A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Eienne Gilson
Doug Mounce
jaraymaker
As a side-note, I recall this review by Denis Bradley (who also wrote on Aristotle and Aquinas' ideas of natural desire) that references the inflamed issue, and briefly states the "exact issue"."The way back [from modern philosophy's sophistry] to pre-modern epistemic certitudes, however, may not be so straight as Redpath hopes, even for convinced Thomists: Raymond Dennehy, rehearses—syncretizing their positions rather than clearly resolving—the exact issue between Maritain and Gilson. How should an “authentic” Thomistic realism be grounded: immediately or critically? Everything depends on how the bugbear, “critique of knowledge,” is defined. The issue inflamed neo-Thomists for almost a hundred years. Dennehy, a Maritainian partisan despite his conciliatory intent, continues to think that Thomistic realism, standing before the bottomless “epistemological trench” of modern scepticism, somehow requires and permits both an immediate and a critical grounding, thereby apparently—or coming very close to—conceding the need and the possibility of exactly what Gilson, ever the vigilant anti-Cartesian, never ceased to deny: a reflexive, second order, inferentially constructed bridge to the extra-mental world of naturally knowable things. This is not to deny that Thomists need a cognitive theory (explaining how we know the extra-mental world); it is to say that it should not be conflated with critique (essaying to demonstrate the conclusion that we do know the world). While perhaps not conflating them, Maritain—with Dennehy in tow—seems to think that the former is somehow a suitable and necessary stand-in for the latter. (For a vastly more developed and sustainable version of the latter position, which really does sublate the now rather faded neo-Thomist controversy, one can recommend total immersion in Lonergan.)
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jaraymaker
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Betreff: [lonergan_l] A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Etienne Gilson
Hugh Williams
Doug and John,
One can recommend a total immersion in Lonergan, but does that mean staying only with Lonergan's thought and viewpoints?
I'm not sure even Lonergan would recommend that ...
... for there is advance in the philosophical discourse, which often, for me, is difficult to grasp, appreciate, and express.
For example I do sense some movement from the dogmatic realism attributable to Gilson towards the critical realism found in (or attributable to) Rahner and Lonergan (and earlier in Gilson's contemporary Maritain).
But now one reads of what has been called a 'robust pluralist realism' as what finds in Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor where the phenomenology of being in the world bodily has gained a prominence.
to the actual affections of the subject, 2) they are also applicableTo view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/663232835.577440.1717220154134%40mail.yahoo.com.
Hugh Williams
Doug and John,
One can recommend a total immersion in Lonergan, but does that mean staying only with Lonergan's thought and viewpoints?
I'm not sure even Lonergan would recommend that ...
... for there is advance in the philosophical discourse, which often, for me, is a challenge to grasp, to fully appreciate, and to express or communicate.
For example, I do sense some significant movement from the so-called dogmatic realism attributable to Gilson towards the critical realism found in (or attributable to) Rahner and Lonergan which we speak of at length on this list (and also as found earlier in Gilson's contemporary Maritain).
But now one can read of what has been called a 'robust pluralist realism' as in what one finds in Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor where the phenomenology of bodily being in the world has gained a much-needed philosophical prominence.[1]
Philosophical reflection has traditionally told us that we possess qualities of sensation and are aware of this possession as such. This sensation and the awareness of it are a unity in the one subject of experience. In this sense we can say sensations are subjective.
But these sensations are real not because we are aware of their appearance but rather, we are aware of them because they are real. However, sense qualities cannot be intrinsically attributed to material things and treated as objects of knowledge as are material things.
In the Aristotelian tradition sense qualities have a potential reality in the thing itself which is able to stimulate them. Aristotle preserves the notion of sensation as a unity due to the collaboration of subject and object but assigns the function of receptive powers to the subject and that of active stimulation to the external object.
On the basis of the principle that the reality of an action resides in the patient, Aristotle concludes that the actuality of both sensation and sense quality belong to the subject. The external object is only potentially colored in the sense of being capable of stimulating these colored sensations. Thus, the terms in which we speak of sense qualities have a twofold meaning – 1) they are applicable to the actual affections of the subject, and 2) they also are applicable to the affective qualities or powers of the external object as source/cause of these affections.
The Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition in its medieval expressions does not discuss any stage in the development of experience more primitive than the perception of the external world. Thomas notes the distinction between sensation and perception when dealing with the veracity of the senses, and he also notes that although one’s judgment of external objects is subject to error, we cannot be deceived in our awareness of the affecting of sense which is sensation itself.
It is argued quite forcefully in the tradition that we must acknowledge not only the reality of bodily sense data but also their essential connection with the self. However, always as the final ‘standard’ for objectivity, we must look elsewhere for the source of perception of the external world. And it is said by Gilson and many others that for the realist, the proper direction to look is toward a recognition of both the distinctive character of our corporeal/bodily awareness and the actual existence of other objects of direct acquaintance along with their sense data. (For a succinctly condensed exposition of this realist tradition, see D. B. Hawkins, “The Criticism of Experience” pp.30-38)
Hugh
[1] As I understand it robust pluralist realism is the philosophical position on realism that Taylor has developed with Hubert Dreyfus in a small but mighty relatively recent text entitled “Retrieving Realism”. It is a position making three fundamental claims: 1) that there may be multiple ways of inquiring into reality – thus the pluralism; 2) that these ways reveal truths independent of us in the sense that we will be required to adapt and revise our thinking in order to properly or adequately grasp things, this is the robustness of the realism; and 3) we may yet fail in bringing these different ways of inquiry into a single unified mode of inquiry or picture – thus the robustness of the pluralism.
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Doug Mounce
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jaraymaker
Hugh Williams
John and Doug,
I do agree in the value of Lonergan’s methodological approach, but it too has its limits… because no methodology stands completely alone, there are always philosophical presuppositions lurking in the ‘hallways and backrooms’. There is always the issue and problematic of ‘content’ somehow, somewhere …
First-off, I have a keen sense that this question of ‘relation’ and its onto-existential status is highly relevant here and should not be forgotten in the sense that we should try and return to it at some point. This problematic of ‘relation’ and the auxiliary question as to whether ‘relation’ has only to do with the ‘connections’ of thought or thinking, especially in our highly complex relational world has given, or can give, the critical realists such as Lonergan an important forum in our own times.
But when we focus on Rahner’s text, and I say I’m seeing the influence of Marechal and behind him the influence of the great Kant in how Rahner is setting up his question and thus his problematic in his ‘Introductory Interpretation’ of Thomas' question and articles, I’m feeling a little bit of Gilson is warranted.
I say this, because in the more intense and passionate period of this debate among Thomists in the first half of the twentieth C, Gilson definitely had Marechal in his sights. It is often claimed that Gilson was unduly critical of cognitional-intentionality analysis often arguing that metaphysical critique alone was needed or sufficient. In my view it was the tendency he saw in this analysis to completely consume or eclipse metaphysical critique that concerned him most.
His argument for his dogmatic realism, when it was pitted against Marechal particularly, was that Thomistic judgment implies an intentional finality which presupposes a completed union of subject and object in the prior grasp of an “in itself” ontologically. It was for Gilson the knowing of this that affords consciousness. For him Thomist epistemology rests upon such an ontology which can be known and understood without need of epistemological justification. The object first confronts the subject so thought is able to turn towards it, and if metaphysical critique has not already grasped this object neither it nor its finality would exist.
We might argue that the transcendental Kantian act implies a finality and postulates its object, but then we must ask with what object are we concerned? And Gilson worried that it is and can only be an object of thought, an immanent object and nothing more.
In contrast … in order to posit the thing in itself – the real being, we, in Gilson’s considered view, must be freed of all these operations which cannot satisfy realism’s standard. Yes, we can by the finality of the dynamism of our thought posit in thought the independent reality of the end pursued, but this dynamic necessity is the basis for only a subjective certitude not an objective one.
Now, my sense is that this dogmatic realism can sustain a certain straightforward appeal up until one seriously encounters this complex question of ‘relation’, then the need for cognitional and intentionality analysis becomes much more apparent as, for example, Kenneth Schmitz and Norris Clarke have argued and shown …
… and we get only a hint of this in Lonergan’s letter in response to Gerard Smith’s, for now, ‘unknown question’ on this very matter ….
Hugh
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