Jacques Maritain Center :
Thomism in an Age of Renewal /
by Ralph McInernyIn order to talk about the role St. Thomas can continue to play in our intellectual life, it is necessary first of all to talk about encompassing issues. That is what we tried to do in the preceding chapters. Some expressions of discontent with the fact of Thomism actually have a far broader target for they call into question the inevitable consequences of being taught philosophy, of learning philosophy. To the degree that one learns philosophy he is brought into relation with a tradition, he accepts on extra-philosophical grounds a curriculum, a course, and a teacher. This is not the unique plight of the Catholic in a given kind of school; it is a common situation and one which has advantages as well as disadvantages. As soon as this point is made, its obviousness is unmistakable; yet it has been overlooked and its being recalled can bring us gently back to the real world where we can confront the genuine difficulties of present-day Thomism.
If the Catholic shares with any beginning student of philosophy the need to trust, to accept, to suspend disbelief there is a feature of his philosophizing which is less generic and that stems precisely from the fact that he has faith. Some Catholics have expressed embarrassment at the suggestion that they differ in any way from their fellow philosophers because they possess the gift of faith. The exact nature of the influence of faith on our philosophy is difficult to determine; nevertheless, it is or should be real, its influence can be seen as beneficial and beneficial philosophically. To be a Catholic after all, to hold rather determinate views on the present condition of man, his ability to achieve his natural end apart from the help of grace, and all this, we suggested, has its importance for discussions of how man can pursue successfully his natural impulse to know. Faith makes foolish the wisdom of this wold, but surely that does not mean there is no wisdom apart from revelation; knowledge becomes foolish when it is mistakenly regarded as inimical to what God has revealed, when it becomes an impediment to faith. It is foolish, not because it refuses to be put to some extrinsic use; it is foolish because it fails to meet the intrinsic criteria of knowledge. The Catholic has an antecedent certitude that no valid knowledge can be inimical to what has been revealed by God. His faith is therefore a kind of measure of his philosophy; his faith gives him confidence and comfort when the going gets rough. What is here being recalled is what the believer holds, not what anyone, believer or not, must recognize to be the case. The only adequate philosophical test of these convictions will be in philosophical positions and arguments which commend themselves to believer and non-believer alike. To recall this extra-philosophical influence, which the believer holds will have a salutary effect within philosophy, should not be embarrassing for the Catholic. If he is embarrassed by such reminders, surely he should examine the phenomenon of embarrassment and see what its sources and justification might be. It is a melancholy fact of the history of philosophy that extra-philosophical influences other than faith explain odd jumps, lacunae, and a systematic indifference to certain issues; in any philosopher there are tenets and favored topics which cannot be explained within philosophy. Why does Heidegger simply refuse to let God intrude into his philosophy? One who inspects his chosen area of study without Heidegger's resolve to keep the ontology finite will have difficulty discerning in the things spoken about any warrant for this restriction. Why does Sartre simply assert that "God cannot exist? Why did some philosophers insist that religious and ethical statements are devoid of meaning? Once one makes such options he can construct a theory which seems to favor them, but the resulting theory soon reveals itself to be in such flagrant contradiction with what we knew and knew for certain before undertaking the formal study of philosophy that a following generation has to dethrone the controlling assumption and admit as meaningful what no one ever seriously considered to be meaningless. My point is that every philosopher is influenced in his philosophizing and resultant theory by antecedent attitudes. The Christian is no different generically but when he turns to the specific influence of his faith, can he regard it as arbitrary, as a menace, as without justifiable import for philosophy? Just as faith is reasonable, so the influence of faith on philosophy is reasonable. The same cannot be said for every antecedent influence on philosophizing. Many Catholics attempt to by-pass such considerations by carefully selecting areas of study where the meeting of knowledge and faith is minimal or non-existent. I have sometimes thought that formal logic attracts for this reason; were this so, one might say, varying a title of A.N. Prior, escapism is the ethical verdict on logic. Analytic philosophy regarded as a technique without philosophical content could exercise a similar attraction. What happens then is that one avoids the big questions which have always been definitive of philosophy because, of course, those big questions will always raise, at least for discussions of philosophical activity, of philosophizing, the further question of the relation of this activity to one's religious faith. When an interest in logic or analysis is not merely an expression of the division of intellectual labor, but of a systematic turning away from the broad and big questions, the result is not merely a personal confusion which can reach a high emotional pitch, but also a denaturing of philosophy itself.
Like all students of philosophy, the Catholic is under the influence of what can be called tradition; unlike many other students of philosophy, the Catholic is under the influence of his faith -- though, again, this does not mean that the other students of philosophy are without antecedent influences. The difference is that it is quite easy for the Catholic to isolate and describe this principal influence on his intellectual inquiries and to go on to see its desirability and advantages of a more or less a priori sort. The proof of the value of faith as an antecedent influence must be read in its consequences: philosophical positions assessable in terms of the intrinsic criteria of philosophy. Antecedent influences other than faith are also present in the Catholic philosopher, of course, but they are more amorphous, less easy to isolate and describe.
It would be possible to draw up an impressive list of ecclesiastical documents bearing on the study of Thomas Aquinas, but it is not necessary to do so. Father Ramirez has already done it in as thorough a fashion as one could wish.{1} No one can doubt that the Church, through the ordinary magisterium, which is of course fallible, has again and again and in quite unmistakable terms recommended to Catholics a sure guide in philosophy, as their first teacher in this area, St. Thomas Aquinas. It is the meaning and import of this fact that has caused difficulty, which continues to cause difficulty, and about which opinions are severely divided. A correct understanding of what the Church is doing here is of an extreme importance lest some use these documents as an occasion to excoriate their fellows, question their sincerity and faith, or seek to settle philosophical differences by a citation from an encyclical or a papal allocution. A proper understanding of these documents is no less necessary to forestall any likening of the recommendation of Aquinas to the condemnation of Galileo, or regarding the repeated recommendation by the ordinary magisterium as a welcome occasion to exhibit one's indifference to, or liberty in the face of, such dark Italianate crypto-fascism said to have nothing to do with the Christian faith. These documents, let it be said, should be neither an invitation to release the latent Torquemada in every breast nor an occasion for juvenile protestations of disregard for those conservatives in Rome. A tradition of the longevity of this one can hardly be lightly dismissed by a serious Catholic. I should think that each of us, certainly those of us who are professionally engaged in philosophy, owes it to himself to reflect on the meaning of this tradition and meditate on its significance for his own philosophizing. Ten years ago this would have been a superfluous suggestion; I rather doubt there were many Catholic philosophers then who had not arrived at a reflective position on the question. Today is a different matter altogether, I think. For many reasons, some of them examined by Professor James Collins,{2} there is an increasing number of young Catholics who have finished or are finishing their graduate work in philosophy, often in non-Catholic schools, who will be joining the philosophy staffs of Catholic colleges. The situation before us is one of immense opportunity, consequently, but as well one of great potential danger. Unless we recognize the situation and respond intelligently to it, it is not impossible that there could be repeated in Catholic institutions the kind of philosophical chaos that obtained when Leo XIII issued Aeterni patris. On the other hand, the situation could be likened, mutatis mutandis, to that which confronted Aquinas himself, and surely those of us who lay claim to the title of Thomist would be far less than we should be if we could not reflect in our efforts something of the open, eager, even delighted responsiveness which Thomas regarded an intellectual era in a state of rapid and sometimes confusing flux.
I hope that our earlier considerations have made it clear that there is nothing in itself unusual about the Catholic's receiving advice at the outset of his study of philosophy. If our earlier point was made, we will be in agreement that anyone who begins the formal study of philosophy is under a comparable influence. But if any novice in philosophy must trust for a time his elders, the situation to which we are making reference seems decidedly different. The faith involved would seem to be not simply human faith, but religious faith. Let us be as clear as possible here, in order that a grievous misunderstanding can be avoided. The Catholic is not asked to believe St. Thomas Aquinas in the strong sense of believe; there is no suggestion here that anything Aquinas might have taught or written could, just as such, be considered as part of the deposit of faith the Catholic must believe. No Catholic does, or is called upon to, believe a philosophy or a theology. Our effort to distinguish between faith and reason, philosophy and theology, should make this clear. No philosophical position or argument is, as such, de fide; there is only one way to sustain a position philosophically and that is by argument, by appeal to the relevant evidence, by the cogency with which one reasons, and this must all be such that the appeal is to any mind, whether Christian or not. Nothing the Church has said about the study of Aquinas conflicts or could conflict with that basic truth which has to do with the integrity of human reason. The recommendation of Aquinas bears on our initiation to philosophy and the Church speaks here not simply out of the generic concern that one man or group of men might have for the younger generation. The Church is not simply Uncle George. As a divine agency, she has as her role the guarding and teaching of the deposit of faith. It is that proper concern which has led the Church to speak as well of philosophical instruction, not because philosophical instruction is part of the deposit of faith, but rather because many philosophical discussions impinge on the deposit of faith which is in the custody of the Church. The church, then, is addressing the activity we have called philosophizing, the area where our subjective dispositions are essentially involved. The distinction between philosophy and faith, considered in themselves, abstractly, is neat and clear; the connection between philosophizing and faith is, in the believer, I should think, inevitable. His faith, bearing as it does on the Church in her proper role, will affect his disposition with respect to the ordinary magisterium of the Church. The livelier his faith, the more disposed he will be to take into account what the Church has to say. In reflecting on what the Church has to say about philosophical instruction, he can come to see the reasonableness of such advice. One who has devoted some years to philosophy can easily see that some modes of initiation to philosophy could involve distinct and unnecessary dangers to faith. What more reasonable then than that the agency which has been entrusted with the task of guarding the deposit of faith should speak out on this matter? As the Fathers of Vatican II put it: "to fulfill the mandate she has received from her divine founder of proclaiming the mystery of salvation to all men and of restoring all things in Christ, Holy Mother the Church must be concerned with the whole of man's life, even the secular part of it insofar as it has a bearing on his heavenly calling."{3} What reason could a Catholic have for rejecting out of hand such advice of the Church? Surely it would be difficult to sustain the opinion that the Church has no business to speak out in this area; surely one would be wanting in docility if, while conceding the Church's right, he chose simply to ignore it. Moreover, a philosopher who rejects an Aquinas he has not read can scarcely be thought of as passing a philosophical judgment. Quite apart from the expressed wishes of the Church, a Catholic philosopher who rejected Aquinas as irrelevant for our times has at the very least the burden of proof. I have little doubt that one could draw up a list of passages and positions from Aquinas which could be shown, on a philosophical basis, to be inadequate, unlikely and even false. On that basis, their irrelevance would be follow as a matter of course. Were someone to draw up such a syllabus of errors and establish their falsehood, inadequacy or unlikelihood, no one could fail to take seriously such an effort. But this would be toto coelo different from the claim, made by one who had not seriously examined Aquinas, that his thought is irrelevant to the twentieth century. This is not the expression of judgment, but of an antecedent attitude and one I should find surprising in a Catholic.
If the Church has the right, given her proper task to speak out on the matter of philosophical instruction and if the Catholic who is well disposed can be expected to take into account what the Church teaches, even when this is a matter of ordinary magisterium, there arises the question as to the continuing status of the substantive doctrine of the Aquinas the Church recommends in a special way. However, I would like, first of all, to suggest a minimal way in which Aquinas could always continue to function as a guide for the Catholic philosopher. In the Decree on Christian Education, promulgated at Vatican II, we read the following. "In those schools dependent on her, she [the Church] intends that by their very constitution individual subjects be pursued according to their own principles, method and inquiry, in such a way that an ever deeper understanding in these fields will be obtained and that, as questions that are new and current are raised and investigations made according to the example of the doctors of the Church and especially of St. Thomas Aquinas, there may be a deeper realization of the harmony of faith and science."{4} We notice that Aquinas is here mentioned by name but that he functions as a kind of symbol of the intellectual activity of the Catholic. What he is symbolic of is the concern the Catholic intellectual will have to relate what he knows from his study of the various sciences to what he believes. The present pope has sounded a number of warnings against fideism, against the tendency to dissociate reason and faith. "Your studies can also help to dispel the error of some believers who are currently tempted by a renewed fideism. By trusting scientific thought alone and distrusting the certitude proper to philosophical wisdom, they are forced to base their adherence to truths of a metaphysical order on a decision of the will. In face of this abdication of the intelligence, which tends to destroy the traditional doctrine on the preambles of faith, your work must again call attention to the irreplaceable value of neutral reason, solemnly declared by Vatican Council I in conformity with the constant teaching of the Church, one of whose most authoritative and outstanding witnesses is Saint Thomas Aquinas."{5} Once more Aquinas is cited as an example, as a symbol, of a certain kind of Christian concern. If the Christian must endeavor to relate everything in his life to his calling, we are faced here with a particularization of that general task. The intellectual, the scientist, the philosopher, must as Christians see their work in the light of their faith. This does not simply mean that they direct their efforts, as human acts, to their supernatural goal, but also that they meditate on the significance of what they come to know for what they believe. Paul VI refers to the traditional doctrine on the preambles of faith, something we touched on earlier. The Catholic is held to believe that God can be known by natural reason apart from revelation; even if some things which can be naturally known have de facto been revealed, these can be distinguished from what has been revealed and cannot be understood by natural reason. Thus the non-believer as well as the believer can come to know on a basis other than faith truths about the same God concerning whom the Christian believes yet other truths. It is because God can be the object both of faith and of natural reason that there is a kind of bridge between the two; not again that faith can be deduced from reason, not that acceptance of a proof of God's existence makes one a Christian. But if one knows God exists, on the basis of natural reason, he may be disposed to hear what God has revealed to man. For the believer, such natural proofs of God's existence are a powerful adjunct; God can no longer seem an object gained by a voluntaristic leap in the dark. Furthermore, when the Christian philosopher sees the limits and poverty of natural knowledge of God, he will be disposed to be grateful for what God in his goodness has told us of himself. Is this to say that the faith of the philosopher differs from that of the simple man because he is a philosopher? Not on the point I have mentioned, certainly, since the simple man too must accept as defined that man can naturally come to know that God exists. Whatever the limitations of his personal talents, the simple believer cannot hold that faith is man's only access to the existence of God. In short, it is the belief of Catholics that faith and natural reason cannot be opposed in such a way that the former alone can attain to God and the latter has simply a finite range of objects, knowledge of which has no relation whatsoever to knowledge of God. I take the pope's warning against fideism to be a reminder to us, particularly to intellectuals, of what we do in fact believe. I take him to be warning against regarding science and/or philosophy as neutral or irrelevant to what we believe. He tells us that we cannot seriously hold this and he points out a long tradition of attempts on the part of Christian thinkers to bring into relationship with one another the fruits of natural knowledge and the truths of faith. The symbol of that effort is St. Thomas Aquinas. If then the pope is mentioning a task more or less incumbent on every Catholic engaged in the various pursuits of the intellectual life, and if Thomas Aquinas is the privileged symbol of that task, then the Christian intellectual is, to that degree, called to be a Thomist. That is, called to do the sort of thing Thomas did or tried to do.
What I have just described was earlier billed as a minimal response to the Church's wishes. It goes without saying that Thomism means a great deal more than this acceptance of a generic task, both to Thomists and their opponents. It means a good deal more than this to me. But, without being excessively irenic, I wanted to devise a meaning for the term Thomistic which would be broad enough to cover an essential obligation of the Christian intellectual (if I read the pope correctly). This is what I had in mind when, in my first chapter, I said that there is no real alternative to Thomism open to the Catholic philosopher. He should be about the kind of business Aquinas was about as a philosopher. That at least any Catholic philosopher can accept from the Church's recommendations. One might wonder why we couldn't as easily say that any Catholic philosopher must be an Augustinian or Bonaventurian or Boethian. On the level of the minimal response, there is no reason why we couldn't have used those designations -- except that the Church, when she singles out a Christian thinker to symbolize the task, has a penchant for Aquinas. Perhaps one reason for this is that to symbolize the common task as Thomist is to leave out so very little that would be connoted by the other adjectives and to imply a good deal more, at least with respect to the student of Augustine, of Boethius, of Denys the Areopagite, of Abelard, Erigena, the Victorines -- one could go on and on -- what would a Thomist without those interests be? But this is to get into the more substantive interpretation of Thomism, and there is a discussion we must undertake as a preliminary to that.
When we were speaking of the difference between the Catholic and the non-Catholic with regard to the status of this one giving advice on where to begin the study of philosophy, we made the point that the Catholic must regard himself as being in a more favorable position. The advice he is following emanates from a source he simply cannot think of as on the same level as a merely human agency. He will have, we suggested, a far greater antecedent assurance that he is setting out on the right path. Uncle George could be wrong, even Time could be wrong, but the Catholic is unlikely to think that the Church can be wrong on a matter on which she has spoken so consistently and over so long a period of time. Having said that, we added that matters are not really so simple and radiant for the Catholic. I am sure the reader surmised my meaning, but I will nonetheless develop it; it would be rather late in this essay to refrain from laboring the obvious.
Mediating between the Catholic enrolling for his first philosophy course and the advice of the Church that he begin with St. Thomas are at least two things: the curriculum of the school and the particular instructor he has drawn in the mad lottery called registration. The curriculum embodies an institutional response to the Church's wishes, and let us imagine that it is a fairly positive kind of response; the curriculum represents an interpretation of those wishes in terms of an undergraduate in an American Catholic college in the twentieth century. Presumably the curriculum contains more than one philosophy course, and our beginner must take several if he is one to be graduated. Now, as it happens, not every philosophy curriculum in American Catholic colleges is the same; the required courses vary in number and content; where there is a similarity in required courses, this boils down to one response among many to the Church's wishes, a response devised or agreed upon or lived with by a number of individual philosophers. My quite obvious point is that, in the concrete, the young Catholic beginning the study of philosophy is subject to an advice which is every bit as human, all too human, as that to which the student in a non-Catholic college is subject. Beyond the curriculum there is the individual instructor he chances to get. He may have had no choice in the matter; he may have had a choice and exercised it by seeking advice from other students. Let us imagine that what guided his decision was not the information that Professor Pumpernickel is an easy grader, but the repeated claim that he teaches a good course. Our beginner is once more deeply involved in trusting of a sort not unlike that of a student in a non-Catholic college. Anyway, here now he is, seated with others before the sapiential visage of Professor Pumpernickel. The course about to begin may be regarded by the teacher as Thomistic in orientation but, as we mentioned in the introductory chapter, there are Thomists and Thomists and we can assume that Professor Pumpernickel is of one sort or another. In brief, our novice is not simply beginning the study of philosophy under the guidance of Aquinas; he is being introduced to Aquinas by one of several possible routes. Let us consider some introductions to Aquinas which have not led to a lasting friendship.
The situation in seminaries should be considered first since many of the current critiques of Thomism come from men who took their philosophy in seminaries. Not a million years ago, the situation looked something like this. Philosophy was begun in what corresponded to junior and senior years of college, during which years the seminarian was referred to as a philosopher, a title he may not have claimed nor been accorded since. During those two years, the seminarian took a staggering number of courses in philosophy; logic, epistemology, metaphysics, natural theology, cosmology, psychology, ethics, the history of philosophy. Some of these courses were a semester in length, others two, the history often four semesters in duration. In bleaker houses, the medium of introduction was a textbook, perhaps written in a Latin the quality of which made the seminarian who had gained something from long years of study in the classics wince. One priest told me the only philosophical problem he ever had in the seminary was whether or not he would pass the course. If we can believe the critics, the tone of the course was what can only be called catechetical. Here is the thesis we maintain; here are the grounds for it; here are erroneous options to our thesis. Go and commit it all to memory. Whether or not the text was in Latin, it received a kind of attention and devotion rarely accorded books. How many philosophers have said or written things they would seriously want others to memorize verbatim? We would like to be praised or damned for what we actually said, of course, but the thought of huge paragraphs, even pages, being uncritically committed to memory involves a type of adulation few philosophers would wish. Yet this is the way many manualists were treated, men whose claim to intellectual fame often rested solely on the manual, men unknown to philosophical colleagues, contemporaries of theirs of the wider scene. If there was anything more striking than this demand on the student, it was the self-effacing diffidence of the instructor. It was not unknown for a seminary professor to long publicly for the parish life and wish to be free from the drudgery of teaching. It was not unheard of for a seminary instructor to be unable to elucidate the text the students were poring over. It was not surprising that young men who were subjected to this sort of thing failed to learn. They were not being asked to learn. The manual might as well have been Holy Writ; the point was to get it into one's memory and be able to disgorge it on demand.
This is a pretty bleak picture. I cannot say whether or not it is a true one. Nothing in my own experience matches it and I spent two years of my life being, successively, a First Philosopher and a Second Philosopher. But many will assure us that they endured some such instruction and, even allowing for dyspepsia and hyperbole, one is forced to conclude that in some seminaries things have been rather less than intellectually exciting.
Even in some fairly good seminaries, there were professors who gave the impression that every meaningful philosophical question had already been framed and definitive answer to it found. This conviction may not always have vitiated their teaching in any radical way, but it hardly conduced to an attitude of eagerness and inquiry. Even in the better places, however, the range of sources considered pertinent to the discussion of a philosophical question was severely limited. It would have been difficult, perhaps, to find a seminary that would not have claimed to be teaching Thomistic philosophy, but it would have been equally difficult to find one where the students were urged or expected to read Aquinas. The point is that the restriction of the range of sources was not to the texts of Aquinas; rather it was to secondary sources, usually manuals, often Latin manuals. and it seems to have been the rare place that required students to read anything other than the textbook for a given course. This point must be underlined when we consider the phenomenon of anti-Thomism among the clergy. Few of them ever read Thomas Aquinas, apart from a citation in the manual; few of them were really engaged in philosophical inquiry, even in terms of limited sources. Here and there, presumably, a rare seminarian did more than he was required to do; he read primary sources, he read the philosophical journals in the seminary library. But by and large, even good students were led to see the task of philosophy in terms of warring interpretations of medieval texts, of medieval schools.
What of the courses in the history of philosophy? Surely these would have broadened the philosophical outlook of the seminarians? In some cases, this seems to have happened, though there was always a problem with some original sources and the Index. That was not an insurmountable problem, of course, and the question remains whether seminarians were urged to go beyond the narrative presentation of a philosopher's teachings, laid out in the history of philosophy text, to the man's writings. Even with the inclination, however, the seminarian was so busy with so many courses that it would have been difficult for him to undertake that further reading.
Imagine this situation, paint it blacker or less black, as you will, and then consider the case of the clerical anti-Thomist. If things were as bad as I have attempted to describe them on the basis of quite audible hearsay, could anyone blame the victim for his discontent? I feel constrained to repeat that this dark picture does not match my memories of my sojourn in the seminary; I feel equally constrained to add how surprised I have been to hear friends from those days who, in their indifference to matters intellectual could have gone unscathed by the instruction of Socrates himself, lament in retrospect the quality of seminary instruction. There is doubtless much exaggeration going on here, but equally doubtless we have to admit that seminary philosophy, as it has been described, invites reaction. And yet, assuming all those depressing tales are true, I would want to insist that to reject that can hardly be the same thing as rejecting the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. I would concede that the rejection is a rejection of Thomism, since that is what this seminary instruction claimed to be. But since, by general report, it involved practically no direct contract with the writings of Aquinas, it is not and should not be described as a rejection of Aquinas. I hope it will be granted that this is no mere nit-picking distinction. To make it is not, of course, to question the correctness of the rejection that is being made. If what is described as the nature of past seminary instruction were Thomism, I would say, Away with Thomism! If the sort of thing one can find in many of the manuals to which reference is made were Thomism, I would say, Away with Thomism! What I do say is away with that sort of Thomism and I will go on to say that that sort of thing is not at all what Leo XIII had in mind when he wrote Aetermi patris. Something has intervened between Leo XIII and John XXIII, something in many ways unfortunate. But that is something for a later place.
First we must return to our college freshman. We left him in order to examine the plight of the seminarian. That was not entirely a detour, as it happens, because in the not too distant past the philosophy curriculum of Caholic laymen was modeled, to a greater or lesser degree, on that devised for seminarians. To a certain extent, accordingly, many of the bad aspects of seminary philosophy were carried over into the college offerings. A rash of textbook series appeared and, as with itching and scratching, it seemed for a time that the flood would never cease. At the moment it has been reduced to the merest trickle. What principle lay behind those text books? Let me discuss one basis for them, one with which I am acquainted. Philosophy is the name of a class of disciplines which culminate in metaphysics; the purpose of teaching philosophy is to bring students along to metaphysics as the crowning course. As prerequisites for it, logic, philosophy of nature and psychology, at least, must first be studied. All right, what was needed, the assumption ran, were textbooks giving a rounded if capsulized presentation of each of these disciplines. When these disciplines were viewed from the Thomistic angle, the textbooks amounted to introductory presentations of Aquinas (and Aristotle) on logic; Aquinas (and Aristotle) on the natural world; Aquinas (and Aristotle) on the living thing with emphasis on man. Some of these textbooks were good, some very good; they had a clear view of what they wanted to do and they did it remarkably well. Not all of them, God knows, but some. The general idea was that the philosophy courses represented a mounting curve; finally, the student took metaphysics. But it was questionable that the metaphysics took, or the philosophy of man, or the philosophy of nature, or logic. If it did not, if the student could not reasonably be expected to master the wide range of problems covered in all those courses, what had been accomplished? Well, he had a pretty good picture of what Aquinas had taught. he had information of how Thomistic doctrine was said to relate to carefully selected modern and contemporary views. As Aquinas said of the young who are taught metaphysics, they cannot understand it but they can repeat what they have heard. One hears the echo of Augustine. We do not send our sons to school to learn what the teacher knows. Or what Aquinas said. This curriculum was simply too ambitious; it did not, it could not, achieve its goal. An earlier chapter made it clear that I accept the notion of progression through various disciplines to a sapiential over-view as a good description of what philosophy is and of how one acquires philosophical wisdom. My present point is that I think it was a mistake to take that "order of learning" as a ready-made plan for a curriculum for undergraduates in a twentieth-century American Catholic college. I will return to my own suggestions on curricula later.
There were other conceptions of the meaning of a curriculum of undergraduate philosophy courses, but they shared with the one I mention the need for a plurality of textbooks. That is, whatever the conception of the curriculum, it responded to or called forth a set of textbooks in which a fairly well-rounded presentation of a slice of the philosophical task was given. What controlled the presentation was the author's conception of the doctrine of Aquinas. The questions were by and large the questions Aquinas asked; the answers were intended to be those Aquinas had given or would have given. The book ended with the resounding impression that that was that. Authors other than Aquinas were of course mentioned; sometimes they were treated sympathetically, usually they were not. More often they functioned as foils for the official view being retailed. And that, really, was the trouble. The books gave the student the scoop and by the shovelful. Far too much was taken up if it were to be treated well. Why? In order to give the whole picture. One seemed always hastening on to another point. This affected the style and method, points were made inadequately, obvious difficulties hurried past. Was this the function of the instructor? His syllabus hardly allowed him to develop matters to the requisite length if philosophical assimilation, learning, were to take place.
A decade or so ago, at what was perhaps the crest of the textbook flood, there was a crescendoing criticism of textbooks. The critics did not speak with a single voice. Some said that, while philosophical instruction of the kind enshrined in textbooks was all right for seminarians, it did not meet the needs of the lay student. Others were against textbooks because they were secondary sources and what they wanted were courses taught with the text itself of Aquinas. Yet others urged a more historical basis for the philosophy curriculum, where the student would be led from ancient philosophy through medieval and into modern thinkers. Such a curriculum could use either narrative histories of philosophy or original sources. Finally, there were those who wanted neither a return to the original text of Aquinas (in English translation, to be sure) nor a curriculum in the history of philosophy. They wanted to teach phenomenology or existentialism or, more recently, analysis. That is, they wanted to replace one philosophical persuasion with another where the replacement was conceived to commend itself, apart from substantive grounds, because it was recent and new and timely.
The first reaction is one I have no sympathy with, and it may not have been intended to be an endorsement of seminary philosophy so much as a disarming tactic. Surely if seminary philosophy was as bad as described, it couldn't be considered to be all right for seminarians. It was not all right for anyone, least of all for future priests. Some who made this distinction did so for wider reasons; they wanted to suggest that in speaking of college courses in philosophy we needn't worry about the Church's wishes concerning Aquinas since those were directed to seminaries. My own feeling is that we should be able, even while recognizing the different purposes of seminary and college curricula in philosophy, to come up with curricula which honor the Church's wishes regarding the role of Aquinas. For I do not think that those wishes can be narrowed to directives for seminaries.
The back-to-the-texts suggestion has much more to commend it, but it does not seem to me to be an adequate answer to curricular difficulties. The historical-sequence suggestion is, I think, a counsel of despair, on a par with the remark that philosophy is what philosophers do. We still have to be given criteria for recognizing philosophers and, if an earlier argument has any force, a man's claim to be one or the historians' willingness to call him one does not settle the matter. Furthermore, although a counsel of despair, such an historical sequence seems open to the fallacy of evolutionary optimism, suggesting as it may that we have come a long distance from the Greeks, philosophically speaking. That is an assumption not every philosopher is willing to make without a dozen qualifications. Finally, to replace Thomism with existentialism or phenomenology or analysis, a suggestion which would of course be based on substantive grounds, does not really address itself to the problem before us. That problem thus far is one of style and procedure rather than one of substance; a narrow and catechetical and scholastic, in the pejorative sense, style can and has attached itself to existentialism, phenomenology, and analysis. What we want is not a rotation of vices, a shift of Isms, a new orthodoxy. What we want is a philosophical instruction which will embody the wishes of the Church on this matter. This calls for a change of style and a new look at substance, a new look at Aquinas, a timely way of being Thomistic. On a large scale, the vision of Leo XIII has not been realized; in a very real sense, therefore, Thomism has not yet been tried and, not having been tried, it cannot be said to have been found wanting.
It is impossible, even today. to read the Aeterni patris of Leo XIII without the feeling that here is a challenge and invitation to Catholic thinkers of the most serious and exciting kind. Issued in 1879, this encyclical has borne some fruits, fruits so obvious that they were recognized by such non-Catholic philosophers as the American, Josiah Royce. Writing in 1903, after the death of Leo, Royce had this to say: "Many students of philosophy, of theology, and even of the natural sciences -- students, I mean, who have no direct concern with any of the internal affairs of Leo's own religious body -- are still forced, although outsiders, to recognize how important, for the general intellectual progress of our time, the future outcome of the whole neo-Scholastic movement in the Catholic Church may prove. For if the process which Leo initiated continues to go unhindered, the positive results for the increase of wholesome cooperation between Catholic and non-Catholic investigators and teachers will probably be both great and helpful."{6} Royce goes on to suggest that the influence of a revived Scholastic philosophy on contemporary thinking will doubtless be mutual and that is as it should be. There are aspects of the teaching of St. Thomas he finds uneven and inadequate and he enumerates several, but by and large, he expresses a sympathy and interest that one would expect from a thinker of his depth and sincerity. At the time he writes, with Leo dead, Royce expresses fears for the future of the Thomistic revival. Hoping these fears will not be realized, he concludes, "But what an admirable opportunity for a genuine spiritual growth will be lost if Leo's revival of Catholic philosophy has even its first fruits cut off, and is not permitted to bear the still richer fruit that, in case it is unhindered, it will some day surely bring forth."{7}
Royce's expectation that the Catholic philosopher has something distinctive to contribute to the general work of philosophy is one that continues to be shared by the vast majority of non-Catholic thinkers who take any interest in the matter. Surely it would be the depth of irony if the Catholic philosopher regarded his involvement in the intellectual life as indistinguishable from that of non-Catholic Christian or Jewish philosophers and even from that of agnostic and atheist philosophers. Any such effort on the part of the Catholic philosopher to appear indistinguishable is met with wary amusement by his colleagues who remember, even when the Catholic forgets, that in the person of the Catholic philosopher there must be a meeting of faith and knowledge. The effort to take on the dominant coloration of contemporary philosophizing, with a concomitant and strident critique of the substance of traditional Catholic philosophy, if it is motivated by zeal, as it often is, seems to me destined to have the opposite of its desired effect. We will have come to an odd pass if the believer has to be reminded by the non-believer that faith is a pervasive and undeniable guide to the philosophizing of the believer. Far from being impressed by attempts at such an impossible abstraction of philosophizing from faith, the non-believer will tend to suspect that the faith of his Catholic colleague is empty or disappearing and, when one considers the anguished condition of many who have attempted the abstraction, it is hard not to see precisely this danger lurking over the horizon. The minimal response to the Church's suggestions concerning the Catholic's engagement in philosophy requires a prolonged reflection on just this matter. Philosophandum in fide can hardly be construed as the option of some excessively docile Catholics; if it is stated as an exhortation, this is only because it is a reminder to do consciously and well what one, as a Catholic, cannot fail to do. Whatever others may think, the Catholic who regards his faith as an impediment to philosophy, as restrictive and confining, is on the way to having his philosophy become an impediment to his faith. Videte ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam: watch out lest anyone lead you astray through philosophy, St. Paul warned.{8} How tragic if that someone should be oneself. Revealed truth is a tremendously liberating and fortifying factor in the philosophizing of the Christian. The Catholic philosopher who does not reflect on his condition, who does not grasp and welcome that truth, is open to the kind of fideism against which Paul VI warns. But with fideism faith becomes unreasonable and it is at least dubious that one whose vocation is the life of reason will long adhere to something he mistakenly consigns to the region of the absurd and irrational.
These are things I feel constrained to say, without authority, God knows, but with, I hope, the best of motives. If Catholic philosophy has not been all it should be, it is up to Catholics to remedy the situation. This is what the Church expects of us; it is, I think what we expect of ourselves. My present suggestion, relevant to any effort at dialogue with non-Catholics, is that this is precisely what our non-Catholic colleagues expect of us. To refuse the challenge is a disservice not only to ourselves and to the Church but also to our non-Catholic colleagues who are right to expect better of us. This was certainly the invitation issued to Catholics by Leo XIII in Aeterni patris. Was it accepted?
Consider the following assessment of Father James Weisheipl. "It is a social historical fact that the hope of Leo XIII has never been universally realized in Catholic colleges, universities and seminaries. Not even the ardent efforts of St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, or Pius XII were able to effect anything more than a closed, safe, and sterile Thomism, imposed by legislative authority. Legislation did not stimulate a return to the true thought and spirit of St. Thomas relevant to our day. Legislation led rather to the production of safe textbooks that demolished adversaries (sententiae oppositae) with presumptuous conviction. But this merely led students to pass easily, as Pius XII noted in 1950, 'from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and even contempt for the teaching authority of the Church itself, which gives such authoritative approval to scholastic theology.' Pius XII might just as easily have used the terms 'philosophy' or 'Thomism' in this context. Until the program of Leo XIII is seriously attempted in a thorough and spontaneous manner, there will always be zealous priests and laymen who react to what they only half understand. Reactions against Thomism in the past half-century have been, in fact, to a pseudo-Thomism, a half-understood St. Thomas."{9}
Father Weisheipl takes a very dim view of Church legislation on the matter of Thomism, although he is careful to point out the factual situations that called it forth. He laments the atmosphere that was created by that legislation and the political machinations to which it gave rise. He goes so far as to draw an analogy between the third Reich and "the reign of terror" that existed from 1910 onwards. He senses the dawn of a new era with John XXIII and Vatican II, but a new era, be it noted, for Thomism, a Thomism in the spirit of Aeterni patris and of Thomas Aquinas himself.
Those who were subjected to some version of the rigid, catechetical Thomism described above may be impatient with attempts to dissociate Thomas from that Thomism. This effort may seem a belated face-saving one undertaken by those who have a vested interest in retaining power behind a hastily revised image. Was that so-called sterile Thomism all that untrue to St. Thomas Aquinas? Since this reaction is both predictable and understandable, something will be gained by pointing to a number of ways in which the Thomism to be rejected was really untrue to Thomas. Since the objections have to do, for the most part, with style and method and scope, it is principally to these that I will address myself.
Aquinas and Jargon. The question of philosophical terminology is complex and difficult. Peirce has a passage in his papers entitled "The Ethics of Terminology"; in it he recommends that philosophers proceed as do botanists and devise labels from Greek and Latin for their key positions and tenets. Peirce is characteristically straightforward in this suggestion which would lead, I think, to the apotheosis of philosophical jargon. Nevertheless, he is addressing himself to a commonly recognized fact about philosophical literature. That literature is in large part written with the vocabulary of ordinary life, but the philosopher employs terms from the ordinary language in an extraordinary way, so extraordinary in fact that one who took the terms as they are usually understood would miss the whole point of what the philosopher is trying to say. To overcome the ambiguities within the natural language and the further ambiguity created by using its vocabulary for technical purposes, Peirce suggests in effect that philosophers create a unique terminology from which ambiguity can be systematically excluded. Similar suggestions with a more limited purpose are usually made in introductions to logic textbooks. The advantage of a formal language in doing logic, the argument runs, is that we are immediately free of the ambiguities of natural speech.
The logician's claim has more plausibility than Peirce's more sweeping recipe, but in many respects the formal language of logic merely postpones a difficulty. When we are concerned, not simply with logical reasoning, but with reasoning logically, the problem of the interpretation of the symbols presents itself. Outside of logic, our concern is not with logical symbols, but with substantive matters and those substantive matters may very well be the things ordinary men know well enough to name and talk about. A translation is in order, therefore, and one that presents a dual difficulty. For there is the prior task of translating from the natural into the formal language and the subsequent one of translating from the formal back into the natural language. Whichever end of the process we look at, it becomes quite clear that the formal language of logic cannot be commended as just of itself overcoming ambiguities within the natural language. That ambiguity has to be overcome before symbols can be invoked and the overcoming therefore is a task within natural language and carried on in terms of natural language. That ambiguity has to be overcome before symbols can be invoked and the overcoming therefore is a task within natural language and carried on in terms of natural language. Peirce's suggestion loses its attractiveness so soon as we attend to the difficulties that would be involved in learning the technical language he proposes. In order to learn it, the elements of the technical language have to be put into relation with the natural language each of us has been speaking since childhood and this entails, or so it seems to me, that a technical term must always be able to be cashed in the currency of the natural language, some phrase at least of the natural language serving as descriptive of what it means. One could imagine a technical language where the exchange could go on for a time in terms of scrip, but sooner or later the whole system has to be related to the Fort Knox of ordinary language. If not, how could it be learned? Well, counter-suggestions are possible, I know, but I will ease the matter to a tentative close here because I am convinced the point I am making could continue to be made in the face of further considerations as occur to me.
What is the straightforward alternative to Peirce's suggestion? It is the conscious and reflected-upon alternative of Aristotle and Aquinas as well as many others, the unconscious alternative of most philosophers. If philosophy is the continuation of a kind of thinking few men could fail to engage in, if it is an attempt to do well the inquiring which is definitive of man, this formal and reflexive effort must always be regarded as continuous with that spontaneous effort. The spontaneous effort is expressed in the natural languages men devise in society; the formal effort can be carried on in that same language. When a philosopher makes use of the natural language, he will want to select terms from it which express an awareness or knowledge connected with the knowledge he has acquired. Unless he does this, unless he is able to put the meaning he attaches to, say, "form" and "act" and "substance" into relation with the meaning those terms already have and show why he selected the terms he did rather than others, his language will not be an instrument of communication. The function of the language philosophers use, in short, is to enable men to move from what they already know to what they don't yet know and if there is a dependence of the latter on the former, this dependence can be enshrined by retaining the same vocabulary. It is not often noticed how severely limited the philosophical vocabulary of Aquinas is; how very few terms it contains which don't already have a meaning and use in ordinary Latin.
The philosophical terminology arrived at in the way I have sketched is a deliberate courting of ambiguity. Since it is deliberate, or systematic, it must be constantly alluded to in in order that it not become an impediment. Book Delta, or Five, at the beginning of Metaphysics of Aristotle is subtitled, in the Oxford translation, a Philosophical Lexicon, and another English edition of that work actually places Book Delta, or Five, at the beginning. In either case, the suggestion seems to be that the book contains Aristotle's technical language, the jargon of his philosophy. But it is quite clear to the reader of that book that the devising of the terminology is one of the most important philosophical tasks Aristotle ever undertook, that its importance lies precisely in his concern not to employ a jargon or technical language in the remote sense implied by those two English editions. For, as is obvious, Aristotle's conception of philosophical vocabulary rests upon any number of substantive philosophical positions; the nature of language, the question of meaning, the order of learning, etc. Aristotle's view of philosophical terminology cannot be separated from his vision of what man is, the trajectory of human knowledge, the function or functions of language.We spoke earlier of the opening considerations of Aristotle's Metaphysics and pointed out that he there calls our attention to the primacy, in our lives, of the practical, of the technical in the root sense. Given that obvious point about what it means to be a man, unavoidable consequences follow for philosophical language. If there is an area, a dimension of human existence, that no man can fail to understand and if his performance there involves and is enshrined in language, any effort to lead men from what that already know to what they do not yet know must pay careful and sustained attention to that common stratum of awareness.
Was Aristotle so naïve as to think that this common knowledge of men was clearly contained in natural language? Surely not, since he spends much time, in his analysis of natural language, of ordinary language, removing impediments to seeing its fundamental, ineradicable content. If the Greek language, as actually spoken, both contained and covered up what every man knows, modern languages are vehicles of far more freight and do not easily lend themselves to employment beyond ordinary ones. It is often pointed out that sophisticated uses of language, philosophical and/or scientific interpretation of terms, filter back into common usage; ordinary language can thus seem to be the repository of formalized concepts, familiar but hardly evident notions.Think of Korzybski and the Anti-Aristotelian Society. It is the thesis of this semantic school that ordinary language is vitiated by the influence on it of Aristotelian conceptions. Aristotle's point was just the opposite, that his conceptions and uses of language were controlled by what men knew before his arrival on the scene and independently of anything he might say. In Korzybski's favor, we can recall the twofold aspect of "common sense" discussed earlier.
This is not the place to engage in any sustained discussion of the nature of language. I had to say as much as I have in order to provide the necessary background for understanding Aquinas' conception of a desirable philosophical vocabulary. On these matters, his views are one with those of Aristotle, whose psychology and doctrine on language he accepts. What this means for philosophical instruction is that it must always be kept in a close and warm relationship with ordinary language. Really to teach philosophy, really to teach anything, is to begin where the student is, with the certitudes he has prior to instruction and with the language he ordinarily employs to express that antecedent knowledge. Now, aren't some of the objections to the previously regnant Thomism really objections to the unreal language in which it was embodied? Whether one was embarrassed by it or took a fleeting and perverse pride in it, the student knew his parents could not have the slightest inkling of what he was saying if he should quote to them a passage from his philosophy text, even -- perhaps particularly -- if it were in English. The recognition that one shared their ignorance was not exactly an exhilarating experience. What did it all mean? What relevance did it have for the common concerns and language of men? These were not silly, inapposite questions. They amounted to an essential and devastating criticism -- and one Aquinas himself would have made of this Thomism.
Let us not suppose that the Church favored this sort of jargon. In Humani generis, Pius XII had this to say: "However, even in these fundamental questions, we may clothe our philosophy in a more convenient dress, make it more vigorous with a more effective terminology, divest it of certain scholastic aids found less useful, prudently enrich it with the fruits of progress of the human mind."{10} One could multiply such suggestions about philosophical terminology. Does this mean that being, cause, substance, form, matter, and so forth are to be expunged from our philosophical vocabulary? Surely not. They continue to function in our language when we are not doing philosophy. But they have taken on any number of what C.S. Lewis called, in a different but related area, dangerous senses.{11} There is a vast task of analysis and sifting of ordinary usage required, a task that may be performed piecemeal or in a sustained though still limited way, if those dangerous senses are to be avoided and the desired sense recognized. It is scarcely a matter of chance that many philosophers today feel impelled to peel away the layers of ordinary usage in order to get at ineradicable senses and uses of common terms. This task is undertaken by thinkers as different as Heidegger and Wittgenstein and if their immediate procedures differ, if their ultimate objectives differ yet more, anyone can come to appreciate the importance and necessity of what they are up to. The chaos created by conflicting philosophical traditions has come to be mirrored in ordinary language and we are in danger of being cheated out of our ordinary certitudes. Analysis and phenomenology, in different ways, provide invaluable aids to removing impediments to seeing what we all already know. In many different ways, contemporary philosophers can be regarded as re-examining the starting point, regaining the starting point, from which philosophy traditionally set out. The difficulties within Thomism, within Catholic philosophy generally, are not confined to it; they are part of a widespread malaise where even the evident is felt to be obscure. The Catholic can recognize difficulties, he has had his share in creating them, but he is spared the vertigo of thinking that after the layers of the fantastic and familiar have been peeled away, we will be left, as with a Lockian onion, with discarded skin and no substance.
Chatter and Informing. Buried away in Aquinas' discussion of the angels -- who nowadays reads the Angelic Doctor on angels? -- is a distinction pertinent to what we have been saying. He asks if angels can talk to one another. (At this point, I imagine a certain kind of reader lurches or shudders. My God, how baroque! Perhaps. But what prompts the question is the Epistle to the Corinthians, I, 13:1: "If I should speak with the tongue of men and angels...") Aquinas establishes the nature of the metaphor involved here{12} and then, relying on the notion of a hierarchy of angels, asks if a lower angel can speak to a higher one. I am not presently interested in the context but in the distinction Aquinas draws between talk that is mere talk (locutio) and talk that is informative (illuminatio). Truly informative talk is independent of the informer, since what he says is referred to principles, knowledge of which the learner may be supposed to have. "But the manifestation of those things which depend on the will of the one who knows them cannot be called informative but merely talk. For example, if someone tells another, I want to learn that, I want to do this or that ... To know what you might wish does not serve to perfect my mind nor does to know what you know, but only the way things are."{13} The connection of this with earlier discussions will, I trust, be seen. We do not send our children to school to learn what the teacher knows. We do not study philosophy to learn what a thinker holds, what Aquinas said. No doubt there is a fine line to be drawn between the virtue of gratitude and the vice of quoting; it is the rare philosopher who will not give citations, references to his reading, particularly when his reading has helped him to gain a position. If one did not acknowledge such debts, we would feel him deficient. There is a basis for the copyright laws. Yet, finally, of course, the point of philosophy is not who said it, but what is said and the reasons for saying it. Once more this is a trick area. The ideal may seem austere, altogether too austere. Is the reading of history and biography to be proscribed? Is our interest in the story of our children's day somehow suspect since all we get is a narratio singularium, the events of which detain us because this is Junior speaking? No consequences so loathsome as these follow on the distinction made. My point in invoking it is that it makes as clear as could be desired that Aquinas provides no warrant for our being interested in what he said as what he said. And is that last sentence locutio or illuminatio?
Problems and Theses. The trouble with reducing what Thomas taught to a number of theses is that conclusions can seem to be enshrined at the expense of the arguments that support them. But of course a conclusion is only as good as its supporting argument. There is no inherent fault in a pedagogical method which would proceed by saying this is the way it is and now here are the reasons for the claim. But what can be absent from such a procedure, and not merely temporarily, is the question that at least originally must have controlled it. What possible interest could we have in an answer, even if accompanied by supporting reasons, if it had never occurred to us to ask the question? Surely the main part of philosophical instruction is to encourage inquiry, to guide it, to make sure good questions are being asked. The term used to signify this today (ungrammatically, as it happens, since an adjective is employed as a substantive) is the problematic. We must, we are urged first work up the problematic. Grammar aside, it is a salutary reminder. and isn't this, again, part of the criticism of the Thomism that prevailed? Is this what the Church is recommending when, among other things, she urges us to pay particular attention to the method of St. Thomas? Well, what was the method of St. Thomas? That it was a method of inquiry is stylistically clear from the Summa theologiae. The titles of the articles are precisely questions; the major divisions of the work are quaestiones. A question, for Aquinas, was the expression of indecision before possible answers, so the question embodies inquiry, wonder, searching. Furthermore, the question is answered, the problem resolved, by putting into play as live possibilities a number of alternative positions. Even those who read the Summa theologiae seem sometimes to miss the dialectical, problematic procedure of that work. It was to counteract this, we may suppose, that Professor Otto Bird wrote an article on how to read an article in the Summa.{14} Teaching should be problematic, inquiring, dialectical, something carried on in terms of the interplay of possible answers, all of which can usually be shown to cast some light on the matter at hand. The procedure of Aquinas has not characterized the Thomism many would reject. One must admit that theirs is a fundamentally Thomistic criticism.
A final word about scope. While there are obvious limitations on the sources that can be usefully brought into play in discussing a given philosophical question, there seems to have been an unnecessary narrowing of interest on the part of Thomists. Furthermore, even when the range of sources was broadened, the impression was seldom given that the authors referred to could have any substantial contribution to make. All too often they were brought in merely to be chastised. Now maybe they needed chastisement, maybe much of what they wrote was both absurd and dangerous. But consider again the manner of Aquinas.{15} One reads him with the growing awareness that he was in principle interested in anything available to him, from whatever source it came; moreover, the sympathy with which he reads authors whose fundamental tenets are opposed to his own, the value he insists on finding wherever he reads, is something almost unique in the history of philosophy. Try if you will to imagine an Aquinas alive today who would not be well versed in Wittgenstein, Ryle, Wisdom, Russell, Whitehead, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, and so forth. That is almost as impossible as imagining Aquinas a Thomist in the sense that designation has sometimes had. We are still proceeding here on a fairly superficial level, but the spirit which guided Aquinas' own intellectual labor is the polar opposite of that which would, considerations of time and talent aside, limit the range of authors to be read or approach with a prejudiced mind any author, even when his terminology and approach are unfamiliar and difficult. I have always been struck by Aquinas' commentary on the Liber de causis, the Neoplatonic work that derived from Proclus -- a discovery owed to a piece of detective work by Aquinas himself. The starting point of that work, its vocabulary and style, are such that one might be prepared for an unsympathetic reading of it by Aquinas. But just the opposite happens. Moreover, his commentary contains a large number of references to Aristotle, attesting to a supreme effort to read this work in the light of positions considered to be be already established. The upshot of the commentary is that Thomas sees the Neoplatonic emanation metaphysics as the possibility opened up by the Aristotelian ascent from below. Thus two initially conflicting metaphysical views are shown to be complementary to one another.
A consequence of some of the features of the sterile Thomism we have been examining is that at times readers of Aquinas lost the sense of the varying force of arguments and put on a par with firmly established positions others which are at best likely or probable. I suppose it was this sort of thing that led critics of Thomism to ask Thomists if they thought everything Aquinas had written is true. To say, "No, he quoted a lot," was seldom, I found, received for the feeble humor it tried to be. But the accusation veiled in the question was so absurd and sweeping that one would have liked to believe a quip could do service as a reply. Any philosophical benefit derived from reading Aquinas, to repeat a point, consists in freeing oneself from the fact that Aquinas said it. Like others who have profited from their study of an author, Thomists may sometimes have seemed excessively reluctant to discard an argument of Aquinas merely because it was dense and difficult. But none of this need have been tantamount to treating the opera omnia of Aquinas as a repository of the truth and nothing but the truth, with its ultimate warrant the fact that Aquinas was the author.
Perhaps these few remarks will sufice as a justification of the claim that many of the things which have been objected to in a traditional so-called Thomism could be objected to on Thomistic grounds. It is not meaningless to say, therefore, that a rejection of such Thomism has little or nothing to do with the teaching of Thomas Aquinas.
We suggested a minimal response to the Church's recommendation of St. Thomas which turned being a Thomist into being a man who makes an effort to conjoin reason and faith, and that would seem to be the unavoidable task of a Catholic engaged in intellectual matters. Because many would be content with this minimal response because of a bad experience with what was called Thomism, we went on to accept descriptions of the Thomism criticized and agreed that it ought to be rejected. However, to reject such a Thomism is not, as we tried to show, a rejection of Aquinas. That last point was made in terms of style, approach, and manner of philosophizing because the objections to Thomism and its consequent rejection are often made in terms of such factors. The open manner of philosophizing we attributed to Aquinas, while it is his authentic manner and must be an essential component of any future Thomism, cannot be thought to characterize Thomism in any substantial sense. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a substantial Thomism. Surely a concern with philosophical terminology, paying attention to the exigencies of pedagogy, an irenic and sympathetic attitude to whatever philosophical documents are not attitudes confined to Aquinas. Thus even if this open spirit be added to the kind of minimal response suggested earlier, we are still far from any notion of what Thomism is in a substantive sense.
We have reached, therefore, a difficult point in our essay and one the adequate treatment of which would require far more space than we intend to use here and a far different manner of procedure. There is little point in listing a series of key positions of Aquinas that would make up a substantive Thomism, though such a list could be made. Included in that list would be such items as his establishment of the spirituality of the human soul and of its immortality, together with such allied positions as the difference between intellection and sensation and the manner in which intellection is dependent upon sensation. All of this would lead to a statement of the essential realism of Aquinas. Now even to mention the philosophical questions associated with realism should be sufficient indication of the difficulty I am facing here. The term "realism" has become so ambiguous that it makes next to little sense to say of Thomas that he held for realism. Royce, in the essay mentioned, cited the changing scholastic attitude toward Kant and seemed to be calling attention to the amount of "idealism" that could be assimilated by "realism." A list such as is envisaged would have to include Aquinas' proofs of the existence of God, his teaching on the basic principles of morality and the nature of the moral decision. Once more, phrases like "natural law" and "practical syllogism" do not wear their meanings on their faces; they mean wildly different things to different people. What I am saying is that any list that could be drawn up would have to be accompanied by a rather thorough commentary if its meaning were it to be clear. Even if such difficulties could be overcome, I doubt that very widespread agreement could be reached as to what would constitute a list of the essential teaching of Aquinas. This does not really bother me. The day of such lists is, I should hope, behind us. The day of testing the adequacy of the Thomism of others, their Thomisticity, as it were, is behind us. To engage in that sort of thing is to be drawn away from the philosophical task, to lose the spirit of philosophizing, to want to identify the "true believers" in an area where belief is not the point. Anyone can consult the ecclesiastical documents to find short lists of the Thomistic positions which have prompted the Church to single out St. Thomas in the way she has. What I want to say is this. To be really meaningful, the term "Thomism" must include more that what is involved in the minimal response and openness in philosophizing mentioned above. I have certain ideas as to what a minimal but substantive Thomism would amount to, but I am unwilling to lay it out lest it be construed as some kind of standard for others. The matter cannot be left here, of course, but to carry it beyond this point must be a group rather than an individual decision.
Let me try to clarify the preceding, rather obscure paragraph. Throughout this chapter I have been failing to distinguish between two types of response to the Church's wishes that we undertake the study of philosophy under the guidance of Aquinas, types that could be called the personal response and the institutional response. It was to my advantage not to make this distinction earlier; it would be to my disadvantage not to make it now. The church documents in question are, by and large, addressed to bishops primarily or to the heads of religious institutions, universities, and so forth, but beyond these stated addresses they speak to the faithful at large. Each of us must, therefore, ask, What is their meaning for me? Part of what I have been trying to say is that I should find it difficult to understand why any Catholic would simply ignore what the church has to say here. And, although I accept as a possibility the interpretation of Aquinas as a symbol of an effort the Christian intellectual must inevitably make, while I suggest that there is a description of the spirit of Thomism which is relatively independent of the substance of what Aquinas taught, it is nevertheless my opinion that every Catholic philosopher has a special obligation to give Aquinas himself a sympathetic reading. I say a special obligation because it is generally incumbent upon philosophers to read the writings of acknowledged giants in the field and it goes without saying that such a reading should be sympathetic. When a philosopher is a Catholic, when his church has repeatedly and in unmistakeable terms directed his attention to the writings of Aquinas, it is surely not extreme to suggest that he should heed this advice and give a privileged status to the views of Aquinas on philosophical problems he takes up, where Aquinas has views. I have often marveled at the docility of converts like Jacques Maritain and Edith Stein, who, though already formed philosophers, turned themselves to a prolonged study of St. Thomas Aquinas. Here as elsewhere the behavior of converts is instructive for the cradle Catholic, for one insufficiently grateful for familiar blessings.
When things are transposed to this level, when a Catholic philosopher reads Aquinas seriously and sympathetically, the only controlling criteria are those of reason. None of the Thomistic positions I mentioned above when I wasn't drawing up a list is uncontroverted; the only meaningful way any Thomistic position or argument can be philosophically assimilated is by an interplay of positions, by taking particular account of criticisms of Aquinas. The proofs of the existence of God are an obvious instance. These proofs have been subjected to severe criticism and some of these criticisms are important and timely. The serious student of Aquinas has to take them into account. What will the upshot of this be? Does one who is beginning the study of these proofs have to be assured that those proofs can withstand any conceivable criticism? I may think they can, and let us hope that if I think so my conviction is based on a sustained and serious look at actual criticisms of them. What I am trying to say is that we must not define a serious study of such proofs in terms of a conviction that can only be the result of a serious study. A Catholic may become convinced, after studying these proofs, that they are invalid. If he publishes his criticisms, another may wish to dispute with him. My point is that we cannot and should not even faintly suggest that the first man is somehow remiss in his obligations as a Catholic. What we have to keep absolutely clear is that there is no such thing as official orthodoxy so far as substantive philosophical arguments and positions go, unless of course a philosophical position is in open and flagrant opposition to revealed truth. The Thomistic proofs for the existence of God -- need it be said? -- are not part of revealed truth.
All the Church asks, all we need ask of ourselves, is that we give St. Thomas a careful and sympathetic reading. The only grounds for accepting any element of his philosophy will be evidence and argument. It seems obvious to me that underlying the Church's recommendation of Aquinas is her acceptance of a long tradition of esteem in which Aquinas has been held, the assumption that his arguments will, a large part of them, hold. And, of course, her proper judgment that what he taught is in remarkable conformity with the faith. Once more, there is no suggestion here that we must believe Aquinas in the strong sense of believe, that we must believe in the strong sense that such and such a proof of his is valid. The validity of a philosophical proof is a matter of judgment, not of faith.
I think it unlikely that anyone can study St. Thomas without philosophical profit. Some students will find more and other less that is acceptable in Aquinas. My point about personal response and my unwillingness to draw up a list of Thomistic positions has to do with just this possibility. One may be in accord with St. Thomas on some points and in disagreement with him on others. Far better really to hold a few philosophical positions, which happen also to have been held by Aquinas, which happen to have been arrived at by a study of Aquinas, than to adhere to a whole host of unexamined philosophical tenets which one cannot adequately communicate or defend. Of two men, one of whom holds to X number of Thomistic theses as if they constituted a credo, theses he cannot sustain against relevant objections, while the other holds one or two positions in common with Aquinas but holds them philosophically, rationally -- well, it would not be difficult to say which is the better philosopher, which is the better Thomist.
If I were to try to sum up what I have been trying to say about the personal response to the Church's wishes concerning Aquinas, this is what I would say. It seems to me that every Catholic philosopher has an antecedent obligation of a special kind to study Aquinas seriously and with sympathy. From that point on, he is under no obligation as to what the outcome of that study will be. He is under no obligation to agree with Aquinas. To suggest otherwise is to deny the very nature of philosophy. It is because many have sensed that suggestion in the attitude of Thomists that they have turned away from what is indeed their obligation, namely to take St. Thomas seriously into account in their philosophizing. For what comfort they may derive from it, I am suggesting that this does not entail that they take Thomists seriously.
When we realize that what the Church has had to say about the teaching of St. Thomas calls for an antecedent deference to him of a special kind but is not a prediction that there will be a consequent deference, based on philosophical assimilation, or, if there is, that this will be homogeneous and on all points the same, we realize what I should like to think no one ever seriously doubted, that Thomism must meet the same demands in the intellectual market place as any other philosophical position. This does not mean that the non-Catholic may have to be convinced of its value while the Catholic accepts it on trust. There is only one way to be a Thomist and that is by being a philosopher, and there is but one set of demands that must be met by the philosopher, whether or not he is a Catholic. If Thomists have in the past seemed to demand of their fellow Catholics adherence to philosophical tenets on other than philosophical grounds, then Thomists have been grievously wrong. If men have thought they were philosophers who could not sustain the views they held, then they have been mistaken and it is criminal if they covered up their deficiencies with the label of Thomism. It is laudable to be alert to the advice of the Church on how we should begin the study of philosophy; it is culpable to equate the antecedent attitude with the finished product.
I hope that my Catholic reader will agree with what I have said earlier about our advantages as philosophers, advantages which derive from faith and from the fact that the advice we receive about the study of philosophy comes from a source as trustworthy as the ordinary magisterium of the Church. It is equally clear that these advantages would become disadvantages if we thought they exempted us from the difficult task philosophizing is. I suspect it is because, for some, Thomism seemed the enshrinement of the view that within philosophy, the Catholic is not subject to the same demands as any philosopher, that Thomism has become a symbol of what must be cast aside. The study of St Thomas should never have become a synonym for intellectual lethargy and sham. Surely it is the task of those who have learned from that study to redeem Thomism from this misunderstanding.
On the level of the personal response to Aquinas, it is impossible to predict what the Thomism of the future will be. However, it should be safe to predict that what we will move toward is not Thomism but Thomisms, any number of ways of truly and philosophically profiting from the study of Aquinas. This plurality of Thomism will not simply be a function of diversity of talent; it will also be the result of the unavoidable division of philosophical labor. The interests of some will lead them into the philosophy of science; of others into ethics, into social and political philosophy; yet others will be principally concerned with philosophical anthropology. Some will devote themselves chiefly to theory of knowledge and metaphysics; others to logic, semantics, and allied topics. What these multiple efforts will have in common, insofar as they can be called Thomisms, is that the philosophers who undertake them will know Aquinas well and, knowing him well, will have taken on his spirit which entails that they are in principle open and interested and sympathetic to whatever has been written on their principal interest. Furthermore, having taken on the spirit of Aquinas, they will retain the view that the ultimate import of any special knowledge is the aid it can give us in coming to know God.
It goes without saying that many questions which occupy Catholic philosophers were undreamt of by Aquinas or were posed by him in a different or more limited fashion. Thomistic positions will doubtless be altered by being put into relation with other views, later views, different vantage points. But of course the task of the philosopher who has learned some things from his study of Aquinas is not to show that he can learn nothing from anyone else, it is not to defend at all costs, whatever further considerations are brought to bear, what Aquinas said. I suspect that Catholic philosophers of the future, all of whom may be called Thomists in some meaningful sense of the term, will bear only a family resemblance to one another rather than the cooky-cutter identity that seems to have been the expectation of some past devotees of Aquinas. As we move away from the baleful past influence of the suggestion that there is a substantively orthodox catholic philosophy, as our philosophizing becomes livelier and, while in continuity with what Aquinas learned, yet distant from what he achieved, we will be on our way toward the Thomism envisaged by Aeterni patris. We will not scrutinize one another for departures from orthodoxy, but attend to the arguments. We may as Catholics know how we should begin the study of philosophy, we may have thanks to our faith a tremendous aid and impetus to philosophizing, but who of us can predict what the outcome or outcomes will be?
If on the level of personal response to the church's advice, there are good and sufficient reasons for refraining from listing an array of philosophical tenets which anyone must accept if he is to be regarded as taking Aquinas seriously as a philosopher, the matter is rather more difficult when we turn to institutional response. Is there a curriculum for Departments of Philosophy in Catholic colleges laid out somewhere in the heavens of orthodoxy? Curricula are or should be the embodiment of collective decisions by philosophers as to how the young may best be instructed in philosophy. If that is so, institutional responses to the desires of the Church will reflect the personal response to those desires made by the philosophers who are faculty of a department. Those who have survived some years of departmental meetings devoted to the philosophy curriculum, those who have been put to the ultimate test of serving on committees formed for the purpose of revising a curriculum, will appreciate that any easy answers to the problems they have faced are hardly worth he laughter they would provoke. It goes without saying that discussions of philosophy curricula in Catholic colleges must, and without apology, take into account the extra-philosophical demands of faith. The Catholic philosopher who views his philosophizing in conjunction with his own faith has an obligation to introduce his students to philosophy in such a way that they too see the Christian context of philosophizing. Included in that context, for those who must worry about curriculum, is the matter of the Church's recommendation of St. Thomas as a sure guide of our philosophizing, particularly at the outset. That recognition does not bring with it a ready-made, four-course curriculum; it does not entail a particular sequence of courses; it does not demand the use of a certain kind of textbook or of English translations of Aquinas. It does not even require, finally, the mention of Aquinas' name in a course in philosophy.
The last remark is a concession to a far-out and mythical demand, of course. However, although I think it would be contrived, I can imagine a course given by one who has learned things from Aquinas who yet argued for those positions with his students while using only documents by other thinkers who made the same points. My own view of the substantive value of Aquinas' teaching is that few of his tenets are peculiar to him; indeed, I would find it exceedingly odd if that were not the case. In ethics, for example, it is perfectly possible to treat a fair number of themes and employ a wide variety of readings, none of them in Aquinas, and argue for positions substantively identical with those Aquinas held. I see no reason to proceed in this way, of course, but neither do I see any impediment to doing so. My point is that, on the level of what I am calling the institutional response, there is practically nothing we have to do in our philosophy offerings, whether in the matter of number of courses, sequence of courses, content and methods of courses, in order to be said to be taking seriously into account the wishes of the Church. Just as there is no orthodox philosophy, so there is no orthodox curriculum.
This is not an invitation to an unserious approach to the curriculum of our philosophy department. On the contrary, it is to direct our attention to where the seriousness lies. These matters cannot be settled by appeal to official documents. They must be settled by discussion and argument, by compromise and consensus. Welcome, in short, to the real world. The guidelines for these decisions, from the point of view of the denominational character of our colleges, are broad and permissive. Here too we have to get rid of the suggestion that there is an official answer to the vexed and difficult problems we face. We should be able to assume that no suggestions which come from a member of a philosophy department in a Catholic college will amount to jeopardizing the religious values to be safeguarded. When that assumption is made, and it a safe one, it is more clearly recognized that views must be sustained by arguments and communicable reasons. We may be convinced that a colleague is making crazy suggestions without feeling a compulsion to tune up the rack. What we must seek is not the safe and closed and sterile, but the open and intellectually lively. The best kind of philosophy for a Catholic college is the best kind of philosophy. It is that simple and that complex. Perhaps these few remarks will suffice to excuse me from offering a master plan for the philosophy curriculum in the Catholic college. I could not, and do not wish to, make my personal views prevail in my own university. This does not cause me to worry about the future of Western civilization, though other things do. In sum, no one can predict or prescribe what institutional responses to the wishes of the Church will be. My guess is that, like life itself, they will be various.
If the institutional response to the Church's wishes, which is embodied in the curriculum of the philosophy department, is the product of collective decision and thus ultimately reflects the personal responses to those wishes by the individual members of the department, the hiring policy of our Catholic colleges must be both enlightened and prudent. Prospective members must of course accept the nature of the Catholic college and the legitimate if peculiar demands it makes upon its faculty. If this acceptance were merely the acceptance of external limitations and answered to no personal and free acceptance, matters could become impossibly complicated in many segments of the college, perhaps particularly in areas like philosophy. Catholics may dispute among themselves about the nature and degree of faith's influence on the practical task of teaching, but if the dispute within a Catholic college came to turn on the very legitimacy of the influence it would be unsettleable. For such a dispute could only be settled by conversion and that is the necessary consequence of no argument. An atheist, for example, would find life uncomfortable in the philosophy department of a Catholic college and it would be naïve to regard his discomfort as the result of an infringement of academic freedom. As sometimes defined, "academic freedom" would lead only to chaos. That is why, I suppose, its more hot-eyed advocates can find it not at all or only imperfectly existent in academe as we know it. More pertinent to our present point is the fact that the member of a philosophy department must have a say in such matters as the curriculum. But discussions of curricula are in large part practical and entail decisions which appeal not only to the principles of a given discipline but also to far wider matters. the wider matter at issue in a Catholic college is a belief in God, a recognition of the teaching authority of the Church, a vision of reality. One who cannot accept the appeals that must often be made to that wider context will thereby feel restricted by truths he does not accept. This is something which must be taken into account on both sides when additions to the faculty are contemplated. And, if previous points have been made at all, such a reminder is in no way either a plea or warrant for unphilosophical philosophy.
But it is not the restrictions of our situation that should be dwelled on. In any institution, the hiring policy attempts to place academic pursuits in a broad context. In philosophy departments in Catholic colleges, where it is recognized that any and all philosophical contributions must be taken sympathetically into account, but where, as in any department, the practical limitations on effective response to every philosophical style and program and content are recognized, the broadest possible coverage should be striven for. This does not mean, I should think, that a departmental faculty should be seen on an analogy with a zoo, its desideratum one of each if not a pair. A department need not contain one analyst, one existentialist, one phenomenologist, one idealist, and so forth. But it should contain some men whose principal interest is analysis, others whose principal interest is phenomenology, and so forth. If a philosophical style or content required a committed adherent to get a fair hearing, things will have degenerated miserably. Thomism, as I have been trying to commend it in these past few pages, seems to me the best hope of getting beyond the level of factions and schools and systems of philosophy. The Thomism I envisage is not one school among others. It is the attempt to move out from a proved base in many directions, to assimilate, to grow, to renew itself as well as to correct misadventures, to be always open at the operative end of thinking. Nor is this a private vision, if I read Aeterni patris correctly, if I have caught the sense of the many ecclesiastical documents having to do with the role of Thomas Aquinas. We are not being invited to elect for a system among systems, because Thomism, while principled and systematic, is simply not a system. It has substantive content, but that very substantive content makes it more visible as a method of synthesis. No doubt this is why so many have wanted to see it as the privileged locus of the perennial philosophy. The best interpretation of that phrase, as we have already suggested, is not as denoting a fixed and final body of truths forming a well-rounded whole. There are philosophical truths. They have been attained in the past, they are being attained today. But each man must acquire them for himself. Moreover, a truth is such precisely because it is anchored in reality and reality, the things that are, beckons us beyond what we have already attained. In going beyond it would be foolish not to try to profit from what others have had to say and profiting from them is precisely to put them to the test of reality. If Thomism meant only what Aquinas taught, it would mean much but not enough to explain why the Church has placed such hope in the future of Thomism. That future Thomism is in our hands. It is something to be won, something to be devised, something that will never achieve the perfection of a "system." The Church cannot have wanted us to turn our backs on our own times and look with nostalgia toward the thirteenth century. Equally, the Church does not want us to look to the future as if there were no past, as if nothing has been settled or could be settled. To strike the difficult balance between old and new is surely the profoundest sense of renewal, of aggiormento.
Let me, with a throat raw from preaching without authority, bring this essay to a close. The question before us was the present status of Thomism. It is raised most often by those who feel that the day of the hegemony of Aquinas is over. In looking at their reasons, we have found some unsound and other sound. If Thomism were only what it has been its future would deserve to be no brighter than its past. But when Thomism is considered as what it might be, as the task the Church has set us in giving all that advice, it is difficult to see it in conflict with the legitimate desires of its current opponents. For the Thomism we are all called to help bring forth is not a philosophy. Here is the genius and inspiration of the Church, it seems to me, in selecting St. Thomas Aquinas as the model and mentor of the intellectual life of Catholics. Both saint and scholar, Thomas Aquinas is the fitting guide of an introduction to philosophy which introduces to philosophy without qualification, to philosophy in all its scope, in all its appearance and efforts. It is the utter catholicity of Aquinas' interests that earns him the role of patron of the Catholic intellectual. To the degree that we exhibit in our philosophizing the zest and daring of his spirit, we will be worthy of the title, Thomist.
{1} S. Ramirez, "The Authority of St. Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist, Vol. XV, No. 1 (1952), pp. 1-109.
{2} See "Toward a Philosophically Ordered Thomism," "Leo XIII and the Philosophical Approach to Modernity," and "Thomism in College" in Three Paths in Philosophy, Chicago, 1962.
{3} Decree on Christian Education, Introduction, New York Times, October 29, 1965.
{4} Ibid.
5. Address of Pope Paul VI to Participants in the Sixth International Congress of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, September 10, 1965.
{6} Josiah Royce, "Pope Leo's Philosophical Movement and its Relations to Modern Thought," in Fugitive Essays, Cambridge, Mass, 1920, p. 408.
{7} Ibid. p. 429.
{8} Epist. to Coloss., 218.
{9} James A. Weisheipl, O.P., Thomism as a Perennial Philosophy, Chicago, 1956, pp. 13-14.
{10} Pius XII, Humani generis, n. 30.
{11} C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words, Cambridge, 1960.
{12} Summa theologia Ia, q. 107, a. 2.
{13} Ia, q. 107, a. 2.
{14} O. Bird, The New Scholasticism, XXVII, 2, pp. 129-159.
{15} J. Maritain, The Uses of Philosophy, Princeton, 1961.