VERITAS RERUM: CONTRASTING COSMIC TRUTH
IN HELLENISTIC AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

The Truth in Things: Ontology
THE DELIBERATE and systematic reflection of
hinking believers on their lived belief, theology can
choose from among many ways (hodoi) or methods of
reflecting. Various historical forces have conspired to provide
the preponderance to a particular kind of philosophizing theology, wherein deductive, syllogistic reasoning predominates.
Valid and inevitable in itself, this type of theology is not simply sufficient, and if, falsely supposed sufficient, thins theological reflection and, ultimately, religious experience, of their
proper profundity and richness. Other approaches to the
meaning of being are not only helpful, but necessary.
As J. N. Findlay has recently admonished us, Platonic
myths " represent, with some decorative devices, a very serious
ontology . . . and theology which we moderns would do well
to take seriously, since they may well be true." 1 Centuries before, Dante's Divine Comedy had made it clear to Boccaccio
that "poetry is theology." This idea was later elaborated by
Charles Maurras, who suggested that "Ontology would perhaps be a better name, for poetry inclines above all to the
roots of the knowledge of Being." 2 Not that poetic reflection
and description are without their own proper dangers, both in
discovery and in communication. Even (or perhaps, precisely)
in the utterly symbolist mentality of the Middle Ages, Alain
t J . .K. :Findlay, " The Myths of Plato," in Myth, Symbol and Reality,
ed. Alan Olson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) 165.
2Cited by Jacques Maritain, Art and Ffoholasticism (London: Sheed and
Ward, 1949) 173.

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ROBERT L. KRESS

de Lille cautioned that "poetry's lyre rings vibrantly with
falsehood in the external literary shell." Nevertheless, "internally it communicates a hidden and profound meaning ....
Whoever reads with penetration, having discarded the external
shell of falsehood, finds the sweet tasting fruit of truth enclosed within." 3
Why is this the case? For two reasons. First of all, both
philosopher and poet are petitioners of the truth, propelled
thereunto by their experience of the cosmos which prompts in
them wonderment (admiratio). St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Aristotle, well remarks:
It is clear that puzzlement (dubitatio) and wonderment (admiratio) proceed from ignorance. For when we encounter effects
whose cause is hidden from us, then we wonder about their cause.
And, insofar as wonderment was the cause leading to philosophy,
it is clear that the philosopher is in some sense or other a philomythes, that is, a lover of fable (story), which is the property
(the hallmark or characteristic) of poets. For this reason, the first
who considered the principles of things (de principiis rerum) in a
narrative (or story: f abularem) form were called theologizing
poets, as were Perseus and certain others who were [known as] the
seven wise ones. The reason why (causa quare) the philosopher
is compared to the poet is this: both are concerned with mirandathings which evoke puzzlement and wonderment. For the stories
with which poets are concerned are composed of certain " wonderfull" things. Philosophers, too, have been moved from wonderment
to philosophizing. And because wonderment_ proceeds from lack of
knowledge, it is clear that they have moved to philosophize in
order to escape ignorance. 4

The second reason poets and philosophers enjoy perichoresis
in the pursuit of truth is the perichoresis of truth and being itself. According to the Scholastics, "ens et verum convertuntur." 5 That is, being and true are interchangeable terms, for,
de Lille, De Planotu Naturne, PL CCX, 451 C.
Aquinas, In XII Libras Metaphysicor11-1n Aristotelis EJJpositio,
L.I,1.3 ( Marietti 55) .
5 On this, see Joseph Pieper, Wahrheit
der Dinge (Munich: Kosel, 1947)
11-27, 107.
3 Alain

1 Thomas

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as Thomas Aquinas notes, " The name truth expresses the
congeniality and coming together of being and intellect." 6
Later, he emphasizes that " each and every thing is true and
no thing is false." 7 In a word, truth is a disposition of being
which neither adds to being nor specifies a special mode of
being. It describes, rather" what is found in being in general."
For, as "the philosopher concludes, the same order obtains in
being (esse) and truth (veritate) ... and thus the nature
(ratio) of the true follows the ratio of being (entis) ." 8
Long before our disputatious age and its bookish preoccupations, Anselm of Canterbury was already alarmed, for" so few
ponder the truth which is located in the [very] being of
things." 9 And Thomas Aquinas also felt compelled to emphasize that the purpose of dialogue and thought was not to
know " what others have thought, but the truth residing in the
very nature and being of things." 10 Indeed, the history of
Western thought is encompassed by exhortations to do just
that. At the beginning Heraclitus already admonished us that
" Wisdom is to do and say true things, listening attentively to
the very nature, the essence of things." 11 And in connection
with his self-proclaimed destruction 12 of Western philosophy,
Martin Heidegger proclaimed that " Thought (Thinking) ,
simply put, is the thought (thinking) of Being. The genitive
is twofold. Thought is of Being insofar as thought is the event
or happening of being; thus, it belongs to Being. Thought is
6 Thomas Aquinas,
De Veritate (Quaestiones Disputatae) I,l (free translation).
7 De Veritate I,10.
s De V eritate, I,l, ad 4,5.
9 Anselm of Canterbury,
Opera Omnia T, ed. F. S. Schimitt (Edinburgh:
Thomas Nelson, l!l46), 188 (ch. 9). See also pp. 185-186 ( cli. 7), where this
idea is expanded.
10 Thomas Aquinas, Gommentarfam
in libros de Gaelo et Mundo, L.I,1.22.
11 Heraclitus,
Fragment 112, in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H.
Diels and W. Krans (Berlin: Weidmann, 1934).
12 Of course, Heidegger's
"destruction" was not meant to be annihilational,
but regenerative.
Compare the origin of " destruction of the history of
ontology" (Sein und Zeit [Halle: 1947, 19-27] with Was Jst Metaphysilc
(Bonn: Colten, HJ43) !l.

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ROBERT L. KRESS

simultaneously the thought of Being insofar as thought, belonging to Being, listens to and heeds Being. The listening belonging to Being-this is what thought is in its very essential
origin." 13 And when thought thinks successfully, it receptively discovers the truth, which is itself the aletheia, the unconcealment, the revealing of being. Being itself is always threatened by concealment in and through the very beings it enables
to be.14
At this point the question of the "ontological difference" inescapably reveals itself. 15 To what kind of Being beyond
(apeiron.) the being of individual beings do these beings themselves point? Of which transcending being are they signals? 16
In less strenuous language, we are inevitably brought face to
face with the question recently popularized in Alfie and Jesus
Christ Superstar: "What's It All About? " In the more
sombre, soulful tones of Peggy Lee, one inquires, "Is That All
There Is?" More philosophically put is the question of Leibniz, Schelling and Heidegger: "Why is there anything at all,
and not just nothing?" 11 This question inevitably leads to
what the Greeks called the apeiron-the unlimited, the unbounded, the all embracing, the beyond. In sum, the question about the beings and Being (Seinsfrage) of this world and
their meaning (Sinnfrage) inevitably evokes the question of
God (Gottesfrage). Thus, Hegel could still say that "in
reality the proper object of philosophy is only God, or, its
goal is to recognize and know God." 18 And before him, Thomas
13 Martin Heidegger,
Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit mit einem Brief
iiber den Humanismus (Bern: Francke, 1947) 56-57.
14 See Martin Heidegger,
Preface to Heidegger-Through
Phenomenology
to Thought, Herbert Richardson (Hague: Nijhoff, 1963) XI-XIV, XXL
15 See Max Muller, Existenzphilosophie
im geistigen Leben der Gegenwart
(Heidelberg: Kehrle, 1964; 3rd revised ed.) 43-50, 77-84.
1s Peter Berger, A Rumor of Angels (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969).
11 See Joseph Pieper, "Kreatiirlichkeit,"
in Thomas von Aquin 1274-1974,
ed. Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff (Muni ch : Kosel, 197 4) , 58 ( bibliographical references).
18 G. W. F. Hegel, Einleitung
in die Gesohiohte der Philosophie, ed. J.
Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959) 91.

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Aquinas had emphasized that "nearly the entire philosophical
enterprise is ordered to the knowledge of God." 19 From its
very beginning, Western thought, indeed, all human thinking, has been fascinated by the apeiron beyond the limited
beings and experiences of everyday human life. Already among
the earliest Greeks unanimous agreement about its existence
was accompanied by unanimous disagreement about its nature. The truth which is in the very nature of things here on
this side (diesseits) can only be and be fully revealed insofar
as the truth of the Beyond (jenseits) shines into and illuminates this cosmos.
Human reflection is the endeavor to discover this truth in
and through the events and experiences of everyday life.
Christian reflection understands this discovering to be sourced
in the twin lights and books of creation and revelation. 20
Among the many miranda, the wonderful things which human
and Christian reflection must ponder, are positive and negative elements. Among the latter, a preferred topic is the event
and experience of failure. Human failure is twofold. One is
merely finite, the failure that can happen in any human endeavor when the desired goal is not reached. The other is also
moral, when a goal, important for the flourishing of the cosmos
and humanity, is not reached because of a freely and inadequately chosen and performed means. Often finite failure is
also moral failure-sin. However, not all failure is necessarily
moral, and we must be careful lest we become sin-preoccupied,
thereby devaluing both God and cosmos, as well as sin itself. 21
19 Thomas

Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I,4.
M. D. Chenu, "The Symbolist Mentality," Nature, Man, and Society
in the Twelfth Century, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) 99145; also Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff, " Gotteserkenntnis im Licht der Vernunft
und des Glaubens nach Thomas von Aquin," in Thomas von Aquin 1274-1974,
97-123. Avery Dulles has well shown the compatibility and mutuality of
"Revelation and Discovery," in Theology and Discovery: Essays in Honor
of Karl Rahner, ed. William Kelly (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
1980) 1-29.
21 See Robert Kress, "Human Nature in the Roman Catholic Tradition,"
in The Human Condition in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (tentative
title), ed. Frederick Greenspahn KTAV. (New York: KTAV, 1985).
20 See

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ROBER'f L. KRESS

In any case, the experience of failure and guilt has been a
constant goal to reflection on the truth of the things of this
cosmos. Failure and guilt have long been a favorite theme of
the matter-of-fact indicative sentences of deductive, syllogistic
theological textbooks. Of all theological themes, however, failure and guilt may have flourished most in the dramatic narratives of both myth and history. 22
Against this background I wish to compare some experiences
of failure and guilt in Greek and Judeo-Christian literature. 28
Before we proceed to the texts themselves, it is worth noting
that some words are more important than others. Karl Rahner
calls these "Urworte "-original, originary, primal, primary
words. They do more than merely designate and denominate
individual beings, whether things or actions. Beyond this, they
symbolize-that is, they enable the thinking human being to
synthesize, to pull all things and events into a. coherent, meaningful whole. We often spontaneously associate such original
and primal words with the poet-night, star, home, heaven,
hell, heart, kiss, wind, spirit. 24 From among them, we choose
for our purposes light and darkness, cosmos and conscience,
vision and blindness.
22 Thus, Hans Urs von Balthasar
has proposed a "Theologische Asthetik,
Logik and Dramatik" in order to achieve an "at least moderately satisfactory presentation of the uniqueness of Christianity for contemporary culture." Rechenschaft 1965 (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1965) 27-33.
2s In support of my procedure, I shall invoke only Cleanth Brooks, The
Hidden God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), especially 68-97.
" The poet's task is not only to find new symbols for the central experiences
but to reconstitute the old symbols, reclaiming them, redeeming them, setting them in contexts which will force us once again to confront their Christian meanings" ( 72-73). Charles Moeller has devoted an entire volume to
"salvation literature and the literature of happiness . . . in the eyes of
modern man." Man and Salvation in Literature (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1970) 3.
24 Karl Rabner, ffohriften
zur Theologie III (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1956)
349-375, 379-390. "Thus the Urwort is certainly, before all other expressions, the Ursakrament of the entities, realities (Wirklichkeiten) ... in this
word the realities come forth from their obscurity into the protecting light
of man, to bless him and fulfill him " ( 358) . See also the idea of the
" Schliisselbegriff" in Schriften XIII ( 1978) 255,310.

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7

The Truth in Tears: Myth and History
For our comparison we shall have recourse to both the
Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions. From the former the
truth of dramatic myth will be represented by Oedipus; from
the latter the truth of dramatic history by Peter and Paul. In
both cases, of course, it is a matter of reflection on the experience of failure for the sake of discovering the truth in the very
nature of things, the being of the world.
Oedipus Rex 25 is properly called a. tragedy, for the truth
mediated by this drama is truly tragic. To discover precisely
wherein this tragedy lies now becomes our task.
We may begin by asking whether the truth of things which
Oedipus discovers enlightens or endarkens the cosmos which he
experiences. I have chosen Oedipus precisely because he was
" a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with
envy on his lot" (Rex 1525). His later lot, was, however, anything but enviable. But the precise nature of the tragic drama
of Oedipus remains imprecise. Was it an ancient anticipation
of Existentialist Angst, testifying that "not to be born is the
greatest boon, surpassing thought and speech" (Colonus
1224)? Or was it a pristine paradigm of stoic endurance in a
hostile cosmos, where we may " count no mortal happy till he
has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain" (1530) ?
Most properly, neither of these approaches is adequate. As
even Sigmund Freud perceived, Oedipus Rex is really a theoontological drama: 26 " The Oedipus Rex is a tragedy of
fate ... the conflict between the all-powerful will of the gods
and the vain efforts of human beings threatened with disaster." 27 However, he misperceived when he asserts that" the
25 For the Greek dramas I have used the translation
of David Grene and
Richard Lattimore, Greek Tragedies, volumes I (Oedipus Rex) and III
(Oedipus at Oolonus) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
26 I borrow this term from
Martin Heidigger, Identitiit und Differenz
(Pfiillingen: Neske, 1957) and do not deem it illegitimate eisegesis to use
it in regard to Freud.
27 Sigmund Freud, The lnterpreta.tion
of Dreams (GBWW 54) (Chicago:
Britannica, 1952) 246.

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ROBERT L. KRESS

form which it [the Oedipus fable] subsequently assumed [in
Sophocles] was the result of misconceived secondary elaboration of the material, which sought to make it serve a theological intention." 28 For it does serve such an intention, although
one may still agree with Freud's contention that the pious
Sophocles can hardly be expected to urge " an accusation
against destiny and the gods." 29 On the other hand, one must,
not and may not agree with Freud's presumption that the
Oedipal drama is a prolepsis of his own psychoanalytic philosophy and program, wherein the truth of things is parricide and
incest, as "the basic [primeval] wish-phantasy of our childhood" unveils and reveals. 3 ° Crucial for our purpose is that
even the pious Sophocles cannot rest easy with the harsh truth
of things, blinding and exiling as it is, which is revealed in
Oedipus Rex. Thus, Oedipus at Colonus represents Sophoclean
puzzlement and wonderment about the cosmos and its apeiron,
" God in whose hands all these things [certainly miranda]
are" (1779).
A later interpreter of Freud, Paul Ricoeur, has clearly seen
that " the core of the tragedy is not the problem of sex." It is,
rather, "the tragedy of truth ... the tragedy of self-consciousness, of self-recognition." However, he is less satisfying when
he specifies this tragedy as "the problem of flight," wherein
"Oedipus becomes guilty precisely because of his pretension to
exonerate himself from a crime that, ethically speaking, he is
not in fact guilty of." Ricoeur is correct in emphasizing
Oedipus's original non-guilt, but he is wrong when he describes
the Oedipal " disaster" as " this impure passion with respect
to the truth, his hubris . . . his passion for nonknowing. He
incorrectly locates Oedipus's guilt "in the sphere ... of selfOne can wonder whether Ricoeur has entirely escaped the danconsciousness: it is man's anger as the power of non-truth." 31
Interpretation 24 7.
General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (GBWW #54) 582.
ao Interpretation 247; General Introduction 582.
a1 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1970) 516-517.
28
20

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gers of the Freudian, psychoanalytic " reductionist hermeneutic," about which he himself has cautioned. 32 Why else
would he insist on finding Oedipus somehow or other guilty of
something or other? In the drama there are certainly guilt and
tragedy aplenty. But their specific subject is not the person
of Oedipus, who remains "a man most masterful" (my emphasis) . It is, rather, the cosmos which he inhabits, its taxis
(order) 33 within and its apeiron without, for they are all beholden to heimarmene, 34 the impersonal tyrant of blind fate.
Consequently, a free human conscience, the prerequisite for
guilt and sin in the strict sense, is not possible in the Oedipal
cosmos.35 Hence, he cannot be guilty in the strict sense, but
the cosmos is guilty in an analogical sense. The " truth of the
things" in this cosmos is darkness-both blind and blinding.
This cosmos is not the " Seat of Wisdom," which enlightens,
but the exile of doubt and despair, which blinds. As in all
philosophies, myths and religions, this cosmos is the image and
likeness of the apeiron whence it comes. And this apeiron is
the blind, impersonal fate of necessity (anangke) 36 to which
even the gods are subject, as Ovid's Jupiter meekly confesses:
" The fates rule me also " CMetam. 9,435) .37 The inner worldly " sacramental " presence of this heimarmene is the cosmic
taxis, itself absolutely necessary and inviolable, blindly bent
32 Paul Ricoeur,
"The Atheism of Freudian Psychoanalysis,"
Oonoilium
6/2 (June 1966) 31; 35.
33 On the importance of ta::vis, the necessary cosmic order of things, and the
retribution it requires and effects, see Martin Heidegger, "Der Spruch des
Anaximanders," H olzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1963) 296-343.
34 See Hans Jonas, Philosophical
Essays (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall,
1974) 275-290.
35 See Robert Kress, " Cosmos and Conscience in the History of Religious
Imagination," in The Pedagogy of God's Image, ed. Robert Masson (Chicago:
Scholars Press, 1982) 191-206.
36 See Philip Wainright,
editor, The Presocratics (New York: Odyssey,
1966) 94-99, 105, 141, 295 (also moira, tyohe, themis).
37 See also Aeschylus, Prometheus
Bound (Grene and Lattimore I): "Is
Zeus weaker than these? Yes, for he, too, cannot escape what is fated."
Likewise, for Horace (Carmen I, 12, 49-51) is Jupiter also subject to Fate.
See H. 0. Schroder, "Fatum," Realle::vikon fur Antike und Ohristentum 7,
(Stuttgart: 1941) 529.

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ROBER'r L. KRESS

on avenging every violation of itself. Greek cosmocentric, objectivist thought neither requires nor, in all truth, allows that
knowing freedom of conscience we customarily consider requisite for sin and guilt. 38 Thus, Freud is again not on target
in contending that Oedipus dramatizes a conflict between" the
all-powerful will of the gods and the vain efforts of human beings ... between fate and human will." Likewise, Oedipus's
cosmos does not a.llow the Freudian contention about the
tragedy as " the attempt to reconcile divine omnipotence with
human responsibility," 39 for it cannot provide for human responsibility at all. Even worse is the reason it cannot do this:
its presumably "all-powerful ... gods" are themselves impotent, subject to an even greater power, whose necessary nature
is not the creativity of free wisdom, but the force of blind fate.
Because of all of this, not Oedipus, but his cosmos is guilty,
its truth blinding, not illuminating. The truth of this cosmos
inspires not rejoicing, but weeping, not home-coming, but exile.
Sophocles's text itself is emphatic.
For this "terrible wisdom (Rex 316) ... God's meaning for
us (407, 707-710, 723-725) is darkness on your eyes ... this
land ... a haven [which is] no haven" (417-423). Therefore,
the blind seer [In such a cosmos could the seer be anything
but blind?] continues, " he'll have no joy of the discovery:
blindness for sight and beggary for riches, [blind exile] to a
foreign country" (453-456). How otherwise, in a cosmos in
which "What you have designed, 0 Zeus" enables Oedipus
to "have called curses on myself in ignorance" (737, 744). It
is, once again, not Oedipus, but his cosmos and its apeiron
which are "mad" (727) . In such a cosmos, where one's
"fate" is "doom" (792-793), there is only one answer to
Alfie's and Jesus Christ Superstar's question "What's It All
About": acquiescence in Jocasta's exhortation "I beg youdo not hunt this out" (1060), participation in the prayer,
38 See J. B. Metz, Christliohe
Anthropozentrik
(Munich: Kosel, 1962)
especially 59-64. Robert Kress, A Rahner Handbook (Atlanta: John Knox,
1982) 98-103.
39 Interpretation
246-247.

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" God keep you from the knowledge of who you are " (1068) .
The truth of the Oedipal cosmos is such, then, that ignorance
is truly bliss, for knowledge of the truth results in banishment
and blindness. Not only are Oedipus and Jocasta" unhappy"
(1071, 1236) and "luckless" (1195), their very "world [is]
darkness" (1326). Since "vision showed me nothing sweet
to see" (1335), Oedipus was certainly correct when "he tore
the brooches ... and dashed them on his own eyeballs " (12681270) . " Dark eyes " (1273) are as good as clear eyes when
even "the sight of [one's own] children [cannot] gladden"
(1375). And in this cosmos Oedipus was also correct to "cast
himself out of the land" (1289), for this "city, its towers and
sacred places" (1377) have no room for the "sinner and son
of sinners " (1398) Oedipus has been found to be. In such a
cosmos, " seeing and hearing nothing" (1390) is a logical wish,
indeed a blessing. Can one really argue against the conclusion
that one "would be better dead than blind and living"
(1368) ? If the world is darkness, knowledge blindness, life's
journey an exile, one may truly " count no mortal happy till
he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain "
(1530).
Oedipus at Colonus continues these reflections on the
miranda of Oedipus's life: "indeed his end was wonderful, if
mortal man's ever was" (1665). In this account of Oedipus's
last days, and this is crucial for our purpose, there is not only
resignation to "inscrutable destiny ... the powers that are
over us" (1450), 1443). There is also puzzlement and wonderment whether the cosmos is really as blindly fated as Oedipus
Rex has experienced it. Protest and revolt are probably too
strong to describe this puzzlement, but there is diligent inquiry. The cosmos still continues to be perceived as "a wide
and desolate world (1746) ... the night of earth (1753) ...
a deathly night" (1684) . "Uttermost twilight " (1237), the
world is like "the dark road (1433) ... [in a] sunlight of no
light (1549). Since the earth is certainly "no epithalamion"
(1222) but a " shroud " (1546) , its end is most fittingly " the
dark underworld (1552) ... death (1223) . . . [whose] unlit

ROBERT L. KRESS

door opened (1663) [onto] the dead men's plain, the house
that has no light" (1564) . How, then, could one not desperately inquire "Where shall I go and how shall I live " (1735) ?
Faced with "this ... truth" (1238), it is not startling that
the "sightless face's (1260) ... eyes are blind with tears"
(1709). How else respond to the truth that "not to be born
surpasses thought and speech [that is, is the greatest boon
mankind can expect]. The second best is to have seen the light
and then go back quickly whence we came" (1224-1226). Unfortunately, for Oedipus "to have seen the light" is to know
that human being and human history constitute a " bewildering mystery " (1677) . This is " the truth of things " in the
Greek objectivist, cosmocentric universe of Oedipus, who, although hardly enviable in his fate, remains most noble in his
character. Not he personally, then, is tragically guilty, but
his cosmos with its apeiron of heimarmene without and its
taxis of retribution within.
But is even this Oedipal cosmos quite so tragic, so blindly
fatal? Again, one can hardly speak of revolt and rebellion on
the part of Oedipus and his fellow dramatis personae or of
Sophocles and his fellow dramatists. But questioning and
doubt there were, whether the apeiron beyond and the cosmos
here could be so constituted. Again, we must remind ourselves
that the drama of Oedipus is neither sexological nor ethnological 40 nor psychological, but ontological, or, in the classic triad
of Western thought, cosmo-anthropo-theological. "All human
reflection on the deeper meaning of life ultimately revolves
around three concepts, or the metaphysical trinity as they have
been called: God, man and world." 41 Oedipus's original and
primal discovery is not his unusual relationship as simultaneously son and husband, father and brother (Rex 455-560;
40 Against Freud's attempt to locate the source of human tragedy in some
historical event "in the beginning," see Paul Ricoeur, "The Atheism" 34,
where he also indicates the serious deficiencies of Freud's methodology in regard to both religion and the history of religions.
41N. Max Wildeirs, The Theologian and the Universe (New York: Seabury,
1982) 1.

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18

Oolonus 829, 588, 1184), but the truth of the nature of his
cosmos and its apeiron. This we have seen at length above.
There remains but to indicate that the truth thus discovered
was not merely and supinely accepted. It was also a source of
discontent. Oedipus Rex is already a.hie to contrast "some
malignant God" (829) with " God as our protector" (828)
who "gives all life" (1425) .
However, it is Oedipus a,t Oolonus which emphasizes the unease of even the pious Sophocles with the truth of things which
Oedipus Rex had discovered. At the very beginning Oedipus
recalls that the "oracles ... of Apollo ... spoke of ... a resting place ... when I should find a home ... conferring benefit
on those who received me" (85-90) ... for I came here as one
endowed with grace by those who are over nature (286) ...
a more lasting grace than beauty" (578). Although the emphasis on "fate-al" necessity and destiny remains (46, 191,
253, 525, 964, 998, 1887, 1450, 1518, 1546, 1672, 1715, 1765)'
Oedipus is nevertheless able to protest vigorously: "No, I did
not sin! Before the law-before God-I am innocent (587,
548) ! " Indeed, "how was I evil in myself? For I suffered
these deeds more than I acted them" (270, 267; all of 265290). Even more impassioned is Oedipus's protest to and
against Creon (960-1014): "No, I shall not be judged an evil
man (988) .... I suffered them, by fate, against my will
(968) .... How could you find guilt in tha.t unmeditated act"
(977)? Perhaps the ground for this protest can be found in
Polyneices's contention, self-serving certainly, tha.t "compassion limits even the power of God " (1267) and all " these
things are in the hands of God" (1779). Thus it is possible
both to " cry in bitter grief against our fate" (1672) and also,
surprisingly, to pray and hope that "the gods may give you
such destiny as I desire for you" (1124) .
What are we to make of all this? What is the truth that
Oedipus discovered in the very nature of the things he so
dramatically experienced in his cosmos? Negatively, he discovered that the conventional theological wisdom of his contemporaries was not satisfactory. Human being is not, and

14

ROBERT L. KRESS

cannot be, merely one more homogeneous part of the blindly
fated taxis of the cosmos, as " inscrutable " and " incredible "
(Colonus 1450, 983) as the blindly fated apeiron supposedly
its source. Hence, the cosmos and its apeiron must be different
than they first seem to both the customary conventional wisdom of the past and the immediate reflection of the present
on, especially tragic, experience. Even in the restricted cosmocentric objectivist cosmos of the Greeks, human experience
and (theological) reflection thereon do not allow for universal
unfreedom and the destruction of the innocent man. However
simple or sophisticated, the argument is that reality simply
must be other than a cosmic prison of pain, a dark dungeon
of death. The truth of the nature of things has to be other.
For Oedipus at Colonus the truth may not yet be as luminous
as the Psalmist's, for whom even" the night shines as the day .
. . . Night shall be my light in my pleasures" (Ps. 139: 11-12;
Vulgate), but it is also no longer "uttermost twilight"
(Colonus 1237), a vespers fit only for the "deathly night"
(1684) of the " underworld," whose entrance is "the unlit
door of earth " (1663) .
This rather unexpected, indeed startling, outcome of Oedipal
experience and reflection I take to be a particular instance and
manifestation of what Karl Rahner has termed "suchende
Christologie "-a searching, questing Christology .42 By this
phrase Rahner wishes to assert that the world has been created
and graced by God in such a way that even those who have
not heard of Christ explicitly can and do live a. " Christology,"
at least unthematically and anonymously, in the course of their
42 The basic texts
are "Jesus Christ," Saoramentum Mundi Ill (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 194-197, where "suchende Ohristologie" is
unfortunately translated as "inquiring Christology;" Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Th using, Ohristologie-Systematisch
und Exegetisch (Frei burg: Herder,
1972; unfortunately the English translation, A New Ohristology (New York:
Seabury, 1980) cannot be recommended for two reasons. The Rahner material is not at all the same. The translation can best be described as at
random.) 59-69; Karl Rahner, Sahriften XIII (1978) 174-225; Grundkurs
des Gla,ubens (Freibnrg: Herder, 1976) 288-295.

VERITAS RERUM

15

personal histories. 43 In their lives human beings freely strive
for a final validity for themselves, whole and entire. Given the
fragility and fragmentation of human history, individual and
universal, the human being keeps watch and is on the lookout
for an absolute savior, not only as an external, providing agent
or effective cause, but as an instantiation or realization of this
wholeness in him/herself, whether already accomplished in the
past or still to happen in the future. This " seeking Christology" for the absolute savior is especially manifest in what
Rahner calls the three "Appelle" or calls, summonses: I) absolute love of neighbor; 2) readiness to die, or better, willingness to accept death; 3) hope in/for the future. At least in the
most authentic "moments " of their lives, human beings experience and understand these three calls to be dimensions of
their very existence. Rahner describes them as " anrufbares
Daseinsverstandnis." 44 That is, these three experiences of
human existence are especially the ones to which one appeals
when one wishes to " demonstrate " the meaning and consequent relevance of Christ for human beings. Or, again, because
of the de facto order of God's saving creation and grace, human
life authentically loving, hoping and dying not only prepares
for, but also already participates in the absolute salvation
which Jesus not only causes, but is. This seeking, searching
Christology I take to be illustrated in Oedipus's quest for both
understanding of his tragedy and justification of his person.
He was, therefore, truly looking for salvation from sinfully
compromised finitude in a fallen world, the salvation which
Christians believe to have happened in Jesus Christ, the only,
and therefore universal, mediator between God and man (I
Tim 2:4-6; John 10: 1-16) .45
43 On the relation of "searching Christology"
and "anonymous Christianity" see my A Rahner Handbook 60-62, 80-85.
44 Christologie 60.
1s See Rudolf
Schnackenlmrg, IJus .Tohunnesevangelium
11 ( Freiburg:
Herder, 1971) 366-369: "Die Absolutheit des Anspruches Jesu schliesst alle
Konkurrenten aus." To account for these various degrees of divine enlightenment, theology developed the theory of the threefold light of nature, grace,

16

ROBERT L. KRESS

The difference between the fullness of salvation revealed in
Jesus Christ and the search for salvation manifested in Oedipus is illustrated by the contrast between his experience of
failure-sin-guilt and the experience of Simon Peter and Paul
of Tarsus. That which Oedipus experienced as " Bewildering
Mystery" (Colonus 1667), they experienced as" rich, glorious
mystery (Col 1: 27) ... mystery of the Gospel (Eph 6: 19) ...
the Good News" (Rom 16: 25). "The mystery of our religion
is very deep indeed: He was made visible in the flesh . . .
taken up in glory" (1 Tim 8: 16). The truth of things revealed and experienced in the Apostolic encounter with the
cosmos and its apeiron, even with failure and guilt, is quite
other than the Oedipal. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the
Oedipal experience may be legitimately understood as a longing and searching for this other, apostolic, Christian truth. It
has its own light of truth, although it does not yet enjoy the
fullness of light and truth which da.wns only in Jesus (2 Tim
1: 10; Tit 2: 11; 8.4) . However dim it may at times seem,
Odeipus's cosmos does have its own light and truth. Why? According to Thomas Aquinas, for example, " insofar as a thing
has both formal and actual being, it also has light." And in a
philosophical work, he was able to say that " Ipsa actualitas
rei est quoddam lumen ipsius " (The reality of a thing is itself its very light) .46 We can now take up the Petrine and
Pauline experience of the cosmos and its apeiron through the
medium of failure and guilt.
First of all, in contrast to Oedipus, Simon Peter has to be
accounted guilty in the proper sense, for his failure was freely
chosen and freely accomplished. In the Judaeo-Christian anthropocentric understanding, the human being is precisely not
and glory, on which see Ludwig Rodi, "Lumen Gratiae," in Mysterium der
<htade, ed. H. Rossmann and J. Ratzinger (Regensburg: Pustet, 1975) 238250.
46 St. Thomas Aquinas, Super Primam l!Jpistolam Ad Timotheum Leotura,
VI 3 (Marietti 268); Oommentarium in Librum de Oausis I 6. This insight
is continued in contemporary philosophy under the rubric of the "Gelichtetheit des Seins." See Emerich Coreth, M etaphysik (Innsbruck: Tyrolia,
1961) 160-168, 413-417.

VERI'.l'A8 RERUM

17

a homogeneous part of the cosmic world and its taxis of fatal
necessity. However compromised human freedom may be in
the factual conditions of social, political, economic and cultural life, human beings remain free and responsible in the
depths of their personal being. Even in the very "administered world" 47 in which we moderns live, the Deuteronomic
admonition holds true: "I call heaven and earth to witness
against you today: I set before you life or death, blessing or
curse: Choose life" (Dent 30: 19) . Simon Peter knew this.
Nevertheless, even though he had been warned beforehand
(Luke 22: 31), he committed the greatest crime-he denied
and betrayed his friend. His treachery was certainly compounded by his repeated and explicit denials, compounded even
more, in his macho milieu, by repeated denials to mere maid
servants (Luke 22: 54-62; par.), compounded still more by his
position as spokesperson for the Twelve. 48 Thus, Petrine crime
was, quite unlike Oedipal " crime," real, not merely (forensically) imputed. One would expect its consequences to be correspondingly more severe. However, rather than an " inscrutable destiny," Peter encounters the countenance of the incarnate apeiron, not a distant force, but a part of this cosmos 49
and its history: " And the Lord turned and looked straight at
Peter" (Luke 22: 61). This encounter with the destiny of the
world, Christ, (Eph 1: 3-14; Col 1: 15-20), is neither blinding
nor exiling, although Peter "went outside and wept bitterly"
(Luke 22: 62) .50 Rather than exile to an alien land, Peter's
"going out" is an exodus, in which he finally turns from
(metanoia) "man's ways to God's way of thinking" (Matt
47 See, for example,
Max Horkheimer and Theodor .Adorno, Dialectic of
Enlightenment (New York: Seabury, 1972).
48 See Raymond Brown, Karl Donfried,
and John Reumann, Peter in the
New Testament (New York: Paulist, 1973) 159.
49 See Karl Rahner,
Schriften V ( 1962) 204, where he emphasizes that
Christ, the absolute bringer of salvation "ein Stiick dieser Geschichte des
Kosmos selbst ist .... ein Stiick des Kosmos selbst."
50 Legend has it that Peter wept so copiously that the rivulets
of tears
traced lines into his countenance, which remained, nevertheless, sighted and
not blinded like Oedipus's.

18

ROBERT L. KRESS

16: 23) . Thus, his tears, although bitter, are not blinding and
destructive, but, like the flood waters of Noah, purifying (1
Pt 3: 21) , a kind of baptism which leads into the underworld
of death, but only briefly, and for the sake of resurrection to
new life (Rom 6: 1-11). The "truth of things" revealed in
and by Christ is, then, not exile, but" home," not slavery but
"freedom" (John 8: 31-32), not darkness but "true light"
(John 1: 9). The saving grace of which Oedipus spoke at the
end of his life is more fully and truly present than even he
could have imagined in the incarnate apeiron become part of
the history of this cosmos (John 1: 14-18; 10: 10).
The case of Paul of Tarsus combines factors of both the
Oedipal and Petrine experience of failure and guilt. Like
Oedipus, Saul the Persecutor does not seem originally to have
been guilty of sin against the " followers of the Way ... the
Lord ... against the saints [and] everybody who invokes your
[the Lord's] name" (Acts 9: 2, 4, 14-15). His zeal "for the
total destruction of the Church" (Acts 8: 3) was apparently
righteous. He was not yet aware of his "kicking ... against
the goad" (Acts 26: 14). When Saul did see the light, the
truth, it was a dazzling, indeed a blinding light (Acts 22: 11).
However, like the countenance of the incarnate light for Peter,
this " light from heaven " (Acts 9: 3) was for Paul not permanently blinding. It was, rather, like Peter's tears, penitential and pedagogic. It was but a momentary darkness, indeed,
the darkness of a" vision" which enabled Saul the Persecutor
to become Paul the Apostle, sent, not exiled, to lands near and
far, " to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness
to light" (Acts 26: 16-18) . Saul's blindness was for the sake
of an even greater " sight," which would enable him " to see
the Just One" and then to "testify to what he had seen and
heard," namely that the real truth of things is the " forgiveness of sins and a share in the inheritance of the saints" (Acts
22: 15; 26: 18) . Messianic blindness is not a singular "fate,"
unique to Paul. He was, rather, one particular instance of the
more general salvation-historical principle, according to which
" one section of Israel has become blind, but this will last only

VERITAS RERUM

19

until the whole pagan world has entered [salvation] ... for
God never takes back his gifts . . . to show mercy to all mankind" (Rom 11: 25, 29, 82).
It is for the sake of these gifts and this mercy that the saga
of the blind Oedipus is not merely Sophoclean drama., indeed,
not even primarily a tragedy of fate. Rather, it is first and
foremost a " seeking Christo logy "-looking for and searching
out that apeiron which neither deadens nor blinds, but enlivens
and enlightens every man who comes into this universe (John
1: 8-9) . Such universal enlightenment is possible because, although God, the apeiron of this cosmos, is a.t " home . . . in
inaccessible light" (1 Tim 6: 16) , he has freely chosen us to
be " sons of light and sons of the day " (1 Thess 5: 5) .
"Retribution comes " indeed, as Theseus proclaimed (Colonus
1758), but a far greater and different one than frail and fallen
humanity might fear or dare hope for. The true divine " Retribution " is truly strange, for it is " salvation through our Lord
Jesus Christ, who died for us so that . . . we should live united
to him" (1 Thess 5: 9-11) .
In Jesus," the life and light of the world " (John 8: 12; 14: 6) ,
is super-abundantly fulfilled the Old Testament's prophecy
and promise: " In your light we shall see the light " (Ps
86: 10) . Contending, without adducing any supporting reasons,
that" the received translation, 'In your light we shall see the
light,' has not yielded satisfactory interpretation,'' Mitchell
Dahood translates " in your field we shalJ see the light." 51
Even should Dahood's suggestion prevail, our interpretation
here would suffer no attrition. As Rudolf Schna.ckenburg has
pointed out, "Jesus promises that he will give the light of life
to anyone who allies himself with Jesus in faith. Corresponding to the spatial understanding of darkness, this is to be understood as the divine realm of light (Lichtbereich: see 1 John
1: 7), which makes true life, participation in God's eternal life,
possible." Thus, " to follow Christ means not to walk in the
darkness, but to have the light of life." 52 This combination of
51Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966) 222-223.
s2Rudolf Schnackenburg, Das Johannesevangelium II 242; III (1975) 469.

20

ROBERT L. KRESS

light and life is rooted in the biblical understanding that the
divine favor, which provides "the sight of happiness" for
humans, is granted by "the light of your [Yahweh] face,
turned toward us " (Ps 4: 6) .
The Truth of Christ: Sacrament
In the New Testament, Jesus, the Son, and consequently the
face of God in the world (" To have seen me is to have seen
the Father " John 14: 9) not only brings truth and life and
light to the world, he is the divine truth, life and light in and
of the world.68 This is possible because of the perichoresis between Fa.ther and Son, so that whatever the Father has, the
Son has also received. The Incarnate Son does and says only
what he sees and hears the Father doing and saying (John
14: 10; 5: 19-28, 26) .54 Jesus is, then, the fullness of that revelation and communication of God with the not-godly which began already in creation. Out of chaotic darkness came light,
life and order (truth). This is possible because the true
apeiron of the cosmos is neither chaos nor nothingness, but being, whose transcendentals are truth, goodness (beauty) and
unity, and because the relationship between the cosmos and
this apeiron is neither identity nor separation, but sacramental
communion. 55 Creation ex nihilo does not mean that there is
an abyss between God and the world, which must then be supernaturally compensated. In means, ra.ther, that nothingneither demiurge nor raw material--comes between God and
the creation of God. Hence, the human world actually created
can be and truly is the "image and likeness of God" (Gen
1: 26). This sacramental understanding of being is what distinguishes the created world of Peter and Paul from the quasidivine cosmos of Oedipus. It is also what, at bottom, dis53 Oscar Cullman,
Die Ohri8tologie des Neuen Testaments (Tiibingen:
Mohr, 1958) 266.
54Joseph Bonsirven, Theologie du Nouveau Testament (Paris: Aubier,
1951) 45-49.
55 Robert
Kress, The Ohuroh: Oommunion, Sacrament, Oommunioation
(New York: Paulist, 1985) 21-22.

VERITAS RERUM

21

tinguishes their experience of failure and guilt from his. For,
as such, they are not necessarily more noble persons than
Oedipus, but the cosmos and its apeiron, in which they are
persons, is decidedly different, more noble, than Oedipus's.
It is more noble because it is the image and likeness of the
free, triune God whose very being is communion and communication. To be is to be with. Hence, even in its :finitude, the
world is, by virtue of its divinely createdness, communion and
communication with God. It is not God. Neither according
to Thales's polytheistic pantheism: "The world teems with
Gods." 56 Nor according to anthropocentric Gnosticism's contention that anthropos is really a secret, hidden name of God. 57
On the other hand, neither is the Judaeo-Christian cosmos the
sunless, endless emptiness of Friedrich Nietzsche: 58 " What
did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither
goes it now? And whither we? Away from all suns? Do we
not stumble constantly, lurching backwards, forwards, sidewards? Is there still an above and a below? Do we not wander
through an endless nothing? Is not empty space breathing
coldly down our necks? Is it not colder now? Doesn't night
come on constantly ... constantly the night? " Neither divine
nor demonic, the cosmos is sacramental. 59 This fundamental
Judaeo-Christian insight is, most fittingly, most successfully
urged by the philosopher-theologian-poet, Dante Alighieri. For
him finitude spells neither cosmocentric capitulation to otherworldly heimarmene and its innerworldly taxis, as the ancient
objectivist Greek theo-ontology had it, nor anthropocentric
apotheosis of human freedom as the modern subjectivist and
solipsist anthropocentric theo-ontology has it. 6 ° For Dante,
doxography, De Anima 411 a 7.
Jonas, Philosophical Essays 268-270.
58 Friedrich
Nietzsche, Die Frohliche Wissenschaft II ed. Karl Schlechte
(Munich: Hanser, 1966), 127 ( #125). Obviously Nietzsche had read
Oedipus at Oolonus ( 1678-1693).
59 Judaeo-Christianity
treads a middle road between the divinized cosmos of
the Greeks and the demonized cosmos of the Gnostics. See Hans Jonas, The
Gnostic Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1963) 241-265.
ao See Jacques Maritain, Le Songe de Descartes (Paris: Correa, 1932) 261.
56 .According to .Aristotelian

57 Hans

ROBERT L. KRESS

rather, finitude is positive and affirmative, the only way in
which that which is in and of itself not necessary can be at all.
Dante is well aware that if one is not God, one's options are
only to be not at all or to be creature. Creature is, then, a
thoroughly positive term, finitude a positive attribute. As
finite the non-godly creature "overcomes" the power of Nothingness (not-ing; Sartre's neant) and becomes godly, Godlike (Gen 1: 26). Finitude itself is already a beginning" share
(in) the divine nature" (2 Peter 1: 4) .61 So, unless one insists
on being the very deity itself, one need not be embarrassed or
depressed by one's finitude. 62 Finitude is the first divinely
taken step of theiosis,.63 the project whereby God divinizes the
not-godly, man. For Dante the universe is illumined " divinely" and "blessedly", revealing this truth of things: "Our
[mortals] good is perfected in this good-that what God wills
we also will." Consequently, even "defect" can be "sweet." 64
Indeed, the "Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence from fervent
love, and from living hope which vanquishes the divine will;
not in such wise as man overcomes man, but vanquishes it,
because it wills to be vanquished, and, vanquished, vanquishes
with its own benignity." 65 Not only is finitude caught up in
this strangely vanquishing benignity, so is failure. When the
created, cosmic sacrament of God fails and falls, it is not destroyed, but sought out embraced and healed by the same God
who created it. 66 Thus, we can legitimately hear Cunizza's
61 Karl Rahner artily describes three stages in this participational
history:
philosophy (nature) as the created possibility, theology (grace) as the
created-uncreated
actuality and existential-ethics
(vocation) as the utterly
personal, existentiell response of the graced human being to the gracing
God_ Schriften XIII, 236. See also his 'l'he Dynamic Element in the Church
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1964).
62 Dante, Convivio 3, 15; 4, 9; 4, 12; Purgatory 3, 34-45; Paradise 13, 88130.
63 See Raymond Hotz, Sakramente im Wechselspiel
zwischen Ost und West
(Freiburg: Herder, 1979) especially 254-298.
64 Paradise 20, 136-138.
65 Paradise 20, 94-99.
66 Robert Kress,
Christian Roots nvestminster, Md.: Christian Classics,
1978).

VERITAS BERUM

words as if spoken by the fallen cosmos: "I am refulgent here
because the light of this star overcame me. But gladly do I
grant myself indulgence for the occasion of my lot, and it does
not trouble me .... " And fallen Folco, too, has understood that
forgiveness is as much a part of the divine comedy as creation: " Yet here we repent not, but smile; not for the fault,
which does not return to memory, but for the power which
ordained and saw." 61 Dante has truly seen (How could he not,
given the many lights and visions he describes himself to have
received from the one divine light?) that in the divinely
created cosmos being is both given and forgiven. 68 Therefore,
even failing, finite human beings can smile joyfully, for they
are precisely the creatures of a joyful creator-a. "lieto fa.ttore." 69
How different all this is from Oedipus's agmiia, but also
from
Kierkegaard's fascination with The Difficulty of
Being a Christian. 10 Not that human and Christian Exi-stenz
is frivolous and trivial. Hardly, as all our experience shows.
Even Dante's commedia begins in the tragedy of the inferno.
On the other hand, how easily we forget that divinely created
being is first of all gift, only subsequently and secondarily task
and duty. 11 How pervasive the Prometheus temptation (according to Karl Marx, " the noblest of saints and martyrs in
the calendar of philosophy ") , which is itself precisely the
" acknowledgement of the consciousness of man as the supreme
divinity! " Under these impossible circumstances, Prometheus
was even more correct than he may have imagined when he
61 Paradise 9, 34;

103-105.
Kress, The Difference that Jesus Makes (Chicago: Franciscan
Herald, 1982) .
69 Purgatory 16, 89.
10 As a collection of his writings
edited by Jacques Collette is entitled
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964); see especially 16,
24, 30, 202. Also Henri Bouillard, The Logic of Faith (New York: Sheed
and Ward, 1967) 67: "For his own part, he (Kierkegaard) would set about
showing how difficult it was to become a Christian."
11 Walter Kasper, "Die Gottesfrage
als Problem der Verkiindigung," in
Die Frage nach Gott, ed. Joseph Ratzinger (Freiburg: Herder, 1972) 155.
68 Robert

ROBERT L. KRESS

said" I hate all the gods." 12 How different is the Judaeo-Christian approach, which ena.bles that unfortunately forgotten attitude or virtue which Meister Eckhart christened Gelassen.heit.13 According to this virtue, one may indeed be relaxed,
since it is not the creature, but the creator who must sustain
being in existence. As Julian of Norwich so beautifully insists,
" and therefore we may with reverence ask from our lover all
that we will, for our natural will is to have God, and God's will
is to have us, and we can never stop willing or loving until we
possess him in the fullness of joy." 74 The Judaeo-Christian
"truth of things" emphasizes the congeniality of the apeiron
and its creature-cosmos. The true divine apeiron is not fury,
but philanthropist, human beings are not exiles, but friends
(John 15: 9-17) .75
The True Apeiron
We must again emphasize that the " truth of things " in the
cosmos is precisely such because of the truth of the apeiron
beyond the cosmos. This also applies to the Judaeo-Christian
" truth of things." By virtue of its own inner nature of symbolic communication and communion, the triune apeiron of
Judaeo-Christianity is totally committed to being, not only its
12Karl Marx (and Friedrich Engels), "Foreword to Thesis: The Difference Between The Natural Philosophy of Democritus and the Natural
Philosophy of Epicurus," in On Religion (New York: Schocken, 1964) 15. It
should be noted, however, that Marx truncated the last quotation, from
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, by excising the concluding words, "that gave
me ill for good " ( 97 5) . Of course, Prometheus's experience of the gods was
hardly joyous. On the other hand, Prometheus was also not entirely deserted
by the deities. Hence, Marx's version of the Promethean protest is at least
tendentious.
73 Reiner Schiirmann,
M aitre Eckhart ou la joie errante (Paris: PlaneteDenoel, 1972) .
74 Julian of Norwich, Showings, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh
(New York: Paulist, (ch.6,longertext).
75Yves Congar, Jesus Ohri8t (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966) 3031 (literature). See also Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Atlanta: John
Knox, 1960).

VERITAS RERU:M

25

own, but also its creation's. True Wisdom (I: 13) knows that
" Death was not God's doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living. To be-for this he created all." This was
one of St. Thomas Aquinas's favorite biblical passages. It enabled him to assert that the power of non-being, the ability to
cease to be, does not even exist in creatures, precisely because
they are creatures. Only God can cause beings not to exist,
just as, and precisely because, only God can make them exist.
By virtue of the divine power, might, force (words so dear to
Greek dramatic theology), God could annihilate the beings he
created. However, the divine wisdom precisely disallows such
a possibility. 76
Even the failure of sin cannot compel or invite God to such
destruction. History is a history of salvation, not damnation.
From the very beginning God has been seeking out and gracing fallen humanity. The history of the world is not primarily
a history of sin but of grace. Thus, W. H. Auden was right on
target when he proclaimed that "for Thy goodness, even sin
is valid as a sign."
But this itself is possible and true only because of the same
poet's intuition
That after today
The children of men
May be certain that
The Father Abyss
Is affectionate
To all Its creatures,
All, all, all of them.
Run to Bethlehem. 77

At Bethlehem was revealed an apeiron whose relationship to
the cosmos is one of illumination, kindness, philanthropy. The
76 Contra Gentiles 2, 30; Summa Theologiae I, 76, 6, ad 2. De Potentia Dei
5, 4, ad 6; In Sent 4 d. 46, I, 3 ad. 6; Questiones Quodlibetales 4, 4.
11 W. H. Auden, For the Time Being (New York; Random House, 1944)
40, 103.

26

ROBERT L. KRESS

crucial revelation of this unbounded philanthropy happened in
the brooding darkness engulfing the murder of the truly innocent victim. The final words spoken to this cosmos and its
apeiron are words of forgivE,ness, not condemnation (" Father,
forgive them.) "; of promise, not punishment (" Today you will
be with me in paradise.") ; of devotion, not despair (" Father,
into your hands I commit my spirit." Luke 23: 34, 43, 46) .
Thus is revealed in detail the true nature of the Beyond,
that apeiron which inevitably, ineluctably surrounds us and
embraces us-not the empty abyss of nothing, 78 but the fullness of Jesus's Abba Father (Mark 14: 36). For this reason the
inevitable mystery of being, both apeiron and cosmos, is not
"bewildering" as the anonymous," suchende Christologie" of
Oedipus still found it (Colonus 1677). Rather, as the explicit
Christology of Karl Rahner knows,
The Christian allows himself to fall into the mystery we call God.
In faith and hope he is convinced that, in falling into this incomprehensible and nameless mystery, God, he is really falling into a
blessed and forgiving mystery, one which divinizes us. He is aware
of this on the level of conscious reflection and explicit faith and
hopes for it explicitly, not merely anonymously in the actual living
of his daily life. Understood thus, to be Christian simply means to
be truly human. But the Christian also knows that this life, which
he is truly living and of whose fullfillment he is aware, can also
take place where one is neither explicitly Christian nor explicitly
aware of being such. 79

This is the real and full "truth of the nature of things," intimated and hoped already by Oedipus in the twilight of his
life, revealed and conferred in the darkness of the cosmos by
Christ, the world's life-giving light which even cosmic darknes.s
could not overpower (John 1: 1-18). Because he is the way,
the light, the life, Jesus Christ is also the truth of the very nature of things of this cosmos. In the light of this Light, the
78 Karl Rahner, Schriften XII ( 1975) 316; also 290, 300, 308 . .Also Karl
Rahner, Everyday Faith (New York (Herder and Herder, 1967) 86.
10 Karl Rahner, Grundkurs 413.

VERITAS RERUM

Church truly smgs m the vanquished darkness of the Easter
vigil
" Let the entire earth exult,
Bathed as it is in such shining splendor,
Illumined by the glory of the eternal King,
Rejoicing to have lost all darkness." so
ROBERT L. KRESS

University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois

so The hymn, "Exsultet lam .Angelica Turba," Missale Romanum ( Sabbato
Sancto), formerly attributed to St. Ambrose, originated in the early Gallican
liturgy. See L. Kunz, L1']( 3, 1318.

A METHODOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF LONERGAN'S
THEOLOGICAL METHOD

HE MOST EXPLICIT challenge to the enterprise of
Christocentric Thomist ontology or metaphysics now
n print is that of Bernard Lonergan's cognition theory,
first worked out in his 1957 work, Insight,1 and applied to the
task of theology in his Method in Theology,2 perhaps the most
important piece of English theological writing since the Second
Vatican Council. Certainly it is the most ambitious, for its
method intends the restatement of the entire problematic of
theology, which henceforth, if it is to be authentically developed, must conform to the pattern or structure which Lonergan has seen as the prius of all thought and whose inevitability
is factual, a matter of experience. 3 This pattern is discovered
and its architecture established by cognitional analysis, out of
which emerges, as known rather than merely as conscious, the
process from data to results which is human intentionality, the
norma normansof all knowledge. 4
The transcendental method which applies this norm subsumes all special methods of human knowing, including the
theological, and in so doing orders them to its own pattern and
process, passing from the multiplicity of experience to its
progressive unification on the levels of interpretation, narrative and dialectic, to the foundational unity of the intentional
horizon, and thereafter descending to the diversities of doctrine, systematization and communications, these latter being
i Bernard
Lonergan, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding, Longmans, Green &Co., Ltd., London, 1958 (Revised student's edition); herein·
after cited as Insight.
2 Bernard Lonergan,
Method in Theology, Herder and Herder, New York,
1973 2; hereinafter cited as Method.
s Met hod, 15.
4 Ibid.; see all of first chapter, e.g., 4, 17, 19, 20.

28

LONERGAN 's THEOLOGICAL METHOD

the specifically, or mediated, theological disciplines. 5 This
specialization according to distinct and separable stages of the
intentional process rather than according to the more customary distinctions between fields of research or between areas
of final results, the tractates of the older theology, avoids the
exclusive focus upon the clinical which characterizes field
specialization, and upon the confessional a priori which is
proper to dogmatic theology, for the functional specialties are
of their nature interdependent, unable to prescind from the
totality of the intentional process in which they are integrated
and integrating elements. 6 Henceforth, theology must be a cooperative venture, for the splendid isolation of the specialist is
foreign to this methodology. 7
The bedrock of Lonergan's method, that by which it is
transcendent, is his cognitional analysis, that turn to the subject first spelled out in his Verbum articles over thirty years
ago, 8 which has moved him away from the notion of objectivity found in Thomism and neo-Thomism to the critical realism
which he considers his analysis alone to found. 9 This realism
is achieved by moving out of the world of naive realism of the
extroverted consciousness in which transcendence and common
sense interpenetrate, to pass on to the differentiations of
theory, of interiority, and of transcendence. With the "discovery of mind " which began with the pre-Socratics, human
intentionality as a dynamic of unrestricted questioning has
moved away from the mythic and illusory realm of cosmic
symbolism to force the discovery of the different realms of
meaning which mediate the world to the critical intelligence,
and which, by this differentiation, constitute the world as
5 Ibid., 23-25.
a Ibid., 125 ff.
1 Ibid., 137.

s Bernard Lonergan, "The Concept of the Verbum in the Writings of St.
Thomas .Aquinas," i-v, Theological Studies, vol. 7, (1946) 349-392; vol. 8
(1947) 35-79, 404-444; vol. 10 (1949) 3-40, 359-393. Reprinted as Verbum:
Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David Burrell, C.S.C., Notre Dame University
Press, Notre Dame, Ind., 1967; hereinafter cited as V erbum.
9 Met hod, 257 ff.

DONALD .J. KEEFE, S ..J.

mediated by meaning, a world of critical realism, rather than
the world constituted by the naive immediacy of the undifferentiated consciousness. 10
Lonergan's critical realism is thus tied to his cognitional
analysis; the objectivity of the real is thereby a.t once experiential (given by the data of sense, plus consciousness), normative (constituted by the needs of rationality and intelligence),
and absolute (as so resulting from the union of experiential
and normative objectivity that through the first, the conditions for knowledge of a thing are fulfilled, while through the
second they are linked to what they condition, yielding a conditioned with its conditions fulfilled-the virtually unconditioned-which is in knowledge a fact and in reality a contingent event). In Lonergan's view, this cognitional theory provides a refutation of naive realism, of naive idealism, and of
absolute idealism, all of which fail because they do not distinguish the objectivity of immediacy, or perception, from the
objectivity which is the mediation of the world by meaning. 11
The focus of this cognitional analysis is consistently concrete and psychological; its appeal is empirical, to the experience of intentionality. Particularly, it is not based upon a
metaphysical account of the intrinsic, or a priori, causes of experienced intentionality, and thus it entails a rejection of a
faculty psychology. 12 Such a metaphysical base for cognition
and intentionality belongs, in Lonergan's view, to a less differentiated and less developed level of consciousness than that
of interiority; i.e., it belongs to the level of theory upon which
a bypassed scholasticism found its ground. 13 This relatively
naive base has been undercut by the failure of the deductivist
and necessitarian notion of science which it had taken over
from Aristotelianism, and by the success of critical historical
scholarship. 14 Thereby its own static view of truth has been
10 Ibid.,

263 ff.
Loe. cit.
12 Ibid., 289, 340.
13 Ibid., 280.
14 Loe. cit.; see also Bernard Lonergan, The Philosophy
ogy, Westminster Press, Phila., 1973, 32.
11

of God and Theol-

LONERGAN'S THEOLOGICAL METHOD

31

shown to be inadequate, and its confidence in the objective
reality of the a. priori structures discovered by logical analysis,
inordinate.'" Consequently, philosophical and theological sys15 The Thomist analysis,
here referred to as " logical," is so designated
because, like that of Aristotle, it presupposes the isomorphism of the structures of being and of formal logic; as the predicate of a sentence or affirmation is to its subject, so act is to potency. For instance, it is asked how
form can be immanent in matter, contra Plato; the analysis replies that matter is, as such, the potency or possibility of the inherence and delimitation
of form. This of course is no more than the begging of the question, a
petitio principii which occurs again when it is next asked how a substance,
in the sense of a finite material thing, can be itself and yet undergo a continuum of change. The analysis replies that substance, as such, is the potentiality for such change, for accidens, whether active or passive. From this
viewpoint, which thus far is Aristotelian, and determinist or essentialist,
whatever can happen must happen: matter as potentiality amounts to unlimited space and time, and whatever actuality is possible to matter is also
inevitable. Much the same is true of the potentiality which is substance:
substance as such bespeaks no preferred determination, but given some formal
determination, say of this or that living thing, whatever lies within that
species or range of substantial activity and passivity must eventually be
actualized, for the species within which this actualization is given has an
unlimited spatial and temporal dimension. In this way the necessitarian
character of formal logic is mirrored in the world in which that logic is the
structure of truth and of being.
Thomism, as we shall see, asks a question which cannot be answered in
this fashion: the possibility of creation is not provided for by the logical
evocation of its prior possibility, because creation, as a matter of definition,
is understood to be em nihilo, educed from no prior potentiality whatever,
whether of a creator or of an antecedent materiality. To insist on the question, a question which cannot arise within the Aristotelian determinism, is
to convert the analysis; it must now bear, not upon the necessary truth of
the Aristotelian cosmos, but upon the contingent and free truth of a world
created in Christ. Nonetheless, the isomorphism remains. It is that of a correlation whose polar elements are contraries, capable in their mutuality of a
conceptually or literally intelligible composition, a composition so governed
by the principle of contradiction that it may be called logical. Such a "logical" correlation contrasts with that which Paul Tillich and others have
called dialectical. This latter correlation corresponds to a phenomenological
rather than a transcendental analysis, in that it looks not to the intrinsic conditions or "causes " of the logical, in the sense of non-contradic·
tory, truth of an affirmation about reality, but to the formally correct description of an anxious or guilty or estranged consciousness. This phenomenological analysis, a la Tillich, concludes to a correlation between polar elements which are to each other as clear and distinct ideas, mutually exclusive

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

tematizers have been forced to find a new method, one whose
transcendentals, reflecting the contemporary understanding of
objectivity, are simply the a priori dynamics of the process
from data to results which is intentionality or interiority.
Lonergan then must insist that cognitional analysis and its
resultant cognition theory rest upon no prior metaphysical
structure; he believes he is able to find in Augustine, Pascal
and Newman precedent for this assertion. 16 Rather, once the
structure of conscious operations has been revealed by cognitional analysis, a base is provided from which one may move
to a critical appreciation of the mediating theological specialities (research, interpretation, history, dialectic) and to a constructive response to the epistemological question (why is
doing that, knowing?) and to the metaphysical question
(what do I know when I do that?) .17 But this response to the
metaphysical question is not the reconstruction of the categorial metaphysics familiar to Aristotelianism and Thomism;
it is instead " an integration of heuristic structures," 18 inasmuch as the notion of being has been identified with conscious
intentionality. Thus understood, metaphysics is no longer the
general case of the contents of the special sciences (e.g., the
Thomist ontology or science of ens) but is the general case of
as literal meanings but none the less correlative, as e.g. justice and mercy
are, at the profound, trans-literal or existential level of ontological truth and
reality. A profound insight into this dialectic is provided by E. M. Barth,
"The Logical Paradigm in Dialectical Philosophy and Science," Erkenntnis,
vol. 11 (1977), 292-322. I am indebted to Fr. Walter Ong, S.,T., for this
reference.
The so-called transcendental deduction of transcendental Thomism is a
logical analysis in the sense described; the phenomenological analysis of consciousness as existential anxiety corresponds rather to the dialectical analysis
according to which man is e.g. simul justus et peooator. Lonergan, as will be
seen, tries to merge the two in his cognitional analysis. This is methodologically impossible; it amounts to the identification of noumenon with phenomenon, substance with accident, essence with existence. This is the error of
Suarez as well. The Thomists call it essentialism; Tillich terms it selfsalvation, a denial, by a triumphant logic, of the Fall.
16 Method, 261; see also 115, 316, 338.
17 Ibid., 261, 297, 316.
18 Ibid., 11.

LONERGAN'S

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

33

the methods of the special sciences; metaphysics is now not
other than the transcendental method revealed by cognitional
analysis.
The "turn to the subject" has dominated the systematic
theology of the present century, nor would it be difficult to
find its stress upon interiority in the earliest strata of patristic
theology; it is of course luminous in the scriptures. The Augustinian tradition has maintained this emphasis in Western
theology despite the charms of medieval Aristotelianism, and
since Blondel's catalytic Action, the works of Rousselot, Marechal, de Finance, Coreth and the early Karl Rahner have made
it the commonplace of Thomist theology as well. Nor is this
innovation; the equation drawn between e8:1e and intelligere
goes back to St. Thomas, and if its implications were ignored
or forgotten in the later Thomistic schools, they are nonetheless authentic Thomism. But Lonergan's interpretation of this
equation also ignores those implications and, like Rahner's
Thomism, leaves unsolved and perhaps insoluble the problem
of the relation of the grace of Christ to the process of human
intentionality; the metaphysics which is grounded in cognitional analysis appears no more able than the metaphysics
grounded in theory to integrate the grace of Christ with human
intentionality. Lonergan's thought on the nature-grace relation is finally moored to the supposition that created grace
(being in love with God) is a contingent modification of a
pre-existing natural entity, and that consequently the problem
of stating their relation is dealt with by showing that human
intentionality is what the older theology called an obediential
potency for grace. 19 The changes rung on this theme are well
known, and Lonergan's explanation of the state of "being in
love with God " as a supernatural fulfillment of a natural and
necessary thirst for transcendence does nothing to dispel the
systematic incongruity of the inherence of a graced consciousness in a natural subjectivity. It does not suffice to dismiss this
19 Bernard Lonergan,
A Second Oollection, ed. W. J. Ryan and J. B. Tyrrell, Westminster Press, Phila., 1974, 228; but sec Method, 210.

34

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

problem as merely arising from a misplaced insistence upon
logical coherence, as though the elimination of the deductivist
notion of science enshrined in the Posterior Analytics legitimated a merely nominal account of reality. As Meynell has
seen, Lonergan's philosophy is close to Aristotle's; 20 within any
of the differentiations of consciousness, the potentiality of subjectivity or interiority finds expression in logical integrations,
whose emergent probability rests finally upon the premiss or
postulate of the isomorphism of the knower and the known. 21
That there is such an isomorphism need not, indeed cannot, be
contested: but it must be accounted for, and this on some level
not vulnerable to the charge that such accounts are finally
identity systems, locked within their own deductive reasoning
pattern. 22 To refuse such accountability as regression to a
lesser differentiation of consciousness, that of a deductivist
scholasticism, is to suppose interiority to be self-validating and
autonomous: this is Lonergan's supposition, 23 and it reveals a
rationalism little at peace with a gratuitous intellectual horizon, the horizon of faith. In fact, Lonergan prefers to neglect
the knowledge-component of religious conversion: when he
speaks of the assent to doctrine on the non-doctrinal level of
belief he supposes it to be " catechetical " 24 knowledge, a view
which is of course discussable when one has in view the intro20 Hugo Meynell, An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan,
London, Macmillan, New York, Harper and Row, 1976, 36; see also Method,
passim, e.g., 164-6.
21 Method, 21; Insight, 679.
22 Met hod, 6.
23 Method, 17, 310.
24 The Philosophy
of God and Theology, 68; in Method, Lonergan cites
J. R. Geiselmann's description of the definitions of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption as "cultic," over against the conciliar definitions
which settled controversial issues, and suggests that the development of the
Marian doctrines thus defined is best understood in the context of human
psychology and "specifically the refinement of human feelings." ( 320). See
also Method, 278, 311-312; an earlier discussion of Marian doctrine is available in Lonergan's essay, "The Assumption and Theology," written well before the definition, and republished in Collection: Papers by Bernard Loner,qan, Edited by F. E. Crowe, S.J., Herder and Herder, New York, 1967, (hereinrifter cited as Collection) 68-83.

LONERGAN'S

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

35

duction of the rudes to Christian teaching, but does not answer well to the tolle, lege of Augustine's moment of truth. 25
However polymorphic human consciousness may be, it is necessary to recognize in it, a.t the level of common sense, whether
differentiated and however differentiated, a receptivity for the
gift of faith which is an intellectual receptivity, a free openness
to Truth. And it is further necessary to allow, at the level of
common sense, a free self-appropriation of that gift of Truth.
Lonergan, as an Augustinian, prefers to speak of love rather
than of knowledge; he considers that knowledge (as opposed to
consciousness) does not exist until it is conceptual; Gilson's
"implicit affirmation " is, for Lonergan, one which has not yet
happened. 26 Since the grace which is prior to faith, as its condition of possibility, is evidently pre-conceptual, Lonergan
identifies it as " being in love," but this will not suffice, for it
is also a gift prior to the sanctifying grace with which Lonergan has also identified "being in love." 21 There is no recognition of this problem in Lonergan's theological method: it is in
fact excluded from consideration by that method, which supposes, given the empirical or experiential character of divine
grace, that the continuum in process from data to communications, which includes the experience of conversion, is a continuum in being; being and the process are indistinguishable.
This is no more than a restatement of the merely nominal continuum between nature and grace by which the Thomists old
and new have avoided the systematic problem of accounting
for the actuality of divine immanence in history. But for all
that, the problem remains fundamental; when it is ignored, as
in Lonergan's method, theology is reduced to an identity-system whose accommodation to the radical contingency of grace
25 For the movement
from the undifferentiated patristic consciousness to
the differentiations of metaphysical theology, see Met hod, 27 ff.; for the nonintellectual character of religious assent, see Met hod, 278. Neither Augustine
nor Newman transcended the level of common sense: see A Second Collection, 227.
2a The Philo8ophy of God and Theology, 61.
21 Method, passim, e.g., 120-123, 289, 340.

36

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

can be no more than nominal. The matter is worth a closer
examination. 28
Although Lonergan's transcendental method includes within
its range all the objects of theology-for outside its range is
simply nothing-transcendental
method is only part of theological method: the anthropological part, the part dealing with
the invariant process of intentionality. 29 The specifically religious component of theological method is supplied by grace, a
grace corresponding to the universal salvi:fic will of God. 30 The
reader of Method in. Theology is referred to Lonergan's :first
full-length study, his doctoral dissertation on Aquinas's theology of grace, 31 for an understanding of the equivalence of
sanctifying grace with "the gift of God's love," the "being
in love with God," Lonergan's language of preference for
designating the proper, although disproportionate, fulfillment
of the unrestricted questioning, "our capacity for self-transcendence," which is human intentionality. 32 This fulfillment,
which the older theology called sanctifying grace, Lonergan
considers to be experienced (not thematically known at the
level of insight or judgment) at the apex animae where consciousness is not yet knowledge experienced as the moment of
our response to the fourth transcendental precept-be responsible-by the unrestricted love of, commitment to, God. 33
While Lonergan's developed understanding of grace is no
longer simply that of St. Thomas, he believes it sufficiently
28 Lonergan of course specifically
refuses such a consequence; see the first
six pages of Method. However, see also the remarks of Meynell, cited in note
20, supra, concerning the similarity between Lonergan's thought and that of
.Aristotle, even to the inevitable actualization of all possibilities, given sufficient extension of space and time. Such a consequence is the very hallmark of determinism.
29 Met hod, 24-25.
30 Ibid., 123; A Second Collection, 17 4.
31 Grace and Freedom:
Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas
Aquinas, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, and New York, Herder and
Herder, 1971, originally published as four articles in vol. 2 ( 1941) and vol.
3 (1942) of Theological Studies; hereinafter cited as Grace and Freedom.
32 Met hod, 111, 183.
33 Ibid., 107, 288-289.

LONERGAN's

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

37

continuous with the Thomist theology to a.Ilow the identification of the reality which the Thomists discuss under the heading of sanctifying grace with the reality (experienced) which
he calls " being in love with God." This grace is not an activity, but a state, one caused by the operative grace of God, one
experienced as cooperative grace, the principle of the expression of the love of God into a world mediated by meaning.
But whether viewed as a work of God or as a human condition, " being in love with God" is considered to be a matter of
conversion. It may be prepared for and preceded by less stable
states and less complete commitment, but as sanctifying grace
it is at once the gift and the exercise of the ultimate human
freedom and responsibility: union with God. But this grace
is not understood as constitutive of human intentionality, of
being; interiority can and does exist without it.
This gift of " being in love " is gratia Christi, unless we are
willing to admit an extra Calvinisticum, but there is in Lonergan's metaphysics no room for more than a nominal recognition of its connection with the Christ. 34 Lonergan's thought
operates in a De deo imo, De deo t1-ino context, in terms of
which, as the Thomist theology has long held, the grace of
God is always a. less than universal gift, and must therefore be
assigned the ontological level of accidens-or, as Lonergan
prefers, of conjugate form. 35 The universal, the invariant, is
dealt with as the necessary; while Lonergan insists that his
analysis refers to the empirical, the historical reality, not to
an abstract " nature," he nonetheless considers that this analysis bears upon and makes known that which cannot be otherwise, and upon this inevitability and necessity the transcendent application of his method is entirely dependent. It is clear
enough that while cognitional analysis can reach to an !ch
34 Ibid., 298; Philosophy of God and Theology, 1 ff., 20. The "ewtra-Calvimisticum" refers to any theology of grace which supposes the reality of a
grace not mediated by Christ. See E. David Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-called ewtra Oalvinisticum in Calvin's Theology, E. J. Brill, Leyden, 1966.
35 Philosophy of God and Theology, 6 ff.; A Second Collection, 174.

38

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

kann nicht anders, it is a very hazardous and quite unjustified
step that would conclude to an essential necessity on such a
basis, or, which is the same thing, that would suppose to be
ungra.ced the invariant process of intentionality thus discovered.36 For it is entirely without warrant that one supposes
the grace of Christ to be given on a less than universal basisyet this supposition underwrites the transcendental method,
and is therefore integral with Lonergan's metaphysics. The
transcendental method provides the " anthropological part " of
Lonergan's theological method, while the "religious part"
comes only with conversion to the love of God. 37 This is very
much the nature-grace format of an inadequately converted
Aristotelianism, 38 imposed now upon an Augustinian inquiry
into subjectivity; it is not to be wondered at that Lonergan's
cognitional analysis like Anselm's discovers a highly Aristotelian consciousness, whose transcendental precepts are those
of a rationally ordered world, one mediated by meaning, rather
than by the guilt and alienation which are the hallmark of
Augustine's Confessfons, of Pascal's Pen,sees1 of Kierkegaard's
Either/Or, and which, as "ultimate concern," are the a priori
of Paul Tillich's theological method, but not of Lonergan's. 39
36Method, 282.
37 Ibid., 107.
38 For the condensed statement
of such a conversion, see Karl Rahner,
"Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of Christ,"
Theological Investigations, vol. 5, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, and
Baltimore, Helicon Press, 1966, 193-218; for a more extended treatment of the
Thomist theology as a conversion of .Aristotelianism to the Christian a priori,
see the present writer's Thomism and the Ontological Theology of Paul Tillich, Leyden, Brill, 1971, hereinafter cited as Thomism and Tillich.
39 See Paul Tillich's
treatment of the formal criterion and the material
norm of his .Augustinian theology in the first volume of Systematic Theology,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951, 47-62. Lonergan manifests his
misunderstanding
of Tillich's notion of ultimate concern in Method, 106,
where he identifies "being grasped by ultimate concern" with his own notion of falling in love with God. In Tillich's thought, ultimate concern acts
as an existential a priori to impose a dialectical hermeneutic on theology,
a hermeneutic far removed from that of Lonergan's cognitional analysis, as
Tillich's ontology is far removed from Lonergan's " integration of heuristic
structures " (Met hod, 11) .

LONERGAN's

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

39

Lonergan's Augustinianism seeks and finds its certitude in necessary reasons, in the invariant structure of intentionality,
rather than in the illumination to which Augustine had recourse: like Thomas, Lonergan identifies illumination with the
agent intellect, 40 a. necessary structure of autonomous intentionality. But this is to assume what Augustine denied, the
immanent self-sufficiency of the human mind. For Lonergan,
human intentionality is necessarily, intrinsically, objective; 41
any contrary view of it is driven to self-contradiction. Even
the quest for God is natural, in the sense of being intrinsically
necessary, not merely as factually universal, but as a dialectical
inevitability: any evasion of this quest is analytically selfdefeating. 42
But the later Thomas knew better; he recognized that the
interior instinctus which, concretely, is the universally-given
eros of the human mind is also our concrete involvement in the
supernatural; it is that by which faith is intrinsically and universally possible, and infidelity consequently a sin. While
Thomas never called the instinctus a grace, and still less provided for it any metaphysical account, it is clear enough that
40 Verbum, 74-84; see also the generally sympathetic
discussion of Coreth's
metaphysics in Collection, 218, where Coreth makes the same assumption. In
Lonergan's theological method, the invariant structures discovered by his
cognitional analysis, structures which constitute his anthropology, constitute
as well the prius of all grace, and the "natural light of reason," "the unconditioned desire to know," is the sum of that invariant. Thomas was less
certain of the ungraced status of the agent intellect; he speaks of it as a
"participation in the uncreated light," and wishes to transmit the matter
of its being graced or ungraced: "sive naturale sive gratuitum;" see B.T.
I, Q, 88, A. 3, ad 1; Q. 12, A. 2, ad 3, and Q. 84, A. 5, corpus. But as a
matter of method, Thomas's analysis, like Lonergan's, concerned itself with the
necessary conditions of the possibility of knowledge; these, being necessary,
can hardly be squared with gratuity. Thus, insofar as theological method is
identified with a transcendental deduction, it can only conclude to the product
of that deduction as nature, not as grace. It then becomes a problem to find
room for faith understood as the affirmation of a transcendent Verum; the
ground has already been occupied. See the discussion in The Philosophy of
God and Theology.
41 Oolleotion, 228, 152-163.
42 Method, 20-25.

40

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

for him it was other and more than the agent intellect. Neither
is it lumen fidei; it exists before faith, a gift ad salutem universally given, an illumination of the mind which is the actual
possibility of faith. Thomas spoke of it in experiential terms:
it is the interior instinctus ad credendum, it is trahi a Deo.48
It belongs then to that existential-empirical side of the
Thomist analysis which Lonergan explored in his V erbum
articles, but neither there nor subsequently does it enter into
Lonergan's cognition theory; it is alien to his transcendental
method as to his metaphysics. But its appeal to interiority and
to the experience of being attracted to and by God is certainly Thomist, although not as Lonergan reads Thomism, as a
theory about objects. 44 For the appeal to interiority, to the
experience of tension between the mind and God, is not merely Augustinian, still less is it a last recourse forced upon
modern philosophy by the success of the Enlightenment. It is
integral with every valid religious insight, as it is with their
commonplace dualistic perversions; it underlies the philosophic
43 Roger Aubert, " Le charactere
raisonnable de l'acte de foi d'apres les
theologiens de la fin du XIII• siecle," Revue d'histoire eoclesiastique, t. 39,
( 1943) 68-72, cited in Aubert's Le probleme de l'acte de foi: Donnees traditionelles et 1·esultats des controversees reoentes, 3• edition, E. Warny, Louvain, 1958, 65-66, note 63. In the latter work, Aubert cites in Joannem xv,
lect. 5, no. 4, 8. T. IP n•• Q. 2, A. 9, ad 3, Q. 10, A. 1, ad 1, and Quodl. II,
A. 6 to support his view of St. Thomas's later theology of the interior instinotus ad oredendum. An extensive treatment of the instinctus is given by
Max Seckler's dissertation, Instinkt und Glaubenswille naoh Thomas von
Aquin, Mainz, Matthias Grunewald, 1962; E. Schillebeeckx discusses Seckler's
contribution to the discussion of the instinotus with high praise in the collection of his articles entitled Approches theologiques, vol. I, Revelation et
theologie, Bruxelles, Editions du Cerf, Paris Office general du livre, n.d., 285321. However, neither Seckler nor Schillebeeckx resolves the problem posed
to systematic theology by this Glaubenswille; as the initium salutis, it is
evidently grace, yet its universal distribution is unaccountable if grace is
to be treated as an ontological accident, one dispensable to the constitution
and function of the human person, and the unfailing presence of which is
therefore anomalous.
Seckler and Schillebeeckx refuse the problem on
grounds which are finally nominalist and a rejection of systematizing. Traditional Thomism seems to have no alternative to this tactic, as its routine
employment testifies.
44 Met hod, 259.

LONERGAN'S

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41

eros, as it does every search for salvation whether secular or
religious. Its classical pre-Christian exposition is Plato's doctrine of a universal anamnesis of the world of forms, a doctrine
put to Christian uses by the Alexandrines as by Augustine and
his followers, as in our own day by Tillich. It carries an emphasis upon fallenness and the need for redemption which, as
has been said above, is curiously absent from Lonergan's
anthropology. It is inseparable from the religious tradition out
of which St. Thomas thought and wrote; if his use of Aristotle's
logic with its necessitarian overtones tends to banish the intuitive a priori, the trahi a Deo, from his still-Aristotelian psychology and epistemology, it is also true that his conversion of
Aristotelian essentialism by the addition to it of the esse-essentia analysis of substantial contingency has opened the way to
the coherent act-potency systematization of the trahi a Deo
by way of the equation of esse and intelligere: the trahi can be
accounted for as the direct (pre-conceptual, not merely prejudgmental as Lonergan understands this term) consciousness of our creation, our ontological dependence upon and participation in Christ, whose centrality to creation is the theme of
the Johannine prologue and of the Pauline Captivity Epistles.
Very briefly, the trahi, under this analysis, is the noetic aspect,
the conscious aspect, of our substantial and existential dependence upon the Christ in whom we are created. The trahi a Deo
can then be seen as gratia suffictens, universally, even inescapably given, for it is given as substance, not as accident; the gratuity of gratia Christi and of creation then coincide. The
solidarity of Christ with those for whom He died is then seen
to be intrinsic and exclusive; as they have no relation to the
Father except that which is mediated by the Son in his Spiritempowered Incarnation, so also the Father's drawing them to
Himself in faith, hope and charity must be mediated by the
Christ, and the mediation, as concrete, historical and universal,
cannot be distinct from their creation in Christ, by which even
the damned are sustained in being. 45
45 This

is taken up at length in Thomism and Tillich; see note 38, supra.

42

DONALD ,T. KEEFE, S.J.

The Christocentrism of human intentionality is then simply
excluded without discussion by Lonergan's transcendental
method and its concomitant anthropology; the cognition
theory which these entail supposes a simply ungraced intentionality whose thrust toward God is adequately accounted for
as other than supernatural. This supposition not only begs
enormous questions; it also imposes limits upon what revelation may be: it must be a contingency contained within the
potentialities of a prior anthropology, the anthropology which
states the limits of human possibility, subsuming even the
Christ to its immanent necessities. 46
Lonergan's understanding of theological method is then one
which insists upon some of the less tenable elements of
Thomist and Thomistic theology, aspects of Thomist thought
which cannot be normative for the Thomist enterprise itself.
Of these, the nominalist statement of the nature-grace relation is the most refractory to the Thomist act-potency systematization, but the mistaken isolation of the doctrine of God
and the Trinity from Christology in the Summa Theologica,
and the concomitant abstraction of the subject of sacra doctrina and of theology from the Incarnation,4 7 also find an echo
in Lonergan's isolation of his method from the same central
event and central truth. Their reassociation, once the work of
theology is taken up under the guidance of this method, cannot but require the same nominal solutions of the same false
problems which the cosmological dissociation, accepted by St.
Thomas, between the theology of God and the theology of
Christ, between Christology and Trinitarian theology, between
the contingency of grace and the contingency of creation, has
demanded of the Thomist schools. The methodological key to
the systematic synthesis of these integrating elements was
offered by St. Thomas's systematic conversion of the necessi46 Method,

24-25.
the study of Gerald van Ackeren, Sacra Doctrina: The Subject of
the First Question of the Summa Theologioa of St. Thomas Aquinas, with an
introduction by Fr. Yves M. J. Congar, O.P., Romae, 1952, Officium Libri
Catholici, esp. 92 ff., 118 ff.
47 See

LONERGAN's

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43

tarian, anticreationist ontology of Aristotle, through the addition, as has been said, of the esse-essentia couple to those of
forma-materia and substantia.-accidens already provided by
Aristotle. This addition amounted to the application of the
act-potency analysis of the intrinsic conditions of possibility,
or " causes," of being to the problem, unconsidered by Aristotle
because unknown to him, of creation, or contingency on the
level of substance rather than merely on the level of accidental
change. When this conversion is taken seriously, i.e., on the
level of method, the resulting metaphysical analysis is at once
understood to conclude to a hypothetical construct, for it is
able to conclude only to the immanent conditions of the possibility of a free creation, which conditions or immanent causes
can never be identified with the immanent structure of the actuality. So understood, the Thomist metaphysics amounts to
a coherent question, directed to a transcendent source of truth,
i.e., to a truth transcending its own formal cause or method.
Such a truth can only be the Christian revelation, the Christ.
Consequently, the Thomist metaphysics of creation can only
be a theology; when it forgets to be a theology, it also forgets
to be hypothetical, and its talk of esse-essentia resumes the
necessitarian overtones which make it indistinguishable from
the Aristotelian metaphysics on more than a nominal level.
When given full value however, the Thomist conversion of
Aristotelian metaphysics can give full value to the existential
Augustinian emphasis upon the necessity of illumination, for
it is not other than the conditioned necessity of an existent
for existence, which is to say, for a substantial intelligere
which, as substantial, is prior to the differentiation between
intellect and will, and so is also a substantial amare, because
it is our created dependence upon and participation, on the
level of substance, in Him who as made :flesh is the Light, enlightening all men. This illumination is no essential necessity,
no implication of a definition, no reduction of reality to theory,
as has been pointed out elsewhere. On this showing, the whole
weary business of the Thomistic anthropology of human nature or substance as potentia obedientialis, and of grace as a

44

DONAJ,D J. KEEFE, S ..J.

purely nominal accidens, disproportionate and unowed, entirely incapable of education from that potency, may finally be
laid to rest, for grace is now no longer accidental, but substantial; its contingency is not that of a modification of a preexisting natural potentiality or capacity for change, but is one
with the contingency of creation in Christ, the Gift of the
Spiritus Crea.tor, out of no prior possibility, but from the Love
which acts ex nihilo. In such a metaphysical theology, method
is used as it should be, as the formal cause of a hypothetical
construct, which remains a theological method and forms a
theological construct only for so long as it is subordinated to
the formal cause of faith, to the Christ present in the worship
of the Church. Theological method is such only in this concrete posture of conversion to the historical revelation in the
historical Church; it can no more prescind from the concreteness and particularity of this conversion than it can from the
conversion itself. Nothing prevents an Augustinian cognitional analysis from being such a method, from forming such a
method, from forming such a theology, but to do so, it must
begin and end with the concreteness of the Christian conversion to the explicitly Christian faith; a dehistoricized method
of theology is immediately and irremediably autonomous, incapable of that reflection upon the historical faith which Lonergan's method intends. The dissociation of method from theology which he insists upon, as a matter of method, is akin to
the dissociation of creation from the triune God, which
Thomism accepted by a kind of inadvertence, as it equally inadvertently accepted the impossible task of discovering the
conditions of possibility of creation ex nihilo. Process theologians have long fastened on this false problem as normative
for the Thomist enterprise, forgetting in their hope of ridding
theology of Thomism that the more recent Trinitarian theology, such as Karl Rahner's, lives by the denial of the intelligibility of those ideal constructs such as pure nature,
whether divine or human, as imaginative aberrations improperly because unmethodologically foisted upon the Thomist
theology.

LONERGAN'S

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METHOD

45

Theological method is inevitably historical; one might go
further, to say that it is inevitably also historical method, for
the inseparability works in both directions. It is, however,
enough here to insist that any theology which accepts the dissociation of Christ from theological method will never be able
to rejoin the two; of this truth, the history of theology is the
most eloquent witness, as a brief perusal of the centuries-long
futility, the dispute De auxiliis, will confirm. Theology cannot
construct its own beginning point; that is given in the revelation, the Christ, and there is no other base upon which theological method can stand.
II

Intrinsically linked to Lonergan's theological method is his
exegesis of the Vatican I statement concerning the natural
knowledge of God. 48 That Council taught that the natural
light of human reason is adequate to reach a true knowledge of
God through his creatures; while Lonergan maintains that the
knowledge of God which is a universal human ability is a matter of fact, he is unwilling to suppose that this is a simply
philosophical knowledge. He considers that the insistence
upon a sharp distinction between theological and philosophical
knowledge of God belongs to a lesser differentiation of consciousness, that of theory, than the differentiation at the level
of interiority to which his transcendental method responds, for
the older, logical, distinction between nature and grace, between faith and reason, ignores the factual unity of the cognitional process. 49 Lonergan would thus prefer to associate
philosophy and theology as Thomas did, as distinguishable
aspects which in the concrete are inseparable. Theology is able
to recognize this unity, while philosophy, by reason of its nar48 Lonergan presents this exegesis in a number of places: A Second Oollection, 117-133; The Philosophy of God and Theology, 50 ff.; Method, 338-340.
An earlier treatment can be found in Oollection, 84-95. The most extensive
treatment is "Natural Knowledge of God," Oatholio Theological Society of
America Proceedings 23 ( 1968), 54-69.
49 The Philosophy of God and Theology, 34, 40, 46. Met hod, 336 ff.; A Second Oollection, 127 ff.

46

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

rower soope, is not; therefore, Lonergan would place natural
theology in the theological rather than in the philosophical
curriculum. To this program, the usual reading of Vatican I's
Dei Filius is an obstacle, since it seems to insist that an ungraced, and therefore nontheological, knowledge of God is possible, by way of inference from creation. 50 Lonergan is of the
opinion that this objection can be defused; he observes that the
original draft of the statement referred the natural ability to
know God to the fallen condition of man, but that this reference was omitted in the final draft of the canon. From this he
concludes that the canon speaks of a juridical rather than an
actual natural capacity to know God. The juridical statement
thus prescinds from subjective reality, and treats only of the
availability of valid arguments for God's existence, and of the
substantially ungraced character of the knowledge arrived at
by their employment. These are matters of possibility, not of
actual occurrence: concretely, our knowledge of God depends
upon graced acts of decision and judgment, so that, in the factual and given situation, there is no simply ungraced knowledge of God by inference from the created order.
The interpretation of conciliar documents is a parlous business, even for a historian trained to the task; further, when the
historical question has been solved in terms of an adequate
understanding of the context in which the document was written and to which it was addressed, the hermeneutical difficulty
is by no means resolved: it is precisely the nature of the link
between that conciliar context and our own which must be determinative of the meaning of the document in the here and
now. This relation can be variously viewed: the critical historian, operating in terms of a given philosophy of history,
may leave its interpretation to the criteria which that philos·
ophy generates, while a Catholic theologian, recognizing the
one context and the other a.s moments in the one historical
community which is the Church, will understand the relation
between these moments in function of his ecclesiology and will
5o Denzinger-Schonmetzer

3004, 3026.

LONERGAN's

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METHOD

47

therefore interpret the document in a. fashion consistent with
that ecclesiology. Fina.Uy, the ma.gisteria.l interpreta.tion, the
Church's ongoing historical expression of her historical worship of the Lord of history, tra.nscends the hypotheses of historical and theological synthesis as actuality transcends possibility: it is this ecclesial and liturgical hermeneutic which is
alone authentic and normative, and to it the constructive interpretation of the scholar is addressed, as a question is addressed to its answer.
Lonergan's juridical interpretation of Dei filius a.nd its
canons makes an essential point-that the Constitution's
emphasis is heavily objective, little concerned with any account of the manner in which the knowledge of God, in principle obtainable by the natural light of human rea.son, is in fa.ct
arrived at. The thrust of the magisterial affirmation is tha.t
such knowledge is objectively possible; it anathematizes those
who deny that possibility.
It is when Lonergan concludes that Vatican I's affirmation
of the possibility of a natural knowledge of God prescinds from
the concrete historical condition of fallen humanity that it becomes impossible to follow him. The first paragraph of De
revelatione (the second chapter of the dogmatic constitution
Dei filius) to which the crucial canon is in parallel, finds its
base in Rom 1: 20; it cannot but include the context of Romans
within its own, and Paul is obviously addressing the historical
human situation, to the point that the Council of Trent found
the doctrine of Original Sin to be contained in the fifth chapter
of that Letter. Whatever the actual or probable reasons for
dropping the language ab homine lapso from the final version
of the canon may have been-and they are doubtless worth
exploring-they will hardly justify reading the canon in isolation from the detailed statement of De revelatione. It does
not then appear that the distinction which Lonergan dra.ws
between the quaestio juris and the quaestio facti is any more
responsive to the issue with which the fathers of Vatican I
were concerned than it is responsive to that which Paul dealt
with in Rom 1: 20. Such a. distinction can provide no reliable

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DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

ground for the interpretation of the Vatican I doctrine concerning the natural knowledge of God: nor, in fact, does it
serve Lonergan's interest, which is to stress the dynamic unity
of all knowledge of God, a unity which he understands to be
experiential, and to be completed and fulfilled by grace. The
fact that the fathers of Vatican I may well have been quite
juridical in their outlook, intent upon abstractions rather than
upon history in their theology, does not justify relegating the
doctrine of Dei filius to the limbo of failed theologies-for that
doctrine, as a conciliar teaching, transcends theology and challenges theologians. The challenge it offers to the unity of all
knowledge of God has long been recognized: granted that this
unity is real, how may it be understood to be real, given the
doctrine of Dei filius? Lonergan answers that the conciliar
teaching does not refer to the actual human situation. A more
responsive hermeneutic might accept the conciliar concern,
evidenced by its citation of Romans, for the quaestio facti, and
thus accept the actual relevance of that doctrine, and in the
light of its transcendence, go on to question the adequacy of
cognition theory which cannot so read it.
The problem of the unity of our knowledge of God is evidently one of the unity of faith and reason, of grace and nature: these categories or their equivalent are inescapable, as
Lonergan avers, in any theological discussion of" being in love
with God." 51 The experiential emphasis of Lonergan's cognitional analysis has committed him to the experiential character
of God's grace, a grace encountered as "falling in love;" we
have pointed out the consequences of this position, in that it
places systematic restrictions upon the universality of grace.
It does this because it supposes a non-graced, or anthropological, experience, which, in the moment of " falling in love," is
transformed into the theological experience of grace. This, as
has been seen, forces a consideration of grace as a created
s1 Method 103, 339; see also the discussions in :J'he Philosophy of God, and
:J'heology, 9 ff., 18 ff. 36 ff., and in A Second Collection, 129 ff., esp. 131,
where Grace and Freedom is specifically cited; cf. note 31, supra.

'

.

LONERGAN S THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

49

reality distinct from the created reality which is ungraced consciousness. This distinction, so viewed, is temporal: conversion
happens in a moment of time, prior to which its grace, equivalent to sanctifying grace, is not given. The placing of this distinction in a temporal context is simply to renew the cosmological dilemma of the classic Thomist theology of grace. The preChristian reverence for the cosmos, the world made inhabitable
by the divine struggle against the demonic, had imbued the
early Christian theologians with a reverence for nature, which
went well enough until the dawn of the age dominated by the
Aristotelian dialectic or logic. When this new device took possession of the field of theology, nature suddenly lost its reference to the divine, to become autonomous, and this autonomy,
as the centuries after Cajetan discovered, was irreconcilable
with any potentialiity for grace. Thomism accepted at once the
natural self-sufficiency of creation, and the need for something
more than natural autonomy for salvation. This " something
more " was grace, and from the beginning it embarrassed the
ontological interest of a half-converted Aristotelianism, one
which had not yet discovered that the Christocentrism of the
revelation is to be taken seriously. Thus the Thomists made of
grace a quid addendum, an accidens unowed to and yet assimilable by a. nature half autonomous and half "obediential."
Buckets of nominalist whitewash veiled the inconsistency, accepted in the service of a piety still struggling with a. cosmic
imagination. For Thomism, the problem was posed in terms of
the unity of being, of understanding how " nature " could be
viewed as a potentiality for "grace:" the answer was ever and
again offered: Nature is to be viewed as intrinsically necessary
substance, placed outside its causes by the Creator, then completed by the gift of an accidens, a non-necessary modification,
to which it is, inexplicably, as potency to act. Beyond such
affirmations, which restate the problem rather than solve it,
classical Thomism did not reach, nor has its transcendental
version been more successful. Lonergan has dismissed the
Thomist metaphysics as" theory," the product of a consciousness less differentiated than that which has found its ground

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DONALD .J. KEEFE, S.J.

in interiority. What Lonergan intends by "theory" appears
to be much what Rahner, twenty years ago, meant by
"ontic." "2 In both cases, what is deprecated is that kind of
metaphysical analysis which rests content with the logical
ordering of language, rather than undertake the task of exploring its own latent but intrinsic hermeneutic by applying its
own methodology rigorously. It is only by such single-mindedness that the naivete of the imaginative world-view is transcended; however, the Thomists, possessed of a method capable
of assimilating the Chalcedonian doctrine to the esse-essen.tia
correlation, never went beyond that point, one already reached
by St. Thomas in the 13th century, preferring to leave unfinished what Thomas had not lived long enough to complete,
and transforming that diffidence into a school loyalty. Lonergan, like Karl Rahner, shares that diffidence; recognizing the
evident inadequacy of school Thomism and refusing the possibility of its methodological rectification, each has passed to another theological interest: Lonergan to his version of cognitional analysis, and Rahner to an increasingly unsystematic pastoral theology. At bottom, both are entangled in cosmological
presuppositions, of a largely imaginative provenance, which
theological method exists, quite simply, to untangle, by freeing
the intelligence from the imagination's dominion. Lonergan,
who concerns us now, reads that imaginative content into his
cognitional analysis: because methodologicaily it is demanded
that grace be experiential, as consciousness (being) is, he supposes, with no methodological support, that its presence must
be signailed by a change in consciousness: i.e., from a natural
to a graced consciousness. At the same time, he is well aware
that there is no moment in our awareness which can be said to
be ungraced. Nonetheless, when he presents the product of his
cognitional analysis, he presents it in two parts, therefore as
a process which has an anthropological prius whose unity with
the theological posteriu.s demands a temporal conscious process
from the absence to the presence of grace. Yet Lonergan ins2 Karl Rahner,

op. cit., 206 ff.

LONERGAN's

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51

sists that no such non-experience of grace is given in consciousness: the absence of conversion, i.e., of the experience of "falling in love," therefore cannot be identified with the absence of
the experience of grace.
Lonergan's mistake is that of all nominalist Thomism; he has
associated the Augustinian phenomenology of consciousness
with the Thomist act-potency analysis of grace and nature,
thereby confusing the phenomenal with the noumenal: he insists upon the experiential meaning of grace. But the same
reasons which require Lonergan to reject a faculty psychology
require him to forego the act-potency analysis of the unity of
consciousness in all its manifestations, one of which is explicit
in his cognitional analysis: nature as the prius of grace.
Augustinianism can have no such distinction, for it is not given
in experience, while Lonergan insists upon it. The unity of the
Augustinian consciousness is not a matter of act-potency, but
of a dialectic which the act-potency correlation, in its preoccupation with the analytic deduction of necessary intrinsic
causes, completely ignores. The converted Aristotelianism
which St. Thomas projected may well contain, at least implicitly, an adequate theology of grace, but it is not one with
which an experiential cognition analysis can be at peace; the
experiential analysis is Augustinian. The Augustinian tradition begins and ends with the phenomena of consciousness as
the existential manifestation of one's fallenness, thus of the
dialectic of one's awareness of oneself as simul justus et
peccator. The attempts to engraft upon this dialectical tension the logic proper to an act-potency integration of its intrinsic causal constituents amount to efforts to carry water on
both shoulders: the experience of fallenness, however verbalized-as Angst, estrangement, alienation, absurdity, Sein
zum Tode, etc.-is of intrinsic contradiction, not of intrinsic
integration. The a priori of the Augustinian theological project
is thus an existential intuition, a consciousness which, when
conceptualized, is discovered to be intrinsically contradictory.
This intuitive a priori is methodologically irreconciliable with
that of the Aristotelian-Thomist analysis, which presupposes

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DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

the analytic integrity of being as the ground of the act-potency
metaphysics, for this metaphysics touches consciousness only
in its last analysis, that of existential substance, where alone
does Thomism encounter the Augustinian in.tellectus, menwria,
amor. 53 And even there, the Thomist concern is with the literal
truth of logical affirmation-a. truth now known to be contingent rather than necessary, but still a. logical truth, an expression of consciousness rather than consciousness itself. 54
Thomism encounters the duplex amor, the dialectical tension of
fallen intelligere, only in the paradox of ft.des inJormis, wherein
faith is imperated by a will lacking any saving love of God.
Even there, the interest remains clinical, for it is a pathology
which is analyzed, not an anguish which is experienced.
But Lonergan, although rejecting the faculty psychology of
Thomism, will also have no part in the Augustinian stress upon
the dichotomous consciousness; the transcendental intentionality which is Lonergan's concern is not turned within to discover its simultaneous and contradictory loves, but is rather
an orderly passage from data. to results, conducted under the
spur of the transcendental a prioris of attentiveness, intelligence, rationality, responsibility: these drive cognition with a
rational necessity to the moment of conversion. The effect
achieved is Cartesian, the classic rationalization of Augustine,
made inevitable once the quest for certitude, without which
thought must cease, is held to be satisfied from within rather
than by the illumining presence of God to the mind He creates.
For the autonomous mind continues to spin out its dichotomies, the isolated ideal clarities of thought which isolate man
from God, to the point of disintegrating the human and
demonizing God by the ideal removal of both from history. 55
53 This is possible only on the supposition,
whose validity is argued for
in the present writer's Thomism and Tillich, that the interior instinctus ad
credendum amounts to a substantially-graced intelligere, whose actuality, as
first act of intellectus, is preconceptual and prefacultative.
See notes 38
and 43.
54 See note 15, supra.
55 Method, 316, 327-328. To find, as Lonergan does, the shift to interiority
initiated by Descartes is to risk its confusion with idealism.

LONERGAN'S

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58

This path has been trod sufficiently to permit little of novelty along the route. Plotinus rationalized Plato by substituting,
for the Dionysian consciousness's experience of fallenness from
the kalokagathon, the rational, ideal and transhistorical necessity of the mind's relation to the absolute; Thomists ha.ve
done as much for Augustine, in substituting, for Augustine's
illumination doctrine, the Aristotelian notion of the autonomous intellect. Anselm's "necessary reasons" have appealed
to rationalists of every age since his: they dispense from the
insecurity of an historically fallen consciousness by the idealization, the dehistoricization, of God's relation to us. The later
Thomas disagrees: it is not by the necessary dynamism of
consciousness, not by any autonomous certitude, not by any
transcendental Cogito, that we come to God; we come to Him
by His having come to us, by a Trinitarian and Christocentric
Presence which, from our side, is not distinct nor distinguishable from our total dependence upon him in the order of being:
i.e., of unity, goodness-and truth. This total dependence upon
the unifying, inspiriting and illumining presence of God to us
is not other than our creation in Christ our Lord, the Light of
the world, from whose pleroma we have fallen, in whom we
are redeemed.
Our fallenness, and our re-creation in Christ, mark us
throughout our existence, our presence to God; whether we
affirm it or deny it: it is intrinsic to consciousness as such, as
universal as creation is. This Paul affirmed in Romans; this is
the doctrine of Vatican I. To deny the concrete applicability
of this doctrine is to ·denature it. Paul in Romans and the
bishops of the First Vatican Council speak of the concrete
responsibility of historical human beings to know God. This
teaching has been obscured not so much by the juridical mentality of the authors of Dei filius ·as by the literalist interpretation of that document by Thomist theologians, who impose
upon the conciliar language of nature and grace a Thomist
account of the interrelation of nature and grace which has
never been able to resolve its own inconsistencies, much less
clarify the conciliar teaching. Rather than have concerned

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DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

himself to distinguish the quaestio facti and the questio juris,
Lonergan would have served his own interest better by asking
whether the interpretation which school Thomism had placed
upon Vatican l's use of" natural,, was correct. Given the further clarification of Dei Filius by Humani Generis in 1950, it
is far more likely that the word means only " innate " or " native,, in the sense of a human characteristic found universally,
than that it includes also the Thomistic explanation of that
universality, in terms of essential necessity. 56 It is this naive
identification of doctrine and school theology which has for a
century befogged the doctrine which affirms the reality of the
"natural knowledge of God," for it imposes upon that doctrine
the entirely unreal cosmological imagery of a naturally good
world, created by God, to which grace is subsequently added
propter peccatum. This imagery is nearly universal in the
Church Fathers; it has dominated the scholastic theology of
grace, and controls transcendental Thomism in its various
manifestations. Yet it is radically undercut by the cosmic
Christocentrism of the New Testament, whose hymnic expression is as ancient as the earliest levels of the Christian tradition.57
One of the results of this cosmological imagery has been to
transform the meaning of revelation and grace: Vatican I uses
these terms in a highly naive fashion: respectively, they denote " sacred information ,, and the accidental change of the
human reality which is temporally subsequent to its coming
into existence and is given by God ad sa.lutem.58 Any other interpretation, such as the Thomist, which would assume their
56 Denzinger-Schonmetzcr
3875, where nativa and naturalis are used interchangeably; so also Lonergan, in Method, 103.
s1Notably, the Johannine Prologue, Phil 2:5-11, and Col 1:15-20. For the
antiquity of the Prologue, see R. Brown, The Gospel According to John, IXII, The .cinchor Bible, vol. 29, Doubleday and Co., Garden City, N. Y., 1966,
18-23; For Colossians, see Joseph A. Grassi, "The Letter to the Colossians,"
'.Phe Jerome Biblical Commentary II, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J.,
il36-337; for the hymn in Philippians 2, see Joseph Fitzmeyer, "The Letter
to the Philippians," The Jerome Biblical Commentary II, 250-251.
ss See tJ1e further discussion in Thomism and Tillich, ch. 2.

LONERGAN's

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5!J

literal statement to its own hermeneutic and thus lend them
an entirely unwarranted ontological weight, can only suppose
that the Council is teaching what it never dreamed of affirming, the actual reality and religious importance of a people to
whom God is not present, to whom the Revelation is not
given, upon whom the Christ has had no impact. To attribute
such a doctrine to Dei Filius or to Paul in Romans is flat nonsense; it is not to be wondered that Lonergan wishes to avoid
it. Nevertheless, his own theological method reflects the same
cosmological imagination as does the dogmatic constitution of
Vatican I, with the additional defect of reducing it to a methodological necessity. The ultimate problem which Lonergan's
treatment of the unity of consciousness fails to solve is that
of harmonizing the cosmological and the Christian consciousness. Nor is this failure strange: the problem is a false one,
without solution. The cosmological consciousness is that from
which one is converted: it is the standing alternative to Christianity, and any failure in Christianity reverts to it. Here,
the failure is that of Lonergan's cognitional analysis, which
makes a cosmological anthropology normative for the theological enterprise.
It is then not strange that Lonergan sees no real future for
and no real contemporary interest in a metaphysical theology,
for the single task which constitutes its interest and its future
is one which he has scouted: the ontology of the grace of
Christ. 59 If this is really no longer a theological concern, it
will really not make much difference with what matters theology shall henceforth be concerned, since it will be committed
to triviality. Its center will have shifted: no longer the Christ,
it is rather our experience of God's love-but an experience
whose relation to the historical life, death and resurrection of
59 A Second Collection, 561, 237. Lonergan never links the universality
of
grace to the particularity of the Christ-event. For him, this belongs not to
theological method, but to systematic theology. The consequence is that his
method presupposes, and is submitted to, a notion of history prior to and
independent of the Christian faith. However, grace as grace either is or is
not gratia Christi; a theological method which must transmit this question
is already dehistoricized. Cf. A Second Collection, 175.

56

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

Jesus the Christ is of no more than a. nominal interest. A
theology which understands the unity of graced consciousness
in merely nominal terms, unconcerned for its ontological
ground in Christ, has no historical foundation: the universality
of the divine salvific will becomes abstract, and salvation history is made irrelevant.

III
Perhaps the most visible failure of Lonergan's theological
method is its application to fundamental or foundational
theology. "Foundations" is of course one of the functional
theological specialties, and deals with the impact of religious
conversion upon the intentional process: it is the point at
which the mediating disciplines or functional specialties give
way to the mediated or specifically theological specialties of
foundations, doctrines, systematics and communications. Inasmuch as conversion is universally available, and thus not
tied to a given doctrinal content, the relation between any
given conversion or instance of" falling in love with God" and
the Christian revelation of God in Christ is contingent upon
the experience of the person whose conversion is in point. 60
"Foundations," as a functional specialty, is charged with developing the theological categories which such experience provides; obviously, a Christian's experience will provide a different set of categories from those of, say, a. Buddhist. Be this
as it may, the recourse to dialectic will reduce the counter-positions to their intrinsic incoherence, and develop the intrinsic
potentiality of the positions. This development is of a piece
with the " discovery of mind " which is the ongoing differentiation of consciousness; one aspect of this is the discovery of the
historicity of truth. Lonergan is explicit that truth is determinate only in context, a context whose discovery and explicitation is for the a.cademy.61 The end result of this view of de60 Met hod, 278.

61 Ibid., 312-330. Lonergan finds the unity of doctrinal meaning in a realm
immune to history, " beyond the vicissitudes of the human historical process."
( 327 )-a position very similar to Schleiermacher's, and for much the same

LONERGAN'S

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

57

velopment is to turn the concrete mystery of Christ's presence
in the Church over to the academy, leaving its permanent
truth-value fragmented: it can be revealed at the level of one
differentiation of consciousness, defined in a second, and understood in a third. The unity of these differentiations is not
religious, but academic: we have seen that, in Lonergan's view,
Vatican I's Dei Filius does not speak to a. contemporary situation, although the historian can determine and understand
what was said there by recourse to the tools of his specialty,
chief among which is the recognition of the differentiations of
consciousness which attends the passage from one century to
another, from one cultural situation to another. Thus, the
unity of doctrine is provided ab extrinseco: it is, once again, the
unity of Lonergan's transcendental method which is in view,
not the unity of the doctrinal tradition. The latter unity was
the concern of the " dogmatic " theologian of the classicist
mentality; the contemporary functional specialist in doctrines
knows that meaning is determinate only in terms of a context,
and that the determination of that context, and so of the meaning of doctrine, is finally academic, insofar as it transcends the
simplicities of catechesis, insofar then as it is received on the
levels of interiority and transcendence. For the specialist, as
historian and hermeneut, has deprived the dogmatic theologian
of his sources: 62 these, constituting in their sum the ecclesial
tradition, are by Lonergan's method delivered to the mediating
disciplines, fundamentally anthropological rather than theological, secular rather than ecclesial. Under their analysis, the
tradition is deprived of any intrinsic unity. Granted that the
old dogmatics was quite uncritical of its sources and naive in
its confidence in them; granted that the classicist mentality,
in its fascination with objectivity, too little noted the moment
reason. See also Lonergan's Dootrinal Pluralism (The Pere Marquette Lecture, 1971) Marquette University, 1971, 53. For Lonergan, what is incarnate
is relativized by its historicity. This is the result of his complete acceptance,
formally announced, of the "contemporary notions of science, philosophy and
scholarship." (The Philosophy of God and Theology, 32.)
G2 The Philosophy of God and Theology, 32.

58

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

of interiority: is it really to be conceded that the progress in
historical and philosophical sophistication has effectively delivered the concreteness of the Church's historical self-expression to an extra-ecclesial oversight, that of history and interiority as these are perceived by contemporary scholarship? Does
this not simply deprive the Church of its own in-worship-appropriated historicity, and so of its very base, the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus the Christ? Lonergan's methodological removal of all concrete content from faith, from " falling in
love with God," 63 his consequent isolation of the foundational
analysis of conversion from any interest in Catholic doctrine,
has received its appropriate extrapolation in David Tracy's
fundamental theology, one completely delivered to the normative values of secular historical criticism. 64 It is difficult to see
how such results are to be avoided, if conversion as such is as
anonymous in principle as Lonergan's view of ecumenism requires. The dilemma is clear enough: either history is a secular reality or an ecclesial; if the former, then Tracy and his
allies are correct, while if history is finally time qualified by
the immanence of the Incarnate, Lonergan's Augustinian inspiration should be fulfilled in a radically theological analysis
of history, one which will find the cause of history in the Eucharistic worship of the Church.
Lonergan relies for the clarification of historical-doctrinal
truth upon the specialty of dialectics, brought forward as an
aspect of foundational theology. No doubt dialectics will serve
to resolve the particularities of any issue which involves some
radical inconsistency, some ultimate incoherence which undercuts its own affirmation. Lonergan's illustrations of the dialectic process are taken from the philosophers: e.g., he has no
difficulty showing the inconsistencies of the Humean view of
knowledge. But doctrinal truth is not so easily dealt with; its
a priori or ultimate concern is mystery, the mystery of the
divine-human relation, and if the Christian and Catholic apGS See note

60, supra.
Dulles's review of Tracy's Rlessecl Rage for Order in Theological Studies, vol. 37 ( 1976) 304 ff.
64 See Avery

LONERGAN's

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

59

propriation of that mystery is by way of history, this is by no
means the case universally: the eastern religions and the Christian heresies generally refuse or falter before the concreteness
of such a mediation, and thus have at best a diluted faith in the
truth-value of its historical utterance in doctrine. The history of religious controversy is not one which supports Lonergan's hope that "authentic" interpretations of doctrine will
coalesce in a pattern of mutual recognition: the rationalist
quest for authenticity tends to a. sola fide resolution, not to a
doctrinal agreement. And in fact this is already anticipated
in Lonergan's separation of faith and belief: only the latter
is doctrinal. Faith in his view has a doctrinal consequence by
reason of its communal and public character, not by reason of
any truth content immanent in and constitutive of the condition of" being in love with God. Faith, by itself, not only rests
upon no prior knowledge of God, but of itself and in principle
is love rather than knowledge; it is therefore in principle indifferent to orthodoxy.
Of a piece with Lonergan's separation of fundamental
theology from doctrine is his separation of doctrinal theology
in the sense of a functional specialty from the functional specialty of systematics. The task of the doctrinal theologian is
that of providing a contextual interpretation of doctrinal statements: this interpretation is continually developing, as the differentiation of consciousness develops; as has been seen, the
unity of the development is that of the transcendental method,
which makes of the legitimacy of any given doctrinal development finally an academic question. The "ongoing contexts "
of doctrinal development are those associated with particular
historical communities, and their cultural-historical multiplicity appears to admit no criterion other than a rationalist dialectic by which one might select between them. The academic
theologian views them, but without any a priori preference
induced by his faith-conversion. For it is supposed of any
given doctrinal affirmation (in the sense of a ma.gisterial definition) that it is indissociable from the limitations of its own
time and place, and further that its reception in another time

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DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

and culture is subject, a priori, to what the traffic there will
bear. Precisely what this may be is, again, an academic question: any magisterial prolongation of, e.g., Chalcedonian doctrine into the late twentieth century then awaits an academic
legitimation. The magisterial function is then not doctrinal,
but pastoral: the Church speaks not to the head but to the
heart. 65 It is distanced from the revelation as from history by
the hosts of functional specialists in research, in history, in
hermeneutics, in dialectics. It is not simply the old-fashioned
dogmatic theologian who can no longer appeal to theological
sources in scripture, patristics, theological consensus and reasoning: it is also the bishops who suffer this alienation, and the
worshipping community of the Church. Preaching is aimed not
at belief, but at faith, quite a different matter, for faith is
" falling in love," not with a known, but an unknown God.
It is only in systematic theology that humility returns to
the theological academy; theological systems are simply hypotheses: if doctrinal truth, as inevitably linked to a dispensable
verbal formula, is in principle ineffable, at least until the last
mediating specialist shall have uttered, the truth of systematic
theology is that of modern science: it stands to Church doctrine as physics does to sense experience. 66 It relies upon
65 See the observations
of Frederick Crowe, " Doctrines and Historicity in
the Context of Lonergan's Method," Theological Studies vol. 38 ( 1977) 115124, esp. footnote 38, which concludes an excursus on pastoral theology with
the following: "More generally, we would try to imitate the economy practiced by the Lord of revelation, and take account, not only of the limited
ability of the hearer to receive or profit from a given truth, but also the
limited role that truth plays in general in Christian life." This condescension
echoes Billot's relegation of the rudes to the condition of moral imbecility;
its ascription to Jesus may be an implication of Lonergan's Method, but
hardly of the text of the New Testament, or of the Church's liturgy.
66 Method, 346. It should be noted that Lonergan's view of science has been
rather summarily dismissed by a most eminent historian of science: see
Stanley Jaki, 'l'he Road of Science and the Ways to God (The Gifford Lectures, 1974-1975 and 1975-1976), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1978, 457, note 45, where Jaki cites Lonergan's Method as an effort "to give
respectability to theology by refashioning it according to models of science
that bear but scant resemblance to the true reality of science." The language quoted may be found on pp. 327-328; cf. Met hod, 315 ff. Lonergan

J,ONERGAN 'S THEOLOGICAL

.
METHOD

01

Lonergan's critically established metaphysics, whose terms correspond to the elements of his cognitional analysis-which is
not hypothesis but demonstrated necessity. It is then difficult
to see how the systematist, in possession of the transcendental
method, can by its application be in doubt as to the fundamental meaning of any doctrine. Lonergan would divide the
doctrinal from the systematic understanding as he has divided
judgment or affirmation from concept: doctrine looks to the
affirmation, and is concerned to understand it only by a concern for clarity and distinctness of meaning, while the systematic is more concerned with. the conceptual elaboration of
the doctrine: the hypothetical quality of this latter understanding is predicated upon the relative precariousness of the
conceptuality of one's times. 67 Again, it is the historicity of the
systematist's situation which induces the humility which we
have instanced; it is not at all induced by a recognition of the
relativity of the systematic inquiry vis-a-vis the absolute character of the Church's dogmatic expression of its faith. It is not
the systematist's function which is relativized, in Lonergan's
view, but rather, the concepts of the system, its notation. And
however fallible his conceptualization, the systematist's understanding of doctrine is to that of the faithful as the physicist's
errs in supposing science to be the merely ideal discipline described by the
"Copenhagen" interpretation of quantum mechanics, which as Mach's conversion has indicated is reductively Buddhist: our experience has then only
that intelligibility which is conferred upon it by the autonomous mind. This
eliminates the possibility of learning, whether from our experience of the
physical world or of the Catholic tradition, and is ruinous alike for physics
and for theology. A world thus "mediated by meaning" becomes itself
meaningless.
67 Method, 349-350. Lonergan recognizes that hypotheses such as those of
systematic theology construct possible rather than actual truth, but they
represent a level of differentiation of consciousness, an intellectual sophistication, factually unsurpassed by any non-theological reception of doctrine and
thus are not open to any criticism originating in a less differentiated consciousness. See pp. 275 ff., 330. Since the liturgical mediation of the revelation, which is basic, presupposes no differentiation of consciousness beyond
that of commonsense in union with transcendence, it is not difficult to understand that the Magisterium is not in a position to disagree with a theologian
confident of his own authenticity.

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DONALD .J. KEEFE, S.J.

understanding of the material world is to that of sense experience. It is not then the less differentiated consciousness of the
sensus fidelium which is normative, but the higher sophistication of the systematic theologian. The less differentiated consciousness, after all, is incapable of criticizing the more differentiated, and that of the ecclesial consensus, of the worshipping community, is the least differentiated of all: common
sense and transcendence interrelated. A Newman, even an
Augustine, is on this level; it is reserved to the late twentieth
century to transcend their vision by use of the transcendental
method.
This systematic separation of faith from its believing expression, its doctrinal content, is a contemporary Catholic temptation, by no means dependent upon Lonergan's theological
method. It finds utterance particularly in the views of the
function of the episcopal magisterium commonly heard in
American faculties of Catholic theology. This function is conceived as pastoral, directed to the activity rather than to the
understanding of the faithful: the intellectual aspect of faith
is seen as an academic rather than as an episcopal concern.
But it can hardly be denied that Lonergan's methodology
lends legitimation to this attitude, while its sola fide overtones
have an obvious "ecumenical" attraction. 68 At bottom, the
failure here is in the realm of the theology of history, or rather,
in the absence of a theology of history-for history, as a funces The sola fide overtones of Lonergan's method are the result of his isolation of the ecstasis of faith, understood as "falling in love with God" or
" being grasped by Ultimate Concern" (see footnotes 25 and 39, supra) from
any necessary intelligible content; faith is thus so la in that it is ineffable,
unaccompanied in principle, as a matter of method, by an affirmation of a
credal sort. It is incorrect, as has been noted, to enlist Tillich in this position, Lutheran though he be; Tillich has insisted upon the correlation, within
any moment of revelation, of ultimate concern and its mediation, i.e., of
ecstasy and of miracle. See Tillich, op. cit. 117-145. Therefore, for Tillich,
faith always either "has truth" or "is true;" in either case, it never exists
apart from its affirmation in terms of symbolization, whether adequate or inadequate. This of course implies a criteriology, which concretely is Jesus
as the Christ, our Ultimate Concern, the final revelation by which all others
are judged.

LONERGAN'S

THEOI.OGICAL

METHOD

68

tional specialty, is a secular discipline, and even as placed in
the differentiation of transcendence by conversion to the love
of God, is still delivered to the academy. But the Church's
history is hers to interpret: theologians may question, even
doubt that interpretation, but they cannot, as Catholic theologians, transcend it by means of any higher viewpoint without
tacitly abandoning the historicality, the concreteness, of their
Catholic faith, a faith whose historical truth is ecclesial, a matter of worship, not of theology. Theologians tend to forget
this, as even Origen did on occasion.

*

*

*

The root difficulty in Lonergan's version of that "turn to
the subject" which has dominated the Thomist theology of the
present century is that it represents a despair of the Thomist
enterprise, and consequently its abandonment. The only serious attempt to deal with this theology critically which Lonergan's works provide is that represented by his Verbum articles
of the latter nineteen-forties, which discovered in Thomas's
thought an isolation of concept from affirmation unsuspected
by any prior student of St. Thomas's epistemology, and one
completely incoherent with the act-potency methodology
which Thomism inherited from Aristotle. 69 The notion of intellectual dynamism which is Blondel's, and more remotely
Newman's, legacy to the "new theology" of de Lubac, de
Montcheuil and Fessard, had already written finis, in the exploratory work of Rousselot, the foundational Cahiers of
Marechal, and the penultimate elaboration of that insight by
men such as de Finance and de Raeymaeker, to the baroque
mechanics of Suarezian " Thomism." That nominalist essentialism still prevailed, by fiat, in the philosophy schools of the
Society of Jesus until the early nineteen-forties; the student
au A most cogent criticism of the " V erbum articles " was offered by Matthew O'Connell, "St. Thomas and the Verbum: An Interpretation,"
The
Modern Schoolman, vol. 24 ( 1947), 224-234; it is today infrequently cited,
and its point ignored.

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

protest against its sterility long antedated Lonergan's tour at
Heythrop in the early nineteen-twenties; Teilhard, a decade
earlier, had suffered his three years of Suarez in the Scholasticate at Jersey, and his revolt against it flowered in The
Human Phen01nenon, in which he showed the same minimal
acquaintance with the Marechalian development which Lonergan has admitted. 70 Both Teilhard and Lonergan turned to
Augustine, but Teilhard much more wholeheartedly than
Lonergan, who in his willingness to isolate the potentiality of
concept from the actuality of affirmation, to identify the actuality of essence and of existence in the notion of central
form still resonates to Suarezian themes.
The impossibility of a "turn to the subject" in the context
of an act-potency methodology is a postulate of Lonergan's
method: in this he compares with Tillich, who also found in
Thomist metaphysics only a voluntarism, an alienating ideoogy. But also like Tillich, Lonergan finds the Thomist project
inescapably essentialist: both are prevented from seeing it
otherwise by supposing the sole legitimacy of a methodology
whose access to reality is by introspection, the experience of
the duality of consciousness.
This discovery of the failure of the rationalist analysis of
consciousness is the tern1inus of a. long journey, beginning with
Duns Scotus's denial of the Augustinian a priori, intellectual
illumination. Thereafter the self-reliant intelligence discovered,
with Ockham, that its analysis produces only multiplicity, a
10 Lonergan's
own autobiographical
remarks make this clear; he was
trained as a Suarezian, as was the mode for the Jesuit seminarians of his
time, and although like Teilhard, who suffered similarly, he rejected Suarezianism entirely, he imposed its empiricism on Thomism in the Verbum articles, out of which Insight emerged. While he was engaged in this work,
the Thomist "turn to the subject" was proceeding under the aegis of
Marechal and his confrere Rousselot, taught in turn by Blondel. Taken
up in the thirties and during the war years by de Finance, de Raeymaeker,
Rahner, Bouillard, de Lubac and others, this development of the Thomist
equation of esse with intelligere has not interested Lonergan, for it does not
respond to his own empiricism. See the discussion with Coreth, Oolleotion,
202-220. For the pertinent autobiography, see the final essay in A Second
Oollection, 263-278.

LONERGAN's

THEOLOGICAL

METHOD

65

multiplicity whose intrinsic unintelligibility still must be
remedied ab extra. After the Reformers exploited this futility
by using it to undermine the sacramental worship of Catholicism, Descartes rationalized Anselm's "ontological argument"
for the existence of God, in an effort to rationalize Augustinian
illumination, and so reunify what nominalism had destroyed;
his failure to find a synthesis between self and world set the
stage for the history of Western philosophy henceforth: the
dichotomies of mind and matter became permanent options,
most recently exemplified in the diachronous-synchronous
dilemma of contemporary structuralism. Reason is unable to
avoid these dilemmas, not because of the perdurance of a latent
extroverted consciousness, as Lonergan believes, but because
the postulated autonomy is false. Whether one proceeds with
a Thomist or an Augustinian analysis, this conclusion is inescapable. Lonergan's cognitional analysis is no more able than
Descartes's to find an Archimedean place to stand while constructing a world.
DONALD J. KEEFE,

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

S.J.

THE PARTICULARITY

OF MORAL KNOWLEDGE*

I

N MANY OF THE Platonic dialogues, Socrates is portrayed as hunting for definitions of the virtues which are
acceptable to those participating in the conversation. The
prey is courage in Laches, friendship in Lysis, that combination of wisdom and self-restraint called sophrosyne in Charmides, piety in Euthyphro, and above all, justice in The Republic. As Copieston notes, this search for moral definitions
serves Socrates's ethical interest in avoiding the relativism of
the sophists: "If we can once attain to a universal definition
of justice, ... we can judge not only individual actions, but
also the moral codes of different states, in so far as they embody or recede from the universal definition . . ." 1 Thus
Socrates's search for moral definitions dramatizes a necessary
presupposition of morality: the possibility of universal moral
knowledge based on the universal claim of morality itself.
This same presupposition underlies all moral argumentation.
As Macintyre points out, moral arguments always purport to
be impersonal: they presuppose criteria of evaluation which
are universal, and can therefore be cited as " good reasons "
for acting in this way or that, " independently of who utters
[them] or even whether [they are] uttered at all." For moral
argument " expresses at least an aspiration to be or become
rational in this area of our lives," and such rationality demands
"objective standards." 2
*This paper is the first product of a research project on tradition and
moral knowledge, initiated with financial support from the American Catholic
Philosophical Association's summer research grant program. The author
wishes to thank the ACP A for its help and encouragement.
l Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy,
Vol. 1, Pt. 1 (Garden
City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1962), p. 126.
2 Alasdair Macintyre,
After Virtu.e (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
Press, 1981), pp. 8-9. Macintyre argues, however, that in our present historical situation our moral arguments are ineffective in producing agreement because there is no consensus concerning wllich criteria of evaluation
are, in fact, universal.

66

THE PARTICULARITY

OF MORAL KNOWLEDGE

67

But what is the status of these objective moral standards in
relation to particular moral actions and the knowledge which
guides such actions? Socrates's search for definitions tells us,
on the one hand, that these definitions are not yet knownotherwise, no search would be necessary. On the other hand,
however, he does expect to make progress toward the attainment of such definitions by reflecting on what is already implicit in the understanding of his partners in conversation.
Socrates appears to presuppose, therefore, that something of
universal moral significance is already known by moral agents,
even though this knowledge is not yet expressed in definitions
having universal validity.
This paper will argue that moral agents understand universal moral standards in their application to particular actions, even when they do not understand such standards abstractly. This argument will be based on the view that the
knowledge which guides particular moral actions can neither
be derived from our knowledge of universal moral standards
per se, nor be adequately summarized in such standards. The
moral knowledge which guides particular moral actions requires a creative moral insight, and not merely a factual insight, into the particular situation as such. This creative moral
insight determines the universal moral significance of the particular situation at the same time that it provides concrete
normative content to universal moral standards. It will be
argued that universal moral standards have no normative content apart from particular situations, and consequently, that
universal and particular moral knowledge are interdependent.
The paper will conclude by clarifying the implications of this
view for natural law theories.

*

*

*

Since Plato is responsible for the portrait of Socrates used
above, it should be noted that he would strenuously oppose
using that portrait to argue for a genuine moral knowledge of
particular good actions that is not based on explicit knowledge
of what we have called universal moral standards. For Plato,

68

STEPHEN A. DINAN

an action is known to be good only if it is known to participate
in that universal form which makes it good (justice, piety,
courage, etc.). If one lacks knowledge of the universal form,
therefore, one lacks knowledge of the particular action's participation in this form. In such a case one may have a true
belief about, but not knowledge of, the goodness or badness of
the action. Thus Plato would understand Socrates's procedure
as an attempt to ascend from an experience of the mere reflection of the universal form in particular actions, which is
the basis of true belief, to an understanding of the form itself
as an object of genuine moral knowledge. Moral knowledge,
in short, requires the reason for naming an action " good,''
and such a reason is universal, not found in the particular action as such. 3
It is this last point which must be challenged: that what
makes an action good is not to be found in the particular action as particular, but in the universal of which the particular
action is only an instance. This view is shared by all theories
which interpret morality as the conformity of action to a universal principle or standard. Such a view presupposes, of
course, that particular actions can conform to universal standards-i.e., that universal standards can prescribe what is to be
done in particular situations. It also presupposes that knowledge of universal moral standards is independent of, and has a
priority over, knowledge of the morality of particular actions.
All of these presuppositions, it must be argued, are mistaken.
s This view is evident in many of Plato's writings, but especially in The
Republic (Bks. III-V), where he discusses the education of future guardians
and future rulers of the state. The former will be exposed to good influences
which will enable them to recognize and imitate the moral virtues in the
concrete; only the latter will understand the virtues in themselves (as immutable forms) . The divided line analogy in The Republic ( 509-511) contrasts the world of knowledge, which is the world of forms, with the world
of mere opinion or belief, which is the world of the concrete reflections or
copies of the forms. Finally, without mentioning the forms, Diotima's description of the dialectic of beauty in The Symposium (210a-212a) makes it
clear how the forms are reflected in concrete persons and institutions (and,
we may presume, actions), as well as how one can love the reflections without having yet understood the forms which they reflect.

THE PARTICULARITY OF MORAL KNOWLEDGE

69

Knowledge is moral knowledge. only insofar as it guides
human actions, which are always particular. It is obvious,
therefore, that any moral theory which posits universally valid
moral standards of whatever scope must acknowledge the need
for applying such standards to particular situations. Thus,
knowledge of universal moral standards is moral knowledge
only in an incomplete sense; complete moral knowledge is particular knowledge of what is to be done. Moreover, as Aristotle knew, knowing what is good in general is not sufficient
for knowing what to do in a. particular situation. 4 It is precisely the difference between these two forms of knowledge which
must be investigated. If the universal moral standards in
themselves are capable of prescribing what is to be done in the
particular situation, then particular moral knowledge will consist only in " factual " knowledge of the conditions under
which the universal standard is to be realized. There will be
no difference in meaning between the universal moral standards and the particular determinants of the action's morality;
the latter will simply be particular instances of the former,
fully comprehended in a universal concept or rule. If, on the
other hand, the universal moral standards cannot prescribe
what is to be done in particular situations, it will be because
the meaning of the moral standards, i.e., what they prescribe
and under what conditions, is not fully determinate apart from
the particular situation. This is the view of Gadamer, who insists that ethical knowledge cannot be learned and possessed
prior to application. The knowledge of what is just, for
instance,
is totally relative to the ethical situation in which we find ourselves.
We cannot say in a general and abstract way which actions are
just and which are not; there are no just actions " in themselves,"
independent of what the situation requires. 5
4 I refer, of course, to Aristotle's
doctrine of phronesis or practical wisdom, developed in Bk. VI of the Nichomaohean Ethics .
.5 Hans-Georg Gadamer, " The Problem of Historical Consciousness," in Paul
Rabinow and William M. Sullivan, eds., Interpretive Social Soienoe: A
Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 140.

70

S'l'EPHEN A. DINAN

This would mean that particular moral knowledge is not merely " factual " but normative; i.e., that it does not merely discover what one is to do given certain universal standards, but
also discovers the proximate moral determinants which make
the proposed action good. If this is shown to be the case, it
will be established that the ultimate moral determinants of an
action are particular, and that universal moral standards are
grounded in and mediate instances of these particular moral
determinants without, however, exhausting them.
The most obvious challenge to the view that all moral knowledge is ultimately particular knowledge is posed by the existence of iules or laws. The virtue of rules or laws is that they
alleviate the need for a great deal of deliberation prior to action by prescribing, often in highly specific ways, how we are
to respond to various kinds of situations. We might even say
that much of our dealing successfully with the world consists
in reducing our choices to habitualized rules of conduct. Moreover, societies institutionalize patterns of response to certain
kinds of intersubjective situations. This ensures the possibility of success in social interaction since each individual will
know how others will respond, and how others will expect him
or her to respond, to a wide variety of situations. 6 Since these
personal and social rules or laws are generated in order to insure the most advantageous actions in pre-defined situations,
it would seem that knowing what to do in such situations sim6 See Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Oonstruction
of
Reality (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday .Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 52-7.
Berger and Luckmann suggest that it is precisely because human beings are
free that they must limit their possibilities by creating habitual rules of
conduct which give their lives the stability that other animals possess naturally. (p. 52.) Ortega notes that such "usages," when they are socially institutionalized, do not even have to be intelligible to the actor in order to be
binding; they merely have to provide a community with an accepted way of
doing things (e.g., greeting others by shaking hands). See Jose Ortega y
Gasset, Man and People (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1963), pp. 203-8.
This need to do things in a consistent way independent of the content of our
habitual rules not only appears to undermine the claim that moral knowledge is particular rather than universal; it also suggests that the maintenance of universality is itself a good.

THE PARTICULARITY

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ply means knowing the appropriate rule or law. The moral
determinant of such actions, in short, seems to be the rule or
law itself as a universal standard.
Before we take this objection too much to heart, however,
it should be noted that it was precisely in the application of
laws in the polis that both Plato (in spite of what we would
call his ethical idealism) and Aristotle (who, after all, believed
in a universal " natural law ") found the greatest practical
problem with universals. They were not thinking of practical
rules in general, but of those laws whose purpose is to insure
justice. Plato argues, in The Statesman, that direct rule by
one who has the " art of kingship " is better tha.n a rule by
law. For the legislator must make laws which will work well
for most people under most circumstances; he " will never be
able in the laws he prescribes for the whole group to give every
individual his due with absolute accuracy." 7 The reason given
is simple and revealing: " It is impossible for something invariable and unqualified to deal satisfactorily with what is
never uniform and constant." 8 Because he agreed with Plato
on this point (although he believed some matters of justice
could be adequately universalized) , Aristotle called for the
virtue of epiekeia or equity, which would enable the ruler to
adapt the law to the situation by correcting it in those instances where a literal application would result in injustice. 9
What is clear in both of these authors is that justice is never
simply a matter of following a law, even if the law is an adequate one; rather, it is the fulfillment of an ideal, measured by
the form of justice itself in Plato, and by the virtue of justice
in Aristotle. But what are we to say about a universal ideal
of justice that cannot adequately be expressed in laws? What1 Plato, The Statesman,
in Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns, eds.,
Plato: The Collected Dialogues (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 295a (p.
1064).
S294c (p. 1063).
9 Aristotle, Nichomachean JJlthics, in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works
of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 1137a 32-1137b 31 (pp.
1019-20).

72

STEPHEN A. DINAN

ever the extent to which they accounted for this insight in their
ethical theories, Plato and Aristotle both clearly recognized
that justice is something to be attained differently in different
situations. For this reason, universal laws can never specify all
the demands of justice.
We can generalize this insight to all forms of moral goodness: one can no more guarantee the goodness of one's actions
by following moral rules or laws than one can guarantee the
quality of one's writing by following the rules of grammar,
syntax and composition. In each case the rules are necessary;
in each case the rules are somewhat flexible as to what they
permit or prohibit; in each case there will be instances in which
the rules may be, and perhaps must be, set aside; and in each
case a creative insight which transcends the rules is required
if the outcome is to be good in a way demanded by the concrete situation. In the case of morality, this creative insight
must make the rules speak to the present situation, but in
doing so it cannot simply attempt to grasp what the rules demand; in the light of the rules, and sometimes against the
rules, it must grasp what the situation demands. As Gadamer
points out, "we try to find the best, the good, in our decisions
and this is always a very concrete thing." 10 All knowledge
"at a distance " from the moral situation "threatens to hide
or weaken the present demand for choice in the moral situation." 11
It should be noted that, in denying the adequacy of rules
for defining what needs to be done morally in the concrete
situation, we are in effect also denying any attempt to make
universal moral standards adequate for practical moral judgment. For any theory which defines morality as the conformity of actions to universal moral standards must allow those
standards to prescribe what is to be done in every kind of
concrete circumstance. Such a theory, therefore, must concede
10 Gadamer,

"Practical

Philosophy

as a Model of the Human Sciences,"

Research in Phenomenology, IX (1979), p. 82.
11 Gadamer,

"Sur la possibilite

Philosophie, 34 ( 1971), p. 393.

d'une ethique philosophique,"

Archives de
.

THE PARTICULARITY

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73

to prescriptivists, rule utilitarians, and other theorists who follow Kant on this point, that all general moral standards imply
or ma.y be expressed as rules or imperatives if they are to function morally in guiding conduct. The person who wishes to
follow such rules must understand what concrete actions they
prescribe or prohibit, the situations in which these actions are
prescribed or prohibited, and the circumstances under which
the rules do not apply. We are maintaining, however, that
such knowledge cannot itself be derived from or reduced to
rules, but requires a creative moral insight into the particular
situation itself. For even if we express our moral principles in
terms of rules, there are no rules which could specify all the
conditions which affect whether, and how, these rules should
be applied. The application of rules cannot itself be done by
rules, but only by the practical reason of the moral agent facing and understanding the concrete demands of the situation. 12
But why is the understanding necessary for applying moral
rules not derivable from the rules themselves, or more remotely, from the universal moral standards which find expression
in moral rules? What is the obstacle which universal moral
knowledge cannot remove, even with adequate knowledge of
the" facts" of the situation? To determine this, we must look
more closely a.t the operation of rules in moral situations.
It is possible to construct a variety of procedures which
specify in detail how one is to act in certain circumstances.
Such procedures are always aimed at producing certain typically similar results which we desire to bring about. This kind
of '' recipe " knowledge for solving certain "typical " problems
through the use of detailed habitual plans, which Schlitz calls
"course-of-action types," 13 is present to a great extent every
12 Gadamer, "Practical
Philosophy as a Model of the Human Sciences,"
pp. 82-3. Ewin points out that having recourse to rules in order to interpret
rules involves one in a vicious infinite regress of interpretive rules. A. E.
Ewin, Co-operation and Human Values (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1981)' p. 20.
13 See Alfred
Schiitz, " Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of
Human Action," in Collected Papers, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971),
pp. 19-22.

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STEPHEN A. DINAN

time we act; for we can only decide to do something if we know
how to do it. This "knowing how" that we have called procedures, however, does not constitute moral knowledge. Procedures tell us only how to produce certain results taken abstractly; they do not help us to evaluate either the unintended but
foreseen effects we will produce, or to determine, among an
those things which are practicable because we possess such
procedures, which ones are good, or indeed the best. Procedures, like our anticipation of certain unintended effects of actions, represent factual knowledge of the situation, and do not
at all tell us what we are to do.
For this purpose we have more general proscriptions and
what I would call " promotions," that is, prescriptions which
instruct us to seek certain general good ends. General proscriptions include such rules as "never commit murder," and " take
nothing to which someone else has a prior claim," while promotions include such rules as " always be loyal to your
friends," and " treat the poor with kindness." Such rules are
highly important for focusing our attention on what is morally worthwhile or necessary in concrete situations. However,
they by no means specify what is to be done concretely. For
one thing, there may be many conflicting goods in a particular
situation, and I am forced to determine which of these is to
take precedence. For another, many different circumstances
combine to determine in concrete situations what constitutes
"murder," "a prior claim," "loyality," "poverty," and "kindness." These are not simply objective "facts," but morally
weighted "facts," i.e., moral realities. Each situation not only
contains different examples of such moral realities, it contains different forms of them-and these forms may vary in.definitely.
Pieper says, " The goals of human action do not change, ...
yet the specific ways of accomplishing this unchanging obligation may take a thousand different forms." 14 This text seems
to express a view usually ascribed to Aristotle but about which
14 Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal
Virtues
Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. 25.

(Notre Dame: University

of

THE PARTICULARITY

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at best he is ambiguous: that the practical ends are determined
prior to deliberation while only the means vary from one situation to the next. 15 If this is what the text asserts, we must reject it; for what is worthwhile in the concrete situation cannot be specified apart from the situation. As Gadamer puts
it, " practical deliberation upon the discovery of concrete decision is both the finding of the means and the concretization
of the ends." 16
This is an important point and must be stressed: the concrete ends which make a particular action morally good change
from one situation to the next. Not only must it be determined
which good, among all those which are possible, our action
must preserve or attain; it must be determined what the
goods themselves are, since they change from situation to
situation. Thus, what makes a particular action just, or courageous, or kind in one situation will be different from what it
is in another. For example, provoking a despairing person to
a rebellious anger which restores that person's sense of purpose is very different from consoling a sorrowing person with
words of sympathy and hope. Yet both actions are kind. What
makes them kind is different in each case, yet they share the
same general form of moral goodness: kindness. Moreover, in
spite of the kindness of either of these actions, we might conceive of circumstances in which such actions would be morally
deficient-if, for example, the effort to be kind led me to
neglect another action which a greater claim by someone else
required of me. Because both the criterion of morality and
the character of the moral good change from one situation to
another, we cannot comprehend the moral determinants of ac15 See e.g . .Aristotle,
Niohomachean Ethics, llllb, 27-9. Monan develops
the ambiguity of .Aristotle's view of the relationship between ends and means
by showing that, for .Aristotle, moral actions are both a means to the attainment of a general good end and a concretization of that good end. ConSee Donald
sequently, deliberation determines the end itself as practical.
Monan, Moral Knowledge and its Methodology in Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 62-3; 67.
16 Gadamer,
"Hermeneutics and Social Science," Ou-ltural H ermeneutios,
II ( 1975), pp. 312-13.

76

STEPHEN A. DINAN

tions in universal rules or concepts. Consequently, concrete
ends, practicable means and moral priorities must be sought in
the particular situation as such; they cannot be derived from
rules or the concepts which underlie them. Universal moral
standards serve only to focus our attention on what needs to
be done in the concrete situation; they refer to concrete goods,
but they do not determine them to the extent necessary for
moral choice.
We noted at the beginning of this paper, however, that moral
knowledge grasps something of universal significance, and that
moral argument must be based on reasons that are impersonal
in the sense that they apply to anyone. For both of these reasons, Kant is correct in maintaining that I must be able to
universalize what I do in a given situation, i.e., that I must
be able to acknowledge that it would be morally sound for anyone else to act as I am acting if they were in a situation identical to mine. Thus it is theoretically possible to express in
valid moral rules what it is that makes any given action morally sound. However, contrary to what Kant believed, this
theoretical possibility does not provide an adequate basis for
the attainment of particular moral knowledge. The Kantian
strategy of attempting to determine whether a proposed action could be prescribed in all relevantly similar situations
must assume what it tries to establish: that certain kinds of
actions are morally sound-i.e., universalizable-in
certain
kinds of situations. In short, rather than providing a basis
for knowing what is morally sound in concrete circumstances,
moral rules presuppose such knowledge. It is because we know
in a given situation that a particular action is just, courageous
or kind, for example, that we can universalize that particular
form of justice, courage or kindness as normative in similar
circumstances. The possibility of universalizing our moral
judgments enables us to use the knowledge we have gained
from one situation to shed light on subsequent ones. Moral
rules which result from such universalizing, however, are valid
only to the extent that they are based on concrete experiences
of the moral good, and are applied to relevantly similar situa-

THE PARTICULARITY

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77

tions. In the same way, the principles of morality are knowable only by abstraction from concrete moral experiences, and
are limited in their applicability by these experiences.
It has just been claimed that moral experience provides a
basis for generating universal moral rules and standards which
can be used to shed light on subsequent moral situations.
However, has not the possibility already been excluded of using universal moral standards-whatever their origin-as a
basis for determining what is to be done in a moral situation?
For it was pointed out that the limitless variability of moral
situations means that the moral determinants of action cannot
be comprehended in universal rules or concepts to a degree sufficient for moral choice. To overcome this problem it is necessary to look a little further into the nature of universal
moral concepts and the experience of what is universally valid
in particular situations.
Some universals are instantiated in the same way in all particulars which exemplify them. The nature of these universals
is not dependent upon the particular case, but is the same in
all cases. While the adequacy of our understanding of what
is common to a number of particulars may depend upon the
adequacy of our experience of them, it makes no difference
for our understanding which particulars we experience so long
as they exemplify the same universal. Borrowing a term from
logic, such universals may be called univocal in the sense that,
when terms signifying such universals are used literally and
not figuratively, they always designate things which are formally the same. This kind of universal includes, for example,
dogs, typewriters and teacups: despite individual differences,
what makes something a dog, a typewriter or a teacup does
not vary from one particular to another.
If moral universals such as justice, courage or kindness are
univocal, then it should be possible to define them adequately
enough to guide future action once we understand what it is
that makes any particular action just, brave or kind. However, it was argued that what makes one action just, brave or
kind is not the same as what makes another action just, brave

78

STEPHEN A. DINAN

or kind; the form of moral universah changes from case to
case. Moral universals, therefore, are not univocal. Knowledge
of such universals depends very much on which individual
case is used to exemplify them for the knower, because the
meaning of the universal itself differs somewhat from case to
case. Not only are different means used to attain the same
ends (e.g., justice, courage or kindness) in different situations;
the ends which constitute justice, courage or kindness are
themselves different from case to case. Of course, there would
be no universals at all if justice, courage or kindness were completely different from one situation to another. However, the
fact that the same moral universals occur in many different
forms indicates that moral universals are what may be called
analogous rather than univocal; tha.t is, the terms signifying
such universals designate things which differ formally from one
situation to the next. Moreover, unlike the accidental differences which mark instances of univocal universals, the differences between cases which exemplify moral universals are
morally significant. For it is not justice in general that must
be done, for example, but that particular form of action which
can be called just in the concrete situation.
Since moral universals are exemplified differently in different cases, we understand such universals in their particular instantiations. This means our understanding of moral universals depends upon the particular exemplifications we have experienced, and changes as it is applied to different kinds of
cases. New experiences cause us to revise our understanding
of moral principles and what they require, 17 even to the point
of seeing previous applica.tions as mistaken. In addition, our
understanding of moral universals in principle cannot encompass all future possible forms of exemplification. For the possible variations in cases which might exemplify any moral
universal are limitless. Thus any abstract definition of moral
universals must necessarily he inadequate for determining par11 See Robert Henle, S.J., "Prudence and Insight in Moral and Legal Decisions," Proceedin,q.9 of The American Catholic Philosophical Association,
LVI (1982), p. 27.

THE PARTICULARITY

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79

ticular actions, since it must leave open the possibility of new
and unanticipated forms of exemplification. Only a practically
intelligent moral experience of the concrete situation can determine what that situation demands of the moral agent.
This, of course, makes problematic the very notion of " applying " universal moral standards or principles to particular
cases. For if universal moral standards do not determine what
needs to be done in a. particular situation, what does? And
what use are moral universals in guiding our actions if they
do not tell us what we must do in particular?
Here we have a problem similar to the one the jurist faces
when he or she tries to discover the meaning of the law in
order to apply it to a particular case: how does the jurist know
what the law requires? His or her understanding of the law
must take into account the original circumstances of its legislation, as well as the subsequent application of the law to
varying circumstances; yet it is to the present circumstances
that the jurist must make the law speak. However, we should
not see the history which separates the original legislation
from the present circumstances as a barrier to understanding
the law. Instead, we should recognize that it is precisely this
history which has given the law its meaning for the jurist. The
jurist can apply the law to this situation because the history
of the law has formed the jurist in a way that enables him or
her to see the present in the light of past applications and circumstances.18 In other words. the identity of the jurist, as a
jurist, has been formed by the history of the law, and the
whole system of law to which it belongs. The formative influence of this history through the jurist's own past experience
of the law enables the jurist to see what the law demands in
the present case.
The universal moral standards which the moral agent accepts are roughly equivalent to the legal text which the jurist
18 This analysis was suggested by Gadamer's analysis of the way in which
the jurist and the legal historian each understand the meaning of law. It
does not, however, follow his analysis in all details. See Gadamer, Truth and
ilfethod (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), pp. 290-3.

80

STEPHEN A. DINAN

seeks to apply. These standards ma.y have been received from
others through socialization, or they may have been formulated to deal with recurring moral problems in the agent's own
experience. In any case, like the law, universal moral standards
have meaning or normative content only in their applications,
both past and future. Rather than confuse the meaning of
those moral standards, the history of their " application " or
discernment in concrete circumstances makes it possible for the
moral agent to understand what those standards demand here
and now. For what the past application of moral standards
has taught the moral agent is neither an abstract definition of
moral goods nor a set of universal moral rules, but rather, a
way of seeing each new situation in the light of past applications. This seeing is based on the development of the agent's
moral character thorugh prior experience. This accounts for
Aristotle's insistence that the ultimate norm or measure of
what is to be done is the practical reason of the phronimos, the
person who possesses moral virtue and practical intelligence. 19
What is seen by the virtuous and intelligent moral agent is
an analogous likeness between a proposed action and other responses to moral situations in the past. Such an analogous
understanding is morally successful in guiding actions because
it learns from the past but does not simply attempt to repeat
the past. Just as the jurist must understand the normative
content of the law as " determined in regard to the given case
in which it is to be applied," 20 so the moral agent must allow
the moral content of universal moral standards to be determined in regard to the present situation. A legalist mentality
must be avoided, in which the solutions of the past are
mechanically applied to the present without the creative insight which adapts the norms to changing situations. For the
forms in which moral universals have been exemplified in the
past can narrow one's horizon in such a way that new experiences will not be allowed to show what the moral situation
really demands. On the other hand, an antinomian mentality
10 For

example, see Aristotle, Nichomaohean Jj)thi-08, 1107a, 1-2.
Truth and Met hod, p. 292.

20 Gadamer,

THE PAR'flCULARITY

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81

must also be avoided, in which the present action has no basis
in the moral experience of concrete goodness in the past.

*

*

*

This paper has tried to show that, rather than determining
the knowledge of what is to be done in concrete situations,
universal moral standards both presuppose and are determined
by such knowledge. Their meaning varies from one situation
to another as the demands of concrete situations vary. The
ability to understand the meaning of universal moral standards is dependent upon the agent's character as this has been
formed by prior experiences of the moral good. It consists in
the ability to see analogies between proposed actions in present circumstances and the various forms of goodness experienced in past situations.
If this view is correct, then any attempt to ground ethical
norms in moral principles whose normative content and authority is not derived from concrete moral experience must
be looked at with suspicion. Formalistic theories which attempt to base moral knowledge in universal rules or laws will
fail, because these rules or laws must either be infinite in number to determine all possible moral situations, which is impossible, or they will be too general to prescribe particular actions.
Moreover, as prescriptions of conduct they are not self-evidently binding-reasons must be given for the agent's acceptance
of such rules. However, because they are a.bstract, and supposedly not derived from the demands of concrete situations,
such rules or laws cannot give to the concrete moral good the
affective " weight" or claim on the agent's character that is
necessary if the agent is to be motivated to seek the moral
good. For similar reasons, ethical theories (e.g., some natural
law theories) must fail if they attempt to ground moral knowledge in an understanding of human nature and its moral principles that is not itself derived from concrete moral experience.
Of course, the natural law tradition that is descended from
Aquinas has not failed to notice the importance of practical
wisdom or prudence. To take a prominent example, Josef
Pieper's classic essay stresses the irreducibility of morality to

STEPHEN A. DINAN

commandments 21 and the irreducibility of practical moral
knowledge either to universal moral principles 22 or to casuistic rules of applica.tion. 23 Pieper asserts:
The immediate criterion for concrete ethical action is solely the
imperative of prudence in the person who has the decision to
make. This standard cannot be abstractly construed or even calculated in advance; abstractly here means: outside the particular
situation. The imperative of prudence is always and in essence a
decision regarding an action to be performed in the " here and
now." By their very nature such decisions can be made only by
the person confronted with decision.24
This emphasis on the originality of practical moral reasoning
reflects the view of Aquinas and ultimately has its origins in
Aristotle.
However, coupled with an emphasis on the irreducibility of
prudence in Pieper's work is another emphasis that also reflects
the view of Aquinas: that the general goals of human action
are fixed and universal, 25 and that they must be known as
universal principles of practical reason by the natural habit of
synderesis prior to any prudential knowledge of what is to be
done in a concrete situa.tion. 26 Pieper calls conscience a "living unity " of synderesis, or " natural conscience," and prudence, or "situational conscience." 27 According to Aquinas,
synderesis is habitual knowledge of first practical principles
which, because they are known by nature, prior to all investigation, are stable and certain. 28 Following Aquinas, Pieper asserts an absolute cognitive priority of universal moral principles over prudential knowledge:
it is not the purpose or the business of the virtue of prudence to
discover the goals, or rather the goal, of life, and to determine
21 Pieper,

p. roii.

p. 10.
23 Ibid., p. 27.
24 Ibid., p. 27-8.
2s Ibid., p. 25.

22 Ibid.,

26Ibid., pp. 10-11.
21 Ibid., p. 11.
2s Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate, Q.16, a.I.

THE PARTICULARl'fY

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the fundamental inclinations of the human being. Rather, the purpose of prudence is to determine the proper roads to that goal and
the suitable outlet in the here and now for those fundamental inclinations.29

Pieper adds that it is "self-evident" that one " ought to be
just and brave and temperate." These "ultimate goals " of
one's life cannot be acquired, but must already be present.
" The reflections and the conclusions of prudence are directed
solely toward the actual realization of justice, fortitude and
temperance." 30
Apart from the highly problematic notion of a "self-evident " truth that is not analytical, this view has two major
difficulties in light of the position developed in this paper.
The first difficulty has to do with the meaning of universal
moral principles. No matter how general these principles are,
if they are practical principles, that is, principles which guide
conduct, they must be analogous universals: their meaning differs somewhat from situation to situation. Since their meaning as prescriptions cannot be understood except in relation to
individual situations or sets of situations, there is no way for
them to be understood prior to concrete experiences. Moreover, precisely because they do take on meaning in situations
which vary, they are not" stable" but changing as experience
expands to include more and different situations.
The second difficulty has to do with the ability of universal
moral principles to motivate the agent. The human good is
not abstract but concrete, and it must be experienced as such
by the moral agent before it is capable of motivating action.
But what I anticipate to be good or humanly fulfilling, and to
a great extent even what I experience as good or humanly fulfilling, is an extension by analogy of what I have understood
as humanly fulfilling in past experiences. Since universal
moral principles known prior to and independent of all prudential judgments would have no such relationship of analogous
likeness to past experiences of goodness, they would lack the
29 Pieper,
30 Ibid.,

pp. 32-3.
p. 32.

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STEPHEN A. DINAN

relationship to a person's moral character which makes moral
judgments binding and motivating. For something has moral
" weight" only if it fulfills, or promises to fulfill, the concrete
inclinations of a situated human agent. These concrete inclinations are not toward universal goods as such, but to those
particular forms of universal goods which are knowable and
attainable only in particular situations. As universals, therefore, moral principles can only be interpretations of particular
goods experienced in the past as having an analogous unity.
They cannot provide a cognitive basis for that experience in
the first place.
Of course, if there can be no universal moral principles independent of concrete moral experiences, the same must be
true of the various philosophical interpretations of the inclinations of human nature, and of what such inclinations morally
require. Philosophical reflection may properly shed light on,
clarify and correct the concrete inclinations of human beings
as these are evident in moral experiences. It cannot, however,
create other inclinations by fiat simply because they are required by a model of human nature developed independent of
moral experience. The inclinations of human nature which are
relevant to moral judgment must be manifest in moral experience as a complex interior dynamism which may be reflectively
apprehended by the human agent. Philosophical reflection
may seek the meaning and ground of human inclinations by
integrating them into a. theory of dynamic human nature, but
only if that theory is developed by analyzing moral experiences
of the human good. In short, we should judge something to
be an inclination of human nature only to the extent that people experience its object as a good. Moreover, such judgment
must be taken as corrigible, since new and different experiences of lack and fulfillment will determine whether prior
judgments were correct, as well as how the inclinations which
were the objects of such judgments are to be understood in
ever-new circumstances.
STEPHEN A. DINAN

205 South Jefferson Street
Waterford, Wisconsin 53185

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

TI

E TASK OF CRITICALLY comparing and conasting the thought and writings of G. W. F. Hegel
.
d S. Kierkegaard is one that has been assumed by a
number of contemporary scholars. 1 However the relationship
between the two thinkers is to be properly and finally construed, it seems to be a working premise among such scholars
that the relationship itself is a highly significant one. 2 A
deeper understanding of it should serve both to illuminate the
writings of each thinker and to yield valuable resources for
future philosophical and theological inquiry. Consequently,
this task has both a historical significance and a contemporary
relevance. While underscoring the importance of the undertaking, however, it should be quickly observed that the relationship between Hegel and Kierkegaard has shown itself to
be rather complex, a clear and consistent description of it,
somewhat elusive. Several _insightful analyses have been produced; a good deal remains yet to be accomplished.
In this essay, I will explore both the Hegelian and the Kierkegaardian perspectives on religious knowledge, focusing on
the relationship between faith and certainty. This project has
been rendered manageable for an essay of this length by a necessary limiting of its scope. First of all, while a. complete analysis would need to be descriptive, comparative, and evaluative, I will confine myself to the initial task of describing the
positions of both thinkers on a number of related topics. In
1 E.g., see S. Crites, In The Twilight of Christendom:
Hegel vs. Kierkegaard
on Faith and History (Scholars Press, 1972); M. Taylor, Journeys To Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (U. of California Press, 1980); N. Thulstrup,
Kierkegaard's Relation To Hegel, tr. G. Stengren (Princeton U. Press, 1980).
2 Even Thulstrup, who appears to be the exception here, argues that it is
highly significant that no such relationship exists! See, eg., Thulstrup, Relation, p. 12.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

the process of executing this task, certain similarities and differences will inevitably emerge, but no rigorous comparative
analysis will be attempted, nor will I evaluate each thinker's
arguments in order to make some sort of judgment about the
superiority of one over the other. Secondly, I have focused
my attention on a few key texts. Within the Hegelian corpus,
the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion 8 (including, in the third volume of the English edition, the important " Lectures on the Proofs of the
Existence of God") contain vast amounts of relevant material. Hegel's Faith and Knowledge will not be considered in
detail, even though it embodies, in its critique of Kantian,
Jacobian, and Fichtean "faith-philosophy," the outline of
Hegel's own constructive arguments concerning the epistemological status of faith and its relationship to philosophy.
Material from Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Philosophical Fragments will be examined, and the
unfinished Johannes Climacus will provide a few additional insights, but the remainder of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous and
non-pseudonymous writings will not be discussed. Here, the
nagging problem of Kierkegaard's relationship to his pseudonyms emerges as a possible stumbling block. It is a problem that I will certainly not attempt to resolve in this paper.
I can offer, as justification for my method, only two brief observations: (1) The Kierkegaardian texts with which I am
dealing are the work of the same pseudonymous author,
Johannes Climacus (with the exception of the short work
bearing his name as its title, which is, nonetheless, about
Climacus): so at least they should represent a consistent
point of view. (2) It has been argued that, of all his pseudonyms, Kierkegaard most closely identified himself with
Climacus. 4 It is possible, of course, that Climacus's perspec( 1979, ed.
8 The Scholars Press edition of Hegel's 7'he Christian Religion
Hodgson) will be used whenever it overlaps with the older Speirs edition.
4 See L. Mackey, Kierkegaard:
A Kind of Poet (U. of Pennsylvania Press,
1971), p. 281; and .A. Burgess, Passion, "Knowing How," and Under11tand·
ifi,g: An Essay on the Concept of Faith (Scholars Press, 1975), p. xii.

FAITH AN.D CERTAINTY

87

tive on faith and certain knowledge does, in fact, significantly
differ from that of Kierkegaard. If that is the case, this essay
will simply have to be construed as describing the positions of
Hegel and of one of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors, an
author who, nonetheless, clearly distinguished his point of view
from that of the " Hegelians " as forcibly as Kierkegaard did.
The essay is divided into two main sections. In the first of
these I will describe the manner in which each thinker characterizes religious faith in general terms. Here a number of related concepts will be explored, but attention will be focused
on the problem of determining the relationship between faith
and certain knowledge. The epistemological status of faith
will again be at issue in
second section, where each thinker's
attitudes towards the philosophical proofs of the existence of
God will be discussed. In addition, it will be important to examine briefly their respective evaluations of the data of Christian revelation. What, according to Hegel and Kierkegaard, is
the epistemological significance of the Incarnation? How, if at
all, does it transform the believing consciousness? Finally, a
brief conclusion will contain a few remarks intended merely to
suggest the sort of comparisons and evaluations that this descriptive analysis will have made appropriate.

I
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel subtly but carefully
distinguishes faith both from the unhappy consciousness and
from religion in and for itself.
Religion-for it is obviously religion that we are talking aboutin the form in which it appears here as the faith belonging to the
world of culture, does not yet appear as it is in and for itself. We
have already seen it in other characteristic forms, viz. as the Unhappy Consciousness, as a shape of the insubstantial process of
consciousness itself . . . Here, however, religion in part has proceeded from the Substance and is the pure consciousness of it; in
part, this pure consciousness is alienated from its actual consciousness, the essence from its existence. True, it is thus no longer the
insubstantial process of consciousness, but it still has the characteristic of an antithesis to actuality as this actuality in general,

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

.

and of an antithesis to self-consciousnessin particular. It is therefore essentially merely a belief.5
Unhappy consciousness, unlike faith, remains without substance and immersed in subjectivity. 6 In both cases the self is
alienated from its essence, but for the believing consciousness
that essence is represented as an objective content, albeit one
that is posited or "projected " beyond the actual world.7 Consequently, faith is not yet religion in and for itself because the
believing self remains unaware of its unity with its object.
While it involves consciousness of and therefore knowledge of
its object, faith lacks the certainty of self-consciousness. It
manifests itself as the consciousness of the content of truth,
without any awareness of its relationship to that content.
In the believing consciousness ... the content was regarded as the
self-less Being of the world, or as essentially an objective content
of picture-thinking, of a picture-thinking that simply flees from
reality and consequently is without the certainty of self-consciousness.8
Hegel identifies faith as certainty, then, but it is the certainty of religious consciousness and not of Spirit that has come to
recognize itself as Spirit in the form of Revealed Religion.
This certainty must be distinguished as well from both the
purely immediate and abstract awareness of sense-certainty
and the comprehension of necessary truths of reason. Faith,
like sense-certainty, is an immediate form of knowledge, but its
content is the truth of Spirit, not of "finite things of sense." 9
5Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (PS), ed . .A. V. Miller (Oxford U. Press,
1977) ' #528.
s See J. Hyppolite, Genesis and Structures of Hegel's Phenomenology of
Spirit, tr. S. Cherniak and J. Heckman (Northwestern U. Press, 1974), p.
382, 420.
1 See M. Westphal
on Hegel's theory of religion as "projection" in History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology (Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 16667, 194-207.
s PS, #768.
on the Proofs of the Existence of God," ( LPE) in
9 Hegel, " Lectures
volume three of Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (LPR), ed. Speirs
(The Humanities Press, 1962), p. 179.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

89

Seeing, according to Hegel, is not believing; it involves an altogether different mode of knowledge. Similarly, one does not
label as a belief what one knows with the certainty of reason
to be necessarily true. Hegel makes these distinctions clearly
in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.
To put it more definitely, certainty is called faith, partly, too, in
so far as this knowledge is not a knowledge of the necessity or
necessary nature of a content. "'What I see immediately before me,
that I know; I do not believe that there is a sky above me; I see
it. On the other hand, if I have rational insight into the necessity
of a thing, in this case, too, I do not say ' I believe,' as, for example, in the theorem of Pythagoras. In this case it is assumed
that a person does not merely accept the evidence of a thing on
authority, but that he has seen into its truth for himself. 10

Here, the certainty of faith is contrasted both with an inferior form of consciousness (sense-certainty) and with a mode
of knowledge into which it must itself eventually be transformed. Faith marks a development beyond natural scientific
reason in Hegel's Phenomenology, but that is because faith has
as its object the complete truth of Spirit. It is the case, nonetheless, that faith must be transformed into a knowledge of
the " necessary nature " of its content. That which is believed to be true must come to be rationally comprehended as
a necessary truth. It is here that the philosophical proofs of
the existence of God (in particular, the ontologicaI proof) will
play such a vital role in Hegel's system.
Hegel's analysis of the world of self-alienated Spirit traces
the conflict between religious faith and " pure insight" of the
Enlightenment. This conflict is both iliuminating and productive; it manifests itself as an important phase in the dialectical
development of Spirit. Believing consciousness is alienated
from its essence, but it does possess a content. On the other
hand, pure insight is pure self-certainty, a radical reduction of
all objective content to the pure "I " of self-consciousness.
Both forms of consciousness are impoverished; each stands
violently opposed to the other.
10 LPR, I, p. 117.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

... these two moments fall apart into a dual consciousness. The
former is rure insight as the spiritual process which focuses itself
in self-consciousness, a process which is confronted by consciousness of what is positive, the form of objectivity or of picture-thinking, and which turns against it; but pure insight's object is only
the rure 'I'. The simple consciousness of the positive, or of tranquil self-identity, on the other hand, has for its object the inner
essence qua essence. Pure insight has, therefore, in the first instance, no content of its own, because it is negative being-for-self;
to faith, on the other hand, there belongs a content, but without
insight.11
Enlightenment reason is doubting reason, appearing at first
to be radically opposed to the certainty of faith. Recognizing
the self-alienation of a believing consciousness that projects all
value and perfection beyond the actual world (by ascribing
such qualities to a deity) , Enlightenment thought attacks and
seeks to expose as illusory the content of faith. Hegel argues
that such vigorous opposition is ironic, because the doubting
self has failed to perceive that the very content that it attacks
constitutes its own essence, its own truth. The pure insight
of the Enlightenment is, no less than faith, a form of alienated
consciousness.
It is important to emphasize that the dialectical movement
that Hegel is tracing involves at this point a struggle between
faith and reason, between the certainty of religious conviction
and the critical doubt of Enlightenment thought. Hegel's project here differs from that of Descartes; his concern is not with
the radical or universal doubt of
science, but with a
doubt that appears as the "determinate negation" of a specific content. 12 This doubt is dialectically related to the truth
that it calls into question; it is itself determined by that truth
and will come to recognize it as it's own. Likewise, the certainty of faith is not an absolute certainty and, as has already been
observed, it must be distinguished from the certainty of fully
self-conscious Spirit. Just as sense-intuition is a limited mode
11 PS, #529; see also Faith and Knowledge, tr. W. Cerf & H. S. Harris
( SUNY Press, 1977), pp. 56ff.
12 PS, pp. 49ff.; see also Hyppolite, Genesis, p. 12.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

91

of knowledge that must be transcended, so too, the certainty
of faith will be sublated aud transformed. Consequently, the
concept of certainty does not possess for Hegel the exalted
epistemological status that characterizes its position in other
systems of thought. The Phenomenology is not a quest for certainty but, rather, an educational program designed to raise
subjective certainty to the level of truth. As Hegel observes in
his " Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God," the
truth of a thing is not necessarily entailed by the certainty of
its truth.

It is in certainty that the nerve of faith lies. And here we encounter a further distinction, we further distinguish truth from
certainty. We know very well that much has been known, and is
known for certain, which is nevertheless not true. Men have long
enough known it to be certain, and millions still know it to be
certain, to take a trivial example, that the sun goes around the
earth .... Truth stands eternally over against mere certainty, and
neither certainty, nor immediate knowledge, nor faith decides what
is true.13

Having distinguished between certainty and truth, Hegel
proceeds to isolate and describe the inadequacies of knowledge
resulting from belief. It is clear from Hegel's analysis in the
Phenomenology that faith, while it is the certainty of the truth
of absolute Spirit, remains an alienated form of consciousness.
The Enlightenment attack on faith, despite its own ironic lack
of self-understanding, does possess a certain validity. The believing self persists in affirming the content of its faith without
any genuine insight into its own relationship to that content.
The religious truth is maintained over against the human world
of culture, " reflecting" that world but opposed to it. In addition to this profound self-alienation, Hegel explains that
faith can also result in the mutual estrangement of persons.
While refusing to identify faith with religious feeling, he does
claim that "faith cannot exist without feeling." 14 Feeling, as
opposed to thought, is a subjective and immediate form of
13 LPE,
14

p. 178; also LPR, I, p. 117.
LPE, p. 180.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

consc10usness that isolates one individual from another. For
those affirmations based on one's own feelings, one can claim
no universal validity. A faith that grounds itself completely
in a feeling of certainty remains immersed in particularity and
is disruptive of human fellowship. 15 For Hegel, the truth is
always located in the whole rather than in the parts, and access to the truth necessarily involves the exercise of reason.
This critique of faith as being destructive of community is
directed specifically against that type of belief that associates
itself with religious feeling and fails to recognize itself as
genuine thought. Herein lies the essence of Hegel's analysis
of faith and of the dialectical development that he describes.
Faith is thought that does not know itself as such. Any attempt to drive a wedge between faith and thought or between
faith and knowledge is, for Hegel, completely misguided.
Faith and pure insight share the same essential nature. 16
. . . faith is certainly pure consciousness of essence, i.e., of the
simple inner being, and thus is thought-the cardinal factor in the
nature of faith, which is usually overlooked. 16
:Faith expresses the inwardness of certainty, and certainty of the
deepest and most concentrated kind, as distinguished from all
other opinion, conception, persuasion, or volition. This inwardness,
at once as being what is deepest and at the same time most abstract, comprises thought itself; a contradiction of this faith by
thought is therefore the most painful of all divisions in the depths
of the Spirit. 17

While " painful," this contradiction of faith by reason is
nonetheless of great significance. The object of faith is exposed
as being the imaginative production of the believing consciousness itself. Because of the essential unity of consciousness and
its truth, this result does not entail the falsification of the content of faith (even though this was the immediate conclusion
of the Enlightenment). Rather, that essential unity itself is
iliuminated and the nature of faith as a. form of thinking,
1s LPE, p. 183.
16 PS,
11

#529.
LPE, p. 157.

FAITH AND CER'l'AlNTY

93

albeit "picture-thinking" (vorstellen), is revealed. To recognize that faith is a mode of thought and that its content represents genuine knowledge is to take the first step toward
transcending faith altogether. It then becomes necessary to
discover and to analyze the inadequacy of faith as a form of
thought.
Unlike philosophical reflection, religious belief involves pictorial representation (Vorstellung) . The content of faith is
imaginatively depicted by believing consciousness, i.e., thought
in a manner that is modelled on sense perception. Faith has
as its object the complete truth of Spirit, but, like sense perception, its object remains posited over against it. That which
is perceived or believed, in either case, is perceived or believed
to be an "other." 18 The believing self "flees" from the real
world in order to find its truth in an imaginatively construed
" beyond."
The images of faith are inferior to philosophical thought
in another sense as well. They are sensuous or " natural " symbols, and the bond between them and the specific objects that
they represent is a powerful one. When translated into the
language of speculative philosophy, these images are "liberated " from this bond and acquire a universality that is appropriate to the truth that they are intended to convey. 19 Religious faith must, therefore, even after it has achieved the fulness of self-awareness that Hegel ascribes to it in his discussion of religion in and for itself, eventually abandon pictorial
representation as an inadequate mode of thought. In doing
so, of course, it ceases to be faith and is transformed into a
superior kind of knowledge. As long as a content is merely
believed, however, the imagination will continue to play a vital
role in construing that content. As such, faith does not yet
grasp its object in its reality. The real is the content of the
concept, and no sensuous image can ever function adequately
History, pp. 201-202.
S. Dunning, The Tongues of Men: HegeZ and Hamann on Religion
Language and History (Scholars Press, 1979), p. 188; also, L. Dupre, "Religion as Representation," in A Dubious Heritage, (Paulist Press, 1977), ch. 3.
18 See Westphal,
19 See

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MICHAEL L. UAPOSA

as its representation. 20 It is in the concept alone that truth
and certainty, object and self, are finally brought into perfect
unity. Belief in God, a God depicted imaginatively as one who
is "other," must be superseded by the concept of God, by the
rational comprehension of God's own inner nature. The reality
of God is embodied in and therefore entailed by (the ontological proof) the very concept of Him. The pictorial imagination,
la.eking the synthesizing power and the universality of philosophical thought, remains bound by the finitude of its own
representations.
It is here that one must return to the dialectical opposition
between faith and pure insight in order to ascertain its significance for the form of thought itself. Enlightenment reason, as
has already been observed, is somewhat misguided in its attack on religious belief, but it does succeed in dissolving the
unreal picture world that faith had contrived.
As a result, faith has lost the content which filled its element, and
collapses into a state in which it moves listlessly to and fro within
itself. It has been expelled from its kingdom; or, this kingdom
has been ransacked, since the waking consciousness has monopolized every distinction and expansion of it and has vindicated
earth's ownership of every portion of it and given them back to
earth. . . . Since faith is without any content and it cannot remain in this void, or since, in going beyond the finite which is the
sole content, it finds only the void, it is a sheer yearning, its truth
an empty beyond, for which a fitting content can no longer be
found, for everything is bestowed elsewhere. 21

Reduced to the contentless self-certainty of pure insight,
faith "mourns over the loss of its spiritual world." This loss
is necessary, however, if consciousness is ever to take full possession of its truth. Whatever else must yet be accomplished,
no progress can be made until the "otherness" of faith's object has been overcome. Once this has occurred consciousness
is reduced to " sheer yearning," devoid of any content, until
a new mode of thinking and expressing that content can be
20 Q. Lauer,
21 PS,

#573.

"Hegel's Critique of Kant's Theology," p. 97.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

discovered. This becomes the project of Enlightenment
thought as well as of faith, for it is now clear that the opposition between faith and thought was false and that they are
essentially one.

*

*

*

For Kierkegaard, unlike Hegel, faith cannot be sublated by
thought and there is no essential unity between the believing
and the thinking consciousness. The concept of certainty does
play an important role in Kierkegaard's analysis of faith, however, and it will be most useful here to begin by examining
Kierkegaard's treatment of that concept.
Kierkegaard, as Hegel had done, refused to identify certainty with truth. Rather, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
he argued that
An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of
the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual. 22

Furthermore, Kierkegaard asserts that this " highest truth "
is accessible only to the believer; to gTasp the truth is to perform an act of faith .
. . . the above definition of truth is an equivalent expression for
faith. Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective uncertainty. 23

Here, Kierkegaard appears to be defining faith in terms of
the two concepts of "truth" and "uncertainty." The close
relationship between faith and truth is clearly one that J(ierkegaard is anxious to affirm. It is not his intention, however,
simply to identify faith with uncertainty. Not only does
Kierkegaard make an important qualification here, i.e., it is
an objective uncertainty that is involved in believing, but elsewhere he describes faith as resulting in certainty and sharply
22 Kierkegaard,
Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Lowrie, (Princeton U. Press, 1968), p. 182.
2s CUP, p. 182.

(CUP), tr. Swenson &

96

MICHAEL 'Ii. RAPOSA-. -" ;

contrasts belief and doubt. 24 Consequently, this definition is
potentially misleading. Faith, although it involves an objective uncertainty, itself produces subjective certainty. While
Hegel is concerned with raising subjective certainty to the
level of truth, for Kierkegaard, subjectivity is truth. The truth
of a belief is determined by" how" it is believed subjectively,
not by "what" objectively constitutes the content of that belief.25 Furthermore, Kierkegaard explains that objective uncertainty enters into faith only as a conquered moment, i.e.,
the uncertainty of faith is a "negated uncertainty." This negation results, not from the verification of sense data or the
gathering of conclusive "evidence," but from a subjective and
passionate act of appropriation. For Kierkegaard then, as well
as for Hegel, faith is not to be confused with the immediacy
of sense perception .
. . . in the certainty of belief there is always present a negated uncertainty, in every way corresponding to the uncertainty of coming into existence. Faith believes what it does not see; it does not
believe that the star is there, for that it sees, but it believes that
the star has come into existence .... Immediate sensation and immediate cognition have no suspicion of the uncertainty with which
belief approaches its object, but neither do they suspect the certainty which emerges from this uncertainty. 26

It is doubt and not uncertainty that stands opposed to
faith. 27 Although Climacus manifests some inconsistency in his
use of specific terms, his argument becomes less opaque if one
is careful to distinguish between certainty and uncertainty on
the one hand, faith and doubt on the other. The former represent epistemological, the latter, volitional concepts. Nonetheless, all of these notions are inter-related. Certain knowledge
about a thing precludes the possibility of either believing or
24 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, tr. Swenson & Hong (Princeton
U. Press, 1962), pp. lOlff.
25 CUP, p. 181; see also Burgess, Passion, pp. 43ff.
20PF, p. IOI; also, see Johannes Olimacus, tr. Croxall (Adam & Charles
Black, 1958), p. 185 (hereafter, JC).
21 JC, p. 182, 184.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

97

doubting that thing. Faith is not necessary where something
is known with absolute, objective certainty. Likewise, doubt
cannot occur in such an instance. Consequently, faith and
doubt both presuppose an objective uncertainty, yet they
stand sharply opposed to each other. This is possible because
each represents a free act of will and not a characteristic of or
degree of knowledge. 28 Only concerning those choices for which
an individual's epistemological status is not decisive can the
individual's will be free to play a vital role. Faith is not itself
certainty then, although it can result in subjective certainty.
Neither is faith to be identified with uncertainty, despite the
fact that one must be objectively uncertain about something in
order to choose to believe it. Likewise, one decides to doubt
only those things concerning which one lacks certainty, but
doubt itself transcends the epistemological sphere.
Knowledge is the result of reflection, the object of thinking
consciousness. Certain knowledge is precisely the goal of
philosophical thinking, at least according to Kierkegaard's interpretation of Hegelianism. Doubt differs from reflection,
however, in so far as it is an "interested" form of consciousness.29 To doubt " X" is to be concerned about "X " and,
through an act of will, to withhold one's assent to it. On the
other hand, one can be either certain or uncertain about an
infinite number of things for which one lacks concern. Objective, philosophical thinking is by nature disinterested, because
"interest" is a function of subjectivity. Consequently, in
order for doubt to emerge as a possibility there must exist a
real relationship between the individual and the subject matter. To talk about "philosophical doubt" as a method employed in order to secure objectively certain knowledge is to
make a serious category mistake. Kierkegaard insists that
doubt, although it presupposes a certain epistemological state
of affairs, is not itself an epistemological concept.
This type of reasoning allows Kierkegaard to draw some
rather significant conclusions. Given the nature of doubt, it
2s PF, p. 76, 103.
20 JC,

pp. 151-53.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

cannot be overcome by philosophical speculation. Thinking
may result in knowledge, but knowledge is not a cure for the
doubting consciousness.
The Greek skeptic did not doubt by virtue of his knowledge, but
by an act of will (refusal to give assent ... ) . From this it follows
that doubt can be overcome only by a free act, an act of will, as
every Greek skeptic would understand as soon as he had understood himself. But he did not wish to overcome his skepticism,
precisely because he willed to doubt. 80

This may seem like a strange argument, since Kierkegaard
has insisted that doubt presupposes uncertainty; i.e., the
acquisition of objectively certain knowledge should render
doubt impossible. The apparent confusion here disappears,
however, as soon as one recognizes that Kierkegaard is contending that virtually nothing is known with objective certainty. One can be certain about that which is immediately
sensed or cognized, but as soon as one makes any sort of reflective judgment about the objects of sense or cognition, uncertainty creeps into the picture. Reflective knowledge is of a
thing's essence, its "whatness," but knowing what a thing is
cannot even prevent one from doubting that it exists. 31 Since
Kierkegaard is primarily concerned with the subject matter of
religion, the impotence of philosophical speculation in settling
questions of existence is for him an extremely important issue;
in particular, it has significant implications for his understanding of the proofs of the existence of God. At this point, however, it is important simply to emphasize that the "objects"
of thought can never be known with certainty. Thought abstracts from the immediacy of experience, and, in doing so,
renders its own judgments problematic. Consequently, no
amount of thinking can ever dissolve doubt if one is committed
to refusing one's assent to something. If doubt is a volitional
act it can only be dispelled by another volitional act. Faith,
not certainty, is the cure for doubting consciousness.
ao PF, p. 102.
21 PF, p. 101; see also Mackey, Kierkegaard, pp. 180-81.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

99

The conclusion of belief is not so much a conclusion as a resolution, and it is for this reason that belief excludes doubt .... Belief is the opposite of doubt. Belief and doubt are not thus two
forms of knowledge, determinable in continuity with one another,
for neither of them is a cognitive act; they are opposite passions.
Belief is a sense for coming into existence, and doubt is a protest
against every conclusion that transcends immediate sensation and
immediate cognition. 82

Faith, then, is both the opposite of doubt and the means for
eliminating it. To give one's assent is to cease to refuse one's
assent, but in both cases one is objectively uncertain about
the correctness of one's position. Kierkegaard's argument here
would be untroublesome enough, if it were not for the fact that
he also insists that the uncertainty of faith is a "negated" uncertainty. Clearly, he does not mean that to believe something
is to become objectively certain about the truth of that thing.
For Kierkegaard, a finite, existing individual can know virtually nothing of significance with objective certainty. What does
he wish to affirm then, when he speaks about the certainty of
faith? First of all, it must be a subjective rather than an objective certainty. That is to say, the emphasis here is on the
psychological rather than the epistemological status of the individual, on the subject's certainty, rather than on the objective validity of knowledge. Furthermore, if faith results in any
kind of certain knowledge, it must be self-knowledge. To use
Kierkegaard's terminology, attention must be turned away
from the " what," the objective content of belief, and focused
on the subjective "how," the volitional act itself. This turning inward does not require that the object of faith be disposed of. Unlike Hegel, Kierkegaard is not contending that
faith must be sublated by thought, that consciousness must
think its content rather than discovering it over against itself.
For Kierkegaard, the object of faith is genuinely " other " and
not a mere projection. Paradoxically, the emphasis on the
" how " of faith reveals something of great significance about
the " what" of faith. In order to believe with one's whole self,
P.2 PF, pp. 104·05.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

willfully to assent with the greatest possible passion, one must
be completely uncertain about the object of belief. As ·objective uncertainty increases, so too the passion of faith intensifies.BB Faith becomes synonymous with truth when it affirms
that object concerning which there can be absolutely no certainty; i.e., when it affirms the paradoxical and embraces the
absurd.
When subjectivity, inwardness, is the truth, the truth becomes objectively a paradox; and the fact that the truth is objectively a
paradox shows in its turn that subjectivity is the truth. For the
objective situation is repellent; and the expression for the objective repulsion constitutes the tension and the measure of the corresponding inwardness. The paradoxical character of the truth is
its objective uncertainty; this uncertainty is an expression for the
passionate inwardness, and this passion is precisely the trutli. . . .
... Anything that is almost probable, or probable, or extremely
and emphatically probable, is something one can almost know, or
as good as know, or extremely and emphatically almost knowbut it is impossible to believe. For the absurd is the object of faith,
and the only object that can be helieved. 84

While Hegel identified believing consciousness as a pre-reflective form of thinking and sought to transform it into a
higher mode of knowledge, Kierkegaard argues that faith
transcends all human knowledge. From the Kierkegaa.rdian
perspective, it is thinking consciousness that is sublated by
faith or doubt when it becomes a passionate, interested consciousness. It is lack of interest rather than lack of certainty
that most significantly burdens the self. Indeed, objective certainty should be regarded as an obstacle by the religious believer; the religious object can never be "known" by an existing individual, so any such certainty is an illusion, albeit a
seductive one. Hegel described the manner in which thought
attacks the " illusions " of faith; Kierkegaard is concerned with
faith's defense against the chimerical knowledge that thought,
particularly philosophical thought, posits as its object.
38 See

L. Dupre, Kierkegaard As Theologian ( Sheed and Ward, 1963), p.

124.
34 CUP, p. 183, 189.

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101

Such knowledge is illusory, of course, to the extent that
thinking consciousness is certain of it. For Kierkegaard, to interrupt the immediacy of sensation with reflection is to introduce an element of uncertainty. Thought abstracts from
actual existence and has as its object the possibility of existence. It is concerned with the "essences" of things, i.e., with
" what " a thing is like, whether it exists or not. Thus, uncertainty is the distinguishing mark of the possible. That which
is actual is certain, but no such claim can be made for that
which is possible. Furthermore, that a thing actually exists
cannot be known but only believed. Thought always has as
its proper object a possibility. Even one's knowledge of a historical event is rooted in the possible, and thus lacks certainty.
(This fact has important implications for Kierkegaard's understanding of the Incarnation, and it will be explored in
greater detail in the second part of this essay.) The necessary
is eternally actual, but the transition from possibility to actuality is free and non-necessary. Since all events are possibilities that have been actualized, the past is no more necessary
than the future, nor is it less uncertain.
Whoever apprehends the past, historico-philosophus, is therefore
a prophet in retrospect (Daub) . That he is a prophet expresses
the fact that the certainty of the past is based upon an uncertainty, an uncertainty that exists for the past in precisely the same
senses that it exists for the future, being rooted in the possibility
(Leibniz and the possible worlds) out of which it could not
emerge with necessity, nam necessarium se ipso prius sit, necesse
est. The historian thus again confronts the past, moved by the
emotion which is the passionate sense for coming into existence:
wonder.... for wherever the process of coming into existence is
involved, as is the case in relation to the past, there the uncertainty attaching to the most certain of events (the uncertainty of
coming into existence) can find expression only in this passion,
which is as necessary to the philosopher as it is worthy of him.85
Thinking consciousness is able to determine " what " a particular thing is, but not "that" it is. Nonetheless, it is im85 PF,

p. 99.

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MICHAEL L. UAPOSA

portant to recall that faith itself presupposes the objective uncertainty that results from reflection. Faith is a "new immediacy," 36 an immediacy after reflection, and it is not to be
confused with the immediacy of sense perception. The possibilities contemplated by the thinking self are possibilities upon
which the self can act. The sphere of the possible is negated
and transfigured by the exercise of human freedom. Any objectively uncertain situation presents the self with a decision;
faith is an act of deciding.
The only possible way of drawing a distinction between thought
and action is to relegate thought to the sphere of the possible, the
disinterested, the objective, and to assign action to the sphere of
the subjective. But along this boundary there appears a twilight
zone. Thus when I think that I will do this or that, this thought
is not yet an action, and in all eternity it is qualitatively distinct
from action; nevertheless it is a possibility in which the interest
of action and of reality already reflects itself. The disinterestedness and the objectivity of thought are on the way to being disturbed, because reality and responsibility reach out to lay hold
of it. 37
As with Hegel, for Kierkegaard faith and the imagination
are closely related. 38 Since Kierkegaard regards faith as a
volitional concept, however, this relationship is of a different
sort. The imagination provides the believing consciousness
with possible courses of action. Pure imagining must be transformed by actual decision, but it is nonetheless crucial to faith.
Furthermore, since faith is an act of will, and not a matter of
simple cognition, it cannot be communicated to others directly,
as an objective subject matter or body of knowledge is communicated. Rather, the task is to confront an individual with
certain imagined possibilities, and to encourage that individual
to contemplate and to act upon these possibilities. That the
latter will occur can be no more than a hope on the part of the
one who communicates. Consequently, the truth of faith is
36 CUP, p. 310.
sr CUP, p. 302.
as CUP, pp. 307ff.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

108

always communicated indirectly. 89 One can be a passive
learner, but one cannot be a passive believer. The objectively
uncertain content of faith must be appropriated by a free and
passionate act of will, an act that would be neither free nor
passionate if that content could be grasped by thought and
known with certainty.

II
Hegel's understanding of faith and its relationship to
thought provides a context within which the classical proofs
for the existence of God acquire a special significance. He
analyzes these proofs in great detail, and the ontological proof
in particular plays a key role in the development of Hegel's
philosophy. Nonetheless, working within an intellectual milieu
that had been shaped and transformed by Kant's first Critique, Hegel was well aware that any defense of these arguments would meet with considerable resistance, perhaps even
disdain .
. . . the proofs of the existence of God are to such an extent fallen
into discredit that they pass for something antiquated, belonging
to the metaphysics of days gone by; a barren desert out of which
we have escaped and brought ourselves back to a living faith; the
region of arid Understanding, out of which we have once more
raised ourselves to the warm feeling of religion. The attempt to
renovate, by means of new applications and artifices of an acute
Understanding, those rotten props of our belief that there is a
God, which have passed for proofs, or to improve the places which
have become weak through attacks and counter-proofs, could of
itself gain no favour merely by its good intention. 40

For Hegel, however, it is precisely because the opposition between faith and thought is illusory that these proofs remain
significant for the religious believer. Thinking consciousness
must look to faith for its content. On the other hand, belief is
a form of picture.:.thinking that must come to recognize its own
essence embodied in its images. Such recognition will allow
a0 CUP, pp. 289-91.

to LPE, p. 156.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

consciousness to think its own content, to overcome, in the
dialectical unity of the concept, the alienation of self from object, to bridge the ga.p between certainty and truth. The philosophical proofs can play a key role here, but not until the mutual interdependence of faith and thought has been affirmed.
All that partakes of Spirit is concrete; in this we have before us
the Spiritual in its most profound aspect, that of Spirit as the concrete element of faith and thought. The two are not only mixed
up in the most manifold way, in immediate passing over from one
side to the other, but are so inwardly bound up together that there
is no faith that does not contain within itself reflection, argumentation or, in fact, thought, and, on the other hand, no thinking
which does not, even if it be only for the moment, contain faith,
for faith in general is the form of any presupposition, of any assumption, come whence it may; which lies firmly at the foundation
momentary faith. 41

What faith has affirmed as "other," philosophy will reveal
as being implicit in consciousness itself. God cannot be other
than consciousness because there is no " outside" for God, and
nothing can exist external to Him; God is " the absolute identity of thought and being." 42 Consequently, the opposition between self and object must be recognized as constituting merely one moment in the unfolding of the content of the religious
concept. Hegel contends that the goal of thinking consciousness is to grasp the absolute as its own truth. It does not seem
imprecise then to assert that Hegel's entire philosophy is a development and an articulation of the ontological proof of the
existence of God.
Primitive versions of the ontological proof existed long before Anselm developed his own formulation of that argument.
It is the Anselmian proof, however, that has served as both a
starting point and a touchstone for subsequent philosophical
analysis and argumentation. Hegel is no exception here; his
discussion of the ontological proof takes the form of a running
commentary on Anselm and on the Kantian critique of Anselm's position.
41 LPE,

p. 160.

42 Hegel, Faith

and Knowledpe, see :p. 169,

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

105

In the Proslogion, Anselm had defined the concept of God
as the concept of " that than which nothing greater can be
conceived." Since such a concept is not only possible, but actuaily exists in our minds, it necessarily follows that God must
exist in the real, extra-mental world as well. Otherwise, it
would be possible to conceive of a being that is greater than
" that than which nothing greater can be conceived," which is
clearly absurd. (Anselm is contending, of course, that a really
existent perfect being is greater than the mere thought of such
a being; consequently, the concept of God entails God's existence.)
Hegel's analysis follows in the wake of Kant's seemingly
devastating critique of the Anselmian proof. Kant had argued
that being is not a predicate, that the being of a thing adds
nothing to the content of the concept of that thing, i.e., that
"being is a mere determination of form" and" cannot be' unpacked ' from the concept of God, for being is something other
than the concept." 43 Hegel's counterargument is paradigmatic
of his ongoing polemic against the sharp Kantian distinction
between phenomena and noumena, subject and object, Notion
and reality. Hegel affirms the Anselmian presupposition that
" perfection is the unity of concept and being," but Hegel intends to regard this as a dialectical unity, and herein lies his
special contribution to the history of the discussion of the
ontological proof. According to Hegel, Anselm correctly perceives and articulates the presupposition that everyone innately grasps and that serves as the foundation for the whole
of philosophy, i.e.,
that everything only imagined is imperfect, and that only what
has reality is perfect. Now God is most perfect; therefore he must,
just as he is in the concept, also be real and existent. People are
also aware in their imagination that image and concept are different, and likewise that what is merely imagined is imperfect, but
that God is perfection. 44
43 Hegel, The Christian Religion (CR)
p. 48, 54.
44 CR, pp. 55-56; also, LPE, pp. 360ff.

(Scholars Press, 1979), ed. Hodgson,

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MICHAEL L. UAPOSA

Anselm's analysis remains at the level of an "abstract form of
perfection," however; in his argument, the concept of the " possibility" of perfection (Anselm's starting point) is never" sublated." Hegel asserts that "the concept is the movement by
which it determines itsel:f to being, the dialectic by which it
determines itself in opposition to itself .... The point is just
that the concept objectifies itself for itself." 45
This is an ingenious and highly imaginative argument in
which Hegel appropriates both the Anselmian proof and the
Kantian critique of that proof and posits them as dialectical
"moments" in his own unfolding analysis. Anselm recognizes
the unity of concept and being, but it is a simple, implicit,
abstract unity that remains a logically undeveloped presupposition.46 Kant set Notion and reality in opposition; the truth
of this opposition is purely dialectical, however, and serves only
to describe one moment in the development of the concept.
Hegel contends that a clear grasp of the nature and necessity
of this development will inevitably result in the comprehension of the dialectical unity of thought and object. The concept of God includes the reality of God within itself, not only
implicitly but as a dialectical necessity, this implicit unity
and the subsequent opposition between concept and being now
having been sublated.
In articulating such an argument, philosophy is able to
render explicit the truth of the content of faith (a content
that has already been transformed by the alienated reason of
the Enlightenment and become self-conscious in the form of
Revealed Religion). Hegel never argues that philosophical
knowledge of God is necessary or even possible for everyone,
but he does not disguise the fact that he regards it as a superior mode of knowledge.
Man is not purely thought. On the contrary, thought manifests
itself as perception or picture-thought, or in the form of ordinary
ideas. The absolute truth which is revealed to Man must there45 CR, pp. 56-57.
46 CR, pp. 56-57.

FAITH .AND CERTAINTY

107

fore exist for him as a being who forms general ideas and sensuous
images, who has feelings and sensations. This is the mark by
which religion in general is distinguished from philosophy. Philosophy thinks what otherwise exists only for the ordinary idea and
sensuous perception. Man, who thus forms general ideas, is in his
character as Man a thinking being also, and the substance of religion comes to him as a being who thinks.4 7

Religious opposition to the philosophical proofs of God's
existence is based on both a false anthropology (i.e., man's
essential nature as a thinking being is not comprehended) and
a false understanding of the relationship between religion and
philosophy. In addition, Hegel argues, this pious contempt for
reason represents a. failure to comprehend religion itself, at
least the supreme form of historical religion, i.e., Christianity.
According to Hegel, " the meaning of the Christian Religion is
precisely to know God." 48 To contend that God is mysterious
and incomprehensible is to fail to perceive Christianity for
what it is, i.e., a revealed religion. God's own act of self-revelation should form the basis for the conclusion that He is not
a" jealous" God and that the divine is not opposed to or other
than the human. Indeed, in the event of the Incarnation,
human and divine ha.ve become one. This truth is not yet a.
philosophical truth, but, rather, it is the proper content of
faith. Philosophical thought will bring to full self-awareness
the believing self whose truth is already implicit in this central
ima.ge of the Christian religion.
It is not the case that the necessity [of the appearance of divinehuman unity] is first perceived by means of thinking; rather, it
must become certain for men. In other words, this content-the
unity of divine and human nature-achieves certainty, obtaining
for humanity the form of immediate, sensible perception and external existence; it appears as something seen and experienced in
the world. One must have essentially before oneself this form of
non-speculative consciousness; it must essentially be before mei.e., it must become certain for man. Only what exists in an immediate way, in inner and outer perception, is certain. In order
" LPE, p. 366.
4BCR, p. 23.

108

MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

for this divine-human unity to become certain for man, God had
to appear in the world in the fiesh.49

The chasm between the human and the divine is bridged for
the believing consciousness by the person of Christ. Faith is
certain of this truth revealed in the Incarnation-event, but,
once again, this is the certainty of religious consciousness and
not the self-certainty of Spirit in and for itself. Here, as well,
Hegel vigorously maintains the distinction between belief and
sense perception. The content of faith cannot be grasped or
confirmed by the senses; while it may manifest itself in a historical event, it is not to be identified with the sensible externalities that characterize such events. The truth of religious
faith is not subject to historical confirmation.
The representation of the foundation [of truth] has as its basis
the sensible certainty of other persons regarding certain sensible
facts, and it brings other facts into line with these. The life-history of Christ is thus the outward form of confirmation. But faith
alters its significance. For it is not merely a question of faith
taken as belief in this external history, but rather of faith that this
man was the Son of God .... The object has been completely
transformed from something that exists sensibly-historically into
a divine content, into a moment of God himself that in essence is
the highest momep.t. This content is no longer something sensible;
thus if the demand is made to confirm it in the previous, sensible
way, this way at once proves to be inadequate because the object
is of an entirely different nature. 50

The Christian truth is the absolute truth of Spirit, and it
constitutes the content of believing consciousness. As such,
belief is vastly superior to sense experience as a mode of
knowledge. Nonetheless, the object of Christian faith is the
appearance of the truth "in a single man." 51 This truth is
not yet grasped in its universality, nor is it comprehended as a.
necessary truth of reason. Faith cannot have the universal
as its object, because its form is that of pictorial representa49 CR, pp. 180-81.

50 CR, pp. 249-50.

s1 CR, p. 181.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

109

tion. The finite images of faith must inevitably fail either to
express or entail their content. It is philosophical thought that
will grasp the unity of the human and the divine as a necessary and universal truth. Carefully distinguishing philosophical reason (the type of reasoning involved in Hegel's version
of the ontological proof) from the finite and self-alienated
Understanding of the Enlightenment, Hegel identifies the
former as being equal in substance and superior in form to religion. Philosophy embodies the very content of faith in its own
act, its own concepts. Christian revelation is essential if the
believing consciousness is to become certain of the truth, but
that truth does not transcend human reason.
In faith the true content is certainly already found, but it still
lacks the form of thinking. As we observed earlier, all formsthose of feeling, representation, etc.-can indeed have the content
of truth, but they themselves are not the true form, which makes
the true content necessary. Thinking is the absolute judge, before
which the content must verify and attest its claims.
Philosophy has been criticized for placing itself above religion.
But as a matter of fact this is false because philosophy has only
this and no other content, although it gives it in the form of
thinking; it places itself only above the form of faith, while the
content is the same in both cases. 52

*

*

*

Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel that the truth of the Incarnation can be grasped only by the believer, and that it cannot be sensibly perceived or historically confirmed. Precisely
for this reason, however, he argues that the Christian faith cannot involve certain knowledge of its object. For Hegel, faith is
immediate knowledge analogous to sense perception, but with
the imaginatively depicted truth of Spirit as its content. The
Incarnation represents for faith the highest form of this truth,
the overcoming (albeit, only" in a single man") of the opposition between the believing self and the religious object, the
perfect unity of the human and the divine. In contrast to
s2 CR, p. 292;

also PS #797.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

Hegel, Kierkegaard identifies faith with a volitional act of assent. The Incarnation supplies faith with its content, but that
content is affirmed rather than known. Neither imaginative
nor reflective thought can grasp the truth that is embodied in
this event; likewise, the physical senses are impotent here.
The historical cannot be given immediately to the senses, since the
elusiveness of coming into existence is involved in it. The immediate impression of a natural phenomenon or of an event is not
the impression of the historical, for the coming into existence involved cannot be sensed immediately, but only the immediate
presence. But the presence of the historical includes the process
of coming into existence, or else it is not the presence of the historical as such.58
The " elusiveness " of something coming into existence pertains to the uncertainty of such an event. Necessary being is,
and is eternally; it does not come into existence. 54 Consequently, all historical events are non-necessary. They represent the
actualizing, through an act of freedom, of some pure possibility. Since they are rooted in the non-being of the possible, they
remain radically uncertain. A future event might be or not be.
A past event is no more certain; it could either have been or
not have been. 55 Even an event experienced in the present is
grounded in the uncertainty of the possible; what has happened can be known, but that it has happened is not indubitable.56 The existence of a thing can never form the object of
certain knowledge.
As compared with the immediate, coming into existence has an
elusiveness by which even the most dependable fact is rendered
doubtful. Thus when the observer sees a star, the star becomes
involved in doubt the moment he seeks to become aware of its
having come into existence. It is as if reflection took the star away
from the senses.57
63 PF,

p. 100.

u PF, p. 91.

PF, pp. 98-99.
PF, P· 101.
HPF, p. 100.

G8

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

111

The radical contingency of all historical events is affirmed
by Kierkegaard repeatedly and emphatically. 58 The existence
of that which occurs in time cannot be immediately perceived,
and no amount of reflection can render this existence certain.
Indeed, careful thinking (the sort that Kierkegaard seeks to
represent for his reader in the "Interlude" of his Fragments)
will only serve to accentuate the uncertainty that characterizes
the historical. Consequently, the fact that a particular truth
has been revealed in an historical event cannot be known
either immediately or reflectively; such a truth must be believed .
. . . the organ for the historical must have a structure analogous
with the historical itself; it must comprise a corresponding somewhat by which it may repeatedly negate in its certainty the uncertainty of coming into existence.... Now faith has precisely the
required character. 59
Faith is the constant overcoming, through an act of volition,
of the objective uncertainty that attaches to all historical
events. Christianity is the highest form of faith, because it
affirms that truth which is most uncertain of all, i.e., the absurdity, the paradox of the Incarnation. Whereas a belief
about an ordinary historical event encounters an "elusiveness" in its object, the object of the Christian faith is actually
" repulsive " to human reason. The self is driven back upon
itself and directed inward, because human knowledge can never
embrace the objective proposition that God became man, i.e.,
that the Eternal became anything at all .
. . . all knowledge is either a knowledge of the Eternal, excluding
the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object that the
Eternal is the historical.60
That God has come to exist in time must remain for human
reason an uncertain truth, a characteristic that it shares with
u E.g., see CUP, p. 90.
PF, PP· 100-101.
so PF, p. 76.

G9

lH

MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

all historical truths. The very fact that the eternal Word has
become :flesh and entered a :finite, temporal world is a paradox,
however, not merely uncertain, but absurd as well. The intensity of passion that is required to affirm such a. truth will be
commensurate with the radical objective uncertainty, i.e., the
absurdity, of the truth itself. This kind of faith is as miraculous as the paradoxical content that it affirms.61 According to
Kierkegaard, it is also a gift. The Incarnation is an event that
provides the believing consciousness, not only with its proper
object, but with an " occasion " upon which it can exercise its
will affirmatively, passionately and in perfect freedom. The
will is not constrained in this " moment " by a particular level
or type of knowledge that the self possesses. In fact, the
epistemological status of each believer is irrelevant to the individual act of faith. The learned must choose as well as the
ignorant, the " contemporary disciple " as well as the " disciple at second hand." Once again, passionate inwardness and
objective uncertainty are the distinguishing characteristics of
the believing consciousness.
As with Hegel, for Kierkegaard God's self-revelation conditions human faith, but for the latter this occurs in the form of
an opportunity for radical decision (the "leap" of faith).
Kierkegaard would regard any change in the status of an individual's knowledge as an external, objective change; but his
concern is always with the subjective " how " of faith, not with
its epistemological consequences (i.e., God did not become man
in order that men might be "certain" of the truth). Furthermore, the act of decision that constitutes Christian faith is for
Kierkegaard the supreme human act (albeit one that is made
possible only by God's own free act of love). It sublates and
cannot itself be sublated by mere reflection. Contra. Hegel,
philosophy cannot demonstrate the necessity of this truth that
faith affirms, because all coming into existence is freely ca.used
and therefore uncertain. God acts in freedom, and the Incarnation is itself not a necessity revealed but a possibility act01 PF,

p. 81.

1''AITH AND CERTAINTY

113

ualized. Indeed, for Kierkegaard, God is that by which all
things are possible, the Free Cause of all that exists. Consequently, the really existent unity of the human and the divine
is and will remain the proper object of faith alone (just as the
actual existence of anything forms the content of some belief).
To "translate" this truth into the language of speculative
thought is simply to maintain it as a pure possibility. On the
other hand, to assent to it decisively is to enter into a real relationship with God in time. Philosophy is not inherently
evil according to Kierkegaard, but it can be dangerous if it
misleads the individual into believing that thought can appropriate the content of faith, or that it represents a more adequate human response to this content than faith itself. Hegel
argues that the truth of the Incarnation must be universalized,
but for Kierkegaard the essence of this truth is that God has
come into existence as a particular individual, and "the particular cannot be thought." 62
More than enough has already been said about Kierkegaard's perspective on the relationship between faith and reason to suggest that he regarded the " proofs " of the existence
of God as misdirected failures. Since the concept of a thing
always pertains to the essence of that thing, it is universal and
abstract, revealing the " common nature " shared by all things
of that kind. The existence of a particular thing eludes thought
and can only be affirmed in an act of faith. To believe that
God exists is entirely appropriate; on the other hand, to prove
that God exists via philosophical argument is comparable to
demonstrating the squareness of a circle; it cannot be accomplished.
Generally speaking, it is a difficult matter to prove that anything
exists; and what is still worse for the intrepid souls who undertake the venture, the difficulty is such that fame scarcely awaits
those who concern themselves with it. The entire demonstration
always turns into something very different and becomes an additional development of the consequences that flow from having assumed that the object in question exists. Thus I always reason
e2 CUP, p. 290.

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MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

from existence, not towards existence, whether I move in the
sphere of palpable sensible fact or in the realm of thought. I do
not, for example, prove that a stone exists, but that some existing thing is a stone. The procedure in a court of justice does not
prove that a criminal exists, but that the accused, whose existence
is given, is a criminal. Whether we call existence an accessorium
or the eternal prius, it is never subject to demonstration. 63

Kierkegaard's critique of the ontological proof draws its
force from a distinction that he makes between " :factual being" and "ideal being." 64 The latter has only to do with the
essence of a thing, not with its actual existence. Indeed, factual being is "wholly indifferent to any and all variations in
essence." Furthermore, in an argument that, while directed
against Spinoza, is clearly anti-Hegelian, Kierkegaard insists
that the nature of ideal being " does not involve it dialectically
in the determinations of factual being." The concept does not
entail the actual existence of its content. This fact of existence
can enter into philosophical speculation only as a presupposition. Consequently, philosophy assumes and does not demonstrate the truth of the proposition that God exists.
Kierkegaard's argument here may seem very much to resemble Kant's earlier refutation of the ontological proof. Nonetheless, Kierkegaard's existentialism constitutes a more radical
response to that proof than the critical philosophy of Kant.
Kant had asserted that the conceived existence of God does
not entail the actual existence of God, but Kierkegaard denies
that existence can be conceived of at all. In this respect, his
arguments concerning the proofs of the existence of God are
perfectly continuous with his analysis of the relationship between faith and thought, as well as with his comments concerning the epistemological significance of the Incarnation.
Kierkegaard's negative attitude towards the project of proving God's existence extends to other strategies that have been
employed by philosophers for the purpose of executing that
task. For example, he is equally critical of the physico-teleea PF, pp. 49-50.
64 PF, pp. 51-52, note #2.

li'AITH AND CEUTAINTY

115

ological proof, contending that God's existence cannot be inferred from the design or purpose of his " creation."
... where then are the works of God? The works from which I
would deduce his existence are not directly and immediately given.
The wisdom in nature, the goodness, the wisdom in the governance of the world-are all these manifest, perhaps, upon the very
face of things? Are we not here confronted with the most terrible
temptations to doubt, and is it not impossible finally to dispose of
all these doubts? But from such an order of things I will surely
not attempt to prove God's existence; and even if I began I would
never finish, and would in addition have to live constantly in suspense, lest something so terrible should suddenly happen that my
bit of proof would be demolished.65
Here again, Kierkegaard's general understanding of faith
provides the context and the background for his argument.
Immediate knowledge is certain, but God's wisdom and goodness cannot be immediately known. One can never immediately perceive that a particular state of affairs actually obtains.
It is also not the case, however, that in affirming God's goodness and wisdom one has made some sort of rational inference.
Human reason will only demonstrate that the fact of God's
existence is an uncertain fact, and that all attempts empirically, historically or philosophically to confirm this fact fail to
mitigate its uncertainty. "Proof" then is not a reasonable goal
in this instance, but neither is objective uncertainty the ultimate human condition. In the passionate, " leaping " movement of faith uncertainty is negated and transcended. This is
the miracle of faith: the possible is made actual in freedom;
the truth is affirmed in the very act of holding fast to the uncertainty, the absurdity, of the Word become flesh.
Conclusion
Both similarities and differences between these two perspectives on faith and knowledge have emerged during the course
of this essay. The differences are striking enough, and, for the
most part, they have been carefully analyzed in the secondary
literature on Hegel and Kierkegaard. Hegel's "essentialism"
e5 PF, p. 52.

MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

stands in stark contrast to Kierkegaard's "existentialism," the
latter clearly and forcefully distinguishing between the concept and the being of a thing. 66 Faith, for Hegel, is a kind of
picture-thinking that must be dialectically transformed into
conceptual thinking. Kierkegaard emphatically denies that
faith represents either a type of reflection or a form of knowledge, and, far from being sublated by thought, it is the leap
of faith that transforms the abstract possibilities of the speculative intellect into actualities. Kierkegaard rejects the philosophical proofs of the existence of God with a vigor equal to
that with which Hegel affirms their validity. Indeed, one
might argue that the ontological proof constitutes the essence
of Hegel's philosophical system. Kierkegaard maintains that
the object of faith is and must remain unknown to and other
than the self. Hegel, on the other hand, emphasizes that the
Christian Deity is a self-revealing and knowable God, and that
the opposition between the believing self and its truth must be
and will be overcome. That thought can think the universal
is for Hegel its greatest glory. Thought's failure to grasp the
concrete, particular, existing thing constitutes, for Kierkegaard, its fatal flaw. Hegel identifies faith with a certainty
that must be raised to the level of truth, a certainty that must
become the absolute self-certainty of Spirit in and for itself.
In contrast, Kierkegaard contends that faith always presupposes an objective uncertainty, the elimination of which would
result, not in the transcending of faith, but in the bondage to
an epistemological illusion. Finally, the subjective certainty of
faith is described negatively by Hegel as a privatizing, antisocial force. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, emphasizes that
subjectivity is truth, and that faith is an action performed by
individual persons.
All of these differences need to be analyzed in even greater
detail than they have been in the existing secondary literature,
66 See Westphal's
comparison of Hegel's "concept" and the Aristotelian
essence in "Hegel on Religious Knowledge," in Beyond Epistemology: New
Studies in. the Philosophy of Hegel, ed. Weiss (Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p.
53.

FAITH AND CERTAINTY

117

but the similarities between the two thinkers have tended
much more often to suffer from neglect. Since these concluding remarks are intended to be neither systematic nor comprehensive in their treatment of such topics, I will attempt only
to mark off some of the territory that might be fruitfully explored. In doing so, I will confine myself to a few of the issues
that have emerged out of the present discussion.
It should be noted that, while Hegel and Kierkegaard are
both willing to ascribe to faith a certain immediacy, each carefully distinguishes belief from the immediacy of sense perception. For Hegel, sense perception and believing consciousness
are analogous in structure. They both maintain an opposition
between self and object; in both cases, consciousness is certain of its content. Nonetheless, faith, unlike sense perception,
is a form of thought. Its content is the result of its own imaginative projection, and this content embodies the truth of Spirit
itself. Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel that "seeing" and "believing " are radically different forms of immediate consciousness . However dissimilar his position may be, Kierkegaard,
like Hegel, recognizes that, for the believing consciousness, the
immediacy of sense experience has already been disturbed by
reflection. Faith is a "new immedia:cy," a volitional negation
of the uncertainty of thinking consciousness. The forms of
consciousness described by each thinker are not so radically
different then; the real difference emerges only when they attach the term "faith" to something in particular. For Hegel,
imaginative thinking itself constitutes the believing consciousness. Kierkegaard, however, identifies as faith the decisive act
that transforms imagined possibilities into actualities. Once
again, this is a category difference; faith is, for Hegel, an
epistemological, for Kierkegaard, a volitional concept.
It has already become clear by now that both thinkers affirm
the existence of a powerful relationship between faith and the
imagination. Faith is a kind of imagining for Hegel, while
Kierkegaard contends that faith presupposes the " poetic "
contemplation of the possible. Both share another key opinion
concerning the imagination, however; it must be transcended,

118

MICHAEL L. RAPOSA

for Hegel via the universality of the concept, for Kierkegaard
in the act of faith itself. In this respect, these two perspectives
on faith and the imagination represent particular " versions "
of the Christian experience, each having its own venerable history within the tradition. Despite the rather remarkable differences, Hegel's dialectical overcoming of the images of faith
does resonate with the " via negativa " of much of Christian
mysticism. 67 Similarly, Kierkegaard's evaluation of the relationship between contemplation and action represents a type
of Christian "existentialism," the origins of which can be
traced back to the very beginnings of the tradition. Neither
thinker's position, however, is able to accommodate the notion
that the imagination is more than a " second-class citizen,"
i.e., that imagining itself represents an authentic form of Christian experience. This could constitute a failure in their thinking, since such a notion clearly can be defended. One need only
look to the history of Christian art, the role of the aesthetic in
Christian worship, or the image-filled meditations of Ignatius's
spiritual exercises in order to locate specific resources that one
might utilize in conducting such a defense.
Another similarity between these two thinkers has emerged
and should be emphasized here. Concerning the Cartesian
project of acquiring certain knowledge by means of systematic,
universal doubt, Hegel and Kierkegaard again share a common
perspective; neither is a Cartesian in this sense. Ironically
enough, Climacus, who seems to identify Hegelian philosophy
with the methodological program of universal doubt, absolves
Descartes of any responsibility for this type of approach to
philosophy. Descartes was a "venerable, humble, honest
thinker," who did not doubt in "matters of faith." 68 Clearly,
however, Hegel recognized that every doubt presupposes some
positive content. The philosophical role of doubt is completely dialectical; such doubt is not universal, but rather, it is as
determinate as the content that it seeks to negate. The positing of an abstract truth calls for the negative power of doubt,
a1 See Taylor, Jout"n6f/B, p. 217, note #46.

ea JC, pp. 181·82.

P'AITH AND CERTAINTY

119

as well as for the subla.tion of both dialectical " moments " in
the fully developed concept. Likewise, Kierkegaard argued
that doubt presupposes a prior certainty, just as actuality precedes possibility. 69 In neither case, then, is doubt universal or
methodologically absolute. Both philosophers begin somewhere other than with" nothing." Furthermore, in neither case
is certainty an ultimate goal. Hegel and Kierkegaard are both
primarily concerned with the "truth," despite the fact that
they define that term in radically different ways. For Hegel,
the certainty of faith in no way precludes the inadequacy of
such a form of consciousness. For Kierkegaard, the primacy
of faith in no way precludes the radical uncertainty that it
presupposes. The Kierkegaardian quest is in no sense narrowly epistemological, and Hegel emphasizes the significance of
" knowledge " in his system only because he refuses to separate
sharply epistemology from the domains of metaphysics and the
philosophy of religion.
Finally, in evaluating these two perspectices on faith, one
might attempt to synthesize the basic insights of each position.
For example, one might agree, with Hegel, that faith has
enormous epistemological significance, that it is a. way of
"knowing," that it shapes and informs both our self-understanding and our understanding of the world. One might also
concur with Kierkegaard, however, that faith itself is the result of a free decision; one always believes because of a certain " will to believe," and all knowledge, even philosophical
knowledge, is grounded in certain fundamental " acts of faith."
Epistemological in its significance, but volitional in its origin,
faith would thus constitute a complex category, inadequately
portrayed by either the analysis of Hegel or of Kierkegaard.
But these remarks do not even provide a useful sketch of an
argument that, given its very nature, lies beyond the scope of
the present essay.
MICHAEL L. RAPOSA
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
69 JC, p. 180; compare Wittgenstein
von Wright (Harper, 1969), p. 18.

in On Certainty,

tr. Anscombe and

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

F

ROM TIME TO TIME it is good to return to basics
if for no other reason than to remind ourselves of their
existence; for they constantly suffer obscurity from a
jungle-growth of secondary considerations. A case in point is
the enterprise of " transcendental Thomists " and other Scholastics who maintain that the " critical problem" must be the
starting point for post-Cartesian philosophy, even for Thomistic realism.1- To be sure, given the modern philosophical climate, no realism can retain intellectual respectability without
addressing itself to the question of the validation of our knowledge of extramental reality. Besides, as Maritain pointed out,
philosophy is a wisdom and it is incumbent upon wisdom to
defend its principles; in epistemology this requires a rational
justification of our certain knowledge of extramental being. 2
Thus one does not have to go to the extreme of Gilson's root
and branch rejection of the possibility of a critical realism 8 to
see that there are critiques and critiques, and that the recognition of the need for a critical Thomistic realism does not justify
the enterprise of those professed Thomists who would vali:date realism by starting with knowledge or consciousness instead of being. As Father Henle has incisively shown in the
case of Coreth,4 the latter's justification of Thomistic realism
by the " transcendental method " consists in the end in an apiSee, e.g., Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight (New York: Philosophical Library, 1967), pp. xxvii-xxix.
Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge. Transl. supervised by
2 Jacques
Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), pp. 73-75.
a Etienne Gilson, Realisme Thomiste et Critique de la Oonnaissance (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1947).
4 Robert J. Henle, S.J., "Transcendental
Thomism, A Critical Assessment"
in One Hundred Years of Thomism, edited by Victor B. Brezik, C.S.B.
(Houston: University of St. Thomas, 1981), pp. 90-116.

lftO

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

121

peal to the direct apprehension of sensible being, and all
the elaborate neo-Kantian machinery of the conscious subject
and the being of knowledge, etc., rather than justifying that
apprehension or even leading up to it, is put on the shelf as
the traditional Thomistic realism is trotted out to bring the
critical problem to a happy conclusion.
At the root of this discontinuity lurks the very difficulty
that has bedeviled the neo-Kantians and all who have fallen
prey to the Cartesian error of starting to philosophize by turning inward to knowledge or consciousness rather than outward
to things: the infinite separation between the possible being of
the conceptual world and the actual being of the existential
world. No possibility exists of proceeding in demonstration
from thought to thing. Also at the root of the discontinuityto put the matter in positive terms-looms the transcendentality of being; it is impossible to deny being because being is all
there is and what is outside being is nothing. No sane person
seriously doubts the existence of things outside himself. That
is why Descartes's doubt is called " methodical doubt." Although the expression is not to be found in his writings, he
himself did not doubt the existence of things, but his method
was to accept nothing that could not be demonstrated as necessarily true or was not known to be such by the clarity and
distinctness of its ideas. 5 One result of the methodical doubt
was to drive a wedge between common sense and philosophy,
and long-standing beliefs will frequently recur in
5 " For these customary
my thoughts, my long and familiar acquaintance with them giving them the
right to occupy my mind against my will [and almost to make themselves
masters of my beliefs]. I will never free myself of the habit of deferring to
them and having faith in them as long as I consider that they are what they
really are-that is, somewhat doubtful, as I have just shown, even if highly
probable-so that there is much more reason to believe than to deny them.
That is why I think that I wouid not do badly if I deliberately took the opposite position and deceived myself in pretending for some time that all these
opinions are entirely false and imaginary, until at least I will have so balanced my former and my new prejudices that they cannot incline my mind
more to one side than the other, and my judgment will not be [mastered
and] turned by bad habits from the correct perception of things [and the
straight road leading to the knowledge of the truth]. For I feel sure that I
cannot overdo this distrust, since it is not now a question of acting, but only

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

thus causing the fragmentation of intellectual v1s10n. The
crashing failure of Descartes's roundabout proof for the veracity of our knowledge of things gave dramatic witness to a truth
which Gilson never tired of repeating: once you start your
philosophizing inside the mind, you never get outside it. 6 But
that is the only starting point for the methodical doubt and
for those who regard the critical problem as expressing an intrinsically valid problem. Thus the fragmentation of intellectual vision. The certainty that things exist independently of
ourselves together with the inability to validate that certainty
by demonstration has led some thinkers to banish this kind of
certitude from the domain of knowledge or at least from the
domain of philosophical or rational knowedge. Cardinal Newman, for example, preferred to call such knowledge " instinct," 7 while Santayana called it " animal faith." 8
of [meditating and] learning." Rene Descartes, Meditations. Tr. and with an
introduction by Laurence J. LaFleur (Indianapolis: The Library of Liberal
Arts, 1960), First Meditation, pp. 21-22.
s Etienne Gilson, "Vade Mecum of a Young Realist" in Philosophy of
Knowledge, edited by Roland Hande and Joseph P. Mullally (Chicago: J. B.
Lippinott Company, 1960), p. 387. A case in point is Professor Chisholm's
attempt to arrive at a criterion for distinguishing "appearances that are true
from appearances that are false." It is hard to see how he can hope to succeed when by " first truths of fact" he means "self-presenting states, i.e.,
... various propositions about ... [the knower's] state of mind at that
time-his thinking certain thoughts, his entertaining certain beliefs, his being in a certain sensory or emotional state." Any attempt to base the objectivity of knowledge on "self-presenting" states must produce the opposite
result and with it the destruction of the objectivity of truth and thus of
philosophy and science. For the attempt would make the thing known and
our individual representations identical so that even though it is indubitable
that if at time 1 something appears such and such to me, then it necessarily
appears such and such to me, the fact remains that the truth must mean
"what appears to me at that time." This implicit but emphatic separation of
the object of knowledge from the thing makes impossible any discrimination
between "appearances that are true from appearances that are false." (See
Aquinas, S.T. I, Q. 85, a.2) Chisholm gets his notion of "self-presenting"
states from Meinong. Roderick Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1973), pp. 3 & 29.
(New York: Longmans,
1 John Henry Newman, The Grammar of Assent
Green and Co., 1947), pp. 47-48.
s George Santayana, Soeptioism and A.nimal Faith (New York: Dover Pnhlications, Inc., 1955), p. 180.

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

128

Conversely, the tradition known as the philosophia perennis
rests on the premise that philosophy builds upon the spontaneous judgments of common sense, such as the judgment that
things exist independently of my knowledge of them. 9 The unnaturalness of the dichotomy between common sense and philosophy produced by the methodical doubt was bound to have
a deleterious effect on knowledge itself. Thus the thesis that
I shall defend in this essay is that, although it is impossible
to prove the existence of things outside the mind, the proposition which asserts their independent existence is philosophically evident and certain and that philosophical doubt about this
proposition undermines all knowledge by destroying certitude.
The argument that I shall unfold in defense of this thesis
may be summarized thus: Being, not knowledge, is the basis
of intelligibility. The demand that the existence of things
either be demonstrated or be regarded as philosophically
doubtful bespeaks a refusal to submit to being. The demand
that all propositions which are presented as philosophically
true and certain be demonstrated shifts the basis of intelligibility from being to knowledge, which is to shift certitude from
an ontological to a psychological basis. 10 But the latter cannot
de toutes ces conceptions opposees entre elles, Ia philos9 "Tres differente
ophie traditionnelle enfin, qui admet I'immutabilite absolue des premiers principes de Ia raison et du reel ou de l'etre, et qui reconnait aussi !'existence de
Dieu, Premier Etre toujours identique a Iui-meme, et par Ia meme essentiellement distinct du monde toujours changeant, doit voir, nous le montrerons,
dans le sens commun une philosophie rudimentaire de l'etre, opposee aux
philosophies agnostiques ou athees, du phenomene et du devenir comme a
l'ontologisme pantheistique."
P. Reg. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Le Sens Commun 3° edition revue et corrigee (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1922),
p. 14.
10 "In his Meditations
Descartes does not ask what that being is that is
true being in the sense of the ens certum. For Descartes the essence of certitude has changed in the meanwhile, for in the Middle Ages certitude does
not signify certainty but the fixed delimitation of a being in that which it is.
Certitudo here is still synonymous with essentia. On the other hand, for
Descartes that which is true is measured in another way. For him doubt becomes that tuning in which the attunement [structure of determination]
vibrates to the ens certum, i.e., being in certainty. Certitudo becomes a fixing
of the ens qua ens which
from the unquestionability of tlie oogito

124

RAYMOND DENNEHY

support the weight of certitude. With its inevitable collapse
modern man's doubt has become bottomless. No matter how
compelling the evidence for truth, he cannot find intellectual
peace until he conjures falsifying data, like the neurotic who
always manages, often brilliantly, to dredge up plausible reasons for readmitting self-doubt and torment into his soul.
Furthermore, the refusal to submit to being begets the
philosophical counterpart to the Frankenstein myth. By turning to mind rather than being, the knowing subject finds himself with no alternative than that of making himself the source
of intelligibility and truth. The result is an intolerable relativism which can be compensated for only by enshrining predictive power as the measure of objective knowledge. But this
unleashes a demiurgical force throughout culture which destroys science, philosophy, and art, to say nothing of morals
and politics by valorizing everything in terms of its usefulness.
I

As Aristotle showed,11 and Plato for that matter before
him, 12 all demonstration rests upon what cannot be demonstrated. Motion is imperfect being insofar as it is being in
the process of becoming, of actualizing its potency to be; motion therefore presupposes being, presupposes some thing that
is in motion, as potency presupposes act. Demonstration is
knowledge in motion or on the way to more perfect knowledge;
(ergo) sum for man's ego. Thereby, the ego becomes the distinctive subjectum and thus the nature of man for the first time enters the realm of
subjectivity in the sense of the ego. Out of the attunement to this certitude
the language of Descartes obtains the determination of a olare et distincte
percipere. The tuning of doubt is the positive acquiescence of certainty.
Henceforth, certainty becomes the determining form of truth. The tuning
of confidence to the absolute certainty of knowledge which is attainable at
all times is Bathos and thus the arahe, the beginning of modern philosophy."
Jl.fartin Heidegger, What is Philosophy? Transl. and introduction by William
Kluback and Jean T. Wilde (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1958), pp.
87-89; author's emphases.
11 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I, 2, 7lb 10-30.
12 Plato, Republic VI, 509a-5lld.

125

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS,OF CERTITUDE

hence it is called "discursive knowledge." Just as becoming
presupposes being and potency act, so discursive knowledge
presupposes intuition or understanding-what the Scholastic
philosophers called intellectus. For the premises of demonstrated knowledge must not only be true but indemonstrable,
better known than the conclusion, and prior to it. The reason
for these conditions is that the premises are related to the conclusion as cause to effect. If the premises were not true, the
demonstration could not guarantee the truth of the conclusion.
If they were themselves in need of demonstration, we should
have to demonstrate them with premises that were indemonstrable or be faced with an infinite regress of demonstrations.
But then all demonstration would be impossible. That the
premises must be better known than and prior to the conclusion can be accounted for by the above mentioned parallel of
discursive knowledge and becoming, on the one hand, with understanding and being, on the other. Just as being is prior to
and better understood than becoming, since we explain the latter in terms of the former, i.e., we understand becoming as some
being undergoing alteration, so first principles are prior to and
better understood than the conclusions that are drawn from
them, since our understanding of the latter presupposes our
understanding of the former. 18
Consider the following examples of reasoning: " 2
2 = 4"
and "Metal expands when heated because iron expands when
heated, copper expands when heated, etc., and iron and copper,
etc., are metals." It would be impossible to reason thus without understanding, albeit implicitly, that " Everything is what
it is " and " It is impossible for a thing to be and not be at
the same time and in the same way." These propositions, the
principles of identity and contradiction, respectively, are members of the family known as " first principles." They are socalled because they are the ground and source of all knowledge.
If they were not absolutely and universally true, then all reasoning and indeed all knowing would be impossible. " 2 + 2

+

1a Posterior

Analytics I, 2, 7lb 10-30.

126

RAYMOND DENNEHY

= 4" because fl is fl and not 3 and thus cannot be 2 and 3 at
the same time and in the same respect.
Because these principles are presupposed by all reasoning
and all knowing, they themselves cannot be demonstrated.
Any attempt to do so would be question-begging since the
premises of the demonstration would be unintelligible if they
did not presuppose the very principles to be proved. Equally,
any attempt to disprove them would necessarily be self-contradictory, for not only would the premises implicitly affirm
what the conclusion denied but the conclusion itself would be
self-contradictory since the very terms of its denial, say, of the
principle of identity, would be unintelligible apart from that
denial's implicit affirmation of it. But the impossibility of
demonstrating first principles does not mean that we do not
know them certainly to be true or that our affirmation of them
rests upon other than rational grounds. On the contrary, their
truth is self-evident: Not only is their implicit affirmation presupposed by all our reasoning and knowing, their truth is immediately evident to us once we understand the terms that
compose them.
Of course, any defense of self-evident principles will meet
with the objection that the " self-evident" and "certain " nature conferred by these principles is next to worthless because
they are mere tautologies and therefore consist of vacuous
concepts which leave them incapable of contributing anything
important to our knowledge. On the contrary, these principles,
far from being tautologous, express what is most profound and
crucial in all knowledge. The reason for this is found in the
primacy of being. Being is that which exists, either actually or
possibly. The first act of the intellect is to know being, albeit
implicitly. What we know explicitly are things, i.e., individual
men and women, animals, plants, geometrical figures, weather
forecasts, etc. But since these are all ways of being, the concepts by which we know them are thus concepts of ways of
being. From this it follows that all concepts are reducible to
the concept of being. 14 The first principles are derived from
H

Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate I, I.

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

this concept. For to apprehend something is, in the first instance, to judge that it exists, either actually or possibly. And
this is to acknowledge, again implicitly, the opposition between
being and non-being. Thus the first indemonstrable principle
is that of contradiction, "Being is not nothing." All other
principles are based on it. 15
15 Aquinas, S.T. I-II, 94, 2. It remains a matter of controversy whether the
first of the principles to be derived from being is that of identity or contradiction. Aristotle (Metaphysics IV, 3, 1005b 11-20) and Aquinas (S.T. I-II,
94, 2) say it is the principle of contradiction, while modern Thomists disagree over which is first. Maritain holds that the principle of contradiction
"directly concerns logic, not metaphysics, and is but the logical form of the
principle of identity" (A Preface to Metaphysics, p. 91). But H. Renard,
S.J., insists that the principle of contradiction is first (The Philosophy of
Being, pp. 105-107), while De Raeymaeker would resolve the issue on the
basis of a distinction between the psychological order, the order in which we
acquire knowledge, and the practical order, the order in which we use principles as standards of reasoning. He maintains that in the psychological
order the principle of identity is first because what the intellect apprehends
first is being rather than non-being, but in the practical order the principle
of contradiction is first because the clearest of all demonstrations is per reduotionem ad absurdum. (See Renard, pp. 106-107)
For my own part, I cannot escape the conclusion that the principle of
contradiction, not identity, is first. For being is the first thing that falls
under the intellect. And, as argued above, to know being is to know that
which is, which is to say, that being is not nothing. Were it not for this
primary case, I could agree with Maritain in saying that the principle of
identity is first since to be a thing is to be what the thing is: "No sooner
do we possess the intuition of intelligible extra-mental being than it divides, so to speak, under our eyes, into two conceptual objects. On the one
side there is being as simply existing or capable of existing, as simply given
to the mind . . . On the other side, in another concept which is still being,
but under a different aspect, being is perceived as involving certain exigencies
and certain laws, or, if you prefer, as recognized, admitted, affirmed by the
mind-or as perfection and determination. These two complementary aspects
of being are apprehended by the mind, distinguished, in a purely ideal fashion, as two different concepts expressed by the same words. This difference,
which we may term functional, is revealed simply in the use which the mind
makes of the concept or notion of being, in the latter case as subject, in the
former as predicate.
"Then the mind intuits that in these two functionally different notions it
is thinking the same thing. It sees intuitively the first prillciple of all which
it will formulate thus: each being is what it is. Here 'each being' is being
given to the mind and 'what it is ' is its intelligible determination, being as

·128

RAYMOND DENNEHY

The positive formulation of this principle is the principle of
identity, "Being is not non-being" or "Being is being" or
" Every being is what it is." That this principle is no tautology
can be seen by unpacking its concepts. "Being is being," the
formulation that is the most likely candidate for the charge,
does more than express in the predicate what is expressed in
the subject. To say that " Being is being " is to affirm that
" being is," for it follows from the realization that if "being
is," then "being is not nothing." "Being is being" expresses
the sense of wonder at the real, the wonder which inspired
Parmenides's blurred but profound realization that because being is, being is one, and which later inspired Leibniz's equally
profound question, " Why is there something rather than
nothing? " 10
Here we must bear in mind that being is a transcendental
affirmed by the mind. To its aspect as posited in existence it adds its aspect
as intelligibly determined, as an essential quality."
(Pp. 91-92; author's
emphases.)
I see no difficulty with this approach as long as we confine our attention
to things. For what we apprehend are beings of this or that kind. But what
about the primary, primordial, intuition " Being is "? That intuition is not
primarily a recognition of things in their specificity but of their reality, of
the fact that they are. Is not this the force of Parmenides's insight that
"being is "? that things are instead of are not? that there is being instead
of nonbeing? Looking at the existential intuition in this way, the way
without which the intuition would Jose its force and profundity, it seems to
me that the principle of contradiction is the first of all principles. Just as
the eye in darkness turns spontaneously to light and in that medium sees
things, so the intellect spontaneously seeks being-all concepts are reducible
to being-and in being knows things, which are ways or modifications of
being. From the judgment "Being is" there arises the principle " Being is
not nothing," which principle asserts the opposition between being and nonbeing.
Truly, I know being insofar as I know things-this house, that man,
etc.-, but I know them in their specificity because they are first of all beings,
albeit different ways of being beings. In other words, I cannot know at all
unless I know something, but something, whatever its specificity, is not
nothing.
1a But Heidegger must be regarded as the most conspicuous pursuer of
that question in the twentieth century. See, e.g., his Introduction to Metaphysics. Tr. by Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University press, 1968),
pp. 1 & ff.

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS

CERTITUDE

129

notion in that it refuses to be imprisoned in any category; instead it overflows all categories and pertains to all that is.
Nothing can truly be added to being, for all so-called additions
to it are simply modes or ways of being. What is outside being
is nothing. Everything is being. This is not to say, however,
that being is simply a universal concept; it applies, we have
seen, every bit as much to individuals. Indeed, it is from our
knowledge of individual existents--e.g., Socrates, Fido, the elm
tree standing in my :front yard, etc.-that we get the concept
of being. Our knowledge of things tells us, before all else, that
each thing is, that therefore being is, but that each is a specific
way of being: Socrates's being is human, and individually
human; Fido's being is dog, and individually dog, etc. 17 Thus
the assertion " Being is being " follows from the realization
that the being I apprehend is a specific being, that its being is
specified to a certain way of being by its essence. That is why
"Being is being" and "Every being is what it is" are interchangeable formulations of the principle of identity.
In the formulation "Every being is what it is" the subject
asserts that the being exists (actually or possibly), while its
predicate asserts that its existence is specified or determined
in this or that vvay. We have here two logically distinct notions; the predicate is not implied by the subject nor vice
versa. There is, however, an ontological identity, as is seen in
the proposition "Socrates is a man." This proposition asserts
that the concepts Socrates and man are united in the same being, that they are two logically distinct aspects of the same
being. Because the predicate adds to our knowledge of the
subject, the proposition "Every being is what it is" is no
tautology.
The profound importance of the knowledge conferred by the
principle of identity can be grasped by a consideration of
Leibniz's question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Because existence (the act by which a thing is or has
being) is not part of the essence of anything that falls under
11 Louis De Raeymaeker,
The Philosophy of Being. Tr. by Rev. Edmund
H. Ziegelmeyer, S.J. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1966), pp. 23-28.

180

RAYMOND DENNEHY

our perception and direct knowledge, the question expresses
the sense of wonder at being, at the realization that "Being is
not nothing." A thing is intelligible by reason of what it contains in i,tself or by reason of something outside itself. Now
the being of the things we perceive is unintelligible when the
latter are taken in themselves. For although their essences
render intelligible their specificity and the properties which follow thereupon, they do not render their existence intelligible.
The essence man, i.e., rational animal, explains why Socrates
is rational, why he laughs, loves, and chooses, but he would do
none of these, indeed, he would not be a man, would not be at
all, if he did not exist. Because we will not find the sufficient
reason for his existence among the constituents of his essence,
we are compelled to look outside Socrates's essence for the intelligibility of his being.
The dialectic that carries the mind from the judgment
"Being is being" to the problematic of the intelligibility of
being can be set forth thus: From the principle " Being is not
nothing " is educed the principle " It is impossible for a thing
to be and not be at the same time and in the same respect."
As we have already nnted, if being is, then it follows that
" being is not nothing." Thus a thing cannot be and not be at
the same time and in the same respect: a being that existed as
a tree and not as a tree at the same time and in the same respect could not be at all. It would be nothing. Now if every
being is what it is and if no being that falls under our perception is what it is solely by virtue of its essence, it follows that
either every such being has the sufficient reason for its existence in some being outside itself or every such being is unintelligible. But an unintelligible being could not exist; it would be
nothing. For to affirm the existence of things and at the same
time to deny that they require a sufficient reason is to do violence to reason. That which lacks a sufficient reason for its
existence cannot be: it would both be and not be at the same
time and in the same respect; it would therefore be nothing at
all. Thus the principle " It is impossible for a being to be and
not be at the same time and in the same respect " leads to the

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131

principle of sufficient reason: "Every being has the reason for
its being either in itself or in some being outside itself." And
this principle leads in turn to the principle of causality:
"Every being that does not have the sufficient reason for its
being in itself is caused by another."
The foregoing makes clear that, far from being tautologous
and vacuous, the principle " Being is not nothing " is the primary principle of all intelligibility and hence of all knowledge.
But this is not to say that it is merely a principle of mind or
thought, as the advocates of psychologism maintain. 18 The
principle governs all thought just because it is a principle of
being and thought is being. If, as we have seen, all concepts
are reducible to the concept of being, it is also the case that
concepts themselves are beings, for nothing cannot be an object of thought; it is always soniething that is thought. For
purposes of argument we may, for the moment, regard the
existence of extramental beings as problematic. To establish
the first principles as principles of being rather than of
thought, it is enough to observe that for anything to beeither conceptually or actually-it must be what it is and cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect,
etc. The position that first principles are products of the
peculiar structure of the human mind and do not necessarily
have any basis in reality is accordingly absurd and leads to
consequences that are nothing less than cataclysmic. In the
first place, if these principles did not apply to reality but only
to our cognitions, they would simply be false. If, for example,
the elm tree standing in my front yard is an elm tree and not
an elm tree at the same time and in the same respect, then the
principle of contradiction is false, for it asserts the impossibility of anything both being and not being at the same time and
in the same respect. 19
1s For a brief but illuminating history of psychologism in modern philosophy see Roderick Chisholm's introduction, esp. pp. 12-16, in Realism and the
Background of Phenomenology.
Edited by Roderick Chisholm (Glencoe,
Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1960).
19" Now what makes it natural
to call this principle [the principle of
••ontra.diction] a law of tho11.ght is that it is by thought rather than by out-

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

But more than merely invalidating the principle of contradiction along with the other first principles, psychologism leads
to the absurd and, as I said, cataclysmic consequence that
things outside the mind both exist and do not exist, which
means therefore that nothing exists. Moreover, to deny these
principles any basis in reality is to say that they both apply
to things outside the mind and do not apply to them. If, say,
the principle of contradiction did not apply to things, then,
since things would be capable of both being and not being at
the same time and in the same respect, it would follow that the
principle at once applied and did not apply to things. That is
the inevitable consequence of challenging the absolute validity
of first principles since they are either variant formulations or
strict derivations of what is primarily and essentially an ontological principle, "Being is not nothing."
Thus the principle, " Being is not nothing," and the other
first principles derived from it furnish us with a primary example of what is unprovable and yet known to be true with
absolute certitude. In this case, what is known to be true with
absolute certitude are the principles presupposed by all know!ward observation that we persuade ourselves of its necessary truth. When we
have seen that a tree is a beech, we do not need to look again in order to
ascertain whether it is also not a beech: thought alone makes us know that
this is impossible. But the conclusion that the law of contradiction is a law
of thought is nevertheless erroneous. What we believe, when we believe the
law of contradiction, is not that the mind is so made that it must believe
the law of contradiction. This belief is a subsequent result of psychological
reflection, which presupposes the belief in the law of contradiction. The belief in the law of contradiction is a belief about things, not only about
thoughts. It is not, e.g., the belief that if we think a certain tree is a beech,
we cannot at the same time think that it is not a beech; it is the belief that
if the tree is a beech, it cannot at the same time be not a beech. Thus the
law of contradiction is about things, and not merely about thoughts; and
although belief in the law of contradiction is a thought, the law of contradiction itself is not a thought, but a fact concerning the things in the
world. If this, which we believe when we believe the law of contradiction,
were not true of the things in the world, the fact that we were compelled to
think it true would not save the Jaw of contradiction from being false; and
this shows that the law is not a law of thought." Bertrand Russell, The
Problems of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 88·
89 (author's emphases).

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188

edge, all scientific methodology, all truth. And because they
are in the first instance principles of being rather than thought,
their validity pertains to the intelligibility not only of all
human experience, a confinement insisted upon by the advocates of psychologism, but to the whole of reality, to whatever
exists or can exist.
I have so far attempted to do two things: the first is to support the intellectual respectability of our indemonstrable but
immediately certain knowledge of extramental reality by appealing to first principles as primary examples; the second is
to defend these principles as principles of being. It is time to
return our attention to the question of extramental being.
The reference to thought as being is tied in with the tradition that divides real being into possible being and actual
being. Real being is here opposed to being of reason (ens rationis), such as a chimera, square-circle, the notion of nonbeing, etc. The latter are incapable of existing because they
lack an essence and thus have no internally coherent, intelligible structure. "Real being," conversely, designates beings
that not only actually exist outside the mind but also beings
which are capable of so existing even if they do not do so.
Hence " real being " refers to all beings that are capable of
existing. This usage of " real being " harmonizes with the first
act of the mind, which focuses not on the thing's existence but
on its essence, on what it is. The reducibility of all things, including all concepts, to being brings us closer to an understanding of the profundity of Parmenides's insight, " Being is,
being is one." The transcendental nature of being follows from
this, that all is being and what is outside of being is nothing.
To reiterate, being thus transcends, overflows, all categories
and relations.
It would be mistaken, however, to suppose that, in the light
of the definition of " real being" as that which is capable of
existing outside the mind, the transcendentality of being guarantees us a certitude only of possible being. To be sure, the
concept of possible being is the only genuine starting point for
a science since it rather than actual being assures absolute

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

certitude. Because actual beings-i.e., finite sensible beings,
the only kind we perceive-are contingent, they confer only
conditional necessity: if a being actually exists, then it necessarily actually exists; but, since there is no contradiction in its
not actually existing, it might not have existed. Thus the
Cogito, ergo sum can never provide the absolutely certain
starting point required by a perfect science, for my existence
is contingent. On the contrary, the principle "Being is not
nothing " expressed in its positive form, " Being is being" or
"Every being is what it is," alone satisfies that requirement
because its ground is the concept of being itself, not actual
being. Whether a being is actually existent or merely possible,
it is what it is. 20 The concept of possible being, which, in our
formal terminology is, practically speaking, one with the concept designated by "real being,'' is absolutely necessary because whatever it is, it is what it is. Nevertheless, the requirements of absolute certitude as the starting point for speculative knowledge and perfect science do not exclude our possessing a genuine certitude of actually existing things. The Cogito,
ergo sum, for that matte:.-, does not consist of, or even start
with, mere consciousness of self. My consciousness of my ego
is at the same time a consciousness of my being, of my actual
existence; the "sum" is merely an explicitation of what is implicit in the " cogito." To know that I know is to know that I
am: I am absolutely certain that I exist. Thus my consciousness of my ego is at the same time the consciousness of being,
of actual existence. 21 Moreover, when I know, it is always
something that I know. Knowledge of the ego does not occur
without knowledge of the non-ego. My lifelong experience
confirms this. My first act of knowledge is knowledge of things,
sensible beings other than myself; my second act, consequent
upon the first, is knowledge of my knowing act and then my
third act of knowledge is of myself as the "I" or self who
20 G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on the Human Understanding
Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 102-103, n. 3.
21 Raeymaeker, pp. 14-15.

IV, Ch 7 #7;

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

135

knows. 22 Again we confront the transcendentality of being.
Whatever else my activity as a rational being may consist of,
it consists, first and last, of the knowledge of being: my knowledge of my ego goes hand in hand with my knowledge of my
being, my actual existence; my knowledge of my ego presupposes my knowledge of the non-ego, of things existing outside
myself. My certitude of actually existing being is not confined
to the knowledge of my own being: it extends to, and indeed
starts with, my knowledge of extramental being as well. As
stated above, no sane person, Descartes included, seriously
doubts the existence of extramental reality.
But the philosopher gets misled in a way that the layman
never does. Included in the Cartesian heritage so eagerly embraced by modern philosophers is the identification of knowledge with an abstract object, however that object may be defined: as an immaterial entity, a mere image or impression, etc.
This identification comes from a distorted conception of manman conceived as a pure knower. A moment's reflection reveals, on the contrary, that my knowledge of extramental reality does not depend on concepts or images alone. These are,
after all, but abstractions from the singular existent and what
is abstracted is the latter's intelligible form, its essence. (Even
those epistemologies that depend upon the materialization of
mind and thus reduce all concepts to images or impressions are
left with abstractions since these images and impressions are
acknowledged to be lifeless or faint copies of the real.) 23 My
knowledge is a combined product of my will, appetite, passions, and sensations, in addition to my intellect. For I am not
a pure knower, not simply "a being which thinks," but a rational animal. Rationality permeates my animality so that I
have no intellection without sensation, appetition, etc., and no
sensation, appetition, etc., without intellection. It is from this
complexus that I derive my knowledge of things. For, as observed above, in its apprehension of the essence of a thing, i.e.,
22 Thomas

Aquinas, S.T. I, Q. 14, a. 2, ad 3; Q. 87, a. I.

2a E.g., Hume's definition of ideas as copies of impressions

Human Nature, I, l.

in A Treatise on

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

in knowing what it is, the intellect prescinds from its existence.
Knowledge of what a thing is cannot tell us that it is. That is
why the concept by itself cannot count as evidence for the
actual existence of anything. The very content of the concept,
insofar as it focuses on the intelligibility of a thing, is abstract and universal. In its expression of the essence, it presents manness or humanity, say, to the intellect when the perceived thing is this man-a concrete, singular existent. It is
the senses which perceive the thing as existent and the appetites and passions which experience it as such; and the will
which desires it as such. Yet, if intellection and sensation are
in themselves distinct and separate activities, it would be a
mistake to dichotomize them. Because man is an integral composite of rationality and animality, intellection and sensation
permeate each other; they simultaneously interact so that it is
not, properly speaking, the intellect that knows but the man
who knows: as he understands what the thing is, he simultaneously knows this whatness to be the essence of the concrete being that he here and now perceives with his external senses
and judges to exist. 24
All talk about the transcendentality of being would be fatuous were we to allow ourselves to fall into the idealist trap of
dichotomizing intellect and sense. Despite all affirmations of
man as an integral composite of intellect and sense, rationality
and animality, etc., we would still be in danger of entrapment
as long as our talk about being as the object of knowledge
failed to keep in the forefront of our attention that it is sensible being that we know first and foremost. Hence the crucial
role of the senses. They put us in direct contact with actual
being; they seize the existence of things. And if sight is our
most important external sense, touch seems to be the most reliable source of our knowledge of the concrete, singular existent.
Sight, hearing, and smell can lead us to make erroneous judgments regarding true and false appearances, as when a holo24 See Maritain's
elucidation of the stages of knowing in his Existence and
the Existent. Tr. by Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957), pp. 35-37, n.13,

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

137

gram presents us with a three dimensional image so authentic
in appearance that we judge it to be a concrete entity. The
sense of touch dispels the illusion. 25 At all events, sensation
ra.ther than intellection furnishes us with existence of things;
the latter function is the means by which we know we apprehend their existence, but tha.t is an entirely different matter.
All our knowledge is necessarily resolved in the sensible existent. Because we are integral composites of rationality and
animality, our intellects are ordered to sensible being. All our
knowledge originates in the singular sensible existent and returns to it. A "science of nature" that did not so originate
and return would be a mere dream, not a science. Even mathematics resolves itself in the singular, sensible existent to the
extent that it refers to the merely possible but nonetheless
sensible existent. And although metaphysics, having being qua
being as its formal object of investigation, has transcendent
being for its goal, it nonetheless resolves its transcendent
knowledge in the sensible by providing the raison d'etre for
the latter's contingency. In the end, the veracity of all our
knowledge is grounded in the senses' direct grasp of the singular existent. 26
We are thus surrounded, enveloped even, by being. Not
only does our self-consciousness give us a certain knowledge of
our own real being but this very self-consciousness could never
have occurred without a knowledge of the non-ego, a knowledge of extramental being. And this is not a merely conceptual
knowledge; it is experiential and personal. To live in the world
is to bump into being, into real existents, at every turn; to
live in this world as a. rational being is to know this. Thus the
transcendental nature of being absolutely excludes the possibility of doubting being; being is affirmed in all our knowledge
and self-consciousness, in all we do and suffer. Being is, so to
speak, within and without us. 27
25 Robert J. Henle, S.J., "The Basis of Philosophical Realism Re-examined"
in The New Sckolasticism, Vol. 61, #1 (Winter, 1982), pp. 24-25.
26 Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 131-132.
27 Raeymaeker, pp. 15 & 23.

188

RAYMOND DENNEHY

II
In arguing thus for the transcendentality of being as the
ontological basis of our certain knowledge of reality, we have
arrived at two conclusions which are metaphysical presuppositions of realistic epistemology: (1) Being is the basis of
intelligibility; (2) possible being presupposes actual being.
(1) Being is the basis of intelligibility. As argued above,
the explanation for this principle is found in the reducibility of
all concepts to the concept of being. For a thing must first be
in order to be anything, i.e., any determinate being or kind
of thing. My thinking about a triangle presupposes the existence of a triangle as a conceptual object in my mind; equally
to acknowledge the tree standing in front of my house to be
an elm tree is to acknowledge that it exists as a being of that
kind. That is why we must abstract the intelligible forms from
the things that fall under our senses in order to know them:
" ... for nothing is intelligible except as it is in act." 28 Because
matter resists knowledge (in knowing the concrete particular,
we do not know it as such but know the universal in the particular, e.g., man in Socrates.), the intelligible form of the
sensible thing is in a state of potency (relative non-being) with
regard to its intelligibility. By abstraction the mind frees the
intelligible form or essence from its enmattered state and thereby actualizes its intelligibility. Now to be actual is to be real,
which is to say, to be or exist. What is known must be. Therefore a thing is knowable insofar as it is, insofar as it has
being.
(2) Possible being presupposes a.ctual being. To reiterate,
we can begin with the ever-present reality of ourselves. In
knowing things we implicitly know ourselves as actual and, by
reflecting on our knowing act, we make that knowledge explicit. What I thus know is not simply myself as a. self or
ego but myself as actual, as having being. Here we have an
acceptable occasion for using the cogito: "I think, therefore
28

Maritain,

Q. 14, a. 3.

Degrees of Knowledge,

p. 120, n.3; Thomas Aquinas, 8.'I'. I,

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

139

I am." The actual being that I am is a constant referent in
my capacity to distinguish the possible and the actual. But
more than this, it is always there to remind me of the priority
which the actual enjoys over the merely possible. Where, after
all, could the possible be except in the actual? I entertain the
thought of the possible in the concept, say, of" Flash Gordon,"
but I can do so just because I am actually existent. One might
wish to object that this is to restrict the possible to what is
thought when there are more things that are possible than can
be thought. Such an objection comes to nothing. We can agree
that more things are possible than can be thought (by any
finite mind), but that does not mean that the possible exists by
itself. It takes an actually existing being, a mind, to know the
possible as such, but the possible, including the possible which
remains unknown, is implied and grounded in the actual. The
possible as such exists nowhere by itself. To be sure, a possible being implies other possible beings, but the logically first
possible, which is to say, the possible as such is derived from
an actual being in that it presupposes the latter. The Platonic
snare constantly tempts us to hypostatize the possible, though
the temptation itself affirms the priority of the actual over the
possible. The possible exists nowhere except in the actual as
one of the latter's potencies or implications; and when the mind
grasps something as possible, it renders it explicit by grasping
the possible as such. But in that case, what we have is the
explicit possible, the possible as such, existing in the actual being of the knower. Finally, our own experience testifies to the
priority of the actual over the possible. We know possible being only as a result of our knowledge of actual being. We can
entertain the possibility of a Flash Gordon only because we
have knowledge of actual men, actual heroes, actual manned
flight, etc. And what are mythological beings, such as the unicorn or hydra, but composites of actual animals and people
that their authors have perceived? " ... [S]ince there are
ants, the ant is possible." 29 Thus the possible presupposes the
actual.
29 Maritain,

Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 133-134.

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

This conclusion brings us to the very heart of the problem
of our knowledge of extramental reality and our search for a
criterion to distinguish, in Professor Chisholm's words, "appearances that are true from appearances that are false." 30
Hence it requires the closest scrutiny. The argument leading
to the conclusion may be summarized thus: If being is the
basis of intelligibility and if possible being presupposes actual
being, then actual being is the basis of intelligibility. This
means that without actual being there is not intelligibility; but
there is intelligibility; therefore there must be actual being.
This argument is valid and compelling as far as it goes. But
it goes no further than to establish the priority of actual being over possible being, of things over knowledge, by showing
the dependency of the possible as such on the actual as such.
All it proves is that actual being, besides myself, must exist because there is intelligibility. It does not prove that the things
I perceive as existing outside me are actual beings as opposed
to mere appearances or merely possible beings excogitated by
me. Failure to recognize the limitations of the argument can
lead to Occasionalism or Berkeleyan spiritualism: the actual
existence of only one being besides myself in the universe
would be sufficient; all else could be explained as mere appearances or ideas produced by that being for my benefit.
On the contrary, because things precede thought, we first
know things and only second do we know our knowing them.
We do not know things because we first know concepts and
then search about outside our minds for things that match
them. Rather we have concepts because we know things; the
source of all our concepts is sensible being. For example, at
the moment, I perceive a chair in front of my desk and I know
it to be a real chair, an actual being which exists independently of my knowing it or perceiving it. My certain knowledge
that this chair actually exists independently of me is an intuition. Maritain's words on this point are unsurpassed for getting to the heart of the matter: " If I am asked about this conso Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion, p. 3.

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

141

cept of being, called upon to explain it, I shall say and can
only say-and this is not a definition but a simple designation-that being is 'that which exists or can exist.' And this
designation possesses meaning only because it thus refers to a
primary intuition." 31 The concept of being derives its meaning from actual being, from that which actually exists, and the
latter is known immediately and directly by " a primary intuition." For the criterion of the real (the actual) is the act of
existing, not intelligibility or logical self-identity as the Platonic tradition would have it. 32 Thus a second danger of the
above argument is precisely that-by basing the conclusion,
"Extramental being exists," on intelligibility, it runs the risk
of conflating the two so that, although aiming to establish that
intelligibility presupposes actual being, it ends by making intelligibility the standard of actual being.
A third difficulty with the argument, if pressed, is that it
would in effect attempt to demonstrate what is directly evident to the senses by appealing to what is only indirectly
evident. But this is inefficient, not to say ridiculous. 33 We
know things are real because we directly perceive them as
such; we have a primary intuition of actual being as actual.
The most the argument from intelligibility can accomplish
therefore is to show that the presence of concepts, i.e., mental
entities, in our minds leads to the conclusion that (1) at least
one actual being besides myself exists; and that (2) it leads us
to the threshold of the intuition of being. But it absolutely
cannot lead to the conclusion that the beings I perceive as extramental are in truth so; it cannot provide the criterion for
distinguishing "appearances that are true from appearances
that are false." On the contrary, the reverse is true: my conceptual life presupposes the intuition of being.
But here is the crucial consideration: that concepts presupa1 Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (New York: New American Library,
1962), p. 66.
a2 See Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), pp. 10-12.
ss Thomas Aquinas, In II Phys., lect. 1, #8.

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

pose the intuition of being is not primarily a logical presupposition. It cannot be so because the conceptual and the actual
belong to two entirely different realms. Conceptual being presupposes actual being because the possible presupposes the actual in the sense that once we have the primary intuition of
the real (actual being), we have concepts (of possible beings
or beings of reason). To reiterate: what we know first are
things; what we know second is our knowing. Concepts do not
presuppose actual being in the sense that from the former we
may conclude the existence of the latter. On the contrary, we
have the concept of possible being because we first know actual
being. Thus the presupposition in question is primarily
ontological.
To summarize: Concepts referring to possible being or beings of reason presuppose actual being. Concepts tell us therefore that there are things, existents, outside our minds which
exist independently of us. But concepts themselves do not,
cannot, tell us that a given being is actual as opposed to merely possible. For that we must rely on intuition: actual being
intrudes itself upon us by a direct and immediate confrontation in which we know with certainty that the actually existing thing we are now perceiving actually exists.

*

*

*

I have thus far argued that we know extramental being just
as we know first principles-with certitude. Just as our inability to demonstrate the latter does not make our certitude about
them any the less, so our inability to demonstrate the former
does not lessen our certitude of it. Indeed, because the first
principles are principles of being and of actual being at that,
our certitude of them presupposes our certitude of it. I have
emphasized, however, that this is not to say that extramental
reality can be deduced from a knowledge of first principles,
that is, from possible being. On the contrary, it is the intuition
of actual being which leads us to the discovery of first principles and to all knowledge.
The impossibility of demonstrating extramental being and

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OJ!' CERTITUDE

148

its principles has its ultimate explanation in the transcendentality of being. It is not only because of the invalidity of any
argument which would pass from thought to thing-which is
what any attempt to demonstrate extramental being amounts
to-but also and primarily because being is all there is; what is
outside being is nothing. Because we cannot therefore get outside being, "no one can jump over his own shadow," as Heidegger notes in this regard, 34 there is nothing with which to
demonstrate being. In order to demonstrate being, it would
be necessary to presuppose being, and that is circular reasoning. Other things can be demonstrated or at least defined,
but that is because they are aspects or ways of being rather
than being itself, being in so far as it is being. As such they
presuppose being while seeking to demonstrate ways of being.
Thus demonstration and science, all knowledge and truth, and,
indeed, epistemology itself, are possible because they presuppose being; and they are endeavors for us just because we have
a direct and immediate knowledge of sensible things.

III
To say that the intuition of being is the crucial presupposition of epistemology is to say that epistemology presupposes
metaphysics and thus that metaphysics has primacy over
epistemology. And this, as we have seen, is to say that knowledge presupposes being. In other words, reality, i.e., actual
being or the existent, is the measure of mind, not mind the
measure of reality. This order between mind and reality is
the basis of speculative knowledge and objectivity. To accept
as rational justification only what can be demonstrated or
clearly and distinctly defined is to reverse this natural order,
thereby conferring primacy on epistemology. It is thus to
make being dependent on knowledge and mind the measure
of reality. The locus classicus for this reversal is the Cartesian
methodology.
In demanding an irrefutable argument or clarity and distinctness for every proposition he held to be true-including
34 Heidegger,

An Introduotion to Metaphysios, p. 199.

144

RAYMOND DENNEHY

the existence of extramental reality-Descartes was motivated
by a desire to bring scepticism to its knees. 85 What he employed after all was a methodical doubt; he did not himself,
we have already observed, doubt the existence of extramental
reality. But besides driving a wedge between common sense
knowledge and philosophy-for the proposition that things
exist outside the mind is a spontaneous judgment of common
sense upon which philosophy builds-his determination to hold
no proposition as certain unless it could irrefutably be demonstrated or be apprehended clearly and distinctly subverted the
principle, " Being is the measure of mind," by implicitly making mind the measure of being. Descartes has justly been accused of " angelizing man " 36 by defining him as " a thinking
being." But he is guilty of worse than that. By implicitly embracing the principle, " Mind is the measure of being," he deified man. For things conform only to the mind of God, their
creator; their ontological truth consists in their being what He
has intended them to be. Because God is Being itself (ipsum
esse) and because being is the basis of intelligibility, it is necessary that He be the source and standard of all truth and
thus that all things have their truth in Him.
But, as a creature, man is not the source of his own being;
his essence, i.e., that by which he is what he is, cannot account for his existence; thus he only participates in being. Unlike God, man is not the measure of being; rather being is his
measure and the measure of his knowledge as well. Accordingly the demand that, in order to be rationaily justifiable, all
propositions must be demonstrable or clearly and distinctly apprehended betrays a refusal to submit to being. But such a
refusal violates the principle of contradiction insofar as it
implicitly denies what it must at the same time affirm. For
there is no escaping the transcendentality of being. Knowing
35 Etienne
Gilson, .The Unity of Philosophical Emperienoe (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), pp. 125-127.
as-Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas. Newly transl. & revised by
Joseph W. Evans and Peter O'Reilly (New York: The World Publishing
Company, 1962), pp. 91-92.

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

145

affirms being and thus affirms the transcendentality of being.
Because all knowing presupposes being and because being,
"defined" as that which is or exists, derives its meaning from
a primary intuition of the extramental act of existing, doubt
about or denial of extramental being is equivalent to doubt
about or denial of all knowledge. For, as we have seen, the
first and most certainly known principle is that of contradiction, which follows immediately from the apprehension of being and the latter's opposition to non-being. But being is the
formal object of the intellect; we know all things as ways of
being or in the light of being. Thus scepticism so fundamental
as to demand a demonstration for the extramentality of being
cannot fail to undermine the ontological basis of certitude:
anything might be true if it is possible for something to be
and not be at the same time and in the same respect.
Moreover, the shift from extramental being to mind as the
standard of intelligibility could not help but cast a cloud of
suspicion over metaphysics. The latter has for its formal object of investigation being in so far as it is being. Now being
and its ontological structme are difficult to grasp and even
when grasped are difficult to hold. Being, to be sure, is intelligible in itself, not necessarily to us. The obscurity that being holds for us has a twofold source: First, the beings of our
experience are sensible beings and as such their intelligibility
is immersed in and thus obscured by matter; second, being in
so far as it is being is being freed from the concreteness and
sensuousness of matter; but inhabiting the third degree of abstraction, its pure intelligibility is too much for our intellect
whose material object is the essence of sensible being. Because
clarity is a manifestation of intelligibility, it is a property of
being; being is intelligible in itself; being has clarity in itself.
But by reversing the principle, "Being is the measure of
mind," so that it reads " Mind is the measure of being," intelligibility is separated from its root and consequently withers.
Clarity suffers the same fate. Thus the obsession of the neoPositivists and Linguistic Analysts with the clarification of
philosophical terms represents an unfortunate excess moti-

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

vated by a misconception with regard to the meaning of
of philosophical clarity. Embracing the Cartesian criteria of
"clear and distinct" ideas, 37 they, like their neo-Kantian and
Positivist predecessors, fail to see that intelligibility and clarity
are, first of all, properties of being rather than of mind. The
result is that they clarify philosophical, and especially metaphysical, terms to pieces. Being qua being and the intuition of
being were bound to suffer banishment from the domain of
rational endeavor on the ground that they are intolerably unclear and hence intellectually disrespectable. That is what
comes from making mind the measure of being and hence of
intelligibility. Conversely, when the true order of reality is
acknowledged, the mind submits to being; the philosopher understands that the burden is upon him to attune himself to
being, to cultivate the habitus of understanding whereby he is
enabled to "see" what is. Then he understands that it is not
being that is unintelligible and unclear but rather the weakness
of the human mind which makes being and its principles difficult to grasp.
All of which challenges any position which would ground
certitude psychologically rather than ontologically, ground it
in the knowing subject rather than in being. The error of this
position can be exposed by employing, at the start, a dialectical approach. Consider the contrary of certitude, namely,
doubt. Doubt never comes first. For one thing, it inhabits a
consciousness. I cannot after all doubt without being conscious
of doubting. I doubt the truth of a given proposition, but insofar as that proposition is doubtful to me, it is true and certainly true that I am conscious of doubting it. Thus my
doubt is preceded by certainty. For another thing, I am conscious of my reality as a conscious being. The truth of my being proclaims itself absolutely to me, both in my consciousness of my own being and in my consciousness of other beings.
Moreover, it is impossible to rationally deny truth itself, for to
s1 A strong Cartesian
influence appears in the British Empiricists. See
Raymond Dennehy, Reason and Dignity (Washington, D.C.: University
Press of America, 1981), pp. 35-36.

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

147

say that there is no truth is to utter what one holds to be a
true statement. Even to doubt the existence of truth is to assent to the truth of the proposition " Truth is doubtful." Every
negation implies the affirmation of being since I can know what
is not so only because I first know what is so. I could not, for
example, know that there are no pencils in my desk dra.wer,
upon looking for them there, unless I judged at that particular
time, "This is the drawer with its yellow metal bottom and
sides, its pencil tray, etc." Just as negation has its ground in
affirmation, so all doubt has its ground in certitude. The absoluteness of being lies behind Plato's claim that no matter
how false a statement, it necessarily contains some truth. 88
Descartes failed to see that his" Cogito, ergo sum" does not
refer to a. pure consciousness but rather to a consciousness of
the actual existence of the being who is conscious. He was thus
led to look for certitude in consciousness when, in fact, it, like
doubt, is grounded in being. 89 That being and certitude go
hand in hand becomes clear from a consideration of certitude
itself. To be certain of something is to know beyond all doubt
that it is so. One could say too that " certain " applies equally
to knowing beyond all doubt that something is not so. But
this certitude reduces to the certitude of what is so; for, as
stated above, every negation presupposes an affirmation since
I can know what is not so only because I first know what is so.
Now if to be certain of something is to know that it is so, then
it follows that being is the ground of all certitude because being
is that which is.
Because being is what is first apprehended by the intellect,
at least implicitly insofar as all concepts are reducible to the
concept of being, the intellect immediately judges "Being is "
and then judges " Being is not nothing " (" It is impossible
for a being to be and not be at the same time and in the same
respect") and in positive terms it judges "Being is being"
Sophist, 262e-264b.
reiterate Heidegger's assertion with regard to getting outside being:
"No one can jump over his own shadow." On the matter of the transscendentality of being, see Raeymaeker, pp. 21-29.
88 Plato,
89 To

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

("Every being is what it is"). Because nothing except being
can be known and because we can be certain only of what we
know, it follows that nothing is certain except insofar as it
is being. 40 Thus it is because all things are either being or ways
of being that certitude is grounded in being; for it is absolutely evident and certain that being is being and therefore that
being is not non-being. The transcendentality of being explains why all our scientific and philosophical investigations
begin in certitude: being is all there is and what is outside being is nothing.
To reiterate: Because all things and all intelligibility are
being or ways of being, rational justification does not demand
that all rationally justifiable propositions be demonstrable.
Being cannot be demonstrated; rather it is the source of all
demonstration and intelligibility.

*

*

*

Not only does the refusal to submit to being make mind the
measure of intelligibility and intelligibility the measure of being, it also, as I have argued above, violates the principle of
contradiction insofar as it presupposes being while simultaneously doubting or denying being. And this, we have seen,
means that anything might be true. Man thus finds himself
the source of intelligibility and truth with no wa.y to anchor
truth. Since anything might be true, philosophical relativism
is inevitable. But since the result of relativism is intellectual
anarchy, the effects of which cut to the very heart of morals
and society, an instrumentalist theory of knowledge is
adopted: we have knowledge of a thing to the extent that we
can bend it to our will. Predictive power becomes the standard of truth and with it the deification of man is complete.
The standard of truth-and hence of intelligibility-is human
will: things are intelligible and true to the extent that they
conform to his will.
4o Henri Renard, S.J., .The Philosophy of Being
Publishing Company, 1957). 2nd Edition, p. 107.

(Milwaukee:

The Bruce

THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF CERTITUDE

149

Now instrumentalism merely gives philosophical expression
to the principle "Knowledge is power." And since the standard
of truth for instrumentalism is man's will, what we have, in the
end, is the desire for power rather than for knowledge. 41 But
the desire for power is limitless, especially when extramental
being is no longer acknowledged. As the source and term of
all knowing, being is the regulator of human endeavor, for not
only are our activities hedged in by things but our response
to them is determined by our knowledge of what they are.
Speculative knowledge, which is knowledge for its own sake,
is appropriately named therefore from the Latin speculum,
meaning mirror. For knowledge is of what is. But in so far
as instrumentalism refuses to submit to being, it provides the
philosophical counterpart to the Frankenstein myth and the
rationale for the adulation of technological power which today
dominates the West. Because instrumentalism originates in
the will rather than in the intellect, originates in the desire
for control instead of the desire for knowledge, it is understandable that technology should now ravage nature and culture like some headless giant. Moreover, because the principle,
"Knowledge is power," reduces itself to the desire for power
as an end in itself, it is equally understandable why totalitarian leaders are, as Hannah Arendt observes, obsessed with
the prospect of infallible prediction. 42 Striving for absolute
power, the totalitarian leader succeeds only to the extent that
he makes things over into his own image and likeness. He,
not things, must be the measure of the real. Hence his violent
41 Dennehy, pp. 104 ff. Thus it is the absence of a realist epistemology
which forces neo-Positivists into a radical instrumentalism where the criterion of truth is the power of successful prediction. Failing to acknowledge
being and the intuition of being as the first principle of all knowledge, this
criterion of truth lacks an anchor so that what is left is a modern scientific
version of Sisyphus: successful prediction proves the truth of a scientific
theory because it leads to more successful prediction . . . ad infinitum. See
my review of W. H. Newton-Smith's The Rationality of Science in The
Thomist 48, 3, July, 1984, pp. 478-483.
42 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
(New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 105.

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RAYMOND DENNEHY

manipulation of people and things ensures their conformity to
his will. The success of the aspiring totalitarian deputy accordingly depends on his ability to dissolve immediately all
statements of fact issued from on high into commands: when
he is told that Moscow has the only underground railway in
the world, he instantly interprets that as a command to destroy all other underground railways. 44
Being is all there is and what is outside being is nothing.
Aurea. dicta!
RAYMOND DENNEHY

University of San Francisco
San Francisco, California

ta Origilts of Totalitarianism, p. 3/iO.

THE LOGIC OF MODERNITY:
A Review Discussion*

P

ROFESSOR GALGAN has written a history of modern
philosophy. His specific intent and achievement is the
telling of a story, a story about that period or epoch of
philosophy which defines itself by both following on and setting itself against both ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy (and theology) . Philosophy becomes ancient or old
only when there is a sense of newness which sets itself up in
difference to what until then was simply philosophy, philosophy tout court, not ancient or old philosophy. And in turn
when philosophy sets itself up as new in difference to that
first newness, we call the newly new philosophy modern; and
the old new philosophy, the philosophy between the old and
the newly new, we call the in-between philosophy or middle
philosophy or medieval philosophy (and theology).
Professor Galgan tells a story. A story in relation to whatever it is a story about, a story in relation to its world, does
two things: first, it selects; it limits and trims by selecting;
second, it organizes; it tightens the relations among the elements it selects. As Aristotle says in talking about the plot and
the action which the plot imitates, the plot or story has a
beginning and an end and the elements in the plot or story
follow each other with a degree of necessity which is lacking
in the imitated actions themselves. The story itself therefore
contrasts both with everything that happened and with one
thing happening merely after another and not because of another.
*Gerald J. Galgan, The Logia of Modernity
versity Press, 1982). Pp. xv
475. $42.50.

+

151

(New York: New York Uni·

152

·rHOMAS PRU.FER

I wish to raise several questions about Professor Galgan's
book by raising questions, first, about what went before the
beginning and what comes after the end of the story he tells
and, second, about the principles which he uses to organize or
to pattern the events or moments in "the logic of modernity"
which his story displays.
Third, I wish to ask to what extent the point of view from
which Professor Galgan tells the story is identified with the
point or points of view he tells about in the story and to what
extent Professor Galgan, as teller of the story, takes a different
point of view over against the point or points of view he tells
about in the story.
A story introduces artificial cuts which, by dividing from
what went before and from what comes after, make a beginning and an end. Consider a bit of dialogue from Mozart's
The Magic Flute:
PAMINA:
PAPAGENO:

So you know my good and gentle mother?
If you are the daughter of the Queen of the Night,

PAMINA:
PAPAGENO:

Oh, I am!
I shall soon see by comparing you with this picture.
Eyes brown: yes, brown.
Lips red: yes, red.
Hair blond: yes, blond.
Everything fits, except the hands and feet. According to this painting, you shouldn't have any
hands or feet.

yes.

Although the representation does not represent the hands and
feet of the lady, we know that the represented lady nevertheless has hands and feet. Even though a story makes cuts in
the action by beginning and ending, the story will not abstain
completely from telling about what went before the beginning
and what comes after the end; there will be spillover. I wish
to raise questions about the Greek philosophy and the Christian theology which precede the beginning of Professor Galgan's story but which nevertheless get into that story in a
very important way. And I wish to raise a question about

THE LOGIC OF MODERNITY

158

what follows the end of the story but nevertheless gets into
the story.
Briefly, those questions are these: first, is the view of Greek
philosophy truncated? In discussing this question I wish to
recall Epicurus. Second, is the view of Christian theological
doctrines distorted? In discussing this question I wish to recall
the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity, creation, and the Incarnation. Third, is the view of post-modern philosophy-cumtheology merely conjectural, that is, is the anticipation of a
"rough beast, its hour come at last, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born" a mere conjecture based on the truncation
of Greek philosophy and the distortion of Christian theology?
In discussing this question I wish to recall Heidegger. To recapitulate: against truncation, Epicurus; against distortion,
the orthodox theology of the Trinity, creation, the Incarnation; against mere conjecture based on truncation and distortion, Heidegger.
Before I make these three points, let me go back to the
tightening of the relations among the elements in the plot or
story. It seems to me that Professor Galgan tells the story of
modernity by means of the organizing principle of unmasking.
Masking implies a duality which hides itself by presenting itself as a unity. In Professor Galgan's terms: first, the claim to
know the natural is unmasked as hiding the gap between inner
and outer; second, ideological superstructure hides philosophical substructure and philosophical substructure hides ideological superstructure; looking at either one, we unmask when we
see the other one which at first sight was hidden; third, inheritance or tradition is rejected, but that rejection is unmasked as being fed by a continuing but subterranean acceptance; and it is accepted, but that acceptance is unmasked as
being a distortion of the original, and that distortion is a kind
of rejection.
This brings us back to the issue of Greek philosophy and
Christian theology. Professor Galgan's book begins by speaking of" the ancient' mythos'" and" the medieval' mythos' ".
Greek philosophy simply or tout court is presented as teaching

154

THOMAS PRUFER

a finite cosmos of necessary and eternal kinds with chance and
choice confined to the sublunary center and man finding his
happiness in contemplation of kinds and of contemplation itself. But Greek is not merely Aristotelian. Epicurus, for instance, is Greek, but he teaches infinite atoms and void without heterogeneity and hierarchy, the chance origin of cosmos
and kinds, and happiness in the well-being of non-contemplative pleasure.
After Greek philosophy, what of Christian theology?
In the orthodox theology of the Trinity the procession of
the Son or Word from the Father and of the Spirit from the
Father and the Son or Word is not a loss recouped by a return
to the origin enriched by the inclusion of the recouped loss;
Hegel to the contrary, Aufhebung or uplift to the contrary,
otherness is not necessarily change, loss, or contradiction.
In the orthodox theology of creation the plenitude of God is
not filled out, not enriched or augmented or complemented by
creatures or by the creating of creatures; the Creator does not
change or lose or contradict Himself in the being of creatures
or in letting be the being of creatures. Because creatures are
other than God, it does not follow that they are God othering
Himself. Ex nihilo is not ex Deo.
In the orthodox theology of the Incarnation, there is no
blending or merging or confusion of divinity with humanity;
Christ is not like the teacher of Achilles, Chiron, the centaur,
half man and therefore not wholly human, half horse and
therefore not wholly equine; Christ is wholly divine, wholly
human, not in a confusion of two natures but in the oneness
of person of the Son, other to the Father without change or
loss or contradiction, the Word in whom creatures are created
without change or loss or contradiction and redeemed without
blending or merging or confusion of divine with human.
And what comes after the end?
Heidegger has given us a reading of Greek philosophy, of the
core-words of Greek philosophy: logos, physis or nature, nous
or ousia or mind, being, a reading which is not merely Aristo-

THE LOGIC OF MODERNITY

155

telian, and he has given us a reading of world-technology which
sees its roots not in secularized Christian theology but in implicaitions of Greek philosophy itself. Heidegger is postmodern, he comes after the end of Professor Galgan's story. At
the end of his story, Professor Galgan conjectures about what
seems to me to be a new revelation or unmasking which would
throw off sacramental hiddenness. I do not know whether Professor Galgan speaks here in his own voice or whether he speaks
from the point of view of the Hegelian, who, as the completion
of modernity, also speaks of what comes after the end. Perhaps
for Professor Galgan his own voice and the voice of the end of
modernity speaking of what is on the other side of the cut
which marks the end of modernity are one and the same voice.
For myself, I prefer to join what is after the end with what
is before the beginning. Heidegger has taught us an interplay
of hiddenness and manifestation which is beyond the dialectic
or push-pull of inner and outer, beyond the dialectic or pushpull of ideological superstructure and philosophical substructure, beyond the dialectic or push-pull of acceptance and rejection of inheritance or tradition: he has taught us that the
otherness of hiddenness and truth to each other is not an otherness of loss or contradiction: they rest in each other; they are
not violently wrested from each other. Perhaps Heidegger
points a way both to a rediscovery of Greek philosophy and to
a rediscovery of Christian theology, to a rediscovery of what
has been before the beginning and will be after the end of
modernity, whose story Professor Galgan tells so well.
I would like to end with some remarks about a formulation
at the end of Professor Galgan's book. He speaks of the coming into un-hiddenness of the hidden condition of technology, a
coming into un-hiddenness which intimates the possibility of
a new presencing of God and which opens the possibility of
prayer to a more-than-natural divine (pp. 397-398).
The word "nature" means, among other ways, hy way of
contrast, or at least of difference, to what is in our power to
bring to be by choice and construction. Technology has shifted
the place where the dividing line which marks the difference is

156

THOMAS PRUFER

drawn, but it has not done away with the difference itself.
(Not even Nietzsche makes sense of doing a.way with the difference between nature and power.) Now if by" a more-thannatural divine" we mean the freedom-to-choose and the powerto-make of the infinite God, creator of created natures, we
should not forget that the meaning of " natural " in the phrase
"more-than-natural" is embedded in a deeper or overarching
sense of "nature "-the nature which is God himself, who is
not created, not subject to freedom and power, neither to his
own nor to ours. Uncreated nature as necessity and eternity,
as intelligibility and self-sufficiency suffuses the generosity and
the power in the light of which created natures are conditioned
and therefore can appear to us as malleable by our power.
The "logic of modernity " can try to throw out the nature
of Greek philosophy and the uncreated nature and the created
natures of Christian theology, but nature will nevertheless
come back. Instead, it will never ha.ve been thrown out, except
for a logic which, like the logos of the opponent in Aristotle's
Metaphysics, IV iv, has undermined its own conditions.
A giver who lacks self-sufficiency and therefore gains for
himself and thus changes by giving a gift to another does not
give with a generosity unmixed with something other than
generosity, namely, a change toward self-completion. And because a gift is given freely and not necessarily it does not follow that the giving is infected with absurdity.
Just as for Aristotle the self-destruction of the opponent's
logos manifests the self-manifestation of the necessity of the
true logos (the self-manifestation of this necessity is not
wrested from the self-destruction of the opponent's logos), so
the self-destruction of Hegel's logos, the culmination of "the
logic of modernity," manifests the self-manifestation of the
plenitude of the logos of Christian theology (the self-manifestation of this plenitude is not wrested from the self-destruction
of Hegel's logos). Although the corruption of the best is worst,
the false can always become an occasion for manifesting the
self-manifestation of the true, which in its necessity and pleni-

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'l'HE LOGIC OF MODERNITY

tude shows up the false as false, as fortuitous and lacking. But
the false logos is not that obscurity out of which the true logos
is manifest and in which it rests.
This, I think, is what Professor Galgan's book shows.
THOMAS PRUFER

The School of Philosophy
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.O.

BOOK REVIEWS
Opera Omnia V: ldiota de sapientia; ldiota de mente; ldiota de staticis
experimentis. By NICHOLAS OF CusA. Edited by Renate Steiger after
Ludwig Baur except for the last work, which is edited by Ludwig
Baur. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983. Pp. 315. DM 298.
Nicholas of Cusa was at the height of his creative powers when he
composed the three works presented here in splendid critical edition. The
ldiota texts were all written between July 1 and September 13, 1450.
Although the works themselves betray their hasty composition, that they
were written at all is remarkable evidence of their author's genius and
indefatigability.
Nicholas had been consecrated Bishop of Brixen only
a little over three months before the first section of the ldiota de sapientia
was completed. His appointment to that see plunged him into interminable controversy with Archduke Sigismund of the Tyrol which was bitter
enough to involve siege and weapons. As a matter of fact, there was
scarcely a time in Nicholas's life when he was not embroiled in political
strife, yet his works give the impression that their author was a peaceful
contemplative surrounded only by books and thinkers.
Although Nicholas had used the dialogue form for several earlier
treatises, the ldiota texts show signs of a more decided identification with
the humanist mode. So it is not surprising that the developments which
these treatises represent should be cast in the form of an extended dialogue between the Idiot, mouthpiece for Cusanus, the Philosopher, representative of the scholastic tradition, and the Orator, spokesman for the
new learning. Cusanus had just been named cardinal and bishop by
Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentucelli), perhaps the most humanistically inclined of all the Renaissance popes and one who was particularly concerned to appropriate the new learning and its spirit for the Church. The
new German cardinal could not identify himself completely with the
humanist movement, especially with its emphasis on literary elegance.
But of much else that the new movement represented he was a sympathetic
and even active supporter. The ldiota dialogues are more extended, lively,
and realistic than are the earlier Cusan dialogue treatises. They address
in a direct and often confrontational manner the central issue of the age,
namely, the true nature and significance of human knowledge.
The Idiot is the wise, though unschooled, layman who came by his insight and penetrating knowledge not by reading books or engaging in
scholastic disputations but by experience, by studying only that book writ-

158

BOOK REVIEWS

159

ten by the finger of God, the book of nature. The Orator, on the other
hand, whose school-imparted knowledge came from auctoritates, is like a
horse who was once free but now is led about and must eat the strange
and unnatural food that others offer it. True wisdom, Cusanus (the
Idiot) says, should be sought in the marketplace among the weights and
measures of the shopkeepers and in the workshops of the artisans and
craftsmen. This, of course, is not where the learned humanists of
Nicholas's acquaintance searched for wisdom. The Idiota dialogues thus
take a position on knowledge and learning which is both anti-scholastic
and, at the same time, critical of the humanist obsession with literary
elegance. With the humanist movement he shared the conviction that
learning and wisdom were fundamental to religious reform. He knew
from experience, however, that not only were books very unreliable as
guides to truth, the very words to be found in them were the products
of the human mind, its artifacts. The search for wisdom must then be
concentrated on the operations of the mind as it interacts with the world
of nature.
These treatises place a great emphasis on the processes of weighing,
measuring, and counting. The words experientia, experimentaliter, experimentum, and experiri occur with obvious and unusual frequency in these
three texts-more frequently than indicated in this volume's index verborum, which designedly limits itself to selected occurrences. In his fascinating introductory appendix, Raymond Klibansky suggests that the
term " experimental science " entered the English language because of the
influence of Nicholas of Cusa's ldiota de staticis experimentis. He cites
John Dee's preface to the English translation of Euclid's Elements:
"And because it [mathematical science] proceedeth by Experiences, and
searcheth forth the causes of Conclusions, by Experiences: and also
putteth the Conclusions themselues in Experience, it is named of some
Scientia Experimentalis, the Ewperimentall Science. Nicolaus Cusanus
termeth it so, in hys Ewperimentes Statikall .•• " (p. lxii).

This emphasis on experience in a set of treatises so passionately dedicated to that " wisdom which dwells on high" illustrates both the precocity and the comprehensiveness characterizing the Cusan religious reconstruction effort.
Some indication of thematic similarity between Nicholas and the humanist movement, at least as that movement was perceived by religious writers
of the Rhineland shortly after the death of Cusanus, may be gathered
from the fascinating fact that for several centuries after its composition
the first part of the Idiota de sapientia was received as one of the dialogues De vera sapientia of Francesco Petrarca. In a second appendix to
our volume, Klibansky updates and analyzes the data available on the
clever forgery which deceived so many learned men for so long. His
conjecture that the forgery was based upon a codex lacking the author's

160

BOOK REVIEWS

name-such texts are known-to which was then appended Dialogue 12
"De sapientia" from Petrarca's De remediis utriusque f ortunae, is surely a plausible one. The forger changed the figures Gaudium and Ratio
into Cusanus's Idiota and Orator and then a.dded a longer passage (his
with many citations from classical and Christian authors on
own
self-knowledge and the humility which ought to result from it. The forger
could thus have been a promoter of the " modern devotion " then influencing so many clerics and religious in the Low Countries. Klibansky regrettably fails to cite the excellent study by Giovanni Santinello, "Nikolaus von Kues und Petrarca," Mitteilungen und Beitrage der OusanusGesellschaft 4 :174-197, which does contribute original insight and interpretation as well as manuscript documentation.
Scholars will doubtless find the source apparatus and the apparatus
of parallels to be the most valuable features of this latest addition to the
Heidelberg Academy's Cusanus project. This assessment, unfortunately,
does not apply to the Idiota de staticis experimentis, which is merely reprinted from Ludwig Baur's earlier edition. A spot comparison of the
older version with the edition of Steiger shows the dramatic improvement
made in this project's standards. Where Baur confined himself to a basic
apparatus criticus, the more recent work offers the reader a wealth of citations which frequently include lengthy quotations from the texts cited, a
benefit too obvious to need comment. As the Heidelberg project progresses, the source and parallel apparatuses of the successive volumes
present in truly graphic form the unity of Cusanus's intellectual world.
Our volume, for example, includes parallels from Nicholas's sermons,
sometimes quotations from them as well, which demonstrate the importance of that material to an overall assessment of his thought. Too often,
studies dealing with Nicholas all but ignore this substantial body of material, witness, for example, the recent studies by Jasper Hopkins and by
Pauline Watts. These foster the erroneous impression that Nicholas of
Cusa was a philosopher after the modern style, rather than a religious
reformer who needed to rethink his heritage.
It just is not possible to overstate the scholarly quality or to overestimate the usefulness of this new edition. Its 70 pages of indices offer
prima facie evidence that this is a tool of indispensable utility to anyone working in the field of late medieval Christian thought or religious
history. Of course, the addition of source and parallel apparatuses to the
Baur text of the Idiota de staticis experimentis would have given us a
volume of more uniform value. That reservation aside, we can have nothing but admiration for the cooperative enterprise which produced this
fine volume.
JAYES E. BIECHLER

La Salle University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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161

From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development
of Modern Philosophy. By Loms E. LOEB. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981. Pp. 382. $24.50.
When someone denies old and cherished assumptions, especially if we
comfortably lean on them and never seriously question them, we are likely to be dise-0ncerted rather than refreshed and to reach for a quick destructive retort rather than reconsider our assumptions. In From Descartes to Hitme Louis E. Loeb denies three assumptions which for many
of us are of just that sort. He gathers them together as constituents of
what he calls "The Standard Theory": (1) the most important modern
philosophers before Kant are six in number: Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz; Locke, Berkeley, and Hume; (2) these philosophers fall into
two groups-the Continental Rationalists and the British Empiricists (as
just listed, with the semicolon representing the English Channel); and
(3) within each group a dialectical process occurred by which rationalism
and empiricism became more rigorous and consistent. Loeb, on the contrary, (1) sees Malebranche as more important than Spinoza; (2) regards the rationalist-empiricist distinction as inapposite, proposing in its
place a distinction between "Continental Metaphysicians" (among whom
Berkeley is listed despite his British origins) and its enemies, with Hume
as the principal enemy; and (3) cannot find the sort of dialectical development which the proponents of the standard theory purport to descry.
The three components of the standard theory are obviously of unequal
importance. The first, concerning the "big six" of the period, is least important and receives least attention. Loeb's dissent seems to be limited to
proposing Malebranche as more important than Spinoza, and he makes
a mere beginning on the difficulties involved in measuring philosophic
importance. (Moreover, he still devotes one of his eight chapters to
Spinoza, a chapter that is only slightly shorter than the chapter on Malebranche.)
The other two components of the standard theory are plainly interlocked: namely, the division into empiricists and rationalists and the dialectical development supposed to have taken place from Locke through
Berkeley to Hume and from Descartes to Spinoza and Leibniz. The heart
of Loeb's case against the standard theory, however, is the alleged superiority of a category of continental metaphysicians over the conventional
category of continental rationalists. Let us concentrate on this.
Loeb's new category contrasts with the one for which it is (roughly) a
replacement in that it is concerned with ontology where the old one is

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epistemological. Loeb accords primary importance to doctrines on substance and causality-especially causality-and ties his continental metaphysicians together as deniers of causal relations (taking "causal" in the
modern manner as meaning efficient-causal} : Descartes denies that the
existence of mind depends causally upon the existence of the body;
Spinoza denies that modes of distinct attributes can interact; Malebranche
denies that there are any causes other than God; Berkeley restricts
causality to volitions; Leibniz denies that monads can act upon each
other. These philosophers, Loeb maintains, are only loosely linked and
exhibit little logical development in their temporal sequence. But their
foes are even less a family, and receive scant notice, though Hume does
get some ten pages in the final section of the final chapter ("Hume's
Attack on Continental Metaphysics").
Do we see the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(prior to Kant) more truly, more penetratingly, if we adopt Loeb's division Y (Loeb concedes that his dichotomy is pedagogically inferior and
makes things messier; but, if things are messy, we of course ought to be
honest about it.) Needless to say, Loeb's interpretation of the history of
philosophy from Descartes to Hume should be opposed to a sophisticated
rather than simplistic version of the standard theory, and Loeb himself
seeks to avoid setting up a straw adversary that can be easily knocked
down. One certainly does not want to deny the rationalistic elements in
the empiricists (in Locke's conception of ethics, for instance) or the empiricist elements in the rationalists. Nor would one want to ignore the
sometimes rather than important intellectual intercourse between continental and British philosophars (e.g., Malebranche and Berkeley). When
the needed distinctions and qualifications are made, however, I remain
convinced that the standard theory is sound, and I think that it is preferable to Loeb's.
I find the epistemological approach more illuminating than the metaphysical. The doctrines concerning causality are themselves in large degree consequences of noetic principles. It is the rationalists' practice of
measuring reality by concepts severed from sensory experience that destroys the possibility of any understanding of how one thing can act
upon another; and Hume, denying, not the possibility of one thing acting on another, but our capacity to have knowledge of such a happening,
bases his account of causality on his theory of distinct perceptions.
As for putting Berkeley with the " Continental Metaphysicians,'' his
empiricist (not to say anti-metaphysical) intentions are too patent, and
manifested too ubiquitously, to allow us to call him a " Continental Metaphysician." Open his philosophical works at random a few times, and
then ask yourself: Is this a British empiricist or a " Continental" metaphysician 7

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168

Certainly, a good case can be made for the proposition that the modern
revolution in philosophy resulted in no small degree from the changed
view of the cosmos wrought by Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, Galileo,
and others, culminating in a mechanistic world devoid of quality and
purpose. The starting point, thus, may have pertained more to ontology
than to noetics. But epistemology rather than ontology (or natural
philosophy) might still have been the primary base of operations for the
philosophers from Descartes to Hume. Indeed, the very agreement upon
the mechanical character of the world among the intelligentsia of the
early seventeenth century led to the problem of how to reground human
knowing after immediate knowledge of the external world had come to
be seen as impossible, and here the initial choice was between (1) turning to putative revelatory ("innate") ideas in the mind-rationalism and
(2) making the best of sensory and reflective data as all that we haveempiricism.
Finally, even if we have misgivings about the argument just offered
(and left undeveloped out of concern for keeping this review decently
short), the empiricist-rationalist division might still be more significant
for us than the alternative division advocated by Loeb. If so, then, after
we have given due acknowledgment to other ways of coming at preKantian modern philosophy, we could still legitimately follow the good
old " standard" division.
Nonetheless, it must be said that Loeb presents his case well. His work
deserves to be carefully considered and has the very real merit that it
calls us to a healthy reexamination of our entrenched suppositions-a
better response than grumpily and peremptorily rejecting proposals that
threaten our mental inertia.
NORMAN E. FENTON, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.O.

Realism and Truth. By MICHAEL DEVITT. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. ix + 250. $25.00.
Causal Realism: An Essay on Philosophical Method and the Foundations
of Knowledge. By JOHN C. CAHALAN. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985. Pp. x + 503. $19.25 (paper); $36.50
(hardbound).

Converging views in philosophy-where members of distinct and historically opposed traditions begin to find themselves more and more in
mutual agreement-are as time-honored as philosophy itself. In the

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eighteenth century, empiricism and rationalism crept closer together as
English and French thought found rapprochement. In the nineteenth
century, idealism and scholasticism gave birth to the phenomenological
movement which inaugurated the twentieth. So too scholastic realism and
analytical empiricism begin to find more cause for common vision as the
one polishes its lenses and the other casts away its blinders. Both Realism
and Truth and Causal Realism argue for a full-blooded common sense
realism and a return from the interstel:ar space of logical constructionism, the first from the analytic, the second from the scholastic perspective. Both books argue for a correspondence theory of truth. But the
approaches are so different that the mutual exchange of advantages is far
from ready to begin.
In Realism and Truth the author defends two particular theories: A.
Truth by correspondence: that sentences of a given type are true or false
in virtue of their structure, the objective referential relations between
their parts and reality, and the objective nature of that reality; B.
Realism: that tokens of the most current common-sense, and scientific,
physical types objectively exist independently of the mental. Central
to the author's case is the logical independence of both A and B, an independence not at all surprising. For clearly an idealist, a realist, a Kantian, and a pragmatist can all assent to A; each will understand objectivity after his fashion. Nor need a realist embrace B; for commitment
to the entities of common sense and current science is compatible with a
Tarskian theory of truth in which semantic satisfaction is analytically
more primitive than referential correspondence. The real heart of the
of A
book and its most notable achievement is the sustained
and B to various contemporary ontologies. And here the very thorough
treatment given current anti-realistic and anti-correspondence programs is
enough to recommend the book. But caution, too, is needed. Many will
regard the thesis expressed in A as arbitrary and that proposed in B
as begging the important question whether joint acceptance of common
sense and scientific worlds can be made without equivocation in the attribution of existence. Others will see in A and B clever moves which
secure results that appear verbally shocking but, upon careful analysis,
come to seem bland. Occasionally the stipulations go too far. For the
author to maintain that foundationalism entails some form of anti-realism
(cf. pp. 51-2; 54-59; 227) he must so characterise the foundationalist
position that he excludes the work of professed foundational realists like
Bergmann, Chisholm, Heidelberger, and Sosa. Otherwise the scholarship
is usually careful, but never so persuasive as to make one fear that opponents like Quine, Putnam, or Dummett are ever likely to convert.
Though controversial, the book is conscientious and well written.
Neither so conscientious nor so well written is Causal Realism. Like

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165

many contemporary realists of his background, the author traces antimetaphysical scepticism to Hume. But it is doubtful that he has understood Hume's position on knowledge of metaphysical necessities. He attributes to Hume (pp. 8; 275-277; 283-285; 310-315) a thesis far too
simplistic: that since an efficient cause and its conjoined effect are not
identical, it cannot be a contradiction to deny the existence of either while
affirming the existence of the other; neither, then, can we infer a cause
from the existence of a given thing. This reading is a mistake. Many
existential inferences between non-identicals are allowed by Hume, and
anyone familiar with the Treatise knows them-the inference from the
existence of material wholes to the existence of their proper parts, the
inference from the existence of ideas and impressions to the existence of
their phenomenal contents. The real point of Hume's critique of efficient
causality is more searching, worthier of consideration, and rests on the
distinction between those propositions which can be reworded as analytic
and those which cannot. Although Hume does indeed speak at length
about the non-identity of cause and effect, his point is that the causeeffect connection, as an example of a necessity known by properly metaphysical cognition, cannot be expressed by a purely analytic proposition
and cannot be done justice by a purely contingent one. How, then, are we
to account for it? Three strategies are possible: to follow Hume's version
of empiricism and reject all hope of an account (scepticism) ; to recognize a third class of propositions, the synthetic necessities, and then
justify such a recognition (Kant among the critical philosophers, Reid
among the Scottish Realists) ; to adopt the scholastic tradition and reconsider fundamental logical doctrines so as to give true causal propositions the status of logical necessity and to ground knowledge of them in
a properly metaphysical mode of cognition (Aquinas, Cajetan, John of
St. Thomas, and the author).
The author's heart is ever in the right place. Yes, we surely can do better than Hume thinks. Yes, the scholastic doctrines of logic and scientific
method deserve better notice than the mainstream gives them. Yes, the
epistemological obsession needs some relaxation. But the author's efforts
to revive a creditable alternative are wanting in clarity and skill, they
are tendentious in formulation, and they are often unappreciative and
smug when confronted by the merits of rivals. Nor does he always fare
well with his own scholastic tradition. After some twenty pages on logical modalities and the Ontological Argument (pp. 206-225), he credits
Cajetan with insights which have led him to reject Anselm's proofs both
in the original versions and in contemporary reconstructions; but then
he accepts Plantinga's thesis that the possibility of a most perfect being
entails its existence-a move inconsistent with a more careful reading of
what he has taken from Cajetan. He then observes that "atheists do

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not deny the existence of God as a mere contingent fact; they deny the
possibility of God's existence "(p. 214). I fear I am acquainted with
atheists who do admit the possibility of God's existence but reject
Plantinga's thesis. And in any case, why does the author not at this point
move to the obvious: Leibniz's celebrated attempt to demonstrate the
antecedent of the Plantinga thesis-that a most perfect being is possible?
If Leibniz's argument is sound, then the author, by his own acceptance
of Plantinga, cannot maintain a non-.Anselmian position on the demonstrability of the existence of God. Yet nothing is said one way or the
other beyond the implausibility generally ascribed to atheists.
The reader in search of a scholastic-style treatment of the questions
discussed in this book would do better to return to the original sources
or, failing this, to Cardinal Mercier's Scholastic Manual; though dated,
Mercier's work is far more knowledgeable, penetrating, and fair to the
opposition than is Causal Realism. Apart from occasional sections the
book seems less a finished work than a first experiment in method.
More fundamentally at issue is the degree to which the two books here
considered actually manifest any convergence of the old realism and the
new. The reviewer believes that Devitt-and those in his tradition-will
accept the first alternative to Hume and account for causal necessity in
terms of synthetic a priori propositions, even if they do not ground such
necessity or knowledge of it in Kantian conditions for the possibility of
experience. By contrast, Cahalan and those sympathetic to his outlook
will reject both Humean scepticism and synthetic necessities, preferring
an account of necessity in terms of real essences and of its metaphysical
cognition in terms of first propositiones per se nota. But can these two
views ever really meet? It is unclear how. Devitt's presuppositions include the body of contemporary logistic and the analytic/synthetic distinction of the early modern period. Cahalan's include the body of .Aristotelian material and formal logic where the analytic/synthetic distinction as conceived today does not exist and has no structural counterpart.
Until this gulf is bridged, it would be unwise to hope that the analytical
realists and the scholastic realists can agree on much more than A and B.
NICHOLAS INGHAM,

Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

O.P.

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167

Religwus Belief and Religious Skepticism. By GARY GUTTING, Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. Pp. 192. $15.95
(cloth); $9.95 (paper).

This small but weighty volume consists of two parts. In the first the
author argues that religious beliefs need justification, that the autonomy
of religious language-games is not enough to protect them from justificatory demands, and that philosophers have yet to show that religious claims
are ' properly basic ' or beyond the reach of evidence. In the second he
first considers a cumulative evidential case for theism and then argues
that the belief in God can best be grounded in appeals to experience.
Both parts contain a number of very fine points, but also, in my opinion,
some weaknesses.
Gutting begins by noting that the wide disagreement in religious matters creates a prima facie demand for believers to justify their claims, but
he pauses to consider the Wittgensteinian point that believers and nonbelievers do not share a common understanding of the claims at issue.
He grants this point but refines it, saying that nonbelievers can perfectly well understand the moves in a religious language-game and still lack
an understanding of the transitions (a term borrowed from Wilfrid
Sellars) into and out of the game. One learns transitions into a religious
language-game in connection with religious experiences, so that one cannot have certain concepts without the accompanying experiences. Here
it is hard to see how one can lack certain religious concepts and still be
said to understand all the moves in a language-game. Yet, this point
aside, Gutting argues that nonbelievers can understand enough to question not only the consistency of the ' game' but also the veridicality of
the underlying experiences.
He then considers the claim-also attributed to Wittgenstein-that
religious beliefs cannot be justified because they belong to the framework
of basic propositions which we rely on in justifying other claims. He accepts the idea that some propositions must be basic in this sense, and he
seems to accept the idea that these basic propositions are rooted in the
language user's practice. But he does not accept the conclusion that religious beliefs are basic; for there may well be other more fundamental
propositions in terms of which religious claims stand to be justified. For
reasons which are unclear, he thinks that a detailed account of religious
language is required to settle the question of just how basic religious assertions are. Yet the question of whether they are more basic than other
propositions would seem to require a detailed analysis of these other
claims as well-all of which makes one wonder what exactly he means by
a' detailed' account.

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BOOK UVIEWS

He does give one example of a detailed account-David Burrell's exposition of St. Thomas Aquinas's views (Exercises in Religious Understanding )-but the question of how 'basic' religious claims are gets lost
in a welter of other complications. Burrell's discussion of Aquinas is
supposed to be supportive of a Wittgensteinian treatment of religious belief because of Aquinas's claim that God cannot be described. Presumably, a God that cannot be described cannot be the object of justification
either. Yet God-talk obviously must have some point, and once that point
is explained we are back to the question of justification. Are religious
claims about God justifiable or are they not f According to Burrell,
Aquinas's famous five ways of proving God's existence are not proofs so
much as attempts to show the explanatory power of the God hypothesis.
Indeed, the God hypothesis is open to the same kind of justification as
any metaphysical claim; it stands or falls with its explanatory power,
fruitfulness, scope, comprehensiveness, etc. This, however, is plainly
incompatible with the claim that religious beliefs are groundless, and so
Gutting concludes that religious beliefs require justification, just as
Aquinas thought. But the connection between this discussion and Wittgenstein's treatment of religion is so remi;>te that Gutting's procedure
amounts to little more than stating Aquinas's views (or Burrell's account
of them) and then announcing that he prefers them.
More surprising, Gutting, having discussed Aquinas at length denies
that this strategy of justification will work. The fact that Aquinas tried
to justify the proposition that God exists shows only that justification is
appropriate, not that it has been accomplished. Judged by the criteria of
explanatory power, scope, fruitfulness, accuracy, and simplicity, theism
turns out to he no more probable than naturalism. This point is developed in chapter 4 through a discussion of Thomas Kuhn, Basil Mitchell,
Ian Barbour, and Richard Swinburne.
In the previous chapter he dispenses with Alvin Plantinga's argument
that believer's have a right to their beliefs even without the justification
that such beliefs call for. Such a position might be defended by appealing to a 'principle of methodological conservatism '-i.e., to a principle
which says that the mere fact that one believes p, in the absence of other
reasons, gives one adequate grounds for p. At most, however, the fact
that one believes p can only justify the act of believing p and not p itself. Such a revised principle makes some sense, since the act of maintaining a belief can be an important factor in the search for truth. A
free-market competition of strongly held ideas may well promote the discovery of true beliefs. Yet any appeal along these lines can justify only
interim assent to religious beliefs, or provisional endorsement designed to
further inquiry, not the decisive assent which religious belief requires.
This last point is an important one, for if it were not for Gutting's
distinction between interim and decisive assent religious claims might be

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169

justified simply by countering objections and by noting that religious
beliefs are in fact held. The necessity of holding some beliefs for the
furthering of inquiry would be justification enough. But then he would
not be forced to consider the evidence provided by religious experience,
which is the culmination of the book. The trouble is that the distinction
between interim and decisive assent may be empty when applied to religious claims. Interim assent, again, is provisional maintenance of a belief, based on the hope of discovering truth through further inquiry. Decisive assent is given when one is satisfied that the inquiry has been conclusive. But it is not at all clear that the truth of religious beliefs can
be discovered, that they can be the object of common inquiries, or that
some day we will all know the truth of religious matters. Thus, it may be
pointless to defend interim assent to religious beliefs as a means of discovering religious truth. That assumes that religious beliefs are hypotheses which stand to be confirmed or disconfirmed by independently
gathered evidence-and they may not be hypotheses at all.
In any case, Gutting wants to leave no alternative to justifying religious beliefs through appeals to religious experience. He has in mind
recurrent perceptual, non-sensory experiences of a good and powerful
being who is concerned for us. Obviously the reliability of such experiences must be checked, but this is by no means impossible. Such experiences recur, other people have them, and they enable the one who has
them to lead a morally better life. No doubt it is hard to see how God
could reveal himself in experience as, say, the creator of the world; but
Gutting argues that there is no telling what experience of God might reveal, especially since the experiencer is thought ' causally to interact' with
God. He does admit, however, that such experience justifies only a 'common core ' of religious belief (the belief in a good and powerful being) ;
and he advises that one grant only interim assent to the outer layers of
belief (the dogmas that divide religions or denominations).
Gutting's is a good argument, protected at many junctures against apparent objections. Yet there will surely be those who will not accept his
case. What is a perceptual, non-sensory experience T What is ' causal
interaction ' with something which is experienced as a non-sensory presence T And cannot the same things which Gutting says on behalf of religious belief be said on behalf of spiritualism and the experiences of
seances, many of which are admittedly fraudulent T His book is a refreshing re- opening of an old argument, but I think that more will have
to be said to justify appeals to experience in defense of religion.
JOHN H. WHITTAKER

Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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Initiation d la Pratique de la Theologie. Volumes I and II. Edited by
BERNARD LAURET AND FRANCOIS REFOULE. Paris: Les Editions Cerf,
1982. Pp. 544 (Vol. I) and 526 (Vol. II).
These two volumes are part of a four-volume series published by Cerf.
The authors are principally French Dominicans who have written in the
context of a world and a church profoundly changed since the Second
Va ti can Council. The spirit of theological pluralism and interdisciplinarity pervades the series, to which over sixty authors from diverse disciplines
and religious confessions have contributed. The unifying principle of
the entire series is the interpretation of the Christian story for a given
time in history. These two volumes succeed in so interpreting the Christian story for our time.
The first volume. Initiation d la pratique de la Theologie, Introduction,
sets up a methodology for doing theology. First it defines the way of experiencing God within the J udeo-Christian historical tradition, which is a
response in faith for living in and transforming the world. Secondly, it
deals with characteristics of doing theology, such as analyzing norms and
criteria as these are manifested in various theological traditions, perceiving truth as historically conditioned in the traditions, and studying
theologies of the ecclesiastical life. The guiding principle is discerning
the unity of faith in diverse modes of understanding.
In the third part the authors analyze Christianity through the eyes of
non-Christians, Marxists, Buddhists, and Muslims. They conclude their
introduction with two actual analyses. The first deals with psychoanalysis
and religious consciousness, the relationship between fantasy and religious
belief supported by insights from Freud and Jung. Yves Lebeaux brilliantly concludes this chapter with a penetrating discussion of psychoanalysis and ideology, which prepares us for the final chapter of the book
and the second analysis, a critique of theological formulas. In this chapter
Lebeaux penetrates the question of language, cognition, and the limitation
formulated doctrinal statements impose on the theological enterprise. The
authors strive to empower the believer to transcend the limits of language
and form and to enter into the mystery of the Divine life. The two problems of existence itself and man's relationship to existence are both presented and resolved together in dogmatic theology. The authors have overcome a current tendency to fragment, atomize, and compartmentalize
theology. A good theological method considers and adequately interprets
all of human experience. This they have succeeded in doing.
The author's view is primarily francophone; while this is a valuable

BOOK REVIEWS

i.?'1

contribution to the theological enterprise, it is somewhat limiting and
may indeed impair the universality of their viewpoint.
In the second volume, Dogmatique I, we are introduced to their practical methodology, which is basically a discussion of the scriptural basis
for Christian belief. Christian Duquoc and Bernard Dupey initiate this
project with a discussion of the covenant alliance of God in the Old Testament followed by a discussion of messianism. Much of this kind of work
has been done in English by Frank Devine and in German by the Jesuits
at the Canisianum in Innsbruck. More recently Dulles, McBrien, and
Tracy have attempted to do theology in this manner. They follow basically a method that appears in Rahner, Lonergan, and De Lubac and which
is clearly enunciated by M. Helwig in Christian Tradition and What are
the Theologians Sayingr Their methodology is a four-step process: first,
data retrieval (Scripture) ; second, data context, an examination of the
time, place, and language in which a revelation is situated; third, historical sequence, an examination of the historical development and evolution of a belief or doctrinal statement; and, finally, the community's
definitive statement as expressed by its teaching authority. Our authors
use this methodology to develop their critical, practical theology. In addition they see it as a spiral process which springs from God's revelation to a community and the community's response to this as it tries to
express the experience of faith; finally, as this revelatory experience is
reflected upon, it becomes intellectually an object of belief and practically
a principle of action.
This triune approach is used then to discuss the question of God's
revelation, followed by a discussion of Christology as a human experience.
The volume concludes with a discussion of the church in the world as the
work of the Spirit.
There is not much that is new in this work. What commends it is rather
the freshness of presentation and the high level of scholarship coupled
with precision, coherence, and clarity. The two volumes of this fourvolume series are first-rate scholarship and add a much needed balance
to the voluminous German scholarship and the somewhat fra,,,<7lilentedcurrent approach to theology in North America.
In a sense the editors, Bernard Lauret and Fram;ois Refoule, have taken
Rahner's project of a " basic course" and developed it into a four-volume
manual of theology. Professional theologians should have this work if
for no other reason than that it is an excellent summary of what is being
said and done in francophone theology today. The bibliographies reflecting current and classical scholarship are extensive. The presentations by
each of the more than sixty authors, while representing wide-ranging
scholarship, are clear, precise, and terse. This is a relief from some re-

17i

BOOK REVIEWS

cent European scholarly writing, which is frequently turgid, oblique, and
endless.
Two final points should be made. First, this work deserves to be translated soon into English. Secondly, the work, like some other European
studies, e.g., Jedin's Hist-Ory of the Church, suffers from insufficient appreciation of English-speaking scholarship. But this should not deter professionals.
WALTER J. BILDSTEIN
University of St. Jerome's College
Waterloo, Ontario