Transcendental Thomism

I föreliggande PM kommer jag att redogöra för, analysera och diskutera den tyske teologen Karl Rahners )1900-1984) transcendentala thomism –  hans teori om religiösa upplevelser som transcendental erfarenhet och denna som grund för kunskapen om Gud.

This study examines the function of the vis cogitativa in Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of antecedent and consequent passions. It builds upon recent scholarship concerning his understanding of the way virtuous passions can contribute to deliberation and practical reasoning, by explicating the way the cogitative power is integrated into acts of practical reason, is essential to all acts of moral perception, and specifies the passions of the sensitive appetites. In order to clarify a number of ambiguous features of Aquinas’s doctrine of antecedent and consequent passions and the obedience of the passions to reason, this paper makes use of an analogous account of antecedent and consequent cogitative estimations that causally specify these different passions. It then compares the way prudence and other habits of practical reason enhance the acts of cogitative moral perceptions that specify the sensitive appetites in temperate, continent, and incontinent persons.

I offer a clear and careful statement of exactly what Lonergan was up to in Insight with regards to those parts in which his strategy appears so Kantian. Though sometimes labeled a " transcendental Thomist, " Lonergan is not to be thought of as beating Kant at his own game. The difference in strategy is to be seen in Lonergan's avoidance of the idea that knowing must involve knowing something. His motivation is pedagogical: in view of our infantile tendencies, we tend to confuse two criteria for knowing what is really there.

Did we get Aquinas’ Epistemology right? St. Thomas is often interpreted according to Kantian principles, particularly in Transcendental Thomism. When this happens, it can appear as though Aquinas, too—along with Kant—had made the “turn to the subject”; as if Aquinas were no longer the Aristotelian “believer” who thinks nature is what it is but, instead, the Kantian “thinker” who holds that nature is what we think of it; as if St. Thomas, like Kant, had concluded that nature is intelligible not only when we think of it, but because we think of it.
After much struggle with this problem, the challenge seemed obvious to me: to show the radical difference between Aquinas and Kant. Kant had reasons to make his turn, his Copernican revolution. Could I explain those reasons, could I pinpoint the problem leading Kant to think in those terms? Could I show Aquinas facing the same problem and clearly taking a different direction in his proposed solution? That is what I have tried to do in this book.
This book provides an interpretation of Aquinas’ agent intellect focusing on Summa Theologiae I, qq. 75-89, and proposing that the agent intellect is a metaphysical rather than a formal a priori of human understanding. A formal a priori is responsible for the intelligibility as content of the object of human understanding and is related to Kant’s epistemological views, whereas a metaphysical a priori is responsible for intelligibility as mode of being of this same object. We can find in Aquinas’ text many indications that the agent intellect is not productive of the intelligible object but is, rather, productive of the abstracted or intelligible mode of being of this object. This is because for Aquinas the universal as nature, which is the object of human understanding, is present in the things themselves but with a different mode of being.
In this four-chapter book, Chapter 1 is intended to establish the fact which requires for Aquinas an agent intellect, and provides two very important principles: one is that the object of human understanding (the universal as nature) is present in the things themselves and, the other, that it is not in the things themselves with a mode of being which makes it available to the intellectual eye. These two principles lead us to the main point of Chapter 2, namely the distinction between the intelligible object and its intelligible mode of being. Now, because knowing is receptive of the intelligible object (Chapter 3), which is present in the things themselves (Chapter 1), the agent intellect is productive not of the object’s intelligible content, but of its abstracted or intelligible mode of being (Chapter 4).

C. S. Peirce introduced the term “icon” for sign-vehicles that signify their objects in virtue of some shared quality. This qualitative kinship, however, threatens to collapse the relata of the sign into one and the same thing. Accordingly, the late-medieval philosopher of signs John Poinsot held that, “no matter how perfect, a concept [...] always retains a distinction, therefore, between the thing signified and itself signifying.” Poinsot is touted by his present-day advocates as a realist, but I believe that, judged by realist standards, his requirement of minimal dissimilarity backfires. Poinsot thinks that, in analyzing the sign, we should stop before a full merger between sign-vehicle and object is reached. Peirce, by contrast, saw good reason to push the analysis all the way down to one isolated quality. Because such a qualitative merger can lend support to realism, I favour Peirce’s stance.

An analysis of Deely's book ,The Tradition via Heidegger: An Essay on the Meaning of Being in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Martinus Nijhoff, 1971).(published doctoral dissertation) for his Festschrift. Argues that "esse intentional" [Latin] means "essential being of Moral consciousness"{Trivium: Rhétorique Générale) over against Heidegger's definition as "essential being of Self consciousness" (Trivium: Rhétorique Spéciale).

In this paper I summarize the criticism of transcendental neo-Thomism in  Alasdair  MacIntyre’s  works;  offer  points  of  agreement  where  MacIntyre’s Thomistic-Aristotelian arguments  and  ideas  get  very  close  to  some  of  the transcendental neo-Thomists’; look for the possible roots of these commonalities in Aquinas’s works; and show more at length what we could gain theory-wise from contrasting  some of  their  views  by  initiating  an  argument  on  the  question  of
fallibility and infallibility.

A synthesis of Isaye's life's work, based on 30 articles written in French.  Isaye used retortion, the argument from self-referential inconsistency, to ground a comprehensive view of reality.

International Philosophical Quarterly 17:1 (1977),  59-83.

Dans cette présentation, on voudra d'abord faire justice du travail initial autour d'une métaphysique biblique. Le renouvellement de la rationalité qu'y chercha Tresmontant le conduisit ensuite à défendre une interprétation croyante du regard sur les sciences contemporaines, école pour retrouver le chemin qui conduit vers Dieu. En tentant d'écarter ce qui nous semble des scories, nous voudrons surtout indiquer quelles analyses resteront et valideront pour l'essentiel la promesse cachée dans cette oeuvre considérable, visible dès 1953 avec l'*Essai sur la pensée hébraïque*. La méthode théologique de Tresmontant est déjà une proposition sur la rationalité de la théologie, qui nous conduira à discuter, entre autres positions, celle du thomisme transcendantal.

John Haldane commented recently on Lonergan's absence from the analytic conversation— not a single entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions him. If this situation is to be remedied then Lonergan, Meaning and Method may prove a useful resource. With fine sensitivity to the historical roots of philosophical discussions, especially in the British context, this fourth book by Andrew Beards attempts to build bridges between isolated traditions by skilfully discerning latent connections and new developments. It touches on epistemology, science, art and semantics. Beards finds a measure of agreement with Timothy Williamson who espouses an " anti-luminosity " doctrine: self-knowledge is not always easy; the transition from conscious self-presence to genuine self-knowledge requires a subtle and diligent inquiry. On the other hand, in view of the post-Gettier preoccupations, Beards questions whether Williamson has the final word. Gettier's famous article had shaken up epistemologists by bringing to prominence cases in which true, justified belief is not knowledge as when we think we know the time by looking at a clock that has stopped at what unbeknown to us happens to be the right time. These have been taken to vindicate externalism over internalism, the idea that knowledge does not necessarily involve knowing that we know—sometimes we know without having luminous access to our inner states. We might think of children, the unsophisticated, or those successfully trained chicken-sexers who reliably make accurate judgements. Beards shows, however, that this cannot be the whole story. " If I claim (judge) that knowledge is not warranted assertion because the way things are in the world makes a statement true, and the warrant in certain cases does not guarantee this, then this itself is a case in which I am claiming to know what is true in the world (reality) because of the sufficiency of the rational warrant of my argument. " In exploring the certainty of self-knowledge, Beards opens up Insight's " little discussed " section on degrees of certainty. Beards stresses that he has only offered a sketch, and perhaps would agree with Dalibor Renić, whom he cites favourably, that there are also externalist elements in early Lonergan (influenced by Newman's Grammar). Or again, that the deepest foundation offered by Insight is a " pragmatic engagement. " Science is another fruitful domain for building bridges and, in the first essay, Beards is keen to note how late on Lonergan returned to characterize his approach as " generalized empirical method " rather than " transcendental method. " This has rhetorical advantages insofar as it underlines Lonergan's distinctiveness from transcendental Thomism. Beards continues to

The central focus of this essay is to offer a detailed analysis of ST II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3, in which Aquinas denies the possibility of “unbelievers” knowing that God exists. This passage has been highlighted and utilized by several interpreters, especially over the past fifty or so years, to show that Aquinas denied the possibility of pagan philosophical knowledge of the one true God of Jesus Christ. As Fr. Fergus Kerr has noted, this passage was brought to the attention of many by the late Princeton philosopher Victor Preller. Among those who have interpreted St. Thomas along similar lines, one could include George Lindbeck, Bruce Marshall, Eugene Rogers, Stanley Hauerwas, and more recently, D. Stephen Long, and John P. O’Callaghan. Given the work that ST II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3 does for those who argue that Aquinas denies that the pagan philosophers believed that God exists, it is crucial to have interpreted Aquinas rightly here. But have they done so? In this essay, I will argue that, in fact, Preller and the others have misinterpreted ST II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3. Aquinas does not have pagan philosophers in mind at all. They are not even on the radar. Rather, the infidels in question are simply heretics and the like, namely, those who are said to hold that God exists, otherwise than by faith, while also holding other false opinions about God and matters of faith. Furthermore, I will argue that the common interpretation of the passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in which deficient cognition of a simple thing is said to be ignorance of that thing, has also been misinterpreted and mis-utilized to buttress the broader misinterpretations about pre-Christian pagan philosophers.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and others have maintained that Henri de Lubac's articulation of the relationship between the letter and spirit of Scripture and his articulation of the relationship between nature and grace are in fact analogous. That is to say, the dialectics of letter-spirit and nature-grace are, in de Lubac's corpus, structurally parallel. Such a position, however, is problematic. If one affirms the analogy, and then attempts to interpret one dialectical pair in light of the other, unacceptable positions follow, on Lubacian grounds. Either the literal meaning of scripture is evacuated of meaning—and, consequently, the whole edifice of Christian spiritual exegesis collapses—or the relationship between nature and grace becomes extrinsic. Both conclusions, not surprisingly, are problematic for de Lubac. The present essay seeks to unpack the reasons why such a position follows from de Lubac's theology, and therefore, why the position of Balthasar, et al., is problematic. Furthermore, having shown how the suggested analogy is lacking, I will argue that--rather ironically--it is the account of nature-grace offered by the ressourcement Thomism of recent years (e.g. Reinhard Hütter, Thomas Joseph White, et al.) that provides the more promising analogue to de Lubac's articulation of the relationship between the letter and spirit of Scripture.

Rousselot was an early pioneer of the movement that came to be called 'transcendental Thomism', whose more illustrious representatives include Joseph Maréchal, Emerich Coreth, Karl Rahner, and Bernard Lonergan. Notwithstanding substantial differences, these thinkers share similar concerns and questions pursued in relation to Thomas Aquinas. If there is a single thread linking them together, perhaps it is the rediscovery of wonder as constitutive of human knowing and human being. R.'s goal was to retrieve the 'architectonic' theses of Thomas Aquinas and disengage them from their merely residual context. He brought into focus the derailment of later scholasticism into a 'conceptualism' that overlooked intelligence and understanding because of a preoccupation with universals, logic, and necessity. What R. called the 'intellectualism' of St Thomas was a metaphysical account of knowledge that took as its ideal the intuition of concrete individuals rather than abstract, universal concepts. He insisted that the human intellect achieves this ideal only in a deficient manner through a process of discursive reasoning. Concepts as representational of being illustrate the deficiency rather than the power of human intelligence; the real power of intellect is in the capacity to identify with being.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and others have maintained that Henri de Lubac's articulation of the relationship between the letter and spirit of Scripture and his articulation of the relationship between nature and grace are in fact analogous. That is to say, the dialectics of letter-spirit and nature-grace are, in de Lubac's corpus, structurally parallel. Such a position, however, is problematic. If one affirms the analogy, and then attempts to interpret one dialectical pair in light of the other, unacceptable positions follow, on Lubacian grounds. Either the literal meaning of scripture is evacuated of meaning—and, consequently, the whole edifice of Christian spiritual exegesis collapses—or the relationship between nature and grace becomes extrinsic. Both conclusions, not surprisingly, are problematic for de Lubac. The present essay seeks to unpack the reasons why such a position follows from de Lubac's theology, and therefore, why the position of Balthasar, et al., is problematic. Furthermore, having shown how the suggested analogy is lacking, I will argue that--rather ironically--it is the account of nature-grace offered by the ressourcement Thomism of recent years (e.g. Reinhard Hütter, Thomas Joseph White, et al.) that provides the more promising analogue to de Lubac's articulation of the relationship between the letter and spirit of Scripture.

In exploring the role of Catholic intellectuals in engaging science and technology in the twentieth century, this book initially provides a background context for this evolution by examining the Modernism crisis in the first chapter. In order to unpack the subsequent evolution, Thompson then concentrates in separate chapters on the distinctive contributions of four specific Catholic intellectuals, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984), and Thomas Merton (1915–1968). All of these intellectuals experienced some degree of official restraint in their efforts but through their distinctive intellectual trajectories, they contributed to a different engagement of the Church with science and technology. In the final chapters, the book first reviews the changes within the institutional Church in the twentieth century toward science and technology. Finally, it then applies some key ideals of the four intellectuals to anneal and extend John Paul II's approach of "critical openness" to suggest how the Church can now engage science and technology.

Lonergan's Insight has frequently been compared with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Giovanni B. Sala, an internationally acknowledged Kant scholar, contrasts the cognitional theory of his former teacher Lonergan with the positions of Kant that have proved so influential, and in many ways so intractable, over the past two centuries.

The first essay is one of the most influential papers ever written on Lonergan; it and the second one inquire into the notion of the a priori. The third essay presents a detailed analysis of Kantian intuitionism and contrasts it with the `knowledge as structure' position of Lonergan's critical realism. In this essay intuitionism is generalized, to allow Sala to address representatives of neoscholasticism as well. The argument with neoscholasticism continues in the fourth essay. The final paper discusses Kant's resolution of the question regarding the agreement of a priori concepts with things, and finds in Lonergan's work an alternative position on correspondence and truth. Each essay is a model of careful and thorough scholarship, and also - surprising in a book of such proportions - of clarity. Lonergan appeals several times in Insight to the device of `Clarification by Contrast.' Sala's essays show us in intricate detail how illuminating such comparisons can be.