Jacques Maritain Center :
Characters in Search of Their Author /
by Ralph McInernyIn October I sought to clear the ground for what I shall be attempting in these February lectures. If the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions of the classic proofs for the existence of God had been shown by modern philosophers to be faulty, there would of course be little reason to bother with proofs which for centuries were considered sound and valid. Kant taught that all of the so-called cosmological proofs are in reality only variations on what he dubbed the Ontological Argument, a label that is applied to Anselm's proof in the Proslogion as well as to proofs by Descartes and others. The trouble with the Ontological Argument, its critics say, is that it seeks to move from the order of thought to an ontological conclusion. The very idea of God is taken to be the guarantee that the idea is an idea of God. One begins in the mental order and argues that there is one, and only one idea, that requires an extra-mental counterpart simply on the basis of the content of that idea.
Kant himself stands in the tradition that can be said to begin with Descartes, what might be called the epistemological tradition. Having cast into doubt all claims to knowledge, Descartes found the fact that he was thinking indubitable and in considering the objects of thinking came upon the idea of God. He then showed to his own satisfaction that, since he himself could not be the source of that idea, because of the richness of its content, its cause must be God himself. Methodic doubt had led to the assumption that thinking is about thinking, the external world having been put in brackets or in escrow, and the first philosophical task was, in effect, to get out of one's head.
But this, we argued at length in October, is a fundamental error from which sprang not only skepticism about proofs for the existence of God but eventually a general skepticism or subjectivism. We traced some of the history of this turn-to-the-subject in both the theoretical and practical orders. Hume's fact/value dichotomy was given new life and practical orders . Hume's fact/value dichotomy was given new life by G. E. Moor who held that traditional moral philosophy had rested on the fundamental mistake of believing that moral judgments are grounded in objective truth. He invented the Naturalistic Fallacy to describe the mechanics of this mistake. In the theoretical order, there are many who have taken Kant's phenomena/noumena split to entail that our knowledge can never be knowledge of the way things are. All knowledge is interpretation, that is, our construal or construction. It follows, then, that whether we are speaking of so--called value judgments or any other judgments, our knowledge is of our knowledge and not of things in themselves.
Cornelio Fabro, speaking on behalf of the tradition, and Thomas Reid speaking on behalf of common sense, saw the Cartesian turn to the subject as leading necessarily to the results just sketched, that is, to subjectivism, relativism, nihilism, atheism. Obviously, unless and until one showed that the Cartesian turn and its aftermath are indeed mistakes, it would be impossible to fulfill Lord Gifford's hope and speak on behalf of natural theology. The upshot of our previous lectures was to restore a basis on which theists and atheists can meaningfully disagree. If theism is merely one subjective option and atheism another, there is little point to asking which of them is true, truth no longer being attainable by the human mind. And by truth I mean the grasp of things as they are.
How does one make appeal to objective truth something other than an option, with no more warrant than any other stance -- this being the ultimate consequence of the Cartesian turn? If this cannot be done, again, the objective option is a subjective option and there is only one option not two. Or, there are only options. Consequently, the objectivity of thought had to be shown to be inescapable, thus undermining the subjective option and showing it to rest on an egregious mistake. Far from objective being a subjective option, the subjective turn was seen to involve an inexpungeable appeal to objectivity. Here I took my cue from Plato and Aristotle as they confronted the seemingly live-and-let-live-dictum of Protagoras. What is one to make of a position that says that what I think is true is true for me and what you think is true is true for you? Plato took the obvious tack of asking whether the dictum could be applied to itself. If it could, the saying was both true and false. Aristotle developed this and showed that such a position cannot be coherently maintained. Neither Plato nor Aristotle thought they were proving the fundamental assumption of thought; rather, they were showing its inescapability by reducing its rejection to nonsense. On this seemingly slim accomplishment, such was my conclusion, we have a basis for considering anew the truth of theism and the falsity of atheism -- or, of course, vice versa.
Needless to say, one experiences a heady feeling in sweeping from the board the basic assumption of modern philosophy, but I emphasize that the upshot of our inquiry thus far is simply that the discussion of natural theology, pro and con, remains a task to be pursued and has not been discredited by the now discredited modern turn. Needless to say, such preliminary inquiries could have been extended indefinitely. There are and have been many counterclaims to what I have concluded. Moreover, there are many disguised forms of subjectivity which consider themselves to be accounts of objectivity, that is, accounts of why it is that our thinking is not arbitrary, that there are standards it has to meet, that positions cannot be reduced to the options of the solitary individual, as if solipsism were the natural offspring of the Cartesian turn. And so on. But what Reid called "Representationalism," that is, the claim that our knowledge is about our knowledge, however disguised, is still rampant in many circles that consider themselves, and are considered by others, avant-garde.
Philosophy has become a boneyard. Having passed through the abattoir of doubt, linguistic reduction, and nihilism, philosophy is but a skeleton of its former self. No wonder. Modern philosophy began by describing man as a thinking substance whose flesh and blood were yet to be warranted. We have ended with ossa disjecta. Perhaps Dicken's Mr. Venus could hook them up again. As for myself, like the object of Mr. Venus's attention in Our Mutual Friends, "I do not wish to regard myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light."
Nothing has fueled modernity in its many modes more than the undeniable fact that the history of philosophy sometimes looks like a horizontal Tower of Babel extending through the centuries. There seems to be nothing on which philosophers are not in serious disagreement. Speaking of others, of course, philosophers have observed that there is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not maintained it to be true. Who cannot sympathize with the longing for some method or approach which would put an end to this once and for all? However, instead of seeking a quick fix we are better advised to practice a long patience. The proposal of a mathesis universalis, a calculus that would enable us to appraise substantive arguments in a quince, has only generated more disagreement.
But doesn't logic equip us with just such a ready way of assessing arguments? If the rule of modus ponens or modus tollens is violated we feel justified in simply rejecting a proposed argument. So too with the rules of syllogism and of other types of argument. If the conditions for a valid argument are not met we are justified in dismissing the putative argument. With the spread of formalization in logic it became clear that one did not have to know what the values of p, q, and r might be in order to assess arguments that took the form "If p, then q, but q, therefore p." Or "If p then q, but not --p, therefore not --q." The Principia Mathematica inspired Bertrand Russell to develop a philosophy of logical atomism. If all molecular propositions, however complicated, are truth functions of their ultimate constituents, atomic propositions, the identification of the values of atomic propositions promised a way out of the scandal of philosophy. This was the dream that A. J. Ayer popularized in Language, Truth and Logic. Russell considered atomic propositions to be truths about sense data; Ayer said more broadly that they are empirical truths. But, as critics pointed out, these claims about the values of atomic propositions are not truths of logic, but extra-logical claims which soon fell to a criticism not unlike that which Plato had leveled against Protagoras. The so-called Principle of Verification -- that all truths are either logical tautologies or empirical truths -- could not be successfully applied to itself, and thus had an air of improvisation or arbitrariness about it, thereby contributing to, rather than removing, the scandal of philosophy.
The negative criterion of formalism was one thing, but to seek to make logic positively decide the truth of the interpreted symbols for propositions is quite another. The language of logic -- Russell called it a syntax without a vocabulary -- is a second-order language. The medieval said logic dealt with second intentions, that is, with relations established by the mind between first intentions, which were grasps of the way things are. A logical analysis is always at one remove from talk about the things that are. For the medieval, this drew attention to the fact that logic rides piggy-back on our knowledge of the world. Logic could no more be the first thing we think about than could first intentions be the object of thinking in the sense of Reid's Representationalism. Thinking itself, like the relations established between things as we think about them, is a reflex object of thought, not its first object.
There is no more famous text in discussions of natural theology -- that is, philosophical efforts to prove the existence of God and establish certain truths about his nature -- than the so-called quinque viae of Thomas Aquinas, five ways to prove the existence of God.
| Latin | English translation |
|---|---|
| Dicendum quod Deum esse quinque viae probari potest. Prima autem et manifestior via est, quae sumitur ex parte motus. Certum est enim, et sensu constat, aliqua moveri in hoc mundo. Omne autem quod movetur, ab alio movetur. Nihil enim movetur, nisi secundum quod est in potentia ad illud ad quod movetur: movet autem aliquid secundum quod est actu. Movere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in actum: de potentia autem non potest aliquid reduce in actum, nisi per aliquod ens in actu: sicut calidum in actu, ut ignis, facit lignum, quod est calidum in potentia, esse actu calidum, et per hoc movet et alterat ipsum. Non autem est possibile ut idem sit simul in actu et potentia secundum idem, sed solum secundum diversa: quod enim est calidum in actu, non potest simul esse calidum in potentia, sed est simul frigidum in potentia. Impossible est ergo quod, secundum idem et eodem modo, aliquid sit movens et motum, vel quod moveat seipsum. Omne ergo quod movetur, oportet ab alio moveri. Si ergo id a quo movetur, moveatur, oportet et ipsum ab alio moveri; et illud ab alio. Hoc autem non est procedure in infinitum: quio sic non esset aliquod primum movens; et per consequens nec aliquod aliud movens, quia moventia secunda non movent nisi per hoc quod sunt mota a primo movente, sicut baculus non movet nisi per hoc quod est motus a manu. Ergo necesse est devenire ad aliquod primum movens, quod a nullo movetur: et oc omnes intelligent Deum. . . . (ST1,2,3) | it should be said that there are five ways in which God can be shown to exist. The first and most obvious way is based on motion. For it is certain and evident to the senses that some things in this world are moved. But whatever is moved is moved by another. For something is moved insofar as it is in potency to that toward which it is moved, and something moves insofar as it is in act. To move is nothing other than to educate something from potency to act, and a thing can be brought form potency to act only by something in act, as fire causes wood which is only potentially warm to be actually so, thus moving and altering it. A thing cannot be at once and in the same sense in potency and in act, but only in different respects: what is actually warm cannot be at the same time be potentially so, though at the time it is potentially cold. It is impossible for a thing to be at once and in the same sense moving and moved. So whatever is moved is moved by another. And if that by which it is moved is moved it must be moved by another, and so on. But this cannot go on infinitely, for then there would be no first mover nor any other mover, because secondary movers move only insofar as they are moved by the first mover, as a stick moves only insofar as it is moved by the hand. It is necessary, therefore, to arrive at some first mover which is not moved by anything else, and this is what all men understand God to be. |
In its stark simplicity, the proof would be stated thus:
Appraised formally, from the point of view of logic, this proof works. The problem thus becomes one of knowing whether the consequent is true, not whether it is truly consequent upon the premises. How is this to be decided? By finding out whether the premises from which it logically follows are true.
An unfortunate consequence of the favor shown this text in introductory philosophy classes is that the neophyte is apparently expected to decide whether it is a good proof, that is, decide whether its premises are true. The text occurs in the Summa theologiae, which Thomas wrote precisely for beginners, so this may seem fair enough. But the beginners for whom Thomas was writing were beginners in theology, not philosophy. Indeed as the very first question raised in the Summa indicates, its readers are assumed to be well-versed in philosophy.{1} And as philosophers, Thomas's theological beginners have already established the existence of God. They will know that Aristotle called the philosophical discipline that culminates the lengthy task of philosophy theologia. It has come to be called metaphysics, and is in effect the wisdom the seeking of which gives philosophy its name. The proof from motion is to be found, however, in natural philosophy, in Books 7 and 8 of the Physics. But the proof cannot be understood -- that is, its premises cannot be judged true -- except on the basis of everything that has preceded the proof in the Physics. In short, a proof which rides on a host of preliminary matters, could not be intelligently appraised by the student of philosophy at the beginning of his studies. This is why it is misleading to assume that Thomas presumed that beginners in philosophy are capable of an intelligent appraisal of the proof from motion.
What Thomas is doing in the Summa is sketching things his readers have already studied in detail. Why does he do that? Because he is concerned to compare what philosophers concluded of God by way of proofs with the truths about himself that God has revealed. Thus, in ST 1.2.2.ad1M he observes that what can be known about God by way of natural reason, such as that he exists, is not to be counted among the things that are articles of faith, rather such truths are praeambula ad articulos and are among the naturally knowable things which are presupposed by faith, as grace presupposes nature. Of course such naturally knowable truths about God will first have been believed by Thomas's Christian readers before they fashioned a philosophical proof of them, but Thomas sees no difficulty in the same truth being held by demonstration and by faith, since these are two quite different ways of holding it. He does not, however, think that the same truth can be simultaneously known and believed.
Furthermore, before sketching the proofs by way of reminder of what his reader will already have established demonstratively, he has some general things to say about the demonstrability of God's existence.
This discussion draws on his reader's knowledge of logic since, relying on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Thomas will distinguish between truths which are known in themselves -- per se -- and truths which are derived from other truths -- per alia. God's existence is not self-evident, he notes, so if it is known, as opposed to believed, this must be by way of a demonstration. But demonstrations sometimes proceed from cause to effect, in what is called the demonstration propter quid, of the reasoned fact, and at other times proceed from effects to the existence of their cause -- the demonstration quia. God can be philosophically known to exist only by means of a proof which takes its rise from his effects.{2}
These allusions to logic are also a reminder of what the reader of the Summa theologiae is expected already to know. My point here, then, is this. Proofs for the existence of God can neither be fashioned nor appraised without reliance on a vast fund of knowledge. Philosophy does not begin with such proofs, although it does begin in the hope that the natural hunch that God exists -- which the philosophical neophyte, pagan or Christian, brings to his study -- will turn out to be provable, and when it is, the wisdom sought, the telos of philosophy, will have been attained. The remarkable opening chapters of Book One of the Metaphysics suggest by way of a promissory note that our natural desire to know, shown to be a quest for causes, will reach its culmination in knowledge of the first cause of all the things that are.
Is this a begging of the question? If the inquirer were a solitary individual setting out without guide or mentor to satisfy his desire for knowledge it is perhaps doubtful that he would describe his interest in a lunar eclipse as leading inevitably to knowledge of the divine. But when it is a question of learning, of being taught, and not of discovery, the one teaching is presumed to have the knowledge he will eventually impart to others.{3} One who is wise is instructing others on what wisdom is and how to attain it. His listeners must take his word for it at this juncture. Oportet addiscentem credere. Discovering on one's own and being taught by another have the same starting points however different the ambiance of instruction is from that of discovery. Some things are naturally known prior to inquiry; teaching addresses the knowledge the student already has and seeks to help him move on from that to what he previously knew only potentially. In short, teaching takes place against a wide and deep background shared by teacher and student, the culture within which they and countless others stand.
When the proof from motion is reduced to the stripped down form we have given it, which is a simplification of a simplification, we would not of course think that the three sentences accomplish something of themselves. Language involves both a speaker and a listener, and a proof is the distillation of someone saying something to someone else in a given context. The proof is presented in such a way that its addressee can reenact the process captured by the written proof. It would be absurd to imagine that a proof need merely be stated in the presence of hearers in order to have the desired effect. It is addressed to someone on the qui vive, someone who wants to know, who can grasp the meaning and truth of the premises and thus, given the validity of the sequence, is enabled to see the truth of the conclusion. The logical appraisal of the proof may pay little or no overt attention to who is talking and who is the addressee and what is presupposed on either side. But since the logical appraisal leaves untouched the question of the truth of the premises, it must be regarded as relying on minimal and preliminary criteria.
From the beginning, philosophical reflections on language have made it clear that not every utterance is meant to convey a truth.{4} Speakers may be engaged in a variety of performances, sometimes exhortatory, sometimes asking a question, sometimes praying or making a promise. There are sentence forms which customarily convey this but it is not necessary that the different performances be syntactically signaled. Nor does this usually present any problem to those conversing in a language both know. What is clear is that the appropriate response to what is said takes into account a vast number of things that go unsaid. If one responded to the speeches of actors on a stage as he does to remarks made on the street, breaking into Hamlet's soliloquy from the balcony is an effort to cheer up the poor prince, we would recognize that he needs help in distinguishing these two uses of language. Not every question a character asks is rhetorical, but the proper respondent is on the stage, not in the audience -- pace Pirandello.
Reflection on the background assumptions of language makes it clear that it would be clumsy if a speaker sought to make these explicit whenever he spoke to another. In the kind of language that characterizes philosophical proofs, as Thomas has been recalling them, the speaker is presumed to be saying things about the things that are. His listener's attention, accordingly, is not being directed to what the teacher knows or thinks but rather to the things he himself knows. If in speaking of lunar eclipses, the teacher spoke in rhyming couplets or declaimed in the manner of an orator, this would distract attention from what he is saying to how he is saying it. Aristotle locates demonstrative philosophical language, the language used in the quest of truth about the things that are, on a spectrum which has as one of its extremes poetic language. In poetry the medium is a good part of the message, the music of language is not merely a means the poet uses to say what he has to say, it is integral to what he means. If we tracked back along this spectrum to what we might call the apodictic use of language, the music of what is spoken should become like the music of the spheres, inaudible. Horace said the best art does not call attention to itself, but this cannot be understood as meaning that Horace thinks his elaborate prosody is incidental to what he is saying. But he does not want his hearer to scan the verse as he is hearing it, although what he is hearing is, especially in the case of Horace, most artfully contrived.
It should not be concluded from this that the language of the philosopher is artless. Au contraire. The philosopher must be at great pains to use language as a pure medium so that it does not distract from what he could convey, which is a truth about the things that are. Brand Blanshard's work On Philosophical Style was once almost the only entry in a field that is more populated now.{5}
But if the aim of philosophical language is to fashion apodictic proofs, the way to such proofs involves discourse of various kinds. Aristotle's taking of geometrical proof as a kind of model of demonstrative reasoning in the Posterior Analytics has led to misunderstanding. Scholars have complained that Aristotle's carefully developed scientific methodology does not seem to characterize his procedures in the treatises. Because of its abstract character, Euclidean geometry -- Euclid lived a century after Aristotle, but of course geometry did not begin with him -- can proceed as it were ab ovo. Its reliance on our experience of the world is minimal. But a science of nature must undertake many preliminary analyses before anything like a demonstration can be offered. Thus, it has been said that the first demonstration in the Physics occurs in Book Three of that work. What then has been going on previously? Aristotle first reviewed what his predecessors had to say about nature and change and found beneath the apparent cacophony of voices a number of basic assumptions. This suggested to him that those assumptions are likely true. But he then proceeded to his own analysis of what comes to be as a result of a change and presents his famous claim that any change involves an abiding subject which from not having a certain characteristic comes to have it. This fundamental Aristotelian doctrine is not proved in the sense of demonstrated. It purports to be an analysis of what we already know which commends itself against the background of what his predecessors had to say. So too the discourse of Book Two does not demonstrate anything about the presumed subject of the science.
The differences between the procedures of geometry and natural science are due to their quite different subject matters and the accessibility of those subject matters to us. It is notorious that the procedure of the Metaphysics instantiates the methodology of the Posterior Analytics only in the most remote way. As Aristotle remarked, it is the mark of the wise man to look for what the subject matter permits and not expect geometrical precision in every subject.Forgive me for dwelling on these commonplaces, but there is yet another I must mention. I have been speaking of discourse as it is to be found in what Aristotle called the theoretical sciences. When Aristotle distinguished mind theoretical from mind practical in his De anima (III,10), he pointed to different aims of thinking. Sometimes we use our mind to find out what the truth of the matter is; sometimes we use our mind in order to have a guide for making or doing. Practical thinking reaches its end in something made or done. Theoretical thinking aims at the perfection of thinking as such, Truth.
Classical proofs for the existence of God are exercises in theoretical reasoning. If the learner reenacts the thinking embodied in the proof he will arrive at a new truth. That is the aim and end of the process. It is useful to recall this because one source of dissatisfaction with the classical proofs derives from the fact that a person might accept them and still live as if God did not exist. When one asks undergraduates whether they think God's existence can be proved they usually say No., and often this is because of their belief that, if the proof worked, it ought to change the life of anyone who accepted it.
This sets the stage for my next lecture which will deal with the distinction between changing one's mind and changing one's life.
FEBRUARY 8, 2000
{1} The Summa theologiae begins by asking whether there is need for any science beyond those that make up philosophy. The question only makes sense to one who has a sufficient knowledge of philosophy to see the problem. Among the things that he is taken to have learned in philosophy is that the existence of God can be proved.
{2} In all this Thomas is guided by Romans 1:20 where Paul says of the pagan Romans that they could from the things that are made come to knowledge of the invisible things of God.
{3} Thomas makes this distinction between inventio and doctrine in his De magistro, Quaestio disputata de veritate, q. 11.
{4} Contemporary philosophers must be grateful for the work of J. L. Austin in this regard. From How To Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1955) through Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964) as well as in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), he drew attention to much that had been overlooked.
{5} The matter of these paragraphs is discussed in my Aquinas Lecture, Rhyme and Reason, St Thomas and Modes of discourse (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981).