Two Roles for Catholic Philosophers[*]Alfred J. Freddoso In what follows I will describe the two principal roles that, as I see it, are incumbent upon Catholic philosophers. In a certain respect, there is nothing new in what I have to say on this topic, since the two roles correspond exactly to the two separate tasks that St. Thomas Aquinas, the prototypical Catholic philosophical inquirer, takes up in the Summa Theologiae on the one hand and the Summa Contra Gentiles on the other. Still, in light of recent philosophical developments, especially the many trenchant critiques of modernist conceptions of rationality and philosophical inquiry, we are in a position to challenge some deeply entrenched ways of thinking about the distinction between philosophy and theology and about the division of labor among Catholic philosophical inquirers. I intend to press this challenge here, if only inchoatively. My remarks are addressed to Catholic philosophers
for whom fidelity to the teachings of the Church, as propounded by the
Magisterium, functions as a central intellectual commitment. I do not preclude
the possibility that others, Catholic or non-Catholic, might contribute--intentionally
or unintentionally, directly or indirectly--to the project of articulating
the Catholic faith and of clarifying and defending it within a wide variety
of cultural and intellectual settings. But conformity to the teachings
of the Church is an obvious constraint on what is to count as a substantial
contribution to that project, and this constraint will operate effectively
only in the minds and hearts of those who in their own intellectual undertakings
are haunted by the conviction that to cut themselves off from the teachings
of the Church is to cut themselves off from Christ.[1]
The first role of Catholic philosophers is to articulate the Catholic faith (or, perhaps better, Catholic wisdom) in a comprehensive, systematic, and intellectually rigorous manner and to transmit this articulation at appropriate levels of intellectual sophistication to other members of the Church--especially, but not only, those who themselves aspire to be Catholic intellectuals. The Summa Theologiae serves as an obvious paradigm here, both structurally and substantively. But the Summa itself does not treat in detail every important metaphysical or moral or epistemological issue. What's more, since the teachings of the Church leave plenty of room for fruitful disagreements about particular conclusions and about particular ways of arguing to incontrovertible conclusions, and since philosophical, scientific, and cultural developments constantly present new opportunities for extending and deepening and recovering various aspects of the Catholic wisdom-tradition, there will always be much work to be done and new intellectual challenges to be met. Someone will object: "Wait just a minute! You are running roughshod over the distinction between philosophy and theology that was formulated by St. Thomas and has since been institutionalized in Catholic colleges and universities by the strict separation of philosophy faculties from theology faculties. According to this distinction, the domain of philosophy as an academic discipline is limited to principles and conclusions that are or can be made evident to natural reason, whereas theology counts among its principles the mysteries of the faith, which ex professo are not evident by the light of reason. Thus, the idea that Catholic philosophers should be in the business of articulating and teaching the Catholic faith violates the integrity of natural reason and and conflates philosophy with theology."[2] My reply is that this objection not only (i) distorts St. Thomas's intention but (ii) proceeds from a misconception--or, at any rate, a non-mandatory conception--of the nature of philosophical inquiry. As for the first point, St. Thomas himself did not intend that his distinction between philosophy and theology should be used to divide future generations of Catholic philosophical inquirers into some individuals who would avail themselves of the sunlight of faith in their search for wisdom and other individuals who would pursue wisdom merely by the candlelight of natural reason. As Joseph Ratzinger has put it: With the terminology which began with St. Thomas, philosophy and theology were distinguished as the study of the natural and supernatural, respectively. These distinctions received a particular sharpness in the modern era. This was then read back into Thomas and the distinction began to be presented in a way cut off from the earlier tradition and in a more radical manner than the texts themselves would justify.[3] The "particular sharpness" Ratzinger alludes to stemmed from various modernist (or enlightenment) conceptions of rationality and philosophical inquiry which, though differing in detail, shared in common a devotion (I know of no better word for it[4]) to `pure' reason and/or `pure' experience unadulterated by affectivity, along with the resulting injunction that genuine philosophical inquiry (even in ethics!) must proceed only from universally evident and affectively neutral starting points. Somehow the idea got out, and was accepted by many Catholic philosophers, that it would be intellectually dishonest to let philosophical inquiry, the search for ultimate truth and wisdom, be contaminated by any appeal to the certitude of faith. Yet St. Thomas clearly did not mean to urge Catholics, even the really smart ones, to pursue wisdom as if the Son of God had not come to expel sin and ignorance from their hearts and minds, or to conduct their philosophical inquiries with the light of faith formed by charity tied behind their backs, so to speak.[5] What would be the point of doing this, given that our goal as philosophers is to attain and to live in accord with ultimate metaphysical and moral truth, and given that we believe Jesus Christ to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life? Is revealed Wisdom somehow beyond the pale for those who profess to be philoi sophias? Aristotle and Plato had no choice but to practice philosophical inquiry wholly without the aid of divine revelation; but what excuse could we as Catholics possibly have? As my colleague Alvin Plantinga has remarked in a similar context: "I could probably get home this evening by hopping on one leg; and conceivably I could climb Devil's Tower with my feet tied together. But why should I want to?"[6] To be sure, it might sometimes be dialectically inappropriate to invoke propositions or models not accepted by one's philosophical interlocuters, but this is a general point that applies to every philosophical inquirer--believer or non-believer--and to every philosophical conversation; and even here there is flexibility about what can count as an effective and intellecually virtuous dialectical strategy.[7] Nor do I mean to deny--and I will return to this below--that it might be both intrinsically and apologetically valuable to show that some element or other of Catholic doctrine can in principle be arrived at without any direct appeal to divine revelation; but, once again, this consideration of itself does nothing to undermine the claim that at least one role of Catholic philosophers is to contribute to the systematic articulation and transmission of the Catholic faith as a whole and in all its ramifications. I have already broached the second point asserted above. The term `philosophy' will, because of both its etymology and its original historical denotation, always admit of a broad sense according to which the genuine philosopher is antecedently willing to scrutinize any claim to ultimate truth, regardless of its source. What, after all, is the purpose of the philosophical life and of philosophical inquiry? Suppose we accept the classical answer that the aim of an intellectually, morally, and spiritually integrated philosophical life is the attainment of wisdom--that is, the attainment of a comprehensive and systematic elaboration of the first principles of being that provides definitive answers to fundamental questions about the origins, nature, and destiny of the universe and about the good for human beings and the ways to attain it. This conception of the goal of philosophy and of philosophical inquiry puts no a priori restrictions on possible sources of cognition, but ostensibly invites us as philosophers to draw upon all the cognitive resources available to us in constructing a comprehensive and coherent set of answers to the deepest philosophical questions. But every Catholic philosopher of the sort I am addressing believes with St. Thomas that the most indispensable of all our cognitive resources is divine revelation as transmitted to us through Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church. Indeed, it was precisely with this broad conception of philosophy and philosophical inquiry in mind that St. Thomas was led to identify absolute wisdom, the self-avowed goal of the classical philosophical inquirers, with sacra doctrina or Catholic theology.[8] Far from being separate from philosophical inquiry, Catholic theology--in both its theoretical aspect (metaphysics) and its practical aspect (moral theory)--is just what philosophical inquiry amounts to for Catholics. Had we not been bombarded in the last twenty years with so many convincing critiques of modernist epistemology--in both its rationalist and empiricist manifestations and in both its more optimistic early versions and its more chastened later versions--we might by force of bad habit still be worried about the propriety of allowing cognitive claims involving affective commitments to function as starting points and first principles in philosophical inquiry. But such critiques, coming from sources as varied as Nietzscheans on the one hand and Christians such as Plantinga and Alasdair MacIntyre on the other, have exposed as irremediably defective the modernist tenets that individual philosophical inquirers, precisely as philosophical inquirers, (i) must begin in absolute neutrality by putting aside affective commitments to any intellectual or moral traditions that have emerged from the shared beliefs and practices of particular historical communities, and (ii) must proceed only from starting points that are evident to all philosophical inquirers regardless of their moral and spiritual condition and regardless of the moral and spiritual condition of the cultural communities within which they practice philosophy. These same critics have likewise called into question the tendency, typical of later and more skeptical brands of modernism, to value brilliance and cleverness over intellectual virtue--an inevitable development once intellectual excellence has been severed, in the manner of Gorgias and his friends, from truth and moral integrity. I recognize, of course, that St. Thomas often uses terms like `philosopher' and `philosophical discipline' in a way narrower than the one I have just sketched, and I will get to this in a moment. But first I must address a more practical objection, viz., that under the present dispensation we Catholics who are professional philosophers are not adequately equipped to articulate and transmit Catholic wisdom as a whole because we lack the right sort of training in Sacred Scripture, Patristics and Church history, liturgical theology, the history of Catholic theology, and contemporary systematic theology (both theoretical and moral). To begin with, this objection is at best only partly true, since many of us have formally studied, or at least read widely in, one or more of the areas just listed. But the obvious "low-road" response is that by this very same criterion not many Catholic professional theologians--and this holds especially for those who have received their advanced degrees in the last twenty years or so--are adequately equipped to articulate and defend Catholic wisdom. For one thing, most of them are woefully undertrained in the history of philosophy and in philosophical sub-disciplines such as logic, ontology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, ethics, and epistemology. Even more to the point, their theological training itself has almost certainly been focussed on just one or perhaps two of the areas noted above to the virtual exclusion of the others.[9] So what conclusion should we draw? The
first role I have set for Catholic philosophers is a collaborative one
that requires rectitude of will, a spirit of cooperation, and various types
of intellectual expertise on the part of many thinkers who see themselves
as engaged in a common project. In short, we must communicate with one
another and learn from one another despite the institutional and curricular
barriers that have been interposed between theology and philosophy. In
particular, we must become more creative in devising interdisciplinary
courses and research programs. What's more, the need for rectitude of will
and a spirit of cooperation is symptomatic of the fact, emphasized long
ago by the classical philosophers themselves within their own context,
that our common philosophical enterprise has moral and spiritual dimensions
that cannot be divorced from from its intellectual dimension. In particular,
Catholic philosophical inquirers must, like other Catholics, nurture the
theological and moral virtues through the Sacraments, through personal
prayer, and through a life of loving self-sacrifice. Only a spiritual effort
of this sort will enable us to hone our philosophical insights and to keep
constantly in mind that our intellectual endeavors, including our disagreements,
will be fruitful only if we desire above all, in Gilson's words, to put
our intelligence at the service of Christ the King. The second role of Catholic philosophers is to engage non-believing philosophers with charity, courage, and intellectual integrity, both in order to learn and in order to teach. This claim, taken generally and in the abstract, is wholly uncontroversial, since sympathetic and intellectually rigorous interaction with philosophically sophisticated non-believers has been a staple of the Catholic tradition from the very beginning, despite periodic protests from those who see the Gospel as simply a replacement for, rather than the perfection of, the philosophical inquiry of non-believers. St. Thomas was confident that those non-believing philosophical inquirers who are intellectually and morally virtuous can be led, by standards of successful inquiry they themselves accept, toward recognizing Catholic theology as a viable candidate for the absolute wisdom they are seeking. As he saw it, the classical philosophers had already taken significant steps in this direction and could have gone even further had they done better by their own standards.[10] (This, I take it, is the thrust of the first three books of the Summa Contra Gentiles.) Then, too, he showed by example that Catholic philosophical inquirers can in favorable circumstances adapt substantive theories proposed by non-believing philosophers or at least make extensive use of conceptual resources developed by them. Moreover, he held that even though the dim light of natural reason pales by comparison with the radiant light of faith, and even though the certitude attainable by reason is markedly inferior, absolutely speaking, to the certitude of faith, nonetheless, the demanding intellectual activity by which a wide range of philosophical principles and conclusions are rendered progressively more evident to natural reason is perfective of the philosophical inquirer as such and hence valuable to the Catholic philosopher in itself and not just for its apologetic usefulness. All these factors led him to distinguish philosophy (in a narrow sense) from theology and to attribute a limited autonomy to those "philosophical disciplines" that had been developed by the classical philosophers without the aid of special revelation. However, as I have argued above, to draw this distinction is not at all to encourage faithful Catholics to practice philosophical inquiry as if their faith someone prevented them from being genuine philosophers. In fact, as far as I can tell, St. Thomas's distinction does not by itself provide any theoretical justification at all for the sharp separation of the philosophy and theology curricula that one finds today in most Catholic colleges and universities. To the contrary, his narrow use of the term `philosophy' seems to function as something very close to a rigid designator that refers to what Plato, Aristotle, and other classical "gentile" philosophers actually accomplished without the aid of divine revelation by way of attaining wisdom or (perhaps better) what they could have accomplished without divine revelation had they done better by their own standards of successful philosophical inquiry. There is no suggestion at all that Christian philosophers themselves should pretend, as it were, not to be Christians when they engage in philosophical inquiry. To be sure, at least some Catholic philosophical inquirers should explicitly take on the task of studying in depth what the best philosophers, believers or non-believers, have said in the past and are saying in the present, so as to learn from them, criticize them, cooperate with them in mutually advantageous research projects, and help educate fellow Catholic intellectuals about them. But this point does nothing at all to justify a sharp separation between philosophy and theology within educational institutions that are meant to embody St. Thomas's conviction that sacra doctrina brings classical philosophical inquiry to perfection by standards of intellectual perfection that non-believing philosophers themselves can recognize, or be led to recognize, as legitimate. As I see it, the only remotely plausible
justifications for such a separation are purely practical ones--for example,
that the cultures of theology and philosophy are at present too diverse
to tolerate any attempt at a merger; or that given the disdain for religion
and theology characteristic of top-rated graduate programs in philosophy,
Catholic colleges will be unable to place their philosophy majors in such
graduate programs unless they clearly distinguish them from theology majors.[11]
Still, I have no doubt that that if we are sufficiently creative and self-confident,
we can find ways to circumvent these problems without abandoning a distinctively
Catholic vision of the nature of philosophical inquiry.[12]
Now I am under no illusion that Catholic universities, especially those presently headed toward becoming second-rate imitations of their more prestigious secular counterparts, will any time soon restructure their philosophy and theology curricula in a way more in keeping with our distinctive intellectual tradition. So I want to close with a few reflections aimed at those of us who, for better or worse, find ourselves on the philosophy side of the divide between philosophers and theologians.[13] First, we must resist the temptation to turn the distinction between theology and philosophy into a distinction between individuals who play the first role outlined above and individuals who play the second role. The two roles simply cannot be divorced in this way. After all, how can I as a Catholic philosopher engage in free and open conversations with non-believing philosophers of various stripes unless I bring to those conversations a deep and comprehensive grasp of what I believe as a Catholic? To cite a simple example, how can I intelligently discuss the so-called "problem of evil" with non-believing philosophers unless I have an intellectually sophisticated appreciation for the way in which the cross of Christ transforms ordinary understandings of suffering, death, and moral evil? Again, how can I as a Catholic philosopher intelligently discuss ethics with non-believing philosophers unless I understand deeply the ways in which Catholic faith and practice sheds an interesting and distinctive light on the moral virtues; think, for instance, of the fascinating confluence of magnanimity and humility which the eyes of faith see in the life of almost every great saint, but which is well-nigh incomprehensible to many non-Christians. Similar examples are easy to produce along a whole front of metaphysical, epistemological, and moral topics which impinge directly on the deliverances of the faith.[14] Second, we must not be naive about the prospects for fruitful engagement with non-believing philosophers (including natural and social scientists as well) on matters that bear on the faith. St. Thomas felt a special kinship with the classical philosophers and their later commentators (including many Jews and Muslims) not only because they were seekers after wisdom, but also because by his lights they had hit upon many important truths or insights which could be incorporated into a comprehensive Christian articulation of absolute wisdom. We cannot take it for granted that every philosophical system or research program will be as congenial to Catholic doctrine as, say, Platonism and Aristotelianism turned out to be in many important respects. Interestingly, in his Gifford Lectures Alasdair MacIntyre faults "much nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Thomism" for not appreciating just how disparate its own first principles and conception of philosophical inquiry were from those of Cartesianism, Humeanism, and Kantianism, and thus for not understanding just how different its relation to these philosophical systems was from St. Thomas's relation to Aristotelianism.[15] To the extent that Catholic philosophers differ from non-believing philosophers in both substantive and methodological assumptions, fruitful discussion will be difficult--especially in circles dominated by one or another of scientific naturalism or pragmatism or postmodern anti-realism. This is not a counsel of despair so much as an indication of how arduous and delicate the second role of Catholic philosophers is likely to be over the next few decades. (Indeed, the present, somewhat inhospitable, climate of secular philosophy underscores the importance of our maintaining centers of learning and research in which Catholic philosophical inquiry has the freedom to develop and flourish without forever having to justify its very existence.[16]) Third, while it is important for the Catholic philosophical community as a whole to be intimately familiar with, and in many cases engaged in, the important research programs currently being carried out by non-believing philosophers, this is not incumbent on each Catholic philosopher as an individual. Catholic philosophical inquiry is, once again, a communal project that admits of and in fact demands a prudent division of labor. But this division of labor itself is likely to produce tensions among us, and we will be successful only to the extent that what we share in common predominates over our philosophical differences in those many matters that the faith allows us to disagree about. The differences I have in mind here include those that stem from divergent philosophical styles imported from the broader philosophical world (e.g., "analytic" vs. "continental"), as well as the more parochial ones that have developed internally within our own tradition (e.g., among competing forms of Thomism or between Augustinians and Thomists, etc.). Likewise, it is important for the Catholic
philosophical community as a whole to be engaged both in exegetical research
projects aimed at deepening our understanding of historically important
philosophical traditions--especially, but not only, the medieval Catholic
sub-traditions--and in systematic research projects aimed at pushing forward
discussions currently at the forefront of philosophical interest among
both believers and non-believers. But it is not necessary that each individual
Catholic philosopher should excel in both types of research. This general
point seems uncontroversial, even given the obvious fact that the division
between exegetical projects and systematic projects is not as neat as the
above characterization might suggest. Still, unfortunate tensions exist
here, too; exegetes often chide systematicians for being short-sighted
and ahistorical, while systematicians often chide exegetes for not having
their interests sufficiently shaped by contemporary philosophical discussions.
Needless to say, Catholic philosophy will flourish only if both types of
research project are carried out at a very high level of intellectual excellence
and only if both types are valued highly by all Catholic philosophers.
It hardly needs saying that I have merely skimmed the surface in these brief remarks, and I do not claim to have addressed every issue that needs to be addressed or to have answered every objection that needs to be answered. Still, I believe that it is a propitious time for us as Catholic philosophers to stop worrying about crossing some imaginary barrier between philosophy and theology, and to be forthright and creative in presenting the Catholic claim to wisdom in as attractive a light as we can to intellectually sophisticated non-believers. In this we will only be following in the footsteps of our most illustrious predecessor.
NOTES * An earlier version of the this paper was delivered to a session on Philosophy and the Magisterium at the 1997 Patristics, Medieval, and Renaissance conference at Villanova University. 1. I recognize, of course, that historically there have been strained relations between Catholic philosophical inquirers and members of the hierarchy even in the best of times, when Catholic thinkers for their part have been concerned not only to appear orthodox but to be orthodox and when bishops for their part have been concerned to preserve the rightful autonomy of scholarship in the various intellectual disciplines that touch upon the faith. Even under such relatively ideal conditions, it is possible for there to be--and legitimately so--differences of emphasis and perspective issuing in conflicting prudential judgments. Still, as long as all sides are characterized by humility, unity of purpose, and good will, there is always a decent chance of working out mutually satisfactory resolutions of such conflicts. 2. Interestingly, the distinction between philosophy departments and theology departments that one finds in some denominationally Protestant colleges appears to have a rather different genesis. When I queried my colleague Alvin Plantinga about this, he speculated that the philosophy departments in such colleges had their origins in the conviction, deeply felt in at least some Reformed circles, that theology students should be acquainted with the history of philosophy. Later, because of pressures to prepare promising students for graduate work in philosophy, the philosophy curriculum evolved from its primarily historical orientation to something more in tune with, both substantively and methodologically, what was going on at the best graduate schools. Still, Plantinga remarked, evangelical Christians who choose careers in academic philosophy have always been encouraged and even expected to use their philosophical training as a tool for articulating and defending the Christian faith. 3. Joseph Ratzinger, "Faith, Philosophy, and Theology," John Paul II Lecture Series (College of St. Thomas, 1985), p. 11. In this paper Ratzinger laments the sharp opposition that has developed in modern times between philosophy and theology. As he sees it, the result of this opposition is that philosophy, having despaired of ever finding wisdom, has devolved into a technical academic discipline cut off from the persistent metaphysical questions that inspired philosophical inquiry in the first place, whereas theology, having repudiated systematic metaphysics and with it the claim to absolute truth, has lost its missionary character and become isolated from the other intellectual disciplines. Ratzinger urges us to reconceive the relation between philosophy and theology in a way reflective of the early Christian identification of Christian doctrine with the true philosophy that fulfills the hopes of the ancient wisdom-traditions. It may be, he speculates, that only Christian theology, rightly construed as a hope-filled inquiry into the deepest metaphysical questions, will keep philosophy itself alive as the search for wisdom. 4. As Chesterton aptly remarks: "Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." See Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1908, 1995), p. 38. Along these same lines, see Alvin Plantinga, "An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism," Logos 12 (1991): 27-49. Here Plantinga argues that by their own lights scientific naturalists have good reason not to believe in the reliability of our cognitive faculties. Plantinga's argument is a more sophisticated version of the argument that C.S. Lewis had tried to articulate in Miracles (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1947, 1960), chapter 3: "The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism." 5. Given my own fondness for Francisco Suarez and the seeming penchant of some contemporary Catholic authors to blame every historical distortion of St. Thomas's thought on the Jesuits in general and on Suarez or his progeny in particular, I hasten to point out that the mere fact that Suarez authored the Disputationes Metaphysicae as a "purely philosophical" work is not a sufficient reason for imputing to him the idea that philosophy and philosophical inquiry are strictly independent of theology. First of all, the Disputationes Metaphysicae were explicitly intended to provide students of theology with what the study of Aristotle's Metaphysics was supposed to be providing them with, but was not in fact providing them with in Suarez's estimation. Second, Suarez goes out of his way in the Preface to make clear to the reader that the Disputationes Metaphysicae are ordered toward the articulation of Christian doctrine: In this work I am doing philosophy in such a way as to keep always in mind that our philosophy should be Christian and a servant to divine Theology. I have kept this goal in view, not only in discussing the questions but also in choosing my views or opinions, inclining toward those which seem to comport better with piety and revealed doctrine. 6. "Advice to Christian Philosophers," Faith
and Philosophy 1 (1984): 253-271. Over the past twenty years, Plantinga's
has been the most eloquent and compelling voice in analytic circles urging
Christian philosophers to stand firm as articulators of the faith in their
philosophical endeavors and not to accommodate themselves to the many current
philosophical trends and research programs that are deeply anti-Christian
in their root assumptions. (On a personal note, it has been my privilege
to have this brilliant and pious man as a colleague for the past fifteen
years, and his writings, as well as those of two other colleagues, Ralph
McInerny and Alasdair MacIntyre, have profoundly shaped the argument I
am presenting here.) 7. As I will indicate below, there are dialectical situations in which a Catholic philosopher's most effective reply to an interlocuter posing an objection to some Catholic metaphysical or moral doctrine will be to exhibit the internal conceptual resources by which the Catholic perspective may accommodate the point of the objection without falling prey to it. Such a reply is not direct, but instead invites the objector to look at Catholic doctrine from a new and deeper perspective. 8. Summa Theologiae 1, q. 1, art. 6. 9. For instance, Notre Dame's doctoral program in theology
is divided into five distinct areas: (1) Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity,
(2) the History of Christianity, (3) Liturgical Studies, (4) Moral Theology/Christian
Ethics, and (5) Philosophical and Systematic Theology. As I understand
the program requirements, a student may get a doctorate in theology by
taking courses in just two of these five areas. 10. I develop this interpretation at more length in "Ockham on Faith and Reason," in Paul V. Spade, The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.) 11. It is not at all clear how serious a problem this really is. To put it another way, the prejudice against those who have graduated from Catholic colleges with joint philosophy/theology degrees may not be any worse than the current prejudice against those who have graduated from Catholic colleges with straight philosophy degrees. At Notre Dame we are now running a successful joint undergraduate program in philosophy and theology, and some of its graduates have gone on to advanced studies in philosophy, including a Rhodes scholar who is presently attending Oxford University. 12. Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), p. 151. Interestingly, MacIntyre claims that the biggest obstacle for St. Thomas and Thomism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was precisely "the power of the institutionalized curriculum," and that the truly amazing thing is "way in which Aquinas was repeatedly revived and invoked after that initial rehabilitation which led to his canonization." In light of this, it is especially deplorable that nowadays undergraduate philosophy majors in Catholic colleges often receive an intellectual formation that is virtually indistinguishable from what they would have received in secular universities. 13. Just for the record, I admit that in some ways the separation of philosophy departments from theology departments has been a blessing over the last twenty-five years, given the culture of dissent that has permeated many theology departments at major Catholic institutions of higher learning. Some of us who profess fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church have found the philosophy departments in such institutions to be safe havens where we can carry on our research and teaching with freedom. However, my argument is predicated on the assumption that this situation is a temporary aberration. 14. Such examples should also make us wary of the simplistic claim that philosophy (in the narrow sense) has the natural as its object, wheras theology has the supernatural as its object. I do not deny, as some have, that the Catholic perspective must insist on a metaphysical distinction between the natural and the supernatural; but it does not follow from the recognition of this distinction that we can understand the natural fully in all its aspects (especially with regard to the human person) without understanding the supernatural. 15. Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy and Tradition, pp. 145-148. 16. Recently I had the opportunity to hear some senior Catholic scholars from Belgium and the Netherlands lament their marginalization as self-professed Catholics in both the state-run universities and the Catholic universities of their native countries. Yet despite fretting about their own isolation and about the secularization of their universities, some of these scholars seemed even more haunted by the specter of the "intellectual ghetto" they describe Catholic thought as having occupied before Vatican II--so much so that they cannot even now bring themselves to embrace the idea, set forth in John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution Ex corde ecclesiae (1990), that Catholic universities must be places of "rigorous fidelity" and "courageous creativity" where Catholic philosophical inquiry can flourish even within otherwise hostile secular intellectual climates. It may be that Catholic philosophers before the council were to a great extent responsible for their own isolation from the secular intellectual mainstream; but it is worth remembering that in England and the United States the secular mainstream was at the time in question dominated by logical positivism, pragmatism, and ordinary language philosophy, three of the most virulently anti-metaphysical movements in the history of philosophy. |