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A Catholic Interpretation of Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2024

Aelred Graham O.S.B.
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Extract

The work of the philosopher may be considered fundamentally from two points of view: as an activity directed to an object which is of its nature an end and pointing to nothing outside itself, or as concentrated upon an object to be regarded as a bonum utile, a means to be employed to some further purpose. Accordingly as either of these tendencies predominates will the mind receive, so to say, its determination and character, its philosophical habitus. For those who accept the first point of view philosophy will be an activity formally of the speculative intellect, essentially contemplative; for those who accept the second it will be an exercise of the practical intelligence, a work, in a sense, artistic and creative.

It will hardly be questioned that for St. Thomas Aquinas the object of the speculative intellect, truth (or being as known) can never be subjected to any kind of intellectual utilitarianism; for the contemplation of truth is the supreme end of man, an end which alone gives point and meaning to all subordinate activities, itself, in an ultimate and sublime sense, completely useless. Consistently then with this view, if the philosopher engages in the practical work of teaching, his task is not one of rendering the transcendental order acceptable to the tastes of his disciples, but of leading their minds to the contemplation of truth in its essential clarity by subtilizing and strengthening their native powers of apprehension; fortificando virtutem intellectivam; in this way he participates, in his own degree, in the angelic activity of “illumination”: illuminare nihil aliud est quam manifestationem cognitae veritatis alteri tradere (Summa Theol. I, cvi, i).

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Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 16 , Issue 187 , October 1935, pp. 746 - 755
Copyright
Copyright © 1935 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Vide De Doctrina Christiana, lib. II, cap. 40-Migne, P. L., 349 63.

2 Polarity, a German Catholic’s Interpretation of Religion, by P. Ench Przywara, S. J., translated by A. C. Bouquet, D.D. (London. Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford. Price 8/6 net.)

3 A Newman Synthesis. (London, Shed & Ward, 1930.)

4 From the context it is evident that by “clearly active character” Fr. Przywara means not the immanent activity of intellectual apprehension, but the trmsitive, practical activity which terminates in the formation of an object of knowledge. To attribute such a notion to St. Thomas can only arise from ascribing to the “active intellect” (intellectus agens) a factitive, creative power—misinterpretation, in its turn, perhaps due to attempting to “synthesise” the Thomist epistemology with a theory of knowledge diametrically opposed to it. In reality, the function of the intellectus agens is not to construct the object, but to actualise its latent intelligibility, so that the object, thus rendered intelligible in actu, thereupon actualises the intellectus possibilis (from this point of view the act of knowledge is essentially passive-“pati quoddam”) to form a union of complete identity; the intellectus agens no more constructs the object of thought than a light constructs the objects it illuminates—a comparison constantly employed by St. Thomas in this context. (For the more important texts on St. Thomas’s conception of the act of knowledge see the “Bibliographie sommaire” in J. Maritain’s Réflexions sur l’Intelligesce et sur so vie prope, troisième edition, p. 50. Desclée de Brouwer et Cie., Pans, 1930.)

5 Lightfoot: Epistle to the Galatians, p. 55.

6 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, cv, II, ad. 8.

7 Yves Simon, Introduction à l’ontologie du connaître, p. 127, note I. (Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1934.)

8 In his own terminology: the solution to the problem of the relation of Deity (the coincidsntia oppositorum, the “unity of opposites”) and the creation (p. 12-14).

9 In his extensive bibliographies no reference is to be found to the celebrated tractatus of Cajetan’s, De nominum analogia, a work of capital importance for the study of analogia entis; M. T.-L. Penido’s recent magisterial treatise Le róle de l’Analogie en Théologie dogmatique (Paris, Vrin, 1931) is also apparently unknown to Fr. Przywara; still less does he show any first-hand acquaintance with the work of the modem French Thomists, who are generally considered to be in the authentic tradition of the master. When it is recalled that the philosophy of St. Thomas has been officially stated to be that of the Church itself (“cuius doctrinam, ut quam plurimis in omni genere litterarum monumentis testata est. suam Ecclesia fecerit.”—Litt. Encyc. Studiorum Ducem Pii PP. XI, 29 Jun., 1923—Acta Ap. Sed., vol. xv, p. 314). this lacuna in the otherwise great erudition of Fr. Przywara must be taken into account when estimating the value of his conclusions as to what constitutes the “classical Catholic philosophy.”

10 In Boetium De Trin., q. II, art. II, ad. 7.

11 Ibid, q. vi, art. I, resp. ad tertiam questionem.

12 Vide ibid., q. II, art. III, ad. I.

13 Contra Gentiles. lib. III, cap. 6g.