What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

A Neo-Scholastic revival?

Neo-Scholasticism was a movement within philosophy and theology which sought to revive, develop, and defend Scholastic thought in general and Thomism in particular as an alternative to the various schools of modern thought. It flourished from the years just prior to Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris to the close of Vatican II in 1965. As those temporal markers indicate, it was mostly a Catholic movement, but there were several prominent non-Catholic thinkers who sympathized with the Aristotelian themes emphasized by most Neo-Scholastics. Mortimer Adler, John Wild, and Henry Veatch would be three examples. (Adler did finally convert to Catholicism not long before his death.)

A great many silly things have been said about this tradition by its critics. For example, within Roman Catholic circles, Neo-Scholasticism is often disparaged as “manualist,” because of the way in which Neo-Scholastic thought was often transmitted through manuals or textbooks of philosophy, theology, and ethics, usually for use in seminary education. Yet why such “manualism” is objectionable is a question to which no one has ever given a satisfying answer. We are told, for instance, that the teaching of the manuals was too “constricting” and pre-packaged, that the systematic and rigorous character of Scholastic thought stifles “creativity.” But of course, you could say the same thing about textbooks of physics or chemistry, and no one would suggest that this shows that what is taught in such textbooks is wrong. Physics and chemistry are what they are, and if that makes it more difficult for would-be physicists or chemists to show their “creativity,” that’s just tough luck for them. Similarly, if the teaching of the Neo-Scholastic manuals is correct, then complaining that it cramps one’s style is simply juvenile and frivolous, and certainly beside the point.

To be sure, one might object that that teaching is not correct. But it is amazing how infrequently this charge is actually made. People do object, of course, to this or that specific doctrine, especially in moral theology, but by and large the critics do not allege that the central philosophical and theological claims of Neo-Scholasticism are false, much less bother to put forward arguments against them. Instead they say that the manualist tradition is “outdated” or “doesn’t speak to the concerns of modern man.” Given that no attempt is made to refute that tradition, such claims thus turn out to entail little more than that Neo-Scholasticism isn’t fashionable. Again, one wants to ask: So what?

One might object that the comparison to physics and chemistry is inapt, since philosophical and theological inquiry don’t give us anything close to the kind of settled results that those sciences do. But this would simply be to beg the question against the Neo-Scholastics, who took the view that the “classical realist” tradition of thought extending from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine to Aquinas and the other great Scholastics represents, in part, a body of known truths, whose precise significance and implications may be open to reasonable debate, but whose essential correctness is not (certainly not from a Catholic point of view). Hence, from the Neo-Scholastic perspective, philosophy and theology are capable of yielding settled results, at least concerning the “big picture” – realism about universals, rejection of any mechanistic conception of nature, affirmation that the existence of God can be demonstrated, defense of the distinction between sensation and intellect, and so forth – even if they also leave much room for debate. (And anyone who thinks the Neo-Scholastics just repeated each other without engaging in serious controversy – another standard charge – has obviously not bothered to read them.)

Thankfully, there have been signs recently of a renewed appreciation for the Neo-Scholastic tradition. Among theologians, R. R. Reno, writing in First Things, has noted how the successors of the Neo-Scholastics have failed to put anything in the place of the systematic body of thought represented by the manuals, leaving a gigantic gap in ordinary theological education. The new emphasis on novelty and “creativity” effectively destroyed any sense of a common theological tradition and replaced it with a bewildering variety of unsystematic and idiosyncratic theologies as numerous as the theologians themselves. The upshot has been a catastrophic failure of catechesis within the Catholic Church in the last four decades. As Reno notes, this is a failure not only of blatantly heterodox writers like Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx, but also of those partisans of the nouvelle theologie who saw themselves as loyal to the Church’s magisterium, such as Balthasar and de Lubac. Reno recommends a new look at the great Neo-Scholastics, hinting that their critics would have been better advised to build on what they accomplished, even if modifying it somewhat in the process, rather than throwing it aside altogether.

Others have begun to take that second look. The greatest of the 20th century Neo-Scholastics – some of us dinosaurs would say the greatest Catholic theologian of the 20th century, period – was Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, whose work went into near-oblivion in the post-Vatican II period. Recently, however, two sympathetic book-length studies of his thought have appeared. The first is Richard Peddicord’s The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., which was published in 2005. (The title is taken from an epithet once directed at Garrigou-Lagrange by one of his detractors.) And this year Aidan Nichols has published Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought, originally presented as a series of lectures at Oxford. (Incidentally, if you are interested in exploring Garrigou-Lagrange’s own work, you cannot do better than to begin with his Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, and continue with his great two-volume work God: His Existence and His Nature, both of which have recently been reprinted. See here, here, and here.)

Among moral theologians of the manualist era, John C. Ford stands out as particularly significant. Among his other accomplishments, he was instrumental in persuading Pope Paul VI that the Church’s traditional teaching against contraception could not be changed. (Ford’s book Contemporary Moral Theology, Volume 2: Marriage Questions, co-authored with Gerald Kelly, is the best book in English on sexual morality that I know of.) Though he has, like Garrigou-Lagrange, been neglected in the post-Vatican II period, he too has been made the subject of a recent book-length study, John Cuthbert Ford, SJ: Moral Theologian at the End of the Manualist Era, by Eric Marcelo O. Genilo. (Genilo is not entirely sympathetic to Ford’s traditional approach to moral theology, but tries to be fair-minded.)

Within philosophy, Ralph McInerny has for decades been carrying the Thomistic banner passed on by the Neo-Scholastics, and like them he interprets Aquinas in light of the Dominican tradition of commentary represented by Cajetan. His recent book Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers is a defense of that tradition against critics of Neo-Scholasticism like de Lubac and Gilson, who sought to disassociate Aquinas from the commentators and from Aristotelianism more generally. (See here for a review of McInerny’s book, from the same issue of First Things in which Reno’s article appeared.)

Some philosophers often identified as “analytical Thomists” have also shown an interest in the Neo-Scholastic tradition. John Haldane recently edited Modern Writings on Thomism, a series of volumes reprinting several important Neo-Scholastic philosophy manuals of the pre-Vatican II period. David Oderberg’s work also evinces sympathy with Neo-Scholasticism. His brilliant recent book Real Essentialism is must reading for anyone interested in a rigorous and detailed contemporary defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. And of course, other analytic philosophers with an interest in medieval philosophy have sought to show how the ideas of the medieval Scholastics, when properly understood, are as powerful and challenging today as they were in their own time. Gyula Klima’s work has been exemplary in this regard.

None of this quite adds up to a “Neo-Scholastic revival,” but it does provide evidence that such a revival is not out of the question. It is in any event sorely needed (or so I would argue) if the rational foundations of morality and religious belief are once again to be widely understood – indeed, if the rational foundations of anything are to be understood. For modern philosophy is an incoherent mess, and its false assumptions make problematic, not only natural theology and ethics, but empirical science and any other form of rational inquiry as well. The Last Superstition is devoted in part to making the case for this claim – and to doing my own small part to further the revival of the great Scholastic tradition.

(cross-posted)

Comments (19)

I have a student here at Marquette University who will be doing a thesis on --- of all things! --- the natural desire for the beatific vision, using Garrigou as a key interpretive aid.

http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/Reg_Garrigou-Lagrange
is a yahoo group designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas on thomism especially as they relate to Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Within Calvinsit circles a neo-scholastic movement has evolved among those who promote the writings and thinking of Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield.

"We are told, for instance, that the teaching of the manuals was too “constricting” and pre-packaged, that the systematic and rigorous character of Scholastic thought stifles “creativity.” But of course, you could say the same thing about textbooks of physics or chemistry, and no one would suggest that this shows that what is taught in such textbooks is wrong. Physics and chemistry are what they are, and if that makes it more difficult for would-be physicists or chemists to show their “creativity,” that’s just tough luck for them."

This reminds me of the criticism that certain modern Catholic theologians and academics level at the Church concerning the insistence by Rome to strict adherence to orthodox teaching itself, to which then Cardinal Ratzinger rightly responded:

Ratzinger said that by insisting on adherence to magisterial teaching, Rome actually promotes academic freedom.

“As you see with a medical faculty, you have complete academic freedom, but the discipline is such that the obligation of what medicine is determines the exercise of this freedom. As a medical person, you cannot do what you will. You are in the service of life,” Ratzinger said.

“So theology also has its inner exigencies. Catholic theology is not individual reflection but thinking with the faith of the church. If you will do other things and have other ideas of what God could be or could not be, there is the freedom of the person to do it, clearly. But one should not say this is Catholic theology.”

“As you see with a medical faculty, you have complete academic freedom, but the discipline is such that the obligation of what medicine is determines the exercise of this freedom. As a medical person, you cannot do what you will. You are in the service of life,"

Well, there he goes again with his oppressivepatriarchallogocentricantiquarianreactionarydarkageimprisonedpowermotivehellenism.

thebyronicman,

Well done! That's perhaps the longest (made-up) word I have ever seen next to supercallofrag-whatchayoucallit!

Also, kudos for zoning in precisely on the applicable section of Ratzinger's comments!

supercallofrag

alisticexpialadocious (sp?). And thank you.

I prefer the approach of John Milbank and radical orthodoxy myself.

Why dismiss de Lubac?

That grad student at Marquette might consider being provoked by The Mystery of the Supernatural, a Catholic work that is closest to the protestant position on nature and grace as I have ever read.

Many of the theological faculty at Ave Maria take great pride in continuing and/or drawing-on the neo-scholastic tradition and bringing it into dialogue with modern questions as well as other schools of thought. One thinks of Steven Long, Matt Levering, and Michael Dauphinais in particular. Their Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal holds annual conferences and brings in many people with similar interest in and love of that tradition in philosophy and theology.

I own several volumes from Veatch's library, including a signed Gilson text given to him when Gilson was at IU.

I'm glad some people remember who he is!

The American Maritain Association (of which McInerny is a member) and the republication of the complete works of Jacques Maritain by Notre Dame Press, also deserves mention considering the relationship between Maritain and Garrigou-Lagrange.

Maritain, hmm. I have seen and heard him praised as a Thomist many a time. And yet, he advanced some notions very antithetical to Thomas Aquinas's thought. For example, on the notion of whether Christ knew He was God early in life. I have always thought that maybe Maritain's version of Thomism was one of the reasons Thomism went into eclipse.

And yet, he advanced some notions very antithetical to Thomas Aquinas's thought. For example, on the notion of whether Christ knew He was God early in life.

This seems a failed understanding of Maritain.

Could be.

In a book entitled, On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus that Maritain wrote toward the end of his life, he applies the fertile idea of the spiritual unconscious to understanding more clearly the humanity of Jesus.

Maritain in his book begins the delicate task of trying to discern how the light from Jesus' supernatural unconscious effected the lower regions of his soul. The soul of Jesus is composed of ordinary ego consciousness, as well as an infraconscious equivalent to a Freudian-style unconscious, and a "natural preconscious" or natural "supraconscious of the spirit." (1) In addition, it will have a unique "supraconscious of the spirit divinized in Christ by the beatific vision." (2) Thus, Jesus had in his human nature two different states of consciousness: an ordinary "world of consciousness" embracing ego consciousness, the infraconscious, and the natural supraconscious or spiritual unconscious, and he had a divinized supraconscious that was "for Him a consciousness of self" which did not only show Jesus "the holy Trinity and His own divinity... but show to Him also, - although not by reflection on His acts, -that His own Person, the divine Word, was the Self from which all the acts produced by His human faculties proceeded..." (3)

There was a certain communication between these states, as well as "a certain incommunicability," (4) a translucent partition. There was no way that the transconceptual knowledge of the beatific vision that dwelled in the heaven of Jesus' soul could express itself directly in his world of consciousness, but it did enter there "by mode of general influx and of comforting, and of participated light." (5) And Jesus in his prayer, in his infused contemplation, entered into this divinized supraconscious of his soul.

http://www.innerexplorations.org/catchtheomor/mind5.htm

Sorry - that was all a quote, was all supposed to be italicized.

Excellent text, Edward!

Check out this new translation of a Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange work: The Essence & Topicality of Thomism.

Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., explains why Thomism is the solution to the present crisis of Modernism in the Church.

The problem:
The indications of the current crisis in the Church have “been not of a crisis of faith, but of a very grave malady of the intellect, which conducts itself on the tracks of liberal Protestantism and through relativism to absolute skepticism.”

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s solution: Thomism.
“Thomism corresponds to the profound needs of the modern world because it restores the love of truth for the sake of truth itself. Now, without this love of truth for itself, it is not possible to obtain true infused charity, the supernatural love of God for the sake of God Himself, nor to arrive at the infused contemplation of God sought for Himself, that is, at the contemplation that proceeds from the living faith enriched by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, first of all, knowledge and wisdom.”

Thanks for sharing this nice article. and i wish to agaion on your new blog keep sharing with your article.
Thanks For Share....

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.