THE MEANING OF VIRTUE IN THE CHRISTIAN MORAL LIFE: ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR HUMAN LIFE ISSUES RoMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Dominican House of Stuaies Washington, D.a. R CENTLY, AN International Congress of moral theology convened in Rome brought together some three hundred academicians. They participated in an open forum devoted to current questions in moral theology and bioethics. Held at the Lateran University, the Congress, "Humanae vita,e: 20 Anni Dopo," was divided into two parts. Although a majority of the presentations concerned the relevance of the Church's teaching on artificial contraception, the membership did devote the second part of the Congress to a sustained discussion of some new issues raised by Donum vitae (1987), the recent instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on " Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation." To be sure, both documents emphasize the Church's constant teaching concerning the providence of God in human life and the dignity of the human person. Nevertheless, procedures such as GIFT (gamete intra.-fallopian transfer), LTOT (low tubal ovum transfer), TOT (tubal ovum transfer) provide the moral theologian with new challenges to interpret the Church's position which insists on identifying the procrea.tive and unitive aspects of Christian marriage. The following article discusses the papal documents from the perspective of a realist moral theology. First of all, I would like to recall a principle which Paul VI, however obliquely, enunciated in the course of Humanae Vitae, for I consider the principle an axiomatic one in the present discussion. At the beginning of section 8 entitled "Pastoral 178 174 ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Directives," we find a statement of theological purpose which should guide all Catholic moral practice. Hence, I would like to quote this text as a way of introducing the meaning of virtue in the Christian moral life. The Church, in fact, cannot have a different conduct toward men [and women] than that of the Redeemer: she knows their weaknesses, has compassion on the crowd, receives sinners; but she cannot renounce the teaching of the law which is, in reality, that law proper to a human Zife restored to its original truth and conducted by the Spirit of God.1 I am especially struck by the phrase " that law proper to a human life restored to its original truth," for I believe it actually describes the kind of life which develops in those who practice the virtues. Yet, before speaking about the implications of a virtue-centered morality for the difficult issues of bioethics, I would like to remark briefly on the way certain contemporary theologians misinterpret what Paul VI calls the " law proper to a human life restored to its original truth." In order to do so I have divided this paper into three parts. Thus, the first section of the paper examines several themes in contemporary moral methodology. The second section provides a general statement about the relationship between moral theology and the sa,cra domrina. Finally, the third section briefly considers why the life of virtue remains the only legitimate means for fulfilling the " law proper to a human life restored to its original truth." First, then, to contemporary themes. I Proportionate Reason and the Ethics of Personal Responsibility In an earlier draft of this paper, I titled this section "St. Ignatius, St. Alphonsus, and St. Elsewhere." I had considered actually outlining the moral methodologies of two Roman theo1 Paul VI, Humanae vitae, n. 20. VIRTUE THEORY AND HUMAN LIFE ISSUES 175 logians, the German Jesuit Josef Fuchs 2 and the Redemptorist Bernard Haring. 3 These authors have influenced most leading revisionist moral theologians in America, especially Charles Curran.4 One could argue, therefore, that they figure among the principals in the current debate over bioethical norms. Upon reflection, however, it seemed rpreferable simply to signal two or three basic themes which appear in most revisionist moral theology, especially as it has been developed in the United States. In brief, these themes focus principally on (1) the freedom of the individual, and (2) the consequences or end results of an action. Revisionist moral theologians receive their name from the fact that their announced purpose includes a radical revision of pre-Conciliar casuistry. 5 Nevertheless, the revisionist project, at least as it has developed up to this point, actually exhibits some marked similarities to the casuist model of moral theology. As a result, we can signal at least two features of casuist morals which hold a central place in the revisionist project. First, casuists placed a great deal of emphasis on the function of conscience in the moral life. Secondly, they developed a quite complex principle of double effect as a means for resolv·ing difficult moral cases. Traditionally, then, moral theologians have recognized the importance of a person's freedom and an actions's consequences in moral discourse. All in all, the revisionists treat these same issues. But resample of his work, see Josef Fuchs, S.J., Personal 2 For a representative Responsibility and Christian Morality, trans. William Cleves et al., ('iV'ashington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983) and a second collection of essays, Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh, trans. Brian McNeil, (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Press, 1987). a His three-volume Ji'ree & Faithful in Ghrist (New York: Crossroad, 1982) presents the most comprehensive statement of Haring's outlook on morals. 4 See Charles Curran, Directions in Fundamental JJ!oral Theology (Notre Dame, Univ Simply put, any end worthy of the name must so completely satisfy desire that nothing is left to be desired or pursued in action. This is the case, ·according to Buckley, only when both "the human intellect in the face of Truth itself, and the human will at the contact of Goodness itself, are necessarily and totally arbeatitudinem requiritur quod intellectus pertingat ad ipsam essentiam primae causa. Et sic perfectionem suam habebit per unionem ad Deum sicut ad objectum, in quo sofo beatitudo hominis consistit." (ST la2ae q. 3, a. 8, c.) The La;tin text for citations from the Summa Theofogiae is taken from the Blackfriar's bilin.,"'Ual edition. (London: Eyre and Spottis:woode Limited, 1966) 9 Man's Last End (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co., 1949), p.165. 1-0 Buckley, p. 170. HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? 221 rested." 11 But again there are no determinate goods in the natural order capable of terminating that desire whose object is the bonum universale. Buckley concludes that man's end in the natural order is nothing more than the vague and abstract good, happiness in general, which is concrete and determinate only to the extent that it can be indefinitely realized in a plurality of finite goods. To this extent it is neither final nor complete; it is not an end at all. Buckley's position also finds textual ,support. In the SurnmuJi ThJeowgiae1 la2ae q.1, a.5, Thomas asks whether it is possible that man have several ultimate ends. He argues that each thing desires its ultimate end as that which perfects and comultimate end must therefore he complete in pletes it. the sense that it completely satisfies this desire. If two such ends were desired, then neither would be truly ultimate; for each would possess something that the other lacked. Consequently neither would alone completely satisfy desire, which is the mark of an end which is absolutely ultimate. In the eighth article of this same question Thomas argues that the natural object or end of human willing is the universal good. Therefore, nothing can completely satisfy man's desire which does not comprehend universal goodness. But this is found only in God; for all creatures possess goodness only by participation. Only God is Goodness simply and per se. The true end of man is therefore one and consists in nothing less than the attainment of God Himself. Both Buckley and de Lubac agree, then, that man has no natural end, though they do so for di:fferent reasons. Buckley denies de Lubac's central premise, namely that man has a natural des,ire or positive ordination to the batific vision.12 11 Buckley, p. 218. i2Buckley, pp. 89-95; p. 180 n. 20. Following John of St. Thomas, Buckley argues that man has only an obediential capacity in regard supernatural beatitude. .An obediential capacity is merely non-repugnance to elevation. There is no positive ordination to this end; rather, it is only the case that God's elevating man to a vision of Himself involves no inherent contradiction. Man's natural desire, according to Buckley, is only for the good as KEVIN M. ST.ALEY Nevertheless, the disproportion between the formal object of willing, the bonum universale, and any good obtainable within the natural 011der, is sufficient to show that whatever goodness man can achieve naturally will leave his desire unsatisfied. If the notion of an end implies the complete satisfaction of desire, then there can be no natural end for man. According to de Lubac, on the other hand, man does possess a natural desire for the vision of God's essence, though he can not attain it on his own. If a natural desire for an ultimate end implies that such an end must be proportionate to the nature in question, then it is simply the case, according to de Lubac, that for Thomas man is not a thing of nature: " C'est ootte ouverture a un ordre qui le depasse, qui temoi,gne de la noblesse de la na.ture humai,ne et la differende radicalement de 'choses naturelles '." 13 The notion of a ' pure nature' had a special value for theologians defining and defending the supernatural character ,and the gratuity of God's gift of the ,beatific vision. If the state of pure nature is an impossibility, it would appear that God, though free to crea.te such beings as man, is bound to confer upon them a necessary ordination to personal and intimate knowledge of Himself. The great majority of the opposition to Fr. de Lubac's position from theological corners, including Buckley's, turns on the issue of divine freedom.14 De Lubac such an unspecified yet indefinitely specifiable object (p. 192). From its inception, controversy concerning the natural end of man was closely associated with a discussion of man's natural desire for God. See E. Elter's "De naturaZi hominis beatitudilne ad mentem antiquioris " ( Gregoriam;wm, IX, pp. 269-306). This was also the case in the late 1940's and early 1950's. See, for example, William O'Connor's The Eternal Quest (New York: Longman's Green & Co., 1947). Tracing the precise relationship between ·these independent, yet closely related, discussions is well beyond the scope of the present study. Here it is sufficient to have shown that there is good reason to suppose that there is no n111tural end of man whether one holds (with de Lubac) that man has a natural desire for God, or (with Buckley) argues to the contrary. 1a De Lubac, p. 454. 14 For an extensive introduction to the variety of theologcial responses which de Lubac's work evoked, see Philip J. Donnelly, "Discussions on the Supernatural Order," TheoZogicaZ Studies, 9 ( 1948), pp. 213-249. HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? 228 contends that this gratuity can he explained on other grounds. Whether his defense is successful or whether one adopts Buckley's position instead, a purely philosophical suspicion remains given their common conclusion, namely, is there not in Thomas at least the formal necessity that man have a natural end, a necessity which can be demonstrated ,by appealing to the role which the concept of nature plays in his metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy? There is no need to belabor the centrality of the notion of nature in Thomas' philosophy. Suffice it to say that nature serves as a primary principle in the structure of created being, as the principle of its development and operation (including all causal activity), as the foundation of its intelligibility, and as the measure of what is appropria.te or inaippropriate for any given being. Without the concept of nature, it is difficult, if not impossible, to account for the limitation of esse in creatures, the reality of secondary efficient causality, the intelligibility of the objects within experience, and, in the case of man, the possibility of a natural morality including such notions as natural virtue, law, and state. 15 But the concept of nature is unintelligible apart from the notion of an end proportionate to that nature. The intelligibility of natures is dependent upon this finality because we know natures from the fact that they constantly and regularly tend to definite acts and objects. 16 1 15 See W. Farrel and M. Adler, "The Theory of Democracy Part III: The End of the State-Happiness", The Thomwt, 4 ( 1942), pp. 121-181. Adler and Farrel argue that if there is no natural end of man which is genuinely final and distinct from both the common good and supernatural beatitude, then the inequalities of various forms of government in regard to political justice become unintelligible (pp. 127-128). Their proof that such an end exists turns precisely on the "naturalness" of the state (pp. 132-136). Although its publication preda.ted that of Surnaturel, it spoke directly to the issue and still remains one of the most comprehensive studies of the specific implications of the doctrine of the natural end of man for political philosophy. 16 See Gerard Smith, "The Natural End of Man," Proceedings of the American Oatho Uc Philosophical Association, 23 ( 1949), pp. 47-61. De Lubac's work raised so much controversy that discussion of the end of man was chosen as the central theme for the meeting of the American Catholic :KEVIN M. STALEY Causal efficacy depends upon finality, because every agent acts in view of its proper end. 11 Natural morality obviously depends upon such finality, for the moral order depends upon a right perception of the end. 18 From the perspective of Thomas' philosophlcal 1acoount of the matter, it seems necessary to posit both natures and ends proportionate to these natures. There is not, however, any proportion between man's nature and the vision of God as He is in Himself. Therefore, since no creature is without a nature, •and no nature without a proportionate end, man must have some natural end fitted to his innate powers and caipa.bilities. Here lies the philosopher's confidence that Thomas' philosophy not only allows for but demands an analysis of some natural end of man; £or without it, creation would, as it were, no longer be metaphysically intact. Commenting upon this line of argument, Anton Pegis remarks ' those who dream of a natural end of man find here the occasion of their moment of triumph.' But in defense of de Luba.e's position he offers this description of man's proportionate end, his destiny if he were to be left to his own powers: " If man had been created without elevation, what would stretch before him for all eternity is an endless existence as a disembodied soul, a soul whose understanding has been relieved of the disturbances of the body, yet a soul whose knowledge is subject to the confusion arising from its inability to be an adequate knower."19 Philosophical Association in 1949. Smith was invited to oppose de Lubac's position, and he implies that he is simply playing the role of devil's advocate rather than giving his own position {p. 47). Nevertheless, he develops a powerful argument for the necessity of positing a natural end in light of Thomas' broader metaphysical and epistemological position. Smith developed his own position four years later in "Philosophy and the Unity of Man's Ultimate End," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Associa· tion, 27 ( 1953), pp. 60-83. i1 Smith, pp. 58-59. 1s See James Mullaney, "Man's Natural, Terrestrial End," The Thomist, 18 (1955), p. 391. Mullaney also argues for an analogical use of the term end though he does not develop the twofold analogy of proper proportionality for which I argue here. :1.9 "Nature and Spirit: ,Some Reflections on the Problem of the End of Man," Proceedings of the AOPA, 23 (1949), pp. 77-78. Anton Pegis defended HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? 225 Death is the inevitable end of man. Without the body, the soul will drift in a perpetual state of confusion beyond the grave burdened not only with the awareness of its dissatisfaction, but also of the necessity that it will be forever frustrated as well. According to Pegis, Thomas' recognition of the soul's immortality shattered any neat proportion between nature and natural ends, at lea:st in the case of man. In the Aristotelian cosmos, the developmental dynamism of material natures was circumscribed by their constitutive forms. As nature, form functioned as an intrinsic principle of motion and change which directed the course of the composite's development. As end, form functioned as the ultimate terminus of that development. Material substances reached the limit of their perfection when their matter had been fully actualized by form.20 de Lubac at the 1949 .A.CPA meeting, and remained in large part in agreement with de Lubac in subsequent work on the issue. Pegis' insistence on the inability of the soul to be an adequate knower in the state of separa,tion from the body responds directly t-0 proponents of a ' purely natural end' of man to be enjoyed in the afterlife. See, for example, Michael Cronin's The Science of Ethics and. Henry Grenier's Oursus Philosophiae. Similarly, Sestili, Rousellot, aJld Hugueny spoke of a purely natural end belonging to the separated soul consisting in a knowledge of God possessed in virtue of its knowledge of itself or infused species. (See Surnaturel, pp. 449-451.) .Although there is some evidence in Thomas' earlier writings that he considered the .soul to be capable of clear and adequate knowledge when separated from the body, Pegis has shown that Thomas changed his position sometime after his reading of .Aristotle's De Anima. See "The Separated Soul and Its Nature" in St. Thomas Aqumas 1'274-1974: Oommemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), v. 1, pp. 131-158. Pegis adopts a position similar to Donagan's assessment of Thomas' stand towards .Aristotle's account of happiness in " St. Thomas and the Nicomachean Ethics: Some Reflections on' Summa Contra Gentiles' III, 44, 5 ",Mediaeval Stud.ies, 25 (1963), pp. 1-25. See also "Creation and Beatitude," Proceeding of the American Philosophical Association, 29 ( 1955), pp. 52-62. 20 Gilson observes that ".Aristotle's metaphysics was already a thorough dynamism, but it was a dynamism of the form. The form of the being-stillto-be was there, acting as both the formal law of its development and as the end reached by that development. .Aristotelian beings were self-realizing formal types, and the only cause of their individual variations rested with the accidental failures of matters completely to imbide forms. Individuals KEVIN M. STALEY For Thomas, however, man is not simply informed matter. He is incarnate spirit. As a spiritual and intellectual being, he desires to know; and knowing that God exists, he desires to know His essence. Man is not a thing of nature, then, if by nature one signifies a being whose finality is wholly self-enclosed. However, Pegis contends, self.-enclosureis not the mark of nature as such: 1 Natures qua natures are closed only in the sense that they are not subject to more or less. There are, to be sure, closed natures, but they are closed, not because they are natures, but because they are material. If there are creatures with spiritual natures, then they are open because they are spiritual. 21 There is no inconsistency, then, in maintaining that man has a nature and in maintaining at the same time that he has no natural end. The philosopher's confidence that there is a legitimate domain of philosophical inquiry concerning human happiness would thus ·be completely unfounded, were it not for the fact that it is quite evident on textual •grounds alone that Thomas does allow for a, determinate form of happiness which both a) corresponds to human nature and b) is an end proportionate to its native potencies. In the closing paragraph of his ·argument for the necessity of infused virtue in the De Virtutibus in Commwni, for example, he makes the following comparison: Thus, just as, in addition to the natural principles, habits of virtue are required for the perfection of man in the order connatural to him, so also, by way of divine influence, man acquires ... certain infused virtues by which he is perfected for ordering his operations to the end of eternal life:22 then were little more than abortive attempts to be their own forms; none of them could add anything to its species; rather, there was infinitely more in the species than there was in the whole collection of its individuals." Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), p. 185. 21 Pegis, p. 69. 22 "Et siout praeter ista principia naturaZia requiruntur habitus virlutum aa perfectiooem hominis secunaum moaum sibi connaturaZem • • • ita eaJ ai- HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? 227 The function of the infused or theological virtues is here clarified by an analogy to the function of man's naturally acquired virtue in promoting a connatural mode of perfection. Thomas often has occasion, in hoth his earlier and later writings, to describe this connatural perfection in terms of finality. He speaks of a twofold end of man: "Finis ... communis et ultimus . . . est duplex." 28 " Est duplex hominis ultimum bonum." 24 " Ultima perf ectio ra.tionalisnaturae est duplex." 25 James Mullaney has observed that "whatever problems the fact may create, it is 'a fact that Aquinas speaks ... of man's twofold ultimate end; of his twofold felicity; of his twofold ultimate good; of his twofold happiness." 26 Two points are of interest heve. First, Thomas does not argue that man has two ends, the one natural and the other supernatural. Rather, he speaks of ,a single end which is twofold, which is realized at both a natural and supernatural level, and which he describes in the Summa Theologiae as imperfect and perfect beatitude respectively. As a natural end, then, the imperfect beaJtitude of the Summa Thevlogwe is dearly not a 'purely natural end ' which man may have had at one time prior to his de fac;to elevation to a supernatural end. Thus, one might very well accept de Lubac's position that there is no 'purely natural end' of man, ,and yet consistently maintain that there is a natural end of man; but it would be invina influentia c01!8equitur homo • • • aliquo,s virtutes infuso,s, quibus per· ficitur ad opero,tiones ordinandas in finem aeternae vitae." (De Virtutibus in Oommuni, 10. c.; Parma, v. 8, p. 567.) All subsequent citation to the De Virtutibus in Oommuni are taken from the Parma edition (New York: 1949). 2s In II Sent., dist. 41, q. 1, art. 1, c. :H De Ver., 14, 2. 25 ST la2ae q. 62, a. 1. There are other examples as well: " Oonsiderandum est autem, quad est duple11J hominis bonum: unum quidem quad est prop or· tionatum suae naturae, aliud autem quad suae naturae facuZtatem wcedit!' (De Virt. in Oom., 10, c.; v. 8, p. 567) " .•• per virtutes acquisito,s non per'Venitur ad felicitatem oaelestem, sed ad quemdam felicitatem quam homo natus est acquirere per propria naturalia in hac vita ••. " (Ibid., 9, ad 6; v. 8, p. 564.) 26 Mullaney, p. 395. KEVIN M. STALEY cumbent upon one holding such a. position to provide some content for the term ' natural ' which is not conceptually dependent upon the notion of ' elevation '. This brings me to my second point. Thomas does not define the proportion to nature which serves to distinguish natural from supernatural happiness in terms of a natural desire distinct from some desire to know God in Himself 1subsequently .acquired through elevation. According to Thomas, man does not have two ends, so he does not have two desires for two distinct ends. Imperfect as well as perfect beatitude both respond to man's desire for goodness as such, though in differing degrees of completeness. Imperfect beatitude is said rto be proportionate to human nature only in the sense that it constitutes the most ultimate degree of perfection that man can reasonably expect to obtain by virtue of the exercise of his unaided capacity for development. Thus, in the Summia Theologiae, Thomas distinguishes the happiness promised in Scripture from the happiness of which Aristotle had spoken in the Ethics on the grounds that " the imperfect beatitude man can have in this life can be acquired by his natural powers, a;s can virtue, which is the activity in which happiness consists.. Man's perfect happiness," on the other hand, " is .beyond the nature of not only man, but every creature." 21 Even granting the ' naturalness ' of imperfect beatitude in this fashion, a most pressing problem remains for the philosopher. In what sense can imperfect beatitude be said to constitute an end, if it indeed it is imperfect? By wha.t right can it be called happiness at all? This problem is also, at bottom, a conceptual one. It remains insoluble only so long a:s the terms ' end' and ' happiness ' are taken to be univ:ocal in their mode of signification. 1 21 "Dicendum quod beatitudo imperfecta quae in hao vita haberi potest ab homitne acquiri per sua naturalia, eo modo quo et virtus, in oujus operationem oonsistit . • .Sed beatitudo hominis perfecta .•• est supra naturam non solum hominis, sed etiam omnis oreaturae." (ST la2ae, 5, 5, c.) HAPPINESS: THE NATURAL END OF MAN? 29l9 If the concept of ' end ' is construed in its most literal sense as the terminal point in a certain series, then clearly there is no natural end of man save, at best, the disembodied state which Pegis describes. As long as 'happiness' is defined univocally as the complete cessation and satisfaction of all desire, then no other end is open to man, deserving of the name, save the vision of the blessed. On the other hand, should such terms as ' end ' and 'happiness ' he analogical in their mode of signification, to speak of a natural, albeit imperfect felicity would be just as consistent as speaking of a natural, albeit imperfect instance of being.28 Thomas defines happiness 'as the fulfillment of a rational agent who is master of his own actions and is capable of recognizing or ,giving intellectual consent to his own· perfection. 29 Man oomes into being in need of many things. Although in 1 28 De Lubac's commentary on Thomas in the fourth part of Surnatwrel apparently proceeds in light of a univocal notion of happiness and :finality. All ends, simply in virtue of being ends, must be terminative in the strict sense of the term, as de Lubac sees it. Because of this, the natural beatitude under discussion, should there be any such thing, is conceived as an end which, though possible, has now been replaced with another end; for it is just as impossible that there should be both a natural and supernatural end as it is impossible that a line should be terminated at either end by more than one point. Thus, for de Lubac, the question becomes, " Oonnait-il [St. Thomas] deulll ordres de choses, l'un, realise et fait, qui est l'ordrt surnaturel, l'autre, qui eut ete possible en droit, et qui serait un ordre ' purement naturel '? " ( p. 449) The doctrines of his opponents presuppose a univocal notion of beatitude as well. Victor Cathrein writes: 'In praesenti ergo ordine supernaturali, in quo de facto summus, non da,tur finis ultimus et beatitudo mere naturalis." ( Gregorianum, v. 11, 1930 p. 399.) This de facto termination has completely replaced what otherwise would have been a purely natural end, which presently possesses only the status of a hypothetical possibility. In addition, had man not been elevated to this new term, his natural beatitude would have had necessarily to satisfy completely all man's desires: "Illa, beatitudo, quae esset ultimus in statu naturae purae deberet perfecte quietare appetitum naturalem hominis, secus non esset finis ultimus naturalis." 29" Nihil enim aliud sub nomine beatitudinis intelligitur nisi bonum perfectum intellectualis naturae, cujus est suam suffecientiam cognoscere in bono quod habet, et cui competit ut ei contingat aliquid vel bene vel male, et sit s.uwum operationum dorp,ina." (ST la 'l· 26, a. I, c.) 230 KEVIN M. STALEY full possession of the essential principles in virtue of which he is man, he lacks many of the qualities and attributes required if he is to .become fully human. He must refine his moral sense. He must share himself with others in friendship and participate in political community. He must develop his mind by learning about himself and his world, and so forth. Because these subsequent perfections actualize what was already inchoately or virtually present in the initial possession of human nature, they may be considered the due end of that nature; for according to Thomas potency is ordered to aot as to an end. Although no man can exhaust his potency for development, or even his desire for improvement, he may be considered happy to just the extent that this development has been freely realized through the exercise of reason and of the virtues, which perfect its operations and those of the appetites. This end is not literally terminative in the sense that it comes at the end of a certain progression of activities, or at the end of one's lire; rather it consists instead in aotually living one's life a:s a free, rational agent. It is therefore terminative only in the sense that a power or potency can be said to he terminated in its proper act and operation. Nevertheless, a certain proportion or likeness exists between absolute beatitude ·and man's natural happiness; for each is related to the rational agent as act is related to potency ·and as a perfection to the ·subject of perfection. From the point of view of its object, however, it is inadequate to define the end of man simply in terms of his own activity or operation. Even in the order of nature, Thomas a.rgues, the end of man is not man himself.30 Rather, as is the case with all natural agents, his ultimate objective lies outside himself and is properly identified with God Who, as the first creative cause of all being, is also the ultimate term of the activity of all secondary agents. Absolute beatitude is distinguished from all other creaturely perfections inasmuch ·as God is possessed immediaitely in His 110 8'f la2ae INE1SS: Tlt:lll NATuRAt. ENl> OF 28$ philosophical doctrine of happiness is inherently flawed, but only that Thomas refuses to identify happiness simply with a state of the satisfaction of subjective interests. 88 This lea.ves open, of course, the precise definition of man's terrestrial end and its relationship to desire and satisfaction. Is happiness to be defined primarily in terms of its constitutive activity or in terms of the objects to which this activity is directed? Does happiness consist solely in contemplation, the goods of the practical order, or both? Does pleasure belong to the essence of happiness, .or does it :simply accompany any operation which is perfective of an agent? Can the virtuous man be called happy even in the face of the hardships of ill fortune? The answers to these questions are beyond the scope of the present essay and require careful consideration of Thoma:s' moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and metaphysics. Here it ,suffices to have shown rthart these questions refer to a. subject matter amenable to a properly philosophical investigation. as The notions of satisfaction and happiness are closely related in Thomas' thought (the beatific vision is posited as the end of man prooisely because finite goods fail to satisfy man's natural desire) ; but Thomas does not simply identify happiness with satisfaction and contentment. Though hindered by misfortune, the vil'tuous activity in which happiness essentially consists can not be destroyed by material or psychological adversity, unless such adversity be so great as to destroy the use of reason. For both Aristotle and Thomas, the truly happy man can easily bear such misfortune; for it is the mark of virtue to make good use of a bad situation. (See Nicomaokean l!ltkios 1. 10 and Sententia Libri l!ltkicorum I, 16, Leonine v. 47/1, pp. 57-60.) There is then a profound difference between the Aristotelian/ Thomistic account of happiness and its modern counterpart, especially as epitomized by Kant for whom happiness signifies " the condition of a rational being in the world in whose whole existence everything goes according to wish and will." ( Oritique of PraoticaZ Reason, Bk. 2, ch. 2, prt. 5. This difference is too often ignored, and the precise relationship between satisfaction and happiness in Thomas' account of the terrestrial end of man demands a more thorough analysis than is possible in this study. Here it suffices to note that one of the principal reasuns why Thomas' notion of ' imperfect happiness ' may strike the modern reader as counterintuitive lies in the faliure to distinguish between the older Aristotelian understanding of happiness as an activity of reason in accordance with virtue and the more modern notion of happiness as simple satisfaction of desire. 284 KEVIN M. STALEY It is only this natural analogue to absolute beatitude that serves as the subject matter of the philosophy of natural felicity. The philosophy of natural felicity is therefore to be carefully distinguished from theological inquiries into the hypothetical end of man in the state of ' pure nature '. It is mistaken to ,suppose then that 1a philosophical elaboration of human happiness must inevitably conflict with the claims of theology or the aspirations of faith. It is one rthing to claim that there is an activity which constitutes man's natural perfection and that man is capable of attaining to such activity through nature alone. It is quit1e another to claim that man's nature is self-enclosed and self-·sufficient, requiring nothing other than itself for its ultimate completion, excluding all reference to transcendence. Natural felicity by definition remains within the ,sphere of man's natural activity. It lays claim to being man's ultimate perfection only within this sphere. The discovery ·and articulation of this end is of great philosophical moment. The reality of man's natural efficacy is safeguarded, and the intrinsic intelligibility of his activity is guaranteed. A measure for the appriopriateness of his .action is accessible to natural reason. With this in mind, it must always be remembered that Thomas himself spoke of the twofold (duplex) end of man. The term ' duplex ' indicates that a real distinction is ·at hand, but implies tha:t this distinction must ultimately give way to a more fundamental unity. There is a determinate form of happiness corresponding to man's tendency towards growth and development, a happiness which he is naturally 'able to achieve. The twofold is nonetheless necessarily one; and therefore, a philosophical treatise on human happiness can never claim to have offe11ed an exhaustive account of its subject. 1 1 GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION ANTHONY M. MATTEO Elizabethtown Oollege Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania Introduction INCE THE APPEARENCE of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1 the so called "rationality debate " has been conducted at a high pitch in Anglo-American philosophy. Concurrently, this debate has occupied some of the luminaries of Continental philosophy: Gadamer, Habermas, Feyerabend, and Derrida. Now that the Sturm und Drang associated with it has to some extent subsided, we would like to offer a partial analysis and critique. of the insights that this controversy has proffered. In this essay our fundamental thesis is twofold: I) At the heart of the rationality debate is a longing to deconstruct narrow and restrictive methodologies .for acquiring knowledge, thereby creating the possibility for a free and open " human conversation," unfettered by the dogmatisms of the past; The " deconstructive " phase of the deba.te now requires an essentially "constructive " complement: further conditions necessary to ground a free and open " human conversation " need to be specified. In this latter ta.sk we will suggest that the work of the contemporary analytic philosopher, A. C. Grayling, and that of the fa:ther of Transcendental Thomism, Joseph Marecha.I, can be particularly helpful. S I ncommensurability The most radical claim to emerge from the recent rationality debate is that of" incommensura.bility ": namely, two or more awropriations of reality can be so utterly diverse that we can1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 285 ANTHONY M. MATTEO not adjudicate between them as to their respective truth or falsity. Take at face value, for example, Paul Feyerabend's proclamation: that the views of scientists, and especially their views on basic matters, are often as different from each other as are the ideologies that underlie different cultures. Even worse: there exist scientific theories which are mutually incommensurablethough they apparently deal " with the same subject matter." 2 Underlying :this claim is the belief that there is no a prori limit to the number of independent ways in which the stuff of reality can be conceived. Furthermore, since there is no atemporal or ahistorical standpoint beyond the fray of contending worldviews, no one view can legitimately demand absolute cognitive priority on the grounds that it more faithfully captures the " essence " of things than any other possible alternative. In effect, then, " reality is entirely reconceivable . . . . Our experience of the accidents of objects has no more direct claim to being veridical than our judgments about the nature of things." 3 Even a partial list of the factors contributing to the genesis of the notion of radical incommensurability would be impressive: the rise of historical consciousness and its assertion of the historically conditioned nature of all world views, the emphasis in the sociology of knowledge on the socially constructed nature of all visions of reality, the contention in the philosophy of science that .all scientific observation and appraisal is ineluctably theory-laden, a:s well as the Marxist critique of theoretical positions as intellectual supports for vested class interests. Without gainsaying the significance of these and other possible factors in the evolution of the notion of incommensurability, we would argue that a proper gra:sp of its apparent plausi2 Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: NLB, 1975), p. 274. a Victor Preller, Di·vine Science And The Science Of God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 69. GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION bility and consequent appeal can best be attained if we unearth its foundation in ·a relativist reading of Kant's Copernican Revolution in philosophy. Kant's connection with this notion turns on a particular development of his basic distinction between " our " mode of conceiving reality and reality-initself (Ding-an-Sich). In Kant's view, we can only know the appearance of reality as filtered through our conceptual scheme; thus, the thing-in-itself-reality in its pure nature or aseity-is opaque and impenetrable. For Kant, however, there was only one conceptual scheme: namely, the scheme structured by the presuppositions of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics. Kant believed that one of his great contributions to our theoretical life was to demonstrate that this scheme was coterminous with the powers of human conceptualization as such. It is precisely the assertion concerning the uniformity of human conceptual powers that the notion of incommensurability calls into question. Kant was certainly correct in pointing out the role of the" subject" in the construction of human experience, but the proponents of incommensurability balk at the claim that there is only one human conceptual scheme. Haven't the developments since Kant in mathematics, physics, and the social sciences demonstrated the rich and multiform nature of human conceptualizing and, consequently, the parochiality of Kant's view? Hence-so the argument goes-we must recogni7,e a multiplicity of conceptual schemes, each with its own distinctive historically •and culturally conditioned appropriation of that mysterious Ding-anrSich that continually confronts us. Since the thing-in-itself is unavailable to us as an absolute benchmark by which to evaluate the veracity of contending conceptual schemes, what remains at our disposal is the relative, timebound measure of intraschema.tic coherence. In his artful essay, "On The Very Idea Of A Conceptual Scheme," 4 Donald Davdison attacks the notion of incom4In J. W. Meiland & Mihael Krauz, eds., Relativism versity of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 66-80. (Notre Dame: Uni- ANTHONY M. MATTEO mensurability au fond. His argument centel's on the incoherence that infects the claim that two or more views of reality can indeed be incommensurable or incompara.ble. Such putatively incommensma.ble views could only flow from genuinely alternative conceptual schemes: reality-in-itself would have to be organized by thinking agents through the prism of such radically divergent conceptual frameworks that all mutual comparison and comprehension would be impossible. If with Davidson we identify conceptual schemes with languages-a move that adds some precision to an otherwise fuzzy and slippery notion-then failure of translation would appear to be at least a necessary condition of truly alternative, incomparable, or incommensurable conceptual schemes. However, when we l'eflect on the conditions that ground the age-old art of translation and interpretation, we realize that we would not even be in a position to recognize a purportedly untranslatable language as a " language" at all unless we share enough in common with its creators to take their sounds or jottings as in some way related to our language or conceptual scheme. As Davidson asserts: We must conclude, I think, that the attempt to give solid meaning to the idea of conceptual relativism, and hence the idea of a conceptual scheme, fares no better when based on partial failure of translation than when based on total failure. Given the underlying methodology of interpretation,. we would not even be in a position to judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different from our own. 5 Davidson's point is certainly not to deny the fact that there are, and ha.ve been, numerous different systems for interpret5 Davidson, p. 79. In a similar vein, while arguing against the complete malleability of human nature, Maurice Mandelbaum asserts that "unless we can assume common modes of feeling and thinking, regardless of differences in culture, we have no right to assume that we can understand the nature of any culture othei: than our own. In short, the evidence which allegedly proves how different others are from ourselves rests on the assumption that there are fundamental respects in which they are not different, but similar." History, Man, and Reason (Baltimore: ,fohns Hopkins Press, 1971}, p. 478 n. 25. GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION 239 ing the same external reality. Furthermore, there is no a priori reason to assume thait wondrously novel inte:vpretative models might not spring up in the future. We can cite the magical systems of our primitive ancestors, the Ptolemaic, Aristotelian, Euclidean, Newtonian, and Einsteinean pictures of the world, or we can well imagine some grand megatheory of the future. However, Davidson is forcing us to raise the following questions: Do such admittedly diverse theo1-etical approaches to reality bespeak alternative conceptual schemes? If they did, how could communication (or translation) between them be possible? Davidson's main contention is that the entire hermeneutic enterprise requires, as a ground, some matrix of intellectual commonality that cuts across the boundaries of divergent theoretical systems. As impo11tant as Davidson's argument is vis-a-vis contemporary philosophical debate, it is by no means novel. More than two centuries ago Giambattista Vico proclaimed: There must be in the nature of human institutions a mental language common to all nations, which uniformly grasps the substance of things feasible in human social life and expresses it with as many diverse modifications as the.se. same things may have diverse aspects.6 Centuries earlier, the scholastics sought to account for the intertranslatability of the world's languages by making a distinction between the terminus conceptus (concept) and the tenninus prolatus (spoken or written word). Although words for objects might differ, there must, in their reckoning, be commonality at the conceptual level or else the evident fact of successful translation and cross-cultural communication would not be possible. To reiterate: Davidson's point is not new, but its reassertion against the background of the current rationality debate is both necessary and instructive; the undeniable reality of effective communication across historical, cultural, linguistic, and theoretical ;boundaries requires the as6 New Science (On Elements) par. 161. 240 ANTHONY M. MATTEO sumption of a common conceptual scheme as the ground or necessary condition of its possibility. In Beyond Objectims-m And Rela.tivism,-a book that offers a comprehensive overview of the current rationality debateRichard Bernstein attempts to extract a more nuanced notion of incommensurabliity from the writings of theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyera.bend, Peter Winch, and Richard Rorty that effectively circumvents Davidson's critique. According to Bernstein, a proper understanding of " incommensurability " as enunciated in the work of the aforementioned thinkers does not imply the " incomparability " of beliefs and practices of differing historical or cultural provenance. Ra.ther, as he puts it: What is sound in the incommensurability thesis is the clarification of just what we are doing when we do compare paradigms, theories, language games. We can compare them in multiple: ways. We can recognize losses and gains. We can even see how some of our standards for comparing them conflict with each other. We can recognize-espe:cially in cases of incommensurability in sciencethat our arguments and counter-arguments in support of rival paradigm theories may not be conclusive. We can appreciate how much skill, art, and imagination are required to do justice to what is distinctive about different ways of practicing science: and how 'in some areas' scientists 'see different things.' In underscoring these features, we are not showing or suggesting that such comparison is irrational but opening up the type:s and varieties of practical reason involved in making such rational comparisons. 7 In practice, then, the incommensurability doctrine should not lead to our isolating ourselves within the confines o·f our inherited way of seeing things; it in no sense rules out the possibility and desirability of cros1s-culturalconversation. Rather, in Bernstein's view, it should liberate us from the strictures of ethnocentrism, scientism, fundamentalism, or any form of dogmatism that erroneously enshrines .a particular, historically conditioned perspective as authoritative and definitive. Purged 1 Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivi8m A.ml Relatfoism University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), pp. 92-93. (Philadelphia: GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION of dogmatic presuppositions, we can then enter openly into a free and unencumbered dialogue with the rich and multiform sets of beliefs and practices by ,which human beings have struggled to malrn their way in the world. It is their common moral commitment to enhance "freedom" and "openness" in the human conversation that Bernstein adjudges the constructive side of the otherwise iconoclastic projects of the authors he analyzes. Though they may admittedly be given to occasional binges of hyperbole in pursuit of their purgative ends-a fact that has brought on charges of " irrationalism " and " relativism "-beneath the surf ace rhetoric Bernstein finds in their work a reasoned protest against our ever present tendency to ahsolutize our beliefs and prnctices, thus inhibiting rather than promoting genuine dialogue. Specifically of Rorty, Bernstein asserts that he: is calling for a clear recognition of what constitutes our historicity and finitude and for giving up the false metaphysical or epistemological comfort of believing that these practices are grounded on something more fundamental. We must appreciate the extent to which our sense of community is threatened not only by material conditions but by the faulty epistemological doctrines that fill our heads. The moral task of the philosopher or the cultural critic is to defend the openness of human conversation against all those temptations and real threats that seek closure. And for Rorty, too, this theme is universalized, in the sense that he is concerned not only with European intellectual's form of life but with extending conversation and dialogue to all humanity. 8 Seen in the irenic light of Bernstein's analysis, the notion of incommensurability appears a lot tamer that at first glance: one can, in fact, endorse it as a welcome--albeit somewhat melodramatic-antidote to the surfeit of reductionism, scientism, or verificationism in philosophical circles that sought to structure all human inquiry on rigid and restrictive mathematical and physical models. However, the legitimate passion to disavow ourselves of myopic and imperialistic cognitive criteria, with a view toward creating a more " inclusive " circle s Bernstein, pp. 204-05. ANTHONY M. MATTEO of conversation; must not blind us to the fact that our very ability to engage in conversation at all implies a conceptual commonality that, for the sake of the conversation, ought to be made explicit by something akin to transcendental analysis. In fact, the call for open-ended dialogue-,-eschewing the twin ills of dogmatism and relativism-that Bernstein so heartily endorses, requires just such a transcendental grounding if it is to be more than just naked assertion. Unfortunately, in line with the authors he treats, Bernstein seems convinced that any renewed search for foundational principles grounding the human conversation .would only represent another vain attempt to evade the inherent contingency of all human intellectualizing. Rorty is of like mind and, consequently, asserts that " to accept the contingency of ,starting points is to accept our inheritance from, and our conversation with, our fellow humans as our only source of guidance." 9 This necessitates our abandoning the age-old quest for ·some sure foundation on which to erect our theoretical systems. Since Kant, philosophers have hoped that it might be fulfilled by finding the a priori structure of any possible inquiry, or language, or form of social life. If we give up this hope, we shall lose what Nietzsche called " metaphysical comfort," but we may gain a renewed sense of community .... In the end, the pragmatists tell us, what matters is our loyalty to other human beings clinging together against the dark, not our hope of getting things right. 10 Now we can readily agree that "philosophically" our only source of guidance resides in human creativity and resourcefulness without preemptorily dismissing the need to uncover the principles or structures underlying these capacities. If we maintain that, say, modus ponens or the principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason are not indispensible criteria of intelligible human discourse, then how could we at all distinguish "sense" from "nonsense," meaningful conversation 9 Oonsequences of Pragmatism Press, 1982), p. 166. io Rorty, p. 166. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION 248 from mad and incoherent ravings? And isn't the hope of "get· ting things right "-not perfectly but in some incremental fashion-the very reason .for engaging in serious conversation in the first place? If concern with rectitude is not a primal intellectual imperative, then would we not be hard pressed to justify our predeliction for a society in which free inquiry reigns rather than the purposeful obfuscation and manipulation of an Orwellian state? The " deoonstructive " side of the project of. a thinker like Rorty can contribute to a more vibrant and inclusive human conversation by helping to clea.r the philosophical ground of narrowly conceived, dogmatic canons of rationality. However, as far as specifying the acceptable rational standards that ought to guide us now is concerned, aU Rorty provides is the vague assertion that only continued coversation, not some illusory metaphysical support, can direct us. Certainly the conversation needs to be protected from the stultifying effects of dogmatism, but the point of the above questions is to indicate that some further specification of the preconditions of, and the standards for, the venewed conversation envisioned by Rorty, Bernstein, and others of like mind is still required to shield it from the opposite ill: the spectre of relativism. in other words, a. theoretical groundwork needs to be laid for " constructive " work in philosophy, possessed of greater solidity than the simple call to keep the conversation going in hopes that somehow progress will be made in an utterly ad hoc fashion. With this latter end in mind, the time would appear ripe for a return to Kant to see what, if any, of his attempt to provide a rational ground for our cognitive experience can be fruitfully appropriated for our current situation. Kant Revisited In proposing his Copernican Revolution in philosophy, Kant suggested: Hitherto it has been assumeyl that all out knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of ob- 244 AN'fHONY M. MATTEO jects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must the.refore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.11 It is not that Kant is asserting that the mind creates its objects, as it were, ex nihilo. He always maintains the discursive or non-intuitive nature of the ·intellect: it requires a material or sensible contribution from without. However, Kant does wish to cla.im that nothing can become an object of knowledge for us unless it necessarily conforms to certain conditions imposed by the mind. Against the continental rationalists-with their emphasis on intellectual intuition and their concomitant denigration of sense experience-Kant defends the indispensable role of sensation in the cognitive process. With the empiricists Kant oould proclaim: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu! Nonetheless, Kant, saw that, on strictly empiricist analysis, the cognitive experience we actually possess would be impossible: •such an analysis cannot account for the unity and apparent necessity of our knowledge in fields such as mathematics and physics.12 Kant's major goal in the Critique of Pure Reason is to extract and elucidate the a priori element in our knowledge that reason itself supplies. He is engaged in what he calls "trans11 B xvi. We are employing Norman Kemp Smith's translation of Kant's Oritiqite Of Pure Reason (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1958). 12 "Experience is, beyond all doubt, tbe first product to which our understanding gives rise, in working up the raw material of sensible impressions .... Nevertheless, it is by no means the sole field to which our understanding is confined. Experience tells us, indeed, what is, but not that it must necessarily be so, and not otherwise. It therefore gives us no true universality; . . . Such universal modes of knowledge, which at the same time possess tbe character of inner necessity, mlli!t in themselves, independently of experience, be clear and certain. 'rhey are therefore entitled knowledge a priori; whereas, on the other l1and, that which is borrowed solely from experience is, as we say, known only a posteriori, or empirically." A 1-2, GROUNDING 'tltFl i'iuMAN CONV.ElRSA'riON 245 oendental " analysis: one which seeks the grounds or necessary conditions for the possibility of the knowledge we actually possess. In sum, the empiricists had convinced Kant of the sense-dependent nature of human cognition, but he, in turn, saw the futility of conceiving the mind as a tabula rasa, functioning as a merely passive receptor of external stimuli. In Kant's view, .the mind, via the senses, is certainly a receptive organ, but it "actively" shapes what it receives according to its own internal structures. The content of our knowledge stems from sense experience, but its form is imposed by the mind: this form represents the a priori element in knowledge. Thus all knowledge is a synthesis of sensible and intellectual elements.13 As A. C. Grayling writes: Kant's central question was about the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. Answers to this question rest upon answers to a more inclusive question: the whether there are conditions necessarily presupposed to coherent and intelligible experience in general. ... In arguing for the Categories, and for space and time as the pure forms of sensibility, Kant is arguing that there can be experience only under certain conditions: and this is the point of inte.rest.14 Coming out of the Thomistic tradition, Joseph Marechal credited Kant with having shown a way through the thicket of conflicting arguments generated by the long debate between dogmatic rationalism and empiricism. His Copernican Revolution highlighted anew the need to view human cognition as a synthetic process in which the senses and the intellect play complementary roles. Hence, according to Marechal: The upshot was at least a partial solution to the fundamental antinomy of rationalism and empiricism. Since the two opposing tendencies had by then developed their most extreme consequences, Kant was able to reconcile them only by returning uncon1a "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." A 51 .. B 75. 11 The Refutation of Scepticism (LaSalle: Open Court, 1985), p. 81. 246 ANTHONY M. MATTEO sciously to a synthetic viewpoint which had been overlooked by the ancestors of modern philosophy. 15 Thus both thinkers are of the opinion that one can endorse the fundamental elan of the Kantian program, and search for those concepts that shape or make possible our cognitive experience, without necessarily subscribing in defail to all the ofttimes highly obscure arguments of Kant's first Critique. One can, as Grayling puts it: take; seriously the spirit, but not so much the detail of Kant's enterprise, and attempt to find out what if any concepts are indispensably presupposed to our making judgments or to our thinking of the world as a system of spatio-temporal particulars. 16 Grayling, Transcendental Arguments, And The Hu,man Conversation Grayling points out that Wittgenstein used transcendentalstyle arguments-arguments that emulated the spirit rather than the letter of Kant's formulaitions--1n the Philosophical Investigations to demonstrate the impossibility of private languages, and in On Certainty to demonstrate the possibility of knowledge. 11 He also refers to Stra.wson's transcendental-style reasoning in Individuals showing the logical necessity of our belief in other minds. 18 The goal of these transcendental arguments is to show that our beliefs about the public nature oflanguage, the possibility of knowledge, and the existence of other minds are so basic to our conceptual scheme that we cannot coherently conceive the world without them:. Hence, the renewed human conversation that Rorty, Bernstein, and others wish to inaugurate-though ideally shrived of the restrictive, dogmatic rpresuppositions of the past-must, nonetheless, hold these beliefs as " foundational," for they at1sLe Point de Depart de la Metaphysique 11. 16 Grayling, p. 81. 11 Grayling, p. 81. 1s Grayling, pp. 79-80. III (Paris: Desciee, 1964), p. GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION !47 test to elements so fundamental to our conceptualizing power that we cannot call them into question: they ground the very " possibility" of thought, disco'l.lrse,or conversation as such. In his own attempt to elucidate certain foundational features of our conceptual scheme, Grayling first strives to show that we cannot coherently doubt that our descriptions of experience refer to independently existing spatio-temporal particulars "not just because it is merely natural to describe our experience by talking about the objects it is experience of, but because there is no other way of doing so." 19 Purportedly more basic accounts of our perceptual experience in terms of" sensedata" or" raw-feels" turn out to be parasitic upon the fundamental object-reference language .. Hence, Grayling concludes: to argue that one's sensory states cannot be described except by me,ans of terms whose literal function is to describe objects is to say that description of experience carries essential reference to its possible objects, which is to say there is no possible characterization of experience which is made without essential use of the concepts and terms by means of which the objects of experience are described. 20 At this point a sceptic might concede that "realist" presuppositions are necessary to " our" conceptual scheme but retort that they may riot be necessary to other imaginable ways of organizing experience. Grayling counters such an objection by seeking to substantiate "the claim that all conceptual schemes have the same specifiable fundamental structure with respect to the nature and organization of empirical experience." 21 He does so by marshalling Davidson's arguments against the possibility of our coherently conceiving a conceptual scheme so radically different from our own that realist presuppositions were dispensable. Thus, in Grayling's words: certain transcendental beliefs (in particular the assumption of objects) are necessary to the coherence of conceptual experience (the 19 Grayling, p. 15. pp. 15-16. 21 Grayling, p. 41. 20 Grayling, 248 ANTHONY M. MATTEO sensefulness of language) and . . . anything recognizable as such de.pends upon the same set of transcendental beliefs.22 But there is a paradoxical twist to Gra.yling's argumentation. It stems from a distinction he makes between option A and option B transcendental arguments. Option A TA's would prove the existence of an independent world of objects corresponding to our perceptual statements. This would purportedly represent a full-blooded demonstration of philosophical realism. However, option B TA's (which Grayling claims to be employing) can only show that " realist assumptions " are necessary to our experience of the world: our conceptual scheme-the only one of which we can coherently conceivesimply demands them. In effect, then, we must "think " as philosophical realists, but this necessity does not entaiil that reality-in-itself, as it exists independently of our thought, necessarily corresponds with our conceptions. In this context Grayling asserts: a belief in the existence of objects is a necessary condition of our thought and talk. To say this is tantamount to saying that realist assumptions are necessary to our conceptual that, in effect, we are bound to be epistemological (or ontological) , realists, if our thought and talk is to be coherent. But saying ' we are bound to be realists ' is thus to make an anti-realist point; for the claim is not a claim as to the truth of a realist view of the world, but a claim to the necessity of taking a realist view, with nothing following, because nothing can follow, as to the truth or falsity of such a view.28 Thus, in regard to the fundamental distinction between reality-in-itself and reality as it appears to us, Grayling remains securely within the ambit of Kant's critical philosophy. To become part of our experience, reality must pa'SS through the filter of our conceptual scheme. We can employ transcendental analysis to say what is necessary to that scheme and, 22 Grayling, p. 76. C. Grayling, An Introduction & Noble, 1982), pp. 287-88. 2s A. To Philosophical Logic (N.J.: Barnes GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION fl49 therefore, what shape reality must take if it is to be coherently conceived; but we can know and say nothing of that same reality as it exists apart from our conceptual scheme.24 With his updated Kantian view of reality, Grayling believes he has grounded the ongoing human conversation in the only available sure foundation: one that enunciates a middle course between uncritical philosophical claims for a human capacity to assume a quasi-divine perspective on things (sub specie aeternitatis), and untenable relativist claims that reality is essentially reoonceivable depending on which conceptual scheme-among the many supposedly open to human to be employed. Thus Grayling leaves us with a cognitive situation that is paradoxical indeed: it is necessary for us to " think " as epistemological realists, but we can say nothing as to the " truth " of the realist view. Furthermore, Grayling's metaphysics of anti-realism does not, he claims, argue for relativism because reflection (i.e., Davidson's arguments) indicates that there is no conceivable conceptual scheme in which realist assumptions would not function as necessa.ry conditions. Hence, extrapolating from Grayling's account, the human conversation we are seeking to ground can confidently proceed, wedded to the notion that we simply must operate intellectually " as if " our language is reality-related, and this necessity effectively secures us from the corrosive impact of relativism, without thereby committing us to an uncritcial and unwaranted leap to a full-blown metaphysical realism. 24 As to the clOt!e affiliation of his views with the spirit of Kant's enterprise, Grayling asserts: "For a grasp of perceptual discourse is tied to knowing the empirical conditions of application for perceptual terms, and being able to recognize that a given set. of experiences warrants use of given expressions; sense cannot accrue from experience-transcendent conditions .••. It is in this sense that to make the point that we must be epistemological realists is to make an antirealist point about sense and the coherence of experience; it exactly parallels Kant's view to the effect that empirical realism is a. transcendental idealist thesis." Refutation, pp. 110-11. 250 ANTHONY M. MATTEO M arechal's Critique Of Kant' Like Grayling, Marechal seeks to appropriate what is valuable in the Kantian enterprise with a view toward making a contribution to contemporary philosophical debate. Of course, Marechal is writing in the first forty years of this century and comes at Kant from the perspective of the Thomistic rather than Anglo-American tradition. However, we believe that valuable insight can be garnered from his work and fruitfully applied to the current concern with finding ra;tional criteria for grounding the human conversation. Marechal credits Kant with realizing that the only egress from the stalemate that beset modern philosophy was to elucidate the complementary roles of sense and understanding in the cognitive process. According to Marechal, this ·solution, to some extent, marks an unwitting return to the Thomistic doctrine of abstraction. "On both sides a contingent multiplicity, that is empirically acquired, is comprehended and universalized by a non-intuitive a priori of the intellect." 25 Both emphasize tha:t, as embodied and finite creatures, all our knowledge begins ·with sense experience. Both assert that the mind is not merely a receptor of sense impressions but an active partner in structuring the data provided by the senses into an intelligible whole. Finally, both see that only if the joint contributions of sense and intellect are recognized can we avoid stumbling into rationalist or empiricist caricatures of cognition. However, Marechal is critical of Kant for failing to integrate the "organizing " function of the understanding (Verstand) with reason's (Vemunft) primal drive or quest for the absolute foundations of knowledge. What lies behind Kant's failure in thi s regard? In his analysis of the a priori structure of knowledge Kant identifies a hierarchy of transcendental conditions that are the logical prerequisites of the "objects " of our cognitive experience. Then, as Marechal writes, he aprpends to this hierarchy: 1 1 25 Joseph Marechal, "Au Seuil de la Meta.physique: Abstraction ou Intuition," in Melanges Joseph Jlarechal I (Paris: Desclee, 1950), p. 147. GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION 251 by a necessary correlation with the transcendental unity of the " Ego," the pre-categorial affirmation of the " thing-in-itself," which represents, in the content of knowledge, an undetermine,d absolute, a negative noumenon, a genuine limit of the phenomenon, necessarily posited along with it, and theyeby the true contact point (point d'attache) for the objectivity of our concepts. 26 Thus, f:vom Kant's perspective, to abandon the thing-in-itself or noumenon as the necessary correlate of the transcendental unity of apperception and the phenomenon as appearence would be to transmogrify his critical philosophy into an absolute idealism. Our sensibility endows us with the capacity to be ·affected by external reality under the a priori forms of space and time. Our experience is, thus, an experience of something external to us, and cannot be reduced to internal states. Hence, the doctrine of the "thing-in-itself" has a twofold function in Kant's system: I) It anchors our experience in external reality; amd 2) It forbids an uncritical identification of " our " experience of reality qua phenomenon with an experience of this same reality's absolute character qua, noumenon or independent object. Marechal points out that, like Kant, the Thomistic tradition maintains the empircia.lly based, discursive nature of the intellect. Consequently, it also rejects the various forms of rationalist metaphysics that claim to produce apodictic knowledge on the basis of direct, intellectual intuition that bypasses the vagaries of the senses. But, unlike Kant, it does not thereby discount the very possibility of constructing an intelligible metaphysics of the noumenal realm. In fact, Marechal holds that Kant need not have reached an agnostic conclusion in this regard. What does he [Kant] lack to rejoin metaphysics in the full sense of the term? He obviously lacks the capacity to apply certain formal deteyminations to the " thing-in-itself" besides its mere phenomenal expression; in other words, he lacks the capacity to construct a system of positive noumena determined according to their own internal structure (en soi) . This inability is the resuit 2a" Au Seuil de la Metaphysique," p. 147. ANTHONY M. MATTEO of the analysis Kant makes of the intellectual a priori which he places in synthesis with the empirical diversity. Kant did not see how the very a priori that makes the object of experience intelligible (by surrounding it with logical properties and projecting it toward a real absolute) must, in this objective function, ascribe to the absolute certain formal determination at least of an analogical nature. 27 Kant dismisses any theoretical determination of the nature of noumenal reality because he cannot conceive of its possibility except when linked with direct, intellectual intuition. In this regard, Marechal feels that Kant does not totally escape the rationalist influence against which he was reaoting.28 Marechal's goal is to expunge this rationalist remnant from Kant's thought, thereby completing his rapprochement with the Thomistic tradition. To this end, Marechal strives to demonstrate that a. thoroughgoing transcendental analysis of the a priori element, operative in the functioning of a discursive intellect such as ours, reveals that a " necessary " affirmation of the noumenal absolute enters into the very constitution of every object of experience, without reliance on a non-sensuous mode of intuition. Knowing (or, better, learning) is a fundamentally dynamic process by which we encounter, not merely appearances, but things-in-themselves precisely through their myriad appearances. Of course, our knowledge of things during our earth21" Au Seuil de la Metaphysique," pp. 147-48. the former disciple of Leibniz and Wolff had detached himself from Cartesian Platonism to the point where he recognized the reciprocal causality of matter and form at the heart of our objective knowledge-which leads him closer to Aristotle-he nonetheless preserves, in the hypothetical conception he has of all ontology, something of the Platonic prejudice in favor of intuition." "Au Seuil de la Metaphysique," p. 148. At the heart of the Platonic prejudice is the belief that sense knowledge is relative and changing, and can at best achieve the level of opinion ( doa:a) . Only pure intellectual intuition could attain to a certain and immutable knowledge of reality ( episteme). Marechal's point is that Kant did not liberate himself from the Platonic notion that only non-sensuous, intellectual intuition can give us a " true" insight into the nature of reality: namely, provide us with a vision of the "thing-in-itself." 2s "If GROUNDING THE HUMAN CONVERSATION 253 ly sojourn can never be exhaustive; such total comprehension would involve an immediate visio sub speoie OLANYI AND KUBN cessive the,ories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, the entities with which theory populates nature and what is " really there." · Perhaps there is some other way of salvaging the notion of ' truth' for application to whole theories, but this one will not do. There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its "real" counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle. 6 This is no afterthought with Kuhn, nor is it a course correction which he may have felt was required when he wrote "Postscript-1969," for we read the following in the main part of his magnum opus 1 in which there are many similar passages: We may, ... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth [and to the real]. 1 Clearly this is not Michael Polanyi's point of view on this matter. Polanyi may not be an empiricist, but he is by no means a relativist either, radical or otherwise. He is simply not prepared to deny the existence of reality, or to claim that it is nothing more than a fabrication of the creative imagination of practicing natural scientists, great though they ma.y be. He repeatedly makes it very clear that natural scientists investigate what is real-what exists independently of themselves, in the world 'beyond their minds-and not some subjective entity which is a construction of their minds. It is true that Polanyi believ,es that it is very difficult to establish beyond a doubt that this is what the natural scientist investigates, but the fact is that at no point does Polanyi sa.y or even imply that the natural scientist is exploring, either in an arbitrary or reasonable manner, his imaginative constructions. For Polanyi, scientists are simply not engaged in the exploration of s Thomas S. Kuhn, The Btruoture of Boientifio Revolutions, p. 206. 1 Ibid., p. 170. 268 MABEN W .ALTER POIRIER imaginative constructions which are resident in the mind. They are involved in the exploration of what is other and of what is real. He makes this point in many ways and on a number of different occasions during his career as a philosopher of ·science. For example, in the following paissage from his work The Tacit Dimension, which was published in 1966, we read of Polanyi's .conviction that scientific knowledge places the scientist in contact with reality 1 rather than with the empirical world, as mainstream thinkers believe, or with some subjective imaginings, as consensualists hold: Modern arose claiming to be grounded in experience and not on a metaphysics derived from first principles. My assertion that science can have discipline and originality only if it believes that the facts and values of science bear on a still unrevealed re;i.lity, stands in opposition to the current philosophic conception of scientific knowledge.8 And agaiin, in an article entitled" Science and Reality," which he published in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science in 1967, Polanyi writes the following by way of an introductory comment: The purpose of this essay is to re-introduce a conception which, having served for two millennia as a guide to the understanding of interpretation of scinature, has been repudiated by the ence. I am speaking of the conception of reality. Rarely will you find it taught today, that the purpose of science is to discover the hidden reality .underlying the facts of nature. The modern ideal of science is to establish a precise mathematical relationship between the data without acknowledging that if such relationships are of interest to science, it is because they tell us that we have hit upon a feature of reality. My purpose is to bring back the idea of reality and place it at the centre of a theory of scientific enquiry. 9 And yet on another occasion, Polanyi writes in an aipproving manner about what it means to speak of something being real. He·says: s:Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday-Anchor, 1967)' 70. s Michael Polanyi, " Science and Reality," The British J oumal for the Philosophy of Science, XVIII ( 1967), pp. 177-196. p: A COMMENT ON POLANYI AND KUHN fl69 To say that an object is real is to anticipate that it will manifest its existence indefinitely hereafter. This is what Copernicus meant by insisting that his system was real. Copernicus anticipated the coming of future manifestations of his system, and these were in fact discovered by later astronomers who had accepted this claim that his system was real.10 There is no doubt about where Polanyi situates himself in regard to this matter. Polanyi holds that science and scientist are, and always have been, interested in knowing the real, and not the empirical world of the mainstream school, nor, for that matter, the imaginative order fahricated by a particularly creative mind, as seems to be the view of Thomas Kuhn and his associates. Early on in our reading of Polanyi, we learn that nea.rly all (if not, indeed, all) great naitura.ilscientists can be shown to be of the conviction that what they, as practising scientists, are engaged in investigating is the real, and not the empirical or the ima.gina.tive. Polanyi's favorite example, although by no means his only example, of the correctness of this belief is provided him by Copernicus. Copernicus, he informs us, and, of course, we already know this from the study of the early history of astronomy, did not see heliocentricism as a mere computational matter; that is to say, in the faJShion in which Ptolemy saw geocentricism. Rather, he along with his followers recognized heliocentricism to be true, to be a reality-a. picture of the way things are. Polanyi writes in his· article " Science and Reality ": The great conflict between the Copernicans and their opponents, culminating in the prosecution of Galileo by the Roman hierarchy, is well remembered. It should be clear also that the conflict was entirely about the question whether the heliocentric system was real. Copernicus and his followers claimed that their system was a real image of the sun with the planets circling around it; their opponents affirmed that it was no more than a novel computing device.11 10 Michael Polanyi, " Genius in Science," Encounter, XXXVIII, No. 1 (January, 1972), p. 44f. ll Polanp, " Science and Realit;v,'' :p. 177. MABEN WALTER POIRIER Examples \Such as this from the history of science ,abound, Polanyi argues, and in his principal work, Pe!fsonal Knowledge, Polanyi repeats many times the sort of statement which has just been quoted. But precisely what does Michael Polanyi mean when he claims that science and scientists are in search of the true and the real? This is, alter all, the fundamental question. If he means \Something that is essentially similar to what Kuhn means when he asserts that scientists are involved in the exploration of paradigms, then in truth there is no major distinction to be drawn hetween Kuhnian and Polanyian thought concerning wha:t is involv;ed in thinking scientifically. Howev;er, if it can he demonstrated that Polanyi does not mean what Kuhn means, and it is our contention that he does not, then there is ,a major difference between the two thinkers, and they are not in agreement with one another over fundamentals. On a number of occasions, Polanyi very clear what he has in mind when he states " ... the scientist seeks to know the real." For instance, he writes the following in the article from which we have just quoted above: What we mean is that the thing will not dissolve.like a dream, but that, in some ways it will yet manifest its existence, inexhaustibly, in the future. For it is there, whether we believe it or not, indepe.ndently of us, and hence never fully predictable in its consequences. The anticipatory powers which Kepler, Galileo and Newton revealed in the heliocentric system, were as many particulars of the general anticipations that are intrinsic to any belief in reality.12 He immediately goes on to say: This defines reality and truth. If anything is believed to be capable of a largely indeterminate range of future manifestations, it is thus believed to be real. A statement about nature is believed to be true if it is believed to disclose an aspect of something real in nature. A true physical theory is therefore believed to be no mere. mathematical relation between observed data, but to rep22 lbid., p. 191, A COMMENT ON POLANYI AND KUHN 9l71 resent an aspect of reality, which may yet manifest itself inexhaustibly in the future. 13 In making this point, Bolanyi is drawing attention to the fact that if and when a theory is viewed a:s being nothing moJ.1e than a man-made computational device, and as having oonventional significance, then it is not ". . . capable of a largely indeterminate range of future manifestations." And this is so because it has nothing more to manifest. A computational device is what its manufacturer made it to be, ·and it cannot, with the pa1ssage of time, reveal itself to be more than was intended by its creiator. It is exactly what it wais CJ.1eated to be, and nothing more. However, this cannot 1be the case if it is held that a particular theory peers into the real. The claim here is completely di:fferent,says Polanyi. In thi's instance, what is being asserted of theory and theoretical knowing is that it is capable, in time, of unmasking more than has been hitherto revealed of the hidden order. It is susceptible of giving a fuller acoount of what is out there, and it does this because its content is not the pmduct of man's creative genius, but rather the consequence of the attentive communication that takes place between man and the other than man. Obviously, for Polanyi, rthe philosophical realist, a theory is not a model, 1a. schema., or a conceptual framework invented by ,a scientist to save the appearances. A theory is the product of insight, however imperfect, into order, and into the real. To the extent that this insight is truly about what is real, it is a wager that the insight in question will uncover more of that order than is presently known. And, if mol'e of the order i's uncovered, then it is held that the original contact with reality was true, and the wager in the ·end was worth making; since it eventually brought more of the true order, existing independently of man, into the ken of men. This, in brief, is what Michael Polanyi means when he asserts that scientists search out the true the rea,l, +s Il;id., p. 191, MABEN WALTER POffiIER We cannot avoid drawing attention .to the fact that, for Polanyi, man the scientist does not experierwehimself as being in charge of the constituents of his insight. He is not an inventor of his vision, as inevitably is the case for Thomas Kuhn. Rather, he comes upon it, so that it might be ,said that he is responding to the beckoning of the real. Clearly, this is a very Platonic vision, yet, we believe, it accurately represents Michael Folanyi's conception of how scientists reason .and scientific knowledge is advanced. GiV'en .all of this, how can :anyone claim that Polanyi is ontologically a relwtivist? It seems to us that he is one o:f the few philosophers of science in the Twentieth Century who is precisely not a relativist. B) This brings us to the question o:f subjectivism in Polanyi's thinking. Polanyi is understood by many to have been a subjectivist, and as having had a. 'mystical message ' in relation to how scientists come to know what they claim to know. This is so, it is held, because of the prominent role which he assigns to what he calls subsidiary knowledge :and the tacit dimension in the knowing pr:ocesis. However, is it right to assert that Polanyi is a subjectivist, if what we mean by subjectivist is ". . • one who is concerned with matters that originate in and exist only inside of the mind, and which have no external referent?" By this standard, it is undoubtedly correct to identify Kuhn and his colleagues as subjectivists. But what about Michael Polanyi? Polanyi, we :feel, is much too concerned with reality and with what is othler, as it exists independently of the mind, for this label to be appropriately applied to him. Throughout his writings, he invariably directs our attention to what is outside the mind, and he asserts, in a classically Platonic fashion, that truth and objectivity reside in the approximation of the mind with what is, as we have had occasion to note above. Indeed, he even alludes to the oldfashioned character of this conception of true knowledge, ,when says very early on i:q Personal Kriowledve; A COMMENT ON POLANYI AND KUHN To say that the discovery of objective truth in science consists in the apprehension of a rationality which commands our respect and arouses our contemplative admiration; that such discovery, while using the experience of our senses as clues, transcends this experience by embracing the vision of a reality beyond the impressions of our senses, a vision which speaks for itself in guiding us to an even deeper understanding of reality-such an account of scientific procedure would be generally shrugged aside as out-dated Platonism: a piece of mystery-mongering unworthy of an enlightened age. Yet it is precisely on this conception of objectivity that I wish to insist. . . . I want to recall how scientific theory came to be reduced in the modern mind to the rank of a convenient contrivance, a device for recording events and computing their future course, and I wish to suggest then that twentieth-century physics, ... demonstrate on the contrary the power of science to make contact with reality in nature by recognizing what is rational in nature. 14 The important point in all of this is that the distinction between what is objectivism and what is subjectivism in epistemdistinction beological thinking is not equivalent to tween explicit ·and tacit knowledge. Put very simply, what is objective is not synonymous with what is explicit, and perha.ps even more importantly, with what is empirical, and what is subjective is not synonymous with what is tacit. The expres1sions tacit knowledge •and explicit knowledge relate to how man e:x!periencesthe activity of knowing, wherea;s the words objective and subjective; bear on the question of where the content of our knowledge is deemed ito be located-outside of our mind, or within our mind. It is not inconceivable, therefore, that man can have explicit knowledge of what is subjective (Cartesian thinking :for the most part unfolds within the realm of a highly explicit, yet subjective order), and a tacit knowledge of what exists objectively, namely, outside of the mind. In fact, this is precisely how we are to understand the distinction between, on the one hand, what Kuhn proposes, and, on the other, what Polanyi advances. Kuhn, as far a;s he 1 14 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Oritical Philos- ophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1962), p. 5f. 274 MABEN WALTER POIRIER goes, gives us a highly explicit reading of the subjective worlds which he claims are fabricated by the fertile and imaginative minds of great scientists, and Polanyi, for the most part, gives us an insight into the role of the tacit component in the knowing process as it hears on the exploration of what is real and objective. We see from this that while both Kuhn and Polanyi may be agreed in their opposition to empiricism, they are a.Iso in point of fact not engaged in the investigation of the same questions, nor do they have the same perspective on those issues which interest both of them. At no time is Kuhn an objectivist, and Polanyi exhibits no inclination towards subjectivism when addressing issues of scientific significance. Of ·associated significance is the fact that Kuhn 'Shows no indication that he is interested in exploring the role played by the knower in the acquisition of knowledge, except in as much rus he speaks of gestalt-like shifts taking place in the mind of ,a scientist. Thus, he indicates his desire always to remain within the realm of the explicit and intellectually transparent. The reference to gestalt-like shifts only serve to mask his disinterest, since the langua,ge of gestalt-shifts: prevents .any furthex investigation of the import and role of the knower from taking place; and in the end, everything flounders on the rock of psychological obscumntism. Note that in this respect, Kuhn is not all that much at odds with the mainstream empiricist view, which likewise fails to understand the role of the personal in the acquisition of knowledge. Polanyi, on the other hand, draws our attention to the fact that all knowledge is essentially human knowledge, and that it is imperative that we explore the tacit and experiential recesses of our person if we are to understand the source of our intuitions of other, of order, and of the real. At this point, it may be argued by some that we have not confronted the problem of subjectivism in Michael Polanyi's thinking as directly as we might havie. Indeed, it may even be claimed that we hav;e sidestepped the question. Thwefore, let us see if we can address the matter in a fashion that i:s more a:pt to satisfy. A COMMENT ON POLANYI AND KUHN If some understand by the term subjectivism, 1any !l'leliance upon criteria. for judgment which are profoundly personal in character, and ·are thus maybe not susceptible of full explicitation, then it is perhaps not surprising that they may want to view the Polanyian position as a subjectivist one. Epistemological •studies for some two hundl.'ed years have been particularly concerned by the need to make knowledge as rigourous as possible, and there has been ·a generalized fear of the intervention of human biases into the knowing P'rocess-biases w:hich, it is felt, might distort the reliability of knowledge. Now, all of us appreciate that rbhis is a fear that is not to be dismissed lightly, for we understand that we gain absolutely nothing if we allow for the free reign of our biases when making a decision which aims at the truth. As a result, we are rather .accepting of the systematic attempts, which have been made over the years, to eliminate all human interference in the development of knowledge, and we look upon any suggestion that man inevitably does and ought to play ·a role in the knowing p11ocess with a certain scepticism, if not outright horror. It is in this ·context of ·concern for the reduction of bias that Polanyi is accused of being .a subjectivist, and by implication an opponent of ohjectivism. But we ought to be extremely careful here before we brand Polanyi a subjectivist. If we approach the question of Polanyian subjectivism from this direction, then we should be aware that what we are really saying is that we fault Polanyi for not being a neutralist, for the opposite to subjectivism thus understood is not objectivism (although many would have us believe that it is), but epistemological neutralism. 15 And, of course, Bolanyi is not a neutlla.list; and to the extent that he is criticized by his opponents 15 There is a tendency for some present-day thinkers to name what we hav:e called "epistemological neutralism" objectivism. Although we do not wish to argue over words here, it appears to us as more reasonable to indentify this modern stand as neutralism, and reserve the words "objective" and "objectivism " for the traditional man-centered scientific outlook on the world. 9l76 MABEN WALTER POIRIER for not being one, they are correct.16 But this does not make him a subjedivist either. He is an objeativist in the original sense of the term-in the manner in which the word was understood prior to the rise of posiitivist thinking in the field of epistemological studies. Let us explain. The doctrine of neutralism in the field of epistemology studies is a view which first ma.de its appearance a11ound the time of the Enlightenment, and it has been mistakenly believed ·since then that ,all it represents is a concern for the pursuit of the unbiaised or unvarnished truth. In fact, the consensus is that it ,is simply the expression of an interest in a high degree of objedivity in all types of disciplined research. Now, if we could take this at face-value, few of us would 1be in disagreement with the merits of such a doctrine, or with its objedive. But unfortunately we cannot . .&s a view, this doctrine is founded upon the erroneous belief that the only reliable sort of knowledge that is available to men is that which arises out of an "extra-personal" articulation and implementation of a logic or procedure, the objectivity and unbiased nature of which is guaranteed by its methodologically trans-personal character. One might have faith in the obj-ectivity and verity of knowledge pursued in this manner, it is held, because it is unaffected by ·any human intervention, and hence potential for bias or distortion. It is the product of nothing more than the enadment of an impersonal pmcedure. Clearly, what we are dealing with hel'e-assuming that it is possible for us to have this sort of knowledge in the first place-is a knowledge that is thoroughly impersonal, sanitized, and devoid of all human residue. Now, so-called" neutral knowledge" of the sort we have just described must not be confused with ohjedive knowledge, nor with objectivity in all forms of discursive reasoning. Ob16 Michael Polanyi is never e1JJplicitly criticized for TU>t being a neutralist, although this is the implied criticism which follows from his being accused of subjectivism, since mainstream philosophers of science do not distinguish between neutralism and objectivism. In the view of most contemporary philosophers of science writing in the empirical tradition, everything that is not objectivist qua neutralist is subjectivist. A COMMENT ON POLANYI AND KUHN 277 jectivity does not preclude the personal, nor does it place an embargo upon human residue in any knowing activity. It is rather the ca;se that the truth issues out of the acceptance that all knowing activity is fundamentally rooted in man, and that what makes knowledge objective is man's bias in favour of " getting it right." A knowledge is worthy of being called " objective," not because it is the product of the implementation of some impersonal methodology or pmcedure, but because it accords with the reality of a situation, which can only be known as a result of the knowing's rootedness in man. Polanyi never believed that it was possible for man to know in a way that did not actively engage the knower in the knowing process, ·which is what is sought by epistemological neutralism. But if P:olanyi did not think that it WaiS possible to know in a neutral manner, this should not be interpreted to mean that he believed that objectivity was impossible. It was very much possible, and without it, science and the search for the truth was impossible, as we have had ample occasion ·to observe, given his belief that the object of knowledge in science is real. As we see it, the problem is that many modern epistemologists and philosophers of science confuse objectivism with neutralism, and when they encounter a thinker who is not .a neutralist in epistemological matters, they believe him to be a subjectivist, or one who would make scientific knowledge a hostage to hios persona.I fortune in that he is unduely given to allowing for the entry of personal proclivities into the decisional and knowing process. But, obviously this is not necessarily the case, and especially is it not likely to be the situation if ithe thinker is ia philosophical realist, rus is Michael Polanyi. claim that the acWe should recall here that it is tivity of knowing has two poles, namely, attending from and attending to. When man claims to know something, Polanyi informs us, he is actually aware of a great deal more than the ' something ' which he says he knows. This ' ·something ' srbands in the forefront of his mind, in all of its otherness, and man is MABEN WALTER POIRIER said to know this in a focal fashion or ,explicitly, says Polanyi. This is generally what most of us mean when we speak of our having knowledge 0£ something, and it is what Polanyi understands when he speaks. of knowing by attending to. However, Polanyi a;sserts that there is more to having knowledge than this. Man not only knows in an explicit manner, but his very possession of explicit knowledge is dependent upon his way of being in the world. In order to know explicitly, man must be anchored somewhere; after all, it is human lmowledge that we are talking of here. And, this somewhere in which man is anchored is nothing other than whaJt he calls " his experience ", and ultimately his body. It is on his experience that man draws in order tbo know explicitly. Polanyi speaks of this knowledge as a form of knowing by attending fram. Now, man cannot be rtotally transparent or articulate 'about ,this realm called' experienoe '. Try as he ma,y, there is always some element of realm which eludes his grasp. Hence, its designation ,as tacit by Polanyi. But norbe, claiming that man relies on his way of being in the world (experience, body and all) in order to know the other is neither illegitimate nor dalliance with subjectivism. It is not illegitimate, since how else can man know? As a disincar:nate spirit? And it is not flirting with subjectivism, because man is not relying on his way of being in the world and his experiences in order only to explore his interiority, or the inner workings: and constructions of his mind. Rather, he is relying on his experiences in order to know the objective and the real. Therefore, tacit or subsidiary knowledge issues, for Polanyi, out of that range 0£ experience and of being from which we humans depart on our in quest of the real and the objective outside of the mind, or, as we are reminded by Michaiel Polanyi in Personal Knowledge: 1 The enquiring scientist's intimations of a hidden reality are personal. They are his beliefs, which-owing to his originality-as yet he alone holds. Yet they are not a subjective state of mind, but convictions held with universal intent, and heavy with arduous projects. It was he who decided what to believe, yet there is no A COMMENT ON POLANYI AND KUHN 279 arbitrariness in his decision. For he arrived at his conclusions by utmost exercise of responsibility. He has reached responsible beliefs, born of necessity, and not changeable at will. In a heuristic commitment, affirmation, surrender and legislation are fused into a single thought, bearing on a hidden reality. 17 Clearly, Michael Polanyi is neither a relativist nor a. subjectivist. He is a realist and an ohjectivist who understands the human and fiduciary character of all knowledge oriented towards the real. 11 Ibid. p. 311. RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III KEVIN W. IRWIN The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. HIS ARTICLE is the third in a series o.£ reviews on contemporary works on sacramental theology. The first, published in October, 1983,1 reviewed eleven books published between 1975-1988 on sacraments, and considered issues of method. The concluding section delineated the elements to be included in a contemporary systematic study of the sacraments. The second article, published in January, 1988,2 reviewed seven .books published between 1988-1987, also from the perspective of method. This article completes the survey of recent English language works on sacraments by reviewing the books on individual sacraments in the Message of the Sacraments series edited by Monika Hellwig.8 In a preface reproduced a.t the beginning of each volume in the series, Monika Hellwig describes the scope of the project. She then describes five aspects of sacramental life dealt with in each work. 1 See, Kevin W. Irvin, "Recent Sacramental Theology: A Review Discussion" The Thomist 4 7 (October, 1983) , 592-608. 2 See, Kevin W. Irvin, " Recent Samramental Theology,'' The Thomist 52 (January, 1988), 124-147. 11 The books discussed here are all volumes in the Message of the Sacraments series under the general editorship of Monika K. Hellwig, publisih.ed by Michael Glazier (Wilmington). They are: Thomas Marsh Gift of Com· munity: Baptism and Confirmation (1984); Ralph Keifer, Blessed, and, Broken: An Fl«JPloration of the Contemporary Fl«JPerienoe of Goa in Flucha· ristio Celebration ( 1982) ; Monika K. Hellwig, Sign of ReconciUaticm and Conversion: The Sacrament of Penance for our Timl36 (1984, revised edition); David M. Thoma!!, Christian Marriage: A Journey Together (1983), Nathan Mitchell, Mission and Ministry: History and Theology in the Sacra· ment of Order (1982); James L. Empereur, Prophetic Anointing: Goa's Cail to the Sick, the Blons against sentimentality in composing new liturgical terla (88), and calls for a new sense of God as present in the splendor and tragedy of human existence (41) . This, he maintains, will open up a new "sense of [the] mystery" of God. In chapter three Kei£er deals with the phenomenon of a divided Christianity celebrating eucharist •sepairately. He discusses primary metaphors for the eucharist and (again) oontrasts two difierent approaches: the medieval understanding of Christ's atoning sacrifice as atonement for sin (43-47) and the contemporary metaphm- of Christ's identification with humanity (48). Rather than rinterpret "sacrifice,, as meaning "to give up " or " to kill," Keifer sees the notion of "holocaust " 'as evncative and immediately understandable for our culture.17 Two key insights which the eucharistic liturgy offers in orrder 16 Here Keifer criticizes the hymn V ea:illa, Regis for being militaristic and triumphant; however this is to misunderstand the full meaning of Christ's kingship commemorated during the Paschal triduum. The proclamation of the passion from St. John on Good Friday reveals significant royal images of the crucified Christ, the king who freely ascends the cross in order to reveal his glory from the throne of a tree. Frequently in liturgical texts kingship is linked to the lamb of sacrifice •and to the altar of the eucharist. The present revisions in the Mass formula for the Solemnity of Christ the King, specifically its preface, indicate that kingship is linked to the reign of God and less to militaristic images: You anointed Jesus Christ ..• as the eternal priest and universal king. As priest he offered his life on the altar of the cross and redeemed the human race by this one perfect sacrifice of peace. As king he claims dominion over all creation, that he may present to you, his almighty Father, an eternal and universal kingdom: a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, kingdom of justice, love and peace. 17 For a more insightful understanding of the import which the Holocaust has for Christian worship see, Michael Downey, "Worship Between the Holocausts," TheoZogy Today 43 (1986), 75-87. RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III 291 to interpret Christ's presence and sacrifice are anamnesis and epiclesis-remembering and invocation (56) . Keifer describes the meaning and draws out the implica.tions of eucharistic memorial and invocation by describing how the eucharist brings contemporary communities into communion with God, with one another, and with each individual's personal history. The author then discusses eucharistic sacrifice on the basis of memorial and invocation, the same bases which contemporary ecumenical dialogues use to interpret this particularly knotty problem.18 Keifer interprets the Council of Trent's position that the eucharist is a " propitiatory sacrifice " as meaning that it is more than a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and that when the eucharist is celebrated Christ's sacrifice is' present in its saving power (58). An essential component of a liturgical understanding of sacrifice is the fact that it is the sacrifice of the Church (,as stated in the General Imtruction on the Roman Miss'al nos. 1-3). Furthermore, with regard to ecumenical dialogue, the liturgy provides wide understanding of Christ's pre,sence in the eucharist; it includes his presence in the assembly, in its prayer, in the ministers, in the proclamation of ithe Word and in bread and wine (61) .19 Many insights offered here are useful, yet they deserve more thorough explanation. Chapter four is perhaps the best chapter of the whole book; it presents a 'simplified introduction to a liturgical theology of the eucharist. Here Keifer joins together the scriptmal language about meals with Jesus to the meaning of the deaith of Christ (70) and maintains ·that the language which best describes this is a language not of oblation or of suffering. He 18 A particularly insightful and unique approach to this thorny issue is in David N. Power, "The Sacrifice of the Mass: A Question of Reception and Re-Reception," lilcclesia Orans2 (1985), 67-94. 19 Keifer's delineation of the presence of Christ in the eucharist is taken from the Instruction on Eucharistic Worship of Paul VI ( 1967), no. 9. The original text speaks of Christ being present " in the person of the minister the same now offering through the ministry of the priest who formerly offered himself on the Cross " not " in the ministers of the assembly " as Keifer states (p. 61). KEVIN W. IRWIN states that" sacrifice is an interpretative category .... [W]hat makes an action sacrificial is not what is done, but what the action means" (68). He argues this rthesis on the ba:sis of the servant text from Is 52: U-53: U and an understanding of the paschal meal as a basis for understanding what the eucharist means (71-2). Keifer sides with Jeremias in interpreting eucharistic memorial a:s meaning that God will remember, and thus act on behalf of rthe community (73) .20 While he uses the word " oblation " when referring to the eucharistic memorial, Keifer merely states that " to do something ' in memorial ' gives it the character of an oblation, an offering ... " (73) . Unfortunately he does not develop this any further and rthus leav;es vague his interpretation of obligation as a factor in eucharistic understanding. is faithful to the liturgy when he describes the Jewish berakoth 1as the prayer form that should be undel"Stood as the bwsis for meal prayers in Judaism and during the formative period of Christianity (76-7) . The thesis of chapter five is that liturgy and life should interconnect, and that there should be a relation in life to what is celebrated in the cult. Unfortunately, too many generalizations mar this section, and the reference to liturgy in general, rather than to the eucharist, weakens its cogency as part of a book on the eucharist. Keifer makes a number of important points here: rthat liturgy is not for the like-minded or ,the already committed only (84-5) , and that the eucharistic community is not predicated on 1specialinterests; rather it is ba,sed on human concern for one another. Keifer states that while some question whether infant baptism has any meaning, for him the real issue is whether baptism makes any discemable difference in one's life (90) . of anamnesis ("that God may remember .. .'') ·20 Jeremias' interpretation is not universally held. For a variety of interpretations see, Fritz Chenderlin, Do This As My Memorial: The Semitio and Oonaeptual Background and Value of Anamnesis in 1 Oorinthians 11 :24-25. Analecta Biblica 99 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1982), pp. 228-266. See also the position of Lothar Lies, " Okumenische Erwagungen zu Abendmahl, Priesterweihe und :Messopfer," Zeitsahrift fii,r kathoZische TheoZogie 104 ( 1982), 385-410. RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III 298 In chapters six and se¥en Keifer continues to deal with issues that are tangential to eucharist, specifically that symbols "speak,, when they resonate with our own experience (97), thart one should empha:sfae symbolic actions in liturgy rather than verbal expression alone, ·and that Catholic sacramental worship in¥olves familiar things in life such a:s assembling, bathing, dining and embracing (108-115). Chapters seven and eight are theologically thin and liturgically weak. The issues discussed a.-epeat points Keifer made earlier in the book about the liturgy in general. They are a disappointment in a work 1about the sacrament of the eucharist. When evaluated against the criteria :set forth in the editor's preface to this series, Keifer's Blessed and Broken does not measure up to what was promised. When it deals with the tradition of eucharistic liturgy •and theology it does •so in •a spoUy way. The issues raised have no apparent order OT coheTence. While the liturgical insights into eucharistic theology are usually sound 21 (for example in chapteris three and £our), any real appreciation of the patristic, early medieval and medieval undersitanding of the eucharist is conspicuously ahsent. The book ma.y be useful for an adult education group which is taught by someone who can supplement it with material of more depth and precision. For ·a college, university or seminary audience the work is not recommended because it lacks the requil'ed substance of material and .cogency of argument. A·s already noted, Sign of Reoonmliation and Conversi,on: The Sacrament of Penance for Our Times by Monika Hellwig is very faithful to the aims of the series. In the Introduction the 21 Interestingly, Keifer offers no critique of the present eucharistic rite in this work as he had done elsewhere. In fact he seems to have changed his opinion on the value of the prayers said at the presentation of the gifts. Compare "Preparation of the Altar and the Gifts or Offertory?" Worship 48 (1974), 596-600 with Blessed a.nd Brokoo, pp. 18-19. Much of what Keifer argues in "Our Cluttered Vestibule: The Unreformed Entrance Rite," Worship 48 (1974), 270-277, has recently been more carefully researched historically and argued liturgically by John Baldovin, " Kyrie Eleison and the :i.:iite Qf the :iioon,{tn Worship 60 {1986) 1 334-341, 294 KEVIN W. IRWIN author states that she will treat the sacrament with three contemporary questions in mind: (I) what is an appropriate sense of sinfulness and conversion for our times; (2) how does ecclesial mediation function today ( including both the priest's role and lay persons' roles in penance); (8) what arie the central elements in the rites and what is the sign value of the rites as celebrated (8-10). Additional issues which appear alongside these include the relationship of nature and grace as interpenetrating and as experienced in the single reality of human experience (6), and images of God that operate in the penance process (6) . Hellwig addreses the first of these questions in chapter one entitled " Sin, Repentance and Conversion." Here the author discusses the pervasiveness of God's love in all human life, and repentance as the result of God's initiaitive (25). Preferring the Hebrew notion of turning one's dfoection toward God, as opposed to the Greek notion of changing mind, Hellwig maintains that the fundamental issue a,bout sin and sinfulness resides in self-assertion and independence from God, as opposed to individual sinful acts. Sin is a fundamental attitude whereby one sets oneself apart from God; the author argues thait for Christians, Jesus embodies God's reconciliation. The church is the embodiment of Jesus to continue God's offer of salvation. Here Hellwig reflects an approach to morality based on the fundamental option theory. The cautions about this theory by momlists and the unresolved issue of what role individual actions have in expres1singor determining one's option should be recaUed when assessing the import of this chapter. Chapters two to five consider the history of the practice and the theology of penance. While the author has compressed a large amount of material into these pages, she writes so clearly that the threads of develpment and change are evident and well explained th110ughout. Unfortunately her review of history research Qf is marred by too greait 'a .relia;iice on the 1 1 RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III Oscar Watkins. 22 She asserts that in ,the first two centuries there is no record of a standard rite by which reconciliation was handled (32). The first such indication. comes from Tertullian at the beginning of the third century. Hellwig correctly terms the process exomologesis and notes the involvement of the whole community in rthe process whereby penitents acknowledge 'Sinfulness, perform penainces to express sorrow, and ask the prayers of the community for them. Unfortunately, Hellwig misses the essential part of exomologesis as declaring praise and thanks to God evident in the subapostolic age. At this time "confession" meant the praise of God, thanksgiving for mercy as well as seeking pardon from those offended and reconciliation with the church. 23 The church saw herself as the community of salvation. To be welcomed into its gathering was to receive the blessing of salvation and that in turn evoked the pTaise and blessing of God (berakah and exomologesis) .24 In line with this understanding, it is not surprising that for Tertullian " confession " meant first a confession of faith and of praise, and then of sins. Hellwig seems to have missed the point that essentially exo,mologesis was a declaration and a public acknowledgment of God's greatness. 20 ·22 Hellwig's source for much of the history is Oscar D. Watkins, A History of Penance, being a Study of the Authorities, Vol. I: The Whole Ohurch to A.D. 450, and Vol. II: The Western Ohurch from A.D. 450 to A.D. 1218 (London: Longmans Green, 1920). Conspicuously absent are the more recent and highly regarded works: Cyrille Vogel, Le Peoheur et La Penitence dans l'JfJglise anoieniie (Paris: Cerf, 1966), and Le Pecheur et La Penitence au M oyen-Age (Paris: Cerf, 1969), as well as Karl Rahner, Frune Bussgescnickte in Jilinzelnuntersuonungen, Sonriften Zur Tneologie XI (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1973), which appeared in English as Tneological Investigations Vol. 15, Penance in tne Jilarly Onuroh, trans. by Lionel Swain (New York: Crossroad, 1982). 2s See, James Dallen, Tke .Reconciling Community: Tke .Rite of Penance (New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1986), p. 20. 24 Ibid., p. 24. 25 Ibid., p. 32: " Tertullian uses the Greek womologesis to name the public ritual manifestation of repentance. While this word is often translated as confession, it does not mean what we usually understand by the term. It is confession first of faith, then praise, and only then of sins. JiltDomologesis ii.<*nowledge.s God's greatness, a greatness shown through merc;y leading tQ 296 KEVIN W. mWIN Toward the end of the chapter the author sketches the advainta.ges of " once in a Jifetime " event and some of the disadvantages that led ·to a change to private penance be.ginning in the seventh century. This is taken up in. chapter· three, where the inevitability of the shift from public to private penance is skill£ully summarized (45) . Hellwig cites the influence of monasticism here, particularly the contribution of the Rule of St. Benedict and its forebears in the writings of the desert fathers and of John Cassian. Her·e the author seems so preoccupied with the penitential ·aspects of this way of life that she skirts the thoroughly eschatological character of the life, for penance was one among other important means utilized by monks in their search for God.26 On the other hand Hellwig correctly cites the leniency found in monastic rules about excommunciation and reentry inrto the oommunity. 27 The practice of confessing sins to a layperson is raised on occasion;28 in this chaipter the issue concerns confession to a woman. Hellwig repeaits Kenneth Leech':s assertion (in Soul 1 repentance, and breathes ithe same spiritual atmosphere as the Jewish berakoth. It is not primarily the acknowledgment of sins .... " See also, Jean Leclerq, "Confes.sion and Pr.aise of God," Worship 42 (1968), 169-176. This understanding is important since one of the significant restorations to the reformed rite of penance is the " proclamation of praise for God's mercy" in each of the three forms. See, Rite of Penance, nos. 47, 56, and 63. 2a Central for an understanding of Benedictine monasticism is an understanding of the place of the Abbot, monastic formation and profession as these relate to its regimen and penitential discipline. See, the essays by Claude Peifer on " The Abbot" and ":Monastic Formation and Profession," in RB 1980: The Rule <>f St. Benedict (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1981), pp. 322-378, 437-466. 27 A thorough presentation of such disciplinary measures within the context of the monastic life is detained by Kenneth Hein in "The Disciplinary Measures in the Rule of Benedict," in RB 1980, pp. 415-436. 2s This issue is raised in connection with the present context for discussing the sacrament (p. 8), in observatons about the Celtic tradition and the (doubtful) examples of Brigit and Ita serving as confessors (p. 54), medieval discussions of the role of the ordained confessor (p. 74), Aquinas' comments on the matter ( p. 98), present examples of this practice which foster a more fraternal role for the confessor (p. 135), and future prospects of includill$' laypersons in this minist17 (p. 157), RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III 297 Friend) that this occurred from the seventh century onwards; but she readily admits the lack of precise documentation from this secondary source. 29 It is one thing ·to affirm the benefits of the contemporary practice of acknowledging sins to a director outside s·acramenta.l penance (8); it is lay quite ·another to try to indicate historical precedent where evidence for it is so sketchy as to be unsound. Chapter three ends with a description of the system of tariff penance and the development of penitential practices engaged in by the whole church during Lent (55-60). Chapter four reviews the relative advantages and d:isadvanrtages of public and private penance, noting especially the severity of the former and the lack of ecc1esial sense in the latter (62-64). The system of ·tariff penance involved a loss of the important mle of the confessor in discernment, 30 which role was sacrificed in favor of recourse to penitential books to determine the requisite penance to perform (65). Hellwig argues that in the medieval period the practice (derived from mon11Jsticism) of manifostaiting one's conscience and of admitting sins in the context of spiritual direction was reversed. 31 At this same time the practice of penance became very individualistic, as did the common understading of sin. This, Hellwig argues, led to an emphasis on acrts rather than on attitudes in acknowledging sin and the need for conversion (83). The author's explanation ·and assessment of the new rites of sacramental penance comprise the ooncluding pages of this chapter (84-87), and are very superficial. Nowhere does Hell29 Hellwig herself makes the following comment in n. 21 on p. 54: "This assertion is frequently made but without documentation, e.g. by Kenneth Leech in Soul Friend: A Stud.y in Spirituality (London: Sheldon Press, 1977)' p. 50." ao See, Raymond Studzinski, " The Minister of Reconciliation: Some Historical Models," in The Rite of Penance: Commentaries. Background and Directions, ed. by Nathan Mitchell (Washington: The Liturgical Press, 1974), pp. 50-61. st Hellwig cites her indebtedness for this insight to Thomas Clarke, and she distinguishes between this as a way of interpreting the past and as an avenue for future developments. Its usefulness for the future is not debated here. 298 XEVIN W. IRWIN wig mention the importance of ritual in penitential celebrations, the roJe of laying on of hands or the sign of peace in history or in the revised rites, or the importance of the litany and thanksgiving prayers that are found in communal forms of penance. 82 Chaipter five contains a hisrtocy of the theology of penance. Hellwig emphasizes the period from the twelfth century on, since she 3Sserts that this is the time when the theology of penance began (96). The first part of this chapter, though very brief, deserves attention because of the way the author argues about patristic notions of God, and which images predominate. The shift from absolution as a prayer that God would forgive, accompanied by a declarative absolution from penances 1and penalties, to emphasis on a declarative formula whereby the priest seems rto forgive 'Sins as well •as remit penalties takes place in the era of the Victorines (97). Both Hugh and Richard of St. Victor placed the priest at the center, ias the one who f&gives in the proper sense of the term because God has given him the power of the keys (97). This argument will remain as part of the church's explanation of penance through Tl.1ent. Limitations of space do not ·afford the author Ml opportunity to explore the teaching of Aquinas (98-99) or of Trent (99-100) more thoroughly. Chapter six offers an intriguing evaluation of the present state of use and non-use of sacramental penance. The author is clearly sympathetic with those who prefer other ways than the sacrament of penance to achieve a sense of forgiveness and integration in life. Three factors which have contributed to this dissatisfaction include the medieval shift from contrition to satisfaction (117) , the problem of assigning penances (118) , and the shift away fvom penances as ascetical practices that helped the penitent to look fo the future, rather than to coma2 For an appreciation of the role of such gestures as the laying on of hands and exchanging the sign of peace in the development of this sacra· ment see, James Dallen, "The Imposition of Hands in Penance: A Study in Liturgical History" Worship 51 (1977), 224-247. RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III 299 pensate for sins committed in the past (119). Unfortunately, Hellwig seems not to appreciate the emphasis on contrition, as evident in the General Instruction on the rite of penance. 88 In chapter seven, Hellwig deals .with the commonly unexplored issue of indulgences. She traces ·an important ·distinction between inner conversion and the " residues of sin " (127) from patristic evidence, to the medieval uneasiness with the concept of indulgences. She asserts that a convenient way. of dealing with the distinction was the medieval understanding of merits and the treasury of merits dispell'sed to ·those in need (125). She prefers to interpret indulgences as having to do with the residue of sin, rather than making up for the "punishment due" to sin .as found in Trent (128). In order to avoid a " bargain " notion of indulgence and ·to assert a dynamic understanding of indulgences the author start.es that the granting of an indulgence simply underscores what is happening all the time, that the saving grace of Christ's redemptive death and resurrection ·anticipates and welcomes our conver·sion at every step of the way (128-29). Whether such a description of indulgences would suffice for all who try to interpret the Tridentine teaching today is doubtful. When discussing the role of the confessor in chapter eight, Hellwig offers some helpful things for those who serve in this ministry. She argues for a fraternal, as opposed to a paternal, role •and 1asserrts that one who hears confessions should do so in such a way that his vulnerability ·and sinfulness is also acknowledged in the sacramental encounter (185-86) . When treating this role it is unfortunate that the author does not rely more heavily on the revised rites of penance, which deal with the proclamation and exposition of the Word of God as 33 Most noticeable is the fact that Hellwig did not use the General In· str'Uotion on the revised rite of penance in this regard. No. 6 describes the four parts of the sacrament: contrition, confession, act of penance (satisfac· tion) and absolution. Contrition is deliberately placed first. The Instr'Uotion states: " The most important act of the •penitent is contrition, which is heartfelt sorrow and aversion for sin committed along with the intention of sinning no more." (The Rites, p. 365). 800 KEVIN W. mWIN that which invites pe:nitents to repent. In addition, a flaw in Hellwig's understanding of the new rites (in chaipters four and nine) is a minimalistic of appreciation of the role of the proclamation of the Word in all three rites of penance. When she discusses the "wordly dimension" of penance (in chapter nine), she lays great stress on how a homily can be used to instruct congregations about the justice aspects of penance (148). This can lead to 'a didacticism in preaching, precisely a.t a time when other aspects of the homily given at penance 'services are noted in the Instruction, including the Word 'as that which invites the church to repentance. 34 This last chapter is a most moving analysis of the relationship between the liturgy of penance and real life. The lack of integration and the suffering in modern life can he healed through rites of penance thait emphasize gentle images of God and the reassurance of God'.s presence with his people precisely in the midst of their suffering and pain. Hellwig clearly emphasizes social sin and the need for justice as essential parts of penance. This is coherent with the emphasis found in the revised rites of penance and in recent church teaching on penance.85 This volume is a fine example of the kind of sacramental theology promised in Hellwig's preface to this series. Her treatment is insightful, challenging and balanced. While the book is not without flaws (especially in the historical and liturgical sections), it is especially useful precisely because it faces the problem of the contemporary non-use of penance and the S4 Where Hellwig emphasizes the educative function of the homily in communal celebrations the Introduction to the Rite (no. 25) states that in the homily " it would be good to recall: (a) the infinite mercy of GOO. • • • (b) the need for interior repentance ... (c) the social aspect of grace and sin . . . ( d) the duty to make satisfaction for sin." (The Rites, pp. 373-374) . On the importance of emphasizing positive scriptural images of God, who invites to conversion, and the importance which liturgical texts and the homily can play, see, David N. Power, "The Sacramentalization of Penance," The Heythrop JOt1if'MJl l8 ( 1977), 5-22. 35 The General Instruction on Penance itself is clear on the importance of acknowledging social sin: nos. 5, 6, 25. RECENT SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY III 301 cultural climate in which one tends to affirm and assert oneself, rather than to admit sinfulness. 36 In his work Chnstian Marriage, David Thomas intends a theology of the sacrament based on the twin foundations of love of God and human marital love. He accepts Cardinal Basil Hume's assertion that the experience and statements of married couples themselves should be probed as a rich fons theologiae for this sacrament. 37 Thomas seeks a unified approach that integrates the sexual, creative, unitive, community-building and spiritual aspects of marriage. As such it is a helpful tool for adult education and programs for on-going formation in marriage. The titles of the book's eight chapters provide the author's main thesis that marriage is charted in theology, founded oo love, expressed in sex, celebrated in ritual, sewsoned through change, blessed with children, deepened in spirituality, and experienced as sacrament. In marked contrast to the other books in this series, Thomas' work utilfaes quotations from papal documents on marriage, including those of Pope John Paul II. The l:ack of other theological and liturgical sources is notable, especially when compared with the rest of thi'S series. Perhaps one of the reasons is thait much that passed for a theology of marriage was the canon law on marriage. In many respects, the ·theology of marriage is still in its infancy and recent popes have been in the forefront of moving this question along. When reviewing theological descriptions of marriage the author notes the importance of a covenant as opposed to a contract theology of mamage, as called for in Vatican II (23, 103) . While he notes that ,a covenant theology of marriage should be the beginning of the development of richer theologies of the sacrament, he does not indicate the areas which others to transcend the contract/covenant have already 1 1 86 Brief but insightful observations a.bout the non-judgmental climate of our culture are made in the "Introduction: Questions We Have Today," P· 2. s1 See text of Basil Cardinal Hume, quoted in Okrist«m Marriage, p. 11. 302 KEVIN W. IRWIN limitations. 88 His chapters on marital love and sexuality are well presented and offer important insights into how the daily and ordinary happenings in marriage should be seen in relation to the way the sacrament functions, and what the sacramentality of marriage means. In chapter four, Thomas presents the evolution of the rite of marriage and how it came to be focused on consent (8494) . His argument about the importance of a church rite of marriage is disappointingly weak (94-100), ·although his assessment of the issue of baptized non-believers who present themselves for a church wedding is well done (106-108) . When Thomas discusses planning a wedding ceremony he prefers to discuss the meaning of the vows exchanged (100-102), rather than what the scripture readings reveal about the theology and spirituality of marriage. This reflects his limited use of scripture as a basis of a theology of marriage throughout the work. Chapters five through eight deal with developing marital love throughout one's marriage. Thomas discusses " enrichment skills " for couples and techniques for improving communication (rn4-34); the link between these and gospel values is in the author's emphasis on forgiveness as the key to marital communion (131-34). His discussion of the important place which children have in marriage emphasizes the essential move in marriage from self-absorption to self-transcendence. Wisely, Thomas bl!oadens this section to include other expressions of self-giving: extended family, friends, people outside the family unit (154-56) -a discussion that can be pastorally helpful for the childless couple. A more cogent argument about fol!ces within our culture tha.t go against such self-transcendence for family members would have been welcomed. 39 In as See the insightful and probing approach by Tibw Horvath, "Marriage: Contra.ct? Covenant? Commuity? Sacrament of Sacraments ?-Fallible Symbol of Infallible Love, Revelation of Sin and Love," in The Sacraments: God's J,ove and Mercy Actualized, edited by Francis Eigo (Villanova: University of Villanova Press, 1979), pp. 143-181. 39 On the necessity of a family pen; that interpretation. And in his discussion of perticular issues, he consistently misrepresents my views. Churchill is clearly fearful that my hook will " spark a revisionist reading of Wittgenstein " ( C 170) . But if he wishes to refute my reading then he must respond to the book which I wrote, not to the one which he reviewed. I would welcome any such serious response. RICHARD McDONOUGH iV£itfonal University of Singapoi·e J(ent Ridge, S'inga,p01·c A RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR McDONOUGH Professor McDonough's response to my review of his book on the Tractatus consists of six main points. I will respond to them in sequence. First, Professor McDonough believes that I have ignored the central point of his hook: namely, the contention that the Tractatus embodies a philosophical argument built around certain " fundamental ideas." I have not done so, though an ambiguity in his idea of what that argument is explains why he thinks that I have. By " the argument of the Tractatus " Professor McDonough may mean the pattern of remarks in the text concerning the non-representational status of logical con· stants, the idea that the sole logical constant is the general propositional form, and the idea that the tautological propositions of logic exhibit the framework of possibility for language and the world. In his interpretation of the links among these ideas Professor McDonough neither advances nor strays from the sorts of interpretations other commentators have offered. So in my review I dealt principally with the other side of the ambiguity, in which "the argument of the Tractatus " means an attempt, which Professor McDonough attributes to Wittgenstein, to establish a philosophical discourse about logic, the world, and mind, a discourse not covered by the injunction to silence. It is here that Professor McDonough's reading-as I think we both agree-is eccentric, and it was to this most interesting, though mis· taken, aspect of hi,s argument that I have directed my attention. Second, P1ofessor McDonough seems to suppose that I believe that the import of proposition 7 is that no one can consistently offer interpretative discourse about the Tractatus, and that I, in my remarks, seize special, unfair advantage by offering interpretation and then invoking silence. He charges that I " [make my] own interpretative claims " and that I ·then insist " (conveniently) that one must there· after he silent." By no means. It is only Wittgenstein (or one who endorses the Tractarian doctrines) who is open to a circumstantial ad hominem charge of inconsistency if he offers interpretations. For those of us who try to understand the Tractarian perspective without precisely sharing it, the question of consistency with proposition 7 is not an issue. What is an issue is construing Wittgenstein's doctrines in 327 328 JOHN CHURCHILL such a way that they are consistent with proposition 7. It is here that McDonough's reading is, as I have said, both most interesting and least convincing. Further, in suggesting that I have paid attention to the " conclusions " of his argument but not its substance, Professor McDonough does not do justice to the coherence of his own work. Those aspects of his interpretation to which much of my review is directed-for example, his interpretation of the thought as a " meaning locus "-are essential to the structure of his argument. By focusing my attention there I have shown, I believe, how these elements of his interpretation contribute to his central claim that the Tractatus is built around an argument. Third, he attributes to me the implausible idea that there is a " stand· ard interpretation of ' the plain sense of what Wittgenstein wrote ' " throughout the Tractatus. But I allude to a " plain sense " only in commenting on the injunction to silence about philosophy in proposi· tion 7. Of course there are many interpretative difficulties in the text. Professor McDonough supposes me to be denying that by ignoring the fact that, in the line he quotes from my review, I refer only to proposition 7 and to his attempt to interpret it. Fourth, Professor McDonough takes exception to my use of allusions to some of Wittgenstein's later works to illustrate shortcomings in his interpretation of the Tractatus .. He is quite right in detecting my own underlying assumptions of continuity throughout Wittgenstein's philosophical work. If space to articulate those assumptions was lacking in my review, it is scarcer here. I will simply say that one of the strongest continuities, the concern to see how philosophical inquiry comes to an end, is precisely the thing that Professor McDonough's " argument of the Tractatus " misconstrues. Fifth, Professor McDonough provides a list of seven points at which, he contends, my criticisms miss the mark. I cannot respond to these points individually in this space, but it is worth pointing out that they fall into two groups, one having to do with the problems of depiction and one having to do with silence and the mystical. Professor McDon· ough's list thus sketches in brief those two areas of interpretation in which his reading of Wittgenstein is most innovative. The two groups converge on the concept of a "thought," so it is puzzling to me how he can believe that my review, which highlighted his treatment of that concept, somehow missed the book's main thrust. Finally, Professor McDonough implies at least three times that my review fails, in some way, to he about his hook, and closes his com- A RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR :MCDONOUGH 329 ments by insinuating that my review is not serious. He concedes that he ofiers an unorthodox reading of the Tractatus. Can he then be sur· prised at critical comments which bring his own ways of dealing with the text into question? I do not know what is entailed by the vague charge that my review is not serious, but I am quite willing to acknowledge that Professor McDonough's perspective on the Tractatus, though often mistaken, is serious enough. It is important to attempt to find points of critical contact between di:ffering philosophical perspectives, and important, too, to refrain from maligning perspectives with which we disagree, even while we argue against them. JoHN CHURCHILL HendriUJ Oollege OO'nWay, ArkanBaB BOOK REVIEWS Substance and Modern Science. By R. J. CONNELL. Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, U. of St. Thomas (Distributed by U. of Notre Dame Press), 1988. 280 pp., Bibliography, Index. $30 (cloth), $17 (paper) • This is a work in the philosophy of nature, more Aristotelean than Thomistic in orientation. The author's particular interest is in the existence, nature, and multiplicity of natural substances. The text is divided into a Preface, 23 relatively short chapters, and an Epilogue emphasizing the importance of " substance " as a natural rather than as a metaphysical consideration (p. 236; cf. pp. 33-34). The metaphysical consideration of substance can only come later, after the existence of non-physical entities has been established. There is also an Appendix summarizing Aristotle's three principles of change. In the Appendix he states: To summarize, then, we may say that coming to he requires three dis· tinct principles: subject, term, and privation. Stated in the words we employed in the earlier chapters, coming to be requires a material, a structure, and a privation of the structure that is acquired (p. 242). The author's intention is to present the position of Aristotle in contemporary dress, using Aquinas's commentary on the Physics as an aid in understanding Aristotle (p. v). Near the end of the work he states, " But apart from the difference in language, the position we have defended here was that of not only Aquinas but Aristotle before him" (p. 210). Given the widespread acceptance today, largely under the influence of modern science, of mechanistic, reductionistic, and even monistic, doctrines concerning nature, the question of whether or not Nature is an orderly collection of natures is an extremely important one. Is reality divided into a multiplicity of separate and semi-independent substance-things or is it only a collection of insubstantial property-things? Part I, chapters 1 to 5, discusses the reality of substance. Everyone admits that properties, that is, the various observed traits which qualify things, are real. The real is " that which exists; " and for the purpose of distinguishing intramental from extramental reality we can add "Outside the mind and imagination" (p. 11). A property is defined as "that which exists in another as in a subject" (p. 12). The "as in a subject" part is important because " One reality can be in another 331 BOOK REVIEWS in many ways" (loc. cit.) and it is significant that a prope.rty is in. a subject in a certain way, namely, as dependent on the sub1ect for its existence. A substance is defined as " that which exists in itself (or by itself) and not in another as in a subject" (p. 13). As an example of what a substance is, we ourselves are the most obvious cases of such rela· tively independent things. I recognize myself as the stable foundation for properties. However, being a substance does not mean having an unqualified permanence and independence. Substances are not absolute. Neither are they necessarily absolutely simple and uncomposed. Although a truly elementary particle is undoubtedly a substance, from what we know so far, any statement that claims substance is necessarily simple is gratuitous; whether this is or is not so is one of the principal issues to be considered in this book ( p. 14) . The main villain in modern philosophy when it comes to an attempted elimination of substance is David Hume. Hume's position, however, which attempted to dissolve all substantial unities into mere bundles of properties somehow existing all on their own, and which formed the basis for later process philosophies, cannot stand up to the evidence of ordinary experience. Hume cannot explain how one property can modify another or how a mere collection of properties can constitute the unity of a natural thing such as an individual plant, animal, or man. When considering whether the world is composed of substance· things with properties, or property-things all on their own, we must take into account both observation and logic. In any philosophical approach to reality ordinary experience must he given the basic and primary role. Starting with the reality of properties, and realizing that they cannot go on inhering in each other or in something else ad infinitum, we come to see that at least one subject or substance must exist. This is not an assumption or an hypothesis, insists the author. Having defined property on empirical grounds and having inferred the existence of substance from the definition, the existence of sub· stance is proven. "Either we have established them [it?] apodictically or we have done nothing" (p. 34). Part II, chapters 6 to 20, takes us into a discussion of the differences between natural things and artefactuals, the various mechanistic doctrines in biology, the body-mind problem, sensations, the classification of species, and the role of properties and sub-systems as the instrumentalities whereby substances carry out their activities. Whether one takes a radically pluralistic (atomistic) or radically monistic (e.g., Einstein, Heisenberg) view of reality, the results are the same with respect to the reality of many different substances in the BOOK REVIEWS 333 world. In either case, all observed substantial unities are reduced to property-things. Substances lose their status as the basic units of reality. The restoration of substances in the plural is the main aim of Part II. This restoration can be achieved by examining the relationship he· tween properties and substance. We see, first of all, that there are great differences between natural entities and machine-type things, so that any mechanical-aggregate-type model is inadequate to describe sub· stantial unity. The appearance as adequate of analogies between natural substances and machines can only be achieved by equivocating on key terms and concepts (p. 72). Furthermore, if everything were merely an aggregate of property-things, the coordinated and predictable changes which occur in the world, and which are described at great length in biology, chemistry, and physics, could not be explained. If properties were not rooted in a subject, hut were instead directly re· lated to one another, there would not be any constancy in the natural world. But we know that such unity and constancy does exist. The fact that new physical properties and new behavioral capacities show up in the world within well-defined contexts proves that the exclusively property-thing view must be wrong. This leaves us with the only other alternative, namely, that the world is composed of substance-things which are the centers for, and root causes of, the observed properties and activities. In chapter 14, on the body-mind problem, the author very nicely outlines the three forms of the mind-body (brain) identity theory: Frege's sense and reference (different names, same referent) view; the reductionist view which says that mental states are brain states in the same way that heat is molecular motion; the formal identity view which most closely identifies mental and bodily acts parallel to talking about water and H20. In all three cases though, the author shows quite well that there is not and cannot he a strict identification of the two. There will always he some distinction between mental and physical acts, even in the third case where one term (water) signifies obscurely while the other (H20) signifies more precisely (p. 127). Likewise for sensations and bodily states and changes. What I rec· ognize as a sensation in myself, and what the physiologist describes as electrical and/ or chemical impulses propagated along and among bodily tissues and cells, will always show a discrepancy to one degree or another. This precludes the possibility of any formal identification of the two. This irreducibility of one category to another is generally true across the hoard with respect to the basic property-thing cate· gories, as well as to the relationship of property-things to substance· 334 BOOK REVIEWS things. Based upon ordinary experience, where all scientific and philosophical theories must begin and end, we find that no theory of simple interactionism among physical parts can account for the existence of properties in subjects. With respect to organisms, it is possible to maintain the existence of natural types, to attain to " permanent classifications of organisms," yet without maintaining a doctrine of immutable essences, " whatever that might mean " (p. 178). Biological entities are ultimately told apart via their operations. This is how we distinguish both individuals and species from one another. Thus, in the case of Siamese twins, for instance, if there are two heads, two distinct sets of mental and physical operations, and so on, then there are two individual human beings. In general, where there is a unity of operations all stemming from one central core there is a unity of form. Not so, though, with respect to inanimate species. Inanimate substances, such as those studied in chemistry, do not have a nature in the same full sense as do living units. Relative to animated things inanimate species are indeterminate. We know they are di:fferent from each other because they have different properties, but our knowledge of their inner nature is even more limited than our knowledge of organisms. The author states: One can understand why inanimate substances should he indeterminate in comparison to those that are animate, for the former provide material for the latter as well as an environment common to the organisms of an ecosystem (p. 180). Part III, chapters 21 to 23, deals with substantial form, prime matIn any organism there is an ter, and the meaning of "the internal structure which guides all its activities. This structure is within the substance of the thing, and it is a " unified unextended ordered multitude of operational roots or causes that directs the operations and subordinate activities" of the organism (p. 200). It is this internal structure, that cannot be directly observed, which makes the substance to be what it is, that is, the kind of thing that it is. In a similar way, the substantial material, which also cannot be directly sensed or measured, is that by which one substance can become another. This material is both a part of the actual substance now and potential with respect to future substances. This matter cannot possess any properties of its own (except potentiality) " for every property reqmres an actual substance as a substratum in which to exist " (p. 280). In an analogous way, artefactual property-things are also composed of structured matter, but with the all-important difference that they do not possess a nature as do natural kinds of substance-things. By viewinl,? the differences the reidm of artefactuals and the realm BOOK REVIEWS 335 of natural kinds we can now come to a clearer understanding of what it means to be natural. The author lists five traits of the natural: regular, predictable changes and movements; changes leading to a predictable state of final determination and rest; spontaneous changes coming from within the substance; sets of behavior which are " first nature," that is, which are proper to the kind of thing it is, and which are convertible with the class of things to which it belongs (e.g., the diffusion of gases, sensation in animals) ; all changes as divisible into essential and accidental, with those that are essential being per se or directly relevant to the class, so that " nothing that is incidental is truly natural in any proper sense of the term" (p. 233). What this last point means, in part at least, is that some things which may be innate to an individual, such as skin color in humans, are not really natural to the species. They cannot be a part of the definition of the species. Now it is also true that none of these five traits can be applied to artefactuals in an unequivocal way, hence reinforcing the lack of analogy between substance-things and propertythings. I find myself in basic agreement with the author's general position. Aristotle's hylomorphism is by no means an impossible, anti-scientific view today, and it deserves to be treated as a viable alternative to both mechanistic and vitalistic positions. I do, however, have some reservations about some aspects of the work. Although he does often speak of the substance as the root and cause of the properties of the thing (cf. pp. 89-100, 193-4), the author also sometimes gives the impression that properties have a reality and existence of their own. It can be misleading, though, to talk about properties being real or inhering in a substratum, especially if the listener is in the reductionistic camp and attuned to interpreting any such talk as indicating an aggregation of parts. In fact, in Aristotle's hylomorphism and psychosomaticism, properties have no reality of their own at all. The properties exhibited by a subject derive all their reality from the subject. This goes for all quantitative as well as qualitative attributes, accidents, and so on. It's important to emphasize this and avoid the " pincushion " imagery so often associated with the Aristotelean position. I must also wonder about the author's view that a minimum amount of something definite is not a real substance, or is incomplete in species (cf. pp. 102-3, 167, 179-80). Surely a particle of gold, for instance, even down to the molecular and atomic levels, is a true species of something, even though inanimate. If it isn't, what can we say about other levels in the sca'la naturae (cf. p. 172) ? Are plants incomplete substances relative to animals, and so on u:p the scale? Wh&t about 886 BOOK REVIEWS subdivisions within the major divisions? Are some plants incomplete substances relative to other plants, and so forth? This sort of reasoning could lead us into a situation where the only true and complete substance is the ultimate or top entity in the scale of reality. In Aristotle's system, for example, only the Prime Mover would be a really real being. Anything less would then be a being only by attribution. Consequently, just as we would say that only this organism is healthy, but that this medicine may also be called healthy because of its relationship to health in the organism, so we would say that the only true and complete substance would be that one which resides at the top of the scale of reality, wherever that may be, even though we might continue to talk about this mineral, plant, animal, or man as a substance because of its relationship to something higher up the scale. The author does not actually say this, but I think that it is something which might he read into his view as stated. Aquinas avoids this problem by his emphasis upon an existential metaphysics and an analogy of proper proportionality. This allows him to preserve the full reality of each individual thing at all levels of reality even though the beings are certainly not God nor any part of God. Also, someone might suggest as some possible chapters in a second edition, some discussion of some more contemporary issues in this area. For instance, how does one's sexuality fit into the substanceattribute scheme of things? Is one's sex part of one's nature? Are male and female different in nature? Are there any philosophically significant differences between men and women? Another area of interest today, especially with respect to the present possibilities of genetic engineering, is the question of whether or not humans can artificially create a natural nature. This sounds contradictory, certainly, but is nevertheless something worth discussing. If some scientist does succeed in manufacturing a new bacterium, for example, would it then be a natural type? Would it he a permanent species with its own definition? In addition, the Bibliography, brief as it is, leaves much to he desired. Several authors quoted in the text are not even listed, including Aquinas himself, while many of the entries are incomplete, missing such things as volume and page numbers. There are also some cases in which the publication date given in the footnote reference does not match that given in the Bibliography. A good copy editor should have cleared up all this sort of thing before publication. Overall, though, this is a well-organized work, with short chapters and frequent summaries and recapitulations, thus making it suitable as a textbook or corollary reading in a philosophy of nature course. It BOOK REVIEWS 887 could also be useful in a science course as an outside reading for those interested in expanding their intellectual horizons in an inter· disciplinary way. F. F. CENTORE St. Jerome's College U. of Waterloo, Ontario Die Metaphysik des Thomas von Aquin in historischer Perspektive, IL Teil. Salzburger Studien zur Philosophie, Band 17. By LEO J. ELDERS. Salzburg/Miinchen: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1987. Pp. 331. Paper, DM 54. This is the second half of Elders' metaphysical study as promised in the prior volume (reviewed in THE THOMIST, 50 [1986], 463· 465) on common being. The present book centers on God, in contrast to ens commune. But it strongly renews {pp. 7, 24) the insistence that no Wolffian separation of ontology from philosophical theology is Summa theologiae in showing first that God's existence is not immedi· ately evident to us but needs to be demonstrated (pp. 28-88). It then presents the " five ways " for demonstrating the divine existence, with Latin text and German translation side by side {pp. 89-137). It re· duces other suggested " ways " to some one of the five, or else sets them aside in one manner or another (pp. 137-142). After that it treats the divine attributes according to the ways of negation, causality and eminence {pp. 143-187), and then the naming of God (pp. 189· 221), God's knowledge, life, truth, power and will (pp. 223-275) , and :finally the divine action upon creatures (pp. 277-315). This treatment proceeds strictly in the order followed by the Summa theologiae. The book concludes (p. 317) that the philosophical theology of Aquinas is a coherent whole, based upon everyday experience yet for that very reason on principles that are metaphysically evident and ad· mitted by "common sense" (see also pp. 15, 200). The treatment is neatly addressed to the problems that have been under lively discussion during the past few decades, such as the " death of God." These are dealt with against an extensive and admirably detailed historical background stretching from the Greeks to the present day, with wide coverage of secondary literature, thoroughly justifying the book's designation of itself as a study pursued "in historical perspective." However, the advisability of the Summa's order of treatment for a work meant to explain the metaphysical thinking of Aquinas is open to question. Elders (p. 8, n. 3; p. 13, n. 4) is acquainted with the vigor· 338 BOOK REVIEWS ous protests of Gilson and Pegis against reading as philosophy what Aquinas wrote as theology. Yet Elders (p. 8) allows the stand that on the ground of its intrinsic rationality Aquinas would have adhered to the Summa' s order even if he had been writing a purely philosophical theology. In the present case, one may strongly object, the result is a way of thinking that dulls sensitivity to the core position of existence in Aquinas' metaphysical thought. The long and checkered history of the notion " common sense " in western philosophy should be enough to dissociate that concept from Thomistic metaphysics, and here the appeal to " everyday experience " as a support calls first for careful analysis of the radically different ways in which existence and nature are originally attained by human cognition. The book finds (p. 101, n. 61), for instance, that in the demonstration of God's existence from motion Aquinas is employing without radical distinction the same principles as Aristotle but is applying them more strictly. The pro· foundly distinctive character of Aquinas' metaphysical acumen is thereby missed. This may be aptly illustrated by one example. The pointed assertion of the Summa contra gentiles (1.9.Inter) that without consideration of the proof for God's existence " omnis consideratio de rebus divinis necessario tollitur," is understood by Elders to mean " ... ist jede philosophische Betrachtung des Seienden letztlich grundlos" (p. 89). Yet granting without hesitation that the proof of the divine existence is necessary for understanding metaphysically " that which exists " (das Seiende), one may, against Elders, take the statement of Aquinas at its face value as much more finely pointed. It means what it literally says, namely that things divine cannot be understood apart from consideration of the proof for God's existence. That proof shows why one can know that God exists, without knowing what existence, even though quidditative in God, is. In the same vein, one can know that all the attributes and perfections are in God without knowing what these are when really identical with the divine existence. In this regard Elders expressly asserts his opposition to "Gilsons Theorie" (p. 220) about human cognition of existence. While gladly allowing with Elders (p. 15) that the internal coherence of Aquinas' thought is too strong for acceptance of one part with rejection of another part, one may well insist that the core existential doctrine unifying Thomistic metaphysics is more pointedly expressed in the De ente et essentia and in passages from the commentary on the Sentences that it is in the section of the Summa theologiae used for the present study. This situation helps show why the order of the Summa theologiae, taken just alone, can hardly be satisfactory for bringing out the cogent metaphysical sequence in Aquinas' doctrine BOOK REVIEWS 889 on God. Rather, leads towards tracing the authentically metaphysical development of Aquinas' thinking are more readily found in those earlier works. Yet no matter what disagreement there may be with the procedure of Elders' book and its conception of Thomistic metaphysics, the value of his indefatigable labor in deftly locating the philosophical problems about God in the contemporary situation is beyond doubt. The book in its detailed coverage will be a welcome help for anyone approaching these problems in their present-day context. For course work it will provide an excellent introduction to the " First Part " of the Summa theologiae. It is equipped with indexes of names (pp. 319-326) and of subjects (pp. 327-331), for convenience in consultation. But even with these indexes the book would have been enhanced by addition of a general bibliography providing the reader with a bird's-eye view of the copious literature hovering in the background, though the task of preparing it would have been Gargantuan. JOSEPll OWENS, C.Ss.R. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Toronto, Canada The Philosophical Assessment of Theology: Essays in Honour of Frederick C. Copleston. Edited by GERALD J. HUGHES, S.J. Washington, DC, and Turnbridge Wells: Search Press, Ltd. in association with Georgetown University Press, 1987. Pp. xii +215, including index and bibliography of Copleston's principal writings. It has been a genuine pleasure to read and to review this elegant collection of essays dedicated to Father Frederick Copleston, S.J., on his eightieth birthday. Each of the ten essays submitted merits warm recommendation on some point and several on many. They are technical enough to interest the student of philosophical theology hut lucid enough for beginners. Naturally I cannot claim to agree with every thesis defended or advanced, hut neither can I fault any contributor on scholarship, clarity, or style. For example, Professor Swinburne, in his essay, "Analogy and Metaphor ", revives the view of Scotus that terms like ' wise ' or ' powerful ' admit of univocal predication to both God and man. I am unhappy with accounts of univocity of this sort in general; I think they breed their own antitheses and land ultimately in a position of radical equivocity on the very ground they aim to cover so carefully. Still the theory proposed is clearly an able one and Swinburne haiil 340 BOOK REVIEWS stated his version of it with about as much economy and precision as his format allows. Occasionally a contribution offers nothing really new-as in A.H.T. Levi's "The Breakdown of Scholasticism and the Significance of Evangelical Humanism". But the piece is well written, concise and synoptic in form-easily a competent introduction to its topic-and memorable on these grounds apart from any others. Sometimes the tone grows a little arch and patronizing, as in the essay on Transubstantiation by D. J. Fitzpatrick; but here, too, the author's skillful assembly and use of texts and opinions offsets the irritation of his manner. There is one essay, however, which might well bear the book's title as its own subtitle: "Philosophy and Theology", by Basil Mitchell. This essay raises the fundamental question: of what relevance is philosophy to theology, apart from the various historical connections and disconnections the two have suffered? Mitchell proposes the following as positive theses: that the Christian tradition, epsecially as regards its doctrines, has a supra-historical identity and validity-even if problems of doctrinal identity and doctrinal development are very close to Hume's problem of personal identity and, hence, personal develop· ment; that philosophy, in relation to doctrine, can exercise a salutary influence for clarity and for plurality among legitimate interpretations of the central Christian Mysteries; that the message of the New Testa· ment is inexhaustible, so that we should expect to see differences in the conversation between philosophy and theology corresponding to differences in times, cultures, and needs, none wholly fixed and inalterable, all valuable in proportion to their service to the greater Christian tradition. I have no quarrel with these views. Even the notions of ecclesial infallibility and doctrinal irreformability can meet this thesis about the relation between philosophy and theology with equanimity. The larger issue, it seems to me, lies in the consequences. If theology and philosophy do sustain something like the relationship proposed by Professor Mitchell, then there must be some guarantor of authenticity, one which determines and decides between those interactions which are legitimate within the Tradition and those which are spurious. It comes back, as I see it, to Newman's problem of fidelity in development; and by Professor Mitchell's own canons, history alone is not the guarantor nor time, in and of itself, the sieve of orthodoxy. What this characteristically modern view of philosophical theology calls for, I think, is the recognition of a teaching authority which acts to regulate normatively for any given time and, at length, for all times, the interpretation of the Gospel best suited to those times, however painful the BOOK REVIEWS 841 message may seem, however clearly at odds with the Weltgeist. What Professor Mitchell's position calls for-to the delight I am sure, of Fr. Copleston-is a universal, unified, sanctificatory, and legitimate teacher of the Christian message: a Church which is one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. NICHOLAS INGHAM, O.P. ProvidenceCollege Providence,Rhode Island Morals as Founded on Natural Law. By STEPHEN THERON. European University Studies. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. 218 pp. $32 (cloth). This is a hard book to read, though it need not be. The author assumes a knowledge of other writings that few (apart from himself) are likely to have, and his English is sometimes tortuous in the extreme. A little more polishing of the sentence structure and a little more explanation of references would have made the book immeasurably . more readable. There would still be flaws in it nevertheless, flaws that concern the content of the book and not its form. Theron's aim is to establish morality on an external authoritative law, namely the authoritative law of God. Towards achieving this he devotes the first chapter to criticizing R.M. Hare, since Hare has a theory of autonomy in morals, or a theory where the prescriptiveness of a law or moral norm is self· imposed and not derived from something outside the autonomously choosing individual. Theron's criticism of Hare, apart from the obscurity of several of the references (obscure, that is, unless one already knows Hare's work more or less inside out), rests on distortions or unsympathetic interpretations of what Hare says. To say that, for Hare, " all that is essential to good living is the extrinsic, fortuitous character of its being commended" (p. 31) is to misrepresent Hare's whole point about the mea,ning of good, for which the a.ct of commending is of the essence and cannot be something extrinsic. And to say that, apart from what can be derived from logic, the rest of Hare's theory is "all a matter of who commends the loudest" (ibid ..) is so gross a distortion that one can only wonder if Theron has paid any attention at all to what Hare has written about the nature of moral reasoning. As for Theron's own theory, he says that morality is grounded on a divine legislative authority to which, like children with respect to parents, we just ' find ' ourselves bound. But how are we bcmnd, or BOOK REVIEWS what persuades us that we should submit and obey this authority? Theron denies the applicability of this question, since he says that to seek a ground for this authority is to fall into an infinite regress. Yes indeed if authority can only be grounded by appeal to some other authority. But why should this be so? Because 0£ the nature of reason, says Theron, or how do we justify our acceptance 0£ and obedience to reason? Reason itself cannot do this. " ... reason only has the authority of law and even truth if God gives it that authority," and "as one cannot appeal to reason to invalidate reason one cannot appeal to it to validate it" (p. 161). For Theron, what is :first for us. is not reason but divine authority, which is just somehow an ineradicable given. This would make morals, to say nothing of philosophy simply, dependent on divine law, not, as his title declares, on natural law. That title is indeed misleading since it is clear that, in Theron's eyes, natural law, or the law of our natural reason, is derivative and secondary, dependent for its lawfulness on the prior recognition of divine law. But all this must be false. Our recognition of divine law and of its binding force presupposes the validity of the workings of our own reason, for only by reason can we have this recognition. But if we could only admit the validity of our own reason after we have recognized the divine and reason's dependence on it, then we really are caught in an infinite regress, for this recognition would itself have to presuppose the prior validity of reason. And so on and so on. What is first for us, if not in time then certainly in nature, is not God, or law, whether divine or otherwise, but reason, and it is by reason that we come to see the validity of some laws and not others or to recognise the divine and the authority of the divine. For reason is self-validating or nothing at all is valid. There is more in Theron's book than this thesis and the argument for it, notably an extended critique of Donagan. About this critique I would only note that one has not refuted a conclusion by refuting the reasons for it, since the conclusion might still be true though the reasons someone gives for it are all invalid. But the substance of Theron's book is his reduction of everything, in philosophy as well as morals, to a legalistic theism. That reduction, apart from being wildly in conflict with classical philosophy and indeed classical theology (which should be a cause for concern for Theron at any rate, if not for those who have little regard for the classical tradition), is and must be false for the reason I have stated. As a result, and all the more so in view of the other faults I mentioned at the beginning, this is not a book that I can commend to the attention of others. PETER SIMPSON College of Staten Island/CUNY Staten l.sland, New York BOOK REVIEWS 348 A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory. By RussELL RITTINGER. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. Pp. vi +232. $26.95. Dr. Hittinger's book causes us to remember how genuinely delicate and refined is the balance between reason and faith in St. Thomas' view of human knowledge and its relationship to reality. This enabled St. Thomas to develop with discernment his notion of the natural law, because St. Thomas understood that an act of genuine intellection distinguished in order to unite, not separate. Therefore, there was an intrinsic unity to truth and a unity to philosophical experience which reflected reality-something which has gotten lost in the contemporary morass of interminable dialectics. Have the contemporary attempts to retrieve a notion of the natural law succeeded in maintaining this balance? If such attempts have not succeeded in maintaining the requisite balance, what are the consequences of the loss of this balance for the success of their endeavor? When in the history of philosophical experience this balance cannot be maintained, one is forced to move in one of two directions. The first is towards a kind of fideism in which the fundamental questions raised by reason are only resolvable by the faith; thus philosophy is absorbed into theology. The second is towards the claim that reason can answer all that is answerable (which may be very limited) and thus faith becomes subordinate to reason. The latter either leads to rationalism or a variety of positivism. For Rittinger what appears to be a contemporary attempt to retrieve natural law moral philosophy has proven itself unable to avoid a fideistic solution to moral philosophy; for faith in the end resolves all the fundamental issues raised in regard to moral philosophy. The beginning of the discussion of moral philosophy and man as the author of his actions was very carefully placed in the writings of St. Thomas. It is only after St. Thomas had established certain fundamental truths and principles in natural theology and the philosophy of human nature that he begins to discuss moral philosophy. St. Thomas first established the existence of a personal God, who is both the efficient and final cause of all finite being. God's being is also discovered to be identical to truth, goodness, and beauty. God is recognized as that which all men seek even though only the beatific vision will present this to the intellect and will with an all-consuming necessity. "Beings" are ordered in two ways, as parts of totality, and as things to an end. The ordering of things to an end is the most important, since the final cause is the cause of all the other causes. Therefore an identification of the final cause makes all the other causes and the 344 BOOK REVIEWS order in things intelligible. Also it is only after a great deal is known about human goods, and human nature, and the ordination of human goods that St. Thomas is ready to begin a discussion of the first principle that states the good is to be pursued or the good is to be done. St. Thomas has also established, through reason, that man by nature desires and should desire in justice to give God his due. There· fore religion properly understood is natural to man. The above pro· vided St. Thomas with the knowledge prerequisite for the development of a natural law moral philosophy. If one perceives that we are at a juncture in the history of philosophy where one no longer can develop or defend the kind of knowledge that is a prerequisite to the successful development of a natural law ethics, then this must he faced with all its consequences. Is a natural law ethics still viable? This is true even if one believes that any attempt to establish such knowledge would drag the ethician into an in· terminable debate in regard to the is-ought dilemma announced by Hume or the positivist rejection of metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. Is the direct or indirect avoidance of dealing with these issues acceptable? The inventors of the new natural law theory attempt to replace the knowledge required for the development of moral philosophy described above by hypothesizing a wealth of premoral intuitive knowledge. They appear to he trying to do by intuition what Thomas did via meta· physics and the philosophy of nature. If one finds as a result of such a process that one cannot demonstrate that religion is a basic good, or that one can not escape from a solipsistic ordination of human goods without positing the content of faith, then to what exent is the new experiment a success? Has not the very notion of natural law become ambiguous and equivocal? Further if man only discovers his end qua man through faith, then inefficacy of the practical intellect becomes certain. The practical intellect in the concrete order becomes worthless in the absence of faith. Finally, if only through faith one comes to realize that happiness is a real possibility and that principles of morality are genuinely obligatory, then moral philosophy can be buried and put to rest forever. This I might add appears closer to recent fideistic moralities of modern and contemporary times than anything related to the Thomistic natural law tradition, which must also be distinguished from Suarezian casuistry. Rittinger suggests that there are two ways to have a moral philoso· phy remain open to positing religion as a human good and avoiding fideism. The first is the road of St. Thomas; the second is a road similar to that of Kant where, in Hittinger's view, one sets the foundations of morality independent of the faith but one implies or leaves open 845 BOOK REVIEWS the possibility of faith becoming morally significant. However, in my view the latter offers only a logical possibility, hut not a really workable possibility in the concrete order. The critical question is whether either of the two ways of avoiding fideism is open to this new way of employing the notion of the natural law. Rittinger concludes that Grisez-Finnis have not succeeded by either path because they want to hold that religion is a basic good at the foundation of morality but they have to posit faith to maintain this position. There are several other difficulties pointed out. For ex· ample, is the distinction between the premoral and the moral, that is so important to the new approach, a real distinction? Rittinger states that in practice it is a distinction without a difference. What normative role can the concept of human nature have in a moral philosophy that does not deal directly with the problems related to the development of a philosophy of human nature? Rittinger makes a good case for an inconsistency in the way nature reappears as a ghost from the past to solve concrete problems such as contraception. It can also he asked, aside from Grisez' fideistic resolution of moral philosophy, if he has genuinely overcome utilitarianism? In his defense, Grisez might insist that he never intended to use nature as a normative concept or develop a natural law ethics-in which case, it becomes unclear just what his intentions were aside from coming to many of the same conclusions as the Thomistic natural ethics without affirming the premises of the tradition. How Grisez' moral philosophy might be reinterpreted, in light of such a defense, is not very clear at all. Finally it must he stated that Grisez-Finnis' desire to get beyond the morass of contemporary dialectics is a pious, noble, and worthy project; however, the method they chose did not provide a means by which they could succeed. Therefore there is a tragic and fundamental flaw in their results. A small mistake in the beginning becomes a very great one in the end. Dr. Hittinger's hook is a well researched and worth reading. However, I have my doubts as to whether the second alternative to fideism is as viable as he suggests. JosEPH St. John's University !amai,ca,New York J. CALIFANO 846 BOOK REVIEWS Marx's Socwl Critique of Culture. By Loms DUPRE. New Haven: Yale 299. $30.00 (cloth) and $9.95 University Press, 1983. Pp. ix (paper). + Modernity has produced in equal measure material abundance and critical disdain. Its critics may he roughly divided into two groups. Negative critics deny all value to modernity and long for a glorious past or a perfect future; the romanticism of an Othmar Spann or the utopian anarchism of a Mikhail Bakunin provide excellent examples of this type. Of more interest to political theory, however, are the dialectical critics who both affirm and deny the modern project; Rousseau and Marx are the greatest thinkers in this category. Louis Dupre is certainly a critic of modernity. The nature of his complaint remains to he determined. I should begin by saying that Dupre's hook neither condemns nor worships Marx. From the start he sets for himself the unfashionable task of understanding his author before passing judgment on his ideas. Hence, Dupre explicitly distinguishes interpretation from critique and devotes most of this hook to elucidating Marx's ideas. Some readers would perhaps agree with Hahermas that interpretation is always critique, hut I find that Dupre generally maintains this distinction in these pages. I turn first to his reading of Marx. This is not a hook about what might he called high culture, a civilization's achievements in expressing the human spirit. Dupre relies little on Marx and Engel's scattered reflections on art and society, and he spends relatively few pages on the Frankfurt School and their critique of contemporary popular culture. Dupre is rather a philosopher using Marx to think about culture in a fundamental way. His subject is modernity itself and particularly Marx's criticism of the essentially modern separation of culture and activity. The first part of the hook focuses on Marx's conception of alienation. For almost half a century questions about the unity of Marx's early and late writings have accompanied explications of Entfremdung. Dupre sides with those who see a unity of purpose in the works of the young and the old Marx. Although the idea of alienation appears rarely in Das Kapital, Dupre argues that Marx continually attacked bourgeois society for separating subject and object. Culture thus becomes in capitalist societies an object of exchange value that stands in opposition to its producers, a commodity like all others. The second chapter pursues Marx's belief that alienation must he understood socially and historically. Here Dupre provides a subtle interpretation of Marx's conceptions of base and superstructure. He concludes that Marx rejected the logical extremes of determinism and voluntarism BOOK REVIEWS 847 in history. Instead, the rational will of the proletariat was viewed as the culmination of social development. Yet, as Dupre notes, Marx's belief in the general principle that history is progressive turns on his specific analysis of the spread of capitalism; the generalization about history depends in the end on unproven assumptions about the development of capitalism. Dupre devotes his third chapter to a broad and learned discussion of the role of the dialectic in Marx and Marxist political theory. Marx himself did not provide a complete and clear account of dialectical contradiction; any tension that might lead to the destruction of capitalism fell within Marx's understanding of contradiction. Dupre's conclusion that Marx ultimately founded his dialectical method on an undefended teleology will, I think, ring true to most students of the subject. His discussion of the realist interpretation of the dialectic will occasion controversy largely because Dupre believes Engel's methodological ideas in Anti-Dukring can he legitimately associated with Marx's views. This is an important and damning link, for, of course, the scientism enunciated in Anti-Dukring took Marxism a long way toward both the relatively benign orthodoxy of the German Social Democrats and the horrible monism of Stalin. For Marx, however, the dialectic was more than anything else a way of positing the loss of social and culture unity and of foreseeing their reintegration. His exposition of Marx's atempt to unify economic and social activity contains a thoughtful reconstruction of the concept of value in classical economics. Dupre emphasizes that Marx criticized capitalism for turning labor, the subjective source of value, into labor power, an objective source of exchange value; the reification critique thus appeared in Marx's economic analysis. At the same time, Marx believed that the individualism of the classical economists was historically limited to their age; productive activity was in truth always a social undertaking. Hence, Dupre concludes that " Marx, from his earliest writings on, sought to establish a society that would reintegrate individual needs with social concerns ". Yet, for all his antipathy to Smith and Ricardo, Marx agreed with the classical economists that economics was the primary sphere of life. The question of the scope of economics returns in a chapter on ideology. Dupre discerns in Marx both a casual and an organic relation between the economy and the ideas of an age. The former conception presents the familiar argument that ideas reflect material conditions; the ruling ideas of an age, Marx noted, were the ideas of the ruling class. More interesting is Dupre's discussion of the organic theory of the relation of society and thought in Marx; here subject and object are integrated and interdependent. The evidence that Marx clearly constructed such a concept of ideology or that he attached 348 BOOK REVIEWS much significance to it is not convincing. Nonetheless, I do find value in Dupre's discussion of how this tension between determinism and interdependence has complicated the cultural writings of Marx's successors. Clearly Dupre approves of much in Marx's critique of modernity. For example, he believes that the reification of culture has continued to our day producing both vulgar art and snobbish elitism. I also take from this text the feeling that Dupre sympathizes somewhat with Marx's critique of individualism and the divisive tendencies of modern culture. Yet his disagreements with Marx are enormous. Dupre worries that Marx in the end allowed the economic too much say in human life, a mistake that precludes social and cultural integration. By accepting the priority of material life, Marx merely generalized the conditions of high capitalism to all of human existence. Praxis itself, Dupre concludes, may he an aspect of high capitalism. In sum, " Marx's critique and his attempt at cultural reintegration remain party within the ideological horizon of the modern age " (em· phasis in original). What then does Dupre wish to affirm in this hook? The rejection of Marx suggests that a proper theory of culture must see beyond the modern horizon. Early on, Dupre notes that disengaged reflection is " indispensable for the pursuit of wisdom and the good life ". The last section presents a tantalizing critique of Marx's idea of praxis which adumbrates the importance of guiding principles and higher ideals. Just at the moment the reader is about to conclude that Dupre is retreating off into the speculative mists, the final page avows that " this study by no means advocates a return to ancient theoria. Even assuming that it were possible to bracket the entire experience of modernity, it would he extremely undesirable to do so." Dupre affirms in the end the modern hope for the " universal development of freedom " and the expansion of the democratic ideal. This is a good hook written with great care and learning. I par· ticularly admire the author's willingness to embrace complexity through subtle and exhaustive reflection. For that reason, he must he counted among the dialectical critics of modernity. Unlike Rousseau and Marx, however, Dupre offers no clear path to unity from contradiction, no easy reintegration of culture. Perhaps that task will he taken up in another hook. Having read this prolegomenon, I eagerly await a com· plete postmodern theory of culture from this thoughtful author. JOHN SAMPLES The Twentieth Century Fund New York, New York 349 BOOK REVIEWS Wittgenstein: From Mysticism to Ordinary Language: A Study of Viennese Positivism and the Thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. By RUSSELL NIELI. SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany; State University of New York Press, 1987. Pp. xvi 261. $39.50 (cloth) ; $12.95 (paper). + In his original and thought-provoking hook, Russell Nieli offers a well-documented interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophical development from mysticism, which supposedly dominated the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), to ordinary language philosophy, as expressed, for instance, in the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953). According to Nieli, Wittgenstein's rejection of traditional metaphysics and theology in the Tractatus was grossly misunderstood by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, who missed the main point, namely Wittgenstein's emphasis on the mystical ascent toward higher reality (God) which "lay outside and beyond the world" (p. xi). Metaphysics was rejected by Wittgenstein-Nieli claims-because it leads to " God-debasing profanation or impropriety" (p. 83); it attempts to say what cannot he said hut only shown. The logical system of the Tractatus is then " a precise delineation of the profane world which is left behind in the transcendental encounter with the Sacred" (p. 98). Allegedly, such mystical, ekstatic experience cannot he articulated by any however perfected linguistic medium, which hopelessly remains an " inner-worldly " phenomenon. Of course, this application of via negativa must have been totally alien to the Humean-empiricist philosophy of Wittgenstein's teacher, B. Russell, as well as to any positivistically oriented philosophers operating in the tradition of the Enlightenment. Nieli supports his claims and comparisons by very rich documentary material drawn from the history of mystical experiences and doctrines, just as from the recent philosophical and psychological sources: from St. Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. John of Cross, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, W. James, R. Carnap, Heidegger, Sartre, R. D. Laing, and many others. In addition, he follows closely Wittgenstein's personal and intellectual history, as it has been revealed by various relevant memoirs, notebooks, and recollections. As expected, Wittgenstein's alleged mystico-religious experiences are given prominent coverage. Wittgenstein's puzzling transition from the Tractarian logical atomism and picture theory of language to the ordinary language philosophy is treated by Nieli through the analogy of the prophet turning into a rabbi (this is already suggested by the title of his Preface) . According to this characterization, the early Wittgenstein-the prophet" has descended the mountain to join the priests and rabbis below, as 850 BOOK REVIEWS the immediate pastoral needs of society have come to overshadow the former concern with maintaining the truth and purity of mystic theophany " (p. 183) . Nieli draws an interesting comparison between the development of Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the actions of the Jewish council of Jamnia in 90 A. D. which declared the end of the age of prophecy and canonized sacred writings of the past as models for the prescribed way of living. Regarded as an accumulation and expression of life-experiences and life-attitudes of common people, ordinary language acquired for Wittgenstein a new status as scripture. After the devastating experiences of the First World War Wittgenstein made remarkable steps in an attempt to help common people as a teacher in small Austrian villages. He gave away his fortune and even thought about joining a monastery. Nieli persuasively reports on Wittgenstein's affinities to L. N. Tolstoy as well as on Wittgenstein's deeply troubled soul, for which hard physical work and communication with plain folks were cherished means for escaping the threat of mental insanity. The late Wittgenstein's concern with language-games, rule following, his quasi-behaviorism and emphatic rejection of the so-called private language-all of this is then explicable, Nieli believes, by Wittgenstein's search for and endorsement of the normal, sane, standard, commonsensical. Is it possible that Wittgenstein's struggle with the " dark side " of his tormented soul, reflecting almost a Manichean-Gnostic position, played such a decisive role in his production of a highly influential therapeutic linguistic philosophy? Nieli's affirmative answer seems plausible, yet it would need further elaboration, in particular with respect to Freud and depth-psychology. Nieli's sympathetic treatment of Wittgenstein's philosophy comes to a rather abrupt end in the final sections of Chapter IV, where he criticizes what he calls "linguistic tribalism" (pp. 237-246). He sees in both the Tractatus and the later philosophy " an inability to main· tain a proper balance between self and society" (p. 239); in the Tractatus the mystical silence remains incommunicable (and thus easily misunderstood) , while in the ordinary language phase, " the sell, weary of its estrangement from society, throws itself headlong into the linguistic stream of social life, losing in the process, the inner dignity of its private sphere" (p. 239). In this context, critical charges are raised against Wittgenstein's conservative and naive apotheosis of ordinary language and common people-against an attitude which may dangerously lead to the relativism of values and an endorsement of antihumanistic ideologies. Although the concluding chapter of the book (Chapter V), which deals with Wittgenstein's conception of a language-game and playfulness in general, moderates the negative impact of the aforementioned critical remarks, the damage caused by them will be hard to repair (in the attentive reader's mind). Or do we BOOK REVIEWS 851 treat Wittgenstein's honest failure as our own too-as the failure (honest or not) of our entire modern culture? To sum up: Russell Nieli produced a very interesting, however hold, contribution to the ever-growing literature on Wittgenstein's philosophy. He wrote his hook in a refreshing way, avoided unnecessary technicalities and utilized a remarkable wealth of supporting documentation, frequently based on very unusual sources. The quotations and footnotes are sometimes too long (especially in Chapter I) , and his emphasis too one-sided (he is overlooking, for instance, the utmost importance of logic in the Tractatus), yet he pursues the goals of his interpretation with admirable consistency. Readers interested in other aspects and interpretations of Wittgenstein's philosophy will, of course, have to consider other sources, such as the hooks written by G. E. M. Anscomhe, M. Black, S. Cavel!, P. Engelmann, K. T. Fann, J. N. Findlay, R. J. Fogelin, P. M. S. Hacker, G. Hallett, W. D. Hudson, J. F. M. Hunter, A. Janik and S. Toulmin, A. Kenny, F. Kerr, N. Malcolm, D. Pears, R. Rhees, E. Stenius, G. Vesey, P. Winch, and G. von Wright. Nieli's hook might then he put into a much richer perspective. AUGUSTIN RISKA St. John's University New York, N.Y.