Conscience
and the person fit together inseparably. There is no mature person without the
voice of conscience, and no conscience save in a person. Conscience is also
perhaps the most
distinctive expression t it means to be a person, in the two main aspects of
the person; that
is to say, it is the most distinctive expression of what it means to be human
and of what it means
to be me. Let us see how this is the case.
What
is Conscience?
Understanding
what is called "conscience" is clearly at the heart of any adequate theory
of morality.Yet, as one author has put it: "Conscience is another word
like 'sin' - often
used but little understood. Trying to explain conscience is like trying to nail
jello to the wall;
just when you think you have it pinned down, part of it begins to slip
away." To explain exactly
how conscience works is indeed difficult. But the main lines of what
conscience is and
of the role it plays in our moral lives seem to me to be clear enough, and
accessible to all -
fortunately so, since "Follow your conscience" is one of the
fundamental principles of the moral
life.
Let
us first pin down what we are talking about in our when we speak of "my conscience."
This refers to that "inner voice" that advises me and commands me in
the presence
of a moral decision as to how to act in a given concrete situation: "This
action is good;
you ought to do it, you should do it"; or "This action is
evil; you should not to it. That "inner
voice" does not just declare what is good to do or evil to avoid; it
declares as well an obligation to
do the good, speaking with a certain authority, and coming to us from some higher
source. This is what we all experience when our individual moral conscience
begins to manifest
itself clearly enough from around the age of six or seven on. I am talking here
about the
actual experience - the phenomenology, if you will - of conscience that the vast
majority of
mature human beings have, however, they may describe or explain it. I am not
talking of the
various explanatory theories of philosophers and professional psychologists,
many of whom,
of course, have denied or tried to explain away the validity and authority of conscience
as the authentic voice of reason ( e,g., Freud, various materialist
reductionists, etc.)
But
just what is this "inner voice" we call "conscience"? Where
does it come from and
what is its role in my personal life? We must distinguish it from the
"superego"--a term first
coined by Freud-which seems like it in many ways and is often confused with it
by
The
voice of authentic moral conscience, on the other hand, speaks to us as our own inner
voice, commanding us in the name of our own better selves, in terms of values
which we
ourselves understand and have internalised as our own, as though our own better
selves ere
guiding us, at the same time that they were expressing the voice of some
higher, more ultimate
authority.
What,
then, is the nature of this authentically personal moral conscience,
this inner judge
of which we speak metaphorically in terms of a "voice"? I
shall be following here the lines
of St. Thomas' theory of conscience, because it seems to me to be the most
satisfactory. When
St. Thomas first introduced it in the 13th century, in the midst of intense
discussion and
conflicting opinions on the subject, it seemed uncomfortably novel to many,
even dangerous
with regard to his firm teaching on the obligation to follow even an erroneous conscience--which
many at the time explicitly rejected. But the powerful clarity and coherent unity
of his doctrine gradually won out and the doctrine it- self went on to become what
now is
the most widely accepted tradition among Catholic thinkers.
Conscience
is not constituted by a feeling or emotion, although it can be accompanied by
strong emotions when we resonate emotionally positively or negatively with the
values or disvalues
that shine forth to us when we are making a judgment of conscience. It is not a special
faculty or power of the soul distinct from both intellect and will. It is not
an act of the will
or a combination of intellect and will, like the free will decision. According
to St. Thomas,
it is a strictly cognitive act, a judgment of our reason, which applies
the basic innate orientation
of the human spirit toward the total human good, our final end, to the
particular situation
confronting us and calling for decision here and now. This basic orientation
toward the
total good that is our final end St. Thomas calls "the natural law
imprinted in our hearts by
God," (synderesis as the medievals called it after Aristotle), a
participation in the divine law
in God's intellect which is his plan for our happiness and final destiny. The
latter by itself,
however, remains very general, including the intuitive grasp of the first
principle of practical
intelligence , "Do good and avoid evil," and of a small number of
basic general goods
to be pursued and evils avoided. But our actual moral life is lived out in the
day to day particular
moral judgments called for by the particular situations here and now
confronting us as
our life unfolds. We need some power to mediate between this general
orientation toward the
good and the particular instances of moral good and evil confronting us in the
existential order,
or if you will, to apply the general to the particular in the order of
moral action. This is precisely
the role of conscience: nourished by this deep natural ordination toward the
good, to judge
just how to apply it to the particular situation now facing me and guiding us
declare that
this is the good act I ought to do or the evil should avoid here and now.
St.
Thomas insists--insightfully, I think--that the voice of conscience is a
judgment of my
reason alone addressed to my whole person declaring, "This is the good
you ought to do, [or]
the evil you ought to avoid." Conscience, in that sense, is both a
declaration of fact and the
authoritative imposition of an obligation to act this way or that, which
has in it the nature of a
command, a "moral imperative," as it is called: "Do this, avoid
that." But an ought, a moral
obligation, is not a compulsion. It is still up to me to decide freely with my
whole person--intellect,
will, emotions all working together--just how I am in fact going to act, either
following the moral command of my reason, ignoring it or rejecting it.
This
voice of conscience operates both antecedently, before my free decision,
either as
guiding me through warning or command, and consequently, after the
decision, by praise or
blame. It is thus an expression of one of the fundamental roles of reason
in a rational being:
to impose order on the multiplicity of our experience by discerning the
priority of values
and the relation of means to ends, and to guide the will--or, more correctly,
the whole person--in
choosing wisely between the finite goods offered me, in view of moving effectively
toward the final end inscribed in our natures. Note the profound difference between
this classical conception of reason as the wise guide of all our other
faculties, counselling
us as to the ends and means we choose to fulfil our innate destiny, and the conception
of reason of not a few later thinkers for whom, because reason can no longer attain
truth, can no longer be the guide of our actions, becoming merely the skilled
instrument for
helping us to attain what we desire, to get what we want, the servant of
will rather than its master.
One thinks in this regard of the revealing statement of Madonna: "I hate
the Catholic Church
because it is always trying to keep me from doing what I want to
do"--notice, not "what
is good to do," but what I want to do.
Because
the "voice of conscience" manifests itself not just as giving advice
but as commanding
us, laying an obligation upon us, in the mode of a judge--which we are
free to follow
or reject but not to abolish or change at will--it has taken on, almost
universally, in all the
past cultures we know, the aspect "of the voice of God," or of
some higher power guiding us
toward the authentic good for which we are destined, or at the very least,
"of the voice of our
inner ( or higher, better, authentic) self," which we
should respect and listen to if it is our wish
to become truly good persons, deserving of the respect of others. Or perhaps,
more accurately,
it has taken on the aspect of the voice of my inner true self, which is inspired
by and
echoes the voice of the higher power that made me and holds me responsible for
my actions.
Thus an ancient Egyptian text tells us, "The heart [by which is meant the
living wisdom
of the whole person as a unity of mind, heart, and emotions] is an excellent
witness. One
must stand in fear of departing from its guidance." Immanuel Kant
describes it as "the consciousness
of an interior court of justice in man," the Second Vatican Council: as
"man's most
secret core and sanctuary:" The Vatican II declaration continues:
"Deep within his conscience
man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must
obey" (Vat.
II, G. S. 16). But the most eloquent description I know of is also one
of the oldest, that of
the Roman philosopher Seneca in a letter to his young friend Lucilius:
God
is near you, he is with you, he is within you. Thus do I say, Lucilius:
a sacred and august spirit resides within us, and takes stock of
our good and evil actions, and is the guardian and avenger of our
deeds (Letter 41.1).
St.
Thomas explains why it is appropriate for us to call the voice of conscience
"the voice
of God." Since it lays on us or binds us with a moral obligation that is
unconditional, a "categorical
imperative," as Kant later put it, it is not possible for human reason on
its own to bind
the person owning it, to bind its own self authoritatively and unconditionally.
That can only
derive from some higher authority that has power over us, that ultimately is
God speaking
through the innate necessary orientation toward the ultimate good imprinted in
our hearts
by the Creator of our nature as the natural law, which is a participation in
the divine law
in the mind of God exercising providence over us. Yet, since this voice of
conscience is not
directly and immediately the voice of God speaking within us, but only as
mediated though
our own imperfect human reason, marked by its own history, it can be fallible
and, in certain
cases, even erroneous. But we must still follow it, until corrected, as our
immediate guide
to moral action, for, as Aquinas says, "Every human must act according to
reason, the reason
that he himself has from God, whether natural or infused:' (De Ver., 17,
5)
How
Does It Operate?
The
practical judgment of conscience is not arrived at by some abstract argument or logical
deduction from some more general set of moral principles, requiring special intellectual
training or skills, or high theoretical intellectual development. It is not
really a philosophical
type of activity at all. Most of the time, i.e., when the moral values emerge clearly
enough, it manifests itself as a spontaneous, quasi-intuitive judgment
that sizes up the whole
concrete situation which confronts me in a moral decision, together with its
relation to me
and how it resonates with my own basic moral commitment to the good in my
journey towards
my ultimate fulfilment. That is, it sees in a kind intuitive insight how it all
fits together
- it lights up to the mind, so to speak, in a kind of flash - then immediately
speaks to me
in a command, "This is the good demanding your response here, do
it!" or "This is evil, a violation
of your moral commitment to be a good person, denial of your authentic self,
don't do
it!" St. Thomas Aquinas sometimes as a kind of "knowledge by
connaturality," a knowledge
not by abstract concepts or purely intellectual reasoning, but by a certain existential
affinity and resonance of your whole person - mind, will, heart all working together
- with the moral goodness involved, or by dissonance and repulsion in the
presence of
evil. 3 The judgment is strictly concrete and existential, focused on the
situation here and now
before me, although general principle or value involved can shine forth, so to
speak, as applying
here and now. Thus a well-developed, sensitive conscience does not at all
require that
one be an educated person, or possess a highly developed speculative
intelligence. Luckily
so - for otherwise either the process would work too slowly to meet the often
urgent needs
of action or else only the well-educated could develop a mature conscience -
neither of which
is the case, as we know from experience.
The
mature conscience does require ( 1) a certain self-possession
through self- consciousness
and the ability to reflect on one's actions; and (2) a basic
commitment of oneself
as a person to the moral good, to live as a good person, which is the conscious
taking possession
and ratification of the deep innate drive of our nature as finalized towards
its ultimate
good, put in us by our Creator before our conscious moral life begins; this
makes us want to
discern the authentic moral good in a present situation; and (3) a certain fund
of practical
life experience from which we have learned to recognize the most probable consequences
of certain types of actions, expressed by the maxim, "Actions have
In
St. Thomas' explanation of the underlying structure of moral action he posits
as a necessary
presupposition of the above phenomenological description the innate
positive dynamism
of the whole person, intellect and will, toward the final good which defines
our nature
- the so-called natural law imprinted in our hearts by God our Creator - i.e.,
the natural orientation
of the intellect toward recognizing being as truly good, plus the natural
orientation of
the will toward union with the authentic good fulfilling our nature - which in
fact can only be
Infinite Good. It is this deep pre-conscious dynamism of the whole person, as
consciously recognized
and ratified by the mature conscience - which is the inner dynamo or source of psychic
energy impelling the practical intelligence to spontaneously discern the appropriate or
morally good action in the situation by which I am confronted, and then carry
it out, yet another
step in the direction of my authentic final fulfilment rather than an obstacle.
I am not obliged
to follow this command of conscience, of course, since it does not force my
freedom but
only lays a claim of moral obligation upon me. But without this a priori
natural orientation
toward the good, there would be no spontaneous impulse on the part of practical reason
to discern and command us choose the good and avoid the evil in this particular
case. As
Rudolf Hoffman comments insightfully in his fine article on conscience in: Karl
Rahner's Encyclopaedia
of Theology:
As
with every genuine appreciation of value, an attitude of reverence
and love [for the good] is an essential pre- condition
both for the development and for the activity of conscience.
(285 A).
It
is worthy of note that in late medieval thought (notably Ockham, the
Nominalists, a number
of post- Thomistic scholastics}, and in much of modern and contemporary Western thought
(Freud, Sartre, etc.), this innate orientation of the will toward the good, its
inclination to
follow the guidance of reason, is submerged or denied, with the result that the
will has become
a radically autonomous faculty, independent of the intellect, and
indifferent or neutral in
itself toward any good, even the profound pull of the Infinite Good, so that
free choice proceeds
from a radically free, intellectually unmoored will. This is the well-known
tradition known
as voluntarism, manifest in the insistence of Scotus, and especially
Ockham, that no other
reason can be given why the will is free than that it is in fact free,
for such is its nature, and any attempt to ground it more deeply in intelligence leads to
determinism and undermines
its absolute freedom toward all goods, including the Infinite Good. This is the inspiration
behind the political philosophy of the absolute power of the monarch (king, emperor,
etc.), who can declare, when asked for some justification of his commands:
"Let my will
stand in place of any reason" (Stet pro ratione voluntas.). In such
a tradition, moral goodness
is profoundly transformed: it is no longer obedience to the voice of conscience
as speaking
for my own reason's sight into the good, nor a participation in the divine
wisdom, but
obedience, rather, to a divine command simply because it is commanded,
willed by God. And
this will of God is so inscrutable to our reason that God, in fact, if he had
wanted to, could
have turned all the Ten Commandments, except the first, upside down so as to command
the opposite. We would, as such, be morally obliged to "commit adultery,
steal, lie, murder,
etc.," and not be in a position to question the reason for our being so
obliged. "In fact,
God has not commanded thus, but he could have." This is the so-called
"divine command
ethics," which seems to have been the position of the original Calvinists
and Lutherans,
who were opposed to philosophical or purely rational attempts to justify
morality or
solve moral problems. This is clearly quite a different explanation of the
structure of conscience
from the Thomistic one, which we have been drawing upon here. We will not argue
this point further.
The
Limitations of Conscience
1.
Conscience can be uncertain. In perhaps the majority of
moral situations which confront us
along the path of our lives, the moral values involved shine forth clearly
enough so that conscience
can, quickly enough, size up the situation and speak out its command without much
hesitation, as difficult as it might be for us to acquiesce to its commands.
But not rarely
we will be faced with situations so complex, where the priority of values
involved will
be so obscure, that we will be unable to see clearly the appropriate moral
decision to make.
In such a case, conscience can for some time remain prudently suspended, while we
unravel the various apparent conflicts of values and bring some order into the complexity.
A mature conscience should itself warn us here not to jump too quickly before
we can see clearly.
Sometimes
we can never reach this clarity despite our sincerest efforts. Then, since
we may have to act in real life, we can decide to follow one path of action as
the most
plausible accessible to my reason re and now. Another equally good and
committed moral
person may decide the opposite according to his practical decision made in good faith.
Both will be acting morally within the context of how far their limited vision
can guide
them. That is all we are asked to do. "For every human being,"
St. Thomas tells us, "is
obliged to act according to reason, i.e., the reason which he or she actually
possesses, whether
natural or supernaturally infused," not anybody else's/ (De Veritate,
q. 17, art. 5 ad
4). It is part of our basic human dignity as persons to take responsibility for
our own journey
toward God.
2.
Conscience is fallible. Although the voice of conscience is
ultimately, like the natural law of
which it is an application, a participation in the divine law for us, and so an
echo of the voice
of God, it is so only through the mediation of our own finite and imperfect intelligence,
which can be fallible not only as speculative but as practical. It can fail to grasp
or can misread the relevant moral values involved in a particular situation, or
even misread the actual situation itself, and this for many reasons proper to
its own history:lack
of mature self-awareness, lack of ability or willingness to reflect on one's
actions and their
probable consequences, distorted training by parents or other social influences
which induce
biases or blindspots in the recognition of certain moral values, lack of
adequate life experience
to interpret accurately what is at stake in the situation before one,
especially if it is complicated,
impatience or undue haste in making judgments, even previous bad habits of ignoring
or rejecting the voice of conscience, etc., etc.
Nonetheless,
fallible and even erroneous though it may be in a particular case, we must in the
last analysis follow what our conscience clearly command us to do with
certainty, after we
have sincerely tried our best to come to a reasonable decision, since our own
reason is the ultimate
immediate norm of all responsible human action. We must act according to the
light we
have, dim or even distorted though it may be, since it is a decision we are
personally responsible
for. However, we also have the moral obligation coming from a mature conscience
to try our best to make our conscience a well-informed one, and, in this
regard, to solicit
the help of others as we seek to come to a decision as objectively we can, and
as close to
authentic moral wisdom. (De Ver., q. 17, art. 4; Sum. Theol., I-II, q.
19, art. 5).
St.
Thomas is uncompromising on the obligation to follow the voice of my own
personal conscience,
to act according to the light of my reason, the reason that God has
given to me personally. We
now take this position for granted; it has become the central position of traditional
Catholic philosophy and theology. But it was quite an innovation when St. Thomas
first introduced it in the 13th century. The Franciscan masters and most
others, even his
own master, St. Albert the Great, were teaching that, out of respect for the
divine law, expressed
in the natural essences and order of things, it was a sin to follow an
erroneous conscience.
St. Thomas broke decisively with this tradition, standing at the cutting edge
of, and
giving precise expression to, a dramatic new wave awakening of medieval
consciousness to
the interiority and personalization of the moral and psychological life. It
began with Abelard's
introduction of the interior intention of the personal subject as a crucial
element in the
constitution of the moral act, provoked intense discussion within the university
faculties, and
was given mature technical expression by St. Thomas himself. What it meant was
that in the
analysis of the moral act, the good that was the object of the will's free
moral choice was no
longer the objective good in itself, but the good as presented to me by my
own personal reason,
the reason that I have from God, natural or infused. This is a dramatic
affirmation of the
dignity of the individual moral subject, personal and free, as Chenu puts it in
his illuminating
brief study of the awakening of personal consciousness in medieval civilization of
the 12th and 13th centuries. 4 St. Thomas, however,
hastens to restore the balance with the objectivity
of morality by adding that the objective moral goodness of an act in
itself is still determined
by conformity with the objective norm of right reason ( recta ratio),
i.e., reason as
properly ordered to the human final end in accordance with nature. And one has
an ever- present
personal obligation of conscience to try to conform one's conscience as closely
as possible
to this ideal of objective moral wisdom.
Conscience
as Privileged Manifestation of Personhood
From
all this it emerges that this remarkable human endowment of conscience, though not
the only one, is one of the most privileged places where the distinctive
characteristics of personhood--both
its solidarity with the rest of the human family and its uniqueness as proper
All
the above concerns the uniqueness in the process by which I come to make my own
practical moral judgments and to express them by the voice
of conscience. But far more striking
and luminous is the uniqueness that shines forth in my free response to
the voice of my
own individualized conscience. The voice of conscience guides me, warns me,
commands me
how to act. But it does not force or determine my free will. I alone, my whole
person, expressing
myself through my will decision, am responsible for making this decision--and nobody
else. The child becomes, rather dramatically, conscious of this around the age
of six seven,
but the mature person is acutely conscious of it, if willing to reflect at all
on its action. Beforehand:
"It's up to me to decide; the buck stops here. I am
responsible." And afterwards: "
I did it. And 1'm--or sorry--I did it."
Facing
up to this unique personal responsibility and taking personal responsibility
for the
result rather than shifting the blame onto someone else lies at the very core
of the awareness
and acceptance of yourself as a unique person, an "I" in the full
sense of the term, having
the dignity and responsibility of self-governing my own life toward its
final end. St. Thomas,
at the very beginning of Part II of his great Summa Theologiae, in a
striking passage on
the return of the human being to God by the moral life and the life of grace,
declares that this is why we are images of God in leading a good moral life. The
essence of the moral lifefor
him does not consist, as it did for many other Christian thinkers, in obedience to law, even God's
law, since God is not bound by any law imposed on him from without. We could
not be
images of God in this way. Our imaging of God consists rather in our
participation in his providence
over life. God is provident by his wise action over the whole universe; we are
not big
enough to do that (though some seem to think they are). But we can exercise our
own wise
providence over our own lives (and those in our care, such as children,
workers, etc. ) , over
our own turf, so to speak, and in this we are images of God, of one of the
central perfections
of God. Such is the profound dignity of the mature human person in his role of freely
self-governing his own life toward the final end laid down for him by God.
Thomas
is not at all afraid to follow out the implications of this fundamental obligation
of every human person to take personal responsibility to guide his or her own
life toward
its final end by the light of this or her own reason, even where it leads to
conclusions surprising--it
at first--to many, in the area of obedience to higher human authority. Thus, speaking
of the obedience of a subject to any human superior, even a bishop--and by implication,
of course, even to the Pope--St. Thomas makes this ringing affirmation of the independence
of conscience of every human person:
“It
is not the place of the subject to pass judgment on the command in
itself in its own wisdom and goodness, but it is his responsibility to pass judgment
on his own fulfilling of the command here and now. For every human
being is bound to examine his own actions according to the knowledge
which he himself has from God, whether natural or acquired, or
infused from above: for every human being is obliged to act according to
reason" [i. e., his own personal possession or participation in reason] (De
Ver., q. 17, art. 5, ad 4).
I
once read this out to a group of young nuns without them where it came from,
and asked
them what they thought of it. "Oh, that's far out," they replied.
When I said that it was actually
from St, Thomas Aquinas, their response was, "They certainly didn't teach
us that in the
Novitiate!" Once when I gave a talk on St. Thomas and the person to the
Catholic Newman
Club at New York University and read this passage, a very conservative Catholic layman
broke in, "The Pope's the ultimate authority. If he tells you to do
something, you've got
to do it. None of the private judgment stuff." "But this is St.
Thomas Aquinas speaking, declared
the Common Doctor of the Church," I replied, "Well, he said, without
a moment's hesitation,
"then he'll have to go!" In a lecture not too many years ago in a
well-known Catholic
seminary for the training of priests, I found that the same text was a
surprise-- although
a welcome one--to many of the seminarians, and even--to my surprise--to
a few of their
teachers. But it is nothing far out at all. It is the constant traditional
teaching of all the great
Catholic philosophers and theologians in the Church--at least after Aquinas.
A
shocking example of what it means to abdicate this basic obligation to take
personal responsibility
for your own actions in response to your own moral conscience was given us not
too long ago in the case of trial of the Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg after
World War II.
When, under questioning, Eichmann (I believe he was the one), one of top Nazi
officials, admitted
quite openly to having carried out Hitler's orders to exterminate the Jews, the
judges asked
him wonderingly, "But didn't your conscience bother you in doing
this"? he made this chilling
reply, "The Führer is my conscience." This is the abdication
of the very core of what it means to be an authentic person. And haven't we all met, in our own
experience at least,some
people who seem to be skating all too close to this fatal precipice, which
might be called
"the suicide of the self"?
It
is important to warn, however, that to apply wisely this obligation to judge personally
whether to obey or not in a particular case requires considerable maturity, humility,
and good judgment, not just to an ego trip. A mature conscience will judge prudently
that as a general rule, for reasons of the greater good, it is better to obey
than to follow
your independent judgment, even though it might be better in itself. But once
one's conscience
speaks clearly to forbid something, one must have the courage to take a stand, cost
what it may. (The Pope might have gone crazy, for example, just before he gave
you the order
your conscience forbids you to execute, or given a mind-bending pill, etc.)
doing the act is
your responsibility, not his.
Conscience
Christian Life of Grace
The
operation of conscience which is part of our natural equipment for the human journey
towards its final end is not destroyed but transformed when subsumed
into the spiritual
life of the baptized Christian.5 It is illuminated from
above by the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
counsel, wisdom, etc., which lend it quicker and deeper insight into what is
the will of God for
us to do in the present situation, often surprising those judging from natural
practical wisdom
alone. In general it lifts this voice of the inner judge, which can often seem
to us on the
natural level as somewhat aloof and impersonal to us, even at times a somewhat unwelcome
intruder into our spontaneous plans for self-satisfaction, into a whole new dimension
of personal relationship with God, our loving Father. It now appears as
a personal call
of God into closer intimacy with him, uniting our will to his ("Thy will
be done…") in our
growth in holiness and slow transformation from innate hidden image to a more
manifest likeness
of his own divine wisdom and goodness, something whose intrusion we no longer resent
or accept reluctantly, but welcome as the personal loving guidance of the Holy
Spirit itself.
As a
result, it becomes more clear, more sensitive, more continuously present to our willing
attentiveness as a function of our "living in the presence of God."
Rudolf Hoffmann, in
his article on conscience mentioned above (from Rahner's Encyclopaedia of
Theology) aptly
writes:
The
conscience of the Christian will fulfil its function only when
dawning every value is deeply experienced as a gracious
approach to the divine perfection and every situation
of decision as a gift and a call of God, as a possibility
of Christian loyalty in the presence or the divine 'Thou'
(286 B).
Thus,
deliberate conscious commitment to be willing to follow the call of conscience, at
whatever level, natural or supernatural, turns out to be one of the most
fundamental and indispensable
manifestations of our unconditioned commitment to that most profound of all calls
sounding deep within us, summoning is to become the unique authentic image of
God that
he has destined us to be--which in the last analysis is what is really means to
be an authentic
person.
A
Conversation with Norris Clarke
by
Dr. Tomas G. Rosario, Jr.
William
Norris Clarke, S.J., Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Fordham
University in
New York City, was at the Ateneo de Manila University recently to give a
lecture series on
the thought of St. Thomas. Founding Editor of the International
Philosophical Quarterly, and
author of The Philosophical Approach to God, Metaphysical Explorations, The
Universe as
Journey, Person and Being, and Central Problems of
Metaphysics., Fr. Norris Clarke lectures
widely in Philosophy within and outside of the United States. Following are
excerpts from
an interview of Fr. Norris Clarke conducted by Dr. Tom Rosario of the Ateneo.
Dr.
Rosario: You are best known for your work on St. Thomas Aquinas. Could you tell
us what you find attractive in the thought of this medieval thinker who appears
mainly to have
been ignored by Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger?
Fr.
Clarke: That is a good question. As a youth, I had a great longing to
understand reality
and hold it together in some kind of a unity. But it was not until I got to do
my philosophy
with the French Jesuits on the island of Jersey that, under the tutelage of the extremely
creative Thomistic professor of metaphysics, Andre Marc, S.J., I found what I
had been
secretly longing for--some kind of a metaphysical vision of whole. Then I came
across the
work of Fr. Joseph Marechal, founder of what is known as Transcendental
Thomism. He was
a very good historian of philosophy, and undertook to retell the history of
philosophy the standpoint
of St. Thomas' metaphysics. Of course, to tell that is to bring focus to bear
upon the
shortcomings, the incompleteness, of other philosophers. So I would consider
pivotal for the
formation of my own intellectual commitments, both Andre Marc's exposition of St. Thomas'
metaphysics, and the historical perspective on philosophy presented by Marechal
in his
five-volume work, The Point of Departure of Metaphysics. I must in this
light also mention
Blondel's Action, which presented the whole dynamic aspect of how it all
comes together.
What is troubling about so much modern thought is its fascination with the part resulting
in the total eclipse of the whole. An American philosopher who edited a book on contemporary
philosophy once said to me, "We don't have anymore these big visions, just careful
piece-meal work!," and I said to him, "Then you are in pieces, you
are all in pieces!" Thomas'
vision of the whole, in contradistinction to the partial visions of the
philosophers down
the ages, is what has made me truly Thomist. Of course, it takes about ten
years for anyone
to develop a central perspective on the thought of St. Thomas, ten years of
assiduous and
careful reading. I think it was Bergson who said that every great philosopher
has one central,
simple thing which he tries to say over and over again. If you get it, then you understand
the whole. If you don't you are merely fighting skirmishes along the edge. In
my view,
that one great thing for St. Thomas is self-communication. Active existence,
for Thomas, is self-communication.
Dr.
Rosario: You say it takes ten years for anyone to get into the mind Thomas. Where
do you suggest a prospective student of St. Thomas should start?
Fr.
Clarke: Start with Thomas' metaphysics, his epistemology. And make sure
you have a good
teacher, one who truly understands Thomas central vision or insight. If a
teacher has got it,
he communicates it to his student, and the student will grow. If he has not,
then all that student
can hope to gather is pieces, just pieces.
Dr.
Rosario: You say that the central idea in the whole philosophical thought
of St. Thomas
is the act of existence as self-communication?
Fr.
Clarke: Yes! The act of existence is fundamentally dynamic. intrinsically
self- communicating.
That's the way God is, the Supreme Being, of whom we are all images. Thomas
once said you could sort of sum up the universe in terms of the communicatio essendi,
the communication of the act of existence.
Dr.
Rosario: Please tell us what you think about the influence of Aristotle on
St. Thomas?
Fr.
Clarke: St. Thomas saw that Aristotle had a much better metaphysics than
Plato of this
world of things that have real existence. For Plato, the world of change is not
the real world
but a kind of shadow world. So there can be for him no real metaphysics of this
world. Only
the Beautiful is real. For Aristotle, this world is real, this world of matter
and form. And he
sought to develop a good metaphysics of this world of change. At the center of
this metaphysics
are actions. Actions comprise the whole metaphysics of the finite. What, however.
is missing in his metaphysics is creation. The world for him is eternal. There
is no 1 origin
of all beings. The prime mover is not the efficient cause. In the 12th book of
his Metaphysics,
Aristotle argues that God, the Prime Mover, cannot be this world's efficient cause,
for if he were, then he would have to get involved in a reaction and get
changed. The Prime
Mover can only be this world's final cause, knowing only himself, the pure
good. God does
not know this world. If he knew anything less than himself, if God knew all the
misery, all
the evil, and imperfection in this world He would. To be happy, He can know
only the best.
He knows only himself because He is no creator. Being is simply eternal, with
no source.
Thus, Aristotle provides us with a good, immediate metaphysics of the world of change,
but not with a metaphysics of being. He's got the term "be" but
unrelated either to origin
or to creation. For Aristotle, there can be no ultimate explanation. It was at
this juncture
that St. Thomas began to draw from neo-Platonism. For Plotinus and Plato, Being traces
its origins back to the self-diffusiveness of the Good. From this developed a participation
metaphysics expressed in Aristotelian terms of act and potency.
Dr.
Rosario: You deploy the notion of participation in explaining the thought
of St. Thomas.
Is it important to St.Thomas' efforts to explain the totality of reality?
Fr.
Clarke: Absolutely! The earlier Aristotelian Thomists were unaware of the implications
of the fact that the term "participation" keeps recurring in
Aristotle's works. A coincidence,
they thought, only a coincidence. The word does not even appear in the index of basic
terms to the Summa theologica. Yet Thomas clearly insists that if there
could be just one
big act of pure existence, it would be participation. Every time he explains
the relationship
between essence and existence, it is in terms of participation. In and through
the notion
of participation we can explain the relation of God to creatures.
Dr.
Rosario: In an early article, you write that you find Thomas' doctrine of
the Five Ways
least relevant to his metaphysics. Would there be a point to re-working this
doctrine using
the notion of participation?
Fr.
Clarke: Absolutely! But so long as you remember that St. Thomas himself
did not do that.
The 4th Way, comes very close to what you proposing. It examines the different
degrees of
being, and asserts there must be a highest being which is going to be the cause
of all the rest, but without saying why, So, first comes the discovery of the
highest being, and only subsequently
to this discovery, a consideration of causality. The 4th Way, then, has everything
reversed. The finite degree cannot explain its own existence, but needs to receive its
own explanation from a higher. St. Thomas does not make the same mistake again.
In all of
the rest of his works, whenever there is a measure of degrees, it is not by
some kind of a Platonic
leap that he gets to the highest degree of being, but through causality. But if
he makes
that mistake in regard to the 4th Way, it is because he used a mis-translation
of the text of
Aristotle. Mis-translations of Aristotle were common in all of 13th century until
William of
Morboeke provided a more exact translation. Working from a mis-translation of
the 1st book
of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Thomas is prompted to say that the highest
member of genus is
the cause of the rest. Clearly, however, for Thomas, you never get to the
highest member of a
genus, except through causality. That's the Thomistic way. Of course, it's very
difficult to explain
that if have degrees there must be a first. Why? Why must there be a first?
There is a good
reason, but you can't get to it by some kind of a Platonic leap. You must go
through the existential
causality. The 5th Way is fine except that it's incomplete. It doesn't say how
many intellectual
orders there are in the world. The 1st Way, from motion, the 2nd Way, I causality,
both conclude logically to the first in this series of effects of causes--this
series has to
have a first. What that doesn't tell you is that all the chains of causality in
the world have to come
from that first one. It merely gives you an Aristotelian "First Mover;"
not a God who is infinite
and, therefore, one. The argument, then, is incomplete. It is only at Question
11, some 100
pages later, that St. Thomas completes his proof. The trouble with the 1st Way
is that St. Thomas
has local motion in mind, which requires a cause. With Newtonian physics,
however, it's
quite different. For as long as there is motion, that motion continues, and it
requires no cause.
Continuous motion in a straight line requires no cause. Aristotelians, on the
other hand,
understand that in the case of a projectile, its cause has to be constantly
working, pushing
behind it. This important distinction is not explained in the 1st Way. The Five
Ways, in
that sense are not complete, and St. Thomas was aware of that. Why didn't St.
Thomas provide
an account of motion in terms of "participation"? He does, in fact,
in the De potentia. De
potentia, question III, articles 5-6 is a kind of
argument from participation. Why didn't he do
the same thing in the case of the Five Ways? I think it's because he wrote the
latter piece for
beginners, beginners who must begin from sense experience. Motion is a sense experience;
we see things in causal relation. But you don't see participation;
participation roots
in a deep metaphysical theory, which is not for beginners.
Dr.
Rosario: What are the prospects today for work in the philosophy of St.
Thomas?
Fr.
Clarke: Well, in the U. S. it's coming back quietly through the concern
in Ethics to
root its claims in the dynamism of the natural law. Without such a ground,
ethics becomes little
more than custom or emotion. Thus, to ground the ethical obligation you have to
go deeper
into metaphysics. I myself am trying to bring it back through a
"phenomenology of interpersonal
relations." Interpersonal relations, that's a very living kind of a thing.
It brings us
face to face with the dynamism of being. The dynamism of being is expressed
most strongly
in the dialogue between two persons.
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