Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought
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Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought
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Areopagite; he was likewise acquainted with those of the Arabs, especially
Avicenna; and he knew Augustine. Nevertheless, he was in no wise primarily
a man of bookish scholarship; his strongest point, in fact, was the direct
observation of nature and experimentation. After having taught for some years
at the University of Paris, he travelled, as a Dominican superior, through
almost all of Europe. Not only was he continually asking questions of
fishermen, hunters, beekeepers, and birdcatchers but he himself also bent his
sight to the things of the visible world. But amidst the most palpable
descriptions of bees, spiders, and apples, recorded in two voluminous books
on plants and animals, Albertus formulated completely new, and even
revolutionary, methodological principles: for instance, “There can be no
philosophy about concrete things,” or, “in such matters only experience can
provide certainty.”
With Albertus, the problem of the conjunction of faith and reason had
suddenly become much more difficult, because reason itself had acquired a
somewhat new meaning. “Reason” implied, in his view, not only the capacity
for formally correct thinking, for finding adequate creatural analogies to the
truths of revelation, but it implied, above all, the capacity to grasp the reality
that man encounters. Henceforth, the Boethian principle of “joining faith with
reason” would entail the never-ending task of bringing belief into a
meaningful coordination with the incessantly multiplying stock of natural
knowledge of man and the universe. Since Albertus’ nature, however, was
given more to conquest than to the establishment of order, the business of
integrating all of these new and naturally divergent elements into a somewhat
consistent intellectual structure waited for another man, for his pupil Thomas
Aquinas.
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To epitomize the intellectual task that Aquinas set for himself, the image
of Odysseus’ bow, which was so difficult to bend that an almost superhuman
strength was needed, is fitting. As a young student at the University of Naples,
he had met in the purest possible form both extremes, which, though they
seemed inevitably to be pulling away from one another, it was nevertheless
his life’s task to join: one of these extremes was the dynamic, voluntary
poverty movement whose key word was “the Bible”; and the second
phenomenon was the Aristotelian writings and outlook, which at that time
could have been encountered nowhere else in so intensive a form. And
“Aristotle” meant to Thomas not so much an individual author as a specific
world view, viz., the affirmation of natural reality as a whole, including man’s
body and his natural cognitive powers. To be sure, the resulting Summa
theologiae (which Thomas himself chose to leave incomplete) was a
magnificent intellectual structure; but it was never intended to be a closed
system of definitive knowledge. Thomas could no longer possess the
magnificent naiveté of Boethius, who had considered it possible to discuss the
Trinitarian God without resorting to the Bible, nor could he share Anselm’s
conviction that Christian faith so completely concurred with natural reason
that it could be proved on compelling rational grounds.
In the meanwhile, the poles of the controversy – the biblical impulses,
on the one hand, and the philosophical and secular ones, on the other – had
begun to move vigorously apart, and partisans moving in both directions
found some encouragement in Thomas himself. But in his later years he
realized that the essential compatibility as well as the relative autonomy of
these polar positions and the necessity for their conjunction had to be clarified
anew by going back to a deeper root of both; that is, to a more consistent
understanding of the concepts of creation and createdness. At Paris, he had to
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defend his own idea of “a theologically based worldliness and a theology open
to the world” not only against the secularistic “philosophism” of Siger of
Brabant, a stormy member of the faculty of arts, and against an aggressive
group of heterodox Aristotelians around him, but also (and even more) against
the traditional (Augustinian) objection that by advocating the rights of all
natural things Thomas would encroach upon the rights of God, and that,
besides, the theologian needs to know only that part of creation that is
pertinent to his theological subject. The latter idea was supported also by the
Italian mystical theologian Bonaventura, who, in his earlier days as a
colleague of Thomas at the university, had likewise been enamoured of
Aristotle, but later, alarmed by the secularism that was growing in the midst of
Christendom, became more mistrustful of the capacities of natural reason.
Thomas answered this objection in somewhat the following way: The benefit
that the theologian may derive from an investigation of natural reality cannot
be determined in advance, but, in general, faith presupposes and therefore
needs natural knowledge of the world; at times, an error concerning the
creation leads men astray also from the truth of faith. This may sound like an
optimistic Rationalism; but the corrective of negative theology and philosophy
was always present in the mind of Thomas, as well. Not only, as he argued in
his treatise on God, does man not know what God is, but he does not know the
essences of things either.
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Late Scholastic Period
Thomas did not succeed in bridging the faith-reason gulf. When he left
Paris (1272) and after his death (1274), the gulf became much more radical;
and on March 7, 1277, the Archbishop of Paris, in fact, formally condemned a
list of sentences, some of them close to what Thomas himself had allegedly or
really taught. This ecclesiastical act, questionable though it may have been in
its methods and personal motivations, was not only understandable; it was
unavoidable, since it was directed against what, after all, amounted in
principle to an antitheological, rationalistic secularism. Quite another matter,
however, were the factual effects of the edict, which were rather disastrous.
Above all, two of the effects were pernicious: instead of free disputes among
individuals, organized blocks (or “schools”) now began to form; and the
cooperative dialogue between theology and philosophy turned into mutual
indifference or distrust. Nonetheless, the basic principle itself (“join faith with
reason”) had not yet been explicitly repudiated. This was to happen in the next
generation.
The negative element, as formulated in the theology of the Areopagite,
proved to be insufficient as a corrective to counter the overemphasis of
reason, for reason seemed to imply the idea of necessity; Anselm’s asserted
“compelling grounds” for revealed truths, for example, were akin to such a
necessitarianism. A second corrective was therefore demanded and this took
the name of “freedom” – which indeed was the battle cry of an important
Franciscan, Duns Scotus, known as the “subtle doctor,” who lived at the turn
of the 14th century. Scotus used “freedom” primarily with reference to God;
consequently, since redemption, grace, and salvation as well as all of creation
were the work of God’s groundless, absolute freedom, there could be no
“necessary reasons,” if indeed any reasons at all, for anything. It was therefore
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futile to attempt to coordinate faith with speculative reason. Clearly, Scotus’
theological starting point made the conjunction of what man believes with
what he knows every bit as difficult as it had been in Siger of Brabant’s
secularistic “philosophism.” From both positions there was only one step to
the doctrine of a “double truth” – a step that in fact was taken in the 14th
century by the Nominalist William of Ockham, also a Franciscan, to whom
singular facts alone are “real,” and their coherence is not; this mere factuality,
he held, can neither be calculated nor deduced, but only experienced; reason
therefore means nothing but the power to encounter concrete reality. And
upon such soil only a consistently “positive” theology could thrive. Any
collaboration with speculative reason must be rejected as untheological. Faith
is one thing and knowledge an altogether different matter; and a conjunction
of the two is neither meaningfully possible nor even desirable. Inexorably, and
justified by reasons on both sides, a divorce was taking place between faith
and reason – to the connection of which the energies of almost a thousand
years had been devoted. What was occurring was the demise of medieval
Scholasticism.
Enduring Features
But not all of Scholasticism is specifically medieval and therefore
definitively belonging to the dead past; there are perennial elements that are
meant for every age, the present one included, three of which may be here
distinguished. First, not only has Scholasticism held true to the normal
historical rule that ideas, once thought and expressed, remain present and
significant in the following time; but the medieval intellectual
accomplishments have surpassed the rule and exerted, though more or less
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anonymously, a quite exceptional influence even on philosophers who
consciously revolted against Scholasticism. New historical investigations
clearly show that the classical modern philosophers Descartes, Locke,
Spinoza, and Leibniz owe much to medieval ideas. Of Descartes, for instance,
it has been said, contrary to the usual view, that he could quite well have been
“included with the later Scholastics”; and even Charles Sanders Peirce, the
originator of 20th-century American Pragmatism, refers not too rarely to
Scholastic maxims. Secondly, there have been explicit attempts to go back to
Scholastic thinkers and inspire a renascence of their basic ideas. Two chief
movements of this kind were the Scholasticism of the Renaissance (called
Barockscholastik) and the Neoscholasticism of the 19th and 20th centuries,
both of which were primarily interested in the work of Thomas Aquinas.
Renaissance Scholasticism received its first impulses from the
Reformation. One of its leading figures, a Dominican, Cardinal Thomas de
Vio (16th century), commonly known as Cajetan, had some famous
disputations with Martin Luther. Cajetan’s great commentary on Thomas
Aquinas, published again in a late edition of the Summa theologiae (1888-
1906), exerted for at least three centuries an enormous influence on the
formation of Catholic theology. He was much more than a commentator,
however; his original treatise on the “Analogy of names,” for example, can
even pass as a prelude to modern linguistic philosophy. The so-called Silver
Age of Scholastic thought, which occurred in the 16th century, is represented
by two Spaniards: Francisco de Vitoria of the first half and Francisco Suárez
of the last half of the century were both deeply engaged in what has been
called the “Counter-Reformation.” Though likewise commentators on the
works of Thomas Aquinas, the Renaissance Scholastics were much less
concerned with looking back to the past than with the problems of their own
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epoch, such as those of international law, colonialism, resistance to an unjust
government, and world community. Though Suárez was for more than a
hundred years among the most esteemed authors, even in Protestant
universities, Renaissance Scholasticism was eradicated by Enlightenment
philosophy and German Idealism. This, in turn, gave rise in due time to the
Neoscholasticism of the 19th century, one of the most effective promoters of
which was a German Jesuit, Joseph Kleutgen, who published a voluminous
scholarly apology of patristic and Scholastic theology and philosophy and was
also responsible for the outline of the papal encyclical Aeterni Patris of Leo
XIII (1879), which explicitly proclaimed the “instauration of Christian
philosophy according to St. Thomas.” The result, fed of course from many
different sources, was that all over the world new centres of Scholastic
research and higher learning (universities) arose – some more traditionalistic,
some from the start engaged in the dialogue with modern philosophy and
science, and some primarily devoted to historical studies and the preparation
of critical editions of the great medieval Scholastics – and that a multitude of
periodicals and systematic textbooks were produced. It is too early for a
competent judgment on this enterprise to be made. Its immeasurable
educational benefit for several generations of students, however, is as
undeniable as the unique contributions of some Neoscholastic thinkers to
current intellectual life. A weak point, on the other hand, seems to be a
somewhat “unhistorical” approach to reality and existence. In any case, it is
scarcely a matter of mere chance that, after World War II, the impact of
Existentialism and Marxism caused a noticeable decline in Neoscholasticism
and that the positions of “Scholastic” authors active in the 1970s were already
beyond Neoscholasticism.
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The third and most important aspect of the enduring significance of the
Scholastic movement implies the acceptance of the following fundamental
tenets: that there exist truths that man knows, and also revealed truths of faith;
that these two kinds of truth are not simply reducible to one another; that faith
and theology do not, by means of symbols and sensuous images, merely say
the same as what reason and science say more clearly by conceptual
argumentation (Averroës, Hegel); that, on the other hand, reason is not a
“prostitute” (Luther), but is man’s natural capacity to grasp the real world;
that since reality and truth, though essentially inexhaustible, are basically one,
faith and reason cannot ultimately contradict one another. Those who hold
these convictions appear quite unable to refrain from trying to coordinate what
they know with what they believe. Any epoch that addresses itself to this
interminable task can ill afford to ignore the demanding and multiform
paradigm of Scholasticism; but to the problems posed it will have to find its
own answer.
Thomism
The advent of Christianity had important effects in philosophy as in
other aspects of human life. Initially Christians were opposed to philosophical
claims of any kind; they saw philosophy as an essentially pagan phenomenon
and refused to allow the propriety of subjecting Christian dogma to
philosophical scrutiny. Christian truth rested on revelation and did not need
any certificate of authenticity from mere reason. Later, however, attempts
were made to produce a specifically Christian metaphysics, to think out a
view of the universe and of man’s place in it that did justice to the Christian
revelation and nevertheless rested on arguments that might be expected to
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convince Christians and non-Christians alike. St. Thomas Aquinas was only
one of a number of important thinkers in medieval times who produced
Christian philosophies; others – such as the philosophers John Duns Scotus in
the late 13th century and William of Ockham in the first half of the 14th
century – took significantly different views. In selecting the system of
Aquinas for summary here, the factor that has weighed most has been its
persistent influence, particularly in postmedieval times. Aquinas was not the
only medieval philosopher of distinction, but Thomism is alive as other
medieval systems are not.
The central claim of Thomism is that reflection on everyday things and
the everyday world reveals it as pointing beyond itself to God as its sustaining
cause. Ordinary existents, such as human beings, are in process of constant
change. The change, however, is not normally the result of their own efforts,
and even when it is, it does not depend on them exclusively. No object in the
familiar world can fully account for its own esse (i.e., its own act of existing),
nor is it wholly self-sufficient; all are affected from without, or at least operate
in an environment that is not of their own making. To say this is to say that
they are one and all finite. Although finite things can be, and commonly are,
stimulated to activity or kept in activity by other finite things, it does not
follow that there might be finite things and nothing else. On the contrary, the
finite necessarily points beyond itself to the infinite; the system of limited
beings, each dependent for its activity on something else of the same kind,
demands for its completion the existence of an unlimited being, one that is the
source of change in other things but is not subject to change itself. Such a
being would be not a cause like any other but a first or ultimate cause; it
would be the unconditioned condition of the existence of all other things.
Aquinas believed that human reason can produce definitive proofs of the
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existence of an infinite or perfect being, and he had no hesitation in
identifying that being with the Christian God. Because, however, the
movement of his thought was from finite to infinite, he claimed to possess
only so much philosophical knowledge of the Creator as could be arrived at
from study of his creation. Positive knowledge of the divine nature was not
available; apart from revelation, man could only say what God is not, or
conceive of his attributes by the imperfect method of analogy.
Aquinas worked out his ideas at a time when the philosophy of Aristotle
was again becoming familiar in Western Europe after a period of being largely
forgotten, and many of his detailed theories show Aristotelian influence. He
assumed the general truth of the Aristotelian picture of the natural world and
the general correctness of Aristotle’s way of interpreting natural phenomena.
He also took over many of Aristotle’s ideas in the fields of ethics and politics.
He gave the latter, however, a distinctively different twist by making the final
end of man not philosophical contemplation but the attainment of the beatific
vision of God; it was Christian rather than Greek ideas that finally shaped his
view of the summum bonum (“greatest good”). Similarly, his celebrated proofs
of God’s existence proceeded against a background that is obviously
Aristotelian but that need not be presupposed for their central thought to have
validity. Thomism can certainly be seen, and historically must be seen, as the
system of Aristotle adapted to Christian purposes. It is important, however, to
stress that the adaptation resulted in something new, a distinctive way of
looking at the world that still has its adherents and still commands the respect
of philosophers.