A Living Thomism

Chapter IV of
THE SPIRIT OF THOMISM
Etienne Gilson
New York, 1964

Is there a future in sight for Thomism, and, if there is one, what kind of future could it be?

There are many obstacles on Thomism’s road to success. The first is its religious inspiration. The difficulty is so obvious that ever since the fourteenth century many Thomists have attempted to separate the philosophical from the religious in the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. They hoped to provide a Thomistic philosophy completely distinct from Thomistic theology.

Their intention was good; but if what I have said in the preceding lectures is true, the attempt was doomed to failure. True enough, Thomas has introduced a clear-cut distinction between reason and faith, philosophy and theology. But far from inferring from this distinction that they should be kept apart, Thomas always thought that the best thing for them to do was to live in a sort of symbiosis in which each profited from its association with the other. I know that many philosophers refuse to have anything to do with religion, but that does not prove that they are right, even as philosophers. At any rate, I also know that, judged from the point of view of the spirit of Thomism, they are certainly wrong.

What should we do then to make Thomism acceptable to such men? The answer is simple: we should teach it as it is. There is for us no other choice, at least if it is Thomism that we want to teach. Of course we cannot cause men to believe in the truth of revelation, but Thomas does not think we should worry about that. However intimately associated with faith it may be in our own mind, our philosophy, as philosophy, stands on its own merits. Perfected in us by faith, natural reason can help others to perceive the reasonableness of faith, and that is what Thomas Aquinas was hoping his theology would achieve: “For though it is not in our power to know by ourselves the things of faith, nevertheless, if we do what we can, that is to say, if we follow the guidance of natural reason (ut scilicet ductum naturalis rationis sequamus), God will not fail to give us what is necessary to us (Deus non deficiet a nobis quod nobis necessarium est). When I find myself wondering what I should do about

the situation, my personal answer is: “Do what Thomas himself says: follow the lead of natural reason as far as it takes you; God will do the rest.”

A more formidable obstacle is a purely philosophical one. Even apart from the association of Thomism with theology, many philosophers are likely to find it the wrong sort of philosophy because it is realistic, whereas today only the idealistic can hope to be accepted.

This is the more true because idealism enjoys the privilege of constructing systems, for it is easier to systematize notions than things. Systems always attract attention, and, because they can be learned and taught, they stand a good chance of surviving in the memory of the generations to come. If I say, “Descartes,” you will answer: “I think, therefore I am.” Likewise, Leibnitz means monadology, Malebranche spells occasionalism, Spinoza, substance, Spencer, evolution, and so on. Systems are interesting to read and easy to teach, but has any philosophical system ever been true? Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a German philosopher by the name of Franz Brentano began to wonder how long the chain of the mutually destructive systems of philosophy was going to continue. Kant had just been replaced by Fichte, Fichte by Schelling, Schelling by Hegel, and Hegel by Schopenhauer. Hoping to bring the philosophical merry-go-round to a stop, Brentano suggested as a remedy a general return to the realism of the Greeks. This meant that for us as already for Aristotle, the method of philosophy should be the same as that of the science of nature, to wit, a rational interpretation of observed facts. The result of Brentano’s experiment is conclusive: himself a good psychologist, Brentano left no system to which his name, could be attached, so that today he is practically forgotten.

I must confess that I know of no remedy to the difficulty. If philosophical realism is right, we cannot turn Thomism into a wrong philosophy io order to increase the number of its supporters. Philosophy simply is not the kind of conceptuaJ poetry they call a philosophical “system.” Philosophy is wisdom, and wisdom is not poetry. Neither is it positive science, nor ethics, nor economics, nor politics. A true philosopher may well be neither a scientist nor a successful industrialist, nor a celebrated statesman. When asked to say what he knows, the true philosopher modestly answers with Socrates: nothing. And indeed his own function is not to know any particular kind of things; rather, it is to start from the cognitions gained by other men in the various and changing fields of knowledge and action; it is to clarify these cognitions, to criticize them and to order them by relating them to first causes. Like science, philosophy is about things, not cognitions, yet what is left of science, unless it thus unifies itself in the light of philosophical reflection, is but a heap of uncritical and disjointed pieces of information.

Thomas Aquinas was well aware of this truth and that is the reason his personal contributions to philosophy belong chiefly in the field of metaphysics, which is the science of thefirst principles of reality as well as of knowledge. He never pretended he was introducing into philosophy a new first principle. The project would have seemed preposterous to him. For him it was one and the same thing to think, to think of some thing, and to think of it as of a being. Because being attends all our representations, every true philosophy must be a philosophy of being.

Thomas also knew that reflection on being necessarily leads to the notion of the act in virtue of which being is, and is being, namely that of esse. This conclusion leads to no system, but it throws light on the manifold of reality and permits us to order it. If we want to rejuvenate Thomism, the first thing for us to do is to revive its interpretation of the first principle; if we do, our experience will probably be that we ourselves stand more in need of being rejuvenated by Thomism than it does by us.

 The second mark of a living Thomism immedi ately follows from the first one because in beings to be comes first, and to be is an act; the real world outside us is not made up of static essences but of acting, operating and causing beings. In Thomas’ own words, “from the very fact that something actually is, it is active”: ex hoc ipsoquod aliquid in actu est, activum est.

Without essences, finite beings would not be possible; and it is true that, as the Schoolmen used to say, the essences are operating and living things, but they act and operate only because they are, and they are only because each and every one of them is actuated by its own act of being. It would be silly to attribute to Thomas Aquinas the great intuitions of today’s science. He was no scientist, but at the level of philosophical insight he certainly entertained a general view of the world of nature attuned to that of modem physics. To him the last word about physical reality was not extension in space, nor was it matter, nor pattern and shape, but rather it was act, energeia, or as we say today, energy. He only would add to the scientific view of the world a purely metaphysical one, to wit, that the act of all acts and the energy of all energies is “to be”. And indeed, if they were not, things could neither act nor operate; there simply would be nothing.

If we succeed in seeing things in the light of that capital notion, the whole order of action assumes a new importance and even a new meaning. We are naturally inclined to see the world as consisting of things to each of which a certain number of operations can be attributed. In such a view, the thing is the core of reality. Not so in the universe of Thomas Aquinas, wherein all substance is in view of its operation: omnis substantia est propter suam operationem. In other words, the thing is not there in view of itself but rather in view of its acts. Common sense here agrees with metaphysical intuition. Why do we say “handsome is that handsome does,” if not because, for man, to do is fully to be? Only in his acting does every one of us fully actualize his being. Now that is the authentic teaching of Thomas Aquinas: the ultimate perfection of the thing is its operation; operatio enim est ultima perfectio rei.

One of the main perils that threaten Thomism is the tendency of too many Thomists to mistake the world for a collection of substances inertly subsisting in a kind of glorious inactivity. Hence the rise of the modem philosophies of actionthat are intended to stress a notion their authors consider badly neglected by Thomas Aquinas. If they think that Thomism does not recognize the importance of action in beings, I wonder what Thomas could have done to make it more clear. He has expressed it in a sentence which, for even such a master of philosophical style, is uncommonly packed with substance. I am afraid it defies translation, but here it is: “Just as the act of being (ipsum esse) is a certain actuality of the essence, so also operating is an actuality of the power or energy to operate. For such indeed is the reason both are in act, namely, the essence inasmuch as it is, and the power because it operates.” It is therefore in their operations that finite beings attain the whole actuality of which they are capable, and no wonder, since to be is for them the act of all the acts.

A last objection to Thomism, or rather against its chances of survival, is still more serious than the preceding ones. It is the actual failure of most of us to provide proofs of its continuing vitality. And indeed, a great deal has been done to keep it alive in schools, to defend it against adverse criticism and, more often still, to prove that Thomism is right by demonstrating that the rest is wrong. The best thing we are doing along those lines probably is the present effort of many of us to clear up the meaning of the first principles which are at one and the same time those of Thomism, of the mind and of reality.

This is a praiseworthy undertaking, for indeed the understanding of a philosophy hangs on that of its principles, but the cognition of the first principles is not the whole of philosophical knowledge. True enough, it is its higher part, but even the highest part of a whole is not the whole. Complete philosophical wisdom is the knowledge of reality seen in the light of first principles and as related to its first cause. If what I have just said is true, the principles themselves as contained in our knowledge attain the fullness of their being only when they are actualizing themselves in their operation. To know is to know something. To understand a principle is to understand through that principle. I know being only in the acts whereby I am knowing beings.

To reduce Thomism to the contemplation of its principles would deprive it of all actual content. A chance remark of Thomas Aquinas on the object of the beatific vision can be quoted in confirmation of this truth. “The ultimate felicity of man,” Thomas says, “cannot consist in the contemplation which depends on the understanding of the principles, for that is a most imperfect contemplation, being most universal and limited to the knowledge of things in potency. Besides, that is only the beginning of human inquiry, not its end, since we owe it to nature, not to our own effort to discover truth.”

Translated into plain language, the objection means that ever since the end of the sixteenth century, scholasticism has tended to become a more or less repetitious kind of school teaching, perfect in its form and in that respect often superior to most of the more modem philosophies, but poverty-stricken in its contents, unable to produce new ideas and to play its part in the rational interpretation of the modem world. To put it bluntly, the main objection to modem scholasticism is its sterility.

On this point, I think we should plead partially guilty. Born in schools, created by schoolmen for classroom consumption, scholasticism soon conceived of itself as identical with philosophy itself. Now the end of philosophical studies is not for us to have learned philosophy. just as physics is not about physics, but about nature, so also philosophy is not about philosophy but about reality understood in the light of philosophical principles. To philosophize is actually to apply these principles to a rational interpretation of reality. Because it is too much of a teaching and not enough of a training, slowly but surely scholasticism is dying of anemia.

When we realize the danger of the situation, we are inclined to blame it on the principles of the doctrine. Then we try to modernize them, but the result is disastrous; for indeed the principles of scholasticism are perfectly sound; we are to blame for neglecting to put them to good use. The modem Thomist too often is like a man holding a lamp, lost in the contemplation of its light and complaining that he sees nothing. Let us only turn our light on the world of things around us, and we shall have plenty to see and to say.

That is what Thomas Aquinas himself so successfully did in his own time. Having inherited from Aristotle a sound philosophy, he wisely decided to apply its principles, not to the ancient world of the Philosopher, but to the modern world in which he himself happened to live. Those two worlds were separated by a decisive event, namely, the Christian revelation. In this revelation, philosophy was confronted with something of which Aristotle had no idea. In order to understand this event, philosophy had to share in the task of sacra doctrina, which consisted in opening the minds of unbelievers to the saving truth, as far as could be done by expressing it in the language of natural reason. Hence the notorious formula: philosophy is the handmaid of theology.

To the extent that he used similar expressions—for I do not think this one is literally to be found in Saint Thomas himself—he never intended them as a definition of philosophy. To him philosophy essentially was that of Aristotle, who had no Christian theology to serve, but even in Aristotle philosophy was tending toward a theology of its own, and that is the reason Thomas always conceives the relationship between theology and the philosophical sciences as analogous to that obtaining, within philosophy itself, between those sciences and metaphysics.

Wisdom sent her maids to invite guests to the tower (Prov. 9:3). Taken in itself this is not a description of the task of philosophy, but for an intelligent handmaid there is no better opportunity to learn than to serve an intelligent mistress. Had he contented himself with teaching the philosophy of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas could not have done better than faithfully to repeat the doctrine of the master. He would now be to us one more of those many peripatetics whose. names dot the history of late scholasticism. On the contrary, Thomas Aquinas set out to bring the teaching of Aristotelianism to a more complete realization of its truth, because the object of his own philosophical reflections was not a philosophy but a religion.

This creative activity of Thomism is what we now need to revive, and the only way to revive it is to put its principles to good use again; but this time—and I am speaking as a philosopher rather than as a theologian—we need to turn our attention to the object of philosophical speculation. That object is nature, and although in itself nature has probably changed but little since the thirteenth century, our knowledge of it is very different from what it was in the mind of Thomas Aquinas. Our mental universe, as William James would call it, has long ceased to be the same. We now know many things Thomas Aquinas never heard of.

First of all, we now know that Aristotle had but an incomplete knowledge of what it is scientifically to know. Himself an excellent observer, he was no mathematician; he was fond of classifying, but much less fond of measuring. In mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, biology and anthropology, a twelve-year-old child of today is full of information completely unknown to Thomas Aquinas.

Furthermore, six centuries of modem history have considerably modified our perspective on the nature of political, social and economical life. Changes have not always been for the better. In its efforts toward more knowledge and a better way of life, mankind normally proceeds by trial and error. Everything man does is purposeful, but he may be misguided in his purposes and still more often in his choice of the means. Enormous material has thus been accumulating since the time of Thomas Aquinas, and a living Thomism should devote itself to the urgent task of criticizing it, interpreting it and ordering it in the light of permanently valid principles, that is to say, of the Thomistic metaphysics of being.

Even as a handmaid of theology (Thomas once called his thought its “vassal”) a living Thomism could render signal services, if only in dissuading theology from wasting its time interpreting a physical universe that has long ceased to exist. Natural theology is fraught with concepts and images inherited from popular beliefs and from now outdated scientific views of the world. By ridding the imagination of those transitory mythologies, a well informed Thomism could help sacra doctrina to achieve a higher degree of theological purity. There is no point in continuing to state the prima via of Thomas Aquinas as though the sun were revolving around the earth or as though the principle of inertia had never been discovered.

But these would be complicated examples to discuss, so let us content ourselves with simpler ones. Does the word “heaven” mean to us what it meant to a thirteenth century theologian? He knew it was “above.” But, today, where is above? And by the by, where is hell? Such scientifically minded theologians as William of Auvergne and Saint Albert the Great were already busy demythicizing some currently accepted popular notions, but they could do so only in the light of thirteenth century science. For instance, speaking of hell, Albert still thought it was “below,” not far from the center of the earth and somewhat to the left. But today where is “below?” Were he still with us, Albert would have to admit that the adverb no longer makes sense in that application.

A still simpler question is: where is the earthly paradise? Apart from the cautious Origen, who understood it in a spiritual sense, most of the theologians thought it was somewhere, but where it was, they did not know. After pushing it east toward India, then south toward Ethiopia, they felt rather puzzled when a better knowledge of the explored parts of the earth failed to ascertain its location. Thomas Aquinas was well aware of the problem, but he also was very cautious about such questions. Before following Origen’s allegorical interpretation of Scripture, Thomas wanted to be absolutely sure that the earthly paradise was nowhere to be found on the surface of the earth. He said that the fact that it had not yet been discovered was no proof that it did not exist. It might have escaped detection because access to it was difficult. That place—locus ille, Thomas called it—was secluded from our lands by impassable seas, desert wastes, mountains, or stormy and uninhabitable regions. Such might well be the reason, Thomas added, why no writers had ever mentioned its location despite careful explorations of the habitable parts of the earth.

Today, Amazonia looks like our last chance to find the lost paradise. But the chance is slim. This simple case can help us realize, when more important questions arise, how positive information can purify the very substance of religious belief from the incidental imagery which often goes along with it.

What is true of theology is still more obviously true of metaphysical knowledge. Modern physics has deeply transformed traditional notions of matter, mass, energy, and the like. Microphysics is now suffering from a certain disorder because of the speed of its progress, but it has changed our view of the world perhaps still more radically than astronomy ever did. There never was a time when the reflections of scientists themselves on the nature of physical causality provided as much food for philosophical thought as the controversies among leaders of scientific inquiry in our own day. The names of Max Planck, Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Einstein, Fermi, de Broglie and many others suffice to evoke the memory of those scientific discussions. Positive science itself has become a highly specialized business. Neither the theologian nor even the philosopher can be expected to master the scientific techniques at play in these controversies. To do so is none of their business.

On the other hand, the business of the scientist is not to provide a clear philosophical elucidation of the principles involved in his own scientific theories. Only the philosopher is qualified to do so. A remarkable example of that kind of work was provided, twenty years ago or so, by a chemist who was neither a theologian nor a metaphysician, but a mind remarkably gifted for philosophical speculation. I am thinking of Emile Meyerson and of his great book, Identity and Reality.

In the fields of the philosophy of nature, of political economy and of the so-called “human sciences,” the example of Jacques Maritain clearly shows how it is still possible today to renovate ancient concepts and to open new fields of investigation. The philosophy of art, illustrated by the same philosopher, clearly shows that in certain cases Thomism is bound to create if it is still to live. For indeed Thomas himself has said precious little, if anything, about the fine arts. In all these fields, modem Thomists are confronted with problems unknown to their master and for which no answers can be found ready-made in his writings.

In the thirteenth century, a great adversary of the theologians Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas called them the two philosophical leaders of the time: praecipui viri in philosophia. The trouble with Christian philosophers of today is that those of us who know theology seldom know science, while among those who know science very few know theology. Many of the latter think they do, but that is not the same thing, not even when these self-appointed theologians happen to be priests.

And yet I believe there is hope. A striking innovation took place in the history of the Church when the huge task of bringing Christian philosophy up to date was assumed by the popes. After the somewhat unpopular Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, an almost uninterrupted chain of encyclical letters has reminded the world that the teaching function in the Church belongs properly to the bishops and that the Pope is the Bishop of Rome. The names of Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII call to mind many epoch-making encyclicals, entirely different in style from the ancient ones, in which the leading moral and social problems of our own times are handled with wisdom, authority and a doctrinal audacity which perhaps comes more easily to a pope than to any lesser teacher in the Church.

It did not take long for Paul VI to make it known that the recently established tradition would be continued. And no wonder, since the first of those epoch-making documents was the celebrated encyclical Aeterni Patris, in which Pope Leo XIII, nearly one hundred years ago, proclaimed Thomas Aquinas the patron saint of Catholic schools, and soon after, the Common Doctor of the Church. Then the popes waited for us to do the work, but when they saw that not much of it was being done, they decided to do it themselves. Still, like Wisdom, they too are inviting all of us to the tower. The truths which the successors of Saint Peter will sanction tomorrow by their authority need to be prepared by the personal efforts of countless obscure philosophers and theologians of today, and this is our own responsibility.

The popes have repeatedly called upon us to share in that great collective task to be performed by all Christians under their leadership and their authority. If the call is heard, there will be a living Thomism; we are all invited to answer the call in the fullness of our goodwill and to the full measure of our limited capacities. If we do, the success does not matter; it will be what God wants it to be. Provided only that we remember that we are His right-hand men, He will do the rest.