Studia Gilsoniana 9:2 (2020)

Studia Gilsoniana A JOURNAL IN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY 9:2 (2020) ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG (prefix) Volume 9, Issue 2 (April–June 2020) INTERNATIONAL ÉTIENNE GILSON SOCIETY & THE POLISH SOCIETY OF THOMAS AQUINAS Studia Gilsoniana ISSN 2300-0066 (print) ISSN 2577-0314 (online) DOI 10.26385/SG (prefix) ACADEMIC COUNCIL Anthony AKINWALE, O.P. – Dominican University, Ibadan, Nigeria Lorella CONGIUNTI – Pontifical Urban University, Rome, Italy Włodzimierz DŁUBACZ – John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland Adilson F. FEILER, S.J. – University of the Sinos Valley, São Leopoldo, Brazil Urbano FERRER – University of Murcia, Spain Silvana FILIPPI – National University of Rosario, Argentina Peter FOTTA, O.P. – Catholic University in Ruzomberok, Slovakia Rev. José Ángel GARCÍA CUADRADO – University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain Curtis L. HANCOCK – Rockhurst Jesuit University, Kansas City, Mo., USA Juan José HERRERA, O.P. – Saint Thomas Aquinas North University, Tucumán, Argentina John P. HITTINGER – University of St. Thomas, Houston, Tex., USA Liboire KAGABO, O.P. – University of Burundi, Bujumbura, Burundi George KARUVELIL, S.J. – JDV–Pontifical Institute of Philosophy and Religion, Pune, India Henryk KIEREŚ – John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland Renée KÖHLER-RYAN – University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney, Australia Enrique MARTÍNEZ – Abat Oliba CEU University, Barcelona, Spain Vittorio POSSENTI – Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy Peter A. REDPATH – Aquinas School of Leadership, Cave Creek, Ariz., USA Joel C. SAGUT – University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines Callum D. SCOTT – University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Peter L. P. SIMPSON – City University of New York, N.Y., USA Rev. Jan SOCHOŃ – Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Poland William SWEET – St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada Daniel P. THERO – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA Lourdes VELÁZQUEZ – Panamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico Berthold WALD – Theological Faculty of Paderborn, Germany EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-chief Fr. Paweł TARASIEWICZ – Adler–Aquinas Institute, Colorado Springs, Colo., USA Associate Editors Fr. Tomasz DUMA – John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland Jeremie SOLAK – University of Mary, Bismarck, N. Dak., USA Linguistic Editors Stephen CHAMBERLAIN – Rockhurst Jesuit University, Kansas City, Mo., USA Donald COLLINS – University of Western Ontario, London, Canada Thierry-Dominique HUMBRECHT, O.P. – J. Vrin’s Equip Gilson, France Thaddeus J. KOZINSKI – Wyoming Catholic College, Lander, Wyo., USA Artur MAMCARZ-PLISIECKI – John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland Florian MICHEL – Institut Pierre Renouvin, Paris, France Ángel Damián ROMÁN ORTIZ – University of Murcia, Spain Contact Email Box: ptarasiewicz@holyapostles.edu P.O. Box: Al. Racławickie 14/GG-037, 20-950 Lublin, Poland PUBLISHERS International Étienne Gilson Society 33 Prospect Hill Road Cromwell, Conn. 06416-2027 USA Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu (The Polish Society of Thomas Aquinas) Katedra Metafizyki KUL (Department of Metaphysics) Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland The online edition is a reference version of the issue The issue is openly accessible at: www.gilsonsociety.com Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020) ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG (prefix) Table of Contents Scripta Philosophica STEVEN BARMORE The Silence of Socrates: The One and the Many in Plato’s Parmenides ........... 209 THOMAS J. GENTRY II Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel: An Enquiry into St. John Paul II’s Personalism and its Implications for Evangelization ............................ 237 MARK HERRBACH The Soul of Goethe’s Thought ............................................................................... 253 JOANNA KIEREŚ-ŁACH The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse. In Terms of Chaim Perelman ...................................................................................... 267 JASON NEHEZ In Pursuit of True Wisdom: How the Re-Emergence of Classical Wonder Should Replace Descartes’s Neo-Averrostic Sophistry ....................................... 287 Book Reviews BRIAN WELTER Des vérités devenues folles by Rémi Brague ........................................................ 319 BRIAN WELTER Sagesse: Savoir vivre au pied d’un volcan by Michel Onfray ............................ 325 Scripta Philosophica Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 209–236 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090208 Steven Barmore* The Silence of Socrates: The One and the Many in Plato’s Parmenides A sincere discussion of the nature of reality in the pre-dawn hours of metaphysics, Plato’s Parmenides is more than an early survey of the apparent contradictions between the One and the Many. The first dozen pages crackle from a young Socrates engaging Zeno’s and Parmenides’ challenges concerning the One and the Many with his own doctrine of Forms, but the remaining five dozen pages of the dialogue are given to Parmenides himself, who guides his youngest disciple through eight antinomies concerning the One and the Many. Nonetheless, the Parmenides is not not an early survey, a kind of “map,” of metaphysical questions that were, at the time, unanswerable because, strictly speaking, Parmenides was not himself a metaphysician. Considering the precious few metaphysicians left to us, this map is useful even today; and it could direct many professional philosophers to metaphysics itself, which, presently, might be for them a terra incognita. While no shortage of scientific specialists exists among us, reality demands more of scientists than specializations in this or that narrow aspect of the real; and because the weary modern intellect sorely needs the rest that only metaphysical first principles afford, we would all benefit from a reminder of metaphysics. Philosophical, scienSteven Barmore — Fort Worth, Texas, USA e-mail: sbarmore@holyapostles.edu ▪ ORCID: 0000-0001-5271-7378 * ARTICLE — Received: Jan. 8, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Mar. 17, 2020 210 Steven Barmore tific, knowing is a shared enterprise. To that end we could do worse than spend an afternoon reading Plato’s Parmenides on its own terms; but I propose reading the Parmenides with the aid of Aristotle’s and St. Thomas’s answers to the challenges posed by the apparent contradictions between the One and the Many. More excellent is to resolve metaphysical aporiae than merely to be reminded of them. This map of premature metaphysical questions in the Parmenides is, in its way, primitive. A dialogue, absent from its structure, is the courteous order found in a Scholastic treatise. The contours of its topics sprawl recklessly in several directions and with greater or lesser proportion to the detail we would expect them to require. At times, historical maps-in-progress do this. For that reason some people find them funny. Even a child of six giggles at the exaggerated shorelines and ridiculous proportions allotted to the known and hypothesized land masses proposed by the early maps of the New World. They only strike us as funny, though, because all of the current maps of the world are fully developed and uniform in their accuracy. We all know what a world-map should look like because we all know what the world is, and we all know what the world is because we are all taught and retaught the locations of things using the same maps from childhood to adulthood. This situation is not same with metaphysics today, and true metaphysicians themselves would be the last to find amusement in the contemporary abandonment of the first science. For still other reasons the Parmenides tends to strike nobody as funny. Instead, it tends to strike even seasoned metaphysicians as longwinded and convoluted. Close to the whole truth in some ways, it is far off in others. And, while no serious metaphysician might want publicly to admit that it is boring, it is tedious and technical, yet unequipped with the precise, technical language that we depend upon to make metaphysical distinctions, discussions, and instruction possible. To make matters worse, to those who expected him to put his opponents in their The Silence of Socrates 211 place, Socrates’ strange silence is discouraging. Finally, the dozens of dead ends garnishing each of the eight antinomies inspire flashes of remorse at having taken up the challenge of seeing this dialogue all the way through. In this article, I will take the eight antinomies of Plato’s Parmenides as though they were eight difficulties raised at the beginning of a Scholastic treatment of a question, and the question—which is the chief question of this paper—is whether reality must be a One (not a Many). To make the case that the difficulties posed by the One and the Many are not solvable without a sound metaphysics, I will rely upon Aristotle and St. Thomas and their progeny to offer inroads to the solution of each of the difficulties. An Overture to the Difficulties The Parmenides opens with the conditional assertion that, if reality is a many, then many things must simultaneously be like and unlike. “Unlike” cannot be like “like” and “like” cannot be like “unlike” because these possess irreconcilable characters. And because many things cannot be at once like and unlike, reality cannot be a many. This is Zeno’s original thesis, which echoes Parmenides’ thesis that “reality is one.”1 As his first attempt at a response, Socrates proposes the doctrine of Forms, which includes forms for Likeness and Unlikeness. He explains that, by their participation in Likeness, things partaking in the form of Likeness become alike, and things partaking in the form of Unlikeness become, by their participation in unlikeness, unalike. A unified thing partaking in both forms participates in the form of Plurality, but 1 Plato, Parmenides, trans. John Warrington (London: Everyman’s Library, 1969), 127e–128b (cf. Plato’s Parmenides, The Perseus Project, available online—see the section References for details). 212 Steven Barmore he concedes that the form of Oneness cannot be proven to be the same as the form of Manyness. Socrates then proposes that many things maybe everything, may be a one and a many. A human being certainly is: a one man among the many covering the Earth. Each man participates in unity; yet each also participates in plurality. Each man, he points out, “can point to [his] right side as different from [his] left, [his] front from [his] back, [his] upper from [his] lower parts; naturally, because [he] partake[s] of plurality.”2 While each man, and each of the many other things covering the Earth, participates in both unity and plurality, Socrates denies the possibility of merging any one of the forms into any of the other forms. Having already denied the possibility of merging the form of Oneness to the form of Manyness, he extends this denial to the possibility of merging Plurality to Unity, Rest to Motion, Likeness to Unlikeness, and so on. Similarly, Socrates is sure that forms for Right, Beautiful, Good, exist; but—when Parmenides presses him on the point—he is less sure whether forms exist for such things as Hair, Mud, Dirt, and so forth. 3 Nor is Socrates confident about particulars’ participation in the whole of forms; he likens particulars’ participation in the same Form to illuminated items participating in the same sunlight of the same day. By contrast, Parmenides likens such participation to multiple particulars underneath the same enormous sail. He is willing to grant that everything is covered by the same sail, but he will not agree that each thing is covered by the whole of the sail—only part of the sail—and a different part of it at that. For that reason, Parmenides held that Forms must be divisible, not indivisible. From that, he naturally held the form of the One to also 2 3 Plato, Parmenides, 129d. Ibid., 130c. The Silence of Socrates 213 be divisible. And if each particular’s participation in unity is only a partial participation in unity, then a Form for One is problematic. How could a Form for One be composed of variously sized “portions” of “one”? Other ridiculous consequences would have to follow from partial participation: Magnitude, Equality, and Smallness, for example, lead to odd considerations such as a small part of “Largeness,” Unequal shares of “Equal-ness,” and relatively Larger and Smaller pieces of “Smallness.” Parmenides concedes to Socrates that patterns of appearance and relationship in and between particular things are readily observable in nature, but he is less willing to accept things’ participation in Forms. Certainly, large things exist that would appear to participate in Largeness, but then there are also Larger things. In what do these things participate? We would say that an aircraft carrier is a large thing, that Jupiter is a large thing, that the Milky Way galaxy is a large thing; but would we also have to say that each of these large things participates, according to its respective largeness, in a correspondingly larger Form? If so, an indefinite plurality of large things by virtue of which each large thing participates, according to its specific size, would have to exist. Endeavoring to explain to Parmenides the universal character of Forms, Socrates indicates that, while many and sundry large things of different magnitudes actually exist in the world outside of the intellect, Largeness is a universal existing inside the intellect; and it exists also in a most perfect way outside of individual intellects and the particulars participating in them. And, while Largeness is recalled to the intellect upon the sensation or memory of some large thing, it is not so much participation in the Form of Largeness as it is a resemblance to the form of Largeness. Forms, Socrates explains, are “fixed patterns in nature; other things resemble them, i.e., are copies of them, and the so-called 214 Steven Barmore participation of those things in Forms is nothing else but resemblance to the Forms.”4 This response will not do for Parmenides, who retorts with the following: If A is like B, then B is like A, and the likeness between A and B must participate in the form of Likeness. But if C and D are also alike, then they too must participate in the form of Likeness. Yet how could the same, single, Form of Likeness accommodate the alikeness of both A and B and that which pertains to C and D, if the two pairs are not at all alike to one another? There must be another, different form of Likeness for the similarities between C and D, and there must be another, different form of Likeness for E and F. And so on, ad infinitum. Parmenides is unwilling to admit the existence of a single, distinct form for each of the classes of things; but the greatest of the difficulties, he opines, is in the inability to convince a disbeliever in forms that the forms themselves can actually be known in the first place. That anywhere or in any way “realities in themselves” exist is unbelievable. For, “if there were, how could they be ‘realities in themselves’?” Knowledge, as such, must be knowledge of reality as such, wherein each distinct branch of knowledge must be knowledge of some department of being as such. Denying the possibility of knowing forms themselves, Parmenides maintains knowledge in our world must be knowledge of the reality in our world; and each branch of knowledge in our world must be knowledge of some department of being in our world. Because we do not have access to the Forms themselves—which cannot possibly belong to our world—and because the several Forms are known by the Form of Knowledge (which we do not possess), we cannot know, in themselves, any of the Forms: be they Likeness or Largeness, Goodness or Beauty, or anything else. 4 Ibid., 132d. The Silence of Socrates 215 This rules out for Parmenides the possibility of the gods knowing about, or being involved in, human affairs. For, if anything were capable of possessing the Form of Knowledge (through which access to the other Forms is gained), such a capacity would belong to the divine nature. Possessed of this, then, the gods neither own nor know anything of human affairs. The significance of Forms is relative only to Forms, and the significance of things in our world is relative only to things in our world. “The contents of each world are relative only to one another.”5 According to Parmenides, that no overlap between gods and men can be is the inevitable consequence of postulating independent forms for everything. To Parmenides’ reckoning, this postulate is a claim so beset at every step with confusion that any who dare to approach the question of forms will question their very existence, or will maintain that the Forms are, in themselves, beyond the scope of human knowledge. And if an unchanging Form for everything is not, Parmenides concludes, the denial of the existence of Forms of things and the unwillingness to recognize a Form in each particular thing is to have no object of thought whatsoever. This conclusion destroys the procedure of dialectic altogether. Socrates does not utter another word for the remainder of the dialogue. Whether he was so dumbfounded or scandalized—or both—at the impossibility of gods and men overlapping in the same, single reality that he left the conversation, or whether Plato just wanted to present Parmenides’ ideas without interruption or synthesis, the remainder of the dialogue is left to Parmenides and Aristoteles, his youngest and most pliable student. The former presents to the latter eight antinomies regarding the One and the Many. 5 Ibid., 134d. 216 Steven Barmore The Difficulties The First Antinomy: What Is One Must Lack Parts As his first antinomy, because parts in a whole entail a many, not a one, Parmenides proposes that what is One must lack parts. Yet without parts, the One would be without beginning, middle, or end and would be, as such, limitless. And without parts and limits, the One would also be shapeless. If the One were shapeless, the One could be neither in another nor in itself; for to be enveloped bespeaks of a many —of at least: (1) an envelope and (2) that which is enveloped. But the One could be neither in another nor in itself. It would be in no place. If it is in no place, then it would be outside of space. And if the One were outside of space, then it would be without motion. Furthermore, because the One cannot be in anything, it could never be in the same state, for if the One were in the same state, it would have to be uncontainable: neither self-contained nor contained by another. It could neither be the same as something else nor other than itself. For each of these implies a many—two things, at the very least, to which sameness or similarity could be shared. Yet unity could not be sameness, for the One could not be the same as itself or as something else. Nor could the One be other than itself or something else. For these would imply a many, not a One. For the same reason, the One could not be like another thing; but it could not be like itself: neither like nor unlike either itself or anything else, nor could it be equal to itself or to anything else. For these relations would imply a many, not a One. Furthermore, the One would have to be ageless. If it had duration, it would have parts such as beginning, middle, and end—but these are properties of the Many, not the One, which is outside of time. As such, the being of the One could not be expressed in any tense: of the One we could not say, for example, that it was, or that it has become, or The Silence of Socrates 217 that it was becoming; nor could we say that it will be, or that it will become. We could not even say that the One is, or that the One is becoming. The One must have no share in being—it simply is not: it neither is One nor is at all. It is not named, spoken of, or thought of. It is not known or perceived by anyone. In short, if the One is totally distinct from the Many, then nothing at all could be asserted about the One. 6 The Second Antinomy: The One Cannot Itself Be Being Parmenides contends here that if the One is, it must have a share in being—it cannot itself be being. 7 To justify this conclusion, he considers anew the implications that would follow if the One were taken to be a whole. Anything that is a one would have to be a whole, and if it were a whole, then it would have parts. Each part, he proposes, would always be two: (1) existence and (2) unity—because existence and unity could not be the same thing. Unity always contains existence, and existence unity, and these are the parts of any one. Because the whole’s part must always be two (being and unity) and could never be one (which would be the consequence of the One having being, and not being Being), the existent One would have to be an indefinite plurality. Further, if the One has being, it has existence. And because the One has existence, it would be a plurality. It must be a plurality, Parmenides reasons, because the being of the One is distinct from its self. From the existence of the One Parmenides derives number, concluding from this three things: (1) reality must be indefinitely numerous, which amounts to saying that reality is composed on an unlimited number of parts; (2) the existent One must be subdivided by existence 6 7 Ibid., 137b–141e. Ibid., 142b–157b. 218 Steven Barmore and would be, as such, simultaneously bounded and limitless in number; and (3) the One must be in a state of permanent motion. Because it implies the One is both in itself and in its parts (a special challenge, owing to his reluctance to entertain the possibility that the One should have parts), the permanent motion of the One presents Parmenides with many difficulties. Parmenides begins with identity, noting things are either identical or different. If things are neither identical nor different, one must be part of the other, or one must be a whole of which the other is a part. If the One is not part of itself, then it could not stand to itself as a whole of which it is itself a part. Yet if the One is not different from the One, it could not be other than itself. But since the One is neither other than itself nor stands in any whole-part relationship to itself, it must be identical to itself. But if the One is, at once, the same as itself—in the same place as itself—and in other things, its parts (which are elsewhere), it must be at once in itself and in something other than itself. For if A is other than B, then B must be other than A. And if whatever is not one is other than the One, then the One must be other than whatever is not one. The One, then, is different from the Many because whatever is not one has no unity; if it had unity, it would be, in some sense, one. And if the notones were parts of the whole of the One, they would, in some sense, share in the One. Parmenides denies such a relationship between the One and the not-ones; but he is willing to concede a shared similarity: their mutual difference. The One must be simultaneously like and unlike itself and the Many. As for whether the One makes contact with the Many, Parmenides reasons that, if the One is in its parts, it would surely be in contact with its parts. If things are to be in contact with one another, they must lie immediately adjacent to that with which they are to be in contact; if The Silence of Socrates 219 the One were two, it could do this, but as One, it cannot. So, a third thing—an intermediary—must exist between the two things between which there can be contact. If the One is, the One must be said to be. For that reason Parmenides is led to consider—as he did in the previous antinomy—the tenses of being possessed by the One. Because it has been and will be, the One possesses present, past, and future duration. The One always is and, having a progressive duration, is always growing older; but it can never overtake the present. Because the present is always with the One, whenever the One is, it is now. Yet it also is becoming older and younger than itself. For now follows whatever passed, and now is newer (younger) than the past (older). From this point, Parmenides labors to justify his conclusion that the One is prior to the Many in both generation and existence. He ends up asserting that to say that the One, by its very nature, comes into being simultaneously with the Many is the more accurate expression. Parmenides concludes the second antinomy by considering whether a time exists when the One is acquiring being (that is, “coming into being,” and a time when it is losing being: “perishing”). As a one and a many, the plurality of the One would perish when it became one; and its unity would perish when it became many. If the One becomes a one and a many, it would be subject to disaggregation and aggregation. If the One becomes like and unlike, it would become subject to assimilation and dissimilation. If the One becomes greater, less, or equal, then it becomes subject to increase, decrease, or equalization. And if the One is stopped in motion, or is changed from rest to motion, then it would not exist in time. Any of the foregoing changes would be said to occur instantaneously. 220 Steven Barmore The Third Antinomy: The One Is Not the Many The One is not the Many, Parmenides opines. 8 For, if the One were the Many, nothing other than the One could be. Yet other things besides the One are. Lacking absolute unity, some unity exists to the Many. The Many have parts—not of a plurality, but of a whole. Each whole is composed of parts, and each part is part of a single pattern of all its components into one complete entity. The Many are a single, complete whole having parts. Yet to speak of each part of the whole of the Many is to speak of unity: each part of the Many has unity, but is not itself unity. Only the One can be unity. The whole itself of the Many has unity, as does each of its constituent parts; but only the One is unity. Prior to their constitution, the recipients of unity in parts and wholes in the Many (and of the whole of the Many) are indefinitely numerous, and each part—absent a relation to a whole—is a limitless manifold. The Many, then, are affected by the contrary characters of being limited and limitless. Because contraries are extremes of unlikeness, the Many are both like themselves and unlike themselves. The Many are simultaneously identical with and different from each other. The Fourth Antinomy: The One Must Be Separate from the Many Next, Parmenides opines that the One must be separate from the Many because, presumably, nothing else exists besides these, nothing else in which the One and the Many might reside.9 Because the One and the Many are never identically located, they must be separate. Moreover, the parts of the wholes of the Many, and the whole of the Many itself only have unity (and only a relative unity), which differs in kind 8 9 Ibid., 157b–159a. Ibid., 159b–160b. The Silence of Socrates 221 from the sense in which the One is unity. Because the Many is not a unity, it lacks the contrary forms found in the One: sameness and difference, motion and rest, generation and corruption, magnitude and paucity, equality and inequality, and so on. The Fifth Antinomy: If the One Were Not, It Could Not Exist If the One were not, Parmenides hypothesizes, it could not exist. To entertain the notion that the One is non-existent would be to admit possession of being, in some sense. The non-existent One must have, at the very least, the character of “being-non-existent.” Just as existing things possess “not-being-non-existent,” not existing things possess “being-non-existent.” Completely to exist a thing must have: (1) being, or being-existent, and (2) not being, or not-being-non-existent. To be absolutely non-existent is to have: (a) not-being, or notbeing-existent, and (b) being, or being-non-existent. Supposing, then, that the One did not exist, the non-existent One would still have to have being: being-non-existent, in order not to exist. 10 The Sixth Antinomy: If the One Is Not, It Would Have Not Being Absolutely If the One is not, Parmenides hypothesizes, it would have notbeing absolutely—could in no sense have being. 11 If the One were completely non-existent, then in no sense could it be said to have, acquire, or lose being. As such, the non-existent One would be changeless. For the non-existent One to change, it would have to gain or lose being. Nor could the non-existent One be stationary. To be stationary it would have to be located someplace; but it must be in no place. Therefore, it could not be in motion or at rest. 10 11 Ibid., 160b–162e. Ibid., 163b–163e. 222 Steven Barmore Nor could the non-existent One have an active character of any kind: not greatness, smallness, equality; likeness to, difference from itself or others. Characterless, the Many could in no way relate to the non-existent One. Further, if the One were non-existent, nothing could stand in relation to it. It could not be said to be a “something” or a “this.” It could not be said to be related to “this” or to an “other.” It could not be set in the past, present, or future. It could not be the object of knowledge, judgment, perception or discussion. Nor could it have a name. The consequence of the non-existence of the One is the impossibility of qualifying the One as anything actual. The Seventh Antinomy: If the One Is Not, the Many Cannot Be Unity of Aggregates If the One is not, Parmenides hypothesizes, the Many must be other than a unity of aggregates. The only option is that the One is not. In the absence of the One, the Many, composed of aggregates (which would only appear to be one) would exist; but, actually, it would be multitudes of indefinitely many parts—appearing to have number, largeness and smallness, equality, beginnings, middles, and ends. The aggregates would only appear to have these. They could not actually have them because no unit would exist against which to measure them, no whole to limit them. These impossible aggregates would only appear to be like and unlike, identical with and different from one another. In short: If the Many are and the One is not, whatever would be would not be. Any such array of apparent, aggregated manys could not be. 12 12 Ibid., 164a–164e. The Silence of Socrates 223 The Eighth Antinomy: If the One Is Not, the Many Could Not Be One If the One is not, the Many could not be one. The Many could not be composed of a plurality of ones because no One is. If none of the plurality of aggregates were a one—but only appeared aggregated— together they could be nothing. No connection could exist to the nonexistent One. No semblance or appearance of unity in the Many could be. No unity could even be thought of because it could not exist. If the One is not, nothing at all is. 13 General Response to the Difficulties Perennial solutions to the ancient problems posed by the One and the Many, and especially, Parmenides’ antinomies, are gained only by a sound metaphysics. While the historical Parmenides was the first to move the problem of genus and species from physics toward metaphysics, he was unable to distinguish metaphysical problems from problems in physics.14 Parmenides was a materialist. Considered as such, neither he nor Plato’s rendering of him in the eponymous dialogue could have arrived at a sound metaphysics. A portrait of the futility of the materialist’s approach to metaphysics is found in Parmenides’ exchange with Socrates concerning the doctrine of Forms, wherein Parmenides offers a counter-illustration of individual participation in Forms using the image of a physical sail covering a physical figure. By this maneuver, he did not show an unwillingness to compromise so much as he displayed an inability to comprehend Socrates, who had just proposed a (less imperfect) likeness 13 Ibid., 165a–166c. Peter A. Redpath, A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics, vol. 1 (St. Louis, Mo.: En Route Books & Media, 2015), 86. 14 224 Steven Barmore between individuals’ participation in Forms and things’ illumination by sunlight. By his own admission in the dialogue, Plato’s Parmenides’ greatest difficulty lay in his inability to convince the disbeliever in Forms that the Forms exist in the first place: If the Forms are, where are they? Just as the failure to distinguish material and formal causation would prevent progress in metaphysics, that same crucial distinction would go a long way to resolve many of the metaphysical difficulties present in Plato’s Parmenides. So, too, would sound teaching about the problem of universals. The truth about universals was narrowly missed—by Socrates, no less —in the overture. Our responses to the antimonies are forthcoming, but, first, we should clarify Plato’s mistake about universals. Patterns or characters plainly exist in things. If they were not in things, no way would exist to recognize or classify things. Distinct things of such and such a pattern or character do not exist, as Socrates suggested they do, as “copies” of the form in which they participate. Tigers are not copies of Tiger-ness, the Form in which each particular tiger participates. Instead, real relations exist between and among particular tigers. The world we inhabit with tigers is the world accessible to us; and the form, the real pattern or character, of tigers is in the tigers themselves, not in the Form of Tiger, Tiger-ness itself. Tiger-ness itself, the universal, exists—as Socrates rightly suggested it does—in the intellect. Yet the universal relations are real. Employees and managers exist in every business. Management considered as such is correlative to non-management employment considered as such, and vice versa. The one cannot be understood without the other. Yet the relationship between an employee and his supervisor is a real, universal, relation of one person to another person. A man or woman who is an employee at a firm is not beholden to managers anywhere and everywhere by virtue of his non-management The Silence of Socrates 225 employee status. Instead, he has a particular boss (or bosses). To speak of management in itself, the Form of Management-ness, is to abstract from time and place in which real, physical beings exist; and to speak in like manner of its correlative Employee-ness is almost beside the point of getting at the real relation, which can only exist between particular men in a particular, concretely-existing, organization or genus. To know reality, we human beings depend upon both real relations and proper sensibles. While the proper object of the intellect is the proper intelligible, an abstractly-considered being, the proper function of the intellect is to draw the universal out of its proper object. 15 To err about universals is to err about all the speculative sciences, and the division and methods of all sciences, all divisions of philosophy. The proper intelligibles of the specific intellectual habits are in the speculative characters of physics, mathematics, and metaphysics; and they depend, in different ways upon matter for their being and/or for their being understood. The formal objects of physics depend upon matter for their being and their being understood. Those of mathematics depend upon matter for their being, but not for their being understood; and those of metaphysics depend on matter neither for their being nor for their being understood. Plato’s error regarding universals is less apparent than the errors of the materialist Parmenides. Because we are dealing here with Plato’s Parmenides, not the historical Parmenides, we need briefly to consider a fundamental error in Plato’s metaphysics and Aristotle’s contributions to its correction. 15 As Gilson puts it: “Though the proper object of the intellect is the sensible, its proper function is to disengage the intelligible from the sensible; out of the particular object, illuminated by its light, it draws the universal, thanks to that Divine resemblance which is naturally impressed on it as the mark of its origin; in the proper and emphatic sense of the term, it is born and made for the universal.” Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Edward Bullough (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing’s Rare Reprints, 2003), 356–357. 226 Steven Barmore The Thomist Curtis L. Hancock makes the point that Aristotle’s solution to the problem of the One and the Many is itself a response to Plato’s proposed solution, which erroneously placed the intelligible essences or forms that define things to be what they are outside of the things themselves, effectively eliminating the possibility of physics. Responding to this as a means to advance physics, Aristotle grounded the sciences in the identity of being and unity, making science about substance—about substances themselves, which we only know indirectly through accidents (chiefly quantity and quality)—as well as the principles necessarily and universally related to substance. 16 Reply to the First Difficulty Plato’s Parmenides cautioned Aristoteles, first, to be aware of the hazards of conceiving of the One as an organizational whole. Having neither the habit nor the language of metaphysics, he is attempting to articulate why a logical genus of being cannot exist in reality. I make this claim by transposing his “the One cannot be a whole composed of parts” to our “a logical genus of being cannot exist in reality.” In so doing, I affirm what Plato does in this first antimony, but only as an imperfect foreshadow for what Aristotle would later observe about the logician’s genus. Aristotle supplies us with a reliable refutation of the possibility of a logical genus of being (to which St. Thomas regularly referred when he was called upon to do the same) being actually conflated with a real genus of being. Any genus, Aristotle observed, has differences within itself (“species”). Because the differences within any logical genus must each have being and be one, existence of a real “genus of being” or a “genus of unity” as a logician abstractly conceives of a ge16 See Curtis L. Hancock, “The One and the Many: The Ontology of Science in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas,” The Review of Metaphysics 69, no. 2 (2015): 233–259. The Silence of Socrates 227 nus (as an essential unity equally possessed by every subject of which it is predicated), is, strictly speaking, impossible. 17 Since all the species of which it is said equally possess it, by what could species within such genera differ, how could they be unequal? For example, abstractly considered, the concept of being has no differentia. Being is being and non-being is non-being; a being either is a being or it is not a being; a thing either is or it is not; a thing either exists or does not exist. All being and unity is equally being and one. Reply to the Second Difficulty The second antinomy contains much to clarify and much to affirm. To start with, the notion of sharing in being and the combination of existence and unity are observations not very far off the mark. The Thomist Peter A. Redpath, for example, indicates that an “existing unity” implies possession of the act of being; but, for St. Thomas, an existing being is more than the mere act of existence. Unity also forms the basis for its intelligibility. Only existing units are presented to the human intellect as intelligibles. In both the real and mental orders, each existing unit is, to varying degrees, united to or divided from its esse (act of existence). Existing units have the act of existing. That is, each individual being (ens) is a habens esse—“a that” which has the act of existing—which is said to “possess” unity or disunity with its act of existing.18 17 Aristotle, Metaphysics, III, 3, in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vol. 17–18, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1933, 1989), available online—see the section References for details. Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 10, ad 2, and Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, I, 25, 6, in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Works in English, available online—see the section References for details. 18 Peter A. Redpath, “Aquinas’s Fourth Way of Demonstrating God’s Existence: From Virtual Quantum Gradations of Perfection (Inequality of Beauty) of Forms Existing within a Real Genus,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 3 (July–September 2019): 687. 228 Steven Barmore Moreover, every really existing unit is located within a real genus, a real, causal-order/organization directed toward a real generic aim or goal. Real genera are not abstract concepts. They are acting natures, organizational wholes, causes, causal units, possessing an organizational act of existing; and each organization’s/genus’s act of possessing being (existence) is unequally shared by its constituent species-operators. Each species operates in concert with its other species-operators with unequal degrees of strength or perfection unequally to effect organizational aims of the genus: cause organizational action. Redpath maintains that, through a harmonious organizational unity, existing unit-species-operators unequally effect the organizational aim because: (1) each existing unit possesses the act of existing at a greater or lesser virtual quantum (or qualitative) intensity of perfection in having (is existentially unequal, is not a being-one-in-qualitative strength/perfection) to the other existing unit-species-operators, and (2), as a result of this inequality of being and causing, each existing unit operates differently than (is not a being-equally-one-in-quality) to the other species-operators in the genus, with respect to effecting the organizational aim.19 Furthermore, and calling again upon Redpath, the way to refute Parmenides’ errors is to understand and articulate how partial, imperfect, generic, specific, and individual unities (organizational wholes) can exist and “how generic, specific, and individual beings can have some unity without being total unity.”20 Aristotle did this by discovering that the main key to solving the Parmenidean riddles about the One and the Many lay in properly understanding the complicated natures of unity and quantity. 19 Ibid., 687, 689–690. Ibid., 692–693. “The key to refuting Parmenides,” writes Redpath, “lay in understanding that all having, possession, participation, essentially involves generic, specific, and individual, partial receptivity/resistance to total, absolutely perfect, unity.” 20 The Silence of Socrates 229 While Plato appears to have reduced unity and quantity to a dimensive principle of number, thereby reducing unity to being the principle of dimensive quantity, Aristotle had distinguished this understanding of unity as a principle of dimensive number from (1) unity as convertible with being and (2) harmonic unity as an internal, qualitative principle of organization, partial resistance to formal division within an organizational whole (what St. Thomas calls “virtual quantity”). From there, Aristotle was able to understand and articulate that, in the real order (in contrast to the conceptual order) all possession of the activity of being (existence)—in real genera, species, and individuals—involves partial (qualitatively unequal) receptivity and partial resistance to perfect unity. According to Redpath, these intrinsic, opposing, principles of privation and possession that exist within organizational wholes account for the origin of all real species, and for the cause of qualitatively higher and lower (more or less perfect) genera, and more and less perfect individual members of species. And, according to him, from these principles, too, follow: (1) the principles of division by contrary opposition and diversity within real genera; (2) the real perfections in reallyexisting genera, species, and individuals (as opposed to the impossible Parmenidean “One”); (3) the ability to comprehend the divisions and methods of all philosophy/science; and (4) drawing the conclusion that an absolutely perfect being must exist. 21 Replies to the Third and Fourth Difficulties The third and fourth antimonies touch upon the order beheld in all things. St. Thomas notes a twofold order found in things: (1) of parts to a whole, with the parts ordered to one another (for example, skeletal, muscular, digestive, cardiovascular, respiratory, immune and reproduc21 Ibid., 707–708. 230 Steven Barmore tive systems are mutually ordered to each other in a human body); and (2) of part/wholes (like organizational departments) to an end (for example, military unites cooperating to effect victory over an enemy). 22 Likewise, St. Thomas notes two different philosophical/scientific ways of regarding genus: (1) from an existential point of view—the point of view of the real order; and (2) from the logical, essentialist, point of view (totally abstracting from real existence). By the habits of natural philosophy and metaphysics, genus and difference are considered from the existential point of view, and are found to be based on real natures, wherein the differences must be contrary opposites. 23 The existing, ordered unity of real genera as a proximate cause of organizational action is properly intelligible only from the existential point of view, and only in light of its limited, qualitative perfection of having unity. Parmenides’ and Zeno’s abstractive act of mentally subdividing parts from other parts and from the wholes to which they are really and finitely related wherein sub-atomic particles seem to stretch endlessly toward yet smaller parts toward infinity can never apprehend the nature of real, finite, beings and their causes. The constitution of real, finite, things existing in real part-whole relationships is really caused by unequal reception of existence and unity. Parts are limited insofar as they unite to wholes. Things would be limitless in the absence of part-whole relationships. St. Thomas indicates that participation in an organizational whole —a genus—occurs in one of two ways: (1) as species contained under a genus, and (2) as being reducible to genus. Regarding the first way— the absolute and proper way, St. Thomas notes—things are contained in a genus as species belonging to it (as, for example, skeletal, muscular, 22 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, Bk 1, Lecture 1, par. 1, in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Works in English, available online—see the section References for details. 23 Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima, a. 7, ad. 17 and 18. Available online— see the section References for details. The Silence of Socrates 231 respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, and reproductive systems are species belonging to many genera of the animal bodies). Regarding the second way, things are reduced to their generic principles (as, for example, a point is reducible to the genus of quantity as its principle, and as blindness [the privation of sight] is reducible to the genus of natural habitus as its principle).24 St. Thomas teaches that two principle-components of any created being (ens) exist: (1) the act of being (esse), and (2) essence (essentia). Esse, the first principle-component of any being, is the first act of an ens: the act of existing. Esse gives to a being its character of being insofar as, through its substantial form, esse causes a form to become actual and a substance actually to exist. Essence is derived from substance, and is the medium through which and in which a thing has its being. Often used interchangeably with quidditas (whatness), and sometimes nature, “essence” is derived from what is signified by the definition of the thing that has being; and, in reality, is directed to its specific operations. In other words, a really-existing being is more than its essence. A being (ens, habens esse) is “what it is” and “what it does.” Esse, the first principle component of any being, is the name of an act, namely the act of existing. Esse gives to a being its character of being insofar as it actually exists, and is a proximate principle of an acting nature.25 Reply to the Fifth Difficulty Speaking of actually existing, the lack of clarity in the fifth antinomy is tied to the lack of a distinction between essence and existence in things. Because existence is not itself a thing, it would be incorrect to 24 Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 5, in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Works in English, available online—see the section References for details. 25 St. Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, trans. Armand A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 29–32. 232 Steven Barmore posit the existence of a thing whose chief characteristic is being-nonexistent. Among the many examples of clear teachings someone could employ to refute the errors in the fifth antinomy of Plato’s Parmenides, St. Thomas makes the point that existence is not itself a genus; for it also signifies an essence. A substance signifies that which exists of itself and an essence that has the property of existing of itself. 26 Existence, then, is not a stand-alone property. St. Thomas also makes the point that God is the only substance whose essence and existence are identical: God’s essence is to exist; His existence is his essence, and He is pure esse (pure, totally perfect, actuality) and the act by which every potency is brought into the act of existence. In every other substance, the essence and esse (act of existing) are distinct, with contingent creatures receiving the act of existence from Existence Itself. 27 Upon consideration of the verbal aspect of being—be-ing, “to be” is the activity of existing—the notion that the non-existent One would still have to have being (that is, being-non-existent) in order not to exist is rendered especially absurd. We can think of “existence” as an abstract noun, but it is both prior to and more proper to think of existence as an activity more or less possessed by beings that are actively existing. That some beings “exist more than” other beings, in a qualitatively more perfect way, can be seen in the association of “activity” with operation;28 but to say that a being which is absolutely non-existent, nonetheless, has being (being-non-existent) is incorrect. 26 Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 3., a. 5, ad 1, in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Works in English, available online—see the section References for details. 27 Ibid. I, q. 3, a. 4. 28 St. Thomas presents this connection at Quaestiones disputatae de anima, a. 9: “gradum formarum in perfectione essendi est etiam gradus earum in virtute operandi, cum operatio sit existentis in actu. Et ideo quanto aliqua forma est maioris perfectionis in dando esse, tanto etiam est maioris virtutis in operando. Unde formae perfectionis habent plures operationes et magis diversas quam formae minus perfectae.” The Silence of Socrates 233 Reply to the Sixth Difficulty This antimony cannot be resolved without the distinction between potency and act. By using this distinction, Ed Feser refutes the Parmenidean claim that change is impossible. His three-step approach proves useful to our purpose here. First, change is the motion from potency to act. Second, potency cannot raise itself to act, but must be raised to act by something already in act. Lastly, “an asymmetry between [potency and act]” exists whereby act is both prior to potency and can exist without any potency whatsoever (pure act: God), though potency can exist in no way exist without act. Considered as such, for the non-existent One to exist as anything actual would be impossible because potency cannot exist without act.29 Reply to the Seventh and Eighth Difficulties The seventh and eighth difficulties combine to emphasize the fundamental character of unity that Plato’s Parmenides is right to note. Without a unit to measure against, without a whole whereby to limit them, finite reality as such would be disordered and have only the appearance of unified aggregates. Right, then, in relation to philosophy/science as a habit of the human soul (a psychological activity) is to place emphasis on—even to assign a kind of primacy to—the metaphysical concept of unity. Redpath does this by stressing the unitary character of the generic formal object of philosophy. Every division of philosophy/science essentially involves the act of demonstration. No science, however, is able to Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 9–12. 29 234 Steven Barmore prove, demonstrate, the existence or unity of its subject matter. It takes these for granted, assumes, the existence of its subject. 30 Philosophy’s/science’s two chief acts of demonstration essentially involve analysis and synthesis: dividing and uniting wholes and parts. Considered from this perspective as a proximate cause of scientific/philosophical understanding that the subject of philosophy/science is always an organizational whole (a harmonic unity), being intellectually divided or united, unity is more fundamental to philosophical/scientific understanding than is being. Real scientific/philosophical genera (operational-organizationalwholes) are the proper intelligibles of the specific intellectual habits in the speculative characters of physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. Every science, all philosophy, Redpath reminds us, begins with sense wonder “about what essentially causes some existing composite whole unity . . . to have the generic kind of unity it has (harmonic unity of specific parts) that enables it to generate the specific ways of acting that it does.”31 Peter A. Redpath, A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding St. Thomas Aquinas’s Teaching about the Actual Composition of Essence and Esse in Created Beings: A Chapter in Born-again Thomism (submitted for publication), 2. Taking both existence and unity for granted, every science begins with sense wonder about what causes one or another existing, composite whole-unity to have the kind of unity that enables it to generate its specific ways of acting. 31 Ibid., 2. 30 The Silence of Socrates 235 The Silence of Socrates: The One and the Many in Plato’s Parmenides SUMMARY Parmenides was not a metaphysician (he was a materialist), so there is no such thing as Parmenidean metaphysics. Plato’s Parmenides, however, offers metaphysical insights otherwise overlooked by readers unfamiliar to what St. Thomas Aquinas offers concerning the One and the Many. This article highlights some of these insights and will interest students of St. Thomas. It might also acquaint students of Plato to a more perfect metaphysics, and it could even corrode the beliefs of others who maintain that there is no such thing as metaphysics. The fact that none of the sciences may dispense with the first science is brought heavily to bear upon the reader of the Parmenides, who finds it otherwise impossible to resolve any of the difficulties attendant upon reconciling the One and the Many. The many apparent contradictions between the One and the Many displayed in Plato’s Parmenides really cannot be solved without sound metaphysics, and sound metaphysics cannot proceed unaided by St. Thomas and his inheritors. Go to Thomas to understand Plato’s Parmenides. KEYWORDS Parmenides, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Redpath, the One and the Many, unity, being, potency, act, universal, particular, genus, species, virtual quantity. REFERENCES Aquinas, St. Thomas. De Ente et Essentia. Translated by Armand A. Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968. Aquinas, St. Thomas. Quaestiones disputatae de anima. Corpus Thomisticum. Available online at: https://www.corpusthomisticum.org/qda01.html. Accessed Nov. 30, 2019. Aristotle. Metaphysics. In Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vol. 17–18. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1933, 1989. Available online at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.005 2. Accessed Nov. 30, 2019. Feser, Edward. Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009. Gilson, Étienne. The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Edward Bullough. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing’s Rare Reprints, 2003. Hancock, Curtis L. “The One and the Many: The Ontology of Science in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.” The Review of Metaphysics 69, no. 2 (2015): 233–259. Plato. Parmenides. Translated by John Warrington. London: Everyman’s Library, 1969. Plato’s Parmenides. The Perseus Project. Available online at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.01 74%3Atext%3DParm.; accessed Nov. 30, 2019. Redpath, Peter A. A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding St. Thomas Aquinas’s Teaching about the Actual Composition of Essence and Esse in Created Beings: A Chapter in Born-again Thomism (submitted for publication). 236 Steven Barmore Redpath, Peter A. A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics: Written in the Hope of Ending the Centuries-old Separation between Philosophy and Science and Science and Wisdom. Vol. 1. St. Louis, Mo.: En Route Books & Media, 2015. Redpath, Peter A. “Aquinas’s Fourth Way of Demonstrating God’s Existence: From Virtual Quantum Gradations of Perfection (Inequality of Beauty) of Forms Existing within a Real Genus.” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 3 (July–September 2019): 681–716. St. Thomas Aquinas’s Works in English. Available at: http://dhspriory.org/thomas/. Accessed widely prior to December 2019, when this site stopped hosting St. Thomas’s works in English. Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 237–251 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090209 Thomas J. Gentry II* Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel: An Enquiry into St. John Paul II’s Personalism and its Implications for Evangelization Avery Dulles explicitly states that John Paul II1 is the one who “used personalism as a lens through which to reinterpret much of the Catholic tradition,” and who “unhesitatingly embrace[d] all the dogmas of the church, but expound[ed] them with a personalist slant.”2 In the same vein, Michael Waldstein not only distinguishes JP II’s personalism from that of Immanuel Kant and Max Scheler, but also recognizes the seminal contribution of JP II’s personalistic interpretation of Catholic teaching. 3 Arguably, then, one of the greatest gifts JP II gave to the Church and the world lay in his insights related to philosophical personalism and its pastoral and societal implications. The overall aim of this paper is to find whether JP II’s philosophical personalism provides an effective means for supporting efforts to evangelize people in the contemporary world. As defined through the Thomas J. Gentry II — Holy Apostles College and Seminary, Cromwell, Conn., USA e-mail: thomas.j.gentry@gmail.com ▪ ORCID: 0000-0001-5192-4121 * 1 Hereafter abbreviated to JP II except in instances of direct quotations including the full name. 2 Avery Dulles, “John Paul II and the Mystery of the Human Person,” America: The Jesuit Review (February 2, 2004). Available online—see the section References for details. 3 See Michael Waldstein, “Three Kinds of Personalism: Kant, Scheler and John Paul II,” Forum Teologiczne 10 (2009): 151–171. ARTICLE — Received: Jan. 23, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Apr. 4, 2020 238 Thomas J. Gentry II nexus of its understanding of human dignity and self-determination, JP II’s personalism will be explored along the following lines of enquiry: What is personalism vis-à-vis JP II? What is the significance of human dignity and self-determination in JP II’s personalism? How might JP II’s personalism serve evangelization? Personalism vis-à-vis John Paul II Broadly defined, personalism “always underscores the centrality of the person as the primary locus of investigation for philosophical, theological, and human studies. It is an approach or system of thought which regards or tends to regard the person as the ultimate explanatory, epistemological, ontological, and axiological principle of all reality.” 4 One clearly sees this concern for the person expressed by JP II (then Karol Wojtyla) in a letter written to Henri de Lubac in 1968: I devote my very rare free moments to a work that is close to my heart and devoted to the metaphysical significance and the mystery of the PERSON. It seems to me that the debate today is being played on that level. The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person. This evil is even much more of the metaphysical than of the moral order. To this disintegration, planned at times by atheistic ideologies, we must oppose, rather than sterile polemics, a kind of “recapitulation” of the mystery of the person.5 Although variations in emphasis and explanation exist among advocates of personalism, it is generally characterized as “posit[ing] Thomas D. Williams and Jan Olof Bengtsson, “Personalism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018). Available online—see the section References for details. 5 As quoted in The Second One Thousand Years: Ten People who defined a Millennium, ed. Richard John Neuhaus (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), 116. 4 Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 239 ultimate reality and value in personhood—human as well as (at least for most personalists) divine.”6 Commenting on this latter emphasis, that is, personalism’s recognition of both human and divine personhood, Hans Urs von Balthasar “suggests that ‘Without the biblical background it [personalism] is inconceivable’.” 7 Certainly, as a Catholic, JP II was a theistic personalist with a commitment to give proper place to biblical revelation in his approach, but it is also important to recognize that his personalism was intentionally derived from and complementary with the philosophical and theological anthropology of Thomas Aquinas and, along with others (e.g., Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson) represents what may be dubbed “Thomistic personalism.” 8 In addition to his biblical and Thomistic insights and concerns, JP II’s personalism also gave importance of place to phenomenology, which is “the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.”9 As Pawel Tarasiewicz rightly identifies, JP II found an ally in “phenomenological method” with its attendant emphasis on “a personalistic understanding of man.” 10 Tarasiewicz explains that “phenomenology became a means by which Wojtyla [who later became JP II] found his way to the irreducible in man . . . saving human consciousness from the power of subjectivism and making it an object of realist philosophy.”11 It is this concern for the person that served as the impetus for JP II’s desire to integrate phenomenology with his Thomism, what Waldstein recognizes as JP II’s ability to converge with the sometimes latent, sometimes explicit pheWilliams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 David Woodruff Smith, “Phenomenology,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018). Available online—see the section References for details. 10 Pawel Tarasiewicz, “The Common Sense Personalism of St. John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla),” Studia Gilsoniana 3 (2014): 628–629. 11 Ibid., 629. 6 7 240 Thomas J. Gentry II nomenological thought in the streams of “Vatican II and the tradition of the Church, including the ‘perennial philosophy’ rooted in Plato and Aristotle.”12 Though a full discussion of who/what provided the most influence on JP II’s personalism is beyond the scope of the present consideration, it is important to note that where Waldstein sees JP II’s phenomenology deriving from a personalist interpretation of overt Catholic and classical sources, some disagree and give greater place to Scheler. However, as Waldstein discusses in his argument for a more robust appreciation of metaphysics in JP II’s personalism, it does appear that for JP II to have wholly adopted Scheler’s fundamental approach to phenomenology would have entailed a contradiction of sorts, since “in an attempt to purify Christian philosophy from the Greek and Medieval conception of eros in favor of pure self-giving agape, Scheler claims that the highest end lies already within the person prior to any divine reward.”13 For JP II, however, the highest end is not in man, but in God. As Waldstein aptly states when distinguishing the thought of JP II from Scheler, “The final end determines everything. A personalism for which God is the fin end [JP II’s] differs most radically and fundamentally from personalism [e.g., Scheler’s] in which the final end is found already within the human person.”14 Tarasiewicz’s thesis is also helpful in this area, as he convincingly presents evidence that the primary path taken in forming JP II’s personalism vis-à-vis phenomenology was through the perennial metaphysic of Western philosophy, and that, though Scheler was important, it may be (and likely was) that he was more of a foil for JP II in developing his own Thomistic approach.15 Waldstein, “Three Kinds of Personalism,” 154. Ibid., 169. 14 Ibid. 15 Cf. Tarasiewicz, “The Common Sense Personalism of St. John Paul II,” 624–630. 12 13 Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 241 Whatever may be concluded about the actual source-influences upon JP II’s phenomenology, it is certain that two of the greatest concerns in his personalistic emphasis were the dignity and self-determination of each person. 16 Human Dignity and Self-determination in John Paul II’s Personalism Explaining that “personalists have generally insisted on the falsity of Darwin’s claim that man’s difference from other terrestrial beings is one of degree and not of kind,” Thomas Williams and Jan Bengtsston state that, for the personalist, “the person alone is ‘somebody’ rather than merely ‘something’.”17 This emphasis on the special status of persons is reflected in the question and statement of the 1965 pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world Gaudium et Spes: But what is man? About himself he has expressed, and continues to express, many divergent and even contradictory opinions. In these he often exalts himself as the absolute measure of all things or debases himself to the point of despair. The result is doubt and anxiety. The Church certainly understands these problems. Endowed with light from God, she can offer solutions to them, so that man’s true situation can be portrayed and his defects explained, while at the same time his dignity and destiny are justly acknowledged.18 16 Cf. Jove Jim S. Aguas, “The Notions of the Human Person and Human Dignity in Aquinas and Wojtyla,” Kritike 3, no. 1 (June 2009): 40–60; and Tadeusz Rostworowski, “Self-Determination. The Fundamental Category of Person in the Understanding of Karol Wojtyła,” AGATHOS: An International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 1 (2011): 17–25. 17 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 18 Gaudium et Spes. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Promulgated by Pope Paul VI (December 7, 1965), 12. Available online—see the section References for details. 242 Thomas J. Gentry II Two corollaries of this utter uniqueness of the human—that every human is a “somebody”—that JP II devoted much of his intellectual and pastoral energies to are the dignity of each person and the importance of each person’s self-determination. Whereas human dignity has most to do with who persons are, what William Stern describes as “a primal uniqueness . . . through which every person is a world of its own with regard to other persons,”19 self-determination reveals how a person acts in neither “a mechanical or deterministic way, but from the inner self, as a subjective ‘I’ . . . [in] possession of free will . . . his own master.”20 Dignity and self-determination, it may be adduced, are similar to the two sides of a coin for a personalist, and this is certainly true of JP II. John Coughlin identifies both a philosophical and a theological foundation for JP II’s teaching on human dignity, explaining that JP II understands the dignity of the human being both in an objective and in a subjective sense. The objectivity derives from the universality of human nature according to which every human person possesses the potential for intelligent and free action. The subjectivity flows from the fact that the human being may employ the intellect and will creatively to constitute the individual self. 21 In this two-fold manner, JP II carefully lays a cornerstone of personalistic anthropology—especially Christian personalism—providing what would become the impetus for his tireless pastoral work of standing against the objectification of persons and the destruction to individuals and cultures that comes in its wake. 19 William Stern, Person and Thing: System of a Philosophical Worldview, vol. 2: The Human Personality (Leipzig: Barth, 1918). Cited after Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 20 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 21 John J. Coughlin, “Pope John Paul II and the Dignity of the Human Being,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 27, no. 1 (2003): 68. Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 243 Recognizing that JP II’s philosophical approach to “human dignity rejects determinism, empiricism, and idealism,” Coughlin is careful to highlight that “reflection on human experience leads John Paul II to affirm reason as a distinctive human capacity that testifies to human dignity.”22 Flowing from this understanding of human dignity and its attendant reason, “John Paul II’s [philosophical] analysis of human experience then recognizes the intellect and free will as complementary faculties.”23 Yet, as Malgorzata Jalocho-Palicka recognizes, JP II is not reducing man or human dignity to intellect and free will, but, “following Thomas Aquinas and other great thinkers . . . reminds us that the soul of each man is the source of all his acts, not only the acts of cognition and free will . . . the spiritual substance (the essence) of each man is the source of the ongoing acts of his life.” 24 Nonetheless, it is vital to remember that when these human faculties are freely exercised in the pursuit of such things as “life, knowledge, play, marriage, aesthetic experience, friendship, and religion”—and within an objective moral order—human flourishing is possible, with human dignity among its fundamental axioms.25 Concerning the theological basis for human dignity, and certainly reflective of his Christian commitments, JP II finds a foundation in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. He explains that “through the Incarnation, God gave human life the dimension that he intended man to have from his first beginning . . . [revealing man’s] greatness, dignity and value.” 26 Recognizing the centrality of the Incarnation as inchoate within the biblical metanarrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, 22 Ibid., 69. Ibid., 67. 24 Małgorzata Jałocho-Palicka, “Spiritual Substance: The Essence of Man-Person According to Karol Wojtyla,” Studia Gilsoniana 6, no. 1 (January–March 2017): 105. 25 Coughlin, “Pope John Paul II and the Dignity of the Human Being,” 69. 26 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis (Rome 1979), 1 and 10. Available online—see the section References for details. 23 244 Thomas J. Gentry II JP II’s understanding of man as created in the image of God and having, inter alia, intrinsic worth and dignity, highlights a distinctively Christian metaphysical component to his personalism, since it is only by “knowing and loving God [that] men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” 27 Freely taking on human flesh, God simultaneously reveals and becomes the means of recovering humanity’s original worth and dignity by perfectly joining human and divine natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ. It is because of this gracious condescension of God to become man that the Incarnation is also the pinnacle expression of divine love for humanity. As Coughlin aptly states in summarizing JP II’s emphasis on the Incarnation, “God’s forgiveness of humanity, which is expressed in the Son’s perfect selfsacrificial love, serves as a testament to the highest degree of human dignity both by revealing the love of God for humanity and by demonstrating the fullest possibility for the human person.” 28 JP II’s clarion call is that God created man with dignity, and he has restored it in Jesus Christ. As for self-determination, Dulles explains that JP II “expounded a theory of the person as a self-determining agent that realizes itself through free and responsible action. Activity is not something strictly other than the person; it is the person coming to expression and constituting itself.”29 What is axiomatic and distinctively Christian in JP II’s articulation of self-determination is not the reality of a person’s freewill, per se (though this is certainly something he affirms), but the inseparability of true freedom and truth. As he explained in 1964, in his comment on Vatican II’s draft of the declaration on religious freedom, “Freedom on the one hand is for the sake of truth and on the other hand 27 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (Rome 1998), introductory greeting. Available online— see the section References for details. 28 Coughlin, “Pope John Paul II and the Dignity of the Human Being,” 73. 29 Dulles, “John Paul II and the Mystery of the Human Person.” Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 245 it cannot be perfected except by means of truth. Hence the words of our Lord, which speak so clearly to everyone: ‘The truth will make you free’ (John 8:32). There is no freedom without truth.”30 This theme of freedom and truth is what Dulles describes as “constant and central . . . in the writings of John Paul II.”31 Notice how JP II relates the moral law on the hearts of all persons to the innate awareness of the concomitance of freedom and truth. By doing this, JP II connects the knowledge that self-determination and truth coincide with what it means to be human and have an innate sense of the moral law, as made known primarily through judicial sentiment and conscience, and more fully revealed in Scripture, tradition, and the Person of Jesus Christ. Even though his “philosophy of freedom runs counter to the value-free concept so prevalent in contemporary culture . . . [and] many people today would say that freedom and truth are wholly separable,”32 JP II is unbending in his rational and passional insistence that true freedom, true self-determination is only possible when humans “go beyond individual and collective selfishness and reach out to that which reason perceives as objectively good and true . . . freedom is not diminished but expanded and fulfilled when . . . employ[ed] to bring about a true good.”33 What JP II recognizes is the inviolable truth that self-deter30 As quoted by Dulles in “John Paul II and the Truth about Freedom,” First Things (August 1995). Available online—see the section References for details. 31 Ibid. See also Dulles, “John Paul II and the Mystery of the Human Person:” “‘Authentic freedom . . . is never freedom from the truth but always freedom in the truth’ (VS, No. 64). . . . As he told the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1995, ‘Detached from the truth about the human person, freedom deteriorates into license in the lives of individuals, and in political life it becomes the caprice of the most powerful and the arrogance of power. Far from being a limitation upon freedom or a threat to it, reference to the truth about the human person—a truth universally knowable through the moral law written on the hearts of all—is, in fact, the guarantor of freedom’s future’.” 32 Dulles, “John Paul II and the Truth about Freedom.” 33 Ibid. 246 Thomas J. Gentry II mination is dependent upon truth—that leads the acting person to the end for which their freedom is given, and to become joyful servants of the One who is Truth Himself. Personalism Applied: How John Paul II’s Personalism Serves Evangelization How, then, might JP II’s personalism serve such vital humandivine activities as evangelization, given his trenchant insights into the uniqueness of each person and the centrality of human dignity and selfdetermination in properly relating to oneself and others? Numerous possible answers to this question may be found in JP II’s Redemptor Hominis: In reality, the name for that deep amazement at man’s worth and dignity is the Gospel, that is to say: the Good News. It is also called Christianity. This amazement determines the Church’s mission in the world and, perhaps even more so, “in the modern world” . . . The Church’s fundamental function in every age and particularly in ours is to direct man’s gaze, to point the awareness and experience of the whole of humanity towards the mystery of God, to help all men to be familiar with the profundity of the Redemption taking place in Christ Jesus. 34 Briefly, two reflections on JP II’s words can provide aid for those concerned with the Church’s calling to evangelize others and who seek to do so in an intentionally personalist manner. When It Comes to the Gospel Message and Mission, Human Dignity Is Essential Notice how JP II brilliantly interweaves the subjects of human dignity, the Gospel, and Christianity: “the name for . . . man’s worth 34 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10. Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 247 and dignity is the Gospel . . . It is also called Christianity.” 35 Though certainly not reductionist, in just a few words JP II recognizes that to speak of Christianity is to speak of the Gospel, and to speak of the Gospel is to speak of the worth and dignity of each person to whom the Good News is freely offered—which is every person. Thus, in keeping with JP II’s declaration concerning evangelization in Redemptoris Missio, that “no believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples,” 36 the fundamental personalist presupposition of all who evangelize is that the good news of the Gospel entails an affirmation of human dignity, insofar as it is the Gospel’s aim, among others, to recover the fullness of that dignity as man returns to the God who came to man in the Person of Jesus Christ. Recognizing the human dignity that is effaced by sin and yet restored by grace, the eyes of every evangelizer are focused on the unique person that God is lovingly seeking to reach through them in each evangelizing encounter. JP II also recognizes that the Church’s mission of evangelization in every age, and particularly in the modern (and now post-modern) age, is motivated by the “deep amazement at man’s worth and dignity”37 of which the Gospel is God’s mission of love to all persons. It is not only that the Gospel message is intertwined with the recognition of human dignity, but what the Church is to do with the Gospel—her mission—is inspired by the awe that each person’s dignity as image bearers of God entails. The Church shares the Gospel message of human dignity and the Church’s mission, if thought of as a moving train, travels along rails formed and informed by that amazing dignity. “The missionary—declares JP II—is the ‘universal brother’, bearing in himself 35 Ibid. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio (Rome 1990), 3. Available online—see the section References for details. 37 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10. 36 248 Thomas J. Gentry II the Church’s spirit, her openness to and interest in all peoples and individuals . . . He is a sign of God’s love in the world—a love without exclusion or partiality.”38 If the Church ever doubts her mission, or confuses the message to proclaim as she fulfills her mission, she need only look at one person, any one person, and therein is the reminder, focus, and hope of the mission—that each person’s dignity as God’s special creation is the impetus to sharing the Gospel “without exclusion or partiality.” As the Church Evangelizes with Respect to Human Dignity, Self-determination is Assumed Just as human dignity is fundamental to the message of the Gospel and the Church’s mission of evangelization, so self-determination— itself a hallmark of JP II’s personalism and a necessary concomitant to human dignity—is assumed regarding each person’s choice in rejecting or accepting God’s offer of forgiveness and redemption. Consider the words JP II chose in describing the conduct of the evangelizer, which is “to direct man’s gaze, to point the awareness and experience of the whole of humanity toward the mystery . . . to help all men to be familiar with the profundity of the Redemption.”39 This is not the language of coercion, or of proselytizing, or of manipulation—rather, this is the language of loving invitation, rational persuasion, and it tacitly assumes each person’s self-determination. While it is true that “the redemption event brings salvation to all,” it is also fundamental to remember that “this new life is a gift from God, and people are asked to accept and develop it, if they wish to realize the fulness of their vocation in conformity to Christ.”40 38 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 89. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10. 40 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 7. Italics added. 39 Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 249 Evangelization from a personalist perspective recognizes the free moral agency of the hearer, and, if it is based on the example of Christ offering himself freely to “whosoever will” (John 3:16), will always be carried out in a manner respectful of each person’s self-determination. As JP II elucidates, “Can one reject Christ and everything that he has brought about in the history of mankind? Of course one can. Man is free. He can say ‘no’ to God. He can say ‘no’ to Christ.”41 This is never the desired end, and prayers should be offered that it will not be any person’s final choice to reject God. Should the evangelizer answer questions? Yes. Make reasonable and impassioned presentations? Certainly. Encourage a decision of belief and repentance? Of course. Never, though, is human dignity and its innate self-determination to be trampled upon or disrespected by those who—possessed of unchecked zeal that may otherwise be indicative of a good intention—earnestly desire to see others come to know the love and mercy of God. Conclusion Although much more might be researched and articulated related to JP II’s thought with its attendant insights regarding human dignity and self-determination, what has been discussed here has, hopefully, clearly enough shown that JP II’s philosophical personalism provides an effective means for supporting efforts to make the love of God for all persons known, i.e., to evangelize people in the modern world. In closing, consider one final selection from JP II’s Redemptor Hominis, a selection that ensconces all that personalism, human dignity, self-determination, and evangelization come together to express: The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly—and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and 41 “Homily for the celebration of the Eucharist in Krakow, June 10, 1979,” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 71 (1979): 873. Cited after John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 7. 250 Thomas J. Gentry II even illusory standards and measures of his being—he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must “appropriate” and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. 42 Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel: An Enquiry into St. John Paul II’s Personalism and its Implications for Evangelization SUMMARY St. John Paul II’s (JP II) personalism is explored along the following lines of enquiry: What is personalism vis-à-vis JP II? What is the significance of human dignity and selfdetermination in JP II’s personalism? How might JP II’s personalism serve evangelization? Findings suggest that JP II’s philosophical personalism, especially at the nexus of its understanding of human dignity and self-determination, provides a robust and faithfully Christian anthropology that can effectively inform efforts in evangelizing all persons, as all persons are image bearers of God that are necessarily self-determining and possessed of profound dignity and worth. KEYWORDS John Paul II, personalism, human dignity, self-determination, evangelization, anthropology. REFERENCES Aguas, Jove Jim S. “The Notions of the Human Person and Human Dignity in Aquinas and Wojtyla.” Kritike 3, no. 1 (June 2009): 40–60. Brettmann, Stephanie Mar. Theories of Justice: A Dialogue with Karol Wojtyla and Karl Barth. Eugene: Pickwick, 2014. Coughlin, John J. “Pope John Paul II and the Dignity of the Human Being.” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 27, no. 1 (2003): 65–79. Dulles, Avery. “John Paul II and the Mystery of the Human Person.” America: The Jesuit Review (February 02, 2004). Available online at: 42 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10. Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel 251 https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/469/article/john-paul-ii-and-mysteryhuman-person. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. Dulles, Avery. “John Paul II and the Truth about Freedom.” First Things (August 1995). Available online at: https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/004john-paul-ii-and-the-truth-about-freedom. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. Gaudium et Spes. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Promulgated by Pope Paul VI, December 7, 1965. Available online at: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. Jałocho-Palicka, Małgorzata. “Spiritual Substance: The Essence of Man-Person According to Karol Wojtyła.” Studia Gilsoniana 6, no. 1 (January–March 2017): 97–130. John Paul II. Redemptor Hominis. Rome 1979. Available online at: http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_04031979_redemptor-hominis.html. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. John Paul II. Fides et Ratio. Rome 1998. Available online at: http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. John Paul II. Redemptoris Missio. Rome 1990. Available online at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio.html. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. Rostworowski, Tadeusz. “Self-Determination. The Fundamental Category of Person in the Understanding of Karol Wojtyła.” AGATHOS: An International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 1 (2011): 17–25. Smith, David Woodruff, “Phenomenology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. Tarasiewicz, Pawel. “The Common Sense Personalism of St. John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla).” Studia Gilsoniana 3 (2014): 619–634. The Second One Thousand Years: Ten People who defined a Millennium, edited by Richard John Neuhaus. Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001. Waldstein, Michael. “Three Kinds of Personalism: Kant, Scheler and John Paul II.” Forum Teologiczne 10 (2009): 151–171. Williams, Thomas D., and Jan Olof Bengtsson. “Personalism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/personalism/. Accessed Dec. 16, 2019. Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 253–265 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090210 Mark Herrbach* The Soul of Goethe’s Thought Goethe’s philosophical writings all ultimately stem from his efforts to understand the creative act, which he experienced as essentially the same in all the various forms of activity he engaged in, the writing of his poems, novels and plays, his scientific investigations, his service to the Weimar state and participation in the life of its court. In contemplating his creative experience, he developed a unique conception of the soul, which this article seeks to analyze. The Soul’s Ideal Potential For Goethe, the soul (Seele) is the “starting point” of an individual’s development and activity in the world and the means of realizing the ideal of his existence in activity. It is that in terms of which the individual’s inner life (Gemüt) is latently a whole (Ganzes) or world (Welt), a “circle” (Kreis), with the soul as its center; and it is the power or faculty enabling an individual to act as a whole and express his realized inner wholeness in a created work that is itself a whole: [S]tarting points . . . that I term souls . . . [They] are wont to pull . . . everything that approaches them into their circle and transform it into something that belongs to them. They continue this Mark Herrbach — Zürich, Switzerland e-mail: mherrbach@swissonline.ch ▪ ORCID: 0000-0001-7844-8372 * ARTICLE — Received: Jan. 6, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Apr. 11, 2020 254 Mark Herrbach process until the small or greater world, whose intention lies spiritually within them, also appears outwardly in bodily form.1 Both as inner potential, eventual inner reality, and as outer concrete manifestation of the individual’s inner wholeness, “the whole becomes visible only in the . . . soul.”2 Goethe terms the “material out of which the soul is constructed and in which it lives a purgatory, where all infernal and heavenly forces are interwoven and active together.”3 In this statement it appears that the soul is constructed (gebildet) out of opposing forces of the inner life, but in fact it indicates that the soul is initially only a latent power or faculty, not yet active in unifying them. Or in other words, the inner life—as consisting of “the necessary, immediately given limited individuality of a person pronounced at birth . . . in terms of which the individual . . . differs from (others),”4 inborn characteristics such as talents and abilities, as well as all manner of inclinations and passions, from nefarious ones to spiritual ones, that have been acquired in the course of the individual’s development in the outer real or empirical world—is not yet a whole. It is then the soul, when active in living fashion, that “weaves” the elements of the inner life together in its purgative activity, constructs or makes of them a unified multiplicity or whole in accord with its ideal potential. 1 J. D. Falk, Jan. 25, 1813 (22 673–674). The author’s translations of Goethe’s statements are based on the Artemis edition of his works, letters and conversations: J. W. Goethe, Artemis Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe, und Gespräche, vol. I–XXIV, ed. Ernst Beutler (Zürich 1948–1954). In each case, statements are cited according to the volume and page number of the Artemis edition, with 22 673–674 here, for example, referring to volume 22, pages 673–674. Further, it is to be noted that conversations are cited by the name of the person who recorded them (e.g., J. D. Falk, Eckermann) and that all ellipses, italics and parenthetical emendations in the quotations are the author’s. 2 Xenien, 47 (2 504). 3 Letter to Lavater, May 7, 1781 (18 587). 4 “Primal Words • Orphic” Commentary (2 617). The Soul of Goethe’s Thought 255 Essentially the same conception of the soul is reflected in Faust’s famous lament, where he sighs: Two souls live, alas, in my breast, Each seeks to separate itself from the other; The one cleaves to the world with its organs, The other raises itself forcibly from the dust To the realm of its high ancestors. 5 The one soul, i.e., the multiplicity of Faust’s limited particular individuality and experience of the world in relation to which the soul proper for him is at this point in the drama still only a latent potential, cleaves to the sphere of the senses, the earthly real or empirical world. The second soul, i.e., the soul proper as eventually active for Faust, forms his inner life into the wholeness that is then expressed in his works, and that thereby raises (erhebt) both Faust himself and his works “from the dust” to an otherworldly realm of “high ancestors.” The whole as Goethe conceives it is not an ideal rational order transcending or negating the limitation of the individual and of his existence in the real or empirical earthly sphere, but a concretely existing human creation in which that limitation is elevated to something higher. Thus when Goethe asserts that “in the psychology of man we are concerned always only with one and the same soul,” 6 he does not mean that the real existence of every individual’s soul is one and the same. Rather, he means that the striving of individuals to realize their ideal potential is always the same, regardless of the limitations of their particular individualities and existences in the empirical sphere. For while truth (Wahrheit) for Goethe, i.e., inner and outer appearances of the soul as wholes, “is simple and always the same, however it appears,” error (das Irrtum) “is varied to the highest degree, different in itself and 5 6 Faust I (5 177). Letter to F. Förster, May 1829 (23 586). 256 Mark Herrbach struggling, not only against the good and true, but against itself, opposing itself.”7 The individual’s particular nature, his peculiarities and his experience of the empirical world are, relative to the whole of the inner life and the whole in which they are expressed, “erroneous facing without, but true facing within” and are “forms of the living existence and activity of particular perfect, but limited beings.”8 In this sense, “every form,” that is to say, every created whole, “has something untrue in it; however, it is once and for all the glass by means of which we collect holy rays of light . . . for a glimpse of fire” 9—that fire or flame being the act of acting as a whole when creating a whole: The circle of the years has quietly been rounded, The lamp awaits the flame that is lit. 10 Goethe also holds that actually existing individual souls differ as to the degree of their strength (Kraft) or power (Macht): I assume different classes and hierarchies of the . . . starting points of all appearances that I term souls, because the animation of the whole proceeds from them. . . . Now some of these . . . starting points are . . . small, . . . negligible, . . . others, on the other hand, are strong and powerful. . . . Strictly speaking, I prefer to term only the latter souls. 11 It is this strength or power determines the relative capacity of an individual to assimilate from and develop himself in terms of the outer world and then express his assimilation as a whole in his works: The objects that we perceive are a vast multitude . . . Souls that have an inner strength to unfold themselves begin ordering, in 7 Maxims and Reflections (9 630). “The Court Lady” (14 352). 9 “From Goethe’s Pocket Book” (13 48). 10 “Primal Words • Orphic” (1 523). 11 J. D. Falk, Jan. 25, 1813 (22 673–674). 8 The Soul of Goethe’s Thought 257 order to facilitate knowledge, begin matching and uniting, in order to achieve satisfaction. 12 On the other hand, in the poem “Monologue of a Connoisseur” Goethe holds that all works of art and the legacy of culture (Überlieferung) generally, as well as nature itself, are “useless” to the individual in their earthly or empirical aspect, without true significance, prior to the individual’s assimilation and transformation of them in activity, or unless “loving power of creation” fills his soul: What use to you is glowing nature Before your eyes, What use the objects Of art all about you, If loving power of creation Does not fill your soul And is not productive again In your fingertips?13 Or, as expressed by the chorus representing the ideals of ancient Greek culture in response to Phorkyas (Mephistopheles) in the third act of Faust: Let the sun’s radiance vanish When day breaks in the soul: We find in our own hearts What the whole world is denied. 14 Leonore in Torquato Tasso characterizes the poet in like fashion, while adding that his poems, imitating the “harmony of nature” in their wholeness, animate (belebt) or give life to the created works of the legacy of culture that the poet’s soul has transformed or recreated in his works: “Study after Spinoza” (16 842). “Monologue of a Connoisseur” (1 392). 14 Faust II (5 448). 12 13 258 Mark Herrbach His eye hardly rests on this earth; His ear perceives the harmony of nature; What history offers, that gives life, He willingly takes it up at once: His soul collects what is widely scattered And his feeling breathes life into what is unanimated.15 Considering now Goethe’s philosophical understanding of the creative process in its universal import for mankind generally, his early remark in a letter to Jenny von Voigts is of seminal importance: I try daily to develop myself further according to the best traditions and the always living truth of nature, and let myself be led in each of my efforts, acting, writing and reading, by the goal of coming closer to that which hovers above all our souls as the highest being, although we have never seen it and can’t name it. 16 In the further course of his philosophical development, Goethe maintains then that the highest being, God, or the world soul (Weltseele), as he also terms it, is the foundation of an actually existing ideal world, the whole of all works that are wholes, his world of culture (Kulturwelt). Goethe thereby conceives morality, the philosophy of right and proper conduct, in terms of the creative life of the individual in relation to the divine being underlying his ideal world: [The moral life came into the world] through God Himself, as all good things. It is not a product of human reflection, but rather it is acquired and inborn beautiful human nature. Possessed more or less by man generally, it appears to a high degree in a few particularly gifted souls, whose beautiful appearance captured the love of others and drew them irresistibly to reverence and emulation. 17 15 Torquato Tasso (6 218). Letter to Jenny von Voigts, June 21, 1781 (18 598). 17 Eckermann, April 1, 1827 (24 614–615). 16 The Soul of Goethe’s Thought 259 —and asserts that “if a poet’s soul has a high inner content . . . his effect on others will always be a moral one, however he presents himself.”18 Similarly, Goethe conceives the beautiful appearance of art works to be produced by “a few particularly gifted souls,” souls that are themselves beautiful: You can see [in Lorrain] a perfect human being, . . . who thought and felt beautifully and in whose inner life there lay a world. . . . [His] paintings have the highest truth, but not a trace of reality. Claude Lorrain knew the real world in the smallest of details by heart, and he used it as means of expressing the world of his beautiful soul. And this is the true idealism that knows how to so employ real means that appearing truth produces the illusion that it is real.19 Two of Goethe’s late poems of a philosophical nature not only summarize the preceding analysis of his conception of the soul’s ideal potential, but express the points considered artistically as a whole—first “One and All,” and then “Testament:” World soul, come and fill us! Struggling then with the world spirit Will be the high calling of our powers. Good spirits taking part and guiding, Highest masters gently leading To Him, who creates and has created all. And unending, living activity works To recreate what was created, In order that it does not become lifeless. And what hasn’t been, now it wants to become Pure suns, colorful earths; In no case may it rest. It shall move itself, act creatively, First form itself, then transform itself; 18 19 Eckermann, March 28, 1827 (24 607). Eckermann, April 10, 1829 (24 355). 260 Mark Herrbach It only seems for moments still. The eternal is ceaselessly active in them all . . .20 The individual “struggles” with the world soul or world spirit in the sense that his individuality, existence and strength or power to assimilate from the world of culture in realizing his soul’s “high calling” are limited relative to other individuals and the highest being itself, but remain necessary moments of the concrete wholeness of his actions. The works of previous creative individuals or masters inspire or animate his creative life and gently lead him “to Him, who creates and has created all.” And the individual’s own works recreate and animate their works, in such a way that the ideal world continues to have life and exist. “Testament” amplifies on these themes, while focusing more on a given individual’s experience of the ideal world and the truth of individual actions in their membership within that whole: Truth was found already long ago, It united a noble community; Ancient truth, seize hold of it! ............... Now turn within at once: You will find the center there inside That no noble soul may doubt in. You will miss no rule there: For an independent conscience Is the sun of your day of virtue. ............... With fresh gaze observe with joy And stroll confidently but impressionably Across meadows of a richly endowed world. ............... The past is lasting then, 20 “One and All” (1 514). The Soul of Goethe’s Thought 261 The future living in advance, The moment is eternity . . . The true works of the individual’s “high ancestors” united a “noble community,” i.e., served to make that community an ideal whole or world. In so far as the onlooking individual “seizes” or appropriates it in his development and finds the center of his circle, expresses his latent and realizable wholeness in relation to that community, he will find the sun of his moral “day of virtue” despite, but only in terms of, the particularity of his individuality and existence, his “independent conscience.” If he is then successful in acting as a whole, he will be able to “examine the universal dominion,” know himself to be participating in the ideal world’s eternal life, and know his works to be true or beautiful in inspiring others to act in similar fashion: And if you are finally successful, And full of the feeling: Only what is fruitful is true— You will examine the universal dominion, It will rule in its own manner, Join the smallest company. And just as in former times, secretly, A work of love in his own manner Was created by the philosopher, the poet, You also will achieve most beautiful favor: For feeling ahead of noble souls Is a most desirable calling. 21 Realization of the Soul’s Potential It is not yet clear how the soul realizes its ideal potential in Goethe’s thinking. For though error or falsity have been shown to be possible for him in terms of an individual’s limited individuality and experi21 “Testament” (1 515–516). 262 Mark Herrbach ence in the world prior to the wholeness that the soul achieves, it has not been shown how an individual can fail to realize the soul’s ideal potential. Or though Goethe concedes that “the soul loses the consciousness of itself in pleasant and good circumstances,”22 it is also not clear how in his view the individual can become conscious of his soul if he isn’t already conscious of it. And why for that matter does Goethe write “if you are finally successful” in his “Testament”? In short, if “the circle of the years has been rounded,” if “the lamp awaits the flame that is lit,”23 how does an individual light the flame? Goethe provides an answer to these questions in Faust: [W]hen in our narrow cell The lamp burns brightly again, There will be light in our breast . . .24 —and in this passage from Torquato Tasso: O, that we forget so much to follow The pure and quiet wink of the heart. Wholly silently, a god speaks in our breast . . .25 For when, he says, the individual seeks to create a whole, he must concentrate both on his projected work, his plans and intentions with respect to it, the traditions and conventions of his form of activity, the works that he has assimilated from the world of culture, and this point in his breast (Brust). Only then is he conscious of the “starting point” of his soul from which “the animation of the whole proceeds,” 26 will he find that a “pure middle point” arises in his breast and will the multiplicity of his inner life become a whole “moving in circles” about that point: 22 Letter to Lavater, Oct. 4, 1782 (18 700). J. D. Falk, Jan. 25, 1813 (22 673–674). 24 Faust I (5 179). 25 Torquato Tasso (6 261–262). 26 “Primal Words • Orphic” (1 523). 23 The Soul of Goethe’s Thought 263 How can the individual stand before the infinite being, unless he collects all of his spiritual powers, pulled as they are in many directions, in his inmost, deepest being, unless he asks himself: can you even think of yourself as standing in the middle of this living order, if something constant and moving in circles about a pure middle point does not arise in you? And even when it is difficult to find this middle point in your breast, you will recognize it by the fact that a benevolent and beneficial effect proceeds from it and gives witness to it.27 The physical existence of this point in the individual’s breast, though “difficult to find” or having a “secret existence,” can be found—but only during the creative act: In the human spirit, . . . nothing is above or below, everything demands the same right in terms of a common middle point, whose secret existence manifests itself precisely in the harmonious relation of all its moments to it.28 How this recognition takes place, how the “multiple confusing relations” of the inner life are unified by the soul in creative activity, is incomprehensible to the individual’s rational understanding, “seems a spontaneous and special gift of God,” but it can nevertheless be known to take place with complete certainty: [W]hen men construct a whole according to their abilities, . . . the inner life . . . must become ever simpler, [they] must concentrate on one point and renounce multiple confusing relations, and only then can [they] find [themselves] with all the more certainty in a condition of good fortune that seems a spontaneous and special gift of God.29 Why are there so few and so easily overlooked references to the physical location of the soul in Goethe’s philosophical writings? Two 27 Years of Wandering (8 131). Aphorisms and Fragments (17 778). 29 “Study after Spinoza” (16 843–844). 28 264 Mark Herrbach factors are involved in the author’s opinion. On the one hand, since he believed that “it is one’s duty to only say to others only that which they are capable of receiving,”30 Goethe sought to avoid confounding or alienating readers and listeners who had not experienced his creative principle with utterances seeming to claim that he himself was in possession of it in some absolute sense. On the other hand, however, he hoped that his utterances dealing with the creative life would encourage or stimulate others to discover the soul and participate in the life of his ideal world. For believing as he did that “philosophers can . . . only offer us life forms” and that “how they fit us, whether we are able according to our individual natures and abilities to provide those life forms with the necessary content, that is our concern,”31 Goethe left his readers and listeners such a life form with respect to the soul, “results” of his philosophical reflections that, “since we do not know the occasion of their utterance, . . . force us to go backwards by means of reverse discovery and invention and so if possible understand the derivation of such thoughts from a distance, from the bottom upwards.”32 The Soul of Goethe’s Thought SUMMARY Goethe’s philosophical writings all ultimately stem from his efforts to understand the creative act, which he experienced as essentially the same in all the various forms of activity he engaged in, the writing of his poems, novels and plays, his scientific investigations, his service to the Weimar state and participation in the life of its court. In contemplating his creative experience, he developed a unique conception of the soul, which this article seeks to analyze. Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Wandering (8 38). J. D. Falk, undated (23 817). 32 Years of Wandering (8 137). 30 31 The Soul of Goethe’s Thought 265 KEYWORDS Goethe, creative principle, soul, wholeness, legacy of culture (Überlieferung), inborn individuality, real world/ideal world, world soul/God. REFERENCES Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Artemis Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe, und Gespräche, vol. I–XXIV, edited by Ernst Beutler. Memorial edition of Goethe’s works, letters, and conversations in 24 volumes. Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1948–1954. Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 267–285 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090211 Joanna Kiereś-Łach* The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse. In Terms of Chaim Perelman Why Rhetoric? Contemporary social discourse that takes place in social media, especially in the so-called virtual reality (and globalized reality), opens up to everyone the opportunity to speak on any issue regardless of their competencies and language cultures. Therefore, one can observe the socalled “communication chaos” and the widespread lack of communication skills, especially the ignorance or even flagrant disregard for the criteria of discourse. Such phenomena as brutalization or vulgarization of the language and an evident lack of understanding of the issues which are considered, what is being said and spoken about, mean that the social debate in its semantic context is largely reduced to an exchange of opinions which is cognitively empty. What is worse, although these opinions express different attitudes and views of a worldview nature, and therefore are largely subjective, in the absence of the aforementioned universal discourse criteria, they are considered to be cognitively equivalent. Joanna Kiereś-Łach — John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland e-mail: joanna.kieres-lach@kul.pl ▪ ORCID: 0000-0002-4716-8674 * ARTICLE — Received: Jan. 27, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Apr. 19, 2020 268 Joanna Kiereś-Łach On the other hand, it is often enough to use professional terminology and build one’s statement as well-shaped in order for one to pretend to be an expert in a given matter. In other words, superficial competence and linguistic efficiency, expressing only someone’s opinion, can be considered binding on media and internet forums users. It is also emphasized that due to the possibility of anonymous participation in the discourse, which is enabled by social forums, responsibility for spoken (written) words disappears. In addition, using the media, which are communication intermediaries, impairs the ability to engage in real, ongoing tête-à-tête communication or exchange of views. For this reason, people who face the necessity of public speaking, often experience paralyzing fear, have difficulty with formulating their own thoughts and revealing the intentions of their speech. 1 The literature emphasizes that democratization of social discourse is undoubtedly valuable, but on the other hand it is also clearly emphasized that there must be social concern for the culture of expression/communication, especially for the development and implementation of universal principles or criteria of this discourse. This postulate supports increased interest in rhetoric, as—simply speaking—the art of beautiful and convincing argumentation in relation to the issues which are addressed. The return to rhetoric, that is a sort of reminder that it has shaped the culture of the word in Europe since Greek antiquity, is also supported by the so-called political transformation, which in Poland and in countries that have freed themselves from the regime of political totalitarianism is simply necessary. Changing the profile of social discourse to democratic and the economy to a market style requires shifting social mentality and intensifying life dynamics in social spaces. 1 For more on the role of communication in social discourse, see Paweł Gondek, “Communio and Communicatio: The Role of Communication for Participating in Public Life,” Studia Gilsoniana 4, no. 1 (January–March 2015): 17–28. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 269 The so-called “soft” competency, the ability to communicate with other people, is becoming one of the more desirable and socially expected features of civic life. Therefore, ways of improving communication skill are created, such as coaching (which is a form of development in which an experienced person supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance2), mentoring (which is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person3), public relations (“PR” which is the practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public 4), marketing (which is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services 5), or career counseling (which is a professional intervention made by a specialized person who is focused on how the individuals manage their journey through life, learning and work6), etc. The purpose of these forms of education is to prepare modern people to skillfully move in the space of broadly understood interpersonal communication.7 It should be noted, however, that these forms of education fulfill a need of the mo2 Excellence in Coaching: The Industry Guide, ed. Jonathan Passmore (London/Philadelphia: Kogan Page, 2016), 11. 3 Caela Farren, “Eight Types of Mentor: Which Ones Do you Need?,” Available online—see the section References for details. 4 James E. Grunig, Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 7. 5 Shelby D. Hunt, “The Nature and Scope of Marketing,” Journal of Marketing 40, no. 3 (1976): 17. 6 Raoul Van Esbroeck and James A. Athanasou, “Introduction: An International Handbook of Career Guidance,” in International Handbook of Career Guidance, ed. James A. Athanasou, Raoul Van Esbroeck (Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2008), 2. 7 For more about it, see Robert St. Bokacki, Leadership Tool Box – ludzki kontekst przywództwa (Warszawa: Kontekst HR International Group, 2014); Ken Blanchard, The Heart of a Leader (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007); Sara Thorpe, Jackie Clifford, Podręcznik coachingu: compendium wiedzy dla trenerów i menedżerów, trans. Anna Sawicka-Chrapkowicz (Poznań: Rebis, 2004). 270 Joanna Kiereś-Łach ment, which is why they are often created spontaneously, outside the social control of their quality. As a result, teaching these competencies takes on a sophistic character in that it becomes the art of manipulation of another person. 8 It happens that people who are considered experts in the field of communication or speech do not necessarily personify the ethos of the speaker in any way, which results in ignoring the fundamental principles of building a persuasive message. 9 As mentioned earlier, inquiries about rhetoric and universal criteria for cultural discourse have been going on since Greek antiquity, and their intention is to define timeless and supra-cultural norms and principles that would also be resistant to any—not always beneficial to man —changes taking place in social life. Ultimately, it seems that concern for social discourse is concern for rhetoric, its proper face and important, if not crucial, role in this discourse. From its beginnings, rhetoric has been associated with philosophy, and philosophy claims to be the cognitive foundation of human culture and human activity in the world. In this connection, the truth about rhetoric should be recognized, namely that it is theoretical knowledge of the essence of the practice of social communication. Such knowledge conditions the practice, it determines the general criteria for this practice, but the practice itself is already an art, because it concerns specific, life-important issues. 8 Manipulation is difficult to praise, because it invalidates an important and good aspect of social discourse. The essence of manipulation is to evoke the illusion of communing with the good and the true in another person, which is done by secret or unknown means. Manipulation is therefore a fraud, as a result of which a person persists in the erroneous belief that the decision he/she has made is the result of his/her free and conscious choice. For more on it, see Piotr Jaroszyński, “Manipulacja,” in Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii, vol. 6, ed. Andrzej Maryniarczyk (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2006), 779–780. 9 For more about the speaker’s ethos, see Maria J. Gondek, “Ethos jako forma perswazji retorycznej w ujęciu Arystotelesa,” Wistnik Charkiwskowo Nacionalnowo Uniwersitetu, no. 1057 (2013): 114–120; Maria J. Gondek, “Ethos mówcy w ‘Gawędzie o gawędzeniu’ o. Jacka Woronieckiego,” Studia Gilsoniana 6, no. 3 (July–September 2017): 425–449. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 271 This article engages these considerations that have been conducted in the field of culture since ancient times, when the first concepts of rhetoric began to emerge and when the first attempts were made to solve practical problems arising in social discourse. In this connection, it is worthwhile to recall the first concepts of rhetoric and the related attempts to define these criteria in their practical application. Historically, the rise of rhetoric is associated with events that took place in ancient Greece. In literature related to the study of rhetoric, three such events are often indicated, namely, first of all, the creation of the poleis (800–700 BC); secondly, the overthrow of the rule of the tyrant Trazybulos in Sicily (465 BC); thirdly, the arrival to Athens in the Sicilian mission of the sophist Gorgias (427 BC). Thus, thanks to the emergence of the poleis and, as a consequence, the emergence of various forms of social life (civilization), both politicians and citizens had to learn to speak in public. Convincing others about their point depended on the ability to recall the appropriate argumentation. The example is the case of Sicily, where democracy was brought after the overthrow of the tyrant’s rule. This gave the oppressed citizens a chance to recover previously lost goods and lands. However, since there were many cases of vindications, but much fewer lawyers who could represent injured persons, citizens had to go on trial and vindicate their rights. This situation caused many Greeks to think about the speeches, their types and the criteria of persuasion. Corax of Syracuse and his student Tisias made a particular contribution to this issue. The third event, which is recognized as a breakthrough for Greece and the birth of rhetoric, was associated with the arrival of Gorgias to Athens, whose speeches increased awareness of the important role that the spoken word played in public life. Thus, problems related to everyday civic life became the main reason for the rise of rhetoric and for its development. Theoretical considerations of language, its structure and functions, as well as its persuasive capacity followed the spontaneous “de- 272 Joanna Kiereś-Łach velopment” of rhetoric. In other words, reflection on rhetoric, its essence and principles is something secondary to rhetorical practice, but necessary in that it is actually cognitively primary. 10 Chaim Perelman on the Causes of the Rhetoric Crisis The work of contemporary thinker, Chaim Perelman, creator of the so-called new rhetoric, deserves to be recognized as a “classic” of rhetorical thought. It is impossible to deal with issues in the theory of rhetoric without recalling the concepts of this thinker, especially his views on the philosophical foundations of rhetoric. He is definitely a point of reference and authority on the basis of reflection on rhetoric and its philosophical foundations. He not only restored rhetoric to its rightful place in scientific and social discourse, but, above all, he renewed key issues and solutions related to it, but first and foremost he pointed out the reasons for its crisis and, then, its fall. This proposal has many supporters and opponents who appreciate its contribution to research on rhetoric, but do not remain uncritical of its claims. This article will take into account and refer critically to both attitudes. Perelman agrees with the view that rhetoric was discovered by ancient thinkers, but emphasizes that its rational basis was created only by Aristotle, who stressed the connection between rhetoric and dialectic. The beginnings of the crisis of rhetoric, i.e., the loss of its understanding and role in social debate, are associated with the Middle Ages, because, in Perelman’s opinion, during this period rhetoric was gradually reduced to a divagation over the ornamentation of speech. However, the proper beginnings of the rhetoric crisis are associated with the ReCf. Anna Kucz, “Retoryka i oratorstwo w starożytności,” in Retoryka, ed. Maria Barłowska, Agnieszka Budzyńska-Daca, Piotr Wilczek (Warszawa: PWN, 2008), 17– 19; Mirosław Korolko, Sztuka retoryki. Przewodnik encyklopedyczny (Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1990), 27–34. 10 The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 273 naissance thinker Petrus Ramus, who, contrary to Aristotle and tradition, separated dialectics and rhetoric, and combined dialectics with logic. It was Ramus’s opinion that both logic and dialectics are only about justifying the judgments, and it is irrelevant whether the justification is necessary or related to the opinion and what is probable/possible. But then, as Perelman points out, the opinion, which is probable, is the domain of rhetoric. As a result, rhetoric without rational bases turns into stylistics, i.e., the theory of tropes, stylistic figures and verbal expression techniques. 11 It follows that the key reason for the fall of classical rhetoric was its break with philosophy, and especially with Aristotle’s Organon (a collection of his logical writings), which made it an area close to poetry, that is not about persuasion, but about aesthetic catharsis.12 Perelman also notes that there were many significant attempts in history to restore rhetoric to its proper place and role. He draws particular attention to the Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition and its empiricist-nominalist trend (F. Bacon, J. Locke, D. Hume, Th. Reid), up to contemporary broadly understood analytical philosophy (J. Searle, J. L. Austin, P. Grice and others), in which psychological (emotional) and ideologically (worldview) determined aspects of discourse and their persuasive usefulness (value) in justifying judgments and decisions and in persuading the interlocutor were appreciated. Perelman also treats American tradition, little known in Europe, with great appreciation. He associates his own concept of rhetoric with this achievement, as well as the hope of overcoming Europe’s antipathy to this culturally important discipline. He praises the American tradition of the likes of Samuel Cf. Chaim Perelman, “The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning,” in The New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays on Rhetoric and its Applications (Dordrecht: Holland/Boston: U.S.A./London: England: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 1–2. 12 Cf. Chaim Perelman, L’empire rhétorique. Rhétorique et argumentation (Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002), 13–15. 11 274 Joanna Kiereś-Łach Silas Curry, James Albert Winans, Charles S. Baldwin, Harry Caplan, Lane Cooper, Everett Lee Hunt and Richard McKeon. The American view emphasizes the importance of rhetoric in social discourse: in politics, in law, in ethics, in philosophy, and in religion. It also emphasizes the persuasive nature of this discourse. Accordingly, it treats rhetoric as an art of persuasion, and therefore, which is close to Perelman, focuses on distinguishing various techniques used in rhetorical argumentation.13 As mentioned, Perelman proclaims that rhetoric is closely related to philosophy, but he is aware that the problem of philosophy itself should be resolved, namely, the answer to the question: what (which) philosophy resolves the issue of the essence of rhetoric? Philosophy— its specific tradition or current or school—can favor rhetoric or depreciate its role in human life, or even ignore it. Historically, an excellent illustration of the above thesis is the position of the rationalist Parmenides. He excluded rhetoric from the sphere of rational discourse, not unlike the general views of sophists who based all cultural and philosophical discourse on persuasion, such that the goal was seen as influencing the will of the listener and obtaining his/her approval; sophists also emphasized the role of authority in the discourse. Plato placed rhetoric under the so-called maieutics, for he saw in it a dialectical tool for persuading about or guiding toward the discovered truth. Plato condemned the sophistic concept of rhetoric because he saw in it only the art of manipulation. In turn, Aristotle, who settled this dispute on the basis of the division of philosophy into theoretical and practical ones, placed rhetoric in the sphere of practical discourse and associated it with what is possible and probable, namely with art. He based his conception of rhetoric on experience and common sense, but he treated it as the art of persuasion, i.e., the art of influencing one’s judgment and decision. However, the aforementioned Petrus Ramus threw rhetoric 13 Cf. Perelman, “The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning,” 4–5. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 275 beyond philosophy as a rational discourse, and eventually French rationalist Rene Descartes ousted it from philosophy with his concept of evidence as a criterion of truth, from which it follows that what is possible and probable is not evident and thus does not fit in terms of truth. According to Perelman, Cartesian absolutism (rationalism) dominated the philosophy and theory of science, but, as he emphasizes, the view was criticized: Karl Popper turned out to be the ultimate conqueror of rationalism, who challenged the Cartesian dogma of evidence (obviousness) as the infallible criterion of truth. He stated that science creates hypotheses, and its domain is the search for convincing arguments that will support their acceptance. He also emphasized the role of the scholar’s culture, authority and personality. Popper’s thought changes the face of philosophy and science, because it departs from traditional apriorism and absolutism (rationalism), and makes them self-critical disciplines, open to the modification (falsification) of assumptions and views. According to Perelman, a contemporary change in the criterion of rationality demands a renaissance of rhetoric, because it gives rhetoric a strong theoretical foundation. 14 Perelman is convinced that his own insight into the history of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric proves that the situation of rhetoric depends on the concept of philosophy and that errors in the field of philosophy (absolutism, formalism, scientism) cast a shadow on rhetoric, limit its scope and applicability, and in extreme cases they eliminate it from cultural discourse. He also emphasizes that changes taking place in European culture, and especially in politics that implements the idea of liberal democracy and the civil state, demand a return of rhetoric. These changes suppose that worldview dialogue is the heart of social life and culture, and rhetoric, understood as a general theory of persuasive speech, covers the “extensive field of informal thought,” i.e., 14 Cf. Perelman, L’empire rhétorique, 169–195. 276 Joanna Kiereś-Łach thought measured by worldview, values and beliefs. For this reason, he believes, culture is ruled by a “rhetorical empire” in which rhetoric, as Walter Jens put it, is “the old and new queen of the humanities.” 15 According to popular opinion, Perelman’s investigations contributed to the 20th-century rhetorical revolution, the growing interest about rhetoric in the academic environment. Perelman demanded a respect for the ancient rhetoric and also referred to it in substantive terms, although as evidenced by the label “new rhetoric” nominally used by Perelman himself, his demand intends to improve rhetoric and develop its important themes. He thinks that modern times are challenging, since they are dominated by changes taking place in philosophy, science and social policy. He adds that the re-flourishing of rhetoric and argumentation theory was also largely due to the rehabilitation of colloquial language associated with the changing times, which until now—especially in formal disciplines—was accused of ambiguity and lack of accuracy.16 What Is New in the New Rhetoric?17 An assessment of key aspects of Perelman’s concept of rhetoric with the intention of determining its novelty yields that, first of all, the “new rhetoric” is not limited to style, it is also not focused on one of the components of traditional rhetoric, namely on the demonstrative type. Moreover, it certainly is not reduced to the rationally understood logos (and its criteria of consistency and evidence) and thus is not a formal 15 Cf. ibid., 198–199: “Ainsi conçue, elle couvre le champ immense de la pensée nonformalismée: on peut parler, à ce propos, de l’empire rhétorique; c’est dans cet esprit que le professeur W. Jens, de l’université de Tübingen, l’a qualifiée d’ancienne et nouvelle reine des sciences humaines (alte und neue Königin der Wissenschaften).” 16 Cf. Michel Meyer, Manuel Maria Carrilho, Benoit Timmermans, Historia retoryki od Greków do dziś, trans. Zuzanna Baran (Warszawa: Aletheia, 2010), 263–264. 17 This issue was indicated in Joanna Kiereś-Łach’s book, Filozofia i retoryka. Kontekst myślowy “nowej retoryki” Chaima Perelmana (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Academicon, 2015). The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 277 discipline, so it does not fall within the scope of logic. It is also not a collection of stylistic figures that explicitly serve manipulation, diverting the attention of the listener or interlocutor from the immoral idea of the speaker. Perelman’s rhetoric in the strict sense, as a set of argumentative techniques, is not bound to formal standards and ideals of logic, in the name of which the colloquial language would be unified (“mummified”) or deprived of its vitality and dynamism. Thus, at the root of his “new rhetoric” lies the key thesis that rationality is not just the domain of logicism (formalism). In other words, not everything that is formally illogical is ex definitione senseless. This belief is associated with the distinction of two functions of reason, namely its rational function and reasonable function. This second function, what is reasonable, is based on its own arguments and related argumentation, which naturally precede decision-making and action. In the context of the above reflection, Perelman formulates his definition of rhetoric as a theory of argumentation for which the object is to study discursive techniques allowing us to induce or to increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent.18 In Perelman’s opinion, rhetoric—defined in this way—has to serve philosophy, has to be its methodological tool, useful in the practical sphere, e.g., in ethics, law and politics. In connection with the above, it was aptly emphasized that Perelman’s concept of philosophy should be 18 Cf. Chaim Perelman, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, Traité de l’argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Universite de Bruxelles, 2008), 5: “[D]e meme, la théorie de l’argumentation ne peut se developper so toute prevue est conçue comme reduction à l’évidence. En efet, l’objet de cette théorie est l’étude des techniques discursives permettant de provoquer ou d’accroître l’adhésion des esprits aux theses qu’on présente à leur assentiment.” And Chaim Perelman, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric. A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson, Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 4: “In the same way, the theory of argumentation cannot be developed if every proof is conceived of as a reduction to the self-evident. Indeed, the object of the theory of argumentation is the study of the discursive techniques allowing us to induce or to increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent.” 278 Joanna Kiereś-Łach referred to as the new rhetoric sensu largo, and that of rhetoric as the proposed methodological tool of the new rhetoric sensu stricto.19 As he often emphasizes, rhetoric is almost an antipode of logic, because logic does not have sufficient tools to deal with problems of all kinds. Especially nowadays, logic is reduced to a formal discipline which purpose is the logical analysis of language and the examination of the correctness of formal proofs.20 In short, Perelman understands rhetoric as an argumentative practice wherever logical proof cannot be used or evidence cannot be found.21 Perelman’s argumentation is defined as “an extended form of Reason and Rationality”22 and opposed to the aforementioned rhetoric of style which uses language figures for stylistic purposes. Rhetoric, however, emphasizes the persuasive power of these figures. The theory of argumentation will therefore be a treasury of figures that have argumentative power, and thus help the speaker to convince the audience, not to give the audience mere aesthetic or psychological satisfaction. Style rhetoric, or simply stylistics, gathers figures that have a decorative function, while rhetoric sensu stricto, i.e., the theory of rhetorical argumentation, provides knowledge about the mechanisms by which one’s own beliefs are justified. These justifications are based on proba19 The distinction between the new rhetoric sensu largo and the new rhetoric sensu stricto was taken from Anna Frąckiewicz’s doctoral dissertation, “Nowa retoryka Chaima Perelmana jako komunikacyjne ujęcie prawa” (PhD diss., The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, 2007). 20 Cf. Chaim Perelman, Cours de logique, vol. 3 (Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1964), 5–7; Ryszard Kleszcz, “Od analizy do argumentacji. Wprowadzenie do Perelmana,” Studia Filozoficzne 283, no. 6 (1989): 131. 21 For more about the issue of obviousness, see Chaim Perelman, “Évidence et preuve,” in Justice et raison (Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1972), 140–154; Chaim Perelman, “O oczywistości w metafizyce,” trans. Adam Węgrzecki, in Szkice filozoficzne: Romanowi Ingardenowi w darze, ed. Zofia Żarnecka (Warszawa–Kraków: PWN, 1964), 159–171. 22 Cf. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, ed. Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzberg (Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 1990), 1410. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 279 ble (enthymematic) reasoning, acquired experience and established custom, or on the basis of so-called common sense. The rhetorical approach to knowledge as a sphere of permanent discourse protects it from the error of absolutism (apriorism) and mental inertia, which often unreflectively absolutizes and accepts a certain opinion. As Perelman thinks, contemporary philosophers are ready to agree with this approach; they point out that scientific knowledge is the fruit of continuous discussion that takes place within societies that share common beliefs, assumptions, ideals and values, and in various ways make them concrete. Emerging positions and disputes are a source of cognitive progress and moral improvement for humans as social beings. Perelman adds that belief in absolutism destroys all discussion and results in reductionist and inhuman ideologies. 23 Culture and the “New Rhetoric” It is the cultural duty of rhetoric to show that not all statements are obvious and “closed,”24 i.e., absolute, and that key discourses for human culture are persuasive, and therefore based on justifications and arguments that take into account the role of the audience, and even cor23 Ibid. Perelman refers here to the conception which was very popular in the 1950s, namely conception of the so-called “open concepts,” which was characteristic for one of the varieties of British analytical philosophy—linguistic philosophy—inspired by the views of Ludwig Wittgenstein, from the second period of his activity. Proponents of this conception distinguish “closed concepts,” appropriate to formal disciplines (logic, mathematics, geometry) whose scope and content are explicitly defined, from “open concepts,” i.e., all qualitative concepts (e.g., man, love, truth, justice, value), whose scope and content are perennially flexible, perennially debatable and subject to constant modification. The consequence of this position is the thesis that universal definitions of open terms are logically precluded—one can only create their reporting definitions and critically highlight those uses that are fertile cognitively and practically. This view took the name of “anti-essentialism.” Cf. Morris Weitz, The Opening Mind: A Philosophical Study of Humanistic Concepts (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977). 24 280 Joanna Kiereś-Łach respond to the will and intention of the audience. In assessing his own program of renewing rhetoric, Perelman emphasizes that it is discovering the importance of such concepts as discussion, persuasion, audience and dialectic in the field of practical life. These concepts are part of the canon of reasoning analysis based on probable premises which, thanks to their persuasive power, lead to important decisions. Reversing the order, it can also be said that thanks to the understanding of rhetorical mechanisms it is possible to justify the value of deeds that are the result of decisions based on rhetorical argumentation. 25 Perelman constantly repeats that rhetoric, understood as the theory of persuasive speech or the theory of rhetorical argumentation, includes every statement which purpose is not to express an impersonal truth, but through which one aims to influence another person or persons. Exerting influence on somebody can, however, consist in both attempting to direct another’s thinking, arousing or calming another’s emotions, as well as inducing another to act. At this point it is important to note that Perelman distinguishes cultural abstract values from concrete values. The former are hidden behind denominations common to all mankind, e.g., good, love, holiness, but they are specified and hierarchized in specific cultural contexts, so they are given a specific meaning, i.e., a specific concept of good, love or holiness. In other words, abstract values are made concrete in a specific culture, its history, experiences and goals. All these goals should harmonize with the concrete values assumed by the speaker, around which he wants to gather his listeners. Such values gain acceptance, if they are associated with abstract values adopted at the starting point by the participants in the discourse. Consensus on specific values presented for acceptance is there- 25 Cf. The Rhetorical Tradition, 1410. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 281 fore only possible in a community already organized around a purpose, and recognizing the same abstract values. 26 According to Perelman, the cultural and universal value of the “new rhetoric” that differentiates it from ancient rhetoric is that it can be directed to any type of audience. So it can be both a crowd gathered in a public place, a team of specialists in a particular field, a single person, or all humanity. It can be practiced in an intra-subjective mode, i.e., considering arguments that arise during internal deliberation (arguments that we direct to ourselves when we consider a given issue, before making a decision or before taking action). In other words, the domain of rhetoric includes any statement aimed at conviction or persuasion. It deals with all types of reasoning that are not formal (they are not formally correct inferences), nor are they mechanical calculations. Therefore, the argumentation is rhetorical regardless of to whom it is addressed or with what it deals; it does not concern the obvious in the sense that it neither provides it nor is directed against it; it deals with the area of reality where there is simply no sufficient reason to take something as self-evident, or there are doubts about something and it is necessary to justify one or another choice. Perelman points out that by distancing rhetoric from logic and formal evidence, he does not claim that rhetoric has nothing to do with evidence. If the speaker is convinced that he is sure about something, then he uses arguments to propagate what he is sure of. One might think that Perelman’s remark concerns what could be called subjective evidence, i.e., the speaker’s internal conviction or faith in the rightness of the argumentation that he used. Such evidence cannot be a criterion of truth, even if the preferred judgments correspond with intuition or with common sense—so important in Perelman’s conception. Perelman constantly emphasizes that rhetoric is a tool of philosophy if it is considered that philosophical 26 Cf. Perelman, L’empire rhétorique, 197–199. 282 Joanna Kiereś-Łach statements are only some kind of hypothesis that can be an optional solution and not be treated as unchanging and ahistorical truths.27 Conclusion Perelman strongly emphasizes the dialogical nature of culture. According to him, dialogism is a universal recipe for developing culture. The key to cultural discourse is for its participants to be aware that their living is a constant dialogue. Only this universal awareness will protect culture and its participants from such threats as civilizational totalitarianism and cultural monism. Not without significance is Chaim Perelman’s personal experience of the evil of World War II, especially the crimes of genocide (the Holocaust). This painful experience led him to believe that the history of European culture is the history of overcoming traditional absolutism in favor of epistemological and worldview pluralism, as well as egalitarianism, which in turn underlies a democratic civil state. Rhetoric, understood as the theory of persuasive speech (rhetoric sensu stricto), would then be the foundation and at the same time an instrument of social and cultural dialogue. It is absolutely necessary to appreciate Perelman’s claims, and see the validity of his criticism of rationalism (absolutism, scientism, logicalism) which—let us emphasize—is one (beside irrationalism) of the currents of the tradition of idealism. For this reason, his thesis, according to which the entire cultural and social discourse, and consequently the whole philosophy, is rhetorical, leads to circular reasoning in justification, and ultimately to relativism, according to which abstract values (truth, good and beauty) are gradual, changeable and dependent on the civilizational and cultural context. What is more, the adoption of relativism as the basis of philosophy leads directly to relativism as the 27 Ibid., 15–23. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 283 basis of rhetoric, which concerns what is possible and what may—but does not have to—happen, but is ultimately based on acts of will (voluntarism) and on a contract (conventionalism). Rhetoric in the classical (Aristotelian) approach takes into account what is really possible and probable, and thus finally becomes valid in the context of real experience. In other words, rhetoric considers what is possible in the future, but is always based on the past and the present. This criticism, nevertheless, does not entirely undermine Perelman’s achievements in the field of argumentative techniques, which can be successfully used as part of and within the context of classical (Aristotelian) rhetoric. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse. In Terms of Chaim Perelman SUMMARY This article is an attempt to answer the question about the causes of the rhetoric crisis and its role in social discourse. The theoretical basis of these considerations and their reference point is the concept of new rhetoric in terms of the contemporary rhetoric and argumentation theorist Chaim Perelman. The first part briefly describes contemporary cultural discourse that takes place in a democratized society in the era of so-called new media. It indicates that inquiry into rhetoric (which started in antiquity) is also inquiry into universal criteria for cultural discourse, as well as the timeless and supra-cultural norms and principles that regulate this discourse (taking into account ongoing social and cultural changes). The second part of the article refers directly to the position of Chaim Perelman on the crisis of rhetoric. Perelman saw the main reason for this crisis in the separation of rhetoric from philosophy. The third part characterizes the new rhetoric in terms of its novelty and timeliness, as well as its reference to classical (Aristotelian) rhetoric. The fourth part points to the application of the concept of new rhetoric in cultural discourse. It discusses Perelman’s concept of universal audience, as well as the problem of concrete and abstract values, the understanding of which by the members of a given audience does or does not enable the communication (consensus) between each other. The end of the article briefly assesses Perelman’s contribution to understanding rhetoric and his role in restoring rhetoric to its rightful place in social discourse. 284 Joanna Kiereś-Łach KEYWORDS Chaim Perelman, rhetoric, new rhetoric, philosophy, social discourse, communication, crisis of the rhetoric. REFERENCES Blanchard, Ken. The Heart of a Leader. Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007. Bokacki, Robert St. Leadership Tool Box – ludzki kontekst przywództwa. Warszawa: Kontekst HR International Group, 2014. Esbroeck, Raoul Van, and James A. Athanasou. “Introduction: An International Handbook of Career Guidance.” In International Handbook of Career Guidance, edited by James A. Athanasou, Raoul Van Esbroeck, 1–19. Springer Science +Business Media B.V., 2008. Excellence in Coaching: The Industry Guide, edited by Jonathan Passmore. London /Philadelphia: Kogan Page, 2016. 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Hunt, Shelby D. “The Nature and Scope of Marketing.” Journal of Marketing 40, no. 3 (1976): 17–28. Jaroszyński, Piotr. “Manipulacja.” In Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii, vol. 6, edited by Andrzej Maryniarczyk, 779–780. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2006. Kiereś-Łach, Joanna. Filozofia i retoryka. Kontekst myślowy “nowej retoryki” Chaima Perelmana. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Academicon, 2015. Kleszcz, Ryszard. “Od analizy do argumentacji. Wprowadzenie do Perelmana.” Studia Filozoficzne 283, no. 6 (1989): 123–135. Korolko, Mirosław. Sztuka retoryki. Przewodnik encyklopedyczny. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1990. Kucz, Anna. “Retoryka i oratorstwo w starożytności.” In Retoryka, edited by Maria Barłowska, Agnieszka Budzyńska-Daca, Piotr Wilczek, 17–34. Warszawa: PWN, 2008. Meyer, Michel, and Manuel Maria Carrilho, Benoit Timmermans. Historia retoryki od Greków do dziś. Translated by Zuzanna Baran. Warszawa: Aletheia, 2010. The Causes of the Crisis of Rhetoric and Its Role in Social Discourse 285 Perelman, Chaim. Cours de logique, vol. 3. Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1964. Perelman, Chaim. Justice et raison. Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1972. Perelman, Chaim. L’empire rhétorique. Rhétorique et argumentation. Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002. Perelman, Chaim. “O oczywistości w metafizyce.” Translated by Adam Węgrzecki. In Szkice filozoficzne: Romanowi Ingardenowi w darze, edited by Zofia Żarnecka, 159–171. Warszawa–Kraków: PWN, 1964. Perelman, Chaim. The New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays on Rhetoric and its Applications. Dordrecht: Holland/Boston: U.S.A./London: England: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979. Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric. A Treatise on Argumentation. Translated by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. Traité de l’argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Universite de Bruxelles, 2008. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 1990. Thorpe, Sara, and Jackie Clifford. Podręcznik coachingu: compendium wiedzy dla trenerów i menedżerów. Translated by Anna Sawicka-Chrapkowicz. Poznań: Rebis, 2004. Weitz, Morris. The Opening Mind: A Philosophical Study of Humanistic Concepts. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 287–315 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090212 Jason Nehez* In Pursuit of True Wisdom: How the Re-Emergence of Classical Wonder Should Replace Descartes’s Neo-Averrostic Sophistry At the heart of many scientific and philosophical debates and discussions today lies a layer underneath that can be missed by our times’ propensity toward mathematical physics. That layer is ultimately a question of what fundamentally is wisdom and science. If we call ourselves “lovers of wisdom”(philosophers/scientists) and what we are doing is the “love of wisdom” (philosophy/science), then, apparently, we would know, and agree on what constitutes that wisdom for which we are in pursuit. This syntopical presentation aims to take a look at the writings and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in comparison and contrast to the writings and thought of Rene Descartes, who has come to be known as the “Father of modern philosophy.” In this comparison, it will be shown that the modern concept of wisdom fundamentally diverges with the thinking of Descartes, that, strictly speaking, at least in his metaphysical first principles, if not in his chief aim, he may be a sophist, no philosopher at all. It will also be shown that St. Thomas Aquinas anticipated this divergence and gave a defense in his writing against it. It will be concluded with what constitutes real philosophy and science as presented by St. Thomas Aquinas. Jason Nehez — Holy Apostles College and Seminary, Cromwell, Conn., USA e-mail: jnehez@holyapostles.edu ▪ ORCID: 0000-0002-6252-127X * ARTICLE — Received: Feb. 22, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Mar. 30, 2020 288 Jason Nehez In his work, Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas writes concerning wisdom, “Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the more perfect, the more sublime, the more useful, and the more agreeable. The more perfect, because in so far as a man gives himself up to the pursuit of wisdom, to that extent he enjoys already some portion of true happiness.”1 St. Thomas recognizes that it is in the pursuit of wisdom that man pursues true happiness. This is because, as he mentions in the same work, the lover, or pursuer, of wisdom rightly directs the order of things. A human being who recognizes right order in something must consider that thing’s proper end or aim. According to St. Thomas, the proper end or aim of something is that for which it is naturally striving to reach its perfection. Therefore, the proper end or aim of anything is its proper good. It follows then that the proper end or aim of human wisdom is all good, which would end in true happiness for man, because man’s true end and aim is happiness. Any philosophy or science so called that does not direct its aims toward good, or true, human happiness cannot rightly be called wisdom. For, just as we would hardly call someone who used the medical arts to end human life as opposed to promote it a health professional, we ought to be just as discerning in what we call true wisdom. According to St. Thomas, a human being who seeks to pursue true wisdom must start in the following way: “That they seek to escape from ignorance is made clear from the fact that those who first philosophized and who now philosophize did so from wonder about some cause.”2 St. Thomas recognized that wonder essentially motivated the 1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 2, trans. Joseph Rickaby, S.J. (London: Burns and Oates, 1905). Available online—see the section References for details. 2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, I, 3, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago: Regnery, 1964). Available online—see the section References for details. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 289 first philosophers and motivates all philosophers throughout all time. Those who rightly philosophize perceive some event, or effect, and seek to relieve a personal perplexity, ignorance, that arises from lack of understanding of the cause of that event. St Thomas and Aristotle had recognized that, in a way (analogously), even the early Greek poets were philosophers because they perceived effects, and even though they theomorphized them, they sought to discover the causes to remove their ignorance. Later philosophers only needed to understand more precisely the true nature of these causes, not change the method, habit of discovering causes, or deny their reality altogether. For St. Thomas, wisdom necessarily assumes that we are: (1) receiving some accurate information from our sense perception, and (2) able to apprehend the cause of effects. It takes for granted that those causes are apprehensible by us, not outside of the ability of human understanding and not, as some have claimed, lying only in God’s knowledge, or others have said, unknown entirely to the nature of human understanding. A crucial point to recognize regarding the true starting point of philosophical activity. Through our intellectual de-materializing, or abstracting, ability related to our sense perception, every psychologically-healthy human being has the natural ability to perceive real effects and determine true causes. As the Latin saying goes, Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu (“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses”). Philosophy’s history from the ancient Greeks to the Rene Descartes is a fascinating topic, and one that is beyond the purview of this presentation. Sufficient here is for me to mention Peter A. Redpath’s work, Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry. In this work Redpath presents a compelling argument that, strictly speaking, what Descartes was presenting at the time was not the first 290 Jason Nehez birth of true philosophy. It was really a new species of sophistry, a product, and continuation, of the influence on him of Italian renaissance humanism (rhetoric) and what he had considered to be a Jesuit education too much focused on the trivium as if it had comprised the whole of worthwhile knowledge, philosophy.3 While Descartes’s reactions against philosophy thus understood might not have been against philosophy per se as understood by the ancient Greeks, or a proper understanding of St. Thomas teaching about philosophy’s nature (but a reaction against a prevailing misunderstanding of these at the time), for us to note it suffices for a main aim of this paper: to show that Descartes’s method did not initiate a true understanding of philosophy, wisdom. It created a new kind of sophistry. In his Discourse on the Method, Descartes provides his reaction to what he understood to be philosophy, Of philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated for many ages by the most distinguished men, and that yet there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be greater in it than that of others; and further, when I considered the number of conflicting opinions touching a single matter that may be upheld by learned men, while there can be but one true, I reckoned as well-nigh false all that was only probable. 4 As can be seen in the preceding passage, young Descartes’s attitude toward philosophy as he understood it at the time (as a kind of sophistry) is extremely negative. He perceives that, while philosophy has been studied for many centuries by many distinguished individuals, 3 Peter A. Redpath, Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry (Amsterdam–Atlanta, GA: Rodopi B.V., 1997), 81. 4 Rene Descartes, A Discourse on Method, trans. John Veitch (Project Gutenberg, 2008; ebook edition), loc. 92. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 291 no perceived consensus has been reached among these individuals about what constitutes true philosophy. Normal is for human beings, sometimes, to express feelings of frustration at a lack of universal agreement about a solution of a complex problem; but to use that frustration as a test for the method’s veracity is a different matter. To base any test of veracity on universal assent or agreement itself appears dubious. Nonetheless, at this juncture, Descartes claims to say farewell to the philosophy, or sophistry, of his time as if it represented the whole of philosophy as those prior to him had understood and practiced philosophy. Why he thinks that, by (1) removing himself from the present conversation as if it constituted the whole of the historical discussion prior to him and his time and (2) creating a “new system” is not also another understanding of philosophy about which people will agree and disagree is, also, something he does not explain. It is difficult for an impartial observer not to assume he is asking for special pleading of his Method. Whatever the case, this move will prove to be a short-term, Pyrrhic victory for him, at best. Essentially based upon a flawed understanding of human nature as one of his first principles, Descartes will initiate a new form of cultural psychology and misunderstanding of philosophy/science still being felt today in all our modern institutions of intellectual learning and culture. Immediately after expressing his opinion about the pathetic condition of philosophy in his time as he understood it, he provides this opinion about science, “As to the other sciences, inasmuch as these borrow their principles from philosophy, I judged that no solid superstructures could be reared on foundations so infirm.” 5 So, in addition to eliminating from consideration philosophy (which Descartes appears to 5 Ibid., loc. 93. 292 Jason Nehez be conflating with metaphysics, what for centuries prior to him, following Aristotle, university professors and their students in the West had called “first philosophy”), apparently recognizing philosophy (metaphysics) to be the source of other species of philosophical/scientific understanding, Descartes chose to ignore these other “sciences” as well. This move appears to have been an intentional casting into doubt of a main assumption in the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and the leading ancient Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, as they had understood the correspondence to reality of our sense perceptions and the hierarchical order of our knowledge from first principles known to us, in chronologically-first order through the senses and later (as we ascend from sensory effects to higher causes), eventually known in light of metaphysical first principles. Considered in themselves as more perfect in being, according to Aristotle and St. Thomas, these metaphysical first principles and immaterial causes are the qualitatively highest of knowable beings and qualitatively widest and deepest of causes. Nonetheless, our first apprehension of them in and through sense perception is weak and remote. Only analogously did Aristotle and Aquinas speak of principles and causes in the lower sciences. In setting the stage for his method where he will say we can no longer start discovery with trust in the information from our sense perceptions, Descartes unwittingly cut himself off from centuries of previous thinking on the subject. In so doing, he had eliminated the route to immaterial, metaphysical first principles, causes from abstraction of sense perceptions; and to a proper understanding of classical philosophy; and especially metaphysics and how it relates to other divisions of philosophy/science. Before going any further into the cave of doubt started by Descartes, helpful, at this point, is to consider how St. Thomas had understood order and science because doing so now will allow me later in In Pursuit of True Wisdom 293 this paper to make a proper comparison between the teachings of Aquinas and Descartes about the nature of philosophy/science. Toward the start of his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, Thomas states, “It is the business of the wise man to order. The reason for this is that wisdom is the most powerful perfection of reason whose characteristic is to know order. Even if the sensitive powers know some things absolutely, nevertheless to know the order of one thing to another is exclusively the work of intellect or reason.” 6 As it has been discussed already, for ancient Greeks and Aquinas, philosophy consists mainly in discovery of the causes of effects, the discovery of first principles. In addition, to some extent, it involves discovery of how, once we know them, to apply first principles, causes, to generate effects. We discover those causes by ordering of the intellect and the relationship of effects to causes and causes to other causes and effects. While our senses might produce some true image that initiates this discovery, dematerializing, ordering, and judging is a product of our unique human intellect. No other creatures possess this power; and even within us this power is used in degrees. Hence, the reason some people are wiser than others. Thomas continues, Now a twofold order is found in things. One kind is that of parts of a totality, that is a group, among themselves, as the parts of a house are mutually ordered to each other. The second is that of things to an end. This order is of greater importance than the first. For, as the Philosopher says . . . the order of the parts of an 6 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. 1, L. 1, trans. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964). Available online—see the section References for details. 294 Jason Nehez army among themselves exists because of the order of the whole army to the commander.7 Here lies a crucial understanding of the approach of St. Thomas to wisdom and philosophy/science. In things, composite wholes, an order of parts to a whole exists. The example he provides is of parts of a house mutually ordered. These parts must have unequal possession of the whole: the house. For example, the foundation will be unlike the framing, the framing unlike the insulation, the insulation unlike the roofing, and so on. But we can say these many parts are all one, albeit unequally, in possession of the whole, or genus, of being of the house. This is not, as some people are known to say, that the whole of a thing is the sum of the parts. On the contrary, the whole, or real genus, unifies the parts of a whole by a measure or limit of having parts. By their sum, the parts do not produce the whole of which they are parts. How could they? None of them is the whole in itself and the juxtaposition of them does not necessarily make a unified whole. Given our example, someone might imagine the parts arranged in such a way as to have the same shape of a “house;” but were it to be used as a barbershop, is it still a house? The parts did not make the whole. The whole makes this “house” a place of business. Another example offered by Aristotle is of a human and a corpse. When the body is ensouled, it is a one unified human person. But when the soul has left the body, the whole has changed. It is no longer qualitatively the same organization. No longer is it a human person. It is a corpse, a soulless body. While a corpse might carry some moral dignities and rights, most human beings would not say it is the qualitatively same whole as that of a fully-ensouled human person. And so it is the measure of the whole 7 Ibid. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 295 that has a unifying and limiting factor making a one unified thing out of a multitude of parts. The concept of unity and plurality is crucial to St. Thomas’s understanding of order. In A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics, Redpath explains precisely why: The one is undivided, does not possess, is deprived of, division, and is the opposite of division or plurality. Plurality, not number, is the first-conceived opposite of unity and the ground of all division and difference. Hence, Aquinas maintained, we derive the idea of unity from the idea “of order or lack of division.” The concept of unity entails, depends upon, negation and privation (species of opposition) for its intelligibility.8 This may turn an uncritical understanding of unity of some readers on its head. What is being said immediately above is that unity is not primarily number. We do not first conceive of, know, find a one because some whole is one in number. We find a one because some continuum body qualitatively resists division into a plurality. This might appear to be a semantic backflip, but its truth can be seen when we press a little passed our first, broad and confused, sensory grasp of things and perceive how a thing is first understood as one. All unities are a negation of plurality. This group of unrelated men becomes one army by the lack of division into unrelated parts by the unity provided by a real genus (whole) comprised of the parts and purpose ordered to the whole by the aim of a highest commander. This one man Socrates lacks division into corpse and disembodied soul when he is united as one in nature and substance in a real genus (organizational whole) and species of man whose chief organizational aim is happiness. 8 Peter A. Redpath, A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics (St. Louis, MO: En Route Books and Media, 2015; kindle edition), loc. 2624. 296 Jason Nehez Because breaking a composite, organizational, whole into its essentially constituent parts is the way we human beings first know everything, this concept (unity as understood as a lack of, resistance to, division, or breakability, into plurality) as understood by St. Thomas is crucial to understanding the nature of all philosophy/science, and especially how Aquinas and Aristotle had understood these. No wonder, then, that St. Thomas says understanding the end of a whole is the most crucial principle to grasp in order to know how any finite being is ordered, or organized. For example, squads, platoons, and companies or even the Army, Navy, and Air Force, are all ordered to each other inasmuch as they are ordered to a chief organizational aim or purpose through a highest commander. Without the aim of the highest commander, the highest in the genus unifying the parts to a common goal or aim, the parts have no organizational unity. Again, the sum of the platoons does not constitute an army. The commander unites an army to the platoons for the goal of militaristic success. If we consider the house example, the parts are ordered to the whole of a house so that a house is ordered to its aim as a shelter for a person or family. Change the chief aim, say from a shelter to family to a storage facility, or place of business, and now (without affecting a single part individually or specifically), you have fundamentally changed the thing by changing its genus, or organizational unity. Understanding this concept we can continue with St. Thomas, Now order is related to reason in a fourfold way. There is one order that reason does not establish but only beholds, such is the order of things in nature. There is a second order that reason establishes in its own act of considerations, for example, when it arranges its concepts among themselves, and the signs of concept as well, because words express the meanings of the concepts. There is a third order that reason in deliberating establishes in the operations of the will. There is a fourth order that reason in plan- In Pursuit of True Wisdom 297 ning establishes in the external things which it causes, such as a chest and a house.9 In the above examples, the house and the military, order was discussed as St. Thomas expressed in the fourth order he gives: planning established in external things by a human agent. But philosophy/science chiefly considers things of the highest, or first, order, things not established (humanly caused, produced: products), but contemplatively beheld, such as things in nature. Yet we still understand these products, like manufactured items, as they pertain to unity, privation and possession: the parts to the whole, or the one to the many. In things found in physical nature lies the ability for possession of contrary opposite parts. Some numerically one thing can actually or possibly possess a multitude of potentially contrary opposite qualities, causes, and activities. A person may be hot or cold, sick or healthy, white or black; but, still, the one person possesses the contrary opposites. In order to possess these contrary opposites, some substance (organizational whole) must underlie, cause, generate, the opposites and be that in which these contraries inhere: some real cause that unifies proximate, per se effects or per se accidents into an organizational whole. Some real substance, organization, must exist, unifying the per se accidents to produce numerically-one unified, organizational whole. These essential accidents (properties) are ordered to the substance, such as we find existing in the physical universe around us, which we behold and do not create. As an example, numerically-one tree, although consisting of its multitude of parts (bark, leaves, roots, cells, chlorophyll) possesses an internal, harmoniously-generated unity of parts: a limit, or measure of its existence as a tree identified by its lack of division of these parts. 9 Aquinas, Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. 1, L. 1. 298 Jason Nehez Numerically-one tree possesses the real genus of tree, its associated effects; and, by its specificity and by the human intellect, we are able to understand and comprehend a united-one-thing composed of many unequal parts (an organizational whole, or substance) working together for a common aim. It has already been discussed that, in his Discourse on the Method (which he appears to have conceived as an organizational whole), Descartes had expressed negative opinions about philosophy/science as he understood its nature to be existing during his time. Within that work, he had laid out (ordered, organized) a seemingly careful plan to remove all those “ancient, archaic, unhelpful” ideas and methods from his mind and method so as to be open for entirely and immediately true knowledge. Further, trying to approach their methods with an “open mind,” he decided even physically to remove himself from the environment and travel so as to experience other cultures and the ideas of different lands. After a decade or so of operating as the cultural observer, he sat down in a cabin in Germany and began more exactly to contemplate his method. It is not intended to cover all the steps of his method—only those as allow us a good comparison to St. Thomas in understanding how they differ in each approach to order, perception, and wisdom. In Descartes’s own words, It is sometimes necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be highly uncertain . . . but as I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure exactly the opposite was called for, and that I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions 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 indubitable.10 10 Descartes, A Discourse on Method, loc. 355. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 299 Notice this is not Descartes saying he will exercise a kind of extreme caution in the judgment of the intellect about what the senses perceive. That kind of approach might be warranted in treading on new scientific territory or discovery. This is the mistaken assumption some people today attribute to the Cartesian doubt to bolster Descartes’s flawed method as a good philosophical system. They might claim that Descartes is simply being a “good scientist,” or a “good skeptic:” not hastily making judgments or forcing a hypothesis to a predetermined conclusion. It is not a proper understanding of Descartes’s own words. Descartes is saying that anything not absolutely certain (and we have not yet received his definition of certainty) or, at least, anything that is not absolutely certain to Descartes, he will reject as if it were false. Descartes has entirely changed the name of the game. Historically prior to him, wisdom was (and, properly understood, still is) the satisfaction of wonder in the pursuit of knowledge of causes from sensory effects, as we read in St. Thomas. On the contrary, Descartes maintains that no sensory effects can be used as a starting point for philosophical/scientific activity. He severs the lifeline to wisdom, to sense wonder, and to first, or any, causes. Unless we start already with certain, indubitable, knowledge about the whole of a thing, we will start with a false attribution. Wisdom, for Descartes, does not start in sense wonder, does not chiefly aim at satisfying wonder about causes of effects. It does not even start with truth tables or truth values. Anything with any imaginable, apparent, doubt associated to it, no matter how small, equals False. If and only if absolutely no imaginable doubt exists will that item equal True. The cultural, civilizational, consequences of this move are great. No longer is pursuit of wisdom the pursuit of right understanding of causes of real effects. For Descartes, sense reality becomes known by a kind of mathematical logic. If a thing is clearly and distinctly (mathe- 300 Jason Nehez matically, as he will argue about physical things) true, then it is true in all cases related to sense reality. If something is not clearly and distinctly true then it is false in all such cases. While this may appeal to some who appreciate mathematical precision, this method has a difficult time corresponding even to physical reality, much less to moral and political ones; and even Descartes recognized this in his own time, as we will see later he will need God to make his system intelligible. Descartes continues, Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogism, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experiences when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. 11 An ancient Greek axiom that St. Thomas had adopted, translated as “Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” shows the striking and dramatic shift of the first example here in Descartes’s new method. Because our senses sometimes deceive us, he is willing to throw out all experience and all knowledge that may come via sense perception. This begins to reveal some of the framework of Descartes’s new method. If, as St. Thomas would understand, intellectual knowledge does not first enter by the senses, the sensory data amalgamated into a phan- 11 Ibid. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 301 tasm by the imagination (and abstracted by the agent intellect), then the only other alternative is that the intellectual apprehension of something must have some direct access, some uninhibited avenue or path to the intellect. If this is true, as we will later see, this has striking consequences for the nature of man, the body, the physical world, knowledge, and essentially all reality. Before understanding the consequences, need exists to consider the next item of Descartes’s doubt. After doubting the senses, Descartes does not stop. He continues to doubt any judgments he may have made, such as those that he may have erred about in geometry. He even calls into question any thought at all, since he has had some thoughts that appeared to be very real that turned out to be just the workings of a dream. Initially, concerning the doubts of judgment, such as those attributed to errors in geometry, Descartes calls into question the first order spoken about above in the writings of St. Thomas of which man beholds order in the nature of things. For if we have already cast into doubt our sense perceptions, then those abstracted concepts from the phantasms, such as mathematical and geometrical truths, or true causes of apparently true effects, cannot also be trusted. Descartes increasingly moves further and further away from the ancient Greek concept of wisdom, satisfaction of wonder at the cause of the sensory effects of things. Finally, as he calls into question every sensory appearance, since even some things appear to be very real even in dreams, Descartes goes all the way to casting doubt on the intellect itself, or at least the intellect as understood by ancient wisdom. For, if our senses are in doubt, and the judgments made by the imagination and the concepts abstracted by the imagination, then nothing abstracted by the intellect can provide anything to science and wisdom. 302 Jason Nehez Having systematically dismantled the ancient view of wisdom, what does Descartes offer as an alternative? Following the quotation above, Descartes says, But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search. 12 In an age of an overemphasis on mathematics and efficient causes, to accept this discovery of his as what he claims it to be may be tempting: a solid and sure foundation, an indubitable, irrefutable, first principle of wisdom. But his new-found first principle eliminates the possibility of possession of all other first principles known by science/wisdom and replaces it with a kind of extreme of Plato’s Cave, where the person released from the chains, turns to the light, and finds out that no outside light had ever existed to begin with. All that person ever was, was a cave-dwelling thinking thing. The cave and all the impressions are, and always have been, his true surroundings. The cave is just like a boat to a sailor, a vehicle of locomotion for the intellect within which to move, surroundings not truly one with the person. Descartes’s new metaphysical foundation firmly and definitively reduces man from a composite of body and soul to a thinking thing only, a separated substance, inexplicably tied to a body, if we can even trust that the body is real. We can further understand Descartes’s thinking on this from an example he gives of wax in his other famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy. 12 Ibid. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 303 Let us take, for example, this piece of wax: it has been taken quite freshly from the hive, and it has not yet lost the sweetness of the honey which it contains; it still retains somewhat of the odour of the flowers from which it has been culled; its colour, its figure, its size are apparent; it is hard, cold, easily handled, and if you strike it with the finger, it will emit a sound. Finally all the things which are requisite to cause us distinctly to recognize a body, are met with in it. But notice that while I speak and approach the fire what remained of the taste is exhaled, the smell evaporates, the colour alters, the figure is destroyed, the size increases, it becomes liquid, it heats, scarcely can one handle it, and when one strikes it, no sound is emitted. Does the same wax remain after this change? We must confess that it remains; none would judge otherwise. 13 Above, when discussing his Discourse on the Method, to avoid any possible error, no matter how small, Descartes was willing to jettison any possible truth associated with perception. But here, in the Meditations, he is capable of purporting great error because of this approach. At least two mistakes can be perceived in his statement concerning the wax above that especially relate to our comparison to the writings of St. Thomas. First, since he has removed himself from the method of wisdom found in ancient philosophy, he is essentially unable to recognize how a many can be united in a unity, that numerically-one thing can possess contrary opposite things, can be a composite, or organizational, whole. Such being the case, how this same wax can be both cold and hot, hard and viscous, obtain and lose smell? The substance, the organizational whole, that is, the wax is what unites the per se accidents and maintains the organizational unity of the thing among the qualitatively different, possible contrary opposite con13 Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 11. Available online—see the section References for details. 304 Jason Nehez figurations. Without confusing the different circumstances with errors in our perception, the wax in the first set of conditions can, indeed, be the same wax in the second set of conditions. As a thing, organizational whole, undergoes change, such as the growth of a child to an adult, the one person remains while vastly different accidental changes occur, because the substance (organizational whole) is what unites the contrary opposites in the thing. Secondly, if Descartes does not first recognize the substance of a thing (it being an organizatinal whole united by organizational parts in organizational relations), then he cannot recognize when the substance changes. Just as the earlier example of the man and the corpse, a fully alive person, after having undergone the removal of the soul (death), a corpse remains that is of a qualitatively different substance (qualitatively different organizational whole) than the original man. Or, take the other famous ancient example of the burned log. A wooden log, when exposed to fire and burned, undergoes a substantial change where the log is no longer a log, but becomes ash. The log no longer remains, but is changed to such an extent that it becomes a new substance (organizational whole). So, some would disagree with Descartes when he says “none would judge otherwise.” Yes, some would correctly judge otherwise. I do! The understanding of true wisdom leads some people to true judgements of true unity. The question that someone may reasonably ask at this point is whether anything truly and complete new exists under the Sun? Is Descartes’s new method truly new, or is it something old re-packaged for a new time? A case can be made that Descartes shares many similarities with an Averrostic understanding of the soul. If this is accurate, we end up with a sort of neo-Averroism in Descartes. Let us return to the writings of St. Thomas to further investigate whether there is some credibility to In Pursuit of True Wisdom 305 this argument. In his writing De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, Thomas says, Averroes held that the principle of understanding which is called the possible intellect is not a soul or a part of the soul, except equivocally; rather, it is a separated substance. He said that the separate substance’s understanding is mine or yours insofar as possible intellect is joined to me or you through the phantasms which are in me and you. He says that comes about in this way: the intelligible species which becomes one with the possible intellect as its form and act has two subjects, one those phantasms, the other the possible intellect. Therefore the possible intellect is continuous with us through its form by way of phantasms, and thus when the possible intellect understands, this man understands.14 Here in the Averroistic position we see an analogue of Descartes’s “thinking thing.” Averroes, as we understand from St. Thomas, held the possible intellect to be a separated substance. This means the true understanding of the person, how numerically-one human being really comes to know a thing, is truly separate from the body/soul composite. Does this sound familiar? Although it appears that perhaps Averroes did not go so far as to deny that the body is needed as a part of the human person as did Descartes, striking similarities appear to exist between the teachings of Averroes and Descartes regarding the method described whereby true apprehension of knowledge is achieved: our knowledge truly subsists in a possible intellect that is a substance separate from the individual human body. A challenge for Averroes and Descartes alike is that they want and need some method for this separateness of soul, or intellect, to bridge the gap of individual physical and sense experience. For, as in- 14 St. Thomas Aquinas, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, Ch. 3, n. 66. Available online—see the section References for details. 306 Jason Nehez dividual human beings, we appear to experience, as numerically-one, body/soul composite physical things existing in the external world. Averroes tries to bridge that gap by use of the phantasms existing in the sensory human imagination, a faculty other than the human intellect. He says the phantasms unite this separated substance to this person’s understanding. Later, Descartes will say that any clear and distinct idea presented directly to the thinking thing without any distractions of the senses will be what man truly understands. In other words, a kind of direct phantasm presented to the thinking thing unites the separated substance to this person’s understanding. While not exactly the same, the similarities of their position is enough that a defense against Averroes may prove profitable as a defense against Descartes. What, then, was St. Thomas’s response to Averroes? St. Thomas initially offered three replies to the Averroist position. His second one presents the most trouble for Descartes’s new “philosophical” method. As a result, this is the one that is focused on in this paper. It reads, If then the intelligible species is the form of possible intellect only insofar as it is abstracted from phantasms, it follows that [possible intellect] is not united with phantasms through the intelligible species but rather is separated from them. Unless perhaps it is said that the possible intellect is one with phantasms in the way in which the mirror is one with the man whose image is reflected in the mirror; but such a union manifestly does not suffice for the union of the act. For it is obvious that the act of the mirror, which is to represent, is not on this account attributed to the man. No more could the action of possible intellect on the basis of the foregoing conjunction be attributed to this man Socrates in order that this man might understand. 15 In his response, St. Thomas says that union of knower and thing known cannot provide an actual and essential union if it is only “known” 15 Ibid., Ch. 3, n. 65. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 307 by the knower via the action of a separated intellect (which does the knowing) on the human imagination. He gives the example of a union like that of a mirror, the image of a man in the mirror represents, is not truly one with, the man. No matter how exact and clear the representation, the mirror cannot and will not be one with the man. Actually to be a knower, a human being must actually be one with the thing known, not with a likeness of it (phantasm) generated by a non-human intellect within the human imagination. So, if the substances are separated (are not essentially united, essentially constituting one organizational, knowing/known whole), the image caused to exist as a phantasm in the human imagination cannot be in the man as causing knowledge. To try another analogy, if cargo is in the boat, a sailor does not truly possess it in the same way he possesses sight of the cargo. Does he not truly possess in a more real way in his person the image created by the sensory experience of sight of the cargo than the cargo itself. In other words, if the thing is separate, not united as an internal part of its organizational being with something else that its organizational being causes to be organizationally one with it, difficult, if not impossible, is to say how they can be organizationally united. Later, Descartes will have a similar struggle. After defining man as truly a thinking thing, how, then, can anything physical, any sense perception, be trusted as representing a truly real thing? Ultimately, Descartes will take a route not taken before in the history of philosophy and sophistry. He will use the existence of God to bridge the gap of trustworthiness of the physical. As his argument goes, his imperfection leads him to think that something wholly perfect must exist to account for the existence of something imperfect like himself. For if he were perfect and the only thing existing, he might have created himself to be different, very much more capable, and less limited. 308 Jason Nehez But he finds himself in the unhappy state of not being perfect nor capable of such powers. Were something to exist more perfect than he, no deception could exist in that thing. For the most perfect thing is the good, and deception is the opposite of the good. Therefore, this perfect being (God) would not deceive; for deception is an imperfection. Now knowing that God exists, and he has created Descartes as this thinking thing, God would certainly not deceive Descartes in the impressions that are so clearly and distinctly understood by his mind and senses. And so, despite being a separated substance, his sensory experiences are justified via the existence and trustworthiness of God. While Averroes attempts to bridge the gap of intelligibility by the separated possible intellect acting on Descartes’s imagination to produce a phantasm in it, Descartes uses clear and distinct ideas from God as the bridge, thinking he has achieved his grounds for all future philosophy. And so, despite many striking similarities, we see there are also some differences between Averroes and Descartes. In defending against the idea of a human intellect as a separated substance, St. Thomas, goes a step further and shows that, if we consider numerically-one person, Socrates, as though Socrates is a sailor driving a boat, we will not be able to escape the incoherency of the position. But if you should say that Socrates is not some one thing absolutely, but one by the coming together of mover and moved, many incoherencies follow. First, indeed, that since anything is one in the manner in which it exists, it would follow that Socrates is not a being and does not belong in a species or genus; and further, that he would have no action, because only beings act. Hence we do not say that understanding the sailor is the grasp of the whole made up of sailor and boat, but of sailor alone; similarly, understanding would not be Socrates’s activity, but only that of the intellect using the body of Socrates. The action of a In Pursuit of True Wisdom 309 part is the action of the whole only when the whole is one being. Anyone who says otherwise speaks improperly. 16 In the first place St. Thomas considers our understanding of all things in existence being in the organizational unity of the thing, composite whole. If Socrates exists as a some, numerically-one, separate thing like a soul or separated substance, in locational attachment to the body (but not as intrinsically one as part of a human being’s organizational nature), then no way exists to say that he is, indeed, a composite, or organizational whole. And, if he is not a composite whole, he would not have a true genus or species. If he has no true genus or species, then he is not really a composite being. The example of the sailor provided is a classic, but helpful, analogy to understand this concept. When we want to grasp the sailor as a whole, we do not grasp the sailor and the boat. We comprehend the sailor alone. The boat is accidental, incidental, to the sailor as it pertains to the understanding of the sailor as this one human being. The parallel Thomas is making is that, when we want to grasp the man Socrates as Socrates, we have to do so as one composite whole. Socrates, not Socrates as body and Socrates as soul, or sailor and boat. The body is not, and cannot be, accidental to Socrates, if we are to understand Socrates as a composite whole. As Thomas says, the action of the part can only be the action of the whole when the whole is one being. Descartes’s new method, and that of Averroes, made man, the human being, into two things inexplicably in synchronization in their actions. Thus, this method leads to the question: why have a body at all, if it is only incidental to our true nature? Why fear or discourage separation of the body and soul (death), if man’s true nature is to be separated from the body? These and many 16 Ibid., Ch. 3, n. 69. 310 Jason Nehez more questions arise when we do not consider man as a composite whole. Still later, St. Thomas explains that an act of an instrument is not in the thing, but is in the subject. Second, because the proper act of the mover is attributed neither to the instrument nor to the moved. On the contrary, the action of the instrument is attributed to the principal mover. It cannot be said that the saw makes the artifact, although the artisan can be said to saw, which is the work of the saw. Understanding is the proper activity of intellect; hence even granting that understanding is an action passing on to another like moving, it does not follow that understanding belongs to Socrates if intellect is united to him only as a mover.17 What St. Thomas is maintaining immediately above is that an axe does not chop down a tree, a person chops down a tree using an axe. Strictly speaking, the eye does not see; the person sees by means of the eye. Finally, the intellect does not know, but the person knows by means of the intellect. In all instances of a tool being used, the whole person is what performs the action, not the tool itself. Therefore, if the intellect or the soul were using the body of Socrates as an instrument, we could not properly say that Socrates knows. That would be like saying the axe chops, or the eye sees. For Socrates to know, the soul and body must be a one whole thing, not something used as an instrument so that the intellect as part of the soul can be said to know a thing. In relation to Aquinas’s argument just given, Descartes takes a more significant departure. While an ancient philosopher, even someone later, like an Averroes, might still contend for a kind of unity in the body and soul, albeit unsuccessfully, Descartes has no reservations about completely divorcing the human person from the body. 17 Ibid., Ch. 3, n. 72. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 311 In so doing, Redpath claims that Descartes was not truly behaving like a philosopher. In his book A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics, Redpath states, For Descartes, to know, to possess truth, is identical with knowing scientifically. As Étienne Gilson (b. 1884; d. 1978) tells us, Descartes’s grand project consisted in knowing everything by one method with the same amount of certainty or knowing nothing at all. Descartes had reduced truth, all knowledge (including wisdom) to science and was condemned to possess the whole of science or no truth at all.18 According to Descartes, this one method for determining truth, as Redpath describes, consisted of an elaborate reduction of philosophy to systematic logic (a logical system of supposedly clear and distinct ideas) as a means of separating mathematics and physics from the influence of metaphysics and revealed theology, while, simultaneously, identifying mathematics and physics with the whole of science, understood as rational, logically-systematic, knowledge of sense reality.19 Descartes conflated truth, knowledge, wisdom, and philosophy with systematic logic. With systematic logic as the only means of knowledge; mathematics and mathematical physics, become the only test of truth about the physical universe, to a being he has just established as not really endowed with a body, but only having a body accidentally. At this point in the presentation, what is becoming increasingly apparent is how far this strays from wisdom and philosophy as St. Thomas and the ancient Greeks understood them; and that this helps to explain why, strictly speaking, Descartes should not truly be called a philosopher. 18 19 Redpath, A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics, loc. 219. Ibid. 312 Jason Nehez Discovering a real subject that unifies a multitude through real knowledge gained by sense experience is a far cry from removing from philosophy/science true subjects that can unify a multitude as numerically-one whole, and conflating knowledge with systematic logic alone, making only abstracted mathematical physics a means of knowledge of sensible being. Despite being such a dramatic change Descartes’s new movement caught momentum and its effects are still felt today in our highest institutions of learning and Western culture at large. In conclusion, St. Thomas offers us a definition of true wisdom and true philosophy that just may help in our comparison of these two thinkers. He says in his Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Therefore, since philosophical investigation began with wonder, it must end in or arrive at the contrary of this, and this is to advance to the worthier view, as the common proverb agrees, which states that one must always advance to the better. For what that opposite and worthier view is, is evident in the case of the above wonders, because when men have already learned the causes of these things they do not wonder. . . . Hence the goal of this science to which we should advance will be that in knowing the causes of things we do not wonder about their effects. From what has been said, then, it is evident what the nature of this science is, namely, that it is speculative and free . . . and also what its aim is, for which the whole inquiry, method, and art must be conducted. For its goal is the first and universal causes of things, about which it also makes investigations and establishes the truth. And by reason of the knowledge of these it reaches this goal, namely, that there should be no wonder because the causes of things are known. 20 It seems that, though the Cartesian view has been taken up, tried, tried again, and found wanting, such a neo-sophistic, counterintuitive, 20 Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, I, 3, n. 68. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 313 non-scientific/non-philosophical system was not needed in his time and is still not needed now. On the contrary, it has had devastating effects historically, and in our time. Sound argument can be made that a method such as that of Descartes leads to utopian socialistic ideas, and these ideas hardly have proven to be wise or fruitful; on the contrary, quite the opposite. As Redpath say, “Knowledge that has become divorced from wisdom tends to degenerate into a tool of malevolence, tends to divorce itself from right relation to other forms of human knowledge and become despotic.”21 St Thomas, on the other hand, following the ancient Greeks, rightly recognized that wisdom is initiated in sense wonder. Love of wisdom, philosophy, then, pursues and, in its most excellent form, terminates in satisfaction of wonder: achievement of the contrary opposite, or true knowledge of causes of effects. To be able to achieve this, we must necessarily be able to use our senses, and trust the information being given is of real effects of real unities communicating intelligible substances to intelligent substances. This is necessary because it is the only way we can make sense of contrary opposite parts being united into a one organizational whole. Far from giving us wisdom, Descartes’s method leaves us in a separated world where we can never really know that we are receiving true information about true substances. In fact, we cannot make sense of science or wisdom at all; for all knowledge becomes a kind of sensereality mathematical physics; but mathematical physics is not able to explain why mathematical physics should be the only or pinnacle form of knowledge about the physical universe. And so this syntopical presentation is brought to a close with the hope that, by comparing and contrasting St. Thomas’s writings with those of Descartes this paper might 21 Redpath, A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics, loc. 514. 314 Jason Nehez contribute to an increase in critical aversion to all knowledge and wisdom being reduced to systematic logic. Renewing philosophy/science in our time demands recovering an understanding of true wisdom, of sense wonder initiating pursuit of true causes of true effects, and an investigation into the complicated problem of the relationship between the one and the many, which the ancient Greeks found so puzzling. In Pursuit of True Wisdom: How the Re-Emergence of Classical Wonder Should Replace Descartes’s Neo-Averrostic Sophistry SUMMARY Modern mathematical physics often claims to make philosophy obsolete. This presentation aims to show that the modern concept of wisdom fundamentally diverges with the thinking of Descartes, that, strictly speaking, at least in his metaphysical first principles, if not in his chief aim, he may be a sophist and no philosopher at all. Descartes denies the classical understanding of philosophy and thereby reduces the human person to an intellect separate from the body. Descartes initiated a popular understanding of sophistry that reverberates to today in our modern institutions of philosophy and science. But St. Thomas Aquinas anticipated this divergence and gave a defense of true wisdom in his writing against Averroes. This presentation concludes with what constitutes real philosophy and science as presented by St. Thomas Aquinas, namely sense wonder that creates a search for the true knowledge of the unity responsible for true causes of true effects. For a true restoration of philosophy and science we will need a re-emergence and recovery of this understanding of wisdom. KEYWORDS Averroes, Aquinas, Descartes, wisdom, science, skepticism, wonder, metaphysics, one, many. REFERENCES Aquinas, St. Thomas. Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by C. I. Litzinger, O.P. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964. Available online at: https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/Ethics1.htm#1. Accessed Feb. 21, 2020. Aquinas, St. Thomas. Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. 2 vols. Translated by John P. Rowan. Chicago: Regnery, 1964. Available online at: https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/Metaphysics1.htm#3. Accessed Feb. 21, 2020. In Pursuit of True Wisdom 315 Aquinas, St. Thomas. De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas. Available online at: https://isidore.co/aquinas/DeUnitateIntellectus.htm#3. Accessed Feb. 21, 2020. Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. London: Burns and Oates, 1905. Available online at: https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/gc.htm. Accessed Feb. 21, 2020. Descartes, Rene. A Discourse on Method. Translated by John Veitch. Project Gutenberg, 2008. Ebook edition. Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911. Available online at: https://yale.learningu.org/download/041e9642-df02-4eed-a89570e472df2ca4/H2665_Descartes'%20Meditations.pdf. Accessed Feb. 21, 2020. Redpath, Peter A. A Not-So-Elementary Christian Metaphysics. St. Louis, MO: En Route Books and Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Redpath, Peter A. Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry. Amsterdam–Atlanta, GA: Rodopi B.V., 1997. Book Reviews Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 319–324 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090213 Brian Welter* Des vérités devenues folles by Rémi Brague* Philosopher Rémi Brague, a traditional and Catholic voice in France, covers virtue and values, anthropology, nature and creation, and the family and culture in this collection of English lectures translated back into French. His call for a return to the Middle Ages is in fact an apology of the Catholic and Thomistic perspective. Des vérités devenues folles is written for Catholics who are engaged in building an alternative to modernity. The book succeeds through its nuanced yet clear argument: It is to a certain medieval culture that Brague skillfully and persuasively calls us. Unfortunately, this nuance will be lost on careless readers. Building—and rebuilding—culture does not demand the reinvention of the wheel. Underpinning the argument is the not very original notion of a civilization founded on logos, “on the discourse that allows for rationalism and that has defined human beings since the Greek philosophers. Logos provides us with the principle that sense and intelligibility are present in the world in some manner, and that we are in some way home here.”1 Logos already founded and underpinned medieval Brian Welter — Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: brianteachertaiwan@gmail.com ▪ ORCID: 0000-0001-6796-6561 * * Rémi Brague, Des vérités devenues folles (Paris: Salvator, 2019), 189 pages. ISBN: 978-2706718427. 1 Brague, Des vérités devenues folles, 18. BOOK REVIEW — Received: Mar. 22, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Apr. 26, 2020 320 Brian Welter European civilization, and Brague optimistically asserts that such a civilization is still possible through tradition. He echoes Jose Ortega y Gasset and Charles Duponte in arguing, “Among the fundamental rights of humanity, there is one that needs to occupy first place. . . . It’s the right to continuity.”2 Such thoughts pit Brague sharply against the mainstream and alongside Alaisdair MacIntyre and Roger Scruton. Like Scruton, Brague envisions a rich, nuanced, and forward-thinking tradition that can inform the present and the future based on a conversation between the present and the past, making history “a form of conversation.”3 Brague contrasts this conversation with the barbarity of forgetting the past and thereby dropping our identity, something that he sees happening in contemporary France. Such conversations with both the past and tradition are vital because of modernity’s wide-ranging failures. Any attempt at reforming modernity, such as with a fundamentalist interpretation of biblical creation stories, is doomed to failure. We need something subtler, both-and rather than either-or. Brague seems to relish the creative tension between Scripture and Greek thought. The ancient Greeks’ cosmological view of creation, which envisions an end or purpose to every created good or being, far surpasses the modern downgrading of nature to lifeless material available for exploitation. The much humbler yet richer medieval view, according to the author, looked on nature as a book of wisdom and even occasionally as our master. Enigmatically connected to this, the medieval mind was much more poetic than ours, Brague contends. Medieval poets envisioned birds singing in their Latin, a dignified and holy liturgical language, rather than in a rustic vernacular. Such asides enrich the argument and convey aspects of the medieval personality that the author has in mind for us today. 2 3 Ibid., 160–161. Ibid., 162. Book Review 321 Anthropology and nature form the core of Des vérités devenues folles. Brague contrasts modernity’s project-based thinking with the medieval task. While a project is defined by a human or human society, a task is given us by something or someone higher. This part lacks in detail and coherence. Perhaps the word vocation better expresses Brague’s thinking in both English and French. The author could have expanded his argument to include the Benedictine ora et labora (“pray and work”), which gave dignity and a spiritual quality to the most menial jobs. Today’s aspirational capitalist cultures could do with more dishwashing and floor sweeping, something that the author fails to emphasize. As with many Catholic thinkers, such as Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, one of Brague’s strengths lies in both his definition of man and his insight into how modernity compromises the integrity of the human being. A market-first socio-economic viewpoint reduces the person to a mere consumer, which also harms the family: “The market introduces its own patterns of thought into the sacred fortification of the family.”4 This leads to a clarification of personhood: “The dimension according to which there is something in us that possesses an intrinsic value is the personal dimension. A person is a being whom we should and must respect as such, independently of performance.” 5 Modernity’s atomization of humans contrasts with the medieval view of the person as part of an organic society that thought long-term and prioritized family and religion. So what would this “medieval” society look like today? It would be civilized. Brague memorably contrasts barbarity with civilization. Barbarians fail to communicate. Conversely, 4 5 Ibid., 140. Ibid., 142. 322 Brian Welter civilization establishes an ideal of communication. It is not just any type of communication, but that which is based on or needs to be based on the city, among people who enjoy the attribute civis, and who therefore deserve to be called civilis. The city [is] a space that defines itself by the possibility of linguistic communication, a space in which the objective is to make communication among people possible, even easy and spontaneous. The city’s ideal is the flourishing of communication among men. 6 Such a city allows for the political nature of humans to develop. This nature “stems from our capacity to use the logos,”7 though Brague makes the fascinating point that too much reason leads to excess and a return to barbarity. He notes how overly-civilized societies attempt to rejuvenate themselves by inviting in the apparently more barbaric. Such observations parallel those made by the controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq. In fact, Houellebecq’s notorious cynicism regarding modernity is not so far off from that of Brague, though the latter offers an appealing solution in contrast to Houellebecq’s apparent hopelessness. As with other parts of Des vérités devenues folles, the easilyoffended will be provoked into all sorts of pearl-clutching and swooning. Brague’s discussion of liberty will undoubtedly fall on deaf modernist ears while chiming with traditionalist Catholics. In a sense, then, Brague fails with these lectures because few modernists will question their viewpoint if they read the book. But Catholics, on the defensive for decades, need buttressing. Des vérités devenues folles provides this. Brague challenges, for instance, the mainstream yet childish view of liberty based on endless consumer choice and the satisfaction of our natural impulses. He doesn’t rely exclusively on Catholic and medieval 6 7 Ibid., 154–155. Ibid., 155. Book Review 323 thought, and cites, for instance, Kant’s concern that by following our instincts we allow ourselves to become enslaved to them. Identifying science and the scientific mindset as underpinning much of modernity, Brague contends that Galileo’s revolution, which superseded the Thomistic-Aristotelian scheme whereby each thing in creation is ordered to an end, separated man from the universe. It shrank humanity’s vision of itself and of the cosmos. Creation became mere matter, something to manipulate. Mathematics became the ultimate explanation for everything. Nature lost its meaning to us, and we in turn lost something of our personhood. As with other Catholics interested in science, such as the physicist Father Stanley Jaki, Brague sheds light on the deficiency of the scientistic mindset. This does not entail a rejection of science, but only, and again paralleling other Catholic writers, the observation that science needs to take a humbler position. Science cannot provide the foundation to humanity’s relationship with nature or satisfy our metaphysical concerns. Consistency, nuance, and detail contribute to making Des vérités devenues folles convincing, even though the book is not so accessible to those without theology and philosophy backgrounds. Brague calls us back to the profound insights of the medieval mind. Traditionalists, anyone inspired by the New Evangelization, and those dismayed by society’s current direction will surely take heart in Brague’s series of lectures. He helps us see that our noble and urgent task consists in handing on a living tradition to the next generation and beyond. It is a vocation worth taking up because the spirit of modernity pales in comparison to this logos-inspired medieval vision. 324 Brian Welter Des vérités devenues folles by Rémi Brague SUMMARY This paper is a review of the book: Rémi Brague, Des vérités devenues folles (Paris: Salvator, 2019). The book is a collection of Brague’s lectures that cover virtue and values, anthropology, nature and creation, and the family and culture. The author highlights that Brague (1) calls his readers back to the profound insights of the medieval mind, and (2) helps them see that their noble and urgent task consists in handing on a living tradition to the next generation and beyond. KEYWORDS Rémi Brague, virtue, value, anthropology, nature, creation, family, culture, modernity. REFERENCES Brague, Rémi. Des vérités devenues folles. Paris: Salvator, 2019. Studia Gilsoniana 9, no. 2 (April–June 2020): 325–331 ISSN 2300–0066 (print) ISSN 2577–0314 (online) DOI: 10.26385/SG.090214 Brian Welter* Sagesse: Savoir vivre au pied d’un volcan by Michel Onfray* French philosopher Michel Onfray, author of books on philosophy, religion, and history, examines ancient Roman views on wisdom, sagesse, under three parts, “The Self,” “Others,” and “The World.” The author takes readers into ancient Roman daily life, starting the book off with a typical day in Pompei just before the volcanic end, and Pliny the Elder’s stoic reaction to the eruption. This ancient writer’s actions paralleled his beliefs, something Onfray considers as philosophy’s highest form. Practical virtue forms the heart of the book’s analysis. Onfray argues that Roman philosophy surpasses Greek thought on account of this practicality. Onfray admires Roman masculine virtue and sees it as part of a solution to the postmodern, post-Christian condition. Readers with an interest in philosophy or Roman history will find Sagesse fascinating reading because of the author’s belief that these teachings are not abstract or outmoded, but have much to tell us today. These living philosophies have practical contemporary applications. Onfray clearly conveys his admiration for the Romans such as by addressing Christian criticism of gladiatorial violence. These critics proved their lack of acquaintance with Roman philosophy. Gladiatorial Brian Welter — Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: brianteachertaiwan@gmail.com ▪ ORCID: 0000-0001-6796-6561 * Michel Onfray, Sagesse: Savoir vivre au pied d’un volcan (Paris: Albin Michel, 2019), 500 pages. ISBN: 978-2226-440624. * BOOK REVIEW — Received: Jan. 6, 2020 ▪ Accepted: Apr. 2, 2020 326 Brian Welter combat stemmed not from a love of bloody violence, but, surprisingly, from virtue, particularly stoic virtue, which Onfray repeatedly elevates above the other streams of philosophy and moral instruction. The gladiators reaped the crowd’s love or hatred depending on whether or not they faced death through honor, courage, and even-temperedness. Onfray’s depiction of such virtues contrasts sharply with the modern sugar-coating of courage and deep fear of suffering. Romans faced pain the Roman way, accepting its inevitability and bearing it like men. The tone and purpose are corrective. Onfray offers refreshing perspectives on well-known ancient personnages, including the emperor Marcus Aurelius: Marcus Aurelius does not live in a world of reason and rationality, employing philosophy as a way to detach himself from the gods . . . he lives like an initiated searching to imitate the perfection of the gods who really exist and not only metaphorically . . . there is for Marcus Aurelius no philosophical conversion, but a utilitarian use of philosophy for religious edification.1 Despite Roman practicality, Roman religion concerned itself with the gods, and not simply with a pragmatic or materialistic approach to life: Wisdom, according to Marcus Aurelius, is therefore less a conquest of oneself by the application of reason . . . than the imitation of the gods who do not have much to do with reason and the rational. His philosophical project is closer to hermeticism and the mystery cults than to philosophical rationalism. 2 Onfray reads these philosophers as interested in healing the soul. Sagesse therefore has much to say to the spiritually-parched modern person. Ancient philosophy saw itself as medicine for the soul, which means for the author that it can help to heal the modern soul. The proper philosopher steers clear of burdensome, abstract thoughts that lack 1 2 Onfray, Sagesse, 405. Ibid., 404–405. Book Review 327 connection to life or that weigh us down. Onfray esteems Lucien of Samosata, a Greek thinker, for “inventing the idea that it is effective philosophizing to mock philosophy . . . when it proposes tasks that are impossible to achieve,” which makes a clown out of philosophy. 3 Lucien and another philosopher, Demonax, exemplify cynicism’s true spirit, “a cynicism of being and not of appearances.”4 Other cynics’ clownish or disgusting public behavior defeated any service to philosophy. Onfray, praising Lucien for revealing philosophical frauds, admires the most Roman, that is, the most practical, aspect of the Greeks. It is this practicality that helps to heal the soul. Thus Onfray applauds the pythagorean daily examination of conscience, which allowed for a “dialectic between theory and practice, principles and actions, philosophy and life, that which needs to be done and that which is done.”5 Larger issues, such as cosmology, can also provide something practical: “The role of the philosopher consists of indicating the appropriate place held by man in the universe’s immensity as well as the type of relationship that he must maintain with the great Everything.”6 Such words convey a sense of humility and therefore of light-heartedness toward oneself. Roman philosophy reaches neither for the gods nor for a perfect metaphysical world, but reveals man’s true nature and limits. Simple virtues such as courage and honor matter more than abstract ideals. Nevertheless, not all Romans succeeded philosophically: “Throughout his life, Seneca loved glory and honors; he accumulated wealth without ever following philosophy.” 7 Onfray characterizes him as a pseudo- 3 Ibid., 363. Ibid., 367. 5 Ibid., 377. 6 Ibid., 380. 7 Ibid., 232. 4 328 Brian Welter philosopher: someone who writes and reads about philosophy without living it. Roman philosophy granted a special place to friendship, according to Onfray, who laments what he considers Christianity’s later destruction of it. The Romans characterized true friendship as rare. One could usually have at most only one true friend at a time: “Only those possessing high moral quality” were capable of friendship; “friendship was not for the mediocre.”8 Cicero thus differentiated between vulgar and authentic friendship. The former, for “those who only look for their own interests and utility,”9 contrasts with friendship that “contribute[s] to the achievement of virtue and, especially, to wisdom” built on mutual aid.10 Friendship heals the soul. “Friendship permits two individuals to obtain what each by themselves could not: a superior degree of being.”11 Such discussions illustrate the critical role of virtue for the Romans. Onfray finds it fascinating and inspiring that the Romans sought the virtuous and moral life without belief in a rewarding or punishing Abrahamic God. The lack of a strong belief in the afterlife, in fact, made Roman courage all the more courageous: The Christian, in facing death, looked with certainty toward a wonderful afterlife whereas the Roman saw nothing sure. He died into a void, not eternal bliss. For Onfray, Plutarch reveals the Roman spirit, including this preChristian moral capacity.12 Though born in Boeotia, Greece, Plutarch incarnates the Roman way of doing philosophy. First, because he is totally indifferent to questions of pure theory; second, because each text proceeds from an occasion given by life; 8 Ibid., 257. Ibid. 10 Ibid., 259. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 269. 9 Book Review 329 finally, because all of his thought aims at serving to edify existence.13 Plutarch’s unconcern with metaphysics and ontology contrasts with the main tendencies of Greek thought, which Onfray scorns for abstract ideals and unconcern for the ideals’ application to reality: “Plato could write a dialogue on friendship” that, purely intellectual, lacked any direct knowledge. “He could have not loved his entire life and written nonetheless on love.”14 Plutarch, on the other hand, “first lived and then philosophized. He philosophized on his life, in the direction of his life, to sculpt his own statue.”15 Such philosophy shares little with the contemporary university philosophy department. Perhaps this explains Onfray’s accessible writing style, without the usual scholarly footnotes and index. Onfray juxtaposes Roman courage and valor with Christianity’s supposedly “crybaby” mentality, which he spots in Augustine. He regards the North African saint as, at best, exemplifying some Roman ideals under a Christian hue. The Middle Ages, a wasteland of unRoman Christian tears and decadence, only ends with the “detoxification” of the Renaissance, 16 at which time Plutarch’s Parallel Lives helped “heal the souls of one thousand years of Christian poisoning.” 17 Yet readers do not have to wade through page after page of lecturing about Christianity. Only in a later chapter, “Celse, le dernier païen,” does Onfray really go after Christianity. The author aims to open the way for Roman values to re-energize the contemporary West. Following Michel Foucault in some ways, Onfray sees the pre-Christian Roman West as a guide to the floundering 13 Ibid. Ibid., 271. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 269. 17 Ibid. 14 330 Brian Welter post-Christian West. He continues Nietzsche’s project. Decadent (post-) Christian culture needs ancient values, though Onfray rejects much of the ancient Greeks. Isn’t Christianity merely ancient Greek philosophy in fresh clothing? “Christianity is spiritually Greek—Pythagoras’s dualism; Protagoras’s sophism; Plato’s immaterial soul; Aristotle’s metaphysics of substance; Plotinus’s hypostases; this long list of idealism intellectually nourished Christianity,” 18 something that Christianity in turn bequeathed to German university philosophy, Onfray observes. By the book’s end, readers are clearly aware of the author’s stance, and why. Ancient Roman philosophy, interwoven with ancient Roman virtue and without Greek abstraction, can steer us clear of the German idealism (e.g., Husserl and Heidegger) and French thinking (e.g., Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze) that so confuses us. Such modern philosophy will not stand the test of time. We no longer read Deleuze, who was with us only years ago, yet continue to read Michel de Montaigne almost half a millennium later because of the latter’s classicism, Onfray observes. The Romans expressed and embodied the peak of ancient philosophy, and can provide guidance to us today. The appendix, subtitled “Du bon usage dans l’Antiquité,” and the annotated “Bibliographie” provide much more than the titles suggest, as here Onfray directly discusses modern, mostly French, academic discussions of the ancient Romans and applications to today. This provides an excellent resource on recent French scholarship and political debates inspiring various perspectives. The book as a whole is an excellent resource for Christians who want to understand why many are tuning out to the Christian message even while feeling dissatisfied with the modern post-Christian world. 18 Ibid., 501. Book Review 331 Sagesse: Savoir vivre au pied d’un volcan by Michel Onfray SUMMARY This paper is a review of the book: Michel Onfray, Sagesse: Savoir vivre au pied d’un volcan (Paris: Albin Michel, 2019). The author highlights that: (1) by arguing that Roman philosophy surpasses Greek thought on account of its practicality, Onfray sees Roman masculine virtue as part of a solution to the postmodern, post-Christian condition; (2) Onfray’s book provides Christians with understanding why many are tuning out to the Christian message even while feeling dissatisfied with the modern post-Christian world. KEYWORDS Michel Onfray, wisdom, Roman philosophy, Greek philosophy, Christianity. REFERENCES Onfray, Michel. Sagesse: Savoir vivre au pied d’un volcan. Paris: Albin Michel, 2019.