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A SHORT HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY
Paul Gerard Horrigan
Other
e-books by Dr. Paul Gerard Horrigan:
Introduction
to Philosophy: www.paulhorrigan.0catch.com
The
Existence of God: www.horrigan.angelcities.com
Philosophical Anthropology: www.horrigan.9cy.com
Introduction to Metaphysics: www.phorrigan.fcpages.com
Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant: www.horrigan.9cy.com/descartestokant.htm
Philosophy of Knowledge: www.horrigan.angelcities.com/knowledge.htm
CONTENTS
2. Medieval
Philosophy
3.
Renaissance Humanism to Kant
4. Fichte to
Gadamer
Bibliography
A
number of social, political and economic conditions permitted the rise of
philosophical speculation in the Grecian colonies of Ionia. In the eighth and
seventh centuries B.C., the Greek colonies along the Ionian coastline, through
contact with the civilizations of the East, managed to establish a veritable
commercial trading empire. The Ionian seamen and traders brought in a steady
flow of goods and riches from the East and, in time, the colonies became so
well-off that many of her citizens were endowed with that essential leisure
time needed for philosophical contemplation and speculation. The Greek colonies
were also in contact with the other ancient civilizations of the Orient (which
had, at that time, a superior scientific knowledge and where the arts and
sciences were flourishing), and because of this constant interaction the Greeks
developed a natural love for observation, speculation, and research. The republican
spirit of the Grecian city-states also encouraged free debate in various
fields, something which the older, blood-thirsty and warlike tyrannical regimes
had sought to stamp out. Thus, we find the first philosophical schools
developing in the Greek colonies. Though many of the early Greek philosophers
were scientists, mathematicians, astronomers and doctors, they also sought to
investigate the first principles and ultimate causes of all things by means of
human reasoning (the characteristic mark of the true philosophical spirit). We
also see a passage from the anthropomorphic, mythological solutions of old
concerning God, cosmos, and man, to philosophical ones based on reasoning and
argumentation.[1]
Ancient
Greek and Roman philosophy (spanning over a millennium, from the 6th century
B.C. to Justinian’s decree closing the pagan-oriented philosophical schools in
529 A.D.) can be divided into five distinct periods: 1. The Pre-Socratic
period (which was centered upon the cosmological problem). The Pre-Socratics
include the Ionians (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus),
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics (Parmenides and Zeno), and the
Pluralists (Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus) ; 2. The Sophists (where
we find a shift from an objectivist cosmocentrism to a relativistic and
subjectivistic anthropocentrism. Sophism’s main exponents include Protagoras
and Gorgias) versus Socrates (who, though focusing his philosophical
musings almost wholely on man, was, nevertheless, an ardent seeker of objective
truth) ; 3. Plato and Aristotle (where Greek philosophy, without a
doubt, reaches its highest systematic development) ; 4. The Hellenistic
period (which includes Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and the later
diffusion of Eclecticism) ; and 5. Neo-Platonism (whose most famous
exponent is Plotinus).
The
very first philosophical school in Greece was called the Ionian or Ionic school[2]
because her principal exponents, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus,
had come from Ionia, which was then the name of the Western coast of Asia Minor
(now part of Turkey).[3]
The first Ionian philosopher is Thales (c. 624–c. 562 B.C.) who sustained that
the principle or ultimate cause of all things was water. It is the ultimate
constitutive material principle of everything, remaining as a permanent
substratum throughout the different changes of things. Aristotle conjectures
that the observation of nature may have led Thales to such a conclusion:
“Thales got this notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all things is
moist, and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it
(and that from which they come to be is a principle of all things). He got his
notion from this fact, and from the fact that the seeds of all things have a
moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things.”[4]
Anaximander[5]
(c. 610–c. 540 B.C.) instead held that the first principle of all things was
the “indeterminate” or “infinite” (ápeiron), which is a compound of all
contrary elements. All things originate from it and return to it. The Stagirite
understood the apeiron to mean unlimited extension in space and qualitative
indetermination. It is wholely indeterminate, that is, it is without any formal
determination. Anaximander also believed that the apeiron was a divine
principle, encompassing and governing all things as an immortal and
indestructible principle.
Anaximenes
(c. 585–c. 528 B.C.), considered air to be the primordial principle of all
reality. Air, for this Ionian thinker, is infinite, encompassing all things,
and is in constant motion. Anaximenes probably chose air because all living
things need air for respiration.
Heraclitus[6]
(c. 540–c. 480 B.C.) was the first thinker to delve deeply into the nature of
change and becoming in the world. He is the philosopher of change. For him,
what exists is not being but becoming ; change is the only reality. The sole
material of this universal becoming is fire, since it is at once the most
elusive and the most active of elements and is perpetually in movement. Change
and becoming have their own cause and law which Heraclitus calls the logos (or
universal reason). Maintaining that all reality is pure change or becoming,
that nothing is and everything changes, that whatever is, insofar as it is, is not, since it is subject to change, he
denied the principle of non-contradiction which states that it is impossible to be and not to be at the same time and in the same
respect. Heraclitus’ philosophy of pure flux holds that “we go down, and we do
not go down into the same river ; we are, and we are not ; sea water is at once
the purest and the most tainted ; good and evil are one and the same thing.”[7]
He also held that the soul was fire; the drier the soul the more wisdom it will
have, and the more humidity it has the lesser its reasoning powers become.
The
main importance of these first philosophers, our Ionians, lies in the fact they
raised the question as to the ultimate nature of all things, rather than in any
particular answer given to the question they raised.
Pythagoras[8]
(c. 571–c. 497 B.C.) was a thinker of many talents, occupying himself in such
fields as astronomy and music, and, in particular, in arithmetic and geometry.
He was also the initiator of a famous school named after him. Pythagoras held
that the essential nature of the universe consisted in numbers. Aristotle,
writing of the Pythagorean school, explains that “the Pythagoreans, who were
the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced in this study, but also
having been brought up in it, they thought its principles were the principles
of all things. Since these principle numbers are by nature the first, and in
numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come
into being – more than in fire and earth and water…, since, again, they saw
that the modifications and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in
numbers ; since, then all other things seemed in their whole nature to be the
first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to
be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a
number.”[9]
For Copleston, “it seems clear that the Pythagoreans regarded numbers
spatially. One is the point, two is the line, three is the surface, four is the
solid. To say then that all things are number, would mean that ‘all bodies
consist of points or units in space, which when taken together constitute a
number.’[10]”[11]
Pythagoras had a very spiritualistic conception of man and proposed a strict
moral and ascetical code for his followers. He also taught the immortality of
the soul and the doctrine of transmigration of souls (metempsychosis).
Parmenides
The
philosophical genius of Parmenides[12]
(c. 520–c. 440 B.C.) discovered that betweeen being and non-being there existed
a radical distinction: being is and non-being is not ; being is
thinkable and non-being cannot be thought of. He was the first formulator of
the principle of non-contradiction, holding that being is and non-being is
not. Though Parmenides affirmed that being was the object of the intellect,
he went to excess, holding that being was the only reality, thus denying all
change in the world. Change, motion, and becoming are illusory for him. There
exists only being, the one, perfect, complete, immutable and eternal. Thus, he
ended up a monist. He laudably wanted to re-establish the truth of being in
opposition to the philosophy of pure becoming of Heraclitus. But he understood
his principle “Being is, non-being is not” in a rigid, inflexible
manner and rejected every non-being, including relative non-being. Thus, he
concluded that all limitation, multiplicity and change were impossible and
therefore all reality was but a single, homogeneous, immobile being.
“Parmenides, reaching the opposite pole to Heraclitus, fixed, as he did, once
for all one of the extreme limits of speculation and error, and proved that
every philosophy of pure being, for the very reason that it denies that kind of
non-being which Aristotle termed potentiality and which necessarily
belongs to everything created, is obliged to absorb all being in absolute
being, and leads therefore to monism or pantheism no less inevitably than the
philosophy of pure becoming.”[13]
Parmenides’ notion of being was not analogical but univocal. He failed to draw a distinction between the
infinite and the finite. A correct solution to the problem of Parmenides lies
in the doctrine of act and potency later developed by Aristotle, and in the
teaching that being is not univocal but analogical. “Thus all the difficulties
raised by Parmenides could easily be solved by dividing Being into two kinds,
two realities, two essentially different realizations (rationes simpliciter
diversae secundum quid eaedem) of the same analogical idea of Being: 1.
Being realized in a supreme and infinite degree, i.e. the essentially existent,
the purely actual – ipsum esse subsistens – to which are applicable all
Parmenides’ metaphysical inferences, provided all material elements be excluded
; and 2. Being realized in varyingly limited degrees, in things affected more
or less with potentiality, the objects of sense experience. In regard to beings
of this kind, the Eleatic arguments have no validity.”[14]
Though
Leucippus (who flourished sometime during the fifth century B.C.) is the
founder of atomism,[15]
Democritus[16] (460–360
B.C.) is undoubtedly its most famous exponent. Atomism is a philosophy which holds
that being is constituted by atoms, indivisible and immutable particles,
different from each other only in form and dimension. Atoms are constantly in
movement, and the diversity of things is caused by the movement of atoms in a
vacuum, an existent reality. When atoms unite they bring about generation, and
when they separate from one another corruption is brought about. Every
corporeal being that exists is composed of atoms that are separated from one
another by a vacuum. The cause of movement of the atoms lies in their very
instability ; they are by nature in constant motion. Knowledge, according to
Democritus, takes place by means of the action of atoms upon the sensitive
organs. Atoms constantly flow out of things, and when they reach the senses they
affect similar atoms present in the senses.
The
main philosophers of this school are Empedocles and Anaxagoras. The school is
described as pluralistic because they chose a plurality of elements for their
first principle. Empedocles[17]
(c. 483–c. 423 B.C.) held that the ultimate cause of all things resided in the
four original and immutable elements of earth, fire, air, and water. These
elements are the ungenerated, incorruptible, and immutable substances that
constitute the origin of all things. “From these things all other beings have
proceeded – those that existed in the past, those that exist at present, and
those that will exist in the future – trees, men and women, animals, birds, the
fish that live in the water, and also the gods who live long lives and who
enjoy special prerogatives. For only these elements exist ; and by combining
themselves in different ways, they take on a variety of forms, each particular
combination giving rise to a particular kind of change.”[18] The four elements never change; it is
through their different combinations that other things are brought into
existence. He also sustained that the change and becoming that we experience in
the world are a result of the conflict between the two primordial forces of
love and hate. Hate and love make the four elements unite with or separate
themselves from one another. Love brings things together and brings about
generation, while hate is divisive and brings about corruption. Love and hate
are in constant opposition with each other, and the predominance of one over
the other is in perpetual alternation, giving rise to the cosmic cycles of
generation and corruption. Empedocles’ theory of knowledge is materialist ;
knowledge is the result of the contact between the elements of things and the
elements of the senses.
Anaxagoras[19]
(c. 500–c. 428 B.C.) sustained that the first principle of all things consists
in a great indeterminate mixture composed of an infinite number of
qualitatively diverse substances, infinitely small in size. Aristotle called
Anaxagoras’ first principle the homeomeries. They are the “seeds” all
all things. The homeomeries in a way embody all things in itself. All beings
are made up of a mixture of homeomeries, and different mixtures give rise to
different things, depending on the element which has the biggest proportion in
the mixture. Movement in the world is caused by the Supreme Intelligence or
Mind (Nous). The Nous, it should be noted, did not create the world but
rather sets the world in motion whereby things begin to differentiate
themselves from one another and take on particular characteristics. The motion
initiated by the Nous is what determines the diverse proportions of homeomeries
in things. Anaxagoras describes his Nous: “While all other things are
composed of a mixture of all things, the Intelligence is infinite and
independent, not mixed with other things, but is by itself alone. Otherwise, if
it were mixed with something else and were not alone by itself, it would participate
in all other things, for everything is in everything as I said earlier. The
things mixed with it would prevent it from governing any of them in the manner
rendered possible only by its independence from all other things. The
intelligence is the most subtle and pure of beings. It knows everything
completely and has maximum power….The Intelligence ordains everything that is
brought into being – those things that existed in the past and exist no longer,
those that exist at present and those that will exist in the future. It also
causes the rotation of the stars, the sun and the moon, the air and the ether
that are separating from one another. It is this rotation that causes their
separation.”[20]
The adherents of Sophism came from various parts of
the Greek world but their center was in Athens. The Sophists[21]
were characterized by their mistrust of metaphysics, which they considered
illusory, and their concentration on dialectics, rhetoric, and eloquence
at the expense of truth. Maritain describes them: “They did not seek truth.
Since the sole aim of their intellectual activity was to convince themselves
and others of their own superiority, they inevitably came to consider as the
most desirable form of knowledge the art of refuting and disproving by skillful
arguments, for with men and children alike destruction is the easiest method of
displaying their strength, and the art of arguing with equal probability the
pros and cons of every question, another proof of acumen and skill. That is to
say, in their hands knowledge altogether lost sight of its true purpose, and
what with their predecessors was simply a lack of intellectual discipline
became with them the deliberate intention to employ concepts without the least
regard for that delicate precision which they demand, but for the pure pleasure
of playing them off one against the other – an intellectual game of conceptual
counters devoid of solid significance. Hence their sophisms or quibbles.
Their ethics were of a piece. Every law imposed upon man they declared to be an
arbitrary convention, and the virtue they taught was in the last resort either
the art of success, or what our modern Nietzscheans call the will to
power. Thus, of the spirit
which had inspired the lofty intellectual ambitions of the preceding age, the
Sophists retained only the pride of knowledge ; the love of truth they had
lost. More ardently than their predecessors they desired to achieve greatness
through knowledge, but they no longer sought reality. If we may use the expression,
they believed in knowledge without believing in truth. A similar phenomenon has
recurred since in the history of thought and on a far greater scale. Under
these conditions the sole conclusion which Sophism could reach was what is
termed relativism or scepticism.”[22]
Sophism’s main exponents were Protagoras and
Gorgias. Protagoras[23]
(c. 481–c. 411 B.C.) elaborated an essentially relativistic and anthropocentric
doctrine of knowledge and life. It was he who coined the phrase “man is the
measure of all things,”[24]
by which he meant that all was relative to the dispositions of the human
subject, the “truth” being that which appears true to him.
Gorgias
(c. 484–c. 375 B.C.) instead rejected the anthropocentric relativism of
Protagoras for an even more radically skeptical (and one should add nihilist)
view of reality, negating the existence of being as well as the correspondence
between being and thought. His three theses are: “First: nothing exists.
Second: if anything existed, it cannot be known by man, Third: if it can be
known, it cannot be transmitted and explained to others.”[25]
Not having any faith in philosophy Gorgias concentrated his efforts on
rhetoric; though words have no truth content they can be utilized in order to
control and manipulate the minds of others.
The great Athenian philosopher Socrates[26]
(469–399 B.C.) dedicated his fruitful life to the search and communication of
truth. We do not have any of his writings so in order to know his philosophical
thought we have to have recourse to those who have written of him, namely,
Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and the Minor Socratics. The method
that Socrates used (called the socratic method) in the quest for truth
consisted first of all in the use of irony in which he would appear to know
nothing of the subject matter and his student everything. Through his superior
knowledge and wit he would make his student realize his utter ignorance
regarding the subject matter which he boasted about knowing in the first place.
The second part of the socratic method consisted in the maeiutic or
intellectual midwifery, wherein Socrates helps his student awaken the dormant
knowledge of things possessed in him so that the latter in the end is able to
define the nature of the subject matter at hand by his very own power.
Socrates was a zealous opponent of sophistry,
teaching his disciples to know themselves, objective truth, and the inestimable
worth of their souls. Though he occupied himself mainly with human problems,
something he shares with the Sophists, Socrates differs from them in his
findings, such as the affirmation of the existence of the immortal soul, the
ability of the human mind to attain the universal concept, and in the effective
use of the inductive method. Again, against the Sophists, he insisted on the
essential distinction between good and evil, of vice and virtue. Happiness, for
him, consists in the virtuous life. Socrates is rightly said to be the founder
of ethics. Unfortunately he committed the intellectualist error of confusing
the knowledge of virtue with being virtuous. He mistakenly held that the
knowledge of a virtue was sufficient to put it into practice. But experience
shows us that one can know, for example, what the virtue of justice is yet fail
to be a just person; one becomes just not merely by possessing a knowledge of
justice but by habitually doing just acts.
Socrates
was an outspoken person who took on the corrupt leaders of his time, holding
them to account. And in the process, he inevitably produced enemies who wanted
him out of the way. A trial took place wherein he was accused of impiety, of
corrupting the youth of Athens. But Socrates countered that it was his very
judges who were corrupting the youth and all of Athens by their vice and
corruption. He in fact told his accusers that far from being a threat to
Athens, Athens in reality needed him. Faced with the possibility of death he
nevertheless was not cowed by fear. He was once a soldier and his accusers and
all in the trial knew of his unimpeachable bravery in battle. Not in the least
intimidated by his accusers he told them that he had to obey God rather than
men: “for know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no greater
good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do
nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take
thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care
about the greatest improvement of the soul…This is my teaching, and if this is
the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.”[27]
He then warned his listeners that a person who does injustice suffers a far
greater injury than the one suffering it. He then said: “And now, Athenians, I
am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may think, but for yours, that
you may not sin against the God by condemning me, who am his gift to you. For
if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use
such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of a gadfly, given to the state by
God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy with his motions
owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly
which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am
always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You
will not easily find another like me, and therefore I advise you to spare me.”[28]
They did not spare him, condemning him to death by drinking hemlock, a deadly
poison. Before being led away Socrates warned the jury of the justice that
awaits them: “If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from
censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which
is either possible or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be
disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.”[29]
“The hour of departure has arrived,” said Socrates in conclusion, “and we go
our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”[30]
And he died with the utmost serenity. In the conclusion of Plato’s Phaedo
we read this testimony: “Such was the end of our friend, concerning whom I may
truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest
and justest and best.”[31]
Plato[32]
(427–347 B.C.) was one of the greatest philosophers of all time. The time he
spent with his master Socrates deeply influenced his philosophy. After the
death of Socrates, Plato travelled to various cities, sojourning above all in
Syracuse. He returned to Athens in 387 where he founded the Academy, which
could be called Europe’s first university. The academy continued until 529 A.D.
when it was suppressed by the Emperor Justinian. Plato went to Syracuse another
two times but was unsuccessful in his attempt to educate the city’s tyrant. He
returned to Athens, this time for good, dying there at the age of around 80
years. Plato wrote many works, some of which have been lost to posterity. Many
of his philosophical works were written in dialogue form. His philosophy is
centered round and dominated by his Doctrine or Theory of Ideas which may be
summed up in the following principle: The specific object of human knowledge is
the real world of Ideas, of which the world of the senses is but the shadow or
the copy. Real being, according to our philosopher, is not to be found in the
particular sensible objects that make up what we call Nature, but rather in the
universal essences which are the objects, not of sense, but of the conceptions
of the intellect. Particular beautiful persons or things, for example, are not
real beauty ; only the universal essence or Idea Beauty is. Particular sensible
things only imitate reality insofar as they imitate the Ideas ; particular
horses are only imitations of the one, eternal, universal Horse, or the Idea
Horse. The very essence of Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas is that the universals are
the true realities and the particulars, the individual things that we
experience in Nature, are only half-real imitations of these true realities.
Plato’s Ideas are not something in our mind but are primarily objective
realities in themselves. They are objective universal essences existing apart
from the phenomena of the sense world and apart from our conceptual
representations. How did he arrive at such a false conclusion, that universal
Ideas really exist apart from the human mind? According to Jacques Maritain,
“failing to analyze with sufficient accuracy the nature of our ideas and the
process of abstraction, and applying too hastily his guiding principle, that
whatever exists in things by participation must somewhere exist in the pure
state, Plato arrived at the conclusion that there exists in a supra-sensible
world a host of models or archetypes, immaterial, immutable, eternal, man in
general or man in himself, triangle in itself, virtue in itself, etc. These he
termed ideas, which are the object apprehended by the intellect, the faculty
which attains truth – that is to say, they are reality.”[33]
Plato’s system can be classified as an exaggerated realism which retains that
universals are real things existing by themselves. Universal concepts would
exist independently of the individuals they are predicated of. To correct this
error of Plato we have the position of moderate realism as espoused by the
likes of Aristotle and St. Thomas. In moderate realism what is known exists as
universal in the intellect, but as individual outside the mind. Our words and
universal concepts no doubt signify certain natures, but these natures do not
exist in themselves but are individualized in things. Only individual beings
exist in reality, for the things that exist cannot be predicated of another.
Universality is a property only of our abstract concepts ; it is by virtue of
their universality that they are predicable of many. “Something is a universal
not only because it can be predicated of many, but also because what is
signified by its name can be found in many.”[34]
“For example, justice is a virtue proper to human nature ; hence, the
foundation of its demands is found in every individual subject who possesses
that nature. The common nature that is possessed by many individual
beings is common not numerically but formally. If I write ‘A’ twice –
‘A’ and ‘A’ –, I reproduce the same form in two numerically distinct letters ;
in the same way, human nature is actualized in John, Frederick, and Timothy, in
such a way that numerically, each one has his own individual nature. For
a nature to be multiplied in several individuals, the form must be capable of
being received in several material subjects. The answer to the problem of the
universals is, therefore, linked to the hylemorphic composition (the union of
matter and form) of material beings (John and Peter are both men because they
share the same nature ; but they are distinct individual men because the formal
principle of that nature has been received in different matters). As regards
accidental properties, the answer of moderate realism involves the distinction
between substance and accident (the property ‘yellow’ can be multiplied if
there are many substances capable of receiving it).”[35]
A
thing exists in the mind as a universal, in reality as an individual. That
which we apprehend by our ideas as a universal does indeed really exist, but
only in the object themselves and therefore individuated – not as a universal.
For example, the human nature found in Paul, Billy, Edward, and Bobby really
exists, but it has no existence outside the mind, except in these individual
subjects and as identical with them ; it has no separate existence, does not
exist in itself. To summarize Plato’s error, he believed that that which our
ideas present to us as a universal really exists extra-mentally as a universal.
To correct this, moderate realism holds that that which our ideas present to us
as a universal does not exist outside the mind as a universal but rather
individuated.
For
Plato, man is essentially soul, a pure spirit forcibly united with a body. The
soul existed before it was joined to the body, and its present existence in the
body, which is its prison, is a punishment. What about the Platonic doctrine of
knowledge? For Plato, “the Ideas alone have reality in the strict sense ; they
exist as real entities (noumena) apart from the world of sense (phenomena). The
objects of the sense world are but faint, changing replicas or imitations of
the eternal, unchanging Ideas ; the Ideas are the eternal prototypes or
exemplars of the objects of the sense world. The universal ideas of the human
mind are true representations of these noumenal Ideas and cannot have their
origin in the changeable and changing objects of this visible universe. It
follows, according to Plato, that men’s souls must have had a pre-existence
in a former life in the noumenal world, where they contemplated the Ideas as
these Ideas existed in themselves. On being united to the body in its present
earthly existence, the soul forgot the knowledge of the Ideas, but the
universal ideas thus acquired slumber in the soul until awakened ; they lie
innate in the recesses of the mind. For every object existing in the universe
(tree, dog, sky, house, rose, etc.) there exists a corresponding Idea in the
noumenal world. On seeing such an object in the present life (some individual
tree, dog, etc.), we remember what we have known before and have
forgotten: the innate slumbering universal idea is awakened and brought to
consciousness. Hence, Plato’s theory of innate ideas is also called the theory
of reminiscence.”[36]
While he believed in the immortality of the soul, he also held the Pythagorean
tenet of transmigration of souls, or metempsychosis. That man is essentially a
pure spirit (that pre-existed the body) forcibly trapped in the body, and that
knowledge is reminiscence, are erroneous doctrines not faithful to experience
and consciousness. “For one thing, Plato supposes that the connection between
body and soul in man’s earthly life is forced and unnatural ; the
relationship between the two is extrinsic, similar to the relationship
between a horse (body) and its rider (soul). In this view, death should be a
welcome event, a release for the soul from the imprisonment in the body. We
know, however, that man dreads death. Man is by nature, as all evidence proves,
a psycho-physiological integral organism. The dread of death shows clearly
that the union of the body and soul is natural. If their union were merely
extrinsic, it is inexplicable how the union of the body with the soul could
blot out the knowledge of the Ideas formerly contemplated, because the body
could not possibly influence the inner activities of the soul. Aristotle
opposed Plato’s theory on the grounds that it is poetic and fantastic and
contrary to the testimony of consciousness. If we actually had a former
existence, the awakening of the innate universal ideas should also revive the
memory of this previous existence itself. But we have no such memory. The
theory is pure assumption on the part of Plato.”[37]
What
about Plato’s practical philosophy, his conception of ethics? All of his
philosophy has an ethical orientation: man is on this earth as a wayfarer in
expectation of the next life. In order to attain happiness it is necessary to
renounce pleasures and riches and to dedicate oneself to the practice of virtue
and contemplation. He taught that it is better to suffer injustice than to
commit it. Nevertheless, his moral philosophy has serious flaws, as Maritain
points out: “As a result of his exaggerated intellectualism he failed to
distinguish the acts of the practical from those of the speculative intellect
and identified virtue, which requires rectitude of will, with knowledge, which
is a perfection of the reason alone. He therefore misapplied the principle, in
itself true, that the will always follows the guidance of the understanding,
and maintained that sin is simply due to lack of knowledge and that no one
deliberately does evil : ‘the sinner is merely an ignorant person.’ The
consequence of this theory, which Plato did not intend, is the denial of free
will.”[38]
And
what of Plato’s sociology and political philosophy? Maritain is again critical:
“Plato’s sociology betrays the same idealist and rationalist tendency which
leads him to misapply another true principle, namely, that the part exists for
the whole ; so that in his ideal republic, governed by philosophers,
individuals are entirely subordinated to the good of the state, which alone is
capable of rights, and disposes despotically of every possible species of
property, not only the material possessions, but even the women and children,
the life and liberty, of its citizens (absolute communism).
It
appears that the radical source of Plato’s many errors “seems to have been his
exaggerated devotion to mathematics, which led him to despise empirical
reality. They were also due to an overambitious view of the scope of
philosophy, in which Plato, like the sages of the East, though with greater
moderation and discretion, placed the purification, salvation, and life of the
entire man.”[39]
Aristotle[40]
(384–322 B.C.), also called the Stagirite, was born in the town Stagira in
Trace on the northern coast of the Aegean Sea. In 367, his seventeenth year, he
entered the Academy and became a disciple of Plato, but his philosophy is very
different from his master’s. After the death of Plato, he left the Academy and
in 335 set up his own school in Athens called the Lyceum. He was also for a
time teacher to the famous conqueror Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s
philosophical and scientific work, unparalleled for its extent and variety, was
practically a vast encyclopedia of all the knowledge at that time as well as
the most profound system of philosophical thought in all the ancient world. The
noted Aristotle scholar W. D. Ross had this to say of the Stagirite: “Aristotle
fixed the main outlines of the classification of the sciences in the form which
they still retain, and carried most of the sciences to a further point than
they had hitherto reached ; in some of them, such as logic, he may fairly claim
to have had no predecessor, and for centuries no worthy successor.”[41]
As
was said Plato and Aristotle’s philosophies are very different. The famous
Goethe, commenting upon the famous theme of Raphael’s magnificent fresco The
School of Athens, gives us a comparison between the two master
philosophers: “Plato seems to behave as a spirit descended from heaven, who was
chosen to dwell a space on earth. He hardly attempts to know the world. He has
already formed an idea of it, and his chief desire is to communicate to
mankind, which stands in such need of them, the truths which he has brought
with him and delights to impart. If he penetrates to the depth of things, it is
to fill them with his own soul, not to analyze them. Without intermission and
with the burning ardour of his spirit, he aspires to rise and regain the
heavenly abode from which he came down. The aim of all his discourse is to
awaken in his hearers the notion of a single eternal being, of the good, of
truth, of beauty. His method and words seem to melt, to dissolve into vapour,
whatever scientific facts he has managed to borrow from the earth. Aristotle’s
attitude towards the world is, on the other hand, entirely human. He behaves
like an architect in charge of a building. Since he is on earth, on earth he
must work and build. He makes certain of the nature of the ground, but only to
the depth of his foundations. Whatever lies beyond to the center of the earth
does not concern him. He gives his edifice an ample foundation, seeks his
materials in every direction, sorts them, and builds gradually. He therefore
rises like a regular pyramid, whereas Plato ascends rapidly heavenward like an
obelisk or a sharp tongue of flame. Thus have these two men, representing
qualities equally precious and rarely found together, divided mankind, so to
speak, between them.”[42]
Aristotle
wrote many works, many of which have been lost to us, but still a substantial
body of writings remain. He wrote on many philosophical and scientific topics.
Instead of the dialogue method which his master Plato constantly used, he
preferred the philosophical treatise as the definitive model for his works. Let
us treat briefly of his logic, his metaphysics, his physics, his psychology,
his ethics or moral philosophy, and his political philosophy. 1. Logic.
Aristotle is in fact the inventor of logic. In the field of reasoning he
proposed two methods: induction and deduction. He is also the inventor of the
syllogism ; 2. Metaphysics. Aristotle believed that science was superior
to spontaneous knowledge or to common experience because science was knowledge
through causes. In his work, the Metaphysics, he treats of the first
principles and ultimate causes of all reality. The first fundamental truth of
all reality is the principle of non-contradiction. As to the essential
constitution of things the Stagirite refutes the Platonic Theory of Ideas for,
in his opinion, the theory does not explain the essences of things, nor the
becoming, nor their rapport with the Ideas, nor in what way the human mind can
have a knowledge of them. So, where does Aristotle turn to? To reality itself
which is constituted of substances and accidents and the constitutive elements
of matter and form. Matter and form exist only together ; as regards the
substance, the form confers its specific characteristics while the matter
confers its individual characteristics. Through an analysis of change in the
world Aristotle discovers the theory of act and potency. It is potency that
renders becoming or change possible ; 3. Physics. Physics is the study of
nature, that is, of corporeal beings in movment or motion. The fundamental
principle of all change or motion is that all that is in motion is moved by
another. Becoming is matter’s passage from one form to another, something which
happens in space and time ; 4. Psychology. Aristotle is held to be the
founder of psychology. Man is a rational animal, a substantial unity of body
(matter) and soul (form). The soul is defined as the first act of an organic
physical body. Man is different from the plants and the animals because he
possesses a rational soul. There are three functions of the human soul:
vegetative, sensitive, and rational. Human knowledge is initially had though
sensitive knowledge, and from this knowledge we can proceed to intellective
knowledge. The Stagirite firmly rejected the pre-existence of the soul as well
as innate ideas. The mind is a blank slate before its starts knowing initially
from the senses ; 5. Ethics or moral philosophy. The ultimate end of
man, according to Aristotle, is happiness. We attain happiness through the
virtuous life ; and 6. Political philosophy. The State has a natural,
not a conventional end. The goal of the State is to facilitate the full
realization of man’s capacities. He recognizes three just forms of government,
monarchy, aristocracy, and “polity,” and three unjust forms of government,
namely, tyranny, oligarchy, and “democracy” (or mob rule).
Stoicism’s
main exponents include Zeno[43]
(336–274 B.C.), Crisippus (281–208 B.C.), Epictetus[44]
(50-138 A.D.), Seneca[45]
(4 B.C.?–65 A.D.), and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius[46]
(121–180 A.D.). Stoicism[47]
is essentially a moral doctrine, but also includes quite developed
gnoseological and cosmological doctrines. Its moral doctrine consists in the
acquisition of happiness through the practice of the virtues, refusing any
concession whatsoever to the senses and passions. Emotions and passions were
considered to be unworthy of the wiseman. They considered them to be
transgression of the right order, irrational, and even diseases of the soul.
The ideal of the virtuous wiseman, though not insensitive to others, should be
an emotionless and passionless detachment in all the trying situations of life.
Though Stoicism’s norm of morality based on the nature of man as a rational
animal is quite sound the stoic system is nonetheless arbitrary, basing its
norm on reason alone to the exclusion of every other part of man’s
composite nature. Consequently, the Stoics condemned all emotions and passions
as irrational and evil. But this is erroneous since passions and emotions are
not evil in themselves but are just a part of human nature as reason is. They
should indeed be governed by reason according to the hierarchy of man’s being
but should not be excluded from this hierarchical order as such. As regards
gnoseology or philosophy of knowledge, the Stoics did not hold the Platonic and
Aristotelian doctrine on truth. While Plato and Aristotle held that truth
essentially consists in the correspondence of the mind with extra-mental
reality, for Zeno and his disciples, truth consists in the total comprehension
of the object by which the mind is obliged to assent. As for Stoic cosmology or
philosophy of nature, the world is believed to be essentially constituted by
two primordial elements: matter and the Logos. The former, being indefinite and
inert, represents the passive principle, while the latter, being animate and
full of energy, represents the active principle.
This
philosophy, founded by Epicurus[48]
(c. 341–c. 270 B.C.), is radically different from Stoicism, refusing its
ethical rigorism and anthropological and metaphysical spiritualism. Its
doctrine on knowledge is sensistic: the sole true knowledge of man comes from
his senses and the ultimate criterion of truth is sensation. It gives a
materialistic conception of man and the world: the primordial element of the
world are atoms and the void. The various deviations of the atoms give rise to
all things. Even the gods are constituted by atoms. For the Epicurean, the
supreme good consists in pleasure which should be calm and tranquill. Pleasure
is the only unconditioned good ; all other things, including virtue, can have
only relative value.
The
fundamental thesis of Skepticism[49]
is that man can never know the truth. Its principal exponents are Pyrrho,
Carneades, and Sextus Empiricus. Pyrrho[50]
(360–270 B.C.) held that man must suspend his judgment on all things and such a
suspension is the foundation of peace of soul. Carneades (214–129 B.C.) proposed
a surpassing of radical skepticism, believing in the possibility of choosing by
way of the grades of probabilities offered by experience. Sextus Empiricus[51]
(180–220 A.D.), philosopher as well as medical doctor, was the last major
exponent of skepticism. He had developed quite a complete system of skepticism.
He believed that there was no possibility whatsoever for absolutely certain
knowledge: one cannot pronounce upon precise assertions regarding the nature of
“exterior” things. Sextus Empiricus denied the validity of the Aristotelian
syllogism and of causality, and of all dogmatic doctrines of preceding
philosophers. However, if absolutely certain knowledge must be combatted as
dogmatism, the research that our minds conduct in the knowledge of phenomena is
useful for experience gives us always the possibility of bettering our knowing
powers.
Eclecticism,[52]
a term derived from the Greek ekléghein which means to choose, is a
philosophy that picks and chooses elements of truth in all the preceding
philosophical schools and coordinates and harmonizes them. In Rome, the most
famous eclectic was Cicero[53]
(106–43 B.C.), who was also very much influenced by Stoicism and Platonism.
Cicero chose the philosophical elements of preceding philosophers and schools
which he thought most noble and in conformity with common sense which he
considered to be criterion of certainty.
Neo-Platonism[54]
is a philosophical movement that takes up and develops Greek Platonism. The
foundations of the School of Alexandria was set up by Ammonius Sacca, but
Neo-Platonism’s principal philosopher is Plotinus[55]
(205-270). After his death his work came to dominate the Greek philosophical
world and also had a great influence on later thinkers such as St. Augustine
and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Plotinus had developed a more profound
concept of the Absolute than Plato had done. This Absolute or One is an
absolute principle and the foundation of all being. It is over and above all
being, above all determination or form. At the origin of everything, lying
beyond being itself as the foundation of being, is the One. This One is
absolutely simple and is a principle without principle. It is also infinite,
having the fullness of perfection and an absolute power or energy. It is
wholely immaterial and is the fullness of actuality without any limitation
whatsoever. “Yet its Being is not limited ; what is there to set bounds to it?
Nor, on the other hand, is it infinite in the sense of magnitude; what place can
there be to which it must extend, or why should there be movement where there
is no lacking? All its infinitude resides in its power: it does not change and
will not fail; and in it all that is unfailing finds duration.”[56]
The One does not have any determination and cannot be expressed by any words
whatsoever. Plotinus believed that we have an immediate knowledge of this
Absolute or One which is simple and transcendent and therefore ineffable
(negative theology). He sometimes uses the term Good to designate the One. They
are identical. The One is the “Good above all that is good.”[57]
All things have their origin from the One by emanation. From the One comes
Life, Intelligence and the Soul of the world. Man is composed of soul (which
pre-exists) and body. The goal of the soul is to return to the One through a
free operation that does not contradict metaphysical necessity. The phases of
such a return are threefold: ascetic or catharsis (through the exercise of the
four cardinal virtues), contemplation (the knowledge of the One through
philosophy), and ecstasy (immediate mystical union with the One).
In
the Hebrew tradition there was a notable philosophical potential around God, man,
and history. The Jewish people were the first in developing a rigorous
monotheism. God, for the Jews, is the One and absolutely transcendent Person,
Infinite and Almighty, Creator of the world. God preserves man in the world in
being, and Who speaks through His prophets. Man was made in the image of God ;
with the spiritual powers of intellect and will, the human person is master of
his acts for which he is accountable. History, therefore, for the Jews, is the
story of God and His relationship with His people, a people at times faithful
and at other times rebellious. The Jewish people had a special rapport with
Almighty God ; they had a sacred alliance with Him, Who protected and guided
them through times of crisis, as when they were under bondage and servitude in
Egypt.
Philo
of Alexandria[58] (c. 20
B.C.–c. 50 A.D.) came from a wealthy and prominent Jewish family. Having become
a rabbi he developed a passion for philosophy and sought to work out a
synthesis between the Bible and the philosophy of Plato through the
“allegorical interpretation” of Scripture. Though he admitted a literal sense
in the reading of Scripture he believed it to be inferior to the allegorical
sense which he espoused. He also held that philosophy provided an ancillary
role with respect to theology which he calls wisdom: “In the same way as
general culture is handmaid to philosophy, philosophy is handmaid to wisdom.”[59]
For Philo, the universe has a pyramid structure: at the top is God, and at the
bottom material beings. Man is situated between spiritual beings and that of
material ones. God is so absolutely transcendent that He remains, for Philo,
unknowable to man. Human words are unable to express what He is. He is
ineffable, incomprehensible. However, by means of a limited and negative
knowledge of God we are able to know some of God’s properties such as His
incorporeity, unicity, and simplicity. But the best term to designate God’s
nature is, for Philo, the name God Himself revealed to Moses: “I am Who Am.”[60]
For him, God is the Supreme Being, the Being Who Is and Who will be forever,
and the Being Who causes all things to exist. The object of Philo’s philosophy
is to get man to detach himself from material things and ascend to God through
contemplation and esctasy.
Copleston
gives us a good description of the beginnings of Christian philosophy[61]:
“Christianity came into the world as a revealed religion: it was given to the
world by Christ as a doctrine of redemption and salvation and love, not as an
abstract and theoretical system, and He sent His Apostles to preach, not to
occupy professors’ chairs. Christianity was ‘the Way’, a road to God to be
trodden in practice, not one more philosophical system added to the systems and
schools of antiquity. The Apostles and their successors were bent on converting
the world not on excogitating a philosophical system. Moreover, so far as their
message was directed to the Jews, the Apostles had to meet theological rather
than philosophical attacks, while, in regard to the non-Jews, we are not told,
apart from the account of St. Paul’s famous sermon at Athens, of their being
confronted with, or of their approaching, Greek philosophers in the academic
sense.
“However,
as Christianity made fast its roots and grew, it aroused the suspicion and
hostility, not merely of the Jews and the political authorities, but also of
pagan intellectuals and writers. Some of the attacks levelled against
Christianity were due simply to ignorance, credulous suspicion, fear of what
was unknown, misrepresentation ; but other attacks were delivered on the
theoretical plane, on philosophical grounds, and these attacks had to be met.
This meant that philosophical as well as theological arguments had to be used.
There are, then, philosophical elements in the writings of early Christian
apologists and Fathers ; but it would obviously be idle to look for a
philosophical system, since the interest of these writers was primarily
theological, to defend the Faith. Yet, as Christianity became more firmly
established and better known and as it became possible for Christian scholars
to develop thought and learning, the philosophical element tended to become
more strongly marked, especially when there was question of meeting the attacks
of pagan professional philosophers.”[62]
Christianity,
though being a religion, has exercised a decisive role in the general
development of philosophy and upon the acquisition of certain truths of capital
importance such as the concepts of the person, freedom, history and time, God,
and evil, as Battista Mondin explains:
“1.
The concept of person. ‘In ancient Greek philosophy the term to express
personality does not even exist’ (Zeller). It was Christianity that created a
new dimension for man, that of the human person. This notion was so extraneous
to classical rationalism that the Greek Fathers were not able to find the
categories and words in Greek philosophy to express this new reality. Hellenic
thought was unable to conceive the fact that the infinite and universal could
express itself in a person. Only thanks to the concept of the person – a being
gifted with infinite dignity and absolute value – brought to light by
Christianity, which makes all men images of God created directly by Him, could
all discrimination based on sex, age, race, language, power, possessions, cult
and so forth become illegitimate, unjust, and odious. All men are equally
worthy of esteem, respect and love, even one’s enemies, especially the weak,
the poor and the most humble. Thanks to the revolutionary concept of the
person, Christian philosophers were able to substitute Greek aristocratic and
racist humanism with a truly universal humanism.
“2.
The concept of freedom. Freedom in the sense of man’s sovereignty over
himself, his own decisions, and hence in a certain way over nature, was a
concept unknown to the Greeks, who considered man chained by the three
unshakable powers of Fate, Nature, and History. ‘Entire parts of the world,
such as Africa and the Orient, have never had this idea and still do not have
it.[63]
On the contrary, they knew only that man is truly free thanks thanks to his
birth (as an Athenian, Spartan, etc., citizen), to his character and culture,
and to philosophy (the slave, even chained, is free). This idea came into the
world through the work of Christianity, for which the individual as such has
infinite value. Being the object and goal of God’s love, this individual is
destined to have an absolute relation with God as spirit and to make his spirit
rest in God. That is, man is of himself destined for the greatest freedom.’[64]
“3.
The concept of history and time. The Greeks saw history and time
as mechanical and fatal chronological sequences, not as a totality of events
propitious (‘kairoi’) to man and for which man takes responsibility. The
Christian concept of time and history is diametrically opposed to the Greek
concept of a circular movement returning to the beginning after a certain
number of years (generally calculated by the ten thousands). Christians have a
linear and ascending concept of time and history ; and history has already
indicated a decisive moment (‘kairòs’), that of Christ’s coming. ‘For
Christians, historical time has a completely different character from that of
the cosmic cycle, given the fact that history has preserved the unique event of
Christ’s coming, which is a central date (…) Hence, in the Christian era, the
ancient idea of the cyclical nature of world history has evolved into a linear
dimension (…) With the admission of linear time and its central date, there
came the complete exclusion of ancient conceptions from the Christian
consciousness, for example, the one of all things’ complete return. Christ’s
appearance took place once and for all in a definitive way ; hence the history
into which he entered is a unique event.’[65]
“4.
The concept of God. The anthropomorphic and polytheistic conception of
the divine which prevailed in Greco-Roman culture was challenged by an
absolutely new concept in which we see an admirable balance of some qualities
expressing His infinite distance from man and the world (such as uniqueness and
infinity) and His closeness and intimacy to man and the world (such as
paternity, goodness, Providence, mercy, etc.). It is the originality and
singularity of this concept of God which allowed Christianity to propose new
concepts of the person, freedom, and history.
“5.
The concept of evil. Historians of ideas recognize that the concept of moral
evil is a Christian concept making up part of the logic of the cultural
framework established by the four preceding concepts. In effect, the concept of
moral evil implies a personal relation between man and the divinity, as well as
an autonomy, a responsibility and a freedom of man before the divinity. This
the Greek culture did not possess, although it did become part of the Christian
message.
“6.
The concept of creation. For the Greeks, the world was a divine and
eternal reality without origin and without end. The archetypes of reality
(Plato’s ideas, Aristotle’s forms, the Stoics’ ‘logoi spermatikoi’, Epicurus’
atoms) were essentially unchangeable. Hence the concept of creation, understood
as the complete production of something from nothing, was totally extraneous to
the Greeks. The only type of action they recognized was that of transformation,
the production of a new form in matter through the elimination of the preceding
form. Even the Demiurge and the Logos do not go beyond these limits. ‘Ex nihilo
nihil fit’ was always the first axiom of Greek ontology, shared not only by
Parmenides and Heraclitus, but also by Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus.
Creation, understood as the production of something from an absolute (and not
only a relative) nothingness, is an exclusively Biblical and Christian concept,
a concept exalting the absolute transcendence of God with respect to all other
realities while fundamentally underlining the dependence of all things on God.
Creation means contingency and precariousness of things, but at the same time
it attests to God’s goodness and munificence. Creation means that the world is
not eternal but that it is not the product of malignant divinities who do not
care for the world’s fate. The world is not the fruit of chance. It is not
cyclically born, but it is a marvellous effect of God’s goodness. Thanks to
this rich philosophical potential, Christianity was able to exercise an
influence and stimulus on the development of subsequent philosophical thought
stronger and more profound than that of any earlier religion.”[66]
St.
Clement of Alexandria[67]
(c. 150–c. 215) was the first Christian thinker who had sought to elaborate a
synthesis between the teaching of Christian doctrine and Greek philosophy. For
him philosophy had a propaedeutic function, that is, preparatory, to the faith.
“Philosophy is a preparation that sets in motion man who must be perfected
through Christ…”[68] Regarding
the other relationships between philosophy and theology, Clement retains that:
1. philosophy by itself is not sufficient to assure man’s salvation ; 2.
because it produces salvation faith is superior to philosophy ; 3.
nevertheless, faith should not distrust philosophy as certain religious zealots
have taught ; and 4. philosophy comes to the aid of faith by bettering its
knowledge of truths and their
formulation.
For
Clement, faith is superior to philosophy in its effects (faith saves while
philosophy does not) and in some of its essential properties such as amplitude
of knowledge and probative force (the volume of knowledge and probative force
is greater in faith than in philosophy). For the Alexandrian, faith is the most
certain knowledge (he is talking here of argumentative force and not of
evidence, for regarding evidence, faith, being an argument of authority, is
inferior to philosophy). Philosophy is utilized to better understand the faith.
It is placed in the service of faith: 1. to predispose oneself towards
accepting the Word of God ; 2. to better understand, as much as possible for a
human creature, the Divine Word ; 3. to be able to better teach revealed truth
; and 4. to be able to efficaciously defend the truth against the various
heresies opposing it. These are the
four services which philosophy gives to faith: preparatory, critical,
educational, and apologetic respectively.
Origen[69]
(c. 185–c. 254) was a prolific writer, a commentator of Sacred Scripture, to
which he applied allegorical interpretations, and elaborated a vast attempt to
explain Christian doctrine. The most important philosophical aspect of his
thought consists in his theory regarding the origin and end of things.
One
of the greatest thinkers of all time, St. Augustine[70]
(354-430) was the maximum exponent of Christian philosophy during the patristic
period. He managed to work out a harmonious synthesis between Christianity and
Neo-Platonism. Born in Tagaste, which is now part of Algeria, North Africa,
from a pagan father (Patricius) and a Christian mother (St. Monica), Augustine
dedicated himself to literary and philosophical studies and then to teaching.
He adhered to many diverse philosophies, and was for a time a Manichean and
skeptic. He travelled to Rome and then to Milan where he met the learned and
saintly bishop St. Ambrose. He subsequently converted to Christianity and
received baptism in 387 from the hands of Ambrose. He then returned to Africa
in 388, became a priest and later bishop of Hippo in North Africa. During this
period he engaged in polemics against the Manichaeans, Donatists and Pelagians.
He died in 430 just as the barbarian Vandal hordes were beseiging his beloved
city of Hippo. He wrote a great number of works, his most famous ones being the
Confessions, De Trinitate, and
The City of God. Regarding his philosophical thought let us treat
briefly of his conceptions of knowledge and truth, God, the world, evil and
freedom, the spirituality and immortality of the soul, and history.
1.
Knowledge and Truth. Augustine was a fierce critic of skepticism,
holding against the academic skeptics that we can in fact know objective
truths. We can know for example the first of all principles, namely, the
principle of non-contradiction with certainty.[71]
He notes that even the skeptics are certain of a number of truths, such as, for
example, the fact that of two disjunctive propositions one must be true and the
other false. One is also certain of one’s existence for even if one doubt his
own existence, the doubt itself is a proof of existence. He notes that even if
you fall into error, your being mistaken shows that you exist: Si fallor,
sum (if I am mistaken, I exist).
“If you did not exist, you could not be deceived in anything.”[72]
He states that “I am most certain of my being, knowing and loving; nor do I
fear the arguments against these truths by the academics who say, ‘and what if
you deceive yourself?’ If I deceive myself, that means that I am, that I exist.
Certainly, he who does not exist cannot deceive himself; if I deceive myself,
then through this very fact I am. Since I exist, from the moment in which I
deceive myself, how can I deceive myself about my being when I am certain that
I am, through the fact itself that I deceive myself? Therefore, if I would
exist, I who deceive myself, even given the hypothesis that I deceive myself, I
still undoubtedly do not deceive myself in knowing myself.”[73]
Even doubts of the senses cannot make us doubt our existence and our being
alive: “In reference to this, we must not have any fear unless we are deceived
by some plausible probability, since it is certain that the man who is deceived
is alive. Nor does knowledge depend on visual images which are presented from
without, so that the eye is deceived in these images; for example, when an oar
immersed in water seems broken and the keel seems in movement to those who
navigate, or in a thousand other cases where things are not what they seem. The
truth of which I am speaking is not perceptible through the eyes of the flesh.
It is in virtue of internal cognition that we know we are alive…As a result,
the man who asserts that he knows he is alive does not have the possibility to
err or to deceive himself. Thousands of illusions of the senses may present
themselves; he will not fear any of them from the moment when the man who is
deceived must be alive in order to be deceived.”[74]
Sensation,
the lowest level of knowledge for Augustine, consists in a spiritual act of the
soul, very different from the Aristotelian doctrine of the passive reception of
images from the external world initially by means of the external senses. It is
an act of the soul using the organs of sense as its instruments. Sensory images
are caused, he says, by the soul. “When we see a body and its image begins to
exist in our soul, it is not the body that impresses the image in our soul. It
is the soul itself that produces it with wonderful swiftness within itself.”[75]
As
for the knowledge of the eternal truths, which is the apex of intellective
knowledge, this takes place through divine illumination, a doctrine which
replaces the Platonic theory of reminiscence. Augustine holds that we can
indeed make necessary and immutable judgments and the doctrine of illumination
is meant to explain such a fact. Through the divine illumination from God, when
man makes a true judgment the mind is in contact with the immutable and
necessary truths in the Divine Mind. Though this contact does not enable us to
see the Ideas in God’s Mind, it does account for the immutability and necessity
of our knowledge.
2.
God. Augustine’s philosophy is very interioristic, something he
inherited from Platonism and Neo-Platonism, and therefore, it is essentially
through human interiority that man ascends to God ; 3. The World. Augustine explains the creation of the world by means of
his doctrines of the eternal reasons and the seminal reasons (rationes seminales). He substitutes
Plato’s erroneous subsisting Ideas or Forms for his doctrine of the eternal
reasons in the Divine Mind, and which the rationes seminales are the
created material counterpart: “God knew all things from eternity: everything
that he had made, and those that he can make and will make, as well as those
that he can make but will never make. This knowledge of God is in the divine
ideas, which are also known as the eternal reasons.”[76]
“On the basis of the eternal reasons, God freely created the world out of
nothing…He created first formless matter, which contained the rationes
seminales, that is, the seeds of things that were to come into being in the
course of time. Afterwards, with the passage of time, those seminal reasons
developed all the virtual power that they contained.”[77]
“God made the world at one moment, sowing in the primal amorphous matter the
seminal reasons or seeds of everything that would come to be later on in time.
Such seminal reasons are the created material counterpart of the uncreated
eternal reasons”[78] ; 4. Evil
and Freedom. Our saintly bishop of Hippo teaches that evil is not
a positive reality but rather a privation of reality. Evil cannot exist in
itself as a substance ; rather, it exists in a substance which is ontologically
good in itself since the being is made by God. A killer is ontologically good
in his metaphysical make-up since he was created by God. But what makes him
evil is his freely-willed deordination from right reason, the good and the
true, and from his Maker. The cause of evil is not God but the perverted will
of man. True evil is moral evil or sin, and sin is a result of the bad use of
human freedom. Convinced that man has need of supernatural grace in order to be
saved, Augustine combated the raging Pelagian heresy of his time ; 5. The
Spirituality and Immortality of the Soul. The Augustinian definition of
man is “a rational soul that makes use of a body.” Though not denying that a
part of man is his body, Augustine states that man is above all his soul. The
spirituality of the soul is demonstrated by self-consciousness, and the soul’s
immortality is proved by its continuing relationship with truth. 6. History.
Augustine’s concept of history is found in his monumental work The City of
God. History is divided into three periods: origin, past, and future. While
Greek philosophy’s conception of history is circular, Augustine’s concept was
linear. In his monumental work De civitate Dei (The City of God)
Augustine speaks of the civitas Dei and the civitas terrrena:
“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly city by the love of
self, even to the contempt of God ; the heavenly by the love of God, even to
the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in
the Lord.”[79] Those who
follow the Holy Will of God make up the City of God (civitas Dei), while
those who sin and follow their passions and evil desires make up the members of
the Earthly City (civitas terrena). Therefore, the City of God and the
Earthly City should not be understood as referring to the institutions of
Church and State. The Church is populated by members of the civitas Dei
and the civitas terrena, and both the friends and enemies of God
populate the State.
Augustine’s
philosophy is indeed magnificent but is also open to some criticism. As Joseph
de Torre points out, “it is characteristic of St. Augustine that his teaching
is profound but incomplete, and this gives an idea of Christian philosophy in
its process of formation. As for man, he is also influenced by Platonic ideas:
he cannot explain very well how the soul is united to the body, as he did not
know the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul as substantial form of the body. For
him, following Plato, man is rather a soul using a body, although he did admit
that the body is part of man. Likewise, he could not explain very well the
nature of sense perception. Plato had said, as we saw, that sensible things do
not really exist, but are only an ‘imitation’ of the ideas (reality doesn’t
change ; but sensible things change ; therefore they are not real), and St.
Augustine’s tendency is to think in this way too. According to him, our sense
knowledge is not to be put on the same level as our knowledge of ideas: there
is a sharp division between the sensible and the intelligible worlds. St.
Thomas would also correct this Platonic tendency: without confusion, there is
union and continuity of sense and intelligence, as of body and soul. All the
above explains why some Christian philosophers who have followed St. Augustine
more than St. Thomas have fallen into error and even heresy, not because there
are errors or heresies in St. Augustine, but because his doctrine contains some
unsettled or obscure points which, without the clarifications of St. Thomas, could
lead to misunderstandings. This is why the Church insists that we should study
St. Thomas above all. The other Christian teachers are also very good, but the
Angelic Doctor is the ‘universal teacher’ (Doctor communis): if we
follow him, the Church guarantees that we will not go astray.”[80]
Born
in Rome from a noble family, Severinus Boethius[81]
(480-524) was both a philosopher and a politician. Consul and prime minister to
the Ostrogoth king Theodoric, Boethius was accused of treason and was
imprisoned, tried and executed at Pavia. While in prison he wrote his
celebrated work The Consolation of Philosophy wherein he sought to
solve the problem of the suffering of the innocent and of the problems
connected with it, such as the providence of God and human freedom. Regarding
the demonstration of the existence of God he espoused the a posteriori
demonstrations from grades of perfection and from the order and unity of
things. Regarding the latter argument he writes: “This world could not have
obtained in any way a unified form from parts so different and contrary, unless
He who brought together realities so different were one. The very diversity of
the various natures opposed to each other would have become disassociated and
detached as soon as it was unified unless there were a One keeping all He
joined together. The order of nature would not be so stable, nor would places,
times, effects, spaces, and qualities express themselves in movements so
harmonious, if there were not One regulating this multiple variety of changes
while remaining immutable Himself. This being, whoever He may be, through whose
work created realities remain and change, with a name used by all, I call God.”[82]
He also wrote profoundly upon the themes of time and eternity. Regarding the
questions of evil, freedom, and Divine Providence Boethius explains: 1. that
evil is not a substance but a privation ; 2. that evil has its origin not in
God but in creatures themselves, either because of their physical finiteness
(physical evil) or in their poor use of freedom (moral evil) ; 3. that man is
free ; 4. that God is always the prime cause of all that happens, of everything
that comes into being, and of everything that perseveres in being ; and 5. that
the action of God’s Providence is not suspended when man acts freely. Boethius
is considered one of the Fathers of Scholasticism for two reasons: first, for
his translations of Plato, Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists, which the
Scholastics had obtained many of their doctrines ; and second, for his
definitions of some crucial concepts utilized in Scholastic philosophy, such as
the concepts of person, eternity, and happiness.
Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite[83] is a
pseudonym of an unknown Christian philosopher and theologian who lived during
the end of the fifth century A.D. He is the author of a number of letters and
four Greek treatises of Neo-Platonic inspiration that has exercised an enormous
influence upon Medieval thought. Translated into Latin from the Greek, the four
treatises are: 1. De divinis nominibus (On the Divine Names), which is
an explanation of the names and attributes which the Sacred Scriptures give to
God. It also treats of the value of our knowledge and of the possibilities and
limits of theological language ; 2. De mystica theologia (The Mystical
Theology), is a synthetic review of the preceding work, and continues on the theme
of the divine transcendence ; 3. De coelesti hierarchia (The Celestial
Hierarchy) is a treatise on the angels ; and 4. De ecclesiastica hierarchia
(The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy) is a treatise on ecclesiology. The central theme
of his works concerns the problem of the knowledge and unknowableness of God.
His fundamental contribution consists in having introduced into Christian
theology the distinction between positive and negative theology.
St.
Anselm[84]
(1033-1109) was born in Aosta, and as an adolescent entered the Benedictine
Abbey of Bec in Normandy. In 1086 he became its Abbot and some ten years later
he became bishop of Canterbury in England. His main works include the Monologion,
the Proslogion, Cur Deus Homo, De veritate, and De
grammatico. Anselm is considered by scholars to be the greatest Christian
thinker of the eleventh century and gave impetus to the rebirth of
philosophical and theological thought in the Middle Ages. He delved into two
fundamental problems for Christian philosophy: 1. the problem of the
relationship between faith and reason which he resolves according to the way of
harmonious submission of reason to faith ; and 2. the problem of the existence
of God which he attempts to solve, erroneously at that, with his famous
Ontological Argument (moving from the concept that God is the greatest being
that one can conceive of, of which nothing greater can be thought of ).
Anselm
formulated his Ontological Argument in his Proslogion in the following
way: in the human mind there is the idea of a being of which nothing greater
can be thought of. But such a being – God – must also exist in reality. In
fact, to exist in the mind and in reality is more than existing only in the
mind. Now, if the being of which nothing greater can be thought of did not
exist in reality, it would not be then the being of which nothing greater can
be thought of, given that it would be possible to think of a greater being,
that is, a being which, existing in the mind as the greatest that one can think
of, would exist also in reality. Therefore, the being of which nothing greater
can be thought of exists both in the mind and in reality, that is, God exists.
Expressed schematically the Anselmian reasoning goes through the following
phases: God is the most perfect Being. All consider God as the most perfect
Being. Existence is a perfection. Therefore, only the concept of God implies
His real existence.
St.
Thomas criticized this argument in a number of his works.[85]
He observes: 1. Not all people who hear the name “God” think of that whom which
nothing greater can be thought of. In fact, there have been persons who have
held that God is a body as the Stoics did. Thus, even the point of departure of
the argument is unacceptable ; 2. Supposing that all men really did retain God
as that which nothing greater can be thought of, it doesn’t follow that this
Being conceived in the mind really exists ; it is rather but a concept in the
mind. In short, there is an illegitimate passage from the conceptual order of
the mind to the real order of being. Therefore, the Ontological Argument of
Anselm is invalid as a demonstration of the existence of God. Only the a
posteriori quia demonstration of God’s existence from effect to cause is
valid.
Peter
Abelard[86]
(1079-1142), born in Nantes, was a French philosopher and theologian who had an
encyclopedic mind and a formidable dialectic. He studied in Paris under his
master the nominalist Roscellin and under the ultra-realist William of
Champeaux. He early on took positions contrary to that of his masters, opening
new roads in philosophy with the solution to the problem of the universals with
his theory of moderate realism, and in theology with his dialectical method of sic
et non. Rejecting Roscellin’s nominalistic solution to the problem of the
universals as well as William of Champeaux’s ultra-realistic one, Abelard
proposed the realistic solution wherein the universal is not a thing existing
outside the mind nor is it a simple “flautus voci” but rather a concept
existing in the mind gleaned from things existing outside the mind through a
process of abstraction. Thomas Aquinas was later to perfect the solution to the
problem of the universals.
There
was also a Scholasticism that developed in the Islamic world, its two most
famous exponents being Avicenna and Averroes.[87]
What these two did was an attempt to elaborate a synthesis between the Koran
and Aristotle (an Aristotle revised by the Neo-Platonists that is). The Persian
Avicenna[88] (980-1037),
a genius, had an encyclopedic mind and was famous even in the West as a
distinguished physician. His cosmological vision is Neo-Platonic and in
metaphysics, he attributed great importance to the distinction between essence and
existence, the distinction that fixes the demarkation line between God (the
Necessary Being) and creatures (the possible beings). Reality is divided into
“beings necessary for themselves” and “beings necessary in force of their
cause”: “We say that what makes up part of being can be subdivided by the
intellect into two groups. To the first group belong those which, considered in
themselves, have a being which is not necessary, but which is not impossible,
or it would not belong to being. Therefore, this is a ‘possible being.’ To the
other groups belong those which, considered in themselves, have a necessary
being. Therefore, we say that what is necessary for itself has no cause (necesse
esse per se non habet causam), and what is possible for itself has a cause.
Moreover, what is necessary for itself is the reason for the necessity of all,
other things.”[89] Avicenna
presents a distinction between essence and existence, an important distinction,
for it is precisely this distinction that establishes the boundary between God
and creatures, between the necessary being and possible beings. “Everything
that is, except for the being which is identified with its own being, acquired
being from another, and hence is not identifed with being.”[90]
“Everything that has a quiddity (essence) is caused ; and all other things,
outside of the being necessary for itself, are quiddity which have being in
potency, which comes to them from outside. On the contrary, the prime being
does not have quiddity.”[91]
Avicenna also held the doctrine of the emanation, that is, that the world
proceeds from God through an emanative process.
Averroes[92]
(1126-1198) is famous as the commentator on Aristotle and the author of The
Destruction of Destruction (Destructio destructionis or Tahâfut
al-Tahâfut) in defense of philosophy. His philosophy advocated the eternity
of the world hierarchically structured. Regarding man, he considered the agent
intellect as but one for all men. “Even if Averroes’s rejection of emanation
makes him in a sense more orthodox than Avicenna, he did not follow Avicenna in
accepting personal immortality. Averroes did indeed follow Themistius and other
commentators in holding that the intellectus materialis is the same
substance as the intellectus agens and that both survive death, but he
followed Alexander of Aphrodisias in holding that this substance is a separate
and unitary Intelligence. (It is the intelligence of the moon, the lowest
sphere). The individual passive intellect in the individual man becomes, under
the action of the active intellect, the ‘acquired intellect’, which is absorbed
by the active intellect in such a way that, although it survives bodily death,
it does so not as a personal, individual existent, but as a moment in the
universal and common intelligence of the human species. There is, therefore,
immortality, but there is no personal immortality. Ths view was earnestly
combated by St. Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastics, though it was maintained
by the Latin Averroists as a philosophical truth.”[93]
The
most famous exponent of Jewish philosophy[94]
in the Middle Ages was Moses Maimonides[95]
(1135-1204), born in Cordoba, Spain and died in Cairo, Egypt. Maimonides
attempted a synthesis between the Jewish faith and the doctrines of Neo-Platonism.
He is known for the work Guide for the Perplexed (Moreh Nebukim)
wherein he seeks to show that there is no hostility between faith and reason
but rather a profound harmony, and that there is only one truth by which man
learns through philosophy on one level and by theology on a higher level. Man
acquires his perfection by the speculative contemplation of God.
St.
Albert the Great[96] (1205-1280)
was a German philosopher and theologian. He studied first at Bologna and then
at Padua. In 1223 he entered the Dominican order and taught at Paris and then
at Cologne were he died. In Paris he had as his student the Angelic Doctor St.
Thomas Aquinas. Albert was one of the first Medieval thinkers to value highly
and utilize to great effect the philosophy and science of Aristotle, declaring
it to be compatible with the Christian faith. He also sought to free the
thought of Aristotle from the distortions of the commentator Averroes. In such
a way he opened the way for his student Thomas Aquinas who worked that great
synthesis of Aristotelian thought with Christian revelation, which constitutes
the greatest conquest of the Middle Ages. Similarities between the Angelic
Doctor Aquinas and his teacher Albert include, according to Saranyana, the
following points: “1. All creation is composed of quod est and esse.
Only in the Creator is his quod est equal to his esse. 2. Prime
matter is pure potency. It is neither intelligible by itself nor does it
subsist by itself, because considered in itself it is devoid of any form. 3. In
all beings that are composed, man included, the substantial form is only one.
4. The concept of spiritual matter is contradictory. Thus, universal
hylemorphism is impossible, granting the existence of spiritual beings distinct
from God. 5. Both philosophers emphasize the superiority of the intellect over
the will, since nothing can be desired unless it had been previously known,
although they add that in the present state of man as viator the will
usually exerts a certain control over the intellect.”[97]
Regarding the difference between the two doctors of the Church, Saranyana
writes: “Albert maintained that intellectual activity, specifically in the
highest levels of mystical union, is carried out without the need for images or
phantasms. But Thomas always taught during his lifetime that man as viator
cannot know without having recourse to images. 2. Albert identified being
eternal with being uncreated. Consequently, he considered it contradictory that
a world that is eternal were created. For St. Thomas, eternity does not exclude
being created ; it only means not having a beginning in time. From the
metaphysical viewpoint, therefore, he found no obstacle to thinking of a being
created eternally. 3. The Universal Doctor did not identify the angels with the
separated substances of the Peripatetics, that caused the movement of the
heavenly spheres. In contrast, the Angelic Doctor had no qualms in considering
them the same, metaphysically speaking. In his mind, it is only through Revelation
that we can know that angels are messengers of God, and that they are in his
service. 4. Albert the Great held that the human embryo develops progressively
in such a way that from the very beginning of its growth everything is already
present, including its intelligence. In contrast, Thomas Aquinas thought that
the human embryo becomes an individual of the human species only after a series
of generations and corruptions, that is to say, after various substantial
changes the most important of it being the infusion of the spiritual soul some
weeks after fertilization (the doctrine of the delayed infusion of the soul).
5. Albert and Thomas differed also as to the ontological of metaphysical
composition of finite beings. A contemporary of both, Siger of Brabant, said
that Albert understood esse as something extrinsic to the essence and,
in some way, accidental to it. On the other hand, Thomas stated that esse
is something added to the essence of a thing, constituted out of essential
principles, and neither does not belong to the essence itself of the thing nor
is it accidental. In sum, both philosophers held the real distinction between
essence and esse, but Albert’s esse lacks transcendental
quality.”[98]
St. Thomas Aquinas
St.
Thomas Aquinas[99] (1224/5-1274),
of the counts of Aquino, was born at Rocasseca, in the south of Italy, either
late 1224 or early 1225. As a child he studied under the Benedictines of
Montecassino. From 1239 to 1244 he pursued studies at the University of Naples,
which had been founded in 1224 by the emperor Frederick II, and a little while
after that entered the newly founded Dominican order. This decision was met by
strong opposition from his family; Thomas’ brothers actually abducted him and
confined him at Rocasseca for about a year. However, seeing Thomas’ firm
resolve to pursue his vocation with the Domincans, his family relented. By the
fall of 1245 Thomas was sent to Paris for the novitiate and studies. From the
summer of 1248 to the fall of 1252 he sojourned at Cologne, studying under St.
Albert the Great. During this time Thomas commented extensively on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard. From the fall of 1252 to the spring of 1256 he was Baccalaureus
Sententiarius at Paris. By 1256 Thomas had completed his De Ente et Essentia
(On Being and Essence). Between May and June of 1256 he was named master in
theology at the University of Paris. Between 1256 to 1259 Thomas produced the De
Veritate. By the end of 1259 he left Paris for Naples. Here is a chronology
of his stay in Italy: Naples (1259-1261), Orvieto (1261-1265), Rome
(1265-1267), and Viterbo (1267-1268). It was during this time that he composed
some of his greatest works: Summa Contra Gentiles, the first part of the
Summa Theologiae, the Quaestiones disputatae, De Malo, De
Potentia Dei, and De Spiritualibus Creaturis. From 1269 to 1272
Thomas was in Paris occupying a chair at the University. He was recalled to
Paris in order to defend the use of Aristotle’s philosophy in the service of
the Christian Faith and to expose the errors of the Averroists who, among other
things, held a sole agent intellect for all men. During this second sojourn in
Paris, Thomas commented extensively on the works of Aristotle, producing the Super
Physicam, the Super Metaphysicam, the Sententia libri Ethicorum,
and the Sententia super De Anima. Also during this time he completed the
second part of his magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae and authored
many other works, including the De aeternitate mundi contra murmurantes,
the De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, and a number of
commentaries on Sacred Scripture. In the summer of 1272 he left Paris for the
last time to go to Naples where he was a regent of theology. During this time
he was working on his sermons on the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the
Commandments, on his Compendium theologiae and on the third part of his Summa
Theologiae. On the sixth of December, 1273 Thomas ceased writing after an
extra-ordinary vision from God. He had told his faithful secretary Brother
Reginald of Piperno that whatever he had written thus far was but straw
compared to what was revealed to him by God in the vision. Thomas died on 7
March 1274 while on his way to participate in the Second Council of Lyons. He
was later canonized by Pope John XII at Avignon on 18 July 1323, and was given
the title Doctor of Church by Pope St. Pius V on 11 April 1567.
Modern
endorsements by the Magisterium of St. Thomas include the following: the
Encyclical Aeterni Patris (Pope Leo XIII, August 4, 1879) ; the Motu Proprio
Doctoris Angelici (Pope St. Pius X,
June 29, 1914) ; the 1917 Code of Canon Law, canon 1366 ; the Encyclical Studiorum Ducem (Pope Pius XI, June 29,
1923) ; the Address Singulari Sane (Pope Blessed John XXIII, September
16, 1960) ; numbers 15 and 16 of the Decree Optatam Totius (Vatican II,
October 28, 1965) and the reply given by the Congregation for Seminaries and
Universities in connection with number 15 (December 20, 1965) ; number 10 of
the Declaration Gravissimum Educationis (Vatican II, October 28, 1965) ;
the Letter Lumen Ecclesiae (Pope Paul
VI, November 20, 1974) ; the 1979 Address at the Angelicum University, Rome
(Pope John Paul II, November 17, 1979) ; the 1979 Address delivered at the 8th
International Thomistic Congress (Pope John Paul II, September 13, 1980) ; the
1983 Code of Canon Law, canon 252 ; and numbers 43 and 44 of the Encyclical Fides et Ratio (Pope John Paul II,
September 14, 1998).
The
following are some excerpts:
Pope
Leo XIII (Aeterni Patris):
“Among
the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who,
as Cajetan observes, because ‘he most venerated the ancient Doctors of the
Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all.’[100]
The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body,
Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so
increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed
the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once
humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout,
a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine
science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and
filled it with the splendor of his teaching. Philosophy has no part which he
did not touch finely at once and thoroughly; on the laws of reasoning, on God
and incorporeal substances, on man and other sensible things, on human actions
and their principles, he reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting
neither a full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts,
nor the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or strength of
argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a facility for explaining
what is abstruse.
“Moreover,
the Angelic Doctor pushed his philosophic inquiry into the reasons and
principles of things, which because they are most comprehensive and contain in
their bosom, so to say, the seeds of almost infinite truths, were to be
unfolded in good time by later masters and with a goodly yield. And as he also
used this philosophic method in the refutation of error, he won this title to
distinction for himself: that, single-handed, he victoriously combated the
errors of former times, and supplied invincible arms to put those to rout which
might in after-times spring up. Again, clearly distinguishing, as is fitting,
reason from faith, while happily associating the one with the other, he both
preserved the rights and had regard for the dignity of each; so much so,
indeed, that reason. borne on the wings of Thomas to its human height, can
scarcely rise higher, while faith could scarcely expect more or stronger aids
from reason than those which she has already obtained through Thomas.
“For
these reasons most learned men, in former ages especially, of the highest
repute in theology and philosophy, after mastering with infinite pains the
immortal works of Thomas, gave themselves up not so much to be instructed in
his angelic wisdom as to be nourished upon it. It is known that nearly all the
founders and lawgivers of the religious orders commanded their members to study
and religiously adhere to the teachings of St. Thomas, fearful least any of
them should swerve even in the slightest degree from the footsteps of so great
a man. To say nothing of the family of St. Dominic, which rightly claims this
great teacher for its own glory, the statutes of the Benedictines, the
Carmelites, the Augustinians, the Society of Jesus, and many others all testify
that they are bound by this law.
“And,
here, how pleasantly one’s thoughts fly back to those celebrated schools and
universities which flourished of old in Europe--to Paris, Salamanca, Alcala, to
Douay, Toulouse, and Louvain, to Padua and Bologna, to Naples and Coimbra, and
to many another! All know how the fame of these seats of learning grew with
their years, and that their judgment, often asked in matters of grave moment,
held great weight everywhere. And we know how in those great homes of human
wisdom, as in his own kingdom, Thomas reigned supreme; and that the minds of
all, of teachers as well as of taught, rested in wonderful harmony under the
shield and authority of the Angelic Doctor.
“But,
furthermore, Our predecessors in the Roman pontificate have celebrated the
wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by exceptional tributes of praise and the most ample
testimonials. Clement VI in the bull ‘In Ordine;’ Nicholas V in his brief to
the friars of the Order of Preachers, 1451; Benedict XIII in the bull
‘Pretiosus,’ and others bear witness that the universal Church borrows luster
from his admirable teaching; while St. Pius V declares in the bull ‘Mirabilis’
that heresies, confounded and convicted by the same teaching, were dissipated,
and the whole world daily freed from fatal errors; others, such as Clement XII
in the bull ‘Verbo Dei,’ affirm that most fruitful blessings have spread abroad
from his writings over the whole Church, and that he is worthy of the honor
which is bestowed on the greatest Doctors of the Church, on Gregory and
Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome; while others have not hesitated to propose St.
Thomas for the exemplar and master of the universities and great centers of
learning whom they may follow with unfaltering feet. On which point the words
of Blessed Urban V to the University of Toulouse are worthy of recall: ‘It is
our will, which We hereby enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of
Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine and that ye labor with all
your force to profit by the same.’[101]
Innocent XII, followed the example of Urban in the case of the University of
Louvain, in the letter in the form of a brief addressed to that university on
February 6, 1694, and Benedict XIV in the letter in the form of a brief
addressed on August 26, 1752, to the Dionysian College in Granada; while to
these judgments of great Pontiffs on Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning
testimony of Innocent VI: ‘His teaching above that of others, the canonical
writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of
matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found
swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be
suspected of error.’[102]”
Pope St. Pius X (Doctoris Angelici):
“…We
therefore desired that all teachers of philosophy and sacred theology should be
warned that if they deviated so much as a step, in metaphysics especially, from
Aquinas, they exposed themselves to grave risk. -- We now go further and
solemnly declare that those who in their interpretations misrepresent or affect
to despise the principles and major theses of his philosophy are not only not
following St. Thomas but are even far astray from the saintly Doctor. If the
doctrine of any writer or Saint has ever been approved by Us or Our
Predecessors with such singular commendation and in such a way that to the
commendation were added an invitation and order to propagate and defend it, it
may easily be understood that it was commended to the extent that it agreed with
the principles of Aquinas or was in no way opposed to them…
“…The
experience of so many centuries has shown and every passing day more clearly
proves the truth of the statement made by Our Predecessor John XXII: ‘He
(Thomas Aquinas) enlightened the Church more than all the other Doctors
together; a man can derive more profit from his books in one year than from a
lifetime spent in pondering the philosophy of others’ (Consistorial address of
1318)...
“…therefore
that ‘the philosophy of St. Thomas may flourish incorrupt and entire in
schools, which is very dear to Our heart,’ and that ‘the system of teaching
which is based upon the authority and judgement of the individual teacher’ and
therefore ‘has a changeable foundation whence many diverse and mutually
conflicting opinions arise . . . not without great injury to Christian
learning’ (Leo XIII, Epist, Qui te of the 19th June, 1886) be
abolished forever, it is Our will and We hereby order and command that teachers
of sacred theology in Universities, Academies, Colleges, Seminaries and
Institutions enjoying by apostolic indult the privilege of granting academic
degrees and doctorates in philosophy, use the Summa Theologica of St.
Thomas as the text of their prelections and comment upon it in the Latin tongue,
and let them take particular care to inspire their pupils with a devotion for
it.
“Such
is already the laudable custom of many Institutions. Such was the rule which
the sagacious founders of Religious Orders, with the hearty approval of Our
Predecessors, desired should be observed in their own houses of study; and the
saintly men who came after the time of St. Thomas Aquinas took him and no other
for their supreme teacher of philosophy. So also and not otherwise will
theology recover its pristine glory and all sacred studies be restored to their
order and value and the province of the intellect and reason flower again in a
second spring.
“In
future, therefore, no power to grant academic degrees in sacred theology will
be given to any institution unless Our present prescription is religiously
observed therein. Institutions or Faculties of Orders and Regular
Congregations, also, already in lawful possession of the power of conferring
such academic degrees or similar diplomas, even within the limits of their own
four walls, shall be deprived of such a privilege and be considered to have
been so deprived if, after the lapse of three years, they shall not have
religiously obeyed for any reason whatsoever, even beyond their control, this
Our injunction.
“This
is Our Order, and nothing shall be suffered to gainsay it.
“Given
at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 29th day of June, 1914, the eleventh year of
Our Pontificate. Pius PP. X.”
Pope Pius XI (Studiorum Ducem):
“Most
philosophers as a rule are eager to establish their own reputations, but Thomas
strove to efface himself completely in the teaching of his philosophy so that
the light of heavenly truth might shine with its own effulgence. This humility,
therefore, combined with the purity of heart We have mentioned, and sedulous
devotion to prayer, disposed the mind of Thomas to docility in receiving the
inspirations of the Holy Spirit and following His illuminations, which are the
first principles of contemplation. To obtain them from above, he would
frequently fast, spend whole nights in prayer, lean his head in the fervour of
his unaffacted piety against the tabernacle containing the august Sacrament,
constantly turn his eyes and mind in sorrow to the image of the crucified Jesus
; and he confessed to his intimate friend St. Bonaventure that it was from that
Book especially that he derived all his learning. It may, therefore, be truly
said of Thomas what is commonly reported of St. Dominic, Father and Lawgiver,
that in his conversation he never spoke but about God or with God.
Pope John Paul II (1979 Address at the Angelicum):
“…what
are the qualities which won for Aquinas such titles as: ‘Doctor of the Church’ and
‘Angelic Doctor’?…The first quality is without doubt his complete submission of
mind and heart to divine Revelation…The second quality, one which has to do
with his excellence as a teacher, is that he had a great respect for the
visible world because it is the work, and hence also the imprint and image, of
God the Creator…Lastly, the third quality which moved Leo XIII to offer Aquinas to professors and students
as a model of ‘the highest studies’ is his sincere, total and life-long
acceptance of the Teaching Office of the Church, to whose judgment he submitted
all his works both during his life and at the point of death…These three
qualities mark the entire speculative effort of St. Thomas and make sure that
its results are orthodox.”
Pope John Paul II (Fides et Ratio, no. 44):
“Saint
Thomas was impartial in his love of truth. He sought truth wherever it might be
found and gave consummate demonstration of its universality. In him, the
Church’s Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion for truth ; and,
precisely because it stays consistently within the horizon of universal,
objective and transcendent truth, his thought scales ‘heights unthinkable to
human intelligence.’ Rightly, then, he may be called an ‘apostle of the truth.’
Looking unreservedly to truth, the realism of Thomas could recognize the
objectivity of truth and produce not merely a philosophy of ‘what seems to be’
but a philosophy of ‘what is.’”
With
regard to his philosophical thought let us treat of his concepts of faith and
reason, his philosophy of being, his anthropology, his philosophy of God, and
his political philosophy. 1. Faith and Reason. For Thomas, there is a
harmony between faith and reason. They are distinct spheres but should never
contradict themselves. Reason has its own sphere but is incapable of
penetrating the mysteries of God. It, however, can provide a precious service
to the faith by: (a) demonstrating the preambles of faith such as God’s
existence, human freedom, and the immortality of the soul ; (b) explaining the
truths of faith with examples and illustrations ; and (c) defending against the
objections raised against the faith. 2. Philosophy of Being. Thomas’
philosophy can rightly be described as a philosophy of being. Its primary
tenets are the following doctrines: the maximum perfection is being understood
as the act of being (esse) the perfection of esse is one and is
identified with God ; the origin of
finite beings is due to creation, which is a participation by similarity
of the perfection of being. And the limitation of the perfection of being is
due to potency (that is to essence). 3. Anthropology. Man is a
hylemorphic composite of body and soul, soul being the sole substantial form of
the body. Human knowledge is self-sufficient and has no need of the
extraordinary intervention of God in order for it to take place. The soul is
immortal of personal immortality because it is an absolute form, not dependent
upon matter. 4. Philosophy of God. Thomas rejects the a priori
demonstration of the existence of God. The only valid way is the a
posteriori quia (effect to cause) demonstration. The constitutive elements
of the a posteriori demonstration are the following: “1. The attention
is drawn to a certain phenomenon (change, secondary causality, possibility, the
grades of perfection, finality) ; 2. The relative, dependent and caused
character (that is, the contingency) of the phenomenon is evidenced. Whatever
changes is moved by another ; second causes are, in turn, caused ; the possible
receives its being from others ; the grades of perfection receive perfection
from the highest perfection ; finality always requires intelligence, while
natural things in themselves do not have intelligence ; 3. It is demonstrated
that the effective and actual reality of a contingent phenomenon cannot be
explained by postulating the intervention of an infinite series of contingent
causes ; 4. It is concluded that the only valid explanation of the contingent
is God. He is the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause, necessary being, the most
perfect being, and the supreme ordering intelligence.”[103]
He gives us his Five Ways to demonstrate the existence of God: 1. From motion
or change we ascend to the Unmovable Mover ; 2. From secondary causes we ascend
to the First Efficent Cause ; 3. From contingent being we ascend to Necessary
Being ; 4. From grades of pure transcendental perfections we ascend to the
Absolutely Perfect Being ; and 5. From the finality of non-intelligent bodies
we ascend to the Supreme Orderer of the universe. As to the Nature of God,
Thomas rejects both agnosticism and anthropomorphism. 5. Political
philosophy. Aquinas reaffirms the Aristotelian doctrine of the State which
is a perfect society because it has a proper end, the common good, and the
sufficient means to realize it. Regarding the rapport between Church and State,
Aquinas recognizes the autonomy of the State but also the preeminence of the
Church whose end is the “supernatural good” of man.
Born
in Banoregio (Viterbo), the philosopher and theologian St. Bonaventure[104]
(1221-1274) entered the Franciscan order while still a youth. He studied
theology in Paris and was nominated Master of Theology. He was later named
superior general of the Franciscans. Bonaventure was a great champion of the
harmonious coexistence of faith and reason and the subordination of the latter
to the former. The object of philosophy is exemplarism, that is, the property
that things have by being made in the image of God. He held that man, though
having but one nature, was constituted by body and soul. Human knowledge is
gotten through abstraction or by illumination. Will, in man, is more important
than intellect. God’s existence is evident. In Him there are three types of
knowledge: approval, vision, and intelligence. The divine Essence is the model
of all things. Saranyana summarizes the main points of Bonaventure’s philosophy
for us: “First: In the study of the divine attributes, he especially
emphasized and analyzed the ‘eternal reasons.’ Closely related to this doctrine
is that of exemplarism. He considered impossible and contradictory a creation ab
aeterno. Second: In the context of the Aristotelian doctrine of act
and potency, he held the view that all of creation is composed of matter and
form, angels and the human soul included. Matter endowes a thing its being
concrete and particular, that is, its existence. The form gives matter
its essential determination, its essential actuality (actus essendi).
Essence and existence are related to each other as matter and form. They have
neither a transcendental relation nor a logical one, but merely a modal
relation. Modal relation involves a distinction between essence and
existence which is neither a real distinction nor purely a distinction of reason.
It is more of a formal distinction, as Duns Scotus would later on explain.
Bonaventure would also distinguish – following Boethius’ doctrine enriched in
the course of centuries – between quo est (humanity), quod est
(man, the essential composite), and quis est (the individual composite,
e.g., Henry). Third: Prime matter is not pure potentiality ; there is in
it a degree of inherent formality or basic form. In other words, prime matter
is precisely so because it contains a certain intrinsic form from the very
moment of creation. That form acts like the beginning and seed of all other
forms (seminal forms) which it could give rise to, dependent on the kind of
agents that act over it. In the absence of that first formality – relatively
indeterminate to be this or that, but in itself is perfect – it would be
impossible to even speak of prime matter. That does not imply, nevertheless,
that this semi-formed prime matter exists independently of particular things.
St. Bonaventure spoke of that material and actual substratum present in all things only in his commentary
on the Hexameron ; the Bonaventurian universe, besides, is not a single
substance evolving accidentally, because we know that he admitted the
multiplicity of substantial forms in the composite. But it is incontestable
that prime matter is already ‘something’ in a certain sense, because otherwise,
it would be ‘nothing’ – and from nothing, nothing comes. Fourth: The
first substantial form ‘given’ to prime matter is ‘light’, which is manifested
by an accident, the ‘lumen’ (luminosity). This characteristic resplendence is
found in all things (God is uncreated light), and has a lot to do with the
process of knowing which, in the Augustinian tradition, is a process involving
light. The light-form coexists with other substantial forms, the last of which,
called ‘complete form’, gives a specific perfection to being. Bonaventure also
considered philosophically erroneous the doctrine of the unicity of the
substantial form. Fifth: The agent intellect is insufficient, as will
soon be discussed below, so Bonaventure proposed an alternative gnoseology with
an Augustinian slant. He argued thus: It is said that the agent intellect does
not know although it makes things intelligible. But how can it make things knowable
if by itself it does not know? There must be another explanation for our
knowledge. And Bonaventure found it in the doctrine of eternal reasons because
they know – being ontologically identical with the Divine Word – and in them
God knows everything. Thus, with the eternal reasons, man is able to know, amd
they make things intelligible to him. But for the Seraphic Doctor, man cannot
know everything in the divine ideas (that would be ontologism, contrary to
Bonaventurian thought); he says, on the other hand, that the human mind – after
abstracting the species of a thing, which is inevitably a copy of the
divine ideas – needs a kind of divine illumination that leads it to discover
the ‘exemplar’ in the species or copy. The eternal reasons, therefore,
are guides and controllers of human knowledge, but they are inadequate without
divine illumination. Sixth: The human soul is a substance, an hoc
aliquid, capable of existing, acting and feeling by its own. The soul,
composed of matter and form, is the form of the body which is itself a
substance composed of matter and form. The soul, therefore, is the ultimate
substantial form that gives man his specific perfection in conjunction with
other substantial forms, for instance, the substantial form that gives corporeal
characteristics to a body. Being a substance, the soul is apt to separate
itself from the body, subsisting nonetheless. Bonaventure distinguished the
soul from its two faculties (the sense faculties being part of the body), but
he did not go far enough in making that distinction as to consider the
intellect and the will as accidents of the soul. He considered the powers of
the soul as having the nature of a substance, although strictly speaking they
are not substances. That ambiguous position taken by Bonaventure would flourish
in other Franciscan thinkers (Duns Scotus among them) as the denial of the real
distinction between the soul and its powers, and the view that the powers of
the soul are merely active manifestations of the soul when it knows and loves.”[105]
Duns
Scotus[106]
(1265-1308) was born at Maxon in Scotland. He entered the Franciscans in his
youth and studied at Oxford and Paris. At Paris he obtained the title of Master
of Theology. In 1298 he returned to England where he began a commentary on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard. He returned to Paris and ended his life in Cologne. Scotus
sought to work out a synthesis between the current Franciscan current and
Aristotelian philosophy. The more original doctrines of his metaphysics are his
doctrines of the univocity of being, ecceity, and the formal (not real)
distinction between essence and existence. The object of metaphysics is being
as the maximum indeterminate perfection. Ecceity is a particular form that
confers individuation. Between essence and existence there is no real
distinction but only a formal one. The existence of God must be demonstrated,
the most convincing proof being that of causality. Whether in God or in man the
will has priority over the intellect.
Mondin
explains Scotus’ univocal concept of being for us: “The object of metaphysics
is being, but not being as the greatest perfection (esse perfectio omnium
perfectionum) of St. Thomas, but the ens comune, or being as the
most common perfection, which precedes every determination, including the
division between finite and infinite being. This is the being that is pedicable
of all that is. Being conceived in this way is univocal (esse est unius
rationis) and is predicated in the same way of everything. Ens dicitur
per unam rationem de omnibus de quibus praedicatur. In all cases, being
means the same thing, the opposite of non-being. The reason which led Scotus to
the theory of the univocal concept of being is probably theological. According
to Scotus, if the concept of being were not univocal with respect to God and
creatures, then any knowledge of God working from creatures would be
impossible.”[107]
An
English Franciscan, William of Ockham[108]
(1290-1349) studied and taught at Oxford. For his doctrines that were suspected
of heresy he was ordered to present himself at the papal court at Avignon to
respond to the heretical ideas which he was accused of. Ockham fled Avignon
with a group of dissident Franciscans and sought refuge at Munich in Bavaria
with the Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria. He was subsequently excommunicated. Ockham
affirmed that the universals exist only in the mind and do not have any
relation to real things. They are but pure concepts. Man is incapable of
knowing the essences of things. Abstraction, for him, is a fount of error which
conjures up hidden and unnecessary entities like essences and substantial
forms. Therefore, it is necessary that one eliminate uselessly multiplied abstract
entities (Ockham’s razor: non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate).
So how do we know? Ockham postulates that we know only what is known
intuitively, either by sense intuition or by an intellectual intuition.
Centuries later rationalism was to adopt the latter (in its direct knowledge of
essences) and empiricism the former. Ockham also held the antinomy between
faith and reason, which has become a cardinal tenet of modern philosophy from
Descartes to our day.
From
renaissance humanism to Kant, modern philosophy’s main characteristics that
make it different from medieval philosophy are essentially three: 1. The
complete autonomy of philosophical research from sacred theology. Philosophy is
not just not studied in view of presenting its findings to theology in order to
form a rational base for the latter, but the very harmony between faith and
reason, between philosophy and theology, has been shattered. 2. A pluralism,
not just of method as was the case in the Middle Ages, but primarily a
pluralism with regard to the very content studied by philosophy. Medieval
philosophers and theologians did not have this radical pluralism of content
because they were Christian philosophers and theologians and could not doubt
the content of their faith. For the most part, modern philosophers (who were
overwhelmingly laymen and not Christians who adhered to all the tenets of the
faith) did not share this view, sustaining an absolute autonomy of philosophy
from theology, the latter not anymore providing a negative rule for the former.
Free from the constraints of the Christian faith the modern philosopher now
felt free to sustain just about any philosophical position that seemed
rational. Thus, in the modern epoch, we encounter systems that affirm and deny
the existence of God, the creation of the world, the immortality of the soul,
human freedom, and the moral law. 3. We also see in modern philosophy the
progressive disinterestedness and even elimination of metaphysics as first
philosophy, first with the mathematicism of Descartes and later with Kant’s
dismissal of metaphysics as a “transcendental illusion.”
Secularization
Secularization
refers to that activity which affirms the complete autonomy of man and the
world from God, assigning to man the authority which before had been ascribed
to the Divine Creator. It is a type of thinking and way of acting wherein God
is left out of man’s affairs; human life and the passage of history is
comprehended as something that has nothing to do with God’s providence and
intervention. For the secularized man,
the affairs of this world are to be efficiently accomplished without having
recourse to God, without waiting to ask what in fact is the will of the
Almighty at the present moment. The world has witnessed a vast secularization
in the modern epoch, contrasted with the sacralized theocentrism of the
preceding Catholic Christian epoch, the times of great Catholic intellectuals
like Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Our contemporary age
has seen the almost total obliteration of every trace of the sacred in
practically every form of cultural expression.
Secularization
is essentially the expulsion of the sacred from the profane, with the intention
of exalting the profane in its mere profanity. That which pertains to the
divine and supernatural is transformed, in the process of securalization, into
the worldly, mundane, and purely natural sphere. What is rightfully divine is
secularized, that is, naturalized and humanized. And what is but human and
natural becomes, in Pelagian and pantheistic terms, “divinized.”
Secularization
can also be described as the passage from a vertical understanding of reality
to a purely horizontal comprehension of man, the world, and of history. It is a
mind set that considers all things within the enclosed sphere of a
rationalized, worldly, and merely natural comprehension, with the total
exclusion of Revelation, sacred theology, revealed religion, and the Holy
Church. It is a declaration of the emancipation of man, the world, and of
history from the bonds of the true Lord of History: God, who transcends the
world and is the Creator of all.
The
modern epoch is a secular epoch. Its reference point is not nature or the
cosmos as it had been in Ancient Greece and Rome. Nor is it the Trinitarian
God, Creator of heaven and earth, as was the case during the Catholic Middle
Ages. Rather, it has man occupying the center stage. It is anthropocentric. Man
has attempted to dethrone the Supreme Being as Lord of History, setting himself
up as master of the universe. It is man who has become the final arbiter of
good and evil, of life and death.
Man
feels that he has come of age, that he is mature enough to do things on his
own, to resolve all philosophical, ethical, and political problems without
recourse to the Supreme Being. The self-sufficient man of the modern epoch
reasons that the immature and fearful man of centuries past had need to have
recourse to God in times of pestilence, war, social chaos, etc. But now he
feels certain that it is merely sufficient to have recourse to man himself and
he only for each and every solution to the problems of the world. Thus he turns
to the experts: the doctors, the politicians, the psychologists, the
sociologists, the economists, the specialists and educators. He is confident
that the present times are within his control and that it is his destiny to
master and dominate the future. Therefore, he begins to meticulously plan
elaborate strategies that are to be realized with the sole force of his
intellect and will, without pausing to find out if this indeed is the Will of
God or not.
The
modern epoch has distanced itself from God and has ended up in irreligiosity, agnosticism,
and theoretical and practical atheism. Reference to God has been omitted from
the public square, from political discourse, from legislation and from
education. The wondrous scientific and technological discoveries of the last
centuries have expanded man’s ego to planetary proportions. From now on, all
problems are to be automatically solved by means of science and technology and
all ultimate questions are to be answered through verification by the empirical
sciences and scientific experimentation.
There
were many positive characteristics of the modern epoch such as the progress of
the empirical sciences and the development of mathematical physics. A better
empirical knowledge of the physical world and the adoption of various methods
of empirical research are indeed good and noble endeavors. Also, the
rediscovery of the poetry, art, architecture, literature and law of the Greek
and Roman civilizations were also magnificent accomplishments. However, there
were also many negative characteristics, like formalism, or the preoccupation
and exaltation of form over content, of rhetorical style over the substance and
deeper meaning of the work, of esthetical taste over virtue and religion.
Another negative aspect of the modern epoch is its cult of individualism: the
glorification of selfishness and egoism over social concern and morality, of
pragmatic shrewdness over the cardinal virtues and the virtue of humility. This
new type of shrewd individualist is exemplified in The Prince of Machiavelli, the cunning and ruthless political
pragmatist for whom end justifies the means. A third dark side of the modern
epoch is its cult of the pagan, or its unabashed neo-paganism. One finds
working in these centuries a progressive pagan evaluation of man’s earthly existence,
the loss of concern for God and the eschatological truths of death, judgment,
heaven, and hell, the despising of the eternal truths of religion and the
absolute norms of morality, the exaltation of purely worldly accomplishments
and exploits, and the triumph of utility, success, pride, domination, cunning,
pragmatic action, and lust over faith, hope, charity, contemplation, sincerity,
purity, and humility.
The
main reasons for the secularization of the modern epoch were the weakening of
Christendom through schisms and heresies and the absolute independence of
reason from faith. The first fundamental reason for secularization lies in the
weakening of Christendom through its being battered by schisms and various
heresies. The separation of the Eastern Church from the Catholic Church had
been a cause of scandal and of the weakening of Christianity’s influence upon
the world. The Western Schism had also done its job of eroding the influence of
Christianity in Europe, but the great push towards the massive secularization
of Europe did not take place until the Protestant Reformation which did immense
damage to Christendom. The Protestant Reformation had initiated a radical
separation of Christian faith and philosophical reason, upturning its once
harmonious relation for a new hostility between the two forms of
knowledge. Luther had a deep distrust for Scholastic philosophy and looked
upon it as an enemy of the faith, now purged from its superstitious
aberrations, pagan accretions, and papist manipulations. What Luther had
accomplished in the religious sphere Descartes was to initiate in the realm of
philosophy.
The
second fundamental reason for the massive secularization of Europe had been the
appearance of a new rationalist and immanentist philosophy absolutely
independent from the guiding light of faith and the negative rule of sacred
theology. For Descartes, philosophy was to become the summit of all
intellectual endeavors, toppling theology from its position as the supreme
science. This new animosity between philosophy and theology was to prove
damaging for man’s faith as well as for his reasoning capacities.
The
split between faith and reason was to be the great cause of the weakening of
man’s philosophical-sapiential dimension of human knowing. This separation
would cause a substantial weakening of man’s intellect, which would now have to
rely solely upon the natural light of human reason to solve all problems
regarding God, man, and cosmos. Without the guiding light of theology,
philosophical thought, now purely rationalistic, would be greatly impoverished
as regards the capacity of the mind to respond to the ultimate questions
regarding God, man, and cosmos.
The
new orientation in human thought was to attempt to solve all problems
confronting man without having recourse to the Church, God’s revelation, and to
the supernatural science of sacred theology. Pure reason was to be sufficient.
A unified and common sacralized theological conception of the supreme ideals of
human life and of man’s eternal destiny, something that had been in function
during the preceding sacralized theocentric Christian epoch, was simply
dissolved in the anthropocentric, rationalistic modern epoch, despite the
heroic efforts of many saints, churchmen, and Christian intellectuals to
preserve it. Man was now to solve all problems using pure reason alone in order
to preserve justice, order, peace, security, and freedom in society. In time,
the ultimate and most profound questions regarding God and man’s true happiness
and eternal destiny were to be relegated out of the public square, to be
confined within the restricted spheres of private worship and personal opinion.
Cartesian
rationalism rejected the harmonious relationship between faith and reason. With
Descrates there emerged a rationalist and immanentist philosophy which was to
be separate and totally independent from the truths of faith. Regarding
Descartes’ pivotal role in this tragic separation and opposition between faith
and reason, Maritain writes: “In the seventeenth century the Cartesian reform
resulted in the severance of philosophy from theology,[109]
the refusal to recognize the rightful control of theology and its function as a
negative rule in respect of philosophy. This was tantamount to denying that
theology is a science, or anything more than a mere practical discipline, and
to claiming that philosophy, or human wisdom, is the absolutely sovereign
science, which admits no other superior to itself. Thus, in spite of the
religious beliefs of Descartes himself, Cartesianism introduced the principle
of rationalist philosophy, which
denies God the right to make known by revelation truths which exceed the
natural scope of reason. For if God has indeed revealed truths of this kind,
human reason enlightened by faith will inevitably employ them as premises from
which to obtain further knowledge and thus form a science, theology. And if
theology is a science, it must exercise in respect of philosophy the function
of a negative rule, since the same proposition cannot be true in philosophy,
false in theology.”[110]
Marsilio
Ficino[111]
(1433-1499) founded and directed the Platonic Academy[112]
in Florence and translated the works of Plato, Plotinus, and Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite. He elaborated a pious philosophy or docta religio where,
through a philosophical process embued with religiosity, one works out a
synthesis between philosophy and faith. Man must be freed from error through a
rational rigor acquired through a knowledge of self and of God. His works
include: The Christian Religion (1474), Platonic Theology (1482),
and Life (1489).
Pico
della Mirandola[113]
(1463-1494) exalted man and his elevated dignity in such works as his famous Oration
on the Dignity of Man (1486). In this philosophical-theological work the
incomparable greatness of man is shown, above all, in the actuation of his
spiritual powers of will and intelligence. His other works include the Heptalus
(1490) and Being and the One (1492).
One
of the most famous men of the Renaissance was the Florentine Niccolò
Machiavelli[114]
(1469-1527). Machiavelli was a master in the newly born field of political
science. He is famous above all for his book entitled The Prince
(written in 1513 but published posthumously in 1531). In this work, inspired by
naturalism and princely absolutism, he affirms the necessity and validity of
politics as a sphere autonomous and beyond good and evil. The interest of the
people, identified in the prince himself, is the supreme law of good. Thus,
moral principles and religion are “true” if they are useful towards the
political goals of the prince. In case of the opposite, the prince must
resolutely oppose them. God and His Providence are not anymore the highest authority
and rulers of men and the world, but rather man himself, bent on achieving his
worldly goals through shrewdness, cunning, and opportunity. From his sinister
amoral and opportunistic vision of the ruler and his politics comes the term
“Machiavellian.”
The
humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam[115]
(1469-1536) placed his vast knowledge of the Ancient Classics, the New
Testament, and the Fathers of the Church, towards the service of reform in the
Church. Instead of Aristotelian–Thomistic Scholasticism which he thought too
dry and abtract, Erasmus preferred the down to earth sapiential philosophy of
life, above all a wisdom and practice of the Christian life. Instead of
abstract intellectual disputations on the doctrines of the Faith, he preferred
a sincere and simple faith and a non-hypocritical charity. Erasmus’ brand of
philosophy is clearly manifested in his most famous work In Praise of Folly
(1511). At times a harsh critic of the Renaissance Church of his time, he
however sided with the Catholic Church against the Protestant Reformation led
by ex-Augustinian monk Martin Luther. He found Luther’s denial of free will
particularly revolting. Against him, Erasmus wrote a defense of free will in a
work entitled On Free Will (1524). He died in Basilea in 1536.
The
English humanist, philosopher, theologian, and Chancellor of England St. Thomas
More[116]
(1478-1535) was a martyr of the Faith during the reign of the carnal king Henry
VIII who, against the primacy of the
Pope, had declared himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England. More, a
devout man, wrote many theological treatises, but he also delved into
philosophy, writing Utopia (1516). In this work he sought to delineate a
model for the reform of the real world. Treated were his ideal vision of human
freedom, the promotion of culture, and the formation of a complete human
personality.
The
French writer Michele Montaigne[117]
(1533-1592), author of the Essays (1580 and 1588), adhered to many of
the tenets of humanism, but was not attracted to the theme of man’s grandeur
and exalted powers of intellect and will. The greatness of man, he believed,
consisted in the acceptance of one’s own mediocrity. Profoundly influenced by
Sextus Empiricus, he held a skeptical view of life.
After
a troublesome and reckless life the ex-Dominican Giordano Bruno[118]
(1548-1600) was imprisoned and eventually burned at the stake in Rome in 1600.
His philosophy is essentially characterized by a dynamic pantheism, the idea of
not a finite but infinite and eternal universe, the exaltation of a naturalist
religion free of dogmas, and by a rationalist ethics.
The
Italian Dominican Cardinal Thomas de Vio, commonly known as Cajetan (1468-1533),
was a profound commentator of both Aristotle and St. Thomas and helped revive
both thinkers for a time during his life. His works include commentaries on St.
Thomas’ De Ente et Essentia and Summa Theologiae, on Aristotle’s Categories,
Posterior Analytics, and De Anima, and on Porphyry’s Praedicabilia.
He also wrote an influential work on analogy, the De nominum analogia.
The
Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), likewise a profound expert
on the Angelic Doctor, is considered to be the founder of international law.
For him, the State is of natural, not contractual, origin. At the foundation of
human co-existence is the natural law, which is a participation in the Eternal
Law of God. He died in Salamanca in 1546.
The
Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez[119]
(1548-1617) was the brightest star of the so-called Second Scholasticism. In
his Metaphysical Disputations (1597) he presented a systematic treatment
of the standard questions dealt with in the First Scholasticism. Suárez is more
famous for his science of law than for his metaphysics. In his De legibus
(1612) he made essential contributions to the doctrine of the State,
international law, and to the theory of democracy.
The English philosopher and politician
Francis Bacon[120]
(1561-1626) was born in London in 1561. After studies at Cambridge he spent two
years in France with the British ambassador and then took to the practice of
law. In 1584 he entered Parliament and in 1618 became Lord Chancellor. In 1621
he was found guilty of accepting bribes in his judicial capacity and was fined
and sent to the Tower. He died in London on April 9, 1626. His works include Of
the Advancement of Learning (1609), the De sapientia veterum (1609),
and the Novum Organum (1620).
Bacon
managed to work out a new inductive method: through experimentation wherein one
gathers sufficient information, and then through reasoning, one then must
elaborate general hypotheses that enable one to arrive at a knowledge of the
phenomena studied. The end of science is of a practical nature; its object is
the cause of natural things. In the Novum Organum he attempts to replace
the old Aristotelian logic, which is essentially deductive, with his new
inductive logic. In the first part of his work, the pars destruens, he
demolishes those obstacles (which he calls idols) which may impede true
scientific research. In the second part, the pars costruens, he
indicates to the reader the procedure for arriving at results. Bacon’s merit
lies in being the first thinker to present in a systematic manner the problem
of the proper method, object, and end, of the experimental sciences. Though he
did not contribute to the progress of a particular science, his contributions
presented above were fundamental to the progress of the experimental sciences
in general. Bacon coined the famous phrase “knowledge is power” which De Torre
interprets him to mean “that knowledge has to be eminently practical and
utilitarian, to enable or empower man to master nature; what matters is
not contemplation, but production and action. Bacon thus introduces the primacy
of praxis over theory.”[121]
The
father of modern philosophy Rene Descartes[122]
(1596-1650) was born at La Haye in Touraine, France in 1596 from parents who
belonged to the lower nobility. He received his early schooling at the famous
Jesuit college of La Flèche from 1604 to 1612 where he studied, among other
things, philosophy and mathematics. After La Flèche Descartes studied law at
the university of Potiers, obtaining a degree in 1616. In 1618, he decided to
see the world, enlisting in the armies of various German princes to be able to
do so. A year later, on the tenth of November 1619, he had three consecutive
dreams which convinced him to devote his life to the search of truth by means
of the cultivation of reason. He sojourned at Paris for a number of years and
eventually made his home in Amsterdam in 1628, where he remained until 1649.
During this time Descartes wrote his Traité du monde (Treatise on the
World, which was published postumously in 1677), his famous 1637 work Discours
de la méthode pour bien conduire la raison et réchercher la verité dans les
sciences (Discourse on Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking
for Truth in the Sciences) written in French and commonly known as the Discourse
on Method, his Meditations on First Philosophy published in 1641 in
Latin, his Principles of Philosophy in 1644, and his 1649 book Passions
of the Soul written in French. In September of 1649 Descartes left for
Holland upon the request of the Swedish queen Christina who sought to establish
an Academy of Science in her land and also wished to be instructed in
philosophy by the famous Frenchman. But the cruel Swedish winter took its toll on
the frail body of Descartes, who caught a bad fever and died in Stockholm on
the eleventh of February 1650.
Descartes
is called the father of modern philosophy for it was he who gave modern philosophy
its fundamental driving principle: that of immanentism. Contrary to methodical
realism wherein being is prior to thought, for Descartes, thought is prior
to being. For him, all philosophical inquiry must commence with the cogito. Mathematics replaces metaphysics
as first philosophy. In the second part of his Discourse on Method, he
presents his four rules of the mathematical method which, if followed, enables
philosophy to attain to certainty: 1. “Never to accept anything for true which
I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid
precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than
what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all
ground of doubt”[123]
; 2. “To divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts
as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution”[124]
; 3. “To conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the
simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend little by little, and, as it were,
step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a
certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a
relation of antecedence and sequence”[125]
; and 4. “In every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so
general, that I might be asssured that nothing was omitted.”[126] These steps are the hallmarks of the new
universal method which closely follows the science of mathematics: intuition,
analysis, deduction, and induction.
Descartes
doubts our cognitive powers – the senses are not to be trusted – all reality is
placed in a state of critical doubt. The first stage of the Cartesian method is
the universal methodic doubt: “In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in
the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.”[127]
This absurd doctrine of universal doubt (which does so much violence to the
certainties of common sense) means not only to doubt the extra-mental world
that we see around us, and the first principles governing it, such as the
principle of non-contradiction (to do so being the height of foolishness), but
also to doubt God’s very existence (no wonder all Descartes’ writings were put
on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Vatican from 1663 onwards after a
commission found these works to be harmful to the faith).
From
this radical doubt emerges the certainty of the thinking subject. When all has
been placed in doubt there remains one thing that cannot be doubted, he says,
namely, that I am thinking and that it is by thinking that I exist. Hence the
famous line of Descartes: “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum).
He writes in his Discourse on Method: “I noticed that whilst I thus
wished to think all things false, it was absolutely essential that the ‘I’ who
thought this should be somewhat, and remarking that this truth ‘I think,
therefore I am’ was so certain and so assured that all the most extravagant
suppositions brought forward by the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I
came to the conclusion that I could receive it without scruple as the first
principle of the Philosophy for which I was seeking.”[128]
This is clearly immanentism’s making human thought prior to real existence. The
Cartesian first principle is not a demonstration but rather an immediate
intuition of fact.
From
this first certainty (cogito, ergo sum) one obtains, through
mathematical deduction, further certainties. He then comes to the thought of
God, but without really transcending the context of his mental representations
of God. Still not trusting his senses, Descartes, departing from the idea of
perfection that he finds in himself, goes on to attempt a demonstration of the
existence of God,[129]
and then finally, the existence of the world. The world that our senses reveal to
us is now proven, through a mathematical methodology, to exist. The existence
of the world is not a natural evidence that we should not doubt in the first
place, but is now, through the mathematical method, proven to exist. The only
thing evident in the existential sphere is the reality of the thinking subject.
The clear and distinct ideas that we have, he says, are innate, not initially
obtained through the medium of our senses – from experience.
Descartes’
universal methodic doubt endevours to make us doubt all things – not only the
whole of the corporeal world, our own body, our sense-perceptions, our internal
states of consciousness, but also the very trustworthiness of our knowing
powers and the first principles of reality such as the principle of non-contradiction.
And such a doubt is truly a real, genuine, not simulated (or faked), doubt, as
he himself relates: “As I desired to give my attention solely to the search
after truth, I thought…that I ought to reject as absolutely false all in regard
to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain
whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly
undubitable.”[130] Note the
words “to reject as absolutely false” which refers not just to a suspension of
judgment but to a conviction that he must reject them as absolutely false,
rejecting everything until he reaches the one indubitable fact: “Cogito,
ergo sum.”
Is
Descartes’ universal doubt possible? No. “Anyone who affirms that absolutely everything
must be doubted is already making a judgment – which represents his own thesis
– and which, therefore, is an exception to what he is affirming: since if
everything is to be doubted, nothing can be affirmed, not even the
thesis which maintains that everything must be doubted. Nor can one have
recourse to maintaining the thesis as merely probable, because even probability
has to have some sort of foundation in certainty. And, it is meaningless to
affirm that it is doubtful that everything is doubtful, since this affirmation,
and all others which are added to it in indefinite regress in order to increase
doubt, simply become so many more exceptions to the universality of doubt. He
who says he is in doubt already knows something: he knows that he doubts; if he
did not know it, how could he possibly affirm it? The awareness of doubt is
itself certain knowledge.”[131]
What
Descartes has done with his new philosophy, which was to change in a most
radical way the history of philosophical thought, was to make thought, and not
being, the point of departure of philosophy, whether it be subjective, as in
thought as act, or whether it be objective, as in the clear idea. What is
accepted as real is not extra-mental reality – extra-mental substances –
substantial beings that exist apart from whether we think of them or not – but
rather the clear idea devoid of any immaginative or sensible element. In
philosophical realism, instead, it is being (ens) that we know – we are able to grasp its form apart from the
thing’s material reality in an immaterial way ; the idea is the
representation by means of which we know. On the other hand, Cartesian
immanentism dictates that the idea itself is what we know. Then, through
mathematical deduction we endeavor to show if there is in fact a reality – the
extra-mental world, God etc. – which would be the cause of these ideas that we
know. But what we in fact have is the Cartesian fracture between ideas and
reality for ideas are not reality but rather representations through which we
know reality. In realism what we know is the extra mental thing itself, not its
representation in our minds. The expressed intelligible species (the idea) is
not that which we understand, but that by means of which we understand. What is
known in the first instance is the object itself. The idea is simply an
instrument of knowledge, not the object of knowledge.[132]
As instruments of knowledge, ideas or concepts refer intentionally to what the
intellect understands, that is, to the order of extra-mental things (beings) in
reality. The philosophical error of subjective idealism is ultimately traced to
the gnoseological error that confuses what we know with the medium whereby we
know. John Locke commits this disastrous mistake, writing, for example, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
that an idea is defined as an “object of the understanding when a man thinks,”[133]
“Idea is the object of thinking.”[134]
Unlike
the Idealists, Descartes’ philosophical system is a mediate realism as his goal
was the recovery of reality through mathematical deduction. But the tragedy of
his immanentism is that, for him, things are not really intelligible in
themselves and in the ultimate account do not really count because what he in
the end arrives at is not true reality as it is in itself, but rather a thought
of reality.
The
French rationalist philosopher and Oratorian priest Nicholas Malebranche[135]
(1638-1715) openly distanced himself from the Aristotelian-Thomistic Scholastic
tradition and was a disciple of Descartes. He agreed with the fundamental
theses of his master in metaphysics (wherein reality is divided into thought
and extension) and in gnoseology (where the supreme criteria of truth is the
clear and distinct idea). But he went beyond Descartes in two points: in the problem
of knowledge and in that of causality. For Malebranche our ideas are the
perfections of God that He shows us in His infinite Essence. The vision of the
ideas in God is possible because He is immediately present in our spirits. He
makes use of his occasionalism in order to resolve the philosophical problem of
the relationship of the soul with the body. Being two completely diverse
realities, the soul and the body cannot enter into direct communication nor
exercise an influence upon each other. The disposition of the body and the soul
serve only as an occasion for the intervention of God who manages to
directly and exclusively develop all the actions of both body and soul. His
works include the Search of Truth (1674-1675), Clarifications on the
Search of Truth (1678), Treatise on Nature and Grace (1680), Christian
Meditations (1683), Treatise on Morals (1684), Conversations on
Metaphysics and Religion (1688), the Laws of Communication and Movements
(1692), and the Treatise on the Love of God (1697).
The
rationalist Baruch Spinoza[136]
(1632-1677) was born in Amsterdam on November 24, 1632 of the Jewish faith.
Though educated in the Jewish tradition his readings of Giordano Bruno and
Descartes made him reject his Jewish faith for pantheism. In 1656 he was
solemnly excommuncated from the Jewish faith at the early age of twenty-four.
In order to support himself he took to grinding lenses. He led a quiet and
reclusive life of study and writing. In 1660 he went to Leiden and in 1663 he
moved to the neighborhood of the Hague. In 1673 he was offered a teaching
position in philosophy at Heidelberg, which he refused. He died of tuberculosis
on February 21, 1677 at the age of 44. His works include A Brief Treatise on
God, Man, and Happiness (written in 1658 but published only two hundred
years later), the Principles of the Philosophy of Rene Descartes
published in 1663, his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus which appeared
anonymously in 1670, and his Ethics Demonstrated According to the Geometical
Order, together with his Political Treatise and his Tractatus de
emendatione intellectus, which appeared immediately after his death in
1677.
Spinoza
attempted to resolve the Cartesian dualism of res cogitans and res
extensa by considering them as but two attributes of a sole existing
substance which would be God. This “God” would be constituted by an infinity of
attributes. For him, the world is not separate from God. For Spinoza, the world
(Nature) is identified with God: Deus sive Natura (God or
Nature). They are one and the same thing. Men and things are but modes of the
one Divine Substance. God would be natura naturans, that is, infinite
productive activity that produces the world. The world, instead, is natura
naturata, that is, the infinite product. “Spinoza, using the traditional
word ‘substance’ with a new meaning, forthwith identifies this one infinite
divine Substance with Nature, that is, with this visible cosmos. Hence the
famous phrase Deus sive Natura, which recurs unforgettably in his
writings in his careful and precise Latin. The Latin language has two words for
‘or’: vel, to state that the two terms are distinct; and sive, to
state that they are identical. When Spinoza says ‘God or Nature,’ therefore, he
means that they are one and the same. When he uses the word ‘God,’ as he does
constantly, he does so deceptively, for he means ‘Nature.’ And when he uses the
word ‘Nature’ he means what pantheism calls ‘the Divine.’ This confusion
between existing in itself and existing of itself erases the
distinction between the Creator and His creatures, who are indeed independently
existing substantial realities because they have received from Him a
participated form of existence. They exist in themselves as distinct substantial
realities. But in Spinoza the doctrine of creation disappears…The doctrine of
the eternity of matter follows as a quick and necessary corollary. And matter
is introduced as an element of God: thus the very concept of God suffers a
reduction to nothingness. For ‘God’ has become only a word. Pantheism is a
disguise for atheism…”[137]
Spinozan
ethics’ object is the intellectual love of God (or Nature), that is, in the
knowledge of the Divine Substance that one attains when one has triumphed
through reason and has dominion over his passions. A consequence of his
pantheism of the sole Divine Substance with innumerable modes (individual men
and the things of the world) is his negation free will in men and the
elimination of the problem of evil. “Since pantheism denies liberty, Spinoza’s
morality merely states the facts which occur, denying the idea of evil, and
replacing it by that of a man being of little repute.”[138]
As regards his political thought, Spinoza was one of the first architects of
the contractual theory of the State. “In his political philosophy, Spinoza
uncovers the ultimate consequences of his system. His Tractatus politicus,
written after his Ethics and unfinished, is decidedly Machiavellian and
inspired by Hobbes. In it he shows the most profound contempt for the people,
the rabble, the masses, the populace: they are despicable, they do not count,
since they live by the imagination, and so fall easily into superstitious
beliefs. For Spinoza, the ruler must be an ‘enlightened despot’, a philosopher-ruler
who, enlightened by reason, will impose it on the people dominated by
ignorance. The enlightened despot must rule with an iron-fist, since he has the
privilege of the intellectual vision of things. He must treat the people like
dangerous and ignorant animals who submit to fear and not to love. This
philosopher thus justifies all political tyrannies in a more radical manner
than Machiavelli.”[139]
For
Spinoza, people are but modes, emanations of the One Substance which is God
identical with Nature (Deus sive Natura). Free-will is illusory; men
live and breathe in a world of strict determinism. Men are insignificant parts
of a larger whole, which is Nature. He says that men think that they are free
because they are ignorant of the causes that determine their actions. One’s
feeling that we are the causes of our free acts is only an illusion. He gives
the example that if a stone were thrown up in the air and while falling were to
become conscious it would imagine that it was flying of its own free will, but
this would all be an illusion for other causes that determine the stone’s
descent are at work. Though free will is an illusion, one can be “free,” he
says, in the detached acknowledgement that everything in the end is determined
or necessary: “Spinoza’s answer is that we shall be free by understanding and
acceptance – understanding that we are part of a bigger whole and seeing that,
as such, nothing that happens to any one of us could have fallen otherwise,
given the state of the whole from which it arises. Once we see this clearly we
shall stop fretting and we shall come free from the cycle of ego-centric,
reactive transactions in which we are puppets on a string.”[140]
“Spinoza holds that it is not by fighting what constitutes such determinism that
human beings can find freedom, move from a state of bondage to one of freedom,
but, paradoxical as it may sound, by accepting it. Such acceptance is achieved
through detachment and self-knowledge…Given that the situation that faces him
cannot be changed, how can he come out of such a state of bondage, emerge into
a state of freedom? Spinoza’s answer is: by accepting his situation, by
stopping to fight it. This involves detachment, which is not the same as
indifference. The detachment in question is from the ego…if in my feelings I am
at one with Nature then everything that happens will be what I am in agreement
with, not because of what it is, but regardless of what it is. Paradoxically in
yielding myself, in the sense of giving up my ego and becoming part of nature,
I stop yielding to something external to myself…the will of Nature, as it were,
is imposed on one because one separates oneself from it by rooting oneself in
one’s ego. If one embraces it, makes the will of Nature one’s command, one will
be set free.”[141]
Refutation of Spinoza’s Pantheism. God is not identified with Nature; He is
infinitely distinct from the world, whose finite and imperfect beings merely
participate in the act of being given to them by the Infinite Being in whom act
of being and essence are identified. To say, as Spinoza does, that there is
only one Substance (Deus sive Natura), contradicts the testimony of
common sense. Everyday experience shows that there are many things in the
world, distinct from one another because of their specific essences, and those
of the same form (apple, horse, cat, etc.) are many because their form is
received in different parcels of matter (matter is the principle of
individuation[142]). If the
world were identical with God, the world would necessarily be a single being,
for God is Himself supremely one, undivided and indivisible.[143]
But such a position blatantly contradicts both the testimony of the senses and
of reason.
Born
in Leipzig the German rationalist Gottfried Wilheim Leibniz[144]
(1646-1716) was a thinker of vast interests and was, with Newton, the inventor
of infinitesimal calculus. He was also the precursor of mathematical logic. His
works include the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686), the New System of
Nature and of the Interaction of Substances (1695), his Essays on
Theodicy (1710), and his Principles of Nature and Grace and Monadology
(1714). At one time one of the most famous of intellectuals in Europe, he died
forgotten in 1716, his burial attended only by his secretary.
Leibniz
is famous for his “monadology.” Against Descartes, he held that the primordial
element of the natural world is not extension but force. The metaphysical
principle is the monad (unity), a simple substance, endowed with quality. There
are, however, no two monads alike. All monads are also endowed with appetition
and perception. The monad is a “mirror of the universe” and has, with the other
monads, a relation of representation. Things are constituted by an
“entelecheia” (active principle) and by prime matter (passive principle).
Between body and soul there is an effective rapport that is derived from a
pre-established harmony produced by God. He refutes the rejection of the innate
ideas by Locke. Unlike Descartes who held that innate ideas were clear and distinct,
Leibniz believes that they are “minute perceptions” (virtual innatism). The
cognitive powers of man are threefold: sense, memory, and reason. The knowledge
of reason is divided into two: truths of reason (the principle of
non-contradiction) and truths of fact (the principle of sufficient reason).
Regarding God’s existence, Leibniz is an ontologist. Founding his theory upon
the principle of sufficient reason, he also sustained that this world was the
best possible of worlds created by God, the Almighty choosing the best of
possible worlds containing the least amount of evil. But such a theory
“jeopardizes divine freedom with regard to creation.”[145]
Thonnard explains the reason why he would conclude to such a position: “The
initial lack of precision on the meaning of sufficient reason led Leibniz to
other lacks of precision. Thus, Leibniz practically denied divine and human
liberty, for he could not recognize in a perfect efficient cause (as the free
agent), an extrinsic sufficient reason fully explicative of action, yet
openly distinct from the intrinsic, essential reason. The latter is
brought back into his system under the guise of a necessary bond between
every cause and its effect. The best possible world tends to become a formal
effect, indispensable to the divine perfection, which is its formal cause;
this is more similar to the series of modes constituting Spinoza’s world than
Leibniz would like to admit.”[146]
Author
of the celebrated Pensees (Thoughts), the French thinker Blaise Pascal[147]
(1623-1663) was a scientist, mathematical prodigy, apologist for the Christian
Faith, and a philosopher who conducted a sustained critique of Cartesian
rationalism. He concentrated his critique upon the Cartesian geometric method,
a mathematicism that replaced metaphysics as first philosophy. According to him
such a rationalist method is opposed to the “reasons of the heart,” that is, to
spiritual intuition. He also sharply criticized the Jesuits in his Provincial
Letters for teaching moral laxism and espoused an austere form of
Christianity of the Jansenistic type. He also reprimanded the irreligious and
freethinkers for their lack of concern for the last things, that is, for death,
judgment, heaven and hell. He was a resolute apologist for Christianity underlining
the reality of original sin and the need for redemption in Jesus Christ. To the
incredulous he proposed the “wager” regarding the existence of God, now known
as “Pascal’s wager.” It is the best thing for man to wager that God really
exists: if one wins, he wins everything (eternal life and beatitude) ; if he
loses he loses nothing.
Born
in Malmesbury, England, Thomas Hobbes[148]
(1588-1679) travelled extensively in France and Italy and knew both Descartes
and Galileo. His philosophical thought consists of a nominalist logic, a
materialist metaphysics, a naturalist anthropology, and a hedonist ethics. In
his work Leviathan, he upholds the absolutism of the State. His theory
of the State is contractual, not natural. He had a pessimistic view of man,
considering him egoistic and individualistic by nature, seeking his own
interest, and regarding all other men as rivals or enemies unless, of course,
they could be used to his advantage. It was he who coined the famous phrase, homo
homini lupus, meaning “man is a wolf to man.” In this state of nature of
man there was a “war of all against all,” no right or wrong, no justice and
injustice, for there was no law. Brute force and deceit governed men’s actions.
Observing that this state of rivalry between men because of their essentially
egoistic and individualistic nature was not ultimately to man’s advantage he
reasoned that in order to pursue peace and order in society the people would
have to renounce certain rights and vest absolute power on the sovereign or an
assembly of men. This would be done in an irrevocable manner to preserve the
efficacy of the sovereign’s or assembly’s authority. Men in this social
contract would have no rights except those granted to them by the sovereign or
assembly of the all-powerful state. Hobbes describes how he believes a
political society is formed in his Leviathan: “The only way to erect
such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of
foreigners and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such
sort as that, by their own industry, and by the fruits of the earth, they may
nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to confer all their power and
strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their
wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will: which is as much as to say, to
appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear their person; and everyone to own
and acknowledge himself to be the author of whatsoever he, that so beareth
their person, shall act or cause to be acted in those things which concern the
common peace and safety; and therein to submit their wills, everyone to his
will, and their judgments to his judgment. This is more than consent, or
concord; it is a real unity of them all, in one and the same person, made by
covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if every man should say
to every man, ‘I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this
man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right
to him, and authorize all his actions in right manner.’ This done, the
multitude so united in one person, is called a commonwealth, in Latin civitas.
This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more
reverently, of that mortal god, to whom we owe under the immortal God,
our peace and defense.”[149]
But this artificial construct, this social contract theory of the state that
Hobbes has conjured up, is false in light of common sense, experience, and
historical facts. First of all, “1. Man is naturally social, not antisocial or
extrasocial. He is neither utterly depraved nor thoroughly upright in nature,
but inclined both to good and evil…2. There never was a state of nonmorality
without rights, duties, justice or law. There was always the natural law, and
from it rights and duties immediately flow….3. The function of the family in
preparing for the state cannot be overlooked. Human beings had to live at least
temporarily in some society to be able to survive as a race. A mere animal life,
whether predatory or carefree, is impossible for man, for no man can supply his
needs unaided. Family life naturally develops into the clan or tribe. 4. The
social contract as the origin for political society as such is pure fiction.
That some later states have originated in this way is readily granted, but it
is absurd to think that this is the only way in which men could have passed
from a condition of civil society. The family forms a natural link between the
two. 5. There are certain inalienable rights of the individual and of the
family. It is immoral to transfer such rights to another, for they belong to
the dignity of the human person and to the very nature of the family. The
social contract theory requires the transference of all rights, and this is contrary
to the natural law. 6. The social contract could not bind posterity. The unborn
were not parties to the contract and might refuse to enter into it. The theory
supposes that the contract is not a requirement of human nature as such, but a
mere convention. No one would become a citizen of the state by birth...7. The
social contract cannot have greater authority than the contracting parties give
it. There are rights of the state which no individual can possess, such as the
right to declare war and to inflict capital punishment. In the contract theory
there is no way in which the state can legitimately obtain these rights.”[150]
The
English empiricist John Locke[151]
(1632-1704) concentrated his philosophical efforts on the theory of knowledge and
on politics. His most famous work appeared in 1690 under the title Essay
Concerning Human Understanding. A severe critic of Cartesian innatism, he
distinguishes four phases of the knowing process: intuition, synthesis,
analysis, and comparison. “Ideas” are either simple, complex, or abstract.
Complex ideas are grouped into three classes: of “substance,” of “modes,” and
of “relations.” Words are signs of ideas and not directly of things. The human
mind cannot know the essences of things but only their existence. Central to
Locke’s whole empiricist philosophy is his theory of ideas which Celestine
Bittle describes: “Here is his understanding of an idea: ‘It being that term
which, I think, serves best to stand for whatever is the object of the
understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by
phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed
about in thinking.’[152]
In this superficial definition Locke unfortunately lumps together as ‘ideas’
things which might conceivably be radically different in nature, namely
‘phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which can be employed about in
thinking.’ By thus arbitrarily blurring the nature of the ‘idea’ so as to
include the images of sense-perception (‘phantasm, species’), he laid the
foundation for sensism, in which all ‘thinking’ is nothing but a form of
‘sensation.’ Descartes placed all sense-perception in the spiritual mind, thus
identifying sense-perception with spiritual activity; Locke here does the reverse,
by reducing ideas, at least in part, to the level of sense-perception. This
confusion of ideas and images is present in all his philosophy.”[153]
Bittle then proceeds to criticize Locke’s empiricist sensism: “For one thing,
Locke simply assumes without proof that ‘ideas’ and ‘images’ are identical.
This identification of ideas and images wipes out the distinction between
sensory and intellectual knowledge simply by definition. Again,
according to his definition of the ‘idea’ the idea is the object
of our understanding, instead of the reality of things being the object
of our intellectual knowledge. All we can know, then, are ‘ideas,’ internal
states of mind; in that case, however, we can acquire no knowledge of the
material world as it is in itself. If carried out to its logical conclusion,
such a theory must inevitably end in subjective idealism.”[154]
The
Anglican bishop and philosopher George Berkeley[155]
(1685-1753) had a mission to defend theism and to affirm the primacy of the
spirit over matter against the growing materialist trend among British
intellectuals. He calls his system immaterialism since it is aimed at
responding to the errors of materialism. His fundamental thesis is that by
which the being of things is resolved into thought-of-being. Primary sensible
qualities were considered by him to be subjective as they are known through
secondary sensible qualities. Bodies are, therefore, for Berkeley, nothing but
sensible qualities and so one should not suppose that there is some sort of
‘substance’ holding up those qualities. “Their esse consists in their percipi
(to be perceived), and it is not possible for them to have any existence
outside the minds which perceives them.”[156]
We should not suppose a ‘substance’ underlying our ideas of the accidents of
bodies, since the true support of these ideas, namely, our very own mind. For
Berkeley, “things exist therefore only as objects of our senses, as phenomena
(from the Greek, ‘what appears before me’). It may be that Berkeley did not
want to deny the existence of the world of bodies but just to combat
materialism by means of the immateriality of knowledge. Nevertheless, by virtue
of the principle of immanence, which he follows, he turns the in-itself into a
for-myself. There is no matter in itself: it exists only in my consciousness.
And my consciousness consists in perceiving ideas (in the Lockean sense) and in
perceiving itself intuitively. (…) Kant would dismiss Berkeley’s philosophy as
dogmatic idealism.”[157]
For Berkeley, it is in the human or divine Mind that ideas exist. One’s own
existence is known immediately. Knowledge of God is mediate and evident.
General and abstract ideas do not exist. Inspired by Neo-Platonism, he believed
that philosophy’s role is to study ideas and language through which God reveals
Himself. Only revealed Faith is capable of enlightening man on the meaning of
life and is able to produce truly beneficial effects for him.
David
Hume[158]
(1711-1776) was born in Edinburgh on April 26, 1711. Originally groomed for a
legal career he instead pursued a literary and philosphical course. He
sojourned in France between the years 1734-1737 were he wrote his famous Treatise
on Human Nature, which failed to attract attention. In 1737 he returned to
Scotland and a few years after published his Essays, Moral and Political
(1741-1742) which proved to be a success. In 1748 he published An Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding (which was a revision of the first part of
his early unsuccessful Treatise). A second edition of this work appeared
in 1752, its final title called An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
That same year saw the appearance of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (which is a reworking of the the third part of his earlier Treatise).
In 1752 he published Political Discourses, which made him very famous,
and in that year became librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. All
throughout the 1750’s Hume worked on a series of volumes on the history of
England. In 1756 he published a history of Great Britain from the accession of
James I to the death of Charles I, followed by a history of Great Britain up to
the revolution of 1688 that same year. In 1759 he published his History of
England under the House of Tudor, and in 1761 his History of England
from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Accession of Henry VIII. In 1762
Hume was in Paris as secretary to the British Embassy in France. In 1766 he
brought Rousseau back with him to England but soon after their friendship ended
because of the Frenchman’s difficult and suspicious character. From 1767 to
1769 Hume was an Under-Secretary of State. He died in Edinburgh on August 25,
1776. His controversial Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, written
by him before 1752, was published posthumously in 1779.
With
the empiricist gnoseology of Hume we find human knowledge restricted to the
level of the senses. For Hume, all man’s knowledge consists of perceptions,
which can either be strong (impressions) or weak (“ideas”).[159]
All these impressions and ideas have their origin in sense experience.
Impressions, for him, are very vivid and immediate, the first products of the
mind. Ideas, on the other hand, would be of a derivative and inferred
character, mere reproductions or copies of those original impressions or elaborations
of them, and can be manipulated and ordered among themselves by the
imagination, according to the “law of association” (resemblance, contiguity in
time and place, and causality). These laws of association of ideas are
psychological laws.
For
Hume there are no universal concepts, only general ideas, “ideas” being simply
blurred images expressing a resemblance common to a collection of particular
sense perceptions. Therefore, all the contents of our experience must be
particular and contingent, the consequences being that we would be unable to
have a basis at all for any universal and necessary knowledge.
The
core of Humean empiricist epistemology is that what we know are our
perceptions, not external, extra-mental reality. What the human mind knows is
not something existing outside consciousness, but merely facts of
consciousness. What is known are not real things but only our perceptions which
are subjective modifications produced in us by sensible experience. “Now since
nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are
derived from something antecedently present to the mind, it follows that it is
impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of anything
specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out
of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens,
or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond
ourselves, nor can we conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions which
have appeared in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination,
nor have we any idea but what is there produced.”[160]
Then
comes the attack on the principle of causality[161]:
Hume denies the universal and necessary validity of this principle. It is
simply not universally and necessarily true, he argues, that every effect has a
cause, since in human perception cause and effect are in fact two phenomena
with two separate existences, one following after the other. We cannot
therefore conclude that the latter phenomena is due to the causality of the
former just because it comes after it. The only conclusion that we can come up
with is that, owing to the laws of the association of ideas, it is believed
(felt) that a certain phenomenon is caused by another, because, by habit, we
have grown accustomed to believe it. For him, causality is not an extra-mental
reality but is rather a subjective phenomenal complex idea, a creation of the
human mind. With this doctrine Hume dismisses the traditional a posteriori
demonstrations of the existence of God as being devoid of demonstrative
capacity.[162]
So,
in Hume’s system, there is no way we can infer the existence of extramental
reality. We cannot say, for example, that our perceptions have been produced or
caused by extra-mental real things, therefore these things must exist, because
the simple fact is that we do not have a perception of a cause. All that is
perceived, experienced, are successive sensations. There is no intrinsic
connection between these sensations nor any necessity for such a connection.
So, what is this principle of causality that the scholastics boast about?
Simply a subjective product of habit. We have gotten so used to seeing fire
burn that, by habit, we say that fire causes the burning; but since Hume states
that we cannot sense this causing, this causing can be but a subjective product
of the imagination. Therefore, Humean philosophy cannot admit that there is
anything real, anything objectively existing outside the states of human consciousness.
The verdict of Hume’s radical empiricism is that the real existence of things
can be but a hypothesis incapable of verification, a postulate that can neither
be proved nor disproved.
An
evident conclusion that one can gather from Humean skeptical empiricism is that
it is impossible to prove the existence of God for it is impossible to prove
the existence of anything. There is nothing we can know beyond our sense
perceptions, whether noumena in the world or God. All we can do is believe as
our imagination fancies. We are unable to prove the existence of God by means
of the metaphysical principle of causality for causality has no objective
value. With the empiricist doctrine of the inability of the mind to ascend from
the level of experience to the establishment of the existence of a cause that
exists and operates on a level of reality above the level of the senses, Hume
has wiped out (from his own skeptical mind) metaphysics and, with it,
philosophy of God, the highest branch of metaphysics. For Hume, one cannot
rationally demonstrate the existence of God for there is no power of insight
and understanding in man different in kind from the bodily senses. Such is
Humean skeptical empiricist agnosticism.
How
then does he explain the fact that so many people have a notion of a Supreme
Being, whom they do not hesitate to call God? His answer: that too is a
product of the imagination, something concocted out of many varied sense
impressions. He does not deny its psychological value and use, as does the psychological
utility of many of our other products of the imagination. But the simple fact
is that the real existence or non-existence of God is outside the mind’s power
to know.
Hume
did not want to be branded an atheist and, at times, admitted religion’s
utility and practical value for society. Nevertheless, his writings reveal his
philosophical views that describes supernatural Christian religion as nothing
but a creation of man’s fertile imagination, and that even a deistic
“illuminist” religion founded on the rational metaphysical principles of
philosophy of God had no experiential or rational foundation. All religions are
of equal value for they all lack any empirical basis. Religious beliefs and
their habits of association are explained through instinct and in the habits of
association which arise from it. A religion may be permitted if it has
practical utility: as a source of consolation, altruism, fraternity, etc.
Naturally, the permitted religions should be devoid of all unreasonable
fictions of the imagination, such as belief in mysteries and miracles; the only
useful religion, according to Hume, would be a purely natural religion devoid
of mysteries and miracles whatsoever.[163]
Hume’s
skepticism regarding extra-mental reality must also be addressed. Contrary to
his radical empiricism, the existence of things is not an hypothesis or a
postulate, that is, something that we must assume since we cannot prove it. An
hypothesis or assumption is something that we cannot, at the moment, prove or
disprove; for example, that the cure for cancer will be discovered in 2089. One
can assume that the cure for cancer will be discovered at that point in time,
but we simply cannot prove it. We can neither prove that it will not occur at
that point in time. But if the cure for cancer is discovered in 2095, then we
are no longer dealing with an assumption but with an accomplished fact. Now the
existence of things in the world that we see around us is not an hypothesis but
a fact. They are not assumed but given. Naturally, the existence of the things
of the world cannot be proved because they need no proof; they are
self-evident. We start with the things of the world; we say that these things are, for these things are there to begin
with. They are thus judged to exist for they simply do exist.
A
detailed refutation of Hume’s skeptical empiricism properly belongs to the
field of epistemology. His main problem lies with his reduction of human
knowledge to the level of the senses, thus denying that man has the power of
abstraction. For Hume, sense experience was the ultimate source of valid human
knowledge. Thrown out together with metaphysics are substance and causality.
Having done this he remained agnostic concerning God’s existence, a natural
consequence of his sensism. Criticizing Hume’s radical empiricism, Celestine
Bittle notes a number of things: “First, Hume’s explanation of ideas as
faint images of sense-impressions is totally
inadequate. Since both are of a sensory character, they are concrete and
individualized. Our ideas, however, are abstract and universal. There is, as we
have shown, a radical difference between ‘sensations’ and ‘images’ on the one
hand and ‘intellectual ideas’ on the other. To ignore or deny these differences
is a serious error. Second, Hume’s explanation of universal ideas
is totally inadequate. The process of forming universal ideas is not at all the
way Hume pictures it. We acquire them by a process of abstraction,
taking the objective features common to a number of individuals and then
generalizing the resultant idea so that it applies to the whole class and to
every member of the class. It is not a question of merely labeling objects with
a common name. Intellectual insight into the nature of these objective
features, not ‘custom’ or habit, enables us to group them together into a
class. Third, Hume’s explanation of the origin and nature of the
necessarily and universally true axioms and principles, such as
the principle of causality and the principle of non-contradiction, is totally
inadequate. He explains their necessity and universality through association.
Now, the laws of association are purely subjective laws with a purely
subjective result. Consequently, the ‘necessity’ which we experience relative
to the logical connection between subject and predicate in these principles
would not be due to anything coming from the reality represented in these
judgments, but solely to the associative force existing in the mind. It
is a subjective and psychological, not an objective and ontological,
necessity. The mind does not judge these principles to be true because it sees
they cannot be otherwise; it cannot see them to be otherwise because the
mind in its present constitution must judge them to be true. So far as
objective reality is concerned, 2 + 2 might equal 3 or 5 or any other number;
and there might be a cause without an effect, or an effect without a cause. If
Hume’s contention were correct, that our observation of ‘invariable sequence’
is the reason for assuming an antecedent event to be the ‘cause’ of the
subsequent event, then we should perforce experience the same psychological
necessity of judgment in all cases where we notice an invariable sequence
in successive events. Experience, however, contradicts this view. For instance,
day follows night in an invariable sequence; but nobody would dream of
asserting that the night is the ‘cause’ of the day. In an automobile factory
one car follows the other on the belt line in invariable sequence; but this
association does not compel us to think that the preceding car is the ‘cause’
of the one following. Reversely, when an explosion occurs but once in our
experience, we search for the ‘cause’ of this ‘effect’ and are convinced there
must be a cause present; here, however, there can be no question of an
‘invariable sequence’ of events. Fourth, Hume’s theory, if accepted as
true, must destroy all scientific knowledge. The very foundation of
science lies in the principles of non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and
causality. If these principles are valid only for our mind and do not apply
with inviolable necessity to physical objects in nature, the scientist has no
means of knowing whether his conclusions are objectively valid. His knowledge
is nothing but a purely mental construction which may or may not agree
with extra-mental reality. But science treats of physical systems and their
operations, not of mental constructions. Since, according to Hume, we can know
nothing but our internal states of consciousness, we could never discover
whether the external world and other minds exist at all; driven to its logical
conclusions, such a theory can end only in solipsism or in skepticism.”[164]
The
difficult and passionate Jean Jacques Rousseau[165]
(1712-1778) is the greatest exponent of the French Enlightenment. Author
of Emile (1762), the Social
Contract (1762), and the Confessions (published posthumously) he is
famous above all for his political philosophy and pedagogy. His philosophical
thought includes writings on the passage from the state of nature to the social
state, an analysis of the social contract where he underlines the “general
will” and sovereignty of the people. Bittle summarizes Rousseau’s social
contract for us, writing that he “viewed man in the ‘natural state,’ in
opposition to Hobbes, as naturally and completely free, fully self-sufficient,
and altogether virtuous. Each man was a peer among peers, endowed with equal
rights, and no one was subordinate to anyone else. There was no work or toil of
any kind, but all lived in an idyllic, arcadian life of ease and comfort and
tranquillity. If Hobbes’s concept of man in the ‘natural state’ was
pessimistic, Rousseau’s was optimistic in the extreme. Unfortunately, according
to Rousseau, this paradisiac condition did not last. It was not ‘sin’ which
disturbed the scene, bringing evil and misery in its train; at least not ‘sin’
in the Christian sense. Nature endowed man with the fatal gift of perfectibility.
Slowly and gradually man began to learn the arts, acquire objects as his own,
fashion tools of various sorts, and communicate and associate with others; and
so he left the condition of the innocent savage for the more turbulent
condition of social contacts and activities with his fellows. The result was
fraud and deceit, dissension and conflict everywhere, and the loss of primitive
peace and tranquillity of spirit. Conditions became so bad that men found it
useful to establish the state in order to restore and preserve peace. The state
came into being through the free consent and social contract of all
concerned, whereby everyone grants all his individual rights and ruling power
to the ‘general will’ embodied in the authority of the community. In this
way, Rousseau thought, it was possible
‘to find a form of association which shall defend and protect with all the
strength of the community the person and the goods of each associate, and
whereby each one, uniting himself to all, may nevertheless obey none but
himself and remain as free as before.’[166]
To the question as to how men in the state can remain free as before, Rousseau
answers: ‘Each of us puts into a common stock his person and all his power
under the supreme direction of the general will; and we receive in our turn the
offering of the rest, each member as an inseparable part of the whole.’[167]”[168]
Criticizing
Rousseau’s theory, Bittle makes this evaluation: “There are many flaws in
Rousseau’s theory. As in the case of Hobbes, Rousseau’s view of man’s nature in
the ‘natural state’ is purely imaginary and arbitrary. Rousseau confuses
physical and moral freedom. We admit that man possesses ‘physical’ freedom
as an essential attribute of his rational nature, so that he has freedom of
choice in the activities of his will. But this does not mean that he is free
from all moral obligation. The natural law is in force at all times, and the
natural law confers certain inalienable rights on persons, with corresponding
moral obligations or duties on the others. Like Hobbes, Rousseau conceived the
pre-state condition of man as essentially individualistic; but, whereas,
Hobbes considered primitive man to be ‘anti-social,’ Rousseau considered him to
be non-social by nature. Rousseau was guilty of a serious oversight. The
family certainly existed at all times, and the family has not changed
essentially. As was pointed out against the theory of Hobbes, family life is by
its very nature social in character, not individualistic. Furthermore,
the very nature of membership in the family precludes the possibility of
perfect equality; the relation between husband and wife and between parent and
child brings with it a natural individual inequality, with differences
in rights and duties in domestic society which are ineradicable and
unescapable. And family life naturally demands private property, so that
private property did not have its origin in fraud and force, as Rousseau
contended, but in the needs and requirements of the rational nature of man.
These same needs and requirements prompted man to till the soil, to learn the
arts, to associate with others, and finally to form the state, because
the perfection of his nature demanded these things. Since the formation of
civil society, of the organization of the political state, is an outgrowth of
man’s natural needs, the origin of the state is a dictate of the natural law,
not of an exclusively human agreement and social contract.”[169]
In
the field of pedagogy, Rousseau denied original sin, sustaining the innate
goodness and original innocence of man who is corrupted by society. He proposed
a new education of youth, developing their sensitive faculties, educating their
reasoning powers, the development of their moral sense, the development of an
autonomous personality, and in instilling in them the primacy of action. In
religious matters Rousseau was a naturalist. God is reached through the
contemplation of Nature and with sentiment. Already famous during his time,
Rousseau had a very powerful influence on culture after his death.
The
German trascendental idealist philosopher Immanuel Kant[170]
(1724-1804) was born in Königsberg, East Prussia (which is now the
Russian city of Kaliningrad) on the 22nd of April, 1724, the son of
parents belonging to the Pietist sect. As a youth Kant studied at the Collegium
Fridericianum from 1732 to 1740 where he acquired a good knowledge of Latin. In
1740 he began his studies at the university of Königsberg where he studied
Newtonian physics, mathematics, and philosophy, finishing in 1746. Because of
financial reasons, he became tutor to
various families from 1746 till 1755. In 1755 he obtained his doctorate and
received permission to be a Privatdozent or lecturer. In March of 1770
he was appointed as ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics at the
university of Königsberg. The years 1755 to 1770 are commonly known as Kant’s
pre-critical period, where he was profoundly influenced by Leibnizian and
Wolffian rationalism. The 1770 dissertation On the Form and on the
Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World signals the beginning of
his evolution to what is called his second or critical period, where he says
that he was awakened from his “dogmatic slumber” by the reading of the radical
empiricism of David Hume. In 1781 Kant published his first major work, the Critique
of Pure Reason (a second revised edition came out in 1787). In 1783 he
published the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, in 1785 his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals,
in 1786 the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science, in 1788
his Critique of Practical Reason, in 1790 the Critique of Judgment,
in 1793 his controversial work Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone
(which got him into trouble with the Prussian authorities), in 1795 the
treatise On Perpetual Peace, and in 1797 the Metaphysics of Morals.
Kant spent almost all of his life within the confines of Königsberg, leading a
methodical, meticulously planned life. He died in that same city on February
12, 1804.
In
his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant sought out the value of the human
sciences, especially that of metaphysics. In order to do so he believed that it
was necessary to inquire into the origins of scientific knowledge, searching
the reason why such knowledge is formed in us. The point of departure of his
inquiry would be the scientific judgments of mathematics, physics, and first
principles such as the principle of causality, foundation of scientific
knowledge. He asks: How are such universal and necessary judgments possible?
There were two historical solutions: the first was the rationalist claim that
science has a totally a priori origin in us through a pure analysis of
one or more primitive concepts. Such scientific judgments were called analytic
judgments. The second solution was the empiricist claim that science has its
absolute origin from sensible experience through a posteriori synthetic
judgments. But Kant was unconvinced by these explanations since he observed
that scientific judgments had the following essential characteristics:
universality-necessity and increment of new knowledge. In the case of the
rationalist claim, yes, universality and necessity were explained but not
increment of new knowledge. As to the empiricist claim, yes, increment of new
knowledge was explained but not universality and necessity since all that comes
from sense experience can only be particular and contingent. What was needed
was a union between the necessity and universality of the analytic judgments of
the rationalists and the increase of new knowledge provided by the synthetic a
posteriori judgments of the empiricists. So, Kant’s solution was that man
obtains scientific knowledge through synthetic a priori judgments.
Scientific judgments have their origin by way of synthesis between something
caused in us by something external to us and subjective elements which the mind
possesses by force of its very constitution. He believed that the ultimate root
of the errors of the rationalists and the empiricists was the erroneous concept
of human knowledge. The rationalists claimed that all knowledge comes from the
subject, while the empiricists held that all knowledge is derived from the
object. Because of these errors, Kant claimed that scientific knowledge would
be impossible because the object would only supply an increment of new
knowledge and the subject would give only universality-necessity. Knowledge,
for him, is not the fruit of the subject solely or of the object solely, but
rather, it is a synthesis of the combined action of subject and object: the
subject procures the form and the object the matter. Knowledge would be the
result of an a priori element (the subject) and an a posteriori
element (the object). The resulting judgments would not just be only analytic
or only synthetic but would be synthetic a priori. Synthetic a priori
judgments would be a sufficient guarantee for the validity of the sciences
which acquires increment of new knowledge from the object and
universality-necessity from the subject.
This
new relationship between subject and object in the knowing process is Kant’s
Copernican Revolution. Realism claims that man can really know extra-mental
things, obtaining immaterial ideas (which are universal) by abstraction from
sense experience. It believes that it is the mind that revolves around things
in the extra-mental universe. Truth would mean the conformity (adequation) of
our minds or judgments to real things. Kant rejects this realism as illusory
and ingenious. His claim is that it is not the mind that revolves around the
thing but rather the thing that revolves around the mind. “It has hitherto been
assumed that our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to
ascertain anything about these objects a priori, by means of conceptions,
and thus to extend the range of our knowledge, have been rendered abortive by
this assumption. Let us then make the experiment whether we may not be more
successful in metaphysics, if we assume that the objects must conform to our
cognition. This appears, at all events, to accord better with the possibility
of our gaining the end we have in view, that is to say, of arriving at the
cognition of objects a priori, of determining something with respect to
these objects, before they are given to us.”[171]
To
answer the basic question, “What can I know with scientific certitude?,” Kant
wrote The Critique of Pure Reason. In this work he examines in a
critical way the very structure of human reason, assigning to man a threefold knowing
power: sensibility, intellect and reason. Out of the threefold knowing power of
man arises, respectively, the three parts of the Critique: the
transcendental esthetic, the transcendental analytic, and the transcendental
dialectic.
The transcendental esthetic. Kant calls “transcendental” every knowledge that
has something to do with the way the human mind knows objects. “Transcendent”
is that which goes beyond all experience. The transcendental esthetic’s scope
is to examine how mathematics and geometry are possible. He retains that these
sciences are possible because the mind is endowed with two a priori
forms that have the characteristics of universality and intuitivity: space and
time. Space and time are not, for him, extra-mental realities but a priori
forms of the human mind.[172]
The only form of intuition that man is endowed with is sensible intuition. Thus
the mind can reach only phenomena (things which appear to us) and not noumena
(things-in-themselves). We only know things as they appear to the human mind
and not extra-mental reality as it is in itself. In The Critique of Pure
Reason and in the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics Kant affirms
the existence of noumena (things-in-themselves) that are the cause of the
phenomena, but as to what noumena are in themselves, we simply do not know.[173]
The transcendental analytic. Just as phenomena stir the sensibility to act, so
the finished products of sensation stir the next knowing power, the intellect,
to act. The intellect takes in these finished products of sensation which are
empirical intuitions and conforms them to its shape, its inborn a priori
forms. These forms are four sets of triple judgments called the twelve
categories. These categories are like molds into which the molten metal of empirical
intuitions is poured, and the resulting piece of knowledge is, in each case, a
judgment. The four master categories (each of which has three branches) are:
quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Thus the judgment “A comes from B as
effect from cause” is not the objective knowing by the human mind of a state of
fact, as it is in realism, but rather, it is merely the result of the action of
the intellect putting the empirical intuitions of A and B through the mold or
category of relation, and through that branch of relation called cause-effect.
Causality is not, for Kant, something that occurs in extra-mental reality
between things but is rather subjective and immanent to human
consciousness.
The transcendental dialectic. In this final part of The Critique of Pure
Reason Kant analyzes the function of “reason” (understood as a faculty that
inquires into the unconditioned) so as to ascertain if metaphysics as a
legitimate science is possible. The “ideas” of reason are three in number: 1.
the soul, which is the unconditioned lying at the foundation of psychical
phenomena; 2. the world or cosmos, which is the unconditioned lying at the
foundation of physical phenomena, and 3. God, the unconditioned lying at the
foundation of all reality. Kantian transcendental idealism retains that
metaphysics arises from a legitimate exigency but nevertheless concludes that
it is impossible for us to demonstrate the objective noumenal value of these
ideas of reason. The idea of soul can only be the result of paralogisms, the
idea of cosmos or world falls into a pit of antinomies, and the idea of God is
grounded upon three proofs which are all invalid since they are all reducible
to the erroneous ontological argument. Thus, the three ideas of reason possess
only a regulative use, indicating a point of problematic convergence, and not a
constitutive use as they do not in any way represent objects to us. Regarding
the existence of God Kant was an agnostic, a logical consequence of his
transcendental idealist gnoseological immanentism where one is trapped in
appearances within human consciousness and incapable of transcending to
extra-mental reality and knowing things-in-themselves.
Kant
goes to great efforts to analyze and describe the intellect and its operations.
He appears to know the intellect and its functions extremely well. But isn’t
that analyzing and describing a noumenal reality, a thing-in-itself? If the
noumenon is totally unknowable then the intellect and its operations would be
unknowable. The intellect and its operations are not phenomena for they are not
the objects of sense experience. We cannot see and touch human reason. Again,
his system breaks down.
Kant
claimed that existing extra-mental things-in-themselves (noumena) are the causes
of the phenomena that appear to us. Phenomena would be effects of their
causes which are noumena.[174]
In the Prolegomena we read that things-in-themselves are unknowable as
they are in themselves but that “we know them through the representations which
their influence on our sensibility procures for us.”[175]
But this is making use of the objective metaphysical principle of causality and
acknowledging causality in the extra-mental world. This is a plain violation of
his philosophical system that claims that causality is not something of the
extra-mental real world but rather something rooted in the very structure of
the human mind as a category.[176]
In order to rectify this blatant error Kant revised his doctrine on the
noumenon in the second edition of The Critique of Pure Reason which came
out in 1787.[177] His second
new doctrine claimed that the noumenon should not be thought of as an
extra-mental thing existing in reality but merely as a limiting concept.[178]
In its negative sense, which should be adopted, the noumenon is that which is
not the object of sense intuition.[179]
What does he do here? He denies the objectivity of the thing-in-itself thus
correcting his own violation of his own principle of causality immanent to the
human mind.[180] But though
he gives us a new doctrine on the noumenon, even now affirming that we do not
know if it exists or not, there are still many parts of his work in his
critical period that clearly affirm the existence of noumena and their being
the causes of phenomena, as B 34 of the second edition of The Critique of
Pure Reason and Prologue 13, remark 2 of the Prolegomena attest to.
Kant could not, even with his new doctrine of the noumenon, free himself from
contradictions in his philosophical system.
It
is not true, as Kant claims, that man is endowed only with sense intuition. We
are endowed with intellectual intuition as for example when we know ourselves
through reflection. And to think that the knowledge of mathematics and geometry
is due solely to sense intuition is absurd.
Bittle
lists a number of other problems with Kantian idealism: “Kant’s theory is contrary
to the science of psychology. He maintains that ‘space’ and ‘time’ are
subjective ‘forms’ of the mind, given prior to all experience. The findings of
psychology are definitely opposed to this claim. Sensory experience contributes
its share to our perception of ‘space’ and ‘time,’ as experimental psychology
has definitively established. We acquire our knowledge of space and time from a
perception of objects which are larger or smaller and which are at rest or in
motion. Persons suffering from a congenital cataract have no antecedent
knowledge of visual space; after a successful operation, they must acquire
knowledge of space through experience and perception. If the
subjective mental form of ‘space’ were, as Kant claims, a necessary condition
for perception, making the perception of phenomena possible, then there seems
to be no valid reason why the mind cannot impose the form of ‘visual space’
upon the incoming impressions, even though a person be congenitally blind. The
evidence, however, points clearly to the fact that the knowledge of space on
the part of the mind is conditioned by the perception of objects, and not that
the perception of space is conditioned by some a priori form present in
the mind antecedent to experience. But if ‘space’ is an attribute of bodies,
then so is ‘time,’ because both are on a par in this respect.”[181]
“Kant’s
theory is contrary to the fundamental principles of the physical sciences.
Kant evolved his theory for the expressed purpose of revindicating scientific
knowledge and freeing it from the bane of Hume’s skepticism. He failed. Science
treats of the physical objects of the extra-mental world and not of
mental constructions; Kant’s world, however, is a world of phenomena,
and these phenomena are mental constructions which give us no insight whatever
into the nature and reality of things as they are in themselves.
According to Kant’s conclusions, the physical, noumenal world is unknown and
unknowable. Science is convinced that it contacts and knows real things
outside the mind. Science is based on the objective validity of the
principle of cause and effect operating between physical objects and physical
agencies; according to Kant, this principle is an empty a priori form
merely regulating our judgments and applying only to phenomena. The laws
which science establishes are considered by scientists to be real laws
operating in physical bodies independent of our thinking; according to Kant,
these laws merely relate to phenomena within the mind and not to nature at all.
Kant states: ‘It sounds no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should
have to conform to our subjective ground of apperception, nay, be dependent on
it, with respect to her laws. But if we consider that what we call nature is
nothing but a whole (Inbegriff) of phenomena, not a thing by itself, we shall
no longer be surprised.’[182]
We are indeed surprised that Kant would accept this conclusion of this theory
rather than see therein the utter fallaciousness of the theory itself which
could consistently lead to such a ‘very strange and absurd’ conclusion. That
such a conclusion destroys the validity of science in its very foundations,
must be obvious.”[183]
“Kant’s
theory destroys the foundation of all intellectual knowledge. Ideas and
judgments are supposed to reflect and represent reality; they are supposed to
tell us ‘what things are.’ Truth and error reside in the judgment. In forming
judgments we first understand the contents of ideas and then have an
intellectual insight into the relation existing between the subject-idea and
the predicate-idea. According to Kant, we do not make judgments because we
perceive the objective relation of the subject-idea and the predicate-idea, but
because a blind, subjectively necessitating law of our mental
constitution draws certain sense-intuitions under certain intellectually empty
categories prior to our thinking, and we do not know why these
particular categories, rather than others, were imposed by the mind on these
sense-intuitions. Our ‘knowledge’ is as blind as the law that produces it.
Intellectual knowledge is thus utterly valueless, because it gives us no
insight into the nature of the reality our ideas and judgments are supposed to
represent.”[184]
Kant
claimed that nothing universal can come from experience. This is false since
the universal can come from experience by way of the realist doctrine of
abstraction.[185]
Kant on the Existence of God. Regarding the question of the capacity of man’s reason
to demonstrate the existence of God Kant replies that, since all our experience
is limited to what is in our sensibility and if the categories of the human
understanding can operate only on the objects given to our understanding in and
through the forms of sensibility, then all theoretical knowledge of God is
rendered impossible. God, who is supra-sensible, is not given in the mass of
sense impressions that we receive and is incapable of being an object of
theoretical knowledge to the human mind. He “applies to God the conditions
required of all objects of experience and hence of all knowable realities. The
judgments constitutive of philosophical knowledge are only possible ‘when we
relate the formal conditions of a priori intuition, the synthesis of imagination
and the necessary unity of this synthesis in a transcendental apperception, to
a possible empirical knowledge in general.’[186]
Those things alone are knowable which are temporal, subject to some finite,
concrete pattern of imagination, included within the order of appearances, and
given through empirical, sensuous intuition. On all four counts, God (as
conceived by Western theists) lies patently outside the scope of speculative
knowledge. He is eternal and not temporal; His being is infinite and unimaginable;
He is not an appearance but the supreme intelligible reality or
thing-in-itself; He lies beyond all sensuous intuition, and man is endowed with
no intellectual intuition for grasping His intelligible reality. Not only His
existence but also His nature and causal relation with the world remain
intrinsically impenetrable to our speculative gaze. Natural theology has no
possibility of providing us with true knowledge about God and should be
abandoned.”[187]
Kant
could not formulate a valid demonstration of the existence of God because of
his negation of abstraction, the metaphysical value of our primary concepts in
favor of a reduction of knowledge to what appears to the senses, and the
inevitable negation of the objective validity of the principle of causality,
which is at the foundation of every valid a posteriori demonstration of
God’s existence. All this because of his acceptance of sensism and his
absolutization of Newtonian physics that would replace metaphysics as first
philosophy. Kant criticizes the a posteriori demonstrations of God,
namely the cosmological and teleological arguments, but these are not the
arguments of the third and fifth ways of St. Thomas, which are by no means
reducible to the ontological argument, a type of argumentation which Aquinas
himself refutes. Rather, the Thomistic five ways are valid effect to cause quia
demonstrations that have as their starting points objects given in sensible
experience which are then interpreted metaphysically. Using the objective
metaphysical principle of causality (and the impossibility of infinite regress
in the first, second, and third ways) one successfully arrives at God. From a
real starting point one concludes to a real Supreme Being. There is no question
here of an illegitimate transfer from the logical order to the existential
order of being (which the ontological argument does). Why then does Kant
erroneously dismiss all possible a posteriori arguments for God’s
existence? It is because he is operating within the framework of his immanentist
theory of experience and theory of existence, which excludes a realist point of
departure, as Collins explains: “The Kantian explanation of the three stages in
any a posteriori demonstration of God’s existence rests upon his theory
of experience and his conception of existence. The steps in the process impose
themselves upon human intelligence not through any necessity inherent in the
human intellect itself or in God’s own being but only on condition that the
intellect is operating within the framework of the Kantian view of experience
and existence. What has been described, then, is the way an a posteriori
inference to God must adapt itself to the exigencies of this view, not the way
in which such an inference must always develop. Thus the analysis has a sharply
limited scope. Kant’s four empirical criteria (temporality, synthesis in
imagination, limitation to appearances, and presence through sensuous
intuition) are determinants of the objects studied in classical physics. It
does not follow that they are the defining marks which characterize everything
we can either know experientially or infer from experience. They constitute the
empirical principle operative within Newtonian physics, but they are not
identical with the experiential principle operative within our ordinary
acquaintance with the existing world and our metaphysical analysis of this
world. Human experience and its existentially based causal inferences are not
restricted to the factors required for the construction of the physical object of
Newtonian mechanics. Kant’s fourfold empirical principle is a univocal rule for
testing the validity of scientific reasoning. By its nature, it can extend only
to objects which already belong to the world of the physicist’s investigation.
Hence it cannot be used to answer the question of whether experience contains
causal implications, leading to the existence of a being distinct from the
world of physics. It can settle nothing about whether our inferences, which
start with the sensible world, must also terminate with this world and its
immanent formal conditions. Hence, Kant’s use of the empirical principle to
rule out the a posteriori demonstration of God’s existence is
unwarranted. Granted that the starting point is found in sensible things, it
cannot be concluded, by the deductive application of such a principle, that
these objects are the only things we can know from causal analysis of
experience…It is because Kant failed to grasp the precise starting point of the
realistic argument from changing and composite sensible existents that his
account of the general procedure of a posteriori demonstration is
inapplicable to the realistically ordered inference.”[188]
But
it is true that man forms his notion of God and can ask a great many questions
regarding a Supreme Being, the First Cause of all reality. How is this so? The
reason for this, according to Kant, lies in the very structure of the human
mind, for its categories of understanding (of cause, substance, etc.) enable
the mind to posit questions about a first cause, a necessary substance, etc.
But there can never be a real answer to these questions for here the mind’s
categories are working without anything, without content. Now, categories can
only work on content, and that content must come in and through the forms of
sensibility. Content without form is unintelligible and, likewise, is form
without content. Thus, questions regarding the existence, nature, attributes,
etc., of God are, for Kant, empty questions, for it is simply impossible to
provide an answer to them in terms of theoretical or speculative knowledge. Man
can speculate about, organize, make relations through cause and effect, only
objects of experience, and such objects are strictly limited, for speculative
theoretical knowledge, to the phenomena given to the understanding through the a priori forms of sensibility. So, Kant
rejects the existence of God as an object of speculative reason. Yet, he
believes that His existence is a postulate of practical reason.
For
Kant, God is postulated as something practically necessary to the carrying out
of our moral obligations, so that we may be happy in the doing of our duty; He
is a postulate of man’s practical reason, posited by the will of man, and held
by a blind faith. God is not inferred by the practical reason, He is
postulated. He answers a need. Did Kant believe in the extra-mental real
existence of God, as postulated by practical reason? How could he possibly do
so since his faith was blind. He could say that there was a God, or think there
was a God, but the simple fact is that he truly did not know if there was a
God. Is knowledge through faith possible? Yes in as much as faith is an act of
the intellect moved to assent by the authority of another. We know, for
example, that Julius Caesar was murdered by Brutus and his co-conspirators.
This is not a postulate or an hypothesis but an historical fact. But we know
this only on faith, our intellects being moved to assent by the authority of
another (in this case written testimonies, historical documents, historians of
eminent professional standing and competence). But this is not Kant’s faith in
God for he postulates Him by an act of the will, and hence he can never be sure
whether there really is a God or not. His position is that of agnostic, and a
dogmatic agnostic at that. So, what exactly is this “God” that he writes about
in his critical period? A simple postulate of practical reason that does not
transcend the domain of his own mind. “The subject of the categorical
imperative…is God. That such a being exists cannot be denied but it cannot be
affirmed that it exists outside of the man thinking according to reason.”[189]
“There is a God in the moral practical reason, i.e., in the idea of the
relation of men to right and duty. But not as a being outside of men.”[190]
“The categorical imperative does not presuppose a highest command-giving
substance that is outside of me but lies in my own reason.”[191]
“The categorical imperative does not presuppose a highest commanding substance
which would be outside of me but is a command or prohibition of my own reason.”[192]
“God,” for him, is not the extra-mental reality of the Supreme Being, but a
subjective certainty made up by the mind that serves or is useful towards man’s
practical or moral life.
In
the final position of Kant, as found in his Opus Postumum, we find that
“God” is but the immanent self-legislating practical reason itself: “The
concept of God is the idea of a moral being which as such is directing and
commanding overall. This is not a hypothetical thing but pure practical reason
itself.”[193] “The
concept of such an essence (God) is not that of a substance, i.e., of a thing
that exists independent of my thinking but the idea (self-creation) thing of thought
ens rationis of a reason constituting itself as a thing of thought which
produces a priori according to the principles of the transcendental
philosophy synthetic propositions an an ideal from it…”[194]
“God is the concept of a personality of a being of thought and ideal being
which reason creates for itself.”[195]
“The concept of God is the idea of a moral being which as such is directing and
commanding overall. This is not a hypothetical thing but pure practical reason
itself.”[196] The
Kantian position on God is the bridge that links agnostic phenomenalism with
the crypto-atheist pantheistic systems of absolute idealism, which in turn
would pave the way for the openly atheistic philosophies of Feuerbach,
Nietzsche, and Marx, the architects of the horrors of the twentieth
century.
Kant
expounds upon his moral philosophy in his Critique of Practical Reason.
The moral law, according to him, cannot come from the experience of objective
reality; it is the a priori condition of the will. Kantian morality is
not teleological but deontological. There are three formulas that explain the
criteria of morality: one based on the universality of the law, another based
on humanity as end, and the last based on the universal legislative will. The
conditions that make moral life possible (or the postulates of practical
reason) are three: free will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of
God. Morality consists in the conformity of the will to the law for law’s
sake.
With
the exception of a few Thomists like Gilson and Maritain, a few other realists,
a number of personalists, and a handful of others, there are essentially three
main traits of philosophers from Kant onwards: agnosticism, atheism or
pantheism. We have seen an example of pantheism in Spinoza who identified
Nature or the world with God. Now, let us first treat of agnosticism and then
of atheism.
Agnosticism,[197]
a term first proposed in its modern sense by Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) in
1869, is etymologically derived from the Greek word agnostikos which means not
knowing, ignorant. It is the philosophical doctrine which professes that
the human mind is incapable of reaching a knowledge of anything immaterial (in
particular, any knowledge regarding the existence, nature and attributes of
God). Agnosticism is different from atheism. The agnostic does not explicitly
negate the existence of God, as does the atheist. The agnostic position is that
the human mind, restricted to the level of sensible phenomena, simply cannot
rationally demonstrate the existence of God by means of speculative reason.
Many agnostics deny that they are atheists. Kant, for example, retains that,
although man cannot demonstrate God’s existence through pure reason, He,
nevertheless, is a postulate of practical reason. The modernists or syncretists
claim that, though God’s existence cannot be rationally demonstrated, one can
instead arrive at His existence by means of religious sentiment.
Forms of Agnosticism. There are two main forms of agnosticism: 1.
Agnosticism of unbelief or skeptical agnosticism ; and 2. Agnosticism of belief
or dogmatic agnosticism.
1.
Agnosticism of Unbelief or Skeptical
Agnosticism. The skeptical agnostic holds that one simply cannot know if
God exists or not. This is so because it is simply beyond man’s cognitive
capacity (which is restricted to sensible phenomena) to give an answer to the
question as to whether or not there corresponds in extra-subjective reality
anything which resembles the common notion we have concerning God. The
skeptical agnostic does not deny that there may in fact exist something in
reality corresponding to the common notion that we have of God, but what he
indeed stubbornly affirms is that we can never know if this reality exists as
fact, since all we know are material-sensible phenomena. Though these thinkers
profess agnosticism instead of atheism their agnosticism is evidently one of
unbelief in that they refuse to hold the existence of this unknowable reality
on faith, religious sentiment, feeling or any other extrinsic reason.
2.
Agnosticism of Belief or Dogmatic
Agnosticism. The dogmatic agnostic professes to know nothing concerning the
real existence and nature of God but maintains that, to the common notion that
we have of God, there does in fact exist a corresponding reality, but the
existence of this reality is held on purely subjective or dogmatic grounds.
According to the dogmatic agnostic doctrine the existence of God can never be
rationally demonstrated by speculative reason for any such argument would
reveal something about the very nature of God, whereas such a nature is simply
unknowable by means of human reason. In spite of this difficulty, the dogmatic
agnostic blindly asserts the existence of God for some non-rational motive,
whether it be a need, sentiment, feeling, etc. While the radical empiricist
David Hume belongs to the category of skeptical agnostic the transcendental idealist
Immanuel Kant professes a dogmatic agnosticism.
Atheism[198]
comes from the Greek (a-theòs = without God) and means the negation of
God. An atheist is one who affirms that God does not exist. There are two types
of atheism: practical atheism and theoretical atheism, though a number of
philosophers like Battista Mondin and Augusto del Noce include a third:
militant atheism. Practical atheism is the behaviour of those who live as if
God did not exist. The practical atheist leads a religiously indifferent and
materialistic life-style with no concern at all for the next life, conducting
his existence without reference to the moral law established by God.
Theoretical or speculative atheism, on the other hand, is a philosophical
vision that excludes the reality of God. God is negated as a conclusion of a
process of reasoning. The philosophies of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud,
and Sartre are examples of theoretical or speculative atheism. Militant atheism
is active, aggressive, propagandistic atheism which conducts an intellectual
warfare against God and the believers of God, with the goal of constructing a
truly godless social order. An obvious example of militant atheism today is
that of Communist China. Before 1989 the center of militant atheism was
undoubtedly the Soviet Union.
I
retain that the philosophical principle of immanence or immanentism (the
incapacity for the mind to know noumenal reality, as all one can ever know are
one’s ideas, impressions, or sensations) is the central reason why we live in
an atmosphere of atheistic unbelief today. The philosopher Karl Marx, for
example, the author of communist dialectical materialism, accepted the
principle of immanentism as a given a priori starting point of his
atheistic system, and his philosophy still rules more than a billion people in
Red China. The Marxist Mao was himself an idealogue thoroughly imbued with the
immanentist spirit. One should note that what rules in the academic settings of
the classrooms and salons of the intelligentia is usually implemented as social
policy a generation later. By the second half of the nineteenth century, openly
atheistic philosophical systems that had germinated from the pantheistic
systems of absolute idealism (which were crypto-atheistic systems) had reached
their zenith (Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels), and it took only a couple of
decades for their doctrines to be implemented in the political and social
spheres, with disastrous consequences (the World Wars, the Communist purges and
failed Five-Year Plans, with all the dozens of millions of tragic deaths and
lives plunged into the blackest despair). Though they did not take everything
from Nietzsche, the Nazis made this atheist the semi-official philosopher of
their godless and supremacist[199]
National Socialism. Adolf Hitler himself was an admirer of Nietzsche’s
writings, and paid public obeisance to the latter, usually in the presence of
Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the philosopher’s racist sister. The atheistic
philosophies of Nietzsche and Sartre likewise accepted immanentism as their
points of departure, and their rotten nihilism still rules over much of the
intellectual elite in the morally corrupt academic circles of the rapidly
disintegrating West.
But
there are a number of other reasons why someone becomes an atheist, namely: 1. Evil
and suffering in the world (If God is so good why does evil and suffering
happen?). Response: true evil is not physical evil but moral evil or sin
which is gotten through free choice. Free will is a great thing. It distinguishes
us from the animals. God respects our freedom so much that He does not force us
to love Him. Much of the suffering that mankind has endured and is still
enduring is often the result of the perverse wills of men (Hitler,
Stalin, Pol Pot, who all caused millions to suffer and die, terrorists, serial
killers, drug pushers, etc.).
2. Phenomenalism,
often through the use of the principle of verification, which states that all
meaningful propositions must be verifiable in sense experience (in short, we
cannot know, says the phenomenalist, that which is beyond the world that our
senses present to us). Response: the principle of verification itself is
unverifiable in sense experience, it being a metaphysical principle. Man has
not only sense knowledge; he also has intellectual knowledge (we are not just
animals, but rational animals). He has the power to abstract universal
natures (like “justice,” which is not sensible; you can’t place “justice” or
“patriotism” in a tin can).
3. The
seeming incompatibility between human freedom and God (If God is the
Almighty then man, according to the atheist, is but a slave deprived of his
freedoms. Therefore, we must negate God so that man may regain his true
freedom. God must be eliminated so that man may be exalted). Response: freedom
cannot be divorced from the true and the good. True freedom is not
merely anthropological freedom or the pure capacity for choice between various
possibilities (e.g., the simple power to choose between fifty types of beers).
A teenager has the anthropological freedom (the pure capacity for
self-determination) to choose between a sachet of heroin and a bag of cocaine,
but does choosing the one over the other make him freer? A man has the power to
choose to drink himself dead drunk night after night, but do these choices make
him a freer person? Do not these bad choices make him rather a slave to his
passions? The mere self-determination between possibles, therefore, is not true
freedom. Rather, it entails the choosing and doing of the true and
the good. The more one does the true and the good the freer one becomes.
The more one utilizes his anthropological freedom to opt for God (who is Truth
and Goodness), the freer one becomes (the freest persons in the world who
consecrated themselves to God often did not have anything as regards material
wealth, for example, Mother Teresa, Padre Pio, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. No
other person probably has as much anthropological freedom or the power of
self-determination than Bill Gates with all his billions. But is he freer than
the holy hermit in the desert who has found his God?).
4. The
bad example of believers (Why should I believe in God when these believers
are bigger liars and crooks that your regular law-abiding unbeliever?).
Response: The scandalous lives of believers are indeed stumbling blocks for
unbelievers. Nothing turns off people from approaching religion better than a
hypocrite. But I believe that Gandhi once said that if Christians practiced
what Jesus taught the whole world would become Christian. We Christians ought
to practice what we believe in, and when we do so we will not repel but rather
attract unbelievers to the Faith. The pagans of old were amazed by the love
that the early Christians had for God (even unto martyrdom) and for one
another. See how they love one another, they said in amazement, and
began their conversion to the Faith.
5. The
superabundance of temporal goods that blind man from his true end (Why should
I think of God now when I have all the creature comforts I need?). Response:
Wealth is often a factor that prevents one from acknowledging God’s existence
and His moral law. Attachment to riches is a sure way of horizontalizing one’s
existence. It is to be observed that as a country rises in wealth, there is a
corresponding rise in the pagan hedonism of its citizens (e.g., the affluent,
“post-Christian” countries of the First World). The answer to this problem lies
in a detachment from things. Wealth has the tendency to corrupt people, but not
all wealthy people are necessarily corrupt hedonists. Rather, it is how one
uses one’s wealth and talents for the good that matters. The detached
millionaire businessman who uses his wealth wisely to help the poor and to
glorify God is better than the poor miser who spends his evenings counting the
handful of dollars that he possesses and is unnaturally attached to. Now, there
is a vice that is common to those who possess riches, which is: they believe
that what they have earned legally is theirs absolutely to disposed by them in
any way that they see fit. They say: I didn’t rob anyone; the money that I
possess was earned through my sweat and tears; therefore, I am going to buy my
fifth car and second yacht and nobody can say anything to the contrary. It’s my
money, period. What these wealthy people don’t realize is that they are
really only stewards of the talents and wealth given to them by God. And they
have a grave obligation to use those and talents and wealth for the good. They
are obliged to help those who are destitute (Lazarus) by works of charity, and
to glorify Him who made them (by contributing to the building of churches, the
printing of catechisms, religious books etc.). One ought also to have the habit
of mortifying oneself so that the spirit may dominate over the flesh. If the
spiritual combat is a long and fierce war for those who have consecrated
themselves to God in religious life and are spared many of the temptations of
the world, what more for those who have riches and are living in the world! A
great book that I recommend for success in the spiritual warfare is Dom Lorenzo
Scupoli’s famous classic The Spiritual Combat, available from Tan Books
(www.tanbooks.com) and Sophia Institute
Press (www.sophiainstitute.com).
A commentary on Scupoli’s magnum opus by the Oratorian Jonathan
Robinson, entitled Spiritual Combat Revisited, is available from
Ignatius Press (www.ignatius.com).
Finally, it is all too often true that comfortable persons come to God only
after some big crisis hits their lives (losing one’s spouse, job, friends,
house, news that one has cancer, etc.). But one should be close to God not only
on rare occasions; rather, one should have a constant presence of God
all throughout the day, in work and in rest.
6. Disorders
of the sentiments and passions (Teenager: I don’t feel like believing in
God or going to church anymore). Response: One ought to free oneself from any
addiction to vice whatsoever by practicing the habit of mortifying one’s
passions, by persevering in prayer (and calling out to God and His Mother[200]
in times of temptations) and by frequenting the sacraments (confession and the
Holy Eucharist). If one is addicted to a vice such as that of lust (which is
the predominant vice of youth), then one’s outlook can only be but horizontal
or earth-centered. In general, one can say that the dominant vice in each of
the three stages of life is the following: lust (in youth), power (in middle
age), and avarice or greed (in old age).
7. The
need to remove guilt for one’s sins and crimes (If I negate God, then I
will not be oppressed by moral guilt and be free) Response: Such an option can
only prove to be illusive. Humble yourself, acknowledge and confess your sins
to God’s ministers, the bishops and the priests,[201]
and you will be free from your heavy burden. Remember that God is a loving
Father who wills that we return to Him, who is willing to forgive any sin,
provided that we be humble. I recommend Scott Hahn’s book Lord Have Mercy:
The Healing Power of Confession, published by Doubleday, and available at
Dr. Hahn’s website:( www.scotthahn.com
).
8. Propagandistic
indoctrination into atheism by atheistic governments (such as the one in
Red China, where Big Brother controls what people are to think and believe) and
in many of the universities of the free world (by atheist professors masking as
agnostics and freethinkers, who indoctrinate their unsuspecting students into
godlessness while hiding under the mantle of academic freedom). Response: there
is an urgent need to de-brainwash those indoctrinated into atheism by showing,
among other things, the reasonableness of realism (that we can indeed know
reality in the first instance and thus be able to rationally demonstrate the
existence of God) and the unreasonableness of immanentism or the incapacity to
transcend the prison of our minds to know what is (which is the suicide of
reason, truth and morality). For once we deny that we can know reality or the
thing-in-itself, since all we can ever know are our ideas or impressions (the
principal tenet of immanentism), then three things follow: first, we are unable
to demonstrate the existence of God and either fall into agnosticism, or one
step further, declare ourselves to be atheists; second, since we are unable to
know the thing-in-itself or the noumenon, as it exists in extra-mental
reality, then there can be no objective truth, for truth is the conformity or
adequation of our minds (that is, our judgments) with reality (or things); and
lastly, if we are unable to know reality then we will be unable to know the
objective nature of the human person, and when this happens there can be no
objective morality. So, no God, no truth, and no morality (as preached by
Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, and all their surrogates in the
universities), and what happens? The horrors of the death camps of World War
II, the abortion chambers of our dying free world, the countless suicides,
murders, broken lives, etc. For a detailed exposé of the ring leaders of the
Culture of Death destroying our world, see Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker’s
book Architects of the Culture of Death, published by Ignatius Press (www.ignatius.com).
Johann
Gottlieb Fichte[202]
(1762-1814) developed Kant’s transcendental idealism into an absolute idealism
that assumes an ethical character: the essence of the ego consists in the will;
the world (non-ego) is romantically conceived as an obstacle that must be
surpassed. “Why the opposition of the non-ego? Fichte replies that here
we can see the creativity of the absolute spirit. It is a creativity by
opposition: the ego creates the non-ego as in opposition precisely in order to conquer
it and master it, as a self-imposed challenge. And this is the struggle
whereby by means of science and of action the ego gradually
conquers the non-ego or the world. It is the struggle of the Subject to master
the Object created by it. The real manifestation of the Ego is therefore the
will to conquer. The will is the real manifestation of the Ego, and so the
moral life (the life of the will) is superior to the intellectual life and to
the animal life. Fichte grounds theoretical reason on practical reason more
radically than Kant…This is how the Ego fulfils Himself: by mastering the
non-ego, and realizing in the end that everything is Ego.”[203]
This radical egoism and voluntarism is the absurd consequence of immanentism
taken to its idealist extreme. He pursued the immanentist principles of the
rationalism begun by Descartes towards an idealism that would attempt to reason
away the real existence of an extra-mental world apart from the subject who
perceives it. Fichte locks himself up within his mind, precluding any rational
ascent to the intelligible order of rational truth, an thus establishes the
human self at the center of the universe.
According
to Fichte, there are only two possible philosophical systems: “dogmatism” where
the fundamental reality is the thing-in-itself, and “idealism” where the
ego-in-itself is the ultimate reality. He opted out for the latter, negating the
thing-in-itself (Absolute Idealism) in order to give more unity to philosophy
and to once and for all resolve the problem of the relationship between subject
and object (the object is simply eliminated). The sole principle of reality is
the principle of identity. “According to Fichte, the human spirit creates
everything, even the thing-in-itself. Nevertheless, as Kant noted, it is not up
to me to change my observation: what is given to me in my consciousness appears
to be distinct from me. But why is there a distinction between the ego and the
non-ego? Why does the non-ego (external world) appear to the ego as opposed, if
the ego creates the non-ego, i.e. if the principle of the non-ego is the ego?
Fichte replies that if we scrutinize the human mind we will find that its most
simple statement is the principle of identity: A is A. This principle is purely
formal: it does not imply the existence of anything (‘A is A’ does not imply
that A exists); it expresses a purely formal identity, without content. But how
does the mind pass from this formal identity to an identity with existential
content (in which A is a really existent A)? Here Fichte turns to
Descartes: ‘I am myself’ is the most basic judgment where we find formal
identity and material content together. Thus, it is by way of my own existence
(I am) that I pass from purely formal identity to a formal identity with
content. But I say that ‘I am myself’ when I am conscious of myself as
thinking: this is the first affirmation of my existence with content. Therefore,
every other affirmation of existence with real content is real to the extent
that it is related to my consciousness. Fichte then declares that the ‘I’ in
the ‘I am’, i.e. the transcendental Ego (not the individual and finite ego) is
thus the origin of all existence. For example, when I affirm that this table is
round, what I do is to affirm the existence of a round table by relating it to
my consciousness of it. The empirical fact that the existence of a thing is
related to my consciousness confirms that the reality of the existence of the
non-ego is grounded on the reality of the existence of the ego.”[204]
The primordial reality is thought: the spiritual principle of man, the pure
ego, also constitutes the foundation of the non-ego. In fact, in thought
functions, there is a distinction between the thinking subject and the object
thought of. Therefore, to the pure ego there is added the empirical ego and the
non-ego: the first is indivisible; the other two are divisible. The ultimate
end of the empirical ego lies in the attainment of the pure-ego.
Friedrich
Wilhelm von Schelling[205]
(1775-1854) differed from Fichte in that, though both are idealists, Fichte’s
philosophy reveals a passion for the struggle to overcome and conquer
obstacles, to master the non-ego, while Schelling sought harmony, love and
unity. Fichte was fascinated by dualism and opposition while Schelling was
captiviated by monism and union. Fichte had been influenced to some extent by
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason while Schelling was much influenced
by the Critique of Judgment. Schelling had a conception of the absolute
as a synthesis of opposites : of the I and nature, of subject and object, of
the spirit and the world. The absolute is the origin of nature, the objective
form to acquire a greater consciousness of one’s proper subjectivity by means
of it. Therefore, nature is the pre-history of consciousness, petrified
thought. Man is the being in which the absolute acquires consciousness of
itself becoming spirit. The comprehension of the universe, wherein nature and
spirit are not anymore opposed against each other, is actuated in aesthetic
activity. Works of art are the manifestation of the infinite under finite
form.
The
most famous of absolute idealist philosophers, Georg Wilhelm Hegel[206]
(1770-1831) was born in Stuttgart on August 27, 1770. After early studies at
Stuttgart he enrolled at the University of Tübingen where he became friends
with the idealist philosopher Schelling and the poet Hölderlin. After his
university studies Hegel earned a living as a tutor to various families, first
at Berne from 1793 to 1796, and then at Frankurt from 1797 to 1800. In 1801 he
managed to obtain a post at the University of Jena and was able to publish a
work on the Difference between the Philosophical Systems of Fichte and
Schelling. During this period he collaborated with his friend Schelling in
editing the Critical Journal of Philosophy of 1802 to 1803. In 1807
Hegel published his first major work The Phenomenology of Spirit. From
1807 to 1808 he edited a newspaper at Bamberg and was appointed rector of the Gymnasium
at Nuremberg, a position which he held until 1816. While at Nuremberg Hegel
produced his second major work the two volume Science of Logic between
1812 and 1816. In 1817 he was made more famous by the publication of his Encyclopaedia
of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. From 1818 onwards Hegel was a
professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, a post which he held until
his death from cholera on November 14, 1831. During his tenure at Berlin he
published his Outlines of the Philosophy of Right in 1821 and new
editions of his Encyclopaedia came out in 1827 and 1830.
Hegel
elaborated a pantheistic, pan-logical and historicist, absolute idealism where
we find an absolute humanism that generates absolute atheism: man is the
immanent foundation of reality itself. He sought to rationally found reality
understood as a logical construction of the world. The object of Hegelian
philosophy is the rational comprehension of the world and of history. History
is characterized by splits between being and non-being, good and evil, the
infinite and finite, and God and the world. Knowledge of this reality engenders
an unhappy conscience in man who desires to free himself from
contradictions. In his work Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel examines
in a scientific way the various manifestations of the spirit in its historical
dimension. The fundamental principles of the Hegelian system are two: in the
logical sphere, that of the identity of the ideal and that of the real; in the
ontological sphere, the principle is the absolute in which being is its
becoming. Hegel’s method is the dialectic: the sole adequate method for the
study of reality is that of speculative logic (or the dialectic). It is made up
of three moments: thesis (the moment of being-in-itself), antithesis (the
moment of being-outside-itself), and synthesis (the moment of reunion). Reality
is structured by an immense triangular pyramid that explodes from the absolute
and develops in an infinite number of triads. The fundamental triad is given
by: idea, nature, and Spirit, and the three principal parts are,
correspondingly: logic, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of the Spirit.
History is the study of the manifestations of the objective spirit. It is the
progressive manifestation of the absolute; in it all that happens has a
rational character. Evil is only a moment in the dialectic of reason. To
manifest itself in history the spirit makes use of the State and of Nation.
A critique of Hegel’s philosophy. As was said Hegel was a pantheist. His Absolute
is not the transcendent Supreme and Almighty God of Christianity but rather,
“this Absolute is immanent in the cosmos, and now specifically in the human consciousness
that makes up the human world of history, with its institutions, social
entities and movements, and especially its organization into political states.
The Absolute is not prior to this world of men or above it; it is not the
creating source whence earthly reality derives, nor is it distinct from it.
Thus the Absolute is not a ‘substance,’ meaning an existing and already
achieved Being or Reality, but rather a ‘subject,’ that is, a process of
development in and of and through the earthly human social reality.”
Hegel
was also the father of modern dictatorships, both of the fascist and communist
types. “In his Philosophy of Law (1821) Hegel teaches that the political
state is the moving progress of God in the world, to be honored as a reality at
once human and divine. ‘Progess’ is the operating word in this concept : it
denotes the presence of the dialectic, the dynamic process or mechanism by
which political states are constituted as the embodiment of social movement in
human history. From the viewpoint of the present study it is clear that the
fundamental metaphysics of pantheism is leading directly to the divinization of
the state as the supreme manifestation of the World Spirit moving in historical
time.”[207] “When
Hegel presents the German world as the goal of the dialectic of the World
spirit across six thousand years of human culture, he has explicitly in mind
the Prussian state of his own day. For him this is the final embodiment of the
World Spirit and the final aim of its progression, a concept to which one now
must turn in order to understand fully what Hegel has in mind with the
application of his dialectic in the Philosophy of History. ‘The
principles of the successive phases of Spirit’, he writes, ‘that animate the
nations in a necessitated gradation are themselves only steps in the
development of the one universal Spirit… This necessarily implies that the
present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps…The life of the
ever-present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments.’ With this concept
of the embodiment of the World Spirit in the succession of political entities
across time, the student of Hegel stands before his work The Philosophy of
Law, which may well be called the rationale of the totalitarian state, and
which reveals how truly it has been said that Marx can be understood only in
the light of Hegel’s philosophy but in an application that Hegel himself did
not forsee. Hegel writes: ‘The state is the Spirit that lives in the world and
there consciously realizes itself…The state is the march of God through the
world…The state is the world that the Spirit has made for itself…We must
therefore worship the state as the manifestation of the Divine on earth.’”[208]
At
the foundations of Hegel’s pantheism lie his panlogicism (his identification of
the real order of being with the logical order resulting in his failure to
distinguish between the ontological concept of God as the Being a se,
and the logical concept of universal being) and his denial of the objective
validity of the principle of non-contradiction, resulting in pan-fieri
and monism. There is indeed a distinction between the metaphysical concept of
God as the Ens a se and the logical concept of universal being. Bittle
writes that “a comparison of the two concepts will bring our their radical
difference. The concept of God is that of a concrete being; the concept
of universal being is abstract. The absolute being of ‘God’ has the
fullest ‘comprehension,’ because He comprises within Himself the plenitude of
being in an infinite manner; but the concept of God is the smallest in
‘extension,’ because He is only one in number. The reverse is true of
the abstract, logical entity of the concept of ‘universal being.’ From the
standpoint of its ‘comprehension,’ it is the most meager of all concepts,
because it consists of the single item of being in general and as such
is next to ‘nothing’; from the standpoint of its ‘extension,’ it is the widest
of all concepts, since it can be predicated of every sort of actual and
possible being, of substances and accidents and modes. Furthermore, ‘God’
and ‘universal being’ differ altogether in regard to the manner of their origin.
The concept of ‘God’ is the result of reasoning, acquired through the process
of applying the principles of reason to the data of experience. On the other
hand, the concept of ‘universal being’ is formed through the logical process of
abstraction, by ignoring the manifold differences existing in the actual
realities. Again ‘God’ and ‘universal being’ differ completely in their mode
of existence. ‘God’ exists as an individual being, independent of any
creatural mind. ‘Universal being’ exists formally only in the abstracting mind
and as such has only a mental existence; in actuality, individual beings alone
exist, and ‘universal being’ does not exist as a real being anywhere in nature.
Finally, ‘God’ and ‘universal being’ are totally different in their properties.
Both are simple; but this ‘simplicity’ is predicated of them in radically
diverse meanings. ‘God’ is said to be ‘simple’ in the sense that He is
infinitely perfect; He possesses ontological indivisibility in the fullness of
His being. ‘Universal being,’ however, is said to be ‘simple’ only because of
its indeterminateness, logical incompositeness, and poverty of content.”[209]
The
Hegelian claim is that the beings that we find in the world are but modes or
modifications of the divine substance through a necessary process of historical
becoming. Such modes or modifications are but thought modes or thought
modifications of the divine being in the process of historical becoming. But
this is a manifest error for creatural beings (substances in their own right)
are not modes or modifications (accidents) of any substantial being. The things
that we observe in the world around us “are complete substances in themselves,
really distinct from God numerically and essentially, and really distinct from
one another numerically and, in numberless cases, specifically and also
generically. What is more, unless we wish to admit that our cognitive faculties
are utterly and absolutely untrustworthy, we must admit that we ourselves and
the rest of the creatures in the world are not mere thought-modifications of
any being, but have an existence in the physical world, an existence, namely,
really distinct from, and outside of, the intellect or thought of any being,
even God. To insist that the world is a mere illusion of God’s intellect or of
our intellects is intellectual suicide. To attempt to live practically in
accord with such a theory is impossible. Even the idealists themselves admit
this.”[210]
The
father of modern atheism Ludwig Feuerbach[211]
(1804-1872) was born at Landshut, Bavaria on July 29, 1804. In 1823 he began
his theological studies at Heidelberg, which he gradually abandoned for life of
philosophy. In 1824 he frequented the courses of Hegel at Berlin, which
profoundly affected him. Four years later he became an unsalaried lecturer at
the university of Erlangen but because of his radical ideas his academic career
stalled. He then decided to devote the remainder of his life to writing. His
works include On Philosophy and Christianity (1839), the famous Essence
of Christianity (1841), the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future
(1843), The Essence of Faith in Luther’s Sense (1844), the Essence of
Religion (1845), Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851), the Mistery
of Sacrifice or Man is What He Eats (1862), and his Spiritualism and
Materialism published in 1866. He died at Nuremberg on September 13,
1872.
Feuerbach
resolved theology into anthropology and transformed idealism into materialism.
The idea of God has its origin when man attempts to project various qualities
that he has in himself onto a Divine Person. God is, for Feuerbach, nothing but
the fantastic representation of the absolute dominion of the human will over
nature and the complete satisfaction of all human desires. It is not thought
that causes matter but matter that develops thought when it reaches the apex of
its material evolution. He maintains that the task of philosophy is to show that it was not God who created man, but
rather man who created the concept of God. His “Copernican Revolution” consists
in the resolution of theology into anthropology. He writes: “What do you affirm
when you affim God? My answer: you affirm your own understanding. God is your
highest idea and power of thought, …the sum of all the affirmations of your
understanding.”[212]
“God is for man the common place book where he registers his highest feelings
and thoughts, the genealogical album into which he enters the names of the
things most dear and sacred to him.”[213]
“God as the epitome of all realities or perfections is nothing other than a
compendious summary devised for the benefit of the limited individual, an
epitome of the generic human qualities distributed among men, in the
self-realization of the species in the course of world history.”[214]
God,
for Feuerbach, is nothing but the essence of man: “The divine essence is the
glorified human essence transfigured from the death of abstraction.”[215]
“It is the essence of man that is the supreme being…If the divinity of nature
is the basis of all religions, including Christianity, the divinity of man is
its final aim…The turning point in history will be the moment when man becomes
aware that the only God of man is man himself. Homo homini Deus!”[216]
Religion would be nothing but the projection of man, his feelings, and his
experience of life out of a given historical situation. Feuerbach’s explanation
of religion and God is wholely in function of man’s nature and its tendencies:
“When religion is defined as the awareness of the infinite, this can be
understood as an awareness of the infinity of man’s own essential being. But at
first the religious mind does not see that the proper object of its worship is
the unlimited essence of man. ‘Man first of all sees his nature as if outside
of himself, before he finds it in himself. His own nature is in the first
instance contemplated by him as that of another being.’[217]
God is nothing more than this alienated way of viewing the human essence as
though it were another being. He is the ideal human essence, which we abstract
from empirical individuals and then set apart as a real depository of all the
attributes and perfections of human nature. Religion is the very process of
projecting our essential being into the ideal sphere of divinity and then
humbling ourselves before our own objectified essence. In worshipping God, men
are really paying homage to their own relinquished essence, viewed at an ideal
distance…As soon as man pierces the real significance of religion, he can
dispense with God or the absolute spirit and devote himself to cultivating the
potentialities of his own essential being.”[218]
We
see in Feuerbach’s philosophy the gruesome consequences of being trapped in the
prison of immanentism and the denial of the realist metaphysics of being. “The
troubles of modern man began when he shifted his attention from God to his
own consciousness of God. Thereupon, he went on to shift his attention from
this human consciousness of God to his own consciousness of this
attention. And at this point he began to wonder who created whom. The
assumption had always been that it was God who created man, and hence ought to be
worshipped by man, with adoration and gratitude, petition and reparation. But
when man became conscious of his own consciousness of God, he set out on
a road toward his own deification: God became for man the ultimate product of
human consciousness, the goal of a self-developing immanent humanity.”[219]
“He, who once was rightly proud of being made to the image and likeness of God,
began to boast that he was his own Creator and that he made God to his image
and likeness. From this false humanism came the descent from the human to the
animal, when man admitted he came from the beast, and immediately proceeded to
prove it by acting like a beast in war. More recently he has made himself one
with nature, saying that he is nothing more than a complex arrangement of
chemical elements. He now calls himself ‘the atomic man’, as theology becomes
psychology, psychology becomes biology, biology becomes physics.”[220]
Like
Nietzsche and Sartre, Feuerbach is classified as an anthropological (or
humanist) atheist: God must be eliminated so that man may reclaim his true
dignity, power, and freedom. He writes: “I deny only in order to affirm. I deny
the fantastic projection of theology and religion in order to affirm the real
essence of man.”[221]
“While I do reduce theology to anthropology, I exalt anthropology to theology;
very much as Christianity while lowering God into man, made man into God.”[222]
But does man reclaim his true dignity when he negates God? The twentieth
century was the time when atheistic totalitarian systems had their hour (the
products of the atheistic philosophical systems of the preceding century),
producing rivers of blood with tens of millions of deaths. Never in the history
of mankind was the dignity of the human person so debased as it was in that
godless century, the century of Nazism and Communism. No, man loses his dignity
when he severs himself from his Maker, and can only reclaim it when, with the
help of God’s grace, he acknowledges, loves, and obeys Him, in whose image and
likeness he was made. “The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he
is called to communion with God. The invitation to converse with God is
addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is
because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold
him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely
acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his Creator.”[223]
“To acknowledge God is in no way to oppose the dignity of man, since such
dignity is grounded and brought to perfection in God. Man has in fact been
placed in society by God, who created him as an intelligent and free being; but
over and above this he is called as a son to intimacy with God and to share in
His happiness. She further teaches that hope in a life to come does not take
away from the importance of the duties of this life on earth but rather adds to
it by giving new motives for fulfilling those duties. When, on the other hand,
man is left without this divine support and without hope of eternal life his
dignity is deeply wounded, as may so often be seen today. The problems of life
and death, of guilt and suffering, remain unsolved, so that men are not rarely
cast into despair.”[224]
Copleston,
like his fellow Jesuit Henri De Lubac,[225]
does not think that Feuerbach’s theoretical philosophy is profound, but admits
his massive influence on thinkers like Marx and Engels: “Feuerbach’s philosophy
is certainly not outstanding. For example, his attempt to dispose of theism by
the account of the genesis of the idea of God is superficial. But from the
historical viewpoint his philosophy possesses real significance…In particular,
the philosophy of Feuerbach is a stage in the movement which culminated in the
dialectical materialism and the economic theory of Marx and Engels.”[226]
The
most influential atheist of all time was Karl Marx[227]
(1818-1883), whose philosophy of communism ruled at one time a third of the
peoples of the earth until the collapse of Soviet Marxist ideology in 1989. There
are still a number of nations today that are still communist like China, North
Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany on May 5, 1818.
His father was a Jew who converted to Protestantism and had his son Karl
baptized in 1824; however, the Marx family did not practice their Christianity
and young Karl grew up in an atmosphere of religious indifferentism. His early
education was at Trier and after this he studied at the universities of Bonn
and Berlin. While at Berlin he mixed with members of the Hegelian Left,
especially with Bruno Bauer. In 1842 we find him editing a newspaper, the Rheinische
Zeitung, at Cologne where he
expressed his radical views. For such radicalism he became a hunted man, and to
escape the German authorities he fled to Paris in 1843, where he began his
intense collaboration with fellow radical and countryman Friedrich Engels
(1820-1895) dating from 1844. In 1845 both men published The Holy Family
directed against Bruno Bauer and his circle (who were described as “the Holy
Family”). In early 1845 Marx was expelled from France and went to Brussels were
he penned his Thesis on Feuerbach which came out that same year. In 1847
he published his Poverty of Philosophy, which was a reply to Proudhon’s Philosophy
of Poverty. In 1848 both Marx and Engels published their most famous work,
the Manifesto of the Communist Party which first appeared in London.
Marx left for Germany when the revolutionary movement started there but had to
flee to Paris when the uprising failed. In 1849 he was expelled from France for
a second time, and journeyed to England where he remained for the rest of his
life, receiving financial aid from his revolutionary collaborator Engels. In
1859 Marx published his Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy,
which like the earlier Manifesto, is another statement of the
dialectical materialist conception of history. In 1864 he founded the First
International which, after the congress at the Hague in 1872 was transferred to
New York. The first volume of his Capital (Das Kapital) was
published at Hamburg in 1867, but he did not publish the other volumes. He died
on March 14, 1883 and was buried in London. Engels continued the Communist
struggle, publishing his friend’s second and third volumes of Das Capital
in 1885 and 1894 respectively. Engels published some works of his own including
his work on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in
1884, his series of essays entitled Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of the
Classical German Philosophy in 1888, and his Critique of the Erfurt
Program of 1891, directed against the social democrats of his time. He died
of cancer in August of 1895.
Marx’s
inspiration came from Hegel, the Hegelian Left, and the materialist and evolutionist
scientists and writers of his time, including Darwin and Ricardo. He
transported the Hegelian dialectic of the spirit into the material world and
history. The material conditions of existence condition our perception of the
world. The fundamental structure of all ideology is economic. It is the social
being of men that determines their consciousness. Theory is subordinated to
action (praxis): what matters is not the interpretation of the world but
rather the changing of it. Economic evolution determines social evolution (that
of the classes) and through it, that of politics. The historical epochs of the
world according to the various types of economic structures are the following:
primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and future communism. For
Marx, capitalism implies the defrauding of the worker (surplus-value theory).
It, however, infallibly provokes an economic crisis and, in the end, provokes a
proletarian revolution and the rise of the communist society. For him,
“religion is the opium of the people,” a contingent superstructure that diverts
man from his true end, which is wholely earthly and material. Atheism is
founded upon three postulates: 1. metaphysical and dialectical materialism ; 2.
historical materialism ; and 3. absolute humanism which places man on the top
of the cosmos.
Marx
had already been an atheist before he absorbed the projection theory of
Feuerbach[228]; the
writings of free-thinkers and anti-clericals had been staple reading at the
Marx household of Karl’s youth, and he later gravitated towards Epicurean
materialism and Democritan atomism. When Marx and Engels adopted the
Feuerbachian thesis that God is nothing but a projection of man’s ideals for
perfection and omnipotence, and accepted the substitution of Hegelian idealism
for Feuerbachian materialism, Engels later wrote in retrospect: “Then came
Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity. With one blow it pulverized the
contradiction, in that without circumlocution it placed materialism on the
throne again…Nothing exists outside nature and man, and the higher beings our
religious fantasies have created are only the fantastic reflection of our own
essence…One must have himself experienced the liberating effect of this book to
get an idea of it. Enthusiasm was general; we all became at once
Feuerbachians…With irresistible force Feuerbach is finally driven to the
realization…that our consciousness and thinking, however suprasensuous they may
seem, are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain. Matter is not a
product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter.”[229]
Man, Marx taught, suffers from a religious alienation. Religion is the “opium of the people,” a superstructure to prop up the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. It makes the worker forget his oppression (and his duty to revolutionize the social order) by concentrating his attention on heavenly, otherworldly things that do not exist. Therefore, the fundamental task of the Marxist revolution must be the elimination (by any means[230]) of this religious alienation towards the emancipation of the proletariat. Marx writes: “The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and self-feeling of man, who either has not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society produce religion, a perverted world consciousness, because they are a perverted world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honeur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its universal ground for consolation and justification. It is the