THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
EDITORS: THE DOMINICANFATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JOSEPH
Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017
VoL. 41

APRIL, 1977

No. 2

RAHNER'S SPIRIT IN THE WORLD
AQUINAS OR HEGEL?

RAHNER's INTERPRETATION

OF ST. THOMAS

R

ECENTLY, IN A provocative and impassioned book,1
Cornelio Fabro scrutinized the seminal work of Karl
Rahner, Spirit in the World. 2 Fabro's project is noteworthy. For Rahner has retained this philosophical anthropology, first elaborated in a doctoral dis.sertation, as the basis
for his protracted Theological lnvestigations. 3 But Fabro contravenes Rahner.
At issue, in general, is the nature of historic Thomistic meta1 Cornelio Fabro,
La svolta antropologica di Karl Rahner (Milan: Rusconi
Editore, 1974).
•Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych, S. J. (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1968) = Karl Rahner, Geist in Welt [1st ed. 1989], 2nd ed.,
revised Johannes B. Metz (Munich: Kosel-Verlag, 1957). Henceforth cited as SW.
8 Cf. Metz, SW, " Foreword," xvi-xvii.

167

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

physics and noetic theory, specifically, the relationship of this
metaphysics to Rahner's transcendental anthropology. Extensive commentary on the general problem 4 bolsters Fabro's
specific repudiation of Spirit in the World: Rahner's transcendental anthropology is not a development, in any ingenuous
sense, of Thomistic metaphysics. 5
However, I shall not duplicate Fabro's comparison of Rahner
and St. Thomas. Another perusal, text by text, here promises no
benefit. Similar comparisons-and this is the probable fate of
Fabro's book-have been ineffective. Rahner deters this kind
of criticism since, as he candidly admits, his " fundamental conception has remained completely unchanged." 6
While this admission should make any prospective critic hesitate, Rahner's apparent intransigence signifies his enduring
conviction about "the original philosophical event in Thomas." 1
Yet, it is this event, however one chooses to characterize it,
that challenges every serious interpretation of St. Thomas.
What, indeed, is "the original philosophical event in Thomas"?
For this, Rahner insists and we can agree, is a question that
should be asked.
But, how is Rahner's peculiar insistence to be related to a
comparable element in St. Thomas? Granted the theological
intention, aim, and character of St. Thomas's thought, Rahner's
claim and, for that matter, procedure, invite comparison with
" Thomistic" philosophical manuals. Are we, once more, engaged in the familiar manualist exercise, finding a philosophy
in St. Thomas's theology by severing from its rational argumentation any "revealed" premises? 8
•See Cornelio Fabro, C. P. S., Participation et causalite selon S. Thomas d'Aquin
(Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires de Louvain/Editions BeatriceNauwelaerts, 1961).
5 For a criticism
of Fabro's historical placement of the metaphysics of St.
Thomas, see R. J. Henle, S. J., "A Note on Certain Textual Evidence in Fabro's
La Nozione Metafisica di Partecipazione," Modern Schoolman, XXXIV, 4 (1957),
Q65-Q82.

SW, "Preface to the Second German Edition," xlvii.
SW. 1.
8 Cf. Etienne
Gilson, "Historical Research and the Future of Scholasticism,"
Modern Schoolman, XXIX, 1 (1951), 1-10.
6

7

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169

Rahner, however, explicitly acknowledges the actual framework of the Summa Theologiae. St. Thomas's doctrine of man
is part of and determined by a "theological systematic." 9 Unfortunately, Rahner does not adequately specify the normative
value of Aquinas's theological systematic; he neither provides
a textual exegesis of the relationship between philosophy and
theology in the writings of St. Thomas, nor, and this would be
more to his purposes, sets forth precisely which are the principles that allow one to derive a contemporary philosophy from
Thomistic theology. 10 To compound the difficulty, Rahner,
while reiterating his dependence on " the teaching of Aquinas
himself," rejects as unphilosophical an investigation into the
historical origins of Thomistic doctrine. 11 Instead, he adverts
to the " original philosophical event" which underlies St.
Thomas's theology. This event can be recaptured by abandoning oneself to" the dynamism of the matter itself." 12
The " matter itself " is encapsulated in the proposition, so
resonant of Heidegger, that " Everything metaphysical is
known only in and at the world." 13 Nonetheless, Rahner proposes to explicate this fundamental thesis in terms of the
Thomistic doctrine of " conversio ad phantasmata." 14
Although this latter doctrine is only the bare beginning for
that " metaphysics of knowledge " which Rahner discerns in
the Thomistic texts, it is the point at which the historically
oriented critic must first pause. Does Rahner truly begin with
a Thomistic doctrine? Likely enough, however, any attempt
to reduce Rahner's metaphysics to its historical elements will
prove an irresolvable controversy. Even so, every interpreta•SW, 15.
10 See SW, xlix-lv, 15-17.
Cf. Anton C. Pegis, " Thomism 1966," Proceedings
of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, XL (1966), 55-67.
11 See SW, I.
1 • Ibid.
13 SW, liii. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson (New York and Evanston:
Harper & Row, 196f.l), 78-86.
Henceforth cited as BT.
H Cf. s. T., I, 84, 7,

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

tion must acknowledge that Rahner professes allegiance to the
transcendental method. And this method has historical antecedents that, in their complex devolution, provide a vantage.
that one might claim Rahner has surmounted but which, therefore, cannot be ignored.
For those who simply juxtapose or divorce philosophical insight and historical research, an historical location of Spirit in
the World may seem of negligible merit. But an autonomous
philosophical insight can only be convincingly exposed in opposition to the history of philosophy, an opposition carefully
preserved by its recent and most eminent expositor.
Heidegger disjoins philosophy and the history of philosophy
since he portrays the latter as the history of forgetfulness. 15 To
its detriment, western metaphysics has focused on beings
(Seiende) but not on Being (Sein). To recover Being, this
tradition must be overcome. 16 Consequently, unlike Hegel
whose Absolute is mediated by all philosophical history,
Heidegger's search for Being sustains itself by means of an
immediate or pre-categorial disclosure: Dasein's" being-in-theworld." 11 Yet, in recovering the foundation of all ontic categorization, Heidegger also uncovers in previous metaphysical
doctrines underlying assumptions that are hidden to naive historical scholarship but which are, from Heidegger's perspective,
normative in the exegesis of those doctrines. 18
Since Heideggerian exegesis is a subtlety that we cannot here
pursue, let us allow that historical texts had, at the least,
a meaning for their authors. If so, we may continue to puzzle
10 For discussions of the relationship
between philosophy and the history of
philosophy in terms of the Heideggerian "retrieve" [" Wiederholen "], see Werner
Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, trans. Theodore Kisiel and Murray Greene
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), x-xiii; William J. Richardson,
S. J., Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhofl', 2nd ed. 1967), 91-93; John N. Deely, The Tradition Via Heidegger (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhofl', 1971), 17-28.
1 • See BT, 22-23. Cf. Marx, 85-100; Richardson,
331-S60.
17 See BT, SO-SI, 261-26S.
18 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James
S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 206-207, 211.

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

171

out that meaning. 19 In our present discussion, this naivete
permits us to compare Rahner's metaphysics with its relevant
precedent in the history of transcendental philosophy, and perhaps to discover in that precedent access to problems that
directly emerge but are not sufficiently addressed in Spirit in
the World.
METAPHYSICS

REVINDICATED

Rahner's primary aim is not the exegesis of Thomistic texts.
Rather it is Kant's famous task: the establishment of metaphysics as an apodeictic science.20 Only Rahner carries out this
task with the help of Being and Time. The metaphysics so
established resembles that of Heideggerian man whose being
is "in-the-world." Accordingly, when examining Summa Theologiae, I, q. 84i a. 7, "Utrum intellectus possi,t actu intelligere
per species intelligibiles quas penes se habet, non convertendo
se ad phantasmata," Rahner is preoccupied with the third objection: How is it possible to know incorporeal beings since
there are no phantasms of these beings? 21
In its historical setting this text marks a turning point in a
major controversy of the 13th century. The decisive advancement of St. Thomas's theology was the defense of the unity
of man and the immortality of the soul, a defense that relinquished the existential dualism of the Platonic-Augustinian tradition. For St. Thomas, the human soul, as a member of the
theological hierarchy of God-angels-man- (non-rational) animals, is the lowest species in the genus of separate intellectual
substances. Nonetheless, the human soul is intrinsically related
to matter which it animates as the necessary means to its own
noetic perfection. The soul, after death a substance which subsists in its own right, turns to phantasms because, in this life,
19 See Etienne
Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), Ch. XII, " The Nature and Unity of Philosophical
Experience," 299-320. Cf. Anton C. Pegis. " Gilson and Thomism," Thought,
XXI, 82 (1946), 435-454.
••See SW, 59.
21 See SW. 50-54.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

it is the substantial form of a living body whose sensation the
soul requires in order to actualize its own power to know. In
Summa Theologiae, I, q. 84, a. 7, ad 3, St. Thomas observes, in
passing, that the noetic dependency of soul on body does not
eliminate metaphysics but only, as the context makes patent,
Platonic metaphysics. 22
The same text, read under the influences of Kant and Heidegger, poses for Rahner the possibility of metaphysics as such.
From the Kantian perspective that Rahner adopts, the problem
of metaphysics is as readily specified as it is radical once located. Lacking an intellectual intuition, can man whose
knowing is rooted in sensibility have any cognitive transcendence over the world of space and time? This question, which
was the principal interrogation of the Critique of Pure Reason,23 Kant answered negatively by confining human knowledge to the spatial-temporal order and by translating the intractable speculations of pre-critical metaphysics, about God
and soul, into practical postulates necessary for morality. 24
Rahner, quite clearly, repeats the typical movement of postKantian philosophy which, by radicalizing the critical question,
reintroduced speculative ontology. 25 In Spirit in the World, the
Kantian quest for an apodeictic metaphysics is revitalized by
being brought into the ken of Heidegger's Question of Being
with, what can only be called, Hegelian seriousness. 26 The absolute beginning for philosophy, because it is the absolute,
irreducible human certitude, is that "Man questions-necessarily." 27
22 Cf. Anton C. Pegis, "Cosmogony
and Knowledge," Thought, XVIII (1943),
643-664; XIX (1944),
XX (1945) , 473-498.
23 Cf. Gerard Lebrun, Kant et la fin de la metaphysique
(Paris: Librairie Armand
Colin, 1970), Ch. I, "Une nouvelle naissance de la metaphysique," 13-41.
24 See Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York:
The
Liberal Arts Press, 1956), 139-141 [=Prussian Academy Edition, Vol. V, 134-136].
25 Cf. Richard Kroner," The Year 1800 in the Development of German Idealism,"
The Review of Metaphysics, I, 4 (1948), 1-31,
2 • See SW, 57-59. Cf. BT, 31.
27
57.

sw.

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

173

:From this, the absolute beginning, Rahner unfolds a metaphysics. The Question 0£ Being is " metaphysical" : it asks
about Being in its totality, Being apart from finite determinations. Whereas this indeterminate Being, for those who have
mastered the Hegelian lesson, is equated with a Nothing at
once logical and existential, Rahner counters that inasmuch as
Being is questionable, it is with the same necessity knowable,
since about the absolutely unknown and unknowable, no questions can ever be asked. 28 And thus Rahner departs significantly from the stance 0£ Being and Time: the metaphysical question reveals the essence 0£ man as the being " who as such is
already with Being in its totality." 29 Furthermore, while Rahner'.s promotion 0£ a radical beginning for philosophical reflection has precedents in both Hegel and Heidegger, his contention, that metaphysics can never transcend its starting point,
the question that orients man to the totality 0£ Being, 30 cannot
be easily fitted into either context.
Rahner does not intend a metaphysics 0£ Being consonant
with Hegel's logic 0£ the Absolute, especially .since he seems to
regard the latter as a form 0£ immanentism. 31 But, then,
Heidegger disavowed the Hegelian Absolute, precisely as the
28 Cf. Plato, The Republic, V, 477; G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic (The
First Part of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), trans. William
Wallace (Oxford: The University Press, 2nd ed. rev., reprinted 1965), # 81,
148-149.
2 • SW, 60. See also SW, 186. Cf. BT, 244-245.
" Understanding of Being belongs to the kind of Being which the entity called
'Dasein' possesses." BT, 244.
For Heidegger, although Dasein as " care " is characterized by its comprehension
of Being, Dasein does not comprehend the totality of Being. Being for Dasein
remains inextricably finite. See BT, 279.
Heidegger reiterates and stresses the same conclusion in his 1930 lecture, " What
is Metaphysics? " trans. R. F. C. Hull and Alan Crick, in Existence and Being, ed.
Werner Brock (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1949), 333: " illtimately there is
an essential difference between comprehending the totality of what is and finding
ourselves in the midst of what-is-in-totality. The former is absolutely impossible.
The latter is going on in existence all the time."
30 See SW, 61.
31 See SW, 72. Cf. Franz Gregoire, Etudes Hegeliennes: les points capitaux du
systeme (Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires de Louvain /Editions
Beatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1958), 210-212.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

culmination of traditional metaphysics, in favor of an existential phenomenology of Dasein, a phenomenology which
has itself been attacked as humanistic, subjectivistic, and relativistic. 32 If this be a justifiable characterization of the
propensity of Being and Time, 33 we should expect that Rahner,
a theologian intent on defending Christian faith, would distance
himself from so threatening a denouement. But perhaps this
threat is only the consequence of an intemperate reading of
Heidegger. No matter; how is it that .a starting point, drawn
forth from Being and Time and enunciated in Heideggerian
terms, is able to distance Rahner from Heidegger's authentic
conclusions? In brief, how may Rahner, while not Heidegger,
suppose that there is a metaphysics other than, not to say more
than, a phenomenology of man? And supposing, indeed, that
metaphysics is identical with transcendental anthropology, is
there any longer a metaphysics?
The answer, if we look to the programmatic statement in the
last chapter of Spirit in the World, is that metaphysics remains
possible in a traditional sense.34 The Question of Being (Seinsfrage) , Heidegger rightly grasped, arises at the point where man
as corporeal is included in the things of the world.35 However,
exactly at this point, Rahner sees a virtual but comprehensive
metaphysics that grounds itself on the affirmation of the Absolute Being. 36
82 See Laszlo Versenyi, Heidegger, Being, and Truth
(New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1965), 77-85. For Heidegger's rejection of Hegel, see BT,
22-23, 43.
83 Cf.
Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical, Essay (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1969), 119-136; A. De Waelhens, La philosophie
de Martin Heidegger (Louvain and Paris: Editions Nauwelaerts I BeatriceNauwelaerts, 7th ed. 1971), 314-315. For a contrary opinion, see Richardson,
op. cit., 545-548.
84 In SW, Rahner describes his metaphysics as "Thomistic,"
but, more recently,
as "scholastic." See "Interview with Karl Rahner," The Month (July 1974),
638.
• 5 See SW, 62.
86 For Rahner's argument against Heidegger's assertion of the finitude of Being,
see SW, 184-185.
In constructing a metaphysics of Infinite Being, B.ahner follows [SW, 152] St.

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175

Man's being-in-the-world, insofar as it involves knowledge, is
to make true judgments about the sensible things of the world
as they are " in themselves." 37 From a phenomenological standpoint, 88 it is incontrovertible that knowledge affirms a sensible
Thomas's distinction [S. T., I, q. 7, a.1] between an infinity "secundum formam"
(" a negative formal infinity ") and infinity " secundum materiam " (" a privative,
material infinity ") . Rahner argues, contrary to Heidegger, that " The pre-apprehension [V orgriffl attains to esse . . . to which esse there belongs a negative infinity," [SW, 183]. But, " The negative infinity of the esse of the pre-apprehension
[V orgriffl is meant absolutely . . . does not come of itself to a limit intrinsically ... ," [SW, 184].
Rahner correlates the Thomistic doctrine of a "privative infinity " with Heidegger's assertion of the finitude of Being. If the pre-apprehension [Vorgriffl were only
to attain to a " privative infinity," this would be equivalent to asserting the
finitude of Being, which finitude would then be grasped in a pre-apprehension
[Vorgriffl of Nothing. Against this Heideggerian alternative, Rahner seems merely
to reinstate, dogmatically, his own starting point: "the implicit supposition of the
assumption itself which expresses a pre-apprehension [Vorgriffl of esse and not
of nothing," [SW, 185]. But to treat the pre-apprehension [Vorgriffl of Being
as a postulate is to eviscerate its purported transcendental deduction.
37 See SW, 130.
38 In reconstructing
the argument of SW, I, and not Rahner, stress the crucial
distinction between a phenomenological and an ontological standpoint. Rahner,
in accordance with St. Thomas, holds that judgment affirms sensible things which
exist independently of the knower. But in the methodological context of Rahner's
argument, this Thomistic realism is an "uncritical" (i.e., "non-transcendental")
and, therefore, inadmissible assumption. For Rahner seeks the " conditions of
possibility " for judgment, a Kantian question that falls outside the boundaries
of historic Thomistic metaphysics. See the indispensable study of Etienne Gilson,
Le realisme methodique (Paris: Pierre Tequi, n. d. (1935]) .
In order to locate Rahner's argument in terms of the Kantian problem and
its subsequent history, as well as to expose its actual structure, one must distinguish, as a necessary hermeneutical device, logical-phenomenological conditions
from ontological conditions. [Cf. Otto Muck, The Transcendental Method, trans.
William D. Seidensticker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 195.]
Historically and systematically, a transcendental deduction is an argument that
abandons all "naive " or pre-critical assumptions. But in the deduction of Absolute Being given in SW, Rahner's awareness of the critical aspect of transcendental method is truncated. "From the outset," Rahner accepts (like Heidegger)
the worldly 'facticity' of Dasein, the " ... really human knowledge ... with
which man finds himself in the real world," [SW, 164]. Referring to this kind
of "realism," Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury
Press, 1975), 225, observes: " ... this critique of idealism was faced then, as
now, with the comprehensive claim of the transcendental position. Inasmuch as
transcendental reflection did not want to leave unconsidered any possible area

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

object-somehow-distinct
from the knower, a thing "in itself." Upon the ontological reality of this phenomenological
distinction, the favorite crux of modern epistemology, Rahner
hangs his argument. 39
Sensation, Rahner assumes, cannot ground any universality
or necessity. 40 But against this Humean principle, which so
thoroughly structured the development of Kant's system, Rahner takes up a realist objection: how is the noetic object to
be distinguished if, on the level of sensation, the sense object is
indistinguishable from the subject's receptive intuition. 41 Every
noetic theory, then, must formulate the ground, which sensation
does not provide, for the phenomenological differentiation of
subject and object. But, for Rahner, this ground is shown to
be ontological, since it is found in the "pre-apprehension [Vorgri;fj] of Being." 42
CoNSCIOUSNESS-IN-THE-W

ORLD

Rahner's phenomenology of man-in-the-world rehearses the
theme of metaphysical " alienation." Actual or finite man,
of thought in the development of the content of the mind-and, since Hegel, this
was the claim of transcendental philosophy-it had already included every possible objection within the total reflection of the mind."
I conclude, however, that Rahner's failure either to reassert definitively or to
overcome critically the realist position exposes the unresolved tension in his metaphysics. [Cf. Barrie A. Wilson, " The Possibility of Theology After Kant: An
Examination of Karl Rahner's Geist in Welt," Canadian Journal of Theology, XII,
4 (1966), 251; E.[dward] A. R.[eno], The Review of Metaphysics, XII, 2 (1968),
385-386.] It would seem, however, that Rahner's proof for the existence of God
depends upon a dialectical surmounting of the disjunction between a phenomenology
or transcendental theory of judgment and the realist affirmation of esse. See
footnote l!i?2 infra.
•• See SW, 131.
' 0 See SW, 138-142.
Cf. Rahner's article, "Aquinas: The Nature of Truth,"
Continuum, II (1964), 67 [henceforth cited as ANT]: " St. Thomas is totally
convinced that the singular as such can express only something of itself . . . but
never the metaphysical universality of concepts that would be required to ground
an apodictic universality and validity .... "
"See SW, 78-79, 117-119.
42 See SW, 142-145. For the term "Vorgrifl',"
see the lexicon of Andrew Tallon,
"Spirit, Matter, Becoming: Karl Rahner's Spirit in the World," Modern Schoolman, XLVIII, 2 (1971), 151-165.

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

177

whose true home is the world, has, nevertheless, a virtually
infinite consciousness which, left unsatisfied by the knowledge
0£ the particular things 0£ the world, expresses this cognitive
restlessness by putting the world as a whole into question. This
latter stance, articulated rationally as the Question of Being,
is paradoxical and tensional. As a virtually infinite consciousness, man surpasses every worldly particularity, but as incarnate
consciousness man's sensibility unites him, by nature, to the
sensible particular. In its embodiment, consciousness seems
alienated. Sensibility places spirit in a material world, an
" otherness " that human intelligence can transcend but not
eliminate. 43
Such an alienation is paradoxical, and Rahner does more to
describe than to explain it. But by describing sensation as the
"mid-point" between the self as separate and the self as "immersed" in the otherness 0£ the material world, 44 Rahner locates the matrix for the Question 0£ Being. Sensibility, which
initially appears to be the total diremption of spirit into matter,
is also the provocation for the philosopher to thematize the
world. In this thematization, or questioning 0£ the world's
existence, man realizes his self-identity as spirit. 45
Contrary to the tenets 0£ a radical naturalism, the questionability 0£ the world establishes that man is not, in actuality,
totally immersed in an opaque " otherness." Human selfidentity is realizable because knowledge, though rooted in sensibility, is not a final or irretrievable diremption 0£ spirit. On
the contrary, the known is the interior actualization 0£ the intellect 0£ the knower, or to use Rahner's definition, "Knowing
is the being-present-to-self-of-Being ." 46
Contrary to the tenets of a radical scepticism, since the world
is questionable, it is, thereby and by as much, knowable. Moreover, the intelligibility of the sensible world, open to an understanding potentially infinite in scope, cannot be regarded as
simply de facto. In the last analysis, a merely contingent or ac4•
44

See SW, 80-83.
See SW, 81.

45
46

See SW, 62.
SW, 69.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

cidental conjunction of Being and Intelligibility is itself unintelligible.47 Philosophical reason must pursue the a priori
condition of possibility for worldly intelligibilities to an original
and necessary unity of Being and Knowing which, once disclosed, is to be acknowledged as the horizon for the infinite
appetite of finite intelligence.
The explicit acknowledgement of this horizon enables one
to deduce a metaphysics of God and man from a phenomenology of man. One should concede, however, that Spirit in the
World is the prospectus for a metaphysical odyssey, whose beginning and end are marked, but whose intermediate steps are
only given proleptic treatment within the analysis of several
epistemological problems. These problems assume a common
field between St. Thomas and German Idealism, for Rahner
aspires-in his language, principles, and method-to an enrichment of both Thomism and Idealism. 48
In terms of the fundamental distinction between the knower
and the known, Rahner tries to overcome the constrictions suffered by Kantian Reason while avoiding the monism of Idealist
ontologies. His attempt hinges on a theory of judgment. By
the act of judging, we affirm an object" in itself" and, thereby,
distinguish the knower from the known. 49 But this distinction,
Rahner contends, can only be made because judgment refers
implicitly to an Absolute Ground.
We describe a sensible object as" in itself" because we affirm
it to have an actus essendi; viz., the object exists independently
of the knower making the affirmation. 50 Learning from St.
"Ibid.
•• See ANT, 65.
• 0 [Sensibility] " ... cannot make possible an objective knowledge because it
cannot differentiate itself ontologically from the other. The capacity of the subject to differentiate itself over against the other which is had in sensibility we
called thought (Denken) ." SW,
For St. Thomas's doctrine of sense judgment, see Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., "Judgment and Truth in Aquinas," Mediaeval Studies, XXXII (1970), 138-158.
00 " •••
the judgment ' through affirmation' only recognizes that synthesis
antecedent to itself as existing .... " SW, 155.

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179

Thomas that judgment reaches " ad esse rei," 51 Rahner also
adopts from Kant the transcendental doctrine that for judgment there must be an a priori condition of possibility. In the
case of judgments affirmative of finite esse, the a priori condition of possibility is Infinite Esse or the Absolute. Although
Rahner does not distinguish clearly enough the phenomenological and ontological standpoint,s, he breaks free of the Kantian
strictures by claiming that the a priori absolute condition of
possibility-God-is the ontological ground for all judgments
of finite esse.52
THE AFFIRMATION

OF BEING

Rahner's deduction of Infinite Esse, the absolute ontological
ground for judgment, can be set forth in five fundamental
theses.
1. Judgments are affirmations about a thing as it is "in
itself." 53
To be a "thing-in-itself" is to possess an "esse" independent of the "esse" of the knower. 54
3. Judgments of "esse," the a priori synthesis "in itself,"
are always of " such and such a kind," viz., they always
refer to a particular thing with a particular nature. 55
4. To know that something is a limited esse is to have a
pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] of Infinite Esse, or the Absolute.56
5. Infinite Esse must be affirmed as the ontological ground
for all judgments of limited esse.51

This schematization, although indigent of the details of Spirit
in the World, exposes the structure of Rahner's argument.
See SW, 168-169.
Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, A592/B620.
53 See SW, 168-168.
•• See SW, 169-170.
••See SW, 140-142, 160, 187.
5 • See SW, 145, 181-182.
67 See SW, 181, 898.
51

52

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

In the argument, as I have schematized it, theses one and two
summarize a realist theory of judgment that can be regarded as
compatible with Thomistic doctrine. The remaining theses,
however, are more difficult to reconcile with the teaching of St.
Thomas. They lead one to wonder whether Rahner has perhaps conflated a " Suarezian " with a Thomistic doctrine of
Being. 58 For our purposes, the differences between these two
Two major themes of Rahner have close parallels in Suarez's metaphysics:
[Vorgriff] as a translation into a Kantian framework of
the "conceptio formalis entis"; (2) the conceptual determination of finite beings
through a formal contraction of the concept of Being (ens commune). The following texts illustrate these parallels.
(1) " ... conceptus formalis dicitur actus ipse, seu (quod idem est) verbum
quo intellectus rem aliquam seu communem rationem concipit; qui dicitur conceptus, quia est veluti proles mentis; formalis autem appellatur, vel quia est
ultima forma mentis, vel quia formaliter repraesentat menti rem cognitam, vel
quia revera est intrinsecus et formalis terminus conceptionis mentalis, in quo
differt a conceptu objectivo, ut ita dicam. Conceptus objectivus dicitur res ilia,
vel ratio, quae proprie et immediate per conceptum formalem cognoscitur sen
repraesentatur."
Disputationes Metaphysicae, II, 1, 1, pp. 64-65 [ed. Breton:
Paris, 1861].
" ... [the] pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] as such does not attain to an object. By
its very essence, it is one of the conditions of the possibility of an objective knowledge. Every represented (vorgestellte) object of human knowledge (that is, of
a knowledge in the form of a knowmg of something about something ... ) is able
to be apprehended itself only in a pre-apprehension [Vorgriff]." SW, 148.
" ... dicendnm est, conceptum formalem proprinm et adaequatnm entis ut
sic, esse unum, re et ratione praecisum ab aliis conceptibus formalibns aliarum
rerum et objectorum . . . per voces exprimimus nostros formales conceptns; sed
vox, ens, non solnm materialiter est nna, sed etiam unam habet significationem ex
primaeva impositione sua, ex vi cujus non significat immediate naturam aliquam
sub determinata et propria ratione, sub qua ab aliis distingnitnr." Disp. Met.,
II, 1, 9, p. 68.
" ... in every essential judgment ... a universal esse is also simultaneously
affirmed which, as one, is able to include in itself the quiddity of the subject and
that of the predicate ... and to that extent is one and universal (that is, is the
being of many determinations) ... The one reality, the one esse of the one real
thing is thus the reality of different determinations . . . is essentially apprehended as universal." SW, 172-178.
(2) " Hine etiam conceptus entis, non solnm unus, sed etiam simplicissimus dici
solet, ita ut ad eum fiat ultima resolutio caeterornm; per alios enim conceptus
concipimns tale vel tale ens; per hunc autem praescindimus omnem compositionem
et determinationem .... " Disp. Met., II, 1, 9, p. 68.
" . . . what the abstractive pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] attains to as unlimited
58

(1) the pre-apprehension

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metaphysical doctrines can be drawn succinctly. 59
For St. Thomas, esse cannot be conceptualized after the
fashion of a quiddity-by means of the simple apprehension of
an essence. The actus essendi is affirmed by judgment; the
" concept of Being," derived by analogy from the concept of
formal actuality, defers to the judicative affirmation. 60 By an
argument from efficient causality, the Thomistic distinction between essence and existence in creatures is proved as a consequence of the demonstration of the existence of God, Whose
nature is "Ipsum Esse Subsistens." 61 Suarez, by contrast, inspected the essences of existing finite things and concluded that
in actual existents there can be maintained to be only a conceptual distinction between essential being and existential being. 62
From the perspective of this controversy, Spirit in the World
appears to reinstate a" Suarezian" identification of Being and
Essence. 63
is what was affirmed as limited in the synthesis (complexio) of the known, the
objective in-itself (Ansich) of the known." SW, 156.
" ... hanc contractionem seu determinationem conceptus objectivi entis ad
inferiora non esse intelligendam per modum compositionis, sed solum per modum
expressioris conceptionis alicujus eutis conteuti sub ente .... " Disp. Met., II, 6,
7, pp. 100-101.
" ... determinations can be added to ens commune, indeed not properly 'from
without ' . . . ens commune, precisely in its emptiness, indicates the fullness of
esse: its indetermined quiddity is only the representative symbol for all possible
determined quiddities .... " SW, 176.
For a discussion of Suarez's influence in the history of the concept of Being,
cf. Andre Marc, S. J., L'idee de l'etre chez saint Thomas et dans la Scholastique
posterieure (Paris: Beauchesne, 1933) , 13-30; Etienne Gilson, Being and Some
Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1951), 97-99;
Cornelio Fabro, "The Transcendentality of Ens-Esse and the Ground of Metaphysics," International Philosophical Quarterly, VI (1966), 389-4fl7.
59 Cf. Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., " The Number
of Terms in the Suarezian Discussion of Essence and Being," Modern Schoolman, XXXIV (1957), 147-191.
60 " Cum in re duo sint, quidditas
rei, et esse ejus, his duobus respondet duplex
operatio intellectus. Una quae dicitur a philosophis formatio, qua apprehendit
quidditates rerum . . . Alia autem comprehendit esse rei, componendo affirmationem ... ."I Sent., d. 38, q.1. a.3, Solut., I, 903 [ed. Mandonnet: Paris, 1939].
61 Cf. Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., " Quiddity and Real Distinction
in St. Thomas
Aquinas," Mediaeval Studies, XXVII (1965), 1-flfl.
62 Cf. Owens, "Suarezian
Discussion," 178-179.
•• Rahner makes this identification because he minimizes the order of efficient

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

Rahner often notes, it is true, that essence is only " the
potency for esse," but at crucial points, he identifies esse with
the totality of the extra-mental object. 64 This identification
occurs since Rahner ignores, and even explicitly contradicts,
the Thomistic teaching that essence, " absolutely considered,"
abstracts from all esse.65 The result is far reaching. Spirit in
causality or reduces it to the order of formal causality. In knowing God by means
of a metaphysical demonstration, ". . . the way of causality already presupposes
the knowledge that the esse of the existent is 'received,' which knowledge of
limitedness already presupposes a concept of being as such as its condition. . . ."
[SW, 894; italics mine.]
In defense of Rahner's " Thomism," one could easily quote numerous texts,
e.g.: ". . . esse is not a universal concept such as the apprehension (as such)
forms," [SW, 202]. Yet, Rahner abstracts from judgment (a concept of) Being:
" Hence, if being, insofar as it expresses esse, is what is first grasped by abstraction,
is the fundamental abstraction, then abstraction must abstract being insofar as
it is grasped in the judgment as esse," [SW, 207]. From this abstracted concept
of Being, Rahner derives the conclusion that finite beings are to be comprehended
as "contractions" of Being: " ... the objects of possible judgments are distinguished in their esse as such . . . insofar as the esse of these objects as limited
by its essence must be understood as a partial realization of esse in itself," [SW, 179].
For St. Thomas, esse is affirmed as diverse in each existent: ". . . in diversis
rebus est diversum esse, quo formaliter res est ... ," [In I Sent., d.19, q. 5, a. PJ,
Solut.; I, 492 (ed. Mandonnet: Paris, 1929]. But in judgments of esse, Rahner
affirms a universality that is appropriate only to an abstracted quiddity: " Human knowing is the judgmental affirmation of a universal about something • . .
sustained by the pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] of esse absolutely . . . ," [SW, 241].
Cf. footnote 67 infra.
The equivocation in any concept of Being, unless this concept is reduced
to the judicative affirmation of the actus essendi of the individual existent, is
analyzed by Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., " Diversity and Community of Being in
St. Thomas Aquinas," Mediaeval Studies, XXII (1960), 800: " ..• a universal . . . is a concept of the second intention . . . ' Being,' as originally known
in the judgment, antecedes all such concepts of itself. . . ."
••"Now what is this esse? . . . it is understood first of all purely by way of
definition as identical with the in-itself (Ansich) ... as the synthesis which is
able to be encountered as already realized antecedent to the affirmative synthesis .... " [SW, 157.] Cf. SW, 160, 162, 165. Cornelio Fabro, Participation et
causalite, 57, observes: "TI n'est done pas douteux que l'esse designe ici [in Spirit
in the World] la realite des concrets existants: ii est 'l'esse in actu ', l'en-soi comme
synthese reelle en acte de la multiplicite des determinations formelles."
•• " ' Essence ' is never in Thomas . . . indifferent of itself to real being. . . ."
[SW, 160.] Cf. St. Thomas, Quodl., VIII, 1, ad 1 m: "absoluta consideratio naturae
senarii, prout abstrahit a quolibet esse. . . ." For a discussion of the Thomistic

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183

the World, despite Rahner's frequent advertence to the judicative affirmation of esse, has recourse to a concept of Being as
that supreme essence which grounds all other essences.
And, here, opens the basic juncture. What content is to be
attributed to the concept of Being?
In answer to this, the Parmenidean riddle, Rahner relies on
metaphor: the concept of esse " oscillates " " between nothing
and infinity " because of its " intrinsic freedom." 66 At the root
of these metaphors is an analogy philosophically more commonplace. As one form is instantiated in many material particulars, so all particulars have esse. That is, esse is universal
" in a way similar" 67 to that universality pertaining to form.
But unlike any form, the universality of esse is absolute. 68 In
this comparison lies an unavoidable consequence.
The " similarity " between esse and form, since the latter is
a " contraction " of esse, is an equivocation unless the concept
of esse is none other than the concept of universal Being which
subsumes the concept of every particular being.69 About this
" absoluta consideratio," see Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., " Quiddity aud Real Distinction," and "Unity and Essence in St. Thomas Aquinas," Mediaeval Studies, XXIII
(1961) ' 240-259.
66 SW, 162.
61 " The pre-apprehension [Vorgriffl of esse must be able to be apprehended
in a way similar to the way that the pre-apprehension [Vorgriffl of the form
as in itself negatively unlimited appeared: the form as content of the predicate
of the proposition appeared, with respect to the concrete thing to which the
judgment relates it, as broader in itself, as universal, since it is able to be affirmed
of many possible concrete things. Now, this is also the case with esse. To-be-initself (Ansichsein) as esse can be affirmed of many individuals ... but [esse] is
in itself broader, universal, and unlimited." SW, 171.
68 " ••• in every essential judgment ... a universal esse is also simultaneously
affirmed which, as one, is able to include in itself the quiddity of the subject and
that of the predicate ... and to that extent is one and universal (that is, is the
being of many determinations)." SW, 172.
69 ". • • essences are apprehended as potencies for and limitations of esse . . .
the abstraction of esse is the condition of the possibility of the abstraction of
form .... " SW, 170.
" ... the agent intellect is the spontaneous pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of
esse absolutely, and thereby it is the faculty which apprehends the universal."

SW, 225.
" ... the universality of esse manifests itself ... [as] the one realizing ground

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DENIS J.M. BRADLEY

concept, Hegel's Logic raised the fundamental question: Does
the concept of Being possess any content peculiar to itself? 70
Rahner, however, denies that his concept of universal esse
is "empty." Unlike the Hegelian equivalence of Being and
Nothing, it is intended as the "fullest" concept. But this assurance gives us a distinction without a difference. In displaying the " fullness " of Being, Rahner succumbs to Hegel.
We think universal esse "by enumerating many existing determinations and negating their differences." 71
The enumeration of existing determinations engenders a
dialectic of finite and infinite, or to be exact, of the limited and
the unlimited. Judgment, in Rahner's exposure of its ordinary
or empirical function, is a cognitive assertion about a particular
concretion, a sensible instantiation of the form of a species,
which, in turn, is only a limited instantiation of the universal
formality, Being. To the affirmation of limited being, there
corresponds an antipode, unlimited or Infinite Being, since in
judging that a thing is, one implicitly judges that Being transcends every particular thing. From this implicit judgment, or
pre-apprehension [Vorgri;ffj, to the explicit acknowledgement of
Infinite Being, there is the smallest step. For how can one
explicitly think the concept of limited being without thinking
necessarily the concept of Being as unlimited?
This last question, I admit, suggests a dialectic of concepts
of many essential determinations ... as the unified fullness which realizes out of
itself the essential determinations .... " SW, 174-175.
" ... the breadth of the horizon comprehended a priori, which horizon [Being],
apprehended as such in the pre-apprehension [VorgriffJ offers the possibility of experiencing the forms of sensibility as limited .... " SW, 143.
70 See G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London and New
York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and Humanities Press. 1969), "With What
Must the Science Begin? ", 67-78.
71 SW, 177.
In the Science of Logic, Hegel allows that " Being is the indeterminate immediate ... free from determinateness in relation to essence " [81] but concludes that
the " negation of negation . . . has . . . infinite extension and universal application," [103]. Cf. Jean Hyppolite, Logi,que et existence (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1961), Ch. IV, "Negation empirique et negation speculative," 135-163.

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185

that Rahner would undoubtedly repudiate if put in these terms.
For Spirit in the World is intended to be a transcendental justification of the judicative affirmation of finite being. But between the intentions of the argument and its actual elaboration,
there intrudes an identification of Being and Essence which
involves Rahner's argument, albeit unintentionally, in a dialectical theory of Being. 72 This dialectic becomes more evident
if we take a wide sweep of Rahner's position.
FIRST PRINCIPLES

In a summary presentation of his argument, 73 Rahner maintains that the traditional definition of truth, " adaequatio rei
et intellectus," permits either a metaphysical or a critical posture. As a description, the traditional definition does not transgress or supersede the common, pre-philosophical awareness of
speaking the truth. For pre-reflective consciousness, ajudgment
is true if it accurately mirrors a state of affairs and the mirroring
is noticed to be accurate.
Rahner's anthropology centers on the "knower-in-theworld," and confirms the pre-reflective " adaequatio" between
man and world, by a theory of judgment that presents a human
subject at once utterly dependent on sensible intuition but yet,
no less, capable of transcending the object sensed. The noetic
subject constitutes itself by judgments that express the certainty
of truth, or to use the more usual epistemic criteria, by judgments that are universal and necessary. 74 Since Rahner concedes that the matter of sensible intuition is radically contingent,75 cognitive universality and necessity are assumed to
72

This dialectic is latent in the analogy that Rahner draws between form and

esse. In Thomistic doctrine, the absolute infinity of Being cannot be compared

to the "negative" or relative infinity of forms [See S. T., I, 7, 2] and, therefore,
the infinity of the pre-apprehension [VorgriffJ of Being could not be based on
" the knowability of a privative and of a negative infinity," [SW, 184]. But it
is by reference to a formal infinity that Rahner develops his metaphysics. Cf.
footnote 86 supra.
73 ANT, Zoe. cit. in footnote 40 supra.
••Cf. ANT, 66 and Critique of Pure Reason,
75 " ••• the structure and content of universal judgments and especially of meta-

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

originate in an a priori inherent in the subject himself. But in
this subjective a priori, Rahner finds not Kant's categories but
the " first principles " of St. Thomas. 76 These Thomistic first
principles are the self-evident or indemonstrable propositions
which all rational demonstrations presuppose. 77
Rahner's explanation of the a priori function of the first principles fuses Thomistic, Kantian, and Hegelian standpoints. As
these standpoints are fused, we glimpse the goal to which his
metaphysics aspires: the full unfolding of the concept of
Being. 78 Yet it is this goal which also makes the elements of
Rahner's metaphysics appear so disparate and perplexing.
Because the sensible singular can never ground " the metaphysical universality of concepts," 79 Rahner turns to " the
intelligence itself, [as that] which informs, objectifies, conceptualizes and judges the data from sense cognition." 80 The intelligence "informs the material sensible" by means of the
"first principles." 81
St. Thomas, who in this respect did not deviate from Aristotle,82 regarded the first principles as self-evident ("per se
nota ") but only as grasped concomitantly in, through, and
with the knowledge of particular sensible things whose abstracted natures inform the possible intellect. 83 Since "ens est
primum quod cadit in apprehensione simpliciter," 84 an intrinsic
physical judgments--cannot be grounded in the evidence of sense perception."
ANT, 65.
1 • Ibid. Cf. SW, 202-211.
77 See De V eritate, Q. XI, a. 1.
78 " Judicative knowledge of the world ... contains implicitly, as condition for
its own possibility, the affirmation of transcendent being and of its ultimate structures." ANT, 68.
79 ANT, 67.
so ANT, 65.
81 ANT, 67. Cf. SW, 225: " ... [the agent intellect] apprehends this material of
sensibility . . . gives it those metaphysical structures of being which were expressed in the first principles."
82 Cf Aristotle,
Meta., IV, 8-4, 1005b-10006a28; Post. Anal., 99b20-100bl 7;
Aquinas,
II, 78.
II, 83.
••See
•• S. T., I-II, 94, 2c.

sea,
sea

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187

order prevails among the "per se nota" principles, the first of
which is the " principium contradictionis " ("non est possible
ens esse simul et non esse ") .85 Although all concepts can be
reduced to the concept of Being, the term " Being " does not,
for St. Thomas, exhaust the intelligibility to which finite mind
may lay hold. The concept of Being must itself be explicated
by derivative but equally universal concepts, the transcendentals: unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. 86
Rahner subsumes the Thomistic doctrine of Being and the
transcendentals into the problem posed and resolved in the
Transcendental Analytic of the First Critique. So reformulated,
Aquinas's first principles function as the a priori conditions for
conceptual experience. 87 This function Rahner justifies in a
transcendental deduction that displays, but only in a highly abbreviated outline, the a priori conditions for judgment as an
ascending logical-ontological series.88 Kant, who assumed the
logician's table of the logical forms of judgment, 89 ascended
in a series of strictly logical conditions from temporal schemata,
85

Cf. Etienne Gilson, "Les principes et les causes," Revue Thomiste, Lil (1952),

46.
See De V eritate, Q. I, a. 1.
For St. Thomas, the sensibly given thing, as ontologically constituted independently of the knower, is already "determined" by the first principles of
Being. Intellect, when knowing sensible things as actually intelligible, also falls
under the rule of the first principles. But the agent intellect does not " impart"
to the intelligible object the first principles; rather, those principles are principles
both of thought and Being. In the intelligible species, the form of the sensible
thing is the form of the possible intellect. However, St. Thomas's doctrine of the
formal unity of the knower and the known presupposes that the sensible thing
possesses a formal determination prior to being actually known.
Cf. Pierre-Ceslas Courtes, 0. P., "Coherence de l'etre et Premier Principe selon
saint Thomas d'Aquin," Revue Thomiste, LXX (1970), 387-423.
"Car ces principes premiers supposent !'abstraction des singuliers et comme une
induction elementaire ... ils sont cependant posterieures a la lumiere de !'intellect
agent. En ce sens, ce ne sont pas des 'formes a priori' de .l'entendement." J.
Guillet, 0. P., "La 'lumiere intellectuelle' d'apres S. Thomas," Archives d'Histoire
Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age," II (1927), 85.
88 See SW, 402-403; ANT, 68.
89 See Herman-J.
De Vleeschauwer, The Devefopment of Kantian Thought,
trans. A. R. C. Duncan (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1962), 75-82.
86

87

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

to the pure categories, to the supreme condition, the transcendental unity of apperception. For his part, Rahner assumes
that the categories presented by Aristotle are thinkable because
they are governed a priori by the first principles which, in turn,
are " included " in the transcendental or " primitive categories "
that explicate the concept of Being. 90 And with this latter concept we are, once again, in the ontological realm. In fact, we
have always been in the ontological realm.
THE PRIMACY OF SPIRIT

The concept of Being that grounds judgment is the Being
whose pre-apprehension [VorgnffJ constitutes human spirit as
spirit. Judgments which, as propositions, are governed by the
a priori conditions of transcendental logic, are, as " performances," affirmations of finite spirit 91 which" brings with itself
the ultimate and most formal metaphysical structure "-Universal Being. Under the guise of this ultimate formality, spirit
is disclosed as actually "the .structure of its objects." 92
This disclosure, lest it be misconstrued as an Idealism, Rahner carefully tempers by translating "Spirit," when affirmed
as the comprehensive reality, into the identity, in Gady of Pure
90 " Judicative
knowledge of the world---0f the physical, as Kant says-does
not offer an immediate vision of the metaphysical, but contains implicitly, as condition for its own possibility, the affirmation of transcendental being and its ultimate
structures.
" ... these structures are not immediately and formally affirmed by the categories-these categories also belong . . . primarily to material being-but are
affirmed before hand, by . . . the transcendental determination of being. These
are ... the primitive categories of metaphysical being. It is from these metaphysical concepts that the first principles are formed, that are valid therefore for
being as such, and for that reason are valid also for the being of immediate sense
experience." ANT, 68.
Cf. Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L.
K. Shook, C. S. B. (New York: Random House, 1966), 358: "The content of
the notion of being is not such that it can be defined once and for all and set
forth in an a priori way. There are many ways of being and these ways must be
ascertained."
• 1 See ANT, 67.
••ANT, 70.

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Being and Pure Knowing. Finite spirit appears" outside" the
radical unity of divine Being and Knowing because it is "internally affected by non-being." Thus limited, finite spirit cannot know everything " beforehand." 93 In short, Rahner translates the traditional Analogy of Being into an Analogy of Spirit.
But here, surely, we must attend to the history of post-Kantian
philosophy.
In the light of that history, Rahner's analogy cannot be merely asserted. The contravention of Idealism, if not heeded, must
at least be heard. For the asserted difference between the being
of the finite and the Infinite is, if kept unresolved, that " unhappy consciousness " whose cure, in terms of the very category
of Spirit, Hegel proclaimed with untempered confidence.94 Contrary to common accusations, the Hegelian cure does not involve the denial of all differences between God and man. 95 The
Phenomenology and the Logic preserve the finite, even unto
the end; Hegel eliminates only that "otherness" which would
warrant the necessity of the Infinite for the finite but which
would deny the necessity of the finite for the Infinite. 96 The
actuality and the discernment of the actuality of this latter
necessity constitutes the unfolding of Spirit. 97 And as Spirit
unfolds, it overcomes the apparently irreconcilable divorce between God and man by healing the root unhappiness of consciousness, the apparently irreconcilable divorce between man
and the world. In its theoretical manifestation this primal
" otherness " is overcome because philosophical consciousness
••ANT, 71.
94 See G. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Rdigion, ed. and trans. E. B.
Spiers and J. Burdon Sanderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, reprinted
1968), Vol. I, 11.
95 See ibid., 26.
•• " Revelation means this differentiation of the infinite form, the act of selfmanifestation, the being for an Other, and this self-manifestation is of the very
essence of Spirit." Ibid., II, 884. Cf. Emil L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension
in Hegel's Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2nd printing, 1971),
190-218.
07 See G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New
York: Harper and Row, 1967), 85-86.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

weans itself, by the force of its own history, from the penchant
to split asunder the knower and the known, the appearance and
the thing-in-itself. 98
By its own aims, Spirit in the World succeeds to the historic
idealist dissolution of Kant's epistemic dualities and antinomies. Its motif seems lifted from the opening pages of
Fichte's epochal Wissenschaftslehre. 99 For Rahner also wishes
to preserve the thesis that human knowledge depends upon
sensible intuition, but to mitigate its usual corollary, that in
sensible intuition there is found a diametric otherness which
is over and against the self-productions of Spirit. 100
While Spirit triumphs, the victory in Rahner's case must be
attributed to the cogency of a pre-critical metaphysics. For
Rahner enlists Aristotle and St. Thomas. As the form of a
living body, the soul possesses a power of sensibility by whose
exercise man attains to potentially intelligible objects. For incarnate soul," conversion to the phantasm" is an intrinsic and
necessary moment. Or, as the Idealists correctly argued: the
intuition of sense is not an irreducible otherness for Spir-it.
Rahner brings the two traditions together by identifying, without any basic qualifications, the psychology of soul with the
ontology of Spirit. 101
98 See ibid., lll; G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Phuosophy, ed.
and trans. E. S. Haldane and Francis H. Simpson (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, reprinted 1968), Vol. III, 551.
0 ° Cf. J. G. Fichte, Science of Knowledge
(Wissenschaftslehre), ed. and trans.
Peter Heath and John Lachs (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970), "First
Introduction," 8-28, especialJy 28.
100 " ••• knowing must set itself over against itself.
It must have the world
and therefore be the world itself, and it must make it into an object in that
it sets itself over against it and thus over against itself." SW, 48.
101 " The subsisting ground unites itself with the other of matter into one existent: ' the soul is the form of the body ' ; in this substantial unity of spirit
and matter it forms sensibility as a power . . . In the course of its own selfconstitution, the substantial, spiritual ground forms its own sensibility for itself,
and in this process of becoming spirit it receives it into itself as the first of its
faculties." [SW, 268-264.] But Rahner's identification of the two traditions
might well leave other students of St. Thomas and Hegel mutually discontented. Cf.
Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., " The Unity in a Thomistic Philosophy of Man,"

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191

Yet Rahner shies away from the doctrine of a completely
autonomous Spirit. In his more restricted but perhaps decisive
statements, Rahner does not contend that Spirit produces the
particular, the contingent, the sensible object but only that the
spirit "emanates " a faculty of sensation. Nonetheless, prior
to any concrete act of sensation, spirit already possesses the
world in the pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] of Being, since for spirit
this alone determines the horizon for all sensible objects. 102
Under this horizon, the role of sensibility is, supposedly, to
fill up the " formal emptiness " of the pre-apprehension [V orgriff] of Being. Although this is the task assigned to sensibility,
Rahner buries, in a plethora of texts and qualifications, the
realist principle that all formal content is derived from sensation. And in stressing spirit's self-actualization through the
emanation of sensibility, Rahner edges towards a subjective a
priori that is not merely empty but is actually productive of
concrete determinations. For Being refuses to stay " empty." 103
By the Hegelian standard, however, the spirit that under
Rahner's tutelage strains towards an autonomous articulation
of Being, cannot free itself from the Critique. On behalf of a
"realism," Rahner preserves Kant's thing-in-itself, the irreducible otherness which sustains the matter of sensibility. 104
Spirit can determine this otherness but it cannot resolve it.
Intelligence is "being-present-to-self," but in its human embodiment, this self-presence is only potential. To bring about
Mediaeval Studies, XXV (1963), 54-82; G. R. G. Mure, An Introduction to Hegel
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprinted 1966), 61-62; Anton Pegis, "The Mind of
St. Augustine," Mediaeval Studies, V (1944), 59.
102 See SW, 264.
10 • Rahner begins with the prefatory acknowledgement of "a thoroughgoing determination of knowing by being," [SW, !iii], but ends by describing finite spirit
as " a power which has actively produced this and that concrete act of knowledge in its sensible determinateness " [SW, 323].
10 • " ••• we have not grasped the essence of sensation if we understand the senses
as passageways through which things enter into us . . . sensibility constitutes the
ground . . . on which what is had in consciousness is placed in this process of
objectification." SW, 45.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

actual intelligence and actual presence-to-self, a sensible matter
is required.1°5
Rahner's reduction of sensibility to spirit partially resolves
the " otherness " that affiicts human knowing inasmuch as hu10 • Although the phantasm derives from a sensible receptivity, Rahuer emphasizes
that "in relation to the phantasm, the [intelligible] species is an a priori law
of the spirit which informs the phantasm and makes it subordinate and subservient to the spirit's own cognitive goal," [SW, 318]. Accordingly, the possible
intellect cannot designate " the potency for a reception which is just as passive
as that of sensibility," since no " determination which is actually intelligible can
be produced in the spirit by the sensible-material object," [SW, 321]. To support
this thesis, Rahner appeals [ibid.] to S. T., I, 54, 4. But in this text, which
demonstrates that angels do not have a possible intellect, St. Thomas clearly distinguishes the reception of a sensible determination from the actual intelligibility
of that determination. Rahner, however, conflates the two and obscures the fundamental feature of human knowing, as St. Thomas understands it, that human
intelligence can only render actually intelligible those determinations which it
has sensibly received.
"Est enim intellectus possibilis in potentia ad intelligibilia, sicut indeterminatum
ad determinatum . . . Quantum autem ad hoc, intellectus agens non est in actu.
Si enim intellectus agens haberet in se determinationem omnium intelligibilium,
non indigeret intellectus possibilis phantasmatibus. . . ." In Ill de An., lect.
10, Pirotta: nos 738-739.
Rahner's attempt to ground all cognitive formality in the a priori pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] of Being leaves his theory of noetic determination straining with
ambiguity.
" ... when a sentient knower produces his determination under the influence
of a sensible object, then he produces in strict identity the self-realization of the
sensible object itself. Insofar as this self-realization as a determination of the object is produced by the sentient knower himself, and so as participating in the
ontological intensity of the knower, it is reflected against itself, it is sensibly conscious in the sentient knower. Insofar as the sentient knower lets this self-r.ealization emanate in the otherness of matter, the self-r.ealization is conscious as
other .... " SW, 365-366.
Finally, however, Rahner's theory entails a notion of the indeterminate matter
of sensibility.
". . . the spirit is possible intellect, that is, receptive, insofar as it necessarily
produces sensibility as its receptive intuition. And if the intelligible species as a
determination of the free spirit as such is to be more than merely the general
structure of the spirit, then this is conceivable only if the spirit actively produces sensibility not merely as a general, empty power, but in its concrete determinateness in each instance. Insofar as it actively produces sensibility in its
varying, determined actualization, the spirit 'suffers' a determination which
goes beyond the producing of sensibility in general." SW, 322-323.

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

193

man knowing points to and is a consequence of the original,
infinite unity of divine Being and Knowing. But while the
unity of Infinite Spirit is the ground for finite spirit and its
pre-apprehension [V orgriff] of Being, finite spirit can never be
identified with Being. Being is only known as a non-objective
horizon. And that horizon sets an unsurpassable limit to
thought. 106
THE HEGELIAN

COUNTER-POSITION

The Hegelian riposte to traditional theology is to push the
search for the unity of Being and Knowing beyond the " contradiction " that leaves intact the irreducible difference between
the finite and the Infinite. 107 For Hegel, the requirement of
" original unity " is achieved in the philosophical doctrine of
Absolute Spirit. Absolute Spirit is a process of self-differentiation whose realization necessitates finite spirit. 108 From the
Hegelian standpoint, Rahner appears to posit, arbitrarily and
externally, an irreducible otherness between the finite and the
Infinite. But, in principle, the solution is ready to hand. The
pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] functions as the a priori condition
making possible all judgments, since philosophical reflection
po.sits Being and, from this supreme category, dialectically
generates all other categories, including the category of the contingent or formal possibility of a sensible " given." 109
Cf. S. T., I, 46, 1-2.
See Fackenheim, Religious Dimension, 160-165.
108 " To be thus self-related in the passage, and in the other, is the genuine
Infinity . . . Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and
infinite, fails to note the simple circumstance that the infinite is thereby only
one of two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the finite forms the other
particular." Hegel, Logic/Encyclopedia, #95, 176-177.
10 • " It is here vital
to remember that Formal Possibility and Contingency
are two moments of a category, and are .. , inseparable thoughts ... The mere
contingent matter of fact, the 'actual' of common sense, only is 'actual' as the
outer of an inner possibility." G. R. G. Mure, A Study of Hegel's Logic (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1967), 183-134. Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, 545: "This unity
of possibility and actuality is contingency. The contingent is an actual, that at
the same time is determined as merely possible, whose other or opposite equally
106

107

is."

194

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

To what extent is this Hegelian Aufhebung of Rahner germane? Certainly Rahner's starting point, theunmediatedgivenness of Being as affirmed through the sensible phantasm, precludes any idealist reconstruction of Spirit in the World. For
it is exactly this starting point, if defensible, that obviates the
idealist pretension of a totally comprehensive reason. Still, an
historical comparison with Hegel is germane to Rahner's enterprise. By intending to found again an apodeictic metaphysics,
Rahner positions himself in reference to Heidegger as Hegel did
to Kant. Both Hegel and Rahner attempt to wrest an ontology
out of transcendental anthropology. 110 But when we look at
Rahner's ontology, this parallelism with Hegel, although formally correct, seems not to hold in any consistent fashion.
In the last chapter of Spirit in the World, Rahner intimates
that the development of metaphysics, beyond the statement of
its condition of possibility, is constituted by "the intrinsic
moments " in the concept of being; in other words, the metaphysical object should be defined "only from the empty concept of being." 111 But then, in a somewhat bewildering caveat,
Rahner warns that the empirical cannot " be resolved adequately into pure, transcendental apriority." 112 We may ask, however, what might count as an " adequate " resolution? For we
know that from a similarly " empty " concept of Being, Hegel
proceeds to demonstrate that the Logic can mediate the category of empirical contingency out of its own necessity and can
110 " Hegel's renewal of the proofs of God must be understood as a completion
of the anthropological interpretation which Kant began. In Hegel's interpretation,
the cosmological and physicotheological arguments no longer relate directly to the
processes of nature, but express the relationship of man to nature .... " Wolfhart
Pannenberg, "Anthropology and the Question of God," in Basic Questions in Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson (London: SCM Press Ltd. 1973), Vol. III, 84. Cf.
SW, 408: " Insofar as man enters into the world by turning to the phantasm, the
revelation of being as such and in it the knowledge of God's existence has already
been achieved .... " [Italics mine.]
111 SW, 401. Cf. ibid.: " For although esse is in itself the full ground of every
existent, nevertheless, this fullness is given to us only in the absolute, empty
infinity of our pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] or, what is the same thing, in common
being with the transcendental modes intrinsic to it."
112 SW, 405.

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

195

resolve it into its own ground. 118 This program, although it
seems congruent with Rahner's suggested development of metaphysics, would, if successfully carried out, accomplish that
Aufhebung of the dualism that pervades Rahner's ontology:
the sensibly given which as given falls outside the otherwise
complete rational mediation of Being. And here the Hegelian
critique is germane since it brings into focus an equivocation
in Rahner's argument.
AN UNRESOLVED PROBLEM

Whereas St. Thomas understood the " conversio ad phantasmata " to be the explanation of the knowledge of the material
particular, Rahner advances the same doctrine as the decisive
moment in spirit's self-actualization. 114 Although the two interpretations are not in themselves directly contradictory,
they point in different directions.
Rahner grants that human knowledge is the intentional possession" of something different from the knower," 115 but Spirit
in the World is colored by a theological assimilation of human
knowing to the unity in God of Being and Knowing. The divine
unity of Being and Knowing is the paradigmatic instance of
knowing for noetic theory. "True knowing is fundamentally
the indubitable self-presence of Being to itself." 116
Rahner cautions that finite spirit merely approximates the
identity of Being and Knowing, but he places more weight on
this identity than on its approximate character. Hence his
argument, when it stops short of the full philosophical realization of Being and Knowing, seems quite naturally to stir up
consideration of the Hegelian Aufhebung. More importantly,
113 " The problem of science, and especially of philosophy, undoubtedly
consists in eliciting the necessity concealed under the semblance of contingency."
Hegel, Logic/Encyclopedia, #145, 265.
m See SW, 252, 253, 263.
115 ANT, 71. For Hegel's category of " difference," see George DiGiovanni, "Reflection and Contradiction. A Commentary on Some Passages of Hegel's Science
of Logic," Hegel-Studien, VII (173), 134.
11 • ANT, 71.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

Rahner's failure to explore adequately how a phenomenology
of judgment must pass over into an ontology of judgment, and
how they come together in the affirmation of Infinite Being,
forces one to Hegel as a comprehensible point of reference.
Consider, for example, Rahner's key concept-" horizon."
Being is the "horizon " under which fall all affirmations of
finite beings. But what is this horizon-is it a logical (phenomenological) or an ontological condition for grounding judgment?
To suppose that it is merely a logical condition is to be
trapped within the confines of the Critique of Pure Reason.
There the concept of God, Whose existence and nature are always unknown and unknowable, .serves as a " transcendental
ideal " or supreme principle regulating man's unending quest
for a totally unified empirical knowledge. 117 However, from the
confines of the " transcendental ideal," Rabner struggles to free
God and metaphysics. The struggle succeeds, in the only way
feasible, because Rabner transforms Kant's principle of "highest
formal unity" into an ontological ground.
This transformation is difficult to follow. Spirit in the World
does not, to be sure, move from the premise that the Absolute
is the necessary logical (phenomenological) condition for judgment to the conclusion that the same Absolute exists as an
ontological ground. Instead, amidst a complex of logical and
ontological principles, the first step of Rahner's demonstration
seems tantamount to the assertion of a pre-critical realism. 118
Rahner expressly disavows, let us mention, any a priori proof
See Critique of Pure Reason, A676/B704.
But why can esse, as the synthesis which is able to he encountered as already realized antecedent to the affirmative synthesis, be identified with esse as
to-be real? In its common conception, what is in-itself (Ansichsein) seems to
occur in two fundamentally different kinds which are independent of each other:
' ideal ' being-in-itself as the essential validity of propositions in themselves and
so on ... and as real existence (reales Existieren) ... Both kinds seem to present
an 'in-itself' which is always already realized antecedent to the affirmative synthesis . . . but they seem to be intrinsically and fundamentally distinct and independent of each other.
"Thomas does not know these two different kinds which stand side by side
imd with equal validity. For him, esse as 'to-be-real' (Wi¥klichsein) is the only
117

118 "

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

197

£or the existence of God but his disavowal is unsatisfactory
since it adduces what most needs explanation: the fact that the
pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] appears only as the necessary condition " in the a posteriori apprehension of a real existent." 119
Especially in a Kantian context, which is the context of Rahner' s argument, there is every reason to suspect that the conditions for empirical judgments are themselves a priori and
proved, by an a priori argument, to be such. 120
The problem reappears at the moment when Rahner affirms
that the Absolute is the ontological ground for judgment. Unlike any finite being, Absolute Being is that which, logically,
would " completely fill up the breadth of the pre-apprehension
[Vorgriff]." But this Absolute Being must exist (" is simultaneously affirmed as real ") " since it cannot be grasped as
merely possible." 121
Why Absolute Being cannot be grasped as " merely possible,"
Rahner doe.s not explain. It would seem that this ellipsis in his
argument requires, finally, some version of the Ontological
Proof. 122 But this requirement contradicts Rahner's disavowal
of any a priori proof. However, an Ontological Proof, fully
fundamental in-itself, and anything is an in-itself only insofar as and to the extent that it expresses 'to-be-real." SW, 157-158. Cf. SW, 35, footnote 1.
11 • SW, 181.
12 °Cf. Jonathan
Bennet, Kant's Ancilytic (Cambridge: The University Press,
1966)' 16-19.
121 SW, 181.
122 Rahner assumes (1) that the judicative affirmation of the esse of a noetic
object is, in fact, the affirmation of the esse naturale of that object, and
that
the condition which is the condition of possibility for the judicative affirmation of
esse naturale must itself be " really" existent-i. e., God is not only possible but
actual.
Both premises, within the context of a purportedly transcendental argument,
are uncritically assumed to be true, and, therefore, are vulnerable to a transcendental " epoche " or reduction to a strictly phenomenological status, as Rahner
himself seems partially cognizant. [See the text cited in footnote l18 supra.]
Set forth in a strictly transcendental argument, the pre-apprehension [V orgriffj
of Being could, at first, only be an affirmation of Infinite Being as possible, from
which possibility one could then deduce the Divine Actuality. [Cf. footnote 38
supra.] In this fashion, a phenomenological affirmation could be demonstrated to
"pass over" into an ontological affirmation. [Cf. Hegel, Logic/Encyclopedia, #36,
73-75; #51, 107-109.]

198

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

stated and fully developed, would consummate Rahner's initial
assumption. In the opening chapter which secures the metaphysical principles of Spirit in the World, Rahn er adumbrates
" the ever present and insurmountable ontological circle of all
But since this is not Rahner's procedure, let us lay aside transcendental criteria
and grant his initial assumption, the realist affirmation of esse naturale. Still, what
is the relationship between premise (1) and premise (fl)? Rahner seems to
presume that (1) entails (fl). But no explicit proof is offered for this entailment.
Perhaps, an argument could be constructed from the proposition that " Insofar
as the pre-apprehension [Vorgriffl affirms the condition of its own possibility . . .
it affirms absolute being as possible and real beyond the world," [SW, 898]. Thus:
I. What is actual depends upon the actuality of the condition of its possibility;
II. The judgment of finite esse naturale is actual; III. The condition of possibility of the judgment of finite esse naturale is the pre-apprehension [Vorgriff]
of Infinite Being; IV. Therefore, Infinite Being is actual.
But this argument merely reinstates the problem. For in what sense is the
Being of the pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] actual? It is actual as a condition of
judgment of finite esse natural,e. But that " ' x ' is the condition of a judgment
about 'y'" does not entail that "' x ' is the condition of 'y '." And this is the
problem: even if we assume that judgment affirms finite esse naturale, we cannot
infer that the Infinite Being which is the condition of possibility for the judgment
of finite esse naturale is, for that reason, also the condition of possibility for finite
esse naturale. The latter condition can only be established by an argument from
efficient causality or by means of the Ontological Argument.
This was clearly seen by Kant who accepted (a) the extramental if unknowable
being of noetic objects, and (b) the condition of possibility of our knowledge of
sensible things entails the regulative idea of God; but denied (c) that, for reason
of (b), one could infer the existence of God. But, of course, Kant denied the
validity of arguments from efficient causality and the Ontological Argument.
Cf. SW, 894: " ... it is self-evident that the fundamental act of metaphysics
is not some causal inference from an existent as such to its ground ... but the
opening of the knower to being as such as the ground of the existent and its knowledge."
Exactly: Rahner's argument passes from the affirmation of the ground of knowledge (pre-apprehension [V orgriffl of Infinite Being) to the affirmation of the cause
of finite existence (Infinite Being) . But knowledge grounds existence only if
what is known entails existence. And only one such object of knowledge--Godentails its own existence, or so proponents of the Ontological Argument have
always maintained.
In ANT, 68, Rahner refers to Joseph Marechal's Le point de depart de la
metaphysique, Cahier V as " the best explanation " of the transcendental deduction of the pre-apprehension [Vorgriff] of Infinite Being within the context of the
Kantian critique. In my article, "Transcendental Critique and Realist Metaphysics," THE THOMIST, XXXIX, No. 4 (1975), 681-667, I argue that Marechal's
deduction must also fall back upon the Ontological Argument. This reliance remains undetected and inexplicit because both Rahner and Marechal assume a car-

SPIRIT IN THE WORLD

199

logic." 123 The radius of this famous circle, as the history of its
discussion indicates, is no less than the Divine Being. 124 And
to trace this circle is to commit oneself, eventually, to the pas.sage from Divine Possibility to Divine Actuality. But since
Rahner does not make this commitment explicitly, we have no
warrant to pursue further the Hegelian comprehension of the
" ontological circle of all logic." 125
An observation must suffice. In the 19th century, Protestant theologians fled from Hegel in the fear that his system, its
own aspirations aside, would undermine orthodox Christian
faith. 126 In the QOth century, this issue is not regarded as
settled; timidity is giving way to a reassessment. Among
Roman Catholic theologians, Rahner's philosophical writings,
although they do not directly confront Hegel, forcefully imply,
once again, the relevance of Hegelian ontology. But there remains a pressing need to sift rigorously the Hegelian philosophical achievement. Spirit in the World does not attempt
to initiate that assessment, 121 and, for that reason, it lacks the
reference which could most clearly set into relief Rahner's own
metaphysics.
DENIS

J. M. BRADLEY

GeO'l'getown University
Washington, D. C.
dinal principle of pre-critical metaphysics which principle is not consistent with a
transcendental starting point: "An 'intentional' pre-possession of the end presupposes its ontological one, an ontological ordination of the power to its end, and
this is condition of the possibility of anticipating the end in knowledge," [SW,
footnote 62]. Cf. my article, 644-646.
12 • SW, 76, ft. 15.
12 • Cf. Quentin Lauer, " Hegel on Proofs for God's Existence,"
Kant-Studien,
55 (1964)' 443-465.
125 " ••• to regard the transition
from the Notion of God to his being, as an
application of the logical course of objectification of the Notion, . . ." Hegel,
Science of Logic, 707.
126 See Wolfhart Pannenberg, " The Significance of Christianity in the Philosophy
of Hegel," in Basic Questions, III, 144-177.
127 The Hegelian elements in Rahner's metaphysics, and their potentially troublesome implications, have been noticed but not explored by Gerald A. McCool,
"Introduction:
Rahner's Philosophical Theology," in A Rahner Reader (New
York: Seabury Press, 1975), xiii-xxviii.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION 1

I

N A RECENT book symptomatic and expressive of the
contemporary drama of existential and religious subjectivity, psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo speaks of creating
" a unified science of human development," 2 " a unified science
and art of human change." 3 He attempts to disengage from the
diverse techniques, exercises, and procedures of education, psychotherapy, and religion, an experimental meeting ground
based on a unity of concern and a commonalty of method. The
various ways of growth which he examines-ranging from behavior therapy to Sufism-are, he says, contributions to a single
process of human transformation involving:
(1) shift in identity;
(2) increased contact with reality;
(3) simultaneous increase in both participation and detachment;
(4) simultaneous increase in freedom and the ability to sur-

render;
(5) unification-intrapersonal, interpersonal, between body and
mind, subject and object, man and God;
(6) increased self-acceptance; and
(7) increase in consciousness.4
He concludes his book with the following summary of his
position:
The end-state sought by the various traditions, schools, or systems
under discussion is one that is characterized by the experience of
1 I wish to acknowledge with gratitude
that the term " psychic conversion "
was suggested to me by Rev. Vernon Gregson, 8. J. My original term was "affective
conversion." That Fr. Gregson's suggestion hits things off better should be obvious from the descripfion given in this paper of the transformation referred to
by this term.
2 Claudio Naranjo, The One Quest (New York:
Ballantine,
p. 15.
3 Ibid., p.

• Ibid., p.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

201

openness to the reality of every moment, freedom from mechanical
ties to the past, and surrender to the laws of man's being, one of
living in the body and yet in control of the body, in the world and
yet in control of circumstances by means of the power of both
awareness and independence. It is also an experience of selfacceptance, where " self " does not stand for a preconceived notion or image but is the experiential self-reality moment after
moment. Above all, it is an experience of experiencing. For this
is what consciousness means, what openness means, what surrendering leads into, what remains after the veils of conditioned
perception are raised, and what the aim of acceptance is.5

My argument in this paper is twofold: first, that Bernard
Lonergan's analysis of conscious intentionality not only constitutes an essential contribution to the foundational quest of
a unified science and art of human change, but also provides
the most embracing overall framework offered to date for the
development of such a theory-praxis; and second, that the exigence for self-appropriation recognized and heeded by Lonergan, when it extends to the existential subject, to what Lonergan would regard as the fourth level of intentional consciousness, becomes an exigence for psychic self-appropriation, calling
for the release of what C. G. Jung calls the transcendent function, the mediation of psyche with intentionality in an intrasubjective collaboration heading toward individuation. The release of the transcendent function is a fourth conversion, beyond the religious, moral, and intellectual conversions specified
by Lonergan. I call it psychic conversion. It aids the sublation
of intellectually self-appropriating consciousness by moral and
religious subjectivity, and thus is an intrinsic dimension of the
foundational reality whose objectification constitutes the foundations of theology.
The seven characteristics of human transformation listed by
Naranjo may be considered as potential effects of psychic conversion. But its immanent intelligibility is something different.
It is the gaining of a capacity on the part of the existential subject to disengage the symbolic and archetypal constitution of
0

Ibid., p. 224,

ROBERT M. DORAN

moral and religious subjectivity. At a given stage in the selfappropriation of intentional consciousness, the intention of
value or of the human good must come to participate in an
ongoing conspiracy with the psychosymbolic dimensions of human subjectivity. The attempt to objectify this conspiracy will
result in a position complementary and compensatory to that
of Lonergan and compensatory to that of Jung. First, the kind
of psychotherapy inspired can and must be moved into the
epochal movement of the human spirit disengaged in Lonergan's
transcendental method. Only such a context preserves the genuine intentionality of Jungian psychotherapy. Secondly, however, the dynamism of transcendental method extends to this
further domain of psychic self-appropriation. The finality of the
methodical exigence is therapeutic. I shall begin by explicating
this latter claim. Then I shall argue that intellectual conversion as articulated by Lonergan is the beginning of a response
to this therapeutic exigence. In the third and fourth sections
of this paper, I will speak of the psychic dimensions of the
self-appropriation of moral and religious subjectivity. I will
conclude with an argument for the constitutive function of the
psyche in the existential subjectivity whose self-appropriation
constitutes a portion of the foundations of theology.

I.

THE THERAPEUTIC

EXIGENCE

I assume as given an appreciation of the meaning of the term
" method " advanced by Lonergan: " method " that has not
to do with the Cartesian universal procedure for the attainment
of certitude by following fixed rules while neglecting bursts of
insight, moral truth, belief, and hypothesis; " method " ·which
takes as its key the subject as subject and thus calls for " release from all logics, all closed systems or language games, all
concepts, all symbolic constructs to allow an abiding at the
level of the presence of the subject to himself " ; 6 " method ''
6 Frederick Lawrence, "Self-Knowledge
in History in Gadamer and Lonergan,"
in P. McShane, ed., Language, Truth, and Meaning (Notre Dame: University of
of Notre Dame Press, 1972), p. 203.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

as horizon inviting authenticity. I presuppose also that the
dialectical-foundational thinking which issues from such a horizon is acknowledged as a movement that is qualitatively different from that which occupied the mainstream of western
philosophy from Socrates to Hegel. This latter movement seeks
a control of meaning in terms of system. It is the movement
of the emergence of logos from mythos, of theoretically differentiated consciousness from what, because undifferentiated
and precritically symbolic, bears some affinities with what is
known in psychotherapy as the unconscious. This theoretic
movement may archetypally be designated heroic, in that it is
the severing in actu exercito of the umbilical cord binding mind
to maternal imagination. It achieved its first secure triumph
in the Aristotelian refinement of Socrates's insistence on omni
et soli definitions. It may have pronounced its full coming of
age as creative and constitutive in its Hegelian self-recognition
as essentially dialectical, in its self-identification with the dialectic of reality itself, and in a Wissenschaft der Logik which
would be the thinking of its own essence in and for itself on
the part of this dialectical movement of reality as Geist. That
Lonergan's articulation of method, with its key being the subject as subject, captures in a radically foundational manner the
structure and dynamism of a new moment of the historical
western mind, of an epochal shift in the control and constitution of meaning, has not gone unnoticed and is not a novel
appreciation of his significance. 7 Thus to propose to complement what can only be denominated an unparalleled achievement surely calls for more than a polite apology.
7 The jacket to the book cited in footnote six, for example, refers to Lonergan's
work as "a mode of thinking which some consider axial in Jaspers' sense." The
reference is to the notion Jaspers sets forth in The Origin and Goal of History that
" there is an axis on which the whole of human history turns; that axis lies between
the years 800 and SWO B. C.; during that period in Greece, in Israel, in Persia, in
India, in China, man became of age; he set aside the dreams and fancies of childhood; he began to face the world as perhaps it is." Bernard Lonergan, " Dimensions
of Meaning," in Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, ed. F. E. Crowe, S. J.
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), p. 258.

204

ROBERT M. DORAN

Perhaps I can begin, then, by recalling that Lonergan himself acknowledges a twofold mediation of immediacy by
meaning. The fir.st is that which has occupied his attention
throughout his career as scholar, teacher, and author, that
which occurs "when one objectifies cognitional process in
transcendental method." The second occurs " when one discovers, identifies, accepts one's .submerged feelings in psychotherapy." 8 This statement would seem to imply that there are
two modes or dimensions to our immediacy to the world mediated by meaning. One mode is cognitional, the other dispositional. These two modes, moreover, would .seem to correspond
more or less closely to the two primordial constitutive ways
of being " there " according to Martin Heidegger: V erstehen
and Befindlichkeit. 9 They are interlocking modes of immediacy.
Lonergan also speaks of "a withdrawal from objectification
and a mediated return to immediacy in the mating of lovers
and in the prayerful mystic's cloud of unknowing." 10 I.s this
mediated return to immediacy, this second immediacy, exhausted by these two instances? Is it connected with the second
mediation of immediacy by meaning?
Any human subject whose world is mediated and constituted
by meaning is primordially in a condition of cognitional and
dispositional immediacy to that world: an immediacy of understanding and of mood. The second mode of immediacy is accessible to conscious intentionality in the ever present flow of feeling
which is part and parcel of one's concomitant awareness of oneself in all of one's intentional operations. "In every case Dasein
always has some mood." 11 This dispositional immediacy is
what we intend when we ask another, "How are you? " "The
mood has already disclosed, in every case, Being-in-the-world
as a whole, and makes it possible first of all to direct oneself to8 Bernard
Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder,
1972), p. 77. (Henceforth MIT).
9 Martin
Heidegger, Being and Tim.e, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 171 f.
10 MIT, p. 77.
11 Heidegger, op. cit., p. 173,

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

wards something." 12 It is this mode of immediacy that is objectified in the second mediation of immediacy by meaning,
that which occurs in psychotherapy. What is insufficiently acknowledged by Heidegger,1 3 hinted at by Lonergan, and trumpeted by Jung, is that this dispositionally qualified immediacy
is always imaginally constructed, symbolically constituted. In
every case it has an archetypal significance. But this imaginal
constitution is not accessible to conscious intentionality in the
same way as is the disposition itself. The symbolic constitution
of immediacy must be disengaged by such psychotherapeutic
techniques as dream interpretation and what Jung calls" active
imagination." It is "unconscious," i.e., undifferentiated. But
when disengaged it reveals how it .stands between the attitude
of waking consciousness and the totality of subjectivity. This
disengagement is effected by the release of the transcendent
function, by psychic conversion. 14 The dynamic structure of
the transformation of Befindlichkeit issuing from this release
must be integrated into the epochal movement of consciousness
effected in Lonergan's objectification of the structure of human
intentionality. Its implications for theological method must be
stated. Furthermore, its complementary function with respect
to the objectification of intentionality will allow for the construction of a model of self-appropriation as a mediation of both
the intentional and psychic dimensions of human interiority.
Self-appropriation heads toward a second immediacy, which is
always only asymptotically approached. It consists of three
stages: intentional self-appropriation as articulated by Lonergan; psychic self-appropriation through the release of the
Ibid., p. 176.
What the Jungian analyst, Marie-Louise von Franz, says of the existentialists
is also true of Heidegger: " They go only as far as stripping off the illusions
of consciousness: They go right up to the door of the unconscious and then fail
to open it." "The Process of Individuation," in C. G. Jung, ed., Man and His
Symbols (New York: Dell Paperback, 1964), p. 164.
14 C. G. Jung, "The Transcendent
Function," in The Collected Works of C. G.
limg, Vol. 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, tr. by R. F. C. Hull
(Princeton: Bollingen Series XX, 1969), pp. 67-91.
12

13

ROBERT M. DORAN

transcendent function, facilitating the sublation of intellectually
self-appropriating consciousness by moral subjectivity; and religious self-appropriation and self-surrender of both discriminated intentionality and cultivated psyche to the mysterium
tremendum et fascinans in the sublation of both intellectual and
moral self-consciousness by religious subjectivity. 15
Perhaps the complementary function of this model with respect to Lonergan's may be illustrated by commenting on the
following statement:
I should urge that religious conversion, moral conversion, and intellectual conversion are three quite different things. In an order
of exposition I would prefer to explain first intellectual, then moral,
then religious conversion. In the order of occurrence I would expect religious commonly _but not necessarily to precede moral and
both religious and moral to precede intellectual. Intellectual conversion, I think, is very rare.16
Surely there is no dispute that the three conversions are quite
different events. Nor need there be any argument with Lonergan's preferred order of exposition of these events. But there
are very serious difficulties, I believe, with the overtones of the
assertion that, in the general case, intellectual conversion is the
last and the rarest of the conversions; that, in the general case,
the intellectually converted subject is the fully converted subject.
15 Lonergan .establishes this relation
of sublation among the three conversions
which qualify authentic subjectivity in his thought. I agree with this order, but
suggest that psychic conversion is an enabling factor, perhaps even a necessary
aid to the sublation of intellectual conversion by moral and religious conversion.
Without the release of the transcendent function, the sublation may be forever
blocked by
. . . the conscious impotence of rage
at human folly, and the laceration
of laughter at what ceases to amuse (T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding ")
which may only become more acute and even chronic as a result of the ascent
of the mountain of the understanding of understanding. The intrinsic finality of
the methodical exigence is therapeutic, and thus demands the second mediation
of immediacy as constitutive of self-appropriation at the level of existential subjectivity.
16 " Bernard Lonergan Responds," in Foundations of Theology, ed. P. McShane
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971), pp. 221 f.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

The assertion is modified considerably, though, by a further
statement of the relations of sublation obtaining among the
three conversions in a single consciousness. For the sublations
occur in a reverse order. And sublation is understood, not in a,
Hegelian fashion with its intrinsic element of negativity, but
along the lines suggested by Karl Rahner. "What sublates
goes beyond what is sublated, introduces something new and
distinct, puts everything on a new basis, yet so far from interfering with the sublated or destroying it, on the contrary
needs it, includes it, preserves all its proper features and properties, and carries them forward to a fuller realization within a
richer context." 17 On Lonergan's account, then, intellectual
conversion is, in the general case, sublated by a moral conversion which has preceded it in the order of occurrence and to
this extent is pre-critical; and both intellectual and moral conversion are sublated by a religious conversion which has preceded them and is also to this extent pre-critical.
But if religious conversion and moral conversion precede intellectual conversion, it would seem that, no matter how genuinely religious and authentically moral, they are infected with
the cognitional myth that the real is a subdivision of what
is known by extroverted looking. More precisely, pre-critical
religious and moral conversion affect a consciousness which,
from the standpoint of the cognitive function of meaning, is
either undifferentiated or has achieved at best a theoretical
differentiation. But beyond the common sense and theoretical
differentiations of consciousness there is the exigence for differentiation in terms of interiority, the satisfaction of which is
initiated by the elimination of cognitional myth which occurs
in intellectual conversion. Lonergan's account would seem to
imply, then, that a consciousness in the process of fidelity to
this critical and methodological exigence is then sublated by
a moral and religious consciousness that is at best, from a cognitive standpoint, theoretically differentiated. Can the sub17

MIT, p.

ROBERT M. DORAN

lating then include the sublated, preserve all its proper features
and properties, and carry them forward to a fuller realization
within a richer context? Is it not rather the case that the exigence to differentiation in terms of interiority results in part
from the existential inadequacy of pre-critical moral and religious conversion at a certain level of intellectual development,
no matter how genuinely moral and religious these may be?
What is there to guarantee that anything more survives the
elimination of cognitional myth than a wan smile at one's
former religious and moral naivete? Intellectual conversion, it
seems, is such a radical transformation of horizon, such an
about-face, such a repudiation of characteristic features of the
old, the beginning of such a new sequence, that it cannot be
sublated by the old, but, if it is to be sublated at all, demands
the satisfaction of a further exigence, the extension of the gains
of intellectual conversion into the moral and religious domains.
The sublating moral and religious consciousness must be not
merely converted consciousness, but self-appropriating consciousness: existential subjectivity in the realm of differentiated interiority, and religious subjectivity in the realm of the
discernment of spirits, the realm of differentiated transcendence. Neither moral nor religious conversion is identical with
self-appropriation at the fourth level of intentional consciousness. But a moral and religious consciousness that can sublate
intellectual conversion must be a morally and religiously selfappropriating consciousness. It may well be that
. . . the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.18
But then the end of all our exploring will not be intellectual
conversion alone, but a mediated return to immediacy through
the satisfaction of a further exigence to a second mediation of
immediacy by meaning, a mediation which facilitates the selfappropriation of moral and religious consciousness and the sub1•

T. S. Eliot, " Little Gidding."

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

209

lation of the cognitional subject by the existential and religious subject.
There are five clues provided in Method in Theology which
I shall use to help me discuss the experience of this sublating
moral and religious consciousness and the nature of its coming
to pass. The clues are:
(I) there is a second mediation of immediacy by meaning,
which occurs not when one objectifies cognitional process in
transcendental method, but when one negotiates one's feelings
in psychotherapy;
(2) feelings are the locus for the apprehension of values
which mediates between judgments of fact and judgments of
value;
(3) feelings are in a reciprocal relationship of evocation to
symbols;
(4) the unified affectivity or wholeness of the converted religious subject is the fulfilment of the dynamism of conscious
intentionality; and
(5) with the advance in the differentiation of the cognitive
function of meaning, the spontaneous reference of religious experience shifts from the exterior, spatial, specific, and human to
the interior, temporal, generic, and transcendent.
The relating of these clues with Jungian psychotherapeutic
insights will form the web of an argument, then, that the
finality of the methodical exigence is therapeutic, and thus
that this exigence intends a second immediacy, an informed
naivete, the transformation of intentionality into kerygma, the
deliverance of critically self-appropriating subjectivity into a
condition where "I leave off all demands and listen." 19

II. THE THERAPEUTIC FUNCTION OF INTELLECTUAL

CONVERSION

Intellectual conversion is not the end of all our exploring, but
the beginning of an answer to a therapeutic exigence.
19 Paul Ricoeur,
Freud and Phifosophy, trans. by Denis Savage (New Haven:
Yale, 1970), pp. 496, 551. For a rudimentary suggestion of an attempt to relate
Ricoeur's project to Lonergan's, see my article, " Paul Ricoeur:
Toward the
Restoration of Meaning," Anglican Theological Review, October, 1973, pp. 443-458.

210

ROBERT M. DORAN

We need not discuss in detail the nature of intellectual conversion. In its full sweep it is the mediation of immediacy
which occurs when one answers correctly and in order the
questions: What am I doing when I am knowing? Why is
that knowing? What do I know when I do that? The answer
to the first question reveals the dynamic structure, promoted
by questioning, of human cognitional process. The answer to
the second question reveals that this process terminates in an
affirmation of the real. What I know when I faithfully pursue
the process is what I intended to know when I began it: what is,
being, the real. The answer to the third question reveals the
structure of the real. Concomitant with answering these questions is the elimination of the cognitional myth that the real is
a subdivision of the already out there now and that it is to be
known by looking.
There is a distinctively therapeutic function to this event.
Not only is it a radical transformation of the subject in his subjectivity, but it is a movement toward an expanded or heightened self-knowledge precisely at a moment when such an increment is demanded because of the inadequacy of the subject's
previous conscious orientation as an understanding Being-inthe-world. It is a knowing of what had previously been unknown, of the dynamic structure-in-process of the subject's
cognitional activity. It is a self-conscious appropriation of what
had previously been unappropriated and inarticulate, " unconscious." 20 The exigence for differentiation in terms of interiority has a cognitive dimension, located in the incommensurability
20 The term,
"the unconscious," is ambiguous. Sometimes it means " the
psyche " and sometimes " the unknown." Jung seems to have consistently overlooked the fact that consciousness and knowledge are not the same thing. That
he was kept from this insight by language-the German language and Bewusstsein
in particular-at least partially excuses him, if not his English translators. Both
Freudians and Jungians would aid their cause by clarifying the term, the unconscious, and at times choosing the appropriate substitute. Jungians could also rename
" the collective unconscious " as " the archetypal function." This suggestion is not
offered simply to please Wittgensteinians-as if anything could-but to correct a
potential error of consequence for the dialogue of philosophy and depth psychology.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

211

of theoretically differentiated consciousness and the undifferentiated consciousness of common sense. But the answers
to the critical questions also help to thematize an event of
archetypal significance in human history; namely, the heroic
severing of the umbilical cord to maternal imagination which
resulted in the theoretic control of meaning, the emergence of
logos from mythos on the part of the western mind. This archetypally significant event is repeated in the ontogenetic development of the contemporary conscious subject who achieves a
theoretic differentiation of the cognitive function of meaning.
The answers to the critical questions tell us what we have done
in insisting on logos in preference to mythos and on .science in
addition to common sense. They render consciousness present
to itself in its heroic achievement, by thematizing that achievement which some two thousand years have brought to maturity.
That the raising and answering of these questions, however,
is a matter of personal decision, that interiorly differentiated
cognitional consciousness is never something one simply happens upon and always something one must decisively pursue,
indicates, I believe, that the psychic demand met by heeding
the invitation of Insight reflects a profound moral crisis. Intellectual conversion may be viewed, then, also as an answer to
an ethical question, a question perhaps previously unnecessary,
one not found in man's historical memory, a new ethical question which man never raised before because he never had to
raise it, a moral question unique to a consciousness which has
brought to some kind of conclusion the demands of the theoretic or systematic exigence. The questions promoting intellectual conversion are not raised out of mere curiosity, but because of a rift in subjectivity, which, if left unattended, will
bring catastrophe to the individual, to the scientific community,
to the economy, to the polity, to the nations, to the world. It is
the rift manifested cognitively in the split between theoretically
differentiated consciousness and common sense, but also experienced psychically as the lonely isolation of heroic consciousness
from all that has nurtured it, as the self-chosen separation of

ROBERT M. DORAN

the knower from the primal parental ground of his being, as the
alienation of the light from the darkness without which it
would not be light, even as the guilt of Orestes or Prometheus,
whose stories were told at the beginning of the heroic venture
of western mind. What Lonergan has captured in his articulation of intellectual conversion is, in part, a cognitional thematizing of the psychically necessary victory of the knower over
the uroboric dragon of myth, of the desire to know over the desire not to know, of the intention of being over the flight from
understanding. This thematization is a help toward healing the
rift in subjectivity which threatens civilization with utter
destruction. It is a rendering known of the previously undifferentiated structure of a differentiation which itself had already occurred.
But it is only a beginning. In large part it articulates what
we have already done, clarifies what has happened, thematizes
what has occurred. But it does not heal the rift in subjectivity.
The knower remains isolated, cut off from his roots in the
rhythms and processes of nature, separated from his psychic
ground, alienated from the original darkness which nourished
him at the same time as it threatened to smother him, guilty
over the primal murder of an ambiguously life-giving power.
The difference is that he now knows what he has done, for to
know what I am doing when I am knowing is also to know what
the knower has done in overcoming the gods and claiming a
rightful autonomy. But it is not to know the way toward
wholeness, which can only come from a conscious reconciliation
with the darkness; in fact, the knowledge of knowledge may even
be the suspicion that all such reconciliation with the darkness
is purely and simply regression, a cancelling of the victory of
the knower, a repudiation of a bitterly won autonomy. Yet, we
must ask, was not the cognitively manifested exigence for such
reconciliation what gave rise to the questions leading to intellectual conversion? And is there not a second mediation of immediacy by meaning which might complement this first one?
Being and knowing are isomorphic, says the self-affirming

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

213

knower. If so, is it not possible that the discovery of the imaginal roots out of which the powers of intelligent grasping and reasonable affirmation have violently wrested their birthright might
disclose a sphere of being which itself can not only be encountered
again-for merely to re-encounter it is the romantic agonybut intelligently grasped, reasonably affirmed, and delicately
negotiated? Might the hero not revisit the realm of the Mothers
without regression and self-destruction? Faustian, you say.
Perhaps, but not necessarily so. Much, indeed all, depends on
the nature of the pact agreed on before the descent, and on the
character of its signers. If religious conversion has preceded
intellectual conversion, the descent need not be Faustian.
Faust's is not the only kenosis buried in the memory of man.

III. THE PSYCHE AND AN ETHIC OF WHOLENESS
Central to the work of C. G. Jung is the tenacious insistence
that every answer to the question of the meaning of human life
must be uniquely individual if it is to have any final significance. Any answer to the question in terms of collective
identifications is a failure to understand the question itself. The
central notion of Jungian thought is the notion of individuation
as an ongoing process of self-discrimination and self-differentiation from everything collective, external and internal. Nonetheless, any facile charge of individualism, solipsism, sheer relativism or subjectivism levelled against Jung would miss the point.
There are operative in Jung's thought certain directives for the
process of individuation which might be called both heuristic
and transcendental. The discovery of individual meaning universally depends on their employment. These directives, phrased
in a language influenced by my own attempts at restatement
of Jungian psychology, 21 are:
(1) conscious intentionality is always in a process of commerce with an available fund of symbolic meanings constitu21 Robert M. Doran, Subject and Psyche: A Study in the Foundations of Theology (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1975) .

214

ROBERT M. DORAN

tive of its dispositional immediacy; this fund is constituted by
both personal and archetypal factors;
(2) conscious intentionality must attend to this source out
of which it continually emerges anew;
(3) it must also negotiate its demands intelligently, reasonably, and responsibly;
(4) thereby the whole of subjectivity will be afforded an
optimum degree of life and development, as the subject continues on the journey to individuation.
The Jungian understanding of the moral crisis of the rift in
subjectivity is detailed in two books by Erich Neumann: The
Origins and History of Consciousness and Depth Psychology
and a New Ethic. Throughout the following exposition of
Neumann's position, which Jung affirms in forewords to both
books, it should be kept in mind that the incommensurability
of theoretically differentiated consciousness and common sense
is the cognitive manifestation of the rift in subjectivity which
Neumann understands in terms of a specifically psychic rift.
The theme of The Origins and History of Consciousness is
that psychic ontogenesis is a modified recapitulation of the
phylogenetic development of human consciousness. Thus:
. . . the early history of the collective is determined by inner primordial images whose projections appear outside as powerful
factors-gods, spirits, or demons'--which become objects of worship. On the other hand, man's collective symbolisms also appear
in the individual, and the psychic development, or misdevelopment,
of each individual is governed by the same primordial images which
determine man's collective history .... Only by viewing the collective stratification of human development together with the individual stratification of conscious development can we arrive at
an understanding of psychic development in general, and individual
development in particular. 22

Thus the history both of mankind and of the individual is
governed by certain " symbols, ideal forms, psychic categories,
22 Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, trans. by R. F. C.
Hull (Princeton: Bollingen Series XLII, 1971), pp. xxf.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

215

and basic structural patterns" 23 which Jung has called archetypes and which operate according to " infinitely varied
modes." 24 The history even of western philosophy and science
represents a series of cognitive manifestations of these archetypal patterns, which are the ground of all meaning.
The first part of Neumann's study describes the mythic
projections of these archetypal patterns. Then he goes on to
argue for the psychic ontogenetic recapitulation of these symbolic patterns in the consciousness of the individual. Mythic
projections reflect developmental changes in the relation between the ego-the center of the field of differentiated consciousness-and the realm of the unknown and undifferentiated
archetypal base out of which differentiated consciousness arises.
Just as unconscious contents like dreams and fantasies tell us something about the psychic situation of the dreamer, so myths throw
light on the human stage from which they originate and typify
man's unconscious situation at that stage. In neither case is there
any conscious knowledge of the situation projected, either in the
conscious mind of the dreamer or in that of the mythmaker. 25

Moreover, the various archetypal stages of the relation between
the ego and its collective psychic base form elements of the
subjective development of modern man. " The constitutive
character of these stages unfolds in the historical sequence of
individual development, but it is very probable that the individual's psychic structure is itself built up on the historical
sequence of human development as a whole." 26 That the same
stages occurred at different periods in different cultures reflects
their archetypal structure rooted in a common and universal
psychic substructure identical in all human beings.
The developmental process begins with an original undifferentiated unity which gives way first to a separation of ego
from base-the hero myth-and in these latter days of western
civilization to a very dangerous split, a rift in subjectivity.
After the separation, the ego consolidates and defends its newly
2 • Ibid., p. xxii.
••Ibid.

•• Ibid., p.
••Ibid., p. 264.

216

ROBERT M. DORAN

won position, strengthens its stability, becomes conscious of its
differences and peculiarities, and increases its energy. Phylogenetically, such a consolidation is represented cognitively,
I believe, by the theoretic or systematic differentiation of
consciousness in western philosophy and science. The ego even
succeeds in harnessing for its own interests some of the originally destructive power of the unconscious so that the world continuum is broken down into objects which can be first symbolized, then conceptualized, and finally rearranged. Thus
there emerges " the relative autonomy of the ego, of the higher
spiritual man who has a will of his own and obeys his reason," n
and with this, I submit, a gradual unthematized discrimination
of the cognitive, constitutive, effective, and communicative
functions of meaning. The end of this development is the capacity " to form abstract concepts and to adopt a consistent
view of the world " 28-that is, the satisfaction of the theoretic
or systematic exigence. Physiologically, Neumann posits, the
process involves the .supersession of the medullary man by the
cortical man, involving a " continuous deflation of the unconscious and the exhaustion of emotional components " linked
with the sympathetic nervous system. 29
My pre.sent interest is in Neumann's analysis of the cultural
disease to which this altogether necessary separation of psychic
systems has brought us. For the division of the two systems
has become perverse. The perversion is manifested in two directions: a sclerosis of the ego, in which the autonomy of the conscious system has become so predominant as to lose the link
to the archetypal base, and in which the ego has lost the
striving for the wholeness of subjectivity; and a possession of
the creative activity of the ego by " the spirit," resulting in the
illimitable expansion of the ego, the megalomania, the overexpansion of the conscious system, the spiritual inflation of
Nietzsche's Zarathustra. The first direction is the more common.
27

Ibid., p. 318.

•s Ibid., p.

••Ibid., p. 381.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

Here, spirit is identified with instrumental intellect, consciousness with manipulative thinking. Feeling, the body, the instinctual, are suppressed or, more tragically, repressed. Consciousness is sterilized and creativity doomed to frustration in a
culture whose institutional structures have become autonomous
from the human needs they were originally constituted to meet.
The transpersonal is reduced to mere illusion, to personalistic
ego data; archetypes become concepts, symbols signs. Not only
is ego life empted of meaning, but the deeper layers of the
psyche are activated in a destructive way so as to " devastate
the autocratic world of the ego with transpersonal invasions,
collective epidemics, and mass psychoses." 30 The affective collapse of the archetypal canon is coincident with the modern decay of values. The alternative courses open to the individual
seem to be either regression to the Great Mother through external or internal recollectivization, or isolation in the form
of exaggerated individualism. The contemporary relevance of
Neumann's analysis for the American way of life is all too obvious in the light of our recent and still too gradual awareness
of the real character of our political life.
Following the collapse of the archetypal canon, single archetypes
take possession of men and consume them like malevolent demons.
Typical and symptomatic of this transitional phenomenon is the
state of affairs in America, though the same holds good for practically the whole Western hemisphere. Every conceivable sort of
dominant rules the personality, which is a personality only in
name. The grotesque fact that murderers, brigands, gangsters,
thieves, forgers, tyrants, and swindlers, in a guise that deceives
nobody, have seized control of collective life is characteristic of
our time. Their unscrupulousness and double-dealing are recognized-and admired. Their ruthless energy they obtain at best
from some archetypal content that has got them in its power.
The dynamism of a possessed personality is accordingly very great,
because, in its one-track primitivity, it suffers from none of the
differentiations that make men human. Worship of the "beast"
is by no means confined to Germany; it prevails wherever onesidedness, push, and moral blindness are applauded, i. e., where"0

Ibid., p. 889.

ROBERT M. DORAN

ever the aggravating complexities of civilized behavior are swept
away in favor of bestial rapacity. One has only to look at the educative ideals now current in the West. 31
The ethical consequences of this situation as they affect the
individual in his relation to the collective are detailed in Depth
Psychology and a New Ethic. Neumann argues strongly and
well that the wholeness of subjectivity, conceived as the consequence of healing the rift described above, is the ethical goal
upon which the fate of humanity depends.
The turning of the mind from the conscious to the unconscious,
the possible rapprochement of human consciousness with the powers
of the collective psyche, that is the task of the future. No outward
tinkerings with the world and no social amelioration can give the
quietus to the daemon, to the gods or devils of the human soul,
or prevent them from tearing down again and again what consciousness has built. Unless they are assigned their place in consciousness and culture they will never leave mankind in peace.
But the preparation for the rapprochement lies, as always, with the
hero, the individual; he and his transformation are the great human
prototypes; he is the testing ground of the collective, just as consciousness is the testing ground of the unconscious.32
The categorial and ontic ethic which accompanied the separation of the psychic systems has disintegrated and is now dead. It
is an ethic which " liberated man from his primary condition of
unconsciousness and made the individual the bearer of the drive
towards consciousness." 33 To this extent it was not only psychically necessary but constructive. The initial phases of the
development of an autonomous ego must be sustained by the
demands of the collective and its sanctions, by its juridical
structures and dogmas, its imperatives and prohibitions, even
its suppressions and attendant sufferings. But soon enough
identification with the ethical values of the collective leads to
the formation of a fai;ade personality, the persona, and to re" 1 Ibid., p. 891.
•• Ibid., p. 894.

""Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, trans. by Eugene Rolfe,
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1969), p. 68.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

219

pression of everything dark, strange, unfamiliar, and unlived,
the shadow. The ego is cumulatively identified with the
and the shadow is projected upon various scapegoats. In our
time, the distance between the two systems has become so wide
that even the pseudo-solution of conscious identification with
the collective ethic is subtly but publicly acknowledged as impossible. Thus Neumann can claim: "Almost without exception, the psychic development of modern man begins with the
moral problem and with his own reorientation, which is brought
about by means of the assimilation of the shadow and the
transformation of the persona." 34 As the dark and unfamiliar,
the " inferior function," is granted freedom and a share in the
life of the ego, identification of the ego-persona with collective
value orientation ceases. " The individual is driven by his personal crisis into deep waters where he would usually never have
entered if left to his own free will. The old idealized image of
the ego has to go, and its place is taken by a perilous insight
into the ambiguity and many-sidedness of one's own nature." 25
Only the total personality is accepted as the basis of ethical
conduct. No longer is St. Augustine's prayer of gratitude to
God possible that he is not responsible for his dreams. 36
Neumann proposes, then, the foundations of a new ethic
whose aim is " the achievement of wholeness, of the totality of
the personality." He continues:
In this wholeness, the inherent contrast between the two systems
of the conscious mind and the unconscious does not fall apart into
a condition of splitness, and the purposive directedness of ego-consciousness is not undermined by the opposite tendencies of unconscious contents of which the ego and the conscious mind are entirely
unaware. In the new ethical situation, ego-consciousness becomes
the locus of responsibility for a psychological League of Nations,
to which various groups of states belong, primitive and prehuman
as well as differentiated and modern, and in which atheistic and
religious, instinctive and spiritual, destructive and constructive ele••Ibid., p. 77.
""Ibid., p. 79.
••Ibid., p. 74.

220

ROBERT M. DORAN

ments are represented in varying degrees and coexist with each
other. 37

Theoretical-I interpret: categorial or ontic, as opposed to
transcendental-heuristic or ontological-prescriptions
for ethical conduct are declared impossible, 38 since it is " impossible to
predict the psychological form in which evil will appear in the
life story of any given individual." 39 Working through and
negotiating our own individual darkness in an independent and
responsible manner-becoming more fully conscious, in Jungian
terms-now ranks as an ethical duty, implying that ego-consciousness is regarded as " an authority to create and control
the relationship to wholeness of everything psychic." 40 Psychic
wholeness takes· the place of sublimation. The latter is always
"purchased at the cost of the contagious miasma which arises
out of the repression and suppression of the unconscious elements which are not susceptible to sublimation." 41 Sublimation
thus contributes to a " holiness " which is nothing other than
a flight from life. The heart of the ethical implications of the
Jungian myth are contained in the following formulation of
principles of value:
Whatever leads to wholeness is " good " ; whatever leads to splitting
is " evil." Integration is good, disintegration is evil. Life, constructive tendencies and integration are on the side of good; death,
splitting and disintegration are on the side of evil. . . Our estimate of ethical values is no longer concerned with contents, qualities
or actions considered as " entities " ; it is related functionally to the
whole. Whatever helps that wholeness which is centred on the
Self towards integration is "good," irrespective of the nature of
this helping factor. And, vice versa, whatever leads to disintegration is " evil "-even if it is " good will," " collectively sanctioned
values " or anything else " intrinsically good." 42
•• Ibid., p. 102.
••Ibid., p. 107.
•• Ibid., pp. 107 f.
• 0 Ibid., p. 113.
u Ibid., p. 115.
" Ibid., p. 126 f.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

In my lengthier study 0£ the theologically foundational role
0£ psychic sel£-appropriation, 43 I have argued that it is precisely
at this point that the Jungian myth collapses. Neumann's
(and Jung's) campaign against the collective ethic is .strikingly reminiscent 0£ St. Paul's difficulties with the Law. But the
outcome is in each instance just as strikingly different. It is
worthy 0£ note that, as Jung's thinking advanced, he came more
to view the individuation process on the analogy 0£ alchemy. 44
The latter is even viewed, perhaps quite correctly, as a mistaken projection onto matter 0£ a striving £or the aurum non
vulgi of psychic wholeness. What Jung and, to my knowledge,
all commentators on Jungian psychology, have missed, however, is that alchemy must be considered as one of the most
remarkable failures in the history 0£ human inquiry, a sustained insistence on asking the wrong question. And the question is wrong, not only in its projected £orm, but in its very
origins, i£ indeed its origins lie where Jung placed them. The sel£achievement 0£ a differentiated wholeness, while it may be the
deepest desire 0£ the human heart, is also a useless passion, completely beyond the capacity 0£ human endeavor to achieve.
The bitterness 0£ Jung's Answer to Job is expressive 0£ this very
frustration. This is a very interesting book on Wotan, but Jung
called him Yahweh.
This is not at all to deny that one must take seriously to
heart everything prescribed by Neumann except his fundamental ethical principle. We have indeed entered a new epoch
in the evolution of human consciousness. It is an epoch marked
by a new control 0£ meaning in terms 0£ interiority. It is ethically imperative on a world-historical scale that ego-consciousness engage in a conscious confrontation with the forces 0£
darkness buried in the human psyche, come to terms with these
forces in truthful acknowledgment, and cooperate in their transformation through acceptance and negotiation. But at this
43

44

Doran, Subject and Psyche, passim.
Jung's alchemical researches are reported in Vols. rn, 18, and 14 of his Ool-

lec(ed Work&

ROBERT M. DORAN

point Lonergan'.s transcendental analysis of moral conversion
becomes equally imperative. For it is only at the summit of
moral self-transcendence in the love of God that wholeness
becomes something of a possibility for man. There alone,
" values are whatever one loves, and evils are whatever one
hates," because there alone "affectivity is of a single piece." 45
The problems raised by Neumann, moreover, bring to light an
element that is unfortunately all but missing in Lonergan's
analysis of this summit: the experience of the forgiveness of
sin. Only this experience, issuing from the realm of transcendence, is enough to render possible the embracing of the darkness called for by Neumann as ethically imperative for our
age. The darkness has already been embraced in a kenosis
quite different from Faust's, and in that divine embrace has
been rendered powerless. Its very spontaneous tendency to
separate man from the love of God has been transformed into
a beneficent factor by the healing embrace of that love. Thus
it is not only the hero's descent into the psychic depths that can
save the world from suicide, but also the restoration in our
troubled times of the genuine contemplative spirit.

IV. RELIGIOUS SELF-APPROPRIATION

AND THE PSYCHE

Lonergan employs various phrases, some borrowed from
other authors, to describe religious conversion. With Paul
Tillich, he speaks of " being grasped by ultimate concern." 46
With St. Paul, he speaks of God's love flooding our hearts
through the Holy Spirit given to us. 47 In terms of the theoretical stage of meaning represented by Aquinas, religious conversion is operative grace as distinct from cooperative grace.
45 Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 39. Lonergan has thus introduced an important and necessary qualification to an ethic of wholeness: wholeness is related to the realm of transcendence, not to that of interiority. It is a gift of God's
grace, and in a Christian context is conditioned by the experience of the forgiveness
of sin. The absence of this distinction is what traps Jungian analysis in an endless
treadmill of self-scrutiny leading only to a perpetually recurring psychic stillbirth.
46 Ibid., p. £40.
"Ibid., p. £41.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

But these theoretic categories are also reinterpreted in scriptural imagery. " Operative grace is the replacement of the heart
of stone by a heart of flesh, a replacement beyond the horizon
of the heart of stone. Cooperative grace is the heart of flesh
becoming effective in good works through human freedom." 48
In Lonergan's own terminology, .suited more to the stage of
meaning when the world of interiority becomes the ground
of theory, religious conversion is "otherworldly falling in love.
It is total and permanent self-surrender without conditions,
qualifications, reservations." 49 As such it is " being in love
with God," which is " the basic fulfilment of our conscious
intentionality. That fulfilment brings a deep-set joy that can
remain despite humiliation, failure, privation, pain, betrayal,
desertion. That fulfilment brings a radical peace, the peace
that the world cannot give. That fulfilment bears fruit in ft
love of one's neighbor that strives mightily to bring about
the Kingdom of God on this earth." 50
The experience of this love is that of " being in love in an
unrestricted fashion " and as such is the proper fulfillment of
the capacity for self-transcendence revealed in our unrestricted
questioning. But it is not the product of our knowledge and
choice. "On the contrary, it dismantles and abolishes the
horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on and it
sets up a new horizon in which the love of God will transvalue
our values and the eyes of that love will transform our
knowing." 51 As conscious but not known, the experience of this
love is an experience of mystery, of the holy. It belongs to the
level of consciousness where deliberation, judgment of value,
decision, and free and responsible activity take place. " But
it is this consciousness as brought to a fulfillment, as having
undergone a conversion, as posses.sing a basis that may be
broadened and deepened and heightened and enriched but not
Ibid.
•• Ibid., p.
" 0 Ibid., p. 105.
51 Ibid., p. 106.

48

ItoBERT M. DORAN

superseded, as ready to deliberate and judge and decide and
act with the easy freedom of those that do all good because
they are in love. So the gift of God's love occupies the ground
and root of the fourth and highest level of man's intentional
consciousness. It takes over the peak of the soul, the apex
animae ." 52
For Lonergan, there is a twofold expression of religious conversion. Spontaneously it is manifested in changed attitudes,
for which Galatians 5.22 f. provides a descriptive enumeration:
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." But another
kind of expression is directly concerned with the base and focus
of this experience, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans itself.
There is an enormous variation to be discovered in the investigation of such expression and Lonergan correlates this variety
with the predominant stages of meaning operative in selfunderstanding and in the spontaneously assumed stance toward
reality-i. e., with the manner in which one's world is mediated
by meaning. He constructs a series of stages of meaning based
on a cumulative differentiation of consciousness. In the western tradition there have been three such stages of meaning,
and they can be ontogenetically reproduced in the life-history
of a contemporary individual.
The first stage of meaning is governed by a common sense
differentiation of consciousness. The second is familiar also
with theory, system, logic, and science, but is troubled because
the difference of this from common sense is not adequately
grasped. The third stage is prepared by all those modern philosophies governed by the turn to the subject, which thus take
their stand on human interiority. Here consciousness becomes
differentiated into the various realms of meaning-common
.sense, theory, interiority, transcendence, scholarship, and artand these realms are consciously related to one another. One
62 Ibid., p. 107. With the needed emphasis on the forgiveness of sin, the love
of God may also he qualified as taking over the depths of the soul.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

consciously moves from one to the other by consciously
changing his procedures.
In all three stages, meaning fulfills four functions. First, it
is cognitive in that it mediates the real world in which we live
out our lives. Secondly, it is efficient in that it governs our intention of what we do. Thirdly, it is constitutive in that it is
an intrinsic component of culture and institutions. And fourthly, it is communicative in that, through its various carriersspontaneous intersubjectivity, art, symbol, language, and incarnation in the lives and deeds of persons-individual meaning
becomes common meaning, and, through the transmission of
training and education, generates history.
In the first stage, these functions are not clearly recognized
and accurately differentiated. So the blend of the cognitive and
constitutive functions, for example, brings about the constitution not only of cultures and institutions but also the story
of the world's origins in myth. And just as the constitutive
function of meaning pretends to speculative capacities beyond
its range, so the efficient function of meaning pretends to practical powers which a more differentiated consciousness denominates as magic. Religious expression at this stage is a
result of the projective association or identification of religious
experience with its outward occasion. The focus of such expression is on what we, by hindsight, would call the external,
the spatial, the specific, and the human, as contrasted with
the internal, the temporal, the generic, and the divine. What
is indeed temporal, generic, internal, and in the realm of transcendence is identified as spatial, specific, external, and occurring in a realm other than that of transcendence. Thus
there result the gods of the moment, the god of this or that
place, of this or that person, of Abraham or Laban, of this of
that group, of the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Israelites.
The key to the movement from the first stage of meaning
to the second is located in the differentiation of the functions
of meaning. The advance of technique will enable the association of the efficient function with pmesis and praxis and reveal

ROBERT M. DORAN

the inefficacy of magic. But more far-reaching in its implications is the differentiation of the cognitive function of meaning
from the other three functions. As the key to the religious expression of undifferentiated consciousness lies in insight into
sensible presentations and representations, so the limitations
of such consciousness to the spatial, the specific, the external,
and the human will recede to the extent that the sensible
presentations and representations are linguistic. 53 This does
not mean, however, that a self-conscious transposition to interiority, time, the generic, and the divine occurs. Rather we
have a movement away from all immediacy in favor of objectification. The return to immediacy in terms of interiority,
time, the generic, and the divine must await the emergence of
the third stage of meaning.
The second stage of meaning, then, is characterized by a
twofold mediation of the world by meaning: in the realm of
common sense and in that of theory. The split is troubling.
It was interpreted by Plato in such a way that there seem to be
two really distinct worlds, the transcendent world of eternal
Forms and the transient world of appearance. In Aristotle, it
led to the distinction, not between theory and common sense,
but between necessity and contingence. The basic concepts of
genuine-i. e., universal and necessary-science were metaphysical, and so the sciences were conceived as continuous with
philosophy.
The introduction of the theoretical capacity into religious
living is represented in the dogmas, theology, and juridical
structures of Western religion. But just as the two tables of
Eddington- "the bulky, solid, colored desk at which -he
worked, and the manifold of colorless 'wavicles' so minute
that the desk was mostly empty .space " 54-reveal the presence
of a conflict between common sense and science, so in the realm
of religion, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is set
against the God of the philosophers and theologians. Honoring
the Trinity and feeling compunction are set against learned
•• Ibid., p. 9£.

••Ibid., p. 84.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

discourse on the Trinity and against defining compunction.
Nor can this contrast be understood or the tension removed
within the realms 0£ common sense and 0£ theory." 55 And so,
religiously as well as scientifically, there is demanded a movement to a third stage 0£ meaning, the stage 0£ the differentiation 0£ consciousness through the appropriation 0£ human interiority.
The sciences then come to be regarded, not as prolongations
of philosophy, but as autonomous, ongoing processes; not as
the demonstration 0£ universal and necessary truths but as
hypothetical and ever better approximations to truth through
an ever more exact and comprehensive understanding 0£ data.
Philosophy is no longer a theory in the manner 0£ science but
the self-appropriation 0£ intentional consciousness and the consequent distinguishing, relating, and grounding 0£ the various
realms 0£ meaning, the grounding of the methods 0£ the sciences, and the ongoing promotion 0£ their unity. Theology then
becomes, in ever larger part, an understanding 0£ the diversity
0£ religious utterance on the basis of the differentiation and interrelation of the realms of common sense, theory, interiority,
and transcendence.
The third stage of meaning, then, is the stage of the appropriation of human interiority. The cognitive dimensions 0£ the
exigence £or this appropriation have been more than satisfactorily treated by Lonergan. The result of the cognitive step
in this process is intellectual conversion. I have begun to suggest what the moral dimensions would entail. That the sel£appropriation 0£ the existential subject is something quite other
than that 0£ the cognitional subject is not at all obvious from
Jnsi,ght, but the work 0£ Lonergan from 1965 to the present
reveals a notable development in this regard, one perhaps best
capsulized in "Insi,ght Revisited."
In Insight the good was the intelligent and reasonable. In Method
the good is a distinct notion. It is intended in questions for de••Ibid., p. 115.

228

ROBERT M. DORAN

liberation, Is this worth while? Is it truly or only apparently good?
It is aspired to in the intentional response of feeling to values. It

is known in judgments of value made by a virtuous or authentic
person with a good conscience. It is brought about by deciding
and living up to one's decisions. Just as intelligence sublates sense,
just as reasonableness sublates intelligence, so deliberation sublates
and thereby unifies knowing and feeling.56
Not only, then, is there a fourth level of intentional consciousness quite distinct from the first three, but the primordial entry
of the subject onto this fourth level is affective, " the intentional
response of feelings to values." Furthermore, affective response
for Lonergan is symbolically certifiable, in that a symbol is " an
image of a real or imaginary object that evokes a feeling or is
evoked by a feeling." 57 Thus moral self-appropriation will be
to a large extent the negotiation of the symbols interlocked
with one's affective responses to values. It will be psychic selfappropriation. Neumann discusses the moral dimensions of this
movement, while sharing in the Jungian failure to differentiate
wholeness as human achievement from wholeness as God's gift.
At the point in psychic self-appropriation where the issue becomes one of good and evil, the movement of appropriation
shifts from the realm of interiority to the realm of transcendence, where God is known and loved. The initial move into
psychic self-appropriation at the religious level, when the direction is as here indicated, occurs in the experience of the forgiveness of one's sins, the only genuine-in fact, the only possible-complexio oppositorum of good and evil. This experience
is of wholeness, of the affective integrity of subjectivity. With
this experience, religious conversion can begin to sublate moral
and intellectual conversion in the movement of self-appropriation, i.e., at the third stage of meaning.
It is not only religious expression, but religious experience itself, which is affected by the movement into the third stage of
•• Bernard Lonergan, " Insight Revisited," in Bernard Tyrrell and William Ryan,
eds., A Second Collection (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), p.
67 MIT. p. 64.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

229

meaning. Prior to this major breakthrough, one's religious
living is pre-critical, and so will involve the projection characteristic of the first .stage of meaning. It will be in terms of
what interiorly differentiated consciousness, by hindsight, is
able to denominate as spatial, specific, external, and human as
opposed to what is temporal, generic, internal, and transcendent. To the extent that one's appropriation of interiority proceeds from intellectual conversion to self-appropriation at the
fourth level of intentional consciousness, the spontaneous reference of religious experience will be to what is temporal, generic,
internal, and transcendent. It will proceed as discernment of
spirits. Such discernment has the same archetypal manifestations in dreams and other symbolic productions as has any
other expression of the evaluative capacity of the existential
subject. That these expressions are not specifically acknowledged in Jungian phenomenologies of individuation is due to
a deficiency in Jung's understanding of existential subjectivity
and the conspiracy it can engage in with the psyche.

v. PSYCHIC CONVERSION AS FOUNDATIONAL
If in addition to the mediation of immediacy by meaning
which occurs when one objectifies cognitional process in transcendental method, there is that which occurs when one discovers, identifies, accepts one's submerged feelings in psychotherapy, then intentional self-appropriation must be complemented by psychic self-appropriation. As related to the question of the process and function of theology, this would mean
that, whereas Lonergan has developed a method for theology
based on the mediation of intentional consciousness, we must
attempt to show the implications for theology of the psychic
mediation. The principal implication will be a fourth conversion foundational for theology, psychic conversion, aiding the
relations of sublation among the three conversions specified by
Lonergan. Through the twofold mediation of immediacy theological reflection will be able to accept the possibilities which
now, perhaps for the first time in its history, are available to

230

ROBERT M. DORAN

it. For in our age not only are we confronted with the relativity
of conceptual schemes of all kinds, in every area, but also, precisely because of this seemingly very uncertain and ambivalent
state of affairs, the individual is given "the (often desperate,
yet maximally human) opportunity to interpret life and experiencing directly. The historical crossroads of such a time is:
either the reimposition of certain set values and schemes, or a
task never before attempted: to learn how, in a rational way,
to relate concepts to direct experiencing; to investigate the way
in which symbolizing affects and is affected by felt experiencing;
to devise a social and scientific vocabulary that can interact
with experiencing, so that communication about it becomes
possible, so that schemes can be considered in relation to experiential meanings, and so that an objective science can be related
to and guided by experiencing." 58 What Eugene Gendlin here
envisions for " objective science " can also be the goal of theology. To envision a theology whose schemes are related to and
guided by experiencing, however, does not, within the horizon
provided by self-appropriation, rule out of court a theology
whose concern is with " things as they are related to one
another" in favor of a theology preoccupied with "things as
they are related to us." Rather, basic terms and relations, as
psychological, are also explanatory. Such is the ultimate significance of fidelity to the methodical exigence.
The present essay, then, reflects an ongoing project to complement the work of Lonergan; it initiates a further essay in
aid of self-appropriation. For beyond the intellectual conversion which occurs in self-conscious fashion when one answers
correctly and in order the questions, " What am I doing when I
am knowing? Why is that knowing? What do I know when
I do that?'', there is the self-appropriation which begins when
one attentively, intelligently, reasonably, and responsibly learns
to negotiate the symbolic configurations of dispositional immediacy. This latter .self-appropriation is effected by the emer58 Eugene Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning (Toronto:
Press of Glencoe, 196!il), p. 4.

Free

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

231

gence of the existential subject into a mediated symbolic consciousness, in which individual, cultural, and religious symbols
are treated-in what Paul Ricoeur has lucidly displayed as
their archeological-teleological unity-in-tension 59-as exploratory of existential subjectivity and as referring to interiority,
time, the generic, and the realm of transcendence rather than
as explanatory or aetiological and as referring to exteriority,
space, the specific, and the human. Psychic conversion is the
recovery of imagination in its transcendental time-structure 60
through the psychotherapeutic elucidation of the symbols
emerging spontaneously from one's psychic depths.
I share the conviction which led John Dunne to write The
Way of All the Earth, the conviction that something like a new
religion is coming into being.
Is a religion corning to birth in our time? It could be. What seems
to be occurring is a phenomenon we might call " passing over,"
passing over from one culture to another, from one way of life to
another, from one religion to another. Passing over is a shifting
of standpoint, a going over to the standpoint of another culture,
another way of life, another religion. It is followed by an equal
and opposite process we might call " corning back," corning back
with new insight to one's own culture, one's own way of life, one's
own religion. The holy man of our time, it seems, is not a figure
like Gotarna or Jesus or Mohammed, a man who could found a
world religion, but a figure like Gandhi, a man who passes over by
sympathetic understanding from his own religion to other religions
and comes back again with new insight to his own. Passing over
and corning back, it seems, is the spiritual adventure of our tirne. 61

The present essay reflects an effort to aid this adventure and
the articulation of its truth. If theology is reflection on religion,
then such articulation would be the theology appropriate to
our age. Dunne says quite correctly, however, that the ultimate
starting and ending point is really not one's own religion, but
Paul Ricoeur, ibid.
See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. by James
Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
61 John S. Dunne,
The Way of All the Earth (New York: Macmillan,
p. ix.
59
60

ROBERT M. DORAN

one's life. At pre.sent I am attempting to highlight the contributions of depth psychology to the exploration of this homeland
and the significance of these contributions for religious experience and for the reflection on this experience which is theology.
The project here reported on is not only complementary to the
work of Lonergan, however, but in some sense compensatory, in
the same way as the psyche, as it manifests itself in dreams, is
compensatory to the attitude of waking consciousness. " The relation between consciousness and unconscious is compensatory.
This fact, which is easily verifiable, affords a rule for dream
interpretation. It is always helpful, when we set out to interpret a dream, to ask: what conscious attitude does it compensate? " 62
Waking consciousness, as it moves from directed attention
through insight, judgment, and decision, has been the sharp
focus of Lonergan's work. Since theology is a matter of knowledge and decision, such a focus has enabled him to articulate
the structure of theological method. Since I accept without
reservation I,onergan's account of "what I am doing when
I am knowing " and his eightfold differentiation of theological
operations, the work I envision is complementary to his. But
.since I wish to lay emphasis on a different but equally valid
source of data-which can still be grouped under Lonergan's
notion of data of consciousness, since they concern interioritythe work would be compensatory to his, just as feeling is compensatory to thinking as a psychological function or as dreams
are compensatory to waking consciousness as a psychic state.
If the first step in interpreting a dream is to ask: what conscious attitude does it compensate?, and if the work I envision
is to be understood as compensatory to Lonergan's in a sense
analogous to the compensatory effect of dreams, then it is only
proper to indicate what attitude or atmosphere this work would
compensate.
Thus Dunne .speaks of climbing a mountain in order to discover a vantage point, a fastness of autonomy. The most com62 C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York:
Harcourt, Brace,
and World, 1933), p. 17.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

plete autonomy comes, he says, from the knowledge, not of
external things, but of knowledge itself.
A knowing of knowing would be like a view from a mountaintop.
By knowing all about knowing itself one would know in some manner everything there is to know. It would be like seeing everything
from a great height. One would see everything near and far, all the
way to the horizon, but there would be some loss of detail on account
of the distances. The knowing of knowing would mean being in possession of all the various methods of knowing. It would mean
knowing how an artist thinks, putting a thing together; knowing
how a scientist thinks, taking a thing apart; knowing how a practical man thinks, sizing up a situation; knowing how a man of understanding thinks, grasping the principle of a thing; knowing how
a man of wisdom thinks, reflecting upon human experience .
. . . At the top of the mountain, as we have been describing it,
there is a kind of madness-not the madness that consists in having
lost one's reason. The knowing of knowing, to be sure, seems
worthy of man. The only thing wrong is that man at the top of
the mountain, by escaping from love and war, will have lost everything else. He will have withdrawn into that element of his nature which is most characteristic of him and sets him apart from
other animals. It is the thing in him which is most human. Perhaps indeed he will never realize what it is to be human unless
he does attempt this withdrawal. Even so, the realization that he
has lost everything except his reason, that he has found pure humanity but not full humanity, changes his wisdom from a knowledge of knowledge into a knowledge of ignorance. He realizes that
he has something yet to learn, something that he cannot learn at
the top of the mountain but only at the bottom of the valley. 63

Nobody familiar with Lonergan can read these words about
the knowing of knowing without thinking immediately of one
of the most daring claims any thinker has ever offered for his
own work, true as it is: " Thoroughly understand what it is to
understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines
of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed
base, an invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding." 64 Nonetheless, Lonergan is seeking
••John S. Dunne, op. cit., pp. 17-19.
••Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York:
Philosophical Libraxy, 1957), p. x)CV.iii,

Q34

ROBERT M. DORAN

greater concreteness on the side of the subject, in the domain of
" the pulsing flow of life." 65 To the extent that his work aids
this greater concreteness, one escapes the madness of having lost
everything but one's reason. Nonetheless, there is much in the
pulsing flow of life that enters into one's life without providing
data for one's knowing of knowing. One may become aware of the
dark yet potentially creative power at work in the valley and
expend his efforts, perhaps first by means of a different kind
of withdrawal-into a forest or desert, in imitation of Gotama
or Jesus, rather than up to a mountaintop-at the negotiation
and transformation of this dark power of nature so that it is
creative of his own life. If he succeeds in this very risky adventure, it will be only because he will have undergone a profound conversion.
Conversion is the central theme in Lonergan's brilliant and,
I believe, revolutionary recasting of the foundations of theology. And such it must be, for nobody who has gone to the
top of the mountain can accept as the foundations of his knowledge anything exclusive of what happened to him there. He has
achieved an intellectual autonomy as a result of which he will
never be the same. But there is a different conversion that occurs in the valley or the forest or the desert. It is both complementary and compensatory to the conversion that takes place
at the top of the mountain, to intellectual conversion. Nor is
it the same as what Lonergan calls religious or moral conversion. I have called it psychic conver.sion. Its effect is a mediated symbolic consciousness, and its role in theological reflection is foundational as aiding the sublation of intellectual conversion by moral and religious conversion. Psychic conversion
.surrounds the other three conversions in much the same way
as the "unconscious," according to Jung, surrounds the light
of conscious waking life. More precisely, it permeates these
conversions in much the same way as psyche permeates intentionality or as dispositional immediacy is interlocked with
cognitional immediacy. It provides one with an atmosphere
or texture which qualifies one's experiences of knowing, of ethi•• Jbid., p. xix.

PSYCHIC CONVERSION

235

cal decision, and of prayer. This atmosphere is determined by
the imaginal or symbolic constitution of the immediacy of one's
mediated world. " The imaginal " is a genuine sphere of being,
a realm whose contents can be intelligently grasped and reasonably affirmed.
The complementary aspect of psychic conversion with respect
to intellectual conversion appears in its role as facilitator of the
working unity of intellectual conversion with moral and religious conversion. Its compensatory aspect appears primarily
in its function within a second mediation of immediacy by
meaning, and thus in the disclosure it provides that the mediation of immediacy is twofold. Second immediacy can only be
approached through the complementarity of the two mediations. Psychic conversion thus corrects what I believe to be a
possible implicit intellectualist bias in Lonergan's thought, especially in Insight. According to this implicit bias, the intellectual pattern of experience would be the privileged pattern
of experience. While the emergence of a fourth level of intentional consciousness and thus of a notion of the good as distinct
from the intelligent and reasonable in Method in Theology
implicitly corrects this bias, the explicit compensation comes
from highlighting the psychic dimensions of this fourth level,
the level of existential subjectivity.
When I ref er with Dunne to a new religion coming into being
in our age, what I am indicating is in part the convergence of
insights from the various world religions in the life-story of
many individuals who seek religious truth today. As Dunne has
indicated, this search will probably be analogous to Gandhi's
experiments with truth. The conversion I call psychic may provide one's criterion for evaluating these experiments and render
the subject capable of reflecting on and articulating the truth
he has discovered. It may enable him, in Dunne's phrase, to
turn poetry into truth and truth into poetry. The latter poetry
he may wish to include in his theology.
One may find that the further steps in self-appropriation
reveal the need for a qualification of one's previous intellectual
self-appropriation. While one will not revise the structure of

286

ROBERT M. DORAN

cognitional process which he has learned to articulate for himself through the work of Lonergan, he may be brought to revise his formulation of the notion of experience provided by
Lonergan. The latter notion may be too thin, too bodiless.
Having come back into the valley from Lonergan's mountaintop--or rather from his own mountaintop-he may re-experience, or re-cognize that he experiences, in a manner for which
the atmosphere of the mountaintop was too rarefied.
This, however, may also lead to further specifications of the
notion of theological method which he has learned from Lonergan. He will accept the basic dynamic and operational notion of
method provided by Lonergan on the basis of the structure of intentionality and of the two phases of theology as mediating and
mediated; but psychic conversion may influence his choice as
to what qualifies as data for theology; the base from which he
engages in hermeneutic and history; the horizon determining
his view of, and influencing his decision about, the tensions of
religious and theological dialectic; the bases from which he derives theological categories, positions, and system; and the way
in which he regards the mission of religion in the world. The
functional specialties will remain, their interrelationship being
determined by the structure of intentional consciousness, but
their nature may be modified as a result of one's exploration
of the " objective psyche," the home of the imaginal, the transcendental imagination, memoria. The task of the philosopher
or theologian educated by and indebted to Lonergan may now
be to descend the mountain of cognitive self-appropriation so as
attentively, intelligently, reasonably, and responsibly to appropriate and articulate the rich psychic bases of human experience. Such an appropriation and articulation will make possible the advent of that fully awake naivete of the twiceborn adult which Paul Ricoeur calls a second, post-critical immediacy .66
ROBERT M. DORAN
Marquette Univermty
Muwaukee, Wisconsin
Q•

Cf. Paul

Freud and Philosophy, p. 496.

l!"AITH AND SILENCE IN PLATO'S GORGIAS

A

THE CLIMAX of his dispute with Socrates over the
nature of man Callicles refuses to go on answering
Socrates's questions and stands silent while Socrates
recapitulates and finishes the argument alone (Gorgias, 506c509) . Throughout the rest of the dialogue Callicles remains
recalcitrant, breaking his silence only to sneer at Socrates or
continue perfunctorily a conversation in which he has obviously
little interest. At first glance Callicles's silence seems to
represent the stubborn embarrassment of a man who knows he
is defeated, but is refusing to admit it. He had maintained tlie
profligate's thesis that the good for man is identical with states
of pleasure but has been led by Socrates to admit the need for
self-control guided by knowledge of the difference between good
and evil pleasures and pains (499b). Now, with Callicles silent,
and at the urging of Gorgias himself, Socrates goes on to complete the argument by supplying the ultimate standard by
which men are to distinguish good from evil pleasures and
pains-the wisdom which has guided his every word in his three
conversations with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles: "Wise men
say, Callicles, that heaven and earth, gods and men, are held
together by the principles of sharing, by friendship and order,
by self-control and justice" (508) . But clearly this conclusion
goes beyond the premise Callicles has agreed to; Callicles could
grant the need for self-control while logically refusing to place
it at the service of friendship, the particular standard announced by Socrates: the tyrant too knows self-discipline. This
insight that Callicles stands on firm ground in his silence can
help to interpret this dramatic incident in Plato's Gorgias. By
making a point of Callicles's silence during Socrates's declaration of his ultimate wisdom Plato provides, not a signal of

238

KEITH ALGOZIN

Callicles's defeat, but the appropriate counter-declaration of
the tyrannical soul.
To be sure, Callicles shifts his position during his conversation with Socrates, but his movement is steadily away from
Socrates until in his silence he stands exposed as the exact opposite of Socrates. This movement occurs in three main steps
as Socrates presses for clarification of Callicles's initial assertion that " nature herself reveals it to be only just and proper
that the better man should lord it over his inferior . . . the
stronger over the weaker " (483d) . In the first step Socrates
leads Callicles to dismiss as better or stronger the mass of men
which has the actual physical strength of numbers (488c-489d) .
Second, he leads Callicles to dismiss as better or stronger the
fools and cowards whose desire is for merely bodily pleasure
(494b-499b). It is at this point that Callicles admits the need
!or self-control. The third and final step in Callicles's move"Xhmt of self-clarification is his silence itself: by the better,
rJt:ronger man Callicles means ultimately himself as opposed
to all other men. His silence asserts his character itself, the unsharable truth, which he alone can fully understand and appreciate, that he is the master and all other men his slaves.
Callicles is the despotic soul whose portrait Plato draws so
vividly too in the Republic, that soul whose hitherto disparate
appetites for fragmentary pleasures have come to be ruled by
the " great winged drone," the insatiable master passion for
power which takes as reality the lunatic's dream of lording it
over all mankind and heaven besides (Republic,
.
The clarification of Callicles as residing ultimately in the
tacit commitment to his tyranny over others is to be contrasted
with the movements of self-clarification undergone in Socrates's
presence by the two previous speakers in the dialogue, Gorgias
and Polus. For the main line of meaning in the dialogue runs
from the opening question about who Gorgias is (447d) to
the final revelation in Callicles's silence of the distorted depths
of Gorgias's own soul.
In the opening conversation Gorgias falls into a self-contra-

PLATO'S " GORGIAS "

289

diction when he both disclaims responsibility for the injustices
of his students and yet claims that his students become just
men in his presence (457b-461): he both does and does not
make just men of those who come under his influence. This
contradiction, which lies at the core of Gorgias's personality,
rises to the surface under the pressure of the questioning
presence of Socrates. In being ashamed to admit to Socrates
that he is not an example of human excellence to his students
Gorgias in effect confesses his own deeepest aspiration. In his
shame in the presence of Socrates Gorgias has made contact
with his own humanity, and now, while others speak he remains
in the background following the argument intensely, so intensely that he will urge Socrates to continue when Callicles falls
silent. The event of " conversion " in the presence of Socrates
is now repeated in the next conversation between Socrates and
Gorgias's student Polus.
Polus admires the tyrant, and in order to refute Socrates's
contention that tyrants are unhappy and powerless because
they cannot fulfill their own deepest desire to be just men he
first cites historical cases of self-satisfied tyranny (470c-471d)
and then invites Socrates to ask the opinions of those listening
to their conversation (473e). Socrates, however, would produce but one witness to the truth, Polus himself (474), and
he asks Polus whether it is uglier to do or to suffer injustice
(474b). Polus responds that doing injustice is uglier than
suffering it, but, as Socrates helps him see, by ugly he really
means evil, and so in fact he himself does agree with Socrates
that tyrannical action contradicts a man's own good. In Polus's
abrupt about-face we once again glimpse Socrates performing
the eminently just action of education for which he was condemned. With his question as to whether doing or suffering
injustice is uglier he has lifted Polus out of the context of
mutual reprisal, where tyranny might be considered excusable
as the fitting response forced upon one by the threats of others,
and has placed before him the entire spectacle of mutual invasion itself, asking him whether it suits his own aspiration for

KEITH ALGOZIN

fulfillment, whether Polus himself could initiate the violence.
When Polus responds, face to face with Socrates, that to do so
would be ugly he expresses the distance between himself and
tyrannical self-assertion. Beneath his superficial admiration of
the tyrant Polus is revulsed by tyrannical action. Socrates's
questioning presence has touched this nerve of Polus's humanity, as it had touched that of Gorgias before him, bringing
him to life as a man.
To be sure, we are not to make too much of Polus's conversion. His tone throughout his conversation with Socrates indicates clearly that he is well on the way toward becoming
like Callicles, the next speaker, who will interpret Polus's admission that tyranny is ugly as influenced not by Polus's nature but by convention (
. By bracketing Polus's admission between Gorgias's more positive eagerness to dissociate
himself from injustice and Callicles's more deadly silence Plato
has both fixed Polus at the mid-point on a scale of growing insensitivity to Socratic friendship and has suggested his movement from Gorgias, the teacher, to Callicles, the thoroughly
corrupt product of Gorgias's teaching. Polus's confrontation
with Socrates jolts him off course only momentarily. Socrates
too is on the way toward Callicles, the human type that will
condemn him for corrupting the youth, and he has not enough
time remaining to help Polus establish this newly awakened
revulsion at evil as the ruling passion of his soul.
The conversions undergone by both Gorgias and Polus in the
presence of Socrates bring into sharp relief Plato's intention
in having Callicles be silent during the speech in which Socrates
links self-control to friendship. Face to face with Socrates, at
the same point at which Gorgias was overcome with shame and
Polus experienced revulsion at initiating the violence, Callicles
remains rooted in that unregenerate commitment to tyrannical
self-assertion for which silence is the appropriate expression.
Callicles loves violating other men, loves tyranny for its own
sake. Socrates had already recognized this loving commitment
of Callicles's when in his first speech to Callicles he stressed

PLATO'S " GORGIAS "

241

that both of them are lovers, he of wisdom, Callicles of power
(481c) . And now, in Callicles's silence during Socrates's declaration of friendship, Socrates cannot but hear Callicles's
counter-declaration that self-controlled dedication to principle
is as much a part of the life of tyranny as of the life of friendship. In Callicles's silence Socrates's self-disciplined friendship
confronts an equally self-disciplined, unyielding, love of tyrannical power, Plato pours into his construction of this confrontation his own recognition of the purity, the spirituality if you
will, of the love of tyranical power, which is in every way the
matching opposite of the Socratic love of friendship.
This suggestion that Callicles and Socrates are spiritual counterparts implies that in the conversation between them every
key concept-nature, convention, freedom, power, happiness,
justice, friendship, speech, etc.-has an opposite meaning depending upon whether Socrates or Callicles defines it. But in
the remarks that follow I will seek to secure, not the opposite
meanings of each of these specific concepts, but rather the general framework which contains them all, the spirituality
Socrates and Callicles have in common, as well as the point at
which they come into opposition. To this end it will be helpful
to characterize briefly the human condition which elicits from
both the fundamentally human spiritual response.
Socrates and Callicle.s have in common what all men have
in common by virtue of the human condition itself, namely, the
issue of staying in contact with the truth of the world. That
a man's fundamental issue is contact with the truth of the world
is strikingly expressed by Plato himself in his fable of the human puppets in the Laws (644d): The .situation of every man
is that of a puppet whose opposed interior states pull him
like cords toward opposite actions, the gentle tug of the golden
cord of judgment toward citizenship, the violent, iron-like tugs
of private pleasure and pain toward self-assertion. For our
present purpose the importance of Plato's image of the puppets
lies not in its location of every man between citizenship and
self-assertion, but in its poignant depiction of every man's situa-

KEITH ALGOZIN

tion of being open to a world whose ultimate meaning is unknown: like puppets we lack the puppet master's knowledge
of the meaning of the show. Sensing that .something is at stake
in our lives but uncertain as to what it is, we do not know how
to perform so as not to spoil the play. It is this specifically human condition of ignorance about the meaning of the whole
which places every man in the distinctively spiritual issue of
locating and maintaining contact with the truth which governs,
not just this or that part of the world, but the world entire.
For within the ignorance of the ultimate meaning of the world
there lurks the horror of unattunement with the world, the
horror of doing what violates the truth of the world or what
is trivial, accidental, passing, as against what is substantial or
enduring because it is the ultimate meaning, or purpose, which
holds .sway throughout the world itself. This horror of unattunement with the world can be dispelled only by the belief
that one is performing in one's every action the ultimate task
which the world itself essentially is and which all things in the
world are called to enact so that, as in a well-formed play, every
part achieves in the manner appropriate to it the proper attunement of all to all. In such perfectly attuned action, which
is the spiritual goal that the human condition of ignorance sets
before every man, a man would be alive in the properly human
essence: that of himself which should rule his life would be
actually ruling that of himself which should be subordinate,
and he would be the rightly ordered place through which the
work of the world is done as it ought to be done by a man in
the world. Here a man would be representative of all mankind
in the sense of a revelation to all men of the meaning of being
human in the world. And now, Plato would have us under.stand, I believe, that both Socrates and Callicles are men of
such spiritual commitment, men whose self-discipline stems
ultimately from the effort to maintain and represent man's
proper attunement to the world. By letting Callicles be silent
during Socrates's statement of his wisdom, and by doing so
against the background of the contrasting assent by Gorgias

PLATO'S " GORGIAS "

and Polus to the spiritual force of Socrates's personality, Plato
effectively suggests that Socrates and Callicles are two equally
forceful spiritual claims to be the model or representative man
whom all other men are to pattern themselves upon in order
to come alive in their properly human nature and stand in the
truth of the world.
But, while Socrates and Callicles are equally spiritual through
their common concern to be the properly ordered, representatively human place through which the truth of the world flows
among men, this truth itself differs radically in each case. For
Socrates "heaven and earth, gods and men, are held together
by the principles of sharing, by friendship and order, by selfcontrol and justice." And, in the face of Callicles's silence, he
goes on: "that, my friend, is the reason wise men call the
universe cosmos, and not disorder or licentiousness." The
wholeness of the universe of existing things, the ground which
is itself no existent thing among others but which embracingly
binds all existent things into a whole, is the event of friendship,
the event of each thing being most itself by drawing the others
into their proper partnership in the whole, their capacity to
create the whole by evoking this capacity in still others, so that
all things are engaged in mutually eliciting, or enlivening, each
other's capacity to form a whole in which all co-exist as partners in simultaneous fulfillment. Just as the gods, the powers
of nature, form the immortal natural cosmos by mutually
evoking each other's partnership in the whole, so too men are
to form the city in the image of this natural cosmos by mutually evoking each other's power to be citizens. And, as we have
glimpsed in Socrates's encounters with Gorgias and Polus,
Socrates himself is the place where this essence of the world occurs among men: Socrates fulfills himself by drawing from
Gorgias and Polus their own capacity to fulfill themselves in
community with Socrates. Such educative friendship is Socrates's very attunement to the essence of the universe. Who
he is is the true statesman (52ld), the human image of the
ground, the unbiased meeting point wherein all things can in-

KEITH ALGOZIN

ter.sect as mutually fulfilling, intercommunicating partners in
the creation of a self-enlivening public order. His life is this
event of evoking in others the moral agency which is their own
capacity to create and maintain the city, i.e., evoke it in still
others. Such friendship, the mutual creation of the city in time
in the image of Socrates, who images the gods, who image the
eternal ground, is truly human life. And in this context
Callicles's silent, self-assertive rebellion against the divine in
man is a living human death.
For Callicles, on the other hand, the universe of existent
things is essentially disorder, strife, the war of everything
against every other thing in which each thing's unsharable fulfillment-mastery-is each other thing's un£ulfillment-slavery.
To be sure, from within Callicles's own private, egoistic perspective, all things appear as facets of an ordered whole: each thing
is an instrument for furthering his own mastery over others.
But when Callicles universalizes this egoism, attributing it to
all, he must find between himself and others, not Socrates's selfenlivening community, but rather the precisely opposite event
of an explosion into nothing, each part's tyranny over the others
eliciting, as in the game of hands upon hands, the other's
tyranny over it-a mutually heightening fragmentation whose
outer limit is the chaos of part outside part outside part. In
this Calliclesian universe Socratic friendship is seen as merely
a surface phenomenon, at best our unstable contract to use
each other for the time against a common enemy, be it physical
nature or a group of .still other men. The last word of all friendship, however, is Callicles's own silence, the mute, self-disciplined violation of each other which enacts, in the image of
Callicles himself, the truth of the world that mind succumbs to
the divisive onslaught of blind, .silent matter.
Thus, as Callicles and Socrates stand facing each other,
Callicles silent, Socrates declaring the truth of frendship, each
is accusing the other of having" turned human life completely
upside down" (481b); each is the spiritual appeal to the other
to awaken from dream and come alive in genuinely human at-

PLATO'S" GORGIAS"

245

tunement to the real world. Moreover, as Plato's image of the
puppets suggests, this issue between Socrates and Callicles is
the issue of every man. Each of us may experience the issue
in that moment of confrontation with the other man when we
stand at once in the centripetal current which would absorb
him into ourselves without remainder and the centrifugal current which would sweep us toward him in friendship. In this
moment we know the opposed Calliclesian and Socratic tensions of our own soul and have ourselves as actors in the drama
of war and peace.
But perhaps-and I suggest this last point with hesitation
because Socrates seems so confident of his " arguments of
adamant and steel" (509)-perhaps Plato has packed into this
incident in the Gorgias the still deeper meaning that in fact
Socrates does not know with certainty that he, not Callicles,
represents human nature. For Callicles's silence occurs against
the background of Socrates's earlier remark, made at the beginning of their conversation, that Callicles will be his touchstone, that if Socrates can bring Callicles to agree with him
then Socrates will know that his own soul is golden (486e) .
Against this background Callicles's silence may represent the
counter-wisdom which Socrates fails to break, a failure which
exposes Plato's awareness of the crisis of faith which lies at
the core of his philosophy. Though Socrates-Plato's wisdom
rests firmly upon his own experiential self-knowledge of the
hierarchical order of rank of the powers of his own soul (his
conscience) , it remains ultimately an act of faith made in the
face of the opposite possibility attested by Callicles-Plato in his
silence. After all, all knowledge waits upon confirmation from
the other's point of view, and this is especially the case for philosophy which seeks that wisdom about the whole which includes
the phenomena of human valuation itself. Here the testimony
of the other is especially crucial. What a man alone sees he
must doubt; he approaches certainty only if others can see it
too. Thus, only in dialogue can there be established the nature
of man as our clue to the nature of the universe, and in this

KEITH ALGOZIN

dialogue Calliclesian silence, whether it stares back at one from
the other or surfaces in one's own soul, has a say. Hence the
power of Socrates's confrontation with Callicles's silence at
Gorgias 506c: the two opposed tugs in every man's soul offset each other, generating every man's deepest question;
Socrates is present as Plato's answer to this question, but this
answer requires a confirmation it does not receive. The reader
must himself enter into the dialogue about the nature of man.
KEITH ALGOZIN

Marquette University
Muwaukee, Wisconsin

PERSONHOOD AND THE BEGINNING
OF HUMAN LIFE

A

IDST THE CONFUSION and strong feelings which
pervade the abortion controversy a few facts have become quite clear. One is the variety and complexity
of the issues. Another is the need for deeper philosophical reflection on these issues. A third is the central importance of
two questions: (I) When does human life begin? and (fl)
What is a person?
This es.say presents a philosophical analysis of these two
questions. We hope (I) through conceptual analysis to arrive
at a classificatory or descriptive definition of the individual human being-a definition decisive for determining when human
life begins-and also at such a definition of personhood; (fl)
to prove that these concepts are essentially philosophical; and
(3) to show not only that establishing the philosophical
meaning of human life and personhood must precede legal, sociological, and moral considerations but that these are not possible until the philosophical task has been carried out. In spite
of the diversity of philosophical positions rooted in different if
not opposing philosophical backgrounds, we believe that we can
present a philosophical position which, taking into account the
available empirical data, maintains a higher level of consistency
and .should attract a wider range of acceptance than any previously stated position.
This essay has two parts. In the second part we pursue the
threefold objective enunciated above. In the first part, as a
preliminary, we survey the answers which others have advanced. These answers have usually been linked with various
legal, ethical, and other considerations, but we shall review only
what relates to the beginning of human life and to personhood.
Though a brief critical evaluation follows each presentation,

248

GABRIEL PASTRANA

the difference of our own position from those discussed will become clearer when we present our own position in the second
part of the essay. Note that this essay is not a direct discussion
of the morality of abortion but an effort to provide the basis
for such discussion.

I.

SURVEY OF POSITIONS

Following the division proposed by Daniel Callahan, we
group the positions under three headings: the genetic school,
the developmental school, and the social consequences school.

The Genetic School
This school comprises those for whom human life begins at
the moment of conception or soon thereafter.
One of the best known proponents of this position is John T.
Noonan. In a long review article discussing the history of
thought on abortion and on the criterion of the human, Noonan
concludes that " once conceived, the being was recognized as
man because he had man's potential. The criterion for humanity, thus, was simple and all-embracing: if you are conceived by human parents, you are human." 1 Noonan rejects
viability, experience, feelings, sentiments, and social visibility" being socially visible as human" -as criteria. Moral judgments often rest on distinctions, but if the distinctions are not
to look like arbitrary fiats they should relate to some real differences in probabilities. Once conception has taken place there
is a sharp shift in probabilities; though the argument from
probabilities is not aimed at establishing humanity, it does establish an objective discontinuity which may be taken into account in moral discourse. The positive argument for conception as the decisive moment of humanization is that at conception the new being receives the genetic code. " It is this
genetic information which determines his characteristics, which
1 John T. Noonan, "An Almost Absolute Value in History," in John T. Noonan
(ed.), The Morality of Abortion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1970), 1-59, at p. 51.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

249

is
biological carrier of the possibility of human wisdom,
which makes him a self-evolving being. A being with a human
genetic code is man." 2 Thus Noonan has answered his initial
question, "How do you determine the humanity of a being?",
by looking at the human origins of the product of conception,
at the genetic code which presumably is established at the moment of conception, and at the degree of probability of survival
that the fetus has once it has reached that stage. Though those
biological stages are undoubtedly most important in the process of development of the fetus, Noonan has been criticized
for attempting to prove too much and failing to prove anything.3 Answering these criticisms, Noonan hi:i,s clearly acknowledged that his is mostly a moral concern that attempts
to remove any ground £or arbitrary decision: " Those who
identify the rational with the geometrical, the algebraic, the
logical, may insist that, if the fundamental recognition of personhood depends on the person who asks, then the arbitrariness
of any position on abortion is conceded. If values must be
mixed even in identifying the human, who can object to
another's mixture? " 4 It would seem, however, that, jumping
from arguments based on biological data to ethical demands,
Noonan has neglected the philosophical analysis that must
bridge the gap between the two.
"'Is the aborted embryo or fetus a human being?' is perhaps
the most important single question in the whole ethical controversy concerning abortion," states Germain Grisez.5 This
single question, however, splits into two questions, one pertaining to biology, the other to philosophy or theology. Considering the first, a factual question: At what point in the re2 Ibid, p. 57.
•John O'Connor, "On Humanity and Abortion," Natural Law Forum, IS
(1968)' pp. Hl7-133.
•John T. Noonan, "Responding to Persons," Theology Digest, 21 (1973), !Wl307, at p. 299.
6 Germain Grisez, Abortion, the Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New
York: Corpus Books, 1970), p. 273.

Q50

GABRIEL PASTRANA

productive process does the individual originate?, Grisez says
that " since new human individuals develop from the union
of sperm and ovum, it would be more accurate to speak of how
life is transmitted, rather than of how life begins ... and if we
just point to a certain moment when a new individual begins,
it should be where the two halves ... have completed the process of uniting with each other to form a whole. Certainly this
has occurred before the first cell division." 11 Since life proceeds
from life and human life from human life in a continuous process, new individuals emerge from existing individuals. Thus,
relative to the parents the individuality of the offspring must
be admitted at conception and so the proper demarcation between parents and offspring is conception; the new individual
begins with conception. From this point of view, then, it is
certain that the embryo from conception to birth is a living,
human individual. In the case of twins, however, though their
individuality is established at conception, their individuation
from one another may occur somewhat later. 7
This assurance of modern biology that new individuals begin
at conception has been obscured or concealed in half truths,
Grisez laments, wherever the movement to approve abortion
has taken hold. Though these biological facts do not settle
the philosophical or theological question, they are nevertheless
relevant. On the other hand, a mere declaration of a restrictive
definition of person is not an argument but a begging of the
question. Grisez's second question is, then: Should we treat
all living human individuals as persons, or should we accept
a concept of person that will exclude .some who are in fact
human, alive and individuals, but who do not meet certain additional criteria we incorporate in the idea of person? In particular, is the zygote or the morula-incipient life even before
implantation in the uterus-to be regarded as a person with a
right to life? Is the embryo a person before it looks human?
Is it a person only after it could survive if separated from the
•Ibid., p. 14.

T

Ibid., p.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

251

mother? Or does it become a person only sometime after birth?
Grisez examines some criteria that have been advanced to define personhood. Humanization or the human socialization
process as a criterion for personhood is too elastic, a dangerous
and arbitrary concept as it is often used. If interpreted in a
psychosomatic manner it could be extended to include the embryo, since the embryo is not an individual entirely isolated
from the patterns of culture, but rather participates actively
from the outset; its potentiality of life is fulfilled by sel£actualization and not by extrinsic perception; freedom, selfdetermination, ability to choose and knowledge of circumstances are not to be considered as disintegrated or completely
separated from the capacities where those actions are rooted,
since they are not discrete entities, like solid blocks, which appear suddenly but rather they are the product of the continuous
progression of the capacities initiated at the beginning of the
embryo's existence. This growth and differentiation started
when life was transmitted by life, with the fertilized ovum
or a biological living organism as the source of its own progress
of growth and development. Looking at the characteristics and
manifestations of paradigmatic cases, i. e. the adult person, to
define the concept of person, would be begging the question.
From a more ethical point of view, Grisez finds especially unacceptable the analysis and the solutions proposed by utilitarianism and situationism. 8 He concludes his analysis by stating
that " it might be argued that our examination of the question
whether the aborted are human beings did not demonstrate absolutely that they are, in fact, persons." But that would be
missing the point. "In the first place," he says, "we saw that
beyond doubt the facts show the embryo at every stage to be a
living, human individual. To go beyond this is not a question
of fact but a question of metaphysics. We should never expect
and will never get a factual answer to the ulterior question.
What our arguments revealed is that there is no compelling rea8

Ibid., pp.

GABRIEL PASTRANA

son to deny that the embryo is a human person . . . we must
admit, at the very least, that the embryo can as well be considered a person as not." 9
There are some points in Grisez's analysis of the" additional
criteria" for personhood that will be taken up in our presentation of the concept of person later on in the second part of this
essay. At this stage we would like to offer some comments in
regard to Grisez's position. The first one concerns understanding of the zygote or new human individual. Grisez defines
individuality by the uniqueness of the genetic code and the
inner unity and division from others of the zygote. This takes
place at the moment of conception when the zygote receives its
genetic code and becomes one cell. This individuality is relative, i. e., it refers to the discontinuity of the new organism from
the parents. The absolute individuality in case of twins and
mosaics is terminated sometime later. Grisez does not indicate
when nor how it does take place. It seems to us that Grisez
has failed to see what is going on in the first stages of formation and the relevance that this might have for an analysis
of the concept of individuation. He seems equally to have difficulty in analyzing the concepts of uniqueness and inner unity
with division from others, in his understanding of the concept
of individuality. While genetic uniqueness is established at the
moment of conception, absolute individuality-inner unity and
division from others, or incommunicability-is not achieved
until sometime later. Thus Grisez is forced to distinguish two
kinds of individuality. In philosophical terms it is safe to say
that until absolute incommunicability is achieved it is not possible to talk about individuality. The second difficulty we have
with Grisez's presentation is his shift from the concept of individuality to that of personhood. He admits that his examination might not have demonstrated absolutely that the aborted
are persons. "This," he says, "is a question of metaphysics.
And we must admit, at the very least, that the embryo can or
•Ibid., p. 807.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

253

will be considered a person or not." If it is a metaphysical question, we should expect at least an attempt philosophically to
analyze or establish the concept of person, something much
more than the gratuitous assumption that " ethics must proceed
on the supposition that abortion kills a person."
Following a mainly ethical approach Paul Ramsey has attempted on several occasions to answer the question of the beginning of human life.10 Though his views have undergone
modification he strongly emphasizes the importance of the
genetic approach. After considering in great detail the significant stages that take place in the early days of conception, he
concludes that" we have three stages at which it is reasonable
to believe that human life begins: conception, when the unique genotype begins; segmentation, or when it is irreversibly
settled whether there will be one, two or more individuals; and
the early development of the fetus, when the ' outline' the
cells contained is actualized in all essential respects, with only
growth to come." 11 Ramsey gives a decisive importance to the
uniqueness of the genetic code of the new individual and to the
phenomenon of individuation. Though he wavers between the
two phenomena as the criterion to signal the beginning of individual human life, his final preference is for the latter one:
"segmentation provides a 'rebuttal argument' to the proof
of genotype. But for the fact of identical twins in human reproduction, the genetic argument for when life is transmitted
would prevail; since, however, there may be two individuals
having the same genotype from segmentation onward, the
genetic argument is rebutted." 12 And a few pages later he adds:
"I have not simply cited segmentation in rebuttal of the argument from genotype. Instead, I have appealed to the time at
10 Paul Ramsey, "Reference
Points in Deciding about Abortion," in The Morality
of Abortion, John T. Noonan (ed.), 60-100; "Feticide I Infanticide upon Request,"
Religion in Life, 39 (1970), 170-186; "Abortion, A Review Article," THE THOMIST,
37 (1), (1973), 174-226, at 189.
11 " Reference Points in Deciding about Abortion,"
p. 75.
12 "Abortion, A Review Article," p. 189.

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GABRIEL PASTRANA

or after which it is .settled whether there will be one, or two
or more individuals." 13 It seems that would be for Ramsey
the moment of inception for a new, individual human being.
The third stage that he had previously considered as one of
the possible moments when human life begins, i.e., the early
development of the fetus when the ' outline ' the cells contained is actualized in all essential respects, is no longer enthusiastically endorsed, because " the achievement of morphological signs of humanity seems to be more a development
than an arrival on the scene, and, second, I like a clear line
(and there is some need for a clear and definite line) when it
is a question of determining when a new and equal member of
the human community, a bearer also of inviolable right to life,
.shows his presence among us." This sounds strange, however,
for in the first writing Ramsey attributed to that stage the
actualization of the " essential aspects " of the blastocyst, while
now he speaks of " morphological humanity and major functioning organ systems."
It would seem that Ramsey's moral concern has blurred his
analysis. Genetic uniqueness, individuation, and the organismic actualization of the zygote provide grounds for a philosophical analysis which is lacking in Ramsey's presentations.
Very close to Ramsey's position is that of Charles E. Curran:
" My own particular opinion is that human life is not present
until individual life is established. In this context we are
talking about individual human life, but irreversible and differentiated individuality is not present from the time of fecundation." 14 The fourteenth day after conception could be pinpointed as the time when this process occurs. Curran's argument
is based, and we believe rightly so, on the concept of individuality," which employs biological data to determine when
individuality is present. The appearance of rudimentary organs
in my judgment does not constitute a quantitative threshold
Ibid., p. 191.
Charles E. Curran, "Abortion:
Theology," The Jurist,
(1973),
18

14

Law and Morality in Contemporary Catholic
p. 180.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

255

marking the beginning of individual human life for there is
still much development which is necessary. In my discussion
I have purposely refrained from using the term 'person' or
' personal life ' because the actual signs of such personal life
do not seem to be present until well after birth." 15
Curran's position, like that of Ramsey, is determined by an
ethical concern to establish a moral policy which would allow
a certain flexibility in some difficult cases of pregnancy. He
refuses to consider the concept of personhood, which he identifies with the much broader term of " personal life." The process of individuation, when the possibility of twinning is closed,
is seen as the time when a new human individual emerges.
His commitment to a fixed period, the fourteenth day after
conception, results from his concern for establishing a moral
policy rather than from a philosophical analysis of the biological data, which because of the variability of the elements indicate that individualization could take place before or after
that date.
Though Stanley Hauerwas's attempt goe.s further than answering the question of when human life begins, he sees the
physicality of the fetus as representing the necessary basis for
any possible form of what we think of as " fully human." The
moral importance of the recognition of the fetus as human is
a way of indicating our own essential physicality. 16 This is to
understand human life as concrete and particular with its physical and " biographical givens," which are a manifestation of
the universal and constitute the basis for man's covenantal relation with God. This, Hauerwas emphasizes, should favor
fetus development as a criterion, though, as he himself admits,
it will not answer the question of when human life begins.
Albert C. Outler is equally concerned with the body-soul
dualism, which, taking shape in Persian and Greek times, has
come down to our own day and obscures the question whether
1•

Ibid., p. 180.

Stanley Hauerwas, "Abortion, The Agent's Perspective," American Ecclesiastical Review, 167 (1973),
p. 105.
16

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GABRIEL PASTRANA

fetal life is human or sub-human, personal or non-personal.
Any answer to that question, he claims, will be rooted in our
intuitions as what human fetal life amounts to and in our
prior convictions as to what human life is. Outler sees the human person as a " divine intention." "Personhood is not a
part of the human organism nor is it inserted into a process of
organic development at some magic moment." 17 Outler's reference of the concept of person to the divine and its transcendence
will certainly be a most interesting aspect to consider for a better understanding of the whole concept; but it is still possible to
avoid the body-soul dualism and continue searching for the
" magic moment," seeking not so much to fix a precise time as
to understand the presuppositions of our concept of fetal and
human life, and thus make any decision about the "magic
moment" more reasonable and less arbitrary.
In the midst of this confusion concerning the " magic moment," Joseph F. Donceel, S. J., has revived the old doctrine
of immediate animation and delayed humanization. Donceel
tries to re-interpret Thomas Aquinas's doctrine that the embryo
is immediately animated by a vegetative ' soul', thereafter by
a sensitive ' soul ', and finally by the rational ' soul ' infused
once the matter has been disposed to receive it. Donceel contends that " those concessions have been reached, or could have
been reached on the basis of sound philosophical principles and
of common-sense knowledge which was available to Thomas
and his contemporaries." 18 The main philosophical principle
in question is that the human soul is the substantial form which
begins to inform the matter when this is sufficiently organized
to receive it. The common-sense knowledge refers to a superficial familiarity with the most basic and externally obvious
moments in the process of conception from a poorly though potentially formed embryo to a highly organized body with senses
17 Albert C. Outler, "The Beginnings of Personhood:
Theological Considera.tions," The Perkins Journal, fl7, I (1973), flS-34, p. 30.
18 Joseph F. Donceel, S. J., "Immediate
Animation and Delayed Hominization,"
Theological Studies, 31 (1970), 76-105, at 79.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

257

and brain. "That much," Donceel concludes, "Thomas knew,
and that much combined with his homomorphic conception of
man is enough to firmly establish his position of delayed animation." 19 If " soul " is understood in the traditional sense as the
first principle of unity and action of an organism, it will have
to be admitted that from the moment that the fertilized ovum
becomes one unit different from the composing elements there
is a certain kind of soul already present. Since it would seem
that at that early stage the matter is insufficiently prepared
for reception of the rational soul, this would be expected to
occur at some later time. Thus there would be a succession of
souls, which will vindicate Thomas Aquinas's thesis and Donceel's re-interpretation of immediate animation and delayed
hominization. But we believe this process can be interpreted
in an entirely different way, in view of the availability of
modern biological information. The common-sense knowledge
of biological data at the time of St. Thomas will be considered
totally insufficient. Moreover, failure to consider the present
available scientific data does violence to a very basic philosophical attitude of Thomas Aquinas: this is to take into consideration for any philosophical analysis not just the superficial
knowledge provided by the external senses or common-sense
knowledge but any and all knowledge provided by the biological
and natural sciences. We would like to think furthermore that
those " very .sound philosophical principles of Thomas," as
presented by Donceel, can perfectly be used today and that,
with the biological evidence presently available even if it is
not fully conclusive, St. Thomas would have arrived at a different conclusion. Further, it will be difficult to prove "the
sudden ontological shift " from vegetative to sensitive to a rational organism. Rather than speak of a sudden ontological
shift, it would seem to be sounder to understand the product
of conception in a process of early organization without demanding the presence of a soul in the traditional sense.
1•

Ibid., p. SQ,

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GABRIEL PASTRANA

Interpreting the available biological data, Louis Dupre
reaches the conclusion that" human life is present, and present
in an individual uniqueness, as soon as the genes of the parental
pools are combined." 20 At no point after conception do we detect a discontinuity radical enough to justify the assumption
of a pre-human stage of life. Following Grisez, Dupre sees "the
individuality which results from the genetic uniqueness of the
new life as no more than an inchoate individualization which
may still split into two separate individuals." 21 New human
life is incontrovertibly present from the start. Yet, at which
stage does it adopt that fulness which alone deserves the name
of personhood? This transcends the concern of physiology. Nor
do behavioral sciences, psychology or sociology answer that
question; rather they presuppose its presence. "The real problem is that personhood cannot be unequivocally defined . . .
our definitions of the person vary according to the issues we
happen to be discussing. They all contribute to our understanding of personhood, but none of them can settle the question of the beginning of personhood." 22 Dupre analyzes the
relationship of the human with the personal. His conclusion
is that they cannot be equated: even if the personal is always
the human, the opposite is not true: not all human life is personal, or at least not in the same degree. This degree of actualization is inherent in the notion of person; it is a dynamic
concept. However, a distinction has to be made between the
structure and its functions: the former is operative long before
the functions appear. Thus, since personhood is irreducible to
its functions alone, it is an original, an underived concept. But
this would seem to imply that, since it would be present, however minimally, with the humble beginnings of human life, it
coincides with human life itself. It is an equation with a difference, explains Dupre. The personal adds an element that
20

Louis Dupre, "A New Approach to the Abortion Problem," Theological, Studies,

34 (1973), 481-488, at 481.
21 Ibid., p.
22 Ibid., p. 483.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

was not contained in the human as such: an active process.
Now, self-determination presupposes a self-determining structure as an integral part of the activity itself. " In an essentially
dynamic entity the potential forms a simple reality with the
actual. At the .same time, since a dynamic entity can only
gradually be realized, the degree of actuality enters into the
very essence of personhood. Undoubtedly the distinction between the actual and the potential results in two different concepts of the person, that of a moral agent and that of a living
being which may become a self-determining agent." 28
Dupre's developmental concept of person is extended, on the
one hand, to include the beginning of human life while, on the
other hand, its dynamic aspect accounts for .self-determination
and later functions. Thus it explains both ends of the spectrum
of human personal life. But does it? Just in the form of questions, the following points could be raised. What is that dynamic aspect that is added to the human and makes it essentially distinct? Or what is exactly meant by equation with a difference? If in an essentially dynamic entity the potential forms
a simple reality with the actual, what exactly does the personal
add to the human? And where is the human left in this new
reality? And, second, if the degree of actuality enters into the
very essence of personhood, then that degree of actuality would
determine the essence of personhood and then we will need
not two but as many concepts of personhood as there are degrees of actuality.

The Developmental School
Under the developmental school are grouped those who hold
that, while the early stages of conception establish the genetic
basis for some sort of human being, further development is
required before one can legitimately speak of the life of an
individual human being. It is commonly asserted by the proponents of this school that the biological development which
starts at conception is a continuous series. Notwithstanding
2•

Ibid., p. 485.

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GABRIEL PASTRANA

the importance of the genetic formation which takes place at
the early stages of conception these authors assign a more
or less later event which would serve as the point of hominization.
Bernard Haring has examined some literature whose authors
would view the formation of the cerebral substance as critical
in the
of hominization. 24 Without the presence of the
cerebral cortex no personal life is possible, and personal life
manifests its nature through consciousness, self-reflection,
thought and free decision. Human consciousness has an indispensable substratum in the cerebral cortex without which no
manifestations of specifically human personal attributes are
conceivable. Thus, in those cases of conception where the fetus
does not reach this developmental stage, it can be said that
the ontogenesis of the human person did not succeed, and it
will not be a personal human being. Haring concludes that the
theory which presents hominization as dependent on the development of the cerebral cortex has some probability and deserves serious consideration and further study. Haring's own
judgment is that " the mere theory of hominization as dependent on the development of the cerebral cortex does not provide
any ground for depriving the embryo of the basic human right
to life." 25
Roy U. Schenk argues that in the continuous series of developmental stages the formation of the cerebral cortex indicates that the level of complexity at which self-awareness becomes possible will mark the point at which the fetus changes
from potential to an actual human person. 26 Thomas L. Hayes
emphasizes that throughout the continuous development of the
reproductive process there are certain important properties that
appear but none represents a point in development where the
24 Bernard Haring, Medical Ethics (Notre Dame, Indiana:
Fides Publications,
Inc., 1973), pp. 81-84.
25 Ibid., p. 84.
••Roy U. Schenk, "Let's Think about Abortion," The Catholic World, 207
(April 1968), p. HJ.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

261

biological form and function of the human individual are suddenly added. While the single cell stage early in development
does not possess many of the attributes of biological form and
function that are associated with the human individual, the
fetus late in development is obviously a living, human individual in form and function. In this continuous biological
development it might be worthwhile to consider the possibility
that the rights of the human person might evolve in the same
progressive way and, if so, Hayes suggests the possibility for
the theologians to define an arbitrary point early in pregnancy
at which time the embryo is endowed with the rights of existence.27
Daniel Callahan attributes the importance of the developmental school to the significance that it gives to the developmental process, rather than assigning the entire weight of the
" human " to genetic characteristics; this new interpretation
admits the possibility of a better understanding and evaluation of those cases where any given zygote may fail to develop
in a viable direction; and most important it makes room for
some important ethical distinctions such as life, human life,
individual human life, human being and person. Callahan also
points out the difficulties of this approach; among them, it does
not give a range as wide as that of the genetic interpretation
to the concept of potentiality; in the long and continuous process of conception the selection of one point-conception, implantation, cerebral cortex, quickening, viability-over the
others as the criterion for determining the advent of personhood would be difficult and and ultimately arbitrary. Moreover,
the definition and significance of some of those criteria such as
viability may change, with the advance of modern techniques.
More important, the accepted norm may be changed by society
or a particular group within society to serve its interests. 28 In
27

Thomas L. Hayes, "A Biological View," Commonweal, 85 (March 17, 1967),

pp.
28 Daniel Callahan, Abortion, Law, Choice and Morality
(New York:
millan Publishing Co., Inc., 1970), pp. 386-390.

Mac-

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GABRIEL PASTRANA

spite of these difficulties, of which Callahan is very well aware,
he supports this position. Callahan gives special importance to
the appearance of the cerebral cortex, especially as it relates
to the definition of the end of life. Recent studies have pointed
to brain activity as a decisive index of the presence of a " person." This has been clearly brought out in reference to the
moment of death. Like life, or the appearance of life, death is
a complex process which proceeds by stages and with some activities being terminated while others go on. The Report of the
Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School has become
a classic document of reference in those matters. Irreversible
coma with a completely flat electro-encephalograph has been
proposed as a new criterion for death. Thus even if some biological form -of life and some organs will continue functioning
with or without artificial aid, the new criterion would point to
the fact that the " person " no longer exists. For these reasons
Callahan finds the position of the developmental school more
attractive than the other two. This school takes account of the
biological evidence and allows such evidence to influence its
moral policy. 29 The difficulty with Callahan's evaluation of the
schools, and with his final preference for one of them, is that
it is ultimately based on moral grounds, as he himself admits:
" Each of the schools takes its stand not just on its theory
of how the biological data ought best to be interpreted biologically, but also on the moral consequences of adopting one
reading rather than another." Since the data as such do not
entail a philosophical or a moral conclusion, it becomes imperative for Callahan to use the moral policy set previously to interpret the data for the decision that is to be made. " Scientific
data as such are open to different readings and compatible with
different moral policies. Obviously people bring to the question
different backgrounds and different heritages, not to mention
their personal way of looking at the world . . . The biological
facts may be evident enough, but these facts are open to a
2•

Ibid., p. 396.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

263

variety of interpretations none of which is undeniably entailed
by the facts." ao Callahan's point of departure is the basic
philosophical assertion that biological data, however great the
detail and subtlety of scientific investigation, do not carry with
them .self-evident philosophical interpretations. Because of particular interests in establishing criteria for interpretation, the
kind of language used, and the type of analytic conceptual devices we bring to bear to solve the problem we set for ourselves,
a purely scientific answer to the question of the beginning of
human life is not possible. The conclusion is then clear: in
raising the question of the beginning of human life or any other
question, the biological data will have a different bearing according to what the purpose of asking the question is. Thus,
when we ask what are the pertinent criteria in determining
whether human life is present in the conceptus we need to know
first whether a determination that life begins at a given point
entails that it ought to be valued at that given point. If it is
determined that life is to be valued at that point, then one
interpretation of the biological data may be preferred, that
human life has begun; however, if it is determined that life
ought not be valued at that point, then a different interpretation of the same biological evidence will be pref erred, giving
an entirely different answer, i.e., life has not yet begun. In
other words, the biological endeavor is to be interpreted according to the moral policy set previously, or if one prefers, the
moral policy determines what value, if any at all, the biological
evidence has. Callahan goe.s as far as admitting that the question should not be, "When does human life begin? " but rather,
" When does human life begin when an abortion is needed or
necessary?" In answering that question one should not consider what is being asked but rather what one wants. That is
to say, the question should be answered with a prior question,
e. g., Are you asking the question because an abortion is desired? If the indications for an abortion are extremely serious,
00

Ibid., pp. 351 ff.

fl64

GABRIEL PASTRANA

then this, Callahan suggests, " will have much to do with
whether we say human life is present." 81 If Callahan's suggestion were to be carried a little farther but well within the
limits of its logic, one might, where rights of inheritance are at
issue, ask the lawyer what would be the best way of interpreting
the biological evidence. Or, being asked about the product of
conception, a doctor might reply " Go in peace; your baby is a
human being if that is what you desire to hear." In such cases, of
course, Callahan would refer us to the validity of the moral
policy previously set, to find out whether that policy satisfies
the criteria of consistency, congruence, and unity, and whether
" it is sensitive to the greatest range of values at stake." 82 The
biological evidence has almost lost its relevance and meaning.
The Social Consequences School
Finally, a different group of authors have sought to answer
the question of the beginning of human life and of personhood
on the basis of social, psychological, or moral factors. Emphasis
is placed, not on the continuity of the process of life, but on
"human life " as such and on its late manifestations. As this
process gets closer to the characteristically human manif estations the fetus or the infant gains his value and social recognition as human.
The complexity of the issues involved in the abortion controversy has been clearly described by Sissela Bok. Past attempts to define human life and its beginnings, she contends,
have not been very successful. These definitions have been expressions of different world views, often of a religious nature,
involving deep commitments with moral consequences. The
reason for the existing disagreement about the names and moral
consequences attached to those views is to be found in the
different purposes for which those views and definitions of
humanity, whether classificatory and descriptive, or normative
and prescriptive, were sought. Such attempts to define hu•1

Ibid., pp. 877-878.

••Ibid., p. 896.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

manity in order to establish moral policies have proven to be
most disastrous. 33 Therefore, Bok urges, we must abandon the
quest for a definition of humanity that will show us who has
a right to life. This does not mean, however, that concern for
the human condition should be abandoned. If the use of
seemingly universal criteria such as humanity and rationality
has proved to be dangerous and unsuccessful, other attempts
should be made to show concern for gaining knowledge about
human conditions and characteristics. Bok hopes to find this
new set of criteria in an understanding both of the harm that
comes from the taking of life and of the reasons for holding
life sacred. More important than a definition of humanity, it
seems clear, is a concern for human life. The new criteria are
best manifested, Bok tries to show, in the feelings that people
experience when life is destroyed. These feelings are that killing
is the greatest of all dangers for the victim, that killing brutalizes the killer, that it causes grief and a sense of loss in the
family of the victim and in others, and that it is somehow
threatening and harmful to society as a whole. Applying all
this to the problem of abortion, Bok proposes a new set of
criteria for identifying the human: semblance of human form;
consciousness of life, death, and pain; and ability to live independently .34
Clearly, these criteria are found only minimally in the early
stages of pregnancy but are prominent in infancy. Thus the
feelings that people will experience and the reasons for protecting or destroying life will vary according to the presence
or the absence of such criteria. Infancy and the early stages
of pregnancy stand at opposite ends of a scale. The absence
of these criteria would readily justify abortion on request in
the very early stages of pregnancy, while infanticide is definitely excluded by their presence. And as pregnancy progresses the
weight of the reasons for the protection of life becomes more
•• Sissela Bok, "Ethical Problems of Abortion," Hastings Center Studies, 2, I
(Jan. 1974), 33-52; cf. pp. 38-41.
••Ibid., pp. 42-43.

GABRIEL PASTRANA

and more obvious. Difficult as it may be to set a moral policy
to be applied in concrete cases, Bok proposes quickening and
viability as dividing lines, because of the factual relevance in
regard to the ability to live independently and, more importantly, because at those stages of pregnancy the reasons for
protecting life seem to be more present. 35 Bok is quick to distinguish between the lawfulness and the morality of abortion.
While the legality could be based upon the reasons discussed
above, other reasons of a religious, family, or personal nature
could determine the morality of a particular case of abortion.
And Bok firmly concludes that abortion should be considered
only as a last resort. 86
Needless to say, Bok's approach raises very important questions. Her appeal for concern for human life and for its protection will receive wide acceptance; the harm and pain and other
consequences of killing are so universally felt and these feelings
are so deeply rooted in human psychology. But unfortunately
that is precisely the weakness of her position: it is essentially
based on feelings that are subjective and individual even though
they are generally-but differently-sanctioned by human societies. Besides, Bok's criteria-semblance of human form, ability to live independently, capacity to know life, death, and
pain-are simply another attempt at defining humanity or a
human being. And, if her dissatisfaction with the "objective"
attempts results from their subjectivity when applied to moral
policies, one wonders how much objectivity and universality
her own approach, which is essentially subjective from the start,
can achieve. Rather than discard altogether the so-called objective approach, we .should reexamine and define it.
The morality of abortion and infanticide is the subject of
inquiry for Michael Tooley .37 His basic issue is what properties
a thing must possess in order to be a person or, what comes to
Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid., pp. 45 ff.
37 Michael Tooley, "Abortion and Infanticide,"
Philosophy and Public Affairs,
1 (Fall,
37-65.
35

36

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

the same thing, to have a right to life. This is a moral issue and
to answer it is to decide what basic moral principles one should
adopt for ascribing a right to life. Tooley's answer is that" an
organism possesses a .serious right to life only if it possesses the
concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and
other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity; this I will call the self-consciousness requirement." 38 To ascribe a right to an individual is to assert something about the prima facie obligations of other individuals to
act or to refrain from acting. This, however, is dependent on
the existence of certain desires on the part of the individual to
whom the right is ascribed. Why does A have a right to life
that must be taken .seriously, and why is self-consciousness a
requirement for personhood and for a right to life? Because,
Tooley says," it seems to be a conceptual truth that things that
lack consciousness, such as ordinary machines, cannot have
rights." Nor can they have de.sires, "interpreting desires as
states necessarily standing in some sort of relationship to states
of consciousness." That is to .say, to have a right one must
consciously desire it. Thus, "A has a right to X, is roughly
synonymous with A is the sort of thing that is the .subject of
experiences and other mental states, A is capable of desiring X,
and if A does desire X, then others are under prima facie obligation to refrain from actions that would deprive him of it." 39
Now the desires a thing can have are limited by the concepts
it possesses. To desire that a proposition be true one must
understand the proposition, and this cannot be done without
possessing the concepts involved. Thus having a right to life
presupposes that one is capable of desiring to continue existing
as a .subject of experiences and other mental states. This in
tum presupposes that one has the concept of such a continuing
entity and that one believes that one is such an entity. So an
entity that lacks such a consciousness of itself a.s a continuing
subject of mental states does not have a right to life, that is to
••Ibid., p. 44.

89

Ibid., p. 45.

GABRIEL PASTRANA

say, is not a person. This is not only a necessary but also a
sufficient requirement for personhood. If this is accepted as
the basic moral principle for the problem of abortion, it can be
seen that the product of conception at no instant of the usually
assigned stages of pregnancy-implantation,
attainment of human form, viability on birth-meets with the requirement of
self-consciousness. And the same can be said of infants until
they reach a certain age. Whether the acquisition of self-consciousness coincides with the acquisition of the power of speech
is to be decided by psychologists. Neither age nor the usually
assigned stages of pregnancy constitute morally relevant differences. Thus the claim that abortion and infanticide are
morally wrong does not hold true. 40 But Tooley, in a quite different direction, goes a step further, "one that may turn out to
be quite disturbing." Tooley's "troubling worry is whether
adult animals belonging to species other than homo sapiens
may not also possess a serious right to life," that is to say, may
not also be persons. If the requirement of self-consciousness
would be applied to those organisms, " once one reflects upon
the question of the basic moral principles involved in the ascription of a right to life to organisms, one may find himself driven
to conclude that our everyday treatment of animals is morally
indefensible, and that we are in fact murdering innocent persons." 41
The circularity of Tooley's argumentation is clear from the
start. To found the "basic moral principle " on the selfconsciousness requirement, and to defend this claim on the
ground that " it seems to be a conceptual truth that things that
lack consciousness, such as ordinary machines, cannot have
rights," is purely and simply begging the question, if it is not
a tautology. And from this follows Tooley's entire position.
When at the end one is faced with Tooley's "troubling worry "
of murdering innocent persons," i.e., animals, it becomes difficult not to reject altogether this unusual way of reasoning.
!bid., pp. 50-55,

0

Ibid., p. 65.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

At any rate we shall have the opportunity to study more closely
the implications of self-consciousness as a requirement for personhood in the second part of this essay.
Tristam Engelhardt attempts to determine the status of the
fetus from a philosophical point of view. 42 For him" the philosophical inspection of the beginning of personhood is a conceptual analysis of the different stages of human ontogeny." 43
This analysis of human ontogeny leads him to the conclusion
that personhood is not a univocal concept but a heterogeneous
one, i. e., " a blend of numerous concepts operating in various
forms." This is how he proceeds. One has little difficulty in distinguishing persons from inanimate objects, plants, or animals,
i.e., those who are persons from those who are not. Self-awareness and rationality would seem to be the crucial property and
ground for that distinction. Through self-awareness subjects
are capable of "having" part of the universe, appropriating
life as " theirs," asserting certain rights, and seeing themselves
as moral agents, being ends in themselves. Being a person
brings about the possibility of being the subject of autonomous
actions, self-awareness, and self-determination. If this initial
conceptual analysis is applied to the fetus one can easily see
that the fetus does not qualify as a per.son.44
Engelhardt analyzes at length the question of the brain and
its relation to personhood. The brain, he says, is ultimately
connected with the mind and with consciousness; it can be
considered as " the .singular focus of embodiment of mind, and
in its absence man as a person is absent." A look at what takes
place at the end of a man's life will help to understand the
connection of the brain with consciousness and personhood:
one can decide that death has occurred when the destruction of
42 Tristam
Engelhardt, " The Beginnings of Personhood: Philosophical Considerations," The Perkins School of Theology Journal, 27 (1973), 20-27; "The
Ontology of Abortion," Ethics, 84, 1 (1973), 217-234; "Viability, abortion and the
difference between a fetus and an infant," American Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynecology, 116 (June 1, 1973), 429-434.
48 " The Beginnings of Personhood," p. 20 .
.. Ibid., pp. 20-21; "The Ontology of Abortion," pp. 219-220.

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the brain as an intact functioning organ has taken place. Yet,
more than an active EEG is required to establish the presence
in the world: the activity of the brain, present in the fetus
at an early age of development, is just the necessary condition
for establishing the presence in the world; what is lacking is
" an actually developed physical basis for personal presence. All
the fetus has is an abstract potentiality." This evidence indicates that a distinction should be made between human biological life and human personal life, a distinction of ethical
significance with respect to beings and values. The potentiality
for human personal life in the future, such as can be ascribed to
the fetus, does not guarantee actual personality, and the value
assigned to the fetus because of the promise of its potentiality
does not secure personhood to the fetus, but only value in
terms of expected personhood. At no instance is there an intrinsic value as if the fetus were an end in itself, but it comes
from outside, from the expecting couple, the mother, society,
or other external considerations. 45
In the continuum of human life from zygote to mature person, the ends of the spectrum appear to be qualitatively different, though no particular quantitative change identifies the
acquisition of a status different in kind from the previous
status. One confronts a complexity of quantity and quality;
" but the search for a simple decisive development overlooks
the complexity of the substance of personhood which is more
a category of measure than one of quantity or quality. The
category of person is rather a qualitative quantity where no
particular quantity is decisive, yet where there are qualitative,
distinct alternatives. As a point of departure, the definition
of a human person as a rational animal will be accepted: only
that which is rational, self-conscious, and embodied in an
animal organism counts as a human person. In that sense, not
only the fetus is not in the strict sense a human person, neither
is the child until a certain level of consciousness is achieved. It
•• "The Beginnings of Personhood," p. 22; " The Ontology of Abortion," pp.
221-224.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

follows then that any attribution of personal qualities is metaphorical until such a level of self-consciousness is attained. In
the case of the infant that level is attained somewhere late in
the early part of infancy or childhood." 46
However, even before that level is achieved, there is a series
of instances when the child, and even the fetus, play a certain
role vis-a-vis society, the mother, the parents, and other agents.
This gives the child and the fetus different degrees of acceptability; they are present in the world, though differently. This
role they play in society suggests the need for a second concept
of person to be used to identify deficient cases of personhood.
In this sense, viability acquires a significant importance in the
sense that it makes it possible for the fetus to be present
in the world; though in an imperfect manner, it plays the
" social " role of a "person." From this analysis, Engelhardt
concludes that one is forced to acknowledge two concepts of
human life: biological life and personal life; and two concepts
of person: the " social " and the strict concept of person. It is
only the first alternative in each dichotomy that applies to the
fetus. 47
Undoubtedly, Engelhardt has faced the issues directly by
placing the ontological status of the fetus at the focus of attention prior to any moral consideration. The difficulty with
Engelhard's analysis, however, is that as soon as he initiates
his " conceptual analysis of the different stages of human ontogeny," he shifts his ontological argumentation to a moral one.
The core of Engelhardt's proof is his analysis of the concept of
self-consciousness as the crucial requirement for personhood;
he forgets altogether the structure and ontology of the subject
of self-awareness. And though biological evidence, as he rightly
says, does not decide the issues involved one way or the other,
it has a relevance, as he also admits, that goes beyond the bio46 " The Ontology of Abortion," pp. 229-282; " The Beginnings of Personhood,"
pp. 28-24.
47 " The Beginnings of Personhood," p. 24; " The Ontology of Abortion," pp.
280-288.

GABRIEL PASTRANA

logical. What one gets from then on is an analysis and an evaluation of the fetus in terms of moral concepts that he has introduced, with the biological evidence amounting to no more than
describing the fetus, and even the child, as " biological human
beings." Then it is no longer an ontological consideration but
a moral reasoning. The difference between the subject in itself and the subject exhibiting certain properties settles, for
Engelhardt, the question of existence or nonexistence of personhood, while on the other hand he identifies self-awareness with
rationality. A clearer distinction between the two and discussion of their interrelationship and dependence would have clarified the concept of personhood.

II.

HUMAN LIFE AND PERSONHOOD:
PHILOSOPHICAL

BIOLOGICAL

BASIS AND

ANALYSIS

Identifying the Question
A look at the literature on abortion will clearly indicate the
different ways in which the questions have been raised. Here
are a few instances. For Grisez the most important single question is: When does human life begin? Noonan, however, raises
the further question how to determine the humanity of a being.
Can age be the determinant of humanity? What determines
when a being is human? When can human freedom be vindicated by killing other human beings? Reviewing Noonan's
position, John O'Connor asks: How should we proceed to determine the criterion for humanity? For Callahan the question
when human life begins presupposes another set of questions:
What is being asked when that question is raised? Arc
we seeking a factor that differentiates the human from the nonhuman? If so, for what purpose: for embryology, or for law,
or to define or solve the abortion problem? Glanville Williams
says that the question is not when " life " begins, but when
"human life" begins. Wertheimer puts it this way: At what
stage, if any, and for what purposes, if any, is abortion justified?
What is the value of fetal life in its various stages? When does

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273

a human life begin? For Ramsey the query is when individual
human life begins or, in ethics, when equally protectable human
life begins. Hellegers states that the question is not when human life begins but when human life has a value, while Tooley's
main concern is what gives something a right to life. Finally,
Thomson asks: Even if a man becomes a person before birth,
how are we supposed to advance from this fact to the conclusion
that abortion is not morally permissible? The list could be extended.
While some of the authors try to define the question and to
distinguish the issues involved, many do not. Much of the confusion that has pervaded the abortion controversy is due, we
believe, to this lack of precision in identifying the question or
questions and in determining the content of the terms used.
Among the terms used, the following can be distinguished:
"Life," "human life," "human individual " or "individual human life," and " human person." However, while we do need
to know precisely what is meant by these terms, it is more important that a clear distinction be made between the factual,
the philosophical, and the moral issues. We would like to reiterate the claim already made in the introduction that the
study of the factual question and a philosophical analysis of
it are to precede any moral evaluation of the problem of abortion. Since the factual question depends on the presently available empirical information, and this is far from being conclusive, scientific research must continue. Furthermore, since different philosophical approaches can be expected in the interpretation of the biological data, the moral evalution will suffer
from this indetermination. Nevertheless, the philosophic analysis remains a prerequisite for the analysis of the morality of
abortion. If we take the available biological data as our point
of departure the two philosophical questions are: (1) When
does individual human life begin-that is, what is an individual
human being, and how and when can it be realized in the fetus?
and (2) What is meant by personhood, and how and when can
it be applied to the fetus?

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Biological Data
Most ethicists' writings on this subject have borrowed the
empirical data from recent writings on the biochemistry and
physiology of reproduction. Fortunately, scientists who have
participated in the discussion have offered under their own
authority descriptions of what happens in the first stages of
human reproduction. Though unfortunately there is no one
exclusive presentation of the process of conception, there is
agreement as to the basic processes, with differences only as to
minor details. In this essay, and in spite of some differences as
to details, we shall borrow mostly from Andre Hellegers, M. D.,
James J. Diamond, M. D., E. C. Amoroso, and C. R. Austin. 48
The terms " life " and "human life," as applied to the product of conception, do not seem to present much of a problem.
Most writers, if not all, agree that " life " and " human life "
refer to the characteristics and components of a living organism
which has human origins. It is the determination of what constitutes " individual human life," with the stress on " individual," that calls for a closer scrutiny.
In the process of conception that starts when the sperm and
the ovum are first joined together to form one cell, there is a
series of stages of organization, growth, and development, each
with its special role, as described in biological literature.
Prior to fertilization, the sperm which ultimately fertilizes
the ovum goes through a process of capacitation which gives
the sperm the ability to fertilize the ovum. Fertilization follows, and soon after-40-60 hours-the newly formed cellorganism undergoes its first splitting of self into two carbon
copies. At the 4-cell or 8-cell stage the mass cell descends into
•• Andre E. Hellegers, " Fetal Development," Theological Studies, SI (1970),
S-9; "The Beginnings of Personhood: Medical Considerations," The Perkins School
of Theology Journal,
1 (1973), 11-15; James J. Diamond, M. D., "Abortion,
Animation, and Biological Hominization," Theological Studies, 36 (1975),
E. C. Amoroso, "Development of the Early Embryo," Science Journal, 6, 6 (1970),
special issue on Human Reproduction; C. R. Austin, " The Egg and Fertilization,"
Science Journal, 6, 6 (1970).

PERSONHOOD:

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275

the uterine cavity which has been undergoing some changes
to receive the zygote; nidation takes place and the process of
implantation starts, which goes on up until the end of the
second week.
Throughout these first stages of conception certain facts,
characteristics, and behavior are pointed out as playing special
roles important in the biological progress of the product of conception. First of all, the fertilized egg is assured of automatic
development unless untoward events occur, a characteristic not
found in the individual ovum or sperm, which left to themselves
inevitably die. With fertilization a new genetic package is
formed containing genetic information brought forth from the
father by the sperm and from the mother by the ovum. Cell
division or cleavage follows. During the initial .stages of this
process, however, the fertilized egg does not seem to be dependent on any paternal genetic material contributed by the
sperm. The vital activity seen in those early days is ordered by
what is called the messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA) from the
mother's ovum, while after organization of the blastula (14-22
days) the directness of the internal activity of the conceptus
is adiocratic and attributed to the influence of the specifically
distinctive fetal messenger RNA elaborated by the conceptus itself.49 "All these matters are brought forth," states Hellegers,
" to point out that, although at fertilization a new genetic
package is brought into being within the confines of one cell, this
anatomical fact does not necessarily mean that all of the genetic
material in it became crucially activated at that point, or that
final irreversible individuality has been achieved." 50 Much is
left to be done before that is achieved.
Another important characteristic is the possibility that during
this early stage the sphere of cells may split into identical parts
to form twins. The phenomenon of twinning in the human may
•• Hellegers, "Fetal Development," pp. S-5; Diamond, "Abortion, Animation, and
Biological Hominization," p. 310 ff.
• 0 Hellegers, " Fetal Development," p. 5.

Q76

GABRIEL PASTRANA

occur up until the fourteenth day, or thereabouts. Likewise, the
reverse phenomenon, conjunction, may occur, i.e., twins or
triplets may recombine to form one organism. Although the
evidence of these phenomena comes mostly from experiments
conducted in animals, some human cases have been reported.
These phenomena of twinning or recombination point to the
fact that a good deal of organizing is going on in the new organism and that, until this is completed, irreversible individuality is not settled.
Some reasons for these strange phenomena are to be found
in a process which is taking place parallel to that of celldivision-the process of differentiation. As the zygote goes
through the process of cell division each cell is totipotential;
i.e., capable of being differentiated into any type of cell. Thus
each of the cells of the early cell-mass is potentially a brain cell,
a bone cell, a blood cell, etc. Laboratory experiments have
shown that, if the early cell-mass is divided into two halves and
each half is allowed to grow, the phenomenon of twinning will
take place; if, however, the two halves are not allowed to grow
beyond a short period of time after which they are recombined,
they will constitute just one adult form; finally, if prior to differentiation cells from one area of the morula are grafted to another part of the morula, the eventual part of the individual is
not affected; if on the other hand this grafting of cells of different
types is done after differentiation, there will be a case of
monster-form. Differentiation then reveals much about the
process of formation and behavior of the zygote at that early
stage of pregnancy. The first differentiation to take place is
one by which a group of cells differentiate into a specialized
cell to form the trophoblast, which will have a specific role and
will follow a different pattern of growth and behavior to form
the placenta. " The trophoblast is the most precocious part
of the egg. Its cells divide more rapidly than the other cells
and soon begin to become differentiated. They stand out in
marked contrast with the remainder of the egg, the inner cell
mass which has more primitive appearance and divides more

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

fJ-77

slowly. Those two parts of the egg now run separate courses." 51
In the morula cell mass there is a primordial nonfixed differentiation potentiality. It is widely admitted, however, that
from one third to one half 0£ all fertilized ova never survive to
implant or differentiate to any advanced degree because of
failure in the uterine cavity (exogenous conditions), or failure
on the part of the zygote itself (endogenous conditions). In
the normal case the nonfixed differentiation potentiality retains
its pluripotentiality until the hominal organizer appears in
the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, the blastula. An invagination at the lower pole of the blastula occurs forming the blastopore, and on its posterior lip appears what is termed the primary organizer. This organizer seems to play a vital role. Its
origins are obscure; many of its effects are not understood.
What it does is better known than how it does it. H this organizer does not appear, or if it is removed, no subsequent differentiation will occur. No differentiation of specific organ systems can take place unless this organizer orders the pluripotential cells to differentiate into such specific organ systems.
Another crucial point is that when the primary organizer appears the unity 0£ the organism is established; twinning and /
or recombination can no longer occur. For these reasons, Diamond concludes, "the scientist has an almost insuperable inclination to identify hominization as being positable no earlier
than the blastocyst stage; £or it is at this stage that the hominizable products of fertilization and the non-hominizable products of fertilization are distinguished. I submit that we can
justifiably hold that at fertilization are laid down only the
characteristics of the subsequently hominizable entity (ies), the
hominization and individualization of which cannot be posited
until late-second or early-third week after fertilization." 52 Organismality will continue; however, all further epigenetic development is served by what are termed secondary organizers.
The totipotentiality of the cells is directed by the primary or51
62

E. C. Amoroso, " Development of the Early Embryo," p. 60.
Diamond, foe. cit., p. 315; cf. pp. 310-314.

278

GABRIEL PASTRANA

ganizer to pluripotentiality which under the secondary organizers form the particular functions, organs, and systems.
There is a far greater continuity of development between
primary and secondary organizer activity than ever exists between pre-organizer existence of the blastula and post-organizer
existence. The same difference exists between the pre-implanted
entity's vital capacity for supply and continued existence and
that of the post-implanted entity. "In short," Diamond finally
concludes, " the biologist holds that the numerous biological
events converging in the general time area of the 14th to 22nd
day weigh extremely heavily in any calculus of the beginning
of the life of a homo." 53
In the light of these considerations the following events and
states have special importance in the development of the product of conception: fertilization and the unique genetic constitution of the new organism, with the predominant role played
by the genetic element of the female component; cleavage or
cell-division and the totipotentiality of the cell in the first
stages; first differentiation which will end up in the formation
and development of the placental cells, following a different
course and starting the process of implantation. The nonfixed
or presumptive differentiability of the cells at the blastocyst
stage retaining their totipotentiality until the appearance of
the primary organizer and the attainment of organismality, to
be continued by the secondary organizer. Crucial difference
in the vital activity of the cells pre- and post-implantation
and the attainment of individuality, i.e., irrevocable unity of
the organism with the appearance of the primary organizer,
closing the possibility for the phenomena of twinning and / or
recombination.
Philosophical Analysis
What is the philosophical significance of these biological
data? How should they be interpreted, and what meaning will
the philosophical interpretation itself have?
•• Ibid., p. 316.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

Before we answer these questions, a certain clarification is
needed in order to set forth the conceptual framework upon
which our answer will be based. We assume that the biological
individual human being described in the scientific literature is
an entity which exists in the natural world. As such it becomes
the object of study or consideration not only of biological and
natural sciences but of other disciplines as well, one of them
being philosophy. The particular philosophic task will be to
identify that entity, its nature, its properties, etc., and to define
it, using philosophical terms and concepts. It is the role of
metaphysics and natural philosophy to study the " order" that
reason discovers in nature, i.e., to study the nature, the constitution of things, and how are they related in and to the whole
world (natural philosophy). This is Thomas Aquinas's understanding of natural philosophy, as he interprets Aristotle in the
Nicomachean Ethics. There are two types of order: one type
of order reason discovers in nature, and this is studied in metaphysics and natural philosophy; the other type of order reason
makes,. and it is divided according to the area in which the order
is made: that made in the arrangement of concepts is the concern of logic, that established in the operation of the will is an
ethical consideration and constitutes the moral order, and finally that made in external things is the subject matter of arts in
general. 54
"'Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, I, lect. I, I: "Ordo autem
quadrupliciter ad rationem comparatur. Est enim quidam ordo quern ratio non
facit, sed solum considerat, sicut .est ordo rerum naturalium. Alius autem est
ordo, quern ratio considerando facit in proprio actu, puta cum ordinat conceptus
suos ad invicem, et signa conceptuum, quia sunt voces significativae. Tertius autem
est ordo quern ratio considerando facit in operationibus voluntatis. Quartus autem
est ordo quern ratio considerando facit in exterioribus rebus, quarum ipsa est
causa, sicut in area et domo ... Nam ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet considerare ordinem rerum quern ratio humana considerat sed non facit: ita quod
sub naturali philosophia oomprehendamus et metaphysicam. Ordo autem quern
ratio considerando facit in proprio actu, pertinet ad rationalem philosophiam, cuius
est considerare ordinem partium orationis ad invicem . . . Ordo autem actionum
voluntariarum pertinet ad considerationem moralis philosophiae. Ordo autem quern
ratio considerando facit in rebus exterioribus constitutis per rationem humanam,
pertinet ad artes mechanicas."

QSO

GABRIEL PASTRANA

It appears that we must fir.st and independently consider the
metaphysical nature of the entity presented to us by science,
i.e., the biological individual human being. Whatever may be
the conclusions, and their meaning and relevance for any further consideration of the same reality, the philosophical analysis
is needed, one by which reason discovers the " order" of things.
It is a discovery rather than a decision. We do fully realize that
this interpretation is not uniform and neither is it the exclusive
patrimony of a special group. Difference in approach and
methodology and, what is more important, different philosophical backgrounds may bring about different interpretations. As
it must be clear by now, our approach and conceptual framework is the ontological realism of Aristotle and Thomas
Aquinas. We shall be using particularly their theories of hylemorphism and individuation. While we accept the limitations
of such a philosophical approach, we cannot understand Sissela
Bok's refusal to consider the validity, even if limited, of such
an enterprise, and much less do we comprehend the need of
moral, social, or legal biases that Daniel Callahan proposes as
a prerequisite for answering the question of the beginning of
human life and what is to be denominated by an individual human being. Though it will be most difficult to claim absolute
objectivity for the philosophical analysis that we propose, there
is no possibility of objectivity if we adopt Bok's or Callahan's
methodologies.
With the above clarification in mind, let us see what philosophical understanding is possible of the biological individual
human being. 55
From the biological description of the process of conception
it would seem safe to conclude that that period is one of organization, disposition and differentiation: the vital activity of
the cell-mass before and after implantation is crucially different;
the totipotentiality of the cell-mass remains indeterminate until
55 The most important works of Thomas Aquinas consulted for this philosophical
analysis are, De Ente et Essentia, De Principio lndividuationis, De Principiis

Naturae. In Boethio de Trinitate.

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281

the primary organizer appears, when the differentiability of the
cell-mass is ordered and the potentiality of the cells or groups
of cells receives concrete functions. What follows, carried over
by the secondary organizers, is a process of growth and development of what has been essentially constituted, with each organ
or system following a different pattern or timetable of development. Now, if we analyze this from a philosophical point of
view we find that the content of the biological description corresponds to the content of the philosophical concepts to be used.
Philosophically considered, an individual is an entity which in
and by itself is one and indivisible. Thus, besides the specific
difference it has by being what it is, a numerical difference is
added: it is one entity within the species it belongs to and,
being one, it seals off the possibility of division, multiplication,
or reunification. This oneness is achieved through the determination brought about by the full disposition of the matter
for the advent of the form. Now, if we apply these philosophical
concepts to the different aspects of the process of conception
from its beginning to the appearance of the primary organizer,
these concepts suffer no violence or distortion. The biologist
speaks of the nonfixed differentiability of the cell-mass and the
difference of behavior before and after implantation; the philosopher, on the other hand, speaks of the disposition of the
material element to receive the form. The product of conception goes through this process of organization and disposition
in which the unity is not evident and the totipotentiality of the
mass-cell is indeterminate. When this differentiability is organismically oriented to perform certain specific functions, the
scientist refers to it as a biological human individual. For the
philosopher such a disposition of the material element signals
the advent of the substantial form actualizing the ultimate
specific difference and establishing an individual human being.
The two concepts, that of the biologist and that of the philosopher, though they are close, are nevertheless different. The
biologist can prove empirically that an entity has the specific
biological characteristics which for him define the human

GABRIEL PASTRANA

species. For the philosopher, on the other hand .. the claim that
the proper disposition of the material element is such as to
evince the advent of the substantial form is a philosophical one,
but one which is based on his experience of the natural world,
i.e., the biological description of the process of conception.
Thus, we propose that when the product of conception going
through those first stages of organization and differentiation
has reached that point where its differentiability is determined
to perform the specific functions of a biological individual human being, this coincides with its disposition to receive the substantial form that qualifies it both specifically and numerically
as an individual human being. In terms of time, the biological
evidence considered above as pointing to the period from the
second to the third week (14th to
day) after fertilization
as the time of the appearance of the biological individual human being, or, more .strictly, indicating its nonappearance before that time, will also be valid from a philosophical point of
view.
Consequently, to call the product of conception human simply because it has human origins, as Noonan proposes. will not
stand a biological analysis nor a philosophical one. Nor would
the uniqueness of the genetic package established at the moment of fertilization satisfy the requirements for individuality.
It is the oneness and the incommunicability of the entity that
specifically characterizes it as individual. If that is the case,
Grisez's distinction between relative and absolute individuality
is irrelevant. Ramsey and Curran look upon the moment when
the phenomenon of twinning is no longer possible as the beginning of the individual human being. While their position is
very close to ours, they overlook the relevance of the biological
evidence as the basis for a philosophical analysis that would
justify that position. Nor would it seem wise, biologically or
philosophically, to commit oneself to a definite date, the 14th
day, as Curran does.
As for Donceel's position, it would seem that there is no need
to revive the theory of the succession of souls, which will re-

PERSONHOOD:

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283

quire an ontological .shift from one stage to the next. Undoubtedly, as Donceel would claim, the product of conception
is from its very beginning a certain entity, and as such we
would be forced to assign it some sort of form. But instead of
looking at it as a substantially constituted entity informed
progressively by vegetative, .sensitive, and rational forms, it
would be more in agreement with biological evidence to consider the product of conception as animated by a " transient
form." ·what takes place during the process of " generation "
and what kind of entity goes through that process are better
understood philosophically by what that entity is tending to or
is going to be than by what it is when undergoing the process
of change. Moreover according to the traditional understanding
of the substantial form, the form of any entity implies a certain
stability; thus the material element which is informed, together
with the form itself, constitutes a stable, determined, and
durable way of being. This character of stability is certainly
alien to whatever form affects the product of conception undergoing the process of disposition and organization during those
early stages. And even if nutrition and continuous subdivision
of cells, characteristic functions of a vegetative form, are among
the primary activities of the product of conception during those
early days, instead of inferring a succession of souls, vegetative,
sensitive, rational, we pref er to view the product of conception
as an ongoing, undetermined entity better understood by
looking at that crucial point of perfection and disponibility toward which it tends than by what it is during the process of
"generation."
From the point of view of biology, the appearance of the
primary organizer .seems to constitute a crucial event in the
stage of development of the blastocyst. As indicated above,
biologists find it easier to describe what the primary organizer
does by observing and analyzing the behavior of the constituting cells than to determine precisely what this organizer is
and what exactly triggers its appearance. It would certainly
be of immense importance if progressive scientific research

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GABRIEL PASTRANA

would tell us more about the nature of this mysterious element.
At the present stage of scientific knowledge biologists find the
behavioral characteristics and activities of the cells, before and
after the appearance of the primary organizer, to be specifically
different, as described above. The appearance of the primary
organizer constitutes, in their view, a most crucial and significant event that marks for the composing cells of the embryo
a specifically different way of behaving.
From a philosophical standpoint we will have to accept, for
the present, the inability of science to determine with more
precision the nature of the primary organizer and its coming
into existence. But the description of the behavior and activities of what constitutes the product of conception before
and after the appearance of that element can be defined in
philosophical terms which in Scholastic language correspond
to the disposition of the material element to receive the substantial form for which it is being disposed. And when this
happens a stable and determined way of being and acting is
brought about.

The Concept of Person
Even if we agree to take seriously the biological evidence
and accept the conclusion that the product of conception at
that early stage is an individual human being, there is still
much more to say about man. The concept of man is much
broader and richer than that of a human individual substance.
Granted that there are specific biological differences that distinguish man from other forms of animal life, that which really
specifies man as man goes beyond these biological differences.
Man is above all a person. The question now is: What is a
person? Which among the characteristics proper to man makes
him a person? Is to be a person an endowment or an achievement? What kind of concept is personhood? Is it a moral, a
psychological, or a legal concept-or is it strictly and primarily
a philosophical one? At the outset a decision has been made to
limit the application of the term "person" to man alone,

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

among visible created things. Is the concept of person then the
result of a decision, or do we discover it? These are some of
the questions we have to face when trying to apply the concept
of person to man, at whatever stage of his development.
It is commonly held that the concept of personhood is a
moral one. This is the point of departure of Callahan, Bok,
Tooley, and Thomson. Others define" person" in a way which
is thought to be meaningful, relevant, and acceptable for a
particular group or for society at large.:;6 In an otherwise very
insightful article, A. Di Ianni takes it to be an obvious fact
that" personhood is an important moral concept ascribing basic
moral rights." 57
Contrary to these views we would like to propose (1) that
the concept of person is first of all a philosophical and indeed
a metaphysical concept and
that any moral, legal, or psychological aspect of personhood is a dimension of and presupposes ontological personhood. In other words, the ontological
structure of personhood grounds every other aspect of the person. We shall try to present a philosophical understanding of
the concept of person. Though this excursus might give the
impression of leading us off the track of our present discussion,
we consider it most important in order to under.stand the concepts involved in our study.
The history of philosophy bears witness to much serious
reflection on personhood. It has been within the Christian tradition, and in efforts to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy
Trinity and the Incarnation, that the concept of person has
been developed. Attempts were made to explain and distinguish between that which is common to individuals sharing the
.same nature and that which belongs to the individual as such.
Speaking .specifically of man, St. Augustine states that "person
does not signify a species, but that which belongs to the singu56 See Andie L. Knutson, "The Definition and Value of a New Human Life,"
Social Sciences and Medicine, 1 (1967), 7-29.
57 Albert R. Di Ianni, S. M., "Is the Fetus a Person?",
The American Ecclesiastical Review, 168, 5 (May 1974), 309-326.

GABRIEL PASTRANA

lar and the individual." 58 From a strict philosophical point of
view Boethius defined person as " an individual substance of
a rational nature." 59
Some centuries later medieval philosophico-theological reflection further elaborated Boethius'.s definition. We shall try
to present Thomas Aquinas's major theses on the person. 60 The
person is to be understood in relation to being and substance. 61
To exist is to be actual, to be real. Existence, however, is predicated of things in different ways: there are things which exist
in themselves; other things can exist only in a subject. Thus
substances are distinguished from accidents. It is proper to
a substance to exist in and by itself, that is to say, to subsist
in a special and more perfect mode of existing than that which
belongs to accidents. 62 This property, subsistence, i. e., aptness
to exist in and by itself, adds something positive and unique to
a thing or reality: the character or perfection of being complete
and total. This perfection is found in every substance, whether
simple or composed, and is ref erred to as a " suppositum " or
"hypostasis," or, in the case of a rational substance, as a" person." Thus person means an individual human substance existing in and by itself; personhood confers the perfection of
St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XV, 7, 11.
Boethius, Contra Eutichen et Nestorium, c. I.
60 The concept of person as understood by Thomas Aquinas has been a subject of rich philosophical reflection among all the major interpreters and commentators of Aquinas. We will not enter into an analysis of the differences among
Aquinas's commentators. Basically we will follow the interpretation of Capreolus
(1444). A very good presentation of this classical question is offered by Umberto
Degl'Innocenti, 0. P., ll Problema della persona nel Pensiero di S. Tommaso,
Roma: Libreria editrice della Pontificia Universita Lateranense, 1967.
61 Summa Theol., III, q. 19, a. I ad 4:
"Esse pertinent ad ipsam constitutionem
personae;" Ibid., I, q. 8, a. 1: "Esse est i!Iud quod est magis intimum cuilibet,
et quod profundius omnibus inest, cum sit formale respectu omnium quae in re
58
59

sunt."
62 De Potentia, q. 9, a. 1, ob. 5: "Subsistere nihil aliud est quam per se existere.
Quod ergo existit solum in alio, non subsistit; " Summa Theol., I, q. 29, a. 2: "Illa
enim subsistere dicimus quae non in alio sed in se existunt" ; De Unione V erbi
lncarnati, q. un., a. 2: " Est autem substantiae propium ut per se et in se suhsistat; accidentis autem est in alio esse.''

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

287

completeness and dignity upon an individual human substance.63 So we have the two constitutive essential elements of
the person 64 : the individual human substance, which stands as
the material element, and the formal element, that which is
most perfect and actual in a thing: the aptitude to exist in and
by itself, which " terminates," completes, the individual human
substance, giving it autonomy of being. 65 This is what is most
perfect in nature: to subsist in a rational nature. 66 Why does
the substance, i.e., the individual human nature, have that
capacity to exist in and by itself? The answer is to be found
in the understanding of the mutual, intrinsic and essential reference of potency to act and, in our case, in the mutual, intrinsic
and essential reference of the individual human substance (potency) to its subsistence (act) ,67
Because of this character of completeness and autonomy of
being, everything that is found in the person exists in it as in
its proper subject; in: other words, the person is the subject, the
68 Summa Theol., I, q. 29, a. 8:
"Persona significat id quod est perfectissimum
in tota natura, scilicet subsistens in rationali natura." Ibid., I, q. 80, a. 4:
"Nomen personae non est impositum ad significandum individuum ex parte naturae,
sed rem subsistentem in tali natura." Cf. ibid., III, q. 2, a. 8.
6 • With Capreolus we should note the distinction
between the formal element
of the person-the act of being-and the person formally taken which is the whole
composed of the essence and the act of being. Capreolus further distinguishes between the person denominative taken: the individual substance habens esse in
ordine intellectivo, and the person formaliter taken which is the essence and the
act of being but not to be understood as if from the two a third entity would
be formed in the line of nature, but rather in the line of existence. It is the first
meaning, persona denominative sumpta, which refers to that which is most specific
to the concept of person, i. e., to subsist. See Capreolus, Def ensiones Theologiae
Divi Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Paban-Pegues, T. V., p. llOb, in fine. Degl'Innocenti,
0. P., op. cit., pp. 27-42.
65 Summa Theol., III, q. 19, a. 1., ad 4:
"Ess11 pertinet ad ipsam constitutionem
personae; et sic quantum ad hoc, se habet in ratione termini." De natura materiae,
c. 7: " Essentiae rerum terminantur per sua esse, quae sunt in rebus maxime
formalia."
66 Summa Theol., I, q. 29, a. 8:
"Persona significat id quod est perfectissimum
in tota natura, scilicet subsistens in rationali natura."
67 Cf. De spiritualibus creaturis, a. I (ed. Keeler, 1946); Degl'Innocenti, op. cit.,
pp. 202-208.

Q88

GABRIEL PASTRANA

whole, in which the parts exist: individual nature, act of being,
and accidents. 68 Each of these enters in its own way into the
concept of person, which always keeps its unitary character.
Since it is proper for the accidents to exist in a subject, they can
be multiplied without the need of multiplying the subject of
existence. The act of being proper to the substance absolutely
cannot be multiplied without destroying the very intimate nature of the entity. 69 Thus the autonomy of being of the person
is followed by its incommunicability.
Furthermore, the act of being of the person is specifically
determined by the substantial form of the individual essence.
Things or entities are not differentiated by the mere fact that
they exist; in this respect they are all the same. Rather they
are diversified by reason of the specific difference of the essence
which receives and limits the act of being, and since it is the
substantial form which is more specific and formal in a particular essence, it is by it that the act of being is also specified.10
The substantial form qualifies and diversifies the act of being
primarily and fundamentally, S'impliciter (angel, man, animal),
while the additional forms qualify it accidentally, secundum
quid (white, tall, heavy) .71 Finally, numerical individuation
within a species is through the matter formed by the substantial
68 Summa Theol., III, q. 2, a. 2:
" Omne quod inest alicui personae, sive pertineat ad eius naturam sive non, unitur ei in persona."
69 Summa
Theol., III, q. 17, a. 1: "Impossible est quod unius rei non sit
unum esse "; Ibid., I, q. 11, a. 1: "Unum enim nihil aliud significat quam ens
indivisum; et ex hoc ipso apparet quod unum convertitur cum ente . . . Unde
manifestum est quod esse cuiuslibet rei consi5tit in indivisione; et inde est quod
unumquodque, sicut custodit suum esse, ita custodit suam unitatem."
70 I Contra Gent., c. 26:
" Res non distinguuntur ad invicem secundum quod
habent esse, quia in hoc omnia conveniunt ... Relinquitur ergo quod res propter hoc
difl'erant quod habent diversas naturas, quibus acquiritur esse diversimode." Cfr.
De Potent., q. 7, a. 2.
71 Summa Theol., III, q. 17, a. 2:
"Est autem considerandum quod, si aliqua
forma vel natura est quae non pertineat ad esse personale hypostasis subsistentis,
illud esse non dicitur esse illius personae simpliciter sed secundum quid . . . Et
huiusmodi esse nihil prohibet multiplicari in una hypostasi vel persona: aliud enim
est esse quo Socrates est albus, et quo Socrates est musicus."

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

289

form. Thus, to the autonomy of being and to the incommunicability of the person, we add a third characteristic: its distinctness.
The person is then not to be understood in a static manner.
Completeness and incommunicability do not exclude openness.
The person, while remaining one, is open to receive new forms
and actualizations. The "existence" of the person is continuously being exercised. So we have the fourth characteristic
of the person: its dynamic openness. The actualization of the
person is rooted, characterized, and exercised according to the
possibilities and the limits of that element which qualifies and
diversifies its act of being: the substantial form or, in our case,
the rational soul, but as existing in a material subject. Thus
there will be actualized in the person certain characteristics,
actions and properties flowing directly from the substantial
form; for example, the acts of knowing, loving, being responsible, while others will affect the person accidentally: being tall,
white, etc. 72 Thus while the person keeps its unity, incommunicability, and distinctness, it remains infinitely open to new
forms and actualization.
In modern philosophical reflection, particular aspects of the
person have been selected for its definition. Thus in Descartes
we find the person being defined in psychological terms. In his
formula, Cogito, ergo sum, the "I" of the person is constituted
by self-consciousness. It is the ability to reflect upon himself
that constitutes the singularity of man. Descartes's approach
has influenced the philosophical speculation of Locke, Hume,
Kant, Hegel, Royce, Gentile, and Sartre. Kant looked to a
different aspect, limiting the concept of person to its moral
dimensions. For him the characteristic of person is to be an
end in itself: man, and in general all rational beings, exist as
72 Summa Theol., III q. 2, a. 3:
" Hypostasis est eui attribuuntur operationes et
proprietates naturae et ea etiam quae ad naturae rationem pertinent in eonereto;
dicimus enim quod hie homo ratioeinatur et est risibilis et est animal rationale.
Et hac ratione hie homo dicitur esse ' suppositum,' quia seilicet supponitur his
quae <1d hominem pertinent, eorum praedicationem recipiens."

Q90

GABRIEL PASTRANA

ends in themselves and not just as means which another can
use for its own purposes. 73 Much more recently, during our
century, the study 0£ the person has received special attention
and constituted the focus 0£ study 0£ the personalist movement.
Battista Mondin, reviewing the literature 0£ the personalist
movement, points to the characteristics 0£ the human person
that manifest its dynamic aspect, .such as consciousness, experience, communication with others and with the world, and
self-transcendence. 74
Doubtless, study 0£ all these aspects, psychological, moral,
or " personalistic," all 0£ them linked to the dynamic character
0£ the per.son, adds immensely to our understanding of what
1\1arcel calls " the mystery of the human person." 75 They are
not to be identified with the ontological structure of the person;
rather it is the ontological structure of the person that explains
and justifies any further development and extension of the notion of the person: it is because of the .specification that the
person receives from the substantial form that, while remaining
one, incommunicable and distinct, the person is specifically open
to psychological, moral and self-transcendent dimensions, according to the limits and possibilities 0£ the substantial form.
Without the latter none of the former are possible. This assertion is founded in the well known philosophical principle:
agere sequitur esse. It is only after the person has been constituted that its actions follow; and the specific nature of the human person allows for such psychological and moral dimensions.
These cannot be understood without first acknowledging the
existence of the person, which, it must also be said, is essentially
ordained to manifest itself in a gradual manner.
73 I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Moral,s, transl. by H. J. Paton
(New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 95.
74 Battista
Mondin, " La Persona umana e il suo destino in San Tommaso e
nel pensiero moderno," Aquinas, Revista lnternational,e di Fifosofia, XVill (1974),

75

Gabriel Marcel, Journal Metaphysique (Paris:

Gallimard,

p. 188.

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

9l9l

The Fetus as a Person
Our analysis of the empirical evidence brought us to the conclusion that confronting the " biological human being" we are
in fact, from a philosophical point of view, in the presence of
an individual human substance constituted by a sufficiently disposed material element informed by the substantial form proper
to man, i. e., a rational soul. A further stage of our inquiry was
introduced by a series of questions which we shall try to answer
in the light of the preceding paragraphs on the concept of person.
We have arrived at the following conclusion: the characteristics of the human person are its autonomy of being, its incommunicability, its distinctness, and its dynamic character;
and this dynamic character, as specifically determined by the
substantial form, keeps the person open to further ontological,
psychological and moral actualization. Thus, we propose, the
concept of person is essentially an ontological concept; the
ontological structure is the basis for the psychological, moral,
and other aspects of the person, while these, in turn, provide
a better understanding of the whole concept of person.
Applying the preceding analysis to the product of conception,
philosophically viewed as an individual human substance, we
conclude that the product of conception should be considered
a human person: there is a new essence, the individual human
substance composed of a sufficiently disposed material element
(as shown by the biological evidence) and a substantial form;
this new essence stands as the material element of the person, bespeaking an immediate and intrinsic reference to the
formal element, its act of being. Thus, the new individual human substance subsists, i. e., exists in and by itself; it becomes
incommunicable, so that no other form can substantially affect
it without destroying it; it is distinct and specifically determined by the uniquely human rational formality; and it is open
to new actualization according to the limits and possibilities of
its essence. As such it is specifically distinct from other subsistent substances, whether spiritual or composite, and nu-

GABRIEL PASTRANA

merically different from other subsistent substances of the
human species.
Because of its dynamic aspect the new human person, while
remaining one and distinct, is, as we have said, open to further ontological, psychological and moral actualization. It is
open to ontological actualization in the sense that the acquisition of any additional form, whether of the material element
(e.g., physical growth) or of the formal element (intellectual
or spiritual development), is an exercise of its existence: new
"existences "-secundum quid-are added to the subsistent person. This second aspect, i. e., the intellectual or .spiritual actualization, though remaining basically ontological, is understood as referring to the psychological dimensions of the person:
in its spiritual or intellectual actualization the person is able
not only to reflect on the external universe-consciousness-but
to be itself the object of reflection-self-consciousness-and
to become aware of such reflection. In this sense, we do not see
any specific difference between what have been called the psychological dimensions of the per.son and its ontological aspect,
since any intellectual actualization-understanding
the psychological in this broad sense-is nothing more than the actualization of the spiritual ontological constitution of the person.
The moral dimensions of the concept of person, however, are
of a different character. Here the person is not only the conscious subject of his actions, but sees himself as related to
others and to himself by certain purposes or intentions. Even
here, the actions have a certain ontological aspect, though the
emphasis is on their moral character. The person enters into
this communion of relations autonomously and consciously; his
autonomy demands recognition from others, while he must consciously recognize their autonomy. Thus we have the basis for
mutual rights and obligations. Notice the implied claim that,
while one must be actually conscious before one can recognize
the autonomy of others, one need not be so to be autonomous
and to be recognized as such by others.
While the dynamic aspect is essential to the person, as Dupre

PERSONHOOD:

HUMAN LIFE

rightly insists, the successive actualizations are received by an
autonomous and incommunicable subject, and thus a new subject or a new person need not come into existence, as Dupre
claims, implying that everytime there is an actualization (and
actualizations are a continuous process), there will be a new
and different person. One is not the same person today as one
was yesterday-or a moment ago!
In the course of our presentation we have repeatedly referred
to the process of actualization, to the new formalities being
added to the person according to its limits and possibilities.
Purposely we have avoided the use of the term "potentiality,''
though we realize that conceptually there is no difference in the
terminology we have so far used. We further realize that
reference to the principle of potentiality is a major issue in the
whole controversy regarding abortion and the concept of person. It is a certain degree of actualization, as opposed to a
former state of potentiality, that distinguishes the actually
existing person from the non-personal product of conception,
the latter being considered a " potential person." Thus personhood is viewed as an achievement (Montagu) or is defined
by the possession of a certain degree of self-consciousness
(Tooley, Engelhardt) through which the person enters into
and is accepted by a community of persons. Before that is accomplished, the individual human being-the fetus, the infant,
the insane, etc.-is valued because of its potentiality, its promise
of self-consciousness. No doubt the person in becoming selfconscious achieves a greater perfection than he had before,
and in that sense he moves from a state of potency to one of
actualization. But to understand the principle of potentiality
in such a manner, and thus to deny the existence of personhood before actual self-consciousness has been reached is to
ignore altogether the ontological basis of the concept of person,
a conclusion however which will not greatly bother those who
view personhood as a moral concept. But does this not entail
the further conclusion that when the ontological basis of the
concept of person is denied, personhood as a moral concept

294

GABRIEL PASTRANA

loses its meaning? We have emphasized the fact that, from
its very first moment of existence, the person is open to a continuous process of actualization, as becomes more and more
obvious as the specific manifestations of the person, such as
the use of language, self-consciousness, and interpersonal relations, become more and more evident and observable. In this
sense the person is in a constant state of potentiality, for there
will be further degrees of actualization to accomplish and also
in this sense self-transcendence better describes the infinite
openness of the person. But, granting this understanding of
the concept of potentiality, we stressed the fact that the person from its very first moment of existence is autonomous,
incommunicable, and distinct; when the individual human .substance at that early stage of conception is actualized by its
own act of being it passes from non-being to existence, to being
and existing in and by itself; it receives esse simpliciter. This
is the most perfect and noblest aspect of actualization: the
transit from non-being to existence in and by itself. What follows after that, according to the infinite openness of the person,
is a continuous reception of new formalities or " existences,"
esse secundum quid: use of language, acts of knowing or loving,
self-consciousness, interpersonal relations, etc. These cannot
affect the person in a substantial manner; otherwise they would
destroy its very existence, since two or more substantial forms
cannot exist in the .same autonomous, incommunicable, and
distinct subject. Furthermore, whatever the person achieves
in the entire range of his activity as a person is determined and
explained by the distinctness underlying his psychological,
moral, or other development. Only in this way can the moral
dimensions of the person be understood.
GABRIEL PASTRANA, O.P.

Kennedy Center for Bioethics
Washington, D. C.

BOOK REVIEWS
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 56 (3a. 60-65), The
Sacraments. Latin text. English translation, Introduction, Notes &
Glossary by DAVID BoURKE, with Index of Scriptural References and
General Index. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.; and London:
Eyre & Spottiswoode Limited, 1975. Pp. 168. $Hl.50.
The publication of this magnificent sixty-volume series has spanned the
turbulent decade for theology which followed the Second Vatican Council.
Over forty men have contributed as translators and compilers of footnotes,
references, and explanatory appendices. The sixty volumes deserve a longer
review article which would evaluate the work as a whole as well as its
special contribution to contemporary Thomistic studies. At this time we
can only express our gratitude to the group of scholars who made this
Latin-English edition of the Summa Theologiae possible, especially to those
who have contributed multiple fascicles to the -series. The entire series
remains as an eloquent monument to its General Editor, the late Father
Thomas Gilby, O. P., whose indomitable spirit would not quit until the
last galleys were in from the printer.
The earliest volumes, which began to appear in 1964, struggled to explain
Thomas's key ideas and his sources. These volumes are characterized by
a multiplicity of footnotes, references, and appendices. During these
years there is also a struggle, often defensive in nature, to present Thomas
within the theological setting of the thirteenth century and to include
positions resulting from recent developments in the Church. Volume 14
(la. 108-109) Divine Government by T. C. O'Brien, appears to be the
" break-through " fascicle of the series, for it contains discoveries on
Aquinas's use of auctoritates and of Aristotle. The final publications of the
series limit themselves to references for the most part tracked down by
the Leonine Commission supplemented by a modest number of footnotes
relating to contemporary problems.
Volume 56 (Sa. 60-65), The Sacraments, is one of the last of the series
of Summa volumes to be published and it deserves to be included as a
valuable part of this series. David Bourke, who also contributed volume
!l9 to the series, gives a translation that is " literally close to the original "
and in keeping with the high standards set by the editors of the series.
Bourke tends to use a multiplicity of English words to convey the Latin
meaning and at times this results in an awkward construction, e.g. 60,
8 ad 3, p. 18.
When viewed within the context of the other sixty volumes, especially

295

BOOK REVIEWS

volume 14 mentioned above, the Introduction of David Bourke is valuable
and quite refreshing. It is not profound in the sense that a new interpretation of Thomas's sacramental treatise is proposed, but it is useful in the
historical development of sacramental theology up to St. Thomas's own
time and in the suggestions it makes towards an interpretation of the
key ideas of this treatise.
Bourke asserts that the scriptural background for Aquinas's study of the
sacraments begins with the Old Testament. The novelty of this suggestion
appears in the way that Bourke applies it in q. 60, Q: "One purpose of this
article seems to be to broaden the definition of sacrament so as to allow it to
apply to Old Testament sacraments too, as being signs, though non-causative
ones, of the same sacred reality as those of the New. But as a matter of definition it adds the specific difference to the genus of sign as explained
in the previous article. What distinguishes the sacraments from other kinds
of sign is that they represent a sacr,ed reaJ,ity as sanctifying men" (p. 8).
The customary division following John of St. Thomas is simply the logical
one into the metaphysical components of genus and species (aa. 1-S) and
the physical components (aa. 4-8).
Bourke's brief outline of the development of the treatise on sacramental
theology is quite useful for setting the stage for the questions included in
volumes 56-60 (Sa. 60-90) . The significant contribution of the mature
works of Aquinas, he rightly maintains, is in giving the sacraments a more
positive and cultic purpose. In his Commentary on the Sentences St.
Thomas had adhered more closely to his contemporaries, who saw the
role of the sacraments as remedies for sin, but now in the Summa he goes
beyond that early position to describe the Christian as a " participator "
and the Paschal Mysteries are expressed in visible sacramental forms.
Bourke finds the biblical foundation for this in Romans 6:S-11 (pp. xiv
and xxii).
The editorial assistance which Bourke gives the reader in this volume is
always concise and useful. No mention is made, however, of the important
contributions to the renewal of ecclesiology, sacramentology and liturgical
studies which have been made by theologians using elements of Aquinas's
sacramental system. The appendices might have developed in greater detail the relevance of the Thomistic notions of sign, sacramental grace and
character, and sacramental causality. Nowhere in the sixty volumes of this
series is there an extended treatment of the important Thomistic explanation of instrumental causality.
At times this sixty-volume series has strained to defend the relevance of
Thomas for today's theology. It is ironic that volume 56 does not make
one reference to Edward Schillebeeckx, Colman O'Neill, Jean-Marie Tillard
and others who have used Sa. 60-65 in different ways and in varying de-

BOOK REVIEWS

297

grees to produce contemporary statements of sacramental theology which
have been favorably received at a scholarly as well as a popular level.
What emerges, then, towards the end of this long project is a fascicle
which presents the Common Doctor to the twentieth-century scholar and
beginner student in a highly readable English translation alongside the
Latin text. There is a sufficient amount of historical background with
a minimum of editorial comment. Taken by itself separately from the
Summa series, this work is a valuable tool for sacramental theology. The
glossary of technical terms is useful for those who are unfamiliar with St.
Thomas.
JOHN MATTHEW DONAHUE,

o. P.

Dominican House of Studies
Washmgton, D.

o.

Paul Ricoeur, La metaphore vive. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975.
Paul Ricoeur, Political and Social Essays (ed. by David Stewart and Joseph
Bien) , Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1974.
Rosaire Bergeron, S. C., La Vocation de la Liberti dans La Philosophie de
Paul Ricoeur, Montreal: Les Editions Bellarmine, 1974.
Paul Ricoeur's philosophical production is now of such scope and influence
as to call forth successive assessments and new collections. It is not, however, as if Ricoeur had reached a plateau for retrospection; he continues to
progress towards the last volume of his early project, the " Philosophy
of the Will "-viz., the long-awaited "Poetics of the Good." Intervening
volumes such as Freud and Philosophy and Conflict of Interpretations may
seem to have wandered somewhat from this path, but are, in fact, necessary
way stations permitting Ricoeur intensive scrutiny of new questions without basically distracting him from the overall end-in-view.
Such a framework may be helpful in locating these two recent publications since both of them reflect various stages and diverse issues in
Ricoeur's work, and yet reveal a unifying perspective. The writings in
Political and Social Essays span three decades and cover a number of
themes that have been central to his main concerns. These concerns, Ricoeur
states in his foreword, are global ones, relating to the conditions of modern
man as he moves tentatively toward a world civilization. Within this
general relevance, although some are slightly dated, these essays speak
eloquently to perduring questions; e. g., " From Marxism to Contemporary
Communism" (1959) reflects cold war issues, yet has a clear bearing on
current efforts to sort out the valid from the invalid aspects of Marxist

298

BOOK REVIEWS

theory, Ricoeur stressing " trafficking with violence " as a form of
"ideology." A companion essay on" Socialism Today" builds an eloquent
case for a socialist ethos that transcends sheer economics and stresses democratic management and humanistic culture.
Other essays address such diverse themes as the meaning of humanism,
Skinner's rejection of freedom, violence and language, faith and culture,
urbanization and secularization. The opening essay, "Nature and Freedom," is especially interesting as an amplification of some themes from
Ricoeur's first book, especially of freedom as " second nature," as habituation permitting mediation rather than opposition between the voluntary
and the involuntary. The last essay, "The Tasks of the Political Educator," reveals the practical sagacity of Ricoeur's assessment of higher education as fulfilling the need of the cultural personality for integration on the
three levels of " industries, institutions and values." But perhaps the most
significant article in the book is the most recent one, " Ethics and Culture,"
with its proposal of a hermeneutic approach to ethics in terms of " distanciation " and " appropriation " as correlated with traditional and innovative approaches to value. Properly to assess this article, I believe,
it is necessary to recognize its deliberately programmatic character and
thus see in it the movement of Ricoeur's thought building towards his
" poetics of the good." It is noteworthy then how value remains the
governing concept in his ethical reflections despite reservations about the
concept of value expressed in earlier works. Indeed, in one passage, Ricoeur
suggests another look at Scheler's hierarchy of value modalities, but with
fundamental qualifications: quite differently from Scheler, Ricoeur places
emphasis on value change or " transvaluation " as a continuous and conscious process analogous to hermeneutic reinterpretation. The reconciliation of Gadamer and Habermas that Ricoeur undertakes in this context
provides a model for the continuing reconciling of traditional and innovative values: reinterpretation of our heritage (Gadamer) shows us how
to appropriate values by way of a distanciation that derives from our
interest in emancipation (Habermas). But this interest in turn presupposes the axiological superiority or preferability of emancipation over
" practicality; " in his way, Habermas is seen as showing us the basic
motive for emancipation, but only if we do not therewith forget our
dependence on previous evaluations and perduring institutions.
The theme of emancipation is only the most recent expression of
Ricoeur's long-standing interest in the question of freedom, starting with
the first volume of his philosophy of the will. It is the same question
that unifies to some extent Sister Rosaire Bergeron's discussion of Ricoeur's
philosophy, although her book is in many ways a broad-ranging coverage
of all the main questions in his work; as such it is a comprehensive and
generally accurate survey of all the major and most of the minor works

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up to 1969. Thorough to the point of being repetitious, it represents
probably the most complete discussion of Ricoeur's work to date.
The book includes a lengthy exposition, a comparison with Thomistic
concepts, and a critique. The first chapter delineates the philosophical
project animating Ricoeur's thought and sums it up in the following formulation: " the philosophy of the will understakes to disengage the meaning
of the integrally human, to establish the vocation of freedom in a problematic of evil and salvation." In his implementation of this project, she
describes Ricoeur as redefining man in terms of his relation to the involuntary and to " Transcendence," and as utilizing different methods but
stressing concrete reflection and sensitivity to levels of discourse. She
then goes step-by-step through the stages of Ricoeur's philosophy of the
will, beginning with the phenomenology of decision, action and consent,
the general results of which she summarizes as " une liberte seulement
humaine." After surveying the meaning of freedom inherent in the concept of fallibility delineated in three syntheses-theoretical, practical and
affective (i.e., the "heart," whose disproportion is the most central to
the meaning of man) -and in the treatise on evil in its symbolism historically graduated from external (stain) to internal (guilt), she concludes
with a discussion of the poetics of freedom, defining " poetics " for Ricoeur
as " the death of self and the acceptance of being." She finds this theme
in early essays such as " The unity of the voluntary and the involuntary
as a limiting idea," and "Le sentiment "-this latter because feeling "permits the anticipation of unity and totality." She then combines this early
affectivity theme with the later emphasis on hermeneutics based on an
epistemology of the symbol with its motto, "Le symbole donne a penser,"
and its invocation of the role of both faith (" seeking understanding ") and
critique, as well as their resultant " second "-post-critical-" naivete."
Now, while my summary only hints at the richness and complexity
of Bergeron's exposition, it may at the same time suggest a serious shortcoming in it: she fails to bring out the overall dialectical character of
Ricoeur's work, which provides developmental unity in the varied styles and
stages of his thought. As Ihde (Hermeneutic Phenomenology, 1971) has
shown, it is the notion of a " postponed synthesis," a kind of open-ended,
minimal dialectic, that permits one to see the connection between the
"diagnostics" of the early phenomenology and the later, more developed
and self-conscious hermeneutic method that brings out particularly the
interplay of levels of discourse. But while the use of Hegel is much more
explicit in these later works, the same openness is there in the rejection
of any historical necessitation and of any temptation to " premature syntheses "-Ricoeur's Kierkegaardian caution forfends any historicism or
crypto-absolutism. Thus in her brief resume of the important essay,
"Freedom in the Light of Hope," (from Conflict of Interpretations) where

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the philosophically neglected context of freedom, viz., hope (in both its
personal and social senses) is explored by analogizing from scriptural expressions (especially the resurrection narratives) as they relate to the discontinuity and concomitant open-endedness of the future, she focusses
on its seeming inconclusiveness stemming from its use of the Kantian principle of the limitation of reason but without explaining that the use of
Kant on this point (Kant is also used for the non-ethical concept of
radical evil) is primarily to moderate the ambition to absolute knowledge
inherent in Hegel's version of the dialectic. Similarly, Bergeron should be
faulted not so much for slighting the richness of this intricate article as
for letting its admitted inconclusiveness be taken too literally and negatively. For it is in the interplay of the three levels or "weighted foci"economic (Freudian psychology), phenomenological (Hegelian) and scriptural-of the article, leading through the paradoxical interpretation of the
" death of God " as a projected symbolic evolution toward a " non-criminal
dying by compassion," that one gets a sense of still unsighted possibilities
as well as of the reciprocal corrigibility of the different disriplines involved.
It is in her critique, however, that Bergeron's neglect of the dialectical
spirit of Ricoeur's writings becomes more serious in its consequences. For
example, in her discussion of his theory of the passions, she argues that
his approach depreciates the emotions in a negative, " crypto-rationalist "
way. But she refers only (and over-simply) to the discussion in Freedorn
and Nature where Ricoeur is presenting the resistance and opacity of the
involuntary (and the corporeal) precisely in its opposition to the voluntary
and thus in a " weighted focus " that points up the clarity and intelligibility
of the voluntary, especially as it functions in a "world of passion." But
Ricoeur's works have a dialectical pattern not only within them but also
between them, and so, on the question of the passions, Fallible Man has a
focus emphasizing their contribution to the "affective synthesis" (the most
central level of the self) . Thus, though experienced as " deviations "
" downfall," etc., the passions are discerned through these deviations in
their " primordial " and " essential " nature by " imaginative variation "
and so can even be perceived positively as making possible great deeds,
as well as internalizing the objectivities of economics, power and culture. 1
But a more fundamental complaint is expressed by Bergeron when she
critiques Ricoeur's approach to ontology, particularly to the meaning of
God. The heart of this complaint is the putative "symbolic" character
of any knowledge of God, knowledge, she implies, that would amount to
non-univocal, vague awareness-in effect, non-knowledge bordering on
agnosticism. Any assessment of this critique would have to take into
account that the writings actually covered by Bergeron's work are those
1

Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man. Chicago: Regnery, 1965, pp. 170-171.

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published before 1970, culminating in Le conflit des interpretations. Within
this critical frame, there is some plausibility to the contention that Ricoeur's
concern is with the resistance of symbolic meaning to full translation into
conceptual language. Moreover, such meaning includes the moment of
hermeneutic "appropriation" in which personal adhesion (sometimes a
matter of " belief ") translates data into meaning, and is thus a seemingly
easy target for Bergeron's charge of "subjectivism "-despite Ricoeur's
effective argumentation for "validity in interpretation." And so, while
she cannot be faulted for ignoring the much more structured approach to
meaning available in the later (1975) work, La metaphore vive, with its
linguistics of the sentence, nevertheless, the main themes of this work,
especially the emphasis on the " polysemy " of the word are already evident
in the earlier writings ("Structure, Word, Event" first appeared in 1967) .2
In other articles, such as those mentioned above, the hermeneutical analysis
of levels of discourse points toward a limited independence of conceptual
thought. That is, the thesis is readily discernible early on that speculative
(categorical) discourse has an intrinsic validity but is incomplete and dependent on an "intersection " with poetic or metaphorical discourse.
This thesis presupposes the theory of the vital metaphor as the " emergence" of meaning. Traditional theories of metaphor developed in the
context of classical rhetoric stress substitution as its fundamental mechanism-according to which metaphor is a means of stylistic ornamentation
in which an appropriate expression or convenient word is replaced by a
borrowed word taken with its deviant use for some sort of pleasant effect.
Understanding a metaphor, then, would be simply a restitution of the replaced term and thus exhaustive paraphrase of a metaphor is possible.
iBut Ricoeur's critique of the traditional theory finds it not only trivializing
but unable to provide a basis for distinguishing between bad (or dead)
metaphor and "novel metaphor." And he finds it more seriously deficient
in its missing of the holistic dynamics of language because of its emphasis
on words rather than sentences. Ricoeur's own approach, by contrast, is
derived partly from the " tensional " theories of Richards, Berggren, and
others, but proceeds mainly on the thesis that words are polysemic in
principle and that the exploitation of this polysemy or plurivocity depends
on the sentence and its constraints of predication, word-order, context
(as effected through integrating "isotopes"), etc. In other words as a
sign in a virtual semiological system, the word is activated by the event
or speech act in such a way as to have its plurivocity restricted or released;
and as a " trader " it returns to the system enriched semantically by its
contact with the world. This process represents the metaphor in its ordinary
•"Structure-Word-Event"
1968.
XII, No.

translated by R. D. Sweeney, Philosophy Today,

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and usually inconspicuous-" frozen "-sense; its active and vital meaning
involves the tension of " semantic impertinence " in its seemingly contradictory predication that permits second-order reference to possibility; and
at its highest most unrestricted level of innovation it becomes the creative
and poetic device par excellence--" heuristic fiction." Apparent dangers
in this theory are countered by Ricoeur: e. g., ambiguity and equivocation are not inherent in metaphor but are failures in its use and understanding; or again, employment of contradiction is only the negative moment enabling us to break with accepted meaning; positively, metaphor
enables us to " make sense with nonsense," it is the creative moment of a
" grasping of resemblance " and the perception of analogies that establishes
"new logical boundaries on the ruins of the preceding ones." 8 Naturally,
such an explanation of categorization as the establishing of new semantic
fields amounts to putting metaphor at the heart of language and thought.
Put differently, plurivocity or polysemy and not univocity or literality is
constitutive of language. The latter dimension is derived from the former
and not vice versa, but only if metaphor is no longer seen as a mere rhetorical device but as " the general process by which we grasp kinship, break
down the distance between remote ideas, build similarities on dissimilarities." 4
Now if this fairly represents Ricoeur's most developed position (of course,
in over-condensed formulation) , then speculative or conceptual discourse
patterned on the model of univocity in argumentation cannot be philosophically self-sufficient. Indeed, it corresponds to but one " strategy of discourse," viz., the scientific, and, as such, is marked by the " defensive measures it takes against ambiguity " and by discontinuity from poetic or
metaphorical discourse. And while it is in a sense dependent on the metaphorical, it is in no way disqualified by the latter, as Bergeron thinks
Ricoeur to be implying; rather " speculative discourse has its possibility
in the semantic dynamism of the metaphorical utterance, but . . . it can
respond to the semantic virtualities of the latter only by offering to it
the resources of articulatory space that it holds from its own constitution "
(MV, p. 325). Thus the two modes of discourse maintain a relation of
dialectical enrichment rather than of mutual exclusion. It is not a matter,
• While Riooeur occasionally treats metaphor and symbol as rough equivalents,
as do some of his commentators, he makes a basic distinction between them.
While symbol has a semantic core in the sense of " bi-dimensional " meaning and
conceptual linkages, it also has non-semantic dimensions, in the sense of rooted·
ness, " connectedness with the configurations of the cosmos " and with the " experience tenebreuse de la puissance." Ricoeur, "Parole et Symbole," Revue des
Sciences Religieuses, Vol. 49, No. 1-2, 1975, pp. 142-161.
•Paul Ricoeur, "Creativity in Language," Phuoso-phy Today, XVII, Vol. 17 No.
2, 1973, pp. 109-110.

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then, of exclusively choosing the metaphor (symbol) or the concept:
"if no concept exhausts the demand of 'thinking further' (penser plus)
borne by the symbol, this only means that no categorization takes into
account the semantic potentialities held in suspense in the symbol; but it
is the work of the concept that alone can witness to this excess of meaning "
(MV, p. 384) •
Consequently, when Bergeron maintains that Ricoeur eliminates the
analogia entis, she misconstrues his general point about symbolic language.
Indeed, in one section of La metaphore vive, Ricoeur undertakes a detailed
and appreciative analysis of the analogia entis as it was grafted on to Aristotle's efforts to resolve the problem of the equivocity of being, in response
to the paradoxical Christian need to maintain both divine transcendence
and the possibility of common discourse. Ricoeur first reviews St. Thomas's
efforts to resolve this paradox by way of an ontology of participation that
moves from emphasis on resemblance to the subordination of exemplary to
efficient causality by way of the analogy of proportionality, itself derived
from the analogy of proportion. He then charts the movements to an ontology of act based on analogy of causality and argues that the net effect
was to set up a mirror relation between conceptual and real unity-between
analogy and participation-that
made the whole thesis vulnerable to
Galilean and Humean critiques of physical causality. Ricoeur points out
that even when metaphor and analogy seem to be brought closest together
by St. Thomas, even when they form (in Ricoeur's words) a "chiasm"
in which the speculative " verticalizes metaphor and the poetic gives an
iconic clothing to speculative analogy" (MV, p. 355), the two modes of
discourse are kept in rigid separation and, as a consequence, metaphor
is discredited. The recognition of their implicit "intersection "-their interaction within their separation-would take a dialectical mentality found
neither in St. Thomas nor in Bergeron.
Bergeron sees Ricoeur caught up epistemologically in a " perspectivism "
that " first grasps the unity of the real " and only afterwards considers
symbols and, we can infer, as only pedagogically relevant. At one point
she accuses Ricoeur of making God more englobing than " being," although
she then concedes that he is talking about our idea of being. In the same
context she complains that Ricoeur eliminates any universality in thought
by stressing its existential situatedness and thus is mired in " inescapable
contingency." In rebuttal, she claims that philosophy can simply overleap
"my singular angle" and thereby achieve universality and objectivity. But
in so doing she ignores passages in Fallible Man where Ricoeur speaks of
a " transgression of perspective " that provides us with empty generic intentions to be filled although not automatically with a positive universal
content. By her grasp of being, Bergeron claims, she accedes to the totality,
to the absolute, but asserts that this is not done conceptually or univocal-

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ly, but only by way of the analogy of being. And yet she also insists that
" being becomes the object of intuition by means of the concept," and
that by the " intelligible unity of the concept " the " combination of absolute Being and imperfect or participated being " is achieved. To be sure,
she attempts to resolve the apparent contradiction here by claiming that
the transcendentals are concepts that are not univocal but analogous and,
when applied to God, are the prerequisites for any symbolic knowledge,
but she gives no real explanation of why they do not reduce to univocal
concepts in the manner of an allegory.
Now one might expect Ricoeur to deal with the transcendentals by using
the same critique he applies to Husserl's rationalism, which sees the speculative as the horizon providing the logical space for all the distinctions that
privilege the conceptual over the perceptual, the same over the similar,
understanding over discovering, and that lead to a " destruction of the
metaphorical by the conceptual" (MV, p. 381). Instead, Ricoeur analyzes
the transcendental concept closely and finds in it a resemblance to the
metaphorical, a metaphorical " effect of sense," in the idea that the significatio nominis is exceeded by the res significata, thus corresponding to
the extension of sense by " impertinent predication " in the metaphor.
Elsewhere, Ricoeur comments that when St. Thomas speaks of " eminence "
as being " thought according to analogy and expressed according to metaphor," he is again implicitly intermixing metaphor and (conceptual)
analogy. But an intermixing, of course, is not a synthesis. For Ricoeur,
a (partial) synthesis is found only in interpretation, a "modality of discourse which operates at the intersection . . . of the metaphorical and
the speculative " and which, on the one hand, " desires the clarity of the
concept, and on the other, strives to preserve the dynamism of meaning that
the concept stops and fixes" (MV, p. 383), At its best, indeed, it would
respond equally to the needs of both movements and not reduce or subordinate one to the other.
We still await the complete elabo:ration of Ricoeur's hermeneutics,
and in the meantime it remains somewhat if we allow for the inadequacy
of these expository comments, especially in view of the dialectical quality
of his thought. But this provides more reason for not reducing it to an
antithetical position-in Bergeron's book, to "anti-Thomism."
Despite
her complaint that it makes "the symbol into an idol," Ricoeur's position
in fact is not a " linguistic idealism " but rather a realism that stresses the
centrality of language but in such a way as to manifest "how it knows
itself in being." But it is a richly nuanced and increasingly comprehensive
position, and so can profit from the dialogue stimulated by books like
Bergeron's.
What the juxtaposition of these books suggests to this reviewer is
that, throughout the various themes and periods, and despite the diverse

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805

interpretations and misinterpretations occasioned by them, there is a synthesizing vision animating Ricoeur's work that does not shrink from the
mobility and complexity of the real. And this vision in turn stimulates
anticipation of the " poetics of the good " with its promise of further
reconciling divergent perspectives and of alleviating some of the " conflict of interpretations."
ROBERT D. SWEENEY
John Carroll University
Cleveland, Ohio

Ethical Patterns in Early Christian Thought. By ERIC OsBORN. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pp. 252. $21.00.
Urged on by certain trends in contemporary ethical thought, among
them "a thoughtful rejection of Christian claims" at whose basis rests
the judgment that religion and God are incurably unintelligible, Eric
Osborn's first concern is to lay bare the principal characteristics, or "patterns," of Christian ethics. He postulates four, and seeks them out as they
appear, with considerable variation, in the New Testament, in Clement of
Alexandria, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Augustine. These four
patterns, namely, righteousness, discipleship, faith, and love, are in turn
viewed with respect to their tendency to be distorted by a drift towards
contingency (i. e., legalism, concretization) on the one hand or perfection
(i.e., enthusiasm, abstraction) on the other, a phenomenon which occurs
whenever one of the two does not take sufficient account of the claims of
its opposite. It is an excellent and apparently all-inclusive framework within which to set the development of Christian ethics, and the New Testament and the Fathers offer extremely apt-and, in the former case, normative--illustrations of that development.
For example, discipleship in the New Testament, the "deep intention
to carry out the will of Christ," not as one who is separate from Christ
but as one who is in Christo, is capable of becoming hardened either into
the ecclesiastical authority which Paul speaks of in 2 Cor. 11:5 and 12:1the contingent, legalist distortion-or into the enthusiasm of the Corinthians who were already "reigning in Christ," whom he mentions in 1 Cor.
4: 10-the perfectionist, abstract distortion.
The Fathers are not always so capable as the New Testament writers
of seeing the pitfalls represented by the contingent and the perfect.
Clement, despite his attention to the minutest details of Christian life in
the Paidagogos and his nearly dangerous glorification of the Christian
gnostic in the Stromata, perhaps comes closest of the four Fathers to main-

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taining a balance: for " the true gnostic finds God in the contingency
of his daily work" (p. 80). Basil, however, although his own instincts
in the matter were sure, placed an emphasis on asceticism and on the
monastic life that later ages were to find all too easy to exaggerate.
Chrysostom, for all his burning zeal and often intemperate language, is
impressive by reason of his sanity as well as his enthusiasm; but his notion
of free will and grace is such that Pelagius can cite him in his own defense.
Finally, in Augustine, Osborn finds that the doctrine of" Love, and do what
you will" (In Ep. Joan. 7, 8) could unfortunately exist in neat relation to
to the Catholic persecution of the Donatists: Augustine " worked out the
order of love so badly that it was possible to persecute in love. He developed the notion of order and law so thoroughly that he lost the freedom
.
which his plausible words suggest" (p.
Osborn illustrates each section of each chapter with citations from the
Fathers which, if not exhaustive in the area, seem more than adequate.
They come marching out in the author's somewhat abrupt style, one after
another, and fairly overwhelm. Occasionally it is difficult to see why some
of these many examples fall under one heading and not another, under
" faith " or " love " rather than " discipleship," for instance. This sometimes suggests a bit of forcing of the categories, which are valuable in
themselves and which do in fact succeed in expressing very well the characteristic patterns of Christian ethics.
The major criticism of Osborn's treatment of the Fathers, however, is
that he cannot do them real justice in the thirty or forty pages he has
allotted to each of them. The author recognizes this himself in his preface.
What it means in the end is that his findings or conclusions, although
always provocative, are unfortunately the result of a process that can
only be sketched in broad lines for the reader. It would have been better
to have made fewer citations and to have dealt with them at greater
length. It is Augustine, more than any of the others, who suffers in this
regard: his attitude toward the Donatists, for example, is handled with remarkably little sympathy, and his tolerance and patience in the affairquite unusual, all things considered-are completely overlooked. Had Osborn's criticism of Augustine, both in his two pages touching upon the
Donatist controversy and in his equally brief conclusion (part of which
is cited supra), come after a more detailed inquiry, it would have been
more justifiable.
The final chapter of Ethical Patterns considers the specific problem which
is related to each one of the patterns of Christian ethics-natural law in
the case of righteousness, imitation and the Jesus of history in the case
of discipleship, the possibility of the existence of non-Christian ethics in
a Christian ethic in the case of faith, and situation ethics in the case of
love. In a word, Osborn feels that the Fathers' infrequent and basically

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reasonable appeals to natural law were later distorted into a universal
and autonomous system; for the Fathers, ethics in no way depended upon
natural law but was directed to the will of God and to living in his world.
The relation of non-Christian to Christian ethics is well-treated: Osborn
shows that neither linguistically nor historically nor logically could Christian
ethics exist independently of its non-Christian predecessor. In this connection he makes a special point of the perennial compatibility of Platonism
and Christianity, a compatibility which the Fathers, of course, acknowledged and took advantage of. For the two teachings share a common
vision: that there is a supreme good, that man is fallible, and that " the
claims of perfection and contingency can be reconciled by the participation
of the particular in the unique divine perfection or by the world which
joins the transcendent to the particular " (p. 204) . In the sections on
discipleship/ the Jesus of history and love/ situation ethics the locating
of the problems in their patristic contexts is not done with any clarity.
Perhaps it was not so intended to be done. Instead the problems are posed
(with the exception of the use of Augustine's "Love, and do what you
will" as a point of departure in the second instance) in an exclusively
modern fashion.
Osborn concludes by remarking that these four patterns, operating in
the tension of contingency and perfection, render Christian ethics intelligible
to a certain extent. Nonetheless, "while the main patterns are clear, there
is genuine confusion and contradiction. . . . More important, there is
ambiguity or polarity running through the whole of Christian ethics" (p.
216) . Essentially it is the ambiguity created by the demands of both
contingency and perfection; however, for all the inherent dangers, the
four Fathers whom the author chooses pick their way rather carefully
among them: that is a sign of the possibility of achieving at least some
small consistency in ethics. And yet ethics can never adequately resolve
the tension within itself: it "can live only in the presence of its failure"
(p. 220) , directed, in the end, toward hope and toward the Cross.
Here is a creative and fertile approach. If there are objections to some
of what Osborn does in his book, these should not obscure its real value.
If, in particular, the treatment of the Fathers disappoints by not being
so lengthy or profound as it might be, nonetheless Osborn is seeking only
to establish and illustrate patterns and not to write a monograph on each
ethical aspect of each Father. And, although in fact 168 of its 252 pages
are devoted to the New Testament and the Fathers, one has at bottom
the impression that this is really more a book about ethics than about
early Christianity and that the Fathers are ultimately only illustrations.
It should, I think, be read in that light.
BONIFACE RAMSEY,

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. O.

0. P.

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Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion. By
CHARLES E. HARTSHORNE. Marquette University Publications: Milwaukee, 1976.
Each year since 1937 the National Honor Society for Philosophy at
Marquette University has invited a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor
of St. Thomas Aquinas. Last year the lecturer was Charles Hartshorne.
While the title of the lecture is rather formidable the main theme is quite
simple. Hartshorne does not present a comprehensive statement of seven
hundred years of metaphysics of religion, but instead an informal statement
of the problem concerning the nature of God and his relation to the world
and man. To one acquainted with Hartshorne and process thought in
general this lecture offers nothing that is ultimately new nor that is more
clearly stated than it has been previously by Hartshorne. Nevertheless,
it is a good introduction to how process thinkers perceive the basic differences between themselves and classical theists.
Hartshorne believes that "The entire history of philosophical theology,
from Plato to Whitehead, can be focused on the relations among three
propositions:
(1) The world is mutable and contingent;
The ground of its possibility is a being unconditionally and in all
respects necessary and immutable;
(3) The necessary being, God, has ideally complete knowledge of the
world " (p. 15) .
Hartshorne maintains that Aristotle, Spinoza, Socinus and process philosophers " agree that the three propositions, taken without qualification, form
an inconsistent triad, for they imply the contradiction: a wholly noncontingent being has contingent knowledge " (p. 15) . Aristotle escapes
the dilemma by denying God's knowledge of contingent reality. Spinoza
escapes by denying the contingency of the world and making it necessary
and divine. Socinus and process philosophers remove the inconsistency by
denying the immutability of God. In trying to maintain all three Aquinas
places himself in an illogical position.
Not surprisingly Hartshorne believes that Aquinas places himself in an
untenable position because of a false axiom he acquired from Plato which
he never challenged. That axiom is that " deity is defined as perfect " (p.
4) and as such is immutable. Hartshorne states that while both Aristotle
and Aquinas realized that if God were such, contingent being could be
related to him but not vice-versa, only Aristotle remained consistent and
denied that God could have knowledge of the contingent world since such
a gnoseological relation implies by necessity change in the knower. The
heart of Hartshorne's critique then is that an immutable God cannot be

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related to contingent reality. Only a changing God can be related to
changing reality.
It would be good at this point to make a few comments on the dilemma
Hartshorne proposes. Because Aquinas understands God to be ipsum esse
and thus actus purus there is no negative potency in God. This includes
the fact then that God has no relational potency in the sense that he does
not have to overcome some lack within himself in order to establish relations. Finite beings on the other hand must overcome a lack within themselves in order to establish causal relations. Finite beings, such as men,
must relate themselves to one another through mediating actions, actions
which actualize relational potency. Thus they must undergo change in
order to be related to one another. Men, therefore, are never causally related to one another as they are in themslves, but only through some mediating action. This is not the case with God. Because God is ipsum esse
he has no relational potency to overcome which would cause him to change
when a relation is established and finite beings become related to him as
creatures or, in the case of men, as sons/ daughters, and subjects. Thus
whatever is related to God is related to God as God exists in himself and
not by some mediating action which is an act that is other than himself
or a partial expression of himself. The effect or change which occurs lies
solely in the finite being. Because the finite being is related to God as
a creature, or as sons / daughters and subjects, God as he exists in himself
is seen and understood to be Creator, Father and Lord.
God's absolute perfection and immutability does not make relations to
the world and man impossible as Hartshorne maintains. Rather it is God's
absolute and immutable perfection which enables God to establish relations which are supremely intimate and dynamic. Through the creative
change in the creature he is related to God as God is in himself. Aquinas
brings this out clearly when he states concerning the Creator / creature relationship: "God is said to be in all things by essence, not indeed of the
things themselves, as if he were their essence, but by his own essence,
because his substance is present to all things as the cause of their being"
(Summa Theol., I, 8, 3, ad 1). In the act of creation God creates by no
other act than the pure act that he is, his essence; and a creature is only
by being related to the very act that God is in himself. Thus God, unlike
any other person, is present in and to the creature by his very essence, by
the pure act that he is in himself. Even pantheism falls short of such a
close relationship, for in pantheism God is never fully present as he is in
himself, by his essence, but by some lesser emanation or divine spark of his
being.
While there is some ambiguity and a more detailed study needs to be
done, it becomes clear what Aquinas means when he says that God
is the " logical term " in relation to the world and man, or that the relation

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is " real " in the creature but not in God. He does not mean that God is
not actually related to creatures as Hartshorne and others maintain. As
Aquinas states: "It cannot be said ... that these relations exist as realities
outside of God " (Summa Contra Gent., 2, 13, 1). What Aquinas is saying
is that God is related to the world and man, not because of some change
or effect in him, but solely and precisely because the creature is effected
and thereby really related to God. For Aquinas, while God is the logical
term of the relation in the sense that he does not change, and does not
establish the relation by some mediating act, he is in reality related to
the creature because the creature is related to him. Commenting on God
being " Lord " Aquinas says: " Since God is related to the creature for
the reason that the creature is related to him; and since the relation is
real in the creature, it follows that God is Lord not in idea only, but in
reality, for he is called Lord according to the manner in which the creature
is subject to him" (Summa Theol., I, 13, 7, ad 5). Thus for God to
be the logical term of the relation, for him not to change in the relation,
detracts neither from the dynamism of the relation nor from the intimacy
nor from the reality of the relation. The very contrary is the case. To
be the logical term specifies that God is related to man at the very depths
of man's being, not in a lesser expression of himself, but in the fullness
of his very being as God.
After criticising Aquinas's understanding of God's relation to the world,
Hartshorne proposes his own. He maintains here as elsewhere that the
principle of " prehension " is the clue to the God / world relationship.
"No more magnificent metaphysical generalization has ever been made"
(p. 41-42). When speaking symbolically and poetically Hartshorne and
other process philosophers usually describe the prehending relation as
" loving," " intimate," " personal," and " dynamic." When defined, prehension is understood to be an ontological constitutive relation by which the
past becomes part of one's present reality. While one gets the impression
many times that prehension is primarily an epistemological concept denoting that the present comes to know the past, this is not its primary
meaning. The past only becomes known in the present because the past
is ontologically constitutive of the present. Prehension is primarily a metaphysical concept.
The relationship then between God and man is that of prehending each
other's past as constitutive of one's own present actuality. Thus Hartshorne
states: "Very literally we exist to enhance, not simply to admire or enjoy,
the divine glory. Ultimately we are contributers to the ever growing divine
treasury of values" (p. 43).
Again a few comments are in order. Because "prehension" is a relation
of the past ontologically constituting the present, God and man are never
contemporaries. They are never related to one another as contemporary

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311

subjects or persons: as " l's." God is only related to a person as the past
constitutive of the person's present. Man is related to God as the past
constitutive of his present. However, they are never personally present
to one another in the present. Hence one must conclude that God and man
do not know each other as contemporary subjects but only as past objects.
Man worships and adores only the past idea of God, not God himself. Thus
it is difficult to see how such a relation could in any real sense be called
"intimate,"" personal,"" loving," or" dynamic." What Hartshorne means
then by man enhancing God's glory is clear. He does this not in any
personal way, but solely in the sense that God prehends man's past into
his present. It is a completely self-constituting affair on the part of God
which bears no personal relation to man at all.
(The only other subject that Hartshorne deals with at any length in
his lecture is the process concept of God as dipolar. Space limitations do
not permit a treatment of that.)
Hartshorne's thought has in many ways dominated the philosophy of
religion over the past several years. This is precisely because, as his
Marquette lecture shows, he treats questions which are of the utmost importance. Even if one does not accept his answers, he forces one to recast one's own, and this is no small merit.
THOMAS WEINANDY, 0. F. M. Cap.
Georgetown University
Washington, D. O.

Faith Under Scrutiny. By TmoR HORVATH. Fides Publishers, Inc., Notre
Dame, 1975). 343 pages. $5.95.
This book represents an attempt to establish and explain a method for
Christian apologetics, which the author understands to be the self-reflective
dialogue of faith carried out in response to challenges to the Church and
its faith. A cursory history of apologetics is intended to illustrate the
variety of forms which the Church's apology has taken, from early New
Testament times through Vatican II, including a suggestion of what the
next great challenge to apologists will be.
The major concerns of recent times began with the nineteenth century
inquiry into the origins of Christianity, an enterprise which inspired the tremendous growth of biblical scholarship. In the second half of the twentieth
century the concern shifted from the origins to the meaning of Christianity,
with the Church asking itself what it can offer to the needs of the human
community which this community cannot find elsewhere. This is the age of

BOOK REVIEWS

"religionless Christianity," the death of God, the theologies of hope, liberation, and politics, in which the Church is urged to acquaint itself more
directly with the values and needs of contemporary society.
Now we are on the threshold of a new "man-computer symbiosis,"
which for the apologist means a " believer-computer symbiosis." As a
highly developed tool of communication the computer will transform man's
habitual way of talking, writing, and believing. Religious man, Horvath
says, will have to translate into " machine language " the dynamics which
he perceives in his behavior as a believer, and the subsequent description
of the elements of an " authentic faith experience " is intended to serve
as a first step toward that end.
At the center of the difficulties of recent apologetical efforts is the role
of the divinity of Jesus: is it a legitimate concern of apologetics? If so,
how should it be approached? If not, how does one avoid presenting Jesus
as merely a religious teacher or prophet? Horvath's work attempts to
rescue apologetics from its confusion by redefining its object in terms of
the role of apologetics in relation to the general task of fundamental theology. Whereas fundamental theology proper studies the ways and forms
in which God reveals himself to man, apologetics concerns itself with the
historical traces of revelation, asking whether it did happen in the manner
in which the Church believes it did. His proposed schema for fundamental
theology would include, first, ·a consideration of revelation from its theological (as given) and anthropological (as received) sides in confrontation with fundamental human needs; second, an apologetics of the revelation of Christ in its original form; and third, revelation in its transmitting
form, from the side of the Church (Scripture and tradition), and from the
side of a progressing humanity.
·Since the definitive· revelation of God has taken place in Jesus, whose
coming represents God's coming into the world, the proper object of apologetics must be " the ' theologico-historical ' demonstration of the validity
of faith in the personal entry of God into human history in Jesus of
Nazareth for the supercreatural beatitude of man." Among his several
arguments for the propriety of this object Horvath suggests that all men
wish in some way to come in contact with the ultimate meaning of their
existence, that the abstract efforts of philosophers make it too difficult for
men to find a common means of contact, and, finally, that the Incarnation
provides the means of contact with ultimate reality in history through
man's experience. Further, this approach emphasizes the divine initiative
of God's seeking out man, which is appropriate for a culture seemingly
indifferent to an existence beyond the present. It therefore becomes the
task of the apologist to demonstrate that God has entered the world in
order to make man happy by communicating his own divine happiness.
The methodology proposed by Horvath is a two-fold activity comprising

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313

" question-raising " and " context-creating." Demonstrating the validity of
faith involves the manifestation of sign-events which invite man to open
himself to faith. These events provoke man to a series of questions: Is
this possible? Is God really acting? Are you the one who is acting now?
(This later stage represents the beginning of prayer.) When man perceives
the answers to be "Yes", the dialogue of faith has been realized. This selfreflective process will be qualified by the various strata of inquiry,
i. e., scientific, philosophical, historical, psychological, sociological, ethical,
aesthetic, religious, and finally, as a matter of belief. The Christ-event
will have proper objectives for a variety of critical analyses. In all cases
it is the role of apologetics to expose the sign-event in all its complexityin order, apparently, to safeguard its mystery.
It is also up to apologetics to provide the proper context in which the
sign-event can be understood. Eschewing various hermeneutical approaches
of the past, Horvath insists that the only adequate context in which to
approach the revelatory sign is charity, understood as the communication
of the fullness of being, with its perfect unity of knowing and lbving.
Apologetics must show that infinite love is the horizon against which the
questioning dialogue of faith emerges. The apologist creates the context
by helping man to want the fullness of being, to know and love the fullness of being, and to recognize plenitude of being as the total and unrestrained giving of self.
Having laid out the theory, the author devotes the remainder of the
work to a practical exposition of his method by analyzing a series of " theologico-historical events." He begins with the series of divine interventions
recorded in the Old Testament, through which is introduced God's loving
presence as a communication of his beatitude to men. Jesus's life of revelation, of himself and of God, is the second event: an examination of the
Kingdom, Son of God, and Son of man sayings reveals that Jesus is here
portrayed as the embodiment and revealer of the fullness. of being, his
life constituting a translation of God's presence into history in a unique
and final way. The next event is Jesus's death, which gives the author
the opportunity to propose his own theory explaining why Jesus was in
fact crucified. Following this there is a discussion of the resurrectionascension as the full realization of supreme love breaking through historical categories. The Church as the historical extension of the risen
Lord is sent to do what Jesus did, believing in his active presence in its
mission. The book ends with a reflection on the meaning and purpose of
God's entry into history, which reiterates the argument for the proposed
object of apologetics. Man's infinite longing for happiness can be satisfied
only by a completely Other, and hence the need for the supercreatural
beatitude which God offers to man. The resurrection is proleptic of our
own destiny.

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BOOK REVIEWS

This last part of the book is distinguished from the beginning sections
by its heavy scriptural orientation and its at times plodding exegesis. A
generally lucid style breaks down in the last chapter in the discussion on
the possibilities of God-talk.
Appended to the book is a series of study questions divided according
to the eleven chapters, and subject and name indices follow the bibliographical notes.
JACK Rossi, 0. P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. 0.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. By Huoo A.
MEYNELL. New York: Library of Philosophy and Religion. Barnes
and Noble, 1976. pp.
Writing an introduction to the work of an important thinker is no easy
business. In addition to a thorough knowledge of the work one must have
a thorough knowledge of the audience and be able to put one's finger on
the transpositions which will make clear to that audience a mind whose
cast and language may well be alien to it. Professor Meynell knows
Lonergan's work, and attempts, with a good deal of promise, to make it
available to the philosophers and students of the British philosophical tradition. The book is not aimed at specialists in Lonergan studies or even
at those who are familiar with contemporary Catholic theology or philosophy, although it may be of aid to those among the latter who have not
read or will not read Insight. Nor does it pretend to introduce the reader
to the Catholic or general cultural background to Insight. David Tracy's
The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan remains the best introduction to
the background and foreground of Lonergan's work in philosophical and
theological method.
Meynell presents the chief moments of Insight. In effect, he takes the
reader, one unfamiliar with Lonergan, on a tour of that book. He summarizes, concisely and clearly, what Lonergan means by understanding,
by classical, statistical, genetic, and dialectical methods, and by method
in metaphysics. He presents the Insight discussion of hermeneutics, of
common sense and community, of the biases that inflict both, and the
"proof" for the existence of God. Finally, in a concluding essay, "Lonergan
and the Problems of Contemporary Philosophy," he brings into dialectical
relationship some of the positions taken by Lonergan and those taken or
taken for granted in Anglo-American philosophy: on science (Bacon,
Popper, Kuhn), on epistemology and metaphysics (Locke, Hume, early

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BOOK REVIEWS

Wittgenstein), on ethics (Hume, G. E. Moore}, and in philosophical theology (Barthians and J. L. Mackie in theodicy). The concluding essay
will be valuable for those who are already familiar with Lonergan and
want to know something of the problems that other philosophers find
in his work.
Meynell is carrying forward one of the concerns of Insight itself in his
attempt to address students of the British empiricist tradition. Insight
was written in good part as an assessment of and reaction to that tradition.
Meynell succeeds in opening Insight for those who may have been put off
by its complexity, length, and language. Clarity and brevity are the major
strengths of this introduction; students will find it helpful on its presentational side. Its chief weakness is that it is not sufficiently and explicitly
dialectical in its method. One example among several that might be offered
is the difficulty that some philosophers of language find with Lonergan's
lack of attention to the achievements and confusions of contemporary language analysis. Meynell might have helped the student more had he in
each chapter listed a few of the major objections to Lonergan's positions
and how these objections are or might be met.
The dialectical character of Insight itself should push the interpreter
in this direction. There has been serious work done on Lonergan and Kant,
Dilthey, Gadamer, and other major European philosophers and theologians.
But detailed dialectical study of Lonergan vis-a-vis the major figures of
the Anglo-American philosophical tradition remains to be done. To make
Lonergan's critical realism and transcendental method available to students
of other traditions in our own context requires contrasts of Lonergan with
Hume, Berkeley, Mill, Russell, Austin, G. E. Moore, James, Peirce, Dewey,
Royce, et. al. Such studies would reveal large areas of shared concern and
of agreement and would advance understanding on all sides if only by
uncovering basic disagreement. However, there are limits of space and
time in introductions such as Meynell has written and we can be thankful
for his effort. There are few philosophers better qualified to interpret
Lonergan to an empiricist audience, and fewer to whom that audience
would be likely to attend.
WILLIAM

Catholic University
Washington, D. C.

M. SHEA

BOOKS RECEIVED
Barnes and Noble: Thomas Aquinas, by Frederick Copleston. Pp. 272;
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Basic Books: Beginnings: Intention and Method, by Edward W. Said.
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Cambridge University Press: Dilthey: Selected Writings, edited, translated
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199; $11.95.
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Indiana University Press: Speaking and Meaning, by James M. Edie. Pp.
271; $12.50.
Intervarsity Press: History, Criticism and Faith: Four Studies, edited by
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Ohio University Press: Western Approaches to Eastern Philosophy, by
Troy W. Organ. Pp. 273; $12.00.
Oxford University Press: Three Monophysite Christologies: Severus of
Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbuq, and Jacob of Saruq, by Roberta C.
Chesnut. Pp. 158; L. 6.75.
Reidel: Vladimir Solovyev and Max Scheler: Attempt at a Comparative
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University of Notre Dame: The Problems of Philosophy: Classical and
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