Tolerance and Virtue

by Andrew Simmons                                                                           Friday,  March 20, 2015

When Socrates spoke on the two principles of knowledge and ignorance, there is the notion that sound ethical behavior arises from knowledge and evil by the latter. Morality becomes centered on the progression towards knowledge.For Aristotle, this was the point of pure contemplation upon one’s existence. In order to produce a ethical modern society, we are encouraged to go out and learn about the cultures that compose our communities. This coincides with Augustine’s statement, which is also used by Aquinas, that “one cannot love what they do not know”. Yet, when confronted with ideas that one does not like, we are told to practice tolerance as a form of social virtue. The problem is the emphasis on tolerance does not work with the pursuit of knowledgable love. Rather, it does that opposite by acting as a censure in which we force ourselves to be ignorant of another.

Tolerance is defined primarily as accepting the existence of traits and practices that one does not approve of. But what is happening in order to allow communication between two individuals tolerating the other? In the theoretical scenario of an African-American citizen conversing with a racially biased individual, is it just these two simply accepting, as a present reality, the conflicting differences between the two? I say no, as, especially in situations of race and prejudice, the conscious awareness of these traits cannot be simply accepted. If communication is possible, it is only because these negative characteristics are pushed into the background. We know they are there, but we choose to not let them immediately dictate the current situation. As such, one is never fully addressing another as they are in their totality.

This is important in terms of the inability for tolerance to fully resolve the problems of social communication. This can be seen explicitly in the growing circular arguments of “You are not tolerant” followed by “You are not tolerant of my intolerance”. What is happening here is not a rhetorical means of evading tolerance, but a showing of tolerances own limitation. Tolerance, as a permanent means of creating peace, becomes obstructed by its own intolerance towards the intolerant. Within any social relationship, there is this initial moment of tolerance in which one differs their attention away from traits they do not like. But, in the growth of knowledge and communication with that individual, there arises this point in which tolerance of these characteristics is no longer possible. There is this process by which those who promote tolerance must become intolerant of another’s refusal to be tolerant. In dialogues concerning sexuality for instance, there is this necessary moment in which the conservative and liberal can no longer tolerate the other.

What should not be concluded from this is intolerance being the more lasting method of communication. It does not follow that the limitations of tolerance should lead to an opposite unlimited intolerance. Intolerance is just as limited as it focuses on changing perspectives of individual characteristics. What truly elevates relationships within society is the application of the virtue. With specific differences in mind, the general definition of the virtues are that they are dispositions/attitudes towards life that allow for one to be a good person. To understand its relationship to tolerance and intolerance, virtue acts as a mediator between when to reasonably be tolerant or intolerant. The mediating principle of virtue is important as it clarifies my view of tolerance: it is inherently pragmatic. It is important, but its importance should be understood within the confines of pragmatism. Virtues provide a means of elevating relationships outside of a tolerance/intolerance dynamic. In lifting one up towards goodness, there is an ethical condition that goes beyond needing to tolerate.

Andrew Simmons is a graduate from Aquinas College and  a student of the Ukrainian Catholic University. He is working on a masters in philosophy <and theology>, but has to go through a lot of language courses. He finally remembered that he has his own blog https://musingconvert.wordpress.com/

Catholicism and the University: The Analogy of Catholicism

by Andrew Simmons                                                                           Saturday,  March 14, 2015

In the City of God, Augustine presented the world as being divided between two groups: the City of God and the City of Men. The rift between these demonstrate the clear “otherness” each city displays towards the other. As Christopher Dawson relates in his Dynamics of World History, the two cities have served as a metanarrative for the medieval world’s inconclusive attitude towards Church and State. This rift appears again within the current spheres of the secular and the religious insomuch as each are credited with their own autonomy. Tensions arise when either of these institutions seek to assert themselves upon the other. One particular focal point of this tension can be found in the Catholic university. How does it identify itself when the secular and religious compose its student demographic? Has it not become a sort of unitive point in which both cities have been interwoven with each other? It is my view that this conflict arises from the burden poorly handled by those assuming the catholic identity. Moving from the whole to the particular, an answer to this dilemma can be found in harkening back to the very understanding of this identity: Catholic.

The philosophical stance by which the Church identifies the nature of the world is the analogia entis. Proponents of the stance can trace their origin to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and his Aristotelian stance in the 12th century. As clarified by Erich Przywara, the analogy of being stipulates that the transcendent is “in-beyond” the nature of creation; the transcendent is outside of the world while also remaining immanent to what it does . There remains no radical ontological separation between the created and uncreated within the analogia entis. What is presented is a unity of what are two very distinct philosophical stances: The Platonic and the Aristotelian.

The founders of these two schools held two very different views of the world. Plato viewed truth and reality as entirely pertaining to the transcendent in which the created domain is an image of these transcendent forms. To unify the multitude of forms, Plotinus proposed that these forms are in the mind of God and united within his one Being. Aristotle differed by asserting that these divine ideas are immanent to the created world, while proposing that the divine is indifferent to the operations of the created world. There is no personal God by which the world refers to. Rather, there is merely many beings united in an act of existence with their reality fully within them. Man need not work to ascend a divine ladder, but focus on contemplating themselves and the idea that is within them; God contemplates himself, while creation works to contemplate itself amid its own changing. This difference between the two schools is seen in Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s assertion that the arts can be inspired by a divine agency.

The response with the dynamics of history have shown how the unity of these two schools have been a difficult and tumultuous road. From the Platonic/Neo-Platonic perspective, the secular and the Church in this world share the same status as images but distinct in that they reflect different eternal ideas. Plotinus further adds to this by making both of these ideas intermingled in the unity of God’s Being. For the Aristotelian view, both share existence but contain different principles within their very actions. Yet, in history, the actions of both are intermingled and confused which halts an immediate knowledge of pure difference. The Church works to be the form of the secular by making it part a divinely oriented society. Meanwhile, the secular perceives the Church as arising from the same social institutions that compose the secular.

This conflict proceeds from the Medieval struggle to distance the two. The monastic communities were able to succeed by separating themselves from the feudal system, while the Pope could not amid the Investiture crises. Medieval society was able to maintain two strictly different codes of law, but the practice of these laws differed in regards to bishops and popes who maintained both ecclesial and secular authority. Universities, especially within Aquinas own time, shared this struggle between whether the Church or the secular should lead it. Essentially, the struggle pertained to whether one community would restrict the ability for students and teachers to perform their duties. The ecclesiastical fear was that the secular would reduce the university to serving particular needs of the local bureaucracies. Concerns such as this are practically reversed today as the secular fears a limitation of knowledge by the Church; fears which have become justified following the implementation of the Codex of Errors. The Church’s response to modernity has hard-locked the identity of the Church from the secular; meanwhile, the secular’s antipathy towards the ancien regime has created an antithetical structure. Each has proceeded to police and monitor those among their ranks for issues of liberalism or conservatism. From where does the synthesis arise that resolves these two?

What needs to be recognized, regardless of the feud, is that there has never been a clear and definitive break within the shared intellectual history. Any such breaks within a system of thought has continued within that thought’s very history. To point out an example of this, the Church’s history brings with it the continued knowledge of its detractors. The heretic continues on through the historical data just as much as the orthodox. The Gnostics, Nomians, Antinomians, Ebionites, and Docetists are recorded within its earliest histories. Arius follows alongside Nicea, and Nestorius proceeds alongside Chalcedon. Modernity’s principles continue to be entirely accessible from the Church’s own writings in Vatican I. If this knowledge was to be confined to some punitive abyss, it should have been forgotten. Rather, the Church has become a nexus of knowledge in which its benefactors and detractors are united within the historical procession towards the divine. Secular history also contain this nexus as the “Age of Reason”, the Enlightenment, Modernity, and Postmodernity have also continue to appeal to the ancients. As Umberto Eco points out in his From the Tree to the Labyrinth, the Enlightenment, for all its assaults on the aforementioned ancien regime, still keeps the knowledge of its antithesis in its encyclopedic pool of knowledge.

The nexus not only provides a structure for a continuation of knowledge, but also points to a proper understanding of what it means to refer to one as “catholic”. In regards to its very etymology, when one is identified as being catholic, they are identified as “universal”. There never is, historically speaking, a pure mimesis of what is contrary to it, as the detractors are caught up in its very universality. The heretics and excommunicants are the Church’s excommunicants and heretics; they are still identified in regards to it and still compose its history. Duns Scotus speaks of language as the symbols by which the understandings of our minds are expressed to each other. As such, the word “catholic” is not some Derridean construct from rhetoric detached from the intellect. Catholic, much like “multiplicity” or “all”, are these singular expressions of understanding that contain all particulars within them. To use a Deleuzian phrase, it is the “One-All” term that unites the many within one understanding, definition, and identity. As such, there should never be a willingness to cast something out of this unity, especially within the Catholic university. Anything less would detract from this universality. If one is going to assert that transcendent principles are in-beyond all, it must assert that true universality of this phrase.

Andrew Simmons is a graduate from Aquinas College and  a student of the Ukrainian Catholic University. He is working on a masters in philosophy <and theology>, but has to go through a lot of language courses. He finally remembered that he has his own blog https://musingconvert.wordpress.com/

Discerning Life

I want to slay dragons!

‘You can do anything that you want!’ is a refrain often heard when we try to decide what to do when we grow up. Now that I’m older I have to ask ‘Why would we want too?’. I was given no hints on actual discernment. All I’ve learned so far is that I want to be an adult who doesn’t give kids crappy advice. ‘You can do anything you’ve set your mind too.’ is another one I heard, but how does one go about setting one’s mind? ‘Just follow your dream’ but nothing on how hard that may be or what they mean by dream (I’ve always wanted to be a wizard, that’s a dream right?). A bunch of spineless adults giving useless aphorisms (I don’t know how they managed that, unless they set their mind to it). You might think that growing up in a Christian community might be better, but ‘God has a plan for you’ only makes me cringe at the thought of messing the plan (that he didn’t deign to tell me) up.

This leads into my first piece of advice: God doesn’t give a shit (well He does, but not in the way you think). If God wanted everything to run perfectly like a well-oiled machine, He would have made us well-oiled machines. God wants us to get to heaven, so anything we choose to do has to glorify God. Remember the parable of the talents? Nothing in the parable says how they invested the talents the Master gave them, it was all about whether they used them in a way to increase the glory of their Lord, or not. If you are using your gifts to know, love, and serve God, that’s what God cares about.

Second piece of advice: know your gifts, desires, and passions. Perhaps you have a talent for figures, the only way to know that is to have done figures. The only way to know if you have a passion for cooking is by cooking. For example, I learned that I like to program because my brother gave me a how-to programming book and I worked through it. The joy I had (and still do) by building something through programming was something different than when I played with LEGO sets or Erector sets. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I had a passion for programming. Anything I end up doing for God, I want to show Him my love for Him through my love of programming. Once you know your gifts and passions,  you need to know your gifts and passions.

My third piece of advice: practice. Gifts and passions will fade if you do not use them. Use it, at least a little, every day. Cook a meal or snack to develop cooking, write an essay or poem to develop writing. Get your friends and family to help critique you so that you improve faster. A little bit a day, is better than none, even better than a lot. If you do too much you’ll burn out, then you’ll need a break. Do a big painting once a week or once a month, and small sketches every day in between. If you feel like you can do more, do so, but don’t overstuff yourself.

Once you have a goal, give yourself a deadline. If you don’t have a deadline, you’ll never get done. If you do have a deadline, a month, or five years, then you can break the project down into bits. A novel (50,000 words) in a month is about 1,700 words a day, in five years about 200 words a week, without a deadline: 1,000 words a day for a week then nothing.

Mommy!

My final piece of advice is prayer. Without God at the center of your discernment it will all be fruitless. If a toddler draws a crayon picture then puts it on the fridge himself, it means far less than if daddy put it on the fridge. Remember for whom you make refrigerator art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua Fahey is a Chestertonian who is still discerning

The World Against Us

The world, we become aware of the world as we start to understand our individuality. The world is cruel and heartless. It is an apathetic and monstrous conglomeration of evil. And as we learn about ourselves and struggle to express ourselves, we treat the world in various ways.

Villain. A villain would plot the defeat of the world. Usually by destruction or subjugation, but enthrallment has been a popular choice as well. Defeat is what a villain seeks to impose, and often receives instead (at least in stories). Villains are inherently selfish, self-centered, to that end they have no or little qualms to bend rules or outright break them. The rebellious teenager is a villain.

Coward. A coward sees the world and runs from it. After the first fight we have with the world, and we lose, there is the thought that since we can never win it is better to run. This is also selfish, for a coward (like a villain) is after self-preservation. The end of a villain may be death, but a coward can never find a safe-haven, can never find an end. Cowards always run from problems because they never want to get hurt, and they never want to hurt others. Dreamers are cowards.

Traitor. A traitor sees the world as his master. They are traitorous because they sacrifice themselves and others in this act, but it is a selfish sacrifice. They seek a place to be, but they are too tired to fight for it or search for it. They may try to influence the world to their own ends, but in the act of service to the world they become corrupted by it. In the act of placing their hand in the flame, they become burned. As such all efforts, no matter how noble the goal, are tainted by the evil of the world. Corrupt politicians are traitors.

Christ. Christ offered another way. Turn the other cheek. Like the villain, a christian stands against the world, unlike the villain, a christian does not seek to destroy it, but to save it. Like the coward, a christian recognizes he cannot win against the world, unlike a coward, the christian does not run away for he knows God is with him. Like the traitor, a christian is called to serve and to self-sacrifice, but unlike the traitor, the master being served is pure and free of corruption who never asks us to sacrifice our purity or to sacrifice others. Only Christ can make a stand against the world heroic. Only Christ can make the coward’s fear into courageous witness. Only Christ can turn the traitor’s service into something good and pure. Christ showed us all three on the cross. He stood against the world, let the world torture and kill Him, and sacrificed himself in order to save all humankind.

 

 

Joshua Fahey is a Chestertonian who found Christ through cowardice and is working on that Courage thing.

Virtue of catholicism (small c)

Racism is bad, but why is racism bad? First we should define racism. The easiest way to define racism is prejudice involving the race of the persons involved. That is, the belief that one or more races is inferior or superior to one or more other races. A stereotype on steroids, if you will. Racism tends to focus on petty differences between over-simplified boxes that no one quite fits into. This puts up walls, misunderstandings (intentional or otherwise), hatred, and callous bias between peoples. Superficial walls that, like Jericho, must be broken down by heroic virtue. Jackie Robinson was a great ballplayer, he had to be to play in the Major Leagues, but if that was all he had it would have meant nothing. What changed the hearts of many people was his courage, his fortitude in turning the other cheek. Gandhi changed the hearts of the British with the same fortitude. They broke down the walls with their profound humanity that even touched hardened hearts.
Virtue is the only bridge that can cross between peoples, virtue is the only way to break down the walls. Political Correctness tries to remove hatred from speech, but all it does is isolate us in our own universe. It removes the intimacy needed to hate, but by doing so it removes the same intimacy needed to profoundly connect to one another. Instead of getting rid of the boxes known as stereotypes so that we might see the person, it changes the shape of the box and reinforces it so that no one might be hurt. It is an obsessive compassion that kills understanding and that eventually kills compassion and empathy. Political Correctness has failed, and in so doing has opened up a path for reactionaries to reinstitute new forms of racism.

I know I said virtue was the only bridge available to cross between peoples. But how can we construct that bridge? What are the materials to be used? Brotherhood and love are the foundation of bridge-building virtue. It should be no surprise that I as a Catholic believe in the catholicism (small c) of salvation. As an American I have had the privilege of profound encounters with many cultures and races. As a Catholic I have had the grace to profoundly connect with them as brothers and sisters. It is this virtue that allowed St. Patrick to evangelize the Irish, and this virtue which allowed John Paul II to defy Communism and defeat it. This virtue whose perfection is agape, self-sacrificing love. We celebrate this Easter the death of one innocent man who raised himself from the dead. We celebrate his blood pouring out for all nations and peoples, so that we may become brothers in Christ. We celebrate our catholicism, we celebrate our oneness, we celebrate as the family of God.

 

 

Joshua Fahey is a Chestertonian who wishes you all a happy Easter.

Beings-unto-God

by Andrew Simmons                                                                           Thursday,  Feb 13

“Since all creatures, even those devoid of understanding, are ordered to God as to an ultimate end, all achieve this end to the extent that they participate somewhat in His likeness. Intellectual creatures attain it in a more special way, that is, through their proper operation of understanding Him. Hence, this must be the end of the intellectual creature, namely, to understand God.” – St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, III. Q. 25. A. 1

Frank Cadogan Cowper’s Saint Francis of Assisi

Following the Renaissance and the recovery of more Greco-Roman philosophers, scholars mainly focused on presenting Christianity in accordance to pagan philosophers rather than Christianizing them (which, arguably, is what Augustine did for Plato, and Aquinas did to Aristotle). The change in emphasis led to dramatic theological changes that resulted in a return to an old Greco-Roman juxtaposition between the supernatural and the natural. Whether it was Duns Scotus or Thomas Cajetan, the changes in scholasticism did create the theological conditions ripe for reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, Wesley, and Calvin (there might be more merit to Luther’s statement of “the Aristotelian Church” than we give credit for). And, as time progressed, it also dramatically affected the views held by those of our time. The change is mainly this: with a severing of the supernatural and the natural, the natural was viewed as being radically autonomous from the other. In demonstrating the problem of this juxtaposition, I hope to provide a small glimpse of a harmonized view in which all are oriented as beings-unto-God.

In regards to the general societal indifference towards God, it should not come as any surprise to see the full spectrum of responses to our current Pope. His statements against capitalism and blatant consumerism in particular have caused the most shock as it impacted a formerly complacent bunch of Catholics. Perhaps the main reason for this is that modern Christians have been inculcated towards a belief that there is a natural end for mankind apart from God. Following the general aphorism “well that is just how the world works”, modern Christians seem to believe that God simply works to direct them towards a suitable natural end in which eternal life is part of some detached life known by sola fide.

The effects of this detachment from a natural way of life can be seen in two individuals: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Nietzsche writes, “The Christians have never led the life which Jesus commanded them to lead…The Buddhist behaves differently from the non-Buddhist; but the Christian behaves as all the rest of the worlds does” (Nietzsche, 95). The self-professed “Antichrist” was tired of the doctrine sola fide common throughout his Protestant upbringing. What he wanted to see among Christians is something more akin to the demeanor of Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (Kaufman, 343-344).  Myshkin, for Dostoevksy, is the portrayal of one who truly lives out the Christian life. It, however, is not a life that ends well for Myshkin. For Kierkegaard, this is very much the point of Christianity. He states that the price of “Christianity is superhuman. And yet the New Testament bids the Christian take up the imitation of Christ.” (Kierkegaard, 152) In making the articles of faith detached from practical living, Christian “lives, exactly like those of the heathens, reveal that man exists in relativity. People’s lives are nothing but relativities.” (Kierkegaard, 149)

In my previous article “Likeness and the Afterlife,” I made the assertion that human beings generally pursue some sort of likeness to live by. The answer to this juxtaposition lies in why one is not able to live without needing to be consummated in a likeness. Philosophers such as Duns Scotus and Cajetan assert that humanity exists wholly as a self-autonomous “pure nature”. Humanity, to be brief, is complete and exists without the need for God to further perfect their existence. I, from the standpoint of the existentialists and the writings of Henri de Lubac, assert the contrary: humanity is radically dynamic and not autonomous. For Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, the essence of man is absurdity which requires an inventive intuition to make sense of (albeit only briefly and relatively). For the Catholic existentialist Gabriel Marcel, the essence of man is ambiguous but finds itself immersed in the wonders of being amongst other beings; the culmination of this statement is found in his assertion that “to be is to be with others”. For Martin Heidegger, who is commonly lumped with the existentialists, the natural end of man could only be a being-unto-death which convicts us to be individuals but also terminates our existence.

With Heidegger’s being-unto-death, it needs to be asked if one can be satisfied with such an end. Is the totality of human satisfaction found in solely embracing its definitive end? Heidegger does present those who put an immense amount of faith in self-determination with an immense obstacle. The pursuit of becoming independent falters in light of the individual ceasing to be in death. Henri de Lubac, however, saves the dignity of our individuality away from the being-unto-death.  He challenges what he calls a “metaphysic of self-sufficiency” with a claim of “radical incompleteness” (de Lubac, 59).  In Catholic theology, one needs sanctification in order to walk the Christian life. Sanctification is the act of God that infuses the believer with faith, hope, and charity. It is not something added to one’s nature or radically opposed to it, but is a perfecting of the human being. For my assertion of searching for likeness, it is God placing upon an individual the means to be able to live out the likeness of Christ. Grace does not turn humanity into super-humanity. Rather, it reveals the individuals radical need to be oriented towards the likeness.

Sources:

De Lubac, Henri. A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 1984.

Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2013.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Trans. Anthony M. Ludovici. New York: Barnes & Nobles, Inc. 2006.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Diary of Soren Kierkegaard. Ed. Peter Rohdes. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc. 1960.

Andrew Simmons is a graduate from Aquinas College. He studied  for a double major in History and Theology with a minor in Catholic Studies. In 2010, during his freshman year, he converted to Catholicism. He find himself reading more of those dastardly modern philosophers and theologians in order to feel more relevant. It would be easier if the moderns would stop deconstructing the point of being relevant. 

Likeness and the Afterlife

by Andrew Simmons                                                                           Thursday,  Jan 30

“Thus when the power-crazed person whose motto is ‘Caesar or nothing’ doesn’t become Caesar, he despairs over that. But this indicates something else: that he cannot stand being himself precisely because he failed to become Caesar…And by not becoming Caesar he despairs at not being able to be rid of himself.” –Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, p. 49

image credit: Kate Beaton, creator of Hark! A Vagrant.

It is clear that there are and remain several underlying questions among Christians about Hell. The release of Love Wins by Rob Bell did not create the discussion, but merely stoked the fires over whether or not Hell contradicts Christian love. Some would say that a God who condemns is not one who loves; conversely, other Christians maintain the importance of hell based on moral principles. In fact, the entire discourse seems to hang on whether or not the law possesses a power over where a person goes. This is not an article about whether or not the lawful or the lawless are right in this situation. The aim of this is to add to the discussion by calling to mind the foundation of the discourse in general: the person. Whatever may occur in the afterlife, it pertains less to moralistic categories, but, rather, reflects personal development.

Now, predominately in the West, there is a reoccurring interpretation that the “image of God” and being made in God’s “likeness” are the same thing (Gen 1:26-27). As someone with an affinity for Eastern theology, this is not the case with the Eastern Christians (Catholic or Orthodox). From Fred J. Saato’s American Eastern Catholics, the image refers mainly to the characteristics of humanity that reflect God’s qualities. Likeness, however, deals with the later perfecting of these qualities (Saato, 62). What this essentially means is that we are all subject to being brought into the likeness of God. The Church Father’s understood this to be theosis. But I wish to add more with the notion of the likeness. Using Aquinas’s notion that the human person is a subject that is driven by desiring, I propose that the human person is driven towards attaining a likeness.

Whether it is impersonating our parents as kids or social icons as adults, we seek to find some symbol to adopt as the foundation for our lives. These personas to live by provide an element of security against life’s common anxiety. One can see it in the impersonating of celebrities, seeking out self-help gurus, or in adhering to any particular social leader. Yet, the symbols others seek to live by are bound to the same contingency as its pursuer. To further add onto the quote by Kierkegaard, it is not so much that one despairs of never becoming Caesar, but the despair in realizing that Caesar was never worth being in the first place. This sensation of despair is key to Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death; the text, however, is not purely psychological. The condition dubbed “the sickness unto death” is something Kierkegaard claims is only noticeable to the Christian.  Death is not the disease, but, for Kierkegaard, is the perceived cure for the afflicted. It is the termination of a life with nothing left to hope for.

The sickness is a condition often ignored due to the continuous affinity to distract one from the root cause.  Today, the world is gripped with constant struggles over ideals. Political activism has replaced a necessary need to ponder the reasons for why certain systems are even believed in. Yet, Kierkegaard, the ever constant social critic, does not begin the text with arguments against politics or social movements. He begins talking about what composes the human person. A person is the synthesis of two distinct concepts: the infinite and the finite. While the terminology is different, the medievals also had a similar understanding that the human person was the unity between eternity and materiality. The sickness is a great loathing for this condition. It is the struggle to accept one over the other. Yet, in failing to grasp that the person is a “both/and” and not an “either/or”, the troubled soul seeks to no longer be a united presence in the world. This, I believe, carries with it an eternal repercussion.

As the synthesis of the infinite and finite, the way one conducts himself is presumed to have an impact on this union. Aquinas states that the customs that we conduct ourselves by become something akin to a second nature (IIa-IIae, Q 49, A 1, ad 2). Whatever we fixate upon becomes a part of us. I wish to take this statement of second nature and apply it to likeness. By seeking out a likeness that is limited, we become trapped within that likeness. For Kierkegaard, one is to be grounded in Christ who brings about a paradoxical realization. When the person seeks out the likeness of Christ, it is always important to remember that Christ, in turn, sought out humanity in the Incarnation.  It is not simply adopting the mask of Christ, but it is taking up a mask that returns and inversely leaves you without one. It is the assumption of a likeness that embraces the eternal. It is a rejection of what Chesterton would refer to as the limiting cell of the madman (an actual reference to Nietzsche’s madman). If anything, hell is that limiting confinement upon which is written “He [the madman] believes in himself” (Chesterton, 21).

Sources:

Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. New York: Image, 2001.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness unto Death. London: Penguin, 2004.

Saato, Fred J. American Eastern Catholicism. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2006.

Image:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=33

Andrew Simmons is now a graduate from Aquinas College! He studied  for a double major in History and Theology with a minor in Catholic Studies. In 2010, during his freshman year, he converted to Catholicism. He is now plagued by questions about graduate school. The anxiety of choice! 

Magical Reason

Reason is unimaginable. It has no shape, density, color, or velocity. If matter and energy were the only things to

Like Magic!

exist, reason would not exist. On the other hand, faith would exist, or at least a simpler version of it. Faith is an outgrowth of experience and trust after all. Dogs have faith, flies have faith, atheists have faith (in reason (and proselytizing atheists have faith in free will)). Of the two, faith and reason, reason is more magical, it is more supernatural. You cannot set up a scientific experiment to test if reason exists, because the experiment assumes reason from the outset. Science cannot disprove the supernatural, cannot disprove magic, because it assumes the supernatural.

The natural version of faith is the simple one of experience, you can trust or believe in something because you have experienced it. The supernatural version is believing in things unseen, like the supernatural. Reason has no natural version, it is purely supernatural. It takes things unseen and manipulates them by unseen means to find more meaning, to find more truth. It is mysteriously present in our thinking, and it magically allows us to see the unseen. It is our magic eyes in a way.

Science assumes reason, and it assumes patterns. It can either fantasize that these patterns are unbreakable laws, or that these patterns can be practically put to use. Either way, the scientific method assumes both reason and repeatability in nature. Both have to be taken by faith. Both elements are supernatural. After all, what does the law of gravity look like? It has no color, velocity, or weight. The facts of falling bodies could be just as accurately described as the ‘enchantment’ of gravity as it could the ‘law’ of gravity.

Reason is practical, ubiquitous, and necessary, but it is still a mysterious supernatural element. A wizardry peculiar to humans among animals. It may very well be an illusion, but that is as unprovable as its existence.

Joshua Fahey is a Chestertonian who enjoys a little polemicism to spice up his life.

Liberty Constrained

by Christian Ohnimus                                                                         Wednesday, January 1

Previously, I wrote about the individualist, secular notion of freedom as solely negative. “freedom” means being freed from something. That something depends entirely on the individual and is thus purely preferential and can be anything. “freedom” means being constrained by nothing: not by religion, not by the state, not by families, not by friends, not by corporations, not by morals, ethics, law or even our own psychology. The modernist march has even tried to “free” us from the very laws of physical reality by rationalizing them away as illusions. The proper word for this kind of freedom is “liberty”. But a world without constraints is not a world of total freedom but one of absolute tyranny. Only the prisoner of conscience is free.

As I illustrated previously, there is another concept of freedom. Freedom can also be positive: the freedom to do good. Freedom is not merely a privation of power of others over us. Such “negative” freedom can be good when it shields us from unjust coercion but it only exists as a reflection of the positive freedom founded on the Good. It is the good that orients our freedom, both negative and positive, and, without which, our freedom is unintelligible. If there is no supreme good to which our freedom is subordinate to then not only does our freedom become meaningless, there is no longer any reason beyond our own selfishness to ever respect any one else’s freedom. Liberty, or negative freedom, is smaller than, and contingent upon, our right to positive freedom because without an objective, universal good, and the right to pursue that good freely, liberty makes no sense.

Not only is constraint not contrary to freedom, it is necessary to it. A purely negative view of freedom where freedom is merely freedom from constraint does little to allow us to live in a truly human way but only provides the most basic groundwork for human action upon which we do great good, horrible evil, or, if we choose, even nothing at all. Negative freedom or liberty as the beginning and end of our social framework promises nothing except anarchy. Liberty must be constrained so that its destructive properties are inhibited and its creative potential expanded. This requires that we possess not only a negative sense of freedom from coercion but, additionally, a positive sense of freedom in which freedom is for something, namely something good.

Mere negative freedom is freedom dominated by the will. Everyone may do whatever they please, good or bad, healthy or disordered, pleasurable or painful. The will is supreme and things like virtue, human dignity, and human flourishing are subordinate to it. The will of the individual is expanded, without borders, and yet no two wills may ever touch for in doing so they will meet resistance and liberty is constrained. Society itself must be abolished and replaced with an aggregate of liberty. When freedom is merely from something but for nothing then the world becomes quite lonely.

Freedom from coercion must exist beside freedom for virtue. Put another way, if negative freedom or liberty means being able to say “no” to the wills of others over us then positive freedom consists in being able to say “yes” to God’s will. It is not enough that our wills be free, they must be directed towards something good. True freedom involves living well, it also means living within the constraints of natural and divine law. When we live according to our nature and temper our wills then new horizons reveal themselves. The ideal of freedom should not be merely autonomous man but virtuous man. Independence Is nice but divorced from some positive end it remains a mere means with no purpose. We could say that the negative freedom of the will to free of coercion is a means and freedom for virtue is the end we should hope to achieve: to temper ourselves so that virtue becomes easy and doing what is good is second nature.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about the vitality of a “freedom for excellence.” George Weigel, in his article A Better Concept of Freedom, sums up Aquinas’ concept of freedom:

Aquinas’ subtle and complex thinking about freedom is best captured in the phrase, freedom for excellence. Freedom, for St. Thomas, is a means to human excellence, to human happiness, to the fulfillment of human destiny. Freedom is the capacity to choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit—or, to use the old–fashioned term, as an outgrowth of virtue. Freedom is the means by which, exercising both our reason and our will, we act on the natural longing for truth, for goodness, and for happiness that is built into us as human beings.

The constraint of our positive freedom that orients us towards what is good and forbids what is evil expands our liberty by giving it a legitimacy and a purpose beyond ourselves. Otherwise, liberty is made small: based only on the caprice of the individual. Freedom from injustice and freedom for excellence, to pursue goodness, these two senses of freedom together represent the fullness of freedom. So naturally we need both to be fully free. It is in the grand combination of liberty and virtue together that our shackles are broken and we are no longer slaves, not to each other, not to ourselves, and not to sin.

Christian Ohnimus is a husband and registered nurse in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Franciscan University. He hopes to raise a holy family with the help of his better and more beautiful other half.

Liberalism and Means without an End

by Christian Ohnimus                                                                         Wednesday, December 18

In an intellectual tradition that can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes in the 17^th century, we have made means supreme and have created a society with no discernible end. Our means serve no end in particular but every end in general and thus means become the end in themselves: a futile and endless endeavor.

Hobbes believed it erroneous to assume that man had any purpose beyond his own survival and comfort. Perhaps some greater purpose existed but Hobbes thought it was not apparent as evidenced by constant disagreement between men over that purpose. If men could not agree on their own end, thought Hobbes, then society had no legitimacy in pursuing one end over another as such controversy inevitably led to violence. All the state could do was assure men the free pursuit of that basic purpose of survival and comfort. In Hobbes’ worldview the controversial values of religion and morality and its ultimate end of salvation were to be replaced with the valueless pursuit of prosperity. Society was not meant to aid man in achieving salvation in the next life but to meet his physical needs and wants on this earth.

However, jumping forward to the 20^th century, intellectual Ludwig von Mises observed that man’s wants can never be satisfied; he will never be truly comfortable. He noted that with each new innovation and increase in prosperity the desires of man also expanded. According to Mises, no matter how prosperous we become we will always desire more – a fact readily apparent in every materialist society. Things do not satisfy men’s souls. To Mises, however, this was an argument in favor of increasing prosperity and, indeed, one of Mises’ primary concerns was how to maximize wealth. If people want more then the function of the market is to meet those wants and no one should interfere with that. Never mind that the market will always fail to provide “enough” no matter how prosperous its economy becomes. Like Hobbes before him, Mises believed that prosperity was the only legitimate end of society. However, as Mises himself observed it is an end which can never be reached. We will never have enough.

Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, like his mentor, Mises, and Hobbes centuries earlier, also asserted that the state should not attempt to realize any conception of higher human purpose because to do so would violate the market of the liberal society. The market, which is to say private economic activity, cannot be subjugated to higher human purpose. But the market is not an end in itself. It is a mere means. The market is the mechanism of production and exchange by which we create and mediate wealth. Then, to Hayek, like Mises, it is this creation of wealth that reigns supreme and any “personal” belief about any higher human purpose must be subordinate to it. To Hayek this was the mark of what he called the “Great Society.” Hayek’s Great Society is distinguished from smaller communities by what he called the absence of “unity of purpose.” This is what made society great: every man could pursue his own purpose and no purpose could be subject to another under the law: it was the means of production and not shared ends that tied men together.

Mises’ disciples are poor illustrators and even worse comedians

The ultimate end of the liberalism of Hobbes, Mises, Hayek and a thousand other progressives is to expand the means of society necessary to maximize prosperity so that every man may be better equipped, at least materially, to pursue his own personal ends individually and independent of the rest of society. Any social end beyond this is anathema. No end may be declared “better” and therefore worth social pursuit over other ends. Thus, disciples of Mises, in carrying the liberal logic to its end, declare that male chauvinist pigs, drug pushers, blackmailers, dishonest cops, counterfeiters, and non-contributors to charity (to name a few) are not only justified in their actions but are heroes for pursuing their own selfish interests in the face of social moral “oppression.”

However, by subjecting ends to means, by declaring means supreme and ends as something that doesn’t matter beyond “personal” preference we are creating a meaningless society. Is a society which is free to pursue any end but is not allowed to place any one end above another really free? After all, is it not the quality of our ends and not the efficiency of our means that really matter? What worth is it to be a mastermind if it means being a criminal mastermind? What worth is it being rich without an appropriate end to direct those riches? Isn’t physical wealth without a good end to direct its use a poverty?

The truth is that we cannot pursue whatever purpose we like even in Hobbes’ Leviathan or Hayek’s Great Society. Even the liberal state admits that some ends are bad even if it cannot admit that some are good. Thus, men are constrained in their purposes: he cannot steal, he cannot murder, and he cannot commit fraud. Such limits alone, however, are insolvent. If the state can tell a man that he cannot do something because it is evil it should also tell him that he can do something because it is good. “Do no evil” can only serve the higher calling to “do good.” Otherwise, what’s the point?

The liberalism that began with Hobbes sought to liberate man from the conflict of religion in society. Men fought and died for salvation. Therefore, salvation had to go. Ultimately, liberalism seeks to sever man from God. In the liberal society men may pray because they believe in God and eternal life and men may desecrate the Body of Christ because they believe it’s just a cracker and there’s nothing after death anyway. In the liberal society it does not matter which you choose so long as you choose. Do you feel like you’re “expressing yourself”? That’s all that matters. What does not matter is whether there is a God and life after death or no God and nothing to follow our short, brutal life except the horror of nonexistence. Both are perfectly valid, satisfying stances.

Except that is insanity. If there is no God then the pursuit of the eternal is in vain and men waste their short lives on a specter. If there is a God then the stakes are astronomically higher. The things of this earth are but dust and every man should fervently tend to his own soul lest he be lost forever. For society to treat the position of the unbeliever as equally valid and desirable in the name of plurality becomes a repugnant act of almost incomprehensible callousness as it abandons him to eternal damnation. The one end above all others that society must concern itself with is not material wants or even needs but salvation. If it is bad to let a man die of hunger it is infinitely worse to let him die of sin. Mercy and charity demand that we tend to the salvation of others.

Our society must boldly seek the truth in regards to God and salvation or we can never know towards what ends we must direct ourselves and any means, no matter how efficient, are for nothing. Liberalism is not even capable of acknowledging the question, much less provide an answer.

Christian Ohnimus is a husband and registered nurse in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Franciscan University. He hopes to raise a holy family with the help of his better and more beautiful other half.