The Role of Philosophy

Early man, as well as hunting and gathering, appears to have been much caught up in myth and magic. Early religion appears to have known spiritual ecstasy and promoted it by such things as mushrooms and physical exercises. One can see dangers here, especially when problems such as drought were faced, for religion would be interpreted by myth and myth does not have a means of criticising meanings and coming to know the truth and the right thing to do, so easily enough man found himself the victim of his own mythic powers and bound to cruel activities such as human sacrifice, even the sacrifice of children. It is a mark of its divine inspiration that the Old Testament, living in such a world, is entirely free of child sacrifice, though the story of Abraham and Isaac shows that such a thing was “in the air”.

Philosophy is the discovery of mind, the discovery of a yardstick man, from his human resources, can bring to bear on things human and divine, and indeed on the natural world around. So before atoms were thought of men thought everything was composed of earth, air, fire and water. The Greek philosophers do not seem to have hit on the idea of creation. The myths accounted for the beginning of things. The early philosophers seem to have thought the world had always been there and perhaps always would be. Recurrence was a theme. They thought the divine worked within them helping them to develop their understanding. Aristotle thought one should follow this inner light, and this way perhaps become divine.

Life presented man with an option: to go for power and pleasure and praise but in this way to lose one’s own self. Pride leads to a fall; or to seek truth and excellence in a genuinely human way under the guidance of God. Aristotle studies virtues and vices in a rigorous and systematic way, finding that virtue was a middle path between excess and lack. So courage lies between cowardice and foolhardiness. St Thomas Aquinas found he could accept many of Aristotle’s conclusions.

Greek philosophy then was something like a religion with a way of life. It belonged, of course, to an elite and the way of life was based on slavery.

An important conclusion they reached was that either a thing was, or it was not. There was no middle ground for being. There was a missionary in Japan who came across the idea held by the religious leaders there, that there were many different paths to Heaven. He argues with them for several years about there being no middle ground between being and not being and eventually he won the argument and they all joined the Church with their people

St Thomas the Apostle took the faith to Kerala, India. He founded a church which still exists, but the mission did not flourish and convert India. I recall Bishop Butler noting how “Christianity went West” and he suggested this was not just because of Roman roads and civilisation, but because Greek philosophy permeated the Western world.

Lonergan makes the same point in discussing the Council of Nicea. The fathers were Greek and their culture had a philosophical “tincture” so that it was possible to make statements about statements, so you get the Athanasian rule that whatever one says of the Father, one must say of the Son, except that the Father is the Father and the Son the Son. The key word at Nicea, homoouson, did not come from philosophy but from cloth merchants – it meant “of the same stuff”.

Cardinal Newman in his book on Arianism makes an extraordinary statement. Emanating from Babylon, there were in 325AD 56 Archbishoprics spreading into China and North India. These fell prey to Arianism and so, 300 years later, to the Moslem religion. Was the reason for this the lack of a philosophic tincture to the general culture, so that the rules for apprehending the meaning of the Council of Nicea were not comprehensible and so not effective?

This story shows the value of “a philosophic” tincture belonging to a culture. It perhaps provides a link in conversation with Moslems and explains the great devotion they have to Jesus and Mary. It perhaps also suggests the importance of a philosophic tincture for the Church and the world today.

While the philosophic spirit exposed the mythological basis around ancient public religions, it is valuable to notice that for around 2,000 years, from 500BC to 1600AD, philosophy and religion went hand in hand, especially in the immense scholastic achievement running from 1070 to 1274, which came to use the metaphysics and logic of Aristotle in a systematic way. For the scholastics, philosophy was not regarded as autonomous but rather as the handmaid of theology. Especially important was the distinction between nature and grace (Philip the Chancellor, 1230). That very distinction though, grounded the possibility of natural science, of philosophy and of history developing in autonomous ways, so that science and history came to recognise their way forward, the canons which govern their methodical advance. So for science, the Royal Society (1660) recognised only observation and experiment and, perhaps for history, a key moment was the recognition that it is about the constructions, good or bad, of the human spirit.

In medieval times it was thought that Theology using Aristotle’s philosophy could address the whole of Western culture, but the development of Western Science involved dropping the link of thought with Aristotle. Scientific method uses mathematical correlation to anticipate physical correlation. The theories it holds are for the most part just the best at the moment. Correlation has replaced causality. Scientists and Theologians might talk about “truth”, but where the Theologian based on Aristotle, means knowledge of causes, the scientist means the best possible knowledge of correlations. Here is a problem for modern philosophy to address.

In history again, if one see history as the recording of events – so 1066, the Norman invasion of England – then what you have is a series of more or less definite facts. If though, history is to be the reconstruction of the constructions of the human spirit, then a development in psychology, or a development in sociology might give one new insights into the motivation of William the Conqueror. One makes progress not about points of certitude but rather about points that are less than certain.

What applies to our knowledge of William the Conqueror applies also to our knowledge of the prophet Isaiah. I think one can see that here, too, there is a problem for Theology. It is great to have greater knowledge of Isaiah, but it is problematic if definite prophecies – Virgo concipiet – become utterances with probable meanings.

Lonergan in writing of Christology and in recognising how studies endlessly move things forward, finds in the title given to Christ in every(?) new testament document – the Son of God - an irreversible starting point.

In a situation where Aristotle somehow needs to be broadened out so that he can cope with modern science and modern history, I find helpful his remark that one does not expect the same sort of reasoning from a politician as from a mathematician.

The conclusion of reasoning, “the truth” as we know it, was identified by Aquinas as being “Ens et verum convertuntur”. For Lonergan, a truth affirmed becomes part of a person’s horizon, and since it is communicable, part of man’s world. For Lonergan and others (Heidegger) as our knowledge of the world expands, so does our knowledge of the self.

If the only knowledge man can have is of empirical science, then he himself becomes a merely material object. Philosophers today may confirm or deny this. How does one base this further autonomous discipline?