The Marriage of Medieval Metaphysics and Modern Personalism

foreign [Music] my last lecture is about the marriage of medieval metaphysics and modern personalism this lecture I'd like to do something that is both larger and smaller than any of the other lectures it's larger because it's based on a big picture an overall judgment about the whole history of philosophy and about what might be the next step and it's smaller because it's more focused on a single issue the possible marriage between what I see as the best of the old and the best of the new of my other lectures was about a war a fight a dialogue between enemies like socceries versus the sophists this one is about a wedding not a war the only War here is between those who support this wedding and those who oppose it when my son was two and learned that things had names he ran around pointing to everything in the house one thing after another asking what that what that what that pre-modern mind is the mind of a curious and intelligent child it asks in the words of the question of a very platonic dialogue what is that what is Justice what is death what is beauty what is learning it wants to know everything's objective Universal essence it's oriented toward objective reality the modern mind is more like the mind of a teenager subjective self-conscious oriented towards his own identity he asks not what is that but who am I are these two minds allies or enemies when we grow into the subjectivity of teenagers must we abandon the objectivity of childhood or are the two synthesizable if so might the third stage of human development adulthood be on the verge of appearing and if so what would it look like in philosophy that's my question in general in particular it's about what I consider the highest achievement of pre-modern philosophy which is the metaphysics of Saint Thomas Aquinas especially his identification of being or reality with the act of existence and the highest achievement of modern philosophy which is to my mind the anthropology of personalism in the words of Saint Pope John Paul II's favorite quotation from the documents of Vatican II man is the only creature God loves for its own sake metaphysics and anthropology objective and subjective child and teenager existence and personality can they marry if you marry a horse to a donkey you make a mule which is sterile and produces no offspring if you marry tomism with personalism do you get a marriage of Minds made in heaven or do you get a mule made in hell father Norris Clark argues for the made in heaven label for this marriage in his little Masterpiece person and being his argument in a nutshell is that person and being are already married in reality and therefore they should be married in our philosophy his little book is a revolutionary Riff on Thomas's pregnant statement that person is that which is highest in all of nature as father Clark says the person is not some special mode of being added on from the outside so to speak it is really nothing but the fullness of being itself we're not restricted by the limitations proper to the material motive being to be fully without restriction is to be personal that is the philosophical argument for the marriage there is also a powerful theological argument for it that is implicit in the self-revealed Divine name I am the word from the burning bush the only time God revealed to us his own Eternal essential name tomistic metaphysics revealed the depths of the am half of the Divine name impersonalism reveals the depths of the eye half and the identity of the I and the am in God's being is the ultimate reason for unifying them in our thinking and that Unity is the marriage that I am heralding since Thomas's method in the Summa is always to begin by stating the strongest objections to his thesis I shall do the same it seems that tomism and personalism are opposites that exclude each other in at least 10 ways first tomeism is abstract personalism is concrete second tomeism focuses on the universal where personalism focuses on the individual third tomism seeks causal explanations while personalism seeks phenomenological descriptions the simplest explanation of the term phenomenology is simply experience fourth tomeism says that the fundamental category is substance which is a being that exists in itself and it says that relations are relative to substances modifications of substances while personalism says that the fundamental category is relation and that substances are relative to relations for personal individuality comes to be only by relating to other persons fifth tomeism relies on reason while personalism relies on experience sixth tomism emphasizes being while personalism emphasizes becoming seventh tomism talks about laws while personalism talks about values eighth tomeism bases everything on metaphysics while personalism bases everything on epistemology tomism thinks about being before it thinks about thinking personalism thinks about thinking before it thinks about being tomiism sees thinking as an example of being personalism sees being as an example of thinking ninth traumism sees the authoritative division of philosophy as philosophical theology while personalism sees the authoritative division as anthropology 10th and most generally tomism is objective while personalism is subjective following the universal turn to the subject that was begun most radically by Descartes the father of modern philosophy who began all of his philosophy with the most famous argument in history I think therefore I am both halves or poles of each of these polarities are real and important and natural and human and therefore any philosophy which simply rejects or ignores either pole is radically incomplete many told us perhaps even most of us are suspicious of personalism and most personalists are suspicious of filmism and especially optimistic metaphysics so father Clark's bold program to marry them is to show that personalism is not only compatible with domestic metaphysics but that the basis for personalists Primacy principle the Primacy of the person is already rooted in a principle explicitly stated in Thomas's metaphysics which is the principle I quoted a few minutes ago about personhood being the fullness of being father Clark is by no means the only philosor who supports this marriage Saint Pope John Paul II back in 1961 presented a prophetic little 10-page paper entitled to Mystic personalism at the Catholic University of Lublin by calling for this marriage and for the marriage of pre-modern and modern philosophy in general the main reason he gave For the synthesis was practical rather than theoretical it was a part of his battle plan in the culture wars the need for a fuller answer than either of the two sides or Paul's alone had to what the pope always maintained was the critical and crucial question of our time which is not what is God but what is man for the crises in the church and in the world today are not about Theology and its foundations in metaphysics as they were in the Middle Ages but about ethics and its foundation in anthropology and psychology this is what we can call the cultural argument for the marriage an even more basic argument for the marriage of domestic metaphysics and personalist anthropology is not anthropological but metaphysical it is that we are in metaphysical fact both subjects and objects and therefore we must do justice to both dimensions of our own being for all of our experience is constituted by both of these two poles the subjective and the objective so we must unite them in our thinking because they are united in our being a third argument is theological and presupposes revealed Christian theology it is that the only time God names himself in his eternal Essence as distinct from his actions and relations with his creatures is the name Moses heard from the burning bush the name Jews regard as so holy that they will never pronounce it since God is the Ultimate Reality this name is the name of Ultimate Reality it is I am therefore to understand reality at its apex and in its fullness we must explore both the I and the am they are equally primordial and absolute for they signify the persons and the nature or substance or Essence or being of God himself very word god means both a who and a what both a person and a nature both his three personal existence and his single Universal essence in All Creatures Essence and existence are distinct in God they are identical it has always been the glory of the Catholic faith to embrace both haves of the many paradoxes that we find both in God and in ourselves for instance man's goodness and his sinfulness predestination and Free Will individuality and community subsidiarity and solidarity soul and body angels and animals Transcendence and imminence the Supernatural and the natural faith and reason that last marriage between faith and reason has been the most fundamental and the most fruitful if Christians had rejected the marriage of faith and reason and chosen either one over the other as dictation and tertullian and original and abelard and veruis and alishari and seizure of Vermont and William avakum and Luther and Calvin rather than embracing both in a marriage like Justin Martyr and Augustine and Gregory of Nissa and John of Damascus and Anselm and Bonaventure and Aquinas and Newman and Chesterton and C.S Lewis then our theology would be in tatters incidentally not one of the first group of ten names has been canonized in fact most of them have been Heretics while eight of the ten in the second group are already Saints with chesterton's case being considered and C.S Lewis being the only exception only because God strategically placed him as his Catholic spy in the ranks of Protestants to grease the slide to Rome for tens of thousands of former protesters one of our two potential Partners to the marriage is much harder to understand than the other since metaphysics is much more difficult than anthropology so we have to take some time to try to get clear this central idea and signature thesis in domestic metaphysics the Primacy of the act of to be the act of existing essay not just for its own sake but to see how personalism fits into it not as an extrinsic addition to telemism or a growth from without like a barnacle but as the logically necessary consequence of that very central idea of Thomas and this is going to require some very difficult and abstract thinking Aristotle the master of practical Common Sense recommended that philosophy teachers wait until their students were mature before trying to teach them metaphysics and he defined mature as the age of 55. I shall now rush in where Aristotle fears To Tread thus proving that I am not an angel but a fool existence is not an essence it is distinct from essence every existing thing has an Essence an essential nature but not every essence has real existence for instance unicorns flojistan the Loch Ness monster or an honest and courageous political party Essence signifies what a being is existence signifies that it is neither Essence nor existence are beings but principles or aspects or dimensions of being Essences are conceivable and definable they have borders cat is not dog soul is not body but existence is not an Essence so it is not conceivable or definable so don't try but it's almost impossible not to succumb to the temptation to think of existence as some kind of thing as a noun instead of a verb so it's better not to use the word existence at all but instead the word existing because it's an act not a fact the fact that horses exist and unicorns don't is based on the act of existing that horses do and unicorns don't do Essences for instance both horses and unicorns have the potential to exist but existing actualizes that potential Aquinas calls existing the First Act and he calls action or activity or operation the second act the second act always follows the First Act everything that exists Acts or operates in some way even a dead and passive Rock acts it does something to something for instance it blocks your path or it resists a hammer it makes a real difference to the real world mere Essences make a difference only to thought the essence of a unicorn can't give you a ride neither can the mere essence of a horse only an existing horse can give an existing ride to an existing person there can't be any second act any acting without the First Act existing existing is the Supreme Perfection Thomas says because it is actual in relation to everything else which is potential to existing Essences are only potential to existence and that entails some startling conclusions first that Essences are really Negative they are limits on existence for instance the essence or nature of a horse prevents a horse from being a human or an angel or a rock Plato would be very surprised to hear that the Essences that he tried to Define in every one of his dialogues the famous platonic forms or platonic ideas were not beings that had actual existence but only potentialities or possibilities for existence Essences are positive to our mind but they are negative in reality Essences can be defined because they limit existence as borders limit a country a country is defined by its borders by its limits by what it is not a second startling consequence is that if God is the Supreme Perfection and the Supreme actuality then God is existence itself unlimited by any essence this is startling to us and we naturally resist it because we can't help thinking of existence as some abstract impersonal Essence which it is not the Reason God is inconceivable is not because he's too abstract but because these two concrete too concrete for words that's why existing is a better word than existence it's the ACT not just the fact here are three analogies for the relation between Essence and existence that might help a little even though they are all inadequate and can be misleading first think of existence as a river in essence as its banks God is the dynamic active River of existence unlimited by any static Riverbanks the problem with that analogy is that it invites us to imagine both Essence and existence as physical things so perhaps a better analogy is the second one the relation between matter and energy neither of which can be imagined you can't imagine matter as such you can only imagine this particular chunk of matter so think of God as Infinite Energy unlimited by any matter that it could be solidified into the problem with that analogy is that matter and energy are mutually convertible and thus equal in quantity which is certainly not true of essence of existence so let's try a third imperfect analogy let's think of existence as electricity in essence as a wire that carries it and contains it and limits it it's the electricity that does the work not the wire call existence unlimited and extend and to call God existence itself may sound like pantheism but it is really the opposite of pantheism because pantheism denies God's Transcendence but it's precisely the Transcendence of existence over Essence that enables it to be present to every essence as it is the Transcendence of light to all colors that lets light actualize all colors and as the Transcendence of thought to thinkable objects enables thought to make present to itself all thinkable objects the real God is more Transcendent than the god of deism and who are imminently present than the god of pantheism and he is both of those things for the very same reason what does this have to do with personalism you're thinking call God the act of existing seems to move in the totally opposite direction from personalism since we tend to think of existence as something impersonal a concept a principle an essence but existence is not a concept or a principle or in essence it is not abstracted from concrete particulars it is the Supreme actuality God is indefinable not because he is too Universal and Abstract like a concept but because he is too concrete and particular and absolutely unique he is infinite existing he is infinitely concrete and dynamic acting living thinking loving all these things are included in God's being the connection between this existential metaphysics and personalism is that persons are to things what existence is to essence persons transcend things as subjects transcend objects ordinary language implicitly recognizes this in distinguishing the two pronouns who and what even in self-consciousness we distinguish I and me the subject knowing and the object known I am more than an object a person transcends a thing that's why a single person can be present to many things a single person can know and love many things can have and use many things just as light which transcends color and shape can light up many different colors and shapes a person whether human or Divine or Angelic or extraterrestrial has reason and will and thus can understand and can freely choose can love as an act of free choice understanding and choosing are acts that can be performed only by persons by personal subjects by eyes not by its by whose and not by what's persons can know and love things only because they are not things they are more than things subjects can know and love objects because they are more than just an unusual kind of object just as existence can actualize Essences because it is more than just an unusual kind of essence existence transcends all Essences that's why it can actualize all essences it's like thinking which transcends all objects and that's why I can think all objects a mirror is not any of the physical things reflected in the mirror that's why all physical things can be reflected in a mirror because existence is not an Essence it cannot be defined it will not sit still for a portrait neither will your personhood your personhood is more than your personality your personality type which is classifiable and definable your body and even your mind and your feelings and your habits can be conceived and defined but not the eye who has the body and the mind and the feelings and the habits and this eye is the image of the god whose name is I am now let's bring these two things together God is personal God is three Divine persons and God is being God is existence itself thus being or existence when it is unlimited is personal personality is not an external addition to being it is what being is by itself when let alone so to speak as Aquinas says person is what is most perfect in all of nature both being that is existence and personhood are not definable because in and of themselves they are not finite not limited the mystics knew that and some of them like Angelus celicius affirmed it of human persons as well as of God when he wrote The Abyss in man calls out to the abyss in God as deep calleth under deep the human eye in dialogue with the Divine eye the relative Infinity of the created image reflecting the absolute Infinity of his creator one of the meanings of the word heart in scripture is that I which is my mysterious personal Center the eye which owns and possesses its body and its soul and within the soul all its powers intellectual and volitional and emotional emotions are what is meant by the heart in the shallow sense of the word but the I or the person that owns his or her emotions as well as his or her mind and will and body is the heart in the deeper sense it is the pre-functional root of all the functions to use the terminology of the Dutch calvinist philosopher it's what Solomon meant when he wrote keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are all the issues of life this subject is not an object and therefore not an object of knowing or of defining it is Mystical like God Aquinas was a Mystic as well as a philosopher and in the end his mysticism transcended his philosophy when he declared his four thousand page silver the greatest work of theology in human history to be only straw compared with the mystical Vision he had seen and he stopped writing his final word was silence in Islam Allah has a hundred names but only 99 of them are written in the Quran the other cannot be written or spoken or thought by man only by God himself another personalistic consequence of Aquinas is metaphysics of existence and a very practical and a potentially life-changing one is what jilson calls the great syllogism its major premise is that existence is in aquinas's words that which is most intimate in each thing and that which is most profound or deep in it because the act of being is actual in relation to all that there is it actualizes all Essences it is the pulsating heart of all being the minor premise of the syllogism is that God is unlimited existence itself and the conclusion is in aquinas's own words therefore God is in all things and that most intimately the heart of Jesuit spirituality finding God in all things or the practice of the presence of God as brother Lawrence so simply called it is founded on the fact that existence is in all things that exist and God is existence therefore God is in all things that exist and he is not in them as contained by them but as actualizing them he creates them and maintains them in being at every present moment for God has no dead past or unborn future he is really present in them in the present moment giving them existence as a present a gift he is not a deistic absentee landlord God the father is not a deadbeat dad of course he is not present in the rest of the universe in the same way as he is present in man's soul and he is not present in all men as he is in those who share his Divine Life his Zoe by faith and baptism and he is not present in any other man as he is present in Christ but he is in different ways really omnipresent and not as a kind of far away hovering eye but as a quieter says most intimately as the existential Center and energy and personal will that actualizes every aspect of every being and in him that existential energy and that personal will are one not two so this Transcendent God is also imminent he is present as a person for only persons can be present persons are distinctive not merely because they are beings that have in their Essence two distinctive Powers reason and Free Will unlike the rest of the universe but they also have a distinctive mode of being they exist or stand outside themselves they subsist from within not from without that is why they have a within an inner life of self-consciousness and moral conscience these two distinctive psychological powers are based on their distinctive mode of being Heidegger invented a name for this distinctive mode of being he called it dazine which literally means being there I think he should have called it herzine being here because objects are there or out there but only persons can be here when the teacher takes attendance in class the chairs and desks are there but they do not respond we are here is still another startling personalist consequence of aquinas's existential metaphysics in the words of Gabrielle Marcel in his essay on the ontological mystery the true introduction to ontology that is metaphysics is the study of sanctity Yes you heard that right the true introduction to metaphysics is the study of the Saints why well because as we've seen with Aquinas being in its fullness is personhood to be a person is not something added on to being from without as life is added on to formally inorganic chemicals to make organisms or as rationality is added onto animality to make man and therefore the actualization and Perfection of being is the actualization and Perfection of personhood which is sanctity what existence is to Essence sanctity is the personhood it's fullness it's Perfection the actualization of its full potentiality this is one of the most striking claims in the history of philosophy that the key to metaphysics is sanctity Saints are more ontologically real than anyone else Imagine The Rage this would cause in an atheist ontologist like Nietzsche who was really an atheist oncologist because for him the death of God is also the death of being as he candidly admits for him being is a vapor and a fallacy if God is dead being is dead too and so is personhood man is a person the image of God cannot survive the death of God any more than the image of a fire in a mirror can survive the death of the fire Marcel's startling claim seems to be a confusion between two very different orders the personal and the impersonal the anthropological and the ontological the subjective and the objective but it is not in fact it logically follows from two premises first that sanctity is the Perfection of personhood and second that personhood is the Perfection of being the saint is the human person at his most human and most perfect as he is meant to be freed from the dehumanizing of sin and the person is being at its most perfect so if sanctity is the Perfection of personhood and personhood is the Perfection of being then sanctity is the Perfection of being thus the deepest and most adequate understanding of being we can possibly get in this life is an understanding of the Saints there is an identity between metaphysical sanity and personal sanctity still another parallel between person and being is that all beings like persons give themselves away in some way they communicate their being to other beings whatever has the First Act or actuality of existence also has the second act of some activity towards other beings some relationship to other beings thus activity and relationship are transcendentals absolutely Universal properties of all beings Jacques maritain calls this Universal self-giving and ontological generosity as if everything is in love with everything fire ignites other things light illuminates other things matter gravitationally attracts other matter love seeks Union with the Beloved this was the tomistic metaphysical Vision that inspired Dante to write the greatest line in the greatest poem in the history of the world about the love that moves the sun and the other stars gravity is Love on the level of matter love is gravity on the level of spirit gravity is a gleam of the glory of God at the heart of being is loving that is why at the heart of ontology is sanctity scratch the surface of being and you will find love at its heart explore the Cave of Being and you will find a saint sitting there a little Christ everything is part of a single system like a solar system and there is a Sun at the heart of his solar system a soul at the heart of a solar system and it is not a Big Blob of gas it is the Lord of life it is not a what but a Who it is not the s-u-n but the s-o-n just as being and personhood are in God perfect and complete and unlimited so love in God is complete love and that is why God is more than one person he is the lover the father and the Beloved the Son and the act of loving the Holy Spirit and these three are one God hear o Israel the Lord the Lord your God is one and since it is the one and the same God the one and the only God who is being and is person and is Love Therefore these three are one in God that is in their perfection three names for the same reality if you like equations think of this seven step equation God is being being his existence existence is actuality actuality is activity activity is relationship relationship is Love Therefore God is love being and love are two names for the same God ever since the end of the Middle Ages there has been a separation if not a divorce between speculative and practical theology between metaphysics and spirituality between ontology and sanctity I think it's time for reconciliation time to write books like Augustine's confessions again books that unite the metaphysical and the personal the search for the depth of being itself and the search for personal sanctity and salvation and fulfillment truth and goodness knowledge and love contemplation and action Mary and Martha they are sisters not strangers Romeo and Juliet deserve to marry even though their families squabble and the families of atomists the Disciples of traditional theoretical objective metaphysics and the families of the personalists the Disciples of modern practical personal psychology are squabbling needlessly Romeo the Thomas the metaphysician and Juliet the personalists deserve each other let them marry this marriage between the subjective and the objective is implicitly called for in the two 20th century Visionary philosophers Rabbi Martin bubert in his classic eye and vow and father Pierre tayar de Chardon SJ in the Divine milieu I will let these two Visionaries have the last word because I think this is the last word in philosophy if philosophy is truly the love of wisdom here is Boomer's version of the need for the union between the subjective person and objective being modern man has divided his life with his fellow men into two tidally circled off provinces one of Institutions and the other feelings the province of it and the province of the eye institutions are outside feelings are within but the separated it of Institutions is an animated Claude without soul and the separated eye of feelings an uneasy fluttering Soul bird neither of them knows man at times man shuddering at the alienation between the eye and the world comes to reflect that something must be done so thought ready with its service and its art paints with its well-known speed one no two rows of pictures on the right wall and on the left on the one wall there is the universe on the other wall there takes place the soul henceforth if ever the man shudders at the alienation and the world strikes Terror in his heart he looks up to the right or to the left just as it may chance and he sees a picture and he sees that the eye is embedded in the world so that there really is no I at all so the world can do nothing to the eye and he is put at ease or he sees that the world is embedded in the eye and that there really is no world at all so the world can do nothing to the eye and he is put at ease but a moment comes and it is near when the shuttering man looks up and sees both pictures in a Flash together and then a deeper shutter seizes him and here is tayar De chardan's answer and so for the first time in my life perhaps although I am supposed to meditate every day I took the lamp and leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear I went down into my inmost self to the Deep Abyss once I feel dimly that my power of action emanates but as I move further and further away from the conventional certainties by Which social life is superficially illuminated I became aware that I was losing contact with myself at each step of The Descent a new person was disclosed with inmate of whose name I was no longer sure and who no longer obeyed me and when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps I found a bottomless Abyss at my feet and out of it came a rising I know not from where the current which I dare to call my life in The Last Resort the profound life the fontal life the newborn life Escape our grass entirely stirred by my Discovery I then wanted to return to the light of day and forget the disturbing Enigma in the comfortable surroundings of familiar things to begin living again at the surface without imprudently Plumbing the depths of the Abyss but then beneath the very spectacle of the turmoil of Life there reappeared before my newly opened eyes the unknown that I wanted to escape this time it was not hiding at the bottom of an abyss it disguised its presence in the innumerable strands from which the web of chance the very stuff of which the universe and my own small individuality are woven yet it was the same mystery without a doubt I recognized it our mind is Disturbed when we try to plumb the depths of the world beneath us but it reels still more when we try to number the favorable chances which must coincide at every moment if the least of living things is to survive at that moment as anyone else will find who cares to make this same interior experiment I felt the distress characteristic of a particle adrift in the universe the distress which makes human Wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and of stars and if something saved me it was hearing the voice of the Gospel guaranteed by Divine successes speaking to me from the depth of the night it is I be not afraid [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Word on Fire Institute

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Keywords: peter kreeft, dr. peter kreeft, dr. kreeft, philosophy, dr. kreeft on philosphy, dr. kreeft and philosophy, word on fire, word on fire catholic ministries, word on fire institute, bishop barron, bishop robert barron, metaphysics, metaphysics lecture, metaphysics and personalism, medieval metaphysics, modern personalism, personalism, personalism philosophy, metaphysics philosophy, metaphysics philosophy explained, personalism explained, metaphysics explained, catholicism

Id: L0EW9ODUddw

Length: 39min 52sec (2392 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023