Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity 978-1443875547

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Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity Edited by

John P. Hittinger and Daniel C. Wagner

Proceedings from the First Conference of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas held in the United States of America

Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity Edited by John P. Hittinger and Daniel C. Wagner This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by John P. Hittinger, Daniel C. Wagner and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7554-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7554-7

DEDICATION TO THE MEMORY OF REV. VICTOR BREZIK, C.S.B. 1913-2009 TEXAN—BASILIAN—THOMIST

Father Victor Brezik, who joined the University of St. Thomas faculty in 1954, adopted as his personal motto, “Dare to do whatever you can,” from his favorite philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas. Fr. Brezik’s philosophical attitude and vision inspired generations of students and colleagues. In addition to his many contributions to the University, Fr. Brezik co-founded with Hugh Roy Marshall the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Thomistic Studies in 1975. The Center for Thomistic Studies, where the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas could be brought to bear on the problems of the contemporary world, was Fr. Brezik’s great dream and he never stopped working for it. Father Brezik recruited Anton Pegis, recently retired from the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies to help plan the Center’s program and to become its first Director. Fr. Brezik taught the Center’s first graduate students and, when he retired, continued to write on philosophical and theological issues into the last year of his life. He met each new class of graduate students and attended colloquia and departmental parties up until a few months before his death. Born in a Czech community in Hallettsville, Texas on May 2, 1913, Fr. Brezik attended St. Thomas High School in Houston, and graduated in the class of 1931. He went on to join the Basilian order in 1932, and was ordained as a priest in 1940. He studied in Toronto and received his Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies in 1943 at the Pontifical Institute, the center of the North American Renaissance in Thomistic philosophy, and his doctorate in 1944. Fr. Brezik returned to Houston in 1954 to join the faculty at the University of St. Thomas. He was named Basilian Superior in 1955. At the University of St. Thomas, he served as a professor of philosophy from 1954 to 1986, and his service to the University continued until his resignation from the board of directors in 2005. He served on the board of directors for a total of 24 years, from 1969-1979, and from 1992 to 2005. The University bestowed on Fr. Brezik an honorary doctorate at the 1989 Commencement Ceremony. Fr. Brezik and Marshall were

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honored with the Order of St. Thomas Award in 2008. The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies recently honored him at a ceremony celebrating their 80th year of existence. Because of Father Brezik’s legacy and vision, it was fitting that the Roman Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas join with the Houston based Center for Thomistic Studies and the Pope John Paul II Forum in sponsoring this conference. Imagine a long journey from Rome to Toronto and then on to Houston. That is the path for a century long migration of the seed brought forth by Leo XIII in Rome to renew the Church and society through the restoration of the Christian wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas. Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris inspired the Basilian Fathers to found the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto for the study of Aquinas, which became an oasis often visited by Maritain, Gilson, and other great teachers of the perennial philosophy. Fr. Brezik went up from Texas to Toronto in the 1930s and became a life-long disciple of the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas. While at the University of St. Thomas he brought forth a vision for a Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston. Now Rome, symbolically, comes to Houston, to celebrate the ongoing renewal of Christian philosophy through the thought of St. Thomas, celebrated by Saint John Paul II as the “Doctor of Humanity.”

John P. Hittinger

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword .................................................................................................... xi John P. Hittinger Introduction: Pope John Paul II’s Designation of St. Thomas Aquinas as Doctor Humanitatis .............................................................................. xiv John P. Hittinger Apostolic Letter: Inter Munera Academiarum ......................................... xxi Saint John Paul II Acknowledgements ................................................................................. xxv Part I: Karol Wojtyáa Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity ...................................................... 2 Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. † St. John Paul II’s Thomism: Why St. Thomas Aquinas is a Teacher of Humanity ............................................................................................... 17 Matthew L. Lamb The Political Praxis of Karol Wojtyáa and St. Thomas Aquinas ............... 41 Rocco Buttiglione What Does it Mean to be “Incommunicable?” and Why Does It Matter? .... 58 Paul Kucharski Wojtyáa: Nature, Person, and Teleology.................................................... 68 Brian Kemple

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Part II: Humanism Thomas Aquinas, Wisdom, and Human Dignity: Philosophy and Beyond ............................................................................. 86 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. † (1932-2015) Sitting at the Feet of the Master: Reading the Summa Theologiae as Written Provides Holistic Formation .................................................... 99 John D. Love Aquinas and Humanity in the Cosmos .................................................... 112 Thomas J. McLaughlin Is Thomism a “Humanism?” ................................................................... 131 Steven A. Long The Passions: Some Key Thomistic Distinctions .................................... 145 Jeffrey Froula Humor, Hope, and the Human Being ...................................................... 153 Margaret I. Hughes Part III: Transhumanism The Roots of Transhumanism.................................................................. 162 Steven Jensen Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Transhumanity? ........................................ 186 John Boyer & Geoffrey Meadows A Thomistic Appraisal of Human Enhancement Technologies............... 198 Jason T. Eberl Part IV: Knowledge St. Thomas Aquinas on the Acquisition of Knowledge ........................... 228 Richard J. Dougherty

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Aquinas on a General Knowledge of God Possessed by Most People .... 243 John F. X. Knasas The Challenge of the Thomistic Sensus Communis: A Hermeneutic View ............................................................................... 255 Mirela Oliva Hylomorphic Dualism and the Challenge of Embodied Cognition ......... 271 Bruce Paolozzi Grounding Natural Law without Human Nature ..................................... 283 Michael J. Deem Part V: Love, Marriage, and Gender Gender Reality vs. Gender Ideology ....................................................... 294 Sr. Prudence Allen, R.S.M. Freedom, Justice, and the Authoritative Nature of Marriage ................... 346 James M. Jacobs Aquinas as Teacher of Humanity: Lessons of Truth and Love................ 360 R. Mary Hayden Lemmons Part VI: Politics Aquinas on Prudence, Law and Subsidiarity ........................................... 380 Gavin T. Colvert The Future of Western Civilization according to Jacques Maritain ........ 398 Juan J. Álvarez Álvarez Educating the Whole Person: A Realist Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Science Literacy .......................................................... 407 John F. Morris

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Part VII: Theology Verbum et Principium in Aquinas’s Commentary on St. John: A Prelude to Philosophical Anthropology ............................................... 428 James G. Hanink Theology, Philosophy, and History: The Challenge of Bernard Lonergan and Étienne Gilson for the New Evangelization ...................................... 441 Hugh Williams Go Teach All Nations: Some Reflections on the Role of St. Thomas Aquinas in the New Evangelization ........................................................ 466 E. M. Macierowski The Beatitudes: Pope Francis’ Programme ............................................. 478 Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo Afterword Homily on St. Thomas Aquinas .............................................................. 493 Rev. Victor Brezik, C.S.B.

FOREWORD JOHN P. HITTINGER

This collection of papers is the result of a conference held in Houston in October 2013, cosponsored by the Center for Thomistic Studies, the John Paul II Forum, and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is the first time that the Pontifical Academy has sponsored such a conference in the United States. The idea for the conference came about in 2012, following the annual meeting of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas on John Paul II’s mandate to the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas (Inter Munera Academiarum, 1999).1 In this mandate he expressed his desire to see philosophy and theology serve the pastoral mission of the Pope and the Church. John Paul II bestowed upon St. Thomas Aquinas the accolade of Doctor Humanitatis because he was ready to affirm the good or value of culture wherever it is to be found. Thomas is a teacher for our time because of his “assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason” (§4). Bishop Sanchez Sorondo, the Prelate Secretary of the Academy, expressed interest in a fuller development of the Thomism of John Paul II, and my brother, Russell Hittinger, suggested that we hold a conference in the United States, where there is a growing interest in the thought of Aquinas as well as a deep devotion to Saint John Paul II. Given the synergy between the Center for Thomistic Studies and the Pope John Paul II Forum, Houston would prove to be a fitting place to bring people together to explore Pope John Paul II’s proclamation of St. Thomas Aquinas as the “Teacher of Humanity.” Daniel Cardinal Dinardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, a strong supporter of Catholic education, gave his endorsement for the Conference. This conference is the fruit of the intellectual exchange between the members of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, the Center for Thomistic Studies, and the Pope John Paul II Forum. The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas was established in 1879 by Leo XIII. The Academy was confirmed by St. Pius X with his apostolic letter in 1904 and enlarged by Benedict XV in 1914. John Paul II reformed the Academy in 1999 by his apostolic letter Inter Munera Academiarum, issued shortly after the encyclical Fides et Ratio. The

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mission of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas is to carry out research into, to defend, and to disseminate the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, and, taking due account of contemporary cultural traditions, “to develop further this part of Thomistic doctrine which deals with humanity, given that his assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason, in perfect harmony with the faith, make St. Thomas a teacher for our time” (Inter Munera Academiarum, n. 4). In this apostolic letter, John Paul II invites us to refer to the encyclical Aeterni Patris and seeks to gather the fruits of the large-scale movement, which, from the nineteenth century to the threshold of the third millennium, led philosophers to deepen metaphysical research into the ultimate questions regarding man and the mystery of the human person. Then, taking into account the importance of the human sciences, their contribution to knowledge regarding man, and the new questions generated by scientific research directed towards a deeper knowledge concerning the mystery of man, the Pontiff invites the Academicians to follow the indications on the subject proposed by Vatican II, as well as the guidelines that he himself has constantly proposed to the Church, ever since his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, the beginning of which made clear the chief direction of his pontificate. The Center for Thomistic Studies was founded in 1975 at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic University founded by members of the Congregation of St. Basil and located in the Diocese of GalvestonHouston. It offers the only graduate philosophy program (offering both MA and PhD) in the United States that uniquely focuses on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Center is founded upon the notion of the perennial value of the thought of Aquinas for the new millennium, combined with a commitment to meet the challenges and realize the opportunities pointed out by Pope John Paul II at the dawn of a new age in philosophy and intellectual culture. At the Center, a living Thomism is pursued, both steeped in historical knowledge of tradition and engaged with contemporary culture in shaping the future. The Pope John Paul II Forum for the Church in the Modern World was founded in 2003 in Orchard Lake, Michigan, the spiritual center of Polonia in the United States, where Cardinal Wojtyáa visited many times prior to becoming Pope in 1978. The Forum is an educational venture that promotes the understanding of the thought of Saint Pope John Paul II through workshops, speakers, classes, website and publications. I brought the Forum to Houston in 2006, where its work continues in collaboration with the University of St. Thomas, the Center for Thomistic Studies, the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, and other schools, parishes and groups

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in Houston who seek to gain a deeper understanding of the thought of John Paul II. The conference and this volume of papers are the result of a fruitful collaboration of these institutions and many scholars and supporters of St. Thomas. The invited speakers were some of the outstanding proponents of the thought of St. Thomas in the world today. Rev. Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Sr. Prudence Allen, R.S.M., Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Professor Rocco Buttiglione, Professor Steven Jensen, Professor Francis Hittinger, and Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo. We are saddened by the recent passing of Fr. Dewan (1932-2015). Many other scholars from the United States, Canada and other countries made presentations at the conference and some of them submitted papers for editorial review leading to this volume. This work will help to realize in its small way the hopes of Saint John Paul II concerning St. Thomas Aquinas: It is to be hoped that now and in the future there will be those who continue to cultivate this great philosophical and theological tradition [of Aquinas] for the good of both the Church and humanity.2

Notes 1

Papers at this meeting of the Academy were published in Doctor Communis, Vatican City, 2012. 2 Fides et ratio §74.

INTRODUCTION: POPE JOHN PAUL II’S DESIGNATION OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS AS DOCTOR HUMANITATIS JOHN P. HITTINGER

In his mandate for the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas (“Inter Munera Academiarum,” 1999),1 John Paul II bestowed upon St. Thomas Aquinas the accolade of Doctor Humanitatis and esteemed him a teacher for our time because he was ready to affirm the good or value of culture wherever it is to be found and because of his “assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason” (§4). The dual concerns for culture and the human person are rooted deeply in the intellectual and spiritual formation of Karol Wojtyáa/John Paul II. He developed a philosophy based upon St. Thomas Aquinas, supplemented by the phenomenological method, as well as spiritual and poetic insight. Cardinal Ratzinger captured well the uniqueness of this philosophical approach in his reflection on the unity of the mission and purpose in the life of John Paul II. His philosophy is distinctive because it is a way of thinking in dialogue with the concrete, founded on the great tradition, but always in search of confirmation in present reality. It is a form of thought that springs from an artist’s gaze and, at the same time, it is guided by a pastor’s care…This comprehension of man beginning not from abstractions and theoretical principles, but seeking to grasp his reality with love, was–and remains–decisive for the Pope’s thought.2

The turn to the concrete is his way of seeking to supplement Thomism and the abstract quality of the work; his approach gravitated towards the creative role of culture and the concrete existential plight of the human person. Commenting on the Pontificate of John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger could note, accordingly, that,

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a ‘philosopher’ has risen to the See of Peter, a man who does not simply take his philosophy from a textbook, but exerts the effort necessary to meet the challenge of reality and of man's quest in questioning.3

The need for such an approach, Cardinal Ratzinger points out, arose from the fact that philosophy had come to be presented too often through a textbook Thomism. It was abstract and rote. Because of this fact, the form of philosophy presented in the theological schools was lacking in perceptual richness; it lacked phenomenology, and the mystical dimension was missing.4

Wojtyáa had a rare talent to combine the metaphysical, mystical, phenomenological, and aesthetic, and this combination would “open his eyes to the many dimensions of reality.”5 The richness of his philosophy is the multidemensional approach to reality. In a very important article summarizing his philosophical work on the human person, “The Person: Subject and Community,” written in 1976, Cardinal Wojtyáa explained the reason why he took his distinctive approach to philosophy in The Acting Person, combining phenomenology and Aristotelian philosophy.6 He said, “the subjectivity of the human person is a problem of paramount philosophical importance today.”7 It is connected to the appreciation of human dignity: The problem of the subjectivity of the person—particularly in relation to human community—imposes itself today as one of the central ideological issues that lie at the very basis of human praxis, morality (and thus also ethics), culture, civilization, and politics. Philosophy comes into play here in its essential function: philosophy as an expression of basic understandings and ultimate justifications. The need for such understandings and justifications always accompanies humankind in its sojourn on earth, but this need becomes especially intense in certain moments of history, namely, in moments of great crisis and confrontation.8

The search for “basic understandings and ultimate justifications” led Wojtyáa to a keen interest in the cultural expression of thought and the question of whether culture could provide fundamental principles or points of reference for understanding human existence and the dignity of the person. From the experience of Poland, Cardinal Wojtyáa spoke about a crisis in terms of the confrontation of human existence with a materialistic interpretation of life, having at its disposal such powerful means of indoctrination and social and cultural control. At the root of the

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controversy was the question of the human person: “the truth about the human being has a privileged place in the whole process.”9 Neither cosmology nor philosophy of nature was as central to the cultural role of philosophy as was philosophical anthropology. His turn to phenomenology was motivated by his desire to enrich the truth of Thomistic philosophy so as to offer the best defense of the “irreducible” in man and to highlight the dignity of the person.10 In the Acting Person, Wojtyáa leads the reader to the rediscovery of conscience against the degradation of materialism of totalitarian ideology, and subsequently the degradation of liberal reductionism and cultural deformations of the West. Dedication to truth, i.e., moral truthfulness, is the highest achievement of the person. His concern for “the acting person,” as he says, equipped him to do battle with Marxism. His great insights were derived from a deep personal interest in man and his education in the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas. This initial seed burgeoned into a personal “mission” when Wojtyáa found his calling. “[W]hen I discovered my priestly vocation,” John Paul II writes, “man became the central theme of my pastoral work.”11 In the Acting Person, Wojtyáa explained that philosophers must do more than erect theories upon theories, meta-theories as we call them today, but rather the philosopher should “face the major issues themselves concerning life, nature, and the existence of the human being…directly as they present themselves to man.”12 In opposition to Descartes and modern philosophy, he suggests that action is a better way into anthropology than reflective consciousness. The human act is the beginning of the experience of man, so it is right that it provide the methodological point of departure for the study of the person.13 From this beginning, the consciousness, selfdetermination, and moral truthfulness or conscience that characterize the person can be philosophically apprehended. The prime objective of this study is “the understanding of the human person for the sake of the person himself; to respond to that challenge that is posed by the experience of man as well as by the existential problems of man in the contemporary world.”14 John Paul II utilizes the phenomenological method, emphasizing philosophical anthropology, in order to offer fresh discovery of the truth of Thomistic philosophy of the human person as a spiritual being with powers of intellect and will, fulfilled by truth and love. Through his study of St. Thomas, he opens a way for appreciation of conscience and the rediscovery of God in the modern world and he brings the Doctor of Humanity’s accomplishments to bear on that confrontation between materialism and person with a fully adequate philosophical anthropology. Subsequently, Pope John Paul II brought these themes into his encyclicals.

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In Redemptor hominis he proclaims that man is the way of the Church. Thus, in Fides et Ratio he praises modern philosophy for “the great merit of focusing attention upon man.” From this starting-point, human reason with its many questions has developed further its yearning to know more and to know it ever more deeply.15 Pope John Paul II later reformulates the account of the crisis of our time as a “crisis of meaning,”16 which runs deeper and is broader than Marxist materialism. It arises from the fragmentation of knowledge (§81), specialization (§56), the “wilting” of reason under the weight of infinite tasks and mind-numbing details (§5), and the constrictions of technological thinking (§15). In light of these factors, we must ask, how does one generate or recover the passion for truth? How do we call forth the desire for truth, for the whole truth, to dare to rise to truth of being? How do we activate or re-activate the desire to know the “whole truth about man?”17 We find a variety of strategies in the work of Saint John Paul II. First, there is the task to reconnect philosophy to everyday life and common human issues. As John Paul II indicates in the very opening sections of Fides et ratio, there is continuity between philosophy and the fundamental questions about human existence arising from everyday life and asked by common people in all cultures.18 Second, John Paul II shows an appreciation of tradition, community, and dialogue in the exercise of intellectual inquiry, suggesting an affinity with the work of Alisdair MacIntyre on the role of traditions in inquiry (Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry and Whose Justice, Which Rationality). John Paul II makes the case in Fides et Ratio that a community also assists in forming the disposition to truth seeking. He writes here, for example, that truth is attained not only by way of reason but also through trusting acquiescence to other persons who can guarantee the authenticity and certainty of the truth itself…It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship.19

Third, the need for an understanding of the human person in action explains his emphasis upon philosophical anthropology, and his use of phenomenological methodology, which leads to the fresh discovery and affirmation of the truth of Thomistic philosophy of the human person as a rational animal, with spiritual powers of intellect and will, fulfilled by truth and love. A full dedication to truth must lead to an awareness of the transcendent truth of God. In a speech given in New Orleans, in 1987, John Paul II explained that there is a mutual discovery of the person and God:

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Today there exists an increasingly evident need for philosophical reflection concerning the truth about the human person. A metaphysical approach is needed as an antidote to intellectual and moral relativism. But what is required even more is fidelity to the word of God, to ensure that human progress takes into account the entire revealed truth of the eternal act of love in which the universe and especially the human person acquire ultimate meaning. The more one seeks to unravel the mystery of the human person, the more open one becomes to the mystery of transcendence. The more deeply one penetrates the divine mystery, the more one discovers the true greatness and dignity of human beings.20

Fourth, the exploration of the ethical challenges of modern technology and social organization is crucial because, as John Puall II notes, the immense expansion of humanity's technical capability demands a renewed and sharpened sense of ultimate values. If this technology is not ordered to something greater than a merely utilitarian end, then it could soon prove inhuman and even become a potential destroyer of the human race.21

We need the Doctor of Humanity to assist in the philosophical grounding of the culture of life. The need for the protection of the dignity of the person springs from the modern challenge of technology and can give rise to the earnest seeking of the whole truth about man. Fifth, and finally, the embrace of faith and its integration with reason is central to a philosophy of the human person that can combat the modern crisis of meaning. It is a central claim of Fides et Ratio that a lively and well-formed faith is one of the best ways to generate and recover the original vocation of philosophy. So, John Paul II says that revelation “has set within history a point of reference.”22 This reference point is absent from culture today. Although shrouded in mystery, the life and teaching of Christ represent a universal and ultimate truth. The intelligible mystery of human life and love “stirs the mind to ceaseless effort.” Revelation is a “lodestar” against the immanentist habit of mind, lifting up the heart and mind to something greater. The mutual influence, the cooperation of faith and reason in this enterprise is, of course, paramount to the teaching of the encyclical: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” The Truth of Christ “holds out to theology and philosophy alike the prospect of support, stimulation and increase.”23 The teaching of Vatican II provided Pope John Paul II with a confident and dynamic agenda for his pontificate.24 In two of the passages in Fides et ratio (§§13 and 60) we find a reference to Gaudium et spes §22 as

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providing a key to anthropology and the answer to human vocation or calling. John Paul II looks to Christ for the true measure of man and finds in his life and teaching a truth “profoundly significant for philosophy.” Confidence is lacking in the search for truth today and yet the searching, the “journey of discovery,” must harbor some hope of fulfillment to be intelligible. Thus, “faith comes to meet them offering the concrete possibility of reaching the goal.”25 We are offered a call to the fullness of truth, which provides a hope for renewal for any particular culture.26 The vocation of the human person is ultimately to know and to love God.27 Saint John Paul II’s mandate to the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas (Inter Munera Academiarum) takes on greater meaning and urgency when we consider his strategies for the renewal of humanity. Cardinal Wojtyáa as a philosopher ceaselessly pondered the question: “what is man?” In his encyclical Redemptor hominis Pope John Paul II proclaimed that man is the way of the church. Therefore, his designation of St. Thomas Aquinas as doctor of humanity indicates his esteem and preference for the philosophy of St. Thomas in the renewal of philosophy in our day. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas seeks out the truth about the human person, the true human good, and the relationship to the divine. These papers from our conference entitled Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity explore the significance for the 21st century of Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on humanity. They explore such questions as “is it still meaningful to talk about ‘humanity’ or ‘inhumanity’?” “What challenges do evolution, eugenics, and the trans-humanist movement present for a concept of ‘humanity’”? “Is the ‘human’ a viable standard in a world with many cultures and traditions”? Throughout the explorations one finds the spirit of St. Thomas at work seeking to understand the full truth of being as well as the boldness of John Paul II seeking to understand the human in the concrete challenges of the modern age.

Notes 1

Reprinted on xxi-xxiv of this book. Benedict XVI, My Beloved Predecessor (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2007), 8-9. 3 My Beloved Predecessor, 10. 4 My Beloved Predecessor, 9-10. 5 My Beloved Predecessor, 9. 6 John Paul II, “The Person: Subject and Community,” Person and Community: Selected Essays, Catholic Thought from Lublin (New York: P. Lang, 1993), 219261. See also Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination (New York: Doubleday Image, 1996), 93-95. 2

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John Paul II, “The Person: Subject and Community,” 219. Ibid., 219-220. 9 Ibid., 220. 10 Ibid., 210-213. 11 John Paul II, Gift and Mystery. 12 Karol Wojtyáa and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Acting Person in Analecta Husserliana (Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1979), vii. 13 See Wojtyáa’s Introduction to The Acting Person, 3-22. 14 The Acting Person, 22. 15 Fides et Ratio §5. 16 Fides et Ratio §81, 17 See, John Paul II, The Whole Truth About Man: John Paul II to University Faculties and Students, ed. James V. Schall, S.J. (Boston, MA: Daughters of St. Paul, 1981). Noteworthy, are the following two essays: “Perennial Philosophy of St. Thomas for the Youth of Out Times,” 209-227; and, “Method and Doctrine of St. Thomas in Dialogue with Modern Culture,” 262-280. 18 Alasdair MacIntyre pursues this theme in his analysis of Fides et ratio. See, “Philosophy recalled to its tasks: a Thomistic reading of Fides et Ratio,” in The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 179-196. 19 Fides et Ratio §33. 20 John Paul II, “The Gospel Purifies Culture: Address to Representatives of Catholic Higher Education—Xavier University, New Orleans, September 12,” in John Paul II in America, ed. Daughters of St. Paul (Boston, MA: Daughters of St. Paul, 1987), 103. 21 Fides et Ratio §81. 22 Fides et Ratio §14. 23 “Veritas, quae Christus est, ubique auctoritate universali se imponit quae gubernat, incitat et prosperat tum theologiam tum etiam philosophiam.” Fides et Ratio §92 24 He said that “the Second Vatican Council has been a gift of the Spirit to his Church. For this reason it remains a fundamental event for understanding the Church's history at this end of the century…and it was possible to note how the patrimony of 2,000 years of faith has been preserved in its original authenticity.” February 27, 2000. 25 Fides et Ratio §33. 26 Fides et Ratio §71. 27 Fides et Ratio §107. See John Hittinger, The Vocation of the Catholic Philosopher: From Maritain to John Paul II (Washington, D.C.: American Maritain Association, 2010). 8

APOSTOLIC LETTER: INTER MUNERA ACADEMIARUM SAINT JOHN PAUL II

1. AMONG THE TASKS OF THE ACADEMIES founded over the centuries by the Roman Pontiffs, research in philosophy and theology holds pride of place. In my recent Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio, I put great importance on the dialogue between theology and philosophy and clearly expressed my appreciation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, recognizing its enduring originality (cf. nn. 43-44). St. Thomas can rightly be called “an apostle of the truth” (n. 44). In fact, the insight of the Angelic Doctor consists in the certainty that there is a basic harmony between faith and reason (cf. n. 43). It is necessary therefore that the mind of the believer acquire a natural, consistent and true knowledge of created realities - the world and man himself - which are also the object of divine Revelation. Still more, reason must be able to articulate this knowledge in concept and argument (n. 66).

2. At the dawn of the third millennium, many cultural conditions have changed. Very significant progress has been made in the field of anthropology, but above all substantial changes have occurred in the very way of understanding the human being’s condition in relation to God, to other human beings and to all creation. First of all, the greatest challenge of our age comes from a growing separation between faith and reason, between the Gospel and culture. The studies dedicated to this immense area are increasing day by day in the context of the new evangelization. Indeed, the message of salvation encounters many obstacles stemming from erroneous concepts and a serious lack of adequate formation. 3. A century after the promulgation of the Encyclical Letter Aeterni Patris of my Predecessor Leo XIII, which marked the beginning of a new development in the renewal of philosophical and theological studies and in the relationship between faith and reason, I would like to give a new impetus to the Pontifical Academies working in this area, in accordance

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with the thought and tendencies of the present day as well as the pastoral needs of the Church. Therefore, recognizing the work carried out for centuries by the members of the Pontifical Roman Theological Academy and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Religion, I have decided to renew the attached Statutes of these Pontifical Academies, so that with greater effectiveness they can increase their involvement in the philosophical and theological field, in order to further the pastoral mission of the Successor of Peter and of the universal Church.

The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas 4. “Doctor Humanitatis” is the name we give St. Thomas Aquinas because he was always ready to receive the values of all cultures (Address to the Participants in the VIII International Thomistic Congress, 13 September 1980; Insegnamenti, III, 2 [1980] 609). In the cultural conditions of our time, it seems truly appropriate to develop further this part of Thomistic doctrine which deals with humanity, given that his assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason, in perfect harmony with the faith, make St. Thomas a teacher for our time. Human beings, especially in the contemporary world, are concerned with this question: What is man? In employing this epithet, “Doctor Humanitatis,” I am following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council regarding the use of the teaching of Aquinas´ writings, both in the philosophical and theological training of priests (Decree Optatam totius, n. 16), and in deepening the harmony and agreement between faith and reason in universities (Declaration Gravissimum educationis, n. 10). In my recently published Letter Fides et ratio, I wished to recall the enthusiasm of my Predecessor Leo XIII in promulgating the Encyclical Letter which began with the words Aeterni Patris (4 August 1879; ASS 11 [1878-1879] 97115): The great Pope revisited and developed the First Vatican Council's teaching on the relationship between faith and reason, showing how philosophical thinking contributes in fundamental ways to faith and theological learning. More than a century later, many of the insights of his Encyclical Letter have lost none of their interest from either a practical or pedagogical point of view—most particularly, his insistence upon the incomparable value of the philosophy of St. Thomas. A renewed insistence upon the thought of the Angelic Doctor seemed to Pope Leo XIII the best way to recover the practice of a philosophy consonant with the demands of faith (Fides et ratio, n. 57).

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This truly memorable Letter was entitled Epistula Encyclica de Philosophia Christiana ad mentem Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici in Scholis Catholicis instauranda. The same Leo XIII created the Roman Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Apostolic LetterIampridem ad Em.mum Card. Antoninum De Luca, 15 October 1879), so that the recommendations of this Encyclical would be put into practice. The following year, delighted with the work begun, he wrote to the Cardinals responsible for the new Academy (Apost. Let., 21 November 1880). Fifteen years later he approved the Statutes and established further norms (Apost. Brief Quod iam inde, 9 May 1895). With the Apostolic Letter In praecipuis laudibus, 23 January 1904, St Pius X confirmed the Academy's privileges and regulations. The Statutes were amended and completed with the approval of the Roman Pontiffs Benedict XV (11 February 1916) and Pius XI, who on 10 January 1934 combined this Academy with the Pontifical Academy of the Catholic Religion, which, in circumstances that were then very different, had been founded in 1801 by Fr Giovanni Fortunato Zamboni. I am pleased to recall Achille Ratti (1882) and especially Giovanni Battista Montini (1922), who, as young priests, obtained their doctorates in Thomistic philosophy at this Roman Academy of St. Thomas and were later called to the Supreme Pontificate, taking the names of Pius XI and Paul VI. To carry out the wishes expressed in my Encyclical Letter, I considered it opportune to revise the Statutes of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, in order to make it an effective instrument for the Church and for all humanity. In the cultural circumstances of the present day described above, it seems appropriate, indeed necessary, for this Academy to serve as a central and international forum for studying St. Thomas' teaching better and more carefully, so that the metaphysical realism of the actus essendi which pervades all the Angelic Doctor's philosophy and theology can enter into dialogue with the many directions in today's research and doctrine. Therefore, with knowledge and mature deliberation, and the fullness of my Apostolic authority, by virtue of this Letter I approve in perpetuum the Statutes of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, duly drawn up and newly revised, granting them the force of Apostolic approval.

The Pontifical Theological Academy 5. The Church, teacher of truth, has ceaselessly encouraged the study of theology and seen that both the clergy and faithful, especially those called to the service of theology, have been properly trained. At the

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beginning of the 18th century, under the auspices of my Predecessor Clement XI, the Theological Academy was founded in Rome as a centre for the sacred disciplines and an enrichment for noble spirits, so that it might serve as a source of abundant fruits for the Catholic cause. Therefore, the above-mentioned Supreme Pontiff, with his Letter of 23 April 1718, canonically established a study centre and endowed it with privileges. Benedict XIII, another of my Predecessors, attended the meetings and activities of this Academy while he was a Cardinal, “with immense joy” (cf. Apost. Let., 6 May 1726), and reflected on how much splendour and prestige it would bring not only to the beloved city of Rome, but to the whole Christian world, if this same Academy were strengthened with new and more effective support, so that it might be consolidated and make ever greater progress (cf. Ibid.). Thus, not only did he approve the Academy which Clement XI had established, but also bestowed his favour and generosity upon it. Therefore, recognizing the satisfying and very abundant fruits produced by the Theological Academy, Clement XIV continued to assist it with no less favour and generosity. This work was taken up and completed by my Predecessor Gregory XVI, who, on 26 October 1838, approved the wisely drafted Statutes with his Apostolic authority. It has now seemed necessary to me to revise these laws so that they may be better suited to the requirements of our time. The principal mission of theology today consists in promoting dialogue between Revelation and the doctrine of the faith, and in offering an ever deeper understanding of it. Graciously acceding to the requests I received to approve these new laws, and desiring that this distinguished study centre continue to grow in stature, therefore, by virtue of this Letter, I approve in perpetuum the Statutes of the Pontifical Theological Academy, duly drawn up and newly revised, granting them the force of Apostolic approval. 6. Everything I have decreed in this Letter given motu proprio I order to be established and ratified, all things to the contrary notwithstanding. Given in Rome, at St Peter's, on 28 January, the memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the year 1999, the twentyfirst of my Pontificate.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish thank first of all, his Excellency, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the Prelate Secretary for the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, for coming from Rome to co-sponsor this conference and to give a plenary address. I am grateful to the governors of the Academy—the former President of the Academy, Rev. Lluís Clavell, Angelo Campodonico, Enrique Martinez, Francis Russell Hittinger, Kevin Flannery S.J., Rev. Steve Brock, and Terence Kennedy C.Ss.R. I am especially grateful to my brother, Professor Russell Hittinger for his guidance and inspiration for this conference as well as for our years of common pursuit of the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II. I wish to thank His Eminence Daniel Cardinal DiNardo for his enthusiastic support for the conference and his opening remarks. Thanks are also due to Rev. Lawrence W. Jozwiak, Rector of the Co-Cathedral of Sacred Heart, Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, for his welcome of the conference participants to the parish liturgy and Fr. Ian Bordenave, O.P., and Holy Rosary Parish for their support and the use of their facilities. We thank the Basilian Fathers for their vision for the University of St. Thomas, and we are grateful to the administrators of the University of St. Thomas, the President, Dr. Robert Ivany, and the Provost, Dr. Dominic Aquila. I make a special acknowledgement to my colleague and cosponsor Dr. Mary Catherine Sommers, the Director of the Center for Thomistic Studies. She and her assistant Valerie Hall deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the conference’s organization. We thank the Pope John Paul II Forum, especially its supporters and donors who made the conference and this publication possible. Mr. George Strake and the Strake Foundation have provided a constant support for the venture of the Forum. Great friends of the John Paul II Forum contributing to the success of the conference and publication include Marcy and Robert Duncan, Dr. John Le and Dr. Tuyet Nguyen, Francis Dezelski, Tom and Beth Kaczor, and Msgr. James Golasinski. Finally, I must thank the graduate students at the Center for Thomistic Studies who have assisted me with the tedious work of organization and manuscript preparation: Dan Wagner, who co-edited the volume with me and oversaw every step of its production; John Boyer, who poured through the entire manuscript; Brian Kemple, Brian Jones, and Francisco Plaza,

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who assisted in editing; and John Skalko, who assists me in the John Paul II Forum.

“Doctor Humanitatis” is the name we give St. Thomas Aquinas because he was always ready to receive the values of all cultures. In the cultural conditions of our time, it seems truly appropriate to develop further this part of Thomistic doctrine which deals with humanity, given that his assertions on the dignity of the human person and the use of his reason, in perfect harmony with the faith, make St. Thomas a teacher for our time. POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II, INTER MUNERA ACADEMIARUM JANUARY 28, 1999

PART I: KAROL WOJTYàA

SAINT THOMAS: TIMELESS AND TIMELY FRANCIS CARDINAL GEORGE, O.M.I.

Introduction I stand here somewhat diffidently, because my pretensions to scholarship have long evaporated. Staying with a discipline in which you have been trained when you are as involved in administration as Cardinal Dinardo and myself means that you read book reviews rather than books, and that, late at night after you’ve gone through the mail. I am grateful always for Bishop Sanchez’s leadership as the secretary of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. And I think all of us are thankful for the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, especially blessed in its director, Dr. Mary Catherine Sommers, who is hosting this event. We are grateful as well for the John Paul II Forum, directed assiduously by Dr. John Hittinger. And the Basilian Fathers also have, in quiet but very important ways, promoted scientific and historical studies of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate are not particularly noted for being university people. We generally are “bush missionaries” all over the world, but we have founded universities when nobody else was around to begin them. In its intellectual work, the Congregation has usually been faithful to the instructions of its founder, Eugene de Mazenod, who made it a matter of the rule that Oblates would follow Thomas Aquinas in doctrine and dogmatic theology. I studied theology at the University of Ottawa before it became St. Paul University, and all the professors had studied at the Angelicum. The textbook was simply the Summa, worked through in course after course along with many secondary sources. At the same time that we were doing theology in this classical mode, the drafts and the documents of Vatican II were being analyzed by our professors. The synthesis of historical revelation and personal and cultural religious experience, which came to the fore in some of the council documents, has yet to be fully worked out. The great advantage we had, however, was that the framework of the Summa remained strong in our spirit even as it was

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supplemented in the light of further developments. That means that one isn’t captive to the last article one has read. Some Oblates did play a significant role in the development of Leonine Thomism. I think especially of my distinguished brothers, Emmanuel Doronzo (1903-1976), the eminent sacramental theologian at The Catholic University of America (Washington, D.C.) and, of course, also of Father George F. McLean, emeritus at CUA.1 Since I myself consider Saint Thomas Aquinas a special master and guide, it pleases me to address those who have assembled in Houston to honor the Common Doctor. There are two parts to this luncheon address. The first considers the titles of St. Thomas, and I depend very much upon those who are more familiar with the historical studies of Thomas and scholasticism than am I. The second part arises from the title “Doctor of Humanity” at a moment in history when common human nature is eclipsed in establishing man’s identity by the diverse cultures that manifest variations in the way humans live. The very category of “humanity” has become problematic.

The Titles of Saint Thomas In 1909, the celebrated historian, Pierre Mandonnet, O.P., who worked mainly at Fribourg in Switzerland, published an article titled, “Les titres doctoreaux de saint Thomas d’Aquin.” The short piece appeared in the Dominican journal, the Revue Thomiste.2 We learn something surprising: from the very start of Aquinas’s service to the Church, Catholics have honored him with titles that express the special sympathy that they held for his thought. Even in the thirteenth century, Churchmen and laity alike referred to Aquinas as Doctor eximius, Venerabilis doctor, vir, pater, magister.3 The titles are richly suggestive of the esteem in which his near contemporaries held Aquinas, even while some of his own brethren and others were taking measures to curb what they considered to be certain erroneous or heretical turns of thought in his writings. The fact is they had to address it, because the synthesis he created in bringing together Augustine and Aristotle challenged them right from the start. While it would be interesting to explore the implications of these ancient expressions of reverence for Aquinas’s magisterial status, allow me to dwell rather on those titles that today we recognize commonly as proper to Saint Thomas. I approach this theme chronologically, that is, in the order in which Thomas Aquinas received his three major titles or, as it were, his heavenly doctorates: Common Doctor; Angelic Doctor; Doctor of Humanity. Each of these was given him by the Roman Pontiff of the day.

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Common Doctor Thomas Aquinas is the Common Doctor. Since the early fourteenth century, the Popes have recognized that Aquinas’s instruction in theology and philosophy displays the capacity to serve the whole Church. The fortunes of Thomists and even of Thomism have waxed and waned during the nearly 750 years since Saint Thomas died in 1274. Still, it remains the case that the Church turns and returns to what Aquinas has said (and what his major interpreters have said about what he said), especially in times when the articles of faith come under attack. The most recent example of this ecclesial confidence in the thought of Aquinas may be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Before the twentieth century, we know too that the Fathers of both Trent and Vatican I depended heavily on the thought of Aquinas. The well-known Thomist, Father Gilles Emery, is quoted as saying, “When the Church speaks well, she speaks Thomistically.” In 1974, Pope Paul VI—in his address to the Dominicans on the occasion of the seventh centenary of Saint Thomas’s death—spoke of Aquinas: We wish to point out the reasons for the scientific authority attributed to him by the Magisterium and ecclesiastical institutions, and especially by many of Our predecessors who have not hesitated to call him the “Common Doctor of the Church,’ following the precedent set in 1317.4

Pope Paul VI went on to enumerate the reasons for this honor that the Church bestows on Aquinas. The Pope specified three such reasons: Aquinas merits the title of Common Doctor by (1) the objective value of his teaching, (2) by the profit to be derived from the study and consultation of his writings, and (3) by the power of his teaching to persuade and form the minds of students, especially the younger ones.5

The title, “Common Doctor,” should be interpreted as the Church’s way to insist on the unity of truth as much as a partisan promotion of a particular saint, even of so great a thinker as Saint Thomas. A common doctor shares common truths. Common truths derive from the First Truth. A metaphysical presupposition is entailed in attributing to him the title of Common Doctor. Since the early modern period, preference for the diverse over the common has gained ascendency in many quarters. Universities promote

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diversity; the modern university favors encyclopedias and genealogies as means for establishing criteria for truth. This preference brings its own difficulties, its own fragmentations. Without the guidance of common truths, we can neither discover nor agree upon a common well-being, a common good. The Church cannot achieve her mission without a reliance on and the preaching of common truths. The basic reason is simple: God is Truth. As Aquinas points out in ST I, q. 16, a. 5: “not only is truth in God but God himself is the supreme and original truth.” Ipse est summa et prima veritas. Jesus, as God’s only begotten Son, describes himself as “the way, the truth and the life.” While the true good of humanity precedes our or anyone’s discovery of it, a lot depends on the Church’s capacity to make that true good known in a clear and convincing way. This rule for the need of divine instruction applies not only to man’s supernatural end, but also to his natural end. Think about the Church’s efforts to correct those faulty views of what perfects human nature that today have gained traction in American society. The Church needs a Common Doctor. The unity of Catholic faith requires one, and we can have one because there is a common truth behind a common good. Admittedly, the philosopher in me recognizes that there are many steps between the Summa Veritas and the achievement of theological or even rhetorical harmony among today’s Catholics. At the same time, diversity and inclusiveness cannot serve as the hegemonic guiding principles for doing Catholic theology. Theology follows, rather, a sapiential path, one that, in the end, leads to our joyful beholding of the Summa et Prima Veritas. This is the challenge that our own intellect presents to us, the intellect in scholastic terms being quemadmodum omnia. We can know everything in some fashion chronologically or negatively. There is nothing, because we participate in the divine intellect that is beyond our ability to understand, at least inchoately, even if we are unable to come to a successful conclusion in doing so. That understanding, therefore, of what we can know is itself witness to what is to be known. Some have observed that the post-Conciliar Church has still to find its new “Common Doctor.” Many more people are persuaded that the very notion of a common doctor for the Church is passé. I suspect that most of the participants in this conference do not share this view. There exists some papal warrant for your skepticism. Pope Paul VI cautioned us about those thinkers who, a decade after the Council, did not share his appreciation for the merits of Aquinas:

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We [i.e., the Pope] know too that their distrust or repugnance is often due to a superficial and casual acquaintance with [Aquinas’s] teaching; in fact, at times those who reject him have not even read and studied his works.6

What Pope Paul said in 1974 may well hold true for those who today either dismiss the necessity of a common doctor or who prefer to transfer the title to another theologian of the modern period. A few, very few, candidates come readily to mind. However, as Father Fergus Kerr has reminded us, none has captured universal approval.7 Nor, I should add, direct papal approbation. The challenge to commonality now is not only doctrinal but also methodological. My own view, however, joins that of Monsignor Robert Sokolowski, whom we all admire because he taught many of us how to think. “One may add,” he said, “to Aquinas, but not replace or displace him. Our Common Doctor keeps us focused on the same, common truths.”

Angelic Doctor Saint Thomas is called the Angelic Doctor. There are two approaches to considering this title: one, you talk about angels and, two, Aquinas led an angelic life. The title incorporates both these approaches. Mandonnet favors ascribing this title to Aquinas’s exquisite and lengthy treatise on angelic creation; he calls Aquinas’s angelology “une idée maîtresse qui éclaire et unifie ses conceptions de penseur intellectualiste.”8 Among other benefits, Aquinas’s metaphysical analysis of the separated substances rescued Western theology from its attachment to the notion of “spiritual matter.” Angels, so Aquinas taught, are not composed of matter and form, but of essence and existence and therefore spiritual but contingent. The origins of this title, “Angelic Doctor,” remain obscure. It is known that, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the Dominican archbishop of Florence, Saint Antoninus (+1459), used the appellation, Angelic Doctor, of Saint Thomas.9 Saint Antoninus also taught about the angels, but he is better remembered for his solicitude for the poor, a late medieval patron of what today we would call social justice. His moral theology exercised a certain influence on some casuists of a later period. A century later, the Dominican Pope, Saint Pius V, gave the title its canonical status when, in 1567, he proclaimed Aquinas a doctor of the Church: “Ex quo sanctorum laudabili numero, qui catholicam veritatem corde, opere et ore roborarunt, Angelici Doctoris, S. Thomae de Aquino.” “Corde, opere et ore.” Aquinas strengthened Catholic truth by “his heart, his works, and his mouth.” Manndonet himself admits that “Thomas

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a été angélique par ses vertus.”10 “Angelic” points then to a way of life, a virtuous way of life. His heart, his works, his mouth unified the truth in such a way that its very virtues witness to that purification externally in his habits of action to what had happened spiritually in his life with the Lord. The title, Angelic Doctor, also recalls the admirable chastity of life that Saint Thomas practiced. It is hard to talk seriously about chastity in a postFreudian culture, because the presumption now is that sexual desire should be made conscious and then acted out in order to avoid repression. Chastity as a virtue does encourage us to recognize sexual desire in order not to be controlled by it, but the practice of virtue enables the chaste person to discern between desires that should be acted on and those to be rejected, as quickly as possible. In Chicago, realizing that young people get quickly trapped in habits that enslave them for life, we have begun a “Chastity Education Initiative.” The high schools have a curriculum that includes formation in the virtue of chastity. Its results seem initially positive, but the struggle to control young people’s lives is, it seems to me, unrelenting and often unrecognized except by those who live a virtuous life. It is marvelous to behold the variety of approaches to virtue that the saints express. The great Carmelite Doctor and ascetic, John of the Cross, while confined by his own confreres to a small cell, was forced to encounter a woman of easy virtue; St. John proceeded to address the woman in warm and friendly terms with an eye toward converting her. Though she failed in her seductive mission, this woman left, so the story goes, quite happy. Saint Thomas, on the other hand, when his blood brothers tried to dissuade him from becoming a Dominican by sending a harlot into the place of his castle confinement, famously picked up a burning brand from the fireplace and chased the lady out of his presence. Then, angels came and girded Aquinas with a cord that remains to this day a symbol of his chastity and of his intercession for those who are less resolute in facing temptations than he. The saints have different ways of remaining virtuous. The important thing is that they did. Whichever form of accompaniment in virtue one may choose, the lesson that the Angelic Doctor teaches is clear: “Love and truth will meet; justice and peace will kiss” (Ps 85:11). But one will not recognize this embrace unless his or her way of life is such that a person is open to God’s love and to God’s truth. A common teaching requires common virtues— the three theological and the four cardinal. Otherwise, vicious acts corrode a person’s adherence to truth as long as his or her hold on virtue remains tenuous.

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As is well known, Aquinas associates the gift of wisdom with the virtue of charity. Commentators remark upon the placement of q. 45 in the Secunda Secundae. Unlike the other gifts that Aquinas associates with the virtues, the little treatise on wisdom comes at the very end of his treatment on the virtue that it accompanies. By this placement, Aquinas wishes to show that the highest expressions of truth in wisdom, and love in charity, together provide the capstone for the Christian life. Wisdom, in other words, crowns his discussion of the theological life as it undergirds the universal call to holiness in Vatican II.

Doctor of Humanity The two doctoral titles, Common Doctor and Angelic Doctor, together introduce the newest title that the Church gives to Thomas Aquinas, that is, “Doctor of Humanity,” which is the subject of your conference. What does Aquinas teach us as Doctor of Humanity? He tells us that the human race requires both truth and right loving to survive. He teaches us what everyone knows, but often forgets, that justice begets peace and injustice brings discord. What becomes problematic, of course, is the definition of justice, founded first in right relationships before they are legally formulated as individual rights. We can thank Saint Pope John Paul II for giving Saint Thomas his third heavenly doctorate, one that, in my view, suits modern sensibilities while at the same time taking up the lessons publicized by the earlier titles of Common and Angelic Doctor. When, in 1999, Pope John Paul II rekindled life into the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the saintly Pope recalled the perennial value of Aquinas’s teaching for our own period. “Doctor humanitatis is the name we give St. Thomas Aquinas,” wrote Pope John Paul II, “because he was always ready to receive the values of all cultures.”11 Values and cultures are two words Aquinas would not have used, but they appear often in the magisterium of Pope John Paul II. Their origin lies in the development of nineteenth century continental philosophy and the creation of cultural anthropology and missiology at the beginning of the twentieth century. Pope John Paul II points to Aquinas’s universal embrace of what is true and good; the Pope also encourages the student of Aquinas to extend this same embrace. He did it pastorally by visiting and speaking to the cultures of the world. His respect for different cultures, however, presupposed that each is a manifestation of the human race; our common humanity finds various expressions. In each country visited, he attempted

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to show how the truths of the universal faith are able to be expressed, at least in part, using the resources of the culture of the people he was addressing. A faith that does not become culture is not a lived faith, he often insisted. In relating the Church to the world, the modern legal question of Church-State relationships cedes its primacy to the dialogue between faith and culture. In the Apostolic Letter re-founding the Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope John Paul II cited an earlier pronouncement, his “Address to the Participants in the VIII International Thomistic Congress.” It was held in Rome on 13 September 1980 to commemorate the centenary of Aeterni Patris.12 It was on that occasion, shortly after his election, that Pope John Paul II officially gave Aquinas this third doctoral title, Doctor Humanitatis. In the 1980 “Address,” Pope John Paul II places Aquinas’s openness to the values of all cultures within the context of his attachment to divine truth: “The Angelic One,” says the Pope, can rightly state: “Veritas in seipsa fortis est et nulla impugnatione convellitur” (Contra Gentiles, IV, c.10). Truth, like Jesus Christ, can be denied, persecuted, fought, wounded, martyred, crucified; but it always comes back to life and rises again and can never be uprooted from the human heart.13

Pope John Paul’s rootedness in the truths of the faith opened his heart to the world and kept him resolute in the midst of particular difficulties. Because such openness is from the Lord, it is the opposite of remaining undecided. The title “Doctor of Humanity” sounds odd to many today and would have seemed strange to the first humanists of the early modern period. Erasmus showed little sympathy for Aquinas’s achievement. As one author has expressed it: By the time of the sixteenth-century Protestant reform, work on Aquinas had become more identified with straightforwardly theological issues, as exemplified in the influence that his Summa Theologiae exercised on the Council of Trent. Those who criticized the “Common Doctor” did so because they considered either his theology not sufficiently humanist or his humanism not fully radicalized.14

Pope John Paul II, with his characteristic talent for translating classical Catholic doctrine into language recognizable to modern thinkers, has helped us move beyond the worn-out criticisms alleging that Thomism survives only as an outdated form of ecclesial rationalism. Aquinas

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received the values of all cultures. Of course, he received them with both appreciation and criticism, in the light of faith and reason. Aquinas’s critical judgment, however, does not proceed from an a priori inclusivism but from the recognition that only one truth can satisfy the human creature: “Desire for truth,” says Pope John Paul II of Aquinas’s achievement, “is transfigured into a natural desire for God and finds its clarification only in the light of Christ, Truth made man.”15 Pope John Paul II therefore challenged Thomists to make of Aquinas a source of living instruction for the Church. The Common Doctor belongs in the engine room of the New Evangelization. Pope John Paul II writes: In the cultural circumstances of the present day..., it seems appropriate, indeed necessary, for [your] Academy to serve as a central and international forum for studying St. Thomas’ teaching better and more carefully, so that the metaphysical realism of the actus essendi which pervades all the Angelic Doctor’s philosophy and theology can enter into dialogue with the many directions in today’s research and doctrine.16

Sometimes even good-willed thinkers interpret an appeal to study Aquinas as an invitation to open up long-forgotten theological battles or as a backward move that requires a rehabilitation of vocabulary and thought patterns that post-moderns have left behind. On the contrary, the interest that Pope John Paul II took in the Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the use that the same Pope made of Aquinas in his own Magisterium, especially in Veritatis splendor and Fides et ratio, confirms that the Pope recognized that Aquinas remains a sure guide for seeking a common truth and for pursuing the common good of the created universe. In the bestcase scenario, when a human person discovers this true common good, he or she is ready to hear the Preaching of the Gospel.

The Values of all Cultures In the abovementioned 1980 “Address,” Pope John Paul II summarized how everyone can discover the “humanity” that Aquinas teaches us as its outstanding doctor: The universal truth about the good of the human person and the perennially valid norms which ensure the protection of that good are accessible to human reason; we can share in God’s knowledge about what we should be and about what we must do in order to reach the end for which we were created.17

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In an “Address” to those assembled at Aquino for his 1974 visit, Pope Paul VI reported that a learned gentleman of politics and the university recently had explained to him the importance of Aquinas for our period: “The thought of St. Thomas Aquinas is the load-bearing structure of our culture!”18 As many of you know, I have followed closely the inspiration of Pope John Paul II in my own intellectual work and in my ministry as Bishop. In a book that I published setting forth themes from the dialogue between faith and culture in our country, I commented on how well, in my judgment, the “load-bearing structure of our culture” is holding up. The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion, and Culture (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2009) considers a number of key issues that Catholics face when they set out to evangelize the culture. I would like to think that the thought of Aquinas supplies the basic inspiration for this book, even as I recognize that many of the topics that I discuss do not appear immediately in the works of the Angelic Doctor. Were I to indicate a single philosophical obstacle to developing the key insights of Aquinas for today’s common consumer of cultural platitudes, I would say that the challenges engage final and efficient causality. Recently, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, wrote to an Italian newspaper. In one report, the headlines ran: Ratzinger gives “prominent mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi a slap on the wrist in a letter published by Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica.’”19 The eleven-page letter shows that the Pope Emeritus is still writing true to form: If you [Odifreddi] want to replace God with “Nature,” the question remains as to who or what this nature is. At no point do you provide a definition of it. This makes it seem like some irrational divinity which does not explain anything. I would like to point out, however, that in your religion of mathematics, there are three elements of human existence which you do not discuss: freedom, love and evil. I am amazed to see that you have completely left freedom out, when it is a core value of our modern age.20

There is also no mention of love or evil in Odifreddi’s book. No matter what neurobiology may or may not say about freedom, it plays a determining role in the real drama of human history and must be taken into consideration. But your mathematical religion offers no information about evil. Any religion that ignores these fundamental questions is empty.21

By and large, the often-slippery term “value” is used by John Paul II to express a truth about the good. The problem with value in moral theory is

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that value requires a determination, which is supplied by an explicit or implicit metaphysics behind the value judgment. Kantian values are well known. Nietzschean rejection of value is also. When Pope John Paul II named Aquinas “Doctor Humanitatis,” the Pope pursued his project, as I have called it, of “Godly Humanism.” That is, Pope John Paul wants to introduce Aquinas as a Doctor who will instruct us on how to discover “the truth about the good of man.”22 To those who say that culture or men create values, Aquinas replies, no. We must first discover the truth about the good. To those who say that norms for ensuring that the human person flourishes are ineluctably various from place to place or from person to person, Aquinas replies, “No.” Because moral values depend on God’s own knowledge of the creature and of his or her created freedom, these values are universal. They depend upon divine causality itself. That assertion assumes, of course, a methodological connection that is antithetical to the way in which value questions are often approached in anthropology and in psychology today. My dear friend, Professor Kenneth Schmitz, has written, Some realists are disturbed by the use of the “value” in discussions of the good. Wojtyáa uses the term in a realistic sense, however... [He] means the good insofar as it offers itself to and for the integral being of the concrete person.23

During an ad limina address to the American Bishops in 1993, Pope John Paul II told us, the Bishops of the United States: In response to the question about what truth should shape human destiny, the Church answers: God’s truth, which is man’s. To the question about what justice ought to guide society, she replies: God’s justice, which alone is a truly human and humanizing justice.24

When we take this papal encouragement to heart, we find the resources to treat the cultural issues that bedevil our contemporaries and critics: freedom, love, and evil. Veritatis splendor repeats a fundamental principle that not only recapitulates what Aquinas has taught us about freedom but also what orthodox Christian teaching has maintained about finding perfection for all human life: “Perfection demands that maturity in self-giving to which human freedom is called.”25 One can’t be totally giving of oneself unless one has experienced in some sense a love that enables us to have the courage to surrender ourselves into what is infinitely good. You give yourself totally, completely, because you know you are safe in the arms of

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someone you don’t fully understand but who loves you more than you love yourself. It seems to me that Saint Thomas still provides the best way to help Christians discuss “freedom, love, and evil.” As I suggest above, we find his instruction readily packaged in the Encyclical Letter, Veritatis splendor, which deserves more attention twenty years after its publication than, as far as I can determine, it has received among Catholic thinkers. Evil emerges from our living in falsehood. The correction to evil is, therefore, first of all truth. One can’t be free without truth. To summarize briefly: freedom requires truth; love finds its orientation in the telic perfections that themselves depend on God; evil emerges from our sad fallings away from those perfections “integral” to the human person. Understanding freedom and perfection remain the challenges for this generation. One may not conveniently avoid the social and psychological sciences without dishonoring Aquinas’s brilliance in receiving the values of the culture. Tentatively, I would like to mention a recently published book edited (with others) by the distinguished psychologist, Paul C. Vitz: Philosophical Virtues and Psychological Strengths.26 I mention it tentatively, because I have to admit I haven’t read the book; I’ve read the review. The merit of this scholarly record of a three-year dialogue between psychologists, including Harvard’s Robert Coles, and mainly Thomist philosophers, including the late Father Benedict Ashley, lies in the book’s efforts at bridge-building where few bridges have been tried. The book of course marks a beginning, not an end, to a discussion that must advance to make the Doctor Humanitatis welcome among our contemporaries, who by and large find the opinions of the psychological sciences, whether rightly or wrongly presented, more convincing than they do the truths of a common faith. Beginning where people are, with contemporary understanding based on always limited experience, you hope to bring them to where they should be: able to receive the truth of who God is because he has been gracious enough to reveal himself in Jesus. Allow me to conclude by suggesting some homework for Thomists, especially young Thomists. Thomists are defined more by the principles that they espouse than by the conclusions that they reach. Our intellectual world is defined by methodologies that claim not to depend on principles. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has observed, the moderns announce many conclusions but their principles remain obscure, if not contradictory. The first assignment: ponder the principles of sound Catholic philosophy and theology. How do they foster a common language and a methodology that would justify a persuasive delineation of the common good?

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Recently Pope Francis has remarked on the genius of Aquinas, while also lamenting what he describes as a “bankrupt” form of Thomism that he met while in formation.27 One assumes that the Pope refers to Suarezianism. In any case, the best way to ensure that the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas remains fresh and does not grow “decadent” is to maintain a community of scholars who work together on the thought of Aquinas. In earlier times, these communities would be localized, e.g., the Salmanticenses and Complutenses, or attached to a religious institute, e.g., the Dominicans, the Basilians, etc.28 Today, I suspect, the Thomist commentatorial community, like everything else, must need exist virtually—on the Internet. The key to this project’s success will be editorial refereeing, as still happens in the better scientific journals. The second assignment, therefore, is: network effectively. Finally, although the present Pope suffered the misfortune of running into philosophy textbooks that he found out-of-date, we should not conclude that textbooks do not serve a useful purpose in training the young—and for helping the old to remember. I especially recommend this worthy project, textbook writing, to you who are engaged in teaching in seminaries and in college or university settings. The task daunts even the most spirited lover of the thought of Aquinas, but as Pope Francis has told us, “the Church should strive for genius.” The third assignment, then, is: write and publish—especially useful textbooks.

“Strive for Genius” In 1974, when he spoke to a festive commemoration at Fossanova, the Cistercian abbey where Saint Thomas died in 1274, Pope Paul VI stressed the fidelity that one should maintain to the thought and the example of Aquinas. The Pope explained that Saint Thomas offers a valid way to defend, expound, and render accessible to the human mind the truth of Catholic religious thought.29 I conclude by making the Pope’s insistence my own: State firma! Stay firm in your understanding of Aquinas and in your study of his thought. And I join my voice to that of the present Pontiff, Pope Francis: “Strive for genius!” Thank you very much.

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Notes 1

See George F. McLean, Man’s Knowledge of God According to Paul Tillich: A Thomistic Critique (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1958). 2 Pierre Mandonnet, “Les titres doctoraux de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 17 (1909), 597-608. 3 Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, The Person and His Work (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 325. 4 Paul VI, Lumen Ecclesiae [Apostolic Letter of Pope Paul VI to the Rev. Vincent De Cousnongle, Master General of the Dominican Order, Marking the 7th Centenary of the Death of St. Thomas Aquinas], November 20, 1974, sec. 2: “...ac simul causas cupimus illustrare auctoritatis scientificae, quam Magisterium et Ecclesiae instituta ei tribuerunt, maxime autem bene multi Decessores Nostri, qui eidem nomen « Doctoris Communis » adicere non dubitaverunt, quod iam anno MCCCXVII est ei impertítum.” 5 Paul VI, Lumen Ecclesiae, sec. 2: “Confitemur sane in affirmanda et refovenda tam diuturna ac veneranda traditione Magisterii Ecclesiae, Nos non solum moveri obsequio in auctoritatem Decessorum Nostrorum, sed etiam sive obiectiva inspectione bonitatis, qua doctrina illius pollet, sive utilitatibus, quae — ut ipsi experti sumus — e studio et consultatione operum eiusdem percipiuntur, sive comprobata vi persuasoria et institutoria spiritus humani, quam indiscipulos, praesertim iuniores, is exercet, quemadmodum ipsi animadvertimus, cum inter catholicos studiorum Universitatum alumnos apostolatum exsequeremur, qui, a Decessore Nostro rec. mem. Pio XI incitati, ad studium Angelici Doctoris se applicuerant.” 6 Paul VI, Lumen Ecclesiae, sec. 3: “In comperto equidem habemus non omnes nostra aetate haec eadem sentire. Non autem Nos fugit saepenumero S. Thomae diffidi vel repugnari eo quod doctrina eius leviter obiterque attingatur, immo nonnumquam eo quod ipsa eius opera nequaquam legantur ac nullum studium iis impendatur.” 7 See Romanus Cessario, O.P., “On the Place of Servais Pinckaers († 7 April 2008) in the Renewal of Catholic Theology,” The Thomist 73 (2009), 1-27. 8 Mandonnet, “Les titres doctoraux,” 607-08. 9 Mandonnet, “Les titres doctoraux,” 606. 10 Mandonnet, “Les titres doctoaux,” 607. 11 John Paul II, Inter Munera Academiarum [Apostolic Letter], January 28, 1999, no. 4. 12 See Insegnamenti, III, 2 [1980] 609. 13 Pope John Paul II, “Address to the Eighth International Thomistic Congress,” September 13, 1980, no. 3. Published in L’Osservatore Romano, English Edition, October 20, 1980, 9-11. 14 See Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas: A Doctor for the Ages,” First Things (March 1999): 27-32. Reprinted in The Second One Thousand Years. Ten

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People Who Defined the Millennium, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001): 28-39. 15 John Paul II, “Thomistic Congress,” no. 4. 16 John Paul II, Inter Munera Academiarum, no. 4. 17 John Paul II, “Thomistic Congress,” no. 4. 18 Pope Paul VI, “Honor St. Thomas by studying his thought,” September 14, 1974. Published in L’Osservatore Romano, June 8, 2011 http://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/honor-st-thomas-by-studying-histhought 19 Marco Tosatti, “‘I never covered up child sex abuse cases,’ Ratzinger tells religion critic” Vatican Insider, September 24, 2013, http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/28071/ (Accessed September 29, 2013). 20 Benedict XVI in Marco Tosatti, “‘I never covered up child sex abuse cases,’ Ratzinger tells religion critic.” 21 Benedict XVI, “Ratzinger tells religion critic.” 22 See Veritatis splendor, no. 64. 23 Kenneth L. Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyáa/Pope John Paul II (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 56. 24 John Paul II, “Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Bishops of the United States of America on their ‘Ad Limina’ Visit,” October 15, 1993, no. 4. 25 John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, no. 17. 26 Craig Steven Titus and Paul C. Vitz, eds., Philosophical Virtues and Psychological Strengths (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2013). 27 “Humans are in search of themselves, and, of course, in this search they can also make mistakes. The church has experienced times of brilliance, like that of Thomas Aquinas. But the church has lived also times of decline in its ability to think. For example, we must not confuse the genius of Thomas Aquinas with the age of decadent Thomist commentaries. Unfortunately, I studied philosophy from textbooks that came from decadent or largely bankrupt Thomism. In thinking of the human being, therefore, the church should strive for genius and not for decadence.” Pope Francis, interviewed by Antonio Spadaro, S.J., America Magazine, September 30, 2013, http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview (Accessed 30 September 2013). 28 These names designate the authors of the courses of Scholastic philosophy and theology, and of moral theology published by the lecturers of the philosophical college of the Discalced Carmelites at Alcalá de Henares, and of the theological college at Salamanca. 29 Pope Paul VI, “Allocutio: In Basilica Fossanovensis coenobii habita ubi S. Thomas Aquinas, anno millesimo ducentésimo septuagesimo quarto, pientissime obiit”: “...fiducia nella verità del pensiero religioso cattolico, quale da lui fu difeso, esposto, aperto alla capacità conoscitiva della mente umana” (AAS 66 [1974]: 540).

ST. JOHN PAUL II’S THOMISM: WHY ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 1 IS A TEACHER OF HUMANITY REV. MATTHEW L. LAMB

St. John Paul II had a very long view of history. Centuries were too short a span for him. After all, his beloved Poland had disappeared from the world maps for over 120 years (1796-1918). It reappeared only to be plunged into the immense sufferings and bloodshed of the second World War and the tyrannies of Nazism and Communism. Through such underground darkness Catholicism kept alive its millennial transcending love of Jesus Christ for the young Karol Wojtyáa and so many other Polish Catholics. Their faith gave them a hope with which to resist despairing of reason and human dignity. Their Catholic faith was a light flickering in the night of nihilism; the reality of the risen Christ enabled them to love responsibly amid the horrors and hatred of warring tyrannies and genocides. Studying great Catholic philosophers and theologians of the past two millennia against the backdrop of two World Wars, the Holocaust consuming his Jewish friends, and the rubble of his beloved Poland, Wojtyáa knew the great challenges facing genuine Catholic intellectual life. Human intelligence was increasingly in need of a vibrant recovery of the wisdom and holiness that took up the massive histories of human suffering into the agony of Christ, true God and true man, crucified and risen to lead humankind into the glory of eternal beatitude. The natural and human sciences, as well as the technological, political, cultural, and religious institutions of the modern world needed to be liberated from the destructive ideologies of relativism, nihilism, and totalitarianism. But Wojtyáa knew well the long years of prayerful study and scholarly collaboration needed to learn the natural, human, and spiritual realities in the millennial treasuries of philosophical and theological wisdom, in the scientific and scholarly advances, not to mention the glories of artistic genius. The cultivation of intelligence is a cooperative enterprise down the ages. The languages, words, sciences, theories, arts—all we learn from

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others. There are no Robinson Crusoes or Cartesian universal doubters in the realm of reason. As Cardinal Newman astutely observed, traditions are crucial, not just for religious faithful, but for all human learners. With Flannery O’Connor, we could imagine it as a long, multi-millennial procession of teachers and learners down the generations. We are born into languages and cultures that sweep us along in the procession.

Four Major Challenges Humanity Faces Today In his many writings Karol Wojtyáa provides many guides for a renewal of Catholic intellectual life. He insisted on the fundamental importance of Catholic universities to meet the enormous challenges facing the world at the dawn of Catholicism’s third millennium. Let me list some of the large challenges we all are facing today: 1. Demographic:2 All the advanced European and Western societies, demographers indicate, are dying out. There is a birth derth among native European populations. One needs a TFR of 2.1 to maintain a population. Estimates put the native populations in the European Union as averaging about 1.40, the Muslems in the European Union have about 3.0 TFR average. Meanwhile, China’s one child policy, thanks to readily available ultrasound and abortion, has led to an imbalance with some 20 million more boys than girls; demographic projections suggest dire consequences in several decades. Marriage and two parent families are diminishing, as divorce, cohabitation, single mother births, and polygyny increase in countries. 2. Cultural: Intellectual fragmentation has turned universities into multiversities, whenever they abandon a unified integrating core in favor of a hodgepodge of unrelated majors, minors, degrees—as one successful student remarked, she graduated with an acute case of intellectual indigestion. Multiculturalism poses as a guardian of diversity, but so far has been unable to avoid a drab uniformity in art, architecture, media, clothes, fast food, malls, etc. the world over. 3. Political: Violence, war, crime, and all manner of vice are attributed to the human “state of nature” by empiricist human sciences. Political regimes of right and left then devise “social contracts or constitutions” that formulate human rights without recognizing any power above the state. Legality is substituted for morality, as intermediate communities and institutions diminish, isolating individual citizens over against the arbitrary powers of growing federal bureaucracies. Human rights are not based upon genuine human dignity, but upon the power of interest

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groups to get state support in order to defend their “rights” with legal sanctions against those who disagree. Humanity lives with the specter of nuclear warfare and environmental destruction. Mega-disasters are regular fare on the science, discovery, and history channels. Ethical: Secularism and Fundamentalism have severed virtue and the good from intelligence and placed them solely in the will. Moral truth claims, like religious ones, are relegated to purely voluntaristic emotional options that cannot be applied to society or humanity as a whole. Love is equated with feelings of sexual attraction that pornography exploits to depersonalize human sexuality and love, misusing them for egocentric pleasure and power. The moral teachings of religious institutions are seen as fundamentalist arbitrary claims. Members and ministers of those institutions are encouraged to dissent and stay to change the teachings. Scandals rationalize dissent and/or rejection of the teachings as having any moral authority. I don’t have to remind this audience of the painful illustration of this in Catholic and other sex-abuse scandals.

Ex Corde Ecclesiae: Catholic Universities and Intellectual Life Faced with such enormous challenges many remarked on the irony of the Pope’s masterful encyclical Fides et Ratio. Here was a Pope indicating how Catholic faith, far from blinding reason, was defending the truth and importance of reason in the face of the skeptical rejection of reasoned judgment and truth overshadowing all advanced cultures and societies. Catholic universities have an enormous responsibility to face up to the challenges confronting genuine intellectual life. So in Ex Corde Ecclesiae John Paul II emphasized the importance of a “free search for the whole truth about nature, man, and God.” He continued: The present age is in urgent need of … disinterested service, namely of proclaiming the meaning of truth, that fundamental good without which freedom, justice, and human dignity are extinguished. By means of a kind of universal humanism a Catholic University is completely dedicated to the research of all aspects of truth in their essential connection with the supreme Truth, who is God. It does this without fear but rather with enthusiasm, dedicating itself to every path of knowledge, aware of being preceded by him who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life’, the Logos, whose Spirit of intelligence and love enables the human person with his or her own intelligence to find the ultimate reality of which He is the source

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The responsibility to explore “the whole truth about nature, man and God” means that today at the dawn of the third millennium of Catholicism there is a need to draw upon the achievements of the past, not as if we were constructing a museum for dusty old relics, but as important insights into the wisdom and science of great saints and scholars about “the whole truth” with which to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Nominalist Origins of the Challenges Learning the sciences requires an intellectual asceticism, a training of the mind to move beyond the descriptive categories of sense to the explanatory categories of mathematical and scientific specializations of intelligence. The empirical natural sciences have transformed the world of nature and of history profoundly. The flourishing of the sciences, both natural and human, is matched by the immense labors of historical scholarship, and the brilliance of the many literary, artistic and architectural achievements. The third millennium of Catholicism demands the development of acquired wisdom and science with the humanities and arts. Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI imbue their teachings with the achievements of the first two millennia of Catholicism in order to address the challenges humanity faces in our times. Why? If the second millennium began by differentiating wisdom and science in the great European universities, it ended with a complete loss of any notion of wisdom as a serious theoretical attunement to the realities of material and spiritual objects. With the loss of wisdom traditions, modern cultures cultivated a fragmented attention to isolated individual particulars. As the environmental crises illustrate, there was no attention to the intelligibility and pattern of wholes; instead there is attention only to the individual things, and any effort to pattern or order them is taken to be conventional and arbitrary. Wisdom is replaced by raw willpower and reason is reduced to calculating how to get and keep such power. As George Weigel states, John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor was an exercise in retrieval, reclaiming the venerable notion of freedom linked to truth and goodness that had gotten lost in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under the influence of the philosophy called “nominalism” and its equation of freedom with raw willpower.4

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In confronting the nominalist/voluntarist challenges of the third millennium, John Paul II found a congenial collaborator in a German theologian, Joseph Ratzinger. In 1974 then Cardinal Wojtyáa gave a presentation on “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination” at a conference honoring the seventh centenary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas at Fossanova. The eminent Thomist, Josef Pieper, was so impressed that he wrote to his friend, then Prof. Ratzinger, that he should “begin a correspondence and exchange books with Wojtyáa.”5 Their friendship grew over the succeeding years. Wojtyáa appreciated how Ratzinger saw, thanks to his profound study of St. Augustine, that reason embraces both understanding and truth.6 Wojtyáa appreciated how Ratzinger’s studies of Augustine, especially on the De Trinitate, emphasized the ways in which Catholic faith enlightens reason and fosters a keen intellectual life, by insisting on intellectual conversion: Logos and “Die Vernunft des Glaubens.”7 Pope Benedict XVI’s magisterial Regensburg lecture indicated that the divorce of science and scholarship from wisdom and holiness initiated nominalism. Duns Scotus did not understand the theoretical way of living as founded on an intellectual conversion whereby one can know both sensible and spiritual realities, that the intelligible causes the sensible. In Ockham, metaphysics was dominated by a conceptualist logic that replaced potency-form-act with possibilities to be exploited by power calculations. Against the “intellectualism of Augustine and Aquinas,” Benedict XVI traces nominalist voluntarism to “the image of a capricious God, (voluntas ordinate) who is not even bound to truth and goodness.” God’s otherness is so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are not found in God, “whose abgründige Möglichkeiten are eternally unattainable and hidden behind His actual decisions.” 8 Benedict traces the deepening rejection of the Hellenic discovery of logos and reason in successive nominalist philosophers and theologians through the reformation and Enlightenment.9 Reason is bifurcated into sensations and concepts, so that we only intuit sensations or concepts rather than real beings. There was a massive eclipse of judgment as knowing the real. Universals are only “flatus vocis” empty words used to arbitrarily label fragmented individual entities or, in Leibniz’s terms, monads. Cultures become distorted by relativism, historicism, nihilism, and fundamentalism.10 Nominalism exalted the will over reason—all living continuity with the great philosophical and theological traditions of the past was broken. Doctrinal and theoretical traditions were devalued into purely “textual” and “verbal” matters. Reason as an instrument of the will to power simply

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slaps labels on objects, and the ones with more power do more labeling of objects and laws. Laws were not expressions of practical intelligence aimed at educating citizens in virtue but arbitrary exercises of will enforcing external behavior. How can Catholic intellectual life overcome the dualisms between mind and body,11 between subjects and objects, between empirical science and theoretical wisdom?

The Acting Person: Reason as Patterns of Experienced Acts and Objects What is common to both Wojtyáa and Ratzinger is how they learned from great Catholic minds of the past—especially Augustine and Aquinas—how to articulate the universality of human reason across all times and cultures. This is the key to counteracting the distortions of nominalism/voluntarism and meeting the intellectual challenges we face. Wojtyáa realized how St. Thomas Aquinas had provided this key.12 Moreover, this key also applies to the moral and theological tasks as well. The key is that all human beings experience in their conscious living patterns of objects and acts. It was obvious to Wojtyáa, Ratzinger, and others, that the logos of human reason means that all human beings, as endowed with God-given reason, experience related and recurrent acts moved by experienced objects. As Wojtyáa wrote: The expression “actus humanus” itself is not only derived from the verb agere—which establishes its direct relationship with action and acting because agere means to act or to do—but it also assumes, as it is traditionally used in Western philosophy, a specified interpretation of the action, namely, the interpretation found in the philosophies of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. This interpretation is realistic and objectivistic as well as metaphysical. It issues from the whole conception of being, and more directly from the conception of potentia-actus, which has been used by Aristotelians to explain the changeable and simultaneously dynamic nature of being.13

What Josef Pieper admired in Wojtyáa’s lecture celebrating Aquinas was the realism of his reading of Aquinas. That realism was also present in Ratzinger’s reading of the Fathers and Augustine. Wojtyáa knew that Aquinas was not interested in founding Thomism, just as Ratzinger knew that Augustine had no interest to found Augustinianism.

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Realities Referenced

Study of texts from the past

State ssame realities in neew contexts

The Fathers and Schoolmen knew that all hum an beings experience acts of senssing, of perceiving, of imagining, as weell as acts of inquiring, understanding, conceiving, weighing the evidencee, judging the truth of something understood, along with acts of delibera ting what is good, of deciding, of acting, loving, etc. The acts are movved by all the sensible objects in the world around us, as well as by person s and realities that go beyond our senses. The universality of reason is oriented into the universality of being. Thus there is an implicit met aphysics in all human acting. Rendering metaphysics explicit requires a collaborative attuning n its causes d own the ages. mind and heart to the whole of being and Good (Virtues)

Intellect

Soul

Habits

Faculties Will

Personal Identity

Acts

Objects

(Vices) Bad in related recurren t patterns of

conscious experience

In calling Vatican II, St. John XXIII dramatized the twofold challenges of what he termed Ressourcement and Aggiornome nto: appropriating the Catholic spiritual and intellectual traditions, annd by this to inspire Catholics to reform and renew both church and worlld.14 Wojtyáa, coming from Communist Poland, had an advantage over his other bishops. The mass media in Poland did noot report much on the council. So when he returned home he was able to teach what in fact the Council taught in terms of Tradition and reform. H is Sources of Renewal is a masterful guide on how to realize the tasks set by the Council; it has extensive quotations from the documents. He uses the key of referring to the related patterns of conscious acts and objectss constituting both the formation of reason and the formation of the Ch urch. He situates the

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renewal of Vatican II within the historical and eschatological selfrealization of the Church in the redeeming Christ.15

A Purified Memory Integral to Catholic Intellectual Life Wojtyáa explored the key of attending to the acts and objects of human reason and Catholic faith and practices from his The Acting Person to his magisterial Papal Encyclicals and Apostolic Letters and Audience presentations. Memory was so important to the renewal of Catholic intellectual life that he called for a “purification of memory” given all the sins Catholics had committed in order for the intelligence, wisdom, and holiness of the Church’s memory to be recovered. Veritatis Splendor was, as George Weigel writes, part of John Paul II’s comprehensive program to implement the Second Vatican Council…[it] does so by a method … of Ressourcement, the recovery of foundational theological themes from the Bible, the theology of the first Christian centuries, and medieval scholarship.16

Fides et Ratio begins with a strong injunction that shows the inextricable link of objects and acts in seeking the truth: Know Yourself… In both East and West, we may trace a journey that has led humanity down the centuries to meet and engage truth more and more deeply. It is a journey that has unfolded—as it must—within the horizon of personal self-consciousness: the more human beings know reality and the world, the more they know themselves in their uniqueness, with the question of the meaning of things and of their very existence becoming ever more pressing. This is why all that is the object of our knowledge becomes a part of our life.17

Metaphysics for Wojtyáa is the theoretical analysis of the really existing causes of the beings know by the related and recurrent patterns of experienced acts and objects. Metaphysics is foundational in the search for truth, and is implicit in all knowing and moral striving aimed at the supreme Good who is God. He insists that I do not mean to speak of metaphysics in the sense of a specific school or a particular historical current of thought. I want only to state that reality and truth do transcend the factual and the empirical, and to vindicate the human being's capacity to know this transcendent and metaphysical

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dimension in a way that is true and certain, albeit imperfect and analogical.18

Like Aquinas, Wojtyáa wants the student acquiring the wisdom of metaphysics not to be joining a school, but knowing being and its causes, material, formal, efficient, and especially potency and act along with the final causes.19 In 1994, at the end of a most bloody twentieth century, John Paul II issued a call for the Church to celebrate the Jubilee year of 200020 with the provocative title Tertio Millennio Adveniente.21 He came back to the millennial theme again in 2001 at the close of the Jubilee year in in Tertio Millennio Ineunte. He first of all reiterated his call for a “purification of memory” in the light of all the evils and sins Catholics have committed down the centuries.22 With the Church’s memory thus purified through repentance, the proper way to prepare for the future is to enliven the Church’s memory with insights from the treasuries of wisdom, intelligence, and holiness in the past millennia: It is not therefore a matter of inventing a “new programme.” The programme already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem. This is a programme which does not change with shifts of times and cultures, even though it takes account of time and culture for the sake of true dialogue and effective communication. This programme for all times is our programme for the Third Millennium.23

In his 2005 book Memory and Identity: Conversations at The Dawn of a Millennium he reiterates how the many challenges facing Catholicism in the new millennium should lead us to appropriate, make our own, the great intellectual, moral, and theological achievements of the past two millennia. At the very beginning of his remarks, the Holy Father indicates how there is a dialectic operative in Western cultures. The massive evils of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism at the end of the twentieth century are not the whole story. The modern history of Europe, shaped—especially in the West—by the influence of the Englightenment, has yielded many positive fruits. This is actually characteristic of evil, as understood by Saint Thomas, following in the tradition of Saint Augustine. Evil is always the absence of some good

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Matthew L. Lamb which ought to be present in a given being; it is a privation. It is never at total absence of good.24

He illustrates this with the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Mt. 13:2930). The Pope then illustrates how the positive fruits of the Enlightenment could be harvested from the documents of Vatican II. The Conciliar proclamation of human liberty, equality, and fraternity is based on the God-created dignity of human beings. The discernment that Catholic theologians and the Council exercised in this dialectical process is due, the Pope states, by attention to the wisdom of the first millennium of Catholicism. These formulations are the fruit of the Church’s profound doctrinal reflection during the first millennium, concerning the correct way to speak of the mystery of the Incarnate God. The question was addressed by almost all the Councils, which continually return to different aspect of this fundamental mystery of faith. The Second Vatican Council bases its teaching on the great wealth of earlier doctrinal reflection on Christ’s divine humanity, so as to draw forth a conclusion that is essential for Christian anthropology. This is where its innovative character lies.25

If the first millennium of Catholicism is important in the dialectical discernment needed for the third as regards a proper understanding of equality and fraternity, John Paul II sees the crucial importance of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to discern what is human freedom. Against the voluntarism that divorces the will from reason in nominalism, the Pope calls upon Aristotle. What is human freedom? The answer can be traced back to Aristotle. Freedom, for Aristotle, is a property of the will which is realized through truth. It is given to man as a task to be accomplished. There is no freedom without truth. Freedom is an ethical category. Aristotle teaches this principally in his Nicomachean Ethics, constructed on the basis of rational truth. This natural ethic was adopted in its entirety by Saint Thomas in his Summa Theologiae. So it was that the Nicomachean Ethics remained a significant influence in the history of morals, having now taken on the characteristics of a Christian Thomistic ethic.26

He goes on to show how Aquinas was able to order the intellectual, moral, and theological virtues thanks to the Aristotelian definition of right reason discerning the mean from the extremes, thereby knowing the truly good from merely apparent good. The Pope also relates briefly this Thomistic ethic to the development of the social teachings of the Church.27

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Following the leads of Pope John Paul II, the next two sections will highlight some of the dialectical developments in the first two millennia of Catholicism. The difference between historical and dialectical accounts might be illustrated by the difference between color photographs and xrays. Historical accounts are multivalent, open to choose among the many events occuring at places and times. Dialectical accounts are bivalent, seeking out key factors that promote development or cause decline. Fortunately, for more historical details, I can refer to the recent works. On the first millennium of Christianity there is the book by Robert L. Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity.28 For the two millennia of Catholicism, there is the recent work by James Hitchock, History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium.29

Memories from the First Millennium of Catholic Intellectual Life If one looks back upon the first millennium of Christianity, one sees that the life of learning and communities of men and women in monastic, cathedral, and convent schools carried teaching forward. Most of the great literature, philosophy, science, and theology of antiquity comes to us through these communities. Christian intellectuals in the first millennium knew that the life of the mind, if it was to avoid the darkness of pride and what St. Augustine called “the disordered desire for domination,” had to be cultivated in communities dedicated as well to the quest for both wisdom and holiness.30 The sins, the idolatry, and bloody wars of the great empires of history (even though these empires have left great monuments of great skill and beauty) convinced the first millennium Christian intellectuals of two things. Firstly, learning and teaching need to occur within a moral life that both ordered human desires toward the truly good and was also inspired by the grace of Christ’s holiness. Secondly, the intellectual life, if it was not to derail into an egocentric love of honor, vanity, and power had to be informed through prayer and sacramental worship into a Christ-like love of wisdom and truth in the service of all mankind. Early in the millennium, St. Irenaeus wrote that “those who receive the Spirit are not enslaved to distorted sensual desires but in all things walk according to the light of reason.”31 From the great Greek and Roman philosophers, Augustine glimpsed the importance of striving for wisdom, attuning his mind and heart to the whole of reality and ordering his

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appetites and emotions intelligently toward the truly good. Yet he also saw how these philosophers were unable to give adequate accounts for why so few—and Augustine knew he had not—attained the life of speculative or contemplative wisdom. The evil and injustice so evident in human history, and in Augustine’s own wayward life, was wrongly attributed to matter or something in human nature.32 Fundamental to Augustine’s conversion is his discovery of an ordered practice of intelligence and reason. The intellectual aspects of Augustine’s conversion are especially present in Books Five through Nine of his Confessions. His ascent to God was accompanied by an awareness of the importance, not only of understanding (intellectus) but also of judging that the understanding is true—of Veritas. For Augustine, the nature of the human mind is given and to be discovered—it is not self-constructed, as for many moderns.33 His intellectual conversion was an experience of his own reason, his mind, as a spiritual self-presence. At the beginning of Book Seven of the Confessions, Augustine mentions how he was so “gross of mind” (incrassatus corde) that he had not come to the realization of how the mind, while it generates all images, is not itself an image “but altogether different than such images.34

Augustine uses “cor” or heart to designate the mind with its orienting desire or will.35 His own attentive self-consciousness (intentionem) has been so dulled by his disordered desires and sinful living that he cannot grasp that the mind both forms all images and transcends them. This twofold aspect of mind, both forming all images and yet not being itself a material image, is developed in his De Trinitate, where Augustine explores the human mind as an immaterial “imago Dei.”36 In Confessions 7.17, Augustine reflects on the nature of human intelligence as it judges something to be true and another thing false. So, as I reflected on how it was that I came to make these judgments which I did make, I discovered above my changing mind an unchanging and true eternity of truth.37

He then recounts how he ascended from sensible and corporeal things to the faculty of reason and the intelligible and intelligent light by which he is led to prefer the true and eternal to the changeable. The realism of this presencing of eternal truth is clear when Augustine narrates that this intellectual conversion to truth is a discovery of Being: “And in the flash of a trembling glance my mind came to That Which Is. I understood the invisible through those things that were created.”38 But he immediately

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adds that this discovery was not yet habitual. For he could not live the theoretic or contemplative life demanded by the discovery until Christ gave him the strength to do so.39 Stop for a moment and reflect on the fact that truth is infinitely sharable. Also reflect how your intellectual memories (when you first discovered that 2+2=4) are not intrinsically conditioned by space and time. You do not have to return to where you were when you knew it. So, Augustine says, intellectual memory is our rational self-presence. They are very different from sensible memories.40

Memories from the Second Millennium of Catholic Intellectual Life The second millennium began with the growing affluence of cities and the ability they provided for learning and teaching in the monastic, cathedral, and convent contexts. Guilds of teachers and students spread within the towns of Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Then came the “studia generalia,” which, by the thirteenth century, flowered into universities. Teaching and learning, while remaining in the monasteries, cathedral schools (seminaries), and convents would now be carried out in colleges and universities dedicated primarily to science and scholarship. At the beginning of this process, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), in his debates with Peter Abelard, worried that the new ways of learning and teaching might end up divorcing science and scholarship from wisdom and holiness.41 The great mendicant orders arose to infuse the new universities with teachers and students whose love for science and scholarship would be deepened by their commitment to Christ’s wisdom and the holiness of the Church. One thinks of the great St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and St. Bonaventure (1217?-1274). Cultures informed by Catholic faith were the matrix within which universities were born and flourished. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “It is actually natural to man to strive for knowledge of the truth.” St. John Paul II writes of the perennial “novitas” of the work of Aquinas.42 The English “originality” does not capture the meaning of “novitas” as newness, surprising unfamiliarity. The Holy Father himself experienced this startling strangeness of Aquinas’s work. Wojtyáa realized that Aquinas’s writings illustrated recurrent patterns of acts of knowing constituting a theoretical way of living attuning mind and heart to truth and wisdom. This opens us to the universal patterns of knowing and loving acts cultivating open attitudes to discover patterns in the whole of creation and redemption.43 Indeed, if we are to bring together

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the quest for wisdom and holiness with the quest for science and scholarship, the Pope stresses the foundational importance of metaphysics.44 With Augustine and the Fathers, Aquinas distinguishes between the orientation of the mind toward the sensible and imaginable and the orientation of the mind to know itself, and through understanding its own spiritual nature,45 to reach a true analogical knowledge of angels and God.46 By attending to its own operations of knowing and loving, Aquinas grasped the central importance of this immaterial image of God as the highest created analogue to understand the central mystery of the Triune God.47 As the human mind longs for correct answers, so this desire for truth leads to wisdom. Wisdom is acquired, according to Aquinas, insofar as the human mind moves from knowing sensible objects (e.g., physics), through imaginative objects (e.g., mathematics), to attending to spiritual or immaterial realities (e.g. metaphysics of being). The higher in no way negate the lower. Metaphysics provides a wise understanding of an open and ongoing intelligible order in the whole range of beings, material and spiritual, as well as in the range of sciences and mathematical disciplines.48 To understand what Pope John Paul II in Fides et Ratio calls “the surprising newness” of Aquinas is to grasp how Aquinas links the way of wisdom with judgment. Thinking and concepts are not enough. We know in the act of correctly judging; and true judgments are not limited to sensible and imaginative beings. There are realities that transcend both the senses and the imagination, namely, those that are entirely independent of matter both with respect to their being (esse) and with respect to their being understood. So, when we know realities of this kind through judgment, our knowledge must terminate neither in the imagination nor in the senses.49

While our spiritual minds can know—not just think about—spiritual realities, our minds have as their proper objects material realities. The higher in no way negates the lower. There is here neither a Platonist nor a Cartesian opposition between the spiritual and the material, between mind (res cogitans) and bodies (res extensa). Aquinas analyzes in detail how the light of active intelligence illumines the human imagination, grasping the intelligibility in the phantasm (species qua) and understanding the universal in the particular (species quae), then intelligently formulating the universal common to many in the concept (species in qua). The intelligible is not a kind of “looking” with the senses alone; nor is it an imaginative

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looking at images alone. All the senses and the imagination provide the mind with givens to be understood. It is the light of active intelligence that grasps the intelligible and so the universal in the particular. 50 There is no antinomy between the universal and the particular, no contradiction between the singular and the species and genus to which singular things belong. Aquinas states how by that light of active intelligence we can know truly very changeable and contingent things and events. He states: For the light of agent intellect is needed by which we can know unchangeable truth in changeable things, and distinguish the things themselves from the likenesses of things.

Aquinas related Augustine’s understanding of divine illumination (John, Prologue) to Aristotle’s comment on the light of agent intellect. As Aquinas states: “it is a certain participation in every human being of the divine light.”51

American Contest With Nominalism for the Good of Science & Scholarship Pope John Paul II was particularly attentive to the developments in the United States of America. On his visits, he would refer to the importance of truth for genuine freedom. He would also refer to the importance of Biblical faith, both Jewish and Christian.52 Similar to Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II saw that religious faith properly understood heals and enlightens reason, never blinding it.53 This cooperation of faith and reason was threatened by the influence of Benedict Spinoza’s radical Enlightenment.54 His Political-Theological Treatise fragmented the Bible, just as nature had been fragmented, so that all order is arbitrary power imposing order. Spinoza reduced the Bible into discrete sentences; there are no whole books, let alone the Bible as a whole. One text can only find meaning relative to other texts. He provided historicist reductive foundations to an historical-critical method that treated the Bible as any other text. As Newton’s mechanics sought only three-dimensional perceptible motions, so Spinoza’s canons of interpretation recognize only those perceptible textual meanings found in the Scriptures as a perceptible book. The texts are not to be taken as true when they are referring to any realities not perceptible by the human senses. Spinoza makes clear that Biblical interpretation does not concern itself with the truth of the texts,

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but only with perceptible meanings. There can be no spiritual realities revealed in Scripture.55 This development has a special philosophical meaning for American culture. The new Enlightenment culture of the United States was particularly vulnerable to nominalism with its insistence that only isolated individual things exist and that all orders are imposed arbitrarily by will. From late-medieval nominalism through the reformation and romanticism, Americans, along with their modern European counterparts, sought to liberate human life and nature from Logos and what they considered the “cold constraints of reason.” Science was handed over to mathematical hard-headedness, and voluntarism took over the fields of morality and religion. Hobbes and Locke did away with the Hellenic Christian cosmos of an Eternal and Loving Triune God. Humans were orphaned in a cold indifferent nature. Monads without purpose, they had to turn to what Hobbes termed the “prosthetic divinity” of their engineering and technology in the war against hostile environments and other men. The socalled wars of religion led Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, and other political philosophers to privatize revealed religion or to reject it outright, as with Marx. Religion could no longer provide a wisdom ordering societies, while war was read into the very marrow of nature and humanity. They threw out the baby (religion) and kept the bloody bathwater of wars and violence as intrinsic to nature, both cosmic and human. Two great European scientists, Werner Heisenberg and John Eccles, contested strongly the materialist and empiricist rejection of past wisdom. Heisenberg studied the great Greek philosophers as a teenager, his father being a Classics professor. A founder of Quantum Mechanics, he indicates the importance of recovering Aristotle’s notions of potency-form-act as the ontological (metaphysical) framework of emergent probability.56 The neurophysiologist, John Eccles, has demonstrated that conscious events cannot be in a one-to-one correlation with brain events. Indeed, he sees such reductionism as blocking progress in neurophysiology.57 One of the greatest of American mathematicians and philosophers, Charles S. Peirce, realized the enormity of the threat posed by nominalism. He saw nominalism as pervasive throughout the modern era. Professor Paul Forster has provided a thorough analysis of Peirce’s analysis and critique of nominalism.58 Unfortunately, Peirce saw in Duns Scotus an ally for realism. He sought to disengage Scotus from Ockham’s more radical nominalism. Had he studied more carefully the Augustinian and Thomist attention to the operations of knowing as fundamental to the origin of both concepts and the truth of judgments as knowing real things, he would have had a more solid realist alternative to nominalism than his pragmaticism.59

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Peirce’s pragmaticism is still caught in a Scotistic conceptualism, and so is a half-way house between nominalism and a fully verifiable and verified ontological realism.60

Conclusion: St. John Paul II as a Prophet of a New Humanism A long procession of saints, scholars, scientists and artists in the last two centuries of the second millennium sought to defend the dignity of human life and to overcome the fragmentation of an instrumentalist degradation of human reason. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI call attention to the saints, martyrs, holy scholars, and artists who have kept alive the intellectual apostolate that proceeds from the heart of the Church. For the two-millennial procession of Catholicism means that its third millennium offers hope. The procession is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, doomed to wander aimlessly amid the rows and hedges of a nominalist fragmented shadow world condemned to death. Whenever Catholics feel lost in a maze of modernity or post-modernity and are tempted to break off participation in the procession, to withdraw into a total rejection of contemporary science, scholarship, and art, we need to recall, with Flannery O’Connor, that a procession is not a march or regimented parade.61 These latter she saw as Pelagian efforts to march mechanically with a false conviction that human progress has replaced Divine Providence: ever forwards never backwards or sideways. In comparison with such marches, processions tend to meander depending upon countless interactions of the participants, each moving in answer to a Divine Call of the Teacher, being fascinated by this or that object or person. Like processions coming up against unexpected obstacles, Catholicism has had to improvise and meander around the obstacles, oppositions, and delays. Is this not the way that God has created the universe? Do not contemporary scientists and artists confirm the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, echoing the Fathers, that creation is a “procession” rather than a mechanistic clock-like march? The mechanistic rationalism of the recent past does not do justice to reason; the divine order of creation consists in its procession from God and return to Him. Given sin and the massive injustices in human history, the importance of holiness and the theological virtues cannot be overestimated in the task of participating in this Catholic intellectual procession as she makes her way at the beginning of her third millennium. The fact that theology has

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disappeared from the cultural patrimony of our post-nominalist intellectual establishment has meant that the human sciences are bereft of a wisdom they desperately need. Empiricist human sciences chart how human beings behave, how they act. They tend to take any behavior—no matter how disordered and sinful it is—as normative. On the basis of such studies, social policies are formulated, and so disorder and sin are structured into a society and culture in such laws as those condoning and supporting contraception, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, to the detriment of religious liberty. Catholic universities need to recover the roles of philosophy and theology in interdisciplinary collaboration with the natural and human sciences, the liberal arts, humanities, and professional programs. Only the labors of universities over centuries will build up an architectonic wisdom open to, and integrative with, all true advances in science and scholarship. Our graduate programs in philosophy and theology should lead the way in reintegrating science, scholarship and the humanities with wisdom and holiness. If we cultivate sound scholarly judgment and are intelligent and faithful, we may discover that the great Catholic intellectual traditions are, in fact, a vast and complex cathedral of the mind and heart to which each generation of human beings is called to contribute. This is a cathedral of the mind and heart, far more enduring than those of stone, wherein one finds an attentive reverence for the goodness and holiness of genuine knowing and loving. In such a cathedral of the mind and heart every discovery of truth is ultimately a gift, a finite created participation in the embracing Mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Infinite Understanding generating Infinite Wisdom spirating Infinite Love. For this cathedral of the mind and heart is the whole Body of Christ in the City of God. St. John Paul II was, as his biographer George Weigel reminds us, a prophet of a new humanism calling us in the third millennium of Catholicism to “a new springtime of the human spirit” dedicated in faith and love to the true dignity of human beings. He knew that St. Thomas Aquinas is a teacher of humanity. For all humans are created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen.

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Notes 1

Originally published under the title “The Millenial Challenges Facing Catholic Intellectual Life,” in Nova et Vetera Vol. 11, n.4 Fall 2013, 969-991; reprinted here with kind permission of Nova et Vetera. 2 Cf. Country Comparison of Total Fertility Rates in the CIA World Fact Book for 2013 projections. On global aspects of the demographic decline, cf. David Goldman, Its Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You (New York: RVP Publishers, 2011) and his How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam is Dying Too) (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2011). On America cf. Jonathan V. Last, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster (New York, Encounter Books, 2013). 3 John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae #4. 4 See George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Harper Collins, 1999), 694 on the import of Veritatis Splendor (e.g., #76-78) as “an exercise in retrieval, reclaiming the venerable notion of freedom linked to truth and goodness that had gotten lost in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under the influence of the philosophy called ‘nominalism’ and its equation of freedom with raw willpower.” 5 George Weigel, The End and the Beginning (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 12. 6 Cardinal Wojtyáa used Ratzinger’s Einführung in das Christentum when he gave, at the invitation of Pope Paul VI, the Lenten retreat at the Vatican. 7 Cf. Einführung in das Christentum, 35-52 on logos and “Die Vernunft des Glaubens,” 103-150. 8 Regensburg Lecture # 25; also James V. Schall, The Regensburg Lecture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2007), 63-68; and Étienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1999), 61-121. 9 Regensburg Lecture # 25; also James V. Schall, The Regensburg Lecture, 63-68; and Étienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, 61-121. 10 Regenburg Lecture ¶ 10. Benedict sees the world of today threatened by those who deny the truth of human nature and reason. Foremost among such denials he singles out, citing Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, are nihilism and fundamentalism that feed upon one another: “Looked at closely, nihilism and the fundamentalism of which we are speaking share an erroneous relationship to truth: the nihilist denies the very existence of truth, while the fundamentalist claims to be able to impose it by force. Despite their different origins and cultural backgrounds, both show a dangerous contempt for human beings and human life, and ultimately for God himself. Indeed, this shared tragic outcome results from a distortion of the full truth about God: nihilism denies God's existence and his provident presence in history, while fanatical fundamentalism disfigures his loving and merciful countenance, replacing him with idols made in its own image. In analyzing the causes of the contemporary phenomenon of terrorism, consideration should be given, not only to its political and social causes, but also to its deeper cultural, religious and ideological motivations.”

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This is the significance of John Paul II’s theology of the body to overcome the depersonalization of love into disordered pornography, trying to wrench eros from its intrinsic orientation to philia and agape. In his encyclical Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI spells out how the infused love of the Triune God, agape or charity, in no way negates or minimizes the human forms of love as eros and philia, married love and the love of friendship. The redemption of creation heals erotic love and friendship from the disorders that sin had introduced. Indeed, agapic love transforms erotic love into the holy mystery of Christ’s love for his church in the sacrament of marriage. The higher does not negate the lower; so also the light of faith in no way “blinds” or negates the light of reason. These principles of the Holy Father’s teachings were learnt well when, as a student and then professor of theology, he studied and appropriated the works of St. Augustine. Augustine profoundly explored the intimate bond between knowing and loving, between reason and will, in his reflections upon the human mind as an immaterial image of God in his On the Trinity. There Augustine spells out how we humans do not love the unknown, rather we love to know the unknown (On the Trinity 10, 1). Love always engenders a desire to understand and know the truth. Love always arises from the “logos” or “verbum” of reason that, in very Trinitarian language, spirates the love (Ibid., 9, 2-12). This distinction, between loving the unknown and loving to know the unknown, is what separates Nietzschean nihilism (loving the unknown as such) and the dark night of Christian mysticism (longing to know the unknown). 12 Cf. the important volume John Paul II and St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2006), especially the essays by Avery Dulles, Michael Sherwin, Reinhard Hütter, Guy Mansini, Thomas Weinandy, and Matthew Levering. 13 Cf. Karol Wojtyáa, The Acting Person trans. Andrzej Potocki (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing, 1997); this translation is very poor and I am drawing upon the better German translation from the Polish by Herbert Springer, Person und Tat (Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany: Verlag Herder, 1982), 33. Joseph Rice has drawn upon the Polish original and emphasizes, as I do, Wojtyáa’s transcendental approach that breaks through the dichotomies between subjectivity and objectivity, see his “Consciousness, Conscience, and Persons: A Reflection on Wojtyáa’s ‘TransPhenomenological’ Approach to Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity,” at the 2012 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Conference. See also Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyáa: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, trans. Paolo Guitti & Francesca Murphy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); as Vincent Potter, S.J., points out, it would be futile to oppose Wojtyáa to Thomas Aquinas, in this regard Potter sees that Bernard Lonergan, S.J., adopts a similar way of seeing a key to human experience in Aquinas, cf. John McDermott, S.J., ed., The Thought of Pope John Paul II (Rome: Gregoriana, 1993), 205ff. 14 Cf. Matthew Lamb & Matthew Levering, eds., Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4-20. 15 Foreign reporters from Western and first world countries from 1962-1965 knew there were two places in the world where their stories would be assured top billing: the war in Vietnam and the council in Rome. So they flooded Rome with little or

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no knowledge of Catholicism. It was then that they came up with the template of the council as a struggle between conservative/reactionary versus liberal/progressive forces. Those periti who bought into this template were quoted often and generously in the mass media. No attention was given to the daily Masses and prayers of the assembled bishops. When the constitutions, decrees, and directives of the Council were published, they were misinterpreted as political documents: whenever traditional Catholic principles were expressed, they were seen as “compromises” to get conservative votes for the “liberal” changes. So the dichotomy developed between the “spirit” of the council and the actual texts. Liberals were winning and the progressive Catholics should move beyond the popes and bishops with this disembodied spirit of liberal accommodations. The realities referenced in the texts were ignored as the texts were set in conceptualist frameworks of ideologies of progress over reactionary forces. 16 George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999), 694. 17 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, # 1; also 24, 46, 55, 61, 76. 18 Ibid., 83, and also 84. 19 ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad. 2. 20 Cf. George Weigel, The End and The Beginning (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 197-98. 21 Apostolic Letter of John Paul II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente ¶ 7. 22 Ibid., ¶ 6: “The purification of memory: To purify our vision for the contemplation of the mystery, this Jubilee Year has been strongly marked by the request for forgiveness. This is true not only for individuals, who have examined their own lives in order to ask for mercy and gain the special gift of the indulgence, but for the entire Church, which has decided to recall the infidelities of so many of her children in the course of history, infidelities which have cast a shadow over her countenance as the Bride of Christ. For a long time we had been preparing ourselves for this examination of conscience, aware that the Church, embracing sinners in her bosom, ‘is at once holy and always in need of being purified’. Study congresses helped us to identify those aspects in which, during the course of the first two millennia, the Gospel spirit did not always shine forth.” 23 Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Ineunte ¶ 27. 24 John Paul II, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of A Millennium (New York: Rizzoli, 2005), 3-4. 25 Ibid., 111-112. Christ as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, unites in Himself His divine nature and human nature. In this chapter Pope John Paul II shows how Gaudium et Spes #22 links human nature and all of human history to the Mystery of Jesus Christ, so that all of human suffering and sin is redeemed by Christ on the Cross. Christ’s resurrection destroys death and his dying—into which we are baptized—redeems the sins that crucified Him. 26 Ibid., 39. 27 Ibid., 39-50. 28 New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. 29 San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2012.

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In this section I draw upon both original sources and the excellent Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, “Augustinum Hipponensem—On the 16th Centenary Anniversary of the Conversion of St. Augustine” 28 August 1886. Most likely the Holy Father discussed this letter with then Cardinal Ratzinger. 31 Irenaeus, Adversus Haerese V, 8, 2. Also Pope John Paul II, “Mary was united to Jesus on the Cross,” General Audience 25 October, 1995, #2. 32 See Matthew Lamb “Eternity Creates and Redeems Time,” in Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought: Essays Presented to the Reverend Dr. Robert D. Crouse, ed. by M. Treschow, W. Otten, and W. Hannam (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 116-140. 33 Cf. Ernest L. Fortin, The Birth of Philosophic Christianity: Studies in Early Christian and Medieval Thought, ed. J. Brian Benestad (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefied, 1996), 10-11, 21-122. 34 Confessions 7.1. 35 Cf. Edgardo de la Peza, El significado de “cor” en San Agustín (Paris: Éditions augustiniennes, 1962). 36 Cf. D. J. Merriell, To The Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development of Aquinas’ Teaching (Toronto: Ponitifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990), 1335, 98-110 on Augustine. See also Rist, o cit., 92-147 on Augustine’s non-Platonic understanding of body, soul, and mind. 37 Confessions 7.17: “hoc ergo quaerens, unde iudicarem, cum ita iudicarem, inueneram inconmutabilem et ueram uertitatis aeternitatem supra mentem meam conmutabilem.” 38 Ibid.: “et peruenit ad id, quod est in ictu trepidantis aspectus. tunc uero inuisibilia tua per ea quae facta sunt intellecta conspexi.” 39 Cf. the end of Confessions 8, where Augustine converts to Christ. That conversion enables him to live morally and intellectually. This is a classic expression of the ascent to truth as God that Augustine shares with his mother, illustrating how the light of faith enables souls to enjoy a contemplation of the divine even if they lack formal intellectual training (Cf. Confessions 9.10). 40 Cf. Karol Wojtyáa, Person und Tat, 120-300, on how human acts manifest both the transcendence of human nature in the self-conscious acts of intelligence and at the same time manifest the integration of this transcendence by properly ordering human somatic appetites and human psychic emotions. Aquinas clearly stated this difference btween intellectual memory (which he identifies with Aristotle's "intellectus possibilis") and sensible memory, ST I, q. 79, a. 6 & a. 7. 41 See St. Bernard’s De Consideratione and his 80th sermon on the Song of Songs. Also John R. Sommerfeldt, Bernard of Clairvaux on the Life of the Mind (New York: Newman Press, 2004). 42 Fides et Ratio, # 43. 43 Ibid. #44. 44 Ibid., #83: “We face a great challenge at the end of this millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality, speculative reflection must penetrate to the spiritual

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substance and the foundation on which it depends. Therefore, a notion of philosophy which denies any room for metaphysics would be radically unsuited to the task of mediation in the understanding of revelation” 45 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, qq. 55-70. Metaphysics is important, not only for serious theology, but as a foundation for the sciences, humanities, and arts, if these are to overcome fragmentation and the isolation that hinders interdisciplinary collaboration. Metaphysical wisdom provides a comprehensive heuristic framework capable of attuning the mind to an intelligibility in the whole of reality—to being as being. Aquinas clearly grasped how wisdom is both a divine gift and a natural aspiration of the human mind that sets the acquisition of speculative and practical wisdom as intellectual excellence or virtues. Divine gifts neither deny nor denigrate human abilities. For these natural capacities are themselves the gifts of God’s creative love. So the theological virtues call forth and encourage the journey of acquiring the human intellectual and moral virtues 46 From Augustine, Aquinas takes the teaching on ratio inferior and ratio superior. Cf. Robert Mulligan, S.J., “Ratio Superior and Ratio Inferior: the Historical Background,” The New Scholasticism Vol. 29, n. 1 (1955), 1-32. 47 Cf. the important book by Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 48 Aquinas In Boethius de Trinitate, 5-6. 49 In Boethius De Trinitate, 6, 2c. 50 On this see Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 1-105. 51 ST I, q. 84, a. 6, ad. 1. This indicates how the experience of human consciousness in act is identical with the highest created experience of being (esse). God is Pure Act and Pure Intelligere et Amare. This indicates how Wojtyáa’s recovery of Aquinas situates personhood with being as esse, and so does not succomb to modern dichotomies between subjectivity and objectivity. This aspect of his recovery of Aquinas would further develop Joseph Rice’s work referenced in footnote 12 above. 52 Cf. The Pope Speaks to the American Church (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 97, 105-108, 144-155, et passim. 53 Cf. Karol Wojtyáa, Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of Vatican II (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 13-60; and Richard A. Spinello, The Encyclicals of John Paul II: An Introduction and Commentary (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 135-153 on faith and reason. 54 On the pervasive influence of Spinoza, cf. Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (New York: Oxford Univesity Press, 2001). 55 Cf. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, ed. Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 97-100. Also, Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 56 Cf. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007, reprint of 1958 edition), 133-140,

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154-160; on Kant and Augustine on infinity, 98-99. Also see Patrick Heelan, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity: A Study of the Physical Philosophy of Werner Heisenberg (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965). See also, correspondence with Heisenberg. 57 John Eccles & Karl Popper, The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (London: Rutledge, 1984). Joseph Ratzinger refers to Eccles in his Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1988), 255256, 264. 58 Paul Forster, Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 59 Cf. J. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963); Karl-Otto Apel, Charles Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism (Humanities Press, 1995). 60 Cf. Vincent Potter, “Objective Chance: Lonergan and Peirce on Scientific Generalization” in his Peirce’s Philosophical Perspectives (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993); also Michael Forest, “Lonergan and the Classical American Tradition,” Method: A Journal of Lonergan Studies Vol. 23, n. 1 (2005), 17-42. 61 Cf. Arthur Kennedy, “A Hope Embodied in Story: Flannery O'Connor's Vision.” in Lonergan Workshop, Vol. IV, 1984; “The Good under Construction': Flannery O'Connor's Gift.” Published in the College of Saint Thomas Magazine (Autumn 1989); “Processions are our Rightful Home,” Commencement address, University of St. Thomas Graduation, December 16, 1994.

THE POLITICAL PRAXIS OF KAROL WOJTYàA AND ST. THOMAS AQUINAS ROCCO BUTTIGLIONE

The Beginning The first philosophical book Wojtyáa studied as a young student was, as far as we know, the handbook of K. Wais, Ontologia czyli Metafysika ogòlna.1 Wais was a rigorous Thomist but was also, in his times, an innovator, along the lines of the school of Louvain. In the Cracow underground seminar, the future John Paul II was compelled to come to grips with the first principles of Thomist metaphysics, in the beginning without great enthusiasm. The book of Wais is written in a rigorous and difficult technical language. It is not a book with which students can easily fall in love. After a couple of weeks of unrelenting efforts at understanding, Wojtyáa was thoroughly fascinated by this book. Whilst at a first glance metaphysics seems to stand afar from immediate live experience, on second thought Wojtyáa realized that metaphysics brings to our attention its essential structures, enlightens them, reconciles their seeming contradictions, allows us to go back to experience and to penetrate its secrets up to an unexpected depth. This first approach to Thomist philosophy was later continued in the Angelicum of Rome, under the direction of great masters like GarrigouLagrange and De Finance.

The Precomprehension Was, then, Wojtyáa a Thomist since the beginning and nothing else? Yes, of course, but…in a rather particular way. The young man who comes to know St. Thomas through the mediation of K. Wais has already gone through two fundamental cultural experiences. He is a passionate reader of the great poets of Polish romanticism: Slowacki, Krasinski, Mickiewicz, and, first of all, Norwid. These great

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poets have all made an attempt to formulate a philosophy of the history of nations, although, of course, not in a technical/philosophical but in a poetical and literary form. Through the mediation of French romanticism, and especially of Ballanche, they have been influenced by Bossuet and Vico. There was, however, already within the tradition of Polish culture an attempt at an interpretation of the history of the nation as the story of a calling of God to the Polish people manifested through the baptism of the nation. More than once in the course of history the Polish people have been unfaithful to this calling, mainly because of the selfish greed of the ruling classes, but they have always gone back to their original vocation through repentance and conversion and through the faith of the humble. It is enough here to quote the name of Piotr Skarga, S.J., and to recall the political significance of the popular devotion to the Black Virgin and Mother of Jasna Góra. In the years of the partition of Poland, this vision of Polish history becomes consolidated in an idea of Odrodzenie (national revival), very akin to that developed in Italy by Rosmini and Gioberti (in the first part of his philosophical career). The nation has been humiliated and divided, has disappeared from the geographical map of Europe. She will be resurrected first of all through a moral and spiritual renewal, a religious conversion. These elements are common stock (more or less) of all great Polish romantic poets. To them, Cyprian K. Norwid (the preferred source of Wojtyáa) imposes a forceful twist. The resurrection of the nation is not something that will take place someday in the future. The resurrection is an event that happens every day in the choice between good and evil, in the lives of individuals and of families. Norwid sees clearly the risk of a reduction of Polish Christian conscience to a kind of national messianism (Towianski) and for just this reason makes a clear cut distinction between political history and the history of salvation. They are of course connected with one another but are also irreducible to one another.2 We find again this idea, after an interval of many years, in the great homily pronounced by John Paul II at Auschwitz during his first pilgrimage as a Pope to his native country.3 Here the Pontiff explains the meaning of Maximilian Kolbe offering his life. He makes a strong distinction between worldly success and spiritual victory. In the moment in which the Polish nation experiences the utmost humiliation and defeat in the realm of military and political power, Father Kolbe wins through the sacrifice of his life to save that of another fellow prisoner, a spiritual victory similar to that of Christ himself.4

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The second experience that shapes the intellectual consciousness of young Wojtyáa is the reading, mediated by the saintly tailor of Cracow, Jan Tyranowski, of the great mystics and especially those in the Carmelite tradition. The main issue is here the presence of God in the soul of man and a vision of conscience as the seat of a dialogue with that presence. Here, St. John of the Cross offers a decisive clarification: this presence is at the same time an absence.5 The presence of an absence is a sign.6 The presence of the image of God in the heart of man sets man in motion to search for the original of that image. This search becomes the hermeneutic criterion that helps us to read and understand the history of each individual human person. In Christ, who is God, who moves towards the searching man because he wants to be found, this history becomes the history of salvation.7 It is now apparent that when the young Wojtyáa reads St. Thomas, he carries in his heart a certain precomprehension, and, in the text of Aquinas, he looks for answers to the questions he carries in his heart. The original source of these questions can be sought after on a level that runs even deeper than the readings we have mentioned. They were likely born out of the precocious experience of grief over the death of the mother and also out of sorrow for the destiny of the nation in the years of the dark night of Nazi occupation in which millions of Polish people were brutally slaughtered. Later, National Socialism was defeated but, instead of liberty, another totalitarian dictatorship arrived, that of Communism. This seems to be the state of mind of young Wojtyáa in the moment in which he approaches the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.

At the Angelicum with Garrigou-Lagrange There is only one truth but many are the paths leading to this truth. In his search for truth, young Wojtyáa moves from his existential and historical condition that is closely intertwined with that of his generation and of his Polish nation. The study of Thomist metaphysics is encountered along the path of a spiritual pilgrimage that has as its starting point man in his existential/historical as well as in his social and historical perspective. The study of metaphysics (as well as that of mathematics) wants us, in the beginning, to bracket all existential and historical dimensions and this is the reason why it may seem to be rather dry and uninteresting. This first impression is turned upside down when we realize that what is put within brackets is not annulled. Metaphysics allows us to have a comprehension of essential relations through an initial act of abstraction. We can then go

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back to the contents that have been put within brackets in the beginning and acquire a much more lively insight in their true dynamism and in their authentic meaning. In 1946, young Wojtyáa goes to Rome to study theology in the temple of Thomistic studies, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas where he will earn a doctorate in theology two years later.8 What kind of Thomism was taught at the Angelicum in those years? The undisputed master of Thomistic studies was then Father Garrigou-Lagrange,9 who was convinced of the necessity to defend objective truth against modern subjectivism10 and against the “nouvelle theologie.”11 The Roman theological environment was not, however, wholly homogeneous.12 J. De Finance shows already, in the title of his book Étre et Agir dans la Philosophie de St. Thomas,13 his attention for the issue of action and tries not to oppose being to action, objectivity to subjectivity, but rather to put them in relation to one another. In the debate on modernism, a distinction has to be drawn between two different stances. The first one wants to participate in the research of modern man, to accept its existential starting point and also the philosophical categories in which this existential starting point has been formulated. If we go along this path up to its very end, then the truth of the faith has to be reduced within the precomprehension of the modern man. This is the way of modernism, condemned by Pius X. There is however the possibility of a different path that accepts the existential starting point of modern man but does not consider it as a point of arrival that cannot be transcended but rather as a problem and a question whose adequate answer is only the encounter with Christian faith. In this sense, modernity must not be considered as a horizon that cannot be transcended but rather as an open question. The existential experience of modern man must not be accepted at face value in the categories in which it formulates itself but must be rather critically reformulated. We can do that because we are modern men too. The intent is to build an inroad starting from modernity and leading to Christian faith. In this perspective, the faith is considered as a force capable of transcending the limit the usual interpretation of modernity sets to itself. The act of trespassing the transcendental limit of modernity towards Christian faith is intertwined with an analogous trespassing of the same limit in the direction of philosophical truth that allows us to formulate a better theoretical understanding both of truth in itself and of the true existential situation of the man of our time. This second stance implies a critical sympathy towards modernity. Christianity does not reconcile itself with the dominating self-comprehension

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of modernity but rather helps modernity to reach beyond itself or, rather, beyond its self imposed limit towards its true and better self. This stance is clearly differentiated from that of the modernists but cannot be identified with a reactionary stand preoccupied only with the repetition of a system of eternal truths. Just because of its eternity, truth enlightens a plurality of contingent situations and the truth conquered anew in the critical confrontation and dialogue with modernity will be the same as before and yet different, enriched through this confrontation and dialogue.14

St. Thomas as a Compass and a Landmark For Wojtyáa, it is only natural to adopt this vision that can be seen as an opposition to but also as a continuation of the position of GarrigouLagrange. What will be then the quality of his Thomism? St. Thomas cannot be just a starting point. He is rather a point of arrival but at the same time a compass. It is difficult to reach this point of arrival if it is not present somehow since the beginning. We are reminded here of the profound meaning of the title “doctor communis” with which St. Thomas is designated. This title really characterizes the role of St. Thomas in the history of Christian theology and philosophy. The “doctor communis” is not opposed to the peculiarities or particular chords pertaining to any philosophical or theological school. He is rather a landmark that averts the absolutization of any particular perspective and prevents its circling back on itself and its becoming isolated from other expressions of the same truth. G.K. Chesterton, who has written a biography of St. Thomas15 that received the unqualified approval of E. Gilson,16 says that the error is a truth become insane, that opposes itself to other truths instead of looking patiently for its proper place in the organism of complete truth. In this sense, Thomism is not just a philosophical/theological school among others but a common compass forbidding the self-absolutization of partial perspectives. It guarantees the orthodoxy (the correct doctrine) and the catholicity (the openness to the totality of truth and to dialogue with other perspectives). The vision we have been developing emphasizes both philosophy and theology as doctrine and philosophy and theology intended as activity. Truth exists in itself but exists also as form of human experience that this experience must assume as its own through an educational process. This process, in its turn, is of course existential and historical, goes from the contingent to the eternal realm.

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Young Wojtyáa, when he encounters St. Thomas, is charged with the demands and the expectations of his generation to which he intensely participates. These demands have to be put for a while within brackets in order to learn the method of metaphysics. They will forcefully reemerge later and will more easily find an answer just because in the beginning they have been put within brackets in order to bring to evidence the fundamental structures of being.

The study of Philosophy at the Jagellonian University The study of theology at the Angelicum will be followed by the study of philosophy at the Jagellonian University of Cracow. The philosophical environment of Cracow was then impregnated with the realistic phenomenology of R. Ingarden.17 Ingarden had been one of the first followers of E. Husserl, but had refused the transcendental turn of his master and had further developed his thought towards realism, along a path similar to that of E. Stein. The doctoral thesis of Wojtyáa in philosophy was dedicated to the problem of the possibility of constructing Christian Ethics on the basis of the phenomenology of Max Scheler.18 If we consider only the title, we might expect one of the usual confutations of the errors of modern subjectivism from an objectivistic standpoint. As a matter of fact, it is a deconstruction and reconstruction of Schelerian phenomenological philosophy. This deconstruction and reconstruction of Schelerian phenomenological philosophy reforms it not only from the point of view of its possible utilization for the formulation of Christian Ethics but also from the point of view of its capacity to adequately explain the things in themselves, that is, from the point of view of its intrinsic truth.

The World is made of Objects...and of Subjects The final point of the formative years of our author can be found in the book Love and Responsibility19 that, not by chance, attracted the attention of the founding father of the Nouvelle Theologie, H. De Lubac, who wrote an introduction to its french translation.20 In the first page of this book, Wojtyáa makes it clear that the world is made of objects. Through this preliminary observation, our author defines his working method against the risk of remaining involved in a subjectivist bias. Immediately after

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these opening remarks, Wojtyáa continues explaining that a different starting point was possible. It was possible to begin saying that the world is made of subjects. This sentence is equally true as that saying that the world is made of objects and, moreover, subjects are certainly more interesting than objects. If we begin with the objects and not with the subjects, the reason is that subjects are also objects; they have an objective substance. The human subject, for instance, is something objective, really existing and endowed with properties that are there in a way that is absolutely independent from its will. I am what I am and not what I imagine that I am or I pretend to be or I would like to be. My essential characteristics are not the result of a process of self-constitution but rather of an original gift of being that I receive from another subject (my parents but, in the last instance, God himself). Of course, I am also the result of a kind of second creation whose author is myself. Through my efforts, I may become a weight lifter or rather a dancer but this effort at self-creation is only possible on the basis of the fact that God has created me making of me a man. Only men can become either weight lifters or dancers. After this fundamental methodological clarification, Wojtyáa goes on considering the human subject. His issue is human subjectivity. If modernity is the thought of the subject and the discovery of human subjectivity, then the approach of Wojtyáa is surely modern. Wojtyáa puts at the beginning of his argumentation the subject, but this subject is not the abstract subject of the cogito of Descartes. The subject of Wojtyáa is a concrete subject, who, to begin with, has a body (and this body is a sexuated body: male or female), is situated in time and space, has a father and a mother, etc. To Garrigou-Lagrange and first of all to St. Thomas Aquinas, “ens est illud quod primo cadit in cognitione humana.”21 To Wojtyáa, in a certain sense, “primo quod cadit in intentione est homo.” Man is however a subject who is at the same time an object, an ens. It is as if Wojtyáa begins with the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae, and with the treatise De Homine. The whole ontological wealth of the Prima Pars is progressively recovered in the progress of the argument and this can be easily done because (as in the De Homine) the man who stands in the beginning is a really existing man, a being. Phenomenology helps to disentangle the intricacies of human experience and leads us up to the fundamental questions which properly belong to the realm of metaphysics. Metaphysics, for its part, helps phenomenology not to get lost in the mazes of its interpretations. Metaphysics allows us to see, in a certain sense, the fundamental frame and the skeleton of experience while phenomenology

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shows us the tendons and muscles supported by this skeleton. Together they constitute the living body of philosophical experience.

The “Political Praxis” of K. Wojtyáa We have dealt with the philosophical upbringing of Wojtyáa in an attempt to understand the specific traits of his Thomism, encountered along the path of a research that begins with the experience of modernity but transcends it. We will now make an effort to find the tracks of this philosophical formation in the teaching and in the action of John Paul II and in his “political praxis.” It is a matter of course that John Paul II did not mean ‘politics’ in the common sense of this word, if by the word politics you understand a struggle to conquer and defend power. The man who tells the truth does not enter into the political game. The witness given to truth produces, however, political effects, which can sometimes be even revolutionary.

The Wager on Human Conscience In his message on occasion of the XIII World Peace Day, John Paul II explains that man is an essentially moral being. In the footsteps of St. Thomas, he says that when man performs an evil act he does it (and needs to justify it in front of his own conscience) with the intention of a certain good. So the use of violence is disguised with the pretext of a reaction or a defense against the violence of the opponent. A witness given to truth without violence, respecting under all circumstances the human dignity of the opponent (who is never an enemy), if need be up to martyrdom, disarms violence. The respect for human dignity goes hand in hand with an appeal to the conscience of the opponent whose dignity as a moral subject is affirmed. With this power,22 the communitarian witness of the people of God under the spiritual leadership of John Paul II animated the resistance to violence of whole nations against the totalitarian rule of communism but also against the national security dictatorships in Latin America and other forms of political oppression and violation of human rights in different parts of Asia and Africa. The core of the broad popular movements for human rights in which, in those years, millions and millions of non-Christians also participated, was the conviction of the inviolable dignity of each individual human person. On this decisive issue, St. Thomas contradicts his master Aristotle

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and teaches that “homo non ordinatur ad communitatem politicam secundum se totum.”23 The Catechism of the Catholic Church has reformulated the same concept and said that the human person transcends the political community and constitutes therefore the end to which all political action should be oriented.24 From his phenomenological training John Paul II derives his capacity of beginning with the hic et nunc (here and now) of history, with the events that agitate the surface of human history leading step by step the attention of the listener towards the fundamental structures that enliven this history and towards the Son of God who stands in the centre of the cosmos and, through his incarnation, also of history.25 Along this route the phenomenological analysis is organically linked first to the metaphysical and then also to the theological reflection. The historical event does not lose at all its contingency and historicity but is at the same time read and understood in the light of the history of salvation.

The Role of Culture and the Theology of Nations Central to this method of reading history is the comprehension of man as a cultural being and the theology of nations. In his speech, delivered at UNESCO Headquarters (June 2 1980), John Paul II quotes St. Thomas: “genus humanum arte et ratione vivit.”26 A free translation could be: “man is a fundamentally cultural being.” Against communist (and also western) materialism John Paul II says that we really touch and understand man in the realm of culture. Man not only is but needs to exist in the peculiar space of his own conscience.27 He stands in need of objectifying what he is in front of himself. Hence the question: “Man, what do you say about yourself?” The space of conscience is not only individual. Man utters his word on himself through action. Many (if not all) of the most significant human actions involve other men. More generally, we could say that man understands himself in the relation to the other man and through the construction of a community with other men. Two human communities are particularly important (in the natural order): the first is the family and the second is the nation. Historical materialism and western economicism had considered the idea of nation as superated and as a relic of the past. On the contrary, John Paul II not only has spoken about the nation but has spoken to the soul of nations and contributed like nobody else to the national awakenings of the last part of the 20th century.28

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Within the family and within the nation, culture becomes an active force. Culture gives value and meaning to these communities and, at the same time, draws energy from them because both family and nation are cultural communities. This is the reason why, in the teaching of John Paul II, the issue of the rights of nations accompanies that of the rights of the person and makes it more concrete because man is a cultural being and because man is both an individual and a (member of) a community.29

On Liberation Theology We must see also the issue of Liberation Theology in connection with the philosophy and theology of nations. The first pilgrimage of John Paul II after his elections was to Latin America.30 Here the first confrontation and dialogue of John Paul II with Liberation Theology takes place. Liberation Theology has two sides. On the one hand, Liberation Theology is a great attempt at the enculturation of the faith in the culture of the Latin-American people. This is the great message of Puebla. LatinAmerican theologians want to speak to the Latin-American man and especially to the Latin-American poor, taking him where he really is, that is, within his historically developed culture. This approach appeals very much to the sensibility of John Paul II. It comes very close to his own theology of nations and to his way of speaking to the Polish people from within their history and tradition. He is therefore sympathetic to the demand for a Latin-American theology. The other side of Liberation Theology is the use of Marxist analysis in order to explore the path of liberation. Some liberation theologians go even further and make use of Marxist analysis as an instrument to better understand the Latin-American poor. John Paul II had already seen the failure of Marxism in his native Poland and could not have any illusions on the power of Marxism to liberate. As a consequence the judgment on liberation theology had to be differentiated. The theology of the Latin-American people had to be approved.31 The existential situation of the Latin American poor must not however be understood on the basis of Marxist analysis.32 It must be interpreted on the basis of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is present in the culture of the Latin American poor since the first evangelization of Latin America, since the preaching of Bartolomé de Las Vasas, of Motolina, of St. Toribio de Mongrovejo and since the event of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Here is also the justification and the basis of a struggle for the liberation of the Latin-American poor. It is perhaps worth while to mention here that those who evangelized Latin America and defended the rights of the

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Indios were all disciples of St. Thomas mainly through the mediation of Francisco de Vitoria.33 On this issue, the path of John Paul II crosses that of Pope Francis. A group of theologians and philosophers and sociologists had begun to develop a kind of liberation theology (it could perhaps be called better theology of the people) in the sense desired by John Paul II already before Puebla. They came mainly from the cono sur (the southern cone, that is Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) of Latin America. I recall here the names of Jorge Maria Bergoglio, Lucio Gera, Juan Carlos Scannone, Guzman Carriquiry, Alberto Methol, Joaquin Allende, Hernan Alessandri, Pedro Morandé. They participated in the preparation of Puebla and in the following struggles for a reorientation of liberation theology.34 It is not difficult to develop the issue of the rights of nations and, first of all, of the rights of the poor on the basis of the thought of St. Thomas. We must, however, recognize the fact that seldom or never had it been brought to the fore so forcefully as in the teaching of John Paul II. It is a classical example of a creative development on the basis of tradition.

The Church and Democracy Something similar takes place regarding democracy. The Church has mistrusted democracy for a long while, and not without good reasons. The political trends called democracy in the 19th century that were condemned by Gregory XVI35 and Pius IX36 were a good deal different from what we call democracy today. Jacobin democracy37 is a direct democracy and a good specimen of this kind of democracy is displayed in the "September Massacres" of the French Revolution: the people (some might say the mob) took to the streets and they were, all together, legislators, judges and executioners.38 The constitutional evolution of democratic regimes has been led, throughout the 19th century, by the preoccupation to avoid any possible repetition of the September Massacres.39 It was a posthumous revenge of the Girondins on the Jacobins. The democracy (or, rather, liberal democracy) of our times is a representative democracy. The people choose representatives who make decisions after an adequate analysis of the problems and a careful consideration of the possible alternatives. On the basis of the democratic legitimation a principle of authority is reinstated. The elected representatives are endowed with the prestige and authority needed to resist disordered popular passions. There is a clear distinction of the executive from the legislative and the judicial power. The traditional criticism of democracy, since Plato,40 is founded upon the fact that, in democratic regimes, the passions of the day prevail over

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reflection and reason. Representative democracy tries to build up the space of reflection between the momentary passions and the time of decision in order to help reason to prevail. Jacobin (and Rousseauian) democracy, moreover, identify the will of the people with absolute truth. Liberal democracies know that the people can be wrong and defend against majorities, protecting fundamental human rights and minority rights. Dissent against the majority opinion is not sufficient cause to be labeled as an enemy of the people. Anglo-Saxon countries have had a different constitutional development. They have been dependent on the tradition of Locke and Burke, rather than on that of Rousseau.41 The model of the founding fathers of the American revolution has been the mixed government of Polybius rather than the continental idea of democracy; A. Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers, has anticipated all the ideas that have led the development of representative democracy.42 The growth of Liberal democracies has reduced, little by little, the distrust of the Church towards democracy. In any case, the Church maintains that all forms of government are equally legitimate provided that they achieve the common good. The Church holds on firmly to the notion of common good but this did not seem to imply a principled choice for democracy. The last chapter of The Acting Person43 emphasizes the human right to participate in the decision of the community to which he belongs. This right to participation has an effect on the notion of common good. It is not enough that the political decision brings about what is objectively good for the community, what we may call the “objective” common good. The decision must be taken with the participation of all members of the community. Man carries the moral responsibility of the action he performs together with others (and this is, in a broad sense of the word, the political action). He has then the duty (and therefore also the right) to participate in the political decisions that concern him and engage his moral responsibility. His moral dignity demands that he be the subject and not just the object of the action. The “objective” common good must be integrated with the “subjective” common good. The materially right decision, which produces, for example, a growth in the material wealth of the community, must be taken in the formally correct way, that is, as involving the responsible participation of the members of the community. The “objective” common good is not objective enough because it does not integrate that objective reality that is the human subject. We must enlarge the concept of common good and the right to participation must be included as its integral part. Here we have a legitimation in principle of (liberal) democracy as a concretization of the principle of participation.

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Limits and Dangers of Western Democracy Having worked together to defeat communist totalitarianism, are the church and western democracies now reconciled? Not quite. In his evaluation of democracy, John Paul II does justice to the value of modernity and to its discovery of human subjectivity. At the beginning of modern consideration on man stands the cogito of Descartes: “I think and therefore I am.” There are, however, many ways of reading the cogito and the more commonly accepted sees in the cogito the discovery of a mere abstract subjectivity. The subject who is discovered is an abstract subject who has no father and no mother, no brothers or sisters or offspring and is uprooted from the context of universal human solidarity and brotherhood. The society of the abstract subjects resembles the liquid society described by Z. Bauman.44 Everybody lives for himself and all human relations are contingent and not necessary. The social acceptance of abortion is an apparent manifestation of this state of affairs. The very relation of the mother to the unborn child in her womb is not necessary and can be broken. Also the relation of man to himself and to his body may be interrupted, in part (I choose for myself a gender different from the sex nature has given me) or completely (euthanasia or suicide as expression of absolute freedom). In the same way, and even more strongly, can be interrupted the relation of brotherhood to other men, from the spouse and children up to the people starving in far off countries. In this situation, the great ideals of the French Revolution (liberty, equality, fraternity) run the risk of being turned upside down when they are deracinated from the body of truth on being, on man, and on God.45 The idea of fraternity withers out first. In the place of a society animated by solidarity, we build up systems of social security that are too cold to warm up the souls and too costly to be financed in the long run. The globalization of techniques and economy is not balanced by a globalization of solidarity and politics and produces new injustices and miseries in which the progress of some is paid for through the impoverishment of others. Man in the end is dissolved, becomes liquid and is flushed away. We live in the historical time in which man might disappear. The abstract subject is not the human being. The human being has a body; he is his body. He lives out of the organic interchange between his body and the environment around him. If this environment is destroyed, the human being dies. The body needs nourishment and shelter. If the abstract equality of the subjects who exchange goods and services on the market is not accompanied by the care that nobody remain deprived of the

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possibility of being fed, of having a shelter, of working and building up a family, the human community is likely to be dissolved in the struggle of everybody against everybody else and especially of the haves against the have nots.46 The abstract subject has no sex (at most he may give to himself a gender) and has no natural inclination to fall in love, to build a common life with a person of the opposite sex, to engender and educate children, etc. If, however, no families are created and no children are born and nourished and educated the human kind will disappear. Human kind runs the danger of extinction also in another sense. Man, as an intelligent and free subject, is constituted through an intricate network of interactions involving a man, a woman, and a child. Father and Mother introduce us into reality, help us to control our passions and to unify them in a coherent personality led by reason. When this educational process is not brought to an adequate completion this results in damaged personalities, enslaved by momentary whims and passions, unable to build up communities and easy to be instrumentalized by social power agencies. The maturity of the child is the consequence of the covenant the parents freely entered into in order to create that space of the soul that is called family in which the child can discover his freedom and at the same time his responsibility towards others. There is a natural but also a moral and spiritual human ecology and the spiritual environment of man is the family, the nation and the whole sphere of culture. When this environment is degraded then man himself is degraded.47

In the End In tackling all these issues, the creative link to the thought of St. Thomas emerges now and again. The starting point is always, for Wojtyáa, the existential and historical situation of the man of our time. Man is indeed the way of the Church. This historical and existential situation contains many values that must be considered with sympathy and receive an unqualified approval. The Christian is, of course, a man of his time.48 The Christian, however, is not only a man of his time. His faith transcends time and judges it. Time is the unavoidable condition for the incarnation of truth but it may become a prison, which restricts and even mutilates the affirmation of truth. The Christian proclamation blows up the chains of the self-comprehension of any given time. In doing this, the Christian faith paves the way for a different self comprehension of the time. This demands also a deeper philosophical self-consciousness of any given

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historical epoch, a kind of deconstruction and reconstruction of its selfinterpretation. A tension towards liberation and a demand for truth is present in all cultures. Times, civilizations, and cultures are never monolithic but are always crossed and variegated by internal tensions. There are dominating trends that under circumstances may be hostile to truth but there are always also other minority self-interpretations in which a different self-consciousness may be formulated. This is true, of course, also for modernity. Karol Wojtyáa rereads the modern discovery of subjectivity on the basis of the metaphysics of being in order to arrive at the concrete human being who is “the way of the Church.”49 Along this route the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas offer to John Paul II a compass and a landmark that smooth the path and make fruitful the dialogue with time.

Notes 1

Translated as: “Ontology, that is general Metaphysics.” Kazimierz Wais, Ontologia czyli Metafysika ogòlna (Lwów: Towarzystwo "Bibljoteka Religijna,” 1926). 2 See R. Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyáa: The Thought of the Man who Became John Paul II (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 18 and ff. 3 Ibid., 1 and ff. 4 John Paul II, “Holy Mass at the Brzezinka Concentration Camp,” Vatican Website, June 7, 1979, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jpii_hom_19790607_polonia-brzezinka_en.html. 5 Not by chance Wojtyáa wrote on St. John of the Cross his doctoral thesis Doctrina de Fide apud S. Johannem de Sancta Cruce, presented at the Angelicum in 1948 and published in an Italian translation by Angelicum/Herder in 1979 with the title “La Dottrina Della Fede in S. Giovanni della Croce.” 6 A footprint: the man is not here but he must be somewhere. 7 John Paul II, Homily at the Mass in Victory Square (Warsaw: June 2, 1979). http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jpii_hom_19790602_polonia-varsavia_en.html 8 Ibid., p.44 and ff. 9 See A. Nichols, Reason with Piety. Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought (Naples FL, Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2008). 10 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Le Sens commun, la Philosophie de l'étre et les formulas dogmatiques (Paris: Beauchesne, 1909). 11 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie òu vat' elle?” Angelicum 23 (1946): 126-145.

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And the thought of Garrigou-Lagrange was more complex and multifaceted than what might seem on the basis of a too easy characterization of him as a kind of watchdog of Roman theology. 13 J. De Finance, Étre et Agir dans la Philosophie de St. Thomas (Paris: Beauchesne, 1945). 14 See F. Bertoldi, “Il Dibattito Sulla Verità fra Blondel e Garrigou-Lagrange,” Sapienza 43.3 (1990), 1. 15 G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (1933) now in G. K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Volume 2: The Everlasting Man, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987). 16 See Maisie Ward, G.K. Chesterton (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943). 17 See Roman Witold Ingarden, Man and Value (Muenchen: Philosophia Verlag, 1983). 18 K. Wojtyáa, Ocena moĪliwósci oparcia Etyki chrzeĞcijaĔskiej na zaáozeniach system Maksa Schelera (Lublin: KUL, 1959). 19 John Paul II, Love and Responsibility (London: William Collins Sons & Co, 1981). The first Polish edition was published in 1960. 20 Henri de Lubac, introduction to Amour et Responsabilité: Étude de Morale Sexuelle (Paris: Société d'Éditions Internationales, 1965). 21 St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii de Trinitate q. I a. 3, ad. 3. 22 “The power of the powerless” in the impressive words of V. Havel. See V. Havel, The Power of the Powerless (New York: Routledge, 2009), 1. 23 “Man does not belong to the political community with the totality of his being.” ST I-II, q. 21, a. 4, ad. 3. 24 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1929. 25 Redemptor Hominis, # 1. 26 Literally: human kind lives through reason and art. Commentary on Posterior Analytics, n.1. 27 See K. Wojtyáa, “Thought-Strange Space” in Collected Poems (London: Hutchinson, 1982). 28 See R. Buttiglione SuwerennoĞü Narodu przez Kulture in R. Buttiglione and Merecki, Europa jako Pojencie filozoficzne (Lublin: RW KUL, 1996). 29 K. Wojtyáa, “The Person: Subject and Community,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). 30 See John Paul II, “Homily of the Mass in the Basilica of Guadalupe,” January 27, 1979. 31 Sacred Congretation for the Doctrine of Faith, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, 1986. 32 Sacred Congretation for the Doctrine of Faith, Instruction on certain aspects of "Liberation Theology," 1984. 33 See Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 34 See Javier Restán Martínez, Alberto Methol Ferre y su Pensamiento en Nexo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2010). 35 Mirari Vos 1832.

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Quanta Cura (1864). See J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1960). 38 Carron, Les Massacres de Septembre (Paris: La maison du livre français, 1935). 39 See J. Godechot, ed., Les Constitutions de la France depuis 1789 (Paris: GFFlammarion, 1979). 40 See Rebublic VIII. 41 See R. Kirk, The Roots of American Order (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2004). 42 A. Hamilton, J. Jay, and J. Madison, The Federalist Papers (Toronto: Bantam Classics, 1982). 43 K. Wojtyáa, The Acting Person (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979). 44 Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, (Cambridge: Polity, 2000). 45 See Veritatis Splendor, 1993. 46 See John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 1991. 47 See John Paul II, Familiarus Consortio, 1981. 48 We might stretch to the presence of Christians in time what Diognetus says on the presence of Christians in space and among nations. 49 Redemptor Hominis, 1979. 37

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “INCOMMUNICABLE” AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? PAUL KUCHARSKI

Introduction Jacques Maritain once suggested that “nothing can be more remote from the facts than the belief that ‘personalism’ is one school or doctrine.”1 I do not disagree, but I do think that one can find common beliefs that loosely unify different species of personalism, like the belief in the inalienable dignity of persons, the rejection of any political theory that unduly subordinates persons to the social whole or, conversely, that unduly emphasizes the desires of individual persons over the needs of the common good, and a belief in the importance of emphasizing the incommunicability or uniqueness of each person.2 It is the emphasis on personal incommunicability that I want to focus upon in this essay, for this seems to be one of the distinguishing features (if not the distinguishing feature) of any personalist philosophy. John Crosby, in fact, goes so far as to define ethical personalism as an ethics that is informed by a deep understanding of personal individuality and that is centrally concerned with showing persons the respect that is due to them, that is due to each as being this person.3

In what follows, I want to address the claim made by certain personalist thinkers that we must take incommunicability to be a distinct source of human dignity in order to safeguard the irreplaceability of human beings as persons; or, to express this as a negation, we ought not to ground human dignity solely in our shared rational nature, because to do so risks making human beings replaceable by one another. I will argue that this position should be rejected because it does a kind of metaphysical violence to the human being and, ironically, leads to the very moral conclusion that the proponents of this position wish to reject, namely, that (at least some)

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human beings are replaceable. Despite these reservations, however, I will suggest that there are still compelling reasons for incorporating reflections on personal incommunicability within our moral reasoning.

What does it mean to be incommunicable? Let us begin by considering what it means to say that persons are incommunicable. Obviously this does not mean that persons are unable to communicate with one another in the sense of sharing what they are thinking about or alerting one another to their intentions and expectations. Rather, to say that persons are incommunicable is to suggest that each exists in a way unique to him or to her, that there is an aspect of his or her own being that cannot be shared with others. Granted, persons are communicable in any number of ways. Socrates is human, but so am I. Neither Socrates nor I exhaust “being human,” as human nature is in a very real way shared in common by all human beings. We might also say that Socrates is wise, but so is Solomon. Such examples show, I think, that persons are communicable in the sense that what is true of one person is repeatable, that is, able to be found again and again in others of the same type. However, personalists believe that not all that we are is repeatable, as John Crosby illustrates in reference to Socrates: [Socrates] has something that exists only in him and not in any other. His being Socrates is radically his own, it is monopolized by him; Socrates has it in such a way as to exclude the possibility of another Socrates.4

If persons really are unique and unrepeatable, this also means that they are irreplaceable. As a person, I am more than just an individual who can be replaced by another individual of the same species, even one with similar or virtually identical qualities. I am in principle beyond replacing —once I am lost, I am lost forever. As Maritain puts it, “the person as such is a whole,” and “with respect to the eternal destiny of the soul, society exists for each person and is subordinated to it.”5 Crosby, echoing Maritain, states that “each person exists as if he were the only one.”6 The notion that there is something incommunicable about persons perhaps strikes us as intuitively correct. When asked why I love my mother, I certainly point to her excellent qualities, but I do not think of her simply as an instantiation or collection of various qualities. Rather, I take there to be something ineffable underlying these qualities, something that escapes precise conceptualization. Though I can say of others that they are selfless and kind, as I do say of my mother, I take there to be something

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irreducibly unique about her, and I would be perturbed were she replaced with someone of similar temperament and virtue. Admittedly one might argue that I say such things because of the unique historical relationship that I have with my mother, and that to describe people as incommunicable is really just to speak in a metaphorical and philosophically imprecise way. But, as Linda Zagzebski observes, perhaps we really do see something—in a person's face, voice, manner— that is inexpressible but that leads us to think that nobody else is, or even could be, like that person.7

Personalists are aware that in a sense all substances are incommunicable (nothing can be the chair I’m sitting on but this chair), but they maintain that persons are uniquely unique, or radically singular. I turn, once again, to John Crosby, who offers a helpful reflection on the manner in which incommunicability can involve important differences in degree.8 At one end of the spectrum, Crosby says, we find beings that are incommunicable only to the minimal degree required to exist as a single, determinate being. He asks us to consider a copy of today’s edition of The New York Times. Though the copy I purchased this morning is certainly incommunicable in the sense of being this particular copy and not any other copy, what interests me in this copy is exactly that which interests me in any other copy: the content common to them all. By way of contrast, something would be supremely incommunicable if the entirety of its being were incommunicable. And this, in fact, is exactly how Thomas Aquinas describes God: God’s essence is existence itself, and in principle there can only be one being that is subsisting esse.9 We find the human person between these two extremes of incommunicability. Unlike God, a person has aspects of his or her being that are communicable or shareable with others; unlike the newspaper, that which is incommunicable in a person is not merely in the service of that which is common with or shared by others. Persons are created for their own sakes, as Aquinas notes in the third book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, and, therefore, as persons human beings are more than just instances of their species or parts within a social whole.10 Moreover, each person has an innate ability, however latent or incapacitated, to make rational and free choices, and therefore he or she is responsible for the individual that he or she becomes; in other words, his or her uniqueness is not imposed from without, but flows from within. This is why Aquinas says the following:

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In a more special and perfect way, the particular and the individual are found in rational substances, which have dominion over their own actions, and which are not only made to act, as are others, but act of themselves. Therefore, individuals of a rational nature even have a special name among other substances; and this name is person.11

It might seem odd, at first glance, to suggest that x can be more of an individual than y; as is clear from above, however, such claims refer to the manner in which a thing is an individual, and do not at all suggest that there is some middle state between what is particular and what is universal.

Is incommunicability a distinct source of human dignity? Let’s now consider the relationship between personal incommunicability and human dignity. Several personalist thinkers hold that unless we recognize incommunicability as a distinct source of human dignity, one that can be distinguished from our shared rational nature (which also grants us dignity), we cannot defend the claim that human beings are irreplaceable. Linda Zagzebski defends this position in her article, “The Uniqueness of Persons.” Zagzebski suggests that when we speak of human dignity, we are really saying that human beings have two different kinds of values, “infinite value” and “irreplaceable value.” That which has infinite value is “raised above all price” or, perhaps we might say, is intrinsically valuable, and that which has irreplaceable value “admits of no equivalent.”12 On her account, these two values are not inextricably linked, for we can think of something that is irreplaceable but lacking in value, like a uniquely ugly spider, and we can think of something with infinite value that is replaceable, like biological life.13 Zagzebski argues that if a person lacks some property that is unique to him or to her, that is, if a person only has qualities like rationality, self-consciousness, and the capacity to value others, all of which can be shared in common, then he or she is infinitely valuable, but not irreplaceably valuable. For “if someone is irreplaceable in value,” this means that “if we lose her, no one else, not matter how similar to her, can replace her,” but “how can any shareable property make each individual that has that property irreplaceable in value?”14 What, then, according to Zagzebski grounds our irreplaceable value? What makes us more than a mere instance of an infinitely valuable nature? What makes us incommunicable? Based on her reading of Karol Wojtyáa’s seminal article, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,”

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Zagzebski suggests that what makes a person irreplaceably valuable is his or her subjectivity, that is, his or her irreducibly first-personal lived experience.15 This aspect of one’s being, she argues, is a non-qualitative property that in principle cannot be shared—though I can to some degree communicate to you the content of my mental states, my experiences remain inextricably linked with “my state of conscious awareness.”16 In sum, persons find the dual aspects of their dignity in distinct sources: their infinite value is grounded in the communicable properties that they have by instantiating the nature that they do, and their irreplaceable value is grounded in the irreducibly unique subjective lived experience that each person has qua person. In his article, “A Neglected Source of Human Dignity,” John Crosby defends a similar thesis while addressing Peter Singer’s arguments for the moral permissibility of infanticide. Singer, as is well known, thinks that we can justify killing a “defective” infant, like a hemophiliac child, in order to make room for a healthy infant.17 Crosby argues that one who grounds human dignity solely in our shared rational capacities and not in our incommunicable personhood cannot adequately respond to Singer’s argument, because [Singer] has only to exploit the fact that the dignity of persons depends on their common human nature, saying that all that is lost when the hemophiliac infant is killed, exists again in the healthier infant that he wants to make room for…One instance of rational nature succeeds the other; the first is replaced by the second.18

Crosby, like Zagzebski, supposes that human beings become replaceable when we fail to acknowledge incommunicability as a distinct source of their dignity. Are they right to think so?

Concerns about describing incommunicability as a distinct source of human dignity I worry that to speak of two distinct sources of dignity creates too strong a division between human persons and their nature. This is most clearly evident, I think, in Zagzebski’s article. Consider, once again, her suggestion that shared qualities cannot ground our irreplaceable value. The claim here is that being an instance of rational nature is not enough to be irreplaceably valuable: one must be an instance of rational nature and, in addition, possess the all-important, non-qualitative property of subjectivity. This view, it seems to me, gives the impression that a person

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is a collection of properties, that a concrete human being is one part human nature and one part subjective lived experience. On this account, one’s incommunicability presents itself as a single, exclusively held property that is added to the mix of properties that are held in common with other persons (like rationality, self-consciousness, and moral awareness). The irony here, I think, is that Zagzebski’s position opens the door to a possibility that she wishes to reject, namely, the possibility that there are non-personal (and thus replaceable) human beings. Infants, for example, do not manifest the kind of subjectivity or meaningful first-person experience that Zagzebski takes to ground one’s irreplaceable value. Nor do the severely brain-damaged. And so despite her insistence that “we cannot rule out the very young and the brain damaged from the class of persons,” I fear that Zagzebski’s position entails just such an exclusion.19 I want to argue, following Aquinas, that there are no mere instances of rational nature, that simply by being an individual substance of a rational nature one is incommunicable, or, as Aquinas says, one is an individual “in a more special and perfect way.” A person is not a collection of properties, but rather a unified and concrete substance whose nature and properties can be isolated and considered in abstraction; however, this nature and these properties should not be treated as concrete things in themselves, which I take Zagzebski to be doing (implicitly, if not explicitly).20 A person’s incommunicability finds its ultimate metaphysical explanation in his or her human nature, but simply because human persons share a nature in common does not mean that what flows from this nature cannot be radically unique. This is a paradox, not a contradiction. Moreover, on the Thomistic account, because all human beings have rational capacities, even those who are not currently exercising these capacities (like the very young or the brain-damaged) are incommunicable. They are still radically unique individuals because each is by nature the kind of thing that is master of its own actions, and each has a special calling from God by being created as this particular person. At first glance, Crosby seems vulnerable to the same criticisms I’ve made of Zagzebski because he clearly agrees that human nature alone fails to ground the dignity that makes human persons irreplaceable.21 However, Crosby parts ways with Zagzebski by embracing the same Thomistic account of personhood I’ve just defended It is evident that the very idea of a mere specimen of rational nature is absurd; that rational nature cannot be multiplied in interchangeable individuals in the way today’s newspaper can be multiplied; that rational nature is such that it can exist only in incommunicable persons.22

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I confess that I find Crosby’s admission here puzzling. In my view, Singer’s argument for the replaceability of infants (and, by extension, other human beings) is compelling only if we suppose that human beings are mere instantiations or collections of qualities or properties that can be held in common. As such, human beings would be interchangeable. As we have seen with Zagzebski, one way to avoid this conclusion is to posit two distinct sources of human dignity. We might suppose that in addition to his or her shareable properties, a human person also has a non-qualitative property that in principle cannot be shared, namely, subjective lived experience, which grounds his or her incommunicability. I have argued that there are good reasons to reject this position and, in its place, to endorse a Thomistic account of personhood. On said account, a person is an individual, unified substance that has a special dignity as compared to non-personal substances. In the abstract we can identify and consider the human nature that is the ultimate metaphysical explanation of a person’s dignity, but we should always keep in mind that we only ever have concrete persons who are each incommunicable by virtue of being an instance of a rational nature. This eliminates, it seems to me, the need to speak of two distinct sources of human dignity, and yet Crosby continues to do so despite his admission that rational nature “can only exist in incommunicable persons.” What is this talk of incommunicability as a distinct source of dignity adding? At best, it seems to me, nothing substantive and, at worst, it implicitly introduces an ontology of personhood incapable of rebutting the utilitarian claim that at least some persons are replaceable.

Ethical relevance of personal incommunicability Though I have argued that we should not conceive of personal incommunicability as a distinct source of human dignity, I do think that there are compelling reasons for incorporating this concept within one’s moral reflections. In particular, I think that there are compelling reasons for the Thomist to do so. I will conclude by considering one such reason. I take one of Karol Wojtyáa’s great insights to be that a Thomistic ethics is impoverished if it refuses to make room for reflections on personal subjectivity.23 Although it is difficult to conceptualize (or even to speak about) an individual’s incommunicability, to undertake this endeavor is to touch upon matters of fundamental importance. Consider, for example, the following observation made by Maritain in his book Existence and the Existent:

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To be known as object, to be known to others, to see oneself in the eyes of one’s neighbor…is to be severed from oneself and wounded in one’s identity. It is to always be unjustly known.24

Maritain’s point is that one of the goods that each person seeks is to be known and loved in his or her very selfhood, as this unique person, and to love others in the same manner. This is perhaps inchoate in the Thomistic system, but it becomes fully manifest through a reflection on subjective lived experience. Our deepest longing is to be known in the depth of our subjectivity and loved accordingly. However, strictly speaking, we are only known to others as objects and never as subjects, that is, never as we experience our own subjectivity. This is not a trivial point. It appears that we desire the impossible—to be known and loved in our very subjectivity, even though we only ever present ourselves to others as objects. This should be of concern especially to the Thomist, who believes that natural desires cannot be in vain.25 Now, if we really do desire to be known in our subjectivity, and this desire, like all natural desires, cannot be in vain, then this should perhaps lead the Thomist to consider the epistemological methods by which we can come to know persons in this way. I take this to be part of what Eleonore Stump is doing in her very fine treatment of the problem of evil, Wandering in Darkness. Stump suggests that interpersonal relationships, as well as narratives or stories, allow for a kind of intuitive “seeing” of the other in his or her subjectivity; this knowledge, which she refers to as “Franciscan knowledge,” cannot be expressed in propositional form and yet it is still a genuine kind of knowledge.26 The Thomist might also give serious consideration to Maritain’s suggestion that love allows us to glimpse another’s incommunicability, that “by love, finally, is shattered the impossibility of knowing another except as object.”27 Philosophers both within and without the Thomistic tradition might be allergic to such suggestions. After all, philosophers desire conceptual precision, and one is hard-pressed to find such precision in Stump’s notion of an intuitive “seeing” of persons, or in Maritain’s almost mystical account of love as an epistemological vehicle. Nevertheless, I would suggest that though incommunicability is, in a sense, enigmatic, it is, nonetheless, a hugely important aspect of our being, and thus philosophers should be willing to consider the various ways in which we might grasp this elusive reality.

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Notes 1

Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 12-13. 2 For a helpful account of how personalism arose as a reaction to the political errors of collectivism and individualism, see Matthew Schaeffer, “Thomistic Personalism: A Vocation for the Twenty-First Century,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86.2 (2012): 182-188. For a general overview of the history of personalism, see Thomas D. Williams, Who Is My Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), ch. 7 (“A Personalist Primer”). 3 John Crosby, “Personal Individuality: Dietrich von Hildebrand in Debate with Harry Frankfurt,” in Ethical Personalism, ed. Cheikh Mbacké Gueye (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2011), 19. 4 John Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 42. 5 Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, 56, 61. 6 Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person, 49. 7 Linda Zagzebski, “The Uniqueness of Persons,” Journal of Religious Ethics 29.3 (2001): 414. 8 See Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person, 45-47. 9 Aquinas gives several reasons to support his claim that in God essence and existence are identical. His central argument is that because a creature’s essence is really distinct from its act of existence, it must receive this act from some outside principle because a thing cannot cause its own existence. And “because whatever is from another is reduced to what is per se as to its first cause, there must be some thing which is the cause of the being of all things by the fact that it is existence alone, otherwise there would be an infinite regress in causes, since everything which is not existence alone has a cause of its existence, as has been said.” See On Being and Essence, in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Ralph McInerny (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 42. Aquinas repeats this argument in ST I, q. 3, a. 4. 10 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, 22.7-10. From Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III: Providence, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956). 11 ST I, q. 29, a. 1. For a helpful introduction to Aquinas’s general account of personhood, see Gilles Emery, O.P., The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch. 6 (“The Person”). 12 Zagzebski, “The Uniqueness of Persons,” 402-403. 13 Ibid., 403: “A world containing life is infinitely better than a world without life. But it is still possible that all living organisms could be replaced by similar organisms without loss of value.” 14 Ibid., 412-413.

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See Karol Wojtyáa, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 214: “The [subjective lived] experience of the human being cannot be derived by way of cosmological reduction; we must pause at the irreducible, at that which is unique and unrepeatable in each human being, by virtue of which he or she is not just a particular human being–an individual of a certain species–but a personal subject. Only then do we get a true and complete picture of the human being.” 16 Zagzebski, “The Uniqueness of Persons,” 417. 17 See Peter Singer, “Taking Life: Humans,” in Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 18 John Crosby, “A Neglected Source of the Dignity of Persons,” in Personalist Papers (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 10. 19 Zagzebski, “The Uniqueness of Persons,” 419. 20 For a recent defense of a Thomistic conception of essences, substances, and properties, see David Oderberg, Real Essentialism (New York: Routledge, 2007). 21 Crosby also agrees with Zagzebski in that he, too, equates a person’s incommunicability and irreplaceable value with his or her subjectivity. See “A Neglected Source of the Dignity of Persons,” 28. 22. Ibid., 15. 23 See Karol Wojtyáa, “Thomistic Personalism,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). 24 Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent, trans. Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948), 76. 25 ST I, q. 75, a. 6: “A natural desire cannot be in vain.” 26 See Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. ch. 4 (“Narrative and the Knowledge of Persons”). 27 See Maritain, Existence and the Existent, 84: “By love, finally, is shattered the impossibility of knowing another except as object. I have emphasized this impossibility at length and noted that it directly concerns the senses and the intellect. To say that union in love makes the being we love another ourself for us is to say that it makes that being another subjectivity for us, another subjectivity that is ours. To the degree that we truly love…the intellect within us becomes passive as regards love, and, allowing its concepts to slumber, thereby renders love a formal means of knowledge…to this degree we acquire an obscure knowledge of the being we love, similar to that which we possess of ourselves; we know that being in his very subjectivity (at least in a certain measure) by this experience of union. Then he himself is, in a certain degree, cured of his solitude; he can, though still disquieted, rest for a moment in the nest of the knowledge that we possess of him as subject.”

WOJTYàA: NATURE, PERSON, AND TELEOLOGY BRIAN KEMPLE

There is a view, unconsciously dominant in much of the Western world today, which understands nature and person to be antagonistic to one another; a view which negates the possibility of inherent good in nature and places all value in the autonomously-determined pursuits of the person. This denial of value in nature as such, however, is based upon a concept of nature grown within modern philosophy, a concept which merely “includes that dynamism which is directly and solely the consequence of birth itself” and thus “presents itself as a strictly defined moment of the dynamism proper to man rather than as the basis of all this dynamism.”1 In other words, to perceive an antagonism of person and human nature depends upon conceiving of the latter as nothing more than the biological given basis, a conglomeration of parts, upon which occur certain “activations,” (happenings or actualizations to which the human individual is a mere passive recipient, but which are not identifiable with the individual). Contrariwise, within this view, the concept of the person is that of a predominately psychological entity, constituted by actions— which, according to Jean-Paul Sartre, are only properly actions if they are conscious and freely willed, i.e., willed without any motivating factor other than election.2 Thus, human nature is posited as an incipient challenge to the person, accompanying each individual’s birth, which is to be overcome by the autonomous person’s activities of willing. Karol Wojtyáa rejects this antagonistic view, for it ignores that all experience, passive and active, occurs on the basis of a nature which is not a mere moment of the human dynamism, strictly defined by the biological, but a persistent principle of the subject, without which the subject could have no unity or identity, and subsequently no such thing as the person.3 If deprived of a metaphysical understanding of human essence, the contrast of human beings to all other animals becomes ultimately one-dimensional. In other words, humans and brutes are each reduced to a single ultimate but limited principle: psychological subjectivity in concert with a free will

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on the one hand, and a given nature composed from material, biological constituents on the other. Consequently these principles are seen as in opposition to one another: person against nature, and vice versa. Wojtyáa proposes, against this antagonistic view, an integral concept of person and nature. In his view, nature is the origin of and is always present as an aspect of the person in all his actions; thus, the person encompasses but neither departs from nor is reduced to nature. In order that we adequately understand how such an integration is possible, we must explicate and clarify the conception of nature and the teleological framework, rooted in the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, within which Wojtyáa is working. While certain aspects of Aristotle’s cosmology have been shown to be false, especially that of the celestial spheres, it can be maintained that the key principles and conclusions which emerge out of genuine Aristotelian physical and metaphysical inquiries are true—and if they are understood properly, much of his physics are also seen to be true. Specifically, among his principles, those of hylomorphism, as the basis of material natures, and the division of being by act and potency are true and relevant to any discussion involving nature. What is perhaps the most prevailing error of modernity in the realm of natural philosophy is that of dualism, in which form and matter are separately existing principles mysteriously joined together—as though the human soul, for instance, were something essentially immaterial but accidentally, if necessarily, conjoined to the body, which is essentially material; and as though material being is something real apart from its association with some immaterial principle.4 Rather, the form and matter which together constitute any mobile being, insofar as that mobile being persists in a state of actuality, are not separable in any way other than in thought; and the transmission of form from one individual to another, in both generation and modification, is not an incorporeal transmission, but one accomplished through the dynamic interaction of form and matter as correlative principles of act and potency. In every case where motion of any species occurs, the form which comes to be originates from something at least equally active; and that in which it comes to be is in potency to receive that action. Dough is capable of being shaped by the impact of things harder than it precisely because its relative softness is in potency to the shaped actuality it receives by means of the relative hardness of some other thing; eyes actually receive light only because some thing is actually illumined; an ovum is fertilized only because the sperm is actually fertile. But such changes can only occur if there is a substratum which remains actually existing. A form to be received, while it cannot be received into

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matter which has a form having an actuality in opposition to the form to be received, also cannot be received into matter which is not already joined to a form of some kind—except in the situation that there is creation in time. This necessity of form already being present in that which undergoes change is because matter, apart from form, has being only in potentiality, i.e., as a substrate which is not nothing only by virtue of relation from something actually existing.5 Ens potentia could not be called ens6 were it not standing in some sort of relation to an ens actual by esse; for matter, the principle of potency, receives esse only through form.7 Were there no persistent principle of actuality, there could be no principle of potentiality; without form, matter would be not be.8 To understand mobile being requires that we understand act and potency as correlates, of which there is mutual dependence insofar as they a principles of mobile being, but a priority of act over potency.9 Substantial form is the primary act whereby all created things are. Despite being inseparable from the essentially material entity of a mobile being, the substantial form can nevertheless be talked about in a number of ways which do not entail an explicit consideration of this inseparability: (1) definitionally, as that which in the thing corresponds to the “quiddity,” the conceptual correlate; (2) as that through which a thing has actual existence, for which reason it can be called “essence;” or (3) as that which orders the thing to some operation proper to it, on account of which it has been traditionally called “nature.”10 While it is important to keep in mind these three connotations, which are intimately linked to one another, it is the third sense of substantial form which is most important for our study. Nature as substantial form, as the orienting principle, not only provides the initial activation for the human being, but is also present in all his actions, as that from which his operations come and by which they are ordered.11 This fundamental dynamism of the substantial form, to be always orienting the thing of which it is the principle of actuality, is irreducible to a mere biological, chemical, or even atomic or subatomic given, for in such terms we cannot adequately express what the thing is in regard to its proper operations. For instance, it is insufficient to say that the substantial form or essence of water is truly defined, in a genuinely philosophical or properly phenomenological sense, as “H2O.” This is because neither a hydrogen molecule (i.e., two hydrogen atoms connected by a covalent bond) nor an oxygen molecule, nor even their juxtaposition, adequately define the act of being water. Water has a different substantial act, different potencies, and different properties from both hydrogen and oxygen. These differences dramatically affect the role of water within the material cosmos taken as a whole such that water itself is quite different

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from its constituent parts. Consequently, “H2O” is only a descriptive definition formed by means of considering parts; a definition which does not and cannot signify the proper operation of water; that is, to what its nature directs it, both in its original activation and in its persistent determination of any subsequent actualities.12 While understanding which material beings precede the generation of water and which material beings result from its corruption can aid in the understanding of water itself, enumeration of them does not constitute the proper intelligibility of water as water; such understanding may help to form a defintion which, in the words of Yves R. Simon, operates within a descending analysis proper to the empiriological sciences, i.e., an analysis which emphasizes the mobile or sensible aspect of the study of physical being. Contrariwise, it is through observation of the actions of things according to their proper operations, i.e., in accord with their natures as well as their interactions with other beings, both of their own kind and of others, that we are able to notice in the cosmos a teleological structure, a concept which belongs to what Simon calls an ascending analysis, which is proper to a philosophical science of nature, an analysis which places emphasis on the being aspect of the study of physical being.13 Now, in relatively uncomplicated, inanimate substances, such as water, identification of a proper operation is admittedly rather difficult—after all, water does not move itself; the extent of its “operation” is to be what it is and to have the accidents which follow thereupon. To look at any inanimate object in this manner is, however, to remove it from its proper context. Water by itself does not have an operation in terms of a selfmotive active potency—nevertheless it is a necessary material cause for the operations of living bodies, as are countless other elements and beings within the cosmos which of themselves have no proper operation beyond their mere existence according to nature. While a consideration of these things in isolation from their natural contexts seems to indicate that they lack an ordering, a broader consideration of them—one which considers them with their relationships to other mobile beings—reveals an ordering which not only transcends but also permeates the individual. As such, even if chance events are the proximate efficient causes of change in mobile being, each recipient of some chance interaction was already ordered towards the perfection it received—light is reflected from surfaces because surfaces have the capability of rejecting photons at visible wavelengths; the fewer that are absorbed and converted into heat energy, the brighter the surface. This interactive dependence is even more evident in animate being: plants absorb their nutrients through the soil, and animals their nutrients through plants and one another—at the cellular level, the process

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of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase from adenosine diphosphate (ADP) is possible only because there is a real potency in the ADP, being combined with inorganic phosphate and a release of energy, to produce the ATP enzyme which acts as the basic currency of all intracellular energy transfer. From the simplest of mobile beings (which lack much in the way of actuality inasmuch as they have relatively uncomplicated existences) to the most complicated forms of life, there is an evident ordering which is not merely imposed by extrinsic forces, but which is also, in a more principal way, on account of the interior principles by which each thing is directed towards something more perfect, either in the cosmic whole or within both that whole and in themselves; to quote William Wallace, Elements are good in themseves, but compounds may better or more readily serve the needs of the organic world; plants and vegetables represent a higher stage of being than complex molecules, but less than that attained by the animals that eat them and incorporate them into their substance.14

In other words, because each natural being possess not only its active potencies but also its passive potencies due to its intrinsic principles of form, it is in itself ordered towards an end.15 Mobile being is inherently teleological, even if the teleological ordering is not always evident in isolated instances. This inherent teleology is more evident still when we come to sentient being—for all animals clearly act for particular goods which become particular ends by the animals’ operations. Whereas the natures of inanimate being have their perfection in a simple essential order—i.e., being what it is for them to be, such that they are open to specific interactions with other things by means of unconsciously actualized potencies—when we observe animate being, and particularly sentient animals, we find perfections that consist in more than simply being what it is for a certain kind of thing to be, with regard to the actualization of both active and passive potencies. Nevertheless, we should not understand these two levels of perfection in sentient being, entitative and operative, as hypostatically united. In each and every substantial form there is contained, in the potencies which are a part of its being, a pattern (or possible patterns) for attaining this operative perfection; in other words, there is an ordering towards actions and receptions to attain this or that sort of perfection, according to the form which is ordering.16 Thus, just as nature provides and sustains the basis for a thing’s passive potencies and therefore the activations which take place within the entity, so too it provides and sustains the basis for a thing’s active potencies and the

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actualizations which follow. Such a concept of nature, in which each and every thing has its own ordering, both in its own actions and parts, and in its relations to other beings, is in no way opposed to the subjectivity of the person, as we will now show.17 A close examination of the essence of being a “person” reveals that the nature is not opposed to the person’s subjectivity, nor is the subjective element of the person opposed to such a concept of nature. This becomes clear when we consider lived experience; i.e., the subjective aspect of experience as opposed to the objective content.18 This experiential element of subjectivity is precisely what repudiates attempts to reduce the person to something which can be objectivized, to something which can be used as merely material. To explain: while any thing can undergo an experience (i.e., “to be a subject”), only a fully cognitive agent experiences (i.e., “to be subjectively”). An animal undergoes experiences, and engages in them; but it does not have consciousness of selfhood as experiencer over and against the content of the experience. Contrariwise, in any human experience, we may recognize the content, which is grasped in an intention or which is objective, i.e., in relation to the cognitive faculties,19 and we may recognize the experiencing, which is inexorably subjective and irreducible to the status of something objective. The moment we make a conceptual objectivization of our lived experience, it ceases to be accessed in a subjective manner.20 How then, can we know our subjectivity, specifically as subjective? It would seem that such knowledge is something opposed to the very ratio of knowledge as developed within the Thomistic tradition. Yet this ratio is one which considers knowledge precisely as of objects or things; by definition, it excludes that which is present to the consciousness but not an object of it. Consequently, we see that, unlike all other things which are strictly cognized through conceptual objectivization, there is a twofold disclosure or revelation of one’s own personal subjectivity; in other words, it is cognized both objectively and subjectively. First, we are able to reflect upon our experiences as specifically our own, as a unique relationship of the intentionally grasped content as an experience which belongs to the self.21 Consciousness mirrors the subjectivity of the person. In so doing, it objectivizes not only the content of the experience in a manner indivisible from its relation to the subject, but also objectivizes the subject. We reflect upon both the content of the experience, such as the flavor of something tasted, and the activity of experiencing, the activity of being one who is tasting. It is through this mirroring that we come to a concept of ourselves, the “I,” as something distinct from all other objects; the variety of things experienced is held in

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an opposition to the constant identity of the self as experiencing. Properly speaking, this does not reveal our subjectivity as subjectivity but it does prompt the properly subjective disclosure:22 namely that, being conscious of our experiences, we experience ourselves as the subject, not as an object upon which we reflect, but as being that very “I” who experiences. In other words, we experience being the self in a manner which cannot be reduced to the intentional awareness of experiential content, but which is rather being the self as a freely conscious agent, a someone and not merely a something. While consciousness is always intentional, it is never merely intentional: consciousness entails both being about or towards something and being a someone who is about or towards something.23 But just as the person cannot be reduced to that which constitutes his entitative being, his nature, neither can he be reduced to this constitutive factor of his subjectivity, his consciousness. Being a a someone is dependent upon being a something, that is, a substance. Personal substantiality requires a unique and persistent constitutive principle of actuality actuality which bestows upon the substance the dynamism particular to human freedom and self-determination. In order to be a someone which is also a something, there must be a nature at work in every human individual’s being. Even if the antagonist view of nature as merely providing the person, the someone, with an initial activation of his being were accepted, it would have to be admitted that what is activated by this nature remains part of his personhood—namely, his capacities for intellect and will,24 which are exercised through the body. These fundamental characteristics of the person, therefore, constitute him as a something with a persistent nature, inasmuch as a nature is both what orients and that through which a thing has being. The personalism of Wojtyáa and the tradition of Thomism both maintain that a thing can attain value for the person, or can become an object of personal appetition, only because the person has innate apprehensive faculties, including the corporeally-constituted sense powers, which are at all because he is a something which has intellect and will.25 It is, moreover, through these innate powers that the person can be said to be free.26 Consequently, whereas the sole basis of value for the subjectivist resides in the affective experience itself—that is, the lived experience—for the Thomistic personalist, that affective experience can be right or wrong in its value, inasmuch as the act of valuing and what is valued are or are not in accord with the natures of both the person and the thing being valued. Human nature demands a rectitude of the orientation and actions of the person in accord with that orientation, towards experiences, both in terms of intentional content and in lived experience. As Wojtyáa writes,

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The consciousness of value, on the other hand, arises in us when that existential good (something that exists in a determinate degree and becomes an object of action) is evaluated in a certain way, namely, is placed, so to speak, under the light of truth. Only then can one speak of the 27 lived experience of value.

This placement “under the light of truth” is the role of the intellect in the evaluation of a thing’s good in relation to the irreducibly subjective aspect of the person.28 Without some revelation of the thing’s goodness, even if the thing itself is good for the person, the total good of the experience is lacking inasmuch as the value of the thing does not enter into the lived experience of the person. Conversely, without the thing actually being good for the person, that is, perfective in the order of second acts, the subjective experience of the good is incomplete inasmuch as the thing does not fully accord with the natural potencies of the discursive intellect and will which fundamentally constitute the “something” of the person. Thus, on account of human nature, the person not only exists within a teleological cosmos, i.e., such that the person is part of the telos of creation as a whole, but cannot be reduced to the cosmic teleological ordering—the subjectivity of human persons, being a someone and not just a something, defies reduction to being simply a part of the universe as a whole and having its end set for it in a cosmological ordering. This seeming contradiction is easily resolved, however, if we see that, while human persons have an end from their nature, that end is not simply a subservient part of the cosmological ordering, but rather envelopes and supercedes the cosmological ordering on account of human nature itself: for we know a thing’s end by its proper operation, and a man’s proper operation is that which is in accord with his most perfect actions— understanding and freely willing. Moreover, every intelligible thing is an object whereby he achieves his perfection in some way, meaning that the cosmos of intelligible things is in some manner for the sake of the human person.29 Therefore, while the person is subservient to the cosmological ordering inasmuch as the animate soul relies upon the intersubjective dynamism of the corporeal universe, nevertheless, considering the human person as a being fundamentally constituted by an intellectual principle which has as its object all being, the person transcends this intersubjective dynamism. The human person’s actions, therefore, are oriented by an innate teleology, inasmuch as intellect and will are integral to the existence of the person; and yet, because the person is unrestrained by the cognitional particularity which constrains the activity of non-intellectual animate and inanimate being, he is also innately autoteleological. The indeterminacy of human intellect and will in respect of the particular

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objects which the person encounters allows for freedom. In other words, while a man is or ought to be motivated by his intellectual capacity to act in accord with right reason, he may nevertheless act in accord with faulty reasoning. This autoteleology is evident in the source of value—for a thing becomes valuable to us because we grasp some truth about its good. The first thing apprehended by the practical reason, as St. Thomas tells us, is the good considered according to its greatest universality, ens sub ratione boni.30 Yet the good, as an absolute, is not presented to man in his natural state; it is found only partially and incompletely in particular goods, about which he must reason discursively and make judgments. Because every good thing can have the truth about it perceived, every good becomes a potential object of choice. If we focus simply upon the truth about that particular good, we may lose sight of the greater good—for instance, one might focus on the good of a delicious food, ignoring its unhealthy quality, despite needing to eat healthier in order to preserve life. In so doing, one chooses the truth about some good of a thing in relation to a particular part of himself, rather than the truth about what is good for him as a whole. This capacity for election reveals our free choice of ends, not only for ourselves, but also for things inasmuch as they are manipulable by us. An autoteleology, in order to truly be fruitful, must recognize laws as already existing within things, and ends to be set in accord with those laws. Because of the dynamism of act-potency and the ubiquitous potentiality of all things material, no mobile being is immutably fixed; but each mobile being necessarily has an intelligible end towards which it is directed by the fundamental intersubjective dependence of its nature. In other words, there is a logos or rational structuring to the thing itself, a teleology which indicates what is the good for the thing as what it is, which involves not merely the thing as some isolated unit within the cosmos, but that thing as related to others.31 This is equally true of human beings—for, while it is better for a man to be healthy than sick, his good is not simply health; while it is good for a man to be intelligent, his good is not simply intelligence; but rather, the good for him is simply to be good as a human, i.e., as a political animal, possessing intelligence, and capable of responsible agency within the uniquely human world which is constituted by his various relations—which includes not only relations between substances, but the radically different relations of a knower to things known. Furthermore, for the person, as a someone irreducible to the mere “something” contained in a definition of human nature, the good is to be good as a person—an individual substance of a rational nature, who is an “I” that experiences, and cannot be reduced to that nature. In a sense,

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every person is a creator of himself as a person; for inasmuch as we are capable of acting freely within the confines of our nature’s given perfection and ordering, we are self-determining with regard to our experiences. While all animate being is being-in-becoming in a certain way, only the person is also the agent responsible for his own becoming.32 To be morally good, a specifically personal kind of good, requires that one perform actions that are in the accord with the highest known good, as the end to which all things involved in the action ought to be ordered. Every person is, to some degree, capable of grasping and therefore obliged to grasp, this hierarchy of goods, and the subordination of the lower to the higher, precisely because the person’s nature entails the apprehension of the good.33 This is the responsibility of being a human person—to ensure not only the flourishing of the self, but also to be a steward and aid to other beings. In conclusion, although this paper has moved sweepingly, almost haphazardly, through a number of topics, it can hopefully be seen that the concept of the person as advocated by Wojtyáa and that of human nature as upheld by the Thomistic tradition are not only compatible, but mutually beneficial—for personhood adds to nature the irreducible subjectivity of the person as experiencer, and thereby opens a path for relating universal moral norms to each individual; and reciprocally, nature adds to personhood a meaningful structure wherein those experiences may be situated and evaluated; that is, the telos to orient morally significant actions under the light of immutable truth.

Notes 1

Karol Wojtyáa, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Boston, MA: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 78. Hereafter, AP. 2 Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (United States of America: Yale University, 2007) in passim and Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc, 1956), 73-105, 433. 3 AP 79: “There seems to be in that approach a kind of transposition that puts the aspects of experience above its total significance. The total experience, which gives both a simple and a fundamental perception of the human being—whether it be in the pre- and even nonscientific approach, or in the domains of learning, especially philosophy—supplies the evidence for the unity and the identity of the man-subject. This is accompanied by the synthesis, on the ground of the one and the same ontological support, of acting and happening that takes place in man, the synthesis of actions and activations, of efficacy and subjectiveness. There is, therefore, no valid reason for the mutual opposition in man of person and nature; on the contrary, we now see the need of their integration.”

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4 Such as can be found in the Suarezian understanding of potency as a sort of very limited act. Cf. Suarez, Disputatio Metaphysicae (Venice: 1610), Disput. XXXI, sec. VIII, 164 A-B: “Neque, absolute loquendo, potest satis intelligi illud causalitatis genus [material], quia illud non potest tribui essentiae et considereatae in sola potentia obiectiva, sic .n. ut saepe dixi, est simpliciter non ens & nihil: quod aut nihil est, secundum eum praecisum statum non potest habere influxum realem, neque aliquid recipere, neque aliuid potest adhaerere illi. Quomodo .n.adhaerebit ei quod nihil est? Neque etiam potest tribui illa causalitas essentiae ut iam factae & constitutae in ratione etnsi in actu, nam ut sic in se ipsa ut receptiva, seu ut condistinguitur alteri actui, includit intime aliquod esse actuale extra causas … esse vero formae materialis habet similiter causam materialem, non quidem componentem: est.n.illud semper simplex & partiale, sed sustentatem & recipientem illud.” See also Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (Indianapolis, IN: Ex Fontibus, Co., 2012), 32. 5 Thomas Aquinas. ST I q.44, a.2, ad.3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod ratio illa non ostendit quod materia non sit creata, sed quod non sit creata sine forma. Licet enim omne creatum sit in actu, non tamen est actus purus. Unde oportet quod etiam illud quod se habet ex parte potentiae, sit creatum, si totum quod ad esse ipsius pertinet, creatum est.” De ente et essentia, c.3: “Talis autem invenitur habitudo materiae et formae, quia forma dat esse materiae. Et ideo impossibile est esse materiam sine aliqua forma.” 6 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In I Sent., lib.1, d.19, q.5, a.1, c.: “Cum autem in re sit quidditas ejus et suum esse, veritas fundatur in esse rei magis quam in quidditate, sicut et nomen entis ab esse imponitur” and SCG I c.25, n.10: “Oportet igitur quod ratio substantiae intelligatur hoc modo, quod substantia sit res cui conveniat esse non in subiecto; nomen autem rei a quidditate imponitur, sicut nomen entis ab esse”. 7 In other words, this is the third thing required for generation: for in addition to ens potentia, which is matter, and id quod per fit actu, which is form, Thomas names privation, non esse in actu, which is not non esse simpliciter, but non esse in (hoc) actu, i.e., the act of the form of the being which is to be generated, and the potency of that in which that form is to be generated: for all material change requires some fulfillment or creation of a privation in a thing. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, c.1 in passim but especially: “Et quia generatio est quaedam mutatio de non esse vel ente ad esse vel ens, e converso autem corruptio debet esse de esse ad non esse, non ex quolibet non esse fit generatio, sed ex non ente quod est ens in potentia; sicut idolum ex cupro, ad quod idolum est (cuprum) in potentia, non in actu. Ad hoc ergo quod sit generatio, tria requiruntur: scilicet ens potentia, quod est materia; et non esse actu, quod est privatio; et id per quod fit actu, scilicet forma. Sicut quando ex cupro fit idolum, cuprum quod est potentia ad formam idoli, est materia; hoc autem quod est infiguratum sive indispositum, dicitur privatio; figura autem a qua dicitur idolum, est forma, non autem substantialis quia cuprum ante adventum formae seu figurae habet esse in actu, et eius esse non dependet ab illa figura; sed est forma accidentalis. Omnes enim formae artificiales

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sunt accidentales. Ars enim non operatur nisi supra id quod iam constitutum est in esse perfecto a natura.” 8 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputate de anima, a.10, ad.1: “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod cum materia sit propter formam, forma autem ordinetur ad propriam operationem, oportet quod talis sit materia uniuscuiusque formae ut competat operationi illius formae; sicuti materiam serrae oportet esse ferream, quod competit ad opus serrae propter suam duritiem.” Ibid., ad.2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod cum materia sit propter formam, hoc modo forma dat esse et speciem materiae, secundum quod congruit suae operationi.” ST I q.84, a.3, ad.3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod omnis motus supponit aliquid immobile, cum enim transmutatio fit secundum qualitatem, remanet substantia immobilis; et cum transmutatur forma substantialis, remanet materia immobilis. Rerum etiam mutabilium sunt immobiles habitudines, sicut Socrates etsi non semper sedeat, tamen immobiliter est verum quod, quandocumque sedet, in uno loco manet. Et propter hoc nihil prohibet de rebus mobilibus immobilem scientiam habere.” It should also be noted that there is a significant difference between the kind of actuality that is realized in the case of, for instance, local motion or motion of augmentation, and the kind of actuality which is possessed by a substantial form; the former is dependent upon the persistents of the latter—in other words, every transitive act depends upon an immanent (which should not be understood as purely something within, but even the act of existing which is that thing. In the oftquoted words of Étienne Gilson, “Not to be, then to act; but rather, to be is to act.”). 9 Cf. Louis De Raeymaeker, The Philosophy of Being, trans. Edmund H. Ziegelmeyer (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1954), 172-73: “Potency and act of the being in motion have meaning only if we consider them as correlations. The definition of this act must mention the potency, which is its principle of individuation and limitation; the definition of the potency must mention the act, to which it is related as to its principle of determination. From the correlation of potency and act in the being in becoming it follows that their structure is wholly and entirely subject to change, that is, this being which remains always determinable, in potency, is determined in itself by its successive acts. It also follows that this same being, unceasingly determined, remains always determinable in itself, but the fundamental reason of the determination of the whole subject is the principle of act, and the reason of the determinability is the potential principle.” 10 Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, c.1: “Et quia illud, per quod res constituitur in proprio genere vel specie, est hoc quod significatur per diffinitionem indicantem quid est res, inde est quod nomen essentiae a philosophis in nomen quiditatis mutatur. Et hoc est quod philosophus frequenter nominat quod quid erat esse, id est hoc per quod aliquid habet esse quid. Dicitur etiam forma secundum quod per formam significatur certitudo uniuscuiusque rei, ut dicit Avicenna in II metaphysicae suae. Hoc etiam alio nomine natura dicitur accipiendo naturam secundum primum modum illorum quattuor, quos Boethius in libro de duabus naturis assignat, secundum scilicet quod natura dicitur omne illud quod intellectu

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quoquo modo capi potest. Non enim res est intelligibilis nisi per diffinitionem et essentiam suam. Et sic etiam philosophus dicit in V metaphysicae quod omnis substantia est natura. Tamen nomen naturae hoc modo sumptae videtur significare essentiam rei, secundum quod habet ordinem ad propriam operationem rei, cum nulla res propria operatione destituatur. Quiditatis vero nomen sumitur ex hoc, quod per diffinitionem significatur. Sed essentia dicitur secundum quod per eam et in ea ens habet esse.” 11 Cf. AP 76-77. 12 AP 77: “Taken semantically, nature, conformably with its etymology, also reaches in another direction. It is not confined to the domain of the subject of acting, which to some extent we have already explored, but also signifies the manner of acting open to it.” 13 Cf. Yves Simon. “Maritain’s Philosophy of the Sciences” in The Philosophy of Physics, ed. Vincent Edward Smith (Jamaica, NY: St. John’s University Press. 1961), 30: “The philosophy of nature can be defined as a physical consideration whose conceptual instruments call for an ascending analysis, positive science as a physical consideration whose conceptual instruments call for a descending analysis.” It should moreover be noted that the inability to provide a standard Aristotelian definition of certain essences (i.e., species + genus) does not mean that substances of that sort do not have essences—simply that it is difficult to give a definition for something which has, so to speak, a heavily weighted ratio of act to potency. The more a being is akin to our own standing in act and potency, the easier it is to define: plants are easier defined than inanimate matter, animals than plants, and rational animals are the easiest of all; but those creatures understood as greater in their substantial actuality are more difficult, and in the case of God, utterly impossible to define. Thus, the empiriological or positive sciences are fruitful in providing more details about the acts of material beings, but cannot provide sufficiency for their understanding considered under the light of being. As Simon says earlier in the same article, 28-29: “physical thinking, while bound to adhere to the two aspects of its object, can put a particular emphasis on one of them. If the emphasis is put on ens, we have a form of knowledge both ontological and physical, a philosophical physics, a philosophy of nature. If the emphasis is put on mobile seu sensibile, we have a discipline of a physical and non-ontological character, an empiriological science. This point must be insisted upon: the privilege granted to either pole of the physical object is only a matter of emphasis. The philosopher of nature is not a metaphysician, and his definitions must imply some reference to data of sense experience. On the other hand, the empiriologist is not a mere dealer in sense experiences, for the observable regularities with which he deals owe their constancy and their consistency to their being organized by some ratio entis.” 14 William Wallace, The Modeling of Nature (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American Press, 1996), 17: “Clearly in cases of organic growth the end product represents a superior grade of being over the stage at which it began. It is also more perfect, in the etymological sense of per-factum, as that which is thoroughly made and possesses no de-factum, i.e., is lacking in nothing it should

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possess as a member of its species. In inorganic changes it is difficult to see in what sense a compound is better than an element, or an element of higher atomic number better than an element of a lower. Perhaps one should differentiate here between processes that are good for a particular nature, say, to conserve it in being, the way in which salt cyrstallizes and so preserves its identity, and those that are good for nature as a whole, the universe being made up of many different kinds. Elements are good in themseves, but compounds may better or more readily serve the needs of the organic world; plants and vegetables represent a higher stage of being than complex molecules, but less than that attained by the animals that eat them and incorporate them into their substance. If this seems true in the observable order of nature, it would be even more so in the evolutionary order, if such is indeed the work of nature. The successive production of higher and higher types undoubtedly represents some kind of progress, some greater good or perfection that is attained over time, presuming that the later types are not mere freaks or the result of chance occurrences.” 15 William Wallace, The Modeling of Nature, 17-18: “Much of the difficulty with teleology in nature arises from conceiving all final causality as intentional or cognitive and not sufficiently differentiating the cognitive from the terminative and the perfective. The medievals gave expression to such a mentality with the aphorism opus naturae est opus intelligentiae, the work of nature is the work of intelligence. If by saying this one means that every natural agent consicously is aware of the goal at which it is aiming, there is little evidence that such could be the case throughout the entire order of nature. The word intelligence, however, can take on a variety of meanings, as is clear from the way one talks of artificial intelligence in the present day. Perhaps in the latter way of speaking one could say that the double helix is programmed to replicate in a certain way and so ‘knows’ how to do it, or that an asteroid ‘knows’ how to find its path through the solar system without performing the calculations we make to predict its path. In this sense, natural agents seem to foreknow what they aim to achieve and so implicitly substantiate the claim that nature acts for an end.” 16 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q.29, a.8, ad.8: “in eodem instanti forma dat esse, ordinat et distinguit.” The ordering given by the form, towards the proper operation of the thing, is this patterning. 17 AP 79: “The total experience, which gives both a simple and fundamental perception of the human being—whether it be in the pre- and even nonscientific approach, or in the domains of learning, especially philosophy—supplies the evidence for the unity and the identity of the man-subject. This is accompanied by the synthesis, on the ground of the one and the same ontological support, of acting and happening that takes place in man, the synthesis of actions and activations, of efficacy and subjectiveness. There is, therefore, no valid reason for the mutual opposition in man of person and nature.” 18 Cf. Translator’s note in Wojtyáa, Man in the Field of Responsibility, trans. Kenneth W. Kemp, and Zuzanna Maslanka Kieron (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2011), 8, n.2.: “Wojtyáa here relies on Edmund Husserl’s distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis, a distinction difficult to render into

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English, as for both the ordinary English word would be experience. Erfahrung (Polish doswiadczenie) refers to the objective content of a person’s contact with some reality, whereas Erlebnis (Polish przezycie) refers to the subjective dimension reflected in consciousness. In order to maintain the distinction we follow the practice of Husserl scholars in rendering the latter as lived experience.” 19 I.e., some “thing” inasmuch as it is in relation to a power; in this case, the complexus of cognitive powers of the soul. 20 As Wojtyáa says in “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1993), 214: “The experience of the human being cannot be derived by way of cosmological reduction: we must pause at the irreducible, at that which is unique and unrepeatable in each human being, by virtue of which he or she is not just a particular human being—an individual of a certain species—but a personal subject.” Hereafter PC. 21 AP 42: “The mirror of consciousness gives us a yet deeper insight into the interior of actions and of their relation to the ego, and it is only there that the role of consciousness comes into full view. Consciousness allows us not only to have an inner view of our actions (immanent perception)) and of their dynamic dependence on the ego, but also to experience these actions as actions and as our own.” 22 AP, 42-43: “It is in this sense that we say man owes to consciousness the subjectivation of the objective. Subjectivation is to some extent identifiable with experiencing; at least, it is in experience that we become aware of it. While constituting a definite reality which as the object of self-knowledge reveals itself in its own peculiar objectiveness, the acting person, owing to his consciousness, also becomes ‘subjectified’ to the extent to which consciousness conditions his experience of the action being performed by him as the person, and thereby secures the experience had of the person in its dynamically efficacious relation to action.” 23 As Wojtyáa expresses in “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” it is important, in gaining a fuller, richer appreciation of the depth and complexity of the individual person, as including, depending upon, and being intrinsically ordered by his human nature, to “pause” at the consideration of lived experience (and therefore of the subjective element of the person as subjective), PC, 215-16: “What does it mean to pause cognitively at lived experience? This ‘pausing’ should be understood in relation to the irreducible. The traditions of philosophical anthropology would have us believe that we can, so to speak, pass right over this dimension, that we can cognitively omit it by means of an abstraction that provides us with a species definition of the human being as a being, or, in other words, with a cosmological type of reduction (homo = animal rationale). One might ask, however, whether in so defining the essence of the human being we do not in a sense leave out what is most human, since the humanum expresses and realizes itself as the personale. If so, then the irreducible would suggest that we cannot come to know and understand the human being in a reductive way alone. This is also what the contemporary philosophy of the subject seems to be telling the traditional philosophy of the object…A legitimate method of disclosing [personal

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human subjectivity] can only enrich and deepen the whole realism of the conception of the human being.” 24 AP, 81: “Even if nature is to be identified only with the moment of activation, as opposed to the moment of action, which reveals the person in the human being, then the former moment at any rate is not external to the unity and identity of the ego.” Cf. Michael Gorman, “Personhood, Potentiality, and Normativity,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85.3, (2011), 483-498. 25 Whereas Steve F. Sapontzis, in “Groundwork for a Subjective Theory of Ethics” American Philosophical Quarterly 27.1 (1990), 27-38, in passim, restricts value to only those things which can be considered to have an interest, and that interests are only of those things which have some good which can come to them by which they are perfected (and thus a plant or even the planet considered as an integrated ecosystem can be said to have an interest), we find this fundamentally flawed; not for the breadth of its extension, but for the narrowness which it propounds. The whole integral nature of the teleological cosmos indicates that each and every part of the universe, while not valuers for themselves, are involved in a dynamic and intersubjective reality whereby they are perfected; nevertheless, this topic, while related to our concern here, is ultimately outside its scope. 26 Cf. ST I, q. 82, a. 2. 27 Wojtyáa, “On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis of the Moral Norm,” in PC, 80. 28 Ibid.: “A result of this cooperation of reason and the will is that the good and the true somehow mutually include one another: when reason sess that the will wills a good, and still more when reason sees that something is good, then the good becomes an object of reason and eo ipso a particular truth. Truth, in turn, is the good of reason, and so truth is also an end of the will, which, so to speak, urges reason o to truth. The truth of the good may have a speculative meaning. Reason apprehends the good in a speculative way when it defines the good and thereby reveals its essence; this is a purely theoretical knowledge of the good. In addition, however, reason knows the good in a practical way when the good is an object of action (bonum ordinabile ad opus sub ratione veri).” 29 SCG III, c.112, nn.5-6: “Praeterea. Manifestum est partes omnes ordinari ad perfectionem totius: non enim est totum propter partes, sed partes propter totum sunt. Naturae autem intellectuales maiorem habent affinitatem ad totum quam aliae naturae: nam unaquaeque intellectualis substantia est quodammodo omnia, inquantum totius entis comprehensiva est suo intellectu: quaelibet autem alia substantia particularem solam entis participationem habet. Convenienter igitur alia propter substantias intellectuales providentur a Deo. “Adhuc. Sicut agitur unumquodque cursu naturae, ita natum est agi. Sic autem videmus res cursu naturae currere quod substantia intellectualis omnibus aliis utitur propter se: vel ad intellectus perfectionem, quia in eis veritatem speculatur; vel ad suae virtutis executionem et scientiae explicationem, ad modum quo artifex explicat artis suae conceptionem in materia corporali; vel etiam ad corporis sustentationem, quod est unitum animae intellectuali, sicut in hominibus patet.

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Manifestum est ergo quod propter substantias intellectuales omnia divinitus providentur.” 30 ST I-II q.94, a.2: “Sicut autem ens est primum quod cadit in apprehensione simpliciter, ita bonum est primum quod cadit in apprehensione practicae rationis, quae ordinatur ad opus, omne enim agens agit propter finem, qui habet rationem boni.” 31 Cf. ST I q.48, a.2. 32 Cf. AP, 98-106. 33 Cf. “On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis of the Moral Norm” in PC, 78-80.

PART II: HUMANISM

THOMAS AQUINAS, WISDOM, AND HUMAN DIGNITY: PHILOSOPHY AND BEYOND LAWRENCE DEWAN

Our general theme, as stated by Dr. Sommers in her announcement of this conference, is: “Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity.” In my title I have associated St. Thomas with “wisdom,” linked this with “human dignity,” and have suggested that our discussion must speak of “philosophy,” and even go “beyond philosophy!” Thomas himself, in his most ambitious works, insists at the very beginning, that wisdom is his business, and that the quest for wisdom is going to take us, perforce, beyond philosophy. Let us note, first of all, that St. Thomas is primarily a teacher of the truth of the Catholic Faith. That Faith is the wisdom he has primarily to do with. However, since the quest for wisdom is found in various cultures, and in the western world in Thomas’s time it was associated with the Greeks and especially Plato and Aristotle, famous philosophers, it is not surprising that Thomas begins his Summa theologiae with the query: “Is there need for a teaching that goes beyond philosophy?” Here, Thomas explains the nature of the knowledge that the Summa contains, the knowledge he here calls “Sacra Doctrina,” i.e., the Holy Teaching.1 He presents the necessity that there be this Holy Teaching, a teaching that takes us beyond the philosophical disciplines. Thomas eventually, i.e., in article 6 of this first question, explains why the Holy Teaching is the highest human wisdom. Let us go straight to that a. 6, remembering that what is proper to the Holy Teaching is that it comes to us through divine revelation, not through the natural investigative capacity of human reason. Is it wisdom? Thomas tells us: It is to be said that this teaching, among all human wisdoms, is maximally wisdom, not merely as to some partial field, but unqualifiedly.

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For, since it is the role of the wise person to put things in order and to pass judgment, and judgment concerning lower things is had through the higher cause, that person is called “wise” in each particular field who considers the highest cause in that field. Thus, for example, in the field of buildingconstruction, the craftsman who specifies the form of the building is called “wise” and “the architect” [i.e. the master-craftsman] relative to the lower craftsmen who shape the lumber and prepare the stones, etc.: hence, in I Cor. 3 it is said: “As a wise architect I have laid the foundation.” And again, in the field of the whole of human life, the prudent person is called “wise,” inasmuch as he orders human acts towards their fitting goal; hence it is said in Proverbs 10.23: “Wisdom, for a human being, is prudence.” Therefore, that person who considers what is unqualifiedly the highest cause of the entire universe, which [cause] is God, is most of all to be called “wise;” hence, knowledge of divine things is called “wisdom,” as is clear in Augustine, On the Trinity, 12 [cap. 14; PL 42.1009]. Now, the Holy Teaching most properly determines concerning God according as He is the highest cause, because [it does so] not merely as regards what is knowable through creatures (which the philosophers have come to know, as is said in Romans 1: “What is known regarding God has been manifested to them.”); but also as regards what is known to Himself alone about Himself, and communicated to others through revelation. Hence, the Holy Teaching is called “wisdom” most of all.2

This is the primary wisdom, the maximal wisdom: what God reveals to us about himself that is otherwise known only to himself. No wonder, then, that in the earlier Sentences Commentary, Thomas pointed to St. Paul’s having presented Christ as the Wisdom of God as the best account of wisdom!3 Now, the need for the human being to know the doctrine contained in the ST, i.e., the doctrine Thomas is calling “the Holy Teaching,” is explained in the very first article of the work. And we should notice how this issue is put. He asks: “Is there need for a teaching beyond the philosophical disciplines?” The first article of the ST affirms our need for a teaching that transcends the teaching of the philosophers. Thomas says: It is to be said that it was necessary for human well-being [human salvation] that there be a teaching by divine revelation, beyond the philosophical disciplines which are worked out by human reason.4

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The primary reason for such a need is the nature of the goal that God has assigned for the human being, a goal that surpasses our natural knowing powers: what is the human being for?5 Let us not rush through this first article of the first question of the ST. It merits much reflection. Thomas says: …the human being is ordered towards God as towards a goal that exceeds reason’s comprehension; in accordance with the text of Isaiah 64.4: “Eye has not seen, O God, without you, what you have prepared for those who love you.”6

And Thomas goes on: But the goal is supposed to be known in advance by human beings, who are supposed to order their intentions and their actions towards the goal. Hence, it was necessary, for the well-being of the human being, that some things be made known to him by divine revelation, things that surpass human reason.7

That is, the human being, as a kind of thing, is meant to seek known goals: thus, it was necessary that God make known to us, reveal to us, the goal he has decided upon.8 Our benefiting from that revelation must be through an act of supernatural faith.9 Still, there is more to the human situation, to your and my situation, than that. As Thomas continues in the same first article, even as regards the truths concerning God that the human mind can know by its natural powers, there is need for a revelation, and so for faith. We read: Furthermore, regarding those things about God that can be investigated by human reason, it was necessary that man be instructed by divine revelation; because the truth about God, as investigated by reason, would have come only to a few people and after a long time and with an admixture of many errors; and yet on knowledge of this truth depends the entire ultimate well-being of the human being, which is [to be found] in God.10

This presentation here by Thomas is crucial for our sound conception of ourselves and our own situation in reality. While there are things about God that human reason can discover, that sort of human knowledge is arrived at with certainty only by a few. This brings St. Thomas to the conclusion of his article, based on the two just seen reasons:

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Thus, therefore, so that ultimate well-being11 might come about for human beings both more suitably and more certainly, it was necessary that they be instructed concerning divine things through divine revelation.12

Dignity13 Before pursuing further the portrait of the Christian sage, and how philosophy figures in his undertaking, let us say something about that other element in our title, i.e., “dignity.” What does St. Thomas have in mind in using that word? I begin with what seems to me the most “down to earth” use of the conception in St. Thomas, that found in the treatment of the virtue called “observantia,” in ST, II-II, q. 102. Thomas is there in the course of presenting a hierarchical sequence of virtues akin to justice.14 The highest in nobility is religion,15 followed by filial piety (including patriotism), and then “observantia.”16 Let us try as a translation of this Latin word “submissiveness.” Thomas has in mind that after God, who is the supreme governor, and one’s father, who has been a source of life and sustenance and education, there is a mode of respect due to those in public office of various sorts: civil, military, educational. He describes our action towards such persons as a “cultus.” This is sometimes translated as “worship,”17 as in, I suppose, “his worship, the mayor.” However, that word is now rather strong for such usage. Let us try “respect.” Q. 102, then, is on “observantia.” The first article asks whether it is a special virtue distinct from the others, and the second asks whether it belongs to observantia to exhibit “cultum et honorem,” respect and honor, to those “established in dignity [in dignitate constituta].” Naturally, this expression interested me. I did a search on the words: “in dignitate constitut” and found 30 instances, of which 17 were from this one question, ST II-II, q. 102.18 Let us note the body of the article: I answer that, as is clear from things already said, it is necessary that the virtues be distinguished in a descending order in keeping with the excellence of the persons [excellentia personarum] to whom something is to be rendered. Now, just as the father according to the flesh participates in a particular measure in the role of principle which is found in God universally, so also a person who in some respect exercises a providential role towards us participates in what is proper to a father, because the father is the principle of generation and education and discipline and of all those things that pertain to the perfection of human life.

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Lawrence Dewan Now, a person established in dignity [persona...in dignitate constituta] is in the role of a governing principle with respect to some things: for example, the governor of the city in political matters, the army commander in matters of warfare, the teacher in matters of learning, and it is similar in other areas. And thus it is that all such persons are called “fathers” because of the similarity of their solicitude; thus, in Kings 4.5 the servants of Naaman said to him: “Father, if the prophet had spoken to you of some great thing, etc.” And so, just as under religion, through which respect [cultus] is paid to God there is found in an order piety, through which parents are respected, so under piety is found “submissiveness [observantia]” through which respect [cultus] and honor are shown to persons established in dignity.19

We see that “dignity” has to do with being in a providential position, being actually a source, a principle of well-being in some respect: civil, military, scholastic.20 The idea is further exhibited in the reply to the second objection. The objection argues that the same sort of treatment is given to those who excel in science and virtue as is given to those “established in dignity,” and yet there is no special virtue by which we honor such people. Why then should there be one for those “in dignity?” And we get the important reply: To the second it is to be said that someone by the fact that he is established in dignity has not merely some excellence of status, but also the power to govern subordinates. Hence the role of principle, inasmuch as he is governor of others, belongs to him. Now, by the [mere] fact that someone is accomplished in science or virtue he does not have the role of principle relative to others, but rather merely an excellence in himself. And therefore a particular virtue is specially determined for the showing of honour and respect for those who are established in dignity. However, because by science and virtue and all such things someone is rendered capable of the status of dignity, the reverence [reverentia] that because of any excellence is shown to some people pertains to the same virtue.21

We see that dignity has to do with prudence, virtue, and providence—all that depends on intelligence and goodness. In another work of St. Thomas,’ his Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, we find a precious presentation of modes, i.e., grades, of dignity. It concerns the passage, i.e., Romans 2.14, about the Gentiles who do not have the law but do by nature what the law requires. Here are Thomas’ words concerning “ipsi sibi sunt lex” and the levels of human dignity, from Romans 2, lect. 3:

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Thirdly, he shows their dignity, in this, that, not having such law, they are law for themselves, inasmuch as they fulfill the office of law towards themselves, instructing themselves and inclining themselves towards the good; because, as the Philosopher, i.e., Aristotle, says [Ethics 10], law is a statement having compulsive power, issuing from some prudence and understanding. And so it is said in 1 To Timothy 1, that law is not laid down for the just, i.e., [such a person] is not coerced by an external law, but is laid down for the unjust, who need to be externally coerced. And this is the supreme degree of dignity among human beings, i.e., such that they are led to the good [inducantur ad bonum], not by others, but by themselves. But the second degree is of those who are led [inducuntur] by others, but without coercion. But the third degree is of those who require coercion in order that they become good. The fourth is of those who cannot be directed to the good even by coercion. “Your sons have been chastised in vain, for they have not taken the lesson.” [Jeremiah 2]22

As for the unqualifiedly supreme degree of dignity, I note the following: In Super evangelium s. Ioannis lectura, prologue of St. Thomas, #2, Thomas equates "dignity" with "nobility of nature." In #5, spelling this out, he speaks of the dignity of God as expressed by the words: "upon a high throne,” and expressed concerning the Word of God by saying: "the Word was God.” The human approach to God that catches sight of this unique dignity is that of the Platonists, who see God as “ipsum esse per suam essentiam, idest quod sua essentia sit suum esse,” from which all else derives its being, (all else) having being by participation. Thomas describes God so known as “qui est sufficientissima, et dignissima, et perfectissima causa totius esse.”23 This parade of superlatives concerning God as first cause, having as field the entirety of being, is as expressive as can be.

The Human Being in the Summa theologiae As the teacher of “the holy teaching,” and indeed one who has been repeatedly pointed to by Popes as especially recommended, Thomas himself is seen as in a position of dignity. What we should pass in review is the way that such a work as the Summa theologiae of Thomas presents the life and strivings of the human being. He thus appears as a “teacher of humanity,” i.e., of the positive possibilities to live a human life. If Thomas is to be our teacher as regards our living human life in the most authentic way, we must pay close attention to his own explanations

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of the order in which he presents things. With this in view, I will take my cue from the Summa theologiae, and the explanations he gives of what he is doing and the order in which he does it. Here I call to your attention his plan in the ST. We read: [B]ecause the principal aim of this Holy Teaching is to communicate knowledge of God, and not only as he is in himself, but also according as he is the source of things and their goal, and especially [the origin and goal] of the rational creature (as is evident from what has been said) [here the editor rightly refers us to q. 1, a. 7 (on God as the “subject” of the science contained in the ST)], aiming to set forth this teaching, firstly we will treat of God; secondly of the movement of the rational creature towards God; thirdly, concerning Christ who, inasmuch as he is a human being, is our pathway for moving towards God.24

From here I would jump to the presentation of creation, and especially the creation of the human being, and the account of his nature. Focusing on the mind, the intellect, of the human being, Thomas ultimately presents the human being as made in the image of God.25 Nevertheless, the distinction is then made between the human being as originally created in the state of innocence, and the condition of the human being after the fall. Eventually, i.e., at q. 103, we come to the treatment of “the government of things.” Then q. 104 treats of the first of the particular effects of divine government, viz., the conserving of things in being. Q. 105 brings us to the second effect of divine government, viz., the changes that takes place in creatures. Here, q. 106 gets into “how one creature moves another,” i.e., angels moving angels, etc. It is followed, in q. 107, by angels speaking to angels, and q. 108 speaking of hierarchy among angels (the movement of illumination of one angel by another presented in q. 107 as “the higher” influencing “the lower”). Q. 108 also speaks of human beings, by grace, getting into the levels of angels, etc. Q. 109 speaks of order in bad angels and domination of them by good angels. At q. 110 we come to the presiding of angels over corporeal creatures. And q. 111 is about angels acting upon human beings. There is much else of considerable interest in ST I, but in the interest of brevity I will move to what is most directly on our topic, i.e. Thomas Aquinas as teacher of humanity. Having seen something of the nature of the human being as a rational creature, I wish to call attention to the entire second part of the ST. I say: “the entire second part,” because it is itself divided into a first part and a second part. It is about the human being as

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an agent, a source of events; this requires a first, more summary overall presentation, and then a second, more detailed, particularized treatment. However, the prologue beginning the “first part of the second part” is the introduction to the whole. We read: Because, as Damascene says: “The human being is said to be made in the image of God, inasmuch as by “the image” is meant: “intellectual, and having freedom as to judgment, and having itself power,” after having spoken about the exemplar, i.e., about God, and about those things which have issued forth from the divine power in accordance with His will, it remains for us to consider His image, i.e., concerning the human being, inasmuch as he too is source of his own works, as having free judgment and power over his own works.26

Merely to examine the two parts of the second part of the ST would give an idea of why Thomas is well called “the teacher of humanity,” meaning by “humanity” the positive quality of the human agent’s behavior, as contrasted with failure to act in a way that brings us to life with God. I would stress that we are constantly being directed beyond “mere” human nature, according to the teaching that it is a nature subject to elevability to higher reaches.27 This is particularly associated with the need to believe something beyond natural reason, if one is to come to the fullness of well-being, i.e., “salvation.” Notice especially the lesson in ST II-II, q. 2, a. 3. This bears upon the interior act of faith, and asks, in particular, whether it is necessary to believe something beyond the field of natural reason if one is to attain salvation. Answering in the affirmative, Thomas has occasion to say: Only the created rational nature has an immediate order to God, because the other creatures do not attain to something universal, but only to something particular, participating in divine goodness either merely by being, as is the case with inanimate things, or also in living and knowing singulars, as is the case with plants and animals, but the rational nature, inasmuch as it knows the universal notion of being and goodness, has an immediate order to the universal principle of being. Therefore the perfection of the rational creature consists not merely in that which befits it according to its own nature, but in that also which is attributed to it from some supernatural participation of the divine goodness.28

The third part of the ST bears upon Christ as elevating human life, human behavior, so as to usher us into familial friendship with God the Father for eternity.

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While St. Thomas died before he had time to finish the third part, nevertheless taking what exists of it, plus the previous writings of his life as concerned with human virtuous action, surely places him in a class by himself as a teacher of human living (i.e., as one of the foremost followers of Christ, who is “the Way,” “the Truth,” and “the Life”). “Teacher of humanity” is certainly wonderfully well proposed as descriptive of Thomas Aquinas and his role in reality.

Notes 1

Translations from the Latin are my own unless otherwise indicated. ST I, q. 1, a. 6: Respondeo dicendum quod haec doctrina maxime sapientia est inter omnes sapientias humanas, non quidem in aliquo genere tantum, sed simpliciter. Cum enim sapientis sit ordinare et iudicare, iudicium autem per altiorem causam de inferioribus habeatur; ille sapiens dicitur in unoquoque genere, qui considerat causam altissimam illius generis. Ut in genere aedificii, artifex qui disponit formam domus, dicitur sapiens et architector, respectu inferiorum artificum, qui dolant ligna vel parant lapides, unde dicitur I Cor. III, ut sapiens architector fundamentum posui. Et rursus, in genere totius humanae vitae, prudens sapiens dicitur, inquantum ordinat humanos actus ad debitum finem, unde dicitur Prov. X, sapientia est viro prudentia. Ille igitur qui considerat simpliciter altissimam causam totius universi, quae Deus est, maxime sapiens dicitur, unde et sapientia dicitur esse divinorum cognitio, ut patet per Augustinum, XII de trinitate. Sacra autem doctrina propriissime determinat de Deo secundum quod est altissima causa, quia non solum quantum ad illud quod est per creaturas cognoscibile (quod philosophi cognoverunt, ut dicitur Rom. I, quod notum est dei, manifestum est illis); sed etiam quantum ad id quod notum est sibi soli de seipso, et aliis per revelationem communicatum. Unde sacra doctrina maxime dicitur sapientia. 3 We see this answer to the quest for wisdom, an answer that St. Thomas features at the very beginning of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the work that relates to his first teaching at the University of Paris. In April 1948, Étienne Gilson gave the concluding talk at the (Paris) Semaine des intellectuels catholiques. The theme of the week was “Intellectuals and the Charity of Christ,” and Gilson's paper was entitled "Intellectuals and Peace." He spoke of the fear haunting the human being at that time, referring to the experience of the 20th century, and, above all, of the Second World War, of the mistreatment of man by man. The invention and use of the atomic bomb suggested that henceforth there is no limit to the possibilities of destruction of the real. The terrors of the year 2000 seemed predictable enough. But behind the practices, Gilson pointed to the ideas at work in our time, especially the ideas of Nietzsche, on the death of God, and their consequences among the Surrealists, the Marxists, Sartre, Camus, etc. He saw there “a universal will for annihilation.” He continued: “This universal will 2

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towards annihilation we have explained by the pretence that man has of himself replacing God and making of himself a creator. All that we can say to our time, and we say it with all our heart, is that, on the contrary, he must reenter the natural order which is that of the divine creation, and return to the wisdom of Christ, or rather, return to Christ who is Wisdom. Because we are not speaking here of an abstract doctrine, we are not speaking here of a theodicy treatise nor even of a theology treatise; we are speaking of Someone, him whom our teacher St. Thomas Aquinas has so well pointed out when, at the beginning of his Commentary on the Book of Sentences he asks himself: what is Wisdom? And in the very first sentence of his treatise gives the following answer: “Among so many opinions of such diverse authors as to what is true wisdom, that of the Apostle Paul is singularly lucid and true. Wisdom, he tells us in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, is Christ, the power of God, the wisdom of God, and whom God has made Wisdom also for us.” Christ! Him whom we find first in the Gospel, whom we meet, if we wish to, on each page of this divine book; to whom we can speak, ourselves, in all simplicity—I had almost said: man to man—let us say, at least, to the Man-God; to whom we can say: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us! Lord, if you will, you can heal us…” He is there, available to us, and we can, if we so wish, make him available to all.” From Étienne Gilson, “Les intellectuels et la paix,” in Les Intellectuels devant la charité du Christ. Semaine des intellectuels catholiques (1118 avril, 1948) (Paris: Éditions du Flore, 1948), 218-229, aux 227-228. My translation. 4 ST I, q. 1, a. 1: …dicendum quod necessarium fuit ad humanam salutem, esse doctrinam quandam secundum revelationem divinam, praeter philosophicas disciplinas, quae ratione humana investigantur. 5 The magnitude of human dignity is properly grasped only in the light of that destiny. Cf., e.g., ST III, q. 57, a. 6, ad. 3: “…Christ, by ascending once into heaven, obtained for himself and for us the perpetual right and dignity [ius et dignitatem] of the heavenly dwelling.” Cf. also ST III, q. 58, a. 4, ad. 1 and ad 2; ST I, q. 12 and I-II, qq. 1-5, on beatitude; and q. 93, a. 4, on the three levels of man's being “in the image of God.” 6 Ibid.: “…homo ordinatur ad Deum sicut ad quendam finem qui comprehensionem rationis excedit, secundum illud Isaiae LXIV, oculus non vidit Deus absque te, quae praeparasti diligentibus te.” Thomas’s text of Isaiah seems to be influenced by 1 Cor. 2.9. 7 Ibid: Finem autem oportet esse praecognitum hominibus, qui suas intentiones et actiones debent ordinare in finem. Unde necessarium fuit homini ad salutem, quod ei nota fierent quaedam per revelationem divinam, quae rationem humanam excedunt. 8 The necessity here pertains to God’s justice and his wisdom; cf. ST I, q. 21, a. 1; cf. also my paper: “Death in the Setting of Divine Wisdom: the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas,” which is ch. 19 in my book: Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 327-329. 9 The role of faith is mentioned for the first time in the article’s ad 1. The objector had used the biblical authority of Ecclesiasticus 3.22 to argue that we should not

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seek things that are above us; and Thomas replies: … though those things which are above human knowledge are not to be inquired into by means of reason, they are, nevertheless, as revealed by God, to be accepted through faith. Thus, in the very same passage it is added: “Many things beyond the scope of humans have been shown to you. And the Holy Teaching is about such things.” […licet ea quae sunt altiora hominis cognitione, non sint ab homine per rationem inquirenda, sunt tamen, a Deo revelata, suscipienda per fidem. Unde et Ibidem subditur, plurima supra sensum hominum ostensa sunt tibi. Et in huiusmodi sacra doctrina consistit.] 10 ST I, q. 1, a. 1: Ad ea etiam quae de Deo ratione humana investigari possunt, necessarium fuit hominem instrui revelatione divina. Quia veritas de Deo, per rationem investigata, a paucis, et per longum tempus, et cum admixtione multorum errorum, homini proveniret, a cuius tamen veritatis cognitione dependet tota hominis salus, quae in Deo est. 11 I have so translated “salus” because “salvation” might be too much associated with “the usual sermon” to make its point. 12 Ibid.: Ut igitur salus hominibus et convenientius et certius proveniat, necessarium fuit quod de divinis per divinam revelationem instruantur. 13 Materials in this section are taken from my paper: “Some Notes on St. Thomas’s Use of ‘dignitas,’” Nova et Vetera 11.3 (2013): 663–72. 14 Cf. ST II-II, q. 80, art. unic. where the term “potential part” of justice is used in the introduction, but explained as “virtues annexed to [justice].” The general theory of such annexation is explained at the beginning of the body of the article. 15 Notice that religion is supreme among moral virtues, a virtue superior even to justice: ST II-II, q. 81, a. 6, in cor and ad 1. 16 The old (and in most things admirable) Dominican translation to be found on the New Advent website has “observance,” i.e. not much help. 17 It is so translated in the old Dominican translation. 18 I notice that in ST II-II, q. 183, a. 1 it is the “plebeius,” i.e. the common man, that is contrasted with the person “in dignitate constituta.” One should take account of such texts as ST II-II, q. 183 on “status,” which seems much more serious than “dignity.” Status relates to freedom and servitude. In q. 183, a. 1 “dignity and ordinary citizenship” are presented somewhat on an “easy come/easy go” level (like rich and poor), whereas “status” or “standing” is deeper and less changeable. In q. 183, a. 2 on diversity of standings and jobs in the Church, after perfection and efficiency the third reason given for them is “dignity and beauty” which is had in a hierarchy of standings and official roles. 19 ST II-II, q. 102, a. 1: Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut ex dictis patet, necesse est ut eo modo per quendam ordinatum descensum distinguantur virtutes, sicut et excellentia personarum quibus est aliquid reddendum. Sicut autem carnalis pater particulariter participat rationem principii, quae universaliter invenitur in deo; ita etiam persona quae quantum ad aliquid providentiam circa nos gerit, particulariter participat proprietatem patris, quia pater est principium et generationis et educationis et disciplinae, et omnium quae ad perfectionem humanae vitae pertinent. Persona autem in dignitate constituta est sicut principium gubernationis respectu aliquarum rerum, sicut princeps civitatis in rebus civilibus, dux autem

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exercitus in rebus bellicis, magister autem in disciplinis, et simile est in aliis. Et inde est quod omnes tales personae patres appellantur, propter similitudinem curae, sicut IV Reg. V, servi Naaman dixerunt ad eum, pater, etsi rem grandem dixisset tibi propheta, etc.. Et ideo sicut sub religione, per quam cultus tribuitur deo, quodam ordine invenitur pietas, per quam coluntur parentes; ita sub pietate invenitur observantia, per quam cultus et honor exhibetur personis in dignitate constitutis. 20 It is in this sense that Thomas describes Our Lord’s status in his earthly life thus [De rationibus fidei, ca 7]: “Privatus absque dignitate vixit, ut homines ab inordinato appetitu honorum revocaret.” [He lived as a private person, without (a position of) dignity, so as to warn men against the inordinate appetite for honours.] 21 ST II-II, q. 102, a. 1, ad. 2: Ad secundum dicendum quod aliquis ex hoc quod est in dignitate constitutus, non solum quandam status excellentiam habet, sed etiam quandam potestatem gubernandi subditos. Unde competit sibi ratio principii, prout est aliorum gubernator. Ex hoc autem quod aliquis habet perfectionem scientiae vel virtutis, non sortitur rationem principii quantum ad alios, sed solum quandam excellentiam in seipso. Et ideo specialiter quaedam virtus determinatur ad exhibendum honorem et cultum his qui sunt in dignitate constituti. Verum quia per scientiam et virtutem, et omnia alia huiusmodi, aliquis idoneus redditur ad dignitatis statum, reverentia quae propter quamcumque excellentiam aliquibus exhibetur, ad eandem virtutem pertinet. ST II-II, q. 84, a. 1, ad. 1 is helpful on modes of reverence. Cf. also ST II-II, q. 104, a. 2, ad. 4. On the nature of reverence, cf. ST II-II, q. 103, a. 1, obj. 1 and ad 1; also q. 81, a. 2, ad. 1, and ultimately II-II, q. 19, a. 9 on reverence and filial fear, the gift of the Spirit. 22 I notice a resemblance of this doctrine of grades to the citation of Hesiod by Aristotle in EN 1.4 (1095b10) [cf. Thomas, In EN 1.4 (54)]: Far best is he who knows all things himself; Good, he who harkens when men counsel right; But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart Another's wisdom, is a useless wight. [Oxford tr.; W. D. Ross] 23

Quidam autem venerunt in cognitionem dei ex dignitate ipsius dei: et isti fuerunt Platonici. Consideraverunt enim quod omne illud quod est secundum participationem, reducitur ad aliquid quod sit illud per suam essentiam, sicut ad primum et ad summum; sicut omnia ignita per participationem reducuntur ad ignem, qui est per essentiam suam talis. Cum ergo omnia quae sunt, participent esse, et sint per participationem entia, necesse est esse aliquid in cacumine omnium rerum, quod sit ipsum esse per suam essentiam, idest quod sua essentia sit suum esse: et hoc est deus, qui est sufficientissima, et dignissima, et perfectissima causa totius esse, a quo omnia quae sunt, participant esse. Et huius dignitas ostenditur, cum dicitur “super solium excelsum,” quod, secundum Dionysium, ad divinam naturam refertur; Ps. cxii, 4: excelsus super omnes gentes dominus. Hanc dignitatem ostendit nobis Ioannes, cum dicit: et deus erat verbum, quasi: verbum erat deus, ut ly verbum ponatur ex parte suppositi, et deus ex parte appositi. Super

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evangelium s. Ioannis lectura, prologue of St. Thomas, #5. 24 ST I, q. 2, prologue (Ottawa ed. 11b20-31): Quia igitur principalis intentio huius sacrae doctrinae est dei cognitionem tradere, et non solum secundum quod in se est, sed etiam secundum quod est principium rerum et finis earum, et specialiter rationalis creaturae, ut ex dictis est manifestum; ad huius doctrinae expositionem intendentes, primo tractabimus de deo; secundo, de motu rationalis creaturae in deum; tertio, de christo, qui, secundum quod homo, via est nobis tendendi in deum. Quia igitur principalis intentio huius sacrae doctrinae est dei cognitionem tradere, et non solum secundum quod in se est, sed etiam secundum quod est principium rerum et finis earum, et specialiter rationalis creaturae, ut ex dictis est manifestum; ad huius doctrinae expositionem intendentes, primo tractabimus de deo; secundo, de motu rationalis creaturae in deum; tertio, de christo, qui, secundum quod homo, via est nobis tendendi in deum. 25 ST I, q. 93. The questions on the relation of the human beings one to another in the state of innocence, and the relation of the human being to the other corporeal creatures are of great interest. Cf. e.g. q. 96. However, I will leave such things aside here. 26 ST I-II, Prologue: Quia, sicut Damascenus dicit, homo factus ad imaginem dei dicitur, secundum quod per imaginem significatur intellectuale et arbitrio liberum et per se potestativum; postquam praedictum est de exemplari, scilicet de deo, et de his quae processerunt ex divina potestate secundum eius voluntatem; restat ut consideremus de eius imagine, idest de homine, secundum quod et ipse est suorum operum principium, quasi liberum arbitrium habens et suorum operum potestatem. 27 Cf. ST I, q. 12, a. 4, ad. 3 28 ST II-II, q. 3, a. 2 [Ed. Ottawa 1416a, lines 6-22]: Sola autem natura rationalis creata habet immediatum ordinem ad deum. Quia ceterae creaturae non attingunt ad aliquid universale, sed solum ad aliquid particulare, participantes divinam bonitatem vel in essendo tantum, sicut inanimata, vel etiam in vivendo et cognoscendo singularia, sicut plantae et animalia; natura autem rationalis, inquantum cognoscit universalem boni et entis rationem, habet immediatum ordinem ad universale essendi principium. Perfectio ergo rationalis creaturae non solum consistit in eo quod ei competit secundum suam naturam, sed etiam in eo quod ei attribuitur ex quadam supernaturali participatione divinae bonitatis.

SITTING AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER: READING THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE AS WRITTEN PROVIDES HOLISTIC FORMATION JOHN D. LOVE

My aim is to show that reading the Summa Theologiae as written is a powerful formational activity through which Aquinas contributes mightily to the concrete, holistic development and maturation of his readers. Forty years ago at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary, Fr. Robert Zylla began teaching courses in Thomistic Moral Theology in which he required his students to read every article of every question in the entire Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae, that is 303 of the approximately 500 questions in Thomas’ text, during the span of one academic year. During class meetings, the professor called randomly on students to take turns presenting articles of the Summa, identifying Thomas’ arguments and conclusions. I have continued this practice since Fr. Zylla went to God in 2009. Under this method of study, readers allow St. Thomas to lead them step by step towards wisdom as he carefully unfolds his vision of moral theology and “man’s return to God.” The marvelous result of this intense “listening to Aquinas” has been a life-changing experience for all involved, enriching intellectual, human, spiritual, and pastoral formation, and equipping the future-priests with invaluable tools for hearing confessions, preaching and teaching. As a result, these academicallychallenging elective courses have become popular among the seminarians at the Mount. Unlike other electives, the Summa courses are offered every year, and 40-50% of the seminarians have completed one or both of them at some point during their studies. In this paper, I will combine Fr. Gilles Mongeau’s study of Aquinas’ rhetoric and formational intent in the Summa and insights from Torrell, Pinckaers, Chesterton, and others with data collected from course evaluations and a just-concluded, online, anonymous survey of the Summa-alumni who have completed these courses since 2005. I will also report other oral and written testimonials from Summa class alumni.

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Aquinas’ Formational Intent in the Summa Torrell explains that Aquinas’ teaching and his life are laden with values that may easily inspire people to behave in a special way both as human beings and as Christians.1

Rather than “imposing his system” on his readers, Aquinas seeks to “teach his disciples to think and to live on their own.”2 Fr. Mongeau carries this insight into examination of the Summa Theologiae in order to discover Thomas’ pedagogical aims and the rhetorical tools he employs to accomplish them. At the outset of his study, Mongeau draws attention to Aquinas’ general prologue, in which he states that he hopes especially “erudire insipientes,” that is, “to educate beginners.”3 Citing DeFerrari’s Aquinas Dictionary, Fr. Mongeau suggests, however, that the “erudire” of beginners is more literally understood as “un-rude-ing” them, or “bringing them out of immaturity and into culture; enlightening [them].”4 In addition, Mongeau draws attention to Aquinas’ phrase in the first sentence of the same prologue, “eo modo tradere,” which is normally translated “to treat of,” but would be better rendered, “to transmit,” or “hand on…whatever belongs to the Christian religion in a way suited to the ‘unrude-ing’ of beginners (erudire insipientes).”5 From the following lines, we also discover that Thomas thought the existing theological texts were not suitable to this task, “in part because of the multiplication of useless questions, articles and arguments in these writings.”6 Thus, the general practice at present of omitting articles in the Summa deemed to be unnecessary or tangential is ironic because Thomas wrote the work specifically to avoid inclusion of such chaff. From these considerations, Thomas sets out to investigate sacra doctrina. What we call “theology” was for Thomas a harmonious, mutually buttressing confluence of “acquired intellectual virtue and a whole way of life, [ascetical and spiritual].”7 Thomas aligns sacra doctrina with scientia in Prima Pars question 1, article 2. Mongeau explains that because the Word, as the fullness of revelation, is the principle from which the science of sacra doctrina proceeds, then, The various activities that make up sacra doctrina are participations in Christ, spiritual activities by which persons are conformed to the image and likeness of Christ.8

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Unlike his contemporaries, Thomas identifies sacra doctrina as a “speculative science,”9 but Pinckaers explains that, for Aquinas, the terms “speculative” and “contemplative” are “practically equivalent.”10 Torrell clarifies that, in this case, Aquinas refers to a “contemplative knowing” that is acquired rather than infused, in via towards the most perfect “contemplation,” which is beatific vision.11 Nevertheless, just as the beatific vision necessarily entails consummate love of God,12 so also, as Thomas writes in Prima Pars question 1, article 4, the “contemplative” activity of sacra doctrina, demonstrated in the Summa, is not only speculative, but also practical. Having established sacra doctrina as a specific type of scientia, Aquinas proceeds in article 6 to identify sacra doctrina as sapientia. Thomas states that sacra doctrina is wisdom acquired by study,13 by which one treats of God as the highest cause, both as he may be known through creatures, and “as far as He is known to Himself alone and revealed to others.”14 According to Thomas, wisdom is not, however, purely speculative perception of principles, but “judges and arranges other things in light of the principles known.”15 He reiterates this practical dimension of wisdom when he considers speculative intellectual virtues, including wisdom, in Prima Secundae question 57, article 2 and the infused Gift of Wisdom in Secundae Secundae question 45, article 1.16 In the latter question, Thomas specifically states that wisdom is both speculative and practical, as it, respectively, considers God and “judges of human acts by Divine things, and directs human acts according to Divine rules.”17 Thomas explains that the difference between the acquired habit of wisdom and the infused Gift of Wisdom rests on the varying methods of considering God between the infused Gift which is caused by Charity, and the intellectual virtue, which is acquired through study.18 Thus, both the infused gift and the acquired habit of wisdom (which, when considering God as the highest cause is called, sacra doctrina) share this practical dimension. Thomas’ presentation of wisdom in these disparate questions in the Summa reveals an implied invitation to his readers to engage and develop their Christian “friendship with God” (or Charity) as prerequisite for attaining the highest wisdom. Thus the development of Charity is an important element of the erudire insipientes that will produce effective preachers and confessors. We can see this “invitation” in the combination of 1) the intrinsic connection of the speculative and practical functions within wisdom, which includes sacra doctrina specifically, 2) the assertion of the preeminence of the infused wisdom gained through the Gift of the Spirit, and 3) Thomas’ awareness that his target audience (Dominican students) were equipped and motivated to advance in their

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appropriation and use of sacra doctrina. In addition, Claude Geffré points out that for Aquinas, sacra doctrina and the experiential encounter with God (including the Gift of Wisdom), as components of the theological act, cannot be separated from each other because both are rooted in the act of faith.19

Thomas explains that faith provides the principle for sacra doctrina,20 and it precedes charity in the order of generation.21 Other authors have detected pedagogical and spiritual dynamics in a broader examination of the structure and content of the Summa. Mongeau reports that “Mina Ofilada sees the exitus-reditus structure of the Summa as ‘a pedagogical manner of comprehending the Christian life.’”22 Mongeau concludes, The text of the Summa Theologiae not only may be used as a spiritual exercise (as Torrell argued), but, based on the research of Emery and Burrell, Aquinas intended the work as a spiritual pedagogy, that is, a series of “spiritual exercises” in order to lead the reader to an encounter with divine truth in Christ.23

Matthew Levering finds a similar “spiritual pedagogy” in his examination of the De Deo questions of the prima pars.24 In addition to establishing Aquinas’ formational intent in the Summa it is important to recognize the rhetorical tools Thomas uses to accomplish this holistic formation.

Aquinas’ Rhetorical Tools in the Summa for Holistic Formation Mongeau identifies a host of rhetorical features in the Summa that indicate Aquinas’ formational intent, and which comprise his literary tactics for forming his readers. These include: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8)

Logical, Aristotelian movement from the universal to the particular The progression of scholastic investigation: An sit? Quid sit? Quomodo sit? Backward-looking analepses Forward-looking prolepses Repetition Refuting errors The Dramatic and Temporal order of Scriptural Accounts Arguments from Fittingness

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It is not possible to thoroughly examine Thomas’ use of each of these rhetorical techniques in the Summa, but we can touch upon them and present examples of them.

Aristotelian and Scholastic Ordering Mongeau explains that through the Aristotelian movement from the universal to the particular, Aquinas introduces the principles that will act as the causes of the knowledge that comes after.25 Thus he attempts to conform his readers’ minds to “the order of the real.”26 The typical scholastic progression of investigation—An sit? Quid sit? Quomodo sit?— provides Aquinas with a standard form of inquiry and enables him to emphasize the metaphysical foundations of whatever he is examining, which helps him recognize logical and natural relationships between, for example various virtues.27 For my students, the pattern “Is it a virtue? Is it a special virtue? Is it the greatest virtue?” seems at first redundant and foreign, at times humorous, but eventually reliable and very helpful in understanding the differences between virtues precisely because the pattern remains consistent, with appropriate modifications for the particular case. The modifications show that Thomas is more interested in the truth about the reality he is attempting to sum up than the symmetry of the system he is constructing. Thomas’ repeated use of these rhetorical structures not only teaches my students how to think for themselves (i.e., intellectual formation), but also how to teach others as they learn from him (i.e., pastoral formation).

Analepses and Prolepses The backward-looking analepses and the forward-looking prolepses within the text invite an interpretive strategy that assists the reader in combining earlier theoretical with later practical elements in the pursuit of a sapiential sacra doctrina.28 Aquinas does not, however, rely exclusively on these references to remote parts of the text, but also employs repetition of material, often with some augmentation or amendment, in order to assist his readers in understanding and applying his thought.

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Repetition Mongeau identifies repetition as a key tool through which Aquinas refines his terms and concepts as he proceeds through the Summa, gradually leading his readers to the full flowering of his vision.29 While Thomas decries “frequent repetition” as a primary fault of theological texts in his general prologue, without doubt he employs this technique with moderation throughout the Summa. Fr. Mongeau points, for example, to the pair of “knowledge-will” that animates all three parts of the work, coming to full fruition in Thomas’ presentation of Christ. We may also point out that Thomas’ definition of a “passion” appears, at least in part, in questions 22 through 25 in ST I-II, again as each particular passion is introduced (ST I-II, q. 26, q. 29, q. 30, q. 31, q. 35, q. 40, q. 41, q. 45, and q. 46), and again when considering moral virtues in the sensitive appetites (ST I-II, q. 59). It is interesting to watch my students struggle with the elements of the definition in question 22, and then display cool mastery of the same material by question 59. In other words, I watch this pedagogical technique succeed year after year. When examining Aquinas’ use of “modulating repetition,” it is important to take note of the fact that at times, Aquinas changes his positions, even radically so, as he proceeds through the Summa. One such example is his estimation of the Isaian Gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the 4th Appendix to Volume 28 of the Gilby Summa (I-II, qq. 6870), Gilby explains the development of Aquinas’ thinking on how the Gifts of the Holy Spirit aid Christians in responding generously to God’s call. Gilby shows that the evolution of Thomas’ thinking on this matter continued during his dictation of the Summa Theologiae, as evidenced by his shift from assigning the Gifts to functions of the rational soul in ST I-II to particular Theological and Cardinal virtues in ST II-II.30 Thomas’ willingness to alter both his presentation of these Gifts and his account of the way in which the Holy Spirit works through them demonstrates his humility and commitment to seek the truth always. His willingness to not hide the development of his thought by doubling back to edit I-II question 68 allows readers of the work to see that the author may be mistaken and change his mind on this or that point. This invites the reader to imitate Thomas’ humble quest for the truth rather than idolize his “current theory” at the time when the Summa was composed.

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Refuting Error The quaestio format, with its objections and replies, ensconces “refutation of error” on every page of the Summa. Mongeau explains that Thomas considered “errors a live option for Christians in the present,” which made refutation of them an important pastoral challenge. We may also recall that Thomas was only one generation removed from the founding of the Dominican Order, which was established for the purpose of combatting the Albigensian heresy. In addition, the posthumous condemnation of several Thomistic positions in the 13th century highlights the fact that Thomas was heavily engaged in the dialectical refinement of theology that characterized the scholastic era. Pedagogically, as Thomas identifies common pitfalls and sidetracks, he equips readers of the Summa Theologiae with examples and skills to respond to these and other difficulties when they encounter them in pastoral ministry.

Narrative-Scriptural Order Aquinas adds to this collection of pedagogical tools periodic departures from the order of logical consideration in light of a narrativeScriptural order. To identify a few examples of this organizational tool, we can look to I-II, question 84 on “Sins that cause other sins” and II-II, question 175 on Rapture. In the first case, Aquinas asks whether covetousness is the root of all sin (a. 1), and in the next article, whether pride is the beginning of every sin. The sed contra in each article points to seemingly opposed Scriptural affirmations about which of these sins is “the first vice” in the path of moral degradation. Thomas explains the two vices in such a way that he can affirm with logical coherence the way in which money makes it possible to commit many sins, and disordered selflove undergirds any departure from God’s design for human happiness. After these more exegetical reflections, Thomas turns to Gregory’s list of “capital sins,” and conducts linguistic and logical analyses of the explanation Gregory gave of some sins leading to specific other sins. Another example may be found in II-II, question 175. After two articles of logical analysis of rapture, or “being drawn by God out of your bodily senses,” Thomas gets caught up for the remainder of the question explaining St. Paul’s famous experience of being “rapt to third heaven,” recorded in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.

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Arguments From Fittingness Mongeau explains that arguments from fittingness express the rationes Dei embodied in historical events…they correspond to the concrete intelligibility whereby things, in God’s wisdom, explain other things.31

Pointing to the work of Gilbert Narcisse, Mongeau affirms in addition that such arguments are “not merely descriptive, but are ways of expressing the aesthetic-dramatic intelligibility of the relations between certain mysteries.”32 Among these and other benefits, Thomas’ reliance on fittingness arguments for important matters such as, the resurrection of the body,33 curbs tendencies towards over-reliance on reason and thereby offers a kind of regular intellectual formation in humility and the virtue of studiousness. Although we are only beginning to analyze Thomas’ rhetorical tools in the Summa, evaluation of his methods must also include observation of the data available on students’ concrete experience and the results of reading the Summa as Thomas wrote it.

Data from Course Evaluations and Other Testimonials The course evaluations for the Summa courses since 2005 are all very good. On a 5-point scale, the average composite score is 4.6, with a high of 4.9. Remarkably, the student evaluations are higher, and the comments more glowing for the second semester, where we read 189 questions instead of the paltry 114 required in the Fall term. In their anonymous comments students have written: This was the best course I have ever taken. I took it for no other reason than to learn from the Angelic Doctor and to see if it would help my reading and understanding especially of Moral Theology. The course has made me a better student and a better person in general as now I feel much more confident. I never thought of myself as a person capable of doing something like this until I tried and stuck with this course.

One student shared with the class that studying the Summa for a year had changed the way he thought, the way he prayed, the way he taught, and that he would continue to mine the text for years to come. Another student, who was famous at the Mount for his ability to artfully avoid expending his full effort in any endeavor, was required to

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take the first semester course for an MA degree that his diocese asked him to attempt. At the end of the semester, he shared with the class that the most enduring fruits of his participation in the course were the lessons in self-discipline, perseverance, and confidence he gained from completing this arduous task. He voluntarily took the second semester course. About six months after his Ordination, this former-student shared with me that what he learned from reading the Secunda Pars helped him every time he heard confessions, and that he started a program with his pastor to make Confession available on nearly every day of the week. Other alumni have volunteered their appreciation for these courses after Ordination, and the pastoral usefulness of the knowledge they gained through reading the Summa.

Data from Alumni Survey In preparation for this presentation, I composed and distributed a 31question online survey to 79 students who have completed these courses since 2005. I received 48 anonymous submissions, which at 61% returned, is, at least for the Mount, an excellent rate of reply to any request for alumni participation. The survey was organized around the four pillars of formation named in the US Bishops’ Program for Priestly Formation: human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral. The questions included opportunities for students to comment in their own words about the impact these courses had on them in each of these pillars. On the whole, the responses to the survey were overwhelmingly positive. Given the fact that 16 of the respondents have not graduated yet from the seminary, 29 of 32 respondents who could possibly hear Confessions reported that they use the knowledge they gained in the Summa courses in the confessional “every time” or “sometimes.” Only 8% of respondents said that they never use the knowledge they gained in the Summa courses when they preach. Only 2% (1 student) said that he never uses this knowledge when he teaches, compared with 65% of alumni, who use this knowledge in their teaching “often.” In the intellectual dimension, 90% of alumni found the Summa courses were “extremely useful” or “very useful” in understanding the thought of Aquinas, and 83% found these Summa courses “extremely useful” or “very useful” for helping them in other courses at the seminary. 92% claimed that based on the knowledge they gained in these Summa courses, they feel very comfortable (44%) or mostly comfortable (48%) teaching and preaching on the Christian moral life.

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Relating to human formation, 94% of alumni reported that the courses had a positive effect on their personal discipline, while none claimed a negative effect in this area. 79% of students claimed that the courses had a positive effect on their time management, with only 1 reporting that reading 60% of the Summa in 27 school weeks had a negative effect on their time management. 88% claimed a positive effect on their sense of accomplishment, with none claiming a negative effect. 94% of students claimed that these courses had a positive effect on their spiritual lives. Alumni were asked at the conclusion of the sections about each pillar whether they would recommend these courses to current seminarians. Under intellectual and pastoral formation, only 4% (2/48) answered “no.” Under spiritual formation, 6% (3/48) said “no,” but under human formation, only 1 respondent (2%) said they would not recommend the courses. When given the opportunity for free responses, there were a few negative comments about the “read everything” method, but almost all were very positive. Their responses showed that they appreciated the study habits, spiritual insights, pastoral and intellectual tools that reading the Summa straight through helped them attain.

Conclusion Quoting Thomas’ teacher, St. Albert the Great, Chesterton trumpeted Aquinas as the “Dumb Ox who bellowed down the centuries” in his patient, plodding, yet whole-hearted quest for truth in service to Christ, the Church, and Western civilization.34 In a way confirming this characterization, Art Bennett selected Aquinas as the model-saint for people with a “Phlegmatic” personality.35 While they do not move quickly, once a phlegmatic has committed himself, he is unmatched in perseverance. Reading the Summa the way Thomas wrote it has afforded many benefits to students at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary over the past 40 years, as demonstrated by the sample provided here. Although I have not always taught Thomas this way, the core value of this method is that it compels busy 21st-century, multi-tasking, smartphone users to give their attention to a humble, patient genius, as he guides, teaches, and forms his readers step by step in a holistic way.

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Notes 1

Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., St. Thomas Aquinas Vol. II: Spiritual Master, trans. by Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 21. 2 Ibid. 3 Gilles Mongeau, S.J., Embracing Wisdom: The Summa Theologiae as a Christoform Pedagogy of Spiritual Exercises (ThD. Diss, Regis College and the University of Toronto, 2003), 56. 4 Roy DeFerrari, A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1986), 538. 5 DeFerrari, A Latin-English Dictionary, 1046. 6 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prologue. 7 Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 58-67. 8 Ibid., 64. 9 ST I, q. 1, a. 4. 10 S. Pinckaers, "Recherche de la signification veritable du terme ‘speculatif," Nouvelle Revue Theologique LXXXI, no. 7 (July-August 1959): 693, as cited in Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 66, with a translation of the French quotation. 11 Jean-Pierre Torrell, "Le savoir theologique chez saint Thomas," Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 369, as cited in Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 66. 12 ST I-II, q. 3, a. 4. 13 ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad. 3. 14 ST I, q. 1, a. 6. 15 ST I, q. 1, a. 6. 16 In I-II, q.57, a.2, Thomas delineates three intellectual virtues of the speculative intellect: understanding, wisdom (sapientia), and scientia, which is often translated, as “knowledge.” For Thomas, understanding (intellectus) is the habit by which we know principles. Wisdom is that habit by which we consider the highest causes “wherefore it rightly judges all things and sets them in order.” Thomas defines scientia/knowledge in this article as the habit by which we consider “that which is last in this or that genus of knowable matter.” The distinction of wisdom and scientia in this way refines Thomas’ treatment of the topic which we saw in I q1 a6. In the earlier reference, Thomas explained that the common use of a “wisdom” or “wise” for craftsmen like architects pointed to the fact that, in building, the architect perceives the principles of construction, and so directs all those who contribute to the erection of the edifice. On this consideration, sacra doctrina is “the highest and best of all wisdom; it is wisdom simply put.” In I-II, q.57, a.2, Thomas concludes his corpus with the affirmation, “there is but one wisdom…because there can be no perfect and universal judgment that is not based on the first causes.” The earlier treatment acknowledged and explained common usage of “wise” and “wisdom,” while the reprise in I-II purified the readers’ conception of the reality based on the definition already established, and offered an alternative term for the common usage of “wisdom” that does not properly fit the nature of that intellectual virtue. In II-II, q. 45, Thomas represents the “wise architect” example he has used in I, q. 1, a. 6 in order to distinguish infused

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wisdom obtained through the Gift of the Holy Spirit from the insight gained through human effort. Cf. I-II, q. 93, a. 1, where Thomas describes Eternal Law as “the type of Divine wisdom as directing all actions and movements,” and refers to the fact that Divine wisdom as creating is “art, exemplar, or idea,” referring to I, q.14, a. 8. 17 ST II-II, q. 45, a. 3. 18 ST II-II, q. 45, a. 2; ST II-II, 45, a. 3, ad. 1. Cf. Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics; Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 28-34. Levering differs from my reading of Aquinas at a few points, but he is tracing the same collection of texts and finding similar insights about wisdom in the Summa Theologiae. 19 Geffre makes this comment in a footnote at the bottom of page 159 of the first volume of the 1984 French translation of the Summa, reprinted in 1999. See Thomas Aquinas, Somme Theologique (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1984), 159, as quoted in Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 67. 20 ST I, q. 1, a. 4. 21 ST I-II, q. 62, a. 4. 22 Mina M. Ofilada, "The Role of the Teacher as a Condescending Mediator as Viewed from Aquinas Notion of Sacra Doctrina and Its Bearing on the Nature of the Theological Enterprise," Angelicum 77 (2000): 393, as cited in Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 69. 23 Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 70. Mongeau cites the following works of Emery and Burrell, respectively: Grilles Emery, "Le traite de saint Thomas sur la trinite dans la Somme contre les gentils," Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 5-40; and, David Burrell, Exercises in Religious Understanding (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974). 24 Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 34-46. In St. Thomas, see ST I, qq. 2-46. 25 Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 78. 26 Ibid., 78. 27 Ibid., 77. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas’ Prologue SCG. 28 Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 77. 29 Ibid., 78. 30 Thomas Gilby, Appendix 4 to Summa Theologiae, Vol. 28, I-II, q. 68-70, ed. by Thomas Gilby, trans. by Ed O’Connor (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1974), 130. Thomas explains in II-II, q. 141, a. 1, ad. 3 that the Gift of Fear of the Lord corresponds to Temperance according to its “secondary object” of whatever a man shuns in order to avoid offending God,” but that this Gift corresponds primarily to the virtue of Hope according to its “principal object,” which is God. 31 Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 68-69. 32 Ibid., 68, summarizing Gilbert Narcisse’s accomplishment in his book, Les raisons de Dieu: arguments de convenance et esthetique theologique selon saint Thomas d ’Aquin et Hans Urs von Balthasar (Fribourg, Suisse: Presses Universitaires de Fribourg, 1997).

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ST I-II, q. 4, a. 5. G. K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox” (New York: Image Books Doubleday, 1956). See particularly pages 69-71, where Chesterton quotes Saint Albert for the titular phrase of the book. 35 Art and Laraine Bennett, The Temperament God Gave You (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2005), 245-247.

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AQUINAS AND THE PLACE OF HUMANITY IN THE COSMOS TOM MCLAUGHLIN

For St. Thomas Aquinas, the universe is fundamentally theocentric. God is the ultimate end of all creatures and of the universe regarded as a whole.1 However, within the created order, human beings have a special place, for according to Aquinas, man is at the summit of the natural order.2 The whole physical universe is ordered toward man as its end. However, the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent progress of science have been widely interpreted as showing that humankind has no special status or importance in the universe. On this interpretation, human beings are cosmically insignificant. This paper argues for a contrary view. When seen against the background of Aristotle’s cosmology, the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent progress of science have tended to support Aquinas’ claim. I shall begin with a discussion of Aristotle’s cosmology and the difficulties it poses for the view that the physical universe is ordered toward man as its end. After describing Aquinas’ treatment of these difficulties, I then argue that the Copernican Revolution removed them and tended to support Aquinas’ claim. Developments in the sciences since that time have also tended to show that what Aquinas regarded as a hierarchical order of natures leading to man is also a chronological order. This development, it will be argued, further strengthens Aquinas’ view. Finally, more recent discoveries concerning what is called the anthropic principle also support Aquinas’ claim. One implication of my overall argument is that the modern view of man’s insignificance in the cosmos is a philosophical position and not a scientific discovery.

Aristotle’s Cosmology I begin by arguing that Aristotle’s cosmology located human beings in a place that did not treat them as the summit of the physical universe. In Aristotle’s cosmology, the universe is finite and spherical. It is divided

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into two very different regions, the inner and relatively small sublunar region and the very much larger outer celestial region. The center of the universe is absolute down, the bottom so to speak, and the extremity of the universe, the outermost sphere, is absolute up, the highest part of the cosmos. The sublunar region is the realm of heavy and light things and of all the different kinds of change. It consists of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, and any bodies composed of them. Each of the elements tends toward its own specific place. The element earth naturally tends toward the center of the universe, and the other three elements, water, air, and fire naturally tend toward spherical regions above earth and at increasing distances from the center. The celestial region consists of a series of causally interlocking nested spheres extending outward and upward from the Moon to the outermost sphere, which for Aristotle is the sphere of the fixed stars.3 The celestial spheres were thought to be made of aether. Aether is eternal and perfect. Aristotle held that, in some sense, it is divine.4 It is neither heavy nor light.5 The aether is ingenerable, incorruptible, inalterable, and not subject to growth or diminution.6 Thus, the only kind of change to which the celestial spheres are subject is local motion. More specifically, the celestial spheres are subject to circular motion alone, and this motion, according to Aristotle, is perfect and everlasting.7 In this cosmology, the center and the extremes of the universe establish a natural order of places that corresponds to an order of natures. This order of natures is also an order of value, importance, nobility, and degree of perfection. Consequently, both with respect to position and value, the center is the lowest part of the cosmos and the outermost celestial sphere is the highest part.8 Thus, contrary to the commonly held view, the least important part of Aristotle’s universe is the center, the location that is the natural place of the element earth. The most important parts of the universe, those with the greatest value and nobility are the aetheral spheres, especially the outermost sphere. Human beings, dwelling as we do on the surface of the earth, occupy a relatively lowly place in Aristotle’s cosmos. We might say that humans are of the greatest worth among the beings of the sublunar region, the region that is subject to all the different kinds of change, but that is a relatively small and less important part of the Aristotelian universe. Furthermore, on Aristotle’s account, the celestial spheres themselves, or more properly, the stars and planets embedded in them, are animated and intelligent. In the De Caelo, Aristotle writes, The fact is we are inclined to think of the stars as mere bodies or units, occurring in a certain order but completely lifeless; whereas we ought to

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The unmoved movers move the stars and the planets as a final cause. As a final cause, an unmoved mover is an object of love, and the spheres move through desiring and contemplating their corresponding unmoved mover.10 Thus, the stars and the planets have thought and desire.11 Consequently, they are intelligent. According to the Aristotelian scholar Sir W.D. Ross, Aristotle when he wrote the De Caelo explained the movements of the heavenly bodies by the action of immanent souls or powers of initiating movement.12

The celestial bodies do not, however, have sensory awareness and, thus, are not animals, although Aristotle does make an analogy comparing them to animals and plants.13 Aristotle seems to envision a level in the scale of being that is between human beings and purely immaterial beings inasmuch as it is intelligent, immortal, lacks the specifically animal and vegetative powers of sensation, growth, nutrition, and reproduction but is nevertheless embodied and in local motion. Such beings are inferior to purely immaterial beings but superior to humans. By their everlasting circular motions, the celestial bodies are efficient causes of the eternal cycles of coming to be and passing away in the sublunar region.14 As Aristotle writes, “Man is begotten by man and by the sun as well.”15 With regard to the sublunar region, the final cause or goal of the spheres’ motions presents a problem. The spheres’ motions cannot be for the sake of the generation and corruption of sublunar bodies, for it is a principle of Aristotelian philosophy that the action of a more noble agent can not be for the sake of a less noble end since the end specifies the means. The goal cannot be for the sake of motion itself, for it is also a principle of Aristotelian philosophy that motion cannot itself be an end or goal. For Aristotle, the goal of the celestial spheres’ motions is imitating the causality of the unmoved mover. Thus, by causing generation and corruption in the sublunar region, the celestial bodies imitate God, and this is the goal of their everlasting motions. Further, the celestial bodies themselves are final causes of change in the sublunar region. According to Aristotle, “all movements must be for the sake of the stars…the end of every movement will be one of the divine bodies which move through the heaven.”16 In sum, human beings, though the greatest of all things mortal, are located far beneath the embodied intelligences of the celestial spheres, and these embodied intelligences do not move for our sake. In Aristotle’s

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cosmos, they are immortal, and they are both literally and figuratively at the summit of the physical order.

Aquinas’ Aristotelian Cosmology Aquinas, of course, retained most of Aristotle’s cosmology. However, in defending the claim that human beings are the summit of the physical universe, Aquinas not only reconceived the Aristotelian universe in fundamental ways but also introduced a considerable awkwardness and incongruity into Aristotle’s cosmology. Unlike Aristotle, Aquinas held that the whole physical cosmos, both the celestial and the sublunar regions, is ordered toward the generation of human beings: [T]he ultimate end of the whole process of generation is the human soul, and matter tends toward it as toward an ultimate form…. Therefore, man is the end of the whole order of generation…. So, if the motion of the heavens is ordered to generation, and if the whole of generation is ordered to man as a last end within this genus, it is clear that the end of celestial motion is ordered to man as toward an ultimate end in the genus of generable and mobile beings.17

The key claim here that distinguishes Aquinas from Aristotle is the claim that the celestial motions and not merely the sublunar motions are ordered toward man. At the end of Aquinas’ argument, which I have not included in my discussion, he quotes a passage from Deuteronomy 4:19 to make the same point. He says “that God made the celestial bodies, ‘for the service of all peoples.’”18 Therefore, all nature is ordered toward human beings as a final cause whereas human beings are not ordered to anything in nature as their final cause. However, nature is ordered toward an end that it cannot achieve on its own, for on Aquinas’ view, the human soul is spiritual, and, thus, it cannot be generated by nature but must be directly created by God. The human soul, though, is only a part of the whole human person. In and by itself, the human soul is incomplete. It is made to be united with matter as a formal cause. Consequently, for Aquinas, the goal of nature, its highest attainment, is something for which it is most intimately suited but which surpasses it. Furthermore, according to Aquinas, since the motions of the celestial spheres are ordered toward the generation of human beings, upon the completion of a specific number of human beings, the number of the elect,

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the motions of the celestial spheres will cease. The spheres, having achieved their end, rest.19 That the motion of the celestial heavens will cease, Aquinas maintains, is a matter of faith. Reason cannot demonstrate it.20 Nevertheless, Aquinas argues by reason that his view is more probable than the alternative view that the goal of the celestial motion is likeness to God in operating as a cause.21 The point I wish to emphasize is that in contrast with Aristotle’s cosmology, the motions of the celestial spheres are ordered toward human beings. As an aside, various thinkers, such as the biologist Ernst Mayr, have said that evolution shows that species are not everlasting and that this is a problem for Aristotelianism because Aristotle held that the species of things are everlasting.22 However, on Aquinas’ view, when the motions of the celestial spheres stop, animals, plants, and minerals—indeed all mixed bodies except for human bodies—will cease to exist. Only human beings, the celestial spheres, and the elements will remain. It would be the greatest mass extinction in history. This shows that for Aquinas biological species are not everlasting. Even after being created, most of the different kinds of things are not meant to last forever but only until their temporally finite goal is achieved. Thus, Aquinas’ view, in a way, is more compatible with a modern scientific understanding that almost all of the species that have ever lived on the Earth have gone extinct23 and eventually all species on Earth will go extinct. Aquinas would be much less troubled by the extinction of the dinosaurs than would Aristotle. In addition, Aquinas does not accept Aristotle’s view that the celestial spheres are living, intelligent beings. Rather, Aquinas maintains that the spheres are inanimate and are moved by separated, incorporeal intelligences, what we might popularly call angels. The spheres’ dignity is thereby lessened. As Aquinas notes in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo, a greater dignity accrues to the heaven if it is considered moved by a conjoined spiritual substance. This last consideration led Plato and Aristotle to posit an animated heaven.24

Thus, since human beings have spiritual souls and the spheres do not, human beings now have greater dignity than the celestial spheres. With regard to worth and dignity, the celestial spheres have been lowered and brought below human beings, and human beings have been elevated above the celestial heavens. Therefore, there is no difficulty in maintaining that the spheres are ordered toward the generation of human beings as their end and that they come to rest when that end is attained.25

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However, Aquinas’ claims do not fit very well within Aristotle’s cosmology. Though not resulting in a logical contradiction, Aquinas’ claims are inharmonious with a cosmology in which a hierarchy of value and worth directly follows a hierarchical order of place. The highest places in the Aristotelian cosmos are no longer the place of the highest being in that cosmos. The highest beings are located in the lowly sublunar region. Compared to Aristotle’s cosmos, in at least three ways, Aquinas’ suffers from considerable dissonance and tension. First, Aquinas’ cosmos places the creature that is at the summit of the natural order near the bottom of that order. Second, Aquinas unites the sublunar and celestial regions by subordinating them to human being. Third, the motions of the heavenly bodies have human beings as their end. Oliva Blanchette, in a book entitled The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas, makes this point while summarizing the changes that Aquinas makes to Aristotle’s conception of the celestial spheres: Because St. Thomas did not think that the heavenly bodies were animated, it was easy for him to think of human being as more noble than the heavens and hence as the end intended in the heavenly motions. But Aristotle thought of the heavenly bodies as somehow animated, and indeed by an intelligence superior to that of human being; this made it practically impossible for him to consider seriously an idea such as that of Saint Thomas, supposing that such an idea even occurred to him. For Saint Thomas, the intelligence that moved the heavenly body was superior to human being, but it was a separated intelligence and did not enter into the constitution of the heavenly body as its soul. There was implicit in his position a clearer value or a greater nobility attached to the human person than in that of the philosopher. Thus St. Thomas tended to make the ancient cosmos strain at the seams by placing the human being clearly at its summit and somehow above it.26

I will now argue that the strain and dissonance that Aquinas introduced into Aristotelian cosmology is alleviated by the Copernican Revolution in a way that does not undermine Aquinas’ view of the human person as at the summit of the natural order.

The Copernican Revolution The Copernican Revolution and the development of Newtonian physics removed the tension and disharmony that Aquinas had introduced into Aristotelian cosmology by overcoming the Aristotelian division between the celestial and sublunar realms and formulating a different

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conception of the unity of the cosmos. Newton and Copernicus are usually given credit for overcoming the Aristotelian division of the universe into two distinct realms: Newton since his three laws of motion and universal law of gravitation were the first successful attempt to treat the celestial and terrestrial realms under one common set of specific physical laws; Copernicus since, by treating the Earth as a planet and in formulating his Sun-centered theory, he produced a roughly coherent and unified astronomical system that abandons Aristotle’s fundamental distinction between the celestial and the sublunar realms. As a consequence of these scientific developments, the highest beings in the cosmos—human beings—were no longer thought to be located in the lowly sublunar region. And, of course, the planets and other celestial bodies were no longer viewed as ensouled, intelligent, and ordered toward goals superior to human nature. The new cosmology was at least consistent with Aquinas’ view of the dignity and purpose of human beings in the universe and with his broad view that the celestial and terrestrial orders were subordinated and ordered to human beings. Although the Copernican Revolution has been widely interpreted as showing that humankind has no special status or importance in the universe, the key figures of that revolution held the opposite view. Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, viewed the change from an Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology to a Copernican cosmology as elevating the status of human beings. This point has been made by a number of different scholars, such as A.O. Lovejoy, Michael Polanyi, Rémi Brague,27 and Dennis Danielson. Danielson, a professor of English at the University of British Columbia, argued in The American Journal of Physics that Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler thought that the new heliocentric cosmology exalted the position of the Earth and its human inhabitants.28 Copernicus, in the dedication of his famous work to Pope Paul III, explained his motivations for developing and publishing his astronomical system: For a long time, then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe’s spheres. I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers....29

Copernicus is, of course, remarking primarily upon the incoherence of the existing astronomical systems. Nevertheless, he understood the universe as created for the sake of human beings.

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One difficulty that Copernicus faced was that his astronomical system seemingly demoted the Sun. Cardinal Nicholas Schönberg expresses this point in a letter encouraging Copernicus to publish his astronomical system. Copernicus included the letter in the front matter of On the Revolutions. Schönberg writes, “you maintain … that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe.”30 Copernicus himself responded to the apparent demotion of the Sun by arguing for a revaluation of the central position as that from which the Sun most effectively carries out its role as a governing, illuminating, and generating body. In his famous “Hymn of the Sun,” he writes, At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. [Hermes] the Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles’ Electra, the allseeing. Thus indeed, as though seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving around it. Moreover, the earth is not deprived of the moon’s attendance. On the contrary, as Aristotle says in a work on animals, the moon has the closest kinship with the earth. Meanwhile the earth has intercourse with the sun, and is impregnated for its yearly parturition.31

The success of Copernicus’ argument is apparent in the fact that we still refer to our little part of the universe as the “Solar System.” Further, if the “Hymn of the Sun” is taken with Copernicus’ previously quoted passage from the dedication to Pope Paul III, then he views the activity of the Sun as primarily “for our sake,” a view which Aquinas maintained. Galileo, in a famous passage in The Starry Messenger, quite clearly asserts that heliocentrism elevates the Earth: Let these few remarks suffice us here concerning this matter, which will be more fully treated in our System of the world. In that book, by a multitude of arguments and experiences, the solar reflection from the earth will be shown to be quite real—against those who argue that the earth must be excluded from the dancing whirl of stars for the specific reason that it is devoid of motion and of light. We shall prove the earth to be a wandering body surpassing the moon in splendor, and not the sink of all dull refuse of the universe.32

Galileo repeats this claim in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. In the Dialogue, Salviati states

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Tom McLaughlin As for the earth, we seek … to ennoble and perfect it when we strive to make it like the celestial bodies, and, as it were, place it in heaven, from whence your philosophers have banished it.33

The philosophers referred to in this quote are mostly Aristotelians. Kepler made perhaps one of the most insightful comments by explicitly breaking with the Aristotelian conception of a hierarchy of value and dignity that directly follows a hierarchical order of place. The relation of value and dignity to place is not so straightforward. According to Kepler, [A]s I said in the Optics, in the interests of that contemplation for which man was created, and adorned and equipped with eyes, he could not remain at rest in the center. On the contrary, he must make an annual journey on this boat, which is our earth, to perform his observations.… After the sun, however, there is no globe nobler or more suitable for man than the earth. For, in the first place, it is exactly in the middle of the principle globes.… Above it are Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Within the embrace of its orbit run Venus and Mercury, while at the center the sun rotates, instigator of all the motions….34

Danielson, in commenting on this passage, remarks that This is clearly a complete reconceptualization of what it means to be in the center. To exercise or actualize their divine image properly, humans must be able to observe the universe from a “central” but dynamic and changing point of view conveniently provided by what Kepler sees as this optimally placed orbiting space station of ours. And for him, therefore, only with the abolition of geocentrism may we truly say that we occupy the best, most privileged place in the universe.35

Kepler’s general line of argument, with its rethinking of the connection between place and worthiness, has been taken up in a contemporary context in works such as The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards.36 Gonzalez and Richards argue, for instance, that the Earth’s position in the galaxy and the kind of galaxy in which the Earth is located are the best for doing astronomy.37 Here I would like to make a specifically Thomistic point, for what Kepler and his modern counterparts say fits very well with Aquinas’ view on one way in which human beings contribute to the perfection of the universe. For Aquinas, human beings are a kind of boundary creature that unites both the physical and spiritual realms of creation. As Blanchette explains, in knowing the physical order, human beings contribute both to

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their own perfection and to that of the rest of the universe. Indeed, without intelligent beings to know the universe, it would be radically imperfect.38 Even some modern scientists implicitly recognize the truth of this claim. The astronomer Carl Sagan remarked with wonder and admiration that “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”39 If we discount the evolutionary naturalism of his explanation of human intelligence, Sagan expresses an insight that Aquinas and others recognized long ago.

After Newton Rather than pursue this discussion further, I’d like to take up a different line of argument. According to Aquinas, matter has an ordination toward the highest and most complete kind of actuality that it can attain. The highest and most complete kind of actuality that matter can attain is the intellectual soul, the kind of soul possessed by human beings. Aquinas himself thought that human beings were the only kind of being that possessed such a soul, though he did not seem to think such a claim was demonstrable.40 One argument that Aquinas makes for the claim that matter has an ordination toward the intellectual soul as the highest actuality it can attain is from gradations in the things of nature. The different hierarchically ordered grades to which Aquinas refers are prime matter, the elements, mixed bodies, vegetation, animals, and humans. The lower grades are in potency to the higher and the higher are actualizations of a proximate potency in the lower. In Aquinas’ words, [P]rime matter is in potency, first of all, to the form of an element. When it is existing under the form of an element it is in potency to the form of a mixed body; that is why the elements are matter for the mixed body. Considered under the form of a mixed body, it is in potency to a vegetative soul, for this sort of soul is the act of a body. In turn, the vegetative soul is in potency to a sensitive soul, and a sensitive one to an intellectual one.41

The philosopher Hans Jonas observes that in Aristotelian cosmology this order of nature is static whereas on modern scientific views, this order is dynamic and itself requires generation: Aristotle read this hierarchy in the given record in the organic realm with no resort to evolution, and his De anima is the first treatise in philosophical biology. The terms on which his august example may be resumed in our time will be different from his, but the idea of stratification, of the

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Tom McLaughlin progressive superposition of levels, with the dependence of each higher on the lower, the retention of all the lower in the higher, will still be found indispensable.42

In a phrase to which I shall frequently return, Jonas remarks that “the evolutionary ‘later’ largely coincides with the Aristotelian ‘higher.’”43 Jonas is speaking of the biological realm but on the modern understanding the order of stratification is present in the inanimate as well. Subatomic and atomic particles were generated in the early moments of the Big Bang, most of the elements heavier than hydrogen and helium have been generated later in stars, and from them various compounds, and many other kinds of inanimate bodies have also been generated. Indeed, as the universe expands, new kinds of things come to be as time goes on. A qualification is necessary here. The generation of new kinds of animate and inanimate things over time is not only a movement from lower to higher but also involves, so to speak, a horizontal spreading out or, to continue the geometrical metaphor, a movement at an angle. Not only do new levels, higher kinds of things, come to be, but also new kinds of things come to be on each of the levels.44 Also, for the most part, animals do not seem to have come after plants. Rather, plants and animals seem to have co-evolved. And, some entire lineages of evolution have gone extinct. In addition, perhaps, some things such as dark energy do not fit neatly into a stratified hierarchy and must be treated somewhat in the way in which Aquinas treats the aether.45 In any case, Jonas’ remark that “the evolutionary ‘later’ largely coincides with the Aristotelian ‘higher’” is roughly true and may be extended beyond biological evolution to the whole universe. On the modern account, the graded order of natures has not always existed nor was it created altogether in some kind of beginning. It was generated sequentially over time, beginning at the Big Bang, and, for living things on Earth, from a common ancestor. Aquinas’ general philosophical principles suggest that this sequential generation of the various grades of nature better shows that nature is ordered toward the generation of creatures such as ourselves, intelligent and animal. A universe in which the various gradations of nature are not made all at once but are generated in temporal succession from a common origin more plainly manifests the goal of nature. The goal of nature, the generation of animals with an intellectual soul, is made easier for us to recognize because nature has reached it by a kind of movement or climb. Thomists sometimes compare Aquinas’ Fifth Way, the teleological argument for proving the existence of God, to certain kinds of design arguments that start from the order or arrangement of things. The Fifth Way, by contrast, starts with action, beginning with the claim that some

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things that lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end. Thomists usually claim that as far as our recognition goes action better manifests teleology than does arrangement. That a watch is for the sake of telling time is more evident to us from observing its operation than by examining a static arrangement of its parts. My point is not that the generation of animals with intellectual souls is obviously the goal of the universe nor do I intend to take up the question of what is meant by higher and lower grades of things. My point is that, given stratified grades of being, the goal of nature is more manifest to us in a universe in which the gradations are generated successively in time, that is, a universe in which “the evolutionary ‘later’ largely coincides with the Aristotelian ‘higher.’” Aquinas makes a related point in commenting on the creation account in Genesis and explaining why man is created last among the animals: It could also be said that the way of generation goes from the less perfect to the more perfect according to an order such that the less perfect are produced prior to the order of nature. For in the way of generation the more perfect something is and the more it is like the agent cause, the more posterior it is in time, even though it is prior in nature and dignity. Hence, because man is the most perfect of animals, it was necessary that he come to be last among the animals, and not immediately after the heavenly bodies, which are not ordered along with the lower bodies according to the way of generation, since they do not communicate in matter with them, but have matter of another kind.46

The basic claim Aquinas makes about the way of generation, that the more perfect are produced posterior in time, characterizes the modern understanding of the universe. Consequently, given stratified grades of nature, modern science has discovered an order of generation toward embodied intelligence. The universe, so understood, shows us the order of nature to human beings better than did Aristotelian cosmology precisely because the grades of nature are generated from less to more perfect, and so, their end is more manifest.

The Anthropic Principle Recent discoveries concerning what is called the anthropic principle further support Aquinas’ claim that the whole physical universe is ordered toward man as its end. The anthropic principle has various meanings. Here, I will use it to refer to the discovery that some aspects of the laws of

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physics both in themselves and with respect to each other are fine-tuned in such a way as to make life in the universe possible. If the values for these physical principles, such as the strength of the strong nuclear force or the relative strengths of the strong nuclear and electromagnetic forces or the masses of the proton and the electron, were altered by a few percent either way, then life as we know it would not have arisen in the universe. Many striking and very different instances of the anthropic principle have been discovered.47 Usually, the anthropic principle is spoken of with respect to physics, but instances in astronomy, such as the frequency and proximity of supernova and the very size and age of the universe, have also been identified. Various authors have also argued for the extension of anthropic thinking into chemistry and biology. They note, for example, the extraordinary suitability of carbon and water for life, and the extraordinary fitness of DNA and proteins for life. Similar arguments have been made for the extension of the anthropic principle to specifically intelligent life.48 The many striking and diverse instances of the anthropic principle suggest that the universe is finely tuned for the generation and emergence of life, perhaps even intelligent life.49 Anthropic thinking is most frequently used to argue for the existence of God. The most common response to such an argument involves postulating multiple universes, either a very great many or an infinity of universes. I do not wish to enter this debate as such. My point is much simpler. No such anthropic fine-tuning was known in Aquinas’ day, and Aristotle’s cosmos contained no such extraordinary specificity and precise determination. Yet, if what many scientists claim about anthropic phenomena is true, such phenomena fit very well within Aquinas’ arguments for the claim that the physical universe is ordered toward man as its end. Viewed from within the context of Aquinas’ broad philosophy, the anthropic principle as I’ve used it here supports and strengthens his claim that man is the summit of nature.

Humanity and the Theory of Evolution In addition to the change from geocentrism to heliocentrism, the Theory of Evolution is often used to argue that humanity is insignificant and that the universe is not ordered toward the generation of human beings. The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould famously argued that if the history of evolution could be replayed, the outcome and the

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course of events would be entirely different. We should not expect to see anything like human beings: The modern order was not guaranteed by basic laws (natural selection, mechanical superiority in anatomical design), or even by lower-level generalities of ecology or evolutionary theory. The modern order is largely a product of contingency…. [A]ny replay, altered by an apparently insignificant jot or tittle at the outset, would have yielded an equally sensible and resolvable outcome of entirely different form…. Replay the tape a million times from a Burgess beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again.50

Evolution, on Gould’s view, is dominated by contingency and lacks direction. It is unpredictable and certainly not ordered toward the generation of human beings: Darwin’s revolution will be completed when we … own the plain implications of evolution for life’s non predictable non directionality—and when we take Darwinian topology seriously, recognizing that Homo sapiens…is a tiny twig, born just yesterday on an enormously arborescent tree of life that would never produce the same set of branches if regrown from seed.51

Human beings, on this account, are an insignificant chance twig on the great tree of life. On the other hand, in contrast to Gould, Simon Conway Morris argues that evolution, though involving contingencies, is law-like and characterized by convergences toward general biological properties.52 On Morris’ account, humans, or intelligent life similar to us, are an inevitable outcome of evolution but are unlikely to occur elsewhere in the universe because the right astronomical conditions for it are rare. Thus, the title of his book, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. With respect to the opposite views of these two preeminent paleontologists, many other evolutionary biologists, such as John Maynard Smith53 and Richard Lewontin,54 hold intermediate views. Quite clearly, given these diverse views, we are not dealing with settled science. We should keep in mind St. John Paul II’s admonition that we speak of evolution in the plural, of Theories of Evolution. The different theories of evolution are differentiated by the different natural philosophies upon which they draw and by the different mechanisms of evolution that they posit.55 Both kinds of distinguishing principles are involved in the Gould/Morris controversy. We should also keep in mind John Paul II’s further claim that

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Tom McLaughlin the elaboration of a theory such as that of evolution, while obedient to the need for consistency with the observed data, must also involve importing some ideas from the philosophy of nature.56

A theory of evolution, like any major scientific theory, must draw upon principles of natural philosophy. In this regard, we might gently suggest that Gould, though a great paleontologist, is a poor philosopher, especially with regard to his philosophical anthropology and just what it is that evolution would have to explain about man. Further, a few brief observations may be made about Gould’s “enormously arborescent tree of life.” First, the notion of humanity as a “small twig” nicely expresses the fragility and precariousness of the higher species and captures humanity’s dependence on the “infrastructure,” so to speak, of living things. Indeed, evolution, given its view of humanity as having descended from the original lowliest living things fits well with and even enhances Aquinas’ view of the importance of the human as a boundary creature, as having a likeness to the lowest beings. On the side of the body, we are akin to algae, clay, and quarks. However, Gould’s small chance twig metaphor fails in important ways. It fails to grasp the act and potency relation that characterizes the relation of each higher level to each lower level. Consequently, the different levels have an order to each other in which the higher fulfill the lower. The higher are not merely arbitrary complexifications of the lower. In a generic way, humans in their own being incorporate all the lower levels and order them according to the human form. In a rough, generic, incomplete sort of way, humans are the tree and the ground in which it grows. Finally, the human is not merely a small addition to the great tree. Gould’s small twig metaphor fails to recognize that the human represents a new level of vast difference from previous levels. It is, to borrow from Carl Sagan, a way in which not only the arborescent tree of life but also the very cosmos knows itself. It is a way in which the universe reaches a kind of completion. In this paper, my goal has not been to argue from the discoveries of modern science to Aquinas’ philosophical views. Rather, I am arguing that modern science fits much better within Aquinas’ general philosophical views about man than did Aristotle’s cosmology. This suggests that the rejection of Aquinas’ view about man is not due to the discoveries of modern science but is really a philosophical rejection of Aquinas’ philosophical and theological views.57

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Notes 1

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk.III, Ch.25, 1, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). Hereafter, SCG. 2 With regard to his end, man is not only highest in the natural order, but in the whole of creation, nothing is higher than man: “Now, although it is true, some conditions considered, that man stands inferior to some creatures, and even that in certain matters he is rendered like to the lowest creatures, nothing stands higher in the order of end than man except God alone, in whom alone man’s perfect beatitude is to be found.” St. Thomas Aquinas, SCG, Bk.IV, Ch.54, 3, trans. Charles J. O’Neil. 3 “[F]or the sphere of the fixed stars is that which moves all the other spheres.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1073b25, trans. W.D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941). 4 Aristotle, On the Heavens, 270b5-b26 and 279a27-279b3, trans. W.K.C. Guthrie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). 5 St. Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of Aristotle’s Treatise On the Heavens, Bk.I, 5157, trans. R.F. Larcher, O. and Pierre H. Conway, O. (Columbus: College of St. Mary of the Springs, 1963). See also, Aristotle, On the Heavens, 269b18-33. 6 The “primary body of all is eternal, suffers neither growth nor diminution, but is ageless, unalterable, and impassive.” Aristotle, On the Heavens, 270a14-270b4. 7 “[F]or a body which moves in a circle is eternal and unresting; we have proved these points in the physical treatises.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1073a31-3. See also Aristotle, Physics, 261b-266a9; On the Heavens, 268b11-269b17 and 286a3290b11. 8 “Now the order of site in the parts of the universe is established according to the order of nature. For that celestial body which is the highest is the most noble. After this according to the nobility of nature among other bodies is fire, and so forth down to earth. Hence it is clear that an inferior body, which is consequently related according to an order of site to a superior body, is next to it in the order of nature. Therefore he adds ‘not by force’ to designate the natural order of site to which the order of natures corresponds. He excludes a violent order of site, as when a terrestrial body is above air or water through violence…. For it is necessary that the gradation of natural places corresponds to the gradation of natures.” St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Bk.IV, 492, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). 9 Aristotle, On the Heavens, 292a18-22. 10 “The final cause, then, produces motion as being loved, but all other things move by being moved.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b4. 11 “And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072a26-7. 12 W.D. Ross, trans., Aristotle, Physics, A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1936), 98. See St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, q.5, a.5c, trans. Dominican Fathers (London: Burns Oates &

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Washbourne LTD., 1933). Hereafter, DP. See also, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 70, a. 3. 13 “[W]e must suppose the action of the planets to be analogous to that of animals and plants.” Aristotle, On the Heavens, 292b1-2. 14 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072a9-23. See also On Generation and Corruption, 318a14-31, 335a25-32, 336a15-337a34, 338a4-338b19. 15 Aristotle, Physics, 194b14, trans. R. Hardie and R.K. Gaye, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941). 16 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1074a27-31. 17 Aquinas, SCG, Bk.III, Ch.22, 7-9. For a further summary of this view, see also SCG, Bk.IV, Ch.97, 1-3. 18 Aquinas, SCG, Bk.III, Ch.22, 10. 19 Aquinas, DP, q.5 a.5c. 20 Aquinas, DP, q.5 a.5c. 21 Aquinas, DP, q.5 a.5c. 22 See, for example, Ernst Mayr, “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution” in Evolution and the Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 251-276. 23 Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., 2005), 146. 24 Aquinas, Exposition of Aristotle’s On the Heavens, Bk.II, 315. 25 “By not attributing a soul to the heavenly bodies, St. Thomas was thus lowering the heavenly bodies from the high place that Plato and Aristotle had given them and subordinating them simply to human being; at the same time he was enhancing human being’s position at the summit of the natural order.” Oliva Blanchette, The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas (University Park, Penn: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 259, fn. 19. 26 Blanchette, Perfection of the Universe, 258-59. 27 Rémi Brague, “Geocentrism as a Humiliation for Man,” in Medieval Encounters 3 (1997): 187-210. 28 Dennis R Danielson, “The Great Copernican Cliché,” American Journal of Physics 69 (2001): 1029-35. See also, Dennis R. Danielson, “Copernicus and the Tale of the Pale Blue Dot,” Address to the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation at Colorado Christian University, Lakewood, CO, July 2003, accessed January 16, 2015, http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/ddaniels/docs/bluedot.RTF. 29 Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions, trans. Edward Rosen (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 36-43. My italics. 30 Copernicus, Revolutions, xxi. 31 Copernicus, Revolutions, 22. 32 Galileo Galilei, The Starry Messenger in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. and ed. Stillman Drake (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957), 45. 33 Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems—Ptolemaic & Copernican, 2nd ed., trans. Stillman Drake (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 37.

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Edward Rosen, trans., Kepler’s Conversation with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965), 45. Quoted in Danielson, “Great Copernican Cliché,” 1032. 35 Danielson, “Great Copernican Cliché,” 1032. 36 Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publ., 2004). 37 Gonzalez and Richards, Privileged Planet, 142-68. 38 Blanchette, Perfection of the Universe, 270-71, 280-85, 291-95. 39 Carl Sagan, The Carl Sagan Portal, accessed January 16, 2015, http://www.carlsagan.com. The quote is taken from Episode 1 of the PBS series “Cosmos: A Personal Odyssey.” 40 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, Bk.II, 293, 294; SCG, Bk.II, Ch.90; On Spiritual Creatures, a. 8 ad 10. 41 Aquinas, SCG, Bk.III, Ch.22, 7. 42 Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Dell Publ. Co., 1966), 2. Jonas offers the following ways of understanding the relation of higher to lower: “One way of interpreting this scale is in terms of scope and distinctness of experience, of rising degrees of world perception which move toward the widest and freest objectification of the sum of being in individual percipients. Another way, concurrent with the grades of perception, is in terms of progressive freedom of action.” Jonas, Phenomenon of Life, 2. 43 Jonas, Phenomenon of Life, 57, fn 11. 44 Leon Kass writes “we can extract from Darwin’s own words that there are at least three prominent tendencies in the evolution of life, which I shall name ‘Diversity,’ ‘Plentitude,’ and ‘Ascent:’ Diversity the tendency to greater and greater variety … Plentitude, the tendency to more life … that is, more organisms.” By “Ascent” Kass means a tendency toward higher grades of soul. Kass, Leon R., M.D., “Teleology, Darwinism, and the Place of Man: Beyond Chance and Necessity?” in Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1985), 268-75. 45 None of these qualifications would pose much difficulty for Aquinas since he also maintains that a variety of creatures participates and represents the divine goodness better than any single creature or single kind of creature. Consequently, the fact that the universe’s history and biological evolution not only move from lower to higher but also move horizontally or at an angle would not be opposed to his claim that nature is ordered toward the generation of creatures such as ourselves, animals possessing intellectual souls. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.47, a.1-2. 46 Aquinas, DP q.4, a.2, ad 33. See Blanchette, Perfection of the Universe, 244. 47 For a brief discussion of the anthropic principle, see Stephen M. Barr, “Faith and the Structure of the Cosmos,” in Science and Faith, eds. Gerard V. Bradley and Don DeMarco (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 35-49. The classic work is John Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

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48 See, for example, Fitness of the Cosmos for Life: Biochemistry and Fine Tuning, eds. John Barrow, Simon Conway Morris, Stephen J. Freeland, Charles L. Harper, Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge Universisty Press, 2008) and Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny (New York: Free Press, 2002). 49 “There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life.” P.C.W. Davies, “How biofriendly is the universe?” International Journal of Astrobiology 2/2 (2003): 115120. However, not all scientists accept this view. See, for example, Steven Weinberg, Facing Up (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 235-37. 50 Stephen J. Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989), 288-89. 51 Stephen J. Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1996), 29. 52 “Convergence shows that we can provide first-order predictions of the emergence of important biological properties on Earth, and by inference elsewhere.” Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 301. 53 J. Maynard Smith, “Taking a Chance on Evolution,” New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992, 34-6. 54 R.C. Lewontin, “”Fallen Angels,” New York Review of Books, June 14, 1990, 34, 6-7. 55 John Paul II, “Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: On Evolution,” 4, EWTN Document Library, accessed January16, 2015, http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM. 56 John Paul II, “Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: On Evolution,” 4. 57 An early version of this paper was read at the 2008 Summer Conference of the Institute for Natural Philosophy. I am grateful to those present for their comments and criticisms.

IS THOMISM A “HUMANISM”? STEVEN A. LONG

Introduction The question whether, and in what respect, the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and that of the living school proceeding from his teaching known as Thomism1 is a “humanism,” naturally presupposes a certain prior judgment regarding the nature of humanism. Accordingly, it engages issues of a material breadth and profundity that cannot be adequately engaged in a brief essay. After all, if one is to speak of the substance of “humanism” in any richly sufficient manner, one must consider the classical humanism of Greek and Latin sources; its elevation and perfection within Christian understanding; the radical temptation for humanism to become, as Maritain put it so well, anthropocentric rather than theocentric; and the devolution of progressively more attenuated and limited humanisms until we reach the postmodern bargain basement of Peter Singer, who prefers beasts to human children. If one confines oneself to the semantics of humanism, it may be affirmed that anything that attempts to articulate the truth of human nature and destiny, and to provide a normative account of human perfection, is at least an “attempted” humanism. Thus used, of course, the term can be applied even to false theories. So, if we wish to confine our definition to true humanism, then we may say: a true humanism will communicate the truth about human nature and destiny, and about human perfection and the way to it. Thus understood, it is doubtless true that Christianity, Christian thought in general, and certainly Thomism—which comprises theology and philosophy—must count as humanistic. But such a judgment is too easily won to preoccupy an essay. For this reason the sense here to be considered of the question whether Thomism is a humanism regards specifically modern humanism—the type of humanism that most people would recognize as such in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in the Western world, whose pedigree reaches back through the Enlightenment and the Renaissance even to the end of the Middle Ages. Accordingly, this paper will first

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sketch a brief prefatory analysis of the foundational causal constituents responsible for distinctively modern humanism (thus deliberately not taking up the consideration of all the flora and fauna of its efflorescence). Second, it will take up the penetrating remarks concerning modern humanism and its relation to Thomism offered by Charles de Koninck in a famous letter he sent to Mortimer Adler in 1938.2 The paper will conclude with a few brief remarks regarding the implications of de Koninck’s analysis. The paper is largely an occasion for appreciating the centrality and penetration of de Koninck’s insights.

The Elements of Modern Quasi-Humanism Voluntarism The elements constituting modern humanism are greatly disputed. Perhaps the most remote yet arguably fiercely persistent contributing influence in modern humanism is the voluntarism of Scotus or Ockam. Such voluntarism depicts both divine and human liberty as natureless power, such that the rational will and freedom of man is wholly incompatible with any subjection to any natural or necessary ordering to the universal good and happiness. Thus, the ensuing implication extending to theology, that the divine commands are in principle not subject to any natural necessity with respect to the divine truth and the divine goodness, with the further implication that God putatively could command man to hate him and that if He did so it would be “good” for us to obey. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in the Regensburg Lecture, In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done.3

This stress on freedom as naturelessness, so that natural desire for happiness, and natural teleology with respect to the rational will, are denied, is deeply implicated in contemporary views of personal dignity that define it largely in terms of the absolute claims of subjectivity (or as the US Supreme Court articulated the matter in the Casey vs. Planned

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Parenthood decision, a right to privacy seen as the right "to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."4).

Mirandola and natureless self-transformation This voluntarism, lamented by Pope Benedict XVI in his famed Regensburg Address, in certain ways suggests that further unfolding of specifically modern humanism expressed in the words that Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in his Oration on Man5 has God speak to Adam, saying, We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.

As Mirandola writes a few lines later: Who then will not look with awe upon this our chameleon, or who, at least, will look with greater admiration on any other being? This creature, man, whom Asclepius the Athenian, by reason of this very mutability, this nature capable of transforming itself, quite rightly said was symbolized in the mysteries by the figure of Proteus.

These words, explicating the spirituality of the soul and the nature of human freedom as an utter chamelion-like naturelessness enabling man to rise as high or fall as low as he himself by his own endless well of power should dictate, clearly removes man from the given providential order as one whose freedom is not merely a freedom with respect to choice, but rather that extends to nature, teleology, and God. This is of course not systematic theology or philosophy, nor would Scotus or Ockham have

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concurred. Yet with respect to negating the natural teleology of rational will, their account surely prepares the way for such views.6 Similarly, the spirit breathed by Mirandola’s humanism is itself seen to grow historically. Mirandola’s words are prophetic with respect to the manner in which the nature of philosophy itself would come to be viewed: not as a sapiential science requiring ascetic conformity to the objective contours of the real, but rather as not only in part but indeed principally and chiefly a practical art continually being spun out from the logical and mathematical ingenuity of man pursuing and undergoing endless transformations. Bacon and Descartes among others seem to have embraced the view that the task of thought is not so much to conform to nature as to master and possess it. But neither the voluntarist account—associated with Scotus, and with the negation of any teleology with respect to the rational will—nor what one might call the praxeological transformist view, which thought should seek to transform nature rather than conform to it, are adequate for the understanding of modern humanism without understanding an even more profound current of thought.

Molina and the Pure Liberty of Indifference to Divine Causal Providence Equally or more important than these contributants to distinctively modern “humanism,” however, is the work of the famed 16th century Jesuit Fr. Luis de Molina, who with respect to freedom famously held that one is only free inasmuch as all requisites for action remain the same, one can do otherwise.7 Taking the causal agency of God to be included in this formula as merely one of the conditions or requirements, suddenly the transcendent first cause of universal being or ens commune as such is construed as simply another finite actor on the stage, so that whether God wills or no, the human creature can in fact “will otherwise.” For if one of the conditions that it is supposed can remain the same whilst the creature can will otherwise is that “God absolutely wills this particular willing to exist” and yet it is said that even so the creature can simply not act, then it must be inferred that the created will lies outside the providential divine causality. Lost on this account is the view of the rational will held by Aquinas as necessarily and naturally ordained to the universal good and to happiness, on the basis of which freedom of choice is founded. For St. Thomas Aquinas freedom of choice flows from the universality of the objects of man’s intellect and will—the ordering of intellect to universal being, and

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will to universal good—such that no finite object could compel the will.8 Every finite object being limited and so in some respect “not good,” the rational agent may always consider the finite good precisely under that ratio. Thus neither any finite good, nor even “to act” nor “not to act,” can compel the will to act, and so for this reason the rational will is by its nature objectively free with respect to all finite goods. Yet, it is likewise true for St. Thomas, that each act of free self-motion by man, proceeds from man moving himself as second cause, but from God—moving man to move himself—as First Cause.9 Without entering into this subject with all the distinctions it will come to require, it can be said that subtracting man from the universality of divine causal providence leaves man with a freedom outside of being itself. For God is the first cause of universal being, whose modes are denominated as necessary or contingent predicated on the nature of the proximate cause: a necessary cause brings about one effect with metronomic constancy; a contingent cause brings about a great variety of effects. For Thomas there is natural necessity in the will’s ordination to the universal good and to happiness; but there is objective natural freedom in the choice of finite goods which as finite can be viewed by the intellectual creature as in some way “not good.” And so the rational will by its very nature is, in the act of choosing, a contingent cause.10 This contingency extends to grace, taken as an object of choice (in the way in which one might say that attending Mass, or seeking out the sacrament of confession, is a grace). No object can compel the will, and regarding any of its connatural finite objects the will is objectively free.11 Yet, any least actuality of the will in the application of the natural motion of the will in choice presupposes prior divine motion, moving man’s will from potency to act with respect to its own free self-motion. Thus St. Thomas writes in De malo: To the fourth it should be said that when it is said that something moves itself, that the same thing is mover and moved. But when it is said that something is moved by another, the moved is taken to be one thing and the mover another. But it is clear that when something moves another, from this it is not taken to follow that it is the first mover: wherefore it is not excluded that from another it is itself moved and from this other it has even this, that it moves. Likewise, when something moves itself it does not preclude that it be moved from another from which it has this very thing, that it moves itself. And thus it is not contrary to liberty that God is the cause of the act of free will.12

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Thus God causes, with hypothetic necessity of consequence but not absolute necessity, every act of a contingent cause; and God causes, with necessity of consequent, every act of a necessary cause.13 But each is wholly, for St. Thomas, within rather than without the divine causal providence. This is to say that contingency is not denominated in relation to God but rather is denominated solely in relation to the proximate cause.14 Contingency and necessity are not denominated in relation to God, but in relation to the nature of the proximate cause. Thus the rational will in choice, as a particular type of contingent cause, is not denominated as contingent by something pertaining to its relation to God, but because of its very nature by virtue of which no finite good can compel it or fully actuate it.15 What makes the rational will free is not that it is outside of divine causality, or that it does not require the divine motion in order to move itself to act; what makes the rational will free is that by its nature no finite good or goods can compel it, so that each of its acts of choice is by the nature of the proximate cause free. Just as both God and the rose bush cause the flowering of the rose bush, so both God and the human creature are, for St. Thomas, in different orders, total causes of the effect of free action: God as the first agent cause, and man as an essentially subordinated secondary cause, who is moved from potency to act with respect to his own self-determination in freedom. Thus free acts in their being, truth, and goodness are, for St. Thomas, like being itself, simultaneously most our own, and most a gift. The voluntarist view of man’s rational will as lacking natural order to the good because will itself, even in God, is boundlessly arbitrary; and the corresponding suggestion taken up in later thought that man’s task may accordingly be taken to transform nature in the world and in himself in an effort of self-creation limited and measured neither by a natural norm nor by a transcendent providential order, joins with Molina’s separation of the contingent actualizations of rational freedom from divine causal government in behalf of an absolute liberty of indifference. The effect is necessarily to separate human liberty from providence and law. The pillars of the resultant “humanism,” thus, are seen to be the insistence on philosophy as no longer the call to heroic conformity to the objective nature of the real, but rather to a plastic practical inventiveness seeking to free itself from nature; and the removal of human rational willing from the divine providential order, and from the natural order itself. Thus voluntarism is opposed to the affirmation of a necessary natural willing of happiness and the universal good; whereas Molinists are opposed to the affirmation of the dependence of the rational will on divine

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motion in order that its natural motion to the good be applied in choice, in our own self-motion in liberty.

Charles de Koninck’s Diagnosis of the Pathology of Modern “Humanism” It is at this point that the central preoccupation of this essay can make its way onto the stage. In the remarkable letter written by Charles de Koninck to Mortimer Adler, dated June 15, 1938, he addresses voluntarism and natureless praxeological reductionism, as well as Molinism, all of which he identifies as fused into the false humanism that largely constitutes modern thought. I will unblushingly below quote his remarks at very great length, only to offer very brief comment at the end. He writes: I am always conscious of the utter impossibility of meeting modern philosophers on a common ground. They are essentially dogmatic. They are forever telling us. They are like poets who are not to be interrupted. They cannot stay on first principles. On the other hand, they always start from a flock of evidences which I completely fail to grasp. A complete absence of critique seems to be the fundamental characteristic of critical philosophies. They start half-ways. They impart their views. They do not exchange them. They have never listened and they do not intend to. Hence there can be no common ground between modern philosophy and philosophy as we understand it. Philosophy proper must be preceded by dialectics in [the— sic] Aristotelian sense: we must prepare the terrain in order to determine the problems and definitions. Dialectics is essential as an introduction to philosophy. Not that philosophy itself is essentially conditioned thereby, but it is “quoad nos.” This Descartes has thrown overboard. The result is: philosophy itself becomes dialectics. The modern conception of philosophy is not in the least philosophical: it is conceived as an art. The absolute opposition between Aristotle, Metaph. I, c. 1 & 2, and Descartes, Discours, parts 1 & 2, has always struck me that way. All the properties assigned to philosophy by Descartes are really characteristic of art. His tone and procedure are such that we cannot expect to communicate with him. Neither does he in fact expect scientific communication. He presents his philosophy as a “tableau,” as a “fable.” He merely asks us if we like it. His examples are all drawn from the arts. (For example the one drawn from architecture and the building of a city.) From

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Steven A. Long them he concludes directly that we must do in philosophy what is being done in the arts. And therein lies the disguised dogmatism of all modern philosophies. What has been called “l’émancipation de l’individu” is in philosophy the equivalent of the emancipation of art as a substitute for science. When today we oppose science and philosophy, and when philosophy is rejected, we are really distinguishing pure science (philosophy) and the sciences which are also essentially arts, i.e., logic, mathematics, and the experimental sciences. And what is sought for in the latter is not the scientific aspect, but formally the artistic, the fabricative, the making and the shaping. Such is the case of John Dewey, and of dialectical materialism.

A few sentences further on, De Koninck will argue: In science the object is first principles, it is the measure. On the contrary “principium artis est in faciente.” “In scientiis practicis finis est quasi constructio ipsius subjecti.” In perennial philosophy, the object is the dictator. In modern philosophy, the philosopher is the dictator. Intellectual dictatorship is the very essence of modern philosophy. How can we converse with dictators in philosophy? We cannot even indulge in dialectics. We have no common object. The philosopher makes the object, all he can do is tell us. Going back to Descartes, we may consider him as the true father of all modern philosophy in that he made philosophy a practical science, that is an art or prudence…

He then writes, with some exasperation: The modern mind lacks the natural quality of the philosopher, the ability to grasp the transcendental import of first principles, of the “est” and “nonest.” It has the obscure confidence of the animal. In fact, it does not need philosophy. Its actual needs are so easily satisfied; the nature of the things it wants is essentially platitudinous. It cannot find what it does not naturally search for. I can feel no sympathy for its ambition. As one who devotes himself to philosophy, i.e., a speculative science, not apologetics or proselytizing, I do not even care. Malum ut in pluribus in specie humana; I expect no more. I do not wonder. It is all very natural. Why must philosophy become a humane affair? If per impossibile it could become such, we would still have to wait until the philosopher is born. We cannot make philosophers as modern philosophy would. Why argue with

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people who are not sapientes? The average American philosopher is merely platitude that has learned to write. As one who desires only to know, I am content, rightly or wrongly, to understand that modern philosophers cannot think otherwise than they do. They are merely part of the world I have to explain, and doing so, I derive the impossibility of communication.

De Koninck then identifies Scotus, Suarez, Vasquez, Molina as “the real modern philosophers:” “Though they lead to the negation of philosophy their errors are still strictly philosophical: communication is not impossible.” In short, we stand here at the philosophic point of departure for something that will very speedily become non—and indeed—anti philosophical, yet with which genuinely philosophic engagement remains possible. De Koninck notes in passing the essential role of Cajetan’s treatment of analogy in refuting modern mathematicism through the refutation of Scotus’s univocism, writing that: …modern mathematism begins with Scotus’ univocism; thus mathematics (with its essential homogeneity) which is a science, but also essentially an art, again occupies the very summit of thought and being. Logically this will lead to being a “subject for fabrication,” a prime matter to work upon.

And then: “Vasquez takes the next step: we impose truth on being.” De Koninck then comes to the crux: Together with Suarez and Molina he takes exactly the same attitude toward freedom; free will is cut away from God, it is drawn outside of being to come back upon it. Logically, being will become a subject to act upon. But this time we are putting the accent on freedom. To a Thomist this means that in creating free beings God literally alienates his power as absolute cause of all “esse.” Freedom thereby becomes something supremely relative to being. I am convinced that in philosophy the most extreme limits of opposition have been reached by Thomism and Molinism. In the eyes of a Thomist, the Molinist must be the most formidable and at the same time most interesting opponent; interesting because its initial positions are so fundamental, and consequently, its logical implications so far-reaching. Molina gave the fullest possible expression to humanism in his theory of free will. (I am of course referring to logical implications). If I were asked to imagine what philosophy is most profoundly opposed to the Aristotelian and Thomist spirit, I would answer “humanism.” I mean that a more profoundly opposed philosophy is inconceivable. There is no corrective for

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humanism, for it is by definition based on the primacy of freedom. No amount of distinctions can mitigate this opposition. A Thomistic humanism is a contradiction in terms, the essence of Thomism being the absolute transcendency of God of which the most profound implication is predetermination.16

If it is true that it is the Molinist judgment that constitutes the last genuinely philosophic moment in the motion toward the loss of speculative science, and toward negation of normative natural and providential order, rigorous response to that judgment becomes all the more crucial. “Humanism,” understood as that terminal obsession with a rational and volitional autonomy that like a force field cuts all the way through, and out of, the divine providential causality, and which yields an autonomous ethics that implicitly denies the normativity of man’s passive participation in the eternal law for his rational participation—which latter accordingly is no longer measured by the divine wisdom and goodness—is opposed to Thomism. Indeed, “a more profoundly opposed philosophy is inconceivable.” This is a proposition whose truth only philosophic and theological habitus, and not mere reference to Thomas’s texts as an historical material resource, will suffice to discern. In fact, merely historical use of texts written for and naturally ordained to speculative purposes—transformation of speculative works into mere objects of second order historical inquiry—is one more version of the contra-naturam thesis of modernity, according to which we can only subdue natures to our practical transformative agency rather than acknowledge their normative teleology. The accoutrements of historical engagement are good, but they exist for a reason that they cannot themselves achieve or even move toward in the least degree: the achievement of genuine speculative wisdom.

Conclusion Humanism—taken as the above-mentioned obsession with liberty of indifference before God and as independent of natural desire for happiness and for the good—is the antithesis of Thomism. Nonetheless—although not in any sense that residents of contemporary cultures infected with the virulency of modern humanism would be likely easily to recognize— Thomism is, and in a far more fundamental sense, a humanism: precisely because it is wholly ordered to theological, metaphysical, and natural truth, and to pointing the way toward human—and superhuman—good and wisdom. Thomism is a “humanism” much as the peace of Christ is a

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peace, namely, a peace—and a humanism—not of this world, but centered in the reality of God. Owing to voluntarism, praxeological transformism, and most of all to the Molinist negation of human liberty as subject to divine providential government, this is a humanism that the world will necessarily continue to find challenging. Yet neither the truth of grace nor of nature kneels before the voluntarist gods of popularity and cultural efficacy, and neither can ever be either wholly effaced or finally subdued by willful error and delusion. And this is to say that the providential midwifing of the genuine philosopher and theologian—like the Christian formation of souls and indeed every motion whether natural or voluntary17—lies within the universal government, and the sovereign efficacy, of God.

Notes 1

One is of course accustomed to the widespread notion that the thought of Thomas is not to be taken as a speculative and scientific contribution to theology and philosophy, susceptible of being understood even more deeply and developed and applied, but rather as an historically material individual possession of Thomas, and at best a type of resource access to which is of course principally historical. Yet the first principle of textual interpretation is that texts should be read as the kind of texts that they are, and so beyond the status of historical resource, certain texts assume a rational importance in speculative terms. Accordingly, to read a speculative text as something else is otiose; and to reject speculative engagement with a teaching, or further insight into it, or development of its implications and applications—or even consideration of the order of teachings within a doctrinal synthesis—is tantamount to simple disinterest in the subject. Thus, the commentatorial engagement principally and intensively dedicated to engaging, penetrating, and developing this doctrine—while it can only be seen, by some, as cluttering the historical stage with unnecessary accessories—constitutes a speculative tradition of inestimable aid in penetrating the teaching of St. Thomas. One cannot reasonably substitute for the formal and final causality of doctrinal articulation a merely material historico-critical engagement with the text, while nonetheless the latter remains of essential and unavoidable pertinence in coming to grips with the meaning of a text. All of which addresses the need to take stock of the commentatorial tradition, and to realize that it constitutes a privileged route to a more speculatively rigorous engagement with the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. 2 The letter may be found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/7815329/folder-32-part-6. 3 Apostolic Journey Of His Holiness Benedict XVI ͒To München, Altötting And Regensburg ͒(September 9-14, 2006), Meeting With The Representatives Of Science, Lecture Of The Holy Father, Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg ͒Tuesday, 12 September 2006. See James V. Schall, S.J., The Regensburng

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Lecture (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), 130-148. 4 Justice Anthony Kennedy, from Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 [29 June 1992], joint opinion coauthored with Justices Souter and O’Connor. 5 For these two quotations see Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, tr. Richard Hooker, from Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Red Wood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964); the quotations are taken from traditional sections #5 & #7. 6 Mirandola’s remarks almost remind one of aspects of the thought of Jean Paul Sartre in his work Existentialism is a Humanism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 7 A more colloquial rendering of the precise words of Molina in the Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, dis II, init., (Paris, 1876), 10. “Illud agens liberum dicitur quod positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum potest agere et non agere”.—“That agent is said to be free to act which, positing all the requirements of acting, is able to act and not to act.” 8 Cf. Summa theologiae I, q. 82, a. 2, ad. 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod movens tunc ex necessitate causat motum in mobili, quando potestas moventis excedit mobile, ita quod tota eius possibilitas moventi subdatur. Cum autem possibilitas voluntatis sit respectu boni universalis et perfecti, non subiicitur eius possibilitas tota alicui particulari bono. Et ideo non ex necessitate movetur ab illo.”—“To the second it should be said that the mover, then, from necessity causes movement in the thing movable, when the power of the mover exceeds the thing movable, so that its total capacity is subject to the mover. But as the capacity of the will regards the universal and perfect good, its total capacity is not subject to any individual good. And therefore it is not of necessity moved by it.” 9 ST I, q. 83, a. 1, ad. 3: “Dicendum quod liberum arbitrium est causa sui motus; quia homo per liberum arbitrium seipsum movet ad agendum. Non tamen hoc est de necessitate libertatis, quod sit prima causa sui id quod liberum est; sicut nec ad hoc quod aliquid sit causa alterius, requiritur quod sit prima causa eius. Deus igitur est prima causa movens et naturales causas et voluntarias. Et sicut naturalibus causis, movendo eas, non aufert quin actus earum sint naturales; ita movendo causas voluntarias, non aufert quin actiones earum sint voluntariae, sed potius hoc in eis facit; operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius proprietatem.” “Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.” 10 Cf. De malo q. 16, a. 7, ad. 15: “Et ideo necessitas et contingentia in rebus distinguuntur non per habitudinem ad voluntatem divinam, quae est causa communis, sed per comparationem ad causas creatas, quas proportionaliter divina voluntas ad effectus ordinavit; ut scilicet necessariorum effectuum sint causae

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intransmutabiles, contingentium autem transmutabiles.”—“And therefore necessity and contingency in things are distinguished not in relation to the divine will, which is a universal cause, but in relation to created causes which the divine will has ordered proportionately to the effects, namely in such a way that the causes of necessary effects are unchangeable, and of contingent effects changeable.” See also As Thomas puts it in ST q. 25, a. 3 ad. 4: “For it is according to the condition of the proximate cause that the effect has contingency or necessity.” 11 Thus, again, ST I, q. 82, a. 2, ad. 2. 12 De malo, q. 3, art. 2, ad 4: “Ad quartum dicendum quod cum dicitur aliquid movrere se ipsum, ponitur idem esse movens et motum; cum autem dicitur quod aliquid movetur ab altero, ponitur aliud esse movens et aliud motum. Manifestum est autem quod cum aliquid movet alterum, non ex hoc ipso quod est movens ponitur quod est primum movens: unde non excluditur quin ab altero moveatur et ab altero habeat hoc ipsum quod movet. Similiter cum aliquid movet se ipsum, non excluditur quin ab alio moveatur a quo habet hoc ipsum quo se ipsum movet. Et sic non repugnat libertati quod Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii.” 13 Cf. ST I-II, q. 10, a. 4, ad. 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod, si Deus movet voluntatem ad aliquid, incompossibile est huic positioni quod voluntas ad illud non moveatur. Non tamen est impossibile simpliciter. Unde non sequitur quod voluntas a Deo ex necessitate moveatur.”—“If God moves the will to anything, it is incompatible with this supposition, that the will be not moved thereto. But it is not impossible simply. Consequently it does not follow that the will is moved by God necessarily.” Of course, see also ST I-II, q. 6, a. 1, ad. 3: “omnis motus tam voluntatis quam naturae, ab eo procedit sicut a primo movente”—“every motion whether of the will or of nature proceeds from God as the first mover.” In ST I-II, q. 9, a. 4, St. Thomas—addressing here the first motion of the will—articulates the principle that “Omne enim quod quandoque est agens in actu et quandoque in potentia, indiget moveri ab aliquo movente.”—“For everything that is at one time in potency and at another in act, needs to be moved by a mover.” This same principle Thomas will apply not only to the divine causality of the natural motion of the will, but to the applicatio of that natural motion in choice, because of his judgment that God is the First Cause of every application of power (and thus of course the First Cause of the application of the will in choice). One sees this teaching, for example, in Summa contra gentiles III, c.67, “Sed omnis applicatio virtutis ad operationem est principaliter et primo a Deo.”—“But every application of power to operation is principally and first from God.” Of course in the text the words of De malo have already been cited from q. 3, a. 2, ad. 4, affirming that God is the cause of our very self-motion in freedom. 14 Cf. note #10 above, De malo q. 16, a. 7, ad. 15. 15 Again one notes ST I, q. 82, a. 2, ad. 2. 16 Letter to Mortimer Adler (Quebec, June 15, 1938), Charles De Koninck Archive, in the Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame, Folder 32: Part 6, 1. My emphasis. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Comment. de divinis nominibus, Lect. iii.

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ST I-II, q. 6, a. 1, ad. 3: “omnis motus tam voluntatis quam naturae, ab eo procedit sicut a primo movente”—“every motion whether of the will or of nature proceeds from God as the first mover.”

THE PASSIONS: SOME KEY THOMISTIC DISTINCTIONS JEFFREY FROULA

In a fascinating chapter of his recent book, Dust Bound for Heaven, Reinhard Hütter shows convincingly that St. Thomas’s account of the passions is germane for our time. He argues that much of the modern debate about the passions is irresolvable owing to the “early modern rejection of the Aristotelian-Thomist doctrine of hylemorphism.”1 Insofar as modern conceptions of human nature fail to see it as a single nature composed of matter and form, body and soul, they inevitably overemphasize either its spiritual aspect (“angelism” in Hütter’s terminology), or its material aspect (“animalism” in Hütter’s terminology). Thus, Hütter explains, “each strand absolutizes a partial truth but is unable to account for the other strand’s central insight.”2 Having been convinced by Hütter’s analysis of the importance of reappropriating St. Thomas’s balanced account of the passions, I conceive of this essay as a very modest beginning in this endeavor. I will simply explain five distinctions which St. Thomas makes regarding the passions that seem particularly helpful in understanding his profound teaching.

Concupiscible vs. Irascible Passions As Peter King notes in his essay, Aquinas on the Passions: Aquinas begins his discussion of the passions by dividing them into two broad kinds. The concupiscible passions (love and hate, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow) have the formal object sensible good or evil taken absolutely whereas the irascible passions (hope and despair, confidence [i.e. daring] and fear, anger) have the formal object sensible good or evil taken as difficult or arduous.3

For Aquinas, the passions are movements of the sensitive appetite. He argues for two distinct powers of the sensitive appetite, the concupiscible

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and the irascible, from the analogical similarity between the natural appetite of corruptible bodies, and the sensitive appetite to which the passions belong. “Fire,” he says, “has a natural inclination, not only to rise from a lower position, which is unsuitable to it, towards a higher position which is suitable, but also to resist whatever destroys or hinders its action.”4 Fire not only leaps upward to a suitable place insofar as it is light, but also expels harmful water from its fuel in virtue of its heat. Relating what we see in natural appetite analogically to the inclinations of the sensitive appetite, St. Thomas explains that: Since the sensitive appetite is an inclination following sensitive apprehension, as natural appetite is an inclination following the natural form, there must needs be in the sensitive part two appetitive powers—one through which the soul is simply inclined to seek what is suitable, according to the senses, and to fly from what is hurtful, and this is called the concupiscible: and another, whereby an animal resists these attacks that hinder what is suitable, and inflict harm, and this is called the irascible.5

Aquinas’s distinction between the concupiscible and the irascible passions is consonant with our experience. The joy of a child eating a candy bar, for example, is quite distinct from the wrath of that same child when a playmate snatches it from him. Similarly, the joy that a lion experiences while eating a zebra is distinct from the anger which causes it to go and battle would-be thieving hyenas. These examples indicate a truth about the relation between the concupiscible and irascible passions: the concupiscible passions are prior to the irascible. If an object of sense were not apprehended as good, and therefore loved and desired, there would be no reason to rise up and attack whatever hinders the attainment and enjoyment of it. Further, not only do the irascible passions find their root in the concupiscible passions, they also resolve or terminate into them. Anger, for example, gives way to joy when an enemy is overcome or to sadness if the fight is definitively lost. Because of these considerations, St. Thomas explains that “all the passions of the irascible appetite rise from the passions of the concupiscible appetite and terminate in them.”6

Two Kinds of Contrariety in the Passions St. Thomas distinguishes between two kinds of contrariety in the passions of the soul, “one, according to contrariety of objects, i.e., of good and evil; the other, according to approach and withdrawal in respect to the

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same term.”7 The passion of love, for example, is contrary to the passion of hate according to the contrariety of objects—the object of love is something good while the object of hatred is something evil. Hope and despair, on the other hand, are contrary insofar as they approach or withdraw from the same term. Hope tends toward a difficult future good while despair withdraws from the same kind of good owing to the difficulty in obtaining it. The six concupiscible passions are paired in three sets of contraries: love and hate; desire and aversion; joy and sorrow. These three sets are all contrary with respect to their objects. In fact, St. Thomas holds that contrariety of objects is the only kind of contrariety found in the concupiscible passions. He explains that: The reason of this is that the object of the concupiscible faculty...is sensible good or evil considered absolutely. Now good, as such, cannot be a term wherefrom, but only a term whereto, since nothing shuns good as such; on the contrary, all things desire it. In like manner, nothing desires evil, as such; but all things shun it: wherefore evil cannot have the aspect of a term whereto, but only of a term wherefrom. Accordingly every concupiscible passion in respect of good, tends to it, as love, desire and joy; while every concupiscible passion in respect of evil, tends from it, as hatred, avoidance or dislike, and sorrow. Wherefore, in the concupiscible passions, there can be no contrariety of approach and withdrawal in respect of the same object.8

Although the only contrariety found in the concupiscible passions is that of contrary objects, such is not the case for the irascible passions. Like the concupiscible passions, the irascible are subject to the contrariety of object.9 But unlike the concupiscible passions, the irascible passions are also subject to the contrariety of approach and withdrawal from the same term. The reason for this is that, while good as such can only be a principle of attraction, the difficulty of attaining some good (which belongs to the irascible passions alone) can cause us to withdraw from it. One may either hope for or despair of a difficult future good. The one who hopes chiefly considers the object’s goodness and moves toward it, while the one who despairs chiefly considers its difficulty, and so withdraws from it. We see then, that hope and despair are contraries insofar as they approach or withdraw from the same object—a difficult future good. St. Thomas explains: Now the good which is difficult or arduous, considered as good, is of such a nature as to produce in us a tendency to it, which tendency pertains to the

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Jeffrey Froula passion of hope; whereas, considered as arduous or difficult, it makes us turn from it; and this pertains to the passion of despair.”10

In sum, while the concupiscible passions exhibit only the contrariety of object, the irascible passions are susceptible to both the contrariety of object and contrariety of approach or withdrawal from the same term.11

The Natural Genus as Distinct from the Moral Genus of the Passions St. Thomas explains that the passions may be considered in two ways: first, in their natural genus, “in themselves,” and second, in their moral genus, insofar as they are “subject to the command of the reason and will.”12 Considered in their natural genus, the passions are viewed merely insofar as they are movements of the sensitive appetite, which is not, in itself and essentially, a rational power.13 In this sense, the passions are common to humans and animals, and no strictly moral good or evil is to be found in them. Yet in man, the sensitive appetite can (to some extent) be ruled and directed by reason and will. The passions are voluntary, St. Thomas explains, “either from being commanded by the will, or from not being checked by the will.”14 To the extent that human passions are voluntary, they are properly human acts and can be morally qualified as good or evil. This is to view human passions according to their moral genus. In sum, the passions may be considered in their natural genus simply as movements of the non-rational sense appetite, or they may be considered as they are found in man—movements of the sense appetite that are, to some degree, subject to reason and will, and thus free and moral human acts. This distinction between the natural and moral genus of the passions helps St. Thomas to determine which passions are morally good and which are morally evil. Any voluntary passion that is not in accord with right reason is evil; while any voluntary passion that is in accord with right reason is good.15

Passions Considered Simply vs. Passions Considered on the Supposition of Something Else In Question 39 article 1 of the Prima Pars, St. Thomas asks Whether All Sorrow is Evil? In answering this question, St. Thomas makes a

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distinction of great importance. Sorrow, he says, “considered simply and in itself” is an evil. Yet he also notes that something can be considered good or evil “on the supposition of something else.”16 In this way, “supposing the presence of something saddening or painful, it is a sign of goodness if a man is in sorrow or pain on account of this present evil.”17 So, although sorrow considered simply is an evil, if something evil is actually present, the passion of sorrow is good. It is in accord with the reality of the situation and right reason. This distinction is crucial for discerning whether or not certain passions are in accord with reason in their concrete circumstances. It was, perhaps in part, a failure to grasp sufficiently this distinction that led Michael Miller in his recent article, Aquinas on the Passion of Despair, to argue that the passion of despair “always works to an evil end and never is felt rightly.”18 It is certainly not good, absolutely speaking, that there are some sensible goods which are impossible, or even not worth the effort required, to attain. Yet such goods do exist. The proper response to them is to despair of them, and move onto others that are possible and worth the effort. The passion of despair (as distinct from the sin against the theological virtue of hope), understood in this way need not be a paralyzing passion that is in discord with right reason, but can free us from the foolish pursuit of impossible goods in order that we might put our efforts into something more attainable. If a cheetah, for example, never despaired of catching its prey, a swift and healthy antelope would leave it dead from exhaustion. But, despairing of an impossible catch, the cheetah can save its energy for an easier target.19

Antecedent vs. Consequent Passions Because man is a rational animal composed of body and soul, it belongs to his human and moral good that not only his will and exterior actions, but also his passions be in accord with reason.20 Yet an important distinction must be made. Passions may either be antecedent to or consequent upon the judgment of reason. If a passion is antecedent to reason’s judgment, if it comes before and unduly influences it in such a way that “a man is moved to do well, rather by his passion than by the judgment of his reason,”21 it lessens the moral good of an objectively praiseworthy action. This is because passions that come before reason in this way “obscure the judgment of reason, on which the goodness of the moral act depends.”22

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If, on the other hand, the passion follows the judgment of right reason, as when a man “chooses to be affected by a passion in order to work more promptly with the co-operation of the sensitive appetite,”23 it conduces to the moral good of the action. Such passions give greater promptness, ease, and readiness in the execution of the action that right reason has determined ought to be done. A passion can also be consequent to the judgment of reason “by way of redundance.”24 Because of the profound unity of human nature, “when the higher part of the soul is intensely moved to anything, the lower part also follows that movement.”25 A passion following the judgment of reason in this way, St. Thomas says, “is a sign of the intensity of the will, and so indicates greater moral goodness.”26 And in another place St. Thomas concludes: “Wherefore by reason of this kind of overflow [i.e. of the will’s vehement movement toward the good into the sensitive appetite], the more perfect a virtue is, the more does it cause passion.”27 With respect to passions that are not in accord with right reason, St. Thomas argues that: A passion that tends to evil, and precedes the judgment of reason, diminishes sin; but if it be consequent in either of the ways mentioned above [by way of choice or redundance], it aggravates the sin, or else it is a sign of its being more grievous.28

Sometimes St. Thomas refers to the distinction between antecedent and consequent passions as acting from passion (ex passione) and acting with passion (cum passione). A man acts from passion when the passion precedes and unduly influences the judgment of reason, while a man acts with passion when the passion follows upon the judgment of reason. Aquinas explains that: “acting from passion lessens praise and blame, but acting with passion can increase both of them.”29 We can summarize St. Thomas’s teaching in three points: 1) Passions which are antecedent to reason’s judgment diminish the goodness of a good act or the sinfulness of an evil one. 2) Passions that are consequent to reason’s judgment by way of choice, as when we choose to be affected by them in order to act more promptly, increase the moral good of an action in accord with reason, or the evil of an act that is contrary to it. 3) Passions that are consequent to reason’s judgment by way of redundance are signs of either greater moral good or greater moral evil. As

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signs, they indicate a robust movement of the will that redounds into the sensitive appetite.

Conclusion In conclusion, I take the distinctions we have gone over to be some of the key distinctions that St. Thomas makes in his account of the passions. His view of man as a composite unity allows him to have a dynamic account of the passions that unites the insights found in present day angelism and animalism. My hope is that the explanation of the above distinctions will both create an interest for and aid further investigations into St. Thomas’s robust account of the passions.

Notes 1

Reinhard Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 76. 2 Ibid., 79-80. 3 Peter King, “Aquinas on the Passions,” in Aquinas’s Moral Theory, ed. Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 110. 4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 81, a. 2. English translations taken from: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1981). 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 ST I-II, q. 23, a. 2. 8 Ibid. 9 Hope, for example, is contrary to fear insofar as their objects are contrary. 10 ST I-II, q. 23, a. 2. 11 Aquinas, it should be noted, argues that the passion of anger has no contrary. See ST I-II, q. 23, a. 3. 12 ST III, q. 24, a. 1. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 ST I-II, q. 39, a. 1. 17 Ibid. 18 Michael Miller, “Aquinas on the Passion of Despair,” New Blackfriars 93 (2012), 396.

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It is important to note that this argument concerns the passion of despair and is in no way applicable to the despair that is opposed to the theological virtue of hope. The despair that is contrary the theological virtue of hope is in the will as subject, rather than the sensitive appetite, and can never be in accord with right reason given the revelation of God’s mercy, power, and salvific will. Further, owing to the excelling, or rather infinite, goodness of our ultimate end, it is always worth every effort, no matter how great, to attain. 20 See ST I-II, q. 24, a. 3. 21 ST I-II, q. 77, a. 6, ad. 2. 22 ST I-II, q. 24, a. 3, ad. 1. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 ST I-II, q. 59, a. 5. 28 ST I-II, q. 24, a. 3, ad. 3. 29 Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 26, a. 7, ad. 1. English Translation taken from: Thomas Aquinas, Truth, vol. 3: Questions XXI-XXIX, trans. Robert Schmidt, S.J. (Indianapolis-Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1954).

HUMOR, HOPE, AND THE HUMAN BEING MARGARET I. HUGHES

Humor, as almost everyone who writes on it observes, is a particularly human characteristic. Therefore, reflecting on humor can show us a great deal about human nature. In this paper, I would like to begin to think about the relation between human nature and humor within a Thomistic framework, but motivated by some contemporary work on humor. I will suggest that humor, accompanied by hope, makes wonder possible, and in opening us to wonder, it prefigures the fulfillment of human nature in the beatific vision. When contemporary philosophers look to the history of philosophy for some help in understanding humor, they sometimes turn to Summa Theologiae, III-II, q. 168, in which St. Thomas Aquinas investigates the virtue and vice of play. For the sake of this paper, I will make the same assumptions as these thinkers, and presume that play is equivalent to humor. I suspect that there is much to be said about this presumption, but my quarrel in this paper is with what I see as a more serious misunderstanding of Thomas’s theory of play or humor which follows from a deep misunderstanding of Thomas’s theory of human nature and its importance for understanding all that is human, even humor. For example, John Morreall dubs Thomas Aquinas’s theory of humor a “relaxation theory.”1 The only criteria for successful play or humor, according to Morreall’s reading of Thomas, is pleasure. Morreall understands Thomas’s position to be that humor is for the sake of pleasure, and pleasure is relaxation, not working. I will suggest, however, that this understanding of Thomas’s view does not appreciate sufficiently Thomas’s understanding of human nature and especially the role of pleasure and rest as the human good. I am particularly indebted to the work of Josef Pieper on rest for coming to this conclusion. The relation of humor to human rest and to human nature becomes clearer in thinking through another debate in the contemporary literature on humor, this one specifically dealing with humor and human virtue, particularly the relation between humor and hope.

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In his article, “Humor and the Virtues,” Robert Roberts maintains that humor is a human virtue, and consequently that humor is necessary for human flourishing.2 In this paper, I adopt as an assumption that a virtuous human life involves humor, and so, when I discuss humor, I always mean virtuous humor, not all humor. I wish to address Roberts’s claim that virtuous humor requires hope. Roberts comes to the conclusion that humor must be accompanied by hope in order to be virtuous by bringing together Aristotelian metaphysics with the current prevailing theory of humor, the incongruity theory. This theory holds that laughter, or what we find humorous, is caused by the perception of something incongruous.3 Something is funny because we perceive it as not fitting. When we laugh, it is because there is something that does not make sense to us or that we cannot explain fully because it does not fit with what we know or expect. Whereas in our everyday, normal navigation of the world, we tend to expect things to be congruent, to fit together with each other and with our expectations, when we run into something that does not fit those expectations and we feel pleasure in the perception of that incongruity, we laugh. The one kind of incongruity that most occupies Roberts’s attention is the folly of human behavior. When we laugh at the faults of another human being, we do so, Roberts says, because that person’s character is incongruous with his human nature. His character does not yet “fit” his nature. Nature here means a human being’s telos; that at which his natural development aims. A human being is fully himself when that nature is fulfilled, and virtue is necessary for that fulfillment. Any faults, any vices, then, do not fit with the fullness of his nature and so are incongruous with the kind of thing that he is. Because the person who laughs sees the incongruity between human faults and human nature, humor is a virtue, or at least indicative of virtue. He sees that there is a goal, the fullness of human nature, and that human faults do not fit with this nature. As a result, he is better able to make choices that move him towards fulfilling his nature. The ability to laugh at human faults, Roberts writes, indicates a moral perspicacity.4 Roberts recognizes the obvious objection to this line of thinking. He writes, …It is one thing to perceive the incongruity of seeking human fulfillment in ways that are at odds with virtue, but quite another to be amused at it, entertained by it, to take pleasure in the perception of what is surely, from the virtues-standpoint, a human tragedy of some dimension or other.5

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Roberts offers a response to this objection by pointing to the unity of the virtues. He claims that a sense of humor, separated from other virtues, would not be a moral virtue, and specifies especially compassion and hope as necessary for virtuous humor. It appears that his claim in relation to hope is that, when one laughs at another’s faults with hope for the remedy of those faults, the laugher is not cruel, but kind. The laugher sees the person as he is now, but also how he may be, with a good-natured looking forward to the fulfillment of his nature. In response to Roberts, John Lippitt calls into question the argument that hope, or any particular accompanying virtue, is needed for virtuous humor. He concludes, …that Roberts’s claim—that a sense of humour, in order to be virtuous, must be allied with compassion and hope—is too strong, too broad-brush.6

It seems to me that Lippitt’s objection arises, not because Roberts has claimed too much, but because Roberts has not been ambitious enough in his claims. Roberts only discusses laughing at another person and the metaphysics underlying that particular object of laughter and it is only this object on which Lippitt bases his objection. A broader metaphysical explanation and a deeper reflection on human nature, however, makes it clear that virtuous humor does in fact require hope. The rest of this paper will argue that, given Thomistic metaphysics, virtuous humor requires hope. It will point out that there are far more incongruities to be laughed at in the world than only the incongruity between a person’s character and his nature. In fact, at least to us human beings, when we consider reality as a whole, all of being appears incongruous because we do not understand it fully, as the notion of the analogy of being makes clear. But it is through knowing all of reality that we fulfill our nature. Without hope, the perception of the analogy of being would lead us to despair of ever reaching our end, and so would close us off from pursuing knowledge of reality and prevent us from fully flourishing. Only if we hope can we see as good that we do not yet grasp fully what we desire to know and so only when humor is accompanied by hope do we continue to remain open to knowing. I will look first at the claim that all of being appears incongruous to us, and then at the claim that we desire to know all of being, the attainment of which is human rest, in order to show that hope is necessary for virtuous humor. At the heart of Thomistic metaphysics is the notion of the analogy of being. The theory of the analogy of being is the recognition that there is something incongruous about all of being. Any analogy is an analogy

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precisely because, while it points out things that “go together,” that are alike in some way, it also points out that these things do not “fit” each other perfectly. An analogy articulates an otherwise unarticulable similarity between two things, but within that similarity, there is also a great difference. An analogy brings together two things that are similar enough to look for a fit, but dissimilar enough that it is clear that they do not exactly fit together: they are neither completely disparate nor completely the same. This is incongruity. All of reality, all of being, presents just such an incongruity. The notion of the analogy of being recognizes that even those things that appear to us as radically different are not entirely different, because they have in common being. And, building on this recognition, is the recognition that created being and uncreated Being have existence in common, but in deeply different modes that we do not fully comprehend. This difference in modes of being means that all of reality is incongruous. Our understandings of the different modes of being do not fully “fit” each other, but we cannot say exactly how they do or do not fit. The claim that all of reality is incongruous to us is really the claim that we do not yet fully understand all of reality, as a whole. An incongruity is incongruous precisely because it is not fully understood. The person perceiving sees that there is a connection of some kind between the things, but does not fully understand how these things “fit” together. He does understand that all the elements of the incongruity are true, and so resolving the incongruity is not simply a matter of accepting one element and dismissing the rest. Rather, an incongruity appears as incongruous precisely because each element appears to be true, and yet it seems that these truths do not “fit” together. The claim that incongruity, and laughing at incongruity, point to a lack of full understanding is not limited to Thomistic metaphysics. The rationalists raise the “irrationality objection” to humor. They conclude that to laugh is an indication of not being fully rational. In a fully rational world everything “fits” and a fully rational human being would know this rational world fully, and so would not perceive any incongruities. Laughter, for a rationalist, is a mark of being less than fully rational. According to the rationalist’s objection, humor and laughter is an indication that the person laughing must get back to the work of completing his construction of knowledge. As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, John Morreall, among others, appears to conflate the rationalist’s notion of humor with Thomas’s, since both seem to think that humor is taking a break from the work. This conflation is understandable, given that in Summa Theologiae,

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II-II, q. 168, a. 2, Thomas draws an analogy between bodily rest from work and rest of the soul, and says explicitly: Consequently, the remedy for weariness of soul must needs consist in the application of some pleasure, by slackening the tension of the reason's study.

This pleasure is play or humor. Morreall, in understanding that this quotation means that the only requirement for humor is pleasure, seems to take Thomas’s view of humor to be that humor is the suspension of the impulse towards knowledge by giving rise to pleasure and so is the relaxation necessary for returning to the work of knowing. This is an understandable interpretation of this passage alone. I suspect that Morreall interprets the passage this way because has not taken into account the importance of rest and pleasure that Thomas ascribes to the flourishing of human nature, which is the goal of any work. Thomas’s understanding of human nature attributes a far more important role to rest than this reading of him suggests. The importance of rest also answers the rationalist’s “irrationality objection” to humor. Play is in fact a break from work, but as a break from work, it is, even more importantly, a foretaste of the beatific vision, as I will discuss next. Humor is something enjoyable, something pleasant. And, as Thomas writes in ST II-II, q. 168, a. 2, “pleasure is the rest of the soul.” This idea echoes what he says about pleasure earlier in the Summa Theologiae, when he writes, in ST I-II, q. 25, a. 2, “rest in good is joy or pleasure” and “pleasure is the enjoyment of a good.” Pleasure results from the attainment of some good. Desire seeks after a good, but, once the good is attained, desire rests; there is not a need to continue to seek after the good. Instead, pleasure is the rest in the enjoyment of an already attained good. Ultimately, a human being’s rest and fullest pleasure is in the contemplation of all that is, which is being able to rest in knowing for its own sake. At the heart of human nature is the characteristic human desire to know. A human’s desire to know will be satisfied only by knowing all that is knowable, which is all of reality. Therefore, the realization and fullness of man’s being, his good, is to know all that is. He ultimately desires the perception of reality at its fullest and most complete so that he himself is most complete. This completion is his flourishing, and when he has achieved it, he rests. Rest in this sense is not a lack of activity. It is not the cessation of knowing. It is, rather, an activity of knowing that is different from the activity of discursive thought. Whereas discursive thought is akin to the eyes glancing about, here and there, searching for an object on which to

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fix their gaze, this kind of contemplative knowing is akin to the eyes’ penetrating gaze. When the eyes rest on an object, they continue to see and see even more intensely. In this way the activity of sight is realized. In the same way, the intellect rests when its proper activity has its proper object and so its activity may intensify because there is nothing more to pursue or to do. While the enjoyment of humor is not a human being’s final rest in contemplative knowing, it prefigures that rest. One of the peculiar features of laughter, as Morreall observes, is that it incapacitates us, physiologically, to do anything else.7 In the grip of uproarious laughter, all we can do is laugh. Laughter is, at that moment, not for the sake of anything else, and certainly not for the sake of doing anything else. Of course, humor has some wonderful consequences, but, if it is pursued only for those consequences, it is no longer funny. A feature of humor, then, is that it is for its own sake, that it is a kind of rest. When we laugh, at least for the moment, we do not continue to strive to be doing something, but instead, rest and enjoy the humor. Within this Thomistic understanding of human nature, since rest has a very different meaning and connotation from that of the Kantian framework, so too does humor. Because humor is enjoyable, it must indicate that the human being is resting in some end, but resting not merely as a break from activity. Rest is the cessation of striving after an object because the object is already attained. In rest, the human being’s proper activity can be intensified, and, through that intensification, he enjoys the possession of what he had desired. Of course, a human being can be mistaken about what ends he should desire and so he can enjoy and laugh at inappropriate things. Here, however, I am only considering appropriate laughter-the laughter of a, at least more or less, virtuous human being, a human being who is on his way towards his end. When a more or less virtuous human being enjoys an incongruity and laughs, he must be resting in something that is appropriate to his nature. There does seem to be a conundrum here, however. Laughter and humor, since they are enjoyable, must entail some rest, the possession of the object of some faculty so that that faculty can rest in being most fully active. If humor is virtuous, then that object must be appropriate for the fulfillment of the human being. That is to say, in order for humor to be virtuous, the pleasure that it indicates must be the result of the proper functioning of the human being. The human being who laughs virtuously must be moving appropriately towards his end, towards a contemplative understanding of all that is.

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The perception of an incongruity, however, is an indication that the human being has not reached his end, that he does not know fully. Such a perception, it seems, ought to be unpleasant and unfunny. If he is virtuous, he desires his end, and so will be pained when he perceives that he is not yet there. A virtuous human being should be pained by his shortcomings. Therefore, it seems that if a human being perceives an incongruity, and so sees that he does not understand fully, and he laughs or finds joy in not understanding it, then he is not virtuous. We must consider, then, how it could be appropriate for a human being, whose end is to behold all of reality, to rest in not knowing. For the rationalist, this can never be the case—thus the irrationality objection. For the Thomist, however, who understands human knowing as receptivity, a kind of rest in not knowing is not only possible, but it is a necessary step towards his flourishing. That rest in not knowing is wonder, and wonder is made possible by laughing with hope. Although a human being does not comprehend reality completely, he does know it to a certain extent. But in knowing it enough to know that there is so much more to be grasped—which is to say, in seeing that there is mystery—his sense of wonder is awakened. The promise of things to be known moves his will so that he wills his intellect to pursue this promise. This wonder, then, is a kind of resting. Not a full resting, but a resting in openness, in receiving what comes. Wonder, then, is accompanied by joy. It is not yet the full joy of the beatific vision, but it is a genuine joy that is the result of the faculties approaching their final end, however distant that end may yet be. Wonder, the openness to the reception of reality, entails a recognition that the perceiver does not yet know. If he is convinced that he knows all, then there is no need for this openness and so no wonder. In this way, the perception of incongruity is necessary for wonder. But, for wonder, the perception of incongruity must also be accompanied by hope. Hope is the virtue by which a human being looks forward to some future good. In humor, a human recognizes that he does not yet possess the full good, the full understanding of all that is. Nevertheless, with hope for his future fulfillment, a human being can enjoy the perception of incongruity, because hope allows him to see that perception as a step on his way towards his end. Without hope, the perception of incongruity would lead to despair of reaching his end and so to being closed to the reception of reality. With hope, he can rest, in the Thomistic sense of being most fully and intensely active, in his receptive disposition, remaining open to the good that is to come.

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Humor with hope paves the way not just for the work that leads to contemplation, but also for the rest in wonder, because humor with hope allows the perceiver to enjoy the perception of an incongruity; he can enjoy what he does not fully understand. That enjoyment opens him further to wonder, so that he may rest in gazing on what is even more mysterious. In doing so, humor provides a small foretaste of the final rest that is the beatific vision. And so, when a human being perceives an incongruity with hope, he can laugh. There is a joy in that perception because, while he is not yet fully himself, while he does not yet fully behold all of reality, he perceives that there is this good before him, to be received. Humor with hope allows a human being to rejoice in the goodness of reality and in his fittingness for that goodness so that he can rest in the receptivity of that good.

Notes 1

John Morreall, Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 23. 2 Robert C. Roberts, “Humor and the Virtues,” Inquiry 31.2 (1988), 147. 3 Morreall, Comic Relief, 10. 4 Roberts, Humor and the Virtues, 133–138. 5 Morreall, Comic Relief, 139. 6 John Lippett, “Is a Sense of Humor a Virtue?” The Monist 88.1 (2005), 88–89. 7 Morreall, Comic Relief, 2.

PART III: TRANSHUMANISM

THE ROOTS OF TRANSHUMANISM1 STEVEN J. JENSEN

Am I not alone, miserably alone? —Frankenstein’s monster to Frankenstein

Nicanor Austriaco, breaking the mold of the utilitarian dominated field of medical ethics with its myopic focus upon results and upshots, gives our attention a refreshing turn toward virtue.2 He allows us to delve into the inner workings of the human heart, and to find there our true human good. In our modern world we can forget that our human good consists not merely in health, pleasure, freedom from suffering, and autonomy. We can forget that our human good is a shared good, which is realized in acts of love.

The Transhumanist Movement This renewed focus on virtue and the inner springs of human action, when applied to what is called transhumanism, reveals a movement that has lost sight of the simple goods in human life. This movement, which proclaims a new age of technologically enhanced human beings, promises results and marvels that will free us forever from the woes and evils that have plagued human history: death and disease, ignorance and selfishness, will all be overcome. I wish to suggest, however, that the accomplishment of these promises is more to be feared than welcomed. It will arise from a sickness of soul that will lead inexorably to emptiness and despair and ultimately to fresh horrors of human cruelty. In the long run, good intentions—when pursued without constraints— can be more harmful than bad intentions. Some of the greatest atrocities of our age have arisen from a misguided desire to accomplish good. The communists’ angry desire to bring justice to the downtrodden working class has ushered in the massacre of those unwilling to conform. The desire to create a superior race has introduced the systematic elimination of “inferior” races.

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I wish to suggest that the transhumanist movement embodies one such misguided desire. This movement seeks to enhance human beings, giving them greater strength, intelligence, perception, and so on, perhaps even creating entirely new powers, such as the ability to fly, or even powers unimagined as of yet. These new creatures will transcend human nature, hence the name “transhumanism.” One might well wonder whether this movement has more to do with science fiction than with science.3 Perhaps its grand visions are mostly fanciful; nevertheless, current technologies have some very real applications, and others are not far in the future. We can use growth hormones, for instance, to increase a child’s height; we can use stimulants to increase concentration. In the near future, various proteins, multiplied through gene splicing, may well increase our memories. It is not so much the technologies—whether real or imagined—that are problematic; it is the attitudes that necessarily underlie the use of these technologies. Like its forebear, the eugenics movement, transhumanism will result in terrible deeds. Transhumanism sometimes claims to be a “liberal eugenics,” purified of all that was evil in the old eugenics. Nicholas Agar, for instance, claims that the new eugenics will not be coercive; it will allow people freely to use enhancements or not.4 The human race will improve by free choice, and not by government intervention. On this view, eugenics is not bad in itself; it just happened to get linked with an unfortunate philosophy. But what if the link is not accidental? What if, as Jeffrey Bishop claims, the very philosophy of eugenics, or of enhancements, is embroiled with excess and coercion?5 Already clouds appear on the horizon, foreshadowing the storm that will break upon us. Some have suggested that parents have an obligation to choose a child without defects or even positively to choose enhancements.6 A neglected obligation sometimes demands coercion, as in the case of deadbeat dads.7 If the benighted masses do not follow the pipings of the transhumanists, then they may need to be forced to comply, for their own good of course. If liberalism cannot win in the court of free ideas, then it will embed its ideas in the next generation through technology.8 It is worth recalling that the old eugenics began with a positive call for improvement but quickly slid into a negative call to eliminate the unfit.9 My general claim is simply that the error of transhumanism is rooted in its underlying attitudes. The use of technological enhancements arises from a sickness of the soul. Most fundamentally it issues from pride. This pride itself, however, is linked to ingratitude, and these two vices together

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bring forth a false love, revealed most poignantly in a hatred for the weak and imperfect.

One Action, Two Attitudes Two identical actions, or two nearly identical actions, with nearly identical results, might arise from quite distinct attitudes (by which I mean a pattern of motivation); one action might be good and the other evil, although their upshots are much the same. As Michael Sandel suggests, the act of enrolling one’s child in the best private academy might in fact be two quite distinct actions.10 For some parents, it might be an act of love, providing the best environment for the enrichment of their child. For other parents, it might be an act of heavy-handed control, by which they hope to assure that their child will get ahead in the world. Although the two actions are similar outwardly, the child feels the difference. Although he has a host of material benefits, he yearns for the smallest act of love. Sandel thinks that modifications of our children by way of technological enhancements are parallel to the case of heavy-handed control; they are not acts of true parental love.11 The results may be ostensibly positive for the child: he acquires astonishing intelligence or he receives a first-rate education. Nevertheless, there is more to life than results. Our human good is constituted through relations with others. More important than the results of our actions are the attitudes from which they arise. A small deed done with great love is of far more significance than a great deed done with meager love, and a great deed done out of anger or ambition is destructive rather than constructive. Transhumanists use the analogy with overbearing parenting to their advantage. Overbearing parents might enroll their child in the best preparatory school, but truly loving parents might do the same. The action of enrolling the child is not, by itself, linked to any particular attitude; it can arise from either good or bad attitudes. Similarly, someone might seek enhancements out of a kind of overbearing love, but perhaps someone else might seek enhancements for the true good of the child. Once again, the action is not, by itself, linked to any particular attitude: enhancements can arise from overbearing love or they can arise from true love.12 I wish to claim that technological enhancements are different in this regard. Whereas the use of a good preparatory school can arise either from good or from bad attitudes, the use of technological enhancements, when done with full knowledge, cannot arise from true love. Enhancements cut at the core of love; they undermine the very good that love seeks. In fact,

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transhumanism is necessarily infected with three destructive attitudes: pride, ingratitude, and overbearing love. In order to reveal the link between transhumanism and these attitudes, I will begin with overbearing love, for which our experience provides a more accessible grasp of its destructive character.

Characterizations of Parental Love Let us consider two extreme parental approaches, what might be called true love and what we will call overbearing love. Realistically, most parents have a mixture of the two kinds of love. They want what is good for their child for his sake, while at the same time they sometimes promote their child’s good in an overbearing manner that actually serves to alienate the child and his good. Conceptually, we will attempt to separate these two loves, considering as far as possible each extreme in its purity. In true love, parents seek to share their good with the child; they want the child to have the good so that he can enjoy it, even as they themselves do. In contrast, overbearing love, if it can be called love, seeks the good of the child for some further purpose—for example, for the reputation of the parents or for the sake of some ideal perfect child. Junior will be the best tennis player not so that he can enjoy playing tennis, but so that Dad can enjoy the success of his son. True love provides the child with opportunities in order to nourish his development, so that he can grow in the good. Overbearing love forces the child to develop. For true love, the ultimate success is seen as the success of the child; as such, the child is allowed freedom, within limits. For overbearing love, the child is more passive, and the success is perceived by the parents more as their own; as such, the child is controlled. A related point might be expressed as “pre-determination.” Overbearing love predetermines the particular good of the child: Junior will grow up to be a doctor; he will be in the top 10 percent of his class; he will be a concert pianist; and so on. In contrast, true love does not decide ahead of time the particular good of the child, but seeks to help the child develop his own potentials. Obviously, this help presumes some idea of what is the good of the child, but it is not so firmly set and determined as with overbearing love. In part, the good of the child must be discovered, a discovery possible for true love because his good is received; the child’s good is not entirely the making of the parents. A consequence of this predetermination is disappointment with failure. Since the goal is predetermined, if the child does not meet the goal, then

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he is a disappointment to the parents. When the child does not live up to the ideal, the parents take out their disappointment through harsh treatment. Of course, failure can be a disappointment for true love as well. The sorrow of the parents, however, is not apt to strike out in angry retaliation. Self-hatred often arises from a kind of overbearing love for oneself. An individual sets an impossible ideal, and when he does not live up to it— when he faces failure—then his own deficiency becomes an evil against which he strikes out. Likewise, the old eugenics set up an ideal, and then sought to suppress failure by eliminating those who did not live up to it. Today, when parents discover that their unborn child has Down syndrome they often choose to abort him. He does not live up to the ideal; he is a disappointment that must be eliminated, to make way for the “satisfactory” child. Similarly, transhumanism wishes to create an ideal. When human beings fail from this ideal, I suggest, transhumanism will turn to a kind of self loathing, a hatred of the species as it is now realized. It will strike out in retaliation against those Luddites who refuse to accept its brand of salvation. A transhumanist might well object that I am overstating the case. Certainly, it may be reasonable to see a tendency in transhumanism toward overbearing love. Like an overbearing parent, transhumanism sets high ideals, a kind of predetermined goal. Like overbearing parents, the means chosen to achieve this ideal is more forceful, since it is achieved apart from the child’s cooperation.13 Nevertheless, these points do not establish a necessary link between transhumanism and overbearing love. They indicate only a tendency. The same sort of tendency might be found in parents who place their children in excellent preparatory schools. A significant percentage of these parents may have a predominance of overbearing love. Nevertheless, truly loving parents can send their children to excellent preparatory schools. Similarly —so the argument goes—using technological enhancements to bolster the capabilities of one’s child might often arise from overbearing love. No necessary connection, however, makes it so. I wish to suggest, however, that there is a necessary connection. The use of technological enhancements always arises from something besides true love, often from overbearing love, and inevitably, as we will see, from ingratitude and from pride. Drawing this connection requires a consideration of a topic to which transhumanism is averse, namely, human nature.

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The Importance of Nature The good cannot be realized apart from some nature. The good of a knife is to be sharp and the good of a hammer is to be heavy and dull. Being sharp just by itself is not good; it is good as realized in certain natures, such as a knife, but not for others, such as a hammer. Similarly, the human good is the good of a human nature.14 Such goods as strength or intelligence are good for our human nature, but not for a rock. Unfortunately, in our age we have no clear notion of human nature.15 Any nature involves a direction to some end or good. A knife is directed toward cutting, and by its nature an eye is directed toward seeing. Similarly, human nature involves some impulse or direction to an end. We do not create our end or good; it is received from our nature. The error of transhumanism will be precisely to try to create what can only be received. The transhumanists suppose that they will transcend human nature, but inevitably they imagine another sort of nature, namely, a disembodied consciousness.16 Of course, they are typically materialists, so that this consciousness is disembodied only in the sense that it arises from pure structure and can be reincarnated simply by replicating the structure. This consciousness might be realized in a human body, but—they suppose—it might also be realized in a computer. In either event, we can attribute certain goods to it, for instance, greater intelligence or greater power to act. Transhumanists tend to describe enhancements as instrumental goods. By promoting enhancements, they need not, so they claim, presuppose any one notion of the good life; goods such as strength or intelligence are universally useful, for every vision of the good life. Transhumanists, then, need not promote one vision of the good life over another, or so they claim.17 Every instrumental good, however, presupposes that there is some inherent good, and every inherent good requires some nature of which it is the good. Furthermore, some goods instrumental to one nature are destructive of another; sharpening a knife is useful for the knife, but sharpening a hammer is detrimental to the good of the hammer. If in fact human beings are not disembodied ghosts that happen to reside in a biological machine, if in fact we are by nature embodied reason, then taking away our bodies will not serve our good. We can imagine that placing our minds into a machine can serve our good, but this wishful thinking is possible only because we have presupposed something about our nature; we have presupposed that we are disembodied consciousness.

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Transhumanism, then, cannot avoid promoting one vision of the good life over another; it cannot avoid presuppositions about human nature. Transhumanists might well ask: why should we so narrowly seek only the good of human nature?18 Why cannot we pursue the good of superior beings that will eventually replace us? Transhumanism hopes to get beyond our particular prejudices, which self-interestedly seek the human good; it hopes for new horizons. It selflessly admits that our good is not the whole good; the good of other beings might surpass our own.

A Shared Good This self-proclaimed nobility of transhumanism, however, is based upon another illusion, namely, the lie of selfless altruism, which supposes that we can pursue the good just in itself, apart from its being connected with our own good. In fact, no such altruism exists or can exist. If we seek the good for others, it is because we seek to share our good with them; we never seek a good that has nothing to do with our own. I should note that I am not asserting egoism, as if we must seek the good of others only as instrumental for our own fulfillment. Rather, I am suggesting that when we seek the good of others, we are seeking not a solitary good but a shared good. An individual does not seek a good that belongs only to himself, nor does he seek a good that belongs only to someone else; rather, he seeks a good that is shared between himself and others. In order to understand this point, it will be helpful to examine some ways in which the human good is shared, ways that will have a direct bearing upon the question of technological enhancements. I will attempt to illumine the human good through an analogy with works of art. When an artist paints, he hopes to capture, in the painting, some share of the beauty that he has perceived and seized within his own mind. When he succeeds, we say that the painting reflects the genius of the artist. A single painting, however, cannot capture the genius of a great artist; only several works together reflect the full measure of his genius. In a similar fashion, the human good is a share in a certain beauty, the beauty of rational nature, which cannot be fully captured in a single individual. A single human being cannot realize the rational good, most dramatically because he is mortal; he will live but a short time. Consequently, human beings can attain the rational good only through an immortality realized through procreation. One individual can realize the

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rational good only in a limited slice of time; to realize it more fully, he must share his good in the prolongation of the species. Even apart from mortality (which, after all, transhumanism hopes to overcome), a single individual cannot fully realize the beauty contained within rational nature.19 Just as the beauty within the artist’s mind has a diversity that cannot be captured in a single painting, so rational nature cannot be captured in a single individual. The rational good contains a variety of elements, including coming to grasp the truth, using the truth to change the world around us, and using the truth to guide our own behavior. No individual can completely comprehend the whole of truth; no individual can realize all the skills and technology involved in changing the world; no individual can fully realize the diverse ramifications of selfcontrol, which plays itself out in many distinct personalities. Each individual realizes a part of the human good; only together do they begin to reflect the multifaceted aspects of the beauty of human nature. When we seek our individual good, then, we seek to share in a greater good. Our good is not solitary; it is had in union with others. By seeking the good of others, we do not seek a good wholly separated from our own; rather, we seek “our” good, a good that is attained only together with others. Just as the members of a soccer team seek the good of playing together, so those who seek the human good seek to attain it together. We fool ourselves if we imagine that we can will for someone a good in which we have no share. Even the individual who sacrifices his life for another still seeks a good that is shared, for he has come to see the good of the other as his good, which is precisely what it means to love someone. He and his friend share in a greater good, which they attain in union, even in the union of offering oneself for the other. Transhumanism, then, does not get beyond human nature, as if it sought some good in which human nature has no share. Rather, transhumanism misconceives human nature. It supposes that human nature is simply disembodied intelligence, which can be transferred from a body to a computer, and which can be elevated in unforeseen ways. Genetically modified human beings, of course, can still share in the human good.20 They still have a human nature, and they still reflect various aspects of the beauty found within this nature. The problem, here, is not that there is no good to be willed; the problem is how the good is treated. Is it treated as something to be shared? Or is it treated as something to be created? How do paintings share in the beauty found within the artist? In part, through being similar to that beauty. There is something more, however. The beauty in the painting must come about in the proper manner, that is,

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it must come about from the artist. If it does not, then it does not share in the good of the artist. Suppose that some third party doctors up a painting, altering features here or there. Whatever else these additions might do, they will not help the painting to share in the good of the artist. Even if they are improvements of some sort or other, they will not be improvements as a work of this artist. Whatever good they bring about, then, will be no sharing in the good of the artist; they will distort the original. By analogy we can see that technological enhancements aim at no share in the human good.21 As we have seen, the full human good requires diverse individuals, each reflecting various aspects of the overall good. Human nature realizes the needed diversity, in part, through diverse natural endowments, which are given naturally through procreation. The multifarious individuals are like the “works of art” of human nature. In short, we share in the human good not only by having features that apply to our rational nature; we share in the human good insofar as we, and our features, arise from human nature itself. All manner of technological reproduction, even those that involve no genetic manipulations, such as in vitro fertilization, attempt to get around our origins within human nature. They do not aim to share in the human good, which is a good that arises from nature. They aim to create a good of their own. Of course, they cannot entirely exclude human nature, so the offspring still share in this nature. Nevertheless, the act of “manufacturing” a human being is not an act that seeks to share in the human good.

Treatment versus Enhancement Transhumanists are averse to the idea of receiving goods from nature. The gifts of nature, Nicholas Bostrom complains, are not always good.22 Disease and deformity come from nature, as well as strength and intelligence. If we must receive all our goods from nature, then we will be left impotent in the face of its evils. If we cannot enhance human intelligence—because intelligence must be received from nature—then neither can we correct defective vision, which also comes from nature. Should we do nothing to correct a cleft palate, because it is a sharing in the good of nature? In opposition to this transhumanist argument we find a typical response, based upon a distinction between enhancement and treatment. Enhancement adds perfections onto a child’s disposition; healing or treatment corrects defects within a child’s disposition. Since a cleft palate

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and poor vision are defects, we can intervene with technology, correcting these problems. On the other hand, increasing a normal child’s height, intelligence, or strength, is not the correction of a defect but enhancement. It is one thing to correct a child’s eyesight, so that he has 20/20 vision; it is another to give a child the farseeing vision of an eagle.23 Transhumanists are unsatisfied with this distinction. They claim that it has no basis beyond our particular prejudices and predilections.24 We happen to have set the standard of 20/20 vision, but in fact some people have better vision, and by way of LASIK we might improve someone’s vision beyond 20/20. If we are allowed to correct someone’s vision to the point of 20/20, then why can we not go further? In either event we are tinkering with the person’s natural disposition. It would surely be acceptable, if it were possible, to correct the mental defects of a Down syndrome child. Why, then, should it not be acceptable to take someone with an IQ of 100 and increase it to 180? Why does the increase from 50 to 100 count as the correction of a defect, while the increase from 100 to 180 counts as an enhancement? Indeed, the distinction between healing and enhancing can be difficult to discern.25 Even when concrete instances can be readily separated, the theoretical underpinnings of the distinction are unclear. We readily distinguish, for instance, between therapeutic cosmetic surgery to correct the scars consequent upon an automobile accident and enhancement cosmetic surgery in order to have a more beautiful nose; nevertheless, we may be pressed to give a good theoretical account that will always distinguish between the two kinds of surgery. In some manner, human nature must be the standard for identifying treatment, since treatment presupposes some prior defect, a defect that is defined in terms of human nature. Nature is not a kind of statistical norm, as if an IQ of 100 is natural because it is common in current populations.26 Rather, “natural” refers to what belongs to a human being in light of the human purpose or function. Given the function of the human eye, we can define what is natural to it, that is, what is required to fulfill this function. We can reasonably conclude that 20/100 vision does not fulfill this function. Furthermore, we can see that the sharp vision of an eagle is not necessary for this function, and might in fact hinder the function. We more clearly distinguish between treatment and enhancement for concrete functions. It is difficult for us to say what the precise function of the eye is within the overall purpose of human life; of course, it is to see, but what is the purpose of seeing? If we cannot answer this latter question, then we will not be able to determine how precise human sight must be; we will be unable to understand why the vision of an eagle might be a kind

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of defect for human beings.27 When we look at the more concrete functions within the eye, however, we readily make the appropriate distinctions. The function of the lens, for instance, is to let light pass through and to focus the light upon the retina. Consequently, we can easily identify certain instances of defective lenses.28 Does nature, then, give both good things and defects, as the transhumanists complain? Certainly, if by “nature” is meant something like “mother nature,” the sum total of all nonhuman causal interactions.29 But no one is suggesting that we must accept whatever comes from nature in this sense. If by “nature” is meant human nature, then what nature provides is a diversity of good things. It does so by a reproductive power that can sometimes fail. It might fail because “mother nature” intervenes, causing some defect. It might fail because the mechanism itself is defective (presumably, through some prior intervention of “mother nature”). In neither event does the defect come from human nature. As we have suggested, human nature involves a directedness to some end. Furthermore, we have seen that this end is a shared good. This end and this sharing must both be received from nature. We cannot create our own end. We cannot share the good except by receiving it, and we can receive it only from nature. Among the various “directions” or tendencies within human nature we find the impulse to share that nature through having a child. It is this sharing that we must learn to accept from nature as a true good. Disease and defect are a falling short from this nature; they represent an opposition to the direction or impulse of nature.

Natural and Unnatural Methods of Improvement The distinction between treatment and enhancement is only a first step. It reveals that technological interventions are acceptable when done in order to treat a defect of nature; it does not reveal that technological interventions to bring about enhancements are wrong.30 Clearly, some attempts to enhance are perfectly acceptable. A man can enhance his muscles through a rigorous workout program; another man might accomplish the same enhancement in conjunction with the use of steroids. Is the first approach acceptable while the other is wrong? Or are the two approaches just two morally indifferent means toward the same goal? Someone might believe that having his child listen to Mozart increases her intelligence; someone else might choose to splice “intelligence genes” into his child. Both approaches aim at the enhancement of increased intelligence. Is one approach acceptable and the other not?

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Some methods of improving ourselves are perfectly acceptable. Indeed, part of what we have received from nature is the ability to improve ourselves. By improving ourselves, then, we actually further the good we have received from nature. Changing ourselves for the better is not opposed to receiving goods from nature. The very act of improving ourselves is also an act of seeking a good that arises from nature. If some ways of improving ourselves are acceptable, such as a rigorous workout program, then can we conclude that all ways are acceptable, including the use of steroids and gene splicing? Or should we distinguish between those that are natural and those that are unnatural? The distinction is not between improvements without the use of technology and improvements by way of technology. A rigorous workout program might well involve technology, such as a treadmill; it does not thereby become unnatural.31 How, then, is the distinction to be drawn? Ultimately, we must look again to the good at which nature aims. It seeks the diverse realization, within multiple individuals, of the many aspects of human nature. One aspect of human nature that needs to be realized is self-improvement, as well as the improvement of others. Nature provides for this self-improvement, giving us the power to realize our potential. We can improve our physical nature by eating healthily and by exercise; we can improve our mental nature by study and by providing an environment conducive to learning. Are there any means of self-improvement (or the improvement of others) that aim at a good apart from nature? Do any aim to achieve the good independently, not as received from nature? Any such means, if they could be identified, would not be seeking to realize the good of nature; they would be seeking one’s own independent good. I will suggest that some such inappropriate means can be clearly identified while others are suspect, although less clearly opposed to nature. Nature has provided the means of dispersing diverse natural dispositions through our power to reproduce. These natural dispositions, then, are received—as a good of nature—through this natural power. Any attempt to get around the power of reproduction, whether through simple in vitro fertilization or through genetic manipulations, is an attempt to achieve the good of nature without nature. It severs us from the true good, which is a reflection of human nature and not of ourselves; it leaves us only with our isolated accomplishment.32 The use of pharmaceuticals to achieve enhancement (as opposed to treatment) is suspect. It is natural to take in nutrients, and some of these nutrients might be better for us than others; some might lead to improvements or something like enhancements, whether physical or

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mental. It is completely natural, then, to control our diets in order to improve ourselves. This natural power appears to be hijacked for another purpose, however, when it is used not to take in healthy nutrients but to take in a chemical directed simply toward a change in our person. Likewise, the use of technology seems suspect when it becomes, in some manner, a “part” of us. It is one thing to use binoculars in order to improve our vision; it would be another thing to implant an enhancing lens within our eyes. The former does not change our very selves, while the latter certainly encroaches upon our makeup. That which we have received from nature is changed; it is not accepted but replaced. For the latter two cases I do not claim to have a clear method of demarcation. The natural dispositions coming through the power of reproduction are fairly straightforward. The natural means of achieving improvements are less clearly delineated. I do wish to claim that any means of improving ourselves must also be received from nature. Which means are received from nature and which are not, however, is not always clear. Nor do I wish to defend the status quo of current human dispositions, as if whatever is “natural” in this sense is sacrosanct.33 The question concerns the good of human nature, which is our good. That good, if it is truly to be good, must be received from the directedness found within human nature. The more concrete question, then, concerns how we receive something from nature. In one way, we receive the genetic dispositions through the human power of procreation, although when these are functionally defective, then the resulting dispositions are received not from human nature but from a failure of human nature. In other ways, we improve ourselves according to the manner given us by nature, which will depend upon the direction nature gives us toward certain ends. Concerning this latter point, the distinction between what is natural and what is not is unclear, at least to me. In practice, the precise distinction may not be especially relevant. Perhaps every instance of the use of steroids for enhancement pursues some isolated good, an accomplishment apart from nature, but perhaps not; perhaps some instances fit within the order received from nature. In practice, however, it seems that the use of steroids arises almost universally from the attitude of independence, of separation. The use of steroids is what Sandel calls hyper-agency, an attempt to make my improvement entirely my own.34 Even without a precise demarcation, then, we can say that the “unnatural” enhancements described above arise, with near inevitability, from the destructive attitudes that we will now proceed to analyze.

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Ingratitude and Pride Transhumanism is averse to accepting the good things that come from nature; it prefers good things made by human beings. Underlying this preference are the two attitudes mentioned previously, ingratitude and pride. When someone receives a gift but is dissatisfied with it, wanting something more, we recognize ingratitude. If someone receives a new computer and complains that it is not powerful enough, even going so far as to turn it in for another, he is not grateful for the good that he has received. R. P. Doede sees this kind of ingratitude in transhumanism: Transhumanist enchantment will… [eliminate] the “unchosen” dimensions of their world and their selves. In this categorical refusal of the givens of human existence, they will be launched into a thankless future.35

When we receive a gift, we recognize that it is not simply our good; it is a good shared with the giver. As we have suggested, when we receive the diverse attributes of nature, we accept them as a sharing in the human good; they are not simply our own goods. But if we should desire the goods of nature—or that which is like the goods of nature—simply as our own, as coming from ourselves, then we would exhibit pride, which desires a singular excellence. In this case, the excellence is to have an individual good that comes from ourselves. The fallen angels suffered from precisely this kind of pride.36 They did not desire what was evil; rather, their error was the manner in which they desired the good. They desired it simply from themselves and for themselves. They did not want their good to be received from God; they wanted it to be their own accomplishment. They did not want their good to be a sharing in God’s good; they wanted it simply to be their own.37 In a similar manner, transhumanism seeks attributes that are truly good, such as greater strength or intelligence, but it seeks them not as a sharing in the good of human nature. The unwillingness to submit to another is typical of pride. In this case, transhumanism does not wish to submit to the dispensations of nature.38 Consequently, it clings to an isolated good, a good that is not a sharing in the human good. Transhumanists might well concede the point. So what, they might ask. What is the value of sharing in an inadequate good? Why not exceed this natural good? We should seek what is better, and the good of nature is less than the good that we ourselves can now make. At one time in human history we had to accept the goods that nature dispensed. We are no longer so limited. We can now attain to higher things. If, in the process, we must give up a sharing in some lesser good, then so be it.

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Pride can rarely see the folly of its ways, and the ingrate does not often recognize his debt, even when it is pointed out to him. What is difficult to deny for almost anyone, however, is the importance of love. Consequently, we will return our focus toward love, in the hope of identifying the destructive character of ingratitude and pride.

Self-Hatred In order to recognize the nature of false love, it will be helpful to investigate self-love and self-hatred. We do not suppose that low selfesteem arises from a healthy self-love; to the contrary, it exhibits aspects of self-hatred. Nevertheless, it is founded in a kind of self-love, as is all our activity. Paradoxically, it is founded in something of an overgrown self-love. Probably on account of the expectations of society or of parents, the person wants such a grand good for himself that when he sees by how much he has fallen short of reaching this ideal, he becomes downcast and self-critical. He is dissatisfied with his own small accomplishments, since he wants greater things for himself. The person with low self-esteem must learn to accept himself, including his failings and limitations. Acceptance does not mean defeatism, as if a person who accepts his limitations cannot strive to overcome them; we can earnestly work to improve ourselves. A difficult balance, however, is required, since the person with low self-esteem is apt to seek to improve himself out of self-hatred, wishing to rid himself entirely of his hateful failings. When he fails, yet again, to eliminate his undesirable traits, he sometimes turns to self-mutilation, whether psychological or physical. In this manner, enhancements upon oneself might turn out to be a kind of self-mutilation, an attempt to eliminate the person one hates and replace it with something new and improved. It is no accident that the enhancements of cosmetic surgery are promoted in advertisements by convincing people that their appearance is defective.39 How are we to find a balance between defeatism and improvements arising from self-hatred? By accepting the limited nature of our good. I do not mean accepting the present state of our good, that is, accepting the fact that we are now imperfect, although this acceptance will follow; rather, I mean accepting what it means for us to be good. Our good—not just now as it is imperfectly realized but even if it were to be fully accomplished— is limited and partial. Our good is precisely to be a part. As such, our good, by its nature, is received.

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When we recognize the limited nature of our good, then we see that— despite our failings—we have some share in the good. Indeed, we see that we are good. Our goodness arises from the fact that we are a part, even if an imperfect part. As a part, we are ordered to the good of the whole, and this very ordering gives us a share in the good. We are not good through a collection of grand perfections; we are good through our lowliness, through being a part.40 From his role within the whole, an individual can recognize his imperfections and realize what good he has yet to strive for. He acknowledges, however, that his imperfections must be overcome as received; they must be overcome not simply from himself. The resulting perfection will not simply be “his”; it will be “ours.” It will belong to all of those who have helped; it will belong to human nature itself. From this point follows another insight: he might have to live with his imperfections for some time. Indeed, it might be better to live with his imperfections than to attain perfections in the wrong way, as if they were only “his.”41 It is better to rejoice in his small share of the received good than to strive after solitary and exalted accomplishments. It may take him some time to learn how to depend upon others; it may take him some time to learn how to depend upon his fragile nature. He must learn to be happy with what he has, with what he has received; he must learn gratitude. What of the person who seeks his own exaltation, who seeks his own good as isolated and independent? According to his own conception of the good, his goodness is not received; his goodness is not on account of his being a part within the whole. Rather, his goodness depends entirely upon his own perfections. Consequently, he learns to hate his imperfections, which are destructive of his only good. When he realizes how embedded his imperfections are within him, he learns to hate himself.

Self-Aggrandizement What happens to the individual who does achieve his own exaltation, the one who succeeds rather than fails, perhaps becoming among the best in his field? Has he not attained a good thing in which he can rejoice? And should we not take this individual as our model (rather than bemoan the failed individual with low self-esteem)? After all, we often suppose that the best way to overcome low self-esteem is by emphasizing our own accomplishments. Unfortunately, if this individual does in fact seek his own independent greatness, then he is cut in the same pattern as those with low self-esteem.

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I do not mean that everyone who accomplishes great things suffers from psychological inadequacies; rather, I speak of those who accomplish these great things perceiving them simply as their own and not as shared and received; these individuals do indeed suffer from psychological inadequacies. They have not learned to love themselves, or rather, their self-love is distorted. The individual who rejects his role as part also rejects the shared good. In rejecting this good, he is preferring some other, namely, his own individual good, which he prefers because he has perceived it as better than the shared good. Why? Because it arises from himself, without being received. After all, we readily suppose that a self-made man is a great thing. Once he pursues this first independent excellence, then he may go on to desire another excellence, namely, a greater degree of the good than he would have insofar as he is a part. He might desire, for instance, greater intelligence. In any event, he desires his good comparatively, as better than the good that belongs to him as a part. What he comes to love in his own good is that it excels; it is better than others.42 In this state, when he sees someone who appears to excel beyond himself, then he perceives his own good as diminished. If to be good is to excel, then to be outdone is to be defective. Those who pursue this self exaltation are doomed to two kinds of dissatisfaction. On the one hand, they will be dissatisfied when their own excellence seems to be outstripped by others. On the other hand, they will be dissatisfied when they recognize, in their moments of honesty, that their own good is rather limited. They will learn to hate their true limited selves; they love only the false image they present of themselves. Since they have no goodness from what they are, but only from their perfections, they are forced to imagine themselves as more perfect than is really the case.

False Love From this portrayal of false self-love, it is not difficult to see how a rejection of the received good distorts our love of others. Parents who want super excellence for their children do not really love their children. Like the person with low self-esteem, they do not desire the good of their child as a part, as received from the whole. They begin to despise their true limited child, and they drive him on to ever further accomplishments, so that they can take satisfaction in their imagined ideal child.

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Just as the individual who seeks his own singular excellence perceives no goodness in himself apart from his perfections, so the parents who seek the singular excellence of their child find no good in the child apart from his accomplishments. The child is not good insofar as he is a part; he is good, they suppose, insofar as he excels beyond the part, independently of any role within the whole. This independent goodness, however, can only be the goodness of individual perfections. When the child falls short of this ideal, then he has no goodness in himself by which he might be loved. We can see, then, why the love of others always involves a shared good. A friend is first of all good by sharing in the whole, not by having a list of perfections. When we desire some good for her, we desire it for her as she is, as an imperfect part that can become better. If, on the other hand, she has only the good of her perfections, then we cannot will the good for her as an imperfect individual; rather, the imperfections must be removed, and we will anything for her only insofar as she is perfect. Ultimately, an individual—even when he has a distorted love—must conceive the person loved as in some manner united with himself. When the good is conceived as a singular excellence, however, it is not the union of two parts within a whole; rather, the person loved is probably conceived as an extension of the lover. The perfections of the child, for instance, are perceived as perfections of the parent. Typically, the child perceives this backhanded love. He perceives that the goods he receives—the excellent education, the special training in sports, and so on—are not goods meant for himself. He learns to hate these goods. He longs for a shared good, a good, however small, that he has with others, and which the others desire for his sake.

Enhancements and Love This portrayal of overbearing love may well be uncontested. What will be contested is the link between technological enhancements and overbearing love.43 The act of sending a child to a top-ranked preparatory school can arise from true love or false love; in contrast, I claim, an act of technological enhancement excludes true love. I do not mean that parents who seek technological enhancements have no love for their child; rather, I mean that the act of enhancing itself cannot be an act of true love but only of overbearing love. Technological enhancements are destructive of love. The pursuit of them necessarily severs the good from the whole of which it should be a part. The desire for a good not received from human nature exhibits pride,

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a pride that seeks to excel beyond the good of the part.44 The consequent deformed good is isolated, unable to be shared. All that remains of this good is its excellence. And what of the one for whom this good is desired? His good also is found only in excellence. The technological enhancements, then, cannot be desired for the individual insofar as she is good; it must be desired for her in order to make her good. She is loved not as a limited part, that is good through her order to the whole; rather, she is loved only as super excelling. Her limited nature comes to be hated. Enhancements, then, are a kind of mutilation, a destruction of the perceived evil in the individual and a replacement with something more desirable. The root of this disorder is pride, pride wedded to ingratitude. The partial good is despised because it is limited. Its first limitation is precisely that it is received, for it is a kind of excellence to create things from oneself.45 What we forget is that it is also an excellence to receive. When we reject what is received we are ungrateful. By his nature, the ingrate cuts himself off, holding his good as only his own. Other goods are disdained. A single act of enhancing is but one instance of such pride and false love. This single act, however, might well arise from a more general disposition of pride. At the very least, this act will give rise to this disposition. Once the attitude of enhancement becomes a settled mindset within a society, then the partial good will be despised; the love of exaltation will turn to hatred of what is lowly. The Down syndrome child is not wanted.46 “Inferior races” must be purged. Defective individuals are “mistakes” relegated to the fringe of society.47 What begins in the tones of a high-minded pursuit of a great ideal becomes all that is ugly. When we see suffering in the world we can take two quite divergent approaches. On the one hand, we can seek to alleviate the sufferings of those around us. On the other hand, we can dream of a world without suffering, which becomes a substitute for the world in which we live. In the latter case, we learn to hate the world in which we live. In the end, we do not seek to mend our broken world; we seek to eliminate it, to replace it. As Tom Koch suggests, Were enhancement enthusiasts serious about wishing to reduce harm and improve human potential enhancement, they might endorse as human rights those programs that improve the life of persons with cognitive, sensory, and physical differences.… Were enhancement enthusiasts truly serious about advancing the lives of society and its members, they might seek not the reflexive elimination, but the general nurturing of those whose differences they do not understand.… Instead they note with approval the

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high rates of second-trimester abortions of fetuses that would, if allowed to develop, become persons with Down syndrome. That is, for me, a pity.48

C.S. Lewis emphasizes that we must marvel at a child as a gift received, as someone with whom we can share our good, a good that we ourselves have received.49 If a child is not a gift, then he becomes a thing for satisfaction, a source for the parents own exaltation. The child yearns for love; instead, he gets only “goods.” He has all the things that money can buy, including exceptional intelligence and superhuman strength, but he is alone, miserably alone. And he knows it.

Notes 1

Originally published in Nova et Vetera Vol. 12, n.2 Spring 2014, 969-991; reprinted here with kind permission of Nova et Vetera. 2 See Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., Biomedicine & Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). 3 Tom Koch (in “Enhancing Who? Enhancing What? Ethics, Bioethics, and Transhumanism” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 [2010], 685–99, at 68789) argues that the promises of transhumanism are mostly hot air. 4 See Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: in Defence of Human Enhancement (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) and Nicholas Agar, “Liberal Eugenics” Public Affairs Quarterly 12 (1998), 137–55. Agar wishes to distance himself from transhumanism by promoting only what he considers moderate enhancements. Nevertheless, his essential outlook of “liberal eugenics” is generally adopted by the transhumanist movement. See also Nick Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity” Bioethics 19 (2005), 202–14, at 206; John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 72-85. 5 Jeffrey Bishop, “Transhumanism, Metaphysics, and the Posthuman God” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (2010), 700–20, at 713. Koch (“Enhancing Who”) argues that the new liberal eugenics are not very different from the old eugenics. In contrast, Nicholas Agar (Liberal Eugenics, 3) claims that Galton, the founder of eugenics, could not have foreseen the evil that would be done in the name of eugenics. One might well wonder, however, whether he could not have foreseen or he chose not to foresee? Was the evil done merely in the name of eugenics or was it part and parcel of eugenics? 6 See Julian Savulescu, “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children,” Bioethics 15 (2001), 413–26; see also Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 1935. 7 Dov Fox (in “The Illiberality of ‘Liberal Eugenics,’” Ratio 20 [2007], 1–25) argues that just as government requires certain educational and social training, so it

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will be obliged, upon liberalism’s own principles, to require certain genetic enhancements. Robert Sparrow (in “A Not-So-New Eugenics: Harris and Savulescu on Human Enhancement,” Hastings Center Report 41 [2011], 32–42) provides a similar argument. Savulescu and Harris think they can avoid this conclusion. 8 For instance, among the things that Persson and Savulescu (in “Moral Transhumanism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 [2010], 656–69) wish to program into human nature is a sensitivity to environmental concerns; they also wish to protect human beings from religious fanaticism, however that might be defined. 9 For an accessible history of the eugenics movement see Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003). 10 Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 49-62. 11 Sandel, Case Against Perfection, 61-62. 12 Agar (Liberal Eugenics, 113-16) argues that if we are permitted to change a trait by nurture, then we should be equally permitted to change it by enhancement. 13 This criticism is one of Habermas’ major concerns with genetic manipulations see Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2003), 13-14 and 53-60. 14 Francis Fukuyama (in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002]) recognizes the importance of human nature, but he defines it simply in terms of typical emotions or behavior (130); the importance of the human function, and the functions of various parts of human nature, is lost from sight. 15 See Bishop, “Posthuman God,” 716, who claims that the word “nature” has lost its meaning; Elizabeth Fenton (in “Liberal Eugenics and Human Nature: Against Habermas,” Hastings Center Report 36 [2006], 35–42, at 39) claims that there is no fixed human nature, thereby confirming Bishop’s concerns. Human nature, it seems, is viewed by Fenton and others simply as whatever evolution has now given to us. 16 Persson and Savulescu (“Moral Transhumanism”), for instance, reject the importance of membership in the human species (conceiving the human species, after the biological manner, simply as mutual fertility) and they argue that we can change human nature, by which they mean typical psychological dispositions. Unstated throughout the article is another sense of human nature, which remains unchanged, namely, a conscious being. R. Doede (in “Polanyi in the Face of Transhumanism,” Tradition & Discovery 35 [2008], 33–45) claims that transhumanism is committed to a “Laplacian” consciousness, which ignores the need for the human body. 17 See Agar, “Liberal Eugenics,” 145-48; Fox, “Illiberality,” 10. 18 Agar (Liberal Eugenics, 90) wonders why our humanity should matter, although later he argues that it does; see Nicholas Agar, Humanity’s End: Why We Should

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Reject Radical Enhancement (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010). Persson and Savulescu (“Moral Transhumanism,” 668) think it does not matter whether improvements create a being that is no longer biologically human. 19 Leon Kass (in “L’chaim and its Limits: Why Not Immortality?,” First Things 113 [2001], 17–24) suggests that mortality has its benefits for the human good. In particular, it can help us recognize our other limitations. 20 Hence, Bostrom (“Posthuman Dignity,” 209-10) asserts that they have dignity. 21 In a similar fashion, Agar suggests that radical enhancements might alienate the enhanced individual, because he cannot share in the human good; see Agar, Humanity’s End, 180-91. 22 Bostrom, “Posthuman Dignity,” 205. 23 This distinction is defended by James E. Sabin and Norman Daniels (in “Determining ‘Medical Necessity’ in Mental Health Practice,” Hastings Center Report 24 [1994], 5–13) in order to distinguish what should be covered by insurance (namely, the correction of defect) and what should not (namely, what is not related to defects). 24 See Agar, Liberal Eugenics, 78-81; see also Agar, 141-42; H. Tristram Engelhardt, “Persons and Humans: Refashioning Ourselves in a Better Image and Likeness,” Zygon 19 (1984), 281–95, at 281-84; Michael Bess, “Enhanced Humans versus ‘Normal People’: Elusive Definitions,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (2010), 641–55, at 645-47. 25 For helpful discussions see Erik Parens, “Is Better Always Good? The Enhancement Project,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998); Eric Juengst, “What Does Enhancement Mean?,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998); Eric Juengst, “Can Enhancement Be Distinguished from Prevention in Genetic Medicine?,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 22 (1997), 125–42. 26 Bess (“Enhanced vs. Normal,” 643-48) criticizes the distinction between therapy and enhancement because he observes too great a flexibility for what is “normal” and for what is “healthy.” Similarly, in “A Fatal Attraction to Normalizing: Treating Disabilities as Deviations from ‘Species-Typical’ Functioning,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998), Anita Silvers seems to reduce proper functioning into a kind of population average. 27 Juengst (“Enhancement,” 36) points out that we do not have a sufficient account of an overall function of the organism to specify functions for intellectual ability and moral sensitivity. 28 The recognition that some cases are not clear, most especially for mental dysfunction, does not obviate the distinction between treatment and enhancement. The fact that people have made mistakes in the past does not obviate the distinction. The fact that sometimes moral norms or standards have been incorporated into the distinction (rather than using the distinction as the basis of a moral judgment) does not obviate the distinction. These shortcomings indicate that

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we must approach the distinction with caution. Some would suggest that our caution should lead us to more readily place something on the treatment side of the line, so that we can thereby relieve the sufferings of as many as possible. At the risk of sounding hardhearted, I recommend the opposite caution, in order to avoid the risk of a cruel kind of false love. 29 Bostrom (“Posthuman Dignity,” 211) refers to “Mother Nature” claiming that she should be jailed for child abuse. 30 Much of the dispute over the treatment/enhancement distinction concerns its use to determine whether society should support some medical intervention, for example, it is sometimes thought that we should provide for treatments but not for enhancements. I am making no such suggestion. My use of the distinction is to recognize that defects do not arise from nature, so that correcting defects is not opposed to receiving the goods of nature. I am not concerned, then, about the justice or injustice of supporting growth hormone treatment for two boys, both of whom will likely end up being 5'3" without the treatment, one of which will have this height from a defect in the mechanism of growth and the other from his natural genetic endowments. It is worth noting that having a height of 5'3" is no defect; the defect is in the mechanism of growth. 31 Nor should “natural” be taken to mean simply the current products of evolution, as Engelhardt seems to suggest; see Engelhardt, “Refashioning Ourselves” 285-86. 32 Agar (“Liberal Eugenics,” 139-41) denies any relevant distinction between improvements by way of changing our environment and improvements by way of changing our genes. He thinks that the distinction hangs upon some notion of genetic determinism. I am suggesting that the relevance derives from the manner in which nature distributes our genetic endowments. There is nothing magic about genes themselves; what matters is that they be received from nature. As we have suggested, defects are not received from nature; in other regards, however, our genetic makeup is received through the power of reproduction, not through our laboratory interventions. 33 Fenton (“Liberal Eugenics”) is primarily concerned to argue against the view that what is natural is sacrosanct, which may not in fact be the position of Habermas, against whom she argues (see Habermas, Future of Human Nature), although it may be the view of Francis Fukuyama (Posthuman Future). Like Fenton, Ted Peters (in “‘Playing God’ and Germline Intervention,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 [1995], 365–86, at 368) seems to oppose this view of the sanctity of nature, claiming that those who wish to restrict enhancements “tacitly bless the status quo.” I argue, however, that the current gene pool is indeed what we have received from nature; it should not be meddled with not because it is ideal but so that we can truly participate in the good by receiving it. 34 Sandel, Case Against Perfection, 26. 35 R. Doede, “Transhumanism, Technology, and the Future: Posthumanity Emerging or Sub-humanity Descending?,” Appraisal 7 (2009), 39–54, at 52. Sandel (Case Against Perfection, 85-95) also emphasizes the importance of gratitude. 36 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 63, a. 3.

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Nigel M. de S. Cameron and Amy Michelle DeBaets (in “Germline Gene Modification and the Human Condition before God,” in Desire and Destiny: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner [Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008], 106-107) note that the simple act of building a tower was fiercely opposed by God in the Old Testament not because there was any inherent evil in the tower, but because those who built it sought their own glory and independence. 38 For this reason, Sandel (Case Against Perfection, 85-92) argues that the hyper responsibility generated from enhancements will eliminate humility, as well as solidarity with others. 39 Susan Bordo (in “Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens [Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998]), for instance, emphasizes the drive to convince women that their appearance is defective. This approach might lead to temporary satisfaction with one’s enhanced appearance but long-term dissatisfaction with oneself. 40 Likewise, Gerald McKenny (in “Enhancements and the Ethical Significance of Vulnerability” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens [Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998]) emphasizes the importance of bodily vulnerability for our human good. Me never goes so far as to find value in our lowliness insofar as, through it, we participate in a greater good. 41 McKenny (“Vulnerability,” 228-29) makes a similar point: enhancing ourselves might actually detract from our pursuit of virtue. 42 Bishop (“Posthuman God,” 705-706) argues that when we have no goal beyond ourselves, then we are left only with self augmentation and constant overcoming. 43 For convenience, I use the term “technological enhancements” (and even, for short, just “enhancements”) to refer to the kinds of enhancements that fail to respect the directedness of our human nature, such that the enhancements are not received from nature, as described above. I am not suggesting that every use of technology in order to improve ourselves—even a treadmill—is problematic. 44 Leon Kass (in Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: the Challenge for Bioethics [San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002], 129) describes this pride as “playing God.” 45 McKenny (“Vulnerability,” 230-35) also argues for the importance of our limitations for the love of others. In particular, he emphasizes the importance of the vulnerability of our bodies. 46 In his promotion of “liberal” eugenics, Agar suggest (“Liberal Eugenics” 138) that the first step of such eugenics might involve aborting a defective child, thereby “canceling out the wrong of the life that would have been lived.” All that can be seen in such a child, evidently, is a wrong life. 47 See Kass, Defense of Dignity, 130. 48 Koch, “Enhancing Who,” 696-97. 49 C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of the Man (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1947), 32-33.

THOMAS AQUINAS: TEACHER OF TRANSHUMANITY? JOHN H. BOYER AND GEOFFREY MEADOWS

Introduction In his 2005 article “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,”1 Nick Bostrom presents a transhumanist response to various ethical criticisms of emerging human enhancement technologies. Bostrom is a strong proponent of “transhumanism,” a relatively recent movement which promotes the use of biotechnology to help humans transcend our nature through material improvement, ultimately leading to a new state of existence which is dubbed “posthuman.” Those opposed to transhumanism are pejoratively labeled “bioconservatives” or “bioluddites” by the transhumanists. Unfortunately, the “bioconservative” faction, with whom we share many sympathies, has offered subpar arguments against transhumanist aspirations. While critics like Francis Fukuyama have rightly pointed out the possibility of abuse of biotechnology and the need to consider carefully what technologies we should deem permissible,2 the basis on which Fukuyama argues is flawed. He fears that biotechnology will destroy human nature, thus eliminating the foundation for morality and human rights. In order to protect these rights, he says that we must prevent any tampering with human nature by heavily regulating biotechnology. While there are legitimate concerns about the use of biotechnology, we should not dismiss all developments in biotech as immoral or illicit. What is needed is a firm ontological framework on which to base ethical judgments. The aim of this paper is to show that transhumanism, while revolutionary in aims, presents nothing new in terms of ontological reality. Human enhancement technologies will not destroy human nature. Future individuals with enhanced capabilities will still be fully human. The same categories which we currently use to make moral judgments will apply just as much to “our posthuman future” as they do to our current unenhanced state.

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Therefore, the basis for moral judgment, for rights grounded in natural law, will not cease to exist. However, in order to understand this, we must work from a proper view of human nature. In this respect, we agree with the transhumanists that Fukuyama and his colleagues have not leveled appropriate arguments against transhumanism, although for different reasons than Bostrom gives. We do not think that the fruits of biomedical research will fundamentally transform human nature, thereby creating a new species of persons so advanced that the only description of them will be in terms of what they no longer are, namely “posthuman.” In this essay, we will argue that biotechnical enhancements will not create a new species. Enhanced humans will be precisely that, human. We will argue that future man, if he is to be considered a person, must retain rationality. Thus the classical definition of man as a rational animal will still hold true. Consequently, the foundation for ethics and human rights, i.e. rationality, will still be present. Whether these enhanced individuals come to be by moral or immoral means is beyond the scope of this paper. The alleged “posthumans” will still be rational. They will still be moral. The rules of ethics will not be altered.

Transhumanism The central claim of transhumanism is that human beings ought to pursue the development and application of technologies that will make it possible to increase human health span, extend our intellectual and physical capacities, and give us increased control over our own mental states and moods.3

Prima facie, these goals appear ambitious, but reasonable. However, the transhumanist goes beyond merely stating that we can and should try to extend life spans, expand our cognitive and physical capabilities, and achieve better control of our moods and cognitive states. Transhumanists assert that the result of these projects will be a change in human nature. In achieving these goals, we will cease to be human and will become a new sort of thing, “posthuman.” This term posthuman is used to describe the next stage of humanity, attained by self-directed evolution. It is not a merely semantic change, the result of redefining our conception of what it means to be human; rather “radical technological modifications to our brains and bodies are needed.”4 Although there is no set definition of “posthuman,” transhumanists generally agree that the minimum requirements to be a posthuman will be

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given in terms of enhanced capacities and abilities. Bostrom defines a posthuman as someone who possesses at least one posthuman capacity, including increased healthspan, enhanced cognition, and enhanced emotion,5 achieved through either redesigning the human body using nanotechnology or enhancing it using a plethora of means.6 Beyond enhancement, transhumanists speak of posthumanity as including “completely synthetic artificial intelligences” and “enhanced uploads.”7 The key question is whether or not posthumans will constitute a new species. This is a tricky question to answer when reading the transhumanists. Some, like Bostrom, think that an individual can become posthuman while remaining a human being.8 Others, like Mark Walker, hold that posthumans will be a new genus.9

The Transhumanist Understanding of Human Nature To determine why transhumanists think there will be a new species, we must look at the their understanding of human nature. The very name “posthuman” indicates that our future state can currently only be defined in terms of the degree to which it exceeds our current nature. Thus, the concept of human nature plays a crucial role in transhumanist claims. Unfortunately, there is no one definitive position among transhumanists regarding human nature. All that transhumanists seem to agree on is that human nature is fundamentally material and thus malleable since the ability and obligation to change human nature and even transcend it is the defining characteristic of transhumanist thought. The malleability of human nature is what qualifies it as capable of being transformed into a new species. This lack of clarity or concern regarding human nature is a result of the transhumanists’ singular focus on the goal of becoming posthuman. This telos dominates their writings. As a result, they pay very little attention to the nature they are leaving behind except insofar as such knowledge can be used to leave it behind. Max More, one of the leading proponents of the “extropian” school of transhumanism, says that biologists’ conception of human nature “remains useful” but is “becoming increasingly inadequate as our further evolution depends more on the scientific and technological products of our minds.”10 The end result is that technological changes will “render our chromosomes almost vestigial components of our individual and species identity.”11 Nevertheless, this materialistic definition of human nature in terms of our genetic code and evolutionary lineage must be presupposed in order to

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argue for the possibility of biotechnological enhancement.12 Walker explains that humans are animals with a species specific genome resulting from the mutation of the genomes of our evolutionary ancestors; all of our powers and characteristics are rooted in our biology:13 “The history of our intelligence lies in a secular phylogeny, that is, with our apelike ancestors and indeed even more ‘primitive’ organisms.”14 Walker states that our distinct nature is best understood in terms of a comparison to these ancestors. For instance, we differ from chimps in intellectual and moral virtues, differences based on our biology.15 Thus, posthumanity will constitute a new genus because posthumans will possess significant biological differences from us, which will manifest themselves in increased abilities. Since the abilities of posthumans are vague, Walker must use analogy to demarcate humans from posthumans, as we do with chimps and men: By altering biology, transhumanists propose to improve human nature to the point of creating a new genus: posthumans. Perhaps the most powerful means to adequately conceptualize what is at stake is in terms of a phylogenetic analogy: posthumans will stand to us in the moral and intellectual virtues as we stand to chimps. The phylogenetic analogy underscores the importance of biology in making humans what we are: it is not prejudice or cultural differences that prevent chimps from integrating into our society, but differences in human and chimp nature. Chimps have congenital limitations that prevent them from understanding much of what we know and doing much of what we do. The confirming experiment is easy enough to run: send any chimp to the best private school in the world. The chimp is not going to succeed academically as well as an average human toddler, no matter how many years of intensive one-on-one tutoring it receives. Accepting the phylogenetic analogy means that we will be similarly intellectually challenged compared with posthumans.16

The transition to posthumanity is thereby defined by altering our bodies to produce a speciation event. However, the precise point at which a speciation event takes place is unclear. Let us assume that there will be a specific point at which our physical phenotype will be significantly altered (larger muscles, better neural networks inside the brain, more efficient eyes) such that we would be able to perform tasks that no current human can. Posthumans then excel at academic and practical activities, which humans in their current state are simply unequipped to take on. These changes would presumably be achieved by germ-line selection, genetic alteration and psychopharmacology. Would this change in our physical structure be sufficient to produce a new species of posthumans?

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Problems with Transhumanist Assumptions Walker’s concept of posthumanity treats differences in kind as if they were merely differences of degree. He presupposes that we differ from chimps in kind, but only insofar as chimps cannot perform as well as we do in academic and moral spheres. This means that chimps do have rational and moral capabilities. This is not a proper distinction in kind, but only in degree, since both ‘species’ are assumed to possess the same abilities. The reason that transhumanists use these analogies is that they assume chimps could perform such actions if they lacked “congenital limitations.” However, there is a fundamental difference in essence between human beings and chimps. Chimps lack the ability to understand universals, abstract concepts, make abstract judgments, or perform proper logical deductions. They would never be able to perform academic tasks in any meaningful way, let alone succeed at them. If we changed the chimp genome, on the presupposition that rationality is entirely genetic, it would have a different essence. This would not be enhancing the chimp. It would be causing a substantial change whereby the chimp would cease to be a chimp. A chimp can only do what we do by becoming human. But if posthumans will exceed us academically and morally as we exceed chimps, we must ask what kind of activities posthumans will be capable of that we are not. Are they merely better at the same type of activities or are they performing activities of a completely different nature, activities which do not belong to reason at all? We have no idea what kind of super-rational activities posthumans could perform. The transhumanists do not either. They talk in terms of vague possibilities and analogies. Bostrom says that posthumans will create and enjoy music which makes Mozart sound like Muzak. This does not sound like a different kind of ability. It is just an enhanced ability. Given the general nature of their predictions, we can only give a general reply. It is of little use to argue over possibilities that the transhumanists themselves cannot precisely define, let alone prove to exist. Stating that we will stand to posthumans as chimps stand to us is of little help. Transhumanists assure us that even though they cannot describe in concrete terms what these powers are, these powers will be radically different and, clearly, being radically different entails that they will be vastly superior. Barring a clear explanation of what these activities and the corresponding powers would be, we are forced to assume that they are performing the same type of activities that we do, but better due to more powerful versions of our own capacities. Posthumans will be extremely rational, not above rationality.

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The very talk of enhancement presupposes an essence, which has the ability to perform these actions and which stands under the change as the source of it. Hopkins recognizes this when he notes that there must be a biologically grounded human nature, otherwise improving our behaviors and cognition through biotechnology would be impossible.17 Assuming that the manipulation of the human genome is possible through one means or another, it is clear that if you alter the genome, and the consequence is enhanced ability, then you have only actualized a possibility that was already in the substance materially. We have only shown something which we are able to do to ourselves while remaining the same. Enhancement presupposes an innate ability to do something which can be improved. The reason we think remembering things more easily is better is that we assume that a human being has a particular essence that would be benefited by remembering things better. This assumes that the ability to remember is part of the essence of humanity. Likewise, the assertion that we can enhance our ability to think or to create presupposes that these abilities are part of what a human being is. To enhance these abilities cannot mean to replace them. It merely perfects them and makes what was potential actual. There is no change in species unless we posit that there is some further realm of activity, which can only be accomplished by powers that cannot be described as rational in any sense.

The Thomistic Response to Transhumanism The Thomistic and, more broadly speaking, the essentialist view is that things have real natures which are determinate. They are not fixed in a Platonic sense; they are able to undergo changes. Rather, the changes that a substance can undergo are circumscribed by its nature. We can remember things more easily and think more clearly because by nature we can remember and think. We can have better control over our emotional states because control over our emotions is something proper to human beings. Given this fact, it is strange to claim that enhancement would change what we are. These enhancements do not introduce some new aspect or determination that was not already implicitly contained in the notion of human. We only speak of enhancing what already exists. Genetic enhancement productive of greater health and increased resistance to disease presupposes a natural disposition to be healthy and a power by which we preserve this health. Because the essential nature of human beings includes the power of nutrition, whereby animals maintain

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themselves, and because this power is exercised through material organs, there is no change to the power if we realize the full potential of it by better disposing the matter to the operation of this power. Susceptibility to the common cold is not a power of human beings; fighting infection is. Eliminating susceptibility to the common cold by altering our genome to fight a specific virus does not replace one power with another or add a new one. It perfects the means whereby the preexisting power acts. When we come into contact with a particular virus or bacteria, our bodies naturally fight against it. Even if we are unable to cope with a particular virus, this does not mean we lack the general power to fight it. We merely lack a sufficient material means to do this. For Aquinas, such material changes, which result in the development of posthuman capacities, would not qualify as speciation events. Speciation is a special kind of generation. Natural changes involve three principles: form, matter and privation. In accidental change, the material cause is the individual substance which acquires a new accidental form. The subject is present both before and after the change. In generation, the material cause is the substrate which loses one substantial form and gains another. The substantial form present before generation is not the same as the form present after generation has occurred. From one kind of thing, a different kind of thing results. However, in the generation of living things, the agent cause will have the same formal nature as the thing generated. A speciation event is different. The offspring belongs to a different species than its parents. We tend to speak loosely when we say that species evolve. The prior species does not actually change. Rather it produces offspring which are of a different species. New species are created because before the act of speciating generation, the new species does not exist except in potency. This potency is contained in the generic nature of the parents, which is able to take on a variety of specific determinations. The actuality realized in the new species must be something contained within the proximate genus of the parents. Birds give birth to other birds. As the evolutionary tree shows, mutations are modifications of the ancestor’s nature. Even though birds and mammals are considered to have descended from the common ancestor reptillia, we must say that both potentialities were contained in the original ancestor’s essence. A fish cannot give birth to a bird. It can, however, due to a mutation, give birth to a different kind of fish or at least a creature which is very fishlike. What would be required for a speciation event in which humans give rise to posthumans? A new essence. Human beings are traditionally defined as rational animals. Aquinas notes that the genus of animals is subdivided into rational and irrational.18 This is the primary and

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exhaustive metaphysical division of animal, for it encompasses two grades of animality, one more perfect, the other less perfect. This does not mean that irrational creatures are less animal than rational animals. Both have complete animality. However, in some, the complete potentiality of animality is more fully realized. In order to be human, then, to be a rational animal, the power of reason possessed by the individual must be a specification of animal. Rationality is a determination of animality. As Aquinas makes clear, The understanding of animal is without determination of a special form and expresses, with respect to the ultimate perfection, the nature of the thing from that which is material; the concept of the difference, rational, consists in the determination of the special form.19

As a determination of animal, the power of reason is proper to rational animals as animals. As David Oderberg has put it, “Rationality adds to the purely sentient and vegetative nature of a thing.”20 If it were possible for rational computers to exist, they would not be human for their rationality would not be a determination of animality. To be a human, one must possess full animality along with full rationality.21 A basic principle of Thomistic taxonomy is that the addition or subtraction of a difference from the definition of a thing will alter the species. Just as the addition or subtraction of a unit changes the species of number, the addition or subtraction of a difference changes the species of the definiendum.22 If the difference added can be reduced to the category of substance, we will have a new or different species in the category of substance. If we were to add rationality to an ox, since rationality is a determination contained potentially in the genus of animal, it would cease to be an ox and would become a human.23 If the difference introduced is reduced to one of the accidental categories, we will not have a different species of substance but a different species of accident.24 In order for the creation or discovery of a new species, which comes forth from human beings, there must either be the subtraction of rationality and/or the addition of some further perfection, one which adds to rationality. The former does not concern us here, since the transhumanists are not interested in creating subhuman individuals.25 In order to create a new, posthuman species of animal, the addition of a further perfection must be contained potentially in the genus of animal. Thus, if from humans, posthumans come to be, the specific difference of posthumanity must be contained potentially in human nature. However, it is unclear what such a perfecting specific difference would be. In order to create a tertium quid, a posthuman animal, the difference

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introduced must add a power above and beyond rationality. If it merely adds a further determination to sensitivity, e.g. the ability to sense electromagnetic fields, then this will not create a posthuman species, for the crowning perfection of the new creature will still be rationality. If the division of animal into rational and irrational is an exhaustive division, the new species must be within one of these two classes: rational and irrational. There is no tertium quid. If there were to be a new species of animal that was neither irrational nor rational, it would have to possess both sensibility, rationality, and some power beyond rationality which was a further perfection of these two previous classes. It could not simply be rational in a different way or be more rational. However, as we said, the division into rational and irrational is exhaustive. Thus, on a Thomistic account, there is no possibility of a new rational animal coming about which is not contained in the species animal rationale. If there cannot be a new species, we can only speak of physical enhancement. Aquinas recognizes that improvement in body corresponds to improvement in intellectual activity and cognition: “We observe ‘those who are refined in body are well endowed in mind,’ as stated in De Anima ii, 9.”26 Those who take care of their bodies are able to think more clearly. This does not entail that there is a difference in species when speaking of differences in bodily refinement. Furthermore, radical changes to the bodily structure of a rational animal, assuming that these changes do not corrupt the matter so as not to be able to receive the form of rational animal, do not change the species either. As noted above, Aquinas recognizes that there can be differences in the phenotype without altering human nature. Were we to add rational “to the definition of ox, it would no longer be an ox, but another species, namely human.”27 It would be rational and thus human despite the preservation of its phenotype; a “rational bovine” would still be four-legged, herbivore, etc. However, the transhumanists are not talking about a change whereby an irrational animal gains a power it previously lacked. They talk about a human being becoming better at performing various actions proper to humans as human. The qualifier is that these enhancements are produced by changes to the human phenotype. Nevertheless, the posthuman will still be a rational animal. As the example of the ox illustrates, these changes to the phenotype, which do not replace or remove rationality, would not be sufficient additions to place a posthuman outside the species of rational animal. Unlike the ox example, the differences between the human and posthuman phenotype would not be such as to subdivide the species. Humans can be enhanced because we contain in ourselves a potential for change. Even if there were a difference due to technological intervention,

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this would be the actualization of a potency preexisting within us as human beings. Mutations which produce imperfections in individuals do not change the species of the individual. People with Down’s syndrome are fully human even though they possess certain congenital defects. Why would the same not apply to perfections rather than defects? If we were to produce an offspring which was better at doing what a human does qua human, it would not be a new species of human but a better human. The biological changes which transhumanists propose will therefore fall under the class of natural dispositions. Just as some are born good boxers or good runners because of physical constitution, so too will those with enhanced abilities be born with talents. Through enhancement, we can create a change in species from “bad at running” to “good at running.” These enhanced abilities, however, belong to the category of “quality,” not substance.28 This change does not alter our substantial essence, i.e., rational animal. To run well or poorly is accidental to being a human. Genetic alteration either enhances abilities we already have or destroys them by corrupting the material organs whereby we can exercise these abilities.

Conclusion Given this proper understanding of speciation in light of nature and definition, it now seems appropriate to ask the question, by way of conclusion: why ought human beings to pursue posthumanity? Bostrom replies that it is beneficial for us.29 But who and what are we? Human beings. It follows from Bostrom’s line that it is better for human beings to cease to be human in order to fulfill ourselves as humans. This is a rather queer notion of self-fulfillment. Enhancement enhances us as human beings. These values which proponents of enhancement hold are values proper to us as human beings possessing a particular essence which is directed toward particular ends. All being posthuman entails is that we achieve ends proper to us as human beings in a more complete manner than before. If achieving ends proper to us as human beings is fully consistent with human nature, posthumanity refers not to a new essence or state of being but to merely living more perfectly. If the transhumanist agrees with us, then he undermines all talk about enhanced biological posthumans belonging to a new genus.

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Notes 1

Nick Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,” in H+/-: Transhumanism and Its Critics, ed. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (Philadelphia, PA: Metanexus Institute 2011). 2 Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Picador, 2002). 3 Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,” 55; cf. Bostrom et al., The Transhumaist FAQ: A General Introduction, 2.1, 2003, World Transhumanist Association. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/faq.html. 4 Bostrom et al., Transhumanist FAQ. 5 Nick Bostrom, “Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up,” in The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, ed. Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 28-29. Cf. Bostrom et al., The Transhumanist FAQ. The FAQ lists a host of qualifications: “To be resistant to disease and impervious to aging; to have unlimited youth and vigor; to exercise control over their own desires, moods, and mental states; to be able to avoid feeling tired, hateful, or irritated about petty things; to have an increased capacity for pleasure, love, artistic appreciation, and serenity; to experience novel states of consciousness that current human brains cannot access. It seems likely that the simple fact of living an indefinitely long, healthy, active life would take anyone to posthumanity if they went on accumulating memories, skills, and intelligence.” 6 Bostrom et al., Transhumanist FAQ. 7 Bostrom et al., Transhumanist FAQ. 8 Bostrom, “Why I Want to be a Posthuman,” 49-50. 9 Mark Walker, “Ship of Fools: Why Transhumanism Is the Best Bet to Prevent the Extinction of Civilization” in H +/-: Transhumanism and its Critics, eds. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (Philadelphia, PA: Metanexus Institute 2011), 94. 10 Max More, “True Transhumanism: A Reply to Don Ihde” in H +/-: Transhumanism and its Critics, eds. Gregory R. Hansell and William Grassie (Philadelphia, PA: Metanexus Institute 2011), 136. 11 Max More, “True Transhumanism,” 136. 12 Patrick D. Hopkins, “Is Enhancement Worthy of Being a Right?” in The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, eds. Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 351. 13 Mark Walker, “Ship of Fools,” 94. 14 Mark Walker, “Prolegomena to Any Future Philosophy,” Journal of Evolution and Technology, no. 10 (March 2010), accessed October 1, 2013, http://www.jetpress.org/volume10/prolegomena.html. 15 Walker, “Ship of Fools,” 94. 16 Walker, “Ship of Fools,” 94. 17 Hopkins, “Is Enhancement Worthy of Being a Right?” 351. 18 Summa Contra Gentiles 1.42.

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De ente et essentia 1 David Oderberg, Real Essentialism (New York: Routledge 2007), 94. Cf. ST I, q. 77, aa. 4 and 7. 21 Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 105. 22 ST I, q. 5, a. 5. Cf. ST I, q. 25, a. 6; SCG 1.54; SCG 2.95; and, SCG 4.35. 23 Commentary on the Sentences, 1.44.1.1 co. 24 ST I-II, q. 18, a. 10. 25 However, transhumanists are interested in the subtraction of animality and the retention of rationality through uploading minds to computers. This, as we have said, would entail that the uploaded mind would no longer be human, since its rationality will not be animal rationality. In fact, it will not even be the same individual. Even though the continuum between the two, the subject of the change, is identified by rationality being possessed before and after the upload, the rationality of the computer exists through a different determination and thus will not even be the same rationality. If this is a different individual power of rationality, it will be a different individual, assuming that a “rational” computer can be called per se unum in the first place. 26 ST I, q. 76, a. 5. Cf. ST I, q. 85, a. 7 27 Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, 1.44.1.1 co.; Cf. ST I-II, q. 67, a. 3. 28 Cf. Aristotle, Categories, 9a14-28. 29 Bostrom, “Why I Want to be a Posthuman,” 29.

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A THOMISTIC APPRAISAL OF HUMAN ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGIES JASON T. EBERL

Introduction1 Debate concerning the enhancement of human capacities through genetic, pharmacological, or technological means often revolves around the question of whether there is a common “nature” that all human beings share and which is unwarrantedly violated by enhancing a human being’s capabilities beyond the normal levels defined by this shared nature. In this paper, I will explicate Thomas Aquinas’s view of human nature, noting certain key traits commonly shared among human beings that define each as a “person” who possesses inviolable moral status. While I have elected to focus upon Aquinas’s theory of human nature given the degree of its influence, particularly among bioconservatives, I will note how other historical and contemporary theories of human nature cohere with the Thomistic account. Understanding the specific qualities that define the nature of human persons, which include self-conscious awareness, capacity for intellective thought, and volitional autonomy, informs the ethical assessment of various forms of human enhancement. Some forms of enhancement— assuming they are demonstrably safe and efficacious—for certain types of capacities may be not only morally permissible, but even desirable from the perspective of what constitutes the “flourishing” of human persons in our fundamental nature as rational animals—for example, enhancing one’s immune system or memory capacity. Other forms of enhancement, however, run the risk of detracting from human flourishing or altering one’s nature in ways that would lead to complicated social relationships with other human persons or diminishing one’s moral agency, with the result that such forms of enhancement ought not to be pursued—for example, attempts to enhance one’s emotive responses. Finally, I will evaluate attempts to “morally enhance” human beings from the virtuetheoretic perspective Aquinas promotes.

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Caveats A few caveats are in order before I proceed so as to define the scope of the present analysis. Each of the issues raised by these caveats is only briefly addressed here but merits its own detailed analysis, which I hope to provide in a longer treatment of the ethics of human enhancement in another article. First, I will not enter into the ongoing debate over whether there is a valid distinction between treatment versus enhancement.2 Rather, I will assume that there are some clear-cut cases of human enhancement beyond the “species-typical” norm.3 The question at hand is whether such forms of human enhancement are morally permissible or problematic. Second, I will not be discussing any of the practical issues related to developing such enhancements, but will presume that the enhancements under discussion have been proven—at present or at some future time—to be safe and efficacious. If any proposed enhancements prove not to be safe and efficacious, then they would be morally impermissible on even the most permissive ethical analysis. As Norman Daniels notes, however, the experimental route to demonstrating that some forms of human enhancement are safe and efficacious may be too disproportionate in terms of the risk/benefit ratio such that we cannot ethically get there from here.4 If Daniels is correct, then this entire discussion is moot—at least for those forms of enhancement the long-term effects of which are not in principle determinable or even reasonably predictable. Nevertheless, reasonable predictions may be made for some forms of enhancement such that they may proceed ceteris paribus on the expectation that the benefit/burden ratio—once verified empirically—will result in their favor. Third, I will be limiting my analysis to whether certain forms of human enhancement are permissible or problematic on the basis of whether they alter human nature in ways that do not contribute, but rather inhibit, the individual or collective flourishing of human beings. Enhancement in general, or a particular form of enhancement that may be judged permissible according to the present analysis, may be evaluated as in principle morally impermissible due to other factors—for example, it may erode our appreciation of the inherent “giftedness” of nature while betraying a Promethean drive towards “mastery” over nature.5 Fourth, I rule out as morally impermissible any means toward achieving human enhancement that involves either the destruction or eugenic selection of human embryos or fetuses. Rather, all approvable means of enhancement must respect the inviolable life and bodily integrity of the individual being enhanced. In other words, permissible

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enhancements involve making this person better, not selecting one person over another as genetically superior. Finally, I will not discuss the important issue of whether human societies, or the “global village” as a whole, may become socially disrupted by virtue of an increase in socioeconomic disparity if enhancements are available for only a select few who enjoy wealth or high social standing. Suffice it to say, given the Thomistic model of human flourishing I will elucidate, such severe social disruption would likely render such enhancements impermissible, or at least problematic in the absence of alternative social support mechanisms for the unenhanced to ameliorate the effects of such increased socioeconomic bifurcation.6 In sum, then, the focus of this analysis is whether particular forms of human enhancement, demonstrated to be safe and efficacious, and which are readily available to all who desire them, are in principle morally permissible or problematic with respect to a Thomistic concept of human nature and flourishing.

Human Enhancement There are myriad forms of, means by, and ends for which human capabilities may be enhanced. Hence, it is difficult to justify a blanket approval or disapproval of all forms of enhancement.7 Rather, each particular form of enhancement, or means by which it is achieved, should be morally evaluated on its own merits: Whether we should employ a particular enhancement depends on the reasons for and against that particular enhancement. Creating superimmunity to all known biological and viral insults is very different from practicing sports doping; choosing the personality traits of our offspring through genetic selection is very different from taking a pill that temporarily boosts our ability to concentrate. On this line of reasoning, it is time to take a further step, from asking “Should we do it?” to analyzing the “it” and asking a number of much more specific questions about concrete actions and policy options related to particular enhancement issues within a given sociopolitical-cultural context. The result of this will not be a yes or no to enhancement in general, but a more contextualized and particularized set of ideas and recommendations for how individuals, organizations, and states should move forward in an enhancement era.8

The basic forms of human enhancement I will discuss are cognitive, physical, emotive, and moral. With respect to specific means by which such forms of enhancement may be achieved, I do not draw any a priori

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moral distinctions between genetic, technological, or pharmacological approaches; although, some means may have more or less effect, for good or ill, on the ontology of human nature as will be elucidated below.9 Finally, I contend that the only morally laudable end for which enhancements may be pursued is the individual or collective flourishing of human persons, understood in the Thomistic sense. Enhancements for purely hedonistic ends or as a mere exercise of autonomy—understood in a liberal, individualist sense—are not commensurate with the Thomistic view adopted for this analysis. The Thomistic concept of autonomy is similar to the Kantian concept insofar as the unbridled exercise of an individual’s will without any internal or external constraints is not the goal; rather, it is the will’s capacity to self-legislate—that is, to govern oneself in accordance with the rationally understood moral law.10 Thus, an agent’s exercise of her autonomy should lead to both individual and collective flourishing. This communitarian perspective is at odds with a libertarian concept of an agent’s autonomy, which does not necessarily lead to one’s own flourishing—if an agent wills to engage in selfdestructive behavior—nor contribute to the common good.11

General Reasons in Favor of Enhancement Those who generally favor human enhancement—often self-identified as “transhumanists”—typically offer a three-pronged argument to make their case.12 They first highlight all the potential benefits that enhancement may yield in terms of physical, cognitive, social, and moral improvement over our current, naturally given, condition. Second, they presume in favor of the liberal conception of individual autonomy, such that the burden of demonstration is on those who would restrict the freedom of individuals who wish to enhance themselves or their children. The contrast between a liberal and a Thomistic conception of autonomy—as described above—is premised upon the question of whether there is an objective standard for human flourishing, such that certain forms of enhancement would be good or bad for human beings generally, or whether what counts as “good” for a particular person can only be defined subjectively by her and thus she should have the freedom to pursue her own conception of what constitutes a flourishing life.13 Transhumanists thus advocate a right to “morphological freedom,” defined as “the right to modify and enhance one’s body, cognition, and emotions.”14 Such theorists recognize reasonable limits to the exercise of such autonomy insofar as they foresee legitimate enhancements as often

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contributing to the amelioration of social issues and not merely the exercise of individual preferences; nevertheless, they advocate the freedom to satisfy individual preferences so long as wider social harms do not thereby result. The Thomistic view of autonomy differs insofar as such “wider social harms” are objectively, and not merely conventionally, defined; furthermore, individuals may be legitimately protected from objectively harming themselves through the satisfaction of irrational preferences, even if no third-party harms are implicated. Third—and most relevant to the present discussion—they contend that human nature, as given, is not fixed but malleable and that the application of human intelligence is likely to result in superior alterations to the human form than the “blind” process of continued biological evolution: Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become post-human, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.15

Representative of this viewpoint is the opening chapter of the collection, Enhancing Human Capacities, the authors of which reject as “ideological” any understanding of enhancement that rests upon a metaphysical concept of human nature and adopt a “welfarist” definition, in which an enhancement is “any change in the biology or psychology of a person which increases the chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances.”16 Of course, this definition, consequentialist in tone, leaves open to debate what may be considered a “good life” for human beings. Following John Rawls and others, the authors adopt a notion of “all-purpose goods,” which may subserve human flourishing in a wide variety of lifestyle and career choices.17 The list of such goods includes various cognitive abilities. Thus, they conclude that, as safe and efficacious cognitive enhancement technology becomes available and affordable, “parents will have a duty to enhance their children.”18 Cognitive enhancements would be on an ethical par with enhancing the immune system of one’s child through vaccinations. It is important to note that the goal of transhumanists and their fellowtravellers is not perfection, but rather, a continued increase of human capabilities asymptotically. Max More describes the overarching transhumanist goal as “perpetual progress,” not “seeking a state of perfection.”19 It remains the case that an enhanced human being will be subject to all kinds of contingencies that may forever be insurmountable.

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Hence, while an enhanced human being may be tempted towards less humility or gratitude for the gifts—engineered or naturally-endowed—that she possesses, a reasonable appreciation of just how much remains completely outside of human control, no matter how great one’s capabilities may be, should inspire the continued cultivation of the virtues of humility and gratitude in the face of somatic vulnerability and the changing winds of fortune.20

Objections to Enhancement based on “Human Nature” Although there are various objections either to human enhancement in general or to particular forms of enhancement, I will focus on two related foundational principled objections: (1) enhancements may alter human nature, which is sacrosanct; (2) alteration or destruction of human nature will negatively impact our capacity to understand and pursue what is objectively good in terms of human flourishing.21 Understanding and replying, either affirmatively or negatively, to these objections requires the development of a defensible objective definition of “human nature” and establishing its inherent normative value. Arthur Caplan, however, raises the basic challenge to those who object to human enhancement on the basis that it violates our shared “nature” in objectionable ways: Is there a “nature” that is common to all humans, both those that exist now and those that have existed in the past? … one can concede that we have been shaped by a causally powerful set of genetic influences and selection forces and still remain skeptical as to whether these have produced a single “nature” that all members of humanity possess. What exactly is the single trait or fixed, determinate set of traits that defines the nature of who humans are and have been throughout our entire existence as a species on this planet? … Without a demonstration of a “nature” there is no basis for the claim that change, improvement, and betterment always represent grave threats to our essential humanity.22

Despite all that we have learned about the biological and sociological evolutionary development of human beings, metaphysical analyses from both historical and contemporary philosophers have consistently—if not uncontroversially—defended a fairly coherent list of universal human qualities that emerge through such development. In the classical period, both Plato and Aristotle defined the essence of humanity in terms of our capacity for rational thought. For Plato, this led to the conclusion that we

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are essentially immaterial minds; whereas Aristotle took a less dualistic stance in defining human beings as “rational animals.”23 The earliest philosophical definition of personhood comes from Boethius in the early 6th century, who defined a person as an “individual substance of a rational nature.”24 Later in the 17th century, John Locke offered an alternative definition of a person as “a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places.”25 Finally, in the 18th century, Immanuel Kant grounded the incalculable moral worth— dignity—of human persons in terms of the capacity for rational autonomy.26 By and large, contemporary philosophers have perpetuated the thesis that a person is any being that exhibits a capacity for selfconscious rational thought and autonomous volition, and who is thereby a member of the moral community.27 For example, Lynne Baker contends a person is essentially a being with the capacity for a first-person perspective.28 Other contemporary theorists cite the following essential activities in which persons engage: rational thought, self-reflexive consciousness, using language to communicate, having non-momentary self-interests, and possessing moral agency or autonomy.29

Thomistic Concept of Human Nature and Flourishing Another representative and influential thinker in this regard is Thomas Aquinas who, as both a Christian theologian and as a synthesizer of earlier Greco-Roman philosophical traditions, continues to be a significant voice in contemporary metaphysical and moral debates regarding the composition of human nature and the proper treatment of human persons.30 According to Aquinas, every human being is a person, following the Boethian definition quoted above.31 Being of a rational nature distinguishes human persons from other material substances.32 A human person, though, is not only rational, but is also a sentient, animate, and corporeal substance.33 Aquinas thus follows Aristotle in defining human persons as “rational animals.”34 Rationality, on Aquinas’s view, is the highest capacity found among natural substances because it enables a person to come to know universal conceptual truths and to determine their own actions.35 Hence, he says, the term “person” is attributed to rational beings insofar as they have a special dignity.36 Aquinas refers to human persons as essentially animal because we share certain essential qualities with other members of the animal genus. The primary exemplification of such similarity is the capacity for sense-

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perception. A human body, though, is unique among other kinds of animal bodies in that it is organized to support not only the capacity for senseperception, but also the capacity for rational thought. These two capacities are interrelated insofar as the human intellect functions by abstracting universal concepts from “phantasms,”37 which the mind possesses through sense-perception of particular material substances. Since the activity of sense-perception requires proper material organs—eyes, ears, nose, etc.— as well as cognitive functions such as imagination and memory, which Aquinas considers to be material functions of the brain,38 the human intellect requires a well-functioning human body.39 With this basic concept of human nature in mind, Aquinas proceeds to argue that the fundamental “good” for human beings consists in our flourishing, which is the fulfillment of our shared nature.40 Human nature is defined by a set of capacities relative to our existence as living, sentient, social, and rational animals—the last including both intellective and autonomous volitional capacities. Human flourishing involves actualizing these definitive capacities of the human species, such that each of us becomes the most perfect—that is, most complete or fully actualized— human being we can be.41 To achieve this end, Aquinas claims that all human beings have a set of natural inclinations to pursue whatever we perceive to be good—that is, what is desirable to us insofar as it will help actualize our definitive capacities.42 What he terms the “natural law” includes a set of principles which, if followed, will satisfy a human being’s natural inclinations in accord with reason and thus lead to perfection according to her nature as a human being.43 The Thomistic account of natural law is premised upon a relatively basic account of human nature of which the primary common features are life, sentience, sociability, and rationality. Of course, each of these features must be further defined, and such definitions, as they become more specific, may be controversial. But a high degree of specification is not required to define certain general natural law precepts. For example, sentience may be understood broadly to refer to human beings’ capacity to sense their environment and respond to it, along with the correlative experiences of pleasure and pain. One could then deduce that depriving a person of any of her senses—say, by blinding her—or causing her unwarranted pain would be bad for her.44 Hence, there is an obligation to avoid intentionally or negligently depriving a person of her senses or causing her undue pain. On the positive side, restoring a blind person’s sight, should she desire it, or causing a pleasurable experience would be good and thus worth pursuing. The question then arises whether it would be advantageous to expand a person’s visual capacity by, for example,

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genetically or cybernetically modifying her eyes or visual cortex such that she can perceive beyond the current visible spectrum into the infrared and ultraviolet spectra. Contemporary natural law theorists have cited various goods that arguably follow from the Thomistic understanding of human natural inclinations. John Finnis, for example, identifies seven “basic forms of good for us:” life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability/friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion.45 He further specifies that the basic good of life signifies every aspect of the vitality which puts a human being in good shape for self-determination. Hence, life here includes bodily (including cerebral) health, and freedom from the pain that betokens organic malfunctioning or injury.46

Aristotelian philosopher Martha Nussbaum has formulated a complementary contemporary framework for moral and political theorizing known as the “capabilities approach.”47 This approach refers to the intrinsic good of a human being’s individual and, within a given society, collective capacity to act in certain ways that maximize both her individual flourishing and the common good. Nussbaum’s view accords with the Thomistic natural law ethic insofar as both see individual and collective human flourishing as the ultimate goal of moral action and understand this ultimate goal to be reached through the actualization of natural human capabilities.48 Nussbaum lists ten basic, or central, human capabilities, the existence of which exerts moral and political claims upon others to provide the means for their actualization.49 The first two capabilities listed are life and bodily health.50 The latter, of course, is integral to promoting the former, but it also possesses a more extensive value on its own insofar as being healthy also means that one is not suffering from physical disease or injury—recall that our nature as sentient beings, capable of feeling pleasure and pain, is a definitive property of human nature according to Aquinas—nor is debilitated in a way that interferes with physical and intellectual activity. In other words, health, along with life, is a basic, foundational necessity for a human person to be able to engage in a maximal degree of activity in pursuit of their individual and, in concert with others, social flourishing: human abilities come into the world in a nascent or undeveloped form and require support from the environment—including support for physical

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health and especially, here, for mental development—if they are to mature in a way that is worthy of human dignity.51

Of course, this does not entail that a person will actually engage in the maximal degree of activity; nor is it incumbent upon society to ensure that they achieve the end of such activity. Rather, society’s obligation is to equip individuals with the opportunity to avail themselves of the tools, with which they are already naturally endowed but may be hampered through disease or disabling injury, to be able to choose for themselves which fulfilling activities they will engage in for their own and others’ benefit. Transhumanists take this obligation to the next level by contending that individuals ought to have at least the freedom to pursue, if not actually have provided to them by society, non-natural endowments that may either (a) create new capabilities foreign to human nature or (b) allow one to more fully actualize her natural human capabilities. The latter goal accords with the Aristotelian-Thomistic vision advocated by Nussbaum and myself. The aim of a human enhancement, on this view, is not to create a new species—so-called “posthumans”—but rather to facilitate human persons to become the most fully actualized “rational animals” we can be by building upon the inherent potentialities of our extant nature. Forms of enhancement that eliminate naturally-given potentialities, or which add new ones wholly foreign to human nature, will not be conducive to human flourishing by this standard. In order to criticize the “melioristic” vision of human enhancement, Robert Spaemann asks a series of rhetorical questions intended, by their very asking, to showcase the “absurdity” of such an enterprise: What kind of human being is the more desirable? Should it be one who is more intelligent? One happier, more creative, more easily satisfied, socially more adaptable or emotionally more robust, cordial, and sensitive?52

Put in terms of crafting a “more desirable” type of human being, enhancement does appear to run the grave risk of leading to new forms of class distinctions and a failure the recognize the inherent dignity of all human persons, regardless of their genetic endowment. However, reframing Spaemann’s initial question in terms of which traits are more desirable for a human being to possess, it is more difficult to see the danger—even less the putatively inherent absurdity—of the proenhancement camp. Rather, several of the traits Spaemann lists— intelligence, creativity, social adaptability, and emotional sensitivity—

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seem to be unqualified basic goods that contribute to human flourishing defined Thomistically. I will now analyze in detail four particular forms of enhancement.

Forms of Human Enhancement Cognitive As noted above, Aristotle defines human beings as essentially “rational animals,” and philosophers from Aquinas to Kant have affirmed that the inherent dignity of human beings stems from our nature as rational and autonomous moral beings. It thus seems that promoting human flourishing, which includes not only the disposition to engage in truthseeking speculative and practical reasoning but also the ability to do so, should motivate us to utilize all available feasible means to increase our— or our children’s—ability to engage in intellective cognition or have a greater capacity for autonomous volition. As Ryan Anderson and Christopher Tollefsen affirm: …our given nature is largely one of capacities that require our action to be brought to actuality. Our life must be a life of deliberation, choice, commitment, and action if it is to be a good and flourishing life. We do not want our lives to be lives of merely passive benefit, of induced experiences, but lives of action, lives of which we are agents and authors.53

This perspective, informed by Thomistic natural law theory, does not in principle rule out the moral permissibility of cognitive or other forms of enhancement; in fact, some types of cognitive enhancement may in fact contribute to our being able to more fully actualize our intellective and volitional capacities.54 Nevertheless, Anderson and Tollefsen note two key criteria that need to be satisfied: 1. Enhancements must instantiate more deeply, completely, or thoroughly one of the basic human goods55 without either intentionally damaging other goods or providing us with mere illusions of fulfillment. 2. Enhancements must allow us to instantiate these goods rather than replace our agency with genetic, pharmaceutical, or mechanical alternatives.56

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Lubomira Radoilska argues that cognitive enhancement violates these two criteria by (a) diminishing an agent’s “epistemic credit” for her cognitive performance, and (b) altering over time the agent’s attitude toward epistemic achievement.57 When someone uses a calculator to resolve an algebraic equation, she is not faulted for taking advantage of an available technological shortcut; however, she would not be credited with resolving the equation since she did not utilize her own cognitive apparatus. But perhaps the agent does not mind giving up such credit in favor of being able to resolve complex mathematical equations more quickly and thereby be more productive in applied endeavors. Typically, though, such endeavors are larger, more complicated intellectual projects towards which the cognitive shortcut is but a minor means. The mathematical calculations and applied engineering skills to land a manned spacecraft on the moon remain creditable to the astronauts and NASA engineers despite having benefitted from the assistance of computers and slide-rules. More pernicious, though, is the attitude one may develop as she allows herself to become more and more dependent upon such external aids to conduct her cognitive activities for her, resulting eventually in intellectual “laziness.” Is this a valid concern with respect to realistic types of cognitive enhancement? Certainly, if a human being were transformed into a true cybernetic organism—“cyborg”58—by means of having had a CPU chip implanted in her brain to take over some or all of her cognitive processing, then credit towards her—even her very existence—as an epistemic agent would be diminished or destroyed altogether. On the other hand, using a pharmaceutical enhancement that assists one to have better focus and attention while performing cognitive operations does not replace, but rather assists the actualization of one’s epistemic agency. Even a technological implant within the human brain that, rather than taking over processing activities, merely helps the brain to access information via direct connection to the Internet or to conduct long-distance communication without the need of any external devices could help expand our perceptual abilities in a way that enhances our intellective functioning.59 One could argue that the use of a pharmaceutical enhancement to achieve greater focus may interfere with the cultivation of the virtue of industriousness by utilizing the drug instead of combatting one’s tendency toward laziness. However, such a drug does not necessarily make one less lazy; rather, someone who elects to take it is disposed to be more industrious and desires the drug’s assistance to combat mental fatigue as opposed to laziness.60

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Another type of cognitive enhancement, more permanent in its effects than the use of pharmaceuticals, would involve genetic manipulation to increase the formation of neural connections for the sake of improved memory retention and recall. Memory, Aquinas acknowledges, is a key component of our neurologically based cognitive architecture that is essential for intellective thought to occur.61 Intellective cognition involves the abstraction of universal concepts from the phantasms formed in the imagination as part of the sense-perceptive process. But the intellect does not require phantasms only for its initial act of abstraction, but also whenever it recalls a particular universal or needs to compare a previously abstracted universal with some object currently being perceived to see if it instantiates that universal. All of this requires a well-functioning memory capacity. Of course, the type of memory to which Aquinas is referring is not simply the recollection of data such as facts, figures, and names, but also what is known as experiential memory; the capacity not only to retain information of the first sort, but also to recall past experiences more sharply could feasibly be genetically enhanced given their neurological foundation. Furthermore, face-recognition is a key function of memory that may be subject to deficiency or otherwise open to enhancement beyond the norm; repairing or enhancing this particular memory function could assist one’s sociability, particularly if a person is trepidatious about meeting new people for fear they will not be able to recall their face and/or name on a future occasion and suffer embarrassment as a result. Cognitive enhancement thus coheres with the Thomistic aim of human flourishing by means of actualizing our rational capacities in pursuit of truth or the accomplishment of practical—that is, technological in the original Aristotelian sense of the term—endeavors. Actualizing such capacities to an improved degree can, in turn, positively impact other valuable human activities, such as forming social relationships. An essential caveat is that epistemic agency must always be reserved to the person herself and not usurped by any external device; nevertheless, reliance on such a device—whether an external hand-held calculator or a neural implant—as a cognitive aid does not necessarily entail surrender of one’s agency.

Physical There are many types of physical enhancement and purposes for which one may seek it. Two of the more problematic types of physical enhancement are performance enhancement for the sake of greater athletic

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competitiveness, and aesthetic enhancement for the sake of either vanity or increased sexual attractiveness.62 A more beneficial type of physical enhancement, from a Thomistic view of human flourishing, involves factors that contribute to a greater degree of bodily health, which is not only a basic human good in itself insofar as we are essentially corporeal beings, but also instrumentally valuable insofar as illnesses that impair neurological activity have a negative impact on intellective activity.63 Furthermore, increased healthiness, leading to increased longevity, can allow one more time to pursue truth, deepen and develop new friendships, cultivate moral virtue, eliminate moral vice, and contribute to the common good.64 Particular types of physical enhancement that may be permissible, if pursued for these ends and not for the sake of competitive performance, include increased muscle strength, cardiovascular function, lung capacity, bone density, and immune responsiveness.65 Furthermore, enhancement of manual dexterity would benefit individuals such as surgeons or musicians—recall that aesthetic experience is one of the basic goods Finnis cites. Michael Sandel complains, however, that seeking such physical enhancements instrumentalizes health as subordinate to other goals and neglects its value as an end in itself.66 This complaint is based on a false bivalent “either/or” in which health can only be exclusively instrumentally or intrinsically valuable. Rather, as Aristotle notes, some goods can be both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable.67 It is evident that all the various bodily goods, even life itself, fall within this last category: while valuable in and of themselves, they are also instrumentally valuable for the sake of the highest human function—that is, intellective thought and autonomous volition. For instance, while the life and relative health of someone in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) is no less intrinsically valuable than that of someone who is fully conscious and rational, it is nevertheless the case that the PVS patient’s condition is overall not as good as—that is, it is a less desirable mode of existence than—one in which her bodily condition is capable of supporting intellective and volitional activity.68 Physical enhancement, if pursued for goals commensurate with human flourishing and not merely for the sake of vanity or athletic competitiveness, thus coheres with the Thomistic view of human nature insofar as the bodily functions endemic to our essential animality are both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable by subserving our intellective activity. Hence, as noted above, Finnis and Nussbaum both emphasize health as essentially conducive to human intellectual development. It is important to keep in mind, however, Anderson and Tollefsen’s sound

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principle that the enhancement of human capacities in pursuit of one or more basic natural goods should not damage our capacity for other basic goods according to human nature. Recall the example cited earlier of physically enhancing someone such that their visual-perceptive range goes beyond the current visible spectrum into the infrared and ultraviolet spectra. While such enhancement might open new possibilities for aesthetic experience, it would likely diminish one’s capacity for aesthetic experience within the natural visible range.69 Since the capacity for aesthetic experience is a basic human good and there is no guarantee that this good will be further enhanced, or at least not diminished, with one’s enhanced eyesight, it would be best to accept one’s visual capacity as naturally given—although allowing correction for any defects. Another key caveat is that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to regulate the use of such enhancements once they become available on the open market. Enhancements such as increased cardiovascular function and muscle strength, which augment one’s overall health as well as athletic performance, would likely be utilized for both purposes without any ability to restrict the latter use. The questions at hand are, first, whether allowing performance enhancement in athletics is inherently bad;70 and, second, whether the potential misuse of physical enhancement should lead to a blanket prohibition on such enhancements altogether, thereby depriving humanity of tremendous potential health benefits and increased longevity.

Emotive In morally analyzing various forms of psychological enhancement— including cognitive, emotive, and so-called “moral” enhancement—a common set of normative values are often invoked: autonomy, authenticity, and self-knowledge. Niklas Juth addresses the concern that cognitive or emotive enhancements may alter one’s personality in a way that erodes their autonomy or authenticity. For example, consider a person who has a fundamentally gloomy and cynical outlook on life—though not “clinically depressed”—and elects to utilize an SSRI regimen to generate a more cheerful and positive attitude.71 Juth argues that, so long as this election is autonomously chosen and follows from this person’s desire to have a more positive mood, there is no reason to consider her improved mood to be inauthentic unless one adheres to a “chauvinist work ethics to claim that changes of personality have to be arduous in order to be authentic.”72

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Advocates of classical virtue ethics, however—such as Aristotle and Aquinas—argue that the process of cultivating one’s character traits is itself rewarding and one positive consequence is that such traits, once developed, are self-sustaining—that is, they are not essentially dependent on external circumstances to persist. For instance, Bill and Melinda Gates are evidently generous persons and they have had the opportunity to cultivate their generosity on an immense scale by virtue of their Microsoftbased fortune. What if, however, the Gateses lost their fortune due to a severe economic catastrophe? Would they cease to be generous? If they truly have the virtue of generosity, then they would not cease to be generous even if they could no longer operationalize their philanthropic disposition. The proof would be if they were to regain their fortune and reinitialize their philanthropic endeavors, or if they continued to give even when destitute—like the poor widow in the Gospel of Mark (12:41-44) who gave what little she had and not just out of her surplus. By contrast, an individual who is dependent upon SSRI drugs in order to have a brighter mood will likely not maintain that mood if the drugs were to become unavailable to her. What makes her improved mood inauthentic is that it is neither self-generated nor “owned” by her; rather, it is “given” to her by the drugs, and what is given may also be taken away. However, it may be the case that, having become used to her new positive demeanor and desirous of continuing it, she may be motivated to maintain her new character trait if the drugs become unavailable. Unless, though, the drugs have enacted a stable change in her neurochemistry, she will be back to square one and have to utilize more traditional methods of mood alteration—such as cognitive behavior therapy and positive psychology— which, while involving more effort, may lead to a more stable alteration of her character.73 This does not mean that SSRIs should not be utilized for individuals whose negative demeanor is wholly outside of their capacity to alter through traditional psychotherapeutic means that are self-driven; nor does it rule out the usefulness of SSRIs as a temporary measure designed to help one realize what she would be like if she were to cultivate a more positive outlook on life and then proceed to do so utilizing self-driven measures. It is important to note that this example is not intended to underwrite the claim that having a more positive mood is inherently good; for having a cynical outlook may be beneficial for someone who is thereby suspicious of others’ motives and thus does not allow themselves to be taken advantage of. On the other hand, one does not have to be a thoroughgoing cynic in order to avoid falling victim to nefarious schemes. Nevertheless, any form of cognitive or emotive enhancement will have to

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be evaluated from the perspective of whether they are truly beneficial for the enhanced individual and for society in general. An example of a harmful emotive enhancement would be one that eliminates the experience of suffering altogether or attenuates one’s undesirable emotions such that she becomes blind to goods on which she may be missing out that could be attained only by experiencing such painful emotions. There are a number of spiritual goods—recognized in both Western and Eastern religious traditions—as well as various nonspiritual goods that can result from the experience of suffering. The former include suffering as a means of personal atonement and redemption, or as a sign of personal integrity and honor. The latter include one’s selffulfillment, her experience of respect and love in solidarity with those who care for her as she suffers, and her exercise of autonomy in responding actively to the otherwise passive experience of pain and suffering.74 Furthermore, if one becomes inured to the painful emotions that are indicative of ways in which one is not objectively flourishing, the mere elimination of such emotions may lead to a deluded self-perception that one is flourishing when in fact she is not; and the hedonic pursuit of “feeling good” may lead to alienation from one’s “genuine” self. Concern for such a lack of authenticity in one’s emotional life is prevalent among various voices in the enhancement discussion.75 Although some forms of emotive enhancement may assist one to overcome persistent unpleasant feelings that may inhibit their capacity to pursue happiness or to form healthy social relationships, there is a significantly greater danger, than in the case of cognitive or physical enhancement, of inauthenticity and self-alienation inhibiting one’s autonomous agency, leading to an ersatz form of happiness that is not indicative of actual human flourishing. Furthermore, the experience of emotional suffering, while interfering with one’s natural inclination towards pleasure as a sentient being, may serve an important function in leading to a more genuine and robust experience of happiness that would be derailed by occluding one’s capacity to suffer. Hence, the prescription of emotive enhancements ought to be scrutinized most carefully on a case-by-case basis instead of being made widely available on the open market. Given, however, the current phenomenon of over-diagnosis of depression and over-prescription of psychotropic drugs,76 it may be too risky to trust that such scrutiny for emotional states beyond clinical depression will be forthcoming. Thus, instead of pursuing emotive enhancement, the focus of psychiatric pharmacology should remain in the realm of treatment for diagnosed

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pathological conditions that cannot be overcome by more traditional forms of attitudinal and behavioral modification.

Moral Issues related to emotive enhancement also bear on the discussion of so-called “moral enhancement” insofar as it is claimed that there are some emotions such that a reduction in the degree to which an agent experiences those emotions would, under some circumstances, constitute a moral enhancement.77

Relevant examples of such emotional tendencies include aggression, xenophobia, and ego-centeredness. Further, it may be possible to positively enhance certain emotional tendencies toward empathy, truthfulness, solidarity, agreeableness, altruism, gratitude, fairness, shame, and forgiveness.78 No one would assert that an agent must merely accept who they are— in terms of their emotional states that inform their moral motivations—and not strive at all to morally improve oneself; the salient question is how one ought to go about improving one’s moral character. As discussed above concerning emotive enhancement, the relevant issue is not the simple distinction between utilizing “natural” vs. “unnatural” means to alter one’s character. Rather, the issues at stake include which means will have the optimal effect in terms of permanence—or at least semi-permanence—of avoiding dependence upon extrinsic means that may not always be available, and of preserving an agent’s authentic pursuit of genuine human flourishing. With respect to the former concern, recall that one of Aristotle’s criteria for a virtuous action is that it “must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.”79 There may not be a sound in principle objection to altering one’s morally relevant emotional states through pharmacological or other means; but it remains to be seen whether this would be the most efficacious means of attaining reliable improvement in one’s moral character. Consider an individual who is disposed toward impatience but has a desire to cultivate a disposition towards patience. She may utilize a traditional method for altering her response to stressors—for example, when her child is aggravating her, she may leave the room, close her eyes, and count to ten while taking deep breaths—or she may take a hypothetical pill that alters her neurochemistry such that she becomes less

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prone to becoming aggravated. Does utilizing the latter means decrease the agent’s moral merit in becoming a more patient parent? I contend that it does not inherently decrease her merit insofar as her choice to take the pill comes from the same laudable desire as choosing more traditional means of making oneself more patient. The relevant question is which means would be more efficacious in leading to a sustainable and authentic change of character. Perhaps taking the pill on numerous occasions over time would lead to a permanent change in the agent’s neurochemistry such that she would eventually no longer need to take the pill; but we can only hypothesize at this point whether that would be the case. A notable concern is that such a pill, once marketed, would be taken for all sorts of reasons, some of which would inhibit, instead of facilitate, an agent’s authentic and stable change of character to become a more patient person. As has been witnessed in the case of anti-depressants and pharmaceutical analgesics—such as oxycontin—it is difficult to regulate the prescription or black-market attainment of such drugs once they are approved. Whether this well-founded concern should lead to a general prohibition of such pharmaceutical enhancements, or whether stricter, more paternalistic, regulations may be called for to ensure that they are being prescribed and utilized properly, warrants further discussion outside the scope of the present analysis. With respect to the concern that an alteration of an agent’s character be both authentic and effective, Fabrice Jotterand points out that the theory underlying moral enhancement “appears reductive and one-sided” insofar as it focuses on the manipulation of an agent’s motivational and emotional states to the neglect of an agent’s capacity for moral reasoning, which requires knowledge of the content of morality. Importing Alasdair MacIntyre’s contemporary Aristotelian account of moral virtue, Jotterand concludes, …it appears difficult to determine, on a transhumanist account, what level of emotional control for moral behavior is adequate or what degree of altruism, empathy, or solidarity insures sociability. The way human beings make moral decisions requires the interaction of a complex network of emotional, cognitive, and motivational processes that cannot be reduced just to moral emotions or technological control (moral capacity) but also to practical reasoning (i.e., the source of moral content).80

This is not to deny that there is an emotive component to moral virtue. Aristotle, in fact, explicitly defines virtue, in part, as having the appropriate degree of feeling in a given context:

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Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, whereas virtue finds and chooses what is intermediate.81

In applying his general concept of virtue to someone who is brave, Aristotle concludes, Hence whoever stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right end, in the right way, at the right time, and is correspondingly confident, is the brave person; for the brave person’s actions and feelings accord with what something is worth, and follow what reason prescribes.82

This passage affirms Jotterand’s complaint that moral enhancement programs capture merely one aspect of the cultivation of an agent’s moral character. For no type of enhancement could rightly inform someone of what the moral worth of some end may be, or what would be the most appropriate means toward achieving that end. At best, a manipulation of one’s aggressive tendencies may help moderate their reaction such that they are less prone to act rashly; but there will be a corresponding danger of eliminating one’s aggressive tendencies altogether, which would preclude one’s ability to act bravely in appropriate contexts. Not all proponents of moral enhancement, however, suffer from the narrow focus that Jotterand properly accuses others of holding. An interdisciplinary “Genetic Virtue Project”—involving philosophers, psychologists, and geneticists—is seeking to discover ways in which forms of genetic manipulation may complement, not replace, the Aristotelian model for virtue acquisition: Thus, the hope of the GVP is not to make persons virtuous but to make them better equipped to learn how to be virtuous. In this sense, the GVP is in agreement with Aristotle’s view that “the virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are naturally receptive of them, but we are completed through habit.” To this it may be added that some people are more naturally receptive, that is, able to learn, than others.83

Understood in this way, it may indeed be possible to positively assist certain individuals to cultivate moral virtue by enhancing particular emotional states or facilitating the practical reasoning process when limited by neurological constraints.84 Nevertheless, the same cautions noted above with respect to emotive enhancement more broadly remain applicable and it may be difficult to ascertain—both externally and subjectively—whether one is being helped to cultivate virtue through their

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own efforts of practical reasoning and psychological self-mastery or being offered a mere simulacrum of true moral virtue. As noted above, the risk of inauthentic cultivation of moral virtue may be simply too difficult to avoid due to the inherent inability to effectively regulate access to various forms of enhancement once they become marketable.

Conclusion An unbridled, perfectionist, drive toward human enhancement is not compatible with the Thomistic concept of human nature and flourishing insofar as it is not premised on an objective view of what constitutes human well-being, such that certain enhancements may be pursued for misplaced goals—such as vanity or competitiveness—or lead to an ersatz form of “happiness.” Nevertheless, certain forms of human enhancement, aimed at improving the extent to which our bodies support the actualization of essential human capacities, may facilitate an asymptotic progression towards individual and collective flourishing. As noted above, the first principle of the natural law, according to Aquinas, is to pursue the good, which is what is desirable insofar as it is perfective—asymptotically speaking—of human beings according to our nature as rational animals.85 Hence, cognitive or physical enhancements may be licitly utilized in pursuit of augmented capacities that are conducive to human well-being as living, sentient, social, and rational animals. The potential for misuse will unavoidably be present, however, and thus careful monitoring is warranted. Emotive or moral enhancements, on the other hand, must be approached much more cautiously so as not to erroneously replace the genuine cultivation of virtue with more-or-less “programmed” moral behavior. The risk here is profound as the diminishment or loss of moral agency undercuts the very foundation—as recognized by Thomists, Kantians, and others—of the inherent dignity of human persons. Nevertheless, there are definite material limitations to the exercise of human beings’ intellective and volitional capacities that call for cautious continued modification beyond the current “given.”86

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Notes 1

Originally published in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 35(4), 289-310. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014; reprinted here with kind permission of Springer Science+Business Media. 2 For discussion of the validity of the treatment/enhancement distinction, see Eric T. Juengst, “What Does Enhancement Mean?,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. Erik Parens (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998), 29-47; David B. Resnik, “The Moral Significance of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in Human Genetics,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9.3 (2000), 365-77. 3 For elucidation of this concept and its relevance for drawing the treatment/enhancement distinction, see Norman Daniels, Just Health (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 149-55. 4 See Norman Daniels, “Can Anyone Really Be Talking About Ethically Modifying Human Nature?” in Human Enhancement, ed. Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 38. 5 See Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Relatedly, I will not entertain any theological premises in my analysis that may support or weaken the principled case for human enhancement. Rather, acknowledging that what I will describe is one aspect in which human beings can be understood as created in the “image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:27), I will focus only upon Aquinas’s philosophical account of human nature and flourishing. 6 An excellent fictional presentation of such a bifurcated society due to genetic engineering is Andrew Niccols’s film Gattaca (Columbia Pictures, 1997). 7 An example of a group who generally approves of any form of enhancement is the World Transhumanist Association, also known as “Humanity+”; see Max More, “The Philosophy of Transhumanism,” in The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, ed. Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2013), 3-17. General critical assessments of enhancement technologies are developed by Sandel in The Case Against Perfection and Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2003). For critical responses to Sandel and Habermas, see, respectively, Frances Kamm, “What Is and Is Not Wrong with Enhancement?,” in Savulescu and Bostrom, Human Enhancement, 91-130, and Elizabeth Fenton, “Liberal Eugenics and Human Nature: Against Habermas,” Hastings Center Report 36.6 (2006), 35-42. For a comprehensive evaluation of various forms of human enhancement, see President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003). 8 Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, “Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate,” in Human Enhancement, 19. 9 Descriptions of various present and potential near-future means by which forms of enhancement may be brought about can be found among the contributions to

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eds. Julian Savulescu, Ruud ter Meulen, and Guy Kahane, Enhancing human capacities (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). 10 See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 11 The primary historical proponent of the libertarian concept of autonomy is John Stuart Mill in his seminal essay, On Liberty; see J. S. Mill, “On Liberty” and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For an influential contemporary defense of libertarianism, see Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). 12 In addition to More and Vita-More, The Transhumanist Reader, see Nick Bostrom, “Human Genetic Enhancement: A Transhumanist Perspective,” Journal of Value Inquiry 37.3 (2003), 493-506; Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002); Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family (New York: HarperCollins, 1998). 13 See John Robertson, Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press); Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 56. 14 “Transhumanist Declaration,” in More and Vita-More, The Transhumanist Reader, 55. See also Anders Sandberg, “Morphological Freedom: Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It,” in The Transhumanist Reader, 56-64. 15 Bostrom, “Human Genetic Enhancement,” 493. 16 Julian Savulescu, Anders Sandberg, and Guy Kahane, “Well-Being and Enhancement” in Savulescu, ter Meulen, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities, 7. 17 Savulescu, Sandberg, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities, 11. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 78-81; Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 167-70. 18 Savulescu, Sandberg, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities, 16. 19 More describes the overarching transhumanist goal as “perpetual progress,” not “seeking a state of perfection” (The Transhumanist Reader, 5). 20 For criticisms of human enhancement on the basis of the value of appreciating our vulnerability and the attendant virtues we may cultivate in response, see Sandel, The Case Against Perfection, ch. 5; Gerald McKenny, “Enhancements and the Ethical Significance of Vulnerability” in Parens, Enhancing Human Traits, 222-37. 21 Discussion, both pro and con, of these objections can be found in Parens, Enhancing Human Traits; Habermas, The Future of Human Nature; Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002); Harold W. Baillie and Timothy K. Casey, eds., Is Human Nature Obsolete? Genetics, Bioengineering, and the Future of the Human Condition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004);

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David DeGrazia, “Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (2005), 261-83; Allen Buchanan, “Human Nature and Enhancement,” Bioethics 23.3 (2009), 141-50. 22 Arthur L. Caplan, “Good, Better, or Best?,” in Savulescu and Bostrom, Human Enhancement, 202. 23 See Plato, Phaedo, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Aristotle, De anima, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 24 See Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, in Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), III. 25 See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), II.27.9. 26 See Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. 27 This general definition captures the essence of being a person, but omits many distinct nuances that are often contested. For example, it is debated whether having a capacity for self-conscious rational thought and autonomous volition requires having a biological cerebrum, or whether a functionally equivalent silicon information-processing system would suffice. Also debated is what is required to be a member of the moral community. For example, a severely mentally disabled human being may not be a contributing member of the moral community—in that she does not have the mental capacity to fulfill duties to others—but may be a recipient member—in that she has rights which entail others fulfilling duties toward her. 28 See Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 29 See Peter Singer, “Embryo Experimentation and the Moral Status of the Embryo,” in Philosophy and Health Care, ed. E. Matthews and M. Menlowe (Brookfield: Avebury, 1992), 81-91; Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Mary Ann Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” Monist 57.1 (1973), 43-61. 30 As Thomistic thought has been a primary influence upon the moral theology of the Roman Catholic magisterium, which in turn has been a significant conservative voice in many bioethical debates, it is worth noting what Catholic authorities have had to say on the subject of genetic enhancement. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wholly rejects any form of non-therapeutic genetic intervention; see “Instruction Dignitas personae on certain bioethical questions” (2008): http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith _doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html. (accessed June 21, 2014). Pope St. John Paul II, however, offers a more open-ended assessment in which he defines

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four basic criteria that, if satisfied, would allow for the moral possibility of genetic enhancements; see “Dangers of genetic manipulation” (1983): http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2GENMP.HTM (accessed June 21, 2014). While it may be the case that no human enhancement project could avoid violating one or more of those criteria, perhaps some forms of enhancement may be appropriately carried out that both fulfill the criteria while also avoiding the concerns raised by the Congregation. 31 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I q.29, a.1, hereafter ST. For more detailed elucidation of Aquinas’s account of human nature, see Jason T. Eberl, “Aquinas on the Nature of Human Beings” The Review of Metaphysics 58.2 (2004), 333-65. 32 See Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de anima, III, hereafter QDA; Summa contra gentiles, II, c.60; Sententia libri Ethicorum, I.10, X.10. 33 See Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate, V.3. 34 See Thomas Aquinas, Sententia super Metaphysicam, VII.3.1326. 35 See ST I q. 29, a. 1. 36 See ST I q. 29, a. 3. 37 The purpose of phantasms is to be available for the intellect to use in abstracting the intelligible form—that is, the universal essential concept—of perceived things. Hence, phantasms are between the immediate mental impression of an object perceived by sensation and the intellectual understanding of that object’s nature as abstracted from any individuating characteristics. 38 See ST I q.78, a.4. 39 See QDA II; ST I q.101, a.2. 40 See ST I-II q.18, a.5; q.49, a.2; q.71, a.1. For further explication, see Jason T. Eberl, Eleanor K. Kinney, and Matthew J. Williams, “Foundation for a Natural Right to Health Care” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36.6 (2011), 53757. 41 See ST I q.4, a.1, ad.1. 42 See ST I q.5, a.1. 43 See ST I-II q.94, a.2. 44 The fundamental good of promoting pleasure and avoiding pain for both oneself and others is also affirmed by non-natural law moral theorists, most notably utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill; see Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007) and Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed., ed. George Sher (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001). 45 John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 86-94. 46 Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 86. 47 See Martha C. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 48 Nussbaum and Aquinas also agree that such actualization is achievable through just interpersonal and social relationships defined in terms of our moral obligations to each other, which in turn is the foundation for rights and duties. It is not surprising that Nussbaum’s and Aquinas’s views cohere insofar as Aquinas was

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significantly influenced by reading and commenting upon Aristotle, quoting him at length as “The Philosopher”; see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), ch. 12. 49 See Martha Nussbaum, “Capabilities and Human Rights,” in Global Justice and Transnational Politics, ed. C. Cronin and De Greiff (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 129. 50 Nussbaum likens her approach to Rawls’s notion of “primary goods”; although she also criticizes Rawls’s approach as inadequate for responding to the diversity of human needs. 51 Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, 137. 52 Robert Spaemann, “Genetic Manipulation of Human Nature in the Context of Human Personality,” in Human Genome, Human Person, and the Society of the Future, ed. Juan de Dios Vial Correa and Elio Sgreccia (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1999), 346. 53 Ryan Anderson and Christopher Tollefsen, “Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law,” The New Atlantis 20 (2008), 86. 54 Among the authors cited in this paper, Anderson and Tollefsen, James Delaney, and James Keenan address the topic of human enhancement from a Thomistic perspective as well; see James J. Delaney, “Catholicism, the Human Form, and Genetic Engineering,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 84 (2010), 75-87, and James F. Keenan, “‘Whose Perfection is it Anyway?’: A Virtuous Consideration of Enhancement,” Christian Bioethics 5.2 (1999), 104-20. Each of their analyses differs from the present analysis, however, in various ways. Anderson and Tollefsen adopt a Thomistic anthropological and ethical framework, but they do not relate their analysis explicitly to Aquinas’s texts; furthermore, they arrive at a more pessimistic conclusion regarding some forms of cognitive enhancement that, according to my analysis, can serve as an aid to the “self-constituted philosopher’s” search for wisdom (Anderson and Tollefsen, “Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law,” 96). Delaney conducts his analysis in light of magisterial documents of the Roman Catholic Church, which, although informed by Thomistic philosophy, are also based upon fundamentally theological premises not referenced in the present analysis; furthermore, Delaney discusses genetic enhancement only in general terms without specifically analyzing distinctive forms of enhancement. Finally, similar to Delaney, Keenan approaches the topic from an explicitly theological perspective and focuses narrowly on the question of whether enhancement involves a misguided striving toward perfectionism. 55 The authors have in mind here a list of basic goods quite similar to Finnis’s list cited above. 56 Anderson and Tollefsen, “Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law,” 92. 57 See Lubomira Radoilska, “An Aristotelian Approach to Cognitive Enhancement,” Journal of Value Inquiry 44 (2010), 365-75.

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Fictional depictions of cyborgs include the Terminator, the Cylons of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television series, and the Borg of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. 59 See Anderson and Tollefsen, “Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law,” 98-9. 60 I am grateful to John Boyer for raising this criticism. 61 ST I q.78, a.4; q.84, a.7. Aquinas argues that intellective cognition can occur post-mortem without one’s body; but such is not the natural mode of human cognition; see ST I q.89. 62 For discussion of the various pros and cons of performance enhancement, see Part IV of Savulescu, ter Meulen, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities. 63 See ST I q.84, a.7. 64 I will not discuss here the potential benefits and problems associated with expansively increased longevity, asymptotically approaching immortality. 65 See Delaney, “Catholicism, the Human Form, and Genetic Engineering”; Anderson and Tollefsen, “Biotech Enhancement and Natural Law,” 97-8. 66 See Sandel, The Case Against Perfection, 47-8. 67 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I (1097a30-5), hereafter NE. 68 For further discussion of the ontological and moral status of PVS patients, see Jason T. Eberl, Thomistic Principles and Bioethics (New York: Routledge, 2006), chs. 3 and 5; Eberl, “Extraordinary Care and the Spiritual Goal of Life: A Defense of the View of Kevin O’Rourke, O.P.,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5.3 (2005), 491-501. 69 Consider the fictional depiction of a human being with technologically enhanced eyesight in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The character Geordi LaForge, congenitally blind, is capable of seeing well beyond the visible spectrum thanks to his VISOR. In the feature film, Star Trek: Insurrection (Paramount Pictures, 1998), Geordi’s natural eyesight is temporarily restored and, in a moving scene, he sees a sunrise naturally for the first time, telling his captain, “You know, I’ve never seen a sunrise—at least not the way you see them.” 70 See J. Savulescu, B. Foddy, and M. Clayton, “Why We Should Allow Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sport,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 38 (2004), 666-70. 71 To be sure, there is some debate whether SSRIs are an effective means of effecting long-term emotive enhancement; see Harris Wiseman, “SSRIs as Moral Enhancement Interventions: A Practical Dead-End,” AJOB Neuroscience 5.3 (2014), 21-30. 72 Niklas Juth, “Enhancement, Autonomy, and Authenticity,” in Savulescu, ter Meulen, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities, 43. 73 See Tony Hope, “Cognitive Therapy and Positive Psychology Combined: A Promising Approach to the Enhancement of Happiness,” in Savulescu, ter Meulen, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities, 230-44. 74 See Jason T. Eberl, “Religious and Secular Perspectives on the Value of Suffering,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.2 (2012), 251-61. 75 See Erik Parens, “Authenticity and Ambivalence: Toward Understanding the Enhancement Debate,” Hastings Center Report 35.3 (2005), 34-41; Carl Elliott,

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“The Tyranny of Happiness: Ethics and Cosmetic Psychopharmacology,” in Parens, Enhancing Human Traits, 177-88; Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 76 See C. Dowrick and A. Frances, “Medicalising Unhappiness: New Classification of Depression Risks More Patients Being Put on Drug Treatment from which They Will Not Benefit,” British Medical Journal 347.f7140 (2013), 1-5. 77 Thomas Douglas, “Moral Enhancement,” in Savulescu, ter Meulen, and Kahane, Enhancing human capacities, 471. 78 See Douglas, “Moral Enhancement”; Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, “Unfit for the Future? Human Nature, Scientific Progress, and the Need for Moral Enhancement,” in Savulescu, ter Meulen, and Kahan, Enhancing human capacities, 486-500; Nick Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,” Bioethics 19 (2005), 202-14. 79 NE II (1105a32-b1), trans. W. D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 80 Fabrice Jotterand, “‘Virtue Engineering’ and Moral Agency: Will Post-Humans Still Need the Virtues?,” AJOB Neuroscience 2.4 (2011), 7. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed. (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). For a contrary view, which also employs a MacIntyrean virtue-theoretical framework, see Maartje Schermer, “Enhancements, Easy Shortcuts, and the Richness of Human Activities,” Bioethics 22.7 (2008), 355-63. 81 NE II (1107a4-6), trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). 82 NE III (1115b17-19), trans. Irwin. 83 Mark Walker, “Enhancing Genetic Virtue: A Project for Twenty-First Century Humanity?,” Politics and the Life Sciences 28.2 (2009), 39. 84 See Barbro Elisabeth Esmerelda Fröding, “Cognitive Enhancement, Virtue Ethics and the Good Life,” Neuroethics 4 (2011), 223-34; Auke J. K. Pols and Wybo Houkes, “What Is Morally Salient about Enhancement Technologies?,” Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (2011), 84-7; Vojin Rakiü, “From Cognitive to Moral Enhancement: A Possible Reconciliation of Religious Outlooks and the Biotechnological Creation of a Better Human,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 11.31 (2012), 113-28. 85 See Keenan “‘Whose Perfection is it Anyway?’: A Virtuous Consideration of Enhancement”. 86 In addition to the first U.S. meeting of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, a version of this paper was presented at the 2013 Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies, the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics 9th World Conference, the 3rd Annual Conference on Medicine and Religion, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, and the 2013 meeting of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. I am grateful for comments provided by audience members at each of these conferences.

PART IV: KNOWLEDGE

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE RICHARD J. DOUGHERTY

In his Second Letter to Timothy, St. Paul warns that there will come a time when the people “will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears,” and they will turn away from seeking the truth.1 In the older Roman Missal this passage could be found in the Epistle read on the feast of a Doctor of the Church, an apt selection to focus attention on the importance of orthodox teaching. The warning the passage contains concerning the pursuit of knowledge is repeated in other places in Scripture, but never, it seems, fully developed.2 Indeed, many Scriptural passages clearly suggest the positive benefits of the acquisition of knowledge.3 The Latin translated here as “itching” is “prurient,” from “prurire,” meaning “to itch.” The word “prurient” is perhaps best known in the English language through the Supreme Court’s use of the term in its decision in Roth v. United States, in which it established a multi-prong test for what would qualify as obscene literature that could be subject to legitimate legal restrictions: The early leading standard of obscenity allowed material to be judged merely by the effect of an isolated excerpt upon particularly susceptible persons. Some American courts adopted this standard, but later decisions have rejected it and substituted this test: whether, to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest.4

The recognition that some materials may appeal to prurient interests is an indication on the part of the Court that there may be something problematic for society in the consumption of certain kinds of material or entertainment, or in the approach to the acquisition of some forms of knowledge. The Secundae Secundae of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae is taken up with a lengthy treatment of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, followed by a much longer treatment of the cardinal virtues. Within the analysis of the cardinal virtue of temperance, Aquinas

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addresses the quality of studiousness (studiositas) and what he calls its “opposite,” curiosity (curiositas). This relatively brief account raises quite a few important questions, such as the nature of the pursuit of knowledge, the connection between intellectual and moral virtue (a critical issue for understanding Aquinas’ view of Aristotelian ethics), and the way in which a kind of inquisitiveness can in fact become a vice. This essay will take up the treatment of the virtue of studiousness, in light of the concern we see addressed by St. Paul—that is, what possible misuses may be made of knowledge, or how the pursuit of knowledge may go awry, suggesting the need for some kind of restraint on that pursuit.

On Studiousness (Studiositas) St. Thomas treats two particular questions in connection with the virtue of studiousness. He begins with a consideration of whether studiousness is properly concerned with knowledge, and only after having shown that does he then turn to the question of whether studiousness is a part of the virtue of temperance. Studiousness, he argues, refers to a “keen application of the mind to something,” and the mind is applied to something by knowing it. Study is in the first place directed to knowledge, and only then does it affect the things which are directed by knowledge. Since the virtues as a whole properly concern those things about which they are first and foremost (as fortitude is concerned “about dangers of death, and temperance about pleasures of touch”), so studiousness is “properly ascribed to knowledge.”5 St. Thomas notes in an objection that in one sense knowledge would not be understood as the proper matter of studiousness, since one can be said to be studious because he applies study to certain things, and one ought to apply study to everything, in order to act rightly. Since study is to be applied to all things, the argument stipulates, then it is not restricted to the acquisition of knowledge. While this is true, he notes in reply, nothing can be done rightly without being directed to knowledge, and thus studiousness, insofar as it leads one to have a prior regard for knowledge, is rightly connected with knowledge.6 St. Thomas further notes that man has a special affection for things that are related to the flesh, and to satisfy those desires men seek knowledge about how best to do that, and thus there is an intimate connection between the concerns for the goods of the body and the acquisition of a certain kind of knowledge. Finally, he points out that while Scripture states that all men study covetousness,7 the satisfaction of which concerns

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the acquisition of wealth and not knowledge, it is also true that in order to achieve gain, “it is very necessary to be skilled in earthly things.”8 In the second article, Aquinas turns to the relationship between the virtue of temperance and studiousness. St. Thomas maintains that both the body and the soul have natural desires, the former for food and sex and the latter for knowledge, and the proper function of temperance is to moderate the appetites. Indeed, we can see the connection between temperance and reason in Question 141, the first question in which he addresses temperance, where he says: Hence human virtue is that which inclines man to something in accordance with reason. Now temperance evidently inclines man to this, since its very name implies moderation or temperateness, which reason causes.9

Temperance, then, animated by or embodying reason, must be exercised in the moderation of the desire that pertains to studiousness, and thus it follows that studiousness is a subordinate virtue “annexed to” a principal virtue, that is, to temperance.10 St. Thomas adds to the discussion here a seemingly benign comment, that studiousness is comprised under modesty, which he suggests is the case for the reasons which he has given earlier, in his treatment of modesty (this earlier treatment occurs in this section of the work devoted to temperance). This is what Thomas had to say about the relationship between modesty and studiousness there: [M]oreover, Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii, 54) considered that there was a special kind of good in the moderation of punishment; wherefore he severed clemency also from modesty, and held modesty to be about the remaining ordinary matters that require moderation. These seemingly are of four kinds. One is the movement of the mind towards some excellence, and this is moderated by “humility.” The second is the desire of things pertaining to knowledge, and this is moderated by “studiousness” which is opposed to curiosity. The third regards bodily movements and actions, which require to be done becomingly and honestly [Cf. q. 145, a. 1], whether we act seriously or in play. The fourth regards outward show, for instance in dress and the like.11

Since modesty, in Cicero’s view, is about ordinary matters that require moderation, he treats it apart from temperance, which concerns matters about which restraint is more difficult. But St. Thomas does not seem to follow Cicero’s lead here, as he does treat all of these concerns under the general heading of temperance, and not separately. On the other hand, he does follow the pattern Cicero has laid out, treating in turn modesty and

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the four species comprised under it: humility, studiousness, modesty in words or deeds, and modesty in outward attire.12 One objection to his argument which St. Thomas raises is that studiousness does not belong to the realm of the moral virtues, and hence temperance, because it has to do rather with the intellectual virtues and the cognitive part of the soul. His response to this seemingly reasonable claim is that knowledge regards a twofold good, one of which does pertain to the intellectual virtues, and that is being capable of making a “true estimate about each thing.”13 But there is a second good that knowledge looks to, and that is the act of the appetitive power, directing man’s appetite aright; this application of the cognitive power to the appetites belongs to the virtue of studiousness, he concludes.14 St. Thomas raises one last point in connection with Studiousness, again addressing the relationship between the cognitive and appetitive parts of the soul. Studiousness would appear to be opposed more to lack of study, which seems to be the “default” vice of the virtue, than to curiosity, which is the seeming excess. Here, following Aristotle, Aquinas responds by claiming that in order to be virtuous we must overcome or avoid those things to which we are naturally inclined; thus, fortitude, for example, must provide perseverance against bodily dangers, which we naturally fear as a threat to our preservation.15 But in regard to knowledge, St. Thomas says, we possess contrary inclinations, at one and the same time. For on the part of the soul, he is inclined to desire knowledge of things; and so it behooves him to exercise a praiseworthy restraint on this desire, lest he seek knowledge immoderately: whereas on the part of his bodily nature, man is inclined to avoid the trouble of seeking knowledge.16

Studiousness, then, is rightly directed at the acquisition of knowledge, or we might say the rightful acquisition of knowledge, but it must also be concerned, as least indirectly, with the obstacles to knowledge. Because of this, it serves as both a restraint on the desire to know, and a prompting of the bodily inclination to intellectual sluggishness—and from this it takes its name, Aquinas says.

On Curiosity (Curiositas) In Question 167, St. Thomas turns to a treatment of the vice of Curiosity, and takes up two issues in the articles, addressing the question of whether curiosity regards intellective knowledge (cognitione intellectiva) and then whether it concerns sensitive knowledge (cognitione

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sensativa). The virtue of studiousness, he notes, is not about knowledge directly, but instead it concerns “the desire and study in the pursuit of knowledge.” Knowledge of truth is itself good, yet it can be accompanied by evil by way of result, such as when one takes pride in possessing such knowledge (1 Cor. 8:1), or when one uses knowledge of the truth in order to sin. But such abuses of the knowledge of the truth are described as only “accidental” evils. When St. Thomas turns to look at the pursuit of the knowledge of the truth proper, here he indicates that the desire or study of such knowledge may be right or wrong, and he offers a number of arguments in support of this position. For example, there are those for whom the pursuit of the truth might have evil “accidentally annexed” to it, such as those who seek to know the truth so that “they may take pride in their knowledge.” Additionally, those who study to learn something so that they might sin are engaged in a sinful practice.17 Aquinas tells us that the wrongful acquisition of knowledge can be accomplished in a variety of ways, while indicating four in particular. One would be where one pursues a course of study that is not the one he is obliged to undertake at the moment (he quotes St. Jerome in support of this point, Ep. 21).18 A second misguided approach occurs when someone seeks knowledge from a wrongful teacher, such as seeking to know the truth about the future by consulting demons. Here we see that it is not the truth itself that is problematic, but the manner of acquiring the truth.19 Thirdly, someone can desire to know the truth about creatures without referring that knowledge to “its due end, namely, the knowledge of God.” As he suggests, citing Aristotle,20 the pursuit of knowledge is to be referred to the highest truth, or the sovereign truth. Finally, Aquinas holds that one falls into error in this regard by seeking to know the truth “above the capacity of his own intelligence.” Doing so can easily lead one into error, St. Thomas says, and here he relies on Scriptural support for his claim, citing Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach): Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability: but the things that God hath commanded thee, think on them always, and in many of his works be not curious. For it is not necessary for thee to see with thy eyes those things that are hid. In unnecessary matters be not over curious, and in many of his works thou shalt not be inquisitive. For many things are shewn to thee above the understanding of men. And the suspicion of them hath deceived many, and hath detained their minds in vanity.21

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The Scriptural passage explicitly refers to the dangers of curiosity, and thus this is an especially apt reference to employ in this context. The lack of self-control over matters concerning the acquisition of knowledge has been described as a kind of intellectual gluttony, akin to covetousness or avarice.22 Man’s sovereign good consists in the perfect knowledge of the sovereign truth, not in the acquisition of simply any kind of undifferentiated knowledge. Thus, according to St. Thomas, one can sin in the gaining of knowledge of certain truths, when the pursuit of that knowledge is not directed “in due manner” to the knowledge of the sovereign truth.23 Further, knowledge of truth is good in itself, Thomas notes, but that does not mean that such knowledge will not be misused for an evil end, nor does it ensure that one will refrain from desiring such knowledge “inordinately.”24 St. Thomas adds a last, important comment concerning the relative virtue of the acquisition of knowledge, noting that the study of philosophy is “lawful and commendable” (“licitum et laudabile”), as the philosophers acquired truth “through God revealing it to them, as stated in Romans 1:19.”25 Yet, some philosophers misuse the truth in order to attack the faith, as the Apostle warns (“Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit…”26), and as Dionysius asserts, philosophers “make an unholy use of divine things.”27 This principled warning against the dangers of philosophy is of course repeated quite often by Christian authors, including St. Paul, and yet is often accompanied, as it is here, by praise for the pursuit of the truth. To this point, having shown that curiosity can in fact be concerned with intellective knowledge, in the following article St. Thomas turns to show how curiosity is a vice concerning sensitive knowledge. He begins by citing St. Augustine, who says that concupiscence of the eyes makes men curious;28 since that concupiscence is sinful, just as concupiscence of the flesh and pride of life are sinful,29 so curiosity concerns the knowledge of sensible things. Knowledge of sensible things is directed to the upkeep of the body, as all animals seek their preservation, but in regard to man in particular it is directed to intellective knowledge, “whether speculative or practical.”30 Thus study can be employed sinfully in two ways—when sensitive knowledge is directed away from something useful, or when it is directed to something harmful.31 But, when studiousness about the knowledge of sensible things is directed properly, either to the necessary things that sustain us, or to the study of intelligible truth, then it is virtuous. Curiosity

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concerns sensible knowledge, in part, because the acquisition of such knowledge can lead one to sinful actions.32

On Knowledge and Faith In the context of discussing the theological virtue of Faith at the outset of the Secunda Secundae, Thomas notes that here he will take up the three intellectual virtues of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, because they share their names with gifts of the Holy Spirit.33 Thomas begins with the gift of Knowledge in Question 9, under the broader treatment of the virtue of Faith. While noting that knowledge as a gift of the Holy Spirit is about divine things, he also clarifies some important points about knowledge as a whole. Knowledge allows men to gain a sure notion of the truth, and to act upon it by making right judgment.34 But the gifts of the Holy Spirit are more complete than the moral or intellectual virtues, although, he adds, they are not more complete than the theological virtues. Thus, the gifts as gifts are intended to lead men on to the fullness of the life of virtue.35 Yet, even though knowledge is a gift of the Holy Spirit, the proper subject matter of knowledge is human things, Aquinas notes, as the knowledge of divine things is properly denoted wisdom. Such apprehension, he says, when it refers to knowledge, implies “the certainty of judgment appropriate to a judgment made by second causes.”36 In Question 15 of the Secunda Secundae, St. Thomas notes that this is the appropriate place to address the vices which oppose knowledge and understanding, but that he has already spoken of the vices opposing knowledge and so he omits that here.37 As a consequence, he considers the opposition to understanding, found in blindness of mind and dullness of sense, and also asks whether these vices arise from sins of the flesh. In regard to the blindness of mind, he notes that the natural light of reason is never taken away from the soul, since it “belongs to the species of the rational soul.” It may be impeded, though, by various obstacles, including those from the lower powers, which powers are needed for understanding.38 St. Thomas recognizes a second principle of intellectual vision which he says is a “certain habitual light added to the natural light of reason.” This light is from time to time taken away from the soul, as a punishment; but he does not make clear here whether that added light is a natural light or a consequence of the gift of knowledge or understanding— that is, whether this pertains to the “theological” virtue of understanding or the “natural” virtue.

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This analysis concludes by addressing the question of whether these vices arise from sins of the flesh. St. Thomas begins his answer by asserting that understanding requires an “abstraction from sensible phantasms” for its completion, and so the more the intellect is free from such phantasms the more it could focus on intelligibles and “order all sensible things.”39 But taking delight in things of the flesh leads man to apply himself more to bodily things, and this weakens the operation of the intellect. Both gluttony and luxury prove to be problematic, then, the former because it leads to dullness of sense, the latter to blindness of mind.

Ignorance as a Cause of Sin (ST I-II, q. 76) We recall that, in Question 15, St. Thomas says that he has already addressed the vices opposed to knowledge, and it is worth turning to that treatment to unearth in greater detail the nature of his teaching about knowledge outside the context of the gift of knowledge, which he has been considering in these passages from the theological virtue of Faith. It should be emphasized that this discussion of ignorance, found in Question 76 of the Prima Secundae, would seem more closely aligned with this essay’s treatment above of knowledge and curiosity under the virtue of temperance than with the foregoing analysis of knowledge and wisdom treated in the context of the virtue of Faith. St. Thomas begins his treatment of ignorance by asserting that by ignorance is meant the lack of knowledge about something that one has a capacity to know, and that it can be a cause of sin. But not all ignorance is sin, he notes, but only ignorance about those things that we have an obligation to know—in particular, knowledge of those things without which “we are unable to accomplish a due act rightly.”40 One commits a sin of omission if he remains ignorant of something he is bound to know, though there are a number of things that can be known but which one is not necessarily bound to know.41 So, ignorance through negligence (or lack of application) is not sinful if it concerns knowledge one is not bound to acquire. St. Thomas adds an additional point though, one connected to the discussion above of studiousness. He notes that there is something called “invincible” ignorance, which is not sinful, and which refers to ignorance of things that one is “unable to know.” This ignorance is called invincible because “it cannot be overcome by study.”42 This is not the same as the voluntary ignorance Thomas describes, for this ignorance may very well be purposeful, precisely in order to allow one to sin more freely; this kind

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of ignorance does not excuse, but “seems rather to make the act more voluntary and more sinful.”43 One can perhaps see here in this excusable invincible ignorance an illustration of what he speaks to in the treatment of curiosity in recognizing a vice in man seeking knowledge “above the capacity of his own intelligence.”44 We may not know any more yet about how one comes to recognize the natural limits of such acquisition for oneself, but we do discover here that insofar as one is capable of knowing necessary truths one is bound by a moral obligation to seek them out in order to act responsibly.

The Problem of Curiosity A passage from Plato may help to highlight the issue concerning the appropriate and inappropriate acquisition of knowledge, and the vice of curiosity. In Book IV of Plato’s Republic, Socrates relates the story of Leontius, in the context of a discussion of the parts of the soul: I once heard something that I trust. Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was going up from the Piraeus under the outside of the North Wall when he noticed corpses lying by the public executioner. He desired to look, but at the same time he was disgusted and made himself turn away: and for a while he struggled and covered his face. But, finally, overpowered by the desire, he opened his eyes wide, ran toward the corpses and said: “Look, you damned wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.”45

Socrates comments on the response of Leontius by suggesting that the incident reveals an aspect of the human soul, that spiritedness “sometimes makes war against the desires.”46 The desire at work here, which Socrates also calls the “irrational,”47 and which we might consider a form of curiosity, can lead one to act in a manner “contrary to the calculating part” of the soul. Josef Pieper, in his work on The Four Cardinal Virtues, indicates the connection between the desire for knowledge and the longing of the eyes in this fashion: There is a gratification in seeing that reverses the original meaning of vision and works disorder in man himself. The true meaning of seeing is perception of reality. But “concupiscence of the eyes” does not aim to perceive reality, but to enjoy seeing. St. Augustine says of the “concupiscence of the palate” that it is not a question of satiating one’s hunger but of resting and relishing food; this is also true of curiositas and the “concupiscence of the eyes.”48

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The danger of being consumed by such distractions is addressed in an essay by Thomas D. Kennedy, in which he describes what he takes to be problematic about the desire for information, but also the concomitant decline in the sources of information we come to rely on: [O]ur appetite for invention, for new and different experiences and information, drives us to expose ourselves to more information and expertise than we can properly process and interpret. The result is that the quality of the information we collect, as well as the quality of our interpretations of that information, declines.49

The difficulty presented by the sheer amount of information we confront in daily life makes more difficult the process of properly integrating knowledge. One important aspect of the analysis of curiosity in St. Thomas’ presentation is the role of the teacher. We have seen the way in which following a bad teacher—or, the wrong teacher—in the acquisition of knowledge can lead someone astray. This concern is shared by numerous other authors, for while the presence of a teacher may be necessary for acquiring knowledge, one has to be careful about the type of teacher one relies upon. In Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle considers how one acquires the virtues which he has discoursed about at such length in the work, noting that the point of ethics is not knowing but doing. Some suppose that people become good by nature, others that we do so by habit, still others think that it is through teaching. Now, as for what comes from nature, it is clear that it is not present due to us; rather, it is present through certain divine causes for those who are truly fortunate. And speech and teaching never prevail in all cases, but the soul of the student must be prepared beforehand by means of habits so as to feel delight and hatred in a noble way, just as must land that will nourish the seed.50

Aristotle’s point here seems to be to emphasize the need for a good teacher, though he also notes that education and rearing is fundamentally affected by the presence of good laws in the city.51 Similarly, Averroes, in “The Decisive Treatise,” writing in defense of the pursuit of knowledge within the Islamic tradition (in particular, that it is compatible with the Koran), holds that a learner may go wrong because of “a deficiency in his innate disposition, poor ordering of his reflection, being overwhelmed by his passions, not finding a teacher,” or a combination of such limitations.52 Averroes there highlights the importance of a capable teacher, which is an important concern for St. Thomas, as we have seen. In his treatment of

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curiosity St. Thomas notes that one can sin in the gaining of knowledge in one fashion when the pursuit of that knowledge is not directed “in due manner” to the knowledge of the sovereign truth. This is an indication that the pursuit of knowledge must not be unguided or unmoored, that done properly it is guided by and toward the sovereign truth.

Conclusion Early on in his discussion of the virtue of Temperance, St. Thomas asks whether intemperance is the most disgraceful of sins, and he suggests that it is, and that for two reasons. The first is that it concerns the pursuit of pleasures which we have in common with other animals, and which are thus not necessarily connected with reason. It is true that the pursuit of pleasure may require the use of reason (as in the knowledge needed for the making of money, as we have seen), but the goal is still found in the pleasure itself. But he gives a second explanation, which he does connect specifically to reason: Secondly, because it [intemperance] is most repugnant to man's clarity [claritas] or beauty [pulchritudo]; inasmuch as the pleasures which are the matter of intemperance dim the light of reason from which all the clarity and beauty of virtue arises: wherefore these pleasures are described as being most slavish.53

This consideration of the corruption of reason which accompanies intemperance leads us back to our opening concern with the “itching ears” of Second Timothy, which suggests a similar failing. A brief look at St. Thomas’ commentary on this passage thus might be worthwhile. In his commentary St. Thomas refers to the danger of pursuing curiosities, as we might expect, but he also notes the danger of corrupt and corrupting teachers: The first necessity is the perversity of the hearers in hearing such that they do not want to hear useful things but curiosities. He says therefore regarding the first: Be instant, while they do not want to hear sound doctrine, For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine when there shall be evil teachers… Another perversity is that they want to hear curious and harmful things inordinately. Prov. 1:22: O children, how long will you love childishness, and fools covet those things which are hurtful to themselves, and the

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unwise hate knowledge? Therefore he says, “but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves,’ that is, multiply, ‘teachers’…” And this is according to their own desires since one wants to hear one thing, and another something else, and so they seek different teachers. Thus he says, “teachers having itching ears.” He is said to have an itch in his feet who does not want to rest, and in his ears who always wants to hear news, unheard things, curiosities, and sometimes harmful things. In Acts 17:21 the Athenians had leisure for nothing else than to learn or hear something new.54

The discussion of curiosity begins with an account of the defect of the hearers, but it seems to come to include the defects of the teachers themselves, who can perhaps begin to satisfy the “itching ears” of the hearers, at least enough to distract them from the legitimate acquisition of knowledge. In his recent book, Dust Bound for Heavens, Rienhard Hütter seeks in part to defend the criticism of curiosity against the dominant thrust of contemporary culture: In a world in which curiosity rules, unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive vice therefore amounts to nothing less than a most radical critique of a culture of systemic superficiality and constant distraction.55

While all may not accept the cultural critique contained here, perhaps most can confirm the way in which curiosity can serve as a distraction from the pursuit of higher knowledge, and the performance of one’s duties. In the end, we see that the consideration of the quality or virtue of studiousness leads to a concern with a fundamental concern of Thomistic analysis, that is, the relationship between faith and reason. In addition, the juxtaposition of studiousness and curiosity raises a further fundamental point in the study of Thomistic (and Aristotelian) ethics, the relationship between moral and intellectual virtue. Thus, this brief treatment, tucked away at the end of a long list of what looks like relatively insignificant qualities falling under the heading of temperance, actually compels us to think about some of the most important Thomistic teachings. Finally, the discussion of these qualities also illuminates some earlier passages in the Summa, both on the causes of sin, as ignorance in regard to knowledge, and compels us to think about the extent to which awareness of principles (and here we might add the principle of synderesis, or the habit of knowledge of first principles of practical knowledge, discussed in connection with natural law).

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The virtue of studiousness, then, serves as a corrective to the vice of curiosity, which we might describe as a kind of excess of untutored inquiry, but also as a corrective to ignorance. Studiousness curbs the desires of the intellect by channeling them in the direction of true knowledge and genuine inquiry, and prompts the indolent body to muster the attention and energy needed to acquire knowledge.

Notes 1

2 Timothy 4:3-4: “For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.” (All Biblical translations are taken from the DouayRheims edition.) 2 See, for example, Colossians 2:8: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.” 3 See, for example, Romans 1:19-20, Acts 7:22, Daniel 1:4, Proverbs 1:1-7. 4 Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 488-489 (1957); internal references omitted. On Roth and the obscenity “test,” see, for example, David Lowenthal, No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment (Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company, 1997). 5 ST II-II, q. 166, a. 1. 6 ST II-II, q. 166, a. 1, ad. 1. 7 St. Thomas cites Jeremiah 6:13: “From the least of them even to the greatest, all study covetousness” (ST II-II, q. 166, a. 1, obj. 3). 8 ST II-II, q. 166, a. 1, ad. 3 (“…ad quod maxime necessaria est quaedam peritia terrenarum rerum”). 9 ST II-II, q. 141, a. 1. 10 ST II-II, q. 166, a. 2. 11 ST II-II, q. 160, a. 2. 12 This subsection of the virtue of temperance comprises Questions 161-169 of the Secunda Secundae. 13 He connects this with the virtue of prudence, discussed in ST II-II, q. 47. 14 ST II-II, q. 166, a. 2, ad. 2. 15 See, for example, ST II-II, q. 123, on Fortitude, especially aa. 3-4. 16 ST II-II, q. 166, a. 2, ad. 3. 17 Here he cites Jeremias 9:5: “They have taught their tongue to speak lies, they have labored to commit iniquity.” 18 Jerome, Epistle 21, ad. Damas: “We see priests forsaking the gospels and the prophets, reading stage-plays, and singing the love-songs of pastoral idylls.” 19 Thus Josef Pieper in his The Four Cardinal Virtues says that “immoderateness in striving for knowledge, says St. Thomas, is exemplified in magic” Josef Pieper,

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The Four Cardinal Virtues (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 199. 20 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.7-8. 21 St. Thomas quotes Chapter 3, Verses 22 and 26 (the intervening verses are included here). 22 Alice Ramos, “Studiositas and Curiositas: Matters for Self-Examination,” Educational Horizons 83 (2005), 276. 23 ST II-II, q. 167, a. 1, ad.1. 24 ST II-II, q. 167, a. 1, ad. 2. 25 ST II-II, q. 167, a. 1, ad. 3. See Romans 1:19-20: “Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.” 26 Colossians 2:8: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.” 27 E 7, ad. Polycarp: “they make an unholy use of divine things against that which is divine, and by divine wisdom strive to destroy the worship of God.” 28 St. Augustine, De Vera Religione 38.70, commenting on I John 2:15-16: “Here these three vices are signified, because by the lust of the flesh the lovers of the lowest kind of pleasure are signified, by the lust of the eyes the curious and inquisitive, by worldly ambition the proud” (Translation from “True Religion,” trans. Edmund Hill, in On Christian Belief, ed. Michael Fiedrowicz, [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005], 77). 29 Ibid. Citing I John 2:16, in connecting the vices together: “For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world.” 30 ST II-II, q. 167, a. 2. 31 The examples St. Thomas uses here are watching a dog chasing a hare (an example of being directed away from something useful), or looking at a woman to lust (being directed toward something sinful). 32 St. Thomas gives examples here of the corruption of sensible knowledge leading to lust, cruelty, and detraction (st II-II, q. 167, a. 2, ad. 1-3). 33 ST II-II, Prologue. 34 ST II-II, q. 9, a. 1. 35 ST II-II, q. 9, a. 1, ad. 3. 36 ST II-II, q. 9, a. 2. 37 St. Thomas had addressed ignorance as the lack of knowledge and as a cause of sin in ST I-II, q. 76, aa. 1-4, discussed below. 38 He gives the examples of the mindless and the insane (st II-II, q. 15, a. 1) as possessing such impediments. He refers back to his earlier treatment, presumably to the Prima Secundae, ST I-II, q. 76, a. 3, ad. 3 (Jordan’s footnote references Part One of the Summa, ST I, q. 84, aa. 7-8, which doesn’t contain such an explicit discussion; 260, note 7).

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ST II-II, q. 15, a. 3. ST I-II, q. 76, a. 2. 41 St. Thomas mentions here things like geometrical theorems, which may be knowable by a particular person; but unless he is bound to know such things he does not sin by not acquiring that knowledge (ST I-II, q. 76, a. 2). 42 ST I-II, q. 76, a. 2. 43 ST I-II, q. 76, a. 4. 44 ST II-II, q. 167, a. 1. 45 Plato, Republic, 439e-440a (Translation from The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom [New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968], 119). 46 Republic 440a. 47 Socrates calls it alogiston, as opposed to the calculating part of the soul, from calculation, or logismus (Republic, 439d). 48 Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (South Bend, IN; University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), 200. 49 Thomas D. Howard, “Curiosity and the Integrated Self: A Post-Modern Vice,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 4 (2001), 44. 50 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.9 1179b20-27. Translation from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011). 51 Nicomachean Ethics 1179b27-37. 52 Averroes, “The Decisive Treatise,” in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Second Edition, ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 127. 53 ST II-II, q. 142, a. 4. 54 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentaries on St. Paul’s Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Trans. Chrysostom Baer, O. Pream. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), 140-141. 55 Reinhard Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2012), 52. 40

AQUINAS ON A GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF GOD POSSESSED BY MOST PEOPLE JOHN F. X. KNASAS

Introduction Is Aquinas’ metaphysics only an academic creation or does it exist in the minds of ordinary people? That is the question that I want to pursue. I will argue that the second alternative is the answer. A class in Thomistic metaphysics is unnecessary to have Aquinas’ metaphysics in our minds. It is already there even though we are unaware of it. What we know is more than what we are aware of. This may sound like a Kantian theme. For Immanuel Kant there is the synthetic a priori of the mind before our conscious experience. The synthetic a priori accounts for the experience that we are having, e.g., objects in space and time, causes for what happens, substances for accidents. But Aquinas’ metaphysics is prior to human awareness not in Kant’s sense of the a priori. For Aquinas, the human mind can function in an a posteriori manner so spontaneously and automatically that the mind’s workings stay below the level of consciousness. So in going from the explicit to the implicit in philosophy, we are not necessarily going to the a priori. We can be going to the proto-abstracted intelligible. This proto-abstraction is the notion of being, the ratio entis. The phrase expresses generally the idea of “something real.” Aquinas’ immediate realist understanding of sensation is what underwrites the objectivity of the idea of being. In other words, right here and now, as you look this way, you cannot gainsay that the object of your awareness is something real. The notion of being is a general expression of that fact.1 As such the notion of being does not have any content that would render its abstracted origin from sense incongruous. There would be an incongruity if one accepted Descartes’ dream and hallucination possibilities for what you are doing right now or if one accepted the relativity in perception arguments of the empiricists. These are the arguments Husserl repeated in the twentieth century to bracket our judgments of real existence and to restrict

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our assertions to the apodictic evidence of immanent consciousness. Elsewhere I have addressed these objections.2 Suffice it to say now that the reflexively ascertainable fact that our sensation is an idea free zone is what is crucial for knowing why we are not dreaming or hallucinating now. And distinguishing physical presence from cognitional presence is the key to answering the relativity argument. Physical presence cannot tolerate inexactitude, but evidently cognitional presence can. The nearsighted me has your aquiline nose itself in my vision, even though the nose is fuzzy. Why assume that all presence must be modeled on physical presence? I want to pursue my thesis of Thomistic metaphysics as natural and a posteriori to the human mind by reflecting upon Summa Contra Gentiles III, 38. The chapter falls in Aquinas’ canvasing of a list of possible candidates for human happiness. He has already eliminated from that list things like pleasures, honors, glory, riches, power, bodily goods, moral virtue. In Chapter 38 he wonders if human happiness might consist in the general knowledge of God possessed by most people. In my opinion, the text of Chapter 38 contains a puzzle that can only be solved by my proposed thesis.

The Puzzle in Chapter 38 At the start of Chapter 38, Aquinas describes an ordinary knowledge of God possessed by all mature human beings. This ordinary knowledge of God is a posteriori and appears to recount a primitive version of the teleological argument. It runs as follows: ...what seems indeed to be true, that man can immediately reach some sort of knowledge of God by natural reason. For, when men see that things in nature run according to a definite order, and that ordering does not occur without an orderer, they perceive in most cases that there is some orderer of the things that we see. But who or what kind of being, or whether there is but one orderer of nature, is not yet grasped immediately in this general consideration... But this knowledge admits of a mixture of many errors. Some people have believed that there is no other orderer of worldly things than the celestial bodies, and so they said that the celestial bodies are gods. Other people pushed it further, to the very elements and the things generated from them, thinking that motion and the natural functions which these elements have are not present in them as the effect of some other orderer, but that other things are ordered by them. Still other people, believing that human acts are not subject to any ordering, other than

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human, have said that men who order others are gods. And so, this knowledge of God is not enough for felicity.3

Aquinas concedes that the argument has many shortcomings. For example, Aquinas notes that one does not yet grasp who or what is this orderer of if the orderer is one or many. On the strength of this argument, some identify the orderer with the heavenly bodies, the elements, or other human beings. But does not Aquinas’ concession contradict his thesis that men are knowing God? None of the characterizations of the orderer are remotely similar to the God of Aquinas’ religious belief who is spiritual, unique, and non-human. Would it not have been clearer for Aquinas to say that men fail to attain a knowledge of God? In other words, when a physicist discovers a new particle, he does not exclaim “God.” And if he did, we would think him strange. Hence, is not Aquinas odd to attribute man’s knowledge of God to man’s knowledge of the elements? In fact on another occasion, Aquinas is uncompromising, if not uncharacteristically cruel, in his dismissal of David of Dinant’s identification of God with matter. At Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 8, Aquinas says: “The third error is that of David of Dinant, who most stupidly taught that God was primary matter.”4 I can also point out that elsewhere at Summa Theologiae I, q. 44, a. 2, Aquinas says that when philosophers correctly reasoned from the elements, they reached a “universal cause” still far below the “most universal cause,” God. Later when considering substantial transmutation, philosophers, like Aristotle, went further to the heavens. But that was still to arrive at only a “more universal cause,” not the most universal cause, God. My point is that if philosophers, in Aquinas’ opinion, fail to reach God from the elements or in the heavens, how can Aquinas says that ordinary people do it? Returning to the Contra Gentiles, it is important to realize that Aquinas does not say that men reach something “like” God. Aquinas’ assertion is unqualified. Men reach God, even though they take what they reach and identify it with the mentioned non-divine instances. Consequently, when next in Chapter 39 Aquinas introduces philosophical demonstrations to remove the errors, the removal does not consist in moving on to a higher being than those mentioned. Rather, the corrections consist in purifying through removal of the errors, what the general reasoning had reached. On the other hand, there is another sort of knowledge of God, higher than the foregoing, and we may acquire it through demonstration. A closer approach to a proper knowledge of Him is effected through this kind, for many things are set apart from Him, through demonstration, whose removal enables Him to be understood in distinction from other beings. In

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So, some explanation of how the conclusion of the reasoning can be so wrong and still be right is required. According to Aquinas, the errors in man’s ordinary knowledge of God are set aside by demonstration. The backward reference is important. Early in Book One Aquinas reserves these points of demonstration to the last part of philosophy to be learned, viz., to metaphysics. At Chapter 4, Aquinas says, In order to know the things that the reason can investigate concerning God, a knowledge of many things must already be possessed. For almost all of philosophy is directed towards the knowledge of God, and that is why metaphysics which deals with divine things, is the last part of philosophy to be learned.6

In the just previous Chapter 3, naturally knowable truth about God includes the knowledge of his existence: “But there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach. Such that God exists, that He is one, and the like.”7 This assignment should mean that the ordinary knowledge of God is in some way metaphysical. Only as metaphysical could it successfully reach God, albeit imperfectly, as Aquinas claims. But can one possibly regard ordinary individuals to be in possession of Aquinas’ metaphysics?

A Summary of the Core of Aquinas’ Metaphysics The key note in Aquinas’ metaphysics is his understanding of the existence of the thing.8 Unlike in our common usage, in Aquinas’ metaphysics “the existence of the thing” does not mean simply the fact of the thing. Aquinas regards existence as a distinct principle or act composed with the individual substance to render the substance a being (ens), an existent. Aquinas employs the phrase “actus essendi,” the act of being, and the Latin infinitive “esse” as a noun, or substantive, to express his unique act-sense of the thing’s existence. In fact, at Summa Contra Gentiles II, 54, the thing’s existence is sufficiently distinct to compare its composition with a substance with form’s composition with matter within the substance.

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...in substances composed of matter and form there is a twofold composition of act and potentiality: the first of the substance itself which is composed of matter and form; the second of the substance thus composed, and being [esse]; and this composition also can be said to be of that which is and being [esse], or of that which is and that by which a thing is.9

It is not so much that Aquinas disagrees with the fact-sense of the thing’s existence, but rather that Aquinas insists that the fact-sense be deepened to include the act in virtue of which the thing is a fact. A thing is a fact in virtue of its actus essendi. A being or an existent qua a being or an existent is a habens esse, a possessor of the act of being. No individual thing is ipso facto existent. The relation of this act to the substance with which it is composed also bears mention. In respect to the substance rendered a being by composition with esse, esse is prior (prius), first (primus), most profound (profundius), and most intimate (magis intimum).10 Esse is the core around which the thing revolves. We are so accustomed to conceiving acts of a thing as items subsequent and posterior to the thing that the notion of an act basic and fundamental to its thing is strange. But if one is to correctly appreciate esse, usual ways of thinking must be suspended. This metaphysics of actus essendi leads to a different appreciation of existential propositions than is present in current analytical discussion of Aquinas. In his book, Three Philosophers, Peter Geach argues that the existence of Fido is tantamount to Fido having his form: There is no such thing as a thing’s just going on existing; when we speak of this, we must always really be referring to some form or nature, X, such that for that thing to go on existing is for it to go on being X.11

In partial confirmation of this view, Geach cites Aquinas’ remark that, in living things their life, or vivere, is their esse. Since life proceeds from form as soul, then esse-talk reduces to form-talk.12 Another Analytic Thomist, Brian Davies, follows Geach’s analysis of Aquinas’ idea of esse. In his article, “Aquinas, God, and Being,” Davies claims: On Aquinas’ account, saying Socrates est or Plato est is not to inform people of a property of existence had by Socrates and Plato. It is to assert what Socrates and Plato are by nature, i.e., human.13

Existential propositions about individuals are second order propositions which in first order are propositions about individuals having form. In

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contrast, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Perihermenias, Bk. I, lect. V, nn. 20-21, Aquinas says that “est,” in a phrase like “id quod est,” signifies esse and that esse is “the actuality of every form commonly, whether substantial or accidental.”14 Returning to my summary, I want to next note that, as an act, esse is an ipso facto dependent item. No act as an act of a subject, even the sui generis act that is esse is found by itself. Rather, an act is found as in and of a subject. However, there is no way to explain esse completely by the substance that is its subject. Substances that are complete explainers of an act are in some respect already in act. As a potency for its existential act, substance cannot position itself to completely explain its esse. The need for complete explanation in the case of esse drives the mind to conclude to a further being in which esse is not found as an act but as the very substance that is the further cause. Aquinas calls this further cause esse subsistens (subsistent existence), esse tantum (existence alone), and esse purum (pure existence). He also refers to it as Deus (God). Aquinas’ stated reason is God’s revelation to Moses in the Book of Exodus that God’s name is Ego sum qui sum: I am who am.15 As subsistent esse, the first cause of esse embodies the key component in Aquinas’ understanding of the notion of being, the ratio entis. Subsistent existence is consequently known as infinite and unique. But again, is it plausible to regard Aquinas’ metaphysics as a natural and automatic achievement that exists below the level of conscious articulation so that most will have a knowledge of God, imperfect as it is? The answer depends upon our access to the data in which are Aquinas’ key metaphysical notions. The setting up of things in various multiplicities is the standard procedure for the discernment of the thing’s acts.16 For example, because I find the water both hot and cold, I come to discern the various temperatures as acts of the water that in itself is temperature neutral. Moreover, I come to understand each of the instances as a composition of the water plus some temperature. Likewise, because I can find Tom both pale and ruddy, I come to discern the complexions as acts of Tom who in himself is complexion neutral. But for Aquinas things are found not only in temperature and complexion multiplicities but also in existential multiplicities. Aquinas is an immediate realist in his understanding of sensation. Sensation provides not an image, a representation, a picture of the real thing but the real thing itself. Consequently, the hot water and the pale Tom do not just really exist, in my sensation, they also cognitionally exist. To get a sense for the immediate cognitional existence of something real, you might want to think about the following. Let me place you in a

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seat before a table. I then give you a box whose lid is closed. I ask you to close your eyes. While your eyes are closed I place a vase of tulips on the table. At that time the vase is before both you and the box physically. I ask you to open the lid of the box. You want to note that whether the lid is closed or open, it still is true that the vase stays before the box just physically. Now open your eyes. Did not something more happen in that case than when you opened the lid of the box? The vase which is still physically before you is now also cognitionally before you. In your vision the vase re-presents itself. Opening the lid of the box changed nothing. The vase continued to be before the box just physically. When you opened your eyes, you doubled the existence of the vase. Evidently, there is another type of presence than just physical presence. Using Aristotle, Aquinas sought to explain how cognition as described above could be possible. That explanation took advantage of Aristotle’s hylomorphic doctrine. The key to the explanation was to modify hylomorphism in the case of a changeable substance that exercised cognition. The modification consisted in tweaking one’s understanding of the knower’s form. As Aquinas’ says at Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, a. 1, the knower’s form possesses an “amplitude” or “extension” over the knower’s matter. This quality of the form, enables the knower to receive other forms formally. No re-individuation of the received form occurs as in physical reception of form. Formal reception allows the knower to become some other thing without loss to itself. This explanation, which I have only summarized, beautifully accommodates the above mentioned facts. Now, it is the described facts of cognition, not their explanation, that is important. For a reality to cognitionally exist also means that the reality cannot be real of itself. Likewise if the water of itself were hot, then the water would become impervious to genuinely taking on any other temperature. That the water does truly take on other temperatures means that the water of itself is not temperatured. One might say that of itself the water is temperature neutral. The various temperatures are then attributes that come to the water and modify it. The same type of thinking will hold for a reality that cognitionally exists. The only way in which something real could also cognitionally exist is by being of itself existence neutral. If the thing of itself is real, then it becomes impervious to existing in another way. Real existence should, then, be understood as an attribute that comes to the thing just as the hot temperature is eventually understood as an attribute that comes to the water. So it is the presentation of some individual thing in an existential multiplicity that drives the mind to understand the thing to be in itself

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existence neutral and to understand the thing’s real existence to mean an attribute that the thing has in order to be a reality, or in Aquinas’ Latin, an ens.

Metaphysics as Implicit Knowledge The answer to the above question reduces to an answer to this question. Is the mentioned existential multiplicity available to the ordinary person? Certainly. No ordinary person doubts a real world in his sensation. No ordinary person questions the distinction between remembering their beloved in a memory versus being in the beloved’s presence when in her arms. Even though modern philosophy has run away from the immediate presence of the real in sensation, ordinary people continue to live according to that marvelous truth. Furthermore, ordinary people have sufficient presence of mind that none lack an awareness of their own sensation. Hence, they not only know real things, they know that they know real things. In other words, ordinary people not only sense real things, they also are aware that they sense real things. In short, there is every reason to think that the intellect not only discerns the notion of being, as I have claimed above, but that it also apprehends the notion of being in the sense of habens esse. The data is sufficiently available for the intellect to be led to the metaphysical distinction between a thing and its esse, even if our awareness is elsewhere. But upon a grasp of the composition, cannot the intellect go on to grasp the conclusion that the esse is caused? One conscious outcrop of this activity is Leibniz’s question of why there is something rather than nothing. As Heidegger points out at the very start of his An Introduction to Metaphysics, the question steals upon us in moments of despair, rejoicing, and boredom. Looked at Thomistically, Heidegger’s remark makes sense. Common to these moods is the shutting down of our plans and designs so that we are left simply in the presence of things. But that hovering of things in our awareness bespeaks, as explained, an instability in existents that prompts Leibniz’s question. Aquinas’ metaphysics is as near as the sense realism of ordinary experience. But if this is how people can get it so right, how can they get it so wrong? Here it is necessary to note that the already abstracted notion of being, the ratio entis, can play tricks in our conscious life. It can create faux epiphanies of itself. In this case an instance of being, because of certain superficialities, can become associated with being and acquire a value out of all proportion to the truth. This fauxing can happen in our

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awareness of spatially gargantuan things and minute things. For example, it can happen that to contemplate the heavens in our minds, we profile the heavens, we objectify them, by hanging them up and against the already abstracted notion of being. Just as there is the physical sky up and against which the clock tower is profiled, so too the already abstracted notion of being is an intellectual sky against which things can be objectified. In their own way, minutiae can become overly associated with being. To visually contemplate something small, every other thing is swept away. This can leave the minute alone with being. These two cognitive situations can result in the physically great and small taking on all the truth of being. Because the notion of being has causal implications, the great and the small can take on religious overtones. For example, to an Indian on horseback in the Western plains, the mountain is something mystical. The Indian unknowingly mixes the experience of the mountain with his intellection of being. The scientist’s insistence that the mountain is just a heap of basalt particles is so focused on minutiae that the association of the mountain with being is lost. Yet if the scientist is not careful, being can break through in the scientist’s consideration of minutiae. For in contemplating the small, everything else is removed from our attention. The result is that the small stands alone with being. Because of that cognitive association, the small can become invested with the preciousness of being itself. Hence, the reverential and awe-filled remark of that popularizer of current science, Carl Sagan, that we are all “star stuff.”

Conclusion So my conclusion is that a meditation upon Contra Gentiles III, 38, indicates that Aquinas did not regard his metaphysics to be so much the product of an academic laboratory that it cannot be understood as present in the minds of ordinary people. Moreover, he did not regard this metaphysics as so clearly present in the minds of ordinary people, that it was exempt from fauxizing. This implicit presence of a posteriori metaphysical knowledge explains why Aquinas regards this knowledge of God by ordinary people to be so correct but also so wrong. But it is ironic that the notion of being in whose intellection lies our natural dignity is the very thing than can cause so much error. But if one thinks further about this fauxizing psychology, one sees that it is repeated over and over in human experience. I would like to conclude by mentioning some further examples, unfortunately tragic ones. First, it

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can create an endearment that stymies growth. That unfortunate result is what Scarlett O’Hara, the heroine of Gone with the Wind, pathetically suffered as she fought, often immorally, to resurrect her plantation of Tara that had become lost in the mists of time. Here it is the temporally minute that is fauxized. Scarlett is entertaining that specific past moment of family life out of all other past moments. That restriction can leave Tara juxtaposed to the notion of being such that an overwhelming endearment with Tara occurs and its passing becomes unendurable. True, Tara is not divinized, but it can take on the preciousness of being itself which even before a reduction to the divine is appreciated as the good, the ratio boni. At various times, all of us are Scarlett. As it fades into the past, one’s life and experiences, e.g., one’s studies in graduate school, can take on an endearing quality such that one never engages contemporary discussion nor moves beyond the ways of one’s old professors. Likewise, a people’s love and respect for the land of their forefathers can be so great that it creates injustices for humans existing right now. Sometimes we have to let go. The motivation for letting go lies in the realization that what all truly love is being which is more accurately placed in people rather than ideas or land. With that personal focus we can go on to truly honor our past teachers and forefathers even if we do something different. Even the human person, who is a genuine epiphany of being, can undergo this fauxization with greater tragic results. For instance, Emil Fackenheim demands that philosophers face the problem of how something so uniquely evil as the Holocaust could result from people so banal as the Nazis: And how could those who were the rule, banal ones all, place into our world a “kingdom” of evil without precedent, far removed from banality and fated to haunt mankind forever?17

Fackenheim gives up on explaining the whole by its parts and falls back on the familiar dictum that a whole is more than the sum of its parts. But should banality be so readily dismissed? In describing the banality of Hitler himself Fackenheim says, Other than a low cunning, his one distinguishing mark is a devouring passion, and even that is mostly fed by a need, as petty as it is limitless, to show them—whom?—that the nobody is somebody.18

Again, cannot one see again the bewitchment of another faux epiphany of being? “The nobody” is an instance of the small and so can feed an association with being in the contemplation of it. The banal are prime

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candidates for this tragic trick. Through the play of being, it is not incongruous that banal people invest themselves with an endearment that becomes so ferocious and idiosyncratic that they feel no bounds in others.

Notes 1 At Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate q. 1, a. 1, Aquinas has the notion of being (ratio entis) drawn from the ten genera of Aristotle. These are natures that can have an existence in nature. This approach repeats that at the start of the De Ente et Essentia. But actually, as I will note, the notion of being is drawn from wider data. The further data includes the cognitional existence of these natures. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII (1074b 35-36): “But evidently knowledge and perception and opinion and understanding have always something else as their object, and themselves only by the way.” Human consciousness is never so absorbed in sensible things that it loses all awareness of itself. Consciousness’s natural focus on sensible things is perhaps the excuse for Aquinas’ dividing the notion of being just into the ten genera. 2 See John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), Chapters III and IV. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 38; trans. Vernon J. Bourke, Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), III, vol.1, 125-126. 4 “The third error is that of David of Dinant, who most stupidly [stultissime] taught that God was primary matter.” Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 8, fom The Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), vol. 1, 35. 5 For a description of “removal” as a use of the negating capacity of the mind’s second operation and how it is wielded to chisel out a confused knowledge of the divine quiddity, see my Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 236-244. 6 Summa Contra Gentiles I c.4; trans. Anton C. Pegis, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). 7 Ibid. c.3; trans. Pegis, 63. 8 For the Thomistic texts behind the many points in my summary description of Aquinas’ metaphysics, see Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, Chapters VI and VII. 9 Summa Contra Gentiles II c.54; trans. James F. Anderson, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). 10 SCG I, c. 22, n. 6; trans. Pegis, I, 119: “…it follows that something is the cause of its own being [causa essendi]. This is impossible, because, in their notions the existence of the cause is prior [prius] to that of the effect. If, then, something were its own cause of being [causa essendi], it would be understood to be before it had being [haberet esse]—which is impossible.” Even though the cause is called “prius,” clearly the esse is also. The thing cannot trump the priority of its own esse to be a cause of it. Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei, q. 3, a. 4; trans. L.

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Shapcote, On the Power of God (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1934) vol. 1, 102: “Now the first [primus] of all effects is being [ipsum esse], which is presupposed to all other effects, and does not presuppose any other effect.” The primacy of esse is implied in further texts. For example, De Potentia Dei q. 3, a. 5, ad. 2: “From the very fact that being [esse)] is ascribed to a quiddity, not only is the quiddity said to be but also to be created; since before it had being [esse] it was nothing, except perhaps in the intellect of the creator, where it is not a creature but the creating essence.” De Potentia Dei q. 3, a. 1, ad. 17: “God at the same time gives being [esse] and produces that which receives being [esse], so that it does not follow that his action requires something already in existence.” ST I, q. 8, a. 1: “But being [esse] is innermost [magis intimum] in each thing and most fundamentally present [profundius] within all things, since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing...” 11 Peter Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Balckwell, 1961), 91. 12 Peter Geach, God and Soul (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 59-60. Other texts make it clear that when Aquinas says esse is vivere, Aquinas is not identifying esse with vital operations. Rather, he is using the word ‘vivere’ to stand for his metaphysical principle of esse when found in living things. For example, ST I, q. 18, a. 2: “Et secundum hoc, vivere nihil aliud est quam esse in tali natura...Quandoque tamen vita sumitur minus proprie pro operationibus vitae.” For other texts and commentary, see Joseph Owens, “The Accidental and Essential Character of Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: the Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, ed. John R. Catan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1980), 243-244, n. 22. For more on Geach, see my “Haldane’s Analytic Thomism and Aquinas’ Actus Essendi,” in Analytic Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue, eds. Craig Paterson and Matthew S. Pugh (Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006), 233-252. 13 Brian Davies, “Aquinas, God and Being,” The Monist 80 (1997), 511-512. 14 For more on Davies, see my Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 202207. 15 SCG I c. 22, n. 10: trans. Pegis, I, 121: “This sublime truth Moses was taught by our Lord. When Moses asked our Lord: ‘If the children of Israel say to me: what is His name? What shall I say to them?’ The Lord replies: ‘I am who am...Thou shalt say to the children of Israel: He who is hath sent me to you.’ (Exod. 3:13, 14). By this our Lord showed that His own proper name is He who is. Now, names have been devised to signify the natures or essences of things. It remains, then, that the divine being is God’s essence or nature.” 16 The following is a non-technical paraphrase of Aquinas’ approach to the actus essendi of a thing by the twofold operation of the intellect, viz., conceptualization and judgment. For the twofold operation of the intellect presentation, see Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 182-196. 17 Emile Fackenheim, “The Holocaust and Philosophy,” The Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985), 513. 18 Ibid., 512-513.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE THOMISTIC SENSUS COMMUNIS: A HERMENEUTIC VIEW MIRELA OLIVA

In philosophy, common sense is generally called to support realism, whose main claims are that there is a reality outside us and that this reality can be known. This notion has developed from Aristotle's and Aquinas's epistemological standpoint to Maritain's and Garrigou-Lagrange's metaphysical approach. Furthermore, in political philosophy, common sense designates a form of practical rationality that rules over the social order and political action. This sociopolitical connotation was emphasized in the 20th century by philosophers like Arendt and Gadamer. In this paper, I will offer a comprehensive account of common sense, in which the cognitive-metaphysical and the social-political meanings merge. My synthesis will follow in Gadamer's footsteps. In his Truth and Method, Gadamer points out the characteristics of the Thomistic sensus communis, which are also shared by other thinkers such as Vico, Oetinger, and Kant. Gadamer works out an extended concept of common sense combining the Aristotelian-Thomistic meaning and the humanistic treatment. This widening was actually already in place in the Thomistic tradition itself, which enlarged the primary, perceptive meaning, reaching the metaphysical field of intellectual intuition. Certainly Gadamer has a few merits: he made evident the historical continuity and discontinuity of this prolific concept; he indicated how the various connotations of common sense could be held together; last, he stressed the significance of extending the Thomistic sensus communis–in his eyes, a necessary step to prevent Aquinas’ internal sense power from being reduced to cognitive subjectivism, as in Kant's case.

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Aquinas’ concept of common sense Aquinas’ concept of sensus communis is rooted in the Aristotelian concept of koine aisthesis developed in De anima. In the De anima, Aristotle introduces the concept of koine aisthesis in Book III in order to explain the perception of common sensibles (motion, rest, shape, magnitude, number and unity). He argues that there is no special sense for them, but there is a common faculty (koine aisthesis) that apprehends them directly. This faculty is responsible for the discrimination of sensible differences between the data of each of the five senses: But we have already a common faculty which apprehends common sensibles directly. Therefore there is no special sense for them. If there were, we should have no perception of them, except as we said that we saw Cleon's son. The senses perceive each other's proper objects incidentally, not in their own identity, but acting together as one, when sensation occurs simultaneously in the case of the same object, as for instance of bile, that it is bitter and yellow; for it is not the party of any single sense to state that both objects are one.1

This common faculty renders possible perceptual self-awareness, namely self-awareness of the differences between sensible data, as well as selfconscious awareness of the perceptions.2 In his commentary on Aristotle's De anima, Aquinas refers to the concept of common sense which he calls the sensus communis.3 The sensus communis is an interior sense that has a common relationship with all five exterior senses and makes possible a perceptive activity that grasps the complexity of sensitive data. The common sense represents, first, the awareness of perception, namely the capacity to be aware of our own perception. Basically, we see that we see. Second, the common sense discerns the sensible data which pertain to different senses and consequently unifies them. For instance, it discerns “white” from “sweet.” Sight can perceive “white,” but it cannot perceive “sweet,” which must be perceived by taste. Subsequently, the perception of the same object occurs under the unification of all sensorial data: we perceive a white, velvety perfumed rose by seeing it, touching it, smelling it. The internal sense is assigning all these data to one and the same object, making possible its perceptive identity. Both operations, namely the self-awareness of the perception (we perceive that we see) and the distinction between sensible data pertaining to different senses (e.g., between white and sweet), are unique operations of the common sense and cannot belong to the proper senses.

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Furthermore, the sensus communis is both the common root and the term of all sensitivity and the root and term of each sense in particular: In this way we should understand that the capacity for sensing is spread into the organs of the five senses from one common source: from this source the capacity for sensing goes into all the organs, and at this source all of the alterations of the single organs have their terminus. Therefore this capacity can be considered in two ways: in one way as it is a single origin and a single terminus of all sensory alterations; in another way as it is the origin and the terminus of this sense and that one.4

The sensible awareness provided by the sensus communis is at the same time the condition for intellectual activity. Therefore, this internal sense can be seen as a mediating power between sensitive and intellective activity. As Stephen Laumakis puts it, the sensus communis not only unifies the person's lower and higher cognitive powers, but also...ultimately establishes the relation between the knower and the known.5

The merit of the sensus communis is to outline an idea of a human person who is organically and sensibly related to the external world while being equipped with sophisticated intellectual powers. This strong relation between the knower and the known makes us understand why Thomists who promote realism can see the common sense as their cornerstone. In the Summa Theologiae, the sensus communis is cited in order to legitimize sacred doctrine as one science that includes elements developed by separate philosophical sciences: Nothing prevents inferior faculties or habits from being differentiated by something which falls under a higher faculty or habit as well; because the higher faculty or habit regards the object in its more universal formality, as the object of the common sense is whatever affects the senses, including, therefore, whatever is visible or audible. Hence the common sense, although one faculty, extends to all the objects of the five senses. Similarly, objects which are the subject-matter of different philosophical sciences can yet be treated by this one single sacred science under one aspect precisely so far as they can be included in revelation.6

The analogy between sensus communis and sacra scientia is based on the common trait of unification and, as we will see later, it bears similarities with the hermeneutic circle of the whole and the parts.

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The Neo-Thomistic concept of common sense The Neo-Thomistic development of the concept of the common sense extends its initial role of the unification of sensible data to the apprehension of first principles. Jacques Maritain, for instance, defines the common sense as a natural and primitive judgment of human reason that provides us with certainties regarding both data of the senses (for instance, bodies possess length, breadth and height) and self-evident axioms and principles (for example, the whole is greater than its parts). Although the knowledge provided by this understanding of principles is only confused and implicit and needs a further scientific reflection, it still remains bound to the natural light of the intellect and cannot be attributed to a purely instinctive faculty (which is the case of the Scottish school or of the French Jouffroy) nor to a sentiment (which is the case of Rousseau, Jacobi, and Bergson). The light of common sense is fundamentally the same light as that of science, namely the natural light of the intellect. But in common sense this light does not return upon itself by critical reflection and is not perfected by a scientific habit.7 As such, common sense is the source of philosophy, which justifies and continues it. For Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the common sense is the core of our knowledge of being both in its sensible role and in its apprehension of first principles.8 A philosophy of being is rooted in the common sense insofar as it indicates, first, the primacy of knowledge of the entities. Contrary to modern philosophy, for which the first object of the intellect is itself, Thomistic philosophy assesses that our intelligence knows being first and only subsequently itself. Second, a philosophy of being is guided by common sense insofar as it apprehends the first principles, such as the principle of identity or the principle of non-contradiction. The double connotation of the common sense, sensitive and intellectual, is however not accepted by all Thomists as being true to the original concept of Aquinas in particular and to the spirit of Thomism in general. Étienne Gilson has expressed serious doubts about this development, pointing out that it stems from an initiative of 19th century Thomists to defend Thomistic realism against modern subjectivism. In doing so, Thomists such as Liberatore have incorporated into the sensus communis Aquinas’ communes conceptiones (or communes sententias), namely the first principles. This addition creates a problem, insofar as the communes conceptiones are formulated by reason. Would the sensus communis, in this case, be nothing other than a faculty of reason or even reason itself? If it is not reason, we fall into Reid's irrationalism of common sense. If it is reason, why would we need to speak about it as a

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faculty in its own right? Gilson believes that the common sense understood in this derivative way is a false friend, a poor ally, a foreign body inserted into the structure of Thomistic epistemology. He also points out that there is no textual evidence that could allow us to make such an addition: “No text has ever come to our knowledge in which St. Thomas considers these common conceptions to be the product of some sensus communis.”9 Gilson's critique can be answered, I believe, in three steps: first, the original concept of sensus communis as defined by Aquinas had from the very beginning this role of mediation between senses and the intellect. The only issue here is to show how this mediation works in the case of the first principles. Second, the double connotation sensitive/intellectual is not an accident on the Thomistic road, but rather it reflects the intrinsic ambivalence of the term sensus itself, which means both intellectual content and sensitive power. The Latin etymological development of sensus seems to have taken this double track from the very beginning. Finally, the third step one can take in order to address Gilson's critique of the ambivalence of the common sense is a hermeneutic synthesis of various directions taken by the philosophers of common sense. Gadamer, for instance, envisages the common sense not only in its double signification as sensitive and intellectual, but also in its double amplitude as individual and social.

Gadamer's common sense and Aquinas Gadamer's idea of common sense developed in the first part of Truth and Method promotes a synthesis that is not meant to reconcile ideological conflicts but rather to bring up a more robust concept. The point that Gadamer makes here is that we need to add a political dimension to the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of common sense understood as an inner sense that constitutes the unifying root of human sensitivity. This addition might seem to be a defilement of Thomistic purity to Gilson, but, in Gadamer's eyes, it still follows both the spirit of the Latin culture and the spirit of Christianity. If we do not consider the political and communitarian dimension of the common sense, we run the risk of a psychologization of the common sense that separates it from the unity of the human person. Strangely enough, Gadamer believes that the last phase of the scholasticism of the basic faculties was reached by the German Enlightenment, especially by Kant.

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Gadamer's promotion of sensus communis in Truth and Method corresponds to his effort to show that human knowledge is not reduced to methodical scientific knowledge.10 Hermeneutics points out that understanding is always existential and historical. It is existential because it represents the way of being of man in the world, and not just a particular investigation, as in the case of science. Second, understanding is historical because it is embedded in a tradition; it is largely influenced by the system of beliefs, ideas, and values proper to that tradition. The hermeneutic concept of the common sense is therefore rooted in a new idea of rationality, according to which the scientific abstraction and deduction are but particular cases of a wider form of understanding in place in the every day life of human beings. Gadamer borrows indeed heavily from the Aristotelian phronesis, which he takes as a model for hermeneutic rationality. This move was already initiated by his teacher, Heidegger, who developed in Being and Time the project of a philosophy of Being intended as an analysis of the way of Being of the Dasein, interpreted in its own factical life. For Gadamer, a hermeneutic understanding shares several aspects in common with phronesis. First, it cannot be learned in the way a techne is learned. Moral knowledge does not stand outside the subject, ready to be learned and applied repetitively as such. It cannot be forgotten, as we forget how to do something, for instance, how to cook muffins. It rather depends on each concrete situation. What is right, for example, cannot be fully determined independently of the situation that requires a right action from me, whereas the eidos of what a craftsman wants to make is fully determined by the use for which it is intended.11

Second, moral knowledge has no single, particular end, but pertains to right living in general. The object of moral knowledge is the good life as a whole; this object cannot be exhausted with a clear set of means, but it rather maintains its lively nature at every step of our understanding. Naturally, there is no gap between knowledge and experience in this case, for our moral knowledge is already embedded in the fundamental experience of human finitude: The truly experienced person is one who has taken this to heart, who knows that he is master neither of time nor the future. The experienced man knows that all foresight is limited and all plans uncertain.12

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Finally, moral knowledge requires also a sympathetic understanding, through which we transpose ourselves into the situation of the other person who needs to act. This empathic aspect of moral knowledge is valid also for the hermeneutic understanding. The person who understands does not remain outside the things understood, but rather is involved in the context of that understanding: Once again we discover that the person who is understanding does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unaffected but rather he thinks along with the other from the perspective of a specific bond of belonging, as if he too were affected.13

These three characteristics of hermeneutic understanding in comparison with Aristotelian practical reason bear also upon the conception of the common sense. Indeed, Gadamer's treatment of the common sense stems from his elaboration of a model of rationality largely inspired by Aristotelian phronesis. The common sense conveys the historical and social dimension of rationality. The common sense is not a faculty of reason, but it rather expresses a dimension of our reason that is present in all our rational activities, be they theoretical or practical. The common sense is not a result of tradition, as if tradition had put its stamp on an individual's rationality. If it were so, the common sense would run the risk of being a mere conventional or local feature of our rationality. Gadamer aims, on the contrary, to reach a universal level, to view the common sense as an ability of our reason to grasp truth in every life situation and in every theoretical endeavor. His primary interest is therefore in a reassessment of human reason rather than in the elaboration of a political theory centered on the concept of the common sense. As Sophia Rosenfeld observes, Gadamer did not, however, develop a full-fledged explanation of how such conceptual recovery might be effectively translated into political theory, not to mention practice.14

How is this historical rationality to be connected to the Aristotelian and Thomistic sensus communis? A possible answer to this question can be found in Gadamer's reference to the humanist concepts of Bildung (education, formation, culture) and Takt (tact) developed by the physiologist Hermann Helmholtz at the end of 19th century. Takt is a special sensitivity to situations that orientate our behavior. Takt is tacit and unable to be formulated and goes beyond the mere knowledge of general principles. On the other hand, Takt is not simply a feeling, but is a mode of

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knowing and a mode of being. This peculiar sensitivity is not a priori; it is not simply a part of our natural equipment, but includes Bildung. Gadamer, therefore, defines Takt as a sense for the aesthetic and the historical. This sense is a hybrid between sensitivity and historical and cultural consciousness: Because this sense is not simply part of one's natural equipment, we rightly speak of aesthetic or historical consciousness, and not properly of sense. Still, this consciousness accords well with the immediacy of senses—i.e., it knows how to make sure distinctions and evaluations in the individual case without being able to give its reasons. Thus someone who has an aesthetic sense knows how to distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly, high and low quality, and whoever has a historical sense knows what is possible for an age and what is not, and has a sense of the otherness of the past in relation to the present.15

To fine-tune such sensitivity one must go beyond one's own point of view and open herself to other, more universal perspectives. Bildung means a sense of proportion and distance in relation to ourselves that helps us reach universality. This universality is not an abstract entity, but it is rather the reflection of one's own person and life in the eyes of the others: other human beings, works of art, tradition. To see oneself as the others see you, is the challenge of this reflective universality embedded in particular instances. This is another reason why tact and the cultural consciousness have the character of a sense: The universal viewpoints to which the cultivated man (gebildet) keeps himself open are not a fixed applicable yardstick, but are present to him only as the viewpoints of possible others. Thus the cultivated consciousness has in fact more the character of a sense.16

Moreover, just like the Aristotelian koine aisthesis, this sense unifies all particular fields of each of the five senses and embraces all fields of the human experience. Because it runs in all directions, this sense is universal. For every sense—e.g., the sense of sight—is already universal in that it embraces its sphere, remains open to a particular field, and grasps the distinctions within what is opened to it in this way. In that such distinctions are confined to one particular sphere at a time, whereas cultivated consciousness is active in all directions, such consciousness surpasses all of the natural sciences. It is a universal sense.17

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The cultivated consciousness retrieved in the German concepts of Bildung and Takt is in this way brought back to the Ancient and Medieval idea of a sense that surpasses all other senses in its capacity to embrace all fields of experience. This historical continuity is further displayed in the chapter “Sensus Communis” of Truth and Method. In this chapter, it becomes evident that the Aristotelian and Thomistic root is preserved in Gadamer's attempt to formulate an idea of hermeneutic rationality on the grounds of sensus communis. At the same time, just like the Neo-Thomists, Gadamer proposes an enlargement of Aquinas’ sensus communis. He gives a proper justification for such an enlargement, opening up the sensus communis to a wider assessment of the quality of our rationality, beyond a mere epistemology of cognitive powers. His historical reconstruction is a brilliant example of history of ideas in nuce, for Gadamer is able to show, in only a few pages, how the sensus communis pervaded Western philosophy and, through equivalences and transpositions, changed in various ways, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. This historical development indicates why Gadamer insists so much on extrapolating the sensus communis from the initial epistemological context of Aristotle and Aquinas. Kant's view on the common sense is, in his eyes, the extreme stage of a Scholastic understanding of cognitive powers, which has devolved into sheer cognitive subjectivism. In order to avoid this danger, he refers to two exemplary theories, those of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico18 and the German theologian Friedrich Oetinger. Vico follows the Aristotelian and Thomistic idea of common sense, but he adds to it a significance that reflects the Roman tradition of civil and social life as well as the humanist role of rhetoric. First, Vico resolves the contrast between theoretical and practical reason in favor of the latter. He reflects, thus, a strong tendency in the humanist tradition to privilege Aristotelian phronesis over Platonic sophia, and to contrast the figure of the scholar with the figure of the idiota, the layman, as in Cusanus. Thus, the sensus communis must be thought about beyond the merely theoretical ideal of abstract rationality and must be embedded in the concrete practical life: The main thing for our purposes is that here sensus communis obviously does not mean only that general faculty in all men but the sense that founds community. According to Vico, what gives the human will its direction is not the abstract universality of reason but the concrete universality represented by the community of a group, a people, a nation, or the whole human race. Hence developing this communal sense is of decisive importance for living.19

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For Vico, the sensus communis is the universal sense of what is right and of the common good. It is acquired through living in the community and is determined by its structures and aims. Just like practical reason in Aristotle, it presupposes a moral attitude, a direction of the will. On the other hand, the Vichian sensus communis reflects also the contrast between Greek and Roman culture, which, in Gadamer's interpretation, is a contrast between theoretical knowledge and social pragmatism. This contrast is relevant for modern times insofar as it offers us an alternative to the model of the modern sciences, which inherited the Greek concept of theoria. In this contrast lies also the point of departure from the Aristotelian koine aisthesis: But the sensus communis is not, in this sense, a Greek concept and definitely does not mean the koine dunamis of which Aristotle speaks in De anima when he tries to reconcile the doctrine of the specific senses (aisthesis idia) with the phenomenological finding that all perception is a differentiation and an intention of the universal. Rather, Vico goes back to the old Roman concept of sensus communis, as found especially in the Roman classics which, when faced with Greek cultivation, held firmly to the value and significance of their own tradition of civil and social life. A critical note directed against the theoretical speculations of the philosophers can be heard in the Roman concept of sensus communis; and that note Vico sounds again from his different position of opposition to modern science (the critica).20

Vico influenced Shaftesbury's concept of the common sense in the eighteen century. Shaftesbury envisions a social virtue, a virtue of the heart, that reflects the Roman refined savoir-vivre. This virtue is related to the intellectual and social virtue of sympathy, which constituted the basis of both morality and metaphysics. After Shaftesbury, the concept of common sense gained traction in Scottish philosophy, which insists on the original and natural judgments of common sense in opposition to metaphysics. The Scottish signification has an empiricist twist, which resonates well with the Aristotelian and the Scholastic concept. This attention to the activity of the senses and to their cognitive capacity aims at balancing the exaggeration of philosophical speculation. At the same time, the Scottish school also assigns a moral and social value to a sense that should compensate for the deficiency of the reasoning faculty. The Roman and Scottish conceptions of the common sense have an equivalent in the French bon sens. In the twentieth century, Henri Bergson developed an idea of bon sens as the common source of thought and will, a social sense, which, just like in the case of Vico and the Scottish school, is meant to correct the errors of science and of metaphysics respectively.

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According to Bergson, common sense is a tactfulness in practical truth, a rightness of judgment that stems from correctness of the soul. In sum, common sense as a general civic quality is characteristic of the Latin cultures, which inherited the Roman spirit and transmitted it to the English understanding of common sense. Gadamer's admiration for the Latin culture is of course not new in the German environment, which has always been fascinated with Italy. His cultural analysis helps us to better understand this fascination. It is, indeed, the failure of the German culture to capture the wealth of meaning incapsulated in the Roman sensus communis: The concept of sensus communis was taken over, but in being emptied of all political content it lost its genuine critical significance. Sensus communis was understood as a purely theoretical faculty: theoretical judgment, parallel to moral consciousness (conscience) and taste. Thus it was integrated into a scholasticism of the basic faculties.21 Consequently, German Enlightenment philosophy considered judgment not among the higher but among the lower powers of the mind. In this respect, it diverged considerably from the original Roman sense of sensus communis, while advancing the scholastic tradition.22

The main figure that embodies the German reception of common sense is Kant, in which various meanings of this concept come together. Kant uses the concept of common sense in the field of aesthetics, depriving it from moral or theoretical value. Gadamer's critique of Kant insists on the concept of taste, which indicates the aesthetic confinement of common sense. While the humanist concept of taste still preserves its moral aspect, in Kant the aesthetic and the moral dimension get fully separated. In trying to defend the dignity of the aesthetic, Kant separates it from the moral and theoretical knowledge. His approach aims at unveiling the universality of taste and of beauty, beyond the individuality of each aesthetic appreciation. This universality is reached because the judgment of taste, although it is individual, only reflects and confronts itself with other people's judgments, with the values of the community. The judgment of taste is thus rooted in the common sense, which is a faculty for judging that in its reflection takes account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought, in order as it were to hold its judgment up to human reason as a whole and thereby avoid the illusion which, from subjective private conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental influence on the judgment. Now this happens by one holding his judgment up not so much to the actual as to the

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The judgment of taste defined as common sense does justice to both aspects of the aesthetic phenomenon: its empirical non-universality and its a priori claim to universality. It arises from the free play of imagination and understanding and displays the reason for the pleasure in the object, which in turn is universally communicable. This achievement comes, however, with a price, which is the reduction of sensus communis to a subjective principle: Thus when Kant calls taste the true common sense, he is no longer considering the great moral and political tradition of the concept of sensus communis that we outlined above. Rather, he sees this idea as comprising two elements: first, the universality of taste inasmuch as it is the result of the free play of all our cognitive powers and is not limited to a specific area like an external sense; second, the communal quality of taste, inasmuch as, according to Kant, it abstracts from all subjective, private conditions such as attractiveness and emotion. Thus in both respects the universality of this “sense” is defined negatively by being contrasted to that from which it is abstracted, and not positively by what grounds commonality and creates community.24

The only exception to the German intellectualization of common sense is the Swabian Pietist Friedrich Oetinger, who represents the second inspirational figure for Gadamer, after Vico. Oetinger combined the humanistic, political meaning of the word with Aristotle's and Aquinas’ concept of sensus communis. He defines the common sense as the “vivid and penetrating perception of objects evident to all human beings, from their immediate contact and intuition, which are absolutely simple.”25 This ability to perceive not only guarantees the individual knowledge, but it also holds an entire society together, it is a sense of life increased by the sense of community. The true basis of sensus communis is the concept of life: sensus communis vitae gaudens. Oetinger retrieves this basis in the Aristotelian meaning of the common sense as unifying root of all senses. The capacity to unify all data of the senses is for Oetinger a mystery of life, because it captures life in its unity and simplicity: He takes up the Aristotelian question of the common dunamis, which combines seeing, hearing, etc., and for him it confirms the genuinely divine mystery of life. The divine mystery of life is its simplicity—even if

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man has lost it through the fall, he can still find his way back, through the grace of God, to unity and simplicity.26

The Aristotelian-Thomistic unifying character of sensus communis is transposed in this way into a theological idea of divine unity reflected in the simplicity of life and in the unity of the communal sense: The presence of God consists precisely in life itself, in this “communal sense” that distinguished all living things from dead—it is no accident that he mentions the polyp and the starfish which, though cut in small pieces, regenerate themselves and form new individuals. In man the same divine power operates in the form of the instinct and the inner stimulation to discover the traces of God and to recognize what has the greatest connection with human happiness and life.27

This relation between unity and diversity is expressed in the hermeneutic circle that connects the whole with its parts. Besides offering a non-rationalistic way of understanding human knowledge, Oetinger's purpose was also to offer a principle of interpretation of the Bible which encourages the reader to read various passages of the Holy Scripture in relation to the whole text. The meaning of the Bible must therefore be grasped in this relation between parts and whole, which, in turn, reflects the unity of life and of common sense. It can be recalled, here, that also Aquinas had outlined the unifying character of the sacra scientia in regards to particular sciences through an analogy with the sensus communis, as we have seen at the beginning of this paper. The sacra scientia unifies all particular sciences in the same way in which the sensus communis unifies all senses. Finally, Oetinger's mediation between the Scholastic and the politicalhumanistic commmon sense brings up a broad idea of intuition that, against the narrow modern definition, goes back to its metaphysical foundation, described as the structure of living, organic being in which the whole is in each individual: “the whole of life has its center in the heart, which by means of common sense grasps countless things all at the same time.”28 In a discussion following his talk on sensus communis given in 1958 in Jugenheim, Gadamer indicates very shortly that the immediacy of the sensus communis does not coincide with the intuition intended in a modern sense, but rather in a classical sense. According to the written notes of the meeting that I found at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach,29 Gadamer was responding to a discussion regarding the intuitive character of sensus communis. One participant denied that sensus communis could be an intuition, because it is somehow always present and

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it does not have an occasional character like the intuition. Gadamer responded that this problem subsists only if we adopt the modern understanding of the intuition. In this contraposition Gadamer was most probably having in mind the unifying character of the sensus communis that reflects, in Oetinger, the unity and totality of life itself. This unity is intuited not only through an individual and punctual perception, but also through the global involvement in a tradition. The question of intuition is thus the last step in Gadamer's attempt to articulate an idea of sensus communis that preserves its cognitive immediacy in accordance with the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept, while including the political and communitarian dimension. The force of the common sense resides maybe in its mediation between senses and intellect and between unity and plurality. This force is already present in Aquinas’ account and is further made explicit in the Neo-Thomistic development of Maritain and Garrigou-Lagrange that I mentioned above. A robust concept of common sense should indeed preserve its Aristotelian-Thomistic nature while adding to it the sense of community that comes to us from the Latin tradition. The perceptive, intellectual and social aspects of common sense should indeed be thought together in order to configure the unity of the human person.

Notes 1

Aristotle, On the Soul, Loeb Classical Library 8, trans. W.S. Hett, ed. Jeffrey Henderson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 145. 2 For a discussion of the controversial role of koine aisthesis in the perceptual selfawareness, see D.K. Modrak, “KoinƝ aisthƝsis and the Discrimination of Sensible Diffrences in de Anima III.2,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy XI, 3 (September, 1981). 3 Thomas Aquinas, A Commentary on Aristotle's De anima, trans. R. Pasnau (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 203-209, 291-299, and, 309-316. 4 Thomas Aquinas, A Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, 609, 314. See also, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4, trans. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame, 1981), 396; Thomas Aquinas, Questions on the Soul, trans. J.H. Robb (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1984), q. 13. 5 Stephen J. Laumakis, “The Sensus Communis Reconsidered,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 3, 441. On Aquinas’ sensus communis, see also, Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp, Sinne, Gegenstände und Sensibilia: Zur Wahrnehmungslehre des Thomas von Aquin (Netherlands, Leiden: Brill, 1999), 245-253. 6 ST I, q. 1, a. 3.

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7 Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. E.I. Watkin (New York, NY: Continuum, 2005), 80. On common sense and principles, see also Nicholas Rescher, Common Sense: A New Look at an Old Philosophical Tradition (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2005). On the epistemic value of common sense, see Antonio Livi, A Philosophy of Common Sense, trans. Peter Waymel, (Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 2013). 8 Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Le sens commun, La philosophie de l'être et les formules dogmatiques, 3rd edition (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1922). 9 Étienne Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. M.A. Wauck (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 38. Gilson does, however, define his own realist position as a philosophy of common sense in Methodical Realism, where he refers to the truthfulness of perception: “The awakening of the intelligence coincides with the apprehension of things, which, as soon as they are perceived, are classified according to their most evident similarities. This fact, which has nothing to do with any theory, is something that theory has to take account of. Realism does precisely that, and in this respect is following common sense. That is why every form of realism is a philosophy of common sense. It does not follow from this that common sense is a philosophy; but all sound philosophy presupposes common sense and trusts it, granted of course that, whenever necessary, appeal will be made from ill-informed to better-informed common sense.” See, Methodical Realism, trans. Trower (Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 1990), 127-145. 10 Gadamer's use of common sense in order to downplay the pretension of science to be the only form of knowledge seems to confirm Sophia Rosenfeld's observation that common sense is often evoked at moments of crisis in other forms of legitimacy. See Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 15. 11 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer & D.G. Marshall (Chicago, IL: Continuum, 2003), 317. 12 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 357. 13 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 323. 14 Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History, 247. See also John D. Schaeffer, Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric and the Limits of Relativism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 120: “Gadamer's idea of community is purely linguistic and cultural, not political.” 15 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 17. 16 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 17. 17 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 17. 18 For an analysis of Gadamer's reading of Vico, see John D. Schaeffer, Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism, ch. 5: “Sensus communis in Vico and Gadamer,” 100-126. See also, Gaspare Mura, La rivalutazione del 'sensus communis’ vichiano in Hans-Georg Gadamer, in G. Covino, ed., La nozione di “senso commune” nella filosofia del Novecento, Vol. 16 of Sensus Communis. International Yearbook for Studies on Alethic Logic (Rome: Casa Editrice Leonardo da Vinci, 2012), 97-109.

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Gadamer, Truth and Method, 21. Ibid., 22. 21 Ibid., 27. 22 Ibid., 31. 23 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. P. Guyer, trans. Guyer & E. Matthews (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 173-174. 24 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 43. For a discussion of Gadamer's critique of Kant's common sense see Allen Hance, The Hermeneutic Significance of the Sensus Communis, in International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. XXXVII, no.2, Issue No. 146, June 1997; Rudolf A. Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 157; and Rudolf A. Makkreel, “Tradition and Orientation in Hermeneutics,” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 16, n. 1, 1986. 25 Quoted by Gadamer, Truth and Method, 28. Gadamer quotes: FriedrichChristoph Oetinger, Inquisitio in sensum communem et rationem (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, F. Frommann, Günther Holzboog, 1964). 26 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 28. See also Hans-Georg Gadamer, Oetinger als Philosoph, in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 4, Mohr Siebeck, 1999, 314. 27 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 29. 28 Quoted by Gadamer in Truth and Method, 29. 29 The notes have the title “Diskussion zum Vortrag von Professor Gadamer: ‘sensus communis und common sense’ im Mai 1958 in Jugenheim,” in the category “Senatskommission für Begriffsgeschichte.” I wish to thank the Deutsches Literatur Archiv Marbach for allowing me to consult the Gadamer archive. 20

HYLOMORPHIC DUALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF EMBODIED COGNITION BRUCE PAOLOZZI

Embodied cognition is a relatively new research program within the cognitive sciences that holds both challenges and opportunities for Thomistic hylomorphic dualism. Embodied cognition poses a general challenge to dualistic mind/body conceptions because its focus on the importance of the body in cognitive processes lends itself to both reductive material and emergence theories. The specific challenge that embodied cognition poses to Thomistic thought comes through its goal to replace theories of representational cognition with embodied cognition. This essay will not focus on the materialist reductionism or emergentism that often accompanies embodied cognition, but will treat embodied cognition as an opportunity to enrich existing views of mind/body operation and address technical challenges toward this end. If hylomorphic dualism is compatible with claims from embodied cognition, then such claims do not deductively entail a materialist or emergentist view, for hylomorphism is another viable option. This essay will make three arguments. First, the basic embodied paradigm is consistent with Thomistic accounts of hylomorphic body/soul unity and sense cognition. Second, the challenge to representational cognition does not overcome the representational paradigm. The sort of cognition through phantasms that Aquinas expounds cannot be adequately explained solely through nonrepresentational embodied cognitive processes. Third, instead of posing an inherent problem for Thomism, embodied cognition can contribute to an understanding of habits. The extension of cognition to the body can be accommodated within Thomistic thought as part of habitual action, since habits lie primarily in the soul and secondarily in the body as the body assists with the operation of the soul.

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Embodied Cognition The label “embodied cognition” refers to a new and growing field that has yet to solidify into a single theory or description of cognition.1 It is so new that there is not always agreement among practitioners regarding key concepts, including the meaning of the concept of embodiment itself.2 Even so, embodied cognition is important and different enough from its predecessors that it has been called a “somatic revolution.”3 Even though it is quite difficult to categorize and describe what amounts to a varied research program within neuroscience, there are some common general themes and concepts that can be subject to analysis. Margaret Wilson has the helpful suggestion of treating the claims of various researchers in the embodied cognition movement rather than treating it as a single solidified viewpoint.4 This essay will endeavor to treat a few important concepts coming out of researchers engaging in the embodied cognition paradigm. The most significant aspect of this program is to overcome mind-body dualism. Esther Thelen and her fellow researchers are rather overt that their goal is “banishing the specter of dualism once and for all.”5 The objective is to conduct research that treats the mind, body, and, in many cases the environment, as one unit.6 The main point is to overcome mindbody dualism with mind-body unity, something that several respondents to Thelen et al. have explicitly noticed as part of the open peer commentary.7 While there is not an overt labeling of the type of dualism at issue, the criticism of dualism regarding how action arises from mental constructs seems to lead to the conclusion that the sort of mind-body dualism at the heart of the debate is the Platonic-Cartesian type of dualism. Farnell and Varela explicitly identify Platonic-Cartesian dualism, which they claim is problematic precisely in that it views the somatic as displaced from the mental.8 The early researchers in embodied cognition, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, were influenced by Merleau-Ponty, who “argued for the mutual illumination among a phenomenology of direct lived experience, psychology, and neurophysiology.”9 Their contention was that perception is neither completely in the mind nor completely in the world. World and perceiver hold a relation of mutual specification. Their efforts included an attempt to offer a middle point between realism and idealism.10 The goal is to study cognition as embodied action and thus bypass the realism/idealism debate. This embodied aspect has two main points. The first is that “cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities.”11 The second is that embodiment is embedded within “a more encompassing

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biological, psychological, and cultural context.”12 The body is the realist aspect of the movement and the conditioning that comes from this embodiment is the idealistic aspect, especially the psychological and cultural conditioning. The entire embodied self is the basis for action which is a lived cognition that inseparably includes “sensory and motor processes, perception, and action.”13 This unified situated phenomenological approach to cognition is still a guiding paradigm for the movement. More recent researchers, such as Lawrence Shapiro, point out that embodied cognition is concerned with how the body limits one’s conception of the world, how the body plays a role in cognition, and how this may replace representational theories.14 The body constrains what can be conceptualized by the very limits of the body. Those involved in the embodied cognition research program believe that traditional cognitive theory loses the importance of the body. Shapiro identifies three areas that are distinguishing marks of embodied cognition as a distinct research program. These areas are conceptualization, replacement, and constitution. Conceptualization is the idea that the properties of a body or organism dictate what sort of concepts it can acquire and process.15 According to Shapiro, “The goal of Conceptualization is to show that bodies determine, limit, or constrain how an organism conceives its world.”16 This paradigm focuses on bodily sensory input and experience and how this contributes to cognition. The idea is that our concepts depend on our bodily experience of the world. Physical experience seems to impact our reasoning. Differences in body types entail differences in cognition. The body profoundly limits and filters the different sense data components that an organism encounters. The understanding of the world that then develops is different according to the embodiment of the organism in question. The cognitive-body integration in conceptualization attempts to go beyond the unsurprising thesis that the body is important in cognitive processes, claiming that the body is constitutive to the cognitive process.17 The theory pivots on muscle memory and environmental cues that come with various familiar activities. For example, in order to find your way home, you would not recall a mental map of the area but a set of environmental triggers and actions that correspond to the process. Muscle memory and environmental cues in the world point the way. One thus moves almost on auto-pilot through these various non-representational cognitive processes. Conceptualization is the basic theory assumed by embodiment researchers working to replace current theories. The replacement goal of embodied cognition comes in using the world itself rather than a representational model of the world.18 There are a number of models of cognition with different degrees of compatibility

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between them all vying for a place as the new model for cognition. Thelen and her research team have a dynamic model demonstrated through observation of infants in early stages of spatial recognition and memory.19 Another theory is that there are deictic codes that are linked to cognitive processes. These codes tell the process where to look for the object and free the process from the need for a representational image. There are additional theories of replacement developed out of robotics and artificial intelligence. The dynamic and deictic theories seem to have the most traction at this point in time. The constitution aspect of embodied cognition focuses on the mind as extended beyond the body and into the environment.20 This is sometimes referred to as extended cognition. Extended cognition posits that many cognitive activities are pushed out into the environment, and in some cases that the environment is thus a part of cognition.21 While there is quite a bit of philosophically interesting ground to cover, this essay will not treat this aspect of embodied cognition in further detail.22 The dynamic theory of embodied cognition advocated by Thelen et al. is concerned with uniting the body and mind in a dynamic time-based nonlinear process. Basic cognitive tasks are inherently unified into a timebased shifting pattern. This contrasts with the traditional “inputtransduction-processing flow.”23 In other words, instead of senses reporting information that is then transmitted to the brain for processing, the dynamic theory sees shifting time-based patterns which are marked by both competition and cooperation throughout the embodied cognitive processing. The sense data and motor controls of the body work within the shifting framework of a constantly changing world. This feedback can be at odds or be cooperative, and leads ultimately to full cognition. If this dynamic theory is true, then there should be evidence in human development of sensorimotor activity giving rise to higher forms of cognition. Thelen et al. see evidence of this dynamic processing in the classic Anot-B error observed in human infants. This behavior occurs in infants between 8 and 10 months old and consists in persistent searching for an object in one location even after seeing the object being moved to another location.24 This behavior is very well documented, since the experiment has been repeated by numerous different researchers with similar results. An intriguing aspect of the behavior is that it is easily disrupted by numerous small variables. The A-not-B error as originally described has been used to measure infant object representation. Thelen and her research partners see the object-representation explanation as falling short. Instead of framing the issue in terms of representation and cognition, they see this

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as about what the infants “are doing and have done.”25 For them, the error comes from multiple sensorimotor processes involved in goal-directed reaching that are present at all ages. The learning process is not smooth, requiring repetition. The process is particularly visible in infants whose sensorimotor development is yet incomplete. A complete description of the research is beyond the scope of this paper, but the main point is that what is commonly referred to as “cognition” is the result of time-based dynamics between acting and thinking that can switch quite rapidly.26 Sensorimotor activity thus constitutes intellectual cognition.

Hylomorphic Dualism The roots of hylomorphism go to the basics of metaphysics. It is the idea that matter and form are one unified substance rather than being independent pieces.27 The general hylomorphic construction of all substances applies just as well to human beings.28 For human beings this allows for changes in the body but unity and endurance of the individual as a person grows and then ages. For Aquinas, this construction is not a mixture or mere contact but qualified compositional unity.29 This is because the process of mixing changes the two components into a third substance, and mere contact does not truly unify. This clarifies his metaphysics as holding a unity of intellect and body that reduces to one unified whole without losing the individual properties of either. As Pasnau points out, “To say that soul and body are united (unitur) is simply to say that they make one (unum) thing.”30 Further, Aquinas writes about the soul, intellectual soul, and the body. The soul is what animates the body and gives the body life, and the soul that animates the body and the intellect are one.31 Without bodily structures geared for sensation and transmission to the intellect, the intellect would not be able to operate. Without both body and intellectual soul the human creature would not be able to fulfill the essential characteristic of understanding, which is the essential trait of being a rational animal. Aquinas distinguishes between sense cognition and intellectual cognition, discussing cognitio sensus and intellectus as different powers of the soul.32 Sense cognition is descriptive of sense organs knowing or cognizing the sense data that is the object of the senses. The sense organs operate for the sake of the sensing powers and are united with the organs.33 Aquinas writes, “Now the action of the senses is not performed without a corporeal instrument.”34 They are part of the body and house a faculty of the soul. The sense organs are an embodied faculty

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of the soul through which the soul encounters the world. This aspect of sense cognition in Aquinas leads Madden to the conclusion that sensation emerges or at least has some emergent qualities.35 The purpose of sense organs is to take base data regarding the properties of the world around us and convert that data into a spiritual form that can be unified with the immaterial human intellect. Aquinas refers to this as abstraction from the phantasms. We do not simply understand directly, in an immediate fashion, but are conscious of the senses transmitting data to our intellect. The body fits the needs of the understanding of the intellect by facilitating the conversion of the material world into immaterial phantasms, or imagination. Once converted, the material world can be united with the immaterial intellect. The cognitive ability of any organism depends on the principle of cognition found within that organism.36 The principle of cognition is the intellectual soul, which is in turn the form of the body. Under body-soul unity in which the soul is the form of the body, this means that the principle of cognition is not simply a soul running a mechanistic body but dictates the qualities or properties of the body. There is proportionality between the knower as a total mind/body unity and what is known.37 There is an intrinsic and extrinsic influence on sensory knowledge.38 The qualities or properties of the body doing the understanding provides the basis for the body to obtain sensory understanding and limits that understanding. This is particularly apparent in Aquinas’s description of the differences between how human beings and angels understand. The body or substance of the organism doing the knowing conditions how the organism knows and what the organism is capable of knowing.

Areas of Agreement As mentioned, the overcoming of mind-body dualism is the ultimate aim of embodied cognition. Yet, the kind of dualism at issue is important. Hylomorphic dualism should not be lumped in with Cartesian dualism. Descartes famously portrayed the body as a mechanism, with the mind as a different substance operating the body from a seat in the brain.39 Aquinas responded to similar Platonic notions that the soul is merely the power driving the body like a sailor sailing a ship. He notes that such a Platonic position runs contrary to the fact of human existing, making human beings spiritual creatures who are accidentally united with matter.40 The human soul, with all of its powers, is united to the body as its form.41 Aquinas writes in his commentary on De Anima,

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We must not think, therefore, of the soul and body as though the body had its own form making it a body, to which a soul is super-added, making it a living body; but rather that the body gets both its being and life from the soul.42

Yet, the two viewpoints are often lumped together, since they both use substance language regarding the differences between mind and body. Hylomorphic dualism is rejected out of this misconceived conflation with Cartesian dualism, a phenomenon that James Madden points out.43 Thus, research results that seem to raise serious issues with Cartesian dualism need not be automatically taken to also raise issues with hylomorphic dualism. There is basic agreement between embodied cognition and hylomorphic dualism. In both, there is a refusal to separate body and soul, but instead treat human beings as one single unified entity. There is also an agreement that Platonic-Cartesian dualism is incorrect and needs to be countered with a theory that better matches the fact of human existence. The theories take into account that the biological configuration of an organism affects what the organism can know. The body constrains what can be cognized. The sense faculties of the organism are united with the organism in such a way that sense cognition is an embodied phenomenon. Sense cognition is thoroughly embodied and associated with the relevant sense organs. Sense cognition may be embodied, but what about more abstract general cognition?

Addressing Areas of Conflict Though it is not worked out the same way and in the detail that it has been today it seems that Aquinas has some form of a representational theory of cognition. This means that there is a fundamental conflict between embodied cognition and hylomorphic dualism in spite of the areas of agreement. Representation is part of the cognitive faculty of the soul and is therefore an intrinsic part of the spiritual aspect of hylomorphic dualism. Loss of representation leads to a monistic view of humanity reduced to simply bodily processes. A conflict between embodied cognition and representational thinking thus reaches to the core principles of both mind-body views. Aquinas relies on a theory of abstraction from the phantasms for his theory of cognition. The phantasms arise out of sense organs, as already discussed. The phantasms are abstracted from the sense organs and are then cognized by humans.44 The phantasms abstracted from the senses are

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representations (repraesento) of material forms.45 The object of the intellect is the world itself or the things of the world, or more specifically the properties that define the things of the world. These properties are represented in and to the mind by the phantasms. Aquinas writes that “the proper object of the human intellect is the quiddity of a material thing, which comes under the action of the senses and the imagination.”46 The quiddity or definition of a thing is based on the set of properties that make up the object in question. These properties are passed along to the intellect and represented through phantasms. Further, sensible knowledge is then used to deduce universals based on the particular in sense knowledge.47 The phantasmal representations of material objects are used in intellectual cognition to derive universals. The main research objective of embodied cognition is the attempt to take basic sense cognition and extend this to higher cognitive functions. This feat may not be possible, and attempts to do so may simply replace a theory of symbolic representation with one of non-symbolic dynamic representation or with environmental cues. Thelen’s dynamic theory of embodied cognition attempts to frame sensorimotor functions as part of higher cognition, but it is not clear that such a theory can reach past active embodied sense knowledge to reach into higher cognitive activities. One of the concluding claims of the study is that the [D]ivision between what is “conceptual” and what is “perceptual-motor” may be very hard to draw. Perception and mental planning contribute to a decision to act—the essence of human cognition—but the memories of actions are equally involved.48

The claim is that the connection between remembered locations and sensorimotor inputs has an effect on the planning and action portion of the A-not-B error. Infants reach to the incorrect spot based on this dynamic feedback between memory and sensorimotor activity. This error derives from the underdeveloped sensorimotor faculties of the infants. They have difficulty negotiating the dynamic sensorimotor memories in conjunction with new sensorimotor data. Walter Freeman notes that in the Thelen study this sort of knowing through acting does not seem to truly reach all the way to true higher cognitive functions.49 It would seem odd to explain the sort of higher cognition that goes into abstract thought, such as the Summa Theologiae, entirely in terms of memory and sensorimotor activity. Abstract thought may begin with dynamic sensorimotor activity, but some sort of analogical abstraction that is consistent with representational thought still seems to be required. A study by Boroditsky and Ramscar claims that higher abstract

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functions are based analogically on sense perceived objects.50 The claim is that this places abstract thought into the realm of embodied cognition as being based on bodily sense-cognition. This, of course, is quite in line with Aristotelian thought on the nature of abstract thought and is quite consistent with Aquinas. Just such an abstraction and analogical representation is at the heart of the abstraction of phantasms. Thelen’s work may help explain the process of sense-cognition rather than providing a robust replacement for representational cognition. Freeman further points out that this dynamic theory is compatible with the neuroscience pioneer Piaget as well as Aquinas as part of how sense data is actively assimilated and adapted.51 From this standpoint, Thelen’s dynamic field theory is not entirely at odds with insights from Aquinas, even if it fails in its replacement goal. Alfred White writes that in Aquinas “Intellection is rooted in perception that is interactive, goal-directed, holistic and cooperation-enabling.”52 This summation by White seems to paint quite a dynamic picture that is entirely compatible with Thelen’s theory in its inherent dynamism. Stopping at this point does not achieve full cognition. It is the rational intellectual appetite that allows the change from mere sense data into intellectual representation, which is the formation of concepts of things. Thelen’s sensorimotor dynamics theory may comport best within Thomistic thought as a way of fleshing out the science behind habits. According to Aquinas, a habit is a disposition related to nature and natural operation.53 This disposition is a mode of fixing past experience in a way that modifies the action deriving from the nature of the individual.54 Body extension coheres with habitual action, as habits lie primarily in the soul and secondarily in the body as the body assists with the operation of the soul.55 The subject of a habit can be body or soul depending on the aspect of the habit being considered.56 Habits in relation to operation have the soul as subject in the sense that the soul is the principle of operation. In relation to nature, the habit is found in the body. This is just to say that the habit is stored in the body and operates through the soul as the animating principle of the body. In the A-not-B error, infants first learn the location of a toy and then continue to return to the original location of the toy after it is moved. This occurs even when the infant sees the object moved. According to Thelen, this error is based on sensorimotor memory directing the task. A Thomistic interpretation of Thelen’s theory would be that the infant develops a bodily habit in relation to the location of the object which continues to direct action. Dynamic field theory describes the mechanism by which habits form and are recalled in active operation. The infant stores

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the sensorimotor data and relies primarily on this sensorimotor habit for active engagement in the world. The habituated act is initiated by an act of will and the infant proceeds with the act. Thelen states that this process is assumed to apply to all human beings and not merely to infants.57 In this case, the theory seems to comport rather well with an embodied account of habits. Thelen’s theory can explain the cognition behind any habituated act or task but not of higher cognitive activities. In other words, field theory can explain how an assembly line worker cognizes a task but not how a philosopher does.

Conclusion Embodied cognition may be a serious threat to Platonic-Cartesian dualism but does not seem to pose much of any threat to hylomorphic dualism. Hylomorphic dualism agrees with embodied cognition that a human being is one unified entity. Further, both agree that sense cognition is thoroughly embodied and that the properties of the body condition cognitive powers. A major point of conflict between the views arises when it comes to representational cognition, insofar as abstraction to the phantasms in Aquinas is a representational account of higher cognitive processes. However, embodied cognition does not seem sufficient to account for higher processes. This does not mean that the embodied account cannot add to Thomistic thought. Dynamic field theory as an account of body-based sensorimotor memory and active recall seems to comport with Aquinas’ account of habits. Embodied cognition, then, does not pose a threat to hylomorphic dualism. Instead, it can contribute to a Thomistic understanding of human nature.

Notes 1

Lawrence A. Shapiro, Embodied Cognition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), 67. 2 Lawrence A. Shapiro, “Embodied Cognition,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, ed. Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels, and Stephen Stich (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), 118. 3 Brenda Farnell and Charles R. Varela, “The Second Somatic Revolution,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 38.3 (2008): 215-240. 4 Margaret Wilson, “Six Views of Embodied Cognition,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9.4 (2002).

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Esther Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment: A Field Theory of Infant Perseverative Reaching,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2001), 2. 6 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 2. 7 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment.” See responses at the end of the article by Freeman, 41-23; and Latash, 43. 8 Farnell and Varela, “The Second Somatic Revolution,” 215. 9 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 15. For recent work that bears overtly on Merleau-Ponty, see Farnell and Varela, “The Second Somatic Revolution.” 10 Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 172. 11 Varela et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 173. 12 Varela et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 173. 13 Varela et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 173. 14 Shapiro, “Embodied Cognition,” 125—28. 15 Shapiro, Embodied Cognition, 112. 16 Shapiro, Embodied Cognition, 202. 17 Shapiro, “Embodied Cognition,” 129—31. 18 Shapiro, “Embodied Cognition,” 133. 19 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment.” For recent work on dynamic theory, see Yulia Sandamirskaya et al., “Using Dynamic Field Theory to Extend the Embodiment Stance toward Higher Cognition,” New Ideas in Psychology xxx (2013). 20 Shapiro, Embodied Cognition, 199. 21 Shapiro, “Embodied Cognition,” 139-40. 22 In many ways extended cognition is so obviously wrong that it needs no further discussion. However, it seems to be taken quite seriously by not a few researchers, and therefore needs to be addressed anyway. This author will therefore treat extended cognition in more detail at a future time. 23 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 2. 24 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 3. 25 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 4, emphasis in original. 26 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 32-34. 27 SCG II, c. 54, n. 2. 28 Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, c. 2, n. 1, trans. Armand A. Maurer (Toronto, Canada: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1934, 1968), abbreviated DEE. 29 SCG II, c. 56. 30 Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature : A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae 1a, 75-89 (Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 73. 31 SCG II, c. 76. 32 SCG II, c. 66. 33 ST I, q. 78, a. 3. 34 ST I, q. 76, a. 5.

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James D. Madden, Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 256-57. 36 Thomas Aquinas, Truth, q. 10, a. 4, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J., Volume I, Questions I-IX (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), abbreviated QDV. 37 ST I, q. 85, a. 1. 38 QDV, q. 10, a. 6. 39 Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 3 vols. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 99-108. 40 SCG II, c. 57, n. 3. 41 ST I, q. 76, a. 1. 42 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima II, c.1, n.225, trans. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries, Revised ed. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1951, 1994), abbreviated DA. 43 Madden, Mind, Matter, & Nature, 274. For an example of hylomorphic dualism being lumped together with Cartesian dualism, see Richard Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 44 ST I, q. 85, a. 1. 45 ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad.1. 46 ST I, q. 85, a. 5, ad. 3. 47 ST I, q. 85, a. 3. 48 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 33. 49 Walter J. Freeman, “The Behavior-Cognition Link Is Well Done; the CognitionBrain Link Needs More Work,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(2001), 42-3. 50 See L. Boroditsky and M. Ramscar, “The Roles of Body and Mind in Abstract Thought,” Psychological Science 13, no. 2 (2002). 51 Freeman, “The Behavior-Cognition Link,” 43. 52 Alfred Leo White, “Perception, Language, and Concept Formation in St. Thomas,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 84, no. 1 (2010), 208. 53 ST I-II, q. 50, a. 2. 54 Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 256. 55 ST I-II, q. 50, a. 1. 56 ST I-II, q. 50, a. 2. 57 Thelen et al., “The Dynamics of Embodiment,” 4.

HUMAN NATURE AND THE EPISTEMIC INDEPENDENCE OF NATURAL LAW MICHAEL J. DEEM

Introduction It is commonplace for philosophers to claim that evolutionary theory poses a serious challenge to traditional essentialist accounts of biological species, including essentialist views of human nature.1 Even philosophers working on a retrieval of scientific essentialism remain skeptical about whether biological kinds like “human being” are natural kinds.2 Essentialism about species, which is often associated with Aristotelianinspired ontologies of nature, holds that a species’ nature consists in a set of intrinsic properties shared by members of a biological kind in virtue of which these members belong essentially to that kind and to no other. Contemporary evolutionary theory, however, seems to leave little room for essentialist notions about species, including human being: if species membership is determined not by the intrinsic properties of individuals or an essential form, but instead solely by, say, the particular phylogenetic lineage from which they descend, it seems evolution may problematize traditional essentialist views of human nature. Aquinas is plausibly read as adhering to an essentialist conception of human nature. If it turns out that essentialist conceptions of human nature are undermined by contemporary evolutionary theory, would knowledge of the basic precepts of Thomistic natural law also be undermined? Does Aquinas hold that knowledge of the fundamental precepts of the natural law depends upon more basic beliefs about human nature? In this essay, I provide a negative answer to these questions. Aquinas, I contend, understands the basic precepts of the natural law to be epistemically independent of an essentialist conception of human nature, and so his natural law theory—and any development of natural law theory that retains his core epistemological commitments—need not be vulnerable to evolutionary challenges to essentialism. On Aquinas’s view, the basic precepts of the natural law are knowable apart from any direct inference

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from beliefs about human nature. I divide this paper into two main parts, the first of which considers Aquinas’s understanding of the epistemic grounds of the first precept of the natural law. Aquinas holds that this precept is self-evident, that is, knowable on the basis of an understanding of its conceptual content.3 In taking the first precept of the natural law to be self-evident, he maintains that our knowledge of it need not depend inferentially on more basic beliefs, including beliefs about human nature or human flourishing. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Aquinas extends this notion of selfevidence to the other basic precepts of the natural law. Part of my task, then, will involve providing some clarification of the relation between the natural law and the natural inclinations. In the end, I show that Aquinas’s account of knowledge of the basic precepts of the natural law is not threatened by contemporary evolutionary perspectives on human nature.

The Epistemic Independence of Natural Law How might the evolutionary challenge to traditional essentialism undermine knowledge of the precepts of the natural law? As I understand it, the evolutionary challenge, if sound, would undermine our justification for assenting to the basic precepts of the natural law if our beliefs about those precepts are inferentially based upon beliefs about human nature, understood in a traditional essentialist way. In order, then, to sidestep the evolutionary challenge, our knowledge of the natural law must be in some way independent of our beliefs about human nature. The relevant kind of independence here is epistemic. What does it mean for a belief to be epistemically independent of some other belief or set of beliefs? One might say that a belief is epistemically independent of another belief when the former does not rely on the latter for its justification or for its status as knowledge.4 On this view, some beliefs may be justified non-inferentially; a subject might be justified in holding some beliefs without directly inferring them from other beliefs he/she holds. Now, epistemic independence does not entail that a belief can be justified or have the status of knowledge independently of other beliefs in every respect. A belief’s having the status of epistemic independence does not preclude background beliefs playing a role in a subject’s understanding of the concepts that figure in the proposition that is the object of that belief. For example, suppose my belief that torturing innocent persons is wrong is epistemically independent of other ethical beliefs. In this case, then, any justification this belief might enjoy need not

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be the result of my having inferred the belief from some other justified belief (say, that intentionally harming others is wrong). However, my understanding of the conceptual content of the belief may well depend on beliefs about what torture is and what torture does to persons. In order for a belief to be epistemically independent, it need only be the case that a belief’s justification or status as knowledge need not be the result of an inference from a more basic belief. The question that concerns me here is whether Aquinas considers knowledge of, or justification for beliefs about, the basic precepts of the natural law to depend epistemically on beliefs about human nature. If Aquinas takes beliefs about the precepts of natural law to be grounded epistemically in an essentialist conception of human nature, and if the evolutionary challenge to traditional essentialism is sound, then his account of our knowledge of the natural law is threatened. I contend, however, that Aquinas takes knowledge of the basic principles of the natural law to be epistemically independent of beliefs about human nature. This point is most evident in his comparison of the fundamental precepts of the natural law with the basic principles of theoretical reason. There are two features of this comparison that I wish to bring into relief. First, Aquinas holds that the first principles of practical reasoning, like the first principles of theoretical reason, are self-evident.5 Second, the way in which Aquinas specifies the fundamental principle of theoretical reason is important for understanding how the fundamental precept of the natural law binds rational agents.6 I will discuss each feature in turn. In the Summa Theologiae, “self-evidence” is defined largely in terms of a relation between the predicate and subject of a proposition. For example, in his discussion of knowledge of the existence of God, Aquinas writes A proposition is self-evident because the predicate is included in the essence of the subject, as “Man is an animal,” for animal is contained in the essence of man.7

Similarly, in the Summa Contra Gentiles he writes: “those propositions ought to be the most evident in which the same thing is predicated of itself, for example, man is man, or whose predicates are included in the definition of their subjects, for example, man is an animal.”8 However, Aquinas also construes self-evidence in epistemic terms. For instance, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he adds, “Those propositions are said to be self-evident that are known immediately upon the knowledge of their terms.”9 Three points should be drawn out of Aquinas’s characterization of self-evidence: (i) self-evidence involves a certain relation between the

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subject and predicate of a proposition; (ii) knowledge of a self-evident proposition can be achieved through an understanding of the concepts contained within the proposition and how they relate to one another; (iii) what is known upon an understanding of the concepts and their relation in a self-evident proposition is not the property of self-evidence, but the truth of the proposition. A self-evident proposition is knowable on the basis of one’s understanding of its conceptual content. Hence, Aquinas says that such propositions are per se nota—contained within the proposition itself is sufficient evidence for justified belief of the proposition. This means, then, that knowledge of a self-evident proposition need not come by inference from knowledge or belief of any other proposition. Therefore, by attributing the property of self-evidence to the first precepts of the natural law, Aquinas is committed to the view that knowledge of these principles can be epistemically independent of knowledge of, or beliefs about, human nature. I turn now to the second feature of Aquinas’s comparison between the first precepts of the natural law and the first principles of theoretical reason. In his discussion of our knowledge of the natural law, he distinguishes theoretical reason from practical reason according to their respective objects. According to Aquinas, the proper object of theoretical reason is being, and so its end is the truth of things, whereas the proper object of practical reason is the good, and so its end is action. Aquinas indicates that the division between theoretical and practical reason is made on account of the formality under which the intellect apprehends these objects and their respective domain of knowledge.10 The discussion of the similarities between the two kinds of principles in the Summa Theologiae provides a picture of the function these principles are understood to have in the acquisition of knowledge within these domains. The first principle of theoretical reason—commonly referred to as the principle of noncontradiction—is specified not just in ontological or epistemological terms, but also in logical terms: “the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time.”11 This way of specifying the principle can be profitably read in light of other passages in which Aquinas suggests that the first principle of theoretical reason is constitutive of every act of assenting to a proposition. For example, he writes “the intellect does not err in the case of first principles; it errs at times in the case of conclusions at which it arrives by reasoning from first principles,”12 and, expressing the point in a stronger way, “in speculative matters the intellect necessarily assents to the first and indemonstrable principles, and can in no way assent to their contraries.”13 So it seems that Aquinas characterizes the principle of non-contradiction both as a principle that may serve as a

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premise in the construction of demonstrative proofs and as a constitutive principle of belief. Now consider Aquinas’s specification of the first principle of practical reason, which is the first precept of the natural law: “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”14 What the analogy between the first principles of theoretical and practical reason suggests is that Aquinas considers the first principle of practical reason to be both a specification of the constitutive principle of practical reasoning and the fundamental precept that binds our choice in action. Just as the first principle of theoretical reason is constitutive of right belief, so is the first principle of practical reason constitutive of right action. “Good,” then, is the description under which any object is pursued; to quote Aquinas, “the will necessarily inheres to the...end, so as to be unable to will the contrary.”15 And just as the principle of non-contradiction can function as a fundamental premise in a demonstrative proof, so, too, can the first precept of the natural law serve as a basis for deducing other precepts of the natural law. Further, since both are self-evident first principles, Aquinas understands them to be epistemically autonomous in a rather͒ strong sense: knowledge of the principle of non-contradiction and of the first precept of the natural law is not epistemically dependent on any other belief.16 There is a sense, however, in which the first precept of the natural law does little in terms of guiding action. Just as the principle of noncontradiction tells us little about the truth of existing things, the first precept of the natural law is too general to guide particular actions on its own. Aquinas seems to detect as much, since after providing his initial specification of the first precept of the natural law he moves directly to a discussion of the proper objects of the natural inclinations. He states that “all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good...and their contraries as evil,” and that “according to the order of natural inclinations is the order of the precepts of natural law.”17 But this introduces a potential difficulty: does not Aquinas’s discussion of the natural inclinations take place within the framework of an essentialist conception of human nature? And even if the first precept of the natural law is epistemically independent, does he not hold that knowledge of the other basic precepts of the natural law is derivative from beliefs about the objects of the natural inclinations? I turn now to addressing these questions.

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The Relation between Natural Inclinations and Natural Law In his discussion of moral knowledge in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, Aquinas specifies only one self-evident precept, namely that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided,” yet he states in several places that there is a plurality of self-evident precepts of the natural law (e.g., ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4 and q. 94, a. 6). The ensuing discussion of the natural inclinations suggests that the other self-evident precepts, which he characterizes as precepts of intermediate generality, are connected in an important way to the objects toward which our natural inclinations are directed.18 But does this connection undermine Aquinas’s claim that these intermediate precepts are self-evident and can be non-inferentially known? It is tempting to read the discussion of natural inclinations as suggesting that our knowledge of some of the basic precepts of the natural law depends crucially on our knowledge of human nature and its proper function. After all, Aquinas appears to lift straight from Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics an essentialist conception of human nature, complete with the idea of a three-tiered structure of inclinations. Moreover, Aquinas states in several places that a full understanding of any entity requires an understanding of both of its proper attributes and what it does or could do. His view of the natural inclinations might appear to issue straightforwardly from an essentialist conception of human nature, where our knowledge of intermediate precepts of the natural law must be inferred from our beliefs about what human nature is and what its proper objects are. This reading of Aquinas, however, would undermine his claim about the self-evidence of the first precepts of the natural law, which precedes his discussion of natural inclinations. If the precepts of intermediate generality are self-evident, then they must be knowable apart from any inference from beliefs about human nature. To see that the discussion of the natural inclinations in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2 does not undercut Aquinas’ claim about the self-evidence of these precepts, it is helpful to recall his brief remarks about moral knowledge in ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4. In ST I-II, q. 90, Aquinas discusses the essence of law, sketching its ontological and theological grounds. In the fourth and final article of that question, Aquinas makes a brief but important epistemological remark: “The natural law is promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man’s mind so as to be known by him naturally.”19 Now, the epistemological discussion of natural law is deferred to ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, but ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4 should leave us prepared for Aquinas’ move to an

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epistemological viewpoint of the natural law. While Aquinas takes the understanding of an entity to require knowledge of its essential properties as well as that toward which the entity tends as its end, the natural inclinations of human beings can be understood from two standpoints: the external and the internal. What concerns Aquinas in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2 is not human nature, and does he refer us to the preceding ontological account of law. Rather, the tenor of this article is the way in which natural law is known to us—a distinctly internal dimension of our ethical life. Natural inclinations are felt as directives toward objects that practical reason apprehends under the general description of good. This is not to say that whatever inclination is felt always points us toward something that turns out actually to be good; we are able also to reflect upon and deliberate over the objects that are presented to us by our inclinations such that we may endorse or disavow them. In endorsing an object of our inclination, the object is constituted as a reason for action. Now, goods or reasons for action might be considered in two ways. On the one hand, they can be considered as the proper and perfective objects of some thing or capacity; this is how Aquinas speaks generally of ends. On the other hand, good can be viewed as a normative fact grounded in the constitutive aims of the agent; in this way, goods are constituted by practical reason. It makes sense to read the discussion of inclinations and goods in in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2 according to the latter way, given the immediately preceding claims Aquinas makes about the constitutive principle of practical reasoning. How does this square with Aquinas’ view of the self-evidence of the intermediate precepts of natural law? The propositions of practical reason to which Aquinas attributes the property of self- evidence specify basic duties. Nowhere does Aquinas suggest that our knowledge of goods is non-inferential or that propositions of the form “x is a good” are selfevident.20 Nor does the natural law itself specify what is, in fact, good. Instead, our natural inclinations help us to specify what might be called “general human goods.” We acquire broad concepts of general human goods and their contraries, which supply the conceptual content of the intermediate precepts of the natural law. So, while the precepts of the natural law are self-evident and knowable non-inferentially, our knowledge of good may be epistemically dependent on beliefs about the objects of the natural inclinations. A plausible reading of Aquinas’ claim that “according to the order of natural inclinations is the order of the precepts of natural law,” then, is that the objects of our natural inclinations partly determine the conceptual content that figures in these precepts. However, just as the conceptual dependence of the contents of the

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proposition “a human being is an animal” does not entail that the proposition is not self-evident and cannot be non-inferentially known, the conceptual dependence of the contents of the intermediate precepts does not entail that knowledge of them must be the result of an inference from more basic beliefs about the good, about inclination, or about human nature. Thus, Aquinas can consistently maintain that the intermediate precepts of the natural law are self-evident and can be known noninferentially on the basis of understanding the concepts contained in those precepts. And this means that Aquinas’ account of knowledge of the basic precepts of natural law is not undermined by the evolutionary challenge to essentialism.21

Concluding Remarks I have argued that Aquinas holds that knowledge of the first and intermediate precepts of the natural law are epistemically independent of an essentialist conception of human nature, and that it is their conceptual content that depends on our knowledge of the objects of human natural inclinations. To be clear, I have not suggested that the traditional Thomistic account of human nature is unsound, or, more specifically, that evolutionary theory does, in fact, undermine it. Rather, I suggested only that the core epistemic commitments of Aquinas’ account of natural law are in principle compatible with contemporary evolutionary biology, whatever the latter may imply for a theory of human nature. If this conclusion is correct, then the Thomistic natural law tradition has the resources to address the evolutionary challenge to essentialism.22

Notes 1

See, e.g., David Hull, “On Human Nature,” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1986, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1986): 3-13; Michael Ruse, “Biological Species: Natural Kinds, Individuals, or What?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1987): 225-242; Edouard Machery, “A Plea for Human Nature,” Philosophical Psychology 21 (2008): 321-329; Tim Lewens, “Human Nature: The Very Idea,” Philosophy and Technology 25 (2008): 459-74; and Grant Ramsey, “Human Nature in a Post-Essentialist World,” Philosophy of Science 80 (2013): 983-993. 2 See, e.g., Brian Ellis, The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); but cf. David S. Oderberg,

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Real Essentialism (New York: Routledge, 2007), 201-40. 3 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2; cf. ST I, q. 2, a. 1. Quotations from Aquinas’ works are from the following translations: The Divisions and Methods of the Sciences: Questions V and VI of His Commentary on De Trinitate of Boethius, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986); Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I: God, trans. Anton C. Pegis, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955); Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. J. Litzinger (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1964); Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Benzinger Brothers, 1948). 4 Robert Audi, “Foundationalism, Epistemic Dependence, and Defeasibility,” in The Structure of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 95116. 5 Aquinas works with two senses of “self-evident” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2; SCG I.11.2). On the one hand, a proposition might be self-evident “in itself,” or “in the absolute sense.” Here “self-evident” refers to a property of the proposition itself. On the other hand, a proposition might be self-evident “in relation to us.” Here “self-evident” refers to the relation between a proposition that is self-evident in itself and a subject who knows the proposition in virtue of his/her understanding of the concepts that figure in it. Hence, Aquinas holds that a proposition can be selfevident in the first sense, but not in the second sense. In this paper, I am primarily concerned with the former. 6 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 3; q. 94, a. 2; q. 94, a. 3. 7 ST I, q. 2, a. 1. 8 SCG I, 10.4. 9 SCG I, 10.2. Emphasis mine. 10 In Boeth. q. 5 a. 1; Sententia Libri Eth. I, 1.1. 11 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2. 12 SCG I, 61.4. 13 SCG I, 80.4. Emphasis mine. 14 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, ad. 2. 15 SCG I, 80.4. Emphasis mine. 16 One might object that, according to Aquinas, knowledge of the first principle of natural law presupposes an apprehension of being by theoretical reason and of good by practical reason (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2), and so knowledge of that principle is not epistemically autonomous. The objection can be met if we notice that Aquinas does not think that knowledge of the precept depends epistemically on an apprehension of being or good, as if we make an inference from a belief or evidence about being or good to our belief about the precept. Rather knowledge of the precept depends causally on such an apprehension. On Aquinas’ view, our apprehension of being and good helps explain why we know the first precept of natural law. Thus, acts of apprehending being and good are not beliefs on which our propositional knowledge of natural law inferentially depends; otherwise, the first principle would not be self-evident. 17 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2.

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Aquinas does not hold all the precepts of the natural law to be self-evident. For example, there are “secondary precepts and more detailed precepts” to which he does not attribute the property of self-evidence. Nor does he think that knowledge of particular duties—what he calls “proper conclusions of practical reason”—is non-inferential (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4) 19 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad. 1. 20 Some interpreters of Aquinas nonetheless seem to ascribe to him the view that there is a set of basic goods for humans, knowledge of which is non-inferential. See, e.g., John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 79-104. 21 One might even wish to decouple Aquinas’ account of natural inclinations from his preferred essentialist framework and situate it within an evolutionary framework. For instance, one might construe natural inclinations as motivational and evaluative tendencies in humans that were shaped over the course of human evolutionary history. But even if one wishes to retain Aquinas’ essentialist framework, one can recognize that his account of natural inclinations in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2 does not require essentialism about human nature. 22 I thank the audience at the first U.S. Conference of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, where this paper was originally presented; particularly helpful was discussion with James Brent, O. and Russell Hittinger. I am especially grateful to Therese Scarpelli Cory and Andrew Helms for their helpful comments on the paper, and to John Finnis, with whom many of these ideas were discussed.

PART V: LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND GENDER

GENDER REALITY VS. GENDER IDEOLOGY SR. PRUDENCE ALLEN, RSM

Introduction This presentation will be divided into three basic sections: First, a description of the origins of sex ideology and gender ideology; Second, a mapping of the rapid spread, or “going viral,” of gender ideology; and third, arguments drawing upon the work of Catholic philosophers for a vigorous defense of Gender Reality.1 Much of the material in the first and second sections of this paper is disturbing to read; it is even more distressing to realize how many innocent persons have been and are being harmed through a combination of intentionally deceptive research methods and reporting of results. Thus, it is very important that it be brought into the light so that remedies and counter-arguments can be developed which are based on the truth about the real identities of women and of men. The Doctor of Humanity offers us a context and encouragement to undertake this difficult task. Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians repeats Chapter 2 verse 14: “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.”2 Thomas then describes how to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere: Here it should be noted that preachers of truth should do two things: namely to exhort in sacred doctrine and to refute those who contradict it. This they do in two ways: by debating with heretics and by practicing patience toward persecutors.3

Debating well demands knowledge of the sources and arguments of one’s opponents. It also helps us to practice patience towards those with whom we strongly disagree. I hope that this presentation will help us towards this goal.

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What is the conflict between Gender Reality and Gender Ideology? The present conflict between what I call “Gender Reality” and “Gender Ideology” is the result of two different views of the human person. Gender Reality holds that human beings are “always or for the most part” women or men, female or male. Gender Ideology holds that human beings fall along a continuum of 3, 5, or even 15 different loose group of genders. Gender Reality is rooted philosophically in a descriptive metaphysics (Aristotelian and Thomistic grounded) and Gender Ideology is philosophically rooted in a revisionary metaphysics (Neo Platonist or Cartesian founded).4 Finally, Gender Reality depends upon a hylomorphic (soul/body composite unity) understanding of a human person, woman or man; Gender Ideology leads to a deconstructionist approach to the human person as a loose collection of qualities, attributes, or parts.

How gender ideologies begin? Neo Platonic Reification of Masculinity and Femininity In distinguishing between the concept of gender and the word “gender,” it is helpful to notice that Neoplatonism has historically been associated with making masculinity and femininity into cosmic reified entities like Forms, that tend to reduce the significance of the individual man or woman. For example, the Neoplatonist Nicholas of Cusa (14011464) introduced a theory in which the concept of gender as cosmic masculinity and femininity operated within a “coincidence of opposites” with reified independence from bodily distinctions of male and female.5 In 1620 Reform England, also influenced by Neoplatonism, a satirical text inverting article and noun, entitled Hic Mulier, was answered by another satire reversing this play on words and engendered characteristics Haec Vir.6 In this text, the concept and word “gender” merged together when the satires focused on culturally gendered masculine clothing and characteristics ascribed to a woman and culturally gendered feminine clothes and characteristics ascribed to a man: For since the days of Adam women were never so masculine; masculine in their genders and whole generations, from the mother, to the youngest daughter; masculine in number, from one to multitudes; masculine in case, even from the head to the foot; masculine in mood, from both speech, to

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impudent action; and masculine in tense: for (without redress) they were, are, and will be still most masculine, most mankind, and most monstrous.7

Three-hundred years later, the Neoplatonic text The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris is commonly thought to have been the source for C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra and other texts in his Space Trilogy. In Perelandra, the narrator (who is thought to be Lewis himself) separates Gender as a higher cosmic masculine and cosmic feminine reality from sex. In his words: Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender.... [T]he male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine.8

These three examples of Neoplatonic approaches to reified masculinity and femininity and cosmic gender reveal a certain tendency to devalue the concrete individual human being, man or woman in comparison with some abstract “real” form. This is not to suggest that especially C.S. Lewis ignores concrete women and men in his other works, or to argue that he or Nicholas Cusa would have agreed with the radical gender ideology that has become so evident in the 20th-21st centuries. However, a Neoplatonic approach to the human person especially as it influenced the Reform traditions, which accepted and built on Descartes’ metaphysical dualism, ended up rejecting the Aristotelian/Thomistic concrete hylomophism or foundational soul/body composite identity of an individual woman or man. And it is this rejection that has led to the radical gender ideology of the present time.

Sex Ideology: Proactive Reduction of Sex Identity to Sex acts Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) Dr. Alfred Kinsey, an entomologist, earned his Sc. D. from Harvard University in 1919 studying Gall Wasps. His original orientation towards animals and particularly insects, framed his attitude towards human beings as simply another kind of animal.9 Raised in a Methodist Reform family, Kinsey totally rejected God and also the view that the human soul was both form and spirit.10 Subsequently, when he became part of an interdisciplinary course on sexuality and marriage at Indiana University,

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he studied sexual activity as a human animal “outlet,” to use the word that characterized all his research.11 Kinsey decided to quantify all aspects of a man’s, woman’s, and child’s sexual “outlets,” by age, the size of organ and frequency of “outlets” without being concerned whether the so-called “outlet” occurred with the person alone, with members of the same or opposite sex, with animals, or with children. He included in his classification systems of men, any and all who would agree to give their sexual history in a detailed interview. The groups included serial rapists in prison, pedophiles, single men, married men, male prostitutes, and so on. Kinsey included in his classification systems of married women, women in common law relations as well as female prostitutes living with their handlers.12 Kinsey’s data samples were contaminated, and his work was actual more “pseudoscience” than the hard science he claimed. When the volume on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published in 1948 with its initial claim of being based on interviews with “12,000” males and the volume on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953 with its claim of being based on interviews with “nearly 8,000 females” it had the force in the popular culture of authority of numbers. Even though Kinsey revised his numbers down by claiming that he “scientifically-conducted” interviews with 5,300 men and 5,940 women, it was widely received in the broader culture as describing the truth about human sexuality separated from any context of love, marriage, or human good. The publication of the first volume became a best seller and it promoted the theory that the greater the quantity of so called “sexual outlets” the healthier the man or woman. According to Pomeroy, ...by the time Kinsey died there had been eleven printings of the Male volume...and the book was translated into French, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch and German.13

Kinsey’s report of the “usual numbers” of sexual outlets in various population groups had a proactive influence on a hyper eroticism not only in the United States, but throughout the world. It redefined what had been considered “normal” sexual activity and encouraged counselors, psychologists, and others to push his new version of normal. Kinsey’s single-minded promotion of quantitative amounts of sexual activities without regard to human relations eventually took on the qualities of a cultural sex ideology.

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Michel Foucault (1926-1984) The French philosopher, Michel Foucault thought that sexuality ought to displace sex identity in any analysis of this aspect of human life. In The History of Sexuality, he claimed that “sex...[is] an imaginary point determined by the deployment of sexuality.”14 Foucault argued further that sex identity was completely a social construct, and that the “anchorage points” of “the body, anatomy, the biological, and the functional” should be eliminated in favor of “sexuality.”15 Here we see the elimination of the human being per se and its replacement by an experience. In Foucault’s deconstructionist approach, the metaphysical foundation of the human being as composite substance or hylomorphic union of soul/body is jettisoned for a floating “I think” or “I feel” sexual pleasures. In the spring of 1975 Foucault plunged passionately into San Francisco’s gay community, attracted especially by the consensual sado-masochistic eroticism that flourished in a number of bathhouses in the Bay City at that time.16

In History of Sexuality, he argued that sex is an illusion, while at the same time he choose to seek purpose or intelligibility of his own identity in its multiple sexual acts. Foucault’s rejection of sex identity had been preceded by his prediction in The Order of Things (1966) of the disappearance of man, the human being from western culture. Stating that “man is a recent invention” and “an invention of a recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.” Foucault speculated that if structures of language crumbled “one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”17 Foucault’s deconstructive approach to the human being and his reduction of one’s sex identity to maximization of sexual pleasures gained many adherents among intellectuals throughout the world. It also began to become a cultural sex ideology.

Gender Ideology: Proactive Fragmentation of Gender Identity Margaret Mead (1901-1978) earned her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University, New York in 1929. She soon revolutionized methodologies that anthropologists used to study primitive cultures. Mead described her early goal:

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So, in 1931, my problem, which I had declared to be central to the research I was undertaking, was to study the different ways in which cultures patterned the expected behavior of males and females.18

Her articulation clearly emphasized how a man’s or woman’s identity resulted from what other persons expected of sexually differentiated behaviors. Mead concluded later that her research project to identify ...how culturally attributed contrasts in masculine and feminine behavior differentiated the character structure of men and women, seemed to have yielded very little.19

She reoriented the field of anthropology away from any consideration of essential differences between the sexes and towards a relativism of “sex styles.” During her research in south Asian primitive cultures Mead also rejected her familial Episcopal religion for an attitude of cultural relativism. By 1949, in Male and Female, the anthropologist Margaret Mead claimed that sex-roles and sex-styles were simply culturally learned. In one example she argued: Characteristic after characteristic in which the differences within a sex are so great that there is enormous overlapping are artificially assigned as masculine or feminine.20

Mead’s conclusion about the relativism of sex roles and sex identities flowed over into a reflection on the word “gender” itself. She introduced the word “gender” in a discussion about polygamy when she posited the difficulty a person has to imagine contrasts in other societies. In her words: We know by sad experience how difficult it is for those who have been reared within one civilization ever to get outside its categories, to imagine, for instance, what a language could be like that had thirteen genders. Oh, yes, one says masculine, feminine, and neuter—and what in the world are the other ten?21

In her framing of this hypothetical question, Margaret Mead set the world stage, perhaps unknowingly, for a mutation of gender ideology to begin. Towards the end of her life, at a conference they both attended, Dr. John Money reported that Margaret Mead encouraged him to continue his work breaking sexual taboos related to incest and adult-child activities by telling him that: “This is something he has to do.”22

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Dr. John Money (1921-2006), when a young man in New Zealand likely knew of Mead’s anthropological research in his area of the world. Traveling to the United States for graduate studies, he completed a doctorate in Psychology in 1952 at Harvard University on the study of hermaphrodites. Shortly after its completion, Dr. Money was hired at Johns Hopkins University Medical School to join a medical team in a newly formed gender clinic. In 1955, Money published a paper arguing directly from the study of 131 intersexed individuals to a conclusion about normal males and females, namely that gender identity is environmentally caused during the first two years of life.23 Money later called this time frame of approximately two years from birth to the settling of one’s gender identity a gender gate or gender window. Twenty years later in 1975 Dr. Money continued to argue from the exception of hermaphrodites to the rule of all infants: Convincing evidence that the gender identity gate was wide open when you were born and stayed open for some time thereafter can be found in matched pairs of hermaphrodites.... But is the gate also open for those who were sexually normal at birth? Transexuals give the answer—yes.24

Dr. Money’s gender-gate theory claimed that all children have a period of approximately two years from birth within which they could develop as either a male or a female. Money’s fixed attitude towards the fluidity of all infant-children gender identity soon became a cultural gender ideology.

What are the Characteristics of Sex and Gender Ideologies? In order to highlight specific characteristics of sex and gender ideologies this presentation will focus primarily on the work of Kinsey and Money with occasional references to similarities in Foucault and Mead. It will also go back and forth between Kinsey and Money in further elaboration of common elements in their arguments, research practices, and consequences. There is no doubt that Money was well aware of Kinsey’s research and also that Mead personally encouraged Money’s continued research. It is also likely that Foucault was well aware of Money’s research on hermaphrodites. Gender Ideology developed mostly within the social sciences and pseudo-science under the radar of traditional philosophy and theology. Only recently has its corrupt roots and serious consequences come into the heart of rigorous philosophical and

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theological critique. In the next section, six erroneous aspects of sex and gender ideologies are identified.

Faulty Arguments Arguing from the Exception to the Rule The first error of reasoning that we encounter in John Money’s method is to argue from the exception of hermaphrodites to the rule that gender development is fluid and able to be changed in all children for a period of two years. Money argues from the fact that some children born with ambiguous sex identity could, with medical intervention, become either male or female to the conclusion that all children with normal sex identity from birth could become either male or female in gender. Michel Foucault made a similar error of reason when he analyzed the personal diary of Alexina-Herculine Barbin (1978). Identified as female at birth in 1838, Barbin developed male anatomy and physiology after puberty. Changing her civil status to male led to depression and suicide in 1868. Arguing from this exceptional case to a rule, Michel Foucault asks in the first paragraph of his text: “Do we truly need a true sex? With a persistence that borders on stubbornness, modern Western societies have answered in the affirmative.”25 Foucault instead answered negatively. His error was to reason from the exception of hermaphrodites to the rule that no children should be male or female.

Arguing from Multiple Parts (sexes and genders) to the Whole As early as 1955 John Money described “the sexuality of the individual [as] a cumulative composite of [six] separate sexes:”26 The six separate sexes were called: Chromosomal sex, Gonadal Sex, Physiological sex, Morphological sex, Behavioral sex, and Psychological sex (genderrole/identity).27 In 1972, Money and Ehrhardt continued this same pattern by sequential sub-titles in their book: Terminology and Nature of Hermaphroditism; Chromosomal and Gonadal Sex; Gonadal, Hormonal, and Morphologic Sex; and Fetal Hormonal Sex, the Nervous System, and Behavior; External Morphologic Sex and Assigned Sex; and Differentiation of Gender Identity; Gender Identity and Pubertal Hormones.28 By 1975 Money introduced the concept of “forks” in the road, which were detours “selected” by an unborn individual, in the space and time between some of

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the earlier named sexes: chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, and external genitals, before the letter “m” or “f” are put on his or her birth certificate.29 The question that a philosopher must ask is: “What guides this sequential and multivariate process?” In other words, how can an unborn human being, as a collection of different sexes, take a detour or fork when there is no organizing principle within the being? Money has no principle comparable to a substantial form which actualizes potentialities within the developing fetus.

Arguing from Artificial Division Gender-Identity/Role (G-I/R) to Fractured Identity In 1972 Dr. Money artificially separated “Gender Identity” as private to an individual from “Gender Role” as public expression to others.30 Using a forward slash (“/”) to keep this artificial distinction clear, he introduced the anagram G-I/R to represent “gender identity/role.”31 In this context he used “masculinity” and “femininity” to characterize proportions within a person who is more or less masculine or feminine in “vocational and domestic role” and “role as an erotic partner.”32 By 1980, in Love and Love Sickness, in a chapter titled “Gender Identity/Role (GI/R),” Money described the mind in Cartesian terms: Herein lies the issue of solipsism. Oneself, alone, is privy to what goes on in one’s own mind. In the absence of its being overtly transmitted to other people behaviorally, that is to say, either in words or in body language, the content of one’s mind remains forever covert and unknown to others.33

Frank A. Beach raised an important question about Money’s division between “the introspective component gender identity” and his “defined gender role as a social script”34 in an essay entitled “Alternative Interpretations of the Development of G-I/R.” Beach stated: Somewhere in the argument the distinction between gender role and gender identity gets lost. I understand that sociologists consider gender role as a script imposed on the individual by society. But what happens to gender identity? Is it relegated to Immanuel Kant’s category of innate ideas?35

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Arguing directly from animal behavior to human behavior Turning to another more serious error, the entomologist Kinsey, began to erroneously draw direct conclusions from insect sexual behavior to human behavior. Kinsey concluded that early sexual activity in children was a better preparation for successful adult sexual activity in human beings and conversely the lack of early sexual behavior would inhibit capacity for successful adult sexual behavior. A recent article by Judith A Reisman, et al., in the Ave Maria International Law Journal has demonstrated the direct link between Kinsey’s arguments and SIECUS (supporting early sexual education and freedom for children’s sexual expression) as well as UNESCO (promotion of international sexual education and freedom of children’s sexual expression).36 John Money was fascinated with lower forms of animals and fish. In his 1987 article on “Propaedeutics of Diecious G-I/R,” he introduces the theme of “diecious fishes,” or fish who sometimes breed as males and other times as female. Dr. Money concluded that [o]nce science uncovers the secret of hermaphroditic versatility of sexchanging fish and parthenogenetic lizards, then on the criterion that today’s science fiction becomes tomorrow’s science, it will undoubtedly be applied to mammals. Thus, one can envisage a future when sex-irreducible G-I/R will no longer be fixed and irreducible, but, by a process equivalent to reverse embryogenesis, it will be sex reversible.37

Dr. Money considered that The chief source of empirical data on juvenile erotosexual rehearsal play is the Wisconsin Regional Primate Center where juvenile rheus monkeys have been studied.38

He derived from this study where both female and male monkeys deprived of sex play in early life proved unable to mate in later life, a conclusion that It may well play an extremely influential role as a critical-period phenomenon wherein nature and nurture merge to establish future heterosexual health, male and female.39

He began to introduce pornography into his therapy sessions in the gender identity clinic with young children, and to give lectures on the so-called “positive uses” of pornography in the home and school.40

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Power, deception, and harming the Innocent In this next section further aspects of Kinsey’s and Money’s research methods and promulgation of research results which came to light over time will be described. Here we begin to discover the pernicious effects of their ideologies on people.

Abuse of power to promote the ideology Dr. Kinsey had the utilitarian requirement for anyone who wanted to hear a lecture by him or have some other favor from him such as employment, to agree to give an interview sex history.41 The interview techniques involved frequent use of what philosophers call “the fallacy of a complex question,” i.e., “trying to support a proposition with an argument in which that proposition is a premise.”42 The interviewer would ask “When did you start ____ sexual activity?” and this question would be repeated frequently even when the person denied they had ever done that particular act. Kinsey’s associate Wardell Pomeroy later on described it this way: We also never asked whether a subject had ever engaged in a particular activity; we assumed that everyone had engaged in everything, and so we began by asking when he had done it.43

The abuse of power in this technique eventually wore down the resistance of the person being interviewed until many would make up an answer to just get over the process. Kinsey also told his university audiences that he would not agree to speak unless everyone in the audience would be interviewed. This brought peer pressure onto the young women or men to complete the interview. Finally, the content of the interview involved specific mention of every conceivable sexual act, and the interviewee would often use slang words for these acts that would be commonly understood by the group to which the person interviewed belonged. The overblown statistical results, whether true or not, ended up promoting sex activities under the implication that “everyone did it.” At the time of Kinsey’s gathering of his data, some individuals protested, but most people did not realize what was happening. Another abuse of power in Kinsey’s work was his use persons as “objects” rather than subjects of sexual activity. This obvious utilitarian use of the person reduced him or her from a loved “someone” to a used “something.”44 Kinsey’s reports made no connection between sexual

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activity, married love, the generation of children, and a woman’s experience of maternity. The reports also seemed to encourage sexual activity outside of marriage, breaking promises of fidelity for experiences with prostitutes, homosexual partners, and other heterosexual spouses. It suggested that adults “need” this kind of variety for their “sexual outlets.” John Colapinto, a journalist, who gained the trust of the members of a family who had been clients of Dr. Money’s gender identity clinic, has left for posterity a detailed record about how Money’s abuse of power was directed towards individual persons.45 After John Money’s research method of arguing from hermaphrodites to normal male and female children was criticized by a medical research team from Kansas in 1958 and another one from Toronto in 1959,46 Money thought he found “a perfect controlled experiment” to prove his gender identity theory: two normal identical male twins where one could be brought up as a boy and the other as a girl. A Canadian couple from Winnipeg with identical twin boys born in 1965, Bruce and Brian Reimer, consulted at Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic for help because one son (Bruce) had lost his penis through a poorly performed circumcision. So Dr. Money recommended bringing up the wounded son as a girl surgically, medically, and socially; and he insisted that this not be revealed in any way to either of the 22 month old children. Consequently, the wounded child Bruce’s name was changed to Brenda, and he was castrated in 1967. Mrs. Reimer and Mr. Reimer were told to constantly reinforce typical (i.e., stereotyped behaviors of girls and boys in every possible way). In spite of Dr. Money’s projected goal of helping this normal male child grow up as a “normal” female, Brenda fought the change continuously. Even with hormonal displacement and continuous reminders about what girls do and what boys do, by 1970, Brenda was not adjusting well to being told he was a she. He was normal active boy, a physical fighter, hitting and attacking others, and actually defending his brother. He poorly adjusted to school and suffered a great deal. During annual visits of bringing the Reimer children to the clinic, in a clear abuse of power, Dr. Money encouraged sexual play between the two with one being the girl and the other the boy, and he photographed the children in these positions. The twins, during a later interview by John Colapinto said that Dr. Money would show us pictures of kids—boys and girls—with no clothes on…and also showed them pictures of adults engaged in sexual intercourse. He’d say to us, “I want to show you pictures of things that moms and dads do.”47

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Dr. Money even suggested that Mrs. Reimer walk around nude at home and that the parents allow their children to observe them having sexual intercourse. They refused to comply with this latter suggestion. In 1978, at the annual visit of the Reimers to Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Money wanted to convince 13 year-old Brenda to have further sex-change surgery. He introduced Brenda to an adult transsexual, and the adolescent patient fled his office, never to return again. Through the help of Dr. Mary McKenty, a Psychiatrist in Winnipeg, the Reimers were encouraged to tell their 15 year olds the truth about what had happened so many years ago. In March 1980, as soon as Brenda learned the truth, she immediately made the decision to revert to the biological male sex of her birth, and to take the name of David. In spite of the complete failure of John Money’s Baconian experiment, he always publically claimed it was a success.

Deception in research methods, results, and ignoring facts The Kinsey Institute, located in an elegant house near the campus of Indiana University, provided a veneer of respectability to the project of the study of sexuality and also to those who worked at the Institute of Sexology. Only much later has it become know what actually happened in the Institute. It is now known that behind the walls every conceivable kind of sexual activity was occurring in multiple combinations of people there or who were specially invited and much of it was being filmed.48 Thanks to the work of Judith Reisman and others, it is also known that many of these activities included children from birth to eight years, who parents offered them to the experiments.49 The Kinsey Institute not only deceived those whom they interviewed, but it also deceived governmental agencies and members of the public about the nature of their research and the facts that did or did not support their exaggerated claims. As the truth began to trickle out funding was withdrawn, and towards the end of Kinsey’s life the Institute was no longer able to continue as in the past. By that time, sex ideology was launched through media and journalism, and it began a new life of its own in willing hosts. A similar result came to Dr. John Money’s project of reconfiguring gender. In 1972, a shift from academic professionals to broad public audiences occurred when Dr. John Money published, through the Johns Hopkins Press, Man & Woman Boy & Girl: The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. In this book, intentionally deceiving the public, he proclaimed the “great success of his

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twins experiment,” in spite of the fact that he knew it was failing. Sprinkled through the book Money states proudly, after describing his successes in gender identity-differentiation among human hermaphrodites, A similar extraordinary contrast has been observed even which a child born as a normal male was surgically reassigned as a female...[I]n gender behavior, she is quite gender-different from her identical twin brother.50

This new book of Money’s was praised on its cover by The New York Times: “The Brilliant New Landmark study of human sexuality.... The most important work since the Kinsey Reports!” Time Magazine soon followed. The conclusion most often repeated was that sex and gender identity was more due to environmental factors than to genes, anatomy, hormones and other natural factors from conception, birth, and puberty. Money himself “made the case the centerpiece of his public addresses, rarely giving a speech in which he did not mention it.”51 In 1975, Dr. Paul McHugh was appointed as psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. McHugh requested a systematic study of those who had gender identity changes at the Gender clinic. After two years he realized that we in the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department eventually concluded that human sexual identity is mostly built into our constitution by the genes we inherit and the embryogenesis we undergo.52

In 1979, Dr. Paul McHugh closed down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital and soon after moved Dr. Money’s office off campus and limited his teaching. However, John Money continued to publish his false claims about the gender gate and his “so-called proof” for changing a normal male to female gender. Even though Dr. Money and the general public continued to herald Dr. Money’s “twins experiment,” Dr. Milton Diamond from Toronto had published serious doubts about “the twin” case in two journals; he “never deviated from his conviction that sex reassignment of a developmentally normal infant was impossible.”53 Around this time, the BBC had discovered where the Reimer twins lived and went to school to film for a program called “Open Secret” on medical scandals. After the BBC’s report in 1979, Dr. Money just went silent on the Reimer case, but by then it had become part of a “gender ideology” which had its own trajectory.

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Harming the Innocent It is a characteristic of ideologies that in addition to ignoring facts and abusing power, they also tend to harm innocent persons. Beginning with Kinsey we already noted his focus on children’s sexual activity, and his promotion of it as healthy even when initiated by adults. His reports contained clear sections of data which quantified sexual arousal in children from 0-8 years, citing that they were stimulated by an adult. Even though Kinsey was careful to mention that one of the child’s parents was always in the room, there is no doubt that pedophile behavior was occurring even behind a screen of scientific research. Kinsey also argued that early sexual activity in children, in analogy with animals, was a better preparation for successful activity in adults.54 We also noted that Kinsey’s research techniques involved suggesting to, and even badgering, innocent and chaste college age students with questions about when they began and how often continued all kinds of sexual activities. When the Kinsey reports on male and female behavior were published what sort of harm may they have caused people who thought they should engage in these activities in order to be “healthy?” Did the Kinsey reports contribute to creating an environment conducive to the explosion of the seminarian and priest initiation of homosexual activities with youths and children? Michel Foucault, our other example of someone promoting a sex ideology, turns out to have knowingly with AIDS participated in group sex in 1983 in the bathhouses of San Francisco without informing others of his contagious fatal illness.55 In his History of Sexuality, Foucault “prophetically” predicted his own way of death: The Faustian pact, whose temptation has been instilled in us by the deployment of sexuality, is now as follows: to exchange life in its entirety for sex itself, for the truth and the sovereignty of sex. Sex is worth dying for...the grumble of death [is] within it.56

Sex ideology replaced the culture of life with the culture of death. Returning to John Money’s gender ideology we discover that each member of the Reimer family was harmed by Money’s use of them for his experiment to prove his theory of the gender gate between birth and two years of age. Dr. Paul McHugh stated unequivocally in his critique of Dr. Money’s approach at Johns Hopkins: I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles

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suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions— second guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons.57

The harsh reality of human suffering for the Reimer family was not only evident in the parents’ struggles with alcoholism and depression, but it may have contributed significantly in 2002 when Brian Reimer died from an overdose of medicine for his mental disease of schizophrenia; and again in 2004 when David Reimer died from shooting himself in the head after a time of despair. In addition, John Money lectured on “Pornography in the Home: A Topic in Medical Education.”58 Dr. Money’s approach to pornography is clearly stated in this professional essay. He explicitly showed pornographic images to audiences and argued forcefully for the so-called value of sharing of this kind of imagery in schools and homes “into the total context of sex education.”59 He argued that exposure to pornographic images, even at a young age, is valuable because they lead to the possibility of bettering one’s own sex life, leading one to have less guilt and fewer “hang-ups,” and more honesty and freedom about sex.

Furthermore, he added that “one becomes better able to help others by achieving a position...of non judgmentalism;” and satiation effect...the half-life of pornography...is from about two to four hours out of your total lifetime. So...perhaps you better make sure you’ll enjoy it tonight!60

Money forged a solid connection between the more general theme of a woman or man’s gender identity and erotic experience and sexual orientation; and he publically promoted pedophilia.61 In Sexual Signatures (1975) Money argued that it is good to encourage children to observe sexual intercourse of adults, and that the best time to introduce such pictures [The Pictorial Guide to Sexual Intercourse, by Schwenda and Leuchner, 1969] is before a child’s biological clock has signaled the start of puberty.62

He further argued against the “incest taboo.”63 Finally, in this same text, Money argued that it was possible that “all humans are capable of developing a bisexual gender identity/role...and giving it an erotic expression....”

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Money’s praise for pornography was also paired with a direct attack on the Catholic Church—a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. In his 1970 essay promoting pornography in the home and school, he draws an analogy called “an allegory of the Crucifixion.” Money argues that even though millions of children for two-thousand years have learned at Church on Sunday’s about “how to commit a crucifixion,” he adds that he has “not heard of children who come home and play crucifixion games with their dolls or playmates.” Money concludes: “Pornography does not automatically have the power to incite behavior.”64 Contemporary research proves otherwise, and it also demonstrates how pornography increases the culture of death against the civilization of love. When working on research for gender ideology I was surprised to discover four of Dr. John Money’s books in our seminary library, and again I thought about the innocent persons harmed by the behavior of some seminarians and priests because of the forcefulness of those promoting a gender ideology.

How did Gender Ideology “Go Viral?’’ As I pondered and researched the problem of gender ideology further I discovered that Dr. Money’s works had soon after their publication become imbedded into secular feminist textbooks. An analogy with the way a virus spreads and the contemporary expression about an electronic photo or story “going viral” seemed to apply. A virus has to find a willing host cell to which it attaches itself, and it usually destroys the host cell or ends it normal activities before moving on to infect another cell.65

Adopted by Feminists The original promoters of sex and gender ideologies were not educated in the academic field of perennial philosophy. Instead they worked in areas of pseudo-science and social sciences such as anthropology. The next phase of gender ideology is formed by persons almost all in social sciences, literature, or politics. Again these authors were really not engaged with traditional philosophers or theologians during this phase when gender ideology mutated from a more isolated phenomenon into the broader culture of the women’s movement.

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Secular Feminists In 1970, in chapter two of her book Sexual Politics, Kate Millett (1934-) introduced the term “gender” and its use with respect to establishing a core gender identity by the age of eighteen months.66 She followed the line of thought of Robert Stoller, who had established a gender identity clinic in California.67 Chapter two of this text was drawn from her PhD dissertation in Literature from Columbia University in 1970. Millett begins “Indeed, so arbitrary is gender, that it may even be contrary to physiology;”68 Millet directly quotes Stoller, who includes reference himself to Dr. John Money, ...although the external genitalia (penis, testes, scrotum) contribute to the sense of maleness, no one of them is essential for it, not even all of them together. In the absence of complete evidence, I agree in general with Money, and the Hampsons, who show in their large series of intersexed patients that gender role is determined by postnatal forces, regardless of the anatomy and physiology of the external genitalia.69

Millett then directly quotes John Money approving his view: “...the condition existing at birth and for several months thereafter is one of psychosexual undifferentiation.”70 In 1966, Kate Millett became a member of the National Organization of Women (NOW), shortly after it was founded. Another early feminist connection with Dr. Money occurred through Dr. Alice Rossi (1922-2009), who earned her doctorate in sociology at Columbia University a sociologist who was a founding member of NOW in 1966.71 Rossi was hired by Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College in Baltimore when Dr. Money was running his Gender Identity Clinic. She participated within him in a 1970 symposium at Johns Hopkins that also included Masters and Johnson. In addition, Alice Rossi’s seminal work, The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir, was published in 1973, when many universities were beginning courses in women’s studies and feminist studies. Alice Rossi also gave attention early on to abortion rights for women.72 Feminists also produced textbooks for academic courses using Money’s descriptions about gender identity/role; and these provided hosts for gender ideology that spread through out universities across America, Canada, England, Australia, and the English-speaking world. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach was published in 1978 in the four countries of England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. In the preface, its two authors Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna state

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Our theoretical position is that gender is a social construction, that a world of two “sexes” is a result of the socially shared, taken-for granted methods which members use to construct reality.73

This textbook cites seven different sources authored by John Money; and it incorporates nearly verbatim many of Money’s definitions. In just one example: Gender identity refers to an individual’s own feeling of whether she or he is a woman or a man, or a girl or a boy. In essence gender identity is selfattribution of gender.74

The text repeats all the various arguments from cross-cultural studies and from animal studies to humans. A second example of a popular textbook is provided by The Question of Sex Differences: Psychological, Cultural, and Biological Issues authored by Katharine Hoyenga and Kermit Hoyenga. This book was published in the US and Canada in 1979. Even though the title emphasizes the word “sex,” the content completely adopts Money’s use of terms and definitions for gender identity and gender role.75 The Hoyengas changed Dr. Money’s list of sexes and genders to a list completely of genders in a chart titled: “Eight Definitions of Gender: Chromosomal Gender, Gonadal Gender, Hormonal Gender, Gender of the Internal Sexual Accessory Organs, Gender of External Genitals, Gender of Rearing, Gender Identity, [and] Gender Role.”76 The academic secular feminists discussed in this section were moderate feminists who laid the ground-work for gender ideology to “go viral.” In the next section, the word “gender” gets infused with more radical meaning which added to its virulence.

Marxist Feminists Gayle Rubin (1949-), after completing her MA in Anthropology at the University of Michigan, introduced the phrase “sex/gender system” in her 1975 article “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex.” Following a Marxist approach, she defined the phrase: ...the “sex/gender system” is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.77

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Arguing that men traffic in women to satisfy their sexual needs, Rubin argued: “Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes [into men and women]. It is a product of the social relations of sexuality.”78 Rubin’s solution to the so-called division of sexes is to reorganize the sex/gender system, in her words, by the elimination of obligatory sexualities and sex roles. The dream I find most compelling is one of an androgynous and genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love.79

Rubin leaned towards a Marxist political interpretation of gender. By 1978, she turned her own life and research towards completing her doctorate in Anthropology for the University of Michigan on sadomasochism in gay men and lesbian women from San Francisco.80 Dr. Rubin is presently teaching a course on Foucault in her position as Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Rubin’s phrase “the sex/gender system” became popular among many feminists, including many who did not realize its Marxist roots. More popularly, the phrase “sex/gender system” was used to emphasize, by the forward slash, that sex is a biological category totally separated from gender as a psycho-social category. Following a Cartesian mentality, sex is limited to bodily characteristics and gender is limited to socialpsychological characteristics felt in the mind. This division between mind and body is symbolized by a forward slash, as in sex/gender. Over time, however, the “category” of gender broadened to include various kinds of sexual activity and medically transgendered human beings. Once this happened, the body entered into gender through the back door, and we begin to get the original two genders of man and woman, expanded to five, ten, or fifteen including variously examples as intersex bisexuals (male or female), homosexuals (male or female), heterosexuals (male or female), transgendered males, transgendered females and so on. So the original sex/gender system, the separation of gender from sex, collapses in on itself. Post Modern Feminists Another pathway of androgyny mentioned by Ruben follows a postmodern or nominalist approach to words and categories. In this understanding, both sex and gender differentiations disappear into a

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sexless and genderless human being which, as we saw in Michel Foucault, in turn itself disappears. The identity of the person evaporates. Some intellectual radical feminists began to follow this pathway of collapse. Monica Wittig argues in 1980 that since gender is a socially constructed political concept, it ought to be reconstructed: “Man” and “woman” are political concepts of opposition, and the copula which dialectically unites them is, at the same time, the one which abolishes them. It is the class struggle between women and men which will abolish men and women. The concept of difference has nothing ontological about it. It is only the way that the masters interpret a historical situation of domination. The function of difference is to mask at every level the conflicts of interest, including the ideological ones. In other words, for us, this means there cannot any longer be women and men, and that as classes and categories of thought or language they have to disappear, politically, economically, ideologically.81

Wittig concludes that since sex and gender are socially constructed, they ought to be abolished. Teresa de Laureates, in her 1987 text Technologies of Gender, claims that gender is the effect produced in bodies by complex political technology which produces technologies of sex, technologies of gender, and socially constructed engendered beings. She describes the partial deconstruction of the human being in Technologies of Gender: We cannot resolve or dispel the uncomfortable condition of being at once inside and outside gender either by desexualizing it (making gender merely a metaphor, a question of difference, of purely discursive effects) or by androgynizing it (claiming the same experience of material conditions for both genders in a given class, race, or culture).82

In 1988, Biddy Martin takes a further step in developing contemporary consequences of Foucault's social construct argument when she states that: For Foucault, the question of the truth of one’s sex, of one’s self is not a self-evident question, and the answers which literature, medicine, psychiatry and religion provide are, in fact, a matter of rendering our bodies and psyches subject to control. Having created sex and gender as problems of a particular kind, the experts must necessarily intervene in our lives to provide solutions and to bind us within a particular identity, a subjectivity.83

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Martin considers what she perceives as a difficulty of modern feminists, or how to “desexualize the category of woman” at the same time as woman is kept as a starting point for critical reflection on oppressive structures of society. She sees this as the paradox of desexualization and cultural criticism. By 1990, Judith Butler entered the dialogue about the deconstruction of gender with her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. She recognizes the contradictions that catch post-modern feminists: “...Wittig calls for the destruction of “sex” so that women can assume the status of a universal subject.”84 In this paradoxical move, Wittig seeks to keep some semblance of gender identity at the same time as she is abolishing the ontological grounds for its stability. In Butler’s words: Wittig appears to dispute the metaphysics of substance, but on the other hand, she retains the human subject, the individual, as the metaphysical locus of agency.85

Butler recognizes the serious implications of the deconstructive approach which flows from a theory that gender and sex are only socially constructed: But once we dispense with the priority of “man” and “woman” as abiding substances, then it is no longer possible to subordinate dissonant gendered features as so many secondary and accidental characteristics of a gender ontology that is fundamentally intact. If the notion of an abiding substance is a fictive construction produced through the compulsory ordering of attributes into coherent gender sequences, then it seems that gender as substance, the viability of man and woman as nouns, is called into question by the dissonant play of attributes that fail to conform to sequential or causal models of intelligibility.86

More recently, in her 2004 text, Undoing Gender, Judith Butler continues her philosophical critique of postmodern feminist and political approaches to the question of sex and gender identity. Her questions raise fundamental issues, while her solutions at times get caught in the cross-fire of the social sciences, politics, and philosophy.87

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How did the Gender Ideology Virus “Get Mapped’? When a new virus gets noticed, medical experts begin immediately to map its movement from one location to another. By analogy, Catholic journalists and attorneys began to map the gender ideology virus. Their persistent sounding of alarm was remarkable; and we have to be very grateful for their work.

Catholic Journalists and Attorneys Dale O’Leary The American writer Dale O’Leary described in her book, The Gender Agenda, how preparations were being made in different regional meetings of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) for the United Nations’ world conference in Mexico City in 1975 for the UN Year of the Woman and to prepare for the Decade of Women proclaimed by the United Nations (1976-1985). At one regional conference for Latin America in 1977, which met in Mar del Plato, Argentina, Marta Llamas, a Mexican Feminist, proposed a theory of five sexes. Her words sound like a carbon copy of Dr. John Money’s theory: Biology shows that, outwardly, human beings can be divided into two sexes; nevertheless, there are more combinations that result from the five physiological areas which, in general and very simple terms, determine what is called the biological sex of a person: genes, hormones, gonads, internal reproductive organs and external reproductive organs (genitals). These areas control the five types of biological processes in a continuum... A quick but somewhat insufficient classification of these combinations obliges one to recognize at least five biological sexes: men (persons who have two testicles); women (persons who have two ovaries); hermaphrodites or herms (in which there are at the same time one testicle and one ovary); masculine hermaphrodites or merms (persons who have testicles, but present other feminine sexual characteristics; [and] feminine hermaphrodites or ferms (persons with ovaries, but with masculine sexual characteristics).88

In addition to this proposal for five equal sexes, Marta Llamas also argued that a person’s identity as a man or woman is simply socially constructed. She often spoke of gender and defined it as “the symbolization that each culture establishes over sexual difference.”89

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During September 1-4, 1994, representatives from 179 governments around the world met in Cairo for a United Nations Program of Action on a variety of global issues. A large group of NGO’s met just before the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. At this conference a rather intense argument erupted over the meaning of the word “gender,” which was frequently used in a draft text. American secular feminist and National Organization of Woman leader Congresswoman Bella Abzug tried to redefine gender, or blur distinctions, when others tried to stop her.90 In her words: The current attempt by several Member States to expunge the word gender from the Platform for Action and to replace it with the word sex is an insulting and demeaning attempt to reverse the gains made by women, to intimidate us, and to block further progress.91

Politicizing the discussion of the meaning of the words “sex and gender,” Abzug continued: We urge the small number of male and female delegates seeking to sidetrack and sabotage the empowerment of women to cease this diversionary tactic. They will not succeed. They will only waste precious time. We will not go back to subordinate inferior roles.92

Her political position was based on a kind of Cartesian unisex equality which promoted abortion rights, the social construction of several sexes and genders. After considerable discussion, in the end, the “word” gender was left vague in the documents to mean “as it has been commonly used and understood.”93 This common usage of the word “gender” which had been generally understood of referring to the two basic divisions into male and female human beings now became the target of the gender ideology virus. It is at this point that gender ideology proponents sought to dominate the discussion and resolutions at the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995 by redefining equality of men and women to mean statistical equality in every kind of work or political situation. Dale O’Leary summarized it: The Gender Agenda begins with a false premise—the differences between men and women are social constructs—and then goes on to demand that this premise be “mainstreamed” in every program and policy.94

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As a result of her research on Gender Ideology, Dale O’Leary concluded that the word “gender” itself was toxic. She recommended abandoning the use of the word “gender” in “Don’t Say Gender when you mean Sex.”95

Mary Ann Glendon Mary Ann Glendon, a Professor of Law at Harvard, was appointed head of the Vatican Delegation to UN Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995. Glendon provides a welcome insight into the mind of John Paul II towards the actual work of that conference in her written summary: ...our assessment of [documents of the conference] their pros and cons was communicated to the Vatican Secretariat of State. On Thursday morning, we received the Holy Father’s decision: Accept what is positive, but vigorously reject what cannot be accepted.96

Details about the fight over the use and meaning of the word “gender” in the preliminary conferences leading up to the UN international conference were reviewed. Mary Ann Glendon states: Accordingly, the Holy See delegation associated itself in part, with several reservations, with the conference documents... A controversy over the word “gender” that loomed before the conference had been largely defused with a consensus that gender was to be understood according to ordinary usage in the United Nations context.97

Consequently, Pope John Paul recognized the need to clearly set boundaries for the conflict between those who wanted to take over the word “gender” for political purposes and those who desired to keep its meaning within the usual range referring to women and men. In her words: The Holy See, however, deemed it prudent to attach to its reservations a further, more nuanced, statement of interpretation, in which it disassociated itself from rigid biological determinism as well as from the notion that sexual identity is indefinitely malleable. In keeping with the Holy Father’s instruction to vigorously reject what was unacceptable, my concluding statement was sharply critical of the conference documents for the remaining deficiencies that our delegation had tried from the beginning to publicize and remedy.98

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In addition, Mary Ann Glendon’s fight in Beijing against the expanding reach of gender ideology led her to realize that the gender ideology virus had mutated far from the text books of academics into a world-wide epidemic that was poised to redound back onto individual nations with a new virulence. In her words: The most important political lesson to be taken from the Beijing conference is that huge international conferences are not suitable settings for addressing complex questions of social and economic justice or grave issues of human rights. Unfortunately, there is an increasing tendency for advocates of causes that have failed to win acceptance through ordinary democratic processes to resort to the international arena, far removed (they hope) from scrutiny and accountability... [They] can be expected to keep on trying to insert their least popular ideas into U.N. documents for unveiling at home as “international norms.”99

Glendon’s summary also included a warning about the European Union (EU)’s radical promotion of abortion rights, contestation of every place the word “motherhood” positively appeared in documents, remove all references to religion, morals, ethics, spirituality, and even human dignity.100 The virus had spread its infection not only the United States, but also Europe.

Marguerite Peeters Dr. Marguerite A. Peeters, journalist and Director of the Institute of Intercultural Dialogue Dynamics in Brussels, and faculty member of the Pontifical Urbaniana University, has written extensively on the ideology of gender and is at the forefront of mapping its intellectual and political expansions. Her article maps very well the strategy of “gender mainstreaming, from 1968 Teheran, 1974 Bucharest, 1975 Mexico City, 1980 Copenhagen, 1985 Nairobi, and 1995 Beijing.”101 Her work is an invaluable reference for the viral spread of gender ideology. Peeters correctly identifies that In the gender revolution, the real power is wielded by experts... [who] are given direct access to senior civil servants and all the real decision-makers in every country, in order to be able to exert their influence without hindrance.102

And she prophecies correctly that

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In her book, The Globalization of the Western Cultural Revolution: Key Concepts, Operational Mechanisms, Dr. Peeters analyzes the rightsbased approach strategy of gender [ideology]: The first is the integration into human rights of the objectives of the erotic revolution...The second is the integration of socioeconomic development into human rights...;...and the post-modern right to choose.104

She traces the Gender mainstreaming at the UN and its use of “global gender specialists through the UN’s Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, or OSAGI.”105 In addition, Marguerite Peeters correctly describes a new battleground for gender ideology vs. gender reality in the field of education through a clear agenda from UNICEF for transforming schools in five stages: gender sensitive; gender healthy; gender priority to girl’s education, gender rights of children to express their opinions and to have access to sexual and reproductive health; and evaluation on the children’s positive participation in society.106 Dr. Peeters’ mapping of the globalization of gender ideology is excellent. She identifies a “gender paradigm” supported by “gender feminists” who have established a dialectical distinction between the concept of sex, feminine or masculine, whose differences are written in biology and are therefore unchangeable, and gender, feminine or masculine, whose differences, according to them, are socially constructed, unstable, and changeable.107

There is, however, one aspect of her argument that I strongly disagree with, namely that she suggests that we not use the word “gender” at all because it is so contaminated by the ideology of gender. My position, which will be articulated in the final section of this presentation, is that we should fight to reclaim the word “gender” for its true meaning in gender reality.

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Pontifical Council for the Laity: Women’s Section In 2008, at a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Laity in Rome on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem, Marguerite Peeters gave a lecture entitled “Gender: an anthropological deconstruction and a challenge for faith.” This lecture began with the strong claim: “Gender is one of the most harmful categories in the feminist, sexual and cultural revolution that we are experiencing in the West.”108 Peeters generally used the word “gender” without the qualifier “ideology.” She concluded that “The concept of gender has the revolutionary objective of restructuring society according to a new model of gender equality.”109 At times in her presentation Peeters brought up the concept of the ideology of gender. She argued that “gender is not an ideology in the proper sense of the term,” because it did not flow from a master who created it like Marx or from a systematic great theory.110 Later on in her presentation, Peeters correctly referred to gender ideology’s attack on mothers and on man-woman complementarity. I was present at this conference, and in a public discussion I raised the question about whether we could ransom “gender” because it was our word from the beginning. Her clear response was that the meaning of gender could not be retrieved from its associations with an ideology of gender. The Council for the Laity: Women’s Section has left the debate about gender open by being willing to post articles written against the use of the word “gender” by Dale O’Leary and Marguerite Peeters alongside of articles written by me in which I use the word “gender” in the sense of gender reality.111 Since, with the increasing urgency Peeters and O’Leary are expressing concern about using the word “gender,” I felt that it was time to make a direct case for ransoming gender as part as an effort of new evangelization in this year of Faith. In 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Family had produced a Lexicon: Ambiguous and debatable terms regarding family life and ethical questions. In this lexicon, there are two essays on the meaning of “gender.” In the article called “Gender” by Jutta Burggraf, after tracing the history of the word, the question is left open about whether nor not to use the word “gender.” While not accepting “the ideology of gender,” Jutta Burggraf proposes a “gender perspective” that “defends the right to differences between men and women, and promotes co-responsibility in work and family.”112

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In the same Lexicon, Oscar Alzamore Revoredo defines gender in “An Ideology of Gender: Dangers and Scope.” Drawing from the UN conference in Beijing he states: “Gender refers to the relations between men and women based on the socially defined roles assigned to one sex or the other.”113 Then, drawing from his experience of the regional conference at Mar de Plato, Argentina, Revoredo cautions: It becomes clear that the supporters of the gender perspective were advancing something more reckless, like, for example, “a natural man or woman does not exist....114

These two conflicting positions in the Lexicon of ambiguous terms leave the question of gender open for further study and clarification. I am very grateful for the Women’s Section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity for leaving the question of the use of the word “gender” open at the present time. In its posting for September-October 2013, “A Synthesis by the Women’s Section-Pontifical Council for the Laity,” subtitled “Safeguarding the human being, created as man and woman,” summarizes the conflicting approaches to the use of the word and concept of “gender.” In this document written for “Fifteen years on from John Paul II’s Letter to Women and from the 4th UN Conference on Women (19952010),” we read the following summary: There was some doubt as to whether or not the term “gender” ought to be used in the present context. Although the term is in itself neutral, it has become highly charged with ideology nowadays and using it can be confusing. However, other experts were in favour of its use as long as it is placed within the rich categories of a Christian anthropology.115

The document continued with a contribution by Maria Eugenia Cárdenas, who said that: If Catholics abide by the recommendation (to avoid using the term gender) they will leave the field open to radical feminists, who would eliminate the counter-balance achieved by the laity in many countries. If we refuse to use the term, radical groups will infiltrate with their own agenda faster.116

The rest of my presentation is focused on providing a number of arguments to defend the continued use of the word gender, and to distinguish gender reality from gender ideology in each context it is used.

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Abandon Gender or Ransom Gender? In this final section I will offer several arguments to defend the claim that we should ransom the word and concept of gender. In particular, my arguments will discuss why we should ransom gender, how we could ransom gender, and some fruits of ransoming gender. The root of the concept of gender belongs to the beginning of Western history. It is for Catholics to have, to keep, and to foster its growth if we accept the gift of the meaning that has been entrusted to us.

Ransoming Gender through Scripture and Philosophy The Root of Gender in the Old Testament A first step in ransoming gender reality is to reclaim the meaning of the root “gen” in the word “generation” as articulated in the Old Testament. The meaning of the root “gen” in its verb form is “to produce” or “to beget;” in its noun form it refers to offspring or kin. This meaning is explicitly integrated into early Jewish history. A clear example, dated variously between 1400 BC and 900 BC, is found in Genesis 5:1, which begins: “This is the book of the generations of Adam;” it continues through verse 32, marking off different periods of history in recording the generations from Adam to Noah and his sons.117 The root “gen” from the beginning of Judaism establishes the significance the history of a people living in continuity generation after generation. It incorporates the act of sexual intercourse, of a male and a female, of a man and a woman who become father and mother through their synergetic union. Thus we can also say that the concept of sex is inherently included within the concept of the root of generation, or “gen.”

The Root of Gender in Ancient Greek Philosophy A second example is found in Ancient Western Philosophy, more specifically in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, generally dated 350 BC. Aristotle examined in this philosophical text how animals generate. Higher animals are divided into male and female distinguished by the functions of their respective sexual parts or genitals:

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Sr. Prudence Allen They differ in their logos, because the male is that which has the power to generate in another...while the female is that which can generate in itself, i.e., it is that out of which the generated offspring, which is present in the generator, comes into being.118

Aristotle’s erroneous hypotheses about how this generative activity is accomplished, with the male providing a single seed and the female providing only matter, was corrected over time. However, the concept of union of the male and female sexes is inherent within the concept contained in the root of generation or “gen.”

The Root of Gender in the New Testament A third example, some four centuries later, is seen in the beginning of the first book of the Gospel of Matthew: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.” In Matthew 1:1-16, the Latin word “genuit” with the root “gen” (meaning “to beget,” “to generate,” “to father”) is repeated thirty-nine times. In verse 17, the root “gen” is repeated in the word “generationes” (meaning “generations”) four times. Christianity follows Jewish tradition in recording history through counting births following specific acts of sexual intercourse of a particular man and particular woman. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ, a focal point of Christian history, transforms this history through the action of the Holy Spirit at the same time as it enters into it and depends upon it. Thus, as in the previous two examples, here that the root “gen” in generation or generate incorporates within it the meaning of sex. These three historical examples from the Old Testament, Ancient Greek philosophy, and the New Testament reveal that for over onethousand years the concept of the root of gender, “gen,” was commonly used in both philosophy in Athens and theology in Jerusalem. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology records the continuation of the roots of these theological and philosophical concepts in the development of the English language. It includes the following rich ever expanding languagefamily related to the root “gen”: gender, genealogy, generate, generous (nobly born), genesis, genetic, gene, genial (nuptial, productive, joyous), genital (external generative organs), genitive (grammatical possessor or source), genius (innate capacity, person possession prevalent disposition of spirit), genocide, gens, gentleman, gentlewoman, genuine, and the suffix, -geny (e.g. progeny).119 From this evidence alone, it would appear that the radical separation of the concept and word “sex” from the concept

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and word “gender” suggested by some 20th century authors is artificial indeed.

Ransoming Gender in Ordinary Language Another approach is to ransom the ordinary use of the word “gender.” John Paul II in Fides et Ratio encourages philosophers to test out the truth of their theories by the anchor of revelation. In the controversial sets of arguments about gender, we are very fortunate to have a clear and unambiguous revelation in Genesis that God created a human being as one of two and only two genders, as male and female; and he mandated them into a fertile union: “Go forth and multiply and fill the earth.” This revelation sets the boundaries for philosophers” thought in a very rich way. Aristotle, as a natural philosopher, recognized that claims about nature or science are directed towards what is “always or for the most part” the case.120 He realized that in natural beings there is always some “grey” area which allows for exceptions to be explained within the wider brackets of what is always or for the most part the case. In ordinary use of the word “gender,” the human being is identified as male or female, man or woman. I would argue that the more the word “gender” is used by men and women within a Catholic understanding of the way in which a man and a woman are equally human persons and simultaneously two significantly different ways of being a human person, this will help ransom gender from its present ideological distortions. This public defense of gender reality by using the word “gender” in its ordinary meaning is a method of new evangelization that will help to defend the integral gender complementarity that Saint John Paul II worked so hard to articulate. At the same time several philosophers in the last century through the present have each one individually and together collaboratively provided a remarkably rich intellectual treasury of solid arguments to defend gender reality in the more technical sense against fallacious and distorted ideologies.

Ransoming Gender through Catholic Philosophy The twentieth century experienced an extraordinary dynamic within the intellectual community of Christian philosophers who were writing about the human person. In the first place, many who had received

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Baptism later publicly rejected their faith. Among those are included the prominent philosophers Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Mary Daly and the social scientists Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Mead, and John Money. Secondly, during the same historical time frame, many other philosophers converted to the Catholic Faith. Among those are included Dietrich von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, and Gabriel Marcel. These Catholic Philosophers formed a new intellectual community dedicated to defending the truth about the human person and about the integral complementarity of woman and man. In this endeavor they were joined by other Catholic philosophers such as Bernard Lonergan, Emmanuel Mounier, and Karol Wojtyáa/John Paul II to provide a rich patrimony of deep philosophical thought that we can draw upon to ransom gender today.

The Thomistic Foundation for Ransoming Gender Two crucial innovations by St. Thomas Aquinas of Aristotle’s hylomorphism are the essential foundation of this patrimony. First, Thomas developed Aristotle’s notion of the human soul as the form of the body by demonstrating that the same human soul operates both as form organizing a living material body and as spirit in communication with other spirits. Msgr. John Wippel summarizes Thomas’ innovation: “Hence it is through its essence that the human soul is a spirit and through that same essence that it is the form of the body.”121 Second, Thomas’ principle of the metaphysical unity of a human being whose soul is both spirit and form of the body provides a foundation for the development of the integral complementarity of woman and man. A commensuration of each soul to a particular body solves the problematic legacy that Aristotelian metaphysics of contrariety (i.e. the female is a privative contrary of the male) left for the history of generation of females and males. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas describes it this way: ...[D]iversity, nevertheless, does not result from a diversity in the essential principles of the soul itself, nor from otherness in respect of the intelligible essence of the soul, but from diversity in the commensuration of souls to bodies, since this soul is adapted to this and not to that body, and that soul to another body, and so in all other instances.... Now it is as forms that souls have to be adapted to bodies.122

This Thomistic development of the Aristotelian form/matter structure of reality has important implications for the concept of woman and of man

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as soul/body composite beings. The composite structure of real things is both ontological, i.e, about how a real woman or a real man is in the world; and epistemological, i.e., about how we come to know analogically what it is to be a woman or a man.

The Gift of German Phenomenology to Gender Identity Phenomenology added a systematic account of different kinds of human experiences to the study of philosophical anthropology.123 In 1923, Dietrich von Hildebrand, a convert to Catholicism in 1914, gave a public lecture On Marriage (Die Ehe) in which he introduced the concept that in marriage between a man and a woman are “metaphysically” complementary persons.124 By this he means that each woman and each man is understood individually as a composite human soul/body unity with equal dignity, significant differentiation, and together with synergetic relations. Von Hildebrand continued to explore the nature of this complementary relation in 1966 in Man and Woman: Love and the Meaning of Intimacy, in which he characterized the relationship as “more in a face-to face position than side-by side” so that it is precisely the general dissimilarity in the nature of both which enables this deeper penetration into the soul of the other...a real complementary relationship.125

Dietrich von Hildebrand also elaborated extensively on different values in a personal gift of love in human relations.126 In collaboration with his wife, Alice von Hildebrand, who wrote The Privilege of Being a Woman,127 they brought their considerable philosophical talents to bear on the truth about woman and man’s respective identities. Reacting against the unisex model of gender identity, in 1928 Edith Stein, a convert to Catholicism in 1922, concluded that, “[t]he Suffragettes erred so far as to deny the singularity of woman altogether....”128 Using the phenomenological method to analyze experiences of women and men, Stein suggested some unique ways a woman approaches human relations: Her point of view embraces the living and personal rather than the objective....She tends towards wholeness and self-containment in contrast to one-sided specialization...[with an ability] to become a complete person oneself...whose faculties are developed and coexist in harmony...[who] helps others to become complete human beings; and in all contact with other persons, [who] respects the complete human being.129

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Stein joined to her phenomenological analysis a Thomistic metaphysical foundation for the ontological unity of the human person to uncover essential characteristics of the “lived experience of the body” in both women and in men. In her Essays on Women, Stein articulated complementary hierarchical structures of female, feminine/masculine within a woman; and of male, masculine/feminine within a man. In female/male complementarity, the female corporeal structure is oriented towards supporting new life within the mother while the male corporeal structure is oriented towards reproducing by detachment of seed as father. This root leads to a different lived experience in which a feminine psychic structure receives the world inwardly more through the passions and a masculine psychic structure being less affected by the body receives the world more through the intellect. She proposes that a woman’s intellect tends to comprehend the value of an existent in its totality while a man’s intellect tends to judge in a compartmentalized manner. Further she suggested that a woman’s will tends to emphasize personal and holistic choices, while a man’s will tends to emphasize exterior specialized choices. While Stein’s contribution to gender complementarity tends at times to accept stereotyped generalizations about femininity and masculinity, she nonetheless discovered important psychic effects of the lived experience of a woman’s cycles of ovulation and pregnancy and of a man’s generation outside of his self. In her later work on Finite and Eternal Being, after entering a Carmelite monastery and receiving the name Sr. Benedicta of the Cross, she elaborated a rich analysis of four different kinds of forms that a woman has in her identity as a soul/body composite unity: her essential human form, her unique individual form given at her conception, her pure form or who she is created to be in the mind of God, and her empty form when others describe her characteristics. Stein’s analysis opened up a dynamic understanding of the relation of actuality and potentiality from the moment a person “steps into existence,” discovers his or her vocation, until death and beyond. Sr. Benedicta of the Cross followed von Hildebrand in giving an extensive analysis of love as the “mutual selfgiving of persons.”130

The Gift of French Personalism to Gender Reality A striking aspect of the rising up of Neo-thomist philosophers in the early twentieth century is that in addition to their attempts to offer rigorous

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philosophical arguments to describe woman and man’s identity and integral relations, they also began to foster dialogue with one another and to form new communities of philosophers together. Edith Stein corresponded with Dietrich von Hildebrand, Hedwig Conrad Martius, Roman Ingarden, and Jacques Maritain. Jacques and Raissa Maritain organized Thomistic study retreats in Meudon, one of which Edith Stein attended.131 In 1932, Emmanuel Mounier organized a personalism study group in Paris with Jacques Maritain and they began publishing Esprit a personalist review. Within two years, Gabriel Marcel and Nicholai Berdjaev joined them; together they published a “Personalist Manifesto,” articulating fundamental principles of a new Catholic personalism. The goals of these communities of philosophers was not only to study the works of Thomas Aquinas but also to consider how some of his principles could be applied in ethical, educational, and political areas of common life in the world. In 1934, Mounier published an article in a Polish review (Wiadomosci Literackie) describing the personalist movement in France. In the context of these dynamic series of conversations about the human person, the fundamental principles of gender reality, namely the equal dignity of women and men, the significant differences between women and men, and the synergetic effect of their integral relations, French personalists began to articulate philosophical arguments to defend these principles. In 1936, Mounier published in Esprit an important article on the relation between personalism and woman's identity, entitled “La femme aussi est une personne” (Woman is also a Person).132 Mounier critiqued cultural patterns which inhibited women’s full development towards actualizing her personal dignity. As laymen, many of the writings of the French personalists focused on dynamics of integral complementarity relationship in marriage. In one essay, Mounier argued against utilitarian and secular feminist critiques of marriage: Man and woman can only find fulfillment in one another, and their union only finds its fulfillment in the child; such is their inherent orientation towards a kind of abundance and overflow, not to an intrinsic and utilitarian end.133

Gabriel Marcel, a convert to Catholicism in 1929, added important dimensions to the analysis of synergetic relations among women and men. The first was a rich insight into fatherhood:

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Marcel’s second insight was his description of the important of the will in creative fidelity to one’s spouse or child in life long loving commitment.135 By 1938, a nearly three-hundred page manuscript titled A Personalist Manifesto was translated from French into English and published in London, New York, and Toronto.136 The Personalist Manifesto was translated into Polish and distributed underground in Poland during World War II. Underground copies of this work circulated in Poland radiating from philosophers associated with the Crakow Jagellonian University.

The Gift of Science to Gender Reality Although Aristotle’s original attempt at a scientific explanation of generation led to two thousand years of a kind of “sex ideology,” identifying the human female with incapacity for contributing fertile seed to generation, his philosophy of science also advanced empirical observation which eventually led to science’s great capacity for selfcorrection. Thus, by the eighteenth century, woman’s active fertile contribution of egg to man’s active fertile contribution of sperm opened the door to the discovery of the biological complementarity (equal dignity, significant differentiation, and synergetic union) of men and women. The renewal of the twentieth century philosophy through Neo-thomism included attention to new developments in science. In 1927, at Lake Como, Niels Bohr first used the word “complementarity” to describe the wave-particle theory of light. Dietrich von Hildebrand applied the word “complementarity” two years later to the metaphysical relation of a woman and man in marriage. When Edith Stein had entered the Carmelite convent she wrote a letter to her friend Hedwig Conrad-Martius asking her to send her information about the latest developments in the sciences of physics and of biology: “I would like very much to have an introductory presentation on the latest on atomic theory, if you have anything on that.”137 Stein herself had studied psychology in her undergraduate years and seriously integrated aspects of the psychology of woman and man’s identities in her work in phenomenology. The Thomistic renewal in Canada and the United States began through the work of Étienne Gilson (1927), Jacques Maritain (1933), and Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1940); and it spread through universities in Toronto, Ottawa, Boston, Montreal, and Halifax. In 1942, Dietrich von

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Hildebrand’s book on marriage was translated into English with its description of the metaphysical complementarity of husband and wife.138 Bernard Lonergan wrote a review of it for The Canadian Register (Quebec edition), and he soon adopted the word “complementarity” to describe man-woman relations in his 1943 essay “Finality, Love, Marriage.”139 In his seminal work Insight, Lonergan expanded the metaphysical principle of the hylomorphic or form/matter structure of a human person to include a woman or man’s central form (traditional substantial form) organizing a hierarchical series of conjugate forms. These conjugate forms explain the complementary differentiation of the sexes at the level of “semifecundities” (referring to chromosomes, endrocrinal glands, anatomical structure, and physiological functions) and other levels of vital, psychic, sensitive, emotional and the higher non-organic activities of reason and rational appetite. By 1957, Lonergan had combined the notion of complementarity in Insight to emergent probability to explain how conjugate forms organized by a central form in the human person moved through the sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, to philosophy and theology. For Lonergan, sex and gender identity was not just a matter of division, but also of union. Sexual activity unites not only the semi-fecundities of spermatozoon and ovum but also their bearers: male and female complementary beings. A man and woman united in marriage may enter the spiritual realms of friendship and grace. In Poland, at the Catholic University of Lublin, M.A. Krapiec also integrated the advanced discoveries of science into a renewed Thomistic metaphysics. More recently, Msgr. Robert Sokolowski at the Catholic University of America began to explore the similarities and differences of forms and DNA. An important dimension of the gift of science is that the unity of the individual woman or man ontologically precedes any particular level of analysis.

The Gift of Polish Existential Personalism to Gender Reality After World War II, in May 1946, Emannuel Mounier was invited to lecture on personalism at the Jagallonian University in Cracow when Karol Wojtyáa was a seminarian studying there. John Paul II tells us directly in Gift and Mystery that “My formation within the cultural horizon of personalism also gave me a deeper awareness of how each individual is a unique person.”140

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In 1954, M.A. Krapiec, Chair of the Department and Professor of Metaphysics, hired Karol Wojtyáa to teach ethics at the Catholic University in Lublin. By 1960, Wojtyáa published a book in Polish, which was later translated into English as Love and Responsibility. This text described some significant differences between a woman and a man and invited them to become aware and responsible for their engendered actions in relations with one another. Also Wojtyáa conveyed with respect to gender reality not only differences in one’s male or female psyches but also the important challenge through acts of will to become virtuous men and women in their mutual relations. Roman Ingarden, who had been a classmate of and frequent correspondent with Edith Stein in Germany, introduced her work to Karol Wojtyáa in Cracow. In Rise, Let us be On Our Way, Blessed John Paul had this insightful thought to share: In Krakow I also tried to maintain a good rapport with the philosophers: Roman Ingarden…. My personal philosophical outlook moves, so to speak, between two poles: Aristotelian Thomism and phenomenology. I was particularly interested in Edith Stein, an extraordinary figure, for her life story as well as her philosophy.141

In addition, in the 1950’s, Karol Wojtyáa had developed a collaborative friendship with Dr. Wanda Póátawska, a medical doctor and psychiatrist who specialized in the care of women.142 Following these two different sources, Wojtyáa noted that the monthly cycles of ovulation from puberty through menopause disposes a woman to receive new life and foster its growth.143 This disposition is not a biological determinism because of a woman’s free will; she can act against it through abortion or contraception, or she can act with it. In his later works as Pope John Paul II, he suggested that when a woman follows this disposition, her genius flourishes through the particular ways that she receives and fosters the growth of persons in her own sphere of activity. This feminine genius will flourish in spiritual maternity, intellectual maternity, as well as in physical maternity.144 In Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyáa suggested that the inheritance of original sin tends to effect women differently in some respects than men; a woman tends to want to possess others (husband and children); while a man tends to want to dominate others (wives and children). A woman also tends to desire a man through sentimentality; while a man tends to desire a woman through sensuality. Wojtyáa’s text elaborates ways that men and women can take this “raw material of love” and transform it into mature married love. Spiritual, intellectual, or

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physical paternity has some significantly different dispositions. Because a man generates outside of the self, John Paul II observes that he needs to make an act of will to “adopt” a child or wife as his own. Once this is done, he tends then to protect and to provide for them. In a later text, St. Joseph is described manifesting these characteristics.145 A man’s genius is how he does this for members of his family or for his work projects and other significant attachments. Attending the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's, then Bishop Wojtyáa helped elaborate some important principles in Dignitatis Humanis and Gaudium et Spes. In sum: 1) Truth persuades by its own gentle power; 2) Human dignity and Christian solidarity for the common good are the two principles for guiding the interaction of the Church with the world; and 3) Marriage and family are one of five urgent problems that need to be addressed by the Church. By 1969, Karol Wojtyáa published the Polish version of his book titled The Acting Person. This text integrated a Thomistic Metaphysical foundation for the human person with a phenomenological elaboration of the dynamic experience of being a person with self-possession, selfdetermination, self-government, called into authentic inter-personal relations.146 It did not differentiate between men and women, but rather assumed their equal dignity as persons called to recognize the personalistic value of their actions (how each one redounds back on the person) and how to authentically participate in living the commandment of love. At Lublin, M.A. Krapiec and Karol Wojtyáa together supported higher education for Ursuline Sister Zofia J. Zdybicka, and they also convinced her to join the philosophy department at KUL; eventually she became the Chair and Dean of Philosophy. Father Krapiec also introduced a theory of existential analogies among human beings. This theory opened research into how women are existentially analogous to one another in one way and how a woman and a man are existentially analogous to one another in a different way.147 I can attest personally to the openness of Lublin existential personalism to the serious study of sex and gender identity with gender complementarity, as Sr. Zdybicka invited me in to give a series of four lectures to the students and faculty on this topic; two of these lectures were given in Fr. Krapiec’s metaphysics class. In 1974-1975, Cardinal Wojtyáa also elaborated his approach to building a community of persons in the family and through parenthood.148 Later on he elaborated a theological foundation for complementary human vocations in the context of being called in likeness to the Divine Communion of Persons, as communions of knowledge and love. These themes are very important for ransoming gender reality because they

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provide both the intellectual principles for the ransoming as well as practical applications of these principles in daily life.

Conclusion: The New Evangelization of the meaning of “Gender’ For the next twenty-five years after Karol Wojtyáa became Pope John Paul II in October 1978, he shared his great insights into the integral and complementary identities of woman and man from their Creation, through the Fall, and Redemption in Jesus Christ, True God and True Man. To summarize some key points he made: that God has created us male and female, is revealed particularly in Genesis 2:23; and that our knowledge of man, what it is to be human, passes through masculinity and femininity ...two reciprocally completing ways of “being a body” and at the same time of being human—as two complementary dimensions of self-knowledge and self-determination and, at the same time two complementary ways of being conscious of the meaning of the body.149

An innovation of John Paul II, yet unrealized by most people, is that he uses the word “masculinity” only for men and the “femininity” only for women. This is a change from preceding practices of many authors including Edith Stein, who attributed both masculinity and femininity to each man or woman. John Paul II argued that our sex identity as male or female is “not only an attribute of our individual identity,” it is “constitutive for the person” who “is constituted by the body as ‘he’ or ‘she.’”150 The meaning of our gender identity essentially includes our sex, and it is not reducible to a style or to a role. It is a core of who we are at the most profound metaphysical level of our being. Exceptions in nature which do occur are embraced with love and compassion for their suffering and welcomed into the communion of persons created by God and Redeemed by Jesus Christ. But they do not change gender reality. A further important innovation of Saint John Paul II was to state that the meaning of masculinity is revealed to a man through his fatherhood, in biological and/or spirituality paternity; and the meaning of femininity is revealed to a woman through her motherhood, in biological and/or spiritual maternity.151 This new insight is elaborated in depth in his analysis of the vocation to marriage and the conception, birth, and education of children. It also opens up to his wonderful analysis of the complementarity of vocations through the mystery of being living signs to

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one another of the love of the Bridegroom and the love in response of the Bride. The ordained priesthood participates in a particular way in being the living sign of Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom; a married couple together as a living sign of the love between the Bridegroom and the Bride, his Church; and consecrated persons as the living eschatological sign of the love of the Bride for the Bridegroom.152 Within all his many elaborations of this deep mystery of the relation of vocation to sex and gender identity, Blessed John Paul reveals the new evangelization of relations and gifts of self to others, in equal dignity, significant difference, and chaste love filled by the Holy Spirit in communion of persons for the redemption of the world. He has provided a rich treasury of philosophical, scriptural, and theological foundations for us to draw upon in the new evangelization of gender. Many women philosophers and theologians have built upon John Paul II’s invitation to develop a new feminism which is based on a sex and gender reality. In Evangelium Vitae #99, he called for this new evangelization: In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a “new feminism”....153

Many contemporary Catholic authors have contributed in multifarious ways to the New Feminism.154 Saint John Paul added an urgency to this mission as an essential aspect of the new evangelization: I address to women this urgent appeal: “Reconcile people with Life. You are called to bear witness to the meaning of genuine love, or that gift of self and of that acceptance of others which are present in a special way in the relationship of husband and wife, but which ought to be at the heart of every other interpersonal relationship.”155

If the present virus of gender ideology is allowed to run wild, then many women and men will miss discovering their true vocations. They will be confused about what it means to be a human person, and they will be confused about what it means to be a woman or a man. They will be confused about the chaste ways to relate to one another in marriage and in celibate life. When we reflect on the incredible courage of those who began the Thomistic renewal in the context of the two world wars, we discover men and women who risked everything to defend the truth of the human person, the truth about woman and man as “always or for the most part”

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the two ways of being a human person. They followed the call of their specific vocations by offering their work, their suffering, and even their lives to defend this truth. Can we today do the same, standing on their shoulders, and fighting for the truth which persuades by its own gentle power?

Notes 1

Earlier versions of this paper were given at The American Catholic Philosophical Association Conference in Marina del Rey, California (November 3, 2012) and at the Gender Colloquium, University of Notre Dame Australia (July 2, 2013). A fuller development of it will be published in The Concept of Woman: Search for Communion of Persons, Volume III: 1500-2010 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, Forthcoming c. 2015). 2 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, ed. J. Mortensen and E. Alarcón, trans. F.R. Larcher, O.P., et al. (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012), 427. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Corinthians, 428. 4 This distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics comes from Peter F. Strawson, Individuals (London: Metheun and Co., Ltd., 1961), 9. 5 See “Nicholas of Cusa,” in Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM, The Concept of Woman: The Early Humanist Reformation (1250-1500) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 761-88. 6 Hic Mulier, A3, in Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540-1640, eds. Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 265. 7 Hic Mulier, 265. 8 C.S. Lewis, Perelandra: A Novel (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944), 214. 9 See Lionel Trilling, “The Kinsey Report,” in An Analysis of the Kinsey Reports on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Female, ed. Donald Porter Geddes (New York: Mentor Books, 1954), 213-229. Trilling observes that while comparisons with animals are explicitly made throughout his two volumes on males and females, “Professor Kinsey is a zoologist and he properly keeps us always in mind of our animal kinship, even though he draws some very illogical conclusions from it....” Trilling, “The Kinsey Report,” 218. 10 Wardell B. Pomeroy reports the following incident with Kinsey’s 4-5 year old son Bruce when he said: “‘Look at the pretty flower, Daddy, God made it.’ ‘Now Bruce,’ Kinsey said gently, ‘where did that flower really come from?’ ‘From a seed,’ Bruce admitted. He had learned his father’s lessons well.” Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1972), 29. 11 Consider just the titles of his chapters in Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia and

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London: W.B. Saunders Company, 1948), xii-xv: Part II: Factors Affecting Sexual Outlet, 6: Sexual Outlet, 7: Age and Sexual Outlet, 8: Marital Status and Sexual Outlet, 9. Age of Adolescence and Sexual Outlet, 10: Social Level and Sexual Outlet, 12: Rural-Urban Background and Sexual Outlet, 13: Religious Background and Sexual Outlet; and Part III: Sources of Sexual Outlet. 12 See Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, and Paul H. Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1953) and Paul H. Gebhard and Alan B. Johnson, The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938-1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1979). 13 Pomeroy, Kinsey and the Institute, 274. An immediate critique from the perspective of broader human values and sexual activity with respect to the Kinsey reports, can be found in Donald Porter Geddes, ed., An Analysis of the Kinsey Reports on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Female (New York: Mentor Books, 1954). 14 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 152. 15 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 156. 16 Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 125. 17 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, ed. R.D. Laing (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 386-87. 18 Margaret Mead, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years (New York: Touchstone, 1972), 196. 19 Mead, My Earlier Years, 200. 20 Margaret Mead, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (New York: William Morrow & Company Publishers, 1949), 373. 21 Mead, Male and Female, 13. Bold my emphasis. 22 John Money, Love and Love Sickness: The Science of Sex, Gender Difference and Pair-bonding (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), Introduction. 23 John Money, Doctoral Dissertation on Hermaphroditism: An Inquiry into the Nature of a Human Paradox, in John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 33-34. My emphasis. 24 John Money and Patricia Tucker, Sexual Signatures: On Being a Man or a Woman (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), 90-91. 25 Michel Foucault, introduction to Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite, trans. Richard McDougall (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1980), vii. 26 J. Money, “Hermaphroditism, gender and precocity in hyperandrenocorticism: Psychological findings,” Bulletin of Johns Hopkins Hospital 96 (2005), 253-64. As summarized by David Crews, “Functional Associations in Behavioral Endocrinology,” in Masculinity and Femininity: Basic Perspectives, eds. Reinish, Rosenblum, and Sanders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 91.

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Crews, “Functional Associations,” Table 6-2, 91. Money and Ehrhardt, Man & Woman, Chapter 1, 6-25. In subsequent chapters further categories included internal genital, external genital, brain dimorphism, and gender dimorphic traditions; 41, 44, 95, 248-49, and 130ff. 29 See John Money & Patricia Tucker, Sexual Signatures: On Being a Man or a Woman, (Boston:/Toronto: Little Brown and Company, 1975), 48-49. 30 Money, Man & Woman, 4 and 300-301. 31 Money, Man & Woman, 153. 32 Money, Man & Woman, 153. 33 Money, Love and Love Sickness, 15 34 Money, Love and Love Sickness, 15. 35 Frank A. Beach, “Alternative Interpretations of the Development of G-I/R,” in Kinsey Institute Series, Masculinity and Femininity: Basic Perspectives, eds. Reinish, Rosenblum, and Sanders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 2936, here 30 36 Judith A. Reisman, Mary E. McAlister, and Paul E. Rondeau, “Global Sex Deviance Advocacy: The Trojan Horse to Destroy the Family and Civil Society: A Report on UNESCO and International Planned Parenthood Federation,” Ave Maria International Law Journal 1.2 (Spring 2012): 231-263. 37 Money, “Propaedeutics of Diecious G-I/R,” in Masculinity and Femininity, 1819. See Frank Beach’s argument that Money’s theory about the dimorphic brain schemata present in both males and females implies an erroneous leap from the general to the particular, “because his list includes both human and animal behavior...in several cases [where] no such implication appears justified.” “Alternative Interpretations of G-I/R,” 33. 38 Money, “Propaedeutics of Diecious G-I/R,” 26. 39 Money, “Propaedeutics of Diecious G-I/R,” 26. 40 Money, “Pornography in the Home,” in Contemporary Sexual Behavior, ed. Zubin and Money (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 409-440, here, 410. 41 For interviewing techniques see, Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in The Human Male, 35-62; Gebhard, The Kinsey Data, 11-24; Wardell B. Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and The Institute for Sex Research, 97-137. For a critique of interviewing techniques, see Judith A. Reisman, Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences: The Red Queen & the Grand Scheme (Arlington, VA: The Institute for Media Education, Ind., 1998), 2831, 58-63, and 211 ff. 42 See “Fallacies” in David Kelley, The Art of Reasoning (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), Chapter 6, here 133. 43 Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex, 112. This fallacious approach to interviewing was pursued indefinitely. For example, Pomeroy adds: “If a subject was of low mentality we might pretend that we had misunderstood his negative reply, and ask another question as though he had answered affirmatively; for instance, ‘Yes, I know you have never done that, but how old were you the first time you did it?’ To make it as easy as possible for subjects to correct their 28

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answers, we ignored contradictions, accepting the correction as though it were a first reply.” Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex, 113. 44 See Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference Between “Someone” and “Something,” trans. Oliver O’Donovan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 45 John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006). 46 Colapinto, As Nature Made Him, 44-46. 47 Colapinto, As Nature Made Him, 86. 48 Linda Wolfe, Kinsey: Public and Private (New York: New Market, 2004), 1580; Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research. 49 Judith Reisman, “Global Sex Deviance Advocacy,” in Ave Maria International Law Journal 1.2 (Spring 2012), 252-61. Reisman, Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences, 51-90 and 140-186. 50 John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt, Man & Woman Boy & Girl: The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity (New York: New American Library Mentor Book, 1972), 19. The text also refers the reader to further details in this case in Chapter 7 of the text. 51 Colapinto, As Nature Made Him, 71. 52 Paul McHugh, “Surgical Sex” in First Things (November 2004), 4. 53 Colapinto, As Nature Made Him, 45ff, 166 ff, 174ff. 54 See Table 34 in Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 180, and Reisman, Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences, note 44, 147. 55 See James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 27-29 and 253; and Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 125-26, who refers his reader to the more detailed account of these events in Miller’s text. 56 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 156. Grenz summarizes the sex-acts that Foucault was choosing to undertake at the very same time as he was writing his History of Sexuality (Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, 253). 57 McHugh, “Surgical Sex,” 6. 58 Money, “Pornography in the Home,” in Zubin and Money, Contemporary Sexual Behavior, 409-440. 59 Money, “Pornography in the Home,” 410. 60 Money, “Pornography in the Home,” 418-19. For a more detailed description of his interactions with the Reimer twins about this theme, see Colapinto, As Nature Made Him, 86ff. Money also drew upon some hypotheses (which turned out later to be false) about the value of “sexual rehearsal play” among Australian aborigines, the Yolngu. Colaptino, As Nature Made Him, 88 ff. 61 John Money, “Interview in Paidika,” Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia 2.3 (Spring 1991), 5, as reported in D. Richard Laws and William T. O'Donohue, introduction to Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment, Second Edition, ed. D. Richard Laws and William T. O'Donohue (New York: The Guilford Press, 2008), 3. 62 Money, Sexual Signatures, 134.

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Money, Sexual Signatures, 182. Money, “Pornography in the Home,” 417. 65 See Introduction to viruses: “most virus infections eventually result in the death of the host cell...(cell “suicide’)...and often cell death is caused by cessation of its normal activity....” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_viruses (accessed 2/6/12). 66 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 29. 67 Millett, Sexual Politics, 30, referring back to Robert J. Stoller, Sex and Gender (New York: Science House, 1968), 9. 68 Millett, Sexual Politics, 30. 69 Millett, Sexual Politics, 30, referring back to Stoller, Sex and Gender, 48, who in turn refers back to J. Money, J.G. Hampson, and J.L. Hampson, “An Examination some basic sexual concepts: the evidence of human hermaphroditism,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 97.4 (Oct 1955): 301-19; and J. Money, J. G. Hampson, and J. L. Hampson, “Imprinting and the Establishment of Gender Role,” A.M.A. Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry 77.3 (1957): 333-336. 70 Millett, Sexual Politics, 30, referring to John Money, “Psychosexual Differentiation,” in Sex Research, New Developments (New York: Holt, 1965), 12. 71 A step in the rapid spread of gender ideology is found in the collaborative work of Dr. Money; with the previously well-established field of sexology as represented by the Kinsey reports (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male [1948] and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female [1953] and subsequent reports of Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response [1966] and Human Sexual Inadequacy [1970]). All of these elements were in place at the 61st annual American Psychopathological Association Conference sponsored by Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore in 1970. Dr. Alice Rossi, a moderate feminist, was a participant in this same conference. In 1959, Rossi had been hired to teach full time in Sociology at the University of Chicago. 72 In the conference proceedings, Saul Rosenzweig supported early detection of fetal sex and simple abortion so that “parental choice of neonate sex would become fairly simple,” Contemporary Sexual Behavior, 202. Rossi also wrote: “Feminists of all political stripes have been united in their insistence on the right of women to control their own bodies, have been sharply critical of masculine assumptions concerning female sexuality, and, hence, have demanded safe contraceptives and abortion repeal....” Contemporary Sexual Behavior, 155. 73 Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978), vii. 74 Kessler and McKenna, Gender, 8. 75 Katharine Blick Hoyenga and Kermit T. Hoyenga, The Question of Sex Differences: Psychological, Cultural, and Biological Issues (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 4, referring back to Money and Ehrhardt, Man & Woman. 76 Hoyenga and Hoyenga, Sex Differences, 5. 77 Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 159. 64

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Rubin, “Traffic in Women,” 179. Rubin, “Traffic in Women,” 204. 80 Gayle Rubin, “The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco 19601990” (PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1994). 81 Monique Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” Feminist Issues 1 (Summer 1980), 108. 82 Teresa de Laureates, Technologies of Gender (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 11. 83 Biddy Martin, “Feminism, Criticism, and Foucault,” in Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, eds. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 14. 84 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 20. 85 Butler, Gender Trouble, 25. 86 Butler, Gender Trouble, 24. 87 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004). See especially Chapter 9, “The End of Sexual Difference?,” 174-273. 88 Marta Llamas, “Cuerpo: Diferencia sexual y género,” in Dale O’Leary, The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality (Lafayette, LA: Vital Issues Press, 1997), 6970. 89 Llamas, “Cuerpo,” 71. 90 For a thorough description of the arguments and tactics, see O’Leary, The Gender Agenda, 86ff. 91 O’Leary, The Gender Agenda, 87. 92 O’Leary, The Gender Agenda, 87. 93 O’Leary, The Gender Agenda, 159. 94 O’Leary, The Gender Agenda, 161. 95 Dale O’Leary, “Don’t Say Gender when you mean Sex.” Available from Pontifical Council on the Laity: Women’s Section (January-February 2012), http://www.laici.va/content/dam/laici/documenti/donna/culturasocieta/english/donot-say-gender.pdf. 96 Mary Ann Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” Traditions in Turmoil (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2006), 310. 97 Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” 310. 98 Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” 310. 99 Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” 310. Congressman Chris Smith corroborates Glendon’s conclusion in his keynote address to the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars in Pittsburgh (2004). He stated that he had received anonymously a package which listed the ten or so steps that United States feminists had decided to take to circumvent the difficulty at that time of changing U. S. law. Among these steps was the plan to go first to the United Nations and get certain rights approved there (as it was easier to accomplish) and then return to the United States to argue that this country should conform itself to the international precedent established at the U.N. Another step in the plan was to insert their own members into the middle tier of administrators, who took the UN policies and its finances out to the world, and country-by-country to make sure they could be put 79

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in place. See Representative Christopher H. Smith (R.-N.J), “Pro-Family Prospects in the Congress,” in The Church, Marriage & the Family, ed. Kenneth D. Whitehead (Notre Dame, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), 1-10. Unfortunately these informal remarks in the context of his lecture are not included in the published written text. 100 Glendon, “What Happened at Beijing,” 304-306. 101 Marguerite A. Peeters, “Current Proposals and the state of the debate,” in Pontifical Council for the Laity: Laity Today, Men and Women Diversity and Mutual Complementarity (Bangalore: N.B.C.L.C., 2006): 85. 102 Peeters, “Current Proposals,” 95. 103 Peeters, “Current Proposals,” 96. 104 Marguerite A. Peeters, The Globalization of the Western Cultural Revolution: Key Concepts, Operational Mechanisms, trans. Benedict Kobus (Brussels: Institute for Intercultural Dialogue Dynamics, 2007), 88-89. 105 Peeters, The Globalization, 131-133. 106 Peeters, The Globalization, 161-62. 107 Peeters, The Globalization, 71. 108 Marguerite A. Peeters, “Gender: an anthropological deconstruction and a challenge for faith,” in Pontifical Council for the Laity, Woman and Man the humanum in its entirety, On the 20th anniversary of John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, 1998-2008 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010): 289-299. 109 Peeters, “Gender,” 297. 110 Peeters, “Gender,” 290. She stated correctly that “Gender carries in its wake residue from feminism and Marxism....” 111 For example, they posted an article by Peeters entitled: “A New Global Ethics; Challenges for the Church, and an interview with Marguerite A. Peeters on the gender theory.” They also posted articles by Dale O’Leary on “A Woman’s Perspective on Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective,” and “Don’t Say Gender when You Mean Sex.” And during the same time frames they posted articles by me which use gender to mean basically woman and man as the two ways of being human, in “Mulieris Dignitatem twenty years later; an overview of the document and challenges” and “Man-Woman Complementarity: The Catholic Inspiration.” All Available at www.laici.va/content/laici/en/sezioni/donna/articoli.html 112 Jutta Burggraf, “Gender,” in Pontifical Council for the Family, Lexicon: Ambiguous and debatable terms regarding family life and ethical questions (Front Royal, VA: Human Life International, 2006), 408. 113 Oscar Alzamore Revoredo defines gender in “An Ideology of Gender: Dangers and Scope” in Lexicon, 466. 114 Revoredo, “An Ideology of Gender,” 467. 115 A Synthesis by the Women’s Section, Pontifical Council for the Laity, “Safeguarding the human being, created as man and woman” (September-October 2013), 44. Available at http://www.laici.va/content/dam/laici/documenti/donna/Saveguarding/safeguarding -the-human-being-created-as-man-and-woman.pdf (Accessed 01/24/2015).

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“Safeguarding the human being, created as man and woman,” 44-45. Gen 5:1-10. Translation from The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010). See also Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, introduction to Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, 13-14. 118 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. and ed. A.L Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, Ltd., 1943), 1.2, 716a19-24. 119 The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. Charles Talbut Onions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). 120 Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 1065a 2-6. 121 John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 337. Wippel continues “[Thomas] argued that there are not two forms in the human soul but only one, which is its essence.” 122 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles II, 81.8. See also W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 103. 123 See Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, “What is Phenomenology? An Introduction for the Unititiated,” Crisis 12.4 (April 1994): 26-29; Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Phenomenology of the Human Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 124 Dietrich von Hildebrand, Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1991), 14, 21, and 53-55. 125 Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man and Woman: Love and the Meaning of Intimacy (Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Press, 1992), 91. 126 Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009). 127 Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman (Ann Arbor, MI: Sapientia Press, 2002). 128 Edith Stein, Essays on Women, Second Edition, Revised (Washington DC: ICS Publications, 1996), “Outline of Lecture given to Bavarian Catholic Women Teachers in Ludwifshafen on the Rhine, April 12, 1928,” 27-28. Her italics. 129 Stein, Essays, Introduction, 38-39. Her italics. 130 Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being (Washington DC: ICS Publications, 2002), 453-459. 131 See Jacques Maritain, “Thomist Study Circles and Their Annual Retreats (1919-1939),” Notebooks, trans. Joseph W. Evans (Albany, NY: Magi Books, Inc., 1984), 134-35. 132 Emmanuel Mounier, “La femme aussi est une personne,” Esprit (June 1936): 292-297. 133 Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, trans. Monks of St. Johns Abbey (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1952), 108. 134 Gabriel Marcel, Metaphysical Journal 1943, in Presence and Immortality (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1967), 91. 117

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Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, trans Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), “The Mystery of the Family,” 68-97; “The Creative Vow as Essence of Fatherhood,” 98-124; and “Obedience and Fidelity,” 125-134; and Gabriel Marcel, “Creative Fidelity,” Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 147-74. 136 Emmanuel Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1938). 137 Edith Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters: 1916-1942 (Washington DC: ICS Publications, 1993), #228, 240. 138 See Sr. Prudence Allen, “Metaphysics of Form, Matter, and Gender,” in Lonergan Workshop, Volume 12 (1996), 1-26. 139 Bernard Lonergan, “Finality, Love, Marriage,” Theological Studies 4 (1943): 477-510. Reprinted in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Collection, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 17-52. 140 John Paul II, Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 94. 141 John Paul II, Rise, Let us be On Our Way (New York: Warner Books, 2004), 90. 142 Ted Lipien, Wojtyáa’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church (Washington DC: O Books, 2008), 285-309. 143 Karol Wojtyáa, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981). “Every woman can observe in herself the changes which occur in the relevant phase of the cycle. Apart from this there exist objective scientific methods known of biology and medicine, which help us to determine the moment of ovulation, i.e., the beginning of the fertile period.” 280. 144 See John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, (Boston: St. Paul Books and Media, 1988), #30-31 and NCCB/USCC, John Paul II on the Genius of Women (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1997), #27 and 28. 145 John Paul II, Guardian of the Redeemer (Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1989), #1-2, 7-8, 17 and 22. 146 Karol Wojtyáa, The Acting Person (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979). 147 See Prudence Allen, RSM, “A Woman and a Man as Prime Analogical Beings,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66.4 (1992): 456-82. 148 See Karol Wojtyáa, “The Family as a Community of Persons” (1974) and “Parenthood as a Community of Persons,” (1975), in Person and Community: Selected Essays, ed. Andrew Woznicki, trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 315-342. 149 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), (General Audience of November 21, 1979), 10:1. Emphasis from the original text deleted. Hereafter TOB. 150 John Paul II, TOB 10:1. 151 John Paul II, TOB 21:2.

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See Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM “Mulieris Dignitatem twenty years later; an overview of the document and challenges,” Ave Maria Law Review 8.8 (Fall 2009) and “Catholic Marriage and Feminism,” in The Church, Marriage, and the Family, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Convention, ed. Kenneth D. Whitehead (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007): 95-144. 153 John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1995), #99. 154 See for example, Michelle M. Schumacher, ed., Women in Christ: Towards a New Feminism: (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004) and Jo Garcia-Cobb, “In Focus: New Feminism” Our Sunday Visitor (August 16, 2009); and Francis Martin, The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in The Light of Christian Tradition, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994). 155 John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, #99. For a compilation of John Paul II’s writings on women, see Pope John Paul II Speaks on Women, ed. Brooke Williams Deely (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014).

FREEDOM, JUSTICE, AND THE AUTHORITATIVE NATURE OF MARRIAGE JAMES M. JACOBS

One of the most comprehensive challenges to the traditional Christian idea of human nature is the attempt to redefine marriage so as to accommodate homosexual unions. The comprehensive nature of this challenge is made clear when we consider how it brings into question many of the fundamental principles of human society. For example, supporters of homosexual “marriage” often frame their argument in terms of justice and freedom: since heterosexual persons have the freedom to marry whomever they want, justice requires that homosexual persons be treated equally. Indeed, they insist that since persons are by nature free, it is inherently unjust to arbitrarily constrict that freedom by outmoded human custom. It is ironic that the key premise in these arguments to redefine marriage—that man is endowed with freedom to dispose his person as he wishes—is in fact a seminal insight inherited from the Christian tradition. But the Christian tradition contextualizes personal freedom in a metaphysics of creation, a context which grounds a more profound understanding of marriage as a natural political institution binding free persons together for the sake of the common good. This foundational notion of marriage as the institution which inextricably links freedom to justice thereby grants marriage a unique and irresistible authority for society, an authority which rests on the objective truth of human nature and defies any attempt to alter it. Thus, when personal freedom is properly understood with reference to the metaphysics of human nature from which it arises, the attempt to redefine marriage to include homosexual unions will be seen to be inherently unjust and detrimental to society, for to redefine marriage is to destroy the authority of the very institution it aims to coopt. To understand why this challenge to marriage is so critical for society, we must appreciate that it is the foundational social unit for human persons. Humans are inherently social (or political) due both to their material neediness and also their transcendent end. Too often, though,

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marriage is understood only with respect to its biological foundation, while ignoring its spiritual telos; thus the crux of my argument is that marriage is the morally and politically necessary institution which engenders society by cultivating virtue, thereby transforming natural human neediness into a disciplined pursuit of the transcendent common good. In turning man toward the mutual spiritual enrichment of the common good, marriage is thus constitutive of the order of justice in society; as the foundation of sociality, it plays an authoritative role for society as a whole. This notion of marriage as an imperative natural institution for the common good, however, clearly assumes that human freedom is not utterly unconditioned; rather, human freedom is defined according to both man’s metaphysical nature and his concomitant teleological orientation. It is in light of these truths, man’s essence (first act) and end (second act), that marriage must be recognized to be an inviolable element of society. To justify this understanding of marriage, I will consider the notion of person as articulated by St. Thomas to show how human freedom must be ordered to virtue by means of an intimate union. I will show, first, that the idea of personal freedom must be contextualized by human nature’s created limitations, including its natural inclination to happiness and the corresponding need for society, and critically contrast that to modernity’s ideal of unconditioned personal freedom; then I will demonstrate how, given these creaturely conditions, marriage is the necessary and primal unit of society by which man directs himself to the common good; finally, I will show that, since marriage is indispensable for the common good, it bears an intrinsic authority for man’s pursuit of happiness. In light of this, it will be clear that any attempt to redefine marriage violates the natural authority of this institution, and so contradicts both the demands of justice and the common good. The common principle uniting the tradition and its contemporary distortion is the fact that humans are persons, beings with freedom. A person, according to St. Thomas, is the sort of substance that is the “most perfect in all nature—that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature.”1 It is the most perfect substance due to the mode of its acting. While it is fundamental to Thomas’s teleological metaphysics that all substances exist for the sake of their operation,2 persons are different for they have dominion over their actions: persons “are not only made to act, like others; but…can act of themselves.”3 Because of this dominion over their acts, persons have a unique kind of individuality: they are not just instances of a nature, but rather truly unique in ordering themselves to their end.4 Thus, the personal acts of a rational substance are free,5 persons alone exercise

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choice,6 but consequently also bear a concomitant responsibility for actions. Yet Thomas also recognizes that the extent of this ontological dominion varies according to the nature of the personal being. While all intelligent substances are persons, humans are “the lowest in the order of intelligence [because they are] most remote from the perfection of the Divine intellect.”7 Thus, Thomas shows that the hierarchy of personal natures is defined by the degree to which their immanent intellectual activity is able to be exercised independently of other things,8 for this independence is the ground for dominion per se. Thus, God, who is His own intellect and who knows Himself as the subsistent act of existence,9 has absolute freedom and dominion over His activities. Angels, inasmuch as their intelligence is defined by God’s creative act,10 have a more constricted dominion because their operative capacity is prescribed for their nature. Man’s intellect, finally, is limited both by being, like angels, a determinate essence created by God, but also because that essence, as embodied, is dependent upon the material environment for its activity, for there is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses.11 Thus, man’s dominion, his freedom to dispose his person, is contextualized both by God who constitutes human nature as a certain kind of being with a concomitantly predetermined end, as well as by man’s need to look outside himself for those intelligible goods through which he might attain that end. The former condition is reflected in Thomas’s claim that the will, although free, desires happiness of necessity,12 and further, that the content of this happiness is necessarily common to all human persons.13 Accordingly, although free, this freedom does not extend to personally choosing an end, for in sharing a defined common nature, men also share a common end: namely, the perfection of the intellect and will in being united with God as the First Cause and Final End.14 The latter condition, on the other hand, reminds us that despite this transcendent end to which man is ordained, in this world he must perfect his cognitive and appetitive powers in relations with the finite beings which comprise his material environment, and which become the means to reaching ultimate perfection.15 Man’s activity, then, is essentially defined by the incarnational and relational nature of his worldly existence.16 A crucial consequence of this incarnational neediness, though, is that man must be by nature political, for the perfection of cognition and appetite is realized in the attainment of wisdom and love, both of which are achieved fundamentally through societal intercourse with other persons. Accordingly, Thomas comments:

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Every association is established for the sake of some good….[T]he good to which the political community is directed is the supreme human good.17

Human persons are drawn to one-another, so that in sharing experiences of finite truths and goods, we might enjoy a similitude of transcendent and infinite Truth and Good for which we were created.18 The obligatory nature of this societal activity to human happiness is reflected in the fact that the most fundamental precepts of the natural law are simply to live in society and to know God, for it is through well-ordered societal relations that man grows in wisdom and love, in which perfection in turn leads him to his transcendent end.19 It is these two conditions of human perfectibility—that man is naturally social, and that he is ordered to a transcendent end—that must be kept in mind when considering marriage as the most fundamental unit of society. That it is the foundation of society is made clear when Thomas argues that men and women cannot live without one-another: The association of man and woman [is] the first association of persons. And, because we need to divide the political community onto its smallest parts…we need to affirm that the first union is one of persons who cannot exist without each other, namely, the union of man and woman. For such union is for the sake of reproducing both men and women. And it is clear from this that they cannot survive or exist without each other.20

But, because every substance exists for the sake of its perfection, not only do men and women need each other for the existence of the species (first act), but also for individual flourishing (second act). Indeed, there is an inextricable relationship between marriage as the union formed for human survival and procreation, and its function as the foundation for common human perfection in terms of wisdom and love. The limiting conditions of human personal dominion, then, define the inherent end of marriage as the foundational social unit, for not only does man need a mate in order for the species to survive, but together they encourage the mutual realization of man’s transcendent end. However, when this idea of personal dominion is abstracted from these conditions, serious distortions arise. This is evident in the history of philosophy. First, nominalism rejects the analogy of being, thereby obscuring the important distinctions between the manner in which dominion is exercised in different ways by diverse personal natures: divine, angelic, human. Eventually, human freedom comes to be modeled on the paradigmatic unlimited freedom of God; as, for example, expressed in the voluntarism of Scotus or Ockham. Once human personhood is

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excused from the limitations of created nature, it all too easily becomes confused with the complete dominion of divine personhood. This innovation is clearly illustrated in Renaissance Humanism by Pico della Mirandola when he imagines God saying to man: The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature.21

In modernity, this exaggeration of human freedom is evidenced by the evolution of the Cartesian cogito into Kant’s notion of autonomy in which the personal will is the sole limiting condition of all human action. In these modern exaggerations, human freedom is conceived without its creaturely conditions: there is no metaphysical telos for human nature, nor is the human person dependent on anything outside the sovereign self. Man as autonomous now exercises not just freedom of choice, but has the liberty to define the very meaning of human existence itself.22 As Nietzsche most perspicuously proclaimed, this lack of a metaphysical horizon leaves every person free to define reality for himself.23 Furthermore, as autonomous, individuals are no longer by nature political; as a result, political society is now seen to be voluntaristically formed by free and equal atoms who contract with one another for the sake of personal benefit.24 In this modern view, man is a person with no context: since he is undefined, his dominion is infinite. Every human act, therefore, is an equally valid expression of personal dominion. Justice, in this view, demands that this unfettered dominion be respected. This overblown sense of freedom is at the heart of the argument for homosexual marriage. Since each person defines his own telos, there is no directive constraint to one’s sovereign will. Because interpersonal unions are not a necessary constituent of human happiness, and because each person defines happiness for himself, all interpersonal unions are subject to the free choice characteristic of voluntary contract. Consequently, all interpersonal contracts which are freely entered into ought to have an equally binding validity, since that voluntary contract is the only limitation to the dominion of the person. This, then, is the argument I limned earlier: since persons are free and equal, it seems just to grant equal respect to every interpersonal contract the participants consider to be “marriage.” This notion of infinite dominion, however, utterly nullifies any objective sense of human nature and justice. The gulf between the Thomistic tradition and our contemporaries is clearly manifested by their divergent attitudes about the objective importance of marriage. If marriage

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is the foundation of society, as the tradition asserts, it is objectively important and so cannot be an arbitrarily stipulated contract, for nothing so ephemeral can be foundational. Conversely, if individual freedom has precedence over the nature of marriage, then marriage can only be an arbitrarily stipulated contract; as a result, though, it cannot function as the foundation of society, and so it would have a greatly mitigated objective importance. Herein lies the problem: to allow a redefinition of marriage to include homosexual unions implies that is it an arbitrarily stipulated relationship and not an ontologically objective reality. As a result, to succeed in redefining marriage is only possible by conceding its lack of objective importance. But that concession destroys the foundational relevance of the institution homosexuals supposedly long to participate in, for that participation no longer signifies anything of objective importance. The argument thus comes down to whether marriage in fact has this objective importance. I will argue that this can best be discerned in considering whether marriage is an authoritative institution. If marriage is truly foundational to society as necessary for the common good, it is a uniquely authoritative institution. But, as authoritative, freedom of choice must defer to the natural order of that institution and so cannot be construed simply as an individual contract for purely personal benefit. Let us turn, then, to the nature of marriage. Thomas inherits the Augustinian doctrine that marriage has three ends or goods: personal union, offspring, and sacramentality.25 While marriage as a sacrament is a theological reality,26 the first two goods belong to it universally as part of the natural law.27 Of the two natural ends, Thomas is clear to note that, inasmuch as the good of offspring follows from man’s generic animality, the specific end perfective of human personality is the unique friendship that is the basis of political society as ordered to wisdom and love.28 Indeed, it is because of the natural need for this close friendship that Thomas indicates that mutual consent is the efficient cause of marriage:29 Nor is the direct object of consent a husband but union with a husband on the part of the wife, even as it is union with a wife on the part of the husband.30

Commenting upon Aristotle’s trichotomous division of friendship into the useful, the pleasurable, and the virtuous, Thomas acknowledges that defective marriages might be based on utility (providing sufficient wealth), pleasure (the conjugal act), but integral marriages are based on virtue which alone satisfies man’s true desire: “There is a virtue proper to both husband and wife that renders their friendship delightful to each other.”31 Contrary to popular myths about medieval misogyny, Thomas

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affirms equality in the marriage friendship explicitly: husband and wife are equal because just as in both the marriage act and in the management of the household the husband is bound to the wife in all things pertaining to the husband, so is the wife bound to the husband in all things pertaining to the wife.32

Indeed, for Thomas, the primary integrity of marriage as a natural union lies in this friendship, and the good of children is the fruit of a secondary integrity flowing from the acts of marriage.33 Not unimportantly, this is the reason why the union of Joseph and Mary is a true marriage.34 Thus, it is clear that marriage is that unique union in virtue which, even though it originates from neediness, is oriented to enabling man and wife to lift one another to their common end. It is this natural necessity of marriage for the common good that makes it a uniquely authoritative institution for society as a whole, for free beings are united in action only by means of authority. The couple are oriented to a transcendent common good, realized by an organic growth in the necessarily interpersonal qualities of virtue, wisdom, and love; yet, given human freedom, these goods can be pursued in a plethora of ways.35 But, wherever freedom grants indeterminacy concerning means, Aquinas insists that some authority must be recognized to provide guidance: Now in all cases where things are directed towards some end but it is possible to proceed in more than one way, it is necessary for there to be some guiding principle, so that the due end may be properly achieved.36

The most obvious case of this is in large political societies which require the appointment of an authority who regulates common action for the sake of the common good; Thomas specifies that the requite constituents of the common good are peace, prosperity, and, most importantly, the development of virtue, since virtue is the sine qua non for happiness.37 Marriage, by uniting people in virtue in pursuit of wisdom and love, is even more essentially authoritative, since it is the necessary basis for all human society.38 In marriage, the individual defers to the common good of the couple; this mutual obedience of man and wife in moving one-another to virtue reflects the essential nature of marriage’s authority.39 The imperative and perfective nature of this authority is made clear by Yves Simon.40 He argues that authority has two functions: a “substitutional function” and an “essential function.” (Modernity, due to the voluntarism of social contract theory, only acknowledges the former.)

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The substitutional function is one in which authority makes up for a defect of anything under its guidance by means of correction. Marriage can be seen to serve this minimal function when it is viewed simply as a cure for concupiscence, inculcating a modicum of temperance and fortitude.41 But the essential function of authority is to guide free individuals with a multiplicity of means to a common end in shared activity.42 Thus, in any society of free individuals, authority is necessary; and indeed, the more virtuous the individuals, the wiser and more loving they are, the more options for perfective acting become available, and so the more authority must be at work ordering them to their common good.43 Marriage is thus essential for man as inherently as social being who seeks perfection in union with others; marriage authoritatively empowers this growth, for husband and wife symbiotically flourish in the shared pursuit of that common good, growing in virtue, wisdom, love and moving to a transcendent happiness. Marital union is necessary since man cannot grow in wisdom or love without virtuous social intercourse, and union in virtue is the heart of the marital bond pointing beyond the self to transcendent goods. The authority of marriage is, in this sense, the basis for all civilization, for as Simon comments, civilization is “the state of affairs in which the operations of authority steadily succeed in assuring the communication of excellence.”44 This fact of the authoritative nature of marriage extends also to its natural fecundity in the procreation of children, for this authority also binds the child to his parents, a unique bond that Thomas notes is hallowed with the term piety.45 Now, it should be clear that the very idea of homosexual marriage, as based on the idea of autonomy, a freedom incognizant of the human person’s ontological limitations and natural need for authority, dissolves all these essential aspects of marriage as an authoritative institution. The fundamental character of authority is that it is something to be obeyed because there is a good beyond the mere satisfaction of personal desires.46 This liberation from subjective desire can be witnessed both within the individual, who achieves independence freedom from biological instincts through virtue, and also between individuals, when a person submits to a social authority as a civilizing force by pointing to an end above self-interest.47 As we have seen, the authoritative nature of marriage reflects this conditional nature of human dominion: in respect of his incarnational neediness, and in order to achieve the transcendent happiness proceeding from virtue, man needs the socialization of the family. Given this natural authority, it is not within man’s competence to redefine this institution. Rather, because it reflects the ontological truth of human

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nature, the institution precedes our desires, and our desires must be ordered by it; to participate in the institution requires that man accept its objective nature and authority. This subordination to the civilizing effect of society is accepted so as to achieve a necessarily transcendent end, one beyond the mere satisfaction of desire. Yet the argument for homosexual marriage, by ignoring the conditioned nature of human personhood, falls afoul of both these crucial points. Assuming a modern notion of autonomy, it posits that all social relations are arbitrary and voluntary. Because they are arbitrary and voluntary, persons enter into those associations in order to satisfy personal desires,48 not for recognition of an objective and transcendent common good. Consequently, marriage is no longer an institution necessary for the development of virtue;49 it is instead an arrangement erected to satisfy capricious biological and emotional desires for intimacy. While this idea that marriage is a contract of convenience between autonomous individuals is endemic to modernism,50 I focus on homosexual marriage because it is the reductio ad absurdum of the effects of the ideology of autonomy: in rejecting the authority of the institution, the necessity of virtue and its consecration to procreation, it makes marriage an utterly arbitrary institution defined by desires for pleasure.51 By so depriving marriage of its orientation to the transcendent common good, it also eviscerates marriage’s authoritative nature. We might now conclude by briefly noting that two other consequences follow from this, overturning the oft-stated claim that homosexual marriage is a purely benign reality that is simply an issue of equal justice. First, it is clear that the attempt to redefine marriage is paradigmatically unjust, for it is claiming a supposed right in contravention to the objective common good; but, as no right can contravene the common good, the very attempt to legislate homosexual marriage is unjust.52 The very idea of homosexual marriage, then, is one that embodies injustice, since persons claim more than what is due them, and so violate the principle of the common good and the standard for human intercourse. Second, as unjust, homosexual marriage is now revealed to be of its essence harmful to society, for in undermining the authoritative nature of marriage, it corrodes the very foundation of society, thereby making impossible the achievement of the wisdom and love’s transcendent end for which the human person had been endowed with the gift of dominion to begin with.

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Notes 1

ST I, q. 29, a. 3. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles trans. Anton C. Pegis, James F. Anderson, Vernon J. Bourke, and Charles O’Neil (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), III c. 113, n. 1: “Each thing appears to exist for the sake of its operation; indeed, operation is the ultimate perfection of a thing.” Cf. Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Domincan Province (New York: Benzinger, 1948; reprint, Allen TX: Christian Classics, 1981), I, q. 105, a. 5: “For the less perfect is always for the sake of the more perfect: and consequently as the matter is for the sake of the form, so the form which is the first act, is for the sake of its operation, which is the second act; and thus operation is the end of the creature.” 3 ST I, q. 29. a. 1. For an elaboration of the significance of this Thomistic insight, see W. Norris Clarke, SJ, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993). 4 See ST I, q. 30, a. 4, where Thomas argues that the name for a human individual is the vague appellation some man (i.e, a determinate instance of a nature), while the idea of person is meant to indicate the subsistent reality manifested in that nature. 5 ST I, q. 83, a. 1; II-II, q. 1, a. 1. 6 ST II-II, q. 6, a. 1 and q. 13, a. 2. 7 ST I, q. 79, a. 2. 8 This argument is clearly presented in SCG IV, c.11. 9 ST I, a. 14, aa. 1-5. 10 ST I, q. 54, a. 1. 11 ST I, q. 84, a. 1. 12 ST I, q. 82, a. 1. 13 ST II-II, q. 1, a. 7. 14 ST II-II, q. 2, a. 8 and q. 3, a. 8. It is important to note that this end is open to all men in terms of natural theology, the knowledge of which is expressed in the virtue of religion as the universal inclination to give adoration to the transcendent; on the knowledge of God attainable by natural reason, see ST I, qq. 2–26; on religion as a natural virtue, see ST II-II, q. 81. 15 ST I, q. 83, a. 1 and II-II, q. 13, a. 2-3. 16 The necessary relationality of creatures in Thomistic metaphysics was emphasized by Norris W. Clarke; see especially, “To Be is to Be Substance-inRelation” in Explorations in Metaphysics: Being, God, Person (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 102-122. 17 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, I.1.1-2, trans. Richard J. Regan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007). 18 ST II-II, q. 5, aa. 3, 5 19 See ST I-II, q. 94, a.2: “There is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, 2

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whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law.” Indeed, the precepts of the natural law simply direct man to use his free choices so as to create a just and peaceful society so that all might be able to achieve the perfection of the rational nature which seeks to know the highest cause; see ST I-II q. 91, a. 2; q. 93, a. 6; and q. 94, a. 2. 20 Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, I.1.6. 21 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. A. Robert Caponigri. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1956), 7. 22 See, for example, Kant’s argument against all forms of heteronomy in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, section II (4:432-445), in Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 82-93. 23 For example, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), 327: “Am I concerned with happiness? I am concerned with my work.” It is a disconcerting fact that the Supreme Court of the United States defined freedom along these Nietzschean terms in its notorious Casey decision of 1992: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” 24 This, of course, is the essence of the modern idea of the social contract as the basis of society, common (despite differences in detail) to Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and influentially recapitulated by Rawls. 25 ST Suppl III, q. 49, a. 2. For an analysis of how Thomas developed these Augustinian themes, see Lisa Fullam, “Toward a Virtue Ethics of Marriage: Augustine and Aquinas on Friendship in Marriage” Theological Studies 73 (2012), 663-692. 26 Paul Gondreau has argued that, as grace perfects nature, the purpose of sacramental marriage is to communicate grace so that the spouses might better fulfill the marital commitment by remedying the effects of concupiscence and lifting them toward perfection; see “The Natural Ordering to Marriage as Foundation and Norm for Sacramental Marriage,” The Thomist 77 (2013), 41-69. 27 This is the point in Thomas separating the three goods at the beginning of his discussion with the natural ends, personal union and offspring, being discussed in ST Suppl. III, q. 41, a. 1, and the supernatural sign of sacramentality being discussed in ST III, q. 42, a. 1. Because it is part of the natural law, marriage is also necessarily a topic of legislation in civil law, especially for those aspects “as regards other advantages resulting from matrimony, such as the friendship and mutual services which husband and wife render one another” (ST III, q. 42, a. 2). This is why the capricious treatment of marriage in our own political system is such an affront to justice. 28 ST Suppl. III, q. 41, a. 1, ad. 1: “Man's nature inclines to a thing in two ways. In one way, because that thing is becoming to the generic nature, and this is common to all animals; in another way because it is becoming to the nature of the difference, whereby the human species in so far as it is rational overflows the genus; such is an act of prudence or temperance. And just as the generic nature,

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though one in all animals, yet is not in all in the same way, so neither does it incline in the same way in all, but in a way befitting each one. Accordingly man's nature inclines to matrimony on the part of the difference…but as…the genus…the begetting of offspring is common to all animals. Yet nature does not incline thereto in the same way in all animals; since there are animals whose offspring are able to seek food immediately after birth…. In man, however, since the child needs the parents’ care for a long time, there is a very great tie between male and female, to which tie even the generic nature inclines.” See also SCG III, c.122. 29 ST Suppl III, q. 45, a. 1, ad. 3 30 This exclusivity also invalidates the possibility of polygamous marriages; see SCG III, c.124, n.5: “Strong friendship is not possible in regard to many people…. Therefore, if a wife has but one husband, but the husband has several wives, the friendship will not be equal on both sides.” 31 Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VIII (1723) trans. C.I. Litzinger, O.P. (Henry Regnery Company, 1964; reprint, Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993). See also SCG III, c. 123, n. 6: “Furthermore, the greater that friendship is, the more solid and long-lasting it will be. Now, there seems to be the greatest friendship between husband and wife, for they are united not only in the act of fleshly union…but also in the partnership of the whole range of domestic activity.” It should be noted that despite this emphasis on friendship, Thomas will often speak as if marriage is ordered primarily to offspring. For example, in defining what kind of union matrimony is in ST Suppl. III, q. 44, a. 1, Thomas cites the fact that it is ordered to the begetting of children: “Hence, since by marriage certain persons are directed to one begetting and upbringing of children, and again to one family life, it is clear that in matrimony there is a joining in respect of which we speak of husband and wife; and this joining, through being directed to some one thing, is matrimony.” 32 ST Suppl. III, q. 64, a. 5. This echoes Thomas’s insistence on the ultimate ontological equality of the sexes in ST I, q. 92, a. 1 and a. 3. It is interesting to note that while in most cases, difference must imply hierarchy (see ST I, q. 47, a. 2), in personal relations this is normally not the case. The paradigmatic instance of this is of course in the relations which constitute the Trinity, in which the ecstatic relation of esse ad affirms the equality of persons involved. On this, see Francis George, O.M.I., “Being Through Others in Christ: ‘esse per’ and Ecclesial Communion” in The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion, and Culture (New York: Crossroads Publishing, 2009), 307-326. 33 ST Suppl. III, q. 42, a. 4 and q. 49, a. 3. 34 ST III, q. 29, a. 2. 35 See SCG II, c. 48, n. 6: “Hence, so far as matters of action are concerned, whatever things possess judgment that is not determined to one thing by nature are of necessity endowed with freedom of choice. And such are all intellectual beings. For the intellect apprehends not only this or that good, but good itself, as common to all things.”

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36 De Regimine Principum I.1, in St. Thomas Aquinas: Political Writings, ed. and trans. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 37 Thomas lists these as the three ends of the prince in De Regimine I.16; that virtue is the ultimate end is clearly stated in I.15: “It seems that the end for which a community is brought together is to live according to virtue; for men come together so that they may live well in a way that would not be possible for each of them living singly. For the good is life according to virtue, and so the end of human association is a virtuous life.” On the fact that law is meant to inculcate virtue, see ST I-II q. 92, a. 1; I-II, q. 94, a. 3; and I-II, q. 96, a. 3. 38 That the authority of the family is ordered to the common good of the polis is argued by Thomas in ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3, ad. 3: “As one man is a part of the household, so a household is a part of the state: and the state is a perfect community, according to Politics I. 1. And therefore, as the good of one man is not the last end, but is ordained to the common good.” 39 This is the profound truth that is missed when the lectionary allows for the abridgment of Ephesians 5:21-28 (cf. Col. 3:18-19): “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands…. Husbands, love your wives….” 40 Yves R. Simon, A General Theory of Authority, introduction by Vukan Kuic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962); see also Yves R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1-69 41 See, for example, ST Suppl. III, q. 42, a. 3, esp. ad. 4. 42 As Simon explains, freedom is a superdeterminism, being able to act in many ways, not an indeterminism, having no cause at all, as Hume and his followers would assert; see Simon, Freedom of Choice, ed. Peter Wolff (New York: Fordham University Press, 1969), 153: “Freedom proceeds, not from any weakness on the part of the agent but, on the contrary, from a particular excellence in power, from a plenitude of being and an abundance of determination, from an ability to achieve mastery over diverse possibilities, from a strength of constitution which makes it possible to attain one’s end in a variety of ways. In short, freedom is an active and dominating indifference.” 43 Thus, Simon, (Philosophy of Democratic Government, 71) concludes, “Thus autonomy renders authority necessary and authority renders autonomy possible— this is what we find at the core of the most essential function of government.” 44 Simon, General Theory of Authority, 147. 45 Piety is appropriate for the basis units of society (family, nation, the human race) for it is the duty of respect directed toward those to whom we owe our existence; thus, in different ways, God, our patria, and our parents are given special honor; see ST II-II, q. 101, aa. 1-2; q. 121, a. 1; and q. 122, a. 4. If this authority is not recognized, then children become more like adornments or pets, there to please the parent, but not a sign of the ordering to transcendent good. This is sadly true of most children adopted by or engineered for homosexual parents, a disproportionate number of whom end up with serious psychological scars largely because they have been deprived of their natural right to an environment ordered to virtue and

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transcendence; on this, see the well-known study by Mark Regnerus documenting this, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study” Social Science Research 41.4 (July 2012), 752–770 (available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610). 46 Thus, what is required is not just formal cooperation with authority in willing the common good, but material cooperation in accepting the specifics of what the authority has willed. Simon discusses the importance of obedience in the face of authority in General Theory of Authority, 153-156. 47 Maritain refers to this process as the “conquest of freedom;” see Scholasticism and Politics, tr. by Mortimer Adler (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1960), 117138. 48 As an illustration of this post-modern idea of marriage, see Jacqueline Stevens, States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals (New York NY: Columbia University Press, 2010). 49 Contemporary marriage does retain something of substitutionary function, since at the very least it is meant to restrain promiscuity. However, the abundance of fornication, adultery, pornography, and the proliferation of divorce undermine even this substitutionary function, for a marriage that does not meet one’s needs is easily disposed of in favor of a more pleasing arrangement. 50 J. Daniel Hammond suggests that one reason contemporary American society has difficulty in understanding that the goal of marriage is a common good that is not fungible with mere mutual individual benefit is due to the tendency to reduce all goods to economic commodities regulated by contractual obligation; see “On Economists and Marriage” Public Discourse, March 15, 2013 (at http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/03/7807/). Accessed June 19, 2013. 51 Thus, against those who might argue that homosexuals can enjoy a virtuous relationship, I would point out that inasmuch as homosexual acts give precedence to biological impulse over all rational moderation, they are by definition opposed to virtue. I would also argue, moreover, that to the extent that that lack of virtue frustrates man’s natural inclination for transcendence, homosexual acts are of their very nature necessarily violent, for as Thomas defines it, violence is “opposed to what is according to nature” (SCG I, c. 19, n. 4). Cf. Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J Spath, and W. Edmund Thirkel (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995), VIII (1025). 52 This argument relies on the fact that a realist notion of the common good gives priority to legal justice over commutative justice (ST II-II, q. 59, a. 12).The ideology of autonomy can only conceive of justice in terms of a debased commutative justice in which the common good is defined only when two free individuals voluntarily enter a contract. Consequently, there is no non-arbitrary common good to act as a standard about what is really owed to persons. For an analysis of the relation between legal, distributive, and commutative justice, see Josef Pieper, “Justice” in The Four Cardinal Virtues, trans. Lawrence E. Lynch (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 43-113.

AQUINAS AS TEACHER OF HUMANITY: LESSONS IN TRUTH AND LOVE R. MARY HAYDEN LEMMONS

To teach is to empower others to see a truth that they would otherwise miss, while to teach humanity is to illumine a truth indispensable not only for every human being but also for becoming more humane. So we ask: What was Aquinas's unique contribution to truth? How does that truth advance the cause of humanity? To answer the first question, we must see Aquinas's teaching in its historical context; to answer the second, we must see it in relation to caring for others. Let us begin with the first question. Understanding Aquinas's historical context requires recognizing that it was a time of chaos. Few were unaffected by war. This was the time of Crusades and the Mongol invasion of northern Europe.1 The clashing of armies was matched by the clashing of ideas. Catholic scholars wrestled with the rationalism unleashed in academia by the newly translated texts of Aristotle and key Arabic philosophers. These texts seemed so reasonable that belief in the immortality of the soul and God’s creation in time faltered among scholars. Nor did the masses retain their Catholic sensibilities and mores. Many began living according to different beliefs. Influential in southern France, for instance, were the Albigenesians and their belief that matter, the body, and sex were evil; influential in northern Europe were the Waldensians with their belief that private property was unchristian; and influential in courts across Europe were the courtly traditions of erotic love popularized by Eleanor of Aquitaine in the previous century.2 As a result, no truth seemed certain or universal: all seemed to be in flux and reason seemed to be merely a tool of passion. Aquinas, however, did not share the passions of his age. He looked out at his world of chaos and saw so many unable to recognize each other as children of God to be loved. They were drowning in greed, lust, pride, and utter confusion for the want of a teacher able to illumine a path of truth that they could comprehend and follow from chaos into meaning, that is, into love. So Aquinas fixed his eyes on truth, his heart on God, and joined the Preaching Friars, the Dominicans. With his pen, he sought to write

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gentle, rational arguments that would so illumine the truth as to make it irresistible. His tomes all exude the quiet confidence that error cannot overcome truth and that lovers of truth can find it through rational deliberation and argument. According to Aquinas, truth advances through arguments that understand opposing viewpoints. His texts are thus a delightful challenge to read as he mounts objections so perceptive that they seem impossible to refute—until he does it. His greatest tome, the Summa Theologiae, exhibits this confidence through its systematic treatment of philosophical and theological puzzles that is unparalleled not only in breadth and depth but also in its ability to unite philosophy and theology into a seamless whole. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas uses argument to teach several lessons in truth vital for every human being— especially in ages of chaos.

Lessons in Truth Aquinas’s first lesson focuses on the nature of knowledge and argues that there are different disciplines insofar as there are different starting points and methodologies: for instance, as shown by astronomy and geology. Philosophy and Sacred Theology are likewise differentiated according to how truth is acquired: philosophy begins with nature, theology with faith.3 And since truth is ultimately one, it is harmonious and consistent across disciplines.4 The second lesson argues that God exists and is good.5 The third argues that every part of God's creation is good and echoes the goodness of the Creator.6 The fourth argues that every good is lovable insofar as it is good and that “every agent...does every action from love of some kind.”7 The fifth argues reason can discern the natural moral law.8 The sixth is that human law depends on the natural law in various ways.9 The seventh is that wickedness is not God's fault but due to disordered loves freely chosen.10 The eighth argues that the truths of divine revelation are consistent and support those of nature: after all, God is both Redeemer and Creator. The ninth argues that grace enables us to fulfill our nature, even while also enabling us to transcend nature.11 And the tenth argues that Christianity is God's unsurpassable gift of love and fellowship.12 These lessons of truth teach us not to despair amidst life’s chaos: when faith is in doubt, confusion can be conquered through a philosophy focused on understanding and loving nature’s truth. Rational philosophy neither conflicts with faith and Christian fellowship nor disappoints in enabling one to find truth, love, and life’s meaning. The overarching

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lesson for humanity then is rather simple: love what is good insofar as it is truly good and live in that truth.13 Doing so requires loving God above all for He is unsurpassably good and loving neighbors as oneself for neighbors are human beings who are nigh to oneself in their humanity, needs, physical location, or relationships. Such neighborly love requires a goodwill towards all that is eager to help whenever one is able. These two obligations of love are the primary precepts of life and the basis of both Aquinas’s natural moral law and Christian morality.14 Indeed, Aquinas characterizes them as self-evident to human reason either through faith or nature: Those two principles [“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor,” as stated in Matthew 22:37-39] are the first general principles of the natural law, and are self-evident to human reason, either through nature or through faith. Wherefore all the precepts of the Decalogue are referred to these, as conclusions to the general principles.15

This is not to say that the love of God and neighbor exercised through faith is identical to the love of God and neighbor exercised through nature: faith enables us to see with keener eyes than those of nature so that we can love God not only as our Creator but as our Divine Friend, and we can love our neighbors not only as those to whom the goods of nature are to be willed but also as children of God.16 Aquinas’s identification of loving God and neighbor as the meaning of life and as the foundational moral obligations advances the cause of humanity in various key ways that constitute seven lessons in love.17

Lessons in Love First Lesson: Love’s Self-Evident Normativity and Universal Benevolence Embedded in the Precept of Neighborly Love, the Personalistic Norm, and the Golden Rule The first way that the love precepts advance the cause of humanity is through their self-evidence. By identifying the love precepts as selfevident, Aquinas is identifying these precepts to be universal and deniable only through irrationality, that is, only through a denial what one knows to be true about the goodness of God, neighbors or oneself.18 The Precept of Neighborly Love is universal in so far as neighbors are understood as united to oneself in ways that include the bond of location, need,

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relationship, personhood, or species. The latter too gives neighborly love universality as it identifies every human being as one’s neighbor. In this respect, the Precept of Neighborly Love requires one to will good to every human being as it is willed to the self. Such universal benevolence is morally and rationally required because to acknowledge that others are like oneself is to acknowledge that the same criteria of what is good and harmful applies both to the other and to the self. It is also to acknowledge that the subjectivity whereby one experiences self-awareness as well as acting for goods freely chosen is characteristic of personhood. And this acknowledgment requires extending to others the goodwill that one has for oneself for two reasons. First, since love involves willing good,19 self-love involves willing good to oneself according to one’s nature.20 Second, any failure to will the good necessitated by one’s own nature to those with the same nature contradicts one’s own nature and opposes proper self-love and rationality. It is thus immoral. Thus, since one is obligated to will what’s really good to oneself as a person, one is also obligated to will what is really good to other persons; and, this is to love them benevolently. Aquinas would accordingly agree with the Personalistic Norm as formulated by Karol Wojtyáa: “A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.”21 This fundamental obligation of love can be learned even by children: others are to be treated well and not hurt. As mental sophistication grows, the obligations of love likewise develop in their breadth and depth— although not essentially. The child and the adult are bound by the same love-obligations that proscribe hurting oneself or others, while caring enough to help those in need. It is just that the ways of harming and the ways of caring diversify and multiply for the adult bound to others through various relationships, such as, parenthood and citizenship. It is important to note that by teaching that proper self-love is the basis of properly loving others,22 Aquinas is identifying a compelling motive to care about others as well as an explanation for racism and other forms of bias, namely, that benevolence is extended only to others united to oneself through some kind of likeness.23 Likeness is a cause of love.24 To teach humanity universal benevolence thus requires enabling all to see not only that others are like oneself by being human persons but also that this commonality of personhood overrides other considerations. In this respect, the Golden Rule can play an invaluable role in promoting humane acts in so far as it requires us to consider that the other is like oneself and asks us to see our actions from the other’s perspective (“If I were her, how would I like it?”). This privileging of subjectivity—of the

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other’s and one’s own—presupposes that personhood is the essential fact to consider in moral action. The Personalistic Norm is thereby presupposed by the Golden Rule. According to Aquinas, the Golden Rule also presupposes neighborly love and universal benevolence.25 Aquinas is hereby teaching that the tacit intent of the Golden Rule is nothing other than to promote moral actions and to proscribe immoral actions by making one consider how the other is like oneself so that one can love appropriately, that is, with benevolence. This intent precludes using the Golden Rule as a justification for callousness (I don’t want him to care about me so I don’t care about him) or rudeness (I am serving him turnips–although he hates them—because I want him to serve me turnips—which I love). The Golden Rule is not about strict reciprocity but about acting benevolently as one wants to be treated benevolently, that is, as a person. The Golden Rule thereby schools us in the requirements of benevolence, that is, in the requirements of neighborly love and the Personalistic Norm. On the one hand, the Golden Rule seems ideal for the advancing the cause of humanity across the globe: it is not only able to focus individual minds on moral truths but it is also found in every culture and every religion across the globe.26 This means that no people or culture need repudiate their own insights in advancing the civilization of love.27 However, on the other hand, the Golden Rule can be misinterpreted in terms of strict reciprocity and its moral presupposition denied. For this reason, humanization is likely to proceed faster by emphasizing the Precept of Neighborly Love. This precept leaves no doubt that benevolence is morally required. It also connects others to oneself through the word “neighbor” thereby tapping into the spring of love that originates deep within the human psyche and provides motivation for acting humanely.

A Second Lesson: Love’s Indefeasibility, Specifications, and Eudaimonic Virtues A second way that the love precepts advance the cause of humanity is by being affirmative precepts. As such, they are norms applicable in every circumstance and time. A precept can be fulfilled in two ways: perfectly and imperfectly. A precept is fulfilled perfectly, when the end intended by the author of the precept is reached; yet it is fulfilled, imperfectly however, when although

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the end intended by its author is not reached, nevertheless the order to that end is not departed from.28

So Aquinas teaches that affirmative precepts, regardless of the degree of their generality, are always applicable because they are fulfilled as long as one conforms to that prescription.29 Affirmative precepts thereby always proscribe their opposites: “it is a most grievous fault to fail to do what one is bound to do.”30 For instance, parents are obligated to care for their children; and, they are in conformity with that precept when their children are in a particular school in a particular location that is educating their children in a particular way. But should the “school” actually be a sweatshop for making hats, then the parents would actually be violating that very general obligation to care for their children. Affirmative precepts forbid their contraries no matter how unique those contraries are. In this way, love is able to specify what’s morally obligatory and facilitate the virtuous actions whereby one achieves eudaimonia by becoming a humane person.31 It is love that provides the touchstone for developing the virtues and living humanely.32

A Third Lesson: The Priorities of Love A third way that the love precepts advance the cause of humanity lays in their ability not only to motivate and obligate individuals to care about others—including strangers in distant lands, but to obligate them to do so according to a hierarchy that prevents harming those close to oneself, e.g., relatives. The prescription of loving neighbors as oneself requires one to love all human beings according to the manner in which they are one’s neighbors with the closest neighbor being loved more: “It follows from the very words, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor’ that those who are nearer are to be loved more.”33 Aquinas uses the term “neighbor” to protect the obligation to love the closest the most while also obligating universal benevolence since there are none to whom one is not connected in some way, such as, sharing in the same nature of being human.

A Fourth Lesson: Love’s Objectivity and Unalienable Natural Rights A fourth way that the love precepts advance the cause of humanity is that they necessitate objectivity and wisdom. Consider, for instance, that

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the precept of neighborly love prescribes that one assist the needy and this cannot be done without objectively understanding their problems and how they can be met. Such understanding ultimately requires insight into human nature and being able to ascertain what benefits and harms those whom one ought to love. Aquinas accordingly teaches that love is itself only when conforming to the objective parameters of assisting and harming persons. To frame love as person-centered requires respecting every person. It also requires respecting whatever is naturally commensurate to a person. According to Aquinas, whatever is naturally commensurate is a natural right.34 As such, naturally commensurate goods are inalienable natural rights and intentionally acting against them—or failing to protect them through laws—is especially forbidden by love.35 Morality and political legitimacy are hereby removed from the domain of the powerful and placed in the domain of those who love truth and its objective determinations. No wonder then that the natural moral law has underwritten so many protests against injustice—including the American Revolution which so boldly proclaimed We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.36

A Fifth Lesson: Love, Participatory Common Goods, Subsidiarity, and Politics A fifth way that the love precepts advance the cause of humanity is that they focus attention on willing what is truly good for oneself and for others whether individually or jointly through participation in a common good. Common goods unify individual persons into communities of mutual support whereby the good sought by all and reciprocally willed by each to the other benefits all by conducing to universal happiness. This is true even of political communities: “[T]he law must...regard properly the relationship to universal happiness.”37 Wojtyáa takes this basic teaching of Aquinas and adds two important clarifications. First, Wojtyáa argues that it is only through the common good that human beings can cooperate in actions while preserving their equality and avoiding exploitation.38 Second, Wojtyáa argues that through the common good, persons find self-fulfillment by “adding to the fulfillment of others.”39 This latter clarification is invaluable insofar as it explains that pursuit of the common good benefits every member of the community by enabling them to grow and achieve eudaimonic self-fulfillment.

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The type of love that makes communities of common goods possible is what Aquinas calls the love-of-friendship.40 It varies from the other type of love (the love-of-concupiscence) by seeking to benefit the person. It is the act of neighborly love. The love-of-concupiscence, on the other hand, seeks not to benefit persons but only to gratify desires. Children, for instance, can be loved either way. Parents loving their children with the love-of-friendship seek ways to benefit them, while parents loving their children with the love-of-concupiscence seek ways for their children to gratify them, e.g., by being star athletes. Love-of-friendship is indispensable for forming communities that attain the common good. For through the love-of-friendship, each community member wills that other community members benefit by participating in the common good according to their abilities. A community designed to facilitate the contribution of individuals and participate in the common good lives according to the principle of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity requires assigning every member responsibility for the common good according to that member’s abilities so as to facilitate participation in the common good. For example, victory is the common good and happiness of athletic teams. It cannot be attained without subsidiarity as each member must not only do his part to attain victory but must also will that other members do so as well. It is only through individual excellence and teamwork that the team can achieve what can only be attained in and through community, namely, victory. Subsidiarity is as important for all types of communities as it is for athletic teams. Subsidiarity is the prime directive of communities ordained to participatory common goods through the love-of-friendship.41 Subsidiarity is not only important for attaining the common good but also for forming communal friendships. For friendships are formed when two or more are dedicated not only to the common good but to enabling each other to participate in the common good as unique individuals. The reciprocal and mutual willing of the common good expresses the love-offriendship and forms a type of community friendship. Since friendships are differentiated according to their common goods, there are different kinds of community, e.g., church communities, work communities, and civic communities. Although communities can be diversified by their various common goods, they can also be united by an overarching common good: for instance, the community of coaches and the community of players are unified by the common good of being an athletic team. That civic communities are formed by the love of a mutually beneficial common good is a tremendous teaching that advances the cause of

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humanity insofar as it facilitates using community resources to facilitate the development of community members, thereby unifying individuals in friendship and instilling concord and peace.42 As Aristotle notes: “friendship seems to hold states together.”43 Another reason why love promotes humanity is that neither love-offriendship or neighborly love permits using some community members for the sake of others—not even for the goal of survival. Love-of-friendship and neighborly love condemn utilitarian arguments that survival or wellbeing justifies the sacrifice or mistreatment of some for the sake of the greater numbers. What loving parents would intentionally throw their beloved baby to a hungry lion in order to walk away unscathed? Better to defend the loved one to the death than to betray love. After all, it’s not like sacrificing another provides immunity from death. Death eventually claims each of us. We only get to choose whether to die a coward or a witness to love. For it is not love that steps behind another at the enemy’s charge, but cowardliness, as the ancients well knew. Survival through such means is not only unworthy for those who love others; but it is also, according to Aristotle, unworthy of those who truly love themselves and nobly pursue virtue at all costs.44 Aquinas likewise teaches that the precept of neighborly love obliges both individuals and communities to always seek the welfare of others and never treat anyone as a mere means to some end. Such treatment, after all, either denies that freely choosing one’s ends is a natural right of persons or seeks to destroy a person’s free choice as in cases of torture.45 Thus, no community properly sacrifices some for others—not even in order to save the human race. For how can the human race be truly human when it is no longer being humane? Aquinas also teaches that it is always immoral to intentionally kill the innocent.46 This means that states that are dependent on the exploitation of the weak or that sacrifice some for the sake of the greatest numbers are unjust and inhumane. They are in violation of the precept of neighborly love in as much as this precept not only forbids the mistreatment of minorities and the exploitation of workers, but also obligates states to facilitate the participation of every individual in the state’s common good according to their ability and the principle of subsidiarity. Utilitarian conceptions of the state are thereby rejected: love does not flourish but dims and suffers whenever another is denigrated to the status of instruments—even if a criminal.47 Neighborly love forbids the state to treat criminals inhumanely or to pursue criminals in ways that harm the common good, for instance, by degrading searches of travelers or by outlawing all free associations. In brief, since the state properly exists through the unity caused by the

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neighborly love focused on the political common good, the state and its coercive power are subordinated to the obligations of neighborly love and civic friendship. This means that government must protect human rights and freedom. Such protection requires the outlawing of violence, fraud and other unjust acts. It also requires structuring benefits so as to facilitate the freedoms to have a family life, to form voluntary associations, to be religiously active, to work, and to participate in politics. These freedoms are fragile. They are imperiled, for example, by grinding economic needs, by excessive bureaucracy, by impeding religious liberty, by censorship, by injustice, by failure to provide opportunities for civic involvement, and by failure to promote the common good. Only those governments and laws that promote the common good are legitimate. Governments and laws are illegitimate to the degree whereby they betray the common good and frustrate—rather than advance—the well-being of any member. To so frustrate the common good is unjust and inhumane. Frustration of the common good also occurs when laws are too stringent in proscribing what’s wicked, because laws must be considerate of human persons—the majority of which “are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices.”48 Hence, communities must often permit lesser evils in order to prevent greater ones.49 The criterion for determining whether or not an evil can be permitted is determined by the principle of double effect. This principle permits only the toleration of those evils that are the unintended side-effect of an equal or greater indispensable good.50 For instance, the great good of free speech requires a state to tolerate even hateful speeches as long as they do not incite violence. Such toleration is required by love insofar as love never seeks to impose the truth but only to enable the truth to be found. Liberty is thus an indispensable means of attaining love’s objects. As such, laws and communities must protect the liberty of members so that they can participate in the common good. For it is the common good that sets the parameters of a community’s laws and obligates caring about the welfare of each and every individual as much as possible within the constraints of life.51 Aquinas also teaches that no law binds conscience without directing to the common good.52 If then a government is tyrannical without care for the common good and the well-being of individuals, it is not seditious to overthrow it.53 In this way, Thomistic natural law stands outside of any political regime and judges whether its authority is binding upon the human conscience by determining whether it is a regime seeking a political common good identified by a people united by neighborly love.

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This right to act against tyrannies and establish just regimes is a great protector of human dignity, the common good, and humanity.

A Sixth Lesson: Foundational Norms, Moral Consistency, and Persistence A sixth way that the love precepts advance the cause of humanity is by being the basic or foundational norms of morality. This means that all other moral precepts instantiate the love precepts.54 Morality must thus be consistent with loving others as oneself and loving God above all. Accordingly, there can be no ethical justification for failing to love God and neighbors. This is an invaluable lesson that can be applied across the globe to proscribe the indifference and hatred that generates injustice and violence.55 For it is only love that best counters the hatred, greed, and selfcenteredness that breeds not only immorality but criminality and wars. For although many schemas of natural law can legitimately prescribe caring for our neighbors on this small planet, only love is able to motivate universal benevolence in difficult situations. Only love dismisses the rationalizations that permit injustice, the violation of rights, and coldheartedness. Only love enables one to honor the truth at all costs and to care humanely for others when fear walks the land. But love is such a fragile thing that it is likely to dissipate when costly—unless anchored in the love of all-good benevolent first cause, who holds our lifeline in the palm of His hand. God alone can guarantee that truth and love are never vanquished.

The Seventh Lesson: The Blessings of Loving God Above All The seventh way in which the love precepts advance humanity is by obligating the love of God above all. This love is obligated by God’s goodness and generous benevolence. In other words, the recognition of God as not only existing but as the supreme cause of goodness involves a recognition that the goods of this life exist because there is a first cause who transcends space and time and loves us. This means that there is someone who cares about the hardships that we undertake for the sake of love. This Divine Being will not let our dedication to loving neighbors as ourselves and God above all be in vain. Confidence in God, then, can bolster any flagging human love and encourage the practice of benevolence. Such confidence was typical of America’s founding fathers,

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even of those doubtful of Christianity. Benjamin Franklin put it like this: I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.56

Aquinas’s theology especially teaches humanity to be humane, despite his inability to transcend the feudal approach to heretics.57 For his theology (whether natural or sacred) teaches not only that God is perfectly good and deserving to be loved above all but also that God is not fully loved unless all related to Him are loved—and since God is the Creator that means everyone is to be loved. In other words, Aquinas teaches that loving God requires loving neighborsņand enemies albeit with certain caveats.58 From this it follows that the obligation to love God above all requires us to prioritize our love of neighbors over all other loves and avoid preferring a life of ease and comfort to one of helping others and working for the common good. In this regard, Aquinas’s Sacred Theology reinforces his natural moral law: Christians are to follow the example of Christ who did not hesitate to die helping others. The supremacy of the obligation to love God above all means that there can be no ethical or theological justification for failing to respect human beings designed by God to act in freedom, truth, and love. Neither law nor person should infringe the free exercise of religious beliefs,59 or otherwise harm individuals by denying their natural rights or by scorning their vulnerabilities. Terrorism and forced religious conversion cannot then be warranted as an expression of religious zeal: for good ought never be pursued through evil means. In this way, the obligation to love God above all promotes a humane society that protects the natural rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness as well as freedom of conscience, religious liberty, and neighborly love.60 These blessings of loving God above all advance humanity by obligating that all be treated kindly as a way to love God.

Recapitulation By arguing that loving God above all and loving neighbors as self are the basic principles of practical reason and the first principles of morality, Aquinas teaches not only that caring for our fellow human beings is a privilege and a duty, but also how we can exercise that care to make the world more humane.

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Notes 1

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 and died in 1274. Thirteen years before his birth was the Children’s Crusade (1212) followed by the Fifth Crusade (12171221); the crusade of Frederick II (1229); the crusade of Thibault of ChampagneNavarre and Richard of Cornwall (1241-1242); and the crusades of Louis IX of France (1248-1252; 1270). In addition, during this time period there were the horrifying attacks of the Mongols in northern Europe: Ryazan and Moscow fell in 1237, Kiev in 1240, and Liegnitz and Mohi in 1241-42. 2 According to Friedrich Heer, the traditions of courtly love were spread between 1150-1250 by about a hundred troubadours who were known by name. See his The Medieval World, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: Penguin, 1962), 177. 3 ST I, q. 1, a. 1, ad. 2. 4 ST I, q. 16, a. 6: “[T]he truth of the divine intellect is one, in conformity to which all things are said to be one.” 5 ST I, qq. 2 & 6. 6 ST I, q. 45, a. 5 and q. 65, a. 2. 7 ST I-II, q. 8, a. 6. 8 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2; q. 93, aa. 2-3; q. 94, a. 2; q. 100, a. 1. 9 ST I-II, q. 95, a. 2. 10 ST II-II, q. 25, a. 7. 11 ST I-II, q. 109, aa. 1-8. 12 Christian charity is the gift of divine friendship (ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1). 13 Good is a cause of love insofar as it is good (ST I-II, q. 27, a. 1). The lovability of good is the reason why every action is for the sake of love. (ST I-II, q. 28, a. 6): “Every agent acts for an end...the end is the good desired and loved by each one. Wherefore it is evident that every agent, whatever it be, does every action from the love of some kind.” The implications of Aquinas’s teaching for loving God and common goods are explored further in my “Loving God: Proportional Obligations,” in Ultimate Normative Foundations: The Case for Aquinas’s Personalist Natural Law (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011), 311-37. 14 I have argued this point extensively both under my maiden name, R. Mary Hayden, and my married name, R. Mary Hayden Lemmons. Under my maiden name, see “Love and the First Principles of St. Thomas’s Natural Law” (PhD diss., University of St. Thomas (Houston)), 1988. Under my married name, see “Are the Love Precepts Really Natural Law’s Primary Precepts?” in American Catholic Philosophical Association Proceedings LXVI: 45-71; also see “Privileging the Love Precepts,” in Ultimate, 133-153. Also, see John F. Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 126ff.; Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999). For a discussion of love as basic in Christian morality, see Edward Collins Vacek, S.J., Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994); Paul Wadell, C.P., The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press,

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1992); Edmund N. Santurri and William Werpehowski, eds, The Love Commandments: Essays in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1989); Francis J. McGarrigle, S.J., The Two Commandments of Christ (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1962). Feminist ethics has also privileged love and care: Sara Ruddick, “Care as Labor and Relationship,” in Norms and Values: Essays on the Work of Virginia Held, ed. by Joram G. Haber and Mark S. Halfon (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998), 3-25; Michael Slote, “Caring in the Balance,” in Norms and Values: Essays on the Work of Virginia Held, ed. by Joram G. Haber and Mark S. Halfon (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998), 27-36. 15 ST I-II, q. 100, a. 3, ad. 1. 16 Claiming that the love precepts are self-evident both through nature and faith need involve neither incoherence nor redundancy; see Lemmons, “Sin and Moral Insight: Epistemological Lessons of Moses’s Decalogue,” in Ultimate, 183-87. 17 These lessons of love reformulate material that I presented in “The Normativity of the Love Precepts,” in Ultimate, 388-396. Even so, the arguments sufficient for their justification exceed the scope of this essay but can be found in various sections of Ultimate. For the reader’s convenience, I will cite the location of the supporting arguments in Ultimate when necessary. 18 Aquinas explains normative self-evidence in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2. For a full exegesis see Lemmons, “The Love Precepts as Self-Evident Principles,” in Ultimate, 141-143. 19 ST I-II, q. 26, a. 3. 20 ST II-II, q. 25, a. 7. 21 Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts, rev. ed. (New York: Farrar-StrausGiroux, 1981), 41. 22 As Aquinas puts it in ST I, q. 60, a. 4, ad. 1: “For since natural love is founded upon natural unity, that which is less united with one, is naturally loved less.” In ST II-II, q. 14, a. 1, ad. 2, Aquinas writes: “Every man is naturally every man's friend by a certain general love; even so it is written (Ecclus. xiii. 19) that 'every beast loveth its like.'” In ST I, q. 60, a. 4, he writes: “Now it is evident that what is generically or specifically one with another, is the one according to nature. And so everything loves another which is one with it in species, with a natural affection, insofar as it loves its own species.” In ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1, ad. 2, Aquinas explains that the union that causes love of the self is the substantial union of form and matter while the union that causes love of others is the union of likeness. Also see R. Mary Hayden, "The Paradox of Aquinas's Altruism: From Self-Love to Love of Others," in American Catholic Philosophical Association Proceedings LXIII (1989): 72-83; Lemmons, “Whether Loving Others as Oneself is Selfish,” in Ultimate, 161-163; Tony Flood, The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and SelfGovernance in Aquinas (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2014). 23 Babies tend to judge that those different from themselves deserve to be punished for their differences. See the puppet shows posted by the television show 60 Minutes about the research done by the Yale Baby Lab accessible at

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIc-4h9RIvY. The puppet shows starts at 2:16 and again at 4:33 and 6:48. 24 ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1. 25 For a treatment of the historical influences upon Aquinas’s treatment of the Golden Rule see Michael Bertram Crowe, The Changing Profile of the Natural Law (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 80. Especially well done is Crowe’s explication of how Aquinas clarified a misunderstanding of the relationship between the Gospel and natural law embedded in Gratian’s highly influential Decretum. 26 Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule (New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 27 Lemmons, “The Golden Rule and Divine Acknowledgment as De Facto Universals,” in Ultimate, 356-60. 28 ST II-II, q. 44, a. 6. 29 Lemmons, “Universal Applicability, Supersession, and ‘Relativism,’” in Ultimate, 270-73; Lemmons, “Whether the Love Precepts Can Be Indefeasible,” in Ultimate, 165-66. 30 ST II-II, q. 68, a. 1, ad. 1. 31 Lemmons, “The Love Precepts as Eudaimonic Obligations,” in Ultimate, 14548. 32 Lemmons, “Love Virtues,” in Ultimate, 269-282. 33 ST II-II, q. 44, a. 8, ad. 3. Aquinas offers several guidelines for prioritizing love according to closeness of the relationshi One of them specifies obligations of love according to types of relationship: “[W]e should measure the love of different persons according to the different kinds of union, so that a man is loved more in matters touching that particular union in respect of which he is loved” (ST II-II, q. 26, a. 8) For a fuller discussion, see Ultimate, 137-38. 34 The keys to understanding Aquinas's perspective on rights lies in several key texts. In ST II-II, q. 57, q. 2, he argues that the equality of exchanges is a natural right. In ST II-II, q. 57, a. 3, Aquinas argues that natural rights are by nature commensurate to a person. In ST I-II, q. 10, a. 1, he argues that whatever is the object of a natural power is naturally loved by the will. In ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, he argues that there are three genera of natural inclinations, among the natural rights of every person are life, procreation, education of offspring, living in society, and freely pursuing the truth about God. Thus, since the objects of the natural inclinations are naturally commensurate to human persons, they are inalienable natural rights. For an extended treatment see Lemmons, “Love, Personalism, and Inalienable Rights,” in Ultimate, 292-94. For an extended treatment of how personalism as formulated by Karol Wojtyáa supports inalienable rights see Thomas D. Williams, Who is My Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 35 For a further exegesis see Lemmons, “Love’s Juridical Obligations,” in Ultimate, 294-301. 36 Declaration of Independence, accessed January 13, 2015,

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http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html. For an argument that the natural law tradition of inalienable human rights influenced the development of International Law as well American Revolution see Lemmons, “Human Rights and International Law: Signs of a Worldwide Moral Consensus,” in Ultimate, 362-69. For a brief sketch of the various influences on the development of natural law from its origins in ancient Greece to the twentieth century see Lemmons, “Appendix: Historical Sketch of Natural Law,” in Ultimate, 403-424. N.B. The extent of Thomas Jefferson’s familiarity with Thomistic political philosophy is unclear. Nevertheless, Fulton J. Sheen notes that Jefferson scored only one passage in Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, namely, this quotation from the De Laicis by the Thomist Robert Bellarmine SJ.: “Secular or civil power is instituted by man; it is in the people unless they bestow it on a prince....Power is given by the multitude to one man, or to more by the same law of nature....It depends on the consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a king, a consul, or other magistrates.” Citation from Fulton J. Sheen, Freedom Under God (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1940), 171. 37 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2. 38 “[Love is]...the only clear alternative to using a person as the means to an end, or the instrument of one’s own action....When two different people consciously choose a common aim this puts them on a footing of equality, and precludes the possibility that one of them might be subordinated to the other. Both...are...subordinated to that [common] good which constitutes their common end,” writes Karol Wojtyáa, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willetts, rev. ed. (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux: 1981), 28-9. 39 Karol Wojtyáa, “The Individual and the Common Good: Toward a Theory of Participation,” in Toward a Philosophy of Praxis, ed. and trans. by Alfred Bloch and George T. Czuczka (New York: Crossroads, 1981), 25-56. 40 ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4. 41 Lemmons, Ultimate, 323. 42 ST II-II, q. 29, a. 3; ST I-II, q. 99, a. 1, ad. 2: “[E]very law aims at establishing friendship, either between man and man or man and God.” Every law prescribes for the sake of friendship. Also see Michael Pakaluk, “Political Friendship,” in The Changing Face of Friendship, ed. by Leroy S. Rouner. Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 15 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1994), 197-212. The friendship established by the common good is also treated in Ultimate 317-324. 43 Nicomachean Ethics VIII (1155a22), trans. W.D. Ross, ed. by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941). 44 Nicomachean Ethics VIII (1169a25-35). 45 Lemmons, “Terrorism, Defensive Torture and the Crisis in International Rights Law,” in University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy Vol. 3 (Spring 2009), 71-79. 46 ST II-II, q. 64, a. 6. 47 Aquinas does permit capital punishment in cases where the common good cannot otherwise be protected from vicious attackers. See ST II-II, q. 64, a. 2. Also

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see ST II-II, q. 68, a. 1: “Now the punishments of this life are sought...in their character of medicine, conducing either to the amendment of the sinner, or to the good of the commonwealth whose calm is ensured by the punishment of evildoers.” For a more extensive discussion, see Lemmons, “The Parameters of Legal Punishments,” in Ultimate, 344-46. 48 ST I-II, q. 96, a. 2, ad. 2. 49 ST II-II, q. 42, a. 2, ad. 3. 50 See Lemmons, "Juridical Prudence and the Toleration of Evil: Aquinas and John Paul II," in University of St. Thomas Law Journal 4 #1 (2006), 25-46. 51 The recognition that no law can foresee every situation has long been the reason for allowing exemptions in those cases where the application of an otherwise just law would be unfair. These exemptions are governed by equity. See ST I-II, q. 96, a. 6, and I-II, q. 120, a. 1. 52 ST I-II, q. 96, a. 4. 53 ST II-II, q. 42, a. 2, ad. 3. 54 ST I-II, q. 100, a. 3. See Lemmons, “Primary Precepts,” in Ultimate, 45-71; “Love Precepts as Foundational Principles” in Ultimate, 143-45; “Bonum Formulations” in Ultimate, 124-28; “The Love Precepts as Bonum Instantiations and Specificatory Principles,” in Ultimate, 133-141. 55 That the love precepts are the basis of Aquinas’s natural law and that the resulting universal norms of personalist natural law is able to establish a global morality and jurisprudence are two of the central themes of Ultimate. Ultimate treats the objections to these themes based on some versions of Thomism in chapter 10, pages 179-200; objections based on metaethics in chapters 11, 12, and 13, pages 201-266; objections based on the need for a global morality and jurisprudence to provide guidance in the conduct of wars and in assigning punishments in chapter 17, pages 339-348; objections based on moral diversity are in chapter 18, pages 351-374; and, objections based on feminism are in chapter 19, pages 375-382. 56 Citation from Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 468. Thomas Jefferson had similar beliefs: “1. That there is only one God, and he all perfect. 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments. 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion.” Citation from Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012), 472. 57 Aquinas’s lack of religious tolerance was due not to his theology but to his inability to transcend feudalism. Feudal society was held together by sacred vows given by vassals to their overlords and to God. These vows bound vassals to do their overlord’s political will—unless the overlord was excommunicated. Catholicism thereby underwrote the sacredness of these political vows. To break faith with Catholicism was thus also to break faith with the overlord and to place oneself outside of feudal society. Aquinas accordingly argued that heretics should be compelled to keep the faith (ST II-II, q. 10, a. 8)—even while he also argued in favor of religious tolerance for those who had never been Catholic, e.g., Jews (ST II-II, q. 10, aa. 8 & 11). For a discussion of feudalism’s interplay between church

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and state, see Church and State Through the Centuries: A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries, ed. by Sidney Z. Ehler and John B. Morrall, (Westminister, MA: Newman Press, 1954); John B. Morall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1980); Marshall W. Baldwin, The Medieavel Church (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953); Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World: Europe 1100-1350, trans. Janet Soundheimer (New York: Penguin Books, 1962); Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press,1980). For an extended treatment of the slow slog towards universal religious toleration that emphasizes the American experience see John T. Noonan, The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998). Noonan also argues that the ultimate ground of religious liberty is “Holy Writ which makes obligations to God superior to those to any human being or any human contrivance” (43). For an extended argument that religious toleration is required by the love precepts see Lemmons, “Religious Tolerance,” in Ultimate, 325-39. 58 ST II-II, q. 44, a. 2: “[T]he love of God is the end to which the love of our neighbor is directed. Therefore it behooved us to receive precepts not only of the love of God but also of the love of our neighbor, on the account of those who are less intelligent, who do not easily understand that one of these precepts is included in the other.” Ad. 2: “God is loved in our neighbor...yet there was need for an explicit precept about both for the reason given above.” Ad. 4: “Love of our neighbor includes love of God as the end is included in the means and vice versa.” Aquinas’s teaching on the love of enemies is complex: it distinguishes both between the acts that constitute their enmity and human nature as well as between a general love for enemies and particular love for an individual enemy. See ST IIII, q. 83, a. 8: “[W]e are bound to love our enemies...in their nature, not their sin; and that to love our enemies in general is a matter of precept, while to love them in the individual is not a matter of precept, except in the preparedness of the mind, so that a man must be prepared to love his enemy even in the individual and to help him in a case of necessity; or if his enemy should beg his forgiveness. But to love one’s enemies absolutely in the individual and to assist them is an act of perfection.” For fuller explications see “Lemmons, “Objection Two: Whether Hatred Defeats Love,” in Ultimate, 160; Lemmons, “Supererogation and the Limits of Obligation,” in Ultimate, 283-286; Lemmons, “The Parameters of Just War,” in Ultimate, 339-344 59 Lemmons, "Tolerance, Society, and the First Amendment: Reconsiderations," University of St. Thomas Law Journal. 3 #1 (2005): 75-91; and, “Religious Tolerance” in Ultimate, 325-330. Also, for a superb explication of religious toleration in terms of fraternity, see John Knasas, Thomism and Tolerance (Scranton, Pennsylvania: University of Scranton Press, 2011). 60 Neighborly love also requires religious tolerance in as much as neighborly love obligates a respect for the subjectivity of others incompatible with attempting to coerce religious beliefs. As a result, neighborly love obligates giving others the freedom to worship as they see fit as long as that worship does not exceed the

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boundaries of neighborly love and physically harm others, e.g., by the use of some kind of mind control, or by the failure to seek medical care for sick children, or by the planning of terrorist acts. The religious tolerance required by neighborly love promotes humanity and a humane society.

PART VI: POLITICS

AQUINAS ON PRUDENCE, LAW, AND SUBSIDIARITY GAVIN T. COLVERT

Introduction In the prologue to the Prima Secundae of his Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas articulates a central element of his philosophical anthropology: human beings are divine images insofar as they have intelligence and free-will. Because of this noble element of human nature, he contends in his Commentary on the Politics, following Aristotle, that polity, as opposed to despotism or even monarchy, is the form of government best suited to persons who have the capacity for practical wisdom and self-determination.1 The absence of rule by turns and basic equality is an injustice for those whose nature makes them capable of prudent choice and action. There is room for serious critique of Aquinas’s application of such principles to women, children, and the institution of slavery, but his principles are clear. The capacity for prudential judgment according to Aquinas provides a strong case favoring subsidiarity as a hallmark of just political institutions. Exercising political power ought to be consistent with human nature and human flourishing. Because human beings are by nature capable of practical wisdom and self-determination, political authority should rest as near to the persons affected by political action as possible. Aquinas’s teachings concerning human nature and practical wisdom thus have important implications for contemporary debates about globalization versus the place of national and local political authority in civic life. A full consideration of Aquinas's view of subsidiarity, however, must be qualified by his theological assessment of the impact of the fallen state of human nature upon the role and purpose of human law. In ST I-II, q. 95, a. 1, for example, he asks whether it was appropriate for human beings to make laws. Against the affirmative answer to this position, which he endorses, St. Thomas considers a set of objections that appear to be drawn from the same principles he has articulated concerning subsidiarity. In brief, Aquinas acknowledges the point that laws, which are universal

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practical propositions, seem like blunt instruments ill-suited to character formation and concrete prudential judgment.2 He had, in fact, just argued in the previous question,3 that the universal principles of the natural law admit of exception as one descends to particular cases. Tempering these truths, St. Thomas argues that human law is beneficial because it counters the partiality and prejudicial emotions engendered by our fallen state,4 provides coercive force required by vicious and weak dispositions,5 and because it acknowledges that not all human beings are equally wise.6 Between Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology and his teaching about law, it is therefore possible to articulate a moderate and balanced doctrine of the relationship between the competing imperatives of globalization and subsidiarity, or between the place of universality and particularity in his political discourse. The purpose of this essay is to articulate the basis of that moderate teaching and to defend Aquinas against the contrary charge of being too hierarchal and inegalitarian in order to be relevant in the modern political context.7

Balancing the roles of Law and Prudence, the Common Good and Subsidiarity The best place to make a comparative study of Aquinas’s views of prudence, law, the common good, and subsidiarity is his Prima Secundae, which treats the foundations of moral and political philosophy. This part of the Summa Theologiae shows him striking a delicate balance between the place of individual prudential judgment about particulars and the intermediate universal propositions of practical reason that are laws.8 In addition, while he emphasizes that civil law is directed to the common good of political society, Aquinas provides a place for intermediate social institutions, in particular the family and the Church, which have a subsidiary but irreducible role in guiding judgment and action. For Aquinas the common good is neither merely an aggregate good nor a collective good. Against contractual models, he stresses that the common good is more than merely the aggregated goods of self-interested parties. Individual persons and intermediate institutions are parts of the perfect community—the civitas.9 Against collectivist approaches, the common good of political society is attained by individual citizens flourishing. Properly, human actions (actiones proprie humanae) proceed from reason and free judgment (liberum arbitrium).10 While all agents share in common the teleological structure of action, only rational agents—human beings in

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this case—are capable of self-directed free choices.11 What is proper to human nature is an essential ingredient of human excellence and happiness. The last article of Question 2 and the first article of Question 3 appear to reach contradictory conclusions about human flourishing. Question 2, article 8 asks whether human happiness consists of any created good. Aquinas concludes that no created good, only the uncreated infinite good, constitutes perfect happiness. Question 3, article 1 asks whether happiness is something uncreated (aliquid increatum), and he answers negatively. Aquinas reconciles this apparent contradiction by deploying a distinction between the thing we desire to attain (res quam cupimus adipisci) and the attainment of it that constitutes happiness (ipsa adeptio). The attainment of happiness is something really existing in the individual agent, not an abstract quantity such as pleasure, satisfaction or well-being, as utilitarians might argue. The common good for Aquinas is therefore a good in and for persons. He emphasizes this point when he stresses that happiness is an operation. Granting that Boethius speaks correctly in general terms about happiness as the “perfect aggregate of all good things,” St. Thomas prefers Aristotle’s more precise expression of the essence of happiness as an operation according to the virtues.12 Thus, while the individual citizen is a part of the perfect community, and in that sense the political good is greater than the realization of an aggregate of private individual aims, there is no end of political life other than the intelligent and freely chosen excellence of individual citizens. Furthermore, excellent operation requires free choice accompanied by prudence and the moral virtues. Question 57, article 5, for example, argues that excellence requires individual prudence because good operation depends not only upon action, but upon the manner of an agent's acting through rightly ordered free choice.13 Expanding upon this point, Aquinas notes that the good works necessary for a human life well lived should be motivated by one’s own counsel, otherwise they are imperfect both with respect to the direction of reason and the movement of appetite.14 Aquinas further contends that moral virtue can exist without certain intellectual habits, but not without practical wisdom.15 The apparent counter argument against his position is that some people are instinctively good without being especially wise. Aquinas responds by contending that well-ordered natural inclinations are neither a substitute for virtue, nor sufficient for the good life.16 There are, of course, some simple pious souls who lack universal practical wisdom, but he insists they still have prudence with respect to matters within their competence to judge.17 Nor should we regard Aquinas’s admission that it is sufficient for the good of the

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community that at least some are virtuous, in particular those who must govern, as a reversal of his earlier point.18 Clearly, human political communities are imperfect, and it is not to be expected that every citizen attains virtue in order for the community to flourish. Some, perhaps even many, are merely constrained by laws to preserve the conditions under which flourishing is possible for others. But, there is no conception of the common good of society in which individuals systematically fail to exercise individual virtue and excellent free choice. One might disagree with Aquinas about the putatively necessary connection he postulates between moral virtue and practical wisdom. For our present purpose, however, it is sufficient to note that he does think of human agency in this way, and that this view has important consequences for his conception of social and political life. A less demanding view of agency might permit a more benign account of the place of substituted judgment and coercive force as political tools. But, if we properly understand the account of intellectual and moral virtue that undergirds his conception of social and political life, it is clear that there is a strong gravity towards individual free choice and subsidiarity in his thinking. The first part of the Prima Secundae is devoted to the “intrinsic principles” of human acts, passions, habits, and willing, while the latter part concerns the “extrinsic principles,” law and grace. In spite of this shift in focus, we continue to find Aquinas carefully measuring the relationship between law and prudence throughout. Consider, for example, his definition of the essence of law. Thomas asks whether law is always concerned with the common good.19 Contrary to the view, which he entertains in several objections, that law as practical reason must concern only private prudence, Aquinas affirms that law, by its very nature, concerns the common good. His solution to the apparent contrast between the generality of law and the particularity of prudence is to argue that individual human beings are parts of the “perfect community” (communitas perfecta) and, as such, their individual goods are referred by the legislator to the common good of political society.20 As we shall see, some contemporary critics of Aquinas think that the part/whole conception he deploys here and elsewhere is incompatible with modern democratic conceptions of individual rights and equality, because it encourages political hierarchy and the subordination of individual rights to the community. As if to signal his awareness of this kind of concern, Aquinas considers several arguments that champion private conscience, fraternal counsel and even intermediate social institutions such as the family in place of the abstract universality we ordinarily attribute to the law.21 Contrary to these objections, Aquinas insists that the common good

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requires an exercise of public practical reason, which is not merely the aggregation of private interests, and belongs to the person or political body that has care of the community.22 Clearly, exercise of this capacity is not for everyone, and not all conceptions of the good have equal weight. From the point of view of contemporary procedural political theory this is arguably a disadvantage, because it admits certain hierarchies instead of applying the acid of equal liberty to substantive conceptions of the good and to the exercise of political authority. What remains to be established is whether the radical egalitarian conception of individual liberty secures a better basis for the pursuit of individual excellence. Aquinas’s model, without denying the ultimate importance of conscience and individual practical reason, places this good within the broader context of human social and political life, because he thinks the one is ultimately sustained by the other. Furthermore, the Thomistic position gives standing to intermediate social institutions. There are legitimate exercises of public practical reason by heads of households, for example. Such prudential judgments do not constitute law, because law properly concerns the whole community, which is complete for Aquinas in a way the family is not. But, for him there is also a continuum of subsidiary communities within the civitas that have their own distinctive place in preserving and supporting the individual’s relationship to the common good.23 Questions 95 and 96 in the Prima Secundae consider the nature and power of human law. Thomas emphasizes human law’s essential relationship to the common good, while acknowledging a delicate balance with individual practical wisdom. Laws formulate universal practical principles that are really quite blunt instruments when it comes to the particularity of human life. Would it not be better to have recourse to a wise person or even the animate justice of a prudent judge who can take account of particular cases?24 Aquinas’s response is two-fold: first, because of the nature of the human condition, including our fallen state, in addition to the advice of wise counselors, human beings need the coercive force of laws, withdrawing them from the pursuit of vice and habituating them by restraint to the life of virtue.25 Second, while the exercise of individual practical wisdom is in the abstract better than the blunt instrument of human laws, real persons are often affected by partiality, shortsightedness, and other forms of lack of understanding. The formulation of human laws helps to avoid ignorance, partiality and injustice by promoting thoughtful consideration by wise persons in advance.26 There is no doubt that this conception of law admits certain inequalities between persons with respect to practical judgment, which can impact political participation. But, Aquinas also thinks that human beings each have a certain dignity because

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they are divine images as rational creatures. We should therefore ask whether such practical recognition of human differences is balanced by appropriate concern for equality and subsidiarity in his political theory. While emphasizing the universality of law, Aquinas does not lose sight of the importance of particular practical wisdom. Indeed, his account of the nature of law shows that there is a continuum along which practical wisdom must be exercised from the perfect community to individual choice. Along this continuum there is room for many associations or forms of life in which human beings participate in pursuit of the good life. By themselves, such subsidiary associations are not complete, because they lack the self-sufficiency of the civitas, but they do have a substantive role in exercising prudence appropriate to their domain. A brief survey of some passages demonstrates this point. Consider, for example, ST I-II, q. 91 on the different types of law. Q 91, a. 3 entertains several objections that contrast the uncertainty and particularity of human reason with certainty and universality of divine reason.27 Contrary to the idea that we should appeal only to the most universal practical reason, which is divine reason, Aquinas maintains a distinct role for human practical reason, even while granting that particular conclusions in human practical matters lack certainty.28 The uncertainty of human practical reason, while inferior to divine reason, does not therefore obviate its own substantive role. Human beings must exercise prudential judgment in order to be full participants in social and political life, which is appropriate to their rational nature and divine likeness. Aquinas’s point about human law can be extended to a continuum of exercises of practical reason by individuals and social groups with care of the community. As we descend to matters of detail, human reasoning that is more proximate to the choice at hand has a proper role in decision-making, even though it can only be crafted to fit a smaller number of instances. Q. 92, a. 1 asks whether an effect of law is to make human beings good. Aquinas entertains a series of objections that contrast the coercive and general nature of law with virtue, which habituates particular human beings to good works. Aquinas responds that law has a role in habituating citizens by insuring obedience to the common good.29 Equally important, though, is what he implies indirectly about the relationship between law and prudence. Social contract theorists, like Hobbes, think of the role of law as producing a certain effect directly. Law, or obedience to the law, produces peace and civil society over against human desires, which cannot essentially be changed and are always a counterweight pulling against the force of the contract. Aquinas does not take that route. The law does not produce its good directly, only human beings who come to see the point of

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the habit law induces can operationalize the good life. The common good cannot be achieved without virtuous citizens, although some citizens can serve the common good only by obeying the law rather than being virtuous.30 Q. 92, a. 2 elaborates this point. The fourth objection attacks the idea that law should command through fear of punishment because, following Augustine, good deeds done through fear are not done well.31 Rather than reject this line of thinking, Aquinas insists that habituation through coercion can be a beginning of virtue for those who are able to end up living well.32 Law thus cannot achieve its purpose without supporting virtuous conduct by individuals and the essential place of subsidiary associations within the civitas. While such coercive support is directly a restraint from the most serious evils, it does not imply mere procedural neutrality with respect to pursuit of a fuller conception of the human good. Aquinas argues that indirectly the natural law prescribes all acts of the virtues, even if it does not prescribe each one in particular.33 Furthermore, human law does not punish every vice, not because it is indifferent to vice and virtue, but because it is sensitive to the human reality of imperfection in virtue.34 Conceptions of law, on the other hand, that do not assume the necessity of particular prudence and personal transformation towards virtue will not need an account of a continuum of wise practical judgments by individuals and various subsidiary social groups. Subsidiarity thus depends upon a healthy tension between the universal and particular, between law and particular prudence. Clearly, beneath the level of human law Aquinas envisions many sorts of wise public decision-making by various individuals and social groups. Q. 95, a. 2 elaborates this notion of particular prudence by distinguishing between certain moral and political conclusions that can be derived deductively from the most general natural law principles and others, which are specified rationally but nonalgorithmically, as an artist shapes a general form to particular details.35 Upon careful examination, it is clear that Aquinas has a carefully balanced conception of the relationship between law and prudence, and between the common good and the place of subsidiary social institutions.

Contemporary Critique: Aquinas’s Political Philosophy is Inegalitarian and Undemocratic In an interesting and provocative article discussing Aquinas’s political theory, Paul Weithman takes a contrary view of the relevance of his conception of political participation. Weithman asserts that, contrary to the

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enthusiasm of Neo-Thomists such as Jacques Maritain and John Courtney Murray, and contemporary natural law theorists like John Finnis, Aquinas’s political theory “fail[s] to endorse a democratic view of political equality” and is “an idea profoundly undemocratic in its implications.”36 Although he does not intend a simple condemnation of Aquinas’s contemporary value as a political theorist, Weithman regards St. Thomas’s political theory as largely incompatible with contemporary Western political institutions in ways that these other Thomists do not. John Finnis, for example, has argued that St. Thomas’ account of justice and the political common good is a forerunner of the modern rights doctrine.37 In his early career, Jacques Maritain expressed a certain exuberance for the prospect of secular liberal democracy as the rightful successor to pre-modern Western “Christiandom.”38 A much older and wiser Maritain, however, warned of “kneeling before the World,” in The Peasant of the Garonne, and attempted to correct the excesses of modern individualism by distinguishing between individuals and persons, who find their fulfillment in a richer nexus of intermediate social ties.39 Weithman’s thesis about the incompatibility of Aquinas and modern democratic liberty is much more radical. He concedes that St. Thomas has a conception of human dignity, rooted in the doctrine of the imago dei, and that Aquinas endorses a mixed form of representative government as best.40 The particular passage, which Weithman mentions in passing,41 is worth careful examination because it is so striking. Here Aquinas argues that the best form of government is a mixed regime, composed of elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, where everyone is eligible to govern, and the people choose their rulers. This form of rule Aquinas says has even been ordained by divine law. One can almost detect elements of the Constitution and Locke’s division of powers. In his account of the regime that it is “bene commixta” Aquinas appears to endorse central democratic principles of consent and shared governance, while at the same time striking a Tocquevillian note concerning the preservation of the aristocratic principle within democracy.42 Nevertheless, Weithman insists that Aquinas’s political principles entail fundamental opposition to the democratic notion of equality. While he grants that St. Thomas has a conception of human dignity rooted in the divine image, Weithman contends “a commitment to democracy entails a commitment to the view that fundamentally differences among persons are politically irrelevant.”43 Furthermore, the distribution of social opportunities and resources must be centrally controlled by “society’s governing apparatus,” which requires “a monopoly on justified coercion.”44

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Remarkably, in order to provide maximal protection for individual liberty, democratic governments must diminish the status of all other social institutions besides the individual and the state. Intermediate social institutions are fundamentally undemocratic in this way of thinking. The coercive power of government must be used against social institutions that tend to disrupt or even eradicate democratic equality, especially those institutions that establish and support fundamental differences among persons. Weithman is, of course, correct that Aquinas thinks differently about these institutions. The question is whether such premises are essential to healthy democracies. Significantly, he admits that, as a “definition” of democracy, I cannot defend this suggestion in detail, but note that it fits particularly well with the contractualist tradition of democratic theory from its origin in Locke to the contemporary work of Rawls…45

As Weithman notes, Locke and Rawls think of democratic equality as having important implications for “distributing political power, rights, and liberties,” but it is Rawls who envisions the coercive power of the state actively reshaping the distribution of “income, wealth and opportunities.”46 Clearly, social contract theory in its many forms tends to erode the status of subsidiary social and political institutions that mediate between the radical individual and the state. Hence, Thomists like Jacques Maritain argued for a personalist rather than an individualist understanding of social and political life. But, what makes Aquinas’s political theory seem so deeply undemocratic to Weithman is its neglect of the monopoly of coercive power in the central state, and the active use of that power to level the political effects of differences between persons. To appreciate how distinctive a conception of political equality Weithman thinks is essential to democracy, we ought to consider the case of John Rawls’ political liberalism. In §77 of his A Theory of Justice, Rawls discusses the basis of political equality.47 He contends political equality must be extended to moral persons generally, who are defined only in terms of two criteria: 1) having a capacity for a rational life plan (of any sort), and 2) capable of a sense of justice.48 This conception of political equality entails political neutrality concerning the distribution of social burdens and opportunities with respect to all substantive conceptions of the good, and with respect to virtue and vice, with the exception of those virtues narrowly associated with observance of his two principles of justice as fairness. To get an idea of how radical the implications of this conception of equality are, we should note that in §65 of A Theory of Justice, for example, Rawls explicitly considers the case of

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“someone whose only pleasure is to count blades of grass in various geometrically shaped areas such as park squares and well-trimmed lawns.”49 If political equality requires us to treat this person’s contribution and access to social supports equally with those who make the most extraordinary sacrifices for the common welfare, the consequences for social life will arguably be severe. Rawls goes yet further, speculating about how the coercive power of the state should be used to level differences between persons that are arbitrary and unjust. Extending his consideration to natural capacities and circumstances he notes, “the distribution of natural abilities…[is] arbitrary from a moral point of view.”50 With regard to those inequalities that arise as a result of our natural abilities, his second principle of justice (the “difference principle”) “regulates the structure of organizations and distributive shares so that social cooperation is both efficient and fair.”51 Beneath this apparently bland statement of social policy lies a very radical suggestion. The difference principle suggests that the coercive power of the state ought to be used to redistribute burdens and benefits so that they are to the greatest benefit of those who have been disadvantaged. With almost breathless calm, Rawls postulates that this may require the destruction of the intermediate social institution of the family.52 In §46 he notes that the family is a “barrier to equal chances between individuals” because the variations between families shape an individual’s character: “the internal life and culture of the family influence…a child’s motivation and capacity to gain from education…”53 Good families who emphasize formation in the virtues can be fundamentally unjust? That is astonishing. Furthermore, his argument apparently implies some intrusive state intervention in the education and moral formation of children. How else are we to compensate for the illegitimate advantages that some children gain unfairly from families (very likely religious families), who form their children to have the character and hope necessary for greater life prospects than their peers? The foregoing considerations serve as a brief indication of some of the problems associated with embracing the Rawlsian conception of democratic equality Weithman thinks is essential to modern political theory. It is then arguably not a fatal deficiency in his system that Aquinas is to be accounted as “undemocratic” because as Weithman notes, he does not assume that differences in endowments or in the ways they are realized are irrelevant to membership in the political society or to its realization of the common good.54

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Of course, membership and forms of political participation are not necessarily the same. Any failure to defend fundamental rights rooted in human dignity regardless of endowments ought to be acknowledged and criticized in Aquinas’s thought. Weithman’s own judgment on the merits of Aquinas’s position is finally somewhat unclear. Instead of endorsing what he had argued was essential to modern democratic political theory, he asserts that “the only alternative is to maintain [Aquinas’s] complementarity view while trying to avoid its untenable implications.”55 If that is so, one must wonder why Aquinas’s position is categorically ruled out as anti-modern and undemocratic. Weithman argues that Aquinas’s political theory is undemocratic because he endorses a “complementarity” rather than an “egalitarian” view of political participation. As Weithman correctly observes, for Aquinas “members of society are co-participants in its common good.”56 What is undemocratic about this Aristotelian conception of the body politic? As Weithman notes, The two features of political life that serve as points of departure for democratic theory—the distributive role of government and its monopoly on justified coercion—are not essential to a societas perfecta or to political authority as Aquinas conceives them.57

For Aquinas, civic friendship and participation in intermediate social institutions are natural forms of life and fulfillment. But, as we have seen above, Aquinas also recognizes a place for the coercive role of law. What sets apart the complementarity view is not a naïve conception of state coercion, but rather a conception in which practical reason is allowed to operate at different levels, and human beings are capable of habituating themselves to work together to achieve a shared social good. In principle then, a case can be made for the “complementarity” view as a competing, but viable conception of what a modern democracy should look like. Indeed, there are contemporary political theorists, like Pierre Manent who have argued for a more balanced conception of intermediate political forms, over against the increasingly globalized, statist, and post-political form of bureaucratic power into which our democratic national communities are currently devolving.58

Aquinas and Political Subjection We must temper our optimism for the prospect of a Thomist conception of politics, however, with an honest consideration of the

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potential dangers in the “complementarity” view, which embraces a more substantive conception of the common good. Weithman considers the problem of Aquinas’s conception of domestic complementarity as a case in point. His argument is that in adopting Aristotle’s incorrect biological account of women as “misbegotten males,”59 Aquinas embraces a hierarchical conception of marriage and the political subjection of women. Acknowledging this failure is important Weithman argues, but focusing exclusively upon it obscures a much deeper fatal flaw in Aquinas’s political theory, namely the potential political subjection of whole classes of adult human beings: Despite the objectionable quality of Aquinas’s remarks about women and slaves, focusing on them threatens to obscure a more fundamental problem with his political thought.60

Weithman’s point is that the shortcomings in Aquinas’s conception of domestic complementarity are really just instances of a broader and more fundamental type: a hierarchical and inegalitarian conception of human persons that must be rejected. In response to Weithman’s argument, it is important to acknowledge forthrightly the highly disappointing and ill-conceived nature of the conceptions about women that appear at points in St. Thomas’s writings. Occasionally, his premises help to push him in the direction of a more satisfactory view. Referring to the authority of Genesis, he treats gender and the diversity of the sexes as pertaining to the perfection of human nature.61 In the Summa Contra Gentiles III.123, he also argues that marriage is the best kind of friendship between human beings.62 Of course the best kind of friendships are only possible for people who are alike in virtue, and practical wisdom and the moral virtues are closely connected. Other passages are deeply unsatisfactory and less than intellectually compelling. For example, Aquinas reconciles Aristotle’s biology with his theology of the sexes by arguing that although the division of the sexes pertains to the perfection of universal nature or the species as such, the production of women still remains beside the particular intention of nature.63 Because of his intellectual honesty elsewhere, one might hope that if Aquinas had access to modern biology and meaningful intellectual relationships with female friends, he might come see this situation differently. But the simple fact is these conclusions are theoretically unsatisfactory and empirically misguided. Moreover, Weithman is undoubtedly correct that this sort of error is a perennial challenge for any complementarity view of human social and political life.

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But Weithman’s contention is that these things go to the essence of Aquinas’s political theory insofar as the concept of “political subjection” inherently characterizes and fatally flaws the idea of complementarity. Perhaps etymologically there is a case for this in the letter of Aquinas’s terminology, but the contemporary connotations of the term “subjection” are very far from the conception of the divinely sanctioned best political form that Aquinas envisions in ST I-II, q. 105, which we have previously discussed. In that political community human beings participate in shared governance because it is essential to their nature as rational animals, and without such participation by each citizen they cannot experience human fulfillment. Aquinas’s constant attention to the place of subsidiary associations and also to the need for individual practical wisdom and free assent to the rule of law also militate against the view that he is incapable of appreciating modern ideas of representative government, human rights and equality. We should acknowledge that any view that embraces complementarity and a substantive conception of the good is always in danger of making unwise choices with respect to winners and losers in the distribution of political burdens and benefits. This is a constant danger, against which we must guard by striving continuously to rethink and correct our conception of human nature and the human good. That is one important task of moral and political philosophy. On the other hand, neutrality with respect to any substantive conception of the good leads to the endorsement of Rawls’ blade counter as a viable form of life to be supported and to the political mitigation or outright destruction of the family and other intermediate associations that support human beings in the pursuit of fulfillment. The fruitful tension between law and prudence in Aquinas’s thinking creates a space for the role of subsidiary social institutions that mediate the citizen’s relationship to the civitas and provide essential support to the pursuit of the common good by exercising particular practical wisdom.

Conclusion To place the foregoing considerations in a broader perspective, it is helpful to draw upon Robert Nisbet’s The Quest for Community, a classic contemporary treatment of the importance of subsidiarity. In his introduction to the latest edition of Nisbet’s book, Ross Douthat summarizes the simple but ingenious insight at the heart of the work:

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What seems like the great tension of modernity—the concurrent rise of individualism and collectivism, and the struggle between the two for mastery—is really no tension at all. …It was only a contradiction, Nisbet argued, if you ignored the human impulse toward community that made totalitarianism seem desirable…In pre-modern society this yearning was fulfilled by a multiplicity of human-scale associations: guilds and churches and universities…and of course the primal community of the family. But, from the Protestant Reformation onward, individualism and centralization would advance together, while intermediate powers and communities either fell away or dissolved…the liberal West set out to build a society of self-sufficient, liberated individuals, overseen by a unitary, rational, and technocratic government… But… Man is a social being, and his desire for community will not be denied…if he can’t find community on a human scale, then he’ll look for it on an inhuman scale—in the total community of the totalizing state….64

Writing well before the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, Nisbet recognized an essentially problematic feature of the modern political project. When the acids of liberation and procedural neutrality are applied to subsidiary forms of human association that lie between the radical individual and the awesome power of the bureaucratic state, the individual’s liberty and the pursuit of his or her good are finally in jeopardy. Whether through totalitarian state government or bureaucratic indifference modern life seems to be edging closer to a post-political phase. Before the evolution accelerates beyond our capacity to affect it with our choices and actions, we need to consider other models of the foundations of human freedom and representative government. We do a disservice to Aquinas if we naïvely embrace his political theory without modification or critical assessment. But, we do a disservice to the common good if we naïvely embrace the idea of modern democratic institutions without subjecting them to a thorough critique in light of Aquinas’s political theory.

Notes 1 Sententia Lib. Pol. I. 10.3: “…quia in politicis principatibus transmutantur personae principantis et subiectae: qui enim sunt in officio principatus uno anno, subditi sunt alio; et hoc ideo quia talem principatum competit esse inter eos qui sunt aequales secundum naturam et in nullo differunt naturaliter, sed tamen tempore, quo unus principatur et alii subiiciuntur.” 2 ST I-II, q. 95, a. 1, obj. 1-3. 3 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4.

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ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, ad. 2 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, ad. 1. 6 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, ad. 2. 7 For this line of critique, see, e.g., Paul J. Weithman, “Complementarity and Equality in the Political Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” Theological Studies 59.2 (1998), 277 (discussed below), and Samuel H. Beer, “The Rule of the Wise and the Holy: Hierarchy in the Thomistic System,” Political Theory 14.3 (1986), 391. 8 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 1, ad. 2. 9 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3, ad. 3: “…sicut homo est pars domus, ita domus est pars civitatis, civitas autem est communitas perfecta, ut dicitur in i politic…et ideo sicut bonum unius hominis non est ultimus finis, sed ordinatur ad commune bonum; ita etiam et bonum unius domus ordinatur ad bonum unius civitatis, quae est communitas perfecta…” 10 ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1. 11 ST I-II, q. 1, a. 2: “…illa ergo quae rationem habent, seipsa movent ad finem, quia habent dominium suorum actuum per liberum arbitrium, quod est facultas voluntatis et rationis…ideo proprium est naturae rationalis ut tendat in finem quasi se agens vel ducens ad finem.” 12 ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, ad. 2: “…Aristoteles expressit ipsam essentiam beatitudinis, ostendens per quid homo sit in huiusmodi statu, quia per operationem quandam.” 13 ST I-II, q. 57, a. 5: “Bene enim vivere consistit in bene operari. Ad hoc autem quod aliquis bene operetur, non solum requiritur quid faciat, sed etiam quomodo faciat; ut scilicet secundum electionem rectam operetur, non solum ex impetu aut passione.” 14 ST I-II, q. 57, a. 5, ad. 2: “Cum homo bonum operatur non secundum propriam rationem, sed motus ex consilio alterius; nondum est omnino perfecta operatio ipsius, quantum ad rationem dirigentem, et quantum ad appetitum moventem. Unde si bonum operetur, non tamen simpliciter bene; quod est bene vivere." 15 ST I-II, q. 58, a. 2. 16 ST I-II, q. 58, a. 4, ad. 3: “Naturalis inclinatio ad bonum virtutis, est quaedam inchoatio virtutis, non autem est virtus perfecta. Huiusmodi enim inclinatio, quanto est fortior, tanto potest esse periculosior, nisi recta ratio adiungatur, per quam fiat recta electio eorum quae conveniunt ad debitum finem.” 17 ST I-II, q. 58, a. 2, ad. 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod in virtuoso non oportet quod vigeat usus rationis quantum ad omnia, sed solum quantum ad ea quae sunt agenda secundum virtutem. Et sic usus rationis viget in omnibus virtuosis. Unde etiam qui videntur simplices, eo quod carent mundana astutia, possunt esse prudentes…” 18 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1, ad. 3: “Cum igitur quilibet homo sit pars civitatis, impossibile est quod aliquis homo sit bonus, nisi sit bene proportionatus bono communi, nec totum potest bene consistere nisi ex partibus sibi proportionatis. Unde impossibile est quod bonum commune civitatis bene se habeat, nisi cives sint virtuosi, ad minus illi quibus convenit principari. Sufficit autem, quantum ad bonum communitatis, quod alii intantum sint virtuosi quod principum mandatis obediant.” 19 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2. 5

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ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2: “…oportet quod lex maxime respiciat ordinem qui est in beatitudinem. Rursus, cum omnis pars ordinetur ad totum sicut imperfectum ad perfectum; unus autem homo est pars communitatis perfectae, necesse est quod lex proprie respiciat ordinem ad felicitatem communem. Unde et philosophus,in praemissa definitione legalium, mentionem facit et de felicitate et communione politica.” 21 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3 ad 1-3. 22 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3. 23 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3, ad. 3: “Sicut homo est pars domus, ita domus est pars civitatis, civitas autem est communitas perfecta…et ideo sicut bonum unius hominis non est ultimus finis, sed ordinatur ad commune bonum; ita etiam et bonum unius domus ordinatur ad bonum unius civitatis, quae est communitas perfecta. Unde ille qui gubernat aliquam familiam, potest quidem facere aliqua praecepta vel statuta; non tamen quae proprie habeant rationem legis.” 24 ST I-II, q. 95, a. 1, ad. 2-3. 25 ST I-II, q. 95, a. 1. 26 ST I-II, q. 95, a. 1, ad. 2. 27 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 3, obj. 1-3. 28 ST I-II, q. 91, a. 3, ad. 1: “…ratio humana non potest participare ad plenum dictamen rationis divinae, sed suo modo et imperfecte…ex parte rationis practicae naturaliter homo participat legem aeternam secundum quaedam communia principia, non autem secundum particulares directiones singulorum, quae tamen in aeterna lege continentur.” 29 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1: “Ad hoc autem ordinatur unaquaeque lex, ut obediatur ei a subditis. Unde manifestum est quod hoc sit proprium legis, inducere subiectos ad propriam ipsorum virtutem. Cum igitur virtus sit quae bonum facit habentem, sequitur quod proprius effectus legis sit bonos facere eos quibus datur…” 30 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1, ad. 3. 31 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 2, obj. 4. 32 ST I-II, q. 92, a. 2, ad. 4: “dicendum quod per hoc quod aliquis incipit assuefieri ad vitandum mala et ad implendum bona propter metum poenae, perducitur quandoque ad hoc quod delectabiliter et ex propria voluntate hoc faciat. Et secundum hoc, lex etiam puniendo perducit ad hoc quod homines sint boni.” 33 ST I-II, q. 94, a. 3. 34 ST I-II, q. 96, a. 2. 35 ST I-II, q. 95, a. 2: “Sed sciendum est quod a lege naturali dupliciter potest aliquid derivari, uno modo, sicut conclusiones ex principiis; alio modo, sicut determinationes quaedam aliquorum communium. Primus quidem modus est similis ei quo in scientiis ex principiis conclusiones demonstrativae producuntur. Secundo vero modo simile est quod in artibus formae communes determinantur ad aliquid speciale…” 36 See Weithman, “Complementarity,” 278. 37 John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), Chapter V.

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Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism; Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973). 39 Jacques Maritain, The Peasant of the Garonne; an Old Layman Questions Himself About the Present Time (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968). 40 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 279. 41 ST I-II, q. 105, a. 1. 42 ST I-II, q. 105, a. 1: “Optima ordinatio principum est in aliqua civitate vel regno, in qua unus praeficitur secundum virtutem qui omnibus praesit; et sub ipso sunt aliqui principantes secundum virtutem; et tamen talis principatus ad omnes pertinet, tum quia ex omnibus eligi possunt, tum quia etiam ab omnibus eliguntur. Talis enim est optima politia, bene commixta ex regno, inquantum unus praeest; et aristocratia, inquantum multi principantur secundum virtutem; et ex democratia, idest potestate populi, inquantum ex popularibus possunt eligi principes, et ad populum pertinet electio principum. et hoc fuit institutum secundum legem divinam.” 43 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 279. 44 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 279. 45 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 280. 46 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 280. 47 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005). 48 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 505. 49 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 432. 50 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 511. 51 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 511. 52 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 511: “It seems that even when fair opportunity…has been satisfied, the family will lead to unequal chances between individuals. Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a certain primacy, the idea of equal opportunity inclines in this direction. But within the context of the theory of justice as a whole, there is much less urgency to take this course.” 53 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 301. 54 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 281. 55 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 282. 56 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 280. 57 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 287. 58 See, for example, Pierre Manent, A World beyond Politics?: A Defense of the Nation-State, trans. Marc LePain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 59 See ST I-II, q. 99, a. 2, obj. 1. 60 Weithman, “Complementarity,” 283. 61 ST I, q. 99, a. 2: “ita etiam diversitas sexus est ad perfectionem humanae naturae.” 62 SCG III.123: “Amplius. Amicitia, quanto maior, tanto est firmior et diuturnior. Inter virum autem et uxorem maxima amicitia esse videtur: adunantur enim non solum in actu carnalis copulae, quae etiam inter bestias quandam suavem societatem facit, sed etiam ad totius domesticae conversationis consortium…”

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ST I, q. 99, a. 2, ad. 1: “…femina dicitur mas occasionatus, quia est praeter intentionem naturae particularis, non autem praeter intentionem naturae universalis.” 64 Ross Douthat, introduction to Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2010), viii.

THE FUTURE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO JACQUES MARITAIN JUAN J. ÁLVAREZ ÁLVAREZ

We often hear that the West, especially Old Europe, is in a deep crisis. There seems to be unanimous agreement among specialists on this point. However, our civilization remains active and, at least apparently, shows still a great vitality. What kind of crisis is it? Is it a crisis of growing or a degenerative crisis? The position of this paper leaves open the answer to this question. Nevertheless, by borrowing from the political philosophy of Jacques Maritain, one of the most influential Thomist philosophers of the twentieth century, it tries to define the conditions that will determine the kind of future we might face.1 What are those factors? In what way can they contribute to the consolidation and a better application of the democratic philosophy which is underlying and which inspires the deeds of our civilization? Some facts provide us a first clue. Perhaps it is no accident that democracy arose, developed, and remains stable only on Western soil. Maybe the difficulties that usually accompany the desires to implement and to make lasting fruition on other soils of this kind of political life and its related ideals are not random. Clearly, there will be people saying that democracy (this is the official history of our Western democracies) has only a spiritual debt to rationalism, to the French Revolution, even to Marxism (in those aspects related to the social rights that are today an essential part of democratic philosophy). However, although we cannot ignore the contributions that modern philosophy and culture have made in this area, it is very important too, in my opinion, to emphasize and recognize as well (in any case, but today more than ever) the essential and decisive influence that Christianity, as refracted in the temporal order, had in the generation of that democratic philosophy which rules the social and the political life in our countries. Regarding this question, Jacques Maritain’s work seems to me indispensable. As most of modern and contemporary thinkers, Maritain

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wanted to adopt all along an essentially humanistic perspective. He defined humanism in general like an attempt to “render human beings more truly human and to manifest their original grandeur by having them participate in all that which can enrich them in nature and in history.”2 Unfortunately, not everything that is called humanism really contributes to the integral development of human beings. In fact, there are defective and incomplete humanisms which end up being destructive for people, reductionist and disintegrative humanisms that do not recognize the transcendent character of the person and, paradoxically, consider human beings, from an exclusively immanentist point of view, as the center and measure of everything. True humanism, the “integral humanism” that may aid us to overcome the current state of our civilization has to be founded on reason and to derive from reason, but–Maritain says– it cannot derive from a reason which is separated from itself and ignores what is better than reason. Such humanism will take root and develop only in a renewed civilization that … will be the age of Christian philosophy, and in which, under the inspiration of that philosophy, science and wisdom will be reconciled.3

In short, his goal was to make compatible the movement of history with the realization of the essential finalities of human beings (which were characterized by philosophy in its more complete and perfect state, as represented by Christian philosophy). That required–according to our author–drawing within the socio-political order a project for the future, a “prospective image” which, being dynamic and “situated,” was not a mere utopia but a “concrete historical ideal,” realizable in the long term: Maritain called it a “new Christendom.” What will be the features of this future civilization? Under which criteria may its ideal be formed? It will be a lay State because it will recognize the pluralist character of society, it will respect the autonomy of the temporal with regard to the supernatural, and it will have as its main political purpose the human good of the community. And however, it will be also Christian, because, even if the “unity of beliefs” does not exist– since truth cannot be imposed, nor force be put in the service of God–the unity and the energies of this new temporal civilization will derive from the Christian inspiration: this new civilization will be, he says, “vitally Christian in its concrete behavior and morality as a social body,”4 a city “of human rights and the dignity of the human person, a city where human beings who belong to different races and religious beliefs would commune in a temporal common good, and in common work that is truly human and progressive.”5

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According to Maritain, the Christian character of this temporal city would be evident especially by recognizing the extraterritoriality of the human person in respect of the temporal and political ways, and also in the implications that derive of such recognition. Indeed, as individuals and as part of the social whole, human beings are “for the State,” but as persons (an apart whole, superior, opened to the transcendent and destined for a supernatural end), it is the State which is subordinated to the person and his needs. Autonomy of the temporal order is conceived, thus, by way of an “intermediate and infravalent end” regarding the supernatural end of human beings. This latter is an absolute end, which takes part in the political common good and, simultaneously, transcends it. The unity we need, attained by way of reconciliation, promoted by Christian philosophy in the socio-political plane and expressed by the form of a personalist and communitarian regime, also presupposes— according to Maritain’s position—a firm choice for moral integrity in our behavior, a communion in the good in regard to coexistence and the rules which govern it, and a spirit of justice in politics. In short, it requires in any case an attitude respecting truth, wisdom, and freedom that–the French philosopher insists–even if it is not exclusive of Christianity, in practice only the Christian faith can fully guarantee insofar as the Christian evangelical spirit penetrates us. Nonetheless, because of the circumstances and their historical urgency, Maritain ended up postponing and even forsaking the proposal of a historical ideal, concrete but future, of a new (and, ultimately, maybe utopian) Christendom. With a similar framework, he began to focus his efforts on a more feasible purpose, closer to the main goal of this paper: the regeneration and fulfillment of democracy.6 For our philosopher, the term “democracy” does not only constitute a kind of political regime but, first and primarily, “a general philosophy of human and political life, and a state of mind”7 that accompany human beings in their progress. Due to democracy, man has entered the path that leads to the true moral rationalization of political life; nay, “democracy is the unique way through which the progressive energies in human history do pass.”8 What happened was that the different kinds of democracy that fed on modernity did not accomplish the goals that they had pursued. Where does this failure lie? There are several causes. But the deepest, the only cause able to fully explain the failure of modern democracies is of a spiritual kind: modern democracies were based on a defective humanism of anthropocentric inspiration, they ignored or forgot their Christian roots and the evangelical sap that runs through them. If this is not taken into

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account, it will be very difficult to pass from a frustrated democracy to a real democracy. Maritain dared to warn that where the Christian spirit is not, or where it has evaporated, a real democracy and a truly humanistic political philosophy hardly will flourish: “the durable advent of the democratic state of mind and of the democratic philosophy of life—he points—requires the energies of the Gospel to penetrate secular existence.”9 However, this does not imply that, in order to conform and consolidate a true democracy, it is necessary to accept all ideas that Christianity sustains: it is not a homogeneous unity of doctrine that is required. What is needed is a moral unity. Maritain will maintain that, in a pluralistic society, a “faith” or common conviction of secular character and practical order would be enough to allow both individuals and groups belonging to spiritually different “families,” even competing freely and pacifically from a theoretical perspective, to cooperate in a common and natural task.10 This faith would be structured around some fundamental principles that– he specifies- “depend basically on simple, natural apperceptions of which the human heart becomes capable with the progress of moral conscience, and which, as a matter of fact, have been awakened by the Gospel leaven fermenting in the obscure depths of human history.”11 What are those principles? Maritain addressed this issue several times and by diverse ways. These principles, although various and overlapping, are fundamental to political life and the common good: 1º Respect for the dignity of the human person; the person, while being a part of the State, yet transcends it because of the inviolable mystery of his spiritual freedom and of his call to the attainment of absolute goods. 2º Embodiment of this respect for the person in the form of a concrete recognition of the rights of the human person, as a human person, as a civic person and as a working person. 3º Commitment to justice as a necessary foundation for common life, and as an essential property of the law.12 4º A love of freedom and the conviction that the dynamism and telos of human societies requires an authentic conquest of freedom, in accordance with the vocation of our nature.13 5º An appreciation of the ambivalence of the progress of human history with the affirmation of the priority of the energies of the good and the humanization of mankind, .14 6º The dignity of the people [signifies a] community of the citizens of a country, united under just laws.15 7º The sense of man´s equality in nature and the relative equality which justice must establish among them, and the conviction that by means of the functional inequalities demanded by social life, equality must be re-

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Juan J. Álvarez Álvarez established on a higher level, and must fructify in everyone´s possibility of acceding to a life worthy of man.16 8º That the authority of the rulers, by the very fact that it emanates from the author of human nature, is addressed to free men who do not belong to a master, and is exercised by virtue of the consent of the governed.17 9º That in the truth of things, politics depends upon morality.18 10º And, finally, the deepening awareness of the brotherhood of man, leading especially to a sense of the social duty of compassion for mankind in the person of the weak and the suffering.19

As noted, Maritain knows that most of these principles are accessible to reason but, in his opinion, it was in fact the Christian faith that revealed them concretely, and it is Christian philosophy that can explain and consolidate them in the best way. In addition, among all them the last is perhaps the most important. Certainly, although justice and law are necessary conditions of democracy, they are not enough. What truly is capable of dissolving the conflict between law and freedom, the soul of justice, the unique impulse that is able to guide everyone in seeking the common good, and to accomplish the common work that defines social and political life, the source and the channel of peace, the sap of democracy, is brotherly love. The ancients had already guessed how important it was for a city to have what Aristotle called “civic friendship.” “Only love,” Maritain says in a similar way, “is a proper and proportioned cause of pacification and unity among human beings.”20 This love is, first, natural love that usually is directed to beings of the same species: it is based on their equality of nature and it is an expression of that unity which is characteristic of the human race. But, if we had to be satisfied with that love, we could hardly overcome, for instance, Machiavellian pessimism. Besides natural unity, there are among human beings many inequalities that can be both a source of wellbeing and a cause of very deep difference. The idea of a human fraternity, without a common Father, is just a pipe dream and leads to the worst of illusions. Therefore, the French philosopher says, what is necessary is a love of higher origin, immediately divine, what catholic theology calls supernatural, a love in God and by God that, on the one hand, strengthens in its own domain the diverse dilections from the natural order, and, on the other hand, transcends them infinitely. Only charity (very different from the mere human benevolence preached by philosophers and already very noble itself, but ultimately inefficient), only charity…can enlarge our heart in the love towards everyone because, coming from God who loves us first, it drives us to want for all human

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beings the same divine good, the same eternal life as for ourselves, and sees in everyone those whom God calls, spouting–let me say so–the mysteries of His mercy and the fulfillments of His goodness.21

This higher love does not cancel our natural love but brings it to fulfillment: it is the love that Christ expressed as commandment of brotherly charity and the cornerstone of a heroic humanism; it is the first human law and the law that summarizes all laws. Nevertheless, an objection can arise now as a difficult question. Although it is true that love is the strongest thread of solidarity that can be established among people, how could it be possible for all of us to partake in a common endeavor, like the promotion of social or political life, without a certain communion of doctrine? We return here to the very beginning of our analysis, but now we can better understand the Maritainian response (even if he adds some new requirements): [The] existence of God, holiness of truth, value and necessity of good will, dignity of person, spirituality and immortality of soul, and all the other implications of this law of brotherly charity which are linked to it and I do not mention here are notions that respond to spontaneous views of our reason, and to initial inclinations of our human nature; notions that must not be understood in a univocal and identical way, but that, in any case, can serve people from very different spiritual families and beliefs to cooperate practically in looking for truly human progress in the temporal order.22

In conclusion, what is the crisis of Western civilization? It is a crisis of identity, caused by the erosion of the conviction of the truth of the principles which generated it and that, though our world is not aware of its true sources, still sustain it weakly in its already long historical itinerary. Does Western civilization have a future? The response is still open. If Maritain is right, the future of our civilization will not be very hopeful if it does not recover its awareness of that identity and regain the conviction of the truth of the principles that nourish it: if all what subsists of cultural Christianity, under diminished modalities but still keeping somehow the sense of human dignity that Christianity had given to the world, does not gather its energies, and if the old Christian sap of Western civilization does not recover its vigor and its purity under the effect of a Christian inspiration…and does not renew its conceptions and its socio-temporal structures due to vivid evangelical penetration (what we name “integral humanism”), we do not see how Western civilization can resist its current, inner ferments of death.23

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Is it possible that Western civilization recover and deepen those fundamental convictions about the human person and a just political order and thereby regain its spiritual vitality and dynamism? Will this twilight age be an eve to a brighter and clearer day? Although it is not easy, the future is still in our hands. Maritain found in the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas the principles for such a renewal. But to make this happen, it is absolutely necessary to forge a new collaboration among countries that make up the West, and to configure a new form of unity. This unity to which we have to aspire (that, actually, could include all people of good will), cannot be the homogeneous unity of a materialistic and skeptic globalization, or the unformed unity of a suicidal multiculturalism. It should be a unity in plurality, a unity by way of analogy and not by way of univocity; it will not be a dogmatic unity, but neither the unity of weak thought, a heterogeneous unity that cannot yield other fruit than a spiritual dispersion that would become a source of conflicts and ruptures. We have already seen what are the principles that, I think, would have to sustain the vital and moral unity on which the future of West depends, and even the temporal destiny of all human beings. Europe and America can say and make a lot of things, especially regarding the future of our civilization. Maritain saw it clearly and I am going to finish by repeating his words: It will be necessary that the sense of the tragic in life and the sense of the great human adventure meet and influence each other, that the spirit of Europe and the spirit of America work together in common good will. We do not believe Paradise is set for tomorrow. But the task to which we are summoned, the task we have to pursue with all the more courage and hope because at each moment it will be betrayed by human weakness, this task will have to have for an objective, if we want civilization to survive, a world of free men imbued in its secular substance by a genuine and living Christianity, a world in which the inspiration of the Gospel will orient common life toward an heroic humanism.24

Notes 1

For this article, all citations refer to Jacques Maritain, Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raissa Maritain, 17 vols. (Fribourg–Suisse: Éditions Universitaires, 1982-2008). Each citation refers to the book title, the volume from the Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raissa Maritain, followed by chapter or page numbers. 2 Humanisme intégral VI, 298.

The Future of Western Civilization according to Jacques Maritain

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De Bergson à Thomas d´Aquin VIII, 35. Réflexions sur l´Amérique X, 906. 5 Pour la justice VIII, 666. 6 “I spoke about a new Christendom. Likewise, I could have spoken of a new democracy. Since, for those who go to the bottom of things … the name of democracy is not other thing than the profane name of the ideal of Christendom,” Messages VIII, 426. 7 Christianisme et démocratie II, 719. 8 L´homme et l´État IX, 548. 9 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 738. In this respect, Europe and the United States are–according to the French philosopher–in quiet different circumstances. He says: “Maybe because in America Christianity has taken on diffuse and diluted shapes, often to the point of being nothing more than a sentimental ingredient of human morality, it is that the divorce between the democratic principle and the Christian principle has never made itself as intensely felt here as in Europe, where minds are divided between a Christianity which is irreducibly formed in its structure and its doctrine, but which has been separated for too many years from the life of the people, and opened and militant infidelity or hatred of religion. America´s problem is to place its Christianity once again within the reach of divine exigencies, and to raise up the religious and spiritual potential of its democracy to the height of the cross of Christ. Europe´s problem is to recover the vivifying power of Christianity in temporal existence, and to put an end at one stroke to the wave of anti-Christian barbarism and the wave of antidemocratic enslavement. Here and there a radical change is needed, a resurrection of the spiritual forces, a new knighthood emanating from the peoples.” Christianisme et démocratie VII, 717. 10 Some years earlier, Maritain had already written that the pluralistic structure of a civilization “relaxes and distends his unity but do not destroy it.” The unity to which he refers–he insists–is not a “unity of an essential or constitutional character guaranteed from above by the profession of the same doctrine and the same faith. Though this is less perfect, and material rather than formal in character, it is none the less real; it is a unity of becoming or of orientation which springs from a common aspiration and gathers elements of heterogeneous culture (of which some may indeed be very imperfect) into a form of civilization which is fully consonant with the eternal interests of human personality and with man´s freedom of autonomy.” Du régime temporel et de la liberté V, 385. 11 L´homme et l´État IX, 611. 12 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 728-729. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 854. On this point, see, among other texts: Les droits de l´homme et la loi naturelle VII, La personne et le bien commun, and L´homme et l´État, chaps. IV and V. 13 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 732-733. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 856-857. About this issue, these are some of the main texts: Du régime temporel et de la liberté V, Chap. I; Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, chapter I; and De Bergson à Thomas d´Aquin VIII, Chaps. III and IV. 4

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Christianisme et démocratie VII, 728. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 854. Further on this point, among many other texts, see: Theonas. II, Chaps. VII and VIII; Humanisme intégral VI, 439-442; Raison et raisons. IX; and, in general, Pour une philosophie de l´histoire X. 15 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 729-730. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 854-855. About this theme, see also: À travers le désastre VII, Chap. III; and L´homme et l´État, chap. I, and Raison et raisons IX, chap. VII. 16 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 730. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 855. Maritain develops this point, among other texts, in Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, chap. III. 17 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 730-731. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 855-856. For a greater development of this issue, see: Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, chap. II; and L´homme et l´État. IX, chaps. II and V. 18 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 731-732. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 856. About this question, Maritain reflected extensively and deeply. See, for instance, Religion et culture IV, chap. III, n. 11; Du régime temporel et de la liberté V, chap. III; De la justice politique VII, chap. VI; Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, chap. V; Humanisme intégral VI, chap. VI; L´homme et l´État IX, chap. III and Principes d´une politique humaniste X, chap. II. 19 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 733-734. Also, Pour la justice VIII, 85. On this point, one can read, among other texts, Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, chap. IV. 20 Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, 288. 21 Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, 289. About the relationship between natural virtues and charity, see Science et Sagesse VI, 152-167. 22 Principes d´une politique humaniste VIII, 302. 23 Questions de conscience VI, 26-28. 24 Christianisme et démocratie VII, 762.

EDUCATING THE WHOLE PERSON: A REALIST PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE OF THE CONCEPT OF SCIENCE LITERACY JOHN F. MORRIS

Introduction When compared with citizens in other industrialized nations over the past thirty years, we are repeatedly told that Americans consistently rank well below competitor nations in terms of mathematical ability and basic scientific knowledge. Scientists and science educators believe that these rankings indicate a weakness in science education in America that is leading to a “scientifically illiterate” populace. For example, Jon D. Miller, the Director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, observes that most Americans do not grasp basic scientific concepts such as “what molecules are” or how “heredity” works.1 Unfortunately, the situation does not seem to be much better for students currently enrolled in the American educational system, despite the increases that have already been made in science and math education over the last several decades, with notable percentages believing in things like “astrology” but not fully accepting “evolution.”2 Such findings horrify most scientists, and they have convinced politicians and the general public that we need to improve scientific literacy through increased science and math education for all American students. To that end, The National Academies of the Sciences, in conjunction with other scientific organizations and the government, has been working for the last few decades on suggestions for reforming science and math education in the United States arguing in its National Science Education Standards that, “In a world filled with the products of scientific inquiry, scientific literacy has become a necessity for everyone.”3 However, in this discussion I will question the supposed need for such an increase from a realist philosophical perspective rooted in the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. To begin with, there is evidence to

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suggest that Americans are not as “illiterate” when it comes to science as we are being led to believe and that perhaps American scientists are merely making these claims to increase their own standing in education.4 But there is an even deeper issue here, I believe, than the politics of education. Given that there are only so many hours in the day for students to be in school, if we continue to increase studies in science and math, other aspects of basic education will have to give way, such as history, social studies, art, and literature—in fact, we are already seeing this, even in higher education. My concern is that as education becomes more scientific, students will not be able to develop the critical thinking skills and basic moral knowledge that are needed to ethically evaluate science and technology, as well as other aspects of their lives. And so, in this discussion I will first explain the concept of scientific literacy and its development within American education. I will also review the primary arguments offered by scientists and science educators as to why we need to improve science literacy in America. Next, I will explore the nature of education, and show that it is most properly seen as an enterprise that aims at formation of the whole human person understood in the Aristotelian/Thomistic sense as a social, ethical being. Based on this understanding of education, I will argue that what America really needs is a well-educated public who will be able to recognize right from wrong as we evaluate scientific and technological developments, as well as other important aspects of our shared human experience. In the end, I believe a strong liberal arts education, properly understood, is the best means to achieve a healthy democracy and what we might call an “ethically literate” citizenry as opposed to the limitations of a purely scientific education. This discussion is not a critique of science itself, only a critique of troubling contemporary attitudes that suggest science and math are all that we need in life. I do not see any problem with educators seeking out better and more effective ways to teach science and math, just not to the detriment of the rest of the curriculum, or to the student. We need to be mindful of the all important truth that education should develop the whole person.

What is scientific literacy and why do we need it? It is generally agreed that scientific literacy originated as a specific goal of science education in America during the 1950s.5 However, the interest in making science more of a primary focus in basic education— and for some, the main focus—can be traced back most noticeably to the

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influence of John Dewey in the early decades of the nineteenth century.6 For example, in 1909, Dewey had argued that, Contemporary civilization rests so largely upon applied science that no one can really understand it who does not grasp something of the scientific methods and results that underlie it….7

Part of Dewey’s educational vision was to make science a required element in American school curriculums, especially at the high school level. Through his growing influence in the 1920s and 30s, and with the help of other science educators, Dewey’s vision was finally achieved. World War II slowed down the progress of the science education movement in America until the 1950s when it gathered new momentum. This renewal resulted in the establishment in 1954 of the National Science Foundation to support research in science and engineering, but with a special focus on developing science and mathematics education at the high school level as supportive of its primary goal.8 However, as Morris Shamos points out in his book, The Myth of Scientific Literacy, the birth of what he refers to as the “scientific literacy movement” began with the Russian launch of Sputnik, which kicked spending on science and technology in the U.S. into high gear.9 As a result, the perceived threat to American technological superiority presented by Sputnik further cemented science within the educational curriculum of all American students, where it has remained firmly entrenched. It was during this time that the actual phrase “scientific literacy” seems to have first appeared. In 1958, Paul Hurd used the phrase in his paper, “Science Literacy: Its Meaning for American Schools,”10 as did Richard McCurdy in, “Towards a Population Literate in Science.”11 Since then, the phrase has developed into a broad, umbrella concept that covers everything related to science and science education. Some authors have even questioned whether or not the phrase has any real meaning or value any more.12 Nevertheless, despite the ambiguity in the phrase and diverse understandings that have been offered over the last several decades, the idea of scientific literacy has remained popular among scientists and science educators.13 Given the rise in prominence of the concept of scientific literacy within education in America, it would help to have at least a working definition to reflect upon. Although several can be found throughout the literature, the thought of both Jon D. Miller and Derek Hodson stand out and provide a basis from which to begin a reasonable discussion of scientific literacy. Miller is a former Professor and Director of the Center for Biomedical Communication of the Northwestern University Medical School, a Fellow

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of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and currently the Director of both the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy and the Longitudinal Study of American Youth in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Beginning with his landmark piece, “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual and Empirical Review,”14 published in 1983, Miller has emerged as a national and international expert on the concept of scientific literacy, as well as one of the key developers of tools to measure and assess such literacy. Based on his work, Miller concludes that: In broad terms, to be classified as civic scientifically literate, a citizen needs to display: 1) an understanding of basic scientific concepts and constructs, such as the molecule, DNA, and the structure of the solar system; 2) an understanding of the nature and process of scientific inquiry, and; 3) a pattern of regular information consumption.15

Some science educators have preferred to make distinctions between “science literacy” and “scientific literacy,” while others differ with what Miller has called “civic scientific literacy” here and “cultural scientific literacy” or “functional scientific literacy.”16 For his part, Hodson, now Professor Emeritus of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, offers a broader approach which he refers to as “universal critical scientific literacy.” In his book, Towards Scientific Literacy, Hodson explains that a central goal of this approach is, to equip students with the capacity and commitment to take appropriate, responsible and effective action on matters of social, economic, environmental and moral-ethical concern.17

Hodson’s critical approach highlights a key feature of the scientific literacy movement—putting scientific knowledge into action through responsible decision making. And so, despite the various semantic differences regarding what scientific literacy is or how it should be defined, scientists and science educators all seem to insist that, whatever it is, we need it—suggesting two main reasons as to why.18 First, we need better scientific literacy in America to protect our planet and environment from irreparable harm. Those who argue at this level want to increase spending on scientific research while enlarging science education so that America can make better decisions about our natural resources and serve as a role model for other nations. Second, concerns are raised for the quality of life of individuals. Advocates of this view remind us that we live in an

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increasingly technological world, and to keep up with and enjoy the benefits of these technological advances and maintain our democratic freedom, Americans will need to have strong backgrounds in science. The implication here is that only those who really understand the science and technology that surround them will be able to act responsibly in the world and take full advantage of all the world has to offer.

The crux of the problem—scientific “illiteracy” Needless to say, dozens of other books and articles by scientists and science educators could be cited offering arguments as to why scientific literacy is important for the future of American society. But the real problem here is not just that scientific literacy is a good thing, but that so many Americans are scientifically “illiterate”—or so we are told. Any American who watches even a little news or reads the occasional newspaper has probably heard such claims many times before, with the rhetoric used to discuss our inadequacies becoming increasingly alarmist. Most of us have heard how poor American students do on standardized tests in science and math compared to other industrialized nations around the world and the “crisis” this is creating for our country, our democratic freedoms, and our livelihood. Although one will run across different numbers and percentages, the claim that 70-80% of Americans are scientifically illiterate seems fairly common.19 And even though there has been some indication of improvement over the last two decades, most scientists argue that even 70% illiteracy is appalling and unacceptable.20 But how is scientific literacy or illiteracy measured? Such a question raises the problem of statistical analysis. A great deal of ink and effort has gone into the issues of the reliability and validity of the measurement tools used to assess scientific literacy or illiteracy, the samplings done, the difficulty of comparisons over time, etc.—all legitimate concerns, but well beyond the scope of this discussion. Nevertheless, the more informal manner in which researchers interested in scientific literacy explain their work is very revealing, and gives us reason to be cautious of their findings. For example, in his 1995 book, The Myth of Scientific Literacy, Morris Shamos discusses the issue of genetic engineering and the lack of support for what he considers a promising frontier of medical research due to the public’s lack of knowledge about genetics.21 In his commentary, Shamos refers to “anti-science fringe groups,” “science bashers,” and “neoLuddites” who slow down scientific progress because they appeal “to fear and emotion, not to the reasoned dialogue and debate that supposedly

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forms the cornerstone of science.”22 Now it may well be that there are still genuine neo-Luddites in the world who would automatically oppose something like genetic engineering, but Shamos lumps everyone who opposes such research, or even raises concerns that might slow down its progress, into the same category of being anti-science. He does not consider the possibility that someone could very well understand the science of genetic engineering and oppose it on ethical grounds. Indeed, the whole concept of ethics is rarely even touched upon by Shamos, who instead repeats the theme that opposition to science and technology is based mostly on emotions and ignorance. Jon D. Miller follows a similar vein to Shamos. In numerous essays, Miller alludes to the public resistance towards scientific and technological issues such as irradiated foods, the building of nuclear power plants, climate change, and embryonic stem cell research as based on misunderstanding and ignorance of the science behind these.23 The implication is that if the American public simply had a better science background—that is, if people were not so scientifically illiterate—we would embrace science and all of its wonderful new technologies with open arms. Of course, the further implication is that there are no valid reasons to be opposed to anything science has to offer. The 2004 Science and Engineering Indicators, a biennial report put out by the National Science Board, embodies the same view. Part of the Indicators’ conclusions were based on a survey that included the question, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”24 This is the “evolution” question—and although the Indicators report does not explicitly state this, it is clear in the discussion of this issue that anyone who would answer the above question “false” would be considered scientifically illiterate. In fact, this 2004 edition of the Indicators included a whole side-bar page focused on the issue of evolution titled, “More Than a Century After Darwin, Evolution Still Under Attack in Science Classrooms.” The point here—without getting into the merits of the creationist or intelligent design debate—is it appears that if one disagrees with the current science of the day, one is considered scientifically illiterate. The suggestion that ignorance is behind the opposition to science was strengthened later in the report. A survey was referenced in which 51% of Americans agreed with the statement that, “We depend too much on science and not enough on faith.” In addition, 38% agreed with the statement that, “Science makes our way of life change too fast.” The telling point, however, was in the brief comment that followed the reporting of these findings: “In the United States, the more

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knowledgeable respondents were about science, the less likely they were to agree with these statements.”25 In addition to ignorance, the other most commonly referenced reason for scientific illiteracy is religious belief. The 2004 Indicators observed that people who identified themselves as religious were more likely than others to oppose technologies such as stem cell research and genetic interventions.26 The report moves on to cite another survey that addressed the funding of stem cell research, commenting that, “opponents of funding were more likely to cite their religious beliefs (37 percent) than any other influence.”27 The most recent Indicators, published in 2012, made similar observations regarding the public’s attitudes towards science and their level of scientific understanding and education, although they were not as direct regarding the religious aspect.28 Yet, no consideration is given in either report to the possibility that religious people and non-scientists might have valid, objective concerns with some forms of scientific research. In the last several years, the rhetoric of the scientific literacy movement has stepped-up considerably. In her 2006 piece, “Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology,” Liza Gross, a science writer for the Public Library of Science, specifically targets religion as a problem in scientific debates, arguing, “Religious groups are turning scientific matters like stem cells and evolution into political issues.”29 In her article, Gross interviews the influential contemporary champion of the scientific literacy movement, Jon D. Miller. In this interview, Miller identifies scientific illiteracy directly with religious fundamentalism.30 To further support her point that religion is largely to blame for opposition to science in America, Gross cites a survey Miller conducted about religious attitudes: To gauge the extent of fundamentalism’s reach into American life, Miller evaluated adults’ responses to three statements: the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally; there is a personal God who hears the prayers of individual men and women; and human beings were created by God as whole persons and did not evolve from earlier forms of life. In 2005, 43% of American adults agreed with all three statements.31

Gross does not offer any commentary on this survey, nor is it directly mentioned in the remainder of the article. Instead, it is just thrown into the middle of this discussion about stem cells and evolution. But again, the message is clear—43% of Americans believing in all of this is bad! And, since this is placed within the context of scientific illiteracy, the further implication is that religious believers are scientifically illiterate.

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In his own writings, Professor Miller also commonly cites what he understands as “religious fundamentalism” to be a leading cause of scientific illiteracy. One telling example is found in the chapter he wrote for the book, Science and the Media, published in 2010. In the chapter, titled, “Civic Scientific Literacy: The Role of the Media in the Electronic Era,” Miller laments the current decline in acceptance for the Big Bang theory and evolution, suggesting that the fall off is “undoubtedly the result of increased pressure from religious fundamentalists….”32 Once again, Miller equates such religious views with scientific illiteracy, concluding that people with fundamentalist religious views were “significantly less likely to be scientifically literate than other adults.”33 It is true that Miller continues to reference religious “fundamentalism” as the cause of scientific illiteracy, and not religious belief simply. However, as noted earlier by Liza Gross, Miller’s standard for what counts as religious fundamentalism is broader than most people would accept—if one believes in God and questions strict evolutionism, then one is a fundamentalist.34 In the end, if we are to believe thinkers such as Professor Miller and defenders of his, such as Liza Gross, it would seem that scientific illiteracy—fueled by ignorance and religious fundamentalism—is destroying America, and quite possibly undermining the world. Or, as Art Hobson warned his fellow physicists in his article, “The Surprising Effectiveness of College Scientific Literacy Courses,” scientific literacy must become a priority in order to combat “the anti-science, pseudoscience, superstition, and religious fanaticism that are so tragically at work everywhere in the world today….”35 So what are we to make of all of this? The fact of the matter is that American students have scored lower than some of our counterparts around the world on standardized tests in math and science. Yet, we all know that there have been many objections raised from various social scientists and educators as to the development of such standardized tests, the selection and presentation of questions, how the cohorts to be tested are selected, the way the data can be skewed by educators who teach to the tests as opposed to following a standard curriculum, the fact that American students taking these tests have absolutely no incentive to take them seriously or to try and do well on them, and so on—all factors that raise serious questions about the validity of the conclusions drawn from these tests. Standardized tests generate lots of data, but not all data is good data. Plus, most of the standardized tests are aimed at the primary and secondary levels. When adults are tested, Americans actually come out ahead of our contemporaries. However, this is still not enough for the

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hardline science education researchers like Miller, who insists that even though U.S. adults may perform better than adults in some industrialized countries, We should take no pride in a finding that four out of five Americans cannot read and understand the science section of The New York Times.36

But what if it is, in fact, true that Americans are less scientifically adept than citizens around the world? Is that necessarily a problem? I do not believe so. If other countries want to focus their education almost exclusively on math and science, that does not have to dictate how we approach education in the United States. Such a narrow focus on science and math—especially at the primary and secondary levels—is a disservice to students, and fails to recognize the true purpose of education.

The True Purpose of Education Throughout much of the literature related to the issue of scientific literacy, the question is often raised as to what is the purpose of science education. And, as we have seen, the answer to that question is that the purpose of science education is to develop a scientifically literate populace. But the problem with this focus on science education is that it overlooks the deeper and more fundamental question regarding the purpose of education in general. To discuss science education as if it stood alone, or was all there is to education, puts our discussion on the wrong track. We have already noted some of the influences that pushed us in this direction—such as the educational theories of Dewey, geo-political events like Sputnik, and contemporary concerns about living in an increasingly technological world. Nonetheless, our initial focus should be on the purpose of education in human society, with science being just one of several things students need to be educated about. In fact, as we push to make American students more scientifically literate, we may actually be making them more “illiterate” in other ways that are far more important than their ability to read the science section of The New York Times. What, then, is the true purpose of education? The purpose of education, I propose, is to develop the whole human person to the point that each individual person can, at some point in the course of her or his life, to the highest level possible, take control of her or his own physical, intellectual, and moral development. Education typically begins with the very young human child—indeed, in contemporary times we have discovered that

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such education can begin in the first few months of life, at least in an informal way. But to properly educate the whole human person, we must understand the nature of a human being, and this requires a sound philosophy of the human person. As Curtis Hancock explains in his recent book, Recovering A Catholic Philosophy Of Elementary Education, a proper understanding of a child as a human person leads to the insight that, “Helping the human person to fulfillment is the goal of education understood in the broad sense.”37 This understanding of education as a means of human development that helps guide individuals toward their proper fulfillment gives rise to two important observations. First, the purely utilitarian view of education that we have inherited from the likes of Dewey, which asserts the goal of education is simply to make productive citizens, is woefully inadequate because it is incomplete. And yet, this seems to be the dominant view of education in America. To be fair, there has always been resistance from both educators and the American public to the purely utilitarian approach to education. In particular, Catholic and other religious schools by and large have resisted such a narrowed focus (although as Hancock points out the value of a holistic approach even within the Catholic school system is in need of revival against the mounting external pressures of the scientific community and its political lobbying efforts to increase math and science education). Also, the increase of home schooling—something that has grown into a national phenomenon—is in part a movement to resist the narrowed focus of contemporary public education. Nonetheless, working against the utilitarian trend to develop a broader, more holistic understanding of education is difficult. To counter this attitude, we must remember that the human person is both physical and spiritual. Of course, this point is greatly contested. But if it is true that we are more than just physical beings, an education that fails to give attention to our spiritual side will be lacking. And yet, even without getting into abstract and subtle debates about the existence and immortality of the soul, there is much evidence to support a spiritual dimension to humanity. Love, for example, cannot fully be explained by physical and empirical data alone. Nor can the great longing of the human person for more than what this present existence offers us. Thus, to have a sound philosophy of education, one must resist the reductionist attitudes of materialism and naturalism. On the other hand, a purely rationalistic educational approach would also be incomplete. Human beings are animals, and to be holistic, education must also take our animal nature into account. And although human persons do not have instincts like other animals, we do still have emotions, appetites, and feelings. To properly

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educate a human person, then, one must help him or her develop physically, affectively, intellectually, and spiritually. An education focused heavily on science and math does not address all of these aspects of the human person. The second important observation flows from the first. As Hancock notes, we cannot properly educate a human person if we do not have a proper understanding of what it is to be human. Yet most contemporary philosophies are woefully inadequate in this regard—some even to the point of denying the very reality of the human person altogether. This is why so much of modern philosophy has left American education in a mess. I believe that despite the prominence of skeptical, relativistic, and post-modernist views which have worked their way into educational theories with their impoverished philosophies of the human person, many teachers realize deep down that these theories are inadequate. How could a teacher of first graders not recognize that she is dealing with more than little machines sitting at the desks in her room—or, sometimes, not sitting when they should? Even the action of not following directions (as frustrating as that can be for any teacher or parent) is itself a sign of the freedom and intelligence of our children. And so, in contrast to many of the contemporary strains of philosophy, the realist philosophical approach of Aristotle and Aquinas reminds us that what we have before us when we educate are human persons, beings that are both physical and spiritual. Hancock emphasizes this point well: A human being is a union of body and soul. If we are to situate knowledge within a sound philosophy of the human person, we must be sensitive to the interaction of body and soul at every turn…. A disembodied human intellect does not understand things. A human will abstracted from body and soul does not desire things. A sense organ detached from the person perceives no color or sound. The human person—simultaneously body, soul, and sense—as a whole experiences his world coherently.38

This also illustrates why good education is dynamic, because it appeals to all aspects of a human knower. Now the common objection to the above points raised by scientists and science educators is that they are not asking for primary and secondary education to focus only on math and science.39 But one cannot help wonder if claims that art and music and history should also be part of American education are just mere lip service, since these are the specific types of classes that are getting squeezed out to make more room for science and math.40 In an effort to meet requirements laid out by initiatives such as the National Science Education Standards and other government

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regulations, administrators and educators are finding it increasingly difficult to get everything done. Simply put, something has to give, and so the rest of the curriculum suffers. As we continue to hear the call for more science and math education in grades K-12, such pressure will only increase. There is similar pressure at the college level, where general education requirements in the arts and humanities are being threatened, even in schools where they have traditionally been welcomed. The movement is towards a more fractured educational experience with a focus on specialization as opposed to integration of knowledge.

Liberal Arts Education—Focusing on the Whole Person How, then, does one educate the whole human person? The best approach is the one found in the traditional liberal arts education. Recall that the root meaning of “liberal” is “freeing.” Thus, an educated person is a free person. Not free in the radical sense, because part of one’s education will reveal that we all have obligations to each other that limit what actions we ought to perform. The freedom that good education brings is narrower than that. Yet, in another sense it is deeper and truer than most “freedoms” promised by contemporary theories of education, for the welleducated person is able to become truly self-directing because he or she understands what it means to be a human person. Unfortunately, the traditional concept of a liberal arts education is under fire in contemporary education.41 At the university level, there is a growing tendency to talk about “liberal education” as opposed to a liberal arts education.42 Some may say the difference is merely one of semantics and of no real consequence. I beg to differ. When educators speak of “liberal education,” they generally mean that a student should acquire a sampling of different disciplines throughout her or his educational experience. The concept of “liberal” here is very loose, and is generally used in opposition to the traditional idea of a school having a core curriculum that every student must take. A core set of classes is being viewed in the contemporary setting as being too restrictive—hence, “freedom” it is argued is found in a more open approach to education (let the student wander where he or she will). And, since this attitude is being ingrained in future teachers at the collegiate level, it is beginning to trickle down to the primary and secondary levels as well. A genuine liberal arts education is much more focused. The central idea behind studying the liberal arts is that to be well-educated a student should take specific courses that investigate issues addressing all the

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various aspects of what it means to be a human person. History is not just useful, it helps us realize we are historical beings and that the past impacts our world and our lives today. Art and music help us to appreciate other cultures, but they go further to reveal our common human appreciation of the beautiful and to draw out each person’s natural creativity. The same is true of studying science. Science classes are not just good ideas, rather they are important for helping a student obtain a basic understanding of the physical, temporal world because we are physical, temporal beings. Thus, there is an important difference between “liberal” education and an education in the liberal arts—the latter embodies a purposeful design to educate the whole human person. As Curtis Hancock argues, education involves habituation, the development of specific habits of thought and action, which a traditional liberal arts education can help one achieve.43 At some point each human person needs to take control of her or his own development. But a solid education in the liberal arts beginning at the primary level provides the only secure foundation for the maturation and self-development of each person. Without such a foundation, a person is left ill-equipped to really understand the world and to make good decisions that will lead them to a personally fulfilling life. Finally, a strong liberal arts education is also important because it builds the foundation for philosophical and critical thinking. In many ways, the educational process is inherently philosophical.44 Education should foster this natural wonderment of the human child, guiding and fortifying children through the study of the human person that a liberal arts curriculum can provide and ultimately preparing the child with the skills and tools that will be necessary to take control of his or her life. Even if a student never takes a formal class in philosophy, it is important that her or his education helps develop critical thinking skills that the child will need to move into adulthood. As an adult, one needs to be able to understand the world, but one also needs to be able to evaluate one’s actions and the actions of others. To be fair, some advocates of scientific literacy acknowledge this need to help people develop critical thinking skills.45 Yet, in their discussions, the scientific literacy advocates seem to assume that critical thinking and logic come from the study of science and math alone. A broader, more holistic perspective reveals the intellectual habits developed throughout the entire educational process are what pave the way for habits of evaluation and action—which brings us to the realm of ethics. However, as Hancock observes, “A chief failing of ‘modern’ education is its unwillingness to instruct children in attaining the moral virtues.”46 Hancock goes on to point out that there are many reasons for this failure to provide moral education to children. But one reason

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certainly may be the focus on science and math as the only valuable things a child needs to study. Science and math do not take the child’s education as far as it needs to go. And, as we have been increasing the focus on scientific areas of study at all levels of American education while decreasing the arts and humanities, we may well be making the failure of moral education worse.

Conclusion: Proper Role of Science in Education Herein lies the real danger of the contemporary focus on science and what I would argue is the real “crisis” in American education—the inflation of human science as the sole basis for all truth. Many scientists seem to view all of the dilemmas that humanity faces as being based on, and therefore solvable with, science. Such an attitude can easily lead to the dismissal of all non-scientific areas of our lives. Ethics and morality are not necessary, religion is not necessary, faith is not necessary—only science. The problem is that most of the dilemmas we face in the contemporary world, even those that involve science, are ethical dilemmas that impact our human personhood. As such, they cannot be answered properly with science alone. This is not to say that science is unimportant, but rather to emphasize that there is more to education and problemsolving than science and math. To claim that scientific knowledge is all we need, and then to use that belief as the driving force for education reform, is to destroy the very spirit of education. This realization may also explain why so many scientists do not understand the opposition people raise against research into the human genome, or embryonic stem cells, or irradiated foods, and so on. The reality is that science only gets us so far. Whether or not one understands how human genetics works, that in no way helps to determine if we ought to attempt to alter human beings by manipulating their genes. Certainly, to debate cloning it helps to have a basic knowledge of the process by which this is accomplished. But trying to figure out if we ought to clone human beings, whether as a source for embryonic stem cells or as an extreme way to help infertile couples have children, is solely an ethical issue, deeply impacted by our understanding of what it is to be a human person and our obligations to respect each other. Scientific knowledge in the contemporary sense does not make one automatically wise, nor automatically ethical, but is only one part of human knowledge. Here the scientist is no better off than the lay person. Scientists often do not grasp—or simply choose to ignore—the philosophical dimensions of their own research and its ethical

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impact on human society. Dare we say they are “philosophically illiterate?” In the end, I believe that the issue of scientific literacy as it is currently playing out in American education and politics revolves around the frustrations of scientists who face a public that opposes aspects of their research. A simplistic attitude is offered that all such opposition stems from a lack of understanding science and all of the good it can do driven by emotional or religious fears. Determined to stem the tide of opposition and to create more freedom for scientists (and to attract more money and resources), scientists and science educators have been lobbying for more and more science and math education in grades K-12. They have presented their views in a twofold manner—alarming us of the dangers of a scientifically illiterate populace for our future existence, while also pointing out how much more wonderful life is when you think scientifically. But what underlies all of this is not really the wonder and beauty of science. No, what is at stake here are the activities that scientists want to be able to do, and action is the realm of ethics. Scientists must recognize that the general public has both a right and a duty to be involved with decisions about all human activities that impact our lives together. It is this ethical scrutiny that they seem to fear and that they want to dispense with. And so, to recover a healthy educational system in America, we need to remind educators of this simple truth: education must be holistic and focus on the whole person. To that extent, we need to teach children those ideas, disciplines, and ways of thinking that lead, along with science properly understood, to higher wisdom. However, if children are taught from kindergarten on to think primarily in a scientific manner, and to put their reliance upon empirical data only, we may lose our ability to effectively resolve the dilemmas human society will face in the future. To grapple with the problems of science, as with any of the problems of human life, one needs more than education in science and mathematics. A human person needs an education that speaks to the whole self. A human person needs an education that is broad enough to open the mind to the many different ways of knowing of which a human being is capable. A human person needs an education that will build critical thinking and a basis for moral decision-making that understands right from wrong. I believe a strong liberal arts education, properly understood, is the best means to achieve a healthy democracy and an “ethically literate” citizenry.

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Notes 1

Research quoted in, “Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much,” by Cornelia Dean, published in the online edition of The New York Times, August 30, 2005, accessed June 14, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/science/30profile.html?ex=1182052800&en= e8760aa7d255022a&ei=5070. 2 Research quoted in, “A Twenty-Year Survey of Science Literacy Among College Undergraduates,” by Chris Impey, et al., Journal of College Science Teaching 40, n. 4 (March/April 2011), 31-37. One notable passage indicated: “The results for students who have finished all of their science requirements are disconcerting. One in three think that antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria, one in four think that lasers work by focusing sounds waves, one in five think that atoms are smaller than electrons, and one in five either do not believe or are unaware that humans evolved from earlier species of animals and that the Earth goes around the Sun in a year. Only one in five undergraduates say that astrology is ‘not at all’ scientific, although that fraction increases from 17% to 34% as they move through the university.” 3 National Research Council, National Science Education Standards, “National Science Education Standards: An Overview” (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 1996), 1. 4 For an interesting discussion regarding the motivations behind the scientific literacy movement, see George E. DeBoer, “Scientific Literacy: Another Look at Its Historical and Contemporary Meanings and Its Relationship to Science Education Reform,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 37, n. 6, (2000), 582-601, and Derek Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy: A Teacher’s Guide to the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008), especially, “Chapter 1: In Pursuit of Scientific Literacy,” 1-22. 5 See, Morris H. Shamos, The Myth of Scientific Literacy (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 131; DeBoer, “Scientific Literacy,” 582-601; Rudiger C. Laugksch, “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual Framework,” Science Education 84 (2000): 71-94; Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy,” especially, “Chapter 1: In Pursuit of Scientific Literacy,” 1-22; and, Carol Anelli, “Scientific Literacy: What Is It, Are We Teaching It, and Does It Matter?” American Entomologist 57, n. 4 (Winter 2011), 235-243. 6 Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy, “Chapter 4: The Scientific Literacy Movement,” 77-80. 7 John Dewey, “Symposium on the Purpose and Organization of Physics Teaching in Secondary Schools, Part 13,” School Science and Mathematics 9 (1909), 291292, quoted in Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy, 77-78. 8 Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy, 83. 9 As Shamos put it: “Then, in October 1957, came the shock wave created by Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, and the NSF education programs went in to high gear. Determined not to allow the Soviet Union to surpass the United States in scientific and technological achievement, Congress increased

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NSF’s education budget from three and a half million dollars to nineteen million dollars, and eventually to sixty-one million dollars, and enlarged the agency’s statutory authority, permitting it to support science, mathematics, and engineering education at all levels, including the elementary grades.” In Myth of Scientific Literacy, 83. 10 Paul Hurd, “Science Literacy: Its Meaning for American Schools,” Educational Leadership 16 (1958), 13-16. 11 Richard McCurdy, “Towards a Population Literate in Science,” Science Teacher 25 (1958), 366-368. 12 For a detailed overview of the historical development of the “scientific literacy movement,” see Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy, and DeBoer, “Scientific Literacy.” For a briefer, but still helpful review, see Anelli, “Scientific Literacy: What Is It,” Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy, or Laugksch, “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual Framework.” 13 For example, one survey of the literature from 1974 through 1990 found over 330 journal articles, conference papers, editorials and such related to scientific literacy, see Laugksch, “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual Framework,” 73. 14 Jon D. Miller, “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual and Empirical Review,” Daedalus 112, n. 2 (1983), 29-48. 15 Jon D. Miller, “Civic Scientific Literacy: A Necessity in the 21st Century,” FAS Public Interest Report 55, n. 1 (January/February 2002), 4. 16 For a few noteworthy examples, see Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy, Laugksch, “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual Framework,” and Jane Maienschein, “Scientific Literacy,” Editorial, Science 281, n. 5379 (August 14, 1998), 917. 17 Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy, 2. 18 For example, see National Research Council, National Science Education Standards, “National Science Education Standards: An Overview,” 11-12; Jane Maienschein, “Scientific Literacy,” 917; Jon D. Miller, “Civic Scientific Literacy: A Necessity in the 21st Century,” 3; National Science Board, National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science & Engineering Indicators 2004, “Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding” (Arlington, VA: NSB, May 2004), 7-15, accessed August 28, 2007, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/pdf/c07.pdf; Derek Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy: A Teacher’s Guide to the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, 14; Art Hobson, “The Surprising Effectiveness of College Scientific Literacy Courses,” The Physics Teacher 46 (October 2008), 404; Earth Science Literacy Initiative, “Earth Science Literacy Principles: The Big Ideas and Supporting Concepts of Earth Science,” available at www.earthscienceliteracy.org, May 2009, 1; James Trefil and Robert M. Hazen, “Scientific Literacy: A Modest Proposal,” in Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010), 5869; Chris Impey, et al., “A Twenty-Year Survey of Science Literacy Among College Undergraduates,” 32-34; Bruce Wightman, “A Better Rationale for Science Literacy,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 30, 2011, downloaded from: chronicle.com/article/A-Better-Rationale-for-Science/129541;

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and, Carol Anelli, “Scientific Literacy: What Is It, Are We Teaching It, and Does It Matter?,” 243. 19 For a range of estimates regarding scientific literacy in America, see Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy; Maienschein, “Scientific Literacy;” Miller, “Civic Scientific Literacy;” Jon D. Miller, “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy: The Role of the Media in the Electronic Era,” in Science and the Media, eds. Donald Kennedy and Geneva Overholser (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010), 45; and, Jon D. Miller, “The Conceptualization and Measurement of Civic Scientific Literacy for the 21st Century,” in Science and the Educated American, eds. Meinwald and Hildebrand (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010), 241-255. 20 See Anelli, “Scientific Literacy: What Is It,” Hobson, “Surprising Effectiveness;” Miller, “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy;” and, National Science Board, National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, “Chapter 7, Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding,” (Arlington, VA: NSB, 2012), 74, accessed August 1, 2013, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ seind12/pdf/c07.pdf. For an opposing view that argues scientific literacy has not noticeably improved over the last twenty years in America, see Chris Impey, et. al., “A Twenty-Year Survey.” 21 Shamos’ words are telling here: “Here lies the real danger of scientific illiteracy; genetic engineering has already spawned groups of modern-day Luddites (neoLuddites) who prey on the public’s ignorance with mostly groundless warnings of dire consequences resulting from attempts to interfere with nature, like producing monsters or even the cloned Alphas, Betas, and Epsilons of Huxley’s Brave New World. The net result of such movements, whether by charlatans or by selfappointed, but generally ill-informed, guardians of society, is to slow the progress of science and technology, and mark its practitioners as a careless, perhaps even heartless, segment of society.” In Myth of Scientific Literacy, “Chapter 5: The ‘Two Cultures’—and a Third,” 106. 22 Shamos, Myth of Scientific Literacy, 118. 23 For a few examples, see Miller, “Civic Scientific Literacy;” “Scientific Literacy;” “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy;” “Conceptualization and Measurement,” “Opinion: To improve science literacy, researchers should run for school board,” Nature Medicine 17, n. 1 (January 2011), 21; and, “What Colleges and Universities Need to Do to Advance Civic Scientific Literacy and Preserve American Democracy,” Liberal Education 98, n. 4 (Fall 2012), 28-33. 24 National Science Board, National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science & Engineering Indicators 2004, “Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding,” (Arlington, VA: NSB, May 2004), 7-19, accessed August 28, 2007, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/pdf/c07.pdf. 25 National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators 2004, “Chapter 7: Science and Technology,” 7-24.

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National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators 2004, “Chapter 7: Science and Technology,” 7-29. 27 National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators 2004, “Chapter 7: Science and Technology,” 7-29. 28 For example, regarding the same issue of evolution, the 2012 report observed that people gave different responses to questions asking about the “theory of evolution” than they did when asked about their view of evolution directly. The report observed: “These differences may indicate that many Americans hold religious or other beliefs that cause them to be skeptical of certain established scientific ideas, even when they have some basic familiarity with those ideas.” In the Science & Engineering Indicators 2012, 7-42. 29 Liza Gross, “Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology,” Public Library of Science Biology 4, n. 5 (April 18, 2006), e167, accessed August 28, 2007, http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10. 1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0040167&ct=1. 30 Gross, “Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover.” 31 Gross, “Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover.” 32 Miller, “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy,” 49. 33 Miller, “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy,” 56. 34 In the book chapter being discussed here, Miller references a slightly different standard, but with similar implications: “The index of religious beliefs is a count of the number of times a respondent indicated agreement with (1) ‘The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally’; and (2) ‘There is a personal God who hears the prayers of individual men and women’; and indicated disagreement with (3) ‘Human beings developed from earlier forms of life.’ Individuals who scored three on this index were classified as fundamentalist (22 percent); individuals who scored two were classified as conservative (15 percent); individuals who scored one were classified as moderate (25 percent); and individuals who scored zero on the scale were classified as liberal-none (38 percent).” Miller, “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy,” 63, note #6. 35 Hobson, “Surprising Effectiveness,” 406. 36 Miller, “Civic Scientific Literacy,” 6. 37 Curtis L. Hancock, Recovering A Catholic Philosophy Of Elementary Education (Mount Pocono, PA: Newman House Press, 2005), 64. 38 Hancock, Recovering A Catholic Philosophy, 76. 39 For some noteworthy examples, see Miller, “What Colleges and Universities Need to Do,” DeBoer, “Scientific Literacy,” and, Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy, especially, “Chapter 2: Exploring Nature of Science Issues,” 23-40. 40 For an interesting discussion of curriculum narrowing in American education see, Craig D. Jerald, “The Hidden Costs of Curriculum Narrowing,” Issue Brief, The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement (August 2006), accessed on August 27, 2007 at http://www.centerforcsri.org/files/CenterIssueBriefAug06.pdf, and Elena Silva, “On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time,” Education Sector (2007), accessed on August 27, 2007, at http://www.educationsector.org/research/

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research_show.htm?doc_id=442238. 41 For one illustrative example, see the Association of American Colleges and Universities, National Panel Report, “Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College” (Washington, D.C., 2002), especially “Chapter 3: The Learning Students Need for the 21st Century,” 21-28. 42 For a noteworthy example, see the official journal of the Association of American Colleges and Universities titled, Liberal Education. 43 Hancock’s explanation is worth noting here: “If true human freedom lies in the development of our full human nature, we can be free only when, with the help of others, we have developed our determinate human potentials. … But our human powers cannot be developed without habituating them. Without habits, our powers are random, indeterminate, and subject to the whims of our environment; they are purposeless and fruitless. A rudderless and unproductive life cannot exemplify human freedom. Habits are paradoxical in that they are both limiting and liberating. Habits provide the channel, purpose, and productivity for our powers to expand the range of knowledge and action and, thus, to ensure that our choices enhance, instead of undermine, our humanity.” In, Recovering A Catholic Philosophy, 86. 44 Hancock illustrates this well when he writes: “Every good teacher knows that questions can bring about remarkable conversations, even in very young children. These questions are ways of engaging the child in wonder. Under the influence of wonder, children seek philosophical understanding, which may impel them to develop skills in clarification and justification. Through such conversation, a little philosopher starts to awaken in the child. That children can be philosophical may surprise some. It comes as no surprise, however, to someone philosophizing in the spirit of the ancient Greeks. Adler’s dictum that philosophy is for everybody applies to children as well.” In, Recovering A Catholic Philosophy, 72. 45 For example, see Miller, “Chapter 4: Civic Scientific Literacy,” 55, and Hodson, Towards Scientific Literacy, “Chapter 1: In Pursuit of Scientific Literacy,” 2-3. 46 Hancock, Recovering A Catholic Philosophy, 101.

PART VII: THEOLOGY

VERBUM ET PRINCIPIUM IN AQUINAS’S COMMENTARY ON ST. JOHN: A PRELUDE TO PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY JAMES G. HANINK

The Lectura super Iaonnem: John 1: 1-4 “Please God that it is not too inadequate to the work.” So wrote Reginald of Piperno after completing his reportatio, or notes, of St. Thomas’s Lectura super Ioannem. Reginald’s prayer was answered, and we are among its beneficiaries. Thomas presented these lectures between 1270 and 1272, during the same period in which he was writing Part III of the Summa Theologiae. Thus they reflect his most mature thought, and his Commentary is a rich expression of the Common Doctor’s biblical theology.1 It is a work in the service of Sacra Doctrina which, while drawing on all of the sciences, is itself vital for salvation. Humility requires us to admit our limits. Thomas points out what long experience confirms: “The truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors.”2 In service to the truth about God, the Lectura show the fruitful interplay of theology and philosophy. In this relation, writes St. John Paul II, “what matters most is that the believer’s reason use its power of reflection in the search for truth which moves from the word of God towards a better understanding of it.”3 With that criterion and given my own limits, I will consider only the four introductory verses of Thomas’s first lecture. In doing so, my goal is to highlight their framework for anthropological and metaphysical questions that are enduring and thus contemporary. Let us revisit, with this goal in mind, the familiar lines, so long associated with the “Last Gospel” of what is now the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite: 1 In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were

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made through him, and without him nothing was made. What was made 4a in him was life. 4b And that life was the light of men. (Commentary translation)

In the following reflections, I want to explore the special significance of “Word” and “beginning” in these verses.

On the Word: Questions and Replies What is this Word (Verbum; ੒ ȁȩȖȠȢ) which the Gospel announces?4 And how are we to understand the beginning (principium; ਕȡȤȒ) in which the Word is already present? Thomas’s answer to the first question draws on Aristotle’s claim in De Interpretatione: “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience.”5 For Thomas they express the very “affections of one’s soul.”6 In a related passage in the Summa Theologiae, having noted that the act of understanding is intransitive, he teaches: [B]y the very fact of understanding there proceeds something within us, which is a conception of the object understood, a conception issuing from our intellectual power and proceeding from our knowledge of that object. This conception is signified by the spoken word; and it is called the word of the heart signified by the word of the voice.7

To be sure, here his account is of our human understanding and the word that it brings into existence. The Divine Word is profoundly different. What, then, are we to say of the Divine Word—if we can say anything at all? In answer to this question, Thomas’s Commentary calls attention to St. Augustine’s contrast between the human word and the Divine Word. The human word has three distinct features: (1) it is in potency before it is in act, (2) it is limited in what it says, and (3) it is of an entirely different nature than we ourselves are. The Divine Word, in contrast, has three opposing features: (1) it is always in act; (2) it is wholly expressive; and (3) it is itself a Person in the Divinity. Yet this three-fold “contrastive thesis,” as we might term it, raises its own fresh questions: Should we understand the human word as Thomas does? And if we should, how are we to reach from the human word to the Divine Word that was with God and, indeed, is God? Pointed and persistent questions often invite us to engage competing schools of thought, and we do well to accept such invitations. By doing so, we can both deepen our own tradition and become aware of its lacunae. We can learn from our interlocutors and even from their mistakes.

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Methodologically, there is merit in a “dialogical pluralism” that initially concerns itself more with progress toward greater understanding than with fixing a philosophical Archimedean point.8 A kind of faith comes into play in such exchanges. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger underscores its role when he writes that “Christians must…live a faith that comes from the ‘Logos,’ from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational.”9 And note well: nothing prevent us from arguing for strong conclusions while nonetheless exploring the development of alternative philosophical programs and comparing their subsequent results. Such an approach promises to be more helpful than the hasty clash of incompatible commitments.10 In the discussion at hand, we face pointed and persistent questions about language and meaning. Such questions might well lead us to consider contemporary anti-foundationalism as an epistemic program. On this occasion, I propose that we take account of its Wittgensteinian mode, since Wittgenstein insistently disputes Augustine’s theory of language, a primary source for the account of language which Thomas employs. On Wittgenstein’s view, such a theory is too restrictive and overly intellectualized. Indeed, at the outset of his Philosophical Investigations, he cites, in order to dispute, the portrayal of language learning that Augustine presents in the Confessions. When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out. This, however, I gathered from their gestures, the natural language of all peoples, the language that by means of facial expressions and the play of eyes, of the movements of the limbs and the tone of voice, indicates the affections of the soul when it desires, or clings to, or rejects, or recoils from something. In this way…I learnt to understand what things the words…signified.11

To be sure, Augustine captures something of how our language acquisition works. But Wittgenstein thinks that far too much is lost. Thus he registers the following criticism: Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in several cases where the question arises “Will that description do or not?” The answer is: “Yes, it will, but only for this narrowly circumscribed area, not for the whole of what you were purporting to describe.”12

Later Wittgenstein extends his criticism, and he does so in a way that suggests his famous anti-private language arguments.13

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And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a foreign country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if he already had a language, only not this one. Or again, as if the child could already think, only not yet speak.14

If Wittgenstein’s criticism is correct, it follows that insofar as Thomas follows Augustine, his account of language is badly incomplete and mistakenly presupposes either a pre-existing language or, alternatively, some sort of wordless thought in the learning of one’s supposed first language. At this point, however, Thomists can offer at least three responses. First, they can readily make friends with any well-grounded advances in explaining language acquisition and linguistic reference, especially in light of the variously distinctive contexts of both. Second, they can underscore and deepen Augustine’s appreciation of the pivotal roles of body language and intonation as well as the expressive rituals that can attend both. In this way, Thomists can and should make good use of Wittgenstein’s insights about language. But Thomists can also raise a critical objection to Wittgenstein’s dismissal of doxastic, that is, belief based and propositional foundationalism.15 This third response underscores the inescapable and foundational character of intelligibility. It points out that intelligibility, that is, lȩgos broadly understood, is a requirement for any vocal utterance or written marks to constitute a human word. As Marie McGinn observes, “It is only if his utterance can thus be construed as the intelligible action of a rational human agent that a speaker succeeds in meaning anything at all by what he utters.”16 For however developed one’s view, language acquisition and its referential adequacy presuppose that a language has an internal coherence that is accessible to human intellection. Language acquisition involves more than iterated signaling behavior; it requires the mastery of a fluid range of actions that require choice and exhibit intentionality. Human acts, moreover, proceed from a deliberate will and thus they have a moral dimension. Indeed, with respect to moral acts, Thomas notes that they “receive their species from their end, for moral acts are the same as human acts” (ST I-II, q. 1., a. 4). Thus, in that we seek the end of our acts, Thomas teaches that our acts “take their species according to what is intended” (ST I-II, q. 64, a. 7). Moreover, one’s intention is the immanent form of one’s act. Of course, moral intentionality requires intelligence. We might speak of an animal’s intention to flee but not, say, of an animal’s intention to be derelict in duty. There is a distinctively human interplay of intelligence and intentionality.

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In his Culture and Value, Wittgenstein also contends, following Goethe, that “Language—I want to say—is a refinement, ‘in the beginning was the deed.’”17 In On Certainty he writes “Words are deeds,” and he tells us that “Giving grounds…comes to an end;—but the end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting.”18 In response, however, the Thomist can again underscore the role of intelligibility, in this case as a requirement for any physical event to count as a human action. But there is much more: for the Thomist, intelligibility is the key to answering the question of how we are to reach beyond the human word to the Divine Word. And how is it the key? It is because intelligibility grounds the analogical relation between the human word and the Divine Word that there is warrant for Thomas’s contrastive and yet constructive linking of the two.19 To be sure, there is a far greater dissimilarity than similarity between the human word and the Word. As Aquinas notes in his Commentary, “Every creature possesses some likeness to God, but it is infinitely distant from a likeness to his nature.”20 Yet both the human word and the Divine Word have the perfective property of intelligence, a sine qua non for agency. (Manifesting intelligence is a perfective property without internal limitations, unlike mixed properties with physical limits, for example, “athletically fit” or “hard working.”)21 For the Thomist, of course, one cannot think of the relation between the creature and the Creator apart from Creation. It is a doctrine that invites us to reflect in new and startling ways about time and history; it reframes the intelligibility of the entire natural order. Thus, reflecting on the history of philosophy, it is one thing to affirm, as so many have, the principle of sufficient reason: namely, that there is a sufficient reason for whatever exists, whatever happens, and whatever is true. Some rationalists make systematic use of it.22 But it is quite another thing to identify the source of such reasonableness, and how are we to do so unless we ask why there are any explanations at all? Explanation, moreover, is possible only if there is intelligible truth. The Thomist, to be sure, can affirm that ens et verum convertuntur, because in the last analysis, as Josef Pieper remarks, “it is the same whether I say ‘something real’ or whether I say ‘something creatively thought by God.’”23

On the Beginning: Questions and Replies We come next to the consideration of St. John’s “the beginning” (principium, ਕȡȤȒ). Here we are to understand principium not as an

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abstract principle but as a vital and active source of order. In particular, we are to look to the ordering of the Word, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, as the generative cause of all created things. To be sure, the affirmation of this “generative order proposal,” as we might term it, also raises further questions. We have, after all, advanced far beyond the schematic claims of the ancient materialists. So why should we hesitate to explain the order of things using the increasingly detailed naturalistic terms now available to us? And if such an account of order has significant explanatory power, why should we still consider the Word as our principium, the generative cause through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made?24 These familiar and plausible questions invite us to engage evolutionary naturalism, that is, what Thomas Nagel calls “the theory that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.”25 In this engagement, Thomists can and should underscore the role of the human agent in our understanding both causal agency and the ratio of the value which an intelligible teleology presupposes. To begin with the former, we make sense of causality by first drawing on the experience of our own agency. For this reason, subpersonal and merely evolutionary events, taken solely by themselves, do not explain our lives as we live them. Here Blessed John Henry Newman is an ally. He reminds us that if we are to reason, we need starting points, and that prominent among them is that nothing happens without a cause. Nonetheless, we come to realize this abstract thesis in the course of our own experience. Newman reflects on how it is that a lad, in growing up, learns the efficacy of his intelligence and will; but he also learns the limits of his power to achieve an end, a lesson that watchful parents and Mother Nature join forces to teach him. Newman distinguishes, accordingly, between our personal experience and the widening range of events that we bring into analogy with it. He writes: Of these two senses of the word “cause,” viz., that which brings a thing to be, and that on which a thing under given circumstances follows, the former is that of which our experience is the earlier and more intimate, being suggested to us by our consciousness of willing and doing. 26

In light of this distinction, then, he continues: “Starting, then, from experience, I consider a cause to be an effective will; and, by the doctrine of causation, I mean the notion, or first principle, that all things come of effective will.”27 Natural regularities go far beyond personal agency; but such regularities are observable patterns and, as such, the objects of a spectator. In this perspectival regard they differ from first person causality,

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the lived volitional experience of an agent. In affirming Newman’s distinction, W. Norris Clarke, S.J., writes that “we discover efficient causality by our experience from within, then extend it by well-grounded analogous interpretation to things outside of us…an interpretation learned spontaneously very early and constantly confirmed by social usage and practical effectiveness in solving problems.”28 The guiding theoretical point, for our purposes, is clear: transpersonal scientific explanation occurs to us only in virtue of our prior and distinct experience of explanation in terms of personal agency. Consider, next, the latter point noted earlier, the ratio of the value which an intelligible teleology presupposes. We cannot make sense of value, whether aesthetic or moral, apart from that which we seek. It is a “seeking” that evidences the teleology that reductive naturalism denies, and here the anti-thei St. Thomas Nagel is an ally. For a start, he argues, it is question-begging to assume that biology is somehow subsumable under the mathematized laws of physics and chemistry.29 Believers are hardly alone in looking beyond what Nagel calls “a dead environment” for basic answers about both the coming to be of life, especially rational life, and its stunning uniqueness.30 A Thomist, to be sure, can and should say more: any plausible reductivist account of life would first need to show that the life of a person is a property that admits of reduction rather than something far richer: an irreducible and fundamental activity.31 But there are further fundamental considerations. Nagel thinks that we are hard pressed to make sense of value itself apart from life. And here, as believers, we might well think of John 1: 4: What was made (4a) in him was life. (4b) And that life was the light of men. For John this life is not the ȕȓȠȢ of Aristotle but rather the ȗȦȒ of Scripture, that is, the very life with which Christ identifies himself (Jn 14:6).32, 33 Indeed, for his part, Nagel says that “Value enters the world with life, and the capacity to recognize and be influenced by value in its larger extension appears with higher forms of life.”34 In keeping with these claims, he contends that life is the sphere of value and its “necessary condition.”35 The teleology of life, he speculates, has value as its goal. (At one point he insouciantly notes that he is “extravagantly speculative” and yet later laments that he is “far too unimaginative.”)36, 37 If Nagel’s large claims are true, then we cannot understand teleology without addressing the core questions of axiology. But in this enterprise reductive naturalism is, once more, a doubtful affair. Since it eliminates the sphere of value, at least as a realist understands it, such naturalism is disinclined to make room for teleology and hardpressed even to make sense of it. Hence, we have good reason to reject the reductivist character of such naturalism.

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But there is more. Absent teleology, how are we to make sense of the exercise of practical reason that plays so central a role in human life? In this regard, Nagel asks us to consider what practical reason requires and, in doing so, to recognize the inability of reductive naturalism to account for its exercise. If Nagel is on track, it follows that reductivist evolutionary theories fail to explain what it is to live a human life. Well, then, is Nagel on track, at least from a Thomist perspective? We can highlight the core requirements of practical reason if we focus on judgments of value as a form of practical reason. Here three such requirements are paramount, and reductive materialism fails to account for any of them. First, value judgments are true or false in a way that goes beyond mere assertability conditions, and this truth value itself plays no evolutionary role. As Nagel observes, “So far as natural selection is concerned, pain could perfectly well be in itself good, and pleasure in itself bad [or] both of them might be in themselves valueless—though we are naturally blind to the fact.”38 Here a qualification comes to mind. Given the role of pain in the Divine economy, a Thomist might well replace “pain” with, say, “torture.” Second, judgments of value provide grounds for acting that presuppose free will. Thus, when we experience something bad, we ordinarily choose to counteract it. Consider an academic’s lament: Is your vision blurring? Sorry, I’ll change the computer font. But my offer is an exercise of personal agency, and so too is its execution. Thus Nagel writes: “Human action…is explained not only by physiology, or by desires, but by judgments.”39 A Thomist agrees that our judgments look to, and discriminate among, the reasons and values that engage our free responses to them. Third, judgments of value presuppose the unity of subject. My hand, for example, does not offer to adjust the computer font, nor do my eyes process the reasons for doing so. Neither is my central nervous system intransitively enriched by coming to your assistance. Thus Nagel observes: “The response to value seems only to make sense as a function of the unified subject of consciousness, and not as a combination of the responses of its parts.”40 Indeed, Nagel’s point could be made still more telling. From Descartes on, taking consciousness as such to be an agent has proven to be a mistake. Hume says as much in his own sober second thoughts on personal identity.41 Consciousness, whatever its unity, requires a subject. To use Karol Wojtyáa’s term, the “hypostatization of consciousness” displaces both the body in personal agency and the soul as the principle of that agency.42 Of note here is that the recent exchange

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between Benedict XVI and the mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi made reference to the related claim that reason requires a subject, “a mind that is conscious of itself.”43 What follows, then, in light of these requirements of practical reason? At least this much: there is compelling reason not to extend intellectual credit to reductive naturalists if only because their project undermines what we know ourselves to be capable of: the exercise of practical reason. Having given Nagel their thanks, Thomists would nonetheless offer a caveat. Nagel advances a type of anti-naturalist ethical intuitionism. Yes, he tells us, he is a value realist but one who is free of “metaphysical baggage.”44 For Nagel, values simply are; only with the advent of life can we speak of the appreciation of value; nonetheless a value does not become such because we appreciate it. Nor, he insists, is there a God who brings objective values into existence.45 The Thomist, however, contends that the human good just is human flourishing. We need not appeal to a separate intuition to realize that knowledge, the appreciation of beauty, friendship, life and health, sexual community, and the care of our children are basic goods.46 These goods are mind-independent in the sense that we do not make it the case that they are core constituents of human flourishing, any more than, say, penguins make it the case that huddling together keeps them from freezing. Now if we ask why human flourishing is a good, the Thomist speaks of it as our participation in the Eternal Law. Indeed, the whole of Creation, with a “shout out” for penguins (whether huddling or waddling), is a good and gives glory to God. Here, then, the Thomist asks us to return to the “generative order proposal”—that the Word is the generative cause of all things. The Thomist also urges a personalist metaphysics that reflects the Revelation that announces the principium of that which is. Sharing in the life of this principium, we live in light. With an acknowledgment of St. John Chrysostom, Thomas rejoices that this creative life is forever undiminished and acts freely rather than from necessity.47

Envoi Reflection on the initial verses of the Gospel of John suggests an integrative perspective, namely, that interpersonal relationships offer the best setting for philosophical anthropology and for the metaphysics to which it leads. He who was in the beginning with God exemplifies this venue and invites us to share in it. Scripture itself is dialogical rather than dialectical. Indeed, at the outset of The Grammar of Assent, Cardinal

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Newman cites St. Ambrose’s words: “Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum.” Thus the Thomist welcomes Norris Clarke’s realist claim that “we can know other human beings as just as real as ourselves and successfully exchange information with them in interpersonal dialogue.”48 Were it not so, the path of dialogical pluralism itself would be closed off to us. There remains a final and foundational interrelation to recognize. Without the personalist dynamic of the family, there would be no human community whatever, much less a fellowship of philosophers. How could Thomists do other than to highlight the centrality of the family? The human person rightly develops within the family, past or present denials notwithstanding. (St. John Chrysostom chides philosophers who “have spent their whole life in making women common to all, in overthrowing the very order of life, in doing away with the honor of marriage, and in making other the like ridiculous laws.”)49 Using the language of Vatican Council II, John Paul II wrote: The “communion” of persons is drawn in a certain sense from the mystery of the Trinitarian “We,” and therefore “conjugal communion” also refers to this mystery. The family, which originates in the love of man and woman, ultimately derives from the mystery of God.50

And now comes Pope Francis who writes: “The first setting in which faith enlightens the human city is the family. I think…of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own love.”51 Yes, and John’s Gospel tells us: What was made (4a) in him was life. Because of this life, marital love uniquely shares in divine Creation.

Notes Thanks are due to Elizabeth Murray, Shannon Nason, and Alice Ramos for their encouragement, to Germain Grisez and Michael Torre for their criticisms, and to William Britt for translation alert. 1 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John (Three volumes), trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P, and James A. Weisheipl, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Hereafter Commentary. 2 ST I, q. 1, a. 1. 3 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, §73. 4 The Johannine Word is rooted in the Old Testament teaching of the Word as mediator. For a discussion of John’s sources, see Edgar J. Lovelady, “The Logos Concept” in the Grace Theological Journal 4.2 (Spring 1963), 15–24.

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Aristotle, De Interpretatione I (16a 3-4), trans. E. M. Edghill. Aquinas, Commentary, 12, §25. 7 ST I, q. 27, a. 1. 8 On the right use of dialogical pluralism, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008), xi. 9 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Europe’s Crisis of Culture,” retrieved from Catholiceducation.org. http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholiccontributions/cardinal-ratzinger-on-europe-s-crisis-of-culture.html (Accessed November 18, 2014.) 10 On the need for such gradualism, see Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 127. 11 Augustine, Confessions, I. 8. “Cum ipsi (majores homines) appellabant rem aliquam, et cum secundum eam vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant, videbam, et tenebam hos ab eis vocari rem illam, quod sonabant, cum eam vellent ostendere. Hoc autem eos velle ex motu corporis aperiebatur: tamquam verbis naturalibus omnium gentium, quae fiunt vultu et nutu oculorum, ceterorumque membrorum actu, et sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis, habendis, rejiciendis, fugiendisve rebus. Ita verba in variis sententiis locis suis posita, et crebro audita, quarum rerum signa essent.” 12 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Revised fourth edition. (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), §3. (Hereafter PI). 13 For a discussion of Wittgenstein’s arguments, see Steward Candish and George Wrisley, “Private Language,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Summer 2012 Edition). 14 Wittgenstein, PI, §32. 15 For an account of types of foundationalism, see Avrum Stroll’s “Wittgenstein’s Foundational Metaphors” in The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, ed. Danièle Moyal-Sharrock (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004), 13–24. 16 Marie McGinn, Sense and Certainty: A Dissolution of Skepticism (Blackwell, 1984), 84. 17 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. G. H. Von Wright in collaboration with Heikki Nyman, trans. Peter Winch (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 31. (Hereafter CV.) Goethe had written “Im Anfang war die Tat.” See Faust, Part I (“In the Study”). CV, 46. 18 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, eds. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) §402, n. 2 and §204. 19 For a rejection of this link consider Samuel Beckett’s nihilistic quip that “In the beginning was the pun.” 20 Aquinas, Commentary, 38, §947. 6

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For a discussion of perfective properties, see John W. Carlson, Understanding Our Being: Introduction to Speculative Philosophy in the Perennial Tradition (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 210. 22 For a theological use of the principle, see G. W. Leibniz, Monadology, §37-55. 23 Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas, trans. John Murray, S.J., and Daniel O’Connor. (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1957), 61. 24 Karl Marx famously contends that it is deeply alienating to avoid this question and that the philosopher must move beyond theological myth. Marx’s own Darwinism leads him to affirm that it is labor that makes man. See “Alienated Labor,” in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, eds. and trans. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967), 287–300. 25 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 6. 26 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, ed. I.T. Ker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 50–51. 27 Newman, Grammar, 51–52. 28 W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 189. 29 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 19–20. 30 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 123. 31 Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between “Someone” and “Something,” trans. Oliver O’Donovan. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4. 32 For a discussion of life in John’s Gospel, see Carlo Leget, “The Concept of ‘Life’ in the Commentary on St. John” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, eds. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 153–172. 33 Reflecting on this verse, Robert Spaemann comments that it leads us to link being with life and knowledge. See his Persons, 153. 34 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 120. 35 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 123. 36 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 115. 37 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 127. 38 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 109. 39 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 114. 40 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 115. 41 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 635–636. 42 Karol Wojtyáa, “Thomistic Personalism” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 169. 43 Giulia Galeotti, “An open dialogue” L’Osservatore Romano, 40 (October 2, 2013), 12. 44 Nagel, Mind & Cosmos, 98. 45 John Crosby, in criticizing an exaggerated ethical eudaimonism, argues that, on the contrary, God does just this. See his Selfhood of the Human Person

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(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), especially Ch. 6, “Selfhood and Transcendence in Relation to the Good,” 174–215. 46 Germain Grisez systematically develops an axiology of basic goods in his The Way of the Lord Jesus, Volume One, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 115–133. 47 Aquinas, Commentary, 41. Here Thomas also remarks that “Chrysostom is held in such esteem by the Greeks in his explanations that they admit no other where he expounded anything in Holy Scripture.” 48 W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many, 13. 49 See Chrysostom’s Second Homily on The Gospel of John, §3. 50 John Paul II, Letter to Families, 1994, §8. For a discussion of John Paul II’s theology of marriage, see Donald J. Keefe, S.J., “John Paul II on the Eucharistic Foundation of Marriage and the Marital Foundation of a Free Society” in Love and Friendship: Maritain and the Tradition, ed. Montague Brown (Washington, D.C.: American Maritain Association; distributed by The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 203–217. 51 Francis, Lumen Fidei, §52.

THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, AND HISTORY: THE CHALLENGE OF BERNARD LONERGAN AND ÉTIENNE GILSON FOR THE NEW EVANGELIZATION HUGH WILLIAMS

Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. Luke 24:39 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures…so we proclaim and so we have come to believe. 1 Corinthians 15. 1-11

Introducing Conflict and Disagreement and its General Implications In this paper, I am arguing that the real conflict between Bernard Lonergan and Étienne Gilson of some years past is still central to Catholic-Christian thought in its present state and so an examination of the nature of this conflict is very important.1 However, because of time and space limitations, I am not able to elaborate on the argument here, though I do make some extensive references to the technical dimensions of the disagreement in endnotes 2, 3, 4, and 7 below. What I will do instead is ask the important question whether these two thinkers are fundamentally at odds, or whether there is also a complementarity that can be shown or even developed. One of the obstacles for this latter possibility is that Lonergan makes claims of primacy in philosophical explanation for his cognitional theory that Gilson would say is due only to an older more fundamental realist tradition of metaphysics.

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As said, the technical nature of this disagreement does warrant further careful discussion.2 It especially should give attention to Lonergan’s damaging characterization of Gilson’s position and provide appropriate counter arguments. However, what I will attempt in this paper is an exploration of possible areas of complementarity especially relevant for moving forward in Catholic-Christian thought or in what we should call Christian philosophy. For our purposes hear we can say that the most basic problem in Lonergan, in the Gilsonian view, is that there is insufficient attention paid to being as “the act of existence.”3 This notion is quickly lost sight of, or more aptly, is lost touch with as he pursues an often brilliant and illuminating examination of the structure and capacity of human cognition. And yet in this brilliance, according to the Gilsonian view, there is a tendency towards subjectivism.4 Often then this debate between Lonergan and Gilson is summed up as between Gilson’s apparent tendency towards naïve realism and dogmatism, and Lonergan’s apparent tendency towards subjectivism.5 Though these concerns may seem painfully theoretical, I will argue that they have serious implications still permeating Catholic-Christian thinking in a manner that has both practical and pastoral implications and thus remain relevant for the challenges presented by the recent call for The New Evangelization by the Church hierarchy.6 As we seriously consider this call for The New Evangelization, becoming conscious of the secularizing influences in our culture is inescapable. This is a central issue for our life and thought as Christian believers today and this creative tension between Lonergan and Gilson, in a significant and perhaps fruitful way, symbolizes an important intellectual dimension of this tension and conflict. Many Lonerganians speak passionately now about ineffectual thinking and talking because these human efforts are not functionally ordered to any serious project of implementation. From the Gilsonian side, there is recognition of the problem of ineffectual implementation because of what he has called subjectivism in thinking. In our view, Gilson’s charge of subjectivism in much of modern thought does apply to Lonergan in certain respects. To show this conclusively is an ambitious task that exceeds the purposes of this paper.7 My taking up of this charge against Lonergan, who, without doubt, is a great contemporary thinker in the CatholicChristian tradition, is more modest. It is not a global charge but is directed to certain tendencies in Lonergan’s corpus, especially in his treatment in Insight of the notion of being.8 Lonergan’s philosophy systematically defines the real as that which is affirmed by a well-made (virtually

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unconditioned) affirmation, without distinguishing explicitly between real and mental being. Norris Clarke has astutely observed that Lonergan gives no further criteria for distinguishing real (actually existing) being from mental being, which exists as an idea (or combination of ideas) in the mind. The difficulty is that logical and mathematical propositions can also be affirmed as true, without affirming real being of them. Finally in “Insight Revisited” and more explicitly in Method in Theology, due partly to his own new insights and partly, I think, to the pressure of existential Thomists, including myself, he came around to admit that one must distinguish explicitly between real and mental being. This removes the previous ambiguity and in fact is easily integrated into his basic epistemological doctrine of the invariant structure of knowing: data, insight, judgment. But it is now no longer possible to derive real being and metaphysics purely as the objective correlate of the structure of knowing, i.e., merely from the kind of act of knowing; it must be also from the content or kind of evidence grounding an affirmation, that must come from the object itself. Thus the recognition of action (or some connection with it) is the necessary condition for any affirmation of real existence; metaphysics and epistemology are mutually interwoven from the start. No absolutely “pure” epistemology, prior to and independent of an implicit metaphysics is really possible, it seems to me, as Lonergan seemed to have hoped.9

Illustration: A Recent Controversy over the Resurrection of Christ In a recent “Easter” edition of our local Catholic weekly, one reads the topical news article “Dramatic Jesus Discovery Lacks Hard Evidence” and in this otherwise very good article, one reads the following statement: Catholics have always known the resurrection does not refer to a resuscitated corpse. Jesus was resurrected as a spiritual body, just as all of us will be resurrected at the end of history regardless of the decay of our flesh and bones.10

In subsequent discussions I undertook with the author as to the meaning intended, I was told that Jesus was human and more than human at the same time. If (and it's a big if) there were bones, which could be positively identified as the bones of Jesus, would it change your faith? Would it mean He wasn't resurrected?

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Hugh Williams My answer in this short review of Simcha Jacobovici's film is no. The resurrection is a mystery that cannot be disproved by bones.

Pope Benedict XVI has recently written in his Apostolic Letter on The New Evangelization that though there are many people and communities who have a certain faith, many have an imperfect knowledge of that faith.11 Clearly our author was making at best a confusing claim that needed serious clarification and that lends considerable credence to the Pope’s concern, and the concern of Gilson many years before him. The article concerning the central Christian revelation and communicated widely in the Canadian Catholic media during the Easter period, clearly could contribute to an “imperfect knowledge” at best, if not actual ignorance and error on a critical point of fundamental doctrine regarding the “resurrection of the body.” The Catechism Of The Catholic Church has an extensive section on this doctrine and speaks very clearly and plainly, about the astounding belief by Christians in the resurrection in the flesh of the particular mortal body of Christ.12 This means that indeed we are speaking of the mysterious and miraculous resurrection in the flesh, and not just “spiritually,” of what indeed had been a corpse. In our short exchange on this question the author asked, “if…there were bones which could be positively identified as the bones of Jesus, would it change your faith?” I responded that the more important and fundamental question is whether it would change the faith of the Church: “For what I hold as true in this area of concern is intimately related to what the Church holds as true and at a minimum, I believe, it would mean revisiting the Arian position and its sources which are ancient.”13 At this point in our exchange, the author offered a perspective that is highly relevant for the discussion that follows in this paper concerning the relationship of Lonergan and Gilson. He argued, somewhat in the spirit of many Lonerganians, that this controversy we were dwelling on simply no longer grips our scientific, post-enlightenment mind. In our time we can believe the divine includes the human, that the divine would invite us into God's life, that God could and did intervene decisively in history. We can believe all this if only we can acknowledge that the divine exists in the first place. We are stuck with our immediate reality and cannot admit eschatological reality. (The position I was taking with him, he continued) is a narrow view of what it means to be human that I would argue lays a perfect platform for a dualistic and Jansenist faith.14

And, somewhat exasperated, he complained, “I'm not at all sure why you believe I'm advocating an allegorical reading of the resurrection.”

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With a Gilsonian stubbornness, I retorted, because simply put, if there are the bones of Jesus in the tomb, then there is not the resurrection the Church holds to and has preached as orthodox truth. What we have is something else—allegory, metaphor…and so on. To say the resurrection of Jesus is as real as can be even though the body and bones remain, is simply not the full and coherent view of “real” in the Catholic-Christian sense, and thus the doctrine of bodily resurrection would be profoundly altered by the discovery of the bones of Jesus. In a later explanatory and conciliatory note, the author wrote publically: I’m sorry. In writing about a controversial documentary earlier this month Dramatic Jesus discovery Lacks Hard Evidence I never should have brought up the Resurrection in such an offhand way. I should never have imagined the Resurrection could be explained in a single paragraph of a newspaper article.

Nevertheless, we do have to face up to the Lonerganian question and concern for meaning, and ask what does “Jesus was bodily raised from the dead” mean? The eminent Anglican historian and scripture scholar N. T. Wright reminds us of a profoundly important distinction between what he calls the “referent” and “meaning” of this sentence and claim.15 “Referent” in this instance means that the sentence “Jesus was bodily raised from the dead” refers, whether one believes it or not, to an historical event that happened bodily to Jesus and not to events in the hearts and minds of his followers. This “referent” always would be Gilson’s first concern as a “crass realist” as he once referred to himself and by which he distinguished his position from subjectivism, which would lead one to be first, if not exclusively, concerned with “events in the hearts and minds of believers.”16

The Ancient Concern for Being and the Modern Concern for the Human Subject: Kenneth Schmitz’s Efforts at Reconciliation Gilson’s diagnosis of modern and contemporary thought, according to Kenneth Schmitz, was developed within the context of a largely nonhistorical problematic that was for the most part innocent of the impact of history upon metaphysics.17 He had real difficulty forcefully engaging the new problematic of contingency and freedom that contemporary

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philosophy engages in existentialism and hermeneutics. Schmitz sees the problematic of contingency and freedom being profoundly reframed in the contemporary concerns for temporality, historicity, and pluralism along with the concerns for language and interpretation.18 For Gilson the major difference between ancient and modern philosophy turns primarily on the relation to the metaphysics implicit in the Christian revelation and the infusion of insight from this revelation and its tradition. Greek philosophy has come through the Christian medieval period transformed. The question posed by Gilson to contemporary thought, according to Schmitz, is how does one relate to this transformation? His particular insight drawn from his close study of medieval philosophy was centered upon the primacy of existential act and, for him, this transformation in thought always calls for the return of thought to its proper ground in the actuality of existence and perhaps paradoxically in a renewed appreciation for history. From a more technical perspective Schmitz sees this important concern for existential act as most appropriately applied to philosophies that share with Thomism the problematic of being and the similar principles and presuppositions of ens, esse, and essentia (thing, act of existence, and essence). This has meant it is very difficult to address these contemporary philosophical perspectives in terms of a metaphysics of existential act. The connection with contemporary concerns seems quite tenuous and remote both rhetorically and analytically. Nevertheless, Gilson insisted upon a realism grounded in the primacy of existential act expressed best in existential Thomism. He vigorously opposed any critical position that argued that any serious attempt to bring the act of existence to thought would naturally result in its objectification and falsification thereby undermining human authenticity and freedom. Schmitz has tried to show that to the extent contemporary philosophy can be understood as an effort to move out of and away from a distorting and disorienting type of abstraction, it has much in common with this Gilsonian criticism of a type of thinking that was forgetful or devaluing of the act of existence. Schmitz believes these new efforts, in which we include Lonergan’s important work, though they may not adequately consider the existential order of act, they do share a concern for and orientation towards the concrete for they have grasped something beyond essence or concept—the impact of subjectivity, history, and hermeneutics upon the contemporary problematic. Schmitz now believes it is Gilson’s tenacious orientation towards the concrete that can assist us in seeing the relevance of the question of existential act for contemporary philosophies and their problematic. It can provide the genuinely historical concerns in Christian philosophies such as Lonergan’s with a metaphysics perhaps

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better able to ground these philosophies in the value and worth they implicitly know to be their own. This is to resolve much more than a speculative problem for it truly requires a community of enquiry conscious of the history of thought out of which our present situation and it’s problematic has emerged. Both Lonergan and Gilson, in their respective commitments as Christian thinkers, understood this very well. Schmitz’s own scholarship has shown how personalist philosophies have mounted an important and serious critique of the reduction of human agency to technical function and to a deadening conformity. They have instead developed alternative modes of thought that have promoted human life in community where personal integrity is respected and in turn respects what is unique about each person. Schmitz’s astounding suggestion is that these personalist philosophies, at least in the Christian tradition, have a much greater significance for the tradition than simply their efforts to protect traditional human values in the face of an unrelenting technological advance.19 There is in this kind of philosophy an actual advance in the progressive unfolding of being and not only in our understanding of being.20 To be clear this is understood as an advance in the unfolding of being itself in its very history, according to Schmitz, and to get some initial sense of the significance of this insight from Christian personalism, we need to call to mind the similarity between knowledge and friendship. Though this dimension of knowledge in certain ways may be regarded as quite rare, according to Schmitz, it does not fall short of actual knowledge while at the same time it endows the knower with the riches of the one befriended. Speculative or scientific knowledge does not of itself do this, for it does not turn us into friends of the object known in this personal way. The relationship remains formal only. When we reflect upon our common human experience, we might say that in knowing one’s friend one also knows much more than him or her. What more is this? Here we confront the truth, which if known by way of befriending or loving it, is the very height of our freedom and is even seen by Christians as having to do with man’s triumph over death.21 It is for Christian scholasticism, because it is for Christianity more fundamentally, understood to be the way into eternal life. This truth for Christianity is a divine person and the way we come to know this truth is by way of this divine person’s free bestowal of himself who is eternal life. This involves a profound transformation of formal knowing into a deeply personal knowing. Now this eternal one who freely reveals Himself personally to us permits Himself also to be known in the more formal demonstration of His existence. And this more speculative demonstration for Christians has vital inter-linkage with a profound historical

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occurrence—the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.22 It is a linkage that enriches the mind as a real advance in our knowledge of the real. And it animates an expectancy of this very personal good at the heights of our freedom and that somehow also involves an advance in being itself.23 The formalism of scientific knowledge simply cannot provide this type of knowledge. This perhaps provides us with a richer context for seeing in a unique and somewhat novel manner this deeper linkage between the traditional Thomistic proofs for the existence of God, which are a central preoccupation of scholasticism, and a modern Christian personalism that has caught the attention of Schmitz as it did Gilson earlier. It is something Schmitz believes to be of considerable significance for this dynamic and living tradition of Christian thought and practice. There is also an imperative involved here that leads us on as questioning beings that was seen by Lonergan. And it is an imperative based in the structure of our knowledge itself but also and more importantly in the fact that our human knowing needs most fundamentally an other for its completion much more than it needs systematization.24 This intentionality, which is also crucial in Lonergan’s account of knowledge and being, is important for first philosophy or metaphysics because it shows the character of consciousness as disclosure, this breaking open of consciousness towards possibilities. Knowledge says Schmitz takes definite cognitive form when this need for an other is changed into the disclosure of situation and object, field and figure, periphery and attention. However, knowledge completes itself fundamentally in the act of knowing to the extent it can let the other be as other. This says Schmitz is not simply the knower becoming the other as in learning. And it is unlike the early modern conception of objectivity where methodic control by the knower over the object known was emphasized with its obvious practical and technical advantages. Instead, objectivity pursued by first philosophy to its deepest level ultimately must renounce any restriction upon the object. This acknowledges that the thing known is not in itself an other for this “othering” of the thing in knowledge is intimately related to the “selving” of the knower. But still there is a further intimacy in this objectivity in knowing, in that knowledge is obtained and completed only if it proceeds not on the desire to control the thing known but again by a sort of friendship as benevolence concerned for the integrity of the thing within this new relationship. There is a wishing the other well and the providing an appropriate context where the other can be just as it is. This is a context of a comprehensive situation, for truth demands of knowing that it be a disclosure of the thing known in its being just as it is. This Schmitz insists is not Kant’s famous thing-in-itself. Rather knowing

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the thing as it is in itself means apprehending it as having a transcendental order of relations with the knower; knowing it as whole in its integrity as object within the whole which is the comprehension of the situation in some determinate manner as the actual knowledge of it.25 Such knowing involves limits, which in recognizing these one apprehends the totality of one’s situation as indefinitely open to further disclosure. This at its most fundamental is to be free of perspectivity and sounds very similar to Lonergan’s universal viewpoint somehow appropriated by authentic human subjectivity. Such objectivity clearly is no automatic achievement. It involves an existential relationship between knower and known in which the basis or situation for the relationship is provided by the knower but in accordance with respect for the thing known. This suggestion of Schmitz’s that there is a profound similarity between cognition and friendship is thus key for understanding and approaching any strategy of reconciliation of thinkers such as Gilson and Lonergan, and ultimately of thought and being. He writes: There is a striking similitude between cognition and the love of friendship, for both must let the other be in its appropriate being—the known in its, the friend in his—while sustaining that being in their own.26

Schmitz’s claim is that in knowing and friendship there is an opening out and reaching towards the other that in its very act returns also into itself as subject to become more itself and yet in this returning there is a sealing or establishment of a transcendental completeness that in classical terms has been known as the perfection of truth. Thus the copula, stressed so adamantly throughout Gilson’s philosophy, is the energy of this mediation and the reconciling presence of a needed speculative reason for such enquiry and concern, albeit remarkably renewed and energized by both theology and history. However, Lonergan was correct in insisting that this copula must be understood through a process of concretion and fulfillment. Without this process of fulfillment, theory leaves the copula as an immediate and merely asserted groundless conjunction. It is left with the complacence of a lucky fit between judgment and being. Schmitz sees the copula as showing the unity of thought and being for which he attempts to articulate a theory for their reconciliation. It is at least an important beginning, in our view, that warrants a much more sympathetic interchange between philosophy and theology aided by a more realistic appraisal of our history as Christians and thereby of our future as well.

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Notes 1

That this tradition has a diversity in thought and practice that often involves serious areas of philosophical disagreement, is not always readily acknowledged especially among the Church hierarchy which is responsible for unity. Alasdair MacIntyre as a philosopher working within this tradition has shown the importance of these disagreements in the tradition’s development. He shows that such disagreement and conflict though painful is not necessarily destructive of the overarching unity but may very well come to serve it well in time. See Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of Catholic Philosophical Tradition (Toronto: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 2009). 2 For our purposes here we can say that the elaboration of the notion of being for Gilson always involves a progressive effort of abstraction from sensible things where the role of existential judgment is stressed in the apprehension of esse as the act of existence. This is important for Gilson because he wants to avoid the reduction of existence to a form or essence or nature, which can be the object of simple apprehension. Esse as the act of existence is not a form but the actuality of form. This inevitably points to the radical otherness of esse in creatures from form or essence. Armand Maurer one of the foremost Gilsonian scholars has pointed out how many of Gilson’s critics, and here we would include Lonergan, were not very understanding in their central criticism and so they proceed with serious misunderstandings of Gilson and even more seriously of the notion of being itself. See Étienne Gilson, Three Quests in Philosophy, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute Of Mediaeval Studies, 2008), viii-ix. Lonergan in contrast though having realist sympathies and accepting the practical reality of things does not accept, as Gilson did, that there is a direct and immediate perception of being as the act of existence, or that this perception of being as the act of existence also involves an immediate intellectual cognition. See Bernard Lonergan, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 188-204. As Lonergan explains it, for Gilson, being or the concept of being is “seen” in the sense data whereas being for Lonergan is more properly understood as what is asked about with respect to the data of sense. Being is more properly understood as present in the questions raised by the data. So rather than what is seen in the data, being is what is intended by going beyond the data in our very enquiry and questioning. This questioning leads beyond the already known to the unknown to be known. This deep and fundamental concern for questioning in Lonergan in contrast to Gilson’s concern for existential fact, forces us to conceive human intelligence not on the analogy of sense but more properly in terms of intelligence or intelligent enquiry itself. In Lonergan’s estimation, there is no real problem, as Gilson worried, of the extra-mental or of the bridge, i.e., of getting outside the mind, for as soon as a question is raised being is naturally intended and this being somehow includes everything and so everything is already within the minds intention and it simply cannot be considered as only a modification of one’s own thinking mind as Gilson contended. Subjectivity in its authentic action is somehow already outside in the realm of “being-in-itself” in general. See Richard

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Liddy, Startling Strangeness: Reading Lonergan’s Insight (Toronto: University Press of America, 2007), especially 18-22 and 141-148. Liddy’s own rendering of Lonergan’s argument for how objectivity is obtained through authentic subjectivity is that somehow there is objectivity if there are distinct beings some of which both know themselves and know others as others. A purification of our thinking about our own thinking is needed to properly conceive the objectivity of our knowing of which there are three aspects: 1) experiential objectivity provided by the given data (through attending); 2) normative objectivity rooted in the intrinsic demands of intelligence and reasonableness as formulated by logic and method and 3) absolute objectivity rooted in the grasp of the virtually unconditioned in the judgment as to what is so and as differentiated from what we feel, imagine, or desire as in what is so for us. In absolute judgment the content of judgment is absolute—that is, beyond the relativity to the subject making the claim and his/her context in its contingency. It is the affirmation of the truth of some thing or event and of its eternal unchangeable necessary validity. It is by this aspect of objectivity that knowledge becomes public beyond its relativity to its source and now is available to others and is governed by the principle of non-contradiction. According to Liddy, in Lonergan’s theory of objectivity there is no longer a problem of the bridge, of getting from “in here” to “out there,” because with judgments ruled by our cognitional structure as acts of knowing both objects and subjects, we are already on both sides of the “river” and in no need of a bridge. Absolute objectivity is the connection of subject and object—it is the positing of the absolute realm in which real distinctions/differences occur between objects, one of which is also a subject. This knowing subject may have an experiential sense of oneself, but to know in truth there needs to be understanding and judgment. This means selfknowledge that is objectified because it is an authentic subjectivity—this is to know absolutely. In summing up this footnote excursus into the technical nature of this debate, Fergus Kerr has pointed out that Lonergan was much more a speculative thinker and was perhaps more sensitive to modern intellectual concerns and controversies than perhaps Gilson was as a medievalist. See Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 110. Lonergan was never a scholar of medieval thought in the manner of Gilson, his influences were significantly different and thus as he came to focus his own project on human cognition, he may have been prone to overlook and miss some of the important subtleties in the extensive arguments on how best to understand being. Lonergan’s review of Gilson’s famous Being and Some Philosophers [Theological Studies 11 (1950): 122-125], before the publication of Insight, is sympathetic and favourable whereas his view of Gilson’s later Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986) is in contrast highly critical. 3 Again, it is the meaning of this elusive term “being” that is the central issue between Lonergan and Gilson. It is a term that is often used without an article in an attempt to capture for thought all that is, or the totality of the real, or at other times with an article so as to capture more precisely that in a particular thing which makes it to be a being, e.g., “the being of a thing It is this mysterious question of

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being as both “One and Many” somehow referring both to this totality of that which is real and to all individual beings as real existents that the italicized term being denotes. Here, we must face the question—does the Gilsonian account succeed in showing us how it is possible to have a concept for a thing and another concept for its being and that this distinction is much more than a mere verbal one? Gilson argued that if there is to be a study of being insofar as things are beings, then there must be some object of study that is in some manner universal—being must be in some manner a universal notion. But how can being as the act of existence be one in this universal sense and yet be diversely many at the same time? There is then a profound difference between this notion of being and our other concepts for it is not obtained through the normal abstraction of simple apprehension but rather through an active composing. It is apprehended instead through an active composing that is lost touch with in the conceptualization of being, for the concept of being does not show that anything actually exists. This original meaning escapes being as a concept, even when it is conceived as infinite as in Lonergan’s cognitional account, there are no grounds for saying it really exists. It is a notion that does not manifest its own actuality which is always other than itself and which can only be grasped through the act of existential judgment. This is why it is “act” and “perfection” that serve as the technical terms that designate this function of being apprehended in judgment. Being is a perfection that makes a thing exist, and is the act, which a thing enjoys. Technically being is conceived as the act or perfection of a subject. It is universalized in the concept of act or perfection without adding any special conceptual content of its own and is distinguished only in reference to what is obtained or apprehended in the judgment that expresses this act or perfection that makes a thing be, whereas in itself without reference to judgment the concept does not express anything proper to being. Thus the universality of this notion is what makes it different from nothing. It is a notion or concept that remains open to the real existence of something and it can be given that meaning only through a new existential judgment. This knowledge is not found in the concept detached from the sensible perception of its existence. Thus common being conceptualizes the being grasped in the act of existential judgment, but as a concept applied on its own strength to another thing it does not carry with it knowledge of that thing’s actual existence and yet it can represent any other act of being known through a new existential judgment. By a firm focus on this act, it can shine a light on its consequences and thus be used in reasoning so as to enable as its subject the development of a metaphysics of being. This science though being in a sense concerned with the highest level of generality and abstraction is somewhat unique in that it is also intimately concerned with that which is most concrete in things. See Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Houston: Center For Thomistic Studies, 1985), especially 1-67; See also Norris Clarke, The One And The Many (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), especially 25-41, for a relatively clear introduction to this notion of being at the heart of this conflict between Lonergan and Gilson. 4 This theoretical notion of subjectivism is illustrated in the account of its practical and pastoral effects given in the next section. Here it is shown to be very much

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present in the contemporary discussion of the Easter events, a central theme in this paper, where the resurrection of Christ is no longer considered to be an objective event that actually happened to Jesus in history, but instead some sort of subjective religious experience, albeit powerful, that happened solely in the minds and hearts of the early Christians. However, the Gilsonian charge of subjectivism against Lonergan is a complex philosophical issue that warrants more careful treatment. For Gilson, it is closely related to his longstanding concern regarding philosophical idealism as most fundamentally an understanding of being as first the essence of an existent apprehended in reflective thought, in contrast to his dogmatic realism, which held being to be first the act of existence of an existent apprehended immediately in sense perception and expressed in and through existential judgement. The Gilsonian distinction perhaps can be further understood as that between being held to be most fundamentally the act of existence of the existent in contrast to the essence of the existent or, perhaps as discerned in more common language, between the apprehension that a thing is and the apprehension what a thing is. 5 Though Lonergan, ten years Gilson’s junior, was certainly aware and wrote directly of his work, there is no evidence that Gilson was directly aware of Lonergan’s work. What Gilson does do is develop an extensive criticism in his Thomistic Realism of the critical realist and transcendental Thomist “school” with which Lonergan often has been associated. See Gilson, Thomistic Realism. 6 The Roman Catholic Church has undertaken an enquiry and discussion of a new evangelization among its Bishops and members. In the preparatory documents the problem of ineffectiveness in evangelization and catechesis is clearly recognized as an ecclesiological problem that concerns the Church’s actual capacity to become a real community, a true fraternity, a living body and not a mechanical thing or institution. This means that evangelization is facing new and profound challenges and accepted practices are now in question. This situation requires, it is said, that the Church consider in an entirely new way how she proclaims and transmits the faith. Church authorities are calling for something like a Courtyard of the Gentiles—a free space for respectful dialogue with those persons of goodwill with whom there may be significant differences in belief and understanding. The Church then, it is said, should be preparing for such a dialogue that is not only inter-religious but is with people of goodwill for whom religion may be foreign. This dialogue is regarded as also part of any first step in evangelization. See The New Evangelization For The Transmission Of The Christian Faith: Lineamenta, Synod Of Bishops; XIII Ordinary General Assembly (Rome: Vatican Documents, February 2, 2011). 7 A thorough examination of this issue in Lonergan, for instance, would involve a close critical reading of his Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), which we are unable to undertake at this time, in which he works out an interpretation of Thomas that provides an important basis for his cognitional theory. However, as we have pointed out, Gilson maintained a realist perspective on the intuitive aspect of perception though perhaps his analysis of its conditions was inadequate at times as Kenneth Schmitz suggests below in the

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final section of this paper. For such an analysis requires an extensive examination of the roots of the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition. In this tradition we enter a different intellectual atmosphere of assumed realism free of the critical problem of knowledge where the perception of the external world is intuitive and specific sense qualities are seen as belonging to external objects. This was assumed by the tradition but now in our contemporary situation and with its modern problematic, it is seen as needing the supplementation of phenomenology that analyzes the data of consciousness. Now it seems there are two divergent interpretations of the data within this extensive tradition. Those who follow Suarez tend to describe knowing as the production of a likeness of the object. This species impressa becomes a mediating mechanism for the assimilation of the subject to its possible object. However, if knowing is interpreted as producing a kind of image of the object through which the actual object is known and yet this image itself is not the actual object of knowledge then, inescapably, the image becomes the primary object of knowledge in one’s account. As Gilson insisted, the critical question then arises as to the image’s justification as a correct reference to the actual object of knowledge. This in Gilson’s view was the basis of Descartes’ skeptical question and the ensuing critical enterprise that supposedly brings in its wake a new beginning for philosophy even though it arises out of an earlier Suarezian epistemology. For Gilson, the true Thomistic line of approach is very different—all knowledge is the conformation of the subject and the object. But this formal assimilation is not of the act of knowing itself, which is simply knowing the thing directly without mediation because the object is directly present. Though a species impressa is required in perception when the object to be known is other than the subject, and yet the subject must be made like the object, this likeness is caused/effected by the reception of the species impressa through the act of the external object. Thus according to this Gilsonian realist account, the act of perception follows and does not involve any species expressa or representative image of the object, for the object is itself directly present to the percipient and needs no representation in the cognitive act itself. The valid occasion for speaking of such species expressa or image is when the object is not directly present and so we must imagine it. Thus, according to Gilson, this is a very different theory of knowledge in Thomism than we have in Suarez. There is no representation in the act of direct perception. Knowing most fundamentally, then, is a direct and immediate experience (of being) neither mediated nor interpreted in terms of anything else. In other words we metaphysically and firstly have an image because of the act of knowledge and not knowledge because of an epistemological act of imaging/correctly representing (This is what Gilson’s Thomistic first principle of being and knowledge tries to express). It is the conformation of subject to the object that is required for the subject to know something other than itself and this conformation or assimilation of the subject to the object under the causal influence of the object is a direct communication that is the condition of intuitive perception spoken of by Gilson, Owens, and Clarke and many others as existential Thomists (See D. B. Hawkins The Criticism of Experience [London: Sheed and Ward, 1945],

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especially 107-123, for a very succinct representation of this line of approach within the tradition, along with extensive references). 8 See Bernard Lonergan, “The Notion of Being,” in Insight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 372-398. 9 Norris Clarke “The ‘We Are’ of Interpersonal Dialogue As the Starting Point of Metaphysics,” The Modern Schoolman 69 (March/May 1992): 357-368. 10 See Michael Swan, “Dramatic Jesus Discovery Lacks Hard Evidence” in The New Freeman (Saint John, NB: April 6/12), 12. See also Michael Swan, “Dramatic Jesus Discovery documentary lacks hard evidence” in The Catholic Register (Toronto: April 1, 2012) and his “The Register’s Resurrection mea culpa” in The Catholic Register (Toronto: April 26, 2012). 11 Pope Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter on The New Evangelization, September 21, 2010. 12 Catechism Of The Catholic Church, (Toronto: Doubleday, 1995), 992-1004. 13 The heresy, condemned by the council of Nicea (325), which made the Son of God the highest of creatures, greater than us but less than God. See Richard McBrien, Catholicism (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 1234. 14 It is important to indicate that in the philosophy of religion there have been important developments that challenge this established viewpoint and assumption that ‘we can believe in the orthodox Christian revelation if only we can acknowledge that the divine exists in the first place’. Admittedly it has been long held that philosophically at least Christian revelation cannot be considered seriously until theism has been established. There is new work challenging this assumption arguing instead that it is possible that divine revelation constitutes evidence for the reality of God. Gilson, I believe, would be jubilant over this development in analytic philosophy, which was anticipated in his own extensive corpus. Sandra Menssen and Thomas Sullivan, The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint (Cambridge: W. B. Eermans, 2007). 15 See N. T. Wright, The Resurrection Of The Son Of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), especially 719-738. 16 Kenneth Schmitz, What Has Clio to Do with Athena? Étienne Gilson: Historian and Philosopher (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987), 7. 17 Ibid, 1-24. Schmitz’s important work has done much to develop the basis for a reconciliation of the differences between Gilson and Lonergan in my estimation and thus to overcome a standoff that has been counter-productive for Christian philosophy. This paper draws much from Schmitz and his project. Two of his major published works worth consulting are The Recovery of Wonder: The New Freedom and The Asceticism of Power (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005) and The Texture of Being: Essays in First Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007). 18 See Kenneth Schmitz, “Metaphysics: Radical, Comprehensive, Determinate Discourse,” in The Texture Of Being: Essays in First Philosophy, ed. Paul O’Herron, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 3-20.

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Christianity through the early doctrinal councils appropriated the discourse on the substance of things through Greek philosophy. This has been called ontology that is thinking concerned with being as being. This metaphysics generally and particularly in Christian thought has been subject to considerable controversy and always is in need of resuscitation. Schmitz seriously considers the contemporary temper which asks—if this is really possible? He points out how there have been basically two approaches to this question: 1) one is followed by Lonergan that is concerned with an a priori criteria for cognitional possibility intended to serve as a foundation for fundamental thinking and 2) an approach we are attributing to Gilson that always insists on defining the possible in terms of what is actual. But how is one to proceed with such a metaphysics of the actual given the pluralism in metaphysical systems both Western and non-Western? Because of the challenge of this question, the approach of Lonergan becomes highly appealing in its efforts to establish the criterial and invariable conditions of cognition as a foundation for any possibility in the exercise of intelligent thinking. In this paper, I’m raising serious questions regarding the subjectivist tendencies in Lonergan’s philosophy and especially in his treatment of the question of being and I clearly raise concerns about the influence of these tendencies in his philosophy for theology. However, Fr. Frederick Crowe has shown somewhat convincingly, in my view, that Lonergan’s own theology nevertheless remains firmly rooted in Christian orthodoxy. See Frederick Crowe, Christ and History: The Christology of Bernard Lonergan (Ottawa: St. Paul University, 2005), especially 212-221. Nonetheless, in his own writings Lonergan does raise important and unresolved questions for future theological investigation particularly in the area of the relationship between Christianity and world religions. Lonergan does not view Christianity as standing for an original philosophy of life or for an original ethics. Its first commitment and function has always been to bear witness to an event—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The distinctive nature of Christianity is not God’s grace, which He shares with others, but rather the mediation of God’s grace through Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The ultimate expression of this differentiating element in Christianity is found in the ancient debates concerning the Arian heresy mentioned at the beginning of this paper. Lonergan believes Arianism still has currency for us as Christians. It is found in an earlier expression in the question faced directly by the Church Council of Nicea—whether Christ the mediator of our salvation is a creature only or also God Himself? Lonergan acknowledges that it is likely that most people today are simply unmoved by the significance of this formulation of the question. But both his orthodoxy and theological genius are revealed in how he persists in the Biblical meditation on this question, reformulating it as follows— did God reveal His love for us by having a human being die the death of scourging and crucifixion, or by having His own Son, a divine Person who became flesh to suffer and die, and thereby touch or break in upon our own hard heartedness somehow leading us toward eternal life? Lonergan comes to full theological clarity on this issue by focusing on God’s offering up for us of his only Son instead of on Christ’s mediating role. It is Christ as God’s Isaac with God’s love the analogue for Abraham’s prefiguring sacrifice. And here in this Paschal mystery there is no

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higher intervention to save this divine Isaac. There is only total surrender, for nothing is withheld. There is the total surrender of the divine for us as proof of this Divine Love for us. It is in the ultimacy of this act of God that Lonergan comes to full clarity on what is distinctive in Christianity—this surrendering of the Son by the Father and the Son’s obedient acceptance of this Will. It is in this doctrine that he sees the essence of Christianity and the significance of the entry of the obedient Christ into our history and the exercising of historical causality through the medium of His life, death, and resurrection. Christ enters our history to give the means for our species to reach our proper end—an end of Supreme importance. There are, in Lonergan’s view, two fundamental interrelated aspects of the divine economy in human history—the mission of the Son as outer objective Word and of the Spirit as inner subjective gift. These two aspects now call for a third aspect— the working out of this divine economy in the whole of human history. There is not only the effort to understand this economy in the past, there is also the crucial question as to whether and how much we can carefully discern its workings in our personal and collective future, a future that at the same time is deeply marked by contingency? His central concern is not so much universal salvation nor the claims of Christianity pitted against the rival claims of other religions. Instead his focus is on the question—what is God doing, past, present, and future, in the divine economy of this twofold mission that involves both the actual objective circumstances of real history and our inner subjectivity? What can we discern of the possibilities the future holds and of the actualities God’s intentions may have already determined for us? Such a question calls for some total view of history, and it is here that Lonergan, as a theologian, does have something important to say in his familiar historical structure of progress, decline, and redemption. It is in this light that the question of Christianity and world religions arises in a new way, says Crowe. God has allowed and promoted through the gift of the Spirit the simultaneous existence of many religions. Has God a plan for sequences in the various roles of the various religions? Are some transient and others meant to endure? What of the concrete and cumulative consequences of the acceptance or rejection of the message of the Gospel? How should we conceive the overarching order of the universe when we give equal attention to the objective presence of the Son and to the subjective presence of the Spirit? Crowe acknowledges the debate as to whether theology should be Christocentric or theocentric but the neglect of the Spirit’s role, he argues, leads to the overlooking of a primary question—is the view that centers on the Son to be modified by a view that gives the Son and Spirit equal centrality? This he argues, following Lonergan, is the only preparation for the theocentric question. And then there is the interrelated question of contingency and freedom. For Christians the problem and question is this—was Mary’s acceptance done in freedom and truly contingent; and then what of Jesus’ acceptance? This problem and question is also ours personally now in the context of our secondary creaturely responsibility. What really is contingent in my day-today decisions? What is contingent for our species in the aggregate of our day-today decisions? If God has a plan in place for us and for Christianity that is in the “already” of our “now” then there is no real freedom. But what if God does not

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have this type of plan? Suppose God loves slow learning people enough to allow them long ages of learning what they have to learn? Suppose the destiny of the world religions is contingent on what we all learn to do authentically as Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or as human beings trying to live lives of integrity and authenticity, then responsibility is returned to us with avengence and the answer to the question of the final relationship of Christianity and the world religions, suggests Crowe, is that perhaps there is no answer —at least not yet. The real uncertainty that surrounds this question, he believes, will stir up thoroughly and creatively the relation of Christianity to world religions. It is perhaps one of the most important questions for theology today and it was anticipated deeply by Lonergan though at the end of his career before the issue and the related discussions and debate had truly come into their own. 19 Here we follow closely Kenneth Schmitz’s argument in “The Solidarity Of Personalism And The Metaphysics Of Existential Act,” in The Texture of Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 132–148. It also needs to be mentioned here that Fr. Norris Clarke, who was also greatly influenced by Étienne Gilson, has also contributed significantly to a relational ontology of the human person that is highly relevant for this effort of Thomism to engage contemporary developments in phenomenology and personalism (See especially his Person and Being [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998]). It is highly relevant to present an overview of Clarke’s argument for how the innate dynamism of substantial being overflowing into self-communicative action is clearly and explicitly articulated in Thomist philosophy. The challenge is that the articulation of relationality as a primordial dimension of every real being is considerably more muted and even convoluted in traditional efforts to articulate it in classical Aristotelian terms. According to Clarke, if finite being naturally flows over into self-communicating action towards others and also receives action from them, then a network of relations is generated naturally. It turns out, then, that relationality and substantiality go together as two distinct but inseparable modes of reality. Substance is the primary mode, in that all else, including relations, depend on it as their ground. But since “every substance exists for the sake of its operations” as St. Thomas tells us, being as substance, as existing in itself, naturally flows over into being as relational, as turned towards others by its selfcommunicating action. To be fully is to be substance-in-relation. The act of existence by which a being is present in itself standing out from nothingness is the “first act” of the being and the action or operation proceeding from it and grounding its relationality is its “secondary act.” There is a priority of ontological dependence here that is fundamental for this tradition but this does not mean operations are of secondary importance as if the being could be real without expression in operations. The second act is the very goal and fulfillment in being of the first act. Relationality is therefore an equally primordial dimension of being as is its substantiality. Substantiality and relationality are equally primordial and necessary dimensions of being itself at its highest intensity and the ultimate reason in the Judaic-Christian tradition, argues Clarke, is that all lower beings are images of the Triune God as the ultimate Source and supreme synthesis of both. Thus all

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being is dyadic in nature with an “in itself” dimension as substance and a “towards others” dimension. There is in finite beings this inseparable complementarity of “in-itself” and “towards others.” To be is to be substance in relation. Nonetheless, there have been various distortions of this classical notion of substance in modern philosophy coming especially through the works of Descartes, Locke, and Hume, says Clarke. Modern philosophy and phenomenology have been greatly influenced by these distortions and thus have tended to reject the category of substance as an invalid mode of being. This means dropping the in-itself pole of being. But if this is abandoned then the unique ontological interiority of the other person is abandoned and thus a deep capacity for caring, intimacy, and love between persons is lost. But this dichotomy and its consequences are unnecessary, in Clarke’s view, once substance in relation is properly understood. Clarke applies this understanding of being as dynamic and self-communicative to develop an understanding of human being as human person—that which is most perfect in all of nature. Human being as person is not some special mode of being added from the outside. It is the fullness of being itself—to be without restriction is to be personal, in Clarke’s philosophy. The distinction between human person and human nature takes on an ontological meaning as well as its traditional social and legal significance. To be a person it is not enough to possess an intellectual nature, to be a person in its own right such a nature would have to possess its own act of existence. Person, according to Clarke, is the answer to who am I. Nature is the answer to what am I. Thus we have the beginning of a definition of a person: an intellectual nature possessing its own act of existence as the self-conscious responsible source of its own actions. But this definition does not yet do justice to the full metaphysical richness and originality of the doctrine of existence as central act and core of all perfection in real being. Essence in some determinate, limited and thus finite caused being is best seen as a particular limiting mode of being participating in the all-embracing fullness of perfection that is existence itself. Thus a more adequate definition of person is: “an actual existence distinct from all others, possessing an intellectual nature, so that it can be the self-conscious responsible source of its own actions.” Clarke argues that there is an advantage in emphasizing the act of existence as central rather than nature. Because if all the perfection of being a person comes from its act of existence proportioned to its nature we can transfer all the attributes of being as existence itself to persons as such where they will be found now at enhanced degrees of intensity. Clarke says there are clearly then these two important perspectives on the person—ontological and phenomenological. The ontological perspective is concerned with the metaphysical structure and principles of the being of the human person, the phenomenological is concerned with the manifestations of personhood in the activity of the human beings that we experience. Modern philosophy has tended to evacuate objects of their substance and thus is in danger of losing sight of their intrinsic worth. There is also the idealist tendency or tact of reducing individual substance—the in-itselfness of the person, our very owness of being—to an allembracing oneness. There is then an evacuation of the ontological interiority of the many individual persons. Clarke concedes and cautions that the self-possession of

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the human person through self-consciousness and self-determination is never complete and perfect (in this life). There are many influences that lie outside the focus of the conscious awareness—familial, cultural, bodily and environmental influences. The unconscious and the biological can exert pressures beyond our control. Thus we are not fully masters of our own house. Nevertheless in general and for the most part, we can gradually learn to exercise enough self-mastery over the significant choices in our lives to become moral persons albeit imperfectly and incompletely. Self-possession in the order of action as in the order of knowledge is a journey, an ongoing and difficult project that can be approximated more and more by the discipline of responsible self-reflection and the development of virtue. This we can see clearly in the differences in self-possession, self-awareness, and self-mastery of the various persons we know and this has considerable relevance for our social systems and for the formation and ongoing support of human persons both young and old as they are socialized into their respective communities. Clarke argues that the existential Thomist ontology he is espousing can be a source of direction and hope for our human journey. Like Schmitz, he brings special attention to the rich dynamism in the metaphysics of existential being as expansive act. Being now understood through the act of existence as a first principle presents us with a dynamic expansive act at the root of being as self-possessive “first act” that naturally pours over into the second act as self-communicative acting towards others. This is the basis of the generation of systems of relations both in their outgoing and incoming dimensions. Because of this perfecting of being through acting, relationality is now established as equi-primordial with self-possessing substance. Clarke argues that the important element here is this new emphasis on the relational dimension of being, which he has argued has been inadequately developed and articulated within the classical expressions of this tradition. Clarke, in my view, is an example of a thinker who has gone a long way towards balancing between the traditional Thomistic concern for substance in being and modern phenomenology’s discovery of the fundamental importance of the subject and of inter-subjective relationships in our lived experience as human beings. Again, person according to this tradition as understood and presented by Clarke is not something that is added on to being but is instead being’s highest perfection and most intense expression. It is this dynamism of self-possessing and selfcommunicating being raised to the level of self-consciousness and freedom in the human being. Thus in Clarke, we have the ontology of “substance in relation” becoming the more phenomenologically resonant “person in community.” This is explained in Clarke’s scheme again as caused ultimately by our being made in the image of the Supreme Being, the Source of all being, as revealed in the JudaicChristian tradition to which Clarke and Schmitz, Gilson and Lonergan, all confess adherence and which the Thomist philosophical tradition, I would argue, remains its unsurpassed articulation. As Schmitz suggests there is considerable practical importance for the benefit of human self-interpretation and understanding in finding and developing a more adequate and deeper philosophical articulation of human being as person.

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Following Schmitz we might attempt to summarize what he is arguing is the personalist advance in Christian thought, in this way and in two parts: 1) The search for ultimate truth and meaning is also the very human task of personal integration and transcendence. It is philosophy’s, and especially Christian philosophy’s, original vocation. It is integrally related to an older question of human perfection. It involves an existential encounter and is not just about the collection of ideas and patterns of thought…an existential encounter with the Life Giving Source or First Principle. This is what Christian thinkers have called the sapiential dimension of philosophy. This means that this First Principle that is sought is also a principle of friendship and love—a mysterious Divine Thou and not just an object of idle curiosity. Our human desire and searching has to do with a deep interior movement of love within the enquiring person that tends also towards friendship with all who enquire deeply and similarly. It becomes in a sense the great quest of the human spirit. In this quest there are truth bearing insights received as gifts calling for response of the human subject. The phenomenology of this sapiential dimension of human enquiry sees truth transformed from being founded upon that which is simply given—as a datum, to that which is given as gift—as donum. This leads naturally to the positing of an underlying Gift Giver. 2) However, the locus of this searching and response is not primarily restricted to the individual person but is in the community of persons. This emphasizes the relational character of human knowing and its dependence on relationships of trust with others. This is not simply a credulous trusting and knowing (though there is always great risk of this). There are ways of testing other than by direct personal inspection of every object of knowledge. There is the credibility of the knowledge claims in relation to knowledge already possessed but perhaps even more important is the credibility and authority of the author of the claim—the person communicating to us. This attests to the interpersonal and communal dimension of truth and the truthfulness of its witnesses. Thus clearly the human person in questing must live by trusting. This is a fundamentally important dimension of enquiry, and of truth and knowledge, that is often overlooked. It is the sapiential dimension of knowledge as wisdom to which the Christian tradition generally and the tradition of Christian thought particularly witnesses. (See especially Kenneth Schmitz, “God, Being, And Love: New Ontological Perspectives Coming From Philosophy” in The Texture Of Being: Essays in First Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007) 265-282). 21 See Gerard Smith, The Truth That Frees (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1956), especially 36-51. See also Étienne Gilson’s The Spirit of Thomism (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1964). Gerard Smith asks—what human evidence do we have for this knowledge? And it is here that the medieval scholastic tradition draws from aspects of the ancient tradition of Greek philosophy but does so through the light of the Christian Gospel, where some exemplary Spirit filled individuals, such as Socrates, are recognized to have chosen death rather than choose what they knew to be a certain evil. It seems then that we as human beings are attracted to something that transcends ordinary nature—a good that stands above the goods of ordinary nature. This love possesses one in a way that ordinary

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knowledge does not possess the object known. Speculative knowledge enriches us with what already is in nature and which becomes ours by knowing it. It enables us to talk intelligently of nature and things and to act intelligently. This is scientific knowing but it is, in such instances as in Socrates’ example, surpassed by a different knowledge that knows the good use of knowledge by deciding in favour of it. We possess this object known (or more accurately, knowingly enter into its presence) only by desiring to possess it. 22 Étienne Gilson points out this inter-linkage between being and person in his Spirit of Of Mediaeval Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 204-205. He says that in Christian philosophy personality is the mark or sign of being at the very summit of its perfection because everything has its source in and thus is dependent upon the creative act of a personal God. Revelation teaches us that all things were made by the Word and the Word is with God, and the Word is God; that is to say precisely this being Who presents Himself as personal in virtue of the sole fact that He presents Himself as Being. In many respects this work of Gilson’s middle period can be read as an important exploration of the tendency towards personalism in medieval Christian thought. However, Gilson is careful to remark that though there are clear tendencies towards what he calls a Christian personalism it remained undeveloped and thus holds great potential for Christian philosophy. He writes that “the mediaevals made few efforts to connect the whole development of the interior life with the idea of personality, and thus we may partly surmise the inexhaustible fecundity that still lies hid in their principles.” Gilson, Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, 204. 23 Aristotle wrote that “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods…for with friends men (human beings)are more able to think and act.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1155a) This question of an advance in being is admittedly fraught with formidable intellectual challenges and we can only hope to introduce the issue here in a footnote. But let us consider whether our knowledge of our friendship might in some way add to the very reality of the friendshi (Or in more traditional terms—does my knowledge of relation add to the being of that relation in any way?) The Thomistic tradition that I am following closely holds quite firmly, as I understand it, that the truth of our friendship has two aspects. 1) In being a true relation (state of affairs) whether one knows it or not, the truth is in the fact that we are friends. 2) In being known by us that we are friends, there is truth. So, simply put, in the traditional account the knowledge that we are friends does not first cause the friendship. We are not friends because we think we are friends but rather first because we are in fact friends. Therefore in answering the question—does the knowledge of our relationship add to the being of the relationship?—I might tentatively answer that our knowledge of friendship does not violate the traditional principle that knowledge for creatures is ontologically first dependent upon being—and yet our being as persons is enhanced in knowing being and thus as participants in a relationship as enhanced beings (with actualized potential in knowledge) the relationship can be enhanced through our increased knowledge. Nevertheless, this reflection take us very deep into issues of first principle, as Schmitz suggests, and though one may be very firm in having

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something to say, one may not be very clear in the saying of it especially in these matters and mystery of inter-subjective relations and reality. There is vast room for misunderstanding, debate, and ongoing discussion. This is the challenge on the speculative side. There is real need to develop and clarify a more adequate ontological-phenomenological argument on the metaphysical and epistemological implications of friendship and human nature and thereby show anew its implications for our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and being—a perennial question of first philosophy with profound ethical implications as well. 24 We might elaborate on this issue in Lonergan by considering briefly his discussion of truth and reflective interpretation in Insight 17.3, which is a sophisticated and highly developed discussion yet to be fully appreciated let alone emulated in Catholic-Christian thought today, according to many Lonerganians. If we give some degree of Christian theological content to what is an abstract discussion, by Lonergan, of the need for a systematic approach to cognitive theory and methodology, we believe the importance of this aspect of Lonergan’s project is evident along with its limitations as well. Lonergan argues that as we speak simply and directly of Christ as Lord, we will also inevitably interpret this speaking simply and directly. But there is also what he calls reflective interpretation because we should act in some way because of the truth of Christ to be spoken of as we grasp an expected audience’s capacity to receive, and as we grasp the deficiencies in insight to be overcome if this truth is to be told effectively. Now by simple interpreting, we mean a second order speaking often addressed to a different audience and yet as a speaking of speaking of Christ, it also must be guided by how we should act as such which depends upon the truth of speaking of speaking of Christ as Lord, which we also do upon the grasp of the expected audience’s capacity to receive and as we grasp the deficiencies in insight to be overcome if this second order truth is to be told effectively. This reflective interpreting gradually becomes a multi-layered complexity of the telling and retelling of the Christian story, interspersed with reflecting upon speaking upon speaking. Furthermore, this layered complexity comes to suffer from two additional irksome difficulties. First—reflective interpretation is relative to its anticipated audiences, and audiences change and differ culturally and historically. There are various schools, attitudes, and orientations and within these differences there are as well differences in capacity for understanding. Second—there is the challenging question of whether or not an investigation of this manifold of capacities for understanding is actually possible, and if so can one then communicate the fruits of one’s enquiry? In other words, is effective reflective interpretation really possible? And then we have the basic problem of interpretation—where a simple interpretation may be correct—for there is such a thing as correct common sense that hits the target, as there is correct historical sense that hits the target and usually this is the fruit of a long familiarity with the data. But both these common senses are always subject to individual, group, and general bias. And so then the question is—can our interpretation be scientific so as to avoid such bias? And if it is to be so, it must discover some method for conceiving and determining the habitual

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development of all audiences, it has to invent some method by which its expression escapes relativity to particular and incidental audiences. Clearly Lonergan’s argument is rigorous and involved and to the extent one can grasp this argument one can see how his work becomes preoccupied with the human subject’s invariable cognitive structure. It is this cognitive structure of the human subject that somehow provides the methodological key for understanding this layered complexity in reflective interpretation. It is believed to provide important and perhaps unprecedented guidance for the complexities in any effective transcultural mediation of meanings and values. As Lonergan might put it—in knowing what it is to know, one will know in general terms all there is to know. Furthermore, Lonerganians have argued that the complexity of his approach neither compromises on the demands of objective truth nor neglects the very real claims of cultural difference. Nevertheless even if we grant that Lonergan’s theory of cognition and methodology greatly aide in bringing one into engagement with multi-cultural complexities and issues of pluralism for our times, Gilson’s fundamental issue remains, in our view. It is the ontological dimension and objective truth of Christ’s being that is still missing for the most part. The transposition of this section from Insight, into a discussion of the various reflective layers of the theological “talk of Christ” shows, in our view, that the Church’s primary and direct encounter with the mysterious being of this “Christ” remains unaccounted for. The primary concern and focus moves quickly to the very complex secondary issues of reflection and interpretation and the appropriate and effective communication of such. My simple point, and it would be Gilson’s as well, is that this specialized and particular primary concern of the Church remains foundational and it must necessarily involve apprehending the object of a certain faith, otherwise the secondary complexities eventually can become unhelpful and complicating distractions subject to interminable debate, scepticism, and even despair. For both Gilson the Christian philosopher and Lonergan the Christian theologian, the Christian Revelation in its central claim is stupendous; it is unique and unheard of. It differs profoundly from the Socratic claim at the beginning of philosophy of a human soul somehow living a better life elsewhere, or from the more common immortality of the great person in historical memory treasured by his admirers or disciples. The Christian claim is that this Jesus in his flesh, blood, and bones rose in a new form to the same life that death had just destroyed. 25 For Schmitz, the situation of knowledge he is trying to articulate anew he believes is leading to a renewed appreciation for Gilson’s notion of being as first principle. This situation of knowledge is what he is calling the singular circumambient universal that is fundamental in that it is that out of which and into which knowledge moves as its ground, functioning as a principle of inclusion, not as container or collectivity but as a principle of affinity. Schmitz suggests that what is operative in this principle is the transcendental demand for mutuality. The connection with human discourse and friendship is not hard to imagine. It is and has been the task of metaphysics as first philosophy to help articulate our knowledge of this transcendental situation but, warns Schmitz, the comprehensiveness of this reach is risk laden. For he is speaking of comprehension

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and not of a comprehensible knowable object. Though the situation as a whole is apprehended necessarily by the knower in knowing, it is not known or knowable as an object. Schmitz refers to this as an active noetic structure, sustained by the knower in knowing and though apprehended in actual determinate knowing, is itself neither knowable nor actually known—it is neither determinate nor indeterminate and yet it is the transcendental constituent of integrity necessary for objective knowledge—the ultimate and centering goal of all knowledge from which theoretical and practical modifications of knowledge take their form. See Kenneth Schmitz, “Another Look At Objectivity” in The Texture Of Being: Essays in First Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 74-87. 26 See Kenneth Schmitz, “Enriching The Copula” in The Texture of Being: Essays in First Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 91.

GO TEACH ALL NATIONS: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN THE NEW EVANGELIZATION E. M. MACIEROWSKI

In his Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (30 Sep. 2010), Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI1 attempted to advance the Dogmatic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council Dei Verbum; he begins at the very beginning: He starts with a meditation on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh” (Jn. 1:1, 14). He connects this beginning with the beginning of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1: 1). The theme of this conference is “Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity.” To address this theme, I start with Thomas’s personal vocation as a Dominican Friar, whose mission is to preaching and to teach, and his specific office as a theologian of the Catholic Church. This would seem to be his personal way to take up Christ’s instruction: “euntes ergo docete omnes gentes” (Matthew 28:19). Accordingly, I aim to do two things. First, I’d like to give an overview of a recent Apostolic Constitution of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, and to recapitulate some of the key points made in the first of its three parts. Then, within the context of this document, I call attention to three exemplary texts that might serve as tools to advance what is called “the new evangelization.” The title of the exhortation “Verbum Domini” may be translated as “the Word of the Lord;” that of the Dogmatic Constitution, “Dei Verbum,” as “the Word of God.” Pope Benedict uses the second expression as the heading of the first of the three main parts of his exhortation. Part II will be called “Verbum in Ecclesia” or “the Word in the Church,” and Part III “Verbum Mundo” or “the Word for the World.” These three main parts are framed by an introduction and a conclusion.

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The motto for Part One, “The Word of God,” is taken from John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh.”2 The title of Part Two, “The Word in the Church,” is followed by another Johannine quotation also from the Prologue: “But to all who received him he gave power to become children of God.”3 Similarly, Part Three, “The Word to the World,” takes still a third quotation from the Evangelist as its motto: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”4 Verbum Domini, then, uses the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, as the introduction says, “so that the Bible may not be simply a word from the past, but a living and timely word.”5 At this point, I should like to introduce the first of three texts that might help us follow the thought of the Holy Father and lead us deeper into the Word of the Lord. St. Thomas Aquinas collected explanatory passages from the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church grouped as a running commentary on each of the verses of the Gospels. This concatenation of patristic wisdom came to be known as the Catena aurea or the Golden Chain.6 The first 44 pages of the English version present the first 18 verses of John’s Gospel, quoting John Chrysostom, Augustine, Basil, Origen, Hilary, Theophylus, Bede, Theodotus of Ancyra, Gregory, and various scriptural passages at appropriate verses. Interestingly, five of these nine authors were Greek rather than Latin writers. (As an aside, permit me to mention the title of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg lecture, “Three Stages in the Program of De-Hellenization,” criticizing a certain theological agenda to remove elements of Greek thinking from Christianity. Among the key elements of Greek thinking that was adapted by the Catholic and Orthodox Church is the notion of logos.) In his exhortation, the Pope explicitly mentions the Hebrew word dabar, the Greek word logos, and the Latin word verbum, each somehow attempting to capture something of the rich meaning of the Word as uttered by God. Our own reflections will focus on the first of the three parts of Verbum Domini. This expression, literally translated as “the Word of the LORD,” echoes a tradition going back millennia. In many English translations of Holy Scripture, the word “the LORD” is set off in capital letters. Why? In the Jewish tradition, the Name of the LORD was not taken lightly; indeed the first commandment expressly forbids that the Name be taken in vain. The four Hebrew letters Yod, HƝ, Waw, HƝ were assigned impossible-topronounce vowel combinations. This Sacred Name of four letters, YHWH,7 was not transliterated into the Greek Septuagint; instead of what has come to be called the four-letter Name, or Tetragrammaton, the Greek translators selected the word Kyrios8 or “Lord” to designate the

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unspeakable divine reality. The Vulgate translation, in turn, renders the Greek word Kyrios into Latin as Dominus. Accordingly, there is something hidden or uncommunicated about the Name. At any event, the Holy Father uses a different title for Part One: Verbum Dei, the Word of God, a title derived from the famous Apostolic Constitution of the Second Vatican Council. Against the background of the unspeakable Name, we find ourselves startled by the three subtitles designating the divisions of Part One: first, we are surprised by “The God Who Speaks;” second, we hear of “Our Response to the God Who Speaks;” third, we hear “The Interpretation of Sacred Scripture in the Church.” I shall say a few words about the first and the third divisions, but shall not say anything about our response, the second division. As a supplement to Pope Benedict’s meditation on the Prologue to John’s Gospel, the second text I should like to call to public attention is the English translation of St. Thomas’s Commentary on the Gospel of St. John.9 The first 90 pages of volume 1 are devoted to the prologue of St. John’s Gospel and St. Thomas’s personal commentary thereon. The Catena Aurea and his own personal commentaries on the Gospels open a convenient way to reading Scripture with some of the major Fathers of the Church. Let us now return to Pope Benedict’s first division of Part One: “The God Who Speaks.” The first subdivision of this text is entitled “God in dialogue.” The Greek word dia-logos is a conversation in which the participants talk things through. The conversation in question here, the Pope argues, exists before creation: the Word , who from the beginning is with God and is God, reveals God himself in the dialogue of love between the divine persons, and invites us to share that love.10

But not all speech or language is simply the same, nor utterly unrelated: “human language operates analogically in speaking the word of God.” In philosophical terms, analogy here means that the nature of the thing under discussion occurs primarily in one nature (like the word “medical” as applied to the medical art) and secondarily to others things of a different nature (like “medical” as applied to diplomas, treatments, and practitioners).11 In like fashion, “the expression ‘word of God’ is used analogically,” primarily to the eternal Word, particularly as incarnate in Jesus Christ, and secondarily to creation, expressed in the book of nature. This fact requires

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further study of how the different meanings of this expression are interrelated, so that the unity of God’s plan and, within it, the centrality of the person of Christ, may shine forth more clearly.12

There is also a “cosmic dimension” of the word noticed by St. Bonaventure: “every creature is a word of God, since it proclaims God.”13 “The creation of man” who is created “in the image of God” is of particular importance, not only to “salvation history,” but also to a range of other important issues including the primary precept of “the natural law,” namely “to do good and thus to avoid evil.”14 I am puzzled by the expression “the realism of the word”15 and pass it by now without comment. “The Christology of the Word”16 notices in the Letter to the Hebrews (1:1-2) a new and special way that “God has spoken to us by a Son.” Here, too, we are reminded that “in Christ...the word finds expression not primarily in discourse” but “the very person of Jesus.” This extremely important fact is emphasized with a telling quotation from Origen: “the word was ‘abbreviated’” with alternate manuscript readings.17 We note that the former MS reading (pachynetai) suggests that the Word is being condensed, thickened, perhaps like soup; the latter (brachynetai), that it is shortened, reduced to a small compass.18 In any case, there is a similar expression in Rom. 9:28, “the Lord will make a shortened word upon the earth;” the Latin Vulgate speaks of a “verbum breviatum” but the Greek text uses different terms. Origen’s suggestion seems to be that all of Holy Scripture is concentrated in the single Word, who is Christ, the divine Logos who has taken on the grossness of flesh, or, if you will, that the Person of Jesus Christ is the ultimate digest of all of the Scriptures. To come back to Benedict’s text, the next section “the eschatological dimension of the word of God” discusses why “no new public revelation is to be expected.”19 As to “the word of God and the Holy Spirit,”20 we are reminded that “there can be no authentic understanding of Christian revelation apart from the activity of the Paraclete.” The next paragraphs21 point out what the Apostles had received from Christ Himself or through the promptings of the Holy Spirit that inspired them “and others associated with them” in committing “the message of salvation to writing,” in knowing “the full canon of the sacred books,” and “to grow through time in the understanding of the truth revealed in the Scriptures.” This “living Tradition” can enable us to perceive “the analogy...between the word of God which became ‘flesh’ and the word which became a ‘book.’” The penultimate section, “Sacred Scripture, inspiration and truth,”22 cautions that

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Yet “the inspired books” do indeed “teach the truth,” particularly, as the Council Fathers say in Dei Verbum, 11, “that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures.” Accordingly, the Holy Father expresses his “fervent hope that research...will progress and bear fruit both for biblical science and for the spiritual life of the faithful.” The final section of Part One, “God the Father, source and origin of the word,”23 notes that God speaks not only “in glory” but “as the cross of Christ demonstrates, God also speaks by his silence.” This completes our survey of the eleven headings of the first main division of Part One. Let us now turn to the third main division: “The Interpretation of Sacred Scripture in the Church.”24 Here we have seventeen headings: The Church as the primary setting for biblical hermeneutics;25 The soul of sacred theology;26 The development of biblical studies and the Church’s magisterium;27 The Council’s biblical hermeneutic: a directive to be appropriated;28 The danger of dualism and a secularized hermeneutic;29 Faith and reason in the approach to Scripture;30 Literal sense and spiritual sense;31 The need to transcend the “letter;”32 The Bible’s intrinsic unity;33 The relationship between the Old and the New Testaments;34 The “dark” passages of the Bible;35 Christians, Jews, and the sacred Scriptures;36 The fundamentalist interpretation of sacred Scripture;37 Dialogue between pastors, theologians and exegetes;38 The Bible and ecumenism;39 Consequences for the study of theology;40 The saints and the interpretation of Scripture.41

Even a mere listing of the headings gives some idea of the important issues addressed, but we will confine our remarks to a few of the points most directly germane to showing how the third item on our list of recommended readings can be useful in the renewed effort of evangelization. The reason why the Church is the primary setting for biblical hermeneutics is this: “The Bible was written by the People of God for the People of God, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit;” consequently, since “access to a proper understanding of biblical texts is only granted to

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the person who has an affinity with what the text is saying on the basis of life experience” there is an intrinsic “relationship between the spiritual life and scriptural hermeneutics.”42 The “relationship between exegesis and theology” affects “pastoral effectiveness” and “the spiritual life of the faithful.”43 The Holy Father acknowledges “the benefits that historicalcritical exegesis and other methods of textual exegesis have brought to the life of the Church” as befits “the realism of the Incarnation.” He reiterates that “we must learn to penetrate the secret of language” noting that “because of the search for God, the secular sciences which lead to a greater understanding of language become important.”44 Citing previous Popes, Benedict reaffirms the Catholic attitude of balanced inclusiveness while rejecting false dichotomies such as a faithless “rationalism” and “a mystical exegesis which rejected any form of scientific approach.”45 Benedict re-affirms the Second Vatican Council that “the interpreters of sacred Scripture...should carefully search out the meaning which the sacred writers really had in mind” using three criteria: “the unity of the whole of Scripture;” “the living Tradition of the whole Church;” and “the analogy of faith.”46 Benedict cautions against “a sterile opposition... between exegesis and theology,” with the “troubling consequences” that that entails.47 Following up on an observation of the late Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict suggests a multi-disciplinary approach rather than “the use of one method alone” and reminds us “that the various hermeneutical approaches have their own philosophical underpinnings;” and again, in his own name, Benedict states: “In applying methods of historical analysis, no criteria should be adopted which would rule out in advance God’s selfdisclosure in human history.”48 The proper “interpretation of sacred Scripture presupposes ... the harmony of faith and reason.”49 As we approach the central portion of this subdivision, we are almost ready to point to the third reading to be recommended in this lecture. First, however, let us note the recommendation of “renewed attention to the Fathers of the Church and their exegetical method.”50 As we saw earlier in Aquinas’s Catena aurea and his personal commentary on the Gospel of St. John, the reading of the sacred Scriptures was accompanied by the teachings of the early Church Fathers. There is a central dramatic moment in this section: the Holy Father is well aware of the position of St. Thomas Aquinas, and indeed quotes I. q.1, a. 10, ad. 1—“all the senses of sacred Scripture are based on the literal sense.” At this point, on the other hand, Pope Benedict presents a restrictive “however:” it is necessary to remember that in patristic and medieval times every form of exegesis, including the literal form, was carried out on the basis of faith.51

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This remark is apparently intended to forestall any possible equivocation on the meaning of “literal sense.” Then, Pope Benedict cites this Latin distych: Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. The letter speaks of deeds; allegory about the faith; The moral about our actions; anagogy about our destiny.52

It is at this point that I should like to introduce the third text that might be helpful to some who are engaged in renewed efforts of evangelization: the late Father, and later Cardinal, Henri de Lubac, S.J.’s massive fourvolume study Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture; the original French text is so full of Latin quotations, that the bulk of any English volume is almost twice the length of the original French.53 Let’s look at Sebanc’s more literal translation of the distych: The letter teaches events, allegory what you should believe, Morality teaches what you should do, anagogy what mark you should be aiming for.54

Thus begins a panoramic view of the study of Holy Scripture. The original French is divided into two tomes, each subdivided into two parts; the first two volumes of the English contain the ten chapters of the first part, and the third and fourth volumes contain another ten chapters, those of the second part. Let us by-pass the chapter headings of Lubac’s work and continue with Verbum Domini. In the light of the distych, the Holy Father notes the unity and interrelation between the literal sense and the spiritual sense, which for its part is subdivided into three senses which deal with the contents of the faith, with the moral life and with our eschatological aspiration.55

He acknowledges “the validity and necessity” of “the historical critical method,” and its “limits,” but advances an exegesis that “not only” tries “to find the reality of faith” that is “expressed” “in biblical texts,” “but also seeks to link this reality to the experience of faith in our present world” so that in the “context...of life in the Spirit” we “can...recognize that the word of God is living and addressed to each of us in the here and now of our lives.”56 Accordingly, there is a “need to transcend the ‘letter’” “to grasp the passage from letter to spirit,” which is

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never purely an intellectual process but also a lived one, demanding full engagement in the life of the Church, which is life “according to the Spirit” (Gal 5:16).57

In this setting, “the power of the Spirit inevitably engages each person’s freedom” but is “not simply the exegete’s own idea” but rather “Christ.”58 One such “process of transcending the letter” is the “typological interpretation” practiced by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. What might have appeared at first “disjointed” or “coarse,”59 actually involves “the unity of all Scripture, grounded in the unity of God’s word.”60 To confirm this point, Benedict quotes Hugh of St. Victor: “All divine Scripture is one book, and this one book is Christ, speaks of Christ and finds its fulfillment in Christ.”61 In short, “the person of Christ gives unity to all the ‘Scriptures’ in relation to the one “Word.””62 This applies even to “the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments,” since the latter “itself acknowledges the Old Testament as the word of God,” both “implicitly” and “explicitly.”63 Pope Benedict again calls attention to the method of “typology,” which “discerns in God’s works of the Old Covenant pre-figurations of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his incarnate Son” without forgetting “that the Old Testament retains its own inherent value as revelation” and that therefore “the Jewish understanding of the Bible can prove helpful to Christians for their own understanding and study of the Scriptures.”64 In summary, these central insights of Pope Benedict XVI in Verbum Domini have provided us the occasion to reflect on ways to read the Scripture taking into account both the diversity of its elements and the unity of its message. Its powerful Word is a two-edged sword: the letter killeth, and the Spirit giveth life. We have considered three texts—the Golden Chain and the Commentary on John’s Gospel by St. Thomas Aquinas and the four-volume study Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture by Henri de Lubac—that make use of some of the suggestions put forth in the Holy Father’s Apostolic Exhortation: to read the sacred Scriptures within the Apostolic Tradition, while reading holy Scriptures with the scholarly tools of modern historical-critical method, to read the Scripture as diffusely pointing to one central reality, the divine Person of Jesus Christ, using the many logoi of its many inspired human authors under the principal authorship of its divine Author to help us be joined to the condensed Logos Who is being eternally uttered by the Father and has been made incarnate in Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, and to accept the mission, going forth to teach all peoples what we have seen and heard.

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Notes 1

All references to Verbum Domini have been drawn from the Vatican website: (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf _ben-xv....). 2 Jn 1:1, 14. 3 Jn 1:12. 4 Jn 1: 18. 5 Verbum Domini will be cited by paragraph numbers: ¶5. 6 M. Pattison, J. D. Dalgairns, and T. J. Ryder, trans., Commentary on the Four Gospels Collected out of the Works of the Fathers by St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford 1841-45), with a preface by John Henry, later Cardinal, Newman, in four volumes and recently reprinted in seven paperback volumes by Preserving Christian Publications in Albany, New York (Matthew, Parts I and II, 2000; Mark, 1999; Luke, Part I, 2001; Luke, Part II, 1999; John, Parts I and II, 2000). 7 See, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, Massachusetts: 1979 rpt. of the 1906 edition), page 397b YHWH, where the Tetragrammaton, the proper name of God, is referred to the root HWH page 217b ff. and cited by Strong’s Concordance nn. 3068-3069. At page 218a a survey of interpretations is offered: “Many recent scholars explain YaHWeH as Hiph. Of HWH (=HYH) the one bringing into being, life-giver…; giver of existence, creator…; he who brings to pass… performer of his promises….; or from HWH he who causes to fall, rain or lightning…. But most take it as Qal of HWH (=HYH); the one who is: i.e. the absolute and unchangeable one…; the existing, ever-living…or the one ever coming into manifestation…” (my transliterations). Note the explicit reference connecting the root of the Hebrew divine Name YHWH with the verb HƗYƗH, “He is;” Ibid., 224a-228a, Strong Concordance n. 1961: “I.1.a. Fall out, happen. 2. Come about, come to pass. II. Come into being, become. III. Be (often with subordinate idea of becoming);--1. Exist, be in existence (i.e. orig. have come into existence). 2. abide, remain. 3. with word of locality, be in or at a place, be situated, stand, lie. 4. As copula, joining subj. & pred. 5. Periphrastic conjug.: a. HYH + pt., of continuous state, or condition.” An English version of the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum alten Testament edited by George W. Anderson, G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren and Heinz-Josef Fabry (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1973-) published as the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974-), includes David E. Green’s translation of the article on hƗyƗh composed by Bernhardt, Bergman, and Ringgren (vol. III, 369-381). See also Michael A. Grisanti, “2118 HYH,” in Willem A. VanGemeren, general editor, New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1997), vol. 1, 10221026, especially regarding Ex 3:14 and Jn 8:58. (My thanks to Dr. Andrew Swafford for the latter reference.) 8 See the article Kyrios, in Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 10 volumes, 1964-1976), Vol. III, 1039-1098.

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9 Fabian Larcher, O. and James A. Weisheipl, O.P., trans., St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). The introduction and notes by Daniel Keating and Matthew Levering collate all the verses of John’s Gospel with the places in the Summa Theologiae where they are cited. 10 ¶6. 11 For a metaphysical treatment, see Bernard Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2004). For the Aristotelian background for two-term analogy, it is important to distinguish whether the items are pure equivocals (things having the same name but different and even unrelated natures, like date as a fruit of a palm tree and date as a person with whom one has a scheduled meeting), or pros hen equivocals (things with the same name and different but related natures, like a date on a calendar or a date as a person with whom one has scheduled an event; or, as Aristotle puts it in Metaphysics IV, 2 healthy urine, healthy body, healthy food, where the healthy urine is a sign and the healthy food a cause of a body’s being healthy). If the items in question are pure equivocals, “it is best not to mix them;” if, on the other hand, they are related, it would be good to specify the relation. See Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2nd ed. 1963), 107-135 on the Aristotelian equivocals. 12 ¶7. 13 ¶8. 14 ¶9. 15 ¶10. 16 ¶¶11-13. 17 ho Logos pachynetai/ brachynetai: Peri Archǀn, I, 2, 8: Sources Chrétiennes 252, 127-129. 18 See Lampe Patristic Greek Lexicon, s.v. pachynǀ, 1054a and s.v. brachynomai, 304b.). 19 ¶14. 20 ¶¶15-16. 21 ¶¶17-18. 22 ¶19. 23 ¶¶20-21. 24 ¶¶29-49. 25 ¶¶29-30. 26 ¶31. 27 ¶¶32-33. 28 ¶34. 29 ¶35. 30 ¶36. 31 ¶37. 32 ¶38. 33 ¶39.

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¶¶40-41. ¶42. 36 ¶43. 37 ¶44. 38 ¶45. 39 ¶46. 40 ¶47. 41 ¶¶48-4. 42 ¶¶29-3. 43 ¶31. 44 ¶31. 45 ¶¶32-33. 46 ¶34. 47 ¶35. 48 ¶36. 49 ¶36. 50 ¶37. 51 ¶37. 52 The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition (New York: Doubleday, 1994), quoting the English version in CCC §118. 53 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 4 vols.), volume 1 (1998), trans. Marc Sebanc, vol. 2 (2000), and vol. 3 (2009) trans. E. M. Macierowski who is working on the fourth. The chapter headings of Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis: English volume 1 1. Theology, Scripture and the Four-Fold Sense 2. The Opposing Lists 3. Patristic Origins 4. The Latin Origen 5. The Unity of the Two Testaments English volume 2 6. Names and Number of the Biblical Senses 7. The Foundation of History 8. Allegory, Sense of the Faith 9. Mystical Tropology 10. Anagogy and Eschatology English volume 3 1. Berno of Reichenau 2. Subjectivism and Spiritual Understanding 3. A Lineage Stemming from Jerome? 4. Hugh of ST Victor 5. The Victorine School 6. Joachim of Flora 35

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English volume 4 (In progress) 7. A Synthetic Doctrine (Numeric Symbols; Architectural Symbols; Omnia in figura; Reductive Precisions; The New Testament) 8. Symbolism (Allegory and allegory); the airs of the Symbol; Non-Biblical Allegory; Interferences and Christianizations; Vergil, Philosopher and Prophet) 9. The Scholastic Age (The two Great Masters; the Novelty of St. Thomas; Theologians; Followers of Joachim; Nicolas of Lyra) 10. Humanists and Spirituals (Decadence; Mystic Humanists; Erasmus; Christian Humanism; the Spiritual Tradition. 54 Lubac, ME, vol. 1, 1. 55 ¶37. 56 ¶37. 57 ¶38. 58 ¶38. 59 ¶38. 60 ¶39. 61 ¶39. 62 ¶39. 63 ¶40 64 ¶¶41-42.

THE BEATITUDES: POPE FRANCIS’ PROGRAM MARCELO SÁNCHEZ SORONDO

The church has experienced times of brilliance, like that of Thomas Aquinas. But the church has lived also times of decline in its ability to think. For example, we must not confuse the genius of Thomas Aquinas with the age of decadent Thomist commentaries. Unfortunately, I studied philosophy from textbooks that came from decadent or largely bankrupt Thomism. In thinking of the human being, therefore, the church should strive for genius and not for decadence. Interview with Pope Francis (America Magazine, September 30, 2013)

There are many documents that serve as reference points to understand Pope Francis’ new attitude and the programme of his pontificate. Like Mozart in music, he is creative and renews in different ways the substantive issues that he has in his mind and in his heart, not letting anyone else write or dictate them. He wants to make them his own and to respond to his important experience as a pastor. Of all his speeches I would like to analyse one in particular, perhaps the most spontaneous and significant, which he gave to the young people from Argentina that he met in Rio de Janeiro’s San Sebastián Cathedral. He began by saying: Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise. Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure. Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that. But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves.

He explained that young and old must fight together against an exclusive society dominated by “financial humanism,” which only seeks profit or its own advantage and so, consciously or not, is committing suicide by marginalizing its future, young people, and its wisdom, the elderly. The Pope’s exact words were:

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Look, at this moment, I think our world civilization has gone beyond its limits, it has gone beyond its limits because it has made money into such a god that we are now faced with a philosophy and a practice which exclude the two ends of life that are most full of promise for peoples. They exclude the elderly, obviously. You could easily think there is a kind of hidden euthanasia, that is, we don’t take care of the elderly; but there is also a cultural euthanasia, because we don’t allow them to speak, we don’t allow them to act. And there is the exclusion of the young. The percentage of our young people without work, without employment, is very high and we have a generation with no experience of the dignity gained through work. This civilization, in other words, has led us to exclude the two peaks that make up our future.1

Therefore, we must act and work to change this status quo. But what is the starting point to reverse this suicidal trend, especially in the West? It is faith in Jesus Christ. In Kierkegaardian tones, Francis said: Faith in Jesus Christ is not a joke, it is something very serious. It is a scandal that God came to be one of us. It is a scandal that he died on a cross. It is a scandal: the scandal of the Cross. The Cross continues to provoke scandal. But it is the one sure path, the path of the Cross, the path of Jesus, the path of the Incarnation of Jesus. Please do not water down your faith in Jesus Christ. We dilute fruit drinks—orange, apple, or banana juice–but please do not drink a diluted form of faith. Faith is whole and entire, not something that you water down. It is faith in Jesus. It is faith in the Son of God made man, who loved me and who died for me. So then: make yourselves heard; take care of the two ends of the population: the elderly and the young; do not allow yourselves to be excluded and do not allow the elderly to be excluded.2

A son of St. Ignatius, founder of the Spiritual Exercises, Pope Francis argues that the solution does not lie as much in discussing the essence of Christianity, because it is relatively easy to understand the threshold of mystery, but above all it lies in practicing faith and charity, which is more difficult. In this he is existential like Kierkegaard, who said that Christianity has no essence but is a practice to perform on “existence:” we have to become Christ’s contemporaries by actively participating in his grace and in the love of his Spirit. Kierkegaard writes in Practice in Christianity VI: Lord Jesus Christ you did not come to the world to be served, and thus not to be admired either, or in that sense worshiped. You yourself were the Way and the Life–and you have asked only for imitators [Efterfølgere]. If

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Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo we have dozed off into this infatuation, wake us up, rescue us from this error of wanting to admire or adoringly admire you instead of wanting to 3 follow you and be like [ligne] you.

Now, in the light of this, what does Pope Francis intend as the programme of his pontificate? He points to the Beatitudes and Matthew 25. When a young man in Rio asked him: “What should we do, Father?,” Francis replied: Look, read the Beatitudes: that will do you good. If you want to know what you actually have to do, read Matthew Chapter 25, which is the protocol by which we will be judged. With these two things you have the action plan: the Beatitudes and Matthew 25. You do not need to read anything else.4

Why are the Beatitudes the programme of this pontificate? Because they were the basis of Jesus Christ’s own programme, expressed in the famous Sermon on the Mount. In this, Pope Francis coincides with St. Thomas Aquinas who states that they contain all the perfection of our lives (tota perfectio vitae nostrae continetur), according to the Reportatio of Petri de Andria.5 Through them the Lord explains to us his plan, his promise and the reward he will give us, to fulfil our happiness, which is what we naturally aspire to with all our being and actions. In short, the Beatitudes explain and indicate the path and the ultimate prize, that is God’s reward, which is what true happiness is. We all aspire to this happiness but only those who follow and pursue the Beatitudes with perseverance in the practical exercise of their lives deserve it. Therefore, Thomas says that whereas Moses made the commandments his foundation, Jesus Christ promulgated the Beatitudes above everything else, as the synthesis, reduction, and project of Christian life.6 As St. Thomas says in his commentary on Matthew 5, following the famous question of Aristotle’s Ethics, in general, we all aspire to happiness, but human beings differ when judging what it is. Some will think of it as something, others as something else. Today’s mentality, according to the Pope, places happiness in external and material things; worse still: in artificial realities such as money and finance, which is virtual money, the famous “derivatives,” or titles derived from other financial entities, which are a gamble between the present and the future, meaning that they increasingly represent a value that is less real and more random. The medium turns into the purpose, the future turns into the present, reality turns into possibility. Incidentally, in this view our Pope is not only inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, but also very much by St.

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Ignatius, who had already sensed the existence of modern capitalism’s somewhat evil soul. Let us recall the central meditation of the Spiritual Exercises on the Two Flags: you either choose to be at the service of Christ or on the side and under the rule of Mammona iniquitatis. Moreover, St. Ignatius also teaches us that Lucifer instructs the demons first to tempt with a longing for riches, so that men may more easily come to vain honour of the world, and then to all the other vices (SE 139-142). Many others want money not only for themselves but also to satisfy their own whims. I do not know whether in general you too have noticed that it is characteristic of billionaires to be capricious. It is already underscored in Ecclesiastes: “I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life” (Eccl. 3: 12). These two false views of human happiness, one based on money and the other on following one’s own whims, lead to corruption, which, according to Pope Francis, is the daughter of Satan. Moreover, corruption is the Antichrist itself, because it produces structures of sin that corrupt the world with never before seen forms of criminality. This is the “globalization of indifference” towards the human person and the common good that the Pope denounced in his homage to the brutal deaths in the sea of Lampedusa: The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!7

A few others, a little more worthy on this scale of errors, believe that happiness today consists in having an active life according to a golden mediocrity and worldly bourgeois comfort. Yet others believe in sterile theoretical discussions that the Pope qualifies as “spiritual worldliness.” All these opinions are false and harmful. Pope Francis, like Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, fights and condemns them with determination, passion and courage. Currently, the more widespread false opinion is disrupted or, rather, transformed and turned inside out like a glove by the Beatitude that Pope Francis considers central, as is the advice of Jesus Christ himself on poverty: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5: 3). St. Luke, the friend of the marginalized in the Roman Empire, is more trenchant: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours” (Lk 6: 20). To those who think the kingdom of

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heaven can be reached by way of riches, by which the highest honours of this world are also obtained, the Lord does in fact promise the Kingdom which comprises wealth and dignity, but via the opposite way, through poverty and service. It is not about dominating but about serving. We see that, thanks to wealth, man acquires the power to commit any sin and to satisfy the desire for every sin: because money can help you obtain any temporal good, as already noted in Eccle. 10: 19, “money answers for everything,” and by the great Spanish poet Quevedo, Over kings and priests and scholars Rules the mighty Lord of Dollars. Mother, unto gold I yield me, He and I are ardent lovers; Pure affection now discovers How his sunny rays shall shield me!8

The Pope is rightly concerned about the growing phenomenon of crime, primarily financial crime, but even more of its deleterious consequences, such as the horrific crime of human trafficking that is spreading with the “globalization of indifference.” Some two million boys and girls disappear every year to meet the needs of the growing global sex market of the wealthy, which is euphemistically called sex tourism. Since the International Palermo Protocol against human trafficking was instituted in 2003, this crime has produced over twenty million missing persons, and this figure is only the tip of the iceberg.9 In this sense, it is clear that a longing for riches is the root of all sin, as St. Paul says, followed by St. Ignatius and St. Francis. Pope Francis sees this link very clearly: The suffering of the innocent and peaceful never ceases to hit us; contempt for the rights of the most fragile persons and peoples are not that foreign to us; the dominance of money with its demonic effects such as drugs, corruption, the trafficking of persons, including children, together with material and moral misery are the common currency.10

At the meeting we are currently organising at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on human trafficking, a psychologist is going to explain how a minority of wealthy people has produced the psychological pathology of the global sexual market. As St. Thomas said, there is a deep connection between capital sins, so that one calls and leads to another. Therefore, “Blessed are the poor.” But who are the poor really? As Thomas said, firstly, they are the humble who regard themselves as poor; for they are truly humble who regard themselves as poor not only in external, but also in internal things.11

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Jesus is the master of this attitude: “learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” and “you will find rest for your selves” (Mt 11: 29). And also: Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil 2: 6).

The kingdom of heaven can only be reached through poverty and humility. But what does “poor in spirit” mean? It is not the poor by necessity or tragic circumstances of life. As Paul Ricœur said, we stand with the poor if we fight this poverty, which more often exposes human injustice. We are not with those who love the poor so much that they multiply them! In other words, the poverty that oppresses an important part of contemporary humanity must be fought vigorously. Here we should open a serious chapter about the aim of the economy and the failure of the many economic theories and ideologies that do not put the human person, justice, and the common good at their centre. Social doctrine condemns both the Marxism of the means of production in the hands the state and the neoliberalism of the market without rules. Injustice is evident today in many countries, especially those without Christian and Catholic roots, but if one considers the world as a whole, in a global sense, international injustice is clearly visible with the richest countries taking advantage of the poorest with the arrogance of “either you accept this or nothing.” One of the clearest symptoms is the growing tragedy of world hunger already denounced by Pope Paul VI to the United Nations on October 4, 1965 with his famous order “to devote to the benefit of the developing countries at least a part of the savings which could be realized through the reduction of armaments” (Address to the United Nations General Assembly). There have since been many broken promises in this tragedy, which are also severe injustices offending human consciousness, and not only hunger and broken promises, but also injustice for lack of international redistribution, for instance arbitrariness in the management of sovereign debt. For those living in countries with emerging or developing markets who feel unfairly treated by developed countries, this continuing arbitrariness, which is a grave injustice, is another reason to be dissatisfied with a brand of globalization engineered to serve the interests of the rich countries (and in particular of their financial sectors). The poor by necessity or circumstances are not always happy. Those who are happy have made poverty a deliberate spiritual choice. St. Paul said that “the grace of God has appeared” and trains us “to live

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temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age” (Ti 2: 12): temperately, i.e., being reasonable in using the goods of the world and in our own actions and passions; justly, that is, behaving decently toward our neighbours, considering the other as myself, a person as I am person, therefore an end and never merely a means for me; devoutly, namely behaving in the awareness of the existence of God and of His presence in me, and his infinite Providence towards me and my brothers. Of those who are poor and temperate by choice, some have wealth but do not put it at the centre of their hearts, because they are magnanimous and detached: “If riches increase, set not your heart on them” (Ps 62:10). This is difficult, as the Lord himself says in the Gospel of Mark: “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mk 10: 23-25).

Others do not have much wealth, nor does it affect their hearts. Their situation is safer, because the mind is easily separated from the spiritual realities by wealth’s mundane weight and the demands of its administration. Therefore, the latter are said to be poor in spirit, because they are, by virtue of the grace of Christ and the gifts of his Spirit, poor with a poverty that is above the human way of acting, that is beyond the natural way: these are the men and women who are truly happy whom the Lord refers to when he says: “Blessed are the poor.” Actually, for men and women to be able to discard all worldly goods to the point of not appreciating them at all, they have to live in a heroic and superhuman way,12 that is, as true disciples of Jesus Christ, poor and magnanimous at the same time.13 This poverty distinguishes the new law from the old one and even from other religions that are very present today and are often aggressive. The first thing Moses does is promise riches: "The Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth" (Dt 28:1), and in v. 3: "Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed in the field.” Therefore, to distinguish the old law from the new, Christ first places happiness in the contempt for temporal things “contemtu divitiarum temporalium,” i.e., in the Franciscan “marriage with Lady Poverty,” which Pope Francis follows, as is also evident in the name he chose for himself. The blessed all have this poverty that comes from the excellence of their charity. The opinion of those who put happiness in the selfish satisfaction of their own appetite or whim is censored by the following beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” We should be

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aware that our appetite is threefold. There is the irascible call that seeks revenge against one’s enemies, and this is rejected by the Lord with the beatitude that teaches: “Blessed are the meek (beati mites), for they will inherit the land” (Mt 5: 4). Then, the concupiscent appetite, forever seeking pleasure. The Lord condemns it and turns it around completely when he says: “Blessed are they who mourn (beati qui lugent), for they shall be comforted” (Mt 5: 5). Here the appetite is dual in its goal of infinite pleasure: firstly, it wants no higher law to coerce it in the search for corruption, and secondly, it wants the other to be a subordinate or subject of his. It is just the opposite of the other as myself or myself as other, which Aristotle already spoke about and which is re-proposed today by contemporary ethics (P. Ricœur, J. Marias): there is a desire to dominate and not to serve or “minister.” Benedict XVI, during the Mass for the episcopal ordination of the new Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, before the latter left for Venezuela as nuncio, had already said: “Priesthood is not dominion, but service,” adding that in civil society and often also in the Church things suffer because many people on whom responsibility has been conferred work for themselves rather than for the community.14

The Lord crushes both unrighteous attitudes. That of not being subordinated to any law, spreading corruption, with the beatitude: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Mt 5: 6). The justice of giving to each his due is the social virtue par excellence and will never be perfect in this life, hence the need to be permanently hungry and thirsty. In this sense, Steve Jobs’ famous words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish,”15 which resonated so strongly especially with young people all over the world, were certainly inspired by Jesus Christ. The remedy against the desire to dominate is the beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Mt 5: 7). Therefore both those who put happiness in external things, especially in money, and those who put it in fulfilling their appetite for worldly pleasure, which causes sickness or corruption, are wrong. Justice and mercy are required together forever because justice without mercy is cruelty and mercy without justice is the mother of all moral dissolutions. As Pope Francis says, mercy is having a heart full of compassion for the suffering of others, particularly those who have been excluded from the banquet of life, be it material or spiritual goods. We have mercy on the suffering of others when we feel it as our own, when we are inclined to help and make a gesture of compassion. In fact, when something makes us suffer, we usually try to find ways to overcome this situation. We are truly

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compassionate when we try to comfort the suffering of others, our neighbours, just as we comfort ourselves. The suffering of others is double. Firstly, it means not possessing the goods necessary for life, health, education, work, social security, equal opportunities. And here we should have a merciful heart as dictated by St. John: “If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?” (1 Jn 3: 17). The second type of poverty is worse, because the human being who sins becomes wretched as an individual or as a member of society. Just as happiness is becoming virtuous and saving others, the most harmful misery is becoming depraved or corrupt and corrupting others. Hence, when we admonish the corrupt in a proper way, in order for them to make amends, we work God’s mercy: “At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them” (Mt 9: 36). “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God” (Mt 5: 8). This beatitude is one of most necessary in our days full of temptations, especially carnal ones. The heart is God’s temple and we need it to be pure, especially as far as purity of the flesh is concerned: nothing prevents elevation to God as impurity. In contemporary culture, which has both a Marxist and a liberal origin, the sexual revolution ended up having a dark side that became sexual slavery. Maybe women have a special mission here more than in any other field. Saint John Paul II was prophetic in his address about the dignity and vocation of women, Mulieris Dignitatem.16 The saints who are full of justice, charity and its effect which is likeness to God, know the human heart better than anyone else and come into direct contact with God, see God, and experience him. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Mt 5: 9). This is the seventh beatitude according to Matthew. In brief, spiritual life disposes towards two things: a vision of God, and love. Just as purity of heart disposes towards the vision of God, so peace disposes towards the love of God and of our neighbour, for thereby we are called and we are the true children of God and participate in the filiation of his natural Son, Jesus Christ. Thus, through peace we are open to loving our neighbours as ourselves. It is important to note that the prize for being “children of God” is given to peacemakers and those who “are persecuted for the sake of righteousness” for “theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” which is the same thing. Actually, all the previous beatitudes are reduced to these two, and they produce the effect of all the others, which are like their preambles. Who is it that acts with poverty of spirit, grief, meekness, if not those whose hearts are pure? Who is it that acts with justice and mercy if not the peace seekers? Only the saints with their pure hearts can grant

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God’s peace. The world cannot give such real peace. Therefore, for Thomas Aquinas there are three reasons why the peaceful and peacemakers are called children of God. The first is “because they have the office of the Son of God” who came into the world to gather the dispersed. The second is “because through peace with charity one reaches the eternal kingdom” to which all the children of God are called, and it is already a real foretaste of it. Finally, the third is because through charity and grace the human being “becomes like unto God; for where peace is, there is no resistance,” as it would be the opposite of peace.17 As Pope Francis says, resisting the divine sun, hiding from its light and love, shutting off the horizon of transcendence, is the opposite of peace. In general, modern man has no peace because he has shut off the horizon of eternity. It is remarkable to see how these beatitudes belong to one another and surpass one another: the more one is merciful, the more one is just and vice versa; the more one is a peacemaker, the more one is a child of God and vice versa. There is a gradual circularity among them: one leads to another, and they mutually perfect themselves. The Lord then proposes the eighth beatitude, which signifies the perfection of all the previous ones. The human being is perfect when he does not give up trying to practice the Beatitudes even in the event of persecution: “As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace, so in his conversation is the test of a man” (Si 27: 5). The beatitude says: “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But one may wonder whether this contradicts the message “Blessed are the peaceful,” because persecution clearly perturbs the state of peace or precludes it entirely. We answer that persecution is the cause of the removal of external peace, but not of the internal peace possessed by the peaceful. In this case, persecution itself is not the essence of happiness, but an external occasion allowing it. What makes us happy in Jesus Christ is the practical exercise of justice. This beatitude is matched by what St. Peter writes: “But even if you should suffer because of righteousness, blessed are you” (1 Pt 3: 14). It is worth noting that he does not explain whether it is because of atheists, lay people or non-believers, nor does he mention the reason for faith like the classic martyrs did, but he only indicates as a reason for persecution the practice of justice, which is the social virtue par excellence. The final Beatitude, the ninth, says, “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake,” which strengthens the meaning of the previous one. These two last Beatitudes summarise, of course, the programme of Pope

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Francis. In this he is revolutionary compared to the Popes of the last few centuries, but not compared to the previous Popes: one for all is Gregory the Great, who lived in the Benedictine Monastery on the Caelian hill (one of Rome’s seven hills) where he used to invite the poor to eat at his table every day, while his sister, belonging to one of Rome’s most noble families, served them. And this leads us to Matthew 25: 31 ff., which is good to remember and write down, because it is the action plan that the Lord will judge us by, in the light of the Beatitudes: When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

The righteous will answer him: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?”

And the King will reply: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Then he will tell the people on his left: Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.

They, in turn, will ask him: “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?” And he will answer: “I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.” And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

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We know that Pope Francis rightly insists in warning us that this is the action plan that we shall be judged by. I will be brief for reasons of time. First of all, the King, Jesus Christ, who is well represented in Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, says “blessed by my Father,” because God is the source and mother from whom we receive all the graces and gifts that we have, be they natural or free. There are two causes of our happiness or beatitude: one, on behalf of God the Father, which is his blessing; the other, on our behalf, which is merit based on our freedom to accept God's blessing. We should not be sluggish, but cooperate with God’s gift, “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective” (1 Cor 15: 10). Every Christian, therefore, is well aware that he should do everything in his power, but that the final result depends on God and his blessing: this conviction must support him in the daily practice of the Beatitudes, especially in difficult situations and in the persecution which derives from performing them. In this regard, St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches us in modernity the best rule to act by placing everything in God as first cause, and everything in human freedom, sustained by grace, as secondary cause: “Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you.”18 One may wonder why, there being so many possible meritorious actions, the Lord proposes here acts of mercy towards our neighbours as the action plan and criterion for salvation. Some have interpreted this by suggesting that just by performing acts of mercy, one is saved, even if he commits many sins, which is a bit like saying: “be a sinner and strong in your sins, but be stronger in your faith and rejoice in Christ” (Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo). However, thanks to Paul, we know that this is not true: “all who practice such things deserve death” (Rm 1: 32), and in Galatians, after listing carnal sins, he says “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (5: 21). Thus this interpretation is illusory. Of course, it may be that if one abstains from sin and does penance, one is released from sin and is saved through almsgiving. For almsgiving should start from ourselves and from the bottom of our hearts. Pope Francis always insists on the advice he used to give as a confessor: when you give alms look fondly in the face of the person you are helping. And what if you are an atheist, as in the case of Eugenio Scalfari, the founder of the successful Italian newspaper La Repubblica? We know that Pope Francis, inspired by St. Thomas, recently replied to him with a letter telling him to follow his conscience, the first postulate of which is: do good and avoid evil. Bishop Poli himself, the Holy Father’s successor as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, recounted a meaningful anecdote at the lunch to celebrate his pallium. He was rushing

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out of the archdiocese in a hurry to get to an appointment when a homeless man approached asking for help. Bishop Poli apologized, “These fifty pesos are all I’ve got, and I need them to catch a taxi to my appointment.” Meanwhile the taxi arrived, and at the man’s insistence, Bishop Poli promised: “Come back tomorrow and I’ll certainly give you something.” The homeless man thus started shouting: “Come back, Bergoglio, come back!” The Cardinal had a generous heart and gave to everyone, always. But why does Jesus Christ refer to these acts more than others? According to St. Gregory, it is because these, which he interpreted as minimal, presume the others: if one does not do the primary things required by natural love, one almost certainly will not do the greater ones. St. Augustine claims that we all sin in this world, but not all of us condemn ourselves. He who does penance and performs acts of mercy, is saved. As we shall see, Pope Francis intends acts of mercy to include all good acts. So, when we fulfil a beatitude we perform our duty of charity towards our neighbour. Therefore, when we do good to others, first and foremost we benefit ourselves. And let us not just consider bodily alms but spiritual ones too. Everything that human beings do for their neighbours, results in good for themselves, and everything one needs to do is contained in the acts of mercy. So why do the righteous reply with wonder: Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?

First of all, they admire the Lord’s judgement out of sincere humility, but not just for this reason. The Lord’s reply underscores the new evangelical focus that revolutionises the previous categories: “I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Why? First of all, because we are all brothers: we are a body whose head is Jesus Christ and we are the limbs either in act or in potency. But are all human beings children of God? Yes, they all are, the good and the evil, at the very least because they participate in the common human nature that makes us brothers, but also through participation in the grace of Christ, that makes us “fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God” (Eph 2: 19). But are we called to do good to everyone? Yes, to everyone, because Christ is “the firstborn among many brothers.” And we owe them all mercy and service. The Apostle says, “while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all” (Gal

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6: 10). Basically, we are all called to participate in the grace of Jesus Christ, either actually or potentially. Why does he specify these least brothers? Because they are the neediest members, underprivileged and deprived of the body of Christ. They are the open sores of his flesh. By acting mercifully towards “these least brothers” of ours, we do so towards Jesus Christ who suffers until the end of time in them. As Pope Francis said during the recent canonization of Mexican St. Guadalupe García Zavala, this is called “touching the flesh of Christ.” The poor, the abandoned, the sick and the marginalized are the flesh of Christ. And Mother Lupita touched the flesh of Christ and taught us this behaviour: not to feel ashamed, not to fear, not to find “touching Christ’s flesh” repugnant. Mother Lupita had realized what “touching Christ’s flesh” actually means.19

This is the novelty of Francis, who always lived as a Christian when he was a priest and a bishop, and wants to continue along this same path now that he is the Pope.

Notes 1

Apostolic Journey to Rio de Janeiro on the Occasion of the XXVIII World Youth Day, Meeting with Young People from Argentina, Address of Holy Father Francis, Thursday, 25 July 2013, San Sebastián Cathedral, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/speeches/2013/july/documents/papafrancesco_20130725_gmg-argentini-rio_en.html. Pope Francis then repeated these concepts in his conversation with the founder of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, published on 1 October 2013: http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2013/10/01/news/pope_s_conversation_with_scal fari_english-67643118/. 2 Loc. cit. 3 Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, XX, xii, 213, ed. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, in Kierkegaard’s Writings (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 233. 4 Loc. cit. 5 St. Thomas Aquinas, Super Matthaeum, c.5, lect 2. St. Thomas also quotes St. Augustine: “Whoever will take the trouble to examine with a pious and sober spirit, will find in this sermon a perfect code of the Christian life as far as relates to the conduct of daily life. Accordingly the Lord concludes it with the words, ‘Every man who heareth these words of mine and doeth them, I will liken him to a wise man.’” See, St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea (Golden Chain): http://dhspriory.org/thomas/CAMatthew.htm#5. 6 Loc. cit.

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Homily, Arena sports camp, Monday 8 July 2013 Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, Poderoso Caballero es Don Dinero, satirical poem, 1632. For St. Thomas Aquinas, the “immoderate desire for having anything whatever” is termed covetousness (ST II-II, q. 118, a. 2), which he also defines as “an immoderate desire for money” (In I Tim., 6, 10, Turin 1953, 259, n° 251). This leads to profit making as an end in itself, which is the immoderate greed for gain “which knows no limit and tends to infinity (quae terminum nescit sed in infinitum tendit)” (ST II-II, q. 77, a. 4). 9 According to the recent UNODC 2012 Report on Trafficking, the International Labour Organization estimates that since 2003 “20.9 million people are victims of forced labour globally. This estimate also includes victims of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation,” http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-andanalysis/glotip/Trafficking_in_Persons_2012_web.pdf, page 1. 10 Homily of Archbishop Bergoglio, Chrism Mass, Holy Thursday, 13 March 2013 11 Thomas Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura (Commentary on Saint Matthew’s Gospel), c.1-12, trans. by R.F. Larcher, O.P., http://dhspriory.org/thomas/SSMatthew.htm 12 St. Thomas Aquinas convincingly explains that the disordered desire for the goods of this world derives from the deprived human condition: “avarice is said to be incurable because of the condition of the subject, since human life is continuously exposed to privation. Any form of shortage provokes avarice. Because the reason to seek temporal goods is to subsidize the indigence of present life” (De Malo, q. 13, a. 2, ad. 8). 13 “Hence by altogether contemning all riches (omnes divitias contempsit), Christ showed the highest kind of liberality and magnificence; although He also performed the act of liberality, as far as it became Him, by causing to be distributed to the poor what was given to Himself. Hence, when our Lord said to Judas (John 13:27), ‘That which thou dost do quickly’, the disciples understood our Lord to have ordered him to give something to the poor (v. 29)” (St. Thomas Aquinas, ST III, q. 7, a. 2, ad. 3). 14 Mass For The Episcopal Ordination of Five New Bishops, Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI, Vatican Basilica, Saturday, 12 September 2009, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2009/documents/hf_benxvi_hom_20090912_ord-episcopale_en.html. 15 Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html. 16 Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II on the Dignity and Vocation of Women on the Occasion of the Marian Year, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jpii_apl_15081988_mulieris-dignitatem_en.html. 17 See, Commentary on St. Mathew, lect. 2, c.5. 18 Cf. Pedro de Ribadeneira, Vida de San Ignacio de Loyola. 19 Homily of Pope Francis, 12 May 2013, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papafrancesco_20130512_omelia-canonizzazioni_en.html. 8

AFTERWORD HOMILY ON ST. THOMAS AQUINAS REV. VICTOR BREZIK, CSB FOUNDER, CENTER FOR THOMISTIC STUDIES, THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS, HOUSTON, TEXAS

St. Thomas Aquinas, Model of the Intellectual Life1 It is proper at least once a year to pause in our academic routine to pay tribute to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Patron of this university, a Dominican priest, theologian, philosopher, teacher, poet, Doctor of the Church, and not least, a saint. I am not going to present a chronology of his life, nor compare his historical time with our own. Although he lived back in the thirteenth century, the core of his teaching on human and divine truth, like truth itself, bears no date. He can speak to us today as relevantly as he spoke to his contemporaries in matters of theology, philosophy, morals, and the spiritual and religious life. As we are students and teachers at a university distinguished from others by his name, I have chosen three features of his life as an example and inspiration for our own personal lives. Persons of great achievement are often motivated by an all-absorbing life’s goal. St. Thomas Aquinas was like that. He was fired by a chief ambition. One might say, his dominant passion was simply to know the truth. His Summa contra Gentiles, in which he distinguishes and relates the truth of reason and the truth of faith, begins with a quotation from the book of Proverbs which in the Douay text reads: “My mouth shall meditate truth.” This was for him his life’s prime interest. Truth for St. Thomas was the Absolute, which is to say that truth for him was primarily God. In his theology, truth is a divine name. He regarded truth in general as an agreement or conformity of thought and being. In God this agreement is superlatively more. God is the very identity of thought and being. All other truth is a created participation in the Truth which is God. This Divine Truth historically manifested itself

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visibly to the world in the Humanity of Christ. It follows that all truth, including the truth of ordinary created things, which is a reflection of the Divine Intelligence, emits an aura of sacredness demanding respect, if not even a kind of reverence. As an intelligent being, man is naturally attracted to truth, since truth is proportioned to intellect as its proper object and therefore its good. That is why a good that is identical with Divine Truth is the only object that can ultimately satisfy and bring complete happiness to an intelligent being such as the human being. Knowing this with a rare clarity of perception, St. Thomas spent his whole life in the zealous pursuit of truth. Years ago, in the early years of the last century, a brilliant young Jesuit, Pere Rousselot, who was unfortunately killed during World War I, wrote a well-received book entitled: The Intellectualism of St. Thomas. Even a mere scanning of the writings of St. Thomas would induce one to agree that he may rightly be classified as an “intellectual,” with the qualification, however, of his being a humble one, not a highbrow. His pursuit of truth as his life’s ambition is the first point I wish to make. At the same time, to regard St. Thomas simply as an “intellectual” is not to know him as he really was. Although truth for him at the summit of being is the Absolute, and although in his view, considering them in themselves, the intellect is nobler than the will, nevertheless, with respect to the imperfect conditions of human knowledge in this life, St. Thomas placed a higher value on love than on knowledge, since in this earthly life love is actually more unifying than knowledge, especially with reference to God. Consequently, he thought that on this side of heaven, it is better to love God than to know Him, even though in the next life human happiness will be realized principally through an act of knowledge rather than through an act of love. For this reason, it is not so much as by steps of knowledge that we approach God in the present life as it is steps of love–gessibus amoris. Indeed, knowledge itself does not avail for salvation unless it spills into love. As the Maritains, Jacques and Raissa, declared in their tiny volume on Prayer and Intelligence: “Love must proceed from Truth, and knowledge must bear fruit in love.” This relationship of truth and love in our life here below imitates the life in God where love is, as it were, the very breath of the Divine Word–Verbum spirans amorem. That is why St. Thomas himself, although he much sought to know, nevertheless aspired more to love, above all to love the Truth which is God. As his writings show, he was fully aware that the perfection of our present Christian life consists essentially in charity. This is my second point, that our knowledge must superabound in love.

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The third point I wish to make is that in order to acquire truth, St. Thomas had recourse not only to study but also to prayer. Indeed, as Peter Calo, his first biographer testified, he gained more knowledge through prayer than he obtained through study. Why did he resort to prayer? Evidently, he experienced how arduous it sometimes proves to be to wrest truth from things around us whose intelligibility, being imbedded in the unintelligibility of matter, only obdurately yields to the efforts of our mental powers. Even more difficult is it to reach truths about divine reality from the faint mirror of a material universe. Although indispensable, study alone does not suffice, especially in the case of higher truths. Thus, intellectual giant that he was, St. Thomas at times was driven by agony of mind and sheer frustration deferentially to beg light from on high by prayers wet with tears. What can we learn from him if not the clear lesson that the intellectual life, the characteristic of both students and teachers, needs to be accompanied and supported by a life of prayer. We are fortunate that the physical outlay of this university’s academic mall seems to whisper this suggestion to any thoughtful passerby. In the plan of the mall, the library at one end houses the accumulation of knowledge of the ages in book form and in electronic resources. The long corridor of classrooms for instruction in the humanities and sciences leads toward the striking façade of the chapel as a focal point. This indicates to me that when learning begins to approach the highest of all truths as in philosophy and especially theology, which depends on faith, both student and teacher, realizing the inadequacy of human reason left to its own resources, are instinctively prompted to bend their knees in a pleading gesture of prayer for some ray of light from God, the effulgent divine Truth, worshipped inside the chapel under a golden dome. I have tried to make three points in this homily. First, that St. Thomas dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth as man’s highest fulfillment. Secondly, that in this present life knowledge alone is not enough. It has no value for eternity unless it superabounds in love. Thirdly, that truth is such a difficult prize that a life of study to reach successfully to the highest truths needs to be aided and vivified by a life of prayer. Should there be a fourth point? I think so, but it is one that each of us will have to make for ourselves. The fourth point has to do with the translation of the example of St. Thomas befittingly and variously into our own individual and personal lives. May that be the lesson this homily has conveyed.

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Note 1

Homily at St. Basil Chapel, Mass Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Jan. 2003.