The Thomist 68 (2004): 1-39

"TO BE OR NOT TO BE?":
PASNAU ON AQUINAS'S IMMORTAL HUMAN SOUL
DENIS J. M. BRADLEY
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.

T

HE HISTORICAL ORIGINALITY and doctrinal importance of
Aquinas's account of the embodied but immortal human
soul-form can hardly be overestimated. Anton Pegis, who
over his lifetime studied, with an unmatched profundity, the
sources and internal development of Aquinas's doctrine, described
it as "a revolutionary contribution to Aristotelian psychology" 1revolutionary because the contribution involved "a much greater
loyalty to Augustine than [Aquinas's] acceptance of Aristotle is
ordinarily supposed to allow. " 2 Especially in the notable treatise
"on man" (de homine) found in the Summa Theologiae (STh I, qq.
75-89), Aquinas's abiding Augustinian commitments, and not just
Aristotelian terminology and doctrines, play a constitutive role in
how the problems are set forth and resolved. Thomistic man is a
paradoxically composite being, soul and body, a composite
animated by a spiritual soul but one needing and created for
incarnation, a soul living in the world of matter so as to know
and, thereby, enable the whole man to attain eternal truth and
beatitude. 3 In being so incarnated, the human soul, least of all the

1 Anton Pegis, "St. Thomas and the Unity of Man," in Progress in Philosophy, ed. James
A. McWilliams, S.J. (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1955), 153.
2 Anton C. Pegis, At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man, The Saint Augustine
Lecture 1962 (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Collier-Macmillan Limited,
1963), 24.
3 See ibid., 54-59.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

intellectual substances, "raises [matter] to something higher" -the
world of spirit. 4
Recently, Robert Pasnau has devoted, in what his publishers
rightly call "a major new study," 5 twelve thick chapters of
"commentary"-taking that term broadly so as to include running
historical and philosophical asides, numerous boxed obiter dicta,
and occasional opinions, some intimately cast, about morals,
theology, and the current academic zeitgeist-to the treatise on
man On these fourteen important questions, Pasnau has "tried to
write a book that would help the novice, stimulate the nonspecialist, and provoke the specialist" (xi). Of these three goals,
Pasnau undoubtedly attains the last. This large, sometimes
repetitious, argumentatively sprawling, intentionally provocative,
and, to use the author's own accurate hut unapologetic
characterization, "tendentious" (ibid.) book solicits from the
provoked specialist what cannot be easily given, a comprehensively alternative, and on some issues counter, interpretation
to Pasnau that would far exceed the compass of a single essay. In
this essay, I shall mostly consider (since it is the primary topic of
STh I, qq. 75-89) how Pasnau construes Aquinas's account of the
human soul as both the form of a perishable body and,
postmortem, a separate albeit incomplete spiritual substance.
For his part, Pasnau repeats and embraces Norman
Kretzmann' s negative judgment about the philosophical success of
the Thomistic revolution in Aristotelian psychology. Pasnau
bluntly rejects the probity of Aquinas's arguments for the
postmortem subsistence of the soul that was once the form of a
living body: they are "among the least persuasive parts of his
thought" (457 n. 4). But Pasnau's rejection obliges the reader of
his book to ponder, more explicitly and critically than the author
himself, the philosophical standards by which the Thomistic
• See ScG Il, c. 68 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:203a, n. 1452). Cf. Anton C. Pegis,
"Between Immortality and Death: Some Further Reflections on the Summa Contra Gentiles,"
TheMonistSS (1974): 1-15.
5 Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa
theologiae Ia 75-89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Parenthetical page
references hereafter, unless otherwise noted, are to this book.

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3

revolution is being judged. Finally, there remains one of the basic
questions of twentieth-century Thomism: What is the status of the
philosophy putatively found in Aquinas's theological works?
I. THE SUBSTANTIAL UNITY OF THOMISTIC MAN

Questions 75-89 of the Prima Pars constitute, so the prologue
to question 75 states, a treatise on human nature (de natura
hominis). Human nature, as Aquinas portrays it, is mysteriously
dual but not, in the ancient Platonist or modern Cartesian sense,
dualistic: the treatise is "de homine, qui ex spirituali et corporali
substantia componitur" -literally translated, "about man, who is
composed from a spiritual and a corporeal substance" (but
meaning, surely, "about man who is a substance composed from
the spiritual and the corporeal"). Substantia, in this troublesome
phrase, is ambiguous: it can refer to form, matter, and the
composite. 6 Taking that ambiguity into account, the literal phrase
need not entail that man is actually composed from "two
substances, one spiritual and one corporeal" (413 n. 24). To
interpret this phrase, with Pasnau, as implicated in a substance
dualism is tantamount to disregarding Aquinas's whole
polemic-contra Averroes-on behalf of an intellectual soul that
is at once immaterial and a form of matter, and, as the latter, is
the vehicle of the existential entelechy sustaining the unity of
man. 7 Pasnau' s dualistic interpretation, in fact, assimilates Aquinas
to Averroes: "We have to identify the spiritual substance as the
rational soul, and the corporeal substance as the whole human
being, body and soul" (ibid.). But, then, Pasnau admonishes us not
to "take at face value Aquinas's pronouncements about the way
substances are composites of form and matter" (ibid.).

6 See Aristotle, De anima, 2.412a6-10; cf. Aquinas II De anima, lect. 1 (Pirotta, 59b, n.
215): "substantia dividitur in materiarn et formarn et cornpositum .•.. Substantia vero
composita est, quae est hoc aliquid."
7 Cf. Pegis, "St. Thomas and the Unity of Man," 164: "if there is any doctrine that
characterizes the Thomistic view of man, it is the notion that there is only one substantial form
in man."

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

Such extraordinary, not to say drastic, hermeneutical advice
calls for an equal measure of hesitation. And at this juncture, there
is a very simple reason to hesitate: the prologue to question 50
avoids connoting any "substance dualism" inasmuch as it never
mentions substantia; it simply refers to the forthcoming question
75 as a consideration "de creatura composita ex corporali et
spirituali. " 8 A single human substance that is both spiritual and
corporeal is not an immaterial mind substance that has or uses a
living body substance; rather, it is an embodied intellectual soul,
the unique substantial form of a single living substance.
The difference between a substantial mind that is conjoined but
extrinsic to the body and an intrinsic or embodied intellectual
soul-form becomes evident if we consider the role of sensation.
Aquinas maintains that sensation is essential to human knowing
not just because the mind is inexplicably geared or somehow
internally responsive to the body but because the intellectual soul
radically requires embodiment for the achievement of its own
proper intellectuality. Since a living man is a single corporeal and
spiritual substance, sensation is an act that must be attributed to
the whole human being: "It is through a power existing in this
person, and not in another, that he is enabled to see and to hear." 9
If so, the body must be considered to be a part of human nature.
The human being, therefore, cannot be identified with either part
of human nature, neither solely the body nor solely the soul. 10

8 This characterization of the human composite, I would agree with Pasnau (cf. 413 n. 25),
cannot be neatly assimilated to the contemporary notion of a single substance marked by an
irreducible and inseparable "property dualism." It is true that Aquinas says, as would Aristotle,
that the living human being is a single substance that cannot exist without its dualimmaterial and material-properties. However, the human being is human only because of
its soul-form. While functioning as the Aristotelian form of a living human, the soul remains
a quasi-Augustinian spiritual substance. The postmortem Thomistic soul, though not the
complete man, is a spiritual substance uniquely inclined to-but by itself not able to realize,
though it would otherwise seem like, an essential property-embodiment. On essential
properties, see Q. D. de Anima, q. 12, ad 7 (ed. Robb, 183).
9 "nam videre et audire convenit alicui per virtutem aliquam in ipso existentem, non in
alio" (ScG II, c. 89; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:253a-b, n. 1736).
10 See ibid. (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:256a, n. 1752): "non enim homo est suum
corpus, neque sua anima."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

5

Nonetheless, Aristotelian substances are actually what they are
because of their forms. In any compound or material substance,
form is the principle of actuality and matter the principle of
potentiality. In the case of man, the rational soul is the form that
makes a living human body to be alive and intelligent. Since,
speaking precisely, it is the human form that makes man to be
man, to know "man"-that is, common human nature-is to
know, first of all, the essence, powers, and operations of the
embodied rational soul. The Christian theologian, however, has
his own reasons for being primarily interested in the human soul:
it is the rational soul that makes man a self-directing agent and,
thereby, an image of God, who acts through infinite intelligence
and will. 11 Given this perspective, the theologian can also take
into account the human body but only secondarily, insofar as it
relates to the soul. 12 There is no need for the theologian to be a
physiologist. 13
In defining the nature of the human soul, Aquinas begins
generally and, in an Aristotelian context, noncontroversially. To
define something is to give the species or form whereby
(otherwise indeterminate) matter is what it determinately is.
"Soul" can be generically defined as the first principle that makes
a living body to be living. A body, however, is living not because
it is a body-otherwise every body would be alive-but because
it is such a body, that is, a body "in act" in a certain way. The
principle that makes a body actually to be of a certain kind is
called the actus or (in Pasnau's translation) "actuality" of the
body. Contrary to the doctrine that Aquinas attributes to the
ancient naturalists, the soul itself, as the first principle of life,
cannot be a body. Again, form is actus or actuality. Aquinas allows
that the ancient naturalists did recognize the actuality of
accidental forms: bodies, by changing from state to state, show
that they are subject to further (accidental) determinations. But,
11 See Sfb I-II, prologus: "homo factus ad imaginem Dei dicitur, secundum quod per
imaginem significatur intellectuale et arbitrio liberum et per se potestativum."
12 See Sfh I, q. 75, prologus.
13 Cf. Pasnau, 14: "Ironically, medieval theology might therefore be condemned for being
... overly abstract and too little in touch with empirical data."

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

contradicting the ancients, he observes that all of the four,
putatively unchanging, elements are generated one from the
other; in fact, no one of them is unchanging. 14 He concludes that
the ancients failed to grasp the concept of substantial change:
hence, they did not posit, as the necessary substratum of
determinate elementary bodies, prime matter, the pure potency
existing under a form but always open to other substantial
actualizations.
The distinction between an accidental and a substantial change
is crucial for understanding the death of an animal. Death, the
separation of the soul from the body, is not an accidental change:
obvious signs, putrefaction especially, indicate that a dead body
is not the same body that was once alive. Accordingly, the soul,
the first principle of life, cannot be identified as an accidental
form; it is the substantial form of the living body, but,
postmortem, one that no longer actualizes the dead body. So
much is basic Aristotelian and Thomistic doctrine.
By relying on a version of Aristotelian hylomorphism, Aquinas
attempted to overcome the prevailing Platonic-Augustinian soulbody dualism. Pasnau labels the latter a (two-)substance dualism
or a "nonreductive" theory of the soul's union with the body; by
contrast, Aquinas's hylomorphic account reaches a single unified
substance, and, therefore, is "reductive"-though not, as the term
connotes contemporaneously, a reductive materialism. Pasnau,
however, carries the reduction even further: he repeatedly rejects
what he calls any matter-form dualism. His Aquinas embraces, to
use Pasnau's eccentric label, "reductive hylomorphism" (44).
Pasnau maintains that, for Aquinas, there is only a conceptual but
not a "real" or, as he also calls it, "metaphysical" distinction
between matter and form. 15 Presumably one of the interpretative

14 See I Metaph., lect. 12 (ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, 56b-57a, n. 191).
15 Pasnau, 44: "A substance is just one thing, he [Aquinas] believes; the matter and the
form are conceptually different, but there is no real difference, no way to split the material
part off from the formal part. • . . Aquinas is not insisting on a metaphysical distinction
between matter and actuality."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

7

novelties that Pasnau initially promises, 16 this, indeed, is a
surprising reading of Aquinas, one of great consequence for
understanding how the soul-form is related to the body. Prima
facie, Pasnau's interpretation is implausible. If "form and matter
are not really distinct components of material beings" (80), how
could Aquinas argue for the separability of the embodied human
soul? It is because form and matter are, in the living human body,
distinct secundum rem that Aquinas could coherently pursue the
question whether, postmortem, the human soul-form has a
separate and subsistent existence.
Everything depends, of course, on how we interpret a
distinction secundum rem. For Pasnau, applying the term "real
distinction" to matter and form connotes being able to "split the
material part [of a substance] from the formal part" (44). That
this is not Aquinas's understanding of a "real distinction" can be
easily shown by reference to another instance that calls for an
equivalent Thomistic distinction: it is not possible to split a
singular material suppositum from its essence or an essence from
its properties; yet, in both conjoints, the one member is said to be
"other" (aliud) than its partner. By aliud Aquinas means that they
are to be distinguished secundum rem, not secundum rationem.
Moreover, the distinctionsecundum rem between the essence and
the hypostasis/suppositum of a material thing is further explained
by the latter being individuated by the matter of the
hypostasis/suppositum, which distinction Aquinas explicitly
contrasts with the distinction secundum rationem between the
divine essence and each of the subsistent (but matterless) divine
persons. 17

16 See Pasnau, 1: "I have some novel and perhaps surprising things to say about Thomas
Aquinas .... "
17 See I Sent., d. 34, q. 1, a. 1, sol. (ed. Mandonnet, 1:788): "persona et essentia omnino
re in divinis non distinguuntur. In illis enim in quibus aliud est essentia quam hypostasis vel
suppositum, oportet quod sit aliquid materiale, per quod natura communis individuetur et
determinetur ad hoc singulare. Unde illam determinationem materiae vel alicujus quod loco
materiae se habet, addit in creaturis hypostasis supra essentiam et naturam; unde non omnino
ista in creaturis idem sunt. ..• Nihilominus tamen essentia [divina] et persona distinguuntur
secundum rationem."

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

Although Pasnau, who seems to favor something like Scotus's
notion of a formal distinction, opines that it is "peculiar and
misleading"(425 n. 5) for Thomists to label the nonidentity of the
soul and its powers a "real distinction" between them, Aquinas
does so in one early text. 18 Later texts, without using the term
"real distinction," evidently reaffirm the same doctrine: a "real
distinction" is a distinction that is grasped as mind-independent;
it is grounded in the thing itself, not in the way that we consider
the thing. 19 In all creatures, then, the distinction between essence
and powers is as mind-independent as the distinctions between act
and potency, substance and accident, and essence and existence.
Only in God is there what can only be called a real identity of the
members in each of the three couplets. 20
In none of these "real distinctions" is either conjoint able to be
"split" from the other. Let me, then, simply repeat the standard
Thomist interpretation, which has been thoroughly discussed and
confirmed in the best of contemporary historical scholarship (to
which Pasnau sometimes refers but which overall he does not
adequately engage). 21 Pasnau has not, I think, convincingly
displaced the standard interpretation, as it can be found in the
18 "Egredietur etiam ab essentia alius actus, qui est etiam actus habentis essentiam sicut
agentis, et essentia, sicut principii agendi: et iste est actus secundus, et dicitur operatio: et inter
essentiam et talem operationem cadit virtus media differens ab utroque, in creaturis etiam
realitier, in Deo ratione tantum" (I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; ed. Mandonnet, 1:177;
emphasis added).
19 See XII Quodl., q. 3, a. un. (ed. Spiazzi, 226a): "aliter est de formis realibus, et aliter de
praedicatis quae important aliquid pertinens ad actum rationis: quia in primis, scilicet realibus,
si in eis debeat habere locum talis distinctio, oportet inesse separationem in re et in
consideratione: in secundis non requiritur, sed oportet quod res ilia cadat sub alia
consideratione"; De Verit., q, 2, a. 2, ad 3 (ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disput., 1:28b): "similitudo
que est relatio realis, distinctionem rerum requirit; sed ei quae est rationis relatio tantum,
sufficit in similibus distinctio rationis."
20 See I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1 (ed. Mandonnet: 1:177): "Sed in Deo est omnino idem
re essentia, potentia et operatio, sed differt tantum ratione."
21 See John F. Wippel, "Prime Matter and Substantial Form," chap. 9 in The Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2000): "Matter is now regarded as identical with its
potentiality and with its relationship [to substantial form]" (319), but "it is clear that Thomas
defends the view that a principle of being such as matter is related in objective or extramental
fashion, i.e., really rather than merely logically, by its very nature or essence to its correlative
principle, i.e., its substantial form and vice versa" (320 n. 96; emphasis added).

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

9

first of the Twenty-Four Thomistic Theses: "Potency and act
divide being, so that whatever is either is pure act or necessarily
comes together from potency and act as [its] first intrinsic
principles. " 22 For Aquinas, matter and form are principles of
things, not things themselves; they (and especially prime matter)
are not understood to be real in the way that a res is real.
Nonetheless, matter and form correspond to potency and act,
which is the fundamental ontological-not merely, as Pasnau
would have it, conceptual-distinction
in "the genus of
23
substance. " Aquinas, while rarely using the precise label
distinctio realis to refer to internal distinctions posited within
finite beings, 24 consistently maintains an ontological distinction in
the res between matter and form: he contrasts, for example, a
mobile substance composed of matter and form, which in the
thing are diverse, with the corresponding matter-form
composition in the intellect, the predication of the totum
universale "rational animal"-wherein the genus "animal" =
matter, and the species "rational" = form-of its parts, "man"
and "Socrates." The predication of the form-matter composition
"rational animal" is a "sign of the [conceptual] identity of the
components": 25 that is, "animal" can be predicated wholly of
22 "Potentia et actus ita dividunt ens, ut quidquid est vel sit actus purus, vel ex potentia et
actu tamquarn prirnis atque intrinsecis principiis necessario coalescat." The "Twenty-Four
Thomistic Theses," encapsulating what were thought by the numerous professors consulted
to be the principal philosophical doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, were first prescribed by Pope
Pius X in a Motu -proprio of 29 June 1914, subsequently confirmed by Pope Benedict XV on
7 March 1916, and promulgated in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (article 1366, S2): see P.
B. Grenet, Les 24 theses thomistes: De fevolution a fexistence, 4m ed. (Paris: Librairie P.
Tequi, 1962).
21 See ill Quodl., q. 8, a. un. (ed. Spiazzi, 6a): "potentia et actus sunt prima principia in
genere substantiae; materia autem et forma sunt prima principia in genere substantiae mobilis.
Uncle non oportet omnem compositionem in genere substantiae esse ex materia et forma; sed
hoc sol um necesse est in substantiis mobilibus." Cf. Pasnau, 61: "We can draw a conceptual
difference between the two [i.e., between a nonsubsistent form and the matter that it informs],
but there is no real distinction."
24 Distinctio realis: the Index Thomisticus shows that Aquinas uses this term frequently, not
in metaphysics or physics, but in his Trinitarian theology: the divine persons (Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit) are really distinct from one another but only conceptually distinct from the divine
essence.
25 Sfh I, q. 85, a. 5, ad 3.

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DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

"rational animal," "rational animal" wholly of "man," and "man"
wholly of "Socrates. " 26
The real otherness or distinction secundum rem between
principles composing things-however uncongenial it may be to
contemporary philosophers, who often are more comfortable with
strictly conceptual distinctions-is basic to Aristotle's and
Aquinas's metaphysics. 27 It cannot, without destroying the
foundation of their respective metaphysics in real things, be
expunged: "The intellectual operation [of composing form with
matter] ought to be reduced to the thing as to [its] cause. " 28 Forty
years ago, Wilfrid Sellars acknowledged the historical correctness
of this point even as he himself sought to eliminate matter and
form as "really distinct principles" in things. 29 But I shall return
more than once to Pasnau's assertion that matter and form, in
Aquinas's own doctrine, are merely conceptually distinct; this
implausible interpretation is indicative of Pasnau's truncated and
rather skeptical exposition of the metaphysical principles that
sustain Thomistic psychology.
II. THE SUBSISTENT SOUL

In defining the soul as the first principle of actuality or the
substantial form of a living body, Aquinas affirms the immateriality of the soul: by definition all forms are not material.
However, he does not thereby demonstrate the subsistence or
substantial spirituality of the human soul. The demonstration that
the human soul can exist separately or apart from the living body
26 Cf. STh I, q. 77, a. 1, ad 1: "Totum enim univerale adest cuilibet parti secundum totam

suam essentiam et virtutem, ut animal homini et equo: et ideo proprie de singulis partibus
praedicatur."
27 Cf. Cornelio Fabro, C.S,S., "La determinazione dell'atto," in EsegesiTomistica (Rome:
Libreria Editrice della Pontificia Universit:l Lateranense, 1969), 341: "La materia e potenza
reale, non pura possibilit:l,e percio concorre con la forma, che e ii suo atto, alla costituzione
della sostanza corporea. Essa e principio di essere, ma l'attualit:l le viene della forma."
28 IX Metaphys., lect. 11 (ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, 456a, n. 1898).
29 See Wilfrid Sellars, "Comment" on Eman McMullin, "Matter as a Principle," in The
ConceptofMatter in Greekand MedievalPhilosophy,ed. Eman McMullin (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), 213-17.

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

11

that it once informed-that is, that it can subsist postmortem as
a substance in its own right-requires additional premisses. It
requires showing that the human soul has a per se
operation-namely, intellectual understanding-that cannot be
attributed to any material organ of the body that it now informs.
Here, in outline, is Aquinas's metaphysical argument, given in
question 75, article 2 of the Prima Pars, for the subsistence of the
human soul: (1) since only what subsists in itself apart from the
body could operate apart from the body, and (2) since the rational
soul in intellectual understanding does per se operate apart from
any organ of the human body, then (3) the human soul must be
incorporeal, separable, and subsistent.
Each of the Thomistic premisses calls for extensive commentary. In today's philosophical climate, the second premiss is the
most controversial and the least likely to be accepted.
Nonetheless, in its own setting, the Thomistic proof for the
perpetual existence of the postmortem soul does not require
showing first-as Pasnau demands (65)-that the human soul
continues to have intellectual activity once it is separated from the
body. Pasnau maintains that it is a conceptual truth that the
existence of a living separate intelligence requires that it actually
understand. But, then, he hitches this conceptual truth to an
altogether different requirement: Aquinas must demonstrate that
the separate soul continues to understand some object in lieu of
a bodily phantasm-before establishing that it "survives death"
(367). But why should Aquinas be saddled with this requirement?
Aquinas distinguishes secundum rem the essence of the soul,
which is the first principle that makes a living being to be actually
alive (the "first act" of the soul), from its powers (potentiae) and
habits or dispositions (habitus) which are the mediating
proximate principles of further actions (accordingly, the soul's
"second acts"). 30 Ensouled beings, by definition always living, are
30 While observing that the Latin terms are used synonymously (145), Pasnau prefers to
translate potentia by "capacity," reserving "power" to translate virtus and vis. But this does
not quite fit Aquinas' s distinction between active and passive powers. Aquinas notes (I Sent.,
d. 42, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1) that potentia first applies to the potentia for acting (here, surely
"power") and, then, secondarily, by extension, to the potentia for being acted upon (here,

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DENISJ. M. BRADLEY

not always acting in the various ways that they can and sometimes
do act.
Aquinas allows that sentire vel intelligere can stand for either
the operations or the being of the things operating. 31 Any proof
purporting to show that the subsistent disembodied soul can act
must initially distinguish the disembodied soul's "first act," the
esse absolutum of the soul's essence, from the disembodied soul's
"second acts," its operations of understanding and willing, since
the same distinction first applies to the embodied soul. Again at
this juncture, Pasnau apparently rejects any "real distinction"
between the soul's essence, its powers, and their acts; 32 yet a
distinction secundum rem is exactly what Aquinas posits and
needs to posit for his argument about the separate soul to work. 33
In the Thomistic metaphysical context, "each thing's mode of
operating follows upon its mode of existing" (STh I, q. 89, a. 1).34
Consequently, if the human soul subsists-that is, continues to
exist postmortem-it should be able to operate since it retains its
immaterial powers of knowing and willing. 35 Still, however
confident one might be in the truth that things were not created

"capacity" seems right). But he variously distinguishes an active from a passive potentia: active
powers affect and transform their object; passive powers are moved by their objects (De Verit.,
q. 16, a. 1, ad 13). More perspicuously described, the object of an active power is its terminus
and end; a passive power has no product (whether internal or external) other than the
operation caused in itself.
31 See SI'h I, q. 18, a. 2, ad 1: "Ve! dicendurn est melius, quod sentire et intelligere, et
huiusmodi, quandoque surnuntur pro quibusdarn operationibus; quandoque autem pro ipso
esse sic operantiurn ..• esse est sentire vel intelligere, idest habere naturarn ad sentiendurn vel
intelligendurn."
32 Cf. Pasnau, 157-58; 425 n. 5; 427 n. 1.
33 See SI'h l, q. 77, aa. 1, 8. Cf. Q. D. de Anima, q. 19 (ed. Robb, 179): "sicut se habet
essentia ad esse, ita potentia ad agere. Ergo perrnutatim sicut se habent esse et agere ad
invicem, ita se habent potentia et essentia. Sed in solo Deo idem est esse et agere; ergo in solo
Deo idem est potentia et essentia. Anima ergo non est suae potentiae."
34 "modurn operandi uniuscuiusque rei sequitur modurn essendi ipsius" (SI'h I, q. 89, a. 1).
35 See ScG II, c. 81 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:235a, n. 1624): "Quod autem quinta ratio
proponebat, nullam operationem posse rernanere in anima si a corpore separetur, dicimus esse
falsurn: manent enim operationes illae quae per organa non exercentur. Huiusmodi autem
sunt intelligere et velle."

PASNAU ON AQIBNAS AND THE SOUL

13

to be frustrated-and doubtless Aquinas was so confident 36-there
remain difficult and perhaps philosophically unsolvable puzzles.
The disembodied or postmortem soul is a spiritual substance that
retains its (nonbodily) intellectual and volitional powers but has
lost the sensible phantasms that were the objects necessary for the
embodied exercise of those powers. Consequently, Aquinas's
Aristotelian contemporaries denied that a totally inert soul-one
not exerc1smg those powers on sensible objects--could
perpetually exist. 37 Aquinas's rejoinder (ScG II, c. 79) secures the
being of the disembodied soul (apart from its present intellectual
operations) by appealing to the distinction secundum rem between
essence, powers, and operation, that is, between first and second
acts. 38 On the basis of those distinctions, the immaterial powers
are said to remain immanently within the separated soul. 39
Yet it is not the possession of quiescent intellectual powers but
actual understanding that seems the only life and arguably the
only being possible for a subsistent soul. The Thomistic rejoinder,
then, is but partial: it allows Aquinas to suppose that the
postmortem, disembodied human soul must be able, though
without relying on a phantasm, to engage in intellectual
activity-somehow. 40 This supposition, however, is not a
36 See STb I, q. 105, a. 5: "Quinimmo omnes res creatae viderentur quodammodo esse
frustra, si propria operatione destituerentur: cum omnis res sit propter suam operationem.
Semper enim imperfectus est propter perfectius: sicut igitur materia est propter formam, ita
forma, quae est actus primus, est propter suam operationem, quae est actus secundus; et sic
operatio est finis rei creatae."
37 SeeDeanima 3.7.413a15-17 (revised Oxford, ed. Barnes, 1:684): "To the thinking soul
images serve as if they were contents of perception .... That is why the soul never thinks
without an image."
38 See I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1 (Mandonnet, 1:766): "dicitur esse ipse actus essentiae;
sicut vivere, quod est viventibus, est animae actus; non actus secundus, qui est operatio, sed
actus primus"; X Quodl., q. 3, a. 2, ad 4 (ed. Spiazzi, 202b): "anima secundum suam
essentiam est forma a corporis, nee destructo corpore destruitur anima quantum ad id
secundum quod est forma, sed solum desinit esse forma in acru."
39 See De Verit., q. 19, a. 1, ad 9 (ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disput., 2:360a): "potentiae
intellectivae remanent in anima separata, et ex parte ilia qua radicantur in essentia animae, et
ex parte ilia qua comparantur ad actum."
40
"Dicendum quod cum nulla substantia propria operatione distituatur, necesse est
ponere, cum anima intellectiva post mortem remaneat, quod aliquo modo intelligat" (III
Quodl., q. 9, a. 1; ed. Spiazzi, 61b).

14

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

demonstration that or how the disembodied human soul enjoys
intellectual life.41 It is this latter ignorance, which Owens calls a
philosophical "aporia," that Aquinas circumvents by appeal to the
theological doctrines of "congruence and divine providence. " 42 In
a universe governed by an intelligent, loving, and infinite creator,
where nature cannot be ultimately frustrated or "in vain," Aquinas
can conclude-not
demonstratively
but "probably
enough" 43-that "no substance is deprived of its proper
operation," especially the perpetually existing, subsistent,
separated intellectual soul made in the image of God. 44
III. LIFE AFTER DEATH

Pasnau dismisses Aquinas's profoundly Aristotelian conviction
that our natural desire for immortality cannot be "in vain"
(otherwise nature itself would be unintelligible) as an argument
(STh I, q. 75, a. 6) that depends on unacceptable teleological
assumptions that Aquinas himself, so Pasnau alleges, recognized
to be weak (362). The allegation is dubious. Aquinas calls the
human desire for perpetual existence, which is natural to an
intelligence that apprehends being "absolutely and according to all
time" (STh I, q. 75, a. 6), a sign of the soul's temporal
incorruptibility. But the term does not indicate that Aquinas
regarded such teleological arguments as weak. To take but one
example: Aquinas uses a long and very subtle argument from
natural desire (ScG III, cc. 50ff.) to prove that the ultimate end of
any created intelligence should be and can only be the direct

41 See De Verit., q. 19, a.1 (ed. Spiazzi, Quaest.disput., 1:358a): "Sed modurn intelligendi
[post mortem] difficile est considerare, eo quod necesse est ponere earn [animam] habere
aliurn modum intelligendi quam nunc habeat."
42 Joseph Owens, "Soul as Agent in Aquinas," The New Scholasticism48 (1974): 68, 71.
43 See ScG N, c. 51 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:343b, n. 3876): arguments framed from
the perspective of divine providence, in this case the body's prelapsarian harmony with its
governing soul, are said to be satis probabiliter.
44 See ScG II, c. 81 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:235b, n. 1625b): "Esse vero separatae
animae est ipsi soli absque corpore. Unde nee eius operatic, quae est intelligere explebitur per
respectum ad aliqua obiecta in corporeis organis existentia, quae sunt phantasmata."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

15

intellectual vision of the divine essence, although that vision is
utterly supernatural and gratuitous.
The conclusion of the first argument (in STh I, q. 75, a. 6) is
that a subsistent as distinguished from an accidental or material
substantial form iforma material is) is incorruptible because the
former is inseparable from its own act of being (esse). This
argument's underlying premiss, which is a restatement of the
principle of identity, is that "it is impossible for a form to be
separated from itself" (ibid.). But this premiss does not entail that
every form is absolutely incorruptible or inseparable from its own
being. By definition, an accidental form is one that is corrupted
when the substance in which it adheres undergoes a change in the
relevant category-cold to hot, small to large, and so forth. The
rational soul is a substantial, not an accidental, form. But it is also
not a material form whose actuality is equivalent to and exhausted
in the actuality of the material compound of which it is the
substantial form. The being of a substantial forma materialisthough it belongs to the form "in virtue of itself"-is "submersed"
or inseparable from matter; hence, such a form has no being apart
from matter. It is thus corrupted per accidens (i.e., loses being per
accidens) when the material substance undergoes corruption (=
transmutatio de esse in non esse) through the separation of the
form from its matter. 45
The rational soul, however, has an act of intellectual
understanding that is transcendent or not dependent on the body
which it informs, and only thus can it be known to have a
subsistent actus essendi. In reality, the order is exactly reversed:
in the words of the metaphysical formula, "agere sequitur ad esse
in actu. "46 Hence, the rational soul as a subsistent substantial form
with an esse absolutum can be separated from matter-but not,
thereby, corrupted per accidens as is a material form-when its
compound, the living human body, is corrupted. Aquinas
concludes that just as no form can be per se separated from itself
(or, equivalently, from its own actuality), neither can any
Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2 (ed. Mandonnet, 2:483) .
..,; ScG ill, c. 69 (ed Pera-Marc-Caramella, 3:97a, n. 2450). Cf. Comp. theol., I, c. 21, S6:
"Unumquodque enim potest agere inquantum est ens actu."
45 See II

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

16

subsistent form be separated from its own actuality or subsistent
actus essendi.
This would be Aquinas's answer to Pasnau's charge (366) that,
somehow, a created agent might be able to corrupt per se a
subsistent soul-form: since there is no intrinsic potentiality
towards nonbeing in a subsistent form (STh I, q. 75, a. 6, ad 2), it
is not possible (logically or ontologically) for a created agent to
annihilate it. The only possibility is for the creator to withdraw
the divine causality that originates and sustains the being of all
creatures, including subsistent immaterial creatures. Pasnau,
nonetheless, is swayed by the objection that since the embodied
human soul needs the material phantasm in order to cognize
anything, a separate soul cannot function on its own and,
therefore, "might well be destroyed, indirectly, by the body's
being destroyed" (366). Aquinas, however, holds to the distinction
between the intellect's proper functioning (understanding the
universal nature of any sensible body), which is not the act of any
bodily organ, and the sensible object of that intellectual act (the
phantasm from which the intelligible species is abstracted). 47 The
act of understanding, inasmuch as it requires a sensible object,
may be said to depend secundum quid on the latter bodily
phantasm. 48 But can the disembodied soul, which lacks phantasms,
be said to exist if it does not engage in intellectual acts? From his
earliest works, Aquinas took note of the question and tried to
ward off the negative conclusion that it implied. 49
It could be that, postmortem, the human soul falls into a deep
Pauline sleep (1Cor15 :51) until the day of resurrection, eternally
alive but in no way functioning intellectually-but this is an
eventuality that would have seemed utterly implausible to anyone
47

See II Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, ad 6 (ed. Mandonnet, 2:484).

48 Cf. STh I, q. 89, a. 5: "Sed sicut actus intellectus principaliter quidem et fonnaliter

est
in ipso intellectu, rnaterialiter autern et dispositive in inferioribus viribus idem etiam dicendum
est de habitu."
49 See III Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 4, resp. (ed. Moos, 4:997, n. 148): "Dicere enirn quod
secundum id quod rnodo anirna habet in natura sua, non possit intelligere sine corpore aliquo
rnodo, est valde farniliare illis qui ponunt anirnarn cum corpore deficere; quia ... si nulla
operationum quas habet potest esse sine corpore, nee ipsa sine corpore esse posset, cum
operatio naturalis consequatur naturarn."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

17

living or thinking within a neo-Platonic philosophical cosmos that
has been assimilated and conformed to the created world of
Christian faith. It is not surprising that Pasnau, who it would seem
does not live or think within either of those worlds, finds
Aquinas's complete answer (STh I, q. 89, a. 1, ad 3) philosophically unsatisfactory: that, postmortem, God will infusenaturally not supernaturally-intelligible species in the separated
subsistent soul by which it can cognize. 50 Pasnau searches,
wrongheadedly, for some demonstration that God will or, in fact,
must infuse the separated soul with such species. Finding that
Aquinas provides no such demonstration, Pasnau dismisses
Aquinas's account as "nothing more than an extended just-so
story" (368). But all that Aquinas can attempt is to show what it
would be appropriate for God to do. How could Aquinas
demonstrate what God must do? The Christian God, in regard to
all created beings, acts-need we be reminded?-freely and not
from any necessity.
Pasnau, unfairly, turns Aquinas into an ideologue. Aquinas "as
a Christian," is not "committed to arriving at certain sorts of
results"(361)-that
is, the soul's immortality-rather,
as a
theologian, he is interested in understanding and, if possible,
demonstrating the truth of certain Christian beliefs.51 The point
of Aquinas's argument-not
"story" but argumentum
conveniens-is that the human soul's postmortem mode of
knowing can be analogized to that of the angelic separate
intelligences, who at their creation are connaturally infused with
intelligible species. Such infusion, by God via the superior
separate intelligences, would also be in accordance with the
disembodied human soul's mode of being. Unlike the material
forms of bodies, the rational soul has an esse absolutum;
postmortem, it may be called secundum diversam considerationem
(here a consideratio secundum rem) not the form of the living
human composite but a separate "subsistent substance. "52
so See SI'h I, q. 89, a. 3: "anima separata intelligit per species quas recipit ex influentia
divini luminis, sicut et angeli."
51 See De Verit., q. 19, a. 1.
52 IT Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4 (ed. Mandonnet, 2:484).

18

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

The latter consideration,
however, is not what
predominates-indeed, in regard to their cognitive powers, the
differences between the separate substances and disembodied
souls are stressed-in the account of the separate soul found in
the works written after 1265, notably question 89 of the Prima
Pars (dating from 1265-68) and question 15 of the Quaestiones
Disputatae de Anima (1269).53 In these works, Aquinas continues
to maintain that embodied and disembodied or separate human
souls have different modes of being, but he now emphasizes that
they have the same nature. 54 Accordingly, there remains only one
natural way of knowing for the separated soul. No longer does
Aquinas attempt to assimilate ("perfectly") the disembodied
human soul's mode of knowing to that of the totally separate
substances. 55 As "the lowest among all of the intellectual
substances," 56 the soul has an "inferior intellectual power. " 57 The
knowledge that it gains through infused universal species is not so
much "abundant" 58 as imperfect; it can only be "general and
confused" (a. 3 ).
In these later texts, the natural modus intelligendiof the human
soul is the significant and controlling notion: Aquinas describes
the understanding that results from the divinely originated but
naturalis infiuxus59 of these intelligible species as praeternaturam
of the disembodied human soul (STh I, q. 89, a. 1). 60 It is the
53 On the emergence and central role of "the Aristotelian

notion of nature" in the later
discussions of the disembodied soul, see Anton C. Pegis, "The Separated Soul and its Nature
in St. Thomas," in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274-1974: Commemorative Studies, ed. Armand A.
Maurer, C.S.B. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 1:131-58.
54 See STh I, q. 89, a. 1: "Habet autem anima alium modum essendi cum unitur corpori
et cum fuerit a corpore separata, manente tamen eadem animae natura."
55 Cf. ScG II, c. 81 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:236a, n. 1625) where the modus
intelligendi of the disembodied soul "perfecte assimilabitur substantiis separatis."
56 "Manifestum est enim quod anima humana est infima inter omnes intellectuales
substantias" (Q. D. de Anima, q. 18; ed. Robb, 239).
57 Ibid.
58 So described in ScG II, c. 81 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:236a, n. 1625).
59 Q. D. de Anima, q. 15 (ed. Robb, 214).
60 Cf. III Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 4 (ed. Moos, 3:996) which contrasts the nature of the soul
with its embodied mode of operating cognitively in statu viae. The proper object of the human
intellect, according to its nature, is the intelligible species, not the embodied phantasm (ibid.,
ad 5). ·

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

19

nature of the soul that inclines it, even in its disembodied state, to
reunion with the body. 61 The original union with the body was for
the good of the soul; its postmortem disembodiment is not for its
good, but rather is contra naturam. 62 Embodiment is the only
condition that allows for a "perfect and proper knowledge of [the
material] things" (ibid.) which remain, even for the disembodied
soul, the things proportioned to the soul's capacitas naturalis. 63
In its contra naturam disembodied state, the soul's infused
knowledge is praeter naturam in a sense that comes very close to
being contra naturam. Here we have the Thomistic basis for an
argumentum conveniens for the future resurrection of the body:
if nothing contra naturam can be everlasting in a providentially
created and governed universe, it is exigently reasonable to think
that the disembodied human soul, because it has an everlasting act
of being, will be divinely reunited once again with its
commensurate body, the principle of its own individuation as a
spiritual substance. 64 What more, by way of philosophical "proof"
for a revealed theological truth, the resurrection of the human
body, could an "Aristotelian Christian" demand?
Still, any kind of argument for a postmortem subsistent human
soul, even one that finds a requirement in the soul's nature for
reunion with the body, might still seem to jeopardize the thisworldly, hylomorphic unity of the single human substance that is
both corporeal and spiritual. A living human being is not, in any
way, composed of two substances, a soul-substance and a bodysubstance. 65 The living human being is a single substance with a
61 See Q. D. de Anima, q. 15 (ed. Robb, 214): "Ad perfectionem igitur intellectualis
operationis necessariwn fuit animam corpori uniri."
62 See ScG N, ch. 79 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 3:391b, n. 4135): "anima corpori
naturaliter unitur: est enim secundwn suam essentiam corporis forma. Est igitur contra
naturam animae absque corpore esse."
63 Q. D. de Anima, q. 18 (ed. Robb, 239).
64 See ScG N, c. 81; cf. Pegis, "Separated Soul," 157-58.
65 Pasnau forcefully explains (73-79) that, for Aquinas, only a hylomorphic account
adequately guarantees that it is the same embodied person who both thinks and senses: the
rational soul is the substantial form of the matter of the living hwnan body. No other
explanation of the soul-body relationship-spatial continuity, functional order, or movermoved--can adequately show that an embodied human person is an unum simpliciter (ScG
II, c. 68).

20

DENISJ. M. BRADLEY

nature that is both bodily and rational. Aquinas allows (STh I, q.
75, a. 2, ad 1) that the disembodied human soul can be called a
particular thing (hoc aliquid), because, postmortem, it is a
particular subsistent substance, but he carefully qualifies both of
the latter terms. In the full or proper sense of "subsistence," a
particular thing is subsistent if it neither inheres in something else,
as does an accident or a strictly material form, nor is a part of a
whole, as a hand or an eye is a part of the living body. A hand,
since it does not exist "extrinsically grounded" 66 in another after
the fashion of an accident (as, e.g., a color in a surface) or a
material form (which exists only in matter), can be
said-according to the first criterion, but improperly-"to subsist"
and, thus, to be a hoc aliquid. However, in the proper sense of the
term, a subsistent must be neither inherent nor a part (ibid., ad 2);
both criteria must be met in order for the subsistent to be properly
identified as a hoc aliquid with a per se operation. Strictly
speaking, a living hand is a part of a hoc aliquid, and is not, by
itself, an individual substance operating per se. The operation of
a part is attributed to the whole operating through its parts: a man
touches through his hands and sees through his eyes. Like the
hand or eye, the embodied human soul is a part of the living
human composite: a man understands through his rational soul.
A disembodied soul, which no longer inheres in the matter of
the human composite, is certainly subsistent in the first sense of
the term. It is, therefore, a hoc aliquid, but only in a qualified
sense: it is not an hypostasis or substance that possesses a
complete human nature. As the (disembodied) form of the human
body, it remains a part of human nature. A disembodied human
soul, therefore, is not like an amputated human hand; once
amputated, the hand is dead and no longer really a part of the
living human body. But one must also say that the disembodied
human soul is not only a part. The disembodied human soul exists
66 See De Pot., q. 9, a. 1 (ed. Pession, 226a): "Substantia vero quae est subiectum, duo
habet propria: Quorum primum est quod non indiget extrinseco fundamento in quo
sustentetur, sed sustentatur in seipso; et ideo dicitur subsistere, quasi per se non in alio
existens."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

21

per se but now separated from the living body that it once
informed. It is clear, then, that the embodied human soul is
significantly unlike a living or attached hand, and, no less, a
disembodied human soul is significantly unlike a detached or
amputated hand. Unlike the attached hand, the embodied
intellectual soul has an act not attributable to the body; unlike the
detached hand, the disembodied soul continues to exist and can
be unequivocally identified (unlike the detached hand) as the same
(previously embodied) soul.
Yet Pasnau contends that the disembodied soul is subsistent or
a substance "in precisely the sense in which a hand is" (66). This
contention flattens Aquinas's comparison of the disembodied soul
with a living, attached hand. The Thomistic comparison is an
analogy-not a claim that the disembodied soul "part" and the
living hand "part" are, in some univocal sense, "equally subsistent
and so equally substances" (ibid.). Pasnau is led to his odd
conclusion by fantasizing about a functioning but disembodied
hand. Such fantasies, in this case conjuring up an alternative
possible world where a hand could function apart from a living
human body, are set pieces in current philosophical repertoire.
They are alien to Aquinas's resolutely focused, albeit theologically
sublated, this-worldly "Aristotelian naturalism. " 67 No matter:
Pasnau's imaginary, alternative-world hand could hardly be
said-or said only equivocally-to be a "part" in the way that a
living hand in our world is a part of the human body. The latter
is a part and only a part precisely because it cannot act in any
hand-like way once amputated from the whole human body.
Pasnau's fantasy muddies rather than clarifies Aquinas's
doctrine of the postmortem soul-part. The embodied soul is a part
of the living human being-not a quantitative or functionally
subsidiary part such as an attached hand-in the way that form
and matter are parts of the compound: as intrinsic, real coprinciples. As embodied, then, the rational soul is not a separate
67 For an instance of Thomistic naturalism, see ScG II, c. 86 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello,
2:248a, n. 1708) on the two possible ways in our world that the transmission of semen might
be thought (erroneously) to originate the human soul.

22

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

substance but the form of a single subsistent substance, the human
being. What seems paradoxical-more so if one ignores Aquinas's
analogical use of the term "part" -is that this soul, while
remaining a part (unlike the severed, no longer living or
functional "hand"), can exist, postmortem, as a subsistent
individual substance. The conclusion, nonetheless, follows because
the embodied soul, unlike even the living hand, has an activity
(intellection) that transcends the bodily whole of which it is a
"part."
Aquinas did not need to imagine an alternative possible world
in order to argue for the postmortem existence of an embodied
but, nonetheless, immaterial, subsistent, substantial, and spiritually
transcendent human soul. To quote another version of the
formula: "Esse est prius quam agere natura. "68 Here and now the
human soul acts spiritually because it has a spiritual act of
existence which, postmortem, sustains it as a continuing spiritual
substance: 69 even while embodied, Thomistic human souls
certainly are "more of a substance than are other [bodily] parts"
(68). Its act of being and, consequently, the activity of the
intellectual soul "transcends the whole genus of bodies. "70
Pasnau's remarks to the contrary, there is, indeed, something
special-Aquinas
explicitly says "marvelous" 71-about the
existence and activity of the human soul here and now. 72 To use
Pasnau's language, although Aquinas would have found it
altogether nonsensical, human souls neither possess nor lack
"some kind of stuff that animal souls possess" (70); rather, they
are spirits because they have a different act of being-and,
68 ill Sent., d. 18, q. un., a. 3, ad 1 (ed. Moos, 3:563,

n. 49).
2:204b, n. 1465): "[anima humana] quasi
non dependens a corpore in operando: quia nee etiam in essendo dependet a corpore"; Spirit
creat., q. un., a. 2, ad 4 (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, 377a}: "Tamen in quantum attingitur a corpore,
[animal est forma; in quantum vero superexcedit corporis proportionem, dicitur spiritus vel
spiritualis substantia."
70 &G II, c. 86; Anderson trans., 2:292, p.
71 See &G II, c. 68 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:203, n. 1453).
72 But Pasnau is not entirely consistent in the language he uses to describe Thomistic man:
"human beings are exceptional, in that we combine the immateriality of an angel with the
materiality of brute animals" (100).
69 See &G II, c. 69 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello

PASNAU ON AQIBNAS AND THE SOUL

consequently, different activities-from that of animal souls. And
this spiritual act of being, in comparison with the being of animal
souls, is not merely a matter of "degrees of actuality" (ibid.); the
human soul is not "a form just like other forms" (72). 73 It is the
"most noble of material forms" (Comp. theol. I, c. 9, §2) and
occupies a unique rank in the hierarchy of beings.
The being [esse]of the rational soul is acquired in a certain middle way between
separate and material forms. For immaterial forms, namely angels, receive from
God being [esse] that is neither dependent on some matter, nor in some matter.
Truly material forms receive from God being [esse] that both is in matter and
depends upon matter, since they are not able to be conserved without matter. 74

The hierarchy of being into which the human soul fits is a
mirabilis rerum connexio 75 of different genera of beings. Man,
because of his rational soul, is the lowest member in the genus of
intellectual substances. While the human intellectual soul
possesses all the sensitive powers of the animal soul, the sensitive
soul of a man is specifically different from that of a nonrational
animal. 76
IV. IRREDUCIBLEPRINCIPLES
To reinforce his admittedly "unorthodox" (132) notion of
"reductive hylomorphism"-that is, his rejection of "dualistic
forms of hylomorphism" (101 )-Pasnau notes that material forms
are not directly produced through substantial changes; rather, the
substantial composites of which they are the forms are produced.
73 See &G II, c. 87 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:249b, n. 1716): "Anima autem humana
hoc habet proprium inter alias formas, quod est in suo esse subsistens, et esse quod est sibi
proprium, corpori communicat."
7• "Esse autem animae rationali acquiritur quodam modo medio inter formas separatas et
materiales. Formae enim immateriales, sicilicet angeli, recipiunt a Deo esse non dependens ab
aliqua materia, nee in aliqua materia. Formae vero materiales esse a Deo accipiunt et in
materia existens, et a materia dependens, quia sine materia conservari non possunt" (De Verit.,
q. 19, a. l; ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disput., 1:359a).
75 &G II, c. 68 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:203, n. 1453).
76 See &G II, c. 89 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:225b, n. 1747): "anima sensitiva hominis
ab anima sensitiva bruti specie differt per hoc quod est etiam intellectiva."

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

24

This much of his exposition is in line with Aquinas: forms are
educed from the potency of matter by an agent acting on the
matter. But while Pasnau correctly states that Thomistic form and
matter are not separate entities, he also asserts that they have no
"separate causal powers" (103). Here the word "separate" is
doing service for the word "split." Of course, form and matter, as
coprinciples, cannot have separate causal powers if this means that
they cannot (save in the case of the human compound) be
ontologically "split" apart. But, more controversially, Pasnau
equates not separate causal powers with not really but only
conceptually distinct casual powers. 77 That equation, textually and
systematically a blatant heterodoxy, erases the irreducible
ontological distinction, which Aristotle so carefully develops in
the first book of the Physics, between material and formal causes.
Both are required to explain substantial change. One can only
repeat Aristotle: "First principles must not be derived from one
another nor from anything else, while everything has to be
derived from them" (Phys. 1.5.188a27-29). 78
At a yet deeper level, Pasnau's "reductive hylomorphim"
cannot be squared with Aquinas's esse-metaphysics: although a
material form comes into being through the transmutation of
matter and, therefore, cannot itself exist in separation from the
matter of its composite, it is the form that gives its own act of
being (esse) to the matter and, consequently, "the composite exists
only by the form. " 79 However, unlike an Aristotelian form, the
Thomistic form is other than (and this is otherness in the ordo
essendi not just the ordo rationis) its own act of being (esse). The
latter doctrine, however, Pasnau professes to find "notoriously
77 Cf. Pasnau, 133.
73 Though prime mater can be known only on the basis of an analogy, the Aristotelian
argument for its existence and nature is apodeictic, not probable: see Joseph Owens, "The
Aristotelian Argument for the Material Principle of Bodies," in Aristotle: The Collected Papers
ofJoseph Owens, ed. John R. Catan (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New Press, 1981), 12235.
79 ScG II, c. 68; Anderson trans, 2: 204,§3. As distinguished from a separate form, which
has being through and in itself, the material form is solely the act of being of matter: as
existing only united to matter, a material form "in this way will be dependent according to
its esse on matter" (&G II, c. 86; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello 2:248b, n. 1708e; my translation).

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

25

difficult" (146), implicated in a distinction that, he implies, can
never be made "genuinely evident" because it relies on an
argument incorporating "deep metaphysical assumptions" (158).
Whatever be Pasnau's (unspecified) criteria for recognizing a
metaphysical doctrine as "genuinely evident," it is true that
complex arguments, variously reconstructed by different
Thomists, 80 are required to conclude to this fundamental
Thomistic tenet, the "real" otherness of esse and essentia in all
created beings. So let us admit that the Thomistic doctrine is
difficult but not notoriously so. When since Parmenides has there
been an easy, much less "evident," argument about being and
existence? What to one philosopher are unwarranted, argumentvitiating assumptions about being may, indeed, be another's
principles but are more likely to be hard-won conclusions. 81 At
this point, one may wonder how deeply or sympathetically Pasnau
is able to enter into the Thomistic metaphysics wherein not form
but esse is the "actuality of all actualities" composing all finite
substances. 82 Unfortunately, Pasnau sidelines this fundamental
Thomistic metaphysical tenet throughout his book. 83 Yet, it
so For an extensive review of the texts and interpretive issues, see John F. Wippel, "Essence
and Existence in the De Ente," in John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 107-32; "Essence and
Existence in Other Writings,"in ibid., 133-61.
81 Cf. Etienne Gilson, "Rencontre de l'etre," in Constantes philosophiques de l'etre (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1983), 143-68: "On ditqu'ils sont des entia, des etants. Cette
experience de l'etre est universelle, mais la reflexion sur elle ne I' est pas. Elle est assez rare et
ii est remarquable que ceux qui s'attachent a la decrire ne la situent pas tous au meme point.
Ils ne la decrivent done naturellement pas de la meme maniere."
82 See De Pot., q. 7, a. 2, ad 9 (ed. Pession, 192b): "esse est actualitas omnium actuum, et
propter hoc est perfectio omnium perfectionum."
83 Cf. Pasnau, 131: "Reality is actuality all the way down, and substances are bundles of
actuality unified by organization around a substantial form." Adequately to criticize this one,
truly misleading sentence, and others like it, would require a precis of Thomistic metaphysics.
One text must suffice to indicate the vast metaphysical distance between Pasnau and Aquinas:
"ipsum esse non est proprius actus materiae, sed substantiae totius. Eius enim actus est esse de
quo possumus dicere quod sit. Esse autem non dicitur de materia, sed de toto ..• nee forma
est ipsum esse, sed habent secundum ordinem .... Deinde quia ad ipsam etiam formam
comparatur ipsum esse ut actus" (ScG II, c. 54; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:174b, nn. 128991).
Thomistic reality (God excepted) is not "actuality all the way down": "In substantiis autem

26

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

underlies Aquinas's doctrine of the unity of man as well as the
soul's subsistence. 84
Although there is one being [esse] of [conjoined] form and matter, it is not
necessary that the matter always be exactly commensurate to the being [esse] of
the form. In fact, just as much as the form is more noble, just so much does it
exceed in its being [esse] the matter .... Hence a form whose operation exceeds
the condition of matter, [also] itself exceeds matter according to the dignity of
its being [esse]. (ScG II, c. 68; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2: 203a-b, n. 1454) 85

In the reference to the human soul-form, the principles
governing the multileveled existential and causal distinctions
drawn between the form and matter of the human composite are
evident, at least to Aquinas: once again, "in the way that a thing
has being, so does it operate. " 86 Since intellection is not a bodily
act, so too the intellectual soul is not "wholly immersed in
·matter. " 87 Rather, one must draw a positive conclusion: the
human soul even when embodied is actually "elevated above
matter in regard to its being and operation. " 88 The being of the
soul is to be in matter but not dependent on matter; as a

compositis ex materia et forma est duplex compositio actus et potentiae: prima quidem ipsius
substantiam quae componitur ex materia et forma; secunda vero ex ipsa subsantia iam
composita et esse quae etiam potest dici ex quod est et esse; vel ex quod est et quo est" {ibid.,
n.1295).
84 See ScG II, c. 68 {ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:202b, n. 1450): "forma et materia
conveniant in uno esse.••. Et hoc esse est in quo subsistit substantia composita quae est una
secundum esse ex materia et forma constans. Non autem impeditur substantia intellectualis,
per hoc quod est subsistens ... esse formale principium essendi materiae quasi esse suum
communicans materiae."
85 "Quamvis autem sit unum esse formae et materiae, non tamen oportet quod materia
semper adaequet esse formae. Immo, quanto forma est nobilior, tan to in suo esse superexcedit
materiam. . . . Unde forma cuius operatio superexcedit conditionem materiae, et ipsa
secundum dignitatem sui esse superexcedit materiam" {ibid.; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello,
2:203a-b, n. 1454).
86 "sic enim res habet esse sicut et operatur" {ScG II, c. 86; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello,
2:248a, n. 1707).
87 "[non] sit totaliter immersa materiae" (ScG II, c. 69; ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:204b,
n. 1465).
88 See ScG II, c. 89 {ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello., 2:255b, n. 1747): "ipsa substantia animae
[humanae] sit secundum esse et operationem supra corpus elevata•."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

27

consequence, the matter of the living human body is raised to the
level of the spiritual existence of the soul. 89
The soul acquires from God being [esse] in matter; it exists in matter insofar as it is the
form of the body. Through this, the [soul-form] is united, according to its being [esse], to
the body. However, it does not depend on the body, since the being [esse] of the soul is
able to be conserved without the body. 90

V. WHEN HUMAN LIFE BEGINS

Given its transcendent or immaterial act of being (esse), the
human soul cannot be educed from matter by any corporeal agent.
Human beings, because they have spiritual souls, are the only
animals that cannot, solely by themselves, reproduce themselves.
Yet human procreation remains human. Human semen is not itself
actually alive or ensouled but Aquinas accepts that it contains a
"frothy breath" (spiritus spumosum) that has a "formative power"
(vis formativa). This formative power, as a causal extension of the
generative power of the father's soul, is able to educe from the
matter of semen, through a series of internally guided substantial
changes, the vegetative and animal souls. Aquinas holds to the
biological doctrine standard among his contemporaries: the
formative power can only dispose matter to receive an intellectual
soul-form: an intellectual soul must be infused into a living body
almost but not quite human. God Himself must directly create
and infuse the intellectual soul into an embryo-not a vegetable
but a uniquely prehuman animal-that has the incipient bodily
organs requisite for intellectual activity. During gestation, the
divine infusion of the rational soul perhaps occurs-Aquinas
noncommittally repeats Aristotle-around the fortieth day for
males and the ninetieth for females.91
89 See ScG II, c. 68 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 2:203a, n. 1451): "Est enim materiae
corporalis ut recipientis et subiecti ad aliquid altius elevati: substantiae autem intellectualis ut
principii, et secundum propriae naturae congruentem."
90 "Anima vero acquirit esse in materia a Deo, in materia quidem existens, in quantum est
forma corporis, ac per hoc secundum esse corpori unita: non autem a corpore dependens, quia
esse animae sine corpore conservari potest" (De Verit., q. 19, a. 1; ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disput.,
1:359a).
91 See ill Sent., d. 3, q. 5, a. 2; cf. Aristotle, Hist. de an., 7.4.583b2-30.

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

28

Since the biological details in Aquinas's account of procreation
are so fatally antiquated, one might suppose that they cannot be
usefully or at least not easily coordinated with the data of
contemporary embryology. Not so: Pasnau makes much moral
ado-with undisguised hostility and condescension towards what
he tags the "noxious social agenda" (105) of the Roman Catholic
Church-about the continuing relevance of the "delayed
hominization" of the embryo. Pasnau explains how updating the
vis formativa to the role of DNA "removes much of the impetus
for holding that human life begins at conception" (109). A
Thomistic God, depending on which reckoning the soul's creator
favors, morally may--or rather metaphysically must-wait
twenty-five to thirty-two (maybe even thirty to thirty-five weeks)
or, more "conservatively" if God follows Pasnau, twenty weeks
before infusing the rational soul into the prehuman animal which,
by one or other of those dates, has a sufficiently developed brain
cortex to receive and sustain such a soul. 92 While one might be
troubled by the moral indeterminacy consequent upon these
shifting deadlines for foetal humanity, Pasnau is more concerned
about emphatically reiterating Aquinas's proposition that the
intellectual soul as form needs to be infused into the right sort of
matter. 93
For his part, Pasnau argues-with a conviction that goes
beyond the metaphysical value of any appeal to scientific method
or consensus among scientists about the facts of brain
development-that conception cannot be the ontologically apt
moment when the rational soul is infused into the prehuman
embryo: "To have a rational soul requires having the potential in
hand for using the mind, rather than having some remote
potential to develop the potential" (420 n. 18; emphasis added).
Is the normative or moral difference asserted between these two
"potentialities" -remote and proximate- "genuinely evident"? It
is to Pasnau: on this assertion, he rests his whole argument for the
permissibility of early abortions: in early cases, the animal killed
92

Cf. Pasnau, 419-20 n. 14.

93 But not as Pasnau so breezily puts it: "the human mind ... must

sort of body" (113).

be attached to the right

PASNAU ON AQillNAS AND THE SOUL

29

is without a brain and, therefore, simply not yet human enough to
count as having an inviolable moral dignity. But here advocacy
throws off exegesis. Pasnau's own bumptious metaphor
("potential in hand") eliminates Aquinas's precisely drawn and
important distinction between (a) the spiritual power of intellect
itself (the subject of which is the soul not the body), and (b) the
bodily organ(s) needed for the actual exercise of that power. If we
translate his metaphor into plainer language, Pasnau's "functional
capacity" criterion necessitates that the prehuman body have
(literally) a halfway-developed brain before it can be informed by
a human soul. Of course, this brain requirement is exactly in line
with Pasnau's inability to sustain Aquinas's argument "that the
intellect is immaterial" (119). This inability colors Pasnau' s whole
interpretation and ultimately generates his negative evaluation of
Aquinas's "revolutionary Aristotelian psychology": the rational
human soul does not transcend matter and certainly not the
brain. 94
I shall leave it to others to consider whether Aquinas's or, more
likely, some contemporary arguments for the spiritual
transcendence of intellect over brain are dispositive. 95 Aquinas
certainly thought he had demonstrated that transcendence given
what he took to be the intentional limitations of any bodily organ:
unlike the intentio mentis, no determinate bodily organ is able to
intend or be informed by the universal natures of all other
material things (STh I, q. 75, a. 2). 96 But suppose, to go along with
Pasnau, that the rational soul is a strictly material form that does
perish with the body. Even so, what argument cinches Pasnau's
contention that the mid-gestation brain is the necessary and
94 See Pasnau, 48-57.
95 See, for example, the articles in Neuroscience and the Person, ed. Robert John Russell,
et al., vol 4 of Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican
Observatory Publications; Berkeley: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1999).
Pasnau, 410-11 n. 11 refers to other arguments made on behalf of "the unlimited scope of
intentionality" and against "finite naturalistic" accounts of knowing.
96 On the natural (and supernaturally enabled) intentional scope of the human mind, see
STh II-II, q. 175, a. 4: "Oportet autem, cum intellectus elevatur [above the entire material and
created world known through phantasms] ad altissimam Dei essentiae visionem, ut tota men tis
intentio illuc advocetur."

30

DENIS]. M. BRADLEY

sufficiently developed organ for the emergence (presumably by
solely natural causes) of what Aquinas would surely have regarded
as an oxymoron, an intellectual but strictly material soul-form?
Aquinas's embryology gives us no help; it is full of mistakes that
Pasnau glosses over. Pasnau's quotations from contemporary
embryologists about the chronology of cortical development
cannot settle the metaphysical/moral issue of how delayed is
"delayed hominization." For embryologists, the species identity of
the human zygote is noncontroversial and its continuous
internally motivated and directed development is "genuinely
evident": it is a member of a natural kind-the species homo
sapiens-and, unalterably after uterine implantation and
gastrulation, remains a single biological entity. Contemporary
philosophers, as Pasnau acknowledges, mostly take the biological
data for granted; in arguing for the moral permissibility of
abortion, they spin out the conceptual issues that permits
questioning, and as often denying, that the developing embryo or
foetus is a "person" with any overriding metaphysical status or
moral dignity.
Again, suppose that we correlate, as Pasnau does, the
emergence of intellectual but strictly material soul-forms with
approximately mid-gestation brains: the counter question and its
implied answer, readily posed by any contemporary Aristotelian
who has assimilated the data of contemporary embryology, has
already emerged in full-one might even say official-force. 97
What form other than the intellectual soul-whether or not it is
a spiritual form capable of existing as a postmortem separate
substance-could
actualize and teleologically direct the
continuous development of (what ordinarily stays) a single,
genetically unique body that has, from conception as a single cell
with forty-six chromosomes, the epigenetic primordia for all
bodily organs, including, of course, the human brain? Pasnau gives
not a hint that he regards such a question as intellectually
respectable, or even required by the embryological data: for him,
97 See Robert P. George and Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, "Appendix: Personal Statements,"

in

Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Reportof the President'sCouncil on Bioethics (New
York: Public Affairs, 2000), 294-306.

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

31

"it is surely absurd to think that a few unformed cells count as a
human being" (120).
To be sure, some of the data are puzzling. Monozygotic
twinning, the fusion of zygotes, and the totipotency of detached
embryonic cells raise questions about a zygote's continuing
personal identity--enough
questions that some Catholic
philosophers rejected, too precipitately given the results of recent
research, the "immediate hominization" of the preimplanted
zygote.98 But the developmental individuation of embryonic cells
does not commence with implantation or, subsequently, with the
appearance of the primitive streak. Considerable evidence
supports the view that the cells within a two-cell mammalian
zygote are not featureless but are already internally
differentiated. 99
In the vast majority of cases, the development of the human
zygote, unlike what Aquinas thought (and Pasnau must commit
himself to think), does not involve any apparent "constant, radical
discontinuity" (123) that could signal the need for and the plausible advent of generically different souls. 100 That is, there is no
evidence that the developing human embryo is informed by a kind
of Aristotelian sequence of substantially different soul-forms98 See William A. Wallace, "Aquinas's Legacy on Individuation, Cogitation, and
Hominization," in D. Gallagher, ed., Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy, Studies in Philosophy
and the History of Philosophy 28 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1994), 173-93: "If God had created the human soul and infused it into the zygote at
the moment of fertilization, then a stable individual of human nature would already have been
formed" (188). For the biological evidence in favor of the zygote's initial (preimplantation)
developmental as well as genetic individuation, see George and Gomez-Lobo, "Appendix:
Personal Statements," 301-3.
99 On "the existence of patterning information in the early human embryo," see Helen
Pearson, "Your Destiny, from Day One," Nature, News Features: 8 July 2002
(http://www.nature.com/nsu/020701/020701-12.hanl): "developmental biologists will no
longer dismiss early mammalian embryos as featureless bundles of cells." Cf. Pasnau, 422 n.
25, who notes that "specialization already sets in," at the eight-cell stage.
100 See Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3d ed.
(New-York: Wiley-Liss, 2001), 8: "During the embryonic period proper, milestones include
fertilization, activation of embryonic from extra-embryonic cells, implantation, and the
appearance of the primitive streak, and bilateral symmetry. Despite the various embryological
milestones, however, development is a continuous rather than a saltatory process and hence
the selection of prenatal events would seem to be largely arbitrary."

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

32

vegetative, animal, and rational. On the contrary, if we agree to
value intellectual activity as the proper or defining human activity,
then it seems "genuinely evident" that intellectual "brain-usage"
is the telos that defines a human zygote's internally directed,
individuated, and unitary development from its temporal
beginning: nothing intervenes from outside the zygote's own
genetic code substantially to alter or to redirect its original
development.
The delayed exercise of the human zygote's intellectual
capacity or potency-and it is the exercise not the biological
capacity that is not functional (not "in hand") at conception-may
perhaps be described as temporally but not ontologically
"remote." For Aquinas, the intellectual power is a necessary
property of the human essence; what seems eminently reasonable
to think is that this essential property, especially if it is regarded
as a nonseparable property of the living human body, is a power
contained in the body's determinate and determining form-the
initial chromosomal program-that internally controls the
development of the zygote. All of this information is readily
available in the most elementary presentations of human
embryology. Can one responsibly or plausibly contend, then, that
Aquinas's reasons for denying that "human life begins at
conception ... remain compelling today" (106). Or that Aquinas
redivivus would find them compelling?
Although the morality of abortion is-and, given the structure
of the Summa Theologiae,should remain-an issue quite outside
of the scope of a commentary on questions 75-89 of the Prima
Pars, Pasnau is a man with a passionately felt mission, quick to
disparage papal "rhetoric" in favor of his own, ready to shoulder
what he considers to be the unavoidable burden of making
"comparisons and trade-offs" when weighing "the value of human
life" in respect to other values. 101 So, despite Aquinas's-and,
prior to the fourteen century, apparently every other medieval
theologian's and canonist's-condemnation
of all abortions,

101 Pasnau, 125.

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

33

including those of "unanimated foetuses," as seriously sinful, 102
Pasnau enlists Aquinas in the contemporary proabortion and
proeuthanasia movement. 103 This move is more than surprising.
Pasnau is plain wrong to assert that Roman Catholic philosophers
and theologians have deliberately slighted Aquinas's notion of
"delayed hominization. " 104 Since John Haldane and Patrick Lee
have already taken Pasnau to task for this section of his book, I
need not repeat their courteous but meticulous deconstruction of
Pasnau's misleading and misplaced polemic. 105 Let me single out
only one specious claim that Pasnau recycles as part of a long
argument against the actual humanity of the embryo. On any
biologically precise and morally apt description, sperm and ova
are not "potential humans"; 106 their only relevant innate potential
is to fuse with the other so that each can provide one half of the
DNA for a new, genetically distinct, one-cell organism. Only the
one-cell zygote is an organism with properly human potential
because, arguably, it already is human. A spermatozoon and an
oocyte, left to their own solitary devices, go biologically nowhere;
they either unite or die.

VI. DICENDUM QUOD ...
Pasnau , who despite his penchant for "drawing conclusions
about his [Aquinas's] metaphysics that go beyond what the texts
explicitly say" (85)-indeed, sometimes contrary to what the texts
102 See John J. Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic
Perspective(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1977), 306. Citing the unpublishedQuodlibeta,
q. 10 of another Dominican, John of Naples, it was Antoninus (1389-1435), the archbishop
of Florence, who first raised and affirmatively answered the question whether it was morally
permissible, in order to save the life of the mother, to abort an "unanimated foetus," that is,
one not yet animated by a rational soul.
103 Cf. Pasnau, 105: "Aquinas provides the resources to show something of what is wrong
with the Church's position"; 124: "So the best modern information on brain functioning
combined with Aquinas's metaphysics yields an attractive symmetry between the beginning
and the end of human life."
104 Cf. ibid., 115.
105 See John Haldane and Patrick Lee, "Aquinas on Human Ensoulment, Abortion and the
Value of Life," Phi/osoplry 78, no. 304 (2003): 255-78.
106 See Pasnau, 121.

34

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

explicitly say-can be historically erudite and textually
perspicacious. Still, he usually engages Aquinas agonistically,
reading with a "hermenutics of suspicion" that betrays his own
underlying but continually surfacing anxiety about the au courant
philosophical worth and moral propriety of much of Aquinas's
theology. Since Hume, for Pasnau, has set the course of the
"philosophical mainstream" (335), he often approaches a topic in
Aquinas by first raising objections that someone with a Humean
mind-set might raise. 107 Granted, this approach might be defended
on medieval as well as contemporary grounds: Pasnau replicates,
after a fashion, the structure of a quaestio in the Summa
Theologiae, which first lists the objections to the doctrinal position
that Aquinas will advance. But Pasnau's optique distorts as much
as it clarifies Aquinas. 108 If Aquinas is "diametrically opposed to
Hume" (262), as Pasnau himself acknowledges, then immersing
him, even partially, into mainstream "Humean" (or any other
opposed) philosophy too easily allows one to conflate diverse
problems, methods, and principles and thereby generate
interpretative novelties that are systematically misguided and not
merely anachronistic and eisegetic. I can only offer as salutary
hermeneutical advice the wise dictum of that master of historical
erudition, Richard McKeon: "The relations among philosophies
are not simple differences concerning the same or comparable
problems, nor can they be reduced to a translation formula which

107 Cf. ibid., 26, 43, 262, 335-6
108 For example, Pasnau intertwines (ch. 11.2) discussion of the Thomistic doctrine that
the intellectual soul has an exclusively reflexive knowledge of its own nature and operation
with an epistemological paradox that Pasnau generates (346) about the object of phenomenal
consciousness. That the incarnate intellectual soul perceives and knows sensible things is, for
Aquinas, the first principle or absolute beginning of sound philosophizing about knowing: cf.
STh I, q. 89, a. l: "Ad hoc ergo quod perfectam et propriam cognitionem de rebus habere
possent, sic [animae humanae] naturaliter sunt institutae ut corporibus uniantur, et sic ab ipsis
rebus sensibilibus propriam de eis cognitionem accipiant." Pasnau says, however, that Aquinas
"takes consciousness for granted" (345). This observation betrays Pasnau's own bias. For
Aquinas, this is true: we do not first perceive our perceiving or know or knowing. But only
by voiding Aquinas's own first principle, which ground his "cognitive realism," can one charge
that he ought but fails to provide what modern epistemological critique demands, "an
evaluation of its [consciousness's] reliability" (347).

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

35

will transform a philosophic doctrine into the equivalent
statement proper to another philosophy. " 109
Pasnau's provocative novelties are generated by a hermeneutical assumption deeper than his merely surface Humean
predilections. The answer to one question largely controls how we
view and read Aquinas. In what sense may it be said that Aquinas
wrote pure philosophy?
Pasnau certainly knows that the Summa Theologiae is a "work
of theology" but he makes an all-too-common mistake about the
theological scope of the work: he holds that only "large parts" of
the Summa "presuppose elements of Christian doctrine. " 110 In
fact, the whole of the Summa Theologiae, including those parts
that Pasnau quickly labels "philosophy" (because they provide
rational arguments sans any premisses held on Christian faith),
falls, according to Aquinas, under the formal object of sacra
doctrina or (to use the less common term) theologia: Aquinas
subsumes under the revelabilia all the subjects discussed in the
Summa Theologiae, including those rational arguments for the
existence of a provident God 111 which Pasnau blithely labels
"nonsectarian theological premises" (10).
It is perplexing, given decades of discussion of this issue, that
Pasnau still thinks that he can, merely by subtracting the
revelation-dependent "theological stuff" (11, 13), reach a
remainder that is purely rational and, he thinks, evidently
philosophical. There are, of course, innumerable rational
demonstrations to be found in Aquinas's works. But so-called
"Thomistic philosophy," in its own state, is not an autonomous
enterprise; it is what Aquinas thought to be prompted by and
rationally congruent with a Christian ficles quaerens intellectum:
"When a man has a will ready to believe, he loves the truth he
believes, he thinks out and takes to heart whatever reasons he can
find in support thereof" (STh II-II, q. 2, a. 10). Now if this
109 Richard McKeon, "Philosophy and Method," in Selected Writings of Rkhard McKeon,
vol. 1, Philosophy, Science, and Culture, ed. Zahava K McKeon and Willaim G. Swenson
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 199.
110 Pasnau, 10.
111 See STh I, q. 1, a 3 (esp. ad 3).

36 .

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

reasoning is to be counted as "philosophy," it stands apart from
any philosophy allegedly generated by pure reason alone. The
theological locus of Aquinas's "philosophy" is not controversial.
What is controversial is whether Aquinas's philosophy can be
extracted from its theological setting. Those who advocate the
latter acknowledge, if they are careful, that the extracted
Thomistic philosophy is, in fact, a contemporary historian's
reconstruction. 112
Pasnau, however, makes the astonishing claim that Aquinas, in
"actual practice" (15), did not adhere to the distinction drawn in
question 1 of the Prima Pars between a theology grounded in
revelation and a philosophy grounded solely in reason; the
distinction, he suggests, cannot be taken "at face value" (ibid.). Is
the implication that philosophy in the Summa Theologiae
swallows--or attempts to swallow-revealed theology? 113 Pasnau
contends that because Aquinas offered rational demonstrations of
some religious beliefs-those called the praeambula fidei-he was
actually "concerned with limiting those presuppositions [dependent on faith] as much as possible" (ibid.). 114 This contention,
perhaps Pasnau's most provocative, leads to a preposterously
skewed view of what Aquinas attempts by reasoning within
theology. If we accept what Aquinas says, Thomistic theology
"really did take its premises from revealed truth" (ibid.). 115
Nothing in Aquinas's actual procedure suggests otherwise. In
112 Cf. Wippel, Metaphysical

Thought of Thomas Aquinas, xviii.
Cf. Pasnau, 16: "Aquinas's theology, then, is thoroughly philosophical in its methods.
Never is something accepted on faith that might be proved through reason."
114 In support of this contention, Pasnau observes that the distinction between revealed and
sacred theology (SI'h I, q. 1. a. 1, ad 2) is "immediately" (15) followed by the quinque viae of
rationally proving God's existence (STh I, q. 2, a. 3). Besides being an overstatement, Pasnau
neglects to mention that the quinque viae appear under the consideration of the divine essence
(see q. 2, prologus), a procedure that, while it takes into account Platonist and Augustinian
"theologies of essence," does not raise the question of God's existence &om a Thomistic
philosophical point of view, since Aquinas rejected any Anselmian or "ontological" proofs
reasoning from the divine essence to the divine existence; see Etienne Gilson, The Christian
Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook, C.S.B. (New York: Random House,
1956), 52.
115 See STh l, q. 1, a. 8, resp.: "Ita haec doctrina non argumentatur ad sua principia
probanda, quae sunt articul fidei"; ad 2: "Dicendum quod argumentari ex auctoritate est
maxime proprium huius doctrinae."
113

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

37

regard to the proofs for the existence of God, Aquinas prefaces
them with the words revealed "ex persona Dei" as they are
recorded in Sacred Scripture (Exod 3:14): "Ego sum qui sum." 116
Whatever Pasnau may think about the epistemic value of
putatively revealed doctrines, Aquinas held that the truths of
supernaturally infused faith are not subrational but superrational.
In theology, rational argumentation laboriously lifts the discursive
human mind to truths achieved at the lowest level of intuitive
angelic vision (STh II-II, q. 2, a. 6). 117 Written not for sceptics but
for Dominican theological students, the Summa Theologiae shows
how certain theological beliefs can be systematically organized so
that they follow as conclusions from their ultimate premises (the
revealed articles of faith). 118 Showing this is not eliminating faith
in favor of reason but showing how reason works within and at
the service of the divine revelation that every believing Christian
recognizes as grounding his or her faith.
Along the way, Pasnau acknowledges but does not adequately
respond to the grave reservations that may be raised against his
account of Aquinas's theology. His account, which does scant
justice to the unitary end of Aquinas's theology, is constantly
thrown off by his search for the acceptable contemporary
philosophical remainder. And so he refers (13) to two senses of
theology, the medieval and ours, without providing any specific
details as to how we supposedly now conceive "theology."
Contemporary philosophy as well as theology is more protean
than Pasnau allows. Not every contemporary philosopher will
happily align his postmodern enterprise with what appears to be
Pasnau's thoroughgoing Enlightenment rationalism with its
foundationalist undertones. 119 In any case, Pasnau argues as
116 See W. J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas's Doctrine of God as Expounded in the
"Summa theologiaen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 36 n. 4 on the significance of
Aquinas citing "God Himself" in order "to avoid all ambiguity about the theological character
of the Summa."
117 See STh I, q. 56, a. 3; I, q. 58, aa. 3-4; De Verit., q. 24, a. 3
118 See STh, prologus; I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2; II-II, q. 1, a. 5, ad 2.
119 Cf. Pasnau's remarks (13) that if medieval theology primarily brings philosophy to
bear-"as a kind of auxiliary tool"-"on the premises of revealed dogma" that "would be
deeply unphilosophical in the modern

DENIS J. M. BRADLEY

38

though philosophy needs to be rescued from any (sectarian?)
revelation which is not and can never be acceptable to a reason
that demands that it should pull itself up, to whatever metaphysical heights, only by its own bootstraps. Here the gulf
between Pasnau and Aquinas is unbridgeable. 120 Aquinas allows
that philosophy can do precisely three things for theology:
demonstrate the praembula fidei, refute counterpositions to the
faith, and illumine but not prove the revealed mysteries. But to
imagine that philosophy can or should circumscribe faith and
theology is simply an error. 121 Aquinas sets forth all of the issues
with great clarity in question 2 of the Secunda Secundae.
Pasnau, however, is eager to identify Aquinas as a preeminent
medieval practitioner of contemporaneously pertinent philosophy
because he apparently embraces the modern assumption that
reason should belong in some proper or even exclusive way to
"philosophy. " 122 This assumption misdirects his reading of
Aquinas's theology. "Philosophical theology," as that term might
be given a historical designation recognized by Aquinas, is the
metaphysical doctrine of pagan philosophers about the highest or
first principles known to reason. 123 The rational argumentation
contained within the Summa Theologiae should not be called
"philosophical theology": it is an instrument used to articulate
and explain the revelata and, therefore, is by Aquinas's standards
strictly Christian "theology." 124 More metaphorically but more
profoundly, when Aquinas uses Thomistic philosophy within

°

12 Cf. Anton C. Pegis, "Some Reflections on Summa Contra Gentiles II, 5 6," inAn Etienne
Gilson Tribute, ed. Charles J. O'Neill (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959), "St.
Thomas likewise believed that philosophy was both saved and perfected by the light of that
[Christian] revelations. The philosophy in the SCG [is] ... a philosophy that considers its
openness to the influence of revelation to be nothing less than turning to the source of its
nature. That is why, far form suffering any diminution in autonomy or rationality from its
Christian state, philosophy rather experiences an advancement."
121 See In Boet. de Trin., q. 2, a. 3.
122 Cf. Pasnau, 16: "Revealed doctrine is the foundation of his [Aquinas's] theology, but
in practice it provides at most the guidelines for his work. The real heart of what Aquinas's
theological project corrsponds quite closely with what we consider the project of philosophy."
123 See VIMetaphys., lect. 1 (ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, 298a-b, nn. 1166-68).
124 See STh I, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2: "Unde theologiae quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinet, differt
secundum genus ab ilia theologia quae pars philosophiae ponitur."

PASNAU ON AQUINAS AND THE SOUL

39

Thomistic theology, he does not "mix water with wine, but rather
changes water into wine." 125

125

In Boet. de Trin., q. 2,-a. 3, ad 5.

The Thomist 68 (2004): 41-67

CATHOLIC MORAL TEACHING
AND THE PROBLEM OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER
Loyola University New Orleans
New Orleans, Lousiana

I. THE PAPAL TEACHING INTERPRETED
ESPONSESTO THE PRESENTpapal teaching on the problem of

apital punishment have been varying and even conflicting.
teven Long, whose ideas I consider in the second part of
this essay, argues that the papal teaching cannot say what it
appears to be saying because the Church has never said such a
thing; it therefore must be interpreted as saying what the Church
has always said. Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., tends to agree,
arguing that what is new is not the underlying principle regarding
the legitimacy of capital punishment but the application of that
principle to changing conditions. 1 Gerard Bradley, on the other
hand, says the treatment is novel; capital punishment, once
justified as a means of retribution, is now being assessed in terms
of civil society's right to defend itself.2 Mark Latkovic agrees but
says the novelty does not go so far as to render capital punishment
intrinsically evil.3 Janet Smith suggests the pope might be leaning

1 See Avery Dulles, "The Death Penalty: A Right to Life Issue?" Laurence J. McGinley
Lecture, Fordham University (17 October 2000), reprinted as "Catholicism and Capital
Punishment," in First Things 112 (April 2001): 30-35.
2 Gerard V. Bradley, "The Teaching of the Gospel of Life," Catholic Dossier4 (Sept.-Oct.
1998): 43-48.
3Mark S. Latkovic, "Capital Punishment, Church Teaching, and Morality: What is Pope
John Paul II Saying to Catholics in Evangeliumvitae?" Logos 5, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 82

41

42

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

precisely in that direction. 4 James Hitchcock thinks the pope is
trying to elevate the social conversation "to a higher plane ... by
affirming the sacredness of human life in all situations. "5 Charles
Rice agrees and thinks the papal teaching has made "obsolete" the
traditional view that death is the only fitting punishment for
certain very grave crimes. 6 Justice Antonin Scalia thinks that
Charles Rice and the pope are flat wrong. 7 And so on.
I think the papal teaching is saying something new. 8 Catholic
tradition has argued that legitimate public authority rightly inflicts
the death penalty for very grave crimes, and that its
infliction-insofar as it serves to redress the disorder introduced
by a criminal's crime, protects the community from a dangerous
influence, and deters others from committing similar crimes-is
not only justified, but good. This is not something the present
pontificate has taught, nor in my estimation would it be willing to
teach.
The papal teaching as articulated in the 1997 edition of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) (which includes the
morally relevant elements of the death penalty account of
Evangelium vitae) is unprecedented for a magisterial document.
A careful examination justifies the conclusion that a theoretical
foundation is being laid for a substantive revision in the Church's
teaching on the morality of capital punishment. That revision
would teach that capital punishment as punishment is no longer
legitimate; that the state rightly uses lethal force only for purposes
of self-defense, which means that inflicting death could not be
justified as a means of retribution; that in using lethal force
against a dangerous criminal, the state is justified only in using
•Janet E. Smith, "Rethinking Capital Punishment," Catholic Dossier4 (Sept.-Oct. 1998):
49-50.
5 James Hitchcock, "Capital Punishment and Cultural Change in American Life," in
Capital Punishment: Three Catholic Views (Washington, D.C.: Faith and Reason Institute,
2003), 13
6 Charles Rice, "Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics: An Exchange on Capital
Punishment," First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 9
7 Antonin Scalia, "Justice Scalia's Letter to the Editor," National Catholic Register (24-31
March 2002).
8 Catechism of the Catholic Church 2263-67; Evangelium vitae 55-56.
•

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

43

force proportionate to render him incapable of causing harm; and
that if he dies as an consequence, his death would have to remain
praeter intentionem (i.e., unintended). This is not the explicit
teaching of the Catechism, but the conclusions follow neatly from
a fair reading of the text. I say this for four reasons. First, capital
punishment in the 1997 Catechism (and Evangelium vitae) is not
conceived in traditional retributive terms but rather in terms of
self-defense; second, the Catechism deliberately distances itself
from traditional ways of categorizing the death penalty in the
Church's tradition of justifiable homicide; third, it frames its
discussion of the legitimate infliction of death in terms of doubleeffect reasoning; and fourth, the 1997 text deliberately suppresses
the one statement from the 1992 text warranting the conclusion
that death can be rightly inflicted as a punishment per se. I will
consider each in turn.
The first indication that the papal teaching is proposing
something new is found in the title of the subsection in which
capital punishment is addressed. The section is entitled
"Legitimate defense." What precedent is there in the tradition for
treating capital punishment as a form of legitimate defense?
Almost none. Aquinas never uses the term "legitimate defense"
(defensio legitima), neither in his treatment of the death penalty,
nor in any major work on theology or morality. But he does use
the related term "blameless defense" (inculpata tutela). Asking
whether it is morally legitimate to kill a man in self-defense, he
answers, "it is legitimate to repel force with force provided one
does so with the moderation of a blameless defense. " 9 "Nor is it
necessary for salvation that one omit an act of moderate defense
in order to avoid killing another. " 10 The phrase moderamine
inculpatae tutelae is repeated continually over the centuries in
treatments on lawful killing-but not in regard to the infliction of
the death penalty by public authority. Rather, in virtually every
instance it is used as Aquinas uses it, that is, to limit lawful killing
9 "Vim vi repellere licet cum moderamine inculpatae tutelae" (STh 11-11, q. 64, a. 7;
emphasis added).
16 "Nee est necessariurn ad salutem ut homo actum moderatae tutelae praetermittat ad
evitandum occisionem alterius" (Sfh 11-11, q. 64, a. 7).

44

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

by private persons in self-defense. 11 When the 1917 and 1983
Codes of Canon Law use the term "legitimate defense" (legitima
tutela) they too use it in reference to acts of legitimate killing by
private persons in self-defense. 12 And the Second Vatican
Council's use of the term, in Gaudium et spes, is more or less the
same. 13 In each source the context for the term's usage is selfdefense. The Catechism's insertion of its treatment of the death
penalty under this title is entirely novel.
The second indication that the magisterium intends to distance
itself from its traditional justification for the death penalty occurs
in the very first line of the subjection: "The legitimate defense of
persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against
the intentional killing of the innocent that constitutes murder"
(CCC 2263, emphasis added). Why deny at the outset that killing
in legitimate defense is an exception to the fifth precept of the
Decalogue? Perhaps because the Catechism's historical predecessor, the 1566 Roman Catechism, issued pursuant to a decree
of the Council of Trent, locates its teaching on the death penalty
in a section explicitly devoted to "exceptions" to the fifth Commandment. 14 The logic is straightforward. The Roman Catechism
11 A few examples include: Alphonsus Marie de Liguori, TheologiaMoralis, tom. 1, lib. 3,
tract. 4, cap. 1, dub. 3, par. 380 (Rome: Ex Typographia Vaticana, 1905); M. Zalba, S.J.,
TheologiaeMoralis Compendium, vol. 1 (Madrid: Biblioteca De Autores Cristianos, 1958),
no. 1591, p. 871; I. Aertnys, C.Ss.R. and C. Darnen C.Ss.R., Theologia Moralis (Rome:
Marietti Editori Ltd., 1956), tom. I, lib. ill, tract. V, cap. ill, no. 571, p. 541.
12 "Causa legitimae tutelae contra iniustum aggressorem, si debitum servetur moderamen,
delictum omnino aufert; secus imputabilitatem tantummodo rninuit, sicut etiam causa
provocationis" (Codex Juris Canonici [1917], can. 2205, S4; "legitimae tutelae causa contra
iniustum sui vel alterius aggressorem egit, debitum servans moderamen"; "ab eo, qui legitimae
tutelae causa contra iniustum sui vel alterius aggressorem egit, nee tamen debitum servavit
moderamen" (Codex Juris Canonici [Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983], can.

1323, 5°; 1324, 6°).
13 On warfare: "once all means of peaceful negotiations are exhausted," the council
teaches, "governments cannot be denied the right of legitimate defense." It is the responsibility
of civil authority to "protect the safety of people", to provide "a defense that is just," and
should never use means which "far exceed the limits of legitimate defense [legitimae
defensionis]"'(GS 79, 80). The context is still self-defense, not, however, the private defense
of an individual but rather the self-defense of the community.
14 The Roman Catechismitemizes five exceptions: (1) the killing of animals, (2) execution
of criminals, (3) killing in a just war, (4) killing by accident, and (5) killing in self-defense.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

45

teaches that capital punishment is an exception; the new
Catechism teaches that it is not.
Third, the theoretical framework for the Catechism's treatment
of capital punishment, indeed, its treatment of all forms of
legitimate killing, is double-effect reasoning. Recall that Aquinas
says that an act can have two or more effects: one intended, the
other(s) not. Since intention is primary, though not always
sufficient, for assessing the morality of an act, 15 it can be morally
legitimate to perform an act that results in bad effects, like death,
provided that the bad effects are unintended. The Catechism,
having denied that killing in legitimate defense is an exception to
the Decalogue, continues in its next sentence to quote Aquinas on
double-effect reasoning, indicating that what the Commandment
forbids is not all acts that bring about death but only those that
intend death: "The act of self-defense can have a double effect:
the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the
aggressor .... The one is intended, the other is not. " 16 The next
paragraph (2264) applies double-effect reasoning to a specific
form of legitimate defense, namely, the killing of aggressors by
private persons in self-defense:
Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it
is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who
defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor
a lethal blow: "If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will
be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be
lawful.... Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate
self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care
of one's own life than of another's." [Aquinas STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7]

Paragraph 2265 expands the scope of the term "legitimate
defense" to include the defense that public authority renders on
behalf of the community in repelling aggressors, implying foreign
aggressors:

15 John Finnis, Aquinas

16

srh 11-11, q. 64, a. 7.

(Ozford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 27.

46

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is
responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires
that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those
who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel
aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

The paragraph does not explicitly mention a form of killing and
so there is no need to specify limits in terms of double-effect
reasoning. But there are two good reasons for concluding that the
same context of indirect killing is in view. First, the logical
relation set by the preceding paragraphs and the absence of any
indication of a change of context would seem to necessitate that
the context of double-effect reasoning is still present. Second, the
defense the paragraph speaks about requires "rendering aggressors
unable to cause harm." This is classical language in Catholic moral
tradition used to explain the limits of lawful killing by private
persons in self-defense. If the aggression of another threatens my
life, the tradition that springs from Aquinas very clearly has taught
that the natural right to preserve myself in being justifies me in
using force against that aggressor proportionate to rendering him
unable to cause harm; and the tradition has unambiguously
asserted that the killing that follows from such a defensive act
must be unintended. 17
Since the duty of civil authority to defend the community
against external threats is addressed in paragraph 2265, we might
anticipate that the next paragraph would address the civil
authority's duty to defend the community against internal threats.
And this is what we find in paragraph 2266 in its consideration of
just punishment:

17 See ibid.; although Aquinas only refers to aggressors, not unjust aggressors, it is not
uncommon for authors to refer to the status of the aggressor's aggression as unjust, if not
formally, at least materially. For example, Henry Davis writes: "Everyone has a natural right
to defend himself against unjust aggression even to the death of the aSsailant. ..• But the
assailant's death is a secondary result of my act, the primary result being my own defence. The
doctrine is justified on the universally valid principle of the double effect. (nt. II-II, q. 64, a.
7c)" (H. Davis, S.J., Moral and PastoralTheology, _5th ed. [London: Sheed and Ward, 1946],
152-3; see also EV 55.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

47

The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights
and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of
safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and the
duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense.
Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the
offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of
expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting
people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to
the correction of the guilty party.

Is the context for paragraph 2266 still double-effect reasoning? It
would seem not. In setting forth the primary aim of punishment
in terms of retribution-" of redressing the disorder introduced by
the offense" -the paragraph indicates that it is no longer talking
about an act of forward-looking self-defense. The defining aim of
punishment, it says, is to correct a disorder caused by some crime,
to look back, as it were, at something that has already happened,
not forward at something that still threatens to happen. This
makes sense since only those who do wrong are rightly punished.
Punishment, the paragraph says, also serves the purpose of
"defending public order" and "protecting people's safety," but
neither of these two purposes makes punishment punishment.
We would expect paragraph 2267, in which the death penalty
is taken up, to frame its discussion of the lawful limits of capital
punishment in terms of the theoretical framework used to define
the nature and purposes of punishment outlined in paragraph
2266. But this is not what we find. When turning to the death
penalty the subsection returns to the language of double-effect
reasoning:
Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully
determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to
the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human
lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's
safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are
more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in
conformity with the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for
effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense

48

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

incapable of doing harm-without

definitively taking away from him the
possibility of redeeming himself-the cases in which the execution of the offender
is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practicallynon-existent." (Emphasis
added)

The act of force referred to here is not an act of "punishment
proportionate to the gravity of a criminal's offense." It does not
look back at a disorder introduced by deliberate crime; it is not in
fact an act of punishment according to the preceding paragraph's
own definition. It is an act of self-defense as described in
paragraphs 2263-65. The text states that it is a defensive act
against an "aggressor" aimed at "rendering him incapable of doing
harm." If he is safely incarcerated in prison, why refer to him as
an aggressor? Why not call him "the condemned," "the prisoner,"
"the guilty," or some other term that appropriately describes one
who lives under a sentence of death? The text deliberately
eschews a traditional retributive framework and terminology in its
treatment of capital punishment in favor of a framework and
terminology equally traditional, but not in relation to the death
penalty-rather, in relation to lawful killing by private persons in
self-defense. This is the language and framework of double-effect
reasoning. Limiting the death penalty's lawful infliction by
conditions traditionally invoked for the guidance of acts of private
self defense, paragraph 2267 concludes that "the cases in which
the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity [absolute
necessarium] 'are very rare, if not practically non-existent. '" 18 The
last statement is of course taken directly from Evangelium vitae.
The final-and perhaps the clearest-indication that the papal
teaching explicitly intends to reconceive the death penalty along
nontraditional lines is seen when we compare the 1992 version of
the Catechism with the same section in the 1997 editio typica.
The 1992 version taught:

18 It should be noted that this claim is a matter of sociological and technological fact, not
a matter of faith and morals. Since the teaching authority' of the Church extends only to
matters of faith and morals (cf. LG 25), it cannot be said to form part of the Church's
authoritative teaching on capital punishµient, but must be held to be incidental to it.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

49

For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as wellfounded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors
by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding,
in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. (Emphasis added)

A retributive justification is proposed here. Punishing someone
"by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the
crime" means punishing them for what they have done, not for
the threat they still pose. Sometimes a person's crime-"in cases
of extreme gravity"-merits death. In such a case the death
penalty is legitimate. This is a noncontroversial rearticulation of
a traditional principle of justifiable homicide. Remarkably,
however, in the 1997 Catechism the clause I have highlighted is
suppressed. The statement in the 1992 text was the only
indication that a traditional retributive justification of capital
punishment was being maintained. And that proposition was
deleted from the final authoritative text. Moreover, in 1992 the
Catechism included its treatment of capital punishment in its
analysis of punishment generally. In the editio typica the death
penalty is moved from the section dedicated to punishment to its
own section (2267).
II. ONE CRITIC

There is ample reason for concluding that a new doctrinal
teaching on the morality of capital punishment is being
anticipated in the Catechism. Not all, however, would agree.
Steven Long has published an influential article in The Thomist
refuting this claim. 19 His essay is problematic in several respects.
First, its method of interpretation is flawed, which results in a
tendentious interpretation of the text and the explaining away of
important assertions about the lawfulness of the death penalty in
the modern world. Second, its use of Thomistic sources is
misleading. Third, it falsely states that there is no precedent in
19 Steven A. Long, "Evangelium vitae, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Death Penalty," The
Thomist 63 (1999): 511-52. Parenthetical page numbers included in the text hereafter refer,
unless otherwise noted, to Long's article.

so

E. CHRISTIANBRUGGER

Catholic moral tradition for the plain interpretation of the papal
teaching. And fourth, it caricatures terribly the same plain
interpretation.
Long's attention is directed exclusively to the treatment of the
death penalty found in Evangelium vitae, which, he says, is "the
most important modern locus for understanding the Church's
teaching on the topic. " 20 Because the preparation of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church was a collaborative effort of the bishops of
the world, and because the morally relevant elements of
Evangelium vitae's teaching were incorporated into the 1997
editio typica, I take the Catechism's teaching on the death penalty
to be equally if not more important for assessing the mind of the
present pontificate. I will therefore appeal to both documents in
my analysis.
Long's essay revolves around a judgment that the apparent
meaning of the death-penalty teaching of Evangelium vitae (and
by extension the Catechism), because it diverges from what the
tradition has ordinarily taught, cannot be its actual meaning. In
other words, the papal teaching should not be interpreted as
saying what it appears to be saying, but rather as what the Church
has aiways said. A methodological error at its outset leaves this
conclusion unconvincing. Long asserts at the beginning of his
lengthy essay that "as a magisterial document, its meaning is
constituted in relation to tradition. "21 Although appealing to
Catholic tradition to help clarify ambiguous or partial magisterial
statements is a valid principle of interpretation, to say that a
document's meaning is "constituted" by its relation to the
tradition (by which I take him to mean constituted by the meaning
of past authoritative statements on the subject) is false. The
meaning of an ecclesiastical statement or document is constituted
in the first place by the intentions of its author(s). This is why it
is possible to ask to what degree a particular magisterial assertion
corresponds to or departs from the tradition to which it
contributes. A Catholic scholar's role in the interpretation of
20

Ibid., 511.

21 Ibid, 513; emphasis added.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

51

ecclesiastical texts therefore is to ascertain in the first place,
through careful analysis of a text, the precise intentions of its
author. Most of the problems with Long's essay stem from his
application of his exegetical principle to the papal teaching on
capital punishment with the result that the most important
elements of that teaching become relativized along lines that Long
considers more compatible with Catholic ethical tradition.
Long asserts that "a more traditional reading" of the encyclical,
what he also calls a "prudential" reading, will "not hesitate to give
'defense of society' a rich meaning inclusive of the manifestation
of a transcendent order of justice within society" (513-14 ). The
term "defense of society," or more specifically "legitimate
defense," deserves unpacking. Both Evangelium vitae and the
Catechism, as I have shown, frame their discussions of the
lawfulness of capital punishment in terms of legitimate defense;
and in both, legitimate defense is narrowly construed to mean the
collective self-defense of society. The death penalty, they teach,
may only be inflicted when it is in the interests of societal defense.
But, as I have stated, Catholic moral tradition has held that death
can be a fitting punishment for a crime whether or not the selfdefense of society remains at stake. In other words, the death
penalty in the tradition has been justified as a means of
retribution, as a means of giving criminals what they deserve. This
tension between the present papal teaching and the ordinary
teaching of the tradition is the sticking point for Long. It leads
him to argue that we ought "not hesitate" to include within the
interpretation of "societal defense" a retributive meaning. But that
meaning is not sustained by the text. On the contrary, the text sets
forth an exclusively nonretributive justification, namely, necessary
defense: "the nature and extent of the punishment must be
carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the
extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute
necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise
to defend society" (EV 5 6).
Recall too that the Catechism's analysis references Aquinas's
discussion of lawful killing by private persons in self-defense.

52

E. CHRISTIANBRUGGER

Evangelium vitae does the same. Neither text references Aquinas's
article defending the killing of malefactors by the state, an article
that has exercised enormous influence on Catholic moral
tradition, and with which any scholar familiar with traditional
literature on capital punishment-including
the drafters of
Evangelium vitae and the Catechism-would be well acquainted.
Why not? Why suppress such reference? Why reference instead an
argument that says that killing is legitimate only when necessary
to render an aggressor incapable of causing harm? Why refer to
the beneficiaries of this kind of killing, as in the Catechism, as
"aggressors," not "the condemned," "the guilty," etc.? One reason
may be because the authors intend to conceptualize lawful killing
in capital punishment along the lines of lawful killing in selfdefense. Long discounts this possibility from the outset, calling it
a "reductionist reading" of the papal teaching. 22 He says that if we
conceive of capital punishment under a paradigm of self-defense,
then the papal teaching "will appear to miscontextualize the
teaching of Thomas," that is, will appear to apply a set of norms
to capital punishment that Aquinas only intended to be applied to
self-defense. But this is precisely the novelty of the papal teaching,
that its analysis applies a nontraditional paradigm to limit the
lawful killing of criminals. Long admits that the text tends toward
a novel justification: "if we accept a reading of the document as
a doctrinal argument apart from tradition, it does appear to
propose that only those executions are justified which are
absolutely necessary to the physical protection of society" (517).
But the text does not merely "appear" to say this, it states it
outright: ". . . ought not go to the extreme of executing the
offender except in cases of absolute necessity" (EV 5 6).
Long uses fidelity to the tradition as a tool to reshape the
meaning of the papal text. He says, "we might wish to ask
whether the solemn execution of a divine norm of justice might
22 Long says the same in another essay:"Yet careful reading of the document itself shows
that Evangelium Vitae cannot intend to declare that the formal doctrinal reason for capital
punishment is some species of mere defense." See "Evangelium vitae and the Death Penalty,"
in Capital Punishment: Three Catholic Views (Washington, D.C.: Faith and Reason Institute,

2003), 29.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

53

not be described as necessary to a richer conception of social
order and the common good that may legitimize the application
of the death penalty" (517). Defining capital punishment in these
terms may very well lead to a "richer" conception justifying
capital punishment, but whether or not it does so is irrelevant to
the meaning of the papal teaching whose texts neither state nor
imply such a meaning.
Evangelium vitae, having established "absolute necessity" as the
condition for the lawful infliction of the death penalty, concludes
with the now well-known prudential judgment, "Today however,
as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal
system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent."
Commenting on the papal judgment Long argues, "if one
incorporates within 'protection of society' not only physical
protection, but also the manifestation of transcendent justice in
society as constituting a good in its own right ... then there is no
particular doctrinal reason why justified uses of the death penalty
should be absolutely 'very rare, if not practically non-existent' (EV
56)" (539). Again, there is no textual warrant for concluding that
the intentions of the authors would tolerate such a conclusion. In
so doing, as Long's statement illustrates, one is forced to explain
away the pope's prudential judgment that the condition of
absolute necessity effectively eliminates the death penalty in the
modern world as a viable alternative. Long's assumptions lead him
to propose what he terms "a more plausiblereading," namely, that
"the encyclical stresses that it is better for contemporary society
to avoid the use of the penalty" (546). But the text does not state
nor imply that it would merely be "better" to avoid inflicting
death; it states that occasions warranting the penalty "are very
rare, if not practically non-existent." According to Long, "an
astute intratextual reading should see this prudential feature of the
argument" (546-47). But such a feature should be seen if the
author intended it to be seen. We are not warranted in reading
such an intent into the papal teaching.
If it was the pope's intent to stay within the traditional
framework, we may presume that he would have made his

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E. CHRISTIANBRUGGER

intention clear; at the very least he would have referenced the
account in Aquinas that scholars have referenced for centuries in
defense of capital punishment. But he didn't. He did what is
almost without warrant in the tradition: not only to state the
condition of "absolute necessity" as the primary ground for the
death penalty's lawful infliction, not only to refer to the
beneficiaries as "aggressors," not only say that the death penalty
is lawful for purposes of rendering such aggressors incapable on
causing harm, but also to reference Aquinas's account of lawful
killing by private persons in self-defense.
Long's phrase, "the manifestation of the transcendent order of
justice in society," which he uses to describe what he takes to be
the primary purpose of punishment in general, and capital
punishment in particular, is repeated continually throughout his
article. It deserves a closer look.
Long attributes the phrase to the Church's tradition, which he
says stems from Aquinas. 23 But the phrase is neither Aquinas's nor
the tradition's but Long's. Punishment, Aquinas says, not only
tends to the emendation of the one punished 24 and the preventing
(deterring) of others from choosing wrongly, 25 but it heals some
defectus in the order of justice in civil society. 26 The order of
justice to which Aquinas refers here is an order established by the
just interactions of members of a community based upon naturally
created equality and the morally relevant elements stemming from
their relationships. It is a moral order maintained by the upright
willing of the members of a community. The order can be called
transcendent to the extent that the moral order is God's ordering
of the human person to his proper end, just as divine providence
23 In the same essay, Long asserts that "the primary medicinal purpose of penalty is neither
deterrence nor rehabilitation, but rather is the manifestation of a transcendent norm of justice
within society." This he states "is especially clear in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas" (ibid.,
33).
24 II Ethic., lect. 3; SI'h 11-11, q. 108, a. 4; ScG III, c. 158; SI'h 1-11, q. 87, a. 6, ad 3;III
Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 2.
25 See ScG III, c. 140; IV Sent., d. 46, q. I, a. 2, sol. 3, ad. 2, SI'h 1-11, q. 87, a. 8, ad. 2, Il11, q. 33, a. 6.
26 II Sent., d. 42, q. 1, a. 2, sol.; see also ill Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 2. See also ScG III,
ch. 144.

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55

orders all things in the universe toward their proper ends. 27
Deliberate crime disturbs this order to the extent that a criminal
deliberately "exceeds the due degree of his measure when he
prefers his own will to the divine will by satisfying it contrary to
God's ordering. " 28 A criminal "has been too indulgent to his
will," 29 has been "inordinate [in his] affection, "30 "has exceeded
in following his own will, "31 which makes him "deserving of
punishment. "32
Because crime entails the immoderate satisfaction of the will,
punishment entails the suppression of the wayward will in due
proportion: "the nature of punishment consists in being contrary
to the will, painful, and inflicted for some fault. "33 "By means of
punishment the equality of justice is restored in so far as he who
by sinning has exceeded in following his own will suffers
something that is contrary to his will. "34 The result is the
"restoration of the equality of justice. " 35 Long's phrase, "the
manifestation of the transcendent order of justice in
society"-what he calls elsewhere, the "'truth manifestative'
function of punishment" 36-never arises. Though it is intelligible,
given Aquinas's conception of the just order of civil society as
reflective of a community's conformity to the moral order
established by divine providence, its imprecision is misleading.
Rather than using the Hegelian notion of punishment as the
manifestation of justice, 37 Aquinas and the tradition refer simply
ill, c. 140.

27 ScG
28 Ibid.

29 STh III, q. 86, a. 4; I-II, q. 87, a. 6.

30 STh I-Il, q. 87, a. 1, ad 3.
31 STh

Il-Il, q. 108, a. 4.

32 STh I-II, q. 87, a. 1, ad 2.

n STh I-II, q. 46, a. 6, ad 2; "the nature of punishment is that it is conttary to the will"
(On Evil, q. 1, a. 4, ttans. Jean Oesterle [Notte Dame, Ind.: University of Notte Dame Press,
1995); see also ScG ill, c. 140; III, c. 141; II Sent., d. 42, q. 1, a. 2, sol.; STh I, q. 48, a. 5; Ill, q. 87, a. 6.
34 STh Il-Il, q. 108, a. 4.
35 STh I-Il, q. 87, a. 6.
36 See Long, "Evangelium vitae and the Death Penalty," 33.
37 Hegel's Philosophy of Right, ttans. with notes by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1967), 69-73.

56

E. CHRISTIANBRUGGER

to punishment as the correction-in Evangelium vitae and the
Catechism's words, redress-of a disorder introduced into the
good order of the community by a deliberate offense.
Even granting the similarity between Aquinas's retributive
explanation of punishment and Long's conception of capital
punishment as "the manifestation of the transcendent order of
justice in society," it should be noted that Aquinas never (to my
knowledge) justifies the infliction of capital punishment explicitly
in terms of punishment's retributive function. When Aquinas
turns from punishment in general to discuss capital punishment in
particular his justification invariably turns to his Aristotelian
conception of the relationship of a part to its corresponding
whole. The most prominent example is found in Summa
Theologiae II-II, question 64, article 2. There he writes:
Now every part is ordered to the whole as imperfect to perfect. And therefore
every part is naturally for the sake of the whole. On account of this we see that
if it is useful [expediat]to the health of the whole body of a man to cut off one
of his members, as when it is putrid or corrupting of the other members, it will
be praiseworthy and salubrious for it to be cut away. Now every individual
person is compared to the whole community just as a part to the whole.
Therefore if any one is dangerous and corrupting to the community on account
of some sin, it is praiseworthy and salubrious that he be killed, in order to
preserve the common good. (My translation) 38

He argues that dangerous and harmful men-with danger and
harm being precisely specified in terms of "some sin"-may
rightly be removed from the community as a diseased limb may be
removed from the body whose integrity it threatens. Aquinas does
not say here or elsewhere that the death penalty is only lawfully
inflicted for purposes of societal defence. His larger account of
punishment makes it improbable that he would have employed
38 "Omnis autem pars ordinatur ad totum ut imperfectum ad perfectum. Et idea omnis pars
naturaliter est propter totum. Et propter hoc videmus quad si saluti totius corporis humani
expediat praecisio alicuius membri, puta cum est putridum et corruptivum aliorum,
laudabiliter et salubriter abscinditur. Quaelibet autem persona singularis comparatur ad to tam
communitatem sicut pars ad totum. Et idea si aliquis homo sit periculosus communitati et
corruptivus ipsius propter aliquod peccatum, laudabiliter et salubriter occiditur, ut bonum
commune conservetur"; cf. ScG ill, c. 146; see Aristotle, Politics 1.2.1253a19-29.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

57

such a limiting factor. But he does say that death as a punishment
is justified when man's moral state becomes a threat to the
community, that is, when the community needs to be protected
from a person's harmful influence. He certainly never says that
killing a criminal "manifests a transcendent norm of justice." In
fact, an explicitly retributive justification for capital punishment
does not figure prominently in Catholic moral tradition until the
sixteenth century. 39
Long asserts that the "reductionist" premise-that the state
only rightly inflicts the death penalty when necessary for the
physical protection of society-is not found "anywhere in
Catholic sources prior to Evangelium vitae" (539). In fact,
Catholic theologians back in the nineteenth century were
beginning to argue along these lines. Francis Xavier Linsenmann,
for example, an influential professor of theology at Tiibingen,
argued:
the death penalty can only be considered just-and therefore permissible-if it
is necessary from the standpoint of self-defense; and it remains legitimate only
so long and to such an extent that the need for self-defense remains. Just as war
is self-defense writ large against an external threat to the community, so the
infliction of the death penalty is self-defensewrit large against an internal threat
to the community, i.e., against a dangerous element in one of the many layers of
the community itself. It follows, that if a condition of civil order and safety arises
in which it is possible to control individual dangerous elements with lighter
coercive means than death, then the death penalty would be rendered
superfluous. Indeed, legally limiting the use of the death penalty is a goal well
worth striving for. Its abolition by law is simply a political or cultural question;
no principle of right stands against it. 40
39 See chapter 6 of my book, Capital Punishment and Catholic Moral Tradition (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).
<-0 "In der That muss man vom Wesen und Zweck der Strafe als solcher absehen und darauf
recurriren, dass die Todestrafe nur als gerecht erkannt wird, wenn sie aus einem andem
Grunde fur nothwendig erkliirt werden muss; mit andem Worten: Die Todestrafe ist nur
zulassig, wenn dieselbe unter den Gesichtspunkt der Nothwehr gebracht werden kann; und
sie ist es nur so lange und in solcher Ausdehnung, als die Nothwehr vorliegt. Gleichwie der
Krieg eine Notwehr im Grossen ist gegen Bedrohung der Gesellschaft von Aussen her, so ist
Ausrechthalrung der Todestrafe eine Nothwehr im Grossen gegen die Bedrohung der
Gesellschaft durch innere Feinde, durch gemeingefahrliche Elemente in den verschiedenen
Schichten der Gesellschaft selbst. Hieraus folgt, dass es ganz wohl einen Zustand biirgerlicher
Ordnung und Sicherheit geben konnte, in welchem einzelne gemeingefahrliche Elemente mit

58

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

A twentieth-century example is that of Jacques Leclercq, professor
of moral theology at Louvain, who argued in the 1940s that
the death penalty, like all punishment, is legitimate only if it corresponds to the
legitimate defense of the community. It is not justified by a right of the State to
dispose of the life of its citizens, but only by social necessity. The life of a man
is in itself inviolable, for the State as for individuals. (Emphasis added) 41

Legitimate defense, he makes clear, refers to self-defense: "unless
the person in question poses a serious threat to the lives of
others. " 42 He continues: "Supposing there is no other effective
means of defending the social order, it seems in practice that the
death penalty must be limited to the case where civil authority has
no other sure means of incarcerating dangerous offenders. " 43 But
other means of safely incarcerating criminals have been around
for "more than a century fplus d'un siecle]." Therefore, he
concludes, "today, in the Western world, the death penalty has
ceased to be legitimate as States have other effective means
[suffisants moyens] to defend the social order. "44 This conclusion
is repeated by Catholic authors in the years that follow. 45
leichteren Zwangsmitteln, als die Hinrichtung ist, niedergehalten werden konnten, die
Todestrafe also entbehrlich ware; ja, class es ein zu erstrebendes Ziel sei, die Anwendung der
Todestrafe gesetzlich einzuschriinken. Die gesetzliche Abschaffung der Todestrafe ist einfach
cine politische oder Culturfrage, ein Rechtsgrund stehtihr nicht entgegen" (F. X. Linsenmann,
Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie[Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1878], 473).
41 "La peine de mort, comme toute peine, n'est legitimeque si elle correspondala legitime
defense de la collectivite. Elle ne se justifie pas par un droit de l'Etat a disposer de la vie des
citoyens, mais seulement par la necessite sociale. La vie de l'homme prise en elle-meme est
inviolable pour l'Etat comme pour les particuliers" Uacques Leclerq, Let;onsde droit nature/
vol. 4, Les droits et devoirs individuels (Louvain: Societe D'Etudes Morales, 1946), 89.
42 " ••• un danger grave pour celle des autres" (ibid.).
43 "La peine de mort supposant qu'il n'y ait pas d'autre moyen efficace de defendre I' ordre
social, ii semble qu' en pratique, ii faille la limiter aux cas oii Jes pouvoirs publics ne disposent
pas de moyens sfus d'incarcerer les malfaiteurs" (ibid.).
44 "dans le monde occidental, la peine de mort a cesse d'etre legitime, Jes Etats disposant
sans elle de moyens suffisants pour defendre l'ordre social" (ibid., 90).
45 E.g., "the theologians' acceptance of the State's right to inflict capital punishment does
not rule out a divergence of opinion on the appropriateness of exercising that power in given
conditions. It seems that a growing number of moralists would like to see the power of the
sword in abeyance, a power to be exercised should the need arise but otherwise resolutely kept
in the background" (M. B. Crowe, "Theology and Capital Punishment," The Irish Theological

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

59

By the end of his essay, Long's criticisms of the plain
interpretation of the papal teaching become sweeping and farcical.
Not only has the "reductionist interpretation," he argues,
erroneously subsumed its analysis of the death penalty under a
model of self-defense, but its entire rationale for punishment
generally, he says, is derived from punishment's utility in
defending public order:
the reductionist interpretation of Evangelium vitae appears to place the entire
ratio of penalty in question, suggesting that inasmuch as penalty is not required
for defense of minimum public order it is superfluous. In arguing that mere
physical protection is the primary aim of criminal law and penalty-such that a
penalty not absolutely required for physical protection of society is to be
avoided-the encyclical would then be construed to suggest that there is no
question of justice pertinent to the common good beyond physical protection.
(541)

Evangelium vitae neither states nor implies that the primary aim
of punishment is the physical protection of society. When
addressing the question of the justification of punishment in
general, it asserts plainly that "the primary purpose of the
punishment which society inflicts is 'to redress the disorder caused
by the offence'" (EV 56). (The second half of this quotation is
taken directly from CCC 2266.) The primary rationale for
punishment, according to the encyclical, is not "physical
protection," but retribution; punishment is punishment, in other
words, to the extent that it looks back at a crime already
Quarterly 31 [1964]: 102); "There will always be criminals, but modern society has other
means of protecting itself from them than this" Oean Imbert, La -peine de mort: Histoireactualite [Paris: Annand Colin: 1967]; English quotation in James J. Megivern, The Death
Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey [New York: Paulist Press, 1997], 297); "the
death penalty for murder in this country [i.e., England] at present is unnecessary and therefore
unjust" (M. Tidmarsh, O.P., et al., Capital Punishment:A Case for Abolition [London: Sheed
and Ward, 1963), foreword); see also "Statement of Rhode Island's Religious Leaders,"
Origins 5 (25 March 1976): 629, 631; Declaration of the Administrative Board of the
Canadian Catholic Conference, 1976, in Thomas G. Daily, "The Church's Position on the
Death Penalty in Canada and the United States," Concilium 120 (10 October 1978): 122;
before the twentieth century, see Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Pnnishments," ch. 28, par.
3, in Richard Bellamy, ed., On Crimes and Punishmentsand Other Writings, Cambridge Texts
in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

committed and aims to correct the disorder that the crime
introduced. This traditional account of punishment, immediately
preceding the text's analysis of capital punishment, is what makes
the papal teaching so interesting, and Long's interpretation so
unsatisfactory. The text sets forth a thoroughly traditional account
of the nature and purposes of punishment, and then, when
turning to the particular type of punishment the death penalty
entails, lays out another justification, apparently incompatible
with the former. On the one hand, it says that the primary
purpose of punishment is retribution, and, on the other, that a
criminal's crime alone is not a sufficient justification for killing
the criminal-that although retribution defines punishment
generally, it does not define capital punishment. The papal
teaching says in effect that the death penalty may not be inflicted
for purposes of retribution, but rather only in cases where it is
absolutely necessary to defend civil society. It is not the encyclical's account of punishment, as Long suggests, that departs
from the tradition, but the encyclical's failure to subsume its
account of capital punishment under its own analysis of the nature
and purposes of punishment.
Asserting without argument that the plain interpretation
follows from an inadequate conception of the common good,
which, Long says, has been proposed "in the effort to come to
terms with republican political institutions and the old liberalism,"
Long levels the elliptical criticism: "the regnant minimalist
interpretation of the teaching of Evangelium vitae constitutes
another minimalist epicycle in the to and fro between rich and
eviscerated senses of political common life" (543). But paragraph
5 6 of Evangelium vitae is traditional in its account of punishment,
and it is traditional in its conception of the duties of civil
authority. It maintains that punishment is primarily retributive
and that public authority has the responsibility to inflict
retributive punishment: "public authority must redress the
violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender
an adequate punishment for the crime" (EV 5 6). It just does not
include capital punishment among the available expressions of this

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61

authority. There is no indication that it maintains an "eviscerated"
conception of political common life.
Long continues, saying that "the reductionist major premise
(viz, that the State rightly inflicts the death penalty only when
absolutely necessary for the physical protection of society) seems
to embrace an instrumentalist view of the common good that is,
finally, incompatible with the infliction of any punishment save on
grounds that appear remarkably utilitarian" (549). It is not clear
what Long means by the phrase "instrumentalist view of the
common good," or what is particularly problematic in conceiving
the common good as instrumental. Gaudium et spes, for example,
defines the "common good" as instrumental to the goods of
persons and nothing about this suggests incompatibility with
retributive punishment. 46 It does seem fair to say however that the
encyclical's justification for capital punishment is grounded in
empirical considerations and devoid of formal (retributive) ones.
If this is what Long means by "utilitarian" then in this respect his
point is granted. But to say that the plain interpretation of
Evangelium vitae entails a view of the common good that is
"incompatible with the infliction of any punishment" save on
utilitarian grounds is gratuitous. Not only are some punishments,
according to the papal teaching, primarily justified on nonutilitarian, retributive grounds, but all punishments are-save
capital punishment.
Long concludes by saying that "the reductionist interpretation
of Evangelium vitae to this effect is vulnerable to decisive criticism
from tradition" (551). While I reject the view that the plain
interpretation of Evangelium vitae (and the Catechism) is
"reductionist," it is fair to say that it departs from tradition and in
that sense is subject to criticism. I suggest however that rather
than relativizing the papal teaching along traditional lines, we
should be making every effort to formulate that teaching fairly,
46 "interdependence (between nations) ... is leading to an increasingly universal common
good, the sum total of the conditions of social life enabling groups and individuals to realize
their perfection more fully and readily" (GS 26); "And the common good comprises the sum
of the conditions of social life which enable individuals, families and associations to reach
their own perfection more completely and more readily" (GS 74).

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E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

asking to what degree it is compatible with the Church's
traditional teaching on the lawfulness of capital punishment,
examining where the present teaching is pointing, and judging
whether or not, in light of Catholic tradition, the Church can go
there.
III. WITH WHAT AUTHORI1Y?

I would like to conclude this essay by asking the question: Is
the Church bound by an irreformable tradition not to take the
next step in declaring the death penalty wrong per se? This
question comes down to whether or not the traditional
justification of the right of civil authority to inflict death has been
infallibly taught by the magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Vatican II teaches that the Church's infallibility is exercised when:
(1) the pope as successor of Peter intends solemnly to define an
article of faith or morals (i.e., makes an ex cathedra statement),
(2) the bishops in union with the pope gathered together in
council intend to solemnly define a dogma, or (3) the bishops
scattered throughout the world though preserving a bond of
communion amongst themselves and with the successor of Peter
agree on a judgment on a matter of faith or morals and teach it as
to be definitively held. (The latter is called the infallibility of the
ordinary and universal magisterium.}47
Has the proposition "capital punishment is in principle a
legitimate exercise of civil authority" ever been solemnly defined
by a pope or ecumenical council? The topic of capital punishment
has rarely been raised by ecumeniCal councils. Among those at
which it has, no judgment on its morality has ever been taught.
Lateran III (1179) speaks of the assistance the Church receives
from harsh penal laws, but does not propose any moral judgment
on the death penalty per se.48 And Lateran IV (1215) states that
• 7 Lumen gentium

25.

It is actually a quotation from St. Leo the Great; "As St. Leo says, though the discipline
of the church should be satisfied with the judgment of the priest and should not cause the
shedding of blood, yet it is helped by the laws of catholic princes so that people often seek a
salutary remedy when they fear that a corporal punishment will overtake them" ("Sicut [ait
48

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

63

clergy are forbidden from participating in bloody punishment, but
also makes no positive assertions about the death penalty's
morality.
As for papal statements, only two are of such a nature as to
merit attention. The first is the famous statement in the
Waldensian oath by Pope Innocent III in the early thirteenth
century. In the context of a profession of faith intended to
reconcile members of the heretical sect, he states:
We declare that the secular power can without mortal sin impose a judgment of
blood provided the punishment is carried out not in hatred, but with good
judgment, not inconsiderately, but after mature deliberation. 49

With what authority was this statement-or rather, the profession
of faith in which the statement appears-proposed? The profession is directed to a particular group and not to the universal
Church; moreover, it was published in the form of a personal
letter to the breakaway sect members and not in the form of a bull
or otherwise universally authoritative document. Not all of its
assertions therefore should be taken to be Catholic dogmas,
binding on the universal Church, even though some of its
assertions already possess this status. If therefore one of its
propositions is not already a definitive doctrine of Catholic faith,
its presence in the oath to the Waldensians does not alone suffice
to constitute it as such. It is my judgment therefore that Innocent's
statement does not constitute an infallible definition.

beatus Leo,] licet ecclesiastica disciplina, sacerdotali contenta iudicio, cruentas non efficiat
ultiones, catholicorum tamen principum constitutionibus adiuvatur, utsaepe quaerant homines
salutare remedium, dum corporale super se metuunt evenire supplicium"; Third Lateran
Council (1179], ch. 27 [Decreesof the EcumenicalCouncils, vol. 1, ed. Norman Tanner and
Giuseppe Alberigo (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), 224]). This statement appears again in
Decretal. Gregor. IX, lib. V, tit. VII- De Haereticis,cap. VIII (Corpus iuris canonici, vol. 2,
Decretalium Collectiones [Lipsiae: Ex officina Bemhardi, 1881], cols. 779-80).
49 "De potestate saeculari asserimus quod sine peccato mortali potest judicium sanguinis
exercere, dummodo ad inferendam vindictam, non odio, sed judicio, non incaute sed consulte
procedat" (PatrologiaLatina 215:1512a; my translation); the entire revised 1210 profession
is translated in Denziger, The Sourcesof CatholicDogma, trans. Roy J. Deferrari (London: B.
Herder Book Co., 1954), nn. 420-27, esp. n. 425.

64

E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER

The second relevant papal statement is a solemn condemnation
of an article ascribed to Martin Luther by Pope Leo X in his bull
Exsurge Domine (1520). Luther's proposition reads: "That
heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit. "50 With what
authority was this condemnation promulgated? Exsurge Domine
is a papal bull, a document of high papal authority addressed to
the whole Church. Its solemn condemnations single out judgments
of faith and morals considered to be dangerous to Christian faith
and life. 51 For argument's sake let us say that the censures it
contains have been promulgated with the highest degree of papal
authority. Should we also conclude that the falsity of Luther's
proposition has been proposed infallibly, entailing the conclusion
that the burning of heretics is not contrary, or not always
contrary, to the will of the Holy Spirit? To resolve this question
we ne.ed first to examine the precise language of the papal
condemnation. The general censure which follows the list of
Luther's forty-one condemned propositions reads: "All and each
of the above mentioned articles or errors, so to speak, as set
before you, we condemn, disapprove, and entirely reject as
respectively heretical, or scandalous, or false, or offensive to pious
ears, or seductive of simple minds, and in opposition to Catholic
truth. "52 The precise formulation warrants us in concluding no
more than that the article in question is among a set of articles
whose members are either heretical or scandalous or false or
offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds, and are
obstructive to Catholic truth. It is reasonable to conclude
therefore that the falsity of Luther's proposition has not been
infallibly proposed in Exsurge Domine.
so Denz. 773.
51 It is not uncommon

for the authoritative condemnations of papal bulls to be judged to
have been promulgated with infallible authority. Francis A. Sullivan S.J., for example, claims
that theologians Louis Billot, in his work Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi (1898), and Edmond
Dublanchy, in his article on infallibility in the Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (1927),
judged thatExsurge Domine (1520) contain "dogmatic definitions." Sullivan does not specify
to which propositions he refers. His own judgment is that ExsurgeDomine "does not meet the
requirements for a dogmatic definition" (see Francis A. Sullivan, Creative Fidelity: Weighing
and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium [Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, Ltd, 1996], 84-

85).
52

Denz. 781.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

65

The question remains, however, whether the liceity of the
death penalty has been infallibly taught by the ordinary and
universal magisterium. Vatican II's formulation of this mode of
infallibility reads:
the individual bishops ... proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly whenever, even
though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of
communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically
teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as
to be definitively held. (LG 25)

It states four conditions that must be met before this mode of
infallibility has been exercised: (1) the bishops must remain united
amongst themselves and with the successor of Peter, (2) they must
teach authentically on a matter of faith or morals, (3) they must
agree on one judgment, and (4) they must proclaim it "as to be
definitively held" (definitive tenendam). To resolve the question
as to whether these four conditions have been met relative to the
Church's traditional defense of capital punishment would involve
an in-depth analysis that is beyond the scope of this paper. I have
undertaken it elsewhere and have concluded as follows:
the evidence supports the conclusion that the first three criteria have been met.
The writings of Catholic bishops and councils of bishops going back to early
Christianity contain an explicit or implicit affirmation of one or more of the
propositions summarizing the Church's traditional teaching. These affirmations
have remained constant and the bishops have remained united in them among
themselves and with the successor of Peter. If chronological scope and the
magnitude and firmness of consensus were all that were necessary for the bishops
in their ordinary teaching to proclaim doctrine infallibly, there could be little
doubt about the status of the Church's traditional affirmation on the lawfulness
of the death penalty. But Lumen Gentium states that the bishops' judgement on
an issue, even their united and firm judgement, is not enough to assure the
protection of the Holy Spirit from error. As teachers of the Christian faith, the
bishops must teach that judgement to the faithful not simply as a doctrine of
Christianity, nor as a probable or very probable conclusion of Christian faith, but
as a matter of faith, certainly true, to be definitively held by all. Their act of
teaching and the faithful's act of receiving are complementary, and it is in this
movement of teaching and receiving that the Holy Spirit secures and advances
the right belief of the Church ....
[I judge that] the evidence does not warrant the conclusion that this final
criterion of the ordinary and universal magisterium has been met. Scattered

E. CHRISTIANBRUGGER

66

episcopal statements assert all or part of the traditional teaching as to be
definitively held, but the majority of episcopal statements are not proposed in
this manner. More often than not, the lawfulness of capital punishment is
directly or indirectly affirmed only in the context of discussions, condemnations,
and affirmations of other points of human morality. 53

This of course is a scholarly judgment. If the Church should
teach otherwise I would assent to the Church's judgment and
encourage others to do the same. But if my conclusion is true then
it implies that the Church's traditional teaching can change. To
speak about the changing of a teaching as eminent and longstanding as the Church's defense of the death penalty
understandably makes some people uneasy. The concern is that an
analysis like the one I propose opens the way to a rejection of
other controversial but authoritative moral teachings by those
characterized by a disposition of dissent or those who are weak in
conscience. This is not my intention. My intention is to provide
a fair and honest reading of the present papal teaching and then
ask what its implications are. If the doubt regarding the traditional
teaching was raised in the first place by me, or by a small group
of theologians, or by theologians noted for their dissent from the
Church's authoritative moral teaching, then there would be good
reason not to entertain serious doubt about the verity of the
traditional judgment. Such is the case for example with the
widespread unjustifiable dissent from the central moral judgment
of Paul Vi's Humanae vitae.
But the present situation is different. Clear signs of revision are
found in contemporary doctrinal documents promulgated by the
bishops of the world in union with the successor of Peter.
Whereas Christian writers from the early Church up through the
middle of the twentieth century maintained a relatively consistent
attitude towards the death penalty, that attitude began to change
in the 1950s and 1960s, and more so in the 1970s and 1980s, so
that by the middle of the 1990s a significant turn in the Church's

53

Brugger, Capital Punishment and Catholic Moral Tradition, 151.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

67

attitude toward capital punishment had taken place. 54 The
attitudinal change alone might be considered sufficient
justification for asking questions regarding a change in the
traditional teaching. But more followed. The attitudinal turn was
fused in 1995 and 1997 with formal and universally authoritative
doctrinal promulgations of the magisterium (viz., Evangelium
vitae and the Catechism), promulgations that clearly introduce
new terminology and a new ethical paradigm for examining an
age-old problem. In light of this, it is not only justified but of
paramount importance for theologians to ask questions of the
tradition that otherwise they might not be warranted to ask.

5• A few examples of national conferences going on record in the past twenty-five years
in opposition to the death penalty include: Canadian Catholic Conference (press release, 4
March 1976); Irish Bishops (see Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, "Capital
Punishment," The Furrow 27 (1976]: 697-98; La documentation catholique 78 (1981): 58184); French Bishops (see Social Commission of the French Episcopate, "Elements de
Reflexion sur la Peine de Mort," La documentation catholique 75 [1978]: 108-15); Philippine
Bishops (see "Restoring the Death Penalty: 'A Backward Step'," Catholic International 3
(1992], 886-88); Bishops of England and Wales (see "Bishops Say "No" to the Reintroduction of Capital Punishment," Briefing of the Catholic Information Service, 15 July
1983); the U.S. Catholic bishops individually or in state or national conferences have issued
over 130 statements in opposition to the death penalty since 1980 alone (see Catholics Against
Capital Punishment, Bibliography of Statements by U.S. Catholic Bishops on the Death
Penalty: 1972-1998 [CACP: Arlington, Va., 1998]).

The Thomist 68 (2004): 69-104

MEDICALLY ASSISTED NUTRITION AND HYDRATION IN
MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY:
A CONTEXTUALIZATION OF ITS PAST AND A
DIRECTION FOR ITS FUTURE1
JOHN BERKMAN
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

F

OR A SIGNIFICANT PORTION of the 1980s, ethical issues
regarding the use of various forms of support to prolong life
grabbed newspaper headlines in the United States. Highprofile legal cases over the "right to die," such as those of Karen
Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan, became legal landmarks. Other
highly publicized cases, such as those of Brophy, Conroy, Herbert,
and Jobes, contributed to making the issue a commonplace part
of the news. In the midst of the headlines generated by these and
other related cases, many Catholic ethicists attempted to provide
analysis and guidance. These cases also elicited frequent formal
statements from the Catholic episcopacy, both from individual
bishops and from episcopal conferences. 2
1 Thanks to Michael Baxter, Bill Mattison, Joyce McClure, Gilbert Meilaender, John
Grabowski, and William Barbieri for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks
also to Jennifer Moore, M.D., and Heidi White, M.D., for insight on current medical practice
with regard to MANH, and to Thomas Bender, M.D., for originally bringing to my attention
the Kelly-Donovan debate. Finally, I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the support of the
Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, where I was Visiting Scholar in 2001-02, and where
much of the research for this paper was conducted.
2 For example, "Guidelines for Legislation on Life-Sustaining Treatment," U.S. bishops'
Committee for Pro-life Activities, Origins14:32 (24 January 1985): 526ff.; "Providing Food
and Fluids to Severely Brain-Damaged Patients," friend of the court brief by the New Jersey
Catholic Conference in the Nancy Ellen Jobes Case, Origins 16:32 (22January1987):582ff.;
"Georgia Man Asks to Turn Off Life-Supporting Ventilator," friend of the court brief by the
archdiocese of Atlanta in the case of Larry James McAfee, Origins 19:17 (28 September

69

70

JOHN BERKMAN

Of the various ethical dilemmas surrounding decisions
regarding the use of life support, none provoked more
disagreement among both Catholic ethicists and the Catholic
episcopacy than that of the use of medically assisted nutrition and
hydration (henceforth MANH). Among the episcopacy, this
disagreement gained high profile in statements from the Texas
and Pennsylvania bishops, as well as those of other groups of
bishops. There were regular if not constant exchanges between
Catholic ethicists on this question through the 1980s and early
1990s. 3
The literature detailing various arguments for or against the
use of MANH in caring for the dying and debilitated is extensive.
Yet the thesis of this article is that a large part, if not the main
thrust, of the debates over MANH have been inadequate and
misguided on a number of different levels. I hope to reorient and
redirect the debate by attending to the medical history of MANH
(part 1) and recent medical developments with regard to MANH
(part 5), examining and contextualizing the earliest debate (i.e.,
in the 1950s) over MANH among moral theologians (part 2) as
well as a more recent debate over MANH involving numerous
American Catholic bishops (part 3), and critically evaluating the
types of moral arguments that preoccupy many of those who
currently write on the ethics of MANH (part 4).
The first section-a brief history of nineteenth and twentiethcentury medical practice with regard to MANH-aims to show
that inadequate understanding of the medical history,
1989): 273ff.; "The Nancy Cruzan Case," Bishop John Leibrecht, Origins 19:32 (11 January
1990): 525ff.; "Treatment of Dying Patients," bishops of Florida, Origins 19:3 (1 June
1989): 47ff.
3 For examples of such exchanges, see John Connery, "The Clarence Herbert Case: Was
Withdrawal of Treatment Justified," Hospital Progress(February 1984): 32-35, 70; and John
Paris, "Withholding or Withdrawing Nutrition and Food: What are the Real Issues," Hospital
Progress(December 1985): 22££. See also Richard McCormick, S.J., "'Moral Considerations'
Ill Considered," America 166 (14 March 1992): 210-14; and Kevin McMahon, "What the
Pennsylvania Bishops Really Said," Linacre Quarterly 59 (August 1992): 6-10. For an
exchange between William E. May and Kevin O'Rourke, see William E. May, "Tube Feeding
and the 'Vegetative' State," Ethics and Medics23:12 (December 1998): 1-2; Kevin O'Rourke,
O.P., "On the Care of 'Vegetative' Patients: A Response to William E. May's 'Tube Feeding
and the "Vegetative" State,'" Ethics and Medics 24:4 (April 1999): 3-4.

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

71

development, and varying roles of medically assisted nutrition and
hydration has led moralists to overly rigid understandings of its
place in medicine. One upshot of what I argue in this section is
that, for example, attempts to define MANH as either inherently
"basic care" or "a medical treatment" is an exercise in futility.
Such descriptions are only legitimate in specific medical contexts
and are "patient dependent."
With this history providing a sense of the medical context of
MANH in the 1950s, the second section analyzes what I believe
is the first discussion of MANH by American moral theologians,
placing it in the context of their broader concern with "the duty
to preserve life." The astute reader will surmise that the very
different medical context for MANH at that time reveals both the
achievement of and the limitations and provisional character of
the debate over MANH by the Catholic moralists (e.g., Gerald
Kelly, S.J.) of that era. In view of the evolving medical context of
MANH between the 1950s and the 1980s, one goal of this section
is to show the problematic nature of appeals by some later
Catholic moralists to the authority of earlier authors on the
question of MANH.
The third section examines a more recent Catholic
"debate"-one between two groups of groups of American
Catholic bishops in the early 1990s-over the appropriate uses of
MANH. Even this relatively recent debate cannot be separated
from its specific social and medical context. Their debate shows
both continuity with and development beyond the earlier
textbook debates, showing a greater sensitivity to the various
contexts in which the question can arise. In this debate, the
emphasis seems to be moving away from the preoccupation with
how vigorously to preserve life, and towards asking which lives
should be vigorously (or even not so vigorously) preserved. The
concern over questions related to "quality of life" is seen in the
inordinate attention this debate devotes to questions related to the
preservation of the lives of patients in comas or in a PVS
(persistent vegetative state). My point in this section is that the
traditional question concerning the duty to preserve life has been
to some extent preempted by new questions regarding what

72

JOHN BERKMAN

constitutes a dying person and the quality of life to be preserved.
These new questions--especially those concerning quality of life
-are full of conceptual ambiguity and at the same time deeply
troubling.
In order to clarify the current status of the debate concerning
MANH, the fourth section unpacks some of the arguments that
had significant currency in the last two decades when arguing that
MANH should be discontinued from PVS and other coma
patients. Focusing on four recent arguments regarding MANH for
comatose patients, this section argues that while adequate
decisions regarding the use of MANH must always be relative to
the benefit received by the patient, those who wish to withdraw
MANH from patients who are not terminally ill and whose lives
will be extended by MANH bear the burden of proof, morally
speaking.
In the light of the argument made in the fourth section, the
fifth section is a reversal of sorts. This section evaluates recent
studies on the efficacy of MANH, studies that raise serious
questions about the medical benefit of MANH for many classes of
patients. Having argued in the fourth section that the presumption
should be to give MANH to all who can derive proportionate
medical benefit from it, I postulate in the fifth section that many
classes of patients who have been presumed to gain such medical
benefit from MANH may not in fact have been benefiting from
MANH, and some (as a class of patients) may even have been
harmed by MANH. If these current studies hold up, the forty-year
honeymoon between MANH and much of the medical community
will be over. As questions continue to be raised about the medical
benefits and burdens of MANH, we can expect that the future
will bring greater attention to various means of and general
benefits of oral feeding, and less reliance on MANH.
In the light of the medical developments presented in section
5, the article concludes with some reflections on the eating
practices of contemporary American culture, and their possible
influence on assumptions about the moral appropriateness of
MANH and feeding the dying and severely debilitated more
generally. The debates over MANH in the 1980s and early 1990s

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

73

focused almost exclusively on one aspect of eating practices,
namely, their nutritive significance. In other words, concern was
focused almost entirely on how morally to evaluate a death that
resulted from a lack of nutrition. 4 While some contributors to the
debate expressed intuitions about the symbolism of food as an
expression of concern for one's parent or relative or friend, little
was said about the significance of eating practices
theologically-for example, for Eucharistic practices, for maintaining Christian community, for practicing hospitality, etc. For
many of those involved in the debate, there was no significant
moral difference between eating and receiving nutrition. I
conclude this section and the article with observations as to how
a Eucharistic vision and Eucharistic practices might guide
Christian care of the dying and severely debilitated, including
feeding practices. The purpose of this paper will be realized, not
if the reader's primary conclusion is that MANH is not as helpful
as we have thought and must use it less, but only if the reader's
primary conclusion is that MANH often represents a failure truly
to feed the patient, and if it leads to redoubled efforts to find a
more holistic means of feeding all persons whenever it is
beneficial to them.
I. MEDICALLY AsSISTED NUTRITION AND HYDRATION:

A SHORT HISTORY AND SUMMARY OF RECENT PRACTICE 5
From ancient times, people have received nutrition in ways
other than through oral feeding. Greek physicians made extensive
use of nutrient enemas, delivering various broths as well as wine,
milk, and whey through this means. Hippocrates was one of many
4 Some saw failing to feed as allowing the patient to be "starved" to death. Others saw
feeding (specifically comatose) patients as a failure of faith with regard to Christian belief in
the resurrection of the body.
5 Good general histories of alternatives to oral feeding include Henry T. Randall, "The
History of Enteral Nutrition," in J. L. Rombeau and Michael D. Caldwell, eds., Clinical
Nutrition, vol 1: Enteral and Tube Feeding (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1984), 1-9; and
Laura Harkness, "The History of Enteral Nutrition Therapy: From Raw Eggs and Nasal Tubes
to Purified Amino Acids and Early Postoperative Jejuna! Delivery," Journal of the American
Dietetic Association 102 (2002): 399-404.

74

JOHN BERKMAN

who advocated rectal tube feeding. Devices were developed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that delivered nutrients by
such means as far along as the colon. Articles in British and
American medical journals in the latter part of the nineteenth
century discussed a wide variety of nutrients introduced in this
way. 6 Perhaps the most high-profile recipient of rectal feeding in
the nineteenth century was President Garfield, who was fed in this
way every four hours for most of the seventy-nine days he
survived after being wounded by an assassin.7
While the earliest recorded use of a tube for feeding directly
into the esophagus, stomach, or jejunem is in the fourteenth
century, it first came into widespread use in the nineteenth
century. 8 At the time such methods were known as gavage or
force-feeding. Their first common use was apparently for feeding
patients of insane asylums in the first half of the nineteenth
century. Such feedings were through tubes inserted either through
the mouth (orogastric feeding) or the nose (nasogastric feeding).
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, both nasogastric and
rectal feedings were widely used. 9 By the end of the nineteenth
century pediatricians were advocating such feedings for premature
infants, and for infants and children with diphtheria and other

6 See C. E. Brown-Sequard, "Feeding per rectum in Nervous Affections," Lancet (1878):
1:144. Also Y. M. Humphreys, "An Easy Method of Feeding per rectum," Lancet (1891)
1:366-67.
7 W. D. Bliss. "Feeding per rectum: As Illustrated in the Case of the Late President Garfield
and Others," Medical Record 22 (1882): 64-69.
8 Such tubes were also used for removing poisons or other unwanted contents of the
stomach. The first reported use of a tube for aspirating the contents of the stomach was in
1813 by a professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania (P. S. Physick, "Account of
a New Mode of Extracting Poisonous Substances from the Stomach," F.clecticRepertory and
Analytical Review 3:1 [October 1812]: 111-13; also see Morton D. Pareira, Therapeutic
Nutrition with Tube Feeding [Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1959], 11).
Combining lavage and gavage was being done by 1939, when Stengel and Ravdin reported on
inserting twin tubes at the time of gastric surgeries, one into the jejunum for feeding and the
other into the stomach for removing gastric contents. See A. Stengel, Jr., and I. S. Ravdin,
"The Maintenance of Nutrition in Surgical Patients with a Description of the Orojejunal
Method of Feeding," Surgery 6 (1939):511-19.
9 Randall, "The History of Enteral Nutrition," 2.

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

75

acute ailments. 10 One physician noted that while such MANH was
best carried out by a physician, any intelligent nurse or parent
could be taught how to administer it. 11
While numerous developments in both the techniques of tube
feeding and the nutritional content of tube feeding occurred in the
first half of the twentieth century, the first monograph devoted to
the practice of tube feeding-in particular to scientifically
demonstrating its positive effects-was published by Morton
Pareira in 1959. Pareira noted that while knowledge of tube
feeding had been commonplace, use of tube feeding had up to
that time been "sporadic and limited. " 12 Scientific studies of the
beneficial effects of tube feeding were only begun in the early
1950s. Three large studies (at least 100 patients in each study)
including one by Pareira and associates showed the beneficial
effects of tube feeding on a wide range of patients who were
suffering from malnutrition. 13 Pareira classified the 240 patients
in his 1954 study into nine categories. Since practically all of his
patients showed improvement from tube feeding, he considered
all categories as indications for tube feeding. For example, he
considered patients suffering malnutrition because of localized
mechanical impediments (e.g., maxillofacial surgery or paralysis
of swallowing muscles) and because of the nature of their
postoperative convalescence (e.g., whose malnutrition persisted
because of anorexia) to be indications for tube feeding.
10 Gavage feeding of premature infants was popularized by the first modern authority on
the feeding of premature infants, the French physician Stephane Tarnier (1828-97), and
furthered in America by the work of Julius Hess (1876-1955), who in 1913 opened the first
continuously operating center for premature infants in the United States. See Frank Greer,
"Feeding the Premature Infant in the 20th Century," The Journal of Nutrition 131 (2001):
426S-430S.
11 W. A. Morrison, "The Value of the Stomach-tube in Feeding after Intubation, Based
upon Twenty-eight Cases; Also its Use in Post-diphtheritic Paralysis," Boston Medical and
SurgicalJournal 132 (1894):127-30.
12 Pareira, TherapeuticNutrition with Tube Feeding, 13.
13 T. Boles, Jr., and R. M. Zollinger, "Critical Evaluation of Jejunostomy," Archives of
Surgery 65 (1952):358-66; L. S. Fallis and J. Barron, "Gastric and Jejuna! Alimentation with
Fine Polyethylene Tubes," Archivesof Surgery 65 (1952): 373-81; M. D. Pareira, E.J. Conrad,
W. Hicks, and R. Elman, "Therapeutic Nutrition with Tube Feeding," Journal of the American
MedicalAssociation 156 (1954): 810-16.

JOHN BERKMAN

76

Pareira included patients unable to eat because of systemic
mechanical impediments related to sensorial depression (i.e.,
patients in a prolonged coma) and patients suffering from
terminal cancer as two other indications for tube feeding. 14
Although he only referred to the beneficial effects of tube feeding
for coma patients in passing, he devoted a chapter of his short
monograph to the benefits of tube feeding for patients with
terminal cancer. Pareira studied 64 terminal cancer patients. 15
Most were bedridden, and all were malnourished and anorexic.
After pursuing various means and incentives to get these patients
to eat, such attempts were abandoned and the patients were tubefed. With the exception of the few patients who were imminently
dying, anorexia disappeared in all of the tube-fed patients. The
return of appetite occurred in these patients between one and
three weeks after tube feeding was initiated. Evidence of the
return of appetite was demonstrated by the number of patients
who desired to "eat around the tube" and their action in doing so
if permitted. Pareira found that while most of these patients were
considered imminently dying when admitted, many who were
thought to be terminal were rehabilitated for a period of many
months prior to their eventual death. While initially almost all
were bed-ridden, the majority of the tube-fed patients became at
least partially ambulatory, more comfortable, and less dependent
on nursing care. Pareira concluded that these patients were
undernourished not because of any specific effects of the cancer,
but because of anorexia. By restoring appetite through tube
feeding, the condition of patients who were becoming progressively malnourished was reversed, with improved nutrition
leading to the return of appetite. While Pareira was unable or
unwilling to make claims about increased longevity, he considered
the beneficial clinical effects of tube feeding, including a return of
strength and increased sense of well-being as well as a return of
appetite, to be clear. The resulting situation was also happier for
patients and their families.
14

See Pareira, Therapeutic Nutrition with Tube Feeding, 8, 16-17.

15 Pareira notes that none of the patients had tumors that involved the gastrointestinal tract

(ibid., 34).

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

77

Extensive developments in MANH would go on in the 1960s
and 1970s, leading to a widespread use of MANH. However, it
suffices for our purposes to note that Pareira's conclusions about
the therapeutic efficacy of MANH for a broad range of acutely
and chronically ill patients and its palliative benefit for dying
patients have been widely accepted up to the recent past. Later I
will discuss recent medical studies that question these assumptions
about the efficacy of MANH, but it is important that we be aware
of this prevailing medical context for discussions and debates
regarding the use of MANH from the 1950s through the 1990s.
This context is important for three reasons.
First, we saw above that while alternatives to oral feeding were
certainly employed in a large number of contexts in the first part
of the twentieth century, the clinical benefits of MANH were not
scientifically demonstrated until the mid-1950s and their use did
not become routine until the 1960s. However, the first discussion
of MANH by Catholic moral theologians took place in the late
1940s and early 1950s. Therefore, it is important carefully to
contextualize the conclusions drawn by those moral theologians
in relation to the medical status of MANH at that time.
Second, in considering how best to characterize tube feeding
morally, the diverse purposes for which it is employed must be
adequately considered. For example, tube feeding is sometimes
employed not because oral feeding is no longer physically possible
but as a supplement to or an improvement over oral feeding, and
sometimes as a substitute for convenience rather than out of
necessity.
Thus it is important to note that MANH, even for coma
patients, is not necessarily employed because coma patients are
"unable to chew and swallow." For example, long before tube
feeding was widely available, at least some coma patients were
sustained for many years. Though I have not been able to obtain
data on the nutritional arrangements for coma patients from the
nineteenth and early twentieth century with long-term survival, I
presume that some of these patients were fed orally and others
were fed via nutritional enemas. While some coma patients are
unable to chew and swallow, this is not a universal feature of

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JOHN BERKMAN

coma patients. Certainly, to feed coma patients--or patients with
a wide variety of other debilities-orally often takes a great deal
of time and effort and such patients may aspirate (i.e., choke on)
their food. These kinds of difficulties often make oral feeding an
extremely unpalatable choice for nurses or other health-care
providers. While tube feeding may often be rightly instituted for
efficiency and safety, we should not conclude that all such patients
are unable to chew and swallow simpliciter. 16
Third, this brings us to a further issue related to the cost and
convenience of tube feeding. Whereas reference is sometimes
made to the high cost of maintaining tube-fed patients in hospital,
it is neither true that patients must be tube-fed in hospital nor that
tube feeding is necessarily a costly option. Tube-fed patients are
more often than not in nursing homes and often at home. 17
Patients in nursing homes sometimes (unfortunately) come to be
tube-fed because they experience significant weight loss, and
rather than hiring additional staff to supervise the patients' eating
practices or to take the time to assist them in eating, tube feeding
is prescribed. While a lack of assistance or supervision by no
means accounts for all or even most cases of nursing-home
patients losing weight, the fact that it is often less costly to have
a patient on a feeding tube than to hire additional staff to
customize meal preparation or to supervise eating probably
provides a disincentive to improve oral feeding efforts.
Furthermore, Medicaid and other forms of insurance typically

16 A neurologist well known for advocating the withdrawal of MANH from PVS patients
acknowledges that "[b]ecause PVS patients often have an intact involuntary swallowing reflex
in addition to intact gag and cough reflexes, it is theoretically, and in rare cases practically
possible, to feed these patients by hand. However, this usually requires an enormous amount
of time and effort by health-care professionals and families. If the patient is positioned
properly, and food is carefully placed in the back of the throat, the patient's involuntary
swallowing reflex will be activated" (Ronald Cranford, "The PersistentVegetative State: The
Medical Reality," Hastings Center Report 18 [February/March 1988]: 31).
17 See Catherine H. Bastian and Richard H. Driscoll, "Enteral Tube Feeding at Home," in
Rombeau and Caldwell, eds., Clinical Nutrition, 1:494-511.

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

79

provide additional reimbursement for tube feeding but not for
special meal preparation or assisted oral feeding. 18
II. THE CHRISTIAN'S DUlY TO PRESERVE LIFE

With this brief history and overview of tube-feeding practices
in place, we are now in a position to turn to the first significant
analysis of the ethics of tube feeding in moral theology. Of the
various textbooks in medical ethics produced by Catholic moral
theologians between the 1940s and 1960s, two of the most
popular and significant were Gerald Kelly's Medico-Moral
Problems and Charles McFadden's Medical Ethics.19 While the
majority of these texts focused on beginning of life issues, each
dedicated a chapter to the topic of the duty to preserve one's life.
This discussion was generated at least in part by the desire to help
the dying distinguish suicide from acceptable forgoing of some
medical treatments, and to help medical professionals distinguish
euthanasia from appropriate withdrawals of treatment.
For Kelly and McFadden, the Catholic tradition's key principle
for discerning the extent of the duty to preserve life was the
distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of
18 Note that "in most states, there is a higher reimbursement rate for tube-fed patients, and
hand-feeding a disabled resident takes considerably more staff time than operating a feeding
tube pump," (Susan Mitchell, D. K. Kiely, and L.A. Lipsitz, "Does Artificial Enteral Nutrition
Prolong Survivaloflnstitutionalized Elders With Chewing and Swallowing Problems?" Journal
of Gerontology 53A, no. 3 [1998]: M212). The authors are citing B. Leff, N. Cheuvront, and
W. Russell, "Discontinuing Feeding Tubes in a Community Nursing Home," Gerontologist
34 (1994):130-33.
19 Gerald Kelly, S.J., Medico-Moral Problems (St Louis: Catholic Health Association of the
United States and Canada, 1958), 128-41; Charles McFadden, Medical Ethics (5th ed.;
Philadelphia: Davis and Company,1961), 227-32. For further elaboration of Kelly's
viewpoint, see Gerald Kelly, S. J., "The Duty of Using Artificial Means of Preserving Life,"
Theological Studies 11Uune1950): 203-20. For a history of these texts in medical ethics by
Catholic moral theologians and claims about the centrality of the work of Kelly and
McFadden, see David F. Kelly, The Emergence of Roman Catholic Medical Ethics in North
America (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979). For a more extensive examination of the
principle of ordinary and extraordinary means of treatment from the same period as Kelly and
McFadden, see Daniel Cronin, The Moral Law in Regard to the Ordinary and "Extraordinary
Means of Conserving Life (Dissertatio ad lauream; Rome: Gregorian University, 1958).

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JOHN BERKMAN

preserving life. 20 Their texts include definitions of the principle,
a history of the principle, and examples for its application.
In itself, the principle is straightforward. A patient is obligated
gratefully to receive ordinary means of preserving life, but may
decline extraordinary means. In defining what constitutes
ordinary means, Kelly and McFadden note that physicians and
moralists typically mean different things by the term. For a
physician, "ordinary means" typically refers to those medicines or
procedures that are, for example, commonplace, standard, and
accepted. For a moralist, ordinary means of treatment includes
"all medicines, treatments, and operations, which offer a
reasonable hope of benefit for the patient and which can be
obtained and used without excessive expense, pain, or other
inconvenience. "21 Whereas for a physician "ordinary means"
refers to a medicine or treatment in itself, for a moralist what
constitutes ordinary means is always dependent upon the benefit
gained from the particular treatment by the patient relative to his
20 This traditional distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of treannent
continues to function normatively and institutionally in Catholic healthcare in the United
States, with its inclusion in the fourth edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for
Catholic Health Care Services (2001). Directives 56 and 57 read as follows:

56. A person has a moral obligation to use ordinary or proportionate
means of preserving his or her life. Proportionate means are those that
in the judgment of the patient offer a reasonable hope of benefit and do
not entail an excessive burden or impose excessive expense on the
family or the community.
57. A person may forgo extraordinary or disproportionate means of
preserving life. Disproportionate means are those that in the patient's
judgment do not offer a reasonable hope of benefit or entail an
excessive burden, or impose excessive expense on the family or the
community.
We find four key elements in these two directives. First, discernment of whether a
treattnent is ordinary or extraordinary requires the judgment of the patient. Second, the
patient needs to judge what constitutes a treannent's offering a reasonable hope of benefit.
Third, the patient needs to judge whether a proposed treannent entails a severe or excessive
burden. Fourth, the patient needs to judge whether a proposed treannent imposes an excessive
expense on the family or the community.
21 Kelly, Medico-Moral Problems, 129. Compare this statement of ordinary treannent with
that of Ethical and Religious Directives 56, above.

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

81

particular condition at a particular time. Thus, for a moralist, the
same treatment may at one point in a patient's illness be
considered ordinary, whereas at another stage it may be
considered extraordinary or even useless, depending on its
possible efficacy.
Kelly roots this principle in the difference between absolute
and relative duties for the Christian. Whereas the prohibition on
taking one's own life is absolute (the duty to avoid doing evil), the
obligation to preserve one's own life is limited (the duty to do
positive good). Since one's obligation to preserve one's life is
limited, a number of different considerations can render a
treatment extraordinary. Kelly cites three examples from the
history of moral theology where a hardship or burden was
regarded as rendering a means of treatment extraordinary: going
into a debtthat would place hardship on one's family, undergoing
a tremendously painful surgery or amputation (e.g., prior to the
development of anaesthesia), or moving to a far country to
preserve or restore one's health (i.e., in a cultural context in
which people's identities were firmly rooted in the land and their
families and at a time when such travel was difficult, dangerous,
and likely permanent). 22 Of course, some of what constituted
serious burdens in centuries past (e.g., travelling to another
country for a cure or undergoing an operation) are no longer a
serious burden for most persons today. Such categories are in
themselves always open to revision in relation to medical,
technological, and cultural changes over time.
Kelly and McFadden consider the 1950s equivalent of MANH
when they discuss the appropriateness of withdrawing intravenous
feeding from a patient in the last stages of a painful death from
cancer. The patient, though racked with pain, continues to linger
on, sustained by the intravenous feeding. 23 In the case they
Medico-MoralProblems, 132.
intravenous feeding, nutrients are introduced into veins rather than into the
stomach or jejunum. Such forms of feeding {now referred to as total parenteral nutrition) are
used with some patients {e.g., patients who have had their small intestine removed and cannot
adequately absorb nutrients received enterally). However, intravenous feeding is typically not
the nutritional therapy of choice because of its negative effects on the veins through which
they are delivered. While I do not have definitive data on the efficacy of intravenous feeding
22 Kelly,
23 With

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JOHN BERKMAN

discuss, the physician removes intravenous feeding, and the
patient dies within twenty-four hours. 24 Presumably the patient
dies from a complication related to a lack of hydration. Was such
a decision appropriate? McFadden presents different answers
from three moral theologians before presenting his own view.
Joseph Sullivan argues that means of preserving life must be
seen in relation to the patient's condition. Since the patient has no
hope of recovery and is suffering extreme pain, the intravenous
feeding is to be classified as extraordinary. 25 J. P. Donovan argues
that since the feeding nourishes the patient, it must be considered
ordinary care and the removal of such sustenance is the equivalent
of mercy killing.26 G. Kelly says that, although he understands the
prolongation of life in such circumstances as "relatively useless,"
he would continue with the intravenous feeding unless the patient
objected to it. On the other hand, he also acknowledges that if the
patient were incompetent and the physician and family thought
that he was racked with pain to such an extent that he was not
spiritually profiting from his state, they might reasonably presume
that he does not want the feeding. Kelly is reluctant to propose
this solution, out of fear that people might regard it as "Catholic
euthmiasia." Instead, he says that efforts should be directed
towards better pain management. He does not insist on this as the
only recourse, but advises the employment of extreme caution
with possible instances of forgoing the preservation of life.
In response to these three alternatives, McFadden states his
own view that while in theory such intravenous feeding would be
considered extraordinary, in practice its withdrawal should be
rejected. His objections include Kelly's arguments regarding
as it would have been done in the 1940s, I believe that such feedings would have been very
limited in terms of delivery of calories and nutritional balance, and would have likely led to
numerous other medical complications. However, delivery of simple hydration intravenously
would have been provided with greater ease and fewer complications.
24 See McFadden, Medical Ethics, 229-30.
25 J. V. Sullivan, Catholic Teaching on the Morality of Euthanasia, Catholic University of
America Studies in Sacred Theology, 2d ser., 22 (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 1949), 72.
26 J.P. Donovan, "Letting Patients Die; Plight of a Vasectomized Man," Homiletic and
PastoralReview 49 (August 1949): 904.

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

83

scandal and the slippery slope to euthanasia, and the claim that a
medically useless treatment may have other spiritual benefits.
In addition to the case of the imminently dying cancer patient,
Kelly and McFadden comment on a case where a patient has
lapsed into what appears to be a terminal coma. 27 If the patient is
not spiritually prepared for death, then it is obligatory to maintain
him with the hope that he will recover from the coma. If the
patient is spiritually prepared for death, then both Kelly and
McFadden consider it to be appropriate to cease intravenous
treatments once it is medically established that the coma is in all
likelihood irreversible. According to Kelly, intravenous feeding to
terminal coma patients "creates expense and nervous strain
without conferring any real benefit. " 28
While these analyses of the question of the use of MANH to
dying and/or debilitated patients were the first attempts to address
this question, and seemingly produced at best a provisional
solution to this problem, they have been extremely influential.
Kelly is well known to have been the primary author of the
earliest editions of the Ethical and Religious Directives for
Catholic Health Care Seroices, which influenced thinking about
this question and continues to function authoritatively for
Catholic health-care services, albeit in an edition further revised
by others. McFadden's and particularly Kelly's writings on
MANH are widely cited by moral theologians who argue very
different viewpoints about MANH, not least because some of the
ambiguities in Kelly's response make it easy to see it as supporting
one's own viewpoint. However, their writings on the subject of
MANH reflected the medical practices of their day (i.e., regarding
the immediate impact of withdrawing MANH from a cancer
patient, or the nature of the coma state), practices significantly
different from those of the present. In particular, their medical
assumptions about coma states was different from those current
four decades later, when the question of MANH for patients in
27 It is not exactly clear what Kelly means by "terminal coma." Some moral theologians
have interpreted this as being a patient in a persistent vegetative state, but this is by no means
clear.
28 Kelly, "The Duty of Using Artificial Means of Preserving Life," 230, cited in McFadden,

Medical Ethics, 232.

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JOHN BERKMAN

coma and/or PVS states would become the focus of a major debate
within the American Catholic episcopacy.
III. RECENT EPISCOPAL INTERPRETATIONS OF
THE DUIY TO PRESERVE LIFE

As we saw in the previous section, the key principle regarding
the withdrawal of MANH from a dying person has traditionally
been that of ordinary versus extraordinary means of medical
treatment. While certainly a live issue in the 1950s and 1960s, the
question of withholding or withdrawing life-supporting
treatments such as MANH came to much greater prominence in
the 1970s. In this dawning of an era of increasingly technological
medicine combined with an zealous imperative to prevent death
at all costs, the careful casuistry of the Catholic tradition on
ordinary versus extraordinary means of treatment was seemingly
overwhelmed by two competing viewpoints. On the one hand,
there was the approach of a well-meaning but at times overzealous
medical profession eager to use all the tools at its disposal to save
lives. On the other hand, there was the approach of an
increasingly large group of persons who began to see the medical
establishment as infringing on their right to self-determination at
the end of their lives. In response, the "right to die" movement
was born.
In different ways, these two competing approaches departed
from the classic "patient-dependent" understanding of ordinary
treatment of the dying. While the medical establishment could be
accused of sometimes forgetting the integral good of the
individual patient in the quest to use all possible life-prolonging
treatments, the "right-to-die" contingent substituted "patient
autonomy" for a measured understanding of the good of the
patient. Determinations of the good of the patient were
increasingly subsumed in the question of who had the authority
to make decisions regarding the patient's treatment. In the 1980s,
these two different, competing viewpoints were played out in a
number of very high profile legal decisions, in particular the
Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan cases.

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

85

During the 1980s and early 1990s, a number of bishops and
dioceses submitted briefs for these cases and/or made public
comment on the legal decisions. Among these various statements,
two are particularly noteworthy. In May 1990, sixteen of the
eighteen Texas Catholic bishops issued an "Interim Pastoral
Statement on Artificial Nutrition and Hydration." In January
1992, the Pennsylvania Catholic bishops issued "Nutrition and
Hydration: Moral Considerations." These two episcopal
documents follow closely the approach of Kelly and McFadden.
Both see the issue as that of the appropriate care for and
preservation of human life. Both appeal to the principle of
ordinary and extraordinary means of treatment as the key
principle for discerning appropriate efforts toward preserving life,
and both examine the examples of providing nutrition and
hydration for the dying cancer patient and the comatose patient.
With regard to the example of MANH for the dying cancer
patient, the Texas and Pennsylvania bishops follow Kelly and
McFadden in theory but not in practice, in that both argue that
forgoing MANH can be acceptable in practice as well as in theory.
The Texas bishops argue this implicitly when they follow the
1986 statement of the NCCB's Committee for Pro-Life Activities
that "medical treatments may have to take account of exceptional
circumstances, where even means for providing nourishment may
become too ineffective or burdensome to be obligatory. " 29 The
Pennsylvania bishops argue the point explicitly, seeing this
example as a "relatively easy" case of where it is appropriate to
withhold or withdraw MANH:
In the case of a terminally ill cancer patient whose death is imminent, for
instance, the decision to begin
feeding or feeding by nasogastric tube
or gastrostomy may also mean that the patient is going to endure greater
suffering for a somewhat longer period of time-without hope of recovery or
even appreciable lengthening of life. Weighing the balance of benefits and
burdens makes it relatively easy to decide that this could fall into the category of

29 Texas Catholic Bishops, "Interim Statement on Withdrawing Artificial Nutrition and
Hydration," Origins 20:4 (7 June 1990): 54, quoting from NCCB Committee for Pro-Life
Activities, "The Rights of the Terminally Ill," Origins 16:12 (4 September 1986): 222ff.

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JOHN BERKMAN

extraordinary means and that such feeding procedures need not be initiated or
may be discontinued. 30

Here we see an apparent change in practice (though not in
principle) of Catholic teaching on the use of MANH for those
imminently dying in significant pain.
When it comes to the example of the use of MANH for
comatose (especially PVS) patients, the Texas and Pennsylvania
bishops part company. Since the question of providing MANH for
PVS patients has provoked perhaps the most medical and ethical
disagreement among bishops' conferences and among Catholic
moral theologians, the rest of this section and the next section will
focus on this particular class of patient, before returning to a more
general discussion in the final section.
According to the Texas bishops, patients in a PVS or in an
irreversible coma are stricken with a fatal pathology. Thus,
decisions about when it is appropriate to withhold or withdraw
MANH are to be judged individually, ascertaining the relative
burdens or benefits of using MANH and deciding accordingly.
According to the Texas bishops, in this situation the evaluation of
benefits and burdens is to be made by the proxy based on the
expressed wish of the patient. They do not say what should be
done in the situation in which the express wishes of the patient
are not known, but since they say that a person in PVS or an
irreversible coma "has come to the end of his or her pilgrimage
and should not be impeded from taking the final step," it would
seem that they would have no principled objection to a proxy
withdrawing MANH. 31
The Pennsylvania bishops diverge from the Texas bishops on
this question at a number of points. Whereas the Texas bishops
limit their discussion to irreversible comas and the PVS and define
neither, the Pennsylvania bishops seek to avoid possible confusion
by distinguishing a range of unconscious or seemingly unconscious
states, not all of which are properly referred to as either a coma
30 Pennsylvania Catholic

Bishops, "Nutrition and Hydration: Moral Considerations,"

Origins 21:34 (30 January 1992): 547.
31

54.

Texas bishops, "Interim Statement on Withdrawing ArtificialNutrition and Hydration,"

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

87

or a PVS. For example, they describe two forms of apparent
unconsciousness, the psychiatric pseudocoma and the locked-in
state, where a person is not actually unconscious, but is for
different reasons entirely or almost entirely unable to show the
typical signs of consciousness. In addition, the Pennsylvania
bishops consider the term "irreversible coma" an oxymoron, since
a true coma is "never permanent." Eventually, a person will either
emerge into consciousness or sink into a deeper form of
unconsciousness known as a PVS. Furthermore, the Pennsylvania
bishops argue that regardless of which state of unconsciousness a
patient is in, in none of these states is the patient dead or
imminently dying, but is rather debilitated to varying degrees.
They acknowledge that while the dominant medical opinion is
that patients in a PVS are unlikely to recover, they note that some
patients have been known to recover consciousness, and also note
that there is debate in the medical literature regarding the
likelihood of the recovery of PVS patients. 32
Having provided a description of varying degrees of unconsciousness, the Pennsylvania bishops go on to argue that since,
unlike the cancer patient, the PVS patient is not "imminently
terminal," MANH can serve a life-sustaining purpose and thus
prima facie constitutes ordinary care. Although it usually will not
contribute to restoring a patient to health, it does serve to
preserve the patient's life in its current debilitated state. Involved
here are two key claims: first, that PVS is not a fatal pathology
because the "natural history" of the condition (independently of
not receiving nutrition and hydration) is not imminently or even
routinely terminal; second, that preserving the life of a person, no
matter how debilitated his state, is a benefit. There is no such
thing as a life that is of itself of greater burden than benefit-that
is, a life not worth living.
32 For examples of patients who have revived from a PVS, see Pennsylvania bishops,
"Nutrition and Hydration," 551 n. 14. For the viewpoint that recovery from a PVS after six
months "does occur, but is rare," see The Multi-Society Task Force on PVS, "Medical Aspects
of the Persistent Vegetative State: Part II," New EnglandJournal of Medicine 33 0:22 (2 June
1994): 1575; for evidence that recovery from a PVS is more likely, see Keith Andrews,
"Recovery of Patients afer Four Months or More in the Persistent Vegetative State," British
MedicalJournal 306 (12 June 1993): 1597-1600.

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JOHN BERKMAN

Having accepted that feeding a PVS patient is a benefit to him,
the Pennsylvania bishops then engage in an extended examination
of potential burdens that might outweigh the benefits of MANH.
Interestingly, while the they consider primarily the possible
burdens imposed by the procedure of MANH itself, they also
consider, secondarily, the burdens of continued existence in a PVS
state. Possible burdens are considered first in relation to the
patient himself and second in relation to the family, loved ones,
and society. In general, the Pennsylvania bishops conclude that
neither the feeding of a PVS person, nor continued existence in
that state, is a serious burden to the patient. Furthermore, while
acknowledging the potential strain on the patient's family, they do
not think that in most cases this justifies a decision to remove
MANH from a PVS patient. However, they acknowledge that in
some instances a family "may have reached the moral limits of its
abilities or its resources. In such a situation they have done all that
they can do, and they are not morally obliged to do more. "33
While willing to acknowledge such possible "exceptions," they do
not wish such exceptions to be the basis for a general acceptance
of the practice.
Initially, the main difference between the positions of the
Texas and Pennsylvania bishops seems to be descriptive: what
constitutes an appropriate description of the PVS patient? Do such
patients have a fatal pathology (i.e., the inability to chew and
swallow, as one ethicist puts it)? Or are they simply particularly
debilitated patients that require significant care?
Upon a closer reading of the two documents, deeper
disagreements emerge. For example, in citing examples of reasonable benefits for a patient, the Texas bishops include
"maintenance of life with reasonable hope of recovery."
Maintenance or preservation of life itself is not included on their
list, and this is reinforced by their next statement, that "Even
without any hope of recovery it is an expression of love and
respect for the person to keep the patient clean, warm and
comfortable." Feeding incurable patients is not included as
necessarily an expression of love. Further on in the document,
when discussing patients with a lethal pathology, the question of
33 Pennsylvania bishops, "Nutrition

and Hydration: Moral Considerations," 549.

MANH IN MEDICINEAND MORAL THEOLOGY

89

MANH is presented in such a way that arguments must be
provided as to why it should be given, rather than why it may not.
This is a viewpoint that seems to follow logically from the
viewpoint in which human life-independently of the degree of
function or debilitation-is not considered something worthwhile
to be preserved in itself.
The disagreements implicit in these episcopal statements are
given a much clearer articulation in arguments presented by
numerous theologians in the years leading up to them. In order
better to understand the underlying disagreements that existed
both in these episcopal statements and the more general debate
among theologians, I will characterize what I take to be the four
types of arguments that were typically presented as moral
justifications for withholding or withdrawing MANH from
patients in a PVS or other coma-like states.
IV. FOUR KINDS OF ARGUMENTS FOR WITHDRAWING OR
WITHHOLDING MANH FROM COMATOSE PATIENTS

However much the episcopal statements we looked at above
may differ, even more starkly different viewpoints on these
questions can be found (as might be expected) in the writings of
moral theologians. Identifying the key arguments which
encapsulate rival viewpoints requires some effort, since there is no
consensus on the meaning and use of key terms such as "benefit,"
"burden," "fatal pathology," "quality of life," and so on. In this
section, I will parse out and summarize the four most influential
justificatory arguments for withholding or withdrawing MANH
for PVS or other seriously ill patients who are unable to be or
have difficulty being fed by mouth.
First, there is the "fatal pathology" argument. On this view, the
severely debilitated patient who is unable to chew and swallow is
considered to have a fatal pathology. Morally speaking, an
"existing fatal pathology may be allowed to take its natural
course. "34 By "fatal pathology," one may mean one of two things.
If one means "fatal if no treatment is given," then this argument
31 Kevin O'Rourke, "The A.M.A. Statement on Tube Feeding: An Ethical Analysis,"
America 155 (1986): 321-23, 331, at 322.

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JOHN BERKMAN

on its own establishes very little, if anything. For without
someone having at least a potentially fatal pathology, the
conversation concerning the duty to preserve one's life never
arises. Furthermore, while it is clearly acceptable in some
circumstances for a person with a fatal pathology to refuse
particular medical treatments, the simple recognition of a person's
having a fatal pathology does not provide criteria for morally
evaluating treatment decisions.
On the other hand, if one means "fatal regardless of the
treatment given," then this would seem to mean that the patient
is imminently dying, or at least terminally ill. The terms
"imminently dying" and "terminally ill" more unambiguously
constitute a prognosis of a particular patient's condition than does
"fatal pathology," and thus function better as criteria for
evaluating the choice to withhold or withdraw MANH.
Unsurprisingly, these terms have been much more widely accepted
in the theological and particularly the medical community as
appropriate criteria.
This distinction sheds light on differences between the debate
about MANH by Kelly and others in the 1950s and the debate as
it played out in the 1980s. When Kelly and McFadden addressed
the issue of "terminal coma," a coma condition as they
understood it in light of the medical practices and possibilities of
their day was indeed akin to what could be considered
"imminently dying." However, by the 1980s, whether for good or
ill, PVS patients could not for the most part be accurately defined
as being imminently dying or even terminally ill.
A second justification for withholding or withdrawing MANH
from PVS patients is the "inability to pursue the spiritual purpose
of life" argument. 35 According to this argument, the obligation to
prolong human life comes from the need and desire to strive for
the purpose of life. Pursuing the spiritual purpose of life requires
one to be able to perform human acts (actus humanus). However,
since PVS patients cannot and probably will not be able to
35 An alternative name for this argument is the "no hope of benefit" argument. On this
view "hope of benefit" is understood as a recovery of cognitive or relational functioning that
allows a person to perform human acts (actus humanus).

MANH IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY

91

perform human acts, they can no longer pursue the spiritual
purpose of life. Since "the ability to strive for the purpose of life
[is] the touchstone for using or forgoing life support for persons
with serious ... pathologies .... when people are in a PVS, there
is no moral mandate to utilize MANH on their behalf. "36 This
argument-when made in a specifically Catholic context-appeals
to a particular interpretation of Aquinas regarding the telos of a
human life, and also finds support in a widely quoted address by
Pius XII. 37 In terms of the traditional appeal to the benefits and
burdens of a medical treatment, the argument is essentially that
MANH does not benefit PVS patients, and thus is a useless
treatment which may not or even should not be administered.
The "spiritual purpose of life" argument has considerable
appeal, not least because we tend to identify ourselves with the
activities that distinguish us as human beings. Advocates of this
view tend to distinguish sharply between biological and personal
life, arguing that "biological" life only has significance to the
extent it enables personal life.38 However, critics of this argument
claim that it assumes a dualistic anthropology, requiring persons
to disassociate "themselves" and their spiritual purpose from their
character as bodily creatures. Critics further note that humans are
not "in" their bodies, but that their bodies are in some sense
constitutive of who they are. 39 The "spiritual purpose of life"
36 O'Rourke,

"On the Care of 'Vegetative' Patients," 3-4.
of Life: An address of Pope Pius XII to an International
Congress of Anaesthesiologists (November 24, 1957)," appendix Nin Conseroing Human
Life, ed. R. E. Smith (Braintree, Mass.: The Pope John Center, 1989), 312-18.
38 With regard to the biological life/personal life distinction, "[l]t is necessary to distinguish
clearly and consistently between physical or biological life and personal life (personhood).
When this important distinction is not made, quality of life judgments can equivocate between
the value of biological life and the value of personhood" (Thomas Shannon and James J.
Walter, "The PVS Patient and the Forgoing/Withdrawing of Medical Nutrition and
Hydration" Theological Studies 49 (1988]: 635). With regard to the significance of this
distinction for the care of PVS patients, Callahan argues that MANH can be withdrawn from
PVS patients because "neither provides any genuine benefit: there is not meaningful life of any
kind-it is a mere body only, not an embodied person" (Daniel Callahan, "Feeding the Dying
Elderly," Generations 10 (Winter 1985): 17.
39 Thus Gilbert Meilaender argues "Yet for many people the uselessness of feeding the
permanently unconscious seems self-evident. Why? Probably because they suppose that the
nourishment we provide is, in the words of the President's Commission, doing no more than
37 Pius XII, "The Prolongation

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argument typically assumes functional criteria for "personhood"
and thus leads to the exclusion of certain classes of human beings
from care typically extended to all persons. The argument seems
logically to legitimate withdrawal or withholding of MANH not
only from PVS or other coma patients, but also from various
classes of patients who through genetic disease or other debility
are unable to perform human acts. Since these classes of patients
cannot benefit from MANH or other medical treatments, there is
no purpose to treating them should they develop any kind of lifethreatening (but manageable) illness.
Thus, in the 1980s, some theological ethicists accepted the
discontinuance of MANH to those in a PVS state for reasons
similar to that articulated by James Gustafson, that for such
patients "the qualities that distinguish human beings and are the
basis of human valuing of, and respect for, persons no longer
exist. "40 However, other theological ethicists argued that
"withholding or withdrawing food and fluids on this rationale is
morally wrong because it is euthanasia by omission. The
withholding or withdrawing of food or fluids carries out the
proposal, adopted by choice, to end someone's life because that
life itself is judged by others to be valueless or excessively
burdensome. "41
The above reference to "excessive burden" in fact constitutes
a third distinct argument. This argument also has two discernible
varieties. The first focuses on the burden to the patient, the
second focuses on the burden to the caregiver, to the family, and
'sustaining the body.' But we should pause before separating personhood and body so
decisively. When considering other topics (care of the environment, for example) we are eager
to criticize a dualism that divorces human reason and consciousness from the larger world of
nature. Why not here? We can know
all ranges of cognitive capacity-only as they
are embodied; there is no other 'person' for whom we might care. Such care is not useless if
it 'only' preserves bodily life but does not restore cognitive capacities. Even if it is less than
we wish could be accomplished, it remains care for the embodied person" (Gilbert
Meilaender, "On Removing Food and Water: Against the Stream," The Hastings Center
Report 14 (December 1984): 12.
"°James Gustafson, in a 22 May 1985 letter to John Paris, cited by Richard McCormick
in "Nutrition-Hydration: The New Euthanasia," in The Critical Calling (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1989), 377.
41 William E. May, et al., "Feeding and Hydrating the Permanently Unconscious and Other
Vulnerable Persons," Issues in I.Aw and Medicine 3 (Winter 1987): 206.

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to society. Of the four kinds of arguments distinguished in this
section of the paper, arguments from "excessive burden" are those
most closely rooted in the traditional principle of ordinary versus
extraordinary means of treatment. Thus, this argument is the basis
for Kelly's and McFadden's acceptance-at least in theory-of
withdrawing intravenous feeding from a comatose patient. It is
also the basis for the Pennsylvania bishops' acknowledgment that
in some instances MANH for a PVS patient could be considered
extraordinary treatment and thus morally optional.
The first type of "excessive burden" argument emphasizes the
burden of MANH for the PVS patient himself. This burden is
sometimes expressed in terms of the patient's autonomous choice:
that the patient would not have wanted to be kept alive in such a
state. It is also expressed in terms of the aesthetic disvalue of such
a state of existence, described as "offensive" or "repugnant."
However, when the burden is described in this way, it is unclear
whether what is being objected to is the burdensomeness of
MANH as a form of treatment or care, or rather the form of life
of the PVS patient which MANH helps sustain.
Traditional "excessive burden" arguments for withholding or
withdrawing MANH depend on the discernment that the burden
being considered excessive is the burden of the treatment, not the
burden of life itself. Discerning the motives of patients or their
proxies is difficult at best. However, since some PVS patients can
be fed orally, one means of engaging in such discernment is to
enquire whether the proxy would think it a good thing to feed the
PVS patient orally if that were possible. If that is the case, then it
is more likely that what is being rejected is the treatment.
However, if the receiving of nutrition by any means is rejected,
and there is no reason to believe that the nutrition itself would
harm or poison the patient, then there is significant reason to
believe that what is being rejected is not a treatment but life in
that state. However, as such, this is not a form of the traditional
"excessive burden" argument against MANH as it is understood
in terms of the principle of ordinary versus extraordinary
treatment, and is more properly seen as what is typically referred
to as a "quality of life" argument, which is discussed below.

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The second type of "excessive burden" argument is one in
which MANH for the PVS patient is considered burdensome to
the family, the caregivers, or society. This is not only the most
common justification for withdrawal of MANH from PVS
patients, but also the kind of argument which defenders of the
classic distinction between ordinary and extraordinary treatment
are likely to accept as legitimate in the tradition. More strident
advocates of withdrawing MANH from PVS patients tend to make
this appeal by referring to the financial costs to society of
maintaining PVS patients, and thus make a generalized argument
that the burdens of caring for such patients typically or always
outweigh the benefits. Those who more reluctantly acknowledge
the legitimacy of the argument that in some situations the burdens
of maintaining a PVS patient make MANH an extraordinary
treatment-such as the Pennsylvania bishops-focus on the limits
of a family's ability to care for a PVS patient in a limited number
of difficult or unfortunate situations.
The fourth and final argument is the "quality of life" argument.
We can again distinguish two varieties of argument, which are
distinguishable by their different understandings of "quality of
life." On the one hand, "quality of life" may refer to choices
about the quality of living. For example, when one has a
particular form of heart disease, having an angioplasty now might
result in a stroke and a very debilitated future existence, whereas
not having the operation may mean that one will likely die from
a heart attack before too long. In making a choice whether or not
to undergo angioplasty, a person is making a choice about what
kind of life he wants. While these kinds of choices are not strictly
commensurable, it is still possible to evaluate them, arguing that
some are better and others worse, some morally acceptable and
others morally unacceptable.
For instance, when a person is making a choice whether or not
to receive a medical treatment, or between two different possible
medical treatments, there are at least three different ways in
which we can evaluate the nature of his decision. We may
understand him to be (a) choosing between two reasonable
alternatives, as in the example of the previous paragraph; (b)

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making a seemingly imprudent but perhaps defensible choice; and
(c) choosing to die by omission. To take another example, with an
elderly but somewhat demented man whose last remaining
pleasure is eating, but who is beginning to have problems chewing
and swallowing, one could defend a choice to keep feeding him
orally, despite the risk of death by aspiration. 42
The second kind of "quality of life" argument is a choice that
there is insufficient "quality" in life itself. Like the first variety of
"excessive burden" argument discussed above, this argument is
typically not a rejection of a treatment because it does not
improve or maintain the quality of life that one presently has, but
is rather a rejection of a treatment because it sustains a life that is
not considered to have sufficient quality to be maintained. As
such, to withdraw MANH because of this kind of "quality of life"
concern is not in fact a choice about appropriate medical care,
which is always ordered to benefitting the life a patient has, but
a nonmedically determined choice about living itself.
In this section, I have examined what I take to be the four most
significant arguments put forward by moral theologians as a
rationale for limiting or forgoing the administration of MANH to
PVS and other comatose or severely debilitated patients. While
not using or withdrawing MANH from PVS or other severely
debilitated patients can be justified in some circumstances, the
burden of proof lies with establishing that the burden of the
treatment outweighs the benefit to the patient of maintaining and
prolonging his life.
Of course, perhaps the strongest rationale for the widespread
administration of MANH to patients over the last forty years has
been the accepted belief that MANH does extend the life of a
broad range of patients. This underlying assumption about the
efficacy of MANH has recently begun to be questioned by the
medical profession, and it is to this that I turn in the next section.
42 For an interesting discussion of why the Catholic tradition does not advocate the
protection of one's life and health at all costs, see Bernadette Tobin. "Can a Patient's Refusal
of Life-prolonging Treatment Be Morally Upright When It Is Motivated Neither by the Belief
That the Treatment Would Be Clearly Futile Nor by the Belief That the Consequences of
Treatment Would Be Unduly Burdensome?" Issuesfor a CatholicBioethic, ed. Luke Gormally
(London: The Linacre Centre, 1999): 334-40.

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V. CHANGING MEDICAL PRACTICES WITH REGARD TO MANH

In the previous section the focus was on arguments for and
against withdrawing MANH from PVS patients. In this final
section we return to a more general discussion of changing
medical practice with regard to MANH for dying and debilitated
patients. In the first section I discussed medical practice over the
last thirty years with regard to MANH, how often it is instituted
for a variety of reasons that combine perceived safety, cost, and
convenience for caregivers. In this section, we look at recent
changes in the use of MANH amongst medical practitioners.
Two of the key assumptions that have governed the use of
MANH among the elderly and debilitated are that it increases
longevity (e.g., for comatose patients) and that it improves quality
of life (e.g., Pareira's cancer patients). This assumption has led to
the use of MANH for large numbers of elderly patients in nursing
homes, VA hospitals, and other facilities across America, which
continues to the present.
One of the shared assumptions about MANH by almost all the
moral theologians who discuss the ethics of MANH is that it
increases longevity for almost all classes of patients. This
assumption has been held for the last forty years with little
empirical verification. Until recently it was assumed that tube
feeding was almost always a relatively safe, effective, and valuable
therapy. This assumption has been particularly strong in the
United States, where the use of tube feeding is four to eleven
times more common than in other industrialized nations. 43
However, the assumption that MANH increases longevity has
been challenged by recent studies on a number of different classes
of patients.
In one study published in 1998, 5266 elderly nursing-home
residents with chewing and swallowing problems were followed,
See L. Howard, M Ament, C. R Fleming, and others, "Current Use and Clinical
Outcome of Home Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Therapies in the United States,"
Ga.stroenterology109 (1995): 355-65. Cited in M. L. Borum, J. Lynn, Z. Zhong, and others,
"The Effect of Nutritional Supplementation on Survival in Seriously Ill Hospitalized Adults:
An Evaluation of the SUPPORT Data," Journal of the American GeriatricsSociety 48 (2000):
S35.

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to compare the rates of mortality of those with a feeding tube
versus those without. 44 Overall, the study found a significantly
higher mortality rate for patients with a feeding tube. On the
other hand, a significant portion of those patients who employed
a feeding tube were later able to be weaned from the tube, though
the study does not indicate why this was the case, or whether the
patient's chewing and swallowing problems were resolved. The
study is aware of the possibility that the increased mortality may
be because the tube-fed population was sicker, but also offers a
number of other potential explanations for the increased
mortality. First, while feeding tubes are often inserted to prevent
aspiration, the efficacy of this intervention has never been
proven. 45 Second, tube-fed patients have a tendency to be more
agitated, which leads to the use of other medications or restraints.
Third, tube-fed patients may have a number of other local
complications, such as increased diarrhea leading to fluid and
electrolyte imbalances, and increased infections from the feeding
tube itself, or from it being dislodged.
In another study published in 2000 of 2149 patients receiving
nutritional support who were seriously ill (e.g., almost all were
also on a ventilator), enteral or tube feeding was associated with
increased longevity for patients in a coma. However, it was also
associated with decreased longevity for patients with acute
respiratory failure, with multiorgan system failure with sepsis,
with cirrhosis, and with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.46
The authors of the study acknowledge that the significance of
their results might be limited because of an inability to adjust for
the relative severity of their patients' illnesses (i.e., those receiving
nutritional support might have been relatively sicker and thus
likely to die sooner). While they do not wish to draw definitive
conclusions about the cause for increased mortality among certain
classes of patients, the authors of this study do conclude that
"" Mitchell, Kiely, and Lipsitz, "Does Artificial Enteral Nutrition Prolong Survival of
Institutionalized Elders With Chewing and Swallowing Problems?," M207-M213.
45 See Thomas Finocane and Julie Bynum, "Use of Tube Feeding to Prevent Aspiration
Pneumonia," Lancet 348 (23 November 1996): 1421-24.
46 Borum, Lynn, Zhong, and others, "The Effect of Nutritional Supplementation on
Survival in Seriously Ill Hospitalized Adults: An Evaluation of the SUPPORT Data," S33.

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certain classes of patients who receive tube feeding may be at
increased risk of mortality.
At the same time as these studies have been going on, an
increasing number of geriatricians have been finding that there are
alternatives to overcoming many kinds of chewing and swallowing
problems in the elderly. There is presently much work on
matching appropriate diets for individual patients, making meals
that are appetizing to particular patients, and also finding the kind
of consistency of food that patients with chewing and swallowing
problems can assimilate without aspiration. For example, while
some patients will choke on solids but not on liquids, other
patients will choke on liquids, but not on thickened liquids.
Whereas in the past a patient's tendency to aspirate a typical menu
might have been an indication for tube-feeding, now in some
places efforts are going towards tailoring menus to the specific
swallowing abilities of a particular patient.
This brings us to the question of the future of MANH in
medicine. If the studies discussed above are reinforced by other
studies, there will undoubtedly begin to be a considerable change
in the use of MANH. Because the previous two sections of this
pape!" focused on MANH for PVS and other coma patients, and
the argument put forth there is that since (a) this class of patients
is not in any ordinary sense "terminally ill" or "imminently dying"
and (b) MANH has been shown to prolong the life of this class of
patients, the burden of proof is on those who wish to argue that
such patients should not receive MANH, the reader may assume
that this paper is strongly advocating the use of MANH for all
classes of patients. It is not. While undoubtedly preserving the
lives of many persons, MANH also has many deleterious qualities,
which have not been addressed widely in either the medical or the
ethical literature. Some of these deleterious qualities are medical
burdens in the narrow sense: MANH in some classes of patients
may result in reduced longevity, add other medical complications,
and increase patient discomfort. On these grounds alone, we are
seeing the reduction in the use of MANH for dying and
debilitated patients in various medical settings in the United
States. In the final section, I will argue that moral theologians

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have a broader and more holistic perspective to offer to the
question of the use of MANH for dying and debilitated patients,
a perspective that is rarely presented in the moral and theological
literature.

VI. FEED ME TILL I WANT No MORE?
The perspective to be presented in this last section is
encapsulated in a verse by the Welsh poet and hymn writer
William Williams. His most famous hymn begins as follows:
Guide me, 0 Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,
Feed me till I want no more;
Feed me till I want no more.

In Williams's verse, we can see three implicit claims. First, eating
is placed in the context of Christian pilgrimage and discipleship.
The hungers of a Christian can and should always draw him to the
Provider of his daily bread, which by God's grace will fulfill those
hungers. Second, Williams's reference to "being fed" signals the
importance of the communal element in Christian eating:
Christians not only pursue their daily bread, but also accept being
fed, and in doing so accept gifts given to them. Thus Christians
accept the gift of the Eucharist as sustenance for their lives. Third,
in the ambiguity of the term "want" in Williams's verse, we are
drawn to the realization that "being fed" is adequately grasped
neither as merely a satiation of human desires nor as the
fulfillment of bodily needs. Rather, Christians' desires and needs
for food are to be integrated with-and if and when necessary,
subordinated to-the ultimate end of the Christian. For the
Christian, "feed me till I want no more" is ultimately neither a cry
of gluttonous self-assertion, nor a medical request for the most
efficient delivery of nutrition as long as medical benefits are to be

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had, but an exclamation of a commitment to recognize that one's
daily bread comes from God and God's people.
It is remarkable how little has been written about the
theological significance of eating practices. The human practices
of dining and/or feeding others has not been a significant topic for
most moral theologians. A notable exception to this is a recent
article by Patrick McCormick, which focuses on the
theological-and especially Eucharistic-significance of eating
practices in relation to some of the culinary pathologies endemic
in American culture. 47 McCormick seeks to recover a holistic
theological perspective on Christian eating practices in light of
"Diet America's" current preoccupation with dieting. However,
McCormick's insights are also applicable, as I will seek to show,
to Christian reflection on feeding those who are dying and
severely debilitated.
McCormick seeks to move us toward a more adequate
theological understanding of our eating practices. He emphasizes
a theological understanding of the significance of the bodily, and
challenges contemporary eating practices-specifically those of
"Diet America"-in the light of a Eucharistic theology. Thus he
asks:
if our ability to participate in the mystery of this sacrament depends at least in
part on our grasp of the symbols employed in the breaking, sharing, and eating
of this bread and wine, then just how does our being immersed in the rituals and
customs of "Diet America" affect our experience of the Eucharist? And second,
what, if anything, does the Eucharist have to say to our contemporary food
culture and larger practices of table fellowship? In what ways does this sacrament
of God's creative, redemptive and reconciling love inform and/or challenge the
attitudes, practices, and structures of "Diet America"? 48

47 See Patrick T. McCormick, "How Could We Break The Lord's Bread in a Foreign Land?
The Eucharist in 'Diet America,'" Horizons 25 (1998): 43-57. For other suggestive articles on
ways in which Christians might understand their eating practices Eucharistically, see Mark
Allman, "Eucharist, Ritual, and Narrative: Formation of Individual and Communal Moral
Character," journal of Ritual Studies 14:1 (2000): 60-67; and especially William T.
Cavanaugh, "The World in a Wafer: A Geography of the Eucharist as Resistance of
Globalization," Modem Theology 15:2 (April 1999): 181-96.
48 Ibid., 47.

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McCormick's theological account of the significance of our
eating practices begins with an appeal to Wendell Berry's claim
that with food becoming ever more an efficiently produced,
processed, and packaged commodity, we find it increasingly
harder to eat with an understanding of our food as a gift of God
that involves the labors of others. When we are involved with the
growing and/or the preparing and cooking of our food, "we
experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for
we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and
powers we cannot comprehend. "49 This insight is particularly
relevant for the situation of the person receiving MANH.
Although tube feeding has always in some sense circumvented
eating, at one time it was simply hospital food inserted into a tube
and transported into the body. At present it is highly processed,
and perhaps the exemplification of the alienation of "food" from
its sources, and the mystery and gratitude that food should call
forth from us. As we noted earlier, patients are often tube fed not
strictly out of medical necessity, but for a variety of conveniences
and benefits, which sometimes do not take into account the
pleasures and joys of eating of the person who is to be tube fed.
McCormick also seeks to show how "Diet America's" approach
to food alienates us from the pleasures of eating, and on a deeper
level, from an adequate recognition of our embodiment. The
culture of dieting rejects the pleasures of the palate, and, in
typically promoting an idealized conception of the body, produces
a rejection and/or hatred of real human bodies. McCormick
cannot see how this can be reconciled with a Eucharistic vision
that tells us to "taste and see the goodness of the Lord." He also
notes that "Diet America" is particularly ill at ease with bodies
that "grow old, get sick, and die," and with women's bodies,
which it constantly seeks to "reduce," often "to a number on their
bathroom scales, a number which is always too large. "50 In
contrast, McCormick notes that by our participation in the
Eucharist, we are transformed into the body of Christ, and we are
• 9 Ibid., 48, quoting from Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating," in Daniel Halpern,
ed., Not for Bread Alone (Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco, 1993), 17.
50 McCormick, "The Eucharist in 'Diet America'," 52.

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to "celebrate our bodies and the bodies of our neighbors .... our
bodies are glorious creation ... [which] have been fashioned by
God to savor and enjoy that world-indeed they have become
God's dwelling place. "51 McCormick's insights with regard to the
diet culture's perception of imperfect bodies is clearly present in
many discussions of the bodies of the dying and severely
debilitated. Such discussions never rejoice in such imperfect and
debilitated bodies, but typically speak of the "repugnance" or
"burdensomeness" of life itself when it is lived in such bodies. Our
culture, which prizes efficiency and bodily perfection, is often
unable to find anything redeeming in the process of dying of a
severely debilitated person.
McCormick also powerfully recognizes the communal and
social elements of our eating practices. Humans do not merely
eat; they dine. Dining is a place of companionship, and cooking
is an opportunity to display artistry and hospitality. McCormick
states this eloquently:
For these tables are not only the places where we share our food and drink, they
are also where we bring our stories, raise a toast to our dreams, thank God for
our blessings, welcome new family members, and remember old friends. And
they are the .places we bring the good that has been grown, harvested, and
delivered by others, as well as the places where we bow our heads to recall those
without tables. They are places for sharing and breaking bread, for making sure
that everyone has enough and that no one hoards all the good stuff; for it is a
tough thing to enjoy a meal next to someone who is hungry. They are places for
reconciliation, for forgiving and making peace with a simple toast or a piece of
bread since it is much too hard and stilted a thing to sit around these tables and
eat with enemies. And they are places to bring new acquaintances and fashion
them into friends or family, because dining is not something we can do well with
strangers. If there are things more important than how we behave at our
tables-both personal and public-there are not many of them. 52

Herbert McCabe echoes McCormick's argument that our
eating practices create our communities, claiming that eating
alone (and living alone) are somehow unnatural for humans. 53 In

SI Ibid., 53.

52 Ibid., 54.
53

Herbert McCabe, The New Creation (London: Fontana, 1964).

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breaking bread and sharing the cup with others, we become
reconciled and brought into community with others.
The importance of the communal dimension of eating is also
usually ignored in ethical discussions of MANH for dying and
debilitated patients. For example, as was noted earlier in the
paper, nursing-home patients are sometimes started on tube
feeding because they are not eating sufficiently by mouth, for
whatever reason. While the choice to tube feed may mean
improved nutrition given the existing situation, the choice to
administer tube feeding may signal the end of efforts to feed the
patient by mouth. In such cases, it is also the end of one of the
main forms of human contact and attention that such a patient
may expect to receive. From then on, the nurse or attendant is
typically "feeding" a machine, and contact with the patient is
likely to be more remote. In addition, a nursing-home patient who
is tube fed typically no longer goes to the dining room to eat with
others. As such, she is deprived of another main source of human
contact and socialization. Finally, the patient is now deprived of
a ritual that typically regulates her days and hours, and further
alienates him from the typical human activities that are part of
defining who we are.
McCormick alludes to one other deficiency with the culture of
"Diet America" in its preoccupation with "reducing" human
bodies-its rejection of hospitality. In the quest to control and
reduce the body, diet America is preoccupied with control over all
that goes in the body, and so is suspicious of others' offers of
hospitality. McCormick notes that "the Christian story is littered
with saints like Vincent de Paul, William Booth, and Dorothy Day
who spent their lives honoring and caring for the suffering bodies
of neighbors and strangers alike." 54 For Christians, the centrality
of the command to perform the corporal works of mercy is a stark
reminder not only of the Christian responsibility to show
hospitality in caring for the sick and suffering and debilitated
bodies of the sick and dying, but also to be willing to receive
hospitality when we are debilitated and dying. In the culture of
"Diet America," a culture that emphasizes autonomy and self54 McCormick,

"The Eucharist in 'Diet America'," 51.

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mastery, we should not be surprised to see the spiritual pathology
of the refusal to receive hospitality.
The Christian witness of hospitality also speaks to the situation
of many patients who receive or have received MANH. In most
of the contemporary debates about MANH, it is assumed that if
MANH is removed, the person will not be fed because she should
not or cannot receive any substantive nutrition. While there are
certainly many situations when a patient is dying where it is
indeed necessary and even best for her not to be fed, it should not
be a general assumption that patients who are taken off of MANH
are no longer to be fed by mouth. Feeding others and being fed by
others is among the most significant acts that Christians do, and
not only for nutritive reasons. As persons shaped by a Eucharistic
vision of our eating practices, Christians know this well. If and
when it is realized that MANH is not as effective in prolonging
life as it was once thought to be, there will be an opportunity in
nursing homes and other medical contexts to rethink the
significance of feeding. It can be hoped that a Eucharistic vision
of the significance of feeding the dying and debilitated will be
embodied in these settings, recalling what it might mean to hear
the cry of even the dying and severely debilitated to "Feed Me Till
I Want No More."

The Thomist 68 (2004): 105-41

RECONCILING SCIENCE WITH NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
MICHAELAUGROS
Waterbury, Connecticut

T

HE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE has shaped or influenced
virtually every aspect of modern culture. One of its
consequences has been the apparent demise of natural
philosophy, which was perceived to be an erroneous first attempt
to do what science now does correctly. To this day one sees on
occasion a physics textbook that begins by censuring Aristotle, the
natural philosopher par excellence, for his blunders about falling
bodies, or the stars, or the elements. Some historians concede that
we could hardly have expected more from the Philosopher,
helpless as he was without telescopes and other scientific
paraphernalia. Others point out that he himself offered apology
for daring to speak on things unobservable to him:
We regard the zeal of one whose thirst after philosophy leads him to accept even
slight indications where it is very difficult to see one's way, as a proof rather of
modesty than of over-confidence. 1

By the kinds of experience available to him, Aristotle could never
have attained to much more than scanty conceptions about the
stars. He could not correctly identify even the elements of familiar
and humble Earth. It seemed only appropriate that philosophers
J. L. Stocks translation, from The Complete Works of Aristotle,
ed. Jonathan Barnes (repr.; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). All quotations
of Aristotle will be drawn from this edition. In his Meteorology, Aristotle remarks that "We
consider a satisfactory explanation of phenomena inaccessible to observation to have been
given when our account of them is free from impossibilities" (1.7.344a5, E.W. Webster
translation).
1 De Caelo 2.12.291b25,

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should have relinquished the whole study of nature to those better
equipped for the job. 2
Philosophers, however, cannot afford this luxury. Once every
attempt to philosophize about nature is abandoned, what becomes
of philosophy? What is left? Shall we philosophize about God? Or
the immortality of the soul? If the principles and methods of
philosophy prove unreliable regarding things we can lay our hands
on, can we trust them in studying things outside our experience?
Incredible. Worse yet, if philosophers give up talking about the
natural world altogether, then ethics, too, despite its
preoccupation with our very own actions, could not go forward
without permission from the scientists, but would be obliged to
wait upon their final verdict concerning, for example, the
question of human freedom. When scientists, using only the
methods to which they are accustomed, see no need for such
things as free will, the soul, purpose in nature, and a host of other
things, they are apt to regard them as obsolete hypotheses
invented in a time when a sober study of nature was neither
possible nor yet conceived, when people had an animistic and
anthropomorphic view of the world. In other words, natural
philosophers are not extinct; they have disappeared from
philosophy departments only to reappear in science departments.
There has been for some time now an unfortunate divorce
between "science" and "natural philosophy," a divorce which I am
to some extent forced to acknowledge because of common
parlance. Although there is a real difference between the methods
used in the more general study of nature and those used in the
2 Stephen Hawking notes this concession of the philosophers: "Up to now, most scientists
have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe
is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the
philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories. In the
eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including
science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning?
However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and
mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers
reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, possibly the most famous
philosopher of this century, said, The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of
language.What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!"
(Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time [New York: Bantam Books, 1990], 174-75).

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more detailed studies of it, such differences do not warrant a
distinction of disciplines. One and the same discipline can require
many different methods in order to approach its one subject
matter. Physicists sometimes use thought experiments, other times
they perform physical experiments. Astronomers sometimes use
optical telescopes, other times they need radio telescopes.
Biologists sometimes observe the whole animal in action, other
times they dissect it. Nevertheless, most philosophers who have
not given up on nature entirely have restricted "the philosophy of
nature" to the most general study of nature, where, as we shall
see, certainty is attainable and hypotheses and experiments are
unnecessary. Meanwhile, scientists have confined "science" to a
study of nature by means of hypotheses and experiments. It was
not always so. In Aristotle's day, indeed in the time of Thomas
Aquinas, there was no distinction between the philosopher of
nature and the scientist. Natural science is one philosophic
discipline, although it requires many different methods. Even by
Newton's time it was still customary to call physics "philosophy. "3
The distinction between natural philosophy and science is
certainly artificial for any lover of wisdom who wishes to
understand all things as much as possible. A study that begins in
wonder 4 could hardly stop just as the most wonderful questions
emerge, for the mere reason that we cannot have certainty about
the answers. For scientists, too, the distinction is unnatural. If
they study nature out of curiosity about it, will they ignore any
source of genuine knowledge about it? Will they not rather rejoice
at the possibility of knowing with certainty at least some things
about nature, however humble and general? It makes no sense to
distinguish two disciplines that seek to understand the same
subject matter in the same light, namely, the light of sense
3 The very word "scientist," it seems, was not coined in English until 1834. See the Oxford
English Dictionary, 2d edition, ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989).
4 "For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to
philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little
and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and
those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe" (Aristotle,
Metaphysics, 1.2.982b10-15; W. D. Ross translation).

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experience. To number disciplines based on the number of
methods used is backwards: subject matter is much more
fundamental. 5 If we define a discipline by a single method, then
its subject matter becomes "whatever can be understood by that
method." Accordingly, "the philosophy of nature" has for its
subject matter "whatever can be understood about nature with
certainty from general experience," and the subject matter of
"science" becomes "whatever can be learned about nature by
experiments. " 6
It is no doubt true that the generic study of nature is more
"philosophical" than the detailed study of it in the sense that the
way of thinking appropriate to this study resembles metaphysics
more than modern physics does. It is a mistake, however, to
conclude that thinking in very general terms is somehow more
"philosophical" than getting down to particulars. A philosopher
is not someone who prefers thinking about "animal" rather than
"slug." Ideally, Aristotle says,
We proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any
member of the kingdom, however ignoble. For if some have no graces to charm
the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit
that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of
causation, and are inclined to philosophy. 7

5 Thus Thomas Aquinas points out that those who use a mathematical method to study
nature are nonetheless more natural scientists than mathematicians, because they use
mathematics for the sake of understanding something about narure, not something about
mathematical things. See II Phys., lect. 3, n. 336 (In octo libros de Physico auditu sive
Physicorum Aristotelis Commentaria, ed. P. Fr. Angeli and M. Pirotta, O.P. [Naples: M.
d'Auria Editore Pontificio, 1953], p. 82). The naturalist who applies mathematics to nature
considers every term, such as "straight," "triangle," "circle," in concreto, thinking of each as
existing in some kind of sensible matter. This difference in the mode of defining is the crucial
difference between mathematics and natural science. One defines with, the other without,
sensible matter. This is not a difference of method, but a difference in what they are studying,
an essential difference in the intelligibility of their subject matters. See Aquinas, In Boet. de
Trin., q. 5 ("De divisione speculativae scientiae"), a. 1.
6 None of this constitutes an objection against distinguishing
of one science as a
convenience for the division of labor.
7 Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 1.5.645a5-10 (William Ogle translation).

parts

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As for which is more "scientific," the general or the particular
knowledge of nature, this depends entirely on what is meant by
the word. In its ancient sense, scientia or episternemeant a very
perfect knowledge, a certainty of something obtained by seeing
the reasons why it is so. Accordingly, mathematics would be the
most scientific of the sciences, as one can judge by the standards
laid out for "science" in Aristotle's PosteriorAnalytics. In this
sense of "science," the more general study of nature is more
"scientific," because it is much more certain than the detailed
study of nature which rests upon hypotheses.
Today, however, the word "science" has a meaning that does
not apply to mathematics at all.8 It means a knowledge obtained
by experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses. Notice that
this new meaning is not given in terms of the subject matter we
hope to understand, but in terms of a particular method of
understanding it. 9 It follows, of course, that a generic
understanding of natural things, which does not need experiments
at all, is not "science." Some would even call it "unscientific,"
implying, unjustly, that whatever does not use the experimental
method cannot be real knowledge, but is more like conjecture or
groundless opinion. Regardless of the motives for restricting the
word "science" in this way, taken in this sense it is clear that the
more detailed parts of the study of nature are more "scientific."
To sum up, if "philosophy" is taken in its ancient sense to
mean any universal knowledge (or search for it) beginning in
wonder, it applies to the whole study of nature, both general and
specific, and if more to either, more to the specific, since a
knowledge of things in all their concreteness is more wonderful
than a general understanding of them that abstracts from their
8 "Mathematics is not a science from our point of view, in the sense that it is not a natural
science. The test of its validity is not experiment" (Richard P. Feynman, Six Easy Pieces, ed.
Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands [repr .; Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, Addison-Wesley,
1995], 47).
9 "Scientist" is more concrete than "science," and so it is natural for people to define
"science" by what is common to all the people called "scientists." U those who call themselves
scientists, however, arbitrarily restrict themselves to using certain methods to study nature
when other legitimate ones exist, the "science of nature" will end up with an artificially
restrictive definition.

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differences. Thus what we call "science" today would be more
"philosophical" than Aristotle's Physics.If "science" is taken in its
ancient sense to mean a very sure and causal knowledge of
conclusions, then it applies more to the more general study of
nature, and thus Aristotle's Physics would be more "scientific"
than what we call "science" today.
The more general study of nature I will call "natural
philosophy," and the more detailed study of it, "science." Using
this distinction, we may say that it is generally thought today that
science does not continue the philosophy of nature, but replaces
it. The detailed study of nature, based on experiments, is the only
serious knowledge of nature, we are told, and it replaces the more
general study of it conducted by philosophers who do not use
experiments. 10 To see clearly whether the more "scientific" study
of nature can replace the more "philosophic," to see how these
methods are related, it is necessary first to see their distinction.
Scientists might resent being told that theirs is only a part of the
study of nature, that there are ways to study nature other than the
ones they commonly adopt, ways that yield a knowledge worthy
of the name. Science tends to define itself with perfect generality:
any and all genuine knowledge of the natural world is "science."
This is as it should be, and it is the way Aristotle understood the
science of nature. There are nonetheless principles and methods,
and even kinds of experience, that scientists almost entirely
ignore, but that if pursued yield genuine knowledge of the natural
world.
All distinction is based on some kind of opposition.
Distinguishing the more "philosophical" study of nature from the
"scientific" accordingly reduces to understanding six 11
oppositions, which I now take up one at a time.
10 This is one of the reasons that it is difficult to defend the idea of a university, today,
where science and philosophy departments are supposed to coexist peacefully, and even
cooperate. "The presumption is that nature is every bit of what science can reveal, but a great
deal more besides, and that some of this, too, can be known" (Charles de Koninck, "The
Moral Responsibilities of the Scientist," Laval Theologiqueet Philosophique6 [1950): 356).
11 I make no claim to exhaustiveness, but only to bringing out the most fundamental
oppositions which bear on the distinction between "science" and "the philosophy of nature"
in the modern and restricted senses of these terms.

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I. GENERAL VS. PARTICULAR
The first difference between a more philosophic study of
nature and what we today would call the scientific approach is
based on the difference between generality and particularity.
Science indisputably yields a much more distinct and detailed
picture of the universe than philosophy can ever provide. A
natural philosopher can show that locomotion is the most basic
kind of change, and all other change depends upon it in some
way. 12 A scientist can show how this is so in particular cases, for
example showing how a change in temperature follows upon a
change in the motions of tiny particles. A natural philosopher
defines "element," and can show that elements must exist and that
there must be a finite number of these in the world. 13 The scientist
can tell what the chemical elements are, and he learns more every
day about the ultimate particles composing all bodies. The natural
philosopher argues that the universe is finite. 14 The scientist can
tell roughly how much mass the universe contains, and whether
the finitude of the universe is due to its having a boundary. The
natural philosopher can say what time is.15 The scientist can tell
whether or not there is some universal standard of time in the
universe. Thus scientists speak in a more particular and detailed
way than natural philosophers do. 16
In terms of detail science improves upon what natural
philosophy has to say. A more particular knowledge is better than
a more general, vague knowledge. It does not follow, however,
that scientific knowledge of the natural world can replace a
12 See Aristotle, Physics, 7.7. I cite Aristotle here not as an authority, but as an example of
the way of studying natural things that is so commonly distinguished against "science."
13 See ibid., 1.4.187b7.
14 See Aristotle, De Caelo, 1.5-7.
15 See Aristotle, Physics, 4.11.219b2 ff.
16 The natural philosopher can talk about some very particular things, but not in concrete
detail, as it were. The human soul, for example, is about as specific a thing as one could hope
to find: it is the form of a most specific species of things, namely, man. What enables the
philosopher to speak about so specific a thing, however, is his use of his interior experience
of being a man, which does not enable him to speak in detail about the body of which this soul
is the form. Details about the human Jiody take us immediately into the realm of science.

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philosophic knowledge of it. Particular knowledge cannot replace
general knowledge. One reason for this is that more general
knowledge, precisely because it is more general and therefore less
perfect, is also easier and more certain to us than an exacting
knowledge of particulars. 17 And more certain knowledge cannot
be replaced by less certain knowledge.
To illustrate, even when blindfolded I can distinguish between
wine and beer. That is easy enough, being a quite general
knowledge of rather major differences between different kinds of
alcoholic beverages. I boast that I can also infallibly tell a white
wine from a red one by blind tasting. Once I am asked about
different reds, though, I get nervous. When we descend into
different particular Zinfandels, or different years of the same
Zinfandel, I am lost. Now even if I were a true connoisseur my
knowledge of the differences between this and that wine could
never replace my knowledge of the difference between wine and
beer. It can complete it in some way, but never replace it.
The same is true of intellectual knowledge. My knowledge of
the differences between the species of triangles cannot replace my
more general knowledge of the differences between triangles and
quadrilaterals. My knowledge of properties belonging to all
triangles in general cannot be replaced by my knowledge of the
properties belonging to the "three-four-five" right triangle in
particular. In the opening chapter of his Physics, Aristotle points
out that it is natural for us to begin the study of nature in a very
general way, and that we are much more certain in .our vague
general knowledge than in our understanding of specific details.
We are much more certain that there is a difference of kind
between plants and animals than that there is such a difference
between a skunk and a horse, and we are more certain that there
is a difference of kind between a skunk and a horse than that
there is such a difference between a horse and a zebra.
17 "The laws of physics can acquire this minuteness of detail only by sacrificing something
of the fixed and absolute certainty of common-sense laws. There is a sort of balance between
precision and certainty: one cannot be increased except to the detriment of the other" (Pierre
Duhem, The Aim and Structure of PhysicalTheory [repr.; New York: Atheneum, 1974], 17879).

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It is better, then, to say that science completes natural
philosophy in some way, rather than to say that it replaces it. A
particular knowledge of the natural world is more perfect than a
general knowledge of it, being more distinct and detailed, but it
is also less general and less certain, and therefore cannot replace
it.
II. UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE VS. CONFINED EXPERIENCES

The second difference between natural philosophy and science
is based on the kinds of experience from which they begin. I call
"universal experience" the experience that all healthy adults have
and cannot avoid having, and "confined experiences" any of the
sort that only some people have. 18 Everyone experiences motion
or change in the world; that is a matter of universal experience.
But only some people experience earthquakes; that kind of
experience is confined to certain individuals, even if a great
number of them. Every healthy adult has an experience of seeing;
that is again a matter of universal experience. The more particular
experience of seeing the northern lights, however, is restricted to
some people only. Experiencing hallucinations, or experiencing
heightened senses of hearing and smell due to loss of vision, are
also matters of confined experience.
The answers to some fundamental questions about nature can
be reached by beginning from nothing more than universal
experience. Accordingly the first part of the study of nature begins
from universal experience alone, but can take us only so far into
a study of natural things. Not everything we wish to know about
nature is contained implicitly in the kinds of experiences that all
of us share. Science accordingly seeks to supplement ordinary
experience by contriving, with instruments and experiments,
further experiences that are necessarily confined to a few
18 Scientists make this distinction, too. Werner Heisenberg, for example, says, "Since the
time of Galileo the fundamental method made it possible to pass from general experience to
specific experience, to single out characteristic events in nature from which its 'laws' could be
studied more directly than from general experience" (Werner Heisenberg, Physics and
Philosophy [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], 149).

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observers. Yet science takes pains to ensure that the kinds of
observations from which it begins will always be reproducible in
principle-they must be things which every person could in
principle experience, even if it is not the case that every person
must experience them. 19 Those who love knowledge are not
satisfied with the scanty conceptions of so many particular things
which universal experience by itself would supply-we must
pursue a more and more detailed experience of nature. Thus it is
a part of the aim of science to extend the range of our
experience. 20
The scientist is therefore more free to investigate whatever
questions he chooses than his more philosophical counterpart. But
his freedom is bought at a price: to begin from experiences that
are not shared by all people, to which in fact only a very few are
privy, inevitably introduces an element of human faith into
science which is foreign to philosophy. Not only does a layman
have to take a scientist's word for it that observations and
experiments bear out his theory, but even the scientist himself
must take his fellow scientists' word for such things. No scientist
can personally verify in his own experience all the scientific
theories and results upon which his own efforts depend. The
philosopher, on the other hand, who does not descend to the
more particular experiences of the scientist, is restricted to the
investigation of those mysteries to which nature itself has seen fit
to give us clues; he begins only from things that are naturally
experienced by everyone. His advantage is that he need not put
his faith in anyone to know his conclusions, since they rely upon
no one's experience but his own. Once more, then, we have a
reason that scientific knowledge of nature cannot replace a
philosophical knowledge of it: a knowledge that relies on trusting
someone else cannot replace a knowledge that does not.
It is important to underscore that science, too, presupposes and
depends on universal experience; it is not possible to begin from
19 Niels Bohr says that the aim of every physical experiment is "to gain knowledge under
reproducible and communicable conditions" (Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human
Knowledge [New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1958], 37).
20 "The goal of science is to augment and order our experience" (ibid., 88).

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confined experiences alone. What distinguishes the general part
of the study of nature from science is not that it begins from
universal experience, but that it restricts itself to this. The
scientist, when describing or conducting an experiment or
observation, relies upon the same common conceptions of the
world that everyone does, even if he is not restricted to these. 21
The principle that "The whole is greater than its part" applies in
nature as well as in mathematics, and it is known to everyone
since wholes and parts are a matter of universal experience.
Where would science be if this principle were in doubt? And yet
it is not the result of experimentation or contrived observation of
any kind.
It is therefore useless to try debunking the philosophy of
nature on the ground that science often overturns common
experience. "Common experience," if taken to mean universal
experience as defined above, is not only the basis of the more
general philosophy of nature, but it is also one of the irreplaceable
pillars of science. There is another sense of "common experience"
or "common sense," however, which can be overturned by
science. 22 Sometimes what everyone naturally thinks at first,
before being taught otherwise, is called "common sense." Taken
in this way, it is common sense, for example, that a sailboat
cannot sail faster than the wind that is pushing it. Scientists and
sailors assure us that this piece of "common sense" is actually
false. It is noteworthy that even those who have never sailed
before (perhaps I should say especially those who have never
sailed before) will resist the notion that a sailboat can sail faster
than the wind. Clearly their resistance is due not to any
experience of sailboats but to their experience of some more
21 As Einstein put it, "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday
thinking .•.. Scientific thought is a development of pre-scientific thought" (Albert Einstein,
Out of My Later Years [repr.; Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970], 59).
22 It is this meaning of "common sense" that Carl F. von Weizsacker had in mind when he
said "Aristotle wanted to preserve nature, to save the phenomena; his fault was that he made
too much use of common sense. Galileo dissects nature, teaches us to produce new
phenomena; and to strike against common sense with the help of mathematics" (Carl F. von
Weizsiicker, The Relevanceof Science, Gifford Lectures, 1959-60 [London: Collins, 1964],
104).

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general thing. They know that "No effect can exceed its cause."
They are quite right about this; they are only mistaken in thinking
that the sailboat sailing faster than the wind violates that
principle. It is up to the physicists to explain how a sailboat can
sail faster than the wind that is pushing it, without doing violence
to that very general principle, upon which scientists also depend.
Nor is science alone in this occasional overturning of "common
sense." Philosophy too has its share of surprises. 23
III. REFLECTIVE EXPERIENCE VS. UNREFLECTIVE EXPERIENCE

There is another difference among the kinds of experience
from which natural philosophy and science begiQ.. Philosophy
begins from both reflective and unreflective experience, whereas
what we call "science" today more or less restricts itself to
beginning from specific kinds of unreflective experience.
By "reflective experience" I mean what we experience
whenever we reflect on any of our own acts of knowing or feeling
or desiring. All other experience is unreflective. To see an apple
is an unreflective experience, but to be aware that I am seeing an
apple is a reflective one. To fear something is an unreflective
experience, but to take note that I am fearing something is
reflective. It is on the basis of reflective experience that I discern
in myself the differences between remembering and imagining, for
example.
It can easily be thought that what we experience within
ourselves by reflection must be subjective and private, and
therefore cannot serve as a reliable foundation for serious inquiry.
But a little reflection reveals that this need not always be the case.
A scientist would not be censured for claiming that water boils
under certain conditions just because we could not be there to
witness his water boiling; it is enough that we can witness this for
23 That there should be real and living things which do not exist in place and time and
which have no shape or size runs more contrary to "common sense" than anything in the
whole of science, and yet this is a conclusion of perennial philosophy. Whether one accepts
the arguments or not, no one can deny that Aristotle was philosophizing when he arrived at
the conclusion that there are indeed separated substances.

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ourselves with our own water if we take the trouble. Why should
a matter of reflection be any different? It is true that someone else
cannot share my reflection upon the goings-on of my own interior
life, but surely he can verify within himself the kinds of
experiences that I claim are the same for everyone. A trivial
example: smells are evocative of memories more than colors or
textures are. If one cannot reliably reflect on one's own
knowledge, one could never know this.
Reflective experience is "subjective" in the sense that its object
is something going on within the knowing subject, and it is
inaccessible to those outside the subject. But it is not "subjective"
in the sense that irrelevant features of the knowing subject are
hopelessly confused with the object perceived. "How hot it feels
to me" is a mixed result of the temperature of my hand and the
temperature of what I am touching. My sensation alone cannot
separate these. Therefore "how hot it feels to me" is "subjective"
in the usual and somewhat pejorative sense of the word. But
reflections such as "I am thinking right now," and "hearing is
different from seeing," involve no such confusion.
Science generally limits itself to what can be known through
unreflective, external experience. The physicist reads all his data
off of instruments of measurement and observation. Even the
biologist does not usually have recourse to the data of reflective
experience. There is certainly some reasonable fear, in his case, of
anthropomorphism, if he is studying anything other than human
biology. 24 Yet it is equally possible to apply falsely the facts of
unreflective external experience, so this can hardly be a reason for
abstaining from the use of reflective experience altogether.
Psychology, it is true, makes use of some data known only by
reflective experience, but it is partly for this reason that the
discipline is not considered one of the "hard" sciences, and some
24 J. Henri Fabre dispelled many an anthropomorphic interpretation of insect behavior. In
chapter 10 of The Hunting Wasps, entitled "The Ignorance of Instinct," for example, he lays
out several experiments in which different kinds of Sphex, seeming to know what they are
doing, are proved to have no idea what they are doing. See J. Henri Fabre, The Insect World
of]. Henri Fabre, ed. Edwin Way Teale, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1991), 55££.

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psychologists struggle to make their discipline more "scientific" by
sticking to the data of external and measurable experience as
much as possible. 25 If any part of psychology made full use of the
data of reflective experience, it would look more and more like
Aristotle's De Anima.
The scientist has no reason or need to deny the possibility of
studying natural things, especially living things, with the help of
reflective experience. Sir Arthur Eddington even remarks that a
knowledge of the inner natures of things does not seem possible
without it. 26
IV. NATURAL VS. ARTIFICIAL

The opposition between the natural and the artificial partly
explains the distinction between the "philosophic" and the
"scientific" approaches to nature. For one thing, there is a
25 This is the idea behind distinguishing between "philosophical" psychology and
"experimental" psychology. If these are conceived as two parts of one science which must
avail itself of many methods, I cannot object to the distinction. I object only when they are
conceived as entirely different and independent studies.
26 "Scientific investigation does not lead to knowledge of the intrinsic nature of things" (A.
S. Eddington, The Nature of the PhysicalWorld, The Gifford Lectures 1927 [New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1930], 303). "The Victorian physicistfelt that he knew just what he was
talking about when he used such terms as matter and atoms. Atoms were "tiny billiard balls,"
a crisp statement that was supposed to tell you all about their nature in a way which could
never be achieved for transcendental things like consciousness, beauty or humour. But now
we realise that science has nothing to say as to the intrinsic nature of the atom. The physical
atom is, like everything else in physics, a schedule of pointer readings. The schedule is, we
agree, attached to some unknown background ..•. We have dismissed all preconception as
to the background of our pointer readings, and for the most part we can discover nothing as
to its nature. But in one case-namely, for the pointer readings of my own brain-I have an
insight which is not limited to the evidence of the pointer readings. That insight shows that
they are attached to a background of consciousness" (ibid., 259). C. F. von Weizsacker also
points out that the things we know by reflective experience are not approachable by the
methods to which scientists restrict themselves: "Light of 6000 Awavelength reaches my eye.
From the retina, a chemico-electrical stimulus passes through the optical nerve into the brain
where it sets off another stimulus of certain motor nerves, and out of my mouth come the
words: The apple is red. Nowhere in this description of the process, complete though it is, has
any mention been made that I have had the color perception red. Of sense perception, nothing
was said" (C. F. von Weizsacker, The History of Nature [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1949], 142-43).

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difference between natural experience, in which we play an
almost exclusively passive role, and artificial experience, which
we contrive for ourselves in some way. Insofar as science uses
artificial instruments to extend the range of our experience, it can
be said to proceed from "artificial" experiences. Even an
experiment which does not use such artificial aids is to some
extent an artificial experience, since it is not something that plays
out naturally, as it would if left to itself, but it is something that
an observer "sets up." J. Henri Fabre put it this way: "It is
something to observe; but it is not enough: we must experiment,
that is to say, we must ourselves intervene and create artificial
conditions which oblige the animal to reveal to us what it would
not tell if left to the normal course of events. " 27
The scientist consequently enjoys more freedom in his lines of
questioning than does the philosopher of nature. This difference
between them can be illustrated by the following proportions: 28
Natural Philosopher: Nature:: Student: Teacher
Scientist: Nature:: Lawyer: Witness

There is an obvious similarity between these two proportions. The
student hopes to learn something from the teacher, and likewise
the lawyer hopes to learn something from the witness. The natural
philosopher and physicist both hope to learn something from
nature.

27 The InsectWorld ofJ. Henri Fabre, 327. Einstein makes a similar observation; in contrast
to the detective, he says, "The scientist must, at least in part, commit his own crime, as well
as carry out the investigation" (Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, Evolution of Plrysics:The
Growth.of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta [New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1938], 78}.
28 Kant mentions these two proportions in his Critique of Pure Reason ("Preface to the
Second Edition," trans. Norman Kemp Smith [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965], 20}. He
endorses the comparison of the scientist to a judge, but rejects the attitude of being a student
toward nature. In other words, like almost everyone after him, Kant rejects the philosophical
study of nature, recognizing only the scientific study of it. The half truth in his view is that we
should not rest satisfied beginning with whatever nature reveals about itself in things naturally
known to us; we should force nature to answer as many other of our questions as we can. It
is a mistake, however, to think that this is the only way to study nature.

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But there are differences. The teacher is an initiator. He
decides which topics to address, and which questions to answer.
The student is not in a position to compel the teacher to address
this issue or that, or to take things up in this or that order. The
teacher will say many things, even if the student has not asked
about them, and he might refuse to answer certain questions put
to him by the student, deeming them inappropriate. When the
natural philosopher studies nature, nature is like his teacher; he
must listen 29 to what nature has to reveal about itself in natural
experience, and content himself with whatever can be known by
beginning from there. If he is not satisfied, but will compel nature
to answer further questions, he is no longer like a student, but like
a lawyer, with nature on the witness stand. The lawyer is the
initiator and the witness does not speak except in answer to direct
questions put to him by the lawyer. Nature must answer the
questions put to it by the experimenter, but says no more to him
than he has demanded with his experiment.
The natural philosopher distinguishes between the natural and
the artificial, and then talks chiefly about the natural as such. 30
The physicist, on the other hand, can afford to ignore (though not

29 The

idea of "listening" to nature might be implied in the title of Aristotle's so-called

Physics. As F. M. Cornford notes in his general introduction to his translation of Aristotle's
Physics, "The title 'Physics' is misleading, and the reader must expect to find little or nothing
that it suggests in the treatise" ("General Introduction," Loeb Classical Library 228 [repr.;
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993], xv). The title is <l>Y!IKHE AKPOAEEm:,
which, rendered literally into English, is Of Natural Hearing. The full title is The Eight Books
of Natural Hearing, which seems to mean "Hearing about Nature," perhaps because it consists
in lecture notes, although it might also mean "Listening to Nature." Some authors of Latin
commentaries on the Physics suggest the title means "natural philosophy acquired through
hearing," in the sense that one cannot understand the text simply by reading it but has to have
it explained, hearing it from a teacher. Whatever the title means, it is certainly true that
Aristotle's Physics is more like listening to nature than what a physicist does. The physicist is
far less passive, supplementing whatever experience nature happens to provide with carefully
planned artificial experiences, outfitting the observation equipment provided by nature with
artificial aids, and supplementing the things naturally known to us with carefully chosen
hypotheses.
30 The natural philosopher talks about the artificial in order to understand the natural by
contrast or by likeness.

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deny) the distinction, because his metrical vocabulary ignores it. 31
Thus many, if not all, of the laws of physics apply equally well to
both natural and artificial bodies without distinction. The path of
a body launched over a cliff will approximate a semi-parabola
whether the body be a horse or a piano. Physics textbooks abound
with problems like this: "Consider a string stretched tightly ... "
or "Suppose a pulley is set up .. ". It makes not a whit of
difference whether the string or pulley is a natural thing or an
artificial one, so long as it meets the metric requirements of the
problem.
Biology, too, can overlook the distinction between the natural
and the artificial, studying in living things only what is common
to them and machines. Nothing prevents this kind of study, and
it is nothing short of amazing how much living things do have in
common with machines, and so the biologists, while ignoring
anything distinctive of living things, never run out of things to talk
about. 32 But if biology were to deny the difference between the
natural and the artificial it would find itself unable to designate its
own proper subject matter.
It goes beyond the evidence to say that living things are
nothing but machines, that they do not differ in principle from
them. This was Descartes's vision of the world: what we call cats
and dogs are no more than res extensa, cogs and wheels grinding
away without purpose or interior life, mere mechanisms, not

31 The natural philosopher occasionally ignores the distinction between natural and
artificial, too. The sixth book of Aristotle's Physics is about the properties of motion
connected with its continuousness, and most of the statements Aristotle makes about motion
in that book are true whether the thing in motion is a fish or a ship. As with science, one of
the reasons this treatment of physical things can overlook the distinction between the natural
and the artificial is that it is focusing on the quantitative aspects of things.
32 Physicist Hermann Wey! says that "the scope of the understanding from within appears
practically fixed by human nature once for all, and may at most be widened a little by the
refinement of language .... Understanding, for the very reason that it is concrete and full,
lacks the freedom of the 'hollow symbol.' A biology from within as advocated by Woltereck
will, I am afraid, be without that never-ending impetus of problems that drives constructive
biology on and on" (Hermann Wey[, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, trans.
Olaf Helmer [repr.; New York: Atheneum, 1963], 283-84).

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organisms. 33 Those overly enamored of the method of study based
on unreflective external experience often succumb to the
temptation of thinking theirs is the only legitimate study, that
anything known only by reflecting within ourselves is material fit
only for poets, for those who wish to emote, not those who would
know anything about the world. How would such a person
understand something as biological as sensation? He would have
to reduce it to the things attendant upon it which he can observe
with his "objective" methods-a hopeless endeavor. Erwin
Schrodinger illustrates this point:
The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective
picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had a fuller
knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina? I do not think so. We
could at best attain to an objective knowledge of what nerve fibres are excited
and in what proportion, perhaps even to know exactly the processes they
produce in certain brain cells-whenever our mind registers the sensation of
yellow .... But even such intimate knowledge would not tell us anything about
the sensation of colour, more particularly of yellow.... the same physiological
processes might conceivably result in a sensation of sweet taste, or anything else.
I mean to say simply this, that we may be sure there is no nervous process whose
objective description includes the characteristic yellowcolouror sweet taste, just
as little as the objective description of an electromagnetic wave includes either
of these characteristics. The same holds for other sensations ... neither the
physicist's description, nor that of the physiologist, contains any trait of the
sensation of sound. Any description of this kind is bound to end with a sentence
like: those nerve impulses are conducted to a certain portion of the brain, where
they are registered as a sequence of sounds .... We may follow this conduction
to the cerebral cortex and we may even obtain some objective knowledge of
some of the things that happen there. But nowhere shall we hit on this registering
as sound, which simply is not contained in our scientific picture, but is only in
the mind of the person whose ear and brain we are speaking of. 34
33 "Organ," coming from the Greek word for tool, implies purposefulness. "Appendage"
would be a better word for something of which it is denied that nature makes it for the sake
of something.
34 Erwin Schrodinger, Mind and Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959),
90-95. Hermann Wey! also acknowledges that there is another way to understand life:
"Scientists would be wrong to ignore the fact that theoretical construction is not the only
approach to the phenomena of life; another way, that of understanding from within
(interpretation) is open to us•.•• Of myself, of my own acts of perception, thought, volition,
feeling and doing, I have a direct knowledge entirely different from the theoretical knowledge
that represents the 'parallel' cerebral processes in symbols. This inner awareness of myself is

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These words apply not only to the operations of the five senses,
but to the operations of imagination, memory, to the emotions, to
the will, and to the intellect. One would think that only a blind
man could say that what we call seeing is nothing but these things
he can record and observe from the outside of the one who is
seeing. Has he never seen before? And if he has, how could he fail
to realize that what he calls "seeing" in himself is precisely what
he cannot see anywhere in the person he is observing? No matter
how advanced his "objective" knowledge is, he will never observe
sight in this way; he can witness only external signs, even if some
of these are in some inscrutable way necessary for sight itself.
None of them, and not even all of them together, is sight. There
is no way to prove to a man that he has the ability to see colors if
he discounts his own immediate experience of it.
If despite all this we insist on discarding all the data of
reflective experience, it is sheer folly to demand that anyone show
us evidence that living things differ from nonliving, or that
animals differ from machines, or that natural things differ from
artificial ones. 35 We have in advance not admitted into evidence
the only kind of experience relevant to the question. We might as
well demand that our neighbor prove there are two-inch fishes in
the lake by means of a net with three-inch holes in it. If natural
things and living things are precisely those which behave as they
do because of some principle within themselves, a principle whose
existence and nature would remain wholly unknown to us if we
were incapable of reflecting on the operations of similar principles
within ourselves, then to reject reflective experience as an
the basis for the understanding of my fellow-men whom I meet and acknowledge as beings
of my own kind, with whom I communicate, sometimes so intimately as to share joy and
sorrow with them. Even if I do not know of their consciousness in the same manner as of my
own, nevertheless my 'interpretative' understanding of it is apprehension of indisputable
adequacy. Its illuminating light is directed not only on my fellow men; it also reaches, though
with ever increasing dimness and incertitude, deeply into the animal kingdom. Albert
Schweitzer is right when he ridicules Kant's narrow opinion that man is capable of
compassion, but not of sharing joy with the living creature, by the question, 'Did he never see
an ox coming home from the fields drink?' It is idle to disparage this hold on nature 'from
within' as anthropomorphic and elevate the objectivity of theoretical construction" (Wey!,
Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 283-84).
35 Or that men differ from animals or computers.

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unsound basis for knowledge is to reject such distinctions as
unfounded. Imagine an impossible scenario: a man being born
utterly unable to reflect upon or notice any of his own living
operations in an inward way, but always having his attention fixed
outward. He could see colors, but never notice that he was seeing;
he could understand shapes, but never notice that he was
understanding. Could he ever form the slightest notion of what
was going on in the mind of a deer in the park when he saw it
perk up its ears? The event, to him, would be a sudden change of
position in a chunk of matter, perhaps following upon many other
little changes of place in adjacent chunks of matter, no more. He
could form no notion of "hearing." Nor, when the deer bolted
away, could he form any notion of "afraid," although he might
suspect, from prior "objective" investigations into similar moving
things, that there were many particular electrical and chemical
changes that preceded this brownish mass dashing away upon its
four appendages. He could also form no notion of himself, as
distinct from any other thing in his direct, outward-fixed
experience. 36 To ignore what we know solely by reflection is to
36 This self-imposed seclusion in "objective" experience goes a long way toward explaining
many otherwise baffling denials of biologists and psychologists. K. S. Ashley, for example, says
"There is not direct knowledge of an experiencing self.•.. The knower as an entity is an
unnecessary postulate" (Brain Mechanisms and Conciousness: A Symposium, ed. Edgar D.
Adrian, Frederic Brenner, and Herbert H. Jasper [Oxford: Blackwell, 1956], 423-24).
Psychologist Gordon Allport remarks that "For two generations, psychologists have tried
every conceivable way of accounting for the integration, organization and striving of the
human person without having recourse to the postulate of a self" (Gordon W. Allport,
Becoming [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955], 37). Compare this, now, to the
following remarks of Thomas Aquinas about the indispensable role of reflective experience:
"For it is manifest that this individual man understands: for we would never inquire about the
understanding if we did not understand; nor when we inquire about the understanding do we
inquire about any other principle than that by which we understand" ("Manifesturn est enim
quod hie homo singularis intelligit: nunquam enim de intellectu quaeremus, nisi
intelligeremus; nee cum quaerimus de intellectu, de alio principio quaerirnus, quarn de eo quo
nos intelligimus" [De Unitate Intellectus, c. 3). "Those things which are in the soul by its
essence are known by an experiential knowledge, inasmuch as man experiences intrinsic
principles through their acts, as we perceive the will in willing, and life in the operations of
life" ("Illa quae sunt per essentiarn sui in anima, cognoscuntur experimentali cognitione,
inquanturn homo experitur per actus principia intrinseca: sicut voluntatem percipimus
volendo, et vitarn in operibus vitae" [SI'h I-II, q. 112, a. 5, ad 1]). Commenting on Aristotle's
discussion of the two ways in which one knowledge is better than another, Thomas says "This

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ignore our only source of insight into what is distinctive about
being alive or natural. What proceeds from deepest within is a
living operation, or at least a natural one; but whence it proceeds
simply is not visible from without. "Nature loves to hide. "37
To suppose that another human being enjoys sight within
himself similar to the sight I experience directly only within
myself is not anthropomorphic. 38 Based on the more generic
outward similarities between myself and a dog or a horse, I can go
a step further and surmise that such creatures also experience
within themselves something like what I call sight in myself,
although possibly less like it than what goes on in my fellow
humans. This is what it means to believe in animals, as opposed
to res extensa. To insist that these things are nothing more than
what I say they are in terms drawn exclusively from my outward
observation of them is not only arbitrary, but anthropomorphic in
the worst way. It would require that things are nothing more than
what I know them to be by means of my arbitrarily preferred
method of studying them.
The scientist can, and often should, ignore the differences
between living and nonliving, between natural and artificial. This
does not warrant any denial of such distinctions. But ignoring
them has a wonderful side-effect: scientific results bear fruit in the
world of technology. How could they not? If all the rules should
apply to artificial things as well as to natural things, insofar as
science abstracts from the difference (especially when speaking in
a mathematical way), we should be able to manufacture things
according to the laws of physics and chemistry. And the benefit is
mutual, since science advances along with the instruments of
observation and measurement provided by engineering. More
science, that of the soul, has both: because it is certain, for each person experiences this in
himself, namely that he has a soul, and that he lives by a soul. And because it is nobler: for the
soul is nobler among inferior creatures" ("Haec autem scientia, scilicet de anima, utrumque
habet: quia et certa est, hoc enim quilibet experitur in seipso, quod scilicet habeat animam,
et quod anima vivificet. Et quia est nobilior: anima enim est nobilior inter inferiores creaturas"
[I De Anima, lect. 1]). See also De Verit., q. 10, a. 8.
37 Heraclitus, DK 123; my translation.
38 "It is idle to disparage this hold on nature 'from within' as anthropomorphic"
(Wey!,
Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 284).

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than that, technical advances are like the proof in the proverbial
pudding for the particular theories that engendered them. The
atom bomb was a sign that atomic physics was on to something. 39
Natural philosophy, however, must be comparatively barren in
this respect. How could it be of much practical value? It is chiefly
about natural things precisely as natural, and so we cannot expect
that what it says will be of any special help in producing artificial
things. Moreover, it begins only from universal experience,
forcing it to study things very much in general, whereas making
and doing things requires a detailed knowledge. Finally, it makes
no use of measurement, which is fundamental in the making of
almost everything. On the other hand, natural philosophy is not
dependent upon technological advances, needing no instruments
of observation beyond those dispensed to everyone by nature.
Natural philosophy is useful, however, for grounding ethics and
metaphysics, for which end experimental science does not serve.
V. QUANTITATIVEVS. QUALITATIVE
Most sciences, if not all, use measurement, and the more
scientific sciences use it more. 40 Science, then, is not only
qualitative, but quantitative also, whereas the philosophy of
nature is not quantitative, at least not in the sense of using
measurement. A scientific measurement is only a particular kind
of confined experience, but it characterizes science to such an
extent as to be worthy of separate mention.
Science gains definite advantages over philosophy by its use of
measurement and other forms of technical observation. Only by
these means is a wealth of data made available to us which
otherwise would remain forever beyond our reach, because it is
39 "On to something" should not be equated with "true." "In fact, so far as mathematical
physics is concerned, practical success is the only guarantee that we are on the right track; but
this should not be mistaken for speculative certitude. We do in fact construct highly efficient
machines on the basis of shaky theory" (Charles de Konindc, Natural Scienceas Philosophy
[repr.; Quebec: Laval University, 1959], 9).
10 "What exact science looks out for is not entities of some particular category, but entities
with a metrical aspect" (Eddington, The Nature of the PhysicalWorld, 105); "the whole of our
physical knowledge is based on measures" (ibid., 152).

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either outside the range of our senses, or too dangerous for us to
sense directly, or both. And even when we can sense something
directly, the scientist is right to feel unsatisfied with the
imprecision of unaided sensation. To one person this feels hotter
than that, to another that feels hotter than this. As long as our
bodies are our thermometers, we are not using measuring
instruments constructed in precisely the same way, and what my
sense of touch registers is vague even to myself. What portion of
"how hot it feels to me" is due to the temperature of the water
and what portion is due to the temperature of my body? My
sensation does not tell me. Nor does my sensation assign a precise
number to "how hot it feels to me," a number that I can compare
to "how hot that other thing feels to me" in an unambiguous and
precise way. Raw sensation was never meant for scientific
precision. And yet mathematical precision is crucial for unraveling
many of nature's riddles. Accordingly physics not only restricts
itself to unreflective experience, but to objects of unreflective
experience that are external and precisely measurable.
Galileo is traditionally hailed as the father of modern physics.
He wrote his Two New Sciences in dialogue form, in the tradition
of Plato, who, in his Timaeus, hinted that nature can be
understood in a mathematical way. Modern physics, then, is the
ultimate development of an ancient Pythagorean suspicion, a
suspicion that many deep secrets of nature can be deciphered only
by the use of mathematics. This suspicion was reasonable in two
ways: first, because reason very naturally inclines to
understanding things mathematically, since mathematics is so
accessible to the human mind and yields great certainty and
precision; second, because even a superficial look at the natural
world reveals a host of things displaying quantitative properties,
such as the hexagonal form of water crystals and the spiral form
of sunflowers and seashells.
For these reasons, "to understand" in physics, and in science
generally, quite often means "to have an equation," which is a
kind of understanding insofar as it reduces a chaotic multiplicity
of things to an identity of some kind, finding something one or

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the same in the many and seemingly disconnected. 41 The scientist
uses the language of mathematics as often as possible, and the
more scientific the science, the more its results will be expressed
in mathematical symbols and formulae rather than in words and
sentences.
The scientist's preference for symbols and formulae has led
some people to doubt whether any knowledge of natural things is
possible in mere words. If our work-a-day words were a precise
enough medium by which to express the truth about nature, then
why would scientists not be content with them? It is certainly true
that words are not suited to expressing the very technical and
precise results of physics, 42 but this is not because words are
hopelessly ambiguous and signify nothing solid and certain. If that
were so, physics itself would be impossible, too, not just the
philosophy of nature. Even the most obscure symbolism of the
physicist ultimately depends upon ordinary language for its
meaning. 43 What is the meaning of Tin our equation? It is neither
41 Werner Heisenberg says "For our senses the world consists of an infinite variety of
things and events, colors and sounds. But in order to understand it we have to introduce some
kind of order, and order means to recognize what is equal" (Heisenberg, Physics and
Philosophy, 62-63). Richard Feynman expresses himself similarly: "The things with which we
concern ourselves in science appear in myriad forms, and with a multitude of attributes ...•
Curiosity demands that we ask questions, that we try to put things together and try to
understand this multitude of aspects as perhaps resulting from the action of a relatively small
number of elemental things .... For example: Is the sand other than the rocks? That is, is the
sand perhaps nothing but a great number of very tiny stones? Is the moon a great rock? ...
In this way we try gradually to analyze all things, to put together things which at first sight
look different, with the hope that we may be able to reduce the number of different things and
thereby understand them better" (Feynman, Six Easy Pieces, 23-24).
42 "Since we must cease to employ familiar concepts, symbols have become the only
possible alternative" (Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 249). A physicist is better
off not using words like "work" or "energy," since these have an ordinary sense which is
rather irrelevant to physics. So he uses symbols, labels which have no meaning other than the
one he assigns them. A symbol has the added advantage of "standing for" something in such
a way that it can be the subject of calculations, unlike a word that designates what a thing is.
A farmer might let each pebble stand for one sheep while figuring out how many to keep, how
many to sell. In that case, a pebble does not mean "what it is to be a sheep," but stands for
"one sheep."
43 Niels Bohr says that "All account of physical experience is, of course, ultimately based
on common language" (Niels Bohr, Essays, 1958-1962, on Atomic Physics and-Human
Knowledge [New York: Interscience, 1963], 1). Heisenberg says, "One of the most important

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here nor there that we can replace it with a cumbersome word,
such as "temperature," but it is of the essence that we can explain,
in words, where the number came from for which T stands. The
process of measurement or observation which is the source and
meaning of every physical quantitative symbol in our equations
cannot also be expressed in symbols; it is expressed in words only.
If we do not understand the measurement or observation
expressed in words, then the symbols and formulae are nothing
but hieroglyphics or, at best, an exercise in pure mathematics. 44
The terms of physics are meaningless apart from the appliances
we detect and measure things with, 45 and these appliances are
ultimately understood in words.
Certainly mathematics sheds light on nature. But is nature
nothing but quantities? Or is nature's quantitative aspect the only
inroad to understanding it? If "understanding" is defined as
"having an equation," then the answer is settled in advance. If, on
features of the development and the analysis of modem physics is the experience that the
concepts of natural language, vaguely defined as they are, seem to be more stable in the
expansion of knowledge than the precise terms of scientific language, derived as an
ide:ilization from only limited groups of phenomena. This is in fact not surprising since the
concepts of natural language are formed by the immediate connection with reality; they
represent reality" (Heisenberg, Physicsand Philosophy,200).
,.. This is not to disagree with Richard Feynman, who says that there is a limit to how
much the symbolic statements of physics can be translated into the words of ordinary language
minus mathematics (see Richard Feynman, The Characterof PhysicalLaw [Cambridge: M.I.T.
Press, 1965], 40). The mathematics is essential to explaining the connections between the
statements made by the physicist, and therefore much of what he is saying must remain
unintelligible to the layman who would not take the time to learn the mathematics. Likewise
Eddington says (The Nature of the PhysicalWorld, xv) "Science aims at constructing a world
which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace experience. It is not at all necessary that
every individual symbol that is used should represent something in common experience or
even something explicable in terms of common experience." The symbol, in other words,
might represent something very unfamiliar to most people, such as a number obtained by
using a sophisticated measuring device and manipulated by a certain mathematical function.
Neither the device nor the mathematical function has to be a matter of common experience.
But they must be understood ultimately through words, even if words which do not name
things in everyone's experience.
• 5 "Our knowledge of the external world cannot be divorced from the nature of the
appliances with which we have obtained the knowledge. The truth of the law of gravitation
cannot be regarded as subsisting apart from the experimental procedure by which we have
ascertained its truth" (Eddington, The Nature of the PhysicalWorld, 154).

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the other hand, "understanding" is taken more broadly to mean
any kind of insight into the what and why of things, we can
legitimately ask: Can this be attained solely through measurement? How could one know that natural things were of such a
nature as to be accessible only through measurement? Surely not
through measurement. The only way to know this would be
through a philosophical argument of some kind, in which case one
would have discovered something about nature without
measurement, and hence the position self-destructs. Besides, vague
as it may be, I am sure that "Red is not the same as green," quite
independently of any measurement or mathematics. 46 A scientist
has neither any reason nor any need to deny that there might be
ways of understanding nature besides the way of measurement.
VI. SELF-EVIDENT THINGS VS. HYPOTHESES
The final opposition which is the basis for distinguishing
between the philosophical and the scientific study of nature is the
opposition between the self-evident and the hypothetical. "The
whole is greater than its part," which is self-evident to everyone,
is as true in the natural world as it is in mathematics. This is not
a matter of mere induction, as if we were sold on the matter
because we have seen so many wholes none of which failed to be
greater than each of its respective parts. Should a science journal
announce one day that rock samples have been found on Mars,
some of which were only half their own size, we would suspect a
misprint, a practical joke, or lunacy. This is not a matter of "seen
it so many times I would be surprised to find a counter-example,"
as in the case of having seen so many white swans, we are
surprised to hear that there are black ones in Australia. It is a
matter of the self-evident. It is from truths of this kind that the
philosophy of nature begins. Such self-evident principles are
relatively few, and rather general, although some are more
specific than "The whole is greater than its part." We see once
"' Whatever one thinks of colors, or of the experience of colors, they are some kind of
reality of the physical world, even if only of one's own brain. Chemists still use the colors of
things to decide what they are or what produced them.

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more that the philosophy of nature has a limited scope of inquiry,
if it is defined as proceeding from such principles alone.
Science, on the other hand, begins from assumptions, from
hypotheses, which though they are based on much experience and
reasoning, nonetheless remain hypotheses. The scientist often
reasons as follows:
U hypothesis Z is correct, then I should observe Q.
But I do observe Q.
Therefore hypothesis Z is somewhat confirmed.

He cannot conclude "hypothesis Z is correct," since that would
amount to committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent. But
the more often he reasons this way, and the more consequences
of hypothesis Z that are confirmed, the more likely his hypothesis
becomes. This is especially true if the consequences of the
hypothesis are things never before observed or suspected, that is,
if the hypothesis leads scientists to augment their experience. For
all that, though, the hypothesis could still be false, merely
resembling the true cause and producing similar consequences as
fa: as we have seen. Einstein states it vividly:
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it
may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to
understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the
mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears
its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. U he is ingenious he may form
some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he
observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could
explain his observations. 47

The use of the phrase "free creations" is worth remarking upon.
Physical concepts and physical theories are in large part a product
of the imagination, and "Nothing is more free than the
imagination of man. " 48 The imagination plays a much larger
The Evolution of Physics, 33.
David Hume, An Enquiry concerningHuman Understanding,section 5, part 2, n. 39 (in
Great Books of the Western World, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica,
Inc., 1952], 466).
• 7 Einstein,
48

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MICHAELAUGROS

in modern physics49 than it does in natural philosophy. In natural
philosophy, the first concepts, such as "motion," "body," "time,"
and the first self-evident statements such as "All change requires
a subject" are not free creations of the human mind. Aristotle
speaks more as if the truth of these things coerces the minds of
men. 50 The natural philosopher needs some imagination and some
use of dialectical hypothesis in order to discover the truth, but
only on the way to acquiring the kind of knowledge he seeks. In
a similar way, a mathematician might suppose something he is not
sure about and see where it leads, but his work is not done until
he finds a proof for his supposition that takes it back to selfevident principles which he knows to be true beyond doubt.
Science also lays down many things as facts which, in some
measure at least, are really hypotheses, being the results of
imperfect inductions. Scientists assume that water always boils
under given conditions, not because they have seen every case, but
because they have seen many cases, and they assume a kind of
uniformity in nature. 51 Should they find something about water
that is the reason why it boils under those given conditions, this
something about water will in turn be something they have found
to be so in all cases they have seen, and which they assume to
belong to water in all cases. What is the difference between
"Water boils at such-and-such a temperature and pressure" and
"The whole is greater than its part"? Why have we no assurance
of the first of these except our oft-repeated experience, but our
49 "Galileo formulated the problem of determining the velocity of light, but did not solve
it. The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be
merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new
possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and
marks real advance in science" (Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 95). In this book, Einstein
compares the physicist to a detective throughout. There is obviously danger, too, in using the
imagination in physics. If the universe is indeed finite but unbounded, for example, any image
we form of the universe, other than analogous images of other things, is false.
50 Aristotle, Physics 1.5.188b29-30.
51 Such quasi-universal statements or generalizations entirely dependent upon sense
experience are like the primary "hypotheses" of science. Despite their uncertainty, they are
perhaps more aptly called givens, data, than hypotheses, since they are not laid down as an
explanation for some other phenomenon. Theories consist in further hypotheses, more worthy
of the name, which are laid down as explanations of the generalizations based on observation.

SCIENCE AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

133

assurance of the second seems to become independent of
experience? The difference is that after some little experience we
know what a "whole" is and what a "part" is well enough to see
that denying the principle would entail a contradiction. What
"water" is, however, our experience does not reveal to us quite so
perfectly.
David Hume speaks of a knowledge that "arises entirely from
experience, when we find that any particular objects are
constantly conjoined with each other. "52 He says that "All the
laws of nature, and all the operations of bodies without exception,
are known only by experience. "53 This is not in fact as universally
true as Hume would have us think, but it is true about the vast
majority of modern scientific results. Poincare, too, said that every
generalization is a hypothesis. That is not true without
qualification (the statement itself is a generalization!), but it is true
of most of the generalizations made in science. 54 That every
change is between opposites is not a hypothesis, but something
self-evidently and necessarily true without exception; that the
color red is always associated with such and such a frequency is a
generalization we make based on repeated experience, and·
nothing more.
Yet again we see a complementarity between natural science
and natural philosophy. Philosophy has agreater kind of certainty
in its principles and conclusions, but at the cost of being quite
restricted as to what it can investigate by such means. Science has
a much greater freedom of inquiry, but at the price of giving up
perfect certainty, 55 of assuming a provisional quality, ever revising
and adjusting its statements in the light of new evidence.
52 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 4, part 1, n. 23 (SelbyBigge, ed., 459).
53 Ibid.
54 We can be certain in general that there are regularities in nature. But if we have no
reason beyond repeated experience to believe that this thing before us is one of those
regularities, we cannot be absolutely sure that it does not admit of exceptions.
55 "There are no eternal theories in science. It always happens that some of the facts
predicted by a theory are disproved by experiment .... Nearly every great advance in science
arises from a crisis in the old theory, through an endeavor to find a way out of the difficulties
created" (Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 77).

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CONCLUSION

Once all these distinctions among the major approaches to
studying nature are made, it is possible to ask about the
relationships between them. Throughout this article I have
contrasted "natural philosophy" with "science," in keeping with
the common way of speaking today. This way of speaking,
however, has the disadvantage of implying that we are speaking
of two disciplines quite independent of each other.
The truth is that what we call "science" today is only a
continuation of what we call "natural philosophy," and it certainly
cannot replace it. A particular knowledge cannot replace a more
general knowledge, both because it is a different knowledge 56 and
because it is less certain. A knowledge based on confined
experiences cannot replace one based solely on universal
experience, because any advanced knowledge based on confined
experiences depends on human faith, and is in that measure less
certain. A knowledge based on unreflective experience alone
cannot replace a knowledge based on reflective experience,
because many of the things known by reflective experience cannot
be known in any other way. A knowledge based on artificial
experiences, such as experiments, cannot replace a knowledge
based on natural experience, because even in experiments we rely
upon the use of our senses in the ordinary way to read our
instruments. A quantitative knowledge cannot replace a qualitative
one because nature is more than its quantitative aspects, and there
are many things in the natural world that can be known but not
by measurement, such as substance, nature, and purpose.
Knowledge based on hypotheses cannot replace knowledge based
on self-evident principles, because it is less certain.
People at each end of the study of nature have tried to
emancipate themselves from those at the other end. Philosophers,
be replaced by my knowledge
that a circle is a "plane figure contained by a single line equidistant at all points along itself
from one point inside called the center," since this is simply a more refined version of the
same knowledge. But this relatively particular knowledge of what a circle is cannot replace my
more general knowledge of a what a "figure" is, since that is not the same knowledge.
56 My knowledge that a circle is a "figure" can in some ways

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seeking certainty, the ease of the armchair, and perhaps fearing
mathematics, have restricted themselves to investigating questions
about nature accessible from common experience, inward
reflection, and self-evident generalities-or they have entirely
given up talking about nature. As I noted at the beginning of this
article, this is not a particularly philosophical disposition; it leaves
us with vague certainties, which cannot be enough for any
philosophic spirit.
Scientists, on the other hand, often have a distaste for anything
vague, however certain it may be. They demand the clarity of
mathematical conceptions and procedural definitions in all
things. 57 They will not approach nature through self-evident
principles, since these tend to be vague generalities, nor through
reflective experience, since although it is very certain it is
correspondingly imprecise and obscure. 58 Often, too, scientists
suffer from a confusion of certainty with distinctness in our
knowledge, unwittingly following Descartes. Those who mistakenly identify these will tend to reject the more philosophical
study of nature as uncertain because it is vague, when in fact that
is exactly why it is certain, and they will embrace the more
scientific study of it as certain because it is particular and detailed,
when in fact that is exactly why it is uncertain. Many a scientist,
too, loves his freedom too much to study nature in the more
philosophic way. Those methods restrict him too much; if he
takes the initiative and forces nature to answer his questions
experimentally, he is allowed to ask about anything as long as he
can devise a way to test his predictions.
We should not condemn anyone who chooses to focus on one
or another method for the study of nature. Choice is inevitable.
57 Aristotle noted in his own time that "some people do not listen to a speaker unless he
speaks mathematically," but insists that "The minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be
demanded in all cases" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.3.995a5 and 995a15; W. D. Ross
translation).
58 Cf. the testimony of Bertrand Russell, who says "It seems to me that philosophical
investigation, as far as I have experience of it, starts from that curious and unsatisfactory state
of mind in which one feels complete certainty without being able to say what one is certain
of" (Bertrand Russell, My PhilosophicalDevelopment [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959],
133).

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It is impossible for one person to become proficient in both the
"scientific" and the "philosophic" ways of approaching nature
without at least one of these suffering to some extent. 59 We may
become expert in one, amateur in the other, but an expert in both
is more an ideal than a reality. To become expert in one field of
science is typically a lifetime achi.evement. This is no less true of
becoming expert in the philosophy of nature. More than ever
before, we are becoming conscious of how subject we are to time:
vita brevis,scientialonga. Temperament and personal preferences
and educational experience, too, might suit one person more than
another for the philosophic or the scientific study of nature. I take
issue only with those who say that only one of these approaches
yields legitimate and worthwhile knowledge, or that they are
independent of each other and can safely ignore each other, or
that they constitute separate disciplines. To distinguish the
methods by which nature can be known is a good thing. But to
segregate those using different methods is to insist on unscientific
philosophy and unphilosophical science. This would be the
dismemberment of the knowledge of nature.
The philosophical study of nature depends on science for
completion, to bring our more general knowledge into concrete
focus, and to open lines of questioning that are bound to come up
for the philosopher, but that he cannot answer from his armchair.
"What is time?" asks the philosopher. Even presuming that his
answer is correct when he says it is a kind of number of motion,
the next question must be "Is there one motion whose number is
the time?" His own line of questioning draws him naturally into
science. "What is the soul?" he asks on another occasion. Even
presuming that his answer is correct when he says it is the
substantial form of a natural body equipped with organs, he must
wonder of what kind of organic body is the human soul .the
substantial form. Once more, he is drawn into science. In defining
59 Many scientists, such as Werner Heisenberg and Sir Arthur Eddington, have shown
considerable gifts in thinking philosophically, and yet they are not the greatest of the natural
philosophers. The greatest of the natural philosophers, such as Aquinas and Aristotle, might
have made great physicists, but only at the expense of making progress in the more general
study of nature.

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137

"motion," he makes mention of "place," and in defining "place"
he must talk about a frame of reference and once more he is
entering the realm of science, in which we ask about the size and
shape of the universe we inhabit.
The sciences in turn depend on the philosophical study of
nature. The natural philosopher does not achieve a distinct
knowledge of things in the sense that he descends to very
particular kinds of things, but he does achieve a distinct
knowledge of the very general things he studies. He defines them.
What is a living thing? This question is answerable in a definitive
(if vague) way only by the philosophical study of nature. A
biologist might have a great career without ever attending
seriously to this question, without ever availing himself of the
methods of the philosopher, but then he is indifferent to what it
is his own work is supposed to be illuminating. Science also
cannot understand its own methods, or explain why they are
appropriate or necessary, without turning to the philosophy of
nature. A scientist who tries to define science is not practicing
"science" in the modern sense of the word, but he is certainly
philosophizing. Even a scientist who contends that only the
methods called "scientific" today are appropriate for studying
nature is in fact making a statement about nature without using
those methods. It is impossible to know what one means by
"science," in any sense of the term, without going back to a
reflective experience of knowing things scientifically. And this is
what many call a "philosophical" approach. Science also depends
on the philosophy of nature for stability and guidance. To
illustrate: if the philosopher of nature can demonstrate that
understanding and willing are not acts of bodily organs, then this
should be taken into account in neuroscientific research.
Which method affords a superior knowledge of nature? A
knowledge of natural things, once it has progressed by natural
stages to the level of particularity in science, is superior. It is more
detailed, distinct, unfettered in its scope of inquiry. But this is
assuming a scientist who accepts and applies the givens of
reflective experience, and general principles such as "nature acts

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MICHAEL AUGROS

for an end." A science isolated in a world of external phenomena,
despite its astonishing detail, remains largely on the outside of
things, making it a somewhat superficial knowledge. If we
compare the beginning of the study of nature, the more
"philosophic" part, to the more detailed "scientific" parts that
should be its continuation but are instead pursued in isolation
from it, 60 the beginning is a better knowledge. For in that
beginning, in the more philosophic approach, we obtain a
knowledge of some things nobler and more important to us than
any studied in science, such as the human soul, and the difference
between living and nonliving things and natural and artificial
things. Though vague, natural philosophy is certain, and it is a
living science, as opposed to the necessarily lifeless world of
"objective" biology, 61 to say nothing of physics and chemistry.
In terms of practical fruit, the particular sciences can make
technological products possible independently of natural
philosophy. Natural philosophy either has no such fruit at all, or
very little. But science is a blind guide to the much more
important practical questions about how we should live, and in
particular about how we should use science and technology.
Science, in the restricted modern sense, prescinds from the
good, 62 just as mathematics does, and by ignoring our inward
60 "The fatal consequences of abandoning all thought of the subject as a whole, to become
absorbed and lost in independent investigation of single aspects of it, is illustrated everywhere.
The absence of coordination between the sciences, the failure of each to reflect constantly
upon the scope and significance of the others have brought all to a state of hollowness"
(Charles de Koninck, The Hollow Universe[Quebec: Les Pressesde L'Universite Laval, 1964],
112-13 ). There is certainly some cooperation amongst the recognized "sciences," such as
physics and chemistry and biology, but no one can believe there is any serious cooperation
between these sciences and the more general philosophy of nature.
61 "Modern biology, if some of its distinguished representatives are to be believed, dare not
call itself true science unless it avoids and ignores all that naturally comes to the minds of
ordinary people when they think of familiar animals and plants" (ibid., 79).
62 The "anthropic principle," whether a sound principle or not, is a fine example of
integral science, an approach to nature that does not limit itself to one method or another, but
uses whichever approach seems best suited to help us understand the matter at hand. This
principle invokes the idea that nature acts for an end, but also attends to the metrical aspects
of things so crucial to the physicist. In our modern way of speaking however, we would say
that in such cases the physicist is essentially borrowing from the natural philosopher, or in part
becoming one himself, and he is stepping outside the methods strictly appropriate to the

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139

experience of things, such as our own desire, without which a
knowledge of the good is impossible. Accordingly, natural
philosophy can ground ethics, studying the nature of man's soul
and showing that nature acts for an end, whereas our modern
"science," divorced from the philosophy of nature, is worthless in
that regard.
Natural philosophy is also a better preparation for the study of
truths about God. In pursuing these truths philosophically, we
understand more what God is not than what he is. The via
negativa, however, is much more fruitful the more general are the
things we deny of God. "God is not a carbon atom" is not very
instructive, whereas "God is not a body" is very illuminating. We
cannot succeed in making these negations, though, unless we
know quite distinctly what it is we are negating. We must know,
to the point of being able to define them, what "body," "motion,"
and "matter" are. This is the work of the philosophy of nature.
Aristotle recognized the need for a more and more detailed
experience of nature:
Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the
admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and
its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundations of
their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development:
while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of
the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations. The rival
treatments of the subject now before us will serve to illustrate how great is the
difference between a "scientific" and a "dialectical" method of inquiry. 63

Aristotle recognized, too, the scientist's need for hypotheses
testable by experiment and observation. Speaking of the followers
of Empedocles and Democritus, he says:

physicist. How arbitrary this is can be seen by reflecting on the fact that a physicist necessarily
borrows from mathematics, which is a discipline that does not even share his subject matter
(or go back to sense experience to test its theorems), although it might be applicable to it. If
he can thus borrow from the mathematician in his capacity as a physicist, why can he not use
the general principles of the philosophy of nature, which is really the general beginning of his
own discipline?
63 Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption 1.2.316a5-13.

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MICHAEL AUGROS

their explanation of the phenomena is not consistent with the phenomena. And
the reason is that their ultimate principles are wrongly assumed: they had certain
predetermined views, and were resolved to bring everything into line with them .
. . . But they, owing to their love for their principles, fall into the attitude of men
who undertake the defence of a position in argument. In the confidence that the
principles are true they are ready to accept any consequence of their application.
As though some principles did not require to be judged from their results, and
particularly from their final issue! And that issue, which in the case of productive
knowledge is the product, in the knowledge of nature is the phenomena always
and properly given by perception. 64

Aristotle was also quite aware of the need for applying
mathematics and measurement to the study of natural things. 65 So·
why isn't he credited as the father of "science," even as we
understand it today? Why does its founding wait until Galileo?
Certainly Galileo was among the first to show the world just how
powerful these methods are, and how quickly they become
necessary when we investigate nature. Also, we happen to agree
with Galileo's Copernican hypothesis, and not with the geocentric
hypothesis of Aristotle. Moreover, many "scholastic" teachers in
the time of Galileo contented themselves with being disciples of
Aristotle, measuring their knowledge by conformity to his words
rather than to reality. These false representatives gave Aristotle his
undeserved reputation as an armchair philosopher who, like
themselves, presumably would have refused to look through
Galileo's telescope. As with any philosophic spirit, this is
impossible to believe about a man who reflected that
The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from
their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we
live; just as a half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful than an
accurate view of other things. 66

64 Aristotle, De Caelo 3.7.306a5-17.
Cf. De Caelo 2.13.293a20-25, about the
Pythagoreans: "They further construct another earth in opposition to ours to which they give
the name counter-earth. In all this they are not seeking for theories and causes to account for
the phenomena, but rather forcing the phenomena and trying to accommodate them to certain
theories and opinions of their own." Both quotations are from the J. L Stocks translation.
65 See, for example, Aristotle, PosteriorAnalytics 1.13.
66 Aristotle, Parts of Animals 1.5.644b32-35; William Ogle translation.

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We are right to laugh at the legendary philosophers with a
predilection for the abstract who, out of their loyalty to obsolete
theories, refused to look at the world through a telescope. One
hopes the day might arrive when we will find equally amusing the
scientific type who refuses to remember what the world looks like
without one.

BOOK REVIEWS
Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II. By TRACEY ROWLAND.
Radical Orthodoxy Series. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 226. $95.00
(cloth), $28.95 (paper). ISBN 0-415-30526-8 (cloth), 0-415-30527-6
(paper).
It is not surprising that Thomas Aquinas did not worry about the role of
culture in moral formation since he lived in a thoroughly Catholic milieu.
Contemporary Thomists, however, have no such excuse. According to Rowland,
the culture of modernity-with its mix of theistic, quasi-theistic, and atheistic
elements-is deeply inimical to the gospel in ways that have not been generally
appreciated in the Church in general and among Thomists in particular. A
notable exception to this is Alasdair Macintyre, the Thomist hero of this book,
whose writings articulate what Rowland classifies in her "Introduction" as
"Postmodern Augustinian Thomism" (5). While on first glance it appears that
these three terms do not belong together, Rowland argues that they can be
synthetically reconciled in a kind of concordantiadiscordantiumif defined in a
certain way. She asserts that "post-modern" implies the following notes: a
recognition that the primary intellectual problem is the need to transcend the
culture of modernity, a nonmetaphysical starting point ofthe soul caught in the
contradictory culture of modernity, and a critique of the Liberal tradition that
incorporates elements from the Marxist and Genealogical traditions within a
perspective that highlights the role of narrative and tradition in moral formation.
The term "Augustinian" supplements "post-modern" with a theory of grace
along the lines of La nouvelle theologie,a sense of the dialectical tension between
the secular and sacral orders, and an appreciation of the role of memory in the
formation of the soul. Strangely and tellingly, however, Rowland never defines
what she means by the third term: "Thomism." Perhaps she thinks it is per se
nota. Yet it is not at all clear how one could reconcile a basic adherence to the
thought of Thomas Aquinas with a simultaneous adherence to what is required
by Rowland's definitions of "post-modern" and "Augustinian." The worries
mount as the text unfolds.
"Culture as a Theological Problem" is the topic of the first part. Chapter 1
argues that the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et spes was too optimistic
and naive about the degree to which modernity, understood as a specific cultural
formation whose beliefs are embodied in social practices, is compatible with the

143

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gospel. According to Rowland, the council's efforts at aggiornamento have too
often led to dangerous accommodations to modernity. For example, Whig
Thomists (a term of art comprising such diverse figures as Jacques Maritain,
George Weigel, John Finnis, and Germain Grisez) have uncritically assumed that
the natural-law teaching of Thomas Aquinas can be reconciled with liberalism in
such a way as to allow the Church's teaching on morality to enter into the
political dialogue of the naked public square. Motivated perhaps by a desire to
distance itself from integralism-the view that it is possible for the Church to
provide answers to secular questions directly from faith-the council unwittingly
recognized the autonomy of secular modern culture in such a way as to
encourage an extrinsicism of nature and grace that is reflected in most Thomists
(even Karl Rahner!). After criticizing the authors of Gaudium et spes for failing
to provide a good definition and analysis of culture, Rowland proceeds to
endorse the German Kulturgeschichte understanding of culture as comprising
Geist, Bi/dung, and Kultur; the first term refers to the dominant moral values of
a culture or civilization, the second to the laws guiding self-formation, and the
third to the guiding principles that give a culture its specific form. According to
Rowland, these three concepts are somehow related to the Greek terms ethos,
nomos, and logos. She never explains how these modern (and therefore
presumably tainted) Germanic notions cohere with the premodern Greek
concepts in a coherent concept of culture that is presumably centered on the
Trinity. It is a central weakness of this book that it never explains the meaning
of the first word of its title.
Chapter 2 explores the theme of culture in postconciliar magisterial thought.
If the interpretation of Gadium et spes is the "explosive problematic" in
contemporary Catholic theology, then the key to a proper hermeneutic of the
text (at least according to the Communio school to which Rowland is more
aligned than Radical Orthodoxy) is to make paragraph 22 the guiding principle:
"The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of
man take on light." What this means is that while the human sciences have a
kind of juridical or even methodological autonomy vis-a-vis theology,
nevertheless they ought not to be pursued as if they could disclose the truth
autonomously. It is only through the Incarnation that the human condition,
including culture, takes on its true meaning. According to Rowland's reading, the
thought of John Paul II is marked by an appreciation for the need to interpret
and critique the culture of modernity from an unabashedly Christological
perspective. Yet she thinks that John Paul Il's attempt to use the discourse of
rights language as a way of establishing some kind of moral common ground
with Liberalism is misguided; the pontiff shows a keener appreciation of modern
culture when he characterizes it as a "culture of death." Liberalism is a
deformation of the Protestant ethos that divorces the secular from the sacred.
Thomism must therefore understand that its tradition is related in an inherently
dialectical way with the culture of modernity; it cannot attempt to co-opt
elements of that culture without accommodationism. By contrast, elements of
Greco-Latin culture can and should be maintained in the Church (especially in

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the liturgy) because it was pre-Christian and so open to incorporation, rather
than anti-Christian and so inherently hostile as is modernity.
The second part of the book attempts to make the case that modernity is
inherently hostile to the Thomist tradition through three chapters pegged to the
three components of culture. In terms of Geist or ethos, Rowland relies on
Macintyre to show how modern bureaucratic culture impoverishes the ability of
agents to develop Christian virtues. Modern bureaucratic culture typically relies
on "experts" to make strategic decisions about ends and relegates to individuals
technical questions regarding means .. With the triumph of instrumental
reasoning, where agents no longer deliberate about the good, it is not possible
to develop genuine prudence. Caught between a workplace in which
bureaucratic thinking dominates and a culture in which there is a cacophonous
chorus of competing moral traditions, "plain persons" are not able to develop
moral virtue. The triumph of capitalism has also impoverished moral agency
insofar as it privileges the pursuit of money and allows market forces rather the
good to govern economic practices. Macintyre (in his Marxist mode) and John
Paul II share a common concern for the way in which capitalism has deformed
moral agency by subordinating the development of the worker to the good of the
market. What is needed as an alternative to modernity is a theology of work
along the lines of Laborem excercenswherein labor is seen "as an opportunity to
participate in the transcendentals and offer the fruit of this participation to
others as a gift" (67). Rowland warns that too many Catholic institutions
operating within modern culture have capitulated to its ethos. Instead of
incorporating secular bureaucratic practices, Catholic institutions are called to
develop practices that are sacramental expressions of a deeper Christological
identity.
Chapter 4 considers the conflict between modern mass culture and genuine
Christian Bildung or self-formation. Modern Liberal models of self-formation
were originally "aristocratic" in the sense that they held out a normative model
for individual self-development that was predicated on some non-Christian ideal
of human flourishing and that was available only for a cultivated few. That
eventually gave way, however, to the more "bourgeois" model of selfdevelopment where there is no standard and an individual is free to fashion
himself according to any model of flourishing so long as it does not impact
negatively on any other individual's quest to do the same. Nietzschean nihilism
is the ultimate consequence of this modern trajectory, where one is urged to
fashion a self as a kind of original artistic creation in an exercise of power
unfettered by anything except the ability to effect one's will. The result of all this
is our debased "mass culture." In contrast to modernity, the Church offers a
model of self-formation that is Christological and Trinitarian. Instead of selfcreation, it stresses vocation: it is in response to God's call, rather than in
absolute autonomy, that we come to realize our true selves. Rather than
forgetting the past for the sake of unfettered new creation, genuine Bi/dung is
based upon memoria in the form of "sapiential experience" where we
of the tradition. Much
incorporate into our moral selves the

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influenced throughout by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Rowland emphasizes the need
to participate in the transcendentals in order to develop as persons. In evaluating
the debate between Macintyre and Charles Taylor about modernity as a resource
for Catholic self-formation, Rowland sides completely with the former.
Chapter 5 considers "The Logos of the Kultur of Modernity." The
extrinsicism of the relationship between nature and grace common to the
Thomist tradition prior to Henri de Lubac's recovery of Aquinas's authentic
teaching in Surnaturel has as its legacy a tendency to divide the secular and the
sacred in such a way as to relegate religion to the private domain, irrelevant to
politics. Rowland argues that the traditional Thomistic reliance on a broadly
Aristotelian notion of nature in its theological anthropology has fostered
extrinsicism because it trades on a tight identification of pbysis and telos; as an
Aristotelian nature, the human person must have some kind of natural telos. She
proposes to remedy this conceptual problem through recourse to David
Schindler's ontology of human persons as "identities in relation"; only by seeing
the human person as constituted by its relationship to God can extrinsicism be
avoided. Schindler's influence on Rowland is pervasive, and she echoes his
critique of modern secular logic as mechanical and atomistic; in its Cartesian
preoccupation with individuals, it ignores the role of culture and the
fundamental primacy of relations. She endorses Schindler's claims that the logic
of secular American culture is particularly noxious to the gospel. In a culture
driven by capitalism and devoid of the transcendent, the priority of doxology to
work has been lost. In this chapter it becomes clear that Rowland thinks that
Schindler's theology provides the ultimate remedy to Maclntyre's diagnosis of
the ills of modernity.
The third and final part of the book deals with proposals for a postmodern
development of the Thomistic tradition. Rowland argues that a fundamental
weakness of modern Neo-Thomism is an unconscious adoption of an
Enlightenment model of rationality insofar as it purports to justify morality
without any appeal to revelation. Specifically, by seeking to justify morality in
a purely "philosophical" or theologically "neutral" manner through an appeal to
an alleged "nature" abstracted from grace, Neo-Thomist natural-law
theoreticians have distorted the teaching of Aquinas, for whom natural law is a
fundamentally theological doctrine. In their strict separation of nature from
grace and philosophy from theology, traditional Thomists have evacuated
morality of its specifically Christian content. The boundary between theology
and philosophy needs to be "smudged" through a greater recourse to narrative,
presumably biblical, as a necessary feature of Christian morality. No moral
theory independent of revelation can suffice, since it would then not be telling
the truth of the end of human nature and the true condition of our impaired
moral agency. Maclntyre's account of tradition-constituted rationality ought to
be employed by Thomists as an alternative to an appeal to Cartesian-style
rational precepts available with certainty to atomic individuals.
The final chapter of the expounds at length on a theme that has surfaced
already: New Natural Law Theory (read John Finnis and Germain Grisez) is

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vitiated by its covert supposition of Enlightenment rationality. This is manifested
in its uncritical acceptance of the "no ought from is" dogma; Rowland contrasts
this capitulation with Maclntyre's argument that if natures are conceived
teleologically, rational judgments about what ought to be pursued for the sake
of human flourishing are unproblematic. In contrast to the New Natural Law
theorists, who make the precepts of natural law a matter of individual reflection,
Macintyre would argue that it is only within a moral tradition specified by
narrative that it is possible to come to know and judge the human good.
Rowland's fundamental complaint about the New Natural Law project is that in
its attempts to find common ground with liberal natural-rights theory, it gives
up what is distinctively Christian. This can be seen explicitly in its relegation of
religion to one among many fundamental goods, rather than the overarching and
necessarily dominant good that it is. Rowland argues that the liberal conception
of natural rights is utterly incompatible with Thomism because it presupposes an
autonomous a-teleological individual as its starting point. Without any common
conception of the genuine human good, the apparently common rhetoric of
"rights" turns out to be ideological shadow-boxing masking a deep and
unbridgeable chasm between Catholic Christianity and modern Liberalism.
Within the Thomist tradition, law as a tutor to a naturally common good must
have priority over any talk of rights. As in all other domains discussed in this
book, the presuppositions of modern culture, especially in its American form, are
inherently hostile to Christianity insofar as they represent the severed fragments
of the premodern framework operating in a dysfunctional manner.
This is a bracing and provocative book. Rowland has put her finger on a
we:tlmess in the Thomist tradition in its failure to engage in more systematic
theological analysis of the culture of modernity. She has therefore done the
Thomist tradition a service in raising the problems she identifies, even if not
many are likely to be persuaded that she has offered a position consistent with
that tradition. While there is much that deserves comment in this book, in these
pages it seems advisable to focus on the following question: is what Rowland
proposes really a version of Thomism? An argument could be made that her view
is really postmodern Augustinianism in the vein of some of the more well-known
authors in the Radical Orthodoxy series (e.g., John Milbank and Catherine
Pickstock). A counter-argument could be made, however, that this really is a
work squarely in the Communio tradition based on its heavy reliance on
Schindler, de Lubac, and Balthasar. The only author that Rowland relies on who
is broadly Thomistic is Macintyre, and her interpretation of him is somewhat
eclectic in that she emphasizes the antimodern and Augustinian strains in his
thought. The invocation of all these names gives a sense of the broad learning
that informs this book, but it also points to its central weakness, a weakness that
it shares with some other works emanating under the rubric of Radical
Orthodoxy: ultimately the swirl of references and authorities leaves the reader
wondering how it all hangs together. It gives the appearance of being a mere
bricolage: "an assemblage of haphazard or incongruous elements" (6).

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Ultimately, I cannot see how what goes under Rowland's rubric of
"postmodern" and "Augustinian" coheres with what goes under the rubric of
"Thomism." It is therefore no accident that she never tries to explain what she
means by the term: it cannot be given a credible definition in the light of the
"postmodern" and" Augustinian" assumptions driving this book. While it would
take more space than I have here to explain why this is so, I would say that it has
something to do with another famous Greek term that Rowland neglects to
consider: physis. One can grant to de Lubac (as Gilson did) that the Thomist
tradition went wrong in its parsing of the nature-grace distinction while at the
same time maintaining the importance of that distinction and the intelligibility
of nature as the terminus of God's first gift in creation. One can also grant that
culture has a profound influence on nature without collapsing the latter into the
former. If nature is intelligible apart from grace and culture, then it can indeed
serve as a starting point for an account of the human good that does not make
explicit appeal to revelation and so can serve as a way to talk about that good to
those who are not inside the circle. The simple fact that separates Thomas from
us-he lived in a culture permeated by Catholic Christianity and we do
not-means that we need some moral language that allows us a voice in the
secular domain. Such language is not a substitute for evangelization and critique,
both of which need to go on, but it is in the meantime a way of talking to
strangers that can promote the common human good (including human rights)
this side of the coming of the kingdom.

BRIAN]. SHANLEY, O.P.
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Being & Some 20'h Century Thomists. By JOHN F. X. KNASAS. Bronx, N.Y.:
Fordham University Press, 2003. Pp. 335. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-82322248-9.
Being and Thomism are two very elusive ideas. Knasas's book tries to pin
them both down in no uncertain terms and, one might add, in function of one
another. Thomism is taken primarily as a unique philosophy of being in a
realistic sense and this realistic sense is taken to mean one thing only in the
approach to the question of being: namely, that which is derived only from sense
experience. Being & Some 20'h Century Thomists comes as a response to other
accounts of Thomism and its evolution in the twentieth century, such as that of
Gerald McCool's From Unity to Plurality (also published by Fordham University
Press, in 1992). In fact, it could be viewed as a response of the Toronto school,
or more precisely the Joseph Owens school, to the transcendental Thomism

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propounded by Joseph Donceel of Fordham. The argument of the book, to put
it perhaps too succinctly, is to show that versions of Thomism other than that of
Joseph Owens, especially those labeled as idealist but also some thought to be
realist, fail the test of realism in their approach to the question of being and
therefore fail the test of Thomism as found in the writings of St. Thomas.
"Generally speaking," we are told in the introduction, "Existential Thomism is
a posteriori. It is built from extra-mental reality as presented in the data of
sensible experience. It is specified by the perception of a basic intelligibility, or
commonality, in those real things of sensation" (xvii). The problem for the
author is that this Existential Thomism, as he conceives it, is only a species of
Neo-Thomism, which must be distinguished from and defended against other
species because it is the only one that really works as an elaboration of the ratio

entis.
In chapter 1 Knasas gives his own version of the Neo-Thomist revival contra
that of the man he calls "the dean of the twentieth-century Thomist narrative,
Gerald McCool, S.J."(29) Knasas names most of those one would think of as
part of this revival and then divides them into what he calls three different
brands, identified as Aristotelian Thomism, Existential Thomism, and
Transcendental Thomism, all within a framework of a posteriori Thomism,
which is for him the benchmark for coming into contact with reality. "The
normal locus of this contact is sensation, that is, what you are doing as you look
and listen" (3) For Knasas this contact is with an object that presents itself as
real, or "as an existent ontologically independent of the sensor," where "doubt
that the object is real is not even on the radar screen" (ibid.). This is the position
of "immediate realism" he espouses throughout the book, no matter how
complicated the discussion gets with analogical conceptualizations,
transcendentals, and possessors of existential act or esse. It is the perspective
from which he will try to show that "the metamorphosis of the twentieth-century
Thomistic revival from Neo-Thomism into Transcendental Thomism is a disaster
for Thomism itself" (31).
In chapter 2 Knasas tries to bolster this position of immediate realism with
a carefully articulated theory of "abstraction without precision" and then
launches into a prolonged attack on Joseph Marechal (the Belgian Jesuit seen by
most as the father of Transcendental Thomism) and what is spoken of as the a
prioridynamism of intelligence as a fundamental orientation to God. In contrast
to this a priorism Knasas describes Maritain's intellectual intuitionism of being,
which he also takes issue with, and then goes on to show how Gilson and Owens
come at the kind of metaphysics he wants. He quotes mostly from Owens and
little from Gilson, with whom he will later also take exception. The most
significant thing Knasas finds in Owens is that he "has worked out a metaphysics
by initiating the science with a subject understood as material being taken in the
concrete, that is, the composition of the sensible thing and its esse" (67).
Beginning from the sensible, Knasas thinks "metaphysics itself can generate the
further data of immaterial beings from which concepts able to be apart from
matter can be cogently abstractive" (ibid.). One is left to wonder what "further

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data of immaterial beings" might be if not more sense data or how such other
data can be generated if not by a sort of idealist projection that is "cogently
abstractive" of another set of data besides the set one already has from the
senses. Knasas's way of talking about abstraction in relation to "data," his
preferred term for referring to reality throughout the book, is not without its
own difficulties when he comes to explain the difference between his "immediate
realism" and the idealism he wants to repudiate.
Knasas takes an entire chapter to defend his immediate and direct sense
realism against Descartes, whom, rather than Kant, he takes to be the "paradigm
of critical philosophers" (72). In fact Kant could be viewed as an ally here, since
he restored the validity of sense experience along with abstraction, as Marechal
pointed out, against the pure innatism of Descartes. But Kant is not brought in.
He is hardly alluded to in the book, except in connection with the
Transcendental Thomists, whose assertion of the validity of sense experience is
also ignored. Critical philosophy for Knasas means only someone who denies the
validity of sense consciousness operating in the sense manifold. In opposition to
Descartes's methodical doubt concerning sense perception, Knasas offers his own
version of a transcendental reflection: "Reflection here makes me aware of my
awareness of something real .... The level of awareness of which I am speaking
is my present one, in which I am at least looking this way and listening" (83).
Knasas is aware that the problem of metaphysics as science of being is hardly
resolved by this simple dogmatic answer to Descartes's methodical doubt. There
is more to the problem than just the objectivity of sense consciousness, which
hardly gets us beyond Hume's skepticism with regard to everything that is not
a matter of vivid impression or, shall we say, sense data. Another problem is that
of the objectivity of the notion of being; Transcendental Thomists have long
been aware of this, but other less critical Thomists have tended to ignore it or
simply to set it aside as if it were not a problem for Thomistic metaphysics.
Knasas confronts the problem in chapter 4 by maintaining that the validation of
the concept of being is no different from the validation of any other concept
such as man and triangle.We validate the objectivity of meanings "by seeing the
meanings in light of real sensible data. . . . The same should be true of the
concept of being, the ratio entis. Being should also be an abstraction without
precision from real sense data" (93). However, Knasas is not yet ready to show
how we validate the objectivity of the notion of being, whether by a theory of
abstraction he is willing to admit or in some other way. He only states that
Aquinas had "a novel definition of the ratio entis as habensesse [which] is not yet
on the radar screen of [his] exposition" (94). What is still on his radar screen is
all those attempts to substitute "a more autonomous and enclosed activity to
validate our fundamental concepts" (95) other than what he calls abstraction,
which supposedly "sees that [these concepts] have been drawn from the real
directly given in sensation" (ibid.). Foremost among those who supposedly have
made such attempts to "substitute" some proper activity of intelligence for
"abstraction" are once again the Transcendental Thomists. This time Rahner's
"horizon of infinite being" and Lonergan's "pure desire to know" will be

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chastised along with Marechal's "intellectual dualism," but along with these
Maritain's "critical realism" will also come in for some criticism when it is seen
as "an intellectual perception as such" (142). Knasas finds fault with any attempt
to bring in anything like an intellectual activity as part of the validation for any
objectivity for our concepts, as if the immediate realism of sense were not
enough even for the concept of being. The argument culminates in a retorsion
of retorsion, which Knasas characterizes as "the archetypal method of
Transcendental Thomism" (109), but which most fundamentally is a method for
forcing one to reflect on one's intellectual activity even if it be that of abstracting
intellectual "data" from sense data or from the imagination.
Chapter 5 marks a major shift in the argument of the book. After giving a
relatively severe account of his own approach to the question of being which is
dismissive of any attempt to introduce some intellectual knowing into the picture
as a deviation from the straight and narrow path Knasas takes to be proper to
Thomism, he turns to a more positive account of what one can come up with
using the method he has tried to restrict to what he calls the immediate realism
of sense knowing: "the ratio entis is a first order, or first intention, sameness-indifference" (128). With this he leaps immediately into an account of being as
analogous in all its richness where the dimension of esse will be trumpeted in the
ratio entis in chapter 5, but not before announcing that in chapter 6 he will speak
of God or the First Cause as Esse Subsistensand that in chapter 7 he will derive
a ratio boni from this rich ratio entis as food for the will and as the foundation
for a natural-law ethic.
In connection with analogy Knasas speaks of the richness of being, but .this
richness is still tied to the beings of immediate sense perception. Analogy is not
an abstractive dumbing down or an emptying of the commonality of being. What
he actually tells us about analogy is that he follows Maritain, admitting that
"Aquinas never speaks that way" (131). Knasas takes the rather classical line of
showing how an analogous concept is not univocal, bringing it back to his own
notion of abstraction without precision, that is, leaving out none of the richness
of the ratio entis, even in its universal sameness. Knasas gives examples of
analogy from ordinary experience, but he looks for confirmation of the analogy
of being in Thomism. He cites different accounts of analogy in an attempt both
to validate analogy and to show that the unique kind of analogy he has in mind
is the one Aquinas had in mind even though it is found nowhere in his writings.
After presenting the different types of analogy, he turns to Mcinerny, who has
challenged this classical account as contrary to the mind of Aquinas. According
to Mcinerny, analogy is only a matter of names or concepts and not of being,
something Knasas cannot accept with his immediate realism of the senses. Knasas
does battle with Mcinerny, admitting at several crucial points that he cannot
make sense of what Mcinerny is saying, and goes on to argue that analogy is
supraconceptual, where the analogical concept comes to bear upon the analogon
or the sameness-in-difference one finds in a plurality of individuals. What he
wants to maintain in the end is a "fundamental richness and density that
intelligibly.stands behind our experience of things" (163), without letting go of

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"this one true metaphysics [that] would validate its fundamental analysis of
individual beings" (169), presumably still abstracted directly from sense data. It
is difficult to understand how all this is possible without some intellectual
activity of the kind Transcendental Thomists speak about over and above mere
sense activity. Knasas shows how active his intelligence is in all this when he slips
from talking about being as given in immediate realism to being as possible, as
late medieval commentators on Aquinas did, as Wolff did in his modern
rationalist ontology, and as many Thomists like Garrigou-Lagrange and Maritain
have done since, satisfied with possibility on the intellectual level while insisting
on being or realism on the sense level.
As a centerpiece for any Thomistic metaphysics worthy of the name, the
chapter on actus essendi or esse is a model for metaphysical thinking that is no
longer stuck in the immediate realism of the senses. We are led into a definition
of being as being that distinguishes esse from what is said to have it, habens esse,
with a long discourse on how esse relates to the thing that has it. Through this
we come to a metaphysical concept of being, but still relating only to sense data,
as any "realistic" concept must. Knasas argues against any attempt to loosen this
direct relation to sense data by way of the doctrine of the duplex operatio
intellectus, postulating always that we know universals directly in sense data, no
matter how singular the latter are. Whether this is the direct realism of Aquinas
is highly questionable, but it is that of Owens, whom Knasas quotes at every key
turn in his argument. Knasas knows of other authors who have interpreted the
doctrine of the duplex operatio intellectus differently, but he cannot take them
seriously as metaphysicians or as spokesmen for authentic Thomism. He ends up
speaking of the ratio entis as releasing various esses that actuate things as its
analogates, so that "the myriad of things intelligibly streams from the ratio entis"
(211 ), an astounding statement for one who has spent so much time and energy
denouncing the dynamism of intellect.
In the chapter on actus essendi, Knasas spends a long time discussing causality
as it relates to esse and proofs for the existence of God, especially to the one he
finds in the De Ente et Essentia of Aquinas, which relates more directly to the
actus essendi as such. He takes issue with Gilson and Maurer regarding the
interpretation of this "proof," which leaves him in a rather unique position in the
broader school of Thomism, for no one else is willing to say that the argument
in De Ente et Essentia is a proof like those in either one of the Summae. But
Knasas is not daunted by this. He will go to whatever extreme the logic of his
position on the metaphysical concept of being will take him. That is one of the
strengths of his book: a consistency that brooks no exception.
In the end, after a consideration of the ratio boni that he derives from the
ratio veri and how a such a ratio boni can ground a natural-law ethic, Knasas
returns to his philosophical estimate of the twentieth-century Thomist revival as
a summation of the book. He includes also a discussion of the much-debated
relation between the finite and the infinite, between the natural and the
supernatural, taking issue once again not only with the transcendental Thomists
but also with others on his side of the "idealism/realism" divide. He shows that

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he is well read in all these debates and he is anything but afraid to take his own
position in all of them. The problem throughout the book is that the elusive
ideas of being and Thomism do not stick together as closely as Knasas wants
them to. He knows this, which makes him all the more forceful in the defense
of his unmediated realist position, and he hangs tough at every turn, ready to
gun down, to use his own metaphor, anything he perceives as opposition or as
open to some mediation in our way of conceiving being.
OLNA BLANCHETIE

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Erich Przywara,S.J.: His TheologyandHis World. By THOMAS F. O'MEARA,O.P.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Pp. 254. $35.00
(cloth). ISBN 0-268-02763-3.
Thomas O'Meara's portrait of Erich Przywara's (1889-1972) contribution to
Catholic thought in Germany between the two world wars fills a significant
lacuna in the English-speaking world. Most readers, if aware of Przywara's
contribution at all, will know it only through footnotes to his work on analogy.
Few of his eight hundred publications (including about fifty books) have been
translated into English. Although his thought has been the subject of numerous
scholarly monographs and articles in German and some in Spanish, Italian, and
French, there are only a few such examples of secondary literature in English.
Przywara's often convoluted literary dialectic and the difficulty of his written
German style partly explains the lack of attention. But O'Meara finds a further
explanation in Przywara's intense engagement with the particular concerns of
German and Austrian culture after the 1920s. Przywara devoted himself to a
wide-ranging conversation between Catholic tradition and the philosophy and
culture of the hour. The significance of his contribution is to a large extent
defined by that context. O'Meara deftly introduces that world, the issues of the
day, some of Przywara's dialogue partners and the Jesuit's contribution to the
discussions. O'Meara supplements his own analysis with numerous references to
the literature on Przywara and so provides an invaluable introduction to that
scholarship also.
The first chapter provides an overview of Przywara, his age, and his world.
O'Meara describes a man and a Church struggling to come to terms with
modernity in the context of German culture. The next two chapters offer an
overview of Przywara's projects and central themes. Chapter 2 presents his early
efforts to address the challenge of being a Catholic in the modern world and the
role of his retrieval of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in furthering that end.

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Chapter 3 examines his efforts to articulate a philosophy of religion and an
explanation of Catholic sensibility, particularly in dialogue with Newman,
Husserl, and Scheler. His conceptions of analogy and grace are central to those
projects. Chapter 4 fills out some of the details of Przywara's perspective through
accounts of the theologian's dialogues with leading intellectuals of the time. He
was a "lover of the arts," a literary artist and·something of a poet himself, who
explored culture, music, art, and fiction as well as religious themes. O'Meara
focuses attention here on the Jesuit's conversations with prominent theologians
and philosophers. The sampling (Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Leo Baeck, Edith Stein,
Martin Heidegger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Karl Rahner) indicates the
breadth and ecumenical thrust of his conversations with Protestant, Jewish, and
secular thinkers, as well as fellow Catholics. The final chapter looks at his
thoughts on Church, spirituality, and liturgy. Przywara saw himself as a pastoral
theologian even though his conceptions remained rather abstract and theoretical.
Still, his metaphysical theology was shaped and inspired by Ignatian spirituality.
He wrote two lengthy and influential studies of the Spiritual Exercises.
By the end, O'Meara gives a well-drawn, complex, and fascinating sketch of
an "analyst of the moment." But the sketch is also incomplete--suggestive of a
richness and contour too multifaceted to capture in a 187-page narrative, and
raising a question about what relevance Przywara's thought might have for us
today. The complexity of the portrait arises in part from Przywara's calling, his
characteristic way of thinking, and his times. He was born in Upper Silesia, then
in Germany but now within the borders of Poland. It was a pluralistic
environment that exposed the young Catholic to the secular and Jewish worlds.
O'Meara suggests that this nurtured his openness later in life to engage the
Catholic faith with other currents of thought. His early studies as a Jesuit were
in Holland because the order was still outlawed in Germany. He began his
professional career when the Society had only recently reentered the country and
there was little prospect for a professorship. Hence he was sent to the editorial
staff of the Jesuit journal Stimmen der Z,eit, in Munich. The periodical sought to
articulate Catholic faith and spirituality amid German philosophy, art, and
religion. At the time, the Church in Rome was hostile to modernity, while
Munich had emerged as an artistic and cultural hub of Germany. Although
Przywara's assignment did not give him the prestige and influence of a university
position, it put him at the center of Catholic Germany's confrontation with
modernity and provided a broad forum for addressing the issues of the day
through his countless reviews, overviews of books, articles, and lectures (often
to university audiences). His rejection of isolation and his pioneering engagement
with modern philosophy, Protestants, and Jews had a profound influence on the
generation that followed him and was a remote preparation for the
developments of the Second Vatican Council. His mental temperament was in
some ways especially suited to his calling and times. He characteristically
articulated his own positions in dialogue, often sketching typologies that
arranged thinkers into types and directions, dialectically playing off both the
positive and negative, always looking for connections and analogies that would

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hold the polarities in balance. He sought in the diversity of pos1t10ns a
complementarity to ground a Catholic philosophy of religion, theology, and
spirituality that would address the contemporary world. His efforts to combine
a transcendental philosophy of subjectivity and a metaphysics of being aimed to
demonstrate that the deepest convictions of Catholicism are anticipated in
modern history and subjectivity. He was a fervent apologist but not in a narrow,
defensive, or sectarian way. O'Meara thinks Barth described him fittingly as a
sympathetic and engaging conversation partner who at the same time was
confident and clear about his own positions.
Despite Przywara's dialectic analysis of such a variety of topics and sources,
O'Meara finds that central themes occupied him throughout his career. All of
these were functions of his consistent effort to articulate the nature of a Catholic
approach to life. This led to his investigation of the resources in idealism and
phenomenology for understanding the religious dimension; his effort to work
out the contemporary significance of sources such as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas,
and Newman; his concern to clarify the contrast between a Protestant emphasis
on subjectivity and God's transcendence and the analogical interplay in
Catholicism of God and creation, and of grace and sacraments; and his
conception of the liturgy and Church in terms of the Body of Christ and
sacramentality. His development of many of these themes was pioneering.
O'Meara observes that Przywara was among the earliest scholars to recognize the
many differences between Aquinas's theology and Neoscholasticism, and that in
fact he understood Aquinas better than did many Neoscholastics. Although he
had reservations about Marechal's appropriation of Kant and subsequent efforts
by Rahner, Muck, and Coreth, he supported such attempts to see how Thomism
and modern philosophy could illuminate each other. He recognized the value of
phenomenology for Catholic reflection and devoted considerable attention
especially to Husserl's and Scheler's work. He was critical of Heidegger, but
engaged his thought seriously. He worked to counter the tendency of Catholic
theology at the time to make too sharp a distinction between nature and grace.
He was among the first to recognize the significance of Newman's insights for
contemporary questions and was instrumental in introducing him to German
Catholics. In 1929, when Przywara gave a lecture at Miinster at Karl Barth's
invitation and took part in his seminar, the Holy Office was forbidding
participation in ecumenical conferences. His conception of ecumenism as
including encounter with Judaism was remarkable for the time and involved
substantive interchanges with Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, and Leo Baeck.
He decried anti-Semitism as vulgar and destructive. His sermons delivered in
1943 and 1944 stressed the lasting importance of the Jewish Scriptures and
though they where a "modest counter to the Nazi policies," they were disturbing
enough in Berlin to earn a visit from Himmler who found them too abstract to
be a threat. He was not a feminist but he wrote of the new importance of women
in the Church. O'Meara's account of Przywara's friendship with Edith Stein and
his encouragement of her academic aspirations shows that he was more
progressive on the issue than many of his peers.

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O'Meara recounts that in later years editors found Przywara's metaphysical
theology too abstract, rhetorical, and poetic. He was affected by the trauma of
the war and also began to suffer from somewhat debilitating mental illness.
Although he became more productive again after the war and he found a new
platform on the radio in the 1950s and 1960s, his work did not have the
originality or impact it did earlier. His metaphysical and abstract approach was
less effective as European Catholicism's concerns became more pastoral and
concrete. Przywara's direct influence on Vatican II was negligible. O'Meara
contends that his influence even on the next generation of theologians was rather
indirect. He did not have the sort of personality or project that would attract
disciples or establish a school. O'Meara considers at some length Balthasar's
characterization of Przywara later in life countering the mainstream Catholic
theology leading up to Vatican II; O'Meara rejects the interpretation as a bit too
self-serving. His review of Przywara's work during those years shows one who
was still a Thomist and "lgnatian activist" more sympathetic to modern
philosophy and more involved in Church renewal than Balthasar acknowledges.
O'Meara detects some deep similarities with Rahner and indirect signs of
influence, but follows Klaus Fischer's judgment that there is no direct
dependency in his case either.
On the question of contemporary relevance, O'Meara concludes with other
recent commentators that Przywara does not offer a "system or conclusions but
a way of thinking that is Durchgang, transition, passageway." Przywara's abstract
metaphysical theology does not speak effectively to the issues of today's Church.
His typologies and method are not very helpful in charting contemporary
Catholicism's conversation with postmodern philosophies and cultures. At the
same time, O'Meara's narrative establishes the influence of Przywara's efforts to
engage Catholic sensibility with the intellectual currents of his time on the next
generation's encounter with their culture. It was not so much his conceptions of
analogy, incarnation, and sacramentality, but his performance, his thinking
through of the analogous interplay of created and uncreated in the conceptuality
of his day, that inspired the efforts of Rahner and Balthasar. The question this
raises is what further can be learned for the current tasks of the philosophy of
religion and theology from his performance and theirs-that is, from their
employment of an analogical sensibility rather than from their theories about
Catholic sensibility or the analogical imagination.
ROBERT MAsSON

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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The Thomist Tradition. By BRIAN].SHANLEY, O.P. Handbook of Contemporary
Philosophy of Religion 2. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002. Pp.236. $90.00
(cloth). ISBN 1-4020-0078-2.

Interest in medieval philosophy has been markedly on the rise over the last
twenty-five years. This can be seen not only in Catholic institutions of higher
learning, but in journals, publishing houses, and university departments of a
more secular character as well. The emergence of the philosophy of religion as
a recognized field within non-Catholic philosophy has clearly contributed to this
development. After falling into ill repute during the heyday of positivism,
philosophical reflection on the existence of God, the nature of religious
language, and the problem of evil now enjoys acceptance within the corridors of
the Anglo-American academy. While the proximate roots of this return to
respectability lie chiefly in the impact of contemporary thinkers such as
Wittgenstein and Heidegger, it was inevitable that the thought of the Scholastics
would also benefit, given their very ample and technical treatment of issues
relating to God, man, and the world.
Despite the obvious affinities between the set of topics now covered under
the rubric of "philosophy of religion" and the religious questioning of the
medieval Scholastics, the interface of these two approaches is not without its
difficulties. For one thing, the new discipline side-steps the methodological
distinction, so important within Scholasticism, between philosophy and
theology. Likewise, some themes essential to the contemporary treatment-for
example, religious pluralism-seem prima facie to be alien to the unitary faithpe!."spectiveof the Christian Schoolmen. Nevertheless, the benefits to be culled
from a dialogue between the two discourses, contemporary and medieval, make
it imperative to face the attendant challenges head on.
Written as the second volume in a new "handbook" series on the philosophy
of religion, The Thomist Tradition represents a serious attempt at promoting this
sort of dialogue. The book is not intended to be an historical reconstruction of
Aquinas's own teaching on "natural" religion (with a focus on religio and
associated virtues in Summa theologiae 11-11, qq. 81-122). Nor does it aim at
comparing influential contemporary projects in the philosophy of religion (as
elaborated, e.g., by R. Swinburne or J. Hick) to work within Thomism. Rather,
following an order of exposition that mirrors the standard topics in
contemporary philosophy of religion, the author aims to show how the
twentieth-century exponents of a key medieval thinker-Thomas Aquinas-have
grappled fruitfully with all of the major issues in the new field. The idea, in sum,
is to indicate how the Thomist tradition can serve as a valuable dialogue partner
for contemporary research in the philosophy of religion. At this the book
succeeds quite well. The level of discussion is sufficiently detailed that it conveys
new insight to those who already philosophize from within Thomism, yet by
shunning unnecessary jargon and pausing to explain key terms the book remains
accessible to outsiders.

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The story begins with Pope Leo XIII's encyclicalAeterni Patris (1879), which
set the stage for a vigorous revival of Thomism in the next century. This
influential text exhibited a basic ambivalence toward modernity. While heartily
praising the genuine progress in human knowledge that had been achieved
during this period (especially by the natural sciences), the pope nevertheless was
quite critical of modern philosophy, which he deemed to be tainted by
subjectivism and agnosticism. The encyclical accordingly gave rise to two
different appropriations-conservative and progressive--of Aquinas's thought
in the century that followed. The conservative strand viewed Thomism as an
urgently needed corrective to the Cartesian and Kantian errors of modern
thought. Its proponents thereby sought to maintain Thomism in its state of
original purity, all the while promoting it as a sapiential framework from which
to integrate the advances of modern science. The progressive strand, by contrast,
was convinced that modern philosophy contained valuable insights that, once
freed from their admixture of error and by dint of being creatively joined to
Thomistic principles, would result in a revitalized Catholic philosophy.
These two very different reactions to modernity demonstrate how twentiethcentury Thomism was anything but a monolithic doctrine. An initial glimpse of
its diversity is offered in the book's opening chapter. The first section
concentrates on the years before the Second Vatican Council. Reactions to
Blondel and Bergson in early French Dominican Thomism, Maritain's
reformulation of classical Thomism, the recovery of the historical Thomas by the
likes of Gilson, Chenu, and Fabro, and the development of a "transcendental
Thomism" at the hands of Marechal (and others), were the chief tendencies
during this formative period. A second (briefer) section brings the story up to the
present: decline of classical Thomism in the grand commentatorial style,
intensification of research into the historical Thomas, the transcendental projects
of Lonergan, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx, and the emergence of an analytic
Thomism.
This overview of the key players and trends within twentieth-century
Thomism provides a concise backdrop to the chapters that follow, each of which
is devoted to a specific research area within the philosophy of religion. The
author's strategy is to outline the range of Thomistic debate within each of these
areas. In so doing, he discusses not only the leading figures in the tradition, but
also a broad range of other contributors. In this respect the book offers an
advantage over previously published surveys of Thomism in the twentieth
century (for instance, Gerald McCool's The Thomists). Many of the book's
references are to recent publications; hence the reader comes away well informed
of the current status quaestionis for the issues under consideration.
The second and third chapters of the book delve into issues relating to
religious knowledge and language. Of central concern here is the distinction
between faith and reason. An analysis of Aquinas's term praeambulafidei, in light
of the contemporary categories of fideism and evidentialism, provides a useful
segue into the Thomistic literature on the faith/reason distinction. Aquinas
eschews evidentialism insofar as his praeambula do not provide antecedent

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philosophical justification for the act of faith; yet he should not be classed as
fideist because, on his account, reason has an important role to play in
supporting and sustaining religious belief. Against this background Shanley
provides a masterful treatment of theological faith: as a virtue of the intellect,
faith is very much in continuity with reason's striving toward truth. Yet, because
of its transcendence, the object of faith (God's uncreated mystery) can never be
reached by intellectual investigation alone. Drawing on the groundbreaking work
of A. Gardeil, Shanley elucidates particularly well Aquinas's claim that the act of
faith is based upon an inward movement of the will: this represents much more
than a kind of pragmatic or utilitarian choice, oriented by the hope of
anticipated future rewards. Rather, it emerges from a special sort of love: "the
person's dynamic moral striving toward the ultimate good under the influence
of divine grace" (32). The praeambulashould thus not be understood as premises
of a ratiocination whose conclusion is faith in God. Their function resides
elsewhere: "the point of the arguments for the existence of God ... is to locate
the Christian God on the map of the Aristotelian universe." They thereby
establish "the referent of theology's discourse within the reflection on experience
opened up by reason" (39).
This analysis is subsequently extended into the much-debated topic of
Christian philosophy, first advanced by Gilson and Maritain, and its more recent
mutation under the heading of "philosophical theology." The latter is an attempt
to reframe traditional theological doctrines such as Trinity, Incarnation, and
Atonement in ways that render them amenable to investigation from within
contemporary philosophy of religion. Shanley points out nicely that this
approach is not without its dangers. Side-stepping the formal distinction between
philosophy and theology, in order to allow the former dialectical access to the
truths of faith, puts at risk an insight central to Aquinas's conception of theology
qua sacra doctrina: what God has revealed about himself may rightly be
investigated only with God's help. Theologizing thereby requires more than
intellectual acumen; it presupposes "the virtues, membership in a worshipping
community, a prayer life, and the guidance of an authoritative tradition" (43).
Interestingly, yet perhaps more contentiously, this holistic construal of human
knowledge of God is likewise applied to the related problematic of naming God.
After outlining the standard Thomistic understanding of analogy as a teaching
about the signification of a special class of terms, Shanley seems to nod in favor
of a contemporary approach that sees analogy as especially bound up with the
mental act of judgment. On this reading, "analogy ultimately is not a kind of
scientific theory describing how a philosophical research program aiming at
detached theoretical knowledge of God can proceed, but rather an attempt to
explain the lived usage of language within a believing religious community" (55).
Does this emphasis on religious experience spell an end to the central role
previously accorded to analogy within the scientia of metaphysics?
Chapter 4 is devoted to the relation between science and religion. It serves
as a bridge between the God-centered speculative concerns of the book's opening
chapters, and the matters of existential import-evil and suffering, human nature

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and destiny, conception of the absolute, religious pluralism-that are taken up
in the remaining chapters (5-9). Borrowing from the work ofl. Barbour, Shanley
explains how Thomistic treatments of science have alternated between
integration and dialogue. The integrative approach seeks to subsume scientific
truth claims into the higher light of metaphysics and theology. This was the path
followed by Aquinas when he formulated a proof for God's existence based on
Aristotelian cosmology. Emphasizing the momentous changes in scientific
outlook that have taken place since the time of Galileo and Newton, most
contemporary Tho mists have instead advocated a looser relationship of dialogue,
wherein theology ceases to assert a privileged position vis-a-vis the empirical
sciences. No longer are the latter expected to conform themselves to the
doctrinal requirements of theology. To the contrary, the burden of revision falls
on theology whenever its claims seem to contradict those of science. Correlation
between the two disciplines is thus "achieved mainly by interpreting theological
claims in metaphysical terms so as to obviate any conflict with an empiricallybased science" (91). Shanley judiciously comments that this approach, despite its
advantages, nevertheless risks separating metaphysics and theology from the
realm of the physical: "at that point ... theology no longer really dialogues with
science because it has given up its foothold in the world of nature" (ibid.).
Space unfortunately does not allow for even a cursory examination of The
Thomist Tradition's remaining chapters. Suffice it to say that each maintains the
same high caliber of structured exposition and reasoned judgment. Of these, the
final chapter (9), on religious pluralism, is particularly original. It brings the
whole nexus of issues covered earlier in the book to bear on a topic of urgent
contemporary concern. There is no better way of showing how Thomism in our
own time has been forced to shed the form of medieval Christendom, thereby
to confront a central challenge of modernity. Importantly, this chapter also
manifests how the Thomistic response to issues in contemporary philosophy of
religion must draw from both philosophy and theology. The author is clearly at
home on both levels of discourse, and is able to marshal (and evaluate) a broad
range of literature from each, without succumbing to the temptation of bending
the one to the exigencies of the other.
Overall the book is very well documented. It draws widely from sources in
English, French, and German, and for this reason will provide a rich foundation
for future study and research. Some lacunae may nevertheless be found. For
example, chapter 6, on religion and morality, would have benefitted from at
least passing reference to the work of M.-M Labourdette, O.P. Similarly, the
chapter on religious pluralism might fruitfully have integrated Maritain's
conception of the natural mystical experience (/'experience du sot) or Journet's
important treatment of degrees of membership in the Church. More generally,
given its scope, this account of the history of Thomism could have been usefully
nuanced by reference to the essays in Saint Thomas au XXe siecle (1994, edited
by S.-T. Bonino, O.P.). Finally, the Catholic dialogue with trends in
contemporary philosophy of religion would have been enhanced by some
consi.deration of the arguments in The Philosophy of Religion: A Guide to the

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Subject (1998, edited by Brian Davies, O.P.), which covers much the same
ground as the present volume.
These are just minor quibbles. The Thomist Tradition is by far the most
authoritative, engaging, and up-to-date book in its genre. It merits a broad
readership within the Catholic academic community and beyond.
GREGORY M. REICHBERG

International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIG)
Oslo, Norway

"Person" in Christian Tradition and the Conception of Saint Albert the Great: A
Systematic Study of Its Concept as Illuminated by the Mysteries of the
Trinity and the Incarnation. By STEPHENA HIPP. Beitrage zur Geschichte
der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters n.f. 57. Miinster:
Aschendorff, 2001. Pp. 565. ISBN 3-402-04008-5 (paper).
At the end of one of his opuscula sacra discussing the nature of the Trinity,
Boethius asks his friend to whom the work is dedicated, the deacon John,
whether his arguments are consistent with Church teaching. A simple enough
question and yet a revealing way in which to close one of the seminal documents
on the topic in the Latin tradition. Indeed, Boethius is so concerned with the
difficulties of providing a rational articulation of the doctrine that he asks John
to suggest an alternative account should he have any hesitations. As Boethius's
treatise is an investigation of the concept of persona, his caution concerning his
attempt at philosophical understanding in light of the conciliar formulations is
all the more understandable. The definition of person has been, and remains,
controversial. Yet it cannot be avoided, for the problem of personhood is, for
obvious reasons, among the defining issues of Christian philosophy.
Thus there can be no doubt about the importance of articulating the
distinction between natura and persona, which is the task taken up by Stephen
Hipp's historical study on Trinitarian doctrine. While the historical scope of this
work is rather broad, its delineation is fairly exact: it is focused on the Christian
philosophy of person from the beginnings to the thirteenth century and treats
Albert the Great as a seminal figure in the tradition. The book begins with a
sweeping overview of the concept of person developed in connection with the
Christological councils and in patristic literature. The second section is devoted
to Albert's response to this tradition as well as his own attempts to articulate the
differentia defining personhood. The final section provides an overview of the
study and its implications as well as brief accounts of the views of Aquinas,
Scotus, Suarez, and others.
While the historical background for Albert's work includes both Greek and

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Latin contributions, a significant portion of Hipp's treatment is dedicated to
Boethius's attempts to define and distinguish natura and persona.Analyzing the
concepts of nature and person as developed in the Contra Eutychen, Hipp shows
how Boethius provides the metaphysical infrastructure for his famous definition
of person as "naturae rationabilis individua substantia." Hipp also looks at the
relation of subsistence to substance in the Cappadocian Fathers and their
association of prosopon with particular subsistence. This allows a cogent
comparison with Boethius's parallel treatment in the De Trinitate and De
hebdomadibusas a foundation for the theological principle "substantia continet
unitatem, relatio multiplicat trinitatem." Boethius's primary contribution to
Christian philosophy of personhood is thus located in his formulation of the
substantial yet relational character of personality. Moreover, Hipp shows this to
be both a development of Greek thought and a source for the Latin tradition that
influenced later treatments.
Among the later treatments are those of theologians associated with the
twelfth-century School of St. Victor. Especially significant is the critique of
Richard of St. Victor who insisted that the Boethian focus on rational nature is
insufficient to mark the distinctive reality of persons as persons. Returning to the
Cappadocian emphasis on incommunicability, Richard attempted to draw
attention away from the quality of rationality as common to all persons and
redirect it to the absolute uniqueness of each person as a singularity. This
uniqueness, which can only be designated by a proper name, provides a mode of
definition that goes beyond the limits of essentialism. Person remains a kind of
substance, but cannot be fully articulated without reference to incommunicable
subsistence. Given this shift of focus from substance to subsistence among the
Victorines, Hipp is able to show that the Boethian definition comes down to
Albert along with a set of distinctive critical developments in the logic of
personhood.
The central section of the book is not so much a general account of Albert's
Trinitarian theology as it is a treatment of certain logical problems concerning
the concept of person arising out ofBoethius's definition. This treatment has two
distinct aspects. The first is Albert's use of twelfth-century developments in the
logical theory of signification and supposition to sort out and clarify patristic and
Boethian contributions to the problem of person. This is one of the significant
merits of Hipp's study: being well-versed in medieval logic, he is able to
appreciate Albert's discussion of the meaning of such crucial terms as "ousia,"
"hypostasis," and "prosopon" in their respective modi signifu:andiet supponendi.
By this means, Hipp provides a good account of how Albert explicates the
tradition's treatment of the analogical attribution of personhood to the divine
nature, the distinction between plurality in God and creatures, the nature of
person as person, and other issues.
The second aspect concerns Albert's original contributions to the philosophy
of personhood. Being unsatisfied with rationality and per se subsistence as in
themselves defining characteristics of person, Albert adds a strong notion of
individuality to
specific difference dividing being into persons and

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nonpersons. The classical notions of person as rational substance and per se
existent provide the basis for a general definition, but they do not provide the
constitutive differences that particularize persons. For this, Albert holds, a special
proprietas persona/is is required that bestows the singularity and
incommunicability distinguishing the distinct person in his personhood. Here,
Hipp argues, Albert is refining the classical Boethian definition by using and
extending the notion of singularity introduced by Richard of St. Victor. Albert
it thus able to preserve the "rational substance" definition of Boethius while at
the same time taking account of the emphasis on incommunicability as an
essential element in personhood.
Hipp suggests that Albert's understanding of personhood has implications for
Trinitarian theology by making possible a new understanding of the hypostatic
union. The focus on singularity as a differentiating feature of persons implies
that Christ's human nature is not individual because it is not per se a person. This
allows that the proprietas persona/is of the second person of the Trinity is
primarily a characteristic in the union of the two natures. Hipp does not develop
this suggestion; nonetheless, it is provocative in its theological potential.
While this is clearly an important study, the historical and theological merits
of this book are compromised in its execution. It is quite long and ponderous
and reads like an unedited draft of a dissertation. It is magisterial in its scope, yet
it lacks the unity and accessibility necessary for its recommendation to any but
the specialist. It is certainly true that the argument is quite sophisticated and
provocative in places, but little effort is made to communicate with the reader.
Indeed, the style of presentation is so poor that the reader is frequently at a loss
to •mderstand precisely what the author intends. A particular problem is diction
which in many places is very bad. One wonders why the author and publisher
decided to publish it in its present form. Both the subject and the author's
insights deserve a better presentation.
MICHAEL W. TKACZ

Gonzaga University
Spokane, Washington

Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique. By LOUIS ROY, 0.P.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Pp. 215. $60.00 (cloth).
ISBN 0-8020-3534-5.
Le sentiment de transcendance, experience de Dieu? By LOUIS ROY, O.P. Paris:
Les Editions du Cerf, 2000. Pp. 136. 95 F (paper). ISBN 2-204-06390-8.

In both of these books, Louis Roy studies experiences many people have,
namely, transcendent experiences: "an apprehension of the infinite through

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feeling, in a particular circumstance" (Transcendent Experiences, 4 ). He agrees
with those who have positive judgments of these experiences, and interprets
them "in accord with thinkers who envision the human self as essentially open
to the infinite" (xi). Such experiences can be nonillusionary, and indeed the most
valuable component of human existence. Roy's books are not theological, but a
"contribution to the philosophy of religion" (xiv).
Transcendent Experiences has three parts. The first part is phenomenological.
Here Roy analyses the major elements of such an experience: the preparation for
it, what occasions it, the "feeling" within it (not simply to be identified with
emotion), the discovery or objective correlate that the person finds by its help, ·
the interpretation of it, and its fruits (e.g., conversion). There are different
principal types of such transcendent experience that we can distinguish:
aesthetic, ontological, ethical, and interpersonal. Roy exemplifies these types by
compelling narratives drawn from writers describing their own experiences, from
the communal use of an African-Americanreligious hymn, and from a novel, and
he distinguishes the major elements in each of them. Through these experiences
an infinite is somehow manifested.
How do philosophers who have positive judgments of such experiences
account for them? This is the theme of the second part, which takes up twothirds of the book. Roy draws something positive from Kant's analysis of the
experience of the sublime, Schleiermacher's study of the sense of absolute
dependence, Hegel's dialectical phenomenology of religion, William James's
exposition of religious experiences within the context of his pragmatism, and
Otto's explanation of the human sense of the Holy. But he also shows something
lacking in each theory of the human intellectual, affective, and volitional activity
and endowment by which these philosophers explain the transcendent
experience that they affirm. Roy then turns to transcendental Thomism in
Marechal, Rahner, and especially Lonergan to show how they defend the human
being as open to the infinite and thus as capable of basically valid transcendent
experiences. Roy differentiates his position from Lonergan's in part by finding
conversion to be the fruit of religious experience and not identical with it, and
by interpreting the relation between feeling (or state of loving) and knowing
differently. He writes:
The position that I take underlines the interplay between
feeling and knowing. Feeling is neither cognitive nor totally
separated from knowing. Since the feeling or state of love
does not directly give rise to knowing, there is no such thing
as an intuitive knowledge born of unrestricted love. . . .
Although feeling is not a source of knowledge, it exercises the
paramount function of drawing attention to the actual
presence of values. (137)
In the third part of his book, Roy develops his own synthesis in support of
the validity of transcendent .experiences and their revelatory capacity. He

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analyses the varied meanings of "experience." Specifically, a "transcendent"
experience is one of "that which absolutely surpasses the universe of finite beings
... in terms of meaningfulness, truth and worth-in a word, in terms of being"
(156). The intellectual psychology underlying Roy's affirmation is that there is
an intentionality operative in us in virtue of which we find so many experiences
we have to be limited; for example, "on the affective level we are left with
something unachieved in all interpersonal relationships" (157). And, as Stephen
Toulmin notes, "the 'limiting questions' that we pose about the fundamental
assumptions which undergird our cultural activities are performative proofs that
as questioners we intend the infinite" (159). We ask ultimate "whys." Thus in
both our intellectual and our affective or volitional operations there is a dynamic
orientation toward the infinite; nothing less satisfies us.
How do feeling and discovery interact in such transcendent experiences? "Do
they [feelings] provide an implicit form of knowledge or do they make up the
affective conditions thanks to which the discovery occurs?" (162). Transcendent
experience as such does not give us an object-like knowledge, but an experience
of our own openness to the infinite (which the Greeks called theion [neuter]
rather than theos [masculine]), and a sense of "being gripped by the infinite"
(164)-"an assurance that something very profound has been intimated" (ibid.).
The sense of a totality as context of our lives and a consequent wonder can
accompany this. But "to what extent is transcendent experience fashioned by
interpretation?" (166). Some interpreters think that there is a basic experience
for all human beings, but it is colored by their culture; this leads at times to "a
depreciation of religious doctrines as divisive" (167). Others hold that
interpretation is present before, in, and after such experiences, and they can push
this so far as to say that "since two mystical encounters are caused by unlike
experiences, they do not have the same reality as object" (168). This latter view
seems to suppose that if there were some "pure, unmediated experience ... there
would exist the possibility of objective knowing" (a quotation from James Price
[172)). Against both views, Roy affirms that there are "transcendent experiences
that are similar and different at the same time. Their commonality has to do with
the openness to the infinite, whereas their particularity depends on the concern
and the occasion that trigger them in each case" (175). These experiences are
then both mediated and direct.
This is a very rich treatment of transcendent experience, and it is obviously
based on many courses and much reading dedicated to this important theme.
Roy's partial difference from Lonergan merits comment. I agree with Roy that
conversion is a fruit of religious experience; to identify the two collapses what
experience shows to be distinct. Roy's denial that feeling can be a source of
knowledge may reflect the difference between Thomas's 'intellectualism' and the
lgnatian experience of consolation without reason as a basis for discernment.
Can Thomas's teaching on "connatural judgment" or "experiential knowledge"
mediate these differences? For Thomas, a person facing a practical moral
question could have a judgment based on the principles involved and the
application of these principles to the individual case, or a judgment based on the

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virtue he has (e.g., chastity) and his "sense" that one rather than another mode
of acting is in accord with it. Similarly, Thomas says of the instinctus fidei, "The
light of faith makes us see the things believed in. Ali by other virtues one sees
what is appropriate to him by that virtue, so through the virtue of faith the
human mind is inclined to assent to those things that agree with right faith and
not to others" (STh II-II, q. 1, a. 4, ad 3). And he speaks of the believer being
moved by "the interior appeal of God inviting him [interiori instinctue Dei
invitantis]" (STh II-II, q. 2, a. 9, ad 3).
There are a number of theologians who do not see the immediate effect of
this "interior appeal" in the human heart as intrinsic to revelation, because for
them what is revealed is a religious message. But if we hold, as I think we must,
that what is revealed involves a personal presence and relation offered to us,
then this appeal is interior to revelation. The answer to the question whether the
feeling or state of love gives rise to knowledge depends, it seems to me, on what
"knowledge" here is. Though Thomas is speaking in the texts cited above
directly of Christian revelation, this would seem to hold analogously in nonChristian revelations which are offered by some of the experiences Roy analyses.
Perhaps Roy would accept the above, because he acknowledges that by this
"feeling" one can have "assurance" that he or she is being engaged by the
Absolute. This does not detract from the validity of his assertion that the
interpretation of this Absolute is in part conditioned by the individual's culture
and language and the preparation and occasion of his or her religious experience.
In Le sentiment de transcendance,experience de Dieu?, a slightly earlier
publication, Roy treats the same theme, but in a way more immediately
understandable to the philosophically uninitiated. Though much of the same
ground is covered, the two books are not repetitious. In Le sentiment de
transcendance, Roy gives different examples of transcendent experiences,
analyzes different critics (Feuerbach, Freud, Barth), and shows how psychologists
of the second part of the twentieth century distanced themselves from Freud by
distinguishing religion that enhances human beings and their adulthood from
that which impoverishes the human spirit. He chooses examples that are not
specifically Christian; he distinguishes them from mystical experiences, from
paranormal and from everyday experiences; and he examines them
phenomenologially rather than theologically. His extended analyses of such
experiences here are quite illuminating, partially based on their analogy to
aesthetic experiences. For example, he follows in some detail recent
psychologists' approaches to discerning how individuals can interpret their
religious experiences with quite different results, or how the human psyche can
be satisfied with substitutes (e.g., an interior harmony without facing the
conflicts of the life of the spirit) and/or inhibit the beneficial effects of genuine
religious experiences.
Roy's point is to give us a greater understanding of such experiences that
many people claim to have and that can be a turning point in their lives-if they
can understand them aright, perhaps with the help of spiritual guides, and
integrate them properly into their lives. R;eading these accounts and analyses

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should lead many readers to reflect fruitfully on certain experiences they have
had and the part they have played in their lives. No doubt, since we live in a
world where people interpret the implications of their religious experiences in
radically different ways, Roy would agree that his studies need to be
complemented by theological studies of how specifically Christian revelation is
mediated to us. But what he gives us can help to open students and others to
very significant dimensions of their experience, in the process making them more
open to Christian revelation, and therefore could contribute much to college
courses on cognate themes and be of interest to individual readers.
M. JOHN FARRELLY, 0.S.B.
St. Anselm's Abbey
Washington, D.C.

Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl
Rahner. By MORWENNA LUDLOW. New York: Oxford University Press,
2001. Pp. 304. $80.00 (cloth}. ISBN 0-19-827022-4.

Morwenna Ludlow's study of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner is
remarkably ambitious. The subtitle itself speaks volumes. Ludlow's study is as
much about the complex inter-workings of Gregory's and Rahner's theologies
as it is about their particular eschatological claims. This is necessary, Ludlow
explains, because neither author treats eschatology in a vacuum, apart from his
wider theology (10). The study of their respective eschatologies becomes for
Ludlow a window into each author's mind. Given the theological, philosophical,
and rhetorical sophistication of both Gregory's and Rahner's thought, one might
assume that treating one or the other would be sufficiently challenging for a
single-volume study. Yet Ludlow presents the eschatological teachings of both
thinkers in the context of two extremely nuanced and more than adequately
detailed studies of each one's systematic thought. She clearly knows the primary
texts of both authors quite well, and she is adept at moving back and forth
between micro- and macro-readings of them; commentaries on the finer points
of specific texts are smoothly woven together with big-picture discussions of
each author's philosophical influences, historical context, overall scriptural
hermeneutic, general theological agenda, and rhetorical methods.
Ludlow begins her study with an analysis of Gregory's eschatology. Her
overall picture is of a theologian deeply rooted in a particular intellectualcultural context yet also extremely original and innovative. At root Gregory is
committed to interpreting the scriptural canon and theological doctrines in ways
that are relevant to the spiritual development of his contemporaries. For
example, Ludlow argues, while it is undeniable that Gregory was influenced by

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Platonism and Neoplatonism, and to a lesser extent by Stoicism and a host of
other pagan discourses, it is equally undeniable that all of these influences work
in the service of his reading of the biblical canon (26). This reading is largely, but
not slavishly, indebted to Origen. Like Origen, Gregory assumed that the biblical
canon contains a single, coherent spiritual meaning, and all its parts work
together as an ordered whole to express this meaning (28-30). Also like Origen,
Gregory generally interprets the core meaning of the biblical canon in terms of
the ascent of human creatures toward God through the practice of virtue.
Moreover, with Origen and against the "dualistic" advocates of an eternally
parallel heaven and hell (such as Irenaeus and Gregory's own brother Basil), he
believes that all of creation will ultimately complete the ascent to God and hence
be saved. In this sense he agrees with Origen's famous (or infamous)
interpretation of Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 :28 that in the end God will
be "all in all." Gregory generally shares Origen's conviction that Scripture
fundamentally teaches a doctrine of universal apokatastasisin the sense of a
restoration and universal fulfillment of God's original goal for the creation,
namely, the perfection of all creatures through humanity's full union with the
Creator (38-44). However, Gregory's version of apokatastasisis not gardenvariety Origenism. As Ludlow's analyses in chapters 2 and 3 ably demonstrate,
Gregory rejects Origen's doctrines that God's nature is ultimately
comprehensible, human souls preexisted their fall into bodies, and the
resurrection is more about the freeing of souls from bodies than about the
reunion of souls with their perfected earthly bodies.
Ludlow concludes her analysis of Gregory's version of apokatastasiswith a
discussion of freedom. She shows that Gregory makes things difficult for himself
by simultaneously asserting that (1) all creatures-even the devil-will certainly
be saved, and (2) the exercise of freedom is an essential characteristic of human
nature and God will not override human nature in the process of saving all
humanity and all creation (97). Ludlow believes that because Gregory was not
fully conscious of this dilemma he does not argue himself out of it with maximal
systematic coherence. However, his assumptions about and arguments for
salvation as participation in God after a pedagogical moral-spiritual purification,
both in this life and after, display the beginnings of a coherent solution, namely,
a redefinition of true freedom not as choice but as progressive union with God
(97-111). Still, Ludlow argues, there are problems with this solution, which she
examines in her conclusion.
Ludlow then turns to an analysis of Rahner, and the overall picture she paints
is the same: Rahner certainly belongs within a particular intellectual-cultural
context, but like Gregory he works within his environment in original and
innovative ways. Like Gregory, he makes use all his influences in order to
explicate the meaning of the biblical canon and church doctrine for the spiritual
growth of his contemporary readers. Also like Gregory, Rahner assumes that
there is a fundamental coherence in the biblical canon and Catholic doctrine.
Although he conceives of the form of this coherence in a way different from
Gregory, the content is generally the same. The two bqsic elements in the core

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169

message of the biblical canon and Catholic doctrine are (1) the absolutely
(2)
gratuitous nature of God's universal self-communication-grace-and
salvation understood as the full human acceptance of this gratuitous offer in
freedom and love (129). It is fair to say that Gregory presupposed the first
element (evidenced by his rejection of Neoplatonic and Gnostic emanationist
doctrines of God in favor of the biblical doctrine of free creation and
redemption), but this receives explicit attention from Rabner due to his
particular historical context (post-Reformation) and geographical location
(Germany). Regarding the second element, Rabner shares Gregory's revised
Origenist proclivity for a doctrine of universal salvation understood cosmically
as apokatastasis, or in Rahner's case, Vollendung (consummation). For Rahner
God's universal offer of grace will likely be met with universal acceptance, and
hence God's original plan for creation will be restored and fulfilled. There are
several important distinctions between Rahner and Gregory in their methods and
conclusions (their understandings whether and how people can spiritually mature
in an interim state between death and the general resurrection differ in
interesting ways; see 254-57), but for Ludlow the most important thing to notice
is that Rabner shares Gregory's theological sensibility on this question of
universal salvation. The only real difference is that whereas Gregory is certain
that all humans and all creatures will be saved, Rahner prefers to espouse a
strong doctrine of hope that all will be saved; Rahner refuses to abandon his
carefully qualified belief that it is at least possible for humans to reject God in a
way that would negatively determine their eternal destiny (164, 173-79, 18388).
The conclusion of Ludlow's study undertakes a comparison and an
assessment of Gregory's and Rahner's eschatological teachings. She sees in
Gregory "a fundamental belief in the impermanence of evil in the face of God's
love and a conviction that God's plan for humanity is intended to be fulfilled in
every single human being" (239). She finds Gregory over-confident in his view
that the biblical canon can be read as teaching this message in a detailed and
coherent way (241). Instead she thinks that his fundamental belief can best be
supported by his arguments about the reformatory nature of God's punishment,
but even these arguments are not incontrovertible (242).
Ludlow finds Rahner's anthropological arguments on behalf of hope for
universal salvation more persuasive, provided they are always understood as the
products of prior theological assumptions. Because Rahner's theology is, she
believes, in the service of his reading of Scripture, its credibility is based on the
validity of his hermeneutics. Generally she finds his overall approach to the
biblical canon superior to Gregory's hermeneutic, which sometimes imposes
uniformity on disparate texts in the name of a higher coherence. Rahner's
approach, on the contrary, acknowledges dissonance and relative incoherence
within the canon without anxiety about fodeiting the real but imprecise
coherence of the overall message (246). Indeed, Ludlow faults Rahner for not
recognizing the wisdom of his own hermeneutical practice, and consequently
sometimes thinking that his own theology must reproduce the incoherence of the

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canon in the form of a "paradoxical" assertion that God's love will certainly
prevail universally but nevertheless hell remains a possibility (248). A doctrine
of universal hope, she contends, need not make contradictory claims (under the
guise of "paradox") to avoid making certain predictions.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Ludlow's concluding discussion is that
it raises the question of a common, "genuinely Christian" core connecting
Gregory and Rabner. In fact, Ludlow's handling of this issue indicates that she
holds a vision of the Christian theological tradition as a unified discourse
teaching a consensus understanding of the God-human relationship across time
and place. Contrary to historicist assumptions, there seems to be for Ludlow a
common though imprecise core meaning underlying the Christian theological
tradition. This core, it seems, would be analogous to a common though
imprecise core meaning underlying the disparate canonical texts. At one point
she itemizes six points of similarity between Gregory's and Rahner's
eschatologies and places them in the context of the traditional theological
framework of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation (262-63). She then
asserts, "The interpretation of this framework by Gregory and Rahner suggests
that Christians are right to expect, or hope for, a universal, consummation, given
what has been revealed to them about God's love in creation and redemption"
(263). This seems to mean that Gregory and Rabner are functioning here as the
prototypes of "genuine" Christianity, or at least of genuine Christian theology.
Ludlow says as much when she writes that "although Rahner and Gregory
express a belief with which not all Christians would agree, there are good
grounds for thinking theirs is a Christian belief-particularly if it is expressed as
a hopt" rather than as a certain prediction" (265). While granting that each
thinker's eschatology has a "subtly different content," Ludlow shows concern on
two fronts: we must not allow differences to invalidate overall commonality as
if there were no sense "in speaking of a Christian tradition (or traditions) in
eschatology," yet we also must avoid saying that the commonality erases all
difference so that one generation of Christians merely hands on to the next a
"package of ideas totally unaltered" (268). From here she proceeds to a
discussion of doctrinal development (she means by this simply theological
development and not the development of official dogmas), arguing that we must
avoid looking for overall patterns of development that would lead to either a
naively progressive reading of the theological tradition or a naively reactionary
one (269-70). The root mistake in either case would be judging the validity of
theological claims solely according to their place in history, valorizing or
damning claims simply for being early or late.
As a contrast to this naive understanding of the Christian theological
tradition, Ludlow highlights the "creative role of the individual theologian" in
developing the theological tradition (268-69). It is precisely on this point that
Ludlow's comparative study of two eschatological theologies almost transcends
itself to become a meta-reflection on the nature of theology. She seems to be
arguing that in Gregory and Rabner we see something like a grammar of
Christian theology. Ludlow does not use this term, but it
to be her

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171

working assumption: the imprecise core of the Christian theological tradition,
summarized by the six points of agreement between Gregory's and Rahner's
eschatologies (262-63), is something like a shared grammar that allows for a
variety of different creative theological expressions. Working within their shared
grammar Gregory and Rabner can say truly different things about the afterlife
prior to resurrection or about the nature of human decision, all the while making
creative use of terminology and concepts from Neoplatonism or Transcendental
Thomism, and yet their creativity operates within a context because they are part
of a common tradition with a discernible grammar. For example, part of
Rahner's merit as a theologian, Ludlow explains, is his understanding that
Christian doctrines need to be continually re-expressed in new contexts "whilst
keeping faithful to Christian tradition and learning from their theological
predecessors" (271, 274). Accordingly, Ludlow closes her study of the Christian
theological grammar (if I may continue to call it that) underlying Gregory's and
Rahner's eschatological thought with a reflection on some aspects of our current
cultural situation and an invitation for creative responses to it in theological
eschatology. Her suggestions are interesting, but it is more interesting still that
she thinks to close her comparative analysis of Gregory and Rabner in this way.
Her final pages are not themselves fully developed theological reflections, yet
ending a very intelligent study of figures from the history of theology with
reflections on the possible directions of Christian eschatology in the future was
itself a very intelligent move. It demonstrates in practice what she had been
saying all along about the importance of studying these two creative theologians
in the first place.
KEVIN MONGRAIN

St. Mary's University
San Antonio, Texas

GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUME 68 (2004)
ARTICLES
Augros, Michael, "Reconciling Science with Natural Philosophy" ...... 105
431
Baldner, Steven, "Thomas Aquinas on Celestial Matter" .............
Berkman, John, "Medically Assisted Nutrition and Hydration in Medicine
and Moral Theology: A Contextualization of Its Past and a Direction
for Its Future" .......................................
69
Bradley, Denis J. M., "'To Be or Not To Be?' Pasnau on Aquinas's Immortal
Human Soul" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Brugger, E. Christian, "Catholic Moral Teaching and the Problem of Capital
Punishment" ........................................
41
Bukowski, Thomas P., "Beyond Aristotle ... and beyond Newton: Thomas
Aquinas on an Infinite Creation" ........................
287
Cahall, Perry J., "Saint Augustine on Conjugal Love and Divine Love" .. 343
Decaen, Christopher A, "Aristotle's Aether and Contemporary Science" . 3 7 5
Deely, John, "The Semiosis of Angels ...........................
205
DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk, "Resistance to the Demands of Love: Aquinas
on the Vice of Acedia" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Mahoney, Edward P., "The Accomplishment of Jean Capreolus, O.P." . 601
Payne, Andrew, "Gracia and Aquinas on the Principle of Individuation" . 545
Poirier, Maben Walter, "Eric Voegelin on Christ and Christianity" ..... 259
Sokolowski, Robert, "What Is Natural Law? Human Purposes and Natural
Ends" ............................................
507
Tkacz, Michael W., "Scientific Reporting, Imagination, and Neo-Aristotelian
Realism" ......•...................................
531
Vaillancourt, Mark G., "Guitmund of Aversa and the Eucharistic Theology of
St. Thomas" .......................................
577

REVIEWS
Blanchette, Oliva, Philosophy of Being: A Reconstructive Essay in Metaphysics
(Michael J. Dodds, 0.P.) ..............................
469
Bonino, S.-Th., et al., Thomistes ou de l'actualite de saint Thomas d'Aquin
636
(Aidan Nichols, 0.P.) ................................
Foster, David Ruel, and Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., eds., The Two Wings of
Catholic Thought: Essays on "Fides et ratio" (William L. Portier) 325
Gaine, Simon Francis, Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? Freedom,
Impeccability, and Beatitude (Tobias Hoffmann) ............ 643
Gerson, Lloyd P., Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato (Joe McCoy) ..... 659
Graham, Mark, Josef Fuchs on Natural Law (James Keating) .......... 336
Gunton, Colin E., Act & Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes
639
(Michael A. Hoonhout) ...............................
Gyulai, Emery De Gaal, The Art of Equanimity: A Study on the Theological
Hermeneutics of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (Paschal Baumstein,
O.S.B.) ...........................................
501
Healy, Nicholas M., Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life
(Robert Barron) .....................................
498
Hemming, Laurence Paul, and Susan Frank Parsons, eds., Restoring Faith in
472
Reason (Paul J. Griffiths) ..............................
Hipp, Stephen A., "Person" in Christian Tradition and the Conception of Saint
Albert the Great: A Systematic Study of Its Concept as Illuminated by
the Mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation (Michael W. Tkacz)

.................................................

161

Hittinger, John P., Liberty, Wisdom, and Grace: Thomism and Democratic
Political Theory (V. Bradley Lewis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Kanaris, Jim, Bernard Lonergan's Philosophy of Religion: From Philosophy of
God to Philosophy of Religious Studies (Louis Roy, O.P.) ...... 340
Knasas, John F. X., Being & Some 2<Jh Century Thomists (Oliva Blanchette)

.................................................

148

Langlois, John, A Catholic Response in Sixteenth-Century France to
Reformation Theology: The Works of Pierre Dore (Jared Wicks, S.J.)
.................................................
662
Lucker, Raymond A., and William C. McDonough, eds., Revelation and the
. Church: Vatican II in the Twenty-First Ce;,tury (James Massa) . 479
Ludlow, Morwenna, Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of
Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rabner (Kevin Mongrain) ........ 167
McGinn, Bernard, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man from
Whom God Hid Nothing (Leonard P. Hindsley) ............ 333

INDEX OF REVIEWS (con.)

Mcinerny, Ralph, The Very Rich Hours of]acques Maritain:A Spiritual Life
654
(Ronald E. Lane) ....................................
Mojsisch, Burkhard, Meister&khart: Analogy, Univocity , and Unity (Robert
482
J. Dobie) ..........................................
Murphy, Mark C., ed., AlasdairMacintyre (Christopher Stephen Lutz) .. 646
O'Callaghan, John P., Thomist Realism and the LinguisticTurn: Toward a
More Perfect Form of Existence (Gavin T. Colvert) .......... 319
O'Meara, Thomas F., O.P., Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World
153
(Robert Masson) ...................................
Rocca, Gregory P., O.P., Speakingthe IncomprehensibleGod: Thomas Aquinas
on the Interplay of Positiveand Negative Theology (W. Norris
633
Clarke, S.J.) ........................................
Rowland, Tracey, Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II (Brian J.
143
Shanley, O.P.) ......................................
Roy, Louis, O.P., Mystical Consciousness:Western Perspectivesand Dialogue
with Japanese Thinkers Uames A. Wiseman, O.S.B.) ......... 486
__,Le sentiment de transcendence,experiencede Dieu? (M. John Farrelly,
163
O.S.B.) ...........................................
__,Transcendent Experiences:Phenomenologyand Critique (M. John
Farrelly, O.S.B.) ....................................
163
Shanley, Brian J., O.P., The Thomist Tradition (Gregory M Reichberg) .. 157
Suarez-Nani, Tiziana, Les anges et la philosophie:Subjectivite et fonction
cosmologiquede substancessepareesala fin du XIlle siecle (Marie I.
George) ...........................................
491
__, Connaissanceet langage des anges (Marie I. George) ........... 491
Thiel, John E., God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering:A TheologicalReflection
Uoseph L. Mangina) .................................
476
Venard, Olivier-Thomas, O.P., Litterature et theologie:Un saison en enfer
(David B. Burrell, C.S.C.) .............................
651
Williams, Thomas, ed., The CambridgeCompanion to Duns Scotus (Mary
Beth Ingham) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315