THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS:

THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH

Publishers:
VoL. 41

The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C.

JANUARY, 1977

No. 1

A CHRISTIAN REFLECTION ON MARTIN
HEIDEGGER*

A

THE ENCOMIUM

S ONE who pondered Martin Heidegger's writings, who
had the great privilege of studying under him in Freiburg, who was considerably influenced by his type of
thinking, and who has actually written, lectured, and given
courses on him, I am honored to offer this testimonial, written
on the occasion of his 85th birthday, to the man and his thought.
Germany has meant a great deal indeed to the world in every
aspect of civilized existence-scientific, scholarly, educational,
technical, industrial, artistic, musical, religious-including even
Orientalism, perhaps Germany's greatest single achievement
*EDITORIAL NoTEs: Martin Heidegger died at Freibnrg im Breisgau (Germany)
on May
1976 at the age of 86. I was privileged to know him personally and
to attend his funeral. He was buried in Messkirch, his native town (not far from
Beuron), near his parents. His nephew Father Heidegger, a priest of the archdiocese of Freiburg, took care of the funeral rites as the late philosopher had
wished. A member of the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of

1

CHARLES H. MALIK

has been in the realm 0£ fundamental thought, otherwise called
philosophy. A cultured German may or may not have any
particular avocation, but it is impossible £or him not to be
in love with ideas, not to be philosophical. It would appear
that, when it comes to the deepest and most creative thought,
one is either German and therefore Greek in his thinking, or
one is outside the pale 0£ this particular fraternity 0£ the spirit,
with all that it has concretely meant in history. I say" German
and the1'efore Greek," because this original Greek flame has
passed on to the Germans more than to any other people, and
they have abundantly honored it. In all universities 0£ the
world more philosophy is taught today that stems originally
from the Greeks or from the Germans than from any other
people. It is therefore fitting that we meet to honor, while he
is living, a man many consider, and I certainly believe to be,
the greatest German philosopher 0£ the twentieth century, and
Freiburg, Monsignor Bernhard Welte, professor of Christian philosophy of religion,
gave the eulogy in which he drew special attention to the never ending search for
truth in Heidegger's life.
JOHANNES

QUASTEN

Catholic University of America
Honorary Professor: University
of Freiburg
Charles Malik delivered this critique of Heidegger's thought over a year before his
death in an opening address to a symposium held at the Goethe Institute in
Beirut, Lebanon, on the occasion of Heidegger's S5th birthday. That address,
subsequently modified and amplified, is here printed in its entirety. The flowing
style of Malik's rhetoric contrasts sharply with Heidegger's dense, hyphenated
prose, to which our readers are perhaps more accustomed. We believe that
Malik's critique will be of Bpecial inteI'est to them, however, first as a testimonial
to Heidegger, and secondly, as offering the reflections of a devout Christian on
the alternative possibilities, so much discussed by scholars in our times, either
of Heideggerizing theology ur of theologizing Heidegger. Dr. Malik, Distinguished
Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut and former President of the General Assembly and of the Security Council of the United Nations,
is eminently prepared to give a critique of this type. He did his doctorate in
philosophy at Harvard under ·whitehead before studying intensively under Heidegger at Freiburg, and so understands well the intricacies of both process and
existentialist thought, as well as what each has to offer the development of Christian theology.

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

3

one of the greatest thinkers in all German history. Such statements may appear to lack responsible reserve; often they sound
romantic and sentimental; but all sentimental romanticism
about the present one disappears once you subject yourself to
a real Heideggerian treatment.
Secondly, I want to seize this happy opportunity to express
my humble gratitude to Martin Heidegger himself, my honored teacher, for all that he meant to me personally in my life.
In his memorial address at the celebration in 1955 of the
175th birthday of the composer Conradin Kreutzer, Heidegger said that "the master's presence in the work is the only
true presence," and that "the greater the master, the more
completely his person vanishes behind his work." You will certainly find Heidegger in every sentence and every word he has
written or uttered: you can as it were infer him back from his
written or spoken words, because his spirit, his fundamental
attitude, what is goading him, his boundless wonder at Being,
he himself, marvelously animates and shines through all his
articulations. His own doctrine of discourse is that it is only the
articulation of an already existentially articulated Dasein. Of
course his writings are difficult, very difficult. Some have held
them the most difficult of all German philosophy, and that is
saying something indeed if you know how difficult German
philosophers are, for instance, Kant and Hegel. But after a
while, if only you are patient with him and enter into his
thinking with the spirit of love and expectancy, you will overcome this initially forbidding feature of his philosophy; in fact
in time you will love it, seeing in it a sign-an unavoidable
one-of the immensely difficult problems with which he is
wrestling. What is more, you will find it a model of simplicity
and clarity, because he is talking only about that "in which
we live and move and have our being," which, because it is so
close to us, we have been missing all the time. When I reach
this stage of understanding of Heidegger I can read him faster
than any newspaper. You do not prescribe ahead of time, as
for instance did Descartes, conditions on Being that it should

4

CHARLES H. MALIK

turn out to be simple, neat, fluent, clear, familiar, distinct,
uncomplicated, undemanding, before it reveal its secrets to
you; you may then be distorting the character it will reveal.
You are grateful for whatever mysteries it may deign to disclose
to you from its womb, regardless of any onerous demands it
may rightly make upon your understanding. In Sein und Zeit
Heidegger justifies his plethora of new terms and new constructions on the ground that " not even the grammar " needed for
his task had been created before. Heidegger therefore is his
works in the triple sense that he ventured forth on an exceedingly rough terrain to pioneer and explore, that he had to devise
entirely novel modes of exploration and novel forms in which
to couch his findings, and that the discoveries, or rediscoveries,
he was thus granted are immensely important and valuable in
themselves as well as for the confused, ungrounded and " lost "
thought characteristic of this age. And on all three counts I
am deeply grateful for what I learned from him.
But a man really is never quite his works; this is especially
true of creative thinkers. Their works, no matter how much
they consume themselves in them, are at best a distant reflection-and a very distant one at that-of their personal crises
and sufferings, not to say a "changing of the subject from,"
or a covering up of, or a fleeing away from, these crises and
sufferings. For Being, especially personal existence, simply is,
and can never be expressed in works of any kind. The crises
could be in terms of life and destiny and being, or they could
be in terms of concepts and thought alone; and even the latter
are always ultimately reducible to the former. In the case of
Heidegger they could never be of the latter type only. The
rarefaction of life and death and destiny and being into concepts is the prerogative of the philosophers; that is why the
saints and Nietzsche saw through them totally; they read back,
sometimes rather rudely, their life and death and destiny and
being from their rarefied concepts. When Nietzsche says there
was no philosopher-psychologist before him who penetrated to
the innermost depths of the philosophers and caught them red-

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

5

handed in the very act of covering up and escaping from themselves, he was quite right. But the saints were philosopherpsychologists too, who caught the philosophers red-handed exactly as Nietzsche did; yet with this difference, that whereas
Nietzsche judged them in terms of a criterion-a worthy redblooded criterion-he had in his own mind, the saints came out
of themselves and quite simply allowed Jesus Christ to judge
them himself. Because they came out of themselves and allowed
Christ to do the judging, it would seem that the saints are more
capable of judging Nietzsche, the judge, himself than he was
of judging them, eternally wrapped up in himself as he was to
the very end. So the saints and Nietzsche would tell you that
no man is really quite his works, least of all perhaps the philosophers, whose powers of covering up are simply fantastic.
Thus a glimpse of the existing man Heidegger can better
be acquired from his seminars and lectures than from his
writings. Although perhaps better than his writings, this access to the man is still woefully inadequate; we need prolonged
intimate acquaintance, we need friendship, with all its informality and playfulness and fun, before we can know-before
we can discover-one another. I was not privileged with such
closeness to be able to say that I know the personal being of the
man or to verify my reading back of this being from his writings,
or even from his seminars and lectures. But my experience in
his seminars and at his lectures was singularly rewarding. The
seminars dealt, one with Leibniz's Monadology and one with
Schelling's philosophy of freedom; and one set of lectures treated
Kant's Critique of Judgment and another tried to answer the
question: _Was ist ein Ding, What is a Thing? Limited and
inadequate as these two modes of nearness to the man were,
I was nevertheless privileged to behold in them something that
I have never forgotten and will never forget. In the lectures
there was absolute preparedness; nothing was left to chance
or to improvisation. Always at the beginning of each lecture
we were reminded of the gist of the argument up to that point,
so as to establish the connectedness of the thought of the lee-

6

CHARLES H. MALIK

turer; and the body of what was delivered was articulated in
such a novel and striking manner, and the voice (and this
stands out most in my memory) had .such a tone and ring about
it, that I felt I was in the presence of the highest integrity and
seriousness. In the midst of the lecture certain statements
would often fall from Heidegger's lips which I took to mean
something very personal to me. Not that he was thinking in
the slightest of me or of anybody in particular, or even was
aware of my existence in the lecture hall, but the statements
themselves were of such nature that I felt they applied to me
directly, and always, alas, unfavorably.
I recall distinctly one such incident. One morning I happened
to read the account in the Gospel in which Christ tells the
Syro-Phoenician woman, in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, who
was desperately appealing to him for help for her daughter who
had an unclean spirit, that he was not to squander away his
powers on strangers, but "let the children first be filled: for
it is not meet to take the children's bread, and cast it unto the
dogs." The woman, wholly overcome by the tragedy in her
family, would not take no £or an answer; so she exclaimed:
"Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's
crumbs." Whereupon this quality of faith so amazed Jesus that
he granted her forthwith the crumb she was asking for, the
cure of her daughter. Wholly in the mood 0£ this story I then
went and entered the hall in which Heidegger was to lecture.
In the midst of the lecture one sentence, which I do not now
remember at all, suddenly hit me. I found myself exactly in
the position of the Syro-Phoenician woman. Although Heidegger was talking solid existential stuff, he was talking in general.
Yet I interpreted the message to mean: Who am I to understand what is being expounded, indeed to be worthy of understanding it? Who am I to have claim for the wonderful spiritual
fare that was being dealt us, with such amazing lavishness and
profundity? I picked up a crumb here and a crumb there.
Crumbs are like seeds which take a lifetime to germinate and
bloom. I thank the seed and the sower, and I thank all who

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

7

had before helped in preparing my soil for the reception of
the seed, as well as all who later watered it in my life. But
above all I thank him who was behind me, behind the sower
and seed, and behind the waterers, and who gave the increase.
I took a sort of voluptuous pleasure in this feeling, because
there is nothing I hate more than fraud and falsehood and sham,
and it is this that I loved most in Heidegger's philosophy of
Eigentlichkeit and Uneigentlichkeit. Therefore to have whatever fraud there may have been in me uncovered gave me a
triple satisfaction: firstly, because it was uncovered; secondly,
because the uncovering was effected by Heidegger; and thirdly,
because it was effected philosophically, that is, at a distance,
without knowing me. The fact that I interpreted these statements as convicting me personally, while knowing that Heidegger knew nothing about me and could not possibly have been
thinking of me as he made them, I kept a close secret to myself; and such guarded secrets whereby one's possible shams
are exposed to him without anybody knowing it always produce a genuine catharsis in the human soul. At the end of the
lecture Heidegger would gather up his papers and quietly leave
the room, invariably to the spontaneous applause of the audience; he had said his word and would not loiter for involvement
in any public discussion, for any silly questioning after he had
squeezed dry his soul bordered on sacrilege. This I admired
immensely, and ever since I have always coveted leaving the
room in which I lecture or speak by the back door, literally
without seeing or talking to anybody, including those closest
to me, for three hours. But alas this fervent prayer of mine
has never been granted, to my infinite sorrow. And even the
suffering of this ungratified wish, unmurmuringly suffered, purifies.
The seminars were a much more intimate affair. There were
37 of us in them from all over the world. We were all handpicked by Heidegger himself. I was coming at the time from
my discipleship under Whitehead at Harvard and so he was
kind enough to include me. Heidegger would ask the more ad-

8

CHARLES H. MALIK

vanced students to prepare and read at the beginning of each
session what he called " protocols," that is, brief condensed
treatments, lasting for about 15 minutes, on some theme we
were studying, which would then be thoroughly questioned by
him and by us. The scrutiny to which the protocol-readers were
then subjected was most searching. Heidegger himself in the
exposition of some text would focus sometimes for hours on
a single proposition, a focusing onto which we the students would
be thoroughly drawn at every step. He would bring to bear
on that proposition the entire history of philosophy and much
besides of the experience of other facets of Western civilization.
He would show how the matter before us had its genetic roots
way back in the Greeks, what transmutation, if any, it underwent in the Middle Ages, and how it received its :final formulation, say, by Leibniz. Those moments of prolonged dwelling
on a single sentence and bringing to bear on it all that went
before constituted the most valuable experience I had under
Heidegger. They were moments of sheer joy. In them time
simply stopped and we were ushered into the presence of eternal
essences; or, much better, time appeared in the guise of epochs
and cultures and essential positions and decisive turning points,
and had nothing to do with the day-by-day linear succession
of events-so that Heraclitus, for instance, far from " being"
" before " and " behind " Descartes, would in this sense " be "
considerably " after" and " ahead of " him. The infinite care
and respect for his students, the infinite attention to detail, the
quiet and grace of his gestures and movements, the depth and
extent of his knowledge of the history of philosophy, his mastery of Greek and Latin and of the living European languages,
his passion for what was being considered, his power of telescoping almost everything into that single sentence, all this
was absolutely extraordinary. It was total love for men and
subject matter that possessed Heidegger, love wholly unaffected
and unconscious. And the fruit of this prolonged, leisurely concentration, of this loving dwelling, was always the self-releasement of truth. In the seminars I felt I was not just picking up

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

9

a few crumbs here and there from under the table. I felt I was
participating in the banquet itself.
For all this that I owe Martin Heidegger, as well as for the
lasting profit I got from reading and entering deeply into his
writings, I am deeply and eternally grateful. He has already
been blessed in his lifetime with the knowledge that he is universally recognized as the most important thinker of our day.
I pray that God grant him many, many more years of peace,
vigor and happiness, to the end that he continue creating in
thought what God still wants him to create.
HEIDEGGER

I

Sein und Zeit is Heidegger's masterpiece. I have spent more
time in the study of this book than of any other, with four exceptions: the New Testament, the Book of Psalms, the principal works of Whitehead, and the principal dialogues of Plato.
This book made a lasting impression on my mind. The phenomenological method, with its imperative " zu den Sachen
selbst," to the things themselves, and therefore with its own infinite tender care in "handling" these "Sachen," with its interpretation of the phenomena this " handling " yields, contrary
to Husserl's interpretation, as states or modes of being and
not-being and nothing less, opened my philosophical eyes as
no other method had done. I became existentially transparent
to myself. I saw these 70 or 80 .structures fully constituting
every other Dasein:
The fundamental distinction between man, on the one hand, and
tools which one uses and adjusts to one another as well as things on
which one just stares, on the other. The fact that man's essence is
his existence, so that man is precisely that being whose being itself
is its very problem. The radical difference between categories and
existential modes of being. The fact that we are always in-theworld. The fact that we are always concerned with this or that
thing, including above all and behind all our very being and notbeing. The notion of encountering (begegnen). The hiddenness or
concealedness or covered-up-ness of truth. Discourse as grounded
in existential self-articulation. The fact that Dasein has always

10

CHARLES H. MALIK

made some sort of decision. The fact that Dasein is its possibilities
and nothing more or less or else. The fact that we are always ahead
of ourselves in our plans and projects, so that we never catch up
with ourselves until death catches up with us once and for all.
The fact that Dasein exists either authentically or unauthentically, and that we exist authentically only when we concern ourselves
with our ownmost possibilities, and every other mode of being is
dreaming and escaping and silly talk. Our happy-go-lucky everyday
mode of existence in which all distinctions are averaged up or
leveled down or blurred, and in which we take no firm stand. The
existential spatiality of man, so that far from man being in space
in the sense of being contained in space, space itself is contained in
man and man himself is spatial. The concrete notion of the environment (Umwelt). The fact that there is a primordial existential
knowing in which all perception, scientific knowledge, determination
of nature, etc., are grounded. The fact that we are always living
with others (Mitsein). The pregnant phenomenon of" das Man,"
" the ' they '," which to Heidegger is, if I may say so, the very devil
himself, to which however we are always subject. The notion of
solicitude (Fursorge). The fact that we are always" there," always
outside ourselves and always outside others. Being there as mood
and being there as understanding, so that we are always in some
mood or other and we always understand something or other. The
fact that we gossip no end. The fact that our idle curiosity knows
no limits. The fact that we are usually undecided and therefore ambiguous, so that if, as we said, we have always already made some
decision, the decision we have made here is to be undecided and
vague.
The fact that our essence is care (Sorge), so that we are really
full of cares all the time. The difference between anxiety and fear.
Death and how we are essentially towards death all the time, although this is also all the time covered up by our everyday mode
of existence. What it means existentially to be towards death (Sein
zum Tode). The being of death in our life being our living it in our
limitations and anxieties. How we are our true selves only in
resoluteness (Entschlossenheit), only when, facing our death, we
put aside all childish distractions and dreams and throw ourselves
wholly upon our ownmost possibilities, no matter how humble and
unpretentious. Conscience as the call from unauthenticity to authenticity of being, a call which our own care-ful existence makes
upon us: a gnawing or sudden "pulling ourselves together" into
decisiveness and being. The sense of guilt as the being of the what-

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

11

might-have-been, especially if the call is from our silly distractions
to our real possibilities of being which we have neglected. The fact
that, since by deciding we always destroy possibilities, we are always essentially guilty by the being of these destroyed possibilities
in our being.
How time-past, present, future-is grounded in our essence as
care, and as mood and understanding. How thus a temporal character adheres to every existential structure of Dasein, to everything
we have exhibited so far-mood, for instance, being somehow
mixed up with the past, understanding with the future, gossip and
"das 'Man'" with the present. A critique of the traditional notion
of time, especially with Aristotle and Hegel. How we are essentially
historical, and how the possibility of writing history, historiology,
is grounded in the historicality of the historian. Exactly what this
existential historicality consists of, an.d a critique of the notion of
world-history.
I know I have barbarized Heidegger, and I apologize for that.
It is impossible to appreciate the full impact of Heidegger without personally going through Sein und Zeit from beginning to
end several times. But these and countless other existential phenomena are carefuly worked out and articulated with and into
each other in this great work. This is man, this is Dasein, this
is you and I. When one thus gets thoroughly Heideggerized one
refuses thereafter ever to admit any theory or doctrine without
an authentic certification as to how it is integrally grounded in
human existence. Man is the measure of all things not accidentally, not capriciously, not individualistically, but essentially
and in a structurally existential sense.
HEIDEGGER

II

The later Heidegger, or Heidegger II as he is sometimes
called (and there are some who detect even a Heidegger III),
tried to go beyond Dasein and to come to grips with Being in
general, but without departing-so far as I can judge, and
despite the turning, the Kehre-from the fundamental existential analytic of Dasein in Sein und Zeit. Both at the beginning and at the very end of this book he emphasizes that
the existential analytic was only "preparatory " for this task

CHARLES H. MALIK

of going beyond, inasmuch as " philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein." He therefore considers Sein und Zeit as
only " enkindling" the problematic of ontology and therefore
as being only "on the way." One may therefore say that the
Kehre, far from being a departure from or reversal of Sein und
Zeit, is already presaged in that work.
The fundamental distinction between Being and beings is of
course retained throughout. The quest is for the meaning of
Being-nach dem Sinn von Sein. But Existenz in the sense of
Dasein gives way to Being, and we hear more of thinking,
Denken, than of phenomenology. Indeed phenomenology would
appear to be only one way of thinking, and thinking now becomes the way to Being. And yet we must keep in mind the
statement I have just quoted that after all "philosophy is
universal phenomenological ontology." According to this position, then, when thinking-meditative, besinnliches Denken, I
mean-puts us in touch with Being, be it the Being of poetry
or art or philosophy or science or the world situation, we are
then also in the immediate presence of phenomena, namely, of
what ultimately grounds all these things ontologically.
The themes which now fascinate Heidegger include, among
others:
The concrete historical situation.
Such disclosure of Being as destiny-laden great poetry, for example that of Holderlin and Rilke, vouchsafes.
The tremendous historical phenomenon of Nietzsche as completing
or closing the chapter of modern metaphysics: namely, in Nietzsche,
through Nietzsche, and since Nietzsche modern metaphysics beginning with Descartes and reaching its full bloom in Kant and Hegel
is finished.
The possibility of the opening up of a new age in philosophy
based on Heidegger himself, with his emphasis on man, Existenz,
Being and meditative thinking.
The radical disturbance, if not perversion, which modern ruthless
technology creates and promotes in Being, and the grounding of this
whole disturbance in something that happened to the human soul
way back in the beginning of the modern era, an event which found

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

its philosophical expression in the misfortune that was Descartes,
whereby reality is reduced to objects, and our attitude to it is
dominated by calculative thinking (rechnendes Denken) with a
view to self-assertion, control, prediction, use and exploitation,
rather than by love and adoration with a view to dwelling respectfully and hopefully beside it.
A deep lamentation over the fate of modern man, who no longer
has any sense for the holy and divine, to whom God is dead or has
defaulted, from whom the gods have departed, leaving behind them
no trace or track leading back to them, with the poor poets the only
people left in this destitute time to try desperately, perhaps with
the aid of the ether which the wine-god still affords, to unearth
a trace here and sniff out a track there.
All this with a profusion of terminology every bit as arresting
and rich and evocative as that of Sein und Zeit, a terminology designed solely to put us in the presence of Being, including the Being
behind such terms as:
Ground and origin. Nature and world. Life and fullness. The
slow growth or maturation of nature. Appropriate and inappropriate. Mortals and immortals. Heavenly and earthly. Beast, man,
angel. The quadruple manifold of earth, sky, divinities, mortals,
mirroring each other. Forces all around us, drawing us. The draft
of this drawing. The unheard-of center of these drawings. This
unheard-of center being " the eternal playmate " in the world-game
of Being-so there is a game going on.
Venture and daring. Flinging beings loose. Flinging into danger.
Hazarding oneself. Hanging in the balance. Unprotectedness, unshieldedness. Destiny and fate. Man the merchant. Absence, abyss,
Nothing. This destitute time. The world's night and the mid-night
of this night. The dying world era. The coming world era.
Calculative thinking (rechnendes Denken). Meditative thinking
(besinnliches Denken). The self-assertive will, the will to will.
Noblemindedness (Edelmut). The poets, the sayers. The song.
Dwelling, building, thinking. Thinking, meditating, suspending
judgment, asking questions. Persistently questioning because one
suspects a hidden meaning beyond and underneath. Stepping back,
keeping a distance. Lingering at, stopping at, loitering by, dwelling,
being near to. Listening, waiting-not waiting for but waiting upon.
Silence, stillness.
The Open. Openness to the mystery (Off enheit fur das Geheimnis). Releasement (Gelassenheit). The clearing of truth. Regioning
and that which regions. Uncanny (unheimlich). Direct encountering, encountering without mediation. Presence and presencing.

14

CHARLES H. MALIK

Turning, conversion. The already, the beforehand, the apriori,
the "schon," the condition of the possibility of. Art heralds history,
starts history, but only after the artist has undergone a transformation in his own being. Language the precinct, the house, the temple
of Being. The road, the path, the way, various stations on the way.
This is only a random sampling from Heidegger's later
terminology. The expressions are all basic and technical. The
germs of most of them can be detected in Heidegger I, though
not in the context of the sweep here manifested. Also some of
them he owes to Holderlin and Rilke, and when he meditates
on them he loads them with meanings of his own which one is
not quite sure were in the minds of the poets. In fact this is
his doctrine of great poetry-to sense out Being and invest it
with words which the philosopher can then meditatively think
through and adopt as his own. This random listing only serves
here to point to the domain or "region" of Heidegger's later
concern, and here and there it suggests perhaps something of
the flavor of that concern and of its findings.
It is a separate task to show how Heidegger's thought
throughout, especially in the later phase of his thought, is essentially determined by a species of pantheistic-monistic-theosophical mysticism, deriving originally from Meister Eckhart
and the coincidentia contradictorum of medieval German mysticism, which so fully impregnates all German thought. In this
connection I only wish to remark that if you remove this basic
dialectical strain from German thought, which harkens back
to German mysticism and beyond it to Pseudo-Dionysius of the
sixth century (that strange, obscure and most important figure,
who was probably a Syrian) , very little will be left, at least as
to the distinctive flavor and cast of this thought. The characteristic unity and essential continuity of German thoughtwhat one might denote as the typical Germanness of that
thought-is integrally grounded in the peculiar genius of medieval German mysticism. It is like a gigantic creative bud,
gigantic not in the sense of size but in the sense of potency,
fully self-enclosed, all its own, that took centuries to unfold and

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

15

bloom. Bloom indeed, into a thousand different blossoms; and
just as Aristotle keeps on affirming that although all beings
are, being is not a genus, so there is no genus comprising these
thousand blossoms, save only the fact, which is not a generic
characterization, that they all somehow stem from the original
mystical bent of mind of the coincidentia contradictorum. This
is all a separate task. But the more typically Heideggerian of
Heidegger's passages sound very much like the language of the
great sufis and mystics, such as Jalalud-Din al-Rumi and Joa'l
of the Cross. In many of his more passionate moods one clearly
senses a " flight of the alone to the Alone " a la Plotinus. The
"ineffable One" mysteriously hovers all over.
I know I have here again barbarized Heidegger, and I apologize for that. To compensate a little for this barbarization I
wish to insert here a few short lines of poetry by him.
The world's darkening never reaches
to the light of Being.
We are too late for the gods and too
early for Being.
Being's poem, just begun, is man.
We never come to thoughts. They come
to us.
Three dangers threaten thinking.
The good and thus wholesome danger
is the nighness of the singing poet.
The evil and thus keenest danger is
thinking itself. It must think
against itself, which it can only
seldom do.
The bad and thus muddled danger
is philosophizing.
He who thinks greatly must err greatly.
We may venture the step back out
of philosophy into the thinking of
Being as soon as we have grown
familiar with the provenance of
thinking.
Thinking's saying would be stilled in
its being only by becoming unable
to say that which must remain
unspoken.

16

CHARLES H. MALIK

Such inability would bring thinking
face to face with its matter.
What is spoken is never, and in no
language, what is said.
That a thinking is, ever and suddenlywhose amazement could fathom it?
Forests spread
Brooks plunge
Rocks persist
Mist diffuses
Meadows wait
Springs well
Winds dwell
Blessing muses
APOLOGIA FOR A CRITIQUE

I passionately share Heidegger's passions and convictions:
his love for nature and his fascination by its moods; the recreation of his being through walks in the fields and forests-to
me they are walks in these wonderful valleys and hills or along
these great historic shores; his emphasis on roots and rootedness; his doctrine of dwelling, abiding, resting, being near,
stepping back, being at a distance; his insistence on openness
to the mystery; his doctrine of releasement toward things; his
trust in the lighting of thought; his sensitivity to the prophetic
power of great poetry; his faith that truth is there waiting only
to be unconcealed; his patient waiting on Being; his teaching
that Being ventures forth man, flings him out, into danger and
unshieldedness; his doctrine that we are always in the balance;
his horror of the debasing and dehumanizing of man by
modern technological civilization; his groaning at the midnight
of this night; his critique of the Cartesian aberration; how a
single thought at times perhaps after long waiting and suffering
in the twinkling of an eye flashes in our being with such overpowering force and conviction as to take us a day, a month,
a year, sometimes a lifetime, and in the case of our unutterable
recurrent longing for Being more than a lifetime, to develop and
make fully our own; his conviction that there have been peaks

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

17

in history, including Aristotle and Plato and Kant and Nietzsche,
in which truth cried forth more truthfully than in history's
fallow plains; his fundamental historical-personal question:
Whither man at all, and especially whither man today? My
gratitude to Heidegger in confirming and deepening me in these
and many, many other positions knows no bounds. But all this
bespeaks to me Jesus Christ.
Heidegger's themes almost wholly coincide with those of religion and theology. In attending carefully to Heidegger, religion and theology spontaneously spring forth in one's mind.
One says to oneself, the man is discussing religious-theological
subjects in his own way. Heidegger's fundamental topics-man,
the human condition, the historical situation, destiny, death,
Being, truth, existential distortion and falsehood-what are
these but very topics of theology itself? One can thus establish
two columns, one containing the 100 or 200 basic terms of
Heidegger, and the other their equivalents in theology. This
would be a separate undertaking. The two realms almost overlap, but there are notable exceptions, the most important of
which are: Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Church. There
are no equivalents for these beings in Heidegger's thought, nor
for the others, such as grace, faith, communion, resurrection,
which flow from them; and if equivalents were pointed out or
devised, it would be in a strained and farfetched and wholly
unauthentic way. But I doubt that there is any topic in
Heidegger that is not originally considered in theology.
A profound decision appears to have been taken in the mind
of Heidegger to reduce theology to immanent human thinking.
He boldly takes over and treats the themes of theology, but he
steers strictly away from any entanglement in or contamination
by Biblical, theological, Christian meanings. He transforms all
these meanings into human existence and self-revealing Being.
In his plenary maturity which man has now attained, man can
dispense with all the Christianly intended meanings. Thus
when Heidegger refers to Augustine and Pascal, for instance,
he is most careful to select the Christianly neutral elements of

18

CHARLES H. MALIK

their thought, passing by on the other side of what they would
consider the essence and source and ground of their thoughtthe discovery of Jesus Christ in their own lives and in the world.
And when he gives an example in Sein und Zeit of what he calls
Dasein's pre-ontological way of interpreting itself existentially
as Sorge (care), he chooses an ancient fable on cura (care) attributed to one Gaius Julius Hyginus who flourished ,at the end
of the first century B. C. While the fable is very interesting
and suggestive, Heidegger could have chosen another " £able "
from the Old Testament which, I think, suits his purposes perfectly, I mean the account in Genesis 8 of the consequences of
man's disobedience and fall; there is here as much Sorge as
Heidegger can possibly want (perhaps there is too much!) , but
he would not choose it because it comes from the JudaeoChristian tradition, and it seems he wants to have nothing to
do with this tradition. It is a sort of fundamental existential
oath which Heidegger has sworn to himself ahead of time, way
deep down in his being. In many places you ask yourself, if
only Heidegger would come out with what he wants to say in
plain theological language, with all the concrete personal commitment that this would involve, it would be much better; but
in vain do you wait upon that" coming out." There is a built-in
fundamental inhibition which prevents him from doing so. Phenomenological description and meditative thinking and their
findings completely replace theology and religion. Just as Kant
affirmed the autonomy of the kingdom of reason from all experience, so Heidegger wishes to affirm the full autonomy of
man (meaning always the thinker) from all Biblical or theological or ecclesial conceptions. The problematic of religion is
indeed very real, but as the Bible and the Church hold an
archaic, that is, pre-ontological or ontologically ungrounded,
view of man, being and time, what they were talking aboutthe most serious matters indeed, Heidegger would aver-need
not be cast in terms of their own conceptions at all. Even their
experience on which they base their conceptions is something
now over and finished, and in any case it admits of another

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

19

interpretation. A new conceptual language based on strict ontology and thought can be devised, fully comprehensible by
our understanding and fully adequate to all the themes of the
human condition. We may therefore say that Heidegger is the
detheologizing of theology-not the destruction of it, but the
detheologizing of it-, that is, the secularizing, the humanizing,
the intellectualizing, the ontologizing, the immanentizing, of
it. For, I repeat, the same themes so dear to theology proper
are frontally attacked by him, but in the attack they are
denuded of any traditional theological content. That is the
significance of the two columns to which I referred. Heidegger
is theology, but without God, and certainly without the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
God and revelation can be dispensed with-and that in the
interest of the truth of God and revelation themselves. What
is left is the truth about man and Being in its ontological purity.
Since Heidegger's thought is thus thoroughly theological without owning it, or by owning it in the guise of covering it up, or
attempting to salvage the truth of theology without theology,
a theological critique is fully justified. One does not write "a theological critique " of Marx or Russell or Dewey or Bergson or
Wittgenstein, because these thinkers had nothing to do nwterially with theology, and that despite the Deux Sources in the
case of Bergson. But one does write " a theological critique"
of Heidegger because the subject matter of Heidegger is the very
subject matter of theology, though camouflaged in a non-theological dress. Heidegger of course would presumably say that
the subject matter of theology is itself the very subject matter
of fundamental ontology, though camouflaged in mythological,
pre-ontological terms. The difference however between the two
claims is obvious: theology proper deals with the existing God
of faith in his historical dealings with specific existing individuals and groups-Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah,
Christ, Paul, Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, and others, and
the children of Israel and the Church of J e.sus Christ, the two
most historically continuous communities with distinct ex-

20

CHARLES H. MALIK

elusive universal claims, as existing historical communities, in
the world, so unbroken and continuous in fact that mankind
today dates all its history in terms of their own historical
reckoning. Whereas the claim of Heideggerian ontology that
theology is only camouflaged or mythologized ontology is the
claim of a single philosopher or school of thought (a very important philosopher and school) having no relation, so far as
this claim is concerned, to an existing, historically continuous
community with exclusive universal claims. Heidegger's presumable claim about theology moves in the sphere of concepts
or what Heidegger would call thought; theology's actual claim
about Heideggerian ontology grounds itself in the sphere of
historically continuous existing communities.
I am not interested here in showing that this or that Heideggerian equivalent of this or that theological concept is not as
rich or " true " as its equivalent, or is a distortion of this equivalent. This, of course, can be done. Nor am I concerned with
pointing out this or that saying or perhaps lapse in Heideggerand there are many such sayings and lapses-which leaves room
for positive traditional theology; for if he intended the filling
out of such room he would have done so himself. Nor indeed
is it my job here to "complete" or replace Heidegger's untheological theology with the authentic Christian way of looking
at things. I believe this Christian way is the true way, and will
long survive Heidegger's way or any" new era" of metaphysics
built on Heidegger or Nietzsche. A man is ultimately himself;
he is what and who he is; this is his fate, his Schicksal, on which
Heidegger keeps harping; and I happen to love Heidegger for
what and who he is, and to find in him, and in Nietzsche, the
greatest untheological reminders of true theology-most welcome reminders indeed, considering who the reminders are and
the fact that they come, at least on the surface, from outside
theology proper. I only wish to make a few general observations which I trust will go to the heart of the matter, especially
to the fundamental existential oath to which I adverted. I
speak from the strict Church-Biblical-Christian point of view,

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

which I know and which I existentially hold. We are facing in
Heidegger a non-Semitic, non-monotheistic, non-Abrahamic
"theology"; Islam and Judaism therefore would just as much
take exception to this "theology," especially in the matter of
transcendence, as would Christianity; we are facing a form of
heathenism by way of an atavistic reversion to medieval German mysticism and pre-Socratic cosmologism-fully brought up
to date, to be sure, through phenomenology and the distinctive
genius of Heidegger. I make my observations in a tentative and
preliminary manner; I make them with fear and trembling, and
with the deepest respect and love for Heidegger.
THEOLOGICAL

QUESTIONING

First I wish to repeat what I stressed above that Heidegger
is essentially theological in intent and content. Any fundamental interest in existence and being is theological. The entire
problematic of his philosophizing would have been impossible
as to its content without the basic theological data which he
received from his own tradition and culture, regardless of how
he purged them in the process. He owes this tradition, thoroughly Judaeo-Christian (in its ontological-transcendental reference)
no less than Graeco-Roman-German (in its intellectual-mystical reference), more than he acknowledged, at least so far as
the Judaeo-Christian component is concerned.
Secondly I wish to stress what I called above the fundamental
existential oath that Heidegger took upon himself. Why he
should have taken this oath, never, in the elucidation of man,
Being and destiny, to implicate himself thematically and explicitly in Christian subject matter, is a mystery to me. Was
it really necessary to hold so tenaciously to this position? Is it
" truth " that he is thus serving, and what kind of " truth " ?
Is he not unnecessarily depriving and therefore impoverishing
himself of material that would have added infinitely to the richness and concreteness of his thinking and description, perhaps
a hundredfold more than he could possibly get from even such
great poets as Holderlin and Rilke? Openness to the mystery

CHARLES H. MALIK

should mean openness even, or perhaps especially, to the mystery of Christ, the Church and the Bible. Why should it exclude
these? His answer presumably would be that the ChurchBiblical-Christian subject matter does not belong to his historicality. This answer may be true personally, but certainly
not so far as it may apply to his Germany or to this age in
general, no matter how destitute and forlorn this age may be.
The Church, the Bible, Christ, are living and active in Germany
and Europe, and on every theme he touches upon they have
something to say, and something very decisive. But even personally the answer is questionable if we keep in mind Heidegger's
background, culture, concrete spiritual rootedness, and immense learning. Therefore a decision somewhere in the dark
recesses of Being must have been taken. Nor would I dare
explain this decision, though explanations can be thought. I
would not attempt an explanation partly because all explanations of such great mysteries are more questionable than the
matter to be " explained " ; partly because the explainer in
this instance would have to be explained himself, or to explain
himself; but principally because of my deep respect for Heidegger. But I note here only the existential oath as a striking fact,
and raise the ultimate anguished" why?, why?" about it. Only
Heidegger himself can " explain " the mystery of this oath being
taken "in the dark recesses of Being."
Heidegger's transformation of Christian theology into strict
untheological ontology is wholly incapable of achieving three
things, even if it achieved everything else perfectly. The first is
meeting the question of creation and origins. The Christian
view is that God created the world, meaning man and Being
and thought and everything, " visible and invisible," from
nothing. This is a firm and straightforward position, without
the slightest equivocation, to be understood only from within
the context of the theological affirmation of God's existence and
nature. But to the sophisticated and self-confident philosopher
it may appear naive, dogmatic, hollow, empty, even superstitious, certainly unphilosophical, at best "pre-ontological."

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

Heidegger touches upon " God " and " nothing " in this Christian position (in Was ist M etaphysik?) and makes of God
the question itself (which with him must always mean the
questioner), and of "nothing," "something" as "Nothing,"
that is, as " Something " which is God himself. This is equivalent either to breaking up God (whether as man or Being or
something else) into two, and that is the ancient question of the
coeternity of matter and the world with God, or, on the supposition that God is only the question, to making everything in the
end come literally from nothing (" nothing " this time in the
most absolute and literal sense; i. e. precisely not " something"
in any sense of the term) . This latter possibility is either a
species of magic or the well-known modern doctrine (cf. Whitehead and Sartre, noting at the same time the essential differences between the two) of everything being its own creator.
Karl Barth analyzes and comments on Heidegger's treatment
of Nothing in Was ist M etaphysik? (Church Dogmatics, Vol.
III, Part 3, Chap. XI, Art. 50, Sec. 3) . He concludes that " in
Heidegger nothing is actually the pseudonym which conceals
the Godhead." Barth continues:
We have already seen that [according to Heidegger] the basic question of metaphysics as wrested from nothing is why there is anything at all and not nothing. We have seen the underived and
comprehensive dynamism and activity of this nothing: how it
actually compels, obtrudes, repels and nihilates; how it can never
be discovered by us, yet reveals itself in dread as the basic mood
of existence; how our existence itself is a projection into nothing
and is constituted by our enquiry into it; how to be open to nothing
is the fundamental virtue of existence, and " distortion " of nothing
its fundamental sin; and finally how even that which is, is only
as nothing pervades and is present with it, and discloses itself to
existence only as it becomes elusive and evanescent. We have seen
that it is nothing that exhibits the nature and mode of that which
is, and the fact that it is. We have seen that it is the whence
and whither of transcendence, the basis and pure content of human
science. We have seen that "pure being and pure nothing are
one and the same " [Hegel's formula]. Must we not say that just
as it is irrelevant that Sartre explicitly denies the existence of God,
His place being taken and filled by man, so it is irrelevant that

CHARLES H. MALIK

Heidegger does not explicitly deny it, His place being fully and
finally taken and filled by the all-dominant and dynamic depth of
nothing? We might easily say that if Sartre were not to deny God,
and Heidegger to deny Him, it would not modify in either the
essential fact that God is not dead, but that a substitute is provided
and therefore He is suppressed, and put as it were " on the retired
list." Heidegger differs from Sartre only in choosing a different
substitute for God: " My cause on nothing is founded." But in his
teaching this substitute has actually arrogated the place and function of deity. Thus his doctrine, too, is really a mythological
theogony .... In Heidegger's thought, nothing seems lacking in
none of the essential features of the conventional figure of God
(aseity, uniqueness, omnipotence, omniscience, infinity, etc.), but
nothing has of course no relation to the biblical concept of God,
which is not taken into account by either Heidegger or Sartre in
their respective mythologies. It might well be said, then, that the
God of the Bible, the living God, is entirely unaffected by the suppression and pensioning off of " God " in terms of these two
mythologies. In the " God " whom Heidegger and Sartre suppress
by providing a substitute for Him, the Church cannot possibly
recognize the One whom it calls God. . . . From the standpoint
of the biblical conception of God these alternative postulates ...
are only mythological fabrications ...

This quotation from Barth calls for five observations:
(I) For a variety of reasons Sartre cannot be compared with
Heidegger; this Barth is quite cognizant of. " Sartre contrasts
with the ponderously reflective German Martin Heidegger as a
type of the perennial French debrouillard." Again, Heidegger
"has not mastered this factor, scil. nothingness, [as Sartre
thinks he has] neither does he trifle with it. He handles it with
religious solemnity. The effect which he produces is therefore
immeasurably more serious than that of Sartre."
(2) Barth's real point, regardless of whether or not his comparison of these philosophers is legitimate and the extent to
which it is legitimate, is to prove (and he does so at some length)
that neither the Frenchman nor the German has really faced, let
alone understood, the nothingness which the Bible calls " the
depths of Satan " and " the deceitfulness of sin." Real nothingness is the lie and deceit of Satan and sin, and of this the two

REFLECTION ON HEIDEGGER

25

philosophers have no knowledge, or if they have, then it is sup·
pressed knowledge. Thus the nothing or nothingness of either
philosopher has nothing to do with, is indeed (in Sartre) a
child's play or (in Heidegger) heaven itself compared to, the
awful nothingness recognized in the Bible from which Christ
has once and for all delivered us.
(3) The Hegelian identification of being and nothing, which
Heidegger adopts but reinterprets, is simply another indication
of the gnostic-mystical coincidentia contradictorum which lies
at the deepest base, which indeed constitutes the characteristic
genius, of all German thought, including especially that of Hegel
and Heidegger.
(4) Heidegger's mythological theogony, whether based on
being or on nothing, or on the identity of the two, cannot serve
as an adequate doctrine for creation and origins. Independent
external existence, of things (yonder snake) an dof others
(that man-you, he), which is more primordially given and
far more certain than any phenomenological disclosure of anything, including the disclosure of nothing by dread, cries to high
heaven for the independent cause, source, ground, origin of its
being and its order, beyond every conceptualization and every
idealistic (e.g., Kantian) doctrine of causation. One can theogonize or mythologize or indeed phenomenologize no end, but
it will be a strange kind of heart which will then think that it
has thereby explained or understood the mystery of independent external being and independent external order.
(5) I come now to the fifth observation. No man, certainly
no philosopher, is without some god whom he ultimately
worships. Worship is a fundamental phenomenon; worshiping is
an original mode of being of man, every bit equiprimordial with
understanding or gossip or being-with-others or dread or dying
or any other fundamental existential structure; and someone
should develop the phenomenology of worship in the strictest
phenomenological manner-a manner that only a Heidegger can
prove equal to. No man is without something which he trusts
more than anything else. To Sartre it is he himself, to Heideg-

26

CHARLEs H. MALIK

ger it is nothing; to the materialist it is matter (or so he says),
to the dialectical materialist the class struggle, to the revolutionary revolution, to the naturalist nature, to the hedonist
pleasure, to the idealist the idea or reason, to Aristotle substantial individual existence. It appears then that one of the
deepest characteristics of man is to search and to keep on
searching for something to which he can finally cling. In this
respect men do not differ in that some cling to something and
others to nothing; all cling to something; and even when they
call it nothing; as here in the case of Heidegger, they invest this
nothing with the attributes of deity. In other words, they worship it. In this sense no man is an atheist: the atheist himself
believes in and worships something. The only question is
whether the ultimate thing people worship is true or falsetrue or false in the sense of being the true God or a sham, an
idol. Whatever and whoever be the god of Sartre or of Heidegger, certainly he is not the God of the Church or the Bible. You
do not get rid of God by simply rejecting him or remaining
silent about him-you only succeed then in replacing him by
another god, a false one. You can no more evade God than you
can evade being; for if you exist at all, you are necessarily
worshiping something or somebody, whether true or false; and
of course your heart's deepest desire is that it be true. In the
case of Heidegger it is of course an oversimplification to say that
the God whom he invests with the attributes of deity and therefore whom he worships is the Nothing of Was ist Metaphysik?.
Throughout the range of his writings one is struck with the fact
that his god changes from one writing to another and from
one period of his life to another. Sometimes you feel it is Being,
sometimes Dasein, sometimes the future, sometimes death,
sometimes authentic existence, sometimes phenomenology itself, sometimes metaphysics, sometimes philosophy, sometimes
thinking (rather the meditative type), sometimes sheer mystery, sometimes a certain ineffable harmony, sometimes the allpregnant Nothing. Aristotle would probably say these are
Heidegger's gods in differing senses, for God, like being, is not

REFLECTION ON HEIDEGGER

27

a genus. This polytheism of Heidegger, if I may so call it, is
of a piece with his principle of equiprimordiality which he
stresses so much in Sein und Zeit. His metaphysical situation is
pluralist; the ultimate principles, to which would perhaps correspond the ground phenomena, are many-none subordinate
to any of the others, all on the same footing metaphysically.
There is in Heidegger a deep-seated heathensm which is simply
another term for searching and groping, whether before finding
or after having found. The Kehre only typifies it. Sincere as
he is, the only question is whether he will land, or land again,
where he ought, or whether his fate in this regard is already
sealed. However, with God-I mean the true one-nothing is
impossible.
Heidegger lacks a metaphysical doctrine of causation, and to
say that his rejection of Aristotelian time carries with it the
necessity of rejecting Aristotle's concept of causation is no answer; for the why?, why? persists. No man has asked questions,
and especially the why?, more insistently than Heidegger, with
the possible exception perhaps of Socrates. His pages are strewn
with questions. Sein und Zeit begins with a question and ends
with one, and in between perhaps a thousand questions are
thrown in. To say that after the self-revelation of Being, whatever that may be, any further questioning is silly, is no answer.
Why Being at all and not rather nothing?, as he exclaims in Was
ist Metaphysik? Nothing, nothing ("nothing" here with no
dialectical-substantive connotation whatever) can quench the
wonder of man at Being-not even Being itself. Hence always,
always, whence and whither Being?. You do not rest after you
know the human situation in its fullness; you do not rest in
the knowledge of this situation: you become even more restless.
In fact your real restlesness begins just then. Why?, why?, why?
keeps on maddeningly knocking on your soul-why? both ontologically and personally. Ontologically, in the sense of Why
Being at all and not rather nothing? (Being always in the
Leibnizian sense of the independent external existence of the
monads and the independent external order or harmony reigning

fl8

CHARLES H, MALIK

in them and among them), and personally, in the sense of why
these sufferings and disappointments, why these frustrations
and trials?-including the hatred and envy of men, including
ageing and death. A doctrine of creation and causation is lacking
in Heidegger. When one strains his powers here, one usually
speaks of the abyss (Abgrund) as somehow relieving one of the
necessity of providing such a doctrine; but such a mode of
speaking is either to repeat the question itself, thinking that
in the mere repetition of it an answer is given, or to lapse into
some kind of dark mysticism, unsupported and unillumined by
the living concrete, independent, personal God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, the Father of Jesus Christ.

* * * * *
This is the problem of the ultimate why? But secondly there
is the problem of the ultimate which? Man is his possibilities,
and the Being of his possibilities is understanding: this is certainly true. But I am always before a range of alternatives to
choose from; which of these possibilities must I throw myself
upon, what is the principle of my choice? The only hint at
an answer I find in Sein und Zeit is the related doctrines of
authentic existence, Dasein's ownmost possibilities, resoluteness, and the voice of conscience. But suggestive and helpful
as these doctrines are, they are nevertheless largely formal and
subjective. I certainly know only too well in my own life how,
when I fritter away my energies in softness of living, in idle curiosity and petty talk, in stupid and sterile seductions, conscience
calls me back resolutely to my real, authentic possibilities of existence; and when I then throw myself wholeheartedly and undistractedly on my ownmost task, no matter how humble and
unglamorous, I am in the fullest sense of the term. But usually
we are presented (apart from death, which we hardly ever think
of choosing) with more than one ownmost possibility; thus there
is freedom of choice not only between authentic and unauthentic
existence, but between modes of authentic existence itself; in
such a situation we lack a criterion of choice. The conflict of
duties is a perennial feature of existence. Moreover, what is the

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

29

ownmost possibility of, say, a gambler or a degenerate person?
The gambler will tell you his owmnost possibility, the thing
he can do best, is to gamble, and the degenerate person to
wallow in degeneracy. Thus to avoid radical subjectivist relativism, which I am sure Heidegger would never allow, a
criterion of choice from outside man altogether is required.
Heidegger affords no such criterion from outside, or for that
matter," from inside." At times it looks as though I just close
my eye.s and toss a coin. There is in Heidegger no doctrine of
preferential valuation, no doctrine of better and worse, except
the formal injunction about resolute, authentic existence. To
say that this is a matter of cultural determination, of upbringing, of environment and society, of family background,
either lapses back into relativism or leaves unanswered what
determines the better and worse in all these situations. Heidegger owes his Christian culture in this matter of the valuational
determination of conscience more than he explicitly admits.
The Christian answer is that the better is what accords with
the will and spirit of Christ. The Christian answer goes farther:
it holds that all decisions are ultimately judged by the standard
of Christ, whether or not the decider knows it; and when he
hesitates and weighs, saying to himself, this is better, this is
worse, it is the immanent Christ in him which is weighing thus,
whether or not he knows Christ or whether he has ever heard
of him. All mankind in every decision it takes is implicitly or
explicitly under the judgment of Christ. Those who were
groping for the right decision before his actual appearance in
history, as well as those who are groping for the right decision
outside him today, are nevertheless all groping for him; and,
after the decision is taken and it turns out to be right it can always be .shown that it is right because it conforms to the
standard of Christ. The criterion " from outside " is always
Christ. The Christian holds all this in the simplicity of his
heart, and that is why it appears so questionable and absurd to
the outsider. Christian theology, certainly based on faith, can
answer the question of the which? Heidegger cannot.

30

CHARLES H. MALIK

The ultimate why?, the decisive which?-these Heidegger
cannot answer. Neither can he answer the question of the how?
or the what? I may call this the problem of realization, but
since reality as commonly understood is rejected by Heidegger-and I accept both his criticism here and his rejection! shall call it the problem of "bringing about" or the problem
of "becoming." How do I become existentially what I want to
be even .supposing I possess a perfect criterion which enables
me to know unerringly what it is? To raise the famed question
of old: Is knowledge virtue? Can the idea by itself bring about
itself? I am fed up with my wishy-washy being; I cannot stand
my softness and flabbiness and ungenuineness any longer; I
am disgusted with my being given to gossip and idle curiosity,
and with my lostness in " das Man " ; I am unbearably weighed
under by such and such a bad habit which I have contracted,
and often I shed tears because of my bondage to it; I cannot
sleep at night because my conscience keeps calling me to
resoluteness and authentic existence; I can decide perfectly and
correctly, but I canot bring about what I decide. Heidegger's
powers of presencing Being and beings-almost stealthily, as it
were, without Being and beings noticing it (for instance all
these modes of being of myself which I have just enumerated) is simply uncanny; but he is powerless to suggest how I may
bring about my heart's innermost yearning. He has no idea,
nor in the nature of the case can he possibly have an idea, as to
Paul's anguished cry: "0 wretched man that I am! " This is
an observation that applies indeed to all philosophy and to all
thought, but in the case of Heidegger, as of no other philosopher, the question of becoming and bringing about cries to high
heaven, because his primary interest is in Being. An interest in
Being, no matter how genuine (and Heidegger's is not only
most genuine but most fruitful) , that is yet satisfied only with
description, no matter how perfect, but that does not bring
about the deepest personal Being we crave, has something profoundly the matter with it. It raises itself as a problem unto
itself. Most certainly knowledge i.s not virtue; most certainly

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81

the devil all of a sudden intervenes and spoils everything, even
the most perfect knowledge. The Christian's answer is again
Paul's: " thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." That
is, Christ, prayer to him, participation in his worship, the wonderful sacred music of the Church, the Bible, the lives of the
saints, living my ordinary Christian life, helping to carry the
burden of the Church, getting out of myself to help others at
any cost for the sake of Christ alone, letting his grace and spirit
dwell in me despite my unworthiness, performing all sorts of
little or big acts of sacrifice " in secret " so that my " Father
which seeth in secret" might "reward me openly," the living
fellowship of those who love me in Christ, their forgiveness,
their faith in me despite my failings, their going out of their
way to help me for Christ's sake, the actual existence of the
Christian community, the actual love of Christ manifesting itself in a thousand different ways around me and in every phase
of civilized existence in the world and throughout history-all
these things help me mightly to bring about what I want. This
is the Christian how? of the becoming or the bringing about of
the what?
IMPLIED CONSEQUENCES

These are the questions of the why?, the which?, and the
how? or what? that Heidegger cannot answer. Now to some
consequences. Heidegger is really loading philosophy with much
more than it can bear. Calculative thinking which he deplores
and condemns when it tyrannizes over man can never by itself,
nor even by philosophy, give rise to meditative thinking.
Heidegger can call attention to both types of thinking, he can
describe them superbly, he can yearn for the conversion of
calculative to meditative thinking, or at least for both to be
kept in their right place without either usurping the province of
the other, but neither he nor all philosophy put together can
bring about this conversion or prevent this usurpation. This
is a gift from outside man altogether. Man is helpless here. To
put it this way is of course to wound the pride of self-sufficient

CHARLES H. MALIK

man, especially the pride of the philosopher, to the quick. "The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom "-and not meditative thinking. This thinking itself is impossible without that
"fear." Does self-sufficient Western man today understand that?
" Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build
it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in
vain." Western self-contained immanentist thought has no idea
what this means. Truly it comes to it from outside itself altogether, like a strange unintelligible voice from another world.
It " speaks in an unknown tongue." That is why it took the
love and suffering and patience of countless believers for hundreds of years to convert pagan Europe to begin to understand
what this voice is saying, what this tongue means. And now
Europe, on the word of some of its greatest thinkers, wants to
return to its paganism and to turn a deaf ear to this voice. The
problem of calculative versus meditative thinking is nothing
compared to the problem of the calamitous divorce between
faith and the intellect which has been afflicting the very soul
of Europe and the West for centuries, and the latter problem is
certainly at the base of the former.
If death is Dasein's ownmost possibility (eigenste Moglichkeit) , and of course it is, then despite the fact that the voice
of conscience would, as resolute anticipation of death, call us
back to our authentic possibilities from lostness in the world
of " das Man," we are never totally whole except in death.
There is a possibility here of opening up suicide as a way outI say only a possibility, because I know Heidegger's answer to
this possibility. But the mere possibility disturbs the Christian.
For it is written, thou shalt not kill, and suicide is killing. Nay
more, thou shalt not kill is superseded by Christ's law, thou
shalt not even be angry with thy brother without a cause. This
anger which is a form of hatred is itself killing. The point is
that there is a rule from outside Dasein in Christianity, a rule
which, as coming from outside, ontology would of course hate
or be angry with; and in the radical ontological aloneness of
Dasein according to Heidegger one is reminded of the proud

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88

self-sufficient aloneness of the Stoics, and therefore of their
recommending suicide.
On the plane of concrete existence there is the saddest aloneness in Heidegger-I do not mean in his life, I mean in his
thought. Love would perhaps mean to him the tranquillization
of " das Man." But we are only by love, which is much more
than and radically other than simply to state the matter in these
words. No man has ever been or will ever be except insofar as
love, at least the love of his parents or of somebody, has touched
him. In Christianity the essence of everything about man is
society, company, fellowship, friendship, interaction, belonging
together, the ecclesia, koinonia, community, love, the Holy
Spirit. These are all absent from Heidegger and his treatment
of Mitsein is the poorest substitute for them, even ontologically
speaking. One moment of genuine openness and trust and peace
and communion in love is worth all the certitude and all the
discoveries of the most authentic thought. This is a phenomenon and not an obfuscation by "das Man." May it not be,
from the existential point of view, that because for whatever
reason we are denied the Being of communion and love we fall
back upon the Being of thought and get stuck in it? The certitude of thought, even the most authentic and creative thought,
is a poor substitute for the peace and joy and " understanding "
of the fellowship of love. This is the Gospel's reaction to philosophy, this is Jesus Christ's challenge to Plato and Aristotle aml
all philosophy and thought. I cannot possibly read Heidegger
without all the time inwardly suspecting that he knows all this
as well as anybody. And yet there is something that holds him
back, that inhibits him, from openly coming out with what he
knows and feels. It is as though he is ashamed of it.
Consider those gems of poetical insight which Heidegger
embodied in his " The Thinker as Poet" from which I quoted
above. We are told the inspiration came upon him
When the early morning light quietly grows above the mountains,
When the little windwheel outside the cabin window sings in the
gathering thunderstorm,

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CHARLES H. MALIK

When through a rent in the rain-clouded sky a ray of the sun suddenly glides over the gloom of the meadows,
When in early summer lonely narcissi bloom hidden in the
meadow and the rock-rose gleams under the maple,
When the wind, shifting quickly, grumbles in the rafters of the
cabin, and the weather threatens to become nasty,
When on a summer's day the butterfly settles on the flower and,
wings closed, sways with it in the meadow-breeze,
When the mountain brook in night's stillness tells of its plunging
over the boulders,
When in the winter nights snowstorms tear at the cabin and one
morning the landscape is hushed in its blanket of snow, etc.

There is beauty here, there is peace, there is quiet, there is
nature, there is the pensive mood, there is the joy of inspiration,
there is the sweetest nostalgia. But there is the saddest and
deepest solitude. I see no trace of inspiration coming from
having looked another person in the eye; from will that has been
tried and tested by another will in act; from having quarreled
and argued with another face to face; from the living trials of
loving friendship; from having shared with others; from having
personally participated in some responsible social or political
decision in which more than the fate of one's thought was at
stake, in which perhaps the fate of a whole people, a whole
culture, a whole movement, a certain turn in history, was in the
balance; from having stood in awe at the mystery of independent external personal existence in communion. I feel in
Heidegger at times a most heart-rending loneliness, whatever
its causes and attendant sufferings, a loneliness painfully
reminiscent of that of Holderlin, Nietzsche and Zarathustra. I
need hardly add that this loneliness in no way invalidates the
profound truths it has yielded. But the heart cannot rest in
solitude; it craves company, communion, love. Communion is
indeed in every respect prior to solitude. Now certainly there
" abideth thought, solitude, communion, these three; but the
greatest of these is communion." H there is heaven in this life
or beyond, it does not consist in musing on the early morning
light, or the gathering thunderstorm, or the little windwheel

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85

outside the cabin, or the wind grumbling in the rafters of the
cabin, or the lonely narcissi, or the butterfly of the mountain
brook, nor in the reflections which these musings evoke in us,
but in the fullest active communion of soul with soul in total
transparency, trust and love. Nor may we forget that Christian
theology had to break up God into three Persons so as to relieve
His otherwise unsupportable loneliness with the possibility of
inner communion and love, not within an absolutely undifferentiated One, but between three Persons.
I certainly am passing judgment on thought and philosophy
as such, and not only on Heidegger, when I say that I cannot
help contrasting the thinker's lonely responsibility for his
thinking alone with the responsibility of, say, a Socrates or a
Paul, or Christ himself, who articulated their thoughts in the
midst of (or at least as a result of) concrete personal life-anddeath confrontation and suffering, in the midst of giving themselves in face-to-face encounter to others, in the midst of uttering nothing except to save others from the powers of darkness, " the sorrows of hell and the snares of death." A similar
contrast exists, although on quite a different plane, between the
lonely thinker and the politician or statesman or administrator,
no matter how purely or impurely motivated, who finds himself
caught in the midst of concrete historical responsibility and decision, affecting, perhaps fatefully, the whole course of events.
Thought is not everything, and what it is not may well be the
more important thing.
With all the wonders of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche-personal
wonders, existential wonders, spiritual wonders, intellectual wonders, especially the incredible wonders of Nietzsche-what finally judges these two men is their utter loneliness. From the sufferings of their loneliness lonely beings can discover and be
many wonderful things, but the whole point is that there is
;something wrong in being utterly lonely without lovers and
without friends, and that man is not to shatter himself to
pieces-to be sure, very delectable pieces-in the sufferings of
his loneliness, but to consume, and therefore to restore and find

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CHARLES H. MALIK

himself, in the joy and peace of actual fellowship and love. The
very writing these lonely men pour themselves into in their
melancholic loneliness is intended by them to be read and appreciated by somebody; no man has ever written just into the
air; therefore their writing is itself a mode of fellowship, though
not actual fellowship but fellowship in the mode of hope. They
are denied actual face-to-face fellowship and love and therefore they write, in the hope that somebody will read and recognize them in absentia, at a distance, whether in space or in time.
Would a fully happy person fully absorbed in the act of fellowship and love ever write? He has no time to write! This
is all very well, but a residual problem abides here: there are
lonely people, there are people who after every effort at fellowship remain lonely, there are people who do express the unutterable sufferings of their loneliness in writing; and my sermonizing
here cannot get them out of their loneliness. The problem of
election (what Heidegger would call fate or destiny) is most
real. It is true, of course, that Jesus spent whole nights praying,
and once for forty days and forty nights he was alone in the wilderness without food and without drink; but he was never alone;
he was always communing with the Father, even when he was
wrestling with the devil. Furthermore, after every retreat into
prayer Jesus did not bur.st out into fits of writing: he always
returned to fellowship in the Holy Spirit with his disciples. He
as it were replenished himself spiritually in order to pour himself in active fellowship upon the world. "And when he had
sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray." The
prayer life of Jesus was in the midst of intense social activity,
in the midst of his ministry; and to understand this one should
keep in mind in the most complete and concrete detail what
kind of ministry it was. So different from the thinking-the
"prayer" ?-of the philosophers! Nor can we say that the
saints were lonely-St. Anthony, St. Francis, St. John of the
Cross, St. John of Damascus-although some of them did write
wonderful things; for in their loneliest loneliness they were all
the time in communion with Christ: he was ever their com-

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87

panion and friend. For this is the point of faith which God was
gracious euough to grant these men in full: to believe that
Jesus Christ of Nazareth rose from the dead, that God "hath
highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every
name," that he is there, is living, is beside them, is, as the
Psalmist would say," on their right hand" and therefore they
" shall not be moved."
DETHEOLOGIZING

THEOLOGY

In a footnote in Sein und Zeit Heidegger says Kierkegaard
elaborated the phenomenon of anxiety or dread " in the theological context of a ' psychological ' exposition of the problem
of original sin," implying that his elaboration of this phenomenon, being purely existential-ontological, is completely independent of this context. The truth as it appears to me is
that without the traditional theological perspective neither
Kierkegaard nor Heidegger could have dwelt on this phenomenon, but that whereas Kierkegaard maintained this context within his discussion both from acknowledgment of his
existential sources and perhaps from faith, Heidegger, in conformity with his fundamental existential oath, weaned himself
from it, perhaps from lack of faith, without acknowledging his
existential-personal indebtedness to it. Without the living Christ
in the living tradition neither Kierkegaard nor Heidegger would
be possible, and I believe both of them know that. But in the
case of Heidegger blame the fundamental existential oath for
his not acknowledging this fact and for his accepting to bear
the necessary existential-personal-moral consequences.
Christianity is always uneasy in the world. In vain can it
fully adapt itself to the world and in vain can the world fully
adopt it. This is the significance of the two cities of Augustine,
commingling and living constantly side by side. This is the significance of the Scriptural doctrine of " the world " in the half
dozen or more senses of this term. There is simply a radical
opposition between the righteousness of God and the sinfulness
of man, between the truth of God and the falsehood and fallen-

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CHARLES H. MALIK

ness of the world; and only Jesus Christ of Nazareth can reconcile the two. Christianity has all along been uneasy in Germany
and many Germans repeatedly appear to be uncomfortable with
it. For good or for ill it has implanted itself in Germany-I
believe irrevocably, both in Germany and in Russia-and according to a superficial interpretation of Nietzsche (which is
not my interpretation) he regrets this fact and wishes it did
not happen and that now it be wholly undone, not only in
Germany but throughout the whole world. Despite the fact
that he is militantly explicit on this regretting and wishing, I
read him differently. Thus there is always a harking back
among .some of the finest German thinkers to pre-Christian or
non-Christian pagan sources, whether German or Nordic or
Greek or Roman, or whether Indian or theosophical, or revolutionary as in the case of Marx, a harking back which aims not
at appropriating these sources by correcting and purifying them
under Christ, but at adopting and developing them as substitutes for Christ. These German thinkers feel more at home with
them. But this is the whole point, for it belongs to Christ to
make people-all people and not the Germans alone-not feel
at home in their home. Because he ever reminds them, as all
saints in every time and clime have experienced and affirmed,
including the great German saints, he ever reminds them of
their true home, namely the heavenly Jerusalem, of their desperate need for being near, not only their soil and their earth
and their roots and their forests and their hearth and their folk
and their gods, but for being near him, which is the surest
way-indeed the only way-of enabling them to be truly near
all these other things.
Heidegger secularizes the ultimate theological categories; he
denudes them of their theological significance; he detheologizes
them. They are not a matter of the Bible, of the Church, of the
living Christian tradition, of what the saints, not as philosophers, but as saints, were talking about, of Jesus Christ and
God as understood by the Church. He couches them in human,
conceptual terms, invents entirely unheard-of terms for them,

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and therefore demonstrates the dispensability of the ontology
of the Bible and the possibility of putting the whole thing in
immanentist-human, transcendental-subjectivist
terms. He
thus affects to prove either that there is no inherent necessity
for the Biblical-theological-ontological categories or that these
categories are only one possibility and another his own achievement, or that they were only crude, primitive, unrefined, preontological formulations by the .somewhat uncouth JudaeoChristian-Near-Eastern
mind. Since he is not an avowed
atheist, like, for example, Sartre, he will not deny, I think, the
possibility of the Biblical-Church interpretation of man and
Being, but he will hold either that it is one possibility and his
interpretation another, or, in the moments of absolute self-confidence, he might say his interpretation is deeper, i.e., more
original (ursprunglich), i.e., again, necessarily presupposed by
the Biblical interpretation, if only this interpretation would understand what it was saying. In effect, then, since he disrupts
the over-all " unity " (I am using the term " unity " here in
a very broad sense) of the Graeco-Roman-Judaeo-ChristianEuropean tradition, by recognizing, in his conception of the
autonomy of philosophy, only the purely intellectual (or, in his
own terms, conceptual or meditative or thoughtful) elements
appertaining to the Graeco-Roman-European tradition (by
European here I mean Eckhart, Boehme, Cusanus, Leibniz,
German philosophy since Leibniz, especially Kant, Schelling,
Hegel, Nietzsche, phenomenology, and his own personal genius,
all thoroughly denuded of any strictly Christian reference or
content), he is separating the Graeco-Roman-European element from the Judaeo-Christian element. He is pitting the two
elements against each other, and saying, in effect, that the union
of the two was a misfortune, that at any rate it was accidental
and unnecessary, that if the Judaeo-Christian element has reference to mystery, the Graeco-Roman-European element has
such reference too, and it is his duty to unearth it ( or, to use
his own terms, to release it, or let it reveal or release itself, or
to be open to it), and wherever he does not find it in the

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CHARLES li. MALIK

European secular tradition, he will provide it for that tradition
independently himself. There is no need for the Judaeo-Christian revelation; Europe and the West can dispense with it.
Europe and the West can fold back upon themselves in total
self-sufficiency and independence from any such alien contamination. If this view of mine is wrong, then I ask the very
simple question: Why does Heidegger not make full use of the
immense ontological-existential material, so full of mystery, so
full of depth and content, so directly relevant to all the themes
he discusses, so full of food for thought, so thought-provoking,
to use his own term, in the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles,
the liturgy of the Church, the writings, and especially the
prayers, of the saints, sacred music, including the great Protestant hymns, sacred art, the incredible iconography of the Orthodox Church?
Faith is a matter of believing others. Believing only your
thought, even the most sublime thought, leaves you entirely
within yourself. If there is a devil, this is exactly what he is,
"to be left entirely within yourself." This is why the devil
has been enjoying a marvelous field day in modern subjectivist
thought, including the German transcendental subjectivist
thought of Kant and Hegel. In this state of being, sooner or
later you either get bored or you degenerate. There are many
others who may induce faith in us. Of all the others Jesus
Christ of Nazareth is the most other. He is the wholly other.
The problem of thought is not what it thinks, nor to be faithful
to Being by bringing it to conceptual clarity or by letting it
simply unconceal itself. The problem of thought is what it
makes of the wholly other, of Jesus Christ. The problem of
thought is the decision it takes when it encounters Jesus Christ,
not only in the Bible, but in the face and life and thought of
the living human beings who, now and in history, believed in
Jesus Christ and remained faithful to him. What do you think
of Jesus Christ?-this is the most important question facing
every human being. Since it is a question of "What do you
think? " it faces especially the thinker. It is easy to put the

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

41

matter so simply, but let the thinker really and concretely ponder what the Bible says, how the saints were and what they
said, what the Church says and teaches, how it worships in the
Divine Liturgy, let him moreover meet a few humble Christians just around the corner from his house-and then he will
ask himself: What must I make out of all this? No other question then will appear to him more relevant or more pres.sing, or
more ontological. The trouble with thought and thinkers is that
they worship themselves, they do not know Christ. Until
thinkers have met the wholly other they have not thought:
they have only hugged themselves.
Jesus Christ, in all that he meant to the world in history, and
precisely in what he meant to Germany, meant the revelation
of the hidden truth of the human heart as well as man's most
authentic possibilities; and all this precisely as Heidegger is
most concerned with it. He calls every man to be true-true
precisely in the sense which Heidegger so wonderfully describes
in his doctrine of authenticity. Of course Christ does much
more than that, but he certainly does that. Who told the
Western world today that this existential truth can either be
revealed or conjured up or brought about autonomously by
man? When Christ calls man to be true he tells him, I am the
way, the truth and the life. All this is very well known in
Germany, very well known to Heidegger himself. Can Germany, therefore, with all the great truths it has revealed and
realized in history, truths which overflowed upon the entire
world, can Germany now, penetrated and blessed so abundantly
by Christ for 1500 years, deny its ownmost heritage? Can it
now, on the deepest plane of its existence, and on the tongue
of its greatest thinker, concerning the most momentous issues
(man, being, existence, truth, destiny, death) , afford to throw
off the " yoke of Christ " and revert to pre-Christian, indeed
pre-Socratic, paganism? On the western front of the main
building of the University of Freiburg in which I attended those
unforgettable lectures and seminars by Heidegger one could
read in bold letters at the very top of the wall: " Die Wahrheit

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CHARLES H. MALIK

wird euch freimachen." We know who said this, we know what
he meant by it, and we know the piety of those who carved
this saying on this 518-year-old great institution of higher
learning. Are we now to turn our gaze away from this saying
and from him who said it and the specific personal meaning
he attached to it, toward another inscription on the southern
wall of the same building, an inscription imposed on the University in the thirties, which reads " Zum ewigen Deutschtum "
-and if not Deutschtum then Menschheit, and if not Menschheit then simply and purely Dasein? Is the warm, personal,
inner, universal, Christian content, pointing to the beyond,
to the transcendent, to the ground-as Heidegger perhaps would
love to call it-now to be replaced by something vague, general,
particular, subjectivist, idealistic, mystical, pointing indeed to
some ground, but a ground absorbed in the immanence of total
darkness, a ground that is no ground at all, because it has lost
its own independent autonomy and freedom by being simply
subservient to the autonomy and freedom of Dasein? For the
real ground, the real Transzendenz (and Heidegger will pardon
me for using the word "real" here), is that in terms of which
Dasein is to be conceived rather than one itself conceived in
terms of Dasein and in order to serve and cushion him up. And
such a real ground, such a real Transzendenz, will not wait until
man discovers it, not even until the philosopher makes it speak;
it will have spoken before man makes it speak, certainly before
philosophy discovers it. The discovery of it by philosophy is
made possible only by a prior free uncovering of itself, so that
philosophy then will have to accommodate itself to it rather than
accommodate it to itself. This is the real prior, the real" schon,"
the real beforehand, the real Transzendenz. And this means a
real honest search for and a real humble recognition of that
voice coming from the real beyond-altogether beyond and
other than not only Deutschtum but M enschheit and Daseinand of him who uttered it and what it actually .said. The wlw?
and the what? here are decisive. And there is no equivocation
whatever abnnt the identity of the who? and the what? For

REFLECTION ON HEIDEGGER

43

I hear the voice saying, there is truth indeed, and the truth shall
make you free, but I am the way, the truth and the life. And
I happen to hear the voice really, truthfully coming altogether
from outside me-from outside all thought, all culture and all
philosophy-and I believe it. Any Transzendenz other than
this Transzendenz is not serious; it is self-abuse; it is immanence
all over again; it is a joke.
How much I wish Heidegger would ponder and comment on,
say, Isaiah 40, Psalm 139 and First Corinthians 13, in the manner in which he pondered and commented, say, on Holderlin
and Rilke, or in the manner in which, say, Augustine or
Chrysostom pondered and commented on these texts! It would
be a good exercise, I think. These three chapters are only preliminary; they afford only a foretaste of the real meat-in the
Gospels, in the Epistles, in the Psalms, in Job. Is there anything in all human literature, including Greek and German and
even Christian literature, comparable to this material? Why
should a Westerner of the caliber of Heidegger pass by this infinite wealth on the other side? Why divorce ourselves so
studiedly from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which has certainly formed and transformed us and our whole history and
culture? Why revert to heathenism alone? Why? And I use
the term heathenism here, not pejoratively, but with the fullest
appreciation and gratitude for the solid values it embodied, in
law, in art and in philosophy. But to live and think and act
under the hidden existential oath of having nothing to do with
the Judaeo-Christian tradition without which Western existence
is unthinkable, to appear to feel that any constitutive contact
with this tradition only pollutes and contaminates, is what I
do not understand. Not even Nietzsche, not even the heathen
doctrine of destiny and personal fate can make me understand
it.
Take, for example, a great psalm of David. Can Heidegger
say it and mean it as David said it and meant it-as innumerable believers today say it and probably mean it, if it
happens to be incorporated into the prayer life of the Church?

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CHARLES H. MALIK

Certainly he cannot. But the psalm is not therefore dead and
:finished. The psalm arose within the personal historicality of
David when he was addressing " the Lord "as he poured out his
heart to him. David was not only bewailing his lot, he was
not only poetizing as Holderlin and Rilke were, although of
course their poetizing too sprang from their own immediate
world situation. Nor was David only philosophizing or meditatively thinking on the human condition and on Being, as
Heidegger is. David was addressing a distinct personal being
wholly other than himself, whom he called " the Lord." This
addressing of his was not just a literary trick, a literary vehicle
for the conveyance of his own thoughts. It was most serious:
" the Lord " whom he was addressing was there, wholly other
than himself or his ideas and concepts. And today many serious
people, some good philosophers, read David every morning, antl
find him more relevant to their immediate personal situation,
and to the general situation of the world, than almost all contemporary philosophy and poetry; and with him and in his own
words they address " the Lord " who is there and who is wholly
other than themselves. This Holderlin and Rilke were not doing.
Whom then were they addressing? Whom does Heidegger address? "The universe," "nature," "the world," "Being," "some
other poet or philosopher," " a student of his," " his closest
friend," " a colleague of his," " the general philosophical audience," " the present age at large," " the future ages," " his own
feelings," "himself," "nobody," "Nothing" ? Thus the psalm
arose from the authentic historicality of David, and David was
able to say and sing it authentically, regardless of whether it
belonged to the historicality of Heidegger or Holderlin or Rilke.
But if it does not belong to their existential historicity, is it
therefore a pure relic to them? When they read it-if they
read it-what does it mean to them? Is it nothing, does it
mean nothing? It happens to belong to the existential historicity of innumerable people, both by reason of their personal
sufferings and joys, and by reason of the fact that the Church
has kept it alive. Since it was living and not dead in the days

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of Augustine and Chrysostom and Luther, who, through their
meditative thinking, commented on it in a most marvelous manner; since it is still living today in the lives of innumerable
people, some of whom, through their meditative thinking (better, through their prayerful meditation), are commenting on
it in their own way; the fact that it does not belong to the
existential historicity of Heidegger, for Heidegger to be able
to meditate and comment on it, is of course a problem that has
to be faced. Why is the matter so? Is it fate or destiny or luck,
good or bad? Must we starkly note the matter and leave it at
that? Must we not wonder at it? Is it enough to say that God
is dead? Does the matter end with this statement, which, it
must be noted, when made by Heidegger and Nietzsche, is made
with an unmistakable undertone of sadness? Is it enough to say,
the gods have defaulted, the gods have forsaken us? They may
indeed have defaulted, they may have forsaken Heidegger and
Nietzsche and innumerable other people in this brave new age.
But the fact that they have not forsaken innumerable other
people, and they have not forsaken the Church, which is not
exactly nothing in the world today, ought to force Heidegger
and Nietzsche to stop and think. They cannot impose their
position on others, and I doubt that they want or care to, much
as they may wish it to embrace all, so as not to feel uncomfortable in the presence of those who continue believing. May
it not be that the defaulted God is only a psychological (a la
Nietzsche) reflection on man and his mysterious freedomon this or that man, or this or that epoch or culture? Far from
God Himself forsaking us, may it not be that in the mystery
of our freedom we have forsaken God ourselves? This is all
food for thought even if God does not exist. Firstly, because
Nietzsche and Heidegger really do not know that God does not
exist, although Nietzsche may will Him not to exist; and
secondly, because to dismiss the matter by saying, this is my
fate, I cannot help myself, I cannot be other than I, is not
enough, especially when I find myself in the presence of many
others who, in this respect, are other than I.

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THEOLOGIZING

HEIDEGGER

The dethinging of things, the denaturing of nature, the dehumanizing of man-these afflictions of our age Heidegger
superbly describes and laments. He also traces them to their
origin in certain perversions of the human heart. But then to
detheologize theology is to compound the affliction. Never
without the real living God Who has revealed Himself and Who
is not waiting to be revealed from some "unheard-of center
of Being" can man save himself from the countless devils who
are now possessing him. And many theologians-Bultmann,
for example-are Heideggerizing theology instead of theologizing
Heidegger.
Nietzsche and Heidegger appear to be more upset by the
demise or absence of God than believers appear to rejoice in
his presence. The philosophers are quite uneasy at this situation. They are haunted by a terrible lack. They bemoan it all
the time, Nietzsche by attacking Christianity and doing everything he can to confirm the death of God, thereby only succeeding in confirming his state of being haunted by a lack, and
Heidegger by assuring everybody either that God is really
finished, or that if He still exists He must, if He should return
(because Heidegger doubts not that He has departed) , take full
cognizance of his, Heidegger's, ontological-existential analytic
of man; namely, if God returned, He would have to return only
as a guest of whom the host will be the being of man as Heidegphenomena in Sein und
ger characterized it by his 100 or
Zeit. God the guest must accommodate Himself to man the host.
At least, if God exists, He and man are coeternal, not of course
in the Aristotelian or Hegelian or Christian sense of eternity,
but in the Heideggerian ontological sense of equiprimordiality.
One is not quite sure whether Nietzsche and Heidegger in their
concern about God really miss His presence (I suspect they
could not be so agitated if they did not), or are really scared
lest they should wake up one morning to find that He has suddenly returned, or are doing everything they can to " prove "
His non-existence or at least irrelevance. Since God did play an

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47

important role-and is still playing an important role in certain
quarters-they appear to be occupied with devising substitutes
for that lost role. It appears that something that would function as God is necessary. To Nietzsche this substitute (Ersatz)
is man-not of course this awful man, you and I and every man
including certainly Nietzsche himself, but the tJbermensch, who
can only be reached by somebody resolutely overcoming in himself all that has been man hitherto and straining after the full
measure of the tJbermensch as delineated by Nietzsche. As
the substitute God thus turns out to be a figment of Nietzsche's
own imagination, the ultimate consolation Nietzsche finally
lands in is the Idea; not a given, independent, existing, whole
human being. To Heidegger the substitute appears to be philosophy itself, otherwise called thinking or meditative thinking;
and if philosophy is considered only a way, then the substitute,
the end of the way, is Being or Nothing. "We are too late for
the gods and too early for Being. Being's poem, just begun, is
man." But even when thinking does not rest except in phenomena (the self-revelation of Being), still these phenomena,
being the end of the way, are themselves in a sense ideas. They
cannot be Being itself. German thinkers are incurable idealists
no matter how much they appear to be rebelling against their
own idealism. You do not substitute for God something less
than God-less than God both in being and in idea. It is clear
why the substitute as idea is false, because God is not an idea.
Nor in being, because the old dead God (missed or unmissed)
did not function as idea to be sought and realized, but
supreme being, both in the life of the simple peasant woman and
in the life of Paul or Augustine. They submitted themselves
to Him, but here we are asked to create Him ourselves. Thus
the brave new substitutes for God will simply not do. The dead
old God will keep on haunting man until man repents himself
of his rebellion or until He, God, returns in power and glory
despite this rebellion and in the face of it. For presumably He
is used to such rebellion and sees through the present one and
is not much disturbed by it.

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CHARLES H. MALIK

In his What Is Called Thinking? Heidegger calls Nietzsche's
The Antichrist" the terrible book" (p. 80). He does so, however, in the context of commenting on the first sentence and the
last sentence of Nietzsche's" autobiography," which Nietzsche
wrote at the age of 19 and whose manuscript was first discovered in 1935 and published the following year. In the last
sentence Nietzsche says: "Thus man grows out of everything
that once embraced him; he has no need to break the shacklesthey fall away unforeseen, when a god bids them; and where
is the ring that in the end still encircles him? Is it the world?
Is it God? " Heidegger then immediately observes:
Even the later Nietzsche, the man who, in the last year of his
creativity and after losing balance more than once, wrote the terrible
book The Antichrist, was still asking the same question-if only we
can and will read it. However-to hear this questioning, to come
close to his ways of thought, one requires here to respect and to
acknowledge. Respecting and acknowledging are not yet agreement; but it is the necessary precondition for any confrontation.

For my part, I respect and acknowledge Nietzsche even innay, especially in-The Antichrist, though I do not agree with
him; and I respect, acknowledge and wholly agree with Heidegger on these observations of his. I feel absolutely sure Nietzsche
" was still asking the same question " at the end of his life; his
real self-tormenting lure was throughout God-not any god, but
Christ himself. No man knows what St. John calls in the Book
of Revelation " the depths of Satan " and at the same time the
superabounding grace of Christ (on " where sin abounded, grace
did much more abound," see Karl Barth's Christ and Adam,
Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional Papers No. 5, London,
Oliver and Boyd, 1963) except after he has been shaken to his
deepest depths, politically-socially-morally, bytheutterrottenness of the world, morally-personally-existentially, by the utter
rottenness of his own nature, and, culturally-intellectuallymorally-existentially, by honestly " confronting" Nietzsche in
all his works (especially in Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Will
to Power and The Antichrist) in an "acknowledging" and

REFLECTION ON HEIDEGGER

49

" respecting " spirit, and then, despite this overpowering experience, remaining unshaken in his faithfulness to Christ, or,
more exactly, Christ remaining unshaken in his faithfulness to
him.

* * * * *
The genuineness, the seriousness, the directness, the power,
the sureness, the freedom, the total abandon of Jesus in the
account of the Gospels! And yet one must have the power of
multiplying what he thinks he senses in the Gospels by a factor
of one hundred or more to capture something of the original
fullness of the reality of Jesus. That is what we mean when
we sometimes say: would that we were there with Jesus in the
company of Peter and John and Andrew and James and Philip
and the others! Jesus was so absolutely full of certainty and
power, and that with respect to the most serious matters, that
he never hesitated to say what he said and to act in the manner
he acted. Where in all history is there anything even remotely
comparable to this? And that not just in phenomenological
description and ontological analysis, but in actual living and
being, which included, among other things, training the disciples,
establishing the Church, curing the sick, raising the dead, forgiving sins, teaching truths, imparting his spirit, resolutely
carrying his cross and dying. Nietzsche asks on several
occasions: Who before him saw what he saw and said what he
said? So does Heidegger: such and such a doctrine or interpretation or position or exposition he was the first to grasp and
formulate. And both are right: there are things that these
two men have seen and said that are, of their kind, unique in
history. But the question is not about what they saw and said
about being and existence; the question is being and existence
themselves. The phenomenon of the being and existence of the
total living Person Jesus Christ of Nazareth is itself, of its
kind, unique in history, and not some phenomenological-ontological writing of his. This phenomenon ought to interest the
unprejudiced, that is, the open, philosopher, especially if he
happens to be dealing with human existence, and doubly so

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CHARLES H. MALIK

if he grasps authentic existence as masterfully as does Heidegger. For there is no "instance" of authentic existence that
even compares with Jesus Christ of Nazareth; I do not mean
the "idea" and "description" of authentic existence, but the
very act and being of authentic existence itself; Jesus Christ
is authentic existence par excellence. And if the philosopher
does not interest himself in this unique instance of authentic
existence, then, it seems to me, there must be a contingent
reason for that, and not an essential one. Of course Nietzsche
interested himself in Jesus Christ no end, but in his own prejudiced, unopen way. Despite the perverse and totally unworthy manner of his interest, still Nietzsche unerringly felt
that an existential philosopher of his kind cannot not notice
Jesus Christ; and that is to his eternal credit. Why should
the philosopher be so wary of going out of himself (this is the
real ecstasis, and not what Heidegger describes in relation to
past, pre.sent and future in the second part of Sein und Zeit) ,
out of his subjectivity, out of his ideas, out so to speak of his
reason, out of his era, out of the Weltgeist which so numbs and
stifles him, to encounter someone altogether strange and
different, altogether other, altogether outside the whole tradition
of Graeco-German philosophy, and yet someone speaking with
such power and force, someone actually living around him and
in his tradition in a thousand different ways? Perhaps he is
afraid of being then judged, of falling then under his spell and
control, and the philosopher wants to be himself the judge,
himself the one who would control and cast spells on others.
Jesus deeply disturbs the philosopher, and yet this disturbance
is nothing yet compared to the depths of disturbing of which
Jesus is capable; let the philosopher only cling to Jesus for
twenty or thirty years of his life, and let Jesus be gracious
enough not to forsake him but to keep on chastening him all
these years, and then he will be treated to dimensions of
disturbance that he cannot now dream of.
Who ever cried on reading philosophy, even the deepest
philosophy? But innumerable people have cried on reading the

REFLEdTiON ON HE'.IDEGGER

51

Bible or hearing the Bible read in church, and really attending
to what is being said and who said it, and to the concrete
circumstances under which it was said. People too have cried
on reading Dostoyevsky or other great literature; but a responsible consideration of why they cried here will always lead you
to the Bible and to Christ and the Church as the ultimate
ground. Plato and Aristotle wrote very great literature; so did
Heidegger and Nietzsche; but we never cry when we read
them, nor do I think people cried in the sense I mean here
in the Academy or the Lyceum. I believe when we thus cry we
are closer to Being-in any and every sense of the termthan when we only wonder, ask questions, analyze and reflect,
and think meditatively. After I receive the gift of tears-and
it is a gift-and I accept it without gloating over it or hardening
my heart (and this non-hardening of the heart and this nongloating are themselves also gifts), I can do anything better:
I think better, I write better, I work in the garden better, I
discuss things with my friends better, I attend to my duties
better, I laugh better, I see better, I hear better, I eat better,
I sleep better, I walk better, I listen better, I understand better,
I love better, and, I think, if I am then called upon to die, I die
gracefully and in peace; at least I talk much less, or I do not
talk at all. Then I really am, then Being really presences itself
to me. This is not to be explained psychologically or physiologically: this is a fact that ought to disturb the self-satisfied
explaining psychologist or philosopher at his deepest.
"Now all these things happened unto them as warnings: and
they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the
world are come." (First Corinthians 10: 11) The world ended,
it was simply finished, in Jesus Christ. Henceforth we have
only a new creature or death, or what in a sense is even worse
than death, dying. Everything is simply dying outside Jesus
Christ, no matter how exuberant and self-sufficient it may seem.
Henceforth we have either those who were touched by Jesus
Christ or the dead who have ended. To expect salvation from
within the world after the world has ended in Jesus Christ is

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CHARLES H. MALIK

hopeless. This means every world has ended in Jesus Christ,
including this very world in which we live today-and not only
the world of Paul. This means all our worldly standards and
hopes today are hopeless because they have all ended in Jesus
Christ. This means the only possibly new thing left is this or
that person or culture which is saved, adopted, chosen by Jesus
Christ, born anew in him. There is nothing new any more except the experience of Jesus Christ, except the Holy Spirit falling
upon this or that person in fellowship with those upon whom He
has already fallen. Everything else is boringly, disgustingly,
monotonously meaningless repetition. Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence," hailed by him as his greatest affirmation, is itself the
psychological and subjectivist expression of the total meaningless sameness of existence apart from Jesus Christ. (I say" psychological and subjectivist" because Nietzsche does not really
know that " eternal recurrence " is true, but only " wills" it
to be, as to him the will, indeed his will, creates both being and
truth; thus " eternal recurrence " is the pure fantasy of Nietzsche's effervescent imagination; it is, to speak a la Nietzsche, a
sort of psychological relief-he would call it, of course, selfovercoming-from his terrific subjectivist resentment, and profound sense of revenge, against the world, including above all
the rottenness of man.) Now that the world has ended, now
that there is nothing new any more, the only thing that can
stand is the Church, because it is held together by the resurrected Lord who sitteth now and forever on the right hand of
God. I know perfectly the answer of existential ontology to
all this " nonsense," and I can elaborate it, though of course not
as well as Heidegger, but, thanks to my discipleship under him,
somewhat as he can. But in the living knowledge of Jesus
Christ and his grace and strength and power and certainty and
victory and peace, in the fellowship of the Church, this answer
leaves me completely cold, even when made by Heidegger. It
shakes me, it tests me, but still it is nothing in the actual
presence of Jesus Christ. I am talking from outside existential
subjectivism and humanism, outside Heideggerian philosophical

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

53

anthropology, outside the quietism of medieval German mysticism, outside the pseudo-transcendentalism of phenomenological-ontological-conceptual immanentism. I am talking from
the side of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not, as Pascal would protest, the
God of the philosophers. I am talking from the knowledge of
Jesus Christ in my own living-dying life, in the living-dying life
of countless persons I know, in the living-dying life of the great
saints-Paul, Ephrem, Chrysostom, Damascene, Augustine,
Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross. I am talking from what
Jesus Christ has meant in art (the great cathedrals, the great
sacred music, the great iconography), in poetry (Ephrem, Dante,
John Donne), in the law systems of civilized humanity, in the
amazing endurance of whole communities that withstood over
the centuries the most unbelievable trials and odds. How did
they stand? Only by their love for Je-sus Christ, nay by his love
for them. I am talking about the l ring-suffering, though appropriately concealed, life of the lhurch today in our very
midst-in Europe, in Russia, in America, in the Middle East,
everywhere in the world. This living-suffering being is impressive, and not only to " the ' they '," to " das Man."
"Upon whom the ends of the world are come "-faith cries
that if Heidegger is waiting (and to wait is a fundamental
Heideggerian structure of being) until something turns up from
the womb of Being to save the world-I mean, to save Germany,
Western civilization, technological-calculative-objectifying-dethinging civilization, which has seduced and gotten hold of the
entire world-Heidegger is waiting in vain. He is waiting in
vain because he need not wait. For something has long since
turned up from the womb of Being precisely to perform this
function, even Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who continues to dwell
in our midst, whose glory is the glory of the only begotten of
the Father, and who, as he dwells among us, is "full of grace
and truth."
"Upon whom the ends of the world are come "-faith cries
that if Heidegger thinks that meditative thinking (besinnliches

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CHARLES H. MALJK

Denken), when it turns up in this or that thinker, or when
it entrenches itself in high places (a la Plato who dreamt that
when the philosophers or the authentic meditative thinkers rule,
all will be well with this or that city or state or the world) ,
is going to save us from the curse of calculative thinking and
the degeneracy it engenders in concrete personal and cultural
existence, he is mistaken. He is mistaken for four reasons.
First, because it is not a matter of thought at all, but of fundamental attitude, of total personal orientation, of " the spirit "
of the thinker which is wholly distinct ±:Porn his thought, of his
will (in this sense certainly the will is decisive), of being-and
it is this that creates the thought, and not the other way round;
and therefore the question is how to bring about this original
being which will itself create the meditative thinking. (Heidegger of course fully agrees with all this.)
Secondly, because the dark, rebellious, destructive, dehumanizing pitfalls to which human existence is heir, if they do
not cling to calculative-objectifying thought, as they do today
with such fateful devastation, will cling to something elsedespotism, dictatorship, falsehood, radical hatred of personal
human existence and its inalienable freedom, self-will, degeneracy, totalitarianism, whole systems based on hatred, rejection
and force. Therefore Augustine was right in holding that we
shall always have the corrupt city of man side by side with
and around and interpenetrating the city of God, which itself
too is subject to all sorts of infirmities. Thus the city of God
will always be .struggling, suffering, getting crucified at the
hands of the city of man and of human corruption in general,
but penetrating and convicting and leavening it all the same;
and thus the worry about the world even as swept and
dominated by calculative thinking is a misplaced worry. The
real worry is about the integrity of the existing city of God, and
about saving one's own integrity in the midst of the universal
collapse, as Socrates says in the Republic, by taking refuge in a
genuine lee while the storm rages. But unlike Socrates, who
knew nothing about it, the believer knows that, now that " the

REFLECTION

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55

ends of the world are come upon us" in Jesus Christ, this
shelter, this lee can only be Jesus Christ in the Church.
Thirdly, because, if Christ created the best in Germany and
the West, including the preservation and appropriation of a
purged, i.e., Christened, Graeco-Roman heritage, as well as
meditative thinking itself, then for Germany and the West now
to seek salvation outside this their creator, namely, "to go awhoring after other gods," is demonically rebellious ingratitude,
and therefore they will be denied the salvation they seek.
Fourthly, because, while meditative thinking can rightly bewail its lot in the world today, it is intellectual pride, it is a
form of the will to power, nay it is willful usurpation of power,
for meditative thinking to suppose that it can ever save itself,
let alone the world. Without grace and tenderness from above
and from outside, meditative thinking is as doomed as calculative thinking and as the rest of us. Thus meditative thinking
should either fall on its knees and smite its breast confessing
the sin of arrogance and false self-sufficiency and repenting itself
of it-and I do not expect ever to be treated to the spectacle
of a philosopher, as philosopher, falling on his knees and smiting
his breast and repenting of the sin of intellectual pride-or
stoically and without the slightest hope accept its inevitable
doom.
In What ls Called Thinking? Heidegger suggests an original
relationship (in Part II, Lecture III) between thanking and
thinking. He relates the Old English thencan, to think, to
thancian, to thank. The discussion is ontological and suggestive.
In giving thanks, the heart gives thought to what it has and what
it is.
Original thanking is the thanks owed for being.
We give thanks for something by giving thanks to him whom
we have to thank for it. The things for which we owe thanks are
not things we have from ourselves. They are given to us. We receive many gifts, of many kinds. But the highest and really most
lasting gift given to us is always our essential nature, with which
we are gifted in such a way that we are what we are only through
it. That is why we owe thanks for this endowment, first and un-

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CHARLES H. MALIK

ceasingly.... But the thing given to us, in the sense of this dowry,
is thinking. . . . How can we give thanks for this endowment,
the gift of being able to think what is most thought-provoking,
more fittingly than by giving thought to the most thought-provoking? The supreme thanks, then, would be thinking? And the
profoundest thanklessness, thoughtlessness? Real thanks, then,
never consists in that we ourselves come bearing gifts, and merely
repay gift with gift. Pure thanks is rather that we simply think ...
These are indeed thought-provoking admonitions, so true
and fundamental, especially as addressed to students. Heidegger is saying that the best thanks you can give me is to learn
to think yourselves. The discussion thus stops at the gift for
which we ought to be thankful: our essential nature which is
to think. Apart from whether Heidegger thinks that our essential nature is to think, rather than, in conformity with Leibniz, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to will (and he discusses or implies this position in many places), in the phenomenology of thanking the " to " is at least as primary as the
"for": we always owe thanks to somebody for .something.
Heidegger does not move on to the to whom? Are we thankful
to Being for articulating itself through us? This is clearly in
the end a mode of thanking ourselves. This vagueness or .silence
on the question of the to whom?, this leaving the matter freischwebend, reveals Heidegger's mystical, Eckhartian monismexactly the same type of outlook one finds in Hammarskjold's
Markings. The personal and interpersonal element fuses or
merges or dissolves into impersonal, mystical cosmologism or
ontologism. Man is alone-he has nobody to whom to give
thanks; therefore he thanks himself, or Being. It would be unfair to Heidegger to belabor this point, but the danger of radical
solitude, radical individualism, radical subjectivism, radical
hesitation to express gratitude to a person, exists: one misses
the warmth of the interpersonal element, within which all thankfulness moves. Love is more fundamental than thinking or
thanking, and something is inhibiting us when we merely equate
thinking with thanking. It is not for nothing that in the Christian tradition God is equated with love, and not with thought,

REFLECTlON ON HEIDEGGER

as with Aristotle-not even with thought as thanks. Whoever
thanked thanking itself? Whoever thanked Being or the universe or nature or the unheard-of center or Nothing for his
ability to think or to thank? To thank is to thank somebody,
and ultimately to thank Somebody who is really worthy of
being thanked, and that can only be God. For every human
being we thank is not exactly worthy, and even the quality in
him for which we thank him (his compassion, generosity, hospitality, love, consideration, sympathy, helpfulness) he owes
to somebody beyond himself, and in the end to God. "I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord," cried Paul. The commonest phrase on the mouth of everybody in the Middle East
is" thank God"; every thanks is ultimately "thank God." It
is easy for secularized, technologized, progressive, modern, immanentized, Western society to make fun of this and to call
it at times " a relic " of an old superstition. I am sure, regardless of how much it has in fact become a relic, and regardless
of his own position on God, Heidegger would appreciate and
respect the purity and mystery of the original intention of this
phrase. One of my many phenomenological-existential proofs
for the existence of God is that we thank each other all the time,
and we never really mean this thanking to stop at the other person we thank, knowing man's essential mortality and corruption. An absolutely lonely person cannot thank nor can he be
thanked. The ratio, just as the thanking, is always social, always interpersonal. The " danke," the "thank you," fully understood, proves the existence of God, or else we are in the end
thanking nobody and nothing. Danke, thank you, therefore
God exists.
Presumably when we speak of " gift " and " giver " and " the
things for which we owe thanks are not things we have from
ourselves," we are not only speaking metaphorically; we are not
speaking " as it were " and " as if." Presumably we mean something solid, no matter how possibly vague and undetermined.
The question then is inevitable: what (not to say " who") is
the giver? What (not to say "whom") should we thank for

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CHARLES 11. MALIK

the gift? Did the gift "come" from nowhere and nothing?
Presumably it" came" from somewhere and something. What
is this source of the gift? Must I just thank Being for it, must
I thank nature, must I thank the " unknown God " of the
Athenians we read about in Acts 17? I know the gift, be it
thinking or willing, but I do not the giver. I know "for what"
I should be thankful, but I do not know " to whom or to what "
I should tender my thanks. And this lands me in the end precisely in the impersonal, cosmological, monistic mysticism of
the naturalists-a mysticism, to be sure, much more refined
and sophisticated than the mysticism of a Spinoza or a Bertrand
Russell. The Christian thanks the living, personal, given God
for the gift. He knows this source of the gift from faith; but
faith here is not something dark and magical and private. Faith
here includes a thousand different living evidences, especially of
the order of " trust and love " among the members of a living
community, the Church, held together by living traditions of
"trust and love " constituted and sustained by the Holy Spirit
of Jesus Christ. Without the to in the act of thanking, the for
remains wholly unsupported, hanging in mid-air.

* * * * *
Heidegger has a profound nostalgia for God. " Die Frage
nach dem Sinn des Seins," is probably the fittest motto of his
whole life. Nietzsche had a similar nostalgia. The two men
simply miss God. On every page of Heidegger I sense this
longing for mystery, this nostalgia for God. He desperately
wants faith, but he does not seem to be able to get it. One
who has eyes to see and ears to hear the hidden melody of his
thought will find Heidegger sharpening, in his own way, almost
to the breaking point, the tension between thought and faith;
he will find him struggling to show that without ground and
mystery and transcendence, without " the beyond," thought
is dead and forlorn. Being is there, Being is independent-you
only let it speak. The difficulty, the impediment, is not in Being,
but in you. Nietzsche too sharpens this tension, not "almost"
to the breaking point but " precisely " to the breaking point,

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59

and beyond. One interpretation of Heidegger-of the service he has rendered-is that he is profoundly nostalgic
for a reinterpretation of the profane-pagan tradition in
terms of some religious faith. H this is so then he is £aced
with the inexorable double disjunction: either go back to
the faith of your fathers, absorbing and making foll use of
the profane tradition without losing any of faith's most
distinctive elements viz., God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the
Church, the Resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of the body,
etc.; (Schelling at the end of his life was distinctly groping in
that direction); or seek another faith (there are plenty of them
around!) and wholly identify yourself with it; or, if you cannot
return to the faith of your fathers, and you are not satisfied
with any other available faith (and this is part of the greatness
of Heidegger, that he knows that all the faiths that are being
peddled about are not the real thing) , then create yourself a
faith of your own. To what degree this third alternative is
possible, is of course the greatest problem for Heidegger. But
one cannot go on indefinitely affirming the profane tradition
and completely extruding faith, leaving only a vague nostalgia
for something. One cannot straddle indefinitely between faith
and reason, in any sense of the term reason, without profound
personal tragedy; neither can reason, in any sense of the term,
ever lead one to faith; but faith, originally given, can, without
compromising its integrity in the slightest, folly appropriate
reason, with whatever mystery reason may point to.
Christ is the target of a whole world-wide movement that
takes many forms, sometimes wholly unknown one to the other,
sometimes enemies of one another for different reasons. It is
like the many-headed hydra of Plato. Anti-Christian atheistic
thought, whether of the militant or of the subtle kind, is only
one tributary of this movement. Other tributaries swelling the
torrent are the return to pre-Christian heathenism and the
quest of the thought and life of the non-Christian paganism of
Asia and Africa. How much this heathenism and this paganism
are adulated today! There are many other tendencies con-

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CHARLES H. MALIK

spiring to the same end. The world simply hates Jesus Christ
because he judges it. How well he knew this from the beginning! "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before
it hated you." " The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth,
because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil." (The
" you " in the two quotations refers to two different audiences.)
How much Christ sees through the philosophers, of all peoples
" in the world " ! Especially the philosophers of Being, who,
sincere as they are in their quest, yet, instead of recognizing,
in humility and adoration, the only Being worthy of the name,
namely, the Being which is wholly other than themselves,
usually end up with seeing only their thought, that is, with
identifying thought and Being, and indeed, their thought and
Being! And so, if the world and the philosophers cannot crucify
Christ again, they will at least banish him, as the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoyevsky did when he intimated to him that
he should please go away!
While one may see in Nietzsche either ignorance of the
plenitude of grace and certainty which those who know Jesus
Christ experience in their own lives, or a certain perverse will
in relation to Paul and the New Testament, and to Christianity
in general, one cannot suspect either ignorance or perversion
of will in the case of Heidegger. Heidegger cannot possibly be
ignorant or superficial when it comes to Christ, the Church, the
saints, and the Bible. So, while Nietzsche is either ignorant or,
so to speak, possessed, Heidegger is neither the one nor the
other. This is a very strange situation. What is Heidegger's
state of being then from the Christian point of view? It can
only be being on the way back to faith-full-blooded faith, not
intellectualized faith, not conceptualized faith, not thought-out
faith; but the direct faith of Mary and Peter and Paul and
Augustine and Teresa; faith based on personal knowledge of
Jesus Christ; certainly not the faith of a Bultmann or a Tillich
or even a Kierkegaard, or any of the men now trying to Heideggerize theology instead of theologizing Heidegger. I do not see
any of these men in my mind falling on his knees and smiting

REFLECTION

ON HEIDEGGER

61

his breast and shedding tears of love and gratitude for and to
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as Augustine did in the garden, and
innumerable times afterwards. This is my interpretation of
Heidegger's constant questioning, his never resting in any position, although the illumination of any position he assumes or
thinks through for the time being is simply extraordinary. This
is my interpretation of his perpetual insistence on "the way,"
"the path," "the movement," "the stations of the way."
Heidegger is on the way back to the faith of his fathers. If only
die Kehre, the turn, of Heidegger's way should turn into die
Umkehr, the return, in the simple childlike sense of the termin the sense of the great conversions, or, better, great" returns"
of history-and this despite all doctrines of fate and helplessness, despite Holderlin's soothing words about "the enduring
measure common to all " whereby " each of us goes toward and
reaches the place that he can" (What Are Poets for?) . If in
God's providence this should happen, then we would have one
of the greatest events of the twentieth century, perhaps even
more important than the event of Solzhenitsyn! This is all in
God's hands.
CHARLES HABIB MALIK

American University of Beirut
Beirut, Lebanon

THE PROBLEM OF BEING IN HEIDEGGER
AND THE SCHOLASTICS

I

N HIS RECENTLY PUBLISHED lecture course at Marburg (1927) entitled The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology, Martin Heidegger makes the following observation: 1

They have said that my philosophical work is a Catholic phenomenology. Presumably because I am of the opinion that thinkers
such as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus have understood some(GPdP, 28)
thing about philosophy.

Heidegger goes on to say that there is no such thing as a
Catholic phenomenology, no more than there is a "Protestant
mathematics." 2 Yet it is remarkable nonetheless to us today
that Heidegger would have been popularly thought of as a
Catholic. He was afterwards taken to be an atheist and nowadays we are not sure what to think of the place of God in his
thought. The importance of Heidegger's observation is that it
underlines for us the Catholic scholastic origins of his thought.
Consider these remarkable facts. He was born and educated
1 I will use the following abbreviations
for the works of Heidegger: GPdP:
Gesamtausgabe, B. 24: Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie (Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1975). (This work is referred to in the body of the article under
the English translation of its title.) SZ: Sein und Zeit, 10. Aull (Tiibingen:
Niemeyer, 1963). English translation Being and Time, translated Macquarrie and
Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). N. II: Nietzsche, B. 2 (Pfullingen:
Neske, 1961). English translation in The End of Philosophy, translated Joan
Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). ID: Identity and Difference.
Translated with the German text by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper &
Row, 1969). We will cite the German pagination followed by a slash and the
English pagination.
2 Cf. the remark
in An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated R. Mannheim
(Garden City, Doubleday, 1961), p. 6, that a Christian philosophy is a square circle.
This is apparently an Husserlian attitude, for whom philosophy is strenge Wissenschaft.

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTlCS

in Catholicism and had studied for a while for the Catholic
priesthood. He was presented for the Ph.D. at Freiburg in 1914,
not by Rickert, under whom he did his major work, but by
Schneider, because the latter was also Catholic. 3 He wrote his
Habilitationsschrift in 1916 on Duns Scotus (on the pseudoScotistic de modis significandi) .4 His thought was inspired by
the work of an ex-priest-Brentano-on
Aristotle's Metaphysics-a figure who had also introduced the scholastic idea
of intentionality into modern thought. Brentano's book had
been given to him by Conrad Grober, who was to become Archbishop of Freiburg. From 1919-1927 Heidegger lectured on
such topics as: the philosophical foundations of medieval mysticism (he would have a life-long interest in Meister Eckhart),
the philosophy of religion, Augustine and Neoplatonism, Aristotle's De Anima, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric,
Aristotle and the High Scholastics, and medieval ontology. 5
Heidegger's beginnings are steeped in the Catholic-Aristotelian-scholastic tradition, and any understanding of his
thought must take into account his relationship with the
scholastics. The purpose of the present study is to discuss the
relation between Heidegger's understanding of Being and
scholastic metaphysics. This task will be carried out by
studying the critique which Heidegger makes of the scholastic
theory of essence and existence. This critique is contained in
a lengthy section of The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology (GPdP, §§ 10-12), a discussion which greatly expands and facilitates our understanding of the somewhat more
3 Paul Hiihnerfeld,
In Sachen Heidegger (Miinchen: Paul List Verlag, 1962),
p. 42.
•For a study of Heidegger's Duns Scotus book see my "Phenomenology, Mysticism and the Grammatica Speculativa: A Study of Heidegger's Habilitationsschrift," The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 5, no. 2 (May,
1974), 101-17.
5 For Heidegger's lectures
from 1915 to 1958 see W. Richardson, Heidegger:
Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: M. Nijhofl', 1962), pp. 663 ff.
For a study of Heidegger and Eckhart see my " Meister Eckhart and the Later
Heidegger" in two parts in The Journal of the History of Philosophy XII, 4
(October. 1974), 479-94 and xxiii, 1 (January, 1975), 61-80.

64

jQHN D. CAPUTO

cryptic presentation which Heidegger makes of the .same subject in his 1941 Nietzsche lectures (NII,
The focus of the present study lies in the fact that both
Heidegger and the scholastics, particularly the students of St.
Thomas Aquinas, claim to be the philosophers of Being par
excellence, and each claims that the history of philosophy (in
which each includes the other) is a history in which Being has
been " forgotten" or distorted into something which it is not.
What I am interested in more than anything else in these pages
is these conflicting counter-claims. For Heidegger has insisted
that it is only in recognizing the " ontological di:fference " between Being and beings that the " truth of Being" can be attained. And the Thomists maintain that only in St. Thomas's
metaphysics of esse-of the primacy within being (ens) of the
existential act of being-is there a genuine recognition of Being
as Being. For Heidegger, St. Thomas's distinction between essence and existence lies on "one side" of the ontological difference and lie.s therefore in the oblivion of Being. Yet Bernard
Rioux rejoins that St. Thomas has grasped the being (ens)
in its Being (esse) ,-sand therefore that he is acutely sensitive to
the ontological difference.
We must however proceed very carefully in attempting this
confrontation. We must not naively assume that when Heidegger .says that the distinction between Being and beings supersedes
the distinction between essence and existence, he is speaking
in the same terms as the scholastics and from the same standpoint. We must be on guard against thinking that he is merely
arguing that we replace one set of metaphysical categories with
another. As Father Richardson writes: 7
... one must be extremely cautious in seeing any correlation between what Heidegger means by Being and any sense that the
scholastics, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, gave to the term.
6 Bertrand Rioux, I:Etre et la verite chez Heidegger et Saint Thomas d'Aquin
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968) , p. 188.
7 Richardson, p. 8!'l0, n. !'l7.

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

65

Because Heidegger's work is through and through affected by
his phenomenological standpoint, the word "Sein " has for him
a radically altered-because phenomenological-meaning. We
are not therefore dealing with a different metaphysical distinction, but a radically different kind of philosophy of Being.
The overall plan of this study is quite .straightforward. In
the first half we will, in an expository way, follow Heidegger's
critique of scholastic metaphysics. A good deal of this section
will be devoted to his discussion of essence and existence in the
1927 lecture course, The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology. It will conclude with an examination of the 1941
Nietzsche lectures on the same theme. In the second half of the
study we will make a critical assessment of Heidegger's charge
against the scholastics. There we will take up explicitly the
question of whether the Thomistic notion of esse lies, as Heidegger claims, in the forgetfulness of Being.
PART I. HEIDEGGER'S CRITIQUE OF THE SCHOLASTIC
THEORY OF BEING

For reasons that cannot be fully developed here, Heidegger
always maintained that " the fundamental problem of phenomenology" is the problem of Being. The 1927 lectures are
devoted to a discussion of four main " theses " that have been
put forward concerning Being: (1) Kant's thesis that Being is
is not a real predicate; (2) the scholastic thesis that Being is
composed of essence and existence; (3) the thesis of modem
ontology that Being divides into res cogitans and res extensa;
(4) the thesis of the logician that Being is the copula. Kant's
thesis is related to that of the scholastics; this is evidenced by
the rejection by both Kant and Aquinas of the ontological argument. For neither philosopher can real Being be attained merely by knowing the definition of a thing. Both require a "there is" (Kant's "position") or a "judgment"
(Aquinas) in order to attain real being, even the Being of God,
though both philosophers held that God's essence includes existence. Kant's ontology thus is an extension of medieval ontology (GPdP, 108-110) .

66

JOHN D. CAPUTO

Heidegger entitles his treatment of the second thesis " The
Thesis of Medieval Ontology, which Goes Back to Aristotle:
Being-what (essentia) and Being-present (existentia) Belong to
the Structure of Being of the being." Two things are of interest
in this title.
(1) The thesis is said to go back to Aristotle. That is a
provocative statement. For there has been a vast literature
issuing from the Thomists and the medievalists which argues
that this particular ontological thesis does not go back to Aristotle or to any Greek philosopher. It cannot, it is claimed, because this thesis was introduced to explain creation, viz., the
contingency in being of the creature. But the Greeks had no
idea of creation and held to the eternity and necessity of the
world. Heidegger does not discuss this point, although he
does mention in passing that Aristotle does not have much
to say about existence. Nonetheless he does have his reasons
for taking this thesis back to Aristotle (and also Plato), which
we shall have occasion to examine below.
(2) Secondly, the title of the thesis gives us a preliminary
idea of how Heidegger sees the scholastic distinction between
essence and existence in relation to his own "ontological difference." Essence and existence belong to " the Structure of
Being of the being " (die Seinsverf assung eines Seienden) .
Accordingly essence and existence belong on the " Being " side
of the Being-being distinction. Thus they represent an " articulation " of Being, or what the scholastics would call the " composition" of Being (GPdP, 109). We might graphically represent the two distinctions as follows:
Heidegger
I scholastics

111
111

essence

Sein
I existence

II

Seiendes

I

Let us now turn to the body of Heidegger's 1927 text to see
how Heidegger works out his interpretation of scholastic metaphysics in detail.

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

67

Aquinas, Scotus and Suarez.
Heidegger begins his discussion by differentiating three different positions concerning essence and existence that have been
historically taken by the scholastics. For while all the scholastics agree that in God (ens a se) essence and existence are
identical, there is a longstanding controversy among them as
to how this distinction applies to creatures (ens ab alio) . Here
there are three major schools of thought: (1) Aquinas (Dominicans): "real distinction";
(2) Scotus (Franciscans):
"formal distinction"; (3) Suarez (Jesuits) : "distinction of
reason." What is interesting about this discussion is the slight
tilt which Heidegger shows-within the parameters of the
scholastic debate-towards Suarez's position. He rightly says,
citing in this connection Giles of Rome, that the core of the
Thomistic position is that, if the real distinction between essence and existence is not maintained, it would be impossible
to explain the being of creatures and how their being differs
from God's (GPdP, 28-31). Concerning Scotus, Heidegger expounds his theory that essence and existence represent different
aspects-truly different but not separable aspects-of the selfsame concrete being, these aspects being called by Scotus
" modalities " or " formalities " (distinctio formalis a parte rei)
(GPdP, 131-2) .8
But Suarez is afforded the most attention by Heidegger
(GPdP, 132-9). One can of course only speculate as to how
much Heidegger's preference for Suarez is affected by his own
brief excursion with the Jesuits. Heidegger credits Suarez with
having a decisive influence on modern philosophy, as having
communicated the main tenets of medieval ontology to the
modern period (GPdP, 112; SZ, 22/43-4; N II, 418/17). In
particular Suarez first made the distinction between metaphysica generalis (ontologia) and metaphysica specialis which
exercised such a decisive influence on Wolff and Baumgarten,
and through them on Kant and Hegel. General metaphysics
8 I am assuming in these pages that the reader is already familiar with the
scholastic tradition and I am concentrating my attention on what is distinctive
about Heidegger's interpretation of the scholastics,

68

JOHN D. CAPUTO

deals with the concept of being in general, and special metaphysics with particular beings. Indeed I do not believe we
would be too far astray in finding traces of this distinction in
Heidegger's own" ontological difference." For this is a distinction between Being-which is to be met with only in Dasein's
"understanding of Being "-and beings. Being is not any existing, particular being and must never be confused with such;
Being is rather that upon which beings are projected in order
to be understood in their Being. Being must be understood before beings, even as general metaphysics precedes special metaphysics. Thus "fundamental ontology "-the inquiry into
Dasein's understanding of Being-precedes the metaphysics
which is to be built up upon it and which will deal with particular, existing beings (the regional ontologies) .9
Suarez's position on essence and existence, Heidegger says,
" is the most suited for carrying out a phenomenological exposition of the problem" (GPdP, 135) because Suarez approaches
the problem on the level of experience. Suarez, we will recall,
argued that one could only make a conceptual distinction between essence and existence in created beings. If one considers
the actual, existing concrete being then it is clear that the
two principles are identical. For a thing is not real by something other than itself. Because Suarez's views are inspired by
considering what concretely exists, his standpoint is closer to
the phenomenological one, to first-hand seeing, to an "intuitive
look" at the created being. Aquinas, on the other hand, proceeds " conceptually " from the idea of what a created being
must be if it is to be intelligible. From Heidegger's phenomenological standpoint, Aquinas's view represents more of a
' theory ' which attempts a conceptual interpretation of the
"idea" of a created being.10
9 See Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, translated J. Churchill
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), § 2, on Heidegger's interpretation
of the distinction between general and special metaphysics in terms of his own
" ontological difference."
10 Heidegger's attribution
of a more existential approach to Suarez against a
more conceptual-abstract approach in Aquinas must be particularly painful to

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

69

The Genetic Origins of the Scholastic Distinction.
Scholastic metaphysics is a good example of what the phenomenologists call "objectivism," viz., a theory in which all
reference to the thinking subject is excluded in order to bring
a pure object into view. Objectivism is the theory of the objective thing in itself. Theoretical physics-for the scientific
realist at least-is another example. Thus scholasticism and
mathematical physics originate for the phenomenologist in a
similar frame of mind. (We recall Pascal's complaint about the
God of the philosophers versus the God of Abraham) . Phenomenologists reject objectivism on the basis of their theory
of intentionality, according to which every object is an object
for consciousnes; every objective property is a clue to a subjective activity in which it is constituted. Now both Heidegger
and Husserl in his later works argued for a " genetic phenomenology," viz., a phenomenological analysis which would
trace every theoretical object back to the foundational activities (Urstiftungen) in the life of the subject from which
these objects first originated and received their meaning. Thus
Husserl traced the origin of pure geometry back to the lifeworld of the first geometers, to their need to measure (metros)
the earth (geos) in order to build, farm, travel, etc. 11
Heidegger undertakes here just such an analysis of the origin
of the scholastic distinction between essence and existence. In
his Habilitati-Onsschrift, under the influence of Dilthey's Weltanschauung philosophy, Heidegger traced the medieval doctrine
of the analogy of being back to the amplitude of experience
of medieval man, i.e., to the presence in his experience of the
super.sensible realm of beings-of the soul, angels and God. 12
In The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology Heidegger
Gilson and his followers who contrast Suarez's philosophy of essence with Aquinas's
philosophy of existence.
11 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, translated David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1970), "The Origin of Geometry," pp. 858 ff.
12 Martin
Heidegger, Friihe Schriften (Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1972), 850-1.

70

JOHN D. CAPUTO

situates the origin of essence and existence in human productivity and making (Herstellen). This is carried out as follows.
For the scholastics existence is actualitas, but actualitas is
related to agere, the act in which something actual is brought
forth. In German existentia is translated as "Wirklichkeit .,
which is related back to the verb "wirken" (to effect or produce). Thus Giles says that esse is impressed upon essence in
order to bring it forth as a being. Now a being is constituted
as an actuality for the scholastic inasmuch as it is created,
brought forth, produced (hergestellt). Existence refers back
to the divine act of making (GPdP, 143-8).
Essence too operates within the same conceptual framework.
For the essence of a thing is that which gives a thing its ' look'
(eidos). For the Greeks eidos is the exemplar (Vorbild) for
the formation (bilden) of what is patterned after it (Gebilde) .
The exemplar is how what is produced looks before it is produced. Hence the definition of essence as quad quid erat esse,
that which a thing was to be (GPdP, 151). Again, the word
morphe, which belongs to the order of essence, sounds the
motif of that which is stamped or formed according to a certain
pattern (GPdP, 149-151) .
Both essence and existence refer back to the idea of what
is produced: essence is the look which the thing to be produced
has; existence is actually being brought forth. But the conceptual framework of producing and making leads back to
Dasein's own concrete Being-in-the-world. For Dasein lives its
everyday life within the horizon of a world of tools and instruments, of things which Dasein makes and uses (Zeuge, Gebrauchsdinge) , whether these things be actual products of his
(farm tools, e.g.) or that which, being "already there," he
uses (the farmer's field itself) (GPdP, 152-3). This conception
of Being within which Dasein lives his daily life is what Heidegger calls "being ready to hand" (Zuhandensein), i.e., Being
which is accessible to Dasein's use.13 Dasein itself, in its pre13 Notice how Heidegger's idea of "Zuhandensein"
tinction between " nature " and "art."

overlaps the traditional dis-

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCIIOLASTICS

11

ontological understanding of Being, supplies the horizon within
which beings can be conceived or made (or used) . Accordingly
Dasein itself supplies the horizon within which Being is interpreted in scholastic metaphysics, in which the Being of God
is determined as the creator (H ersteller) and the beings around
us are determined as "created" (hergestellt) .
Thus the ideas of essence and existence take their origin from
the subjective-existential sphere; they have their "birth certificate," to use Kant's expression (GPdP, 140), in Dasein's
concrete life. But this genetic origin was forgotten by the
scholastics, and that is what makes scholastic " objectivism "
possible. Like every objectivism it is naivete, forgetfulness
(GPdP, 155). Producing (Herstellen) is that by which something is brought forth so that it may stand there by itself
(fur sfoh steht: GPdP, 152). But once it is set forth we tend
to forget that and how it was put there. We stand back and
behold it. On the side of the subject, the practical life which
produces is replaced by the theoretical look of the observer. On
the side of the object the being takes on the look of the readymade, the finished, the in-itself (GPdP, 159-60) . Being-in-itself
is really Being which has been " released " and " set free " from
its subjective origin. Thus even as the origins of geometry
were forgotten, and the structures of geometry were taken over
as ready-made by Galileo and the practitioners of the new
science, even so the life-world origin of the ideas of essence and
existence dropped out of sight. Essence and existence are then
taken to mean objective structures of Being which have nothing
to do with the conscious subject out of whose concrete life they
are first born.
In Heidegger's view, ancient ontology was "tailor made"
(GPdP, 168) to the needs of medieval Christian philosophy
and theology. All its basic concepts-morphe,. hyle, eidos,
energeia, ousia-move within the horizon of Herstellen. To be
sure the ancients lacked the idea of creation ex nihilo. But
the fundamental horizon of its ontology, the pre-ontological
framework within which its basic concepts were framed, was

JOHN D. CAPUTO

that of making. Thus, even though the concepts of ancient ontology were modified by the medievals, the scholastics still
remained within the fundamental " understanding of Being "
which existed in antiquity. The changes made by the scholastics were ontic. They made new assertions about beings: the
demiurge and prime mover were replaced by a creator-God;
the psyche of Plato and Aristotle became the medieval anima,
the bearer of immortal life; they added the whole economy of
sin and redemption and the angelic order. But what Being
itself meant derived from antiquity: that which, being made
according to a pattern, stands forth finished and-to the observer-ready-made.
Heidegger's interpretation must indeed appear most provocative to the medievalists, and Thomists in particular, for whom
the idea of esse represents a distinctive and original principle
in Thomistic metaphysics, a principle which sets Thomas off
once and for all from Greek ontology. For Heidegger, the notion
of esse is but an extension of Greek ontology which leaves the
basic framework of Greek ontology untouched. We shall have
occasion to return to this idea below in our critical evaluation
of Heidegger's interpretation (Part II). But for the moment
we should point out that in his later writings Heidegger modifies
this view. In the Nietzsche lectures he will still regard the doctrines of essence and existence as belonging to the metaphysics
of making, but he will then say this metaphysics was distinctively medieval, not Greek. This too will be discussed below.

The Articulation of Being and the Ontological Difference.
Heidegger next raises the question of the relationship of this
distinction to his own " ontological difference." He approaches
this problem by criticizing the applicability of these categories
to Dasein. Dasein, he says, does not answer to the question
of ' what ' (quid) is it, but to the question of ' who ' is it. It is
inappropriate to speak of the "whatness" or "quiddity" of
Dasein. Nor is Dasein's existence mere existentia (Vorhandenheit) , having-been-brought-forth. On the contrary, Dasein is

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

78

the thrown and " factical " being whose Being is an issue for
itself. Neither category befits Dasein. In place of essentia
one must speak of Dasein's being-a-self (Selbstsein); Dasein
is always 'I myself' (Jemeinigkeit), whether in the mode of
being faithful to itself (Eigentlichkeit) or not (Uneigentlichkeit) . And in place of existentia one must speak of Dasein's
" facticity ." 14 Essence and existence are categories of things
and fit under a more general distinction between ' how ' a
thing is and 'that' it is. We may diagram this as follows:

How
That

I
I
I

Dasein
Selfhood (W erheit)
Facticity

Non-Dasein
I
I Essence (W asheit)
Existence
I

In Being and Time Heidegger says that the" essence" of Dasein
lies in its "existence" (SZ, 42/67). But he puts the word
essence in quotes, to differentiate it from the traditional idea,
and he uses "Existenz " in the Kierkegaardian sense, which
is sharply differentiated from existentia. Thus he uses the language of the tradition to say something quite untraditional. I
think the sentence-the traditional definition of God-is meant
to have something of a shock value and, in its paradoxicality,
to draw attention to Heidegger's new concept of Dasein.
' How ' and ' that' thus constitute the basic " articulation ·•
of Being. This distinction is itself differentiated according to
the various kinds or regions of beings to be considered. We may
diagram this as follows:
Being (Sein)
I beings (Seiendes)
I
that
I
how
I
I
Selfhood I individual Dasein
Dasein
I Facticity
V orhandensein I existentia
I essentia I individual things
J

"Despite what Heidegger says here this two-fold articulation of Dasein's Being
is a Procrustean bed into which Dasein does not suitably fit. Dasein has a three--

fold temporal structure.

74

JOHN D. CAPUTO

Thus the categories of essence and existence have a two-fold
shortcoming. In the first place, they are the categories of things.
They do not apply to man. Nor do they apply to God, Who is
not a" thing" either. That is why Pascal raised his complaint
about the God of the philosophers, and why Heidegger later
on would speak of the necessity to find a God to Whom one
could bend one's knee (ID, 140/71-fl). These are categories
which have been drawn from the sphere of Dasein's everyday
Being-in-the-world and from the sphere of its commerce with
things. They befit neither man nor God. Hence one gets no
closer to the Being of God or men when one settles the question
of whether essence and existence are the same or different in each.
For one's understanding of the Being of each is radically defective.15 This brings us to the second fault of this distinction.
In remaining wholly on one side of the ontological difference, it
fails to raise in a radical way the question of the meaning of
Being. It does not rise above the conception of Being as
V orhandensein to question Being itself in its manifold sense.
It has not ascended to Being itself but remains confined within
a certain regional category of beings, a limited kind of Being.
Were it truly a radical metaphysics, scholasticism would have
conceptualized the ontological difference. It would have recognized the radical difference between Being and beings, that
Being is never a being or region of beings, flnd that it can never
be confined within a single kind of Being. But instead the
scholastics contented themselves with the understanding of
Being which had been passed down to them from antiquity.
They devoted their energies to debates about the structures or
articulation of Being-as-V orhandensein without ever stepping
out of the circle of this understanding of Being to question it
as such, and that means without ever truly raising the question
of Being. That is the criticism which Heidegger has in mind
15 We can see here why Heidegger does not identify
God with Being but
locates Him within the sphere of beings. Heidegger does not mean that God is
an individuum limited by some principium individuationis. He means that the
Being of God is always approached from some prior understanding of Being which
lays down the basic framework in terms of which we determine God's Being.

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

75

when he says that the scholastic distinction remained on one
side of the ontological difference.

Essence and Existence According to the Later Heidegger.
It is not possible to adequately address ourselves to the question of Heidegger's interpretation of the scholastic doctrine of
essence and existence without including a discussion of the later
Heidegger's treatment of this theory in 1941, some 14 years
after the Marburg lectures (N II, 899-420/1-19). Heidegger's
standpoint has been altered considerably in the intervening
years, so much so that the whole project of transcendentalhermeneutical phenomenology, such as we find it in 1927-and
.so of a regress to the 'subject' (Dasein) (GPdP, 108) as the
explanatory basis for what Being means-has been overcome
in favor of a thinking in terms of the history and mission of
Being (Seinsgeschick). Speaking of the second part of Being
and Time (a destruction of the history of metaphysics), Heidegger says:
But this destruction, like phenomenology and all hermeneuticaltranscendental questions, has not yet been thought in terms of the
history of Being.
(N II, 415/15)

What Being means in the middle ages is now understood to be
the way Being reveals itself to medieval man, rather than the
way Being was projected in the medieval understanding of
Being.
As in 1927 Heidegger traces the distinction between essence
and existence back to Plato and Aristotle. But the difference
is this. For the later Heidegger the original essence of Being
is expressed in the Greek words aletheia and physis. That is
to say, Being is the process of emerging into presence and
abiding there; it is the process of self-showing by which the
being shows itself from itself. Rather than being the light projected by Dasein's understanding of Being (1927), it is the
light of Being itself in which beings are made visible to Dasein.
Now this original essence of Being is found in its pristine form

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

in the Presocratics, after whom it is progressively covered over.
Plato and Aristotle are the first figures in the history of " metaphysics," and that means they are already fallen out of the experience of Being. But being .so close to the Presocratics they
have retained something of the power and meaning of their
original experience. For Plato Being is the presence which
abides (ousia) not in individual beings but in the eidos,. which
is the true and abiding look of a thing. Essence (eidos) is prior
to individual things (existence). Aristotle, with his distinction
between ousia in the primary and secondary sense (Cat. V, 2a
11 ff.) reverses this order. For him, Being is the presence which
abides in the form of the singular individual. What exists is
prior to its pure look. Thus Plato and Aristotle open up the
distinction between essence and existence, and in .so doing
inaugurate the history of metaphysics. But in both cases Being
is determined as ousia, and that means that something of the
original experience of Being as presence and as that which lies
forth in unconcealment is retained (N. II, 399-410/1-10).
But with progression from energeia and eidos in the Greeks
to the medieval aotualitas and essentia an essential change sets
in. These are not innocent translations (Ubersetzungen) but an
essential modification of the tradition (Uberlieferung). For now
Being is determined in accordance with the metaphysics of
making. Despite the fact that the word "existence" at first
holds some promise, the medieval is soon recognized to be further fallen out of the original experience of Being:
Ex-sistere specu means for Cicero to step out of the cave. One
might suspect here a deeper relation of existentia as stepping out
and forward to coming forward to presence and unconcealment.
Then the Latin word would preserve an essential Greek content.
That is not the case. Similarly, actualitas no longer preserves the
essence of energeia. The literal translation is misleading. In truth
it brings precisely another transposition or misplacement to the
word of Being.
(N. II,

Instead of meaning what stands out (ex-sists) in concealment,
existence now means that which stands outside of its causes and

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

77

so outside of non-being (res extra causas et nihilum sistens) .
This medieval sending of Being occurs in terms of making and
producing. Thus essentia is the "possibility" of what is to be
made, existentia the " actuality " of what has been posited outside of its potency. God is then conceived as the purely actual
being who stands outside of any need to be made and for whom
there is no possibility preceding his actuality. The ChristianRoman experience of Being is cut off from the original Greek
experience. It is one step further removed from "Being" as
unconcealment and " thought " as that which lets the being lie
forth (Vorliegenlassen). Instead we find in the middle ages
a metaphysics of "reality" (Wirklichkeit), of the work which
is brought forth, and of thinking as causal thinking. The outlines of modern technology (Technik) are already to be found
here. The world is treated as the product of a making (Herstand) and thought is contracted to demonstrative argumentation. The similarity of the attitudes of scholasticism and mathematical physics turns out to be no mere accident. The forgottenness of Being is beginning to take over. The middle ages
represent a decisive step in the "de-volution" of thought (N

II,
Heidegger's attitude towards the medievals has in the years
and 1941 become considerably more critical. Inbetween
stead of seeing the unity of Greek and medieval ontology he
now points to the rift between the Greek and the ChristianRoman experience of Being-between Greek and Latin. Now
only medieval ontology belongs within the metaphysics of
" making " and this represents a corruption of Plato and Aristotle. What then has become of the extensive argument in The
Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology about morphe and
hyle, energeia and eidos? In part Heidegger has become considerably more .sensitive to language. Because it is separated
from the Greeks by a different language, the medieval experience
of Being has taken a radically different shape. I think too
that Heidegger's sympathy for the middle ages has waned somewhat over the years; he is now no longer in danger of being

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

taken as a " Catholic phenomenologist." Hand in hand with
this, his appreciation for the Greeks has been intensified and
his interpretation of the Greek experience of Being as aJ,etheia
has been sharpened. Finally, Heidegger has, as he himself says,
adopted a more radically historical point of view than is to be
found in Being and Time-historical not in the sense of giving
an historical report (ein historischer Bericht NII, 399/1) about
the history of metaphysics, but in the sense of following the
history and mission of Being in each epoch. He thus came in
his later works to agree in his own way with the medievalists
who see a sharp difference between the Greek and medieval doctrines of Being. Like them he would see the doctrine of creation
to be the focal point of this difference; but this difference would
represent for Heidegger a devolution, not an advance.
In either period, early or late, Heidegger saw the distinction
between essence and existence to be a failure to attain Being
itself. In both cases he considers the scholastics to have determined Being in terms of the categories of a particular kind of
being. They attain not to Being but to the " Beingness of
beings" (die Seiendheit des Seienden, NII, 414/14) and their
efforts are bent only on " articulating " the latter; as such
scholasticism arises from the forgottenness of Being. That is
the central claim of Heidegger's critique, and one to which we
must now address ourselves.
PART II.

A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF HEIDEGGER'S

INTERPRETATION

OF SCHOLASTIC METAPHYSICS.

The first difficulty which faces any attempt to assess Heidegger's critique of scholastic metaphysics is to decide which
critique to assess. For the early Heidegger criticized the scholastics, from the standpoint of a transcendental-hermeneutical phenomenology, for a naive objectivism which failed to recognize
the genetic origin of its ideas in Dasein's own Being-in-the-world.
But in the late Heidegger this standpoint and the criticism
arising from it are dropped, and the critique shifts to a new
standpoint, viz., that of Being as aletheia. I will therefore dis-

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

79

cuss three questions. (1) The first concerns the early Heidegger's "genetic phenomenology" of essence and existence. For
even if Heidegger later on saw fit to drop the transcendental
standpoint, the argument retains an interest in its own right
which will repay consideration. (2) Secondly, I wish to discuss
Heidegger's notion that the principles of essence and existence
belong within the framework of a metaphysics of HersteUen.
This position is a constant in Heidegger's thought: in the early
period, " making " is the transcendental horizon upon which
beings are projected by medieval Dasein; in the later period
" making " is the face which Being turns to medieval man.
(3) Thirdly, I wish to discuss Heidegger's charge that the doctrine of essence and existence represents a form of the oblivion
of Being. In particular this will involve discussing the relationship between esse in Thomas Aquinas and Heidegger's aletheia.

Heidegger's Genetw Phenomenology of Essence and &dstence.
Scholastic theory is naive, according to Heidegger, because it
believes it attains an objective being-in-itself whereas in fact
every objective structure is a projection of subjective life. This
is a transcendental criticism of scholasticism which stems from
a Cartesian standpoint that is radically at odds with scholastic
realism. The scholastic philosopher who reads Heidegger's critique might want to direct our attention to the doctrine of
analogy. For there scholastic philosophy achieves a criticalreflective awareness of the origin and applicability of the terms
which it uses. It would be pointed out that the scholastic
philosopher is aware that his determination of God as a maker
must ultimately be based upon a direct knowledge of human
making, which is what we know directly and properly about
making. But, it would be argued, human making is then subjected to an analogical transfer by which it is predicated of
God only " eminentiore modo." The scholastic philosopher is
not naive because he knows that whatever is affirmed of God is
also denied of Him, inasmuch as everything predicated of God
has its epistemological origin in the sensible world.

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

But Heidegger's argument cuts deeper than any theory of
analogical predication. For one thing, his argument is that
every theoretical object comes back to the existential subject
from which it derives its meaning. It asserts therefore the primacy of the practical and the derivative character of all theoretical objects, a thesis which is incompatible with the primacy
of the speculative among medieval intellectualists. But more
importantly Heidegger's (and Husserl's) "genetic phenomenology " denies the whole idea of objective being-in-itself and so
of realism-scholastic, scientific or whatever. 16 Being for Heidegger is always Being as it enters into Dasein's understanding of
Being. There is Being, Heidegger says, only insofar as it is
understood by Dasein (SZ, 212/255). Being is always thought
in terms of a horizon which is projected by Dasein. The ultimate conclusion to which Being and Time builds up is that the
meaning of Being is time, that is, Being is projected upon time
inasmuch as temporality constitutes the Being of Dasein. Thus
Heidegger's claim is far more radical than any theory of analogy.
The theory of analogical predication does not escape Heidegger's
charge of naivete, for this theory allows us to believe that we
attain being-in-itself, even if such being is only imperfectly
grasped. But it is only because the genetic origins of such beingin-itself have been forgotten, in Heidegger's view, that we entertain such an illusion. The scholastic who wishes to respond
to Heidegger's critique has to come to grips with the whole premise of transcendental philosophy.
This is not to say that scholasticism is incompatible with
every form of transcendental philosophy, as is testified to by
the emergence of " transcendental Thomism " in the 20th century in the writings of Marechal and his followers. Here the attempt is made to relate St. Thomas's metaphysics to "the regress to the subject," i. e., to relate the Thomistic doctrine of
Being to the Being of the subject which understands Being.
Thus Emerich Coreth looks with favor upon Heidegger's project
11 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,
translated W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books,
§§ 48 and

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

81

of a "fundamental ontology." 17 He attempts in his Metaphymcs an exposition of Thomistic metaphysics which thematizes the idea of the " question of Being " and of the Being of
the questioner. He makes use of Heidegger's idea of a preontological understanding of Being which Dasein " always already" (immer schon) possesses. The task of metaphysics, says
Coreth, is to make this implicit understanding of Being explicit.
Such a metaphysics must in the end depart in a fundamental
way from Husserl and Heidegger, but it belongs to the circle
of problems raised by the early Heidegger's critique of scholasticism and it represents, I believe, a fruitful line of interpretation of St. Thomas.

Being and the Metaphysics of Making (Herstellen).
Heidegger has persistently maintained that scholastic metaphysics takes place within the horizon of " making," that it
does not grasp Being as such but Being within the determinate
horizon of a particular region of beings, the things which are
to be made. In this section and the one that follows I would
like to limit my considerations to Thomas Aquinas, because his
conception of esse represents the important contribution of
scholastic metaphysics and, I believe, the most fruitful basis
of comparison and contrast with Heidegger's "thought of
Being " within the scholastic tradition.
Heidegger claims that the Thomistic idea of existence is to
be conceived as the actualitas which gives reality to a posmbilitas which awaits making. This is, I believe, an oversimplification of St. Thomas. To begin with, essence is not a
free-floating possihilitas which awaits actualization, although
that is how Heidegger tends to portray it, particularly when
he is speaking of Aquinas in reference to Suarez. On the contrary essence is a real principle in an actual being, but it is a
principle of limitation, while esse is what is limited. Moreover
17 Emerich Coreth, Metaphysics, translated
and edited J. Donceel (New York:
Seabury Press, 1973), pp. 27-9.

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

Heidegger puts no particular stock in the fact that Thomas
does not use the word e-:dstentia but rather esse. But is not
the whole thrust of this verbal noun to avoid contracting Being
to any of its modes which would be less than the pure act of
being itself?
I think that Heidegger underestimate.s Aquinas's notion of
esse by trying to confine it within the horizon of making. It is
perfectly true that the doctrine of creation was the principal
"motive" for Aquinas's philosophy of esse. But his notion of
esse is not reducible to the framework of making. The Thomistic commentators are right to defend the originality of St.
Thomas on this point. Aquinas's conceptual framework is not
confined by the Greek idea of what is made according to a
pattern, although the same cannot be said for other medieval
philosophers who remained more thoroughly under the influence
of Plato and Aristotle. Thomas conceived of an order of actuality beyond the sphere of matter and form, which are the
original" regions" in which Aristotle spoke of act and potency.
As it has been repeatedly pointed out, Aquinas discovered an act
which is not a form but the .simple act of being itself. He has
achieved an insight into the simple act by which a thing is
rather than is not, by which it rises up into being and abides
there. The being is conceived by him not as ex-sisting in the
sense of standing outside its cause-for esse applies both to
what is caused and uncaused-but rather in its very actuality
as a being, in its very be-ing.
It is indeed true enough that Aquinas does not remain within
this sphere of the simple insight into the emerging into Being
of the being. On the contrary-just as Heidegger says-this
esse is divided into the esse which has been received from
another-esse causatum-and the esse which subsists of itselfipsum esse subsistens. In other words this insight into esse takes
place in the sphere of causal thought, and it is for all practical
purposes lost to the sight of Heidegger and his followers. It is
developed into a causal-demonstrative scientia which establishes
causal lines between God and creatures, which charts the struc-

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

83

tures of the various created orders of beings and which seeks
to determine the Being of God as the uncaused cause. In other
words this insight into Being passes over into what Heidegger
calls "onto-theo-logic":
a demonstrative science (logic) of
being as such (ontology) which has recourse to God as the
cause of beings (theology) . It is occupied in giving an " account" (Rec.hnen) of the relationship between beings instead
of savoring and unfolding its original insight into the simple
act-of-be-ing-itself.
The Forgetfulness of Being and Aquinas's Notion of Esse.
In what sense then does Heidegger think that Aquinas is
guilty of a forgetfulness of Being? 18 Has not Heidegger rather
unfairly represented the best insights of Thomas's metaphysics?
Has he not missed precisely what is meant by esse when he says
that scholasticism attains only to the being as a being (das
Seiende als Seiende), the being in its Being-ness (das Seiende
in seiner Seiendheit)? That is indeed what the students of St.
Thomas who are familar with Heidegger maintain. Bernard
Rioux writes: 19
The interest of a confrontation of St. Thomas with the thought of
the philosopher from Freiburg is that the former is perhaps the only
representative of that tradition, which is accused of having forgotten
Being, who has made Being the central theme of all his reflections
in regard to truth.

and again:
... St. Thomas has developed an ontology of truth which reposes
in the unveiling of every being (em) in its Being (ipsum esse).

Emerich Coreth says: 20
1 • Of course Heidegger is not speaking of any personal fault on Aquinas's part;
Aquinas is simply the victim of the withdrawal of Being in the Middle Ages.
1 • Rioux, pp. 254, 183.
2 ° Coreth, p. 29. See also:
Max Millier, Existenzphilosophie im Geistigen Leben
der Gegenwart 3. Aull. (Heidelberg: Kerle, 1964), 241 ff; Gustav Siewerth, Das
Schicksal, der Metaphysik von Thomas zu Heidegger (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,
1959); Cornelio Fabro, "The Transcendentality of "Ens-esse" and the Ground

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

No thinker of the past has been more clearly aware of the ontological difference than Thomas Aquinas, nobody has more clearly distinguished between being (ens) and being (esse), or interpreted
beings more consistently in the light of being.

As a matter of fact, it is precisely with the forgetfulness of
Being that the Thomists charge other philosophers. It is precisely this that Gilson has attributed to the history of metaphysics.21 Plato and Plotinus think Being not as Being but as
the one, Aristotle as substance (ousia), Augustine as eternity,
and so on with Descartes, Kant and positivism. Each of these
metaphysical systems, each in its own way, is a victim of what
Gilson calls " essentialism," of an attempt to reduce Being to
some" whatness," some particular kind of Being. The glory of
Aquinas, it is held, is that he does not emphasize any "predicate "-unity, permanence, extension--over the purity of Being
itself. Instead St. Thomas thinks Being as such, in terms of the
pure " act-of-being."
Should we conclude then that Heidegger simply has not followed closely enough the modem interpretations of Thomas
Aquinas? I have no idea of what Hiedegger knew about these
developments, but I have a healthy fear of saying that he does
not know about this or that interpretation of a major historical
figure such as Aquinas. His historical erudition is quite extraordinary; his unorthodox interpretations stem not from mis'Understanding what Aristotle or Kant mean, but from a deeper
philosophical dialogue with them. We will, I think, clarify
nothing simply by charging that Heidegger does not understand
Aquinas.
The better path consists in thinking Heidegger's critique
through. To do this I propose we turn our attention to Heidegger's treatment of the Greek words physis and aletheia, around
of Metaphysics," International Philosophical Quarterly VI, 8 (September, 1966),
21 Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute
of Medieval Studies, 1949); The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, translated
L. Lynch (London: Gollancz, 1961); The Unity af Philosophical Experience (New
York: Scribners, 1987).

HEIDEGGER AND TBE SCHOLASTICS

85

which his whole understanding of Being turns, and then relate
this back to Aquinas's understanding of esse. Physis for Heidegger refers to Being as emergent. 22 He emphasizes the connection of the word with life and growth, a sense which has completely dropped out of our " physical " ; indeed we contrast the
physical with the living (physics vs. biology). This original
meaning is also contained in the Latin natura (nascor, nasci,
natus sum), but this is again hardly retained by our" nature."
Physis means the process by which the being emerges into
presence, irrupts; it signifies a certain upsurge into being. Now
on the basis of what we have said above in connection with esse
as the pure act of be-ing, I believe that a good case can be
made that both Aquinas and Heidegger think Being as an
emergent power, as an active upsurge into being. Esse for St.
Thomas is not a mere status, not a static factum, but an agere,
an upsurge which rises up and overcomes nothingness. Aquinas's
esse and Heidegger's " Wesen understood verbally" are close
kin. Indeed the verbal wesen is a Middle High German translation of esse--e. g., in Meister Eckhart.
The difference sets in when we turn to the word aletheia.
The process of emergence for Heidegger is an emergence into
" manifestness," emergence from concealment (lethe) into unconcealment (a-letheia). Thus Being is inseparable from
"truth" for Heidegger, not propositional truth, but a "manifestness " proper to Being itself. It is here that the " phenomenological" (taken in a wide enough sense to cover both
the early and late Heidegger) character of Heidegger's work
must be accorded its due. In his early writings Heidegger insisted Being is to be met with only in Dasein's "understanding
of Being " in which the " meaning " of Being is constituted.
Being is that in reference to which beings must be understood
in order to be manifest as beings. In the late work Heidegger
retains this relatedness between Being and Dasein's understanding, but now he reverses the direction of the relationship.
••Cf. An Introduction to Metaphysics, 11-4; Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen:
Neske, 1957), pp.

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

In Being and Time the being is projected in terms of a certain
understanding of Being; Being is " unconcealment " because it is
what is uncovered in and through Dasein's disclosive activity.
But in the late works Being rises up and discloses itself to Dasein,
addresses Dasein, reveals itself; the task of Dasein is not to
"project" Being but to "release" it, to let it be (Gelassenheit) .
Yet it would be a mistake to think that in the later work, where
the transcendental attitude is overcome, Being becomes thereby
something "in itself," detached from Dasein. Rather it is essentially a process of rising up and disclosing itself to Dasein.
Instead of being projected or uncovered by Dasein, it reveals
and discloses itself to Dasein. The relationship to Dasein, while
modified, remains unbroken. Thus Being is truth for Heidegger,
i.e., a process of emerging (physis) into "presence" (Anwesen), unconcealment (aletheia).
Now if a case can be made for a kinship between esse and
physis, as I believe it can, no comparable case can be made for
esse and aletheia. Aquinas's esse is not emergence into unconcealment, a process of "revealing" itself to the intellect. At
least it is not essentially and primarily that. Rather the relationship to the intellect is something subsequent to or consequent upon esse in St. Thomas. One need only read De
veritate, I, I, to see that Being is not grasped primarily and essentially as unconcealment. On the contrary, St. Thomas argues
there that truth, "ontological" truth (as opposed to propositional truth) , is some kind of addition to Being (ex additione
ad ens), which is consequent upon being (consequens omne
ens). To the first objection, that Augustine .says that truth
means "that which is," St. Thomas responds that this is a
definition of truth not in the formal sense but in terms of its
foundation in reality. Augustine's definition of truth refers
to " that which precedes the formal notion of truth, and in
which truth is founded." And again: " ... the entity of a thing
precedes the notion of truth." 23 Truth does not, as in Heideg23 " ••• id quod praecedit rationem veritatis, et in quo verum fundatur."
" ... entitas rei praecedit rationem veritatis ... " Thomas Aquinas, Q. D. de veritate, I,
1, c; cf. ad I um.

HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

87

ger, enter into the definition of Being; rather verum is a
transcendental property of Being which arises insofar as Being
enters into a relationship with the intellect. That being is
"precedes" (ontologically, not chronologically) its entering
into a relationship with intellect and so being determined as
truth. But for Heidegger this conception of Being and truth
is a victim of the naivete of" Being-in-itself," Being prior to its
revelation to Dasein. It is a naivete which forgets that Being
is "always and already" something understood by Dasein.
We are now in a position to understand why Heidegger
charges the scholastics with the forgetfulnes of Being. He
means that Being has ceased to mean that which shows itself,
that which emerges into manifestness. Eidos (the pure look of
that which shows itself) becomes essentia (the form in accordance with which a thing is made). Being as pure selfshowing passes over into Being as caused and uncaused. The
pristine simplicity of Being as that which steps forth into the
light, that which shines and appears (scheint und erscheint)
recedes in favor of a contraction of that appearing into cause
and effect, act and potency, essence and existence-all of which
are determinate structures, specific ways of appearing. Appearing as such (Sein als Scheinen) is lost and its place is taken
by a particular kind of appearance. Appearing as such gives
way to appearances, to what is in appearance. Manifesting
gives way to what is manifest. The simplicity of pure selfpresenting, the purity of mere showing itself as such, recedes
behind the clamor of the things which are seen. We see the
things that the sun illumines but we never look up to the sun,
to luminosity itself. More fundamental for Heidegger than
every determination of Being is the self-manifesting of Being
itself. Manifestness is not a predicate which-along with four
or five others-is convertible with Being, but that which Being
properly and primarily means.
For Aquinas self-showing is something "consequent" upon
Being, not its very meaning. If it is true, as I believe it is, that
Aquinas had a real insight into the physis-character of Being,

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

into Being as simple emergence into presence, still this insi,ght
took place in the sphere of objective thinking. Even if Aquinas
grasped Being as the act-of-be-ing, as emerging-into-presence,
Heidegger would still want to say that he has conceived this
whole process non-phenomenologically, as taking place in the
sphere of things-in-themselves and this is a form of naivete.
For Aquinas esse is the act by which a thing comes to be and
to .stand in itself; for Heidegger it is a process of emerging into
sight, appearing, self-showing.
When Heidegger's charge of a forgetfulness of Being against
the Thomistic doctrine of esse is carefully scrutinized, it amounts
to a charge that Thomas has forgotten Being-as aletheia. I
do not think it can be maintained, as Heidegger would have
us think, that esse is something " ontic," that it attains to " befagness" not Being. But it remains true that Being is not for
St. Thomas what Father Richardson calls a "lighting process."
Aquinas thinks Being "objectively," independent of its relationship to the subject (intellectus). It is not Being but the
manifestness of Being which is primary for Heidegger, for Being
is manifestness, self-revelation. Against Husserl, Heidegger was
compelled to argue for the ontological character of phenomenology, for the fact that a phenomenon's "appearing" is its "Being":
to appear is to be. Against Aquinas, he would argue the other
side of this position, viz., the phenomenological character of
ontology, that is, that Being is the principle of self-manifestness: to be is to appear. 25
For Heidegger it is possible to speak of Being as esse only
if Being is already manifest (aletheia). For Aquinas truth
(aletheia) is possible only if there is first of all Being (esse).
For Aquinas truth (aletheia) is "founded" on being (esse) .
••Richardson refers to Being as a-letheia as a " lighting process " ; cf. pp. 6-8
et passim.
25 It is interesting that when one tries to differentiate Heidegger from Husserl,
Heidegger appears as something of a realist; but when one tries to differentiate
him from Aquinas he appears to be more of an idealist. Of course the truth is
that he is neither. Phenomenology represents the mediation of these two positions;
cf. SZ,

HEIDEGGER ANb THE SCHOLASTICS

89

For Heidegger to be " founded " is itself a certain conceptual
determination, a certain mode of being manifest which presupposes Being as manifestness; to be " founded " is a meaning
which appears out against the background of a whole system
of self-revelation on the part of Being. For Aquinas it is Heidegger who is forgetful of Being itself and who has contracted it
to one of its modes-viz., to truth. For it is only in a metaphysics of esse that Being is grasped as such; truth-and goodness and beauty-are convertible terms with being, consequentia of Being, things defined in terms of Being. For Heidegger, it is Aquinas who has forgotten Being because he has forgotten that before it is anything else-before it is essence or
esse, act or potency-Being is simple emergence into unconcealment. " Objective " Being-in-itself, and the articulation of
it into essence and esse, is a naivete, a construction derived by
taking Being, as it were," before" it is manifest (esse praecedit
rationem veritatis) , cutting off its relationship to Dasein, and
treating it as if it were "merely present" (Vorhandensein).
Essence and esse are modes of being manifest which presuppose
the process of manifestness itself. For Heidegger, " objective
Being" (esse) is a derivative mode of truth (aletheia); for
Aquinas truth (verum, ontological truth) is a mode of Being
(ens).
What one discovers when one attempts a confrontation of
Aquinas and Heidegger is that the two positions arise from
radically different standpoints, radically different approaches
to the question of Being. St. Thomas proceeds intellectualistically and objectivistically. I do not mean to say that St. Thomas
is a " rationalist " in the 17th and 18th century sense, or to
deny his starting point in sense experience. I mean to say that
his method is 1) detached," objective," purely" scientific," and
that, given its original point of departure in the senses, it
proceeds along the route of rational argumentation. St. Thomas
speaks " about" Being in propositions for which there can be
proofs and refutations (disputatio). But Heidegger's approach
is radically different: he speaks from within Being, " out of

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JOHN D. CAPUTO

the experience" (aus der Erfahrung) of Being. His words are
not " propositions "·or assertions about Being but the words
in which Being itself is given birth in language. Heidegger's
whole approach is to listen, to hear, to be touched by Being.
It does not in the end depend on concepts (Vorstellungen) but
on a deeper experience of Being. Now it is in this respectively
differing approach to Being that the different understanding
of Being which Aquinas and Heidegger offer to us is rooted.
Because Aquinas's approach is objectivistic and scientific he
conceives Being as the objective act-of-be-ing. But because
Heidegger's approach was at the outset "phenomenological,"
and because this was then later transmuted into a Seinserfahrung, an experience of Being, Heidegger's understanding of
Being was quite different. For him Being is experientially encountered and it is from this standpoint that he speaks of it
as a rising up into presence, an emergence into the light (phos,
phainomenon), a surging up into the "clear" (Lichtung).
From Heidegger's standpoint Being is truth; from Aquinas's,
truth is a predicate of Being. It is a question of methoddisputatio vs. Denken.
I do not mean to imply that this confrontation dissolves into
an arbitrary difference of standpoint, that it comes down to
an initial groundless act of the will in which one adopts one's
basic approach. I mean rather that the real debate between
Aquinas and Heidegger must be seen to take place on the level
of method, that it is really a question of how Being is to be
made accessible to us. Can Being be the object of a scientia,indeed even the early Heidegger thought of the phenomenology
of Being as strenge Wissenschaft-or is it only "given" in an
" address " which can best be " heard " in the depths of our
experience? Can there be proofs in metaphysics or only "experiences"? Is Being the "object" of a science? Or is it more
objective than any object and more subjective than any subject? It is with such questions that one must deal if one wishes
to relate Heidegger's thought of Being to scholastic metaphysics.

* * *

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HEIDEGGER AND THE SCHOLASTICS

Aquinas and Heidegger are two of the great philosophers
of Being in Western thought, neither of whom, I believe, can
be properly accused of the forgetfulness of Being. We cannot,
however, pretend to have adequately dealt with the whole of
this subject matter. We have not so much as mentioned the
important, indeed central, theme of time and history in Heideg.ger.26 But we can pretend to have made a contribution towards
the understanding of the interplay between their thought. In
the confrontation of these radically different yet mysteriously
akin interpretations of Being there lies a great opportunity for
us to awaken in ourselves a renewed sense of the question of
Being. For as Heidegger says in the course of the
lectures
(GPdP,
it is not Aristotle or Kant-and we can add
Aquinas or Heidegger-that we wish to renew, but we ourselves.
JOHN

D. CAPUTO

Villanova University
Villanova, Pa.

26 An essential part of the scholastic's naivete for Heidegger would consist in his
unmindfulness that the aletheia process is essentially historical. The scholastic
is taken in (eingenommen) by the pull (Zug) of his age which is really Being's
withdrawal (Entzug). Thus the scholastic treats Being in terms of a scientia which
uses the categories of cause and effect, act and potency, etc. It is the same in
our age, only nowadays the scientia goes under the name of Technik. The task
of thought is to get loose from this epochal manifestation in order to experience
the epochal sending itself, the "it" which "gives." Cf. "Time and Being" in
Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, translated Joan Stambaugh (New York:
Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 1 ff.

HUMAN DESTINY AND WORLD POPULATION:
THE INDIVIDUAL AS HORIZON AND FRONTIER

Adam was therefore established in the perfection befitting
the founder of the whole human race. And so it was necessary that he should reproduce in order to multiply the human
race and hence that he should take food. But the perfection
of the risen will consist in a human nature coming totally
into its perfection once the number of the elect is complete.
And consequently there will be no place for reproduction
nor for the taking of nourishment. 1 (Thomas Aquinas: Summa contra Gentiles, IV, 83)

E

STIMATES OF THE TOTAL number of human beings
who already have lived on the planet Earth are, of
course, highly problematic. In any case, whether or
not the number is approximately 85 billion, as indicated by
several responsible calculations, there have been a finite number of human beings during the course of the aeons since the
human race first appeared. Recent attention, furthermore, has
concentrated not .so much upon the men and women who have
already lived, nor even upon the roughly four billion now alive,
as upon the supposedly vast numbers who will yet live: the
"futurables," the objects of "futurology." We now know,
moreover, that there is a vast difference between the number
of people who, severally if not collectively, could emanate from
any one human couple-several hundreds on the part of the
female if all ova were fertilized during one lifetime, billions on
the part of the male-and the number who actually will exist.
The decision as to which, if any, of the potential combinations
1 Institutus
ergo £uit Adam in tali perfectione quae competebat principio totius
humani generis. Et ideo oportuit quod generaret ad multiplicationem humani
generis; et per consequens quod cibis uteretur. Sed perfectio resurgentium erit
natura humana totaliter ad suam perfectionem perveniente, numero electorum
jam completo. Et ideo generatio locum non habebit, nee alimenti usus.

HUMAN DESTINY

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should be realized becomes a serious social and moral question
once men recognize that the reproductive process can be controlled by will, by force, or by scientific techniques.
This has become a crucial contemporary issue because the
earth is popularly believed to be reaching its " finite limits "
or carrying capacity. Indeed, morality, what it is to be a good
man, is currently being interpreted more and more in terms of
population density, so that the control of this human population becomes the prima lex for the salus, the wellbeing, of a
republic, or of the world. Our primary enemy is coming to be
seen as the very existence of additional men, against whom
a kind of " incipient " warfare is to be waged by eliminating
human conceptions or terminating them before, by birth, they
can break into the light of day and gain rights of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
In this manifoldly questionable view, moreover, men conceive their " function," that is, the justification for the whole
collectivity of men to exist at all, as the transformation of the
earth in such a manner that there will exist only a steady limited
number-say, three to five billion-on Earth at any given time.
The purpose of the human race on the planet, seen in its temporal sequence, is held to be the preservation and wellbeing
of this privileged collection for as many centuries or ages as
possible until the sun finally burns out or some other cosmic
event terminates life on Earth. Ultimately, those who do not
fall within this planning have no right to exist, since they
threaten the collectivity that the Earth allegedly can support.
And, even when the Earth can no longer support life, as Wernher
von Braun remarked when men first walked on the moon, the
earthly race of men may now be " immortal " precisely because
it may be able to send its own kind to populate the myriads
of Earth-like planets that are thought to dot the cosmos. This
new ethico-political goal proposed to the human race, it should
be noted, deserves more critical attention than it has been
receiving, especially from Christians, who have not been quick
to recognize how this thinking often diverges from essential
religious views.

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JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.

At first sight, too, such contemporary issues do not appear
to have much connection with the kind of thinking Aquinas engaged in some seven centuries ago. Yet, especially in the
Summa Contra Gentiles, there are several remarkable discussions of issues that have now been secularized or politicized.
Indeed, it might well be argued that the form in which these
notions of ultimate human numbers and purposes appears today
is the direct result of rejecting basic values and positions underlying the system of Aquinas. The rise of so-called political
theology, so strikingly absent in Aquinas, flows moreover almost
directly from deemphasizing the human soul and the final locus
of its beatitude. Aquinas never doubted that the number of
human beings to be created was itself limited (Summa Theol.,
I, q. 23, a.7). But the notion that social ethics could be reduced
(or nearly reduced) to a proposition of keeping alive a fixed number of men down through the ages would have seemed to belittle
less than a revival of Greek biology and its application to man:
the immortality of the .species is seen as the purpose of reproduction, and the individual exists only for the species and is not
willed except in collective terms. It is surely of some moment
that this can be proposed as an alternative morality to that
envisioned by Aquinas, which was based upon the free creation,
election, and personal destiny of each human being.
The Summa Contra Gentiles was written .specifically for a
non-Christian and non-Jewish audience so that it might appeal
directly to men who had only their humanity in common (I, 2) .
The structure of the Contra Gentiles is global. It seeks to establish the nature of God, man, and the universe, and especially to
locate and define man's ultimate happiness. This involves
Aquinas in the famous position that each man contains within
himself all the intellectual powers needed for knowing, so that
the destiny of man is open to all knowable things and therefore
to God (II, 59; III, 84) . The end of any intellectual creature
can only be to know God, and this is the purpose for which men
were created (III, 25) . In all of creation there is freedom since
the world need not have been at all; nor was it from eternity

HUMAN DESTINY

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(III, 23; I, 81). The plan of the universe, then, is achieved
when, through Christ, men-body and soul-are able actually
to attain to a complete life with God (Bk. IV) .
Undoubtedly, at least for modem ears, the part of Aquinas's
teaching which is hardest to accept is that each member of the
human race existing historically can in his very individuality
achieve full beatitude. This is what constitutes ultimately the
dignity of the person. But this accomplishment is not something that arises out of mere human activity, nor is it merited
by the individual or the race .
. . . That predestination and election are not caused by any human
merits can be shown not only from the fact that the grace of God,
which is the efiect of predestination, does not comes from merits
but precedes all human merits ... but also from the fact that the
divine will and providence is the first cause of whatever happens,
while nothing can be the cause of the divine will and providence ....
(III, 168) 2

This, of course, is not to deny that men really have something to do in the universe-secondary causes are real causesbut to confront directly any proposition that would locate human happiness and destiny outside what is ultimately possible
only through God's graciousness. We are warned, in other
words, against defining man solely in terms of his worldly condition and its temporal succession.
The last chapter of the Contra Gentiles-On the State of the
World after the Judgment (IV, 97)-is at first sight a curious
mixture of medieval astronomy and theological speculation
which seeks to justify the continuance of man in the universe
after he is no longer subject to those celestial motions that supposedly caused or influenced his begetting on Earth. The import of the considerations, in other words, is how men in a resur• . . . Praedestinatio et electio causam non habet ex aliquibus humanis meritis,
potest fieri manifestum, non solum ex hoc quod gratia Dei, quae est praedestinationis
efiectus, meritis non praevenitur, sed omnia merita praecedit humana . . . sed
etiam manifestare potest ex hoc quod divina voluntas et providentia est prima
causa eorum quae fiunt, nil autem potest esse causa voluntatis et providentiae
divinae .... (III, q. 163)

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JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.

rected state can survive when the present conditions of the cosmos no longer obtain. For Aquinas there are indeed things
made ad perpetuitatem, made forever though with a beginning;
among these are the souls of men by which they transcend the
universe itself. And in the Christian dispensation the body
shares this destiny also, even though God must supply what
is lacking to it-Deo supplente sua virtute quod eis ex propria
infirmitate deest. This is the result, furthermore, not of some
natural self-transcendence but of the concrete history of salvation to which this race of men is subject. 3
This leads into two observations which are especially relevant
to the way in which the contemporary problem seems to be
working itself out. The first is that Aquinas regards the number
of human beings as finally limited.
The goal, however, cannot be the multiplying of souls ad infinitum,
since the infinite is contrary to the nature of a goal. So nothing
unfitting follows if we posit that, when mankind has reached a cer-

tain number, the motions of the heavens will cease.4
•Battista Mondin's comment on W. Pannenherg's theology, and on the importance of this historical race of men and the kind of salvation that is promised
them, is worth quoting (in our English translation) :
"As is apparent (and the words of Pannenberg allow no doubt), the incarnation
of the Son of God in the perspective of transcendental anthropology is not the
result of a historical decision on the part of God to rescue man from the condition of sin and to restore the lost grace of adoptive sonship, but is rather the
consequence of a natural development of the transcendental openness which belongs to the being of man. Accordingly Pannenberg quite logically interprets the
history of salvation as the history of the transcendental openness of man. The
incapacity of man by his own power to open himself to God constitutes sin, while
salvation takes place when openness to God and union with Him are realized.
In this way, however, the effectively historical character of revelation is inevitably
sacrificed to the Hegelian dialectic of contraries and the historical facts are systematically transformed into gnostic speculation.
" In the anthropological scheme of transcendental openness sin as personal fault
can never find adequate expression. Moreover, the very concept of sin appears
to be contradictory. For, if one affirms with Pannenberg that transcendental openness constitutes the essence of man, does not the hypothesis of a closing of man
to God become absurd? " Battista Mondin, "L'antropologia teologica di W.
Pannenberg," L'Osservatore Romano, Rome: April
1976, p. 3.
•Non autem potest esse finis multiplicatio animarum in infinitum: quia infinitum
contrariatur rationi finis. Nihil igitur inconveniens sequitur si, certo numero
hominum completv, ponamus motum coeli desistere (IV, 97) .

HUMAN DESTINY AND WORLD POPULATION

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Just what should determine this completed number is, as
Aquinas notes in the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 23, a. 7), disputed.
God knows the number both materially and formally; that is,
he knows the total number and each individual comprised in
it. Physical creation is ordained to achieve man's purpose, and
more particularly, the purpose of those who in fact choose God
within the confines of history. Aquinas seems to suggest that
God does not directly choose the number of damned-who, of
course, also make up part of the universe's total-since that
would imply that God chose their fallen lot directly.
And what is this total number? Aquinas cites various speculations-that it is equal to the number of fallen angels, or to
the number who did not fall, or to the number of angels created. 5
But he is sceptical about all this. "But it would be better to
say that God alone knows the number of those chosen for
supernal happiness." 6
What should be emphasized-this is our second observation-is that the ultimate number of human beings is limited
because men are in fact to reach their end, which is seen to be
the personal vision of the triune God and nothing less. This
relativizes any ethic which conceives man's corporate function
on Earth as that of preserving himself as long as possible so
that standards and values which define man's dignity and
destiny become subject to this continuation ethic. For Aquinas
it is the other way about; preserving and developing the natural
and Christian ethic is that according to which we should order
the world.
Yet the goal of knowing all things, all earthly things, is precisely the normal function of the human intellect with respect
to its immediate object. The ideal often proposed for Earth, its
preservation as a natural place of beauty and abundance-the
Garden of Eden myth modernized, so to speak-is also present
in Aquinas, but again posed as a problem that concerns the
ultimate status of physical creation.
5 Summa Theol., I, q. !lS, a. 7.
• Sed melius dicitur quod soli Deo est cognitus numerus electorum in supema
felicitate locandus.

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JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.

Since, then, corporeal creatures will ultimately be disposed so as
to fit the condition of man, not only will the condition of man be
freed from corruption but it is also necessary that even corporeal
creatures in their way participate in the glory of the (divine)
refulgence.7

These are, in fact, the last words of the Contra Gentiles, except for the brief citations from Apocalypse (Chapter
and
Isaiah (Chapter 65) about the new heavens and the new earth.
What is here noteworthy is that the kind of thinking which
Aquinas applies to the state of things after the general resurrection and judgment is now more and more directed to a thisworldly project.
The pertinence of what we have been saying can be seen very
clearly if we recall Aquinas's views about sexual activity after
the Parousia. This is of .special interest because recent proposals
tend either to eliminate sex as a means of procreation or at least
to restrict reproduction so severely that it has little to do with
actual human lives. Indeed, cloning proposals eliminate the
connection between birth and sex altogether, as do those which
propose refashioning the human body on the model of existing
genetic structures so that no really new human persons will be
created, contrary to the present order of things, in which new
persons are created in the succession of unique human births.
Aquinas held firmly that there would be no reproduction of new
human beings after the resurection. If we allow for differences
of milieu, his views are not dissimilar to those of contemporaries
who insist that no more children ought to be produced than are
needed to maintain the desirable total number of human beings.
But for Aquinas the reason for excluding further human births
was that all men are at the same moment to be resurrected and
to experience the Parousia. Any children born after that time
would escape the condition of the (finite) historical race of
7 Quia igitur creatura corporalis finaliter disponetur per congruentiam ad hominis
statum; hominis statum non solum a corruptione liberabitur, sed etiam gloriam
induetur ... oportebit quod etiam creatura corporalis quandam claritatis gloriam
suo modo consequatur.

HUMAN DESTINY

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men to whom salvation is promised and for whom it is achieved
(IV, 83, 88) .
Sexual characteristics, however, were to remain after the
resurrection, as these are essential to the person. Women were
even to understand better why they were created!
Similarly, also, the weakness of the feminine sex is not excluded by
the perfection of the risen. For this weakness is not a departure
from nature but intended by nature. And this very distinction of
nature in the human race will manifest the perfection of nature and
the wisdom of God, disposing all things in a certain order. 8

For the risen, Aquinas calmly rejected the notion-practically
de rigueur today-that personal relationship or enjoyment apart
from reproduction would justify sexual relationships. His reason is that each person on reaching his final goal when the universe reaches its final goal, would not need to experience a lesser
pleasure, especially one without its own natural purpose.
Aquinas is very much of the opinion that men are made for
ultimate happiness and that they do achieve it.
Aquinas also held that it was the purpose of the intellect
to know all things.
Our intellect then is in potency to know all the forms of things, and
this potency is actualized when it knows some one of them. Therefore it will not be totally in act nor achieve its ultimate end until
it knows all things, or at least all material things. But man cannot
accomplish this through the speculative sciences by means of which
we know the truth in this life. Hence the ultimate happiness of man
cannot be found in this life (III, 48) .9
• Similiter etiam nee infirmitas feminei sexus perfeetioni resurgentium obviat.
Non enim est infirmitas per reeessum a natura, sed a natura intenta. Et ipsa
etiam naturae distinetio in hominibus perfeetionem naturae demonstrabit et divinam
sapientiam, omnia cum quodam ordine disponentem (IV, 88).
• Intellectus autem noster est in potentia ad omnes formas rerum cognoscendas:
reducitur autem in actum cum aliquam earum cognoscit. Ergo non erit ex toto
in actu, nee in ultimo suo fine, nisi quando omnia, saltem ista materialia, cognoscit.
Sed hoc non potest homo assequi per scientias speculativas, quibus in hac vita
veritatem cognoscimus. Non est igitur possibile quod ultima felicitas hominis sit
in hac vita (III, 48) .

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JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.

From a contemporary point of view this is also a significant
passage for another reason. The current secular argument for
severely limiting human numbers is based largely upon statistics
of available resources. These are believed to be in very short
supply in comparison with population. Rapid population
growth, it is held, will soon exhaust such resources so that men
will reach the secular apocalypse precisely by " increasing and
multiplying." Most such dire predictions, however, are themselves products of the philosophy that defines man's purpose as
a continuance of the species down through the ages. The level
of scientific development upon which calculations are based,
furthermore, is very narrow and does not allow for even the
pre.sent powers of the human intellect. As the more perceptive
scholars are beginnng to point out, there is really only one
natural resource in the universe. This is the human mind-as is
already implicit in Aquinas's definition of the intellect as that
faculty open to all being. In a very real sense it is ultimately
possible to transform anything-except the human person-into
anything else, so that resources are not limited in any meaningful sense compared to human population (or at least they need
not be, for men can always refuse to do what they are able to
do) . This would suggest that the Earth is adequate for its
purpose, which is to minister to men achieving their transworldly destiny. Aquinas again places the ultimate realization of all
knowledge beyond this life, suggesting perhaps that the race
of men is not in fact likely to achieve in history all that it could
achieve.
Aquinas never doubted that the number of human beings to
be created was itself limited. Moreover, the fact that he speaks
of the number of the elect suggests that this number is determined rather by the personal drama of each created person in
selecting his own destiny-and this within whatever social order
he might find himself in. The Contm Gentiles does not deal
with the destiny of nations or other collectivities. What divides
men ultimately and even in this world is their moral and spiritual character. Indeed, under the rubric in the Contra Gentiles

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that seems to bear most directly on the subject-" That happiness does not consist in worldly power" (III, 31)-Aquinas
is mainly concerned with showing that because of its intrinsic
instability earthly power cannot be that which men ultimately
seek.
If some power is the highest good, it must be the most perfect. But
human power is the most imperfect, for it is rooted in the wills and
opinions of men, in which there is the greatest inconstancy. And
the greater we think a power to be, the more things it depends upon.
This belongs to its weakness, since what depends upon many things
can be destroyed in many ways. The highest good for man therefore cannot be worldly power.10

The import of this is that the norms of human destiny govern
what man does with his temporal existence and not vice versa.
It is really the rejection of the proposition that we must change
our morality and our life to conform to earthly exigencies rather
than try to be the kind of persons God created us to be.
Modern thought, as Karl Rahner has pointed out, strives to
give meaning to the earthly enterprise as such, its meaning in
the whole temporal sweep. But it consistently ignores the fate
of persons, individuals, very easily subordinating them to the
collectivity and its supposed higher mission. 11 Precisely because
• 0 Si aliqua potestas est summnm bonum, oportet
illam esse perfectissimam.
Potestas autem humana est imperfectissima: radicatur enim in hominum voluntatibus et opinionibus, in quibus est maxima inconstantia. Et quanto maior reputatur potestas, tanto a pluribus dependet: quod etiam ad eius debilitatem
pertinet; cum quod a multis dependet, destrui multipliciter possit. Non est igitur
in potestate mundana summum hominis bonum.
11 " But if it is the will of modem man to exist not only, as his ancestors
did, as the same man, although under somewhat different conditions, but also
to create really new futures in creative freedom (individually and collectively in
the limitations of both these dimensions , then this will of contemporary man is
ever and again rebuffed and thwarted by death, which takes on a new unique and
radical quality precisely on account of its contradiction to this rather new will
of man. This fatal contradiction between man's radical will to unlimited freedom
and his being condemned to death, although this is suppressed in all the ideologies
of our contemporary history, is obviously not reconciled for the existing individual
by the fact that the succession of generations of such individuals ordained for death
is thought of as going on into an indeterminate future. This fatal contradiction

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JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.

Aquinas does not seek human meaning ultimately in some form
of worldly state of human society, however defined, he can concentrate his attention upon the meaning of each person as
such-" If then the body of the risen man will not be composed
of this flesh and these bones of which it is now composed, he
will not be numerically the same (IV, 84) .12 The destiny of
mankind, its numbers and completion, are seen from the viewpoint of what does happen-men, persons, do die-of what is
permanent, of God, the soul, and, as related to them, the body
and the universe. Modern theorizing about the implications of
population often paradoxically treats, in relation to the present,
questions that Aquinas saw must be treated in relation to the
Par011'Sia: the ultimate destiny of sex and reproduction, the relation of the human intellect to knowing all corporeal things, the
number of human beings, the purpose of human creation.
In the Prologue to his Commentary on Book III of the Sentences is the famous pasage: "For man is a sort of horizon and
is not made legitimate by the fact that it is understood to be going on eternally,
and each generation is only the platform upon which the victory monument of the
next generation is erected, which generation with its victory likewise perishes in
turn.
" Every man has a responsibility not only for those who follow him but also
for the dead who lived before him, and not only for his own life but also for
his own death. The modern mentality of an unconditional will-to-the-future, if
it is not to be deceptive, must acknowledge itself to be frustrated by death."
K. Rahner, "The Death of Jesus and the C1osing of Revelation," Theology Digest,
Winter, 1975, pp.
"Adhuc. Homo naturaliter refugit mortem, et tristatur de ipsa: non solum ut
nunc, cum earn sentit, earn refugiens, sed etiam cum earn recogitat. Hoc autem
quod non moriatur, homo non potest assequi in hac vita. Non est igitur possibile
quod homo in hac vita sit felix." (Contra Gentiles, III, 48.)
12 Si igitur corpus hominis resurgentis non erit ex his carnibus et ex his ossibus ex
quibus nunc componitur, non erit homo resurgens idem numero.
It is interesting that the current movements and proposals to deepfreeze human
bodies instead of burying them (the Christian tradition in view of the resurrection)
is based on hope of eventual resurgence and cure so that the same individual
could continue in a cycle of ages without facing death. But it is the same instinct
to preserve the same individual person which Aquinas also recognizes when he
asserts that we shall rise as the same individuals. The one is based on natural
science, the other on Christ.

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frontier of the spiritual and the corporeal, a sort of medium between them, participating in bt:}th corporeal and spiritual good
things." 10 This means, of course, that the authentic values and
destiny of Earth are indeed man's to accomplish. Man is the
horizon and the frontier. The completion of human numbers
is a definite project. Yet we must recognize that men's relation
to what they themselves are created to be is itself the primary
determinative factor as to how many there can and will be.
Furthermore, human numbers in Aquinas are never seen to be
a question of numbers as such but as the universitas of persons
who achieve the goal for which the universe was created-that
is, the free choice to respond to God's invitation to share his
inner life. The immanent meaning of the world-the rise and
fall of nations, the " hominization " of nature, even the peaceable kingdom-by themselves are not the essential drama. The
" horizon " of man, in all his numbers, in all his accomplishments, is always God. "The end of the divine law is that man
adhere to God. . . . Human laws, however, are ordered to certain earthly goods" (Summa Theol., II-II, q. 140, a. 1) .14 Even
by the best of earthly organizations men may not really be
achieving the goal to which they as persons are called.
Reflection on these doctrines of Aquinas on human numbers
reminds us today that when questions which ultimately pertain
to the Parousia and its condition reappear in essentially secular,
political terms, it means that we are losing contact with the
radical destiny to which the individual person is called. Christianity's validity as a religion, as the Contra Gentiles seems to
argue even from natural reason, is precisely its refusal to allow
men a lesser destiny than the highest, which must include the
happiness of the singular, individual person or else it is merely
an abstraction and not a hope. Contemporary speculation on
13 Homo enim est quasi horizon et confinium spiritualis et corporalis naturae,
ut quasi medium inter utrasque, utrasque bonitates participet et corporales et
spirituales . . .
"Finis autem legis divinae est ut homo inhaeret Deo .... Leges autem humanae
ordinantur ad aliqua mundana bona.

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JAMES V. SCHALL, s . .t.

human population and sexuality should not be .seen for less
than what is is-an effort to provide answers to ultimate questions in a this-worldly context. It is not enough to maintain
that the answer cannot be found here, in this world, no matter
how long it lasts or in what conditions. We must also recognize
that the effort itself to subsume these questions into a manageable technological or ecological perspective is resulting in a
refusal to accept the kind of men that in fact were created-and
their destiny post judicium. And it is this choice to accept the
human condition as such that defines this particular human
race's hope to escape nothingness (but not by itself, of course).
We live in an age which seeks to exalt the human enterprise,
yet fears to accept its conditions. The new original sin, ironically, has almost become-what it was not for Aquinas-sex
activity that increases population. Perhaps the last words
should be those of Aquinas " ... Humility is essentially located
in the appetite inasmuch as by it one restrains the impetus of
his soul from inordinately seeking great things, but it has its
rule in knowledge, namely, that one should not esteem himself
above what he really is" (Summa Theol., II-II, q. 161, a. 6) .15
We are told not to esteem ourselves as more than we are, yet
we are ultimately given everything. This is the mystery that
will be worked out in history-and beyond it, when the prescribed number of men will be complete, certo numero hominum
completo.
JAMES

v. SCHALL, S.J.

Gregorian University
Rome, Italy

15 Humilitas essentialiter in appetitu consistit, secundum quod aliquis refrenat
impetum animi sui, ne inordinate tendat in magna, sed regulam habet in cognitione, ut scilicet aliquis non se existimet supra id quod est.

FRIENDSHIP AND THE PROBLEM OF EGOISM

A

SURVEY OF RECENT philosophical literature indicates continuing interesit in the problem of egoism.
Ethical theory traditionally has had to grapple with
this issue, if only because in every generation the question recurs, " Why not pursue the selfish course of action? " Recent
attempts to resolve that question have focused on a logical
problem, that of challenging the consistency of an egoist's
claims, or the contradictions at least latent in the directives
issued by the egoist. Whether such an analysis defeats the
egoist has been a matter of dispute, and it is likely that refutations grounded in logic will continue to be advanced and
counter-attacked. My paper proposes to move on a different
front. For too long philosophers, fearful of committing a " naturalistic follacy," have neglected consideration of empirical
evidence, for example, that of psychology, which would have a
bearing on this question. The supposed gap between facts and
values has led to such claims as " It is now pretty generally
accepted by professional philosophers that ultimate ethical principles must be arbitrary. One cannot derive conclusions about
what should be merely from accounts of what is the case ... " 1
I believe it is incorrect to assume that one's ethical premisses
can only be " baldly asserted " because " here there is no room
for reason even to go wrong." 2 Rather, it seems to me that
facts about the human situation are relevant to decisions about
how humans ought to act, and that reason can here go wrong
precisely in not attending to those sources of action which
empirical enquiry lays bare. It shall be my contention that
egoism is vulnerable to considerations " capable of determining
1

Brian Medlin, "Ultimate Principles and Ethical Egoism," AU8tralattian

of Philosophy, Vol. 85 (1957), p. 118.

•Ibid.

105

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine;
and this is equivalent to proof." 3 Analogous to the argument in
Mill's Utilitarianism, the evidence which will be appealed to
concerns what people do in fact seek in view of their needs and
interesrts as social beings. The distinctive way in which this approach to egoism may be distinguished from other recent efforts
is perhaps illustrated by the two kinds of test for universalizability which Kant employed. 4 One test argues from the impossibility of one's maxim becoming a universal law, and the other
argues from the undesirability of universalization. The desirability of acting on an egoist principle, it shall be argued here,
is incompatible with what experience manifests to be its consequences. For this sort of evidence one clearly must leave the
closet of philosophical speculation.
A point that requires clarification at the outset concerns
definition of terms. It is especially true regarding egoism that
it derives some initial plausibility, as C. D. Broad has noted,
from " verbal ambiguities and misunderstandings." 5 A case
in point is Ayn Rand. In her introduction to The Virtue of
Selfishness Rand states that " the exact meaning and dictionary
definition of the word 'selfishness' is: concern with one's own
interests." 6 Dictionaries do not support her claim. For example, Webster's Third International Dictionary defines "selfishness " as "concern for one's own welfare or advantage at the
expense of or in disregard of others." Similarly," selfish" means
"seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure or
well-being without regard for others." 7 The danger in permitting Rand's stipulative definition to pass for an ordinary
•John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis. New York: Liberal Arts Press,
Inc., 1957), p. 7.
"Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Liberal
Arts Press, Inc., 1959), pp. 40-42.
• C. D. Broad, "Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives," Ethics and the History
of Philosophy (New York: The Humanities Press, 1952), p. 229.
•Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: The New American Library,
Inc., 1964), p. vii.
•Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C.
Merriam Co., 1967).

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

107

language meaning is that it confuses what is really at issue. The
question does not concern the acceptability of a self-realization
theory, but whether the integral fulfillment of human needs and
interests entails the exclusion of regard for others. Sidgwick was
correct when he observed, " Egoism, if we merely understand
by it a method that aims at Self-realization, seems to be a form
into which almost any ethical system may be thrown without
modifying its essential characteristics." 8
Common sense discriminates between those who devote their
lives to caring for lepers and those whose career is loan-sharking.
The ordinary man perceives a difference between sharing one's
books with others as opposed to pilfering a book from the public
library. Few people confuse the motive of a mother assiduously
attending to her sick child with the motive of one who beats
a child that disturbs her sleep. Customary use of the terms
"selfish" and "unselfish" is intended to mark the real difference between these sorts of actions, motives and states of
character. Were we to abandon that vocabulary, reducing
everything to selfishness, it would be necesary to invent new
language to reflect our everyday experience of these differences.
H it were the case, as Hume has argued, that " even unknown
to ourselves, we seek only our own gratification while we appear the most deeply engaged in schemes for the liberty and
happiness of mankind," this would not establish the egoist's
position. "As the same turn of imagination prevails not in every
man, nor gives the same direction to the original passion, this
is sufficient, even according to the selfish system, to make the
widest difference in human character and denominate one man
virtuous and humane, another vicious and meanly interested." 9
In other words, even granting
... that in all cases self-interest were the only motive, we must
still admit that in some men a certain association of ideas or trick
of the imagination or mistaken reasoning causes them to do actions
8 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (New York:
Dover Publications, Inc.,
1966)' p. 95.
•David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (New York:
Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1957), p. 114.

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE, JR.

which benefit others rather than themselves. Such men and such
actions would be called ' unselfish ', and it would be a fact that
we approve men who habitually deceive themselves in this way,
and disapprove those who do not. 10

That anyone should adopt such a monistic interpretation of
human behavior and motivation, and then " devote endless
labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it " 11 challenges us for an explanation. The
possibilities are various. One is the very simplicity of the theory.
A reduction of all impulses to forms of self-love is attractive
when priority is given to economy of explanation. A veritable
longing for simplicity can override the most compelling evidence
that motivation is complex, that constituents of the self are
diverse, and that a plurality of objects motivate our impulses.
Another possibility derives from the influence which a social'
environment can have upon the individual's values. John
Dewey has written at length to establish the point that our
moral judgments, our habits and, hence, our conduct are socially conditioned. "Of what avail is it to preach unassuming
simplicity and contentment of life when communal admiration
goes to the man who 'succeeds '-who makes himself conspicuous and envied because of command of money and other
forms of power?" 12 At a time when thought is decidedly individualistic, and social arrangements are judged to be secondary and artificial, it is little to be wondered that egoistic justifications should occur to individuals presumed to be naturally
isolated. Moreover, when this prevailing individualism is expressed in an economic theory which maintains that each person
is, or can only survive if he is, a rugged individual seeking his
own profit in competition with others, social approval will erect
egoism into a virtue. 13
1 ° C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical TheMy
(Paterson, N. J.: Littlefield, Adams
& Co., 1959), p. IOI.
11 C. D. Broad, " Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives," p.
12 John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: The Modern Library,
1957). p. 819.
13 Cf. John Dewey, TheMy of the Moral Life
(New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1967), pp. 168-4.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

109

Relatedly, Peter Marin in a recent article has called attention to a current " trend in therapy towards a deification of the
isolated self." 14 The "new narcissism," as he terms it, arises
from a desire to defend ourselves against a sense of shame and
guilt occasioned by routine inequities of consumption and distribution which benefit us and condemn others to misery. "So
we struggle mightily to convince ourselves that our privilege is
earned and deserved." 15 The ground of community disappears
in the face of growing solipsism, and the hunger for relation
is suppressed in the name of selfishness posing as enlightenment.
A third factor which encourages egoistic theory is the type of
dynamic psychology which assumes inflexibility in basic motives
and drives. Psychoanalysis and other genetic accounts assume
that every motive of personality traces back to infancy. Against
this Gordon Allport has argued that one cannot assume motives
operative in the infant or the small child to be isomorphic with
those of an adult. It may be granted that the child starts life
as a completely selfish being, thoughtless, grabby, demanding
immediacy of gratification. However, these egocentric beginnings are not consciously referred to self and, as the self
matures and becomes socialized, a genuine transformation of
motivation occurs. 16 With extension of the ego, an individual
can come to find it intolerable to seek happiness at the expense
of others. What Allport terms the " functional autonomy of
"Peter Marin, "The New Narcissism," Harper's Vol. 251., No. 1505 (October,
1975)' p. 45.
15 Ibid., p. 47.
16 Gordon W. Allport, Becoming
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955),
pp. 28-30. This view might at first blush appear to be in conflict with Dewey's
claim that "our native impulses and acts are iwither egoistic nor altruistic ... "
Theory of the Moral Life, p. 156. Cf. Democracy and Education (New York:
The Free Press, 1966), pp. 43-44, where Dewey rejects the " alleged pure egoism
of children." However, Allport is making another point. Granted that no choice
is even possible at the infant stage, and conscious reference to self or others is nonexistent, nevertheless the behavior in question is in fact egocentric. In the course
of early training we teach the child to approve or disapprove of acts according
as they are or are not considerate of others. On this question, cf. also Gordon
Allport, "A Basic Psychology of Love and Hate," Personality and Social Encounter
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 205 and 210.

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

motives " provides the necessary antidote to " the faulty logic
of bellum omnium contra omnes ... Motives being completely
alterable, the dogma of Egoism turns out to be a callow and
superficial philosophy of behavior, or else a useless redundancy." 11
A fourth and perhaps most significant encouragement to egoism rests upon two commonplace confusions, each often intertwined with the other. The first maintains that whenever I act,
I am simply doing what I most want to do. That is to say,
it is my wants, desires and interests which prompt me to act.
Allegedly, the crucial fact is that, whether I am helping an
elderly person cross the street, or I am stealing coins from a
blind beggar's cup, it is my interest that determines the act.
In the final analysis, all my acts are selfish because what motivates me is the interest or desire which I happen to have and
which I want satisfied.
The problem with this argument is that " we confuse the
ownership of an impulse with its object." 18 It was Joseph Butler who pointed out that " although every particular affection
is a man's own," we require language to express" the difference
between the principle of an action proceeding from cool consideration that it will be to my own advantage, and an action ... by which a man runs upon certain ruin to do evil or
good to another." 19 The appetite or the passion is in each case
distinct, and the object of the one is not the same as the object
of the other. The fact that both acts proceed from inclinations
in the self cannot be denied. The relevant point is that in the
one case my inclination is to assist the elderly pedestrian, and
in the other my inclination is to obtain money at the expense
of the blind beggar's own needs. Selfishness and unselfishness
are terms which mark this real difference in the kinds of character traits which produce acts of the one sort or the other.
Gordon W. Allport, Personality (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937), p. !'l06.
C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory, p. 65.
10 Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (London:
G.
Bell & Sons, Ltd., 1914), pp. 168-9.
17

18

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

111

Indiscriminately to label all my acts as selfish merely because
they are my own accounts for nothing that is of interest either
psychologically or morally. What we find it important to distinguish is behavior which is considerate of the needs of others
and that which is not. Undoubtedly it is my desire which is
satisfied when I assist the elderly pedestrian, and it is my desire
which is satisfied when I steal the beggar's coins. The egoist's
contention reduces to the trivial truth that it is I who am acting
whenever I am acting. What is morally .significant, however,
is the kind of person who is acting, whether that person is sensitive to the interests of others, or whether he is obtuse to those
interests. Either disposition is obviously a constituent of the
self, and in action springing from that disposition the interest
of the self is involved. But, as Dewey has pointed out, " the
different selves have different values. A self changes it.s structure and its value according to the kind of object which it desires and seeks; according, that is, to the different kinds of objects in which active interest is taken." 20
A .second confusion closely related to the first has it that
everything we do has pleasure as its goal. All agents act to
attain what they expect will give them the most pleasure.
Since we all are pleasure-seekers, apparently altruistic acts are
as much a manifestation of underlying egocentrism as any other
act. That some derive their pleasure from tending lepers and
others derive pleasure from stealing beggar's coins, it is said,
should not obscure the fact that seeking one's own pleasure
is the common denominator.
In response, it is once again necessary to point out how little
is asserted in a claim of this sort. It goes without saying that
performance of an act for which one has some appetite is attended with pleasure. Indeed, pleasure just is the satisfaction
experienced in fulfilling an appetite. One would hardly expect
a person not to experience pleasure in the performance of an act
towards which he is disposed. But what is of moment here is
80

Dewey, Theory of the Moral Life, p. 159.

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR,

the sorts of things which give one pleasure. It has been on
the record at least as far back as Aristotle that what distinguishes the good man from the evil man is not that one or
the other finds pleasure in what he does, since both do. Rather,
the distinction derives from the activities which characteristically are a source of pleasure to each. The just man will experience
pleasure in doing just deeds. The unjust man will experience
pleasure in doing unjust deeds. And each would experience pain
were he to perform the act pleasurable to the other. What one
finds pleasurable or painful, then, will depend on the dispositions he has formed. Consequently, it is the prior suitability
of an object to an interest that determines its pleasurableness.
What objects are suitable to given individuals are contingent
upon the interests of those individuals. As those interests obviously can vary, the thrust of moral education is to discourage
formation of interests which disregard the welfare of others,
i. e., which are selfish, and to encourage formation of interests
which are considerate of others, i.e., which are unselfish. In
sum, an " unselfish interest in another is one of a man's oum
interests but not one of his selfish interests ... it is not made
less moral by the fact that it gives satisfaction to the doer." 21
It should also be noted that pleasure is not itself the object
of our act, whether selfish or unselfish. The cup of tea, the relief
of a child's distress, the publication of an article, may each of
them be the object of one or another act. It is because I desire
the object that I will have a pleasant experience in the attainment of the object. But the pleasure presupposes the existence
of the appetite, and the appetite is specified by its object. Were
pleasure itself the object of desire, what would differentiate our
desires? To cite Butler once again,
That all particular appetites and passions are towards external,
things themselves distinct from the pleasure arising from them, is
manifested from hence-that there could not be this pleasure were
it not for that prior suitableness between the object and the passion;
01

Michael Scriven, Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.

1966), p. ft35.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

118

there could be no enjoyment or delight from one thing more than
another, from eating food more than from swallowing a stone, if
there were not an affection or appetite to one thing more than
another. 22

My earlier example should illustrate this point. When I assist
the elderly person across the street, what I seek is not pleasure,
but the safe passage of the elderly person. That is my object.
That I experience pleasure in the fulfillment of that purpose is
to say little more than that my purpose is accomplished. There
is nothing but confusion in the egoist's claim that I did the act
in order to receive the satisfaction, since I would give up doing
it if that act gave me no satisfaction. Satisfaction is not the object of my act, but is a sign that the object is appropriate to my
disposition. The ethical problem is not that a self is satisfied,
but what kind of self is satisfied. It is on this issue that the
egoist's view is impoverished.
In morals, the concrete differences between a Jesus, a Peter, a
John and a Judas are covered up by the wise remark that after
all they are all selves and all act as selves ... The fallacy consists
in transforming the (truistic) fact of acting a,s a self into the fiction
of action always for self. Every act, truistically again, tends to a
certain fulfillment or satisfaction of some habit which is an undoubted element in the structure of character ... But theory comes
in and blankets the tremendous diversity in the quality of the satisfactions which are experienced by pointing out that they are all
satisfactions. The harm done is then completed by transforming
this artificial unity of result into an original love of satisfaction as
the force that generates all acts alike . . . In reality the more we
concretely dwell upon the common fact of fulfillment, the more we
realize the difference in the kind of selves fulfilled.23

The fact that the self is fulfilled when acts of an unselfish
nature are performed indicates the error which underlies the
bifurcation of self from others. Historically the egoism problem
has sprung in part from the false assumption that a strong disjunctive choice is necessary in determining the course of one's
••Butler, op. cit., pp. 167-8.
••Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 136-7.

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

life. Either I act to realize my own interests and potentialities
or I act self-sacrificingly to satisfy the interests of others. Not
only have philosophers such as Aristotle and Dewey attacked
this misconception, but contemporary humanistic psychologists
have as well. Personality theory, which seeks to explain the development of the individual from infant beginnings toward full
maturity, supports the philosophical thesis that man is a social
being, and that egoism fails precisely because it is unfaithful to
this ego-transcending dimension of the self which is constitutive
of our human nature. Philosophers today can neglect the evidence of psychology and the other social sciences only at the risk
of rendering a prioristic their own reflections on the human condition. It is the case that some philosophers recognize the
relevance of psychological and other empirical data. 24 Nevertheless, the predominant tendency is to shy away from such
" naturalistic " orientations and, in the process, ensure the
sterility of philosophical deliverances. This consequence follows,
I am persuaded, from the fact that philosophers have no
privileged access to reality. The study of man advances most
fruitfully when somewhat pridefully erected barriers between
the disciplines are dismantled in the interest of restoring unity
to the complex object of investigation. 25
Abraham Maslow is one of many contemporary psychologists
studying personality development who deplore the false dichotomizing which pathologizes the human situation. Maslow insists that experimental and clinical evidence compels us to think
holistically rather than atomistically. "Dichotomizing seems
••Cf., for example, Richard B. Brandt, Ethir;al Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959). Brandt acknowledges that, concerning "the strategy
for maximizing happiness " we must not confine ourselves to a study of the history
of philosophy. "But in a complex modern world, and after the rise of psychology
and the social sciences, we can and should look for something more sophisticated
and better founded in observation. The sciences of psychology and psychiatry
certainly bear on this ... " p. 39l9.
25 I have argued this point at length elsewhere. See my " Deriving the Desirable
from the Desired," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association,
Vol. XL (1970), pp. 15il-60. Also, "Aquinas and Ethical Naturalism," The New
S()holasticism, Vol. XLIX (Winter, 1975), pp. 76-86.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

115

now to be characteristic 0£ a lower level 0£ personality development and 0£ psychological functioning; it is both a cause and an
effect 0£ psychopathology." 28 Direct study 0£ psychologically
healthy individuals reveals that in them the satisfaction 0£ basic
needs is propaedeutic to movement toward a higher level termed
"self-actualization." At this level there is integration 0£ motivations and inclinations which at a lower level are viewed as,
and also £unction as, opposites. Relevant to our purposes is
Maslow's finding that in self-actualizing people the dichotomy
0£ selfishness and unselfishness is resolved into a higher, superordinate unity. Such growth emerges only from safety so that,
i£ deficiency-needs are not gratified, the individual will not evidence ego-transcendance. The growth pattern 0£ a healthy child
indicates an initial movement outwards to the environment.
l£ not crippled by £ear and frustration the child will continue to
dare. Egocentricity, at first only a pre-reflective appetite for
immediate gratification 0£ impulses, will emerge as the dominant,
conscious tendency only when the environment confronts the
developing personality with a conflict between safety and
growth. Study 0£ free choices in both healthy and sick individuals leads to the conclusion that, in those whose capacities
are developed and fully functioning, there is egoless or selftranscending object-centeredness. Self-love and altruism are not
opposites. Rather, love in self-actualizing people involves a free
giving 0£ oneself, without reserve, wholly and with abandon. 21
The needs 0£ the other become one's own needs, so that for
psychological purposes one is no longer observing separate egos,
but a single unit. Psychology 0£ personality suggests that " this
need to go out beyond the limits 0£ the ego may be a need in
the same sense that we have needs for vitamins and minerals,
i. e., that i£ the need is not satisfied, the person becomes sick in
one way or another." 28
26 Abraham
Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being (New York: D. Van
Nostrand Co., 1968), p.
"'Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (second edition; New York:
Harper and Row, Publishers, 1970), ch. rn.
28 Ibid., p. 194.

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

The social parallel of this holistic psychological theory is the
perception of culture as itself instrumental to need-gratification
when appropriately constituted. The interests of the individual
and of society are not necessarily exclusive and antagonistic.
The challenge is to create social conditions which foster universal self-actualization. 29 The age-old problem of reconciling
personal good and common good is attacked at its root when the
person is revealed as an organism whose needs in quasi-instinctive fashion draw him forward to seek others, and in the further
reaches of that growth to an identification with others. If the
culture is itself "healthy," the good pursued through collective
effort will be synonymous with the requirements for psychological maturation.
These claims of Maslow find support in the research of
another psychologist, Andras Angyal. Life may itself be defined
as " a process of self-expansion." 30 This life process embraces
both organism and environment, and there is a tendency toward
increase of autonomy, i.e., toward self-assertiveness, freedom
and mastery. However, equally basic to human existence is
what Angyal calls the" trend to homonomy." Humans strive
for a place in larger units of which they wish to be a part. Th0
search for integration into superindividual units indicates that
life is not contained within the individual self. Homonomous
tending satisfies that level of human existence in which the need
is to mean something to someone else. We want to have existence in the thoughts and feelings of others, so that our own life
is reflected in an understanding and affectionate way. Theories
which presume an egocentric organization of the individual conflict with evidence that we not only have needs, but we also
want to be needed. Homonomous integration can be toward
another person, toward a group or toward a cause. In any case,
the need to belong forms a community or a unit towards which
one's attitude is quite unlike the self-assertive tendency toward
••Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being, pp. 159 and 221.
80 Andras Angyal, Neurosis and Treatment
(New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1965), p. 5.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

117

autonomy. "While the trend toward increased autonomy aims
at the domination of the surroundings, the characteristic attitude toward superindividual wholes is rather a kind of submerging or subordination of one's individuality in the service
of superindividual goals. In this latter trend a person seeks
union with larger units and wishes to .share and participate in
something which he regards as being greater than his individual
self." 31
Personality development requires integration of the individual into the social group, and psychological theory cannot
neglect this powerful source of human motivation. Homonomous
expression is essential for normal adjustment. "Self-centeredness, being wrapped up in oneself, inability to ' loosen up,' to
get out of oneself, is a well-recognized characteristic of many
forms of personality disorder . . . The merging into superindividual wholes, the sharing and participation in larger units, is
a powerful .support of mental health." 32
Although the autonomous and homonomous trends are distinguished and can be opposed to one another, " in a wellintegrated person the two orientations are complementary
rather than conflicting." 33 An attempt to master the environment uncovers the need for a homonomous attitude in understanding and respecting the laws of that environment. By the
same token, a loving relationship lacks quality when the individual is deficient in resourcefulness and self-reliance. For
Angy al as for Maslow, then, at a higher level of personality
development the apparent opposition of egoism and altruism
dissolves in the perception of the self as one whose essential
nature is expressed in tendencies to incorporation.
31 Andras Angyal, Foundations for a Science of Personality
(New York: Viking
Press, 1972), p. 172.
•• Ibid., pp. 179-80.
•• Angyal, Neurosis and Treatment, p. 29. Cf. F<YUndations for a Science of
Personality, p. 174, where Angyal says, "The two trends may be regarded as two
phases of a more inclusive process. In the trend toward increased autonomy the
biologically chaotic items of the environment are fitted into the organization of
the individual's life, while in the homonomous tendency the individual seeks to fit
himself into even larger organizations."

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

Gordon Allport, a major figure among humanistic psychologists, is even prepared to say on this score that " true neuroses,
we know, are best defined as stubborn self-centeredness." 34
Reference has already been made to Allport'.s description of the
unsocial beginnings of the child. The first stages of becoming
are devoid of altruism. However, as the person matures" there
comes a diminution in the preponderance and intensity of personal inclinations, and a growth and extension of other-regarding
sentiments." 35 This is accounted for by the fact that, in all
forms of human association, we want not only to preserve selfesteem, but also to establish affiliative relations with others. Enlargement of interest systems to include our fellows is a natural
bent of man. In the process of maturation there is achieved a
decentering from the unit of self to an increasingly larger social
unit. Egocentricity gives way to reciprocity and inclusion.
However, this process can be arrested at any point, especially
as a result of frustration of affiliative inclinations. "In clinical
practice we know how often the clamorous manifestations of
egotism gain the upper hand when men are denied a proper continuation of the originally friendly and symbiotic relationship
with family, friends and neighbors." 36 When affiliative desire or
love is rebuffed, then hostility as an emotion of protest may ensue. However, it must be borne in mind that early striving is
toward affiliation. Encounter with the environment is originally
positive, with a zeal for approach. Anxious fear, aggression and
hostility arise only in proportion as these affiliative needs are
threatened.
Adolescent love is one example of youthful experience which
rapidly extends the boundaries of the self. The welfare of some
other becomes not only as important as, but is identical with,
one's welfare. As a person develops more and more interests
outside of himself, whether in friends, ideas, associations,
hobbies, or vocation, the self expands. It is Allport's contention
••Allport, Personality and Social Encounter, p. 173.
35 Allport, Becoming, p. 30.
36 Allport, Personality and Social Encounter, p. 63.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

119

that we cannot qualify as mature personalities unless there has
been this development of autonomous interests in .some significant areas of human endeavor. "Maturity advances in
proportion as lives are decentered from the clamorous immediacy of the body and of egocenteredness. Self-love is a prominent
and inescapable factor in every life, but it need not dominate.
Everyone has self-love, but only self-extension is the earmark
of maturity." 37
Allport is aware that a philosophy of egoism will argue that
motives which at first blush are judged to be self-sacrificing and
other-regarding are in reality merely selfish. However, consistent with his thesis of the " functional autonomy of motives,"
Allport insists that " socialization is not simply a varnish laid
over personality, but involves, at least much of the time, a
genuine transmutation of interests from the egoistic to the
altruistic." as This is not merely a movement from unenlightened to enlightened self-interest, inasmuch as ego-expansion
causes the individual actually to lose himself in the objects of
his interests, to go outside of himself and to be absorbed in persons, causes and pursuits which cannot be accounted for in
terms of self-seeking. The extension of the self which identification with these goals implies is, for Allport, the first requirement
for maturity in personality.
Finally, social and political implications are to be drawn
from this psychological account. What Allport names " propriate striving " is distinguished from other forms of motivation
in that it makes for unification of personality. 39 Integration of
drives and various subsystems of inclinations is what characterizes maturity. Harmonious integration of interests resolves
conflicts and reduces the possibility of such conflicts within a
given individual. And, in similar fashion, the enlargement of
interests which causes one increasingly to identify with the
needs of others reduces the possibility of conflict in social inter87 Gordon Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York:
hart & Winston, 1961), p.
88 Allport, Personality, p. 169.
30 Allport, Becoming, p. 50.

Holt, Rine-

mo

ROBERT B. ASHMORE, JR.

course. As a consequence, the ethical ideal, both on a national
and on an international level, is the resolution of conflict through
progressive enlargement of interest systems. The United Nations, Allport points out, is organized expressly for that purpose.40
There is an impressive list of other contemporary psychologists whose theories of personality development bear strong
family resemblances to those of Maslow, Angyal and Allport.
Perhaps it is not necessary for our purposes to do more than
suggest the lines of agreement. Carl Rogers, for example, indicates that his experience in therapy with disturbed and troubled
people seeking the good life manifests their deep need for affiliation and communication with others. Once the individual is
freed from defensiveness, he exhibits increasing openness to
the whole range of his needs. The problems of socialization and
control of aggressive impulses in that liberated climate diminish.
As he becomes more fully himself, that is, " a.s he becomes more
open to all his impulses, his need to be liked by others and his
tendency to give affection will be as strong as his impulses to
strike out or to seize for himself." 41
Similarly, as a consequence of her psychoanalytic work with
neurotic persons, Karen Horney has written extensively on this
antithesis to healthy human growth. Because of unfavorable
environmental factors, especially those which discourage a
feeling of belonging, the individual develops basic anxiety, or
a sense of isolation and helplessness in a world viewed as hostile.
Out of the-8e feelings there develops an urgent need to lift one.self
above others. Thus begins the alienation from the real self, concerning which there is no self-confidence, and instead the neurotic constructs an idealized image of himself endowed with
exalted powers. The hopeless attempt to actualize this :fictitious
self has been labeled by Horney as the "search for glory." 42
Allport, Personality and Social Encounter, p. 176.
Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton MifHin Co., 1961),
p. 194.
' 0

u

•2

Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth (New York: W. W. Norton &

Co., 1950), p.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

Hl

Not surprisingly, then, a characteristic of neurotic claims is
egocentricity. This unfortunate individual, who is torn by conflicts and driven by unrealistic psychic needs, must be the most
intelligent, the most attractive, most entitled to special attention, victorious in any argument, and least at fault for any mishap. The selfishness of the neurotic places continual and exorbitant demands upon others who, however, are not seen to
have needs and desires which establish any legitimate claims on
their part. After all, the neurotic is so far superior to everyone
else that his rights take precedence, and his needs are more
deserving of immediate attention.
In sum, the pride system of the neurotic removes him from
other human beings by making him egocentric. Unrealistic
about himself, he is likewise unrealistic about others. Horney
concludes that " the inner psychic process which is the neurotic
equivalent to healthy, human striving is tragic. Man under the
pressure of inner distress reaches out for the ultimate and the
infinite which-though his limits are not fixed-it is not given
to him to reach; and in this very process he destroys himself,
shifting his very best drive for self-realization to the actualization of his idealized image and thereby wasting the potentialities
he actually possesses." 43
Erik Erickson, another leading figure in the field of psychoanalysis, identifies eight stages of man in describing the life
cycle, and in so doing emphasizes the growth toward egotranscendence which has been stressed by all the other researchers so far discussed. Thus, in stage six Erickson finds that
"the young adult, emerging from the search for, and the insistence on identity, is eager and willing to fuse his identity with
that of others." 44 Ready for intimacy, the individual is willing
to commit himself in ways that may call for significant sacrifices.
Again, in the next stage, what Erickson terms " generativity "
or a concern to establish and guide the next generation displays
••Ibid., p. 377.
••Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (second edition; New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1963), p. 9.!63.

ROBERT :B. ASHMOREJ, JR.

itself. However, the "ability to lose oneself in the meeting of
bodies and minds " with its consequent " gradual expansion of
ego-interests" and "libidinal investment in that which is generated" can be retarded. Once again, defective childhood experiences, especially "self-love based on a too strenuously selfmade personality" can block development of this essential stage
in psychosexual and psychosocial actualization. 45
In concluding this discussion of psychological theory on the
nature and origin of egoism as an aberrant maturational phenomenon, it is important to note what is not being asserted.
Now here is the claim made that ego-expansion, propriate
striving, homonomous tending, or their synonyms imply a
denial or rejection of self in favor of others. Egoism's presumption of a dichotomous conflict between self and others is here
viewed as a subject for psychopathology. In healthy human
striving the real potentialities of the individual are gradually
brought to actualization. It is indeed the self which is realized,
but this self is one whose natural tending is towards identification with others. Love of self, unless neurotic, is not opposed
to, but rather is fused with, love of fellow man.
Erich Fromm in Man For Himself has argued that "love for
oneself and for others in principle is conjunctive," so that
"the affirmation of one's own life" is "rooted in one's capacity
to love." 46 Selfishness should not be confused with self-love,
for they are actually opposites. The selfish person in fact hates
himself. Were he to possess an adequate self-concept he would
not hesitate to exercise his capacity to love others. In short,
traditional doctrines which have identified virtue with " selfdenial" or "self-sacrifice" or "selflessness" have presented a
false dilemma. Humanistic ethics builds upon psychological
awareness that integrated personality development implies no
disjunction of self-interest and interest in others. The self in
which one is interested is, in the final analysis, a self naturally
45

Ibid., p.

46

Erich Fromm, Man For Himself

Inc., 1947), p. 135.

(Greenwich, Conn.:

Fawcett Publications,

FRIENDSHIP

AND EGOISM

tending to others. The bottom line reads as follows: the nature
of man is a social nature. The conclusion for ethics is that individual fulfillment cannot in principle be opposed to regard
for others, since the needs and interests of that individual necessarily carry him beyond himself and toward community with
his fellow man. 47
That this reading of various philosophical and psychological
theorists should take us back to a thesis which appears to be little
more than a quote from Aristotle should cause no discomfort to
the unprejudiced mind. If it is human nature we are talking
about, observations made by a Greek over 2,000 years ago should
not be falsified merely by the passage of time. 48 Of course, it
would be absurd to maintain that there has not been scientific
progress in knowledge of man. Nevertheless, so many of the
insights grounded in experience which Aristotle has left us seem
only to be confirmed in the findings of contemporary social science. And so, it is to Aristotle that I should like to turn in this
concluding section of my paper. For it is in his discussion of
friendship in Books VIII and IX of the Nichomachean Ethic.<;
that one finds a paradigm of the mature human being.
47 In reaching this conclusion it is, of course, my contention that both psychological egoism and ethical egoism are unacceptable. Neither do people in fact always
act selfishly, nor should they. The latter claim follows from all that has been
said concerning the failure of such behavior to promote self-fulfillment. If this
"fact" is considered by some philosophers to be insufficient to ground a "value,"
then they are left with the improbable task of establishing a credible set of norms
that ignores what people want and need because of their species characteristics.
48 Note, for example, how fundamental
to the social theory of the modern day
philosopher, Karl Marx, is his doctrine concerning the nature of man. Joseph J.
O'Malley sees Marx as distinguishing two distinct kinds of "natural " sociality in
man. " The first would be a ' prehuman ' sociality consisting of that social impulse
present in man's primitive intentional makeup which moves him to cooperative
society as a means to the appropriation of nature's products . . . The second
would be a 'truly human ' sociality consisting in a social impulse which only
emerges as a result of the historical development of production. This would be
the inclination to the ' truly human ' society; it is that ' need of the greatest
wealth-the other human being' ... It would replace self-interest regarding the
goods necessary to life ... as that which holds men together in community."
"History and Man's 'Nature' in Marx," The Review of Politics, Vol. 28, No. 4
(1966), pp. 523-4.

ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

That Aristotle devoted so much attention to the subject of
friendship in the Nichomachean Ethics, and a comparable
amount of space in his Eudemian Ethics, would suggest that
friendship was of quite considerable importance to his moral
philosophy. Nevertheless, most study of Aristotle's ethics focuses
on other areas, and his books on friendship suffer almost universal neglect. This is unfortunate, in my view, for two reasons.
First of all, Aristotle's concept of happiness, the end towards
which all human action is ordered, contains friendship as an
integral part. His analysis of what is requisite for man's fulfillment leads Aristotle to conclude that no man can be called
happy who does not experience friendship of the sort we shall
shortly be describing. 49 Consequently, neglect of Aristotle's
lengthy discussion of friendship hampers understanding of the
goal established by this teleological ethic.
Secondly, it is in Aristotle's doctrine of friendship that one
finds admirably reconciled the apparent duality of man's
strivings toward self-perfection with man's nature as a social
being. The good man is one with the true friend, so that to fail
to appreciate the role of friendship in Aristotle is to lack understanding of virtue in operation. It is, after all, in the activities
of virtuous friends that we discover the most sublime reaches of
human potential. The claims of contemporary psychologists we
have just considered are fully confirmed in Aristotle's analysis
of love in character-friendship.
The division of friendship into three kinds which occurs early
in Book VIII gives immediate indication of the non-egocentric
nature of friendship in its truest form. Friendship of utility and
friendship of pleasure differ from friendship of virtue inasmuch
as the former love" for the sake of what is good for themselves."
(1156al5) The friend is loved because he is pleasant or useful,
••" For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other
goods." Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, trans. W. D. Ross (New York: Random
House, 1941), VII, 1, 1155a5. Hereafter, for sake of convenience, all quotations
from Aristotle will be immediately followed in the body of the article by Bekker
numbers for purposes of locating passages in the Ross translation.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

U5

and such friendship easily dissolves when this service to self is
no longer needed or available. Even vicious persons can enjoy
friendships of these sorts. Virtue is not requisite, £or example,
if friends are such because of their usefulness to one another in
business deals. The same is true when pleasure is the object,
as when one values a friend because he is a good drinking
companion. By contrast, perfect friendship can exist only between good men, and the distinguishing characteristic of this
kind of friendship is that the friend is loved for his own sake.
(1156b9) The object of love is possessed of goodness and hence
what is loved in the friend is intrinsic rather than incidental.
Of course, goodness or virtue may vary from individual to
individual. Hence, even within character-friendships, there will
be differences of degree and friends of this sort are prepared to
assist one another in growth of virtue. One must keep in mind,
however, the purpose of this assistance, "for in purpose lies the
essential element of virtue and character." (1163a23) Love and
friendship of the finest sort wills the other's good £or the sake
of the other. This is why true friendship gives so little cause for
complaint. Who can complain of a friend who wills the other's
good? Lesser friendships are full of complaints because " they
use each other for their own interests " and each wants " to get
the better of the bargain." (1162b16)
Noble friendship rises above such wrangling, for the essence
of this relationship consists in loving rather than in being loved.
(1159a33) What is of value in lesser friendships is not sacrificed
in noble friendship, however, inasmuch as " the good man is
at the same time pleasant and useful." (1158a33) Delighting
in the admirable qualities of the beloved, noble friends naturally
wish to spend their time in one another's company, since" there
is nothing so characteristic of friends as living together.''
(1157b19) Preferring the society of one another to all things
else, the utility of noble friendship is also clear. A friend seeks
to transfer to himself the traits he admires in the other, and
in this case they are truly admirable. Therefore, it is in association with a virtuous friend that one himself grows in virtue.

126

ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

The good will of that virtuous friend is unquestionable, for his
character requires that he seek others to be the object of his
beneficence. The subtle reconciliation of self-love and love for
another reveals itself once again. The " good man will need
people to do well by." (1169bl4) Consequently, in conferring
benefits upon another he is satisfying his own needs. 50
In chapter eight of Book IX Aristotle tackles head-on the
problem of egoism. "The question is also debated," he says,
" whether a man should love himself most, or some one else."
(1168a28) He responds to this question with a distinction. The
prevailing type of self-love is rightly a matter of reproach. For,
lovers of self in the bad sense " assign to themselves the greater
share of wealth, honours and bodily pleasures." (1168b16)
However, the true lover of self, unlike most men, will assign to
himself" the things that are noblest and best." (1168b29) The
good man wishes to excel in virtuous deeds. What are objects
of competition for most people are of no consequence to him.
He gladly dispenses with these in order that he may accomplish
that which is finest in his nature. What the good man wants to
do in life is identical with what a man, morally speaking, ought
to do. It follows that a good man should be a lover of self, for
his nature is lovable. In fulfilling his wants, which are to perform noble acts, he simultaneously profits himself and benefits
others.
It is no mystery, then, why a good person will sacrifice so
much for his friend. He identifies his own good with the good
of the one whom he loves. This unselfishness is exhibited, first
of all, in the willingness to share material possessions. " What
friends have is common property." (1168b7) But it extends
beyond this. Good persons make the best friends, because in
••Dewey made a similar point in Human Nature and Conduct. "Each impulse
is a demand for an object which will enable it to function" (p. 140). Applied in
this context, one might say that virtue propels the good man outwards in search
of a worthy recipient of his good-will. Insofar as the object-friend is inadequate
the impulse is to perfect the friend, so that the ideal can be realized. Therefore,
the loftier the virtuous disposition, the more benevolent is its effort. A mutuality
of such benevolence provides the keenest spur to excellence of character.

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

127

each there is so much that is worthy of love. The things of
which they approve are the same. Whether in times of good
fortune or in times of adversity, friends will seek out one
another, for they are prepared to share sorrows as well as joys.
What strikes the egoist as most paradoxical, the willingness of
a noble person even to die for the sake of his friend, presents
no problem to Aristotle. It has already been established that
the good man loves in himself the disposition to virtuous acts.
Therefore, he will choose nobility before all else. 1£ circumstances require that his life be lost in the service of those he
loves, then a good man will choose the greater prize. In sacrificing his life for his friend, he assigns to himself nobility.
(1169al8-36)
That this doctrine of friendship should be judged by some as
unacceptable or even impossible of implementation would not
strike Aristotle as surprising. Fundamental to his ethical theory
is the conviction that people's habits determine what they find
desirable. The sources of pleasure to a good man differ from
those of an evil man. Ideal friendship will not attract a person
lacking in those qualities by which Aristotle defines virtuous
living. And, indeed, it must be conceded that for some individuals it is not possible to be a noble friend. Recall Maslow's
point that the self will not attempt or be able to extend itself
beyond the self unless deficiency-needs are satisfied, unless basic
needs for security and a sense of belonging are fulfilled.
Similarly, Aristotle would argue that unselfish friendship is an
eligible good only for those properly disposed. This "peak experience " is not species-wide, but rather is idiosyncratic in the
sense that only when requisite qualifications are presupposed
does this higher value become desirable, pleasurable or even
possible.
Aristotle maintains that "as a man is to himself, so is he
to his friend." (1171b32) If an individual does not find his own
being desirable, he will not be able to find a friend's being desirable. Now, some people have good reason not to love themselves. A lovable self is created through the cultivation of

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE, JR.

praiseworthy qualities. Psychology reveals how significant are
the early childhood experiences in the development of wholesome personality characteristics. If Fromm is correct in arguing
that the selfish person is actually one who hates himself, then
surely for him to expand the boundaries of self into the relationship of friendship which Aristotle describes is impossible.
However, even those persons who are properly disposed for
noble friendship will not possess many per.sons as their friends.
It is Aristotle's belief that love, an emotion of affection carried
to a point of intensity, can only be felt for one or at most a few.
A considerable investment of time and attention is made in acquiring experience of the other and becoming familiar with him.
Finally, the intimate manner of their living together, sharing
so completely their interests, their joys and their griefs, means
that " great friendship can only be felt toward a few people,"
and that " the famous friendships of this sort are always between two people." (ll 71al3-15)
In conclusion, I think it must be said that friendship of this
sort could only have been described, as Aristotle has done it,
by someone who had that experience. And the reader of Aristotle's account is likely to be skeptical unless he too has .shared
a similar experience. Nevertheless, whether attested to by Aristotle or by the "self-actualizers" of Maslow's clinical practice,
the experience establishes the possibility of genuine unselfishness in human relations. That the possibility is desirable is
premised in the fact that such harmony of interests points the
way to increased prospects for human happiness in society.
As Ralph Barton Perry has put it, " It is not to be supposed
that personal integration or even self-love is necessarily selfish.
The several interests of the same subject may be interests in
the interests of another subject." 51 Perry goes on to point out
that conflicts in society can be reduced to the extent that love
establishes an integration of wills which are social in their object. " What we require is a personal integration that shall be
• 1 Ralph Barton Perry, General Theory of Value (Cambridge, Mass.:
University Press, 1967), p. 669.

Harvard

FRIENDSHIP AND EGOISM

H9

socially qualified, or that shall guarantee a harmonious fulfillment of all interests." 52
Perry's call for love and universal benevolence creates uneasiness in many philosophers as well as in many social scientists. Allport has found " a persistent defect of modern psychology " to lie in its " failure to make a serious study of the
affiliative desires and capacities of human beings." 53 What has
been called a " flight from tenderness " is explained by Allport
as feeling that it is " more tough-minded to study discord. The
scientist fears that, if he looks at affiliative sentiments, he may
seem sentimental; if he talks about love, he may seem emotional; and if he studies personal attachments, he may appear
personal." 54
Perhaps, if this is an age of liberation from sexism, there will
slowly erode the chauvinistic attribution of " femininity" to
such characteristics as considerateness, benevolence or sympathy, together with the assumption that survival and prosperity in this world require " manly " traits of power-seeking,
impassivity, and egocentrism. 55 Dewey is correct in arguing
that 'the very problem of morals is to form an original body
of impulsive tendencies into a voluntary self in which desires
and affections center in the values which are common; in which
interest focusses in objects that contribute to the enrichment
of the lives of all." 56
It is in affirming the ideal that we " should love others as we
u Ibid., p. 676.
••Allport, Personality and Social Encounter, p. 199.
••Ibid., p. 220. Also, Angyal, in equating the whole concept of homonomy with
love, felt required to counter misunderstandings. "This is not poetry. This is
earthy reality. And you cannot begin to understand human beings if you do not
see the importance of this realm ... " Neurosis and Treatment, p. 19.
••Mary Anne Siderits in " Selves Selving: Development of a Sense of SelfDetermination," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 21 (1973), p. 65, indicates that "an
interest in social power may motivate a species of nurturance that is not egotistically motivated." Social mastery, Siderits argues, can take the form of "acts of social
interest which do not diminish the actor while enhancing his subject, namely, acts
of ' effectant ' participation in the development of another person." Ibid., p. 63.
••Dewey, Theory of the Moral Life, p. 168.

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ROBERT B. ASHMORE,

JR.

love ourselves " that I find the viewpoints of Aristotle, the
Gospels, and humanistic psychology becoming one. And it is
the practical task of our social institutions to generate the kind
of self which finds this ideal both possible and appealing. To
the extent that social institutions, whether political or economic
or educational, are not constituted so as to accomplish this purpose, a more radical reform is needed-a reconstitution of our
institutions so that they present models expressive of this higher
potential in our human nature.
ROBERT

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

B. ASHMORE

NEWMAN ON THE STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

'TI

HE CONCEPT OF BELIEF merits more attention
han philosophers have given it. Action is not so much
ased on knowledge as on belief. And even contemporary epistemologists agree that one probably cannot understand
the concept of knowledge without having a reasonably clear
idea of what belief is. In recent years philosophers have made
countless efforts to show that knowledge is a kind of justified
true belief; but relatively little has been written about belief
itself, and Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent, written
more than a century ago, remains the classic work on the subject. Some of the most interesting passages in Newman's essay
deal with the question of how strong beliefs differ from weak
ones, and since this seminal question has never been satisfactorily answered by philosophers, it may be worth our while to
reconsider what Newman has to say about it.

I
" I strongly believe that. . . ." ; here is a phrase which we
have all encountered in everyday discourse and have often
articulated ourselves. Clearly we believe some things more
strongly than we believe others. But in the sixth chapter of
the Grammar of Assent, Cardinal Newman argues that there
are no " degrees " of assent, and since he considers beliefs to be
only the strongest of assents, he is also committed to the view
that there are no " degrees " of belief. It is hardly to be wondered at that so many readers of the Grammar have found Newman's views on this subject perplexing, for not only is it obvious
that we assent to some things more strongly than others, but
Newman himself admits as much. In discussing profession, for
example, he tells us that, " There are assents so feeble and superficial, as to be little more than assertions" (Grammar, IV, 1, 1).

un

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JAY NEWMAN

Indeed, since Newman regards beliefs as stronger than other
assents, he would seem to be committed to allowing that in
some sense assent admits of" degrees." How, then, can Newman
so boldly declare in Chapter VI that there are no degrees of
assent? Newman answers this question for us in his introduction to Chapter IV, but we can only appreciate his answer if we
understand the conceptual apparatus of the Grammar, and this
conceptual apparatus basically involves two distinctions. According to Newman there are two modes of holding propositions
and two modes of apprehending propositions. When we examine language we see that propositions may take an interrogative, conditional, or categorical form (interrogative when
they ask a question, conditional when they express a conclusion,
categorical when they simply make an assertion) . Corresponding to each of these forms is a specific mental act, an internal act of " holding " a proposition; these three modes of
holding propositions are Doubt, Inference, and Assent. But
Doubt can be explained away in terms of Inference and Assent,
and so for all intents and purposes there are two basic ways of
holding propositions. In addition to being " held," propositions
are " apprehended " ; apprehension of a proposition is the imposition of a sense on the terms of which the proposition is composed. The terms of a proposition, the subject and predicate,
can stand for either notions or realities:
Now there are propositions, in which one or both of the terms are
common nouns, as standing for what is abstract, general, and nonexisting, such as " Man is an animal, some men are learned, an
Apostle is a creation of Christianity, a line is length without breadth,
to err is human, to forgive divine." These I shall call notional
propositions, and the apprehension with which we infer or assent
to them, notional.
And there are other propositions, which are composed of singular
nouns, and of which the terms stand for things external to us, unit
and individual, as " Philip was the father of Alexander," " the earth
goes round the sun," "the Apostles first preached to the Jews;"
and these I shall call real propositions, and their apprehension
real (I, 2).

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

188

With these distinctions in mind, we are now in the position to
understand Newman's answer to our question:
Real apprehension, then, may be pronounced stronger than notional,
because things, which are its objects, are confessedly more impressive and affective than notions, which are the objects of notional.
Experiences and their images strike and occupy the mind, as abstractions and their combinations do not. Next, passing on to Assent, I observe that it is this variation in the mind's apprehension
of an object to which it assents, and not any incompleteness in the
assent itself, that leads us to speak of strong and weak assents, as
if Assent itself admitted of degrees. In either mode of apprehension,
be it real or notional, the assent preserves its essential characteristic
of being unconditional.
This passage tells us why Cardinal Newman sees no contradiction in his claiming both that there are no "degrees" of assent and that we assent to some things more strongly than
others. According to Newman, what we speak of as" strength"
of assent is a function of our mode of apprehending a proposition rather than our mode of holding it. An assent is an assent,
whether it be to a notional proposition or a real one. It does not
depend on evidence, or proof, or other propositions, because it
is not an inference. Assent and inference are two different modes
of holding a proposition; they are two distinct mental acts. To
associate the strength of an assent with evidence or data or
probabilities is to confuse assent with inference. True assent is
unconditional, given without any condition or reservation of
any kind. When we talk about the strength of an assent, we are
not really talking about the "degree" or relative completeness
of the assent itself, for the assent is necessarily-qua assentcomplete and unconditional; we are talking about the impressiveness of the object of the assent, i. e., the terms of the
proposition that is being assented to. The impressiveness of
realities is derived from the powerful images that represent
them. No such images represent notions.
Real Assent then, or Belief, as it may be called, viewed in itself,
that is, simply as Assent, does not lead to action; but the images
in which it lives, representing as they do the concrete, have the

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JAY NEWMAN

power of the concrete upon the affections and passions, and by
means of these indirectly become operative (IV, 3) .

It is worth noting that for Newman, only a real assent is
deserving of the name" belief"; now, of course, we also regard
as beliefs those assents which Newman feels are not true beliefs,
i. e., such notional assents as presumptions and speculations.
The point of departure for Newman's attack on the doctrine
of " degrees of assent " is his consideration of some remarks by
Locke in the chapter " Of Enthusiasm" in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Newman is an admirer of
Locke, and he observes that certain of Locke's remarks in the
chapters "On Probability" and "The Degrees of Assent" indicate that Locke was not consistently wrong about the matter
at hand. But the following remarks of Locke do disturb Newman:
How a man may know, whether he be so [a lover of truth for truthsake], in earnest, is worth inquiry; and I think, there is this one
unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposition with
greater assurance than the proofs it is built on will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not
truth in the love of it. . . . For the evidence that any proposition
is true (except such as are self-evident) lying only in the proofs
a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he affords it beyond
the degrees of that evidence, it is plain all that surplusage of assurance is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of
truth; it being as impossible that the love of truth should carry
my assent above the evidence there is to me that it is true, as that
the love of truth should make me assent to any proposition for the
sake of that evidence which it has not that it is true .... (Essay,
4th ed., IV, 19.)

Why is Newman so interested in this subject? The answer is
that Newman is not simply an intellectual, a philosopher; he
is a Christian apologist. The Grammar is, among other things,
a defense of the right of simple, unlearned people to hold the
Christian beliefs that they hold. At IV, 1, 2, Newman writes,
[R]eligion, as being personal, should be real; but, except within a
small range of subjects, it commonly is not real in England. As

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

135

to Catholic populations, such as those of medieval Europe, or the
Spain of this day, or quasi-Catholic as those of Russia, among them
assent to religious objects is real, not notional. . . . [B]ut such a
faith does not suit the genius of modern England.

The Grammar is largely an attack on " liberalism " ; Newman
makes it clear that he has little confidence in the superficial
religious assents 0£ philosophers and intellectuals. " Life is not
long enough for a religion 0£ inferences" (IV, 3). Newman's
attack on the doctrine 0£ " degrees 0£ assent," then, is an attempt to show that the simple, unreflective Catholic peasant
has a right to assent to the propositions of Christianity even
though he has little in the way of evidence or proofs. The
peasant is assenting, not inferring, and if Newman is right, it
does not make any sense to attack the peasant for assenting to
a " degree that is unwarranted by the strength of the evidence,"
for assent, unlike inference, is unconditional and has no degrees.
The strategy of Newman's attack on Locke's doctrine is quite
simple and has been admirably summarized by H. H. Price in
one of his Gifford Lectures:
It can now be seen that the notion of inference plays a central part
in Newman's criticism of Locke. If he can show that Locke has
confused assent with inference, he thinks the doctrine of degrees
of assent will lose any plausibility it has; and with the collapse of
that doctrine, Locke's Ethics of Belief will collapse too. 1

Price agrees with Locke that there are degrees of assent and
draws our attention to certain peculiarities in Newman's concepts of inference and conditionality. The basic presupposition
of Newman's criticism of Locke is that assent is unconditional
while inference is conditional, and while in Chapter VI Newman
argues around this presupposition, he never really defends it.
Indeed, the opening pages of the Grammar suggest that Newman regards this point as rather obvious. Modern readers tend
to associate inference with inferring rather than with the consequence of inf erring; we think of the consequences of inferring
1

H. H. Price, Belief (London:

George Allen & Unwin, 1969), p. 138.

136

JAY NEWMAN

as assents or beliefs. For this reason, and for other reasons cited
by Price, it is hard for modern readers to get excited about
Newman's basic presupposition. 2 We cannot dispute Newman's
claim that assent and inference are different acts; nor can we dispute Newman's claim that men often assent to propositions
even though they have good reasons for doubting them. Newman is right when he says that " assents may endure without
the presence of the inferential acts upon which they were
originally elicited." He is right when he points out that " sometimes assent fails, while the reasons for it and the inferential
act which is the recognition of those reasons, are still present,
and in force." Sometimes assent does die out " without tangible
reasons "; and often arguments " confessed by us to be good "
are just not " strong enough to incline our minds ever so little
to the conclusion at which they point." Newman is wholly
justified in asserting that assent is distinct from an act of inference. But he is wrong when he claims that he has " gone a
good way towards showing in what it differs from it." He writes
that, " If assent and inference are each of them the acceptance
of a proposition, but the special characteristic of inference is
that it is conditional, it is natural to suppose that assent is unconditional" (VI, 1, 1-2). But four points immediately come
to mind: (1) Inference is not simply acceptance of a proposition. Inference is an inferring, not just an attitude towards a
proposition that has been inferred; (2) To the extent that inference is acceptance of a proposition, it is certainly different
from other modes of accepting a proposition, but its one special
characteristic (if indeed it has only one) is not necessarily its
"conditionality." Moreover, it is not completely clear what
this "conditionality" consists in; (3) Assent and inference are
not necessarily the only possible basic modes of accepting or
holding a proposition. So even if inference is conditional and
there must be some unconditional mode of holding a proposition, it does not follow by " process of elimination " that this
2

Ibid., Series I, Lecture 6.

NEWMAN;

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

187

unconditional mode is assent; and (4) We would distinguish
between assents and inferences even if an inference were simply
a certain kind of assent. Newman's arguments against the doctrine of " degrees of assent " rest on a presupposition that he
has made as far back as Chapter I of the Grammar, a presupposition which reflects the conceptual apparatus that he has
presented to us in Chapter I.
Still, if we consider Newman's remarks in Chapter VI in the
context of the Grammar as a whole, we can see what he is
getting at. We cannot view a weak assent as an assent accompanied by a certain amount of doubt, for if a person has any
attitude towards a proposition, then he either assents to it or
does not. If a weak assent were simply an assent accompanied
by a certain amount of doubt, then a person who assented to
proposition p weakly would be in the position of simultaneously
assenting and not assenting top. In Newman's eyes, to doubt
p, to have a reservation about p,. is to withhold assent. At I,
1 he writes, "To doubt, for instance, is not to see one's way
to hold, that Free-trade is or that it is not a benefit; . . . to
assent to the proposition, is to hold that Free-trade is a benefit."
For Newman, assent and doubt are conflicting, opposing mental
acts; assent is " unconditional " in the sense that it cannot be
accompanied by doubt. Price criticizes Newman for failing " to
notice that propositions about which we have some doubt
are nevertheless relied upon" in that they " give us some guidance both in thought and in action. . . ." 3 Clearly Newman
refuses to count " relying upon " or " being guided by " as assenting to. Price does not see assent and doubt as conflicting
mental acts, and he writes, " When our evidence for a proposition, though not conclusive, is favourable, or favourable on
balance when any unfavourable evidence there may be is taken
into account, we can assent to that proposition with a limited
degree of confidence .... " 4 For Price, doubting p, or having
reservations (or only limited confidence in) p, involves having
•Ibid., p. 158.
•Ibid., pp. 155-156,

138

JAY NEWMAN

a certain attitude towards certain evidence; but Newman is
probably being more faithful to conventions 0£ ordinary language when he suggests that doubt is an attitude towards a
prOJJosition,not simply an attitude towards certain evidence.
For Newman, to doubt p is not simply to recognize that there
are certain data which support our not believing p; £or Newman,
to doubt p is to have an attitude towards p itself, to withhold
assent. Now, i£ he has any attitude towards a proposition, a
person either assents to that proposition or doubts it; that is,
he either assents to it or does not. There is no middle course;
one cannot simultaneously assent to it and not assent to it. In
addition to having an attitude towards the proposition itself,
a per.son may also have an attitude towards data which may or
may not support that proposition. Newman calls this attitude
"inference." To "infer" a proposition is to believe that the
proposition follows from other propositions. The conclusion of
an inference is " conditional " in that it depends on the propositions that it has been inferred from. One's attitude towards a
proposition does not necessarily reflect his attitude towards the
data or evidence which is relevant to it. Perhaps it should; but
this has nothing to do with Newman's point. Newman is not
saying that we should ignore evidence; in fact, throughout the
Grammar, Newman indicates that he is very interested in evidence. But he is saying that no matter what our attitude (if
any) towards relevant data, we either assent to a proposition
or do not, and we cannot perform two conflicting mental acts
.simultaneously. Newman's arguments in Chapter VI rest on a
presupposition which in turn reflects the conceptual apparatus
that he has presented to us in Chapter I. But Newman indirectly defends his conceptual apparatus with an appeal to
ordinary language. The opening pages 0£ the Grammar invite
us to consider the forms a proposition may take; these forms
must correspond to mental acts, modes 0£ holding propositions.
"Assent" and "doubt" are not technical terms but popular
terms used to describe these modes.
Price is disturbed by Newman's attack on Locke because Price

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

139

believes that, " [W]e need to be able to assent to [certain propositions] with something far less than total or unreserved seHcommitment .... ";that is, we need to assent at times in a conditional and tentative way. Newman, of course, is not simply
saying that we should not assent in this way; he is .saying that
we cannot. Some of the assents which Price regards as conditional Newman regards as unconditional. Empiricist
phers may have their doubts about whether the sun will rise
tomorrow; but the simple man assents to this proposition without any reservations. On the other hand, some of the " assents "
which Price regards as conditional Newman does not regard
as assents. He calls them" inferences"; and commenting on a
passage by Gambier, he says that, "In truth, 'suspicion, conjecture, presumption, persuasion, belief, conclusion, conviction,
moral certainty,' are not ' assents ' at all; they are simply more
or less strong inferences of a proposition .... " (VI, 1, Q) . His
point here is that many mental acts which appear to be assents
are not unconditional and hence not really assents; our language, however, is rich in terminology for degrees of inference.
If we call "inferences" like conjecture by the name of "assents," we leave ourselves open to Newman's objection, viz.
that we are allowing that a person can simultaneously perform
two conflicting mental acts. Newman also feels obliged to explain what he calls "prima facie" (presumptive, modified and
qualified) assent, and at VI, 1, 4 he writes:
I report, for instance, that there was a serious fire in the town in
the past night; and then perhaps I add, that at least the morning
papers say so;-that is, I have perhaps no positive doubt of the
fact; still, by referring to the newspapers I imply that I do not take
on myself the responsibility of the statement. In thus qualifying
my apparent assent, I show that it was not a genuine assent at all.
In like manner a prima facie assent is an assent to an antecedent
probability of a fact, not to the fact itself ....

The two moves that Newman makes in this passage do extract
him from the difficulties of which Price speaks. " Conditional
assents " or " assents accompanied by doubt " either are not

140

JAY NEWMAN

genuine assents or are unconditional assents to the probability
that such-and-such is the case. While Newman does not realize
it, however, his two moves also shed light on the real nature
of the difference between strong beliefs and weak ones. When
a person says, " I suspect that it will rain tomorrow " or even " I
believe-though I am not sure-that it will rain tomorrow,"
his words may suggest that he weakly assents to the proposition,
"It will rain tomorrow." But to suspect p is not to assent
top. In any case, we can say that this person genuinely assents
to the proposition," It will probably rain tomorrow." Similarly,
when a person says, "I strongly believe that .... " he is not
really describing the intensity of his belief; rather, he is telling
us something about the object of his belief, i. e., the proposition.

II
At IV, 3 Newman tells us that," Life is for action," and that
man "is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal." Newman is not concerned with
thought per se; he is concerned with thought in its relation to
action. And for Newman, the test of " strength " of assent is
action. One finds out what men really believe by observing
their actions. Thus there is some irony in Price's suggestion
that if Newman's criticism of Locke were justified, we would
not be able to assent to certain propositions which provide us
with guidance for our actions. In this same important passage
of the Grammar, Newman writes that,
[O]n the whole, broadly contrasting Belief with Notional Assent
and with Inference, we shall not, with this explanation, be very
wrong in pronouncing that acts of Notional Assent and of Inference
do not affect our conduct, and acts of Belief, that is, of Real Assent,
do (not necessarily, but do) affect it.
Newman goes to great pains to contrast "liberals," philosophers, and intellectuals with saints, martyrs, and simple but
pious people. We have seen Newman remark that in England
religion is not " real " ; that is, while educated English gentlemen have various notions about God and have come to various

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

141

conclusions about God, they do not really believe. But to humble Spanish peasants, "the Supreme Being, our Lord, the
Blessed Virgin, Angels and Saints, heaven and hell, are as
present as if they were objects of sight .... " (IV, I, 2). English
philosophers may assent to religious propositions, but their assent is notional and not real. Notional assents are weaker than
real assents in the sense that their objects are less" impressive"
and "affective." We know that they are weaker because we
see that they do not motivate men in the way that real assents
(indirectly) do. "Many a man will live and die upon a dogma:
no man will be a martyr for a conclusion. . . . No one, I say,
will die for his own calculations: he dies for realities" (IV, 3).
And just as no man will die for an " inference," no man will
die for a weak notional assent, for notions are not realities,
either. That is why Newman has "no confidence, then, in
philosophers who cannot help being religious, and are Christians
by implication." These intellectuals who have notions and draw
conclusions are like blind men who, " though they can put a
stranger on his way ... cannot walk straight themselves, and
do not feel it quite their business to walk at all" (IV, 3) .
The distinction between real assents and notional ones is
important here for several reasons. First, it provides Newman
with a means of distinguishing between " strong " assents and
"weak" ones without having to relegate most assents to the
class of prima facie assents. Newman is sensitive to ordinary
language, and he knows that he has to explain what leads us
to speak of strong and weak assents, especially since in Chapter
VI he is going to deny that assent admits of " degrees." Chapter IV tells us as much about Newman's views on the strength
of assents as Chapter VI does. Not only does Newman argue
that real assents are " stronger " than notional ones, but he also
theorizes that some notional assents (e.g., presumption and
speculation) are stronger than other notional assents (e. g., profession and credence). Also, when one considers Chapter IV
together with Chapter VI, he can see exactly why the author
of the Grammar is very much a defender of the Faith. New-

JAY NEWMAN

man, of course, is not just philosophizing in the Grammar; he
is educating, moralizing, reforming, witnessing. He is worried
about the influence of liberal intellectuals, politicians, scientists.
He sees his fellow Englishmen losing their religious zeal and
their moral sentiments. He sees their interest in science, philosophy, rationalism, and liberal politics as a threat to their salvation. And so to those who would mock the unphilosophical
believer for assenting to a degree that is unwarranted by the
strength of his evidence, Newman replies that there are no
degrees of assent. And he goes a step further: he argues that
"inference "-reasoning, consideration of evidence, argumentdoes not strengthen religious assents. " To most men argument
makes the point in hand only more doubtful, and considerably
less impressive" (IV, 3). Locke and his misguided followers
(e.g., Gambier) fail to realize that the strength of a religious
assent has nothing to do with evidence and argument. Of
course, Locke is concerned with the normative question of what
men ought to believe. Here is where the pragmatic side of the
Grammar is relevant. Newman is saying to us, in effect, that
we cannot afford to have a world which is dominated by effete
rationalists whose superficial notional assents are too weak to
motivate them to do acts of Christian charity. Newman's
warning is somewhat dated, but remember the audience that
he is addressing in the Grammar. For better or for worse, there
is little left of the " ardent spirit " and the " living faith "
which this Victorian Cassandra so much admired, at least in
the English-speaking world.
The disciples of Peel and Lord Brougham may have more
evidence than a pious, uneducated peasant, but their assents
are not .stronger than that peasant's religious assents; and from
a moral point of view, it is not obvious that they should be.
Newman is a true Christian and a forerunner of the humanistic
pragmatists; he sees the True in relation to the Good. Moreover, the ethics of belief-what men ought to believe-involves
more than evidence. Nevertheless, Cardinal Newman's views
in Chapter IV on the strength of assents are unsatisfactory.

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

143

Newman has two lines of defense, a phenomenological one and
a pragmatic one, and both seem inadequate. In arguing that
real assents are stronger than notional ones, Newman tells us
two stories. As a phenomenologist, he contrasts the mental contents of the philosopher with those of the true believer; as a
pragmatist of sorts, he contrasts the actions of the philosopher
with those of the true believer. Newman's phenomenological
story is that " things " are more " impressive and affective "
than " notions " ; real assents live in images of concrete things,
and these images have the power of the concrete upon the affections and passions. For Newman, then, the variation in the
mind's apprehension of an object of assent is what leads u.s to
speak of strong and weak assents. But Newman does not defend this bit of phenomenology; he assumes that anyone who
is reasonably introspective will agree with his story. And he
assumes wrongly. Notions can be very impressive. Indeed, look
at Newman's list of notional propositions: the Moral Law, the
principle of causation, determinations of science, legal judgments, mathematical propositions, etc. His reference to mathematical propositions serves to remind us of Plato's phenomenology of belief at Republic 509 ff. Like Newman, Plato believes that the clarity of a state of mind depends on the ontological status of the object being apprehended. But for
Plato-and many others-mathematical objects and "Forms "
are much more impressive than the objects apprehended by the
senses. Newman himself recognizes that the senses can deceive
us, that the " realities " of real assent may be as " non-existent "
or "mind-created" as notions. The difference between Newman's phenomenology and Plato's suggests, if nothing else, that
the truth of Newman's thesis is not as obvious a.s Newman
thinks. And in any case, his phenomenological story is too dogmatic to be convincing. 5
Newman's pragmatic arguments also leave much to be desired. It is hard not to be moved by Newm11n's eloquent ac•I discuss this subject in greater detail in the paper, "Cardinal
Phenomenology of Religious Belief," Religious Studies, X (1974),

Newman's

144

JAY NEWMAN

count of the zeal and commitment of the simple men and
women who became Christian martyrs (X, 2, 9) . But many
"men of principle" have demonstrated a willingness to die
for abstractions like justice and freedom. There have even been
philosophers (e.g., Socrates and Spinoza) who have been
moved to dramatic action by their " notional assents." 6 Furthermore, religious zeal is not always to be preferred to sober
liberalism. Sir Robert Peel lacked the most noble qualities of
St. Francis; Lord Brougham was far from being a Christ-like
figure. But on the other hand, Peel and Brougham did not
share the enthusiasm of certain simple, pious peasants for the
aims and methods of the Inquisition. Newman's pragmatic
arguments work both ways. Notional assents can result in
strong, forceful action. And wild behavior is not necessarily
indicative of strength of assent.

III
Reviewing Newman's remarks on the difference between
strong and weak beliefs-or as he preferred to call them, " assents "-we find that he is advancing a number of theses which
may or may not be as closely related as Newman believes; but
to understand Newman's strategy we must take note of all of
them. In Newman's eyes, Christian action should be encouraged; only strong assents give rise to forceful action; " real "
assents are stronger than " notional " ones; assent is unconditional, and there are no "degrees" of assent; strength of assent is not a function of evidence; and it is wrong to attack
a man for assenting to a " degree that is unwarranted by the
evidence."
In commenting on Newman's theory that there are no degrees of assent, my aim was to explain that theory rather than
defend it; I have tried to avoid committing myself to any
particular theory about the nature of belief or other propositional attitudes. If we consider Newman's conceptual appa•Cf. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse V.

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

145

ratus, we can see how Newman arrived at the position that
assent is unconditional. Unlike modern epistemologists, Newman does not consider the possibility that assent is a disposition; Newman accepts the traditional view that assent is a
mental act. 1 He believes that an assertion is the expression of
an act of assent and that propositions which simply make an
assertion, i. e., categorical propositions, imply the absence of
any condition or reservation of any kind (I, 1) . Many believe
that Newman's theory flies in the face of ordinary language,
but it can be argued that Newman is consciously pointing to
a confusion in ordinary language. Besides, Newman does provide us with an account of what he thinks people really mean
when they speak of strong and weak assents. And at VI, 1, 4
he endeavours to "explain some conversational expressions, at
first sight favorable to that doctrine of degrees in assent."
Newman appears to be unaware of the fact that the moves he
makes at VI, 1, 4 reveal more about the nature of strong and
weak assents than does his distinction between real and notional
apprehension. He continues to affirm that there is an " absolute
absence of all doubt or misgiving in an act of assent," and that,
" it will be found that this increase or decrease of strength does
not lie in the assent itself, but in its circumstances and concomitants .... " But in explaining what these " circumstances
and concomitants " are, he speaks not only of the emotions and
the imagination but also of the ratiocinative faculty. He tells
us that when we speak of " conditional assent " we mean to say
" that we will assent under certain contingencies." Expressions
like " impulsive assent " and " hesitating assent" denote " not
kinds or qualities, but the circumstances of assenting." But
as we saw earlier, his most revealing comment is about prirru1
facie assent, which he describes as " assent to an antecedent
probability of a fact, not to the fact itself." Now, say that S
holds that there is a 753 chance that it will rain tomorrow and
that T holds that there is a 903 chance that it will rain to• Cf. Price, op. cit., Series I, Lecture 1, and pMsim.

146

JAY NEWMAN

morrow. It may seem that T's assent is stronger than S's.
Newman is warning us not to be deceived; in fact, S and T
are both giving genuine, unconditional assent to a proposition.
That proposition is not 1 "It will rain tomorrow." And S and
T are not even assenting to the same proposition; for it is misleading to say that S and T assent to the proposition, " It will
probably rain tomorrow," too. Actually, S is assenting to the
proposition, "It will probably [X3] rain tomorrow," while
T is assenting to the proposition, " It will probably [Y3J rain
tomorrow"; S and T have different probabilities in mind here,
and so in a sense they are assenting to different propositions.
If we do not realize this, we may be tempted to regard T's
assent as stronger than S's. But "degree 0£ assent" does not
differ here; it is the object 0£ assent, the proposition, that distinguishes the two assents here.
By allowing-even encouraging-this kind 0£ analysis, Newman is able to dispose 0£ certain criticisms 0£ his view that assent is unconditional. But Newman also pays a price for allowing it. His comments in VI, I, 4 belie his simplistic theory
in Chapter IV that it is the presence or absence 0£ images in
apprehension that leads men to speak 0£ strong and weak assents. For even i£ Newman is right in believing that there are
no degrees 0£ assent, clearly men are led to speak 0£ strong
and weak assents by recognition of considerations 0£ probability. People may well say that T's belie£ that it will (probably) rain tomorrow is stronger than S's; and so Newman's
talk about images may be a red herring. Moreover, he indirectly undermines his defense 0£ the pious peasant's right to assent.
For even i£ it is wrong to attack a man for assenting to a" degree that is unwarranted by the evidence," it may not be wrong
to attack that same man for assenting to proposition p instead
of assenting to proposition q when assent to p is unwarranted
by the evidence. We can revise the passage in Locke's Essay
in such a way as to accommodate Locke's point to Newman's
conceptual scheme. We must dispose 0£ Locke's references to
"greater assurance," " measure 0£ assent," " degrees of assent,"

NEWMAN:

STRENGTH OF BELIEFS

147

and " surplusage of assurance." The point must be made in
terms of propositions, probabilities, prima facie assents, etc.
Even i£ it is wrong to criticize the peasant for believing too
strongly that God exists, it may well be right to criticize him
for believing that God exists when his evidence only supports,
at best, his right to assent to the proposition, "It is probable
[Z3] that God exists." In other words, though his assent must
be unconditional, perhaps it should be a prima facie assent.
And so, given his views in Chapter VI, Newman does not
gain as much as he thinks he does by attacking the doctrine of
" degrees of assent." Those, like Locke, who are worried about
evidence and the ethics of belief need not talk about how
strongly we have a right to assent. They can talk instead about
what propositions we have a right to assent to. To defend the
unreflective person's right to assent to religious propositions,
Newman must show that evidence and the ethics of belief are
not as intimately related as Locke and his disciples think. This
case is not an easy one to make, although Newman has actually
started to sketch it out. I am referring here to those passages
of the Grammar of Assent in which Newman praises the unreflective but noble Christian martyrs and condemns and ridicules
the rational but effete " liberals." Modern readers often regard
Newman's comments on martyrs and" liberals" as out of place
in an epistemological study. But they are not; they are at the
core of his project. I myself believe that Cardinal Newman is
justified in pointing out that the ethics of belief involves much
more than evidence and other impersonal matters. Nevertheless, if my criticisms have not been wide of the mark, we must
conclude that in Newman's approach to the subject of assent,
there are weaknesses in his strategy as well as in his theories.
JAY NEWMAN

University of Gudph
Gudph, Ontario, Canada

BOOK REVIEWS
Summa Theologiae. By ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Latin text, English translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossaries, Published by
Black-friars in conjunction with McGraw-Hill Book Company, New
York, and Eyre & Spotiswoode, London.

Volume 20. PLEASURE (la2ae. 31-39). Translated by Eric D'Arcy, 1975.
Pp. 172. $12.50.
The faithful translation of any work requires a special skill. And the more
subtle and nuanced the original, the greater the triumph of rendering aptly
the twists and turns of thought which lie concealed beneath an apparently
uniform employment of terms. It is one thing to judge that " passio "
might best be the equivalent of our English " emotion." It is another
to discern that sometimes it rather means " passion " as being deliberately
contrasted with the active. It is still another thing to observe even more
graduated meanings of the one word and to combine these various usages
of a seven-hundred-year-old book so that the English reader comes away
with the impression that the original work is quite contemporary. That
is the triumph of D'Arcy. But there is more. Readers with historical or
philosophical appreciation will also find here keen discernment that will,
I think, meet with their approval. Nor are those likely to be disappointed
whose interest lies in the field of ascetics and whose frame of reference is
in the scholastic tradition.
In his Introduction the translator rightly notes, however, that it may
be somewhat difficult to correlate contemporary systems of psychology
with this Aristotelian-Thomistic system, which apparently does not recognize the various levels of the conscious. But then these contemporary systems are not easy to correlate with each other, either. It might have been
of some value, consequently, had D'Arcy explicitly referred to the psychiatric method of the Netherland's Drs. Anna Terruwe and Conrad Baars
(now of New York). Their noted success has given cause to wonder whether
the basic Thomistic structure of the emotions might not be among the
most contemporary after all, inasmuch as it evidences an exceptional grasp
of the normal in reality. The limited scope of this volume on pleasure
and pain could easily belie the importance of its content for moral living.
St. Thomas's adroit handling of the pleasure element in human acting is
itself a pleasure: " ... that person is good and virtuous who takes pleasure
in good deeds, that person is evil whose pleasure lies in evil deeds" (34,

148

BOOK REVIEWS

149

4 ad corp.) . Could the priority that St. Thomas allots to the good over
the evil and to the positive over the negative be the reason why the
translator chose to entitle this volume " Pleasure " although half of it
relates to pain? Not surprisingly, some of the remedies suggested for pain
and sorrow will appear quite dated. Nevertheless, the very fact of their
treatment underscores how at home St. Thomas was with the bodily elements of man's nature. The "oneness " of man-body and soul, feeling
and will, sense perception and intellectual apprehension-comes through
loud and clear. And each element, as it touches man, is shown to have its
indispensable role in morality: a truth of some importance at a time when
it is fashionable in various quarters to question the role and value of the
will, for instance, or even of the emotions. The Introduction to this volume
is superb, the footnotes and glossary are adequate to the subject, the index
is finely detailed, but unfortunately there are no appendices. Still, on the
whole it is a volume that deserves to be kept handy on a good many bookshelves.

Volume 34. CHARITY
1975. Pp.
$15.00.

Translated by R. J. Batten, 0. P.,

Worthwhile treatises on love are as difficult to write as they are perennially popular. When that love is the charity of the Gospels, unless the discourse emanates from some kind of mystical experience or intuition, it is
apt to be either superficial or blase, even if theologically correct. Equally,
unless such a treatise grows out of everyday life, it is likely to be too
esoteric to be useful to the ordinary follower of Christ, priest or layman, for
whom, precisely, it is meant. Without the combination of this sublime insight and of common practicality, however portentous in their prospects,
such works are prone to come off flat, neither fish nor fowl. That St.
Thomas's treatment of charity has avoided these pitfalls, that it has something of truly grand substance to offer while yet exuding a naturalness that
is attractive--this is fairly common knowledge, but perhaps not as common
as it should be. That St. Thomas did not merely baptize Aristotle with a
generous sprinkling of Scripture texts on love, but that his work fairly
breathes the very atmosphere of God's word, is clearly indicated by the
translator in the Notes and Appendices.
Rooted as it is, on the other hand, in everyday experience, a sense of
wholeness pervades the treatise. In fact, so fully do natural and supernatural perspectives play their parts that some who attach themselves
exclusively to the one aspect feel that attention to the other aspect is
an encroachment on a self-contained whole. Thus, as the translator points

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out, " The charge of ' worldliness ' and a desire to have things both ways,
was easily levelled against him (Thomas)." Which puts one in mind of
an observation once made by G. K. Chesterton, that tall people often think
that other people are too short, and fat people often think that others are
too thin.
Translating, then, and commenting on a work of such import and of
such balance must have meant more than the ordinary trials of a translator. Duly acknowledging Fr. Gilby's profound Introduction (unusually
brief but bristling with theological insights), Fr. Batten must have been
sorely tempted to comment at length on passage after passage. He must
have felt the impulse to construct long and numerous appendices to explore the depth and the vast implications of this topic. In a word, there
must have been a strong urge to enlarge this work into a veritable encyclopedia, inasmuch as the rest of human life flows from this virtue and
returns to it. In truth, however, the translator skillfully blended so many
cross-references and so many brief yet appropriate explanations that the
volume leaves little to be desired. While taking its place as but one volume
in a systematic series, it still stands out as a kind of one-volume compendium of " what moral theology is all about."
Fr. Batten of course does not succumb to the pretentious fallacy that love
eliminates the necessity for structures. For it does this no more than the
heart with its circulatory vessels renders superfluous the nervous system
and the bone structure of the human body. But one does come to appreciate
more clearly that charity is the heart of the system, or rather, of the
living organism. Therefore if one wishes to examine more closely what the
core is like and how it functions, what the various kinds of love and of
friendship are, what is the place of joy and peace in Christian living, what
the place of mercy and almsgiving and of beneficence (I find the translation
" kindness " somewhat infelicitous in view of the permissive overtones it
frequently carries today), and should one wish to get a view of how all
these various topics carry their influence to the rest of moral theology,
then I know of no other volume which will comes as near to satisfying him
as Batten's can. Or again, granted some confusion between the boundaries
of theology and psychology today, does one wish to re-establish his bearings,
to peer into the problem of whether or not charity can be lost by one contrary act, or whether a difficult act (loving an enemy) is automatically
better than performing an easier act? Then here is a clear and limpid
translation of incisive theological stances on such issues. Thus all of us,
scholars and non-scholars alike, can be indebted both to the author and
to the translator of this very contemporary volume.

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151

Volume 37. JUSTICE (flaflae. 57-6fl). Translated by Thomas Gilby, 0. P.,
1975. Pp. 138. $15.00.
Justice is the "in thing" today. The fluctuations of appreciated values
during the course of centuries might make an interesting study, and then
St. Thomas's analysis of Right, Justice, Injustice, Passing Judgment, Commutative and Distributive Justice and Restitution (all the contents of this
volume) would be an important contribution.
In fact, however, these topics as discussed in this part of the Summa
rank among those of least general interest today. The experience of anyone
teaching a course on Justice these days will amply corroborate this curious
fact.
In the Introduction the translator sets this tract into the framework
of the whole of moral theology. He frankly admits that for the most part
it reads like a philosophical-ethical treatise, so that when the distinctively
theological insights burst through, they almost come as a surprise. Yet
he holds that the theological interest is indeed uppermost in St. Thomas's
vision here as everywhere else in this masterwork, and that this is another
illustration of how all creation is to be taken up into the eschatological
process. That may be. Still, the desire to see just how Justice is rooted
in revelation, how it is divulged historically in the Sacred Scriptures, and
how it is lived par excellence in Jesus Christ-that desire, so contemporary
and so legitimate, is left quite high and dry in this treatise. Nor is there
any attention given to this matter in an Appendix. In fact there are no
appendices in this slim volume; the Introduction is uncommonly brief, and
the footnotes are fewer and considerably shorter than is customary in this
series. The person who purchases only this volume at its full price will
have cause to feel that some injustice has been done him. But it is an
inequity more than amply compensated for by the series as a whole. One
wonders whether the translator-editor of this volume and editor-in-chief
of the entire series may not have been too exhausted to give this particular
tome the treatment it merits. Or again-more poetically-if one recalls
that the author of the Summa was called from this life before he could
complete the work, and that Father Gilby died in less than a year after
this book was published, then it does not seem incredible that the translator
with some premonition of his approaching end was in haste to complete this
volume as well as other projects still in hand. That could account for the
almost telegraphic style that pervades this translation. The series, then,
is finished, but unfortunately not quite complete.
Yet is that not the story of life as a whole, and of great art as well? Some
flaw is left, to indicate that this is the work of man, a mere mortal, and
that to bring it to full perfection there is required that which can be given
by no mere man, by " non nisi te."

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Volume SS. INJUSTICE (flaflae. 68-79). Translated by Marcus Lefebure,
0. P., 1975. Pp. 290. $20.00.
M. Lefebure's Introduction so profoundly probes the nature of justice
and injustice, of law and morality, of man "as projectile" and as consocial, that it alone might make the volume worth its steep price. The
close reading of his insightful account of St. Thomas's own vision of man,
of society, and of the Church tends to a sense of exaltation, like breathing
the fresh and exhilarating air of lofty heights. Thus is one braced to scan
the negative, the wreckage of the virtue of justice, in order to appreciate
the more how soundly this virtue directs man in his relationships with other
individuals and with the whole of society on this common pilgrimage. While
this 60-volume series is notable for its judicious translations of sometimes
obscure terms and highly technical phrases, one is still pleasantly surprised
at the contemporary turns in this particular volume. For example, I asked
my students how they would translate "personarum acceptio" (Q. 68).
Response took in the substance of the meaning, yet it was interesting to
observe their eyes light up with Lefebure's " unfair discrimination." The
whole question came alive. But not for long. The conferral of " spiritual
benefices upon a dignitary's relations," was not exactly packed with meaning
for them. The content, too, was uneven in its interest. The clarity of
principle running throughout the question of homicide (q. 64) was as illuminating as it was sometimes shocking in its drawn-out conclusions. Likewise the questions dealing with court justice (68-71) evoked considerable
interest among the students, whereas the section on verbal injuries was of
little concern, the subtle concepts proving too unwieldy to be captured in
compact English terms. Thus " defamation " for the customary " contumely " seems only partially successful; and " whispering " doesn't come
off at all. The next question (77) is clarified by the use of the general
heading " unfair trading,'' although the term does not correspond to anything in the Latin text; and it too may be misleading if it suggests a discourse on commerce of the western nations with the Third World. The
question of usury (78) has some light shed on it by the footnoted survey
of its history within Roman Law. Still, one could have welcomed additional
attention to its ecclesiastical and moral history, especially inasmuch as this
aspect retains its vigor as a topic of discussion in morals. Perhaps geography
makes for this variation in interest; the issue may cause no ripples in
Scotland.
The value of this book is greatly enhanced by the two Appendices, particularly by the second which traces the doctrine of private property
through St. Thomas and the recent papal encyclicals. The sequence of
points leading to St. Thomas's conclusion that the world's resources are
for all is cogent enough, and the impression is forcefully made within a few

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pages that the overriding purpose of recent encyclicals has been to effect
a major overhaul in men's attitudes vis-il-vis private property and universal
ownership. Since all justice can be seen to hinge on this truth, all the
varieties of injustice can be seen also as so many obstacles to the realization of that order and balance needed in the affairs of men, who are called
to march in solidarity to their common destiny.
While most of the volumes of this series will no doubt be held by institutional libraries, there are some surely that merit to be acquired by individuals. Lefebure's work on Justice is one of these. An age that has
notoriously flaunted the many-sided virtue of justice calls upon itself the
evils of injustice. This work can help to gain perspective on the ills that
are ours and why this had to be so, given our low esteem of justice. Seen
for what it is in this glaring light, the condition of injustice may move
men again to shoulder the task of rebuilding the virtue. We can be grateful to Lefebure for a readable text in which St. Thomas shows us how to
leave behind the rubble of our inhumanity and to give to each man his
due, with right good will.
ROBERT ZYLLA,

o. s. c.

Mt. St. Mary's Seminary
Emmitsburg, Maryland

Resurrection and the Message of Easter. By XAVIER LEON-DUFOUR. Translated by R. N. Wilson. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975.
Pp. xxii 330. $9.95.

+

Readers familiar with Leon-Dufour's earlier works, especially The Gospels
and the Jesus of History and the Dictionary of Biblical Theology, have
come to expect a high level of scholarship from this author. The present
work will not disappoint them. His examination of the evidence from the
New Testament period (some of which is represented by apocryphal
writings) concerning the content and expression of faith in Jesus' resurrection and exaltation is lucid and thorough.
The work is divided into four major parts or stages. The first of these,
" The Affirmations of the Earliest Faith," deals with the earliest formulae
developed within the Christian community to express its faith in the Easter
mystery. The principal formulae considered are "Christ is risen" and
" God raised Jesus from the dead." In addition, there are those relating
to Christ's ascension and exaltation. Special consideration is given to
Paul's grappling with this mystery and to the variety of expressions he
employed, including the pre-Pauline hymns. At the end of this part and
even within the sub-divisions of the part, Leon-Dufour summarizes rather
consistently the conclusions that he has come to.

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Stage two deals with "The Narratives of the Encounter with the Lord
Jesus." Here the principal concern is with the appearance to Paul (and
the multiple narratives about it), the Jerusalem and Galilean appearancetraditions, and the narratives of the empty tomb. The investigation is
intended to determine how these various forms developed from the earlier
formulations of resurrection and exaltation. Furthermore, the author attempts to distinguish the peculiar emphases that emerge from the several
traditions.
Stage three moves to the topic of " The Easter Message According to the
Evangelists." In this section, the author attempts to show the relationship
of the Easter event to the themes and interests of each of the evangelists
and how the forms employed by them fit their gospels. This section is particularly well-done, and it clearly demonstrates the rich variety of meanings
and articulation attached to the central event and faith of the early community and its spokesmen, the evangelists.
Finally, Stage four, "Hermeneutics," turns to the author's pastoral concern about how this this great mystery and its New Testament expressions
may be translated in a meaningful way for twentieth-century Christianity.
At this point, the author deals with a matter that permeates the entire
investigation: the problem of meaning and language. And coming as it
does at the end of this study, this section emphasizes that a serious and
reflective understanding of the New Testament witness of the Easter mystery is the only sound basis for preaching its significance to modem men
and women.
Among the themes and emphases elaborated by the New Testament
writers are those of the divine initiative, mission and the future Church,
and promise. But even these themes demand translation for the modern
Christian. As an aid to doing this, the author provides a number of examples for such communication.
The work concludes with a collection of texts, a very helpful glossary,
and an index.
Throughout this study, Leon-Dufour points out the tensions in the New
Testament period that the various formulae and emphases betrayed (e.g.,
the "reality" of the resurrection and the exaltation), the constant refinement of language, and the creative talent of the New Testament traditions
and writers in dealing with the Easter event. All of this, the author has
captured within the limits of this work. This is no small accomplishment.
And while we might have expected it from him, we should be no less grateful for the accomplishment.
This work that must rank as one of the best current works on the subject deserved a bit more care in its translation and editing (one notes the
omission of the glossary from the table of contents and typographical errors
beginning on the first page of the Preface). If this English edition sells out

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155

as quickly as the original 1971 edition, hopefully future editors will remedy
these flaws.
JAMES P. CLIFTON, c. F. x.
Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Certainty.
Edited by Huao M. DE AcHAVAL, S. J. and J. DEREK HOLMES, with
a note of introduction by Charles Stephen Dessain. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1976. Pp. 170.
Students of Newman's philosophical writings will welcome the publication
of this volume of previously unpublished papers and notes from the Newman Archive at the Birmingham Oratory. The items in this collection deal
with that constellation of epistemological and psychological concepts that
is the subject-matter of Newman's two great studies in the philosophy of
belief, the Oxford University Sermons and the Grammar of Assent, and
they tell us many things about the development of Newman's philosophical
thought in the years that elapsed between the publication of these two
studies. In his introduction to the volume, Dessain points out that " it
should not be forgotten that nearly all the papers are tentative, unrevised,
and unprepared for publication" (viii-ix). It is the Grammar, not any of
these sketches and notes, that is the definitive statement of Newman's
views on such subjects as assent, inference, faith, reason, intuition, evidence,
and certainty. The reader of these papers should constantly remind himself
that Newman did not publicly commit himself to most of the doctrines
that they contain, and though some of the doctrines do appear again in the
Grammar and Newman's later writings, we will probably never know how
he ultimately viewed the rest. Another source of discomfort for the reader
is that these papers have had to be edited; though the editors seem to have
done their job well, one naturally misses Newman's fluent Victorian prose.
Perhaps it is fitting that we should feel somewhat uncomfortable as we read
the extemporaneous notes of a man who had no reason to expect that some
day the general public would have access to them. We are, after all, encroaching upon the world of Newman's private thoughts.
This collection of papers is primarily for the scholar, not for the general
reader. There is little if any value in subjecting the fragments of insight
it embodies to intensive critical scrutiny. It is a useful companion to Newman's published philosophical works mainly because it helps us to gain a
better understanding of Newman's terminology and the specific problems
to which he sought solutions. For the scholar, comparisons with the Gram-

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mar are inevitable. Many interesting ideas in this volume were eventually dropped, others were radically modified; as Dessain observes, " The
papers in this present volume give an idea of other shapes which A Grammar of Assent might have taken, and other books on faith and certainty
which Newman might have written" (viii). Many of the ideas in these
papers came to the central themes of the Grammar; yet, some of the ideas
in the Grammar are far more profound than anything found in these notes.
The volume contains a list of Newman's theological papers from 1846
to 1886, a list of works and editions cited in the papers, and as an appendix,
an 1859 letter on economy and reserve. The papers themselves have been
arranged in chronological order and put into eight groups. The first group
consists of notes from 1853 on a wide range of subjects. Here we find
familiar discussions of the certainty of faith, propositional attitudes, inference in concrete matter, etc. But some of the terminology is unfamiliar,
and many of the ideas are unrefined. Newman talks here of the difference
between seeing and feeling that a proposition is true, the difference between demonstrable and credible truths, and the difference between demonstration and intuition. He speaks of doubt, inference, and assent, but he
presents a sketchier and more complex approach to mental postures (i.e.,
propositional attitudes) than that which we find in the Grammar. Here
he treats surmise, suspicion, suspense, persuasion, prejudice, and ignoring
as modes of receiving a true proposition. He refers to assent as the acceptance of a proposition as true and distinguishes between absolute assent
and conditional assent. Still, we already find Newman taking it for granted
that an assent does not admit of degrees and talking about the " sort
of reasons, cumulating or convergent, on which we believe" (!i!O). And
though he does not refer here to formal and informal inference, he writes
that, " It appears that the difference of the proof in the Evidentia Credibilitatis, and in the Evidentia Veritatis, is that in the latter the premisses
are generally received, the logical process short; whereas in the Evidentia
Credibilitatis the premisses are recondite and personal, and the process
intricate and indefinitely long" (!il4). The vision is already there; Newman
is searching for the terminology in which to express it. The second group
consists of notes from 1857 on concepts in Mill's logic, differences between
imagination and conception and reason, and arguments for the Catholic
religion; these notes are too sketchy to be of much value, but some of
Newman's comments on Mill's concepts are good illustrations of Newman's
talent as an analytical philosopher. Group III consists of some papers
from 1859. The last deals with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the
idea of Mystery, but it has little in common with the interesting discussion
of these subjects in the fifth chapter of the Grammar; even the analysis
of the doctrine into propositions differs. The major paper in this group
is a lecture on logic, and it is important because. it tells us how Newman

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157

conceives of logic. He surveys a wide range of definitions of logic and then
presents his own. For Newman, logic proper is the science of proof or
inference, but in a sense " logic " is not one science but a generic name
for two sciences, that of proof or inference and that of knowledge (54-55).
Group IV presents analyses of the concepts of phenomena, sensations, regard, reflection, thought, truth, falsity, intuition, and contuition. The long
discussion of intuition is revealing. As one of the British Empiricists, Newman is inclined to take the notion very seriously; but we see him here struggling with the concept. "When the assent which give to a truth, (that
is, to a thought which faithfully represents a thing) is simple and absolute,
I shall call it an intuition, as being an insight into things as they are ....
[A]s to intuition, it is frequently taken to mean an assent to a truth which
does not admit of proof, as being a first principle; but not always (necessarily), and not consistently" (64). Starting from this point, he proceeds
to worry about a variety of problems, e. g., contradictions in professed intuitions, conflicts between professed intuitions and known truths, unreal
intuitions, and intuitions of prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry. As
we read Newman's comments on intuition, we can see why Newman, when
writing the Grammar, avoided abstract talk about intuition and spoke
about the moral sense, conscience, private judgment, the illative sense, etc.
The papers of Group V deal with the" popular, practical, personal evidence
for the truth of Revelation" (81). Here again Newman contrasts personal
grounds for believing with formal, public, objective evidence. " The great
mass of Catholics know nothing of argument; how then is their faith
rational?" (81) The Grammar is Newman's final answer, but these 1860
papers start sketching that answer out. Catholicism is not proved in the
sense that other facts and sciences are proved. Few persons have submitted
to the Church upon a demonstration of her divinity; but we must take
a close look at those chance arguments and probabilities which have come
in the believer's way. Moral probabilities when cumulative issue in certainty. There is a vast difference between an argument in abstract and
concrete. Individuals need not to be able to analyze, understand, and explain their own grounds. Calculating boys reason by instinct, not by
methods, etc., etc. All these facts point to our answer: " personal proof,"
informal inference. The papers in Group VI (1861-1863) deal mainly with
conception and the conceivable. But the notes on other subjects are even
more interesting. Newman has a list of six logical methods; he speaks of
a logic of presumptions, one of analysis, one of synthesis, one of facts, one
of imagination, and one of intuition. This scheme appears to have been
dropped by Newman. Newman also speaks of four ways to accepting a
proposition: implicitly by faith in another, logically as conclusions, as
conceptions from seeing the consistency of the subject with the predicate,
and as assents. In the Grammar, only the second and last of these modes

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are considered basic. Both of these schemes tell us something about those
books that Newman might have written. This group of papers also includes
a note on certainty, intuitions, and semi-intuitions, and some interesting
remarks on how we rise to the idea of a First Cause {97-98). The latter
remarks remind us that the difference betwen Newman's approach to
philosophy and that of earlier Catholic philosophers is more a matter of
emphasis than of content. Newman is a phenomenologist and is concerned
with how men believe as well as what men believe. The papers in Group
VII, as the editors tell us, are papers in preparation for A Grammar of
sent (1865-1869). Newman talks here of the moral sense, conscience, the
relation of inference to assent, notional apprehension in respect to the Being
and attributes of God, etc. Though these papers do not give us anything
resembling a sketch or outline of the Grammar, they give us clues as to
how specific problems will be handled in the Grammar. The collection concludes with an 1885 response by Newman to certain criticisms of his views
by A. M. Fairbairn. This paper is extremely impressive, especially when
one considers that Newman was well into his eighties when he wrote it.
In response to Fairbairn's claim that Newman is a sceptic, Cardinal Newman replies that a sceptic is not one who affirms the impotence of human
reason for the discovery of human truth, but one who holds that no certainty is attainable in religious or other matters. Fairbairn has convicted
of scepticism " all Catholics, besides all theologians of the Greek Church
and all orthodox Anglicans," for all of these men affirm the impotence of
human reason for the discovery of a great many truths (150) . But the
main importance of this paper is that it presents us with a detailed analysis
of the concept of reason. Newman protests against "its being magisterially
ruled by Dr. Fairbairn that the word Reason has one and one only definite
scientific meaning, accepted by all authorities in metaphysics, and incapable of any other" (151); and he agrees with Sir William Hamilton
that it is a vague, equivocal word which may refer to cause, motive, argument, etc. Thus, Newman insists, he has a right to his own way of regarding
the faculty of reason, and while he follows the English use of the word,
he is also adhering to the ecclesiastical (152). "Reason," Newman writes,
has two basic senses. It refers to "Mind" (as used in contrast with the
condition of brutes) or to the faculty of reasoning. The latter is the main
sense, " and though such a view of it does not suggest that venerable and
sovereign idea which we usually attach to ' Reason,' still . . . I did not
find any great inconvenience in taking the word in its popular, etymological,
and, as I hope, ecclesiastical acceptation" (152) . Then Newman adds
that there is a faculty in the mind which acts as a complement to reasoning
and secures its use for rightful purposes. This faculty is the noetic faculty,
or when viewed solely in its relation to religion, the moral sense.
The Grammar was Newman's official response to a set of problems that

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159

disturbed him throughout his adult life. These problems were all related
to the central question of how faith can be rational. By constructing the
Grammar as he did, dealing with assent and apprehension and then assent
and inference, Newman colored the problems. In the sketches and notes
of this valuable collection, the problems are uncolored, or at least multicolored, and so they look different to us. And though the notes are sketchy
and unorganized, they serve, as the carefully constructed Grammar does
not, to illWJtrate that intricate, personal reasoning in concrete matter that
Newman has tried so hard to describe to us.
JAY NEWMAN

University of Guelpk
Guelpk, Ontario, Canada

He Who Lets Us Be: A Theology of Love. By Geddes MacGregor. New
York: The Seabury Press, 1975. Pp. x and 194. $8.95.
This stimulating, informative, but overly repetitive book argues the
thesis that " we must learn to revolutionize our thinking about God in
such a way that the old models of power-worship are throughly undermined so that they may give place to a radically new vision of God "
(p. 168). The key to the needed reformulation the author finds in the
Christian tradition's insistence upon the self-emptying, the kenosis, of
Christ; a kenosis which, MacGregor holds, cannot be limited to the
sphere of Christology, but must be located at the very heart of the intratrinitarian relations themselves. The law of the cross reveals the very
essence of trinitarian life.
The theme here sounded is, of course, no novelty in recent theological
reflection. Where MacGregor strikes an original note is in his contention
that the crucifixion provides the very pattern of God's involvement with
creation. The power which God exercises is paradoxically " kenotic
power " ; and its primordial gift is to let the creatures be. In the
striking words of Simone Weil (whose thought has decisively influenced
MacGregor's own) : " On God's part creation is not an act of selfexpansion but of restraint and renunciation" (cf. pp. 95 and 167). This
self-denial of God in creation foreshadows and anticipates the selfsacrifice of Christ upon the cross.
Hence the core Christian experience is aptly articulated by the author
of the first letter of John in his dramatic assertion that "God is love".
However, the radical import of that claim has been mitigated in Christian
thought through an undue and unfortunate dependence upon conceptual
models of divinity derived from Greek philosophy with its intense

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admiration for immutability and impassibility as undeniable perfections.
By contrast, MacGregor believes that the claim, " God is love ", necessitates a vision of God whose creative kenosis is not devoid of affectivity,
of suffering, and even of anguish. Thus the need for a reconceptualization
of God that is more faithful to Christian life and experience.
What resources does MacGregor himself bring to this task? First, he
appreciates the intention and importance of the trinitarian formulations
of the Church, and seeks to penetrate their meaning, even as he
questions their continued adequacy. Thus, though, in a sense, he attempts
to move " beyond trinity ", it is not by way of denial, but of advance.
A second merit of MacGregor's approach lies in his familiarity with
varieties of kenotic theory in Christian history, and his ability to draw
upon these both in overcoming perceived weakness and in suggesting
lines of development. Here I found MacGregor particularly informative
and helpful in his remarks and references.
A third strong point of the work is the author's recognition that the
theme he is exploring demands the posing of metaphysical issues of depth
and complexity. Indeed, his book is much more an essay in philosophical
than in systematic theology. His chapters on "Freedom and Necessity"
and "The Problem of Evil" directly confront two of the most pressing
philosophical problems relevant to a theistic affirmation.
Yet, in spite of these indubitable merits, the work fails to convince.
Let me try to indicate why.
First, in his discussion of the trinitarian formulations of the Patristic
period, MacGregor's own position remains curiously unclear. He expresses
dissatisfaction with both modalism and tritheism and lauds the importance
of the notion of " perichoresis " in safeguarding the dynamic inter-relatedness of the " persons " ; yet why the trinitarian model is ultimately unsatisfactory does not emerge in convincing fashion. I would suggest that
it is a certain view of the primacy of the Father that MacGregor objects
to, rather than the trinitarian model as such. A further weakness here
is the little heed paid the triadic experience and formulations of the New
Testament itself; for, surely, one of the marks of the Patristic development
is its claim to remain faithful to the New Testament witness and data.
A second defect of the exposition concerns the lack of conceptual
clarity with which it is pursued. The all-important concept of suffering,
applied analogously to God, is never explained with precision. Indeed, at
its first appearance, the legitimacy of its ascription to God seems to
rest upon the validity of a French proverb: "aimer est souffrir ". Now
I yield to no one in my respect for Gallic perspicacity, but I think
something more is required to establish so central a contention. Yet,
though the contention is oft-times repeated, neither its significance nor
its necessity is greatly elucidated.

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A similar lack of cogency surrounds MacGregor's treatment of the
concept of " power ". I agree with the author that any reconceptualization of God must entail a reconsideration of the meaning of power and
its applicability to the Christian God; but his own discussion wants
differentiation. MacGregor seems to consider all exercise of power to be
evil, all ordaining or command to be "Satanic." He goes so far as to
associate " authority " with "power ", and finds both unworthy of
attribution to God. Thus God's love is totally permissive: He lets us
be. He neither restrains nor interferes, for to do so would be a demonic
employment of "clout" (the word is the author's, though he might have
said, more elegantly, "force de frappe ").
The third difficulty I would mention is, perhaps, the most basic and
underlies the other two. MacGregor seeks to introduce process into a
deity that he feels has been much too statically conceived. He rightly
sees that trinitarian doctrine offers resources to this end. But he seems
to sacrifice the element of structure. Patlws replaces logos both in God and
in creatures. Nor do I think us richer for having substituted one incomplete vision for another equally incomplete.
Bluntly stated: form is absent from the book's philosophical purview-whether in the mode of Augustine's rationes or Whitehead's
"eternal objects ". (It is curious that Whitehead, whose thought is in
many ways so congenial to MacGregor's undertaking, should receive but
one passing reference, and that in the "Preface.")
Consequently, the
creature's free development, which is one of the author's pressing concerns, assumes a peculiarly anarchic quality. And the God who suffers
his creature's birthpangs is strangely amorphous: the distinction of
" persons " vanishing in the anguish of an undifferentiated love, which,
MacGregor correctly opines, former ages might have held suspect under
" the fearsome name of Patripassionism " (p. 4) .
Nevertheless, despite these expressed reservations, MacGregor's essay
is a contribution in an ongoing enterprise of decisive importance, whose
issue, I believe, will be to effect a paradigm shift in our conceptualization
of God. We have traded too long on formulations forged in religious and
cultural experiences that are no longer ours. MacGregor sensitively
perceives the problem and offers a proposal both honest and imaginative.
At the least (and this is much) his work prods us to take with theological
seriousness what we proclaim with homiletic fervor: God is love. The
more adequate thematization of this truth is, I believe, the theological
task of our time.
RoBERT

St. Joseph's Seminary
Dunwoodie, New York

P. lMBELLI

BOOK REVIEWS

Religion and Alienation: A Theological Reading of Sociology. By Gregory
Baum. New York: The Paulist Press, 1975. Pp.
$6.95.

Gregory Baum has, on a number of occasions, written of the two years
he spent away from teaching to study at the New School for Social
Research and of their importance for his theological work. Religion and
Alienation: A Theological Reading of Sociology is a major effect to spell
out the relationship he has discerned between theology and sociology. The
context of the book is both wider and narrower than the title would
indicate. Thus, although Baum discusses the sociological analysis of
religion in general, he gives Christianity most of his attention. There is,
for example, no sustained consideration of the bearing of sociology on
Islam or Buddhism. The sociologists at issue are almost invariably the
great social theorists with significance for religion rather than people doing
more quantitative studies on religious beliefs or behavior, and some of
the figures presented (notably G. W. F. Hegel and Sigmund Freud) would
not usually be labelled sociologists. Finally, the focus is on " religion and
alienation," but many other themes enter in the course of the work.
Chapters on the young Hegel and the young Karl Marx and on Ferdinand
Toennies set the stage for Religions and Alienation. Hegel's early theological
writings first laid out the problem of human self-estrangement through purely
external religion and in particular through purely external Judaism and Christianity. The early Marx, in his economic and philosophical manuscripts, his
essays on Hegel's philosophy of right and on the Jewish question, and in his
theses on Feuerbach, continued the Hegelian reflection with the difference
that he took the basic alienation as a consequence of social and economic
relationships and religion as an expression of this more fundamental
estrangement. Baum views Marx's increased concern with the social and
economic as a step forward in sociological sophistication, and yet he sees
in Hegel a truer sense of the ambiguity of religion. Where Marx would
judge religion as almost solely the ineffectual " cry of the oppressed
spirit " and the debilitating " opium of the people," his predecessor had
been able to depict another variety of religious life (with Jesus as a prime
instance) which strengthened and ennobled human beings rather than
weakened and degraded them. The ambiguity becomes more obvious
on reaching Toennies with his pivotal distinction between community
(Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). Religion, as it appears in
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, is the representation of " the original unity
and equality of a whole people, the people as one family which by common
ceremonies and places of worship keeps up the memory of its kinship,"
and its steady demise in modern, individualistic, rationalistic society is an
element in the separation of people from their own depth and from their
fellows. Secularization itself, then, contributes towards alienation in Toennies's eyes, and the problem set by Hegel and Marx grows more complicated.

BOOK REVIEWS

168

Other social theorists who receive major attention in Religion and
Alienation are Emile Durkheim, Erich Fromm, Karl Mannheim, Max
Weber and Sigmund Freud. At each step, it is through central distinctions
that Baum develops his theme: with Durkheim, he discriminates between
magic and religion, with Fromm between authoritarian and humanistic
religion, with Mannheim between ideological and utopian thinking, with
Weber between priestly and prophetic religion, and lastly with Freud
between repressive and sublimative symbolization. In each case, he finds
a way of bringing out the strange truth that religion can be both
death-dealing
life-giving and of discovering some of the factors
affecting the direction it takes in particular settings. From this angle,
he finds himself able to move through debates in sociology about secularization and modernity and in theology about the gospel and liberation.
But his position vis-a-vis the $ociological tradition is never purely
passive-the work at hand is a "theological" reading of sociology. Interlarded with sections on the sociologists, one encounters sections on the
biblical sense of the ambiguity of religion and the further tendency of
critical theology along the same path in the twentieth century. In the
latter connection, Baum stresses the power of the " Blondelian shift " of
which he made so much in Man Becoming and which he defends in
Religion and Alienation as allowing the theologian to perceive the tension
pointed up by sociology and scripture alike and the possibilities for
emancipation inherent in the Christian tradition. Within the more
recent book, he takes a stand among the " hermeneutical " sociologists,
that is, he regards religious openness as a means to a richer interpretation
even within sociology. The import of the stand comes to the fore in the
concluding chapters on " symbol and theology " and on " heaven as
revealed utopia " where he tries to show some of the positive results
growing out of a dialectical contact between theology and sociology.
From the beginning, Baum defines his task as one of introducing the
student of theology to the sociological tradition, and he is more than
successful in fulfilling the task. Religion and Alienation is clear and
interesting, indeed at times exciting. It introduces the reader to the
subject-matter not by a series of expositions juxtaposed to each other,
but by the critical and imaginative pursuit of an over-riding theme of
vital importance to everyone. The ideas play off one another in such a
way as to bring one to a better understanding of sociology and theology.
I, for one, know of no other book which integrates the two so well, and
I am grateful that I could learn by reading it and by attempting to put
a few thoughts together about it.
The flaws of Religion and Alienation are perhaps tied in with the
endeavor to encompass so much material in an introductery text and to
keep the dialectic between sociology and theology going. In places, the

164

BOOX 'REVIEWS

treatment of an author fails to highlight the full ambiguity of the author's
own thinking. There is no mention of the young Hegel's enthusiasm for
Greek folk-religion and Kantian moral philosophy and of his vision of
Jesus as having united the two objects of his own passion in The Spirit
of Christianity. Nor is there a consideration of the shifts in his youthful
attitude towards Jesus and his teaching. In the case of Marx, one hears
too little of his ambivalence towards bourgeois society, an ambivalence
which is clearly present in the early writings and which accounts
partially for the difference between him and Toennies on " religion and
alienation." The view of Marx as well as of Hegel becomes still more
one-sided by allowing the emphasis to fall so heavily on the earlier phases
of their work. Neither would have been happy with the neglect of the
books and essays he himself valued most. And, with respect to Mannheim,
it would seem to eliminate much of his personal perplexity not to dwell
on his reference to both ideological and utopian thinking as, in some
measure, delusory.
The skirting of ambiguity in the treatment of ldeologie und Utopie brings
out a deeper problem in Religion and Alienation. For many social theorists,
it has been a short step from the recognition of the interconnection
between thought (perception, belief, symbol. .. ) and social existence to
the need to review critical difficulties in epistemology. Mannheim, in
particular, made a major shift away from the correspondence theory of
truth towards perspectivism and relationism because of his sociology. The
shift made sense of the Seinsverbundenheit of knowledge for him, and it
provided a seeming escape from the skepticism and relativism which has
haunted so many modern social theorists. I have never been satisfied
with Mannheim's strategies in these matters, but I do think that one
must engage in some such reflection in the wake of the sort of sociological
labors discussed in Religion and Alienation. Although Baum is obviously
aware of the difficulties, his pivotal chapters on " symbol and theology "
and " heaven as revealed utopia " turn out to be remarkably unproblematic
in the area of epistemology. In what sense are religious symbols and
utopias bearers of the truth and how will one choose among conflicting
symbols and utopias? Indeed what will truth be in the area of religion?
Gregory Baum, after the encounter with sociology, would seem to remain
a " realist " in these areas, but he occasionally leaves the door open to
the type of " fictionalist " or " voluntarist " interpretation characterizing a
thinker like Georges Sorel. Answering the questions in more than a
passing fashion will require another book, and yet one can be content in
the expectation that it will be as stimulating as Religion and Alienation.
MICHAEL

LaSalle College

Pkiladelpkia.,Pa.

J. KERLIN

BOOKS RECEIVED
Anchor Press: Beyond Culture by Edward T. Hall. Pp. 264. $7.95.
Basic Books: Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of John Rawls' " A Theory
of Justice" edited by Norman Daniels. Pp. 352. Cloth: $15.00;
paper: $5.95.
Johannes Berchmans Verlag: Bewusstsein und Vergiinglichkeit by Bela F.
von Brandenstein. Pp. 150. DM. 28.
Cambridge University Press: Documents in Early Christian Thought,
edited by Maurice Wiles and Mark Santer. Pp. 268. $2:2.50.
--: Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? by Ian Hacking. Pp.
196. $3.95.
Duke University Press: Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion by
Earl R. MacCormac. Pp. 157. $7.95.
William Eerdmans Co.: Convictions by Donald Coggan, D. D. Pp. 320.
$9.95.
Fortress Press: Structural Analysis of Narrative by Jean Calloud. Pp. 108.
$3.95. What is Structural Exegesis? by Daniel Patte. Pp. 90. $2.95.
Harvard University Press: Reason and Human Good in Aristotle by John
M. Cooper. Pp. 192. $11.00; Thomas Hooker: Writings in England
and Holland, 1626-1633. Pp. 435. $10.00.
Open Court Publishing Co.: Some Questions About Language by Mortimer Adler. Pp. 189. $17.50.
Orbis Books: The Faces of God: Reflections on Church and Society by
Adrian Hastings. Pp. 156. $4.95.
Oxford University Press: The Principle of Reserve in the Writings of John
Henry Cardinal Newman by Robin C. Selby. Pp. 108.
Priory Press: Witness to Change by Richard Butler, 0. P. Pp. 219. $7.50.
Purdue University Press: John Balle: Mythmaker for the English Reformation by Leslie P. Fairfield. Pp. 240. $9.75.
Reidel Publishing Co.: The Intentions of Intentionality and Other New
Models for Modalities by Jaakko Hintikka. Pp. :262. Cloth: $32.00;
paper: $17.00.
Routledge and Kegan Paul: Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology.
Pp. 325. $23.50.
Westminster Press: Lighten Our Darkness by Douglas J. Hall. Pp. 253.
$10.95. The Sustainable Society: Ethics and Economic Growth by
Robert I. Stivers. Pp. 240. $5.25.

165

THE GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUME 41 (1977)
INDEX OF AUTHORS
PAOE

Algozin, Keith, Faith and Silence in Plato's "Georgias"
Ashmore, Robert B., Friendship and the Problem of Egoism
105
Bradley, Denis, J.M., Rahner's "Spirit in the World": Aquinas or

m
Caputo, John D., The Problem of Being in Heidegger and Aquinas
Conlon, James J., Karl Rahner's Theory of Sensation .
Dilanni, Alber R., The Direct/Indirect Distinction in Morals .
Doran, Robert M., Psychic Conversion .
Fay, Thomas A., Bonaventure and Aquinas on God's Existence: Points
of Convergence
Ford, John T., Two Recent Studies on Newman .
Ford, Lewis S., Whitehead's Transformation of Pure Act
Hill, John, "Persona Humana" on Sexual Ethics: An Interpretation
Kearney, John K., Locke, Hume and the Pr.inciple of Causality: A
Note .
Loewe, William P., Two Theologians of the Cross: Barth ood Moltmann
Malik, Charles H., A Christian Reflection on Martin Heidegger .
Newman, Jay, Newman on the Strength of Beliefs. .
O'Brien, Thomas C., "Sacra Doctrina" Revisited: The Context of
Medieval Education .
Pastrana, Gabriel, Personhood and the Beginning of Human Life .
Schall, James V., Human Destiny and World Population: The Individual as Hor.izon and Frontier .
Wharton, Robert V., Evil in an Earthly Paradise: Dostoevsky's
Theodicy
Wilhelmsen, Frederick D., The Concept of Existence and the Structure of Judgment: A Thomistic Paradox .

62
400
350

585
881
540
418
510
1
181
475
247
92

567
817

INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWED
Adler, Mortimer J., Some Questions About Language: A Theory of
Human Discourse and its Objects (Auger)
Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 20 Pleasure, Vol. 84
Charity, Vol. 37, Justice, Vol. 38, Injustice (Zyella)
Summa Theologiae, Vol. 56 The Sacraments (Donahue)
Summa Theologiae, Vol. 81 Faith, Vol. 82, Consequences of
Faith (Zylla) .

601
148
295
618

Assman, Hugo, Theology for a Nomad Church (Folk)
Baum, Gregory, Religion and Alienation: A Theological Reading of
Sociology (Kerlin) .
Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books on Consideration: Advice to a Pope
(Boyle)
Bethge, Eberhard, Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr. (Godsey)
Calloud, Jean, Structural Analysis of Narrative (Barden) .
Campbell, Richard, From Belief to Understanding: A Study of
Anselm's Proslogion Argument for God (Nordgulen) .
Carlson, Charles P., Justification in Earlier Medieval Theology
(Pearson) .
Davies, J., Christians, Politics, and Violent Revolution (Alderson) .
Davis, Charles, Body as Spirit: The Nature of Religious Feeling
(Dupre)
Dussal, E., History and the Theology of Liberation (Alderson)
Ellacuria, Ignatius, Freedom Made Flesh (Alderson) .
Fortenbaugh, William W., Aristotle on Emotion (Bertman) .
Geach, Peter, Reason and Argument (Ingham)
Hartshorne, Charles, Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of
Metaphysics of Religion (Weinandy)
Horvath, Tibor, Faith Under Scrutiny (Rossi)
King, Thomas L., Sartre and the Sacred (Sheridan)
Leon-Dufour, Xavier, Resurrection and the Message of Easter
(Clifton)
MacGregor, Geddes, He Who Lets Us Be: A Theology of Love
(Imbelli)
McFadden, Thomas (ed) ., America in TheologicalPerspective (Weigel)
Meagher, John C. The Way of the Word: The Beginning and the
Establishing of Christian Understanding (Viviano) .
Osborn, Eric, Ethical Patterns in Early Christian Thought (Ramsey)
Patte, Daniel, What is Structural Exegesis? (Barden) .
Ricoeur, Paul, La metaphore vive and Political and Social Essays
(Sweeney)
Scott, Nathan A., The Poetry of Civic Virtue (Webb)
Sokolowski, Robert, Husserlian Meditations (Zimmerman)
Veatch, Robert, Death, Dying, and the Biological Revolution (Henle)

447
162

471
465
596

616
461
610

441
610
610
626
625
308
311
622
153
159
605

603
305
596
297
468

442
456