Jacques Maritain Center :
Characters in Search of Their Author /
by Ralph McInernyVostra apprehensive da esser verace
tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega,
si che l'animo ad essa volger face;
e se, rivolto, inver' di lei se piega,
quel piegare è amor .
-- Purgatorio xviii, 22-26
The turn toward the subjective on the part of Descartes initiated developments that led eventually to a fashionable nihilism among influential philosophers. Nietzschean positions, for which Nietzsche gave up his professorship and finally his reason, are now adopted by some in comfortable university chairs in what turns out to be a profitable career move. We have seen that the proponent of natural theology could take momentary if cold comfort from the nadir that has been reached. No one can accuse him of falsehood anymore. But then again he can never claim to have attained truths.
There is no reality sans phrase, only interpreted reality, what we make of it. No claim can be made that what one says has the support of the way things are because we can only get at the way things are by knowing and interpreting them. The concept of truth as conformity of judgment with that of which it is the judgment is discarded -- the supposed two relata, the terms of the relation, are really only one.
A few years ago, sophisticates in Manhattan gave cocktail parties for groups dedicated to terrorizing the country, blowing up buildings with real people in them, and avoiding baths. This was called radical chic by Tom Wolfe. Beaming patrons in tuxedos, well-groomed women in expensive dresses, mingled with the tousled and scruffy guests. Perhaps this was meant to gain them a pass from the coming terror. It was an endorsement of nihilism. Philosophy itself has now become a form of Radical Chic. Academics holding down comfortable positions, under employed, fly about the world to talk to one another and deny that there is a world to fly around or that anything they or anyone else might say makes sense.
The judgment of Cornelio Fabro that this development was latent in Descartes himself commends itself more and more. In any case, it would be folly for one to seek to elevate a natural theology on the philosophical base available today. Admittedly, in saying this I am according a central position to views I regard as destructive of the philosophical enterprise, and with devastating social and political consequences beside. No wonder Kolokowski spoke of metaphysical horror. It could be objected that there are other currents running. I myself have noted the intimidating use of "we" in modern philosophy. I can only respond to that criticism by the tack I propose to take now.
I propose to journey far into the pre-Cartesian past in order to address head on the assumption of the regnant nihilism. The problem is no longer which of contemporary styles of philosophizing one might choose. The problem is the very possibility of philosophy.
Almost from its beginnings, philosophy has had to deal with its dark twin, sophistry. The quest for wisdom, the truth about the world and ourselves, meant the slow ascent along a path strewn with obstacles. A problem solved generated other problems. But one pushed on. It became clear that there was no shortcut up the mountain; that this was a lifetime's task. Along the way the form and nature of argument had been distilled from inarticulate arguments and studied for its own sake. Reason is a powerful instrument, but only if it is used correctly. We all make mistakes, but the Sophist was the man who deliberately abused reasoning. Aristotle put it this way in his Sophistical Refutations (165a21): "For the sophist's craft is an apparent wisdom but not a real one, and the sophist is a money-maker by apparent but not real wisdom."
Sophists show up in many Platonic dialogues, and not merely as bit-players. By and large, the Sophist is presented as the embodiment of what happens when the love of wisdom is perverted into the will for power. Plato may be said to emphasize the moral defect of sophistry, whereas Aristotle was concerned primarily with its logical flaws. Some seven hundred years later, Augustine wrote the Contra academicos to confront philosophers who held that nothing could be known. It is significant that Augustine as a believer saw the importance of addressing this attack on reason.
It is not easy to gain an accurate picture of "the crowd of Sophists" as Socrates called them. The term soon became one of opprobrium, but there are scholarly studies which question whether Protagoras and Gorgias and Hippias were, well, Sophists. The dialogues of Plato that take their titles from historical Sophists vary in tone and treatment. It is often noted that, while the Protagoras makes its titular figure somewhat comic, not all the good lines are given to Socrates. But the doctrine attributed to Protagoras and discussed in the dialogue qualifies as sophistry in the pejorative sense. Here is how Plato summarized it in the Cratylus (385e ff.), "As Protagoras meant when he said that of all things the measure is man, that as things appear to me, then, so they actually are for me, and as they appear to you, so they actually are for you."
Whatever nice things might be said about Protagoras, this passage is the key to seeing sophistry as the opposite of philosophy. Protagoras was the first of the Sophists, but he might be called the first of the Pragmatists as well. He offered to instruct young men so that they could succeed and prosper in the city. But if his teaching was based on the doctrine attributed to him, the result could be little more than a house of cards. From antiquity it was seen that the maxim of Protagoras could not survive application to itself. In the Theaetetus, Plato shows the vulnerability of the position that 'true' means 'true for me' and not just true tout court.
Yes, and besides that it involves a really exquisite conclusion. Protagoras, for his part, admitting as he does that everybody's opinion is true, must acknowledge the truth of his opponents' belief about his own belief, where they think it is wrong. (171a)
If all beliefs are true for the one who holds them, another who says their opposites are true -- well, the opposites are true for him. To adopt Protagoras' teaching as true is to deprive oneself of saying that its contradictory is false. Plato's discussion is just beginning at this point but his critique comes down to saying Sophists maintain that a proposition and its opposite can both be true -- that both p and --p are true. But of course, Protagoras does not set out to hold both that his position is true and that it is false.
One remedy to this difficulty is to change the subject and talk of other things. But that, as Aristotle famously showed, will provide no refuge.
To speak at all is possible only if words have definite meanings, one or a finite range of meanings. They cannot be taken to mean both what they mean and its opposite. (I set aside ironic usage.) The claim that opposites are simultaneously true cannot be made except by acting contrary to this assertion, where the meanings of the words and the import of the utterance are concerned; they at least cannot mean what they mean and also what they do not mean.{1}
That both Plato and Aristotle should have spent so much time discussing a claim that falls of its own weight may surprise us. Much of what they say when discussing Protagoras et sequaces eius sounds like a man explaining a joke to someone who has no sense of humor. Why does Aristotle devote so many pages, chapter after chapter of Book Four of the Metaphysics, to say nothing of his analysis of fallacies, On Sophistical Refutations, to a discussion of the denial of the principle of contradiction when the denial, if taken seriously, must be the opposite affirmation as well?
. . . if these have such opinions and express these views about the truth, isit not natural that beginners in philosophy should lose heart? For to seek the truth would be to follow flying =ever elusive?= game. (1009b36 ff.)
Protagoras and his ilk poison the well. To leave him unanswered would seem to be an acceptance of his verdict on any doctrine.
Kolokowski has observed that those who dispense with truth and anything that might be called epistemological realism are reluctant to dismiss the demands of consistency.{2} I seize upon this. Of course this reluctance could be explained as simply due to a demand of language, but this would concede the starting point of Aristotle's ultimate defense of the principle of contradiction. One does not say both "It is raining now" and, speaking of the same time and place, "It is not raining now." But, as Kolokowski has suggested, this could be explained in a meta-language. "The rules of the language do not allow the simultaneous affirmation of 'It is raining' and 'It is not raining.'" The principle of consistency would be a rule of language and not any claim about the way things are. Of course, most native speakers would assume that they are talking about the weather, not the language, when they say it is raining or that it is not raining. It is because rain and its absence at the same time and place are not simultaneously possible that the sentences expressing these relate to one another as contradictories. Logic, as Quine must have said, recapitulates ontology.
When Aristotle talks of the first principle -- that is, the ultimate fall-back -- he gives several expressions of it:
Thomas Aquinas, like Aristotle, uses these three as if they were synonymous. When he is speaking of the first principles of practical reasoning, the precepts of Natural Law, he draws an analogy between them and the first principles of reasoning as such. He gives as the most fundamental judgment reason makes, non est simul affirmare et negare (ST 1-2.94.2).
That is Aristotle's first expression =1. above= of the principle: it is impossible to affirm and deny the same thing of the same subject simultaneously in the same sense. But it is we who affirm and deny, so this is something we cannot do.
If I should say that Jorge Garcia both is and is not a gentleman, you will take me to mean that in some respects he is and in other respects he is not a gentleman. But if I should say that is not what I mean, I mean he is and is not everything a gentleman is supposed to be, the exchange would lose interest for you. You would think, perhaps even say aloud, "that's nonsense." I reply that that is what I say because that is what I think. Perhaps I might soften the blow by saying that this is the only exception to the principle I would urge. You would have to know Jorge to understand. But the rule is exceptionless. Why? To say that a proposition cannot be simultaneously true and false makes the point differently, let us say semantically, But neither (1) nor (2) will have any bit independently of (3).{3}
What exactly is the relation between (1) and (2) and (3)? If (1) expresses a psychological impossibility and (2) a logical impossibility, are they in some way derived from (1). The question takes its interest from the fact that we are speaking of first principles which, by definition, are underived.
From the fact that it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be, it follows (sequitur) that it is impossible for contraries to be in the same subject simultaneously . . .. and from the fact that contraries cannot simultaneously inhere in the same subject, it follows (sequitur) that a man cannot hold contrary opinions, and consequently (per consequens) that contradictories cannot be thought to be true.{4}
What is meant by sequitur and per consequens in this passage of Aquinas? The first principle by definition cannot be demonstrated, but here we have three expressions of it, and two are said to derive from the third. Clearly this derivation must be something short of demonstration. But it is discursive. The first and foundational judgment of human thinking can be expressed in terms of the fact that the things we know, in rerum naturae, are such that they cannot simultaneously exist and not exist. Since our knowledge is of reality -- we do not first know our thinking or our expression of it -- propositions will reflect this, and contradictories cannot simultaneously be true because this would involve the assertion that a thing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. That is why we cannot hold contrary opinions. The derivations and sequences in the passage express the fact that our knowledge and language are of reality, and there is an order among them. It is this that prevents the principle of contradiction from being first of all a logical principle or a principle of language whose relation to reality is considered problematic. Logic and epistemology recapitulate ontology.{5}
To handle the persistent naysayer, Aristotle thought that ultimately it is necessary to point out that he must take his words to mean something and not anything or everything. And so must the one to whom he speaks. Suspecting that this commits him to the principle he denies, he might deny this as well. In doing so he simply removes himself from any sensible discussion, since his rejection of this requirement of language involves the principle he purports to deny as much as the acceptance it would have. This kind of discourse is not the same as that involved in seeing the relationships among the three expressions of the first principle. This looks a lot more like an argument, and it is. But it is not a demonstration of the first principle.{6}
Aristotle's understanding of the various expressions of the first principle as well as his defense of it against the sophistic rejection of it, reposes on cognitive realism and a corresponding account of language. The primary objects of thinking and speaking are things themselves, not thinking or speaking about things themselves. The fundamental principle of reality, that a thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time, has its counterparts in our thinking and speaking.
Nowadays many philosophers reject the dependence of truth claims on reality and have developed theories of language to adjust to this denial. The Aristotelian response is not that each and every sentence is meant to express the way things are, and never the way we think or speak of them. But sentences about the way things are are paradigmatic. The cat is on the mat. The fat is in the fire. The frost is on the pumpkin. We don't always say such things -- in actual fact we do not always speak grammatically or in complete sentences. Sometimes we ask questions or exclaim or express our wishes, sometime we praise or beseech. Sometimes we speak of nouns or verbs, sometimes of ideas and judgments and statements susceptible of truth or falsity.
Contemporary anti-realism cannot admit a sub-set of sentences expressive of the way things are. What is currently called pragmatism can be seen as an effort to generalize over all language what is true of some uses of language in the practical order. If that be so, it may be that cognitive anti-realism, insofar as it speaks the truth at all, has in mind something closer to practical truth in the old-fashioned sense.{7}
Sloth or acedia is one of the capital sins and thus appears as a cornice on Mount Purgatory. Dante devotes Cantos 18 and 19 to it. Thomas defines it as weariness with acting well and sadness about spiritual things. While its primary form, as a capital sin, lies in not wanting to think about the divine good, not just any spiritual good, it can be extended to the intellectual life as such, the ultimate objective of which is knowledge of God.{8} Cassian speaks of it besetting monks in choir, usually in the sixth hour.{9} It seems to be a question of familiarity breeding boredom, if not discontent. Similarly, long years spent in pursuit of knowledge, in the fashioning and critique of argument, can lose their savor. As the monk is tempted to find the worship that is his raison d'être tiresome, so the philosopher can begin to feel a distaste for pursuit that seems endless. He may begin to feel that misology, contempt for the Ideas, of which Plato speaks. And just as proper old ladies sometimes emit a vulgarity, to their own and others' surprise, and to their own at least momentary delight,{10} so philosophers can begin to undermine their discipline and argue in order to destroy the point of arguing at all. Perhaps only a Dante could give an adequate account of the contemporary philosophy that considers itself the cutting edge, and which is dedicated to destroying philosophy.
It is not insignificant that the first move in this direction was taken in moral philosophy. Since moral judgments cannot be understood simply as a descriptive account of an empirical state of affairs, the question arose as to what moral terms mean. Ayer had already suggested the answer that gained in vogue. Moral terms are expressive of our subjective feelings, our emotions. Charles Stevenson gave a lengthy account of this theory of the meaning of good and bad, ought and the like, and called it Emotivism. If I find a state of affairs repellent, I disapprove of it. You may approve of it. Nothing in the state of affairs grounds either your reaction or mine.
This is not a theory that would occur to anyone unprompted by philosophical trends, save in special circumstances. In polite society, we do not elevate our preferences into absolute canons of taste. De gustibus non disputandum est remains a good rule of social intercourse. In many cases, "Chocolate ice cream is good" means only "I like it," and its denial "I don't care for it." These are sufficient and terminal when it is a question of flavors of ice cream and brands of beer. But it would be difficult to reduce our uses of good and evil to such cases, or to generalize from them over all uses of the so-called moral terms. But this was done, largely out of fear of the Naturalistic Fallacy, so named in 1903 in Moore's Principia Ethics, but having its roots in David Hume. The supposed independence of Ought from Is, of the prescriptive from the descriptive, precluded appealing to the way things are as the basis for our moral discrimination. The upshot is that we never discover the goodness or badness of types of action; we confer these qualities on them.
One finds a parallel to the Aristotelian handling of those who would undermine the very foundations of human life in Thomas Reid. Reid considered the skepticism of his fellow countryman David Hume, not as an isolated aberration, but as the ultimate consequence of what had begun with Descartes. Baruch Brophy gives as the premises from which Reid saw Humean skepticism to follow logically., these:
Such representationalism as is expressed in ii, creates the insoluble puzzle of how we can get out of our minds to the things that at least some of our idea stand for. Far from being given, starting points, we must prove the existence of the world, the past, other minds.
By contrast, Reid set out to show that such truths are in no need of being proved. He could not of course reject ii, as he did, and then go on to formulate proofs of the existence of the things on that list. What came to be called Reid's Common Sense Philosophy holds both that it would occur to no one but a philosopher to question the existence of such things, and that such non-gainsayable truths -- he did not hesitate to call them self-evidently true -- are the foundations on which truths that must be provided ultimately rest.
Of course there is nothing that we cannot discuss, and probably will, sooner or later. Reid could scarcely object to his predecessors pondering the matters he cites in ii. Those like Aristotle and Reid who call such truths self-evident go on and on about them, as the lengthy discussion of Book Four of the Metaphysics makes clear, but such discussion is far from skepticism. It is late in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man that Reid takes up judgment.{12} It is Reid's contention that that which is commonly sensed is judged to be true. He spends a good deal of time contesting views which speak of the senses as bringing about ideas in the mind without any judgment being involved. He takes his to be the ordinary understanding of sense with which the philosophical is in disharmony. First principles are grasped by men with varying degrees of clarity or explicitness, but they do so because they are endowed with an inward light which, following Alexander Pope, Reid calls "a gift of heaven."{13}
It may be objected that Reid vacillates between using "common sense" to name a faculty or gift we all possess and to name truths which, thanks to this faculty, we cannot fail to know. But surely this is only a sign of the dependence of the former on the latter, à la Thomas Aquinas's discussion of Aristotle's various expressions of the very first principle. Indeed, Reid's first extended discussion of first principles comes after he has established the pedigree of his view and the way in which those who reject it have been unable to do so consistently, as when Hume "candidly acknowledges that, in the common business of life, he found himself under a necessity of believing with the vulgar."{14} Here is Reid's approach to first principles.
Of course this is not a list of first principles, but statements about them. Nonetheless, in discussing 4, Reid invokes what Aristotle identified as the very first principle of all. Men do actually differ about first principles. "When this happens, every man who believes that there is a real distinction between truth and error, and that the faculties which God has given us are not in their nature fallacious, must be convinced that there is a defect, or perversion of judgment on one side or the other." This conviction, on both sides, arises from the implicit acceptance of ~(p~p).
But how precisely to adjudicate between claims that a given principle is a first principle? Reid refuses to leave this to an elite. Any one with a sound mind free of prejudice and who knows what is being asked can handle it?{15} One who denies a first principle will fall into absurdity and become a rightful object of ridicule, wit and humor being other divine gifts to defend the gift of common sense. There cannot be any apodictical proof, but there are argumentative resources available as well as ridicule.
They are five: (a) The argumentum ad hominem, showing one's opponent to be guilty of inconsistency; (b) the argument ad absurdum, tracing the consequences of the denial to manifest absurdity; (c) the argument from authority; (d) from their presence from the beginning of our mental lives; and finally (e) from the practical absurdities to which their denial leads.{16} It is in discussing (c) the argument of authority that he gives us a list of first principles under the aegis of what all men have always believed.
Who can doubt that men have universally believed in the existence of the material world? Who can doubt whether men have universally believed, that every change that happens in nature must have a cause? Who can doubt whether men have universally believed, that there is a right and a wrong in human conduct; some things that are entitled to approbation? (611)
Few readers fail to be impressed by Thomas Reid. They know he is right. Right in the way Chesterton was when he discussed what we mean when we call Dickens great. "But there is a third class of primary terms. There are popular expressions which everyone uses and no one can explain; which the wise man will accept and reverence, as he reverences desire or darkness or any elemental thing. The prigs of the debating club will demand that he should define his terms. And, being a wise man, he will flatly refuse. The first inexplicable term is the most important of all. The word that has no definition is the word that has no substitute."{17} Of course it would be a disservice to Reid to suggest that he sought to give his defense of common sense the same status as common sense itself.{18} My Thomistic regret about his discussion is his failure to make the very first principle stand out from other first principles. If he had followed Aristotle's lead and concentrated on the first principle he would have been spared the carping criticisms of his various examples of lesser first principles.
The Cartesian turn led eventually, perhaps inevitably, to the present fashionable nihilism. That nihilism is reminiscent of nothing so much as the sophistry fought by Plato and Aristotle. Whether or no contemporary nihilists accept consistency -- Kolokowski thinks they do -- it is by reflection on the basis of consistency, the principle of contradiction, that one regains a correct understanding of the relation between words and thought and things in themselves. Once that has been reestablished, natural theology becomes a possibility. A disagreement between the theist and the atheist is possible, since one of them is right and the other is wrong. Atheists have as much stake in opposing the regnant relativism and nihilism as do theists.
NOVEMBER 4, 1999
{1} "Again, if all contradictory statements are true of the same subject at the same time, evidently all things will be one. For the same things will be a trireme, a wall, and a man, if of everything it is possible either to affirm or to deny anything (and this premiss must be accepted by those who share the views of Protagoras)" Metaphysics iv.4.1007b18-22).
{2} See Metaphysical Horror, 31. I do not mean to suggest that Kolokowski would agree with what I go on to say here. He explicitly denies what I affirm. Speaking of the necessity of the ultimate, he writes, "What is thus meant by the necessity of the Ultimum’s existence is that this necessity is its own and not ours. Our logic discovers the self-contradiction in the Absolute’s non-existence because its non-self-contradiction is actually there, and not vice versa. Of course, we cannot discover this self-contradiction without first relying upon our logical norms which are supposed to derive their validity from the source of their being; the never ending curse of the vicious circle does not cease operating here, as in the search of the ultimate foundation." Kolokowski is not the only one who sees that anti-foundationalism follows from the supposed autonomy of the logical vis-à-vis the real. But it is not the real that conforms to the logical but logic which reflects the real.
{3} I discussed these matters earlier in an essay called "Ethics and Metaphysics," which has become chapter 10 of my Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 193-206.
{4} Thomas Aquinas, In IV Metaphysic, lectio 6, n. 606.
{5} Needless to say, this does not prevent the logical and epistemological from having characteristics of their own which reflect our way of thinking about reality rather than the characteristics of the real itself. The seemingly endless discussion of the Problem of Universals is only resolvable when one distinguishes first and second intentions. Predicable universality – to be said of many things - is not a feature of things as they exist, but of things as we know and speak of them. In grasping the nature of human individuals, we form a concept which expresses something found in each of the singulars. The noun expressing the nature is predicable of them all. Is human nature universal? As conceived and named by us? Yes. In itself? No. As found in Socrates and Xanthippe and other individuals? No. Logic rides piggy-back on reality without its elements being in one-to-one-correspondence with the units of reality. But it is because of dependence of our knowledge on the real that non-contradiction enters logic and acquires its antiseptic form ~(p ~p).
{6} Sed tamen hoc non erit demonstrans praedictum principium simpliciter, sed tantum erit ratio sustinens contra negantes. Ille enim qui ‘destruit rationem’ idest sermonem suum, dicendo quod nomen nihil significant, oportet quod sustineat, quia hoc ipsum quod negat, proffere non potest nisi loquendo et aliquid significando"In IV Metaphysic., lectio 7, n. 611).
{7} See Nicomachean Ethics 6.2.1139a26 and Thomas on this text as well as in Summa theologiae 1.-2.57.5ad3.
{8} Actually, sadness and boredom about lesser goods is extended to sadness concerning the highest spiritual good, so in the order of naming my application of acedia may take, if not pride of place, at least a place prior to the special sense of the term. Cf. ST2-2.35.1
{9} In his De institutis monasteriorum 10.1, cited by Aquinas in Summa theologiae 2-2.35.1, obj.2. Cassian explains that the fasting monk, about noon, because of hunger and the position of the sun, feels sadness, and this may lead him to disdain the practice of prayer and its point, and that is sinful.
{10} I think of Sartre’s example of the Parisian matron who suddenly burst out into uncustomary profanity and afterward said, "I think I may be becoming an existentialist."
{11} See Baruch Brophy’s Introduction to his edition of Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Boston: MIT Press, 1969), xvii. Brophy also introduced Reid’s Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, published by the same press in that same year.
{12} Essay VI, 532-709 in the edition cited.
{13} From Pope’s epistle to the Earl of Burlington, the relevant lines of which Reid quotes. See ibid., 558. One may be reminded of Johnson in the Preface to his Dictionary of the English Language: "I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven." See Samuel Johnson, A Critical Edition of the Major Works, ed. Donald Greene (Oxford; Oxford university Press, 1984), 310.
{14} Ibid., 587.
{15} "The learned and the unlearned, the philosopher and the day labourer, are upon a level, and will pass the same judgment, when they are not misled by some bias, or taught to renounce their understanding from some mistaken religious principle" (ibid., 604-605).
{16} Ibid. These are to be found on pages 604 through 613.
{17} G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (London: Methuen, 1913) 9-10. When Aristotle discusses "act" and "potency," he does not define them but rather gives examples that help us see we already know their meanings.
{18} Among the many helpful discussions of Reid, I shall mention only Lynd Forguson’s Common Sense (London: Routledge, 1989), 103-127.