Edward Feser's Blog, page 12

Mind, matter, and malleability

Continuing ourlook at Jacques Maritain’s ThreeReformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, let’s consider some arrestingpassages on the conception of human nature the modern world has inherited fromDescartes.  Maritain subtitles hischapter on the subject “The Incarnation of the Angel.”  As you might expect, this has in part to dowith the Cartesian dualist’s view that the mind is a res cogitans or thinking substance whose nature is whollyincorporeal, so that it is only contingently related to the body.  But it is the Cartesian doctrine of innateideas and its implications that Maritain is most interested in. 

For aScholastic Aristotelian like Aquinas, though the human intellect is immaterial,it is unfurnished until sensory experience gives it contact withmind-independent physical reality.  Evenwhen it rises to the highest of the metaphysical heights and comes to knowsomething of the immaterial and divine First Cause of all things, it does soonly on the basis of inference from what it knows about matter.  An angelicintellect, by contrast, is completely separate from matter and thus fromsensory organs.  Its knowledge is builtinto it at its creation.  And since it isGod who then furnishes it, there is, naturally, no chance of error so long asthe angel wills to attend to what it knows.

Descartes’account of human knowledge essentially assimilates it to this angelicmodel.  For him, knowledge of the basicstructure of reality is innate, rather than deriving from sensoryexperience.  This includes knowledge evenof the nature of material things.  Weneed only confine our judgements to accepting those propositions and inferencesthat strike us as “clearly and distinctly” true and valid, respectively, forGod would not allow us to be misled about those.  Error creeps in only when the willoverreaches that limit and embraces some claim or inference that is not clear and distinct.  A purely mathematical conception of matter isa natural concomitant of this account of knowledge, for it alone has therequisite clarity and distinctness.

The problem,of course, is that we are not in factangels; a faculty of infallible judgment is notbuilt into us; and we cannot read offthe natures of mind-independent things from our ideas of them.  Hence, when we interpret human knowledge inlight of Descartes’ erroneous model, we are bound seriously to misunderstandit.  On the one hand, we might fall intoa dogmatism that mistakenly takes a certain successful – but neverthelesslimited and fallible – way of conceiving of the world as if it were an exhaustive and necessary way of doingso.  On the other hand, we might fallinto a subjectivism that despairs of ever getting beyond our own ideas toobjective reality.  Both tendenciesresult from taking our own representationsof the world to be all we really know directly. The first tendency, which takes these representations to be angel-likein their adequacy to reality, yields excessive optimism.  The second tendency, which comes to see thatour representations are notangel-like, yields excessive pessimism.

Kant did nottranscend these two opposite extreme errors of dogmatism and subjectivism, butrather combined them.  On the one hand, he takes what is essentiallyjust a modern, post-Cartesian account of the nature of the mind’s cognition ofreality and dogmatizes it – confining our knowledge of the natural world to what post-Newtonian science has to tell us aboutit, and ruling out altogether any genuine knowledge of what transcends thenatural world (such as the existence of God and the immortality of thesoul).  On the other hand, he takes evenour knowledge of the natural world to be knowledge only of how it appears tous, and not of things as they are in themselves.

The upshot,says Maritain, is that:

With [Descartes’] theory ofrepresentational ideas the claims of Cartesian reason to independence of externalobjects reach their highest point: thought breaks with Being.  It forms a sealed world which is no longer incontact with anything but itself; its ideas, now opaque effigies interposedbetween it and external objects, are still for Descartes a sort of lining ofthe real world… Here again Kant finishes Descartes’ work.  If the intelligence when it thinks, reachesimmediately only its own thought, or its representations, the thing hiddenbehind these representations remains for ever unknowable. (p. 78)

Ironically,though, the sequel is not greater humility but rather a pridefulself-deification.  If it cannot makesense of a reality independent of itself, the modern mind all too often decidesto make itself the measure of reality:

The result of a usurpation of theangelic privileges, that denaturing of human reason drivenbeyond the limits of its species, that lust for pure spirituality, could onlygo to the infinite: passing beyond the world of created spirits it had to leadus to claim for our intelligence the perfect autonomy and the perfectimmanence, the absolute independence, the aseity of the uncreated intelligence… [I]t remains the secret principle ofthe break-up of our culture and of the disease of which the apostate West seemsdetermined to die…

[B]ecause it wants an absolute andundetermined liberty for itself, it is natural that human thought, sinceDescartes, refuses to be measured objectively or to submit to intelligiblenecessities.  Freedom with respect to theobjective is the mother and nurse of all modern freedoms… we are no longermeasured by anything, subject to anything whatever!  Intellectual liberty which Chesterton comparedto that of the turnip (and that is a libel on the turnip), and which strictlyonly belongs to primal matter. (pp. 79-80)

Hence thevarieties of idealism and relativism (perspectivalism, historicism, socialconstructivism, postmodernism,etc.) that have plagued Western thought and culture in the centuries afterKant. 

That’s anold story, of course, and a more complicated one than these remarks fromMaritain let on.  But it’s not what Iwant to consider here.  Rather, whatcatches my eye is the comparison of the modern mind (as it tends to conceive ofitself) to “primal matter.”  What doesMaritain mean by this? 

Primematter, in Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy, is the pure potentiality to takeon form.  Prime matter by itself is not any particular thing atall.  It becomes a concrete particular thingof some kind – water, gold, lead, a star, a tree, a dog, a human body, orwhatever – only when conjoined with some substantial form or other.  And qua pure potentiality for form, it canbecome any of these things.  It is not limited to being a physical thing onlyof a certain kind (as is secondary matter,matter already having some substantial form or other).  (For discussion and defense of the notion ofprime matter, see pp. 171-75 of ScholasticMetaphysics and pp. 310-24 of Aristotle’sRevenge.)

Maritain’s analogyis clear enough, then.  Just as primematter can become anything (or at least anything physical, to be more precise)so too do constructivist and relativist theories make of human nature somethingindefinitely malleable.  But this mightat first glance seem an odd criticism for an Aristotelian-Thomistic philosopherlike Maritain to level against such views. For Aristotle holds that knowledge involves the intellect’s taking on theform of the thing known.  And there is nolimit in principle to what forms the intellect might in this way take on.  Indeed, Aristotle famously remarks in De Anima that, given this power of theintellect to take on the forms of all things, “the soul is in a way all thethings that exist” (Book III, Chapter 8). But if Aristotelians themselves allow that the intellect can in thissense become anything, why is there a problem with the views Maritain iscriticizing saying something similar? And why compare these views’ conception of human nature to prime matter,rather than to Aristotle’s own conception of the intellect?

The answeris to be found by answering another question, namely: What is the differencebetween the way prime matter takes ona certain form, and the way the intellecttakes it on?  The difference is this:When prime matter takes on the form of a dog, the result is a dog. But when the intellect takes on the form of a dog, the result is not a dog.  Rather, it is knowledge of a dog.  WhenAristotle says that the soul – or to be more precise, one specific faculty ofthe soul, the intellect – is all things, he is, of course, speakingfiguratively.  The intellect does notreally become a dog when it grasps the form of a dog.  To be sure, the figure of speech is apt,because, by taking on the form of a dog, the intellect takes on the nature of a dog.  The intellect takes on “dogginess.”  But to take it on merely intellectually is precisely to take it on without actually being a dog.  By contrast, for matter to take on thatnature just is to take it on in the sort of way that does entail being a dog. 

This shouldmake it clear why Maritain’s analogy is appropriate.  Views that take reality to be relative to ourperceptions, our language, our conventions, etc. make human beings out to besomething like prime matter insofar as they entail that what a human being is (and not just what a human being knows) is indefinitely malleable,susceptible of changing with changes in perception, language, conventions,etc.  And, in fact, that is simply nottrue of us.  We are, among other things,by nature rational animals, and no change in our perceptions, language,conventions, or the like can change that in the least.  The most such changes can do is blind us toreality, but without changing reality itself.

The metaphysics of individualism

Modern moraldiscourse often refers to “persons” and to “individuals” as if the notions weremore or less interchangeable.  But thatis not the case.  In his book Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau(especially in chapter 1, section 3), Jacques Maritain notes several importantdifferences between the concepts, and draws out their moral and socialimplications.

Traditionally,in Catholic philosophy, a person is understood to be a substance possessing intellectand will.  Intellect and will, in turn,are understood to be immaterial.  Hence,to be a person is ipso facto to beincorporeal – wholly so in the case of an angel, partially so in the case of ahuman being.  And qua partiallyincorporeal, human beings are partially independent of the forces that governthe rest of the material world.

Individuality,meanwhile, is in the case of physical substances a consequence precisely oftheir corporeality rather than theirincorporeality.  For matter, as Aquinasholds, is the principle of individuation with respect to the members of speciesof corporeal things.  Hence it isprecisely insofar as human beings are corporeal that they are subject to theforces that govern the rest of the material world.

With a wholly corporeal living thing like aplant or a non-human animal, its good is subordinate to that of the species towhich it belongs, as any part is subordinate to the whole of which it is a part.  Such a living thing is fulfilled insofar asit contributes to the good and continuance of that whole, the species kind ofwhich it is an instance.  By contrast, aperson, qua incorporeal, is a complete whole in itself.  And itshighest good, in which alone it can find its fulfilment, is God, the ultimateobject of the intellect’s knowledge and the will’s desire.

Insofar aswe think of human beings as persons,then, we will tend to conceive of what is good for them in terms of whatfulfills their intellects and wills, and thus (when the implications of thatare properly understood) in theological terms. But insofar as we think of them as individuals,we will tend to conceive of what is good for them in terms of what isessentially bodily – material goods, pleasure and the avoidance of pain,emotional wellbeing, and the like. However, we will also be more prone to see their good as something thatmight be sacrificed for the whole of which they are parts. 

Maritainputs special emphasis on the implications of all this for politicalphilosophy.  The common good is more thanmerely the aggregate of the goods enjoyed by individuals.  But because human beings are persons, and notmerely individuals, the common good is also not to be conceived of merely asthe good of society as a whole and not of its parts.  Rather, “it is, so to speak, a good common to the whole and the parts”(p. 23).

On the onehand, the political order is in one respect more perfect than the individualhuman being, for it is complete in a way the individual is not.  On the other hand, in another respect theindividual human being is more perfect than the political order, because qua person he is a complete order in hisown right, and one that has a destiny beyond the temporal political realm.  Hence, a just political order must reflectboth of these facts.  In particular, itmust recognize that the common good to which the individual is ordered includesfacilitating, for each member of the community, the realization of hisultimate, eternal end in the hereafter.  Thus,concludes Maritain, “the human city fails in justice and sins against itselfand its members if, when the truth is sufficiently proposed to it, it refusesto recognize Him Who is the Way of beatitude” (p. 24).

This refusalis, needless to say, characteristic of modern societies, both liberal andcollectivist.  And unsurprisingly, they haveat the same time put greater emphasis on human individuality than on human personhood.  Both do so insofar as they conceive of thegood primarily in economic and other material terms rather than in spiritualterms.  Liberal societies, in addition,do so insofar as they conceive of these bodily goods along the lines of thesatisfaction of idiosyncratic individual preferences and emotional wellbeing.  Collectivist societies, meanwhile, do soinsofar as they regard human beings, qua individuals, as apt to be sacrificedto the good of the species of which they are mere instances.  (It should be no surprise, then, that Burkewould famously condemn “the dust and powder of individuality” even as hecondemned at the same time the totalitarianism of the French Revolution.  For individualism and collectivism are rootedin precisely the same metaphysical error.)

Maritaincites a passage from Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange that summarizes the moral andspiritual implications of the distinction between individuality and personhood:

To develop one’s individuality is to live the egoistical life of the passions, to make oneself thecentre of everything, and end finally by being the slave of a thousand passinggoods which bring us a wretched momentary joy. Personality, on the contrary,increases as the soul rises above the sensible world and by intelligence andwill binds itself more closely to what makes the life of the spirit.  The philosophers have caught sight of it, butthe saints especially have understood, that the full development of our poorpersonality consists in losing it in some way in that of God. (pp. 24-25,quoted from Garrigou-Lagrange’s Le SensCommun)

Among the paganphilosophers, perhaps none is as clear on this theme as Plotinus, who in the FifthEnnead contrasts individuality with orientation toward God: “How is it, then,that souls forget the divinity that begot them?... This evil that has befallenthem has its source in self-will… in becoming different, in desiring to beindependent… They use their freedom to go in a direction that leads away fromtheir origin.”  And among the saints,none states this contrast more eloquently than Augustine, who distinguishes “twocities [that] have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self,even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to thecontempt of self” (City of God, BookXIV, Chapter 28).  This earthly city, inits modern guise, has been built above all by individualism.

Related posts:

Tyranny of the sovereign individual

MacIntrye on human dignity

Liberty, equality, fraternity?

When do popes speak ex cathedra?

Considerfour groups that, one might think, couldn’t be more different: Pope Francis’s mostzealous defenders; sedevacantists; Protestants; and Catholics who have recentlyleft the Church (for Eastern Orthodoxy, say). Something at least many of them have in common is a seriousmisunderstanding of the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility – one whichhas led them to draw fallacious conclusions from recent papal teaching thatseems to conflict with traditional Catholic doctrine (for example, on HolyCommunion for those in invalid marriages, the death penalty, and blessings forsame-sex couples).  Some of PopeFrancis’s defenders insist that, since these teachings came from a pope, they must therefore be consistent with traditionaldoctrine, appearances notwithstanding. Sedevacantists argue instead that, given that these teachings are notconsistent with traditional doctrine, Francis must not be a true pope.  Some Protestants, meanwhile, argue that sinceFrancis is a true pope but the teachings in question are (they judge) notconsistent with traditional Christian doctrine, Catholic claims about papalinfallibility have been falsified. Finally, some Catholics have concluded the same thing, and left theChurch as a result. 

I’ve addressedthe doctrinal controversies in question at length elsewhere and will notrevisit them here.  The point for presentpurposes is that, whatever one thinks of them, none of these inferences issound, because they rest on the false assumption that Catholicism claims that apope could not err in the ways Francis is in these cases alleged to haveerred. 

The Church’steaching, as famously defined at the FirstVatican Council, is as follows:

When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacherof all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines adoctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, hepossesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, thatinfallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in definingdoctrine concerning faith or morals.

It is fairlywidely understood that this does not mean that a pope is impeccable in hispersonal moral behavior, or that he cannot err when he speaks on some topicunconnected to faith or morals, or that he cannot err when he offers a personalopinion on some theological matter rather than teaching in his capacity as pope.  Rather, it is only when speaking as universalpastor of the Church on a matter of faith or morals that he is infallible.

However, whatis somewhat less widely understood is that even this is not enough for aninfallible ex cathedra statement.  As the passage from Vatican I says more thanonce, the pope also needs to be speaking to the universal Church on a matter offaith or morals in a manner that definessome point of doctrine.  And to “define”a doctrine is more than just putting it forward as binding on thefaithful.  As the Second Vatican Councilteaches in LumenGentium, even papal teaching that is not ex cathedra is normally binding (though as I’ve discussed elsewhere,the Church acknowledges rare exceptions). To define a doctrine involves, in addition, putting it forward in an absolutely final, irrevocablemanner.  When a pope defines some pointof doctrine, he is teaching it in a way that is intended to settle the question for all time and can never be revisited.  It only when speaking with this maximum degree of solemnity that a popeis claimed by Vatican I to be making an infallible ex cathedra pronouncement. 

Suchpronouncements are rare, and Pope Francis has never made one.  In particular, none of the doctrinal controversiesreferred to above involves any such pronouncement.  Neither AmorisLaetitia’s teaching on Holy Communion for those in invalid marriages, northe 2018 revision to the Catechism on the topic of capital punishment, nor Fiducia Supplicans’s teaching onblessings for same-sex couples, involves any ex cathedra statement.  Noneof these documents is intended to “define” or settle in an absolutelyirrevocable way any doctrinal matter.  Hence,if one or more of them really does contain doctrinal error, that would be –though regrettable and indeed scandalous – nevertheless compatible with thedoctrine of papal infallibility, because none of them is the kind ofpronouncement that is covered byinfallibility.

Hence, noneof the inferences referred to above is sound. The fact that these doctrinal pronouncements were issued under thepope’s authority does not (contraryto some of Pope Francis’s defenders) byitself guarantee that they must be reconcilable with tradition, becausethey are not ex cathedra definitions.  Nor, if they are erroneous, would that entailthat Francis is not a true pope, since (contrary to what some sedevacantistsseem to think) even true popes are not infallible when teaching in the specific manner of the documentsin question.   For the same reason – andcontrary to what some Protestants and some Catholics who have lost their faithsuppose – if Francis has erred in these cases, that would not falsify Catholicclaims about papal infallibility, because the Church never claimed in the firstplace that popes are infallible when making pronouncements of the specific kind in question, since none of them involves anattempt at making an ex cathedradefinition.

The teaching of the manuals

It isimportant to emphasize that this is in noway some novel interpretation of papal infallibility manufactured in orderto deal with the controversies that have arisen during the pontificate of PopeFrancis.  It is simply the way Catholictheologians have always understood the matter. To see this, consider what is said in several standard theology manualsof the period between Vatican I and Vatican II. This was, of course, the period when the popes were most keen toemphasize their power to settle matters of doctrine.  And yet the manuals say exactly what I justsaid about the conditions on an excathedra statement.  It is worthadding that these are manuals that received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur.  That does not entail that they areinfallible, but it does mean that what they say was regarded by ecclesiasticalauthorities as perfectly orthodox and unremarkable. 

Let’s beginwith Scheeben’s 1874 Handbookof Catholic Dogmatics, Book One, Part One.  Commenting on papal authority infallibly tojudge matters of doctrine, it tells us that “only those propositions orconsiderations which the judge evidently intendedto determine peremptorily are to be regarded as judicially determined andthus infallibly true” (p. 331, emphasis added). That is to say, unless the pope intends to settle a matter in aperemptory or final way, his pronouncement is not of an ex cathedra nature. Accordingly, Scheeben says, “it is possible, notwithstanding thecontinuing operation of his authority, that the pope extra iudicum [i.e. not excathedra] should profess, teach, or attest something false or heretical” (p.144, parenthetical remark in the original).

Brunsmannand Preuss’s 1932 Handbook of FundamentalTheology, Volume IV, tells us the following:

An ex-cathedra decision…implies the unmistakable intention of the pope to utter a definitive andbinding doctrinal decision and to oblige the Universal Church to accept it withabsolute certainty.  Hence if the pope,even in his capacity as supreme shepherd and teacher, were to recommend to allthe faithful a certain doctrine regarding faith or morals, even if he commandedthat doctrine to be taught in all the schools, this would be no ex-cathedra definition, because no definitive doctrinaldecision would be intended.  The case issimilar with regard to decrees issued by the Roman congregations, when they (ashappens with the S. Congregation of the Holy Office, over which the popehimself presides) condemn a doctrine, and the decision is confirmed by thesupreme pontiff and published by his authority. Such decrees are not per se infallible… If and so long as there is areasonable doubt whether the pope intends a definition to be ex cathedra, no one is in conscience bound to accept itas such.  (pp. 49-50)

Notice thatBrunsmann and Preuss not only note that a papal pronouncement does not count asex cathedra if it is not intended as“definitive” and as settling the matter with “absolute certainty,” but alsooffer specific examples of teaching that would, accordingly, not count as ex cathedra.  Even a doctrine that a pope in his capacityas universal teacher commends to all the faithful and commands to be taught, ora doctrine taught with his approval by the Holy Office (now known as theDicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith), would not count as ex cathedra unless there were an “unmistakable intention” and no “reasonable doubt” that he intendedit as an absolutely final and irrevocable doctrinal definition.

Ludwig Ott’s1955 Fundamentals of Catholic Dogmasays:

Not all the assertions of theTeaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals areinfallible and consequently irrevocable. Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councilsrepresenting the whole episcopate and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra.  The ordinary and usual form of the Papalteaching activity is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, BibleCommission) are not infallible. (p. 10)

The condition of the Infallibility isthat the Pope speaks ex cathedra.  Forthis is required… that he have the intention of deciding finally a teaching ofFaith or Morals, so that it is to be held by all the faithful.  Without this intention, which must be madeclear in the formulation, or by the circumstances, a decision ex cathedra isnot complete.  Most of the doctrinalexpressions made by the Popes in their Encyclicals are not decisions excathedra. (p. 287)

Ott herereiterates the points we’ve already seen in the other manuals, and adds that“the ordinary and usual form” ofpapal teaching, including “most of thedoctrinal expressions… [in] Encyclicals,” are not infallible. 

Salaverriand Nicolau’s 1955 SacraeTheologiae Summa, Volume IBnotes that “to speak ex cathedra,according to Vatican I, implies that the Roman Pontiff teaches something… defining it as something that must be held,that is, obliging all to an absolute assent of the mind and deciding the matter with an ultimate andirrevocable judgment” (p. 216, emphasis in original).  They add that “the manifest intention of defining something is required” (p. 219,emphasis added).  In other words, and asthe other manuals note, unless a pope explicitly tells us that he intends tosettle some doctrinal matter in an absolutely final and irrevocable way, wedon’t have an ex cathedra definitionand thus don’t have an infallible pronouncement.

Van Noort’s1957 Dogmatic Theology, Volume II:Christ’s Church comments on the matter at length:

The pope, even acting as pope, canteach the universal Church without making use of his supreme authority at itsmaximum power.  Now the Vatican Councildefined merely this point: the pope is infallible if he uses his doctrinalauthority at its maximum power, by handing down a binding and definitivedecision: such a decision, for example, by which he quite clearly intends tobind all Catholics to an absolutely firm and irrevocable assent.

Consequently even if the pope, andacting as pope, praises some doctrine, or recommends it to Christians, or evenorders that it alone should be taught in theological schools, this act shouldnot necessarily be considered an infallible decree since he may not intend tohand down a definitive decision.  Thesame holds true if by his approval he orders some decree of a sacredcongregation to be promulgated; for example, a decree of the Holy Office…

For the same reason, namely a lack ofintention to hand down a final decision, not all the doctrinal decisions whichthe pope proposes in encyclical letters should be considered definitions.  In a word, there must always be present andclearly present the intention of the pope to hand down a decision which isfinal and definitive…

[W]hen he is not speaking excathedra… All theologians admit that the pope can make a mistake in matters offaith and morals when so speaking: either by proposing a false opinion in amatter not yet defined, or by innocently differing from some doctrine alreadydefined.  (pp. 293-94)

Van Noortgoes on to give an example of a case where a decree of a sacred congregationwas issued with papal approval but turned out to be doctrinally erroneous:

It should be candidly admitted, wethink, that the sacred congregation did condemn Galileo’s teaching by what wasactually a doctrinal decree. The opinion of some theologians that the decree… was a purely disciplinary decree… is, in our opinion, difficult tosquare with the facts of the case. Likewise it should be frankly admitted that the Congregations of theInquisition and of the Index committed a faux pas in this matter…

The pope was aware of the decree ofthe congregation, and approved it as a decree of the congregation. (pp. 308-9)

Van Noort’sdiscussion repeats the points made in the other manuals, and adds the positiveexplicit assertion that “the pope can make a mistake in matters of faith andmorals” when not speaking ex cathedra,along with an example in which a Vatican congregation acting with papalapproval did in fact issue a mistaken doctrinal decree.

Again, thesemanuals were all written afterVatican I proclaimed papal infallibility but before Vatican II and the doctrinal controversies that arose in itswake.  Hence no one can claim that theyreflect some more limited, pre-Vatican I conception of papal authority.  Nor can anyone claim that they reflect thepolemical interests of post-Vatican II progressives or traditionalists who, forvery different reasons, would want to emphasize the limits of papal power.  They are also exactly the sorts of manualssedevacantists like to appeal to in support of their position.  But in fact they undermine that position,because they show that the errors sedevacantists accuse the post-Vatican IIpopes of would (even if these popes really were guilty of all the errors theyare accused of) be errors of precisely the kind the Church acknowledges canoccur, consistent with what Vatican I says about the conditions oninfallibility.

Again, I’mnot going to revisit here the details of the doctrinal controversiessurrounding Pope Francis.  But if the pope’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia, the 2018 revision tothe Catechism, or the DDF declaration FiduciaSupplicans contain doctrinal error, then these would be the kinds of errorsthe Church acknowledges to be possible for a pope to make, because none of themis an ex cathedra pronouncement.  Hence they would not falsify Catholicism, norwould they show that Francis is not a true pope.

A heretical pope?

But whatabout the thesis that a pope might lose his office due to heresy, which wasdiscussed by St. Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, and others among theChurch’s great theologians?  The firstthing to say here is that what is in view in this thesis is formal heresy, not mere material heresy.  A material heresy is a claim that is in factheretical in its content, whether or not the person who asserts it realizesthat, or would persist in adhering to the claim after being warned that it isheretical.  A person who holds some viewthat is materially heretical would not for that reason alone sufferexcommunication and thus cease to be a Catholic.  That would happen only as a result of formal heresy, which is a materialheresy that a person persists in despite the attempts of ecclesiastical authorityto correct him.  Moreover, we have to becareful in determining what counts as “heresy,” which in canon law is not justany old theological error, but specifically the denial of some teaching thatthe Church has officially defined.  A formal heretic, then, is someone whoobstinately denies some doctrine that the Church has formally defined, despitethe attempt of the Church to correct him.

The thesisin question is that if a pope were a formal heretic in this sense, he wouldcease to be a Catholic, and thus cease to be pope, since a non-Catholic cannotbe a pope.  But as Ihave argued elsewhere, no one has succeeded in showing that PopeFrancis is a formal heretic.  So the thesisthat he might have lost his office due to formal heresy is moot.  But even if he were a formal heretic, thematter is still nowhere near as straightforward as sedevacantists suppose.  For one thing, the thesis that a pope couldlose his office for formal heresy is not a teaching of the Church, but atheological opinion, nothing more. Whether a pope really could become a formal heretic, and, if so, whetherhe would lose his office, are matters that have been debated but never settled,either by theologians or by the Church. 

Here is whatVan Noort says on the matter:

Thus far we have been discussing Catholic teaching.  It may be useful to add a fewpoints about purely theological opinions…Theologians disagree… over the question of whether the pope can become a formalheretic by stubbornly clinging to anerror on a matter already defined.  Themore probable and respectful opinion, followed by Suárez, Bellarmine and manyothers, holds that just as God has not till this day ever permitted such athing to happen, so too he never will permit a pope to become a formal andpublic heretic.  Still, some competenttheologians do concede that the pope when not speaking ex cathedra could fallinto formal heresy.  They add that shouldsuch a case of public papal heresy occur, the pope, either by the very deeditself or at least by a subsequent decision of an ecumenical council, would bydivine law forfeit his jurisdiction. Obviously a man could not continue to be the head of the Church if heceased to be even a member of the Church. (pp. 293-94)

Salaverriand Nicolau write: “Theologians concede that a general Council can licitlydeclare a Pope heretical, if this case is possible, but not to depose himauthoritatively since he is superior to the Council, unless it is clearlycertain that he is a doubtful Pope” (p. 217).

Note firstthat both manuals are tentative about whether it really is even possible for apope to become a formal heretic, though some theologians do allow that this ispossible.  There are two lessons to drawfrom this that are relevant for present purposes.  The first is that the Church does permittheologians to entertain and debate the possibility that a pope may not onlyerr, but even fall into formal heresy.  This is important for properly understandingthe doctrine of papal infallibility, because it shows that the Church is veryfar from claiming that everything apope might say on matters of faith or morals is infallible.  Second, though, the common opinion is thateven if a formally heretical pope is possible in theory, it is highly unlikelythat divine Providence would allow this ever in fact to occur.  And this reinforces a point that should beobvious in any event, which is that a Catholic ought to be extremely cautious about accusing a pope of formal heresy, asopposed to some lesser degree of error. 

But it is,in any event, not up to just any old Catholic with a stack of theology manualsand a Twitter account to make this determination.  Note that the manuals make reference to theaction of a council against a popeguilty of formal heresy.  For to whomdoes the task fall to warn a pope that he is in danger of such heresy?  And who has the authority to decide that,after having been warned to no avail, his heresy is obstinate and thus has infact passed from being material to being formal?  If just any old Catholic could claim theright to do this, the result would be precisely the sort of chaos that theinstitution of an authoritative hierarchical Church is supposed toprevent.  Hence the common view is that, if a pope were to fall into formalheresy and if he were to lose hisoffice as a result, the latter could only occur after some authoritativeecclesiastical body had made the juridicaldetermination that he had in fact fallen into formal heresy and ipso facto lost his office.

Yet eventhis, as Ihave argued elsewhere, would by no means solve all the problems thatarise in such a scenario.  And thisreinforces the point that we are dealing here not with any actual teaching of theChurch, but with highly controversial and problematic theological theories,albeit ones the Church permits us to speculate about.  And it is merely on such speculative theories, rather than on official Catholic doctrine,that the sedevacantist position is grounded. 

Ex cathedra heresy?

So far wehave been discussing papal teaching that is not presented in the first place asif it were an irrevocable ex cathedrapronouncement.  But what if a popeattempted to teach some heresy in an excathedra way?  Is this possible evenin theory?  Sometimes Catholics saythings to the effect that were a pope ever to try to do this, God would strikehim dead before he could carry it out. Interestingly, though, Scheeben treats the matter as being morecomplicated than that.  He writes:

Infallibility in itself does notabsolutely rule out the possibility that the judge oflast resort may place… a formally invalid act of judgment.  In this sense, therefore, many theologians inthe Scholastic period were able to deem the judicial infallibility of the popeconsistent with the possibility that he, out of wantonness or fear, might placepersonal acts, even with the claim of his authority, which should not beregarded at the same time as acts of his authority or of his See and hence,without prejudice to the infallibility of the latter, could be erroneous.

Those theologians considered… thesole [hypothetical] case of obvious and absolute temerity the one in which thepope would attempt to define a notorious heresy, or, what amounts to the same thing, to reject a notoriousdogma that is held withoutdoubt by the entire Church and thus to require the whole Church to abandon herfaith; for in this case, they said, the pope would behave not as a shepherd but as a wolf, not as a teacher but as a madman, whileon the other hand the Church or the episcopate could and would have to rise upimmediately as one against the pope, although we could not say thatshe was rising up over or even merely against papal authority; rather she would rise up only against the arbitrariness of the person whohitherto had possessed the papal authority, but plainly through thequestionable act renounced it and relieved himself of it. (p. 310)

WhatScheeben appears to have in mind by a “notoriousheresy” or the “reject[ion of] a notorious dogma” is the explicit denial ofsomething manifestly previously definedas irreformable doctrine.  And by the“attempt to define” such a heresy, Scheeben seems to have in mind a case wherea pope issued a decree like the following: “Using my full authority assuccessor of Peter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declareand define by a solemn and irrevocable decree that Jesus of Nazareth was notthe Son of God,” or something similarly manifestly heretical. 

Scheebendoes not claim that Providence might ever in fact allow such a thing, but hedoes discuss it as an abstract possibility that would not be strictly ruled outby the doctrine of papal infallibility. But how could it not be ruled out? Scheeben’s view (or at least, the view of the Scholastic theologians hehas in mind) is that such an act would be “formally invalid” precisely because it would manifestly conflictwith previously defined dogma.  The ideaseems to be that among the conditions on an excathedra definition is that it be logically consistent with previousdefinitions.  After all, when proclaimingpapal infallibility and setting out the conditions on ex cathedra pronouncements, Vatican I explicitly says that:

The Holy Spirit was promised to thesuccessors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known somenew doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard andfaithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by theapostles.

The positionScheeben is describing, then, would seem to be that an attempt to define amanifest heresy ex cathedra would bea kind of misfire, a failure right from the get-go to fulfill a basic conditionon making an ex cathedra definition –just as a failure explicitly to speak in one’s capacity as pope, or a failureto manifest one’s intention actually to define a doctrine irrevocably, would bea failure to fulfill the conditions on an excathedra pronouncement.  (In thisrespect, the position Scheeben is describing would be analogous to Fr. ThomasWeinandy’s thesis about the conditions on magisterial teaching more generally,which I discussed in arecent post.)

Some mightobject to this position (as some have objected to Fr. Weinandy’s thesis) thatit amounts to an appeal to “private judgment,” the very thing Catholicscriticize Protestants for.  For if aCatholic were to judge some papal definition heretical, wouldn’t this preciselybe to rely on his own judgment rather than that of the Church?

But thisobjection rests on a crude misunderstanding of the notion of “private judgment.”  The Church has never claimed that we have no understanding at all of scripture,tradition, or past papal teaching apart from what the current pope happens tosay about it.  And such a claim would bemanifestly false.  You don’t need thepope to tell you, for example, that scripture teaches that God created theuniverse, that he made a covenant with Israel through Moses, that Jesus claimedto be the Son of God, and so on. Non-Catholics no less than Catholics can know that much just from reading the Bible and noting how it has alwaysbeen understood for millennia.  It’s notas if the text is just a bunch of unintelligible squiggles that we can makeabsolutely no sense of unless the current pope tells us: “This is what thissquiggle means, this is what that squiggle means, etc.” 

What theMagisterium of the Church is needed for is to settle matters that go beyond what the text has always beenunderstood to say – finer points of interpretation, implications for doctrinalcontroversies, applications to current problems, and so on.  For example, it is open to the Church to say:“This is what divine creation of the universe amounts to,” or “Here is theright way to reconcile this passage with that one.”  It is notopen to the Church to say: “Actually, God did not create the universe afterall,” or “It turns out that we’ve always been misunderstanding scripture whenwe took it to be saying that God created the universe.” 

To deny thiswould be to empty of all content theChurch’s claim to her own infallibility. It would be to say, out of one side of one’s mouth, that the Churchalways teaches in accord with scripture and tradition – but then, out of the otherside, effectively to take this back by saying that if the Church ends upcontradicting some teaching that has always been regarded as part of scriptureand tradition, then it must not reallyhave been part of scripture and tradition after all.  That would be an instance of what is known inlogic as a “No true Scotsman” fallacy.  Itwould make the Church’s claim to infallibility unfalsifiable.

Furthermore,as Ihave shown at length elsewhere, the Church has always acknowledgedthat it can in some cases be legitimate respectfully to criticize popes, evenon doctrinal matters.  The Church couldnot have done so if every criticismof papal teaching necessarily amounted to “private judgment.”

So, Scheebenis correct to hold that, if a pope were to try to define ex cathedra a claim like “Jesus of Nazareth was not the Son ofGod,” that would be a manifest heresy, and it would not amount to “privatejudgment” to say so.  On the contrary, itwould be precisely to adhere, not to one’s own private judgment, but to whatthe Magisterium itself has in the past always insisted is irreformableteaching.

But nowanother objection to Scheeben’s thesis (or rather, the thesis he isentertaining) might arise.  For doesn’tthis thesis itself also make thedoctrine of papal infallibility unfalsifiable? For doesn’t it amount to saying that popes always speak infallibly whenmaking an ex cathedra pronouncement –but then going on to insist that if they do utter some error in what purportsto be an ex cathedra pronouncement,it must not really have been an ex cathedra pronouncement after all?

But that isnot in fact what Scheeben says.  What hesays is that if a pope attempts to define excathedra some “notorious heresy,”then in that sort of case it wouldnot amount to a genuine ex cathedraact but rather only to a failed attempt at such an act.  Again, he evidently has in mind cases where apope would deny some doctrine that has manifestlybeen formally defined by the Churchas irreformable doctrine (for example, the teaching that Jesus is the Son ofGod).  But Scheeben does not addresscases where a pope might attempt to define excathedra some heresy that is notnotorious or blatant, but more subtle.  Andhere, one might argue, is where the doctrine of papal infallibility might openitself to falsification even if one accepts the thesis discussed by Scheeben.

Here wouldbe an example.  Suppose a pope were toattempt to make an ex cathedradefinition like one of the following: “Using my full authority as successor ofPeter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare and define bya solemn and irrevocable decree that the death penalty is intrinsically evil,” or “Using my full authority as successor ofPeter and universal teacher of all the faithful, I hereby declare and define bya solemn and irrevocable decree that same-sex sexual activity can be morallyacceptable.” 

Suchpronouncements would not contradict any past formal doctrinal definition – a previous ex cathedra papal pronouncement, a conciliar definition, or thelike.  But they would manifestly contradict the clear and consistent teaching ofscripture and of the ordinary magisterium of the Church for two millennia.  And the Church holds that scripture and theconsistent teaching of the ordinary magisterium cannot be in error on a matterof faith or morals.  Hence, if a popeattempted to make an ex cathedrapronouncement of one of the kinds just described, he would clearly be teachingerror.

Hence, Iwould say, if a pope were to make such a pronouncement, that would falsify the doctrine of papal infallibility.  And I am myself not inclined to agree withthe thesis entertained by Scheeben either. That is to say, I am inclined to say that, if a pope tried to define ex cathedra a “notorious heresy” likethe claim that Jesus was not the Son of God, that too would falsify thedoctrine of papal infallibility.

Since I haveno doubt that that doctrine is true, I would predict that such a thing will neverin fact happen.  The doctrine isfalsifiable in the sense that it makes substantive empirical claims that can betested against experience.  But it haspassed every such test for two millennia, and will continue to do so.

Relatedposts:

Whendo popes teach infallibly?

Popes,heresy, and papal heresy

Whatcounts as magisterial teaching?

TheChurch permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Aquinason St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter

Papalfallibility

Theerror and condemnation of Pope Honorius

CanPope Honorius be defended?

What counts as magisterial teaching?

Popes speakinfallibly when they either proclaim some doctrine ex cathedra, or reiterate some doctrine that has already beentaught infallibly by virtue of being a consistent teaching of the ordinarymagisterium of the Church for millennia. Even when papal teaching is not infallible, it is normally owed“religious assent.”  However, the Churchrecognizes exceptions.  The instruction DonumVeritatis , issued during the pontificate of St. John Paul II,acknowledges that “it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not befree from all deficiencies” so that “a theologian may, according to the case,raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents ofmagisterial interventions.”  Donum Veritatis explicitly distinguishessuch respectful criticism from “dissent” from perennial Church teaching.

The clearestsort of case where such criticism would be justifiable would be if a popehimself says something that appears to conflict with the Church’s traditionalteaching.  This has happened a handful oftimes in Church history, the clearest examples involving PopeHonorius I and Pope John XXII.  TheChurch has always acknowledged that in these rare cases, it can be justifiablefor the faithful respectfully to reprove a pope.  I have written on this matter elsewhere (hereand here)and direct the interested reader to those articles.

Severaldocuments issued during the pontificate of Pope Francis have, according to hiscritics, exhibited “deficiencies” of precisely the sort Donum Veritatis says can be criticized in this way.  There is, for instance, Amoris Laetitia, which appears to allow, in some cases, absolutionand Holy Communion for those in invalid marriages who are sexually active andlack firm purpose of amendment.  There isthe 2018 revision to the Catechism, which gives the impression that the deathpenalty is intrinsically wrong when it characterizes it as “an attack on theinviolability and dignity of the person.” Most recently, there is FiduciaSupplicans, which allows for blessings for same-sex and adulterouscouples.  In these particular respects,these documents appear to conflict with the traditional teaching of the Church.

I havewritten on these controversial documents elsewhere, and what I want to addresshere is a different issue.  Suppose oneor more of these magisterial statements is indeed problematic in just the waysthe critics allege.  It seems that whatwe would have in that case is magisterial teaching that is, to borrow thelanguage of Donum Veritatis,“deficient.”  But in arecent article at The Catholic Thing,Fr. Thomas Weinandy has proposed what appears to be an alternativeinterpretation.  Commenting on Fiducia Supplicans, he suggests thatsuch deficient teaching is not truly magisterial after all, and for that reasonnot binding on the faithful.  Here is therelevant passage:

St. John Henry Newman providescriteria for judging what is true and what is erroneous doctrinal development(a “corruption”)… Newman presumed that all pontifical teaching or teaching frombishops concerning doctrine and morals is magisterial.  I propose that any pontifical teaching orteaching from bishops that overtly and deliberately contradicts the perennialteaching of previous councils and pontiffs is not magisterial teaching,precisely because it does not accord with past magisterial doctrinal teaching.

The pope or a bishop may be, byvirtue of his office, a member of the magisterium, but his teaching, if itcontradicts the received previous magisterial teaching, is notmagisterial.  Such false teaching simplyfails to meet the necessary criteria.  Itpossesses no ecclesial authoritative credentials.  Rather, it is simply an ambiguous or flawedstatement that attempts or pretends to be magisterial, when it’s not.

Endquote.  This might at first glance seemodd.  If teaching on faith or morals ispresented by the magisterium of the Church, isn’t it, by that very fact, magisterial in nature?  But it seems to me that what Fr. Weinandy isgetting at can be illuminated by way of an analogy with what St. Thomas Aquinassays about the nature of law.  Aquinasfamously distinguishes several kinds of law, the two most relevant for presentpurposes being natural law and human law.  The natural law, of course, has to do with morallybinding precepts grounded in human nature and discoverable by unaided reason.  Human law, by contrast, is man-made ratherthan discovered or grounded in nature. 

But humanlaw is necessary in order to give precision to the application of naturallaw.  For example, we can know by naturallaw that it is wrong to steal or damage someone else’s property.  But how exactly to determine what counts as another person’s property canin some cases be difficult.  For example,if someone homesteads some piece of land, how deep under the ground do hisproperty rights extend?  How much of theairspace above the land does he have a right to control?  Does he have the right to drain stormwateronto adjacent land, or to prevent it from draining onto his own?  And so on. Human law is needed in order to resolve such questions so that propertyowners can know what they can reasonably expect of one another and how toresolve disputes between them.  To theextent that human law applies and extends the natural law in such a way, it isbinding on us, just as natural law is.

However,such law is binding on us only tothat extent.  Indeed, for Aquinas,strictly speaking, it doesn’t even countas law if it is not consistent with natural law.  He writes: “Every humanly made law has thecharacter of law to the extent that it stems from the law of nature.  On the other hand, if a humanly made lawconflicts with the natural law, then it is no longer a law, but a corruption oflaw” (Summa Theologiae I-II.95.2, Freddosotranslation).  And since it is not law,it lacks the binding force of law. Suppose, for example, that some purported law was passed by Congress thatpermitted people to steal the property of those of some particular race orethnicity, or abolished private property altogether.  Because such a measure would positivelycontradict the natural law, it would on Aquinas’s analysis not count as agenuine law at all, and for that reason no one would be bound to obey it.

Law, on thisunderstanding, cannot properly be understood except teleologically, by reference to the end or purpose it serves. Human law, to be true law, must facilitate the application of the naturallaw.  Hence, when it deviates from thisend, it fails to be true law.  It is insuch a case mere pseudo-law, or atbest a failed attempt at law.  Attempting to make such laws is likeattempting to make tea but forgetting to put the teabag into the hot water, orby running the water through coffee grounds. Even if the person making it intendedit to be tea or even thinks of itas tea, the result will not in fact be tea.

Thisanalysis, as I say, gives us an analogy by which we can understand Fr.Weinandy’s thesis.  Like human law,magisterial acts have a teleology, anend or purpose for which they exist and apart from which they cannot properlybe understood.  That purpose is to conveythe deposit of faith, draw out its implications, and apply them to concretecircumstances.  When they facilitate thatpurpose, we have genuine magisterial teaching. But should some act, even an act by a pope, be contrary to that end,then the result cannot be a genuine magisterial act, any more than a human lawthat contradicts the natural law can be a true law, or any more than hot waterrun through coffee grounds can be true tea.

Suppose, forexample, that a pope were to teach that Christ had only one will, as PopeHonorius appeared to do in the letter that led to his condemnation for aidingand abetting the Monothelite heresy.  OnFr. Weinandy’s interpretation, the correct thing to say is not that this was agenuinely magisterial act, albeit one that was in error.  The correct thing to say is that this was not a genuinely magisterial act, butrather at best a failed attempt atcarrying out a magisterial act.  It was akind of misfire, because a truly magisterial act always facilitates conveying thedeposit of faith, and Honorius’s act did the contrary of that.  In Fr. Weinandy’s view, the novel teaching inFiducia Supplicans is anothermisfire, an attempt at a magisterialact that fails insofar as it is contrary to the deposit of faith.

I wouldsuggest that yet another way to understand Fr. Weinandy’s position is that heis, in effect, interpreting the word “magisterial” as what philosopher GilbertRyle called a “success word.”  A successword is a word that describes an act or state that must be successful if it isto be carried out or exist at all.  Forexample, if you can be said genuinely to have proved something or to knowit, then it must in fact be true.  Youcan’t really have known something that turns out to be false, but at most onlyhave thought that you knew it.  Nor can you prove something that is false,but at most only try to proveit.  By contrast, “believe” is not asuccess word, because you can believe something even if it is in fact false.

“Magisterial,”on this interpretation, is also a success word. If some thesis is in fact contrary to the deposit of faith, then itcannot be genuinely magisterial, any more than a false statement can be knownor proved.  At most it can wrongly be thought to be or intended as magisterial, just as you can think you know or intendto prove something that is in fact false.

If it seemsbold to say that the Church can in some cases attempt a magisterial act and yetfail, it is worth pointing out that there is a sense in which Fr. Weinandy’sthesis is actually less bold thanwhat Donum Veritatis itselfsays.  For again, Donum Veritatis says that it is possible for “magisterial documents”and “magisterial interventions” to be “deficient” even with respect to their “contents,”and not just their form or timeliness, and for that reason open to legitimate criticismby theologians.  This seems to imply thata thesis can be genuinely magisterialand yet nevertheless mistaken and open to correction by the faithful.  Fr. Weinandy’s positon, by contrast, impliesthat a genuinely magisterial act cannot be mistaken or open to suchcorrection.  Whatever one thinks of hisposition, it is hard to see how it is in any way less respectful of magisterialauthority than Donum Veritatis is.

A comment on comments

Dear reader,if it seems your comment has not been approved, sometimes it actually has been approved even if you don’t see it.  The reason is that once a combox reaches 200comments, the Blogger software will not show any new comments made after thatunless you click “Load more…” at the bottom of the comments page.  The trouble is that this is in small printand easily overlooked.  In the screen capabove, I’ve circled in red what you should look for.

Occasionally,your comment does not appear because it has notbeen approved.  Sometimes this is becausethe comment is too off-topic.  Most of thetime, it is because the comment is nothing more than a drive-by insult or thelike, or is blasphemous or obscene. Those are never let through if I notice them.  Sometimes obnoxious comments are let throughif they are not too egregious and there is also a more substantive point madein the comment.  But I ask readers kindlyto refrain from sophomoric squabbles and the like.

Finally, sometimesyour comment has not appeared simply because it takes me a while to get toapproving comments.  I’m trying to bemore speedy on that, sorry.

Avicenna, Aquinas, and Leibniz on the argument from contingency

Avicenna,Aquinas, and Leibniz all present versions of what would today be called the argument from contingency for theexistence of a divine necessary being. Their versions are interestingly different, despite Aquinas’s havingbeen deeply influenced by Avicenna and Leibniz’s having been familiar with Aquinas.  I think all three of them are good arguments,though I won’t defend them here.  Idiscussed Avicenna’s argument in anearlier post.  I defendAquinas’s in my book Aquinas ,at pp. 90-99.  I defend Leibniz’s inchapter 5 of my book FiveProofs of the Existence of God . Here I merely want to compare and contrast the arguments.

Because Iwant to focus on what I take to be the main thrust of each of the argumentsrather get bogged down in exegetical details, I will offer my own paraphrasesof the arguments rather than quote directly from any of these thinkers’ texts.

Here are thethree arguments.  Avicenna’s is from the Najāt, and can be paraphrased asfollows:

At least one thing exists.  It has to be either necessary orcontingent.  If it’s necessary, thenthere’s a necessary being, and our conclusion is established.  But suppose it is contingent.  Then it requires a cause.  Suppose that cause is a further contingentthing, and that that further contingent thing has yet another contingent thingas its own cause, and so on to infinity. Then we have a collection of contingent things.  That collection will itself be eithernecessary or contingent.  But it can’t benecessary, since its existence is contingent on the existence of itsmembers.  So, the collection must becontingent, and in that case it too must have a cause.  That cause is either itself a part of thecollection, or it is outside it.  But itcan’t be part of the collection, because if it were, then as cause of the wholecollection, it would be the cause of itself.  And nothing can cause itself.  So, the cause of the collection of contingentthings must be outside the collection. But if it is outside that collection, it must be necessary.  So, there is a necessary being.

Aquinas’sversion is the third of his famous Five Ways in the Summa Theologiae.  It can beparaphrased as follows:

Some things are contingent in nature,as is evident from the fact that they come into existence and go out ofexistence.  Such things can’t existforever, since whatever is contingent, and thus is capable of failing to exist,will in fact at some point fail to exist. So, if everything was contingent, then at some point nothing would haveexisted.  But if there was ever a timewhen nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, since there would in thatcase be nothing around to cause new things to come into existence.  But things do exist now.  So, not everything can be contingent, and theremust be a necessary being.  Now, such athing might derive its necessity from another thing, or it might have itsnecessity of its own nature.  But therecouldn’t be a regress of things deriving their necessity from something elseunless it terminates in something having its necessity of its own nature.  So, there must be something which has itsnecessity of its own nature.

Leibniz’sversion is in the Monadology.  It might be paraphrased as follows:

For anything that exists, there mustbe a sufficient reason for its existence. In the case of the contingent things that make up the universe, thiscannot be found by appealing merely to other contingent things, even if theseries of contingent things being caused by other contingent things extendedbackward into the past without beginning. For in that case, we would still need a sufficient reason why the seriesas a whole exists.  But the series as awhole is no less contingent than the things that make it up.  So, the explanation cannot lie in the seriesitself.  A complete explanation orsufficient reason can be found only if there is a necessary being that is thesource of the world of contingent things. So, there must be such a necessary being.

Each of thesethinkers goes on to argue that, on analysis, it can be shown that the necessarybeing must have the key divine attributes, and therefore is God.  But I want to focus here just on thereasoning each argument gives for the existence of a necessary being.  And again, I won’t be defending the argumentshere, but just comparing them.  So Iwon’t say anything about how the arguments might be fleshed out or thereasoning made tighter, how various objections would be answered, and so on.

What do thearguments have in common?  First, they allrest, of course, on the distinction between contingent beings and necessarybeings, and argue that it cannot be that everything falls into the formerclass.  Second, they all reason causally to the necessary being as thesource of everything other than itself. Third, for that reason, they all have at least a minimal empirical component insofar as theyappeal to the contingent things we know through experience and argue from theirexistence to that of a necessary being.

A fourthsimilarity is that all three thinkers cash out the nature of the necessarybeing’s necessity in terms of the distinction between essence and existence.  Though, as my paraphrases indicate, this is adistinct step that does not and need not be stated in the argumentsthemselves.  Furthermore, our threephilosophers do not do this in quite the same way.  Avicenna, and Aquinas following him, holdthat the cause of things in which essence and existence are distinct must be anecessary being in which they are notdistinct.  Leibniz, however, does not saythat God’s essence is his existence,but that his essence includesexistence.  (This way of putting thingshas influenced much contemporary discussion – and not for the better, because itobscures the implications for divine simplicity that Avicenna's and Aquinas’s wayof speaking makes clear.)

A fifthsimilarity is that none of the three arguments either presupposes or assertsthat the universe had a beginning.  Allof them hold that the existence of a necessary being can be established even ifwe were to suppose that the world of contingent things has always been here.

A sixthsimilarity is that each of the arguments moves from a claim about contingentthings considered individually to a claim about contingent things consideredcollectively, albeit in different ways. For Avicenna, just as an individual contingent thing requires a cause,so too does the totality of contingent things require a cause.  For Aquinas, just as individual contingentthings must fail to exist at some point, so too must the collection ofcontingent things fail to exist at some point, at least if there were nonecessary being.  For Leibniz, just asindividual contingent things require an explanation outside them, so too doesthe collection of contingent things require an explanation outside it.

How do thearguments differ?  First some background.  Scholastic philosophers often distinguish physical from metaphysical arguments for God’s existence.  Physical arguments are those that proceedfrom facts about the concrete physical world as interpreted in light of thephilosophy of nature.  For example, Aquinas’sFirst Way is commonly interpreted as a physical argument because it begins withthe reality of motion, understood along Aristotelian lines.  Metaphysical arguments are those that proceedfrom more abstract considerations that are not tied to the physical world perse.  For example, Aquinas’s proof for God’sexistence in De Ente et Essentiabegins with the fact that there are things whose essence and existence aredistinct and argues that such things require a cause whose essence just issubsistent existence itself.  Since thereis an essence/existence distinction in angels no less than in material things,the argument does not depend on facts about the physical per se. 

Of the threearguments we’re considering here, Aquinas’s has a more physical cast than thoseof Avicenna and Leibniz.  For theobservation that material things come into being and pass away, and the claimthat material things individually and collectively would go out of existence givenenough time, play a big role in the argument, and these are points about thephysical qua physical. 

By contrast,Avicenna’s and Leibniz’s arguments have a more metaphysical cast.  Even if we take them at least to refer tophysical things, what they focus on is the contingencyof these things rather than anything specifically physical.  And angels, which are immaterial, are in asense contingent too, insofar as there is in them an essence/existence distinctionand thus the need for a cause which imparts existence to them.  (To be sure, there is for Aquinas also a sense in which angels are necessarybeings, since once they exist, there is nothing in the created order that candestroy them.  Still, they have to becreated by God, who could also annihilate them if he wills to.  Hence angels have only a derivative necessity rather than a strict necessity.  For that reason, they also have a kind ofcontingency.)

Hence, itseems that one could remove any reference to the physical as such from Avicenna’sand Leibniz’s arguments without altering their basic thrust.  Indeed, one could even remove any referenceto any actual specific contingent things and argue simply that if there are contingent things (whetheror not there really are any), they couldn’t be the only things that exist, for the reasons Avicenna and Leibnizgive.  Aquinas’s Third Way, by contrast,would be a very different sort of argument if the physical claims it makes wereremoved from it.

A seconddifference is that the notion of explanation,and with it the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), play an explicit role inLeibniz’s argument but not in Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s.  That is not to deny that Avicenna and Aquinasare at least implicitly committed to PSR, and that it lurks in the backgroundof their arguments, which are of course offering explanations.  But this is not thematized in theirarguments, the way it is in Leibniz. This reflects Leibniz’s distinctively rationalist approach to metaphysics.

Here’s oneway to understand the difference.  TheScholastics distinguish several “transcendentals,” attributes that apply to allthings of whatever category – being, truth, goodness, andso on.  These are taken to be “convertible,”the same thing looked at from different points of view.  For example, truth is being considered asintelligible, and goodness is being considered as desirable.  (I say a lot more about the transcendentalsin this article.) 

Avicenna’sand Aquinas’s arguments essentially consider reality under the guise of the transcendentalattribute of being.  The being of contingent things, they argue,must derive causally from the being of something that exists in an absolutely necessaryway.  Leibniz’s argument, by contrast,essentially considers reality under the transcendental attribute of truth. The intelligibility of contingentthings, he argues, presupposes a necessary being which is intelligible in itself rather than by reference to something else.

A thirddifference is that the impossibility of an infinite regress of a certain kindplays a role in Aquinas’s Third Way that finds no parallel in Avicenna’s andLeibniz’s arguments.  To be sure, and asI have said, none of the three arguments rules out the possibility of aninfinite temporal regress – a regressof what Aquinas would call “accidentally ordered” causes extending backwardinto the past.  None of them supposes ortries to establish that the world had a beginning.  But Aquinas’s argument does include thepremise that a series of beings that derive their necessity from something elsewould have to terminate in something that has its necessity of its own natureor built into it.  And here he isappealing to the impossibly of an infinite series of causes of what he calls an“essentially ordered” kind, also known as a hierarchicalcausal series.  (I discuss thedifference between these two kinds of causal series in many places, including Aquinas and Five Proofs.)

Any furtherdifferences between the three arguments seem to me to reflect these threefundamental differences.  And thedifferences are important, both because they capture different aspects ofreality, and because they entail that some objections that might seem to haveforce against one version of the argument from contingency will not necessarilyapply to other versions.  (Though, as Ihave indicated, I think each version can successfully be defended againstobjections.)

The heresy with a thousand faces

In anew article at Postliberal Order,I discuss the disturbing parallels between the woke phenomenon and the medievalCatharist or Albigensian heresy, a movement so fanatical and virulent that thepreaching of the Dominicans could not entirely eliminate it and Church andstate judged military action to be necessary.

Immortal souls at West Point

Had a greattime visiting the United States Military Academy at West Point this week for aThomistic Institute talk on the theme “Do You Have an Immortal Soul?” Thank youTI and cadets!

Voluntarism in The Vanishing

Thereputation of 1993’s The Vanishing has suffered because critics judge it inferior to the 1988 Dutch movie of whichit was a remake.  But considered on itsown terms, it is a solid enough little thriller.  Jeff Bridges is effectively creepy as theoddball family-man-cum-kidnapper Barney Cousins.  I had reason to re-watch the flick the otherday, and was struck by what I take to be an underlying theme of the contrastbetween voluntarist and intellectualist conceptions of humanaction.

Tooversimplify, intellectualism in the sense in question is the view that theintellect is prior to the will, whereas voluntarism holds that he will is priorto the intellect.  That is to say, forthe intellectualist, the will only ever wills what the intellect first judgesto be in some way good; whereas for the voluntarist, the will wills what it doesindependently of the intellect, and the intellect follows along for the ride.  The dispute is thus over whether it is ultimatelythe intellect or the will that is “in the driver’s seat” of human action.  Naturally, things are more complicated thanthat, but this characterization will do for present purposes.

Applied tothe issues of free will and moral responsibility, the dispute betweenvoluntarism and intellectualism cashes out in the difference between what theologianServais Pinckaers calls the “freedom of indifference” and “freedom forexcellence.”  On the former conception offree will, associated with Ockham, the will is of its nature indifferent towardthe various ends it might pursue, and thus is freer to the extent that it is atany moment equally capable of choosing anything.  The implication is that a will that isstrongly inclined to choose what is good rather than what is evil is less freethan a will that is not inclined in either direction.  By contrast, on the conception of free willas “freedom for excellence,” which is associated with Aquinas, the will isinherently directed toward the good in the sense that pursuit of the good isits final cause.  The implication is thatthe will is more free to the extent that it finds it easy to choose what isgood and less free to the extent that it does not.

How is thisrelevant to The Vanishing?  Let’s start with a brief summary of theplot.  (I’ll leave out the most crucialspoilers, for any readers who haven’t seen it.) The movie begins with Barney elaborately planning a kidnapping, forreasons that are only revealed later and made especially hard to fathom giventhat he otherwise seems like an ordinary, middle class loving father andhusband.  Meanwhile, we’re introduced to writerJeff Harriman and his girlfriend Diane (played by Kiefer Sutherland and SandraBullock, respectively) who are on vacation and stop at a large and busy gasstation, where Diane goes into the snack shop to pick up supplies.  After waiting in the car for an unusuallylong time, Jeff goes to look for Diane but can find her nowhere.  The employees, customers, and police all proveto be of no help in finding her, and she has vanished without a trace.

The moviethen flashes forward three years, and we find that Jeff has during that wholetime been looking for Diane without success. He has posted fliers with Diane’s picture all over the vicinity of thegas station, appeared on television to discuss the case, followed any lead hecan find, and repeatedly badgered the police, all to no avail.  The search has become an obsession, and hasexhausted him.  When he starts a newrelationship with a waitress named Rita (played by Nancy Travis) it seems hemay finally abandon the search.  But thenBarney, who has been following the case during this time, decides to contactJeff and reveal that he is the one who abducted Diane.  He promises Jeff that he can at long lastfind out exactly what happened to her, but only if he agrees to experience whatshe did – beginning with allowing Barney to drug Jeff with chloroform to knockhim out, just as he had drugged Diane. 

I’ll leaveit to the interested reader to watch the movie and find out what happens.  The relevance to voluntarism is this.  When explaining to Jeff why he did what hedid, Barney begins by describing actions he had performed through the course ofhis life despite their being dangerous. One of them involved saving a drowning girl, which had made Barney ahero in the eyes of his daughter.  Butrather than gratifying Barney, his daughter’s admiration troubled him.  He worried that he could not be worthy ofbeing thought by her to be a good man unless he was just as capable of doinggreat evil as he was of doing good.  And so he decided that he would prove tohimself that he was capable of such evil by doing the worst thing he couldthink of to another person – which turned out to be Diane (and where we findout exactly what he did to her by the end of the movie).

Barney’stale reveals, first, a fixation on the power of the will.  He recounts jumping off a roof as a boy eventhough he knew it was dangerous, and indeed resulted in him breaking his arm.  Throughout the movie he is almost alwaysunflappable even in moments of distress, as when he suffers a serious beatingwith equanimity.  But the truly voluntaristelement is his apparent belief that a praiseworthy action could only flow from somethinglike what Pinckaers calls the “freedom of indifference” – that is to say, from awill that was not in any way aimed at the good more than at anything else, butopted for it anyway.  This, it seems tome, is the best way to make sense of Barney’s claim that he could only beworthy of praise for his good action of saving the girl if he was no lesscapable of an evil action like what he does to Diane.  The kidnapping was, in effect, his way ofproving to himself that he did indeed possess the “freedom of indifference.”

Had he not been able to bring himself to dosuch an evil thing, and had he saved the little girl because of an inclination towardbenevolence, this would have been perfectly consistent with what Pinckaerscalls the “freedom for excellence,” and would have been morally praiseworthy onthat conception of freedom.  Barney’sdissatisfaction with himself evinces an implicit rejection of this conception andof its implications concerning what makes a person praiseworthy.  But neither do his actions flow from any positiveinclination towards sadism, nor from a rejection of moral norms.  He is portrayed as, in general, a pleasantenough person.  And he acknowledges thatit is just for Jeff to want Barney harmed for what he has done.  He never evinces the slightest enjoyment ofcausing others pain.  All his actions areperformed in the bloodless manner of a scientific experiment (and indeed, it isrevealed that Barney is a chemistry professor). He simply wants to make of his will something capable of anything. 

Only a goodaction that flows from this kind ofwill is, he thinks, praiseworthy, and the reason seems to be that he thinksonly this kind of action would flow from the sheer arbitrary freedom of the will alone rather than from anynatural sentiment of benevolence or from a respect for rational criteria.  This is, to be sure, a curious conception offreedom and moral praiseworthiness, and quite perverse (indeed, depraved) fromthe point of view of an intellectualist like Aquinas.  But reading Barney as implicitly committed toa conception of freedom as the “freedom of indifference” makes intelligiblewhat might otherwise seem a simply bizarre and incoherent character motivation.

If Barneytakes the voluntarist emphasis on the will to an extreme, there is also a sensein which the other main character, Jeff, can be said to take theintellectualist emphasis on the intellect to an extreme.  His new girlfriend Rita grows increasinglyfrustrated with his inability to overcome his obsession with findingDiane.  She is, more than anything,jealous of this lost former girlfriend she has to compete with.  Jeff explains that Rita is the one he loves,and that romantic longing no longer has anything to do with his obsession withfinding Diane.  It is not knowing that bothers him.  He admits that if he had a choice between twoscenarios, one in which Diane is alive somewhere and happy but he never findsout what happened, and one in which he does find out but she is dead, he wouldprefer the latter.  Whereas Barney hasmade himself into a blind will divorced from intellect and its standards oftruth and goodness, Jeff has made himself into an intellect obsessed withattaining a certain piece of knowledge to the exclusion of willing what is infact good. 

Related posts:

Popculture roundup [where you’ll find other pretentious philosophical analysesof movies, music, comics, and the like]

Voluntarismand PSR

Thevoluntarist personality

Avicenna’s flying man

PeterAdamson’s new book IbnSīnā (Avicenna): A Very Short Introduction is an excellentprimer on the great medieval Islamic philosopher.  After a biographical chapter, it treatsAvicenna’s views on logic and epistemology, philosophical anthropology,science, and natural theology, and closes with a discussion of his influence onlater philosophy and theology.  Among thethings readers will find useful is the book’s discussion of Avicenna’s famous“flying man” argument.  Let’s take alook.

The flyingman thought experiment is one of the means (not the only one) by which Avicennaaims to establish the incorporeality of the human soul.  He presents it at the end of the firstchapter of his treatment of the topic of the soul in his work The Cure.  One place you can find the relevant passageis Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman’s anthology ClassicalArabic Philosophy, which translates it as follows:

For the purposes of establishing theexistence of the soul… [I]t has to be imagined as though one of us were createdwhole in an instant but his sight is veiled from directly observing the thingsof the external world.  He is created asthough floating in air or in a void but without the air supporting him in sucha way that he would have to feel it, and the limbs of his body are stretchedout and away from one another, so they do not come into contact or touch.  Then he considers whether he can assert theexistence of his self.  He has no doubtsabout asserting his self as something that exists without also [having to]assert the existence of any of his exterior or interior parts, his heart, hisbrain, or anything external.  He will, infact, be asserting the existence of his self without asserting that it haslength, breadth, or depth, and, if it were even possible for him in such a stateto imagine a hand or some other extremity, he would not imagine it as a part ofhis self or as a necessary condition of his self...  Thus, the self whose existence he asserted ishis unique characteristic...  Thus, what[the reader] has been alerted to is a way to be made alert to the existence ofthe soul as something that is not the body – nor in fact any body. (pp. 178-79)

The basicidea of the thought experiment is as follows. A man who comes into existence in the bizarre circumstances Avicennadescribes would have no sensory experiences. For one thing, he has from the start somehow been suspended in midair, ina manner that does not involve even the air pushing against him – perhaps bymiraculous divine action.  Hence he hasnever experienced external physical objects exerting any pressure on hisskin.  Because his arms, legs, fingers,etc. are all spread out away from one another, he also has not felt even hisown body parts pressing against him. Because he is veiled (presumably in a manner that does not involve aveil making contact with his body) he has never seen anything.  Presumably his ears, nose, and tongue aresimilarly prevented from being affected by any stimuli.  Hence he has no awareness of any physicalobject, not even his own body.  AsAdamson notes, while some might object that such a man would still have proprioceptiveexperiences of his limbs, it is not difficult to extend the thought experimentin a way that would prevent that.  Wecould imagine, for example, that the miraculous suspension of the normal operationof the relevant nerves is a further part of the situation. 

Now, the manwould, Avicenna claims, nevertheless have awareness of himself.  He would know that he exists, even though he would not know that his body exists, and indeed would not know that any physical world atall exists.  In that case, though, hemust be distinct from his body andfrom anything corporeal.  For if he werecorporeal, how could he know he exists without knowing that anything corporealexists?

Parallels to Avicenna?

I’ll comeback to some of the remarks Adamson makes about the argument, but first let memake some observations of my own.  Avicenna’sargument might seem similar to arguments later developed in the Cartesiandualist tradition.  For example, in hisSixth Meditation, Descartesargues that he could in principle exist without his body existing, if Godwilled to create him that way.  And in hisbook Engines of the Soul, W.D. Hart argues that it is possible in principle for a person to have visualexperiences while lacking a body, in which case it is possible for a person toexist without a body.

However,Avicenna’s argument is importantly different, in several respects.  First, Avicenna emphasizes that the man inhis thought experiment has had no sensoryexperiences at all.  By contrast,Hart’s argument involves a disembodied person who does have such experiences. And at least earlier in the Meditations,in Meditation One, Descartes suggests that it is possible for someone to havesensory experiences even in the absence of the existence of his body or of anymaterial world at all, if a Cartesian demon caused a disembodied mind to hallucinate. 

Second, the keypremise of Avicenna’s argument is epistemic,whereas the key premises of the Cartesian arguments mentioned are ontological.  Descartes and Hart start with the idea thatit is possible for the self to existwithout the body, and conclude from that that the self is distinct from thebody.  Avicenna starts with the idea thatone can know the self without knowing the body, and concludes fromthat that the self is distinct from the body.

Third, andrelatedly, the thought experiments Descartes and Hart appeal to presuppose thatthe self could in fact exist apart from the body, whereas Avicenna’s thoughtexperiment does not.  That is not to saythat Avicenna doesn’t think the self could survive without the body, but onlythat that would be a further conclusionof the argument rather than a presuppositionof the argument. 

The reasonthese differences are important is that they make Avicenna’s argument immune tocertain objections that might be raised against Descartes and Hart.  First, one might question the assumption thatsensory experience really is possible without a body.  If that assumption is wrong, then Hart’sargument will fail (though whether Descartes’s argument would fail will dependon how seriously Descartes wants us to take the Cartesian demon scenario).  But Avicenna’s argument makes no suchassumption. 

Second, becausethey presuppose that it is possible for the self to exist apart from the body,Descartes and Hart might be accused of begging the question.  They are trying to get from the possibility of the self existing apartfrom the body to the real distinctionbetween self and body.  But a critic canobject that the claim that it is possible for the self to exist apart from thebody presupposes that there is adistinction between self and body, and thus can hardly cogently be appealed toin order to establish such adistinction.  Avicenna is not open tosuch an objection.

If we arelooking for arguments from the tradition that are similar to Avicenna’s, itseems to me that a more plausible parallel is to be found in some arguments earlier than his, which were developedby St. Augustine in On the Trinity.  Augustineheld that the mind can know its own essence with certainty, but does notknow with certainty that corporeality is part of its essence.  Hence, he concludes, corporeality is not partof the mind’s essence.  He also held thatthe mind can know itself without the mediation of any imagery, but cannot knowmaterial things that way, and concluded that the mind must not be material.

Augustine’sand Avicenna’s arguments are similar, then, in starting with what the mind knows or doesn’t know about itself andabout material things, and from this epistemic premise drawing a conclusionabout the distinction between the mind and anything material.  The key difference is that Avicenna appealsto a novel thought experiment in order to make his point about what the mindknows.

Some objections

As Adamsonnotes, one objection that can be raised against Avicenna’s argument would be todeny that the flying man really would or could know of his own existence.  One could hold that it is only after the mind has had some perceptualexperiences that it comes to know itself, by way of reflecting on thoseexperiences.  Note that one can hold thison the basis of the moderate empiricism of Aristotle and Aquinas, withoutcommitting oneself to the more extreme modern empiricism of Locke and hissuccessors.  And as that indicates, onecould hold this without rejecting Avicenna’s conclusion that the mind isincorporeal, but only the flying man argument’s particular way of arriving atthat conclusion.

Adamson alsonotes that Avicenna’s argument has to be understood in light of his broaderepistemological commitments, which include the thesis that the self is alwaysat least tacitly aware of itself.  I findthese broader commitments dubious, but for present purposes will simply notethat the need to defend them in order to get the flying man argument off theground at the very least makes it a considerably less punchy argument than itmight appear to be at first glance.

Anotherobjection noted by Adamson is that to know one’s self without knowing one’sbody does not by itself entail thatthe self is different from the body, any more than the fact that Lois Laneknows that Clark Kent is at the DailyPlanet without knowing that Superman is there entails that Clark Kent isdifferent from Superman.  Adamsonsuggests that one way Avicenna could reply to this would be to argue that toknow a thing’s essence, specifically,requires knowing its essential constituents. If we say that the flying man knows his essence while not knowinganything about his body, then the body cannot be among the self’s essentialconstituents.

Thisinterpretation of the argument underlines its parallels with Augustine’sarguments.  I refer the reader to mydiscussion of those arguments, which is not unsympathetic even though theyare not my own preferred way of establishing the mind’s immateriality. 

Related reading:

Avicenna’sargument from contingency, Part I

Avicenna’sargument from contingency, Part II

Avicennaon non-contradiction