Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Overview of Philosophy in the Light of the Mind of Benedict XVI

The Real Crisis: The dictatorship of relativism. This is the result of reason being reduced to only one kind of experience: sensible experience, particularly of sight, but also the audio of “noise.” There is no recognition of an experience of the absolute. Ratzinger remarked in 1993, when asked “how do you analyze this divorce between faith and modernity?;”[1] “It is explained by the encroachment of relativism and subjectivism, an inevitable consequence of a world overwhelmed by the alleged certainties of natural or applied science. Only what can be tested and proved appears as rational. [Sensible] Experience has become the only criterion guaranteeing truth. Anything that cannot be subjected to mathematical or experimental verification is regarded as irrational.

“This restriction of reason has the result that we are left in almost total darkness regarding some essential dimensions of life. The meaning of man, the bases of ethics, the question of God cannot be subjected to rational experience, verified by mathematical formulae. And so they are left to subjective sensibility alone. This is serious because if, in a society, the bases of ethical behavior are abandoned to subjectivity alone, released from common motives for being and living, handed over to pragmatism, then it is man himself who is threatened….

“In the present situation of emptiness, there looms the terrible danger of nihilism, that is to say, the denial or absence of all fundamental moral reference for the conduct of social life. This danger becomes visible in the new forms of terrorism.”[2]

Therefore, students need to see what Benedict XVI is proposing to restore reason from its “wilting under the weight of so much knowledge”[3] that is purely and merely “factual.” Reason longs for the absolute (Being), and positivistic methodology prohibits access to Being. As he says, “little by little [it: reason] has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being.”[4]

Two Levels of Experience and Knowing:


The Example of Knowing Christ: (Benedict XVI 9/6/06)
“Philip told this Nathanael that he had found "him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn 1: 45). As we know, Nathanael's retort was rather strongly prejudiced: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1: 46). In its own way, this form of protestation is important for us. Indeed, it makes us see that according to Judaic expectations the Messiah could not come from such an obscure village as, precisely, Nazareth (see also Jn 7: 42).
But at the same time Nathanael's protest highlights God's freedom, which baffles our expectations by causing him to be found in the very place where we least expect him [the ordinary commonplace: the secular]. Moreover, we actually know that Jesus was not exclusively "from Nazareth" but was born in Bethlehem (cf. Mt 2: 1; Lk 2: 4) and came ultimately from Heaven, from the Father who is in Heaven.
Nathanael's reaction suggests another thought to us: in our relationship with Jesus we must not be satisfied with words alone. In his answer, Philip offers Nathanael a meaningful invitation: "Come and see!" (Jn 1: 46). Our knowledge of Jesus needs above all a first-hand experience: someone else's testimony is of course important, for normally the whole of our Christian life begins with the proclamation handed down to us by one or more witnesses.
However, we ourselves must then be personally involved in a close and deep relationship with Jesus; in a similar way, when the Samaritans had heard the testimony of their fellow citizen whom Jesus had met at Jacob's well, they wanted to talk to him directly, and after this conversation they told the woman: "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world" (Jn 4: 42).
Returning to the scene of Nathanael's vocation, the Evangelist tells us that when Jesus sees Nathanael approaching, he exclaims: "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!" (Jn 1: 47). This is praise reminiscent of the text of a Psalm: "Blessed is the man... in whose spirit there is no deceit" (32[31]: 2), but provokes the curiosity of Nathanael who answers in amazement: "How do you know me?" (Jn 1: 48).
Jesus' reply cannot immediately be understood. He says: "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you" (Jn 1: 48). We do not know what had happened under this fig tree. It is obvious that it had to do with a decisive moment in Nathanael's life.
His heart is moved by Jesus' words, he feels understood and he understands: "This man knows everything about me, he knows and is familiar with the road of life; I can truly trust this man". And so he answers with a clear and beautiful confession of faith: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (Jn 1: 49). In this confession is conveyed a first important step in the journey of attachment to Jesus.

Nathanael's words shed light on a twofold, complementary aspect of Jesus' identity: he is recognized both in his special relationship with God the Father, of whom he is the Only-begotten Son, and in his relationship with the People of Israel, of whom he is the declared King, precisely the description of the awaited Messiah. We must never lose sight of either of these two elements because if we only proclaim Jesus' heavenly dimension, we risk making him an ethereal and evanescent being; and if, on the contrary, we recognize only his concrete place in history, we end by neglecting the divine dimension that properly qualifies him.


A Proposal for the Course:


The Brief History of Philosophy outline for students and professor is indeed ambitious. In fact, 10 classes in 6 days could be mind-boggling and confusing for them in such a panorama of material. Such an overview of all philosophic thought needs one over-riding insight. It seems to be suggested in the accompanying note that the professor should come armed with "Fides et ratio." But that needs help again since I find that few understand the relation of faith and reason. The danger again is that the students are presented with a superficial apologetic that will be negative with regard to modern thought, instead of positive and in conformity with the mind of Benedict XVI who stated: "(H)ere is the problem: Ought we to accept modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution? Can this modern way of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with the Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great institutions and the great gifts of the faith?

"Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers... or we must reject modernity."

He answers: "And it seems to me that this was the true intention of the Second Vatican Council, to go beyond an unfruitful and overly narrow apologetic to a true synthesis with the positive elements of modernity, but at the same time, let us say, to transform modernity, to heal it of its illnesses, by means of the light and strength of the faith" (From "Let God's Light Shine Forth" Robert Moynihan - Doubleday (2005) 34-35.

Concretely, I would suggest that each professor read and study six of Benedict's statements (short):

1) [The most recent]: "Widening the horizons of rationality" given on June 7, 2008 to the
Sixth European Symposium of University Professors. The operative word is "Performative" (as in “Spe Salvi”) for the anthropological widening of the being of the person in the act of faith as self-transcendence. Reason's exposure to being widens as the believing person expands in the experiential encounter with Christ. This would connect with Fides et ratio #83: "In a special way, the person [exercising the act of faith] constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry."

2) Benedict XVI's Address to European Professors on June 24, 2007 where he emphasizes realism and the "performative" character of the believing person.

3) Benedict's Opening Address for the Aparecida Conference of CELAM in Brazil on May 13, 2007. This centers on the realism that only knowledge of God can give, and to achieve that realism which affects all philosophic thought. 4) Regensburg itself as the recounting of the confluence with reciprocal advantages of lived Abrahamic faith and its encounter with Greek philosophy in the 6th century B.C. Faith became universal wisdom, and Greek philosophy became a real metaphysic in search of the Absolute.

4) Also, the talk not given at La Sapienza University.

5) Regensburg:

6) “Fides et Ratio” #83.

My point: This over-riding insight into the relation of faith and reason would give coherence to the enormous disparity that is suggested in the outline. It would enable people to see the positive value of the recovery of the subject as ontological person, but now as "I" - gift: transcendent. That is, instead of excoriating the isms of subjectivism, idealism, relativism, positivism, skepticism, etc., it is more important to see what they are really looking for from higher insight, and therefore how they are to confronted with deep confidence. It makes for deep intellectual grounding and a positive and fruitful apostolate.





Class I: The Dictatorship of Relativism and Benedict’s Recovery of the Absolute: Broadening Reason/

Challenge of Benedict XVI

European Professors I



1) “Widening the Horizons of Rationality” (June 7, 2008):

European Professors I




At the Sixth European Symposium of University Professors
Pope Benedict XVI
Widening the horizons of rationality
On Saturday, 7 June [2008], the Holy Father met with participants at the Sixth European Symposium for University Professors in the Vatican's Clementine Hall. The Symposium was taking place in Rome from 5-8 June with an estimated 400 university professors participating from 26 European countries.
In continuity with last year's European meeting of university Lecturers, your Symposium takes up a very important academic and cultural theme. I would like to express my gratitude to the organizing committee for this choice which permits us, among other things, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio of my beloved Predecessor Pope John Paul II.
Already on that occasion 50 civil and ecclesial philosophy professors of the public and pontifical universities of Rome manifested their gratitude to the Pope with a declaration which confirmed the urgency of relaunching the study of philosophy in universities and schools.
Sharing this concern and encouraging fruitful collaboration among the professors of various Roman and European athenaeums, I wish to address a particular invitation to philosophy professors to continue with confidence in philosophical research, investing intellectual energy and involving new generations in this task.
The events which took place in the last 10 years since the Encyclical's publication have further delineated the historical and cultural scene in which philosophical research called to enter. Indeed, the crisis of modernity is not synonymous with the decline in philosophy; instead philosophy must commit itself to a new path of research to comprehend the true nature of this crisis (cf. Address to European Meeting of University Lecturers, 23 June 2007, L'Osservatore Romano English Edition, 11 July 2007, p. 6) and to identify new prospectives toward which to be oriented.
An 'anthropological question'
Modernity, if well understood, reveals an "anthropological question" that presents itself in a much more complex and articulated way than what has taken place in the philosophical reflections of the last centuries, above all in Europe.
Without diminishing the attempts made, much still remains to be probed and understood. Modernity is not simply a cultural phenomenon, historically dated; in reality it implies a new planning, a more exact understanding of human nature.
It is not difficult to gather from the writings of authoritative thinkers an honest reflection on the difficulties that arise in the resolution to this prolonged crisis. Giving credit to some authors' proposals in regard to religions and in particular to Christianity is an evident sign of the sincere desire to exist from the self-sufficiency philosophical reflection.
From the beginning of my Pontificate I have listened attentively to the requests that reach me from the men and women of our time and, in view of their expectations, I have wished to offer a pointer for research that seems to me capable of raising interest to relaunch philosophy and its irreplaceable role in the academic and cultural world.
You have made it the object of reflection of your Symposium: it is the proposal to "widen the horizons of rationality". This allows me to reflect on it with you as among friends who desire to pursue a common journey.
I would like to begin with a deep conviction which I have expressed many times: "Christian faith has made its clear choice: against the gods of religion for the God of philosophers, in other words against the myth of mere custom for the truth of being" (cf. J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Ch. 3).[5]
Meet the reality of person
This affirmation, that reflects the Christian journey from its dawning, shows itself completely actual in the cultural historical context that we are living. In fact, only beginning from this premise, which is historic and theological at the same time, is it possible to meet the new expectations of philosophical reflection.
The risk that religion, even Christianity, be instrumentalized as a surreptitious phenomenon is very concrete even today. But Christianity, as I recalled in the Encyclical Spe Salvi is not only "informative", but "performative" (cf. n. 2). This means that from the beginning Christian faith cannot be enclosed within an abstract world of theories, but it must descend into the concrete historic experience that reaches humanity in the most profound truth of his existence.
This experience, conditioned by new cultural and ideological situations, is the place in which theological research must evaluate and upon which it is urgent to initiate a fruitful dialogue with philosophy.
The understanding of Christianity as a real transformation of human existence, if on the one hand it impels theological reflection to a new approach in regard to religion, on the other, it encourages it not to lose confidence in being able to know reality.
The proposal to "widen the horizons of rationality", therefore, must not simply be counted among the new lines of theological and philosophical thought, but it must be understood as the requisite for a new opening onto the reality that the human person in his uni-totality is, rising above ancient prejudices and reductionisms, to open itself also to the way toward a true understanding of modernity.
Humanity's desire for fullness cannot be disregarded. The Christian faith is called to take on this historical emergency by involving the men and women of good will in a simple task. The new dialogue between faith and reason, required today, cannot happen in the terms and in the ways in which it happened in the past. If it does not want to be reduced to a sterile intellectual exercise, it must begin from the present concrete situation of humanity and upon this develop a reflection that draws from the ontological-metaphysical truth.
Dear friends, you have before you a very exacting journey. First of all, it is necessary to promote high-level academic centers in which philosophy can dialogue with other disciplines, in particular with theology, favoring new, suitable cultural syntheses to orient society's journey.

Taken from:L'Osservatore RomanoWeekly Edition in English11 June 2008, page 6

Content: The operative word is "Performative" (as in “Spe Salvi”) for the broadening of reason is concomitant with the broadening of the being of the person by means of the act of faith as a going out of self in order to take in and become the Person of Christ who is, in Himself, the very meaning of “Revelation.” What is involved here is the realism of being as criterion of knowing. It is profoundly evangelical as in Simon coming to know that Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus the Christ, or the Samaritan woman lowering herself in humility before Christ and his revealing his identity to her. Reason's exposure to being widens as the believing person expands in the experiential encounter with Christ. This would connect with Fides et ratio #83: "In a special way, the person [exercising the act of faith] constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry."


2)
Ongoing Challenge of Benedict

“Ought we to accept modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution? Can this modern way of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with the Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great intuitions and the great gifts of the faith”
“Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers, relegate it to the library as historically unsustainable, or we must reject modernity.”

His Solution: “And I think that the gift, the light of the faith, must be dominant, but the light of the faith has also the capacity to take into itself the true human limits, and for this reason the struggles over exegesis and the liturgy for me must be inserted into this great, let us call it epochal, struggle over how Christianity, over how the Christian responds to modernity, to the challenge of modernity.”

“And it seems to me, that this was the true intention of the Second Vatican Council, to go beyond an unfruitful and overly narrow apologetic to a true synthesis with the positive elements of modernity, but at the same time, let us say, to transform modernity, to heal it of its illnesses, by means of the light and strength of the faith.

“Because it was the Council Father’s intention to heal and transform modernity, and not simply to succumb to it or merge with it, the interpretations which interpret the Second Vatican Council in the sense of de-sacralization or profanation are erroneous.

“That is, Vatican II must not be interpreted as desiring a rejection of the tradition and an adapting of the Church to modernity and so causing the Church to become empty because it loses the word of faith.

“Augustine, as you know, was a man who, on the one hand, had studied in great depth the great philosophies, the profane literature of the ancient world.

“On the other hand, he was also very critical of the pagan authors, even with regard to Plato, to Virgil, those great authors whom he loved so much.

“He criticized them, and with a penetrating sense, purified them.

“This was his way of using the great pre-Christian culture: purify it, heal it, and in this way, also, healing it, he gave true greatness to this culture. Because in this way, it entered into the fact of the incarnation, no? And became part of the Word’s incarnation.

“But only by means of the difficult process of purification, of transformation, of conversion.

“I would say the word ‘conversion’ is the key word, one of the key words, of St. Augustine, and our culture also has a need for conversions. Without conversion one does not arrive at the Lord. This is true of the individual, and this is true of the culture as well…”[6]


3)
The Proposal

To take the positive contributions of modern thought and purify them with Christian Faith.

The Act of Faith is the Act of Being: Self Gift
Faith as Anthropological Act

Christian Faith: The Experience of Acting Humanly in One’s Whole Self.
This is the center-piece of the entire study: Faith as ontological-anthropological act.
Vatican II: Dei Verbum:
· “Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in her” (Dei Verbum 8). There is, therefore, a development of experience and consciousness in the assimilation of Revelation. Hence, the faith is not reducible to a series of concepts as intellectual snapshots that can be placed in a book. “Faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is pout into practice. Faith is a decision involving one’s whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn. 14, 6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal. 2, 20)…”[7]

· Faith is act of the whole person: “The obedience of faith (Rom. 16, 26; cf. Rom. 1, 5; 2 Cor. 10, 5-6) must be given to God as he reveals himself. By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals’” (Dei Verbum 5).[8]
John Paul II Comments: “Faith, as these words show, is not merely the response of the mind to an abstract truth. Even the statement, true though it is, that this response is dependent on the will does not tell us everything about the nature of faith. ‘The obedience of faith’ is not bound to any particular human faculty but relates to man’s whole `personal structure and spiritual dynamism
“Man’s proper response to God’s revel-revelation consists in self-abandonment to God. This is the true dimension of faith, in which man does not simplyt accept a particular set of propositions, but accepts his own vocation and the sense of his existence. This implies, at least in principle and as an existential premises, that man has the free disposal of himself, since by means of faith he ‘abandons himself wholly to God.’ This dimension of faith is supernatural in the strict sense of the word.”[9]

To complete the above anthropological notion of faith with the Christological notion of “revelation” as developed by Benedict XVI in his habilitation thesis:
· Ratzinger’s Retrieval of the Pristine Meaning of Revelation and Faith:
Benedict understands revelation to the very Person of Christ Himself. Therefore, to “understand” Scripture one must “know” the Person of Christ. And one can “know” the Person of Christ only by experiencing Him in the ontological subjectivity of the self. This is achieved by faith as self-gift.

Josef Ratzinger said: “I had ascertained that in Bonaventure… there was nothing corresponding to our conception of `revelation,’ by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: … Here, `revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained thorough my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important fort me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This is turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura…, because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[10]


4)
The “Being” of the Self is Recovered in the Act of Faith

Let us pay attention to another level of experience.
1) John Paul II’s announcement of two levels of experience:
“The fact that human knowledge is primarily a sensory knowledge surprises no one. Neither Plato nor Aristotle nor any of the classical philosophers question this. Cognitive realism, both so-called naïve realism and critical realism, agrees that ‘nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu’ (‘nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses’). Nevertheless, the limits of these ‘senses’ are not exclusively sensory. We know, in fact, that man not only knows colors, tones, and forms; he also knows objects globally – for example, not only all the parts that comprise the object ‘man’ but also man in himself (yes, man as a person). He knows, therefore, extrasensory truths or, in other words, the transempirical. In addition, it is not possible to affirm that when something is transempirical it ceases to be empirical.
“It is therefore possible to speak from a solid foundation about human experience, moral experience, or religious experience. And if it is possible to speak of such experiences, it is difficult to deny that, in the realm of human experience, one also finds good and evil, truth and beauty, and God. God Himself certainly is not an object of human empiricism; the Sacred Scripture, in its own way, emphasizes this: "No one has ever seen God" (cf. Jn 1:18). If God is a knowable object--as both the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans teach -- He is such on the basis of man's experience both of the visible world and of his interior world. This is the point of departure for Immanuel Kant's study of ethical experience in which he abandons the old approach found in the writings of the Bible and of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Man recognizes himself as an ethical being, capable of acting according to criteria of good and evil, and not only those of profit and pleasure. He also recognizes himself as a religious being, capable of putting himself in contact with God. Prayer--of which we talked earlier--is in a certain sense the first verification of such a reality…[11]
“And we find ourselves by now very close to Saint Thomas, but the path passes not so much through being and existence as through people and their meeting each other, through the "I" and the "Thou." This is a fundamental dimension of man's existence, which is always a co-existence…[12] Such co-existence is essential to our Judeo-Christian tradition and comes from God’s initiative. This initiative is connected with and leads to creation, and is at the same time – Saint Paul teaches - `the eternal election of man in the Word who is the Son (cf. Eph. 1, 4).”[13]
2) Benedict XVI: a) On the two levels: a) the meeting of Christ and Nathanael: words alone do not suffice to know Jesus as the Christ; one must “come and see.”[14]
b) Theological epistemology: The two major theses concerning accessing the “I” of Jesus Christ beyond the sensible phenomenon of Jesus of Nazareth:


The Supreme Act of Faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16, 16)

How to know the Person of Jesus Christ? (when Mt. 11, 27 says that only the Father knows the Son, and only the Son knows the Father): Become “another Christ.”
· “According to the testimony of Holy Scripture, the center of the life and person of Jesus is his constant communication with the Father:” “We see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer. The Christian confession of faith comes from participating in the prayer of Jesus, from being drawn into his prayer and being privileged to behold it; it interprets the experience of Jesus’ prayer, and its interpretation of Jesus is correct because it springs from a sharing in whets is most personal and intimate to him.”[15]
· “Since the center of the person of Jesus is prayer, it is essential to participate in his prayer if we are to know and understand him.”
- Like is known by like.
- Since Christ is prayer, one must pray and approach the habitus of prayer in order to be “like” Him (become one being with Him).
- Since we are ontologically made in the image of God, and Jesus is the perfect image of the Father (Col. 1, 15), if we experience ourselves to be “like” Him, we “know” (intellegere: to read from within) Him.
c) Samaritan Woman: The following reveals the mind of Benedict XVI concerning the supreme crisis of the present day, the absence of God; and b) it is vintage Ratzinger in its depth, clarity and simplicity as portrayal of the transition from the objectified “horizon” of “thing” (water) to the “horizon” of “I” as disclosed by the act of sincerity (self-gift). This revealing of God’s presence among us, “I who speak with thee am he,” is compelling. Of incalculable importance is Benedict’s assertion below: “In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God.”
“It [John 4] opens with the meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the context of a normal, human, everyday experience – the experience of thirst, which is surely one of man’s most primordial experiences. In the course of the conversation, the subject shifts to that thirst that is a thirst for life, and the point is made that one must drink again and again, must come again and again to the source. In this way, the woman is made aware of what in actuality she, like every human being, has always known but to which she has not always adverted: that she thirsts for life itself and that all the assuaging that she seeks and finds cannot slake this living, elemental thirst. The superficial `empirical’ experience has been transcended.
“But what has been revealed is still of this world. It is succeeded, therefore, by one of those conversations on two levels that are so characteristic of John’s technique of recording dialogue, the Johannine `misunderstanding,’ as it is called by the exegetes. From the fact that Jesus and the Samaritan woman, though they use the same words, have in mind two very different levels of meaning and, separated thus by the ambiguity of human speech, are speaking at cross-purposes, there is manifested the lasting incommensurability of faith and human experience however extensive that experience may be. For the woman understands by `water’ that of which the fairy tales speak: the elixir of life by virtue of which man will not die and his thirst for life will be entirely satisfied. She remains in the sphere of bios[7], of the empirical life that is familiar to her, whereas Jesus wants to reveal to her the true life, the Zoë.
“In the next stage, the woman’s full attention has been attracted to the subject of a thirst for life. She no longer asks for something, for water or for any other single thing, but for life, for herself. This explains the apparently totally unmotivated interpolation by Jesus: `Go and call your husband!’ (Jn. 4, 16). It is both intentional and necessary, for her life as a whole, with all its thirst, is the true subject here. As a result, there comes to light the real dilemma, the deep-seated waywardness, of her existence: she is brought face to face with herself. In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God. Admittedly, the circle could also be closed in the opposite direction: it could be said that it is only by first knowing God that one can properly know oneself.
But we anticipate. As we have said, the woman must come first to the knowledge of herself, to the acknowledgement of herself. For what she makes now is a kind of confession: a confession in which, at last, she reveals herself unsparingly [emphasis mine]. Thus a new transition has occurred – to preserve our earlier terminology, a transition from empirical and experimental to `experiential’ experience, to `existential experience.’ The woman stands face to face with herself. It is not longer a question now of something but of the depths of the I itself and, consequently, of the radical poverty that is man’s I-myself, the place where this I is ultimately revealed behind the superficiality of the something. From this perspective, we might regard the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman as the prototype of catechesis (underline mine) It must lead from the something to the I. Beyond every something it must ensure the involvement of man himself, of this particular man. It must produce self-knowledge, and self-acknowledgment so that the indigence and need of man’s being will be evident.“But let us return to the biblical text! The Samaritan woman has achieved this radical confrontation with her own self. In the moment in which this occurs, the question of all questions arises always and of necessity; the question about oneself becomes a question about God. It is only apparently without motivation but in reality inevitable that the woman should ask now: How do things stand with regard to adoration, that is, with regard to God and my relationship to him? (cf. Jn. 4, 20). The question about foundation and goal makes itself heard. Only at this point does the offering of Jesus’ true gift become possible. (underline mine). For the `gift of God’ is God himself, God precisely as gift – that is, the Holy Spirit (cf. verses 10 and 24). At the beginning of the conversation, there seemed no likelihood that this woman, with her obviously superficial way of life, would have any interest in the Holy Spirit. But once she was led to the depths of her own being [underline mine], the question arose that must always arise if one is to ask the question that barns in one’s soul. Now the woman is aware of the real thirst by which she is driven. Hence she can at last learn what it is for which this thirst thirsts.
“It is the purpose and meaning of all catechesis to lead to this thirst. For one who knows neither that there is a Holy Spirit nor that one can thirst for him, it cannot begin otherwise than with sensory perception. Catechesis must lead to self-knowledge, to the exposing of the I, so that it lets the masks fall and moves out of the realm of something into that of being. Its goal is conversio, that conversion of man that results in his standing face to face with himself. Conversio (`conversion,’ metanoia) is identical with self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is the nucleus of all knowledge. Conversio is the way in which man finds himself and thus knows the question of all questions: How can I worship God? It is the question that means his salvation; it is the raison d’etre of catechesis.”[16]
5) Enter Wojtyla’s Phenomenological Metaphysics:
The Phenomenology of the Act of Faith Yields “I” as Being
Since faith is an act of metaphysical anthropology, it musts be able to be examined phenomenologically as a real action, concretely, the gift of oneself: the spousal act. As such, if we could describe the internal “experiences” of potency and act, we would be able to reach the “I” as Being since consciousness is not susceptible of yielding such an experience. This is the achievement of the metaphysical phenomenology of Karol Wojtyla.


Wojtyla’s phenomenology of the experience of self-determination:

“The basis for understanding the human being must be sought in experience – in experience that is complete and comprehensive and free of all systematic a priori’s. The point of departure for an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination is the kind of experience of human action that includes the lived experience of moral good and evil as an essential and especially important element; this experience can be separately defined as the experience of morality. These two experiences – the experience of the human being and the experience of morality – can really never be completely separated[17], although we can, in the context of the overall process of reflection, focus more on one or the other. In the case of the former, philosophical reflection will lead us in the direction of anthropology; in the case of the latter, in the direction of ethics.

“The experience of human action refers to the lived experience of the fact `I act.’ This fact is in each instance completely original, unique, and unrepeatable… The lived experience of the fact `I act’ differs from all facts that merely `happen’ in a personal subject. This clear difference between something that `happens’ in the subject and `activity’ or action of the subject allows us, in turn, to identify an element in the comprehensive experience of the human being that decisively distinguishes the activity or action of a person from all that merely happens in the person. I define this element as self-determination.

(…) “`I act’ means `I am the efficient cause’ of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely `happens’ in me, for then I do not experience the efficacy of my personal self. My sense of efficacy as an acting subject in relation to my activity is intimately connected with a sense of responsibility for that activity…”

“Self determination as a property of human action that comes to light in experience directs the attention of one who analyzes such action to the will. The will is the person’s power of the self-determination….

“When I say that the will is the power of self-determination, I do not have in mind the will all alone, in some sort of methodical isolation intended to disclose the will’s own dynamism. Rather, I necessarily have in mind here the whole person. Self-determination takes place through acts of will, through this central power of the human soul. And yet self-determination is not identical with these acts in any of their forms, since it is a property of the person as such… My analysis, however brief, shows that self-determination is a property of the person, who, as the familiar definition says, is a naturae rationalis individual substantia. This property is realized through the will, which is an accident. Self-determination – or, in other words, freedom – is not limited to the accidental dimension, but belongs to the substantial dimension of the person: it is the person’s freedom, and not just the will’s freedom…”[18]


“I” as Potency and Act: Cause of Action

Since things happen to man, and that he also is the cause of his own action, there is a different dynamic at work. In the one case, he is in potency to be acted on; in the other he is the cause and agent. “Potency… may be define\d as something that is in preparation , is available, and even ready at hand but is not actually fulfilled. The act… is the actualization of potentiality, its fulfillment.
“As is to be seen, the meanings of both concepts are strictly correlated and inhere in the conjugate they form rather than in each of them separately. Their conjugation reveals not only the differentiated, though mutually coincident states of existence, but also the transitions from one to the other. It is these transitions that objectivize the structure of all dynamism inherent in being, in being as such, which constitutes the proper subject of metaphysics, and at the same time in every and any being… We may with justice say that at this point metaphysics appears as the intellectual soil wherein all the domain of knowledge have their roots. Indeed, we do not seem to have as yet any other conceptions and any other language which would adequately render the dynamic essence of change – of all change whatever occurring in any being – apart from those that we have been endowed with by the philosophy of potency and act. By means of this conception we can grasp and describe precisely any dynamism that occurs in any being. It is to them we also have to revert when discussing the dynamism proper to man.”[19]

“Man is thus in a wholly experiential way the cause of his acting. There is between person and action a sensibly experiential, causal relation, which brings the person, that is to say, every concrete human ego, to recognize his action to be the result of his efficacy; in this sense he must accept his actions as his own property and also, primarily because of their moral nature, as the domain of his responsibility. Both the responsibility and the sense of property invest with a special quality the causation itself and the efficacy itself of the acting person.”[20]

We should not here that Newman makes the same affirmation: “The assent which we give to the proposition, as a first principle, that nothing happens without a cause, is derived, in the first instance, from what we know of ourselves; and we argue analogically from what is within us to what is external to us. One of the first experiences of an infant is that of his willing and doing; and as time goes on, one of the first temptations of the boy is to bring home to himself the fact of his sovereign arbitrary power, though it be at the price of waywardness, mischievousness, and disobedience. And when he parents, as antagonists of this willfulness, begin to restrain him, and to bring his mind and conduct into shape, then he has a second series of experiences of cause and effect, and that upon a principle or rule. Thus the notion of causation is one of the first lessons which he learns from experience that experience limiting it to agents possessed of intelligence and will. It is the notion of power combined with a purpose and an end. Physical phenomena, as such, are without sense; and experience teaches us nothing about physical phenomenal as causes.”[21]

In a word, causality as an experience does not come to us through the senses, but in the experience of ourselves as agents of our own free actions. The consciousness of that experience is then extrapolated to the phenomena which we take in through the external senses. David Hume was correct in stating that causality is not senses but experienced in self and then extended outside. In agreement with this, Wojtyla writes: “The students of the problems of causality, on the one hand, and psychologists, on the other, often note that human acting is in fact the only complete experience of what has been called by Aristotle ‘efficient causation.’… Efficacy itself as the relation of cause and effect leads us to the objective order of being and existence and is thus of an existential nature. In this case efficacy is simultaneously an experience. There lies the source of the specific empirical significance of human efficacy related with acting.”[22]

6) The Absolute

After discovering that the “I” is Being, it is critical to understand that it is the unmediated access to reality as absolute. It is here that we access conscience.
Consider what Benedict said in Brazil in 2007:
“What is real? Are only material goods, social, economic and political problems "reality"? “This was precisely the great error of the dominant tendencies of the last century, a most destructive error, as we can see from the results of both Marxist and capitalist systems. They falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God. Anyone who excludes God from his horizons falsifies the notion of "reality" and, in consequence, can only end up in blind alleys or with recipes for destruction….
“(W)ho knows God? How can we know him? (…) For a Christian, the nucleus of the reply is simple: only God knows God, only his Son who is God from God, true God, knows him. And he "who is nearest to the Father’s heart has made him known" (John 1:18). Hence the unique and irreplaceable importance of Christ for us, for humanity. If we do not know God in and with Christ, all of reality is transformed into an indecipherable enigma; there is no way, and without a way, there is neither life nor truth.
To see in terms of the absolute, restores meaning to factual and contingent knowing. Consider the enlightenment of Helen Keller as presented and commented on by Walker Percy. She experienced herself as “I” in the act of naming the water (similar to the exegesis of Adam naming the animals done by John Paul II in TOB):

“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that `w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way to the dearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.”[23]

Walker Percy comments: “What had happened? Helen had exercised her subjectivity as cause by “throwing” (βαλέιν) the “likeness” (sym): w-a-t-e-r at the wet flowing object. She had experienced herself as cause, and therefore came to a consciousness of herself as “self.” Percy comments: “before, Helen had behaved like a good responding organism. Afterward, she acted like a rejoicing symbol-mongering human. Before, she was little more than an animal. Afterward, she became wholly human. Within the few minutes of the breakthrough and the several hours of exploiting it Helen had concentrated the months of the naming phase that most children go through somewhere around their second birthday.”[24]

Ratzinger on Conscience:
Conscience: the Experience of Being Human as Image of God:
In Texas in 1988 Ratzinger said: “The first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears an echo from within. He sees: That‘s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.
“This anamnesis of the Creator, which is identical with the ground of our existence, is the reason that mission is both possible and justified. The Gospel may and indeed must be proclaimed to the pagans, because this is what they are waiting for, even if they do not know this themselves (see Isa. 42, 4).”[25]

Conclusion: the ultimate ground of all moral action is not “nature” as the result of the epistemology of sensible perception and intellectual abstraction. “Natural Law” is not the law of nature. Natural Law, as understood in the development that has taken place in Vatican II is the “Law of the Person:” “At this point the true meaning of the natural law can be understood: it refers to man’s proper and primordial nature, the ‘nature of the human person,’ which is the person himself in the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of all the other specific charactertistics necessary for the pursuit of his end” (Veritatis Splendor #50).








Rev. Robert A. Connor





The Metaphysical Guts: “I” as Being

Benedict XVI is calling the West to “Widen the horizons of rationality.” Reason has been progressively restricted during the last millennium, particularly in the last 200 years, to sensible phenomena and “facts.” In 1993, he remarked that “Now we are close to the end of a millennium and in an entirely new historical period, indicated by schemas of thought, science, technology, culture and civilization, breaking completely with al that we knew previously.”[26] When asked about the remark that nihilism is rapidly taking the place of Marxism in his then-last work “A Turning Point for Europe,” [27] he answered: “It is explained by the encroachment of relativism and subjectivism, an inevitable consequence of a world overwhelmed by the alleged certainties of natural or applied science. Only what can be tested and proved appears as rational. Experience has become the only criterion guaranteeing truth. Anything that cannot be subjected to mathematical or experimental verification is regarded as irrational.

“This restriction of reason has the result that we are left in almost total darkness regarding some essential dimensions of life. The meaning of man, the bases of ethics, the question of God cannot be subjected to rational experience, verified by mathematical formulae. And so they are left to subjective sensibility alone. This is serious because if, in a society, the bases of ethical behavior are abandoned to subjectivity alone, released from common motives for being and living, handed over to pragmatism, then it is man himself who is threatened.

“The great ideologies have been able to hive a certain ethical foundation to society. But today, Marxism is crumbling and liberal ideology is so split into fragments that it no longer has a common, solid coherent view of man and this future. In the present situation of emptiness, there looms the terrible danger of nihilism, that is to say, the denial or absence of all fundamental moral reference for the conduct of social life. This danger becomes visible in the new forms of terrorism.

“Even though perverted, the political, social terrorism of the 1960s had a certain kind of moral ideal. But today, the terrorism of drug abuse, of te Mafia, of attacks on foreigners, in Germany and elsewhere, no longer has any moral basis. IN this era of sovereign subjectivity, people act for the sole pleasure of acting, without any reference other than the satisfaction of ‘myself.’”[28]

Ultimately, what is the problem? Relativism. As he said on the morning of his election as pope: “Relativism, that is, letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine,’ seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”[29]
And what is the answer? The priority of being over thought. Hence, in Texas in 1988 Ratzinger said: “The first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears an echo from within. He sees: That‘s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.
“This anamnesis of the Creator, which is identical with the ground of our existence, is the reason that mission is both possible and justified. The Gospel may and indeed must be proclaimed to the pagans, because this is what they are waiting for, even if they do not know this themselves (see Isa. 42, 4).”[30]
The problem is that the self is not understood ontologically. And if it is, it is not “I” but a substantial “it” with a rational nature, the result of a reason that works only on the level of sense experience and abstractive thought.

In this light, Benedict is calling on philosophers to “widen the horizons of rationality” to take in the fullness of “Being.” As we have seen, on June 7, he said: “I would like to begin with a deep conviction which I have expressed many times: ‘Christian faith has made its clear choice: against the gods of religion for the God of philosophers, in other words against the myth of mere custom for the truth of being’ (cf. J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Ch. 3).”[31] And “the truth of being,” he goes on, is the “performative” experience that the human person has of himself in the act of faith as self-gift. The experience of the self, going out of self, discloses a new dimension of reason that is the consciousness of the self that is not reduced to the limitation of sense experience and abstract concepts, but to an experience of the existential “I” that is the “empirical” source of absolute value, such as authenticity and the good. Notice Benedict’s remarks: “Christianity… is not only ‘informative,’ but ‘performative’… This means that from the beginning Christian faith cannot be enclosed within an abstract world of theories, but it must descend into the concrete historic experience that reaches humanity in the most profound truth of his existence.

“This experience, conditioned by new cultural and ideological situations, is the place in which theological research must evaluate and upon which it is urgent to initiate a fruitful dialogue with philosophy.

“The understanding of Christianity as a real transformation of human existence, if on the one hand it impels theological reflection to a new approach in regard to religion, on the other , it encourages it not to lose confidence in being able to know reality.

“The proposal to ‘widen the horizons of rationality,’ therefore, must not simply be counted among the new lines or theological and philosophical thought, but it must be understood as the requisite for a new opening onto the reality that the human person in his uni-totality is, rising above ancient prejudices and reductionism, to open itself also to the way toward a true understanding of modernity.

“Humanity’s desire for fullness cannot be disregarded. The Christian faith is called to take on this historical emergency by involving the men and women of good will in a simple task. The new dialogue between faith and reason, required today, cannot happen in the terms and in the ways in which it happened in the past. If it does not want to be reduced to a sterile intellectual exercise , it must begin from the present concrete situation of humanity and upon this develop a reflection that draws from the ontological-metaphysica truth.”


Broadening Reason Will Consist In:

Taking the turn to the subject [Descartes] as positive because faith is an act of the entire subject as enfleshed spirit.

Taking the subject as the source of the absolute true and good. (Kant)

Taking the Romantic Philosophy of Herder who introduced experience of the self (language and naming in the case of Herder, Helen Keller in our own day) whereby the self was a real being experiencing itself in the act of naming (language).

Taking Hegel as a thought experiment to resolve how there can be absolute values of the true and the good, and freedom of autonomy (Kant) while being immersed in a material changing world ruled by absolute laws of nature (Herder). Hegel proposes the Geist (embodied Self-positing Spirit ) or subject who can become self [autonomous] only by subduing self [exercising freedom within the inexorable necessities of nature] to give self in the empirical history. If there were a phenomenology of real experience for this proposal, we would have Gaudium et Spes #24: “Man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself.”[32] When reduced to materialism, it becomes Marxism.

Taking existentialism as the de facto experience the subject has of itself. Kierkegaard is the father of modern existentialism. Reality is now in the concrete existential moment in which I make a choice. In the repetition of that choice, I am becoming who I truly am. I become what I do. “Subjectivity is truth, subjectivity is reality.”[33]

Taking phenomenology (Husserl) as the methodological probe to disclose the experience the subject has of itself (Scheler to Wojtyla). Consider Wojtyla’s reform of Scheler’s phenomenology to reach the very Being of the subject (“going to the things themselves”) by explaining how consciousness is not the subject but the medium the subject may use to disclose the passage from act to potency (and therefore the reality of its “being”) by mirroring what is going on. The disclosure of this “mirroring” (not conceptually “objectifying”) is Wojtyla’s brand of phenomenology that discloses the “esse” of the “I.”[34]

What is Experience? Rocco Buttiglione says:

“Experience as we generally understand it, is the product of abstraction, which as objectivized by stripping away the affectivity which is immediately immanent to it is the datum of experience. The word ‘experience’ has become almost synonymous with sensation, and it thus coincides with the objectifiable side of experience. Phenomenology, by allowing us to recapture the original and founding dimension of experience, rediscovers the co-implication of ethics and metaphysics. Moral knowledge is a knowledge which introduces us to the truth of being. And what is more, there is no divided form of knowledge, in which the ethical aspect has been excluded in advance, which can introduce us to the truth of being. The reciprocal implications of ethics, anthropology, and metaphysics have their heart in the Thomistic notion of ‘persona.’”[35]

The Experience the Subject Has of Itself: The free (moral) act of self-determination [Adam, Helen Keller].


Wojtyla’s phenomenology of the experience of self-determination:


“The basis for understanding the human being must be sought in experience – in experience that is complete and comprehensive and free of all systematic a priories. The point of departure for an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination is the kind of experience of human action that includes the lived experience of moral good and evil as an essential and especially important element; this experience can be separately defined as the experience of morality. These two experiences – the experience of the human being and the experience of morality – can really never be completely separated[36], although we can, in the context of the overall process of reflection, focus more on one or the other. In the case of the former, philosophical reflection will lead us in the direction of anthropology; in the case of the latter, in the direction of ethics.

“The experience of human action refers to the lived experience of the fact `I act.’ This fact is in each instance completely original, unique, and unrepeatable… The lived experience of the fact `I act’ differs from all facts that merely `happen’ in a personal subject. This clear difference between something that `happens’ in the subject and `activity’ or action of the subject allows us, in turn, to identify an element in the comprehensive experience of the human being that decisively distinguishes the activity or action of a person from all that merely happens in the person. I define this element as self-determination.

(…) “`I act’ means `I am the efficient cause’ of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely `happens’ in me, for then I do not experience the efficacy of my personal self. My sense of efficacy as an acting subject in relation to my activity is intimately connected with a sense of responsibility for that activity…”

“Self determination as a property of human action that comes to light in experience directs the attention of one who analyzes such action to the will. The will is the person’s power of the self-determination….

“When I say that the will is the power of self-determination, I do not have in mind the will all alone, in some sort of methodical isolation intended to disclose the will’s own dynamism. Rather, I necessarily have in mind here the whole person. Self-determination takes place through acts of will, through this central power of the human soul. And yet self-determination is not identical with these acts in any of their forms, since it is a property of the person as such… My analysis, however brief, shows that self-determination is a property of the person, who, as the familiar definition says, is a naturae rationalis individual substantia. This property is realized through the will, which is an accident. Self-determination – or, in other words, freedom – is not limited to the accidental dimension, but belongs to the substantial dimension of the person: it is the person’s freedom, and not just the will’s freedom…”[37]

The Nature and Function of “Consciousness” in Experiencing the “I” in the Act of Self-Determination


Concepts objectify what is known by forming a sign through which the reality “lives in” the intelligence of the knower. We know the reality through (quo) the concepts that we form, but we leave out the existential dimension of it in that we know the way we are, not the way the reality is. This is what is understood by “mediation” in knowing. Wojtyla says: “It lies in the essence of cognitive acts performed by man to investigate a thing, to objectivize it intentionally, and in this way to comprehend it…. The same does not seem to apply to consciousness. In opposition to the classic phenomenological view, we propose that the cognitive reason for the existence of consciousness and of the acts proper to it does not consist in the penetrative apprehension of the constitutive elements of the object, in its objectivation leading to the constitution of the object. Hence the intentionality that is characteristic for cognitive acts… does not seem to be derived from acts of consciousness.”[38]

What is consciousness? Buttiglione says: “Consciousness is therefore connected with the cognitive faculties but is not identified with them. Knowing something is not the same as being aware of something. Being aware implies further reflection on something which has already been worked out in the cognitive faculties. Wojtyla gives a particular importance to the relation between consciousness and self-knowledge, since self-knowledge is strictly linked with the ‘I,’ as is the conscience. But this link should not lead us to forget that self-knowledge is always a cognitive act and therefore objectivizes man…” [39]Wojtyla says that it is the cognitive dimension of the experience of the self. “The first element of experience can be defined as a ‘sense of reality,’ placing the accent on reality – on the fact that something exists with an existence that is real and objectively independent of the cognizing subject and the subject’s cognitive act, while at the same time existing as the object of that act.
“We then discern clearly that it is one thing to be the subject, another to be cognized (that is objectivized) as the subject, and still different thing to experience one’s self as the subject of one’s own acts and experiences. (The last distinction we owe to the reflexive [not reflective knowledge as concept-forming] function of consciousness).”[40]

The mirroring function of consciousness reflects the states of the subject as potency to agency over self, and as act produced by that agency. It is not cognition by concept formation which would render the subject as object, but “mirroring” the two states and therefore forming what we understand to be “experience,” and experience of the self in this moment of the genesis of the “I.” This work of Wojtyla is at the basis of his understanding of “work” as having not only an objective dimension in the object made by the work, but also the development of the subject. It is the phenomenology of that he offers of Adam in the Garden who, in the act of obedience to name the animals, comes to a consciousness of self as “alone,” i.e. “different” from everything else in creation that is “object.” That is, he had crossed the threshold to activating his subjectivity by determining his very self as gift of obedience to the creator. In that act, he became conscious of being precisely a “subject,” and therefore, alone.

Combine phenomenology with the thomistic “esse” to give a metaphysical account of the subject – “I” – as Being. See the conclusion in Fides et ratio #83: “In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being [“actu essendi”], and hence with metaphysical enquiry.” This is the genius of the undertaking. Wojtyla draws the entirety of modern philosophy of the absolute existential self into the Hellenic-Christian metaphysic of St. Thomas’s esse and declares that Fides et ratio #83.

“For Kierkegaard, the search for Being through mere processes of reason served only to alienate the individual from his authentic existence. For Nietzsche, the excessive intellectualization of life alienates men from the creative source of life and of historical action.
“All three (Schelling, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) emphasize the role of Subjectivity in truth in contrast to those for whom truth resides somehow in objects and their logical relationships… By Subjectivity of truth these men mean rather the subjective relationship of a living, personal subject to an objective reality. For Kierkegaard, it was the passionate relationship to the objective reality of the ethical imperative. For Schelling it was the ecstatic relationship to the objective reality of the fundamental unity of creation…. For all three, the truth that rises from such relationship [my underline] has greater certainty than the mediated truth of rational demonstration which can never become more than an approximation, a possible truth.”[41]


Taking Faith as Obedience of the Whole Self and therefore the anthropological dynamic of becoming who you should be: Ipse Christus. Show that the act of faith is a metaphysical act of the whole person (not merely operations of faculties of intellect and will) going out of self to the revealing Person of the God-man. As such, the act of faith is the total exercise of the Being of the subject who is the image of God. The act of faith is the supreme act of the entire person because it demands the total self-gift to the revealing God, to the point of death (see VS #92-#94). Faith, then, is the metaphysical act par excellence of the whole self, and hence the supreme exposure of the self as Being, which is the light of reason.

Take the Year of St. Paul as the call to overcome the loss of the experience of God due to the failure to experience the self as gift as seen above. Consider the grave obstacle to this experience: The culture dominated by acedia: “sloth of the heart.”[42]


(See above) Distinguish between Consciousness and Concept: Distinguish between the consciousness that accrues to this experience, and the concept that reason forms when reflecting on that consciousness. The consciousness is the broadened reason that Benedict is proposing when the “I” is experienced as self-determined-self-gift. It is the consciousness of the mystery of the self and the Person of Jesus Christ (“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” Mt. 16, 16). It is the consciousness of the Absoluteness of truth and values that is the self as image of God. “There is only one who is good” (Mt. 9, 17). And again: “No one is good but God alone” (Mk. 10, 18; cf. Lk 18, 19). Since the subject is the image and likeness of the “one who is good,” the experience of the self as being good yields a deep knowledge not only of the self but of God being imaged.


The result: Reason is broadened from a reductive and objectifying conceptualism to a consciousness that is the meaning-giving context for all particulate knowledge of the material world. It is also the metaphysically grounded epistemology for what we understand as contemplative life and presence of God.


Conclusion

Dr. Kenneth L. Schmitz:

“Just as believers are called to bring everything that is ‘beautiful, good and true’ toe the feet of Christ, so too philosophers who are metaphysicians of esse are urged to enter into respectful dialogue with philosophies that differ from or even contradict the metaphysics of esse.

“Indeed, the turn to phenomenology, so characteristic of Wojtyla’s earlier philosophical work, has undoubtedly drawn his attention to an ontological interioroty in the concrete and historical order of being itself. For there is operative in being as existential act an interioroty that is neither religious in form nor introspective in the modern sense, but that is the very ‘radicality’ of being itself. This, above all, it seems to me, is the most significant ‘newness’ that Fides et ratio brings to our attention. It is nothing short of the ‘dearest freshness deep down things.’

“For, in the metaphysics of esse, it is the insight into the nature of being that sustains the search for truth. The bond between knowledge and love, between the true and the good, is certified by the actual richness of being itself. Moreover, it is in the transcendentals that we see that intrinsically differential unity of being in all its richness. Being is really one wit the good, t he true, and the beautiful; it is only the finitude of our approach that is the source of their distinction (ratione). And it is this intimate ‘convergence,’ which is already an identification, that gives attractive power to truth….

“The primary new ontological insight, then, is into the ontological interiority disclosed byt eh metaphysics of esse. It seems to me that , in his earlier philosophical work, especially in The Acting Person, metaphysics had been construed as indispensable but somewhat ‘objective,’ betraying an unintended infection from the modern primacy given to the distinction of subject and object. The difference between metaphysics and phenomenology remains. Metaphysics gives it account within the horizon of the community of beings, whereas phenomenology has as it horizon human experience as such.

“In turning to phenomenology to interpret human interiority, Karol Wojtyla brought subjectivity to prominence, a prominence that has continued to characterize his writings on work, society, and interpersonal relations. But, it seems to me that in Fides et ratio there is evidence that the ‘soft exteriority of metaphysics has given way to a more permeable and intimate metaphysical discourse under the influence of a phenomenology that, without altering the character and vocabulary of a metaphysics of existential act, has nonetheless had an impact upon it. It is as though the turn to phenomenology has acted as a catalyst to release the metaphysics of esse from any residual exteriority attendant upon the modern sense of objectivity. And, indeed, this is to restore that metaphysics to its pristine character prior to the modern primacy give to the distinction of subject and object. Is this a simple return? By no means, since the impact of a phenomenology of experience has released from within the traditional metaphysics of esse a new and more radical appreciation of the ontological interiority of being itself: adnovitatem et radicalitatem ipsius ‘esse.”[43]
















Rev. Robert A. Connor
[1] “And Marxism Gave Birth to … Nihilism,” Catholic World Report, January 1993, 54.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Paul II, “Fides et Ratio,” #5.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Consider the remark made by Paul O’Herron who introduces the philosophical achievement of Dr. Kenneth L Schmitz in the light of the life intention of Hegel: “to reconcile the ‘being of the ancients’ with ‘subjectivity of the moderns’” (Kenneth L. Schmitz, “The Texture of Being” CUA (2007) ix.
[6] Robert Moynihan, “Let God’s Light Shine Forth,” Doubleday (2005) 34-36.
[7] John Paul II, “Veritatis Splendor,” #88.
[8] John Paul II, “Sources of Renewal”
[9] Karol Wojtyla, “Sources of Renewal” Harper and Row, 1979) 20.
[10] Ibid. 108-109.
[11] John Paul II, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” Knopf (1994) 34
[12] Ibid 36.
[13] Ibid
[14] “Philip told this Nathanael that he had found "him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn 1: 45).… "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1: 46). In its own way, this form of protestation is important for us…. Nathanael's reaction suggests another thought to us: in our relationship with Jesus we must not be satisfied with words alone. In his answer, Philip offers Nathanael a meaningful invitation: "Come and see!" (Jn 1: 46). Our knowledge of Jesus needs above all a first-hand experience.” Benedict XVI Sept. 6, 2006.
[15] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) 15-27.

[16] J. Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius (1987)353-355.

[17] The deep reason for this is that the “I” images God Who alone is “good.” To experience one’s being as image is to experience that one is good. This is the supreme triumph of realist ethics over relativism. It has been the centuries long challenge from Hume to the present moment concerning how factual, empirical “is” can be the ground of moral “ought.” The challenge was to explain how one can deduce (since obligation must come from the prius of Cartesian consciousness) “ought” from “is.” The failure to answer that provoked Kant’s so-called “transcendental” philosophy both theoretical and practical to save the absolute. Absent the phenomenology of the experience of the “I” as real Being, there was no escape. Either is was empiricist relativism of self as mere consciousness, or it was the ungrounded apriori categories of Kant. But since they were both mere consciousness, there was no escape from subjectivism and relativism. Wojtyla’s “discovery” of the experience of the “I” changes the entire “thoughtscape” if we understand it. See John Paul II’s VS ##9-11.
[18] Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Person and Community (1993) 189-190
[19] K. Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” Reidel (1979) 66.
[20] Ibid 67.
[21] J. H. Newman, “A Grammar of Assent” UNDP (1992) 70.
[22] K. Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” ibid. 68.
[23] Ibid 34-35.
[24] Ibid 38.
[25] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” Values in a Time of Upheaval Ignatius (2006) 92.
[26] J. Ratzinger, “And Marxism Gave Birth to … NIHILISM,” The Catholic World Report, January 1993, 52.
[27] J. Ratzinger, “Turning Point for Europe,” Ignatius (1994).
[28] J. Ratzinger, “And Marxism Gave Birth to … NIHILISM,” op. cit. 54.
[29] April 18, 2005.
[30] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” Values in a Time of Upheaval Ignatius (2006) 92.
[31] Benedict XVI, “At the Sixth European Symposium of University Professors,” June 7, 2008.
[32] Charles Taylor, “Hegel and Modern Society” Cambridge University Press (1979) 1-4; 135.
[33] S. Kierkegaard, “Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the ‘Philosophical Fragments’” in The Search for Being, Noonday Press (1962) 96.
[34] “Wojtyla has engaged in a reform of phenomenology in order to render it closer to its original intention of ‘going to the things themselves’… R. Buttiglione “Karol Wojtyla” Eerdmans (1997) 183.
[35] R. Buttiglione “Karol Wojtyla” Eerdmans (1997)79-80.
[36] The deep reason for this is that the “I” images God Who alone is good. To experience one’s being as image is to experience the good. See VS ##9-11.
[37] Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Person and Community (1993) 189-190
[38] Karol Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” Analecta Husserliana Reidel (1979) 32-33.
[39] Rocco Buttiglione, “Karol Wojtyla” op. cit 130.
[40] Karol Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” op. cit. 44
[41] “The Search for Being,” op. cit. 15-20.
[42] Joseph Pieper uses the mediaeval word “acedia” which is “a kind of sadness… more specifically, a sadness in view of the divine good in man. This sadness because of the God-given ennobling of human nature causes inactivity, depression, discouragement (thus the element of actual ‘sloth’ is secondary).”[42] Because man has been called to the greatness of imaging God, when he does not heed the call, his very being undergoes decay within him that he cannot endure. He is in conflict with himself in his inmost dwelling and consequently does not will to be what he fundamentally is anyway. He cannot dwell within himself and cannot be at home with himself. “He has to make the vain experiment of breaking out from his own center – for example, into the restlessness of working for work’s sake or into the insatiable curiosity of the lustful eye, which does not really seek knowledge but only an ‘opportunity to abandon oneself to the world’ (Heidegger), which is an opportunity to avoid oneself.”
Pieper mines the insight deeper: “It must further be realized that both manifestations –the systematic establishment of the work ideal as absolute and the degeneration of the lustful eye – surround themselves with the immense effort of a forced optimism, of a radiating trust in life, or a noisily proclaimed ‘progress’…
“For all that, these optimistic attitudes provide no final meaning in the fae of the despair that in their source – even though this source is safely enclosed in the innermost chamber of the heart, so that no cry of pain penetrates to the outside, most likely not even to its owsn consciousness” (“The Obscurity of Hope and Despair” in An Anthology Ignatius (1989) 24.
[43] Kenneth L Schmitz, “God, Being and Love,” in The Texture of Being - Essays in First Philosophy, CUA Press (2007) 280-282.

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