January 1982 Print

 
by Anthony A. Mazzone

In this, the introduction to a series "False Philosophies of the Modern World," the author sets the stage by describing the role of philosophy in the Catholic outlook, and contrasting that with the disorder created by outstanding "philosophical heresies" of the last few centuries. In later installments, Mr. Mazzone will analyze some of these erroneous systems in greater depth.

As one surveys the various religions of mankind, he constantly encounters the characteristic and unique realism of Roman Catholicism. What others grope toward, Catholics assert boldly and simply. What others wrap in fearful mystification and indefinite symbolism, Catholics worship in reality. For example, it is asserted as a literal, historical fact that Jesus Christ is God, Who "suffered under Pontius Pilate" and then rose from the dead. The Blessed Eucharist is adored with the worship of latria, which is accorded only to God, because It is the true and living Body of Christ.

Similarly, Catholicism is unique in its estimation of human reason as an inestimable gift of the Creator. The First Vatican Council declared that reason, used rightly, can "soar even to the high battlements of eternity." This conviction arises from the fundamental fact that Divine Reason, the eternal Word of the Father, was incarnated as a man. Through the Word all things were made; therefore, all creation bears the stamp of Reason. There is no necessary disjunction between the knowledge of spiritual things and the human intellect.

The Church, in losing no opportunity to bring the glad tidings to men, not only employs the ineffable spiritual powers bestowed upon her, but has also felt authorized to adapt the Gospel to the procedural exigencies of the intellect. Quite early in her history, whatever was found to be valid in natural philosophy was pressed into the service of the Faith. St. Clement of Alexandria goes so far as to suggest that philosophy may even have been given to the Greeks directly by God as a sort of "schoolmaster" to bring Hellenism to Christ in the same way that the Law was to lead the Hebrews (Stromateis, I, v). After all, natural reason had arrived—though with uncertainty—at such truths as the existence of one God and the immortality of the soul. Therefore, already in the second century, St. Justin Martyr could write, "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians" (Second Apology, xiii). St. Thomas Aquinas would later say that all truth, from wherever it may come, always comes from the Holy Spirit.

Through succeeding centuries, the Church continued to adopt what was best in human culture, issuing necessary corrections and supplying the basic context. The Church had no wish to trammel the intellect, and the greatest possible freedom of speculation is allowed, provided that the integrity of the Faith is not endangered. However, the Church does assign a special place to scholasticism, as this philosophy has been deemed most amenable to the structure of reality and the workings of the mind, as well as being admirably suited to the explication of sacred doctrine. In particular, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is considered to be the basis for a "perennial philosophy," providing a metaphysic which is objectively true and in harmony with Revelation. St. Thomas, therefore, is "rightly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic Faith" (Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, August 4, 1879).

On the other hand, Catholicism is not merely one philosophy among many. Its robust intellectualism derives from a reserve of wisdom which is nothing less than the absolutely certain Revelation handed to her by Christ Himself. The Church has been entrusted with all the truths necessary for man's eternal salvation, even those not discoverable by reason alone. As Pascal once said, "The history of the Church should simply be called the history of truth."

In the Syllabus of Errors issued by Pius IX on December 8, 1864, the proposition that "philosophy must be dealt with independently of Revelation" was condemned. However, this cannot be construed as an attack upon proper philosophic method. On the contrary, Revelation provides the parameters which assure the proper functioning of reason. This is so because reason may be wrongly used to arrive at conclusions which are not correct. Properly used, it cannot contradict faith, since truth cannot be opposed to truth. St. Thomas tells us, "Therefore, if what is said by philosophy is found to be contrary to faith, then this is not philosophy but an abuse and defect of reason" (In Boethium De Trinit. Q. II, art. 3, C).

To recapitulate, then, the Catholic Church has a clear and definite attitude toward philosophy, the "queen of sciences," and feels she should not absent herself from its exercise. This is so for several reasons.

First, philosophy is, as Pythagoras recognized, "the highest music" and the most grand of intellectual endeavors, aside from theology. In fact, it is an indispensable adjunct and handmaid to theology:

The duty of religiously defending the truths divinely delivered, and of resisting those who dare oppose them, pertains to philosophic pursuits. Wherefore it is the glory of philosophy to be esteemed as the bulwalk of faith and the strong defense of religion. (Leo XIII, ibid.)

In addition, philosophy serves to deduce secondary truths from divinely revealed ones. It establishes the preambles of faith and proves the reasonableness of sacred doctrine: "Philosophy does not seek to overthrow Revelation, but seeks rather to defend it against assailants" (Pope Leo XIII, Inscrutabili, April 21, 1878). In short, philosophy has the exalted function of unfolding the splendrous wisdom of God, much as careful fingers may expose, petal by petal, the hidden beauty of the rose. Truth is not made, but only discovered in God's perfect nature. What the will strives to serve, the mind seeks to know; in the commerce of love propositions are not exchanged, but selves.

Second, the formulation of dogma depends to a great degree upon philosophic categories. One need only read St. Gregory Nazianzen on the Incarnation, St. Augustine on the Trinity, or St. Thomas on the Blessed Sacrament, to be reminded of this. The Baltimore Cathechism itself is a sort of compendium of philosophic definitions.

Third, true philosophizing must be encouraged because falsehood in this sphere leads to great moral and doctrinal aberrations:

For since it is in the very nature of man to follow the guide of reason in his actions, if his intellect sins at all, his will soon follows; and thus it happens that looseness of intellectual opinion influences human actions and perverts them. (Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris)

St. Jerome tells us that St. Irenaeus was able to trace every Gnostic error of his day to its philosophic roots. Closer to our own time, the Italian revolutionary Mazzini declared, "Every revolution is the passing of an idea from theory into action." Later in this series, we shall see how true this statement is in the case of the scourge of Marxism.

 

Modernity and Sorrow

When early in this century Pope Pius X condemned the Modernist doctrine that "Faith is a blind religious sense springing from the depth of the subconscious under the influence of the heart," he placed Catholicism squarely athwart the ongoing subjectivist progress of modern philosophy. And when he went on in Lamentabili to affirm the traditional teaching that faith is "a true assent of the intelligence to truth," he made what is in effect a polemical philosophical judgment against the relativism and scepticism to which that philosophy leads.

Epistemology is the study of the scope, nature, and validity of human knowledge. Metaphysics, broadly, is "first philosophy," the investigation of the nature of reality. The Pope's assertion is both an epistemological and a metaphysical one, affirming both the independent existence of objective reality and the mind's ability to know it. The First Vatican Council had declared that faith is objective knowledge. Or, as St. Thomas had written, a thing "is capable of being known only insofar as it is" (S.T., Ia, A.V, art. 2, c).

To a Catholic mind, such realism can be taken for granted. However, the fact is that for the past several centuries, philosophical thought has developed in much the opposite direction. The thinkers most responsible for this are Descartes (1596-1650), Kant (1724-1804), and Hegel (1770-1831).

Descartes held that nothing is known directly except our own ideas. Kant (of whom more will be said later) asserted that knowledge is limited to spatio-temporal phenomena. Reality is therefore reduced to whatever happens under the senses, arranged in consciousness according to certain conditioning factors, but offering no guarantee of truth. Finally, for Hegel, reality ultimately reduces itself to thought.

Now, one need not be an expert in philosophy to sense the radical incompatibility here with the mind of an Aquinas or a St. Pius X. Similarly, it is not difficult to discover in such ideas the genesis of Modernism. The conviction common to all these modern systems is that only material and sensible things can be known with any degree of certainty (Hume, Berkeley, and their followers would deny even that). Thus there are two trends in contemporary thought which have developed from such a conviction. The first is known as positivism, according to which Metaphysics is meaningless and the only proper occupation of the intellect is science. The second trend may be identified as irrationalist. It holds that supra-sensible things can only be grasped by a kind of intuition which is adjudicated by the private consciousness.

The heresy known as Modernism partakes of both, in a characteristically disjointed way. Faith is divorced from intellect and placed upon a shifting foundation of feeling. Thought is falsely opposed to experience; the supernatural cannot be objectified, only intuited in its unceasing fluidity. For Modernists, Revelation is not the direct communication of divine truths to man, but something that is derived from humanity's feelings and aspirations. These "experiences of transcendence" are embodied in certain symbols (such as "the Resurrection") which are later cast by the Church in intellectual forms known as dogmas. Dogmas are therefore not literal expressions of truth, but are valuable only to reinvoke a certain "experience." They may be changed whenever they cease to be "relevant."

Thus we have a broad outline of the lineaments of modern philosophy, of which Modernism is a fetid offshoot. Much of the frustration felt by loyal Catholics in combatting this "synthesis of all heresies" is due to the fact that its metaphysical roots remain unrecognized. Irreverent or sacrilegious liturgical practices may be here and there suppressed, specific heresies might be combatted, but one finds that, like the hydra of old, each repulsive head lopped off is replaced by two others.

The fact is, however, that the intellectual apparatus of Modernism, though huge, is not very formidable. Its spokesmen rather rely for their success upon propaganda, misinformation, and intimidation. The role of Catholic philosophy in exposing the intellectual poverty of Modernism is not to be fulfilled as a luxury but as a necessary, militant, spiritual activity.

It should be kept in mind that what we are dealing with here is an articulate and unscrupulous post-Christian mentality, in many respects worse than paganism. So twisted is it that lack of conviction is considered to be a liberal virtue and the absence of restraint is equated with freedom. It is incapable of perceiving the grandeur of holiness or the beauty of prayer; it mocks whatever is humble and debases what is pure. Post-Christian society is in the thrall of false philosophies; it is profoundly unhappy because it does not love wisdom and thus cannot know God.