AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOWGIAN BRUCE D. MARSHALL St. Olaf Oollege Northfield, Minnesota, 1J HE PURPOSE of this essay is to discuss the relation between Thomas Aquinas' account of religious and heological truth and a " posrtliberal " one sruch rus that sketched in George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. Most reviewers assume that Lindbeck's .app:voachis on this point incompatible with the mainstream of the tmdition, and Colman O'Neill, writing :in The Thomist symposium on Lindbeck's book, thinks it oontradicts Aquinas in particular. This paper presents the case to the contr:ary. Afte'I." outlining O'Neill's problem, it argues thart he mis11eads Lindbeck 'and, .at greater length, that Aquinas''S views on t:ruth :are, as Lindbeck affirms, compatible with postliberal emphases. I O'Neill's basic problem with Lindbeck's: "cultural linguistic" understanding of truth is thwt Lindbeck " would clearly have us puTify [Christi.an] language by ridding it of extra-linguistic accretions-in particular the intrusion of reference to objective reality. In the end the only thing that matters is scriptural discourse verified by action." 1 Lindbeck may not intend this " purification," 2 but whatever the intention, his 1 Colman E. O'Neill, "The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional Truth," The Thomist 49 ( 1985), p. 422. "The great strength of a cognitive-propositional 2 So Lindbeck writes: theory of religion is that •.. it admits the possibility of [ontological] truth claims, and a crucial theological challenge to a cultural-linguistic approach is whether it also can do so." The Nature of Doctrine: Religion a,nd Theology in a, Postlibera,l Age (hereafter ND), (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 63-4. 353 854 BRUCE D. MARSHALL view of •religioustruth entails a raidical rejection of 1any claim that Christian beliefs !are onto1ogioally true, in other words, tha;t they rre£er or correspond •to reality. The reruson rllor this putative entailment lies in Lindbeck's manifest oontention (to be explained below) that truth claims in any l'eligion, including Christianity, are subject to 1a twofold criterion of coherence: they must fit wirth the wider linguistic (especially scriptural) paradigms of the 11eligion, and also with a range of practices appropriate to the belief the truth of which is being claimed. But, says O'Neill, Christian beliefs are not true because they cohere with anything, they are true (like all true propositions) "because of their reference to the real." a By introducing ;an irreducible element of coherence into his interpl'etation of Christian truth claims, Lindbeck inevitably " attaches to the ·term ' propositional truth ' .a purely pra.gmatic signification," so that " a quite precise philosophical option has: been ma.de in faV'or of the moral or pragmatic definition of truth." 4 O'NeiiH'is point is that " ontological " or " propositional " truth has here been equa,ted with nothing more than the con£ormity of one's life to the patterns narrated in the !biblical story (O'Nei1l's "·scriptural dis·oourse verified by 1action") , •such tha;t " no claims to objective truth" need be made for the story or any a.ssociated beliefs.5 Tihis, O'Neill alleges, is ·a " novel definition of ontological truth." 6 We ought to !'eject this novelty in favor of the under•standing of Christian beliefs and their truth articulated by 'Ihomas Aquinas, whel"e it is firmly maintained against " the moral or pmgmatic definition of truth " that " propositions are true because of their I"eference·to .the real." In order to undevstand the issues ·raised by O'N eill's criticism, it is important to bear in mind the distinction-often made but often overlooked ais well-between truth :and justis O'Neill, "Propositional "Propositional 5 O'Neill," Propositional 6 O'Neill, "Propositional 4 O'Neill, Truth," p. 430. Truth," p. 429. Truth," p. 420. Truth," p. 431. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 355 fica.tion. The very isisue of what it means to say that propositions 1are true can be distinguished from the issue of ho,w one justifies, warrants, or tests the truth of propositions. So, for example, one might maintain that in regard to propositions, "true" should be defined as "oorresponds to reality," or perhaps "fitly expresses experience," or perhaps "is inoorporated into an appropriate form of life." By contrast, one might maintain that pmpositions are "justified" (to mention a few familiar e:x;amples) when they ave logically tied to self-evident truths, when they are supported hy •experienoes of one kind or another, or when they cohere with other assumptions or beliefs. In making rsense of theological and philosophical accounts of tmth, it is useful to distinguish in this fashion be'" tween the way truth is defined and the way truth claims (however defined) a:re jusitified; this is especially so since the two might varry independently of one another, ,such th8Jt a given definition of truth might not necessarily he coITela,ted with any single view of justification.7 If truth and justification are thus differentiated, it turns out that O'Neill's ohj·ection is not to Lindbeck's definition of truth per se, since Lindbeck says he wants to ·allow for the claim upon which O'Neill insists, namely that Christian beliefs. are ontologically true or correspond to reality. Rather, his objection appears to be aimed art Lindbeck's account of justification: since Lindbeck maintains that the truth of Christian beliefs must be warranted by their coherence with a, wider range of beHefs and 3ippropriate practices, it is simply impossible, so O'Neill 1seems to suppose, for him to maintain that these .same beliefs are ontologically or objectively rtrue. In other woTds, 1 7 It can be argued, of course, that the definitions of "truth" and of "justification" should not be different, so that, e.g., in the final analysis truth simply is justification. This is the view of many pragmatists, and of some contemporary anti-realist philosophers (such as Michael Dummett) who would not classify themselves as pragmatists. But this is not to deny the importance of the distinction (in fact these writers ordinarily insist on it), it is to make a claim about how the two should properly be related. My purpose is to see how Lindbeck and Aquinas construe this relation. 356 BRUCE D. MARSHALL coherentist account of justification cannot be remnciled with :a definition of truth as correspondence. In this way, objection is move radical than the charge of " fideism " which is often brought iagainsrt Lindbeck by theologians with strong revisionisrt commitments. While 1account of justification, also aiming primarily at critics like David Tmcy and Ja.mes Gustafson do nort seem to question whether Lindbeck can even make ontological truth claims consistently, but whether there is any point in making them unless one is prepared to defend them on "public" grounds which are in some •sense universal. 8 Since Lindbeck's account of justi:fica1tionsharply curtails rthe possibility of this kind of" public" defense of Christian beliefs, these writers object that Christian o:r other religious truth claims must on his account vemain fundamenta.Iy unpersuasive. I will here atrbend mainly to O'Neill's more radical objeotion that 1a view like Lindbeck\s makes it impossible to hold that Christian beliefs are ontologically true, with the accompanying claim that this view is an eminently dispensable novelty. It will be useful first to make some observations on why Lindbeck maintains his twofold criterion of linguistic and performative coherence, :and on how he 11elatesrthat criterion to the issue of ontological truth. The purpose here is simply ,tJo suggest that his view is a plausible and consistent account of the conviction that Christian beliefs can be ontologically true. After these preliminaries, it will be argued •at greater length that his •account of truth is not at all novd in substance, however fresh rthe perspective from which it is articulated. Thomas Aquinas also maintains tha.t utterances of Christian belief are ontologically true only if they cohere with specific linguistic and practical paradigms internal to the religion itself, and indeed that this coherence is an adequate justification of their ontological 1 1 s See David Tracy, "Lindbeck's New Program for Theology: A Reflection," The Thomist 49 ( 1985), pp. 460-72; James M. Gustafson, "The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church, and the University," Proceed.ings of the Oatholic Theological Society 40 ( 1985), pp. 83-94. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 357 truth. In order to see how the understandings of religious truth in Lindbeck ,and Aquinas 1share at least this fundamental feature, it will be necessary to look at the view of epistemic justification ingredient in Thomas' account of faith, and to see how he relates this view to ontological truth claims. Within the confines of a, single article, it will not be possible 1to address in detail the distinctively revisionist objection to Lindbeck; this will have to be .a matter for another day. But it can at least be .shown that if Lindbeck is a fidei:st or irrationalist on truth, so is Thomas Aquinas, with whom such labels are not usually associated. 1 1 II In The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck uses the word" truth" in three explicitly distinguished senses: he speaks of categorial truth, intrasystematic truth, and ontological truth. An adequate reading of Lindbeck hinges on tracing the connections between these senses of "true,'' but tha;t is not always easy to do. Part of the reason for this is that his discussion of truth is imbedded in a treatment of a brnader issue, centering on the complex question of which theory of religion is best able to account for the claims to unsurpassability ma.de by many religions, while 1also maximizing the possibilities of nonpmselytizing inter-reHgious dialogue 1and the salvation of persons outside a given religfon.9 Despite these difficulties, the best way to unde11standLindbeck's view of the nature ;and justification of religious (especially Christian) ibruth claims is rbo see how !he distinguishes and relates these three senses or kinds of "truth." Of :all the elements in Lindbeck's discussion of religious truth, none is more .standard and widely familiar than his 1 9 Cf. ND, pp. 46-7. While the rationale for treating the problem of religious truth in this particmlar context is substantial, it has the unfortunate result of locating the discussion of categorial truth (pp. 47-52) in a different stretch of text from that of intrasystematic and ontological truth (pp. 63-9). This makes it hard to see the crucial role of categorial truth in the overall view Lindbeck outlines. 1 358 BRUCE D. MARSHALL definition of" ontological truth" (for which t,he phrase" propositional truth" is in most contexts a synonym). When Lindbeck speaks of "ontological truth," he means " thaJt rbr:uth of correspondence to reality which, according to epistemological realists, is .attributable to first-order propositions." 10 This " correspondence to reality " is ·attributable not only to :firstorder propositions, hut also, indeed primarily, to the human being .as a whole. Thus Lindbeck speaks of the way in which "human beings linguistically exhibit their truth or falsity, their ·correspondence or lack of correspondence to the UltimaJte Mystery." :r1 This correspondence of the whole self to 'reality necessarily includes a " mental isomorphism of the knowing 1and the known " by means of p11opositions,for which Lindbeck employs the medie¥al expression adaequatio mentis ad rem.12 This definition of " ontological trwth " is clearly quite close to 1some traditional characterizations of " truth " as .an adaequatio, correspondentia or conformitas of the mind and reality. According to Thomas Aquinas, :for example, " truth is defined by rthe conformity (oonformitatem) of the intellect 'and reality (rei) ." 13 The general notion of cornformitas can be extended to apply to the ;specific relation between the mind and the divine rea1ity. Thus Lindbeck mainta:ins that the relation of the self rto God " can . . . be piotu11ed in epistemologically realist fashion as involving a correspondence of the mind to divine 1 10ND, p. 64. 11ND, p. 69. 12 ND, p. 65. The language of "isomorphism" is Lonergan's; cf. ND, p. 47. is Summa Theo'logiae I, 16, 2, r (This and all other translations from the Latin are my own). S. Thomae Aquinatis Summa Theologiae, ed. Peter Caramello (4 vols., Turin & Rome, 1948-52). I will cite the Summa Theologiae by part number only (I, I-II, II-II, or III) followed by question, article, and location within the article. Cf. also de Veritate (de Ver.) 1, 1, r: ".All knowledge (oognitio) is completed by the assimilation of the knower to the reality known ... The first relation of being to the intellect is that being corresponds to the intellect. This correspondence is called the equation of reality and the intellect (adaequatio rei et intelleotus'), and in this the notion of the true is formally completed." 8. Thomae Aquinatis Quaestiones Disputatae, ed. Raymond Spiazzi et al., 2 vols., (Turin, 1949), Vol. 1. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 359 reality." 14 ALI kinds of questions can of mur:se be raised a.bout how this notion of correspondence or adaequatio should be understood more precisely, and about whether this notion can 1support 1a feasible :account of human kno.wing. But the question xwised by O'Neill and others is simply whether Lindbeck's overall view of truth can possibly include ·this notion, which .seems .to express a basic Christian oonviction that in some deep sense, the faith is true to reality. Clearly the crucial issue is not, as O'Neill suggests, what Lindbeck means when he speaks of "onrtological truth"; his definition of this term is anything hut novel. The key issue for Lindbeck is· raither to specify the conditions under which propositions: can be onto.fogicaillytr:ue, and the mind conformed to .rearlity, in the religious domain. This requmes clarification of .further senses of the term "truth." On Lindbeck's account, " categoria:l truth " is one indispensable pre-condition .for ontological truth. Categorial truth is essentially the fitness or adequacy of an ordered set of categories to describe reality. "Adequate categories are thotSe which can ·be made to apply rto. what is taken to he real, :and which therefore make possible, though they do not guarantee, pmpositional, practical, and symbolic truth. A religion that is thought of as having such crutegories can be said to be 'categoria1ly true.'" 15 Oartegoriail truth can thus he described as potential ontological truth, 1and 1a religion (or other comprehensiv;e worldview) h:rus this kind of truth when its "categories " are capable of being used to describe what is ultimately ·real. By " categories," Lindbeck ;appe:a;rs to· mean noit only the vocaJbulary of a religion, but its syntax as well, that is, the 1 14 ND, p. 66. It is essential to note that I will not be discussing in this article what this correspondence of the mind to divine reality is like, i.e., the manner in and extent to which it obtains. Lindbeck articulates the "how" of this correspondence by employing .Aquina.s's distinction between the modus significandi and the res significata of terms, but my present concern is only with whether any correspondence obtains for Lindbeck ·and .Aquinas, and on what grounds. 1s ND, p. 48. 360 BRUCE D. MARSHALL paradigmatic or nOTmative patterns according to which the terms in the vocabufary are combined: 16 In Christianity, as to ·some degree in other world religions, these normative patterns have 11eached.a high level of fixilty by being " paradigmatically encoded" in a canon of sacred 1texts.11 Unde11stood as rt.his capability to refer to •what is in faot ultimalbely real, ca:tegorial truth chariacterizes (or, of course, f·ai1s to chamcterize) a religion Oil' other semiotic system, especially in its textually encoded form, quite apart from tih.e way the system is used in practice. In at least this 11espect,the" truth'' of a religion belongs ito the language itself of rthe religion and is not a:ffected by •appropriate or inapproprialbe performance on rthe part of the speakers of the language. In Lindbeck's "cartogmphic simile," rthe categorial truth of 1a religion is something like the relation of ·a more or less .adequate maip to the space it depicts. A map of the way from Northfield to Jer1usalem can be "accurate ... in itself "; it does not become a. map of that particular space only when someone 'actually uses it to find her way to JeruBut 1the fact that a map is 1accurate in itself does not 1ensurethat anyone will actually use it so as to succeed in finding Jerusalem, a point to which I .shall return momentarily. Understood .in this way, categorial .truth is clearly a necessary but not sufficient condition for ontological tru:th. It is a necessary condition, in that the mind cannot be conformed to reality by means of propositions unlesis the categories or idiom of the sentences in which the propositions are uttered are them•selves suited to describe 11eality. If ·a religion has suitable or .adequa1becatego•ries, it is possible to ·sfate p11opositionsin that religion which :a;r1e oDJtologicallytrue. But in mo•sit religions, including Christianity, the categorial idiom includes irreducibly particular aspects, such as realistic naITatives, which are taken 1 16 Cf. Ibid., where Lindbeck begins his characterization of "categorial truth" by saying that "attention ..• focuses on the categories (or 'grammar' or ' rules of the game') in terms of which [ontological] truth claims are made and expressive symbolisms employed." 11 Cf. ND, p. 116. 1sND, p. 51. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL 361 THEOLOGIAN ,to be essential to any description of what is in fa.et ultimately 1 real. For example, "many Christians have mainrbained that the stories abourt Abraham, lsaac, Jaoob, and Jesus are part of the referential meaning of the word ' God ' 1rus this is used in biblical religion .and have therefore concluded that philosophers and otheTs who do not 1adviert to these narratives mean something else iby ' God.' " 19 Given the irredudble particularity ingredient in their categorial schemes, different religions may be fundamentally incommensurable, ,even though they may ov;erlap to some degree at a relatively high level of generality. The story of Jesus' death and resurrection in Christianity, and the ,story of the inevitably triumphant struggle of the proletariat in clrus·sical Marxism cannot, as descriptions of what is ultimately real, be translated into one another, any more than " redder " in the .scheme of colors can be translated by "larger" in the scheme of sizes.2<> In light of this inoommen·surn.bility, Lindbeck argues, it is logicaHy possible "that there is only one religion which has the concepts and categories to refer to the religious objeot, i.e., to whatever in fact is more important rthan everything else in the universe. This religion would then be the only one in which any form of propositional, 'and oonceiviably .also ex;p:vessive,religious truth or falsity could be present." 21 On this ,account, ontological trurth claims formulated in a religious or other categorial idiom which 1ackced the crutegories essential to describe reality would not strictly speaking be false, but meaningless. One cannot make either true or false statements about reality rif one lacks the categories to describe it in the first pla;ce. Compa,red to the categorially true religion, " otheT religions the degree they lack the appropriate categories] might ,then he called categorially ,false, but propositionally and expressively ithey would be neither true nor false. They would be religiously meaningless just as talk 1 1 1 1 1.o ND, p. 48. It is at just this point that Lindbeck cites in support of his view an important Thomistic tecxt (II-II, 2, 2, ad 3) to which I shall return. 20 For this latter ecxample as an illustration of categorial incommensurability, cf. ND, p. 48. 21ND, p. 50. 862 BRUCE D. MARSHALL about light .and heavy things is meaningless if one l1acks the concept 'weight.'" 22 Thus, 1assuming that the Christian religion i·s in £,act categorially true, Lindheck's view of truth, far f:vom ca.sting the truth of Christian belief in doubt, seems to suggest an extraordinarily :striong version of the claim that Christianity is ontologically true: ontological truth in any other religion or worldview is not even conceivable. Of course, mos:t religions include the formal claim thrut their idiom is categorially true in Lindbeck',s sense. Row one might justify such a claim in the case of Christianity is •an issue to which I will briefly return later. Yet, while it ris a necessary condition, categorial truth is not a sufficient condition for ontological truth. In order for religious uttemnces rbo conform the mind to reality (and thus ha,ve ontological or pmpositional truth) , they must not only use the right categories, but must 1also use these categories in the right ways; they must have what Llndbeck calls "intrasystematic truth." This is where Lindbeck inrtmduces 1a twofold (that is, lingui·stic 1and practical) criterion of coherence, to which I have already alluded, 1as a neoess:ary condition for religious truth. " Uttemnces rure !intr:asystemartically:true when 1they cohere with the total relev:ant mntext,. which in the case of a religion when viewed in cultural-linguistic terms, is not only oibher utterances hut also the correlati\i;e forms of life." 23 Religious utterances hav·e intrasystematic truth, not only when they fit with the linguistic paradigms hy which the religion indicates how its categories should be combined, but also when 1they are made in the context of practices which the religion sees as appropriate to that kind of utterance. Lindbeck exfo " intriasystematic plains what the force is of his truth," and of the distinction between its linguistic and practical aspects, by us[ng an illustra.tion which has become somewhat no:torious. " The crusader's battle cry ' Christus est Dominus/" he says, "is false when used to authorize cleaving 22 Ibid. 2a ND, p. 64. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 363 the skull of the infidel (even though the same words in other oorubexts may be a true utterance) ." 24 As used by the crusader, "Christus est Dominus ,, has partial intrasystema.tic truth, since it coheres with ;the Christian linguistic parr-adigms for .the use 0£ the categories " Christus" and "Dominus,, (unlike, for example," Petrus est Dominus" or" Judas est Dominus ") . But it does not have ·sufficient intra.systematic truth, sinoe the aotio:ns of the crusader do not cohere with the r:ange of practices which the religion defines •Ills aprpl'IOpriateto such an utterance. Therefore, on the lips of the crusader, "Christus est Dominus " "false." Characteristic a:s it is of his notion of intra.systematic truth, this last remark 1seems to be at •the heart of many reserv:ations about Lindbeck's overall acoount of religious truth. These objections result, I think, largely fmm misunderstandings of the point of appeal to practical coherence a;s a criterion for the truth of religious statements. Such misunderstandings are clearly due in part rto the highly compressed and programmatic (indeed, sometimes runic) character of Lindbeck's discussion of trurth. But part of the problem a.l.so lies with the failure of many interpreiters and critics to trace with adequate care the relationship of intrasystematic truth, especially in its practical :aspect, Ito· cwtegorial truth and onrto1ogical truth. O'Neill, :llo·r example, seems dislturbed more than anything else by Lindbeck's claim that it is possible £or the utterance, "Christus est Dominus," to 1be false, ;and that the pmctices correlaited with the use of this sentence necessarily contribute to its truth or fal.sity. This is ·equivalent, O'Neill apparently 1believes,to daiming that the very reality of Lo'Vdship depends upon the practices and dispositions of believers, a claim manifestly incompatible wi!th the conviction (to use Lindbeck'.s own words) that " Christ's Lordship fa objectively real no ma:bter what the faith or unfaith of those who hear or say the words." 25 It is in this sense, .according to O'Neill, that 1 24 Ibid. 25 ND, p. 66. See O'Neill's discussion of this remark in "Propositional Truth," p. 431. 364 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Lindbeck has reduced the meaning of the term "true" in Ohristian theology to "scriptmal discourse verified by action," without any onitologiioalreference. But 1the rea;son O'Neill Lindbeck in a w:ay :so starkly at odds with the 'latter's stated iaims is rthait he fa.ii.ls to see the basic point of Lindbeck':s discussion of intrasystematic truth, as dis1tinguished from categor.ial and ontological truth. The point of intr.oducing the notion of intrasystema:tic truth is not, 1as O'Neill supposes, to state the basic meaning of the term "true" in the religious domain. That iha:s already been ac,oomplished ill discussion of ontological truth as ,oorrespondenoeto reality. The point is rather to clarify one of the essential oriteria of truth in the religious domain. When Lindbeck uses the criusa;der's"Clvristus est Dominus" to illustrate rthis criterion, the issue is not at all whether "Christ's Lordship is objectively rieal," or correlatively whether sentence1s in Christian discourse (for example, "Christus est Dominus ") can :be ontologically true. On the contracy, the basic aim of his entire" Excursus on Relig,ion and Truth" is to account for the legitimacy of such claims to p!I'opostional truth, in .a way congruent wirth his cultural-linguistic 1approach to religion. Thus the issue here !is nort whether there are (ontofogically) true propositions, but what the conditions are under which one can state 1a sentence which is 1a true proposition. In Christianity (and other religions rus well) , Lindbeck maintaiins, one :such condition is rthe intmsystematic coherence of statements with :a irange of appropriate praJCtices. The sense in which ,oofierence with appropriate practices functions as ia condDtion for religious rtruth on Lindbeck's account is not ail .all mysterious. The problem with the crusader's use of the sentence, " Christus est Dominus," is simply that, uttered as a for splitting people's heads open, it lacks the meaning which the religion insists it must hav;e if it is to be a true proposition, one which corresponds to, reality. By using " D01ninus " in this context, the crusruder ,shows that what he means by the term is a mediev;al knight errant, much like AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 365 himself. But raooordmgto the normative patterns of Christian speech and action, Christ is not thrut kind of Lord; when the predicate "Dominus " has that meaning, it is not 1aipplicable to :bhe su!bject " Clvristus," ,that is, " Christus est Dominus" becomes initrasystemrutically false. Lindbeck clearly if briefly :sfates: that the intmsystemrutic falsity of the crusader's battle cry lies precisely in the meaning the utterance has iin this pr:actical oonrtext. " When thus employed, it contradicts the Chris'tian understanding 0£ Lordship as embodying, for suffering ·servanthood." 26 J\tloreover, hecaiuse the utterance is false in this sense, lit cannot be onto1ogica:lly ·true or conform the mind to reality; it has failed one of the tests that deternrine, within Chri stian discourse, when utterances have ontological truth. On the lips of the skull cleaving crusader, Lindbeck rargues, "Clllristus est Dominus" is precisely not an on'tologically true proposition from which the crusader dl'laws inappropriaite pr:actical conclusions. This is one o.f the primary differences between his own account of religious truth and the views he labels "propositionalist." In a,greement with the mainsitream of modem Anglo-American philosophy (especially under the influence of Wittgenstein) , Lindbeck holds that the meaning of a. rterm must be ascertained :from the way it is used, which requires attention to what Lindbeck calls " the total relevant context," practical 1a;S well as linguistic. The propos:irbionJalist£ails to note the imporlba.illceof pvactice for meaning, especially in religion, and so mak!es rth.e misleading decision that the crusader's cry is ontologically true. Lindbeck's account of intrasystematic truth is designed to 1avoid tills problem. But Hnguistic and practical coherence are not barriers to ontological truth; by establishing when ha"Ve appropriate mean:ings, they ia;re conditions fror it. ·To summarize: 1) CartegoriaJ truth iis ·a neces·s•ary hut not sufficient condition iloc ontological truth. It is a necessary condition because ref rbo rewlity requires the right ca:tego'.Vies, 1 1 2aND, p. 64. 366 BRUCE D. MARSHALL ones which are at foast in some degree ,adequate rto that reality. It is not a isufficient condition, because having the right crutegcnies is no guarantee that they will be rightly used in any given utterance. fl) lrutrasysrl::ematictruth is 'also a necessary but not sufficient condition for ontological truth. It is a necessacy condition because in any coherent network of belief, categories can only refer to reality when they 1are rightly used, that is, when their meaning :is consistent with the shape and requivements of the wider network of belief. lit is not a sufficient ooodition, because ,internally consistent utterances can he made in a :system of belief which lacks categories adequate to rerfer to reaJity. 3) Categocial and intrasystematic truth together are the necessary and sufficient conditions of ontological truth. Lindbeck is ,quite cleair about 1this. "An intrasystemrutically true statement is ontologically false-or, more accurately, meaningless-if it is part of a system that lacks the concepts or categories to vefer to the relevant vealities, but iJt is ontologically true iif it 1is: part of a system that is itself crul:egoria1ly true (adequarte) ." 27 If the Christian categories are true :and they are used in a iway which coheres with :the linguistic 1and practical paimdigms of the veligion, the sentence thereby uttered succeeds in referring to 1amd describing that which is1 in fact the most imporltant thing in the universe-the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Ohrist (however inadequa1te 1and merely analogical the description may be to its transcendent refevent). The proposition thus expressed engenders :a genuine adaequatio mentis ad rem, what Lindbeck 1 1 27 ND, p. 64-5. Lindbeck here describes this relationship in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. It is important to stress that this remark states the truth conditions for "ordinary religious language," which Lindbeck sharply dis,tinguishes from both " technical theology " and " official doctrine"; the former is :first-ordex speech, while the latter two are (in different ways) essentially second-order speech (cf. ND, p. 69). The conditions under which "technical theology" might have ontological truth on an account like Lindbeck's, are more complex, and thexe is not room to go into them here. However, I think Lindbeck's own remarks on this issue sometimes sound a good deal more restrictive than the logic of his account requires (e.g., ND, pp. 106-7). AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 367 cal1s :a " mootal isomOTpihismof the knowing 1and the known," which is no less real :£or being " part ,and parcel of a wider [pl'lactica.l]conformity of the self to God." 28 Understood :in this way, Lindbeck's argument meets O'Neill's radical objection ;squarely. His ,account of religious truth does not at rail exclude the claim that Christian beliefs are onrtologically true. On the oontxrury, reli.gious prorposit:ionsare true" because of their reference rto the real" (to use phrase); on Lindbeck's account, this is precisely what means to say that a religious proposition is " rt:me." But Lindbeck is a:liso oonoerned ito give an ruccount, consisterut with his larger view of religion, doctrine, rand theology, of the conditions under which true propositions can be uttered in the religious domain, and specifically in Christianity. In other words, he wants to give 1a.n :account not only of the truth of Christian beliefs (" correspondence rto reality ") but also of their justification (adequate categories used in w;ays that are intrasystematioally 1true) . O'Neill fails rto observe this distinction. Consequently, he takes Lindbeck's discussion of categorial and int:rasystematic truth as ra. purrposeful reduction orf the meaning of " true " in a religious context to " scriptural disoou.vse verified by action," thaJU whrut it really is----;an account of the conditions under which ,religious utterances succeed in conforming the mind rbo objective reality .29 2s ND, p. 65. The kind of .argument presented by Lindbeck needs to be developed further at this point. It needs to be made more clear how, given a definition of truth as correspondence, ad.equate categories and intrasystematic coherence are not only necessary, but sufficient conditions for the truth of religious utterances in this sense. But it seems crucial to the kind of position .articulated by Lindbeck to hold that this is in fact the case, such that if these conditions are known to be met, no further step is necessary in order to ascertain that a given utterance is true (in particular, the step required by the now widely rejected foundationalist claim that in order to make true s,tatements about the wodd, there can and must be privileged representations, or states of affairs to which we have unmediated access, which alone are sufficient to guarantee the correspondence of mind and language with reality). As we will see (below, note 49), Aquinas makes a move similar to Lindbeck's at this point, on more explicitly theological grounds. 29 In my analysis of Lindbeck, I have been using "justification," "criteria," and " conditions " for truth as, if not identical in meaning, mutually 868 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Lindbeck's compact treatment of these issues raises, ia number of important questions, one of which is that posed by Tracy 1and Gustafson, :to which I 1alluded earlier. To these and other theologians of revisionist or libeml disposition, Lindbeck's account of the justification (as distinguished from the truth) of Christian beliefs !is hound to seem like 1a :flagrant eviasion.'110 :say thart we are justified in :a given proposition to be (ontologically) true because it ooheres with the nJOrms of Christiian belief and practice is, so the objection goes, to beg the decisive question: ho w can these l'.l!orms themselves be jusrtified?Lindbeck is fully a:ware of this challenge, and The Nature of Doctrine culminates with his response to it, so but heI"e I can only draw 1attention to .a few central The problem can be seen :a.is thart of explicating how rbhe whole in:ternaHy normed scheme of belief and praiotice called " Christianity" ca:n be justified. Lind beck's: argument, in brief, is it.hat if individual utterances within the ,oomprehensive scheme are justified by rtheir coherence with internal criteria, then the soheme as a whole must include criteria of its own truth; if tihe justification of Christian ·belief (or other kinds of belief about ultimate meaning and value) is ooherentist on the micro level, it is holistic on the macro level. This is just the point ait whfoh, for writers like Tracy and Gustafson, Lindbeck's account of justification 1seems to degenerate into £.deism and relartivism. But the charge of £.deism seems rooted in the assumption that basic Christian beliefs (and :thereby the Christi an scheme rus a whole) can only he jus:ti:fied•adequa.tely by an appeal to criteria of truth which a,re "p1Ublic," in the sense that they ,a;:ve significantly if not wholly external to Christianity (or 1 1 1 1 1 implicative in .practice; when a belief meets the categodal and intrasystematic conditions for truth, the criteria have been satisfied which justify holding that belief. I think this use of the terms reflects the logic of Lindbeck's argument (and, I will argue, of Thomas's), but the conditions which when met make a belief true, and what gives one the right to hold a belief (i.e., justifies it), might be different, a.nd in some theories of truth they clearly are. so Cf. ND, pp. 128-35 for Lindbeck's discussion (under the rubric "Intelligibility as Skill"). AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 869 any other comprehensive hut community-specific network of belief) , 1and mie 1ait least implicitly urnivers1al,that ri.s, 'Sharied at some level by 1a;ll Eational people. Lindbeck finds this as1sumptiorn unpensurusiV'e: " The issue is not whether there a;re universal norms of reasonableness, but whether these can be fol'llllrulated in some neutral, framework-independent language." 81 In raigreemenrt with Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Mitchell, and others, Lindbeck maintainis thrut we can identify some of the univel'\Sal norms easily enough (he devotes particular attention ;to the norbion of " assimi1ativ;epower ") , but we cannot 1apply them oo make decisions .about truth between comprehensive systems of belief the way we regularly rupply various criteria fo make decisions within such schemes. The reason for this is that each 11eligion or worldview will shape and fill in iSUch norms in its own way, so tha1t each will have ri.ts own materially specific notions of what ccmstitutes adequate and appropriate "assimilrutive power" (for example) . This means, in turn, tha;t a shared norm or value like " assimilative power " only becomes materially definite enough to guide dear decisions 1aboUJt trurth when it becomes cO!Ilcretelythe assimila;rtive power of (for example) Christianil.ty, that is, when it is no longer a norm external to ·a given ,system of belief and practice, but internal to it. 32 The persuasiveness of Lindbeck's sugges·tions abou,t justi:ficrution, .and of their re1rution to his correspondence notion of itruth, can only be addressed by a. much mo11e extensive exploration of the tissues imi;olved. I shall, in the remruinder of ibhis paper, look simply ;at charge of novelty. Lindbeck suggests that lli:s accourut of truth ·and justificrution is deeply 1 s1 ND, p. 130. more detailed discussions of this holist aspect of justification, both as an alternative to the questionable search for universal criteria and an effective reply to the charge of relativism, see William C. Placher, " Revisionist and Postliberal Theologies and the Public Character of Theology," The Thomist 49 ( 1985), pp. 302-416, especially Placher's argument that Lindbeck is in some ways more "public" than (e.g.) Tracy; see also Ronald F. Thie· mann, Revelation am4 Theology, (Notre Dame, IN, 1984), pp. 72-91. a2 For 370 BRUCE D. MARSHALL ,oonsistenrt with a. range of traditional rtheo1ogical views, not least that of Thoma.s Aquinas, a. suggestion O'Neill several rtimes repudiates. By testing Lindbeck's suggestion in regard to Aquinais, a further investigation of some cenrtml problems 'about theological trurth and justification will be possible, and perhaps more light will be source 1and measure of all truth, and since God'1s self-rev;elrutionin Scripture 1and creed is the linguistic embodiment of his own being as pri,ma veritas, whatever propositions cohere with Scripture 1and c:veed must be true, that is, must co·rnespond to rea:lity.49 So it seems plausible to suggest that for Thomas, rbhe criterion of truth for Christian belie£s is their coherence with other beliefs, especiially cel.'lbaiin central ones (when complemented by coherence with appropria.te practice, rus we shall see); Christian beliefs are justified in other words, by meeting this criterion of coherence. In1 49 If this reading of Thomas is correct, then he has at least this explicitly theological way of dealing with an issue which, we have mentioned, is not fully resolved by Lindbeck, namely, how intrasystematic coherence is sufficient to yield ontological correspondence (cf. note 28). AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 377 deed, ffit seems as though this is the only way Christi1an beliefs can be justified, since faith 1ru1one, understood as the disposition rto .affirm propositions about God 1and creatures which cohere with Scripture 1and creed, ,jg the virtue by which the illitellect is " rightly o-rdered" to God-1that is, which entails the correspondentia .by which truth is defined.50 My proposa:l then is that for Thomas, Christianity is a complex and variegated network or web of belief, ,in which the truth of any one aspect is measured by its coherence with the others. The unit of oorrespondance would thus not be the isolaited proposition, but the rwhole weh of belief; in order for 1any one proposition to engender the adaequa.tio mentis ad rem, one would have to believe, 1at least implicitly, a viast number of others as well. One initial test for this coherentist reading of Aquinas is to consider some possible counter-ex;amples. Two cases would seem to count very ,strongly against this reading if Thomas allows for them: 1) 1acceptingsome ·central Christian .beliefs burt denying others; 1accepting one central Christian belief without reference to others, because that belief seems justified on independent grounds. But if Thomas denies that any adaequatio mentis ad rem oan be achieved under these conditions, then the claim that fur him Christian belie£s 1are justified by their coherence wiith other beliefs would be grerutly strengthened. 1) Discussing the question of who has faith and who does not, Thomas 1asks whether ·a person (whom he calls haereticus) who does not believe one 'article oif faith can really believe any of the others, even after the !fashion oif unformed faith (faith not roonjoined with love for that which is believed, to which I will return). The ranswer is no. "The heretic who denies (disc.redit) one .article of :faith does not have the habit of fiaith, either formed or unformed." 51 In order to explruin why, Cf. I-II, 62, 1, rand above, note 34. 5, 3, r. Ignorance, confusion, perplexity and so forth do not count as heresy for Aquinas, but only the willful and persistent denial, from within the community, of central Christian beliefs. Cf. de Malo S, 1, ad 7 ( Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 2). 50 51 II-II, 378 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Thoma;S makes 1a now familiJa;r .appeal. " The formal o of faith is the first truth, 1aooordingias it is made manifest in rthe holy Scriptures 1and the doctrine of the Church." 52 Precisely booause the " oibjeot" which giv;es foith its distincbi.ve character tbakes the form of .a network of interrelated propositions, it is imposisib1eto believe some of these propositions in isolation from the others:. Tihe central tenets of the faith are aV1ailable as a coherent whole (and as such the regulae for believing other things) or not ,a;t iall. Thomas is quite clear that affirming !Some of the a:rticles of faith .aparit f11om others decisively changes the epfustemic srtaJtus of the articles which one does affirm. " Someone who is :an unbeliev;er with regard to one article does not have with regard to the others, buit a kind of opmion in aocord:a;ncewith his own will." 58 And Thomas is also quite clear that propositions about God affirmed under these conditions (without what Lindbeck would call intl'lasystematic truth) 1are incapable of briinging :about any adaequa.tio mentis ad rem, even when the sentences used are identical with articles of fa:i.th. On the cont:mry: " A person is maximally .sepamted from God hy unbelief (infidelitatem), ibeca;use he does not have true knowledge (oogitionem) of God. Through false cognition •a.bout him one does: not draw near to him, but mther is more greatly sepamted from him.'' 54 The reruson 'I1homas gives is crucial to understanding his view of justifica" It cannot be thaJt tion and truth in the religious someone who ha;s :a false opillion about God knows (cognoscat) him in any respect a.t all (qwantum ad quid) , ibecause what he or she thereby imagines (opinatur) is not God." 55 The person whose discourse does not cohere writh the b:r:oader norms of 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. Cf. also de Oaritate 13, ad 6 ( Quaestione8' Disputate, Vol. 2). 10, 3, r. The infideUtas of which Thomas speaks here includes haeresis in the sense of II-II, 5, 3, r; cf. II-II, 11, 1. 55 II-II, 10, 3, r. Cf. II-II, 5, 3, ad 2: "Faith .adheres to all the articles of faith by one means (propter unum medium), that is, by the first truth proposed to us in the Scriptures, rightly understood in accordance with the doctrine of the Church. Therefore someone who does not rely on this means (ab hoc medio'decidit) entirely lacks faith." 54 II-II, AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 379 Christian belief is not even talking about God, and so cannot possibly know or refer to him. In order to understand what Thomas is getting rut here, a. dose look ·at rthe second proposed counter-example is needed. 2) In .several discussions of the act of faith Thomas considers the case of the person who 1a:ffirms certain statements about God which Christians also .hold, not because these statements cohere with .the description of God articulated in Scripture .and the creeds, but because they :a:re justified by a demonstl'lative argument. Acts lime habits are distinguished and defined by their objects, Thomas argues, so the ·complete aot of faith will have three aspects, each" hav;ing 'a different relation .to the object of faith." 56 Considered simply as an act of the intellect, faith has .a twofold relation to its object. With rega:rd fo its material object, the act of faith is credere Deum, " to hold beliefs .about God." 57 With regard to its formal object, the act of faith is credere Deo, " to believe God." This is the act by which one adheres .to the first truth •as manifested in Scriptwe and creed, "in order that on .account of [t one may assent to ilia;t which is believed." 58 When the intellect in the 1act of '.faith is considered as moved iby the will, a third aspect emerges: credere in Deum, to love the self-revealing :fir:st truth and to desire union with him •as the goal of one's e:iciistence.59 Given these distinctions, the question for present 56 II-II, 2, 2, ad I. On the necessity of all three aspects for the complete act of faith, see In III Sent. 23, 2, 2, ii, ad 1 ( # 150), (S. Thomae Aquimatis Scriptum super Sententiis Magistri Petri Lombardi, ed. P. Mandonnet and M. F. Moos, 4 vols., [Paris, 1929-47]); de Ver. 14, 7, ad 7. 57 On the correlation of materiale obiectum fidei and credere Deum, cf. II-II, 2, 2, r. The ·phrase credere Deum in Thomas is hard to translate well. It is often rendered "to believe that there is a God." While it captures an essential concern Thomas has here, this is much too narrow, since credere D1mm is correlated with the material object of faith, which includes not only a wide number of affirmations about God, but about crerutures in relation to God as well. 58 II-II, 2, 2, r. 59 I have so far bracketed the role of the will in faith, although it is of course crucial in Thomas's wider account. It will come up at several points below. 380 BRUCE D. MARSHALL purposes concerns the epistemic status oif .a person (such as a pre-Ohristian philosopher) who holds beliefs about God (in particula:r, the belief that thel"e is a God) on the basis of a demonstmtive argumeTIJt, but withowt reference to Scripture ·and creed. Is someone who believ;es God exists under these conditions jru:stifiedin so doing, with ;a resulting correspondence of mind ·and reality? Thomas takes urp this question when he considers an objection which 'argues that credere Dewm ,should not be considered a pal"t of the distinctive act of Ohristian :faith. After all, people without Christian faith also hold beliefrs about God; for example, " to !believe that God exists is something unbelievers also do." 60 And sometimes unbelievers have good reasons, in the form of demonstrative arguments, for believing .thirut God exists. 61 But Thomas l"ejoots this whole line of reaisoning, because it is based on a false assumption. Unbelievers, even those with demonstrative arguments, do not in fact believe that God exists, or hold any other beliefs about God wh:ich Christians hold: "nee vere Deum credunt." 62 This is obviously not a l"emark 1about the psychology of the unJbeliever; nothing prevents the unbeliever foom uttering sentences in which "God" is the subject, and from 1affirming that these sentences are true. It is ·l'la1ther a l"emaJ."k about epistemic justification. Unbeliev;ers do not really (vere) believe that God exists, or 60 II-II, 2, 2, ob 3. the passage I am here considering (II-II, 2, 2, ob 3 and ad 3), Thomas does not refer specifically to the unbeliever who has a demonstrative argument for God's existence, but simply to the infidelis in general. However, parallel discussions in Thomas of the threefold act of faith indicate that it is precisely the claim to demonstrate God's existence which is Thomas's primary concern when he considers credere Deum outside of faith. Cf. In 4 Rom. I, ( # 327) : "If someone believes that God exisb by various human reasons and natural indications (signa), he or she is not yet said to have faith" (Super Epistolas Pauli, Vol. I). When the act of faith is considered in the Scriptum super Sententiis, the objection just outlined is stated this way: "That God exists is proven demonstratively by philosophers. Therefore to believe that God exists is not part of the act of faith" (In III Sent. 23, 2, 2, ii. ob 2 [ # 131]). 62 II-II, 2, 2, ad 3. 61 In AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 881 whatever else they may say about God, precisely because " they do not believe that God e:icists under those conditions which faith determines (determinet) ." 63 The "conditions " of which Thomas speaks here are simply all the other interconnected belfofs which constitute that Scriptural and creedal network of 1belie£ by which faith is defined (and .00 which the aot of faith is rela;ted as oredere Deo) .64 The problem with the unbeliever'1s oredere is that it takes place apart from oredere Deo, and thus iapart :from the web of belief in which it properly belongs, fitness with which establishes the truth of beliefs about God. There iis 1a ilaiek of necess1axy coherence with other beliefs in the unbeliever's credere1 and this entails that persons without faith are not in £act justified in helieving that God exists (ias Thoma;s puts is, they do "not really believe" it), no martter how strong the grounds they may have for holding the belief. Thus the credere Deum of the believer and the unbeliever iare not the 1same act, 1a:s the objection supposes, but differ in kind. " Unbelievers do not befileve that God exis,ts (oredere Deum) in the sense in which (sub ea ratione) this is parit of the act of faith." 65 The relation ibetween coherence a;nd correspondence in Thomas'1soocount of religious truth is particularly dear at this point. At least with regard fo God, correspondence is the result of coherence; 1a given utter.anoe rubout God (e.g., "God exi:srts ") only engenders 1an adequatio mentis a;d rem when the perison who makes it hoJds 1a number of other specifically Christian beliefs :about God. Where this kind of coherence between beliefs is absent (i.e., apar.t from " the conditions £aith de63 Ibid. 64 This is explicitly stated at In III Sent. 23, 2, 2, ii, ad 2 [ # 151], in connection with the explicit denial that there is genuine oredere Deum with someone who has a demonstration of God's existence outside of faith: "Although the existence of God by itself (simplioiter) can be demonstrated, that God is three in one, and other things of this kind which faith ascribes to God (in Dea credit), cannot be demonstrated. But it is in accordance with these things that it is an act of faith to believe that God exists (credere Deum)." 65 II-II, 2, 2, ad 3. BRUCE D. MARSHALL fines ") the11e is no correspondence at all-even fo:r the person whose a;sserb:ion that God exis1ts is the ,oonclus[on of a sound argument. Thomrus makes this claim ,about the connection between coherence ,and correspondence by introducing ia technical Aristotelian point regarding the knowledge of " simple" things: " In simpJe things any failure of knowledge (defootus cognitionis) is in fact 1a total lack of knowledge." 66 God ii:s " simple " £or Aquinas in that he transcends the metaphysical distinctions which .apply fo. Cl'eated realities (especiially mate1rial ones), ,and which structure 1all of our knowledge. This is true in pa1.1ticu1arof ,fue distinc'bion between ,an individual substance and its essence: " In simple sUJbstancesthe thing (res) and its essence 1are rbhe same." 67 The notion that in " simple things " the essence is the parbicula.r leads Thomas to reflect on our ordinary knowledge of essences, which forms an analogy 1 66 Ibid. It might be argued here and in regard to what follows that Thomas's appeal to conditions of coherence for knowledge of God is dependent on and motivated by a prior commitment to a notion of metaphysical simplicity. If this notion is rejected as implausible or incoherent (as it often is), then it would seem that the need to talk about conditions of coherence would be obviated. I think, on the contrary, that his use of the notion of simplicity here and elsewhere is dependerut on and determined by his theological commitments, so that in this case he employs the notion of simplicity because he thinks the mind's correspondence with God takes place only " under the conditions faith defines," and not vice versa. It would take a complicated te:8Jtual argument to establish and explicate this claim about the function of appeals to simplicity in Aquinas, but two points ma.y be mentioned here. 1) Thoma.s's use of Aristotle in II-II, 2, 2, ad 3, as is usually the case in directly theological contexts, seems to be primarily illustrative rather than justificatory. 2) When applied to God, "simple" is not primarily a metaphysical description for Aquinas, but rather a metalinguistic stipulation rooted in the conviction of God's transcendence. It serves to qualify the application of all creaturely discourse to God, who is, so the faith maintains, the beginning and end of creatures but not himself a creature (cf. I, 2, pro.). On this point David Burrell's textual arguments seem persuasive; cf. his Aquiinas: God and Action, (Notre Dame, 1979 ) . If this is correct, then it would be beside the point to reject Thomas's appeals to divine simplicity because they seem metaphysically unpersuasive. 67 In 9 Met. 11, (#1907), (S. Thomae Aquiinatis in duodeoim Libros Metaphysioorum Aristotelis JJJwpositio, ed. M.-R. Cathala and R. M. Spiazzi, [Turin, 1964]). AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 383 for the knowledge of " !Simple things.'' For Thoma:s, eiit:her we have the idea of " homo" as " animal, rationale" or we do not have it; tJhe:ve is no partial griwsp of essences. Similarly there is no partial knowledge of simple rthings; " For the mind to grasp (attingere) them 1and speak ,about them consrti,tutes truth, but nort to gria:sp these simple things is to he entirely ignorant of them.'' 68 In this our knowledge of " s:imple things " is quite different £rom our knowledge of ,fue "composite " objects of our sense experience. " Whoev,er does not grasp the essence of a s:imple thing does not know it ,at 1aH; it is impo1ssibleto know one .thing about it, and not to know something else, since it is not .a, oomposirte reality." 69 We cannot know God'1s essence, but ':Dhomws thinks these ideas ahout the knowledge of " 'simple rthings " can be used to explicate the w:ay in which the intellect oomes: to correspond to God in :liaiith. The tmnscenderut prima veritas has revealed himse1f, not simply in a concept or in isolated, 1a1bomic propositions, but in 1a complex body of propositions which are mutti1ally necessary for the knowledge of him. These propositions a.re related in .a manner analogous to the relation between the oomponeI1Jtsof 1a definition; if one component is missing, 1bhe definition is not gria:sped, or perhaps something else is defined. Someone who could say in all seriousness, "My pig is a per·SOn " would show the11eby thait he or 1she had 1simply not grasped the meaning of " per:son." 1<> Even le1ss, Thomas argues, does someone who s1a.ys "God exists" but does not iaffimn implicitly or explicitly th at " God became incarnate in Jesus Christ" the reality of God. 11 This lack of coherence, the 1 68 In 9 Met. 11, ( # 1905). The analogy, is should be stressed, is between our grasp of the meaning of a definition and our grasp of the reality of a transcendent "simple thing" through whatever propositions constitute a minimally adequate description of it. In both cases there is an adequa,tio mentis: to the essence expressed by the definition, and to the "simple thing" described by manifold propositions. 69 In 9 Met. 11, ( # 1905). 1<> Thomas uses a similar example in SOG III, 118 ( # 2904). 11 Or, in regard to the Old Testament, who does not say "God will be- 384 BRUCE D. MARSHALL defectus cognitionis of which Thomas speaks in II-II, 2, 2, ad 3, entaii1s not a parti,al, but a total lack of ool'l"espondencebetween the mind .and God. " God is maJcimally simple. Therefore whoever is mistaken about God does not know (cognoscit) God. example, someone who 1believes that God is ia body does nort know rGod in any way, but .apprehends 1somethingelse in place of God.'' 72 It will he reca:1led that Lindbeck iapperuls to the Thomistic passa;ge I have been .analyzing here .as .a precedent for his own account of intrasystematiic truth. 73 Lindbeck daims that the meaning of religious uttemnces is determined by rthe " total relevant context," necessarily including the speaker's other u:ttemnces 1and belie:lis,1so that a person who believes tha.t God exists without believing (for example) that this God has become incamate ii.n Jesus Olrnist does not mean by " God " whrut Christians mean, and ·so cannot refer to .the self-manifesting prima veritas who is the Christian God. Lindbeck's claim 1seems to sum up very nicely the force of Thomas's argument in II-II, 2, 2, !ad 3. Indeed Aquinia:s ·says as much when he opens the discussion there by mruintaining that the unbeliever's credere does not take plaice " sub ea ratione " of .the believerone does not mean the same thing as the other when they " believe thrut the:ve is a God." So £ar the discussion of Thomrus hrus focused entirely on linguistic ·coherence ·a;s a, necessary condition for ontofogical tru.th. The:ve iare 1a;lso parallels in Thomas to what Lindbeck regards ias the complementary condition of practical coherence, that of the :fitness of religious famguage wllith appmpciate practices. The parallel, while it oould be developed a:t length, is .an obvious one. Recall that for Thomrus, the complete iact of faith engages the will ,as well ,a,s the intellect; the aspect of credere in Deum is [ntegl1al to the act itself. But credere in come incarnate." On the different senses in which faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for right speech about God before and after his coming, cf. II-II, 2, 7, r. 12 SOG III, 118 ( # 2904). 73 Cf. above, note 19. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 385 Deum means precisely to believe out of caritas, out of that love which returns to God his own friendship il:JOward us and is rooted in God's gift of himself to us. " Credere in Deum exhilbits the orde11ing of faith :to its. end, which happens through 1ove (per ca.rita,tem)." 74 As -an iaspeot of the act of faith, credere in Deum describes the will moving the illitellect to assent to the articles, ·and to whatever coheres with the 1articles. The will moves the intellect to assent because it clings to the prima veritas manifested in the .articles and presented to it by the intellect rus the uLtimaitely fu1filling goal of the whole human being.75 The diwne gift o[ caritas, moreover, is the supTeme virlue, which order:s aH of our inward 1and outward acts towards the rewlization of beautitudo in union with the very God who is manifested in the articles of faith. So for Thomas the £aith by which the intellect is conformed to :vea1ityis impossible without the disposition to .a;ot in ways appvopriate to what is helieVi,nio$ tacking the compelling cha11acter of self-1evidence.80 Now, Thomas dearly supposes that it is possible to have scientia (by way of demonstrative 1arguments) concerning at least some of those propositions which the believer affirms by .adhering to God's ·self-revelation in Scr.iptu11eand the creeds. Since he insists .thart one cannot have .both soientia 1and fides concerning the same proposition, the availability of demonstrative arguments leads Thomas to distinguish between those beliefs about God ("material objects" correlated with credere Deum) which .are a:1.1ticlesof faith in the strict sense, because they oannot be demonstmted, and those which are articles of faith only in 1a, limited sense, because they can be demonst:tiated (such as God':s erisrtenoe and unity). Indeed, Thomas underlines the point that regarding these latter ·beliefs one oan have visio in this life (since that is what scientia invo1lves), even though most people may be limited to faith: " It can happen thart wh!ait is seen or known by one person, even in this life (in statu viae), is believed by another, who does not know (novit) it demonstratiV'ely." 81 One can hold these beliefs because one dings to God revealing himself (credere Deo), or because one ha:s a demonstration based on (for example) putatively selfevident principles of Aristotelian togic and physics, but one oannort, it seems, do both. Thomas's disjunction between fides and soientia has suggested rbo nume:mus oommenmtors that the justification of any specific Christian belief in Thomas ihas nothing to do with 1ingwisticand practical coherence with the wider web of Chrisseen (visa). Therefore whatever things are known ( scita) are seen in some way ( aliquo modo) ." As will become clear later on, the qualification aliquo modo is crucial here. Cf. also II-II, 1, 4, r: "Those things are said to be seen which by themselves move our intellect or sense to know them (ad sui cognitionem) ." s-0 II-II, 1, 2, sc; cf. II-II, 1, 5, ad 4; II-II, 2, 1, r. s1II-II, I, 5, r; cf. II-II, 5, 1, r; de Ver. 14, 10, r. AQUINAS AS POSTUBERAL 'l'IlEOLOGIAN 389 tian belief. lndeed, the possibility that this might be the case is usually not evien considered. With regard to those beliefs not explicitly exduded hy Thomas from scientia1 the ultimate and proper criiterion of truth iis often assumed to be the aviail:ability of syllogistic a:rgument based on principles naturally evident to the mind. Where 1a valid .argument of this kind (e.g., for God's exis:tence) is grasped, rthere is necessarily an adaequatio mentis ad rem, regardless of whether the person who grasps the 1argument shares in the wider network of belief .and practice (as, e.g., the rpre-Christiianphilosophers who made such arguments did not.) 82 Gilson speaks illor a host of others when he says concerning those Ohristian beliefs whic:h are " purely rational " that, " sinoe these do not presuppose faith, they can be extraoted from their theological context and judged, from the point of view of nrutuml l'lea:son, as purely philosophical conclusions. This is an erlremely important point !in that it enables us to undoostand how strictly metaphysical knowledge can be included in :a theological structure without losing its pmely philosophical nature." 83 Not only is .the jusrtification of Christian beliefs iby " natural :ve1a;son" (viz., isyllogisms) independent of the specifically Christian context of those beliefs, it is qualitatiV'ely superior ·to :any jusbificrutionthose beliefs can have through faith. The believer (or, pvesumahly, the unbeliever) who has a demonstrativ:e argument for (e.g.) God's existence ihas gvasped if:Jhe truth of that in a better way than is ·aviailable by faith, so that (allowiing for occrusional relapses) he or she can leave faith rbehind, at least where that pa:vticu1arbelief is concerned. So Gilson glosses Thomais's disjunction of fides and soientia in this way: " Abstractly and absolutely speiaking, where reason 1 82 After all, so the argument goes, Thomas frequently concedes claims like, "Some things which are part of the faith (in fide continenter) have been proven demonstratively by philosophers, for example that God exists, that God is one, and other things of this kind" (II-II, 1, 5, ob 3; cf. II-II, 1, 8, ob 1). 83 Etienne Gilson, The Ohristian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. L. K. Shook, (New York, 1956), p. 9. 390 BRUCE D. MARSHALL is able to understa;nd, faith has no further role to play." 84 All of this seems diametrically opposed to the ooherentist reading of rbhe credere Deo suggesrted by pa.is.sages such as those in which Thomas denies. thtat the unbeliever with demonstration in hand really believes that God exists. Can a ooherentist reaiding of the credere Deo be reconciled with Thomas's disjunction between fides and scientia? To begin with, Thomais significantly qualifies the notion of scientia by distinguishing between scientia before and a.fter faith. This distinction is central, for example, to the way Thomas handles the question whether having ·reasons for what one believes reduces the "merit " of faith. Faith is meritorious for 11homas on ;account of the role the will plays in it, leading the intellect ·bo •aiccept1a network of propositions which axe not evident rto the 1intelleot. If someone requi11es convincing reasons he[ore that person is willing to believe, his act oif belief 1aicks merit, just because " he or she would not be readily willing to believe (or would not be willing •at •all) unless a compelling argument (ratio humana) were introduced." 85 But when a person seeks the support of ratio humana after £.aith, not .in order to believe, but because he or she clings to the selfrevealing God, then the merit of faith is increased. " :for when .someone is readily willing to believe, he or she loves the truth which is believed, meditates on it, and embmces any reasons which can be discovered for it." 86 Two things a11e suggested by these remarks. First, fides and scientia regarding a given article of faith (that is, one of the preambles) do not absolutely exclude one :another; there is a sense in which ·they ·are compatible. To be sure, " demonstrative :rea:sons" 1adlter faith " diminish the sense in which faith is present (diminuant rationem fidei) , ibecause they cause what is proposed for belief to be evident (apparens) ," .and the fomia.l object which defines faith is the yrima veritas precisely Thomas Aquinas, p. 17. 2, 10, r. 84 Gilson, St. 85 II-II, 86 Ibid. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 391 as non visa.187 But while the relation of the intellect to one of :bhe preambles is changed by having .a demonst11ation after faith (we wiH see how sb:o:dly), the will's .adherence to the prima veritas remains what it w:as ;in faith prior to the demon'stmtion. And so the will continues to dispose the intellect to believe .all the articles (including the preambles) simply because they are the 1self-disc1osureof the prima veritas 1 even when the believer hrus a demonstration-quite apa11t from the fact that themselves. Rather, Dasein is :both the ontological " cause" of their meaning (Being) and the " end " for whose sake they " are ". In short, the sign-clm11ader of the equipment does not involve formal signs but only instrumental signs, where such signs are instituted signs, taking their rise and meaning from the Being of Dasein. Like customairy signs, they :reflect a world already constituted hy Das·ein 1and thus the wo:vld with which Dasein is already familiar. In this priority of idealism over 11ealism,40 one could argue 1 1 89 Heidegger, History of the Oonce'pt of Time (Bloomington: versity Press, 1985), p. 208. 40 See Sei!n und Zeit, pp. 207-8. Indiana Uni- VINCENT GUAGLIARDO, O.P. that Heidegger has missed 'the very being of the sign in his 1analy:sis: of the o[ things. John of St. Thoma.s, fo:r e:x;ample, attempting to develop the notion of sign-theory in St. Thoma1s, credibly argues that the very being of the sign is relation, in .an indifference a;s to whether the re£erence of the sign is real or ideal, whether it is formal or instrumental. 41 In this way he offers a semio,sis which, thanks to the indifference, or neutmlity of .the being of the sign as relation, is ·as open to the real as it is to the ideal and which can ,also a.ccount for the oompenetration of 1both in the constructs of culture. Now the circumspective concern of reckoning Dasein, as we have said, resembles pmctical ·reason in Aristotle ·and St. Thomas. St. Thomas notes: ... ratio specvlativa et practiva in hoc differunt, quod ratio speculativa est apprehensiva solum fl'erum, ratio vera practiva est non solum apprehensiva sed etiam causativa. 42 But with modern phil0:sophy speculative reason ,begins to attain :an a.ctive, causative role as a pri,ori. By the time of Kant reason, including understanding, is aictive, oir spontaneous, throughout. But speculative reason must now be limited, .for in acting beyond understanding, speculative reason enters " naturally " into illusion, giving rise to the dialectic that is metaphysics. Only pmctical reason as active avoids illusion because it does not daim for its bas[s knowledge hut only itself as mtionaJ. Now the 'early Heidegger, it could be argued, gave priority to an a.ctive, p'I"actioa.l kind of " reason " temporally rooted in contrast to timeless speculative reason, whether a.ctive or passive. But with the later Heidegger the association of active, pra.ctical "reason" (which characterizes much of Da,sein's understanding in Sein und Zeit) with will shows itself to be nothing move than the outcome of reddenda 41 See John PoiilSot (John of St. Thomas), ed. John Deely, Tractatus de Signis (Berkeley: University of California, 1985), p. 119. In more technical terms, the relation is secunthis not by any apriority of specu1a:tive knowledge, ,as reddenda ratio would have it, hut by something which does not chamclerize anything at all like scientia Dei, namely temporality. Here the index of :finitude, and not infinity itself, appears a;s the horizon within which our heing ,and knowing ,seem to " coalesce," rwhere knowing iais " know..Jhow" in dealing with inner-worldly entities is for the sake of our being a:s Being-in-the-world. Here our knowing/ being does not bespeak anyithing like a principium rationis sufficientis, which befits only divinity as the principle of resolution, but a principium rationis insuffioientis, in which the principle is one of lack, in our temporal dispersal (Zerstreuung) among worldly beings, and not their ontological resolution in 1 1 1 us.41 Ra.tio as Questioning 1and Thinking When St. Thomas speaks of ratio a:s " discurrendo de uno in ialiud " he unde.l'!stands ratio as primarily speculative and it is in this context that ratio :finds its place in his theofogy. As we have seen, St. Thomas defines speculative ratio a:s only apprehensive. But since knowledge in us is ia coming to know, we discover that ... our intellect understands by discursion, and by composing and dividing: namely, that in the first apprehension of anything newly apprehended it does not at once grasp all that is virtually contained in it. And this comes from the weakness of the intellectual light in us ... 48 41 For the concept of Zerstreuung in Heidegger, see Metaphysische An· fangsgrunde der Logik, pp. 173-175. That Dasein is not ontically the principle of any reddenda ratio is clear from what Heidegger says in Vom Wesen des Grundes (in Wegmarken, p. 160, note 59). So for St. Thomas our knowing involves temporal dispersal (In peri Hermeneias, I, 1, Leet. 14, n. 194). In Summa contra Gentiles, I, Cap. 57, Aquinas calls ratio "defectivus quidam intellectus." 48 ST, I, 58, 4, c. 426 VINCENT GUAGLIARD0 1 O.P. Consequently, . . . there is no one special power in man through which he gets knowledge of truth simply, absolutely and without movement from one thing to another [absque discursu] . ... there is no power in man separate from reason which is called understanding [intellectus].49 St. Thomas proceeds further to relate faith to ratio. Cogitatio, or thinking, as the discursive movement of reason, is the ;same as the sea,l'ch for truth. 50 Now we know that Heidegger criticizes the notion of cogitatio, especially 1as it occurs in Descartes' philosophy in his foundational principle, "Cogito, ergo ,sum ". 51 But for St. Thomas oogitare does not involve a foundational principle capable of securing ahsolutely whatever other truths the human can know. Rather, cogita.re as the activity of ratio presupposes intellectus as its starting point and strives to attain further or deeper understanding. As 'Such it designates inquiry prior to the ,attainment of some truth. 52 St. Thomas distinguishes between a cogitare with regard to universals, which pertains to the intellect, and a cogitare with regard to particulars, which relates to the cogitative power. The latter involves that aspect of ratio discussed earlier as "reckoning," i.e. pmctical reason as both apprehensive and causative. But the former invnlves ratio as " deliberatiV'e," i.e. speculative reason as apprehensive but not causative. Now it is .this sense of ratio which also expresses the nature of faith for St. Thomas: " ... in hoc intelligitur tot:a ratio hujus actus qui est credere." 53 In faith the intellect is determined by the will to adheve firmly to one object, as in understanding and sci·49 de Veritate, Q. 15, 1, c. Q. 14, 1 & ST, I, 34, 1, ad 2. 50 See de Veritate, 51 E.g., see "Der Europllische Nihilismus," Nietzsche, II, pp. 148-168. For Heidegger the meaning of cogitare in Descartes is not thinking but the representing subject so that "Im Herrschaftsbereich dieses subiectum ist das ens nicht mehr ens creatum, es ist ens certum: indubitatum: vere cogitatum: ' cogitatio'" (ibid., p. 166). s2 See ST, II-II, 2, I. Also, see ST, II-II, 83, 1. sa ST, II-II, 2, I. THE QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY 427 ence, but without the intellect termina:ting in a full understanding of that object, as it does in understanding and science. Faith, then, for St. Thomas has its own unique phenomenological structure to which ra.tio as cogitare and quaerere necessarily belongs: " ... et per hoc distinguitur iste actus qui est credere 1ab omnibus actibus intellectus qui sunt circa verum et fa:lsum".5 This is Aquinas' appropriation of Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum. Because faith is not simply intelleetus there is the movement of eogitare and quaerere. If theologizing is, as Heidegger contends, " :a thinking and questioning elaboration of the world of Christian experience, i.e. of faith," then ratio is a necessary element of theologizing. But what cogitare comes to mean from Desca.rtes to Husserl is ratio shorn of intellectus as both its terminus a quo and ad quem, a reddenda ratio become Wissenschaft in the absorption of Verstand into Vernunft, the object into the subject. It becomes the activity of the "representing I" of modern intentionality, ·which became increasingly causative as it became decreasingly ·apprehensive. But for St. Thoma:s ratio means "dis.course," for the word " discourse " comes from the word discurrere. Here ratio is linked to logos, where ratio is through logos, verbum, language. As such it is .Jinked to " dialogue," in which a twosome is pre.served " de uno in aliud," where thinking is always " unterwegs ". The dialogue that true thinking is is alwayis with die Sa.che th:vough logos (Being) [n a way that does not preclude other humans from thinking through the matter but includes them as a moment of it.s questioning. Here we see ratio as St. Thomas himself practiced it: the quaes•tio, which seeks to be on the trail of the die Sa.che, not resting contented with what others have 1said hut going through the maUer itsel:f. The medieval quaestio, as Gadame.r remarks, is a genuine hermeneutical dialectic. 55 In the "to and fro" of such dialogue the 4, 54 Ibid. 55 See Gadamer, Triith and Method, p. 328. Also, see pp. 325-341, for his discussion o.f "the hermeneutical priority of the question." 428 VINCENT GUAGLIARDO, O.P. fusion of horizons and effective-historical consciousness take place. Here ratio as a tempom.I condition shows our historical being as it dialogues with tmd!ition, as well as contemporary discussion, in the seeking of :£urthffl' possibility. But the answer itself, while it may come through the tradition, is itself 'an " ·event " of 1appropriation, where questioning ,and thinking 1are for the sake of undersfanding, ratio for the ·sake of intellecfius.56 Ra,tio, we see, then, is not an end in itself (as a reddenda ratio would have it) but, as "unterwegs," is for the sake of understanding. But neither is ratio the source, Grund. It does not take its rise from itself (as a reddenda ratio would have it). Rather, its source lies in anotheil' place (Ort), in the relation between Being ..knowing that Dwein is tin the hermeneutical circle as ontological, as we shall see. But there is another sense of source which is ontical, bespeaking, not the ontological difference, hut the " theological difference ". 57 If Seinsdenken seeks to be closer to the source of the ontological diffe:rience,then theology as fides qua:erens intellectum seeks to !he closer to the source of rthe theological difference. Our thi,rd g.ain in the retrieval of ratio is that speculative reason shows itself to be the phenomenon of questioning and thinking, primarily aipprehensive nather than causative, needing Being •as " other," through which beings are for us. In this the "openness" which Caputo says pertains to intellectus l"eally pertains to ratio in relation to intellectus. 58 For intel1 56 Reason is to intellect as motion is to rest (see ST, I, 79, 8, c). In this regard, " ... supremum in nostra cognitione est non ratio, sed intellectus, qui est rationis origo" (Summa contra Ge:n,tiles, I, Cap. 57). 57 See Max Miiller, Ewistenzpihilosophie im geistigen Leben der Gegenwart (Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1964), p. 67, in which he speaks of "die 'transzendente' oder theologisohe Differenz im strengen Sinne: Den Untersohied des Gottes vom Beienden, von der Seiendheit und vom Bein" which he claims the early Heidegger planned to treat in the third portion of Part I of Sein un4 Zeit .as. one of the three ways we can speak of transcendence ( p. 66). ss It can be argued that insofar as Caputo describes his deconstructed concept of intelleotus as " openness " such an intelleatus would be formable and thus still in some sense the passive intellect which for St. Thomas expresses itself conceptually through ratio. THE QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY 429 lectus as :such ·char:acterizes 1active and not passive knowing, and consequently a being that already knows 1all that it will ever know. It does not characterize a being that comes to know. Neither does ,it characterize the theologian as one standing m faith. Pure intelleetus is a knowing which is "closed " (" windowless " .as Leibniz put it) in the sense that it is a " filled" and " fulfilling " knowing a priori.59 Only a being which comes to know can be " open " in tha;t it can seek to be ever closer to tha;t which grants it understanding, the " other," whether that other be Being or God. For ratio· as expression is not the :sou:rce of huma;n being which we seek in either the ontological or the theological sense. Rather, it shows itself :to be the " index " of finitude. It is now to that ontological source of human finitude for both Heidegger and Aquinas to which we turn. Being 1and Knowing: Ens and Intellee;tus Thus £air we have looked at the human intellect only insofar as it is p11imarily pas'Sive in a discursive coming to know, in the sense in which St. Thomas, following Aristotle, &ays anima est quodammodo omnia ". But in order for knowing to be for us there must also be a;nother transcendental relation of knowing to beings to which the active and not just the po·ssible intellect stands in relation. In order for the possible intellect to become " anima quodammodo omnia " in regard to beings, there must be a tmnscendental relation of the active intellect to Being as the prior disclosure for understanding, where understanding presupposes understanding. In considering the Platonic solution to the paradox that in order :to know we must in ,some sense already know, St. Thomas offers 1a modified view which makes! ana.mnesis unnecessary. First, Aquinas agrees that knowing does not involve going from the unknown to the Jmown but from the kno-wn to the unknown. 60 In this ·sense ratio presupposes understanding. " 1 59 See In Librum de Oausis, Prop. 10, Leet. 10, n. 244. eo See Aquinas, In Post. Anal., I, Leet. 1-3; Summa oontra Gentiles, II, 83, nn. 27-32. 430 VINCENT GUAGLIARDOJ O.P. But how is this possible, since Aquinas, unlike Plato, does not hold for innate ideas? As we have .seen, while to be and to know are the same for God, for us they are not. This means tlmt knowing for us is not " twough itself," i.e. tWough ourselves alone, but twough another, i.e. being, ens ·as transcendental, through which everything else which we know is known. This transcendental relation to being directs us in advance to beings (as Sein to Seienden in Heidegger) as whrut we propeT'ly know when we know. Eckhart tells us that God speaks only one Word, the Son through Whom creation is, but we as creaturres hear two words, i.e. the Word of God always comes to us through being (Sein) as what is fir.st for u:s.61 Thus, for Eckhart, the transcendental relation we have to being indicates precisely our finitude, our creatureliness, hy which we are other than God. It indicates for Eckhart exstasis (our being outside God) rrather than instasis (our being inside God). God in His own ibeing is ever instasis, creation exstasis.62 For Heidegger, ·as we know, our Heing-in-the-wollld is one of ecstatic temporia1izing. So we see that both Eckhart and Heidegger link our 1being-outside, our Being-in-the--world, our temporalizing, -with Sein. But on this score, I think, Eckhart is also really in consonance -with St. Thomas as well, which I 1will now ·attempt to show. In the Kantbuch Heidegger attempts to relate Sein to Dasein's temporia1izing. Here Heidegger is pursuing the conclusion of Sein und Zeit, which say;s: " Does time itself manifest itself a:s the horizon of Being? " Now we know that the early Heidegger tried to find the relation between time •and Being in the transeendental imagination, in which schematism occurs in which Kant designates Being here as the unknown X of an ens imaginarium.63 But, •according to Heidegger's £amous interpretation, Kiant " rreeoiled" from what was phenoop. oit., 122. Die deutschrm W erke (Stuttgart, 1938:ff), III, pp. 315-317. Also, see Deutsche Predigtoo 'l.llnd Traktbreakdowns, e.g. Schelling, Nietzsche, Ho1derlin-,and St. Thomas-further remarks: But this ... great breakdown of great thinkers is not a failure [Versagen] and nothing negative at all-on the contrary. It is the sign of the advent of something completely different, the he.at lightning of a new beginning.96 But Heidegger, interestingly enough, remarks: "Das Religiose wird niemals durch die Logik zerst-Ort, sondern immer nur dadurch, dass der Gott sich entzieht" (Was Heisst Denken? (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1971), p. 7). 94 See Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985), .p. 98. In Sahellings A.bhandlung, p. US. 95 Ibid. In Summa contra Gentiles, I, 2, n. 2, St. Thomas describes the motive for theologizing as ·an act of religion, or piety, in tension with the acknowledged human limitations of such an enterprise. 96 Ibid., p. 3. In Soheliings A.bhandlung, p. 4. THE REDUCTION OF ESSENCE IN THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQillNAS AND EDMUND HUSSERL MARTIN T. Wooos Loyola, Marymount University Los .Angeles, California 'TI RE PURPOSE of this article is to address, first of all, the iissue of whether St. Thomas anticirp1ated the pheomenological in both an epistemological and metaphysica,l sense, and subsequently articulated its solution he:£ore the investigations of modern phenomenofogists began. The secondary purpose of this writing is to reveal the anomrulies :£aiced by the phenomenologist Edmund Hussel'll, who, in noting the same problem earlier ·addressed by Aquinas, attempted to discover the narrow bridge between reality and knowledge and £ailed to find it. This effort will he amply documented from his Gottingen lectures published as The Idea of Phenomenology late in his career. Thomas, on the contrary, seemed to find this bridge with relative ease .and went on to clarify with admira:hle lucidity the steps to be taken in traversing it, paxticularly in the latter part of his little work On Being and Essence (De Ente et Essentia) , written for the Dominican students 1at Naples rubout U55. 1 Aquinas and Essence Absolutely Coniidered After analyzing in some detail the notion of species, genus ·and difference Aquinas states in his work On Being and Essence thaJt sruoh universal notions could not be said to belong in .the strict sense to real existent individuals, an in·sight the Blatonists had highlighted from antiquity by assuming that universals exist independently of thought. "In this way" 443 444 MARTIN T. WOODS Aquinas says, "the genus a.nd species would nut be predicated of individual; for ,it cannot be said that Socmtes is what is separated from him," 1 n.a.mely, the universal natures of man and animal. However, in .spite of the pmblem of ontologism the Platonists eventually CTeated, they were the first to clarify the distinction tha.t still sepa,rates sense experienoe f·rom universal notions in the thinkiing of philosophers today. In order to close the yawning epistemologiorul chasm that resulted, Plato, the architect o[ this separation, had gone on to claim that the world of ideal forms or unive'l's·al notions somehow i11uminedthe wodd of sense appearances a;nd gave them meaning. It is ;at this point that Aquinas, unlike his master in philosophy, Aristotle, parts company with the Platonists and goes on to question the immediate relation of formal universals to the understanding o[ parlicula!'.s. "Nor further, would this sepamted something (e.g. the species man) be of any use in knowing this singular (i.e. Soorates the individual man) ." 2 This somewhat unexpected statement of Aquinas seems to put him at odds with the position of Aristotle on whom he relied so heavily for his classic analysis of predicrubles. Why this striking deviiation from the ·authority of the philosopher who states quite specifically in the Categories that while the univerrsrulis not in any way present in things, it ·is nevertheless predicable of them? Aqumas on the contmry seems to suggest that his notion of a " predicable " is a bit more ahstmct than Aristotle's. It was at this point in the De Ente et Essentia that Aquinas laid a firm basis :for trhe ela:bo.ootion of a phenomenological reduction without lrubeling it as such. In order to accomplish this purpose, Aquinas decided to clarify .an important distinction between the essence conceived as " a universal " iand the " essence absolutely considered." 1 1 Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia ( 52) trans. by Joseph Bobik, On Being and, Essence. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965. p. 119. 2 Ibid,. THOMAS AQUINAS AND EDMUND HUSSERL 445 " Now a natlliVeor essence signified as a whole," he states, " can be considered in two ways. In one way it can be considel.1edaccording to its proper content, and this is an absolute oonsidemtion of it. And in this way, nothing is true of it except what :belongs to it as such. For e:immple, to man as man belong rational animal, and whatever else falls in ills definition." 3 Regarding this first me8!Iling of essence, he then goes on to say, "1and it is the nature so considered which is predicated of all individuals. Yet it cannot be said," he adds, "that the notion of a universal belongs to the nature so considered, ·because oneness 1and commonness are of the notion of a universrul. Neither of these belongs to human nature considered absolutely for if eommonness were of the content of man, commonness would .be found in whatever thing humainity is found. And this is false, for in Socrates there is not commonness but whatever is in him is individuated." 4 He then points out in a brief example that essence a1bsolutely .considered includes nothing which is outside the content of humanity 81S such: " ... whence if one should ask whether the nature so considered can be said to be one O'l' many, neither should be allowed, because ea.oh is outside the content of humanity, and either can be added to it." 5 Epistemologically, then, Aquinas ilays a groundwork for a suitable phenomeno'1ogioal reduction by excluding from the essence " rubsolutely considered" both unive•rsality in thought .and ind1ividuality in fact without excluding its po.ssible relation to either. The epistemological status of the EAC (henceforth used for " essence absolutely considered ") is disoovera1ble precisely in the act of prescinding .from unity in essence and p1urrality in f.act. Consequently, everything that belongs :by definition to the nature so ·apprehended is predicable of it whether that " it " happens to ibe the " man in general " or "SoCJ'iates in pa:vticular ", the cfass or the individual. Thus "Man is a rational animal" and "Socrates is a mtional 'animal" are both equally true statements. a Ibid. ( 54), p. 122. 4 Ibid. ( 57), pp. 123f. 5 Ibid. ( 54) , pp. l 22f. 446 MARTIN T. WOODS However, Aquinas is not satisfied to leave his clarification of the EAC to ,an epistemological reduotion. He continues in the same vein to accomplish .a metaphysical reduction of equal importance. "In the oither way, an essence is considered according to the eristence it has in this or that. When the essence is so considered, something is predicated of it 1accidentally, by reason of thaJt in which it is; for e:x;ample,it is s1aid that man is white hecause Socrates is white, although to ibe white does not belong to the man as man." 6 This second reduction is of a metaphysiool order in that the EAC prescinds from the independent e:ris:tence of the object Socrates who happens in a contingent sense to he white, 1and likewise prescinds from the independent eristence of the concept " man '' which is .a modification of the thinker's consciousness. Yet rthe EAC qua known, .represents the possibility of judging the correspondence of what man is both es1sentially and incidentaHy (because man is incidentaJ.ly white with respect to Socrates while remaining essentially "r:ational animal " with respect to hoth the univer1sality of its own nature and the individuaility of Sociiates.) Thus the EAC itself becomes the principle of identity by which the utterly divergent differences between the two ontofogica;l realms of kno1wledge and being can he recognized. As Aquinas 1Says, "This natune (the EAC) has ,a twofold existence, one in singul·ar things, the other in ·the .soul; and a;ccidents follow upon the nature according to either existence. In singulfil' things it has a multiple existence in acco['d with the diversity of these singular things; yet the existence of none of these belongs to the nature considered in .itself, i.e., mbsofotely. " 1 The EAC, then, is capruble of being recognized, even in things. The EAC may in tfacl be recognized ,as "of the essence" of each ontological status with respect to the being of this man -and the knowledge of what man is, but neither status determines the nature of the EAC as such, Aquinas pointed out, for these aspects ·are what is laicking in the cons Ibid. ( 55), p. 123. ( 56), p. 123. 1 Ibid. THOMAS AQUINAS AND EDMUND HUSSERL 447 tent of the EAC as such. It is in fact the EAC itself that determines the possibility of reoognizing both the essential identity and the existentia[ di:fferences between knowledge and its object. (Had Aristotle anticipated this more precise distinction ·between the EAC and the universal form.any conceived, the early medieval (lOntroverrsies·about the ontology of the universal itself might have been far less 1acrimoniorusand much more enlightening.) conclusion of all this was 1stated quite simply by Aquinas: "And it is the nature 1so considered (i1e., the EAC) which is predica;ted of all. individuals." 8 He then goes on to f()ll'esta.11the likely objection, a schofastic one at that, that the !formal unive!l'sal is itself P'redieated of its "inferior" individuals. In contradiction to this, he states (and it hears repeti·tion in this new oontext), "Yet it cannot he said that the universal ;belongsto the nature so considered (the EAC), because oneness and commonness 1are oif 1the notion of ·a u.n.ive11sal Neither of these belongs to human nature considered absofotely, for if commonness were of the content of man, commonness would he found in whatever thing humanity is found. And this is false, ibecruuse in Socrates there is not commonness, but whate¥er is in him is individuated." 9 Thus, the formal universal :is depicted hy Aquinas ;as .adding to the EAC the " note" or notion of class universality, for example, the definitional chamcter of a species or genus. Such universal essences quite oibviously are not predicable of individuals without contradiction. On the contrary, there is absent any explicit reference to a class concept when the content of a genus or species (namely, the EAC) is predicated oif individuals. Thus, it makes pe:rtfect sense to say that Socrates is a man without saying that Socmtes himself is a species of ·animal. Aquinas therefore ooncludes that the " notion of the species is not among the things which belong to the nature absolutely considered . . . Rather the notion o.f the species is .among the accidents which s Ibid. ( 57), pp. 123f. 9 Ibid. ( 57), p. 124. 448 MARTIN T. WOODS follow upon the natuve oooording to the existence it has in the intellect; and it is in this way too that the notion of the genus and the difference (e.g. "animality". or "rationality") be· long to it." 10 Sev:eml oibservations should be made at this point: (1) Aquinas is guilty neither of an epistemological no!r a metaphysical correspondence of a naive order, as sometimes claimed. From his metaphy:sica.l perspective, class notions ·are quite different £mm individual things, while relations of universality 1and relations of particular facts ,a;re !recognized to possess a quite divergent epistemological status, clearly reoogni2la.ble to David Hume, example. (2) The objection that the EAC is in a. sense " the last thing known " in this analy·sis, and therefore incapable of representing the prior " known linkage " ·between particulrurs 1and class notions, is not wirurranted. Aquinas alw:ay.s ifollowed the Aristotelian principle that "we must begin with whait is more knowable to us " and progress " to what is more knowable in itself", i.e., from the perceived effects to the causal principles 'that explain them. The EAC belongs to the latter class while the divergent £acts of knowledge .and reality belong, episteat least, to the former. The :£act that even after much reffootion ·we do not understand the precise function of the EAC does not render its use hy us any less effective than the ignorance of motorists ahout the operation of differential.s imperils their ability to turn corners. 'Iihe term "known link1age " is misleading here, because the EA C is known primarily in the sense that it reveals " contents " and only seconda.rily in the 1sense that it reveals its own nature to us. H is in this sense that the authoil' in his classes occa;sionallyref e11s to the " mirror pruraidox" wherein one recognizes a friend in a dall"k restaurant without at first noticing the mirror or phy,sical medium in which he or she is reflected. (S) While Aquinas ·attempts to achieve the fruits of dual (YfJOOhe, or the reduction of essence, by prescincling from empi10 Ibid. ( 65), p. 126. THOMAS AQUINAS AND EDMUND HUSSERL 449 ricism and psychologism (iand he did this long ·before " phenomenological !'eduction " was proposed hy HusseTtl and his disciples), nevertheless, Aquinas eschews any forma;l reduction, :such as the ahsolute "transcendence" of the empirical object familiar to phenomenology. Instead, he adheres to established epistemological .and metaphysical paradigms that .uphold the integrity of the cognitive act. It is this point in particular that wi11 be discussed later relative to Husserl and his employment of the dual epoDhe which turned out to he one of the central principles of his epistemology and ontology. A final note in summary of Aquinas' insight: it is in the EAC that the meaning and being of what man is, for example, lose their separate identities in the indistinguisha;ble content of what is found to belong to :both. The next question is whether the same result will actually be accomplished by the phenomenological reduction developed ,by Husserl in his " Idea of Phenomenology." Husserl and the Phenomenological Reduto have an opinion that is correct, and to be ,aware tih:at it is so." 8 Smith further !holds that wha,t one knows is not simply true for oneself hut is true ahout the universe. Umortunateily, Smith laicks the metaphysical tools for maintaining these positions oonsistently. In the end, though, Smith offers his positions tentatively out position the bwden orf proof will alwayis rest upon those who would assert incommerrsuvability; 5 but incommensurable standards o.f eva:l4 This point has been argued at length by Macintyre in Whose Justice'! Which Rationality? 5 I am using "incommensurability" here in a way that " splits the difference " between the two senses of the term Stout offers in his Lexicon. Stout defines "Rorty',s sense " of incommensurability as: "What obtains, under conditions of abnormal discourse, when nobody has yet thought up a way to achieve rational commensuration; not necessarily a bad thing, depend.mg on how important it i8 to achieve agreement by rational means under the circumstances " ( 294-5) [italics added]. The " bad sense " of the term is defined as follows: "What obtains when two or more groups assign different meanings to words, thereby (allegedly) causing their sentences to be about different worlds and opening an abyss between their respective conceptual schemes" ( 295). When political disagreement over a moral issue, e.g., abortion, reaches an impasse and the dispute become de facto inadjudicable, that disagreement becomes the practical equivalent of Stout's "bad sense" of the term incommensurability. For a helpful description of such IN PRAISE OF PLURALISM 497 nation have not been ruled logically impossible. Therefore the fact of moml diversity can lead to a genuine problem of inrommensumbility. What, then, hrus Stout demonstrated with his refutation of relativism? He has shown that the relativity of justification does not necesisarily imply the relativity o[ truth. He has also refuted the conceptual relativity associated with incommensur.able schemes. But he has not shown the notion of incommensuraibility per se to be unintelliigiibleor inapplicable to our real moral disputes. Booause the book lacks the mora.I bricolage necessary for testing its conceptual proposals, 6 we remain uncertain whether his philosophically valid distinctions are practically or politically useful. ;In the final section of Ethics After Babel Stout develops a picture of liberal society thrut differs from the one accepted by both l.iherals and communtariarrs, and he thereby presents a compelling ,defense of moral p1umlism and liberal polity. His own position is developed th:mugih an auseinandersetzung with Alasdair Moolnrtyre. Stout's chief criticism of the argument of After Virtue is that the author exaggerates the character of moml disagreement in our culture and thereby misconstrues the nature o[ a lilberal society. Stout grants Maclntyre's point that our culture lacks agreement on the telos o[ humankind, but argues that liberal institutions have been developed precisely to allow us " to mana;ge collective life in the aibsence of perfect agreement on 'man-:as-he-would-:be-iif-he-realized-histelos'" We do have profound disagr-eement in our liberal society, but our morail disputes (Davidson is once again "practical incommensurability " see William Werpehowski, " The Pathos and Promise of Christian Ethics: A Study of the Abortion Debate," Horizons 12:2 (Fall, 1985), pp. 284-302. 7 " Moral Abominations," a most interesting exploration in 6 Chapter philosophical and cultural anthropology, is as close to moral bricolage as Stout get in this volume. While Stout brilliantly describes the social conditions which must obtain in order for the notion of "abomination " to be intelligible, he does not argue that any particular human activity is in fact a moral abomination. 498 RONALD F. THIEMANN invoked) presuppose a broad backiground of agreement; indeed, Stout as1serts, "mosrt of us do agree on the essentials of what might he oaJled the pmvisilonal telos of our society " (212). That consensus represents an acknowledgement within liberal societies that "a self-limiting consensus on the good" is preforruble to the strife and waclare generated by those religious societies that have sought to enforce a broader agreement conoerning the good life.7 This "overlapping consensus" is " 81.J!bstantial enough to do 1a lot of ordinary justificaitocy work" (213). In fact the "relatively presuppositionless language " of liberalism enables us to " describe disagreements with ea;se and precision," thereby giving us an aidvantage over the more rich but rigid moml languages of previous cultures. But finally, Stout argues, the continuities between liberal and prronodern cultures are far more s:ignificant than Maiclntyre i s willing to grant. " Earlier generations were themselves produots of eelectic bricolage, on the one hand, and conceptua.l adaptation to new circumstances, on the other . . . If premodern language-users have been ruble to converse across culturial boundaries, change their minds in dialogue with strangers, and invent new moml languages out of apparently incompatible fragments, perhaps we can too" (9H8-9). The danger of Macintyre' s description of the radicrul moml fragmentation oif our culture is that it can encourage a sectruri1an withdrawal foom public life and rob liberal polity of the citizenship of the " connected critic," 8 i.e., the loyal but critical social commentator. Stout's more balanced a;ssessment of moral plura.lism prepares the way for his own aooount of the kind of social criticism to Hiberal society. Drawing upon Maclntyre's discuss:ion of the social :practices and the 1 7 Stout writes, "Let us, however, be clear about one thing; even civil war carried on by other means is preferable to plain old civil war-the kind you get when one fully developed conception of the good, unable to achieve rational consensus, comes crashing down upon another, bringing about rather little good but much bloodshed, tyranny, and terror" (224). s This term is used by Michael Walzer in Interpretation and 8ooiai Ori.tioism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). IN PRAISE OF PLURALISM 499 goods internal to them, Stout argues that our society " is richly endowed with widely v;alued social practices and goes to remarkwble lengths to initiate new generations into them" (271). In so doing we have cultivated a rich repertoire of virtues appropriate to those practices. Thus the medical profession, for eX!ample, imbues the cardinal virtues of practical wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Other soci,al p:riactices instill those virtues a.ppropriate to their internal goods, but we often fail to recognize this nurtu:riing process because we lack a ca.retful " participant-observer " description of the practices of liberal society. Because these practices a,re diverse the moral languages and activities they yield are equally multifarious. This moral pluralism should not be decried but celebrated. This rather positive description of liberal pluralism does not imply, howeveil', that our society is free of serious problems; it rather offers a different account of the plight of public life. Our variegated social practices are embodied in institutions that" necessarily trade heavily in external goods" (274). The external goods associated with the practice of medicinewealth, status, power-can all too easily overwhelm the internal goods associated with the cail.'e of the sick. "[T]he social practice of medical eare hais been placed at grave risk by its own institutional setting and rclated social pmctices ... It is. in [this] uneasy relation between our social practices and our institutions that many of the most deeply felt problems 0:f our society lie " (275) . In response to this predicament Stout pmposes " a stereo1scoipic social criticism, one which brings social pmctices and institutions, intema1 and external goods, into focus at the sa;me time" (279). Such criticism would locate professional ibehavior of physicians, for example, " within a network of socia,l ipractices ·and institutions " that would allow the critic to construct "a dmmatic narrative-replete with moral appraisa1s, a coherent interpretation of his moral language, and a rendering of the mutual determination of chara:cter and cir- 500 RONALD F. THIEMANN oumstance" (281). Tihis form of social criticism would guard :against our tendency to reduce professional behavior either to a mere set of toohniques guided hy bureaucratic standards or to a romantic viision of professionals as altruists purely dedicated to those whom they serve. Rather we would be positioned to understand and evaluate the tensions that arise between internal and external goods in social practices that are embedded within institutions. Such immanent criticism will he grounded in a complex description o[ social and institutional behavior, but neither the scope nor the power of its criticism need be curibed by its immanent character. The tensions within the practices of liberal institutions are sufficiently severe to assure a radical social criticism. Liberal societies, according to Stout's depiction, represent a genuine advance in the construction of political institutions, an advance char.aicterized by "a widely sha.red but se1f-limiting consensus on the highest good achievable " within a pluralistic culture. While we have forgone an overreaching vision of the ultimate human telos, we have gained a great deal more. Our modest conception o[ our society's end " justifies a kind of tolerance foreign to the classical teleological tradition. And it rightly directs our moral a.ttention to something our ancestors often neglected, namely, the injustice of exduding people from social practices because of their race, gender, religion, or place of birth " (292) . Libeml societies for all their difficulties allow for genuine cooperative activity while encomiaging the social practices and moral languages o[ diverse population. To identify that pluralism as the source of our current moral difficulties is, Stout argues, a philosophical and political mistake. " Moral disoomse in pluralistic society is not threatened, then, hy disagreement among its members aibout the good. Neither is it threatened hy the confusion of tongues manifested in its various moral languaiges" (287). Rather moral pluralism is the inevitaible result of the cultural and social pluralism that makes liberal societies such interesting places in which to live. Rather than bemoan that pluralism we should honor it as the of liberal :societies' greatest achievement. 1 IN PRAISE OF PLURALISM 501 Clearly the debate between Stout and Madntyre aibout the nature of liberal societies and the solutions for their ailments will continue. It is unfortunate, however, that Ethios After Babel was ·completed before bhe publication of Whose Justice? Whivh Rationality?, because Madntyre's position in the latter book is not subject bo the same criticisms Stout directs against After Virtue. It is clear, for eXiample, that Macintyre does not view dispamte positions like the Thomistic and Humean moral trarntions to be incommensuraible conceptua.l schemes. He iiather argues that their conceptions of justice and rationality, and thus their standards of evaluation, are so different as to be de facto incommensurable. MOireover, Macintyre appears to· have drawn baick from his recommendation that persons retreat into their local communities of virtue, thereby ceding the public realm to the " barbarians " who akeady govern us. In fact his pl'IOposal concerning the aidjudication of disputes between traditions, requiring as it does careful attention to the social praictiJces of historically particulaJ."communities, is clearly compatible with Stout':s " stereoscopic social criticism." Still the two moral philoS10phers do differ decisively in their judgment aibout the achievement oif liberal societies. In oontrrust to Stout's modest celebration of pluralist liberal institutions Macintyre continues to argue "that only by either the circumvention or the subversion of liberal modes of debate" can particular tra;ditions of enquiry "challenge the cultural and politcial hegemony of liberalism effectively." 9 Interestingly this on-'going dispute about political liberalism reflects differing positions regarding the role of religious oommunities within public life. Macintyre, with his new-found appreciation of the Augustinian tmdition, is quite open to proposals from religious communities concerning the telos for our public life. Stout, on the other hand, remains ambivalent on this issue. What role might religious communities and their theologians have in Smut's reconstruction of public life? Is there a future o Whose Justice? Whose Rationality!', p. 401. 502 RONALD F. THIEMANN ifor public theology in a libeml society? Stout cleavly recognizes that the " religious languages of momls, . . . including theological inquiry, have moved to the margins of public life" . To some extent the marginality of religious communities reflects their failure to provide a framework for public life inclusive of moml pluralism. " What made the creation of liberal insbitutions necessary, in large part, was the manifest £ailure of religious groups of various sorts to estwblish rational agreement on their competing detailed virsions of the good. It was partly because people recognized putting an end to religious warfare and intolerance as m1011ally good ... that liberal institutions have been able to get a foothold here and there . Attempts by theologians to re-enaround the globe" the interest of the secular public is threatened by two limiting dangers: either theologians conform their position so closely to the secular ethos as to minimize any distinctive religious content or they cling to their distinctive religious messa.ge and thereby minimize their engaigement with the broader public worM. In neither case do theologians present themselves as interesting conversation partners. What would it take for theologians. to regain a significant public voice? "[W]hether academic theologians can win a wide hearing even within the academy depends in part, it seems to me, on whether religious resu:vgenceproduces dramatic change, independently oif theofogy, in what most people, including intellectuals, take for granted rubout the nature and existence of God when they speak to matters of mor:al importance in pubilic settings. Such a change would shi£t the burden of proof in •a way thrut might make stome kind of theology central to the culture again" (186). While these comments are hardly encouraging to those of us concerned with the future of a public theology, they are a clear and vivid reminder tha.t a genuine public theology must raise the question of the significance of helief in God for prwblic life. While theologians may have important things to say a;boru:t human nature, the chamoter of or the nature of po'wer, they cannot genuinely political IN PRAISE OF PLURALISM 503 fulfill their responsibilities ais public theologians unless they address the question of God's existence and nature. Jeffrey Stout haJS written a thoughtful, incisive, and thoroughly challenging hook. Though he addresses .a num:ber of complicated philosophical issues, he writes with a style that renders his arguments accessible to a broad public. Even when I disagree with him, I fin:d tha.t the rigor of his thought elicits a new precision in my own fol'!lnulation of the issues. Ethioo After Babel takes the diSCU'ssion in moral and political philosophy to a new levd of clarity and sophist:icaition. It is o;f signal importance to philosophers, ethicists, theologians, and persons involved in the practices of public life. No one concerned with the issues of momlity and public affairs should fail to reflect upon Stout's powertful and persuasive position. BOOK REVIEWS Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God. By NICHOLAS LASH. Oharlottesville, Virginia: Uni· versity Press of Virginia, 1988. Pp. 313. $29.95 (hardbound). Nicholas Lash sets out "to construct an argument in favor of one way of construing or interpreting human experience as experience of the mystery of God " (p. 3) , and to show that this awareness of God has nothing to do with analyses of " religious experience " or of theism. Recent attention to religious experience, such as that of the philosopher Riohard Swinburne or of the research unit established by the zoologist Alister Hardy at Oxford, relies on a conception of that experience as individualistic rather than communal and as a matter of feeling or sensation in contrast to thought. Lash aMrihutes ·this view of religious experience to the legacy of William James, and contrasts it with that of Frederick Schleiermacher. According to Lash, James identifies the personal the individual, contrasts thought with feeling, and regards religious experience as private in contrast to public, or " naked " with respect to language, institutions, and other cultural forms. Schleiermacher avoids these errors by focusing not on discrete, datable experiences that one can identify as religious, hut on a moment that pervades all human experience, to the source or object of which the grammar of Christian doctrine gives the name "God." Lash acknowledges that Schleiermacher can he read in support of either of these two different ways of construing religious experience (pp. 112, 129), hut he does not realize that James can also he read in a way that blurs the dichotomy he sets up. Both James and Schleier· maoher provide uncommonly sophisticated accounts of the social character of the self and of the role of language and thought in shaping perception and feeling. In his Ethik, Schleiermacher locates the individual in social and cultural institutions, and elaborates the anthropology that informs his influential lectures on hermeneutics. Three of many notable contributions of James' Principles of Psychology are a chapter on the self that is the source of conceptions of the social self in American sociology and social psychology, a critique of classical empiricism showing that the distinction between sense impressions and ideas is an artifact of an erroneous psychological theory, and a famous chapter on the stream of thought in which he argues human experi- 505 506 BOOK REVIEWS enoe is not divided into ideas, sensations, and feelings, but is a continuous flow of consciousness. Toward the end of his career, he gave up the concept of consciousness as too closely associated with the mental in contrast to the physical, and spoke instead of the flux of experience. Lash accuses James of Cartesi1an dualism, and attributes to him the view that there is a "little person," a Cartesian self imprisoned in the body. He admi,ts that the Principles contains no such view, hut sug· gests that J aines becomes mo't'e and more Cartesian as he develops, his radical empiricism. In fact, there is very little in James that could accurately be called Cartesian, and nothing ei,ther in the Principles or in the late Essays in Radical Empiricism that would condone any such picture of an homunculus inside the body. Contrary to Lash's view, the idea of "pure experience" in the latter work does not refer to experience that is independent of language, culture, or institutions, but is rather a reminder that such distinctions as that between objec· tive and subjective, feeling and thought, or perception and fantasy, are not girven in experience, but are products of our interpretations. Despite their social views of the self, both Sohleiermacher and James focus on the consciousness of the individual when they come to ex· amine religious experience or piety. James says .that he will stress the more extreme or devdoped reports of religious experience in order to examine the " ripe fruits " of ,tJhe religious life. Both share a Protes· tant bias toward personal piety as the heart of religion, and regard ritual and institutional forms as the communal context for that piety, and an insufficient appreciation for the value of the routine and conventional. But this is not to be identified in either with a Cartesian individualism or a separation of feeling from thought. Both were influenced by the Romantic paradigm of the person as artist. To study artistic creativity, they thought, one should look at the fullest examples, at genius, and not at the sohoolmen who never rise above the conven· tions of a particular place and time. They share this approach with Nietzsche, who employs the artist as the paradigm of the person, hut is acutely sensitive to cultural and traditional influences on character and emotion. And with Kierkegaard who, while decidedly more in· dividualistic than Nietzsche, could not rightly he accused of separating feeling or passion from thought. Lash is wrong to interpret James' focus on religious virtuosi as evidence of an aristocratic neglect of the democratic. He claims that James attends only to " the pattern setters of religion, whose genius, like that of the New England gentry and faculty at Harvard, sets them apart from the coarsely physical unimaginative fidelity of the servants and disciples who constitute their environment" (p. 47). James' selection of examples is open to criticism, hut this characterization is wildly inaccurate. BOOK REVIEWS 507 Both James and Schleiermacher are also interested in the claim that religious experience or the religious dimension of experience is in some way revelatory, or has a cognitive component. Both search for some moment that points beyond the subject, toward " something More " in James' terms, and a " whence " of the feeling of absolute dependence in Sohleiermaoher's. It is at this point 1lhat James likens the cognitive component in experience to sensation, and Schleiermacher claims that the moment of absolute dependence in the religious consciousness shapes hut is not shaped by language and thought. Neither claims that these moments are ever found in their pure or naked form. Experiences always come in 1lhe concepts and beliefs of a particular culture and tradition. But both point to a moment that they take to he distinctive of the religious consciousness, and common to the various traditions. Here it seems to me that if either is more wedded to the notion of a moment in experience that is radioally independent of language and oulture it is Schleiermacher, who argues for, and whose program demands, an immediate self-consciousness, unmediated by words or doctrine. James likens the cognitive moment in religious experience to sense ,or sensation, hut his ,analyses of sense perception and feeling never allow for any kind of immediate, intuitive moment of the sort that Schleiermacher preserves through the several editions of the Speeches and The Christian Faith. Schleiermaoher says that the paragraphs in which he describes the feeling of absolute dependence are borrowed from Ethics. Lash wrong· ly comments here that they are borrowed from "Christian ethics" (p. 120, original emphasis) . Ethics, for Schleiermacher, refers to the Geisteswissenschaften, and includes his philosophical anthropology; it is not Christian ethics. Lash wants to read Schleiermacher as an hermeneutical theologian operating entirely within the Christian framework. That is not inaccurate, hut the prolegomenon that he provides in the introduction to The Christian Faith is carefully constructed to he independent of any appeal to Christian life or doctrine. The aspect of Schleiermacher's analysis of piety that Lash appreciates most is his view of religion as a moment of all human experience r,!lil:'her than a focus on particular religious experiences. Through commentary on the work of Newman, von Hugel, and Rabner, Lash elaborates on what he takes to he the features in human experience that point to what the Christian calls God. He finds those features in com· munal life, in the relation between persons in community that Buber describes, and the basic trust ,that is required for the occurrence of real community. Von Hugel describes the " sense of God " as an operative facto'!.' in all human experience, and stresses the triadic character of that experience. Buber provides a corrective to von Hugel by his at· 508 BOOK REVIEWS tention to the ethical component of community, to the social and political implications that von Hiigel had ignored, and his careful portrayal of the rela:tion that is possible between persons when community is achieved. Rahner tries to show that the drift of human experience points to features that the Cihristian would call God. The Christian dootrine of God can he interpreted to mean that community is permanently possible, and to provide a basic component of l:rust. Lash sees this as similar to Schleiermacher's feeling of absolute dependence. In each of these figures, including Buber, Lash discovers a tripartite distinction that he interprets in trinitarian terms. The various triads are so different that their assimilation to one another is purely rhetorical. The point is to oppose the triadic structure of an interpretive approach to human experience to the Cartesian dualism that he attributes to James. (Lash would appreciate Josiah Royce's use of this opposition, and C. S. Peirce's theory of signs, in The Problem of Christianity.) He is right to defend an interpretive approach, and to oppose the separation of feeling and thought, and of individual and community, but wrong to think that such an approach resolves or dissolves questions about the knowledge of God in human experience. Lash portrays the rich complex of emotions, attitudes, values, and character that makes up the religious life of a community of persons, and rightly holds that ,any attempt to separate thought and feeling, or individual and community, is artificial. He appeals to that complex in order to show that a sense of God, knowledge of God, is a practical assumption that pervades religious life in a Christian or Jewish community. The emphasis on the practice of a community, however, is then invoked as a protecif:ivestrategy to preclude the kind of questioning of traditional assumptions that has always gone on. Peirce argued that inquiry is always triadic and communal, and that the road of inquiry must not be blocked. Lash is not alone in appealing to the priority of practical over speculative reason in order to block inquiry that might call into question some of the concepts and beliefs that inform our experience. WAYNE PROUDFOOT Columbia University New York, New York BOOK REVIEWS 509 Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. By ELAINE PAGELS. New York: Random House, 1988. Pp. xxiii 189. $17.95. (hardbound) + Elaine Pagels attempts to analyze early Christian readings of Gen. 13. In particular she argues that Augustine's reading of this text was such an idiosyncratic and radical break with Christian precedent that it amounted to a dismissal of more than three hundred years of unanimous tradition. As such, despite her closing disclaimer that there is no "pure Christianity" (p. 152), it is implied that Augustine's views are a distortion of the orthodox tradition, an aberration which caught on only because of its political expediency. The first four chapters present a view of pre-Augustinian Christian readings of Gen. 1-3, which is then used in chapter five as a foil for Augustine's views. Except for the gnostics, Pagels argues that the Genesis text was almost universally read as "the story of human freedom" (p. xxvi). Christians from Paul to Jerome proclaimed their freedom from the Roman social fabric by their espousal of celibacy, and, until Constantine, were prepared to demonstrate their liberty from demonically inspired imperial persecution by their own deaths. Pagels claims that because of their defiant attitude toward the Roman social and political order, these Christians read the first three chapters of Genesis as a charter of liberty for all humans: • • . orthodox Christians of the second and third centuries, from Justin and Irenaeus through Tertullian, Clement, and the brilliant teacher Origen, stood unanimously against the gnostics in proclaiming the Chris· tian gospel as a message of freedom-moral freedom, freedom of the will, expressed in Adam's original freedom to choose a life free of pain and suffering. (p. 76) This is intriguing hut difficult to assess since Pagels does not tie it to particular readings of Genesis hy any of the authors she lists here, although there is one citation from Clement, given much earlier in the book (p. 39) which could serve to tie the above observation to an early Christian reading of Genesis. But there are no citations of readings of Genesis hy Justin or Irenaeus or Tertullian or Origen at all. Pagels draws the term autexousia seemingly at random from an unspecified text in Clement (p. 73) as indicative of the "power to constitute one's own being" (p. 73) or "the moral freedom to rule oneself" (p. 99) which Pagels claims summarized early orthodox readings of Gen. l. Pagels makes the additional claim that the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent was not seen by pre-Augustinian theologians as the story of a moral fall which extended to all humanity: 510 BOOK REVIEWS Most orthodox Christians agreed with many of their Jewish contemporaries that Adam's fatal misuse of ... freedom was so momentous that his transgression brought pain, labor, and death into an originally perfect world. Yet Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement also agreed that Adam's transgression did not encroach upon our own individual freedom: even now, they said, every person is free to choose good or evil, just as Adam was. (p. 73) Again, however, it is difficult to assess this argument because Pagels provides only one slender citation from Irenaeus (and that out of context and without elaboration, from AH 4.17.1), to back it up. One wonders in any event whether it is begging the question to say that people in a world characterized by " pain, labor, and death " have a freedom to choose good or evil as perfect as Adam's was. Certainly for Irenaeus the whole of creation had to be " redone " by Christ because of Adam's sin, and while this may not be a doctrine of original sin in the Augustinian sense, there is clearly much more room for continuity than Pagels' formulation of the earlier literature suggests. Thus what Pagels presents in chapter 5 as an almost monolithic foil for Augustine's reading of Genesis is actually tied to pre-Augustinian readings of Genesis by two slender threads widely separated in the course of the first four chapters, and these are treated only summarily. But even this picture of consensus is given an additional twist, apart from any further consideration of the sources, as Pagels moves in chapter five to a consideration of Augustine. What in the first four chapters had been a consensus regarding the moral freedom of Christions quietly modulates in the first chapter into a consensus regarding political freedom: Are human beings capable of governing themselves? •.. Early Christian spokesmen, like the Jews before them and the American colonists long after, had claimed to find in the biblical creation account divine sanction for declaring their independence from governments they considered corrupt and arbitrary. (p. 98) None of the texts Pagels cited in the first four chapters could be used to support the claim that the early Christians believed in the possibility of political self-rule. Justin, Tertullian, and Clement were in fact eager to point out how loyal and useful Christian citizens were and wanted to he (in texts which Pagels herself cited, pp. 46-49. Note that in chapter two Pagels had explicitly ruled out a comparison between the early Christian view and the later American ideal as a step the early Christians did not take, p. 55) . Augustine is thus made to answer a question which was not asked of any of the earlier texts, and therefore the link between his theology and a particular political agenda is accomplished almost by a sleight of hand. Since his teaching on original BOOK REVIEWS 511 sin is reduced by Pagels to an answer to the question, " Are human beings capable of governing themselves? " it therefore appears, before any textual work is done, to he a denunciation of any attempt at poli· tical self-rule: The traditional Christian answers to the question of power no longer applied by the later fourth century, when not only Constantine hut several others, including Theodosius the Great, had ruled as Christian emperors. Augustine's opposite interpretation of the politics of Paradise-and, in particnlar, his insistence that the whole human race, including the redeemed, remains wholly incapable of self-government-offered Christians radically new ways to interpret this unprecedented situation. (p. 105) Pagels' actual treatment of Augustinian texts slips imperceptibly and without warning from a purely theological view of freedom to a more political view: As Augustine tells it, it is the serpent who tempts Adam with the seductive lure .of liberty. The forbidden fruit symbolizes, he explains, 'personal control over one's own will.' Not, Augustine adds, 'that it is evil in itself, hut it is placed in the garden to teach him the primary virtue ' -obedience. So, as we noted above, Augustine concludes that humanity never was really meant to he, in any sense, truly free. God allowed us to sin in order to prove to us from our own experience that ' our true good is free slavery '-slavery to God in the first place and, in the second, to his agent, the emperor. (p. 120). For Augustine, of course, submission to God gives us personal control over our will for the first time in our lives, and in holding this view he aligns himself with Justin, Minucius Felix, and others whom Pagels had cited as examples of the defense of Christian liberty. For it was precisely the Christian's allegiance, and indeed "obedience," "service," and" yielding" (pp. 39, 46, 55, 119) to God that mandated the resistance to the Roman social order that Pagels so ably documented. Why then is Augustine's insistence that the true freedom. of humanity is service to God condemned as an indication that he teaches that " humanity never was really meant to he, in any sense, truly free," and thus as a deviation from previous orthodox Christian teaching? Nor does Pagels cite any text which supports her contention that the emperor is the "agent" of God in the sense implied above, namely, as his representative on earth. We owe obedience to the political order, hut not one which accepts the emperor's decisions as God's own. It seems impossible, ll:oo, creditably to maintain with Pagels that Augustine differs from earlier theologians because he felt that the baptized as well as the unbaptized were in need of a political order. None of the earlier thinkers she cites treats the question comprehensively, and all, as we have seen, were anxious to demonstrate the loyalty and good citizenship of Christians. Paul himself required allegiance. 512 BOOK REVIEWS Pagels simply shifted the sense in which she is using the word "liberty " with reference to readings of Gen. 1-3-from the earlier discussion in which it had primarily a theological and moral sense, to the discussion in chapter five, where a decidedly political specification is introduced. The Augustine who in contrast to earlier theologians appears as little more than an ideologue for the Roman Catholic Empire is one which is engineered largely by this shi£t in term usage, and not by evidence from the texts. With considerably less trouble, Pagels could have found in Eusebius of Caesarea, or some other court theologian, a willing ideologue much more pliable than Augustine was. Her point that theologians and historians of ideas need to take more seriously the political agendas against which ideas arise is well taken. But by insisting that it was the political expediency of Augustine's teaching on original sin that caused it to catch on (pp. 99-100, 105, 118), Pagels skates perilously close to a reductionist reading of this theology despite her stated intention (p. xxvii) to the contrary. JOHN C. CAVADINI Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by ALASDAIR MAc!NTYRE. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Pp. xi+ 410. $22.95 (hardbound). One part of the Enlightenment project, for the past 300 years or so, has been to reach assured foundations for both thought and action. Thus Descartes, near the beginning of this project, insisted on starting with propositions which are clearly and distinctly true and on suspending commitment to any received wisdom. From this untainted beginning, the ,thinker could build the edifice of thought and culture securely. Ordinary people might not maintain such purity; but, so influential has this image been in Western history, that even today we take the scientist and the philosopher as critical inquirers unbound by ties of tradition. Alasdair Maclntyre's Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is a brilliant challenge to this common understanding. Maclntyre's title indicates the scope as well as the direction of his argument. When questions of justice arise, that is, questions about the relationships of people with each other, about the apportioning of the goods of society and so on, they cannot be answered without reversing the question, without asking about the society in which the question BOOK REVIEWS 518 arises. To a great extent, the deeper question can only he answered from within that society with all of its givens. Sorting out the claims and counter-claims requires us to put them in the context of tradition. The same must he said for the questions of truth and of inquiry which always flow though and around the arguments about right and wrong. There .too we must reverse the question. The standards of rationality, like those of justice, inhere in society, in an ongoing enterprise from which the thinker cannot separate himself if he is to proceed. Hence the question, "Whose rationality? " The rejection of Descartes's pure beginning is not original with MacIntyre. C. S. Peirce and Ludwig Wittgenstein, to name just two among many, made the argument too effectively for rebuttal. What is different about Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is that it focusses as much on the relative pronouns as on the substantives. It traces concern about justice and rationality through history. Macintyre takes it as "crucial that the concept of tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive rational enquiry cannot be elucidated apart from its exemplifications." However, rather than attempting a universal survey, he attends to four exemplifications capable of supporting and clarifying the central thesis: ancient Greece from Homer to Aristotle, patristic and medieval Christianity with Augustine and Aquinas as the center points, the Scottish enlightenment beginning in the kirk and ending with Hume and Reid, and finally the very liberalism stemming from the enlightenment and challenged by the book at hand. What unifies a tradition is not so much an idea as a problem and a preoccupation. The problem and its attendant preoccupation become the focus of struggle(s) within society in a way which forms its internal development, which establishes its intellectual and moral perimeter, and which sets it in relation to others. Macintyre sees Homer as setting the terms of debate and interaction for the Greeks. Dike and arete, justice and virtue, are not matters for philosophical debate in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but marks of achievement in dealing within a natural and social order beyond question. What happened for Homer's successors was that two dimensions of achievement, the achievement of victory and the achievement of excellence, came to stand in evident tension with each other. Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, each found a different relationship between these achievements; and, as they did so, they came to different interpretations of justice and virtue, of politics and of thought. Yet, whatever their divergence, the over-arching unity of the Greek city-state, the polis, served as the background against which they could sort out the debate and because of which one can now identify an ancient Greek tradition. To the world-view of the Greeks, Macintyre juxtaposes the vision of 514 BOOK REVIEWS patristic Christianity and in particular of St. Augustine. Here a different tradition formed, one which had the Hebrew Bible as well as classical philosophy flowing through it and which displaced the polis for the City of God. It reached its culmination in St. Thomas Aquinas' systematic effort to overcome the apparent conflict between the two currents and which had its proper milieu in the church and in Christian religious communities. The Bible and Aristotle also played a role in seventeenth and eighteenth century Scotland; but a new background, the system of local kirks and of church courts, gave a special meaning to debates about faith and reason, about law and property. These debates ended in David Hume's anglicizing secularism and in Reid's universalizing of common sense. Experts in Greek thought, in Augustine and Aquinas, in the Scottish enlightenment may have objections to Macintyre's treatment of their familiar ground, but I can simply confess to having learned a great deal on these subjects. His presentation is so rich that one easily becomes submerged in the particulars to the point of forgetting where it leads. Not so with 1the discussion of liberalism. In this instance, MacIntyre involves himself in philosophical debate rather than historical elucidation. Perhaps he thinks After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981) quite enough in the latter regard. In a sense, the whole of each book is negatively about liberalism since this anti-tradition is his bete noire throughout. The liberal takes himself to have finally purged politics and theory of every given, and it is precisely the claim of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? that liberalism too has its roots and its taken-for-granted scaffolding and that its endeavor to have unsituated discourse is hopeless. If Macintyre would do battle with liberalism, he is no less anxious to challenge relativism in the understanding of tradition. His reason for worrying should be obvious. Once one maintains that all moral life and all theoretical reflection depend on background beliefs of a thinker and that :these background beliefs are a social matter, one easily concludes that each tradition exists in a species of self-sufficiency and incommensurability with others. In contrast, Macintyre maintains that traditions do meet, that people in one tradition do learn from those in others, and that self-criticism is possible from within them, and finally that it is possible to speak of one tradition as having greater intellectual and moral resources than another. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is certainly proof that it is possible Ito reach beyond the perimeters, and the author makes interesting use of the analogy of language learning to explain the bridging. In Aristotle and Aquinas, he finds a method for the internal justification of principles which moves up to premises (and criticizes them) rather than merely moving down BOOK REVIEWS 515 deductively. Lastly, he acknowledges some intellectuals and movements, St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomism in particular, as having developed a strategy and a synthesis of value beyond their original spatial and temporal locale. My inclination is to cheer for Macintyre in his defense of tradition as well as in his attack on relativism. In the end, however, I am left dissatisfied as well as enlightened and stimulated. The case against pure beginnings seems perfect, but he makes the relativist problem too easy by the selection of traditions and authors. What if the Buddha or the Bhagavad Gita or witch doctors or even Jesus instead of Western philosophers and theologians had been in the mix? Then the discussion would have been more complex. From another side, the resolution of the epistemological puzzles involved in the defence of tradition is never quite complete. Macintyre needs to concentrate still more on the old-fashioned questions of truth and knowledge, but now in a way enriched by his sensitivity to the importance of roots and givens. It would he especially helpful to expand the discussion of Aquinas on these issues and to pick up on the passing remarks about John Henry Newman. Reading Wilfred Ward's biographies of Newman and of his father, William George Ward, makes it clear that Macintyre's interests are not new in the twentieth century. None of these thinkers makes the juncture of tradition and epistemology easy to negotiate, hut they do cast much light on the attempt. That is also Macintyre's merit in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? MICHAEL J. KERLIN La Salle University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania What Will Happen to God?: Feminism and the Reconstruction of Christian Belief. By WILLIAM ODDIE. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988. Pp. xviii+ 161. $9.95 (softcover) The questions of the ordination of women Ito the priesthood and of the proper role of women in the Christian community have received much attention in the past few years, particularly within the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions. As obvious as that statement is, there have been few attempts to place these issues in a larger context than that of sociological or political development. Feminism as a whole, of which the movement for the ordination of women is only a part, has received little critical attention. Fr. William Oddie's book is an attempt to focus that attention on 516 BOOK REVIEWS feminism in general, and on the effects of feminism on Christian belief in particular. This is not a hook about the ordination of women to the priesthood; nor is it limited to any particular issue on the feminist agenda. It is an informed challenge to feminism, hut it lacks the diatribe and vitriol of polemics. It is one of the few hooks to take feminism at its word and examine its presuppositions and its tenets. The hook centers on three major areas in which feminism and feminist literature have attacked traditional Christian theology. First, in the area of Christian anthropology, Fr. Oddie examines the development of a " feminist consciousness " within the past twenty years. The anger in page after page of sources quoted from the feminist writers is frightening-its cumulative effect is stunning. Here the author first suggests that the purpose of the feminist critique is not inclusion, or even "inclusiveness", in the Christian tradition, hut rather the complete reconstruction of Christian belief. The way this is achieved is through a combination of ridicule and misrepresentation. Thus, the Jewish heritage of the Old Testament is dismissed as "misogynist," sociological and anthropological data are disregarded as " oppressive " or worse. The feminist critique is not, however, entirely negative: in the place of the old "sex roles" (taught by both the imprisoning authorities of culture and Church), there rises the "feminist consciousness " of equality and independence. This equality and independence is established not as a positive force, hut as a reaction to patriarchal structures which imprison women in restrictive roles. Here Fr. Oddie begins his second area of consideration, namely, how feminism has taken the attack on male stereotypes and applied them to God. This is considered not only as the question of so-called " inclusive " language, hut the far more fundamental question of the Fatherhood of God. Liturgical documents produced by the feminist movement are studied here in addition to the writings of its proponents. They run from the texts which are slight changes of authorized documents, to the more radical rewritings which are awkward (at best) or humorous (at worst). "The perception of God as Father is a projection from a woman-denying patriarchal culture which Jesus saw himself as modifying-even, openly defying-so as to achieve the liberation of women, [so that] we would expect to see this shift reflected in his teachings and recorded utterances " (p. 104) . Since this shift cannot he found in .the record of the New Testament, feminists have been forced to make the battleground the liturgy, as an immediately available target. Examples abound. " One notable coup, achieved almost unnoticed, has been the optional omission of the verses referring to the headship in Christian marriage of the husband, from the passage in Ephesians (5.2, 21-33) which is an appointed epistle in the Roman Catholic nuptial mass " (p. 105) . BOOK REVIEWS 517 From liturgy, the author moves on to the third, and perhaps the most emotional and difficult area, that of the Bible itself. Here, in this third area, we see the most radical effect of "femspeak" in the redefinition of what has gone before (the Christian tradition, cultural consciousness, Biblical revelation, and liturgical practice) . The " hermeneutics of suspicion " is the cornerstone of this reconstruction. The author then catalogues the feminist critiques of the high demons of the tradition (Augustine, Aquinas, Barth, and, of course, St. Paul). There are, however, at least two questions which remain for the careful reader at the end of the book. The first is a question concerning sources: the authors and texts cited in the book are quite extensive, hut are they representative? There is little distinction made between secular feminism, the "women's movement" of the seventies, such as Germain Greer, and what we might call theological feminism, such as Mary Daly and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza. Only in the chapter on liturgical revision does Fr. Oddie distinguish three classes of feminism (from "softcore" to "hard-core"). I suspect that there are many Christian feminists who would in no way accept rthe conclusions of Mary Daly (in her later non-Christian writings). All feminists cannot be tarred with the same brush: and yet, I do not feel rthat this is what the author is doing. One could call this either a domino effect, or a " trickle-down " effect, but one of the points which the new preface for the American edition brings home is that what had been radical and eccentric ten years ago is commonplace today. Feminism is not monolithic, but the thought of the " advanced " writers is in some way mirrored even by the less radical. What began as some rather laughable revisionism. at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge is now standard fare for a new generation of the Episcopal establishment (cf. particularly .the Liturgical texts for evaluation, nicknamed the " Black Mass Book"). What was written in Oddie's book in the early eighties is no longer the preserve of " extreme " feminism, however extreme it might have been ten years ago. The second question rises from the author's identification of the source of feminism. Is feminism really a movement of middle class American housewives? For all its Marxist language, and the rather free borrowing of the dialectic of the class struggle, feminism does, in fact, bear the marks of its American, middle class birth. But where did all of this come from? It cannot be dismissed as a fad-and Fr. Oddie does feminism the compliment of studying its documents very closely-but what does all of this have to say to the rest of the world, which is not economically or politically well off enough to indulge in .the luxury of this discussion? The hook could have been more compleil:e in its analysis if it had traced the genealogy of feminism more closely. 518 BOOK REVIEWS The hook is written by an Englishman, a priest of the Church of England, and although many (if not most) of the feminist sources cited are from Americans (and even from American Roman Catholic feminists), there are occasional passages which may not he clear to a non-Anglican American audience. The author has written a new in· ,troduction, aimed at updating the hook for an American (and largely non-Anglican) audience, and this does help. The election of a woman as bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, less than three months after the publication of this American edition, makes understanding this hook all the more urgent, most particularly by all who count themselves inheritors of the Catholic tradition. The task of a fair and temperate scholar, in treating of a school which has attracted so much scorn and praise, is a task of distinction; and Fr. Oddie, without resorting to advocacy or polemic, dispels much malevolent fiction by contrasting it with reality. The volume is an ample and trustworthy collection of facts, pointing out the nature of feminism's attempt at reconstruction of the edifice of Christian heliefand also how distant the foundations of feminism are from those of Christian belief. But this is not new, or even surprising. It is, in modern guise, Newman's famous distinction between liberal religion and revealed religion-between those who would correct the notebooks of the Apostles, and those who would allow the Apostles to correct our own. The contrast between feminism and revealed religion cannot be more sharply stated than the author does-" [Feminism] is, quite simply, the controlled manipulation of historical assumptions in the service of ideology: a technique not unknown to the twentieth century " (p. 145). The story of the publication of this hook is also instructive, if only to show us the times in which we live. The hook was first published in England by S.P.C.K. in 1984, and sold out its first printing within a year. Fortress Press, which usually handles S.P.C.K. titles in America, refused (under pressure) to import this title. I ts scholarship (couched in non-technical language) made it too controversial to handle. S.P.C.K. then refused to reprint the hook, claiming (after the first printing was sold out so quickly) that there was no demand for the hook. Ignatius Press is to he commended for bringing out this American edition so that an audience on this side of the Atlantic can read and ponder its message. WARREN J. A. SOULE Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. BOOK REVIEWS 519 The Church: Learning and Teaching. By LADISLAS ORSY, S.J. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1987. Pp. 172. $14.95. This work develops (and repeats) some of the ideas in Orsy's ar· ticle, "Magisterium: Assent and Dissent," TS 48 (1987), 473-497. One of the most neuralgic issues in the Church today is the relation· ship between the magisterium and theologians. This extended essay, notable for its irenic tone, broadens the topic to a consideration of the whole church in its activity of learning and teaching. Its stated purpose is to " clarify some of the foundational concepts and to present a framework in which the interplay between the teaching authority and the whole community can be understood." In the heat of debate when lines are drawn, and each side is in danger of becoming myopic because of the intensity of focus on a given issue, each risks losing sight of the larger dialogic relationship between God and human person. To its credit, this essay counteracts this risk by describing the pattern of encounter between God and the human person. Orsy reminds us that the church in its teaching and learning responds to a mystery which always eludes absolute order and clarity even through both occur under the guidance of the Spirit. Within this dialogic interplay, the function of the episcopate is to witness to the word that God has spoken, a word always predominantly ineffable, while the task of the theologians is to penetrate into the meaning of the word through systematic theological reflection. In the three remaining chapters, Orsy discusses teaching authority, assent and dissent, and Catholic universities and academic freedom. He calls for a new hermeneutic for the interpretation of encyclicals in order to differentiate between statements of doctrine universally held, opinions of theological schools, and statements that may later be found to he erroneous. He points out the ambiguities associated with the term "ordinary magisterium," citing texts where it is the equivalent of "non-infallible," and others where it simply refers rto the manner in which a doctrine is taught. Departing from Dulles' suggestion for a dual magisterium, Orsy sketches the problems associated with the concept of a magisterium of theologians. He then cautions us against an over-simplification of the difference between fallible and non-infallible teaching which fails to account for the organic unity of Christian doctrine. As there is a dialogic interaction between God's word and human response, so is there an interplay between the bishops' witness to the truth in the Spirit and the recognition of this truth on the part of the people of God who then surrender in an act of faith. The exact nature of this obsequium fidei, however, is problematic. Orsy's identification 5!l0 BOOK REVIEWS of obsequium as a seminal locution in Lumen Gentium circumvents the dispute as to whether it means "respect" or "submission." Orsy attempts to defuse much of the emotional charge associated with the term " dissent " by noting that it is a much stronger dialectical term than such European expressions as opinion difjerent or anderer M einung. He cautions that " to state simply that dissent from non-infallibly held doctrine is legitimate, is simplistic and incorrect " since one must note the relationship of the non-infallible doctrine to the infallible core. He concludes ,that the best climate for a healthy relationship between theologians and bishops is mutual trust, a reasonable margin for honest mistakes, a recognition of limits on the part of theologians with a corresponding resolution never to call a final truth what is in reality a hypothesis. Orsy notes that history witnesses to the perils of theologians being subject to correction by their peers only. He points out that theologians should perhaps return to the practice of investigating questions rather than defending theses. The dangers associated with dissent include the possibility of the propositional dissent of a theologian becoming a feeder to a deeper attitudinal dissent in others or in some other way threatening the peace or unity of the church. It is difficult to see how anyone can take issue with such a balanced approach to this sensitive topic. In order to indicate how a university can he Catholic and receptive and responsive to the magisterium while retaining the academic freedom necessary to be " houses of intellect," Orsy outlines six models representing concrete relationships between a university and a believing community: (1) secular universities in a Catholic environment, (2) secular universities integrated with a Catholic academic unit, (3) universities nourished by Catholic traditions but with no formal institutional commitment, (4) universities with institutional commitment to Catholic ideals but without an ecclesiastical charter, (5) universities established by the church with a canonical charter, and (6) " Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties " established by the church and dedicated to "sacred sciences." He finds that a Catholic university must uphold and promote human and religious values according to Catholic beliefs, be well-proportioned to its environment, and rely primarily on the internal disposition of its constituencies for its religious dedication. How this will he accomplished will vary according to the concrete existential order in which the university finds itself and therefore cannot he determined from an abstract conceptual ideal. Thus these six models and the principles which Orsy outlines offer a fruitful starting point for discussion on what makes a university Catholic, hut they do not and cannot offer specific criteria. In effect this throws the problem of Catholic identity back on the universities to work out in their own particular situation. BOOK REVIEWS 521 Orsy uses his six models to clarify the relationship of the hierarchy to the teacher and the university and to address the problem of what happens if a teacher is denied a canonical mission. He concludes that in the case of universities whose relationship is that of communion (the third and fourth types described above) , the hierarchy needs to deal with dissent directly with the teacher. Because universities of this type are not persons before canon law, there is no way the hierarchy can oblige a university to hire only teachers possessing a mandatum or to declare that such a university is indeed no longer a Catholic university. Thus the impasse remains insofar as mutual trust fails. Orsy's appeal for recourse to the concrete existential situation of a university must account for situations where such trust fails, for to presume unfailing trust is itself to appeal to an abstract ideal. As conciliatory as Orsy's work is, this is perhaps the Achilles' heel: in spite of the requirements of academic freedom, there is something incongruous in the fact that the church has no control over the catholicity of a university that declares itself to he Catholic. The situation is different for those universities whose relationship with the church is one of legal incorporation (the fifth and sixth types) , for there is a duty to ascertain that the canonical requirements in their teachers are fulfilled. The great merit of this essay is its balance: it does much to outline issues, define terms, offer models, and in general suggest a perspective from which the controversial topics of assent and dissent can he addressed. The footnotes are as informative and interesting as the text itself. A brief annotated bibliography is given at the end. Two presuppositions in the essay which invite further clarification and discussion are Orsy's notion of the evolution of doctrine and his tendency to place such doctrinal issues as scriptural authorship in the same category as moral questions. In the first instance, one cannot presuppose that doctrine evolves without referring to what remains constant. In the second, the relationship between concrete moral judgments and doctrine is inadequately addressed. These two points are at the root of the question of assent and dissent in the church. Orsy does much to elucidate the ecclesiological questions; many systematic and moral questions remain. SusAN K. WooD Saint Mary College Leavenworth, Kansas 522 BOOK REVIEWS Essays in Ancient Philosophy. By MICHAEL FREDE. Minneapolis: Uni· versiy of Minnesota Press, 1987. Pp. xxvii + 382. $32.50. For this impressive volume, Michael Frede has woven together a series of seventeen essays on themes from Plato's analysis of percep· tion to the principles of Stoic grammar. There are six sections of the hook, dealing with Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Skeptics, Ancient Medicine, and Ancient Grammar, respectively. Though most of the essays have appeared in print before, not all of them were readily accessible. Three essays are new to this volume (Chapters 1, 6, and 13) and three appear in English translation for the first time (Chapters 2, 4, and 10). In addition, Frede has prefaced the book with a splendid introduction, ex· plaining with great care his conception of the study of ancient philosophy. Throughout the book the argumentation is thorough and persuasive, the style clear, the conclusions subtle and profound. The experience that Frede brings to bear on various problems discussed in the hook is remarkable. The book may he read as a series of independent essays. There is no need to begin with the section on Plato, or to read the essays in any of the sections in sequence: no special knowledge of previous essays is presupposed by subsequent ones. Nevertheless, to suppose that the sug· gestions made and conclusions drawn in the course of the book are in· sulated from one another would be a serious mistake. To discern any precise connection between the essay on perception in Plato's Theae· tetus and the essay on the principles of Stoic Grammar is admittedly quite difficult. But the essays in the sections on Hellenistic Philosophy work together to flesh out the interrelations of the often complex and diverse views of that period, as well as to demonstrate the influence of earlier philosophers on these views. In this respect the essays in earlier sections provide a context for later essays. Within each section the essays generally exhibit a high degree of unity. This is especially true of the section on Aristotle. According to Frede, logic provides a unify· ing theme for all the essays in the hook. This is generally, but not al· ways, the case. Instead, it is Frede's consistent approach to the study of ancient philosophy that focuses and unifies the essays. His position is that we can understand a philosophical view only if we see how it fits into a [philosophical] history as a whole (p. xx, Introduction). There are, moreover, other histories that are relevant, or even crucial, to understanding certain views in ancient philosophy. Frede presents a clear formulation of his own approach to the study of ancient philos· ophy in the introduction, on which I comment below. The remainder of the comments in this review are intended to reflect, primarily, the interests of readers of this journal. Thus, most of the detailed remarks BOOK REVIEWS to follow concern Frede's introduction and the sections on Plato and Aristotle. The other sections, however, are no less significant, and the arguments contained therein are as persuasive as any in the book. Anyone doing research in ancient philosophy must consider how much emphasis to place on its historical and philosophical elements: the methods, arguments, evidences, and contexts that one employs are a logical outcome of the relation one establishes between philosophy and history. Frede attempts to work out this relation in some detail, a task which is rarely undertaken in print; his introduction contains more than a few insights as a result. Many important distinctions are clarified or introduced, among them are distinctions between ancient philosophy and the history of ancient philosophy, between philosophical and historical explanation, between the history of philosophy and histories important to philosophy, and between a historically important philosophical fact and facts important to the history of philosophy. The conclusion yielded by these distinctions is that it is an extraordinarily complex fact that a philosopher held a certain view-a fact which can be legitimately studied in many ways, but not in just any way one chooses. In Frede's view, the study of ancient philosophy requires historical as well as philosophical approaches. For when we want to understand the reasons for which philosopher X held view Y we must determine what Y is, why X held Y, whether those reasons are good ones, whether what X thought was a good reason accords with our own view, and so on; and all of this involves philosophical and historical reflection. Thus, Frede argues, to consider the philosophical views of ancient philosophers as such provides a rather limited understanding of ancient philosophy. Frede's interest, rather, is in "ancient philosophy itself as it turns up in the various histories into which it enters and the way it actually enters these various histories" (p. xix, Introduction). The essays of the book are a case study in the application of this method. Plato. One wonders at first why the section on Plato is included in this volume. It contains but one brief essay, on the meaning of the verb aisthanesthai (generally: "to become aware of something") in Plato's dialogues, especially the Theaetetus. The essay is not closely related to any other in the book (though one could argue that it is important for understanding Chapters 9-11, all of which concern impressions and beliefs). However, the lack of contextual continuity is more than made up for by the significance of the conclusion here. Frede argues that Plato is not already working with a precise definition of aisthanesthai in the Theaetetus; rather, he is just trying to clarify its meaning in the course of the dialogue. Thus, aisthanesthai only comes 524 BOOK REVIEWS to be understood as " to perceive by the senses " as a result of Plato's philosophical considerations. Understanding the history of the meaning of aisthanesthai in this way makes some difficult passages in the Theaetetus immediately more intelligible. For example, in Theaetetus 184-187 Plato tries to show that no case of perception as such is a case of knowledge. Thus, his point in narrowing the meaning of aisthanesthai is to distinguish between the family of related concepts connected with the use of that term, viz., perception, appearance, belief knowledge. The philosophical and historical significance of distinguishing between these concepts is obvious. As a case in point, the Hellenistic Skeptics and Empiricists espouse the view that our beliefs are just a matter of how things appear to us. Plato, in the Theaetetus, is laying the ground for a tradition that rejects this claim, and does so by examining more carefully what we mean when we talk about "how things appear to us". Aristotle. The five essays on Aristotle comprise the most unified and sustained treatment of a theme in the book. At first glance this may not appear to be the case: the essays range from "The Title, Unity and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories" (Chapter 2), which seems more important to the history of philosophical texts than to the history of philosophy as such, to " The Unity of General and Special Metaphysics: Aristotle's Conception of Metaphysics" (Chapter 6), whose interest is primarily philosophical. In fact, however, these essays are all closely related by the common themes of logic, grammar, and metaphysics; they are an example of the point made in the introduction about the importance of other histories to the history of philosophy. The first essay, on the Categories, defends the view that the so-called Postpraedicamenta are part of the original treatise. Surprisingly, one argument in favor of the unity of the Categories is that chapters 1-9 and 10-15 differ so greatly in content that it is otherwise difficult to explain why an editor would construe these two sections as a single work. The differences of the two sections reveal that arguments for the unity of the treatise require the admission that the text is only a fragment of a work whose subject was not categories as such. Though the actual subject cannot be determined with certainty, a common theme of the treatise is the discussion of philosophically important synonyms. This suggests that the Categories is more directly concerned with language than some scholars have thought. Chapter 3 ("Categories in Aristotle") offers evidence about the meaning of " category " in Aristotle's works that employ ,the conclusions of Chapter 2: In order to determine the meaning of " category " one should not turn to the treatise of that name, since it is doubtful that the Categories is actually about categories. Rather, one should examine the Topics (especially book I, chapter 9) , since it is BOOK REVIEWS 59i5 probably a contemporary of the Categories and is the only other treatise in which all ten categories are named. Ironically, this was also Porphyry's suggestion, though for somewhat different reasons. Frede considers the meaning of the plural noun kategoriai in the notoriously difficult passage at 103h25 ff., and concludes that categories, in the technical sense, are " kinds of predication ", as opposed to either " kinds of being " or " kinds of predicates ". The latter part of the chapter is spent working out the implications this view has for understanding the relation between the category of ti esti and substance. Frede argues that Aristotle does not have a category of substance (at least not in his early works). Curiously, Frede does not mention the passage at Topics 1.5 102a32, which could he significant to his thesis: " A ' genus ' is what is predicated in the category of essence (en toi ti esti kategoroumenon) of a number of things exhibiting difference in kind." The investigation of substance in the latter part of Chapter 3 lays the ground for the next two chapters in the section, on Individuals (Chapter 4) and substance (Chapter 5) in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Frede works hard just to clarify the sense - of "individual" that Aristotle uses in the Categories. His conclusion is that " individual " indicates that part of a genus which does not have any subjective parts, i.e. parts that have subjects (p. 52). When, in Metaphysics Z 13 Aristotle denies 'the real existence of genera and species, he must also abandon this understanding of " individual". However, this reintroduces the problem of identifying the substance that underlies the properties of ordinary objects. Frede defends Aristotle's choice of the substantial form for this identifying role, where " substantial form " is understood as " the organization, and the history of organization, of changing matter " (cf. p. 66) . This interpretation has numerous advantages. For example, it enables one "to distinguish between various forms of the same kind at any given moment on the basis of their histories" (p. 69). However, some ambiguities remain with the con· cept of the organization of an object as its substantial form. For "or· ganization " is supposed to he logically independent of the properties and matter of an object; it is a "capacity for functioning in a characteristic way " (p. 66, emphasis mine) . The term " characteristic ", however, is ambiguous and suggests a reliance on properties (or characteristics) in order to individuate objects. Be that as it may, the problems with individuation are problems for Aristotle-Frede provides persuasive reasons for his interpretation of the text. The last chapter in the section on Aristotle, on the unity of general and special meaphysics, deals with the long-standing question of the relation between what Aristotle calls " first philosophy '', which in· vestigates the being of separate substances, and the study of being qua 526 BOOK REVIEWS being. Frede's thesis here is that in order to understand being in general, one has to understand the being of separate substances. This is primarily what Aristotle means when he says at Metaphysics E 1026a 30-31 that first philosophy is universal because it is first. Together, the essays on Aristotle form the basis of a persuasive, if not compelling, interpretation. And because Frede's arguments consistently span a wide range of Aristotelian texts and doctrines, they should be, if not accepted, challenged by equally comprehensive responses. Either way, our understanding of Aristotle is greatly enhanced. Stoics. Anyone doing research on the Stoic philosophers in recent years will already be familiar with the highly original essays in this section. The arguments here are necessarily more speculative than those of earlier sections-for Frede's work on Stoic logic there has little precedent. The three essays on the Stoics include: "Stoic vs. Aristotelian Syllogistic " (Chapter 7) , " The Original Notion of Cause " (Chapter 8) , and " Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions " (Chapter 9) . In Chapter 7 Frede tries to account for the rejection of Aristotelian syllogistic by the Stoics and vice versa. At the root of the differences between these two schools is the concept of validity: what it means for a conclusion to " follow from " its premises. Whereas the Stoics found it necessary to be explicit about logically true assumptions that relate premises to conclusion, the Peripatetics felt no such compulsion. This is particularly clear in the case of certain hypothetical assumptions (e.g. " If, if p, then q, then if p, then q "), which the Stoics deem necessary for syllogism, but which the Peripatetics treat as assumptions about argumentation, not about the matter of an argument. The chapter on cause is the most intriguing in this section, if only because it clarifies the history of a concept about which philosophers are still not always clear. Frede emphasizes the etymological distinction between aition (an entity that is responsible for something) and aitia (an account, i.e. a propositional item). He tries to show how the Stoics are primarily responsible for the modern emphasis on entities as causes, and does so by clarifying a whole set of Stoic causal concepts: autoteleis aition, sunaition, sunergon, prokatarktikon, pro· egoumenon, and sunektikon. Frede also shows how the Stoic emphasis on responsibility encourages treating entities, and primarily entities, as causes. The final essay on the Stoics is an investigation and defense of the concept of clear and distinct impressions. Frede argues that the Stoic position can withstand the objections of the Skeptics, though not without considerably weakening Stoic claims to knowledge. On Frede's BOOK REVIEWS view, however, the Stoics only claim that it is possible to have knowledge by means of clear and distinct impressions; they admit that they do not have any such knowledge (p. 170) . One wonders why the Skeptics should not he much appeased by this admission. Skeptics. The two essays on the Skeptics both concern beliefs, the first beliefs generally, and the second the Skeptic's kinds of assent and the possibility of knowledge. Frede defends the Skeptics against the familiar objection that their way of life is self-defeating. In particular, he argues that there is no reason why a Skeptic should not assent to many things, including how things are (the appearance/reality distinction is, after all, a theoretical one, not accepted by the Skeptics) . Frede's point is well-argued and certainly correct. However, he does not address carefully enough the numerous passages throughout Skeptic literature that imply a radical sort of skepticism, which could he construed as self-defeating. Might it not he that here again, the Skeptics simply make no positive claim about the extent of their skepticism; that instead it is their opponents who draw distinctions about kinds of skepticism that require presuppositions a Skeptic cannot make Medicine and Grammar. The last two sections, on Medicine and Grammar, contain investigations into histories parallel to, and influen· tial upon, the history of ancient philosophy. The section on medicine contains four essays: a very helpful introductory chapter on the relation between philosophy and medicine in antiquity, which yields to more properly philosophical essays on "The Ancient Empiricists", "The Method of the So-Called Methodical School of Medicine", and "Galen's Epistemology". Throughout Frede makes it clear how important the understanding of ancient medicine is to the study of ancient philosophy, and vice versa. Much the same can be said of the essays on grammar. Here the chapter on the origins of traditional grammar (Chapter 17) is particularly interesting. In Frede's view, a view shared by many contemporary linguists, traditional grammar (e.g. the Greek and Latin grammars of Kiihner-Gerth and Kiihner-Stegmann) is utterly confused. Chapter 17 traces the development and persistence of confusions about grammar to mistreatments of Stoic and Peripatetic views. The last of the essays is followed by helpful notes and indices. The hook is extremely well-argued throughout, and should he invaluable to scholars and students alike. E. E. BENITEZ The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. 528 BOOK REVIEWS Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy. By HERBERT A. DAVIDSON. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. 428. $37.50. In the Introduction to his book, Proofs for the Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy, Herbert A. Davidson proclaims his work " to be exhaustive as regards Arabic and Hebrew arguments; that is, I have undertaken to examine every medieval Arabic and Hebrew philosophic argument for eternity, creation, and the existence of God" (p. 7). In addition, he says, "In a number of instances I have pursued the penetration of Islamic and Jewish arguments into medieval Christian philosophy, and in a few instances into modern European philosophy. There, though, I make no pretense at exhaustiveness, and the citations are of a kind that are ready at hand in obvious primary and secondary sources" (p. 7). To a large extent Davidson's work appears to be what he claims it to be. At the very least, it is an impressive piece of scholarship which provides a wealth of source material for those wishing to do research into medieval Islamic and Jewish arguments for eternity, creation, and the existence of God. The claim that it is exhaustive, however, is a bit of an exaggeration. Even ten times the four hundred plus pages which he devotes to the topic is not likely to achieve the goal which he claims to have reached. An excellent source book it is; exhaustive it is not. One of the reasons the text is not exhaustive has to do wih its current date of publication. The hook was completed in 1980, and many of the references to secondary sources are from the 1960s and before. While the work depends heavily upon primary sources, one would expect, nonetheless, that an exhaustive analysis of a subject would refer to current work by other scholars in the field. One would ex· pect that even a work completed in 1980 would make reference to ex· tensive scholarly research in the field close to the date of completion. Another problem the work has is that terms such as "eternity," "creation," and "existence" rtend :to be used in very technical ways by medieval thinkers, but Davidson seems to ignore this fact in much of his discussion. Regarding the term "creation," for example, he says in a footnote, " I employ the term ' creation ' to mean the thesis that the world came into existence after not having existed, not the more specific thesis that a creator brought the world into existence " (p. 1). Such a use of the term " creation " is rather odd, but Davidson never gives a clear explanation why he would examine medieval Islamic and Jewish arguments for creation from this usual sense BOOK REVIEWS of the word rather than from the way the word was commonly understood by the medievals themselves. In addition, a word like " eternity " is used ambiguously by many thinkers of the medieval period. On the one hand, it refers to a measure of the way God possesses His being as a perfect and simultaneous whole; on the other hand, it refers to temporal existence without end. One would assume that this same sort of distinction was to some extent present among medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers studied by Davidson, hut he makes no reference to it; and even if it played no role in their discussions, Davidson's understanding of discussions of eternity in Christian and modern thought becomes seriously flawed by omission of this distinction. Similarly, the term "existence" has various meanings for different medieval thinkers, and the meaning of this term plays a significant role in understanding the notions of eternity and creation. Yet Davidson does not devote much attention to the role it plays in the various arguments he examines. Such attention, however, would have to paid by a thoroughly exhaustive study of these issues. The hook consists of twelve chapters which reflect a great deal of painstaking scholarship for which studnts of medieval and Islamic and Jewish thought should he grateful. The first chapter gives a general introduction to the problem and a statement of purpose, and in the second chapter Davidson begins a formal presentation of arguments for and against eternity based upon a dichotomy, which he derives from Moses Maimonides, of categorizing proofs of eternity in a twofold manner: 1) arguments formulated by Aristotle which proceed "from the world," and 2) arguments extracted from Aristotle's philosophy which take their point of departure " from God" (pp. 1011). Chapter 2 itself traces arguments for eternity from the nature of the world from their origin in Greek philosophy and their transmission to the Middle East by the Christian thinker John Philoponus. This chapter is particularly important because it not only presents the overall structure of Davidson's work hut also indicates how dominant is the role which he attributes to Philoponus in later medieval arguments regarding eternity, creation, and the existence of God. Indeed, Davidson's study of Philoponus, together with that of Maimonides and Proclus, seems to comprise the huh of his entire work. That study continues in Chapter 3 with proofs for eternity of physical and non-physical creation proceeding from the nature of God. In this area Davidson identifies Proclus as the probable main channel for these proofs to medieval Arabic thought (p. 51). At the same time, for Davidson the main medieval arguments against the eternity of created being from the nature of God are derived from Philoponus (See pp. 68, 78, and 84). 530 BOOK REVIEWS In Chapter 4 Davidson gives a detailed analysis of Philoponus' proofs for creation. He distinguishes these into two sets: one set based upon the impossibility of an infinite number and the other set based upon the principle that a finite body can only contain finite power. According to Davidson, both sets of arguments "employ Aristotelian principles to draw the un-Aristotelian conclusion that the world is not eternal but had a beginning" (p. 93) ; and not only were Philoponus' proofs " accessible to readers of Arabic in the Middle Ages" but also " Philoponus became a most important source for medieval proofs of creation" (p. 94). , In Chapter 5 Davidson traces the influence of Philoponus' two sets of proofs for creation within Kalam writers, giving particular attention to the standard Kalam proof from accidents. In Chapter 6 he shifts his focus of attention from the Aristotelian influence exercised on the middle ages through Philoponus, and he concentrates on what he refers to as " particularization arguments " in Kalam writers, Maimonides, and Gersonides. He sees these as reaching the medieval period from Plato's Timaeus through Galen's Compendium of the Timaeus. Chapters 7 through 12 of Davidson's text examine" medieval Islamic and Jewish proofs of the existence of God which are associated with the Aristotelian tradition" (p. 214). Chapter 7 concentrates on the argument from design, while Chapter 8 considers the argument from motion. Chapter 9 takes a look at Avicenna's argument for a necessary being from the necessarily existent by virtue of itself, and Chapter 10 focuses attention upon Averroes' critique of Avicenna. Chapter 11 stresses the impact which Avicenna's argument had upon medieval arguments against the possibility of an infinite regress and the relation of these arguments to demonstration of the existence of God. Chapter 12 treats of a short, subsequent history of the influence of Avicenna's argument from necessity upon Maimonides, Aquinas, and the West. The book ends with an appendix sketching the history of the principles of the impossibility of an infinite number and of a finite body containing only finite power, another appendix giving an " inventory of proofs " covered within the text, and a bibliography of primary sources. Davidson's work as a whole is an excellent piece of scholarship which should prove to be a valuable research tool for students of medieval thought, whether they be interested in Judaism, Islam, or Christian areas. The work suffers from some accidental weaknesses, such as a bibliography which omits the name of editions of primary sources being used and a sketchy subsequent history which could have been omitted. In a sense, it is the excellence of Davidson's treatment of his BOOK REVIEWS 531 topic which makes these weaknesses stand out. They detract from the beauty of the work as a whole. Nonetheless, the work is an opus magnum meriting serious scholarly attention and applause. PETER A. REDPATH St. Johns' University Staten Island, New York Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt: The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid, and Newman. By M. JAMIE FERREIRA. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp. xii+ 255. Professor M. Jamie Ferreira has written a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of scepticism within British intellectual life from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth. Her cast of characters is at first sight an unusual, even an eclectic one: John Wilkins, an Anglican bishop and founder of the Royal Society; David Hume, himself often regarded as the chief of sceptics; Thomas Reid, the Scottish philosopher of common sense; and John Henry Newman, the most famous Viotorian convert to Roman Catholicism. In Ferreira's analysis what holds this group together is their varied attempts to re· fute scepticism through an appeal " to ' the natural '-to how we are constituted, to what we, as human beings, are and do in the arena of believing " (p. vii). In other words, the refutation of intellectually derived scepticism lies in an examination of practically lived human ex· perience. Ferreira seeks to describe three distinct modes of naturalism. The first is sceptical naturalism such as found in the clearly sceptical pass· ages of Hume. The other forms of naturalism constitute replies to this sceptical position. These anti-sceptical positions are reasonable doubt scepticism and justifying naturalism. Advocates of the former contend there is no reasonable basis for doubt about fundamental beliefs of human nature. They contend that these fundamental lieliefs are more basic than other beliefs rthart are subject to justification. They are indeed the basis of our juslf:ification of other matters. For persons of ithis outlook, rationality and justification are mallters of practice. By contrast justifying naturalism does seek to provide some kind of justification that links what is natural with what can be justified. In effect, justifying naturalism rejects the argument that only one mode of justification can be regarded as legitimate. Reasonable doubt naturalism and justifying naturalism often closely approach each other, but the latter may reject scepticism on grounds other than those of practice. BOOK REVIEWS Fundamental to Ferreira's argument is her interpretation of the position of John Locke in the anti-sceptical tradition. In contrast to Henry Van Leeuwen, she asserts that rather than standing as the culmination of an earlier liberal Anglican tradition associated with John Wilkins, Locke actually departed from that anti-sceptical position which had based itself largely on the concept of moral certainty. Locke based his rejection of scepticism on a distinction between kinds of certainty rather than upon human nature itself. Whereas Wilkins and others had seen a close and sometimes identical relationship between the highest probability and certainty, Locke distinguished ,the two. For him, cel'tainty had to achieve more than probability. Locke distinguished kinds of evidence from degrees of evidence. He also proposed categories of probability and demonstrated certainty hut no category of proof. This issue is crucial for Ferreira's interpretation of Hume. She contends that Hume understood this distinction in Locke and that he looked to the earlier anti-sceptical tradition. She argues that Hume thought it possible to offer a response to his own sceptical position that actually went beyond simply unavoidably accepting certain beliefs. Hume introduced a category of proof between Locke's categories of certainty and probability. According to Ferreira, he based this category on the previous seventeenth-century distinction between reasonable and unreasonable doubt. Ferreira does not claim a single unified interpretation of Hume, but urges the presence of tension in his thought that allows for the presence at least some of the time of a naturalist approach to scepticism. Thomas Reid was regarded in his day and during most of the nineteenth century as the major critic of Hume. However, Ferreira examines that critique largely in terms of shared concerns. Reid sought to distinguish degrees of certainty in both demonstrative and probabilistic reasoning. His key metaphor was found in the suggestion of there being no reason to seek an iron bar when a rope would do. In that regard, he rejected syllogistic reasoning as a guarantee of certainty. This stance was part and parcel of his better known rejeotion of the representationalist theory of ideas. Both failed to provide an adequate account of human nature. Reid repeatedly, in differing philosophical and social contexts, appealed to universal practice to legitimize beliefs that lay implicit in social and linguistic practice. These truths were self-evident and served as illustrations of the natural. They are also exemplified in a philosophy grounded very largely in the doctrine of unreasonable doubt. John Henry Newman was thoroughly familiar with Reid. He too pursued a naturalistic response to scepticism, most particularly in The BOOK REVIEWS 533 Grammar of Assent. Yet whereas Reid had urged a fundamental agree· ment on first principles on the intuitive basis of common sense, Newman thought such principles were discovered inductively and that there might he much disagreement. It was the disagreement itself that led to the need for a better understanding of the reasoning process. In place of common sense, Newman appealed to the illative sense. In l:his regard, Newman directly rejeots Locke's distinction between demon· stration and probability. Various kinds of probabilistic reasoning for Newman can lead to a certainty beyond reasonable doubt. Ferreira claims that in this regard Newman is following a strategy not unlike l:hat of Reid. Both Reid's common sense and Newman's illative sense are natural. However, the former can discover only self-evident 'truths while the latter is part of the process of reasoning itself. Ferreira pro· vides a very full discussion of the manner in which these outlooks led Newman into the tradition of a naturalistic response to scepticism. Both philosophers and intellectual historians will find Professor Ferreira's volume useful and informative. In a very sprightly man· ner she has explored a tradition of British intellectual life that often has remained ignored. She has displayed very considerable daring in attempting to cover two centuries of thought. The most valuable sec· tions are no doubt those on Reid and Newman where she has care· fully illuminated a major intelleotual path not .taken hy most late nine· teenth· and twentieth-century British philosophers hut which exerted very considerable influence during the first three-quarters of rthe nine· teenth century. The volume also prepares the way for intellectual his· torians to examine what were the social and struotural reasons within British intellectual life for these particular anti-sceptical strategies. FRANK M. TURNER Yale University New Haven, Connecticut The Later Wittgenstein: The Emergence of a New Philosophical Meth· od. By S. STEPHEN HILMY. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Pp. viii+ 340. This is a hook of extraordinary scholarly density. Its 226 pages of text are complemented hy 94 pages of notes, 6 pages of bibliography, and 14 pages of indices. A heavy texture of relentlessly documented argument, Hilmy's hook is neither for philosophical novices nor for !:hose whose interest in Wittgenstein is merely moderate. To profit from 534 BOOK REVIEWS this hook, the reader must share the intense concern that led the author to plough through Wittgenstein's vast Nachlass. But readers must also he willing to contend with a style of writing that is often forbiddingly and needlessly convoluted, and with a tone that is sometimes snide. More will he said about these problems below, after a discussion of the hook's purposes. Hilmy believes Wittgenstein scholarship to he in a sorry state. The problem stems, he thinks, from blunders committed hy the literary executors. He writes, " The unhappy state of Wittgenstein scholarship is in large part due to the fragmented and ahistorical character of the potpourri of published remarks wirth which scholars have been work· ing" (viii). Indeed, his confidence in the published materials is so low that he often refers to them as Wittgenstein's "works" (in quotation marks) to signal his disdain for the editors' selections and arrange· ments. The scope of this volume is intentionally limited; little or no assess· ment of Wittgenstein's conclusions is offered. But Hilmy does claim to he taking a necessary first step which, he says, "much of the volumin· ous literature ... has dismally failed to take" (3); namely, an examination of .the historical development of Wittgenstein's later way of thinking (Denkweise) as chronicled in the Nachlass. His appeal to the manuscript material is based on his belief that rthe "conglomerated fragments" (9) in the published works are best understood in their original contexts and in light of later contexts into which Wittgenstein placed them in the process of revision. Much of the stylistic character of Hilmy's hook stems from .the necessarily laborious nature of trac· ing these origins and transpositions, and from his sense of getting Witt· genstein right for the first time. After sorting through some preliminary issues concerning Wittgenstein's compositional style, Hilmy produces an intricate argument de· signed to establish that a large Wittgenstein typescript (TS 213) should have been published instead of Philosophische Grammatik, that TS 213 was a major source of remarks for Philosophical Investigations, and that .the hulk of the remarks in TS 213 are traceable to original contents that date from the first year of Wittgenstein's return l:o philos· ophy in 1929. The burden of this argument would he to establish TS 213 " as a relatively reliable expression of his ' later ' approach l:o philosophy" (34), and hence to show that Wittgenstein's development of his later Denkweise preceded his return to philosophy, rather than having occurred in 1933-36. Few readers will he in a position to assess Hilmy's contentions about the origins of TS 213, as the evidence in· eludes suppositions about Wittgenstein's travels to Norway in the mid1930s, about the origins of certain notebooks, ahourt the meanings of BOOK REVIEWS 535 ambiguous intratexitual comments, and about the validity of previous judgments made by the literary executors and others. Most readers, however, will wonder what we learn about Wittgenstein from Hilmy's display of exegetical virtuosity. Following these preliminaries, four main theses are argued in the book, along with a closing general claim. The first thesis is that Wittgenstein, in his early work, held a " me:talogical " view of psychological concepts; and, more generally, that he thought the explanation of language must involve " a hypothesized psychological substratum " ( 54) ; and that the emergence of his later way of doing philosophy involved a rejection of these ideas. Hilmy is correct in linking Wittgenstein's rejection of "metalogic" with his repudiation of the psychologistic reading of verbs such as "to mean" and "to understand." It is also safe to suppose that Wittgenstein himself once was tempted, at least, by the view that such verbs gain their meanings by denoting introspectively identifiable mental processes, and that his attention to the actual function of those and similar verbs in ordinary language correlates with a rejection of il:he idea that they compose a special domain " beyond logic." Hilmy provides ample documentation of these patterns of linkage. Unfortunately, though, Hilmy's contention that Wittgenstein's later way of doing philosophy had emerged before 1929 (40) obliges him to he very vague about just what metalogical view Wittgenstein may have held and when he may have held it. There is no discussion of the Tractatus, w1th its insistence that the topics of psychology must he either ineffable or uninterestingly mundane, or of what Wittgenstein may have been up to in his own comparartively brief pursuit of a "primary" or "phenomenal" language. Thus Hilmy's arguments on this point, for all their complexity and documentation, yield a disappointingly bland conclusion. The second thesis is that Wittgenstein's thinking concerning "the ideal " shifted from an insistence on a simple ideal order already in all language to the effort to elucidate actual language by comparison He writes: with constructed ideal languages ("language-games"). "it is in their heuristic capacity as Vergleichsobjekte that 'exact' ('clear and simple') language-games serve to achieve complete clarity " ( 75) . Wittgenstein had rejected as an imposition the insistence that language must already possess, somehow, a precise, abstract, rulegoverned grammar, and had adopted as a methodological technique the construction of artificially simplified linguistic practices which are designed to illuminate actual practices. In his presentation of this .thesis, Hilmy displays with great thoroughness one of the central functions of the concept "language-game" in Wittgenstein's later work: namely, its function as a label for the heuristic devices invented to aid in the 536 BOOK REVIEWS investigation of language. Still, Hilmy does not adequately explore the fact that in this development, the ideal shifts, not only in role, hut also in nature. The early Wittgenstein is some sort of realist concerning logic and grammar, while the later Wittgenstein is, for the most part, a constructivist. Hilmy's exposition does not make this profound aspect of this shift apparent. Hilmy's third major claim is that Wittgenstein's rejection of a psychologistic understanding of language was a direct criticism of James, Russell, Ogden and Richards, and others; and that a single vision of language expressed variously as a " calculus," " language-game," or " system of communication," was formulated by 1930, and held Wittgenstein's a1Jtention thereafter. Hilmy convincingly argues that "during the ' lost decade ' Wittgenstein was in fact aware of the philosophical activity in England concerning ' the meaning of meaning ' " (112) , and that his "calculus/game/system" view of meaning emerged as a reaction in theories that were developed in England in the 1920s. But Hilmy's eagerness to establish that Wittgenstein's later Denkweise preceded his return to philosophy leads him to write of "the post-1930 'calculus/language-game' conception" in ways that obscure important differences between the idea that language is a calculus and the language-game image. Hilmy shows some awareness of these differences, hut he minimizes them, and so glosses over the deepest implications of the concept " language-game." There is no recognition of the great likelihood that the apparent synonymity of " calculus " and " game " in Wittgenstein's writings of the early 1930s disappeared as the exploitation of the game image over the next two decades disclosed the central philosophical problem of the later work----1he "paradox" of rule-following which animates much of Philosophical Investigations. Any account of the emergence of the concept " language-game " that fails to give prominence to the themes that converge on PI # 143-315 cannot he regarded as adequate. Hilmy's most curious thesis is the contention that Wittgenstein understood his new vision of language as analogous to relativity theory and that it involves him in something rightly designated as " linguistic relativism." Hilmy makes much of ithe fact that Wittgenstein several times referred to his later way of doing philosophy as analogous to relativity ·theory. Acknowledging that it is far from clear what the sense of this analogy is, Hilmy argues that " Wittgenstein proposes a sort of linguistic ' relativism ' which amounts to the suggestion that signs have meaning only relative to the language-games, systems of communications, or linguistic calculi, and that these are in effect a form of life constitutive to the meaning of the signs" (145). Wittgen· stein's references .to relativity theory in relation to his new way of doing BOOK REVIEWS 537 philosophy could hear any of a number of meanings. They might he designed il:o underscore his belief that his new Denkweise constituted a revolutionary shift away from old ways of doing philosophy. He could also have meant .that his new way of doing philosophy reorders our grip on the relation of central concepts having to do with language and meaning, just as relativity does with the central concepts of physics. Or he could have meant, indeed as he said in one passage cited by Hilmy ( 146), that " in the ' not being able to go outside of itself ' lies the similarity of my views and .that of relativity theory" (146). Hilmy, however, gives emphasis to the comparison with relativity theory as a part of Wittgenstein's answer to il:he question "What gives signs their life? " That answer involves " a sort of ' linguistic relativity theory ' of the significations of signs" (163). Anyone who knows anything about the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein knows that he deals with the problem of meaning through attention to the use of words in language-games embedded in forms of life. But Hilmy's laborious discussion of Wittgenstein's "linguistic relativism" asserts no more than this. To the extent .that Hilmy has produced an accurate portrayal of Wittgenstein's handling of "the question of what constitutes the ' life' or meaning of signs" (165), he gives the reader nothing novel. And in using, continually, without close definition, the highly charged term "relativism," he raises the unfulfilled expectation of il:he demonstration of some sort of link between Wittgenstein and some one or another of the various philosophical positions that are called " relativism." The general claim that in all these points Wittgenstein held " strong suspicion and antipathy . . . toward the dominant scientific current of our age" (193) is argued in Hilmy's final chapter. It is easy to show that Wittgenstein felt a sense of estrangement from .the main currents of contemporary culture and that he passionately rejected the idea that philosophy should strive to produce scientific (or pseudo-scientific) explanations of meaning and language. Hilmy rightly links this rejection with Wi.ttgenstein's expressions of distaste for philosophical theorizing and with his declarations that philosophy should be descriptive in nature and should not attempt to solve philosophical problems "by offering discoveries about the essence or form of language" (211). Hilmy's case, however, while laboriously argued, does not produce a conclusion worthy of the density and complexity of the argumentation. Hilmy alludes repeatedly to Wittgenstein's broader Kampf against metaphysics and against language (226), but he offers little clue as to the precise nature of that battle. Hilmy closes .this book with an allusion to another volume he is preparing, one in which " a host of further themes fundamental to [Wittgenstein's] Denkweise" (226) will be explored. Perhaps in that second 538 BOOK REVIEWS volume the thinness of his substantive conclusions concerning Wittgen· stein's philosophical thought will he corrected. Such a laborious and involved working of the Nachlass ought to enlarge or amend our grasp of 'the central struotures of Wittgenstein's thought. A major shortcom· ing of this hook is that it does not do so. When Hilmy is accurate, he is within the hounds of the existing understanding of Wittgenstein. Where he is novel, he tends to he inaccurate or unconvincing. Further, Hilmy's writing ,tends toward syntactical constructions so complex that they obscure his meaning. Throughout the text there are examples of such awkwardness. One memorable sentence on p. 177 runs to one hundred-fi:fity words, eighty-eight of which intervene between the sub· ject and the verb. That sentence contains three parenthetical interludes, including one nested within a clause which is itself set off inside a pair of dashes. Ten words in the sentence are flagged with quotation marks or italics. The sentence does make sense, and it is, in fact, true. But it is inexcusable to cloak one's meaning in such clumsy constructions. It is too bad that Hilm.y's editors at Basil Blackwell did not save him and his readers from this problem. Finally, it needs to be stated that this book has an ugly undertone. Convinced that no one before him has done Wittgenstein justice, Hilmy describes the efforts of his fel· low scholars in scornful language. Other commentators " spin tales " (18-19 and 40) ; are "reckless" (19) ; have made " shots in the dark" (vii); have committed" blunders" (92); have offered" numb· ingly vague illustrations" (180); and have given "feigned Wittgen· steinian reflections " (185) . Hilmy also sneers at Russell, telling his readers that "at Oxford in 1914, Russell was peddling what he called 'scientific philosophy' .... " (216) He says acidly of one commen· tator's interpretation that it "no douht expresses something terribly profound" (19). This sarcasm is well beyond the bounds of courtesy or good taste. Who should read this book? It is hard to say. Anyone who has enough interest in Wittgenstein to bear with the author, and enough expertise to follow his analyses, will know the material well enough to be disappointed in Hilmy's conclusions, all of which can be reached less arduously in other works. On ·the other hand, anyone in a posi· tion to be enlightened by Hilmy's conclusions will almost certainly be disheartened by ,the labor of getting to them. This is a disappointing book, and it is l:o be hoped that its sequel will be an improvement both in style and in substance. JOHN CHURCHILL Hendrix College Conway, Arkansas BOOK REVIEWS 539 ls There a Measure on Earth? Foundations for a Nonmetaphysical Ethics. By WERNER MARX. Trans. Thomas J. Nenon and Reginald Lilly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. 172. (Hardcover.) (Originally published as Gibt es au/ Erden ein Mass? Grundbestimmungen einer nichtmetaphysischen Ethik. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983.) Is there a non-metaphysical earthly measure for responsible action? Marx takes his question from Holderlin and directs it at Heidegger, in whom Marx finds no explicit answer. It is not the case that Heidegger simply fails to ask or answer this question, but rather that the corpus of Heidegger's later work itself motivates the question and leaves us searching for the path to an answer which must, on Heideggerian principles, differ from the one embraced by Holderlin, Schelling, and the metaphysical tradition in general. Marx explores .the various possibilities offered in Heidegger's texts but fails to. find a definite answer with respect to a measure for responsible action. In his concise interpretation Marx is led in one inevitable direction--4:owards the concept of death. How does death qualify as a measure for action? Before he addresses this question Marx attempts to understand 1the concept of measure, which, he contends, can be viewed as either a metaphysical or a nonmetaphysical concept. He sets out the metaphysical concept of measure on the basis of his reading of Schelling. Schelling's onto-theological concept of measure is characterized as normative, transcendent, immanently powerful, obligatory, self-same, manifest and univocal (20). This conception is then taken to represent the traditional metaphysical position. Here a number of questions could be raised regarding what Marx himself calls the "not completely satisfactory route" of his own analysis (17). One could certainly agree with his beginning assumption, "ithat our contemporary understanding of measure still contains certain residual traditional meanings" (17). But the stronger and genuinely operative assumption in Marx's analysis is more questionable. Why does Schelling's conception stand as .the representative of an entire metaphysical tradition? Although Schelling's conception of measure nicely facilitates Marx's projecl: vis-a-vis Heidegger, the reader might remain unconvinced that the full metaphysical conception of measure is reflected therein. Consider, for example, Marx's contention ithat 1the traditional measure is univocal and therefore leaves no room for ambiguity (42) . On this basis he asserts that we cannot take Heidegger's notion of "the fourfold," which involves an "inner mobility" of play, as a .traditional measure. The ambiguity and "basic 540 BOOK REVIEWS instability inherent in playing and mirroring is irreconcilable with the traditional meaning of a measure" (42). By avoiding the more extensive analysis to which he makes reference, Marx neatly steps around an extremely important problematic involved in the concepts of ambi· guity and univocity. The following question indicates this problem in the simplest way: Does univocity belong to the measure itself or to our perception or predication of the measure? We might say, for example, ,that there is no ambiguity in God, but that there is a high degree of ambiguity involved in our perception or predication of God. Certainly in the tradition, whether we take Arisotle's spoudaios, or God's eternal law, or Christian love in the model of Christ as our measure, we do not escape the ambiguity of our own finite interpretations. Thus Aristotle's caution about .the nature of ethics (N. Ethics 1094bl2-15), Aquinas's qualification about knowing the natural law with respect to details (ST 94,, 4), or Kierkegaard's acknowledgment of the paradox of Christ. This problematic is also to be found in Heidegger's writings where he indicates a play of concealedness-unconcealedness involved in Being or "the fourfold," and thus an ambiguity in the measure itself. But would Heidegger say that this concealing-unconcealing play of Being is something that happens in itself, outside of language, or independent· ly of the one who is looking after Being? (See Marx's discussion, 9192, 123) . The difference between Heidegger and the tradition on this point is .this: in the tradition the " location " of ambiguity is unambiguous; it is found in human perception, language, and reason, hut not in the measure itself. In Heidegger, ·the location of ambiguity is itself ambiguous; the concealing-unconcealing is both concealed and unconcealed. So Marx is correct in saying that " the fourfold " cannot be a measure in the traditional sense. But the conciseness of his analysis makes it too easy to infer incorrectly that there is no room for ambiguity in taking a measure for responsible action according to .the traditional metaphysical conception. For example, associating ambiguity with the concept of mystery, Marx states: "It could be that the character of mystery is reconcilable with the essence of measure when the latter is conceived of non-metaphysically whereas it is not when measure is conceived of traditionally, i.e., metaphysically. However, .this certainly does not hold for the measure that we are seeking, i.e., for a measure for responsible action" (45; also see 94) . All of this brings us back to ·the question of why Schelling should be taken to represent the tradition. Might not this modern and romantic thinker still be too much under the tacit influence of enlightenment categories when it comes to the question of ambiguity and human understanding? (See, e.g., Gadamer's remarks on romanticism, in Truth BOOK REVIEWS 541 and Method). By focusing on Schelling, does Marx accurately or adequately represent the traditional concept of measure? Marx's conciseness, which in many cases is a virtue, here seems to suggest an inadequacy. Marx intimates an awareness of this inadequacy when in several places he indicates that he is not telling the full story or supplying .the complete analysis (e.g., 17, 21). What precisely is a non-metaphysical conception of measure? In one sense Marx assumes a negative interpretation, viz. anything that does not fit into the traditional pattern of .the metaphysical concept of measure (which for Marx is represented by Schelling) must be non-metaphysical. Positively he associates it with Heidegger's later philosophy, specifically .to •the extent that it involves a surmounting of modern subjectivism (74). He also tends to identify the metaphysical with the "otherworldly," the onto-theological thinking that derives its values from extra-worldly sources. Thus the non-metaphysical measure would be one that, in Nietzsche's phrase, remains "faithful to the earth." A measure on earth is one that would provide a foundation for a nonmetaphysical ethics. Two concerns motivate Marx's search for a non-metaphysical measure. One is explicitly identified: the " diminishing efficacy " of :the Judeo-Christian tradition (2). A non-metaphysical ethics "would provide measures or standards for ·those who, having lost ·their are no longer able to find a measure in religious doctrines" (3). The other motivation, not explicitly identified but clearly operative and near the surface, is his concern about the ertreme difficulty involved in finding any standard for responsibility in the later works of Heidegger. Here Marx is not alone. His book, originally published in 1983, enters the most contemporary of debates in France and America about the nature of Heidegger's thinking and its relationship to an ethics of responsibility. This is one reason the book deserves a reading. Marx shows in an extremely clear way how all determinations of freedom become, in the later Heidegger, absorbed into determinations of truth or man's relation to Being. Ethical determinations are subsumed under determinations of Being in a way that leads to the impossibility of finding a measure for responsible action in the traditional sense (e.g., 34) • But Marx insightfully undertakes a retrieval of a concept that is not only central to Heidegger's early work, but is still alive in his later works; the concept of death. Marx, however, is required to think beyond Heidegger's conception if death is to be interpreted as a nonmetaphysical measure for responsible action. Death, not in the objective sense as opposite to life, but as the Heideggerian existential being-towards-death which the individual must live in his or her self-experience, is not a measure in the traditional 54Q BOOK REVIEWS sense since it cannot be characterized as either manifest or univocal (4 7). Yet Heidegger thought of death as a measure in some sense: " Death is the still unthought giving of a measure by that which is immeasurable, i.e., by the utmost play into which earthbound man is engaged, a play in which he is at stake" (cited, 48). For Heidegger death is subsumed under the determination of Being and loses any explicit ethical force. Marx, in thinking beyond Heidegger, wishes to re· store an explicitly ethical significance to death by showing " how death is a ' third force ' over against Being and nihilating Nothing " (48) . Such ethical significance, however, is to be found not in the relation between death and Being but in " the relationship of mortals to their death" ( 4,9). Marx, following the early Heidegger, characterizes this relationship as a special kind of "attunement." If man is properly attuned to death then death will " unsettle " man from " accustomed habits and relationships " and will set man into a different order of life: "authenticity" in the early Heidegger, a" guardianship of Being " in his later thought. More importantly for Marx the proper attunement towards death will effect a transformation of the individual's "being-with-others." Thereby the proper attunement towards death constitutes a "healing force " that overcomes the Angst which is associated with death and which unsettles man. The movement from the unsettling character of death to the healing power of our experienced mortality involves at the same time a transformation in the way that we treat others, from an indifferent confrontation with others to a "being-together-with-one-another" (53). By showing how this transformation is possible Marx demonstrartes how the healing force of the proper attunement towards death can he considered a measure for responsible action and can be determined more specifically as love, compassion, or respect. A problem, often raised in connection with Sar.tre's philosophy, is raised anew by Marx's thought. In Sartrean criticism rthe question is often posed whether one freely chooses the fundamental project which guides all further existential choices. In respect to Marx's analysis the question migh!: be put as follows: Is the proper relation to death the source or measure of responsibility or is it the case that one must be responsible for assuming .the proper relationship towards death? If on this point one follows the Heideggerian "rturn " away from the traditional metaphysical conception of the subject, as Marx seems to do, then the notion of responsibility for finding the proper attunement towards death is displaced. The proper relationship to death must be thought of as a donation, gift, or event that happens to man (57, 114· 115). Suddenly we are again faced with the concern about responsibility that motivated Marx's thinking, although now .the question has BOOK REVIEWS 548 been pushed hack a step. For Marx, in contrast to Sartre, man is not the " ' subject ' whose ' power ' shows itself in the fact that everything happens according to. his ' project ' or plan " (62) . Rather there are developments beyond the scope of subj eotive control: the modem changes associated with technological advancement, the impending ecological disaster, the possibility of nuclear holocaust. Marx implies · that man cannot continue to avoid the recognition of what is happen· ing to human existence. The transformation required for responsible action is something that is being forced on us. We will be called into the proper attunement towards death. As Heidegger suggested, citing Holderlin's lines, "where danger is, grows/the saving power also ... " We do not control, nor do we have responsibility for, the advent of the saving force. Rather, responsible action is action that is chosen under the measure of the saving force. Likewise, the " latitude " for freedom occurs only when man already dwells within the realm of measure (71). Responsibility only follows a " responding " that occurs under the guidance of the measure of the healing force. We would not be far from a secularized Pelagian-Augustinian interchange if someone (a Sartrean, perhaps) were to insist that we, as human subjects, are responsible and need to accept the responsibility for the technological " progress " that has placed us in need of a saving force. Would it be difficult to resolve these antithetical positions concern· ing human responsibility if taken together they were viewed as expressing a basic feature of all moral experience? We are at once responsible and not responsible. Our relation to technology is similar to our relation to history. As a different Marx would say, we produce it and are produced by it. There is an essential ambiguity in all of this. But here again Werner Marx exhibits his distrust of mystery in the realm of ethics (see 42-43, 157). He seems unwilling to admit ambiguity, even though his analysis itself suggests it. The measure of the saving force is both metaphysical and non-metaphysical according to Marx. This measure is non-metaphysical because it is no longer transcendent (p. 59). But this same measure remains metaphysical in its other determinations. The healing force is absolute, obligatory, selfsame, manifest, and univocal (59-60) . The difficulty again involves the univocity Marx claims for the measure. One might ask how the healing force, which "happens to us behind our backs" (63), is not transcendent with respect to man and yet is something larger than human existence. One can resolve this aporia only so long as one is willing to give up the claim to the univocity of the measure. To the extent that Marx is unwilling to do this the metaphysical thought con· cerning its univocity seems to undermine the non-metaphysical founda· tions for a measure on earth. 544 BOOK REVIEWS My remarks have been focused on the first part of Marx's book. The conciseness of his analysis makes it challenging and in the best sense provocative. There is also a great deal to be found in :the other parts of this rethinking of Heidegger. Marx is not afraid to venture into the most difficult and obscure passages of the later Heidegger, and to emerge with fruitful discussions of mortality, nothingness, language, and the measures for thinking and poetry. Measure for measure this is a work worthy of study. SHAUN GALLAGHER Can.isius College Buf/a/,o,New York