Where in the creed does it call for liberalism or conservatism?

The two main streams of Christianity, liberalism and conservatism (whether Protestant or Catholic), both lead to heterodoxy if unbalanced by orthodoxy and tradition.

Conservatism must remember that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only his earthly words but just as equally his actions. Moreover, it was not suffering in itself that is salvific, but Jesus' commitment, obedience, and fidelity through it.

Liberalism must remember that what theology needs is a hermeneutics of faith, not merely a secular hermeneutics of the latest philosophical fad. Liberalism would do good to remember an old medieval limerick regarding how we ought to read scripture: Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. "The letter speaks of deeds, allegory about the faith, the moral about our actions, analogy about our destiny." Let them not neglect our faith and our collective destiny.

The only way to avoid sliding into one extreme or the other is to strive for fidelity in our collective and historical faith. Through adhering to the tradition of our faith we find sustenance to continue onward amongst so many temptations to go astray. The beauty of our faith is that it is historical. It doesn't ask us to believe random notions created by the recent ideological sway in society, lacking any historical credibility like so many self-created religious groups of the last century. But, just as equally it demands of us to remain committed to action, not merely passive in reciting beliefs. It eternally calls us to become more than we are today, it does not allow us the comfort of complacency. The reason why our faith is able to do this is because of the history of countless saints who have come before us and blazed the path in which we follow. Either extreme of liberalism or conservatism neglects part of that historical faith. It either ignores our collective faith and destiny or it neglects our struggle for growth and action.

It does good to remember that the Church does not count time in decades, like our culture does, but in centuries. And we ought to remember that the historical Church is not liberal or conservative, rather it was, is and remains, one, holy, apostolic and catholic.

Heidegger, Husserl and Thomas Aquinas

The problem with Husserl and ultimately with Heidegger is not the lacking of Absolute Being, rather it is the starting point in knowing the Absolute. Where Husserl (and Heidegger) hide inward, Thomas Aquinas discovers outward among countless participants.

Outdated Versions of Thomism

Traditionally, there have been four recognizable sub-fields of Thomism. Typically they are:

Transcendental Thomism: Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan. These are your typical Neo-Kantians, they tend to be Cartesian dualists (subjectivists) and typically use Thomas in "creative manners," with little regard for the historical character of actual Thomism.

Analytical Thomism: Kretzmann, Stump. These are your philosophers who want to use the name of Thomas, and some of his ideas, to address issues within analytic philosophy.

Existential Thomism: Gilson, Maritain. These philosophers tend to be more influenced by continental philosophy, yet unlike the transcendentals are not "card carrying" Neo-Kantians. They want to use parts of Thomas for problems within continental philosophy.

Aristotelian Thomism: These are your philosophers who tend to emphasize the historical Thomas, as well as his reliance on Aristotelianism. These tend to be your medievalists, interested in history and ecclesial tradition.

Yet, I'm becoming more and more convinced that these are outdated models of Thomism. I would like to offer a more up to date divison of Thomism in the 21st century:


Fribourg (German) Thomism: These philosophers seem to have little regard for the historical problems that Thomas himself was interested in. They tend to read Thomas alone and neither apply it to contemporary issues or analyze the historical nexus of his work.

Angelicum Thomism: These philosophers tend to place all their interest in the historical Thomas. It tends to stress the originality of Thomas and underplays his Aristotelian reliance.

Pseudo-Analytical Thomism: These philosophers tend to give no credence whatsoever to the original Thomas and its historicality. It seems many times they merely pick and choose whatever suits their contemporary needs.

Finally, what I'm interested in

Historical and Contemporary Thomism: These philosophers merge the Angelicum thomism with the old existential thomism with modest results. I believe there is potential in this, but it needs to be broader. This type of Thomism needs to have the historical rigor of the Angelicum, but the agility to bring into discussion both existential thomism and a form of analytic philosophy. Both on their own tends to lead to ridiculous grandstanding to particular needs given to their respective philosophical stem (continental or analytic).

So using the old versions, you could say I want to merge all three camps, minus the transcendental thomists who I believe we can just ditch by the roadside. But if using this newer model, we need to ditch the pseudo-analytic thomism which seems to do nothing whatsoever in regards to what Thomas actually said, yet at the same time not ignore analytic problems. We need a thomism which is firmly rooted in the actual person of Thomas, yet with the ability to consistentantly and cogently speak to the continentals and analytics. Its a tough task, but it must be done. As it is now, Thomism is too fractured.

Commentary on The Old System-Program of German Idealism

Within continental philosophy there is a widespread reliance upon basic presuppositions of the human person that have their roots firmly planted in the soil of German Idealism. As with most things, this has both its positives and its negatives. It's benefits, perhaps, lie in the seriousness in which it takes any investigation of the human, fully aware of the psychological complexities of the mind and the limits of any real investigation into the self. Now, this is not to say that all German Idealism consists of is mere psychological brainteasers, frantically groping into the murky depths of the subconscious. Although, as with anything, there is some of that too. But to be fair to German Idealism, there are many brilliant and interesting discoveries made to bare, that perhaps are too often neglected, atleast in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, to the point. What I present here is a summation of a brief treatise written by one of the so called "Tubingen Three," either Hegel, Schelling, or Hoderlin. (Although, it seems to me that its entirely possible it was a collaboration). No matter the author, it provides the general environment in which German Idealism flourished, and paints a colorful picture of what life ought to be like, if only we all became German Idealists. What follows is partly a summation and partly a presentation of their ideas. I leave it you to determine its validity, and whether it truly reflects reality.

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One of the principle foundations on which German Idealism rests is Fichte’s famous statement, ‘I am I.’ Within such a principle, for Fichte, we can locate the primordial self-consciousness, the starting point on which idealism will be developed. Within this principle is located both the subject and the object, the “I think,” or the transcendental apprehension, and the unknown noumena or the objective ‘thing-in-itself.’ Hence, fittingly, Fichte explains such a principle as an intellectual intuition, a seeming oxymoron, yet yielding perfectly within Neo-Kantian structures. The absolute grounding of such a principle, for Fichte, was the absolute ego. Only from this primordial ground can we understand the subject, or partial ego and the object, or non-ego. Rejecting this absolute ego as the primordial grounding, Holderlin argues that there is a primordial split between the subject and object, one grounded not in an absolute ego as Fichte believed, but in an absolute ‘being.’ Where Fichte understood this primordial split of the absolute being between the partial ego and non-ego, Holderlin postulates that the split ought to be between subject and object, with being as the absolute. Furthermore, Schelling, disagreeing with Holderlin, postulates that the grounding of the absolute is only understood within identity, developing an identity philosophy. Hence, the primordial split between subject and object occurs under the elusive identity.

The natural question that underlies the progression of these perceptions of the self is how does one unify the subjective and the objective? Moreover, what philosophical discipline will allow for such seeming contrasting principles? After all, it was Schelling who dichotomized the subjective, with its freedom, spontaneity, ethics, goodness on one side and the objective, that is, determinism, necessity, physics, laws, and truth on the other. How ought the two be understood together, and thus recognizing the underlying absolute? For this, these philosophers provided the concept of beauty and aesthetics. Through the perception of beauty one can understand both the subjective and objective, the uniting of the good and the true. For example, in a painting, the subjective element is presented as a product of the self, yet the objective is revealed in its ability to objectify the self, to stand and observe the self-created as other than oneself. Hence, in their eyes, true philosophy must be poetic.

It is this philosophical aestheticism that is at work in The Oldest System-Program of German Idealism. There it is described how truth and goodness can be unified in the aesthetical act, “I am convinced that the highest act of reason (in containing all ideas) is an aesthetical act, and that Truth and Goodness are only related in Beauty – the philosopher must possess as much aesthetical power as the poet.” Under this understanding, the philosopher is not understood as a rigid logician, void of the power of the subjective, but rather ought to unite the primordial split through their commonality in beauty. This becomes in contrast to the professional philosophers, who have the ability to systematize and categorize ‘lower ideas,’ but can never understand the ‘higher dignity’ of the poet. “The human beings without an aesthetical sense are book-philosophers. The philosophy of the spirit is an aesthetic philosophy. One cannot be ingenious, one cannot even reason about history in an ingenious way, without aesthetical sense.” The test of philosophical worth becomes the ability to unite subject and object so as to recall the primordial self which is both.

Moreover, also curiously correlated with the notion of philosophy of poetics is the notion of the need for the mythological. Reason has been too cold and calculating, unaware of the beauty in which the primordial split can be united. Additionally, the goal of such a mythology is to provide an interest to everyday, average people who do not have the philosophical knowledge to arrive at these conclusions. Hence, beauty is turned into mythos, and mythos in turn becomes reasonable, thus correlating the average people to that which is beautiful in a manner suitable to their ability. “Until we make the ideas aesthetical, i.e. mythological, they will have no interest to the simple people – and vice versa…mythology has to become philosophical and the people reasonable, while philosophy has to become mythological in order to make the philosopher sensual.” The interesting dynamic at work is a direct resemblance of romanticism. Rejecting the perceived complete objectivity and superiority of the Enlightenment, these idealists call for a philosophy that matters to the people, to unite the philosophers with the common man. “Finally the enlightened and unenlightened must shake hands.” The rejection of a class of philosophers, as the uniting of the self, subject and object, would take precedence within the beautiful.

Another interesting aspect of this work is its replacement of the religious with the aesthetical and mythological. “Then eternal unity will rule among us. Never again the condescending look, and never again the trembling of the people before its sages and priests.” Where in the past, truth and goodness were dictated to the people by philosophers, or religion, according these idealists, once beauty has been mythologized it will finally replace the need for superstitious religious beliefs that hinder the uniting of the self. In this regard, the religion of the Church is supplanted by the religion of the beautiful. “A higher spirit, send from heaven, will have to be the founder of this new religion among us; it will be the last and great work of humanity.” These pseudo-religious overtones intentionally parallel aestheticism which had previously been dominated by the Church. It was after all the Church in which most of artwork had been created and sustained. It was also the Church and religion in which the aesthetical and the mythological were united in revealing a primordial truth. Hence, we can rightly claim that within this work, the new aesthetics, purely humanistic, and the new mythology, based upon such aesthetics, will be the new religion of the people, revealing a primordial truth. This truth for Schelling would be one’s identity, and for Holderlin this would be being itself. Overall, the goal of such is to recollect one’s true self, a self which has been split and needs to be united. It is not a coincidence that in doing so, these idealists purposely uses religious terminology. By pursuing a fundamental and primordial state of being, they are replacing the monotheism of Christianity, with the monotheism of “reason and heart.”

Is there room for Christianity in this picture? If so, how might it fit?

Kantian Epistemology: What Can We Know and How?

There is perhaps no more influential epistemology on post Enlightenment philosophy than Kant, certainly there is at the very least no more influential modern philosopher. While the critical philosophy of Kant undoubtedly affected almost every discipline within philosophy, perhaps none were as radically altered by his critiques than the discipline of epistemology (although, as Fr. Schenk reminds us, where we jump in may not turn out as important as how we decide to proceed). Nevertheless, in arguing for a Copernican revolution in philosophy, Kant, to his mind, attempted to synthesize the empiricists and rationalists. Whereas the empiricists attempted to begin epistemological inquiry through an objective knowledge of an external world, Kant believed that it was the subject itself that imposes on the external world certain categories and knowledge. To be sure, one could make a reasonable argument that Kant was merely bringing Cartesian dualism to its logical conclusion. Where Descartes understood the relationship between the res cogitans and the res extensa as possible through interactionism in the pineal gland, Kant understood such an interaction was impossible. In this way Kant brought the Cartesian compromise to its skeptical completion, exposing the logical error Descartes was never able to fully appreciate, namely that no matter where such an interactionism is located the subject can never be fully able to know the res extensa as it really exists. The res cogitans could never penetrate the res extensa. The correspondence between knower and thing known was crushed under the weight of the knower’s subjectivity, and along with it all of metaphysics.

Most fundamental to Kantian epistemology is the distinction between analytic judgments and synthetic judgments. Analytical judgments are based on the law of non-contradiction, knowledge intuitively known through immediate inference. Specifically, such knowledge is a tautology, the information gleaned from analyzing the terminology. Moreover, such knowledge is a priori, that is, knowledge which is independent upon experience. On the other hand, synthetic judgments provide us with new knowledge of the world and rely on the ability to synthesize the subject with the predicate. In this manner, synthetic judgments form the bedrock of reason, forming the ability to rationally progress through logical statements. Moreover, synthetic judgments, according to Kant, are both a priori and a posteriori. As a priori judgments, synthetic knowledge is obtained independent from external experience of the subject. Juxtaposed with this, a posteriori judgments are gleaned from interaction with the external world of sensation. In a priori judgments, the more controversial distinction, Kant argues that there are judgments which give us knowledge of the world, but through a priori means. This might sound counter-intuitive, but for Kant it is a vital distinction for his understanding of mathematical judgments and judgments about phenomena which can never be universalized by pure observation. For example, ‘all events have a cause’ is not empirically based, we can never verify it through direct observation, yet we bring it to our presuppositions of the external world.

Another vital Kantian move in epistemology is the distinction between the phenomena and noumena. As mentioned above, the Copernican revolution for Kant requires that the human subject be understood as the beginning point for knowledge. We can never escape our limitations, positions, and subjectivity to stand outside ourselves and judge our interaction between self and external world. Hence, for Kant the ‘I think’ is the subjective condition for knowledge, which by definition can never be an objective condition. In this regard, Kant rejects both the empiricist and rationalist positions. Rationalists tend to believe there is a world which exists as a limited whole, a space/time condition in which the self exists. Empiricists tend to believe the world is unlimited, externally verifiable through proper observation. By rejecting both positions, Kant’s Copernican turn supplants both positions by arguing that the world is not an object ‘out there.’ Rather, our subjective condition allows for knowledge to come to the knower, but in a confused fashion, ultimately determined by categorization by the mind. Hence, Kant determines that there is a division between that which exists in its reality, the noumena, and that which comes to us in our subjective condition, determined by the mind’s categories, namely the phenomena.

Moreover, for Kant, the only manner in which the subjective self can have knowledge of the external world is through the phenomenon, never the noumena. However, Kant does not want to collapse into a complete solipsism in which the external world is in complete chaos, relative and lacking reality. Even though the cognitive subject can never know the extended world as it really exists, the appearance of that reality as the phenomenon is in some manner caused by the noumena. For Kant this is possible because causation is not an empirically verifiable principle based on direct observation, but rather a category used by the mind in order to structure the phenomena. However, this leaves room for problems in understanding the actual relationship between the noumena and phenomena. If in fact causation is mere mental construction, not a reality-in-and-of-itself, then how can we say with certainty that there is an actual causal relationship between the noumena and the phenomena? Perhaps there is no connection between the two, in which seemingly, Kantian epistemology does indeed slip into solipsism.

We must ask the question, under this epistemological model, what can we know? Seemingly, for Kant, the only knowledge available to the subject is the phenomenon. While he retains his position of the two stems of knowledge, empiricism and rationalism, both seem muted by the distinction between appearance and reality. If the phenomena are mere constructive structures determined by the mind, then reality, and knowledge of it, will always be elusive. Under such a model, only the appearance of such reality can be readily accepted into our noetical structure. But, perhaps more interesting, especially when held to the light of the history of philosophy, is Kant’s rejection of metaphysical knowledge, a clear result of the above distinction. The best metaphysics can achieve under such a narrow epistemological justification are transcendent illusions. Mirroring the noumena and phenomena distinction, Kant allows for the limitations of the transcendental and transcendent. Transcendent knowledge, under this view, is by definition beyond the ability of the human subject, while the best our cognitive advances can hope for is merely transcendental.

There seem to be several major outcomes of such a narrow epistemology that the history of philosophy has reasonably proved. First, when the noumena, or transcendent, is removed from even the possibility of knowledge and instead understood as the limitations of knowledge, metaphysics is completely removed from philosophical inquiry. The ramifications of such a removal are too vast for this brief summary, but certainly ought not to be overlooked. Second, such an epistemological model centers on the subjective ‘I,’ starting the epistemological process with the condition of a something relative to the subject, namely existence. Operating within such an internal psychological state, it is no wonder Kant has such a problem with the transcendent. Moreover, by limiting the self as ultimately elusive and unknowable the self becomes itself a phenomenon, merely an appearance of the noumena. And, under such a position, it would seemingly be impossible to ever gain knowledge of that subjective self in relation to others or objects, as others and objects would also be mere phenomena, in which case it would be impossible to even postulate the noumena.

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