THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS:

THE DOMINICAN FATHERS OF THE Pnov1NCE OF ST. JosEPH

Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017
VoL. XL

No. 4

OCTOBER, 1976

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT:
OR LITERAL ACCOUNT?

MYTH

A

S MUCH AS it is crucial for a correct understanding
of Aristotle's epistemology, the following passage of
De Anima,, taken from Bk. III, 5, 430 a 20-25, is among
the most debated texts in the whole history of philosophy:
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8e KaTa 8-Dvaµ.iv
xp6vip 7rpoTepa lv T</> M,
8e
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bTe µ.ev vo€t: bTe 8'
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'TOV'TO µ.6vov MMva'TOV Kru
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jLVrfjLOVf:lioµ.€V Bi, O'Trl 'TOV'TO µ.ev a'TrafHs, b 8e 7ra07J'TlKtJ<; VOV<;
cp0ap06s, Kal dV€V 'TOV'TOV oVOev VO€£.

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It is sufficiently clear that the two lines of interpretation that
actually took place in the Middle Ages were prompted by the
ambiguity of the passage itself. Aristotle's words, indeed, led
those philosophers to face the following problem: is the Agent
Intellect a separate entity common to all men as the text seems
to indicate, or is it rather a part of the individual soul as common sense and perhaps even the context itself would advise us
505

506

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

to believe? Unfortunately, new trends of thought did not bring
more decisive solutions to the same persistent problem. As a
matter of fact, the "Active Intellect" was variously understood
in Modern and Contemporary philosophy as well, the tendency
being this time to deemphasize it as much as possible. Thus,
already in the early sixteenth century, Pomponazzi and Zaharella held that the intellect or nous is indissolubly united to the
individual body in its existence and perishes when the body
perishes, but they added that in its functioning it can rise
above the body's limitations. Granting that the nous needs
images as its necessary materials, they point out though that
it lifts itself to the level of the universals and the eternal truths.
From this they conclude that it is not in its existence that the
mind is " separable and unaffected and unmixed," but rather
in its act of knowing. And to the Aristotelian question, What
makes us know?, Zabarella replies: it is truth itself, the logical
structure of the world, joined to images as ' their intelligible
form.' In other words, the active intellect is but the intelligibility of the universe itself, and in this sense, it alone is immortal.
Mead and Dewey seem to give us a modernized version of the
same opinion. The active intellect, they would say, is actually
logos. To the question, What makes us know? or What actualizes the universals?, they answer: logos, discourse, language
and communication. However, besides the fact that this is to
send the problem back to the question, What makes discourse
and language possible?, this approach happens to be not Aristotelian at all. Even Randall, who is willing to subscribe to
the substance of it, has this to say: " But it is striking that, important as Aristotle makes logos, what things can be said to
be, he never treats logos itself in biological and functional terms,
as an activity of organisms with the power of nous: he never
treats logos as a 'part ' of the psyche, as one of the functions
making up 'life.' Such treatment is not in the De Anima at all,
but it ought to be." 1
1 John Herman Randall, Jr., Aristotle, Columbia University Press, New York
and London, 1965, p.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

507

Others, such as Werner Jaeger, Alfred E. Taylor, F. Nuyens
and almost every modern interpreter, simply dismiss the difficulty. The active intellect, they say, does not fit logically into
Aristotle's psychology; it is a mere psychological remnant of
Aristotle's early Platonism left over as a myth. Randall is right
when he writes: " Such a view of recent scholars transforms the
logical problem of harmonizing the active intellect with the
rest of Aristotle's thought into the psychological problem of his
' development' ; and we moderns somehow feel that when we
have abandoned logic for psychology we have ' solved ' a
problem." 2
Undoubtedly, Randall is to be commended for his courage
and honesty. And this is all the more so because he himself
proceeds with his example, by attempting to give us a very
elaborated solution. However, one might wonder whether the
very method he adopts for his research does not condemn his
theory to failure. Indeed, it is extremely dangerous to turn
one's own back on the text when one is trying to solve a problem
of history of philosophy. Now, that is precisely what he intends to do. We cannot draw the solution from the analysis
of the text itself, he reasons, because it is too short. We must
then turn to the problem that Aristotle was facing. If we do
this, he thinks, we will find that Pomponazzi and Zabarella
were on the safest path towards a solution.
There is first a basic admission in his opinion which should
have steered his approach in the right direction. "It seems
clear," he says, "that for Aristotle the 'active intellect' must
be something that is more than merely human. It may well be
'the greater' or the cosmic 'nous ' of Anaxagoras." 3 Thus the
problem comes down to this: " Why did he retain this early
Platonism? " 4 But this forces Randall to take a stand, the
essence of which is that this early Platonism is not there, as
Jaeger, Taylor and Nuyens believed, as a mere illogical "remnant," but rather because it is the only ,account that a man
committed to drawing all his explanations from the nature of
9 Op.

cit., p. 108.

I

Ibid.

508

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

things can give of the challenging and paradoxical fact of human knowledge: " If we know what Santayana has called ' The
Secret of Aristotle,' that he is a naturalist through and through,
we can, I think, see in the ' active intellect ' a recognition of
the cardinal difficulty in any naturalistic theory of knowing and
intelligence." 5 In sum, it is there as the failure of a naturalist
who is forced to retreat into the myth of Plato.
As Randall views it, therefore, Aristotle does not give up
easily but the driving power of the tremendous fact that he is
looking into drags him out of the neat realm of natural explanations. He fully realizes that " intelligence is not merely an organ
of adjustment and adaptation, but a means of arriving at what
may fairly be called ' truth'." In view of such a speculative
characteristic, he must say that " mind does seem to rise above
the limitations and conditions of its bodily instrument, and to
be . . . ' unmixed and separable,' and in its vision ' deathless
and eternal'." Of course, Randall recognizes that this Aristotelian approach " is not so much a theory about the ontological status of nous as an appreciation of what nous can do." 0
But then, he reasons, it does not have to be such a theory
either. As he puts it: "There is no problem of 'How knowledge is possible, and why it isn't.' For Aristotle, ' knowing is
not a problem to be solved, but a natural process to be described
and analyzed.'' 7
Following Aristotle through his elaborate analysis, Randall
seems to notice two different aspects: one is the content of
his description, and the other, the mythical expression of the
same in Platonic language. As to the former, according to
Randall, Aristotle is simply integrating the fact of knowing in
the intelligible universe in which we live. As he puts it, Aristotle
"treats knowing as a function of the human organism responding to its environment, as a way of dealing with its world,
a way of functioning in a context. He treats it as a natural
process: there is no gulf between ' mind ' and the rest of nature.
Mind is an intelligible interaction between a knowing organism
"Ibid.

8

[bid,

• Op. cit., p. 105.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

509

and a knowable world." 8 Of course, this entails another fact,
because " we could not think at all if the world were not thinkable, if it had no intelligible structure, if it were not, in some
sense, the embodiment of ' reason,' of logos-if it were not what
can be aptly called a ' realm of mind ' ... That is, the world is
an intelligible system or order, a ' realm' of reason and mind." 9
From this discovery, Randall goes on to another one which is
rather amazing. He writes: "And when we think in spite of
all our limitations, in spite of all the 'perturbations ' of our
individual human minds, it is more than just we men thinking.
It is more than just particular animal organisms doing something by themselves. It is the actualization of that system and
order, of that 'greater and cosmic nous', as Anaxagoras calls
it." 10 And the status of pure potentiality that Aristotle attributes to our mind seems to confirm Randall in this kind of
Aristotelian panlogism: " Thinking and knowing," he says, " is
the' thought' embodied there in the world, 'potentially,' Aristotle would say, being actually thought by us mortals. It is the
world reason or nous flowering in our human knowing. The
farther you push the human mind, as Aristotle does, to ' pure
potentiality,' to the power to know all truth, the closer you
come to 'pure actuality,' to that perfect truth itself." 11
If that is all that Aristotle is saying, concludes Randall, then
the passage which so much disturbs the interpreter is to be dismissed as a pure " mythical expression." ' The active intellect'
is clearly a Platonic myth, says Randall. " It is clothed in the
language of Platonic myth . . . not in the normal Aristotelian
language of exact statement. Such language always points to
human experience; and if taken too literally always turns out
to be nonsense ... The implication of the myth, the point of
the metaphor, is that thinking is not something alien to the
universe. ' Mind' is not a kind of cosmic accident. It is rather
a natural and inevitable development in a universe with the
"Ibid.
• Op. cit., p. 104.
10
11

Ibid.
Ibid.

510

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

character ours displays, reaching its ' highest ' actualization in
the minds of men." 12
It is quite clear that Randall's interpretation calls for a very
close scrutiny. It would seem, indeed, at first glance, that the
preconceived thesis of Aristotle's pan"logism has prejudiced the
entire interpretation of the puzzling paragraph; and it is most
distressing to realize that no attempt has been made to study
the immediate context in .search of a possible connection between the so-called "active intellect" and what Aristotle
teaches us about sensation, imagination, and intellection in general. Randall's genuine Aristotelian presuppositions, on the
other hand, are very few in number and too broad in scope. All
dedicated Aristotelians, indeed, would certainly agree with him
as to these two tenets, namely, that our knowledge needs an
organism if it i.s to be carried out, and that our knowledge would
not take place at all if the universe were not intelligible; but
they would find very controversial his basic contention as to
the possibility of human knowledge not being at stake in Aristotle's view. This belief being the decisive reason why Randall
feels entitled to disregard the text and turn to general considerations, it is quite clear that an enlightened criticism should center around the question, Is it true that knowledge is not a
problem to Aristotle?
Randall himself provides our research with a sound start. He
acknowledges that according to Aristotle human knowledge
would be impossible if the universe were not intelligible.
Hence, the whole problem boils down to this: supposing that
the universe is: intelligible, would human knowledge of it be
possible if our intellect were merely organic? Thus, if it can be
shown that in Aristotle's view the mind could not know the
world if it were purely organic, and that its " inorganic " character calls for the use of an " active intellect," then it can be
established as well that the paragraph under consideration is
but an attempt to answer the obvious question, How is our
knowledge possible?
12

Op. cit., p. 105,

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

511

We will try to answer this question following Aquinas's
methodology, the main characteristic of which reduces to
avoiding inconsistencies with the De Anima's text on one hand
and Aristotle's overall doctrine on the other. This legitimate
concern is already noticeable in the general argument whereby
he dismisses the notion of Agent Intellect as common faculty on
grounds that such a stand would be mo.st inconsistent both with
Aristotle's clearly stated doctrine of actual intelligibility's requiring total abstraction from phantasms 18 and with a previous
passage of the De Anima where the Stagirite had insisted upon
the fact that both intellects-the possible and the active-are
" in the soul." 14 Qn the other hand, he refers Aristotle's conclusion on immortality to the" soul-mind" rather than to any
particular kind of mind, and he proves this to be the case by
looking back into the De Anima's teaching on the immateriality
of both kinds of mind. 15 Furthermore, he relates the crucial
Aristotelian conclusions on immortality to the problematic remark that had been made in book II and bore on the soul as
a whole, and he emphasizes the identity of content between
the two groups. 16 Finally, if he feels entitled to link the lack
of memory with the post mortem status of the whole soul it is
because he brings to bear on this issue what was said before
on the proper way of being acted upon which characterizes the
possible mind and makes it perishable in the sense of useless
for an after life.17
This leads us to a detailed study of Aristotle's psychology
which is designed to clear the way to a reliable interpretation
of our text and cannot have another outcome but the following
thesis: Aristotle was convinced that intellectual knowledge
would be absolutely ' impossible ' without a faculty quite inorganic and essentially different from senses and imagination,
for which an 'Agent Intellect' would be quite indispensable 1
13

Aquinas, In Libros De Anima Comm., III, lect. 5, par. 735.

" Op. cit. 736.
15 Op. cit.
1 • Op. cit. 743.
17 Op. cit. 745.

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FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

either as a necessary condition or as an integral part of it. Of
course, the establishment of this thesis, which would constitute
sufficient grounds for the dismissal of Randall's theory, would
still leave room for a further investigation about the nature
and the role of the Agent Intellect. We are going to proceed t0
the treatment of these two separate questions: the nature of
' intellectual knowledge ' according to Aristotle and the interpretation of the passage in question which will yield a better
understanding of the active mind.
I-THE NATURE OF" INTELLECTUAL

KNOWLEDGE"

ACCORDING

TO ARISTOTLE.

The meaning of this heading finds its full explanation in the
proposition just mentioned above. Two points are to be made
if it is to be established: (A) Aristotle establishes an essential
difference between the faculty of sense and the intellect as a
faculty; (B) According to him, the possible intellect cannot function without the causality of the Agent Intellect.

A-Essential Difference between the Faculty of Sense and
the Intellect as a Faculty.
(I) While sensation is a true qualitative change which consists in being acted upon in the strict sense of the word, the
·mind cannot, strictly speaking, be acted upon, although in a
broad .sense it can be said to be moved inasmuch as, being the
" possible intellect," it is capable of receiving the forms of its
objects. 18
(2) Hence, sensation is only about particular objects and is
caused by external causes, whereas intellection is also about
universals and is caused by internal objects as well, since universals are in the intellect only. 19
(3) A sense differs from" insensitive things," in that a form
can be imparted to the latter only " with matter," i. e., with
18

See De Anima, Bk. Il, 5, 416 b 80-85 and Bk. ill, 4, 429 a 15. See also Bk.

II, 5, 417 b 5-20.
19

See De Anima, Bk. II, 5, 417 b 20-80.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

513

the same kind of existence it has in the agent (for instance,
the heat of the fire is received in a piece of iron by mere transmissi,on) , whereas the sense faculty can receive it only" without
matter." 20 On the other hand, sense differs from mind in that
the former can receive " without matter" only a few forms,
whereas the latter can receive in that manner all forms. The
limiting factor in the sense being its possession of an " organ " although the sense faculty, which is "materially identical"
with its organ, is " essentially different " from it- it follows
that the intellect must be essentially free from any " organ"
whatsoever. 21 As Aquinas explains it 22 :
See Op. cit., Bk. II, rn, 424 a 15-80. See also Bk. II, 12, 424 a 25-424 b 10.
In the De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 429 a 17-27 (English translation according to
J. L. Creed and A. E. Wardmann, in The Philosophy of Aristotle, edited by Renford
Bambrough, A Mentor Classic, p. 270---we are going to refer to the pagination
of this edition even when we adopt a different translation as will be indicated in
time) we read: "It is necessary, then, since it thinks of everything, for the mind
to be unmixed with anything, so that, as Anaxagoras says, it may have control,
that is, so that it may recognize things. For any alien element that appears in
it is a hindrance and impediment; it follows that it cannot have any other nature
than that of being capable of doing what it does. That part of the soul that is
called mind (and by the mind I mean that with which the soul thinks and believes) is not a thing that exists in actuality at all before it thinks. So it is not
plausible to suppose that it is mingled with the body; if it were, it would come
to be of a particular kind-hot or cold-or it would have some organ as the
faculty of sense does; but as it is, it has none." St. Thomas explains this passage
as follows: ". . . Aristotle argues that it cannot be compounded of bodily things,
as Empedocles thought, but must be separate from such things, as Anaxagoras
thought. Now the reason why Anaxagoras thought this was that he i:egarded intellect as the principle that dominated and initiated all movement; which it could
not be if it were either a composition of bodily things or identified with any one
of such things; for in these cases it would be restricted to one course of action
only. Hence Aristotle's observation that, in Anaxagoras's view, the intellect was
detached ' so that it might command' and, commanding, initiate all movement.
But, since we are not concerned at present with the all-moving Mind, but with
the mind by which the soul understands, we require a different middle term to
prove that the intellect is unmixed with bodily things; and this we find in its
universal knowledge. That is why Aristotle adds 'That it might know,' as if
to say: as Anaxagoras maintained that intellect was unmixed because it commands,
so we have to maintain that it is unmixed because it knows." (St. Thomas's
Commentary On Aristotle's "De Anima," Bk. III, 4, paragraphs 677, 678, 679,
translated by Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries, with an Introduction by
Ivo Thomas, 0. P., New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1965, P· 404.),
20

21

22

Op. cit., Bk. II, 12, par. 532, p. 831

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FRANCISCO L, PECCORINI

I answer that, while it is true that every recipient receives a form
from an agent, there are different ways of receiving form. Form
received in a patient from an agent sometimes has the same mode
of existence in the ·recipient as in the agent; which occurs when
the patient is disposed to the form in the same way as the agent.
For whatever is received is received into the being of the recipient;
so that, if the recipient is disposed as the agent is, form comes to
be in the recipient in the manner in which it exists in the agent.
And in this case the form is not imparted without the matter. For
although the numerically one and the same division of matter that
is in the agent does not become the recipient's, the latter becomes,
in a way, the same as the material agent, inasmuch as it acquires
a material disposition like that which was in the agent. And it is
in this way that air receives the influence of fire, and any other
passive thing in nature the action that alters its natural quality.
(4) Sensation is absolutely incompatible with error, whereas
thinking can be either true or false. 23
(5) The sense faculty is essentially corporeal because it is
a faculty in a body (in an organ) , whereas the mind neither
has an organ, as shown above, nor can be identified with any
corporeal entity, not even with imagination.
(a) If the mind were corporeal, indeed, it would not have
an unlimited object and any attempt to go beyond its limits
would make it ineffective. But, in fact, nothing limits the power
of the mind: 24
These people speak well who describe the soul as the place where
the forms are, except that this is not true of the whole soul, but
only of the part that is capable of thinking; nor are the forms there
in a realized state, but only potentially. That the incapacity of the
faculty of sense to be acted upon is not like this same incapacity
in the faculty of thought is plain from a consideration of the sense
organs and of sensation. After encountering a too violent object
of sense, the sense cannot perceive; it cannot hear after hearing
very loud sounds, it cannot see or smell after having seen very
bright colors or smelled very pungent smells. But when the mind
thinks of what is in the most extreme sense an object of thought,
it does not think any the less of what are objects of thought to a
28 See De Anima, Bk. Ill, S, 427 b 8-14.
••De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 429 11- 25-429 b 5; p. 270.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

515

lesser degree; rather it thinks of them ·even more. For the faculty
of sensation does not exist independently of the body, but the
mind is separable from it.
(b) The mind is even essentially different from imagination,
which seems to be less corporeal than the senses. Imagining holds
a status somehow intermediate between perceiving and thinking, and yet it is corporeal because it does not require reason
nor can it transcend the objects of sense-perception.
Indeed, imagination is essentially different from sensation: 25
The following considerations make it clear that imagination is not
sensation. Sensation is either a faculty or an activity (as with
sight or seeing, for instance); but something can be imagined when
neither of these is present-the things that are imagined in dreams
are an example. If they were the same in their actualities, it would
be possible for all the beasts to possess imagination; in fact, however, this does not seem to be the case; it does not seem that ants,
bees, or earthworms can possess imagination. Further, sensations
are always true, whereas most imaginings are false. Also, it is not
when our sense is being precise and active about its object that we
imagine something to be a man, but rather when we do not perceive clearly whether this is true or false. And, as we were saying
earlier, we imagine sights even when we have our eyes shut.
On the other hand, imagination
ligence: 26

is not the same as intel-

Nor can imagination be any of the faculties that are always right,
like knowledge or intelligence, for it can be false as well as true.
Furthermore, imagination is not the same as opinion, despite the fact that opinion is compatible with error, because
opinion includes belief and reason, which imagination does
not: 27
It remains, then, to see whether imagination is opinion, since opinion
can be both true and false. But opinion is accompanied by belief,
since it is not possible to hold opinions that one does not believe;
and no beast is capable of belief, although many of them possess
imagination. Further, although every opinion is accompanied by
25 De Anima, Bk. III, 8, 428 a 5-15; p. 267.
•• De Anima, Bk. III, 8, 428 a 15-20; p. 268.
27 Ibid.

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FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

belief, belief is also accompanied by conviction; and conviction is
accompanied by reason; and although some beasts possess imagination, none possess reason.
The reason for this inferior status is that imagination is a
mere movement which cannot take place without sensations nor
transcend the objects of sensation. 28
(6) Although both the sense and the mind receive the form
of the object " without matter," nevertheless, they receive it
in a different manner, in that the former is affected by the form
considered in its singularity whereas the latter gets hold of the
same form as already detached from its singularity and in this
sense de-materialized: 29
Now, magnitude and the essence of magnitude are different, so are
water and the essence of water; and it is the same in many other
cases, though not in all-in some the two are the same. Since
this is all so, either one will judge of flesh and of the essence of
flesh with different faculties, or one will do so with the same faculty
when it is in different states. For the flesh is not devoid of matter;
like ' snub,' it is one definite thing contained in another definite
thing. It is with the faculty of sense that one judges the hot and
the cold and all the things of which flesh is a proportion; but it
is with some other facutly, which is either separate from the faculty
of sense or bears the same relation to it as a crooked line does to
itself when it is straightened out, that one judges the essence of
flesh ... In general, then, the activities of the mind are separable
in the same way as objects are separable from their matter.
Many valuable concepts concerning Aristotle's epistemology
are contained in the foregoing paragraph. Reference is made
in it, in the first pJ.ace, to the basic principle that immateriality
is essential to the actual intelligibility of the object. According
to Aristotle, indeed, the mind cannot actually understand anything if it cannot focus the form of the object alone by disregarding its matter. There is no doubt in his mind about this
being so, otherwise he would not say:
since the mind is only a potency for being such things insofar
as they are separable from matter,
De Anima, Bk. III, 8, 428 b 10-15; pp. 268-269.
••De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 429 b 10-25; pp. 270-271.

28

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

517

as he says in the De Anima.30 That these words connote a
power of the individual man who knows is clear despite the
rather misleading translation given to them by Smith, 81 according to which the mind would seem to be only a special state
of the things that are known, and in this sense, it would suit
the panlogistic interpretation of Randall. However, such a
reading does not fit into the course of Aristotle's thought and
certainly does contradict the way Smith himself translated Bk.
III, 4, 429 a 21-24, where he explicitly situated the mind in
the soul.82 On the other hand, the translation provided by Creed
and Wardmann, on the basis of which we are working, finds
a fine support in Moerbeke and Wheelright. 33
Correlatively, then, a thing is intelligible only insofar as it
is capable of being considered without matter at all, and the
process whereby things are placed in that state is called " abstraction." On the other hand, the process of abstraction is one
and the same with the transformation of the possible intellect
into the known object. It is precisely because the object has
become identical to the mind that the mind can know it and
the object itself can in turn be said to have become " actually
intelligible." In this sense the mind is really present in those
things that have become actually intelligible as the only act
they have in that new kind of existence they have put on, and
which oould be called " intentional existence." 34
De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 480 a 8; p. 271.
In The Works of Aristotle, translated into English under the editorship of
W. D. Ross, Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, Vol. III, De Anima, Bk. III, 4, a 8,
80
81

Smith gives us the following translation: "for mind is a potentiality of them
[meaning the objects] only in so far as they are capable of being disengaged from
matter."
•• He says: " Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by mind I mean that
whereby the soul thinks and judges) is, before it thinks, not actually any real
thing."
83 Moerbeke gives us this translation in paragraph n. 727 (in the Yale University
Edition already quoted, p. 421): "Hence in them is no intellect, for the mind that
understands such things is an immaterial potency." Philip Wheelright concurs
in this translation: " Consequently, since mind is the power of becoming these
objects without their matter, it follows that the objects themselves do not contain
mind." (Aristotle, The Odyssey Press, New York, p. 147).
84 De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 480 a 8-5; p. 271: "In the case of things that are

518

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

Therefore, for the mind it is one and the same thing knowing
the object and knowing itself, so much so that there is no
other way for the mind to be actually intelligible than the way
in which the object is so, namely, through the mutual identification mind-object. 85 As St. Thomas puts it: 86
Speculative knowledge and what is knowable ' in this way' (i. e.,
in act) are identical. Therefore the concept of the actually understood thing is also a concept of the understanding through which
the latter can understand itself.

Islamic philosophy, too, got the message. Alfarabi, for instance, wrote: 87
And when it becomes an intellect in actuality in relation to all intelligibles and it becomes one of the existing things because it became the intelligibles in actuality, then, when it thinks that existent
thing which is an intellect in actuality, it does not think an existing
outside of itself but it only thinks itself.

St. Thomas Aquinas though was not satisfied with the positive aspect of this truth: he pointed also to its negative side as
well: 88
The reason why the potential intellect cannot be known immediately, but only through a concept, is the fact that it is potential also
devoid of matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical, for speculative
knowledge and its object are identical."
•• See De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 480 a 2; p. 271: "It is itself an object of thought
in the same way as the things that are the objects of its thought."
••III de Anima, 4, 724. See also paragraph 725: "The reason why the potential intellect cannot be known immediately, but only through a concept, is
the fact that it is potential also as an intelligible object; for, as it is proved in
Book IX of the Metaphysics, intelligibility depends upon actuality. And there
is a like dependence in the field of sensible realities too. In this field what is
purely potential, i. e. bare matter, cannot act of itself, but only through some
form conjoined with it; whereas sensible substances, being compositions of potency
and act, can act, to some extent, of themselves. So, too, the potential intellect,
being purely potential in the order of intelligible things, neither understands nor
is understood except through its own concepts."
8 ' Alfarabi, The Letter Concerning the Intellect, reprinted and translated
by
Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh in Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Harper and
Row, New York, Evanston and London, 1967, p. 216.
••Op. cit., Bk. III, 4, paragr. 725, p. 424.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

519

as an intelligibleobject; for, as it is proved in Book IX of the Metaphysics, intelligibility depends upon actuality.
In this light, the objection that Aristotle confronted on page
429 b 15-29 loses all its effectiveness. In fact, the objector was
afraid that,
if the mind is an object of thought in itself, and not by virtue of
anything else, and if all objects of thought are one in kind, either
mind will be present in everything else as well or it will contain
something mixed in with it that makes it an object of thought in
the way that everything else is.
Aristotle dismisses the dilemma by means of a very simple
distinction. In the case of "actual intelligibility"-" In the
case of things that are devoid of matter "-he bluntly chooses
the first horn of the dilemma-" what thinks and what is
thought are identical"-, because at the level of "intentional
existence" there is no absurdity in both the actually intelligible
objects and the actually intelligible mind having the same existential act, which is the actuality of the possible mind. In the
case of" potential intelligibility," though, he denies both horns
of the dilemma, but sees no reason to dismiss the mediate intelligibility of the possible intellect. After all, being not essentially and inseparably attached to matter and having the
essential possibility of becoming actual, the possible mind has
all the right to actual intelligibility, which rests altogether on
immateriality and actuality. The same reason goes for the intelligible objects as well. If real things can be transferred to
a level of actuality where they would be immaterial, they can
be called " potentially intelligible " even though at their present
level they do not share either the actuality of the mind (i.e.,
even though the mind is not present in them) or, at least, the
same essence of the possible intellect. This is what Aristotle
means in the following passages, that I am going to quote according to Wheelright's translation because Creed and Wardmann do not seem to render Aristotle's conclusion as faithfully
as they should: 39
39

Philip Wheelright, Ari.<rtotle.The Odyssey Press, New York, p. 147.

520

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

Where, on the contrary, the objects of thought are themselves material, it is only potentially [i.e. in their formal aspect] that they
are identical with thought. Consequently, since mind is the power
of becoming these objects without their matter, it follows that the
objects themselves do not contain mind, and yet that the mind
itself may be an object of its own thinking.

We might as well pause for a moment to observe that the
stance just taken by Aristotle is altogether incompatible with
Randall's panlogistic claims. However, this is hardly the moment to do so since Aristotle still keeps in store a heavier
barrage of arguments to emphasize the superiority of the intellect above the sense organs. It is the case, indeed, that the recess of the mind from the sense organ becomes increasingly apparent as its own operations become more and more complex
and far reaching, and Aristotle does not fail to call our attention to such a divergent process. On the above mentioned text
(429 b 10-25) that we set out to comment upon, for instance,
he gives us an interesting insight on both the different kinds
of mental operation and the degrees of abstraction that are possible.
It is true that upon a first reading of the text itself (and
this time I am going to quote it from Smith's translation),
we may find only a reference to an essential relation between
the possible intellect and the sense faculty when the soul carries
out the knowledge of the particular thing. 40 However, it seems
possible to see in that apparent duality of coordinated faculties
a rather disguised insinuation of two operations of the same
mind which presuppose the work of the sensitive part of the
soul-including the imaginative faculty also-, namely, the
simple apprehension of the essence of the object (simple concept), and the recognition of the same essence in the phantasm,
which entails a kind of reflection of the mind upon itself and a
• 0 See De Anima, Bk. III, 4, 429 b 14-18: "Now it is by means of the sensitive
faculty that we discriminate the hot and the cold, i.e., the factors which combined in a certain ratio constitute flesh; the essential character of flesh is apprehended by something different either wholly separate from the sensitive faculty
or related to it as a bent line to the same line when it has been straightened out."

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

521

relation to the individual thing shining in the phantasm (act
of judgment). St. Thomas took it this way: 41
It knows the specific nature or essence of an object by going out
directly to that object; but it knows the individual thing indirectly
or reflexively, by a return to the phantasms from which it abstracted what is intelligible. This Aristotle expresses by saying that
the intellectual soul either knows flesh sensitively and discerns the
'being of flesh' with' another' and' separate' potency,-i. e., other
than· sensitivity, in the sense that intellect is a power distinct from
the senses; or it knows flesh and the ' being of flesh ' by one and
the same intellectual power functioning diversely; in so far as it can
'bend back,' so to say, 'upon itself.' As 'stretched out straight,'
and apprehending directly, it ' discerns ' the ' being ' or essence of
flesh; but by reflection it knows the flesh itself.

Furthermore, it would seem that the rest of the context tends
to vouch for this interpretation in the sense that there is talk
in it of two operations of the same faculty 42 which can be exercised in connection with two different kinds of material objects: concrete material objects-and then the mind must perform a first degree abstraction, an abstraction from sensible
qualities-, and abstract material objects, such as mathematical figures-, and then the mind must carry out a second degree
abstraction in order to get to the essence, namely, an abstraction from quantity, which is an aspect of matter. 43
There is no doubt that by means of these six points Aristotle
has made extremely clear that the mind is essentially different
from the sense faculty and that consequently human knowledge
could not occur by means of any organic power alone or by the
collection of them all. It goes without saying that the mind
he has been talking about all along is the "possible intellect,"
the same of which he said " Hence it has no nature and is not
one, except in being potential ... What then is called the 'intellect ' of the soul . . . is not, before it understands, in act of
any reality.'' It is defined as the place where the forms are po"Commentary ... , Bk. III, 4, paragr. 713; p. 417.
•• See De Anima, Bk. III, 4fl9 b !fl: " flesh and what it is to be flesh are discriminated ... by the same faculty in two different states."
••See ibid., lines 18-U. See also St. Thomas's Commentary, III, 4, paragr. 715.

FRANCISCO L, PECCORINI

tentially, not in a realized state, and, to use Aristotle's own
classical metaphor, "it is potentially those objects in the same
way that a writing tablet on which nothing is actually written
is potentially something written upon." This is enough, though,
to say that it is " itself " since " It is itself an object of thought
in the same way as the things are objects of its thought." 0
Evidently, therefore, Aristotle has not avoided the problem of the conditions of possibility of human knowledge
as Randall seemed to insinuate. But it is not less evident that he cannot be satisfied with this partial achievement.
There lies ahead indeed an obvious and urgent question that calls
for an answer lest all his work will have been in vain. For it
is necessary to ascertain what are the conditions: of possibility
for the transition from the state of potentiality of our mind to
the state of actuality. It is incumbent upon us therefore to determine whether indeed Aristotle did ask himself that question
and whether he related it to the Agent Intellect. So long as
this puzzle has not been solved positively, Randall's theory
stands still a chance of success and has much going for it.

B-According to Aristotle the Possible Intellect cannot function without the Causality of the "Agent Intellect."
Despite the fact that the above mentioned " possible intellect " is supposed to be simple, without any particular nature
and incapable of being acted upon, as the Anaxagorean mind,
yet Aristotle does not deprive it of all activity. This in tum
implies that there must be an agent to trigger the activity of
such a "potential cause " and, correlatively, a capability in the
very possible intellect, for being acted upon by such an agent.
This being acted upon, of course, cannot be understood in the
strict sense of the word, as we pointed out above. It is only
insofar as the possible intellect can successively be found not
having and then having in itself the actual forms of particular
objects, that one can speak of the possible intellect's being acted
upon. In Aristotle's words we might say" that in a way the
De Anima, Bk. ID, 4, 429 b 30-430 a 6; p. 271.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

59l3

mind is potentially the objects of its thought, but that it is not
any of them in a realized form until it is actually thinking." 45
When Aristotle started dealing with that part of our soul
whereby we think, he told us from the outset that even before
considering whether the intellective soul is immortal he was
going to determine its characteristics and how it can know.
This certainly does not sound like Randall's contention that
knowledge is not a problem for Aristotle: 46
Turning now to the part of the soul with which the soul knows and
thinks (whether this is separable from the others in definition only,
or spatially as well) we have to inquire (1) what differentiates this
part, and
how thinking can take place.

So far he has been answering the first question, and, ironically
enough, when he comes to tackling the second one, he o:ffers
us the Agent Intellect as the solution that is most fitting, and
he does so precisely by means of the problematic passage that
we set out to comment upon and of which Randall said that it
is not an explanation, but rather a mythical description of the
phenomenon of knowing. It is most amazing that he introduces
that passage by means of an explanatory reasoning based on
the most naturalistic principle of his, namely, that nothing can
pass from the state of potentiality to the state of actuality if
it is not determined by something in act. He establishes a
parallel between the factual existence of the objects of knowledge .and their intentional .actuality. Even as their matter
could not be brought to the real actuality of their form if the
action of a productive cause in act did not give them their
form, so also, the possible mind, which is potential only, could
not be brought to its full actuality if the forms of material
things were not given to it by an immaterial cause which is
the Agent Intellect. 47 This is a typical Aristotelian reaction
'"De Anima, Bk. Ill, 4, 429 b 29-480 a 5; p. 271.
••De Anima, Bk. Ill, 4, 429 a 10-12. This particular quotation was taken from
Smith's translation.
"See De Anima, Bk. III, 5, 480 a 10-20; pp. 271-272: "How, in nature as a
whole, every class of objects has its matter, which is what potentially is those
objects; then, a second factor, there is the productive cause, so called since it

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

in which St. Thomas sees an essential difference between Aristotle and Plato in the sense that he detects a connection between Aristotle's need for an Agent Intellect and his rejection
of Plato's Forms.48
This active mind shares some of the characteristics of the
possible mind-its incapability of being acted upon in the strict
sense of the word, its lack of mixture with anything else-, but
it differs from it in that it is not potential at all, but rather an
actuality in essence. This actuality, though, .should be carefully pondered. We might say that its actuality is not due to
any kind of actual knowledge but only to a permanent participation in Being whereby Being is already and always potentially
intelligible in regard to human possible intellect. 49 It is actual,
produces everything, which is related to matter in general in the same way that
art is related to its material. This being so,
distinctions must be present
in the soul as well. There is the mind that is such as we just described by virtue
of the fact that it becomes everything; then, there is another mind, which is what
it is by virtue of the fact that it makes everything; it is a sort of condition like light.
For in a way light makes what are potentially colors become colors in actuality.
This second mind is separable, incapable of being acted upon, mixed with nothing,
and in essence an actuality. For what acts is always more to be valued than what
is acted upon, and the first principle more than the matter."
••See his Commentary, Bk. Ill, 5, paragr. 731: "The reason why Aristotle came
to postulate an agent intellect was his rejection of Plato's theory that the essences
of sensible things existed apart from matter, in a state of actual intelligibility. For
Plato there was clearly no need to posit an agent intellect. But Aristotle, who regarded the essences of sensible things as existing in matter with only a potential
intelligibility, had to invoke some abstractive principle in the mind itself to render
these essences actually intelligible."
•• St. Thomas gives us a metaphor that should be exploited if we want to understand what the actuality of the active mind really is: ". .. if the agent intellect
as such included the definite forms of all intelligible objects, the potential intellect
would not depend upon phantasms; it would be actualised simply and solely by the
agent intellect; and the latter's relation to intelligible objects would not be that
of a maker to something made, as the Philosopher here says; for it would simply
be identical with them. What makes it therefore in act with respect to intelligible
objects is the fact that it is an active immaterial force able to assimilate other
things to itself, i.e., to immaterialise them. In this way it renders the potentially
intelligible actually so (like light which, without containing particular colours,
actually brings colours into act) . And because this active force is a certain participation in the intellectual light of separated substances, the Philosopher compares it to a state and to light; which would not be an appropriate way of

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

525

therefore, not because it is the bearer of potential intelligibility
of Being but rather because in order to be so the soul-of which
it is a faculty-must already be a kind of special participation
in Being in which Being is capable of being present to itself
through the activity of its possible intellect. Gabriel Marcel
would be a good help in terms of understanding this actuality
of the Agent Intellect. 50 At any rate, it is clear that whatever
this actuality may be like, it is it precisely that gives the active
mind the right to immortality. The question, then, comes down
to whether or not the possible intellect can share with the active mind the separability of the latter.
describing it if it were itself a separate substance." (Commentary : •• , III, 5,
paragr. 739.).
Analogically, therefore, the active mind does in regard to intelligibles what the
sun does in regard to colored objects in which the colors are already present. It
does not make them " intelligibles" but only " actually intelligible" intelligibles.
As for the way in which this is done, let us take a hint from the way in which
the sun works. We observe that the sun makes colored things actually visible as
such by placing them under its own light, which happens to be the necessary
medium for actual visibility. We must say therefore that the active mind makes
things actually intelligible by placing them in the only medium where the forms
can become actually intelligible for the possible mind. The whole problem thus
comes down to identifying the characteristics that pertain to the essence of such
a medium. The guiding clue we have from the outset is that such a medium must
perforce have to do with the essence of understanding. Now, to understand in act
amounts to grasping things as to what they "are," i.e., it can be described as becoming aware that they " are " in this or that way, as well as to see the colors is
to perceive things as colored in this or that way, i.e . to perceive them as capable
of affecting the eye thus or thus. Consequently, it follows that the active mind
is nothing more than the faculty which is capable of creating the intelligible medium
in which things become perceptible precisely as and insofar as they "are," in
other words, as " beings." On the other hand, things cannot be understood as
"beings" unless the intellect can already and always understand Being as such.
Consequently, the medium that is to be created by the active mind can only be
the "potential intelligibility of Being" which needs only a concrete situation to
become actual. This leads us to the ultimate problem: How should the active
mind be if it is to be able to create such a medium? It would seem that the
only way it can do it is if it itself is nothing less than a certain participation of
Being in which Being is able to be present to itself and thus can " assimilate other
things to itself."
•• See Gabriel Marcel: Philosophical Fragmrmts, translated and edited by Lionel
A. Blain, The University of Notre Dame Press, 1965, p. 73; Being and Having,
Harper and Row, 1965, p. 171.

526

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

II-THE FINAL INTERPRETATION

OF THE PROBLEMATIC

p ASSAGE.

The apparent ambiguity of the text, coupled with a strong
N eoplatonic tendency inherited from Plotinus, makes it quite
understandable why the Islamic medieval philosophers understood the Agent Intellect as a subsistent substance common to
all men-a sort of " common faculty." The p'l'oblem, then, does
not lie so much in accounting for that line of interpretation as
in showing the grounds the Christian thinkers discovered in the
text, such that upon it they could build an Aristotelian epistemology without transcending the limits of the soul.
This brings us to the following question: Is it possible, if not
necessary, to take the active mind to be a power of the individual soul? And, since the main argument against this thesis
seems to be the eternity of the active intellect as opposed to
the apparent " mortality" of the possible intellect, we might
as well say that the whole puzzle comes down to this: Is it
not the entire human soul, rather than the Agent Intellect
alone, that is pointed to as eternal and separable?
Before tackling the textual analysis, it seems quite appropriate to uncover first the purpose that guided Aristotle in writing
the De Anima. Within the framework of the whole conception
we might as well be able to determine the particular purpose
of the puzzling text under consideration.
To start with the definition of soul, we find that he defines
tihe soul in such a broad way that its explanation alone could
structure the entire work. The soul, indeed, is described in Bk.
II, 2, 418 b 10, in terms of the specific powers of self-nutrition,
sensation, thinking and motivity, of which it is said to be the
source. One can feel, since the outset, that if he is going to talk
of the complications of the thinking process, it is only in order
to elucidate the notion of soul. But this expectation begins to
be realized as early as in Bk. II, 2, 413 b 24-30, where he anticipates in a problematic form-and one might add in a way appairently out of place-the conclusion that he seems to assign
exclusively to the Agent Intellect in the text of our study, with

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

527

the significant difference, though, that here he is concerned with
the whole soul of the individual:
We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it
seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is
eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in
isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul,
it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of ,separate existence though, of
course, distinguishable by definition.

It is interesting to note that the mind, or power to think,
is designated here as one kind of soul. It is only in connection
with this kind of soul that the problem of immortality can
meaningfully be raised. As in the case of man this soul does
the jobs of the other three, 51 the others are susceptible of a
logical distinction ' only ' in the same individual man and thus
the human soul is in a position to cease its lower operations
after its separation from the body.
Page 414 bis entirely devoted to a description and determination of the different subjects in which the different kinds of
soul, characterized by the different specific operations, can be
found. Then, on p. 415 a 13 he announces the plan of his study,
namely, to look for the most appropriate definition of each one
of these souls. In a sequence, the method to be used is outlined.
An account is to be given both of the operation (thinking, perceiving, etc.) and its object (the intelligible, the sensible, etc.) .52
In this perspective, our text falls in place quite naturally. It
is only the answer to the question, How is thinking posmble?
At the point where our problem is located there has preceded
as yet the study of nutrition, sensation, and part of thinking,
conducted always in the same spirit and according to this
trilogy of questions: what does ,tJhat power do? what enables it
to do that, and what is its object? More specifically, from chapter three of the third book, after having finished the discussion
of sensation, he started dealing with the difference between per61 Ibid., Bk. I, 5, 411 b 5-18.
•• Ibid., Bk. II, 4, 415 a 13-28.

528

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

ceiving and thinking. 58 Then, in 429 a 10 he starts to be concerned with whether or not the intellective soul is immortal
and how the thinking process can occur. And it is the latter
point that leads us straight to our problem, which centers
around the interpretation of Bk. III, 5, 480 a 15-52.
'f.hat even at this point he does not lose sight of his concern
with the soul is made clear by the way he introduces the application of the principle of causality to the actualization of the
possible mind. He reminds us there that both the matter and
the efficient cause are to be found " within " the soul: H
Since in every class of things ... we find two factors involved ...
these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul.
This reinforces the belief that what comes next is nothing
else but the confirmation and the explanation 0£ the tentative
conclusion that he had announced on p. 418 b 24-80, which
ascribed immortality to the whole soul 0£ man and not only
to a part 0£ it.
Again, even the final conclusion makes it clear that Aristotle
is referring to mind: (1) in a general, sense-as meaning" human soul "-which was established already in the tentative
conclusion, where mention was made of " the mind or the power
to think " as a " different kind of soul" ; (2) in three specific
acceptations, as meaning respectively " possible mind," " active
mind," and " actual mind." The possible mind becomes an
actual mind (actual knowledge) under the operation of the
active mind, but it is the mind in general, the whole soul, which
" is set free " and " alone is immortal and eternal," the final
conclusion being that " without it "-meaning by that without
such a kind of intellective soul-" nothing thinks."
If, then, we place the troublesome text within the master
plan of the whole work and introduce it through the statement
where Aristotle warns us that the specific operation of the intellective soul whereby the possible mind becomes an actual mind
53

Ibid., Bk. II, 4, 427 a 15 on.
Bk. III, 5, 43Q 3 10-15. Quoted according to the Smith translation,

G• [bid.,

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

5!!9

(actual knowledge) is made possible because the human soul
is constituted in such a way that it contains the necessary matter and the indispensable efficient cause (i. e., that " these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul "-if it
is allowed to emphasize Aristotle's phrase), then the whole
problem seems to vanish.
In this vein we might gloss the text in the following manner: 55
And in fact [this refers to the previous warning of which we just
made mention] mind as we have described it is what it is by virtue
of becoming all things [possible mind], while there is another which
is what it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours
into actual colours [active mind].
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since
it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior
to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which
it forms).
Actual knowledge [actual mind] is identical with its object; in
the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time.
Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind
[mind in general, or soul] is set free from its present conditions it
appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal
and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is
destructible [note well that it is the same subject of operation at
two different states that mention is being made of, not two different
subjects that share no community of action ... ], and without it
nothing thinks.

In this way everything makes sense even in connection with
some details of which St. Thomas took due care. 56 Aquinas's
De Anima, Bk. III, 5, 430 a 10-26. Smith translation.
As for Aristotle's phrase "but in the universe as a whole . . ." one might
have the temptation of taking it to refer to a kind of " common faculty mind."
However, we are prevented from giving it such an interpretation because, as Aquinas
points out, " forms cannot exist before their matter" according to the Peripatetic
doctrine. On the other hand, there is no real need for such an interpretation. It is
enough to say with St. Thomas: " though in one and the same thing potential
knowledge is prior in time to actual knowledge, yet, speaking universally, potential
55

56

580

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

understanding, of course, can be relied upon. It was so clear
that he even dared to correct Moerbeke's translation which
made the soul the subject of the last phrase (the soul thinks
nothing) -which is a contradiction, since then we would be
saying that " without the soul the soul thinks nothing ,,-as
can be seen from his commentary: 57
He says, then, that only the mind separated from matter is that
which really is mind; and he speaks here, not of the agent or passive
intellect in isolation, but of both together, since both have been
described as separated from matter. And the whole intellect is
so described because it operates without a bodily organ.
And in line with what he said at the beginning of this book, that
the soul might be separable from the body if any of its activities
were proper to itself, he now concludes that the soul's intellectual
part alone is immortal and perpetual. This is what he has said
in Book II, namely that this ' kind ' of soul was separable from
others as the perpetual from the mortal,-perpetual in the sense
that it survives for ever, not in the sense that it always has existed;
for as he shows in Book XII of the Metaphysics, forms cannot exist
before their matter. The soul, then, (not all of it, but only its intellectual part) will survive its matter.

This recourse to a comparative study of Aristotle's doctrine
on the soul in general led also Marcel De Corte to the same
conclusion.58 And certainly, no matter what other puzzles it
may raise, the textual interpretation we just gave becomes fully
confirmed through such a procedure. Three points, indeed, come
knowledge is not prior either in nature or in time. In Book IX of the Metaphysics
Aristotle had said that act is by nature prior to potency, but not in time in one
and the same thing; for a thing is first in potency and afterwards in act. But
universally speaking act takes priority even in time; because no potency would
ever be actualised unless something were already in act. So, even in the case
of potential knowledge, no one ever comes to know anything actually, whether
through his own effort or another's teaching, except in virtue of some pre-existing
actual knowledge, as it is said in Book I of the Posterior Analytics." (Commentary ... , III, 5, paragr. 740). Perhaps one would have to conclude that such
a chain of acts and potencies cannot come to an end except through the acceptance
of a first infinite exemplary mind.
••St. Thomas Aquinas, III de Anima, 5, paragr.
••Marcel De Corte, La doctrine de l'intelligence chez Aristote, Paris, 1934, pp,
64-91.

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

581

quite clearly out of it, namely, (1) that there is only one soul
in each man, (2) that the soul of a man is his mind, and finally
(S) that that mind-soul is both immortal and most personal.
First of all, we must keep in mind that according to Aristotle
the soul, in terms of its essential characteristic of being a unifying principle, must be one in each living being. His formal
rejection of Plato's theory comes through in these terms: 59
Some say that the soul is divisible into parts, and that one thinks
with one part and desires with another. What then holds it together, if it is naturally so divisible? Certainly the body does not.
On the contrary, it seems rather that the soul holds the body together; at any rate, when the soul leaves it, the body disintegrates
into the air and decays. But if there is some other thing that
unifies it, this other thing will have more right than anything to
be called the soul. Then, one will have to inquire about it, in its
turn, whether it is one thing or has many parts. If it is one, why
do we not straightaway say that the soul is one? If it is divisible
into parts, the argument will lead us to inquire again what holds
it together, and thus the process will go on to infinity.

The second point easily comes about by simply coupling the
thesis of the unicity of the soul with both the insinuation he
makes in Bk. I, 5, 410 b 10-16 as to the possibility of the mind's
doing that job in men-and I say "possibility," because at that
point he had not yet decided the question whether or not
Empedocles was wrong-and the confirmation thereof in Bk.
II, 2, 41.S b 24-30, where the' mind' is called a" widely different
kind of soul " within which both the vegetative and the sensitive souls are not distinguishable in reality-because they are
"incapable of separate existence "-but "by definition" only.
The possibility of this is strongly suggested by the former passage which forcefully dramatizes the head-on collision between
Empedocles's conception and ithe unifying character of the soul.
Indeed, if the soul is nothing but a collection of elements similar
to the different sets of things, how can it unify all the parts of
the living being? Would it not be reasonable to say that the
soul must be the strongest possible factor of them all, and if
•• De Anima, Bk. I, 5, 411 b 5-IS; p. !M4.

532

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

so, that the mind is the candidate for the job in the case of men,
since it is not only the strongest principle but also somehow
divine? 60
As for the thesis of the " soul-mind" being most personal to
the individual knower and immortal, it is sufficiently indicated in
Bk. I, 4, 408 b 17-30,61 where the bearing of the whole text gives
the clear impression that the mind is imperishable and the belief
that the mind belongs to the composite as a personal constituent finds a solid support even if one translates the first statement by " it seems to be an independent sub.stance implanted
within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed " as
Smith does. Not even there is any mention to be found of a
separate entity working from without the individual man. That
the mind is the personal soul is textually asserted by the
translation of Creed and W ardmann. On the other hand, it can
easily be shown that such a translation is most probable on two
grounds. First, Smith's translation collides head-on with the
context, wherein the mind is considered as a simple faculty of
• 0 Ibid., Bk. I, 5, 410 b 10-16; p. !l4!l: "Then one might he at a loss to know
what it is that unifies them. For the elements are like matter, and the
most important thing is what holds them together, whatever it is; hut it is impossible for there to be anything stronger than the soul controlling it, and even
more impossible for there to he anything stronger than the mind. For it is reasonable to assume that mind is prior both in age and in importance to everything
else, whereas they maintain that the elements are the first among the things that
exist." This would seem to be a confirmation of the need for an exemplary infinite
first mind that St. Thomas seems to suggest in his Commentary, III, 5, paragr. 740.
See here, footnote number 56.
01 See De A nima, Bk. I, 4, 408 b 17-30; p.
"It seems, however, that the mind
comes to be present in things as a substance, and that it does not decay. If it did
decay, it would he more than anything the dulling influence of old age that would
make it do so. But, in fact, what happens with the mind is like what happens with
the senses; if an old man were to obtain an eye of a particular kind, he would
see as well as a young man man. Old age does not involve anything happening
to the soul, hut to what the soul is in, as is also the case with drunkenness and
disease. Thought and speculation waste away because something else inside the
body is decaying; nothing happens to the thought itself. Thinking, loving and
hating are not affections of the mind, but of what possesses the mind, insofar as
it does possess it; it is when this possessor fails that remembering and loving stop;
for they did not belong to the mind, hut to the compound that has perished. The
mind is perhaps more divine, and so nothing happens to it.''

ARISTOTLE'S AGENT INTELLECT

588

the· soul at the same rank, more or less, as the sense-faculty,
thereby making its status of i1wrustated substance previously
mentioned most unlikely. Secondly, the Greek text, on its part,
does not demand the inclusion of the genitive " of the soul,"
since it refers to the mind as being only an "inborn substance,"
whose " innerness " can be easily understood with reference to
the total composite, of which mention is made later. 62
There are, though, some side-problems raised by this passage,
the solution of which is rather obvious. In approaching this
text one should keep in mind three things. First of all, in it
Aristotle is concerned only with proving that the soul itself is
not moved when the man thinks, hates and loves. By the same
token, he is not interested in solving the question of the inorganicity of the mind. In the second place, the only human
operation that he assigns per se to the mind as such is thinking.
As to " remembering and loving [with emotion, of course] stop "
the obvious meaning is that they are carried out by the mind
in conjunction with the body. Finally, the parallel drawn by
Aristotle between the decay of sensation and that of thinking
is not pushed through to the extreme of implying that thought
is an organic operation. This is so because for the exclusive
purpose of proving that the movement occurs only in the composite, not in the soul, an extrinsic dependence of the mind upon
the brain is more than sufficient; and it should not be forgotten
that the only objective of Aristotle in writing these few lines
is to show that the soul is not moved at all either when it thinks,
hates or loves, or when it imagines or senses.
That here he has in mind only a kind of extrinsic dependence
upon the body becomes evident if we read the present passage
in combination with the method of research he outlined in Bk.
I, 1, 408 :a. According to that criterium, the thinking faculty
would necessarily depend" intrinsically" upon the body, as the
sense faculty does, only if it could not subsist without the body;
62 Jt reads: o
l'OUS
e"("(l11eu8a.1 ovu{a. 7'1S
Ka.! OV <f>8elpe<r8a.1 and can
be translated ad pedem litterae in this way: "the mind is like a substance which
is inborn and does not fall prey to corruption."

534

FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI

but if it is prevented from thinking without the help of imagination only while it is joined to the body but is fully capable of
subsisting and thinking on its own, then its current dependence
on the body is to be labeled as "extrinsic" only. 08
We are now in a position to draw a final conclusion. For we
know already from Bk. I, 4, 408b17-30 that, although the action
of thinking is subject to the ups and downs of the body in our
lifetime, the mind is immortal; and we know also that, although
imagination has to precede thinking, thinking is nevertheless
essentially different from imagining. Now, since by" thinking"
it is possible intellect that is being refeITed to in both places, we
are entitled to conclude that it is the whole mind that depends
only extrinsically upon the body. On the other hand, since the
soul is only one, it is the soul-which is called " mind" in terms
of its highest and most specific operation-that is immortal and
intrinsically independent of the body.
It is therefore clear that unless a N eoplatonic influence should
blur the mind of the interpreter, the De Anima of Aristotle can
be said to pave the road for the Christian conception of the
Agent Intellect. Therefore, perhaps it is rather Randall who
was being unfaithful to Aristotle's principles when he passed
this harsh judgment on Aquinas: 64
Thus it is likely that as an Aristotelian interpretation Thomas
Aquinas' is inaccurate. In any event, the "activ,e intellect" is
quite impersonal: Aristotle leaves no doubt on that score. It is
immortal and eternal, but has no memory. It is thus of little help
to a Christian theologian, but it is very much like Spinoza.
FRANCISCO

California State University
Long Beach

••Ibid., Bk. I, 1, 408 a 2-18; p. 287.
••Randall, op. cit., p. 108.

L. PECCORINI

ETIIlCS AS A KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY
THE SIGNIFICANCE

OF SPECIFICATION

BY OBJECT

v.

ARIOUS OBSTACLES BLOCK an easy access to
" the most coherent work on moral theology in the
ntire history of Christianity ",1 i.e., the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. Most prominent among these obstacles are, on the one hand, the multitude of questions and articles relating to medieval topics and controversies, and, on the
other, Thomas's method of" interpretation." Often the p:resentday reader, unfamiliar with that historical environment, can
hardly make more sense out of a translation than out of
the Latin text. He can easily be led to believe that certain formulas or a certain configuration of elements represent Thomas'
opinion whereas in fact they merely reflect the state of the
question in the 13th century, i.e., the stage preceding his
interpretation. One of the most famous examples of this state
of affairs is to be found in Thomas' analysis of good and evil.
Every single manual or treatise, mainly in the Catholic tradition, contains a reference to Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, aa.
2-4 in order to support the contention that good and evil are
determined by object, circumstances, and intent. While this
may be suggested by the titles of the articles, it is quite another
question exactly how Thomas proceeds to " interpret" this configuration of elements that he happens to find in the theologies
of the 13th century.
Only an extensive historical commentary of the Prima
Secundae, particularly of qq. 6-21, will make it possible to
understand the real meaning of Thomas' s fundamental ethics
1 The qualification was formulated by James M. Gustafson in a paper at the
annual meeting of the American Society of Christian Ethics in Washington, D. C.,
in January 1976. The paper will be part of a forthcoming book.

535

536

WILLIAM

VANDERMARCK

and of the theological questions involved in it. The present
article is the introduction to such a commentary. It is a tentative first chapter concerning the introductory questions of the
Secunda Parsi I-II, qq. 1-5, "On Ultimate End and Beatitude."
It is also the first installment towards a long overdue debt to
those who have expressed both appreciation and curiosity about
many statements in my book on Christian ethics. 2
1. Perspective of the treatise.
When Thomas decided to open the second part of his Summa
Theologiae with a treatise on ultimate end and beatitude, he
introduced a new element into the study of Christian ethics.
Although such a move had a precedent in the first book of
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and although a certain systematic treatment of beatitude had been developed by some
of Thomas's predecessors, no comparable approach existed in
the work of medieval theologians. 8 The impact of this innovation has been rather limited. Until well into the 16th century
Peter Lombard's Sentences remained dominant in the study
of theology. The renewal of the Counterreformation, strongly
influenced by Jesuit authors, led to the development of a
" moral theology " greatly indebted to Thomas, in which, however, " speculative" and " theoretical" questions were eliminated. The first victim of this process was the treatise on
ultimate end and beatitude. It failed to appear in the pacesetting manuals of the early 17th century, and the subsequent
tradition faithfully followed the same path. 4 Thomas's intro•Toward A Christian Ethic: A Rene.walin Moral Theology. New York: Newman
Press, 1967.
•The best recent study of Thomas's introductory treatise in its historical context
is by Roger Guindon, Beatitude et Theologie morale chez saint Thomas d'Aquin.
Origines-lnterpretations. Ottawa: Editions de l'Universite d'Ottawa, 1956. See
also the classic study of Thomas's ethic, which continues to be valuable especially
because of its historical data, by Michael Wittmann, Die Ethik des hl. Thomas
von Aquin in ihrem systematischen Aufbau dargestellt und in ihren geschichtlichen,
besonders in den antiken Quellen erforscht. Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1933.
• A comprehensive study of this development, mainly concerning the 16th and
17th centuries, has been published by Johann Theiner, Die Entwicklung der M<YTal-

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

587

ductory treatise kept its place, almost unavoidably, in the
commentaries on the Summa Theologiae, and also in a few
manuals of moral theology. 5 However, two features appear
to have monopolized the interest of the commentators. One
etc.,
concerns the beatific vision, its constitutivum
and this seems to have been the main reason why the early
manualists dropped the treatise as too "speculative" and too
" theoretical " for their purposes. The other concerns the
finality or teleology of nature in general, and of human acts in
particular. Both features point to elements that are crucial for
the understanding of Thomas's introductory treatise, and invite
further inquiry.
a. " Theology of Earthly Realities."
Not until rather recently have the questions on ultimate end
and beatitude drawn the attention of those interested in a " theology of earthly realities." It was often not so much explicitly
stated as implicitly under.stood that the first five questions of
the Prima Secundae dealt with the beatific vision, its possibility, its implications, and so forth. The authoritative commentaries certainly made no effort to dispel this idea. They
treated the ultimate end, i.e., heaven, as that toward which
all human activity should be orientated. 6 The much discussed
theologie zur eigenstandigen Disziplin (Studien z. Gesch. d. kath. Moraltheologie,
17). Regensburg: Pustet, 1970. Thomas's introductory treatise was dropped by
Henriquez (op. cit. 259-260. 356), Azor (270), Tanner (275. 434-435), Sanchez
(278), Figliucci (285), Laymann (291. 356), Busenbaum (314), and Illsung (316).
See also the project for a manual in document # 4 (366). Henriquez (259-262)
and Figliucci (285) gave Thomas's questions a place within the treatise de
novissimis.
E.g., in those of Noldin, Tanquerey, Priimmer, Merkelbach.
See the leading commentaries by Jacobus M. Ramirez, De hominis beatitudine.
In I-II Summae Theologiae Divi Thomae Commentaria (Opera omnia, III).
Posthumously edited by Victorinus Rodriguez. Madrid: Instituto de Filosofia
' Luis Vives,' 1972, 5 vols. (The first partial edition, in 3 vols., was published in
Salamanca, 1942, and Madrid, 1943-1947); Reginaldus Garrigou-Lagrange, De
5

6

beatitudine, de actibus humanis et habitibus. Commentarius in Summam Theologicam S. Thomae la llae qq. 1-54. Turin: Berruti, 1951. A modified and
abbreviated version was published in English: Beatitude. A Commentary on St.

538

WILLIAM VANDERMARCK

problem of" the natural desire to see God" is in part connected
with the introductory questions of the Prima Secundae.1 So
are the controversy about the beatific vision involving Pope
John XXII, 8 and the discussion about the role of the body in
heaven.11
In recent years, however, there has been a distinct shift of
interest, and of interpretation. Guindon has concluded that
Thomas's own conception of " beatitude," already in his early
works, constituted a .similar shift of emphasis from heaven and
final judgment towards man's earthly condition. 10 Other studies
The>mas' Theological Summa, Ia Ilae, qq. 1-54. Transl. by Patrick Cummins. St.
Louis, London: Herder, 1956; Petrus Lumbreras, De fine ultimo hominis (la fJae
1-5) (Praelectiones scholasticae in Secundam Partem D. Thomae, I). MadridBuenos Aires. Studium de Cultura; Rome: Angelicum, 1954.
•It received great emphasis in the controversy around Henri de Lubac,
Sumaturel. Etudes historiques (Theologie, S). Paris: Aubier, 1946. For some
recent studies of the question see G. Colombo, "Il desiderio di vedere Dio. Dieci
anni di studi tomisti: 1957-1967," Scuola Catt. 99 (1971) Suppl. 8*-60*; Jorge
Laporta, " Pour trouver le sens exact des termes appetitus naturalis, desiderium
naturale, amor naturalis, etc. chez Thomas d'Aquin," Archives d'Histoire Doctr.
et Lit. du Moyen Age 40 (1978) 87-95; J. H. Walgrave, "Quelques remarques sur
le desir naturel chez S. Thomas," in: San Tommaao e l'odierna problematica
teologica. Rome: Citta Nuova Edit., 1974, 221-229; G. A. Puerta, "Deseo natural
de ver a Dios. Contribuci6n a la Historia de la Teologia Cat6lica del Siglo XX,"
Ecclesiastica Xaveriana (Bogota, Col.) 28 (1978) 72-188.
8 See various publications by Marc Dykmans, of which the latest is: Les Serme>ns
de Jean XXII sur la vision beatifique (Miscell. Hist. Pontif., 84). Rome: Greg.
Univ., 1978; and by Anneliese Maier, of which the last one is: " Schriften, Daten
und Personen aus dem Visio-Streit unter Johann XXII," Archiv. Hist. Pcmtif. 9
(1971) 148-186; see also Rev. d. Sc. Philos. et Theol. 58 (1974) 497-499.
• P. Glorieux, "Saint Thomas et l'accroissement de la beatitude (Etude sur la
Somme, 1-11, q. 4, a. 5, ad 5) ," Rech. de Theol. Anc. et Med. 17 (1950) 121-125;
Franz Pelster, "Das Wachstum der Seligkeit nach der Auferstehung. Um die
Auslegung von S. Th. 1-2, q. 4, a. 5, ad 5," Scholastik 27 (1952) 561-568.
10 Beatitude et Theologie morale ..• , 212: "nous sommes ici en presence d'une
nouvelle orientation du traite de la beatitude: d'un contexte de fin derniere et
de retribution, ii passe a un contexte de morale OU ii est appelti a jouer le role
de principe fondamental." This can be confirmed through the work of Nikolaus
Wicki, Die Lehre von der himmlischen Seligkeit in der mittelalterlichen Scholastik
von Petrus Lombardus bis Thomas von Aquin (Studia Friburgensia, 5). Fribourg:
Universitiits-Verlag, 1954. Wicki defended his dissertation, under Wyser, in
Fribourg in the winter of 1952-1958. Guindon finished his thesis there, under
Deman, in 1954.

ETHICS .AS KEY TO .A.QUIN.A.S'S THEOLOGY

539

have equally understood the treatise on ultimate end and
beatitude as the basis for a " theology of earthly realities." 11
It appears more than obvious from the plan of the Summa
Theologiae that the introductory questions of the Prima
Secundae do not constitute a treatise de novissimis, which was
to come at the very end of Thomas' s work.12 They are instead an
essential part of his" moral theology." They form the introduction to, and the summary of, the entire Secunda Pars.18 This
does not disqualify the work of earlier commentators, their interest in the " beatific vision," etc. It merely shifts the perspective of these questions from a future state in heaven to man's
present condition. It should also be borne in mind that the
earlier commentators never denied the significance of these
questions for the present. They merely focused on the future
because the unchallenged assumptions that they had grown up
with placed the main emphasis on man's future status.
b. "Teleology."
This shift from future to present is of paramount significance
for the understanding of Thomas's conception of ultimate end
11 Particular mention ought to be made of two articles by L. Hamain, "Morale
chretienne et realites terrestres. Une reponse de saint Thomas d'Aquin: la beatitude
imparfaite," Reck. de Tkeol. Anc. et Med. S5 (1968) 134-176, 260-290. Hamain's
articles are based on his earlier .studies of 1957 and 1959: see Mel. de Sc. Reliy.
15 (1958) 146-147; 16 (1959) 74. See also: Dietmar Eickelschulte, "Beatitudo
als Prozess. Zur Frage nach dem Ort der theologischen Ethik bei Thomas von
Aquin," in: Paulus Engelhardt (ed.), Sein und Ethos. Untersuckungen zur
Grundlegung der Etkik (Walberberger Studien, 1). Mainz: Matthias-Griinewald
Verlag, 196S, 158-185; J. V. Mullaney, "The Natural, Terrestrial End of Man,"
Tkomist 18 (1955) S7S-S95; Dalston J. Forbes, " Temporal Goods in the Christian
Economy. A Thomist Synthesis," Rev. de l'Univ. d'Ottawa SO (1960) 185*-206*;
SI (1961) S9*-71*; Robert H. Harvanek, "The Notion and Role of Beatitude in
the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas," in: Studies in Medieval Culture, ID.
Kalamazoo: The Mediev. Inst., Western Michigan Univ., 1970, 124-184. A similar
emphasis can be found in the older work, by Theodor Steinbiichel, Der
Zweckgedanke in der Pkilosr:Ypkie des Thomas von Aquino nack den Quellen
dargestellt (Beitrlige z. Gesch. d. Philos. des Mittelalters, XI, I). Miinster:
Aschendorfl', 1912, 87, 101, 116, 119-120, 148.
"See the Prologue of the Tertia Pars.
18 See the Prooemia of 1-Il, q. 1 and q. 6.

540

WILLIAM VANDERMARCK

and beatitude. It is customary to qualify his theological ethic
in terms of " finality " or " teleology." 14 Thomas affirms in the
very first article of the Prima Secundae that man acts for an
end. Nothing, therefore, appears more logical than to assert
that man realizes "intentions" and "purposes." 15 Thomas's
ethic, it is said, reflects the teleology of his entire philosophy.H
One does not want to deny the obvious, and it is obvious indeed that " acting for an end " constitutes the introductory
theme of the Prima Secundae. However, one ought to raise a
persistent question with regard to the real meaning of this
theme, which is not of the variety that the customary interpretation suggests. Garrigou-Lagrange asserts that the end "expresses the motive, the reason why, of the human act," and that
"(it) does not mean a mere terminus, :as point means the end
of a line, or as vacation means the end of a school year." 17 That
may be true, to an extent. However, when Ramirez, with regard
to that same first article of the Prima Secundae, writes that
human acts are those for which we are responsible,1 8 he raises
implications that are of more profound importance than a perhaps somewhat naive and simplistic teleology.
Although Ramirez's overall perspective appears in line with
that of Garrigou-Lagrange, his mention of responsibility indicates in fact a middle position between " purpose " and "mere
terminus," and it is here that one has to look for the position
of Thomas. Responsibility exists with regard to what one pursues or intends but also with regard to results that one did not
intend at all. The latter part of this statement needs to be
Wittmann, op. cit. (footn. 3) 22.
See, e.g., the commentary by Garrigou-Lagrange (footn. 6), Latin ed. 30,
English ed. 33.
16 See Steinbiichel (footn. 11); Edgar Schorer, Die Zweckethik des hl. Thomas
von Aquin als Ausgleich der formalistischen Ethik Kants und der materialen
Wertethik Schelers. Vechta: Albertus Magnus Verlag, 1937; J. Schmitz,
iiber das teleologische Denken. Eine Gegeniiberstellung von Nicolai Hartmann,
Aristoteles und Thomas von Aquin. Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald Verlag, 1960.
See also Ramirez, op. cit. (footn. 6) vol. I (early ed.) 209-210.
17 English ed. 33, Latin ed. 30.
18 Op. cit. Vol. I (early ed.) 29; his own emphasis.
14 See
15

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

541

qualified. One is not necessarily responsible for whatever results
from one's actions. One may, or may not, be responsible, entirely or partially. Accidents are seldom intended. Nonetheless,
it is customary to assess responsibility even for accidents, depending on such factors as caution, intoxication, experience, etc.
This confirms that we do not equate (responsible) result and
"mere terminus," i. e., we do not necessarily hold a person fully
responsible for everything that actually results from his actions.
However, it also makes evident that (responsible) result can
be a whole lot less than " purpose " and " intent." The factor
that in this respect ties purpose and result together may be
called, e.g., responsibility. This is one of the first points made
by Thomas in his introductory questions to the Secunda Pars,
and anyone may judge whether this concern is appropriately
expressed by the term "teleology." A closer look at the text
here becomes mandatory.
2. Responsibility, freedom, voluntariness, morality.
Thomas's first observation is, that not every human act is
a human act or, to use the famous distinction that he formulates
here, not every actus hominis is an actus humanus. Actus
humanus is the act to the extent that it is "in man's power"
or" voluntary." Insofar as this is not the case, the act is merely
an actus h<>minis. Characteristic of the human act (actus
humanus) is its object which is finis et bonum, i.e., the good
which can be called " the end " of the human act. Therefore,
one must indeed say, in this sense, that all human activity is for
an end. 19
It may appear that the concern of this first article is teleology,
i. e., acting for an end. Actually its concern is rather a certain
interpretation of teleology. What distinguishes the human act
from the actus hominis is not merely its origin or source (ratio
et voluntas or liberum arbitrium) but that origin or source in
conjunction with its specifying object (secundum rationem sui
obiecti). The reference to the specifying object raises the issue
1•

Summa Theol. I-II, q. I a.I.

WILLIAM

vANDERMARCK

far above the level of " intentions " and "purposes " which
abound in the discussions of the medieval
Thomas's concern here is not what someone happens to inten<l
but what the human act by its very nature is and achieves.
Already in the Prima Pars he has had numerous opportunities
to describe what the will is, and what its object is, to what
extent intellect and will are one,21 etc. 22 This now forms the
background of the first article of the Prima Secundae. It thereby becomes evident that the emphasis on "the good" as object
of " the will " points to a very formal preoccupation. Many
commentators focus on the distinction between actus humanu:;
and actus hominis as an indication that not all human activity
proceeds from that full deliberation, attention, and intent which
alone qualify an act as actus humanus (and/or sin!). They
find this confirmed in the classic example of an actus homini.Y,
"inadvertently stroking one's beard," 28 which serves to illustrate that certain acts lack the necessary qualifications of an
actus humanus. Hence the interest of many commentators in
psychology, inhibitions, neuroses, etc.
Relevant and important as these observations may be, particularly from the practical point of view of pastoral concern,
•• See, e.g., the various studies by Odon Lottin, in particular his article,
"L'intention morale de Pierre Abelard a saint Thomas d'Aquin," Psychologie et
Morale au Xlle et Xllle siecles. Vol. IV. Louvain: Abbaye du Mont Cesar;
Gembloux: Duculot, 1954, 309-486.
21 An extensive documentation on this subject can be found in Tibor Horvath,
Caritas est in ratione. Die Lehre des kl. Thomas ilber die Einheit der intellektiven
und affekti"ven Begnadung des Menschen (Beitrage z. Gesch. d. Philos. u. Theol.
des Mittelalters, XLI, 3) . Munster: Aschendorff, 1966.
••The most pertinent questions are those on good (5-6), on the will of God
(19), of angels (59), and of man (82-83).
•• Garrigou-Lagrange, op. cit. English ed. 35, Latin ed. 31; Ramirez, op. cit. Vol.
I (early ed.) 206; Dominicus M. Priimmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis secundum
principia S. Thomae Aquinatis. 10th ed. Barcelona: Herder, 1946. Vol. I, 27-28;
Benedictus H. Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae Moralis ad mentem D. Thomae et
ad normam luris Novi. 3rd ed. Paris: Desclee De Brouwer, 1938. Vol. I, 56-57;
Jacques Leclercq, Les grandes lignes de la philosophie morale. New ed. Louvain:
Publications Universitaires; Paris: Vrin, 1954, !i!56. It is mentioned in the third
11rgument of this first article of the Prima Secundae,

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

54:3

they tend to overlook the very important formal distinction
that Thomas describes, and replace it with a material diversity
that, Thomas warns, is not what he has in mind. 24 His purpose
is not to separate fully human from not fully human acts but
to point to that element or aspect in every human act which is
the reason why the act is called human, responsible, free, voluntary, or moral. Whatever other elements or aspects the human
act may have, these do not place it on the level of" morality."
They may also be found, e.g., in animals. The one element or
aspect which uniquely characterizes the human act is its rational nature expressed in its having " the good " as its object.
Man not merely recognizes, and strives for, the particulars that
suit him, as animals do. He is capable of recognizing particulars
for what they are, i. e., a good, a partial realization of the good,
and he is able to act accordingly. Man is able to grasp the relation between the particular activity that he engages in and his
well-being and that of others. 25
The good is defined as that which is desirable, worthy of pursuit. 26 It is, and as such it is perfect. 27 It constitutes man's
beatitude or happines.s,28 real or imagined. 29
In distinguishing actus humanus and actus hominis,. a distinction based on the ratio obiecti of man's freedom, Thomas
indicates that the distinctive element of the human act is the
pursuit of happiness or beatitude. This ultimate dimension
(and there is no need here to talk explicitly about God yet)
gives each and every human act its status as a free, voluntary,
responsible, moral, or human act.
Thomas does not say that man is, or ought to be, aware of
this dimension of his acts in everything that he does. As a
Summa Theol. I, q. 59 a. 2 ad 2; q. 76 a. 3 ad 4; q. 77 a. 3 ad 3; q. 80 a. 1 ad 2.
See especially Summa Theol. I, q. 19 a. 3; q. 59 aa. 1 and 3; q. 80 a. 2 ad 2;
q. 82 aa. 2 and 5; q. 83 a. 1; q. 105 a. 4.
26 Appetibile: op. cit. q. 5 aa. 1, 3, and 5.
27 Loe. cit. a. 3.
28 Op. cit. q. 19 aa. 3 and 10; q. 26 a. 1; q. 60 a. 2; q. 82 aa. 1 and 2; q. 83
a.1ad5.
••Op. cit. q. 105 a. 5. For lengthy but often very pertinent descriptions of the
(human) good, see Leclercq, op. cit., especially Part Ill, 217 fl'.
2•

26

544

WILLIAM VANDERMARCK

matter of fact he points out that such an awareness is not required.30 His claim is based on an understanding of man's rational nature. 81
The reference to the pursuit of happiness or beatitude does
not imply a particular position with regard to the purpose of
human life. Although Thomas does discuss certain questions
which concern this issue,82 he purposely, it appears, chooses a
general formula in order to avoid specification.
It appears, therefore, that the first and real meaning of the
first article of the Prima Secundae is not to assert a conscious
teleology in some human acts, but to point to that aspect of
every human act which substantiates the claim that it is a
free, voluntary, responsible, moral, or human act. 98 The article
states indeed that man acts for an end. Its focus, however, is
not the deliberation or intent which supposedly separates the
actus humanus from the actus hominis but the internal finality
which raises any actushominis to the level of an actushumanus.
The crucial question raised in this first article is: what is
a moral act? Thomas answers: every act is a moral act for
a very specific reason, i.e., because (and to the extent that)
in the act itself man's final destiny (happiness, beatitude, purpose) is affected, positively or negatively. It is essentially irrelevant whether an act is theft or adultery (to use one of
Thomas's, and Aristotle's, classic examples). The relevant question is, that, and how, an act affects man's "ultimate end." It
is therefore true indeed, in this sense, that man in every single
activity " acts for an end." The concern of this first article, as
stated earlier, is not teleology in the usual sense of that term
but rather a certain interpretation of teleology. 84
Summa Theol. I-II, q. I a. 6 ad 8. On the meaning of "intent," see 8, b, below.
See footn. !i!!i! and !i!S, and the questions in the Prima Pars about truth (16),
about the knowledge of God (14), of angels (54-58), and of man (79). See also
I-II, q. I a. !i! ad 3.
••Op. cit. I, qq. 98-IO!i!.
88 See also Leclercq, op. cit. (footn. !i!3) !i!56, !i!68, !i!77.
••It would be out of proportion in this context to attempt a thorough study of
the position of Aristotle and of his interpreters, particularly in the 13th century. It
appears, though, that Thomas, confronted with a " teleological" (and " Christian ")
80

81

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

545

Having explained his own understanding of the phrase,
" acting for an end," Thomas in the second article pursues his
interpretation by further emphasizing the unique character of
man's actions. 85
3. "Specification" and the human act.
The third article of the first question develops Thomas' s initial
approach to the human act. It contains at least four elements
that deserve special attention.
a. Specification.
The focus is on specification. Specification is not a general
term with a vague sense. It has a very distinct meaning derived
from species, i.e., nature or essence.86 The article opens with
the pointed remark that specification is a matter of actuality,
not of potency. That is a profoundly relevant statement when
compared with the medieval discussions about acts that " of
themselves " are involuntary, evil, etc. In the immediate context it appears more particularly aimed at "intentions" that
are meant to accomplish all kinds of things, and never actually
do, but also at accomplishments that were never " intended."
interpretation of the first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, chooses the
current terminology of " acting for an end " as the vehicle of his fundamental introductory statement about the nature of moral action. See Rene A. Gauthier and Jean
Y. Jolif, L'Ethique a Nicomaque. Introduction, traduction et commentaire. 2nd
ed. Louvain: Publications Universitaires; Paris: Beatrice-Nauwelaerts,
1970.
Gauthier, in his introduction (Vol. I), discusses various historical aspects of the
problem (!Ml-244, 284-295) . He emphasizes the " incompatibility " of Aristotelian
Ethics and Christian doctrine (182), of Aristotle and Aquinas (275-276). However,
if (1) the " teleology " (or " finality ") customarily associated with Aristotle is
indeed based on false interpretation (241-244); if (2) "good " may have a much
more nuanced meaning than is sometimes suggested (284-295); and if (S) Christian doctrine is not opposed to correct ethical analysis; then the question ought
to be raised (pace Gauthier) whether, and to what extent, Thomas and Aristotle
are actually in accord on fundamental ethical issues. See also Gauthier's commentary on Nie. Ethics I (op. cit. Vol. II, 8-88), and Thomas' Sententia Libri
Ethicorum (Opera omnia, ed. Leon., XL VII) . Rome: S. Sabina, 1969, 8-78.
•• Agit vs. agitu'I', based on cognoscere rationem finis; see also I, q. 18 a. 8.
•• The terminology includes: dare speciem, habere speciem, recipere speciem,

sortiri speciem, constitui in .ma specie, specificari, etc.

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WILLIAM

VANDERMARCK

Actual specification, then, in everything that consists of
"form" and "matter," derives from the "form." This is also
true for movements whether they are described actively or passively. E.g., heating derives its nature from the heat which is
its source: being heated from the heat toward which it is under
way. Either way the human act, considered actively or passively, derives its specification from the end. Willing derives
its nature from the will, and therefore from the end and the
good which is the will's object. Being willed derives its nature
from the term toward which it is under way, i. e., again
the end and the good. This is according to the definition of the
human act (actus human us as distinguished from actus
hominis) explained in the first article. In other words, Thomas
is trying to describe not what someone may, or may not, will,
but what the nature is of the human act. Therefore, the following conclusion should not come as any surprise: the actual
term of the human act is that which the will intends as end.
The article closes with the summarizing statement that the
human or moral act derives its specification from the end. In
comparison with the preceding articles the new element of the
third article is the emphasis on specification in the strict sense.
The end or good specifies the human act, i. e., really determines
its nature and essence.
b. Intention.
One implication of this position is that one can no longer
speak about intention in the rather loose sense of " what one
happens to have in mind." If intent represents the human act,
then it is necessarily determined by what the human act is, not
by what someone happens to think it is. This requires further
qualification which will be provided later in the treatise.
Thomas does not say that one intends what one actually accomplishes (or commits). He is careful to point out that the
actual term of the human act (not of the actus hominis) is that
which one must be said to intend. This leaves the possibility
open of results for which a person is not necessarily (fully)
it also opens the way to responsibility
responsible.

ETHICS AS :KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

547

for results that were not " intended." In general, while safeguarding all possible qualifications and nuances, Thomas rejects
in principle the dichotomy between intent and act. 37 Not what
one " has in mind " but what one actually does is what one
really intends, i. e., " the actual term of the human act is that
which the will intends as end."
This also accounts for the famous distinction between finis
<Yperis and finis <Yperantis, often suggested as a significant element in Thomas's ethics. 88 This distinction between the subjective (intent) and the objective goal of an act has the merit of
pointing towards an element other than the intent. That, however, is precisely the purpose of Thomas'sinitial statement about
the good as the object of the human act, and of his subsequent
corrective interpretation of the term "intent." Therefore, the distinction between finis operis and finis operantis tends to obscure,
rather than represent, Thomas's position. For, a finis operis is
morally irrelevant unless the opus is the human act; and the
finis operantis is determined," specified," not by someone's intent but by the extent of someone's actual responsibility. Thus,
finis operis and finis <Yperantis coincide,89 and the distinction,
from Thomas's point of view, is at best superfluous, at worst
confusing. 40
c. End and object.
The strict question of the third article is, whether the end
specifies the human act. In the course of his answer Thomas
casually states, as he had done already in the first article, that
87 See also Leclercq, op. cit. (footn. fl3) fl71, 409, 4!U.
••Particularly in connection with the distinction between finis cuius and finis
quo. See Wittmann, op. cit. (footn. 3) 31; see further under 5, below.
•• Or, to use Thomas' own terminology, finis operis semper reducitur in finem
operantis (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum II, d. l q. 2 a. l; ed. Mandonnet,
Paris: Lethielleux, 1929, 45-46).
•• Historical data on the question can be found in Odon Lottin, " La place du
'finis operantis' dans la pensee de saint Thomas," op. cit. (footn. flO) 489-517. It
provoked a critical discussion by L.-M. Simon, " Substance et circonstances de l'acte
moral," Angelicum 33 (1956) 67-79; 40 (1963) 195-201. Guindon (op. cit. in footn.
3-84, footn. 61) notes the presence of the distinction in John de la Rochelle.

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WILLIAM

vANDERMARCK

the object of the will is the good and the end. It should, therefore, be obvious that one can easily and casually, in this context, interchange end (finis) and object (obiectum) without
in any way changing the content of statements, or confusing
the issue.
d. Art. 3, ad 3.
The :final element that deserves special attention is the last
part of this article, i. e., the answer to the third argument. The
third argument is typical for the position of those who interpret
end as intention, and consider this intention as accidental to
the act in itself. The argument observes that one and the same
act can have various intentions, and concludes that it cannot
be specified by its end since it is obvious that an act can only
have one specification.
Thomas tries to dispel the various ambiguities of this position. He admits, first, that one and the same act emanating
from an agent as a particular individual act can have only one
immediate end which specifies this act. He then adds, contrary
to what the argument suggests, that nothing prevents this act
from having various "remote" ends, as long as one is the end
of another. It is obvious, from Thomas's point of view, that
these " remote " ends specify the act, with the result that what
is materially one and the same act can be various acts because
of various specifications (see 5, below) .
Next, however, he turns to the underlying assumption which
the third argument is based upon, namely, that acts remain
what they are no matter what their ends, i. e., intentions. Briefly, he argues that this is true from a physical, not from a moral,
point of view. Since the entire discussion concerns moral acts,
this distinction reveals the totally inadequate approach of the
traditional under.standing of moral problems. It is possible,
Thomas writes, that what is a certain act because of its physical
specification, has different moral specifications. E.g., the killing
of a human person is a specific physical act. However, as a
human or moral act it can be an act of justice or an indulging

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

549

in private vengeance. 41 These are totally different moral acts,
the one good, the other evil. For, Thomas continues, an act
(or movement) is specified not by something accidental but by
its per se term. Moral specifications are accidental to physical
acts. On the other hand, physical specifications are accidental
to moral acts. Therefore, similar physical acts can be different
moral acts, and vice versa.
If the profound significance of Thoma.s's introductory articles
had perhaps not yet become obvious because of his matter of
fact approach in a rather formal terminology, it must by now
be evident from this revolutionary statement. Medieval theologians without exception share the assumption underlying
the third argument, namely, that moral acts remain essentially
unchanged although intentions and circumstances may vary.
Killing forever remains killing; a lie forever remains a lie; etc.
Thomas admits that this is true, from a physical point of view.
This constitutes the most devastating critique of a supposedly
moral theory, which is here being unmasked as totally inadequate to comprehend the moral phenomena. Thomas observes
that, outward physical appearances notwithstanding, the assumption that the act remains unchanged is false from a moral
point of view, the only one that is relevant here. His example
not merely states that killing may be right, and that murderous
vengeance is wrong (everyone might agree with that); it serves
to reveal a much more profound truth: they are two different
human acts, which is the exact opposite of what the customary
assumption claims. Further, the primary meaning of the claim,
"This may be understood as referring to capital punishment (see, e. g., Summa

Theol. II-II, q. 64 aa. fl and 3), provided one keep in mind that biblical references
constitute a significant element of such a consideration (see, e.g., op. cit. q. 25 a. 6
ad fl; Exod. flfl: 18; Num, fl5). However, both the example and the terminology
appear to relate to the famous dilemma of Augustine: Judas delivered Christ,
the Father delivered Christ, Christ delivered himself. They all did the same, yet
it is not the same. Diversa ergo intentio diversa facif (In Ep. Ioannis, tr. VII,
7: PL 35, fl033). The text is a locus classicus in medieval theology, mainly because of the (ab)use that Peter Abelard made of it in order to prove that the
exterior act is morally irrelevant. For Thomas, see particularly Scriptum super
libros Sent. I, d. 48 a.fl ad 4 (ed. Mandonnet. 1084) .

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WILLIAM VANDERMARCK

that here are two different human acts, is, that one is right,
and the other wrong. A second, and in this moral context
secondary, meaning is, that one is an act of justice, and the
other an act of petty vengeance.
This brief aside foreshadows the profound di:fierencesbetween
Thomas and his medieval predecessors and contemporaries concerning the moral, and theological, issues that he will consider
in detail later on.42
4. Ultimate end: unity and plurality.
The observation that the characteristic of the free, voluntary, human, or moral act is its ultimate implication, its impact
on man's purpose and destiny, in no way suggests that all men
share a common purpose and destiny. And then again, it does,
depending on how one understands ultimate end, purpose, destiny, etc.
Thomas distinguishes between the element of finality on
the one hand, and its particular content on the other. 43 While
the moral nature of any act is dependent upon this act's ultimate implications, there is no reason to ignore or contradict the evidence, that men have different values, and different ideas about the purpose of human existence. Conversely,
the multiplicity of values and purposes in no way contradicts
the presence of a common element in all human action, i. e.,
its impact on whatever man's ultimate purpose happens to be.
That a plurality of ultimate values is possible, and a fact,
does not mean that man cannot do wrong. As Thomas distinguishes earlier between real and apparent good," so he ob•• The distinction between physical and moral specification already appears in
l Sent. d. 48 a. 2; 2 Sent. d. 88 a. l ad 8; d. 40 a. I; a. 4 c. & ad 2; d. 42 q. 1
a. l; 8 Sent. d. 28 q. 8 a. l qla. 8. It is exemplified in Summa Theol. I-II, q. 18
a. 5 ad 8 (see also a. I ad 8), summarizing the extensive argument of de Male> q. 2
a. 4 (comp. 2 Sent. d. 40 a. l ad 4); II-II, q. 40 a. 2 ad 4; q. 64 a. 7.
•• Summa Thee>l. I-II, q. l a. 7: " de ultimo fine possumus loqui dupliciter:
uno modo, secundum rationem ultimi finis; alio modo, secundum id in quo finis
ultimi ratio invenitur."
" See footn. 29.

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

551

serves here that one can falsely seek his good where it cannot
be found. 45
5. Ultimate End and Beatitude.

One final element of Thomas' introductory treatise deserves
special attention. In the last article of the first question Thomas
formulates a distinction 46 that allows him to make an observation of great theological importance. God is the ultimate end
of all creatures. This has been stated many times before 47 in
the sense that every created perfection is a participation in
God's perfection. Man's situation is unique in that he can know
and love God. This too has been said before.48 The importance
of the latter statement results in part from the context, and
further from the fact that Thomas makes it without any appeal to grace, faith, etc.
There is nothing unique in having God as ultimate end. No
creature can possibly have another ultimate end for the very
simple reason that its perfection cannot be anything but some
participation in, and similarity of, God's perfection. The factor
that constitutes man's uniqueness is the same one that constitutes freedom, voluntariness, or morality, namely, man's rational nature, here described as " knowing and loving." 49 The
'"Summa Theol. I-II, q. 1 a. 7 ad 1; see also q. 2.
0 Q. 1 a.8:
" finis dupliciter dicitur, scilicet cuius, et quo: id.est ipsa res in
qua ratio boni invenitur, et usus sive adeptio illius rei." For a critical reflection
on this distinction and its Aristotelian background, see the article by J. Santeler,
" Der Endzweck des Menschen nach Thomas von Aquin. Eine kritischweiterfiihrende Studie," Ztschr. f. kath Theol. 87 (1965) 1-60, especially Sl-51.
See also Wittmann, fYP· cit. (footn. 3) 25 fl'.
'7 See, e.g., Summa Theol. I, q. 6 a. 1 ad 2; q. 44 a. 4.
48 See, e.g., op. cit. I, q. 6 a. 1 ad 2; q. 65 a. 2.
0 San.teler (<Y[I. cit. 32-35) seems to consider the usus or fruitio as unique,
whereas it is obviously Thomas' purpose to point to the uniqueness, in man's case,
of the nature of this usus, etc. Although this may appear to be of minor significance, it is of major importance for Santeler's entire thesis which is built,
against Thomas, upon the understanding that man, according to Thomas, has
two ultimate ends, namely, his own beatitude (too easily understood by Santeler
as simple ' happiness '), and God. Santeler considers the distinction between finis
ouiu. and finis quo as the crucial element of Thomas' position, and as the unsuccessful attempt to reconcile this irreconcilable "competition" (op. cit. 44; also·

55Yl.

WILLIAM VANDERMARCK

crucial element in Thoma.s's :assention is, that God here appears
as the end or object of man's "knowing and loving." This
places the entire area of morality as it is in a theological perspective, i. e., without changing, downgrading, or bypassing
morality itself.
The present context shows the nerve center of Thomas's theology as it recognizes the mystery of man's involvement with
God, without adding any mysteriousness of its own. Man's
"knowing and loving" remains what it is. No mysterious additions or infusions are taking; place. If, nonetheless, man
" knows and loves " God, it is because there is more in that
which he knows and loves than meets the eye. As far as man
is concerned there is nothing but his own nature and his own
natural faculties. If it is nonetheless true that there is more
than that, it derives not from the subject but from the object.
And if it does, then this object" specifies" in the strictest sense
of this term (see 3, a, b, and d, above) . Then all the statements
about the supernatural, about faith, theological virtues,
beatitude, grace, " capacity of God," "natural desire to see
God," and even about " infusion " and " addition,'' appear to
be true indeed. Not, however, because man is provided with
additional mysterious capacities but because God is indeed the
"specifying" object of man's own natural capabilities. 50 It is
6 and 17). In fact Thomas's position is radically anthropocentric: the (human)
good is man's ultimate end, and it implies usus or fruitiQ. When it comes to the
theological interpretation Thomas is at the same time radically theocentric: God
is man's ultimate end, it implies usus or rather fruitfo. While failing to appreciate
Thomas's distinct ethical (anthropological) and theological approaches, Santeler
himself introduces the " competition " which he then wages war against.
Summa TheQl. I, q. 65 a. 2: "creaturae rationales ..• finem
" 0 See, e.g.,
Deum ... attingere possunt sua operatione, cognoscendo et amando"; ill, q. 4
a. 1 ad 2: "natura humana ... est capax Dei, scilicet ipsum attingendo PT<Ypria
operatione cognitionis et amoris" (see also De V eritate q. 20 a. 4; q. 22 a. 2 ad 5);
I-II, q. 5 a. 8 ad 2: "Vera ratio beatitudinis consideratur ex Qbiecfo, quod dat
1rpeciem actui, non autem ex subiecfo " ; a. 5 ad 8: " cum operationis species
dependeat ex obiecto . . ." ; q. 2 a. 8 ad S. See also my article, " Faith: What
It Is Depends on What It Relates to: A Study on the Object of Faith in the
Theology of Thomas Aquinas," Rech. de TheQl. Anc. et Med. 42, pp. 157-202;
as well as, "Beyond Galilei and Bultmann: The Problem of Christian Ethics,"

ETHICS AS KEY TO AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY

558

of course under.stood that no creature is capable of any activity
without the influence of the Creator. 51 There is, again, no reason
to consider man unique in this respect. If, nonetheless, with
regard to man we speak not merely about providence but about
"grace," it is in order to indicate the unique perspective to
which God's providence leads man's "knowing and loving." 52
Conclusion.
In terse scholastic language one would have to say that the
specifying object is the key to Thomas' ethics, and to his theology. If one understands the meaning of the very precise and
well defined term" specification," it becomes apparent (1) that
all human activity touches " the good " no matter what man's
alleged intentions are, but also (2) that it is touched by God
no matter what man's theological awareness is. This double
theme, strictly distinguished but inextricably intertwined, sets
the pattern for Thomas's theological ethics which of course is
not a moralistic search for rules but, as part of his theology, an
attempt to understand God in his image. 58 Such an underin: James Wm. McClendon, Jr. (ed.), Philosophy of Religion and Theology:
1975 Proceedings of the American Academy of Religion. Missoula, Mont.: A. A. R.
and Univ. of Montana Press, 1975, 189-147 (esp. 141-144). Thomas articulates
his notion of faith very concisely in Summa Theol. I, q. a a.18 ad S: "fides
cognitio quaedam est, inquantum intellectus determinatur per fidem ad aliquod
cognoscibile. Sed haec determinatio ad unum non procedit ex visione credentis,
sed a visione eius cui creditur. Et sic, inquantum deest visio, deficit a ratione
cognitionis quae est in scientia."
51 Summa Theol. I, qq. 103-105; 1-11, q. 5 a. 5 ad 2: "indigens ... divino auxilio";
q. 62 a.I: "non tamen absque adiutorio divino"; q. 68 a. 2: "non tamen exclusa
operatione Dei, qui in omni natura et voluntate interius operatur" (see also ad 2);
q.109; etc.
52 Summa Theol. I-II, q. 110 a. 1: "differens consideratur dilectio Dei ad creaturam. Una quidem communis, secundum quam ' diligit omnia quae sunt ' • • . ,
secundum quam esse naturale rebus creatis largitur. Alia autem est dilectio specialis,
secundum quam trahit creaturam rationalem supra conditionem naturae, ad participationem divini boni." See also op. cit. I, q. 103 a. 5 ad 2.
•• For this reason Thomas's ethics is characterized as " speculative" by Guindon,
op. cit. (footn. S) 271, and by Wolfgang Kluxen, Philosophische Ethik bei Thomas
von Aquin (Walberberger Studien, Philos. Reihe, II). Mainz: Matthias-Griinewald
Verlag, 1964, 109.

554

WILLIAM

vANDERMARCK

standing is totally dependent upon a correct understanding of
man and of human morality, which Thomas pursues in the
subsequent treatises of the Secunda Pars. The introduction
" On Ultimate End and Beatitude " reveals the ethical and theological orientation of this entire enterprise. It is the key that
allows one to enter.
WILLIAM VANDERMARCK
DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION?*

I

N THE EARLY thirties the noted Thomist philosopher,
Jacques Maritain, published several books in which he
claimed that without the guidance of Christian theology
there could be no adequately developed ethics.1 Maritain closed
his survey of ethics, in his last big book, with a description of
the human condition as an unhappy situation in which man
finds his "spirit united in substance with flesh and engaged in
the universe of matter." The philosopher, he said, has no solution to the problems arising from this combination. "It is only
with Christianity," concluded Maritain, "that the effort t<,>
go beyond the human condition comes to real fruition." 2 My
old professor, Etienne Gilson, came to agree with Maritain that
a purely philosophical ethics is of little practical value.
Oddly, many Catholic theologians disagreed. The great
Benedictine historian of theology, Dom Odon Lottin, firmly
maintained that " without direct recourse to God human reason can prove the moral obligation of performing certain actions, just as it is able to prove . . . the moral obligation to
incline toward the moral good which is its natural end." 8
Similarly J.M. Ramirez, 0. P., argued that Maritain was undervaluing the contribution that moral philosophy can make to
our awareness of the good life for man. 4
Of course the view that philosophical ethics is quite inade*A revision of the Wade Memorial Lecture delivered at St. Louis University,
March 7, 1976.
1 J. Maritain, Science and Wisdom (New York:
Scribner's, 1940) is the main
English source of this teaching.
8 Maritain, Moral Philosophy (New York: Scribner's, 1964) pp. 452 and 458.
a <Men Lottin, Morale Fondamentale (Tournai: Desclee, 1954) p. 209; quotation
translated by Bourke.
'J. M. Ramil'ez, "De philosophia morali Christiana," Divus Thomas (Fribourg),
XIV (1936) 87-122, 181-204 •

555

556

VERNON J. BOURKE

quate, unless guided by religious faith, is not confined to
Catholic thinkers. Many of the founders of Protestantism held
a low opinion of philosophy. In our century, the Anglican Bishop R. C. Mortimer rejected all attempts at rational study of
man's moral duties and taught that Christian ethics is simply
what God wills. On the continent of Europe, Emil Brunner
wrote: " The Good consists in always doing what God wills at
any particular moment." 5 A recent article by Lynn Boliek in
a Dutch Calvinist journal 6 expresses the same distrust of nonreligious ethics, and in particular of Rudolph Bultmann's use
of Heidegger's phenomenology. "We have seen," concludes Dr.
Boliek, " a similar clash between the Biblical ground-motive and
the aristotelian form-matter motive in Thomas Aquinas." 7
Nevertheless we :find very capable Protestant spokesmen who
recognize the independence of philosophical ethics. John
Macquarrie, editor of the Dictionary of Christian Ethics, is a
good example. He makes a competent combination of existential philosophy and Christian teachings. 8 In England the
Anglican Thomist, E. L. Mascall, has long defended the use
of philosophy in the service of theology. 9 But the writer who
most impresses me, in the contemporary Protestant current, is
Paul Ramsey. In both his general view of the relation of Christian ethics to moral philosophy and in his consideration of life
and death issues in contemporary life, Paul Ramsey stands out
as a well balanced American Protestant thinker. 10
•Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1947)
p. 88.
• Lynn Boliek, " The Integrity of Faith. Toward a Reformed Response to the
Neo-Scholastic Method of Rudolf Bultmann," Pkilosophia Ref ormata (Amsterdam)
XXXIX (1974), 41-65.
• Art. cit., pp.
8 See for instance Macquarrie's
Three Issues in Ethics (New York: Harper,
1970). His earlier An Existentialist Theology (New York: Holt, 1945) initiates
this combination.
• E. L. Mascall, The Openness of Being (London: Darton, 1971) is representative
of his thought.
10 See especially Paul Ramsey, Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics
(New
York: Scribner's, 1967).

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

557

There is, then, in Christian thought today a broad diversity
of judgment on the status of philosophical ethics. However,
ethical philosophers vary widely in their estimates of the value
of Christian teachings to ethics. Typical of extreme rejection
of the Christian influence is Robert G. Olson. He claims that,
" prevailing religious views, far from being conducive to moral
uprightness, in fact seriously undermine the practice of morality." 11 Olson is especially critical of the Neo-Thomistic emphasis on moral law. An equally blunt criticism of the legalism of
theistic ethics is made by the British ethicist P. H. NowellSmith. In 1966 he wrote an article in which he suggested that
" religious morality is infantile." To show that he meant this
literally, he explained: "I shall try to show that the religious attitude retains these characteristics of deontology, heteronomy
and realism which are proper and indeed necessary in the development of a child, but not proper to an adult." 12 He thinks
that Christian ethics tries to impose duties and boss adults in
the way that children are managed in England.
While one's immediate response to such criticism might be
resentment, the fact is that we may learn something from it.
Perhaps there is too much emphasis on duty and obligation in
some types of Christian ethics and not enough stress on acting
out of our own appreciation of moral goodness, for ourselves
and for other people. In other words, an ethics built upon the
growth of personal virtue may be superior to one built on externally imposed obligations.
At this point let us make our terms more precise. I am not
a theologian, and certainly not a spokesman for the Catholic
Church, but I have studied some of the writings of major Christian thinkers. Men like Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Duns
Scotus, Leibniz and Locke were both philosophers and theologians. Now, when we think of Christianity in relation to
11 R. G. Olson, The Morality of Self-Interest
(New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1965), pp. v and 158.
12 P. H. Nowell-Smith, "Morality:
Religious and Secular," in Ian T. Ramsey
(ed.), Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy (New York: Macmillan,
1966) pp. 95 and 108.

558

VERNON J. BOURKE

ethics, it is well to distinguish the roles of faith and of theology.
Faith is a personal disposition to assent to certain propositions,
not because they are rationally evident but because they are
vouched for by some authority: in the case of theistic faith
the ultimate authority is God. No Christian can get along without faith. On the other hand, theology (moral or any other
kind) is a special study cultivated by a few experts who try to
understand and explain the meaning of their religious beliefs.
Theology is not something that the average Christian must acquire in order to be saved. Indeed in the first Christian centuries there was very little theology. To St. Augustine, theologia meant pagan nonsense.
Our problem is not whether one may develop a viable ethics
while lacking in religious faith but rather whether philosophical
ethics can get along without the support of moral theology. So
stated, our answer may already be clear: of course it can. If
Maritain and his associates ever really meant that ethics is
not possible without the guidance of moral theology or Christian ethics, then they overlooked four centuries of ethical
thinking among the Greeks and Romans before the time of
Christ. Indeed, I shall suggest later that, far from moral philosophy depending on theology, moral theology has always borrowed materials from philosophy.
Likewise the term " ethics " does not mean the same thing
as "morality." Ethics is a special study cultivated by few
people and aimed at a very basic understanding of what constitutes a good life for humans. On the other hand, morality is
something on which all thinking people have their own convictions. Ethics is a kind of knowledge that can be taught to
others; moral views are very private and unteachable. We
sometimes speak of morality as an incommunicable wisdom. Its
purpose is to promote good or right actions, while the purpose
of ethics is to know what is involved in moral thinking.
What we are really asking, then, is whether ethics may be
autonomous in relation to Christian ethics. To help to see an
answer let us look at the views of four living thinkers, two

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

559

Americans who are not Catholics and two British ethicists who
are Catholics.
One of the well respected textbooks in the field today is
Richard Brandt's Ethical Theory. He discusses the use of
authority in ethics, in terms of three questions. (1) "Are the
ethical recommendations of religious teachers de.serving of serious consideration? " To this he answers that they are, in some
cases. (2) "Is knowledge of religious teaching essential to the
justification of ethical belief?" Brandt answers that there are
some ethical obligations that do require knowledge of God for
their justification. 18 He quotes Dietrich von Hildebrand (Christian Ethics, New York; McKay, 1953, pp. 455-6) who wrote:
Morality presupposes ... God's existence.... This does not mean,
however, that we must have a knowledge of God's existence, eithel"
by Revelation or by rational demonstration. . . . The knowledge
of a personal God is not indissolubly connected with the experience of moral values, nor does the voice of conscience presuppose
the knowledge of a personal God.

Finally Brandt asks: (3) " Is the ethical teaching of some religious leaders infallible?" In reply he suggests that we need
some test to determine who speaks the will of God. (If we
recall that the religious leadel'.s to whom Brandt has reference
may include not only the Pope, or a respected Protestant
scholar like Reinhold Niebuhr, but also the many vulgarizers
of the Christian message, perhaps we will see the validity of
Brandt's answer.) In any case Brandt holds that the claim that
theology plays an essential role in academic ethics is " patently
invalid."
Another American moral philosopher whose views are well
worth considering is William K. Frankena (University of
Michigan) . Despite an early Calvinist education, he is not a
theologian but a strictly philosophical ethicist. In the sixth
chapter of his textbook,14 he states that the justification of
18

Richard Brandt, Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:

Prentice-Hall,

1959)' pp. 68-81.
i•

W. K.

Ethics (Englewood Cliffs:

1968), p. 85,

560

VERNON J. BOURKE

ethical principles cannot logically depend on theological premises. The reason is that such premises are not established by
philosophical evidence. He admits, however, that perhaps "no
adequate motivation to be moral is possible without religion,"
but this is quite different from saying that academic ethics requires a basis in theology. Just last year, in the Journal of Religious Ethics (vol. III, 1975, pp. 7-62) Frankena discusses this
whole problem with F. S. Carney (S. Methodist University)
and Stanley Hauerwas (Notre Dame University). Here
Frankena admits his doubts about the dependence of ethics on
religious thought. Perhaps his most revealing sentence is this:
"This view that I have been proposing ... is that morality and
religion embody two somewhat different, but not necessarily
mutually exclusive, points of view from which normative or
evaluative judgments are or at least may be made." 15 I agree
with this judgment of Frankena's.
In British countries and Scandinavia (and increasingly in
the non-denominational universities of the U.S. A.) the most
popular type of academic ethics is associated with linguistic
analysis. Analytic ethics strives to achieve clarity by continually asking: " What do we mean by X? "-where X stands
for any part of the moral experience. Thus, if X is the act of
intending, or the sort of thing that is called a " good reason "
for acting, or the notion of " community standards," it is often
beneficial to examine how these terms are used in ordinary
speech. People who have studied Scholastic ethics, or moral
theology, know how complex the explanation of something like
" voluntariness " can become. The analysts simplify the whole
thing by saying that your act is voluntary, if you could have
done otherwise. This is plain talk.
Philosophers on the continent of Europe (who tend to be either
phenomenologists or Marxists) cannot understand the British
analysts. And the feeling is reciprocal: the British think the
French, Germans and Italians are talking idealistic nonsense.
15 Frankena, "Conversations with Carney and Hauerwas," Journal of ReliqiQ1111
Ethics III, I (1975), p. 57.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

561

Even more odd is the fact that those few Catholic philosophers
who try to be up-to-date usually prefer the so-called phenomenological method. This is what has happened in the movement called Transcendental Thomism which is suddenly quite
popular among young Jesuits in this country.
However, a few Catholic philosophers are now suggesting
that we who work in the Catholic tradition but in Englishspeaking countries might better shift our attention from the
mystifications of continental idealism to the plain talk of
analytic philosophy. Instead of talking about Da-Sein and
So-Sein, about Angst and the devoir de l' existence, we ought
to be cultivating a method of ethical thinking that is more
adapted to our English culture and interests. This, at any rate,
is the view of an Australian priest-scholar, Eric D'Arcy. 16
Father D' Arey has no quarrel with Frenchmen or Germans who
want to use their philosophical heritage, from Meister Eckhart,
through Kant, Hegel and Fichte, to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
The point is that the inward-looking concentration on mental
events which characterizes much continental philosophy is
utterly alien to the Anglo-American experience. Why theologians who write in English pay so much attention to phenomenology is something that Eric D'Arcy cannot grasp. I
can't either, although it is clear that some Catholics are under
the impression that there is something more spiritual about
European idealism.
Actually, a good many of the people now working at analytic
ethics in England are Roman Catholic philosophers. I think
of people like Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband, Peter
Geach, of Desmond Henry, E. B. F. Midgley, Max Charlesworth, John Finnis, and others. A good example is the work
of Father Patrick McGrath who uses linguistic analysis in his
book, The Nature of Moral Judgement (1967), to show that
" rights constitute the ultimate criterion of our moral obliga16 Eric D'Arcy, "Worthy of Worship:
a Catholic Contribution," in G. Outka
and J.P. Reeder (eds.), Religion and Morality (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday,
1973)' pp.

562

VERNON J. BOURKE

tions " (p. 822) . And McGrath insists that the Christian precepts of love do not provide an adequate norm for moral judgment.
On the whole, however, American Catholic writers on ethics
and moral theology ignore what is being done in analytic ethics.
Yet the amount of writing in the field by analysts is huge in
comparison with the ethical output of phenomenologists. More
important than quantity, however, is the kind of thing that is
attempted in the two schools. Much phenomenological ethics
is therapeutic: it tries to cure those who are in moral trouble:
it is a sort of moral psychiatry. But in recent years ethicists
have come to distinguish two different focal points. One center
of attention for some thinkers lies in the rules and general judgments that serve as guides for moral decision-making. With
this focus one proceeds to develop a rule-ethics, as is the case
in natural law thinking. On the other hand, another sort of
moral philosophy attempts to focus on the actual conduct of
men. Deeds rather than rules are important. In the older tradition of ethics this was the domain of prudential judgment and
was not regarded as ethics. To my mind this is still so: an
act-ethics is not teachable for it has no universality.
Consider the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example. He
was doubtless a very sincere Christian thinker. This man felt,
as did Sjiiren Kierkegaard in the preceding century, that the
ethics of the schools is useless. What a really good Christian
must do is to follow the immediate personal promptings provided by an all-knowing God for every person who faces a moral
problem. Thus, if Bonhoeffer were asked to join a conspiracy
to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he would not try to find a rule
governing such matters, he would rather humbly ask God for
divine guidance. Now I don't want to disparage such procedure-but I do want to say that it is not ethics. That there
are some fortunate people who get so close to God that they are
directly ruled by the divine will, I do not deny. My first year
in graduate studies was mostly devoted to reading Saints
Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux. But just imagine the

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

568

problem of trying to teach such people ethics. There is a New
Testament text to the effect that really good people don't need
any laws; they do their duty without recourse to generalized imperatives. If all mankind were such, we would need no ethics, no
Church laws, and indeed no civil or criminal laws. But there
are not many St. Bernards in the world. I think the majority
of men and women need some general rules, and upon occasion
even some coercion, to live well. As I see it, an act-ethics
(which is what phenomenological ethics tends to be) provides
no basis for such guidance.
What is called the new morality, the morality of the situation, is an attempt at an act-ethics. The contention that any
act that is motivated by love is good forms the central thesis
of act-agapism. This is not a viable type of academic ethics.
There is nothing in it that is teachable. It would be possible to
decide to do almost any sort of action in the name of an ethics
of love. Recently there was an Iowa Court of Appeals case
dealing with the activities of a female minister alleged to have
been observed having sexual relations with a prisoner in a state
prison, during a counselling session. Quite possibly she used
in her defense the claim that she acted out of love for her fellow
man. The problem is to determine the quality of such love.
Where there is a great variety of religious sects, many using the
name Christian, there is not much point in saying that just any
kind of love sanctioned by religion is the love of charity or
agape. There are two kinds of love, as Augustine well knew,
good and bad. In the long run, we must know what should, and
should not, be loved, before we can give meaning to love as an
ethical attitude. To my mind, this means that an act-ethics
of the agapistic type will not work.
But what about natural law ethics: isn't that the sort of
thing that distinguishes this subject as usually handled by
Catholic Christians? Don't we all know quite naturally that
some kinds of actions are right and good, and others are wrong
and bad? My answer is that many people have their doubts
about the validity of natural law today. Let us consider three
kinds of criticism.

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VERNON J. BOURKE

First, since Vatican Council II many Catholic writers are
found attacking the realistic foundations of natural law thinking.
They challenge the whole idea of human nature as the essential
character of man. They reject the view that reason is what
makes a person specifically human. Some of the new type of
theologians talk about the Hellenizing of Christianity as something now outmoded. They advocate a return to the simplicity
of the Old and New Testament. According to these new theologians, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Anselm of Canterbury,
Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and Duns
Scotus spoiled the Christian message by putting all that nonsense from Greek philosophy into their theology.
The director of graduate studies in theology at the University
of Notre Dame, Stanley Hauerwas, is a case in point. In an
article published last year, on "Natural Law, Tragedy, and
Theological Ethics," 17 he writes: " In this essay I will argue
that Christian ethics theologically does not have a stake in
' natural law ' understood as an independent and sufficient
morality." Later on the same page Hauerwas adds that" reason
is not the essence of man." To support his contention he appeals to two writers. Richard McCormick is quoted as saying
that, " there is no such thing as a natural law existentially
separable from the law of Christ, and there never was. There
is only Christian morality." 18 And George Regan writes:
" Natural law is not really natural; it enters completely into the
supernatural economy of salvation which takes place through
the grace of Christ. Joseph Fuchs rightly says that' Christ has
redeemed the natural law .... Natural law does not exist apart
from the grace of Christ'." 19 Of course one of the most strident
critics of natural law and the whole tradition of Scholastic
thought is Leslie Dewart, a lay theologian at my old College,
St. Michael's in Toronto.
American Journal of Jurisprudence XX (1975), p. S.
R. McCormick, " Human Significance and Christian Significance," in Paul
Ramsey and G. Outka (eds.), Norm and Contea;t iin Christian Ethics (New York.
Scribner's, 1968) pp. 233-261.
1 • George Regan, New Trends in Moral Theology
(New York: Newman Press,
1971) p. 130-131; cited by Hauerwas, pp. 3-4.
17

18

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

565

What is discouraging about this sort of criticism is that it
is half true-but also half false. May I explain in two brief
comments? First, these and similar writers so restrict the scope
of natural law that it becomes available only to those who
know the law of Christ and are supernaturally elevated by
divine grace. This excludes vast numbers of men today: millions of people in China, India, Russia and Africa do not know
or accept Christianity. Second, this criticism of natural law
on the part of the new theologians involves the relation between the natural and the supernatural: a problem that I do
not propose to discuss here. It is not necessary to discuss it.
When the great theologians of the middle ages talked about
natural law, they had a special meaning for "natural" which
sets it in opposition to " acquired " knowledge. The meaning
of " natural " in their lex naturalis or jus naturale centers on
the way that such a law is conveyed to mankind, that is, its
mode of promulgation. Some items of knowledge are made
known to us by being expressed through external signs. Thus
we may be told that a certain day in the week is to be kept
holy: for the Moslem it is Friday, for the Jew it is Saturday,
for most Christians it is Sunday. This manner of communicating through signs is called positive promulgation, from the
Latin positum, meaning that which is placed before us. Other
items of knowledge we acquire from our own personal experience and reflection. Early in life most people get to know what
" equality " or " fairness " mean, just from the inner prompting
of their own native awareness of such relations. Now this mode
of acquiring knowledge is called "natural," in the sense that
some things are evident to us without being communicated to
us through external signs. When Thomas Aquinas talks about
a law being " natural," this is what he means, and he does not
differ on this usage from all the great thinkers before the
Renaissance. The same piece of information may be received
either naturally, or positively, or in both ways, but we lose
clarity if we confuse the two modes of promulgation.
Small wonder, then, that there have been misunderstandings
and disputes about the status of natural law, all through the

56'6

VERNON J, BOURKE

ages. As soon as you start to tell, or teach, another person what
you think the natural law requires, you have moved to another
method of communication than that of natural promulgation.
Perhaps this may help us to understand why people who are
not Catholics frequently resent being told by Catholics what
the natural law teaches.
A third serious objection to a simplistic theory of natural law
is one which I would make myself.20 It is not the case that all
humans can easily know " what the natural law teaches,,, by
merely intuiting a whole code of moral behavior within their
own minds. It takes much more than a few minutes of personal
insight to grasp even the basic judgments of ethics. The claim
that knowledge of natural moral law is quasi-innate is impossible to maintain. When Aquinas wrote his treatise on. moral
theology, in the second Part of his Summa of Theology, he dicl
not start with natural, or any other kind of, law and then explain his notion of our moral obligations. Rather; he first devoted eighty-nine Questions (roughly equivalent to chapters
in a modern book) to how men may distinguish good from evil.
Only after this long analysis (several volumes in a modern
printing) does the Summa Theologiae tell us that there is
a lex naturalis which summarizes, as it were, the conclusions
of such a long investigation. This natural law is not identical
with eternal law, nor with man-made law, nor with divine law.
The explanation of these different kinds of law that is given
by Aquinas in his treatise on laws (S. T. I-II, q. 91, art. 1-4)
is worth considering. There is, first, the eternal law (lex
aeterna) which is God's supreme principle of governance (ipsa
ratio gubernationis) for all things. This eternal law is known
in its fullness only to God: no human knows the whole eternal
law. Second, there is natural law (lex naturilis) which involves
a sharing in that part of eternal law which a rational being
may get to know by thinking about one's basic inclinations,
or needs, for appropriate goals and actions (inclinationes in
•• See my article, " Is Thomas Aquinas a Natural Law Ethicist? " The Monilt

i.vm

(1974) 52-66.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

567

proprios actus et fines). Third, there is human law (Zero
kumana) which consists of particular regulations (particulares
dispositiones) discovered by human reasoning and added to the
very general precepts of natural law. Such man-made laws are
promulgated positively. Fourth, there is divine law (lex divina)
which is over and above natural law and human law (praeter
legem naturalem et legem humanam) . Divine law is needed for
several reasons but especially because human agents are directed by God to an ultimate life goal (the beatific vision)
which exceeds the natural capacities of mankind. Divine law
lifts us to the level of supernatural revelation. So it is not
natural but something different and on a higher level. As
Thomas puts it (art. 4, ad primum):
Through natural law the eternal law is participated according to
to the ability that is proportionate to human nature (secundum
proportionem capacitatis humanae naturae). But man needs to
be directed in a higher way toward his final supernatural end. So
the law that is divinely given (divirzitU8'data) is super-added, for
through it the etemal law is participated in a higher way (altiori
modo).

After this bit of textual analysis, may I point out something
that is important? Divine law is positively promulgated
(Thomas is thinking of the ten commandments delivered in
writing to Moses, and the two precepts of love in the New
Testament) and it adds to natural law and to state laws a
special knowledge of what men must do to achieve ultimate
felicity.21 It is only confusing, then, to speak today of the divine
natural law: for that phrase attempts to combine positive law
with non-positive law. At some point in the early modern
period, many Christian thinkers forgot this distinction, because many legal experts came to think that the essence of all
law is the imposition of obligation by the will of a lawgiver.
This is what is known as legal voluntarism and it is a very
• 1 Summa Theologiae, I-II, 91, 4, c: "Dicendum quod praeter legem naturalem
et legem humanam necessarium fuit ad directionem humanae vitae habere legem
divinam."

568

VERNON J. BOURKE

deceptive theory. Suffice it to say that it involves a sort of
ethical extrinsicism which is beautifully exemplified in the
Christian ethics of Joseph Fletcher. Unfortunately he is not
the only advocate of such extrinsicism: some recent Catholic
writers have adopted it.
We see both sides of this issue in a new book on international relations and natural law, written by a British professor of political science.n E. B. F. Midgley writes that natural
law as Aquinas understood it has a vital contribution to make
to the settlement of world problems in the twentieth century.
This is a remarkable view, especially for a man who teaches at
Aberdeen University, but I think it is valid. Midgley faces
up to the problem of ethics and Christianity quite frankly:
The question arises acutely in our own times as to whether an
atheist (or an agnostic) can properly recognize the obligatory
character of .a precept of the natural law. Certainly, any such
recognition depends upon the .existence and providence .of God,
but it may not necesS!lrily depend upon knowledge-by the
atheist-of the divine existence and providence. . . . Even in the
practical order, there will be some moral obligations which the
atheist will fail to recognize and others which he will recognize
only with difficulty and with the admixture of many errors.
Nevertheless, it does seem to be in accord with the mind of St.
Thomas that an atheist will not fail altogether to recognize the
obligatory character of every precept of the natural law. (pp. 7879)

position of Aquinas;
This is a very accurate statement of
Midgley has been well guided in his interpretation by his
reading of Dom Odon Lottin. But shortly after this passage
(p. 111) Midgley spoils his case by saying that a political
theorist such as Jean Bodin went wrong because, "he has deprived himself, by his apostasy, of the extrinsic authoritative
guidance in matters of natural law which was available in the
threefold source: the Sacred Scriptures, the Catholic tradition
and the magisterium of the Church."
•• E. B. F. Midgley, The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International
Relations (London: Elek Books; New York : Harper, 1975) pp. 78-79 and p. 111.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT REVELATION

569

Midgley has missed the point about natural law not being
divine law. I must repeat that most of the people in the world
today do not accept these three sources of guidance. The huge
population areas now are non-Christian and Church authority
means as little to these millions as it did to Joseph Stalin, when
he asked how many legions the Pope commanded.
Because of such confusion I have frequently wondered
whether it would not be advisable to stop talking about natural
law. If use of the term persists, however, we may eventually
have to do what Bernard Wuellner did in his Dictionary of
Scholastic Philosophy (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1956, pp. 69-70) .
He said that there are two kinds of natural law:
Christian natural law, the natural law as clarified, interpreted, and
confirmed by the truths of Christian faith and Christian tradition
guiding reason's knowledge of the law ... [and second] natural
law formally considered, the body of precepts and rights which
constitute the law [plus] natural law virtually considered, right
reason; reason's capacity and tendency to know the law.

In this terminology, the Christian natural law will have validity
for Christians but the natural law formally and virtually considered should be valid for all men. It is the latter, less adequate
but more universally available to mankind in general, that may
form the groundwork for a purely philosophical ethics. This
is why I have urged for many years that some (not all) Christian scholars should work at the elaboration of an ethics that
does not depend on the teaching authority of the Catholic
Church, or on the moral teachings of the Bible.
Moreover, even if the whole world became Christian, I would
think that a philosophical ethics would still be needed. My
view is grounded in the conviction that a good explanation of
how to think about moral problems, that is to say an ethics,
must be developed prior to moral theology or Christian ethics.
For a useful understanding of the bases of moral judgment we
need what Eric D' Arey and Elizabeth Anscombe have continually demanded, a workable moral psychology. If it is more
meaningful to some to say that we need a better understanding

570

VERNON J. BOURKE

of the functioning of human nature, then I would accept that.
The psychology of the " heart " which runs through the
biblical and early Christian writings does not provide a sufficient
analysis of the well-springs of human action. For the ancient
Hebrews, the heart (Lev) was the seat of human feelings and
willing, the focal-point of personal commitment and decisionmaking, and also the seat of human wisdom and higher knowledge. Today we know that the human heart does none of these
things; the heart has no conscious functions. If it did, then a
cardiologist might be writing this article. Of course we may
continue to use the term "heart" metaphorically, particularly
in ordinary talk about man's feelings and thoughts. But such
use does not explain what it means to know, to feel, and to
will things.
Christian ethics, or Catholic moral theology, cannot spring
full-blown from Holy Scripture, or from the simple roots of
Church traditions, or even from formal decisions of the teaching
Church, unless there be some understandable universe of discourse in which such teachings may be expressed. Even a moral
theologian cannot work in an intellectual and cultural vacuum.
It is quite possible for the Christian ethicist to try to construct
his own philosophy of morality, as Thomas Aquinas did, but
even such a philosophical ethics working in the service of moral
theology must have its own independent validity. It must be
worked out apart from the guarantees of religious authority.
So, my conclusion is that a purely philosophical ethics is possible apart from Christian theology but such an ethics is open
to development on a higher level of human experience, in terms
of the spiritual values inherent in Christianity. 23
VERNON

J. Boumrn

St. Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri
••This is also the view of two leading European Catholic ethicists: Wolfgang
Kluxen, Philosophische Ethik bei Thomas von Aquin (Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald,
1964); and Sofia Vanni Rovighi, "C'e un etica filosofica in S. Tommaso?" Rivista
di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica (Milano) LXVI (1974), 653-670.

BROWNSON'S APPROACH TO GOD:
THE CATHOLIC PERIOD

O

N BECOMING A Roman Catholic in October of 1844,
Orestes A. Brownson * had already acquired, at least
in germ, many of the leading ideas that would shape
his approach to God as a Catholic. Victor Cousin's model
of the infinite, the finite, and their relation; the Idea taken
as objective in the sense of Plato; the "synthetic philosophy" comprising the subject, the object, and their relationthese and other ideas would shape Brownson's development of
the Ideal Formula (Being creates existences), the focus of his
search as a Catholic for an objective or ontological foundation
for God's reality. 1 Some of these pre-Catholic ideas, of course,
would undergo transformation in his Catholic period. Cousin's
Absolute or spontaneous Reason, for example, would be replaced by the objective Ideal understood as real and necessary
Being. 2
*Orestes A. Brownson (1803-1876), an editor and a prolific writer on many
questions facing 19th century America, was born in Vermont in 1803. He imbibed
the spirit of New England Puritanism and became a Presbyterian at nineteen.
Then he successively became a Universalist preacher (1826-28), espoused social reform as a radical humanist (1829-31), became a Unitarian minister (1832),
organized his own " Church of the Future " (1836), developed certain aspects of
New England Transcendentalism, and finally converted to Roman Catholicism
(1844) . After a stormy but productive career as a Catholic layman, he died in 1876.
1 On becoming a Catholic, Brownson's instructor, Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston,
asked him to relinquish his pre-conversion philosophy for a scholastic philosophy.
This, plus Brownson's concern to form a philosophy compatible with Catholic
teaching, were the underlying concerns of his God-Question after his conversion
to Catholicism. These factors both limited and enhanced his rather distinctive
approach to a philosophical theology of God.
• In a letter to Cousin, Brownson told him that he discarded his distinction between the Absolute and subjective reason, but maintained a deep interest in de-

571

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

Brownson's approach to the God-question as a Catholic
would be primarily philosophical, not biblical, in character.
Against fl.deists and traditionalists, he believed human reason
capable of yielding genuine knowledge of God to supplement,
not supplant, knowledge of God gained through faith. 3 Though
Brownson in fact both granted and pre-supposed God's reality
as known through faith in a theological sense, his prime concern
was how certain knowledge of God could be attained via human
reason as it reflected on the data of ordinary experience or via
a logic which conformed to " the real order of things." Since
this search was carried out intermittently in the pages of his
Quarterly Review, his theology lacked the systematic character
found in the later Barth's Church Dogmatics or Paul Tillich's
Systematic Theology. In spirit, however, his theology would
be more akin to the philosophical theology of Tillich than to
the confessional-biblical theology of Karl Barth; his approach
to God as real and necessary Being would be much closer to
veloping the implications of Plato's thought. Brownson to Cousin, Sept. 1, 1844,
Brownson Papers, University of Notre Dame Archives (henceforward UNDA).
8 Cf. Brownson's Quarterly Review,
(edited by O. A. Brownson, Boston & New
York, 1844-1864, 1873-1875; (henceforward BrQR) April, 1852, 146-7 and January,
1854, 34-5; also The Works of Orestes A. Brownson (20 vols., collected and arranged
by Henry F. Brownson, Detroit: Thorndike Nourse, 1882-1887; henceforth Works)
II, (1875), 519l-3; I, (1855), 306-23. Traditionalism was concerned with how we
achieved certainty in regard to religious truth; it felt this certainty to have been
undermined by Cartesian methodic doubt. According to Traditionalism, a philosophical and theological doctrine prominent in certain parts of Europe (especially
in France) during the 19th century, human reason by itself was not capable of
attaining truths of a metaphysical or moral nature. Human reason needed to
be supplemented by external instruction in the form of divine revelation which
taught man not only supernatural truths but also such natural truths as the
nature of being, the moral law, and the immortality of the soul. The existence of
God was purely a matter of faith in divine revelation. Carried to its extreme,
traditionalism would make revelation the basis of natural science. For Brownson's
critique of traditionalism and fideism, see BrQR (October, 1855), 467 ff., and
Works, I, 289, 310, 323, 402, 438-86, 490-520; Ill, 340. A helpful background
article on the life and times of the French thinkers criticized by Brownson in this
regard (L. de Bonald (1754-1840); Abbe Felicite Lamennais (1782-1854); and
A. Bonnetty (1798-1879) is H. W. Paul, "In Quest of Kerygma: Catholic Intellectual Life in Nineteenth-Century
France," American Historical Review, 75
(December, 1969), 387-428.

BROWNSON'S

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573

Tillich's Ground of Being than to Barth's God of the biblical
revelation. 4
The so-called starting point of philosophy would be a key
question for Brownson. Did philosophy begin with existences
or simple contingent creatures and then work its way to God
via the psychological method? Or did philosophy start from
Being as such and work its way to existences or creatures via
the ontological method? 5
Brownson's key principle of logic led him to reject both
methods. He believed that nothing not already included in
the premises could be in the conclusion of any line of reasoning.
(Here he presumed a traditional syllogism of two premises and
a conclusion, all containing a subject, a predicate, and a copula
uniting them.) He thus rejected the psychological method because .such a method, by taking either the human person or
the data oi our own inner consciousness as a starting point (as
did Cartesianism) , could conclude only to further information
about, but not transcending, that same subjective data. There
was no way, for example, to proceed from the conception of
ourselves as entities (Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum) to the ob• 1Jrownson identified God with real and necessary Being, while Tillich, in the
first volume of his Systematic Theology, seems to go one step beyond to see God
as the Ground of Being. Brownson's onto-theo-logical approach to God as real
and necessary Being bears many resemblances to Martin Heideger's approach to
Being, even though Heidegger does not identify God and Being. For the latter's
view on the question of God and Being, cf. T. F. O'Meara, "Heidegger on God,"
Continuum, 5 (Winter, 1968), 686-98.
•The terms 'psychologism' and 'ontologism' (and their corresponding philosophical methods) were used consistently by Brownson. Psychologists asserted
the human subject to be the starting point of all philosophy, From the data of
our inner consciousness, they tried to attain what Brownson called teal and necessary
Being by logical induction from the nature of contingent beings. Only contingent
beings were immediately knowable and God was known only logically through
indtrctive or discursive reasoning. Ontologists, on the other hand, made real and
nete·ssary Being instead of the human subject the statting point of philosophy, and
descended by way of deduction from Being to contingent beings. (In Brownson's
categories, Tillich's method would be psychological, Barth's ontological.) The role
of the human subject was called the primum psychologicum by Brownson, the role
of real and necessary Being the primum ontologicum. Their relationship in synthetic unity was termed the primum phuosophicum (see n. 55 infra)

574

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

jective reality of Being or God. The result was either subjectivism or nihilism.
Cartesianism, or the prevailing French philosophy, starting from
personal existence, or the contingent, remains forever in it, and
can never get beyond subjectivism, to the assertion of the real and
necessary Being, that is to say, is doomed to end in simple nihilism."

Inductive reasoning was only an extension of the psychological method for Brownson. Not only did inductive reasoning depend on the limitations of fallible human subjects, but also its
contents (creatures or contingent existences) were as limited
to the realm of the Actual as were human subjects. Inductive
reasoning from existences (as independent of human subjects)
to the reality of God-the traditional a posteriori proofs from
nature-could not yield knowledge transcending the realm of
the Actual any more than the data of our inner consciousness
could yield knowledge transcending itself. For Brownson,
'nothing in the conclusion not in the premises' implied that reflection could not go beyond the contents of the subject
analyzed in the premise. To say that " all things have a cause,"
for example, could only yield an infinite number of finite causes,
not an Infinite Final Cause transcending them or the First
(uncaused) Cause in a chain. The subject of the premise (all
things) was limited to the realm of the Actual or empirical; any
analysis of the subject could not transcend the Actual since
analysis could only bring out the contents of the subject
analyzed. 7
On the other hand, to go from Being to existences in the
ontological sense showed the same difficulty in reverse. From
the simple analysis of Being as a subject, we could only simply
get Being. How then get to contingent existences? This attempt to go from Being to existences had two devious consequences for Brownson. First, German Idealistic Philosophy,
especially that of Hegel, started from Being or the Absolute
6

7

Works, II (1861), 185.
BrQR (January, 1850) 1 80-11 BrQR (October, 1851), 482-8,

BROWNSON's

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575

and could never assert the contingent or the relative. 8 Secondly,
there was the problem of pantheism. Emerson's Over-Soul, for
example, had stressed the identity of all things in Being with
the danger of denying the diverse, the multiple, the particular.
If Being were the only subject, then its predicates, existences,
would be identical with it. They would only be emanations of
Being, thus, of the same substance of Being. Hence, Brownson
felt driven to see the relationship between Being and existences
as one of cause and effect, and cause and effect implied a theory
of creation wherein the Creator was distinct from his creation. 9
To avoid the extremes of the psychological method and the
ontological method in forming a viable philosophical theology
of God, Brownson posited an approach in which both Being
and existences would ontologically be in the premise, thus
making God a genuine part of the conclusion. 10 His procedure
was complex, sometimes confusing, but laboriously worked out
throughout his Catholic period. His inclusion of Being, or more
properly, the Ideal, in the premise as well as the conclusion
certainly was not without its difficulties (it was the root of the
charges of ontologism against him) , but it represented an attempt to deal from a new perspective with the traditional problems of God raised in philosophical theology.
Furthermore, Brownson's approach to God consciously tried
to reconcile God's objective reality (against subjectivism) with
God as Creator (against pantheism). His attempted synthesis
sought ways to see Being (the Ideal or God), existences, and
their relationship in their true unity and to provide an answer
to the ontological onesidedness of the ontologists and German
Idealism and the psychological onesidedness of Kantianism and
Cartesianism. Whether he acknowledged it explicitly or not,
these challenges were always in the background as he developed
his own approach to the God-question.
8 Works, II, 185. A similar difficulty, Brownson argued, applied to Rosmini's
Ens in genere or Being in general. See BrQR (January, 1854), 32, and (October,
1855), 459-60, 465 ff., as well as no. 40 infra.
• Works, I, 64, 238, 291; II, 5-6.
10 BrQR (April, 1852), 149-51.

576

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

Brownson's approach to God during his Catholic period did
not have the rather defined" stages" of his pre-Catholic period.
Three overlapping but somewhat distinct elements were at
work. First, he sharpened his approach to the God-question in
a series of articles on philosophical theology in the Quartm·l71
Review during the 1850's.11 At the same time, he delved deeper
into the philosophical-religious thought of Vincenzo Gioberti. 12
Finally, both these elements formed the basis for a coalescence
of his thought on God in the Essay in Refutation of Atheism
(1873-1874) .13 It now remains to detail the significance of these
three elements for the development of Brownson's approach
to God as a Roman Catholic.

Brownson's Philosophical Theology in the 1850's

In an article entitled "An a priori Autobiography," written
to combat what Brownson called "the dead abstractions of
psychologism," two philosophical tenets, seemingly contradictory at first sight, served as foci for the development of his
epistemological approach to God: (I) the priority of the ontological or objective over the psychological or subjective, as
evidenced by his continuing development of the Platonic notion
of Idea; and
the concrete or the real as preceding the abstract or the possible.14
Brownson saw the priority of the ontological over the psychological in reference to the distinction between intuition and
reflection. Intuition meant the subject's looking on an object
presenting itself to the subject by its (the object's) own selfaffirming power. Reflection meant the subject's re-thinking the
11 Among the more important are "An a priori Autobiography,"
BrQB (January,
1850), 1-39; "The Existence of God," BrQR (April, 1859l), 141-64; "Hume's
Philosophical Works," BrQR (October, 1855), 445-73; and "Primitive Elements
of Thought," BrQB (January, 1859), 58-90.
For Brownson's critique of the psychological approach to God, see "Morell's
Phuosophy of Religion," BrQR (April, 1850), 159-70; and " Newman on the True
Basis of Theology," BrQR (October, 1851), 417-59l.
12 Works, II (1850, 1861, 1864), 101-9l70.
18 Works, II (1873-74), 1-100.
"BrQR, (January, 1850), 1-39. Henceforth, "An a priori ••• "

BROWNSON's

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577

data of intuition and analyzing the constituents of the data
of intuition. 15 Intuition always preceded reflection for Brownson since the human subject could not re-think ot re-fleet (to
turn back cm something already given to the mind) without
first thinking, and it could not first think without a real ' something ' in the form of a concrete particular object first being
given to it to think with. The fact that intuition preceded reflectiort implied that the ontological order of being both logically and epistemologically preceded the subjective order of knowledge or reflection.
The intuition that preceded reflection was of two kinds:
empirical and ideal. Empirical or sensible intuition comprised
an external, material object presenting itself to the subject and
the subject's knowing by looking on or immediately beholding
the object without intermediate processes of abstraction and
discursive reasoning or reflection.rn Empirical intuition was
similar to John Locke's sensation and involved direct and immediate apprehension of an empirical or sensible object before
the mind began abstracting mental concepts from the sensible
object and reflecting on these mental concepts in a process of
discursive reasoning. This immediate presentation of an external object to the senses presumed that the object was real
or material and not an abstraction. For if the object were not
real, it could not present itself, and if it could not present itself,
there could be no thought, since the subject could only act in
conjunction with its object. 17
Ideal intuition, on the other hand, had a :meaning peculiar
to Brownson, a meaning not at all associated with the ordinary
understanding of intuition. 18 Ideal intuition, for Brownson, comprised the pre-empirical principles of all actual thought, the preempirical element in all knowledge. Ideal intuition preceded
"Professor Bascom's Lectures," Works, II (1878), 454.
Philosophy," Works, I, 59-71.
17 " Ontologism and Psychologism,"
Works, II (1874), 488.
18 A helpful orientation
to the distinction between ideal and empirical intuition
in Brownson's thought is the fourth chapter of S. Raemer's America's Foremost
Philosopher, pp. 57-75.
1•

16 " Synthetic

578

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

any sense experience as well as any actual thought and involved
the causal order, not the cognitive order. That is, ideal intuition involved not the actual procedure of knowledge, but
the very ontological conditions which made knowledge possible.
There were pre-empirical elements necessary for knowledge,
Brownson argued, because both the objects of empirical intuition and the intuiting subject were dependent beings and did
not exist of themselves. The subject depended on the object
(and vice versa) and the object in turn, as a dependent empirical reality, was dependent on Being itself (real and necessary Being) . Thus ideal intuition, he explained, comprised real
and necessary Being, existences dependent on this Being, and
their relation (shortly to be described as one of creation) :
The ideal is real and necessary being, in the respect that being is
intelligible to us, but it is intelligible to us only as intuitively given
by its creative act, and the intuition being given to us who are
placed by it, and therefore contingent existences, it includes both
(Being plus existences) in their synthetic relation. 19

Brownson's ideal intuition will be developed further as we
proceed, but for the moment we can concentrate on existences.
Every creature or existent as Brownson preferred to say did
not, as a contingent being, have existence of itself; it existed
only from something else. Existence as ex-stare (to stand from
or in virtue of something else) meant that every object of
empirical intuition existed from something other than itself. 20
This ' something other ' was real and necessary Being, and no
existent was even perceptible outside of its inherent relation to
Being. Thus, whenever any object of empirical intuition
presented itself to the intuiting subject, it could not be thought
except as contingent or dependent; and since contingency implied real and necessary Being or the Ideal, the Ideal also
presented itself to the knowing subject in every act of empirical
intuition, but only in and through the empirical object of intuition.
19

"Professor Bascom's Lectures," 455.
Primitive Elements of Thought," BrQR (January, 1859), 62-86.

20 "

BROWNSON'S

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579

Brownson's contention that the Ideal also simultaneously
presented itself to the subject in every object of empirical intuition was his unique contribution to philosophical theology,
but also his greatest point of vulnerability to his critics. 21 He
tried to make two things clear. First, the Ideal as real and
necessary Being was real, but not sensibly real in the same way
as an object of empirical intuition. Being belonged to the
category of the Ideal as opposed to the Actual, and its reality
was equivalent to the objective reality of a Platonic Idea.
Secondly, as the Idea was not a sensible reality, it could not be
a sensible intelligible (an object capable of being known
sensibly) and hence known in the same way as an empirical
object of intuition. For the human subject, as composed of
both body and soul, could have no direct intuition of the immaterial (such as the spiritual but objective reality of the Idea)
on the basis of the principle, Nihil in intellectu quod prius non
fuerit in sensu.22 Hence, the Ideal could not be known directly
in itself by the human subject; it could be known only as it
manifested itself in and through the object of empirical intuition. The Ideal manifested itself in the empirical object as
its ground, for without the Ideal as real and necessary Being,
the empirical object could not even exist. The object of empirical intuition could not even pre.sent itself to the subject
without also manifesting its prior ontological dependence on
the Ideal as its ground. On the other hand, the Ideal could not
present itself to the subject without being manifested in and
through a sensible or empirical object. Every act of empirical
intuition, therefore, simultaneously involved an empirical and
ideal intuition, that is, both the empirical object and the Ideal
on which it was dependent presented themselves to the human
subject in every act of empirical intuition. This did not mean
that there were two objects in every intuition, one empirical
and the other ideal, as Brownson explained in a letter to Father
Augustine F. Hewit:
21
22

Bro'wnson's response to his critics will be further detailed later in this article.
"Professor Bascom's Lectures,"

RICHARD M. L'ELIAERT

... the object intuitively presented contains two distinct elements,
the ·em,piric!tl,or contingent, and the ideal, in their real relation.
There is for us no purely intelligible. Being can stand alone, but
neither the empirical nor the ideal can; for the ideal is being ·in
relation to our or to the human intellect: the empirical, or contingent, cannot stand alone, and therefore can be presented only in
its relation to the ideal on which it depends. Hence the object in
intuition is complex, the synthesis of the ideal and the empirical,
or of being and existences, . . only intuition does not analyze, or
distinguish the elements. That is done by reflection. 23

Brownson's insistence that both the ideal and the empirical
were elements of one and the same intuitive object, or that both
were given together in their real synthesis in one and the same
intuition, had a twofold orientation. First, in opposition to
Plato, he held that the ideal is not presented to us separately
as pure ideal without the empirical. This violated the constitution of the human subject as composed of a physical body and
a spiritual soul, the former being the gateway to the latter
(even though the latter was ontologically primary to the
former). Secondly, in opposition to the sensists, he held that
the empirical was ontologically dependent on the Ideal and
could not be presented without at the .same time manifesting
this ontological dependence on the Ideal. 24 Furthermore, just
as Brownson's synthesis attempted to avoid the extremes of
spiritualism and sensism, it also attempted to avoid the extremes of a priori and a posterioriapproaches to God. For, on
the one hand, Brown.son equated God with real and necessary
Being, and a priori methods of approach to God presumed that
God could present himself to man without any empirical medium (either by pure intellection, i. e., St. Anselm, or by the
direct intuition of Being, i.e., the ontologists). On the other
hand, a posteriori methods presumed that the purely empirical
could yield conclusions about the non-empirical, but in relation
to God, Brownson believed, this was possible only if both the
23 Brownson to Fr. A. F. Hewit, January 11, 1872, Brownson Papers, UNDA.
See also BrQR (October, 1851), 430.
2 • "Professor
Bascom's Lectures," 456.

BROWNSON'S

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581

empirical and the Ideal (God) were somehow given simultaneously in every act of empirical intuition.
This inability of the Ideal to present itself to the subject without its manifestation in the empirical, despite the ontological
primacy of the Ideal as the ground of the empirical, was the
meaning of the second focus in Brownson's article "An a priori
Autobiography," namely, that the concrete preceded the abstract, the real the possible. For Brownson, only what was real
was intelligible; to be intelligible was to be real. 25 But the real
was by no means limited to the sensible or the empirical. The
real also comprised the immaterial, the non-sensible intelligible,
or in short, the Ideal. The Ideal was abstract as spiritual or
immaterial, as opposed to sensible. Thus, in relation to the
Ideal, to say that to be intelligible (capable of being known)
was to be real, and to say that the real preceded the abstract,
was to say that the Ideal could be known only in and through
the empirical (as we have just explained). To say that the
real preceded the abstract was also to say that the abstract,
as the Ideal, was ontologically but not epistemologically prior
to the empirical. That is, even though the Ideal was ontologically prior to the empirical (a cause always preceded its effect),
the empirical must first be presented to the subject, from an
epistemological point of view, before the subject could know
the Ideal as presented in the empirical. To say that the real
preceded the abstract meant, to put it in another way, that
even though every act of empirical intuition comprised simultaneously an empirical and ideal intuition, the Ideal was ontologically primary and epistemologically secondary, while the
empirical was ontologically secondary and epistemologically primary.
These remarks clarify Brownson's tenets that the order of
being preceded the order of knowledge, that intuition preceded
reflection, that the intelligible (the object capable of being
known) preceded intellection (the subject's assimilating all the
various aspects of the intelligible through reasoning and reflec•• "An a priori ... ," SS; " Primitive Elements ... ," 80.

582

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

tion) , that principles preceded method. He did not want to
say that the subject and its powers of intellection were not
necessary to thought, but that its constitution as a thinking
subject depended not so much on its own power but on the
objective reality and ontological priority of the empirical object of intuition with its simultaneous ideal and empirical elements. Hence, in opposition to Kant for example, Brownson
conceived ideas as being furnished to the mind, not by the mind
on the occasion of experience.26
Brownson's assertion that the real preceded the possible, the
concrete the abstract, needs to be seen in terms of his conception of ideas and empirical existents. For Brownson, ideas
were objectively real in the sense of Platonic Forms. Ideas were
the eternal types, exemplars, or possibilities of all concrete existents. They were not only " exemplary causes " or abstract
models according to which particular existents were made, but
also " essential causes " insofar as they concreted particular
existences. These particular existents in turn had their own
reality; they were not unreal in the sense that they were
"copies" of their corresponding ideas (the common interpretation of Plato's doctrine of mimesis). They existed, however, by
their participation in the being of their ideas (Plato's doctrine
of methexis) in the sense that their existence was dependent on
but distinct from the being of their ideas. 27 Ideas, therefore,
were objectively real as ontological principles of concrete existents. Ideas were neither mere words nor pure conceptions
(against nominalism); nor were they mere subjective forms of
understanding (against Kant) or innate ideas originally inherent in the human mind; nor were they entities (empirical
existents) or conceptions with a foundation in reality (against
some scholastic realists) .
Ideas as objectively real were thus active, but where were
••"Professor Bascom's Lectures," 455.
27 "An a priori ... ,"
ff. Brownson's doctrine on Ideas will hopefully become
clearer as we proceed. For his understanding of the Platonic terms methexis and
mimesis. cf. Works, II, 187; III,
and VIII, 51.

BROWNSON'S

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583

they before their concretization in empirical particulars, through
which ideas only could be known? " Ideas are certainly real,
and in some sense active," Brownson explained, " but their activity is not the activity of the things of which they are the
ideas or the necessary and eternal forms, but of the Divine Intelligence or Reason, in which they are real." 28 Thus, the activity of ideas as concreted in existences is the activity of the
existences themselves. The activity of ideas as not so concreted,
but as real, was the activity of the Divine Mind which contains
them, and was the power to concretize or actualize them. Ideas,
then, were ontologically prior to empirical existents, as the
Ideal was ontologically prior to the empirical; but the ideas
could be known only as concreted in their particular existents,
just as the Ideal could be known only in the Actual or empirical.
Seen in this sense, the priority of the real over the possible,
from an epistemological point of view, did not contradict the
ontological priority of the possible (idea) over the concrete
particular.
To place the abstract before the concrete, the possible before the
real, is to place nullity for the starting point . . . In the order of
knowledge, the abstract must be subsequent to the concrete, precisely because reflection must always be subsequent to intuition;
for it [the abstract] is formed by reflection operating on intuition,
and only the concrete is revealed in intuition, since what is not is
no object of intuition.20

Ideas or universals, as the necessary and eternal forms of
things in the divine Mind, were distinguished by Brownson from
universals considered as abstractions and from genera and
••Ibid.,
The locus of the Ideas in the Divine Mind seemed to contradict
the interpretation that Plato considered the ideas to exist in their own realm outside of the ' Divine' Mind or Logos. On this point, Brownson noted: "Aristotle
accuses Plato of placing the ideas extra Deum, and making them the objects of
the divine contemplation, but the accusation is not easily sustained; and we think
that all that Plato does is to represent the ideas as extra Deum only as the idea
or design of a picture or a temple in the mind of the artist is distinguishable
from the artist himself. But in God all ideas must be eternal, and therefore
really his essence, as is maintained by St. Thomas" (Works, II,

••Ibid.,

584

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

species considered as generalizations of the essences of things.
These latter were pure abstractions or nullities and existed
neither in reality nor in the divine Mind. As Brownson explained:
Genera and species are real, and so far, if we call them ideas, ideas
or universals are real, as. Plato and the old realists asserted. But
when we understand by ideas or universals the simple abstractions
or generalizations of the essential qualities or attributes of things,
as whiteness, redness, roundness, hardness, beauty, justice, goodness, they are real only in their concretes or subject. Objects may
be really white, red, hard, heavy; things may be really beautiful;
actions may be really just, wise, and good; but what we call beauty,
justice, wisdom, goodness, can exist only as attributes or qualities
of being, and are real only in their concretes. They can be reflected
by creatures, but have no reality as abstractions. Abstractions, as
St. Thomas says, have a foundation in reality, because they are
formed by the mind by way of abstraction from objects presented
by .experience, and experience can present only that which is real;
but as abstractions they are nullities. 80

The distinction between ideas and concrete particulars implied that in concrete particulars there was a distinction
between their essence and their existence. That is, their essence
or" what-ness" stemming from their being concreted by their
idea was different from their existence, their actually being
concreted as a particular existence. An idea or essence had an
existence in the Divine Mind whether or not it concreted a particular existence. An existent, on the other hand, depended for
its actuality on its being concreted by and sharing in the existence of its idea or essence.81
But as far as God was concerned, Brownson noted, his es30 "An Old Quarrel," W arks, II
(1867), 293. Just previously Brownson had
criticized Plato's understanding of Beauty in the Hippias as an abstraction instead
of a real idea. It followed for Brownson that the real comprised either (1) real
and necessary Being or (2) concrete empirical existents. Anything in between, so
to speak, was an abstraction and hence a nullity. Abstractions were thinkable or
intelligible, as they exist, only in their concretes; they had no existence of their
own but were simply formed by the tnind working on the concrete. See Works,
I, 295; II, 233-4, 417; III, 127-30, 233-4.
81 "Primitive Elements ... ," 62.

BROWNSON,S

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585

sence and his existence were one. His essence was simply to be.
Thus, if in God there was no distinction between essence and
existence (meaning in scholastic terms that God was Pure Act),
then there was no distinction between God and ideas (=essences). "Ideas, the essences, forms or possibilities of things,
are God," Brownson stated; for ideas, in the objectively real
sense of Plato,
. . . If contained in the Divine mind, if eternal and immutable,
neither beginning nor passing away, but the forms of all things
which may be or are originated, that may or do perish, they are
unquestionably the necessary, eternal, immutable, and immovable
God himself, in the infinite plenitude of his being; for certainly God
is all that is uncreated, necessary, immutable and eternal ... The
necessary, immutable, and eternal, abstracted from reality, from
real being, who is it, is necessary, immutable and eternal nothing,
ahd therefore absolutely unintelligible; for ... what is not is not
intelligible.32

Ftom God's viewpoint, therefore, there were not many
ideas, but one Idea, real and necessary Being (God). There
was no distinct realm of ideas apart from God as there
were in Plato's understanding of 'God,' for these ideas were
simply God's own ability to act and to concrete existences and
thus identified with his own being. All ideas such as power, intelligence, goodness, beauty, truth and being were identical and
indistinguishable in God. "The idea, under whatever aspect
it is revealed to us, or is contemplated by us, is always and
everywhere identically the one God," Brownson insisted; but
while ideas were one and identical in God, they had to be conceived in their different aspects by knowing subjects, owing to
the limitations of human knowledge. These distinctions of ideas
made by the human mind did not mean that we knew reality
in an unreal order, but that we could not know all reality and
were not able to embrace all we did know in a single conception:
Owing to the infinity of God and our finiteness, we are obliged
to conceive of what is revealed to us of God, whether naturally or
aa "An a prWri ••• ,"

"Primitive Elements ••• ," 61, 75,

586

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

supernaturally revealed in separate and successive conceptions; and
hence, when we wish to reduce it to the forms of reflective science,
we are obliged to treat the essence of God as if it preceded his esse,
his esse as if it preceded his attributes, and his attributes as if
distinguished from and following one another.
In conceiving God distinctly as Being, Truth, Intelligence, Wisdom,
Goodness, &c., we ascribe to him nothing that he is not; and though
he is all these things at once in their indissoluble unity and indistinguishable simplicity, the distinctions admitted do not falsify our
knowledge, for they are privative, not positive, and suppose, not
that we add what is not, but that we fail to embrace in our conceptions all that is, in the Divine Being.33

We might briefly note at this point that Brownson's emphasis on the objectivity of Ideas as Forms in the Platonic
sense recalled an aspect of St. Thomas's thought generally overlooked by Catholic thinkers in his time. The latter often regarded St. Aquinas as a strict Aristotelian with no predilection
to Plato's thought. Brownson, however, revived the analogy
in Aquinas's thought between the divine Ideas and the Platonic
Ideas; by so doing, he called attention to Aquinas's acceptance
of the Platonic doctrine of ideas. Brownson appealed to Aquinas
as support for his own acceptance of the role of Platonic Ideas
and, as Aquinas had done, he modified Plato's doctrine by accepting a multiplicity of Forms which, in God, were one and
identical with his essence.34 Brownson did not depend directly
•• "An a priori ... ," 28-4.
••St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 15, art. 1-8; Summa Contra
Gentiles, I, chapters 51-5; Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Lessons
14-17 (cf. the two volume edition translated by J. P. Rowan, Vol. I (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1961), pp. 86-111). See also R. J. Henle, St. Thomas and Platonism
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956), especially pp. 851-86, and H. D. Saffrey,
O. P., Sancti Thomae de Aquino Super Libmm De Causis Expositio (Fribourg:
Societe Philosophique, 1954), pp. 17-20, 44, 8!'!-4.
According to Aquinas, ideas were " the forms of things, existing apart from the
things themselves" (S. Th., I, q. 15, art. 1). These ideas, which existed outside
the divine Mind for Plato but were one with the divine essence in God for Aquinas,
served two ends " either to be the exemplar of that of which it is called the form,
or to be the principle of the knowledge of that thing, according as the forms of
knowable things are said to be in him who knows them." Ideas were then the
principles both of the knowledge of things and of their generation (S. Th., I, q.

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on Aquinas for these Platonic emphases for he also quoted St.
Augustine to this effect. Not only had the latter developed the
implications of Platonic thought for a theology of God before
Aquinas, but Brownson also showed signs of borrowing more
from Augustine and his Platonism than from Aquinas in developing his own philosophical theology. 35
The identity between ideas and God raised for Brownson the
question of the relation between ideas and the world of concrete existences. While ideas and God were identical, ideas and
concrete existences were not. What then was the relation between ideas (identified with God) and the world of concrete
existences? Was this relation one of identity or one of difference
and distinction? Brownson rejected many answers offered to
this question. He rejected any theory presupposing the eternity
of matter since this denied the contingency of the world of matter and its dependence on Being. While accepting Plato's doctrine of Ideas, for example, he rejected Plato's cosmology since
Plato assumed the eternity of matter. For Plato, what was
normally termed 'creation' was, in Brown.son's view, simply
the Forms impressing themselves on matter as a seal is im15, art. 8), that is, they served epistemological and entitative or creative functions.
While Aquinas almost solely stressed the former function (see Henle, op. cit.,
pp. 858-61), Brownson stressed the latter function.
••Cf. "Schools of Philosophy," BrBQ (January, 1854), 81; W orlcs, VIII (1874),
BrQR (October, 1851),
While authors like Raemers and Farrell correctly stress Brownson's admiration and respect for the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas,
they imply that the latter was the primary base for Brownson's Catholic approach to God. This opinion needs to be modified. On the one hand, Brownson
was convinced of the soundness of Aquinas's system to the extent that he would
only reluctantly disagree with it; he also read Aquinas well enough to chide clerical
critics who tried to use Aquinas against him (" Ontologism and Psychologism,"
Worlcs, II (1874), 479). On the other hand, Brownson disagreed with Aquinas
on certain epistemological problems and argued that Aquinas's system lacked the
completeness needed to meet the challenges posed by philosophers like Kant
(" Ontologism and Psychologism," 475; Worlcs, II, 75).
When writing for the Quarterly Review, Brownson was free in his criticism of
Aquinas; when writing for other Catholic journals like Fr. Becker's The Catholic
World, Brownson was deferential to Aquinas; compare, for example, "Ontologism
and Psychologism," Worlcs, II, 468-86, written for his own Review and "An Old
Quarrel," Works, II (1867),
written for The Catholic World.

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RICHARD M. LELIAERT

pressed on wax.86 Brownson also rejected theories wherein individual existences in their diversity were merely emanations
from one cosmic principle. He saw Emerson's Over-Soul to be
of this variety.
Furthermore, he rejected theories proposing that creation was
Infinite Possibility realizing itself, or progressively filling up the
infinite void in its own being (Brownson's view of Hegel) .81
This also implied a rejection of theories wherein God created
the universe out of his own being. To say that God creates out
of his own being was tantamount to pantheism, no less a danger
than atheism. Pantheism was in turn tantamount to saying
simply that real " Being is! " To say that God, as identified
with real Being, simply is, provided no bridge for crossing from
Being to existences since from " Being is," nothing more can be
concluded than " Being is! " On the principle, ' nothing in the
conclusion not in the premises,' we could no more attain the
conception of existences from the conception of Being than we
could attain the conception of God and the universe from the
single conception of ourselves as simply entities (against
Descartes) .38
It followed for Brownson that the formula, real and necessary
Being is, was simply not adequate. Unless the conception of
cause or creator was added to the conception of real Being, real
Being would end in pantheism from the viewpoint of the order
of being, and in a tautology from the viewpoint of knowledge
for from real " Being is " we could only get real " Being is." The
only remedy was a productive formula wherein the two conceptions, Being and existences, were connected by the creative
act out of nothing, the copula or medium between the two extremes.
To say that God non mediante the creative act is the universe, is
not true, for then there is no universe; to say that God mediante
the creative act is all things, is the universe, is true; for then the
Cf. Works. I, 411; Il, 258, 289; "Primitive Elements ... ," 61-2.
... ," 80.
88 "An a priori , .. ," 26-7; see also Works, II, 472, 482.
80

81 "Primitivf;! Elements

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univers.e is not only ;;tsserted, but asserted in its true relation to
God, a.s being only from him, by him, and in him, through the
creative act bringing it ... forth from potentiality to actuality.
There is no possible bridge from God as real and necessary being
to existences, or from existences to him, but his creative act, and
therefore we must either rest in pantheism, or assert creation out
of :nothing.89

The only adequate formula, then, is the synthetic judgment,
Real Being is a Creator, or, Being creates existences. It was
only mediante the creative act that real being is of itself productive, and a formula could not be productive in the order of
knowledge unless it included all the terms necessary to productiveness in the order of being or the ontological order.
Brownson took care to point out that the synthetic formula,
Being creates existences, neither denied the freedom of Being
or God to create nor implied that the creative act was simply
a past instead of a continuing act (Being creates as well as
created existences). The former caveat was directed toward
Cousin, the latter against deism.40
For Brownson, the error of modern philosophers consisted
not so much in denying this synthetic formula, but in trying
to obtain this formula solely by reflection, as if reflection could
••Ibid., 26; Works, II, 518; BrQR (October, 1855), 471-2.
••Regarding Deism, cf. Works, II, 78; "Primitive Elements ... ," 87-8. Cousin,
in Brownson's view, leaned towards pantheism and a doctrine of necessary creation.
For C9qsin, " snbstance is substance only insofar as cause, and therefore whatever
is capable of causing, in however limited a degree, is a substance." Brownson felt
that this could be taken to mean that God as the prime Substance was so only
as he caused, that is, created, which seemed to assert a doctrine of necessary as
opposed to free creation on God's part. Cf. Brownson to Cousin, Sept. 1st, 1844,
Br-0wns.on Pa,pers, UNDA; l!lso Brownson to Cousin, December
1858 (Brown1wn
Papers); Works, II, 264-316; and BrQR (October, 1855), 464.
On this question, Brownson wrote later; " The creative act is . . . a free act,
and it is distinguished, on the one hand, from being as the act from the actor,
and on the other, from existences as the effect from the cause .... The relation
of caus.e and effect is necessary, and if cause is placed in the category of being,
creation is necessary, which is pantheism .... We have avoided the possibility of
mistake by placing the causative power in the category of being, but the exercise
of the power in the category of relation, at once distinguishing and connecting being
and existences" (Works, II, 74).

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RICHARD M. LELIAERT

add something to intuition, or as if reflection could operate productively before it even had a productive formula. While reflection could separate various aspects of the object of intuition
which were not evident on first sight, it could add nothing to
the object of intuition. 41
In this inability of reflection to add anything to intuition lay
the weakness of traditional a priori and a posteriori proofs for
God's existence. Most if not all a posteriori proofs had only
sensible intelligibles (=empirical objects of intuition) in their
premises (i.e. All things have a cause). From sensible intelligibles alone, however, nothing could be concluded since they
had in themselves no nexus binding them to non-sensible intelligibles such as real and necessary Being. Only the non-sensible
intelligible could supply this nexus, and the non-sensible intelligible is the idea (1) and the idea (1) is God. A posteriori proofs
thus mistook sensible for non-sensible or intelligible intuition
and assumed that we knew existences immediately and God
only mediately as implied in and logically deducible from existences. Thus, from sensibles such as ' all things have a cause,'
a posteriori proofs attempted to reason to an Infinite First
Cause. But sensibles could yield only the conclusion, ' there is
an infinite string of finite causes.' Unless a non-sensible intelligible were given simultaneously with a sensible intelligible in
the object of intuition, an a posteriori proof was bound to be
inadequate. Since reflection could add nothing to the object
of intuition, and since the object of intuition in a posteriori
proofs was a sensible intelligible only, reflection could not move
in a posteriori proofs from a .sensible to a non-sensible intelligible (such as God as real and necessary Being or Infinite
First Cause) .42 A priori arguments, on the other hand, remained solely on the level of the non-sensible intelligible with
no intermediary in sensible intelligibles. If only non-sensible
intelligible.s comprised the object of a priori proofs, then reflection could deduce nothing more than non-sensible intelligibles,
u "Primitive Elements . . .," 75-6; "An a priori ... ,'' 27-8.
"An a priori .•• ," 82-8. See also Works, II, 82-40.

•2

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that is, intelligibles solely on the level of the Ideal. They were
even less of an argument than a posteriori ones, Brownson
argued, since they presupposed what they attempted to prove.
They pretended " to demonstrate God from necessary and
eternal principles " or ideas, and since ideas were God, then
eternal and necessary principles were God. God was thus
proved from God.43
The synthesis, Being creates existences, must then precede
all our judgments a posteriori, Brownson continued, because
without this synthesis no judgment was even possible, except
the simple judgment, Being is, which was certainly not a
posterioribut a priori, for the one who said Being simply said
all one said in saying, Being is. It was possible to attain the
synthesis, Being creates existences, therefore, only as it affirmed
and revealed itself a priori in direct and immediate intuition,
in which the human subject was only a passive spectator. As
Brownson explained,
we have direct intuition, not only of phenomena, but of existences
themselves; and existences . . . are and can be nothing but the
Divine creative act, which, as what is called conservation of existences is nothing but the very act, unsuspended, that originally
created them out of nothing, is constantly before our eyes in the
simple fact of existence itself. As this synthesis affirms and reveals
itself a priori in immediate intuition, it is and cannot but be certain,
both ontologically and psychologically. 44

Brown.son's assertion of direct and immediate intuition of
God did not imply, he was quick to add, that we saw God
intuitively by himself alone or as he was himself. Brownson asserted intuition of non-sensible intelligibles, but not pure intellections, as did an exaggerated spiritualism. 45 Men were
simply not capable of pure intellections because men were not
pure intelligences, but intelligences welded to bodies. The intelligible, therefore, could be apprehended only in union with
the sensible. What Brownson denied and wished to disprove
was that God was known only as contained implicitly in his
'" Ibid., 43-4.

••Ibid.,

••Ibid., 37.

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RICHARD M. LE!..IAERT

works and discursively (by reflection) obtained from his wotks
without Ideal intuition. But this did not mean that God was
known as God without his works (of creation)
To see God
only discursively, as implicitly contained in his: works, was not
to see God clearly, for such implicit seeing was not clear seeing.
God or the things of God, otherwise unknown to us or invisible
to us, were clearly seen only by or in understanding his works,
just as " we see the light in seeing the visible body which it
renders visible.'; Using this analogy of light, Brownson went
on to say that we actually saw the light as " the primary and
immediate object of our vision, and the medium by which we
see all else that we do see.'' But light was not seen in itself,
nor by itself alone, for our eyes were too weak for that and the
light would strike us blind were we to look directly or immediately into it. This analogy of our knowledge of light through
visible things was applicable to our knowledge of God in the intelligible or non-sensible world.
.4@

So in the intelligible world, we ·really and truly see God; he is the
primary and immediate object of the intellect, and the medium by
which we intellectually see all else that we do intellectually see,
understand, or know, but not as he is in himself, for if we cannot
look into the sun, which is but the shadow of his light, without being
struck blind, how much less can we look into him who is light itself;
nor do we know him by himself alone, that is, apart from his works,
but we know him in knowing objects, which are made intelligible
objects only in and by his intelligibility, as they are made existence
only by and in his creative act, or omnipotent power. 47

By this caveat, Brownson separated himself from the ontologism of Rosmini and the " Vision in God " of Malebranche. 48
•• "Primitive Elements ... ," 79.
' 1 "An a priori ... ," 88. See also Brownson to Father McMurdie, May 9, 1862,
Brownson Papers, UNDA.
••"Primitive Elements ... ," 60, 80-1.
For Rosmini, the unity of Being (Ens in genere) was prior to any of its modes.
Being as such was the basis of all the actual and determinate forms of being and
contained within itself all the principles of that determination, but only in abstracto
or virtualiter. This meant that Being as such was not the creative principle by which
those forms were reduced to p.ctuality, Thus Brownson, who believed in the

BROWNSON'S SEARCH )!'OR GOD

598

Contrary to Rosmini and Malebranche, Brownson argued that
it was not necessary from an epistemological point of view to
first perceive God or the Idea before we could perceive a concrete existent. Ontologically, God or the Idea was primary,
of course, for without them an existent simply could not be.
But existences were not first known in their ideas or metaphysical essences, for this would be saying that we knew them
in God who was identical with ideas. Existences could not be
known where they were not and, though essences or ideas were
in God, existences were not. To the question, how are existences
known?, Brownson replied:
Existences cannot be perceived in being, for what is in being, is
being, and existence is not being but distinguishable from it. It
is perceived by being, we grant; but it can be perceived, for only
the real is pereeived, by being, only in the sense that it exists by
being, therefore only in its real relation to being. Existence is by
being because it is from being only (by virtue of the creative act
of being) , and therefore ean be perceived only mediante that act,
and consequently by the perception of that act itself, the real relation or copula between it and being. 49
Ideal Formula, rejected Rosmini's separation of Being from God as well as the
latter's failure to see Being as a creative principle.
Malebranche, positing a mind-body dualism, argued that external effects were
produced by God on the occasion of acts of the will. The will was an active,
not a passive power. The mind, however, was a passive power or faculty; it did
not produce ideas, it received them. When pressed to account for the source pf
our ideas, or how ideas of things distinct from ourselves came to our minds,
Malebranche argued that ideas could not come from the physical bodies they
represented nor could they be produced by the soul itself. Furthermore, the production of ideas by man presupposed a power that man did not have, the power of creation. Nor could God have have placed a complete stock of innate ideas in the soul
from the beginning. The only reasonable explanation for ideas was that " we see all
things in God " (Vision in God) . This did not mean for Malebranche that we saw
the essence of God. He avoided attributing the beatific vision, reserved for souls
in heaven, to men without distinction as well as the naturalizing of the beatific
vision. Brownson could not see how Malebranche could distinguish between seeing
the divine essence in itself and seeing the divine essence as externally imitable
in creatures: " We do not see things themselv.es in God, but only their idea or pos·
sibility. From the idea of God we may deduce his ability to create, and that the
type of all creatable things must be in him; . . . we can ... see a possible, but
not an actual universe in God;" (Works, II, 371-2).

••Ibid., 66.

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RICHARD M. LELIAERT

Throughout the 1850's, Brownson somewhat refined but never
really surpassed the philosophical theology of God initially
presented in the article entitled "An a priori Autobiography,"
from which we have drawn much of the above. Herein he developed his response to the two dangers plaguing his preCatholic period: subjectivism and pantheism. Against subjectivism, Brownson developed the objectivity of Idea in the
Platonic sense, and by identifying the Idea with God and by
showing the Idea as the ground of concrete existence, he laid
his groundwork for an objective and ontological approach to
God. Against pantheism, he tried to establish that " God reveals himself immediately to us in direct intuition as creator,
actually creating, according to his own will, out of nothing,
therefore as free, voluntary creator." 5° From these elements,
he developed the " Ideal Formula " or ideal intuition: Being
creates existences.

The Role of Gioberti
Throughout his whole Catholic period, especially during the
1850's and the early 1860's, Brownson's use of the Ideal
Formula was refined by his study of Vincenzo Gioberti (18011852) .51 He introducted Gioberti to the readers of his Review
somewhat apologetically since Gioberti was " in bad odor" with
Rome for his attack on the Jesuits and for his political views.52
Yet he deeply admired Gioberti's philosophical thought and its
implications for a philosophical theology of God, and said so
as early as 1850:
We cannot say that we have been absolutely indebted to him for
any of the views set forth in the text, for we have obtained them,
substantially, before we had the least knowledge of his writings or
of his doctrines; but it would be folly on our part, and injustice to
him and the public, to attempt to dissemble that he has greatly
••"An a priori ... ," 87.
WO'l'ks, II, 100-270. Even before 1850, Brownson was studying Gioberti's
thought; cf. Brownson to Father Cummings, October 80, 1849, and Brownson to
James McMaster, November 10, 1849, Brownson Papers, UNDA.
••Cf. Brownson's exposition of Gioberti's views in this respect in Works, II
(1850), 100-40, especially 109-!W.
01

BROWNSON'S

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aided us to clear up our previous views, and on several not unimportant points to extend them.53
The main point on which Gioberti extended Brownson's
thought was the former's assertion of" the creative act of being
as a primitive intuition." 54 According to Gioberti, as Brownson
interpreted him, real and necessary Being was not simply Being
in itself, quiescent Being, or Being conceived as "the essence
of existence," but Being " as creating existence." Rather than
seeing Being and existence simply as independent realities, with
no nexus or connection between them, Gioberti supplied this
connection or nexus between Being and existences by showing
that the copula (=the creative act of Being) is perceived together with Being and existences as an integral part of their
relation, and that neither Being nor existences were ever perceived without this copula. Hence, the judgment, Being creates
existences. Brownson did not want to say that Gioberti was
the first to conceive the relation between Being and existences
in terms of the nexus of creation or the creative act of Being.
But he did say that Gioberti was the first to make this nexus
or copula, the creative act of Being, part of every act of ideal
intuition itself, part of the primum philosophicum known in
every act of empirical intuition. 55
•• "An a priori . • • ," 28. In deference to Catholic bishops and theologians,
Brownson often took pains to assert that the philosophy of Gioherti was not
irreconcilable with that of St. Thomas Aquinas. Yet he still did not hesitate
to put Gioherti on an equal par not only with Aquinas, hut also with Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine. See "Faith and Theology," Works, VIII (1863), 25, and
the manuscripts of Henry F. Brownson as he prepared his father's works for
publication (Brownson Papers, UNDA) . Later Brownson would qualify his admiration for Gioberti while claiming independence from him; Works, II (1872), vi.
•• " Primitive Elements ... ," 73; Works, II, rn6.
••By the primum philosophicum, Brownson meant the primary ontological
principle of all reality, the Ideal Formula or Being creates existences. This
Formula synthesized the primum psychologicum and the primum ontologicum (sec
n. 5 in this chapter) in their right relation. Rather than starting from one or
the other hy themselves, philosophy must start from its fundamental fact, namely,
that Being freely creates hoth existences and the human subject, and neither
would exist were it not for their a priori relation to Being via the creative act
of Being. See BrQR (October, 1851), 425-7. Gioherti's conception of Being

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lUClIARD M. LELIAERT

Ideal intuition, therefore, as the pre-empirical element of
empirical intuition, comprised not merely Being and existences,
but the relation between them, namely, the creative act of
Being. This meant that in every act of empirical intuition, the
human subject perceived not only the empirical object, but also
the object's connection with Being via the creative act of Being
(=ideal intuition) . In every act of empirical intuition, there
wel'e two elements: the empirical object on which the subject
looked (empirical intuition) and ideal intuition (Being affitming itself to the subject in virtue of its creative relation with
the empirical object in question) .
To avoid confusion at this point, it might be well to distinguish Brownson's understanding of ideal and empirical intuition from an epistemological viewpoint. For Brownson, ideal
intuition was an act of the object,. not of the subject. Ideal
intuition meant real and necessary Being affirming itself and
presenting itself to the subject in every object of empirical
intuition in virtue of the creative relation between Being and
every empirical object. Ideal intuition, therefore, as distinguished from empirical intuition, was not open vision of the
object presented, was not the subject's cognition or judgment,
but the objective Ideal implicitly affirming itself to the subject.56 It was an a priori intuition by which the pre-empirical
elements of all thought, Being and its creative act, presented
itself to the knowing subject as constitutive principles of empirical objects and of thought itself. Ideal intuition thus constituted the human mind, it was not an act of the human mind.
Brownson's objective understanding of ideal intuition often confused his critics, especially since he occasionally used the term
'intuition of the ideal' which gave the impression that the
ideal was an object which the human subject looked upon
(his normal use of the word ' intuition ') , instead of his intended
creates existences is often understood in a pantheistic sense; cf. for example, S.
Raemers, America's Foremost Phuosopher, pp. 40-1. Brownson, however, did not
understand Gioberti's rendition of the Ideal Formula in a pantheistic sense; Works,
II, 7$, 61-fl.
• 4 Wotks, II, 97; IX, 897.

BROWNSON's

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meaning, the objective affirmation of the ideal to the human
subject in every act of empirical intuition.
Empirical intuition, on the other hand, was the human subject looking on and knowing immediately an empirical object
independent of itself. Because of the close relation between a
contingent empirical object and the Ideal, the subject also
intuited this necessary connection in every act of empirical intuition. But in any case, empirical intuition involved an act of
the human subject; its orientation was subjective, not objective
in character.
Furthermore, Brownson pointed out, the fact that there were
two elements in every act of empirical intuition, ideal intuition
and empirical intuition, did not mean that there were two
(empirical) intuitions or two objects of (empirical) intuition.
Along with the object of empirical intuition, the Ideal as real
and necessary Being and its creative relation to every existent
was simultaneously given to the subject. The Ideal (which
Brownson identified with God) is really presented in the intuition, not separately but in relation with the object of empirical intuition, not as clearly and distinctly known but as
known only in an obscure and indistinct manner. 57 What
Browson called the primum philosophicum or the primary philosophical fact was the simultaneous presentation of the Ideal
(or God) and the contingent existence in their real synthesis,
that is, the Ideal as real and necessary Being (or God)
presented in empirical intuition not separate from but in relation with the contingent created by it.
This did not mean that the Ideal was directly perceived by
the human subject. Only the object of empirical intuition was
directly perceived. But, in intuiting or perceiving the empirical
object one was .simultaneously intuiting or perceiving its necessary relation to Being. The distinction, however, between the
elements of ideal intuition (Being, existences, and the creative
relation between them) and the object of empirical intuition
could be known only through acts of refiection.58 Since refl.ec57
58

Cf. "Schools of Philosophy," Works, I (1854), !l91.
'Primitive Elements ..• ," 76.

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RICHARD M. LELIAERT

tion could only reflect on the data of intuition, since reflection
could not add to the data of intuition, the Ideal must be present
somehow in the empirical object of intuition, and it was present
in virtue of Its creative relation to the empirical object. This
connection, though given in the one act of empirical intuition,
could be known only through reflection.
The Ideal as real and necessary Being and the contingent existence were therefore given in one intuition, Brownson argued,
and intuition of the contingent was not possible without intuition of the Ideal or the Necessary. And if one could not be
intuited without the other, then one could not be known without the other. Brownson's explanation is worth quoting at
length, keeping in mind that ' unit realities ' here described are
equivalent to contingent existences.
But, unhappily, these " unit realities " are not cognizable by themselves alone. To suffice of themselves as objects of thought they
must suffice for their own existence. What cannot exist alone, cannot be known alone. Then every one of these unit realities, to be
cognizable alone, must be an independent, self-existent and selfsufficing being, that is to say, God, and there must be as many Gods
as there are unit realities or distinct objects of thought or intuition,
which we need not say is inadmissible. These unit realities can be
objects of thought or intuition only on condition of presenting or
affirming themselves to the mind, and they can present or affirm
themselves in intuition only as they are in re, not as they are not,
as is sufficiently proved in our analysis of thought. If they are not
real and necessary being they cannot affirm themselves as such;
if they are not such they can affirm themselves only as contingent
and dependent existences that have their being in another, not
in themselves, and then only under the relation of contingency
or dependence, or in relation to that on which they depend; consequently they are not cognizable without intuition of real and
necessary or independent being which creates them. Contingency
or dependence expresses a relation, but relations are cogitable only
in the related, and only when both terms of the ·relation are given.
Neither term can be inferred from the other, for neither can be
thought without the other. Hence, there is no intuition of the contingent without intuition of the necessary, or empirical intuition
without ideal intuition. 59
•• Works, II, 50.

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Essay in Refutation of A theism
Brownson's fully developed approach to God as a Catholic
was summarized in his Essay in Refutation of Atheism (18784) .'60 After a general survey of atheistic views current in his
day, and after asserting theism to be in possession against
atheism, Brownson set forth his basic line of approach in four
broad steps. 61 Since these steps have already been described in
this and the previous chapter, they will serve as a summary of
Brownson's approach to God as detailed in this chapter.
First, Brownson stated, " the analysis of Thought gives us
three inseparable elements, all equally real: subject, object, and
their relation." '6 2 · Rather than starting with the human subject
in the analysis of Thought, as was the predominant tendency
in modern philosophy since Descartes, Brownson gave priority
to the analysis of the object (s) independently presented to the
subject. The second step thus involved the analysis of the object of Thought which also gave us " three inseparable elements,
all objectively real, namely, the ideal, the empirical, and their
relation." 63 Then Brownson analyzed the objective basis of
every object of Thought, the Ideal. The Ideal in turn gave
us three inseparable elements, all objectively real, namely," the
necessary, the contingent, and their relation, or Being, existences, and the relation between them." 64 Fourthly, he analyzed the relation itself between Being and existences, seeing
it as one of free creative causality on the part of Being rather
than as one of emanation whereby beings were simply the selfWorks, II, 1-100; henceforth, Essay.
Against the "latest and ablest representative of the atheistical science of the
age . . . the Positivists, or the followers of Auguste Comte, and the Cosmists, or
admirers of Herbert Spencer," Brownson held theism to be in possession even
though God's reality was not demonstrable on purely scientific evidence. The fact
that science could not prove that " God is " was no presumption against his existence since God was not " in the order of facts " dealt with by science but the
very cause of " the order of facts." The Cosmists " do not find God, because he
is not in the order of facts with which they are engrossed," Brownson noted,
" though not one of these facts does or could exist without (God) ." Cf. W orklJ,
II, 9-18.
69 Easay, 56; 40-6.
••Ibid., 56; 46-56.
••Ibid., 56 ff.
60

61

600

lUCQ:AnD M. LEL!AEll'r

expression of Being and simply identical with Being.65 Beings
were thus the effect of their cause, Being creating (Ens creans);
creativity involved a cause-effect pattern whereby Being freely
created beings distinguishable from itself, not from its own
substance but from nothing (creatw ex nihilo). This causeeffect pattern was prominent in the first three steps. For
Brownson, objects were not passive but active in character,
insofar as they rendered the subject active by affirming themselves to the subject independently of it, thus reducing it to act,
and therefore creating it, so to speak. Objects in tum were the
effects of causes, insofar as they derived their existence not
from themselves but from their being created by the Ideal or
real and necessary Being.
Brownson's assertion that the elements of Ideal intuition were
given intuitively as the a priori condition of the empirical (that
is, the Ideal as given in every empirical in virtue of the creative
relation between them), and that the necessary (the Ideal) and
the contingent (existents) were correlatives, was bound to lead
to misunderstanding, especially among his Catholic critics. A
great majority of these, taking intuition in the sense of ' looking
on,' understood him to say that we have direct intuition of God
in the intuition of every empirical object (extreme ontologism) .66 A small number, taking intuition in a more subjective or innate sense, understood him to mean simply that
our knowledge of God was immediate and direct, involving no
need for discursive reasoning.67 Brownson's Essay carefully re•• Ibid., 62-7.
66 Brownson's critics accused him of holding to the seven propositions endorsed
by professors at the University of Louvain but condemned by the Holy See in
September, 1861. These propositions, all somehow expressing extreme ontologism
or direct knowledge of God, are listed in Raemers, America's Foremost PhilospPher,
pp. 42-8; and "Brownson's Ontologism," Catholic Historical Review, 28 (October,
1842), 877. For Brownson's reply to criticism from the peri9<iical The Catholic
World, 19 (1874), 281-46, see his "Ontologism and Psychologism," Works, II,
468-86. Among the letters of Brownson, cf. Brownson to Fathers McMurdie, May
9, 1862; llecker, April 28, 1866; Fagan, December 1, 1870; Rewit, August 4, 1871
and Jl!Iluary 11, 1872; Brownson Papers, UNDA.
See also Essay, 52.
67 Cf. Brownson to Cummings, October 80, 1849, Brownson Papers, UNDA.

BROWNSON'S

SEARCH FOR GOD

601

plied to his critics. First, against ontologism, he emphasized
that what was given in every empirical intuition was not the
Ideal Formula itself, but its constitutive elements: Being, existences, and their relation. Furthermore, the precise relationship between Being and existences and vice versa was not
known immediately in empirical intuition but was known only
by reflection.
. . . the analysis of the ideal or a priori element of human knowledge
gives us being, existences, and their relation. . . . They are given
in the empirical fact, though its a priori element, and the mind by
its own intuitive action does not distinguish them from the empirical element of the object, or perceive them as distinct and separate
objects of thought. We distinguish them only by reflection, or by
analysis of the object, which is complex, distinguishing what in the
object is ideal and a priori from what is empirical and a posteriori.
When we assert the necessary and the contingent as ideas, the
mind, again, does not perceive that the one is being and the other
existence or dependent on being; the mind perceives this only in
reflecting that if given they must be objective and real, and if real,
being and existence, for what is not being, or by and from being,
is not real. The identity of the ideal and the real, and of the real
with being and what is from being, is arrived at by reflection, and
is, ... a conclusion. 68

Secondly, just as the identity of the Ideal with the real or
of the real with Being was known only through reflection, so
was the identity of God with the Ideal or real and necessary
Being known only through reflection. In the latter part of the
Essay in Refutation of A theism, Brownson simply identified
the Ideal or Being with God.69 His caveat that this identification was known only through reflection instead of by direct intuition should have cleared him of the charge of ontologism, but
his distinction between intuition and reflection as well as his
peculiar use of the term 'intuition ' continued to escape many
of his critics.
Thirdly, Brownson continuously insisted that empirical intuition did not involve the intuition of two separate objects.
Only the object of empirical intuition, not the Ideal, was
es Essay, 59-60.

GO

Ibid., 76.

602

RICHARD M, LELIAERT

directly intuited; the empirical and the Ideal were not two
separate objects, but two elements of one object of empirical
intuition. In other words, the Ideal or the necessary and the
existent or the contingent were correlatives, that is, neither
could be deduced or concluded from the other. It was impossible to intuit the contingent without intuiting the necessary
since the essence of being contingent was its inherent relation
to the necessary from which its being was derived. In this sense
the necessary and the contingent were simultaneously given in
empirical intuition, although the precise relationship between
them was discernible only through reflection.70 Again, the fact
that both the necessary or the Ideal, identified with God, and
the contingent were given simultaneously in intuition made it
possible for God to be an inherent part of every premise and
hence a legitimate part of every conclusion.
Fourthly, the Ideal Formula, Brownson told his critics, was
not only a complete judgment in a logical sense, containing a
subject (Being or God), a predicate (existences), and a copula
or connecting link between them (the creative act of Being) .71
It was also a complete judgment ontologically, insofar as it was
the a priori condition of all empirical judgments since it encapsuled the very ontological structure whereby philosophy was
even possible. That is, without God's or Being's creative act,
no empirical object and no human subjects were even possible
in the first place. As such, the Ideal Formula was not simply
one judgment among many, it was the very precondition of
philosophy to begin with. The failure to perceive this lay at
the root of the errors of contemporary philosophy. In short, the
Ideal Formula, as reflection on our part should amply remind
us, was not the end point toward which all philosophical theology of God strove, it was rather the starting point or primum
philosophicum from which all philosophical theology took its
origin. Brownson sensed that this a priori character of the Ideal
Formula was open to objection from his critics. " The objection commonly raised to the Ideal Formula," he noted, " is,
10

Ibid.,

11

Ibid .• 61.

BROWNSON's

SEARCH FOR GOD

608

not that it is not true, but that it is not the principle from which
philosophy starts, but the end at which philosophy arrives."
He went on to say,
This, in one sense, if we speak of the reflective order, is true, . . .
Yet by using reflection we shall find that it is given in the object
of every thought, . . . the first as well as the last. Ideal intuition
is a real affirmation to the mind by the act of the ideal itself, but
it is not perception or distinct cognition, because, ... it is not given
separately, but only as the ideal or a priori element of the object,
and is never intuitively distinguished or distinguishable from it.
This is, we think, a sufficient answer to the objection, which is
founded on a misapprehension of what is really meant by the assertion that the ideal formula is the principle of science and intuitively given. It is so given, but it is only by reflection that the
mind distinguishes it, and is aware of possessing it. 72

Throughout Brownson's Catholic period, as we have seen,
his development of the Ideal Formula was mainly concerned
with showing God to be not only real and necessary Being, but
also "the free, intelligent, voluntary, and therefore personal
Creator and Upholder of the universe .. .'' 73 His approach to
Being thus seemed abstract and impersonal, yet his approach to
Being was always reverent and personal. If we merely regarded
God as the First Cause in the sense that all existences proceeded
from him by way of creation, Brownson noted, then such a God
would be no more than a guarantor of the physical laws of the
universe. 14 Such a view of God would be only speculative truth
'" Ibid., 75-6.
Ibid., 81-2.
10 Ibid., 82. To stop at God as First Cause, or to identify God as First Cause
or Physical Governor of the Universe and God as Final Cause or Moral Governor
of the Universe, had bad consequences for Brownson. For if we did so, God
would be relegated to a mere Custodian of the laws of nature and would not
be concerned with man's destiny. Then, we might as well say with T. Jefferson,
" What does it matter to me, whether my neighbor believes in one God, or twenty?
It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket." Furthermore, while the laws of
nature might throw light on the laws and conditions of physical life, they introduced
us to no moral order and threw no light on the laws and conditions of spiritual
life or the end for which we are created and exist. One result would be to identify
the physical and moral laws as did Emerson's " Obey thyself! " and Spencer's
cosmic naturalism. Ibid., 82-8.
1•

604

RICHARD M. LELIAERT

with no bearing on practical life. Such a view lacked a moral
dimension whereby God would only be First Cause and not
Final Cause. " The end or final cause of a creature is its good,"
Brownson pointed out, " and when we say God is the final
cause or end of a particular existence, we say he is that which
it must seek and possess in order to attain to and possess its
supreme good or beatitude." 75 To say then that God was the
good of creatures insofar as he was the being of creatures further
implied that God gave his creatures good only by giving them
himself. Besides God there was no good for creatures since besides God there was no good. Creation flowed out from the infinite fullness of the Divine Love which diffused itself both in
the creation and beatitude of existenoes. God could not beatify
creatures other than through their participation of his own
beatitude. God in this sense was the ultimate and the final
cause of creation.
That God is the final cause of creation follows necessarily from the
fact he is its free, voluntary first cause .... Being a free creator
not compelled by any extrinsic or intrinsic necessity, as he cannot be, since he is being in its plenitude, ... he can create only for
some end, and consequently only for himself, for besides himself
there is and can be no end for which he can create. . .. The conclusion is strengthened by considering that God, being all-powerful
and essentially wise and good, it would contradict his own being and
attributes to create without any end, or for any but a good purpose or end, and he alone is good, for the very reason that he alone
is being, and his creatures are being and good only by participation.76

This personal dimension of God as First and Final Cause gave
a personal character to such practices as prayer, worship, and
obedience to the moral law. Our prayer and worship was not
directed to God as abstract Being (God as pure Essence or
Being) but to God as Will, that is, to a God who freely created
and who freely ordered all creatures to him in love as the ultimate Good. The free response of creatures to God's free creative act was thus the basis of the moral law. The moral law
75

Ibid., 84.

78

lbid .• 88-4.

BROWNSON'S

SEARCH FOR GOD

605

was not independent of the will of God for the moral law
emanated from the Divine Will, not from the Divine Essence.
Thus things were right and obligatory because God commanded
them; they were not commanded by God because they were
right and obligatory. In terms reminiscent of the Calvinist concept of the sovereignty of God, Brownson saw the creative act
as the ground both of God's right to command us and of our
duty to obey God.
God has a complete and absolute right to us, because, having made
us from nothing, we are his, wholly his, and not our own. He
created us from nothing, and only his creative act stands between
us and nothing; he therefore owns us, and therefore we are his ...
He is . . . our Sovereign Lord and Proprietor, with supreme and
absolute dominion over us, and (has) the absolute right, as absolute
owner, to do what he will with us. His right to command is founded
on his dominion, and his dominion is founded on his creative act,
and we are bound to obey him, whatever he commands, because
we are his creatures, absolutely his, and in no sense our own.77

If God was the first and final cause of existences, they then
had two movements: the one by way of creation from God as
their first cause, the other under the moral law of return to
God as their end, beatitude, or the perfection of their nature
and the perfect satisfaction of its wants. These two movements,
Brownson argued, founded two orders, the initial or the natural
order, and the teleological or the supernatural order. Even
though God as first and final cause could be proven by reason,
it did not follow that the human soul could attain God and accomplish its destiny by its own natural powers, that is, without supernatural assistance and grace.
Our reason, properly exercised, suffices . . . to prove the reality of
the two orders, the initial and the teleological, but as God, either
as First cause or as Final cause, is super-cosmic or supernatural,
it would seem that nature must be as unable to attain of itself to
God as its end, or to perfect itself, as it is to originate or sustain
itself, without the creative act. They who, while professing to believe in God as creator, yet deny the supernatural order, forget that
"Ibid., 91.

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RICHARD M. LELIAERT

God is supernatural, and that the creative act that founds nature
with all its laws and forces, is purely supernatural. The supernatural then exists, founds nature herself, sustains it, and is absolutely independent of it, is at once its origin and its end. 78

The supernatural, then, was God and what he did directly and
immediately by himself; the natural was what God did mediately through created agencies, or the operation of natural laws
or second causes created by him. If supernatural grace (and
also a supernatural revelation) were necessary to enable man
to enter the supernatural order, to persevere in it, and to attain
to the perfection of human existence, we could reasonably conclude, Brownson argued, that the same infinite love and unbounded goodness which prompted God to create man would
provide these supernatural assistances. The error of certain
rationalists and others, whether in morals or religion, Brownson contended, was not wholly in the denial of supernatural
grace (or revelation) , but in denying or disregarding the
teleological order and in trying to find a basis for religion and
morality in the initial or natural order. 79
Finally, Brownson maintained that the soul really had intuition of God as final cause in a sense analogous to that in
which the soul had an intuition of Being as first cause. 80 He
appealed to the teaching of St. Thomas that the soul naturally
desired beatitude, and what it naturally desired it naturally apprehended, even if in a confused way. But in Brownson's terms,
the soul desired beatitude, but it could not desire what it had
no intuition of, or what was in no sense presented or affirmed
to it; and since God himself was this beatitude, the soul must
have some intuition of God as its final cause. While the soul
did not know explicitly that it was God that presented or af78

Ibid., 87.

Brownson accused Gioberti of failing to distinguish between the initial or
natural order and the teleological or supernatural order. Gioberti assumed that the
teleological was simply the full ripening of the initial order just as an oak tree
was the full ripening of an acorn. No supernatural grace from God was needed.
For Brownson's critique, cf. Works, II, 151-8.
79

80

Essay, 81;,

BROWNSON's

SEARCH FOR GOD

607

firmed himself to the soul as the beatitude it desired, yet it
really had intuition of God as final cause just as much as it had
intuition of God as real or necessary Being and first cause. And
to come full circle, Brownson made it clear that " in neither case
is there a distinct or explicit cognition that what is presented
is God, and it comes to know that it is so only by refiecticm."
As real and necessary Being, whether as First or Final Cause,
God was the primary objective but personal reality for Brownson. His search for the Ideal Formula grew out of his personal
experiences, especially before his conversion to Catholicism.
After his conversion to Catholicism, he sought for an ontological or objective foundation for God's reality, a foundation which
would anchor the Truth he had newly found in the Catholic
Churoh. Such a foundation for Brownson's spiritual security
called for an ontological Ground of Being, so to speak, which
would remain secure from subjective approaches to God characteristic of Transcendentalism, philosophies such as those of
Kant, and the biblicism of American Evangelical Protestantism.
Gioberti's Ideal Formula, Plato's doctrine of Ideas, and to a
lesser extent the thought of Cousin, all coalesced to form an
ideal formula, so to speak, for an answer to Brownson's personal
God-Question.
RICHARD

Catholic Theologic<il Union
Chicago, Illinois

M. LELIAERT, 0. s. c.

CHRISTOTHERAPY AND THE HEALING OF COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

HE PRINCIPAL FOCUS of my recent Christotheray1 is· an initial heuristic outlining in pastoral fashion

f a Christian psychotherapy. Attention there centers
on the healing and maturation of individuals rather than of
groups or societies. The book does make it clear, however, that
the meanings, values, assumptions and beliefs of individuals
are in large measure the product of familial, societal, environmental factors. In the present paper a key interest is in the
potential role of a Christian psychotherapy and specifically of
Christotherapy in effecting a healing through enlightenment on
the societal level and, in particular, on the level of the American
psyche or consciousness.
Discussion in this article will involve the following elements,
some treated in detail, others only briefly and suggestively: (1)
a consideration of the basic meaning of a Christian psychotherapy and specifically of Christotherapy; (2) a phenomenological
exposition of some hypotheses of psychotherapists regarding
the possible role of society in the generation and/or development of emotional disorders or " mental illness " in individuals;
(3) the views of Bernard Lonergan on the relationship between
the individual and society and the possible role of society in the
causation of emotional illness; (4) the view of Christotherapy
on society's causation of emotional illness; (5) the relationship
of Christotheraphy, N oo- and Christo- genesis, and cosmopolis;
(6) Christotherapy, liberation theology and conscientisation;
(7) some brief suggestions regarding the possible role of Christotherapy in the healing of the American consciousness.
1 Bernard Tyrrell, Christotherapy: Healing through Enlightenment (New York:
Seabury Press, 1975).

608

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

609

The Issue of a Christian Psychotherapy
A first step is to establish certain parameters within which
and only within which a Christian psychotherapy can be seen
to make any sense. This will be best accomplished by testing
the notion of a Christian psychotherapy in the light of the biophysical, the intrapsychic, and the rational-emotive and existential psychotherapeutic approaches.
Diverse Psychological Approaches

The Bi<Yphysical Approach.-If mental illness finds its sole
and adequate explanation on a biophysical level, then the notion of a Christian psychotherapy is as meaningless as would
be that of a Christian physics or a Christian chemistry. Either
drugs or surgery but not psychotherapy would constitute the
proper healing means to be employed. Good Christian counseling might prove to be helpful in the recovery process but it
would be a factor extrinsic to the curing of the neurosis or
psychosis as such.
The Intrapsychic Approach.-If mental illness is at least at
times explicable along the intrapsychic lines of a Freud or a
Jung with the emphasis on instinctual conflicts, need deprivation or traumas, especially in early childhood, then there is a
certain room for such a phenomenon as a Christian psychotherapy. Thus, for example, Agnes Sanford, 2 Francis MacNutt, 8
Michael Scanlan 4 and others describe .a certain Christian form
of " healing of the memories." In this process of inner healing
the Christian counselor or charismatic healer enters into a
prayerful dialogue with the troubled individual. In this dialogue the suffering person journeys into his past and allows
painful and at times repressed traumas and memories to surface in consciousness and to be prayerfully evaluated and res•Agnes Sanford, The Healing Light (St. Paul, Minnesota: Macalester Park
Publishing Company, 1968).
•Francis MacNutt, O. P., Healing (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1974).
'Michael Scanlan, Inner Healing (New York: Paulist Press, l974),

610

BERNARD TYRRELL

ponded to in the light of Christ's forgiveness and healing love.
The result of this prot!ess is a certain healing of the memories
and traumas of the past in which the individual experiences a
liberation and transformation at the very roots of his psyche
and spirit. Here there is an instance of a genuinely psychotherapeutic approach along intrapsychic lines since various natural
techniques are employed to raise to consciousness traumas and
repressed memories and experiences of the past. At the same
time the process is constitutively Christian since it is at its
core prayerful and since healing in the above process comes about
through the transforming presence of the light and grace of
Christ.
The Rational-Emotive and Existential Approaches.-If mental illness, as Dr. Albert Ellis,5 founder of rational-emotive psychotherapy, contends, has its roots in deeply held, constantly
reiterated irrational ideas and beliefs and if healing comes
through the unmasking of those ideas and beliefs as irrational
and replacing them with rational ideas and beliefs, then there
is room for an explicitly Christian psychotherapy. In fact, the
Sermon of the Beatitudes might serve as a paradigm for a
Christian rational-emotive psychotherapy. Again, if 0. Hobart
Mowrer 6 is correct that refusal to acknowledge real, authentic
guilt is the key factor in many emotional illnesses, then, most
certainly, there is room for and indeed need of a Christian psychotherapeutic approach. Finally, if Dr. Thomas Hora 7 is correct that inauthentic modes of thinking and desiring lie at the
roots of mental illness then both the possibility and desirability
of a Christian psychotherapy which puts central stress on the
healing power of the Christ-meaning and the Christ-value is
clearly established. Christotherapy finds its key inspiration in
the writings of Hora and other psychotherapists who hold that
•Albert Ellis, Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy (New York: Lyle Stuart,
1971).
6 0. Hobart Mowrer, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion (New York:
Van
Nostrand, Reinhold Company, 1961).
• Thomas Hora, In Quest ;f Wholeness, ed. Jan Linthorst (Garden Grove,
California: Christian Counseling Service, Inc.,
.

l:IEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

611

meaning and value play constitutive roles in the psychotherapeutic healing process.
Lonergan's Notion of a Christian Philosophy and the
Issue of a Christian Psychotherapy
Certain reflections of Bernard Lonergan on the issue of a
Christian philosophy help to elucidate analogously the meaning
and scope of a Christian psychotherapy. Thus, Lonergan argues
at least minimally that "there is a philosophy that is open to
the acceptance of Christian doctrine, that stands in harmony
with it, and that, if rejected, leads to a rejection of Christian
doctrine." 8 Thus, it might be argued by analogy that there
is a psychology and psychotherapy open to the acceptance of
Christian doctrine, that stands in harmony with it, and that, if
rejected, leads to a rejection of Christian doctrine. If, for example, Carl Jung is correct in his observation that the philosophy of life of the therapist shapes the spirit of his therapy, 9
then the psychotherapy of the determinist or the materialist or
radical anti-religionist will not be open to Christianity or in
harmony with it. This presupposes, of course, that the philosophy of the therapist in question is, in fact, carried over into his
psychotherapeutic theoria and praxis. On the other hand, if a
psychotherapist envisages the human person as endowed with
intelligence and freedom and as open to a religious dimension
then to the extent that his view of man enters into his psychotherapeutic theoria and praxis it is open in principle to
Christian revelation and in harmony with it. This, of course,
is a minimalist approach to the isue of a Christian psychotherapy.
In other writings Lonergan argues that there is a philosophy
implicit in Christian revelation. 10 Lonergan speaks, for example,
8 Berna.rd Lonergan, "Bernard
Lonergan Responds," Language, Truth, Meaning,
edited by Philip McShane (Dublin: Gill aud Macmillan, 1972), p. 309,
•Carl Jung, "Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life," The Collected Works,
Vol. 16, p. 79.
10 Bernard Lonergan, S. J., De Deo Trino: I Pars Dogmatica (Rome: Gregorian
University, 1964), p. 154.

BERNARD TYRRELL

of a Christian realism which acknowledges that the true and the
real are known in correct judgments and not properly in any
prior stage of cognitional process. 11 I believe that it might be
argued analogously that there is a psychotherapeutic dimension
at least implicit in Christian revelation. This is clearly the case
if healing of the wounded psyche can come through the discovery of authentic meaning and value since Christ himself is
the very revelation of the healing Meaning and Value that is
God himself.
Natural Healing Laws and Christian Intentionality
The possibility and desirability both of a Christian philosophy
and a Christian psychotherapy are rooted in the distinction
which the Catholic Christian tradition has drawn between nature and grace. Nature refers to man as he is according to his
essence, that is, as a rational animal or symbol-using animal
or incarnate-spirit endowed with the capacities to sense, to
know and to love. Grace refers to the transformation that takes
place in man when he receives the gift of adoption as son or
daughter of God and is filled with the Spirit. Lonergan expresses this distinction between nature and grace in the psychological terms of " openness as fact " and " openness as gift." 12
Man is by nature open to the fullness of being and of value. He
possesses a pure, unrestricted desire for knowledge and for
value. But man's natural openness to everything that is, his
natural desire to know even the essence of God can only be
fully satisfied through God's free gift of his love, his gift of
adoption in Christ. In Christotherapy I express this distinction
by speaking of the natural self and the Christ-self.
In the light of the distinction between nature and grace or
between " openness as fact " and " openness as gift " or between
the natural self and the Christ-self, it is possible and necessary
11 Bernard Lonergan, " The Origins of Christian Realism," A Second Collection,
edited by William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S. J. (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 1974), pp. 239-261.
12 Bernard Lonergan, " Openness and Religious Exp.erience," Collection, edited
by Fred Crowe, S. J. (Herder and Herder, 1967), pp. 198-201.

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

613

to distinguish between healing processes operative in the natural
self and according to its laws and inner dynamics, and healing
processes directly attributable to the workings of healing and
transforming grace and the gift of God's love. A psychotherapy,
then, is to be called "natural " to the extent that it embodies
and employs natural healing laws. It is to be called Christian,
however, to the extent that it embodies healing laws which are
in accord with the psychology and anthropology implicit in
revelation but above all when it partakes in the healing through
enlightenment which flows directly from the saving power of
Christ himself.
Now Christotherapy, as I have developed it to date, embodies
to an extent certain natural healing laws and in this sense
it may be spoken of as involving a natural psychotherapy.
Christotherapy, however, sublate.s the natural healing laws it
employs within the higher healing context of Christian intentionality. Christotherapy, then, is a natural psychotherapy
insofar as it is in principle open to the employment of any
natural healing techniques which are authentically human and
not in opposition to the psychology and anthropology at least
implicit in Christian revelation. Christotherapy, however, is
above all a Christian psychotherapy because it places all natural
psychotherapeutic theories and techniques under the final judgment of revelation and most of all because it envisages Christ
and the healing meanings and values he incarnates as the principal therapeutic agent for the healing and integrating of the
wounded psyche and spirit of man.
Some observations of Karl Rahner on the relationship between the revealed word of God and the natural signs or symbols present in the .sacraments may help at least indirectly to
illuminate the relationship between natural healing laws and
the healing dimension of Christian intentionality or of the
Christ-meaning and the Christ-value. Rahner in his article
"The Word and the Eucharist" ia indicates that natural signs
13 Karl Rahner, " The Word and the Eucharist," Theological Investigationa, IV
(Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), pp.

614

BERNARD TYRRELL

or symbols are not able of themselves to communicate the
meaning of the healing mysteries of faith, e.g., of the Trinity,
the Incarnation, the Indwelling of the Spirit. Rahner affirms
that if God is to reveal to us the healing mysteries of his inner
life, a revelation of the Word in the word must be added to
the natural revelation of himself God makes in nature and the
cosmos. Thus, in the context of the sacraments Rahner writes:
" In the manifestation of grace which is called the sacrament,
the word is necessarily and inevitably the decisive element:
an objective element in the nature of a thing only enters this
manifestation insofar as it is absorbed into this utterance in
the word." 14 For example, washing by itself is a natural symbol of purification. But it is only through the revelation words
of the baptismal formula that the natural symbol is sublated
into a faith context and is able to effect truly what it symbolizes
and signify what it effects. There is, for example, a natural law
of psychological healing which is effective whenever an individual who has offended another acknowledges his wrongdoing and sincerely asks for forgiveness. But when in a prayerful or sacramental context an individual confesses his sin against
his neighbor to God and asks for and receives forgiveness in
Christ the natural law of healing is subsumed into an entirely
new realm of healing efficacy and forgiveness. This latter is
the gift-realm of the healing Christ, of the Christ-meaning and
the Christ-value, of Christian intentionality.
But what, more precisely, is the meaning of Christian intentionality? The expression "Christian intentionality" I derive
from Josef Fuchs who employs it in his book Human Values
and Christian Morality .15 In the book Fuchs raises the question: " If Christian conduct is substantially identical with
human conduct as such, in what sense can we speak of a specifically Christian morality?" 16 Fuchs answers that the "disIbid., pp.
Josef Fuchs, S. J., Human Values & Christian Morality (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1970).
10 Ibid., p. ms.
u

16

HEALING COMMUNAL

CONSCIOUSNESS

615

tinctive element of Christian morality is that specific Christian
intentionality which transcends and fulfills all human moral
values." 11 Fuchs notes that in all his moral activities the Christian relates himself to Christ as his brother and savior and to
the Father as the source of all salvation. The dynamic presence
of the risen Christ in the consciousness of the Christian who
lives by faith metamorphoses and transforms all that the Christian thinks, de.sires, feels and does. And this is what is meant
by Christian intentionality.
It follows from what has been said above about Christian
intentionality that in a Christian psychotherapy the healing
light and power of the Christ-meaning and the Christ-valuemanifested in the Christ-Event-irradiate
and transfigure all
natural psychotherapeutic laws of healing and sublate them
into an incomparably richer and more vital and efficacious
healing realm. If, for example, a natural healing of the wounded
psyche can come through the discovery of meaning and value,
how much greater and more transforming a healing can come
through the gift of participation in the saving Value and
Meaning brought near to suffering humanity in the event of
Jesus the Christ. Of course, the healing that comes through
Christ does not obliterate or render useless and inoperative the
natural psychotherapeutic healing laws. Rather these natural
healing processes are enhanced, strengthened and enriched beyond measure through their sublation into the gift-realm of
the healing and enlightening grace of Christ the Healer.
Some Hypotheses on the Role of Society in the
Causation of Emotional Disorders
Perhaps the best way to handle initially the discussion of
the possible role of society in the genesis and/ or development
of emotional illnesses will be to offer a phenomenological exposition of some theories of psychotherapists regarding this
issue.
17

Ibid.

616

BERNARD TYRRELL

Major Hypotheses

The Biophysical Hypothesis.-Clearly, for the strict biophysical psychotherapist societal causation of emotional disorders
is a matter of genetics and strictly physical causation and, if
improvements are to come, it will probably be along some
eugenic line.
Intrapsychic Hypotheses.-Within the intrapsychic tradition
of psychotherapy Karen Horney's views on neuroses and their
development in society are especially interesting. In her well
known book The Neurotic PersonaUty of Our Time 18 Homey
stresses the critical importance of cultural factors in the causation of psychic disturbances. Homey does not depart entirely
from Freud in his stress on the role of childhood experiences
in the development of neuroses but she does see cultural factors as playing an important and sometimes decisive role.
Horney points out, for example, that there are certain difficulties
inherent in American culture which appear as conflicts in each
individual's life and when intensified and accumulated may
lead to neuroses. As an example of these difficulties and conflicts Horney notes the contradiction which exists between the
stress in society on the need to be competitive and to succeed
and, on the other hand, the need to be an exemplar of brotherly
love and humility. 19 (Horney wrote her classic work in 1937
and some of the contradictions she saw as existing then in
American culture are, if anything, much more widespread today.)
As another example of cultural conflicts Homey points to the
stimulation of our need for " conspicuous consumption " especially through advertisements and, on the other hand, our
constant factual frustration in satisfying our so-called "needs." 20
Horney concludes her work with this telling comment:
It seems that the person who is likely to become neurotic is one
who has experienced the culturally determined difficulties in an
18 Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York:
W. W.
Norton, 1964).
20 Ibid.
1 • Ibid., pp.

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

617

accentuated form, most through the medium of childhood experiences, and who has consequently been unable to solve them, or has
solved them only at great cost to his personality. We might call
him a stepchild of our culture. 21

Viktor Frankl, who is also in the intrapsychic tradition of
psychotherapy, distinguishes between what he calls "psychogenic neuroses " and " neogenic neuroses." The latter type of
neurosis is, according to Frankl, "sociogenic" in nature. It is
brought about by a sense of meaninglessness in life which Frankl
sums up under the rubric of the " existential vacuum." Frankl
sees drug addiction, a rising suicide rate and the increase of
crime, violence and aggressiveness as indications of this colledive neurosis. Frankl sees logotherapy, with its emphasis on
meaning, value and self-transcendence, as providing a powerful
antidote to the existential frustration, loneliness and despair
which are generated within the collective psyche and are constantly on the increase both in America and elsewhere.22
The Rational-Emotive Hypothesis.-Dr. Albert Ellis holds
that it is various irrational ideas, which are ubiquitous in America and elsewhere, that are the prime source of emotional disturbances and widespread neurosis. Ellis appeals to Horney,
Eric Fromm, William Reich and others for added support of
his view that societally-inculcated superstitions and prejudices
are a prime cause of pathological disturbances. 28 Ellis notes
the danger of an uncritical acceptance of the so-called American
values and he cites La Barre who comments that in our society
" a child perforce becomes a Right Thinker before he learns to
think at all." 24 Ellis lists eleven principal irrational ideas which
he holds are culturally derived and which both cause and sustain
emotional disorders. I myself would dispute some of the notions Ellis considers to be irrational but here I simply cite his
view that society is indeed to a large extent the cause and
sustainer of pathological diseases in individuals.
Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 290.
•• Viktor Frankl, "Psychological, Spiritual and Religious Values and Attitudes,"
a lecture delivered at Loyola Marymount University on February fJ1, 1974.
•• Ellis, p. 60,
" Ibid.
21

618

BERNARD TYRRELL

The Existential Hypotheses of Waldman and Hora.-Dr.
Roy Waldman in his book Humanistic Psychiatry 25 takes issue
with the basic tendency of Freud to confine his theory of personality to an individual framework. Waldman, showing the
influence of Alfred Adler, Jean Paul Sartre and Ronald Laing,
emphasizes the role of sociohistorical elements in the individual's development of neurosis.· Waldman envisages man as
basically a "being-in-the-world" who can only act in a situation. Neurosis, for Waldman, is not the product of instinctual
conflicts or biophysical inadequacies but a purposeful tactic
or life strategy, either consciously or unknowingly employed, in
a self-defeating effort to deal with the at times oppressive
alienating forces of society. If I might cite a comment from the
final chapter of Waldman's provocative book:
The task of contemporary psychiatry calls for far more than the
ceaseless familiar, time-worn efforts of laboratory studies inclined
to investigate the physical insides of man. Our concern must focus
instead upon the very fabric of our society that spews out masses
of idiosyncratically (neurotic) oppressed people as well as those
who bear their suffering in more conventional manners-as an
instance, the black majority. Whether it be the downtrodden
misery of the black man or of the neurotic, both have similar social
origins and psychiatry must fulfill its part in discerning and exposing the structures of our social order which fosters man's fallen
condition. 26

Dr. Thomas Hora interprets the varied forms of emotional
disorder as a .symptom and consequence of erroneous modes of
thinking and desiring-in-the-world. For Hora "contemporary
man lives in an increasingly polluted atmosphere, in a ' noosphere ' that is, a mental climate that is more or less overcharged and harmful." 21 The mental climate in which man
lives consists in implicitly or explicitly, covertly or overtly paraconsciously or consciously communicated assumptions, thoughts,
affects, values, meanings, ideologies. In this age of mass com25 Roy Waldman, Humanistic Psychiatry (New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1971).
27 Hora. In Quest of Wholeness, p. 1.
9 " lbid .• p. 144.

HEALING COMMUNAL

CONSCIOUSNESS

619

munications the individual is bombarded with false, destructive
messages about what it really means to live and exist in the
world and one of the principal results is mental illness. The
communication of false meanings and values occurs in diadic
situations, in the family and in society. Healing, for Dr. Hora,
comes through the gift of enlightenment which takes place
within a climate of love. Enlightenment involves the cleansing
of the mind and heart from toxic mental and affective content
and the reception of the gifts of authentic life-meanings and
values.
Lonergan on the Individual-Community Relationship
in the Context of Mental Health.
Here it is possible only to indicate heuristically certain key
categories pertaining to Lonergan's analysis of the relationship
which exists between individuals and society. For Lonergan,
then, individuals are born and raised within communities and
the individual's capacity for self-realization is limited by the
available common meanings and values shared by the community.28 It is within an intersubjective community that an
individual comes to know himself and his self-knowledge is
mediated and molded by language which is the creation of the
community. 29 Lonergan stresses that it is through meaning
that the world is mediated to man and it is through the creative
constitution of meaning in .art, polity, economics, etc., that man
ever more fully realizes himself. Man, as an individual, however, knows the real world largely through participation in the
common sense understanding of the community and he constitutes meanings mainly within the larger ongoing constitution
of meaning by the community.
Lonergan's key distinction between immanently generated
knowledge and belie£ indicates yet more clearly the awesome
role society plays in the thinking and desiring of individuals.
Thus, knowledge in Lonergan's analysis is knowledge in the
••Lonergan, Collection (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), pp.
••Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder,

BERNARD TYRRELL

strict sense when it is a matter of personal insight and verification, I know that England is an island only if I have personally
verified it for myself. Belief, on the other hand, is a matter of
accepting something as true on the testimony of someone else.
Lonergan points out that most of what we as individuals claim
to know is, in fact, strictly speaking a matter of belief. Indeed,
in his M etlwd in Theology Lonergan remarks: " Convictions
and commitments rest on judgments of fact and judgments of
value. Such judgments, in turn, rest largely on belief." 80 Moreover, "few, indeed are the people that pressed on almost any
point, must not shortly have recourse to what they have believed." 81 Belief looms so massively in human consciousness
that Lonergan can state: "To appropriate one's social, cultural,
religious heritage is largely a matter of belief." 82
In the light of Lonergan's analysis of the role of belief in
human consciousness his phenomenological study of group and
general bias is most relevant and of maximal import in the
present context. Thus, in his masterful chapters in Insight on
commonsense and its subject and commonsense as object (chapters 7 and 8) Lonergan forcefully articulates the meaning and
role of group and general bias in the intellectual and affective
development of individuals. Tersely expressed, group bias, like
individual bias, involves an interference with :fidelity to the
normative exigencies of intelligence. Self-interest is maximalized at the expense of anyone whose interests do not coincide
with those of the group. Group bias, however, unlike individual
bias, does not have to defy the judgments of others since all
within the group think alike. Moreover, just as individual bias
impedes development in the individual and leads to his deterioration as an authentic human being, so group bias introduces
a surd on a much broader level and radically impedes the
development of those insights which would lead to authentic
social development. Finally, general bias is a communally
••Ibid., p. 244.
11 Ibid.
••Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 41.

HEALING COMMUNAL

CONSCIOUSNESS

6U

shared indifference to problems that require long range solutions.
General bias is at its core the common failure of most to make
basic rationality the center of their thinking and judging. Most
clearly, then, if society does play a central role in the causation
of mental disorders it will be above all in the areas of belief and
of bias that a basic transformation and healing will have to take
place.
Two further questions should be raised. First, does Lonergan
in his writings show a preference for a particular therapeutic
theory and praxis? Second, does Lonergan acknowledge a
societal factor in the genesis and/or development of emotional
disorders in individuals?
In regard to the first question regarding a possible therapeutic preference on Lonergan's part it is to be noted that in
Insight he basically makes use of an adapted Freudian-and,
to some extent, Jungian-model for explaining the meaning
and role of the psyche in human development. In M etlwd in
Theology Lonergan refers to many contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches in his discussion of meaning and notes that
the followers of Freud, Adler and Jung have become less and
less rigid in their theorizing and practice. 33 More recently,
Lonergan has shown a renewed and deepening interest in Jung.
In general, it is my impression that Lonergan's psychotherapeutic preference lies in the direction of the more complex and
comprehensive theories and models. It is perhaps of interest to
note, however, that although Freud, Jung and Adler offer the
most sophisticated and highly developed hypothetical models of
the psyche and psychic life, there is no clear evidence that in
practice their therapies are more successful in bringing about
mental health than are certain more recent, less complex approaches.
There is the further question: Does Lonergan acknowledge
a societal causal factor in the genesis and/ or development of psychic disorders? In general, in Insight Lonergan employs a more
individual oriented approach to the problem of emotional dis••Ibid., p. 67.

BERNARD TYRRELL

turbances. For example, Lonergan limits the phenomena of
repression-inhibition in the strict sense to the unconscious functioning of censorship a la the Freudian model. Yet, Lonergan
also acknowledges that the dialectic of subjects within community " gives rise to the situations that stimulate neural demands and .... molds the orientation of intelligence that preconsciously exercises the censorhip." 34 Moreover in Method in
Theology Lonergan evinces a certain openness to the potentialities in various contemporary therapies of a more existential
orientation and this would seem to imply perhaps an equal
openness to the acknowledgement of a more significant role of
society in the causation of mental disorders.
The View of Christotherapy on Society's Causation
of Emotional Disorders
There is no a priori maner in which the correct view on the
possible role of society in the genesis and/or development of
mental illness in individuals can be determined. The hypothesis-option out of which Christotherapy operates is that society
does play a key role in effecting a causal situation in which mental disturbances will either flourish or decline. This option can,
of course, be challenged but there is much evidence to support
it and certainly no definitive evidence for rejecting it. Moreover, if psychotherapists were to choose to delay the exercise of
their healing practice until all the evidence was in regarding
the nature and causation of mental illness there would perhaps
never be any psychotherapeutic aid at all.
Here I might also add that if it should ever be established
that all mental illness is the result solely of biophysical causes
then, of course, Christotherapy would have to renounce any
claim to being an effective agent in the healing of emotional
disturbances. Christotherapy would retain, however, its value
as a dynamic existential means for overcoming existential ignorance, bias and other destructive factors in human living and
"'Bernard Lonergan, Insight (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), p. 218,

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

623

as a graced way for actively receiving gifts of ever richer participation in the Christ-meaning and the Christ-value.
Now to indicate the general role of Christotherapy as a
theoria-praxis in the criticism and transformation of the beliefs,
assumptions, viewpoints of societal consciousness I will initially
relate it to Teilhard de Chardin's notions of noogenesis and
Christogenesis and Lonergan's cosmopolis. Then I will show
the possible relationship of Christotherapy to the so-called
" liberation theologies " and how it may be viewed as a form
of " conscientisation " or a "pedagogy of the psychospiritually
oppressed." I will also point out the dynamic relationship which
exists in Christotherapy between theoria and praxis. Finally, I
will make a few suggestions concerning the possible healing relationship of Christotherapy to the American consciousness.
Christotherapy, Noo..: and Christo--genesis,and Cosmopolis
Teilhard de Chardin envisages the development that leads
up to and goes beyond the phenomenon of human consciousness in stages. First, cosmogenesis or the coming to be of the
cosmos precedes biogenesis. Next, biogene.sis or the coming to
be of life leads to noogenesis or the appearance of reflective
thought and love in human consciousness. Finally, Christogenesis extends and goes beyond noogenesis through the incarnation of God's own son. Christogenesis is the birth of
ultrasynthesized humanity or the " whole Christ."
Now Christotherapy in the present paper is envisaged in its
ideal form as a comprehensive Christian psychotherapy which
both is open in principle to all natural psychotherapeutic
methods which are in harmony with Christian revelation and
is an integral (at least heuristically) expression of the psychotherapeutic dimensions of the Christ-event. As a meaning
and value centered theoria-therapy which in principle is itself
open to all authentic natural psychotherapies Christotherapy
would form a natural component in what Teilhard de Chardin
calls the noosphere. Likewise, as a Christ-inspired, Christdirected, and Christ-oriented theoria-therapy Christotherapy

BERNARD TYRRELL

also would naturally constitute an integral component in the
process Teilhard describes as Christogenesis.
Teilhard's noosphere has been described as follows:
In the noosphere, superposed on the biosphere, there is collected
all psychosocial and cultural changes, all artistic and scientific
achievements, etc. It is, in a sense, a collective memory and intelligence, the milieu in which, increasingly, individual men and all
men, think, love, create and feel together as integral members of one
organism. 85

From a Christian perspective the noosphere is not an adequate
expression of human consciousness as long as it is not envisaged
as transformed and sublated by the activity and intentionality
of Christogenesis. In similar fashion any psychotherapeutic approach is inadequate to the extent that it does not take into
account man as existentially touched by the realities of sin and
grace, of the fall and of redemption. Thus, just as noosphere
must be complemented by Christogenesis in order to present
a complete picture of the human condition so natural psychotherapeutic processes must be evaluated and sublated in the
light of the psychotherapeutic process present in the Christevent if they are to deal with the whole person in a fully adequate fashion.
Lonergan's notion of cosmopolis adds the element of explanatory science to Teilhard's noo.sphere. In Insight Lonergan
articulates the notion of a critical and normative science capable
of directing the emergent probability of human affairs. He
sees man as capable of erecting a human science capable not
only of knowing history but of directing it. Lonergan calls this
state of enlightened human consciousness, to which even common sense may at last submit for the sake of its own survival,
cosmopolis.86
Lonergan acknowledges, however, that a purely human science is not enough. This is so because:
•• W. Henry Kenney, A Path Through Teilhard'I! Ph<inomentm (Dayton, Ohio:
Pflaum Press, 1970), pp. 251-52.
••Lonergan, Insight, pp.

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

625

. . . these sciences consider man in his concrete performance, and
that performance is a manifestation not only of human nature but
also of human sin, not only of nature and sin but also of a de facto
need of divine grace, not only of a need of grace but also of its acceptance or rejection. It follows that an empirical human science
cannot analyze successfully the elements in its object without an
appeal to theology.s1

Applied to the area of psychotherapy this comment of Lonergan
implies that only a psychotheraphy which in its theoretic moment takes into account freedom and grace, sin and redemption
can adequately come to grips with the healing and maturation
of the human psyche in its total spectrum and complexity. This
likewise means that only a psychotherapy which as theoria is
informed by Christian intentionality can engage in fully adequate and proper diagnosis and discernment of what is authentic and inauthentic in the values, meanings, beliefs, assumptions
of a given culture.
Christotherapy, then, as a theoria participates in a noogenesis
transformed by Christogenesis or in Lonerganian terms in a
cosmopolis illumined by the truth and values of Christian intentionality. And for Christotherapy as theoria to be informed
by Christian intentionality is above all for Christotherapy to
have its roots planted deeply in a foundational analysis of conversion-religious, moral and intellectual-since it is only in
the light of conversion as thematized authentically that a fully
existential evaluation of the values, meanings, beliefs, assumptions operative in a culture is possible.
A key function of Christotherapy, accordingly, is to perform
the theological task of reflecting on the psychotherapeutic dimensions of the Christ-event as applicable in a given cultural
situation. This also involves a critique of what is false and
destructive and generative of emotional disorders in a culture
and the constituting and/or mediating of those values, meanings, beliefs within a culture which help prevent emotional illness and foster psycho-spiritual maturation and wholeness. In
87

Ibid., p. 748.

BERNARD TYRRELL

performing these diagnostic and creatively discerning processes
Christotherapy makes use of the general and special categories
articulated in Lonergan's functional .specialty foundations. Of
course, the functional specialty dialectic also plays a central
role in eliminating false meanings, values and beliefs and fostering what is authentic in a cultural ambience. Likewise, the
specialties, doctrines, and systematics are necessarily involved.
The specialty communications are also of decisive importance
since it is in communications that theological conclusions are
related to other fields. And clearly Christotherapy as theoria
is necessarily in dialogue with the human sciences and most
especially with psychology.
Christotherapy, Liberation Theology and Conscientisation
Christotherapy, I think, enjoys a certain natural affinity with
the so-called liberation theologies because it, as they, stresses
the need for the oppressed to recognize and understand their
state of enslavement and alienation, to seek through the concrete unity of theoria and praxis to overcome the negative restricting elements in their cultural ambience and to constitute
life-giving values and meanings. Christotherapy is likewise in
agreement with the liberation theologies that the Christian religion should be a source of liberation in all areas of human enslavement and alienation and that if it does not seek the liberation of mankind in all of its servitudes it is failing in one of its
constitutive tasks. Christotherapy is also in full accord with
the stress of the liberation theologies on the need for a dynamic
unity of theoria and praa;i,s. The latter can at most be distinguished as two moments in one process but never separated.
Divorce between theoria and praxis is stagnation and finally
death.
Juan Luis Segundo in his book The Community Called
Church emphasizes that what characterizes the Christian is that
he is "one who knows." In Segundo's view all men are traveling
on the same road toward the same goal aided by God's grace.
But he adds:

HEALING COMMUNAL

CONSCIOUSNESS

The only thing is that some people on the road, through God's
revelation, know something that relates to all; they know the
mystery of the journey. And what they know, they know in order
to make a contribution to the common quest. 88

Christotherapy stresses that " existential ignorance," i. e., a
passive ignorance or an active ignoring of those values and
meanings essential for human wholeness and holiness is at the
roots of much emotional illness. Christotherapy also emphasizes
that the Christ-event is alive with an intentionality, a power
for enlightenment which can set mankind free from its existential ignorance and its psycho-spiritual bondage. Christotherapy is in profound accord with Juan Segundo's view that
knowledge of the mystery of life revealed in the Christ-event
is what distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian. It
also resonates deeply with the view that what Christians know
" they know in order to make a contribution to the common
quest." Christotherapy thus sees it as the task of a Christian
psychotherapy to provide a higher viewpoint and an integrating
structure for the basic psychotherapeutic thrust operative m
all authentic natural psychotherapeutic methods.
Conscientisation
Conscientisation is a term closely associated with Paolo
Freire. 89 Conscientisation in Freire's articulation is a knowing,
but it is more than just a prise de conscience or a simple noncritical awareness or spontaneous apprehension of reality. Conscientisation is critical; it implies an involvement, a historical
commitment to make changes. It is a critical insertion into
history in order to mold it. The conscientized individual not
88 Juan Luis Segundo, The Community Called Church (Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis Books, 1973), p. 32. Segundo holds that, in fact, Christ's grace is at work in
all men interiorly whether they explicitly have knowledge of Christ or not. I agree
with this and would grant that Christ's grace is interiorly present in all therapeutic
encounters. I would also stress, however, that explicit knowledge of Christ does
make a real difference existentially in a person's life and that it contributes a
distinct element to the psychotherapeutic healing process.
•• Paolo Freire, " Conscientisation," Cross Currents, Spring, 1974, pp. 23-31.

628

BEllNARD TYRRELL

only understands that he is oppressed but he sets out to overcome and transform. The conscientized individual adopts a
critical attitude of denouncing and announcing, " denouncing
the dehumanising structure and announcing the structure that
will humanise."
Christotherapy and conscientisation have much in common
and it is useful to compare the two. Thus, central to both is
the notion of liberation from oppression. Freire's immediate
concern is with liberation from oppressive socio-economic and
political structures. Christotherapy has as one of its main concerns the liberation of groups from psychologically oppressive
commonly held biases, beliefs, assumptions which are an expression of existential ignorance and foster mental illness and
prevent psychological growth and maturation. Again, both
conscientisation and Christotherapy express a need for understanding, an enlightened state of mind which is at once diagnostic and positively creative. Freire stresses the need for an under.standing on the part of the oppressed of the causes of their
oppression and an unmasking of the myths used propagandistically to keep the oppressed unconscious of their oppression.
This understanding leads to what Freire calls the act of denouncing. One denounces the dehumanising structure. Chri.stotherapy emphasizes the need for existential diagnosis. This
is an understanding of the inauthenticity of certain modes of
thinking, desiring, feeling-in-the-world. On the communitarian
level this would involve a communal existential diagnosis of
the basic inauthenticity of certain commonly held biases, beliefs, assumptions, and an unmasking of their destructive, ignorant, enslaving nature. Further, Freire is not concerned
merely with the negative, diagnostic moment of understanding.
He is equally interested in the understanding that discerns positive, humanising .structures and leads to the act of announcing.
Announcing is a matter of positively proclaiming the structures
which humanise. Christotherapy likewise insists on the positive
moment of existential discernment in which the authentic way
' 0

Ibid., pp. 25-26.

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

620

to think, desire and feel-in-the-world is discovered and lovingly
embraced. This type of existential discernment can be done
both on an individual and communal level. Finally, conscientisation and Christotherapy are in agreement on the need for
the sublation of orthodoxy (here, correct and authentic theory)
by orthopraxis (here, liberating action) . Freire writes that
" knowledge that stays at the level of mere doxa and goes no
further to the level of a task (the reality's reason for being, as
Mao Tse-tung would say) never becomes full knowledge; it is
not a logos of reality." 41 Christo therapy would agree with
Freire that the ultimate test of the potential for liberation in
a given viewpoint is the fact of liberation. In outlining the
stages of liberation of the individual from his psycho-spiritual
bondage in Christotherapy I stress that the culminating moment in the process is " demonstration." The latter is " the actual living-out of the insight received on the level of revelation" 42 or on the level of existential understanding. Interestingly, in this context Lonergan has recently written that
" nihil vere cognitum nisi prius amatum," 43 that is "nothing is
truly known unless it is first loved." I would add that nothing
is truly known unless it is lived out, realized, practised, demonstrated. This, I think, is the full meaning of the distinction
Cardinal Newman draws between notional and real knowledge.
Likewise, it is the core truth of pragmatism and of the Marxist
stress on the unity of reflection and action. It is also the truth
in the view-also espoused by Lonergan in a recent lecturethat orthopraxis sublates orthodoxy. 44 An orthodoxy that is not
in principle open to blossoming in authentic liberation and action is a pseudo-orthodoxy. In sum, both conscientisation and
Christotherapy insist on a marriage between theoria and praxis
which manifests itself in the healed and liberated consciousness.
41 Paolo Freire, " Conscientisation," p. 24.
•• Tyrrell, Christotherapy, p. 42.
" Bernard Lonergan, " Christology Today: Methodological Reflections" (an
unpublished lecture delivered at Laval University, Quebec City, March 22, 1975),

p. 5.

•• Bernard Lonergan, " Mision and Spirit " (an unpublished lecture), p. 12.

680

BERNARD TYRRELL

Christotherapy and the Healing of American Consciousness

In concluding this paper I would like to suggest in rather
skeletal fashion certain issues with which Christotherapy as a
theoria must come to grips if it is to be able to exercise a certain
healing function in reference to American consciousness. Obviously, in the light of the primarily heuristic nature of the
present paper, I can only indicate certain problematic areas
to ·be considered. Concrete applications must be left for later
development.
There is, of course, the major issue which the so-called radical
psychologists and therapists raise. Is it not, they suggest, the
socio-economic and political structures operative in America
which are the major cause of emotional disturbance in individuals? Roy Waldman, for example, while not a radical
like Marxist Phil Brown, states, as we have seen, that the task
of contemporary psychiatry " must focus . . . upon the very
fabric of our society that spews out masses of idiosyncratically
(neurotic) oppressed people." 45 For Waldman it is the duty
of psychiatry to "fulfill its part in discerning and exposing the
structures of our social order which foster man's condition." 46
Phil Brown in his Toward a Marmst Psychology 47 goes much
further and indicts capitalism itself (as it is operative in America) as the chief source of oppression and alienation on all levels,
the psychological included.
Christotherapy does recognize that without doubt unjust
socio-economic and political .structures do exercise a deleterious
influence on the psychological and spiritual health of individuals
and that America does have real problems in this area. Thus,
for example, the excessive stress on competition in America
which Horney and others point to as a frequent source of emotional difficulties in individuals has its roots deep in the socioeconomic structures of America. Yet, the issue of Marxism
'"Roy Waldman, Humanistic Psychiatry, p. 144.
••Ibid.
"Phil Brown, Toward a Marxist Society (New York: Harper Colophon Books,
1974).

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

681

versus capitalism or a critique of the socio-economic and
political structures operative in America can only be adequately
handled through the combined efforts of economists, political
scientists, sociologists, historians, philosophers, theologians, etc.
It is an area, however, in which a Christian psychotherapy can
and ought to make its contribution.
Again, Phil Brown argues at length that psychiatry as practiced in America is a tool of the American ideology and increases
rather than diminishes psychological oppression. Brown's view
that there is a relationship between psychiatry in America and
the general institutional American W el{anschauung receives a
certain general support from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman in their The Social Construction of Reality. Thus, Berger
and Luckman write:
Since ... every society faces the danger of individual deviance, we
may assume that therapy in one form or another is a global social
phenomenon. Its specific institutional arrangements, from exorcism
to psychoanalysis, from pastoral care to personal counseling programs, belong, of course, under the category of social control ...
Since therapy must concern itself with deviations from the ' official '
definitions of reality, it must develop a conceptual machinery to
account for such deviations and to maintain the realities thus challenged. This requires a body of knowledge that includes a theory
of deviance, a diagnostic apparatus, and a conceptual system for
the ' cure of souls.' 48

Of course, the analysis of Berger and Luckman would apply as
much to Marxist societies and the therapies operative in them
as to the American situation. But, in any case, it is clearly the
task of a Christian psychotherapy as theoria to become cognizant of the relationship which exists in a given culture-and
in this instance the American culture-between the official
'mind-sets' and W eltanschauungen of that culture and the therapies operative in the culture. Moreover, an authentic Christian
psychotherapy must make basic value judgments in this area
of a critical type in the light of its own understanding of the
0 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality
(New York: Doubleday, 1966), p. 104.

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BERNARD TYRRELL

origin and destiny of man as informed by a Christian intentionality.
Further, recent studies, such as that of Patrick Kerans entitled Sinful, Social Structures 49 forcefully bring out the collective dimensions of human sinfulness. Kerans writes of a certain
"knowing ignorance " that manifests itself in what Lonergan
has spoken of as group and general bias. Kerans argues, for
example, that in America today " one group, the middle-class
mainstream, are transmitting the message, in accordance with
the dominant school system of North American society: 'Be
a winner'". On the other hand, "another group, comprised of
the racial minorities, of the poor, of the retarded, are beamed
another message: 'You're a loser.'" 50 In Kerans's view each
of these positions as operative in American society is biased,
narrow, destructive and sinful. I might add that Karl Menninger in his recent book Whatever Became of Sin? 51 tends at least
in part to support Kerans' analysis where he speaks of sin in
terms of a certain collective irresponsibility and gives examples
similar to those of Kerans.
Kerans and Menninger in their respective studies both point
up serious sinful flaws in the American consciousness which are
in need to healing. It is clear, then, especially if Mowrer and
Menninger are correct, that sinful attitudes can generate mental
illness, that a Christian psychotherapy must engage in a diagnosis
of the attitudes pervading the collective American consciousness; it must show, as Karen Horney did, how these attitudes
can and do lead to the increase of mental illness and must offer a
healing alternative to these destructive mind-sets and beliefs.
Further, Mortimer Adler in his The Time of Our Lives points
out that" critics-all of them, left and right-fail to recognize
that many of their criticisms leveled against America and
Americans, apply to all societies and to the human race gen••Patrick Kerans, Sinful Social Structures (New York:

Paulist Press, 1974).

••Ibid., p. 81.
61 Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York:
1973).

Hawthorn Books,

HEALING COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS

633

erally ." 52 Adler is correct, I believe, in pointing out that there
are certain moral flaws and biases, e.g., sensualism, etc. which
are present in all cultures and societies and which are in need
of diagnosis just as much as are sinful socio-economic attitudes
and beliefs. Along these lines, in Christotherapy I note that
cultures as well as individuals can be dominated by sensualist,
possessivist, racist biases and beliefs.58 A Christian psychotherapy then must attend to the fact that there is a wide
variety of ".sinful structures " or mind-sets besides the political
and socio-economic which are the source of emotional disturbances and are in need of existential diagnosis and a healing
transformation.
Finally, Charles Fair in his recent book The New Nonsense
argues that the decline of faith in America has brought about
a basic anxiety flourishing in poor and rich alike, and in the
sheltered as well as in the exposed. Fair .speaks of a " Rage to
Believe " 54 as characteristic of contemporary American culture.
Fair notes that individuals in their flight from anxiety experience "an inclination to willful personal belief so strong that it
amounts to compulsion." 55 Fair fears an end to rational consensus as individuals give credence to a wide variety of species
of the irrational and to bizarre sects and therapies which promise salvation. This very recent commentary of Fair on the role
of belief in contemporary American society points up the urgent
'need for a critique of beliefs, a critique grounded in a foundational analysis of authentic conversion and worked out in a
dialectic context.
It is then the task of a Christian psychotherapy as theoria
to give careful attention to sinful structures and mind-sets, the
irrational ideas, the absurd beliefs, the cultural contradictions,
the destructive modes of thinking, desiring and feeling-in-the
••Mortimer J. Adler, The Time of Our Lives (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1970), p. 232.
••Tyrrell, Christotherapy, pp. 94-95.
••Charles Fair, The New Nonsense: The End of Rational Consensus (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1974), p. 17.
•• Ibid., p. 34.

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BERNARD TYRRELL

world which psychotherapists and social theorists like Ellis,
Horney, Hora, Frankl, Waldman, Menninger, and others aver
to be a communal source of mental pollution and emotional disturbance in individuals. There is need for a Christian psychotherapy, illumined by the values and meanings operative in a
Christian intentionality, to engage in a communal existential
diagnosis and prophetic critique of the beliefs, assumptions, etc.
present in the American noosphere in an effort to dispel mental
pollutants and group biases. Likewise, there is need for a communal existential discernment which will foster authentic beliefs, values and meanings.
To conclude, the thrust of this paper has been to show that
a Christian psychotherapy and specifically Christotherapy has
potentially a communal as well as an individual-oriented goal.
There is need for a dimension of preventive medicine or therapy
in the area of the psychotherapeutic and this basically involves
a diagnosis, transformation and leavening of group and national
consciousness. There is most certainly a need for an authentic
" greening of America " and for the emergence of a new and
higher level of consciousness. Hopefully, a Christ-oriented and
Christ-directed psychotherapy can make some important contributions in this vital area.
BERNARD TYRRELL,

Gonzaga University
Spokane, Washington

s. J.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY:
SOCRATES?

S

ATHENA OR

OCIETY IS ALWAYS bound to find philosophers intolerable, that notorious breed who make it their profession, like their father Socrates, to question everything.
Moreover, philosophers insist on teaching, on bringing forth
the new life of raised consciousness in those around them. And
this experience of passing from the mind's dark and comfortable
womb to the light of day is usually traumatic. Instead of being
grateful, people generally hate those who precipitate such an
event. Without his daimon, Socrates admitted, he could never
have sustained the philosophical life.
The problem is somewhat like that of an irresistible force
meeting an immovable object. Society hangs on for dear life
itself to its traditions. To unsettle those traditions is to unsettle the subject of those traditions. And no subject will
tolerate unsettlement indefinitely. Beyond a certain point it
fights back for its life, its identity, its traditions. Hence also its
prohibitions. Hence the burdensome existence of every philosophy teacher true to his model. If it is true that there is no
history of a happy philosopher, perhaps Socrates' paradigmatic
life explains it all.
But to come down to some specificity. (A common scholastic
word, by the way, long before Watergate taught the nation how
to pronounce it.) The problem of a philosophy teacher vis-a-vis
society is not that he questions, but rather what he questions.
For no one will deny that questioning is part of teaching. But
question everything? Then how exactly, the philosopher asks,
should he question?
Clearly, the issue touches philosophy teachers not only in a
Catholic but indeed in any university, say, a Russian or a Red

685

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

Chinese university. That is, any university which identifies itself explicitly with the values of a larger community. For if
questions are raised only as devices to bring on pre-forged answers, which in turn are meant merely to reinforce community
beliefs, then the intellectual life is mocked, the university enterprise turned into a farce. If, on the other hand, questions are
genuine, as they should be, with answers truly open to possibilities other than traditional beliefs, then the larger community's interest in sending their young specifically to such and
such a university seems betrayed. Such is the dilemma which,
appearing in various forms, seems to plague the Catholic educational scene in every age. For his part, a philosopher cannot
evade the perilous task of working through a solution consonant with the signs of the times in the church, country and
the university.
There are related questions. Though peripheral and probably
better handled by other disciplines, we should mention at least
two of them which seem to touch our topic quite closely. One,
how many of the students in a Catholic college today are there
anymore because it is strictly Catholic? My own limited classroom surveys reveal that public and private loans, grants,
scholarships, a relatively " higher " level of campus clientele,
manageable tuition, ecumenism, even just sheer physical convenience and a safe location all figure decisively enough in a
student's choice of a school to caution against usual presuppositions on the matter. Two, does it make sense anymore to
refer to students today as the "young"? After all, among
other things, these "young" today can vote, purchase liquor,
get the pill, even undergo abortion without strict requirement
of parental permission. Parietals are a fact of life in campus
dormitories. Are these not indicators that the university has
already changed away from its traditional in loco parentis
status? Are these not in effect an admission that students are
now masters of their own morals and mature enough not to
need any protection from themselves?
Yet, interestingly enough, we hang on to the characterization

PHILOSOPHY

IN THE UNIVERSITY

687

of the university as an Alma Mater to her alumni? This persists unchanged. Everyone continues to decry the trend toward
mass production and impersonality on campus. Indeed there
would be spirited and universal support today for Newman's
insistence that a college be an "Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry or a mint or a treadmill." 1 How
to make this real in the face of enrolments larger than Newman
ever saw in his day is, of course, another kettle of fish. But
in principle, at any rate, everyone would agree that,
An academic system. without the personal influence of teachers
upon pupils is an arctic winter; it will create an icebound, petrified
cast-iron university, and nothing else.2
But to come back to the problem. How, and in what sense
can the university be rightly called a parent even as it seemingly menaces, especially in the person of the philosophy teacher,
the values from home and the other larger communities which
sustain it? Clearly, the issue here is that of" wisdom" and the
ways of its transmission. What sort of wisdom does a philosophy
teacher transmit in these times of Post Vatican II openness in
a Catholic university? How is this wisdom transmitted in a
way consistent at once with the limits of tradition and the
unlimited drive of the intellect to know? In what sense can
the Catholic university today, after superseding .so much of
its " systematic " contents, policies, procedures and rituals into
a new postconciliar lifestyle, still claim legitimately and credibly
to be an Alma Mater to her alumni?
A good way to start an answer would be to note the
etymological corelation between mater and alumnus (from the
Latin alere, to nourish). We see how the two are as implicated
as the ideas of" parents'' and" offspring." Hence too the intertwining notions of parenthood and college teaching. However,
1 Newman, J. H., The Idea of a Uuiversity, edited by M. J. Svaglic, Rinehart
and Co., New York, 1960, Discourse VI, sect. 8, p. 109. Also, Historical, Sketches,
Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1885, v. 3, p. 16, where he calls the university
" an Alma Mater of the rising generation."
•Ibid., 74.

638

BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

the differences and similarities in this analogy need to be untwined if they are to shed light on the question at hand. This
I now propose to do from the standpoint of Simple Apprehension and Judgment as the mind's acts. My procedure will be
to circle around the mystery of "parentalism" four different
times from this precise angle. But the movement will be continuous like that of a camera zeroing in for a closeup of the
interests which lie at the core of this problem. To lay bare
those interests, I am convinced, is to be well on the way to a
solution.
l. Human Parenthood and Simple Apprehensl,on: The First

Circle.
The word parens comes from the Latin pareo, meaning to
give birth. Now, as Marcel points out, physical generation does
not by itself automatically constitute human parenthood. 8 Admittedly it does on the level of brute generation. For there
the offspring is able to forage on its own almost instantly at
birth. Nature in her wondrous way supports this ability by
usually synchronizing the arrival of young animals with springtime when food is abundant. By contrast, the human baby,
long after birth, is in effect still attached to the mother's body.
Spatially, of course, and surgically, it has been cut off and
moved from inside the womb to exactly outside it as it lies
cradled in its mother's arms. But, as the Madonna, the timeless
gesture of motherhood, signifies, the infant continues to depend
on its mother for its very life much as it did inside the womb.
It is a commonplace that a baby needs to be picked up regularly
8 Marcel, G., The Mystery
of Being, translated by G. S. Fraser, H. Regnery,
Chicago, 1964, v. 1, pp. 243-53; Homo Viator, translated by E. Crawford, Harper
and Row, New York, 1962: "the existence of a family as a protective skin placed
between himself and a world which is foreign, threatening and hostile to him,"
p. 77. In this essay "home" for Marcel is, strangely enough, the permanence of
the physical habitation itself, " ... the outward is also the inward," p. 78. Still,
the stress is on "the continuity of the family itself ... the act by which he
is continued in other beings who would not exist without him," ibid., 120; " The
Mystery of the Family," ibid., 68-97; "Creative Vow as Essence of Fatherhood,"
ibid., 98-124.

PHILOSOPHY

IN THE UNIVERSITY

639

and enfolded in human warmth in order to survive. And while
we Catholics, because of the abortion issue, may stop short of
the idea that the foetus is merely a "part" of the mother's
body, we cannot afford to lose the insight it bears, namely, that
a mother does continually extend her whole personal self into
that of her infant. Whether breast or bottle fed, the human infant forages, so to speak, only in its mother's body. It flourishes
only within the ambit of her life-giving presence.
The infant's dominant gesture at this stage is grasping, an act
which graphically summarizes its relationship to its parents.
It is forever trying to apprehend its mother. It is as if it were
trying to pull her into itself or vice versa in a subconscious wish
to restore its ruptured unity. But, obviously, this is not possible. So, nature again wondrously comes to its support with
the mechanism of identification. For better or worse, everything that happens in the parental relationship during these
tender years is recorded in the child's psyche so deeply that it
will take time before the idea slowly dawns on the infant that
it is actually a being in itself, distinct, separate and other than
its parents. Thus " weaning " is more than just a physical imperative. It is also a major psychic signal to the child that it
must now start the lengthy process of learning how to " forage "
on its own in ever lengthening distance from its parents. It
is yet another inevitable step into human reality, namely, the
world where wills other than its own exist. Gradually it learns
the necessity for repression, adjustment and even submission.
To continue along this vein of Freudian phenomenology, 4
social reality is rendered present to the child predominantly
in the looming figure of the father. All the accumulated wisdom
of the race and tribe, all its taboos, allowances and demands,
•Freud, S., New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, translated by J.
Strachey, W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., New York, 1964, pp. 62-4; Group Psychology
and the Analysis of the Ego, translated by J. Strachey, Bantam Books, New York,
1960, ch. 7, pp. 46-53; The Ego and the Id, translated by J. Riviere, W. W. Norton
and Co., Inc., New York, 1962, p. 21; Moses and Monotheism, translated by K.
Jones, Vintage, New York, 1939, Pt. III, section 2, 7, pp. 160-64. Also, Marcuse, H.,
Eros and Civilization, Vintage, New York, 1962, pp. 12-13.

640

BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

the entirety of its totem the child grasps, not singly, which
would be impossible, but quickly in one general transfer of the
father's life-attitudes to the child. Hence we can say that the
child simply apprehends both parents indivisibly, inescapably
and unquestioningly. Unlike brutes to whom "home" is a
definite spatial territory (to penetrate the boundaries of which
is almost pricking the animal's own skin) , "home" for a human
infant is instead the persons of its parents. Thus a baby of
nomadic parents, or one carried along on a long voyage is, sur"'.
prisingly enough, always at home. While a baby who is never
out of the house is yet forever crippled psychically and disoriented socially if brought up by uncaring people whom it never
succeeds in grasping, in simply apprehending.
To put it another way, through identification an infant draws
into itself its parents' wisdom: the ways its parents have
learned about coping with a harsh and perilous universe with
its constant supply of opposing wills. Explicitly and implicitly
parents are continually instilling their wisdom into the child.
Hence the child's immersion in this parental wisdom is identically its immersion in tradition and its insertion into society. Many
will remember how Tevya, the poor father in Fiddler on the
Roof, puts this idea across at the start of that movie.
A fiddler on the roof ... sounds crazy, eh? But here in our little
village of Anatemka, you might say that everyone is a fiddler on
the roof, trying to scratch out a simple pleasant tune without
breaking his neck. It is not easy ... you might say, why do you
stay if it is so dangerous? Well, we stay because it is our home ...
and how do you manage to keep your balance? That I can tell you
in one word: tradition!

The father in Mary Poppins also makes this same serious point
in his deceptively lighthearted verses about how London and
its seasoned ways of banking should mirror themselves on an
English home. And so on.
The point is that human parenthood invariably effects the
child's simple apprehension of its parents' wisdom. Indeed
human parenthood is defined by this act of psychic assimilation

PHILOSOPHY

IN THE UNIVERSITY

641

between parents and infant rather than by mere physical generation. The child internalizes its parents' wisdom in pre-forged
entirety straight from the parents' brains, so to speak, into its
own self through identification. Needless to say, we are dealing
here with a mystery 0£ nature with quite awesome implications.
Accordingly, it may help to adumbrate this point further
through the use of a myth. I have in mind the myth of Athena's
birth. It is the only other Greek story, as far as I know, in
which a fly figures dramatically in the generation of wisdom.
According to the myth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was the
favorite child of Zeus. A very understandable preference since
she had sprung fullblown from her father's head. How did this
happen? We are told that Zeus feared that his first wife, Metis,
the goddess of Prudence, would bear him a rebellious son. Cunningly, therefore, he contrived a game for her called" changing
shapes." Imprudent Prudence, who was already heavy with
child, consented. She playfully turned herself into all sorts of
animals, big and small. Tragically, at one point, she assumed
the shape of a fly! Zeus thereupon quickly opened his mouth
and sucked her in so hard that she zipped right straight to his
brain. Predictably, he began to suffer headaches. This went
on without relief until Metis' daughter, Athena, the goddess
of wisdom, sprang fullblown with flashing helmet, robes and
all, from her father's brain. The myth then tells how Athena
lived up fully to her father's expectations. With Nike, she led
armies to victory, but only in just causes. Finally, she won her
favorite city and namesake. This she gifted with the first
olive tree: oil, food and wood all in one. Under her watchful
eye, from her temple on the Acropolis, and with the wise owl
on her shoulder, we are told that the Athenians flourished in
all their arts and crafts.
These were the same Athenians to whom another fly, this
time in the person of Socrates, came to generate a different
sort of wisdom, namely, "knowledge for knowledge's sake" or
what Newman calls the "university principle." 5 Unlike
5

Historical Sketches, v. 8,

642

BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

Athena's wisdom which had all the answers and was transmitted
full-blown at birth and through tradition, Socratic wisdom consisted instead of questions only. And we all know what the
Athenians did to Socrates when he persisted in calling his radically different way of life " wisdom." They charged him with
corrupting their youth. 6 He insisted that he had rendered them
so invaluable a service that he merited a handsome pension
from them for the rest of his life. Instead they gave him a sentence befitting a bandit, just as tradition dictated.
2. Academic Paternalism: The Second Circle.

We have seen how our students today are deemed capable of
judging for themselves. I would like now to focus on this act of
judgment as the precise basis for academic parentalism, in the
way that simple apprehension, as we saw, constitutes the child's
essential act in its assimilation of its parents and tradition.
This seems the proper place to point out some of Newman's
dated ideas on the university. First, Newman separated research from teaching. 7 He points out that great scientific discoveries were made outside the university by scientific societies,
royal academies, etc. And at the time he wrote, that was true
enough. The university in his view existed only to transmit
both the ancient achievements of the classics, as well as whatever knowledge consistent with the classics the external community had produced through its gifted individuals. A university
thus is of its very nature, says he," old-fashioned." 8 Obviously,
we have to revise this today. Since World War II, at any rate,
our universities have been increasingly great centers of research.
Apology, 86.
• The Idea of a University: " This implies that its object is, on the one hand
intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is a diffusion and extension
of knowledge rather than its advancement." (p. xxxvii); " To discover and to teach
are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found
united in the same person. He, too, who spends his day in dispensing his existing
knowledge to all comers is unlikely to have either leisure or energy to acquire
new." (p. xl) .
8 Historical Sketches, v. S, p. SSI.
6

PHILOSOPHY

IN THE

64$

And while this has its drawbacks such as, for instance, the
opening of the university to all sorts of interests extrinsic to
its nature, it also has obvious advantages. Today, for example,
we cannot conceive of good teaching in separation from a
teacher's research project. Even as we tone down nowadays
the publication syndrome in favor of excellent teaching, teachers
are nevertheless required, in ways subtle and otherwise, to show
evidence of a continuing life of research. This Newman seemed
not to have foreseen, at least in the strict meaning of the word.
Second, Newman held and talked of the university as a
teacher of universal knowledge. He seemed to have in mind
not merely a mental habit of viewing reality as a whole, but
actual content. 9 Apparently, theology was to be the prime
vehicle for such a knowledge. This would bring us back to the
" queen of sciences " position which is an anachronism. For
if indeed the university has so metamorphosed that every good
teacher today is also a researcher, then theology as a vital
discipline, instead of being waited upon must now wait on the
researches of other disciplines for the rethinking of its own
material.
Third, to engage in research is to hypothesize, to test out
and think through alternatives. Instead of the air of serenity and
" intellectual peace " 10 then which would pervade the grounds
and halls of a Newmanian university, we have today a veritable
hive of intellectual pursuits not infrequently in mutual competition. The faculty vie restlessly for the advancement of
knowledge in their respective fields. And all this ferment spills
over to become the classroom order of the day. There are unremitting pressures put on students themselves to get up their
own research projects. Term papers have come to be academic
household words. So different is this bustling matrix of research today from Newman's vision of a university as the serene
custodian and transmitter of classical wisdom.
The Idea of a University, Discourse VI, ,section 6.
Ibid., Preface, xxxix-xli; on "lateral education " among students themselves,
cf. Discourse VI, section 9, p. HO; "Site of a University," Historical Sketches,
v. 3, pp. 18-32.
9

10

644

BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

In Newman's time it was probably still possible to take the
myth of Athena as exemplifying the relationship of the university as Alma Mater to its alumni. When the Catholic community, including Newman himself, really stood as one once
the Pope spoke, and when the presupposition that the university was in loco parentis prevailed unchallenged, it was possible
to run colleges on the seminary model, Newman's explicit rejection of the idea, especially on the point of moulding students'
morals) notwithstanding.
Fullblown copies of traditional
knowledge could then be transmitted to the minds of students.
Education, after all, was of necessity elitist in those days, as
evidenced by the word " cleric." The opposite of " cleric " was
not so much the laity as the uneducated laity. 11 And Mother
Church, as the sole fount of education, gave the only education
she possessed, namely, the entirety of her tradition. And only
a fool will contest this decisive contribution to western civilization.
Athena's way of wisdom, however, is anachronistic today.
That is the sticking point of this whole essay. Today we function
instead on the model of Socrates the teacher, midwife and
gadfly of knowledge. To the Athenian craftsmen and artisans,
engrossed in technical production through their inherited skills,
Socrates came to focus their attention on the value of knowledge
for knowledge's sake. Theretofore the Athenians had been content simply to grasp, to apprehend their traditions. Socrates
considered it his peculiar mission to prod them into assessing
whether those traditions were indeed worth grasping. He
awakened the life of critical thought all around him. He induced and educed new realizations, the precise sort of thing,
it seems to me, that we too should be doing in our classrooms.
Our students come heavy with conceptions not only from their
home (which, we recall, is synonymous with parents) but from
the ubiquitous media also which sells everything with un11 Cf. Laurie, S.S., Early Constitution of the Universities, D. Appleton and
Co., New York, 1887, pp. 202-iW3; Grane, L., Peter Abelard, translated by F. and C.
Crowley, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1970, p. 45.

PHILOSOPHY

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645

matched skill, from deodorants to Presidents, to Superman.
Like Socrates, I should think that our task as teachers lies
neither in letting these conceptions go unquestioned, nor in
dismissing them all under the rubric of technology being incompatible with humanness, but rather in posing both as questions. It is for us to buzz our students into an examination of
all their previously received values. Like the tenacious Socratic
fly, it is for us to make them line up all their little desires which
have been shrilled into their heads fullblown from every side,
and make them sort their way through down to the great
dominant desire/s they ought to have. But as gadflies, it is
also for us to stay outside, careful not to exploit our teacherly
prerogatives in a way that intrudes into our students' freedom
to make the final decision for themselves. And heaven knows
how many ways there are for such an intrusion. The difference
between this approach and that of the parent-infant relationship
is so obvious that we need not say more.
Someone may ask: how, precisely, does the teacher inculcate
this habit of intellectual judgment, or what Newman calls the
"philosophic temper " in the student? In subsequent sections
my concern will be to answer this question in more detail. For
now it will suffice to point out with Dewey that every genuine
moment of thought is set off by a concrete problem. 12 The
teacher therefore must so draw his materials both from the
lived world and from the classics as to awaken the student into
Socratic curiosity about all the beliefs he has uncritically accepted heretofore. By this I do not mean launching a fullscale
attack on all a student's existing beliefs, especially those of his
religious faith. Such an attack is by no means the only way to
stimulate critical thought. If, as Whitehead insists, education
is imaginative teaching and learning, 13 an ingenious teacher
12 Dewey, J., EX'perience and Nature, Dover, New York, 1958, pp. 67-9; 182-83;
The Quest for Certainty, Capricorn, New York, 1960, pp. 244, 233-34; Reconstruction in Philosophy, Beacon, Boston, 1962, p. 90; and passim in his works.
13 Whitehead, A. N., "Universities and their Function," The Aims of Education,
Mentor, New York, 1963, pp. 91-101: "The justification for a university is that it
preserves the connexion between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the
young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning." ibid., 93.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

should be able to devise stimulants to critical thinking without
subjecting personal beliefs to ridicule. On the other hand, to
be scrupulously Socratic, one cannot throw a protective cordon
on certain beliefs, including those of the Faith, to make them
immune to critical examination. Nor can we spare any material
from the history of philosophy pertinent to the subject from
classroom consideration, no matter how opposed to the prevailing orthodoxy. For no genuine intellectual life is possible
without such an unlimited exposure to ideas which have exhibited both their historical durability and power. The only
limit to such a presentation, itself by rights unlimited, is of
course the inescapable one of the teacher's own :finitude. For,
as any critique of "objectivity" can readily show, a teacher
cannot but somehow mix his own persuasions with his presentation. What is Socratic ignorance, after all, but Socratic irony?
And what is that but simply another term for the wise person
of Socrates himself? And what is Socratic wisdom if not a
limited one?
Just as home is the persons of the parents themselves, rather
than any geographical spot for the child, as we saw, so too the
classroom is the teacher's own living personality rather than a
compartment inside a building. This the ancient Peripatetics
knew very well. Whether in grade school or college, a teacher
is always more than just what he explicitly expounds. The
course material he selects to stimulate his students' reflective
judgment; the way he organizes and argues in his presentation; the way he phrases his words-with style or lack of it;
the breadth and depth of his aesthetic and intellectual taste;
his personal appearance which is constantly exposed to ruthless classroom scrutiny; his allusions, edited experiences, insights, psychopathologies of everyday teaching; his wit, jokes
and brand of humor; his interests as revealed by the examples
and analogies he employs to clarify his point-all these go into
the personally lived space which we misleadingly call the "classroom." It is in this individualized noosphere, if I may put it
that way, of his own person that the teacher constitutes the

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limit to pluralism, rather than any diktat on subject matter
to be taught aimed at protecting students from themselves.
Not only under Athena's watchful eye, but also under the
aegis of Apollo, the god of light and music, did the Athenians
pursue arts and crafts. Now Apollo's oracle, as we know from
Socrates, was in the habit of speaking in ambiguities. This
was its way of alerting its suppliants to its deeper messages.
Thus its pronouncement to a mystified Socrates that he was
the wisest of men ultimately meant that a man must forever
divide, question, look at and reflect on himself from all sides.14
Only after circling around himself in reflective criticism, as it
were, could he then compose himself into what Kierkegaard
regards as the authentic " individual." 15
At this point we may well wonder why it is that societies in
general seem to be always apprehensive and fearful of genuinely
Socratic individuals<. It is as if they feared that, somewhere in
the subconscious depths of the mind, there is an unpredictable
source of novelty which is, in Nietzsche's language, no longer
Apollonian but purely Dionysiac in thrust. And what responsible person is not affected by the sight of a Nietzsche philosophizing against revered traditions with a hammer? 16 What
serious administrator does not shrink at the thought of the sons
Apology, 21-3.
Kierkegaard, S., The Point of View for My Work as an Author, translated
by W. Lowrie, Harper, New York, 1962, pp. 107-51.
16 On the intertwined duality of Apollo and Dionysus as sources of artistic inspiration, cf. Nietzsche, F., The Birth of Tragedy, translated by F. Golffing, Doubleday
Anchor, New York, 1956, passim, v. g., sections xvi, xxi, xxv, pp. 97, 131, 145 respectively. Also on the constraint of style a genuine artist submits himself to cf.
The Gay Science, Bk. IV, Section 290, p. 232 in the translation by W. Kaufmann,
Random House, New York, 1974. On the Nietzschean imperative to "live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! " cf. ibid., 228. See Kaufmann's remarks on the duality of Apollo
and Dionysus, ibid., notes 124, 126, p. 331. On Nietzsche's " categorical imperative,"
namely, "So live that you must desire to live again," cf. Danto, A., "The Eternal
Recurrence," in Nietzsche edited by R. C. Solomon, Anchor, New York, 1973, p. 321;
also Kaufmann, W., Nietzsche, Meridian, Cleveland, 1963, pp. 108-110-130, 132-33,
and 216 for the analogy of an artist melting a masterpiece for material toward a new
inspiration.
14

16

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

and brothers in Freud's primordial horde rising up to slay the
father because of a freer and better society they phantasize? 17
What is overlooked, however, is that even Dionysus in Nietzsche
is never really quite free of Apollo, just as no society in Freud
is ever without its oversupply of repressive mechanisms in anticipation of rebellion. We can rely, in other words, on the
intellect which generates questions, also to generate suitable
answers. Not immediately perhaps-but then it is part of
maturity to delay gratification 18 as prudence dicates.
The sensible direction to take then amidst all these understandable fears is so to cultivate the life of reflection that
can be reasonably expected to be self-purifying and self-constraining even when it unleashes itself into the novel objects of
uninhibited thought. I see no alternative to this in these our
times of mass media, paperbacks, and the transformation of
colleges into research centers. As Rollo May writes, inhibiting
the creative impulse in such a milieu is just not possible. It
has not worked in the past. There is no reason to think the
nature of man the artist will change in the future.
Dogmatists of all kinds-scientific, economic, moral, as well as
political-are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist ...
We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artist, together
with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyers of our
nicely ordered systems. For the creative impulse is the speaking
of the voice and the expressing of the forms of the preconscious and
unconscious; and this is, by its very nature, a threat to rationality
and external control. The dogmatists then try to take over the
artist. The church, in certain periods, harnessed him to prescribed
subjects and methods. Capitalism tries to take over the artist by
buying him. And Soviet realism tried to do so by social proscription. The result, by the very nature of the creative impulse, is fatal
to art. If it were possible to control the artist-and I do not believe it is-it would mean the death of art. 19
17 Freud, S., Totem and Taboo, translated by J. Strachey, W. W. Norton and
Co., New York, 1950, pp. 141-44; Group Psychology, pp. 72; MosesandMoootheism,
pp. 101-17.
18 Cf. Civilization and its Discontents, translated by J. Strachey, W. W. Norton,
New York, 1962, p. 44; An Outline of Psychoanalysis, translated by J. Strachey, W.
W. Norton, 1940, pp. 108-110; Marcuse, H., Eros and Civilization, pp. 12-15.
19 May, R., The Courage to Create, W. W. Norton, New York, 1975, 76.

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Everything I have said about teaching up to this point will,
I hope, support the implication made explicit in this quote from
May, that the teacher should be an artist par excellence. What
he creates are lives Socratically awakened, gentlemen individuals who make their philosophic temper bear on each situation
gracefully to soften the savage heart of man and help refine the
life of the world.
We are now in a position to look at the distinctive sense in
which our colleges today may still lay legitimate claim to the
title of Alma Mater.
3. Alma Mater and Ph'ilos<Yphy: The Third Circle.

The opening lines of Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus have by
now become classic.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is
suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living. All the rest
comes afterwards. One must first answer. 20

It should be noted that the talk here is about serious philosophizing. Not everyone agonizes on whether to be or not to be.
Like Athena's Athenians before Socrates, most people simply
stay with the wisdom they have apprehended from their parents
and from the traditions of their various arts and crafts. In
Plato's term, their lives are led on the level of pistis, received
opinion. The same seems true comparatively of those who come
to our philosophy courses. Would that we could say of all
of them that at the end they go out with a seriously worked
through and personally appropriated answer to the meaningof-life question which Camus assigns as the sine qua non of the
philosophical life. The term papers I invariably assign for submission at the end of my courses show that, more often than
not, students only end with more questions than answers to
that " first " question in philosophy.
As we noted earlier, some will be quick to say that this is
precisely what is lamentable about this whole Socratic version
•• The Myth of Sisyphus, translated by J. O'Brien, Vintage, New York, 1955, 8.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

of wisdom. It pretends to get at the bottom of things. In fact
it leaves its adherents high and dry in ceaseless uncertainty.
And in a way, they are right. To lead the examined life, to be
intellectual or genuinely thoughtful, as I have already noted
from Dewey, is always to approach things in a problematical
and therefore tentative fashion. It is to entertain hypotheses,
to look at the widest range of alternatives possible. It is to
rehearse imaginatively the various possible answers with an
eye to judging whether any and which of them best satisfies the
human desire in question. 21 Elsewhere, I hope to show how this
is by no means incompatible with the idea of there being absolutes, and how it merely means that the understanding of
the absolute itself, as well as its legitimate scope of application
to concrete experiences, constantly demand reflective judgment.
For now the point to be made is simply that this sort of incessant questioning and reflective judging is precisely the distinctively human mode of life as differentiated from life on
the subhuman level. He who before was in a one-track mentality and thus asleep now awakens literally in wonderment at
the world of alternatives all around. She who before lived in
the shadow world of received opinions now seeks meaning and
light through personal effort and vision. This is to be born
anew to the grade of existence proper to man, all remaining
questions notwithstanding. For it is certain that man, to be
human, must question and thus come to a continual realization
of who he is. And this self-knowledge in its very imperfection
is the proof that Socrates dissatisfied is yet superior to the fool
satisfied. For the fool knows nothing but the unquestioned
immediacy of his experiences. Whereas "the other party to the
comparison knows both " 22 since he stands outside the life he
leads in questioning it. What cannot be stressed enough
though is that the examined life presupposes a knowledge of
both sides to the comparison. The Socratic teacher thus is one
21 Dewey, J., Theory of Valuation, University of Chicago, 1966, p. 8!l; Experience
and Nature, p. 435; Theory of the Moral Life, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New
York, 1960, p. 135; Common Faith, Yale University, New Haven, p. 49.
•• Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1957, p. 14.

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651

who presents the great thoughts both of those who uphold the
community wisdom (let us recall that Socrates refused to escape with his life) which the student presumably already apprehended, as well as other great thoughts either opposing or
opening them to further horizons. Again the only limits are the
teacher's own competence and the time alloted the course. If
at the end of the course the reflective attitude of searching for
truth does take root in the student's mind, then I say that this,
more than any remembered specific content of the course,
makes the university an Alma Mater to her alumni. Needless
to add, as we saw earlier from Newman, we presuppose a personal rapport between teacher and students. Always there should
be a consciousness-raising teacherly presence which beckons the
student to the distinctively human life, the life of reflection
which is the university's own gift to him.
However various the historical motivations may have been
for the founding and rise of the first universities, they nevertheless had this common aim, namely, to nurture and culture the
intellectual life. This made it inevitable that Abelards would
always arise in their midst to personify the university ideal of
an unceasing intellectual quest for truth. For, as Bergson has
said, the intellect. sometimes functions in a way which makes
its answers to deeply tormenting questions suspect. 23 To allay
its own torment at often being unable to get at absolute answers
to questions it itself has raised, the intellect tends to rest at
pain-mitigating ideas it invents. It is thus part of a liberal education to be alerted to this possibility. This in turn means that
there really is no substitute for ever purifying and deepening
effort toward a personally acquired wisdom on the serious problems of life.
Admittedly, this sort of intellectual inquiry bakes no bread.
But what are the alternatives? Should one merely continue to
eat or bake bread unreflectingly like the " fool satisfied " ? Or
should one simply decide to follow another's teaching " blind••Bergson, H., The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Anchor, New York,
1935, pp.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

ly " ? How are these two really di:fferent since he too is a fool
who simply follows tradition " blindly " ? If, on the other hand,
the decision to follow tradition blindly is a reflective decision,
then we have a self-cancelling statement. One, after all, may
sub.scribe to the goal of the reflective life, albeit in the distorted
manner so vividly portrayed by the Grand Inquisitor. 24 In
any case, what would be clearly unacceptable would be for
one to just go on baking or eating bread without ever having
come to terms with himself on what life is all about. The worthwhileness of life, as William James once said in a poor pun, all
depends on the liver. 25
From all this I see our task as philosophy teachers to be
threefold. First, to awaken the student to the meaning-of-life
answer-whatever that be which has kept him going up to now;
or, awaken him, perhaps, to his zombie-like condition, should
he indeed totally lack such an answer. Second, to make him
grasp the various serious possibilities philosophers have presented on this matter so as to make the field of his choices as
expansive as his understanding. Third, to practice Socratic
midwifery toward the birth of the reflective and educated habit
of judgment. A word now on each of these roles.
Fir.st, the awakening. As we saw, the world bares its harsh
necessities to man continually at every stage of life, from the
cutting of the umbilical cord, to weaning, to the unceasing demands of a job. Young as they are, our students, especially
those who come to weekend and night classes, are certainly no
strangers to this harsh aspect of the lived world. It is a safe bet
that they come to us full of ambitions, desires and a powerful
will-to-live. In this sense they do bear an implicit meaning-oflife answer within themselves, a certain sense of selfhood therefore. It is for us Socratically to move this implicit meaning
forward to the light of explicit consciousness. Our task is not
"" ... man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly
to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature
is born." Dostoyevsky, F., The Brothers Karamazov, translated by C. Garnett,
The Modern Library, New York, p. 264.
95 The Will to Believe, Dover, New York, 1956, p. 32.

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653

to reinforce other little desires our mass media have already
shrilled into them, but rather to awaken them to the deepest,
the dominant ought or desire they should have, one powerful
enough to function as the organizing center of their lived worlds.
Secondly, we saw how through identification with its parents,
an infant is made continuous with their persons and thus with
the society into which it is born. No one comes into this world
floating like a piece of solitary deadwood from the middle of
a lake. 26 Nevertheless, it is only through education, through
passage to explicit consciousness that one actively and freely
makes himself a part of the race. He does this by opening his
vision beyond his own inherited tradition to the best that has
been achieved by the human spirit in every age. It is one thing
to be pushed around in a baby carriage, or to be carried in a
knapsack on a parent's back, or even to move excitedly but
empty-headedly amidst the ruins of an ancient civilization. It
is another thing to pause every few steps amidst such a setting
to study and savor the philosophy, history, psychology, economics, literature and art which are memorialized in those ruins.
To be ignorant of these even as one stands literally amidst their
testimonials is to be in pathetic bondage to one's immediate
consciousnes. Then no excited travelling, even in a supersonic
Concorde, from one ancient site to another, can ever substitute
for the rich flight of the imaginative understanding which marks
off the liberally educated gentleman from the captives of ignorance in such a setting.
A free spirit breaks out and grasps for itself what men have
thought worthwhile and why. Thus he opens up his options
beyond the enslaving limits of merely immediate excitements
and desires. This, I submit, is a rationale which distinguishes
a truly liberal arts college from a technical and vocational
school. In other words, we should, without hesitation, support
the established principle that liberal subjects do not aim at
baking bread. They aim rather at awakening students to the
realization that not by bread alone does a man live, and that
26

Dewey, J., Theory of the Moral Life, pp. 168-65.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

in fact bread is better fare when life itself is perceived as
meaningful human life, not the other way around, as the unexamined life would have it.
Here philosophical literature becomes our dialectical tool.
It is the field we open for our students' judgments to range on.
Here there is legitimate use of examinations to make sure the
students indeed grasp both the positions and counterpositions,
both the reasons for and against the prevailing orthodoxy as
presented in lectures and assigned readings. Hopefully, too,
the readings will be such as to generate a lifelong love of
the printed page in the student. For to be free is to be able to
choose. And choice is authentic only when it ranges the field
of options which open themselves to consciousness, only when
the individual himself seeks to discover and apprehend them.
Finally, grasping, simply understanding is not enough. The
ultimate finality of the intellect is toward the generation of the
act of judgment, toward truth. Concepts, or what St. Thomas
calls the apprehension of the indivisibles, 27 only tell us what
other people have said. Whereas our aim at learning what they
said is so that we may " compose and divide," 28 that is, sort
out dialectically what we judge true from what we judge false.
"The study of philosophy," says St. Thomas, "is not for the
purpose of knowing what men have thought, but to know the
truth of things." 29 In other words, the goal is always that of
specific judgment on the various options apprehended and understood. This would correspond to what A. N. Whitehead calls
the transition from the phase of romance to those of precision
and generalization. 30 All else is prelude to this moment. It is
here that a person is reborn to an existence distinctively human.
Hence, whatever the student reflectively judges to be his
meaning-of-life the teacher's task remains essentially the same,
., St. Thomas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1958, q. 5, a. 3, c., p. 26.

••Ibid.
•• De Coelo, Book I, Lecture 22, Parma Edition, v. 19, p. 58.
••Whitehead, A. N., The Aims of Education, pp. 28-38.

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namely, to be the gadfly and midwife to that judgmental, selfassessing act.
Needless to say, what meaning-of-life or self a student concludes to is not necessarily lifelong and permanent. The nature
of reflective judgment itself demands a constant ongoing evaluation of incoming material against settled beliefs. As Newman
used to say, even before Dewey, "life is change, life is growth." 31
And new materials do come in unceasingly from books, other
disciplines, new relationships, unexpected experiences, novel discoveries, etc., all of which a per.son necessarily undergoes as the
world turns. This is why, rather than any specific content, we
have advocated all along a reflective habit of judgment instead.
As the Chinese proverb has it, to teach a man to fish is infinitely superior to giving him fish as a handout. And "knowledge,"
says Whitehead, " does not keep any better than fish."
To repeat, we cannot overlook the fact that the teacher himself is a living method in himself. He is on public exhibit before
his class as he thinks dialectically and imaginatively through
the various contrasting positions. He exemplifies method as
he presents his reasons and unobtrusively draws his students
to participate in the process. And, of course, any experienced
teacher knows that little of the material he does present during
a course stays as specific contents in the .students' minds much
beyond examination time. Instead, what they take away permanently and unforgettably, for better or worse, is the remembrance of the teacher in action, as he philosophized before them
and with them in the classroom. Very much to the point are
Whitehead's words to students.
Your learning is useless to you till you have lost your textbooks,
burnt your lecture notes, and forgotten the minutiae which you
learnt by heart for the examination ... The function of a university
is to enable you to shed details in favor of principles. 33
81 Cf. Harrold, C. F., John Henry Nl!!Wman, Longmans, Green and Co., London,
1945, chs. 3 & 4, " The Life of Ideas," pp. 53-90, especially 58, 68, 79.
••Whitehead, op. cit., p. 98.
38 Ibid., 37. This is where I probably would disagree with J. F. Hitchcock who
appatently wishes to confront students in a Catholic college with the authoritative

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

Clearly then, in both his person and own personal persuasion,
it is impossible for a teacher to be totally " objective " or
" value-free."
When our students, with our help, do come to have a love
of reading and the life of erudition; and when, most importantly they do come to possess a lifelong habit of reflective judgment, only then can we say that we have been midwives to
their birth into the examined life. The unreflective multitudes
will continue to live merely as the world turns under the sedate
owl of tradition. But our alumni, hopefully, will be Socratic
gadflies buzzing the multitudes awake to the question: how
ought the world to turn? The two modes of existences are vastly
different. One remains merely potential to the distinctively
human mode of existence. The other is humanity actually reborn in the individual as he habitually resorts to reflective judgment. It is this actualization of the distinctively human in our
students, I submit, which entitles the university to be called
Alma Mater by her alumni and alumnae.
4. Objections and Replies: The Fourth Circle.

Those who in the past learned a structured scholastic philosophy in Catholic colleges, and who believe this has stood them in
good stead (better at any rate, they maintain, than what is
teaching of the Church in such a way as practically to insure doctrinal agreement
on the part of the student, even though " some will reject these pronouncements."
Cf. Catholw Mind, January, 1976, p. 15. I would instead agree with the following
remarks by Father John Forman in an article on updating seminaries today:
" The lack of imagination is evidenced not only in the narrowness of the pastoral
program but also in the academic environment which fosters dependence on a few
books and a limited and select quantity of ideas-perhaps itself a commentary
on how the faculty judges the intellectual caliber of their students. The alternative
would be clear enough: a cultivation of refined, critical, questing and reflective
intellect. Newman's ideal rather ironically has been achieved more often at
Harvard than at Catholic institutions which cite Newman's words so frequently."
National Catholic Reporter, February
1976, p. 5 (italics added). "This kind of
intellect is in rather scarce supply among the clergy of any century, but it is often
tamed unconsciously even in the liberalized intellectual environment of some seminaries. It is still often enough regarded as annoying and an irritant to the program.
Hence it is discouraged, if not actively sanctioned," ibicl.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY

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served their children in the classrooms today) will probably object that the Socratic version of wisdom just presented is much
too negative. It offers nothing but process and problems. It is
devoid of content. It urges questions at the same time that it
itself seems incapable of accepting any answers. The hungry
sheep look up, it is urged, and are not fed.
In reply, one should say that it is not a matter here of being
unable to accept any answers. Obviously, to ask questions is
to look for answers. Anything else would be perverse. The
point here, however, is that of submitting every answer to constant reflection. 84 The alternative to this, as we saw, is a lapse
to the subhuman level and thus unacceptable. No one is saying
that reflection is an end-in-itself. It is merely the instrument
for the Socratic and the university principle, namely, knowledge
for knowledge's sake. What the objection visualizes, however,
seems to be a sort of pre-Vatican II situation where philosophical wisdom is somehow merged with the concept of an eternally
true Church. As one who grew up in that system on both sides
of the classroom table for almost two decades, and as one who
undoubtedly draws extensively and gratefully from such an
education even in the writing of these pages, I suppose I have
a fairly good store of memories and experiences of that era. In
those days the transmission of " content " was what was the
unum necessarium, rather than the habit of subjecting content
to constant reflection. The temptation to routinized teaching
was almost irresistible where contents were not only specified
but stayed fixed semester after semester. I must say that the
teaching life for me personally is much more interesting now
both during the semester and at the end when I go through
••Minogue, K. R., The Concept of a University, University of California, Los
Angeles, 1978, p. 58: "The ordinary lectures for the undergraduates are, then, not
merely exhibitions revealing to students how someone who is presumed to know
a great deal about a subject goes about giving an account of some part of it;
they are also rituals which force scholars to re-examine their subject as a whole,
and therefore a significant complement tQ minute or specialized researches. For
in academic terms, to teach a subject is to rethink it; and the problems of rethinking it often become far more evident in the preparation of lectures than in
tutorial or classroom discussion."

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the term papers on the meaning-of-life problem. One never
knows what will turn up next! Hence one stands ever ready
to think each fresh position through attentively. I would be
the last to deny that there was wisdom too, and certain
strengths in that Pre-Vatican II approach. Indeed if we could
have both that approach and the one I am portraying here (presupposing they are not mutually exclusive, which perhaps is
debatable) then we probably would have a very good thing.
If that be so, then let me hasten to add that the approach I
am presenting here, in fact tries precisely for the compatible
unity of those two approaches. For I have repeatedly held that
we ought to bring in as much literature as possible to open up
the field of options for the student. And this should certainly
provide a lot of room for the former sort of wisdom to get its
fair and proportinate hearing among others.
But perhaps it is best to backtrack a bit and illustrate the
difference between the two approaches. Most of those educated
in the tradition, for instance, know that St. Thomas holds that
we only know that God exists, not what He is.35 We also know
how soon after saying that St. Thomas proceeds to go into
lengthy expositions on God's attributes. 86 We need only look
at Thomistic textbooks on the subject in those days to see that
they followed the same route. In effect students were taught
quite a bit as to what God is. This despite the fact that the
heart of St. Thomas' position is that we know God through the
negative judgment of separation only as a being other than the
world. Clearly the world is the reference point here for the judgment that God exists. And since the world continues to tum
and change, we can see how reflection becomes the only constant on the human side of our knowledge of God. To stop
reflecting on a changing world, and to take knowledge of God's
attributes once learned as forever fixed, would thus result in
having no real content when one affirms God as other than the
••St. Thomas, S. T., q. rn, a. rn.
••Ibid., qq. 8-11; On Truth, q. 10, a.
Sciences, q. 6, a. 8.

ad 7; Division and Method of the

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world. It seems to me something of this sort is what is meant
by those who contend that theology has not kept pace with
the technological culture engulfing the world today. Indeed
even the basic notions of metaphysical contingency and necessity at the core of the Thomistic demonstration for God's existence would be eviscerated of meaning, since certainly contingency is paradigmatically realized most of all in one's grasp
of one's self, just as one conceives the "world" only by reference to the self.37 Those who would insist that all this was
likewise the aim of the former approach should then have to
to explain why they are so upset now that it is being explicitly
practiced. After all, in the Socratic approach as I depict it here,
the teacher is free to bring in any material he deems important
for the students' consideration and free choice to range on.
The truth is that it is unrealistic now and it was unrealistic
all along to have thought that reflection would have remained
content indefinitely to operate only in a vertical direction without any opening to the left, so to speak. 38 For it is of the nature
of the intellect to move sideways back and forth dialectically
even when trying to penetrate a single truth. The fact is that
questions about the validity of that former approach were already simmering underneath the seemingly tranquil setup even
in those Pre-Vatican II days in Catholic colleges. There was
always the feeling that human wisdom is really got at by way
of honest, and therefore unrestricted, inquiry. The difference
then is not between content and no content between the two
approaches, but rather between content personally appropriated
through a genuinely free and reflective judgment ranging
through all literature on the subject at hand; and content simply apprehended, memorized, repeated, stored and used. The
difference is that while formerly examinations and grades were
87 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, translated by C. Smith,
Humanities Press, New York, 1962, pp. 98-106.
•• "A system of dogmas may be the ark within which the Church floats safely
down the fioodtide of history. But the Church will perish unless it opens its window
and lets out the dove to search for an olive branch." Whitehead, A. N., Religion
in the Making, Macmillan, New York, 1980, p. 145.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

decided mostly on the basis of identification with the teacher's
brains, today we examine on the students' extensive grasp of
the alternative positions plus the depth and quality of their
critical conclusions. Agreement or disagreement with the
teacher's own stand on the subject by itself now no longer
earns points. The irrepressible Abelard, as we know, was driven
out of the university. 39 Today, with his first rate intellect, not
only may he stay but he would get the highest marks.
We should not get our sights confused. A John XXIII does
not invent the questions of the day. He merely allows for their
ventilation. In an era of mass media when journalists compete
at white heat, it is absurd to think genuine questions can remain unventilated. Indeed, given the nature of human wisdom
as a cooperative venture, what else but free and open reflection
is the human way of arriving at truth? The systematic compulsions of an earlier decade would simply be anachronisms.
Even if one holds that only a magistral few can define truth for
a believing community, it still would be undeniable that even
they are helped immeasurably more by methods of open reflection rather than by intimidated silence. In political anJ.
especially diplomatic matters, things may be otherwise. But
in the academic world there is no alternative to thinking questions through with our modern-day Abelards, whether these be
among our students or among the faculty. Indeed, even in cases
of downright impiety, Scriptures point out that " it is the will
of God for you to muzzle the ignorance of impious people in
this way, by excelling." 4-0
Obviously we have to have content and answers in our
courses. How can there be reflection without something to reflect on? The content we reflect on is what great minds have
thought, the materials we organize and present to our classes,
though not with the misleading notion of wisdom as already
a finished and structured whole. Ideally, our students should
graduate alert to the ever present possibility that religious pas•• Grane, L., Peter Abelard, pp. 34-46; cf. also Newman, J. H., Historical Sketches,
v. 3, pp. 192-202.
••I Peter, 2, 15.

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IN THE UNIVERSITY

661

si-On rather than reason may really be what is behind a religious
" truth," the mere possibility of which, with regard to any
official Catholic position, many Catholics find it painful to concede ever. Ideally, our graduates should have the realization
that wisdom is something they must strive constantly to acquire for themselves both in content and structure, through
habitual reflection on their Faith and on the constantly shifting
kaleidoscopic scenarios of life. It may be worth our while to
remember how Martin Luther was educated in the scholastic
thesis method, and he eventually nailed his own countertheses,
otherwise not allowed, on the church door. Hegel hailed German Lutheranism with its stand on private interpretation as
the acme of emancipated reason in religion. 41 Eventually, Karl
Marx came along to tum Hegel rightside up on his feet-with
eleven theses on Feuerbach. 42 And, of course, Catholics have
the Twenty-Four Thomistic Theses to be sacredly held in all
schools of philosophy, 43 with the oath against modernism required for good measure. What I am trying to say here is that
as we look back on all this today, it should be quite clear that
there is no alternative to a personal critical conclusion studiously arrived at.
Let us review the alternatives. Do we want (1) an alumnus
who indeed has memorized a system of " truth " to which he
conforms his life in an unquestioning submission of faith? Or,
(2) do we want one who in addition bends his energy only toward deepening those truths of Faith he has simply apprehended? Or, (3) do we want one who knows what content his
Faith teaches yet takes the risk of genuinely reflecting on them
in the light of those who dissent, likewise reflectively, from those
contents so as to reach and make his own personal judgment?
I submit that this last is the only liberally educated way.
41 Hegel, G. F., The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree, Dover, New
York, 1956, pp. 412-57.
••Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, Edited by L. S.
Feuer, Anchor, New York, 1959, pp. 248-45.
••Published by the Congregation of Studies, July 27, 1914. Cf. also "Constitution of the Catholic Faith," Denzinger, Numbers 1761-1820.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

Finally, someone may ask: is not salvation, loss of Faith,
too precious to risk simply for the culture of the intellectual
life? What doth it profit a man to be the greatest intellectual
if he suffers the loss of his soul-as Ignatius is said to have
called out to Francis Xavier repeatedly during their days at
the University of Paris, or some words to that effect? To put
it in Camus' terms, should we philosophize with our students
in a way that proposes suicide as a live option? Is the intellectual life really worth this serious a risk?
In reply, let me say that I do understand and appreciate the
usual traditional reply that a genuinely intellectual life cannot
possibly be a risk to Faith any more than truth can be opposed
to truth. But I think my meaning is clear. It is simply that a
genuine search for wisdom, as for instance in the well-known
example of the young Maritains, 44 can and does sometimes inescapably involve the risk of suicide and loss of Faith. On the
other hand, it could also mean the gain of life and the glory of
the Faith as again happened in the case of the Maritains. Then
too there is Newman's famous remark about toasting conscience
first before the Pope. 45 Hence I see no alternative to risking
even the Faith as the pearl of great price, if it is to remain that,
a prized possession. Personally, I probably would wrestle to
the ground any of my students who attempted suicide because
of our philosophizing. But one perhaps takes oneself much too
seriously to think of even this possibility. After all, good sense,
Descartes reassures us, is the most widely distributed of all
human gifts. 46
But to come to the point itself. It is hard to see how one
who sincerely employs his intellect to see the light endangers
44 Maritain,
R., The Memoirs of Raissa Maritain, translated by J. Kernan,
Doubleday, New York, 1961, pp. 64-9.
••"Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which
indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink-to the Pope, if you please-still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards." Certain Difficulties Felt
by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, Longmans, Green and Co., London,
1885, v. 2, p. 261.
••Descartes, R., Philosophical Works, translated by E. S. Haldane and G. R. T.
Ross, Dover, New York, 1955, v. 1, p. 81.

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IN THE UNIVERSITY

663

his eternal salvation, no matter how and what he may conclude
to. That is something which, I confess, I never quite understood even in my uncritical stages of life, especially given the
natural law obligation to follow one's conscience.47 Man's role
in salvation is more a matter of will than of intellect. And certainly, no one acquires the habit of reflection without an antecedent good will to truth. If that is so, then only one's
subsequent will, as judged by the consistency of his actions
and choices with his best intellectual light is what his salvation
would depend on. And this certainly falls outside our scope
as teachers. Here there are only God and the individual, the
alone before the great Alone. A teacher can only stand outside
and hope. ·we can only hope, after we have sensitively fulfilled
our obligations to them, that they will make the right judgments about their particular problems. It is all part of the
unending process of human maturity from which no one is
exempt.
To conclude, the objection on the basis of risk to salvation
does not invalidate the position that the examined life of reflective judgment is superior to that of a simply apprehended
and unidirectionally deepened wisdom. Superior, that is, not
in terms of a " holy life," but of the intellectual life. This is
the human desideratum which it is the university's task to actualize.
When we consider how Voltaire was educated in a no-risk
milieu, so to speak, we see that actually there is no alternative
to the examined life of open reflection. Sooner or later it will
break through. For barriers cannot be hid from the intellect
forever, seeing it is the intellect which thinks them up in the
first place.
There comes a point in natural as well as academic parentage
when in every sense youth becomes adult, responsible for his
own judgments and master of his own destiny. In that moment
all walls must come tumbling down before the unrestricted
drive of the intellect to know. We can only hope and so work
'"Cf. Fagothey, A., Right and Reason, C. V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1976, pp. 43-5.

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BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON

now that when that moment comes, its accompanying emotions
will be not disgust, dismay, disappointment-or all these and
worse-over one's former teachers for an unrealistically narrow
approach to wisdom. Nor do we want these emotions either
over a teacher who was so broad and " open " that the class
had nothing really substantial to reflect on. In brief, we hope
the emotion will be one of gratitude to a teacher for having
generated, fostered and enriched the individual's power to
choose through the culture and nurture of the intellect, and
the instilling of the habit of reflection. In Newman's words:
A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the
attributes are freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation and
wisdom; or what I have ventured to call a philosophical habit.
This then I would assign as the special fruit of the education
furnished at a university. 48

To end on an updated note, I can perhaps quote from a
newspaper account of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. of
California and recent Presidential aspirant.
The Jesuit-trained governor and his young aides almost make a
virtue of their lack of answers to tough problems. They loftily call
the Brown method " government by dialectic " referring to the
Socratic technique of seeking to expose false beliefs and elicit truth
by endless questioning. 49

That personifies the point I have tried to make in this whole
essay.
BENJAMIN

L01Jola University
Chicago, Illinois

••The Idea of a University, Discourse V, Section I.
The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 1976.

0

s. LLAMZON

TRACY'S BLESSED RAGE FOR ORDER:
A REVIEW ARTICLE *

I

REMEMBER WELL a winter afternoon in 1964 when, in a
New York suburban rectory, David Tracy, our mutual friend
Joseph Komonchak and I argued the value of philosophical theology. At the time I was in my first year of graduate theology
at Union Seminary and a participant in a seminar on contemporary
conceptions of God led by Daniel Day Williams and J. A. Martin.
I had sworn off the neo-scholastic philosophy and theology of my
seminary days. I could see no connection between them and the
ministry I was engaged upon, but my inherited ' classical theism '
had not been replaced or modified by any conception that could
be called contemporary. I had retreated to biblicism of a reasonably
sophisticated sort. Fathers Tracy and Komonchak urged me to
read Bernard Lonergan's Insight. In fact they gave me a copy. I
read it, and the reading changed my mind on what the theologically significant issues were and where they lay. Whether as a result
of my biblicism or my classical theism now reinforced by chapter
XIX of Insight, I spent the semester mystified by the neo-classical
or process theism of Professor Williams. A set of lectures by Charles
Hartshorne did nothing to ease my mystification.
Father Tracy was then a parish priest in Stamford, Connecticut.
He returned to Rome the following year and wrote a doctoral dissertation on Lonergan's notion of method. From 1967 to 1969 he
was assistant professor of systematics at Catholic University and
there wrote The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan. He has since
been an associate professor of systematics at the Divinity School
of Chicago University. In these years he has published a number
of important essays in foundational theology which marked out his
own position, distinguished it significantly from Lonergan's, and
show the increasing influence of his Chicago colleagues, especially
Schubert Ogden. Appreciation of his talents and efforts by the
Catholic theological community was made obvious when he was
elected president of the Catholic Theological Society for 1976-1977.
* David Tracy: Blessed Rage for Order, The New Pluralism in Theology (New
York: Seabury Press, 1975).

665

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

Blessed Rage for Order is the outcome of a decade's labor. It is
worth the labor. It is not so thoughtful or profound a philosophical
interpretation of religion as Louis Dupre's The Other Dimension or
W. E. Hocking's The Meaning of God in Human Experience. Nor
will it achieve the classical status in American philosophical theology of Josiah Royce's The Problem of Christianity. But it easily
rivals and in many respects surpasses the work of Ogden and
Langdon Gilkey. It is a well-informed and persuasive analysis of
the plurality of positions in theology based on a carefully articulated personal stance that has no trace of the evasion, idiosyncrasy,
or common sense eclecticism that characterizes much of the work
in the field. It interprets and interrelates the present state of
scholarship in a dozen vital areas. It brings into Catholic theology
a demand for revision of the theological tradition, presses that
demand on the basis of the values of the tradition itself, and does
so from a foundation radically different from inherited Catholic
theological self-understanding. It forces the issue of truth and its
criteria in theological discourse to the center of debate. Issued
from that tower of contemporary scholarship in religion, the Chicago
Divinity School, it will command the attention of any thinker concerned with the meaning of existence, with religion, with the question of God, and with the nature of theology as a contemporary
discipline. It is quite possibly the best work ever done by an American Catholic in foundational theology.
CONTENT
Blessed Rage for Order is primarily concerned with theological
method, with what theology is and does, with the stance and commitment of the theologian, and with the procedures and criteria
necessary for a truly contemporary theology. Father Tracy means
to define theology and, as he understands it, it is necessarily " revisionist." In the first chapter the cognitive, ethical, and existential
crises of modern theology are outlined. The first we are familiar
with: since the Enlightenment no cognitive claim of Christianity
has gone unchallenged. The second underlies the first: there is
an unalterable opposition in theology between the morality of belief and the morality of autonomous inquiry, an opposition which
has defied attempts at mediation and one side of which the theologian must choose. Tracy's choice is clear: theology must be
critical. Beliefs are not answers to theology's questions; they are
data to be understood. The theologian must be faithful to the
canons of inquiry and to evidence wherever it may lead, even
when it leads to a negation of a, or indeed any, traditional belief

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(p. 7) . The theologian's first loyalty is to the community of inquiry whose methods are adopted and only then to a church or
tradition and its claims. While the theologian may (but need not)
be a professing Christian and may (but need not) hold that the
Christian faith is an adequate statement of our common human
experience (p. 9), he or she must affirm the critical autonomy of
inquiry over against all traditions, must adopt public criteria of
meaning and truth, and must share " the faith of secularity: that
fundamental attitude which affirms the ultimate significance and
final worth of our lives, our thoughts, our actions here and now,
in nature and history" (p. 8). The latter conviction and the consequent denial of " supernaturalism " constitute the third or existential crisis and call for a revision of traditional theological
interpretations of the meaning of Christianity. The cognitive and
ethical crises make it necessary that the theologian defend positions
not only on material issues but on formal methodological ones as
well (p. I). The theologian, then, is committed to a faithful interpretation of both the Christian tradition and the post-Enlightenment secular faith in the worthwhileness of existence.
What should be the structure of theology's revised understanding
of itself, and how does that structure differ from other theological
options? In his second chapter, Tracy adapts Lonergan's horizon
analysis. He delineates the horizons of five options (models) by
specifying the subject and object referent in each, and mentions
the significant weaknesses which render four of them incapable of
resolving the contemporary problem. In the orthodox model the
theologian conceives of himself or herself as a believer and the
object of theological reflection as an understanding of the beliefs
of the tradition; the weaknesses are an uncritical acceptance of
beliefs and a failure to appreciate the" inner-theological relevance"
of the cognitive claims and values of modernity (p. fl4-fl5) .
Liberalism (and its Catholic counterpart, modernism) accepts those
claims and values, and has as its object a reformulated Christian
tradition; its failure is in execution rather than in principle, and
its weakness an inability to criticize the Enlightenment ideal of
rationality and progress. Neo-orthodoxy, the third model, is fundamentally correct in its criticism of liberalism and of the illusions
of Enlightenment consciousness; its subject referent is the person
of radical faith and its object the mysterious, wholly other God
of Jesus. N eo-orthodox weakness is disclosed in its failure to
analyze " with critical and deliberate hardmindedness the central
revelational, theistic, and Christological doctrines of the Christian
tradition" (p. fl9). The radical model (death of God theologies)
incorporates a correct self-understanding (secular in its commit-

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

ment to life and liberation) and its object is Jesus as a paradigm
of human life, but its negation of the Christian God leaves it open
to the charge that theology is superfluous.
Tracy's proposed revisionist model includes the subject committed to the modern experiment (critical) and takes as its object the meanings of both common human experience and the central
motifs of the Christian tradition. It rejects the stance and object
of the orthodox model; it carries on the liberal commitment to the
authentic values of modernity but turns to new resources for its
interpretation of the tradition; it continues the neo-orthodox critique
of liberalism's anthropology and recognizes with neo-orthodoxy the
power of the Christian symbols for a transformation of life, but it
intends a critical examination of the symbols; it accepts the selfreferent of radical theology yet finds its negation of God inappropriate to Christianity. Revisionism is a dialectical subsumption
of the other models. It aims at "the dramatic confrontation, the
mutual illuminations and corrections, the possible basic reconciliation between the principal values, cognitive claims, and existential
faiths of both a reinterpreted post-modern consciousness and a reinterpreted Christianity " (p. 33) . Christian theology is " a philosophical reflection upon the meanings present in common human
experience and the meanings present in the Christian tradition "
(pp. 34, 43, 64) . The remainder of Blessed Rage for Order explicates this definition, first in terms of method (chapters 3-4) and
then in its implications for substantive issues (chapters 5-10).
In his third chapter Father Tracy spells out, in thesis form, the
task, methods, and criteria of revisionist foundational theology.
The two sources of theology are common human experience and
language and the Christian text (p. 43) . Text means the various
accumulated historical expressions of the Christian witness but,
generally and for his own purposes, Tracy restricts his own text to
the New Testament witness. Theology must demonstrate that its
categories are adequate to human experience (criteria of adequacy)
and appropriate to the text (criteria of appropriateness).
The
method used in an examination of experience is " a phenomenology
of the religious dimension of everyday and scientific experience and
language " (p. 47) . The phenomenology adopted is the hermeneutic
phenomenology of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. The method
for the Christian text is historical reconstruction and hermeneutical
analysis of the principal Christian images, symbols, etc. For example, " Jesus is the Christ " requires historical, semantic, and
literary critical establishment of the sense of the text; a hermeneutical analysis will clarify the referent or mode-of-being-in-the-world
disclosed in the text. Once the several meanings are clarified they

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669

must be correlated (pp. 45-46) . Finally, to determine the truth
status of the correlated meanings the theologian must employ a
metaphysical or transcendental method. The theistic question is
logically unavoidable once the meanings have been explicated and
correlated, and only a metaphysics can address the reality of God.
The issue of criteria is carried another step in the fourth chapter:
A particular experience or language is " meaningful " when it discloses an authentic dimension of our experience as selves. It has
"meaning" when its cognitive claims can be expressed conceptually with internal coherence. It is " true " when transcendental or
metaphysical analysis shows its " adequacy to experience" by explicating how a particular concept (e.g. time, space, self, or God)
functions as a fundamental " belief " or " condition of possibility "
of all our experience. (p. 71)
Meaningfulness demands criteria of disclosive power and transformation possibilities (e. g. aesthetical and ethical criteria) ;
meaning calls for criteria of logical consistency; truth, criteria of
adequacy to all experience. The Christian theologian, of course,
will go on from common experience to the Christian text, and thus
is distinguished from a philosopher of religion (p. 72) . The theologian will be concerned to explicate the meaning of the Christian
symbols and to show how developed theological concepts are appropriate to those meanings. Finally, in the moment of correlation,
the criteria are switched: the meaning of experience may be declared appropriate to the Christian text and the meaning of the
text adequate to experience.
Here Tracy makes a distinction: the "sense" of the text is its
ideal, immanent meaning; the " referent " is its extra-linguistic
meaning. The first is established by historical and literary-critical
exercise, the second by a hermeneutical one (pp. 75-76). And he
takes an important position, one reliant proximately upon Ricoeur:
the text, precisely because it is written, is not a " speech-event,"
a psychic event, or a physical event. The text undergoes a process
of distantiation from its dialogic origins. The theologian is concerned primarily and directly with the text and its meaning, not
with the author's intention or the originating historical event. This
ends, for theological purposes, psychological analyses of Jesus and
the confusions of German " decisional " hermeneutics. Logicity
rather than historicity, aesthetic meaning rather than decisional,
imagination rather than will, are the concerns of hermeneutical
practice and theory (p. 78) . The implications of this are made clear
in Tracy's incursion into Christology (Chap. 9).
Tracy begins his discussion of substantive issues (in Chap. 5)

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

with an " initial and tentative " articulation of the revisionist model.
Here, he raises the question: Is the religious interpretation of common human experience and language meaningful and true? In an
ingenious combination of philosophical concepts and methods including an adaptation of Kant (limit-concept), Lonergan (selftranscending subjectivity and transcendental method), Toulmin
(uses of argument in ethics) , Ogden, Dupre, Hartshorne, and
Whitehead (religious dimension of experience), and Jaspers (analysis of experiential situations), he seeks to persuade us that religion
is a limit-language proposing limit-answers to limit-questions as
well as reassurance in the limit-experience of human life. Religious
language can thus be situated in meaningful relation to experience
and its meaning clarified logically. Such inventive adaptation and
combination of plural resources in contemporary thinking are characteristic of the entire book.
But is the language of the Christian text religious? What is its
meaning (sense) and is it meaningful (its referent)? Using thirdstage linguistic analysis (Ramsey and Ferre in particular) , hermeneutical theory (Ricoeur again), and literary-critical analysis of
proverbs, eschatological assertions, and parables (Perrin, Beardslee,
et al.), Tracy concludes in his sixth chapter that in the New Testament " a strange world of meaning is projected which challenges,
jars, disorients our ·everyday vision precisely by showing us the
limits to the everyday and projecting the limit character of the
whole" (p. 130). The meaning of the New Testament is established
as a limit language. Its referent is " a mode-of-being-in-the-world "
(p. 131 f). It re-presents our common and basic faith that life is
worthwhile and shows how authentic existence may occur: " it
may yet be possible to live as if in the presence of a God whose
love knows no limit " (p. 134). The language is an imaginative
disclosure of an authentically religious mode-of-being. It is, then,
existentially meaningful.
How shall the truth of religious and New Testament language
be established? The seventh chapter argues the necessity of metaphysics (against Nygren) and of a metaphysics of a certain sort
(transcendental, against the limited claims for metaphysics of
Ramsey and Ferre), and attempts to clarify the cognitive claims
of religious and Christian languages. The chief claim is: "the
Christian God [isJthe sole and single objective ground of all reality "
(pp. 146-147). The cognitive claims of the New Testament and
the presupposition of our common faith in the worthwhileness of
existence coincide in a theistic referent. The reality of the referent
can be established only by a transcendental argument to the neces§;.tr,Y condition Qf all our experience 11nd understanding. Phe.-

TRACY'S BLESSED RAGE FOR ORDER

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nomenology may explicate meaning and meaningfulness; truth requires metaphysics since the referent is not a matter of any experience but a condition of all experience.
The concept of God forms the problem of the eighth chapter.
Classical theism, in both its medieval (Aquinas) and contemporary
neo-Thomist forms (Rahner and Lonergan), is internally incoherent and inadequate to both contemporary ·experience and scripture (pp. 172-177). It is not existentially meaningful and "seems
to force some of those among our contemporaries most firmly committed to such traditional Christian orientations as the struggle
for truth and justice and love in this world to turn away in existential repugnance from a God literally unaffected by this struggle" (p. 181). The criteria are met, in the main, by the dipolar
concept of God (pp. 183-184). Tracy adds a caution: for several
reasons "I remain unconvinced that process thought, of and by itself, provides as full a resolution of the contemporary theological
situation as several process thinkers seem to suggest" (pp. 188189).
Tracy, in the ninth chapter, attempts to fix the meaningfulness
and validate the truth of the claim that Jesus is the Christ. The
problem is an old one: how can a fact be meaningful to our common (i.e. universal) human experience? Tracy's solution involves
analyses of fiction, evil, and fact. Fiction is necessary for character
formation and for praxis; the need is universal. Thus the meaningfulness of a fiction (including the " supreme fiction " of the story
of Jesus as the Christ) is subject to an existential verification of
its relative adequacy to experience by ethical, aesthetic, psychological, political, and sociological criteria (pp. 207-211). The inevitability of evil (non posse non peccare) makes transformative and
liberating fiction necessary and justifies an " over-hearing " of the
story of Jesus (p. 214).
But is there a fact claim to this particular fiction? The classical
Aristotelian distinction between fact-as-actualization and possibility
can be reformulated to include fact-as-possibility, or symbolic language and action which factually present a possibility. Fiction
is this second kind of fact-and does not depend on an actualization of the possibilities presented. Hemingway's presentation in his
fiction of the possibility of grace under pressure is a fact insofar
as it presents a possibility. The validity and power of Hemingway's
vision does not depend on whether he (or anyone else for that matter) actualized the possibility (p. 215). Likewise the title" Christ"
does not refer to an actualization of that possibility by the one who
holds the office (p. 216) . Rather, the meaning and truth claimed
is this: in the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ the

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

truth of human existence is re-presented with factual finality (p.
217) . There is no need for the modern psychologizations of ontological Christology, nor any attempt at a Christology based on actualization rather than re-presentation of possibility. We need to
know nothing of Jesus's consciousness (an impossible task at any
rate) . We need to know his words, deeds, and death as they represent the possibility of an authentic relationship to God (p. 218).
History is not abandoned here by Tracy. Historical work is
needed to " provide the text for the proclamation " of the representation of God's love in Jesus of Nazareth. But the principal
referent of the Christological language is not the actualization of
a possibility in Jesus of Nazareth himself but a possible mode-ofbeing-in-the-world (agapaic righteousness) and the gracious God
before whom we are called to live (p. 221). The main burden of
the chapter is to expose an " exclusivist " interpretation of the
Christological claim spawned by mistaking Jesus to be the actualization rather than the presentation of the Messianic possibility and
to point out that in the proclamation about Jesus is re-presented
our common and basic secular faith in the worthwhileness of life
and the only God whom all humanity experiences.
The final chapter traces the implications of the revisionist stance
for practical theology. Returning to his models, Tracy outlines the
form of various practical theologies. The task he sets for a revised
practical theology is to project, on the basis of historical retrievals
and systematic explications of Christian meaning, the future possibilities of meaning and truth. While he agrees that contemporary
theologies of liberation are on the right track here, he points out
their failure to analyze critically the Christian symbols themselves.
Their assumptions are neo-orthodox. A revised practical theology
would include the following factors: an empirical analysis of the
economic, social, political, and cultural situations and an ethical
analysis of the limits and possibilities of the situation (in the mode
of Frankfurt social theory), a critical retrieval or invention of
liberating symbol systems, and a projection of those images of social
humanity to which we can commit ourselves (pp. 246-247) .
COMMENTS
No matter how one estimates the blessedness of the book, it
surely exhibits a rage for order. The exhibition is of peculiar benefit for those who, like myself, are victims of some disorder in
thinking and given to a piecemeal approach to the theological puzzle
and to joy at the occasional insight that allows connection between
one question and another or one field and another. And the peculiar

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order of the model he argues is a signal contribution: when he
clarifies his own position on theology and contrasts it with others
Tracy makes it nearly impossible for any of us to avoid clarification,
even if halting, of our own more muddled and perhaps more
orthodox self-understanding. The five models are not merely a
bright idea providing different ways of looking at a complex theological task. They are descriptive of the ways in which we understand ourselves. He proposes a normative model that requires us
to name what we are doing. This does not make our ordering any the
easier-I, for one, find myself operating happily if illogically within
all five, depending on mood and the exigencies of debate. But the
possibility of and demand for clarity of stand, procedure, and goal
are presented in Blessed Rage for Order with an effectiveness that
matches Lonergan's relentless call for self-appropriation in Insight.
There is as well Tracy's consistent prosecution of the principle
of the public nature of theological discourse. The speech of a
discipline is never ' mine ' or ' ours ' opposed to ' theirs.' It must
in principle be for all even if some cannot or will not use it. And
if theological discourse is public in principle and so involves without
exception the application of public criteria to issues, then one adopts
it and adheres to it so far as one can or one lapses into private, incoherent, and obscuring noises. Here Tracy brings into Catholic
theology what such American philosophers as Peirce and Dewey
found essential to inquiry a half century and more ago. Almost
without fail Tracy sticks to his principle. His arguments for the
principle seem to me conclusive even when his applications are not
entirely convincing. It is this principle that allows him to cut
through the tangle of contemporary theology and its allied disciplines and to fetch us up so constructive, coherent, and compelling
a view of the future of theology. His ability to do this is not only
a function of intelligence and extraordinarily broad reading; it is
a function as well of a personally appropriated and unified conception of theology and a devil-take-the-hindmost devotion to the logic
of ideas.
In the first place, then, I cannot but agree with Tracy on the
revisionist stance, the description of the methods necessary to
foundational theology, and the public nature of theological discourse. I do so not only because his arguments are persuasive but
because the alternatives no longer make sense to me. I do so with
no little regret and hesitation because the implications of the position for a future dogmatic theology are momentous; I do not like
the unknown, and especially the momentous unknown. I agree, too,
with Tracy's estimate of two of the three crises which beget :i
revisionist understanding of theology (the cognitive and the ethi-

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

cal) . In what follows I would like to register my disagreement
with the "insight" which Tracy thinks arises from the third crisis
(existential) and with some of his positions on other issues, and
conclude with a brief discussion of his distinction between fundamental and dogmatic theology and its implications for the future
of dogmatics.
I begin with his words on authentic secular faith:
The authentic person is committed above all else to the full affirmation of the ultimate significance of our lives in this world. Such
a fundamental commitment can be described as a faith, i. e., as
a basic orientation or attitude which determines one's cognitive
beliefs, and one's individual ethical actions. The most basic expression of such faith, moreover, is probably best described as the faith
of secularity: that fundamental attitude which affirms the ultimate
significance and final worth of our lives, our thoughts, and actions,
here and now, in nature and history. An explicit and full recognition of this faith as, in fact, the common faith shared by secularist
and modern Christian is perhaps the most important insight needed
to understand the contemporary theological situation in its full
dimension and its real possibilities (p. 8; also pp. 10, 108, 109, 119,
134, 135, 158) .

The secular articulation of this basic faith comes to Tracy from
Dewey and Santayana (both of whom would be aghast at the conclusion Tracy draws from it) via Schubert Ogden (see The Reality
of God). In Tracy's view theism can be justified as the condition
of the possibility of such faith in the worthwhileness of existence.
He obviously thinks that it provides a starting point for a transcendental argument superior to those proposed by Lonergan and
Rahner. I do not think that the argument is in fact superior. Assuming life worthwhile, feeling life worthwhile, and even hoping
that it is, are considerably different from judging it so. We differ
from animals in that we can and must (at our best) ask whether
it is or is not. I doubt that we get an unambiguous answer to that
question. At least I do not. We can, I think, get an unambiguous
answer to the question whether we actually understand and whether
existence is intelligible. The basis of Tracy's argument, this conviction of worthwhileness, needs a far more extensive phenomenological analysis before we can count on it as a datum for a
transcendental deduction.
Secondly, I am not at all sure exactly what Tracy means by the
" ultimate significance of our lives in this world." I am unable,
with a straight face at any rate, to affirm the ultimate significance

1'ltACY,.S BLESSED RAGE :FOR ORDER:

and worth of my life or any other life here and now, in nature and
history. Perhaps he means that we are here and now only once, and
so our thoughts and actions are irrevocable. In that case I have no
problem, although the point is somewhat obvious. However, he
may mean to close off the issue of personal survival implying that
our actions here and now are ultimate because we exist only in
nature and history. His consistently negative remarks about
"supernaturalism" support the latter interpretation. If this is the
case, then the stand has considerable implications for Christian
eschatology which Tracy nowhere addresses. Some clarification on
life, eternal life, "ultimate" and "final" would be helpful. It is
from such convictions about worthwhileness and ultimacy that
Tracy builds his transcendental argument and the bridge to secularism which so deeply concerns him. The obvious advantage of
Tracy's argument over the neo-Thomist formulations of Lonergan
and Rahner is its rhetorical power. I do not find it philosophically
rigorous, I suspect that it depends at bottom on the neo-Thomist
formulation, and doubt that it will have any broad impact among
philosophers and philosophical theologians in the form in which
Tracy states it. The terms " ultimate " and " final " and ' worthwhile " are notoriously ambiguous in philosophical argument, and
no added clarity is achieved in Tracy's usage.
Although Tracy is convinced that Christianity as opposed to
secularism "can provide an adequate understanding, a correct reflective inventory, or an existentially appropriate respresentation
of the fundamental faith of secularity" (p. 9), he maintains that
" a loving God is not fundamentally arrived at as a conclusion from
a phenomenological and transcendental analysis of common existence " (p. 222) . How, then, is God and his love arrived at? If
it is not a conclusion, then it must be a belief or a conviction based
on "hints, signals, rumors" (p. 134). Yet there are other hints.
Tracy himself calls attention to the ambiguity: " a dimension
which, in my own brief and hazy glimpses, discloses a reality, however named and in whatever manner experienced, which functions
as a final, now gracious, now frightening, now trustworthy, now
absurd, always uncontrollable limit-of the very meaning of existence
itself. I find that, although rather religiously unmusical myself,
I cannot deny this reality " (p. 108) . He takes some clues, ignores
others, and declares that existence is trustworthy (p. 109). He
seems firm in that conviction, which he considers the basic conviction of us all. How does he arrive at such clarity on the trustworthy
character of existence? The glimpses are hazy and the hints many
and confusing. Father Tracy is singing a two part melody: in a
high register, an Ogdenesque certainty about the reality of God;

WlLLIAM M. SHEA

in a lower, a more muted, hesitant belief that the Christians may
be right, that unless God is and loves then existence is not worthwhile after all. I prefer the second myself. It is more " adequate
to experience." In addition, the second, the belief of Christians,
does not match the secular faith that Tracy speaks of, for in the
secular faith the conviction of worthwhileness is unconditioned while
Christian belief in worthwhileness is most certainly conditioned on
and not merely explicated by the love of God. If there is no God,
no creator and redeemer, then existence is clearly untrustworthy
and, although it may be worthwhile, it can only be so in a more
restricted fashion than Tracy's language would lead us to believe.
At any rate the dialogue with secularism (e. g. Flew and Hepburn) on experience and Christian belief is not brought to a happy
conclusion by Tracy's Christian convictions. If he intends, as I
think he does, that the metaphysical argument definitively countermands the empiricist arguments about ambiguity in hints and
signals, he must do a far more extensive expose of the "worthwhileness" of our lives and the "trustworthy" character of existence. The book argues the necessity of metaphysics more
successfully than it justifies theism metaphysically. But, then,
Flew and Hepburn have already agreed that, if theism is to be
justified, a metaphysical proof must be offered.
Tracy's frequent references to worthwhileness and trustworthiness serve two purposes so far as I can see. First, they justify
theism. As so used they leave much to be desired. Secondly, they
form the datum, an insight into which provides the third, and most
important, of the three legs upholding revisionism. The third leg
is a bit shorter than the other two. I think revisionism can stand
on the cognitive and ethical crises; the third, the existential crisis,
introduces a wobble.
In his eighth chapter Father Tracy rejects " classical theism,"
specifically that of Aquinas and Calvin (p. 164 n. 9), as logically
incoherent, inadequate to our experience, and hermeneutically inadequate to scripture (pp. 147, 180). On the other hand he finds
that dipolar theism meets the criteria of meaning, meaningfulness,
and truth. The classical concept is logically incoherent because
"all reality is constituted by both external and internal relations"
while the classical God is related to creatures only externally and
nominally (p. 180). The classical concept is not existentially
meaningful because acceptance of the concept leads to a " supernatural world whose existential lure too often removes its believers from the struggle for truth and justice in this world " and
so is " repugnant to the secular spirit" (pp. 180-188). It is inadequate to a proper interpretation of scriptural texts because those

TRACY'S BLESSED RAGE FOR ORDER

677

texts tell us of a God who is intensely involved in the human
struggle and in turn is affected by that struggle (pp.
175).
First of all, the chapter is hesitant in expression-there are more
" mays," " seems," " perhaps's," and "mights " than I noticed in
any other chapter. This is all to the good. Secondly, after explicity mentioning Aquinas as a chief example of classical theism,
he goes on to state that the process thinkers have not reflected
sufficiently on Aquinas's theism (p. 180). In view of his own interpretation of Aquinas, one might suggest that Tracy hasn't either.
Thirdly, the criticism which he makes is drawn from the process
stock and evidences no independent critical work of his own on
Aquinas. Fourthly, between p. 177-180 there are some twenty-three
questions put and meant to expose the inadequacy of classical
theism (many of them well taken). They are structured rhetorically, which suggests to me that Tracy is not sure of the answers he
might get if he did a study and is actually more interested in
pushing the reader in the direction of process theism than in examining dispassionately a classical theism.
Although I am no expert in or devotee of classical theism I
think it very possible that Tracy is dealing with an abstraction
or a strawperson-as Hartshorne does. It is not wise to talk of
classical theism when what one must in fact deal with are Christian theologians. One may assert and set out to prove that a
Christian theologian such as Aquinas did not successfully integrate
his reflection on the one God with his reflection on the triune God
and on the incarnation et al., but to state that Aquinas thought
that the proclamation "God is love" is a "mere metaphor" (pp.
161, 170 n. 94) or to suggest by rhetorical use of language that a
Christian theologian such as Aquinas thought God indifferent to or
unaffected by our struggle is inaccurate and will only mislead the
reader. There is, to my knowledge, no question for the Christian
theologian whether God loves or whether he is affected by our
struggle; the question is how, and how best speak of both so that
we are quite sure we are still speaking of the transcendent Creator
of all that is. Classical Christian theism can justly be accused of
a" monopolar prejudice" (God is absolute but in no way relative)
only when the trinitarian and redemptive contexts of its discussions
are overlooked; and of conceptualizing a God unrelated to " our
common struggle" only by closing one's eyes to its incarnational
context. I hope that Father Tracy very soon fulfills his pledge to
make a study comparing Thomist and process views on the matter
(p. 198 n. 66) .
Whether dipolar theism ought to be substituted for classical
theism remains a moot question for me. I am entirely unconvinced

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

by Tracy's urgings in this direction. The concept seems, to say
the least, no more logically coherent than Lonergan's "pure act
of understanding," for example. On its existential meaningfulness
for " secular persons " I am in full agreement with Anthony Flew's
comment on dipolar theism: "Appropriate to Christian faith it
may be-if you say so. But, understandable to secular men? Count
me out!" (Journal of Religion 48: 158). On its appropriateness to
scripture, the concept becomes ·even minimally appropriate only
when the classical Christian doctrinal resolution of the language
about Jesus of Nazareth in Trinity and Incarnation is no longer
taken seriously as a factor in an interpretation of New Testament
claims. While I agree that the classical resolution is difficult and
perhaps impossible to support on revisionist criteria, I am loath
to surrender these doctrinal claims to existentialist interpretation or
Father Tracy's process prejudices.
Tracy himself has hesitations on the adequacy of the process
position, and his hesitation does him credit (pp. 175, 188-190). The
value of the chapter is that it provides an example of the application of revisionist criteria to the question of God. It is, however,
singularly unconvincing in its positive proposal for a dipolar conceptuality for God. Until Tracy makes good his promise to deal
with analogy and the dialectical character of religious and theological discourse, I suspect that I will not be satisfied and will
continue to read the proposal as a naive application to God of
categories developed in accord with the reformed subjectivist principle. The dipolar God still appears to me, as it did when I listened
to D. D. Williams and Charles Hartshorne some dozen years ago,
a very sympathetic and very large man. The chapter has some
limited success as a programmatic statement; as an argument for
process theism it is a failure.
Tracy several times mentions the need for the invention of " new
symbols " with power to disclose the Christian God to contemporary persons. He is critical of process thinkers because they have
not found a symbolic language " more resonant with the sensibilities
of contemporary humanity" (pp. 189-191). Again, he projects as
a task of practical theology the retrieval or invention of symbol
systems for liberation (pp. 247-248) and compliments neo-orthodoxy on its discovery of a " powerfully disclosive, an existentially
meaningful anthropology" (p. 214). Yet he insists that Christians
do not need an invention of symbols but a rediscovery and reappropriation of them (p. 204) and declares that the theologian's task
is not the invention of a new religion (p. 72) or the creation of
symbols (p. 236 n. 105) . I admit to confusion. Surely no contemporary Christian theologian will invent a new religion or could

TRACY'S BLESSED RAGE FOR ORDER

679

wish to invent primal religious symbols to replace the Christian
symbols. We agree that the task of the theologian is to interpret.
And we can agree with Dewey that an interpretation that does
not change life by illuminating it is a fraud and no interpretation
at all. But I am not sure whether Tracy wants theological concepts
which can serve as well as images provoking liberation or a new
and more authentic rhetoric (which is quite distinct from theory).
If it is the latter he wants, then he may be referring to the product
of an operation akin to Lonergan's eighth functional specialty, communications. If he wants a set of symbols capable of mediating
between the inherited Christian symbols and liberating praxis, I
am afraid we shall have to wait for a saint or a prophet.
A highly interesting question is Tracy's evaluation and use of
the achievements of orthodoxy, and how he places what he calls
" supernaturalism." Many of the achievements of neo-orthodoxy
are mentioned, chief among them the irretrievably dialectical character of the God-world relation and the " radical mystery" of
God (pp. 27-30). In my opinion he pays little more than lip service
to these achievements. He can hardly do otherwise, of course, given
his fundamentally Kantian theory of religious language and his
process concepts for God. Orthodoxy seems to refer to an historical
stage in the Christian theological development, now superseded
by the liberal-revisionist model. As historical it receives respectful
treatment (pp.
But in view of his remark that the success
of revisionism lies in its ability to be faithful to achievements of
the other models (p. 41 n. 65), I would expect him to point out
precisely what it is that revisionism learns from orthodoxy and
what orthodoxy does and can contribute to the contemporary
pluralistic scene. I suspect that for Tracy orthodoxy is irretrievably
non-contemporary, and contributes only a text for interpretation
and its historic devotion to systematics (p. 25) .
I suspect, too, that "supernaturalism" and "fundamentalism"
are code words for contemporary orthodoxy or a species of it. These
terms designate a perversion of historical orthodoxy; orthodoxy and
neo-orthodoxy, along with some philosophies of religion, are further
classified as "fl.deism" (p. 104). For supernaturalism and fundamentalism Tracy reserves a Menckenesque contempt: they are
positivistic, literalistic, imbued with irreligious tenets, intellectually
untenable, irretrievably false and illusory, parochial, on the verge
of collapse and unable to withstand the force of truth, and unconscionably insensitive to social justice (pp. 133-135, 239,
What seems most to arouse Tracy's theological ire and somewhat
selective outrage is the belief in " a supernatural realm of ultimate
significance" or in a God who is indifferent to the ultimate sig-

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WILLIAM M. SHEA

nificance of our actions (p. 8) , and the use of limit-language as
an ordinary language (pp. 126, 145 n. 95). Finally, supernaturalism
and fundamentalism seem to represent the religion of " established
powers " whose displeasure the revisionists must brave (p. 9l39) .
Tracy's remarks are not dialogical; they are "diatribal." He is
not offering us a description of fundamentalism or an explanation
of it; he is telling us it is wrong, and for some reason warning us
against it-as if the prospective readers of Blessed Rage for Order
are in danger of superstition! The chief theological point to be
made about fundamentalism is that it is insufficiently hermeneutically aware; the chief psychological point is that fundamentalists
are nervous about the survival of the Christian gospel and doctrine
in the hands of liberals and revisionists-no unsupportable fear and
one that Tracy's book will not in any measure quiet. Most Christians are certainly supernaturalists and quite possibly fundamentalists most of the time; certainly the most vital portion of the
contemporary Christian movement, Evangelicalism, is. Respectful
disagreement and criticism is called for; the scorn should be reserved
for after-dinner brandy. Tracy has made fundamentalism the bugbear of revisionism. I think that revisionists have little to fear
other than the usual political dangers of a clash between theoreticians and common sense folk who are suspicious of the acids
of theory. The real problem should emerge between revisionism
and secularists on the one hand (and I think that the latter will
no more be moved by revisionism than by its parent liberalism)
and, on the other hand, between revisionism and the more sophisticated philosophical theologies of the orthodox model. The significant difference between the models is to be found in the subject referent of the orthodox model and the subject referents of the
other four (among which, from the orthodox point of view, there
is little appreciable difference). Representatives of the orthodox
theological tradition will probably be Tracy's most severe, acute,
and helpful critics. We can hope that they will use no " power "
except that of the mind; they certainly form, so far as I can see, no
"establishment" more powerful than Tracy's own.
As I have already mentioned, Blessed Rage for Order makes a
contribution of the first order to a clarification of the aims, stance,
and criteria of fundamental theology. But it makes no small contribution to a discussion of dogmatics or systematics and its relation
to fundamental theology. Tracy's efforts here are initial and partial
but provocative and enlightening nonetheless. Dogmatics, in his
view, will show a greater concern with the particularity of the
Christian symbols and the dogmatic theologian will have a " more
intimate relationship" to the community of inquiry of a particular

TRACY'S BLESSED RAGE FOR ORDER

681

church tradition (pp. 15 n8; 80). The dogmatic theologian's task
is a fuller explication of the meaning of the tradition's language
and he or she will have questions beyond those put by the foundational theologian (pp. 224 n6, 224 n9, 233 n84, 234 n94, 235 nl02).
The two theologies are related, however, in some decisive ways: the
criteria and their application in each are a mode of public discourse;
and the loyalty to the secular community of inquiry, so strongly
argued by Tracy in his comments on fundamental theology, is to
characterize the dogmatic theologian as well (pp. 15 n. 8, 18 n. 35) .
" The basic criteria and basic modes of argumentation for dogmatics
itself will remain those developed in fundamental theology" (p. 81).
How it will be possible to have a confessional theology which is
so informed and is open to public discourse he admits is the chief
question for a revisionist dogmatics (pp. 87 n. 57, 250 n. 1 & 3) .
Perhaps his chapter on christological language will serve as an
example of the distinction-as he intends. It would be a mistake
to read the chapter as Tracy's Christology; it is not that. It is
a fundamental theology, a discussion of the meaning, meaningfulness, and truth of the Christian claim that Jesus is the Christ. He
claims that the basic meaning is a theological anthropology: the
words, deeds, and destiny of Jesus re-present God and human existence as fundamentally related. That such a claim is meaningful
must be established by criteria of relative adequacy. The truth
or "fact" at issue in the claim that Jesus is the Christ is, for a
fundamental as distinct from a dogmatic theology, whether or not
Jesus as the Christ re-presents to us the possibility of a transformed
life (pp. 231 n. 73; 233 n. 84). Tracy is establishing that Jesus is the
symbolic re-presentation of the God-human relationship outlined
in earlier chapters. But there are further questions for dogmatics
(the "person" of Jesus, for example) which are not addressed by
Tracy's fundamental theology (p. 231 n. 73) .
Have we an example from Tracy of precisely how a dogmatic
theology would be done under the revisionist model? No. But we
do have words which indicate his strictures on the operation of a
quotation is lengthy but deserves close
confessional theology.
attention:
... a full systematic theology could and should be developed in
relationship to that [revisionist] fundamental base. A properly systematic theology, to be sure, would need to apply and expand the
model not only in relation to those initial religious, theistic, and
christological questions which this text addresses, but also in relation to the whole range of questions which Christian theology historically has addr.essed: ecclesiology, justification and sanctifica-

WILLIAM M. SHEA

tion, the trinitarian understanding of the Christian God, the Chalcedonian understanding of christology, etc. For anyone who accepts
this model for doing theology, no one of the traditional Christian
answers to these questions-or, for that matter, the questions themselves-can be assumed. Rather all must be reinvestigated in the
light of the set of criteria articulated in the model itself. In some
cases, the symbols and doctrines may well find an appropriate contemporary reinterpretation by means of a hermeneutics of restoration. In still other cases, those symbols and doctrines may not bear
the power of meaningfulness, meaning, or truth any longer-either
to our common human experience or to the central meanings disclosed by the Christian texts and tradition. In these latter cases,
those negative conclusions exemplified by various hermeneutics of
suspicion upon Christian meanings should be honestly and candidly
stated with a methodological and critical rigor appropriate to the
seriousness of the subject matter.
The Christian theologian stands in service both to that community of inquiry exemplified but surely not exhausted by the
contemporary academy and to that community of religious and
moral discourse exemplified but surely not exhausted by his own
church tradition. If that same theologian, as herein understood,
is really to fulfill his service of critical reflection, he must start the
inquiry without an assumption either for or against the meaning,
meaningfulness, and truth of the symbol or doctrine under analysis
(pp. Q38-Q39).
Several things are clear. First, the field examined by the dogmatic
or systematic theologian remains what it has been traditionally.
Secondly, the dogmatician operates autonomously and critically
with regard to traditional beliefs: any belief is subject to a "negative conclusion," and one cannot assume the truth of any belief
under question. Thirdly, the criteria remain the same for both fundamental and dogmatic theology.
Although we must wait upon Tracy's promised Glaubenslehre
37 n. Q7, Q34 n. 94), his remarks
for any final judgment (pp. 37 n.
leave little room for what the Catholic tradition, in its orthodox
self-understanding, has meant by dogmatics. Most of his remarks
lead me to think that his dogmatics will be as much a fundamental
theology and theological anthropology as is Blessed Rage for Order,
with this difference: the range of positions and language put under
analysis will broaden and there may be some extension of criteria
of adequacy (e.g. to explicitly aesthetic criteria). There is, after
all, a logic to ideas. He argues for the independence of foundational
theology from dogmatic presuppositions, credal beliefs, and explicit

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683

ecclesial commitment, and argues that dogmatics will need reformulation on the basis of the revisionist model in foundational
theology. His dogmatics will be as antithetical to an orthodox
dogmatics as his foundational theology is to an orthodox fundamental theology. In many significant ways Tracy's theology is a
contemporary version of historical liberalism and modernism. He
himself states often that his dogmatics will be in the tradition of
Schleiermacher. Many Christians and some theologians may conclude on the basis of this book that Tracy has so firmly identified
his work with that tradition that there is little hope that his
dogmatics will be more than a gussied up liberal Glaubenslehre.
He, I think, is convinced otherwise, but this book provides no support for his conviction.
The book puts Tracy in the front rank of philosophical theologians. Its strength lies in its methodological proposals. Its chief
value is its clear stand on what theology is and how it must proceed;
in reflecting on it theologians of every stripe cannot help but understand themselves and their discipline better. Its chief weakness
is in its resolution of the philosophical issues it raises and in its
cautious, if revealing, treatment of the implications of revisionism
for dogmatics. However, we can expect that Tracy will meet the
problem of dogmatics with the learning, inventiveness, and directness displayed in his discussion of foundational theology.
WILLIAM

School of Religious Studies
Catholic University

M. SHEA

BOOK REVIEWS
SIX STUDIES OF CAUSALITY ON THE
BICENTENARY OF DAVID HUME

The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation. By J. L. MACKIE.
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1974. Pp. 335. $17.00.
Causality and Determinism. By GEORG HENRIK VON WRIGHT. New York
and London: Columbia University Press, 1974. Pp. 164.
Causing, Perceiving and Believing. An Examination of the Philosophy of
C. J. Ducasse. By PETER H. HARE and EDWARD H. MADDEN. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, No. 6. Dordrecht and Boston:
D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975. Pp.
Causal Powers. A Theory of Natural Necessity. By R. HARRE and E. H.
MADDEN. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975. Pp. 198. £4.75.
Philosophical Problems of Causation. Edited by ToM L. BEAUCHA1\1P.
Dickenson Series in Philosophy, No. 5. Encino, California: Dickenson
Publishing Co., Inc., 1974. Pp.
Causation and Conditionals. Edited by ERNEST SosA. Oxford Readings in
Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Pp.
The year 1976 marks the second centenary of the birth of our country;
it also marks the second centenary of the death of the philosopher who
has dominated American thinking on the nature of causality, namely, David
Hume. Most of the books listed above acknowledge this dominance, some
by their repeated references to Hume and by their analyses of his thought,
others by their use of the term Hume preferred for the subject of this study,
viz, causation. The frontispiece of J. L. Mackie's book is particularly illuminating in this regard, for it signals not only that Hume provides the
inspiration for the study, but it also hints at contemporary efforts being
made to resolve some of the inconsistencies and ambiguities in Hume's
thought. Mackie, a fellow at University College, Oxford, and one of the
foremost analysts dealing with causality, there cites Hume's characterization of causation as being " to us the cement of the universe " because it
is one of the few " ties of our thoughts " on which the mind can depend for
its operations. Apart from this subjective function, however, the real problem Hume has bequeathed us, says Mackie in his introduction, is answering
the ontological question of what causation is " in the objects," i. e., what

684

BOOK REVIEWS

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it is that makes causation be, not merely to us but also in fact, the cement
of the universe (pp. 1-2). His entire book is a closely reasoned attempt
to answer this ontological question, itself left unanswered by Hume, and,
in this reviewer's opinion, quite unanswerable once one has conceded Hume's
epistemological premises.
Mackie, however, makes a serious attempt at an answer, and whether
he succeeds or not his book deserves study, for it summarizes and criticizes
much contemporary writing on causality. It would be impossible to present
even the lines of his solution in this review, but perhaps a chapter by
chapter precis will serve to indicate the thrust of his argument and the
conclusions to which he comes.
Chapter 1 is quasi-historical, devoted explicitly to Hume's account of
causation; in it Mackie identifies 15 elements in Hume's presentation,
which he connects in a rather complex structure to demonstrate the element
he regards as primary, i.e., that, for Hume, "causation in the objects, so
far as we know, is only regular succession" (pp. 10-11). The import r:if
the chapter would seem to be more than that of an historical prenote; it
aims to show that at least the question of the ontological status of causality
is present in Hume's work, and that the basic elements of its answer may
also be there, although they will require revision and fuller explication in
later chapters.
In chapter 2 the author jumps immediately to the contemporary problematic, focusing on the current interest in conditional analyses of causation. Many seem to feel, he notes, that a causal sequence of events will
support a contrary-to-fact conditional whereas a non-causal sequence will
not. The examples he gives to explain this are significant:
A: A chestnut is stationary on a flat stone. I swing a hammer down so
that it strikes the chestnut directly from above. The chestnut becomes distinctly flatter than before.
B: A chestnut is stationary on a hot sheet of iron. I swing a hammer down
so that it strikes the chestnut directly from above. At the very instant
that the hammer touches it, the chestnut explodes with a loud pop and its
fragments are scattered around. (p. 29)
Assuming in both examples that the condition is expressed by the hammer
striking the chestnut, Mackie would identify sequence A as causal and
sequence B as not, on the basis that any intelligent but unprejudiced person
would grant that in A the chestnut would not have become flatter if the
hammer had not struck it, whereas in B it would have exploded even if the
hammer had not struck it (p. 30). These examples are interesting, and
Mackie frequently reverts to them throughout his book, but in his analysis
he never clearly sets out the causal factors that are involved in both A
and B; apparently all he wishes to show is that some conditions (or situa-

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tions that are logically expressed as conditions) are causes, whereas others:
are not. He goes from this to the customary discussion of necessary and
sufficient conditions, and is led to emphasize " that a ca:use is thought to
be both necessary and sufficient in the circumstances for its effect, but that
the sufficiency is less firmly required than the necessity, particularly where
the sequence is known to have occurred" (pp. 57-58). In the final analysis,
however, conditional descriptions require further backing than causal concepts suggest; there must be " further relations in the objects that encourage
us to speak and think in these ways " (p. 58).
Chapters 8 and 4 focus on the Humean and Kantian themes of regularity
to see what can be salvaged from these attempts to explain causation " in
the objects." Here Mackie prefers the empiricist option over the rationalist,
for he speaks of causes as events or facts, sees the singular as more intelligible
than the universal, detects the " fatal flaws " in Kant's analysis, and argues
that whatever assumption of uniformity may be necessary to establish
causal relations, the form required is not that of a " law of universal causation" (p. 281). In chapters 5 and 8 he investigates ordinary ways of
speaking about causes, concentrating in chapter 5 first on the legal usages
explained by H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honore, then on the more extensive
commonsense examples of C. J. Ducasse, and in chapter 8 on William
Kneale's related analyses of causal necessity. While admitting that this literature contributes some revealing insights, Mackie actually concedes very little
to it by way of the restrictions it would impose on his own results. He
criticizes Hart and Honore for taking " as distinctively characteristic of
interpersonal causation features which are in fact common to it and physical
causation," and maintains, against Kneale, that " the apparent power of
causal laws to sustain counterfactual conditionals [can] be explained without
assuming that such laws differ in form or content from accidental generalizations " (pp. 270-271) . In chapter 6, however, he does make some interesting
points about functional dependency and various attempts to use it in place
of causal concepts, and argues, correctly in the eyes of the reviewer, that
functional laws are better seen as a development and a refinement of causal
relationships rather than as a rival or complete replacement for them.
In the remaining chapters Mackie develops his own views as these emerge
from the critiques already given. Chapter 7 is devoted to the general problem of temporal antecedence and succession, under the rubric " The Direction of Causation "; chapter 9 takes up statistical laws as an alternative
for deterministic explanations; chapter 10 inquires whether causes are events
or facts and whether causal statements are extensional; and chapter 11, the
concluding chapter, addresses the special problem of final causality. What
emerges from these treatments is Mackie's conviction that there is no universal determinism in nature, and that man's concept of the direction of
causation, though discovered initially through his interventions in natural
processes, is not incurably anthropocentric, nor does it derive simply from

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the asymetry of time; rather he defines causal priority in terms of a contrast between fixity and unfixity and relates both to the dispersal of order
and to the direction of explanation. Mackie countenances teleological accounts as useful, but finds no objective processes that are teleological m
such a way as to preclude their also being instances of efficient causality;
thus final causality becomes for him a species that can be subsumed under
the genus of efficiency. His overall conclusion, :finally, he states as follows:
Causation is not something between events in a spatio-temporal sense, but
is rather the way in which they follow one another. It involves regularities,
universal or statistical, in particular what I have distinguished as pure laws
of working, but it is not exhausted by them; it includes also the spatiotemporal continuity stressed by Ducasse, the qualitative or structural
continuity, or partial persistence, which I have sorted out from Kneale's
more rationalist concepts, and the features which constitute the direction
of causation. When Hume said that the principles of association are to us
the cement of the universe, he meant that they are the links that connect the ideas of unobserved things with impressions, that give rise to the
nonrational inferences which we naturally make. Inference is not as central
in causation as Hume thought, but the causal inferences which we undoubtedly make have sometimes more authority than he allowed. When
we get things right, our causal inferences retrace or anticipate the sequences
by which the universe creates itself. (p. 296)
Whatever may be said about the details, this is surely a judicious conclusion.
It preserves the Humean flavor that pervades Mackie's treatment, it proposes a cautious answer to the ontological question he poses for us in his
introduction, and at the same time it definitely intimates that we will have
to go beyond Hume, if ever so little, when we set out to discover what is,
in fact and not.....,.,
merely to us, the cement of the universe .

* * *
G. H. von Wright's Causality and Determinism strikes a quite different
note, although its message, on close analysis, is not too different from that
contained in Mackie's much longer work. Von Wright's presentation was
originally given as four Woodbridge lectures at Columbia University in
New York in October and November of 1972, and these are here reproduced
in a revised and slightly expanded form. Unlike Mackie's analysis, von
Wright's is almost completely systematic, making few bows in the directions of history or of contemporary commentary; yet, to one acquainted
with the recent literature utilized by Mackie, it will be obvious that von
Wright has also taken such matter into account. His predilection is not so
much for Hume as it is for logical analysis, for his method "consists largely
in the application of tools of formal logic to an analysis of concepts of
causation and determinism" (p. 2). But von Wright is far from thinking

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that this is the only method available to the philosopher; his is but one
among many, and he would not even claim that it is the best method for
investigating the topics of interest to him. His own background is in logic,
however, and this determines the areas in which he can make a contributtion. And he is eminently logical in carrying out his project, for he prefaces
his lectures with a fine summary, in almost syllogistic form, giving the bare
bones of his argument.
At the outset von Wright intended to deal with the problems of causality
and determinism as these present themselves both in the sphere of natural
events and in that of human action. This proved too broad a task, however,
so he had to drop his projected study of human action; the result is a
treatment of causality as a category within the philosophy of nature, and
there alone. In this context the four lectures develop the following points.
Lecture 1 poses the question as to what concepts can serve as logical primitives for analyzing the notions of cause and effect; it enumerates three
broad possibilities, viz, the concept of function, relationships based on
probabilistic and stochastic ideas, and various concepts of condition; and
it decides in favor of the last. Both the extensionalist view and the intentionalist view of conditions are then examined and shown to have their
inadequacies. Various ontological categories are thereupon introduced, e. g.,
state, process, event, possible world, and these are used to define determinism and to set a variety of possible causal and temporal restrictions on
world development.
Lecture 9l explores in general the relationship between causation and
action. It endorses the counterfactual conditional as establishing the ontic
difference between an accidental regularity and a nomfo or lawlike connection, and proposes that causal counterfactuals can only be verified by
interfering with the future, which necessarily involves the concept of action.
Actions imply agents, and the actions themselves can be of various kinds:
productive, destructive, preventive, sustaining. Actions result in states of
affairs, which in turn are related to events, and causal relations subsist between events in nature, not between agents and events (von Wright distinguishes here between immanent action and transient action, and restricts
his analysis to the latter). He uses this device to separate agency from
causation and to argue that causation is existentially independent of agency.
In this setting he compares his position to Hume's as alternative answers
to the question of how we come to associate the idea of necessity with observed regular sequences. He writes:
Hume's answer to his question [given in psychological terms] was ingenious, and criticism of it has not always been fair. Yet I think it will
not do as a solution to the problem. My proposed way out is different. The
idea of necessity, which we associate with some regularities, arises from
observations we make when we interfere and 11bstain from interfering with

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689

nature. The fact that the observations have this effect on us reflects conceptual peculiarities of the notion of acting (interfering with nature) . The
idea of action is an idea of how to make a difference to the world, and
from this idea of a potential difference is born the idea of necessary connection. If we were not familiar with action and ability to act, we should
not have the further notion, in a sense opposed to it, of " iron laws of nature." For we should then have no means of distinguishing between accidental and lawlike uniformities.
One could say that, both on Hume's view and on the view taken here,
causal necessity is not found "in nature." In nature there are only regular
sequences. But it would also be wrong to say that causal necessity exists
only " in our minds," that it is something " subjective " and not " objective." Action requires an agent, an acting subject. To this extent the concept of an action, and also that of causal necessity, is "subjective." But
that there are agents and actions and lawlike connections is not in any
reasonable sense of the term to be labeled " subjective." It is, on the contrary, something which in its turn has an "objective" foundation in facts
of nature, as I shall next try to show. (pp. 53-54)
The resulting effort is focused mainly on an analysis of manipulative or
experimentalist causation, and is tied to the fact that we acknowledge as
causal (nomic) only such regularities that can be related to the hard core
of laws over which we have experimental control in our laboratories, while
granting that many laws of nature have the character of conceptual principles, true by convention, and are not experimentally testable nomic connections.
Lectures 3 and 4 work out in fuller detail some interesting consequences
of the positions already adopted. Lecture 3 explains the asymetry involved in the causal relation, analogous to Mackie's direction of causation,
and likewise finds the asymetry to be more than temporal. Lecture 4 is
devoted to the idea of universal determinism, to how one can interpret
statements such as "Nothing happens without a cause," and concludes
that the truth of these assertions must remain an open question, since the
existence of determinism can be settled only for fragments of the world.
Even this brief sketch of von Wright's important work should serve to
show that, respectful though it is of Hume, it has moved considerably beyond the epistemological restraints that Humeans consistently invoke in
their discussions of philosophical issues. Von Wright's tools are those of
formal logic, but this does not restrict his discourse to logical necessities alone;
he explicitly introduces ontological categories, and is not afraid to speak of
actions and agents, even of powers and abilities to act (see pp. 51-54).
Like Mackie, moreover, he wants to tell us what causality is " in the objects," but he is far from being bashful in his claims, when, as in the
quotation given above, he wishes to make clear that causality is the cement
of the universe in fact as well as to us.

* * •

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Of all the analytical philosophers who have recently graced the American
scene, Curt J. Ducasse was the most original in subjecting Hume's analysis
of causation to critical examination and finding it wanting. To him, there·
fore, must go the credit for initiating the anti-Humean turn within an
establishment that had been hitherto deeply committed to all aspects of an
empiricist program. Such being the case, it is fitting that Peter Hare and
Edward Madden should give us their critical study of Ducasse's philosophy
under the title, Causing, Perceiving and Believing. Their book, to be sure,
considers much more than the problem of causality, for it ranges widely
over such crucial philosophical issues as the nature of perception, the mindbody problem, aesthetics, the analysis of beliefs, parapsychology, and metaphilosophy. But the chapter entitled "Causality and Necessity" is particularly relevant to our theme, and for this reason alone merits careful
review.
Ducasse wrote at an earlier period than the two authors we have already
examined, and his contributions influenced them both, Mackie explicitly,
von Wright implicitly. Spread out over a period of forty years, however,
these contributions were somewhat diffusely presented, and thus Hare and
Madden render a service when they summarize and codify, as it were,
Ducasse's doctrine. For them his teaching on causality can be recapitulated
under six points, as follows. (I) Only an event, and not an object, thing,
or substance, can be a cause or an effect. An event is a happening, a change
in a state of affairs, but the term may also be applied to an " unchange,"
the continued existence of a state of affairs. Moreover, a causal relation between events involves three terms, which for Ducasse constitute a strict
experiment: a state of affairs, S, a change C that occurs in S at time ti,
and another change E that occurs spontaneously and immediately following
C in S at t 2 • Since causality is itself a triadic relation between S, C, and E,
any attempt to reduce causes to conditions, itself a dyadic analysis, is
necessarily mistaken. (fl) If the total change C at t 1 is simple, the cause
can be directly perceived; if complex, experimentation will be required to
discover whether the various components are sufficient or more than
sufficient to produce E, and in such cases the concept of cause itself becomes "generalized" and causes are not directly perceived. (3) Relations
are not causal simply because they are regular; they are regular because
they are causal. (4) To ask how one given event caused another can only
mean to inquire whether there were any intermediary causal steps; if the
events themselves are proximate or immediate, the question is absurd. (5)
The causal relation is neutral about whether cause and effect are physical
or mental: all possible combinations can occur. (6) One might be mistaken in believing that C at ti was the only change in S prior to E at t 2 ,
but one cannot be mistaken about this: if C was the only change prior to
E, then it was the cause of E, for this is precisely what is meant by saying
that anything is the cause of anything else. In general, however, causal

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691

assertions are no more precarious than any universal negative proposition
established through observation.
To these items, Hare and Madden add a few observations about Ducasse 's
analysis of necessity as it applies to causality, while admitting that this was
not as clear and unambiguous as it might have been. For one, necessity
for him is not limited in its meaning to logical necessity: the latter is
found only between logical entities, whereas causal necessity holds only
between events. Ducasse preferred to speak of this connection between events
as etiological necessity, and he instantiated it by such simple examples as
the impact of a hammer necessitating the breaking of a vase and the axeblow of the executioner necessitating the death of the decapitated victim.
Like William James and A. N. Whitehead, therefore, Ducasse argued that
causal necessity is undefinable but denotatively meaningful from the direct
experience we have of it in a variety of contexts. Just what he meant by
this type of necessity, however, he never made completely clear; Hare and
Madden interpret his examples to suggest that he himself understood
etiological necessity as denoting some perceivable force or power which
is present in the cause, thus making the effect occur, although he never
.
explicitly made this statement (p.
While generally sympathetic to Ducasse's treatments of causality and
necessity, the authors are critical of some aspects of his teaching, and
these, as it turns out, are directly related to the subject of our review.
They are dissatisfied, in the first place, with his definition of an event as
a change or unchange in a state of affairs; such a definition is not very
discriminating, and indeed can be construed as including everything. Again,
there seems to be no good reason for insisting that a cause is always an
event. Yet again, Ducasse falls victim to the same error as does Hume,
though they do so in different ways: both confuse the reasons we have for
saying that two objects or events are causally related with the meaning
of the term cause. A related confusion in Ducasse arises from his failure
to distinguish between experiencing the cause of E and experiencing something as the cause of E. And finally, Ducasse was limited in his attempts
to explain etiological necessity by his preconceived notion that causes had
to be events; this precluded his use of power concepts to explicate that
necessity, and it led him to make rather extravagant claims about the way
in which such necessity can be directly perceived. Ducasse's failings, therefore, do not arise so much from his rejection of Humean doctrines as they
do from the arguments he used to rebut them. Himself subscribing io
Hume's event ontology, at ground he lacked the resources with which to
support the conclusions to which he had instinctively come, and thus ultimately to explain how causality can really exist " in the objects."

* * *

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Edward Madden has consistently been a careful student of both Ducasse
and Hume, and so it is not surprising that in recent years he has been
increasingly concerned with the problem of causality. What is somewhat
unexpected is that he should have teamed up with a British philosopher
of science, Rom Harre, and produced a refreshing new book on this subject, the fourth on our list, namely, Causal Powers. As its title suggests,
this work focuses on the weakest part of Ducasse's teaching and uses this
to provide an answer to the question Mackie finds already in Hume, viz,
what is the ontological status of causality? Unlike Mackie's treatment,
however, this is not sympathetic to Hume, not even by way of amenities;
rather it is a frontal attack on the Scottish philosopher, who is identified
as the villain behind the plot at the very outset.
The plot, for so the authors describe it, consists in setting up the fundamental assumptions of the Humeans (i.e., the regularity theorists), and
then showing, step by step, why these must be wrong because they are in
conflict with both science and common sense. The Humean assumptions
identified are two: (1) the philosophical analysis of any non-empirical concept must be a formal explication, and any residual features of the concept must be capable of analysis in terms of its psychological origins; and
(2) the world as experienced can be conceived equally well as a system of
things or as a flux of events, and the latter view contains all that is present
in the former without its allegedly unwarranted stipulation of continuity
(pp. 2-3). Associated with the second assumption is another feature of
the Humean point of view, viz, the radical independence of successive events
and of co-existing properties, so that any event can follow any other, and
no matter what properties a body has, it can, for all one knows, at any
time take on simultaneously any other property whatever. All of these
assumptions have to be shown to be unwarranted, and Harre and Madden
propose to do this by first attacking Humean methodology and epistemology
and then by showing that a flux of events is no adequate substitute for a
world of things. On the contrary,
we shall show that it is possible to conceive of a world of things whose
interactions produce the flux of events. The system of things, of ultimate
and derived individuals, is the permanent structure of the universe. Since
we try to preserve the structural integrity of the universe, we are in no
need of a cement to stick it together. (p. 4)
As the veiled reference in the last sentence indicates, Mackie's attempt
to salvage Hume is known to the authors and is one of the targets of their
attack.
The central concept developed by Harre and Madden to achieve their
goal is that of a "powerful particular," i.e., that of a material thing that
is endowed with powers resident in its nature and so is capable of producing

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693

or generating something, of being a causal agent. To unpack everything
contained in this notion they must first distinguish conceptual from natural
necessity (ch. 1), present anew the content of Humean "regularity theory"
rebut its central features (ch. 3), show how inductive inference can
lead to a knowledge of natural necessity (ch. 4) , explain causal powers
(ch. 5) and how these are related to natures (ch. 6), clarify the notion of
natural necessity (ch. 7), and finally answer whatever Humean objections
can be found against the overall thesis (ch. 8). The authors append a final
essay (ch. 9) wherein they explain how the physicists' concept of" field of
potential" can be used, in their view, to explicate the nature of the ultimate
entities of which the world is constituted. This very interesting proposal
must await detailed examination elsewhere. For purposes of this review
it will suffice to indicate the conclusions to which the authors come and
how these are related to some of the materials already sketched.
Most of the analytical work on causality centers around examples and
counter-examples (Mackie's A and B, cited above, are good instances
of this), and many of the examples used originated with Ducasse; this being
so, it would seem desirable to show how Harre and Madden resolve some
of Ducasse's difficulties by their recourse to causal powers and natures. Fortunately for our purposes, Madden has already done this in his examination
of Ducasse's philosophy, and thus we can cite him directly on this particular
point of interest:
Ducasse's examples of the striking of a match on a rough surface causing
it to burst into flame and the gasoline exploding in the cylinders causing
the car to move [suggest an] interpretation of the concepts power and nonlogical necessity ... which has been increasingly advocated in recent literature. Scratching the match on a rough surface is what made the phosphorus
sulfide tip burst into flame at that moment and thus exhibit the power of
igniting it always had in virtue of its nature. The chemical structure of
phosphorus sulfide explains why it has the power to ignite under certain
conditions, and chemical theory, in turn, can explain the structure of
phosphorus sulfide. Turning on the ignition, etc., is what made the gasoline
exhibit at that moment the power of exploding it always had by virtue
of its nature. The chemical structure of gasoline explains why it has the
power to explode and chemical theory, again, can explain why it has that
structure, though it is not necessary that a particular have its nature explained before that nature is capable of explaining the powers and capacities
of that particular. The weight of the air and the pressure of the atmosphere
explain why water goes up a pump when air is evacuated from the cylinder
even though the weight of the air is not explained, in turn, though it could
be, by gravitational attraction. Again, the weight of the bird, the weight
of the stone, and the pressure of the deep water-all characteristics of the
nature of some particular-explain why the bird's alighting makes the
branch bend, the stone break the glass, and the pressure crush the submarine--where ' bending,' ' breaking,' and ' crushing,' are causal verbs ex-

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pressing powers to make certain events occur under specific releasing
occasions of alighting, falling, and submerging. (pp. 25-26 of Causing,
Perceiving and Believing)
As can be seen from this citation-the full explication of which, of course,
entails the whole of Causal Powers-the introduction of more traditional
concepts such as powers and natures provides Harre and Madden with a
much broader ontology than that of events alone to explain causal processes
in all their complexity. Cause, for them, need not be restricted to events:
a cause may be an event, a state of affairs, or a material substance. A
cause need not be identified with a condition or an occasion, although sometimes it may prove convenient to coalesce the usage of these terms. Sometimes an event alone may be singled out as a cause, without signaling its
relation to a power or a nature; at other times the event may be unintelligible as a cause unless the agent is included along with it. And so on.
Thomists will readily see how this richer terminology rejoins the tradition
in which they have been trained, and thus offers promise for a more fruitful
development not only of the concept of causality, but also of related concepts, such as that of induction, which have become so central in presentday philosophy of science.

*

*

*

A fairly extensive literature has grown up around the problems sketched
in this review, much of it located in journals and not readily accessible to
the non-specialist. The last two titles on our list are anthologies that make
selections of this material available for students and others interested in
the general problematic.
Tom Beauchamp's Philosophical Problems of Causation is the broader
of the two, and gives a rather comprehensive survey of the various positions.
The editor divides his selections into six parts, and prefaces each with ,.
knowledgeable introduction that explains the rationale of his treatment and
the interrelatedness of the articles presented. Part I is devoted to the historical background in Hume and Kant, and contains valuable articles by
Ducasse and L. W. Beck, among others, examining critically the classical
texts in which Hume and Kant develop their doctrines. Part II is entitled
"Modern Necessity Theories," and is the weakest section in the anthology;
it is devoted almost entirely to a superficial interchange between Karl
Popper and William Kneale, and touches few of the gut issues. Part
III, on the other hand, gives full space to modern regularity theories,
featuring articles by Mackie and by A. J. Ayer and Ernest Nagel-something of an overkill. Part IV has the caption " The Manipulability
Theory," meaning by this any theory in which causes are seen as controlling means to desired ends; included are articles by R. J. Collingwood
and Douglas Gasking, as well as a selection from von Wright in view of
his developing conceptual connections between causality and action. Part

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695

V is designated as "The Singularist Theory,'' understanding this to refer
to any theory in which singular instances are recognized as causal, rather
than posing the problem, as Hume did, at the universal level. Excerpts
from Ducasse, Madden, and Donald Davidson are presented here. Finally,
Part VI is devoted to causal explanation and causal context; this features
articles wherein "the selection of a cause is in some crucial way relative
to a particular context of enquiry and to a set of assumed explanatory
principles" (p. flOI); the authors included here are Hart and Honore, N. R.
Hanson, Samuel Gorovitz, and others.
Ernest Sosa's Causation and Conditionals has, from its title, a more restricted focus, but actually it succeeds in covering much the same ground
as Beauchamp's anthology. Apparently the selections and the rationale for
their inclusion grew out of a seminar given by the editor at Brown University, where the memory of Ducasse is still fresh. In his introduction (pp.
1-14) Sosa sets out various ways of understanding how conditions are related to causes in terms of sufficiency and necessity, and then proceeds to
unravel all the complications that the various formulations entail. Mackie's
essay on "Causes and Conditions" leads off the anthology, but thereafter
the path of the regularity theory is mostly uphill. Adequate representation
is given to the views of Ducasse, von Wright, and Davidson, and in addition
some excellent articles are included by Richard Taylor, Michael Scriven,
Jaegwon Kim, G. E. M. Anscombe, W. S. Sellars, R. M. Chisholm, Nicholas
Rescher, Robert Stalnaker, and David Lewis. The methods of analysis
and the example-counterexample technique persists throughout these essays, but one gathers the impression that fundamental issues are not being
ignored, and that some solid philosophy is emerging as a result.
Neither anthology, unfortunately, so much as mentions the work of
Rom Harre, whose The Principles of Scientific Thinking was published
in 1970 and contained the essential elements reported above. The failure
of both editors to take this into account perhaps shows the degree to
which different contemporary schools of philosophy continue to be well
insulated from each other. This is somewhat tragic, all the more because
Harre presents himself as delivering a sledgehammer blow to the tottering
Humean edifice, and his assertions deserve to be examined critically by
Humeans and non-Humeans alike.

*

*

*

Since all of the above works were published after the reviewer had
written his two-volume Causality and Scientific Explanation (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press,
, perhaps a few concluding
words of comment relative to that work may not be out of place.
The general lines of argument advanced by Mackie and von Wright,
and the broad spread of approaches to the problem of causality represented
by the selections contained in the two anthologies, were known to the re-

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viewer but they were not reported or analyzed in any detail in his work.
Thus these four books supplement his treatment and should be consulted
by those interested in specific analytical and formal treatments of causality
made within a general Humean framework. Nothing in these four books,
however, would lead him to alter his main thesis relating to the role of
causality in scientific explanation. His earlier intuition, reinforced now
by a study of these more detailed presentations, was that analytical and
formal discussions of causality are quite divorced from actual scientific
practice. Some formal analyses, to be sure, are helpful when treating the
mathematical details of relativity and quantum theories, but for the
most part such analyses are peripheral for understanding the classical contributions to learning that made modern science possible and that account
for its development since the seventeenth century. On the other hand,
the two books of which Madden is co-author fit in extremely well with
the project in which the reviewer has been engaged, namely, ascertaining
how causal explanation figures in both the history and the philosophy
of science. The work of Ducasse, Hare, Harre, and Madden was already
known to him in some detail, but he welcomes these fuller expositions of
their views, for they also supplement, and indeed strengthen, his basic
thesis. (Harre and Madden register their accord with that thesis in
Causal Powers, p. 117.)
One point, however, should be noted, especially by those interested in
the thought of Thomas Aquinas and its relevance to the present day. Not
one of the six books listed above takes seriously any literature written
before the twentieth century. Not one of the books, moreover, cites any
thinker who antedated David Hume, as though the discussions of causality
that have taken place over the past two hundred years represent the only
important work that has ever been done on this subject. The reviewer's
conviction, as should be clear from the scope of the treatment in his twovolume work, is that very important discussions of causality have been
going on for over two millenia, and that one can neglect the contributions
of the Greeks, the medievals, and Renaissance thinkers only at his own
peril. What is most refreshing to him is to see these very recent works
resurrecting such time-honored concepts as cause, condition, occasion, agent,
action, power, nature, and even substance. Apparently philosophers, in
spite of their schools and their training, are led by their subject matter
itself to relive the past, even when they appear to be oblivious of the
fact that they are so doing.
WILLIAM

The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, N. J.

A. WALLACE, O.P.

BOOKS RECEIVED
Aguilar/Buenos Aires: S. Tomas de Aquino, Sobre la eternidad del mundo,
Suma contra los gentes, Suma teol6gica (Selecci6n). Introduction
and Notes by A. J. Cappelletti. Pp. 132, no price given.
Australian National University Press: From Belief to Understanding:
A Study of Anselm's Proslogion by Richard Campbell. Pp. 227,
$6.95.
Barnes and Noble: The Presumption of Atheism and Other Essays by
Antony Flew. Pp. 188, $20.00.
Geoffrey Chapman: Historical Transcendence and the Reality of God by
Ray S. Anderson. Pp. 828, £5.50.
Editions du Seuil: l:tre, monde, imaginaire by Stanislas Breton. Pp. 189,
no price given.
Gill and MacMillan/Dublin: Christ and Life by Wilfred Harrington, 0. P.
Pp. 160, £3.25.
Indiana University Press: The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin
Heidegger with Notes and Commentary by James G. Hart and John
C. Maraldo. Pp. 212, $10.95.
Marquette University Press: Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of
Metaphysics of Religion by Charles Hartshorne. Pp. 68, $4.00.
New York University Press: Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. R. J_,.
Weiss and C. E. Butterworth. Pp. 182, $14.00.
Orbis Books: The Faces of God: Reflections on Church and Society by
Adrian Hastings. Pp. 156, $4.95 paper; Christians, Politics and Violent Revolution by J. G. Davies. Pp. 211, $4.95 paper; Freedom
Made Flesh by Ignacio Ellacuria. Pp. 246, $8.95.
Reidel Publishing Co.: The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Philosophy, Science
and Theology in the Middle Ages, ed. with Introduction by J. E.
Murdoch and E. D. Sylla. Pp. 556, $49.00 hardbound, $28.00 paper.
Sheed and Ward/London: A Companion to the Summa by Walter Farrell,
0. P. (reissue). Pp. 1918, £20.00.
The Seabury Press: Christians and Jews, Concilium Vol. 98, ed. by Hans
Kung and Walter Kasper. Pp. 98, $4.95 paper; The Future of the
Religious Life, Concilium Vol. 97, ed. by Peter Huizing and William
Bassett. Pp. 95, $4.95 paper.
Talbot Press: Looking at Lonergan's Method, ed. by Patrick J. Corcoran,
S.M. Pp. 198, £13.00
Universita Gregoriana Editrice: Ministerial Consciousness: A BiblicalSpiritual Study by Louis J. Cameli. Pp. 223, L7,000.

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