THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS: THE DoMINICANFATHERS OF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH
Publishers:

The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017

VoL. XXXIX

OCTOBER, 1975

No.4

TRANSCENDENTAL CRITIQUE AND REALIST
METAPHYSICS

I.
URING THE FIRST decades o£ this century Thomists,
anxious lest they be charged as dogmatists before the
bar o£ post-Cartesian philosophy, concentrated on the
problem o£ philosophical method. 1 In the development o£ this
school o£ methodologically-oriented Thomists, Pere Joseph
Marechal, S. J., 1878-1944, remains a preeminent figure.2
His magnum opus, Le point de depart de la metaphysique,
consists o£ five volumes," c.ahiers,"which are subtitled"

D

1 See Georges van Riet, Thomistic Epistemology:
Studies Concerning the Problem of Cognition in the Contemporary Thomistic School, trans. by Gabriel Franks
(St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1963) .
• Cf. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., " Metaphysics as Horizon," in Collection:
Papers by Bernard Lonergan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), p. HZ;
Otto Muck, The Transcendental Method, trans. by William P. Seidensticker (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp.

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sur le developpement historique et theorique du probleme de
la connaissance." 8 Cahiers I to IV project an historical nexus
for what Marechal identified as the modern philosophical problem of knowledge. Cahier V resolves this same problem by a
polemical epistemology derived from a confrontation of St.
Thomas and Kant. 4 Most notably, this fifth volume displays
Marechal's effort to refute the Critical Philosophy from its own
principles by utilizing the Kantian transcendental method to
reestablish a " Thomistic " or, as I shall emphasize, a realist
metaphysics. For the specific " problem of knowledge " set
forth in Cahier V is the possibility of a method that could
guarantee metaphysics to be a universal and apodeictic science
of Being.5
Among Thomists, Cakier V provoked a controversy in which
it was argued, often sharply, that Marechal had violated not
only the letter but also the spirit of orthodox Thomistic
philosophical doctrine. 6 If this· particular polemic is jejune, as
it is sometimes claimed/ the basic controversy, far from being
a passing scholastic quibble, has been kept alive in today's
8 Cahier 1: De l'antiquite a la fon du moyen age: la critique ancienne de la
ccmnaissance, 1st ed. (Paris: Alcan, Museum Lessianum, section philosophique,
1922); Cakier II: Le conjtit du raticmalisme et de l'empirisme dans la pkilosopkie
modeme avant Kant, 1st ed. (Ibid., 1923); Cahier Ill: La Critique de Kant
(Ibid., 1923); Cakier IV: Le systeme idealiste chez Kant et les postkantiens
Desclee de Brouwer, Museum
(Brussels: L'Edition Universelle, and Paris:
Lessianum, section philosophique, 1947 [published posthumously]); Cahier V: Le
tkomisme devant la pkilosopkie critique (Louvain: Editions du Museum Lessianum,
and Paris: Alcan, 1926) .
For the complete bibliography, see A. Milet, " Bibliographie du Pere J. Marechal,"
in Melanges
Mareckal, I (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1950), pp. 47-71.
A partial English translation of the five cahiers can be found in A Mareckal
Reader, trans. and ed. by Joseph Donceel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970).
All of my citations of Marechal refer to the volume and page number of the
French original.
• See V, 14; 84.
• See V, 15; 34-43.
6 The bibliography for this controversy can be found in Milet, pp. 65-71. Cf.
Muck, pp. 205-243.
7 See Bernard A. M. Nachbar, "Is It Thomism? ,"
Continuum, 6 (1968), pp.
282-235.

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discussion of the role of hermeneutics and method in determining the rational foundations of metaphysics and theology .8
Under the guise of hermeneutics, there is reincarnated the
dominant issue of the earlier exchange: the proper interrelationship of metaphysics and epistemology .9 Yet, the current
methodological vogue is unequivocal only in that it endows Le
point de depart de la metaphysique with a contemporary significance. How this significance is to be discerned, stated, and
evaluated continues to be a major dilemma if the principles
of a Thomistic tradition are compared with the diverse, perhaps
contrary, presuppositions of prevailing hermeneutical theories. 10
In the original debate, one can conveniently isolate two kinds
of questions. Roughly speaking, there are: (1) historical questions about the Thomistic character of Marechal's metaphysics;
(2) philosophical questions about the criteria that would serve
to identify a genuine doctrinal development within a philosophical tradition. 11 However, it is this distinct separation of
historical and philosophical questions which is now frequently
labelled an uncritical assumption ignorant of the cognitive horizons that structure our inquiries. Operationally, in the actual
exegesis of a text, the two kinds of questions are, to be sure,
sometimes mixed together. The stronger and here principal
thesis is that hermeneutical presuppositions necessarily determine the structure of all historical or exegetical questions and
their corresponding answers. 12
8 See Foundations of Theology, ed. by Philip McShane, S. J. (Dublin:
Gill and
Macmillan, 1971) and Language, Truth and Meaning, ed. by Philip McShane
(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972).
• See Etienne Gilson, Le realisme methodique (Paris: Pierre Tequi, n. d. [1935]).
10 See Etienne Gilson, Linguistique et Philosophie; Essai sur les constantes
phiques du langage (Paris: J. Vrin, 1969).
11 Cf. Jacques Maritain,
The Degrees of Knowledge, ed. by Gerald B. Phelan
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), pp. 71-81.
12 " In view of this intention
of any ' retrieving ' interpretation, it in fact appears doubtful whether it is to be refuted in detail by arguments from traditional
research. . . .. It would be remiss to assume that there is for Heidegger a thing
' in itself ' which could ' from the outside ' yield a ' criterion ' which would determine whether the 'unsaid ' in what is said in a definite text has been disclosed
'correctly' or 'falsely.'" Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, trans. by

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As a prophylaxis against this thesis of a constitutive hermeneutical a priori, whose radical historicism could only be
cured by some form of realist metaphysics, let us assume that
we all travel around the famous circle: that the meaning of
a text can only be exposed from an intellectual and cultural
stance, and that the stance requires a further critique to render
itself explicit. So much, one readily supposes, is obligatory for
every self-reflective investigation. But acknowledgement of the
hermeneutical circle does not entail the additional but commonly held premise that the intentionality of any but especially of
a historical text is, in itself* inaccessible to the inquiries of the
reader. That is, one can abstain from or repudiate a hermeneutics in which the interpretation of the text becomes essentially
an imposition or a construction of meaning, a construction
whose plausibility is determined not by the intrinsic intelligibility embodied in the text but by the systematic consistency of
the cognitive horizons or categories of the interpreter. 18
In opposition to a " Copernican" hermeneutics 14 or, more
exactly, to its epistemological forebear, the Thomists of MareTheodore Kisiel and MurraY: Greene (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1971)' pp. 109-110.
Merely to catch the Hegelian-Heideggerian resonance that can be heard among
some contemporary " neo-scholastic " philosophers, the following quotation seems
example enough: " There is no pure immediacy of what appears and what is to
be received because every objective content which comes to us as givenness is
already mediated through the performance of the subject. The way in which
we see the object, against which background and in which context we understand
it, which questions we direct at it, and which answer-from our perspective-we
expect from it, all this helps determine the object as it discloses itself to us and
becomes ' phenomenon.' "-Emerich Coreth, S. J. "I=ediacy and the Mediation
of Being: An Attempt to Answer Bernard Lonergan," in Language, Truth and
Meaning, ed. McShane, p. 88.
13 Cf. Joseph Owens, C.Ss. R., "Judgment
and Truth in Aquinas," in Mediaeval
Studies, 82 (1970), pp. 188-158; Hans Jonas, "Change and Permanence: On the
Possibility of Understanding History," Ch. 12 in Philosophical Essays: From
Ancient Creed to Technological Man (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp.
287-260.
" " On peut penser que Kant, de nos jours, aurait donne un supplement a sa
Dialectique, specialement consacre a l'histoire." Victor Goldschmidt, Platonisme
et pensee contemporaine (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1970), p. 218.

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chal's generation, by reason of their own noetic principles, were
obliged to evaluate, historically, the Thomistic character of his
metaphysics. That historical interpretation proceeded from the
realist contention that meaning or intentionality is effected by
but is not a construction of the human intellect. In Thomistic
terms, the debate about a historically, that is, a textually verifiable interpretation of St. Thomas, is legitimated by the very
possibility of metaphysical knowledge. Words and word usage
are, indeed, immersed in the obfuscating changes of history,
hence the need for hermeneutics, but intelligence and intelligibility transcend their historical instantiations, hence the
need for a realist hermeneutics.
Now the human mind ... is in itself above time, but it is subject
to time accidentally, inasmuch as it understands with continuity
and time, in keeping with the phantasms in which it considers the
intelligible species ... (Summa Theol., I-II, q. 113, a. 7, ad 5).

A text, albeit difficult to interpret, retains a potential but intrinsic intelligibility which historical exegesis partially unveils
but does not create. Understanding in its own right the meaning
of a text, the goal of a realist hermeneutics, is an instance
analogous to the intellect grasping the natural intelligibility of
a thing. 15 For hermeneutics, with all of its peculiar and sometimes intractable problems, is a derivative science governed,
in its fundaments, by the principles permitting knowledge of
Being.
The distinction posed between historical and philosophical
questions does not deny that such investigations are reciprocal.
They are, however, differently ordered. Historical exegesis aims
to reveal the meaning of the text in itself; philosophical reflection, methodologically subsequent, demonstrates that this
intelligibility can, in principle, be revealed in itself. Therefore,
in the order of
discovery of meaning, historical exegesis can
15 A realist
hermeneutics reflects the crucial distinction between instrumental
signs (words and texts) and formal signs (concepts). For the epistemological elements of a realist hermeneutics, see Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 119-128,
387-417.

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function independently of any explicit hermeneutical theory. 16
The Thomists' response to Marechal centered on a point of
order-the order to be observed between metaphysics and
epistemology. Does a realist metaphysics, to be considered
apodeictic, need as its proper prolegomenon a critique of knowledge? The judgment that Marechal's philosophy is not
" Thomistic " depended on historical and systematic arguments
that asserted the impropriety of such a critical prolegomenon
for a Thomistic Realism. These arguments merit rehearsal, but,
since the stated purpose of Cahier V is also to instantiate the
Critical Philosophy, it is no less compelling to ascertain
whether Marechal reestablished a realist metaphysics of Being
by means of a Kantian transcendental method. 17
Roughly speaking, this is an investigation of the historical
kind which, although it does not evoke the full Thomistic doctrine of metaphysical knowledge, at least grants that the
hermeneutical circle is not " vicious " : that there is an essential
distinction to be maintained between the intentions and
meanings embodied in a text and the structuring features of our
inquiry into the text. On this realist hermeneutical principle,
which Marechal professed/ 8 is founded the central historical
analogy drawn in Cahier V: between Aquinas and Aristotle,
Marechal and Kant.
16 " We need, in the first place, a nonhistoricist
understanding of nonhistoricist
philosophy. But w.e need no less urgently a nonhistoricist understanding of historicism, that is, an understanding of the genesis of historicism that does not
take for granted the soundness of historicism." Leo Strauss, Natural Right and
History (Chicago.: The University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 33.
" What does a philosophical understanding of the history of philosophy involve?
It involves nothing less than the discovery of philosophy itself. Only he who
knows philosophy can see the history of philosophy in its light. If there is a
philosophical truth, then it and it alone is the real location of the meaning of
the history of philosophy." Anton C. Pegis, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, Vol. I, "Introduction" (New York: Random House, 1945), p. xliii.
17 A project suggested but not carried out by Francis P. Fiorenza in the "Introduction " to Karl Raimer, Spirit in the World, trans. by William Dych, S. J.
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), p. xxxiv.
18 Cf. V, 13-17; 29-31.
The conclusion of this paper is to question whether
Marechal could consistently maintain such realist principles.

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II.
The vocabulary common to Aristotle and Aquinas has occasioned the idea that Thomism, in its internal principles and
structure, is Aristotelian philosophy in the service of a Christian emendation and amplification of Aristotelian doctrine.
Such was Man!chal's conviction. 19 But this interpretation, and
others like it, are over-simplifications that leave unexplained
how Aristotle and St. Thomas, supposedly using the same principles and method. could have reached patently different conclusions in their respective metaphysics. 20
The historian most responsible for an alternative view, Gilson, has insisted that, despite the indisputable " presence . . .
of an Aristotelian level," Thomism " did not come out of
Aristotelianism by way of evolution but of revolution." 21 The
transformation of Aristotle occurred, in the main, because St.
Thomas believed in the theological doctrine of creation, understood God as the Prima Causa, and identified actus essendi and
not form as the primary actuality in a finite substance. Put
succinctly, Aristotle and St. Thomas reached different conclusions because their philosophical principles were different.
In the most general perspective, to correlate the methods of
St. Thomas and Aristotle is to distinguish the theological
Summa of a mediaeval Christian theologian from the metaphysics of his Greek predecessor, a non-Christian, pagan philosopher. This delineation of the realms of philosophical nature
19 " ••• Ia pensee philosophique, a travers ses tatonnements,
ses oscillations, ses
deviations, ses redressements, ses progres, recherche obscurement, a chaque epoque,
et aujourd'hui autant que jamais, une position d'equilibre, qui correspond, en fait,
pour l'essentiel, a celle qu'occupa l'aristotetisme thomiste." V, 34. [Italics mine.]
Cf. I, 101, 104, 106, 256-257; V, 35, 39, 75.
20 See Anton C. Pegis, St. Thomas and Philosophy
(Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1964); "Some Reflections on Summa Contra Gentiles II, 56,"
An Etienne Gilson Tribute, ed. by Charles J. O'Neil (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1959), pp. 169-188.
21 Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (Torcmto:
Pontifical Institute
of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), p. 158; History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle
Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), p. 365.

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and theological grace touches upon theoretical and historical
problems too many and too complex to be raised here. 22 Instead, it is sufficient only to note that
considered that
Aristotle and St. Thomas had engendered a common, metaphysical patrimony. For this heritage, Marechal essayed a
transcendental justification that should have reconciled Kant's
new method to old metaphysical conclusions. 28
Paradigmatic for the relationship drawn between Kantian
method and realist metaphysics is the relationship that Marechal attributed to Aristotle and St. Thomas. As Aquinas had
made explicit what was latent in Aristotelianism, so Marechal
could make explicit and justify the realist metaphysics that he
thought latent in the method of the Critical Philosophy. 24
If Marechal's project seems a quixotic or an untenable
legerdemain, this suspicion is generated by one's own conception of the aim of the Critique of Pure Reason. For there have
issued, from different interpretations of the Critical Philosophy,
the numerous commentaries whose proliferation is mirrored in
a variety of ideas about Kant's purpose in the first Critique. 25
Although Kant himself often mentioned what he hoped to
accomplish, his intention is most neatly stated in the question
that is asked in the " Introduction" : " How is metaphysics,
as science, possible? " [B22]. This question, if we allow that
it correctly poses the aim of the Critique, requires attention
to Kant's deployment of the term "metaphysics." 26
22 See Anton C. Pegis, The Middle Ages and Philosophy:
Some Reflections on
the Ambivalence of Modern Scholasticism (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company,
1963).
•• Cf. V, 33-34, 39, 599-601.
••" Comment constater, dans le kantisme meme, la presence ou I' absence de
cette metaphysique implicite .... Telle fut . . . {1'] attitude prise par les Cahiers
devant le probleme de la connaissance." V, 602.
•• See Nathan Rotenstreich, "Interpretations and Systems: On Approaches to
the Critique of Pure Reason," in Experience and Its Systematization: Studies in
Kant (The Hague: Martin us Nijhoff, 1965), pp. 132-174.
•• See D. P. Dryer, Kant's Solution for Verification in Metaphysics (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1966). Cf. Nathan Rotenstreich, "Kant's Concept
of Metaphysics," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 8 (1954), pp. 392-408.

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In defining " metaphysics," Kant indicated that it is a
knowledge of things but, mostly, he stressed that the Critique
is an investigation concerned" not so much with objects as with
the mode of our knowledge of objects" [AI2]. Kant's emphasis
notwithstanding, the Critique is not, in the later sense of the
Mar burg school, an epistemology. Kant, it is important to remember, was concerned with the mode of our knowledge of
objects and not with our knowledge of knowledge. 27
Marechal can be assimilated to the group of interpreters who
recognize that the purpose of the Critique of Pure Reason is to
establish the possibility of metaphysics as a science.28 This
assessment makes plausible, if only initially, Marechal's proposal to use the Critique to reestablish a metaphysics. That
this is a realist metaphysics and that it can be derived from
Kant's method is the heavy burden of proof assumed in the
fifth cahier. For there, the demonstration of the "affirmation
ontologique " is attempted.
As itself an explicit judgment, the " affirmation ontologique "
declaims the "absolu de l'etre": in Kantian terms, the existence and theoretical intelligibility of God and the noumenal
order. 29 As true, the "affirmation ontologique" is the logical
ground for all judgments and is the implicit condition of the
possibility of any object of thought, 80 and, in that sense, resembles Kant's concept of the Transcendental Ego. 81 That it
is also the ontological ground for the objectivity of knowledge
precisely supersedes the possibilities of Kantian philosophy to
express.
Although the Critique does demonstrate the objectivity of
human knowledge by explaining how the noetic object is conCf. Dryer, p. 26, footnote 2.
See Heinz Heimsoeth, "Metaphysical Motives in the Development of Critical
Idealism," in Kant: Disputed Questions, trans. and ed. by Moltke S. Gram
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), pp. 158-199; Gerard Lebrun, Kant et la fin
de la metaphysique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970), pp. 13-41.
29 Cf. V, 318.
•• Cf. V, 459.
81 Cf. Critique of
Reason, B131-Bl36 = [K. r. V., B131-Bl36.].
27

28

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stituted in and for consciousness, Marechal, curiously enough,
construed Kant's explanation as an answer to how the phenomenon, defined as "l'etat d'impression subjective," becomes
an "object." For Marechal, the essential characteristic of a
noetic object is a certain " unite independante " or self-contained permanency, whereas the defining mark of a phenomenon
is its accidentality. A phenomerum.,Marechal claimed, is merely a changing, qualitative modification of consciousness.82 In
this phenomenological sense, the distinguishing feature of the
noetic object is that it is an" en-soi "known only" par opposition au sujet." 88 Whether there is an ontological ground for
this phenomenological " opposition " both the Thomist and
the Kaniian must determine. In making this determination,
each philosophy confronts a comparable problem which can be
located in reference to the coterminous intra-mental and extramental character of a noetic object.
For St. Thomas, a noetic object is the immanent form of the
intellect: " Intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu." 84 But
there is for this formula a counter-balance, the doctrine of the
transcendent or intentional character of a noetic object:
" Species. intelligibilis non est quod intelligitur, sed id quo intelligit intellectus." 85 From a profoundly altered slant, the
Critique explains the noetic object as the product of the understanding, the " relation [which] is nothing but the necessary
unity of consciousness." 86 But this revolutionary assertion
must also be squared with Kant's famous remark in the
"Aesthetic": "Thoughts without content are empty ... [and]
it is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible,
that is to add the object to them in intuition." 87
Kant's account of the objectivity of knowledge Marechal regarded as an error originating in a self-contradictory doctrine
•• Cf. III, 141-145.
•• III, 145.

•• Summa Theol., I, q. 14, a. 2.
86 Ibid., q. 85, a. 2 .
•• K. T.v., A109 .

•• K. T. v., A5l,

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of phenomenality. The transcendental deduction of the" affirmation ontologique " is designed to expose this contradiction
and to supply a true account of the ontological ground for the
noetic object. The linchpin in Marechal's deduction is the concept of final causality, for it enabled him to appropriate the
principal conclusion of traditional theory: that all agents must
have some final end or terminus for their activity. And the human intellect, with its infinite potentiality, has for its final end
Infinite Being. 38
The relationship of final causality is to be observed in the
process that is identified as. objective knowledge. Marechal
emphasized that the possession of an intelligible form, the
species abstracted from the material thing, is not a static perfection or actualization of the intellect; it is "le dessin actuel
d'un mouvement," 39 a provisory term or end of the intellect's
tendency toward Infinite Being. As provisory, a noetic object
is distinct from the knowing subject because it is only a partial
realization of the intellect's potency and not the final end of
the rationalis appetitus.
Demonstrate that all these partial ends are necessarily in the
" ordre absolu du noum{me," 40 and one thus proves that the
condition which distinguishes a noetic object from the subject,
the relationship of finality, is the same condition that grounds
a noetic object in the ontological order. This demonstration
establishes that the phenomenological affirmation of the extramental character of a noetic object also entails the ontological
reality and intelligibility of the noetic object, the noumenal
"en-soi " distinct from the subject.
Kant restricted the affirmation of the noumenal order to
postulates of practical reason that enshrine the moral necessity
to ground the categorical imperative. In addition to the difficulties inherent in Kant's singularly austere concept of duty,
38 " L'infinite virtuelle de !'intelligence,
comme puissance, et !'objet formel total
de !'intelligence, l'etre abstrait et transcendantal, sont done des expressions correlatives, qui se peuvent indifferemment deduire l'une de l'autre." V, 375.
39 v, 443.
445.

••v,

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Marechal discerned a more fundamental oversight in the argument from Practical Reason. Moral action is only secondary
or derivative; practical postulates should be derived from the
conditions of the fundamental human a priori, the necessity
of voluntary action in genere.
In opposition to Kant, Marechal insisted that the affirmation of the noumenal order is a necessity of theoretical reason
because such an affirmation is the necessary logical condition
for voluntary action in genere. That is, to attempt to will an
end which is, under all conditions, a logical impossibility is
simply to attempt to will non-being. And this notion, in reference to the primary nature of the will, is self-contradictory. 41
Consequently, the logical condition for every voluntary act or
pursuit of an end, is, implicitly, the judgment that it is logically possible to realize this end.
If we schematize Marechal' s prolix argumentation/ 2 his
41 Marechal claimed that the Final End, God, is logically possible for man to
attain. It cannot be the case that " ... la tendance radicalle de notre nature intellectuelle devient une absurdite logique: l'appetit du neant" v, 448. In this
reductio ad absurdum argument, Marechal fell back on the axiom, " Desiderium
naturae non potest esse inane." Otherwise, " ... 'la volonte de nature' devrait
etre con<;ue comme volonte de !'impossible: l'etre tendrait au neant; la position
serait negation, le non-etre etre" V, 421. However, these assertions are not meant
to compromise the gratuitous, super-natural character of the Final End. See V,
419-423.
•• Marechal propounded a metaphysical and a transcendental deduction of the
" affirmation ontologique." The transcendental deduction deploys the phenomenological method and is considered to be, because of Kant, an unavoidable prolegomenon
for a critical metaphysics. (Cf. V, 15-16.) The phenomenological method, however, is " un artifice " yet legitimate because it terminates in " I'affirmation metaphysique sous les phenomimes" (V, 69). Thus, the two deductions are complementary since they both arrive at the same ontological conclusions. The metaphysical deduction, although it assumes the ontological reality of the noetic object,
includes the transcendental subject. The transcendental deduction, although it
begins only with the a priori subject, concludes to the existence and intelligibility
of the ontological object. (Cf. V, 69-70.)
The difference between the metaphysical and the transcendental deductions
is the difference in their starting points. The starting point of the metaphysical
deduction is the noetic object interpreted ontologically: the "proportion entitative" between existent things and the intellect. (Cf. V, 460, # 1.) In the Kantian
sense, the metaphysical deduction is " uncritical." A critical (transcendental) de-

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transcendental deduction devolves into three major steps that
bridge the gap between the logical (phenomenological) possibility of volitional and noetic ends and the ontological or
noumenal reality of those ends. The deduction proves that:
(I) Phenomenologically, the Final End for the human intellect
is Infinite Being, the Absolute, or God. 43
The logical possibility of God entails the existence of God. 44 (3) The existence
duction assumes only the phenomenal object denuded of any ontological reality.
Its point de depart is " ... une diversite ordonnee de 'phenomenes' contingents,
presents a la pensee, et dont il s'agit precisement d'apprecier le rapport eventuel
.
avec un absolu ontologique" (V,
48 "Intellectus
autem respicit suum obiectum secundum communem rationem
entis; eo quod intellectus possibilis est quo est omnia fieri" (V, 374). For
Marechal, the Thomistic argument is demonstrative but it should be put into
a transcendental mode. (Cf. V,
In the transcendental mode, the concept
of an end is " analytically " derivable from the concept of motion as a passage
from potency to act. (Cf. V, 363.) That St. Thomas did not have an " analytic"
concept of final causality has been established in a detailed textual survey by
George P. Klubertanz, "St. Thomas' Treatment of the Axiom 'Omne Agens Agit
Propter Finem,'" in An Etienne Gilson Tribute, ed. by Charles J. O'Neil (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959), pp. 101-117. In referring to the
Final End, Marechal used expressions such as " Infinite Being," " the Absolute,"
and "God,'' interchangeably. (See V, 375,
Cf. Edouard Dirven, S. J.,
De la forme a l'acte: Essai sur le thomisme, de Joseph Marechal, S. J. (Paris:
Desclee de Brouwer, 1965), p. 149, footnote
44 " La fin subjective
adequate de notre dynamisme intellectuel-la beatitude
parfaite, possession du Bien parfait-consiste dans nne ' assimilation ' saturante
de la forme de l'etre, en d'autres termes dans la possession de Dieu. Et cette
fin, quoique surnaturelle, doit etre, en soi, possible: sinon la tendance radicale de
notre nature intellectuelle devint une absurdite logique: l'appetit du neant.
Or la possibilite de la fin subjective (' finis quo ') presuppose la realite de la
·fin objective, ('finis cujus ') pour que I' assimilation
r:Etre absolu soit possible,
il faut avant tout que cet Etre absolu existe. . . .
Et, par consequent, dut-on repousser la valeur metaphysique immediate des
tendances ' naturelles,' valeur admise par les Scholastiques, il resterait encore que
poser un acte intellectuel quelconque, c'est affirmer implicitement, non pas seulement
la possibilite mais la realite de la ' fin objective,' du ' finis qui, vel cujus,' condition
logique de possibilite de la ' fin subjective.'
Lorsque la 'fin objective' est un objet fini, le mode de realite de ce dernier n'est
point totalement fixe par le seul fait de 'terminer' objectivement une tendance ....
Mais lorsque cet objet est Dieu, lorsque la fin objective s'identifie avec l'Etre
necessaire par soi (Acte pur), qui n'a pas d'autre mode de realite que I' existence
absolue, l'exigence dialectique enveloppee dans le desir prend une portee nouvelle-et cela, non pas a raison du seul desir naturel, mais a raison de 1'objet du desir:

a

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

of God as the Final End grounds the noumenal existence of all
finite (partial) ends. 45
Since it embodies much traditional metaphysical vocabulary
but does so under a novel doctrinal aegis, it is necessary to
reiterate, with some commentary, the three steps of this deduction.
First,
appealed to the idea of the adequate formal
object of the intellect (totius en tis universalis) and finality
(rationalis appetitus). This reinstatement of traditional metaphysics, however, is made from the standpoint of a phenomenology that portrays Infinite Being, the Absolute, or God as
the Final End of the human intellect. To this phenomenology
is joined a logical analysis of the conditions which make possible
the activity of the finite will.
Secondly, Marechal stressed, it is true, the de facto dynamism
of the finite intellect but the existence of the Absolute which
grounds this dynamism is demonstrated by a simple and classic
statement of the Ontological Argument: 46 the existence of God
affirmer de Dieu qu'il est possible, c'est affirmer purement et simplement qu'il
existe, puisque son existence est la condition de toute possibilite.
Nous pouvions done poser, en toute rigueur, que la possibilite de notre fin derniere
subjective presuppose logiquement !'existence de notre fin derniere objective, Dieu,
et qu'ainsi, dans chaque acte intellectuel, est affirmee implicitement d'un Etre absolu:
' Omnia coguoscentia coguoscunt implicite Deum in quolibet coguito ' (V erit., !it!it,
!it, ad I. Interpreter ceci par S. Th., I, 84, 5; 88, 3) ." V, 448-450.
•• "Achevons de degager ce que la finalite de notre acte intellectuel renferme
d'implicite.
Nous tenons deja !'existence necessaire de la fin derniere objective.
Ajoutons-y !'existence necessaire de tout ce que !'analyse revelerait etre indissolublement lie a la fin derniere; cela va de soi [viz., les fins partielles subordonnees].' v, 451.
" Les formes particulieres, immanentes a notre intelligence, tiennent done leur
valeur objective de leur subordination finale a une Necessite absolue .... " V, 459.
•• My assertion has been called "simply wrong" by J. Michael Vertin, "The
Transcendental Vindication of the First Step in Realist Metaphysics According to
Joseph Marechal" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1973),
p. !it86. [Cf. Denis J. M. Bradley, "Transcendental Critique and the Possibility of
a Realistic Metaphysics:
A Study in the Philosophy of Joseph Marechal" (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1970), pp. 137-138.]
But consider Vertin's reconstruction of Marechal's argument:
". . . (1) the
intelligence's striving for an objective term implies the intelligence's affirming that

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is possible, but since the Divine Existence must be conceived as
the necessary ground of all logical possibility, therefore, God
exists.
that term is (a) at least possible, in general, and (b) actual at the time
when it is achieved, (2) the intelligence inevitably strives for an ULTIMATE
objective term, and (3) the notion of the ultimate objective term implies the
notion of unlimited actuality and thus excludes the notion of mere possibility;
and, consequently, (4) it follows that the intelligence inevitably affirms that
ultimate term as actual." [Ibid.] No less than Marechal, Vertin (expressly in step
3) argues from the notion of possibility to the "notion of unlimited actuality."
Dirven candidly admits: "Ce texte [V, 448-450], qui ressemble tellement a la
preuve ontologique de Leibniz, est simplement deroutant " [op. cit., p. 248] but
emphasizes Marechal' s reference to " l' exigence dialectique du desir " (p. 250) .
Vertin also stresses "the implicit, dynamic, performative order" (p. 286) and
cites Marechal's specific criticisms of the Ontological Argument (See V, 473, 339,
344-346, 472-474, etc.) to support the idea that the deduction argues from the de
facto intellectual dynamism to the Final End which makes this dynamism possible.
Similarly Dirven: "Ceci est prouve [i.e., the existence of God], non par I' analyse
logique du contenu conceptuel, ni par un examen du pur finalisme ... mais par
un enracinement dans l'etre du dynamisme . .•. " (Op. cit., p. 253, italics mine).
However, on the premise that Marechal criticized the Ontological Argument one
can hardly conclude that his own deduction is free from every vestige of Anselmian
logic. To the contrary, the regulations which initially govern the deduction create
a profound antithesis: Either (1) the de facto intellectual dynamism is merely
and strictly a phenomenological dynamism void of any ontological referent, or (2)
it is, actually, an existential dynamism rooted in Being. In order to refute Kant,
Marechal needed to prove (2) but was constrained to begin his argument with
the assertion of (1). Yet if Dirven and Vertin have correctly characterized the
deduction, then Marechal, in fact, began with (2), in which case his argument
does not accomplish its stated objective. Assuming that his argument begins at
(1), as Marechal claimed, it seems necessary that some form of the Ontological
Proof be interpolated.
For if Marechal presupposed, uncritically, the ontological existence of the
de facto intellectual dynamism, his deduction founders on a methodological inconsistency. The " factuality" of that dynamism must be maintained to be
strictly in the phenomenological realm. But if it is consistently restricted to a
phenomenological terminus a quo, the deduction can only move from a notion
(a description with an existential epoche) of intellectual dynamism to that
analytically implied notion of the intellect's Final End which, in this case, must
necessarily be conceived to exist. Indeed, the Ontological Proof introduced at
this point is highly " dialectical " and more subtle than the Anselmian and Rationalist formulations that Marechal criticized.
However, merely to observe that Marechal's deduction " ... est suspendue, non
a notre marche vers un terme, mais a l'objet en taut que conditionnant l'etre
de la marche" (Dirven, p. 250) is to ignore the methodological problem and to

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

... affirmer de Dieu qu'il est possible c'est affirmer purement et
simplement qu'il existe, puisque son existence ,est la condition de
toute possibilite (V, 450).

The third step promulgates the significant and novel conclusion. In the case of the partial specifications of finite intellectual dynamism, the End absolutely " justifies" the means.
Because God exists, any noetic object that is, phenomenologically, a subordinated end on the way to the Absolute must also
be conceived to have a noumenal existence and intelligibility.
Elsewhere, it should be readily acknowledged, Marechal
denied the probity of Anselm's reasoning, confident, no doubt,
that his own dialeotical treatment of intellectual tendency did
not stray from the preserve of Thomistic orthodoxy .. But one
asks how is there a way to pass from a truly Phenomenological
Absolute to a truly Ontological Absolute other than by the
Ontological Argument? Surely in the very necessity to make
this passage, there is revealed the radical discrepancy between
Cahier V and the classical, especially Thomist, procedure.
The Aristotelian and Thomistic arguments begin with the
existent motion in the world, establish the impossibility of an
actually existent infinite series of moved movers, and conclude
to the actual existence of an Unmoved Mover or Final End
which is the definitive termination of the series of relative or
subordinated ends. Marechal, however, could not demonstrate
that the ontological existence of the Final End follows from the
existence of the subordinated series of relative ends because,
in his deduction, these ends are initially assumed to be only phenomenal. Indeed, it is the specific purpose of the deduction to
demonstrate that this initial assumption is ultimately false but
it is essential to begin only there.
raise but not pursue the ontological question. How can Being be introduced into
an argument which is, ex hypothesi, strictly phenomenological?
Reviewing Marechal's argument, Joseph De Vries, S. J., La Pensee et L'Etre
(Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts,
p.
concludes: " ... une metaphysique
de la connaissance qui pretend resoudre les problemes critiques fondamentaux en
s'appuyant sur la connaissance de la ' nature de !'intelligence' ne peut manquer
de presupposer deja ce qu'elle veut demontrer."

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In a Thomistic metaphysics, no bridge can be built between
a Phenomenological Absolute and its subordinated series of
phenomenal ends and an Ontological Absolute which is the
causa essendi of all subordinated beings. For Marechal removed from his deduction the initial affirmation of finite esse
that is the cardinal principle and sole motive force of the
Thomistic proof.. As a result, the transcendental deduction of
the ontological affirmation reverses the order of the Thomistic
proof from final causality; it argues from the existence of God
to the existence of finite beings. 47 In Marechal's deduction,
then, there is sufficient "ontologism " to satisfy the suspicions
of Kantians and Thomists alike.
On the other hand, Marechal understood the Critical Philosophy to be contradictory since it posits a phenomenal object
divorced from its ontological grounds. But the doctrine of a
strictly phenomenal object was Kant's personal mistake. Kant's
method can be freed from that mistake. An adequate transcendental analysis, even if-for the sake of philosophical dialogue-it begins, hypothetically, with the Kantian phenomenal
object, proves that the so-called strictly phenomenal object
must necessarily be "sublated" into the reality of the noumenal
order, indeed, into the very order of the Absolute.

III.
Unfortunately, terminological and logical confusions mar
Marechal's ingenious attempt to refute the Kantian doctrine
of cognitive objectivity. In Marechal's reading of the Critique,
the " premiere opposition " of the subject and the object is
engendered by the " imposition " of the categories on the phenomenon. His definition of the phenomenon as " le donne reS!u
par nous" corresponds, apparently, to Kant's term "appearance" (Erscheinung) in the first edition, the sensible datum as
subject to the a priori forms of space and time. 48 If "opposi•• See Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., "The Conclusion of the Prima Via," in Modern
pp. 88-58,
"Actuality in the 'Prima
Via' of St. Thomas," Mediaeval Studies,
(1967), pp.
•• Cf. ill, 145; K. r. V., A90,

Schoolman, 80

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

tion" first arises when the phenomenon (Erscheinung) is subject to the categories, the implication is that there can be an
unsynthesized manifold, that is, an Erscheinung not subject
to the categories. Although problematical/ 9 there are texts to
support this idea in the Critique.
Kant gave one clear statement of the relationship between
"appearance" (Erscheinung) and" phenomenon."
Appearances, so far as they are thought as objects according to the
unity of the categories, are called phenomena
.

This text, however, is not included in the second edition, which
does not hold to the distinction first drawn. On the contrary,
in the second edition, the term " Erscheinung " is used to cover
both the indeterminate object of sensible intuition and the determinate object of the understanding. 50 In the case of the
indeterminate object of sensible intuition, what is given, strictly
speaking, is the matter of appearance. The form of the appearance pertains to the a priori forms of the sense faculty. 51 In
both editions, Kant rarely used the term " phenomenon " and
when it is used, it can only refer to Erscheinung in the full
sense-to the determinate object of the understanding.
In A248 52 Kant distinguished the different contributions to
knowledge of the sense faculty and the understanding. Sensibility accounts for Erscheinung, the understanding for the phenomenal objects, although the production of the phenomenal
object comes about only because the understanding is necessarily related to the sense faculty. Marechal's definition of the
"phenomenon," "l'etat du donne sensible sous les formes
spatiale et temporelle " 53 is confusing and confused.
49 See K. r. V.,
Cf. Graham Bird, Kant!s Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument in the Critique of Pure Reason (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul,
p. 58.
50 E. g., K. r. V.,
fl'. Cf. T. D. Weldon, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
ed., 1958), p.
51 See K. r. V.,
52 Commenting on this text, H. J. Paton, Kant!s Metaphysic of Experience, Vol.
II (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1986), p. 440 complains: " ... [Kant]
habitually uses the word 'appearance ' [Erscheinung] without making clear whether
by that he means the whole object or only a partial and temporary aspect of it."
58 III, 144,

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Kant did not use the term " phenomenon" to refer to the
indeterminate object of sensible intuition and never considered
the phenomenon to be merely "l'etat d'impression subjective." 54 Marechal's notion that the categories impose "conditions nouvelles " 55 on the "phenomenon" and that these
new conditions are what enable one " connaitre le phenom{me
objectivement" 56 is meaningless. By Kantian definition a
"phenomenon" is a categorized object, so that the subjectobject opposition cannot be based on an opposition of the phenomenon to the a priori categories of the understanding. In the
Critique there is not and cannot be any such opposition.
Evidently, Marechal's muddled terminology indicates a more
significant anomaly in the starting point of his deduction.
Marechal identified the " phenomenon" in a way that could
only be isomorphic with Kant's problematical idea of an unsynthesized manifold. But the idea o£ an unsynthesized manifold is never the initial premise in any of Kant's arguments.
Rather, all the versions of the Transcendental Deduction presuppose an empirical unity of consciousness, a unity that is
multifaceted and variously explicated by Kant. What Kant
demonstrated is that the de facto empirical or psychological
unity of consciousness has its necessary ground in an a pnon
or transcendental unity of consciousness. 5 7
54
55

III, 141.
III, 145.

Ibid.
Marechal noted "' L'objet dans Ia pensee,' ou la 'pensee objective,'-postulat
initial de toute Ia Critique- .... " (III,
but commenced with "le point
de vue de !'objet, considere precisivement comme 'objet phenomenal '" (V, 589).
This, supposedly, is "le minimum incontestable d'objet donne ' a titre de science '
. . . selon Kant. . . ." (ibid.) . By "precisivement," Marechal meant that one
should adopt an "as if" stance: his deduction proves that "la notion d'objet
exclusivement phenomenal" is intrinsically contradictory but, in the beginning, this
is the assumed (false) pr.emise. (Cf. V, 517.)
Robert Paul Wolff, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1963) , p. 105, explains that " In each of the versions
of the Deduction, ... the starting point ... is a revised form of the cogito which
expresses what Kant believes to be the most general fact about any consciousness:
its unity."
56

57

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DENIS .T. M. BRADLEY

In the first edition, Kant distinguished between a Subjective
and an Objective Deduction. 58 The text is tortuous but the
key to the Subjective Deduction is the doctrine of the threefold synthesis which is the a priori generative process, the
activity which is the understanding itself, that underlies
and grounds the unity of consciousness. The Objective Deduction assumes this generated unity of consciousness, the
" original apperception," and proceeds to the essential elaboration of the validity of our a priori concepts. In the second edition, although the distinction between the Subjective and Objective Deductions is not maintained with any consistency or
clarity, the doctrine of a priori synthesis must still be presumed
to be the generative source of the transcendental unity of apperception. This latter doctrine, fully developed, is the characteristic Kantian expression of the necessary unity of consciousness. For, on the level of the understanding, the transcendental unity of apperception is not only the principle
governing concepts but it is also the supreme principle of the
possibility of all intuitions. 59 The function of judgments, the
categories of the Metaphysical Deduction, is to bring the manifold of intuition under this one, original apperception. 60
Kant did allow, perhaps inconsistently, that we can think
of the concept of an unsynthesized manifold. But this is the
concept of thought negating its own contribution and leaving
as a remainder the uncategorized sensible data. Since Kantian
knowledge is the determination of sensible intuitions according
to the categories, it is impossible, in any positive sense, to know
the sensible given in and by itself. The attempt to conceive this
situation is only to set a limit, in reference to the mutual conMarechal thought that his own conception of the " phenomenal object " marked
the most elementary level of consciousness since " ... on ne pent descendre endessous sans rendre impossible toute conscience objective" (V, 589). But Kant
would have regarded Marechal's starting point as already making " conscience objective" impossible. Cf. K. r. V., BlSl-132.
58 See K. r. V., Axvi.
59 See K. r. V., Al22.
•• See K. r. V., Al27, Bl35.

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tributions of sensibility and understanding, to " the notion of
experience itself." 61 Marechal's concept of the phenomenon and
Kant's idea of an unsynthesized manifold, if we have correctly
coordinated them, are both Grenzbegrif]e.
Yet the purpose of Marechal's deduction is to demonstrate
that Kant's concept of an" objet exclusivement phenomenal"
is self-contradictory. This supposed self-contradiction is puzzling. How does it arise if the phenomenal object is entirely defined by negating any determinative predicates? There can be
no contradiction, it would seem, unless Marechal's concept of
a phenomenon incorporates some categorial content which could
be signified by predicates that are incompatible in the same subject. The discovery that the concept of the phenomenal object is self-contradictory indicates, certainly, a deviation from
any isomorphic element discernible in Kant's epistemology but,
principally, it reveals the equivocation latent in Marechal's
definition of his own starting point.
In comparison with the texts wherein Kant distinguished the
phenomenal and noumenal orders, Marechal's version of the
phenomenal object is truncated. Kant clearly attributed to
the phenomenal object an ontological ground. 62 The definitions
of appearance and thing-in-itself, or phenomenon and noumenon,
are correlatives. The phenomenon is the noumenon known under the forms of sensibility and the categories of the understanding. Despite persistent criticism, Kant never doubted
either the independent reality of the thing-in-itself or its unknowability. Paradoxically, because we krww only phenomena
we can and must think of noumena. Without the doctrine of
the ontological autonomy of the noumenon, the Transcendental
Aesthetic, with its definitive affirmation of an independent, nonsubjective source of the manifold of sensible intuition, would
be completely overthrown, and with it, the entire Critical
Philosophy. 68
81 Bird, p.
•• See K. r. V., Bxxvi-Bxxvii.
•• See Bernard Rousset, La doctrine kantienne de l'objectivite: L'autonomie

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

The affirmation of the ontological reality of the thing-in-itself
is, admittedly, problematic. "Existence" is a category which,
in the Critique, can properly apply only to the data of sensible
intuition. The Kantian problem becomes insurmountable if one
regards the phenomenon and the noumenon as two separate entities or affirms the being of the noumenon to be diverse from
the being of the phenomenon. For Kant, apart from some occasional, careless phrases, did not envisage the noumenon as an
entity distinct from the phenomenon. The distinction between
the two is not in the ontological order. The noumenon refers
to the same ontological object as the phenomenon but from a
different epistemological perspective. 64
The duality that characterizes the noumenon and the phenomenon is a duality that springs not from two diverse beings
but from the fact that the known object has two different kinds
of relationship to the knowing subject. These two different
relationships are analytically implied by the concept of
Erscheinung by which it is both possible and necessary to think
of the object of experience apart from the conditions of sensibility. If that possibility is eliminated, then the Critique could
no longer meaningfully pose the givenness of sensible intuition.
As evidenced by the great divide between Kant and his successors, the objectivity of knowledge, ultimately, rests on the
ontological reality of the unknowable thing-in-itself, the foundation that makes the Critical Philosophy an .empirical realism
and not an empirical idealism. 65
In the First Critique, against the claims of dogmatic metaphysics, Kant protested that theoretical reason could neither
prove nor disprove the existence of God. However, once rendered impotent, theoretical reason could permit a philosophical
faith. For the God of the Second Critique is the rationally
justifiable postulate of a practical reason which, in the face of
nature's indifference to man, must show the "necessary concomme devoir et devenir (Paris:
162-177.
•• See K. r. V., ASO.
65 See K. r. V., A370, B519a.

Librairie Philosophique

J. Vrin, 1967), pp.

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nection between morality and proportionate happiness." 68 This
divine harmony, or Summum Bonum for which men strive, is
guaranteed in the Third Critique by a God whose existence is
postulated as the necessary condition for the moral teleology
intrinsic to free human action. 87
The Moral Law, which always commands some end to be
achieved, entails the concept of freedom, of agents causing
effects in the phenomenal world, and this agency, in turn,
necessarily implies purposiveness. Concomitantly, there appears, between the realms of a postulated freedom and a nature
bound in ineluctable causal chains, an " immeasurable gulf " 68
that theoretical reason cannot traverse. However, the First
Critique, in fact, had already constructed just that bridge in the
schematism which depicts judgment as the link between reason
and understanding. 69 By their schematism, the Faculty of
Judgment can give to itself the law of the purposiveness of
nature, not as a determinative category but as a heuristic principle or reflective judgment guiding the understanding. 70
Purposiveness, not only as an exigency of the moral realm,
must also be attributed to nature itself because the concept of
" mechanical " causality is insufficient to explain all phenomena.
Nature may be regarded as a mere mechanism but not even a
Newton can explain the production of a blade of grass, or any
other living thing, without relying on the concept of a design
or purpose underlying the pertinent causal laws. Kant did not
suggest, however, that teleological explanations, because they
are necessary heuristic principles, are logically superior to
causal laws. "As far as it is in our power," 71 everything in
nature should be interpreted according to mechanical causality.
68 Critique of Practical Reason, trans. by Lewis White Beck (New York:
The
Liberal Arts Press, 1956), p. 129.
•• See Critique of Judgment, trans. by J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1951), pp. 298-804 [= C. J., pp. 298-304].
68 c. J., p. 12.
•• See K. r. V., B176-B187 .
J., p. 17.
71 C. J., p. 264.

•• c.

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In one sense, teleological and causal explanations are on a par.
The causal principle is itself constitutive of our knowledge of
nature, but the maxim that "All explanations should only be
causal ' as far as it is in our power' " is a regulative principle.
Without generating an antinomy for theoretical reason, the two
maxims, since they are reflective judgments, govern only our
way of investigating nature which must be viewed from both
the causal and the teleological standpoints.
The concepts of the understanding, although determinative
of nature in general, the horizon of possible experience, do not
exhaust the manifold of nature. There remains an indefinite
number of laws that cannot be deduced from the categories of
the understanding but can only be educed from empirical experience.72 From the standpoint of our understanding, these
empirical laws are known as contingent but because we regard
them as laws of nature, we must think them as necessary. Since
they cannot be derived from the categories, there must be discerned for these laws another principle of unity, " so as to make
possible a system of experience." 73 Such a unified system is
accomplished by reflective judgment positing the law of the
purposiveness of nature.
When applied to the realm of appearances, the concept of
an unconditioned is not a constitutive principle of any empirical series but is a heuristic rule governing "the widest possible empirical employment of the understanding." 74 An appearance as such is always conditioned, and reason in investigating a series of appearances proceeds, by indefinite regression
or infinite analysis, without a terminal point. Kant's scientific
progress is the modern, never-ending search for particular
causal laws.
Although God is the ground for the totality of all empirical
conditions, Kantian reason must think the Necessary Being" as
entirely outside the series of the sensible world." 75 The concept
•• K. r. V., Bl65 .
•• c. J., p. 16.
•• K. r. V., B545.
•• K. r. V., B589.

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of God signifies; not the first member in a series of empirical
conditions, for there is none, but the " unknown ground of the
possibility of the sensible series in general." 76
In the noumenal realm, Kant allowed that reason can think
that causes do not proceed in infinitum. 77 But this concept of
pure reason has no application to the realm of appearances,
and no speculative proof for the existence of God can be constructed on the basis of the traditional metaphysical principle,
Impossibile est in finibus procedere in infinitum. This latter is
not a constitutive principle of the understanding that governs
any empirical series. Similarly, the corollary principle, Omne
age'M agit propter finem, is not a universal and necessary condition of all possible experience but should be applied only to
one class of agents.
For Kant carefully argued, in the Third Critique, that some
cause-effect relationships can be simply and completely explained by mechanical or efficient causality. The only causeeffect relationship that necessitates reference to the concept of
end or purpose is found in a living, organized being, the relationship of the living whole to its parts. In this case too, the purposiveness attributed to the living whole is posited in a reflective judgment that embodies an analogical concept of purposiveness originally instantiated in the moral act. 78
In Cahier V, the description of noetic finality is a knowledge
claim about the universal and constitutive feature of phenomenal experience. In that way, Marechal identified the
heuristic and the constitutive. For the Critical Philosophy, this
attempted identification could only be judged illegitimate, a
dogmatic over-extension that confuses determinative and reflective judgments.
In the opinion of contemporary scholars, an opinion which
Marechal also held, the problem of noetic objectivity is "the
K. r. V., B59Q.
Cf. K. T. V., B443-B448.
78 " For we bring in a teleological ground . .
.when we represent to ourselves
the possibility of the object after the analogy of that causality which we experience
in ourselves .... " C. J., p. Q06.
76
77

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

specifically critical problem," identical with the " transcendental deduction" 79 itself. In the Critique the objectivity of
knowledge emerges from the oppositions of internal to external
sense, from sensible intuition to the a priori categories of the
understanding, and from the subject as activity distinguished
from the product of its activity. The dynamic activity of the
Kantian subject is displayed in the irreducible distinction between intuition and spontaneity, and, most clearly, in the ceaseless workings of the imagination whose temporal schemata
mediate between the pure categories and sensible intuition. 80
From a Realist, and especially from a professed Thomist,
one might anticipate the charge that the Kantian resolution
of the critical problem is deranged because it establishes that
the " subjective is the foundation of the objective." 81 But
Marechal precisely complained that Kant ignored the proper
dynamism of the knowing subject in favor of a static and formalistic epistemology .82 Kant, we know, did not advert, in the
three critiques, to any teleological theory to explain the objectivity of knowledge. This, however, is neither a lacuna in the
Critical Philosophy nor a sign of its excessive formalism; it is,
rather, merely an indication, in this context, that the First
Critique provides a unique elucidation of the subjective activity that underlies all objective knowledge.
Kant explained, in a footnote in the Prolegomena, that be,..
79 H.-J. De Vleeschauwer, The Development
of Kantian Thought: The History
of a Doctrine, trans. by A. R. C. Duncan (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons,
Ltd.,
pp. 56, 75.
80 " This schematism of our understanding,
in its application to appearances and
their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul. ... " K. r. V.,

BISO.

De Vleeschauwer, p. 70.
"En fait, Kant ne tire aucun parti de l'acte transcendantal d'affirmation, que
pourtant il suppose. En formulant les conclusions agnostiques de la Critique de
la raison pure, il se rabat sur les seules relations formelles et statiques de la connaissance. L'affirmation de la 'Chose en soi' reste un episode inexploite" (V,
Rousset, however, is more judicious: "Ala racine de la correlation statique entre
le sujet et !'objet, il y a done un perpetuel dynamisme constructeur, que mettent
specialement en evidence laplace accordee a !'imagination, la definition de l'entendement par !a spontaneite .... " (Op. cit., p. 341).
81

82

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cause of a difference in the argument's starting point, two different methods could be employed in the development of the
Transcendental Deduction. 83 The Prolegomena, for reasons of
pedagogic simplicity, uses the analytic method which assumes
the cognitive validity of physics and geometry, and regressively
explicates the a priori conditions of possibility for these sciences.
The Critique, since a truly critical argument must be presuppositionless, uses the synthetic-progressive method. It demonstrates from independently reasoned premises about the unity
of consciousness, that geometry and physics, but not metaphysics, are transcendentally possible and valid. 84
The actual argument of the Critique, however, surpasses the
tidy distinctions of the Prolegomena. Commentators dispute
how the two methods are finally related, but usually they hold
that the Critique reinstates both methods at a higher level of
philosophical complexity .85 The reason for this complexity can
easily be grasped. By means of the synthetic-progressive method barely outlined in the Prolegomena, Kant attempted to prove
not only the possibility of an object of experience but to prove
the possibility of experience in general. The nature of this task,
so unique and difficult, suggests that the relationship between
the two methods, as they were mutually developed in the
Critique, could not have been given a simple or an exact parallel
elsewhere.
Between the Critique and Cahier V, however, there is no
methodological parallel. Marechal's transcendental deduction
is not a synthetic-progressive demonstration because it does
not begin with a reasoned premise whose truth remains certain.
The conclusion of his argument cancels the initial premise (the
concept of a strictly phenomenal object) by exposing its inherent self-contradiction. But, alternatively, Marechal's deduction is not analytic-regressive. Its initial premise, although
83 See Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,
ed. by Paul Carus (La Salle,
Dlinois: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1955), p. 9!7, note.
•• Cf. ibid., p. 9!4. But this text is contradicted by K. r. V., B!itO.
85 See Roger Verneaux, Le v.ocabulaire de Kant:
doctrines et methodes (Paris:
Aubier-Montaigne, 1967), pp. 175-181.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

hypothetically taken to be true, does not correspond, obviously,
to the Prolegomena's assumption of the validity of geometry
and physics. The Critique, far from undermining their assumed
validity, provides for these sciences a transcendental and indubitable justification.
Marechal's deduction begins with an apparently true premise
that is then proved to be false by the internal movement of the
argument itself. The self-contradiction hidden in the assumed
starting point necessitates a passage from falsity to truth, or,
one may say, from appearance to reality. This internal movement or passage provides the clue to the method actually used
in Cakier V.
The common purpose of all the various forms of the dialectical method is " to transcend or remove contradiction," 86
and, in the Hegelian dialectic, the removal of contradiction is
accomplished by an" inward mediation ... [that] proves itself
to be necessary." 87 This, exactly, is what Marechal's argument
effects on its own premise: the concept of a strictly phenomenal
object is shown to be self-contradictory, and, therefore, necessarily generative of a new starting point. Marechal accused
Kant of propounding a theory of knowledge which was excessively "formelle et statique." 88 This remark, so indicative of
a dialectical philosophy, echoes Hegel's fundamental complaint: "After all, it was only formally, that the Kantian system established the principle that thought is spontaneous." 89
Whereas Marechal accepted the basic viability of Kant's
method, Hegel had decided that the Critical Philosophy needed
a radical reorientation to overcome the one-sidedness of its
method through a Dialectic that would restore to Reason its
86 Richard P. McKeon,
"Philosophy and Method," Journal of Philosophy, 48
(1951), p. 662.
87 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. I, trans. by E. B.
Speirs (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1895), p. 65.
88 V, 592.
89 The Science of Logic: The First Part of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences in Outline, trans. by William Wallace, 2nd ed., rev. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1892), p. 119.

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full scope and power. 90 Thus, Marechal's transcendental justication of a realist metaphysics, if successful, not only turns
the Critique of Pure Reason on its head, but also refutes the
Hegelian riposte that the partiality of the Kantian method leads
necessarily to its dialectical sublation by Reason. Therein lies
the central issue. In their disavowals of the Critique and in
their constructive designs, a close parallel can be drawn between
the criticisms and objectives of Hegel and Marechal. Are we,
then, to view Cahier V in terms of its stated intentions, as an
attempt, possibly valid, to reestablish "Aristotelian-Thomistic"
metaphysics, or are we to conclude, through a more precise
analysis of the deduction's inner structure, that Marechal's
argument is, all said and done, a simulacrum of Hegel's Logic?
If, in fact, Marechal did not use Kant's method, as I have
argued, then the latter, Hegelian alternative may supply the
correct vantage for an assessment of the metaphysics in
Cahier V.

IV.
The transcendental deduction of the " affirmation ontologique," as a type of argument, resembles the Hegelian transformation of phenomenology into logic or ontology. 91 The Phenomenology, by means of a philosophical description of fragmentary experience, is compelled to reach at its end " science "
or the " organized whole of determinate and complete knowledge." 92 The Logic, since it has been handed this " ladder,"
9 °Kant's
"mistake was to stop at the purely negative point of view, and to
limit the uncDnditionality of Reason to an abstract self-sameness without any
shade of distinction. It degrades Reason to a finite and conditioned thing, to
identify it with a mere stepping beyond the finite and conditioned range of understanding. The real infinite, far from being a mere transcendence of the finite,
always involves the absorptiDn of the finite into its own fuller nature." Ibid., p. 93.
91 " Consciousness is Spirit as knowing which is concrete and engrossed in externality; but the schema of movement of this concrete knowing (like the development of all physical and intellectual life) depends entirely on the nature
of the pure essentialities which make up the content of Logic ... philosophy is
just the exhibition of this movement." Science of Logic, trans. Johnson and
Struthers, I (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 19£9), p. 37.
92 The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. by Sir James Baillie
(London: George
Allen and Unwin, rev. £nd ed., 1949), p. 79, [Preface].

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

begins at the standpoint of the Absolute and gives, in purely
conceptual terms, a circular demonstration of its own rational
necessity. Within that circle, the Ontological Argument evinces
that this necessity, the inseparableness of Thought and Being,
is " found in an absolute form ... in the case of God " 93 and in
a relativ.e form in the case of finite being. 94
In comparison with a PhenomeJWlogy that reveals the goal of
history and culture, or a Logic. that thinks the thoughts of the
Absolute, Cahier V may seem exceedingly modest. Nonetheless,
it contains a phenomenology of the form of knowledge that
internally generates an ontology of God and man. For Hegel
and Marechal this dialectical transformation has as its privileged center an assertion of the necessary unity of Infinite
Being and finite thought. In both dialectics, the Ontological
Argument so employed entirely transcends its Anselmian formulation because it posits not only the existence of God but also
the existence of all beings subordinated to God.
Cahier V stipulates that finite thought is possible because it
is governed by the Principle of Identity which, in traditional
metaphysics, is also the first principle of Being. 95 But one
should not, as Marechal chastised Kant for doing, treat the
Principle of Identity solely as an analytic norm of logic and
ignore, thereby, its synthetic character. 96 This synthetic character can be grasped in the necessity expressed. In any judgment of identity the predicate is affirmed as necessarily identical with the subject, and this modal necessity reveals the unity
of intelligibility and Being or, as Marechal maintained, the
unity of essence and existence. Marechal's conclusion though
idiosyncratic follows upon " Kantian " premises: since every
synthesis is a unified diversity, for which there must be a prin93 Philosophy of Religion, Vol. III, p. 358.
•• " ... every 'proof' of God [for Hegel] is reducible to the ontological proof;
each argues from the necessity of thinking the infinite, if we are to think the finite."
Quentin Lauer, "Hegel on Proofs for God's Existence," Kant-Studien, 55 (1964),

p. 452.
95

See V, 87-89.

••see V, 88.

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ciple of unification, the necessary unity of Being and intelligibility in every judgment of identity has a ground. 97
In the Principle of Identity, the synthesis expressed is of
the most universal order," etre comme Realite et etre comme
Idee." 98 One principle of unity is alone superior to this universal
synthesis: the Absolute Unity of reality and thought-God.
Finite thought, synthetic in nature because governed by the
Principle of Identity, is unable to encompass the absolute unity
of God except analogically. But once the first principle is affirmed, there is implicitly posed as its ground the necessary
unity of Thought and Being in God. 99
In effect, by making explicit the necessary relationship between any finite statement of identity and the Absolute,
Marechal provided the elements of a proof for the existence of
God. Although rudimentary and undeveloped, this " proof "
conjures up Hegel's project. The Logic begins with the statement of undifferentiated identity or Pure Being. This presuppositionless beginning, to which in its own fashion Cahier V
cursorily alludes, is the " point de depart " of Hegelian science.
In the full mediation of the Logic, the Principle of Identity provides the dialectical source of all the categories implicit in the
absolute identity of Thought and Being.100
Unlike the Logic and Cahier V, the Critique raises no ques•• " Car aucune synthese n'est necessaire par soi: la diversite, comme diversite,
ne pouvant etre principe de sa propre unification, la necessite d'une synthese doit
avoir sa source dans la necessite meme d'une unite oil s'efface la diversite des termes
synthetiques." V, 563. Cf. K. r. V., BIOS.
•• V, 563-564.
•• "Les etapes dialectiques qui nous conduisent a l'Etre absolu par la voie du
premier principe, entendu en son sens metaphysique integral, sont done les suivants:
a) possibilite objective du premier principe, reconnue dans son application necessaire a !'objet physique ... ; b) affirmation de l'Absolu, Acte pur, comme source
necessaire de cette possibilite objective. La seconde etape est bien reellement a
priori mais elle resterait hypothetique,
faute de la premiere." V, 565.
' 00 " ••• it is clear that the Law of Identity,
and still more the Law of Contradiction, is not merely analytic, but synthetic. For in its expression the latter
contains not only empty, simple self-identity, but also the Other of identity in
general, and, further, absolute non-identity or self-contradiction. And the Law of
Identity itself contains ... the movement of Reflection .... " Science of Logic,
Vol. II, pp. 4f.!-43.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

tion of Being because Kant considered the origin of finite existence to be theoretically insoluble. 101 In that sensible intuition
is simply given, Being too is simply given. Being is truly the
supreme quaestio facti and the Critical Philosophy carefully
confines itself to a manageable quaestio juris, how sensible intuition is possible and thinkable. This latter question transcendental method can resolve by validating the a priori concepts of the understanding, a validation which shows that the
concept of God is solely a regulative idea of pure reason. 102
Cahier V, however, raises the Hegelian question but withdraws from the Hegelian answer. It demonstrates that the
necessarily existent God is an a priori condition of possibility
for finite thought. The Phenomenology takes the next decisive
step: God is an a priori condition of possibility for finite
thought because the concept of the Absolute is Thought's most
universal category. 103 In his intentions ever the faithful
Thomist, Marechal did not take that step. To do so is to replace the Thomistic doctrine of a formal union between the
knower and the known, the adequatio rei et intellectus, with
the Hegelian doctrine that Thought and Being are identical.
Above all, it is to do away with a created intelligence possessed
of analogical knowledge of God in favor of an Absolute unfolding itself in finite thought. 104
101 " The objects of exp.erience, then, are never given in themselves, but only in
experience, and have no existence outside it .... For everything is real which stands
in connection with a perception .... The non-sensible cause of these representations
is completely unknown to us .... We may, however, entitle the purely intelligible
cause of appearances in general the transcendental object, but merely in order
to have something corresponding to sensibility viewed as a receptivity." K. r. V.,
B521-B522. Cf. Cornelio Fabro, "The Transcendentality of Ens-Esse and the
Ground of Metaphysics," International Philosophical Quarterly, 6 (1966), pp.
389-427.
102 See K. r. V., A696/B724-A702/B730.
103 " This last embodiment
of spirit-Spirit which at once gives its complete
and true content the form of self, and thereby realizes its notion, and in doing
so remains within its own notion-this is Absolute Knowledge. It is spirit knowing
itself in the shape of spirit, it is knowledge which comprehends through notions."
Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 797-798.
104 Cf. Summa Theol., I, q. 84, a. 1 and Science of Logic, Vol. II, pp. 466-486;
Summa Theol., I, q. 12, aa. 1-13 and Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 789-808.

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Thomistic metaphysics identifies Thought and Being in
God/ 05 but preserves against any dialectical sublation the irreducible otherness of finite esse intentionale and esse 1UJr
turale. 106 Moreover, in the Beatific Vision, in which the divine
essence is seen because it is the form by which the intellect,
through grace, understands, the finite intelligence does not dissolve into the divine intelligibility but remains incapable of
comprehending the infinite God infinitely. 107 Guided by Sacra
Doctrina, the metaphysical theology of the Summa Theologiae
explains the relationship between finite thought and Being as
a relationship between the creature and the Creator. Because
human knowledge consists of judgments that refer to the ipsum
esse rei, 108 it is related to God Who is lpsum Esse Subsistens
and the universal causa essendi.109 But this ontology of knowledge, entirely derived from the creature's existential relationship to the Creator, does not negate the " epistemological" level
that is maintained in Thomistic noetic theory. 110 At the
epistemological level, the level at which the intrinsic principles
of the cognitive act are elucidated, the Absolute does not func105 "In Deo autem non est forma quae sit aliud quam suum esse. . . . Unde,
cum ipsa sua essentia sit etiam species intelligibilis . . . ex necessitate sequitur
quod ipsum eius intelligere sit eius essentia et eius esse." Summa Theol., I,
q.14, a. 4.
106 " ••• esse dupliciter dicitur:
uno modo, significat actum essendi; alio modo,
significat compositionem propositionis, quam anima adinvenit coniungens praedicatum subiecto." Ibid, q. 4, a. 4, ad 2.
107 " In tan tum enim intellectus
creatus divinam essentiam perfectius vel minus
perfecte cognoscit, inquantum maiori vel minori lumine gloriae perfunditur. Cum
igitur lumen gloriae creatum, in quocumque intellectu creato receptum, non possit
esse infinitum, impossible est quod aliquis intellectus creatus Deum infinite
cognoscat. Unde impossibile est quod Deum comprehendat." Ibid., q. Hl, a. 7.
108 In Boethium de Tn'nitate, q. 5, a. 3, ed. P. Wyser, pp. 38, 11, 8-11.
109 " Cum autem Deus sit ipsum esse per suam essentiam,
oportet quod esse
creatum sit proprius effectus eius .... " Summa Theol., I, q. 8, a. 1.
110 " ••• in luce primae veritatis
omnia intelligimus et iudicamus, inquantum
ipsum lumen intellectus nostri, sive naturale sive gratuitum, nihil aliud est quam
quaedam impressio veritatis primae .... Unde cum ipsum lumen intellectus nostri
non se habeat ad intellectum nostrum sicut quod intelligitur, sed sicut quo intelligitur; multo minus Deus est id quod primo a nostro intellectu intelligitur." Ibid.,
q. 88, a. 3, ad 1.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

tion as an immanent condition for finite thought.r 11 Both nature and intelligence are created and are secondary or dependent, but each, in the Thomistic scheme, sustains its own
authentic and integral causal efficacy.112 Thus, the human intellect, considered as an activity, is the proper agent of its own
cognition, and, considered as a receptivity, is infqrmed by its
proper object, the abstracted natures of sensible things. 118
If we reflect on Aquinas's unremitting rejection of Avicenna's
Dator Formarum or Averroes's Agent Intellect, 114 or, more significantly, his complete recasting of the Augustinian theory of
divine illumination, 115 Cahier V, from a Thomistic perspective,
seems to obfuscate metaphysical and epistemological explanations. True enough, God's existence is only implicitly affirmed
in each noetic act but, in fact, a solely epistemological explanation of the validity of cognition is eliminated. 118 To explain
adequately a noetic act as act, one must posit God Who,
seemingly so transcendent, becomes a necessary condition within the epistemological justification of knowledge. Here, viewed
111 " ••• habitudo ad causam non intret definitionem entis quod est causa tum .... "
Ibid., q. 44, a. 1, ad 1.
110 " ••• quod Deum operari in quolibet operante aliqui sic intellexerunt, quod
nulla virtus creata aliquid operaretur in rebus sed solus Deus immediate omnia
operaretur .... Hoc autem est impossibile. Primo quidem, quia sic subtraheretur
ordo causae et causati a rebus creatis. Quod pertinet ad impotentiam creantis: ex
virtute enim agentis est, quod suo effectui det virtutem agendi.--Secundo, quia
virtutes operativae quae in rebus inveniuntur, frustra essent rebus attributae, 'li
per eos nihil operarentur. Quinimmo omnes res creatae viderentur quodammodo
esse frustra, si propria operatione destituerentur; cum omnis res sit propter suam
operationem." Ibid., q.105, a. 5.
118 " Et ideo ad intelligendum non sufficeret immaterialitas intellectus possibilis,
nisi adesset intellectus agens, qui faceret intelligibilia in actu per modum abstractionis." Ibid., q. 79, a. 8, ad 8.
11 ' See ibid., q. 79, aa. 4-5.
110 See Etienne Gilson, " Sur quelques difficultes de !'illumination augustinienne,"
Revue N eo-scholastique de philostYphie, 86 (1984), pp. 828-881.
118 "Nous croyons superflu d'insister sur Ia rencontre inevitable, dans toute connaissance intellectuelle d'objet, d'une double condition relative a Ia Realire: une
condition empirique (intuitive sensible), et une condition tranacendantale (rapport
implicite de toute synthese objective a Ia Realite absolue) .... " V, 565.

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from the Hegelian context, Marechal's argument stops short
of an identification of "logic" and "ontology." 117
On Kantian principles, Cahier V must certainly be judged
a mistaken effort to reestablish pre-critical metaphysics. 118 But,
in this regard, Marechal's mistakes are not those of an incompetent historian but of a philosopher who, in bending a method
to serve purposes which, historically and philosophically, are
alien, irresistibly transformed his own principles. Since philosophical methods, principles, and conclusions are mutually constituted, it is to be expected that the observant among latterday Kantians and Thomists should reject Cahier V. On both
sides, this rejection, needless to say, leaves unresolved the truth
of the Hegelian Aufhebung.
Respect for the integrity of individual philosophies disinclines
one to read the history of post-Kantian philosophy with
Hegelian spectacles. 119 It should be allowed that the method
of the Critique need not lead by any Hegelian necessity to the
Phenomenology and the Logic. 120 Yet the Hegelian Aufhebung
one might still consider, with whatever reservation, as the
pertinent historical denouement of post-Kantian philosophy.
But, merely on those cautious terms, the Logic can be seen to
incorporate Cahier V in the unfolding of its own Dialectic. The
transcendent Reason, by means of which Hegel closed in the
Absolute the hiatus between finite thought and Being, brings
117 " ••• Ia logique transcendentale
est deja Ie germe de Ia logique speculative de
Hegel qui ne connait plus Ia borne de Ia chose en soi. Cette logique de l'etre se
substitne a l'ancienne metaphysique qui s'ouvrait sur un monde transcendant.
Hegel ne revient pas au dogmatisme anterieur, il prolonge Ia logique transcendentale en logique speculative. Les categories deviennent les categories memes
de l'Absolu." Jean Hyppolite, Logique et existooce: essai sur la logique de Hegel
(Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1961), p. 70.
118 One recalls Kant's
fulminations in the "Open Letter on Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, August 7, 1799," in Immanuel Kant, Philosophical Correspondtmce,
1759-99, ed. and trans. by Arnulf Zweig (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1967), pp. 253-254.
119 Cf.
pp. 9-17.
12 ° For a general characterization
of the "school of transcendental philosophers,"
see Klaus Hartmann, " On Taking the Transcendental Turn," The Review of
Metaphysics, 20 (1966), pp. 223-249.

666

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

to a complete realization and harmonization, so he claimed, the
God of the metaphysical tradition and the insights of transcendental philosophy. 121 In making the same attempt Marechal's
metaphysics seems mightily, albeit unintentionally, drawn towards the same Absolute. 122
Of course, the distance between St. Thomas and Marechal
is not in direct ratio to the distance between lpsum Esse Subsistens and the Hegelian Absolute. 123 The movement of Cahier
V, with all of its explicit vacillations and latent tensions, cannot
be reduced to that, or to any, :fixed proportionality. Yet the
Hegelian comparison can be left standing because it illumines
those vacillations and tensions. 124
Although they did not excel the historical finesse of Gilson
and like-minded colleagues who refused to their philosophical
programs the accolade of "Thomism," the Nco-Scholastics of
that generation continued to proclaim, vehemently, their allegiance to St. Thomas. Forty years later, that particular
.vehemence has abated somewhat/ 25 since, for one reason, a
tolerant aggiornamento has tamed doctrinaire ecclesiastical censorship. But discussions of the nature of historical Thomism are
121 See
Emil Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension In Hegel's Thought
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 15-18.
122 Marechal, of course, eschewed Idealism because " ... les Idealistes post-kantiens
enervent leur principe de finalite en le combinant de force avec le prejuge de la
totale immanence" (IV, 454). But " ... la metaphysique thomiste trouverait sans
doute dans ces systemes plus jeunes, qui renouerent la tradition metaphysique
interrompue par le kantisme, des inspirations heureuses pour son propre developpement " (IV, 455).
123 "La differenza metafisica fondamentale
sul problema del'.essere fra Hegel e
S. Tommaso e nulla concezione della creazione, in quanto per Hegel l'elevarsi
al punto di vista speculativo comporta il riportarsi in Dio al 'momento che precede
la creazione.' Invece per S. Tommaso e soltanto con la creazione, come produzione
libera e totale del'essere da parte di Dio .... " Cornelio Fabro, C. P. S., "L' Esse'
Tomistico E II 'Sein' Hegeliano," Sapientia Aquinatis: Communicationes IV Congressus Thomistici Internationalis (Romae: Officium Libri Catholici, 1955), p. 268.
124 The opposite
contention, that Marechal illumines the unresolved problems
in Hegel, is made by Franz Gregoire, " Themes hegeliens et depassements thomistes,"
ibid .• pp. 282-291.
125 For a different
opinion, see J. Donce.el, S. J., " Transcendental Thomism,"
The Monist, 58 (1974), pp. 67-85.

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not, these days, altogether passe because theories abound that
directly counter the principles of historic Thomistic metaphysics.126 Yet, as well as be tested, this metaphysics can also
test. To wit, it might be profitable to examine the historicism
planted by Hegel now flowering in the hermeneutics of secondgeneration Heideggerians. 127 However, there is place to pause
for an intermediate question. If my analysis of Marechal is
germane, one may wonder whether contemporary " Transcendental Thomists," as N eo-Scholastics are now called, are not
themselves caught in implicitly Hegelian dilemmas, dilemmas
which can be more clearly posed-and perhaps abandoned-as
the consequences of Hegelian principles. 128 Explication of these
dilemmas, especially as they bear on the problems of hermeneutical theory, I take to be an appropriate point de depart
for further investigations.
DENIS

J. M. BRADLEY

Georgetown University
Washington, D. C.

126 Cf. Terence G. Walsh, S. J., "Assimilation and the Problem of a Contemporary
Thomism," The New Scholasticism, 44 (1970), pp. 591-599.
127 See Alphonse De Waelhens, "Sur une hermeneutique de l'hermeneutique,"
Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 60 (1962), pp. 578-591.
12 " Cf. Georges Van Riet, "Histoire
de la philosophie et verite," in Problemes
d'epistemologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1960), pp.
218-282.

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY AND MAN'S
KNOWLEDGE OF BEING

P

HILOSOPHERS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS in the twentieth century who reflect on man's knowledge-its scope
and processes-generally deny to man the kind of metaphysical knowledge St. Thomas ascribes to him. In such a
situation those who share Thomas's view that man has a capacity for, and an orientation to, a metaphysical knowledge of
reality as being, do well to reflect upon man's knowledge in a
way that is in close touch with contemporary thought. In this
article I wish to do just that, to present an account of the
psychogenesis of being that makes central use of contemporary
psychologies of knowledge and has in view contemporary objections against man's metaphysical knowledge-albeit only in
an exploratory manner, more to suggest its significance than to
develop my theme with the fullness it deserves.
To introduce this study, brief though it is, we must review
something of the Thomistic analysis of man's understanding of
being. There is no one universally accepted interpretation of
Thomas's view on the way man knows reality as being. There
is however widespread agreement that the existential judgment
is proportioned to the knowledge of being as understood by
Thomas, since for him being is that which is. Reality as being
is reducible neither to substance nor to the act of being. If
one accepts this, there still remains disagreement about the
principles that account for such knowledge being present in
The main Thomistic view is that man's knowledge of
the concretely existing sensible reality is primary in the genesis
of such knowledge, and thus that both the concrete sensible
reality and man's knowledge of it through sense, intellectual
abstraction, and insight are the essential principles of this

668

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AND MAN's KNOWLEDGE

OF BEING

669

knowledge. But for many interpreters this cannot fully account
for man's existential judgment, since sense knowledge and intellectual abstraction as such do not properly deliver esse or the
act of being. In another place I have defended the view that
for a full explanation of the existential judgment one has to
recognize that the act of being is more properly the object of
man's affective inclination and volitional act than of his intellectual insight mediated by sense knowledge and abstraction. 1
As supportive of this view we may note that we place the infinitive form of the verb in a sentence as the direct object of a word
or .expression referring to our acts of love, desire, and hate; for
example, we say " I want to live." We normally express the
direct object of an act of knowledge by a noun or a noun clause.
If esse is more properly the object of affectivity and desire than
of intellectual knowledge, the existential judgment and the
knowledge of being proper to metaphysics is dependent in part
on the intellectual knowledge we have through participation in
our affective inclination, act, and its object-our own actualization (or act of being) as the good we seek, and other realities
that are related to this or to which our actualization is related.
The existential judgment is not fully explained by direct intellectual knowledge of concrete sensible reality through sense
and abstraction.
We need not review the major modern difficulties against this
view of man's knowledge of being-such as those that come
from Heidegger on the one hand or from an empiricism, rationalism, or constructivism on the other-to recognize that we
need something like a contemporary " phenomenology " of
knowledge if we are to evaluate Thomas's view in a way that
meets the problems of our time. 2 For such a contemporary
analysis of man's knowledge I suggest that major attention
should be paid to the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget,
1 See "Existence,
the Intellect and the Will," The New Scholasticism, 29 (1955),
145-174, and "Man's Transcendence and Thomistic Resources," The Thomist, 38
(1974)' 426-484.
2 I examine these difficulties and suggest an approach
to them in " Religious
Reflection and Man's Transcendence," The Thomist, 37 (1973), 1-68.

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and I suggest this in spite of his strictures against a philosophy
of knowledge.8 His is widely recognized to be the outstanding
twentieth-century psychology of knowledge he has an epistemological interest in showing how one comes to have the
structures of knowledge exhibited in modern science; and his
developmental approach provides a unique insight into the
dynamism of man's knowledge. Moreover, his study of human
knowledge has gone far beyond the reductionism of the behaviorists. By turning to Piaget we have a vast reservoir of experiments on and observations of human knowledge in its stages
from infancy to adolescence that philosophers of differing traditions have to come to grips with. Yet Piaget's work, valuable
as it is, needs to be supplemented by the work of some American psychologists who have a different emphasis and interpretation from Piaget's. In fact, it appears that the traditional
dichotomy between empiricism and rationalism (or some form
of idealism) is seen in a different way today in this divergence
between some American psychologists such as Eleanor Gibson
and Jerome Bruner (different as these are from one another)
and Piaget and his associates. Their agreements are all the
more significant for their differences, and these agreements and
differences help us to grasp the present state of the question.
For a full study of the relevance of their work for the psychogenesis of being one would have to analyse their questions,
methods, and evidence at much greater length than we are able
• These criticisms are expressed in J. Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy
(New York: 1971). Lhave commented on several of them in ;<Religious Reflection," 48-53.
The philosophical relevance of Piaget's work is discussed in Theodore Mischel,
ed., Cognitive Development and Epistemology (New York: 1971). One of the
discussants (D. W. Hamlyn) discounts such relevance: "My own opinion is that
the mixture of philosophical and empirical issues involve in each case a muddle,
that the philosophical and psychological questions which are at stake are different
from each other, and that there are no grounds for the belief that philosophical
questions can be answered by appeal to empirical evidence or vice versa." p. 19.
Other contributors differ from this position (Stephen Toulmin and Bernard Kaplan).
We should also refer here to the study of Piaget's work in E. Cantore, "Science
and Philosophy. Some Reflections on Man's Unending Quest for Understanding,"
Dialectica,
(1968),

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to here; our brief study can do no more than suggest the possibilities a larger study might contain. To indicate how the
findings of these contemporary psychologies of knowledge are
related to the question of the psychogenesis of being, we will
note, first in reference to Piaget and more briefly in reference
to Gibson, their points of departure, their models of knowledge,
and the stages evident in the evolution they study. Then, as
we proceed, we shall suggest the relevance of their views to
the question of the psychogenesis of being.
In the first place, Piaget's point of departure is to take the
structures basic to scientific knowledge, e. g., the formation and
systematic testing of hypotheses, and then study the evolutionary emergence of these structures in the epistemological
subject. As he writes: " The main aim of a theory of development is to explain the constitution of the operational structures
of the integrated whole or totality (structure operatoire
d'ensemble) ." 4 Reacting against the simple stimulus-response
empiricist explanation of knowledge, Piaget has insisted that
our knowledge of the world depends upon the structures we
bring to bear on it. His early biological work on the evolution
of the mollusc gave him a genetic approach to the problem of
explaining psychologically the structures present in scientific
knowledge. Experiments have shown, for example, that it is
only in the child of 11 or 12 that hypothetico-deductive reasoning is found. Piaget then seeks to explain this emergence
genetically. He finds an analogy between the emergence of new
psychological structures and the emergence of new biological
structures. Among the evolutionary theories of the emergence
• Jean Piaget, "Piaget's Theory," Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology,
Srd ed., ed. Paul H. Mussen (New York: 1970) ¥ol. 1, p.
Of Piaget's many
books we can cite here particularly his summary work, J. Piaget and Barbel
Inhelder, The Psychology of the Child (New York: 1969). He discusses his own
intellectual development in Insights. Among works on Piaget, I have been particularly helped by J. H. Flavell, The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget
(Princeton: 1968), and Hans G. Furth, Piaget and Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs:
1969).

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JOHN FARRELLY

of new biological structures he finds that of C. H. Waddington
to be most consistent with his own previous psychological
findings. Waddington gives great weight to the initiative and
self-regulation of organisms in developing strategies to respond
to challenges posed by the environment, the feedback from the
environment and these strategies upon the organisms, and the
emergence through this of successively new structures by which
the organisms interact with the environment. 5 Similarly, in the
process of the development of the infant into an adolescent
Piaget finds that the epistemological subject in his cognitive
interaction with the environment constructs a series or succession of structures that emerge from earlier ones and lead to
those found in the pre-adolescent and adolescent. His analysis
of the emergence of these structures is in part an explanation of
man's progressively enlarged knowledge of his environment
since this knowledge is dependent upon these structures.
Eleanor Gibson places her more recent studies on perception
within a developmental framework. 6 She is working with an
interpretation of perception that her husband, James Gibson,
defended, and that is gaining wider acceptance. 7 James Gibson
• See C. H. Waddington, "The Theory of Evolution Today," in Beyond Reductionism, eds. Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smythies (Boston: 1969), 857-895.
6 Eleanor J. Gibson, Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development
(New
York: 1969). This book represents not only Gibson's work but also that of many
psychologists, mainly Anglo-American, whose work she reports on and nses. Also
see D. Elkind and J. Flavell, eds., Studies in Cognitive Development (New York:
1969), and D. Hyde, Piaget and Conceptual Development (New York: 1970).
7 See James J. Gibson, The Perception
of the Visual World (Boston: 1950),
and Herbert L. Pick, Jr. and Anne Pick, " Sensory and Perceptual Development,"
in Mnssen, ed., op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 849-988.
The philosophical relevance of J. Gibson's work is brought out by R. Harre
and E. H. Madden in "Natural Powers and Powerful Natures," Philosophy, 48
(1978),
In this article the authors show that a non-Humean philosophy
is needed to account for what science is doing-in reference to our knowledge and
concepts of natural powers, natural kinds, and natural agency. The authors show
that Gibson's work undercuts a philosophical presupposition of those who accept
Hume's event-ontology: "Finally the powerful psychological work of J. J. Gibson
has shown that there is no empirical basis for the tacit assumption, shared by
many philosophers, that , as a matter of fact percepts are organized groups of
sensations." p.

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reacted against the empiricist view that we initially sense only
color (as points or blotches of color), and that perception of
distance or depth is basically learned, that this perception is
the effect of one's interpretation of cues or clues and is thus a
construction by a process of association. Against this he shows
that the stimulus considered globally has correlates for one's
perception of depth (e. g. in gradients of texture in the ground
or setting of one's normal perceptions in the visual world) and
that three-dimensional physical reality is given basically
in perception rather than learned. In continuity with this,
Eleanor Gibson understands perception to be " action, but it
is exploratory action, not executive action in the sense of
manipulating the environment." 8 She writes:
Perception, functionally speaking, is the process by which we obtain
firsthand information about the world around us. It has a phenomenal aspect, the awareness of events presently occurring in the
organism's immediate surroundings. It has also a responsive aspect;
it entails discriminative, selective response to the stimuli in the immediate environment. 9

She is reacting against the behaviorist interpretation of perception or the view that learning occurs through association of
objects with the behavior or response they evoke. Gibson holds
that differing behavior with differing objects (for example, the
differing behavior of Pavlov's dog in the presence of a circle
that signaled the presence of food, and an elliptical figure that
had ceased to signal food's presence) is a sign that the subject
has discriminated the different objects-it is not the discrimination itself nor does it mediate this discrimination. She studies
perceptual learning, understood as "an increase in the ability
of an organism to get information from its environment, as a
result of practice with the array of stimulation provided by the
environment." 10 And she studies this in the context of the
child's development within its natural environment.
8 E. Gibson, op. cit., p. Ul.
• Ibid., p. s.
10 Ibid., p. 77. "The criterion of perceptual learning is thus an increase in
specificity. What is learned can be described as detection of properties, patterns,
and distinctive features " not previously registered-Zoe. cit.

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These basic approaches reflect the fact that the current psychological investigation of knowledge is primarily developmental; knowledge is studied as a process of interaction between an enlarging environment and a developing subject. We
suggest that this approach has value also for the question of
the psychogenesis of being. In asking the question of the emergence of man's understanding of reality as being we should ask
how the interaction of subject and environment gives rise to
this understanding. And in studying this we should give as
much attention to the activity of the subject and its structure
as to the object known in virtue of this activity and structure,
as much attention to the physical world as to the cognitive activity and structure that it evokes. Man's self-knowledge appears to be as essential to this genesis as man's knowledge of
the physical world, if Piaget's analysis of knowledge as development from egocentrism to objectivity-as we shall recall
it below-is valid. Metaphysics, through this approach, will
appear as a further stage of this interaction (when compared
to the sciences) both in reference to the scope of the environment opened up to the subject and in reference to the cognitive
structure centrally involved. It will appear to be not only beyond science in a hierarchical order but postscienti:fic in the
order of man's cognitive development.
In the second place, Piaget and Gibson take different aspects
of knowledge and develop their analyses of the subject's interaction with his environment primarily in reference to these.
Piaget's analysis of the neonate's cognitive interaction with his
immediate environment starts with an examination of the infant's sucking reflex and how its use mediates knowledge. By
assimilating objects to this action scheme or schema, and by
accommodating this structure to the variety of objects he sucks,
the infant can differentiate among them. For example, the
infant sucks the breast, and knows it through this act; but he
also sucks a coverlet, a toy, and a thumb, and all of these are
sucked differently! Knowledge by the infant is through assimilation of its environment to a primitive structure and by

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the accommodation of this structure to its environment. Piaget
considers assimilation to be " the fundamental fact of psychic
development." 11 Assimilation is a process common to man's
behavior considered physiologically and psychologically; it explains the basic psychological fact of repetition for it shows how
repetition can have functional meaning for the subject. Moreover,
the concept of assimilation from the very first embodies in the
mechanism of repetition the essential element which distinguishes
activity from passive habit: the coordination of the new with the
old which foretells the process of judgment. In ;effect, the reproduction characteristic of the act of assimilation always implies the incorporation of an actual fact into a given schema, this schema
being constituted by the repetition itself.12

Initially the child's knowledge is really limited to the most
superficial aspects of its environment and is marked by egocentrism-that is, an awareness of the environment only as it
is related to the self, without distinguishing the one from the
other. "At the beginning of assimilatory activity, any object
whatever presented by the external environment to the subject's activity is simply something to suck, to look at, or to
grasp: such assimilation is at this stage centered solely on the
assimilating subject." 18 Objectivity is· a term of the child's
development, occurring when assimilation and accommodation
are in balance, and mediated not only by the child's knowledge
of the environment but by his growing self-awareness of what
he contributes and how he distorts the world.14 The emergence
of new and more fully developed structures by which the child
cognitively interacts with his environment occurs· through the
initiative of the child, the feedback of the environment and
his activity upon his structures, and the effect of this feedback
upon an adjustment of these structures. What is basic here
11

Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children (New York: 1968), p.

42.

loc. cit.
J. Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child (New York: 1954), p. xi.
" Ibid., pp. 854-857.
12

13

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JOHN FARRELLY

is an equilibration process evoked by the discrepancy between
the environment and the subject.
Gibson's analysis of the interaction that accounts for development is much simpler. Basically, she assumes
that there is a structure in the world and structure in the stimulus,
and that it is the structure in the stimulus-considered as a global
array, not punctate--that constitutes information about the world.
That there is structure in the world is self-evident to the physical
scientist who uses .elaborate tools and methods to discover it. 15
There are discriminable aspects of this environment that at
any particular point in time have not yet been discriminated;
development of perception is in the direction of specificity of
discrimination-a development from perception of gross features of objects to greater specificity, rather than a process of
synthesis toward structured wholes. She examines this development in reference to aspects of the child's natural environment,
such as objects, space, events, representations of these and
coded sources of stimulation (e. g., speech and writing). Principles or processes operative in perceptual learning or differentiation that she particularly stresses are
abstraction of differential properties of stimuli, filtering out of irrelevant variables of stimulation, and selective attention of the kind
described as exploratory activity of sense organs.16
What is the significance of this difference of emphasis regarding man's knowledge of his environment for the psychogenesis of being that grounds metaphysics? Much could be
said, but we want particularly to note that the differing interpretations of knowledge in these two views correlate with the
primacy given in the one to touch and in the other to visual
perception. In the first motor activity as mediating knowledge
of the world is more emphasized, while in the second emphasis
is placed on the stimulus present in the environment. The
difference in emphasis can in part be due to the difference in the
'" Gibson, op. cit., pp. lS-14.
Ibid., p. 117.

18

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questions asked by these psychologists. Piaget is interested in
the emergence of cognitive structures, and particularly the
scientific structure with the place it accords to mathematics;
and Gibson is interested in the emergence of man's perception
of the physical world. It does seem to be a fact that these two
initially unintegrated aspects or forms of knowledge are present
in the infant; we shall see some examples below indicating that
both are operative in later stages of knowledge and that one
cannot be reduced to the other-both are essential principles
of man's developing knowledge of the world. Moreover,
in the knowledge of reality as being, both of these forms
of knowledge are likewise involved. We saw that knowledge of being, according to Thomas's understanding of it,
is essentially dependent not only upon the physical reality
of the environment but also upon two modes of knowledge.
In one of these-the one mediated by sense knowledge,
intellectual abstraction, and insight-we are more in continuity with what Gibson emphasizes. In the other-the one we
called participative knowledge, i. e., knowledge of our esse and
what is related to it through participation in our affective inclination and its object-we are more in continuity with the
dimensions Piaget emphasizes. The infant's motor activity
emerges from its affective inclination, and the knowledge this
activity mediates is not only that of the physical environment
but also that of the self (though at this age not distinguished),
since these actions are directed to the need or good of the self.
If we take account of the contributions of both Piaget and
Gibson, despite their tensions with each other, we find in the
infant's knowledge an anticipation of, or a point of departure
for, the emergence of man's metaphysical knowledge as understood by St. Thomas. There are quite a few stages that the
infant must pass through, of course, before he becomes a metaphysician!
In the third place, the major successive periods of cognitive
growth that Piaget discovers in the child's evolution from infancy to adolescence are the sensori-motor period (from birth

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JOHN FARRELLY

until about 18 months), the concrete operatory period
ginning about the age of 7 and preceded by a
stage) , and the period of formal operations (beginning about
the age of 12). We will note some central characteristics of
these successive periods, indicate some variants in the work
of Gibson, and suggest some implications these psychologies of
knowledge have in reference to our question.
In the sensori-motor period, Piaget studies the succession of
action schemes or patterns that emerge from such primitive
patterns as the sucking reflex. He analyses the emergence of
such patterns as sensory coordinations (e. g., between sight and
hearing, between prehension and sight), the infant's progressive
efforts to discover objects that have been hidden near him,
and his use of means for an end. Piaget's observations and
analyses bring out the gradual construction of action patterris
in the infant, patterns that later contribute to the construction
of internalized actions (e. g., deferred imitation, symbolic play,
formation of mental images, and verbal evocation of events)
and still later to the formation of concrete logical operations
of the school-age child and the interpropositional thought patterns of the pre-adolescent. These early action patterns also
have great importance for the way in which the world comes
to be cognitively constructed by the child. For example, Piaget
finds that objects near the infant do not initially have the character of permanently existing objects that they have for us; the
construction of the permanent object is a process that occurs
in stages over the first year. Piaget notes "how phenomenalistic this ·primitive universe " 17 of the neonate is. The infant
initially appears to be interested in objects about him only as
these are occasions for his_actions-e. g., sucking and looking.
Until these objects are regarded as independent of the infant's
action they are not considered as permanently existing substances. Concerning an intermediate stage in the process of
constructing the permanently existing object, i.e., when the
.,_.; Piaget,
'

i. _:.

.

p. II.

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infant coordinates sight and hearing by looking toward the
origin of sound, Piaget writes:
the space involved here is still only a space dependent on the immediate action and not precisely an objective space in which things
and actions are placed in relation to each other in groups that are
independent of the body itself. In short, intersensory coordinations
contribute to solidifying the universe by organizing actions but they
do not at all suffice to render that universe external to those actions.18

There is a certain recognition of objects by the neonate, but
this can be accounted for by the infant's recognition of the
reaction these objects set up in him; it does not of itself indicate
the infant's recognition of objects as independently existing. It
takes the infant a similarly long process of construction to become aware of a space in which his own body is not the absolute
center but rather is an object together with other objects.
Gibson's study of the same early period shows marked differences from Piaget's. She holds that the objects about the
infant and the stimulus array can account for the child's perception of space and the permanent object, and that growth
here is due to the infant's gradual discrimination of this global
stimulus array, not to the child's motor activity or synthetic
construction save in a very subordinate sense. For example,
in an experiment called " The Visual Cliff " she helped to show
that infants just able to crawl had depth perception; this occurs
earlier than Piaget's analysis can account for.19 In this experiIbid., pp. 8-9.
See E. J. Gibson and R. D. Walk, "The Visual Cliff," Scientific American,
202 (1960), 64-71, and op. cit., ch. 17, " The Development of Perception in the
Individual: Perceiving Space and Events," p. 869 ff.
For supporting studies see T. G. R. Bower, "The Visual World of Infants,"
Scientific American, 215 (1966), 80-92, and "The Object in the World of the
Infant," Scientific American, 225 (1971), 80-88. Bower develops ingenious experiments to defend for the infant what J. J. Gibson defended for the adult,
namely, that perception of size, distance, shape, and solidity is not due to an inference based on association of visual or tactile cues with the infant's perception
of the projected object; it is rather due to the infant's perception of the real object
with its size, distance, shape, and solidity. It is however questionable whether
Bower undermines Piaget's view on the amount of time it takes the infant to
construct the permanently existing object.
18

19

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JOHN FARRELLY

ment the infant is placed on a board that extends across plate
glass; under the glass to one side of the board there is a texture
pattern quite close to the bottom of the glass, and the same
texture pattern is placed more deeply under the glass to the
other side of the board. Infants move to the apparently shallow
side rather than to the perceptual cliff side, thus indicating that
they have depth perception due to gradients of texture or motion parallax. Perception of object permanence, similarly, can
be explained by the global array of stimulus:
Object permanence and perception of an event are reciprocal phenomena. One quite literally implies the other. If the ball rolls behind a chair, is temporarily occluded, and then rolls out again, we
do not see it as a different ball and a new event ....
A concept of permanence would indeed be an intellectual achievement, but invariants over time in a stimulus sequence may provide
a basis for the perception of an object's permanence (like the ball
rolling behind a chair and out again) .20

In these two explanations of infant knowledge of the environment there is definitely a theoretical div.ergence that has not
been resolved by psychologists. Yet I think that, without trespassing on their field, it is legitimate to conclude that neither
approach taken as such is a fully adequate account of the child's
cognitive growth, and that both taken together-without our
being able to resolve the diff.erences-contribute to an explanation of knowledge that offers a starting point for the kind of
knowledge we indicated at the beginning of this paper as involved in the knowledge man has of being. With Gibson we
must admit that there is in the stimulus, as a global array,
information that can account for one's perception of the permanent object and space. But with Piaget we must admit that
after the first year there are elements in the infant's knowledge
of permanent objects and space that were previously not
present. There is a sense in which, partially dependent upon
the child's action on the object, the object becomes disengaged
from his action and acquires for him a permanent existence it
20

Gibson, orp. cit., pp. 381, 384.

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did not have earlier. Similarly, due in part to a development
of the infant's motor activity into more complex action patterns, there is a growth in organization not only of the infant's
behavior but also of the space about him. There seem here to
be two central principles of the infant's developing knowledge:
one beginning from the object perceived visually but not exactly related to the self, the other from the child's executive
action depending on his needs and interests and the significance
this has for his knowledge of self and the environment, which
are only gradually differentiated.
With reference to the child's growth after the sensori-motor
period, we should note at least that both Piaget and Gibson
view language as having a subordinate, though very important,
role.21 Language is not the source of the child's image, concept,
or logic; but when the child does begin to develop speech, language has a feedback function promoting perceptual discrimination (Gibson), and it "enables thought to range over vast
stretches of time and space, liberating it from the immediate"
(Piaget) .22
A central period in the child's cognitive development (and
one in which the divergence between Piaget's and Gibson's
interpretations is quite clear) occurs about the age of 7. Around
this time the child develops a series of concepts in organizing
the concrete environment about him, a development that enables him to escape the distorting influence of perceptual cues
to which he was earlier subject. For example, there is the development of the concept of the conservation of quantity. If
in front of a child an experimenter pours water from a wide,
short beaker into one that is tall and narrow, and then asks
the child whether there is more in the first beaker or the second,
or whether there is the same amount in both, the child of 5
will most often say that there is more in the second, being
11 For example, see Piaget, The Psychology of the Child, p. 90: "These data ...
indicate that language does not constitute the source of logic but is, on the contrary,
structured by it." See also Piaget, " Language and Intellectual Operations," in
Furth, op. cit., pp. 121-180; and Gibson, op. cit., p. 154 ff.
as Piaget, Psychology, p. 86.

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JOHN FARRELLY

confused by the perceptual cue of height. At times he may
centrate on width and say that there is more in the first. He
may vary his answers, but these are subject to the perceptual
cues he is centrating on. About the age of 7 (or earlier for
some children, but still in a definite sequence of stages), the
child will say that there is the same amount in each beaker and
thus will show that he recognizes the conservation of quantity,
a concept he will not lose. Similarly the child gradually becomes aware of conservation with other subject matters, such
as number, area, space, and volume.
For Piaget, this achievement is due to what he calls a" reflective abstraction,"
which does not derive properties from things but from our ways of
acting on things, the operations we perform on them; perhaps,
rather, from the various fundamental ways of coordinating such
acts or operations. 23

The knowledge of conservation that exists in the object is due
to the child's assimilation of the object to an action scheme
somewhat as the infant comes to know the nipple or thumb by
assimilating it to the action scheme of sucking. Between the
sensori-motor period and the period called that of " concrete
operations," the child interiorizes the actions he performs on
things; the action of pouring water from one beaker to the other
leads by a process of reflective abstraction to an operation, or
an interiorized structure, of inversion. By the operation of inversion and by that of negation (e. g., negating the height of
the flask and adding proportionately to the width, or vice
versa) the child here gains an insight into the conservation of
quantity. Piaget finds support for this interpretation in the intermediate stages through which the child moves in this
23 J. Piaget,
Structuralism (New York: 1970) p. 19. Piaget acknowledges a
qualitative abstraction from things as a factor in our knowledge of the world:
" There is what we call physical experience, which consists of extracting information from the objects themselves through a simple process of abstraction. This
abstraction reduces to dissociating one newly discovered property from the others
and disregarding the latter. Thus it is physical experience that allows the child
to discover weight while disregarding the object's color, etc., or to discover that
with objects with the same nature, their weight is greater as their volume increases,
etc." in Mussen, op. cit., I,

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achievement. Another influence on Piaget's interpretation here
is the success of the group concept in mathematics, where a
property is arrived at not by abstraction from the thing but
by an abstraction from an operation performed on it. Piaget
holds that we cannot adequately explain the function of
mathematics in physics unless we acknowledge that by reflective abstraction a person reaches structures in the world that
are independent of him. The isomorphism between intellectual
structures and physical structures existing in the world is owed
to the fact that our intellectual structures are constructed
through the push and pull of the environment upon us: the formation of our external action patterns as a response to the environment, and the interiorization of these patterns through
reflective abstraction. 24 One characteristic of such concrete
operations and conservation concepts that can only be accounted for by reflective abstraction is their necessity; the child
who has come to recognize the conservation of quantity will say
that there has to be the same amount of water in both beakers.
But
if the logico-mathematical laws of "being" are discovered from
without, in the manner of physical laws, they are then no longer
"necessary" in the deductive and axiomatic meaning of the term,
and nothing proves that the selection was sufficient for our adaptation being complete in their regard rather than simply approximating, as in other domains (perception, etc.) .25
•• See Structuralism, pp. 37-43, 62. That there is a construction at the foundation of mathematical concepts is a view very widely held in the 20th century,
though this construction is interpreted in different ways. See Charles Parsons,
"Mathematics, Foundations of," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. P. Edwards,
(New York: Macmillan, 1967) vol. 5, pp. 188-213, particularly his discussion of
two types of constructivism, namely, 'intuitionism'
(Brouwer) and 'formalism'
(Hilbert) . For a brief survey of how widespread the constructivist view of
mathematics has hecome, see M. Vignano, "La matematica e ancora vera?,"
Gregorianum, 54 (1973), 61-89. While studies of the foundations of mathematics
and of modern logic associated with mathematics are generally axiomatic and not
anchored in the child's cognitive interaction with the world, Piaget relates the
development of some primitive mathematical concepts and an elementary modern
logic to the matrix of the child's natural cognitive development.
25 J. Piaget, Biologie et Connaissance (Paris:
Gallimard, 1967) p. 361; also see
Piaget's analysis of the meaning of structure, e. g., in Insights, p. 109: "The notion

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Eleanor Gibson interprets the same case differently .. She
holds that" conservation is in variance over time and over event
sequence. . . . The perception of sameness over change is what
is critical. ... " 26 Some evidence supports this. For example,
of 'structure' is not at all reducible to a simple formalization due to the observer's
mind; it expresses, on the contrary, through its formalizations to which, moreover,
it lends itself, properties of the structured 'being.'" Piaget acknowledges that some
of his collaborators have differed from him on the source of necessity. Ibid., p. 31 f.
It is very informative to compare Piaget's views with those in the excellent book
by Henry Veatch, Two Logics. The Conflict between Classical and Nco-Analytic
Philosophy (Evanston: 1969). The logic whose genesis Piaget investigates is what
Veatch calls a 'relating-logic,' and the logic associated with Piaget's 'simple abstraction' is called by Veatch a 'what-logic.' The representatives of neo-analytic
philosophy and 'relating-logic' whom Veatch studies deny that by this logic we
reach structures, causality, and necessity in the world. Piaget, however, considers
that by this logic and the physical experience it organizes we do indeed reach
quantitative structures in the physical world and their necessity and causal relations. On the other hand, Piaget denies that we reach a necessity in nature by
qualitative knowledge or 'simple abstraction,' whereas Veatch argues effectively
that we do. Veatch denies that the category 'analytic proposition' does justice
to our ' what statements,' and he shows that these statements are basic to our
ordinary discourse, the humanities, and parts of science. While these are necessary
truths if they are true at all, they can be in principle proved false by experience.
We may present one summary expression of this in Veatch's book:
" For example, such statements as ' Hydrogen is an element,' or ' Human beings
are a species of animal,' or ' Motion is a transition of something from something
to something else ' are clearly what-statements, in that each merely attempts to
state in the predicate what its subject is. If this is so, then it would seem that
the evidence for the truth of such statements would have to be a self-evidence-i. e., it is only through a consideration of hydrogen itself that we come to know
what it is. On the other hand, for all of their seeming self-evidence, we also
noted that such statements might well turn out to be false. Chemists might decide that hydrogen was not an element after all, or motion might turn out to be
an entirely different sort of thing than the Aristotelians had thought it was, etc."
pp. 216-217.
•• Gibson, op. cit., pp. 388-389. She is here dependent upon experiments cited
by Jerome Bruner in " On the Conservation of Liquids," in J. Bruner et al., Studies
in Cognitive Growth (New York: 1966) pp. 183-207, although she, together with
Piaget, differs from Bruner on the question of the dependence of conservation on
language.
Also see L. Wallach, "On the Bases of Conservation," in Elkind and Flavell, eds.,
op. cit., pp. 191-219. Wallach gives positive value to both experience or perception
on the one hand and to cognitive structure and operation on the other in the
genesis of conservation, though more to the former than to the latter. See, in the
same book, D. Elkind, "Conservation and Concept Formation," pp. 171-189;

PSYCHOLOGY

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the majority of children tested give as their reason for the conservation judgment the identity of the water in both beakers.
Moreover, in an experiment where a screen is placed between
the beakers and the children, thereby shielding them from perceptual differences, they judge more quickly that there is the
same amount of water in each; this judgment seems then to
come not from interiorized actions such as negation or compensation but from perception of sameness over change. So for
Gibson it is a matter of physical abstraction from the objects.
In the conservation judgment she does not recognize a qualitatively higher stage of knowledge, as compared with perception, whereas Piaget does affirm such a qualitative difference
between these forms of knowledge.
The problem of what accounts for the child's awareness of
conservation has a bearing on how other concepts are developed, including some used in metaphysics. Without being
able here to treat this question as it deserves, we would point
out that whether conservation comes to be known by reflective
abstraction or by simple abstraction, there is a structure or
property in the physical thing that is known (contrary to
Hume), and the basis for one's judgment is the physical object
as well as his cognitive structure (contrary to Kant). Perhaps
we must agree with Piaget that reflective abstraction does at
times give access to a structure or property of physical reality,
since modern physics reaches such structures; as Piaget says,
mathematics is not simply a language in physics-it predicts
at times. J\1oreover, it would seem we must agree with Piaget
that the conservation judgment, when compared with preoperatory perception, is a qualitatively higher form of knowlElkind compares Piaget's study of concept formation with studies of concept formation by way of discrimination. He judges that the discriminative studies reflect
more an Aristotelian mode of concept formation while Piaget's reflects more a
Galilean mode of concept formation. He concludes: " Taken singly, either approach provides only a partial understanding of the concept as we know it in the
behaving and thinking subject and in the history of scientific enquiry. Taken together, however, these two versions of the concept can provide a comprehensive
view of the concept that will account for the modes of conception in both the
individual and science." p. 188.

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JOHN FARRELLY

edge of the environment. And yet Piaget's view that necessity cannot properly derive from simple abstraction may show
a lingering influence of empiricism in his own work; it has not
met with as much agreement as other aspects of his studies
on conservation. Gibson's view that conservation is due to
the perception of sameness over change has much to support
it, but it seems excessively wary of admitting any distinction of
stages in knowledge, and it does not give sufficient account of
the subject's structures that may be involved. Perhaps at times
the subject's structured activity is the conditio sine qua nan
and the physical object and simple abstraction from it the
more direct source of a valid concept; at other times the subject's operation may be the source and the physical object and
experience of it the cmulitio sine qua nan. In any case, one can
see the relevance of developmental psychology's conservation
studies to the question of the psychogenesis of philosophical
concepts, specifically that of being.
A further stage of the child's cognitive growth is found in
pre-adolescence (from age 11 or U to 15), a period Piaget calls
that of formal operations. To relate this to our question we
shall note. an observation that exemplifies this period in part,
discuss what accounts for the knowledge distinctive of this period, and then inquire whether the knowledge found here is implicitly metaphysical.
A central characteristic of the formal operatory period may
be seen in the following experiment. Five flasks are set before
subjects taken from middle childhood and pre-adolescence; each
flask has a chemically different liquid, which may be designated
as 1, S, 4, and g. The experimenter tells each subj-ect that
a yellow liquid may be made by combining g with one or more
of the other flasks' contents; the subject's task is to produce
the yellow color. A younger child (7;1) takes g and pours it
into several of the other flasks without achieving the desired
result, and then into some combinations of the other flasks, but
he reaches only a few of the possible combinations. The preadolescent begins otherwise. One subject (18;0) says:

PSYCHOLOGY

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You: have to try with all the bottles. I'll begin with the one at the
end (from 1 to 4 with g) . •.. It doesn't work any more. Maybe
you have to mix them (he tries 1
g, then 1 3 +g) ... It
turned yellow. But are there other solutions? I'll try ... 27

+ +

+

This example illustrates the actual transcendence in the preadolescent's cognitive structure and operation when compared
to the younger child's. The child at the concrete operatory level
is not unsystematic, but what characterizes his approach to
the problem is that he begins immediately by attempting an
empirical correspondence with the experimenter's results. He
is oriented to the actual concrete rather than to the possible.
This is true generally of his level of operations, as the earlier
example of the conservation of quantity showed. Connected
with this limitation is the fact that the child of the concrete
operatory period forms operational concepts one by one for very
limited areas. His organization of the world about him proceeds
by his development of " more or less separate islets of organization," 28 not interlocking to form the integrated systems found
in adolescents. The pre-adolescent begins his consideration of
the problem here by a systematic recognition of all the possibles,
and only then proceeds to look for the real or actual by an examination of the different variables. He thus clearly distinguishes
the actual from the possible in the problem. Other characteristics
are associated with this basic property of the formal operatory
period. The pre-adolescent proceeds in the problem by a hypothetico-deductive method, systematically trying all the possible
situations. This approach depends upon what the concrete
operatory child has achieved, but the pre-adolescent puts these
achievements into the form of propositions and reflects on the
propositions rather than simply on the concrete data. Piaget
notes that this interpropositional thinking is an approach
sufficiently disengaged from centration on the concrete to allow
a separation of form from content, and of possibilities from the
27 B. Inhelder and J. Piaget, The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood
tv Adolescence (New York: 1958), pp. 117.
28 Flavell, op. cit., p. !'l04.

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JOHN FARRELLY

actual. The greater scope and possibilities of the pre-adolescent's knowledge are based upon this more advanced structure.
Piaget describes this structure and relates it to the adolescent's
growth in affective and social interest in the following passage:
The subject succeeds in freeing himself from the concrete and in
locating reality within a group of possible transformations. This
final fundamental decentering, which occurs at the end of childhood,
prepares for adolescence, whose principal characteristic is a similar
liberation from the concrete in favor of interest oriented toward the
non-present and the future. This is the age of great ideals and of
the beginning of theories, as well as the time of simple present
adaptation to reality. This affective and social impulse of adolescence has often been described . But it has not always been understood that this impulse is dependent upon a transformation of
thought that permits the handling of hypotheses and reasoning with
regard to propositions removed from concrete and present observation.29

Athough we have not followed Piaget's analysis of the development of moral reasoning in the younger child (an area
not as central to Piaget' s interests as the knowledge that leads
to scientific reasoning) , we should at least note, as the above
passage indicates, that Piaget associates the adolescent's moral
idealism and interest in the non-present and future with the
cognitive development characteristic of the formal operatory
period. The value orientation of the adolescent shows a development over that of the younger person similar to that found
in his cognitive development. In both the affective and the
cognitive areas the adolescent, while retaining the operation
characteristic of the younger child, is capable of going beyond
this by systematically considering what is possible and centering on the actual in its relation to the possible. There is a
correlation between stages in cognitive development and in
socialization or moral reasoning. To take an example from an
earlier stage, it is only when the child is entering the concrete
•• Piaget and lnhelder, Psychology, pp. 130-131. Emphasis added. Flavell comments as follows: "The most important general property of formal-operational
thought, the one from which Piaget derives all others ... concerns the real versus
the possible." Flavell, op. cit., p. 204.

PSYCHOLOGY

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operatory period that he is capable of playing games with other
children in a way that calls for all of them to observe equally
a set of rules independent of them. During the concrete
operatory period the child's moral awareness mainly centers on
an organization of his concrete behavior in virtue of rules given
him and his affective relation to parent figures that makes the
assimilation of rules possible. This period is marked by a moral
realism that does not make much room for differences between
intentional and accidental wrongdoing. The scope of the
adolescent's interest, however, is much greater; this is due not
simply to sociological factors but to an inner growth toward
an ability to center on possibilities for himself and society, to
experience their value and seek their realization, frequently,
indeed, in a utopian manner. 30
In continuity with his approach to earlier stages of the child's
cognitive interaction with the environment, Piaget stresses
that in the period of formal operations knowledge is gained
more through the mediation of the subject's operation than
through discrimination of the structure given in the environment. While not denying the latter, he emphasizes the former
because he is showing the genesis of the knowledge and structure that underlies physical science, and particularly physics.
He is interested in the child's quantitative knowledge, because
that is what is characteristic of physics and the interrelation
of mathematics and physical experience found in that science.
The logic whose genesis he examines is the modern logic that is
closely related to mathematics. The development from the
child's concrete operatory period to his formal opera tory period
is for him a matter of reflective abstraction. It is owing to the
objective situations the child faces in his environment (physical, but also social and academic, because these can facilitate
or retard the child's growth), the inadequacy of the child's
present structures to meet the problems presented to him by
his situation, and the feedback from the situation and his own
cognitive interaction with it that a new and more adequate
30

See Piaget, Psychology, pp. 114-127, 149-151.

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JOHN FARRELLY

cognitive structure is generated within him. The pre-adolescent
who tries to find the combination that gives the yellow color
achieves his solution by way of an operation that orders his
action and the environment in accordance with a mathematical
logic more advanced than that of the concrete operatory child:
Without knowing any logical formula, or the formal criteria for a
mathematical " group" ... , the preadolescent of twelve to fifteen
is capable of manipulating transformations according to four possibilities; I (identical transformation), N (inverse transformation), R (reciprocal transformation), and C (correlative transformation) ... combining inversions and reciprocities into a single
system, and thus achieving a synthesis of the hitherto partial structures.31

At a deeper level the operation of the pre-adolescent is seen
as an application of the schemes of the possible and actual in
accord with the hypothetico-deductive method. Similarly,
Piaget sees the adolescent's new awareness of values as a knowledge mediated by his activity, his development of the structure
of the formal operatory period, and his orientation to a wider
horizon than in middle childhood.
In our analysis of earlier periods of the child's cognitive development we have suggested that Piaget's account must be
supplemented by that of some Anglo-American psychologists
who stress the subject's discrimination of the features of the
environment to explain his cognitive growth. We have indicated that in the infant's achievement of knowledge of the
permanently existing object the knowledge present is not only
that mediated by the child's activity but also (and just as
centrally) that mediated by his perceptual discrimination. In
the concrete operatory child achieving awareness of conservation we have suggested that what is operative is not only
knowledge mediated by internalized activity or operations but
also a qualitative knowledge through what Piaget calls " simple
abstraction" (e. g., discrimination of the attribute of quantity
from that of height or width in the case of the flasks of water,
81

Ibid., pp. 139-140.

PSYCHOLOGY AND MAN's KNOWLEDGE

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by abstraction of the one from the other over a process of
change) . Similarly we now suggest that in the formal operatory
period there is also this qualitative knowledge that is basic to
the increased scope evident in the young person's knowledge.
At times Piaget acknowledges this, though he denies its centrality. For example, in explaining one of his experiments with
pre-adolescents (a pendulum experiment), he notes that the
child gains his knowledge of metrical or quantitative proportion
only by beginning with qualitative proportion. 82 The psychologists who emphasize cognitive development through discrimination rather than through operation do not extend their
studies into adolescence in the way that Piaget does. But in
continuity with what we have said earlier, we suggest the following. The pre-adolescent's knowledge of the distinction between the actual and the possible, which he applies in the hypothetico-deductive reasoning that Piaget studies, is mediated by
a process of discrimination as well as by a process of operation
or adjustment. It is mediated by what Piaget calls simple abstraction as well as by r.eflective abstraction. We acknowledge
the presence of the latter. That is, the knowledge is in part
the result of the growing child's adjustment to his environment
(including here both his physical .environment and his value
horizon), his experience that this .environment is larger than
that to which he previously adjusted himself and that the adjustment made in middle childhood is no longer adequate, the
feedback of both environment and of his earlier adjustment to
it upon him as cognitive subject, and his action (by reflective
abstraction) of adjusting to this environment, now within the
context of the actual and the possible. But it in part is due also
to a kind of intellectual discrimination between the actual and
the possible, a discrimination not central for the younger child
and made through a negation: the real is distinct from the
simply possible. This involves a simple abstraction of what
actually is from all the possibilities relating to a specific experiment (e. g., that of making the yellow color by a combination
82

Ibid .• p.

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JOHN FARRELLY

of flasks). And it is involved in areas of qualitative knowledge
that Piaget does not investigate, in a natural logic that questions why things are the way they are rather than otherwise.
Making this discrimination seems to require a higher order of
abstraction than the abstraction of this (e. g., quantity as an
attribute) from that (e. g., height or width as attributes) , which
underlay the child's grasp of conservation in his earlier period
of cognitive growth. While depending genetically on the earlier
discrimination of the child, this later growth makes possible the
greater scope of the adolescent's knowledge.
What is the relevance of these remarks on the formal operatory period to our question about the psychogenesis of being?
I suggest that this type of knowledge found in the adolescent,
which is basic to scientific knowledge as well as to his selfdirection in preparing himself for the adult world, is made possible through knowledge that is implicitly metaphysical. The
basis for this suggestion is that what enables the pre-adolescent
to interact cognitively with his environment in a way surpassing that of middle childhood is his knowledge of being. His
approach to many problems offered him by his environment is
based on his adjustment to this environment in the context of
what is actual and what is possible, and on his discrimination
of the actual from the possible. This is what liberates him from
the limited focus and method of the concrete operatory period
and enables him to test systematically the varied possible answers to a problem such as that of the flasks. And this is what
liberates him from centering his value orientation upon an
adaptation that is simply to present circumstances. His knowledge does reach a structure in his environment and is not simply
a knowledge of language or concept, for it is only a knowledge
of the actual in the environment (as distinct from the possible)
that enables him to operate as he does in realistically forming
and testing hypotheses. And similarly this knowledge does
reach a dimension of the value to which he is orientated, since
the life that is possible for him is not restricted to an adjustment within his current situation or circumstances. The ac-

PSYCHOLOGY AND MAN's KNOWLEDGE

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tualization of his own possibilities and those of the society of
which he is a part engages his interests; a sense of responsibility
for such an actualization is a growth over his orientation of
middle childhood, and it is as central to the development characteristic of the young person as his more directly cognitive
growth. But, as we indicated at the beginning of this article,
this entire achievement is what is meant by the word " being."
Or, what actually is, as distinct from what is merely possible,
is nothing more than reality as being; in his orientation to the
actualization of his own possibilities and those of his society the
individual is orientated to esse, since the actualization of his
being is esse. Moreover, a double ground for the adolescent's
knowledge of being is evident in his action and knowledge, the
double ground called for by a Thomistic understanding of the
psychogenesis of being. The ground is, as we said, a discrimination of the actual from the possible; and this recalls the
Thomistic position that being is known through sense knowledge, abstraction, and intellectual intuition or insight into the
concrete existing reality of one's physical environment. The
ground is also the initiative of the subject shown in his adjustment to an ever .enlarging environment, an adjustment that his
own being (esse) elicits from him; this is explainable by the
Thomistic association of the good with esse, and the dependence
of the subject's organization of his own activity and of his
environment upon his orientation to this actualization of himself and others. We suggest, then, that the adolescent's distinctive knowledge is explainable by his orientation to being
and, on this account, that his knowledge is implicitly metaphysical in that it is possible only through his knowledge of
being. But it is merely implicitly so, for this knowledge is not
possessed reflectively, systematically, and objectively, as it is
in metaphysics.
In conclusion, we have attempted to evaluate St. Thomas's
assertion of man's orientation to, and capacity for, a knowledge
of being that validly bases a metaphysics-a knowledge mediated both by intellectual insight into being as concretely ex-

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JOHN FARRELLY

isting in the sensible individual and by man's affective orientation to, and action for, the good. We have sought to do this
in view of modern objections against ascribing such a metaphysical scope to man's knowledge that derive from one or
other aspect of modern science. To base our evaluation on
modern experience and on a modern interpretation of knowledge, we turned to the developmental psychology of Jean
Piaget and some American psychologists to study their analyses
of the subject's cognitive interaction with his environment in
a progressive manner, and the observations on which they base
their interpretations. We have presented evidence to support
Piaget's assertion of a limited transcendence in this knowledge
through the sensory-motor period, the concrete operatory
period, and the formal operatory period. The dimension of the
environment that the child adjusts to and knows enlarges
throughout this development, as do the structures that he
brings to bear in his knowledge; the development is provoked
both by dimensions of the environment not assimilable to
earlier structures and by the activity of the cognitive subject.
The activity of the subject that Piaget stresses is behavior that
leads by reflective abstraction to a more adequate and interior
organization and construction of operations and environment.
The activity that the other psychologists stress is exploratory
and discriminating perceptual activity. For the latter the environment is discriminable structure, whereas for the former it
is more a principle to which man adjusts his behavior and which
has a feedback influence on his changing cognitive structures.
The action that Piaget emphaszies is central not only for the
subject's organization of the physical world but also for enlarging his value awareness and moral knowledge.
With the aid of developmental psychology we have uncovered
knowledge experiences that many adversaries of metaphysical
knowledge cannot account for. For example, Hume' s phenomenalism cannot account for the infant's grasp of the permanent object; only a realism can account for this. Linguistic
philosophers who give primacy to language use cannot account

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for the emergence of language in the infant and young child,
nor can they account for the relation of this emergence to the
child's earlier cognitive interaction with his environment; only
a recognition of the dependence of language on knowledge can
do this. Those who, in accord with the analytic-synthetic distinction, deny any knowledge of necessity in nature that is objectively based, cannot account for the child's development into
the concrete operatory period, nor, for that matter, for science
itself. And those who deny man's knowledge of reality as being,
in continuity with Thomas's understanding of this, cannot explain the pre-adolescent's enlargement of knowledge or the
distinctive structure of his knowledge, shown both in his primitive scientific approach an.d in his value orientation and knowledge.
The development of these insights can help show man's orientation to, and capacity for, a knowledge of being that bases
a metaphysics; more than that, it can help save modern science
from itself. Those who would restrict man's knowledge and
interest to the level of science and to the technology it makes
available deny the context that alone makes possible science
and technological advance. If one restricts man's cognitive
growth and his adjustment to his environment to such a level,
he denies the meaning of scientific knowledge as well as the
fully human context in which technology's use can be properly
evaluated.
JOHN FARRELLY,

St. Anselm's Abbey
Washington, D. C.

0. S. B.

TOTALITY AND TIME

T

I

HE PURPOSE OF this article is to explore to what extent the philosopher is able to clarify in his own way
a problem much under debate at present, that of timereversal.' It should be made clear from the start that the goals
under consideration are very limited. I am not concerned with
time-travel, nor shall I make the claim and demonstrate philosophically that particles or events are running in reverse-as in
a film taken with the camera upside down and inserted backwards in later editing. There is not, it seems, sufficient ground
to assert this philosophically. I should add that philosopher
and scientist approach the notion of time differently. While
the scientist observes time as a flow of particles or anti-particles,
the philosopher looks for their embodiment in certain events
or things-that-change and as a result offer him the possibility
of time-awareness. Naturally the philosopher's attempt to interpret certain events in the realm of time should not contradict
the proven data of science, but it is important to keep in mind
that some of the scientific conclusions concerning time, especially concerning time-reversal, are themselves speculative; although at times they carry a certain plausibility on the theoretical level, their fulfillment in the physical realm is not easily
verifiable. Whenever particular results on time-reversal seem
to have been obtained by the scientist, they appear to be infinitesimal in both size and duration.
We shall be able to define later what we understand by timereversal, but now we must stress the point that the understanding of time-reversal in this article gives a definite role to
1 This paper was read at the convention of the American Philosophical Associa1974.
tion at San Francisco on March

696

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the future. As is well known, there is strong disagreement
among philosophers on the function of the future. Many in recent times r.esent any consideration of the future dimension
as an object of meaningful study. What matters is the past,
which, on the basis of an incessant cause-and-effect concatenation, builds up the present. Evolution and survival of life are
explained on the basis of a mechanistic cause-and-effect sequence. We shall come back to this topic later; it suffices to
note that this approach does not implicate the future as a cause.
This attitude is considered scientific, and a great number of
philosophers who make the claim that as philosopher one should
not proceed beyond what exists and as such is verifiable, share
that view.
There are still philosophers, however, who would question
such a radical stand. This writer for one would assert-and in
these pages will attempt to confirm his statement-that the
future dimension is a very relevant one, a " phenomenon" of
great importance. I would like to introduce here a scholastic
term that is very illuminating, the term scientia visionis.
Aquinas defines it as the knowledge in God, of himself, of all
creatures, whether past, present, or future (not the futuribilia) .2
It would be sheer presumption to transfer this original meaning
to any human application. Yet the present use of the term
would like to stress that the philosopher qua philosopher is bent
upon past, present, and future. In that sense the scientia
visionis is his potential and the cosmos as a whole his territory,
however modest the results of this endeavor. Things-to-come
are also the object of his observation and phenomenological
description. It may very well appear that life and the world as
a whole are not intelligible on the basis of the past alone. The
philosopher is entitled to this " complete " intelligibility, as
we shall attempt to show.
2 " Quaedam enim, licet non sint nunc in actu,
tamen vel fuerunt vel erunt;
et omnia ista dicitur Deus scire scientia visionis. Quia, cum intelligere Dei, quod
est ejus esse, aeternitate mensuretur, quae sine successione existens totum tempus
comprehendit, presens intuitus Dei fertur in totum tempus, et in omnia quae sunt
in quocumque tempore, sicut in subjecta sibi presentialiter"
(Summa Theol., I,
q.l4, a. 9).

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WILFRID DESAN

II
A traditional philosophy that accepts God as the ultimate
ordinator of the cosmos and of life would make the assertion
that in God's vision, or what has been called above his scientia
vi8ionis, there is foreknowledge at work. We use the term at
work purposely, for we want to stress that the divine intervention in this view is active: God plans a world and by the same
token e:x;ecuteshis plan. The term teleology has been often used
to denote this movement in its immensity, and the fact that
there are or seem to be traces of such divine supervising activity
has been called the teleological proof. To a certain number of
philosophers this approach does not appear compelling, either
because such supervising or planning activity cannot be discovered or because, if there is a planning, this can be seen as
built-in within things and is then called Nature. Whether the
existence of a Mastermind as a distinct and personal entity can
be deduced from the planning that seems to be there is not the
topic of our research. The natur.e of the planning itself, however, in a sense we shall clarify later, deserves serious consideration.
Modern biologists accept a certain end-directedness. Several
among them, confused and disappointed by the dogmatic acceptance of, and the radical stress upon, the mere cause-andeffect adaptation process, have now reworded their formulations. Instead of claiming that the turtle comes ashore and
lays its eggs, they now concede that the turtle comes ashore to
lay its eggs.3 In other words, the claim is that in the living,
end-directedness is a fact. This means, of course, organizationnot sheer randomness but organization that results in adaptation. This new position does not acknowledge Aristotelian
teleology, for it refuses to accept the compelling and causal
function of the absent and futuristic element that affects my
deed from afar according to a plan to be executed. One acts
3 Colin S. Pittenbrigh,
"Adaptation, Natural Selection and Behavior," in Behavior
and Evolution, ed. by Anne Roe and George G. Simpson (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1958) pp. 393 and fl'.

TOTALITY AND TIME

699

for, one does not act because of. The new term is teleonomy.
Teleology is herewith excluded, and divine " planning " would
find no protagonists among the teleonomists.

ill
Our charge is not to defend Aristotelian teleology, just as we
did not consider it our task to safeguard the teleological proof.
The solution we shall presently submit is somewhat different.
Yet by way of preparation for our proposal we would like to
bring to the fore several points that at times have been forgotten when examining the problem under consideration.
The first is that as one observes life as a global phenomenon,
it appears to have a certain will-to-be-and-to-survive. We must
not understand this will-to-be in the Nietzschean sense of willto-power, which stresses self-expansion, but rather as a conation-to-live beyond the present moment and to do so in spite
of a problematic situation. We shall call this the will to survive. Notice how the second part of our proposition includes
the future, for it clearly stresses the fact that to survive signifies
in one way or another a move into the future, To survive is
not just to live in the present but to go beyond the present into
the future. A danger is offset and a menace overcome. This
is the deeper meaning of the verb "to survive." This philosophical observation is confirm.ed in the continual effort of the
living to overcome entropy: it is only on the basis of an
incessant conatus-to-live beyond the present problematic
menace that total entropy is avoided. In looking at this
conatus, one sees that it is only natural that it, too, employs
in its execution what is commonly called the cause-and-effect
sequence, and by the same token makes its way into a certain
environment and" adapts "itself. The will-to-be and to survive
therefore does not exclude the mechanistic cause-and-effect sequence, but the latter alone does not explain the will-to-b{io.
Rather, the will-to-be and to survive command the causal sequence as an instrumentality that makes the move into the
future possible.

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WILFRID DESAN

A second point that deserves consideration in observing this
conatus essendi is the knowledge connected with it. Such
knowledge need not be a clearcut and explicit awareness of
what will happen or of what the present deed implies, nor need
it be shared by the one who accomplishes the deed. So, for
example, the turtle need not know why it moves ashore. An
animal may very well be ignorant of the ultimate purpose of
its own act, yet the act itself is anticipatory. In other words,
the act itself embodies an information. It is a lived knowledge
of the future that is not known as such by the turtle but is
revealed by a more advanced consciousness. The act itself betrays the end, but that end is often present only to the consciousness of man.
In fact, not too much observation is required to notice that
in my human consciousness, whether I am the agent or not,
anticipation, is a very strong and prevalent phenomenon. My
consciousness is present to the present, no doubt; through
memory it is present to the past as well; but most of all I appear
to go beyond the present and into the future, and so I am
present to what-is-not-yet. I should add that, from what is not
yet, I keep incessantly coming back to the present. This is what
I call the anticipatory movement in the very essence of consciousness. In some way the future is already. We shall attempt to detail its modus operandi later, but already this
"being in some way" affects me now.
All this of course presents itself on an individual plane and
is obviously microscopic compared to what the human totality
in its enormous reservoir of knowledge must be. This knowledge and its will·to-be we shall not consider as some Hegelian
Spirit, but nothing prevents us from considering it as the knowledge of a totality resulting from the sum of individual visions.
Such a tatum, made up of the sum of its components, "knows "
its future on a wider expanse and, like the individual knower,
directs its constitutive elements toward its own survival. There
is no reason to deny " end-directedness " to the tatum in its
attempt for survival if we grant it to the individual.

TOTALITY AND TIME

701

Realistically, it is not possible for us to say precisely how
far this reach into the future extends. Perhaps it covers only
a small part, or perhaps it extends very far in a mode that the
human individual cannot even imagine. This, however, can
perhaps be said: just as the human individual unfolds his curriculum vitae and in this very unfolding at times unwittingly
reaches into the future in such a way that what will happen in
his life directs his present life from afar-I did this or that at
25, and at 50 it becomes clear to me that what I did at 20 or
25 was indeed programmed by that unknown-yet-known
future-likewise the totality or subtotality in the present does
what it is asked to do by whatever will happen a thousand
years from now. It seems plausible to accept the fact that the
totum qua totum is ahead of the individual, that it reaches
farther than the latter, hence is present to or is a witness of
what one habitually calls the future, and from that future
directs the present.

IV
It would be a mistake to consider both these awarenesses,
individual and collective, as unr.elated. Apart from the fact
that the individual himself is part of the collective-and this
is something we have thus far presumed and have not felt the
need to reassess-it may be well to stress that consciousness
itself is not and never was a solitary enterprise in the full sense
of solitary. As soon as a child is born he becomes entangled in
a web of traditions, languages, customs, laws and rules, sciences
and religion, which constitute a tightly closed environment
that takes over as soon as he leaves the womb. The species
offers the inheritance of millions. He is part and fragment of
this, and if he is wise, he plays his part. Such indeed is the
individual called man or woman.
This is, of course, a look from without. But if we gaze at
individual consciousness in the act of reflection, where one is
alone and the center of solitude, it will appear that even there
consciousness is not as solitary as we have been led to believe.

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Some day, after longer and more detailed research than this
study can afford, it might be shown that consciousness in the
act of reflection is in fact a participative operation. Individual
thought mov.es in some invisible way within the sphere of its
own time and space, as one cupola covers many thinking centers. This does not cloud the fundamental agreement of men
and women of all times, but it merely goes to say that this
common .essence is affected by its own time and that this " contamination " reaches even into the self, as center of thought
and awareness. Every epoch has its modes of expression and
its main themes, and they shape our individual thought. The
texture of thought is a mystery to us, but perhaps part of the
mystery would be lifted if we were prepared to accept the fact
that thought is geographically structured, i.e., on a horizontal
mode it touches and is touched by the thought of one's fellowmen, just as it is historically enchained by the individuals who
precede or follow it in the line of generation. All this is still
noumenal territory, no doubt, yet the least that can be said is
that Cartesian isolation is deceptive when one considers what
Descartes carried within the cell of absolute solitude before
locking the doors. Aristotle himself may very well have alluded
to this strange intertwining of minds in the cryptic passage
of Book III, ch. 5 of De anima, when discussing the need for an
agent intellect. The necessity of explaining abstraction is his
main purpose, no doubt, yet the whole passage is most complex
and in fact stresses a form of noetic oneness, bringing the multiplicity of individuals together from above.
The participative activity of the individual consciousness
fulfills itself within the collective awar.eness and as a result is,
with the collective, also partially present to what-is-not-yet.
This does not give the participant a conscious prophetic role.
Such a function seems to belong to the prophet, who for some
unknown reason moves into the future more forcefully than
his fellow men. Prophecy, though at times the object of ridicule, merits more attention than it gets: since, however, the
prophet is the exception, we prefer in this article not to con-

TOTALITY AND TIME

708

centrate on him but instead to center on the common man. For
even the common man, in his function of participant in the
vision of the totality, is carried beyond the present participatively into a not-yet that he as an individual does not
live. This participation is a knowing and planning of that
future on the part of the individual, yet it cannot always be said
to he a conscious and explicit awareness of the not-yet. It may
perhaps be spoken of as a subconscious presence to the future.
What is the nature of this "presence"? As we see it now,
it can only be of a noetic nature. I am present to eidos x, not
to an existential dimension. Idea, or eidos x, is not yet actualized but it is foreseen; hence in some way, i. e., as known,
it affects the participativ.e knower in his or her present being.
This molding from afar, or what I would now like to call a type
of time-reversal, is not something that consciously triggers the
here-and-now; rather in my opinion it must be seen as a corrective. By this I mean that eidos x in touching from afar the
present dimension z does not lie somewhere in the future as
a blueprint of what will be, but rather as a negative that completes and corrects the deficiency of the present. The blueprint
that is my counterpart, therefore, is a blueprint in reverse. I
act in such a way that my very incompleteness expects and will
find an achievement or " completion " or perhaps a " correction" at a distance in time, which will result in a survival of
the totality. Hence there is in this "awareness" of the future
unmistakingly a will-to-be, even though this will includes a
confession of incompleteness: that which is a part is somewhere, somehow achieved and fulfilled, to the extent that the
totality in its immobility is and survives. Survival is precisely
the outbalancing of the im-perfect against the im-perfect. Hence,
in the view here presented, there is no finality in the sense that
the future in blueprint causes the past or the present. There is
finality to the extent that a totality made up from the multiple
im-perfect survives through this very interplay.
In this view the individual is no longer isolated or selfsufficient. He or she is very much connected with a past and I

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WILFRID DESAN

or with a future which he or she completes, or by which his
or her im-perfection is corrected-or should I say " expiated" ?
The knowledge of that future affecting the present is not conceptual, it is mostly" lived." My own deeds in their very execution call for redemption, yet in some way they are also redeeming under the manipulation of a totality that survives,
but only accomplishes this feat through the internal disposition
of its parts toward that goal. This negative modeling of my
own life from afar is a form of time-reversal. It is not time's
running backwards in the narrow and scientific sense; still it
appears as a return from eidos x in its blueprint negative form
to me in the present, where it de facto affects me and molds my
activity.

v
The question may be raised at this point whether, instead
of considering the totality in its internal succession and unrolling (throughout time), one might not understand it in the
full-fledged sense as that which is totum et simul, hence present
to any event that happens within its orbit, regardless of time
and space. We are different from me. As soon as we enter into
the game, our overlapping of before-and-after and here-andand eliminates the limits of the innow increases our
dividual caught in the here-and-now. Only we can replace the
angularity of the individual in the realm of knowledge and enhance it to a
hence to a shrinking of time.
In such an hypothesis the totality appears more forcefully
as the immobile entity disposing its internal constitutive elements toward the global achiev.ement of survival. What the
totality knows or does not know in its global view or scientia
visionis is something no one individual can claim to ascertain,
for if he or she did, he or she would no longer be an individual
but would be plainly and simply the totum. Such a vision of
the totality in its very concept dominates present, past, and
future. In fact, it has no time dimension. From the point of
view of its components it is of course time-bound, hence it

TOTALITY AND TIME

705

entails a succession type of survival as we know it. My presence
to the future in the time-bound typ.e of structure is a presence
to eidos x as explained above, but taking the point of view of
what we may call the oculus Dei, then I appear apart with my
" counterpart " on a horizontal line of simultaneity, and the
balance of things and their mutual completion is without successiOn.
This audacious way of looking at things may be more acceptable if we do not press its accomplishment to the very limit
but see it .effected by some form of unitary vision which, though
in our times still fictional, is more easily representable. Let us
view the oculus Dei as multipresent, not as omnipresent, and
by the same token bring things to the size of man. Based upon
the shrinkage of time as manipulated by a totality, this would
eliminate the absoluteness of the rww but it would not make
the claim of absolute quasi-divine simultaneity. In fact, it
would show everything on a plane of relative simultaneity.
Take the following example. Let us suppose my brain cells are
themselves caught in a mode of existence that is much shorter
than mine, yet through me are drawn into an eternity (which
is not really such, only relatively speaking) and into an ubiquity
(again not really such, only relatively speaking). Let us suppose also that this " eternity " and " ubiquity" appear as such
to the individual brain cell. Could I not say that certain things
happen for me, the individual self, and yet not for the individual
brain cell? Or, to put it differently, what appears unknown
and totally in the future for the individual brain cell may very
well be actual and present for the accumulation of brain cells
that is the individual consciousness. Let us now transfer this
example from within to without, i. e., into a construct like the
following. Suppose that an accident occurs on the planet Pluto
and is perceived by a unitary consciousness (which is there-andalso-here): it will be a simultaneous perception by the unit x
as one, but it will appear successively to the individual perceptive particles perceiving the accident from different planets.
Clearly a certain lapse of time (e. g., four hours) is required

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WILFRID DESAN

for the transmission of light from the one planet to the other,
which makes it imperative for the individual perception (viz.,
the perception that is caught in the here and now) to live in
a world of change, hence to wait. It is apparent that the world
of absolute time is non-existent and that it is no longer a
meaningful notion philosophically. The elimination of universal
simultaneity, if the individual particle is taken as norm, is
effected and we merely confirm philosophically what Einstein
has established scientifically.
Of course in all this it is paramount to remember that our
coming to similar conclusions is not because we follow similar
roads. The scientist has based his conclusions upon a mathematical calculation and upon observation of physical reality.
The philosopher, so as to approximate the shrinkage of time,
has introduced a multiplication of selves to escape the limits
of the here and now. How to accelerate this shrinkage of time
and realize the coming to be of what w.e have called a unitary
consciousness is something we are at present not able to say,
or at least we do not consider it as part of this study. 4 What
matters for our thesis is the insight that what is future for me
is present for the collective, and that through the collective,
I myself, as part of that collective, am indeed reaching the
future and am being shaped by it. This return of the future
to me traverses this totality and reaches me in time (my time),
since I live in time, but it can be visualized only as happening
• It seems probable that the improvement of hardware in the world of electronics
is definitely an instrument conducive towards the coalescence of the multiple.
Hence without denying the fact that we still stand at the beginning of an era
in this field, it is fair to say that we can already distinguish between dimension A
and dimension B, the former being time as milieu of perception of the individual
self and the latter being time as organ of the collective-unified apprehension.
Dimension B-in-full is the radical dismissal of time as a separate dimension
and its theoretical overlapping with space. This is not what we can normally observe. What we are approaching, though, is what I would like to call a contraction
comparable to Lorentz's contraction in the realm of the scientific. This makes
sense in our hypothesis as well, for now we can understand how a multipresence
(I shall not say an omnipresence) must unavoidably result in the contraction of
the object. A multipresence, of course, is the presence that encloses the object.

TOTALITY AND TIME

707

beyond time or in a dimension of shrunken time. Once again
this return to me as individual is in most cases merely lived,
not conceptualizable, ineffable, but still translated into my behavior and my acts.

VI
We are hesitant to give the position taken in this article a
precise name. Although we agree with both the end-directedness and the organization that the proponents of teleonomy
consider as essential, our suggestion of a " completive " activity
at work from afar does not accord with the definition of teleonomy. Nor would the term teleology alone, in the classical
sense, fit our description exactly, since the negative blueprint
that we have considered essential for survival does not agree
with the concept of final cause as presented by tradition and
as what is commonly called the causa causarum. We shall
propose the term completive teleology.
Let us attempt to clarify our position in relation to these
other views and at the same time bring to the fore the methodology that has guided its development. The first thing that
must be kept in mind is that the instrumental position that
seems to be the fate of the individual does not prevent him
from being a noetic center as well. Although part and fragment
(ontologically), he sees completion to some extent as the incessant activity of a totality, which as a result survives. Individual man sees order; he has the vision that the multiple
itself, through the repeated encounter of things and persons
as complementa, constitutes and protects the whole. Clearly
the concept of order belongs to individual semantics. It makes
sense only from the standpoint of the individual, who sees progression and also the disposition of means toward an end. The
totality-in-full does not progress from the present to the future,
nor does it strictly speaking return from the future to the past,
since by definition it is present to all dimensions. But for what
lies at the crossroads of those dimensions, for what we have
agreed to call the individual, the possibility of time-reversal,
as defined, makes sense.

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WILFRID DESAN

This being the position of the individual, let us take a look
from above or see "what God sees," as we have suggested at
the beginning of this article. For it is indeed very much in the
light of that particular hypothesis that we have said what we
have.
There is no need to reassess the problem of causality. This
has been done many times indeed. But let us for a moment
observe the terms action and pas8ion as they relate to the concept of causality, and do this from the point of view of the
totality, not from the point of view of the one-who-acts (which
has always given rise to the notion of action) nor from the
point of view of the one-who-undergoes (which originated the
notion of passion). In taking the point of view of the no-time
totality, causality will appear as an encounter of two objects
that merely are themselves in this en.counter: x is itself and
so is z. The one is no more active than the other, nor is the one
more passive than the other. They are merely themselves and
in their encounter act accordingly. Causality as an encounter
of x and z is an encounter of the different with a contribution
coming from both x and z. From the same viewpoint, i. e., from
the viewpoint of the totality, causality does not appear as a
meeting of the active and the passive but rather as an encounter of two complementa. Thus we come to see completion
or complementation as the true cause. Let us clarify this point.
A first character of completion is that it eliminates the
dichotomy between the dimensions of space and time. This
dichotomy has been stretched beyond necessity, as if the two
dimensions were unrelated and disconnected. Such is not the
case, for if we ask how things are connected in space or how
they are connected in time, we discover a Striking similarity.
Although there is no intent to deny that juxtaposition (in
space) is different from succession (in time), the connections
between x and z are nevertheless similar in both dimensions
in the sense that both result in mutual achievement. This mutual
completion does not per se imply succession; completion or
mutual achievement is what it is regardless of time. We could

TOTALITY AND TIME

709

also add that the very act of completion, if and when it does
not imply succession as its main characteristic, could be considered-we do not say must be considered-as a performance
that acts independently of time and of what we may call contiguity or proximity in time (which is, of course, the case for
normal succession) . To be complementary x and z need not
be contiguous. They can be centuries apart and still balance
one another out in the way of mutual achievement or correction.
Further, the term complement reflects a contribution on a
double level. Notice first of all that the deeper meaning of the
word denotes a " supply-in-part" to a common achievement.
This supply-in-part differs in both cases. What x posits in the
act, z does not, and what z posits, x does not. The partial
achievement coming from both results in the " effect," and this
by definition reaches beyond the individual accomplishment of
either x or z. Notice also how the contribution coming from
both sides is unqualified. The newer term with its greater degree of vagueness brings to the fore the undetermined character
of the achievement that takes place, an achievement to which
both x and z have contributed in an unspecified way. For although the effec,t itself is known, we are unable in most cases
to define with exactness what part each of the " causes "
(efficient or material) has played in producing that effect. In
light of this view, it is correct to say that life is a container of
incessant encounter or of endless completion.
At this point we may well ask whether or not the term
effec,t is still meaningful. In answer to this we might say that
it still exists for individual purposes and is indeed perceptible
from the individual point of view, which clearly is that of
modem science. In fact it is the interference of individual man
that " constitutes" the deed in its effec,tual position. The
photographer does much the same: through the shutter-release
he stops the movement of the object and calls it a portrait. The
freezing of the action brings forth its kind of truth. Similarly
the scientist freezes the incessant encounter of things at a cer.:

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WILFRID DESAN

tain moment and calls it an effect. Both are entitled to do so,
and we shall not criticize them for their attitude, even though
it was not our approach in this study. We have attempted to
propose the totality as the Observer or great noesis that in
some way knows what is within itself. In accepting this great
noesis that is the " we," one observes and confronts things that
are incessantly-related and are incessantly-in-the-act-of-completing-one-another. The chain is indefinite, and it must be
understood that for a determinate encounter of x and z a
mobilization 8ine termino is at work. It is thus from afar in
the past and into the future in the complex space-time dimension that we must look to find the intelligibility of the completive encounter of x and z, the encounter called causality
in traditional semantics. It is at the intersection of past and
future that we discover the individual from afar, as the one
who is here and now, hence as the one who measures or observes
the encounter as causality. This does not mean that this attitude, which is also the attitude of the scientist, is erroneous.
It means simply that such an approach, while suitable from
a pragmatic and scientific point of view, is not de facto satisfactory for the philosopher. With that aim in mind the philosopher
attempts to transpose causality into the semantics of complementarity, to lift complementarity into the domain of the
totality, and to observe what is observable in that totality regardless of time and space.
What matters therefore is the insight that a past and a future
are somehow " present," for otherwise the deed would not be
what it is. We shall thus accept a timeless plasticity buried in
the plasticity of matter. This timeless plasticity leaves no room
for annihilation, but it does leave room for continual alteration,
for alteration presumes the presence of matter in its neverending potentiality. But such a presence could not exist without a future. There is no breakdown at this point in time called
the present. What we saw in the past precludes that breakdown. The consciousness of the Observer as totality witnesses
this incessant mobility and interrelatedness as a whole; it is,

TOTALITY AND TIME

711

of course, a more complete witness than the " individual " approach that presents us with the immediate, i. e., with present
and past only.
In the light of what we have attempted to propose, timereversal means simply this: it is the individual's participation
in survival, hence in the conscious or unconscious know-how
that survival implies and in a personal activity under the influence of a future completive event x, working as eidos merely
or, in the more advanced and speculative interpretation, as
an already existing counterpart. The completive movement
arching beyond space and time keeps life alive through endless
correction. This is what we understand by completive teleology. An incessant completion is at work by which things happen in a never-ending collusion. Survival as the ultimate
achievement presumes that activity. It must be seen as a longrange plan and its execution as multi-directional. It presumes
also an elasticity of matter in depth, a built-in planning of
things and of people, and last but not least, a will-to-be and
a form of multipresence that goes with it.
I confess that we have arrived at these conclusions only
through the totality. All in all I am inclined to think that
philosophical problems should be approached through " collective " comprehension. Only when we are able to understand
the totality and the alterations that the sum of its diverse and
unequal components introduce into the texture of physical
reality, shall we begin to understand the future, the eventual
impact of that future, and perhaps the possibility of an antiworld. On the level of the totality, the coming and going of
forces and fields and the gradual awareness of the same cannot
be excluded a priori.
WILFRID DESAN

Georgetown University
Washington, D. C.

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:
AND IDEA

EXPERIENCE

W

HEN HE SPOKE to the Columbia department of
philosophy on the occasion of John Dewey's death,
John Randall remarked that Dewey learned from
Frederick Woodbridge what metaphysics is.1 A good number
of people, including Randall himself, learned that lesson from
Woodbridge. His role-as teacher, chairman of department,
and dean of the Columbia faculties of arts and sciences-in the
development and flowering of Columbia Naturalism is pivotal.
If his greater influence seems to have been as teacher and friend
of other Naturalists, we cannot afford to overlook the few volumes of his writings which exhibit the power of mind that made
him so extraordinary a teacher and so stimulating a friend, and
that embody his own peculiar and attractive philosophy. It
is to Woodbridge's" intellectualism" that I wish to call attention here, and attempt to do so by some comments on the most
provoking of his works, The Realm of Mind. 2 Woodbridge
taught that being is " logical." What did he mean? And what
did he mean by " idea " ? The answers to these questions help
one situate Woodbridge in relation to other Naturalists of his
generation such as Santayana and Dewey and to estimate his
considerable influence on second generation Naturalists such
as John H. Randall, Jr. and Sterling P. Lamprecht, and mark
The Realm of Mind as a significant contribution to the metaphysical endeavors of Naturalists.
1 John
H. Randall, Jr. "John Dewey, 1859-1952," Journal of Philosophy, 50
(1953), p. 9. Randall suggests that Dewey's Experience and Nature most clearly
reveals Woodbridge's influence. Cf. "The Department of Philosophy," A History
of the Faculty of Philosophy af Columbia University (New York: 1957), pp. 127218.
2 F. J. E. Woodbridge,
The Realm of Minrl (New York:

FREDERICK WOODBRIDQE:

EXPERIENCE

AND IDEA

718

I. A NAIVE REALISM
There is no attempt in Realm to offer a psychology of
knowing. Questions of epistemology, insofar as they are treated
at all, are subordinate to and placed in the context of metaphysics. Woodbridge takes as his starting point the fact that
man thinks. He sidesteps, as an initial consideration bound to
lead to absurd conclusions, a theory of knowing based on an acceptance of sensing as mediator in cognition between mind and
existence.8 He suggests that if one begins with sensation as the
sole avenue of contact with the realm of being, one is compelled
by the logic of the starting point to end with mind as an entity
internal to body, an entity which depends on sensation for its
activity in existence and which is inevitably restricted to consideration of sense data and not of existence itself. A different
starting point, he suggests, yields an entirely different and more
reasonable outcome.
Thinking as a fact leads one directly to what is thought
about. To ask about thinking is necessarily to ask about what
is thought. For Woodbridge, " objective mind," or what we
might call the thinkability of being, is a necessary correlate to
thinking as an activity in being.4 The problem how man thinks
and the epistemological problem of the meaning of ideas and
their relation tol existence is to be settled within a context already set by the apparently common-sensical affirmation that
what man thinks about is no more obscure a topic or distant
a subject matter than the fact that he thinks. In fact, to begin
a consideration of mind and being with the already established
conclusion that the two are either at a distance from one
another in existence or are to be considered as separate prob8 Ibid., p. 18 f. I think that Woodbridge may well have had Santayana in mind
here. Santayana had already made known his basically Kantian position on the
cognitional problem. He remained obtuse on this point, and is as consistent in
his obscurantism on the mediatory function of sensing as Woodbridge is clear on
the same question. See Santayana's Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (New
York: 1900), pp. 1-2!1.
'Ibid., pp. 2, 18, 81-82.

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

lems for examination is to belie the obvious fact that thinking
is thinking-about.
Once thinking-about is accepted as axiomatic, the philosopher is free to pass on to an analysis of the subject matter of
thought. How is it to be characterized? If thinking is an event,
what are we to say of that in which it takes place? What is it
that is accessible to thinking? And what, by the very fact that
it is thought, is revealed about the content of thought? If
thinking is relevant to its content, as it obviously must he, what
is it in the constitution of the content of thought that makes
it relevant to thinking? 5 Only in answers to these questions
is any similarity between a Woodbridgean and Kantian starting
point obviated. Woodbridge confesses a dislike of the Critique
of Pure Reason. 6 We may surmise that Kant would have felt
himself lulled back into the sleep of the dogmatic by the cadences of Woodbridge's unashamed realism.
That in which thinking is an event is the" realm of being." 7
That which is accessible to thinking is termed the "realm of
mind." 8 Since thinking goes on in the realm of being, that to
which the term " being " is applicable is that which is accessible
to thinking: the realm of being and the realm of mind are coextensive.9 The subject matter of thinking, then, is being, or
that which is, whatever thinking might find it out to be. Woodbridge is characterizing being, and not maintaining that to be
is to be thought, for logical structure is only one among a number of general characters of being. His position would be better
phrased" to be is to be thinkabl.e," for the activity of thinking
is, in the concrete, limited by experience. The realm of experience is the realm of mind in act; that realm of mind in act constitutes a realm of being which is known and which is in the realm
of being.10 Being, then, in its widest extension, applies to whatIbid., pp. 81-82.
Ibid., p. 28.
T Ibid., p. 2.
• Ibid., p. 29.
• Ibid., p. 32.
10 Ibid., p. 41.
5

6

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:

EXPERIENCE

AND IDEA

715

ever is, and whatever is is coextensive with objective mind, with
the logical structure or thinkability of being. The realm of
being, although not in act thought about, and the realm of mind
are one and the same.
Woodbridge clearly maintains, then, that being or existence is
logical in character, for he means by "realm of mind " that
character of existence which renders it subject matter for human intelligence. His position on this matter is central to his
metaphysics of natural process; without it his metaphysics
is a shambles. The very fact that being, as actual or possible
subject matter of thought, is thought about reveals the fact
that being is possessed of a logical structure, of that which renders it accessible to thinking. 11 That logical structure is a character of being is discovered in the very fact that it is thought
about. To Woodbridge it is as clear as this: ". . . as our
digesting involves a chemical world, so our thinking involves
a logical world. And as by our digesting we do not introduce
chemistry into a world not already chemical, so by our thinking
we do not introduce logic into a world not already logical." 12
So much for Kant. If the scope of our thinking defines the
realm of mind and if we say that what we think about is " in
the mind," then the realm of being is the realm of mind, and
is marked by a logical structure correlative to thinking. Rather
than contract the realm of being and its logical structure to a
thinking mind, he expands the realm of mind to being.13
Logical structure is, according to Woodbridge, " of the essence of things." Being is logically constructed, the realm of
being is a realm intelligible, a mundus intelligibilis.14 And this
logical structure is antecedent to thinking, for it is discovered
as characteristic of existence and not created. We have to work
to find it out; being is so structured " irrespective of our efforts
to comprehend it." 15 Things are constituted as relevant to our
Ibid., pp. 46-47.
Ibid., vii.
18 Ibid., p. S!t.
14 Ibid., pp. 49-50.
15 Ibid., p. 49; cf. pp. 83-84.

11
12

716

WILLIAM M. SHEA

thinking, then, because the constitution of things is logical. As
the mechanical character of the world is revealed by our
walking in it, so the logical constitution of existence is revealed
by our thinking it. 16 To discover that being has a logical structure is " to discover the essential nature of mind,"· i. e., that
being is objective mind, and to lift the mind (human intelligence) out of its cage behind the senses and to place it where
it belongs, in being, in correlative relationship to its subject
matter.

II.

A NOT so NAIVE ARGUMENT

Woodbridge's presentation is simple and direct, and deceptively so with regard to his argumentation for the logical constitution of being. How does he arrive at his position? At times
the matter is obvious, as obvious as it would be to common
sense. Is Woodbridge answering the question of the intelligibilty of being simply on the grounds that his construction of
the facts is obvious? Or is he merely affirming what is a matter
of belief among men, as any good common sense realist should?
This is suggested when he speaks of men's confidence in intelligibility and when he tells us that " belief " in objective mind
is natural and sound. 17 Or is there a more properly philosophical
basis for his position?
That the latter is the case is indicated by his frequent use of
the words " implication " and " inference " when he writes of
the relationship between thinking and the structure of the subject matter of thought. 18 He is careful in his language at these
points. For example, when he argues that thinking is a participation in existence and not something at a remove from
existence, he says:
... it is worth insisting again that our thinking in the world can
hardly be less relevant to its constitution than our walking in it.
By our efforts existence becomes better known and better underIbid., pp. 81-82.
Ibid., pp. 49, 52.
18 Ibid., pp. 49, 54, 81-82.

18

17

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:

EXPERIENCE

AND IDEA

717

stood. It may be that, by forgetting distractions and by remembering how knowledge is naturally effected, belief in objective mind
may appear as warranted an implication of the facts as any other
implication of them. 19

He has admitted that the confidence of men in the intelligibility
of being is not conclusive proof that things are intelligible.
What is the conclusive proof? That literature, the language of
science and philosophy, and religious beliefs express the confidence of men is interesting and confirmatory, but not conclusive. Is the logical structure of being a matter of inference
from the fact of thinking and discourse? It seems that Woodbridge's position rests on a deduction or an inference from the
activity of knowing and its outcome in discourse to the intelligible and discourse-able structure of the known. Woodbridge
quite sharply demonstrates the absurdities of any other philosophical path on the matter in the first chapter of his book.
His own position is far more subtly worked out than may at
first appear. If this is so, Woodbridge is other than the" naive
realist" he so often called himself. He may be so critical a
realist that his argument r-ests on a deduction of intelligibility
as the condition of possibility of knowing. He makes individual
minds the consequence not only of the organization and rebtivity of bodies but of the logical structure of existence. 20 He
also puts it that objective mind is a necessary implication of
the axiom that man thinks. 21 This sounds suspiciously like a
deductive inference. I think that the possibility ought to be
admitted in spite of Woodbridge's adherence to analytic and
empirical philosophic method. In effect, then, he is arguing tu
the sensible and intelligible character of being from two cognitional activities of man, sensing and understanding. Although
the argument is placed in a metaphysical context, it begins with
a brief but quite precise statement of cognitional fact. And
although Woodbridge is given to the " method of analysis and
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 129.
21 Ibid., p. 82.

19
20

718

WILLIAM M. SHEA

tested generalization " here he departs from generalization. He
deductively infers the structur.e of being (metaphysics) from
the structure of knowing (cognitional analysis) .

III.

A LESS NAIVE DEVELOPMENT

What is logical structure? The question is answered in three
ways by Woodbridge. First, he tells us what it is not; second,
he sugg.ests that logical structure is a matter of discovered relationships between things; and third, he extends his analysis of
the correlativity of thinking and the content of thought by
maintaining that logical structure is precisely that character
of being by which being is thought.
Logical structure concerns space, time, objects, qualities, relations, but it is none of these things. It concerns the exploration of the material world, but it is not "physical." The many
names for it (e. g., Spinoza's ordo et connectio idearum et
rerum) "name something besides a non-entity. But what?
Whatever it is, it is clearly not something which can be located.
in a place or given a date. It is not like something else." 22
Woodbridge's refusal to confuse logical structure with that of
which logical structure is a character is paralleled by his sharp
distinction between things and ideas. Ideas are not things, he
maintains; rather, they are things in their logical relations.
Whatever logical structure is, it is not the observable and
measurable, although it concerns the observable and measurable
aspects of things.
Logical structure is the realm of being as this realm " discloses itself as so connected that we can discover what one fact
or event in it implies in terms of other facts and events." 23
Experience, then, is a matter of implications and inferences as
well as a matter of space, time, and mass.
We discover that there is in the realm of being a structure by virtue
of which one fact or event in it may lead our thinking on to other
facts and events which are involved, and opens to us the reaches
•• Ibid., pp. 83; see pp. 41, 46, 53.
•• Ibid., p. 41.

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:

EXPERIENCE

AND IDEA

719

of time and space and what they contain. . . . There is a coherence
in things which is found out by thinking. This coherence is something quite different from spatial juxtaposition, temporal succession
or mass accumulation.24
If Woodbridge's language seems vague at this point it is because implications, inferences, coherence, and connection are
not things that can be pointed at or described. Logical structure is a discovery about things that can be pointed at or
described, a discovery which enables us to speak intelligently
about them without pointing and to speak of them explanatorily as well as descriptively.
Woodbridge's attempt to make clear what he means by logical structure finds its most characteristic formulation in heuristic or anticipatory statements. Logical structure is what is
accessible to thinking. It is the character of being among others
which renders it relevant to thinking. It is that which we explore when we think and that which language tries to express.
It is that which we try to discover and .explain.25 As the quest
of thought is for reasons, so logical structure is that character
of being which responds to the search for reasons: it is the
reason in things, that which " accounts for things and renders
their operations intelligible." 26 Men anticipate that events do
not occur in isolation; what they discover about things which removes them from their isolation is the logical structure of
things. 27
Woodbridge means that logical structure is what is anticipated and sought when a question is raised, and what is discovered when an answer is reached. It is what is grasped by intelligence when a question is intelligently answered. The answer is not the thing. The knower does not "become" the
known in the sense that the thing has " entered " consciousness
in any quasi-physical way. Knowledge is knowledge of the
Ibid., pp. 46-47.
Ibid., p. 83; see pp. 29, 46-47, 81-83.
26 Ibid., pp. 49-50.
27 Ibid.. p. 51.

2•

26

720

WILLIAM M. SHEA

thing, it is the thing in its power-to-be-known, its intelligibility,
its logical structure. It is not without significance that the title
page of the Realm is inscribed with a quotation from De Anima.
Further light is thrown upon the meaning of logical structure
by Woodbridge's treatment of ideas. His discussion of ideas
in the Realm takes place in his chapter on objective mind. This
fact is not without its significance: Woodbridge is a metaphysician, and hesitates at naming his treatment of ideas
"epistemology." He is wary of a theory of knowledge which
amounts to a "piling of one act of knowledge on another." 28
Nor is he a psychologist interested in the psychological aspects
and components of knowledge. Nor does he engage in any
analysis of sensation. His starting point, as we saw above, is
not in an analysis of sense data, or an assumption of the mediatorial role of sensing, or any theoretic construction of the relationship between thing, thing sensed, and thing known. He
takes knowing as a matter of fact and asks what this fact implies about man and the realm of being in which man exists
and knows. His interest is that of a metaphysician and his
analysis is metaphysical analysis. He asks: What is an idea?
What is language? And what must be the characteristics of
a world in which such activities as thinking and speaking take
place?
There are some objections which might be raised to Woodbridge's approach to the problem of ideas and their relationship
to being. There is, in the Realm, a refusal to take up an
analysis of sensing, of experience, and even of consciousness
which seem essential to any adequate theory of knowing. But
Woodbridge had treated these topics over the years to an extent that his position on them had been made sufficiently clear.
What he seems to have done in the Rea.lm is to make available
in apodictic form the conclusions of those years of consideration
of the many problems related to the overriding metaphysical
interests of the Realm. 29
"" Ibid., p. 55.
•• For his treatment of consciousness and cognition, see the essays gathered in

Nature and Mind (New York: 1987).

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:

EXPERIENCE

AND IDEA

In the few pages of the Realm devoted to the subject, Woodbridge offers us a series of statements on the nature of knowledg.e which are incisive, tantalizing in their brevity, and
thought-provoking in their implications. Although some questions are left unanswered and some, perhaps, unasked, the pages
are a welcome r.elief from the obscurantism all too frequently
met in the literature of the theory of knowledge. Woodbridge
tells us what knowledge is and what it isn't, in a style and with
a clarity difficult to fault or match:
What, then, is knowledge? ... To stare the world in the face, so to
speak, is not to know it .... Knowing things is not being them, nor
is their existence knowledge of them. Possession of a counterfeit of
reality is no nearer to knowledge than the possession of reality itself .... We may accordingly conclude that, given all the experience
we have or can have, an idea-unless we arbitrarily make it such
by a definition to start with-is never a copy, image, likeness, resemblance, counterfeit, presentation or representation of anything
whatever. Likenesses are things like photography, paintings,
drawings, models. They are expressed in lineaments comparable
with the things they are like. Ideas are not so expressed. They
are expressed, when we speak or write, in propositions. And a
proposition is never, in any sense, like the thing it propounds. 30
What, then, are ideas? We may now say that an idea is an object
in its logical connections. It is in no sense image, copy, likeness; in
no sense one kind of existence set over against another kind, demanding comparison between the two in order that there may be
knowledge. Nor is it the object's presence, not even if we describe
that presence as a presentation to or in consciousness. For we may
see objects and yet have little or no idea of what they are. We
may handle them and still be ignorant of them. To have knowledge,
something more and something quite different is necessary. Objects
must effect a specific kind of leading on. They must evoke affirmations and denials. They must generate propositions. And our contention is that they do this, not by being first transformed into
something like them or into something which implies them, but by
being themselves already involved in a net of logical connections
which we follow out and discover. The idea of anything is what
that thing is. What a thing is, is conveyed by language, by a material
exchange, and is wholly indifferent to the particular material ex30

The Realm of Mind, pp. 57-61.

WILLIAM M. SHEA

change which may convey it; and no exchange conveys it more
truly than another. In terms of the realm of mind, ideas are its
logic particularized and focused in objects. 81

The clarity and confidence of the presentation are impressive.
Hume or Kant might have been helped considerly in their own
thinking had these pages of the Realm been available, or had
they read Aristotle and Spinoza as carefully as Woodbridge did.
The more significant aspect of Woodbridge's teaching on
knowledge in the Realm may be summarized as follows:
1. Knowing as an activity cannot be equated with sensing or
imagining; the knower does not possess or become the object known.
Knowledge is not sense data or images, nor does it amount to a reduplication of an external object in an internal object, nor any
absorption of the object by the mind or the mind by the object.
2. Knowing as activity is a matter of getting ideas; knowledge
as a fact is having ideas.
3. Ideas are gotten from experience through contact with objects, but ideas or knowledge are not experience or contact.
4. Ideas are gotten from, or are effected by, an object's ability
to" lead on" in a specific way, a leading-on which issues in affirmations and denials. 32 The specific kind of leading-on that objects
effect is exemplified in the questions they provoke and in the search
for answers. The object effects this leading-on precisely insofar
as it is part of the system of objective mind.
5. An idea, then, is not the thing of which it is the idea. It is
the obj.ect in its logical aspect. It is what the thing is, the answer
to the question quid sit. Woodbridge might be styled an adherent
of a correspondence theory of truth, with this caution: he means
that there is a correlativity of intelligence and the intelligible aspect of things. The object outside thought is not a correlate of an
31 Ibid., pp. 85-87. Harry Todd Costello relates, in "The Naturalism of Frederick
Woodbridge," that "when someone raised the question one day whether there is
ever such a thing as imageless thought, Woodbridge replied that the real question
is whether there is any thought which is not imageless." Naturalism and the Human
Spirit, ed. Y. Krikorian (New York: 1944), p. 308.
32 Woodbridge seems to include in his notion of idea the act of judgment.
A
distinction between having an idea, or an answer to the question quid sit, and
judging that one's idea is correct, or answering the question an sit, would have
lent clarity to his discussion. It is the difference between hypothesis or concept
and judgment of fact. Both involve idea but they are not the same activity. An
explicit consideration of judgment, such as Dewey's Logic, is called for.

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:

EXPERIENCE

AND IDEA

723

object inside thought; a spatial metaphor is misleading. We might
put it this way: an object understood is not the· object; it is the
object understood.
Woodbridge has written what to my mind is a superb essay
on the distinction between the activities of experience (sensing,
imagining) and idea. His masterful grasp is nowhere more evident than in his telling use of the classical example of the difference between the idea of a circle and the images of circles,
and in his description of the situation in which the experience
of an object does not amount to an idea of it. 83
The same telling distinction is made in a different way in
his question to Dewey, "Of What Sort is Cognitive Experience?" 34 The essay was written in 1905, twenty-one years prior
to the Realm. It was written in response to Dewey's "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism." 35 The point which Woodbridge takes up is the relationship between cognitive experience
and other kinds of experience. It is helpful to note that Woodbridge did not prefer the phrase " cognitive experience." It
does not appear in Realm nor, I think, in An Essay on Nature.
I suspect that the reason for this is that his own understanding
of the distinction between experience and understanding was
so firm and clear that, although he considered thinking an experience, he felt that the use of the phrase would lead to confusion.
In that essay, Woodbridge suggests to Dewey that cognitive
experience is of quite a different sort from any other kind of
experience. He writes:
... it appears to me clear that in cognitive experience all other sorts
of experience may .exist without alteration; for, otherwise, how could
we find out what sort they are? How could they be identified as
the concrete, particular sorts of experience indicated? In other
words, in the cognitive sort of experience, all other sorts appear to
be transcended. The nub of the question, to use Professor Dewey's
words once more, is, undoubtedly, what sort of experience is meant
The Realm of Mind, pp. 60, 67.
•• Nature and Mind, pp. 816 ff.
85 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (New York:
1910), pp. 226-241.
33

724

WILLIAM M. SHEA

or indicated. But it would appear that this question can be answered only in a cognitive .experience!
There are many sorts of experience of which the cognitive is only
one and one which can be confused with the others only to the
detriment of all. But I must now add that the cognitive experience
is of such a" sort" that it enables us to tell what the others actually are when we ask the question about their sort. 86
The Realm, and essays such as " The Field of Logic " and
"Mind Discerned," exhibit Woodbridge's firm grasp of cognitional fact and his willingness to follow the implications of the
facts. His devotion to Aristotle, Spinoza, and Locke may explain a good deal of the content of his metaphysics and his
method, but it does not explain what Woodbridge himself had
to achieve, an achievement displayed in his writings: he found
out what he was doing when he was knowing, and he capitalized,
with singular brilliance in metaphysics, on that discovery. His
achievement influenced one generation of Columbia Naturalists-his association with Dewey lasted over thirty years-and
contributed to the philosophic development of his students,
among them John H. Randall, Jr. and Sterling P. Lamprecht.
From him they learned the difference between obscurantism
and intelligence in philosophy. They maintained, each in his
own philosophic context, the fundamental positions announced
by Woodbridge, namely, that thinking implies a thinkable
world; that the problem of knowledge is not that of closing a
gap between mind and the thing-out-there, but a matter of
answering questions and that the content of knowledge is not
the " thing " or a representation of it, but an imageless (i. e.,
immaterial) understanding of the meaning of things.

IV.

CRITICAL CoMMENTS

Woodbridge's distinction between experience and idea is incisive and decisive-for anyone willing to pay attention to his
36 Nature and Mind, p. 319. One again,
one has answered the question quid sit.
37 Ibid., pp. 56-78, 160-17!l.

is what one arrives at when

FREDERICK WOODBRIDGE:

EXPERIENCE AND IDEA

725

own cognitional activity. But the distinction suffers the limits
of a two-moment cognitional theory. Except for some references
to judgment in the early essays, Woodbridge fails to advert systematically to the third moment in human knowing, the moment in which one says of his idea that it is correct or incorrect.88 He largely ignores that critical moment of reflection on
idea which leads to affirmation or denial. There is, then, this
further distinction to be made: not only is idea distinct from
experience, but reflection and the subsequent judgment are activities distinct from idea and experience. In addition there is
an ambiguity in his notion of idea. He seems to mean by it
both understanding as activity and concept as formulation of
the content of understanding. Idea is for Woodbridge an amalgam (acceptable in ordinary conversation but misleading in
philosophical analysis of cognition) of the act of understanding
and concept as its product.
I suggest that this weakness in cognitional theory is traceable
to Woodbridge's (and a pari the other Naturalists') failure to
deal adequately with the modern turn to subjectivity. Without
an adequate explication of the cognitional activities of the human subject, the language of Woodbridge's metaphysics can be
dismissed rather easily as a mere repetition and refurbishing
of the classical tradition. Surely Kant is wrong-Woodbridge
knew this-but metaphysics needs a theoretic ground in an explicit cognitional theory which he and the other Naturalists
refused to develop. One can understand that refusal, for
epistemology had become a tiring and unproductive business
and introspection a suspect philosophic method by the beginning of our century. The expeditious solution is to step around
the bog. Woodbridge did more than that, of course. If I am
not entirely mistaken he did approach a critical realism based
in recognition of cognitional fact-but he did not exploit that
recognition and develop a carefully formulated and critical cognitional theory.
•• See Nature and Mind, pp. 33-34 and 68-69. He uses judgment to refute a
relativist position on knowing. For a later statement, see Realm, pp. 61-62.

726

WILLIAM M. SHEA

I find the most intriguing aspect of Woodbridge's development to lie in what I called above the "deductive inference"
which comes to the fore in the Realm. Here Woodbridge does
not seem fully to be aware of what he is engaged in. He is able
to talk about the sensible I logical character of being only because he is able to distinguish sharply between the two activities
of experience and understanding. In fact, his theory of the
sensible I logical structure of being is a deduction from that distinction and the result is a transcendental categorization even
if he would prefer to call it a generalization. One wishes that
he had pushed the matter further. Had he adverted to and
systematically employed a three-fold distinction of cognitional
activities (experience, understanding, judgment) he might
have erected a theory of being as triadically structured (sensible, intelligible, real) and perhaps have addressed himself to
the question whether natural existence is thoroughly or transcendentally intelligible. He was blocked from doing so, in my
opinion, by two factors: by his espousal of an " analytic and
empirical method" and its result in congenial generalization,
and by an absence of a critical theory of the human subject.
And it is precisely the absence which allows an uncritical
espousal of the empirical method.
WILLIAM

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

M. SHEA

ARE CONCLUSIVE PROOFS IRRELEVANT
TO RELIGION?

F

OR CENTURIES the proofs for God's existence have
been debated and their role in religious belie£-systems
assessed. There have been those who claim that the
proofs are conclusive, those who claim that they are invalid, and those who claim that they are valid but inconclusive. There have been disputes, furthermore, as to whether
the logical base for religious belie£ systems should be sought
in proofs and evidence rather than in "self-authenticating"
religious experiences and acceptance o£ religious authority.
But no one, until recently, ever contended that even if the
proofs were conclusive it would be irrelevant to religious
believers. People have thought that religion must be undergirded by proof, aan be undergirded by proof, and need not be
undergirded by proof, but not that proof would be irrelevant.
Now o£ course there are many senses in which a proof could
be relevant to religious believers. The Vatican Council affirmed
that i£ people denied that God could be known with certainty by
the natural light of human reason they would be anathema.
Thus it could have made quite serious practical differences to
a believer whether he accepted the proofs or not. As philosophers we are not concerned with this sort of practical difference
but with philosophical ones, and the question to be explored
is: Is there something philosophically at stake for believers in
this question o£ the proofs for the existence o£ God? I want to
contend that Steven M. Cahn is utterly wrongheaded in his
claim that religious believers have no real interest in philosophical proofs for the existence of God. 1 I am assuming that this
1 Steven M. Cahn, " The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophic Proofs for the
Existence of God," The American Philosophical Quarterly (April, 1969), pp.
170-72. Further citations will be given by page number in the text. Cahn has

727

FRANK B. DILLEY

is not a statistical claim to be settled by polls but rather a
philosophical claim. Cahn makes no effort to produce questionnaire results from a proper sample of believers nor shall I.
To examine this question, in the context of Cahn's contention, it is fortunately not necessary to resolve the question of
the validity of the proofs. In an effort to dismiss them once for
all, Cahn is willing to assume that the proofs are valid, for the
sake of the argument. " Suppose we assume, contrary to what
most philosophers, I among them, believe, that all of these
proofs are valid. Let us grant the necessary existence (whatever that might mean) of the most perfect conceivable Being,
a Being who is ali-good and is the designer and creator of the
universe. What implications can be drawn from this fact which
would be of relevance to human life? In other words, what
difference would it make in men's lives if God existed?" (p.
170)
In support of his surprising thesis that religious believers are
right in ignoring the proofs, he gives two chief arguments, that
religious believers make their decisions as to what beliefs to
hold and what practices to follow on the basis of "self-validating " personal experiences which render the proofs unnecessary, and that the success of the proofs would not enable a
newly converted unbeliever to know what beliefs and practices
to choose. He therefore contends that the proofs are relevant
for neither the believer nor the unbeliever.
In examining his contention about the relevancy of proofs
I propose to look at what religious belief systems say about this
problem, an approach Cahn does not seem to care to use. In
this connection it should be noted that his sources are curious,
for he cites not one person who would be taken by anyone to
be a normal religious believer. He cites Antony Flew, Wallace
Matson, C. B. Martin, and Mordecai Kaplan, but not John
reprinted this essay in his Philosophy of Religion (Harper & Row, 1970), and it
can also be found in Philosophy in the Age of Crisis, ed. Eleanor Kuykendall
(Harper & Row, 1970) and God, Man, and Rdigion: Readings in the Philosophy
of Rdigion, ed. by Keith Yandell (McGraw-Hill, 1973).

ARE CONCLUSIVE

PROOFS

IRRELEVANT

TO RELIGION?

729

Hick, John Smith, H. D. Lewis, or Austin Farrer, and the only
theologian whom he mentions in support of his claim is that
most untypical Dane, Soren Kierkegaard.
Even the arguments which he claims support his thesis,
drawn from Kierkegaard and Kaplan, do not do so. He says,
correctly, that Kierkegaard regarded attempts to prove God's
existence as ludicrous. He does not tell us that Kierkegaard
thought that the proofs were invalid and thought that he had
demonstrated sufficiently that this was so. It hardly supports
Cahn's contention that the proofs if valid are irrelevant to note
that a theologian who thought that the proofs were invalid found
attempts to prove God's existence absurd. Moreover he does
not tell us that Kierkegaard is in no way typical of religious
philosopher-theologians or of religious believers.
In the case of Kaplan, Cahn cites a remark that people seldom convert to religion because of proofs. Again he does not
tell us whether Kaplan thought this would be so of valid proofs.
Kaplan, he mentions, is a naturalist, hence is even more untypical than Kierkegaard of religious believers.
It would seem sensible, first, to look at the place proofs and
rational justifications play in religious belief-systems in order
to see whether or not the proofs if valid are irrelevant.
The primary argument advanced by Cahn is that the basis
for religious belief is not proofs or .evidence but self-authenticating experiences. First, then, we must look to see if this is
the view of the logical basis for religious belief typically held
by believers themselves. As the First Vatican Council made
clear, Catholics believe that the existence of God can be known
with certainty by the light of natural reason. Of course Catholics are not obliged to hold that reason is required to establish
truths about God, for revelation is available to do that. Nevertheless the validation of the proofs for God would give rational
support to basic Catholic beliefs and would be welcomed on
that basis. Catholic apologists often criticize other religions
just because of their reliance on slippery criteria such as personal religious experience or " sheer faith."

730

FRANK B. DILLEY

Outside Catholicism one typically finds greater suspicion of
human reason, hence a greater reliance on historical arguments
and arguments from miracles rather than the rational proofs,
but the point about undergirding is still valid. The typically
protestant appeal is to some evidential base rather than to selfauthenticating experience as a rule. John R. W. Stott, for example, speaks for very conservative forms of Protestantism
in arguing for the acceptance of Jesus as authority on the
grounds that there is all but conclusive historical evidence that
Jesus was uniquely divine. 2 Particularly Stott places emphasis
upon the resurrection as validation of Jesus as authority. Religious believers of various sects would appeal to such " facts "
as the escape of the people of Israel from Egypt, the miracles
of Jesus, the golden tablets given to Joseph Smith, and so on.
In short, religious believers are not just told to " believe," they
are told to believe because . . .
It is often said that believers appeal to authority, and they
do. What needs to be noted is that believerstypicallythinkthat
they have rational and evidential justification for accepting
the doctrines proclaimed by their authorities as true. This is
so even though the same religious believers may speak of knowledge of God " by faith." Faith is not thought to be unwarranted
trust or belief but is thought to have its justification in evidence
and rational argument. What sometimes confuses interpreters
of religion is that they fail to notice the distinction believers
make between the experience which leads them to live religiously (have" faith" in the sense of placing ultimate trust in God),
and the intellectual grounds upon which they rest their set
of beliefs. When Reformers said that knowledge of God was
by faith they meant that the believer achieved commitment
to God in an experience, but not that he first came to have
knowledge that God existed by that experience. Calvin, for example, admitted that all men have an implanted knowledge
of God and that God's existence is obvious in the fashioning of
the universe and the continuing government of it. For Calvin
• John W. Scott, Basic Christianity (Eerdmans, 1958), p. 59.

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it does not take faith to believe that God is but only to believe
in him. Much the same point should perhaps be made in connection with classical mystical religions, whether eastern or
western, but for reasons to become apparent such religions must
be excluded from this discussion.
Biblical religion is often put forward as an example of a religion that rests upon appeal to authority, and it is sometimes
not fully appreciated how wrong it is to present biblical religion in this way. Biblical man supported his beliefs by appeals
to evidence. Very seldom is appeal made to self-validating
visions or to the words of authoritative spokesmen unless an
attempt has been made to show that evidence exists to support
the claims of that authority to speak truth.
The test of a true prophet is whether God does what the
prophet says he will, and false prophets are recognized as such
by the falseness of their claims. Jesus is shown to be the Lord
by the miracles which he performed, by his fulfilling the
prophecies made of old, by his resurrection from the dead and
supernatural reappearance to his disciples. The apostolic
preaching of the first generation heavily stressed the resurrection and miracles as a validation of their claims that Jesus was
the Redeeming Christ. The authority of the Church, in Catholic apologetic, rests upon its having been established by Christ,
and by the miraculous demonstration of catholicity and infallibility which it has evidenced in history. Similar claims have
been made about the Bible as providing clear evidence of its
own supernatural origin.
Further indication of this stress on evidential justification is
shown by the historical explanations provided for the religious
rituals practiced by believers. When children ask why the
rituals should be practiced they are to be told that it is because
God rescued the children of Israel from Egypt. Christian sacraments are given their justification in terms of acts of Jesus as
presented in the Scriptures or remembered in oral tradition.
It is symptomatic of Biblical religion to give answers as to why
such and such should be believed or practiced by reference to

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FRANK B. DILLEY

historical events. Seldom if ever is the justification given" because Moses wrote this down and what he said is inspired."
It is doubtful that Moses is ever quoted by anyone in the
Hebrew Bible, although it is true that words were attributed
to him at various periods as the laws were recodified. The
justification for belief is not "Moses said" but "God did."
Those who stand outside a particular religion may find themselves there just because they doubt the " facts " by which
the religion claims justification, and when that is true then of
course it looks to these outsiders as though the religion is totally
unjustified by an appeal to reason or to evidential support. But
this is not the case for those who stand inside the tradition
and believe because of what God allegedly did in the time of
Moses and does for his people now.
There are some important dissenters from the thesis that
religion as a rule claims philosophical and evidential backing.
Some theologians, often influenced heavily by the second
" melancholy Dane," maintain that all knowledge of God comes
through special revelation and that no backing at all for religion exists. Because this group has been highly vocal in the
past thirty years, and because this sort of non-justification for
religion fits in nicely with some contemporary strands of philosophic thought, the view has become rather widespread that
religion is typically revelational, but this is plainly not the case.
The alliance of Wittgensteinian fideists and philosophical skeptics on the role of reason in religion is of recent origin and is
plainly unacceptable to most religious believers who have
written on the subject in the past ten years, as it has been unacceptable historically.
In support of this historical claim stands Walter Marshall
Horton, theologian, who tried to state the ecumenical consensus
concerning knowledge of God based on World Council of
Churches documents. He maintained that" conservative Protestants have been as little convinced as liberal Protestants of
the total illegitimacy of the rational approach to theology." 8
• Walter Marshall Horton, Christian Theology: An Ecumenical AP'[JToach (Harper
& Row, 1955), p. 74.

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He observed further that theologians who deny this rational
approach, such as Aulen and Karl Barth, have been unable to
persuade the majority to their views and that the consensus,
Protestant as well as Catholic, conservative as well as liberal,
is overwhelmingly against them. Similar observations have
been made about the tendency of some philosophers to regard
the sort of discussion represented in New Essays in Philosophical Theology 4 as the norm for contemporary philosophical examination of religion. Twenty years of discussion of the falsification criterion have indicated clearly that whatever else they
may be theistic assertions are intended as cognitive by most
theists and that religious believers typically offer evidence to
support their claims. Far from being disinterested in proofs
for God's existence, both the classical rational proofs and appeals to miracles, tradition ancient and modern strongly suggests the opposite. Of course it is true that as people come to
believe that the proofs are of doubtful validity they may come
to lay more stress on other ways of validation. A substantial
and highly vocal minority of theologians did shift to appeals
to "self-authenticating " revelations, under Karl Barth's influence, but they never constituted the norm for religion.
On this matter there are borderline cases that are difficult
to classify. There are those who defend a different model of
proof than that classically presented by, say, St. Thomas and
William Paley. What does one say of a person who holds that
theological statements are parts of metaphysical belief-systems
which are validated in terms of their perceived adequacy as
world-views (hence "proved" in that sense), but states that
because adequacy is always" perceived" adequacy these world
views cannot be known to be true in any fool-proof fashion? 5
Since those experiences which give rise to the belief-system
would not be accepted if an integrated metaphysical helief-sys• New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by Antony Flew and Alasdair
Macintyre (SCM Press, Ltd., 1955) .
• Frank B. Dilley, Metaphysics and Religious Language (Columbia University
Press, 1964), chapters VIr and VIII.

734

FRANK B. DILLEY

tem could not be developed from them, the experiences are not
treated as self-authenticating. They must be authenticated in
terms of the adequacy of the metaphysical belief-system that
is developed, and without the successful system the experiences
would be discarded as non-cognitive. Certainly those of us who
take this view believe that it would make a great deal of difference if the proofs were valid. The possibility that we were
letting our inherited beliefs or unconscious motives bias our
world view in leading us to a religious world view would· be removed.
So far we have looked at two lines of argument for the thesis
that religious believers are not interested in the proofs. The two
claims that religious believers are in fact disinterested and that
they rest their beliefs upon self-authenticating experiences have
been denied, both as regards classical tradition and as statements of dominant contemporary religious opinion. Believers
typically appeal to justificatory arguments and evidence to support their beliefs and practices. A minority of contemporary
theologians, a number of contemporary philosophers who speak
on religious questions, and large numbers of unbelievers may
take the position that religion rests wholly on a revelation
which you either get or do not get, but the religious consensus
denies this.
It is time to address the question, what value would proofs
for God's existence have for religious believers and unbelievers?
To answer this question satisfactorily we must take a look at
some aspects of the proofs themselves. It should be remembered
that the question is, what relevance would the proofs have if
valid, if, that is, there is proved to be a most perfect conceivable
Being who is ali-good and the creator of the universe?
In the first place, most of the religions of the world have
gods whose nature is incompatible with that established by the
proofs. It is curious that Cahn never discusses this question
at all. Polytheistic religions typically affirm a multiplicity of
finite and imperfect deities, each responsible for some aspect
of nature or human existence,:hence would be overthrown by

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735

the proofs. Acosmic mysticisms typically deny that the Divine
in any real sense created the world or that it has the kind of
objective value order in it that would justify, say, the fifth
way of St. Thomas or any other version of the teleological argument. In short, given the Cahn concession that the God proved
is the most perfect conceivable Being, creator of the universe,
most of the religious views held by people in the world would
become logically invalid. Moreover, all atheisms would be refuted. It does not take much argument to show that if the
proofs of God were acknowledged to be conclusive it would
make a great deal of difference for these large groups of believers and unbelievers.
Cahn claims, correctly, that the proofs would not enable
someone to know .exactly what set of religious beliefs and practices should be followed; however, he unfortunately forgot (or
failed to mention) that someone would know that he should
adopt some practices consistent with monotheism and not with
polytheism or atheism. If the proofs were valid it is clear that
many people would come to know that their practices were
wrong. I would also contend that people would also come to
know a large range of practices that were right.
To support· his case Cahn claims that the proofs would not
enable a converted unbeliever to know what set of ethical valuations to adopt, hence he or she would not know how to please
God. "We may affirm that God is ali-good and yet have no
way of knowing what the highest moral standards are " (p.
171) . It is true that the converted believer could not deduce
from the nature of God what is good, but if we remember what
kind of world we would have to hav:e for the proofs to be valid
we can see where Cahn goes wrong. He forgets (or neglects to
mention) that for the telelogical argument to be valid it must
be the case 'that people can readily see that the world is designed, and consequently can recognize what is good just by
observing the design of the world. Moreover the fourth way
of St. Thomas presupposes our ability to recognize gradations
of goodness. In short, if we take the proofs seriously we recog-

736

FRANK B. DILLEY

nize not only that the practices of most religions and atheisms
are wrong but also that we could read right off the world itself
what is good. The trouble we now have is that the order of the
world is not clear .enough for the teleological argument to really
work for most of us. If it did work, presumably the order would
have to be clearer.
Although it is fair to cite Hume, as Cahn does, in support
of the claim that normative judgments cannot be deduced from
factual premises, it is not fair to claim support in Hume for
the contention that were the proofs valid we would not know
what moral standards to follow. Whatever else Hume may
have said, all three of the personages in Hume's dialogues on
natural religion agree that the validity of the teleological argument would establish a God whose goodness was very much like
ours. Demea opposed the teleological argument precisely for
this reason, opting instead for a more transcendent God, and
Philo agreed with him. Hume could then be cited in favor of
the view that God's standards would be like our standards
if the teleological argument were valid. Granted that this does
not help to meet the other problem, that of alleged relativity
of value standards, it does show that a God whose existence
was established by the teleological argument would have to
have values much like ours, according to Hume. Secondly, the
divorce of "is" from "ought" depends upon a non-telic interpretation of the universe, but a non-telic universe is not
consonant with the teleological argument. That argument, it
should be recalled, is an argument from the rational order and
goodness of the universe to an all-good orderer. For the argument to be successful man must know what the good is and
must be able to see that the ends toward which all things strive
are good, and surely he would then be able to derive a sense of
moral code from the actual patterns and processes he observes.
So far we have contended, against Cahn, that the validity of
the teleological argument would establish both that God's
values are like ours and that values can be read off the nature
of things. What should be said about the contention that there

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737

is actually a great variety of moral codes? I suspect that it is
false, particularily if the kinds of religious and non-religious
views that the proofs would invalidate are .eliminated. Objectivists in ethics have available a whole range of responses to
alleged ethical relativism. Differenees in family and civic patterns can be handled in terms of special circumstances or be
given developmental interpretation. Perhaps slavery was good
in ancient Greece, but not now. When it was believed that
Protestants' souls went to hell it was perhaps justifiable to slay
the body in order to save the soul. To slay one's parents when
it is believed that by so doing they will be young in the afterworld may be commendable filial piety. Some acts resembling
murder, such as assassination under certain conditions, the
shooting of criminals by police, and the killing of enemies in
wartime, might be right but they do not fall under the prohibited class of actions called murder because of the circumstances in which they occur.
Cultural relativism as a general thesis about widespread differences in basic ethical axioms has fallen on evil days. According to Richard Brandt, recent second looks at anthropological data have disclosed a number of ethical universals. It
would be a mistake, he says, to take .ethical relativism " as a
truth with pervasive scope. Relativism as an emphasis is misleading, because it draws our attention away from the central
identities, from widespread agreement on the items we care
most about." 6 Moreover, could a defender of the traditional
proofs be an ethical relativist? The Fourth Way requires that
we recognize a hierarchy of goods, and the teleological argument
requires that we be able to see the purposiveness of the universe, and it seems plausible to argue that a good teleologist is
obliged to maintain some objectivist theory of ethics. He is
not obliged to hold that in fact all people agree right off about
value matters, but he is obliged to hold that there ought to be
agreement on values once prejudices are set aside and all the
6

Richard B. Brandt, Ethical Theory (Prentice Hall, 1959), p. 288.

738

FRANK B. DILLEY

facts known. A revelationist could claini that ethical disagreements are unsolvable in principle until the wrong party is converted, but it is not evident that a teleologist could so claim.
A third point which is relevant is that many believers would
not c.are what diversity of beliefs and practices people hold,
within limits. Supposing that a person holds ethical beliefs
which fall within a permissible range, that he believes in God,
and that he holds no beliefs which are harmful to the human
body or mind, many believers would not care what particular
rituals and myths someone might support. Doubtless the number of believers who hold that to miss being baptized is to
court hell is diminishing. Strong ecumenical tendencies are
moving religious groups toward unity on terms which in effect
deny the importance of minor matters of belief and practice.
It is true that no one could deduce from a consideration of the
nature of God what specific religious beliefs to hold, but many
believers would hold that it does not matter what specific ones
are held beyond belief in the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. The converted naturalist who, we are to
imagine, has been converted by the proofs and is in doubt as
to what religion to practice might be told that it just does
not matter much either to other believers or to God. The proofs
will be relevant to converting him to a religious view, consistent
in basic outline with a number of religions, but it might not
matter which one is followed.
Now it is true that there is a wide variety of basic beliefs
and religious practices which fall within the scope allowed by
valid proofs for God's existence. One could not infer from the
proofs whether to believe in transubstantiation or not, or
whether God, although one, exists in three persons, but this is
not to say that one could not know what set of moral standards
to adopt. Cahn is right that the proofs do not decide many religious questions. His mistake is in claiming that they would
decide none of the important ones.
The main value to religious believers that would come from
valid religious proofs has not been mentioned, an escape from

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739

doubts about subjectivism with regard to religious experience.
While proofs would not establish everything about religious belief and perhaps would not establish which putative religious
experiences were genuine and which were not, proofs would at
least establish the possibility that some religious experiences
are authentic. Cognitive support is sought by religious believers
because of their awareness that human experiences can be highly subjective. What seem to be authoritative," self-validating"
experiences turn out sometimes to be fallible and subject to revision. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that my
experience of Isis could be duplicated by someone who takes
LSD. A person convinced of one religion can be converted to
another if a new "self-authenticating" experience succeeds the
old one. Moreover my " knowledge " that she loves me can
be shaken by her marrying the other person. That I have an
experience which seems to be self-authenticating is no sure sign
that it is cognitive, as everyone knows who believes that there
is only one God and has met someone who has had an exp.erience of a different one. Even if I based my religion on "selfauthenticating" experience, valid proof that there is a God
would be relevant by establishing that there really is a God,
hence that my visions or religious beliefs and practices need
not be sheer projections onto nothing. 7 Many believers are
seriously troubled by subjectivist explanations of religious experience, and the validity of the proofs would show them that
some visions could well be grounded, although not necessarily
that theirs is one of the ones that is authentic. Since this is
so, valid proofs for God's existence would be relevant, not irrelevant, as Cahn claims, for those who base their beliefs upon
religious experience. Not only would the possibility of authentic experiences be established but also some parameters would
be set in terms of the kind of God proved.
7 While
it seems curious to talk of providing cognitive backing for " selfauthenticating " experiences, I think it is a valid way of talking since " self-authenticating " refers to psychological reactions, not objective status. Sense perceptions
are self-authenticating even though mirages may be involved.

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FRANK B. DILLEY
CoNCLUSION

Those of us who are religious believers but who have to come
to terms with the fact that the proofs are not fool-proof would
welcome the support of valid proofs in the way religious believers have always looked for such support. While it is no
disaster that the proofs are not convincing to everyone, it
would be a welcome fact if it were not so. While religion is
possible without proof, and so is objective morality, the case
for both is seriously weakened compared to what it would be
if there were valid fool-proof proofs.
In the first place, valid proofs would disestablish the alternative world views of polytheism, mysticism, and naturalism
leaving only theism as a live option for the structuring of life.
Secondly, the proofs could be valid only if this were a world
of the sort depicted by St. Thomas or by Paley, where the signs
of design are clear for all to see. Some kind of natural law
theory would be established, along with grounding for the objectivity of ethics and the relatedness of divine being and values
to human being and values. Thirdly, the case would be established that religious experience is not necessarily subjective and
some parameters would be set which would enable us to disqualify some experiences as inauthentic.
Given these ways in which valid proofs would be relevant for
religious belief, to claim that the fact that the proofs do not
establish exactly which religious beliefs and practices are correct establishes their irrelevance to religious belief is to make
a senous error.
Steven Cahn's claim that the philosophical proofs for God's
existence are irrelevant for religious beliefs is wrongheaded.
Such a claim can result only from serious misunderstanding
of the logic of religion. Fool-proof proofs would solve many
of the basic problems faced by religious believers. Alas, there
are no fool-proof proofs, but it would be wrong either to make
a virtue of that lamentable fact, as Barth does, or to make it
a matter of irrelevancy, as Cahn does.
FRANK

University of Delaware
Newark, Delaware

B. DILLEY

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS
AQUINAS ON THE RECONCILIATION OF DIVINE
PROVIDENCE AND CONTINGENT ACTION

I

F THE END of wisdom is to put things in their proper
order, perhaps no finer illustration of such ordering wisdom is to be found than in the monumental work of
Thomas Aquinas in balancing the elements of Christian revelation with the inherent possibilities of the Aristotelian philosophical system to achieve an increased intelligibility of what
God has revealed to man. To appreciate the finesse of this
achievement, however, we must analyze and particularize,
break problems down into their component parts, retrace their
history, and attempt to reassemble them as they were once
understood in successive contexts in the mind of Thomas.
One of the most challenging problems that confronted
Aquinas in his daring effort to adapt Aristotelianism to Christianity was the problem of contingency. Aristotle had affirmed
the contingency of human activity as a refutation of determinism. By his appeal to the per accidens (viz., chance combinations and interferences of causes), he felt that he had destroyed the two premises of determinism: first, that every
effect has a per se, or necessary, cause; and second, that granted
the cause, the effect must necessarily follow.1 Unfortunately
for Aquinas, Aristotle's position on contingency led him to a
negation of divine providence unacceptable to a Christian
thinker. In his basic indifference to the world, the Aristotelian
Prime Mover is a far cry from the God of Abraham and Isaac.
The dilemma Thomas was confronted with is a good illustration
of the difficult position in which medieval theologians who de1

The basic texts in Aristotle are Metaphysies D, 6, 7, 30; E,

741

3.

742

BERNARD MCGINN

pended upon Aristotle frequently found themselves-to deny
the certitude of divine providence was impossible, but did one
have to relinquish Aristotle's victory over determinism as well
and seek its flefutation on other grounds?
Aquinas, of course, viewed these problems basically as a
theologian and within the context of a series of interconnected
theological problems. Father Bernard Lonergan, S. J., in his
investigation of the Thomistic theology of grace 2 has shown
that it is impossible to understand how Thomas handled the
delicate problem of gratia operans and gratia cooperans, unless
some of the basic philosophical pr.esuppositions underlying his
treatment are clearly understood. Among these presuppositions
are the analogy of operation, the theory of instrumentality, a
fully evolv.ed notion of the freedom of the will, and a position
on the problem of contingency that enabled him to preserve
the solution of Aristotle without negating the Christian doctrine
of providence. 3 This position Lonergan terms the " theorem
of divine transcendence." 4
Although Aquinas' solution finds its fullest expression in the
Commentarium in Perihermeneias, lect. 14, it is a tribute to his
speculative genius that the basic position is already clear as
early as his Commentarium in Sententias Petri Lombardi (c.
1252-1256) . The task of this study is to examine the nature
of the theorem of divine transcendence as expressed in four key
texts, attempting to explain its significance and to show the advances made in its expression and comprehension.
• Grace and Freedom. Operative Grace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas
(London-New York: 1971). Based on the author's dissertation, this study first
appeared as a series of articles, "Thomas' Thought on Gratia Operans," Theological Studies
(1941),
3
69-88, 375-402. Any reader of this
seminal work will recognize the indebtedness of the present study to the main
lines of interpretation suggested there; indeed, it grows out of seminar work begun
under Fr. Lonergan's direction.
8 Grace and Freedom, "Concluding
Summary," 139-145. (References will be
to the book throughout.)
Op. cit., 79. " Theorem " here is used in the sense of " exact technical expressions of one's scientific understanding." Cf. D. Tracy, The Achievement of Bernard
Lonergan (New York: 1970), p. 43.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS

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I. Commentarium in Sententias Petri Lombardi.
Because the theorem of divine transcendence is basically a
solution that reconciles antitheses it is usually expressed in two
parallel contexts, the first concerned with the possibility of contingency or with the question of the divine knowledge and will
of the contingent reality, and the second concerned with the
certainty of divine providence. 5
In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5, is of the former variety, i.e., it is
the first in a long series of texts in which Thomas asks himself
the question, " Utrum scientia Dei sit contingentium? " The
response is immediate and unhesitating. Neither the fact that
God is the necessary cause of all things nor the fact that knowledge presupposes a determination in the thing known precludes
the existence of contingent things or God's knowledge of them.
The first does not because the necessity or contingency of the
effect follows the proximate cause and not the First Cause. This
might seem, however, to imply that the secondary cause can
impede the operation of the primary cause, an objection
Thomas answers on the basis of the certitude of the divine
knowledge. Such certitude demands a determination in the
object known, a determination that in the case of the known
First Series: the divine knowledge and will of contingent reality.
A) " Utrum scientia Dei sit contingentium " -In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5;
De Ver., q.
Contra Gentiles, I, c. 67; Summa Theol., I, q. 14, a. 13;
q. 86, a. 4; De Malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15; In I Periherm., lect. 14; Compend.
Theol., cc. 133-134.
B) "Utrum voluntas divina rebus volitis necessitatem imponat "-In I Sent.,
d. 47, q. 1, a. 1,
De Ver., q.
a. 5; Contra Gentiles, I, c. 85; II, cc.
Summa Theol. I, q. 19, a. 8; In I Periherm., lect. 14.
Second Series: the certitude of divine providence or predestination.
A) Positive expression: "Utrum providentia (vel praedestinatio) sit certa "In I Sent., d. 39, q.
d. 40, q. 3; De Ver., q. 6, a. 3; Contra Gentiles,
III, c. 94; Summa Theol., I, q.
a. 6; De Subst. Sep., cc. 13-15, esp. no.
137; Quodl.
q. 3.
B) Negative expression: "Praescientia, providentia, praedestinatio et huiusmodi
non imponunt necessitatem omnibus rebus "-In II Sent., d.
q. 1, a.
ad
De Ver., q.
a. 1, ad 13; Contra Gentiles, III, cc. 71-75; 163;
Quodl. 11, q. 3; Summa Theol., I, q.
a. 4; q.
a. 1, ad 1; a.3, ad 3;
a. 6; II-II, q. 171, a. 6, ad 1; In VI Meta., lect. 3; De Rationibus Fidei,
c. 10; Compend. Theol., cc. 139-140.
5

744

BERNARD MCGINN

contingent can only obtain when the thing really exists. This
is exactly the way in which the divine mind does know, though,
because " all knowledge is after the mode of the knower, as has
been said. Since therefore God is eternal, it is proper that his
knowledge have the mode of eternity ... and so in his knowledge he sees all temporal things, although successive in themselves, as present to him ... " (In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5) .
This presence at one and the same time to God of all the
existents that man apprehends as successive, in the responses
receives a name 6 and an axiomatic formulation. 7 It is nothing
other than hypothetical, or conditional necessity. Expressed
differently its meaning may be put as follows: because God
is completely outside the temporal order, He sees all existents as here and now existing, and not merely as existing in
their causes, although He sees the causes as well. He sees these
existents as necessary, but by a hypothetical necessity, i.e., because they here and now are, and not by an absolute necessity,
i.e., because they are the result of some necessary cause. If A,
then A-but the protasis does not posit an anterior necessary
cause, it merely affirms the reality of what appears in the
apodasis.
We find that the same solution holds for the divine will, for
when Thomas considers the question, " Utrum voluntas divina
semper efficaciter impleatur? " the objection that every effect
whose cause cannot be impeded is a necessary effect is answered
by the distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity. 8
The divine operation, since it is the manifestation of God's
knowledge and will, is subject to the same explanation. The
theorem is also found, as might be expected, in texts that fall
within our second series. 9
6 " ••• et quia
esse quod est, quando est, necesse est; quod tamen absolute
non est necessarium . . . uncle bona est distinctio, quod est necessarium necessitate
consequentiae, et non consequentis, vel necessitate corulitionata, nQn absoluta "
(ad 3).
7 " Ipsum enim necesse est esse, dum est ... necesse enim est Socratem currere,
dum currit" (ad 4).
8 In I Sent., d. 47, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2.
• E. g., d. 40, q. 3, a. 1 (Utrum praedestinatio sit certa).

DEVELOPMENT OF THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS

745

It is time to take note of several factors in the background
to this solution. First of all, the terminology is from Aristotle,
as is, of course, the basic problem. 10 Secondly, the solution appears in a negative form. We get no positive statement of the
transcendence of a God who is able to know and to will at the
same time and with equal certainty and efficacy the necessary
and the contingent; instead, we find a negative response to the
queries of objectors-" Contingent existents are not made
necessary by the fact that they are the objects of certain knowledge. Your mistake is in a false conception of the knowledge
of God." Thirdly, the key to the understanding of the solution
lies in clearly grasping the a temporal character of God's existence. We must realize that all events are present to God;
". . . otherwise error will inevitably r.esult," as Thomas himself
said. 11
This is the theorem of divine transcendence, Aquinas' solution to the problem of contingency in its negative expression:
the hypothetical necessity that routs objectors. But there is
an addendum to the general picture that must be considered
before we can pass on to the treatment of God's transcendence
in later works. One of the two larger contexts in which the
solution, by its very nature, always appears is that of the
certitude of divine providence. But here we find an anomaly,
because it would seem that in the Sentences Thomas holds a
certitudo scientiae with regard to providence but not a certitudo causalitatis. 12 This weakness is seen in the article we
10 The key text for the Aristotelian
background of Thomas's use of the term
"necessarium" is In VI Meta., lect. 3. The importance of the term and the width
of its application in Thomas can be seen from even a cursory glance at the number
of citations it receives in the Tabula Aurea, the index to Thomas compiled by
Peter of Bergamo. For our purpose it is sufficient to note the equivalent expressions for necessitas conditionalis, viz., necessarium ex suppositione, necessitas consequentiae, and perhaps necessarium secundum quid.
11 In I Sent., d. 40, q. 3, a. 1, ad 5.
12 Lonergan, op. cit., 76-80, where three theoretical shortcomings
in the Sentences
are educed. The weakness is seen most clearly in In I Sent., d. 47, q. 1, a.
where it is even said that some things take place " praeter operationem divinam,"
and " ... multa fiunt quae Deus non operatur! "

746

BERNARD MCGINN

have been examining, because whereas later, in similar contexts/3 Aquinas will be forthright in his affirmation that God
is the transcendent cause of the whole of being and all its differentiations (in other words, he will place the solution to the
problem from causality on an equal footing with the solution
to the problem from knowledge), here he must buttress his
solution to the difficulty from necessary causality with his solution to the difficulty from certain knowledge, lest the former
collapse and we are left with a God whose will can be thwarted
by secondary causes. 14 The very order in which the two objections are treated in In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5 and in In I
Periherm., lect 14, hints at this. In the Sentences the objection
from causality must he handled first because its answer will be
insufficient unless it dovetails into the answer to the objection
from knowledge. In the In Perihermeneias, on the other hand,
the objection ex parte voluntatis divinae is handled after the
objection ex parte scientiae as merely another aspect of the
theorem of divine transcendence.
The explanation for the weakness of Thomas's position in
this article sems to lie in the fact that contingency is ascribed
to the proximate cause alone.15 In the later works more emphasis will be placed on the fact that God causes all things and
their modes of existence (contingency and necessity) as well.
Such affirmations, for instance, are found in the De Ver., q. 2,
a. 12, ad 7; In I Periherm., lect. 14, no. 22, and most clearly
of all in Summa Theol., I, q. 19, a. 8. It must be noted, howE. g., In I Periherm., lect. 14, no.
Sed adhuc manet dubitatio maior de secunda: quia causa prima necessaria
potest simul esse cum defectu causae secundae, sicut motus solis cum sterilitate
arboris; sed scientia Dei non potest simul stare cum _defectus causae secundae. Non
enim potest esse quod Deus sciat simul hunc cursurum, et iste deficiat a cursu:
et hoc est propter certitudinem scientiae et non propter causalitatem eius. Oportet
enim invenire ad hoc quod sit certa scientia aliquam certitudinem in scito." (d.
38, q. 1, a. 5-italics added). In other words, Thomas seems to be saying that
the causality of God's knowledge does not extend as far as its certitude.
15 Cf. Lonergan, op. cit., pp. 108-109, footnote 79, where references are given to other
texts in the Sentences that express the same view, e. g., In I Sent, d. 39, q.
a.
ad
d. 40, q. 3, a. 1; and d. 47, q. 1, a. 1, ad
18

14 "

DEVELOPMENT OF THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS

747

ever, that this ascription of contingency to the proximate cause
alone-without the tempering addition that it is God who
causes all things, including the orders of contingency and necessity as a transcendent cause-is a recurrent feature in Thomas's
treatment of the question, e. g., Contra Gentiles, I, c. 67; De
J.I!Ialo, q. 16, a.7, ad 15; and Summa Theol., I, q. 14, a. 13. How
can one account for this recurrence? It would seem from the
context that Thomas is merely repeating a stock response to
a standard objection, because we are usually dealing with the
same example of the defect in the tree that impedes the necessary causality of the sun that should result in the appearance
of buds. Aquinas seems to have proceeded with magisterial
ease, confident that the close student would make the necessary
connections (e. g., comparing I, q. 14, a. 13 with q. 19, a. 8)
and get the full picture. It must also be remembered, of course,
that from man's point of view contingency or necessity in an
effect comes from the proximate rather than the remote cause.
The only problem is that if one insists on looking at things strictly from man's point of view one will never attain an understanding of the divine knowledge and causality.

II. De Veritate.
The problem of contingency vs. providence reoccurs in the
De Veritate (written
during the first Paris period),
as might be expected, and here two parallel formulations must
be examined in order to follow the train of Thomas's thought. 16
In q. 6, a. 3, St. Thomas responds to the question of the certitude of predestination by a distinction between certitudo cognitionis and oertitudo ordinis. The order of providence is certain in two ways: first, in particular cases in those things that
come from necessary causes; and second, universally but not
in particular cases for those things that proceed from contingent causes-" ... and so nothing can deviate from the general goal of providence, although sometimes there is deviation
16 There is a third treatment
of some importance also, q. 2, a. 12, "Utrum
Deus sciat singularia futura contingentia." Cf. especially the response ad 7.

748

BERNARD MCGINN

from some particular goal." 17 Thomas then attempts to save
the day by positing a certitude for predestination that extends
beyond that of providence, in other words, to the particular
as well. This new certitude springs not from the mere addition
of a certitudo praescientiae (thus going beyond the position
of In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5), but from the statistical law that
God will grant so many graces that the end is always sure,
even though no single grace is sure. Thus Thomas has admitted
a merely statistical certitude for divine providence, a position
he will contradict in his later treatments of this question. 18 He
is still on the level where the first factor in the theorem of divine
transcendence, that of divine knowledge, has been clearly
worked out/ 9 but where the corresponding factor of the divine
will, as expressed through the question of the causal certitude
of providence, remains confused.
One does not have to look far for the clarification, for it occurs within the very same work, viz., in q. 23, a. 5, "Utrum
divina voluntas rebus volitis necessitatem imponant?" Thomas
rejects the idea that we can fully explain the contingency of
effects by the mere fact that they follow contingent mediate
causes and not the necessary First Cause in their mode of esse.20
This opinion is seen to support a Platonic emanationism in
which God could not directly create a multitude or a contingent
being. Ther.efore another reason must be given for the
contingency of things, this reason being the fact that every
effect is assimilated to its cause in proportion to the strength
of that cause. Since the divine will is the agen.s fortissimum,
it will necessarily give not only the being of its effect, but the
mode of that being too, i.e., either contingency or necessity.
Cf. q. 5, a. 8.
E. g., Contra Gentiles, III, c. 94; Quodl. 12, q. 3.
19 Cf. responses ad 6 and ad 10. We should, however, note that in the response
ad 3, Thomas comes very close to making a breakthrough when he says, " ... quia
et ipsum modum divina voluntas rebus dedit, ut sic eius voluntas impleretur; et
ideo quaedam explent divinam voluntatem necessario, quaedam contingenter,
quamvis illud quod Deus vult, semper fiat."
20 As he does in' the other late texts cited above:'
De Ver., q. 2, a. 12, ad 7;
In I Periherm., lect. 14, no. 22; Summa Theol., I, q. 19, a. 8.
17

DEVELOPMENT

OF THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS

749

God therefore adapts the order of causes to produce effects in
the manner in which He wills them to be, i.e., as either contingent or necessary. Howev.er, and this is the main point, contingency or necessity must not be thought of as resulting mainly
from the order of secondary causes: no, God as transcendent
First Cause always bears the prime responsibility. 21
The advance has been made; the divine will is now as' fully
transcendent as the divine mind. No longer is it conceived to
be that which initiates a line of causality that extends from
absolute necessity through mediate causes to contingent effects
and thus is only statistically certain; rather now it is seen as
standing outside any such line in its unique transcendency.
God's attention falls first and foremost on the individual thing
because all things are equally present to him. He wills the
thing to be either contingent or necessary and then disposes the
order of causes (which are also equi-present to him) to produce
the thing in its proper mode. The possibility of the contingency
of individual things (despite objections from the divine will)
has thus been affirmed, just as Aquinas and previous authors
such as Boethius had been able to affirm the existence of real
contingency despite the obj.ections from divine knowledge.

III. Summa Con,tm Gentiles.
It remains for us to consider the specific application of the
advance made in the De Veritate, q. 23, a. 5, to the problem of
the certitude of divine providence in the Summa Contra Gentiles and the attendent full and positive affirmation of what we
have called, following Lonergan, the theorem of divine transcendence. Indeed, the very concentration on the idea of providence
that is found in the third book of the Contra Gentiles (thirteen
chapters mention providence explicitly in their titles) against
21 " Et sic non
dicimus quod aliqui divinorum effectuum sint contingentes
solummodo propter contingentium causarum secundarum, sed magis propter dispositionem divinae voluntatis, quae talem ordinem rebus providet" (De Ver., q.
23, a. 5). The radical reason for this is given in the ad 1: the difference between
natural and voluntary causes. Natural causes can give only the esse they have;
voluntary causes give the esse they decide to give.

750

BERNARD MCGINN

its comparative paucity in In I Sent. (only two articles) is an
indication that the divine will is now coming in for an extended
consideration in which its transcendent character will appear
more evidently.
In C011,tra Gentiles, III, c. 94, Thomas once again turns to
the question " De certitudine divinae providentiae," and opens
the stage with the basic Aristotelian objection that a divine
providence that is certain is impossible if we admit the contingency of human acts. The solution to this problem draws
on much of the material worked out previously in the course
of the opus, a massive re-thinking of the Christian position in
the light of the Arabic philosophical challenge. 22 Since God
is the author of all things, his providence must embrace all (c.
64). In any provider two things must always be considered,
the praemeditatio ordinis and the institutio ordinis praemeditati.
The divine provider is perfect in both these orders, because in
the praemeditatio his gaze penetrates to the least particulars
(c. 28) and in the institutio he operates instrumentally in all
things (c. 67) . Ther.efore, divine providence can never be prevented in any way and we can explain the seeming anomaly
that some of its effects are contingent (and therefore of lower
dignity than necessary effects) on the basis of the distinction
between the intention of a particular agent, who looks only to
the good of the individual, and the intention of a universal
agent, who looks to the integrity of the whole. Thus we are
given what is almost a paraphrase of the position worked out
in the De Ver., q. 23, a. 5: "But God, who is the governor of
the universe, intends that some of his effects be produced here
with the modality of necessity, there with that of contingency.
And to do this he adapts causes differently, for some effects
using necessary causes, for others contingent causes" (Contra
Gentiles, III, c. 94). This leads Aquinas to clinch his argument
against Aristotle's denial of providence and provide us with the
full positive statement of the theorem of the divine transcen22 On the character of the Contra Gentiles, see M.-D. Chenu, Toward Underan& the literature noted there.
standing Thomas (Chicago: 1964), pp.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS

751

dence of the will: " ... for divine providence is the per se cause
that this effect come about contingently. And this cannot be
impeded."
Note the clear advance of this position over that of In I
Sent. d. 38, q. 1, a. 5, where the contingent effect was related
back to the proximate contingent cause alone, and no mention
was made of God as the per se cause of the whole order of contingency. Thomas has finally affirmed a divine providence that
in its causal action rules each and every act of man, but he
has achieved this by a remarkable inv.ersion of the Aristotelian
position-he rejects Aristotle's position on per se causes, because God through his providence is the per se cause of all
things, even contingents; but he retains the Aristotelian contingent effect, because God is also a transcendent cause who
produces effects as necessary or contingent according to his
pleasure.
The theorem was complete; the contingency of creatures had
been affirmed. Divine transcendence was not to find its fullest
expression until In Perihermeneias, lect. 14, which belongs to
the second Paris period (written c. 1270), but all the advances
had been made, since the divine operation ad extra, as an expression of God's intellect and will, fell into line with the positions already worked out. 28 The negative .enunciation of the
theorem, i. e., hypothetical necessity, was designed to answer
objections; the positive .enunciation, viz.," ... that God knows
with equal infallibility, he wills with equal irresistibility, he
effects with equal efficacy, both the necessary and the contingent," 24
a profound insight into the divine nature, the
Ipsum Esse Subsistens. The theorem was to prove useful in the
23 A full tr.eatment of the parallel advance made in the conception of the divine
operation ad extm would involve an extended consideration of the idea of application and the analogy of operation which would be out of place here. It was only
after Thomas had seen that the causal certitude of divine providence must reach
each particular that he could affirm that God operates in every agent. Cf. Lonergan,
op. cit., 76-80. Quodl. 11, q. 3, is interesting in this connection, because in it
praedestinatio seems equivalent to operatio and is placed as the third member
after praescientia and voluntas as examples of divine transcendence.
"'Lonergan, op. cit., p. 107.

BERNARD MCGINN

Summa when applied to particular theological questions/ 5 and
it is frequently found in later works in the general framework
we have already examined, although, as has been seen, there
are occasional reversions to modes of expression that marked
the earlier stages.
The development may be summarized thus: Aristotle had
denied divine providence because of his position on the contingency of human actions. Thomas, as a Christian theologian,
not only had to account for the contingency of man's acts but
also to square this with certitude of God's providence. His solution was to conceive God as a transcendent inteUect, will, and
source of operation. The transcendent knowledge is clear right
from the earliest works, because God is always conceived as
present to all events and thus seeing them as hypothetically
necessary; the transcendent will is obscur.e in the Sentences and
in the earlier part of De V erita.te, but it comes to the fore by
De Veritate, q.
a. 5, and especially in the Contra Gentiles,
III, c. 94, where God is shown as a universal transcendent cause,
completely outside the terrestrial orders of contingency and
necessity; the transcendent operation follows as a corollary
from the divine knowledge and will.
BERNARD McGINN

University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

•• Cf. Summa Theol., III, q. 46, a. !'l, and also q. 1, a. !'l; q. 14, a. !'l; q. 65, a. 4;
q. 84, a. 5.

HANS KUNG ON PROPOSITIONS
AND THEIR PROBLEMATIC: A CRITIQUE

I

N HIS BOOK on infallibility 1 Hans Kung has made of
use an " auxiliary " philosophical argument to support his
general conclusion that no set of propositions can a priori
be said to be infallible. His argument takes the following form.
Articles of faith are propositions. Formulas of faith, professions of
faith, and definitions of faith, are propositions-simple or complex
-and are not a priori free from the laws that govern propositions.
Nor are propositions of faith ever directly God's word, but at
best God's word attested and mediated by man's word: perceptible
and transmissible by human propositions. But, as such, propositions of faith participate in the problematic of human propositions
in general. 2

Kung claims that his aim is " a very modest one." He will make
use of certain "basic and scarcely disputable observations"
about propositions in order to make clear "that propositions
-of which the Church's faith has to make use-are a problematic affair. The obvious conclusion will be that a Church
which summarizes or defines its faith in propositions and perhaps has to do this, cannot get away from the problematic inherent in propositions as such." 3 Kung's point seems to be that
'
"general laws" about propositions
a consideration of certain
will substantiate the conclusion that all propositions have what
he terms an inherent "capacity for error," and that therefore
dogmatic propositions must also share inherent " capacity for
error" which capacity, according to Kung, is incompatible with
the claim that they are infallible.
Hans Kiing, Infallible? An Inquiry, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, 1971).
Ibid., p. 157.
• Ibid., p. 158.

1

2

758

HANS KUNG ON PROPOSITIONS

& THEIR PROBLEMATIC

755

exactly what I want to say, i.e., that the snow is white. "But
didn't your intention go beyond that?" No, I did not have an
intention at all.
Kling gives an example: " What would be conveyed if the
Church were to define the proposition (which is certainly
fundamental),' God exists'? Everything-and yet so infinitely
little and
nothing at all by comparison to what might
be said on this proposition." 5 One is tempted to ask: Do
propositions convey things the way trucks
propositions for small loads, big propositions for big loads? Are some
loads not conveyed by propositions (trucks) at all? The
correct answer to the question "What is conveyed by the
proposition 'God exists'?" is that God exists. ("Aren't you
taking all the sublimity out of theology?" "What we are
destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing
up the ground of language on which they stand." 6 ) The first
law of propositions really seems to be a case of Unsinn.
Kling's second law about propositions is: "Propositions are
open to misunderstanding. Whatever I say can be misunderstood, and not only as a result of lack of good will." 7 To this
one wants to say, just try to misunderstand the proposition
"The snow is white." What is the criterion for misunderstanding it? Are you sure that you have misunderstood it, or do you
merely think that you have misunderstood it? Kling writes:
" Words have different, often ambiguous and fluid meanings.
And if I qualify their meaning, these qualifications too have
again various meanings and often the variable factor itself in
these meanings cannot be precisely grasped." 8 But it also
seems to be the case that some words have quite definite
meanings, and there is no reason to suppose that we cannot
clear up ambiguities by plain talk. We do it every day. The
observation that the use of some words can be ambiguous does
not justify the conclusion that propositions as such are am• Ibid., p. 158.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Inve8tigations
7 Kling, InfaUible? p. 158.
8 Ibid., p. 158.

(New York, 1958) I, 118.

756

VINCENT M. COOKE

biguous. If this were so, we would never succeed in communicating. The second law of propositions seems to involve a hasty
generalization from a few limited examples.
The third law about propositions is that " Propositions can
be translated only up to a point. Every instrument plays the
high C in its own way, but it sounds different on the violin from
what it does on the cello; the sounding board is different." 9
"The snow is white" can be translated into the German" Der
Schnee ist weiss." Now what is the" point" up to which propositions can be translated? Has something been missed in the
translation? What has been left out? If something has been left
out, well then pu't it in. The problem about translation is
knowing two languages well enough to be able to. say in one of
them precisely what is said in the other. This takes skill, but
the limitations involved are the limitations of human capacities
and the resources of particular languages. Not everything can
be said in every language. It is not at all clear what conclusion Kling wants to draw from this fact. If one wants to
say that God exists, one must say it in a language in which it
can be said. There are numerous (mostly artificial) languages
in which " God exists " cannot be
This is not a limitation
of propositions but of particular languages. Insofar as the
third law is true, it is not at all clear what relevance it has to the
question of the a priori possibility of the infallibility of
propositions.
Kling's fourth law of propositions is "Propositions are in
motion .... Words and sentences can completely change their
meaning in a new situation." 10 He gives an example:
The proposition " God exists " is also a historical proposition:
understood differently by a Greek of the time of Pericles and a
Jew of the time of the Maccabees, differently by an early hellenistic
Christian and by a Christian Frank; differently too by a medieval
scholastic and a neoscholastic of the nineteenth century, differently
by Luther, by a representative of Lutheran orthodoxy and by
a Lutheran of the twentieth century ... L1
• Ibid., p. 159.

10

Ibid., p. 160.

11

Ibid., p. 160.

HANS KUNG ON PROPOSITIONS

& THEIR PROBLEMATIC

757

There are several points to be made here. First, what reason is
there to think that all the above people understood something
different when they said "God exists"? They may well have
understood exactly the same thing, i.e., that God exists, but
simply have taken it to have different implications. Kling may
here be misled by surface grammar into thinking of what is
understood as a kind of " thing " which " stands behind " particular words.
Further, even if it is true that different people did differ in
what they understood when they
" God exists," this merely
points out that people can use the same sentence to say different things-just as people can use different sentences to
say the same thing (or so it seems).
Part of the difficulty here is that Kling has not told us exactly
what he means by " proposition." It is, of course, a philosopher's word, and there is nothing like universal agreement
on how it should be used. I take " proposition " as the equivalent of " what we say " in a context in which it is appropriate
to ask about the truth value of what we say. As far as I can
see, this seems to be the usage most consistent with Kling's
general purposesY However, in this fourth law Kling seems
to have slipped into identifying propositions with " words and
sentences." It may well be true, as Kling maintains, that
" words and sentences can completely change their meaning "
in new situations. But we are not concerned with words and
sentences when we inquire into truth or falsity (or infallibility) ,
but rather we are concerned with what is said (i.e., the proposition) when we use the words or utter the sentence. "The
snow is white " and " Der Schnee ist weiss " are different sentences made up of different words, but they both state the same
proposition, i.e., they both say the same thing. Words and
sentences can change their meanings as much as you please.
This does not argue to the conclusion that " propositions are
in motion "-unless this picturesque conclusion simply means
19 Thus Kung's second law reads: "Propositions
are open to misunderstanding.
Whatever I say can be misunderstood .... " Ibid., p. 158.

758

VINCENT M. COOKE

that we can say different things at different times, which
is true but trivial. The fourth law is based on a confusion between propositions and sentences.
The fifth law does not really say much more than the fourth
law. "Propositions are ideology-prone: words and sentences
are at our service. They can be used, abused, and expioited.
• • ." 13
Once again Kung assimilates propositions to words
and sentences. What he says seems to me to be true indeed
about words and sentences. But once again the point must be
made that propositions should not be simply identified with
words and sentences. The question of truth or falsity pertains
to what we say and not to the particular words, sentences, or
language that we use to say it.
After elaborating his five laws Kung considers the objection
of an imaginary scholastic theologian who suggests that " in
spite of all this, there are propositions-even propositions of
faith-clear enough in themselves to exclude all misunderstandings, almost as clear in fact as 2X2=4." 14 Kung replies that
mathematical propositions are clear " only as long as no questions are raised about the foundations of mathematics .... " 15
Now here surely is one case where the scholastic theologian is
right. 2X2=4 is a paradigm of clarity. Kung's appeal to the
"foundations of mathematics" is gratuitous. There is nothing
in the philosophy dealing with the foundations of mathematics
which would in the least expose mathematics to the difficulties
which Kung has suggested. The further issue as to whether
at least some religious propositions are as clear as mathematical
propositions is probably a bogus one, unless some definite criterion of clarity is agreed upon. We have a criterion for saying
whether the sky is clear or not, i.e., the presence or absence of
clouds, etc. This may lead us into thinking that we have a
similar criterion for the " clarity " of propositions---which I
want to say we do not. In at least one of its uses, saying that
a proposition is clear is just another way of saying we understand it.
13

Ibid., p. 160.

"Ibid., pp. 161-2.

15

Ibid., p. 162.

HANS KUNG ON PROPOSITIONS

& THEIR PROBLEMATIC

759

The initial conclusion which Kiing draws from his analysis of
the problematic of propositions is as follows:
These five observations should be sufficient for our purpose,
to bring out in the concrete the problematic of propositions. Butin order to ·exclude misunderstandings as far as possible-we do
not mean that propositions are incapable of stating the truth, that
all propositions are equally true and false, that they cannot correspond to the reality which they claim to express, that understanding is impossible. We mean simply that propositions are by no
means as clear as they seem to be, that they are rather fundamentally ambiguous and consequently can be understood differently by different people, that with the best intentions not all
misunderstanding and misuse can be a priori excluded.16
I have argued that Kiing has confused propositions with sentences. Consequently he is not entitled to the conclusion that
" propositions are by no means as clear as they seem to be,"
but rather his arguments seem to support the view that at
least some sentences are not as clear as they seem to be. It
does not seem that he has shown that this is true of all sentences, nor that sentences (much less propositions) are "rather
fundamentally ambiguous." Some sentences seem to be quite
unambiguous, or at least are not ambiguous in any " fundamental" way. The obvious counterexample is "The snow is
white." It seems to me that even with the worst intentions a
native speaker of the language will find it extremely difficult,
if not impossible, to misunderstand or misuse the utterance
" The snow is white."
After his section dealing with the problematic of propositions in general Kiing adds a section on what he calls the
problematic of so-called clear propositions. He here engages
in a brief excursus into the history of philosophy at the conclusion of which he asserts his allegiance to a Hegelian view
of the truth and falsity of propositions. As Kiing expounds
Hegel this seems to mean that propositions are not simply
true or false but rather express both truth and falsity in varying degrees.
16

Ibid., p. 161.

760

VINCENT M. COOKE

Underlying it [Hegel's thought] was the basic insight never forgotten since his day, that I cannot really tell the truth by means
of a single sentence in isolation. I need basically three sentences,
to give definiteness and precision to what I have said, to deny it and
to integrate it into a further assertion. Our train of thought could
be: "That's what it's like"; "No, it's not just like that"; "Ah,
but this is what it's like." And so the process can go on. Truth
then lies in the totality, not in the particular steps, propositions,
or elements of which it is made up.U
Kung does not argue for this Hegelian position, nor would
it be fair to expect him to in a work of the present scope. We
must note, however, that insofar as a version of Hegelian logic
is integral to Kung's larger argument, it is less likely that his
argument will be acceptable to those of us, especially in the
Anglo-American philosophical world, who think there is nothing
more obvious than that propositions are simply either true or
false. I will argue below that a position similar to Kung's can
much more plausibly be argued without the Hegelian logicand that Kung himself is not really quite as committed to
Hegel as he seems to think he is.
Kung finally comes to the main point of his philosophical
analysis concerning propositions by drawing conclusions concerning what he calls the problematic of ecclesiastical definitions. Kung writes:
Error really seems to become a special problem only with regard
to those propositions from which it is sought to exclude error a
priori and in principle. . .. Doesn't such a claim call for the most
profound skepticism? All that has been said in the two previous
sections makes it seem scarcely probable that even the Church's
propositions of faith-which are admittedly human propositions-could be freed a priori from the human weakness, inadequacy,
dubiousness, and therefore also the capacity for error, which are
inherent in propositions. 18
Is Kung really entitled to this conclusion? Has his previous
analysis really given a reason for us to be skeptical about a
17
18

Ibid., p. 166.
Ibid., pp. 169-170.

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& THEIR PROBLEMATIC

761

claim to exclude a priori and in principle error from a particular
set of propositions? His argument would indeed have some plausibility if we could simply identify propositions with sentences.
Kung has successfully argued that at least some words and
sentences change their meaning, and we perhaps are willing to
grant the inference that all words and sentences can change their
meaning. He is then entitled to conclude that we should be
skeptical about a claim to exclude a priori and in principle error
from a particular set of words or sentences (provided one were
willing to grant that it is appropriate to predicate error of words
and sentences). But propositions are what we use multifarious
words and sentences to express, i.e., we can say the same thing
in different words, and Kung by his philosophical analysis has
not given any satisfactory reason to suppose that we should
be skeptical about a claim to exclude error a priori and in
principle from a particular set of things which are said. Indeed,
the only way in which I can conceive that one could argue this
position is by giving a good reason to think that at least one
member of that set is false. But that kind of argument, which
is indeed the essence of Kung's theological (not philosophical)
argument, has nothing to do with an alleged problematic of
propositions.
In order to substantiate his contention that ecclesiastical
definitions have to "allow for the fact that every proposition
can be true and false," Kung analyzes a concrete example
drawn from Catholic-Evangelical controversy. It will be instructive to observe exactly what Kung does with this example,
since it is here that the untidiness of his analysis can be made
graphically clear. I will show that Kung's example is not at
all an instance of a proposition which is both true and false.
Kung writes:
But since there is no error without any co:re of truth, there is an inherent danger that a polemically oriented proposition may strike
not only the error, but also the core of truth in the error: that is,
the true ·concern behind the error, the truth within the error. For
instance, as long as an Evangelical Christian unpolemically observes that " the just man lives by faith," the shadow of error,

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VINCENT M. COOKE

which accompanies the proposition, does not come to the fore. But
if he asserts polemically that " the just man lives by faith," against
a legalistic Catholic who is exaggerating the importance of good
works, then there is a danger that the shadow of error may obscure the truth of his statement with the unexpressed secondary
meaning: "The just man lives by faith (and does no good works)."
Conversely the same holds. As long as a Catholic unpolemically
observes that " the just man does works of charity," the shadow of
error accompanying the proposition does not come to the fore.
But if he asserts polemically, against the error of a quietist Protestant attaching too much importance to faith, that " the just man
does works of charity," then there is a danger that the shadow of
error may obscure the truth of his statement with the unexpressed
secondary meaning: "The just man does works of charity (and
does not live by faith." 19

Kling's analysis rests on the assumption that the utterance
" The just man lives by faith," made in a specified polemical
context, acquires an " unexpressed secondary meaning," i. e.,
" and does no good works." But this analysis seems to me
to be clearly false. What Kling calls the secondary meaning
is really not a meaning of the original utterance at all.
It is simply an additional proposition which in a particular
context can perhaps be taken as an implication of the speaker
saying what he did, but not (and this is the crucial point)
as an implication of what the speaker says (i. e., the original
proposition) . If Kiing wants to establish that " the just man
lives by faith '' has as part of its meaning " and does no works,"
he must at the very least show that " and does no good works "
is an implication of what is said. But he has not done this.
His example is a clear case of the speaker saying what he does,
rather than what is said, being the vehicle of implication. 20
19

Ibid., pp. 170-1.

The distinction between what is said and the speaker saying what he does
is elaborated by H. P. Grice, "The Causal Theory of Perception," Perceiving,
Sensing, and Knowing, ed. R. Swartz (New York, 1965) pp. 444 ff. Keith Lehrer explains a similar distinction as follows: " The distinction between what a
speaker implies when he utters certain words, and what is implied by what the
speaker said, is in need of some elucidation. Sometimes a person implies something
because what he said implies it, and such cases present no difficulty. Confusion is
apt to arise when a person implies something not implied by what he said, be20

HANS KUNG ON PROPOSITIONS

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763

But if what is said (i.e., the proposition" The just man lives
by faith ") does not imply " and does no good works," then the
truth or falsity of the original proposition is independent of the
truth or falsity of the alleged implication. Conversely, in a context in which the speaker saying " the just man lives by faith "
can correctly be taken to imply " and does no good works,"
the addition of the implication now gives us two propositions,
each of which can be true or false independently of the other
(precisely because the implication is due to the speaker and
and not to what is said) . The conclusion which I draw is
that there is nothing in Kling's example to force upon us the
highly paradoxical thesis that propositions can be both true
and false.
There may indeed be other considerations in Idealist philosophy which lead Kling to defend the Hegelian logic, but if
the only reasons he has are of a kind with the analysis he has
given above, one might suggest that he consider not only
whether a much more plausible alternative is available but
also whether the reasons he has proposed are really Hegelian.
As far as I can see there is nothing in Kling's examples, here
or elsewhere, which implies the Hegelian conclusions which he
feels compelled to draw out of them.
Up to this point my consideration of Kling has been mainly
cause in such cases one may mistake the activity of the speaker for the logic
of what he says. In order not to confuse what a speaker implies with the implications of what he says, we may employ a simple test for determining whether
an implication is an implication of what is said or merely of the man speaking.
Suppose that certain words ar,e uttered and there is the implication that P. To
decide whether the implication that P is an implication of what is said when those
words are uttered, ask whether it is logically consistent to say, 'I am not saying
whether P, but ... ,' where the words originally uttered by the speaker are added
at the end of this locution. If it is consistent to say this, then what is said when
the words in question were first uttered does not imply that P. For if what is
said when those words are uttered implied that P, then it would be inconsistent
to utter those words and at the same time to say that one is not saying that P.
For example, what is said when one utters the words ' That is a triangle ' implies
' That has three sides,' and thus it would be inconsistent to say, ' I am not
saying whether that has three sides, but that is a triangle.' " Keith Lehrer, " Belief
and Knowledge,'' Philosophical Review, LXXVII (196S), 498-4.

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VINCENT M. COOKE

negative. I have tried to show that there are sound philosophical reasons for thinking that his alleged problematic of
propositions is simply a red herring, and that the appeal to
Hegel is at best unnecessary. It would not be fair, however,
to conclude on a negative note. Kling, I suspect, has felt impelled to adopt what seem to be highly questionable philosophical theses in order to give some kind of philosophical underpinning to his much more important theological thesis that
the Church can remain " in the truth " while erring on particular issues. I have neither the intention nor the capacity to
evaluate the truth or falsity of this contention here. Kling is
right, I think, in seeing this as mainly an issue for historical
theology. I would like to show, however, that what Kling
proposes can be elucidated quite satisfactorily without the
unnecessary metaphysical baggage which Kiing employs.
In the first place, I propose that, when speaking philosophically, we limit truth and falsity to talk about propositions
being true or false. At least this is a use of" true" and" false"
which most of us seem to most readily understand. Kiing, and
the rest of us, are legitimately concerned with whether things
said by Vatican I or Humanae Vitae are true or false. We all
understand this and have no need of a philosophical theory of
truth to set us straight on it.
It is also true that there is a certain religious use of " truth "
(or perhaps a use of "truth" in religious circles) in which we
speak of " abiding in the truth " or " being led into the complete
truth," etc. It is this latter use which I want now to elucidate
briefly.
Whether we are religious believers or not, we all have numerous things which we hold as true. A lot of these are everyday
things about sticks and stones, people and their shadows. We
have numerous beliefs about history, politics, finance, love, and
war. Now the thing about beliefs which we hold is that some
of them are true and some of them are false. Anyone who
possesses the least bit of self-knowledge knows that at least
some of the things which he believes are as a matter of fact
false. As we go through life we correct our beliefs, abandon

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& THEIR PROBLEMATIC

765

some and acquire others. The only trouble is that right now
we do not know which of our false beliefs are false. If we did,
we would stop believing them to be true. Still, by and large,
we do not let this fact disturb us. We feel confident that our
true beliefs far outnumber the false ones, or at least that over
a period of time the true beliefs we have will help us to overcome the false ones. We feel that, as far as natural knowledge is
concerned, we are situated " in the truth." In this respect
we are much better off than madmen or orang-utans who, from
our point of view, are simply "in darkness."
Now, the above use of" in the truth" as applicable to human
knowledge, the knowledge which is more or less equally available to the race, may1 throw some light on the Christian use.
Christians look to the Holy Spirit to keep them " in the truth,"
i.e., the Christian truth, just as all men, whether they believe
it or not, depend on God to keep them " in the truth," i.e.,
the truth accessible to man whether he has Christian faith or
not. What I want to suggest is that, just as the human race
does not really feel that it has lost its grip on the " truth" when
it turns out that one of its generally or even universally held
beliefs was false, so too if it turns out that Christians have had
a false belief this need not imply that the Holy Spirit has
failed to preserve them " in the truth." The thing about " being
in the truth" is that it helps you to distinguish what is true
from what is false and keeps you on the right track. Does it
mean that every one of your beliefs has to be true and not one
of them can be false? This is the question which Hans Kiing
has addressed to the Church for an answer. Anything like
an adequate response to this question will require careful evaluation of the many issues of historical theology raised by Kiing.
I suggest, however, that the answer has absolutely nothing to
do with a " problematic of propositions."
VINCENT

Fordham University
Bronx, New York

M. CooKE, S.J.

BOOK REVIEWS
Beyond The New Theism: A Philosophy of Religion. By GERMAIN GRISEZ.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975. Pp. 385.
This book is a most comprehensive treatment of questions and problems
in the area of philosophy of religion. Taking philosophical theology as falling
under the broader category of philosophy of religion, the author discusses
issues which are proper to philosophical theology as well as issues belonging
to other parts of philosophy or religion. In the former category Grisez
puts questions like the existence of God and the meaningfulness of God-talk.
In the latter, broader category he puts issues like the compatibility of free
will and foreknowledge, the compatibility of evil and God's existence, the
possibility of miracles, the logical coherence of Christian teachings and the
reasonableness of believing in doctrines such as the Incarnation and the
Eucharist. To all these as well as to a number of other questions Grisez
addresses himself in some detail. Included also in this all-comprehensive
text is a lengthy section in which the author carefully presents a:hd answers
criticisms of the cosmological argument from almost every quarter-from
the empiricists, the Kantians, the absolute idealists and the metaphysical
relativists.
But by far the most important part of the book by Grisez's own admission is the section in which the author painstakingly presents his own version of the cosmological proof of God's existence. One reason for the special
importance which Grisez attaches to this section is his own belief, which
I find questionable, that all God-talk other than that concerned with the
question of God's existence makes sense only if a reasonable argument has
been given showing the existence of God. As against the author, it seems
to me quite sensible to discuss questions like the compatibility of divine
foreknowledge and free will, the compatibility of God's existence and the
existence of evil, and other such questions in the philosophy of religion
without first presenting an argument for God's existence. Be that as it
may, however, I now turn to Grisez's version of the cosmological proof
which, by the way, is similar to, but not the same as, Aquinas' argument
in Chapter Four of On Being and Essence.
Succinctly, Grisez argues as follows: suppose we have the contingent
state of affairs that someone is reading a sentence in his book, a fact which
he labels SRS. Since SRS can either be or not be, the question arises as
to why SRS obtains, i.e ., why it is an existing state of affairs. There are
certain extra-propositional prerequisites which (1) must obtain for SRS to
obtain,
are contingent states of affairs, and (3) themselves obtain only

766

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767

if still further prerequisites are fulfilled. Let us call the set of these prerequisites C. C is itself a state of affairs, namely, the state of affairs that
conditions are so disposed as to provide what is necessary for SRS to obtain.
Now since C is a contingent state of affairs as is SRS, the question next
arises, " Why does C obtain? " That C must be a contingent state of affairs
is evident from the fact that C is the cause of a contingent state of affairs,
namely, SRS. If C were a necessary state of affairs then the proposition
which corresponds to it, say' P ',would be necessary. Further, if SRS were
a necessary consequence of C, then {letting 'Q' stand for the proposition
corresponding to the state of affairs SRS) ' Q ' would follow necessarily
from 'P '. But if a proposition 'P' is necessary and 'P' implies 'Q ',
then 'Q' is necessary. But 'Q' is not necessary since it expresses a contingent state of affairs, namely, SRS. Hence, to be the cause of the contingent state of affairs SRS, C must itself be contingent.
But if C is contingent then the question arises, " Why does C itself obtain?" C's existence, being contingent, can only be explained by another
contingent state of affairs, say, De. De stands for the state of affairs that an
uncaused entity causes C to obtain. And so, De causes C, which in tum
causes SRS. Through De is contingent, it needs nothing which is not included in itself to obtain. Otherwise, there would be an infinite regress of
contingent states of affairs, in which case the fact that SRS obtains could
never be explained. Still, De must be contingent since what it explains,
SRS, is contingent. (Also, if De were noncontingent it would follow that
God or the uncaused entity does not cause C freely, but of necessity). Thus,
while contingent, De includes a state of affairs, D, which is noncontingent.
D stands for the state of affairs that an uncaused entity exists. D obtains
not because of some further state of affairs nor does it obtain because it
obtains. Rather, D obtains simply because of what it is. Hence, in order
for SRS to obtain, an uncaused entity must exist.
This argument feeds on two ambiguities. First, during the course of developing the argument, the author uses C to stand for the following three
distinct things: (a) C stands for the class of those states of affairs which
are necessary conditions for SRS to obtain, (b) C stands for a complex
state of affairs which includes other states of affairs, and (c) C stands for
the kind of meta state of affairs that there are a certain number of states
of affairs which are prerequisite for SRS obtaining. But these three senses
are clearly neither equivalent nor even mutually compatible. For one
thing, a class or set is not a state of affairs, much less either a real state
of affairs or some meta state of affairs. Moreover, in case Grisez means (a)
by C, it is difficult to imagine how a class or set can be the cause of a
fact or state of affairs. Further , as regards (b) , it is not clear whether there
are such things as complex states of affairs, or, if there are, it is unclear
how or in what sense they can be said to " include " other states of affairs.

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BOOK REVIEWS

We speak of classes or sets "including" members, but clearly this is not,
and cannot be, the sense of " include " when we say that one state of
affairs includes others, even assuming that there are such things as complex
states of affairs. And on this latter point, Russell, for one, once argued
that, while there are complex atomic propositions, there are no complex
(or molecular) states of affairs. To say that there are complex states of
affairs which (somehow) include simple states of affairs is in any case a
debatable point. Yet Grisez simply and repeatedly assumes that there are
such entities, an assumption which is crucial to his argument.
But there is even a more serious ambiguity which mars Grisez's argument.
Grisez holds that De causes C which in turn causes SRS. But by ' cause '
he seems to mean two different things. C is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition for SRS, according to Grisez. Otherwise, one would not need to
have recourse to De to explain SRS. But for Grisez De and what it includes
is not only a necessary condition but also a sufficient condition for C; otherwise one would have to have recourse to something not included in De to
explain C. So it seems that in the expression, "De is the cause of C's
obtaining which is in turn the cause of SRS obtaining," the term ' cause '
is used in two distinct senses. But, even if Grisez were consistent in the
use of ' cause ' here, there would still be a problem which remains, a problem which takes the form of a dilemma. Either he means by cause ' necessary condition' (or a class of necessary conditions) or 'necessary and
sufficient condition ' in the phrase " De causes C to obtain, which in turn
causes SRS to obtain." If the former, then De and what it includes is not
sufficient to explain C. But Grisez wants to hold that De and what it includes is sufficient to explain C. But on the other hand if by 'cause ' Grisez
means the latter, i.e., 'necessary and sufficient condition,' then De would
be superfluous in explaining SRS, since C, being the cause of SRS, would
be both necessary and sufficient to explain SRS. But Grisez obviously holds
that C is not sufficient to explain SRS. Accordingly, depending on whether
he uses ' cause ' in the former or in the latter sense, it seems that the author
is forced to conclude either that De and what it includes is insufficient to
explain C or else that the same De is superfluous in any explanation of the
state of affairs that SRS obtains. But it is precisely and ironically the contradictories of these two statements that among other things Grisez is attempting to show.
JOHN PETERSON

University of Rhode Island

BOOK REVIEWS

769

Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning. Three Essays by PAUL OsKAR
KRISTELLER. Edited and translated by Edward P. Mahoney. Duke
Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies No. I. Durham:
Duke University Press, 1974. Pp. 187.
Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512) and His Doctrine of 'Universals' and
'Transcendentals.' A Study in Renaissance Ockhamism. By HERBERT
STANLEY MATSEN. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, and London: Associated University Presses. 1975. Pp. 332. 27.50.
The first title above inaugurates a new and welcome series of scholarly
publications, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and
this is indeed an auspicious volume to mark the series' beginning. Kristeller's three essays, each in its way a masterpiece, were first published between 1960 and 1970 and have as their common theme the continued
presence of medieval traits in the civilization of the Renaissance. Briefest
of the three (25 pp.) , the first essay is entitled " The Scholar and His Public in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance " ; it appeared originally
in German as a contribution to a Festschrift honoring Walther Buist,
Kristeller's friend and fellow student at Heidelberg in the 1920's. The
second essay (65 pp.), "Thomism and the Italian Thought of the Renaissance," was written in French for the annual (1965) Conference Albert-leGrand at the Institute of Medieval Studies of the University of Montreal.
The concluding essay (65 pp.), the only one of the three to be published
previously in English, was given at St. John's University, Collegeville, under
the auspices of its Monastic Manuscript Microfilm library; entitled " The
Contribution of Religious Orders to Renaissance Thought and Learning,"
it contains a valuable bibliography and two appendices, one listing selected
monastic and conventual libraries (many in Italy and Austria) from which
most of the source materials mentioned in the essay were obtained, the
other listing members of religious orders who achieved reputations as humanists or scholars between 1400 and 1530. The volume also contains two
prefaces: one by the editor, Edward P. Mahoney, who translated the first
two essays into English and obtained the author's collaboration in bringing
the footnotes up to date and expanding the appendices; the other by Kristeller himself, wherein he explains the provenance of the essays and some
of the points they were intended to make. Since much of the material
covered in all three essays, and particularly the second, pertains to Thomism
and its history, it was deemed appropriate to have the volume published
in 1974, the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Thomas.
As might be expected of this eminent expert on Renaissance thought,
Kristeller's essay on the scholar and his public is a masterful exposition
of the confusing variety of written and published works in the late Middle

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BOOK REVIEWS

Ages and the Renaissance-a multiplicity that becomes intelligible once
one understands not only the different types of literature (e. g., scholastic,
humanistic, vernacular) but also the different reading publics to which they
were addressed (e. g., students, colleagues, adversaries, sponsors, interested
laymen) . Previous students of this mass of literature have tended to impose arbitrary divisions on authors, to locate them in one school or another
on the basis of their being, say, either scholastics or humanists, and even
to disregard some of their writings when they do not conform to Procrustean categories. Galileo, although not discussed by Kristeller in this
context, is an excellent case in point: he used practically every form of
scholarly and literary communication discussed in this article, as dictated
by the varying audiences he had in mind, and yet his scholastic quaestiones
on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle have never once been edited, presumably because they did not conform to expectations of what Galileo,
the anti-Aristotelian scientist, ought to have thought and said. Those who
have to deal with Italian authors of the quattrocento and the cinquecento,
in particular, will find in this first essay a corrective to biases of very
long standing, and certainly it will become required reading for any student
beginning serious studies in this area.
The second essay was reviewed by the present writer in these pages when
it first appeared in French [see The Thomist, 31 (1967), pp. 367-369].
Nothing needs to be added to the observations then made, save to commend Professor Mahoney on his excellent translation and his up-dating
of this superb account of Thomism and its complex relationships with the
Italian Renaissance.
It is the third essay, however, that will especially commend this volume
to many readers of The Thomist, for in it Kristeller explodes yet another
persistent myth, namely, that the Renaissance was essentially a lay movement, a humanism that had to be combatted by monks and friars, and
thus, having nothing in common with the Middle Ages, could have had
no support or encouragement from religious orders. Carefully documenting
his case, supplying an abundance of illustrations, and listing 33 pages of
religious who contributed substantially to humanist or scholarly literature,
Kristeller details the extent to which monks and friars actually helped
Renaissance culture assume the form it finally took. As the author himself
admits, the list is far from complete, and is particularly deficient in its
treatment of Jesuits and other religious who wrote in the latter part of
the sixteenth century. The present reviewer has been more concerned with
the history of science than with the histories of literature and philosophy,
and in the former field religious orders likewise made outstanding contributions. Kristeller's list might be augmented from this area with many
names-Antonius Andreas, 0. F. M., Domingo Banez, 0. P., Filippo Fantoni, 0. Camald., Joannes Gratiadei, 0. P., Isidorus de Isolanis, 0. P.,

BOOK REVIEWS

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Joannes Versor, 0. P., Benito Pereira, S. J., Domingo de Soto, 0. P., and
Francisco Toledo, S. J., come immediately to mind. But even without
these Kristeller has made his point, and he has made it very well, while
leaving room for others to complete the details of the grand panorama he
has laid before us.

* * *
The second title, by one of Kristeller's students, is a study of quite different character. Growing out of the author's doctoral dissertation, and
still bearing the marks of its origin, it provides a detailed examination of
a few logical and metaphysical topics in the philosophy of Alessandro
Achillini. Previous historians have labelled Achillini an Averroist, but
Professor Matsen finds this characterization deceptive; his own researches,
based on an anaysis of Achillini's teachings on universals and transcendentals, accent elements in his thought that derive more from William of
Ockham than from any other medieval thinker. Working mainly from
early printed editions of Achillini's work, Matsen first surveys Achillini's
intellectual biography and then devotes successive chapters to his teaching
on universals, on being (ens), on unity and truth (unum and verum),
and on the good, the what, and the thing (bonum, quid, and res). There
follow a conclusion and two appendices, the first reprinting Matsen's paper
on Archillini's two-year sojourn at Padua from 1506 to 1508 (his main
teaching career was at Bologna, 1484-1512) which appeared originally in
the Quaderni per la Storia dell' Universita di Padova, 1 (1968) , pp. 91-109,
and the second providing a chronological list of Achillini's published
writings. The study is scrupulously documented, containing over a hundred
pages of notes and bibliography, and is well indexed (indices of primary
texts, of names, and of subjects) .
Matsen's thesis, which in sum holds that Achillini "was the main impetus
behind a revival of interest at Bologna around 1500 in the philosophy of
the English Franciscan philosopher and theologian William of Ockham,"
(p. 16) does not make light reading, but it contains much valuable information that is not otherwise available in English or in any other modern
language. Achillini has generally been neglected by Renaissance historians;
so we are fortunate that Matsen has rescued him from the domain of
glittering generality and given us some authentic details of his philosophy.
In this he joins the ranks of others of Kristeller's disciples-William F.
Edwards, Neal W. Gilbert, Edward P. Mahoney, Charles B. Schmitt, et
al.-who have followed in the footsteps of their master and substantially
enriched the field of Renaissance scholarship.
WILLIAM

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

A. WALLACE, O.P.

BOOK REVIEWS

La Legge Nuova: L'Elemento Esterno Della Legge Nuova Secondo San
Tommaso. By Enw ARD KAcZYNSKI, 0. P. Rome: Libreria lnternazionale
Edizioni Francescane, 1974. Pp. 184.
Few questions in Christian moral theology are so fraught with complexity
as the problem of the fundamental sources of moral obligation. What speaks
to the conscientious Christian in the concrete situation of daily life? Are
there objective norms which address themselves to his conscience from the
outside? Or, is it not rather the inner, immediate voice of the Spirit which
he is to heed in his decisions? The divergent answers have led to a conflict
between what has been called an inhuman legalism, on the one hand, and
a mindless illuminism, on the other. Not spawned by the Reformation, but
certainly nurtured by it, the discussion seems to gather in intensity in
our times. And the disagreement between Protestant and Catholic schools
of thought sometimes seems less wide than the differences between various
members of the same confessional background. On the Catholic side, so
great has become the diversity of theological expression on the matter that
the hierarchy of the Church in the United States sees the need for a statement from the bishops on moral norms.
Professor Kaczynski's study brings into this many-sided discussion a
voice whose dispassionate accents introduce a needed note of serene sagacity.
The book is an examination of St. Thomas' much-neglected short tract on
the New Law (Summa Theol., 1a2ae, qq. 106-108), in which he studies the
external element of the New Law in its relation to the inner element, the
reality of grace acting within the soul. The work does not pretend to give
immediate and all-inclusive answers to what is a whole series of questions
in contemporary moral teaching. But it does bring into the discussion, whose
various parties appeal to St. Thomas for arguments, elements of the Angelic
Doctor's writings which have been largely overlooked. In this sense, it
has an offering to make to contemporary moral theology.
The study begins with a short history of the attention which Christian
thought has devoted to the theology of the New Law, almost to the present
day. Here the author highlights an unexplained anomaly, the commentators'
neglect of St. Thomas' treatment of the subject. The author, then, outlines
his own procedure and, wisely, sets careful limits for himsel£; what he undertakes is an exposition of the three questions on the New Law, enlightened by St. Thomas' teaching on Law, in the Summa Theologiae and
in parallel places mostly in the Commentary on the Sentences and in the
Summa contra Gentes. His aim is simple: to present the thought of
Aquinas on the external element of the New Law. He does not intend 3.
mere reconstruction of St. Thomas' thought, nor does he intend to address
all the problems presently germane to that thought. To set forth St.
Thomas' thought on the subject, placing it in its context, is a singular

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service, granted that its applications must be made by those who treat of
the practical aspects of moral theology in the modern world.
Following the short introduction on history and on his own methodology,
the author enters quickly but carefully into the heart of his subject. The
question is set within its own proper context, in the general framework
of St. Thomas' thinking. Once having established the close relationship
between Law and Revelation, on the one side, and between Law and Salvation History, on the other side, the book proceeds to its main argument,
the teaching of St. Thomas on the exterior element of the New Law
(chapters 3 to 6).
Grace, in its transcendence, in its divine origin, is obviously external to
man; but when, concretely, grace is operating within man, it is (pace
Luther) rightly called internal to man. And, related to this sanctifying
reality of the New Law, its proposal is, really and just as obviously, external, i. e., " any writing that is external to man, even that of the moral
precepts such as are contained in the gospel" (Summa Theol., la!ilae, q. 106,
a. !il). These, the internal and external elements of the New Law-as the
author emphasizes-are not two separate, independent realities. The Holy
Spirit, speaking in the heart through grace, is truly distinct from the written
word of Sacred Scripture, from the precepts proposed to us externally, either
by oral or by written word. There is, however, a living bond between the
two realities, for it is the same Spirit who speaks interiorly or exteriorly,
As St. Thomas-ever the
and He can never speak contradictorily.
realist-emphasizes, there is a sense in which the grace of the Holy Spirit,
as well as the religious and moral demands of the Gospel, remain ever external to man: precisely because the New Law is instilled into man by
"being, as it were, added to his nature by a gift of grace" (ibid., ad 2). And
the external demands of the New Law are a means for the reduction of the
tension in man between the divine and the human, between the inner grace
and the egoistic tendencies to which every sinful man is heir. Thus divine
grace shows its face in history not-most surely-by man's efforts but in
the realisation, through grace, of the fundamental demands of the Law
of the Gospel preached by Jesus and His Church.
Some seem to feel that St. Thomas has said all that he has to say to
the contemporary world, that his works are an exhausted mine so far as
the present is concerned. Professor Kaczynski's work is one sign of how
far this is from the truth. As long as Christianity has existed, it has been
necessary for moral theology to be on its guard against an exaggerated
spiritualism which would divorce the Holy Spirit from word and command
which is written or spoken. Equally, it has had to be on its guard against
an extrinsic legalism which would muffie the Holy Spirit by finding His
sole expression to consist in external law. As an understanding of this brief
tract of St. Thomas shows, a soul which is obedient and docile to the Holy

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Spirit will hear His voice in every word uttered by Christ and continually
preached by His Church to this day.
PHILIP F. MuLHERN, 0. P.
University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome

The Cosmology of Freedom. By RoBERT C. NEVILLE. New Haven:
University Press, 1974. Pp. 385.

Yale

Robert Neville has developed a mesocosmology of freedom. This is not
metaphysics or ontology, which are independent of experience in the sense
that anything determinate (even ideas) is their subject matter (p.
rather, this is a type of cosmology, which is directly dependent on existence.
Unlike microcosmology and macrocosmology which treat more of speculative physics, mesocosmology deals with human experiences. Neville claims
that his topic (i. e., the particular aspect of human affairs called " freedom ") is quite limited, but he clearly believes that some additional
careful work could convincingly extend the applicability of his theory
past human freedom into all areas of cosmology; of course, " freedom" is a pervasive reality, tending to interrelate human activities
among themselves as well as to relate human activity to the non-human,
and so a consistent mesocosmology of freedom might easily be broadened
to a consistent general cosmology.
Neville works in the thought-categories of A. N. Whitehead; indeed, it
is tempting to think of this book as the presentation of a process philosophy
of freedom. It is intriguing to note the influence of the outstanding New
England theologian Jonathan Edwards, especially in the area of social
values. After describing his more general principles, an understanding of
which is anterior to the specific discussion of freedom, Neville details personal freedom (the basic dimensions of which are: external liberty,
freedom of intentional action, freedom of choice, and creativity) and social
freedom (four fundamental dimensions: freedom of opportunity, social
pluralism, freedom of integral social life, and participatory democracy).
The argument is detailed and sophisticated; Neville honestly and effectively confronts the basic issues revealed in a worthwhile analysis of freedom. This review is limited to three particularly interesting themes: (A)
time, (B) elegance as a component of value theory, and (C) privacy as
an aspect of social freedom.
(A) One example of the detail in Neville's work is his consideration of
" time." There are at least two obvious reasons for his concern about time.
(I) Anyone using process categories must address the question of continuity; when change is taken seriously, one faces the question of relating

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775

"before'' to "after." Neville will not say that there is a constant underlying substratum or a fixed form which is regularly reiterated (pp. 114-15);
rather, he is consistently faithful to process categories and says that the
continuity consists in " appropriate changes." Whether or not one can
conceptually appreciate this sense of " continuity " (" appropriate " necessarily bears a heavy burden here), one can see the importance of having
a philosophy of time, for it is precisely in the present that future real
possibilities becomes past facts; that is to say, the present is the moment
of change. (2) Serious considerations of " freedom " lead to the question
of time, especially future time. (If the future is already determined, freedom seems not to exist.) Past, present, and future are three modes of
existence. Even though something (someone) does not at the present time
occupy a present time this does not mean that it lacks present reality.
Napoleon has the present reality of occupying a past time; the events of
2500 do not have present existence now, but they do have future existence
now. (p. 95) Not only is Neville distinguishing present existence from
both past and future, but he is also drawing a deep distinction between
past and future modes of existence. What is past is fact; what is future
is possible. Neville recognizes that the future is not totally open; those
past factors (e. g., height, weight, temperament, etc.) which determine
aspects of the future are " primary universals.'' But there are also " secondary universals," past factors open to several future actualizations; there
is true freedom, since future possibilities are only partially determinate
(but Neville is right in recognizing that future possibilities are not totally
indeterminate).
Neville uses several words which invite confusion: "real," "existence,"
and " actual " are often only vaguely precised. ("Potentiality " and " possibility" are more neatly distinct: "potentiality" refers to something in
the present open to future actualization, whereas "possibility" refers to
something in the future mode of existence.) "Actual" seems rather consistently reserved for the present moment in which possibilities are "actualized.'' However, "real" is slippery. Existence is a real predicate. (p.
96) Possibilities are logical or real; only real possibilities exist (in the mode
of future existence), "since to exist is to have a mode of temporal existence relative to some present existent.'' (p. 141) Neville seems to grant
primacy to present existence (not unexpected in one who uses process
categories, since the present is the moment of change, of actualization of
possibilities, of prehending other actual occasions). To occupy a past time
is actually to have occupied some present time; to occupy a future time
is possibly to occupy some present time. In each case, there is reference
to a present time (which seems to be what makes something real); however, past "reality" and future "reality" are "real" in quite different
ways, at least as different as "fact" and "possibility.'' Neville says:

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To say Napoleon existed once but does so no longer is only to say that he does
not at this present time occupy a present time; it should not be taken, as Thomists
are prone to do, to mean that Napoleon lacks present reality. Rather, so long
as he is determinate, he has reality-in this case, the present reality of occupying
a past time. (pp. 94-95)

I think that Thomists do not usually speak of " reality " in exactly the
same ways Neville does; indeed, for him "reality" gets its meaning primarily from temporal considerations (making" present reality" a potentially confusing choice of words). The Thomist who carefully follows Neville's
use of " reality " might not be so prone to deny " present reality " to
Napoleon; and if Neville were to follow carefully the Thomist's use of
"reality," he might be less prone to assign "present reality" to Napoleon.
(B) Human experience finds fact and value together; the human mind
can separate the two, but it always initially discovers them together. A
"fact" gets our attention precisely because it reveals some degree of importance to us. We do intuit values, but "the mere fact of feeling, upon
which Hume and others base intuitionist ethics, is not the ground of the
aesthetic judgment." (p. 191) We feel that x is better than y because
there is more" elegance" in x; Neville grants that the perception of elegance
is intuitive, but rejects any suggestion that it is irrational.
I am most interested in the role of elegance in ethical decision-making,
but its application embraces more than ethics. Elegance is a combination of " complexity " and " simplicity " ; a high degree of elegance deso::ribes the coincidence of a high degree of complexity (i. e., a large number
of different modes of harmony are present) and a high degree of simplicity (i. e., the large number of differing forms of harmony are arranged
in a hierarchy wherein a few constituents on a higher level can contain
under them a great variety of lower harmonies). In more familiar language, the Oakland Athletics' baseball team displays elegance; many
highly-talented individuals (high complexity) are molded together into a
winning team (high simplicity) without significant loss of the complexity.
Contrast this to a winning football team (high simplicity) which has become so much a unit that the individual talents seem obliterated (low complexity). "Contrast" is the mark of elegance; a high degree of simplicity
sometimes minimizes contrast. Indeed, elegance does seem to be a notirrational dimension, even though it is perceived only by intuition; we get
a feel for elegance.
To apply aesthetic categories to ethical decision-making reminds us of
Jonathan Edwards. Similarly, although Neville does not mention him, I
find a similarity to H. Richard Niebuhr's emphasis on doing the "fitting"
thing in an ethic of responsibility. However, I find Neville even more helpful than Niebuhr. Actuating the "appropriate" change (Neville's language) is not wholly unlike doing the "fitting" thing, but Neville gives

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777

more indicators whereby one can intuit elegance (a high degree of elegance
makes for appropriateness); in Neville's theory, complexity and simplicity
lend themselves to some sort of quantitative measurement.
A sensitivity to elegance should help the ethical decision-maker in at least
two areas. (I) Whenever one faces a conflict-situation, when two or more
values cry out for one's attention and action (e. g., when both wife and
mother claim my time and love), one needs a rational hierarchy of values.
"Elegance" appears to be a workable category for both (a) a generalized
listing of values according to their greater or lesser appropriateness as types
of action, and (b) a measurement of the appropriateness of concrete alternatives in this or that particular case. (2) More exciting is the possibility
of a more creative approach to human activity. Too much discussion in
ethics is chatter about avoiding this particular bad (" inappropriate ")
action. Not nearly enough is said about the far more common situation in
which it is not a matter of the easy choice of good over evil, but rather
the choice of one action when several quite worthy alternatives present
themselves. (Most human decisions are of the latter sort, but since
so much ethical discourse focuses on choices between good and evil, many
persons forget the deep ethical significance of those decisions which involve
a choice from among goods alone.) To adopt elegance as a measure is
to challenge the agent to incorporate as many goods as possible (high complexity) into his action; the true virtuoso creatively embraces as many
varied values as he possibly can.
:N"eville indirectly addresses the prudence/ art distinction of Thomas; his
words are instructive. "An artist begins with a simple idea suggested by
his materials and his past work; contrast comes through the delicate addition of complexity, and at the end of the creative process there is far more
than was intended at the beginning." (p. 183) Human living (Neville
does not speak of " prudence ") tends, on the other hand, to begin in the
face of almost stunning complexity; the task of the ethical agent is to introduce simplicity into the complexity without destroying the contrast, without
any undue loss of value revealed in the original complexity.
(C) When Neville discusses privacy he is clearly extending his cosmological theory past the arena of freedom. Helpful is his distinction of at least
two major senses of "privacy." (1) In one case the "private" is divided
over against the " public." Properly " public" matters are concerned with
sustaining an environment wherein creativity can occur; creativity itself is
a concern of the "private." There is an interplay between public and private, between environment and creativity; to limit one is ultimately to limit
the other. Neville shows this interplay as it works out in education. Whereas the education of children is essentially a parental responsibility, the
public sector quickly becomes involved because it wants to protect and enhance the realm of personal creativity. However, and here Neville speaks

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eloquently to the contemporary scene, public education can effectively stifle
creativity; hence, he speaks of a possible right to refuse public education!
(If public education is not sustaining an environment for creativity but
is in fact making creativity less possible, then it loses its justification as a
"public" enterprise.) Implicit in all this is that the public sphere remains
always open to scrutiny in the light of public standards, whereas the private
sphere is the home of creativity, imagination, and idiosyncracy (which defy
When Neville speaks of a "right to privacy," the
public standards).
emphasis shifts from the environment-creativity
(i.e., public-private)
polarity and interplay to the more vulgar "right to be left alone," to be free
of invasion by others, to be a subject rather than a controlled object. " The
point is, the subjective value of choosing is worth prizing even when the
objective values produced are not." (p.
True subjectivity, autonomy,
self-initiated revelation (rather than the prying eyes and ears of hidden
technology) are to be prized. As a matter of fact, this sounds very much
like the " right to be creative " ; indeed, creativity and privacy are closely
linked in each of Neville's uses of "privacy."
Neville has certainly not detailed every nuance of "privacy," but what he
has done is good. The contemporary concern to protect privacy easily leads
to fuzzy, and even improper, ideas about privacy; it is a concept open to
thoughtful nuance and Neville is clearly aware of at least some of the possible distinctions which can enlighten any discussion of "privacy."
WILLIAM J. FINAN, 0. P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

Pio IX e Antonio Rosmini. By GIANFRANCO RADICE. Vatican City: Libreria
Editrice Vaticana, 1974. Pp. 369.
This study, which relies upon a wide range of primary and secondary
sources, examines the relationship between Pope Pius IX and the priest
and philosopher, Antonio Rosmini. It is a revisionist work as Monsignor
Piolanti, Postulator for the Cause of Pius, indicates in the Preface. It
seeks, among other things, to disprove two commonly accepted notions:
first, that the relationship between the two churchmen was determined essentially by the political events of 1848-49, and second, that Pius was not
consistent in his treatment of the philosopher. Radice attempts to negate
these assumptions by a comprehensive examination of the interaction of
the two protagonists.
The volume is divided into four parts, corresponding to their four periods
of critical interaction. In the opening pages the author concentrates upon

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the political collaboration of the two men in 1848; in part two he examines
the implications of the censure of two of Rosmini's works by the Sacred
Congregation of the Index; in part three he dwells upon the years from
1849 to 1854, culminating in the conclusion of the General Congregation
of the Index that Rosmini's works were not heretical; while in the final
section Radice discusses the defense of the orthodoxy of the works of the
philosopher, following his death in 1855, and the part played by the Pope
in this defense.
The author's meticulous research has led him to unearth some interesting material which allows one to question some of the accepted assumptions concerning the relationship between Pius and Rosmini but does
not justify overturning the traditional interpretation. Indeed the reader
is forced to conclude, in part one, that the political divergence between
the philosopher and the Pope played an important part in the subsequent
difficulties that Rosmini encountered, including the failure to obtain the
Cardinal's hat Pius had promised him. The different positions the two
assumed on the question of papal participation in the war of national
liberation as well as constitutionalism served to keep them apart and assured that Rosmini would always remain a peripheral figure and never a
trusted advisor. This is corroborated in part two, where the author admits
that Pius allowed Rosmini's enemies to condemn two of his essays, not because they were theologically culpable but because they were thought to
hinder a return to the peninsula's prewar normalcy. (p. 157)
Nonetheless the author demonstrates in the last two parts of the bookwhere he makes his most important contribution-that even if the political
divergence between the two was influential in determining the nature of
their relationship, it was not everything. While Pius disagreed with Rosmini
upon a number of issues, and considered some of his ideas dangerous in
light of the troubled situation of the Papal States and the perilous position
of the Church, he never allowed this to alter his own personal assessment
of the philosopher. Rather Pius is presented as considering Rosmini not
only learned and saintly but an obedient and faithful son of the Church.
Radice reconstructs the position of the Pope towards Rosmini by examining the letters, articles, and words of those around him and by the
author's conjecture, which is consistently sympathetic to Pius and Rosmini.
Aside from his apologia for the actions of these two, Radice has attempted
to let the facts speak for themselves. This often leads to a series of quotations tied by the briefest of commentary producing excessive repetition,
confused chronology and, in more than one instance, the loss of clarity.
FRANK

St. John's University
Jamaica, New York

J. CoPPA

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Ockham's Theory of Terms. Part I of the Summa Logicae. Translated and
Introduced by MrcHAEL J. Loux. Notre Dame, Indiana: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1974. Pp. £34.
Dr. Michael Loux has made a definite and worthwhile contribution to
the field of Logic and to the academic society at large by this readable
translation of a famous textbook written by one of the best of the late
Scholastic savants. The Summa Logicae is a work that provides a rather
comprehensive introduction to the key themes of both his Ontology and
his Philosophy of Language, even though some scholars consider it to be
peculiar both in structure and style. Wisely this translator used the
scholarly, but critical, text of Fr. Philotheus Boehner and opted to avoid
the many difficulties of a stuffy literal translation by giving us a work that
is both accurate and readable. It is all that, and for his attempts to bring
to the translation the Ockhamistic traits of simplicity and sharpness Dr.
Loux is to be highly commended.
Preceding the translation itself there are two essays (pp. 1-46) that
focus on some of the general aspects of Ockham's theories on being and
supposition. Though this reviewer did not find either essay very helpful,
he appreciated the aims of Dr. Loux who honestly declared that some of
Ockham's writings in the area of Logic tend to be " hopelessly mysterious
to the contemporary reader." (p. 10)
The translation itself, comprising some 77 chapters, runs about 174
pages (pp. 48-!i!£1). In a very short time one becomes quite aware that
Part I of the Summa Logicae is constructed more or less along the traditional scholastic format of a Logic textbook, as it is a real in-depth study
of TERMS, the basic ingredients into which all propositions can be resolved. The manner in which these chapters are written is for the most
part consistent with his overall purpose: " my intention is rather to examine cursorily some basic issues to aid those untutored in logic" (p. 69),
and again on page 105 we read: "therefore, to instruct the novice I shall
examine some of the relevant terms."
In the early chapters (1-11) Ockham defines and divides "terms," providing rather simple explanations and copious examples of categorematic
and syncategorematic terms as well as abstract and concrete names. Then,
just prior to a well-done treatment of the Predicables (Chaps. £0-25) , he
offers a somewhat novel and enlightening view on " universals " which he
considers to be grounded on the teaching of Aristotle. However, in this
area his unique type of Nominalism begins to show and it is hardly the
moderate realistic view of the Stagirite. (cf. p. 99) Next comes a rather
detailed dialectical presentation of the Predicaments (Categories) that
formally runs from chapters 40-6£, in which he not infrequently drifts into
non-logical questions and apologies for being so brief, but insisting that

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781

most of his views are "compatible with Aristotelian philosophy." This
section is very well done pedagogically and demonstrates his chief concern
for beginners. However, at the same time, it is crystal clear that Ockham,
unlike some modern logicians, is very much aware that no logician is
philosophically neutral. The final chapters (63-77) deal with the general
and particular notions of Supposition.
It was revealing to this reviewer how much the great Ockham was
dependent upon and conversant with both pagan and Christian logicians
from the Stagirite to St. Anselm: e.g., St. John Damascene, Boethius,
Porphyry, and the outstanding Arabs. But, nevertheless, it was very clear
too that Ockham, as a savant, was very much his own man especially in
his many interpretations of them and the philosopher's texts in the area
of Logic and Philosophy. Besides, in the spirit of medieval times, he was
very concerned with how some of his contemporaries were trying to use
or to abuse the instrument of Logic in theologizing.
Though Notre Dame Press deserves much credit for its excellent printing
job, a little more caution could have been exercised in either proof-reading
or in the actual printing of this masterpiece as this reviewer came quite
easily upon more than enough misspellings or typographical mistakes: e. g.,
'fallacious'; page 75, line
page 49, line 'propositions'; page 67, line
'substance'; page 111, line
'elucidated'; page 183, line
'preceding'; page 187, line 8 'let'; page
line
'disjunctive' and an
excess of commas on the last line of page 105 and line 18 on page 198. But
despite these minor blemishes which should be corrected in any later edition, it is my hope as one who has been teaching Logic for almost two
decades that Dr. Loux will quickly complete translating the other parts of
this great medieval work as well as he has done this part.
DENNIS c. KANE, 0. P.
Providence College
Providence, R. I.

Jezus, Verhaal van een Levende (Jesus, the Story of One Who is Alive).
By EDwARD ScHILLEBEECKX. Bruges: Emmaus, 1974. Pp.
(The third enlarged printing (1975) has an additional five pages numbered
to
on " the inner salvation-meaning of Jesus' resurrection," in
which the author insists that it is impossible to reduce the resurrection to
the subjective Easter-experience of the disciples. That experience includes
and is inseparable from the objective Easter event. As he wrote before:
the experience of the reality and the reality of the experience are inseparable
(p.
. A nineteen-page biblical index has also been appended (pp.

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641) listing all scriptural references as well as the references to apocryphal
writings.)
Schillebeeckx's" christological essay," in which he proposes a" Christian"
approach to Jesus-interpretation, one in which both historical-critical
thinking and faith have their say, is intended to show his readers, whether
true believers or men of little faith, a way out of the confusion reigning
in the minds of many today. They are overwhelmed by the ever-growing
variety of opinions regarding Jesus. He frankly faces this variety as a
theologian, without ignoring any comer of it, and critically evaluates what
is acceptable and what is not. The outcome of his careful survey of the
vast exegetical output of today and the recent past proves to be: Jesus
is alive today.
Part One: Questions of Method, Hermeneutics and Criteria (pp. 33-84)
is basic, evidently, as a first step in clearing up the confusion. The author's
stand is firm and decisive: Jesus of Nazareth (the Jesus of history) is
the norm and criterion of every Jesus-interpretation. A believer too has
to take an historical aproach to the problem of Jesus, who offers salvation
on behalf of God. His starting-point in the study of Jesus is what history
tells us about him. Jesus, who was proclaimed the Christ by Christians,
is to be studied in a modern historical-critical manner. No doubt, the historical question concerning Jesus of necessity opens out on a theological
problem, but only a post-critical historical narrative, a critical presentation
of the "story of Jesus," can answer our present-day need for historical
truth and open the door to theological reflection.
The difficulty in this critical-historical approach is well-known: even in
the gospels and in the most ancient Christian records, Jesus of Nazareth
is identified with the Christ acclaimed by the Christian communities. The
facts about the earthly Jesus are "painted over" by faith in Christ the
Savior. Yet it is possible, the author says, from what he learned from the
exegetes to sift the various layers in the early Christian tradition: to shift
what comes from Jesus himself and what comes from the believing community. This has been done by exegetes of various beliefs. He reviews
critically the criteria they made use of: redaction history, form-criticism,
tradition history, consistency in content, in Jesus' message and praxis; and
he refuses some criteria, such as linguistics and cultural geography and
the nature of parables.
The conclusion of his review of question about method and hermeneutics
is clear: it is the imperative need, for a new Christology, of a critical study,
first, of what is actually told about Jesus (Part Two), but also of the experiential setting in which both Jews and Greeks have reacted to the "historical phenomenon" that was Jesus of Nazareth, whether they did so in
personal contact with him or from what they were told about him by
other people (Part Three). A further conclusion will follow from this;

BOOK REVIEWS

783

the need, for a correct understanding of Jesus Christ, to take into account
the ever-new, present-day experiential setting (Part Four).
It is in Part Two: The Gospel of Jesus Christ (pp.
that the
author gives a believer's historical-critical study of the good news or gospel
of Jesus Christ: his message to the world, his words, his deeds, his suffering
and death, and his exaltation by God.
Jesus' message is definite: final (eschatological) salvation comes through
him from God. The author sketches the complex background of its reception by his hearers: the prophetic-apocalyptic movements in the Israel
of the time, the message and praxis of John the Baptist, Jesus' own baptism
by John. Its basic aim is God's reign over men as illustrated in the parables
and leading to the " revolution " of the beatitudes.
Jesus' praxis presents, in his very dwelling among men, a God-given salvation. He went about doing good: his signs and wonders were its offer. His
liberating and gladdening dealing with men, his association with them at
table, particularly with the disciples who follow him, usher in this salvation.
Man's cause is God's cause. Jesus frees man from an oppressive image of
God. It is his own Abba-experience that was the spring of his life's secret,
of his message and of his praxis.
Was all this reality or illusion? The answer to this question, decisive if
any is, is given in God's reign that comes through Jesus' rejection and
death. The problem of his death: why did Jesus die? is answered, the
author explains in reviewing the literature of both Catholic and Protestant,
believing and "rationalist," exegesis, according to three main schemas:
the contrast-schema of the eschatological prophet and martyr, the salvation-historical schema of God's salvific design, and the soteriological schema
of his saving death. In actual fact, Jesus met his approaching death in
an unconditional service of men. The historical-legal reason for his execution was his silence about the God of the Jews-he was a pseudo-teacher.
His very death was a prophetic sign which other people were to interpret.
The Christian story of Jesus goes on after Jesus' death. At his arrest
and death, the disciples were scandalized in their faith. But they were
given a paschal experience, as apparent from the tradition about the holy
sepulchre in Jerusalem, and from the apostolic tradition: we believe that
God raised him, Jesus showed himself to Peter and the eleven, and to
Paul. This came to mean for them: on Jesus' initiative, their conversion
to him as to the Christ, finding their definitive salvation in Jesus the Christ.
Part Three: Christian Interpretation of the Risen Crucified One (pp.
studies the Christian understanding of the paschal experience. The
gospels reflect the early Christians' reactions to the Easter-event in four
different credos of the time: the "maranatha" or parousia Christology
in which Jesus is seen as the bringer of salvation, Lord of the future and
judge of the world; the theios-aner Christology: Jesus is the divine wonder-

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worker, the Salomonic son of David; the sapiential Christologies: Jesus
as messenger and teacher of divine wisdom, himself pre-existent, incarnate,
humbled and exalted Wisdom; and the paschal Christologies: Jesus is the
risen crucified One. All of these rest on a historical facet of Jesus' life. Their
synthesis builds up the Christian credo in which the historical Jesus, the
very person of Jesus, is decisive. The story of Jesus is a story of God.
Ultimate meaning and salvation, experience teaches, come from him.
Thus the four above-mentioned models of final "saviors " agree in
showing the link between the earthly Jesus and what the first Christians
believed of his resurrection and exaltation. Three Jewish models were
available: the eschatological prophet of God's reign, the eschatological
messianic son of David of a national-dynastic or of a prophetic-sapiential
messianism, and the Son of Man. It took time for the Christians, using
these models, to identify the person of Jesus the Christ: Jesus surmised
as eschatological prophet, as the eschatological divine messenger: the
Christ, Lord, Son understood as the prophetic-sapiential Son of David (not
as a dynastic Davidic messiah). This identification of the person of Jesus
links the earthly Jesus with the early Christian faith in Christ the Savior
of the world.
The resurrection is an implication of this Christian faith in Jesus Christ.
The author studies the historical understanding of the fact: "raised from
the dead," against the setting of the late-Jewish concepts of life-after-death,
and the meaning of " the third day " for an eschatological definitive event.
He examines the connection between resurrection and exaltation in the
various old Jewish and early Christian traditions which color the paschal
experience. And he asks: does this experience remain ambiguous? Did
exaltation mean for Christ the imminent coming of the Spirit, the imminent
parousia? And he answers: yes, it did, in a way: " while history continues its course, a definitive salvific action of God took place in Jesus
of Nazareth, the risen Crucified One." (p. 144) Jesus was not mistaken
in announcing that salvation was near at hand despite his death. The
eschatological times have begun with the risen Christ.
All this, the author explains, is but a theology of Jesus of Nazareth, a
study of his speaking and experience of God's reign. But who is this Jesus?
The question of Chrjstology is the question of the person of" Christ. It is
in a second-level reflection, inevitable no doubt, on the data of Scripture in
the setting of Hellenistic thinking about God that the christological dogma
of Chalcedon arose. How?
After a brief examination of the various models present in the N. T.,
the author lists different understandings of Jesus Son of God: Son of
David, son of Abraham; risen Christ sending the Spirit; pre-existent. How
did Scripture lead to the acceptance of the dogma of Chalcedon:
Son of God Incarnate? The answer is explained by the author in the con-

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785

text of the Greek " paideia " : a doctrine of salvation, education to divinization. The patristic concept of God is the hellenistic idea of God, a God
for men, Theos pros hernas. In this setting Christ is the one who brings
salvation from God: in Jesus God is with us and for us. The understanding
of the scriptural "salvation in Jesus from God," through the hellenistic
concept of God, and after Nicaea's stress on " from God " and Chalcedon's
stress on "in Christ," naturally led to the Christology of Chalcedon: Jesus
Christ, distinct from and yet not less divine than the Father. Shall we
say today also, as Chalcedon did: Christ is a divine Person?
Part Four: Who Do We Say He Is? (pp. 470-549) is only a "prolegomenon" (cf. p. 461) to the new Christology for our time. The author
briefly sketches the manner in which this Christology could and should
be worked out-his promise to do so himself in the near future is not
definite. He analyzes the present-day christological crisis and its presuppositions. Why is it that some rethinkers of the doctrine today hesitate to
call Christ God, as Chalcedon did, and that traditionalists incline to see
in this hesitation a denial of the divinity of Christ? After some passing
indications about the patristic and medieval scholastic christologies, the
author explains the breach between tradition and contemporary thought
ushered in by the Enlightenment. The present-day reluctance to ratify
the traditional formula springs from that breach. The Enlightenment, with
its stress on necessary truths, spelt the decline and gradual elimination of
history from theology and philosophy. Historical facts are not necessary
truths: things could have been different. Hence, apparently, the history
of Jesus cannot reveal who the Son of God is-a necessary truth! Nor can
universality, such as is implied in "Savior of the world," be mediated by
or in a particular historical fact.
It is here that the need for a present-day rethinking of Christology comes
in. For there is, in fact, " a unique universality of a historically particular
man." In our human history God acts to save men, and his action can
be the object of faith and can be expressed in the language of faith. This
definitive salvific action of God in history is exactly the message of the gospel: definitive salvation in Jesus from God. To the further question: in
Jesus or in the risen Crucified One?, the answer of the gospel is definitely
in favor of the second alternative, or rather of the inseparable unity of the
two. But the gospel does not include a theoretical answer to the christological identification of his person.
In his prolegomenon to a new Christology, a substantial one indeed
(pp. 470-549), the author only suggests the way. He points in particular
to the fact of Jesus' Abba-experience as Son of God, the soul of his message, life and death, and the revelation of his life's secret, in which the way
to the new Christology is to be found. In the present volume he does not
go beyond asserting the link between theoretical Christo logy, the story of
Jesus, and his praxis of the reign of God.

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This "Story of Jesus the Living One" is definitely a difficult book. It
bespeaks more than ordinary erudition and much scholarly research and
criticism, and it demands that the reader be ever-watchful to make valuejudgments on countless details and, more importantly, on the story as a
whole. Not many a" common reader," for whom the book is meant, may
carry away from its painstaking study all the breadth and depth of learning
and faith to which it is an eloquent witness. One cannot help being struck
by the unfailing serenity with which the author faces both the global problem of Christology (who is this Jesus the Christ?) and the countless little
problems of literary and historical criticism involved. What is the secret
of the overall sound judgment and choice which a professional theologian
is making from the expert scholarly work of a host of exegetes? (He quotes
a saying of Congar: " I respect and consult unceasingly the science of the
exegetes, but I challenge their magisterium.")
Throughout this volume one senses the felicitous marriage of brain and
heart, scholarship and faith, both of these operative and " all there "
throughout the book in an uncommon degree. The author, both believing
and critical, has an insight all his own into the problem that is at the core
of his study: the present-day crisis in Christology and the answer to this
crisis, His very example is part of the answer.
Readers who can spare the effort and time to work through his witness
to Christ and through the many details of his story may come to share
his insight in varying degrees. And they may be taken up by the experience in spite of the tough going. They will hope that Schillebeeckx's
second volume, his new Christology, may not be long in coming.
P. DE LETTER, s. J.
St. Albert's College
Ranchi, India

Philosophies de la Cite. Edited by YvoN LAFRANCE. Montreal:
tions Bellarmin, 1974. Pp. fl89. Paper. $5.00.

Les Edi-

This third volume in the series, " L'Univers de la Philosophie," is a collection of brief expository articles by eleven professors at universities in
Montreal and Ottawa. Rather than being summaries, critiques, or commentaries, the articles serve as prologues to the study of the political
philosophers themselves and syntheses of their thought. In the editor's
words, the intent was to bring together the great moments in the history of political philosophy which " have exercised a decisive influence both
on our conceptions of the political society (" la chose publique ") and on
our own social and political institutions .... In this way we believe that

BOOK REVIEWS

787

these studies will be useful not only to professors and students but also to
that whole lay group which is taking more and more interest in the future
of our political institutions and in the destiny of our modem societies." The
articles are unevenly documented, but all conclude with a suggested reading
list.
The last two articles, both on contemporary political philosophers, are
by far the longest and most detailed. They suggest the editorial emphasis
upon present-day problems and the tendency to view the history of political
philosophy in light of today, rather than vice versa. For some readers this
trace of historicism may limit the value of the work.
The two contemporary articles present the reader with an alternative
choice of philosophies based upon realism and idealism, and corresponding
assessments of the state.
The first of these, "Jacques Maritain: elements d'une politique humaniste,"
by Y. Filippini, is oriented more toward personalism than Thomism.
Drawing upon 13 of Maritain's works (principally Man and the State),
Professor Filippini shows his thought to be "modest " and radical " at the
same time. The author regards these as the most significant of Maritain's
conclusions: Political philosophy is essentially ethical and realist; political
society is both natural and reasonable; the state is society's instrument for
securing the common good as well as personal rights; the new democracy
must be both pluralist and theistic. Professor Filippini acknowledges the
theological ground upon which Maritain's philosophy is based.
The second contemporary article, and the final one in the collection, is
"La 'Philosophie politique' d'Eric Weil," by Jean Roy. As the title indicates, this is mainly an exposition of one work, but it also attempts to
relate Weil's thought to Kantian and Hegelian philosophy. The reader is
led to conclude that Weil's main concern was the modem struggle against
violence and that he made use of Kantian moral concepts not for their
own sake but for the individual's orientation in his search for the good
life. There is here not only a critique of theology but also a fundamental
suspicion of the state. Professor Roy calls upon Paul Ricoeur for assistance
in explaining Weil's outlook.
If one thus begins with the final section of this book, the orientation of
the earlier articles is more apparent. The first three, dealing with the
ancients, form the basis of Maritain's thought, and the next six, covering
the modern period, prepare one for the study of Weil.
Georges Leroux's well-outlined "Metaphysique et politique chez Platon "
opens the collection with a study of the Republic and, to some extent, of
the Laws. Brief attention is also given to the Seventh Letter and the
Statesman. Leon Charette next provides a less documented explication of
Aristotle's Politics with a preliminary consideration of the Nicomachean
Ethics and the connection between the two treatises. Then in " La cite de

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Dieu: un nouveau centre du monde" G.-H. Allard presents an excellent
introduction to St. Augustine with references to many of his writings which
help explain the motivation behind the City of God as a work of political
philosophy.
There is no article on St. Thomas. Indeed, the whole of the medieval
period-the apogee of the classical-Christian tradition and of western
political philosophy-is passed over in silence.
The six articles forming the central section of the collection are the
briefest. Antonio D'Andrea in "Le probleme du succes politique dans la
pensee de Machiavel " concentrates on the autobiographical evidence of
Machiavelli's intention but steers a neutral course between his accusers
and defenders. He passes very rapidly over the Prince and the Discourses.
The next article, "Montesquieu et l'esprit des lois" by M. J. Silverthorne,
focuses on two principal aspects of this work: the analysis of socil(ty and
Montesquieu's thoughts on liberty and tolerance. Next Paul Gagne in" La
republique de Hobbes " presents an outline of Leviathan after locating
Hobbes and his work in the historical setting which explains both.
After skipping over Locke and Hume, the book next takes up "JeanJacques Rousseau et l'ideal republicain." Guy Lafrance, aware of the
difficulties in coming to terms with Rousseau's thought, reduces it to the
state of nature and natural society (in the Discourse on Inequality) and
civil society (in the Social Contract). Yvon Lafrance links Hegel with the
French Revolution in " La philosophic du droit de Hegel," and precedes
his synthesis of the Philosophy of Right with a brief consideration of its
antecedents in the Encyclopedia. Finally, "Marx: d'une philosophic de
la cite a une theorie de Ia formation sociale " by Jean-Guy Meunier ranges
through Marx's writings (especially the earlier, more philosophical ones)
to concentrate not on Marx's thought as a whole but on the particular
theme indicated in the article's title: the concept of society and the class
struggle.
By way of overall evaluation, we may concede the difficulty of compressing the history of political philosophy into so few pages and yet wonder at certain shortcomings in what these authors have produced. Attention
has already been called to some significant omissions. It is surprising,
moreover, that several important schools of political philosophy (such as
those of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin) should be neglected in the interpretative references to these articles.
The authors, however, no doubt had a more modest goal than a rigorous
study of the history of political philosophy. Their work might at least serve
as orientation for those who wish to find some light for our own day in
what has come before.
JoHN

Illinois Statll University
Normal, Illinois

A. GUEGUEN

BOOK R:IDVIEWS

789

Readings in Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics. By MILTONC.NAHM. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Pp. 603. $13.50.
Professor Nahm's just published anthology is a bulky book comprising,
in addition to a preface and a general introduction, seven parts and 12
chapters. The main function of the introductory chapter is to state the
specific aesthetic topics to be used as the principles for the selection of the
texts (artistic genius, inspiration, freedom and creation) and to explain the
title's distinction between " philosophy of art " (i. e., metaphysical aesthetics or philosophy of beauty and art) and " aesthetics " (i.e., general
psychological aesthetics) through the historical role played by A. G.
Baumgarten. The remaining chapters present selected aesthetic material
from Heraclitus to contemporary American aestheticians.
Interestingly enough, Professor Nahm plays two separate roles in this
anthology: that of an editor and that of a selected author. As the editor,
he has written a general introductory essay (chap. 1, A); a special introduction to each subsequent chapter, and a vita to each selected aesthetician.
As an author, Nahm appears three times in the book: with two papers reprinted from journals (pp. 10-17 and 575-87), and a brief commentary
on Aristotle's theory of catharsis, written for this anthology. (pp. 186 f.)
In evaluating this lengthy aesthetic anthology, first the weaknesses will
be considered, moving from the least important to the most serious defects;
to be followed by a positive evaluation of the strength and value of this
publication.
Beginning with mere technicalities, I found misspelled or mispunctuated
Greek words on pp. 5a, 12, 163a, 166b, and 296a; and misspelled Latin
words on pp. 28a, 246b, 338a, 400b, and 518a. The Latin phrase in n. 5
of p. 299 is both unintelligible and erroneous; the correct title is given in
n. 47 of p. 317. There are misspelled German words on pp. 434b; 471 n.
95; 475 n. 109; 477 n. ll3; and 493a. Lotze's and de Bruyne's names are
misspelled on p. 487 n. 135 and p. 200a, respectively. Also, misspelled
English words or other typographic errors are on pp. lOb, 130a, 19la, 254a,
334b, 432 n. 35, and 554b. The word " below " stands for " above" (p. 327
n. 9); and Poetry in Puttenham's book title should read Poesie (p. 196 n.
33). Finally, some sentences or clauses seem to need grammatical improvements (p. 195b 4-5 and p. 198b 16-17) .
Somewhat more important are certain quantitative and qualitative weaknesses in the biographical notes preceding the selections from the aesthetic
literature. One may wish to maintain proportion in the lengths of the
biographical notes by keeping in mind either who is more important or
who is less well-known. If the editor followed the former consideration,
it is difficult to understand why Aristotle's vita consists of 91 lines, while
Kant's is only 82 lines long; Augustine's, 25; Plotinus's, 28; Hegel's, 18-one less than Katherine E. Gilbert's; and Aquinas's, 13-just as Philo's and

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Philostratus's. If, on the other hand, the latter consideration was followed,
it is not clear why the vitae of the well-known Spinoza and Descartes are
about twice as long (35 and 37 lines, respectively) as the equally wellknown Hegel's; why the vitae of the famous Hume and Leonardo da Vinci
receive 43 and 41 lines, respectively-more than the utterly unknown Leone
Ebreo
lines); and why the vitae of such differently known figures as
Dante and S. H. Butcher are of the same length
lines).
The qualitative weakness of the biographical notes lies mostly in the
selection of works listed under the names of the authors. The vita of
Aristotle mentions only the Poetics; and that of Aquinas, only his two
Summae. Yet virtually all the works of Hume, and many by Leibniz and
Kant, are listed. Aristotle's biographical note has also a unique imperfection. While, e. g., Plato's vita is a fair outline of the significant events in
the thinker's life without any unnecessary detail, Aristotle's lengthy vita
abounds in trivial details, such as the circumstances of Callisthenes' life
and death, and that Aristotle was slender and elegantly dressed and spoke
with a lisp-not only echoing Diogenes Laertius' Lives but undoubtedly
using it as a source material for such trivia. 1 And the general characterization of Aristotle, that he was " not only a superb moral and· political
philosopher, but he was also a shrewd man," (p. 103a) is simply inexcusable.
Turning next to the weaknesses in the introductory essays and selections, one notices first of all the quantitative weakness of disproportion.
Some introductory essays are only a few pages long (in chapter U, two
pages; in chapter 13, two pages and a half); while some others are many
times longer: in chapter 11, eleven pages long; in chapter
pages; in
chapter 9, 13 pages. The disproportionate length of the selected texts is
at least equally conspicuous. While the selections from Plato and Aristotle
are, appropriately, of the same amount (63 pp. each), the continental
rationalists are represented rather meagerly (17 pp.); and the postaugustinian medieval aesthetic thought has received an inexplicably brief representation through three authors: Dionysius and Dante with one page of selection each, and Thomas with one page and a half. The monumental threevolume work of Edgar de Bruyne, 2 whom Professor Nahm explicitly
, and the second volume of Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz's
mentions (p.
brilliant History of Aesthetics 3 demonstrate with sufficient force that, in
such a lengthy aesthetic anthology as Nahm's, the medieval philosophy of
beauty and art is neither properly nor proportionately represented on as
few as five pages.
Cf. portions of Diogenes Laertius, Lives, I, 5,
Loeb-ed. I, 445-55.
De Bruyne, Etudes d'Esthetique Medievale. (Bruges: De Tempel, 1946), pp.
XIV
370; X
X
400.
• Vol. II: Medieval Aesthetics. (C. Barrett, ed. The Hague-Paris:
Mouton,
1970), pp. VI+ 315.
1

2

+

+

+

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791

Let us turn our attention next to the qualitative evaluation of the selected texts. Granting that the principle of selection and the actual selection according to that principle are basically up to the editor of any
anthology, and that no book of readings in the field of the philosophy of
beauty and art (as Nahm properly points out on page XVI) "could ever
claim to be exhaustive," one can still wonder even within the self-imposed
limitations discussed on pp. XIII-XIV why some texts were and others
were not included in Readings. Of the Hellenistic aesthetic literature, for
instance, the omission of any text by M. T. Cicero is rather difficult to
justify. For medieval philosophers almost invariably quote Cicero as an
authority on the philosophy of beauty, and thus Nahm's second and third
principles of selection (to be found on page XIV) would seem to demand the
inclusion of this great eclectic author.
Also, given the decision to include Dionysius the Areopagite, De divinis
nominibus, cap. 3 § 7-in itself a laudable decision, the inclusion of
§ 7 in chapter four would have been consistent with the editor's third
principle, viz., the selection of "classical" texts which have endured on account of the great influence they exerted upon subsequent speculation. For
chapter four § 7 of the work in question inspired and gave rise to such
magnificent gems of medieval aesthetic thought as the commentaries of
St. Albert and St. Thomas.
As to the texts selected by Nahm from Thomas the first text on p. !M6
could have been befittingly complemented by his Commentary on the
Sentences, bk. I, dist. 31, q. fl, a. I; and even more so by Summa Theologiae,
II-II, q. 145, a. fl. Similarly, the second selection on pp. fl46 f. would be
ideally complemented by Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. fl7, a. 1, ad. 3. Last
but not least, as a paraphrase and enrichment of Pseudo-Dionysius's De
divinis nominibus, c. 4, § 7 (which in turn, is ultimately rooted in Plato,
Symp. flllA) , some portions of Thomas's Commentary on the Divine
Names, chap. 4, lesson 5 would considerably enhance the informative and
representative value of Nahm's selections of Thomas. Moreover, to do
justice to medieval aesthetics, such authors as Erigena, Richard of St.
Victor, William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle,
Thomas of York, Ulrich of Strasbourg, Vitelo, Duns Scotus, and Dionysius
the Carthusian, but most of all Albert the Great and Bonaventure (probably the greatest and richest aesthetic writers in the Middle Ages), should
be included in any anthology of aesthetics. These authors are suggested
here not only for their aesthetic doctrines or theories in general but also
and even more importantly for their specific contributions to such central
topics of Professor Nahm's Readings as the" great analogy" between divine
and human artist, 4 as well as artistic talent, genius, inspiration, motivation,
and art criticism. 5
• St. Thomas speaks of three correlated analogies: one, between the human
and divine creative idea (In II Sent. 18, 1, 9! sol.); another, between human and

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BOOK REVIEWS

In the modern selections the most glaring omission seems to be, among
the continental rationalists, Alexander G. Baumgarten. The reason for the
gravity of this omission is the role Baumgarten played in starting to replace, to a great extent, the premodern preoccupation with the philosophy
of beauty and art with the modern predilection for the artist and artwork 6-a development expressed in the very title of this Readings, and
thematically expressed in chapters 2 to 8 and 9 to 13, respectively. And
yet, the editor goes only so far in the introductory essay on the continental
rationalists as to discuss some doctrines (p. 296) of Reflections on Poetry,
Metaphysics, and Aethetics, without granting Baumgarten a single selection
from any of these three works. This omission is the more baffling since,
in Nahm's expressed opinion, the contributions of the three selected rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz) are " sparse and avid " (p.
297a); and Leibniz' is "meager" even in comparison to Descartes'. (p.
299b)
At this point it may be noted that some text references connected with
the selections are defective. In identifying, e. g., the first two selections
from Thomas, 7 the important portion "part I" is omitted each time the
editor refers to these texts (p. 200 n. 58; p. 246) ; and in the second selection, "art. 5 " should read "art. 4. (p. 246b) Also, in discussing Aquinas,
Nahm states that according to Thomas, "Art makes a work of art. The
artist is a craftsman. His technique does not necessarily produce beauty; "
and identifies the source of these views in footnote 56 merely as
" Commentary on Ethics" -which is a work of 566 pages in the Mariettiedition.8 Moreover, the Dionysian- Albertian doctrine, which in Nahm's
own words reads " the essence of the thing pertains to brilliance," is identified on p. 199a merely as one to be found in Opusculum de pulchro et de
divine art (De Verit. 4, 4, sed contra 3; !'!, 14 sed contra !'!; Summa contra Gent.
II, c. !'!6, n. 1039; Quodlib. V, 1, !'!; Summa Theol. I, q. 14, a. 8); and a third,
between human and divine artist (Summa Theol. I-II, q. 93, a. 1; q. 45, a. 6).
5 The table of contents of de Bruyne's Etudes (vol. III, pp. 380-400) lists one
page each on artistic conception and mtention; four pages on artistic inspiration;
six, on artistic creation; eight, on artistic imitation; nine, on artistic imagination;
ten, on aesthetic crticism; and fourteen, on artistic talent or genius-all being
central topics in Nahm's Readings. Cf. E. de Bruyne, The Esthetics t>f the Middle
Ages. Eileen B. Hennessy, tr. (New York: F. Ungar, 1969), pp. 135-38; 140 f.;
144 and 148. Similarly, the subject index of Tatarkiewicz' Medieval Aesthetics contains such highly relevant entries as art, artist, beauty, content and expression
in art, idea, imagination, imitation, inspiration, intuition, visual arts, etc. (pp.
31H5.)
6 See Readings, chap. 1, pp. 5-7.
7 Summa Theol. I, q. 39, a. 8; I, q. 5, a. 4, ad I.
8 In X libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum. Editio tertia. (R. M. Spiazzi,
ed. Turini: Marietti, 1964). Nahm may refer to In VI. Eth. lect. 4, nn. 1165-1173.

BOOK REVIEWS

793

bono. Actually, it is taken from the solutio of the second and fifth questions,
with the significant difference that Nohm's phrase "essence of the thing"
reads in those passage "essence of beauty" (ratio pulcri) .9
Some words, finally, about the editor's way of referring to some historical
facts and stating certain doctrines. Professor N ahm remarks in chapter
6 that Edgar de Bruyne and Maurice de Wulf have argued that the De
pulchro et bono was written by Albertus Magnus rather than by Thomas
Aquinas. (Pp. QOOa and p. 199 n. 50) This remark suggests that these two
scholars were the first to recognize Albert's authorship of the opusculum
in question. This, however, is not the case. Mercier questioned as early
as 1894 that the work was Thomas's/ 0 and Pierre Mandonnet attributed
it to Albert in 1910; 11 whereas De Wulf and De Bruyne did so in 1924
and 1946, respectively. 12 Furthermore, two parallel statements may easily
confuse the reader without additional explanation. On p. 199 the editor
states that the opusculum in question is one which " has been listed among
the writings of St. Thomas which are not genuine; " whereas on page QOOa
he declares that the writing " is not listed among St. Thomas' writings."
(Italics mine.) The truth is that in the past the opusculum was actually
attributed to Aquinas. P. A. Ucelli, the discoverer and first editor, wrote
about it as a Thomas-autograph in 1867, and published it under Thomas's
name in 1869; 13 and Michael de Maria included it in Thomas's Opuscula
philosophica et theologica, III, pp. 561-88, since misled by four seventeenth
century witnesses. 14 As a consequence of these publications P. Vallet 15
J. J. Urniburu/ 6 G. Lepore, 17 et al., took it for granted that the treatise
was Aquinas's work. But, due to the efforts of Mercier, Mandonnet, de
M. de Maria-ed. (Tiferni Tiberini, 1886), pp. 565 and 571.
En realite, cet opuscule ne semble pas appartenir a S. Thomas," wrote Mercier
in "Du beau dans Ia nature et dans l'art," Revue Neo-scolastique, I, 3 (July,
1894), p. 285, n. 1.
11 Des Ecrits Autheutiques de Saint Thomas d'Aquin.
(Fribourg: Herder, 1910).
12 M. de Wulf, Histoire de la Philosophie Medievale, I. (Louvain:
Bibliotheque
de l'Institut Superieur de Philosophie, 1924). English tr. by E. C. M.essenger.
(London: Longmanns, Green, 1925), vol. I, 396. De Bruyne, Etudes, III, pp. 1611 73, especially p. 162.
18 Di un codice autografo di S. Tommaso d'Aquino conservato nella Biblioteca
nazionale di Napoli memoria. Reprint from La Caritit, II (1867) of Naples. Del
bello·, Questione inedita di S. Tommaso d'Aquino ... Napoli, 1869.
"'See the de Maria-ed., Praefacio, pp. 561 f.
15 Metaphysica
et Ethica (Praelectiones Philosophicae ad Mentem S. Thomae
Aquinatis, II). Editio prima. (Paris: A. Roger et F. Chernoviz, 1879). Ed.
secunda. (Paris: Jouby et Roger, 1880).
16 Ontologia (lnstitutiones
Philosophicae, II). (Vallisoleti: A. Cuesta, 1891),
pp. 527, 529-32, 538-40.
17 Lectiones Aesthetice11. (Viterbii:
Agnesotti, 1905), p. 19.
9

10 "

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BOOK REVIEWS

Wulf, and Grabmann, authors do now unanimously attribute the treatise to
Albert; and so does, most importantly, the critical edition of Albert's Opera
omnia. 18 It would, finally, be helpful to inform the reader that, although
the" Opusculum de pulckro et de borw" is Albert's rather than Thomas's
commentary on Dionysius' On the Divine Names, chap. 4, § 7, Thomas also
wrote a commentary on this work, in which chap. 4, lessons 5 and 6 are
the longest aesthetic passages in all the works by Aquinas.
And now to the doctrinal interpretations. K. E. Gilbert's understanding
of the classical and the Renaissance concept of the artist (attributed to
Aristotle, pp. 3-4 and 194a) -an interpretation fully adopted by Professor
N ahm and used as the principle of "the pattern " of his Readings (p. Sa)is highly inaccurate and misleading. For the alleged Aristotelian idea of
the artist is said to mean that the artist merely " discovers the statue in
the marble and carves out what he finds in it," whereas in the Renaissance interpretation " no such statue exists in the marble but is originated
by the sculptor." (p. 4b.) Yet, if one carefully reads any number of texts
by Aristotle, dealing with the topic, he will readily see that the GilbertNahm reading of Aristotle's view is in fact misleading. Certainly, Aristotle
does consider the marble as a material substance capable of receiving the
artistic form and, as such, as matter in potency to the shape of the statue
which will be imposed upon it by the artist. But Aristotle also teaches
that any such artistic material is in potency to the artistic form not in
the sense that it has it " hidden " in itself, ready to be discovered and
actuated, but rather insofar as it, as any matter, is suitable to receiving any
number of forms-while actually receiving precisely the one form which
is conceived by the artist, and imposed on matter according to that conceived form. All this is in the very texts selected by the editor. We read,
for instance, "All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e., with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is
capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and
not in the thing made " ; and again, " it is the shape and the form which
pass from the carpenter ... It is his soul, wherein is the 'form', and
his knowledge, which cause his hands ... to move his tools and his tools
to move the materials. . . ." 19 Furthermore, Gilbert's distinction fails to
apply also to St. Augustine, who, as Nahm points out (p. 198a) is speaking
of the "beautiful patterns which through the medium of men's souls are
conveyed into their artistic hands." One may also question the wisdom
of the editor's remark, "It is clear that Augustine is convinced that art
is 'wind and smoke' "-a remark made by Nahm right before acknowl18

Alberti Magni Super Dionysium De Divinis Nominibus (Opera omnia, tom.

87); nn. 71-9!'l. P. Simon, ed. (Monasterii Westfalorum: in aedibus Aschendorff,
197!'l), pp. 180b-195 b.
19 Aristotle, Nic. Eth., VI, 4, 1140a 11-13; De gen. an., I, !'l!'l, 730b 14-19.
Readings, pp. 187a, 139a.

BOOK REVIEWS

795

edging the centrality of the "great analogy" to Augustine's thought (p.
198) . In Conf. X, 84 Augustine merely emphasizes that the beauty of the
human artwork is a potentially harmful allurement to the human soul. But
that remark alone does not entitle anyone to conclude that, in Augustine's
opinion, artistic beauty or human art itself is nothing but " wind and
smoke," unless one interprets Augustine as holding either that the analogate
of divine art is " wind and smoke " or that " wind and smoke " emanates
from divine beauty.
Also questionable in terms of consistency are the editor's assertion that
Dionysius held God to be both the Nameless and the Many-named and his
remark, " To ascribe beauty to God or to predicate it of Him is to ascribe
a term to the Nameless." (p. 199a) Besides, this latter observation ignores
the Neoplatonic doctrine of Dionysius that God is "at once beautiful and
super-beautiful," or "as beautiful and as Beauty." 20
All these interpretational weaknesses are dwarfed, however, by those
concerning St. Thomas's aesthetic thought. Professor Nahm's introduction
to St. Thomas's aesthetic views begins with quoting the utterly irrelevant
Thomistic teaching concerning the absolute incognoscibility by reason of the
triuneness of God. Having stated that teaching, Nahm proceeds to declare
that " the issue here is of importance for the Thomist Philosophy of Art
and for the followers of St. Thomas' doctrine." (p. 199a) One need not
be an authority on Thomistic aesthetics to recognize the erroneousness of
this statement. For, obviously, the natural unknowability of the triuneness
of God can by no means lead to the recognition of the three analytic principles constituting the essence of beauty, as the unknowable and the unknown are per se incapable of leading to any knowledge in the human intellect. Thus, the only conceivable reason why the editor should introduce
his treatment of Thomas's philosophy of beauty with the doctrine of the
absolute incognoscibility of the triune God as triune seems to be that, out
of the three passages in which Thomas lists all three analytic principles
of beauty, two passages occur in a trinitarian context. 21 For from this one
might conclude that either the idea of the triune God in general or the
" appropriations " of the three divine persons in particular enable the mind
to recognize the essence of beauty. The fact is, however, that the opposite
is true. To show this to be true, one must know that in the first selected
text Thomas asks whether it is proper to attribute, with Augustine, beauty
to the Son. 22 In answering this question Thomas argues as follows: For
De div. nom., c. 4, § 7. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 8, col. 708D.
The two trinitarian passages are In I Sent. d. 81, q. 2, a. 1, sol. and Summa
Theol. I, q. 89, a. Sc. The only non-trinitarian text is Summa Theol. II-II, q. 145,
a. 2.
22 Augustine, De Trin. VI, 10, 11 (Migne, Patr. Lat. 42, col. 981) interprets
Hilary's appropriation of the Son, "species," (De Trin. II, 1; Patrol. Lat. 10, col.
51A) as meaning "beauty."
20

21

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BOOK REVIEWS

beauty, three things are required, viz., integrity, proportion, and clarity.
But the Son perfectly conforms to the nature of the Father; is the expressed
image of the Father; and, as the Verb, is perfectly intelligible. These truths
render the Son having integrity, proportion, and clarity. Therefore, the
Son is appropriately called beauty or beautiful. From this syllogism it is
evident that Thomas resolves a trinitarian problem by means of his preconceived idea of beauty rather than derives the latter from the former.
Consequently, the trinitarian context has, per se, no bearing on Thomas's
notion of beauty. Nevertheless, Nahm compounds the misinterpretation in
question by proceeding to discuss a Thomistic-scholastic doctrine concerning
the relation of faith and reason, which is as completely unrelated to
Aquinas's aesthetic theory as the trinitarian issues have been found to be.
(p. 199)
In the next portion of his introductory essay to Thomistic aesthetics
Professor Nahm misunderstands Jacques Maritain in remarking that two
doctrines connected with the "great analogy," viz., Dionysius's conception
of God as the superbeautiful Creator proportionately imparting beauty
to all his creatures, 23 and Thomas's notion of art as a practical habit, lead
to "one problem which the Schoolmen encountered in Philosophy of Art."
The problem is identified with Maritain's alleged contention that " the
production of beauty belongs to God alone as His true property "-so much
so that, to quote again Nahm's assertion of Maritain, "should the artist
attempt to produce beauty, the effort is a denial of the conditions of
making and, in certain circumstances, an arrogation of the aseity of God."
(p. QOOb) What all this is supposed to mean is a clash between Thomas
and Maritain: the affirmation by the former and the denial by the latter
of the possibility of man being able to act analogously to God the Artist.
Now, it is true that the subsequently given lengthy quotation is actually
contained in Maritain's "The Frontiers of Poetry." 24 But in that very
difficult text Maritain is not generally asserting, contrary to Nahm's understanding, man's inability to create beauty in a manner analogous to God.
What Maritain does maintain in that text in an extremely metaphorical
and cryptic language is that human art, as anything that touches the
transcendental order, 25 has the tendency to go beyond the limitations of
the human condition and to become "pure" or "abstract" art (whereby
Maritain means art in the form of its primary analogate or, simply, divine
art which creates ex nihilo rather than makes out of a pre-existent material); and that this endeavor is necessarily unrealizable-just as it is impos23 Nahm does not identify this text.
It is De div. nom. c. 4, § 7 (Patr. Graeca,
3, col. 703C) .
24 Maritain,
Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers of Poetry. J. W. Evans,
tr. (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 196ft), pp. IQQ f.
25 Op. cit., n. 178, p. QQ4.

BOOK REVIEWS

797

sible for the contingent man to become God, the being-by-itself (ens a se).
In brief, all Maritain maintains is that, in the strictest sense of the term
artist, i.e., as meaning creator, only God is an artist-just as in the fullest,
pure, and absolute sense only God is good. 26 In holding this view Maritain
does not for a moment question the possibility for man to be an artist in
the sense of a person making artworks in a fashion analogous to God, as
Thomas maintained. There are numerous texts in Art and Scholasticism
to confirm this interpretation. "To produce beauty," Martain writes in
one passage, " likewise belongs to God alone in the strict sense." 27 Again:
" Thus, the work bears the mark of the artist; it is the offspring of his
soul and his spirit. In this respect also human art imitates God " ; and,
"Artistic creation does not copy God's creation, it continues it." 28 In brief,
then, there is no problem stemming from Thomas's notion of the " great
analogy " for the modern schoolman; nor does Maritain disagree with
Thomas;-simply Professor Nahm misinterprets Maritain.
Having gone through this list of critical remarks, one may perhaps wonder
about the value of Professor Nahm's Readings. For this reason this reviewer hastens to assure any potential reader of this anthology that the
above points, although rather numerous, are indubitably outweighed by
the overall value of this work. For one thing, misprints and defective
quotations, as well as historical inaccuracies or isolated doctrinal misinterpretations, are easily corrected in any later edition (which this anthology
would certainly deserve); and even as they stand in the present first edition,
they are vastly outnumbered by hundreds of exact quotations and thousands of items of invaluably precious information.
To support this favorable (and, apparently, abrupt) evaluation, one
may consider Professor Nahm's Readings absolutely (in itself) and relatively (in comparison to other aesthetic anthologies); and in the latter
case, one may compare this publication with other similar ones both quantitatively and qualitatively.
In terms of mere length Nahm's Readings is presently the third among
English aesthetic anthologies. 29 In regard to the number of selected authors
Nahm's Readings contains texts from no less than 46 aestheticians; and,
as such, together with Melvin Rader's A Modern Book of Esthetics, 80 it
is the most comprehensive Engilsh aesthetic anthology.
With respect to the character of the editorial texts there are today five
•• Op. cit., p. 122.
27 Op. cit., p. 84. Italics mine.
•• Op. cit., pp. 87, 60.
•• Hofstadter-Kuhns' Philosophies of Art and Beauty (New York: The Modern
Library, 1964) contains 701 pages; M. Levich's Aesthetics (New York: Random
House, 1968), 649 pages.
8 ° Fourth edition.
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978). 568 pp.

798

BOOK REVIEWS

kinds of aesthetic anthologies. The first kind contains, besides the selected
texts, nothing but a few biographical data on the selected authors; 31 the
second kind, a very brief general introduction only; 32 ·the third kind, a
general introduction and a very short characterization or biography of each
selected author; 33 the fourth kind, a general introduction and a doctrinal
summary or a special doctrinal introduction to each selection; 34 and the
fifth kind, a general introduction as well as a special doctrinal essay in each
chapter and biographical information about each selected aesthetician. 35 So
considered, Nahm's Readings belongs to the most ambitious and most sophisticated fifth kind of aesthetic anthology.
In respect to the number of the selected periods in the history of aesthetics a good practical measure of the comprehensiveness of an aesthetic
anthology is how much it includes of ancient Greek aesthetic thoughts and
of the period between Hellenistic and modern aesthetics. One extreme in
this respect is Stolnitz' Aesthetics, 36 in which the first selection is from
Aristotle; the second, from Tolstoy. The richest selection (disregarding
Nahm's), in contrast, contains selections from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,
Augustine, and Marsilio Ficino before moving on to the moderns. 37 Professor Nahm's Readings, however, includes seven Presocratics before Plato
and Aristotle; the sixth chapter is dedicated to eight Hellenistic and medieval authors (Philo, Philostratus, Longinus, Plotinus, and Augustine; and
Dionysius, Aquinas, and Dante); and the seventh chapter contains selections from two Renaissance writers (Leone Ebreo and Leonardo da Vinci),
before turning to modern aestheticians-a truly refreshing and long-needed
innovation. For this innovative superiority the editor deserves high praise
and genuine appreciation from anyone who is aware of the wealth of medieval and Renaissance aesthetic thought or interested in observing the continuity of thought in the history of aesthetics.
While the relative consideration alone helps us already to recognize that
Nahm's Readings is among the best in a number of respects within the
field of contemporary English aesthetic anthologies, the true value of
Readings remains hidden from us if only its relative superiority is considered. In the considered opinion of this reviewer the greatest value of
31 E. g., Beardsley- Schueller, eds., Aesthetic Inquiry.
(Belmont, Calif.: Dickenson, 1967) . 805 pp.
82 E. g., A. Sesonske,
What Is Art? (New York: Oxford University Press,
1968). 428 pp.
88 E. g., J. Stolnitz, Aesthetics.
(New York: Macmillan, 1965). 115 pp.
84 E. g., M. Levich, op. cit.
35 E. g., P. E. Richter,
Perspectives in Aesthetics. (New York: The Odyssey
Press, 1967) . 472 pp.
86 See n. 83 above.
87 The selection in question is the Hofstadter-Kuhn
anthology. See n. 29 above.

799

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Nahm's Readings can be recognized only through a careful and reflective
reading of the general introduction and, even more so, of the twelve special
introductory essays to chapters Q to 13. In the general introduction (chap.
1) Professor N ahm broadly sketches the difference between the philosophies
of beauty and art before and after Baumgarten, as the central theme moved
from divine creation to human making, giving increasing emphasis to
artistic genius, inspiration, and creation. In the special introductions the
reader is given a comprehensive and clearly drawn outline of how the main
topic or topics of the chapter were treated within the respective period by
the selected authors. Nahm usually compares and contrasts the treatment
of the main issues in any one period with a treatment of those issues in the
previous and/or subsequent periods. In every case, however, the birth,
growth, and development of the leading aesthetic ideas, together with their
impacts and relative values, are sketched with a few bold and masterly
strokes, so much so that each introduction (with the partial exception of
that in chapter 6) constitutes an impressive, even dazzling display of
the author's familiarity and intuitive-comprehensive vision of the dominant
features of the period in question 38 and, cumulatively, of the entire body
of aesthetic thought, with all the complexities of the interrelations of its
components and factors. These sketches cannot fail to appear to the careful reader as the magnificent fruits of a lifetime spent on studying and reflecting on the history of aesthetics, and as a brilliant manifestation of
Professor Nahm's own aesthetic wisdom.
All in all, despite its isolated and relatively few shortcomings, this
aesthetic anthology is an extremely rich and enriching source-book of ideas
about beauty, art, and artist, and an almost uniquely profound and rewarding philosophy of aesthetic history, that concentrates on the enduring mysteries of artistic genius, originality, freedom, and creation, with
its quantity and quality beautifully balanced.
FRANCIS

J. KovAcH

University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma

Catholicism Confronts Modernity: A Protestant View. By LANGDON
GILKEY. New York: The Seabury Press, 1975. Pp. Qll. $8.95.
Langdon Gilkey, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of
Chicago Divinity School, offers us, in Catholicism Confronts Modernity, a
work that is insightful and richly suggestive. The book's point of departure
is the current crisis of Catholic theology and structures in the aftermath
88

See, e. g., chapter 10, pp. 383-90 and chapter 11, pp. 423-24.

800

BOOK REVIEWS

of Vatican II; and its writing is animated by the author's conviction that
"the resolution of Catholicism's most significant dilemmas [is] the most
important thing that can happen for the whole church in the present." (p.
175)
As contribution to this resolution Gilkey presents the reflections of
a sympathetic and concerned observer who brings to his analysis the fruit
of the Protestant experience of the last two centuries, which witnessed the
rise and decline of liberal Protestantism and nco-Orthodoxy (a trajectory
which contemporary Roman Catholic thought shows manifold signs of
repeating) . Indeed, Gilkey himself is struggling to articulate a renewed
liberal theology, chastened and purified by the Barthian critique, yet serious about the challenges of historical consciousness and process to Christian
theologizing.
The methodological basis of Gilkey's undertaking is his clarification of
Vatican II's emphasis upon " aggiornamento" in terms of the problematic
relation which he perceives between the symbols of the tradition and contemporary human experience. In this regard he reiterates in shortened form
the analysis of secularity as radical challenge to religion which he developed
at length in his earlier book, Naming the Whirlwind. He adds, however, a
nuanced and extremely helpful study of the levels of meaning of theological symbols; apropos of this, I would venture to say that Chapters Four
and Five of the book, entitled, respectively, "Sources and Tradition" and
" The Origins of Action in Theological Understanding," are the strongest
of the present work and as good a short introduction to theological method
as any I know.
Gilkey maintains that we do better to speak of a "development of symbols" rather than a " development of dogmas " ; for the former must be
continually filled with new existential content if they are to remain creatively relevant to actual experience. In particular he holds that the key task
facing Catholic theology today is " to translate traditional Catholic symbols
into the nonsupernaturalistic forms of modern experience, thought, and
valuations." (p. 58)
Though this "hermeneutic aggiornamento" must extend through the entire range of Christian symbols, a particularly crucial importance attaches
to the ultimate symbol, that of God. Gilkey thus reaffirms his persuasion,
already at the center of Naming the Whirlwind, that the renewal of God
language is the paramount challenge confronting theology today. To my
mind Gilkey in the present book speaks about the need for such reinterpretation much more than he actually engages in the task he advocates. However, he does indicate the direction he believes the advance should take,
as when he states, "Any meaningful and valid concept of God must be
set in dynamic, active, related terms " (p. 90) , a thesis which seems to
put Gilkey in general agreement with process theologians like Ogden and
Cobb.

BOOK REVIEWS

801

Catholicism Confronts Modernity has grown out of lectures delivered by
the author to Catholic audiences over the past several years. Yet, despite
their " occasional " character and inevitable repetitions, the chapters manifest an astonishingly high quality of theological reflection. It is as tribute
to their stimulus and as token of concern for the emergence of a renewed
liberal theology (an enterprise to which Professor Gilkey has already contributed a great deal) that I offer some critical reflections of my own.
Firstly, the book at times betrays the perennial liberal temptation to embrace modernity in too uncritical a fashion, with the ensuing danger that its
perceptions and standards become normative for Christian faith. This tendency, of course, aroused the ire of Barth against classical theological
liberalism; and, I must confess, there were certain passages in Chapter
Two on "The Priesthood in the Modern World" which brought an exclamatory "Nein!" to my lips. Happily, in other sections of the book,
Gilkey does add needed nuances, as when he avers: "No philosophical
system per se, modern or Greek, can be adopted without transformation to
fit the symbols of our tradition." (p. 1£6) This, in my view, is the crucial
point. Stated in terms of the typology of H. Richard Niebuhr's classic
Christ and Culture: a revitalized liberal theology must labor according
to the model of " Christ the Transformer of Culture " and must not espouse
the " Christ of Culture " model, if it is to be both creative and faithful.
Secondly, the reader of Gilkey's book experiences a strange hesitancy at
the heart of the hermeneutical concern which structures the work. On the
one hand, there resounds the insistence that the symbols of the tradition
must be reinterpreted if they are to live; on the other hand, there lurks the
suspicion that secularity may be impervious to just that dimension of experience which such symbols elucidated. The result becomes an oscillation
between the two poles of traditional symbols and contemporary experience
that can be more productive of vertigo than of foundational principles upon
which to construct, however provisionally, new theologies and new structures.
This sense of uncertainty crops up, for example, in the book's last chapter, "Addressing God in Faith," where Gilkey seems to waver over the question whether "the presence of the holy" can or cannot be ·"evoked" in
worship (contrast pp. 180 and 187): an irresolution which threatens to render the whole reinterpretation project somewhat otiose. It is, perhaps, such
uncertainty which accounts for Gilkey's speaking eloquently about the need
for reinterpretation, while seeming to accomplish relatively little of the task
himself. On occasion, when he ventures his hand, the resultant theology
strikes one as strongly reminiscent of Tillich-a respectable enough achievement, but somewhat anticlimactic in view of the apocalyptic analysis of
secularity's challenge.
Let me, then, suggest where the issue may lie. In order for the hermeneutical relation between symbol and experience to receive its full due,

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BOOK REVIEWS

it must be self-consciously extended to include the third pole, everywhere
presupposed, but nowhere explicitly treated: namely, the creative interpreter and his will to interpret. For it is this mediator between the tradition and the present, the individual prophet, poet, saint, or theologian,
who embodies his or her own experiential quest in a more ample symbol
and thus makes it available to the common experience of the community.
Moreover, the " embodiment," whether in scripture, work of art, style of
life, or summa, is essential, if the symbol is to become publicly accessible
and not a mere fugitive illumination. In brief, a reflective concern for
reinterpretation must broaden into a philosophical meditation upon the
interpreter who creatively weds the logos of the tradition with the energies
of the present, and upon the vehicles in which the new vision becomes
incarnate.
What I am suggesting is perhaps akin to what Gilkey himself admits
when he asserts in self-critical vein: "It is not enough for theological reflection (as now I must confess I once thought) to relate the eidetic
meaning of the symbol to lived, existential experience in order for us to
conceive it. For a theological symbol to become a doctrine for our reflection, it must be expressed in modern ontological and philosophical form."
(p. lfl6) Now modern philosophy is irreducibly a philosophy of the subject. Hence Gilkey's "move towards metaphysics," adumbrated in the
above citation, should lead him to join the congenial company of Rahner
and Lonergan who base their hermeneutical endeavors on a metaphysics
of the incarnate subject operating in a world open to transcendence. The
outcome of modernity's (and Professor Gilkey's) confrontation with Catholicism and its philosophical sensitivity might then be a renewed appreciation of the need for metaphysics if we are ever to rise above an oppressively
one-dimensional existence and glimpse once more the Mystery which is
our home. Ultimately," aggiornamento" will be more than a passing fancy
only if founded upon a reflectively critical philosophy of God and man.
RoBERT

P. IMBELLI

St. Joseph's Seminary
Dunwoodie, N. Y.

Historical Atlas of the Religions of the World. Edited by Isma'il Ragi al
Faruqi & David E. Sopher. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1974. Pp. 346. $1fl.50.
This is the first atlas of world religions. It includes sixty five maps,
many of which are pioneer efforts at cartographic interpretation, and twenty
articles on the religions of the world written by thirteen scholars. Cartographic materials have been advanced for some time in the religions of

803

BOOK REVIEWS

Semitic origin, and thus the greater portion of maps in this atlas reflect
emphasis on Christianity (13 maps) , Islam (17 maps), and Judaism (13
maps) . Although there are fewer maps for the other religions, for example,
Hinduism (3 maps), Buddhism (6 maps), indigenous China (I map),
traditional Africa (0), and Amerindian
maps), the exploratory nature
of the effort is clear. Perhaps it will encourage more cartographic work in
these non-Semitic areas. More than anything else, it points to the need
to advance geographical understanding in religion study and the manner
in which spatiotemporal patterns occur in and affect a religion and relationships among religions.
The book is divided into the religions of antiquity, ethnic religions, and
universal religions of the present. It is interesting that Judaism, Hinduism,
and the traditional African religions are still considered ethnic religions and
the universal religions ate limited to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
A coherent understanding of the religions of antiquity is presented through
the theogony, anthropogony, and cosmogony of early religious expression.
However, a coherency is absent in the treatment of some of the ethnic and
universal religions due to the varying perspectives of the individual authors.
Many articles are clearly historical in approach while others proceed from
a more literary or anthropological perspective. Each article is good in itself, and the sections on Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam reflect superior quality, but no consistent methodology is evidenced in the
whole. Moreover, several articles on Japanese religion and Judaism are too
sketchy to offer substantial understanding. It appears that the authors had
no one audience in mind. As a reference work these observations are not
serious; when the work is read as a whole, the lack of coherency is more
significant. Professor al Faruqi, the editor of the articles, has contributed
several chapters, and those on Egyptian religion and Islam may be the most
lasting. His extraordinary grasp of the Sufi tradition and the medieval
crusades in Islam reflect scholarship from within Islam itself, so infrequent in Western reference works on religion.
The value of this atlas and the superior production of it are evident; it
is one of the most attractive reference books available. The bibliographies
are brief and authoritative, the chronologies of the religions are thorough,
and the indices of subjects and proper names are most useful. The editors
and publishers are commended for initiating an atlas of world religions and
introducing scholarship into areas previously unexplored.
WILLIAM

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

CENKNER,

0. P.

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