Fr. Stanley Jaki, OSB (1924 - 2009)

Benedictine Father Stanley Jaki, died quietly in the company of friends, from complications after suffering a heart attack without knowing it, on 7 April 2009 [13:15 Spanish time], at Clinica de la Conception in Madrid, Spain where he was visiting friends following a lecture series in Rome for the Master in Faith and Science of the Pontificio Ateneo Regina Apostolorum.

As Paul Zalonski writes in the Communio obituary, "He was a monk and priest of the Archabbey of Saint Martin, Pannonhalma, Hungary. He entered the archabbey in 1941, professing solemn vows in 1944 and was ordained a priest in 1948. Like many other Hungarian priests, Jaki immigrated to the USA during Soviet persecution." Father Jaki was first and foremost a faithful priest and scholar -- a physicist as well as a theologian -- and a prolific writer. He had served as Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, since 1975. As Zalonski notes:

Jaki earned a doctorate in theology from Sant'Anselmo (Rome) in 1950 and another doctorate in (astro)physics from Fordham University in 1957. Since 1965 he has taught at Seton Hall University and honored as Distinguished Professor of Physics in 1975. After retiring he kept active by holding court, giving lectures and writing, often cantankerously.

Father Jaki was well-known for his writings on science and religion. He delievered the prestigious Gifford Lectures from 1974-1976, later published under the title of The Road of Science and the Ways to God. In 1987 Dom Stanley was award the Templeton Prize. He is considered one of the best scholars on the thought of Cardinal John Henry Newman in the U.S. His publishing record show he published 7 books and numerous articles on Newman.

Fr. Jaki was one of the premier contemporary minds in the fields of philosophy of science and theology, as well as on inter-disciplinary issues. He authored innumerable books, articles and essays covering everything from the metaphysics of the Eucharist, to Petrine primacy, to exactly where and how Charles Darwin went woefully wrong. In short, Fr. Jaki was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century and his contributions to Catholic thought and culture will be difficult to quantify.

As one G.K. Chesterton fan comments: "In addition to so many other things, Father Jaki was also a beloved and much-sought after Chestertonian, and a true follower of the Rule of St. Benedict in every way imaginable; he was always teaching. He only had to be invited to speak once to the annual American Chesterton Society Conference....after that he would simply call Dale Ahlquist in advance and announce his topic! Such graceful moxie is very rare these days and those of us who have known him, learned from him, and love him have all been blessed and bettered by his initiative; it will be a palpable loss not to have this spiritual and intellectual giant in our midst any longer."

I am amused that Zalonski mentions that Fr. Jaki could be "cantankerous." A couple of friends of mine report that in conversations with him he would without any hesitation simply declare: "You are no physicist!" or "You are no philosopher!" I say amused, because he was usually quite right in his judgments, even if a trifle tactless. Socrates keeps good company.

Another feature of Fr. Jaki that goes unmentioned, however, is how he was almost always peddling his personal publications. One friend of mine mentions that he met Fr. Jaki at a conference on the East coast. My friend mentioned that Fr. Jaki recruited him to the task of helping him cart books (and flyers promoting them) from the trunk of his automobile and to help market and distribute to those assembled. I have to confess that in phone conversations with him, Fr. Jaki was a persuasive salesman and managed to sell to me about two dozen of his books and publications he warehoused in his basement. I should add, however, that he gave me a significant discount and that I have profited immensely from the books I have read, though I have yet to tackle his huge tome on physics!

Fr. Jaki will be missed. Let us pray for the merciful repose of his soul.

[Hat tip to Fr. Zuhlsdorf and Chestertonian, Miki]

Manfred S. Frings (1925-2008) -- Requiescat in pace

Manfred Frings, the world's leading Scheler scholar, is dead. Frings was the editor of Max Scheler's Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke), translated many of Scheler's works into English, and was singlehandedly responsible for introducing Scheler's phenomenology into the English-speaking world.

Born on 27 February 1925 in Cologne-Lindenthal, Germany, Frings was the third son of Gottfried and Maria Frings. He attended a Catholic elementary school, lived close to a Jewish community where he forged significant friendships shaping his later antipathy towards Nazism. Both his school and home were destroyed during the bombing of Cologne in WWII, and he remembered rescuing his mother from the ruins of their house. He was drafted into the German military near the end of the war, and was captured by American forces and sent to a POW camp near Rouen, France, where he made the first of many lifelong friendships with Americans.

Following the war, Frings attended the University of Cologne, where he studied philosophy, English and French. He earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1953. In 1958 his dream of emigrating to America was realized when he accepted an invitation to teach philosophy at the University of Detroit. In 1962 he accepted an appointment in philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. From 1966 to his retirement in 1992, he taught at DePaul University in Chicago. He subsequently continued teaching part-time at the University of New Mexico. At various points throughout his career, he served as visiting professor and lecturer at the Universities of Cologne, Freiburg, Oxford, and Sorbonne.

Frings initiated the annual International Heidegger Conference at DePaul in 1966. He was one of six scholars chosen by Martin Heidegger to be the original editors of Heidegger’s Collected Works (Gesamtausgabe). He edited Heidegger’s 1942-1944 lectures on Parmenides and Heraclitus (volumes 54 and 55 of the Gesamtausgabe). Since 1970, he served as editor of the Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler (1874-1928), a task completed with the publication of vol. 15 in 1997. He was President (then President Emeritus) of the international Max Scheler Society (Max-Scheler-Gesellschaft), as well as a founding father of the Max Scheler Society of North America.

The principal focus of Frings’s career was Scheler’s phenomenology of values, sociology of knowledge, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of time. Among Frings' major contributions are the recognition he brought to Scheler’s phenomenology as a credible alternative to Edmund Husserl’s, his clarification of the relationship between Scheler and Heidegger in his seminal Person und Dasein (1969), and his concept of absolute time in his LifeTime: Max Scheler’s Philosophy of Time (2003). He has published well over a hundred articles, and edited twenty-four books, including his notable The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (1997, 2nd ed. 2001). His publications have been translated into Chinese, French, Japanese, and German. His work was recognized in a special audience with Pope John Paul II, himself an accomplished Scheler scholar, and by Martin Heidegger in personal meetings in Freiburg.

Frings is survived by his wife and long-time companion, Karin.

Select Bibliography

• Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker (Pittsburgh, 1965; 2nd ed, Milwaukee, 1996).
• Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins (The Hague, 1969).
• “Max Scheler: Rarely Seen Complexities of Phenomenology,” Phenomenology in Perspective, ed. F. J. Smith (The Hague, 1970).
• Zur Phänomenologie der Lebensgemeinschaft: Ein Versuch mit Max Scheler (Meisenheim, 1971).
• Philosophy of Prediction and Capitalism (Dordrecht, 1987).
  “Scheler, Max,” Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle, III, Les Ouvres Philosophiques (Paris, 1992).
• “The Background of Max Scheler’s 1927 Reading of Being and Time: A Critique of a Critique Through Ethics,” Philosophy Today 36 (1992): 99-113.
• “Max Scheler,” Encyclopedia Americana (Danbury, Connecticut, 1994).
• “Max Scheler,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed (1994).
• “Max Scheler,” Dictionaire d’éthique et de philosophie morale (Paris, 1996).
• “Max Scheler,” The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht, 1997).
• The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works (Milwaukee, 1997).

Goodbye, dear friend. You carry away a whole world with you. Requiescat in pace.

(DE)CONSTRUCTIVE ABSENCE

To critically deconstruct or not, that is the question
To sling discursive arrows at outrageous fortunes
Or to take arms against a sea of techno-capitalist powers
And by deconstructing end them?
Yet so foul and fair a day i have not seen
For is this a summons which i see before me
An unseasonal gift in my hand?
Come, let me hold thee
I have thee not, and yet i see thee still
Art thou not a fatal vision, a present absence?
A simulacrum of the mind?
A hyperreal calling
Proceeding from the heat-opressed brain?
Yet, the deafening silence of the calling announces
To critically deconstruct or not, is that the question?
Why, what care i?
Why should you?
Since there's much safety in numbers, in foul analysis
What need we fear?
Who knows it?
When none can call our power to account
Still tis so foul and fair a day i have not seen
For i must attend the true event
My haste is very great
I will be gone
For with the dark, i'll steal away
And all's well that ends well
Whatever the course
The postmodern end is renown
So post-haste, i must depart
For i am become quite old
And the inaudible and noiseless foot of time steals
Nay deconstructs us all, low or high, knave or saint
Thus farewell for now
This day so foul and fair
Alas this speech must meet its end
For speech is much ado about nothing
And foul words are but foul wind
and foul wind is but foul breath
Yet with this breath forget not the question
Of being or not being
Of the différance of identity
That "is"
Critical deconstruction

Arek Shak(espe(ar)e)ian
11-03-1993

[Hat tip to Arek Shakarian. Reproduced by permission of the author, 2008.]

The origins of totalitarian democracy

In book VI of The Republic, Plato offers a fascinating sketch of how, in his view, democracy may give birth to tyranny. The discussion is much too long to quote in its entirety here; but here are some choice excerpts:

"When a democratic city athirst for liberty gets worthless butlers presiding over its wine, and has drunk too deep of liberty's heady draught, then, I think, if the rulers are not very obliging and won't provide plenty of liberty, it calls them blackguards and oligarchs and chastises them."

"So they do," said he.

"Yes," I went on, "and any who obey the rulers they trample in the dust as willing slaves and not worth a jot; and rulers who are like subjects, and subjects who are like rulers, come in for the votes of thanks and the honors, public and private...."

***
"Then it is likely," said I, "that democracy is precisely the constitution out of which tyranny comes; from extreme liberty, it seems, comes a slavery most complete and most cruel."

***
" ' People' will be the name of the [largest] class; all who are handiworkers and outside politics, without much property of their own. This is the largest and most sovereign class in democracy, when it combines."

"So it is," he said, "but it does not often care to combine unless it can get a bit of the honey."

"Well, it does get a bit from time to time," I said, "depending on the ability of the presidents, in taking the property away from those who have it and distributing it among the people, to keep most of it themselves."

"Yes, it gets a share to that extent," he said.

"So those whom they plunder have to defend themselves, I suppose, by speaking before the people and taking action in what way they can."

"Of course."

"And so they are accused by the other party of plotting against the people ...."

"... So the common people will always put up for itself some special protector, whom it supports and magnifies?"

"One thing is clear then," I said, "that when a tyrant appears, he grows simply and solely from a protectorship as the root."

"That is quite clear."

"Then what is the beginning of this change from protector to tyrant? ..."

"...When the Protector of the People finds a very obedient mob ... when he hints at abolition of debts and partition of estates -- surely for such a one the necessity is ordained that he must either perish at the hands of his enemies, or become a tyrant, and be a wolf instead of a man?"

"Such must be his fate of necessity," said he.

"That is the man then," said I, "who comes to lead a party against those who possess property."

"... those who get so far always hit on the tyrant's notorious plea -- they beg the people to give them a bodyguard, in order that the people's champion may be kept safe for themselves."

***
"Well, then," I said, "at first, in the early days, he greets everyone he meets with a broad smile; says he is no tyrant, and promises all sorts of things in private and in public, frees them from their debts and parcels out the land to the people and to those about him, pretends to be gracious and friendly to all the world."

(Plato, Republic, VIII, 562c-566e)

Of related interest

J.L. Talmon, Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (W.W. Norton, 1970) -- a fascinating study based on an examination of Rousseau's Social Contract.

Von Baader now online

This will be a bit arcane for most of you, but a major influence on the Dutch Calvinist philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, was Franz Xaver von Baader (1765-1841), whose work is now available online, albeit in difficult archaic German. J. Glen Friesen just emailed me the news that Google Books has digitized all 16 volumes of the Collected Works of Franz Xavier von Baader, the link to which is available at Friesen's website, along with links to several articles translated into English by Friesen.

[Hat tip to J.G.F.]

Theodore Plantinga - 1947-2008

I take note of the passing of the philosopher, Theodore Plantinga (not to be confused with Notre Dame's Reformed philosopher, Alvin Plantinga), not only because of his particular contributions to the field of Dilthey studies and historical philosophy from his perspective as a Reformed Christian, but because of his personal assistance to me in my days as a doctoral student in helping me formulate my dissertation topic in such a way that it brought together my interest then in the Dutch Reformed phenomenologist, Herman Dooyeweerd, with parallel strands in the German phenomenological tradition adjacent to that of Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) in Max Scheler and the critique he leveled against the classical ethical formalism of Immanuel Kant. The yield of this line of advice, years later, was my publication of Scheler's Critique Of Kant's Ethics, Continental Thought Series, V. 22 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1995).

I never got to know Plantinga well, although I did read several of his books and articles, through which I gained considerable appreciation for his perspective and depth of analysis.

Here, in part, is how his university memorial reads under News and Events, "In Memoriam Professor Theodore Plantinga" (Redeemer University, Ancaster, Ontario, July 5, 2008):

It is with deep sadness that Redeemer University College announces the death of Dr. Theodore Plantinga, Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department. Dr. Plantinga died peacefully at his home in Dundas on the evening of July 4, 2008 . Visitation will be held in St. James Anglican Church from 6:30 – 8:30 Tuesday evening (137 Melville, Dundas), and a memorial service will be held there on Wednesday at 1 pm.

Theo Plantinga was born in 1947 in Ee, Friesland , the Netherlands . His family emigrated to Canada when he was four, settling in Winnipeg , where he attended elementary and secondary schools. He went to university at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan , where he received a B.A. in philosophy in 1969. He subsequently completed a Masters degree, and a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Toronto (1975). His doctoral dissertation, published by the University of Toronto Press in 1980, was Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey.

During the next two years, Dr. Plantinga held a full-time position as lecturer in philosophy at Bishops University in Lennoxville, Quebec. Subsequently, he was a translator and managing editor for Paideia Press in St. Catharines, Ontario. He was appointed Executive Director of College Development for the Ontario Christian College Association, founded to explore the possibility of starting a Reformed Christian liberal arts and science college in Ontario.

Plantinga spent the next quarter century as the chair of Redeemer's philosophy department during the institution's founding years. He also translated numerous books by Dutch authors into English, including volumes by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. He also became managing editor of the Dooyeweerd Centre at Redeemer in 2005.

The memorial concludes with these words: "He had a lively wit, a vibrant faith, a ready laugh, a listening ear and a particular fondness for the eccentric. He will be greatly missed as a friend, colleague, teacher and mentor. 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.'"

[Hat tip to C.B.]

The young Scheler

Mancuso Giuliana, Il Giovane Scheler (1899-1906) (Milano: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2008).
310pp.
€28,50
ISBN-13: 9788879163651
ISBN: 8879163655

Con la pubblicazione del Formalismusbuch e la proposta di un'etica materiale dei valori, Scheler si impose come esponente di punta della fenomenologia di impronta realistica. Tuttavia, egli aveva esordito sulla scena filosofica con una serie di scritti di impostazione neokantiana, e tale restò il suo quadro concettuale di riferimento almeno fino al 1906. Di questa fase giovanile ci si è occupati ben poco. Il neokantismo che informa la prima produzione scheleriana è rimasto una nozione vaga, non tematizzata in quanto tale. Il libro specifica questa nozione attraverso l'esame dei testi giovanili, dei loro più significativi debiti teorici e delle questioni teoriche in essi affrontate. Le risposte del giovane Scheler mostrano come il suo pensiero fosse radicato all'interno del paradigma inaugurato da Kant e sviluppato dal neocriticismo: un paradigma del quale egli accolse la strumentazione concettuale, pur problematizzandola, per lavorare dall'interno alle linee di tensione dell'impostazione trascendentale. L'analisi di due luoghi celebri della filosofia scheleriana della maturità coglie, infine, la presenza operativa di elementi teorici riconducibili al neokantismo giovanile.

Giuliana Mancuso (Carate Brianza, 1975) ha conseguito il titolo di Dottore di ricerca presso l'Università di Torino e attualmente è assegnista all'Università degli Studi di Milano. É autrice di traduzioni e saggi critici che hanno per oggetto la filosofia tedesca tra Ottocento e Novecento, con particolare attenzione al pensiero di Max Scheler, al neokantismo marburghese e alla fenomenologia.

Foreclosure of homes and philosophy departments

Homes are being foreclosed at a fearsome rate these days, and it begins to look as though academic departments and programs are a similarly endangered species. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the termination of the German Department at the University of Southern California, and on May 5, I noticed in The Chronicle that the University of Florida was terminating its doctoral program in Philosophy.

The university, confronting a substantial cutback in state appropriations, has announced that it will lay off 20 faculty members, among other steps, to reduce costs for FY2008-9. As part of this retrenchment, President Bernie Machen has also proposed reducing undergraduate enrollment and cutting back on research expenditures, as well as eliminating some degree programs.

I gather that other Florida universities are reacting similarly to dire state budgetary situations. Many states are experiencing exactly the same financial difficulties, and passing through their problems to public institutions of higher education.

Source: Stan Katz, "The Unity of Philosophy" (The Chronicle Review, May 14, 2008).

[Hat tip to E.F.]

The celebrated Saul Kripke never earned more than a B.A.

One of my good friends and readers of my blog wrote to me recently expressing his surprise that the world-class philosopher, Saul Kripke, was never educated beyond the undergraduate level. "Kripke decided to write and publish rather than take up graduate studies," he wrote. "What a guy!"

The Kripke personal story is indeed impressive and intriguing, as related by Charles McGrath in a New York Times article just after Kripke had turned 65 years old in November of 2005. The Graduate Center of the City University of New York convened a two-day conference on the occasion of his his birthday in celibration of the man and his work. "In many circles, Mr. Kripke, who in 2001 was awarded the Schock Prize, philosophy's equivalent of the Nobel, is thought to be the world's greatest living philosopher, perhaps the greatest since Wittgenstein," says McGrath -- except that Wittgenstein didn't do some of his most important work while still in high school.

Mr. Kripke, a rabbi's son, grew up in Omaha, and by all accounts was a true prodigy, so brilliant and precocious that the so-called prodigies of today are by comparison mere shadows flickering on the wall of our collective cave. In the fourth grade he discovered algebra, which he later said he could have invented on his own, and by the end of grammar school he had mastered geometry and calculus and taken up philosophy. While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first."

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own."

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. His 1980 book "Naming and Necessity," based on work he began in high school, is among the most influential philosophy books of the last 50 years ....

Funny, how easy it is to forget. I remember working through parts of Naming and Necessity (1980) about twenty years ago, aware of its importance and significance as a major philosophical work. It's easy to assume that a work like that might have been written by a philosopher near the end of his career, or even by someone deceased for some time; but the fact is that Kripke was only 40 years old when he wrote it, and it was based on ideas he worked out when he was in high school, probably in the late 1950s. Since Kripke didn't waste any time on post-graduate schooling, dissertating and self-promoting, he was essentially able to complete what in effect the work of a spectacularly successful career by the time he was only 40, and he's been going strong for the 28 years since, with what appears to be as many years yet ahead of him. Setting aside the self-promotional shenanigans required of most graduate students in order to procure professional jobs, one is tempted to ask concerning the value of post-graduate education except as an inconvenient way of weeding out what the professional guild considers the candidates least likely to succeed. Yet one wonders how many Kripke's are forestalled by the prospect of having to endure six-years-to-a-decade of such nonsense before being allowed to settle down to the serious work of philosophical thinking.

[Hat tip to E.F.]

Memories of Dietrich Von Hildebrand

by Ronda Chervin, Ph.D.

It was truly a miracle that I met Gogo (as all his friends called him). Here is how it happened.

I was brought up as a total atheist, though my background was culturally Jewish. I studied philosophy hoping to find truth but only found skepticism, relativism, and historicism. I was looking for love but only found fascinating, sinful, disappointing relationships. By the age of 20 I was in despair of ever finding love or truth.

One Saturday my mother, who never surfed the TV, not ever, turned on the set in the middle of the afternoon, and there was a program called the Catholic Hour with two philosophers on it: Dietrich Von Hildebrand and Alice Jourdain. "Ronda, come see, there are some philosophers on TV." To my amazement, these philosophers were talking as if truth, love, goodness and beauty were objective realities.

I wrote them a long letter describing my futile search and asked if they could help me. It turned out that Alice (Lily – shortly afterwards to become Gogo's second wife) lived but 2 blocks away from me on the West Side of New York city. Neither she nor I, nor Madeleine (to be Stebbins) who was her roommate will ever forget our first meeting. Somehow, even though I was an atheist, I knew that there was something extraordinary in that apartment. Never had anyone looked into my eyes with such compassion and insight as did Lily. Afterwards, I danced down the street thinking, "I have met a saint."

Impressed by my yearning for truth, Lily suggested that I make a visit to the classes of Dietrich Von Hildebrand at Fordham and if I was enthusiastic, why not transfer my Woodrow Wilson scholarship from Johns Hopkins graduate school to Fordham.

Stephen Schwarz escorted me to Fordham. Two things caught my attention. The first was that, unlike the professors at Johns Hopkins who seemed to me to be dessicated academics, Von Hildebrand and Balduin Schwarz were vibrant men, overflowing with joy. Secondly I noticed that they could refute skepticism, relativism and historicism in a few sentences.

I like to think that two of my favorite saints also had something to do with the miracle of my mother turning on the TV at that moment: St. Therese of Lisieux who, during her dark night, prayed so much for atheists, and St. Edith Stein – who, having been an atheistic philosophy student from a Jewish background herself, surely she would want me to meet her "cousin" philosopher, Von Hildebrand.

Of course, being such a thoroughgoing atheist who had been brought up to think that all religious people were stupid and weak, I didn't think that the wonderful traits of Von Hildebrand, Lily, and the Schwarzs: Balduin, Leni (a convert from an atheist Jewish background) and Stephen, their son, had anything to do with their religion. I just wanted to be with them.

Zealous Gogo, at the urging of Lily, quickly arranged for my scholarship to be transferred and within a month I was taking courses at Fordham.

Ecstasy is the only word to describe my reaction to each of Gogo's classes, as I realized that truth was real, and what glorious truths, such as proofs that moral values were absolute. Simultaneously I was lapping up the love the members of the lay community surrounding me with. Getting to know them took place at lunches at the Schwarz house, and on the D-train of the NY subway from the Manhattan to the Bronx and back again, for I was able to travel a whole hour each way with either Gogo or Balduin who were riding up to the classes I was taking and they were teaching.

The miraculous events that led me to become a Catholic a year after meeting Gogo and Lily are told in my autobiography En Route to Eternity. A large part came from reading the authors recommended by them such as Augustine, Newman, and Chesterton. The night before my baptism I was visiting the Schwarzs who would become my godparents. Gogo was there. On my way home, I grabbed his arm and asked, "But suppose it isn't true, after all?" I expected some insight into philosophy or psychology of religion, but he replied with the simplicity of a peasant, "but think of the miracles!"

I found the personality of Gogo overwhelmingly. That the same man could be so serious, so deep, but also so spontaneous and affectionate, delighted me. We used to attend the same daily Mass, walking from different directions. Always I would find him singing opera loudly along the way. I often thought of this as the Italian side of his personality whereas the philosophical side was more German.

These personality traits of Gogo made whatever he wanted to teach me not so much didactic as enticing. And this was not only in the realm of philosophy. My father was a lover of classical music who filled our early childhood with the sound of music every hour he was home. As a teenager I rebelled and listened only to popular tunes. By college I gradually grew to love classical music, but had very little sense of choral music. I will never forget sitting in a room next to Gogo who was playing a 78 recording of Mozart's Laudate Dominum. To make sure I understood the beauty of it, he grabbed my arm with his hand and emphasized each climax of the singing with an extra squeeze accompanied by his radiant smile.

Another memory from these early days of the friendship, which would last until the end of his life, is of his insistence that those of us who rode with him on the subway from Fordham back to Manhattan pray Compline out loud in Latin. It was for me such an exemplification of the later buzz-word "counter-cultural" but also of freedom of spirit. In later years I followed his lead by insisting that friends pray the rosary aloud with me in airports during long waits at the gate.

Gogo played a large role in my marriage to Martin Chervin, a man from an orthodox Jewish background who had become an atheist as a teen but who wanted to know Christ. When I got interested in Martin as a possible spouse, I was on the verge of becoming a Catholic. At the time, he was a divorced playboy. I was confused. I thought a good way of getting rid of him would be to introduce him to Gogo and Lily and the Schwarz family. Surely they would tell me to drop this dangerous friendship immediately. Instead they all loved him and encouraged us in what turned out to be a long chaste courtship and helped us get a dispensation from Martin's previous non-religious marriage. We went through a long process with the New York and Roman tribunals. Finally Gogo was instrumental in persuading a prominent Cardinal to intervene for a dispensation in favorem fide.

It seemed as if Martin would soon become a Catholic. A major influence on him was the reading of Transformation in Christ. He recognized the genius of Gogo's combination of consummate understanding of human nature with sublime faith.
Even more, my husband, who had the same kind of joie de vivre as Gogo, could only have understood a faith like Gogo's, which included rejoicing in the goods of the earth, as well as opening to the redemptive gifts. Before meeting Gogo he thought of Catholics as either tight Puritanical types or rebellious sinners. It took him many years to finally become a Catholic, because he detested the American post-Vatican II Mass. Shortly before Gogo's death he made a bargain with God that should Gogo survive longer, at a time when his life seemed almost at an end, he would take it as a sign to become a Catholic in spite of his dislike of the English Mass. Gogo was spared a short time longer and Martin did become a Catholic

Gogo also had an influence on the conversion of my atheist mother. She was horrified at my interest in Roman Catholicism, but the personality of Gogo opened her to investigating the faith for herself. He decided to meet her informally at our home for individual teaching sessions to overcome her formidable doubts. In a charming gesture, the first time he came he presented her with a huge bouquet of peonies.

A few less important but telling memories:

Before his conversion, Martin and I were once traveling in Europe and went out of our way to go to Florence to see Gogo and Lily. I was praying constantly that whatever Gogo said would be a turning point for Martin to becoming a Catholic. We had a lovely visit but mostly the conversation was humorous and anecdotal instead of deep. At the end I was alone for a few moments and told Gogo how sorry I was that no important points had come up. Immediately Gogo's humorous expression changed to great seriousness and he exclaimed "What a sin on my part to have talked so much thoughtlessly!" I was touched by his readiness to acknowledge a fault even when it was unintentional.

Summers included a yearly meeting of a lay community that most of the Von Hildebrand circle were part of. I occasionally came to these meetings in Bavaria. The Mass was celebrated in a small chapel with parts of the congregation on either side – men on one side and women on the other. It always delighted me to see that, even after many years of marriage, Gogo could not bear to be separated from Lily – so throughout the Mass he would turn his head and gaze upon her with love.

A memory that fits with the name of the book The Soul of a Lion took place when Gogo and Lily came to Loyola Marymount University where I was teaching in the early 70's. Gogo gave the first talk. During the break, Lily told me that I must sit next to him while she was speaking and be sure that he stayed calm because he could have a fatal heart attack at any moment. During the question period the wife of a colleague of mine challenged Lily on some point. Gogo took it as an insult and tried to leap up to seize the floor. I grabbed him to hold him down. He turned on me swiftly and remarked: "Ronda, you can't keep me down. I am not a lamb, I am a lion."

We all knew that Gogo had a bad heart. Once, toward the end of his life, I had a nightmare that he was falling down a staircase to his doom. After that, whenever I was with him and there were stairs I pushed myself ahead of him so that I might cushion a fall.

As a professor of philosophy I have taught Gogo's books for decades with great impact. Some of my philosophy majors such as Michael Healy and James Harold, now at Franciscan University of Steubenville, went on to graduate school to study his thought. I cannot teach his ideas, or those of Lily, my life long friend, without a sense of the presence of their minds and hearts and souls permeating my smaller personhood. What a legacy. Viva the Von Hildebrands!

[Ronda Chervin is presently an adjunct philosopher at Lenoir Rhyne College in North Carolina. For more information about her numerous books about Catholic living, as well as videos and audios, go to www.rondachervin.com. The present article is reproduced here by kind permission of the author.]

Richard Rorty on Jacques Derrida having a bad day

In his memorial, "Richard Rorty (1931-2007): In Memoriam" (CrossCurrents, Fall, 2007), John D. Caputo (right, pictured with white-haired Derrida) writes:

Later on, I also took exception to what [Rorty, pictured left] said about Derrida, that Derrida was not just making fun of the great philosophers but he had an important philosophical project of his own. His response to that was equally gracious. Again, he did not contest what I said about Derrida but only mused that at those times when Derrida stopped making fun of philosophical theories and started developing positive philosophical theories of his own, Derrida was just having a bad day.

[Hat tip to Dr. P.B.]

Beatification of Rosmini: wonders never cease

Sandro Magister, "Blessed Liberty: The Posthumous Miracle of Antonio Rosmini" (www.chiesa, November 12, 2007), writes:

ROMA, November 12, 2007 – A beatification ceremony is approaching that is a miracle in its own right: the beatification of the priest and philosopher Antonio Rosmini.

It's a miracle because just six years ago, the new blessed was still under a condemnation issued in 1887 by the congregation of the Holy Office, against 40 propositions drawn from his writings.

Magister remarks: "The philosopher Dario Antiseri paints the portrait of this teacher of a form of liberalism open to religion." Rosmini fast tracked ahead of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman?

The rediscovery of Dietrich von Hildebrand's legacy

Sue Ellin Browder, "‘Lost Treasure’: Catholic Colleges Recovering Von Hildebrand’s Philosophy" (National Catholic Register, November 4-10, 2007), writes:

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — John Henry Crosby is determined to revive interest in the thought of philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand.

First persuaded by von Hildebrand’s reasoned arguments for the necessity of beauty, Crosby soon was caught up by the story of the philosopher’s heroic fight against Nazism and communism and his suspense-filled flight to freedom. The notion of a “brave philosopher” willing to put his life on the line for the truth inspired him.

“I’ll be involved with this until the day I die,” said Crosby, 29.

His enthusiasm for von Hildebrand is shared by none other than Pope Benedict XVI. As a priest in Munich in the 1950s, Father Joseph Ratzinger attended one of the lectures von Hildebrand often gave on his summer visits to Europe. The subject was “beauty.”

“The joy and freshness of [von Hildebrand’s] understanding of Catholic doctrine were contagious,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 2000 in the foreword to The Soul of a Lion, Alice’s von Hildebrand’s biography of her late husband.

Cardinal Ratzinger believed the “transcendent beauty of truth” that had captured von Hildebrand’s heart was the “same love for the beauty of truth” that later led him to embrace and defend the magisterium’s teaching on birth control. He did so in a small volume originally titled The Encyclical “Humanae Vitae:” An Essay on Birth Control and Catholic Conscience, reprinted by Sophia Institute Press as Love, Marriage and the Catholic Conscience (currently out of print).

Characterizing von Hildebrand as “a man captivated by the splendor of truth,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.”

The Legacy Project

To ensure that all the philosopher’s works will be available in English, Crosby has worked with Alice von Hildebrand and others to set up the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project (hildebrandlegacy.org).

Last month, the Legacy Project brought together more than 150 scholars and devotees from around the world for a conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Scholars focused on von Hildebrand’s growing impact on Christian philosophy.
The philosopher’s impact is making itself felt, too, in university courses. At Steubenville the master of arts philosophy program is furthering von Hildebrand scholarship.

In support of the Legacy Project, Pope Benedict put through a $45,000 Papal Foundation grant to help fund the translation, publication and promotion of von Hilde-brand’s work.

That, my friends, is the substantial first half of the sizeable NCR article, which is well worth reading in its entirety. As a presenter at the recent von Hildebrand conference at Franciscan University and one who has discovered only relatively recently the philosophical breadth of the thinker, I heartily commend Mr. Crosby's Legacy Project to you.

[Hat tip to The Legacy Project Staff]

The Turning of an Atheist

Mark Oppenheimer, The Turning of an Atheist (New York Times, November 4, 2007).

Of related interest: "Anthony Flew's newfound belief in God" (Musings, December 11, 2004).

Ingwagen on the advantages of skepticism

Peter von Ingwagen, in God, Knowledge & Mystery: Essays in
Philosophical Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1995), on p. 2, writes:

One advantage philosophers bring to theology is that they know too much about philosophy to be overly impressed by the fact that a particular philosopher has said this or that. Philosophers of the present day know what Thomas Aquinas and Professor Bultmann did not know: that no philosopher is an authority. Philosophers know that if you want to pronounce on, say, the project of natural theology, you cannot simply appeal to what Kant has established about natural theology. You cannot do this for the very good reason that Kant has established nothing about natural theology. Kant has only offered arguments, and the cogency of these arguments can be (and is daily) disputed.

This is, of course, amusing in one way; and I think I agree with in in the sense in which I believe he intends it. Yet I would disagree with the notion that no philosopher can properly be an authority, as, for instance, Aristotle is for St. Thomas Aquinas. This, of course, is what Ingwagen's quote would entail, if it were taken in the literal sense. Authority, I would argue, is something a bit like honor. You can be honored by others and not deserve it; and you can be dishonored by others and not deserve it. But when you get it right, you're honored by others because you've earned it by becoming worthy of their honor; and that worthiness is the important thing -- far more important than the actual honor given you by others. Accordingly, I would argue that it's possible for a philosopher (like Aristotle) to earn the right to be considered an authority -- whatever lack of consensus may exist within the contemporary fraternity of postmodern professional lemmings who call themselves philosophers. And a philosopher earnes this right by being worthy of being so regarded -- by becoming, in fact, an authority on a subject.

Decadent postmoderns

For a scathing indictment of the existentialist philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, and postmodern philosopher (I use the term loosely), Marcel Foucault, see Christopher's post, "Revolutionary Intellectuals" (Against the Grain, September 1, 2007). The discussion is occasioned by Gerald Augustinus' dismissal of Jean Paul Sartre at Closed Cafeteria (to which http://vox-nova.com/2007/08/31/whos-afraid-of-existentialism/) -- the former referencing Fr. Neuhaus' post Sartre, Legal Scholarship, and Those Troublesome Male Pronouns "On the Square") and the following excerpt from Clive James' Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts. Complete with personal confessions of capitulation to the existentialist seduction and delicious quotes from Paul Johnson's wonderful book, Intellectuals, it's sure to provoke a plethora of responses.

Reformational Philosophy

The Dutch Reformed tradition in philosophy -- often called "Reformational Philosophy" (not to be confused with the "Reformed Epistemology" of Alvin Plantinga, et al., which is an independent development in the Dutch Reformed tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy -- has produced a wealth of societies and journals and theorists stemming from Calvinistic tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck and the seminal philosophical work of Herman Dooyeweerd (pictured left) and D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (pictured right) at the Free University of Amsterdam in the last century. Philosophical societies include the Stichting voor Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte (Society for Reformational Philosophy) and the professional journal, Philosophia Reformata. Other related sites include that of The Dooyeweerd Center for Christian Philosophy (Redeemer College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada), Studies relating to Hermann Dooyeweerd (J. Glenn Friesen, Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Herman Dooyeweerd (Steve Bishop, Bristol, UK), The Dooyeweerd Pages (Andrew Basden, Salford, UK), Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) (Philip Blosser, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC), and numerous other links. Of recent interest is the launching of a new electronic periodical, Aspects of Reformational Philosophy, Vol. 1 (2007), No. 1. Philosophers from a Catholic background may be interested in the work on Dooyeweerd by the Jesuit, Fr. J. Marlet, Grundlinien der Kalvinistischen "Philosophie der Gesetzesidee" als Christlicher Transzendentalphilosophie (Munchen: Karl Zink, 1954), which has interesting chapters comparing Dooyeweerd with St. Thomas Aquinas.

A number of sites promote the published work of the premiere Dutch Reformed philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd. Among these one finds, for example, Steve Bishop's New Critique site, self-described as "A Guide to Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought." This site offers introductory summaries not only of Herman Dooyeweerd's major philosophical work, the four-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought (2nd ed., 1997)

• Vol 1: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy
• Vol. 2: The Structures of Individuality of Temporal Reality
• Vol. 3: The General Theory of the Modal Spheres
• Vol. 4: Index of Subjects and Authors.

Bishop's "Guide" also offers an introduction to and study guide for Dooyeweerd's In the Twilight of Western Thought, a series of lectures Dooyeweerd gave at Princeton in the 1960s. A survey of Amazon links to the works of Dooyeweerd reveals that English-language translators of his works (originally in Dutch) have been busy over the last decades:

• The Christian Idea of the State, tr. John Kraay (1968)
• Christian Philosophy and the Meaning of History (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Series B, Vol 1) (1997)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Introduction (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Historical (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Systematic (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Systemic (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Essays in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Series B, Vol 2) (2001)
• In the Struggle for a Christian Politics (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Political Philosophy (Dooyeweerd, H. Selections. Ser. D, V. 1.) (2004)
• Reformation & Scholasticism in Philosophy (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd Series B, Vol 3) (2003)
• Christian Theory of Social Institutions (Dooyeweerd, H. Works. V. 1.) (1986, currently unavailable)
• In the Twilight of Western Thought (1999)

Although there is not much in English by D.H.Th. Vollenhoven, Dooyeweerd's brother-in-law, one can find the following:

• Introduction to Philosophy, ed. John H. Kok and Anthony Tol (2005)
• The Idea of a Christian Philosophy, Essays in Honour of D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (includes selected and annotated bibliography of Vollenhoven by K.A. Bril) (1973)
• Vollenhoven's Problem-historical Method: Introduction and Explorations, by Kornelis A. Bril, ed. by John H. Kok (2005)

Any intellectual wading more than ankle-deep into the work of these Reformational Philosophers soon realizes that he would be a fool to ignore the wealth of theoretical insights yielded by them over the last century. Dooyeweerd is probably among the two or three greatest Christian philosophers of the twentieth century from any tradition, period. I say this as a Catholic with more than a passing acquaintance with the work of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, John Courtney Murray, Bernard Longergan, and Alasdair MacIntyre, not to mention Karol Wojtyla. This is a philosophical tradition, in my opinion, with which every serious thinker ought to be acquainted and conversant.

The gnostic temptation

Theology as Literary Criticism
By Ralph Roiter-Doister
I love the idea of theology as literary criticism. Much of literary criticism can be reduced to the explication of metaphorical language, or of the language of symbolism (which, with the flash and filigree removed, is only a more complex and challenging permutation of metaphor). The common denominator of both metaphor and symbol is the illusion that two separate things are actually one. With a simple metaphor, such deliberate confusion may amount to nothing more than a conceit, designed to highlight the cleverness of the author. With a symbol, however, a more complex statement is being made, the template of which is typically (1) A is not B, but (2) in a different and more profound way, A is B. The "more profound" way has to do with the cleverness of the author, of course, but also with his relationship with the reader: the author has set out in his text a deeper, more profound and elusive subtext, a hidden level of meaning which only the best prepared, most intelligent, most sensitive, most attuned, can fathom. It is a game of perspicacity, and also of exclusivity.

Thus, there is a certain gnostic tincture to literary criticism: a secret, "higher" knowledge which only the initiated can appreciate. The exquisite insights of Keats and Shelley are lost on workaday drudges, who prefer the ringside orations of WWF freaks of chemistry. The "quiet desperation" crowd is clueless before the altar of Shakespeare, and must wallow in the trashy cultural trough of soap operas and "American Idol" (and, as post-modernists might claim, the poor boobies don't even grasp the proper significance of that!)

But hark ye, a yet deeper layer. As the American university has transformed into a standard item of upper middle class accessorizing, many departments have had to staff up. The ability to teach is all well and good, but it has long been assumed by departmental pashas that performance and promotion has to be decided by more than just that: the basis for promotion in most English departments across the land is popularly referred to as "publish or perish", which means that you must demonstrate your attainment of the gnostic inner circle of knowledge by having your insights on a suitable topic accepted for publication in a book or a journal that is likely to be read only by other members of that inner circle. You must have your parchment placed in the gnostic Nag Hammadi, or face banishment to the bleak desert of the berber bourgeosie, where people actually perform manual labor for money, follow the doings of local sports teams, and watch the Fox Network – all willingly!

Quiet desperation indeed. And the effect of it has been to reduce literary criticism to an almost atomistic level of relativity – an incidental but absolute vindication of the postmodern thesis. My personal favorite example of this phenomenon is Moby Dick. Where once, not so very long ago, there was a fair amount of agreement about what was going on between Ahab and the white whale, today, Moby Dick resembles less a great work of literature than an abandoned strip-mine. The Bible, Shakespeare, Freud, Jung, John Calvin, Pierre Bayle, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Zoroaster, the Ophites, Hindu mythology, Polynesian mythology, even Husserl – it is common, in piling yet another interpretational apparatus upon the novel, to extol the greatness of its symbolism as lying in its ability to "support" all of this gnostic dead weight. A true knee-slapper, that! The post-modern horselaugh in a nutshell: there is no deeper knowledge, no deepest layer: the Nag Hammadi parchments may as well be blank.

How marvellous, then, to see theologians behaving like literary critics! From Han Urs von Balthazar's radical inflation of Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" into "all's a stage, period", to ressourcement fascination with the perfumed vitalistic metaphors of Blondel and Bergson, to Scott Hahn's promotion of the family as a suitable symbol for the triune God, to the current competitive "gnosticizing", if you will, over the proper reading of the metaphor of communio (why, for example, it is more than just a shiny new term for the pockmarked old one, "dialogue"), our "call to holiness" seems to lead so many of us into pursuit of one or another "white whale".

Habermas Writes to Pope Benedict XVI, ally against the "Defeatism" of Modern Reason

Sandro Magister (www.chiesa, Roma, March 7, 2007): Habermas Writes to Ratzinger, and Ruini Responds. Allies against the "Defeatism" of Modern Reason -- "The famous atheist philosopher invokes a new alliance between faith and reason, but in a form different from the one Benedict XVI proposed in Regensburg. Cardinal Ruini highlights the points of agreement and disagreement. And he insists on “the best hypothesis”: to live as if God exists."

[Hat tip to M.F.]

Theology's Captivity to Continental Philosophy

R.R. Reno, associate professor of theology at Creighton University, has written a thoughful analysis of what he calls "Theology's Continental Captivity" (First Things, April, 2006, pp. 26-33). His thesis, essentially, is that contemporary theology has been taken captive by the continental tradition of philosophy, a tradition which in its contemporary postmodern recension is deeply inimical and corrosive of its own purposes, while ignoring the tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, which could be most serviceable to its ends. Referring to trends in contemporary theology, he writes:

Catholic or not, in the main it cannot see the apparent renewal of philosophy in the English-speaking world. Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, William Alston, and the rest of the Society of Christian Philosophers can meet for twenty years, but theology remains blind to ways in which analytic philosophy can contribute to the “evangelization of culture” and renewal of theology that John Paul II—and now Benedict XVI—identify as singular imperatives in the West.

There are exceptions. Bruce Marshall’s Trinity and Truth assesses and reformulates the remarkable new philosophical resources developed since Quine lead analytic philosophy out of its epistemological captivity. Marshall’s colleague, William Abraham, works out of the analytic tradition. There are self-described analytic Thomists. The late Donald Mackinnon helped his theological students see the value of analytic philosophy. But by and large, these figures and trends are eccentric to the main body of contemporary theology. The overwhelming majority of theologians today sift through Heidegger and his philosophical children and grandchildren to try to find useable material.

This impulse is understandable but misguided. Heidegger and his progeny have developed into a tradition unsuited to the traditional role of philosophy has played in Christian intellectual life. It has little to offer for the task John Paul II thought so pressing, to renew confidence in reason, and it does more harm than good in the technical work of systematic theology. (emphasis added)

I have little doubt as to Reno's general critique of the Heidegger and his stepchildren here, but less certainty about his prescription for harnessing theology to the horses of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. On the one hand, as profound as Heidegger's critical analytic of the western metaphysical tradition may be, it ultimately disappoints. Like the work of postmodern deconstructionists who followed him, it leaves one with nothing but the dismantled debris of disbelief. On the other hand, although significant figures have emerged from the ranks of the Anglo-American analytic tradition to make common cause with Christian theology, this is by no means a generalizeable feature of that tradition, any more than the supposition that all contemporary continental philosophers have been atheists. Some of the most outspoken opponents of the Christian "meta-narrative" and of foundationalist projects generally have emerged from out of the ranks of Anglo-American analytic tradition. Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer, and Richard Rorty come to mind. On the other hand, some of the most outspoken defenders of Christianity have emerged from the ranks of that continental tradition of Husserlian phenomenology in which Heidegger and his postmodern deconstructionist successors, such as the French Jacques Derrida, were themselves schooled. Dietrich von Hildebrand, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Karol Wojtila, Robert Sokolowski, and Marold Westphal come to mind. So the first tentative inference I draw is that Reno's distinction may be precipitously overdrawn.

One of the first things one notes about the Existentialist tradition is that it includes both Christians (like Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Berdyaev, and Marcel) and atheists (like Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus, and Sartre -- though both Camus and Sartre were reverting Catholics at the end of their lives). The same polarity is evident in the subsequent movement of existential phenomenology, which includes both Christians (like Scheler, Jaspers and Ricoeur) as well as atheists (like Heidegger, Hartmann, and Merleau-Ponty). The Anglo-American analytic tradition is similarly checkered. Until the advent of Alvin Plantiga's "Reformed Epistemology" (belief in God as "properly basic") in the 1970s, it was dominated by agnostic and atheist evidentialists. Since that time, it is true, the Society of Christian philosophers and other such groups have produced a bugeoning discussion about Christian issues within the analytic tradition. One of the interesting results has been the debate between Catholic and Reformed Protestant philosophers over questions of religious epistemology, such as that sparked by Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology (cf. the anthology, Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, edited by Linda Zagzebski, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).

In sum, I agree with Reno's critique of the disappointing and often nefarious fruits of the contemporary postmodern stepchildren of Heidegger and his fellow deconstructionists; however, I think it may be a bit too facile to suggest that the future and hope of Christian theology lies in looking to contemporary developments among Christian analytic philosophers as such. What of the current development in Protestant circles of the movement called Radical Orthodoxy? What of traditions of contemporary Catholic philosophy? What of the Polish movement of (phenomenological) Lublin Thomism? Realist Phenomenology? Personalism? What of the perspective of scholars such as Kenneth Schmitz? The new semiotic philosophy of John Deely?

Update 1/3/07 -- R.R. Reno responds:

Dear Phil,

Many thanks for contacting me and directing my attention to the discussion of Continental Captivity.

As I step back and think about the many discussions I have had since the article appeared, one thought (or perhaps cluster of thoughts) keeps coming back to me. The decisive figure in modern European intellectual life was Hegel. He saw that the “picture” of human existence provided by Christian teaching needed to be superseded by the “concept” of human existence provided by theology. To do so, theology takes a subordinate place within the overarching competence of modern intellectual life, as the final section of the Phenomenology clearly (and with remarkable contemporary relevance) shows. Or as my article says, with Hegel, born of an elite culture that could not longer affirm the ultimacy of Christian teaching, European philosophy reverts to the original, theological form of Hellenistic philosophy: theology and cure of the soul. Hegel was a conservative. He wanted to preserve the phenomenological core of the Christian worldview. Others were more radical. But what makes Continental philosophy distinctive is its collective “hermeneutical” agenda — it wishes to interpret us to ourselves. Again, this is a recovery of the ancient promise of philosophy — it will bring us to know ourselves, and in knowing ourselves, into participation with that which is lasting. Such a view of the vocation of philosophy cannot but collide with theology.

One of the folks commenting on your post wrongly portrays St. Augustine’s encounter of Cicero’s Hortensius as a step forward on the journey to God. In Book Eight, St. Augustine reports that it was Ponticianus’ story of the power of St. Antony’s biography that brought him to the painful fulfillment of the Socratic imperative: know thyself. “You took me up from behind my own back where I had placed myself because I did not wish to observe myself,” Augustine writes of the visit by Ponticianus, “and you see me before my face so that I could see how vile I was, how twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers.” In this state of self-knowledge, St. Augustine reports that his enthusiasm for philosophy born in his youthful reading of Cicero bore no spiritual fruits — it only shifted his self-love from material indulgence to the labyrinths of an intellectualized self-conceit. Thus he observes in Book Six how astounded he was to discover that what he had imagined a momentous new beginning as a nineteen year old was, in fact, a long detour of delays and self-deceptions.

Compare the failure of philosophy to cure his soul with Book Nine. There, the ideals of classical philosophy are portrayed as realized and fulfilled through his recitations of the Psalm. The Psalms are the language of transformative self-knowledge. By reciting the Psalms, Augustine writes, “I was expressing the most intimate feelings of my mind with myself and to myself.”

One of the great achievements of medieval intellectual culture was its full use of the cognitive potential of classical philosophy within the spirit of the Augustinian critique of its failed promises of personal transformation. Medieval theology domesticated philosophy (handmaiden!), and in so doing, claimed to realize its true potential, both as a world-focused instrument for an ever more accurate picture of finite reality, and as a discipline of mind and spirit that prepared one for full reception of the gospel.

When I wrote the essay for First Things, I tried to provide an accurate assessment of how different modern philosophical traditions might relate to this medieval achievement. Perhaps I am mistaken. Surely a popular essay cannot do justice to the complexities of continental or analytic philosophies. But I would ask readers of my essay to read Hillary Putnam’s recent book, Ethics without Ontology. It is clearly a book in which an eminent analytic philosophy tries to take responsibility for the future of western culture, and it is highly critical of any possible role for theology in that future. Compare with Gianni Vattimo’s After Christianity. Putnam bases his analysis and recommendations on material, defeasible claims about the relationship between Christianity and scientific culture. Vattimo provides oracular, “hermeneutical” pronouncements about the career of Being. Putman argues against the role of theology in public life — Vattimo offers a post-Christian theology. As a teacher of theology and a person of scholastic leanings, I can use Putman’s objections to refine and develop an account of the relationship between theology and modern scientific culture. Vattimo offers an occasion to refine my knowledge of the logic of heresy. Both may be good exercises of the Christian intellect, but only the former holds out promise of renewing and deepening the tradition of Christian philosophy.

Thanks again,

Rusty

Note: For comments in progress on this article, please go to the comment box for Musings of a Pertinacious Papist, December 29, 2006.