LECTURE EIGHT: Truth and Subjectivity

          I have discussed the context within which a proof works, a context which is one of the doctrina rather than inventio. We would not perhaps speak of someone proving something to himself, or if we did we would imagine him duplicated and occupying the roles of the one who addresses as well as that of addressee. Thomas Aquinas might thus read his Five Ways some time after having written them. In any case, we were concerned with the presuppositions of a proof considered as a text on the page functioning as a proof. The process of proving is complete when the addressee has reenacted in his own mind what the teacher had previously enacted in his. The teacher is the occasion of the thought process in his addressee and the proof as text is his instrument.

SUBJECTIVITY AFTER TRUTH

          The upshot of the successful proving of a truth is that the learner has passed from not-knowing to knowing, from being able to know to actually knowing. This change in his mind has as its term the possession of a truth, that is, his mind has been brought into conformity with the way things are. But we have also seen that often, notably in the case of a proof of God's existence, much more than thinking differently than before is demanded of the proof. If such a proof were sound and someone accepted it, this acceptance should be manifested in his life. This difficulty arises either from asking too much of a proof or too little.

          An austere response -- we gave a version of it in the previous lecture -- would be that once the distinction between changing one's mind and changing one's life is grasped, it is seen to be a confusion to ask that a proof should have so dramatic and existential an effect.

          But this response can make one uneasy. Since proving involves thinking, it may seem to follow from this response that thinking has nothing to do with changing one's life. The realm of thought would be static, impersonal, inefficacious beyond the realm of mind; the realm of action would perhaps be delivered over to the passions, with reason operating as their slave if it got into the picture at all.

          This led us on in the last lecture to a discussion of the difference between the theoretical and practical uses of our mind. While the former seeks truth for its own sake, which is the perfection of thinking as such, when we use our mind practically we are seeking knowledge that can guide activities other than thinking, such as choosing. If the first question was, "Why does not theoretical knowledge have a practical effect?" it gave way to the far more agonizing question as to why practical knowledge often has no effect on our practice. This gap between knowledge and action seem to be an essential defect in practical knowledge, whereas if theoretical truth influences actions this would seem to be an incidental result of it.

          In turning to the recurrent problem of the relation of knowledge to virtue, I sought to summarize Aristotle's teaching on the matter as supplemented by his disciple Thomas Aquinas. If one does not become good by philosophizing and if moral doctrine is of little or no value, as Aristotle and Thomas respectively said, the very difference between theoretical and practical knowledge seems called into question. If both are mere instances of thought and neither has a predictable and as it were necessary effect on what the knower does, what good are they? More seriously, if thought does not influence what we do, what does?

          The discussion of these issues led us back to the difficulty posed to proofs for the existence of God. One can claim Pauline authority for the view that there is a connection between knowing that God exists and behavior in accord with that knowledge. Our suggestion here was that, pace those who take the fact/value split as dogma, the practical use of reason depends upon and grows out of its theoretical use. A successful proof of God's existence can lead on to the recognition that God is the ultimate end of the universe and more particularly of the moral agent. From such considerations, a morals that accords with the theoretical knowledge can develop.

          But is it enough to say that certain practical consequences can derive from knowledge of God, with of course all the provisos about the way in which practical knowledge can fail to achieve its appointed end? This might be called the Subjectivity after Truth position. Two of the most formidable minds of the nineteenth century, Soren Kierkegaard and John Henry Newman, seem to require far more of us. For these two, tough in different ways, subjectivity becomes the very possibility of truth, and both will define subjectivity in terms of the culminating judgment of what Aristotle called the practical syllogism.

SUBJECTIVITY IS THE TRUTH

          I have had occasion before in these lectures to draw upon the thought of Kierkegaard. We found it necessary to reject his suggestion that there can be no proof of God's existence because you cannot prove the existence of anything. But it would be misleading in the extreme to portray Kierkegaard -- or his designated spokesman in matters philosophical, Johannes Climacus -- as wanting to get involved in a discussion of classical proofs. Kierkegaard wants to sweep them off the table as irrelevant, misleading, and distracting from the one thing needful.

          When Climacus in The Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments turns to the question of truth, the discussion begins in what looks to be a standard way.^{1} Whether we take the correspondence theory or the idealist theory of truth, it involves two relata, thought and being. As for the former, if truth is thought's conformity to being, and being is taken to be the changing things of this world, then thought aims at a moving target and can achieve only an approximation. As for the idealist theory, if truth is the identity of thought and being it seems only an "abstract self-identity."

Abstract thought may continue as long as it likes to rewrite this thought in varying phraseology, it will never get any farther. As soon as the being which corresponds to the truth comes to be empirically concrete, the truth is put in process of becoming, and is again by way of anticipation the conformity of thought with being. This conformity is actually realized for God, but it is not realized for any existing spirit, who is himself existentially in process of becoming. (170)

It is the existing subject, the knower as a man of flesh and blood, to whom Kierkegaard would direct our attention, and that is to direct it away from "objective reflection" which points away from the subject. "For a subjective reflection the truth becomes a matter of appropriation, of inwardness, of subjectivity, and thought must probe more and more deeply into the subject and his subjectivity" (171).

          Whatever one makes of his remarks about objective truth, it is clear that Kierkegaard is interested in practical knowledge and the truth appropriate to it. One seeks to appropriate, to become, what one knows, and this requires that the knowledge be assimilable in this manner. If the human subject is incidental to objective thought, the very reverse is true of subjective thinking. Knowledge that bears an essential relation to the subject is the only kind of thinking Climacus will regard as essential. "Only ethical and ethico-religious knowledge has an essential relationship to the existence of the knower" (177). The definition of truth appropriate to this emphasis is this: "An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual" (182). That Kierkegaard is speaking of practical knowledge as opposed to theoretical in the Aristotelian sense is clear from his invocation of Aristotle for this distinction.^{2} That there is an undeniable animus against abstract real subject is not the cognitive subject, since in knowing he moves in the sphere of the possible; the real subject is the ethically existing subject" (281)

          But it would be untrue to the Kierkegaardian effort to see it as simply a preference for the practical over the theoretical. The role assigned Climacus in the literature is to lead the reader "Away from speculation!"^{3} toward a correct understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Understanding here must mean the existential understanding captured by the notion of subjective thought. The Christian task is to become like Christ, to assimilate the Gospel message into one's life. Kierkegaard, and Climacus, are annoyed by the attempt to turn Christianity into a mere occasion for scholarship and are ruthless with those who do.

          We have earlier seen the way in which Kierkegaard has Climacus dismiss the whole project of natural theology. And it is precisely our knowledge of God that forms the prelude to the definition of existential truth.^{4} Any attempt to attain objective knowledge of God becomes an endless approximation process that can never achieve its term. This dismissal echoes the viewpoint of the Fragments. The only way God can be attained is subjectively.

The existing individual who chooses to pursue the subjective way apprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having to use some time, perhaps a long time, in finding God objectively; and he feels this dialectical difficulty in all its painfulness, because every moment is wasted in which he does not have God. That very instant he has God, not by virtue of any objective deliberation, but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness.(179)

          I will take this as sufficient basis for the claim that Kierkegaard generalized what is peculiar to the practical order and wants it to encompass what had hitherto been taken to be questions that had an objective solution, viz. God's existence and the immortality of the soul. It is not simply that he opts for the practical as opposed to the theoretical. He absorbs the whole range of issues that had belonged to natural theology into the practical or subjective order. The truth that God exists is established by living as if he existed.^{5}

THE ILLATIVE SENSE

          John Henry Newman tells us that in his discussion of what he calls the illative sense he, like Bishop Butler, is not interested in metaphysics but has a practical aim. But he differs from Butler in this that he wishes to go beyond mere probability to the mind's certainty about the truth of things. The illative sense is presented as the perfection or virtue of the ratiocinative faculty of the mind.^{6} for all that, Newman regards as given a human nature which differs from others in that "though man cannot change what he is born with, he is a being of progress with relation to his perfection and characteristic good" (274). But nature as given is inchoate and rudimentary and must be brought to perfection.

          Inference and assent are the instruments of acquiring this perfection. The ultimate object of this quest is God, but it has pleased God to make the route to him circuitous and rugged above all other investigations. The judging and reasoning that will take us to him are perfected by the illative sense.^{7} It is at this point that Newman related what he is saying to Aristotle, noting that Aristotle called "the faculty" -- he must mean the virtue -- which guides judgment in matters of conduct phronesis. An ethical system supplies laws, general rules, guiding principles, but the application of these to the particular is the task of prhonesis. Is Newman merely citing the counterpart in the practical order of what he has been discussing in the theoretical?

Though Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, speaks of (φρὀνησις) as the virtue of the (δοξαστικον) generally, and as being concerned generally with contingent matter (vi.4), or what I have called the concrete and of its function being, as regards that matter, ἀληθεὐεινν τῶ καταφἀναι η ἀποφἀναι (ibid.3), he does not treat of it in that work in its general relation to truth and the affirmation of truth, but only as it bears upon (τα πρακτα).^{8}

          Newman goes on for several pages giving an account of Aristotelian phronesis. He describes it as the controlling principle in inferences, and suggests that there are as many kinds of phronesis as there are virtues. That he does indeed intend to extend phronesis beyond the practical order is clear enough. The illative sense is taken to be one and the same in all concrete matters. "We do not reason in one way in chemistry or law, in another in morals and religion; but in reasoning on any subject whatever, which is concrete, we proceed, as far as indeed as we can, by the logic of the language, but we are obliged to supplement it by the more subtle and elastic logic of thought; for forms by themselves prove nothing"(281).^{9}

          I take such passages to mean that what Aristotle called phronesis, which he confined to the practical order, can be extended to all reasoning on concrete matters. The Illative Sense is the name of this virtue which is the perfection of reasoning on whatever concrete object it may be operating. Newman explicitly gathers the reasoning that leads to knowledge of God's existence under this umbrella.

A NEGATIVE REACTION

          While Kierkegaard may be said to be skeptical about the objective or theoretical approach to God and to prefer the subjective, since subjective thinking is the mode of access to God and since subjective thinking is exemplified by practical reasoning, it is reasonable to assume that the criteria for truth in practical reasoning are the criteria for subjective truth in the Kierkegaardian sense. As for Newman, he is even more explicit in generalizing the virtue that Aristotle called the perfection of practical thinking, phronesis or prudence. What is to be made of this?

          Aristotle distinguishes the truth of judgments in the theoretical order from those in the practical order. In the former, truth is the mind's conformity to what is. Such conformity requires fixity and bears on the essential rather than the incidental in changeable things. The singular changeable things in the world cannot as such be proper objects of knowledge in the strong sense, of judgments whose truth escapes the ravages of change and accident. This is what led Plato to posit Forms or Ideas, of which we are only reminded by sensible things and which are the fitting objects of knowledge. Aristotle can be said to locate the forms in the singulars so that the kind of changeable things can be abstracted and grasped by the mind and provide a kind of necessity that its singular instances lack. But in practical knowing, where knowledge aims to guide singular contingent actions in the here and now, such truth cannot be had. So it is that Aristotle speaks of practical truth, the truth of the proximate judgment that is embedded in this action.

          Thomas Aquinas, in discussing practical truth, contrasts it to speculative or theoretical truth by saying that the judgment of theoretical mind is true when in conformity with the way things are, whereas the truth of the practical judgment involved in a singular action comes about by its conformity with rectified appetite. That is, unless the appetite has been schooled by moral virtue to the true end of man, a correct judgment as to what a virtue demands here and now cannot be made, or made only with enormous difficulty, as in the case of the one Aristotle calls continent. If appetite is not perfected by virtue, perfect or imperfect, the appetite will draw a person toward the good it habitually pursues. That is, a true judgment of what I am to do in these contingent particular circumstances is guaranteed by the fact that my will is fixed on the true goo. It is the just man who can judge truly the demands of justice in this instance.

          One could go on. Taken as developed by Aristotle and Aquinas, there seems to be no way in which the existence of God and the immortality of soul could be the object of true judgments of practical reason. Any effort to generalize practical reason over the whole range of reasoning would seem consequently to be wrongheaded. In the case of the existence of God, it could be made to seem as if, having thought and argued to a certain point, one simply asserts that God exists. Of course to suggest that either Kierkegaard or Newman would hold such a position as baldly stated as this would be libelous. So having given a negative judgment on their effort taken literally, I shall now go on to see how it might be benignly understood.

A POSITIVE CRITIQUE

          Kierkegaard and Newman are not alone in wanting to expand the classical discussion of practical reasoning to cover what it was not classically taken to cover. Jacques Maritain was greatly impressed by a distinction between two kinds of wisdom based on two kinds of judgment that is made early in the Summa theologiae when it is asked whether sacred science is a wisdom. Wisdom is manifested in wise judgments. Thomas contrasts a judgment per modum cognitionis with what he calls a judgment per modum inclinationis. The latter is also sometimes called a judgment per modum connaturalitatis and it is under this name that Maritain sought to expend its applicability beyond the range assigned it by Aquinas.

          In the text, Thomas is contrasting a general judgment about a moral matter, one that might be made by a moral philosopher or theologian, with the judgment about a certain kind of practical matter made by the virtuous person. Of course he is not suggesting that moral philosophers are not virtuous persons -- then again he is not suggesting that they are -- rather he is pointing out that a judgment on a level of generality, about a type of act, is not dependent on the appetitive condition of the judge. On the other hand, the virtuous person's judgment as such depends, as we have seen on his appetite being perfected by moral virtue. If he were asked for advice, he can give a judgment based, not on generalities, but on his inclination to or connaturality with the good.

          Maritain suggested that poetic knowledge, the knowledge that is presupposed by the technical knowledge that goes into the construction of a poem, can be regarded as connatural knowledge. This development of Maritain's is fascinating in itself and deserves attention, but I mention it now simply as another example of someone seeking to apply the characteristics of the judgment of prudence to other areas.^{10}

          But there is another expansion and one far more relevant to what Kierkegaard and Newman do that is suggested by the text and Maritain also noticed and emphasized in a number of places. Although Thomas's first example of the judgment by way of inclination is a particular moral judgment, where wisdom would mean the practical wisdom signified by phronesis, he also illustrates it by the Gift of Wisdom, which is to be distinguished as well from the wisdom exemplified in theological treatises.

          In the passage at issue then, Thomas is suggesting the following analogy: As a judgment in moral science is to the judgment of the prudent man, so judgments about the divine things in theology are to the judgments one makes according to the gift of the Holy Spirit. The latter is an experiential judgment. Thus, there is knowledge of divine things that can be compared to the particular moral judgment. However, this knowledge is due to an infused gift which is the prerogative of the Christian believer and thus would be consequent on certainty that there is a God rather than productive of it. Is there any way in which the Aristotelian notion of practical knowledge in particular could be applied to theoretical knowledge of God and of the immortality of the soul?

          As Newman's Apologia pro vita sua makes clear, when confronted with a demand to give the objective reasons for his religious conversion, he replied in effect that that is not how profound changes in one's life take place, that is, simply as a result of argument. There were of course arguments along the way but in this regard Newman speaks of a convergence of probabilities. This seems to mean both that the arguments are not conclusive or probative and that they, taken singly and perhaps all together, are insufficient to explain what he decided to do. Since Newman is discussing a movement within religious faith, the passage from being a Christian in one sense (an Anglican) to being a Christian in another (a Roman Catholic), the discussion takes place on a level that is not immediately helpful to natural theology. So too, since Kierkegaard does not think proofs for God's existence are conclusive, he can be taken to be speaking of how it is that belief in the sense of religious faith comes about. It is not, he insists, a necessary conclusion of a demonstration. The conclusion involved would be something like credo in deum, so neither can this be of any immediate help in discussing natural theology.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

          One of the attractions of the Grammar of Assent lies in its emphasis on the fact that reasoning and arguing and concluding are things that concrete individuals do. Not only is the cognitive process by which I arrived at the knowledge of God by way of a proof something that I do, my act of reason is also a moral act and thus finds its native habitat in the subjectivity of the thinker. Kierkegaard observed that objective thought points away from the subject, and so it does. Let us assume, contrary to Climacus, that there are sound arguments for the existence of God and that these are exercises of theoretical reasoning. While such arguments have to be made by some individual person, that person is not thematic to the argument, not what the argument is about. Nonetheless, the argument can be appraised from two points of view, intrinsically, let us say, and morally.

          Intrinsically, the argument will be appraised in terms of logic and of the truth of the propositions which enter into it. If it passes these appraisals, it can be accounted a good argument and the reasoning to have succeeded. But, since the objective truth was attained by the singular acts of reasoning of an individual person, what he has done can also be appraised in moral terms. That is, was his devoting himself to this speculation at this time and place, in these circumstances, good or not? It is conceivable that a good and successful piece of reasoning will get bad moral marks because of the circumstances in which the person engaged in it. Let us imagine a natural theologian whose learning has been gained from books he has stolen; let us imagine, more proximately, that as he labors at his desk, he is ignoring his wife and children and perhaps his own health as well. Perhaps he has plugged his computer into a neighbor's socket and is working on purloined electricity. And so on. Such circumstances might lead us to say of what he was up to in his study that he was acting badly.

          Of course, the intrinsic and moral appraisals of reasoning are incidental to one another. One who acts in an exemplary way in pursuing a proof of God's existence can nonetheless fail to achieve the result he is after, or achieve one that is flawed logically. Here we will criticize his argument but not condemn his behavior. Do these elementary considerations cast any light on the relationship between subjectivity and natural theology?

          Let me advert to considerations in my first set of lectures to suggest a positive answer to that question. In discussing the question of Christian philosophy and the charge that the believer cannot engage sincerely in philosophy because he is already certain on the basis of his faith of many of the things that come up for discussion in philosophy, I granted the description of the believing philosopher, but not the supposed consequence. To do so would be to disqualify anyone from engaging in philosophy. The antecedent beliefs of the Christian are easy to identify and label, but everyone comes to philosophy with a set of antecedent beliefs. Far from entailing that all arguments are merely bad reasons for what one already holds, I suggested that there is an objective appraisal -- I have been calling it an intrinsic appraisal tonight -- of arguments that is independent of the antecedent dispositions of its framer, whatever they might be.

          Now the upshot of that seems to be to acknowledge but deem irrelevant antecedent beliefs of any kind. That was not my conclusion, for reasons I will not repeat: I think Christian faith is of inestimable help in achieving the ends of philosophizing. This is nowhere more evident than when it is a question of asking what reasons could be given to show that God exists.

          One who comes to philosophizing with materialist presumptions, with an animus against metaphysics and skepticism about the existence of God, is in a bad subjective condition to undertake the philosophical task. Consider. If God exists this is a truth of paramount importance. Anyone must agree that failure to acknowledge the one on whom the universe and all in it depend is not a minor defect. One would be out of tune with the reality of which he is a part. Prior to undertaking the task of natural theology it is well for us to have a sense of the seriousness of that undertaking. This does not guarantee success of course, but a successful outcome is viewed as a possibility. A negative antecedent attitude all but guarantees that the task will not be undertaken in a way that will allow the truth of the matter to shine through.

          Subjectivity is not the immediate source of objective truth, but there is a kind of subjective disposition that is open to objective truth and another that is closed even to its possibility.

          Neither my negative nor my positive assessment of subjective or practical truth provides support for the generalization that both Kierkegaard and Newman want to make, each in his own way. By citing Aristotle, they invite an appraisal from one who, like Thomas Aquinas, stands within the Aristotelian tradition. For all that, speaking specifically of divine faith, there is good reason to liken its truth to practical truth. The concrete practical judgment is true when it is in conformity with a fixed and habitual appetitive orientation to the true good. Faith is a habit of speculative intellect, a virtue which enables one to judge well and truly of divine things. Of course any intellectual virtue perfects mental activity. Science is a virtue which enables the one having it to judge well and truly of a certain subject matter, but the truth of such judgments lies in their conformity with the way things are. In the case of faith, its objects remain incomprehensible to the mind of the believer. It cannot be the evidence of the object then which explains his judgment of divine things. The assent of faith is given accordingly because of an impetus of the will moved by grace, something captured by Augustine in the phrase Nemo credit nisi volens. This essential dependence of faith on will's desire for happiness for the truth of its judgments causes Thomas to say that faith is more akin to virtue in the obvious sense, moral virtue, than are such intellectual habits as science and art. Insofar as Kierkegaard and Newman can be taken to be speaking of divine faith, then, calling it subjective truth puts them in the same neighborhood as Thomas Aquinas. In the case of Kierkegaard, since the only access to God is by way of faith, this serves to support his pseudonym's claim that truth is subjectivity. It is more difficult in the case of Newman to arrive at this irenic conclusion, because he wants the illative sense, that is, prudence, to range over all subject matters, theoretical and practical. This can only be accommodated in the way indicated above, the way characterized as benign.

FEBRUARY 15, 2000

{1} Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David E. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941). Chapter II of Part Two is the relevant text: pp. 169-224.

{2} He cites De anima III, 10 on p. 278, and identifies what he has been calling subjective thought with practical thinking in the Aristotelian sense.

{3} Kierkegaard, The Point of View, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 75.

{4} "Let us take as an example the knowledge of God‏" (‎ibid. 178ff.).

{5} In this manner God certainly becomes a postulate, but not in the otiose manner in which the word is commonly understood. It becomes clear rather that the only way in which an existing individual comes into relation with God, is when the dialectical contradiction brings his passion to the point of despair, and helps him to embrace God with the ‘category of despair’ (faith). Then the postulate is so far from being arbitrary that it is precisely a life-necessity. It is then not so much that God is a postulate, as that the existing individual’s postulation of God is a necessity" (ibid. 179, note).

{6} John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 271.

{7} "it is the mind that reasons, and that controls its own reasonings, not any technical apparatus of words and propositions. This power of judging and concluding, when in its perfection, I call the Illative Sense"(ibid., 276).

{8} Ibid., 277, note 1.

{9} "…in no class of concrete reasoning, whether in experimental science, historical research, or theology, is there any ultimate test of truth and error in our inferences besides the trustworthiness of the Illative Sense that gives its sanction" (ibid. 281).

{10} See Chapters 10 and 11 in my Art and Prudence: Studies in the Thought of Jacques Maritain (Notre Dame.: University of Notre Dame, 1988).

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