Aug 30 2008
Faith and Reason The Object of Philosophy (part 1)
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What follows are some notes of mine on chapter two of Etienne Gilson’s THE PHILOSOPHY OF ST THOMAS AQUINAS. Due to the length of the chapter, and the difficulty of the subject matter, I will deal with it in several posts. Boldfaced numbers refer to the paragraphs in that chapter.
1. The historian of Philosophy, in analysing the philosophical system of a modern philosopher, would have to “determine the concept of human knowledge held by our philosopher.” In dealing with St Thomas, or any philosopher of the Middle Ages, a different approach becomes necessary. This is due to the problem of the relation between faith and reason. St Thomas was not simply a philosopher. He was a philosophical theologian. A philosopher, pure and simple, claims to draw truth from reason alone; whereas the philosophical theologian claims to draw truth from two sources; namely from Reason, as a philosopher, and “from faith in the truth revealed by God, and its interpreter, the Church,” as a theologian. This means that the historian of philosophy must ascertain what the respective spheres of Reason and Faith are. “Must the one be sacrificed to the other or can they be harmonized?”
2. Distinguishing between philosophy and theology from an abstract point of view is quite easy to do. The former consists of pursuing truth by means of reason alone. The latter begins with a fact independent of Reason; “the Revelation given by God to the human mind of truths superior to Reason, i.e., truths which unaided Reason would be unable to reach, or even understand once it possessed them, or consequently justify.” But what seems so simple from the abstract point of view becomes quite difficult in the actual attempt to answer the question “can they be harmonized?” A number of difficulties present themselves. The first is this: “of the same texts different historians, when asked to distinguish the philosophical from the theological matter, neither retain nor abandon always the same points.
3. Gilson see this problem as coming from two attitudes based on a “philosophical thesis of “the dogmatic kind” which are hidden behind “the cloak of historical impartiality.” He deals with the third attitude in paragraph 4, and the second in paragraph 5. In paragraph 6 he suggests adopting, “at least provisionally,” a third attitude.
4. The first attitude he deals with is, he says, almost popular in certain circles. This attitude simply passes St Thomas by “since he is also a theologian,” and, “must necessarily therefore be tainted.” This, it seems to me, is a presupposition to intellectual laziness. Gilson terms it an “a priori assertion, based on the demands of an uncompromising rationalism.”
5. The second attitude is probably as widespread as the first. It admits “de jure and de facto,” to the existence of a philosophy proper to St Thomas, but insists that this can only be in independence of his theology. This attitude is opposed to the first in so far as it admits the existence of a philosophy proper to St Thomas, but it starts from the same basic premise.
6. “One might, at least provisionally, adopt a third attitude, and without attempting to judge, inquire what are the relations of philosophy and theology in the system of St Thomas.” It seems to me that if St Thomas attempted, or even at least claimed to deal with the problem of the relationship between philosophy and theology from a philosophical perspective, then merely ignoring him on the basis of an assumption exhibits arrogant stupidity; the most detestable of all forms of stupidity.
