A Cosmpolitan Hermit: Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper 0813217083, 9780813217086

Citation preview

A Cosmopolitan Hermit

A Cosmopolitan Hermit Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper

o

Edited by Bernard N. Schumacher

The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D. C.

Published with the help of the Conseil de Fondation du Fonds de Recherche, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. ∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A cosmopolitan hermit : modernity and tradition in the philosophy of Josef Pieper / edited by Bernard N. Schumacher. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.

) and index.

isbn 978-0-8132-1708-6 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Pieper, Josef, 1904–1997. I. Schumacher, Bernard N. II. Title. b3323.p434c67 2009 193—dc22 2009010754

In memory of Josef Pieper (1904–1997) Doctor honoris causa of The Catholic University of America (20 November 1990)

o

Contents

1 1

A Cosmopolitan Hermit: An Introduction to



the Philosophy of Josef Pieper  1



Bernard N. Schumacher

2 2

Josef Pieper in the Context of Modern Philosophy  24



Berthold Wald

3 3

Josef Pieper on the Intellectual Foundations



Frank Töpfer

4 4

Josef Pieper’s Early Sociological Writings  88

5

Josef Pieper and the Ethics of Virtue  116

of Totalitarianism  63

Hermann Braun

Thomas S. Hibbs

6 The Future of Pieper’s Hope and History  141 6

Joseph J. Godfrey

7

Josef Pieper and the Concept of Tradition  171

Kenneth Schmitz 8

The Twofold Discipleship of the Philosopher: Faith and Reason in the Thought of Josef Pieper  199

Bernard N. Schumacher 9

Josef Pieper on the Truth of All Things and the World’s True Face  228

Matthew Cuddeback 10 The Platonic Inspiration of Pieper’s Philosophy  251

Juan F. Franck Bibliography  279 Contributors  303 Index of Names  309

1  o

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  An Introduction to the Philosophy of Josef Pieper Bernard N. Schumacher  Translated by Michael J. Miller

The German philosopher Josef Pieper (1904–1997) continues to provoke among his contemporaries constructive, critical, and especially fruitful discussion on anthropological and ethical questions. He does this by formulating a defense of culture, which he contrasts with a pragmatic way of thinking that reduces the person to a specific role and function, to proletarian status. His thought is expressed in a lively style unfettered by any jargon or technical terminology—in contrast with much scholarly writing coming out of today’s universities. Such a use of language accompanied by the originality of his thought earned him the praises of the famous British writer Clive Staples Lewis, among others, as well as the celebrated Balzan Prize in the year 1982.1 Married in 1935 and the father of three children, 1. See Josef Pieper, Eine Geschichte wie ein Strahl, 639–40.

1

2  Bernard N. Schumacher this “cosmopolitan hermit”2 published more than seventy works, which to date have been translated into sixteen languages, and he gave innumerable conferences. He refused several chairs (University of Notre Dame [1950], University of Mainz [1954], University of München [1958]) because he preferred to remain at Münster, where his courses knew great success (and provoked thereby the envy of some of his colleagues). Pieper’s original thought draws from both the Greek and the Christian traditions and enters into permanent discussion with his contemporaries, as Berthold Wald discussed in his contribution in this volume. Josef Pieper was interested in the great philosophers of the Western tradition, not because they are representatives of a golden age of philosophy, but because they can help contemporary man to find answers to the fundamental questions that he asks himself. Pieper subscribes to the view of Bernard of Chartres, who remarked that we are dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants in order to see further than they did, that is, to investigate more deeply the mystery of being. The philosopher of Münster denounced the stance of some of our contemporaries who refuse to let themselves be carried by these giants of human thought.3 Such an attitude is summarized by Etienne Gilson when he writes, “Many of our contemporaries prefer to remain on the ground; they put their pride in seeing nothing at all unless they can see it by their own efforts, and console themselves for their petty stature [by assuring one another that they are better]. It is a sad old age that loses all its memories.”4 Pieper’s interest in the ancient philosophers is, 2. Fernando Inciarte described Pieper in these terms in May of 1984, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. See Josef Pieper, “Gottgeschickte Entrückung, Eine Platon-Interpretation,” 147. 3. In the foreword to his Other Minds: Critical Essays 1969–1994 for example, Thomas Nagel points (p. 10) to what he deems to be a lack of originality and/or of argumentative proof in most philosophical works of the past as a pretext for his claim that it is unnecessary to study them or else not worth the trouble. 4. English translation cited, with one revision, from Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 425–26 [402].

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  3 by contrast, motivated by the truth of their thought. Don’t worry about Socrates,5 but rather worry first and foremost about truth. The watchword that accompanies him throughout his whole life can be summarized in one sentence: “I do not want to know ‘what others thought,’ but ‘what is the truth of things.’  ”6 He is vehemently opposed to what Lewis describes as “the historical point of view.”7 This consists of being primarily concerned with analyzing the sources on which a thinker relied, the context within which his ideas emerged, and the coherence of his thought over the course of his career, while prescinding from the question about the truth of his thought. Pieper, for his part, incessantly maintained, especially after the end of World War II, that to abandon the pursuit of truth for its own sake in favor of the relativist, historicist option, in which all positions are equally valid, is to run the risk of reducing reason to a simple instrumental activity that deals exclusively with “particular and regional problems, and sometimes even purely formal questions.”8 The philosopher from Münster wishes to restore to the philosophical act its wisdom-loving dimension, as the poet Thomas Stearns Eliot put it so pithily,9 since philosophy implies an attitude of wonder and non-utilitarian receptivity, along with the hope of being able to attain wisdom. Pieper’s important philosophical opus, which was more than sixty years in the writing, can be divided into two major periods, with the end of World War II as the line of demarcation.

5. Josef Pieper, Kümmert euch nicht um Sokrates! 6. Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 62 [76]. The second part of Pieper’s sentence is a quotation from Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo I, 22. 7. See Clive Staples Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, letter 27, 128. 8. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, nos. 61, 81. See nos. 55, 74; nos. 5, 11. 9. See Thomas Stearns Eliot, “Introduction,” 16 [74].

4  Bernard N. Schumacher

1. Three Influential Youthful Encounters Pieper began his study of philosophy during the winter semester of 1923 with the theology faculty of the University of Münster. He enthusiastically devoted himself to a self-taught course of philosophy, since he found the one taught by the faculty terribly disappointing—a disappointment that he would experience throughout his further studies. Thus it was quite natural that the young university student, who also studied law and sociology at the Universities of Münster and Berlin, should become a disciple of Thomas Aquinas by systematically reading the Summa theologiae. In light of this reading he gradually discerned a problem that was still indistinct but would not let go of him, a question that he addressed in his doctoral thesis and his Habilitation [qualifying him for a position as a full professor]: the basis for moral human action and the truth of things. Pieper had discovered Thomas Aquinas several years earlier. During his adolescence he had avidly read Aristophanes and the dialogues of Plato, which he studied in much more depth during the second half of his life. Indeed, he dedicated several of his works to Plato, who inspired the Pieperian notions of tradition, interpretation, myth, and philosophy (which are analyzed by Kenneth Schmitz in this volume) and who helped Pieper to reply to certain questions posed by modern man, but also to formulate a critique of sophism, contemporary relativism, and the concept of man oriented exclusively toward production and performance. The young Pieper likewise devoured books by authors such as Fyodor M. Dostoevsky and Theodor Haecker. He developed a preference for the latter, not so much for the real meaning of his thought as for his ironic and aggressive style, which led him at the age of seventeen to read the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. One day while he was reading various passages from the work entitled Buch über Adler 10 to one of his professors, a former Dominican priest who had 10. Søren Kierkegaard, Das Buch über Adler.

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  5 received a French, neo-Thomistic formation, the latter replied that such stuff was not intellectually nourishing. He suggested on the spot that Pieper should read in the original Latin—for there was not yet a German translation—Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. The young man immediately set about reading it assiduously, and even though he understood only half of what he was reading, it was love at first sight and the beginning of a lifelong fascination. He discovered the existence of a new world and a master who taught him how to think. The second influential encounter for the young Pieper took place in the Frankish castle of Rothenfels. There he became acquainted with a man who would fascinate him and imbue him with the liberating quality of the rebellion in which Pieper was involved: Romano Guardini.11 This philosopher was endowed with a special pedagogical gift and regularly gave lectures attended by hundreds of young men from all parts of Germany. Pieper participated in his last session for youth in Rothenfels and ruminated over the relation between human action and human wellbeing, the subject of his doctoral thesis. In addition, on August 28, 1924, he also attended a conference given by Guardini on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of Goethe’s birth and the 700th birthday of St. Thomas. Guardini pointed out that the great German poet and Aquinas both taught that reality—which is by its very nature true—is the measure of human thought and action. At that moment the light went on in the young philosopher’s mind and everything became for him, in his own words, as clear as crystal.12 It was thanks to that conference that he finally found the way to compose his doctoral thesis on the foundation of moral action in Thomas Aquinas as a response to moral subjectivism.13 In it he demonstrates that the good presup11. Concerning the relationship between the two men, see Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 39, 123 [53 f., 135]. See also “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 3, and “  ‘Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges Wort’.” 12. See Josef Pieper, “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 3; “Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges Wort,” 323. No One Could Have Known, 62–63 [76–77]. 13. See Josef Pieper, Reality and the Good.

6  Bernard N. Schumacher poses the true, that the good is what conforms to reality, which is to say that every good moral human action has its first origin in the silent contemplation of the truth of things. A third encounter was influential during his formative years. During the summer of 1925 he joined a group of students—among them Hans Urs von Balthasar—who met under the direction of Fr. Stanislaus von Dunin-Borkowski each year near Basel, Switzerland, to take courses in philosophy and theology, a sort of studium universale. The purpose of the program was to make up for a certain inability of the universities to form true thinkers, as well as to provide the young students with a philosophical and theological foundation.14 It was in this setting that he became acquainted with a new thinker who had a profound influence on his manner of perceiving reality: Erich Przywara.15 His teaching was quite different from that of Scholastic philosophy—which Pieper constantly fought against—in that it tried to develop a synthesis between historical and systematic findings. Przywara helped the young philosopher to understand that the real cannot be enclosed within any system of thought whatsoever, because it continually opens up toward something more that goes beyond it, arriving again and again at the frontier of the mysterious. After defending his doctoral thesis in philosophy in late February of 1928 under the direction of Max Ettlinger, Pieper worked for 14. See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 64ff. [78ff.]. Through this group the young man became acquainted with, among others, the future Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who at that time was studying German literature (see Noch nicht aller Tage Abend, 269). See Alfred Stoecklin, Schweizer Katholizismus, 75. 15. “Before that date I had met once again a philosopher and theologian whom I can honestly call one of the teachers who formed my world view, from the foundations on up.” Josef Pieper, “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 4. “Through that basic instruction, which ingeniously managed to combine historical and systematic details into a universal overview, I came to understand for the first time, finally, that every attempt to devise a self-enclosed system of truth actually contradicts the real existential situation of the finite mind, its creatureliness, and that it is precisely the work of the great thinkers, especially Thomas Aquinas, which despite its profound conceptual orderliness resists all attempts to reduce the thinking of Thomas Aquinas to a school of thought consisting of teachable propositions” (5).

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  7 four years as an assistant to Johann Plenge, who at that time headed the Research Institute for Organizational Studies and Sociology at the University of Münster.16 There he met many social scientists—for example the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, Leopold von Wiese and Richard Thurnwald. On three occasions the young philosopher participated in the renowned week-long international sessions of the Hautes Écoles in Davos, where he became acquainted with such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Rudolf Carnap, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. While quickly distancing himself both intellectually and personally from Plenge, Pieper edited several works on topics from sociology, political science, and the social teaching of the Church, which are discussed at length by Hermann Braun in this volume. The banning of his work Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik17 [Theses on social policy] in 1934 by the government then in power compelled Pieper to interrupt his research.

2. A Contemporary Pioneer of Philosophy and Virtue Constrained by these circumstances—“fortunately,” as he would add later on—Pieper decided once again on a change of direction. It was quite natural for him to return to philosophy and, more particularly, to Thomas Aquinas, of whom he had lost sight to some extent. Immediately he immersed himself again in his first philosophical intuition: that by drawing upon the Western Greek and Christian tradition he should help his contemporaries to rediscover that duty depends on being, that moral human action is measured by the reality that is true. Thus he composed a treatise on the cardinal virtue of courage, as understood by the Western tradition, relying especially on Thomas Aquinas, whose thought once again fascinated him by its precision and depth. He pointed out the false notion of 16. See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 73ff. [86ff.]; “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 5ff. 17. Josef Pieper, Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik.

8  Bernard N. Schumacher courage held by a good number of his contemporaries, while expressing his annoyance with the model of courage advanced by the Nazi regime.18 Almost desperate after being turned down by several editors, he sent his manuscript entitled Vom Sinn der Tapferkeit [On courage] to Jakob Hegner in Leipzig. The latter was fascinated and wrote back that Pieper should compose a treatise on each of the other three cardinal virtues as well as on the three theological virtues. Pieper went to work on the project, which he finished in 1972 with the volume Über die Liebe [On love].19 His book on courage, which was published in 1934, did not go unnoticed. Thanks to a misunderstanding caused by its title, it was even mentioned in the official list of books approved and promoted by the Nazi regime (which, however, quickly realized its mistake). Urged on by his editor, Pieper decided on one fine summer day in 1934, while he was riding his bicycle and full of hope for his future prospects, to write a book on the virtue of hope. In it he developed an ontology of not-yet-being that followed partly upon the Heideggerian analysis of the temporality and historicity of Dasein [existence, being-there]; this work anticipated the magisterial work of the neoMarxist Ernst Bloch that was published in 1956 with the title The Principle of Hope.20 In retrospect, Pieper marveled at how boldly he dared to compose a work on such an immense and inexhaustible subject at a time when he still lacked intellectual and life experience. Some years later, after the Second World War which had witnessed the events at Auschwitz and Hiroshima, he would investigate 18. See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 98ff. [111ff.]. “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 9–10; Noch nicht aller Tage Abend, 346–47; “Die Aktualität der Kardinaltugenden: Klugheit, Gerechtigkeit, Tapferkeit, Mass,” 300; Lieben, hoffen, glauben, 9. 19. See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues and Faith, Hope, Love. For a discussion of the virtues in the writings of Josef Pieper, see the study by Gilbert Meilaender, “Josef Pieper: Explorations in the Thought of a Philosopher of Virtue,” and the essay by Thomas S. Hibbs in this volume. 20. See Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope; Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope.

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  9 still more profoundly the rational foundation of hope with respect to the future of the individual person and that of humanity, futures now threatened by an ongoing self-destruction, while keeping his distance from the philosophies of the absurd and from the social religious movements.21 After distinguishing between daily hope [espoir] and fundamental hope [espérance], between everyday despair and fundamental despair, and after elaborating the characteristics proper to human hope and the status of the virtue of hope, Pieper confronts the problems of personal death and the death of humanity, understood as the anti-utopia par excellence. Within the context of his philosophical analysis of the end of history, Pieper works out an original solution by distancing himself from the positions of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Immanuel Kant as well as from the positions of his contemporaries such as Ernst Bloch, Karl Jaspers, and Jacques Maritain.22 Pieper developed a metaphysics of a “transcendence with transcendence” that opens onto a trans-temporal dimension and sustains a hope founded upon an original trust in an absolute Thou, which will lead History to its conclusion even in the event of a total catastrophe occurring within temporality. The theme of hope and history is analyzed by Joseph Godfrey in this volume. It is often forgotten that the philosopher from Münster did pioneering work in rediscovering the importance of virtues in ethics and in the fulfillment of the human person, and that he did so well before reflection on the virtues became a major theme in the 1980s, with the appearance of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre in 1981, which had its antecedents in works by Elizabeth Anscombe (1958), Vladimir Jankélévitch (1968), and Peter Geach (1977).23 Pieper 21. See Josef Pieper, The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History and Hope and History. 22. See Jacques Maritain, On the Philosophy of History; Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte and Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen— Politisches Bewusstsein in unserer Zeit. 23. See Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory; Elizabeth Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”; Vladimir Jankélévitch, Traité des vertus;

10  Bernard N. Schumacher worked out an excellent philosophical synthesis of the cardinal and theological virtues, which he analyzes brilliantly in an original way and which Thomas Hibbs discusses in this volume. Pieper develops the idea of virtue along the lines of the Greco-Christian tradition, clarifies certain interpretations of his subject matter and discusses it within the context of the challenges facing modern man. I cite as proof of his contemporary perspective the fact that he did not write these seven works devoted to the fundamental virtues according to an overall plan; instead, each of the volumes came about within a precise historical context: Fortitude (1934)—in response to Hitler’s regime; Prudence (1937)—in response to the extreme casuistic tradition; Justice (1953)—confronting the notion that what is just has priority over what is good (which corresponds to the present debate with regard to liberalism and communitarianism); Temperance (1939)—especially with regard to the curiosity or the idle talk which have been described so well by Heidegger; Hope (1953)—against the historical despair caused by Hiroshima and the end of the ideology of progress; Love (1972)—in light of the false concept that people have of it and the separation between eros and agape; Faith (1962)—confronting the negation thereof by, on the one hand, rational, scientific discourse, and on the other hand, a certain fideism. From the 1930s on, Pieper’s goal was to elaborate an updated virtue-based ethics that would offer an alternative to the nineteenthcentury bourgeois concept of virtue and to the formal Kantian ethics of laws and duties, as well as to utilitarian ethics. In order to do this, however, he referred, not to Scheler’s notion of value, but rather to the idea of the “whole life,” the Aristotelian architectonic good, eudaimonia. He situates virtues-based ethics within a comprehensive understanding of the cosmos that reflects a precise order in which the human being is conceived, not in mechanistic or reductionist terms, but rather in a way that is open to the totality Peter Geach, The Virtues; André Comte-Sponville, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life.

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  11 of what is real, to transcendence, and is placed within a cosmic vision that allows room for the divine. Pieper’s understanding of the human being, which is the foundation of his ethics, is quite different from the view that regards the individual as a self-sufficient selfconsciousness whose freedom, which is regarded as absolutely autonomous, is said to be independent of any pre-established notion of the good (this view is sometimes known as the principle of neutrality)—a view proposed by Jean-Paul Sartre or, more recently, by John Rawls. Already during the 1930s Pieper had developed a philosophical anthropology—inspired by Thomas Aquinas, Erich Przywara, and Martin Heidegger, and anticipating the homo viator of Gabriel Marcel 24—of the free human being “on the way” to the actualization of his potential for being, pointed toward his total fulfillment by means of the practice of virtue.25 The latter constitutes the ultimate perfection of that capacity, or better, the maximum of what a person can be by his nature, leading him to the utmost of his own potential for being. This anthropology presupposes an ontology of not-yet-being accompanied by an eschatological dimension that expresses the internal structure of human nature, which tends toward a future that is yet to come, a future in which possibilities will be realized. Unlike Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ernst Bloch, Josef Pieper maintains that this future is open to a movement of transcendence with transcendence, in which the surpassing can be understood as an act of breaking out of immanent temporal finiteness, which does not constitute the whole of reality.

3. The Truth of Things and a Metaphysics of Creation During World War II, Pieper worked in the psychological department of the army as a scientific assistant in the administration of the 24. See Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. 25. Josef Pieper composed a short summary work entitled Über das christliche Menschenbild.

12  Bernard N. Schumacher province of Westphalia and also in the aviation corps.26 He devoted his free time to several projects: he collected and translated various texts by Thomas Aquinas,27 and he wrote a work that he presented at the end of the war as his Habilitationschrift: Wahrheit der Dinge: Eine Untersuchung zur Anthropologie des Hochmittelalters,28 after the first manuscript was lost by the editor of Colmar.29 The theme of the reality of things (discussed by Matthew Cuddeback in this volume) had preoccupied the young man since his student days.30 By means of a systematic and anthropological approach, and cit26. For more details on this period, see Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known; “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 11f. Throughout those years he did not have great difficulty with the party in power, although he by no means agreed with their view of man. As for the relations between Pieper and the state, his position is evident both in his pre-war writings and in the works that he wrote during the war; these writings resulted in a ruling forbidding him to publish or to reprint his works. See No One Could Have Known, 94ff., 156ff. [107ff., 164ff.]. See also the article “Ritterlichkeit” that he wrote on the chivalrous spirit, which was published in Soldatentum in March 1942 (No One Could Have Known, 156 [164]). The Party had two grievances against Pieper: first, his brother’s wife was Jewish, and second, his various writings were not welcomed (No One Could Have Known, 158ff. [166ff.]). He was enrolled in the Nazi Party against his will and without his knowledge by his superior, Max Simoneit (No One Could Have Known, 154 [163]). The Party categorically refused to assign him to a job in which he might have any influence whatsoever on the world view of others (No One Could Have Known, 161 [169]). As for the relationship between Pieper and the Jewish question, the German philosopher radically distanced himself from the policy of anti-Semitism. See No One Could Have Known, 155 f., 159ff. [164, 167ff.], where Pieper discusses the Jewish question as well as the officials. See No One Could Have Known, 165f. [173f.]; Eine Geschichte wie ein Strahl, 630f., 636f. See also Bertold Wald, “  ‘Aktualisierung durch Enthistorisierung’: Zu einem Brief von Josef Pieper an Gustav Gundlach aus der Zeit der NS-Diktatur,” esp. 180. 27. See Josef Pieper, Thomas-Brevier. 28. See Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things: An Inquiry into the Anthropology of the High Middle Ages. 29. Since he did not have a second copy, the work had to be redone. His candidacy to qualify as a full professor at the University of Münster in the midst of the war would not have been accepted by the Faculty, even though the philosopher Gerhard Krüger, the successor of Peter Wust, who was himself the successor of his doctoral advisor, Max Ettlinger, would have supported him. (See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 163ff. [171ff.]). 30. Erich Przywara had given him the assignment to interpret Question 1 of De Veritate by Thomas Aquinas. (See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 138, [149].)

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  13 ing Thomas Aquinas, Pieper discerned the initial, profound meaning of the truth of things, which is the basis for human action and for our inability to comprehend the world fully. Distinguishing his position from that of Kant, for whom the truth of things is a concept void of meaning, he describes the concept by means of the proportion between a thing and an intellect. The divine intellect conceives an idea of the form, the essence of the thing, which it projects onto concrete historical existence. The form is the measure of this thing, which is said to be natural. The latter, i.e., the thing, measures the human intellect that perceives it. This intellect, however, is capable of conceiving a “pre-form,” or the idea of a form, which it can project onto concrete historical existence; in this way the intellect becomes the measure of the thing that is said to be artificial. Based on these relations of measuring, Pieper concludes that “the things of nature, from which our mind receives its knowledge, are the measure for our mind; they themselves, in turn, receive their measure from God’s knowing mind.” 31 The truth of things also implies the thesis of the incomprehensibility of things for the human intellect. Pieper distinguishes between knowing a thing, which means taking in the form of the thing known, and comprehending a thing, which refers to a knowledge encompassing everything that is knowable about the thing known. Surely, it is possible for the human being to know all things in a certain measure, since his intellect is capax universi.32 Although he knows the essence of existing things, of which he grasps the subsequent forms, the human intellect is nevertheless not capable of grasping the analogy between the subsequent form [après-forme] and the antecedent form that dwells in the creative intellect, that is to say, he cannot really comprehend anything. “But a finite mind is never capable of grasping all the potential knowledge offered by any existing reality. Rather, whatever is knowable in and 31. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 52 [136]. 32. See ibidem, 77ff. [158ff.] and Pieper’s series of lectures from 1950, Welt und Umwelt, esp. 180ff.

14  Bernard N. Schumacher of an object itself, always and necessarily exceeds what can actually be known.”33 The lucidity and the brightness emanating from the thing being contemplated dazzle the human intellect. Never will man be able to comprehend fully—that is, know totally and perfectly—the inner nature of things. And never will man’s mind be able to measure out completely the totality of the universe. . . . Knowledge of the essence and the totality of things is man’s prerogative within the “promise of hope.”34

This impossibility of arriving at a final understanding of anything, this philosophia negativa, has its origin in a metaphysics of creation which, according to Pieper, constitutes the object of a rational act of knowing by the intellectus which is then incorporated into an act of knowing by the reason [ratio]. According to Pieper, this understanding of the world as creation imbues “the whole sense of being: das gesamte Daseinsgefühl.” It is the secret key to his philosophy: “[T]his createdness determines entirely and all-pervasively the inner structure of the creature.”35 In his essay Unaustrinkbares Licht [“Inexhaustible Light”], Pieper describes the relation between his line of philosophical inquiry and acceptance of the fact of creation: As soon as I ask this in the true philosophical sense, I immediately and formally deal with the unfathomable and inscrutable; and this because it is in the nature of my question to approach to the roots of things, that is, to advance to the source of Being, the dimension of invention and form-giving design, in other words: the dimension of createdness.36

Pieper’s philosophy is an integral part of his decision to take an ontology of creation as his point of departure, as opposed to a certain 33. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 58 [141]. 34. Ibidem, 93 [174]. 35. Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 47 [114]. See also “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 442. 36. Josef Pieper, “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 97 [143–44]. See also Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 176f., 233f. [325f., 374f.]

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  15 tendency described by Gabriel Marcel as “a will for de-creation.”37 This rejection of creation by philosophers results in an impoverishment of the very concept of being.38 Pieper wanted to think through the ultimate consequences of the metaphysics of creation on the level of human nature, death, hope, love, celebration, leisure, the virtues, tradition, and philosophy. In any case, the conviction that the universe has been created cannot remain confined to any one special “sector” of existence—not if it is to be anything more than an abstract tenet carried around in the head. We cannot just file it away in a “philosophical-religious” pigeonhole. Once it has been thought to the end, consistently and vitally, it inevitably affects our entire sense of being. For it then follows that all of reality (things, man, we ourselves) presents itself to us as something creatively conceived, something designed, hence something that had a distinct purpose from the start (an idea that, as is well known, Jean-Paul Sartre passionately repudiated). Above all we have then to view all reality, again including ourselves, as something creatively willed and affirmed, whose existence depends solely on being so affirmed and loved.39

The writing of his Habilitation did not go smoothly, because he was reprimanded for philosophizing instead of studying the history of philosophy.40 Gerhart Krüger—his faculty advisor for his Habil37. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 2, Faith and Reality, 152 [vol. 2, 153]. 38. “The straightforward denial of the createdness of the world also has unforeseeable consequences for the philosophical understanding of the world that are perhaps truly ‘realized’ only in stages. With this denial, one distances oneself not only from the holy tradition of Christianity but also from the Greek world view [Über die platonischen Mythen, 356f.], which means also from those origins that inevitably shape one’s own thinking, in terms of both its problematic and its terminology” (Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 125 [122]). See What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 40 [28]. 39. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 177 [325–26]. 40. “In any case, at that time it was not yet sufficiently clear to me that this objection was aimed, not so much at the problem that interested me personally, but rather at the position of philosophy within the scholarly activity of the university in general. ‘Research’ in the field of philosophy, after all, leads finally to ‘intellectual history’, and thus basically to ‘historiography’ and thus to the effort ‘to learn what

16  Bernard N. Schumacher itation thesis—compared him to the “outsider” philosophers such as Theodor Haecker and Romano Guardini. After successfully defending his Habilitation thesis in mid-January of 1946 by presenting a lecture on the concept of truth in Martin Heidegger,41 Pieper received the venia legendi (authorization to lecture) on July 5, 1946, at the age of 42. On that occasion he gave a conference entitled “Education and Intellectual Labor,”42 which signaled the start of the second phase of his work. In that lecture he developed several major themes of his future thought that can be described as a philosophy of culture aimed at defending and promoting the human person. Having opposed German totalitarianism through his defense of an anthropology combined with virtue-based ethics, Pieper clearsightedly denounced the rise of another sort of totalitarianism: that of the working world and functionalist thinking, which reduces persons to instruments. In order to counteract this new totalitarianism (which Frank Töpfer discusses in this volume), he developed a philosophy of culture that allows for the flourishing of free and genuinely autonomous personal life. As he prepared his first university course for the winter semester of 1946–1947, Pieper could not bring himself to teach the young men who had just returned from the war, eager to learn, a systematic and abstract subject that was simply historical knowledge. He decided therefore to discuss what it means to philosophize (discussed by Bernard Schumacher in this volume). He published the lectures for this course in 1948 in a volume entitled What Does It Mean to Philosophize? This work further developed the insight expressed in the talk that he had given on the occasion of being admitted to the university faculty. Pieper defines the philosophical act in terms of

others have thought’, which, as Thomas Aquinas says, has absolutely nothing to do with the real meaning of philosophizing.” Josef Pieper, Noch nicht aller Tage Abend, 239. See “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 12–13. 41. See Josef Pieper, “Heidegger’s Conception of Truth.” 42. See Josef Pieper, “Philosophical Education and Intellectual Labor.”

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  17 what John Henry Newman calls a “gentleman’s activity,” that is, a free activity of a contemplative sort which is an end in itself. He contrasts this with “servile” activity, which is useful with a view to something else; in other words, its end is something extrinsic to it. Pieper was aware of the emergence, since the end of World War II, of a new “culture” that tended to reduce the human world to one dimension, that of instrumental activities epitomized by work as the supreme value, as an end in itself, so much so that every “free” activity is incorporated within the framework of productivity. This “culture” fosters an activism that attempts to harness and exploit “free” activities and thus tends to rule over the various spheres of human life. Pieper calls the subjection of the individual to utilitarian and servile activities, which shackles the human person to a work routine, the formation of a new proletariat. An authentic culture that is opposed to the functional mentality can be promoted not only through virtue-based ethics, but also by a defense of genuine leisure.

4. A Philosophy of Culture that Defends and Promotes the Human Person Immediately after World War II, Pieper noted that Europe was quite preoccupied with rebuilding: “We are engaged in the rebuilding of a house, and our hands are full. Shouldn’t all our efforts be directed to nothing other than the contemplation of that house?”43 Taking this question as his own, Pieper proposes a very different response in his earliest courses and in his writings by warning his contemporaries about the insidious danger of an “activism” that could threaten personal life. In promoting work as the highest value, as an end in itself, “activism” runs the risk of subjugating the human person to the criteria of productivity and profitability. It was certainly not the most opportune moment to be

43. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 3 [2].

18  Bernard N. Schumacher speaking about leisure, even though the call to rebuild Europe was intended to urge every citizen to make a contribution to the common good and also to the emergence of a new and genuine culture of leisure that would defend and promote the human person as such. One of the central themes in Pieper’s post-war philosophical thinking is precisely the affirmation of the vital need for authentic leisure—which was declining in several ways—and for the happiness and flourishing of the individual person, and thereby for the flourishing of the entire civilization, that is to say, the need for a true culture. It is not very easy to defend such an affirmation in today’s world, which even more tends to assign a higher value to work than to the human person. The latter seems to be reduced to the status of a means and ceases to be an end in itself. The philosopher who applies himself to defending leisure is accused of inciting people to laziness, to an escape from the important labors required for the building of a more just and more human society in the future; or else, paradoxically, the philosopher is blamed for urging them to practice austerity instead of indulging in the conventional amusements that re-energize the individual to continue his work or help him to escape from reality. Such accusations were not devised yesterday. We have only to recall the many and virulent attacks on Socrates made by a certain number of his fellow citizens, which Pieper succeeded in analyzing brilliantly in his reflections concerning Plato’s philosophy and his opposition to the Sophists and to pragmatic man (the man of praxis) (discussed in this volume by Juan Franck). In today’s world, leisure is reduced to “amusement for amusement’s sake,” and work is overvalued, exalted, even glorified to the point of becoming the supreme norm for personal fulfillment, not unlike the world Pieper confronted more than seventy years ago.44 Within this context, true leisure—which is contrary to amuse44. See Josef Pieper, “Das Gesellungsideal der industriellen Arbeitswelt: Aufriss einer sozialpädagogischen Grundfrage,” 374–75.

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  19 ment—is understood as “something totally unforeseen, something completely alien, without rhyme or reason—as a synonym, in fact, for idleness and laziness.”45 Forty years after the publication of his work Leisure: The Basis of Culture, the German philosopher wonderfully summarized the current attitude toward true leisure: “What good are poets in barren times?”46 Isn’t poetry a waste of time and productivity? Isn’t the person who defends true leisure and devotes himself to it really a parasite who should either be bought off or else eliminated? By no means. Rather, isn’t the enjoyment of genuine leisure the key to a happy and fulfilled personal life that is really capable of changing the world for the better? Pieper unceasingly defends the legitimacy of activities that are “free” in themselves, because they are indispensable for personal fulfillment, which cannot be reduced to the criteria of productivity and profitability or explained in terms of a functional mentality. Free activities alone allow for the development of an authentically human culture. Our philosopher goes a step further by demanding the creation, in the heart of the City, of profoundly free and autonomous places that cannot be taken over by the totalitarianism of work or regulated by the criteria of profitability and productivity. Pieper notes that the more the absolutist claim of what is merely utilitarian threatens to confiscate our entire existence, the more a human being, if he is going to lead a genuinely humane life, needs this opportunity to step away occasionally from this tumult of sights and sounds (buy this, drink that, eat those, amuse yourself here, demonstrate for or against), away from this unremitting experience of being screamed at, and to emerge in a place where silence prevails and thus real hearing becomes possible, listening to that reality upon which our existence rests and from which it is continually nourished and renewed.47 45. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 27 [20]. 46. Josef Pieper, “Three Talks in a Sculptor’s Studio. Those ‘Guests at the Festival,’  ” 64 [513]. 47. See Josef Pieper, “Was ist eine Kirche?” 555.

20  Bernard N. Schumacher Pieper’s call to preserve or to create a fully free and autonomous zone that is immune to all the encroachments of the totalitarianism of work has lost nothing of its urgency today. The justification for such a “living space” is found in an anthropology that does not allow the human person to be reduced to a role or a function that is at the service of work, that is to say, to the roles of producer and citizen. Instead, the person is called to live and to become involved as a person, that is, to act in a fully free and responsible way, and not to “delegate” his thinking to others, to use an expression of Emmanuel Mounier,48 but rather to think critically for himself. A life devoid of critical reflection, independent judgment, and the courage to think for oneself would “not be worth living.”49 The promotion of genuine forms of leisure and of all the activities pertaining to theoria allows the human person to become aware of the fact (among other things) that he or she cannot be reduced to the dimension of efficiency, a role and function which, according to Pieper, creates a new proletariat. He explains that Leisure is not justified in making the functionary as “trouble-free” in operation as possible, with minimum “downtime,” but rather in keeping the functionary human (or as Newman said it, so that he can stay a gentleman); and this means that the human being does not disappear into the parceled-out world of his limited work-a-day function, but instead remains capable of taking in the world as a whole, and thereby of realizing himself as a being who is oriented toward the whole of existence.50

The sort of leisure that consists only of rest, amusement, or diversion is not in itself true leisure. True leisure is not a pastime or a mere break between two work shifts, for the purpose of recovering 48. See Emmanuel Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto, 111ff. [98ff.]. 49. This is by no means an ethical judgment declaring that a life devoid of reflection should not be lived or allowed to continue. Hannah Arendt, following Socrates, maintains instead that such persons do not really live according to the ideal to which human nature calls them in “Thinking and Moral Considerations” (431ff.). See Plato, Apologia of Socrates, 38a. 50. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 35 [26].

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  21 from the fatigue of work in order to work more—in other words, to bring about increased efficiency or else simply as a change of pace. If that were the case, leisure would become an integrated albeit distinct part of the working world. People would then go from work to their amusements simply by changing the setting and the kind of their activity. We cannot speak about genuine leisure when we are merely on vacation, off for the weekend, or back from work. Nor can it be acquired in exchange for money, through technology or by particular methods, such as those taught by many recreation experts and directors of activities. True leisure is much more important and more existential then mere free time or amusement. It transcends doing or having and allows itself to be made fruitful and to be at the disposal of others, in an attitude of silent, loving contemplation of reality. Such an attitude, moreover, is essential for any one who wants to lead a truly human life that is fulfilled and happy. The same goes for authentic love, which by its very nature refuses to be turned into a means to an end. True leisure, like the human person, cannot be placed under the tutelage of praxis, because it is only incidentally oriented toward values that have practical utility. The moment that it is no longer an end in itself, it ceases ipso facto to be authentic leisure. According to Pieper, the origin of true leisure and of all theoria is ultimately to be found in the primordial principle of celebration. This must not be understood as an amusement, i.e., as a diversion to pass the time, but rather as an attitude of profound consent to reality, an “affirmative approach to the world,”51 which assumes that being is essentially good. Someone who does not consider reality as basically “good” and “in order” cannot celebrate, any more than he can “devise leisure” for himself. That means that leisure is connected with the presupposition that man consents to the world as well as to his own nature.52 51. Josef Pieper, “Was heißt ‘christliches Abendland’?” 447. 52. Josef Pieper, “Musse und menschliche Existenz,” 457.

22  Bernard N. Schumacher This attitude toward reality, the world, and oneself—which is not necessarily conscious at all times, but shows through the lowliest human activities or reactions—springs, according to Pieper, from another consent: from love. To love a thing or a person is to assume that its existence is something good, something wonderful; in a word, it implies a comprehensive affirmation of the existence of the thing or person that is loved, and thus an opening up of self to reality, an acquiescence in the world. On the basis of a metaphysics of love and ultimately of creation, Pieper proposes the thesis that there could not possibly be any celebration more festive than worship, which signifies thanksgiving for existence. The German philosopher realizes how challenging this conclusion is for his contemporaries, but he considers it inevitable: “The most noble form imaginable of consenting to the world as a whole is the glorification of God, the praise of the Creator, worship. With that we have also defined the ultimate origin of leisure.”53 At the heart of celebration and worship a space is created which is not subject to exploitation by the working world, so that true leisure can then develop in the most auspicious way. The totalitarian state of work has understood quite well that leisure is rooted in celebration. That is why it proposes various artificial feast days, so as to anchor celebration within praxis, even going so far as to make work itself a cult.54 Regarding true leisure as being rooted in celebration and worship is not something unique to Christian thought, since we find it also, as Pieper notes, in pre-Christian thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. The latter maintains that man finds himself incapable of leading a life of leisure by himself. He can do so only “in so far as something divine is present in him.”55 In words written more than sixty years ago, Pieper reminds us 53. Ibidem. 54. “ . . . work itself becomes a cult”: Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 55 [40]. 55. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X, 7, 1177b 26s, 432b.

A Cosmopolitan Hermit  23 that the fulfillment of the human person through the daily living of true leisure contributes to the flourishing of an authentic culture, which in turn contributes to the common good of the human community. When this order is reversed, in other words, when work is set up as the end of personal existence rather than a means to it, and when the person is thus used as an instrument, not only is it impossible for the human person to be fulfilled, but culture itself suffocates. We can conclude that “true culture thrives only in the soil of leisure.”56 56. Josef Pieper, “Musse und menschliche Existenz,” 456.

2

Josef Pieper in the Context of Modern Philosophy

o

Berthold Wald Translated by Gerald Malsbary

Josef Pieper belongs to that small class of modern philosophers who took the political and moral catastrophe of the past century as a challenge for their own thought and action. Although until now his work has left only a few traces in the theoretical discourse of academic circles, its effect on the life and thought of countless students and readers has been much greater.1 While Pieper rather extensively described the historical context of his career in his autobiographical works, he let fall only a few hints here and there about the more technical philosophical context of his writing.2 The following 1. Odo Marquard, a younger colleague of Pieper’s, likened him in this respect to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. He relates that, thanks to his personal encounter with Pieper, “it occurred to him, that—just because the only philosophy that is worthwhile is the kind that people take notice of even in difficult circumstances—a philosopher has both philosophical and literary responsibilities.” “Der Philosoph als Schriftsteller,” 10ff. 2. The best account of the interconnections of Josef Pieper’s life and work

24

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  25 remarks are therefore intended to clarify the relevance of his work in its relation to contemporary philosophy; we will look specifically at (1) the crisis about the meaning of philosophy as such, and (2) the modern world situation, and finally (3) the crisis of the contemporary image of the human being.

1. Truth or Meaning? For some time now, in discussions about the meaning and justification of philosophy in the modern world, two different themes have been discernible, which at first glance may appear to have nothing to do with each other. The first—at once a symptom of a long-standing crisis and an attempt to heal it—can be indicated by the question “Why philosophy?”3 The other theme concerns the debate between analytical philosophy and hermeneutical philosophy over the priority of reference to meaning, over the unambiguous determination of a state of affairs as “true or false” vs. polyvalence of meaning, depending upon a variety of possible givens. In fact, the signs are multiplying that this “domestic” dispute over philosophy’s proper orientation is increasingly being seen as a merely apparent problem, from which contemporary philosophy is once again trying to free itself.4 has been provided by Pieper himself in “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen.” One should also refer to his three-volume autobiography: No One Could Have Known and Noch nicht aller Tage Abend. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen 1945–1964 and Eine Geschichte wie ein Strahl. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen seit 1964. 3. Wozu Philosophie? Stellungnahmen eines Arbeitskreises is the title of a 1978 published collection of viewpoints of a philosophical working group, edited by Hermann Lübbe. 4. A comparable problem can be seen in the theological field. It consists in maintaining a priority of the question of meaning (historicity of understanding) over the question of truth (with reference to the revelation-event). See Fernando Inciarte, “Wahrheit oder Sinn? Ein Konvergenzpunkt zwischen analytischer Philosophie und hermeneutischer Theologie.” In philosophy, however, the situation is reversed: here, the analytical school, which has been dominant for so long, has given up its dogmatic fixation on the univocity of the truth-function and has become

26  Berthold Wald But what does the crisis about philosophy’s identity (“Why any philosophy at all?”) have to do with this dispute about philosophy’s proper orientation? And what justifies bringing Josef Pieper’s understanding of philosophy into the debate? Granted, he was long involved in the discussion, with a view to the fundamental question about the meaning and justification of present-day philosophizing,5 and he joined the debate with some highly principled argumentation; nevertheless, he does not appear to have touched even once upon the basic disagreement between analytical philosophy and hermeneutical philosophy. While his writings do not in fact lack a critical stance toward historicism and scientism, they are not explicitly preoccupied with derivative contemporary movements in philosophy, and it is impossible to assign his express concept of philosophy exclusively to one or another of these schools. But there is a deeper, more substantive context underlying this apparently unrelatedness or even (in Pieper’s work) marginal set of issues, with roots in the early-twentieth-century debate about philosophy. For both analytical philosophy and hermeneutical philosophy can be understood as attempts to deal with the crisis of philosophy that began in the twenties—a crisis that the success of the natural sciences would only further inflame. And the situation was not helped by the mutually exclusive definitions of philosophy that were maintained at the time: on the one side, a claim for the unconditional superiority of unambiguous reference (with dependence on the natural sciences); on the other side, the opposite claim of a no less unconditional superiority of assumed interpretative viewpoints (to reserve for philosophy as a “human science” [Geisteswissenschaft] its own peculiar field and method). This opposition of truth versus meaning could not overcome the crisis but only worsen it. Since then, it has become widely held—and not without some jusincreasingly open to presupposed interpretative perspectives. See Rüdiger Bubner, “Wohin tendiert die analytische Philosophie?” 5. Josef Pieper, “The Condition of Philosophy Today.”

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  27 tification—that philosophy is either a specialist discipline that can provide answers to questions about truth that practically no one but a philosopher would ask, or alternatively, a kind of supermarket where we can choose according to personal taste from a range of rival options of meaning, each with only temporary validity.6 Josef Pieper’s conception of philosophy was likewise determined from the beginning in relation to the crisis of philosophy—not the discipline itself so much as the problem of how to keep philosophy alive and flourishing under contemporary conditions. His starting point was the usual speech and thought of men as oriented toward knowing and action; this kept him from tearing truth and meaning apart, and also from maintaining the (necessarily artificial) opposition between what a statement “refers to” when it means something and the manner and style in which “what is meant” presents itself in each case to the persons who happen to be participating in the dialogue. Truth in its unabridged form does not exist outside a pre-determined horizon of meaning, i.e., it does not exist outside of any transmission of it, nor outside of language and interpretation, just as, vice versa, transmitted meaning, through its relationship to reality, is subject to certain truth-conditions, and to an elementary, not-yet-interpreted knowing. Thanks to this approach, Pieper’s understanding of philosophy, remaining aloof from the debate between truth and meaning, employed a mode of argumentation that steered clear of the alternative “hermeneutic or analytic.” This line of argument had its origin in the later Plato, and was defended by 6. Not only has this last conception of philosophy enjoyed an increasing consensus among contemporary philosophers; it is normally defended against other conceptions—for example, by Richard Rorty and others in Philosophical Papers, vols. 1 and 2. By the end of the century the pendulum had swung away from the ascetic parsimony of the scientific philosophy of the Vienna School to the opposite extreme of the “free” (because non-referential) “play of meaning” (Jacques Derrida), which, although no doubt aesthetically satisfying, is nevertheless indifferent to truth, and consequently useless for the serious business of living. From the starting point of trying to reduce language to what can be said, we end up with a language that says nothing.

28  Berthold Wald Aristotle (in his logical and metaphysical writings) against both the natural-philosophical reductionism of his time and the unprincipled pluralism of sophistic argumentation. Pieper’s understanding of philosophy hearkens back to a philosophical tradition that has not yet buried the historical presuppositions of its own philosophizing. The dominant topic of his For the Love of Wisdom [Schriften zum Philosophiebegriff] is not philosophy but the act of philosophizing. Such a distinction is neither trivial nor arbitrary; if you make the distinction, you should be able to defend it in the terms of contemporary philosophical discourse. Pieper’s point is that at no time has philosophy lived exclusively or even primarily on an interest in philosophy as such.7 He found confirmation for this somewhat casually expressed thesis in Plato above all: “The philosophizing person is not characterized by the fact that he is interested in philosophy as a ‘subject’; he is interested in the world as a totality and in wisdom in its entirety. Such is Plato’s conception of Philosophy!”8 And of course he thereby formulated his own conception, which he would later use in his A Plea for Philosophy [Verteidigungsrede]9 and once again with reference to Plato and with a view to the positions of Heidegger and Jaspers, against historicism and scientism in philosophy.10 The recourse to Plato’s concept of philosophy, in any case, did not mean that Pieper had to go back behind everything that had been thought since Plato in order to be able to start thinking originally again. He did not share Martin Heidegger’s radical, indeed rather Ro7. Wittgenstein, as is well known, wanted to put an end to any interest in philosophy as such through a therapy of the philosophical use of language. “Philosophy [for Wittgenstein] finally appears as transformed into ‘self-destruction,’ in order to make room, in a meditative procedure, “for the world-situation and the selfunderstanding of the human being as a whole.” Rüdiger Bubner, “Wittgenstein als meditativer Denker,” 215. 8. Pieper first presented this idea with full clarity in his essay “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy,” 161. 9. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 153–54 [152]. 10. See also Josef Pieper, “On the Dilemma Posed by a Non-Christian Philosophy,” 299 [304].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  29 mantic, notion of an unspoiled origin of thinking in Parmenides and Heraclitus, to whom reality supposedly appeared in all its immediacy, unsullied by any conceptual philosophical representation.11 Leaving aside the question, whether this in any way affects Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy and their continuation in the environment of the Christian theology of the Middle Ages, the move that Heidegger advocated—to get behind the dangerous, still-enduring epoch of the “loss of being”—conceals the real difficulty of the philosophical act and the precariousness of its existence. The difficulty does not consist in the disappearance of a self-revealing reality behind the (at first) conceptual and (later) technical objectifications of human reason; nor does the mastery over this difficulty lie in a retreat to a “Greek relationship with the world” that obtained before Socrates’ day. Instead, Pieper’s point in having recourse to Plato (especially) is to understand the philosophical act again in the light of the conditions that make it possible at all times but can likewise hinder its development. The loss and recovery of the original intimacy with being—the grand theme of Heidegger’s philosophizing—thrusts the act of philosophizing into an unapproachable mythical distance beyond concrete historical reality. For Pieper, on the other hand, the retreat not to “the Greeks” but to Plato was exclusively intended to recover a timelessly valid paradigm: to understand philosophizing, as Plato did, as a kind of “exceptional state,” which can emerge in any period but which must constantly be defended against certain predictable dangers and criticism: above all, against the question— posed sometimes indifferently, sometimes aggressively—“Why philosophy?” It is a question that has accompanied philosophy as part of its very structure from its beginning, so that philosophy has been painted as an undertaking whose social utility is questionable. Philosophy doesn’t make its students “efficient,” and because this is so, 11. See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, 143ff. (esp. Abschnitt 3, “Sein und Denken,” 88ff.); also Essence of Truth and What Is Metaphysics? See also Josef Pieper, “Heidegger’s Conception of Truth.”

30  Berthold Wald one who philosophizes in a period during which there is a definite bias toward efficiency cannot hide from the problem of philosophy’s meaning and justification; neither can one escape the rather deepseated distaste that civilized society has for an activity that seems useless in this sense. The most obvious form of avoiding “philosophy as a useless activity” is seen in the phenomenon of turning philosophy into a “human science” [Geisteswissenschaft],12 a kind of scientifically certified option for an exclusively hermeneutic interest in philosophy itself that “makes actually lived philosophizing appear to be something that belongs irrevocably to the past.”13 Pieper was not urging a radical immediacy without reference to tradition; rather, he was issuing a plea to call into question the status of a philosophical hermeneutic that did not permit a direct relationship to reality to serve as the standard for the truth of philosophical interpretation. The question about the meaning and justification of philosophy is in any event not yet answered by saying that a society needs philosophers—qua scientifically trained specialists in philosophy—in order to maintain its cultural inheritance. The question, “Why philosophy at all—alongside the other sciences?” has a salutary if unsettling effect for someone who does not avoid 12. According to Herbert Schnädelbach at the 15th “Kongress der Allgemeinen Gesellschaft für Philosophie in Deutschland” (which took place in Hamburg in 1990). A selection of some of the papers read on that occasion has been edited by Herbert Schnädelbach and Geert Keil with the title Philosophie der Gegenwart—Gegenwart der Philosophie, 16. 13. Ibidem. Schnädelbach sees the problem of contemporary philosophy as the attempt to certify the scientific nature of philosophy through “historicizing and philologizing” (15), a “scientification” that would necessarily—with the final transformation of philosophy into a human science—bring about the historical end of philosophy. For a philosophy that is purely a human science-oriented enterprise, no matter at what level it is practiced, would give up for the sake of an historical and philological “pseudo-objectivity” (16) the decisive factor that makes philosophy what it is: the attempt “to make an intellectual orientation in the area of our fundamental thinking, knowing, and acting” (14). Consequently Schnädelbach concludes with unmistakable clarity: “Philosophy is not a ‘human science’ [. . .] if we ignore that, we destroy our discipline” (19). In Pieper’s words, “Philosophy betrays itself at the very moment it begins to construe itself as an academic subject” (“On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy,” 161 [160]).

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  31 it. It reminds those who philosophize about the peculiar claim of knowledge bound up with their activity—a matter non-philosophers presuppose, since they consider it as self-evident. Pieper’s taking on of this challenge helps explain the wider public’s interest in his philosophy; on the other hand it seems quite likely that academic narcissism led to the trend of “Why” questioning that began in the mid-seventies, a trend that shows unmistakably that the field was tardy in taking seriously the reality that goes on outside the walls of academe.14 In light of experiences with totalitarian despotism, as well as the threat of a new totalitarianism of thought that is aimed largely at tangible utility, the “questionable question”15 is still not yet answered by the fact that one “may know, with recourse to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel or Wilhelm Dilthey16 [. . .] that one is carried along by the meaning of historical culture as something self-evident.”17 For Pieper, by contrast, what Karl Jaspers wrote about the intellectual conditions after 1945 would also be valid for philosophizing: “Since we can now speak freely with one another again, our first task is really to speak with one another. And that is by no means easy.”18 Really to speak with one another—on philosophical issues as well—cannot be limited only to ascertaining what others thought or said; it includes assuming a stance that takes seriously and discusses, with reference to one’s own position, the claim that others have to the truth. Only a few philosophers of the twentieth century have shared 14. Several groups of thinkers have cooperated on the question of the current status of philosophy. See Hans Michael Baumgartner and Hans-Martin Sass, Philosophie in Deutschland 1945–1975, 18ff. The outcome of such a working-group was published in 1978 under the title Why Philosophy? (see note 3 above) with a bibliography of 692 items! 15. Hermann Lübbe, “Wozu Philosophie? Über einen Grund des Interesses der Wissenschaften an ihr,” 250. 16. Ibidem, 249. 17. Ibidem, 250. In conclusion Lübbe writes: “Either way, whatever seemed to us at that time to have become questionable . . . philosophy as such did not belong to it” (254). 18. As quoted in Karl Jaspers, Die Wandlung, 54 (italics mine).

32  Berthold Wald Pieper’s conviction about the historical significance of Thomas Aquinas for our time. His effort to bring Thomas into view “as he truly concerns philosophical-minded persons today, not merely as a historical personage,” did not begin with his 1958 Guide to Thomas Aquinas.19 His earlier publications as well—the dissertation on the ontological grounding of morality (1929), the much-read treatise on the human virtues Fortitude (1934), On Hope (1935), Prudence (1937), Temperance (1939),20 and finally the two introductions to the meaning of virtue doctrine, On the Christian Image of Man (1936) and A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart (1941)21— were all attempts to adapt Thomas’s insights into the meaning and goal of human life and to make them fruitful in contemporary circumstances. The “philosophical interpretation of the ancients” took place with the goal of “penetrating more deeply into the incomprehensibility of reality”22 and “in the hope” that “even this world of ours [. . .] might be more clearly reflected in the work of the great masters of Western philosophy than in ourselves.”23 Consequently Pieper did not hesitate to call Thomas Aquinas his “Schoolmaster,” whose presence cannot be overlooked even in later writings.24 In a rather epigrammatic but not inappropriate formula, one could probably say that, as the encounter with the ancient philosopher Aristotle extended the possibilities for Thomas’s theology, so the 19. Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, ix [156]. 20. All four are published together in English in The Four Cardinal Virtues. 21. Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart. 22. Josef Pieper, Über das Gute und das Böse. Vier Vorlesungen (Thomas-Interpretationen), 1. 23. Josef Pieper, Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit. Interpretationen zu Thomas von Aquin: Quaestiones disputate De veritate, 60. 24. The idea of “theologically founded worldliness,” which was fundamental for Pieper’s philosophy of culture (see Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 132, and In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity), was derived from Pieper’s study of the work of Thomas Aquinas; the same is true for his thesis of the “form-unity” of knowing and believing in the act of the philosophizing person (Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 152 f. [291]; see also his essay A Plea for Philosophy), and also for the “concept of sin”: Über das Gute und das Böse. Vier Vorlesungen (Thomas-Interpretationen), 22. This latter subject was developed in a separate monograph, The Concept of Sin.

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  33 possibilities for Josef Pieper’s philosophy were extended by his encounter with Thomas the medieval theologian. Both—Aristotle and Thomas—opened new paths of understanding and formulated insights that are worth grappling with and have become part of the set of philosophical issues known as “Christian Philosophy.”25

2. “Theologically Founded Worldliness” or “Complete Negativity”? Pieper’s Leisure—The Basis of Culture was among the first post– 1945 attempts to formulate a response to the spiritual situation of the day. The book appeared in 1948, a year after Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (later published in English as Dialectic of Enlightenment), although Pieper had already been formulating its leading themes for a few years.26 The most striking similarity between such otherwise contrary positions was the sober prognosis that the instrumentalized reason of modernity would accelerate still more the “advance to an administered world”27 and would bring the risk that the individual would become “a complete functionary.”28 Violence in the external conditions of life had indeed been overcome, but the inner captivity to the “soulless and meaningless civilization of the modern working world,”29 25. Whether the term “Christian Philosophy” as suggested by Etienne Gilson (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy) expresses adequately the innovative character of medieval philosophy is very doubtful; see Jan A. Aertsen, “Gibt es eine mittelalterliche Philosophie?” Since the Middle Ages, philosophical thought has been above all “transcendental thinking [. . .] in continuity with modern philosophy” (176). Nevertheless, the leading idea of Gilson’s pioneering studies is unquestionably correct: “that everything happened as though the Judeo-Christian revelation were a religious source of philosophical development, the witness par excellence to this development in the past being the Latin Middle Age.” The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 405–6 [385]. 26. Josef Pieper, “Notizen über Muße und Mußelosigkeit” and “Notizen über das Schweigen”; these were published by Peter Suhrkamp in 1942 and 1943 in the Neuen Rundschau and were reprinted in 1946 in his Taschenbuch für junge Menschen. 27. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, x [10]. 28. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 37 [27]. 29. Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 188.

34  Berthold Wald brought only repression; what was “truly worth keeping,”30 though, was not to be regained through the mere “practice of tradition.”31 Looking into the past, Adorno was convinced that “real, lost tradition could not be aesthetically replaced.”32 Pieper saw the situation no otherwise: “reaching back to tradition in general”33 would necessarily remain ineffective and “purely academic,”34 because in this way “the real historical battle lines [were] covered over and still unclear behind all the scaffolding of restoration.”35 These would reveal their power to influence consciousness, just because “in place of reality, we have a non-binding world” of appearances and pseudo-education.36 Pieper was likewise not able to derive any benefit from the ontological conception (originating from Martin Heidegger’s thought) of an ever new and varying “language event” [Sprachgeschehen] which was later to become so important for the trend toward philosophical and theological hermeneutics. Confronted with formulations like this—that the dignity of the human being consisted in “being called from Being itself into the verification of its truth” (from the “Letter on Humanism” of 1946)—his “initial fascination began to give way to a deep mistrust.”37 In the sense of Josef Pieper you could argue that Heidegger’s thesis: “Language speaks. Its speaking speaks for us in what has been spoken,”38 is either a meaningless tautology with no relationship to reality or the expression of an unclear theology of immanence that equates real speaking with the self-revelation of the divine Word, at once evoked in the listener and 30. Josef Pieper, “Über das in Wahrheit Bewahrenswerte,” 165. 31. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 271ff. [275ff.]. 32. Theodor W. Adorno, “Über Tradition,” 311; this work was written on the eve of the so-called “cultural revolution” of 1968. 33. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 38 [28]. 34. Ibidem, 56 [41]. 35. Ibidem, 38 [28]. 36. Ibidem, 56 [41]. 37. “It was above all the language of this writer that I could not trust, nor, consequently, the writer himself.” Josef Pieper, Noch nicht aller Tage Abend, 242. 38. Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, and Thought, 210 [33].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  35 conceptually excluded. The disconcerting thing about Heidegger is that “questions can be posed with a challenging radicality, and from an originally theological impetus, which in themselves require theological answers, while at the same time any such answer is radically denied.”39 For Pieper, this was reason enough no longer to allow himself such a misleading occupation with language.40 Where philosophical hermeneutics, especially in the way of Hans-Georg Gadamer,41 adopted the historical substantialism of Heidegger’s language concept, orientation to tradition as such turned into the pretense of understanding, without the question being posed, how binding was tradition “in its ability to provide metaphyscial legitimation, ultimate credibility, and specific, historically effective relevance.”42 It was not by chance that Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas later, from the perspective of communication theory, criticized hermeneutic theory for its failure to provide legitimation for itself.43 The conflict between commitment-totradition and will-to-emancipation, which had until then decisively characterized the intellectual climate, had, after all, become possible only through Gadamer’s call to tradition, which sought to derive the objective groundlessness of tradition’s retreat into past “worlds of speech and thought” from the conditions for understanding in the world of experience. But separated from its claim to truth, every 39. Josef Pieper, “Heidegger’s Conception of Truth” (Habilitationsvortrag, January 1946), 196 [198]. Translation by G. M. 40. Adorno’s critique of Heidegger later would point in the same direction: “He [Heidegger] cleverly combines the appeal of non-romantic, uncorrupted sincerity with the promise of liberation, which can then not be interpreted in any other way but as the very liberation” (Theodor W. Adorno, Jargon der Eigentlichkeit, 437). 41. “Does not the peculiar reality of speech consist [. . .] precisely in the fact [that it is] a preliminary comprehension of all that exists through its potentiality to be spoken? Is not language less the language of human beings than the language of things?” (Hans Georg Gadamer, “Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge,” 72ff.; italics added). 42. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 38 [28]. 43. See Jürgen Habermas, Dieter Henrich, and Jakob Taubes (eds.), Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik.

36  Berthold Wald inherited worldview becomes either a subject of mere aesthetics or a cause of annoyance whenever it demands public recognition. What it comes down to, then, is clarifying once again the value of tradition, with reference to the world experience and reallife decisions of those who are alive today. “A time like the present seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of ‘leisure’,” if, indeed, we are engaged in getting re-integrated back into the world. With this glance at the reservations on the part of the real world, Pieper begins his defense of leisure.44 But philosophy has long been on the defensive and always comes later than life. It comes too late only when it argues about the ultimate things that guide life “on the basis of less-than-ultimate positions.”45 The fundamental decisions, re-orientations, and new starts of intellectual life such as would have been timely after the twentieth-century historical experiences with totalitarianism can be expected to take place only where the lived context that requires renewal reaches down into the same depths that until that time had nourished the orientation of private and public life. Pieper sees just such an original relationship between the closed-in world of total work and a hidden despair, between the contemplative opening of the heart and its facilitation in the festivity of worship.46 What Pieper had first stated in a very basic way, unencumbered by academic reserve, and giving voice to the experience of the totalitarian work-state, he made more concrete, in terms of post-war cultural developments, in his writings on the meaning of academia, on the theory of festivity, and on the history of philosophy. One could formulate the leading thought common to these works as follows: the incapacity for contemplation and the inclination to historical pessimism (or to its opposite, the vision of an earthly paradise) 44. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 3 [2]. 45. Ibidem, 57 [41]. 46. “Culture lives on ‘worship’. And we must return to this original relationship when the question is considered as a whole.” Ibidem, 57 [41].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  37 increase at the same rate as the living relationship with the mystery of God’s presence decreases. The existential and the cultural sides of this loss are closely interconnected. The existential demand would be for a readiness to allow oneself to incur the risk of going beyond oneself. “Leisure is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go, and ‘go under’.”47 To set oneself to work in “the vocationally specialized exercise of a function is, [of course] the normal form of human activity.”48 But the paradox of the human existential situation consists precisely in the fact that the unceasingly manmade world of necessary goods, cultural productions, and useful scientific theories is not capable of satisfying the unfulfilled possibilities or the deepest longing of the human spirit. Therefore the truly human is rescued and preserved precisely because the area of the “just human” is left behind over and over again—and this is not brought about through the application of extreme efforts but rather as with a kind of “moving away” [. . .] this is the paradox that reigns over the attainment of leisure, which is at once a human and super-human condition.49

In any case this is also the conception of existence that Aristotle endorsed, with the warning not to follow those whose advice restricts us, “being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things.”50 The same warning was formulated by the Christian Middle Ages in the concept of acedia, or sadness and heaviness of heart: “that the human being had given up on the very responsibility that comes with his dignity [. . .] that he does not want to be what he really, and in the ultimate sense, is.”51 Kierkegaard named this denial the real “Sickness unto Death,” because it is a sickness of the self, a deeper kind of despair which prevents 47. Ibidem, 32 [24]. 48. Ibidem, 24 [18]. 49. Ibidem, 36 [27]. 50. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b32ff.). 51. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 28ff. [20ff.]

38  Berthold Wald the self from “rest[ing] transparently in the power that established it.”52 Right here is where Pieper sees the root of being chained interiorly to the working-process53 and the need for “worldly substitute cultures,” because “the bourgeois career-culture [especially] in the German consciousness” has to “fulfill a religious function.”54 But “especially to be regretted” is the deceptive “apologetic enthusiasm of the attempt to legitimize the ‘Christian teaching’ [about acedia] through making it agree with the current fashion and [. . .] to read modern activism into the ‘working-ethos’ of the Church.”55 The existential incapacity for contemplative self-transcendence, to “win contact with those superhuman, life-giving forces,”56 is culturally connected with the loss of a conception of reality that Pieper termed “theologically founded worldliness,”57 without indicating exactly what was “cause” and what was “consequence.” What he means is a relationship to reality that has been determined by the Christian theology of creation well into the modern period in three different respects: first, the move from the concept of the eternity of the world to a concept of creation ex nihilo. Why is there something and not nothing? This wonder at the existence of the world goes deeper than the Greek admiration of the order of the cosmos, 52. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, 14 [I. Section, A, concluding sentence]. 53. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 42 [32]. 54. Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 116 (emphasis mine). 55. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 29 [21]. Pieper is here directing a criticism at Johannes Haessle’s Das Arbeitsethos der Kirche nach Thomas von Aquin und Leo XIII, which appeared in 1923 but was reincarnated in Eberhard Welty’s Vom Sinn und Wert der menschlichen Arbeit: “Anybody who takes it upon himself to write a book on the theology of work in 1946 and does not take into account the perversion of working-morality under the Nazi regime, is guilty of denial.” Pieper, on the other hand, is denying nothing: “He attacked the illusion of the total and the totalitarian, whereby work itself must be in a position to answer for a meaning that attaches to it” (Rainer Hank, Arbeit—die Religion des 20. Jahrhunderts. Auf dem Weg in die Gesellschaft der Selbständigen, 82, 116ff.). 56. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 35–36 [26]. 57. Mentioned for the first time in Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas. See also Josef Pieper, “Was heißt ‘christliches Abendland’?” 446.

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  39 even if the power and beauty of that cosmos is experienced as the expression of the divine. Second, creation means: all being is good, because it is willed and loved by God. There is nothing that would be evil by nature—neither matter in general nor the bodily nature of human existence. Third, the Christian conception of creation implies that the creator of the world exists, not beyond being in a separated hiddenness, but rather, as the ground of being, and reveals himself in the fact that things exist and can tell us something about beauty and perfection. All three aspects of the created reality of the world have been formally challenged by modern philosophers, by the deism of the Enlightenment58 as well as by Kant’s critical philosophy, which disputes the theophanic character of the world from the perspective of the restricted human capacity of knowing.59 The real crisis of the Western idea of “theologically founded secularity,” or the loss of its influence on the world-situation of man, reveals itself in nihilism, “whose radicality first became possible on the basis of the theological concept of the creatio, which was in any case not thought of in antique philosophy and which alone rendered the concept of ‘nothingness’ thinkable in its extreme form.”60 Nihilism can be seen as the radical reversal of the Christian doctrine of creation, whereby the “will to nothing” replaces harmony-with-the-world, opening up an unlimited range of free play to the “will to power,” letting a person imagine something new and “completely other” in place of reality. Around the turn of the century there was something like “a thought form of dis-realizing realization,”61 which is to be found in quite various areas. First, in expressionism: this movement lost 58. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 79–80 [198ff.]. 59. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 8ff. [6ff.]. Kant opposed the deistic doctrine of a hidden transcendence with “a doctrine of hidden this-worldliness” (Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 136; emphasis in original). 60. Josef Pieper, The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, 59 [316]. 61. Ferdinand Fellmann, Phänomenologie und Expressionismus, 71.

40  Berthold Wald “the naïve trust in the reality of the given which was characteristic of nineteenth century realism . . . it protests against the unchangeable and believes in the possibility of what is absolutely new, which sets a limit to the given world.”62 Robert Musil prefaces the fourth chapter of his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften [The man without attributes] with the epigraph: “If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility” and he defines the meaning of possibility as “the ability . . . to think of everything that might as well exist, and to take what does not exist as seriously as what does.”63 This rejection of reality also determined Edmund Husserl not to enter anything into “the registry book of phenomenology, which we are about to begin,” that had any relationship to empirical factual being, in order to tread as little as possible upon that other world in the medium of thought—that world “which ‘bears in itself’ all possible real worlds and all worlds in every wider sense.”64 A comparable epocheˉ—in the sense of “stop” or “check”—against the real existence of the world as it is presented to us can also be found in the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, except that in this case it is not man who brings to this reality an “absolute No,” but rather God himself—God understood “as the ‘totally other’ or ‘beyond’, ‘diametrically opposed’, as Karl Barth formulated it, [that which is] completely without relation to all that is created. . . . In place of an analogy between God and creation there is pure ‘negation’.”65 The Lutheran conception of God as Deus absconditus (“hidden God”) 62. In this sense, expressionistic thought feeds the specifically utopian spirit of twentieth-century Germany. 63. Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, 16. 64. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, 149, 33 [152, 73]. The two quotations are taken, respectively, from (1) Section 64: “The Phenomenologist’s Self-Exclusion” (149) and (2) Section 33: “Preliminary Indication of “Pure” or “Transcendental Consciousness As the Psychological Residuum.” This second passage, quoted from the 1950 edition of Walter Biemel, did not appear in either the original 1913 edition or the 1976 Schumann edition, and it was not translated by Kersten. 65. Erich Przywara, Ringen der Gegenwart, 553.

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  41 is thus renewed in its passage through Kant’s teaching of the “hidden immanence” (Plessner), and the possibility of “religious experience” is definitively excluded by negating “the God who is in us and over us.”66 Like Karl Barth, in the end Martin Heidegger also disputed the possibility of a natural theology based on the recognition of created reality. The objectivization of God as a being (even the highest being) among all other beings was taken as the most stubborn form of nihilism that needed to be overcome. Heidegger’s radical rejection of the theological in his elaboration of an ontology of pure immanence tries, of course, by way of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetry, to recover the lost qualities of experience for the “totally other” of dialectical theology in the medium of pure language. “Language itself is—language and nothing else besides. . . . We leave the speaking to language. . . . ‘Language is language’. This statement does not lead us to something else in which language is grounded.”67 Only the ontological self-signification of language places us before the “mysterium tremendum . . . that otherness of absolute contemporariness . . . to which he [Heidegger] can allow no metaphysical status.”68 This radical search for a new relationship with the world after epochal catastrophes and disappointments stands in striking contrast with the spirit of restoration after 1945, which was looking instead for “a stabilization of the indecisiveness between yesterday and tomorrow’69 and held back from a conscious search for a really new beginning70—with a few exceptions. For Josef Pieper, it was just this early twentieth-century crisis of the human-to-world relationship that not only appeared not to have been intellectually mastered 66. Ibidem, 543. 67. Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, and Thought, 190–91 [12, 13]. 68. George Steiner, Martin Heidegger. Eine Einführung, 25. 69. Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 22. 70. George Steiner, Martin Heidegger. Eine Einführung, 9ff. Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 22ff.

42  Berthold Wald by Heidegger’s and Barth’s attempts to answer it, but also remained unanswered and still in need of an adequately fundamental solution. In the meantime Pieper found in Erich Przywara an extraordinary teacher who was capable of reformulating the content of the Christian interpretation of the world (with roots in Augustine and particularly inspired by Newman) and who entered into debate with Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth. (Pieper was himself present at Przywara’s public disputation with Barth in Münster, 1929—the opening of the much-discussed “Dialogues” between the Christian confessions).71 If we read Przywara’s articles written at the time, it is not difficult to see how much Pieper owed to this encounter, especially the insight into the importance of the analogy of being, correctly understood: “that the creator is at the same time in the creation and reveals himself in creation and yet at the same time is over the creation and exceeds all revelation through his incomprehensibility.”72 Precisely this theologically grounded vision of the world that Przywara called (with a certain redundancy) “Catholic totality” had already lost its power to influence culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, even if (thanks to the social strengthening the Church then experienced) this was not obvious to everyone after 1945 (as Pieper had said, “the real historical battle lines are covered over”).73 Significantly, the “battle lines” of the future conflict were already marked out in the 1944 preface of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment [Dialektik der Aufklärung], written while Adorno was still in his American exile: “The Enlightenment must consider itself, if men are not to be wholly betrayed. The task to be accomplished is not the conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes of the past.”74 But the still unrealized 71. Josef Pieper, “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 5. 72. Erich Przywara, Ringen der Gegenwart, 605. His chef d’oeuvre, Analogia Entis, is a later, systematic summary of the college course at Davos that Pieper attended for three successive years (1928–1930). 73. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 38 [28]. 74. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xv [15].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  43 redemption of hope remains ever uncertain by way of the immanent dialectic of the modern concept of reason, because “the submission of everything natural to the autocratic subject [i.e., the reason] finally culminates in the mastery of the blindly objective and natural.”75 It is no wonder, then, that the rational standpoint of the Enlightenment is left behind in the Minima Moralia, which appeared a little later, and in the “face of despair” the challenge is issued to “contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption.”76 The use of the subjunctive (“would”) is decisive here. It displays the continuity in thought of the “disrealizing realization” for which “the question about the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly matters.”77 All hope must pass though “consummate negativity,” that is, through the denial of the world, which will be revealed one day “in the messianic light” with all its “rifts and crevices.” “Once squarely faced,” negativity “delineates the mirror-image of its opposite”78 which, in its lack of conceptuality needs expert exposition. Ernst Bloch’s opus magnum Das Prinzip Hoffnung [The Principle of Hope] provides a monumental exhibition of this “mirror-image” through a flood of metaphors that invest the very earthly “socialist kingdom” with emblems of Christian longing for salvation. A discussion paper by Max Horkheimer dating from this period makes it unmistakably clear in any event that “Bloch’s mystical messianism” was in contradiction to the spirit of critical theory. Horkheimer and Adorno do not share “the hope, that some day everything will be fine on earth” because it could happen that “what exists is in principle worse than what should be,” because there is and will be nothing in this world “that ever can correspond to the 75. Ibidem, xvi [16]. 76. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, 247 [283]. 77. Ibidem. The 1946 edition of Minima Moralia ends with this sentence. 78. Ibidem (emphasis added).

44  Berthold Wald idea of the absolutely right.”79 The “utopian moment” of complete negativity can no longer be represented positively. It can be kept pure only in the longing for the “other.” Wherever it becomes “objectified in a utopia” it has already “sabotaged its realization. Open thinking points beyond itself.” “As long as it is not interrupted, it holds firmly onto possibility.”80 The “sense of possibility” of the cultural avant-garde that had for a time been politically repressed was revived around midcentury by critical theory and its denial of “what exists”; in fact it was even enhanced by the unmistakable evocation of JudaeoChristian eschatology. Horkheimer even speaks of a “desideratum, to renew the connection between philosophy and theology.”81 But the reference Horkheimer makes immediately afterwards to Kant’s significance for critical theory makes it clear that, in such a connection, the theological is already established “on the boundaries of pure reason”: the “other” is in the first place (with Kant and Hegel) thought of as the “absolute,” which nevertheless does not (despite Hegel) acquire any reality in this world and stays (with Kant) hidden from our perception. Through such recourse (no longer specially justified) to this cluster of concepts, the connection of Christian eschatology with the theology of creation is ignored “in the longing [. . .] that this ghastly world is not the only true one.”82 What results is a “philosophical” eschatology which makes the selftranscendence of human longing dependent on a refusal to grant the world any consent. Pieper’s initial warnings about a restorative view of culture were revealed in retrospect as fully justified, in the provocative antihermeneutic of the Frankfurt school. No transmitted concept of the 79. Max Horkheimer, “Zur Zukunft der kritischen Theorie,” 433 (emphasis added). 80. Theodor W. Adorno, “Resignation,” 798. 81. Max Horkheimer, “Die Funktion der Theologie in der Gesellschaft,” 310. 82. Max Horkheimer, “Das Schlimme erwarten und doch das Gute versuchen,” 466.

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  45 human being is legitimated simply by the fact that it exists or once existed. Precisely because it is not a question here of “pure” philosophical insights, the appearance of validity “without the perennial relaying of the foundation of the credere” has long since been exposed as deceptive.83 Consequently, if someone is going to argue for a philosophical-theological teaching on the human being, he must approach it from two directions. First, there must be no shrinking from a “legitimation that reaches back to the most remote source,”84 as occurs in philosophical hermeneutics. And the same skeptical approach should be taken toward positivism: to ask “whether someone is deceived who thinks he can start short of metaphysics; whether, in all the so-called ‘empirical’ judgments, metaphysical pre-judgements are not working themselves out—in the form, in fact, of unnoticed presuppositions.”85 Secondly, it must be made clear that philosophizing from this “deepest source” is not to be justified solely through the use of the vocabulary of the Christian theology of revelation. Under the (deceptive) appearance of “ultimate meaning” which such a philosophizing is capable of giving, there lurks the greater danger of (self-) deception. Just because the “fact of revelation . . . is not easily accepted” by “modern man,”86 revelation can be meaningful for someone who philosophizes in the existential way only when it is seen in its “scandalous . . . incommensurability with the spheres of both nature and culture”87—as divine revelation, that is, and not as speculation of the human mind. “Theologically grounded worldliness” can therefore not be 83. Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 56 [314]. 84. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 56 [40]. 85. This is taken from one of Josef Pieper’s first publications: “  ‘Wirklichkeitwissenschaftliche’ Soziologie. Kritische Randbemerkungen zu Hans Freyer, Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft,” (1931) 31, note 1. 86. Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 36 [302]. 87. Ibidem, 37.

46  Berthold Wald claimed as a contemporary formula for Western man’s relationship with the world without accepting its foundational context at the same time. On the other side, the opposing model of “complete negativity”—by its retention of the language of salvation but without belief in its reality—remains only an aesthetic construct, an empty formula that asks to be filled with “real” content by the “sense of reality” of the next generations.88 The self-destruction of this philosophy of culture through the banalizing of its content is merely the consequence of its nihilism, which makes any future fulfillment of life conditional on the devaluation of contemporary possibilities of experience. Thus arises a vicious circle, in which the indeterminateness of highly wrought expectation permits the world to be seen only in a negative perspective, a perspective that the selfdenying longing needs in turn in order to justify itself. The inescapability of this situation, which can only allow a negative context of reference between experience and expectation, nevertheless need not follow from the intensity of a longing that can find no complete fulfillment in the world. Again and again Pieper points to “the uncompromising radicality” with which Thomas Aquinas— in the tradition of Augustine and Aristotle—accepted “the boundlessness of man’s craving for happiness, a boundlessness which can be almost terrifying, and which, apparently, only dreams and fairy tales can fulfil.”89 Because the ancients “conceived the whole energy of human nature as a hunger [. . .] in point of fact the word ‘hunger’ should be understood in its most drastic and literal sense . . . [Man] hungers for ‘the whole’, longs to be filled to repletion,”90 because 88. Adorno defended himself against the accusation of resignation and political apathy with the argument that “the leap into praxis” of political change would accomplish nothing “so long as it comes at the cost of secret knowledge that it wouldn’t work” (“Resignation,” 796; emphasis added). In any event he should have asked himself, whether his clairvoyant perception of an unacknowledged doubt didn’t arise from the unreal character of that “philosophical eschatology” which requires a hope without reason—without anyone to fulfill the hope. 89. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 40 [172]. 90. Ibidem, 64–65 [188–89].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  47 only the whole, the bonum universale, satisfies the capacity of his spiritual nature.91 In any case there is an important difference here. For Thomas it means that this hunger “for undiminished actuality [. . .] is directed toward the real universe, and the universe in its literal sense, toward the whole of being, toward everything that exists.”92 The feeling of inescapability in modern man’s relationship to the world and his protest against this real world arises, nevertheless, from the indeterminateness and the indeterminability of his expectation. It is characteristic of the way life feels in a post-Christian culture, when a world that has been so absolutely taken over by mankind can no longer be understood as a real symbol for something, as the beginning stage of an ultimate fulfillment, that now longs for the immediate presence of the divine.93 As the impression of a road changes, once one has lost the destination of the journey, even though the road itself has not in fact changed—in just this way the relationship to the world has changed through the loss of faith, “that in the final analysis all is right with the world, that everything created is loved by God”94 and that “existence as we know it [. . .] is entirely permeated by [the divine].”95 To the extent that this loss is still perceived as an evil, arises that disappointed “realism” that unceasingly brings “incriminating evidence against man, life, being in general”96 and propagates the “renunciation of happiness as an 91. “By its nature spirit has to do with the whole, it is basically nothing other than the power of relating, directed to the totality of reality” (Josef Pieper, Was heißt akademisch? 115; emphasis in original). In a certain respect, the most extensive commentary on this sentence is provided in Pieper’s Schriften zum Philosophiebegriff [Werke, vol. 3], in particular, The Truth of All Things. 92. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 64–65 [188] (emphasis added). 93. “As a movement that is self-negating, modernism is a ‘longing for the true presence’. According to Octavio Paz, this is the secret theme of the best modern poets” (Jürgen Habermas, “Die Moderne—ein unvollendetes Projekt,” 179; Octavio Paz is cited from Octavio Paz, Essays, 159). 94. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 106 [215]. 95. Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World, 41 [248]. 96. Ibidem, 58 [261].

48  Berthold Wald escape.”97 “How can we praise contemplation of this earthly creation when the ages, the present age and probably all ages, have been full of disorder, frightful injustice, hunger, painful deaths, oppression, and every form of human misery?”98 Aren’t Ernest Renan’s “terrible words” (as Paul Claudel reported them) correct: “In the end, truth, perhaps, is sad”?99 The occasion for such feelings can never be driven from the world and it is a reality that is hard to dispute. When sorrow over the evils of the world is taken as an argument for the denial of their existence, any “discussion is impossible.”100 But there is then only a single possibility for persuasion. Pieper once called it “the instructive pointing out of things and conditions” because “  ‘proof’ and ‘disproof’ in the realm of most fundamental attitudes does not appear as a very convincing activity.”101 Then: consent to the world does not overlook “the mystery of evil, [or] guilt”102 and therefore “has little to do with optimism. It is a consent that may be granted amid tears and the extremes of horror.”103 Its goal is not selfpreservation, but self-transcendence; the view into the depth of things goes its own way, disinterestedly, and unconcerned about its own feelings. Only in this way can it acquire a share in the being of another and be happy in such sharing. The moral protest against the world overlooks the fact that “its idea of absolute right” (Horkheimer) would be completely abstract and meaningless, and simply incapable of being done at all, in fact, without the background of this experience, wherein “true reality” has already shown itself, even though this happens only once. “If it be granted that we say Yea to a single moment, then in so doing we have said Yea not only to our97. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 105–6 [214]. 98. Ibidem, 105 [214]. 99. Ibidem, 31 [166]. 100. Ibidem, 106 [214]. 101. Josef Pieper, Welt und Umwelt, 186. 102. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 108 [216]. 103. Ibidem, 106 [214].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  49 selves, but to all existence,”104 as it was said by Friedrich Nietzsche, the forefather of nihilism in philosophy. In one section of Adorno’s Negative Dialektik critical of “nihilism’s attempts at ‘overcoming’  ” [Überwindungsversuche]: “The true nihilists are the ones who oppose nihilism with their more and more faded positivities”105—and despite contradiction with his own theory, there is support for the originality of an experience that precedes every negation of the world: “for a man in a concentration camp, it would be better not to have been born—if one who escaped in time is permitted to venture any judgment about this. And yet the lighting up of an eye, indeed the feeble tail-wagging of a dog to which one gave a tidbit that it promptly forgets, would make the ideal of nothingness evaporate.”106 Even this is no compelling argument against negating the world. But it does show that modern man, if he wants to see, is not hindered even by the most extreme circumstances of his surroundings from attaining to some share in “the miracle in all that exists.”107 Here has always lain hidden “the core of our human identity,” namely, the “apprehension of the radically inexplicable presence, facticity and perceptible substantiality of the created. It is: we are. This is the rudimentary grammar of the unfathomable.”108 The happy experience of such a presence, which can be called forth from the most unlikely things, surpasses in principle the possibilities for expression in human language, “because no energy of the soul is left unengaged.”109 Where it nevertheless forces its way out, the normal everyday modes of communication and behavior also change: in the inspired creation of significant form, and in the 104. Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World, 27 [237]. The quotation is from Friedrich Nietzsche, Wille zur Macht, nr. 1032, 675. 105. Theodor V. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 381 [374]. 106. Ibidem, 380 [373]. 107. Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, cited in Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 88 [204]. 108. George Steiner, Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? 201. 109. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 87 [204].

50  Berthold Wald exuberant mode of living known as festival. Both arise from the “affirmation of the true creaturely Being of the world, of things and of man, the Being on which all pragmatic states rest.”110 Through its reflection on the function of language in relationship to reality, the modern debate about the theory of culture called into question such immediate expression of original experience. The poetry and poetic theory of the late nineteenth century sought a new immediacy of aesthetic experience by dissociating “language from external reference,”111 impugning even the representation in language of the phenomenal world as Kant presupposed it.112 The question that is thereby raised touches again on the connection between self-transcendence in the encounter with the “other” and the Western idea of a theologically grounded secularity, or to put it more precisely, it concerns disputing whether such a conception has consequences for human communication. The question is as follows: “Is there anything in what we say? And if so, why?”113 Jacques Derrida gave an answer to this question that addresses the unspoken presupposition of such referentiality of language, regardless of whether (following Heidegger) it is language that speaks or man who uses language to say something that turns out to be only language again. As representation “of pure intelligibil110. Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World, 55 [258]. George Steiner (Real Presences, 201) expressed this point in a concise formulation: “There is aesthetic creation because there is creation” (emphasis in the original). The affirmation is of that, not of the one who experiences. Pieper is in agreement here with Horkheimer and Adorno, although he criticized their failure to distinguish the creativity of being: “Let us stress again that this affirmation is not the same thing as approval of any pragmatic situation. Often enough, pragmatic states are characterized by their lack of reality.” Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World, 54–55 [258; emphasis in the original]. 111. George Steiner, “Real Presences.” Steiner refers especially to Mallarmé and Rimbaud, who began to “dissociate poetic language from external reference,” 21. 112. The word “rose,” for example, has no similarity whatsoever to what it is supposed to signify: it has neither fragrance nor thorn. Rather, it is part of another reality, in which there is neither “the rose in itself” nor the “appearances” of roses, but only words that relate to other words, according to the rules of the game of language and their intentional use. 113. I am making use here of the subtitle of Steiner’s Real Presences (see note 108).

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  51 ity, it [i.e., what is signified as designated content] refers to an absolute logos to which it is immediately united [. . .] the age of the sign is essentially theological.”114 And as for the relation between language and reality, this means, first, that it is the intelligible content of the linguistic sign that gives content to our speech, and second, that this content can nevertheless be grasped and expressed only insofar as it is already an expression “turned toward the word and the face of God”;115 and third, all significant speech is set in motion by the presence of the divine Logos in the world, with which it “immediately unites.” Without this immediacy, by which language is called forth through the presence of God in the world, there is “not a single signified that escapes . . . from the play of [reciprocally] signifying references that constitute language.”116 Derrida himself was of the opinion, thanks to his peculiar knack for deconstruction, that the theological epoch of Western logocentrism had reached its “historical closure”117 by the beginning of the twentieth century. Heidegger’s Nichtigkeit, Sartre’s le néant, “God’s No to the world” in dialectical theology were already the harbingers of a “midnight of absence. Of this consequent annihilation, deconstruction is the spectral trace”118 in our time. For this reason we are not concerned here in the first place with an “added on” theological supposition, even if “any coherent understanding of what language is and how language performs [. . .] in the final analysis, [is] underwritten by the assumption of God’s presence.”119 Whatever the relationship might be between reality and language, any statement can be reduced to its semantic relations and deconstructed. Pieper did not consider the fascination with “language itself” a typically modern phenomenon, but nei114. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, 13ff. [25]. 115. Ibidem, 13 [25]. 116. Ibidem, 7 [16]. 117. Ibidem, 13; the word in the original French text [25] is clôture: along with the sense of “completion,” clôture can also mean “conclusion.” 118. George Steiner, Real Presences, 133. 119. Ibidem, 3.

52  Berthold Wald ther did he consider it a harmless game.120 His critique of the power calculations of sophistical artistry in misusing language and the “stupendous interpretations”121 of modern philosophers of history is itself a piece of successful deconstruction. But the trivialization of linguistic meaning and the “playful nihilism of deconstruction” have nevertheless rendered an indisputable service in one point. “They instruct us that ‘nothing shall come of nothing’.”122 Either it is possible—even today—“to experience the commonplace mystery of a real presence”123 or our language, our art, and our culture are only the interminable self-referential elaborations of a gigantic tautology that lives on borrowing the “vital currency, vital investments and contracts of trust from the bank or treasure-house of theology.” But “very few of us have made any return deposit.”124 Josef Pieper is one of those few. In his writings on the philosophy of culture, he set himself the challenge of paying back to eschatological theology the debt to the future contracted by the philosophers of history, and to set once again before the eyes of those who philosophize, the fulfilled presence of “earthly contemplation”125 as “a satisfaction which desires nothing ‘else’ and yet is not satisfied with itself because in its uttermost depths, yet insuperably remote, a still more complete satisfaction is sensed.”126

3. Human Righteousness or Moral Obligation? A third and last area of debate—on the question of the moral good—is immediately connected with the foregoing discussion. The moral good, which must be done, presupposes a knowledge of what 120. “For the current masters of emptiness, the stakes are indeed those of a game. That is where we differ” (ibidem, 134). 121. Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 111 [347]. 122. George Steiner, “Real Presences,” 38 123. Ibidem, 35 (italics as in original). 124. Ibidem, 36. 125. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 76 [196]. 126. Ibidem, 77–78 [197].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  53 naturally is good for man. The realization in action of the good is related to knowledge of what is good for man, not merely as a part to the whole, but also as an inclination toward the good of contemplation. It is doubtless correct to make reference here to a “preconception of the good”127 which is already assumed, the “idea of a being, which shows no deficiency, no shortcoming, that is, so to speak, good in itself and can thus serve as a model.”128 It is nevertheless equally true that the breaking up of the conceptual coherence between moral good and ontic good, of metaphysics from moral philosophy, has led to one of the aporias described by Alasdair MacIntyre.129 Pieper’s contribution to a possible solution to this problem was unique in twentieth-century philosophy: his philosophical rehabilitation of the cardinal virtues as well as the concept of virtue itself, along with the connections between anthropology and ethics (on the one side) and anthropology and creation-metaphysics (on the other) that must be understood as a background. MacIntyre is convinced today, as Pieper was long ago, that confusions about moral questions cannot be understood or overcome without recalling the complete image of the whole that was once available. “After virtue”—once virtue was no longer understood as it once was, i.e., as the central anthropological/ethical category—the philosophical understanding of the moral good lost its own center as well. Where people used to speak first about the human being, what he can be and should be, in the order of human perfection, now the search for universalizable aspects of the moral good leads to the splitting up of ethics into rival theories of morality, into theories of political justice and private morality.130 That we are here involved in a conflict that is not going to be re127. Annemarie Pieper, Pragmatische und ethische Normenbegründung. Zum Defizit an ethischer Letztbegründung in zeitgenössischen Beiträgen zur Moralphilosophie, 18ff. 128. Ibidem, 19. 129. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 130. On this see John Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good.”

54  Berthold Wald solved any time soon can be illustrated pars pro toto by the controversy over the category of moral obligation, which is downplayed by most contemporary moral philosophers. This leading idea of an unconditional moral “ought” is really one of those “fragments” MacIntyre describes that has fallen out of its original context and can therefore no longer serve in the formation of a consensus. For today, opinions still differ about what should be considered the criterion of unconditional moral obligation—whether it be human nature (starting with the Stoics), the will of God (Christianity), the tribunal of reason (Kant), the insight of the ideal discussion-participant (Habermas), the normativity of moral language (Hare), the greatest happiness of the greatest number (utilitarianism), or the formal correctness of the election process (pragmatism). Worse still, there is widespread suspicion that the very ideal of the moral “ought” cannot be defended by any argument, and is based on circular reasoning, once the idea of an unconditional “ought” has become detached from its original theological context of an unconditional obedience to God. Why then should I be unconditionally moral at all? To this question about the obligatory character of the “ought” there is no rational answer, as long as there is not already somebody thought of, to whom unconditional respect is owed. Pieper had already formulated this insight in his dissertation and in this way established his option for a virtue ethics: “we can speak of unconditional obligation only in the relation of an absolutely independent and an absolutely dependent Being, that is, in the relation of God to the creature.”131 The case is similar with the conceptual content of an ethics of obligation, such as the concept of justice, insofar as the formal idea of a moral self-legislation “for oneself” is considered “absurd,” as Elizabeth Anscombe maintained years ago.132 Justice as a virtue or moral quality of a person, as the constant will to give and permit to 131. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things and Reality and the Good; quoted passage is from Reality and the Good at 168 [92]. 132. Elizabeth Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” 37: “That legislation can be ‘for oneself ’’ I reject as absurd.”

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  55 each person what is owing to that person, is still to be secured from an experientially grounded concept of well-being; injustice does not make anyone happy, but in principle injures the one who practices it—a favorite teaching of the Platonic Socrates, and meant to be taken as a judgement based on experience. But what about justice as a duty, as an unconditional obligation to do what is right? Isn’t something presupposed here, something removed from all experience, out of which the obliging-character would first have to be made evident? “How does anything come to belong to a person, anyway? And how does it so truly belong to him that every man and every human authority has to grant it to him and allow him to keep it?”133 The reference to the experience of conscience can help us to go further in this question only if we are already convinced that in the call of conscience we were really hearing the voice of God and not merely our own voices or the demands of society by which we are determined (Nietzsche, Freud); even so, the immediate recourse to the fact of the moral law in Kant can scarcely find the needed response today, and of course this is not because “[. . .] it is not possible to have such a conception [of ethics] unless you believe in God as a law-giver,”134 and because modern philosophy wants to manage without such a belief. “But if such a conception [of law] is dominant for many centuries, and then is given up, it is a natural result that the concepts of ‘obligation’, of being bound or required as by a law, should remain though they had lost their root.”135 The best 133. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Justice, 45 [46]. The immediate context of the quotation shows how much, to Pieper’s mind, the answers of recent philosophy undervalue historical experience: “Perhaps as a consequence of what has happened throughout the world during the past decades—and is still happening—we are now newly gifted to see what is properly involved in such a fundamental consideration. The answer is no longer self-evident; the most extreme formulations—and realizations, too—of absolute untruth have come to the fore; and thus the deepest foundations of truth are once more called in question because they are expressly attacked. It is therefore opportune and, indeed, necessary to think these matters through in a new and more radical fashion.” 134. Elizabeth Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” 30. 135. Ibidem.

56  Berthold Wald that one can do in this situation is to put “notions of ‘moral obligation’, ‘the moral ought’, and ‘duty’ [. . .] on the Index.”136 Note well that Anscombe is not arguing here against either the existence or the concept of moral obligation, which by all means can have its legitimate place in a theologically grounded doctrine of the “ought”; her objection is aimed only at the central position occupied by the concept of duty in philosophical ethics, which, she maintains, can be consistently grounded only using philosophical means, as a virtue ethics. The unadulterated concept of “ought” and unconditional obligation was one important instance of those context-bereft “fragments” that were held to so stubbornly and for so long a time in modern philosophy, while the concept of virtue was being suppressed; the explanation appears to lie in the way ethics understood itself as it began to evolve after the end of the sixteenth century—“after virtue,” that is, after the end of the Western-Christian doctrine of virtue. Since antiquity there was an ever wider stream of ethical thought, whose relative independence from other areas of philosophical knowledge came to expression for the first time in the titles of two Aristotelian works, the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. But neither in antiquity nor in the medieval period can there be found an ethical school that was exclusively interested in the “ought,” in prohibited or permitted behavior. Attention was too absorbed in questions of what the human being is as such and what he is supposed to be aiming at, seen foundationally and as a whole, even before considering what he should do. This implies, on the other hand, that we cannot state the basis of a right and, hence, of a judicial obligation, unless we have a concept of man, of human nature. But what if it is claimed that there is, absolutely speaking, no human nature, “il n’y a pas de nature humaine”?137 136. Ibidem, 38. 137. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Justice, 49 [51], here quoting JeanPaul Sartre, Existentialismus, 15 [22].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  57 The dispute over such coherence of being with ought has of course become a commonplace of modern moral philosophy in the wake of David Hume, while the connection between moral judgment and a disposition to action has remained a central theme, at least in the moral philosophy of the English-speaking world.138 Here we need to recall the fact, discussed by Aristotle139 and brought to consciousness again by Pieper’s rehabilitation of the concept of virtue, that (to use the words of Richard Hare) “logic cannot take us all the way from beliefs in non-moral facts to dispositions to action.”140 There is need for the “so-called moral virtues” in order to be able to act according to our convictions. This is the view also of Jürgen Habermas (in his recent Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy) that “normativity and communicative rationality [. . .] [i]n any case cannot themselves guarantee that insight will issue in motivated action.”141 A rational morality in the Kantian tradition may make possible, perhaps, “a knowledge that is meant to orient one’s action, but does not thereby dispose one to act rightly.”142 For Richard Hare, reason itself needs a disposition in order to reach any convictions with content. Whatever we are convinced of at any time depends primarily not on an irresistible constraint through reason, but rather on the moral disposition of the acting person. “Amoralism” is therefore completely compatible with the contentless universality of the purely rational standpoint; against this, “all we can do is to give reasons of a non-moral sort why it should not be chosen,”143 as, for example, the probability that a way 138. See also Richard Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point, especially chapter 11: “Prudence, Morality, and Supererogation”, 188–205. 139. Aristotle, De Anima, III, 9–11. 140. Richard Hare, Moral Thinking, 189. 141. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, 5 [19]. 142. Ibidem, 113 [145]. 143. Richard Hare, Moral Thinking, 190.

58  Berthold Wald of life that ignored moral obligations would founder:

144

“the man

who does not give a person what belongs to him, withholds it or deprives him of it, is really doing harm to himself; he is the one who actually loses something—indeed, in the most extreme case, he even destroys himself.”145 At any event, the surprising preference on the part of modern legal, social, and moral philosophers for the concept of virtue is essentially different from the classical Western virtue doctrine which Pieper brought back to the modern consciousness by his recourse to Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. A sufficiently clear expression of this difference can be found in a statement of Richard M. Hare, which also addresses the position that Jürgen Habermas had been defending: “If morality is to be a viable enterprise,” then we must “[be able] to believe that if we adopt moral purposes and principles we stand a reasonable chance of carrying them out and not perishing uselessly in the process.”146 For Hare we have this “reasonable chance” of surviving with our moral principles only through “[bringing] them [i.e., children] up to be virtuous—even to practise a higher virtue than run-of-the-mill principles require.”147 It could also be said, to quote the title of a book: what we need today once again is the courage to be virtuous.148 “For it is usually the case that people who are so brought up are happy.”149 For Habermas, who judges this matter more cautiously, such “prudential calculation of consequences”150 should always nevertheless be capable of being safeguarded with relation to the sanctioned legal institution, 144. Peter Geach carries out a thoroughgoing criticism of Hare’s decisionist position in his book The Virtues, which is, furthermore, the only presentation available (besides Pieper’s) of a philosophical defense of all seven principal virtues. 145. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Justice, 47 [49]. 146. Richard Hare, Moral Thinking, 205. 147. Ibidem. 148. Karl Rahner and Bernhard Welte (eds.), Mut zur Tugend. Über die Fähigkeit, menschlicher zu leben. 149. Richard Hare, Moral Thinking, 205. 150. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 116 [148].

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  59 so that we do not suffer misfortune. The basic concept of virtue is still the same here, and could be stated in brief as follows: virtues are necessary dispositions for following moral or legal rules, which would otherwise remain without effect for human behavior.151 But in the meantime modern moral philosophy has approximated the position that Pieper has brought back to mind, and the approximation could be formulated in this way: moral reason does not lead to moral action without the right dispositions to action, any more than reason as such is the source and standard of what is morally right. What is presupposed in any case is reference to a different picture of man and reality as a whole. For “an ought is meaningful only in relation to an is [. . . and] can be obtained only from a certain interpretation of being.”152 Moral expectations must not merely be accompanied by the possibility of satisfying them; their recognition must furthermore be good also for the one of whom they are required. “Ought” stands in direct connection with our understanding of the nature or being of the one who “ought” to do something. If this means that such an understanding presupposes, and must first make clear, “that the being [of the one who ought to do something] is deficient, is in need of something,”153 then this sentence appears to presuppose the specifically modern conception of what it means to be human, a concept that is fraught with an insuperable deficiency—namely, a natural egoism. Virtue is then “the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty: a moral constraint through his own law-giving reason, insofar as this constitutes itself an authority executing the law.”154 Or, as it is can be read concisely and comprehensively in the Critique of Practical Reason: virtue is “moral disposition in conflict.”155 In conflict with what? For Kant, it is very clearly in conflict with the unavoidable egocentric 151. See also Alaisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 244ff. 152. Annemarie Pieper, Pragmatische und ethische Normenbegründung, 19. 153. Ibidem. 154. Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 164 [A 47, 537]. 155. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 72 [A 151, 207].

60  Berthold Wald inclinations of human nature, to which is opposed only the lawgiving reason, which itself possesses no natural inclinations. This very picture of humanity, and this opposition between morality and self-interest, we can also find in modern moral philosophy, insofar as this latter has recently started to have a new interest in virtues. The connection is clearly expressed by Richard Hare in his thesis of the indispensability of virtues for any success in action at all, whether or not the action is considered moral. And from this perspective it is immediately comprehensible why Hare can have the peculiar opinion that “many of the so-called ‘moral’ virtues, including some of those listed by Aristotle—namely those which I shall call the instrumental moral virtues—are required as much for success in egoism as in morality.”156 Hare is thinking of the virtues of courage and temperance, of course, but also of prudence, because “it must be admitted from the start that it is not the case, and it is hard to see why anybody should ever have thought that it was the case, that to do what we morally ought to do is always in our prudential interest. At least, it is hard to see how anybody could ever have thought this.”157 Apparently this unnamed “anybody” is the entire tradition of ethics from Plato to Thomas Aquinas! It is not without reason that Pieper begins his Treatise on Prudence with the assertion: “No dictum of traditional Christian moral doctrine strikes such a note of strangeness to the ears of contemporaries, even contemporary Christians, as this one: that the virtue of prudence is the mold and ‘mother’ of all the other cardinal virtues, of justice, fortitude, and temperance. In other words, none but the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate, and the good man is good in so far as he is prudent.”158 The real point of difference in understanding the virtues is con156. Richard Hare, Moral Thinking, 192. 157. Ibidem, 191. 158. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Prudence, 3 [2]; “Since this is so, there is a larger significance in the fact that people today can respond to this assertion of the pre-eminence of prudence only with incomprehension and uneasiness.

In the Context of Modern Philosophy  61 sequently not to be traced to the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, as is occasionally maintained, but is rather based on the difference between the Western-Christian view of man on the one hand and the self-understanding of modern man on the other, which is presupposed by the recent concepts of ethics and thus implicitly dominates modern moral philosophy. Thus the lack which is implied in the concept of “ought,” when viewed from the specifically modern perspective of man, is interpreted in solely negative terms—as a lack of moral perfection. By nature self-preservation and the carrying out of one’s own self-interest determine the guiding interest of the acting person. Moral virtue is then viewed as the task assigned to the will for moral improvement of the human being, to the extent that man is ruled by a natural egoism. In contrast to this, Josef Pieper, following Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, understood the lack of perfection that is understood with the “ought” in a positive way, and that means not exclusively as a moral deficit to be removed, but as an ontological deficit of human nature, driving that nature to its fulfillment and completion. Virtue is [. . .] the enhancement of the human person in a way befitting his nature. Virtue is the ultimum potentiae,159 the most a man can be. It is the realization of man’s potentiality for being. Virtue is the perfecting of man for an activity by which he achieves his beatitude. Virtue means the steadfastness of man’s orientation toward the realization of his nature, that is, toward good.160

What is referred to is the possibility that lies in human nature of becoming “more” than what one actually is at first. The lack that is presupposed in the concept of the “ought” consists in the as yet unfulfilled potentiality of human powers, the actualization of which That they feel it as strange may well reveal a deeper-seated and more total estrangement. It may mean that they no longer feel the binding force of the Christian Occidental view of man.” Ibidem. 159. The expression is that of Thomas Aquinas: “Per virtutem ordinatur homo ad ultimum potentiae” (Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus in communi, q. 11, ad 15, with reference to Aristotle, De Caelo I, 11, 281a14ff). 160. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Hope, 99 [264].

62  Berthold Wald does not happen of itself or by nature, but by the person’s way of acting. Accordingly, virtue means above all the unfolding of the natural possibilities of existence and not their suppression, the continuation of something that began long before and should reach its goal in right action. For Pieper, the peculiar vacillation between nihilism and utopianism in philosophy rests, in the final analysis, on modern man’s altered self-understanding. In his early treatise On Hope (1935) he refers to the philosophical extremes of radical immanence and radical transcendence in the interpretation of human life: Present-day existential philosophy, which regards human existence exclusively in its temporality as a ‘being-towards-death’, is right to the extent that it opposes an idealistic doctrine of man in which the status viatoris seems transformed, against its nature, into a permanent likeness to God. But to the extent that this existential philosophy conceives of man’s existence as essentially and “in the foundation of its being temporal” (Heidegger), it too fails to comprehend the true nature of its subject.161

As against these extremes of human self-understanding, Pieper tried to show clearly that human existence can remain human only by the amendment and elevation of life’s achievement—beyond doing the “ought” in the narrower moral sense. From his philosophical reconstruction of the four cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, courage, and temperance—as well as the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—we learn in a convincing way why even today a virtue ethics will remain the appropriate form of an ethics in which moral good itself does not exhaust the good. The natural virtues should serve the development of life, without being life’s fulfillment. In Pieper’s consistent avoidance of a self-satisfied “ethicism,” which for so long was connected with the philosophical understanding of the virtues in general, lies perhaps the most important prerequisite for the rehabilitation of a new understanding of the virtues. 161. Ibidem, 95 [260]. See Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope.

3

o

Josef Pieper on the Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism Frank Töpfer Translated by Grant Kaplan and Michael J. Miller

Totalitarian forms of government have affected the past century so profoundly that its history cannot be adequately understood without an investigation of the phenomenon of totalitarianism. Such an investigation is not solely a subject for the particular fields of political science, sociology, or history. It is also a subject for philosophical reflection, that is to say, for a reflection that considers its object not in itself, separately from other fields of study, but rather within the horizon of reality as a whole. Josef Pieper can be counted among those who attempted to shed light in this way on the phenomenon of totalitarianism following the demise of National Socialism. He did not turn his attention to the limited subject of National Socialist rule in Germany or to a sociological or political analysis of the structures and origins of totalitarian society as such. Pieper’s work is thus distinguished from such works as Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. First published

63

64  Frank Töpfer in 1951, Arendt’s study was one of the first devoted to the subject. Using the descriptive methodology of political science and comparing totalitarianism with other forms of dictatorship, Arendt searches “for the true essence of totalitarian rule as a form of government.”1 She analyzes the specific structure of totalitarian regimes and the guiding principle of their action. For Pieper, on the other hand, the theme of totalitarianism appears within the context of the question about man’s essential constitution. His approach, in this respect, is along the same lines as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, for example, or another of Arendt’s works, The Human Condition. The immediate object of these studies is not Nazi totalitarianism or the essence of totalitarian rule per se; rather, they touch on the anthropological and intellectual presuppositions of political totalitarianism, explicit or otherwise. Still, totalitarian phenomena occur not only in the area of governmental structures, the political sphere in the narrower sense. Pieper turns his attention to an absolute claim of the working world that was formulated theoretically at the beginning of modernity and has gained wide acceptance in present-day society. This claim has a totalitarian character insofar as one particular sphere of human life purports to determine life as a whole: to understand human existence in its entirety as work, and to shape the human world as the working world, with no alternative even imaginable. Pieper shares this diagnosis with Hannah Arendt. Unlike her, however, he explicitly understands the social acceptance of this claim as a prerequisite for political totalitarianism. The absolute claim of the working world not only becomes actualized in totalitarian political constitutions but likewise manifests its totalitarian character in politically liberal commonwealths. Pieper sees this totalitarianism of the working world as a threat to present-day society. 1. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Quoted from the author’s translated and revised German edition, Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft, 672.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  65 Sociological investigations paved the way for Pieper’s philosophical interest in totalitarian phenomena, and in this, too, his work resembles the analyses of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Arendt, who were specialists in social and political science. In 1933 he published Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln [Basic forms of social rules]. This work was the product of his collaboration with the Research Institute for Organizational Studies and Sociology at the University of Münster from 1928 to 1932. Even here, before the beginning of National Socialist rule, Pieper saw that social structures were endangered by absolutist claims—more precisely, by the attempt to absolutize the social form of “community” [Gemeinschaft]. Thus a review published in Switzerland described the book as “latently antitotalitarian,” and consequently the Nazi regime prohibited a second printing of the book.2 From 1934 on, moreover, all of Pieper’s works in sociology, which until then had been Pieper’s primary field, were forbidden. Pieper took this development as an opportunity to turn his literary activity away from the social sciences and back to his original field of interest, which had provided the subject for his dissertation, which was published in 1929: “a new doctrine of man’s being and ethical obligations [Sein und Sollen], to be formulated using the elements of the grand tradition of western thought.”3 Pieper’s project emphasized in particular the Christian branch of this tradition, especially the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He started in 1934 with Vom Sinn der Tapferkeit [On courage], published in Leipzig by Jakob Hegner (who, being Jewish, had to flee Germany in 1936). The books of this sort that Pieper wrote were not forbidden. But, as Heinrich Wild, the assistant executive of the Jakob Hegner publishing house and Pieper’s future publisher, said in retrospect, the ration of paper for the publishing house was cut off “under the pretext of saving resources for the war effort.” Many of Pieper’s books 2. See Josef Pieper, Noch nicht aller Tage Abend, 271ff. 3. Josef Pieper, “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 9.

66  Frank Töpfer could “practically speaking no longer be printed despite the great demand.”4 In the following pages I will present, first, Pieper’s critique of the absolutizing of the social form “community” as expressed in his Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln and explain how this absolutization is a presupposition of totalitarian government. Next I will discuss Pieper’s own remarks. After an explanation of the absolute claim of the working world as a further presupposition of political totalitarianism, the second part of this essay will examine the threat posed by this claim, even independently of totalitarian regimes. In the third part I argue that the threat to human existence posed by the absolutization of the working world means, for Pieper at least, that the possibility of human happiness is endangered.

1. The Danger of Absolutizing Community Pieper’s Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln has gone through many editions since 1945 and the end of Nazi rule, and the 1987 edition contained substantial revisions. These changes affected the style rather than the content. Pieper considered the earlier editions too wedded to the jargon of sociologists from the 1920s and 30s. The revision was supposed to make the work accessible to a wider audience. The impetus for the reworking, as we learn from an introductory note, came from a remark in an acceptance speech given on 19 September 1976 by Max Frisch at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main, when he was awarded a peace prize by German publishers, the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. The speech addressed the possibility of peace after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The remark in question captures the essence of the speech: peace cannot be secured through military 4. Quoted from Berthold Wald, “  ‘Aktualisierung durch Enthistorisierung.’ Zu einem Brief von Josef Pieper an Gustav Gundlach aus der Zeit der NS-Diktatur,” fn. 21. See also Josef Pieper, “Gesamtbibliographie,” and Hermann Braun’s essay in this volume.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  67 or diplomatic strategies, but “only through the reconstruction of society into a community.”5 With this phrase Frisch takes up a distinction between two types of human social life that was extremely influential in German sociology and social philosophy. It constitutes the subject of a classic work of German sociology that mentions this distinction in its title and anticipates the value judgment in favor of community found in the speech by Frisch. The work in question is Ferdinand Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [Community and association].6 The book claimed that these two concepts would provide the fundamental categories by means of which all concrete social structures could be described. Tönnies’s value judgment in favor of community fell on fertile ground that had been tilled in Germany at least since the Romantic period. Romanticism had an essentially communal ethos rooted in religion or the people and opposed to a “society” [Gesellschaft] guided by formal, rational principles. Tönnies’s sociological approach continued the Romantic tradition, and, reciprocally, this tradition was partly responsible for the reception and influence of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. In his 1933 Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln Pieper expressly opposes Tönnies’s understanding of how community and society relate. In this work Pieper attempts to characterize ideal types of such social forms, in which the basic concept of ‘sociality’ [Gesellung] is realized in various ways. This concept signifies “those human rela5. Max Frisch, “Wir hoffen,” 336. 6. Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [Community and Association] (1887). In 1912 a substantially revised edition was published under the title Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft with the subtitle: Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie. [Translator’s note: The original translation by Charles P. Loomis—published under the title Community and Association, and the source of the quotations in this article—leaves the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in the German. Throughout this translation “society” will render Gesellschaft.] See also the earlier work by Lorenz von Stein, The History of the Social Movement in France, 1789–1850, preface and introduction [VII, XIV]. For the effect of this classification of community and society on German philosophy, see the article by Hermann Braun: “Die Anfälligkeit des Prinzipiellen. Existenzphilosophie und philosophische Anthropologie vor und nach 1933.”

68  Frank Töpfer tions . . . that are based upon a mutual affirmation of the partners.”7 Unlike Tönnies, Pieper identifies not two but three such relations: community, society, and organization [Organisation]. As with the corresponding sociological categories of Tönnies, we are dealing here with conceptual types—a given social manifestation is not a community, society, or organization, but rather exhibits, to a greater or lesser degree, typical characteristics of one of these forms. Thus the “community” type indicates the predominance of what its members have in common, “society” emphasizes the individual in his particularity, and “organization” means the association of people based on their special qualities. Because the concretely existing person is determined by all three moments, because he both has something in common with others and also is an individual possessing special qualities and capabilities, every social structure formed by human persons entails characteristics of all three forms of sociality, despite the predominance of one of them which determines the type. In contrast to Tönnies’s disparagement of “society” as opposed to “community,” Pieper’s Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln aimed to show “that there are several legitimate basic forms of social life, and thus various ways to ‘do justice’ to one’s fellow human beings.” 8 But that is precisely what Tönnies disputes.9 He regards society as a mere symptom of the decay of community, as something “pathological.”10 Although he restricts his investigation to social “relationships of mutual affirmation,”11 Tönnies does not consider society as a form of 7. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 8. 8. Ibidem, 9, 17, 45. 9. Tönnies seeks to give a purely descriptive treatment of the difference between community and society “without regard for the consequences.” See Ferdinand Tönnies, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 126. In doing so, however, he does not draw the logical consequences that result from his presentation: namely, the inferiority of society to community, the denial of individual rights, and the practical strengthening of communal elements and concommitent weakening of societal elements. 10. Ibidem, 80. 11. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association, 37 [2].

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  69 sociality in the way that Pieper does. For Tönnies, society is only a “superficial”12 communal life of persons not “essentially” bound to one another. Society consists of “isolated individuals,”13 “a mere coexistence of people independent of each other.”14 It is based solely on the egoism of individuals, whose wills “have nothing whatsoever to do with another human person as someone who is their own.”15 Society is an artificial, mechanical, pragmatic association that the individual makes use of for his own advantage. That is why it is dominated by the profit motive, exploitation, individual ambition, and the like. Life in society is not desired as an end in itself, but only as a means to ends that lie outside of society, essentially for the sake of satisfying economic needs. As a result, the “animosity is negated”16 in society, but only as long as and to the degree to which this is conducive to one’s own economic advantage. Hence “potential animosity” and “latent war” predominate in society.17 In contrast to society, community does not serve its members as a means of achieving ends that are external to it. According to Tönnies, community is sought for its own sake. Community is based on the spiritual or intellectual connection among people and emphasizes what its members share in common. As a result, their individual interests and peculiarities take on a distinctly secondary role. The decisive thing about community is not that its members share the same attributes, e.g., that they are biologically all members of the same family, or inhabitants of the same village, etc. Instead Tönnies considers it essential that this connection to the community itself is 12. Ibidem, 39 [5]. 13. Ibidem, 74 [40]. 14. Ibidem, 38 [4]. 15. Ferdinand Tönnies, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 66; Community and Association, 87ff. [53ff.]. 16. Ferdinand Tönnies, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 117; Community and Association, 39 [5]. 17. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association, 87 [53]; a few paragraphs later Tönnies writes, “Even enemies . . . recognize that under certain conditions, it is to their advantage to agree and to spare each other. They may even unite themselves together for a common purpose (or also—and this is the most likely—against a common enemy). Thus competition is limited and abolished by coalition” (89 [54]).

70  Frank Töpfer desired.18 The family serves as a paradigm for a social manifestation that has the character of a community, an association that is founded through birth and experienced in the emotional and spiritual ties between its members. This is obvious in the case of the family, but it applies in principle also to larger communities such as a ‘people’ [‘Volk’]—I am not a member of a ‘Volk’-community inasmuch as I pursue my particular interests therein or because I perform a particular function; rather, I am a member on the basis of something that I share in common with all the others who belong to this people. This can be race, language, culture, history, customs, or a combination of such shared elements. Pieper does not dispute the possibility of a decline in social structures. But unlike Tönnies, Pieper does not regard society per se as a dependent, artificial form that, being a sickly symptom of decay, can only be derived from the natural and robust community. This is implied by Tönnies’s understanding that community is “real and organic life,”19 “the lasting and genuine form of living together.” Society, on the other hand, is only “transitory.”20 Pure instances of the “community” type are possible at least in theory, but pure expressions of the “society” type are not.21 The concept of society is actualized when the social manifestation, which is primarily of the community type both conceptually and in its underlying reality, is transformed by features typical for society. To be historically concrete: when the exchange of goods became predominant in the real social manifestation of the city during the Renaissance. In actuality and conceptually, society remains linked to the community, with 18. Ibidem, 37–41 [5–7]; 123f. [91–93]; and Ferdinand Tönnies, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 125ff. See also Günther Rudolph, “Friedrich Nietzsche und Ferdinand Tönnies: Der ‘Wille zur Macht’ widerlegt von den Positionen eines ‘Willens zur Gemeinschaft’.” 19. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association, 37 [3]. 20. Ibidem, 39 [5], 37–41 [3–7]; Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 115, 117. 21. Edith Stein makes this point in her critique of Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Scheler. See Edith Stein, Untersuchungen über den Staat, 295; Hermann Braun, “Die Anfälligkeit des Prinzipiellen,” 367ff.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  71 the tendency not to destroy the community, but to sap it of its vitality.22 Tönnies’s”concept of ‘society’ implies” as such “the normal, regular process of the decay of all ‘community.’  ”23 Pieper, in contrast, recognizes that society is something genuine and positive in its own right, not something derived from another form of sociality. The legitimacy of society is based on the “singularity” of the person in his concrete existence.24 Every human being is an individual, “who lives a separate life of his own, which he cannot share with anyone else,”25 but a human being is not isolated as things are isolated. Pieper understands the singularity of the human being rather as an aspect of his personhood: the individual human being is “a whole in himself, and oriented toward himself. He is a being that exists for the sake of his own fulfillment and perfection.”26 This, however, is the basis for one claim of the human being, “the claim to respect for what is ‘private’ and to whatever belongs to him as an individual.”27 By virtue of personhood, every human being has not only individual interests, but also a right to pursue them. Society is the public space for the realization of such interests—a space in which there may be conflict with the interests of others—whereas in a community, interests are pursued together. Thus Pieper’s concept of “sociality” [Gesellung] acquires a thicker content. For now it has become clear just what is affirmed in the “mutual affirmation” that constitutes society. The Other in his personhood is affirmed, i.e., in his autonomy as an end in himself deserving respect [Selbstzweckhaftigkeit]. This must be held in esteem even in cases of different or even conflicting interests. In describing the social type of “society,” Tönnies is guided by the paradigm of the market, where “the nature of the Gesellschaft 22. See Ferdinand Tönnies’s partial rehabilitation of realism as opposed to nominalism (Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 115ff.). 23. Ibidem, 123. 24. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 9. 25. Ibidem. 26. Ibidem, 17. 27. Ibidem.

72  Frank Töpfer [society] is erected as in a concave mirror or as in an extract.”28 The social relation of individuals to one another is thus revealed as a contractual relation. Pieper agrees with this analysis: society is a place where “interests are balanced through service and reciprocal service in return.”29 The contractual regulation of this balancing “has no other purpose for the individual than to ensure the right to one’s own demand and the partner’s obligation to keep his side of the bargain.”30 Respect for the personhood of the contractual partner, who is also a contractual rival inasmuch as everyone pursues his own interests, nevertheless demarcates an accepted boundary to that pursuit. “Provided that neither of the two parties is simply a swindler, then both want what is to their own advantage, limited by the condition that the other one receives his due also.”31 Pieper sees the essential element of the contractual relation precisely in this: it is subject to the principle of equivalency, the principle of equality between service and service in return.32 Both sides acknowledge the principle of justice: to each his own, “which naturally includes the principle: to me what is mine.”33 Society is a form of authentic sociality, and not in itself a pathological symptom of decay, on account of the mutual affirmation of the other’s right to what justly belongs to him. This right of the other is based on his personally being an end in himself. For it is this sense of autonomous purpose that is actually being affirmed. Society declines when the legitimacy of the other’s interests is no longer accepted, when respect for the other’s personhood is lacking and no longer sets a reliable limit to the pursuit of one’s own interests. 28. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association, 87 [52]. 29. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 18. 30. Ibidem, 19. 31. Ibidem, 20. 32. As Tönnies notes, this equivalency need not meet any objective standard. It is required only that each party regard what he receives as “at least equal” to what he gives (Community and Association, 74 [40], emphasis mine). Tönnies continues: “It is even necessary that it [i.e., the service received in exchange] be more desirable to him than what he could have kept himself, because only for the sake of receiving something that seems better to him will he be moved to give away a good.” 33. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 21.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  73 Nevertheless, even Tönnies understands society explicitly as a human relation of mutual affirmation, though he defines the basic feature of society as a “negative attitude”34 of individuals toward each other. Further, their respective wills “have nothing whatsoever to do” with another person.35 But if this is so, then upon what is the mutual affirmation based? What exactly is being affirmed here? Affirmed is the Other—but exclusively as a means to one’s own advantage. The will of the individual in society has nothing to do with the Other on a direct, “spontaneous” level.36 As a person who exists for her own sake and thus places limits on my control, the Other is neither wanted nor even respected. When such respect is nevertheless achieved within a concrete social structure, according to Tönnies, it is due to an element that does not itself belong to the structure of society as such. What Tönnies describes as society is therefore a symptom of decay even from Pieper’s standpoint, since in this instance the moment of affirming the Other as a person is missing, and the Other is merely a means. Pieper, however, acknowledges also a form of society that is not in decline: in his view society can decline, whereas for Tönnies society as such is a state of community in decline. Unlike Tönnies, Pieper views the recognition of personhood as a structural element of society itself. In this regard society has two faces: first, society is the location where the individual legitimately pursues her interests as an individual. Secondly, on the other side of the same coin, society is the place where others expressly acknowledge the individual’s personal singularity, i.e., the fact that he exists for the sake of his own fulfillment, just as he acknowledges theirs. In this twofold sense, personhood is the “core element” around which society crystallizes.37 Pieper does not mean by this that society somehow generates 34. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association, 74 [40]. 35. Ferdinand Tönnies, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 66. 36. Ibidem, 126. 37. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 17.

74  Frank Töpfer personhood. Society is simply that manner of human social interaction in which personhood, the fact that the individual is an end in itself, becomes explicitly realized. Society is essentially the mutual acceptance of the right to privacy, personal boundaries, and the pursuit of one’s own interests. The mutual affirmation taking place in society does not bring about personhood, but it helps human existence, as personally constituted, to be recognized explicitly and thereby to have the opportunity to develop. However, since it is an attribute of a human being to be a personal individual, he remains such an individual even in those social structures that are defined by the priority of another form of sociality. Even in the family, which exhibits a primarily communal character, for example, “the individual remains a personal being who exists for the sake of his own fulfillment.” Conversely, in society “human beings remain ‘brothers,’ even though they may understand themselves primarily as sovereign individuals.”38 The same applies for the social type “organization.” Since Pieper recognizes several legitimate basic forms of human social life, to his way of thinking community is not the only one capable of decline. In principle every concrete social structure can decline, regardless of the social type by which it is predominantly characterized. This can happen not only when, in a social structure of a certain type, characteristics of another social type get the upper hand; for example, a communally formed association can deteriorate not only through the prevalence of societal characteristics. An association can also, so to speak, degenerate from the inside. This is precisely what happens when societal action disregards the boundaries of the Other’s personhood. This means abandoning a foundation that is constitutive for this social type. A concrete social manifestation can also fail, however, when the prevalent type of sociality within it is absolutized. In this case,

38. Ibidem, 35; see also 33.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  75 too, the manifestation does not decay into another type. Any society, community, or organization that absolutizes itself remains an association of precisely that type, for it is denying, indeed, all other characteristics. The decline in this case is the absolutizing per se, which disregards the constitution of the human being in her concrete existence, in which she is something general, individual, and particular. The problem with Tönnies’s construct lies in such a theoretical absolutizing. This is evident in his treatment of the human being in his personal singularity. Like Pieper, Tönnies associates the human being, viewed as an individual pursuing his own interests who is in this sense free, with the social type “society.” But Tönnies appears to regard society as the locus which allows personal individuality to emerge in the first place. The fact that the city develops into a barter society implies that the subjects of this exchange of goods “emerge as free individuals.” Even if Tönnies only meant to say that in the barter society individuality develops particularly well, the fact remains that the actual locus of individuality is thus a symptom of the decline of human social life. Free individuality does not merely become evident here, however. On the contrary, individuality itself is a phenomenon of decline, for individuality is the engine of the development of community into society, and thus the engine of decline. Individuality has “detached itself from the main stem of communal life and thought” by “the pursuit of its own ends.” Free individuality allows for the social conditions of exploitation and oppression to develop. Although according to the concept of society, all individuals of a society are equal, “in so far as they are capable of making exchanges and contracts,” in reality things are not so. Those enterprising individuals who drive the development of society “constitute, as the capitalist class, the leaders and active subjects of the society, who regard the laborers as their instruments.”39 39. Ferdinand Tönnies, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken, 117, 118.

76  Frank Töpfer What is problematic in this formulation is not that the free individuals are regarded as the driving forces of the development of community into society. Rather, the problem is that a positive concept of free individuality is missing here, a concept which would not be bound up with “society” (viewed as a form of decline), and would not itself be a phenomenon of decline. Thus in Tönnies’s conception, free individuality no longer has a legitimate place: wherever individuality appears, there is decline. Setting up “community” as an ideal in contrast to individuality results in denying the very right to personal autonomy in the first place. This is exactly what happens, for instance, in the National Socialist ideology, when the society is identified with the racially defined community, or when civil society is replaced by a certain community. That paves the way for a political totalitarianism. It does not consist per se in the absolutizing of the social type “community” and in the autocratic rule of a given concrete community. But with the elimination of the individual’s right to particularity, privacy, and personal space, one prerequisite for the achievement of a totalitarian order has been fulfilled. Pieper views the essence of such an order not in an absolutizing of the community, but rather in an absolutizing of the social type of “organization,” i.e., an “acting unity . . . in which every individual is connected, through his particular function, with the other individuals—who are likewise working in their own particular manner through the division of labor.”40 Within the organization—be it a soccer team, an orchestra, a factory—the individuals are primarily functionaries who complete their respective, particular tasks for the accomplishment of the common goal. Those who are associated in this way encounter one another in their qualitative particularity, which distinguishes them.41 Of course: they are connected by something common to them all, by the goal to be accomplished. It is this 40. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 28. 41. Ibidem.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  77 goal that the individuals have primarily in view, not the entirety of the organization, nor one another as individuals. The goal can be realized only when the individuals in their particularity subordinate their particular interests and subject themselves to the goal. In the extreme case of totalitarian social structures, this subordination extends to a complete negation of particularity and to a total absorption into the function for the common goal. Pieper does not inquire into the positive relation between community and organization. Instead he only discusses the possible tension between these two and observes, in an epilogue to the Grundformen, the threat posed by the organization to both community and society.42 A glance at the totalitarian political systems of the twentieth century shows, however, that in them community and organization enter into a close relationship: the organizations are in the service of communities, of a people or a class. The reason for this is that the social form called “organization” is in a certain sense dependent, which makes it different from the other two social forms. Community and society contain their ends within themselves, although in different ways. In communities the end is the life in community itself. For societies the end is the individual— for whom the society is simply a means—but that individual is bound to society as a member. In this case the members of society are ends. But in no sense does the organization have its end in itself. The symphony to be performed is the end, not the orchestra; the military victory is the end, not the army. The organization is essentially a means. Therefore it requires an antecedent end that the organization itself cannot determine. Instead, the organization is called into being for the sake of this antecedent end. In the totalitarian socio-political structures of the past century, the community (“the ruling of the working class,” “the greatness of the Volk”) pro42. See Josef Pieper, “Über die Spannung zwischen Organisation und Gemeinschaft in der kirchlichen Arbeit,” and the appendix of the Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln.

78  Frank Töpfer vided this end.43 There, the community regarded itself as the sole legitimate end and thereby discredited the individual in her particularity. Both value judgments are necessary for a totalitarian political order: the community provides the goal to which an organization can dedicate itself, and at the same time the community legitimizes the suppression of the individual’s own particular interests. Therefore, contrary to what Pieper thinks, political totalitarianism cannot be understood as a system that absolutizes the social type “organization,” but only as a combination of communal absolutism and organizational practice that is at the service of the communal. Not only the historical reality of twentieth-century totalitarian systems, but also Pieper’s own analysis and terminology, lead to this conclusion. For he defines organization as being oriented toward an end that lies beyond it. It is true that totalitarian regimes strive for “the organization of the political commonwealth into a labor force consisting entirely of individual functionaries related to one another in primarily official interactions.” But this does not entail the “dissolution of all non-rational communal life.”44 The National Socialist racial ideology emphatically testifies to that. When the end of a given social structure’s political organization is determined to be a community that absolutizes itself, only one kind of human behavior toward it is legitimate—work for the sake of achieving that end. Whatever does not serve the end directly gains its legitimacy through its indirect usefulness. Hence the National Socialist vacation program aims to achieve “strength through enjoyment,” a force that should then be channeled into one’s prescribed work. Hence political totalitarianism is articulated as the claim of organized work upon all departments of human life, com43. Of course this does not rule out the possibility that the organization is in truth an interest group that only ostensibly advances the end of the community, but in fact merely pursues its own interest, whether that be power, economic advantage, etc. 44. Josef Pieper, Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, 34.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  79 bined with the violent enforcement of this claim.45 This demonstrates that the intellectual foundation for totalitarian political systems is a concept of man that reduces him to a communal being whose existence is legitimized through his functional usefulness to the community.

2. The Total Claim of the Working World In the first book that he published after World War II, Leisure— The Basis of Culture [Muße und Kult],46 Pieper addresses this feature of totalitarianism, namely, that it sets up work as an absolute imperative that makes demands on all departments of life. He was guided by the conviction that the intellectual presuppositions of totalitarianism have a greater longevity than their National Socialist consequences and by no means remain in force exclusively in communist regimes. That is why Pieper focuses less on the past than on the future.47 The occasion of a new beginning in Germany after the war demanded a reflection on the intellectual foundations of that beginning. A look at the immediate past that is on everyone’s mind makes clear for the present the possible consequences of denying these foundations. Pieper concentrates on those things he sees as most urgently required in the actual situation of reconstruction: namely, a defense of leisure against the “demands of the allconsuming working world.”48 In this appraisal of the situation, Pieper emphasizes a point that was contained also—though less explicitly—in the Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln: the notion that 45. Hannah Arendt also describes “total organization” as an element of National Socialist totalitarianism. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 353ff. 46. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture. Before that Pieper had already published, “Notizen über Muße und Mußelosigkeit” and “Verteidigung der Muße.” 47. Rainer Hank stresses this also. See Arbeit—die Religion des 20. Jahrhunderts. Auf dem Weg in die Gesellschaft der Selbständigen, esp. 116. 48. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, V, 9 [1, 6]. See also “Muße und menschliche Existenz” and “Arbeit, Freizeit, Muße.”

80  Frank Töpfer a human being is justified primarily by his usefulness is not tied to political totalitarianism. If one looks at concrete social structures to see how they are marked by such a notion, one finds symptoms of an absolutizing of work (i.e., utilitarian activity) far beyond the realm of dictatorial regimes and prescribed five-year plans in seemingly harmless phenomena: in an educational reform, an understanding of holidays and leisure time, and a discussion of laws regulating business hours solely according to criteria of economic efficiency.49 These examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, are not taken from occurrences in totalitarian dictatorships. Nevertheless they can be understood as expressing the conviction that all human activity, even spiritual and intellectual, must have practical utility and has legitimacy only on that basis. What Pieper stated about political totalitarianism, while only partially correct, is true for his diagnosis of the current situation: in the all-encompassing demands made by the working world, the social form “organization” regards itself as an absolute without any positive relation to any other kind of sociality. Work becomes the only legitimate human activity. Whatever is not work in the first place must be oriented to work and derives therefrom its meaning and legitimacy. Leisure is understood as recreation for the sake of the work routine; free time is filled with activity, and participating in this activity is experienced as fulfilling a demand for accomplishment (that is why sociologists speak of “leisure time stress” [Freizeitstress]). Time not filled up in this way is experienced as boredom.50 In view of this social situation, Pieper—even after the downfall of that totalitarian organization of the National Socialist dictatorship—regarded Ernst Jünger’s description of “the worker”51 (which 49. See also, Christian Nürnberger, Die Machtwirtschaft. Ist die Demokratie noch zu retten? and Kirche, wo bist du? 49–141. 50. See Rainer Hank, Arbeit—die Religion des 20. Jahrhunderts, 87–143. 51. In Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  81 Jünger had published in 1932, before the Nazis seized power) as still relevant. Jünger does not devote his analysis to a certain sociologically definable social class, as the title might suggest—for instance, to the day laborer as opposed to the employee or the self-employed.52 Instead Jünger wants to show the worker as the universal, the “planetary” figure of the twentieth century: a worker is everyone in every walk of life. More cautiously, Pieper argues that the picture drawn by Jünger has “already begun to shape the man of the future.” Pieper nonetheless considers Jünger’s book to be thoroughly on the mark regarding the prevailing “opinion about the essence of the man in general,” which asserts itself through the absolutizing of functional thinking: being human means being a worker, which means performing a function for some purpose. This does not designate a claim imposed on the individual externally, by a political dictate. When the “worker” is the “general human ideal,”53 that is no longer necessary. The all-encompassing demand is a demand against oneself. Functional thinking that takes itself as an absolute backfires by making man himself and his whole existence a disposable means, a mere instrument. Therefore the point of the diagnosis of the total domination of the working world does not lie in the opinion that work and production are always going on. Rather, the diagnosis is saying primarily that a certain manner of thinking, an intellectual attitude, has gained absolute validity: an attitude that regards all activity, even theoretical activity, as being instrumental, according to its usefulness for something other than this activity itself. This absolutizing disallows legitimation of any human activity other than work or work-related activities, whatever external appearance they may have.54 52. In contrast to Siegfried Kracauer’s Die Angestellten. 53. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 6 [5]. See also 43 [32]. 54. Pieper agrees with Adorno, Horkheimer, and Arendt about this diagnosis and its present relevance, although their positions differ in many other respects. With the transition from the medieval period to the modern age, Arendt not only sees the vita contemplativa being discredited. she also finds that, in the subsequent

82  Frank Töpfer A person having this attitude is potentially willing to dissolve into a functionary for an organization. Political totalitarianism builds upon this readiness. The totalitarian stance against oneself helps make political totalitarianism possible. Thus, even when the concrete ends or means of a dictatorial regime are not approved, there is, nonetheless, no opposition—at least to the degree that the ideal image of the worker has gained acceptance—to the notion that human beings are subject to the absolute demands of utility. This attitude does not disappear, however, with the collapse of a totalitarian political system. Its termination does, of course, end the external violence, but not the internal attachment to the “civilization of the modern working world that has become meaningless.”55 Civilization has become meaningless because work, which by nature is merely mediate activity, has acquired absolute value. When the means of work is absolutized, when it becomes independent of any purpose that is not in turn simply a further means in the work process, all meaning is lost—both the purpose that is meaningful in itself, and also the significance of the means itself. Work has significance as a means only insofar as it is directed to a goal that is not development, interpersonal action (in the true sense of an activity that has its end in itself and is not a means) is replaced by work as the constituent element of human existence. This development ends in the disappearance of the human being as an acting subject in favor of class and status, while the individual human being remains merely an “Animal laborans” (see Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 320ff.). The “theoretical glorification of labor” at the beginning of modernity has led to a “factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society.” Work remains “the only activity left” (Ibidem, 4). In the revised 1969 German edition of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer wrote that since the “end of the Nazi terror,” despite a temporary interruption, “the transition to the world of the administered life” and “toward total integration” has accelerated even more. These developments have substantiated their earlier diagnosis about the totalitarian character of instrumental reason that is aimed at production. What is required is “support for the residues of freedom, and for tendencies toward true humanism, even if these seem powerless in regard to the main course of history” (ix ff.). 55. Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 188. Pieper had agreed with Plessner regarding the critique of community as the societal ideal. See Helmuth Plessner, The Limits of Community: A Critique of Social Radicalism.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  83 merely a means itself. Where everything is done for the sake of a goal, there are no longer any goals, and the means themselves become meaningless. This self-fulfilling reductio ad absurdum does not diminish the factual predominance of such thinking. It does lead, however, to the specifically modern forms of nihilism and of the existential experience of meaninglessness.56 The individual desire for meaning nevertheless remains. Under the dominance of instrumental thinking it has no other choice than to turn to the only thing left standing: work. Only by dint of the fact that meaningful fulfillment itself is expected from a mere means, does work realize its totalitarian claim. Work is no longer experienced merely as a demand, but is also anticipated as the only possible fulfillment. It has become the only alternative.57

3. A Defense of Human Happiness What Pieper is defending against such a usurpation is the individual right to a basic freedom from the standard of practical efficiency. He sees this freedom realized culturally in the forms of religion, celebration, art, and scientific (especially philosophical) theory. Pieper recovers the classical and medieval conception of a culturally protected realm of leisure which by its very nature refuses to be in the service of given purposes. On the contrary, to facilitate leisure is the goal of all “unleisurely” labor-related activity.58 The point of all work and goal-oriented organization is to make room for purpose-free activity that is meaningful in itself. 56. In this context one should also mention Heidegger, who regarded European nihilism as a consequence of the rule of technical thinking. 57. See Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 43 [32]. Rainer Hank, Arbeit—die Religion des 20. Jahrhunderts, states in the title of his book that work is a “religion.” Hannah Arendt calls “productivity and creative genius” the “highest ideals and even the idol of modernity.” See Arendt’s German edition of The Human Condition, which appeared under the title Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben, 289. 58. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b5.

84  Frank Töpfer The ancient philosophers clearly perceived the connection between facilitating a realm of leisure and political organization. For Aristotle, the task of the lawmaker is to create the social conditions for a realm of leisure, in which freedom from all political and private constraints of necessity and utility prevails.59 The intent of the tyrant, in contrast, is to do everything in his power to prevent “leisure and celebratory gatherings.”60 Meeting with one’s fellow men without being yoked to the purposes of work and planning makes it possible for human beings not just to become acquainted with one another as societal functionaries but to develop personal intimacy with one another, an exclusive relationship that eludes supervision and control. Leisure that is characterized by freedom from any kind of conscription therefore represents a potential danger for every form of totalitarianism. What the all-encompassing working world abolishes along with leisure is the realm in which human happiness is realized. Together with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, Pieper holds the position that the fulfillment of human existence consists in the joyful possession of that which one loves. And with this same tradition Pieper understands this possession of something beloved as a cognitive act: as theoria or contemplatio. Such a “theorizing of happiness” may at first appear counter-intuitive: who really imagines happiness as the uninterrupted contemplation of metaphysical principles, in the way that Aristotle does, unless perhaps in a university seminar on philosophy? It is one of Pieper’s achievements to have discovered certain forms of “theoretical” happiness in unexpected places—provided that knowing does not mean the production of concepts and judgments, but rather the experience of reality. Only in such knowing do we “possess,” for example, a work of art, or a person whom we love. Such a “purposeless” “satisfaction” in what we are yearning 59. Aristotle, Politics, 1333a36–b1. 60. Ibidem, 1313b2.

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  85 for remains unrealizable without the free space of leisure.61 Protecting leisure against the all-encompassing demands of the working world means defending happiness. Pieper recognizes the endangerment of this free space in the intellectual foundations of the modern age. The programmatic utilization of all knowledge for practical purposes constitutes an essential feature of the transition from the medieval world to modern times.62 This is evident for instance in Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna.63 Connected with the polemic against sterile philosophical speculation, Bacon assigns knowledge the task of controlling nature technologically through natural science. And he does not stand alone in making this demand. As Descartes formulates it, knowledge, even and especially “philosophical” knowledge, should make us “masters and possessors of nature.”64 In both cases, the thought is guided by a social purpose: namely, the advantageous shaping of external, material living conditions. One could object that precisely because knowledge is supposed to serve the “general good of all mankind,”65 it appears that one cannot here talk of a threat to human freedom and human happiness. Moreover, a view of man wherein his existence can be legitimized only through his usefulness does not seem to be expressed when man himself is the goal of all knowing and doing. But this objection overlooks two facts: first, that the human good is supposed to be brought about here through praxis alone, or more precisely, through scientific-technological dominance of nature, and secondly, that all “merely theoretical” knowledge is discredited since it contributes nothing to the cause. It is true that Bacon and Descartes explicitly oppose only the traditional, essentially theoretical, i.e., contemplative philosophy, and do not formally oppose ev61. See Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation. 62. See also Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, chapter 6, 248ff. 63. Published piecemeal between 1605 and 1627. 64. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, part six, 35 [62]. 65. Ibidem.

86  Frank Töpfer ery merely cognitive attitude. It becomes clear, however, from their explicit reasoning that their opposition applies not only to philosophical theory in the narrow sense but also to other forms of theoretical cognition. Philosophy as mere theory should be rejected because it contributes nothing to practical, technological endeavors. But this argument opposes every attitude that turns to something— be it a human being, a work of art, or an object that is interesting for its own sake, without ulterior motive—for the sole intention of having it present for what it is in itself. But if happiness consists precisely in a cognitive “having-present” of what one loves, without any ulterior motive, then the effort to discredit this position turns against the possibility of human happiness, even when this result is not specifically intended. The discrediting denies the legitimacy of the sole mindset in which happiness can be realized. The social dimension of Pieper’s thought is found in the opinion held in classical and medieval times: the realization of a merely cognitive attitude that is not oriented to utility is required not only for the sake of individual happiness. It is also “necessary for the perfection of the human community that there are people who devote themselves to the life of contemplation.”66 With this Pieper touches upon the importance of scientific knowledge [i.e., scholarship, which includes the liberal arts], especially in the narrower sense of philosophical theoria, for the condition of a commonwealth. In order to make this idea plausible, let us imagine the diametrically opposed case: a social structure in which there is only knowledge directed to practical, technological ends. For that situation to exist there must be complete clarity about the contents of the end to be achieved. The end cannot be defined in a merely formal way as “the good” or “the common good.” Instead it must be made clear what the good to be realized consists of specifically. Since such ends must precede the knowledge aimed at their realization, this knowledge cannot 66. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, Bk. 4, dist. 26, q. 1, a. 2 (quoted in Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 26 [19]).

Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism  87 determine its ends by itself. It requires another knowing that does not ask how a good presupposed as a goal is to be realized, so as to supply the means, but rather asks—“theoretically”—what the good and the common good consist of in the first place. In contrast, it is characteristic of totalitarian regimes that they pursue a preordained common good without any forum or authority that could ask, independently of such official purposes, what the human good and the common good consist of. Those who “hold the political power,” claim, in this case, “to determine the precise content of the bonum commune exhaustively and definitively.”67 This does not happen in liberal, democratic polities. But the increasingly widespread predominance of a mentality that considers valid only what is useful leads to the same result: the social and governmental goals, in relation to which something is supposed to be useful, can no longer be an object of investigation and discussion as to what constitutes their good. The polity loses the possibility of reaching an understanding about what the public good consists of, and what form the polity should take accordingly. Even prior to the alternative between a “capitalist” or “socialist” economy, the totalitarianism of an idling, utilitarian mentality gains acceptance. One “indication of this among others is that philosophy and the act of philosophizing are viewed more and more as mere intellectual luxury, as something that can hardly be reconciled with ‘social conscience,’ and almost as a kind of sabotage against the ‘really important’ tasks.”68 67. Josef Pieper, “Philosophy and the Common Weal,” 62 [421]. 68. Ibidem.

4

Josef Pieper’s Early Sociological Writings

o Hermann Braun Translated by Matthew Cuddeback and Michael J. Miller

The far-off voice allows us to grasp what now is, in the light of what is always or for the most part.1

For his entire life Josef Pieper was in search of the truth, guided by a far-off teacher. His thought did not follow fashion. Two early experiences left their mark on him. Hungry for a philosophical formation, he turned in his youth to Søren Kierkegaard, as did many of his generation. One of his teachers at the Gymnasium Paulinum nudged him in a different direction, explaining that the “black bread” of Thomas Aquinas is more nourishing than the Dane’s “pastries.” Pieper took the advice, and picked up the prologue to Aquinas’s commentary on the Gospel of John.2 A meeting with Romano Guardini gave him “bedeutende Förder1. Robert Spaemann, “Einleitung,” XVI: “Die Stimme aus der Ferne läßt uns das, was jetzt ist, begreifen im Lichte dessen, was immer und was meistens ist.” 2. Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known. An Autobiography, 48f. [62f.].

88

Early Sociological Writings  89 nis durch ein einziges Wort” [“significant encouragement by a single word”], an allusion to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Pieper later described what Guardini told him in this meeting: All that ought to be is grounded in what is. The Good is what conforms to reality. Whoever wants to know and do the good must turn his gaze toward the objective world as it is, not toward his own thoughts, or to conscience, or to values, or self-determined ideals and models. He must disregard his own act and look to reality.

These remarks are found in his dissertation on Aquinas.3 As a writer, Josef Pieper acquired a reputation for being faithful to the work of Thomas Aquinas. This faithfulness cannot be cast in the usual language for affinities of thought in intellectual history. Pieper was not “influenced” by his great teacher. He did not judge him, did not interpret him. He succeeded in doing what Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel deemed most difficult, since it unites judgment and interpretation: He brought forth what was substantial and authentic in the work of the Angelic Doctor of the Church.4 The thought of Thomas Aquinas was so much Pieper’s own, that he moved in it with freedom and objectivity. Thus Josef Pieper brought Thomas Aquinas into modern-day discourse, for the benefit of those yearning for “the objectivity and thoroughness of a Mediterranean mind.”5 Thomas Stearns Eliot saw in his German friend a thinker who counteracts the corruption of philosophy by logical positivism, dispels philosophy’s inferiority complex with respect to mathematics 3. Josef Pieper, “  ‘Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges Wort.’ Romano Guardini zum 70. Geburtstag,” 659–60. See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 62f. [76f.]. Pieper’s dissertation, Die ontische Grundlage des Sittlichen nach Thomas von Aquin, was first published 1929 in Münster/Westfalen (Helios-Verlag). The text cited is taken from the revised edition, which first appeared 1931, under the title Die Wirklichkeit und das Gute, brought out by Pieper’s friend and publisher Jakob Hegner. 4. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, preface, 3 [11]. 5. Heinrich Böll, with reference to Pieper, “Thomas von Aquin,” in Fritz J. Raddatz, Zeit-Bibliothek der 100 Sachbücher, 40–45.

90  Hermann Braun and symbolic logic, and revives philosophy’s traditional relationship to theology: “He restores to their [rightful] position in philosophy what common sense obstinately tells us ought to be found there: insight and wisdom.”6 Helmut Kuhn chose to entitle his appreciation of Pieper’s life work “The Wisdom of the Ancients in Our Time.” He describes Pieper as a kind of original and powerful thinker, as a Catholic who speaks as a philosopher and teaches us to do so, and who knows at the same time that every philosophical question finally “runs against an originally theological utterance.”7 Pieper did not belong to any particular Neo-Thomistic group. As a young man he was hunched over the two Summae and the Disputed Questions, not as a schoolboy caught in the taut net of transcendental logic, or bewitched by the depths of fundamental ontology, but as an artless student who sought a teacher and, having found him in Thomas, was never to stray from him.8

Kuhn portrays Pieper as possessing a “beautiful homogeneity,” while noting that the philosophical literature of our day has no comparable itinerarium mentis to show for itself. The beginnings of Pieper’s intellectual journey are shown precisely in his hunching over Aquinas’s texts. Kuhn says that during the thirties Pieper chose to live in a self-selected academic isolation that proved life-saving: The widespread temptation in Germany at that time proceeded from an equation that originated in crypto-Hegelianism; a powerful political movement was said to be the will of the world-spirit. For the [young] student of Aquinas, this sophistry, this legitimation of opportunism in the name of history, must have fallen on deaf ears. It is not surprising, then, that Pieper’s first works fell victim to the censorship of Hitler’s regime.9 6. Thomas Stearns Eliot, “Introduction,” 16 [73f.]. 7. Helmut Kuhn, “Die Weisheit der Alten in unserer Zeit,” 352, with reference to Josef Pieper, The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, 16 [290]. 8. Helmut Kuhn, “Die Weisheit der Alten in unserer Zeit,” 359. 9. Ibidem.

Early Sociological Writings  91 This is all that Kuhn tells us about Pieper’s earliest works. He does not consider their content. In late February 1997 the Josef-Pieper-Stiftung held a conference which, because of poor health, Pieper himself could not attend. The paper on Pieper’s early writings was assigned instead to the Bielefeld sociologist Franz-Xaver Kaufmann. Kaufmann placed Pieper’s Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln (1934) in its intellectualhistorical context. He describes the emergence of sociology from Enlightenment premises, as distinct from the medieval synthesis of divine wisdom and human reason (which was upheld once more in Hegel’s critique of the Enlightenment). Putting on the airs of a pedantic specialist, Kaufmann concludes that Pieper applied himself “earnestly” to the study of German sociology in his early years. To his surprise, he finds that in Pieper’s sociological writings there are no references to his philosophical thought, apart from the occasional reference to the problem of justice. What is more, in Pieper’s later philosophical writings there are no references to Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln. Was Pieper’s “preoccupation” with sociology something isolated, a dead-end in his intellectual journey?10 How can Thomistic thought about morality be related to modern sociology, born of the Enlightenment, and vice versa? Wasn’t the Enlightenment, with its faith in the autonomy of man and in the potential of the empirical sciences, the “avalanche” that buried metaphysical thought, in which the being of the existent was defined as divine? Kaufman starts from the fundamental insight that Pieper draws from his study of Aquinas: everything that ought to be [Sollen] must be grounded in what is [Sein]. He examines the roots of this insight in intellectual history. Sociology thinks “etsi Deus non daretur” [“as though God did not exist”], but Thomas Aquinas can be understood only in terms of his theological premises.11 Had Pieper devoted himself to such a sociology, abandoned by all metaphysical spirits, he 10. Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, “Das Soziale und das Gute,” 12. 11. Ibidem, 6, 13.

92  Hermann Braun would have been unfaithful to his distant teacher in his early sociological works. I doubt that this was the case, and I suspect that the young Pieper did not think that he was facing such an alternative. To prove this conjecture, I will first discuss Pieper’s meeting and collaboration with Johann Plenge and then examine his early sociological writings in detail.

I In the summer semester of 1926 Josef Pieper took his first course from Johann Plenge. He was drawn by the title of the lecture series, “Man’s Place in the Cosmos,” which foretold a treatment of philosophical anthropology. In this way Pieper came indirectly into contact with Plenge’s Research Institute for Organizational Studies and Sociology. In the autumn of 1926, in a letter to the head of the Institute, Pieper offered to collaborate, “not in just any way, but intensively, and with a certain responsibility.” He hoped to give a “sociological orientation” to his philosophical thinking. And he announced his interest in being able “to lend a helping hand”12 in the institute’s development as well as in research projects. After completing his doctorate in 1928 and receiving approval to teach as an assistant to Plenge, Pieper dropped his plan to study law and applied himself to the basic questions of sociology. Plenge, who after some hesitation had employed Pieper at the Institute, was an extremely prolific, brilliant professor, and quite charismatic in person. Plenge’s high sense of his own worth made up for a lack of recognition within his academic fields of national economics and sociology. He demanded from his assistant not only collaboration in research and teaching but also admiration. Plenge had his own bronze bust installed at the Institute. He subtitled his universal the12. The letter, signed “Josef Pieper, cand. philos. et stud. iur.,” is held by the Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld. I am grateful to Mrs. Waltraud Noldenberger for the opportunity to view it among the unpublished papers of Johann Plenge.

Early Sociological Writings  93 ory of social connections “The General Theory of Relations” and expected his assistant to regard him as the Einstein of sociology. Pieper resisted the pressure to take part in this professor-worship, and after Pieper had been on the job for two years, Plenge threatened him to dismiss him for incompetence. But he did not follow through, for he must have feared the position would be cut. Pieper stayed on as assistant two more years, with minimal duties but with ample time for writing. Plenge had written a philosophical work, Marx und Hegel (1911), which provides the foundation for his sociological position. In its reversal of the chronological sequence, the title foreshadows the thesis. He presents Marx as the necessary “link” between the social philosophy of German idealism and the “realistic humanism” of a social science that was yet to come. Karl Marx is the middleman who implicitly continues the tradition of Hegel. Marx became an essential part of the nineteenth century, and so Hegel’s thought continues in a hidden way to have influence on “the new world of organization.” In fact Hegel’s theory of bourgeois society, concerning the unleashed forces of the satisfaction of individual needs, which need to be controlled by law and organization, survived the Marxist notion of revolution. The image of the sorcerer’s apprentice who is rescued by the return of his aged master (an allusion to Goethe’s poem “Der Zauberlehrling,” presented in 1911 as a prophetic vision, deserves our great respect, in view of the historical events that we experienced during the twentieth century. Plenge sees in Marx an “extreme exaggeration” of Hegel’s disparaging treatment of “ought” [des Sollens] in the preface to Philosophy of Right, and of Hegel’s tying of philosophy to the reality of what is rational. Marx equates every productive organizational plan with utopian Socialism and condemns it as unscientific fancy. Thus, he misses the true way to overcome the opposition of is and ought in a world that is becoming: moving from ought to is.13 Marx 13. Johann Plenge, Marx und Hegel, 168f.

94  Hermann Braun does have the merit of organizing the “formless social masses” of the proletariat, creating for them a “new consciousness” and integrating them as members of society. Karl Marx and his followers brought self-aware societal thinking into circles which previously had no part in higher intellectual life. They awakened in countless souls respect for the mind [Geist], the pursuit of science, the yearning for culture. One may hope that this effect was stronger than any materialistic coarseness of his inflammatory way of speaking. Time will tell.14

Today we can say that time has told. Plenge saw an opportunity for a “constructive socialism” in the growing class of social functionaries.15 With his thesis that the future belongs to an ever-expanding organization of economic life, Plenge rightly held, despite his reservations about “fluctuating probability,” that these functionaries would serve the general public and so bring about an organizational socialism.16 Plenge claimed to have initiated, with his book in 1911, a theory of society that he called “organizational socialism.” He chose this partisan, activist phrase for pedagogical reasons: he distances himself thereby from the Marxist theory, with its call for a radical change in societal relations and the emancipation of the proletariat; he thus brings the bourgeois revolution of 1789 to its completion. According to Plenge, in the history of ideas the real revolution took place in 1914. In Germany, the triad of liberty, equality, and fraternity which was born in France in 1789 was set aside in 1914 in favor of the ascendant ideas of order and organization.17 Pieper appeared openly in his sociological works also as a student of Plenge, and he dealt critically with Hans Freyer and Leopold von Wiese, yet he remained unmoved by the debate with Marx and Hegel that is so fundamental for Plenge. This indifference is a strong indication of his early and lasting philosophical formation, 14. Ibidem, 180. 15. Ibidem. 16. Ibidem. 17. See Hermann Lübbe, Politische Philosophie in Deutschland. Studien zu ihrer Geschichte, 206ff.

Early Sociological Writings  95 which was unwaveringly guided by Thomas Aquinas and required no revision in light of the modern period. Pieper would not get involved with Hegel, even in those areas where Hegel’s thinking exhibits a fundamental similarity to Thomism. Plenge sums up Hegel’s worldview with the well-known and controversial assertion from the preface to Philosophy of Right: what is real is rational, and what is rational is real [. . . .] There is no opposition between what is and what ought to be. It is as foolish for someone to imagine a philosophy that goes beyond the present world as it is to imagine an individual who steps outside his own time, or leaps over Rhodes. If his theory does in fact go beyond that, he is building for himself a world as it ought to be; it does exist, but only in his opinion, a material which is soft enough to be molded into anything.18

Even when Pieper is directly confronted with Hegel’s philosophy in his own sociological analyses, he ignores him. This is striking in Pieper’s examination of Hans Freyer’s position. “Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, specifically the moral teaching in the third volume, is the origin of German sociology,” says Hans Freyer. This teaching “is freighted with such a profound knowledge of the realities of the historical-societal world that, in any age, a concrete sociology awaits discovery therein.” For Hegel it is essential that moral requirements are no longer what ought to be, but what is. They no longer confront the will of the subject as demands from without, but surround it as powers that are really present, supporting the will of the individual. Freyer draws on Hegel to give an historical account of the system of sociology. This account is his fundamental intention. The formative principles of the social order follow one from another, on the one hand, as developmental stages in a “real dialectic,” but they are also structural elements present in any historical time. Any sociological system must reckon with this insight of Hegel, insofar as it has to take its place in a manual of the philosophy of history. Community can be understood in this way 18. Johann Plenge, Marx und Hegel, 167.

96  Hermann Braun as an epoch’s law of formation, chronologically prior to the structures of society. Community can lose its foundational role and be replaced by societal ruling powers, but it nevertheless remains an “eternal phenomenon” and a contributing factor in overall societal conditions. The same goes for other formative principles: they are at the same time developmental stages and structural elements, steps and layers. “Sociology must not historicize its system exhaustively; Hegel’s philosophy of right is the great albeit one-sided example of how societal reality can be conceived in a purely ideal dialectic as a multiplicity of layers.”19 Pieper’s critical “marginal notes” on Freyer focus on a basic hermeneutical question and on a systemic problem of sociology. Methodologically, Pieper formulates a consistently immanent critique, starting with the way sociology understands itself as a science. Is it a “science of mind” or a “science of reality”? As a science of reality, according to Freyer, it must concede that the sociologist never confronts his object theoretically; rather, it belongs to him “existentially.” To that extent the sociologist himself is also involved in the “intentions” [Willensgehalten] that are active in a society, in its impulses for change. Yet such conditions do not allow the sociologist to be a detached observer, and Pieper asks whether scientific objectivity is attainable in sociology. This thematizes what we call today the relation between interest and knowledge. The language that Freyer and Pieper use still shows the influence of Ferdinand Tönnies’ psychology of the will. Freyer remarks that Tönnies sunk the foundations of the basic concepts of sociology “as deep as possible into psychology, without falling into psychologism.”20 A telling phrase in Freyer’s science of reality is: “one sees something sociologically only if he wills it societally.”21 19. Hans Freyer, Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft. Logische Grundlegung des Systems der Soziologie, 218. 20. Ibidem, 185. 21. Ibidem, 305.

Early Sociological Writings  97 And also: the image [Bild ] of the past will be formed by “the disposition of one’s will in the present.” In the interest of saving objective knowledge, Pieper insists on a distinction. Admittedly the disposition of the will can influence the choice of what is worth knowing. But when this choice has been made and what is thereby thematized is in view, the strongest sort of objectivity is required. Pieper demands a sort of ascesis of the will in sociological inquiry—something that is called for precisely when the investigator, willy-nilly, is involved in the objective circumstances of his subject matter. He formulates a basic methodological problem that has been with sociology since Max Weber. On the fifteenth German “Sociology Day” (1964), in Heidelberg, Max Horkheimer described Weber’s teaching on “value neutrality” as follows: “Value judgments should be justified in the proposing of a task, but not in its performance.”22 Jürgen Habermas asked whether the value judgments that allow one to select the theoretical framework can also be incorporated, in the analysis of social science, as the real context on the transcendental level.23 Pieper would have objected to such reasoning, which makes the methodological dilemma itself into a subject of sociology. Of course, Pieper has quite different reasons from those of Weber, whose positivistic views—as Habermas suspects—forbid such a self-referential sociological method. Pieper had prepared a socio-anthropological solution for dealing with this “transcendental level.” He “dehistoricized” the basic forms of social structure and described them in terms of a general morphology grounded in natural law. This becomes clear from the perspective of a systems theorist, which was Pieper’s perspective in his critique of Freyer. He observes a contradiction between the historicism of Freyer’s “science of reality” and his systematic claims. In order to justify his concep22. Max Horkheimer, “Diskussion zum Thema Wertfreiheit und Objektivität. Einleitung zur Diskussion,” 66f. 23. Jürgen Habermas, “Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften,” 19.

98  Hermann Braun tion of sociology as a system, Freyer is compelled to do something that Pieper calls “de-historicization.” Freyer must “generalize.” He cannot sustain his thesis of “structural concepts saturated with a maximum of history.” Thoroughly historicized concepts would not allow for sociology as a systematic science. Pieper illustrates what this means by examining the structural concept of “community.” It is at once a step in social development and a level or layer that shows up in any age of social development, as a “perpetual phenomenon.” Freyer’s teaching on the embedding (Einschichtung) of this phenomenon in historical processes is evidence of the awkward position to which his historicism leads. This awkwardness indicates the lack of a “morphology of social phenomena” and of a “basic histological teaching.”24 Whoever will not accept the “perpetual structure” of human interactions cannot grasp society as a whole: only through such structural concepts are diverse epochs comparable and thereby knowable.25 Pieper also subjects von Wiese’s concept of social doctrine to an immanent critique. According to von Wiese, the “social” is essentially reducible to “association” and “dissociation”—a basic form whose dynamism lies in a process of “shifting distance.” Thus, at any one time there is a certain form of distance between people. This is their “connection.” From distance and its shifting develops a unity that can be called a “social construct.” Pieper extends the critique that Theodore Abel had formulated in his Systematic Sociology in Germany (1929). Abel thought highly of von Wiese’s “behavioristic sociology” as an approach that was free from metaphysics and open to empirical methods: “his sociology is more in accord with prevailing trends of sociological thought in America than it is with the trends in Germany.”26 Abel shows how von Wiese presents 24. Josef Pieper, “  ‘Wirklichkeitswissenschaftliche’ Soziologie. Kritische Randbemerkungen zu Hans Freyer ‘Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft’,” 45f. 25. Ibidem, 47. 26. Theodore Abel, Systematic Sociology in Germany: A Critical Analysis of Some Attempts to Establish Sociology as an Independent Science, 80ff.

Early Sociological Writings  99 association and dissociation as the elementary possibilities of interaction and as the “basic sociological scheme.” This scheme is the specificum sociologicum that distinguishes sociology, with its range of subject matter, from other social sciences.27 According to Abel, von Wiese’s basic concept, relation (as interrelation or interaction), is “the central and unifying category in the sociological systems of Simmel and Vierkandt as well as of von Wiese.”28 Von Wiese’s elementary sociological concepts are “tendency” (with respect to distance, either away from or toward) and “degree” (greater or lesser stability with respect to the ties of human relations). Pieper’s critique begins here: “Tendency and degree are inadequate categories for the analysis of intra-human relations, even in their most elementary structures. If a relation is to be known, many more of its features must be inspected.”29 Small distance does not always mean greater stability of relation, and conversely a greater distance, for instance to someone held in esteem, can mean a firm connection to him. Pieper’s work ends with the judgment that “sociology needs clear basic concepts.” With that he expresses his overriding intention in his critical study of the leading sociologists whose works he discovered during his years as Plenge’s assistant (he became personally acquainted with von Wiese also through visits in Münster).

II Quadragesimo anno, the encyclical of Pius XI promulgated in 1931, spurred Josef Pieper to move beyond mere academic sociology. In several of his writings he attempted to apply the encyclical’s central social message. In Die Neuordnung der menschlichen Gesellschaft [The new or27. Ibidem, 91. 28. Ibidem, 82. 29. Josef Pieper, “Die Grundbegriffe L.v. Wieses,” 25.

100  Hermann Braun der of human society] he offers a systemic study of the encyclical. He wanted to distill and promote its basic ideas, so that they would not merely describe the “new order” academically but also helped to put it into practice. We can say the same about his second work on the encyclical, Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik, published in 1933. It was reprinted after the war under the title Thesen zur sozialen Politik. With these works, and with essays on social pedagogy written during this same time, Pieper became involved with the contemporary social and political situation. The first words of the 1931 encyclical, which also serve as its title, refer to the fortieth anniversary of Rerum novarum, the social encyclical of Leo XIII. Theodor Heuss responded in a newspaper article dated August 21, 1931, pointing out that it is not customary to celebrate a fortieth anniversary. Current events must have prompted Pius XI to recall the encyclical on the condition of workers by Leo XIII, the “political pope” whose social teaching had Thomas Aquinas’s thought as its philosophical foundation. According to Heuss, in Pius XI’s encyclical the organization of society by means of orderly divisions into professions and trades is even “more lively and undaunted” than in the writings of Leo XIII. Quadragesimo anno looks at ways of realizing a Thomistic idea of society. It vividly describes how the spirit of individualism has shattered and nearly destroyed a once-thriving societal life that was richly diversified into a host of associations of various sorts. “Now the individual and the state are almost all that remains, to the considerable detriment of the state itself.”30 During the pontificate of Pius XI, Mussolini’s reorganization of Italian society along class lines built a corporate commonwealth with state control and legitimation of the organized trades and professions. The pope commends efforts to preserve peaceful labor relations, and to resist socialist labor unions. But he rejects the “corporate facade” of 30. Theodor Heuss, “Quadragesimo anno . . . Zur Entwicklung der katholischen Soziallehre,” 1590.

Early Sociological Writings  101 the “fascist power structure.” Why? Because the constitution along occupational lines “has an excessively bureaucratic and political impact,” which is more “useful to political special-interest groups than it is in bringing about and introducing a better social order.”31 The pope asks that the attempt be “interwoven” with Catholic principles. He calls on the representatives of Catholic Action to work against Mussolini’s distortion of Catholic and Thomistic teaching. In Italy, the relevant section of Quadragesimo anno was taken as a declaration of war, and two weeks after its promulgation, conflict with Mussolini broke out openly.32 In 1933–1934 Pieper reacted to the current German political situation with a whole series of writings and treatises, culminating in Das Arbeitsrecht des Neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno, a commentary that deals directly with the legislation enacted after Hitler took office as Chancellor of the Reich and Parliament was deprived of power.33 When we survey Pieper’s writings from the years 1933 and 1934, his position on National Socialism immediately before and after it seized power seems conflicted. Berthold Wald has provided a welldocumented analysis of this situation. Wald has reprinted, among other things, excerpts from a letter Pieper wrote on July 24, 1934, to Father Gustav Gundlach, the editor of the Latin-German edition of The Social Encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI. Gundlach had obviously found Pieper’s Das Arbeitsrecht questionable and communicated this to Pieper in a letter. In March 1933 Pieper had received an appeal formulated by the “Görres Club of German Catholics” [Görreskreis katholischer Deutscher], with a request that he sign it. It reads:

31. Ibidem. 32. Ibidem. 33. Josef Pieper, Das Arbeitsrecht des Neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno (1934). Withdrawn from bookshops by the author a few months after its publication.

102  Hermann Braun The national uprising of our day has affected the whole of German life. There has been a radical change and rethinking of the nature and reality of the nation’s being [volkhaften Seins]. It is not our task to stop this change. Rather, we must carry it further, even into Catholic Germany. For the sake of our love for our people, and because we believe in the eternity of the Church, we should renounce certain outmoded forms of political and cultural involvement which developed in the past. New circumstances demand new ways and means, and so we especially call upon the young, who for years have struggled for recognition and are devoted members of this people, to join with us in the struggle for a new Germany, to say “yes” to the powers of the national movement and to the leader who bears the responsibility for it in the sight of the people and the state.34

Pieper declined to subscribe to this call. He did not vote for the National Socialists in the election of early 1933. But he did contribute the monograph mentioned above dealing with the new laws for labor [Arbeitsrecht] to the series Reich und Kirche. Writing later about this work, he explained: My intention was to take the proclamation of an idea just as it stood and interpret it by a comparison with Quadragesimo anno. Thus I hoped to influence the way it was applied—which, it seemed to me at the time, had not been finally determined. Naturally I could not formulate my intention in so many words without sabotaging the whole project.35

Pieper also said that under similar circumstances, he would write such a brochure again. This identification with a historical situation—and knowing what happened in the following twelve years— reveals that Pieper is certain he has taken a side, now as then, that transcends the vicissitudes of history. The basic ideas of Quadragesimo anno, he says in the foreword to the new edition of Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik, had their origin not in the author’s own intellectual efforts, but in a mind (the pope’s) that has a higher claim 34. Berthold Wald, “  ‘Aktualisierung durch Enthistorisierung’. Zu einem Brief von Josef Pieper an Gustav Gundlach aus der Zeit der NS-Diktatur,” 180. 35. Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 96 [109].

Early Sociological Writings  103 to teach.36 Pieper’s error, then, was limited to the (vain) expectation that the author could still have some influence in 1934 on the course of events in the “New Reich.” The “Gesetz zur Ordnung der nationalen Arbeit” [“Law regulating national work”] dated January 20, 1934, defined the relation between employer and employees according to the principle of leadership, the so-called Führerprinzip: In the workplace, the entrepreneur is the work leader, and the employees and workers are his staff. Together they promote the goals of the enterprise and the common benefit of the people and the state (§1).37

The manager [Betriebsführer] is advised by trusted individuals [Vertrauensmänner, the title for “shop stewards” in industry]. They must pledge, among other things, “to support the national state unreservedly at all times” (§8). In accordance with the National Socialist Organization of Betriebszellen [industrial units], a list of advisors to be elected will be posted. By secret ballot, the staff/workforce will vote for or against the list as a whole. If the workforce does not approve the list, the “work trustee” can appoint the advisors and their deputies (§9).

The work trustees are state officials bound by the guidelines and rulings of the German government (§18). This law brought universal state control of the national economy. The common good of the people is identified with the advantage of the state. The world of work is dominated by the political 36. Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik. Grundgedanken der Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno (Regensburg: Anton Pustet, 1933). The second edition was entitled Thesen zur sozialen Politik (Freiburg: Herder-Verlag, 1946). 37. This was set forth in the Reichsgesetzblatt Part I, Nr. 7, 23 January 1934. On the question of power and the juridical aspect of the new workers laws, see Michael Stolleis, Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus, 104–7. Concerning the complementarity of the inner obligation to a community and the external obligation in an authoritarian state, see 122–25. Ernst Fraenkel’s proposed distinction between the “Normenstaat” and the “Maßnahmenstaat” is helpful for understanding the radical change brought about by the new law for workers. See his The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship.

104  Hermann Braun order. It was a further stage in the empowerment of the NSDAP to exercise complete control over all departments of people’s lives. Pieper’s treatment of the labor law was published in Münster in 1934.38 He intended it as an extension and completion of his two writings on the encyclical, writings he had published a year earlier (Die Neuordnung der menschlichen Gesellschaft and Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik). It gives us a historical snapshot of Pieper’s early work. In the very same year, he asked the publisher not to print a new edition of it.39 The manner in which Pieper had first published this “extension” of his systematic and propositional treatment of Pius XI’s encyclical, and his reasons for immediately distancing himself from his book, tell us much about the position of Catholic political action right after Hitler seized power.40 Initially Pieper noticed the hopes of the socially conservative bourgeoisie that accompanied the growth of the National Socialist movement. Pieper apparently counted himself among that group of young Catholics who did not expect much from the “socialist” declarations of the National Socialists. With this group he viewed the National Socialists, and also their struggle against Marxism, as being on the “reactionary” side, at least indirectly. Then, however, after Hitler’s election as Chancellor, the dissolution of Parliament by the Enabling Act, and the first legislative acts of the new regime, Pieper’s assessment changed. Now a “clear view of the actual achievements of the new state”41 was possible, 38. See Josef Pieper, Das Arbeitsrecht des neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno. 39. Pieper related this fact in his letter to Father Gundlach of July 14, 1934. See Berthold Wald, “  ‘Aktualisierung durch Enthistorisierung’. Zu einem Brief von Josef Pieper an Gustav Gundlach aus der Zeit der NS-Diktatur,” 176. 40. See Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Der deutsche Katholizismus im Jahre 1933. Eine kritische Betrachtung.” Reprinted, with a historiographical essay by KarlEgon Lönne. Böckenförde on Pieper, Das Arbeitsrecht des Neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno, see 54, note 39. 41. Josef Pieper, Das Arbeitsrecht des neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno, 338.

Early Sociological Writings  105 and Pieper again takes an impartial position. He dedicates the work to his “fellow German Catholics” of the younger generation: Whoever compares Catholicism and National Socialism with the impartial intention of doing justice to both must acknowledge that the resemblance is not superficial or exaggerated, but that this fundamental agreement reaches to the very core of a Christian social ethic and to the same deep level of all the socio-political motives of the National Socialist state.42

But this “impartiality” is sympathetic to the language and polemical style of Hitler: “If Adolf Hitler regards the destruction of Marxism as ‘his task before history’, he leaves no doubt that he intends to strike Marxism first and foremost as the criminal instigator of ruinous class warfare.”43 The social principles of the Third Reich and the teaching of the encyclical are to be distinguished from the principles of political Reaction. Pieper was equally opposed to the attempt by “reactionary capitalism” to claim the papal encyclical as its own and to the Marxist depiction of the encyclical as the “charter and quintessence” of the Reaction.44 A large part of the Catholic workforce and the anti-bourgeois Catholic university students thus allowed themselves to be stampeded into opposing the authoritative pronouncement of the Church.45 At that time Hitler compared the absolutist age of Frederick the Great and the “democratic age during our parliamentary period” from the “viewpoint of the people.” The absolutism of Frederick the Great looked after the interests of the people “more objectively.” During the parliamentary period, however, the interests of individual class representatives were increasingly favored—thus the motto “The rule of the proletariat must replace the rule of the bourgeoisie” became popular. What had changed was the class or social status that dictated to the others, “whereas we want the dictatorship of the people, that is, the dictatorship of the totality, of 42. Ibidem, 339. 43. From Hitler’s speech to the Congress of German “Arbeitsfront,” May 30, 1933, 45. Quoted by Josef Pieper in Das Arbeitsrecht des neuen Reiches . . . , 339. 44. Ibidem, 339. 45. Ibidem, 340.

106  Hermann Braun the community.”46 Hitler contrasted the idea of “class” or “status” with the idea of nationhood [Volkstum], whose preservation is the highest goal of National Socialist policies. There was no longer any place for a state with social classes that would still have any particular privileges [Eigenrecht]. It is typical of Pieper, by the way, that he cites the statement about the dictatorship of the people but leaves out the last word, “community,” which defines more precisely the concept of totality. Indeed, a “dictatorship of the community” would directly contradict the thesis in his book on Social Rules, in which he rejects the absolutizing of any societal form. At the end of his brochure Pieper seeks criteria for introducing an order of professional organizations, and he mentions the Reichsnährstand and the Reichskulturkammer. The latter is defined as a professional organization, subdivided according to occupational fields. Pieper thought it possible to interpret this as the beginning of an occupational order in the new state. But the Reichskulturkammer [“Chamber of Culture”] was subordinate to the Minister for Education and Propaganda and from the start served the National Socialist cultural policy, which immediately prohibited Jewish artists from practicing their trade.47 The encyclical’s principle of subsidiarity, and the corresponding particular rights of professional classes, were out of the question. Pieper himself was not quite sure about “abolishing the proletariat” within a society divided into different professional classes. Concern46. From Hitler’s speech to the Congress of German “Arbeitsfront,” May 30, 1933, 45. Quoted by Pieper in Das Arbeitsrecht des neuen Reiches. . . , 344. 47. There is the well-known case of the famous Comedian Harmonists (well documented in Eberhard Fechner’s book, Die Comedian Harmonists. Sechs Lebensläufe). After Goebbel’s decree dated November 1, 1933, implementing the “Reichskulturkammergesetz,” every German artist had to belong to one of the six professional associations. Without this membership it was no longer possible to pursue an artistic profession. In §10 of the decree it was set down that whoever lacked the requisite suitability and aptitude to engage in artistic activity could be rejected or excluded. This determination was left to the Ministry for Education and Propaganda (see Fechner, 240f.).

Early Sociological Writings  107 ing this he said: “At any rate, all this leaves room for other interpretations. And so it makes little sense to spend more time on it.”48 But this skepticism is combined with the confidence that a professional order is a natural growth, which then develops according to the pope’s teaching in the encyclical. Indeed it is the natural ordering of a people, when the “unnatural and violent condition of class struggle has at last been cleared away.”49 The revival of the idea of a state made up of classes [Ständestaatsgedanke] was part of the political program of the journal Hochland. The Weimar Republic should not be defended but overcome, in accordance with the organic-authoritarian ideal. Guiding principles were the “natural class-based” order and the spirit that represented it.50

III In 1934 the Magazin für Pädagogik, a monthly for Catholic education, published two essays by Josef Pieper.51 It is helpful, in order to judge these works fairly in view of the events of the time, to look at what happened in the year of their publication. The introductory editorial by Msgr. Stauber looks back to two important events in world history during the year 1933: the “establishment of the National Socialist state,” and the conclusion of the Church’s Concordat with that state. According to Stauber the Parliament, with its parties and changing majorities, had lost its absolute governing authority and leadership of the government. He then recounts all that the 48. Josef Pieper, Das Arbeitsrecht des neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno, 362. 49. Ibidem, 361. 50. Richard van Dülmen, “Katholischer Konservativismus oder die ‘Soziologische Neuorientierung’,” 301. 51. Josef Pieper, “Über die Spannung zwischen Organisation und Gemeinschaft in der kirchlichen Arbeit” and “Die geistige Situation der Gegenwart und die Verwirklichung echter Bildung.” This was the ninety-seventh year for the oldest Catholic periodical on education.

108  Hermann Braun Concordat recognized and guaranteed for Catholic education: Catholic religious instruction, denominational schools, the founding of private schools by religious Orders. In the future educational policy would be settled “by the governing bodies of the Church and the state” in direct negotiations. The Magazin für Pädagogik could therefore omit a discussion of educational policy matters.52 Its ongoing task, according to article 21 of the Concordat, would be to teach a patriotic, civil, and social sense of duty. Stauber’s words convey an unmistakable undertone of satisfaction at the new order of things. In the same issue, Dr. Anton Stonner writes on “Heroism and Christianity.” He says that for us, a Germanic people, the “heroic worldview” is more than any other “suited to our race” [artgemäß].53 Referring to the Heliand [an early medieval Old Saxon verse epic that depicts Christ as a duke], which shows how the heroism of Christ’s disciples and apostles enthralled the Germans, he concludes: “Christianity itself is heroism.”54 “Cowardly emigrant-Christianity” could do nothing but bring discredit to the Catholic religion, with the result that “no one believes our declarations of loyalty.”55 Fr. Sedlmeier from Ravensburg writes about teaching patriotism in Catholic religious instruction. Taking as his point of departure article 21 of the Concordat, he calls with particular emphasis for the fostering of a patriotic, civil, and social sense of duty. In this connection, he asserts, much attention should be given to the German saints, including those from recent and modern times. The list need not be limited to those who have been canonized: “Saintly men have been heroic men in every age.” For example, when instructing children about the laws of fasting or the virtue of temperance, it would be effective to point out that the German Chancellor is a teetotaler and a vegetarian.56 52. Georg Stauber, “Zum 97. Jahrgang,” 1. 53. Anton Stonner, “Heroismus und Christentum,” 7. 54. Ibidem, 13, 15. 55. Ibidem, 16. 56. Kaplan Sedlmeier, “Erziehung zur Vaterlandsliebe im katholischen Religionsunterricht,” 17.

Early Sociological Writings  109 Fr. Sieber, in discussing the work of national education, blames humanism and rationalism during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the victory of liberalism for the uprooting and destruction of German nationhood. The two rival worldviews today, he says, are liberalism and Marxism.57 Within the context of this issue of the Magazin für Pädagogik, which offers little objective distance but rather a spectrum of gestures greeting the new spirit of the times that ranges from a starting bid to conformity and ingratiation, appears Pieper’s brief essay, “Über die Spannung zwischen Organisation und Gemeinschaft in der kirchlichen Arbeit” (The tension between organization and community in the Church’s work). It contains the central theses of his book Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, which focuses on the relation between organization and community. Anyone who tries to make community the sole valid social ideal is acting contrary to human nature. The same goes for an ideology of organization such as Ernst Jünger’s “all-encompassing working world,” which Pieper deems even more dangerous than the “ideology of community.”58 All three societal forms—community, society, and organization— must come into their own with their respective, legitimate rules. To Pieper’s bibliographical reference (Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, Freiburg 1933), the editorial staff adds the following remark: “We highly recommend that the readers of this journal consult this outstanding book, which is among the most important publications of recent Catholic sociology.”59 The recommendation of the editorial staff of the Magazin can be read as a discreet signal that its judgment of the social teaching of National Socialism is not exclusively positive. Although, in keeping with the title of his essay, Pieper’s critique 57. E. Sieber, “Die katholische Volksbildungsarbeit in Deutschland und in der Diözese Rottenburg,” 19. 58. Josef Pieper, “Über die Spannung zwischen Organisation und Gemeinschaft in der kirchlichen Arbeit,” 384. 59. Ibidem, 385, note 3.

110  Hermann Braun of the social romanticism of the “ideology of community” pertains to the situation within the Church, his analysis is applicable also to the socio-anthropological basis for all social structures, and thus to man’s social life as ordered by the state. When Pieper mentions current themes—for example, the education of leaders [Führerbildung]60—he is not accomodationist but follows his convictions, which are in line with Thomas Aquinas. These prompted him to regard the development of modern thought as misguided from the start.61 This becomes clear in his second essay, “The Present Intellectual Situation and the Realization of Genuine Education”—a title that alludes to Karl Jaspers.62 Pieper judged the current situation a favorable one in which to bring about “genuine education.” The turn to “positive instruction” shows the need for “authoritative leadership” and a renunciation of the methodology of constant self-questioning: “Weary of our fathers’ subjectivism, we stand once again in the supra-individual traditional context of a doctrine.”63 Yet, he says, the renunciation of Cartesian doubt and Enlightenment rationalism involves also the risk of “an irrationality that darkens all of being.”64 Parliamentarianism, which is anti-authoritarian, hailing from the bourgeois Revolution of 1789, has been set aside. Pieper does not explain this course of events. What is important to him is the fact that “unity of mind and soul” for the people has been prepared politically as of 1933. It should bear 60. Ibidem, 387. 61. Klaus Müller has argued that Pieper’s position is so rooted in the pre-modern that the fundaments of modernity never really came within his field of vision. If post-modern thinkers are taking an interest in Pieper, it is because their thought finds it unnecessary to grapple with modernity. See Müller, “Über das rechte Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie. Josef Pieper im Kontext einer neuentfachten Debatte,” 92. 62. Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit. See Hermann Braun, “Die Anfälligkeit des Prinzipiellen. Existenzphilosophie und Philosophische Anthropologie vor und nach 1933”: concerning Jaspers, 359–64. Concerning Josef Pieper’s book on Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, see 345–48, 365. 63. Josef Pieper, “Die geistige Situation der Gegenwart und die Verwirklichung echter Bildung,” 333. 64. Ibidem, 334.

Early Sociological Writings  111 fruit in a “living existential relation” between those groups of the people that lead and those groups that are led. Education is understood as the education of a people, not merely of the individual, and not just the prerogative of a privileged class. “Only on the basis of a unity of mind and soul between those who lead and those who are led does education become realizable and meaningful as a concept of the spiritual life of the whole people.”65 Popular thought should be liberated to seek an “overview of the whole.” Today, he says, the idea of national unity is proving to be most effective in the leading intellectual groups of the people. Pieper is speaking here about what he calls the “formal preconditions for putting education into action.”66 That is, in his view the political and social prerequisites for a comprehensive Catholic educational project are now present. And so he justifies his writing activity in the service of social pedagogy: happily, in comparison to recent decades, a healthy and conducive “moral climate” has now come about. Yet the current intellectual situation still harbors dangerous tendencies; in order to dispel them, everyone is obliged to lend a hand personally. Pieper’s favorable assessment of the situation ended abruptly with the murders in the so-called “Röhm affair.” Pieper then saw that justice did not rule in the National Socialist Reich.67 Martin Heidegger took up this same issue: in his report on his time as rector at the University of Freiburg he points out that after June 6, 1934, it became clear that anyone who still wanted to hold a university position knew with whom he had to deal.68 At the start of “The Magician of Messkirch,” a video documentary about Heidegger by Rüdiger Safranski and Ulrich Boehm, there is a clip from a 1988 discussion at the University of Heidelberg between the philosophy professors Hans Georg Gadamer and Reiner Wiehl. Poet Hilde Domin asks Gadamer why Heidegger was an65. Ibidem. 66. Ibidem. 67. Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 96–97 [109–10]. 68. Martin Heidegger, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, 390.

112  Hermann Braun gered by the Röhm affair, but not by the persecution of the Jews. He answers, “He was so disturbed by the extermination, and the extermination camps, that he could not even open his mouth about it.” Reiner Wiehl screws up his face in disbelief, lets out a laugh, then turns serious again. Gadamer gets scattered applause. The audience members within view sit dumbstruck, looking down or staring blankly into space, and then the clip ends. It is a dramatic commentary on the question of criticism and historical justification, which this subject brings to the fore. Pieper’s social-pedagogical activity continued. He wrote his treatises on the virtues, beginning with Courage, in which he criticizes the notion of heroism found in National Socialist ideology. Another essay on social pedagogy is Totale Bildung. The essay is militant, and it openly takes the opportunity to instruct, after the Concordat with the Reich forbade political Catholicism but allowed the Church a free hand in matters pertaining to schools and education. In this essay there are no more gestures of rapprochement, as in his essay on worker’s rights. The title, Totale Bildung, does not indicate a hand extended to the totalitarian system, but rather a challenge to it. For the thesis of the work is that there is only one kind of total education, and it is founded on the Christian faith. Without the Christian faith there can be no genuine education. It would be a contradiction in terms to speak of an educated pagan. The concept of a “total” education is philosophically grounded, namely, through the philosophical psychology of Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle’s axiom that anima est quodammodo omnia69 is of capital importance here: “The spiritual soul is related to the whole of reality, and in this relation lies its essence.”70

69. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 1, a. 1. 70. Josef Pieper, Totale Bildung. Die Grundformen ihrer Verwirklichung: Führerbildung und Volksbildung, 318 f.

Early Sociological Writings  113

IV Unlike the sociologist Leopold von Wiese, who in his definition and mapping out of liberalism saw the potential for a reconciliation between the individual and society, and in 1917 postulated the “advance of parliamentary government reform” and a weakening of the authoritarian state,71 Pieper equated the bourgeois liberalism that follows from the revolutionary ideas of 1789 with capitalist lack of consideration for the common good. Writing in 1932, and looking at the parliamentary constitution of the Weimar Republic, he saw only the disagreeable alternative between capitalist exploitation and Marxism, which in the form of Bolshevism had become a serious threat. Despite the opposition between them, the two societal systems have in common a loss of transcendence. Pieper approvingly cites a critique of capitalism from the article on “Socialism” in the Staatslexikon [State encyclopedia, col. 1690]: “The overall attitude of a capitalist age allows for no ultimate [jenseitige] integration of societal life, whether in the Socialist or the bourgeois sense.” Pieper calls this thesis, which dialectically relates bourgeois-capitalist society and Bolshevism, ingenious, and he cites the following passage: “Bolshevism is at once a creation of bourgeois society and a judgment on it. It shows where [bourgeois society] leads when the implicit worldview of the entire bourgeois age is really taken seriously.”72 71. Leopold von Wiese, Der Liberalismus in Vergangenheit und Zukunft, 234f., 242f. 72. Josef Pieper, Die Neuordnung der menschlichen Gesellschaft. Befreiung des Proletariats Berufsständische Gliederung. Systematische Einführung in die Enzyklika ‘Quadragesimo anno’ (1932), 100. He is citing Waldemar Gurian, Der Bolschewismus. Einführung in Geschichte und Lehre, 192. Pieper speaks of Gurian in his “autobiographical reminiscences” of 1997. Gurian was the reviewer of Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln who judged the work to be “implicitly anti-totalitarian.” The National Socialists therefore forebade a new edition. See Josef Pieper, “Dreimal ‘Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln’. Eine autobiographische Reminiszenz,” 699f. At the conclusion of a review offered unsuccessfully to Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Ferdinand Tönnies described Pieper’s Grundformen as one of the

114  Hermann Braun Under these circumstances, he judged, the Weimar democracy had no chance. The National Socialist state seemed—in the abstract, and on the level of ideological conflict—to be the alternative that would save the situation, or at least it seemed to be the lesser evil. This could explain how one might expect that the authority of the Church’s social teaching, which is based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, would find opportunities for collaboration in the new authoritarian state. Nothing is gained, however, by understanding how humanitarian and astute thinkers could have been so mistaken. But there is another voice that was raised in Münster. Dr. Edith Stein, who was as familiar with Thomas Aquinas as she was with the phenomenology of her teacher Edmund Husserl and the existential ontology of his student Martin Heidegger, was appointed lecturer at the German Institute for Pedagogical Science in Münster in the summer term of 1932. In early April 1933 she wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI.73 Holy Father! As a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church, I dare to speak to the Father of Christendom about that which oppresses millions of Germans. . . . For weeks we have seen deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity, not to mention love of neighbor. For years the leaders of National Socialism have been most “serious contributions” to date in pure or theoretical sociology. I am grateful to Dr. Jürgen Zander for his friendly help and for the chance to view the text at the Schleswig-Holsteinischen Landesbibliothek in Kiel. The review will appear in volume 23.2 of the Tönnies-Gesamtausgabe (Berlin: De Gruyter). 73. The letter, thought to be lost, was published in the journal Stimmen der Zeit in March 2003, 147–50, along with an introduction by the head of the Edith Stein Archives in Cologne, Sister Maria Amata Meyer, O.C.D. The Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung had already published an excerpt from the letter on February 20, 2003. A while after she wrote the letter, Edith Stein received from the pope a formal letter bestowing his blessing on her and her relatives. On August 2, 1942, Edith Stein, who as a Carmelite took the name Sr. Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (April 15, 1934), was arrested at the Carmel of Echt in the Netherlands, and a short time later was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. On May 1, 1987, John Paul II declared her Blessed, and on October 11, 1998, he canonized her.

Early Sociological Writings  115 preaching hatred of the Jews. Now that they have seized the power of government and armed their followers, among them certifiably criminal elements, this seed of hatred has sprouted. The government has only recently admitted that excesses have occurred. To what extent, we cannot tell, because public opinion is being gagged. However, judging by what I have learned from personal relations, it is by no means a matter of singular exceptional cases. Under pressure from reactions abroad, the government has turned to “milder” methods. It has issued the watchword “no Jew shall have even one hair on his head harmed.” But through boycott measures—by robbing people of their livelihood, civic honor and fatherland—it drives many to desperation; within the last week, through private reports I was informed of five cases of suicide as a consequence of these hostilities. I am convinced that this is a universal phenomenon which will claim many more victims.74

Why does this voice, whose analysis of the situation and prognosis hit the truth so precisely, seem to us to come from another world? The question remains painfully relevant. I do not have an answer that could silence this question. 74. Translated from the German jointly by Suzanne Batzdorff, a niece of Edith Stein, Sr. Josephine Koeppel, the translator of her autobiographical writings, and John Sullivan, editor of the collected works of Edith Stein. The letter to the pope is also published (in facsimile) in the book by Elisabeth Lammers, Als die Zukunft nach offen war, 110–18.

5

Josef Pieper and the Ethics of Virtue

o

Thomas S. Hibbs

Perhaps no alteration in the landscape of Anglo-American philosophy in the last thirty years has been more surprising, more sustained, and more fruitful than the resurgence of interest in the ethics of virtue. Most discussions of the history of twentieth-century moral philosophy trace the return of virtue to Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay from the late 1950s, “Modern Moral Philosophy.”1 A jeremiad against Kantian and utilitarian ethical theories, Anscombe’s essay urged that, given the present state of philosophical ethics—with its incoherent conceptions of obligation, its lack both of terminological clarity and of an adequate philosophical psychology—we should banish ethics totally from our minds.2 She hinted, but only hinted, at the possibility that an adequate moral philosophy might be resurrected from Aristotle, a suggestion that was to be enthu1. See Elizabeth Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy.” 2. See ibidem, 26.

116

The Ethics of Virtue  117 siastically embraced by later proponents of virtue, most notably by Alasdair MacIntyre in his influential After Virtue.3 In the 1930s, much earlier than Anscombe’s essay and in complete independence from the debates in Anglo-American ethics, the German Catholic Josef Pieper began a series of investigations in the cardinal and theological virtues.4 His writings on the virtues, found in a variety of his works but especially in his collections entitled The Cardinal Virtues and Faith, Hope, Love, pre-date the AngloAmerican rehabilitation of virtue and anticipate many of its central tenets. In what follows, we will examine both what Pieper has to say about the virtues and what he might have to contribute to contemporary debate.

1. Casuistic and the Virtue of Prudence Echoing Garrigou-Lagrange’s complaint that theologians had exercised a “quasi-suppression of the treatise on prudence,”5 Pieper proceeds to argue that a retrieval of prudence is necessary for an authentically Catholic understanding of the ethical life. The casuistical moral theology of the day, with its onerous list of prohibitions, had become a “science of sins instead of a doctrine of virtues, or of a theory of the Christian idea of man.”6 Pieper’s corrective has especially to do with a reassertion of the primacy of prudence: “The first of the cardinal virtues is not only the quintessence of ethical maturity, but in so being is also the quintessence of moral freedom.”7 3. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 4. For the history of his writing on the various virtues, see his autobiography, No One Could Have Known. See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. The other texts of Pieper that we shall be citing in this essay are Faith, Hope, Love; Leisure—The Basis of Culture and Hope and History. For a discussion of Pieper and virtue very much compatible with the perspective of this essay, see Gilbert Meilaender’s “Josef Pieper: Explorations in the Thought of a Philosopher of Virtue.” Also see Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope, and Berthold Wald, “Abendländische Tugendlehre und moderne Moralphilosophie.” 5. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Prudence, 6 [4]. 6. Ibidem, 30 [32]. 7. Ibidem, 31 [33].

118  Thomas S. Hibbs In his critique of excessive reliance on casuistry, Pieper adduces objections against an exclusively rule-based morality, objections that have now become commonplace in the literature of virtue ethics. The basic flaw in a rule-based system is that it is too far removed from the concrete circumstance of action. It relies too heavily on a deductive model of reason that begins and ends in universals. The deductive model disregards the distinctive object and term of practical reasoning: the concrete, singular action. Between universal and singular, the perception and judgment of the agent must intervene in decisive, non-rule-governed ways. The agent must be able to discern what is salient in the circumstance, and this involves not only measuring this experience against previous experiences (hence the crucial role of memory in prudence) but also an awareness of what is novel and of how to interpret that novelty. If rules are to be brought to bear on the singular, the agent must judge which rules are relevant and, if there are multiple rules, apparently in conflict, the agent must decide which rules apply and how. If we are to invoke further rules to cover the interpretation of ambiguous cases or cases where relevant rules seem to conflict, we invite an infinite regress of rules and moral paralysis. Moreover, the casuistical model replaces the virtues of perception, deliberation, and judgment (which can be possessed and exercised only by an individual agent) with an abstract decision procedure. All of this appears to make the agent superfluous and the irreducibly singular action merely an instantiation of a universal.8 Tracing the attraction of casuistry to the understandable, but misplaced, desire for “certainty and security,” Pieper holds that to overvalue casuistry is to “confound model and reality” and to misunderstand the “meaning and rank of the virtue of prudence.”9 Casuistical guidelines can 8. For a succinct statement of the problems with grounding choice in a decision theory, see Joel Kupperman, Character, 67–89. 9. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Prudence, 26–27 [27].

The Ethics of Virtue  119 never take hold of a real and whole “here and now” for the reason that only a person really engaged in decision experiences (can experience) the concrete situation with its need for concrete action. . . . The guarantee of the goodness of concrete human action is given solely by the virtue of prudence.10

The virtue of practical wisdom, prudence, is possessed only by the mature and experienced character, who has the capacity to discern, deliberate, and judge of concrete singulars. One of the chief obstacles to recovering prudence is that we now tend to identify the prudent person with the “clever tactician,” who devises stratagems to “shun danger” and “avoid commitment.”11 In fact, Aquinas would call this astutia, or cunning, the false prudence of the vicious. Since practical reasoning is either assisted or impeded by the passions that sensible singulars arouse in us, prudence requires the proper education and transformation of the passions by the moral virtues. So it is not surprising that unchastity, which divides the soul against itself and renders it thoughtless and indecisive,12 would be cited as a vice corruptive of prudence. But what about covetousness, which is also cited as corruptive of prudence? In the hitherto unsuspected link between covetousness and imprudence, Pieper observes, there is “suddenly revealed a connection between various trains of ideas which previously seemed to have no connection.”13 Following Gregory the Great, Pieper understands covetousness as “immoderate straining for all the possessions which man thinks are needed to assure his own importance and status.”14 In a gloss that displays Pieper’s gift for tracing the subtle and intricate connections between a host of virtues, he writes: how impossible the informed and receptive silence of the subject before the truth of real things, how impossible just estimate and decision 10. Ibidem, 28 [29]. 12. See ibidem, 19 [17–18]. 14. Ibidem, 21 [20].

11. Ibidem, 4–5 [3]. 13. Ibidem, 21 [19].

120  Thomas S. Hibbs is, without a youthful spirit of brave trust and . . . a reckless tossing away of anxious self-preservation . . . how utterly, therefore, the virtue of prudence is dependent upon the constant readiness to ignore the self, the limberness of real humility and objectivity.15

In many ways, then, the virtue of prudence is the antithesis of our common, contemporary understanding of prudence as a calculative guarding of the self and its projects.

2. Ethics of Natural Law and the Virtue of Prudence So far, Pieper’s account of the virtues, especially of prudence, fits rather nicely with the contemporary revival of virtue. Yet, in contrast to most contemporary proponents of the virtues, Pieper does not see any necessary incompatibility between an ethics of virtue and an ethics of natural law. One reason that Pieper sees no difficulty in combining law and virtue is that they have a common source: natural inclination. Still, one might object that a hierarchy of natural ends can provide no more than a remote and flexible guide to prudential deliberation and that to demand more is to constrict the operation of prudence to the crude and mechanical subsumption of singulars under general cases. Is Pieper’s position vulnerable to these objections? Prudence does indeed mediate between universal and particular. Pieper quotes Aquinas, “It is necessary for the prudent man to know both the universal principles of reason and the singulars with which ethical action is concerned.”16 But there is no neat deductive process from the first principles of the natural law to concrete decisions. The certitude of prudence, moreover, is not equivalent to that achievable in theoretical disciplines; it can never be so great as to completely remove all uncertainty.17 Nonetheless, the influence of 15. Ibidem, 21 [20]. 16. Ibidem, 10 [8], quoting Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 4, a. 7 ad 3. 17. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Prudence, 18 [16].

The Ethics of Virtue  121 universal, negative precepts plays a crucial, if quite limited, role in the moral life. These precepts might be said to circumscribe the parameters of the moral life, to note the boundaries beyond which acts cannot be described as actually perfective of the human agent.18 The attention to intolerable acts provides Pieper’s account with the resources to respond to a recent objection to virtue ethics. The objection is put concisely by Robert Louden in the essay “On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics,” where he contends that the “strong agent orientation”19 of virtue ethics neglects the importance of acts. Louden’s objection is twofold. First, he argues that the question “What sort of person ought I to be?” cannot be isolated from another question “What ought I to do?”20 Unless the latter is answered in some detail, we shall be left with vague models of virtue and no clear pedagogy for how to become virtuous. The link, moreover, between behavior and character would seem to demand that virtue ethics be more forthcoming about virtuous acts. A pedagogy that details acts to be avoided or pursued is certainly necessary, but even here the virtue ethicist insists that what is needed is not so much abstract rules as a teacher who can discern what this individual needs to do in order to overcome this vice or foster that virtue. Virtue ethics, furthermore, can go only so far in the direction of a table of acts, since its bedrock thesis is that judgment in the concrete rests with the individual of mature character, not with a catalogue of rules. Second, Louden thinks that the agent orientation overlooks “intolerable acts . . . types of action which produce harms of such magnitude that they destroy the bonds of the community and render (at least temporarily) the achievement of moral goods impossible.”21 In this passage, Louden echoes MacIntyre’s claim from After Virtue 18. The best account of the natural law in these terms can be found in Ralph McInerny’s Ethica Thomistica, 35–59. 19. Robert Louden, “On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics,” 204. 20. Ibidem, 205. 21. Ibidem, 207.

122  Thomas S. Hibbs that on an Aristotelian view the list and ranking of the virtues must be complemented by a table of intolerable acts, acts whose performance precludes one’s pursuit of the goods common to a community. But Louden proceeds in an unAristotelian manner to split virtuous action into good intentions and right doing. The good/right split is an invention of modernity. The agent orientation, clearly operative in Pieper’s grounding of the virtues in a proper understanding of the human person, need not obscure from view the importance of heinous acts. Instead, it grounds its code of intolerable acts in the agent’s orientation to the good: certain acts can never be perfective of the agent, that is, can never be virtuous acts. Now it might seem from this that the grounding of natural law precepts is entirely self-regarding, but this would contravene the obvious fact that what is wrong with murder or lying is not so much the harm it does to the agent but the harm done to the victim. Of course, it is a central tenet of the classical tradition of the virtues that vicious acts are harmful to the perpetrator of them. But is it possible to reduce the harm or the evil to that suffered by the agent? Surely not. To do so would be incoherent and morally offensive. To see that this is not Pieper’s position, we need to attend to his account of the virtue of justice, a much-neglected virtue in contemporary discussions.

3. Virtue of Justice Worries such as those voiced by Louden about the excessive agent-orienation of virtue ethics diminish when one turns to the virtue of justice, which is defined as the good of another (bonum alterius). Of all the cardinal virtues, only justice has built into its very definition an essential relation to others; its neglect in the contemporary recovery of virtue is perplexing, especially given the prominence virtue ethics accords to human beings as social and communal animals. In contrast to the other moral virtues, where the

The Ethics of Virtue  123 mean is directly relative to the character of the agent, the “due” or mean of justice does not reside in the subjective disposition of the agent; it consists rather in the external act, in the effect on another. The proper matter of the virtue of justice is “external operations and things”; justice seeks to secure a proportionate equality between external things and persons so that what is bestowed will correspond to merit. The precepts of justice especially concern those matters without which human society cannot be preserved; thus they prohibit heinous acts against our fellow-citizens, for example, murder and theft. To this extent and in this respect, Aquinas can accommodate Jerome Schneewind’s understanding of modern natural law, with its insistence on perfect duties, which must “be carried out if society is to exist at all,”22 which are susceptible to codification, and whose performance is obligatory regardless of one’s internal motivation. Where Aquinas would depart from modern natural law theory, at least as it is defended by Schneewind in his attack on virtue ethics, is in its claim that “the man who regularly carries out all his perfect duties is a just man even if he dislikes acting justly.”23 To be said to possess the virtue of justice it is insufficient, although it is necessary, to fulfill the “due”; to be called “just” one must rejoice in just deeds, that is, perform them from a character that is just.24 Human law concerns itself directly with the external act but indirectly with virtue, without some modicum of which the performance of the external acts of justice is unlikely to endure. Of course, there is a more fundamental disagreement between 22. Jerome Schneewind, “The Misfortunes of Virtue,” 186. 23. Ibidem, 186. 24. It is not surprising, then, that Aquinas’s only sustained discussion of the list of prohibited acts occurs in his examination of the virtue of justice. While Aquinas introduces the topic of the natural in the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae, he postpones detailed examination of cases (for example, whether killing in selfdefense is murder or whether taking from another what one needs in circumstances of dire necessity counts as theft) until the secunda secundae, and there he subsumes it within a broader consideration of virtue.

124  Thomas S. Hibbs Pieper and the dominant strains of modern legal theory, which latter takes its point of departure from a contractual conception of justice. If the ultimate basis of justice were merely contractual, justice would be coextensive with conventional agreements. There would be no natural justice. For Pieper, by contrast, the standard in light of which something is called “just” precedes contractual arrangements and is derived from human nature. Thus the exemplar of justice is not, pace Rawls, the unencumbered and unsituated self, located behind a veil of ignorance. Instead, the just individual must have a knowledge of his place and the places of other rational beings within the natural order. Of all animals, only human beings are masters of their own actions who must be treated as ends in themselves. This Kantian-sounding language does not imply the related Kantian theses about (a) the autonomy of our rational capacity from the order of nature, or (b) dichotomies between duty and happiness, morality and inclination, egoism and altruism. The latter oppositions are foreign to the Thomism of Pieper, for whom natural inclination, which is not to be confused with my present feelings, likes or dislikes, accords with reason. Although we are self-directing and masters of own acts, we are not autonomous. Instead we are “ruled rulers,” participants in the orders of nature and providence not of our own devising. The other important divergence from Kant has to do with the rational good, which, according to Aquinas, attracts or draws the will. Desire itself cannot be a source of heteronomy, since the will is the “primary sort of desire.” Happiness, which is principally an activity, is hardly egoistic. The attention of the agent is not on her enjoyment but on the activity itself. As a good, indeed the chief good, happiness is diffusive of itself (diffusivum sui). It may seem odd, even unsettling, to juxtapose justice with the notion of the good as diffusive. The diffusiveness of the good is palpable in Aquinas’s enumeration of the debts we owe to God, country, parents, and those who exercise offices of dignity in the community. Some of these debts can never be fully repaid and all of

The Ethics of Virtue  125 them are incurred prior to and without an individual’s conscious consent. At the heart of the Thomistic account of justice is the paradox of a debt that cannot be fully repaid, the virtuous response to which is gratitude, liberality, and hospitality. Pieper writes, The just man, who . . . realizes that his very being is a gift, and that he is heavily indebted before God and man, is also the man willing to give where there is no strict obligation. He will be willing to give another man something no one can compel him to give.25

Pieper’s analysis of justice thus underscores its preeminent status among the cardinal virtues. Justice is the “human good”; the possession of the virtue of justice renders the agent perfect not only in the powers of his soul but also in his relationship to others. The need for justice to be accompanied by a host of other virtues also underscores the limits to justice. In this, Pieper anticipates many of the contentions of contemporary communitarians and feminists about the “need for more than justice.”26

4. Virtue of Courage The nesting of justice within a host of other virtues evinces the precise scope and limits of justice. Yet justice must continue to exercise a directive and regulatory role with respect to other moral virtues, especially courage, whose problematic status is evident from Ambrose’s injunction that “courage must not trust to itself.”27 Apart from an understanding of the aim and purpose of human life, courage (or to be more exact its false image, boldness) is likely to exalt itself above the rest of the virtues and to identify excellence

25. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Justice, 111 [110]. 26. See, for example, Annette Baier’s “What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?” The more deeply we probe the Thomistic account of the virtue of justice, the more we see that it is at odds with both the communitarian and the liberal points of view. 27. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Fortitude, 122 [118].

126  Thomas S. Hibbs with confronting situations of risk and danger. From the swaggering gesture of the street-smart thug to the nihilist’s celebration of enduring the despair of life’s meaninglessness, courage is reduced to struggle as an end in itself. Pieper grants that courage is a virtue necessary to human beings precisely because we are vulnerable to an array of assaults, not the least of which is the abiding threat of death. Indeed, he states bluntly that “all fortitude has reference to death.”28 Still, the degree of virtue corresponds not so much to the extent of the danger confronted or the effort expended as to the end or rational good that courage defends and succors. Courage does not eliminate fear, but rather tempers and subordinates it to the pursuit of a higher good. The key question for courage is—what end or good, that is, what conception of justice, informs its exercise? Through the “virtue of justice . . . the good of reason becomes transformed into actual existence. . . . Fortitude, by itself, is not the primary realization of the good. But fortitude protects the realization or clears the road for it.”29 Exemplars of courage, accordingly, will vary depending on the different conception of the end or good of human life. Aristotle, for instance, cites the warrior in battle, while Aquinas adduces the martyr as the chief example of courage. In either case, courage would seem to present a difficulty for any account of the virtues that links virtue to happiness and depicts the activity of virtue as inherently pleasant. Aquinas does not avoid the problem. The consolation of knowing one is dying for one’s country or even for God does not eliminate suffering. The “pain of martyrdom,” he writes, “can obscure even the spiritual joy in an act pleasing to God, ‘unless the overflowing grace of God lifts the soul with exceeding strength to things divine.’  ”30 Courage is never passive, and its most obvious form of activity consists in attacking threats to the good; the virtue of righteous an28. Ibidem, 117 [114]. 29. Ibidem, 125 [121]. 30. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae II-II, q. 123, a. 8) quoted in Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Fortitude, 119 [115].

The Ethics of Virtue  127 ger requires that we pounce upon evil.31 Still, the encounter with evil forces that seem overwhelming calls forth the highest form of courage—endurance, which is not resignation but active and vigorous clinging to the good in the face of seemingly insurmountable opposition. More so than Aristotle, Aquinas accentuates the internal disposition of endurance over that of external attack against the enemy. Courage is thus related both to patience, which allows us to have serenity in the experience of what thwarts our enjoyment of the good, and to hope, a theological virtue to which we shall turn shortly. Pieper comments: Not because (and this cannot be sufficiently stressed) patience and endurance are in themselves better and more perfect than attack and selfconfidence, but because, in the world as it is constituted, it is only in the supreme test, which leaves no other possibility of resistance than endurance, that the inmost and deepest strength of man reveals itself.32

Indeed, Pieper makes much of Aquinas’s hierarchical ranking of types of fortitude. We have already discussed political fortitude, which enables one to act for the common good of the city, and we now touch on purgatorial fortitude, whereby the Christian endures a purification of soul. Martydom is not the only example of this; in fact, every Christian experiences some of this, perhaps especially the mystic who endures what John of the Cross calls the “dark night” of the soul. But purgatorial courage is not an end in itself; it is rather the means whereby we achieve a higher sort of courage, the fortitude of the purified soul. Thus, the hope for victory permeates purgatorial courage.33 It is instructive to note that Pieper composed his treatise on 31. Pieper adopts Aquinas’s gloss on Christ’s counsel to “turn the other cheek.” Aquinas argues that if Christ meant for us to remain passive in the face of all physical opposition, he would not have complained to those who beat him during his passion, “Why hit me?” Instead, turning the other cheek means that we should willingly bear necessary and unavoidable evils without bitterness. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtue. Fortitudes, 132 [128]. Thomas Aquinas, Lectura super Ioannem, 18, lect. 4, 2. 32. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Fortitude, 130 [126]. 33. See ibidem, 141 [135].

128  Thomas S. Hibbs courage during the reign of the Nazis. But his highlighting, in ways foreign to neo-scholasticism, of the superiority of clinging to the good over attacking an enemy and his exaltation of purgatorial fortitude as submission to the transforming fire of divine grace, mark the distance between his understanding and any association of courage with a will to power.

5. Virtue of Temperance The last of the virtues addressed by Pieper in The Cardinal Virtues is temperance, whose misunderstanding in contemporary society is akin to that of prudence. It is commonly associated with moderation, a bland quantitative avoidance of excess, and a fear of exuberance. According to Pieper, temperance is the virtue most intimately concerned with the integrity of the self, with the disposition of the parts of the self in a unified whole. Just as with courage, so too with temperance, the mark of its presence is not so much deprivation or denial but the good that it nourishes. The good of virginity, for Aquinas, consists not in the sacrifice itself but in that to which the sacrifice is ordered: consecration of oneself completely to God. Pieper quotes a telling remark from Augustine: “  ‘I, as a celibate, am not thereby better than Abraham.’  ”34 Even apart from these religious examples of temperance, there are numerous natural counsels regarding this virtue. Fasting detaches from inordinate attachment to food, which dulls our appreciation of the beauty of created things. Self-denial in regard to bodily good restores cheerfulness of heart (hilaritas mentis). The identification of intemperance as a vice that erodes prudence reinforces the link between temperance and perception: unchaste abandon and the self-surrender of the soul to the world of sensuality paralyzes the primordial powers of the moral person: the ability to 34. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Temperance, 178 [172].

The Ethics of Virtue  129 perceive, in silence, the call of reality, and to make, in the retreat of this silence, the decision appropriate to the concrete situation.35

In Pieper’s discussion of chastity, there is not the least hint of a Manichean denigration of the body. Not sex itself or even its pleasure, but the selfish instrumentalizing of the object of one’s sexual gratification is the mark of unchastity. The problem with habitual vice in sexual matters is not so much that it distracts, frustrates, or subverts reason, thus creating a division in the soul between passion and reason. Other, more insidious possibilities may emerge. One possibility is that immersion in sensual pleasure dissipates the powers of the soul and flattens its relationship to the world and people. Intemperance generates not active rebellion against the good but indifference, dissipation, “lazy inertia.”36 Another possibility is that vice puts reason at the service of its own aims, thereby entangling and implicating reason in its ignoble projects. Aquinas’s statement is apt: “There is not much sinning because of natural desires. . . . But the stimuli of desire which man’s cunning has devised”37 lead to much sinning. The intemperate craving for seeing, touching, and experiencing conjoins and corrupts reason and passion, soul and body. Following Aristotle, Aquinas draws analogies between touching and knowing and claims that a greater cognitive power accompanies the better sense of touch.38 Independently of Aristotle and in reliance on Augustine, Aquinas speaks of the vice of inordinate seeking after knowledge (curiositas) and the virtue of proper and ordered zeal in the pursuit of knowledge (studiositas). The symptoms of curiosity include a roaming unrest of the spirit (evagatio mentis), whose extreme form is “complete rootlessness.”39

35. Ibidem, 160 [154]. 36. Ibidem, 197 [189]. 37. Ibidem, 173 [166]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 142, a. 2, ad 2. 38. Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Temperance, 186 [179]. 39. Ibidem, 201 [192].

130  Thomas S. Hibbs It may mean that man has lost his capacity for living with himself; that, in flight from himself, nauseated and bored by the void of an interior life gutted by despair, he is seeking with selfish anxiety and on a thousand futile paths.40

Wisdom, as Nietzsche says, puts limits to knowledge.41 Far from limiting the scope and function of temperance to the curbing of this or that sensitive impulse, Aquinas relates temperance “to the root of the whole sensual-intellectual life.”42 Compared with Pieper’s fertile probing of the significance of temperance, how barren is the generic, contemporary understanding of temperance, which leaves us with but a simulacrum of the virtue? Pieper’s exposition confirms at least a portion of a controversial thesis of Alasdair MacIntyre, who has repeatedly made the argument that there is not one doctrine of virtue but many doctrines of virtues.43 In specific accounts of the virtues as taught and lived, there are likely to be disagreements not only about the list of virtues, what is included and what excluded, but also about the rank and relative importance attached to particular virtues. Even where the same virtue is cited in two contexts, there need not be agreement about the nature and function of the virtue. In one essay, MacIntyre singles out an unlikely virtue for comparative analysis, sophrosyne or temperance.44 This is an unlikely choice because one would expect substantive disagreements to emerge more clearly over virtues like justice or courage. And yet, Pieper’s own analysis of temperance confirms MacIntyre’s claim about the specificity of any rich account of the virtues. 40. Ibidem, 201 [192]. 41. Ibidem, 198 [190]. 42. Ibidem, 187 [180]. 43. I say “one portion” of MacIntyre’s thesis because, at least in his early writings, those leading up to and including After Virtue, MacIntyre advocates a thoroughly historicist take on the virtues and repudiates what he calls Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology.” He has since reconsidered and revised his position. See Dependent Rational Animals. 44. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Sophrosune: How a Virtue Can Become Socially Disruptive.”

The Ethics of Virtue  131 Of course, neither Aquinas nor Pieper aims to present an idiosyncratic picture of the virtues. They strive to depict the virtues proper to human nature, virtues that are constitutive of the human good. But they do not reach an account of the virtues proper to human beings by filtering out what is controversial in order to arrive at a human condition accessible to anyone, anywhere, regardless of education or training. The goal is not to unveil the least common denominator in the human understanding of the good, whether that be the avoidance of violent death (Hobbes) or the pursuit of property (Locke).45 Whereas some modern authors repudiate the pursuit of the ultimate end of human life as futile, Pieper grounds each of the virtues in a teleological conception. No virtue is intelligible apart from its relation to the end or rational good to which it contributes and which it partially constitutes. Precisely because there are competing accounts of the virtues and because any generic account is misleadingly shallow, Pieper typically begins with a critique of misunderstandings of the virtue in question, misconceptions operative either within the current culture or within a rival philosophical school.46

6. Virtue of Faith Pieper situates his reflections on the virtues within a particular philosophical and theological tradition. Although in all of his investigations, even those concerning the theological virtues, he adopts the posture of the philosopher, theological data and insights inform his analyses.47 Thus he examines the relationship between pru45. On the modern recoiling from nature, see Pierre Manent, The City of Man. 46. Thus does Pieper’s approach confirm a related thesis of MacIntyre, namely, that the ethics of the virtues have sufficient substantive power to marshal a critique of existing mores, that they need not be seen as exclusively conservative, and that in some political settings certain conceptions of the virtues may be unavoidably revolutionary. 47. For a precise description of how he understands philosophy and theology,

132  Thomas S. Hibbs dence and charity, and the difference between pagan and Christian models of courage; he uses virginity and celibacy as examples of temperance. As we have seen most explicitly in the discussion of justice, Pieper’s account of the virtues begins from, and returns repeatedly to, the primordial truth about human beings, namely, that they are creatures. Our very existence is a gift of the transcendent Creator God who is active in history and who has so orchestrated the drama of creation and redemption that we are destined for union with Him. Given all this, any account of the virtues would be woefully incomplete without attention to the theological virtues. As we turn to faith, hope, and love, and take them, as Pieper himself does, one after another, we would do well to keep in mind the classical thesis of the unity of the virtues. Aquinas writes: “The theological virtues flow back upon themselves in a sacred circle; one who is led to love by hope has thereafter a more perfect hope, just as he also believes now more strongly than before.”48 Aquinas will similarly insist on the unity of the natural and the infused virtues, which strengthen and illumine one another. Accordingly, Pieper’s investigation of the theological virtue of faith includes an examination the role of faith or trust in the exercise of natural reason. Aristotle’s statement that “to learn one must believe”49 is the epigraph to the study of faith. In probing the theological virtue of faith, Pieper does not address properly theological issues such as the content or doctrine of faith or the operation of grace infusing virtue into the soul of the believer. Instead, he focuses on the nature of the act of believing and its problematic relationship to the nature of man. Faith has two dimensions: a belief about something and a belief see Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 57ff. and The Philosophical Act. See also Bernard N. Schumacher’s contribution to this volume. 48. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Hope, 104 [267]. Thomas Aquinas, De Spe, 3 ad 1 in Quaestiones disputata De potentia. 49. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 13 [198]. Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations, 165b3.

The Ethics of Virtue  133 in someone, the witness or possessor of knowledge.50 In the case of religious faith, these two dimensions coalesce; God is both the one trusted and the one about whom we believe something. Faith is a type of personal knowledge, the goal of which is “communion with the eye witness,” a “participation in the knowledge of the knower.”51 The nature of faith raises the question of whether and why human beings should find themselves in such a state of dependence. Such questions cannot be answered by abstract analyses of the rationality of belief, but must be addressed by reference to man’s true nature.52 Pieper concedes that an “intellect bent on critical autonomy will take such a course only with reluctance.”53 And he warns believers against quickly branding such a person as arrogant; instead, he urges a deeper probing of the existential situation of man. Drawing upon Blaise Pascal and John Henry Newman, Pieper suggests that someone eager for the whole “vital truth”54 will omit nothing in his search. Where there is no possibility of direct knowledge, as is the case with the ultimate good, the bonum ineffabile, the individual is left with an either/or: either no access or knowledge through hearing, through faith in testimony.55 Again Aquinas, “Under otherwise similar conditions, seeing is surer than hearing; but if the one from whom we learn something by hearing is capable of grasping far more than we could obtain by seeing for ourselves, then hearing is surer than seeing.”56 Since faith is technically defined as thinking with assent, it involves mental investigation and probing. Instead of giving us rest, it incites us to greater intellectual activity. Faith is not just a path toward understanding; it also involves some apprehension of truth in its very act. Pieper quotes Aquinas: “Man could not believingly assent to any proposition if he did not in some way understand 50. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 29–31 [209–11]. 51. Ibidem, 42 [219]. 52. See ibidem, 59–60 [233–34]. 53. Ibidem, 65 [238–39]. 54. Ibidem, 65 [238]. 55. See ibidem, 43–45 [220–22]. 56. Ibidem, 44 [220]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 4, a. 8, ad 2.

134  Thomas S. Hibbs it.”57 If God were, as some philosophers and theologians insist, “absolutely other,” the involvement of the intellect at all in the act of faith would be rendered otiose. One of the chief analogies between human and divine on which Christian theologians have insisted concerns the scriptural and credal claim that God is a personal being. Thus, although faith is a matter of accepting a number of propositions on trust, it is fundamentally and ultimately about sharing in the life of a personal God. The key question concerning the nature and possibility of divine revelation is “how do you perceive a person?” Pieper remarks pointedly, “If God is conceived as a personal Being, as a Someone rather than a something, and a Someone who can speak, then there is no safety from—revelation.”58

7. Virtue of Hope The gap between faith and vision undercores the future-oriented character of the Christian life. We are wanderers or wayfarers: this is the “core of our creaturely existence.”59 The general object of hope is a difficult future good (bonum arduum futurum). The need for hope signifies both our “absence of fulfillment”—our “proximity to nothingness”—and our “orientation to fulfillment.”60 As a virtue, hope stands between the twin vices of despair and presumption.61 It is thus related to the virtues of magnanimity, which urges us to pursue difficult goods, and humility, which counsels us not to claim as our autonomous possession goods that exceed our capacity or merit. Once again, Pieper displays the remarkable interconnection among the virtues. Indeed, Pieper’s consideration of hope as a virtue that speaks to the character of our temporal existence 57. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 25 [205]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 8, a. 8, ad 2. 58. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 61 [235]. 59. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Hope, 92 [258]. 60. Ibidem, 93 [259]. 61. See ibidem, 113 f. [274 f.].

The Ethics of Virtue  135 evinces the link between hope and all the virtues. Since the ultimate good is hidden, we are, as practitioners of the virtues, ordered in a certain direction, pursuing a telos, but not yet in possession of it. We are situated between presumption and despair. Although presumption is a “false similitude of hope” and involves a “perverse security,”62 despair is the greater vice. The former, while dangerous, retains a simulacrum of the virtue of hope, whereas the latter abandons the power of divine grace altogether. The consequence of the loss of hope is an atrophying of the soul, the inner man. Aquinas notes that “natural hope” accompanies youth, for whom “the future is long and the past is short.”63 Supernatural hope gives eternal youth, “that strong-hearted freshness, that resilient joy, that steady perseverance in trust that so distinguish the young and make them lovable.”64 God, as Augustine says, is “younger than all else.”65 Although Pieper does not make the connection, we cannot help but notice one between hopelessness and intemperance. One of the symptoms of the latter is restlessness and dissipation of the soul. The relevant vice is sloth (acedia), which is the root of despair or hopelessness. Given our commitment to work and exercise, it would seem that we are acutely aware of, and on guard against, the vice of sloth. Yet the spirit-numbing activity of ceaseless work and the exaltation of the body may actually contribute to sloth, whose classical meaning is despair of the divine good, a failure to take delight in true leisure and divine worship. Sloth exhibits a “perverted humility” that wishes to be left alone by God rather than to undertake the demanding task of becoming what by nature and divine grace we are called to be.66

62. Ibidem, 124–25 [283–84]. 63. Ibidem, 110 [272]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, 40, 6. 64. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Hope, 111 [273]. 65. Ibidem, 111 [273]. Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, Book VIII, 26, 48. 66. See Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Hope, 117–20 [278–81].

136  Thomas S. Hibbs

8. Virtue of Love It is striking how often and in how many contexts Pieper recurs to acedia as a threat to the virtues and as the vice of our time. It even occurs in the discussion of love where, following Kierkegaard, acedia is defined as a “despair of weakness” that seeks to “escape the demands of love.”67 It is precisely love’s transforming power that informs the entire discussion of the virtue of love. This distinct note can be found in Pieper’s initial observations on the way Aquinas improves upon Aristotle’s definition of love as “wishing another well for his own sake.”68 Aquinas adds that love is ordered to a “union of affection,”69 a transforming communion of lover and beloved.70 But the transforming power of love is most palpable in the examination of the relationship between eros and agape. The supposed opposition of eros to agape is a staple of the theological literature, especially among Protestant authors.71 We have already noted a philosophical version of this opposition in the purported contrast between duty and happiness, altruism and egoism. Contemporary virtue ethics puts this opposition into question. Most recently, Michael Slote has argued that the dominant modern ethical theories, utilitarianism and Kantianism, overemphasize other-regarding and neglect self-regarding traits of character. These theories make unreasonable demands upon agents and are, consequently, psychologically debilitating. Virtue ethics, by contrast, is more capacious; it includes self-regarding as well as other-regarding traits.72 It is also more integrating; self- and other-regarding virtues are more deeply intertwined than we typically acknowledge, in part because we are in the grips of Kantian assumptions. Slote him67. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 192 [339]. 68. Ibidem, 195 [341]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 27, a. 2, obj. 1. 69. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 196 [342]. 70. Ibidem. 71. Ibidem, 211–23 [355–64]. 72. See Michael Slote, From Morality to Virtue.

The Ethics of Virtue  137 self seems to remain in the grips of a common view of Christianity as anticipating the Kantian denigration of the agent. Pieper, though, in his reflection on eros and agape, aims to combat precisely such an impression. Pieper is concerned that the sharp opposition of eros to agape, of human to divine love, sets up a dichotomy between nature and grace, rendering one the enemy of the other. Thus eros would be “the diametrical opposite of Christian love.”73 As we have by now grown to expect, popular conceptions of eros, as of the virtues, have been be debased in various ways. The greatest evisceration of eros occurs in the post-Freudian understanding of eros as sexual stimulation or as a need that leads us toward others only so that we might devour their separateness and subordinate their existence to our wants. Pieper attempts to restore a proper understanding of eros as a “desire for full existence, for existential exaltation, for happiness and bliss.”74 His defense of eros, properly understood, against the objections of its Protestant detractors, recurs to the integrity and goodness of creation. One who comprehends man to the depths of his soul as creatura simultaneously knows that in the act of being created we are—without being asked and without even the possibility of being asked—shot toward our destination . . . a kind of gravitational impulse governs our desire for happiness. Nor can we have any power over this impulse because we ourselves are it.75

Thus, the denigration of eros risks reducing the creature, the very one to whom the commandment of love is issued, to nothing. Is eros, he asks, “strange”76 and foreign to agape? Or is it not the ground within which supernatural grace takes root and blossoms?77 As Aquinas is fond of noting, we are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. If “natural love (amor), or eros” were “not 73. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 216 [359]. 74. Ibidem, 234 [374]. 75. Ibidem, 235 [375]. 76. Ibidem, 216 [360]. 77. Ibidem, 216 [360].

138  Thomas S. Hibbs something good in itself, then caritas (agape) could not perfect it.”78 The difficulty with understanding eros has to do with its mediating and mediate status. It links the “lowest with the highest”79 and thus can be misunderstood in “two directions”;80 it can be divinized or beastialized. Reasonable worries about the abuses of eros should not, however, lead us to cut off all access to agape by the path of eros. If we do so, we shall end up beastializing eros, that is, subsuming it within sex as a merely bodily appetite. Sex itself will then be incapable of communicating anything about our humanity; it will become, as it is for Kant, mere appetite.81 The quest of eros for wholeness, beauty, and happiness cannot be fulfilled on eros’s own terms. Dare we speak of the perfection of eros by agape? “Perfection always includes transformation. And transformation necessarily means parting from what must be overcome and abandoned precisely for the sake of preserving identity in change.”82

9. Conclusion In the presentation of Pieper’s writings on the virtues, we have had occasion to note that his view of the virtues constitutes in itself a sort of anthropology, a conception of human nature, its good, and the means to its attainment. Without encompassing other philosophical disciplines or branches of theology, ethics for Pieper touches upon the whole of human life and inquiry. Nothing brings out this expansive conception of the ethical more than Pieper’s fertile reflections on the connections among philosophy, hope, and history, to which we shall briefly turn by way of conclusion. In what is perhaps his best known book, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, Pieper returns to acedia as the vice of the modern times. 78. Ibidem, 260 [396]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 60, a. 5. 79. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 260 [396]. 80. Ibidem, 261 [397]. 81. Ibidem, 249 [387]. 82. Ibidem, 280 [414].

The Ethics of Virtue  139 It underlies, he suggests, our immersion in work and our dismissive attitude toward activities that are other than productive or entertaining. In this way, the teleological ordering of human nature to the whole is denied and humanity is understood in purely functional terms. Rooted in our capacity for wonder, true leisure and contemplation rupture the world of “total work.”83 Notice how many of the themes from our discussion of the virtues come to the fore in this beautiful passage on wonder: The one who wonders is one who sets out on a journey. . . . Wonder is defined by Thomas in the Summa theologiae as the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to know. But along with not-knowing, and not-giving-up, wonder is also . . . joy, as Aristotle said. . . . In this juncture of Yes and No is revealed the “built-in” hopefulness of wonder, the very structure of hope, which is peculiar to the philosopher and to human existence in general.84

The theme of hope also surfaces in the discussion of history, especially in Pieper’s dissection of modern claims concerning historical progress. In his book Hope and History,85 Pieper underscores the intimate connection in the modern thought between history and hope. Kant, for example, includes “what can I hope for?” among the most basic questions.86 Pieper concurs on the question’s importance but denies that history itself gives us any rational ground for belief in the inevitability of human progress. Pieper patiently examines, and finds wanting, a number of arguments on behalf of historical progress, construed as a movement toward a universal society of just relations among persons. Pieper concludes,

83. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 27–34 [20–25]. 84. Josef Pieper, The Philosophical Act, 106–7 [49]. 85. For more information on the notion of hope and history by Pieper see Josef Godfrey’s contribution to this volume and Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope. 86. Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 18 [380]. Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 9, 25.

140  Thomas S. Hibbs If earthly existence is pervasively structured toward what is “not yet in being,” and if a man, as a viator, is truly “on the way to” something right up to the moment of death, then this hope, which is identical with our very being itself, either is plainly absurd or finds its ultimate fulfillment on the other side of death.87

Modernity’s failure to fulfill the hopes that modernity itself, mimicking Christianity, has fostered in humanity generates forms and degrees of despair peculiar to modernity. Pieper’s response is to deny not so much the hope for universal justice but the secular answer and to insist that hope can be a real and vigorous virtue only if it is grounded in eternity, not in the flow of time. But does the turn to eternity not risk a denigration of limited, temporal goods? Pieper responds: “It is this identical, created reality here and now present before our eyes, whose fulfillment, in direct overcoming of death and catastrophe, we hope for as salvation.”88 Pieper’s previous comments, not just about hope, but also about eros, are pertinent here. To attain what it desires, eros must undergo a transformation, “passing through something akin to dying.”89 It is more than an “innocuous piety,” he concludes, for us to pray, “Kindle in us the fire of Thy love.”90 In these words, we see how Christian themes about nature as creature and grace as a path of redemptive suffering inform in decisive ways Pieper’s contribution to the contemporary ethics of virtue. So, two decades before Anscombe’s seminal, if schematic, essay, Josef Pieper developed an ethical vision of the virtues that simultaneously anticipated many of the central moves in Anglo-American virtue ethics and some of its chief deficiencies and internal debates. 87. Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 107 [436]. 88. Ibidem, 108 [437] 89. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 281 [414]. 90. Ibidem, 281 [414].

6

The Future of Pieper’s Hope and History

o Joseph J. Godfrey

In 1967, Joseph Pieper published the German edition of Hope and History; its first English translation came out two years later.1 Now, more than forty years later, how well does Pieper’s thought about hope and history hold up? Is it still a helpful treatise? In this essay I propose to take the measure of Pieper’s treatise in light of some later studies on hope and on history. Pieper wrote in response to the prospect of nuclear annihilation, in response to the publication of Ernst Bloch’s 1959 The Principle of Hope, and in response to the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that appeared in the 1960s. He turned to Catholic theological understandings of biblical apocalyptic literature to identify and underline some weaknesses in the thought of Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin. I will match my essay’s structure to that of Pieper’s argument. He surveyed then-contemporary thinkers, criticized them using some reli1. See Josef Pieper, Hope and History: Five Salzburg Lectures (1969). In this essay I will quote the translation by David Kipp (1994).

141

142  Joseph J. Godfrey gious sources, and offered reasons why drawing on these religious sources for his philosophical treatise is legitimate and important. I will review Pieper’s argument in Hope and History,2 offer some comments of my own on this work, compare his with recent treatments of hope and history both in works of Francis Fukuyama and Robert Wright, and in religious sources, namely, in a 1987 essay by the theologian Johann Baptist Metz, and in the 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church; I will then conclude with some assessment of the lasting importance of Pieper’s approach to hope and history. My main themes will be: noting the basis for the stance that religious analyses are superior to secular analyses; noting that transformation is more central than concepts of time; and noting that there should be connections among pedestrian hopes, large hopes, and eternal hopes. I develop my themes through reflection on the relationship between meaning and direction, and through reflection on the types of models for understanding hope’s fulfillment, including the relationships between historical and transhistorical or eternal conditions. Two questions serve as preludes, and they are related. The first is the viewpoint question, imaged by the ant and the eagle. The ant works and lives close to the ground; it cannot see far ahead. The eagle has the higher viewpoint: it can see what the ant cannot, including the terrain lying well ahead of the ant. For us mortals, antlike, the questions are these: Can I know what lies ahead? If an eagle offers me a report, what account should I take of the report? What if there are several eagles and the reports differ? The second question is: Why pay attention to any report about the future? If a scholar of history reports a trend, why should I pay attention? Why should I want to know which way some matters are developing, be it the promise of the Internet or the threat of glo2. For an understanding of history and hoping which draws on the full range of Pieper’s work, I defer to Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope.

The Future of Hope and History  143 bal climate change? Why should I want to understand what is happening in circles larger than my own, in national politics, or in the world economy? As we will see Pieper express it, we should apply more energy to “the everyday accomplishment, in each given situation, of what is wise, good, and just.” But what is good, just, and wise in each situation? And what are the connections between what is just and wise in each situation and the larger consequences of such choices? The consequences of my choices may range from garden to globe, from the local few to myriads and millennia. Should not a responsible person have some knowledge of the way things are going and therefore of the way he could contribute to or inhibit their movement? So when I hope, should I not take into account what is now possible and what is worth hoping for? Should not my hope take account of history? And how may I learn from and discern among various voices proposing differing understandings of past and future? The ant asks: What may I hope? The eagles say: Here are the trends that suggest what lies ahead; you may hope for their good outcomes and fear their catastrophes.

1. Pieper’s Hope and History Pieper’s 1967 Hope and History brings to an understanding of hope and history the accounts of possible nuclear annihilation, of the movement of history according to Bloch, and of evolution according to Teilhard de Chardin. Pieper begins with an analysis of hope, drawing on the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Marcel. Central to hope is the sense that what is hoped for does not lie at the disposal of the one who hopes. Strictly speaking, we do not hope for what we can surely effect. More central to an understanding of hope is the contrast between ordinary hopes and what Pieper calls “fundamental hope.” With both espoir and espérance, the French language can more easily label the difference between

144  Joseph J. Godfrey a hope that has an ordinary object of the world as its target and a hope that reaches toward an object not of this world. The hopes for worldly achievements or gifts can be disappointed. Indeed, Pieper reports findings of physician Herbert Plügge to the effect that only when standard hopes collapse can “fundamental hope [. . .] most convincingly be grasped.” Disappointment makes way for the “purging of all illusory hope.” “Out of the loss of common, everyday hope arises authentic hope.”3 Pieper, drawing on a thesis of Marcel, maintains that such fundamental hope, strictly speaking, cannot be disappointed, because it is just as unshakable as existence itself. Yet it cannot be fulfilled by anything a person can “have”; fundamental hope is oriented toward what a person “is,” toward his salvation or self-realization in the future.4 History, Pieper proposes, is not evolution. History stems from human freedom. While there can be possibilities delivered to humanity by past processes over which there has been no human control, history depends on whether humans take advantage of these possibilities. Evolution delivers the possibilities; humans choose the future. What will happen is not decided on the field of evolution, but on the field of human choices—history.5 When selfdetermination obtains, evolution does not. Aside from and in the midst of cosmic evolution, natural history, and cultural, scientific, and artistic chronologies, “there is also a fully different, irreducible, incomparable, and in the strict sense ‘historical’ kind of event that issues from the free decisions of men, comes about through them, and itself participates in the mode of being proper to human acts of will.”6 When human choices are factored in, predicting the future becomes risky business. Pieper’s predictors of the human future include Immanuel Kant, Teilhard de Chardin, and Bloch. Kant judged that talent, skill, and 3. Quoting Hermann Plügge, in Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 29 [387]. 4. Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 26–30 [385–88]. 5. Ibidem, 38–40 [393]. 6. Ibidem, 43 [395].

The Future of Hope and History  145 taste outpace the development of morality, but that some day “humanity’s moral disposition” will catch up with human cultivation.7 Teilhard de Chardin is another predictor: cosmic evolution has given rise to humanity; humanity is capable of reason and reflection; the aim of such reflection is becoming one with the cosmic Christ; cosmogenesis is directed through biogenesis and noögenesis toward Christogenesis, because “the mystical Christ has not yet attained his full growth.”8 But Pieper finds in Teilhard de Chardin not one but two pictures of such movement. The first is that of steady progress toward Christogenesis, with setbacks overcome and the goal assured. The second is the split between movements of acceptance of Omega and movements of ever deeper resistance to it, a “strike” in the noösphere, requiring an awaiting of the doom of the world in order to be taken into God along with Christ.9 Since Teilhard de Chardin offers two pictures of historical movement, Pieper finds that Teilhard is ambivalent about evil. The dominant strand of Teilhard’s thought proposes human progress akin to that of evolution, culminating in the incorporation of humanity into Christ. But it is in the strand which Teilhard makes secondary that we can find a fuller account of evil, one which sees a bifurcatory movement, overcome by the advent of Christ. When close attention is paid to the rise of evils in the world, Pieper judges, it is the possibility of increasing evil that Teilhard’s thought, in the final analysis, neglects. Finally, Pieper finds Bloch to be a predictor in his The Principle of Hope. This work constitutes an encyclopedia of humanity’s hopes, illusory and sound. Humanity’s final hope is aimed at, to use Bloch’s litany, “happiness, freedom, nonalienation, golden age, land of milk and honey, the eternal feminine, the trumpet signal in Fidelio, the conformity with Christ on the day of Resurrection.”10 It is enlightened man at one with an enlightened world, the highest good, a “kingdom of God–without God.” Admittedly these are images, but 7. Ibidem, 59 [405]. 9. Ibidem, 67–70 [410–13].

8. Ibidem, 67 [410]. 10. Ibidem, 74 [415].

146  Joseph J. Godfrey images of what is realizable within this world. Yet Pieper notes that death is the surd which elevated human hopes cannot take adequate account of. Even setting aside the claim that in Marxist political movements these hopes will be realized—Ubi Lenin, ibi Jerusalem—it is death that raises the question: “How do things stand regarding our hope if we nevertheless must die?”11 Gathering his judgment of Kant and Teilhard de Chardin and Bloch, Pieper observes that whatever the outcome and however felicitous, “such a prospect is really of concern to me, as one who hopes, only if I can think of it as being somehow linked to that hope in the ‘hereafter’ that pertains to my very own destiny on the other side of death.”12 What confers authority on this judgment Pieper makes? What legitimates his view rather than those of Kant, Teilhard de Chardin, and Bloch? Can there be legitimate prophecy about history? Christianity answers this with a clear yes. For example, among its sacred texts is the prophetic book of Revelation (the Apocalypse), and in it (although not in it alone) there are assertions about the ultimate future of historical man—not so much, then, about how history will continue but rather about how it will end.13

Why does Pieper choose this text rather than another? Pieper’s assumptions for this choice include: that human existence plays out on a suprahistorical field; that “the end, and also even the beginning, of human history as a whole and of individual biography, must necessarily remain beyond our empirical grasp”; that the empirical here and now is not identical with the whole of existence; and that truth can come from a suprahuman sphere.14 To attend to Christian apocalyptic is to “respect, in faith, certain transempirical reports that claim to reveal the future while nevertheless not actually showing it and that, while not depriving what is to come of its futurity (indeed, while even reinforcing that), never11. Ibidem, 86 [422]. 13. Ibidem, 95 [428].

12. Ibidem, 89–90 [425]. 14. Ibidem, 95 [428].

The Future of Hope and History  147 theless lay claim to illumining the darkness of what lies ahead.”15 But surely there are other such illuminations; why a Christian apocalyptic text? Pieper draws his answer from where he stands: Yet the philosopher, even then, still speaks as himself, and what he expresses is his own conviction. And if he happens to believe these kinds of trans-empirical reports to be true, he would simply cease to philosophize with any existential earnestness at all from the moment that he excluded them from consideration.16

From Christian apocalyptic we learn several things. We learn that human history will not be a smooth progress. We learn that death separates humanity from human perfection. The passage to eternal fulfillment will pass through a “kind of dissolution,” looking “more like destruction than like progress and fulfillment.” There seems to be prospect of a “universal tyranny of evil,” a pseudoorder alluded to in Nietzsche and in Dostoevsky’s “tale of the Grand Inquisitor.”17 Pieper’s opening question becomes his closing question: “Is the history of mankind a matter for despairing? Or does it offer grounds for hope? On what would this hope be based? Is it truly in the nature of man’s hope that it can never be fulfilled, never be satisfied, within the area of history?” Pieper has his basic answer to this last question: If earthly existence itself is pervasively structured toward what is “not yet in being,” and if a man, as a viator, is truly “on the way to” something right up to the moment of death, then this hope, which is identical with our very being itself, either is plainly absurd or finds its ultimate fulfillment on the other side of death, “after” the here-and-now. In a word, the object of existential hope bursts the bound of “this” world.18

This smacks of foolish avoidance of the importance of historical realities and possibilities: the fulfillment of this creation will pass through death and disaster into perfection, yet not one jot or tittle 15. Ibidem, 99 [430]. 17. Ibidem, 102, 103, 104 [433–34].

16. Ibidem, 99 [431]. 18. Ibidem, 107 [436].

148  Joseph J. Godfrey will be lost of what is good. How is this possible? The Christian is convinced that the wall between this life and the next has already been breached from the other side, through what is pointed to by the term “Incarnation.” The Great Banquet is the image of what is prepared, but prepared not by humanity; the table is set by God. Furthermore, the Great Banquet rejects all arbitrary exclusions, and therefore it captures the goals sketched by Kant and Bloch. “No matter where and by whom the realization of fraternity among men is understood and pursued as the thing that is truly to be hoped for, there exists, eo ipso, a subterranean link to the elementary hope of Christianity.”19 Yet the target of this elemental hope remains undefinable and the tasks apparently pedestrian: Thus it is characteristic of those who truly hope that they remain open to the possibility of a fulfillment that surpasses every preconceivable human notion. And they will apply the energy of their hearts not so much to militant implementation of predefined plans and goals or eschatological images of order (through which human solidarity has already been often enough marched into the ground) as to the everyday accomplishment, in each given situation, of what is wise, good, and just. Precisely that is probably the true, and most human, form of historical activity. This supposition has nothing to do with timid, petit bourgeois aversion to the radical thrust of great political decisions, and certainly nothing to do with any kind of lack of trust in the historical future. It may well, however, have something to do with mistrust of any delimiting specification of the object of human hope.20

Doing daily whatever is wise, good, and just, in each given situation, and mistrusting any doctrine that delimits the object of human hope—these are the recommendations Pieper offers in conclusion of his 1967 reflection on hope and history.

19. Ibidem, 110 [438]. 20. Ibidem, 112–13 [439–40].

The Future of Hope and History  149

2. Reflections Pieper’s Hope and History suggests some comments and reflections, some of which stem from my own work on hope. The first is the question of reliable viewpoint. The ant is earthbound, the eagle celestial. Humans are terrestrial, limited in what they can see ahead. Some humans, however, take wing, and rise to a level where they claim to see farther; they propose a higher viewpoint. Such views are those that Pieper rehearses, from Kant through Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin to the Book of Revelation. But while the earth is firm and vision reliable whether from ground or sky, the view of the future is not firm: the future is not yet definite and is to become definite as a result of human choices. So even a higher viewpoint, at least a human higher viewpoint, has a limit to its knowable reliability.21 The celestial scout may not see clearly far ahead. Prophecies are not predictions, Pieper rightly observes. But a horizon to head for can be descried. Regardless of whether the hoped-for outcome is historical or transhistorical, when what is close at hand are the decisions made daily by viatoric people, they must choose. If the ultimate lies beyond our view and beyond reporting, still we must choose what to do. We must live with weeds and wheat, and learn to promote the wheat, without mistaking an infestation for harvest abundance. Even when the ultimate is Christ’s victory, what if any21. In contrast with hopings that have targets, more definite or less definite, hoping can also obtain in an object-less way. Terrestrial homo viator undergoes disappointments of outcome and of worth, and these can indeed lead a person to hold out for a higher good; but they can also draw a person towards despair. Hence it is useful for those of itinerant existence to recognize a manner of hoping which consists essentially in holding off from despair when the available target is disappointing. I see nothing better now visible behind the fallen target, but I nevertheless hold off from declaring that all is lost and that I am lost (Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope, 64, 144–48). While this “hope without a target” consists simply in the refusal of despair—“I am still hopeful”—yet it is hard to imagine such refusal without some image of what might still be hoped for, albeit an outcome with scant specificity. Perhaps the cry of a celestial scout gives heart to the terrestrial traveler.

150  Joseph J. Godfrey thing can we learn about the penultimate and the antepenultimate? What is the wheat we should promote? To illuminate terrestrially the objects of our possible choices, a contrast between steppingstones and foretastes is helpful. Steppingstones are to be left behind; we desire and effect and then abandon them; we have not here a Lasting City; we do not cling to the past or hope to repeat it. Foretastes, on the other hand, participate in the ultimate. They are ingredients in the larger hope. They are inchoate of the Kingdom. Our choices, then, include both decisions to leave behind and decisions to begin or foster. Therefore some “link” between what can be close at hand and what is finally to come is worth exploring. As we saw Pieper put it regarding whatever we hope for, “such a prospect is really of concern to me, as one who hopes, only if I can think of it as being somehow linked to that hope in the ‘hereafter’ that pertains to my very own destiny on the other side of death.”22 What kind of link with a hereafter is conceivable? There is obviously the link of ontology: I can be linked to what lies hereafter only if that hereafter will come to pass for me. And for it to have some kind of reality, there have to be available the causal powers that sustain or create that future real situation. For me, and for others, surviving death requires that I and others continue to exist, and continue to exist with some possibilities. But this is only part of the needed ontology. The other part is the kind of relationships of which humans are capable—the specifically human possibilities. One type of relationship is the instrumental: I serve another’s purposes and another serves mine; I am an end in myself and I can be a means (arguably not only a means) to another’s end. But there is also conceivable and possible another type of relationship, that of mutual appreciation or shared life, a kind of living which is not exhaustively analyzed into means-end relationships. Toward another 22. Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 89–90 [425].

The Future of Hope and History  151 I have a non-covetous love; with another I share life and joy. The I-Thou relationships sketched by Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel are of this sort. Means-end relations are I-It; I-Thou is less predictable but nevertheless essential for full living. What is ultimately hoped for should be imaged in I-Thou terms and not solely in terms of I-It. “Communion” is a term supplying a useful gesture for this kind of living. It is helpful for imagining the total hope Pieper alludes to if the philosopher has at her or his disposal an ontology not just of possible means-end relationships but also an ontology of possible shared life or communion.23 It is not infelicitous that Christian thought includes a “communion of saints.” So our choices in history are of a means-end variety, and one can therefore argue that terrorism does not inaugurate the Kingdom of God. But our choices may also be for shared life, and one can therefore argue that treating people only as a means is no inauguration of shared life. We can choose to be what we hope to become; we can live what we recommend. Meaning and direction are not synonyms, and their differences and relationships constitute a theme important for reflecting on Pieper’s Hope and History. These terms’ principal differences are related to outcomes hope d for and to what I would term “being part of the scheme of things.” Pieper intends to avoid claims to grasp the detail of the direction of history. History (Geschichte) is and is not like an arrow. An arrow has a head, a point; it is oriented toward some horizon. But history’s arrow, I suggest, does not have a shaft: there is no clear line that comes from the past and permits extrapolation toward a definite future. History’s arrows are, as it were, tail-less, heading toward a horizon, exhibiting a direction but without a predictable trajectory and without a definable target. His23. I trace two models for ontology, a will-nature model (akin to subject-object thinking) which fits instrumental relations, and an intersubjective model that fits the “shared life” character of what might be hoped for. Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope, 155–68.

152  Joseph J. Godfrey tory heads toward a horizon, but without a traceable trajectory that admits of prognosis. This is what Pieper’s agnosticism concerning the historical future implies, both about the image of time’s arrow and about the causal relationships between means and ends. There is no line—reaching from the past to the present—that can reliably serve to enable prediction of the future. If human history has no clearly discernible future-laden direction, then what makes human choices meaningful? What makes human choices worthwhile? The meaning of human choices “in” history, therefore, requires some reflection. Meaning and direction are not the same: meaning suggests worthwhileness, either intrinsic or extrinsic as means, or as ingredient, or Aufhebende; direction suggests consistency and means-ends relationships of goals over time. Meaning suggests enjoyment, end-in-itself, not just serving a further goal. Sisyphus had meaning. Scholastics contrasted motus with quies, contrasted change and travel with rest. Enjoyment is not direction in the usual sense; frui is not uti. Some human actions can have meaning without having direction, to the degree that they are worth engaging in without further purposing or use. One could therefore hope for a life of meaning without its being ipso facto part of a larger trend or scheme. And yet also one could hope to be part of a larger “scheme of things”: one could hope that what is worthwhile not be lost even if it cannot be clung to. Conceptions of how what is transitory can be included in what is transhistorical, therefore, are of both speculative and practical interest. How we might last, and how lives’ loves and works might last, are of considerable interest for the worth we can conceive right here and now. We would rather not say “It won’t really matter what we do—at least not in the long run.” And practically we would like, many of us, to have made a difference that will make someone else’s life better. Therefore a doctrine of meaning is helpfully articulated into a doctrine of direction, or at least a doctrine of orientation. Perhaps we can say that a helpful Scheme of Things is one that gives mean-

The Future of Hope and History  153 ing and orientation without having to provide trajectory and projection. May what we do at least “face” toward a salutary horizon! But given the Christian understanding of time and history, the orientation, if not at least the general direction of history, is not toward the classless society or toward any delimited Omega Point, but through dyings to resurrection. Choosing among rival eagles, among rival guiding accounts of a larger scheme, needs comment and reflection, as do the reasons for a choice among such guides. From ground level, Kant and Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin and the Book of Revelation seem to be competing eagles. Each has something to say about what trends and tracks can be seen in history. But why should someone listen to Kant? Why should one prefer Revelation to Teilhard de Chardin? Pieper proposes that the fact of death and the extent and depth of evil suggest that the understandings of Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin are inadequate to what life presents to thought. Though precise conceptual coherence hardly characterizes the Book of Revelation, that text arguably offers a more realistic albeit figured account of the extent and depth of evil and of the non-finality of death. According to Pieper, the Book of Revelation tells us about the end of history, and has much to say about the final future of historical man, especially about how history will end.24 As a book of consolation, it offers hope. By one measure, therefore—a measure intrinsic to the message through its images—it has standing as a higher viewpoint from which homo viator might learn. But there is also a question of extrinsic measure, the more fundamental question why the Book of Revelation should be a candidate at all, among the distinguished company of Kant and Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin. What gets this book to the top of the heap of guidebooks as a higher viewpoint? Pieper’s answer to this is 24. But taking the Book of Revelation as indicating how history will end is perhaps a way of interpreting Revelation that is less certain now than it was when Pieper wrote.

154  Joseph J. Godfrey his reliance on what he accepts religiously. As we saw, he proposes that “if he happens to believe these kinds of trans-empirical reports to be true, he would simply cease to philosophize with any existential earnestness at all from the moment that he excluded them from consideration.”25 We accord truth to the Book of Revelation. We therefore take it to have an authority, to be a document “in the know,” beyond what Kant and Bloch and Teilhard can muster. Maybe a deeper reason for taking Revelation to be in the know lies in what is learned from Jesus and his disciples’ emergent community as this community came to take this Book as authoritative; this seems to be the final reason why the Book of Revelation is preferred to The Principle of Hope or Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man. Pieper is expressing his own convictions; that they should convince someone who does not share his convictions is not a claim that Pieper makes. But why should anyone be convinced that Bloch has a better account? Or Teilhard de Chardin? Or Kant? I can only suggest that the account should match our experience, in this case our experience of hoping and disappointment, of seeing others die and of anticipating our own death, of enduring evil and of taking the measure of its extent and depth. Finally, it is a matter of an account meshing with our lives, meshing with the authority of person or text in the communities in which we live, and meshing with the reasonableness we find among the different happenings and trends we only partly understand. This meshing is sometimes accepted on the word of others who have experienced what we have not; but in the last analysis it is a matter of fit between our lives and our understanding. There is one aspect of the “end of time” that suggests causative powers upon the present, in an incursion “from the future.” Bloch might be interpreted as having such an incursion, an Einbrechende of the future; and theologian Jürgen Moltmann also has a view that 25. Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 99 [431].

The Future of Hope and History  155 a future condition has causative powers in the present.26 Such an end-time condition might be imagined as a point of origin for power, for the sortie of a resource from the future. Jesus’s “message in the bottle” arrives from the far shore to which we aspire to journey, and so, it might seem, does his power. On such a reading of end-time, what confers worth on instrumental events is a worth that “arrives” from a future we can only imagine, and what enables us to live lives of grace similarly arrives from the future. But I am skeptical about any causation other than teleological as in any sense coming from the future. I am more sympathetic with the view that the Holy Spirit makes genuinely possible in the present what the Christian understands about the desirable future. The presence of Jesus’s Holy Spirit, now, confers meaning, granted that meaning may be part of that scheme of things which extends beyond our deaths.

3. Comparisons In comparing, I proceed by substitution: Pieper focused on authors and authorities of the mid-20th century; I focus on authors and authorities with some standing in English-language circles near the beginning of the twenty-first. For Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin, I consider Francis Fukuyama and Robert Wright. For the theologians Pieper cites, I take the theologian Johann Baptist Metz.27 For Pieper’s appeal to what he takes as the personally religiously authoritative message of the Book of Revelation, I consider citations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.28 In all, two secular eagles and two religious eagles. 26. As I recall Jürgen Moltmann, “Progress or Abyss: Remembering the Future of the Modern World”. 27. The theologians Josef Pieper cites in Hope and History include Thomas Aquinas, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. 28. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not have the same ecclesial significance as that of the Book of Revelation. Revelation, as part of the Bible, needs scriptural exegesis. The Catechism is published as a synthesis of essentials, “primarily for those responsible for catechesis”: bishops, then catechism editors, priests,

156  Joseph J. Godfrey One secular higher viewpoint lies in the work of Fukuyama, who has devoted several books to reflections on history. Fukuyama is an analyst looking for the comprehensive picture. In his 1993 The End of History and the Last Man, he argues that liberal democracy has emerged in the course of history to be the dominant and ideal form of political society. The struggle to extend liberal democracy is the main political process going on in the world. No other political system can reasonably be expected to supplant it, nor should there be another. The extension of liberal democracy is the political historical reality within which we make our choices. Granting that the “last man” is characterized merely by physical security and material abundance, the emergent positive outcome of liberal democracy’s final extension—the End of History—is not just rights, but recognition.29 But Fukuyama realizes that political order and political recognition are different from social and moral progress, and therefore in his 1999 The Great Disruption, he argues that, granted the inchoate and fitting political dominance of liberal democracy, there nevertheless has been a falling off from genuine social and moral good. What has been lost in recent decades is social capital. Granted, the very defining of social capital is problematic; but if at its core social capital consists of relationships of trust and cooperation, is it better to have trust and cooperation limited to families with close personal ties, or better to have trust extended to strangers by means of contractual commitments? Fukuyama delineates a clear contrast between individualism and social bonding, and maintains that the Great Disruption—the loss of social capital and therefore of social order which some argue was brought about by the individualism occasioned by the Enlightenment or secular humanism—is coming to an end. There is evidence, he argues, of catechists (Prologue 11, 12). The Book of Revelation is an authoritative Christian “classic”; the Catechism has the different authority of an official contemporary teaching guide. 29. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, xvi–xxiii; Part III, “The Struggle for Recognition,” 143–208; 312, 337–38.

The Future of Hope and History  157 a movement away from rampant individualism and toward reconstitution of social order by adoption of norms of conduct.30 Whoever chooses alliance with a trend away from rampant individualism is a person who takes seriously the view from this secular eagle, the cautious optimism of Francis Fukuyama. Another voice for directionality in history is that of Robert Wright. In 2000, he argued in Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny that there is a direction for history, that history’s arrow has a trajectory which suggests its future: The question whether history’s basic arrow will on balance make us freer or less free, will make our lives better or worse, is one I’ll defer for now. I do think that in some respects history’s basic direction makes human beings morally better, and will continue to do so. But that is not the immediate point. The immediate point . . . is that if we leave morality aside and talk about the objectively observable features of social reality, the direction of history is unmistakable. When you look beneath the roiled surface of human events . . . you see an arrow beginning tens of thousands of years ago and continuing to the present. And, looking ahead, you see where it is pointing.31

At the end of Nonzero Wright hazards a formulation of where the arrow is pointing. What may lie ahead is the future expansion of amity, . . . a world in which just about everyone holds allegiance to enough different groups, with enough different kinds of people, so that plain old-fashioned bigotry would entail discomfiting cognitive dissonance. It isn’t that everyone will love everyone, but rather that everyone will like enough different kinds of people to make hating any given type problematic. Maybe Teilhard’s mistake was to always use “noosphere” in the singular. . . . Maybe the world of tomorrow will be a collage of noospheres with enough overlap to vastly complicate the geography of hatred. It wouldn’t be Point Omega, but it would be progress.32 30. Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, Chapter 16, “Reconstructions Past, Present, and Future,” 263–82. 31. Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, 17. 32. Ibidem, 329.

158  Joseph J. Godfrey To trace the details of Wright’s argument is too much of a project here, but the general lines are clear. Derived from game theory, “Nonzero” names the positive sum of pluses and minuses, of advantages and disadvantages, of helps and harms, that come to pass in the evolution of and then in the history of humanity. “Nonzero,” or as Wright amends, “fixed positive sum,” names outcomes that are, on balance, positive. The natural and then human history of the world is not characterized by evils that balance goods, but by goods that at successive stages outweigh evils. Wright finds that game theory permits a common measure of biological and social evolution—or, in terms Pieper would prefer, of biological evolution and social history. What is being summed is something resembling cooperation. This does not mean that every biological entity actually does choose to communicate and trust, nor that every human being actually does communicate and does trust: A non-zero-sum relationship is not a relationship in which cooperation is necessarily taking place. It is (usually) a relationship in which, if cooperation did take place, it would benefit both parties. Whether the cooperation does take place—whether the parties realize positive sums—is another matter. And, aside from “non-zero-sum,” I can’t think of a word that captures this relationship.33

Game-theory terminology helps capture what self-interested parties must do to realize mutual profit: they must communicate and they must trust. This is especially relevant to the trends Wright traces in human history, and he foresees that this measure and ideal will be useful in the future.34 Although I wonder whether the means-ends relationships involved in cooperation are subject to the common measure that summing requires, I am willing to take the term as analogous. Wright does maintain that the path is not simplistically upward: “My belief that some workable infrastructure for concord will very likely emerge does nothing to drain the 33. Ibidem, 338.

34. Ibidem, 338–39.

The Future of Hope and History  159 drama from the present, for one plausible route to long-run success is near-term catastrophe.” And he does see cooperative and fiducial success as morally freighted: “winning will depend on not wanting other peoples to lose.”35 Hedged though they are, these books of Fukuyama and Wright give a picture of encouraging trends. Does such trend-tracing accord with religious thinking not only about the future but also about the end of time? Frankly, that time will have an end is not a feature found in Fukuyama and Wright. One might guess that currently it is a category exclusively religious, if it is current at all. The end of time is a theme in the two religious eagles, authorities who speak with religious clout analogous to the clout Pieper derives from the Book of Revelation. Both the theologian Johann Baptist Metz and the Catechism of the Catholic Church speak of time and the end of time. Johann Metz maintains that bounded time (befristete Zeit) is a central and nonnegotiable element in the biblical concept of God.36 In contrast, he maintains that the myth of unbounded time has come to dominate not only secular understandings of history but also theological understandings of history. Time stretches endlessly, and is understood evolutionarily: change happens, and will simply continue. The prospect of an end is shrunken to the prospect of the end of each individual: “the concept of time was restricted to biographical and eventually to historical time, but was decoupled from the world’s time. Time that is bounded by God’s coming, the horizon of God’s history, as it is biblically attested, was downplayed more and more or even completely read out of eschatology.”37 Alternately, theology of the end-time—non-individual eschatology—is declared to be a remnant of a worldview rival to other worldviews. 35. Ibidem, 332. 36. Johann Baptist Metz, “Theology versus Polymythicism: A Short Apology for Biblical Monotheism,” 89 [184]. I thank Kevin F. Burke for calling this essay to my attention. 37. Ibidem, 86 [182].

160  Joseph J. Godfrey But Metz contends that the world’s time is not to be decoupled from the time of the individual’s life. The shift from biblically understood bounded time to unbounded time under the pressure of evolutionary thinking, Metz proposes, is due to the influences not only in but also on the Enlightenment, even on Kant.38 A notion of cyclical time may have obtained in some cultures, but Christianity brought a notion of linear time; the modern period has recast linear time into endless duration, and then recast endless duration as evolutionary. Metz maintains that “the theodicy question is still the eschatological question,” and that one should not subordinate to questions such as Who is God? and Where is God? the biblical question, What is God waiting for?39 The argument of Metz suggests that evolutionary thinkers such as Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin, and also Fukuyama and Wright, while perhaps they may have slighted death and evil, more centrally have failed to claim the notion of bounded time central to the biblical understanding of God. In their lines of thinking, death has no sting, evil no weight, and time no end. But, Metz argues, the biblical vision will have genuine death, significant evil—and especially bounded time. The biblical Christian vision has death, and evil, and time’s closure—but also and finally resurrection. Scarce or perhaps completely missing from Fukuyama and Wright is the standpoint Pieper took in The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, that time, and human history, will have an end. Fukuyama has “the end of history” as the cessation of major changes in political forms of life as fact and ideal; once liberal democracy has appeared, human history has climbed its last plateau—but the journey continues.40 Wright guesses that the future may bring more networks of cooperation and trust, but not that these relationships will be Aufhebende, or transformed beyond time. 38. Ibidem, 75 [172]. 39. Ibidem, 84 [180]. 40. Johann Baptist Metz, however, sharply criticizes theological approaches that take as an assumption that world history “simply continues” (88 [184]).

The Future of Hope and History  161 Finally, the briefest attention to a second eagle, one that proposes an authoritative understanding in the name of God’s church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) indicates that there will be an end to time, an end to history. It will bring a beatific transformation of humanity and the cosmos into the Kingdom of God. We do not know when. We do not know how this will take place. We can say it is now underway: “the form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away, and we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth.” Furthermore, at present we are living in an “end time”: “The end-time in which we live is the age of the outpouring of the Spirit. Ever since Pentecost, a decisive battle has been joined between ‘the flesh’ and the Spirit.”41 Reflecting on just these texts, I observe that a transformation of humanity and the cosmos into the Kingdom of God need not conceptually require the abandoning of temporal notions such as sequence and the contrast between the determinate and the determinable. Transformations and kingdoms can continue, and flourish. What is central is a transformation which is being achieved after a transformation has begun. What is not central is the conceiving of time as either terminating or continuing. Therefore I would say that the end to time and the end to history alluded to are formulated thus so as to take account of biblical ways of speaking, but these formulas are also open to being understood to be compatible with a change of judgment or with a recognition: what has been judged impossible, or what has been judged promised, is now recognized to be realized; there is recognition of promise being fulfilled. The end of time and the end of history is an end of impossibility and an end of absence and an end of waiting. Or so I would understand these two passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

41. Catechism of the Catholic Church, sections 1048, 2819.

162  Joseph J. Godfrey

4. Assessment and Conclusions We should listen to eagles. We should try to discern the signs of the times when we decide difficult matters. It seems to me that such signs of the times may include those felicitous or at least felicitous-seeming developments which large-scale analysts such as Fukuyama and Wright highlight. But analyses such as theirs can mask evils in one’s own backyard. While overall crime rates may be falling, while global information may be more available, locally there are still violent impulses to be resisted and lies to be countered. We should listen to the eagles, but we ants need to keep our eyes open for what is close ahead. What of Pieper’s injunction apparently to mind one’s own business rather than join some great historic movement? As we saw that he put it: they will apply the energy of their hearts not so much to militant implementation of predefined plans and goals or eschatological images of order (through which human solidarity has already been often enough marched into the ground) as to the everyday accomplishment, in each given situation, of what is wise, good, and just. Precisely that is probably the true, and most human, form of historical activity. This supposition [. . .] may well, however, have something to do with mistrust of any delimiting specification of the object of human hope.42

Must this mean that I should therefore tend my local garden rather than work for global peace or a healthy environment? The key to the start of an answer to such a question is in the term “delimit,” and specifically in the links between hoping for the eternal and hoping for tomorrow. Linkages between tomorrow and the eternal are key to finding an answer to: What should I do? If we can make a threefold distinction among pedestrian hopes, eternal hope, and large hopes, we can say that the hopes which Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin, then Fukuyama and Wright, have 42. Josef Pieper, Hope and History, 112–13 [439–40].

The Future of Hope and History  163 proposed as warranted are large hopes; they are not cut-your-losses hopes, trimmed to what is more likely if less desirable. Like Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin before them, Fukuyama and Wright make the argument that what is largely desirable is actually possible and, yes, even underway—and, yes, even highly probable. The kingdom of God (without God), the Omega Point, the ascendancy of liberal democracy, and Wright’s “workable infrastructure for concord,”43 are not pedestrian hopes. Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin, and then Fukuyama and Wright, make a case that it is reasonable to hope for these large hopes because they are good and because they are feasible or even likely. They are reasonable hopes, and large hopes, but perhaps not eternal hopes. An understanding of links between pedestrian hopes and large hopes and eternal hopes requires both an understanding of links between people facing death in the present and an understanding of links with future people. In the present, it is helpful to employ the contrast between hope-for-me, hope-for-him/her/them, and hope for us. Hope for me is fulfilled when I am fulfilled. Hope for him/her/them is fulfilled when others are fulfilled, even if I am not. Hope for us imagines a union of one with another, such that the well-being of one includes the well-being of another. If it is plausible—and I think it is—that all really worthwhile hope is hope-forus, then in our reflection on hope we need to think about death as a separation of people. “Death” is not included in the indices of either of the Fukuyama books or of the Wright book. This omission is compatible with the large hope which each espouses being a hopefor-him or her or them. It is others who will benefit from the processes now underway; I may die before hope is fulfilled; I may even give my life for the democratic cooperation and trust which Fukuyama and Wright hail but which others—but not I—will enjoy. But the advantage of them after the departure of me is not the full way 43. Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, 332.

164  Joseph J. Godfrey to imagine linkages among people in the face of death. If genuine large hope is a hope-for-us, a better understanding of linkages between me and others is needed, together with some indication that death is not the end of me and that a link to what is good beyond death is genuinely possible. I hope to belong, to be a part of something worthwhile.44 If hope for us is hope for shared life, and shared life includes another and therefore another’s time, then Christian meaning includes Another and Another’s time, linking the current eternal triumph of Jesus with the present and prospective future of homo viator, the itinerant person. The question of time ending is therefore, I argue, subordinate to the question of transformation, and transformation can be understood through conceptualizations of hope’s targets. Hope’s targets can be understood in a threefold way: as retention of what is good; as reversal of what is bad; or as superabundance of the good one has experienced, in emergence of a good one cannot imagine.45 This threefold conceptualization provides an analogous way of imagining the end of time. The end-time will be a setting for continuity. Or the end-time will be a setting of reversal. Or the end-time will be an occasion of superabundance, an enhancement of the best we find ourselves able to do. Continuity is signaled by the teaching that the end-time, the outpouring of the Spirit, has begun. Reversal is signaled by teachings that catastrophe will precede the incursion of God’s kingdom: a new kingdom, the “New Jerusalem” will descend from the heavens, a “replacement-world.” Finally, superabundance is signaled by biblical teachings with phrases like “I make all things new” and “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard [. . .] what God has 44. Reinhold Niebuhr offers a key in his 1952 observations: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.” The Irony of American History, 52. 45. Learned from Paul Ricoeur, repetition, reversal, and superabundance are the categories I use in Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope, 13, 48, 138.

The Future of Hope and History  165 prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”46 When Johann Metz argues that bounded time is the time of the Bible, we may on the one hand hear this by imagining a cataclysmic event the predicting of which by zealous religious prognosticators leaves us anxious—or amused, and therefore inclined to take Fukuyama and Wright as mere entertainers for those who await the Rapture. On the other hand, we may hear this by understanding that bounded time is also compatible with imagining a gradual continuity of good, as God’s kingdom is inaugurated with efforts of God’s people—which observers might judge to be the people’s own doing, when it is not known that all that is good is done, finally, by God. Thus, for example, liberation theology has an eschatology of continuity and reversal, but with theology’s light directed toward the political and social and moral processes such as those which Fukuyama and Wright describe. Bounded time, then, does indeed counter an unbounded time unconsciously imagined by those who hold for evolution without end. But bounded time does not counter those who maintain that the struggle against evil, individual and social and political, is the call of those who would be faithful to God.47 Indeed, it seems to me that instead of maintaining that “time as bounded time is still the universal horizon of theology,”48 a better approach might be that the coming of Christ is the context within which any thought of time as bounded or unbounded must be carried out. The concept of time against which Metz argues is that endless time which diffuses the weight of, and hollows out the substance of, human choices. Unboundedness brings etiolated decisions. “There’s 46. Revelation 21:5. 1 Corinthians 2:9, based on Isaiah 64:3. 47. Metz does not oppose liberation theology, therefore; indeed, his essay is published in the volume Metz entitled A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity. 48. Johann Baptist Metz, “Theology versus Polymythicism: A Short Apology for Biblical Monotheism,” 84 [180].

166  Joseph J. Godfrey always time remaining.”49 But, borrowing “transformation” from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we can accord conceptual priority to transformation rather than to time. We can distinguish among transformation still awaited, transformation begun, and transformation achieved. “Transformation begun” names history’s final stage as begun, that is, the time of the outpouring of the Spirit. “Transformation achieved” points to the end of time of biblical eschatology, when Christ will come or will have come again. But both transformation-begun and transformation-achieved seem, as concepts, rather different from what I call the metaphysics of an end of time, of the cessation of applicability of categories of past and future, of determinate and determinable, of before and after. That Christ will come again seems theologically more fundamental than one or another conception of bounded time. I therefore have reservations about Metz’s proposal that “time as bounded time is still the universal horizon of theology.”50 Indeed, cyclical time set aside, transformation-achieved seems compatible both with time as sequence that has a term and with time as a sequence that has no term. The debate about beginningless or beginning time that obtained regarding arguments about creation—whether creation should be understood as taking place in time—seems matched and even mirrored by a debate about the end of time, whether this should be conceived as the termination of sequences or the achievement—and continuation— of transformation.51 49. A further set of questions gathers around the time of the cosmologist, with beginnings and endings of the physical cosmos as we know it, when such cosmological time is compared both with evolutionary endlessness and with biblical boundedness. Is there a cosmic crunch or a cosmic fading, in relation to which the world as we imagine it seems to be a slow dimming after the brief flash of terrestrial human existence? A contribution to such conceiving is Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell. 50. Johann Baptist Metz, “Theology versus Polymythicism: A Short Apology for Biblical Monotheism,” 84 [180]. 51. Indeed, Pieper takes the understanding of creation as the key to understanding the “transposition” effected at the biblical “end of time.” The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, 59–73 [316–25].

The Future of Hope and History  167 To turn again to the contrasts between terrestrial hopes and eternal hopes—terrestrial pedestrian and even large hopes and hopes of final realization—we can ask again: Of what use is it to speak of terrestrial hopes when it might seem that only eternal hopes are worth entertaining? Why in particular should one praise or fault the current conditions and aspirations of human communities, when only the final standing of humanity will in the long run count as worthwhile? Why be a critic of the passing scene? Critiquing the passing scene is done for the sake of orientation, but we concede that orientation is not prediction. The critic points out that there are goods advertised but hollow, and that their pursuit are ways not to try to go. The critic observes that there are goods of gospel which warrant a twofold commendation: they are indeed worthwhile, despite their being neglected; and they are indeed possible, despite their portal seeming to be the eye of a needle. Genuine worth and genuine possibility are hallmarks of sound hoping, and, if some terrestrial hopes are steppingstones to or foretastes of outcomes more worthy and lasting, then it is worth hearing such biblical and secular gospels as declare that neither the Dragon nor Ozymandias is the last figure, nor is omnia caduca the last word. Thus John Paul II speaks of hope with both critique and reminder, speaks of both diagnosis and prescription, speaks of both ways not worth going and ways with clear if difficult passage toward the promise of lasting good.52 It is tempting to think that Pieper’s book should be titled “Hope and the End of History,” but what is at issue more deeply is not how history is conceived in terms of temporality and its term and its goal, but how history is conceived in terms of the availability of divine fulfillment, regardless of whether such fulfillment be conceived as historical or transhistorical. More central than time and its endlessness or ending are the ways in which people are linked to each oth52. For example: As the Third Millennium Draws Near, nr. 46. On the Holy Spirit, nr. 57.

168  Joseph J. Godfrey er both in their present and in God’s present. Understanding such links helps us to understand transformation, both what is genuinely worth desiring and what is genuinely possible. Transformation is more basic than time, provided “transformation” is equipped with the conceptual tools of hope-for-us. Hope-for-us has intersubjective relationship as its essential ingredient; if hope-for-us is well founded, the degree to which its target is definite or indefinite to the mind of mortals can be left to the imagination of God. Transformation understood in terms of fulfilled hope-for-us is more central than conceptions of time; indeed, time as bounded by God’s coming might better be conceived as history transformed by God’s presence. Pieper’s essay thus continues to raise helpful central questions about eschatology. While religion provides the most-readilyavailable conceptions about history, its meaning and direction, and its fulfillment, Pieper is rightly skeptical about the plausibility of any view purporting to recognize patterns in history. The culmination of time as we know it comes from God; this view is consistent with both what we may know and what we may not know about the future. Pieper’s skeptical approach, therefore, is a good vaccine against rampant confidence that we know what God is doing. Indeed, Pieper’s approach keeps Metz’s concerns alive. And Pieper’s contestable deciphering of the Book of Revelation serves to caution against a facile understanding of history’s problems and their resolution. And yet, for those who would carry forward Pieper’s understandings of history in dialogue with humanity’s large hopes, there continues to be need for some conceptual way of linking the pedestrian hopes and the large hopes that humans have with the final hope’s fulfillment understood to be promised by God. We must not stop at arguing for the differences among human thinkers’ pedestrian hopes, large hopes, and the eternal hope promised by God. The humble effort to discern the “arrow-head” (if not the trajectory and target), the humble effort to discern the orientation if not

The Future of Hope and History  169 the prediction of what is happening in history as we know it—these are helpful and needful for discerning how to choose when one is aiming to devote energy to “the everyday accomplishment, in each given situation, of what is wise, good, and just” and to mistrust “any delimiting specification of the object of human hope.” Avoiding delimited hope does not require embracing limited time; it does call for embracing transformations begun by God. A fuller assessment of Pieper’s understanding of history and hope needs complementary reflection based on and in dialogue with Pieper’s The End of Time. This 1950 work, written a decade and a half before Hope and History, addresses complexities in concepts of “end.” It calls for attention to “the unimpaired structure of the traditional view of history, in which all the individual elements are linked together: the transposition; the intra-historical and extra-temporal end-situations; the concealed or manifest attainment or non-attainment of the goal; the catastrophic character of the intra-historical end, upon which, and as a deliverance, the extra-temporal end ensues.”53 It triggers the question whether catastrophe is inevitable, or essential, for a Christian understanding of history—while finding catastrophe in the Book of Revelation: “The end within history, so says revelation, is catastrophic in character, which must mean that it is not identical with attainment of the goal and with realization of the intention.”54 It surfaces the issue of how to understand Anti-Christ. It stresses that time shall have a termination: Pieper references the announcing angel of Revelation 10:5–6 to the effect that “there shall be no more Time” (chronos).55 But this translation may betray Pieper; more recent translations into English render the verse “there shall be no more delay.”56 53. Josef Pieper, End of Time, 87–88 [335]. My reservations are about whether and to what degree one must think of the extra-temporal as discontinuous with the intra-historical, or even metaphysically different in some ways. 54. Ibidem, 81 [331]. 55. Ibidem, 72 and 70–71 [323–24]. 56. New Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible, New American Bible.

170  Joseph J. Godfrey But the question of whether and how to understand time as bounded or unbounded, as ceasing or not ceasing, is not a crucial question; the key differences among the determinable and the determined, sequence and causality, continue across any threshold between the historical and the transhistorical. Differences do lie, however, in the focus. Focusing on sequences as ceasing or not ceasing (Do changings stop or not stop?) is quite different from focusing on causalities, including final causalities (or their absence), regarding whether history is attaining or missing its goal. Indeed, should we speak of a goal of human history, or of only an interruption by God, a distinctive interruption that saves? And if God interrupts salvifically, what shall we say, if anything, about the period “before” that interruption, the period in which we appear to be living? Hope and History therefore has a future insofar as it makes a perduring case that thought based on Christian faith needs caution in receiving large-themed works that voice an optimism about human progress. But its skepticism needs to be complemented by discernment, in each situation, of “what is wise, good, and just,” and such discernment benefits from continual reflection on connections among pedestrian, large, and eternal hopes, especially hopes understood as hopes-for-us, the fulfillment of which depend on what God is doing in divine transforming love. Hope and History continues to be a model, even if an incomplete model, for conversation between evolutionary historical thought and religious eschatological thought.

7



o

Josef Pieper and the Concept of Tradition Kenneth Schmitz

It is well known that there can be, strictly speaking, no demonstration regarding first things. Now “tradition,” for Josef Pieper, is one of those first things. Or rather, precisely, it is not simply “one” of those first things; it is almost everything, that is, everything that is original, primordial, structural—it is the first thing. There can be no demonstration of it in the syllogistic, derivative, and secondary sense, since—being first—nothing stands behind it, nothing that could be relied upon as a presupposition from which a conclusion could be derived. And yet, for all that, there is a demonstration of firstness in another sense, that is, by way of pointing to it; and this is the movement of Pieper’s thought. For the conception of tradition or Überlieferung in the strict sense is not simply one idea among many. On the contrary, it represents the very goal of his thought, its starting point, and its medium. His every effort is bent upon leading us toward its recognition and acceptance.

171

172  Kenneth Schmitz To be sure, similar notions have been expressed by others. Even Martin Heidegger has spoken of “pre-understandings” (Vorverständnisse), and Michael Polanyi has brought to light the “implicit” contours of consciousness, whereas the “First” to which Pieper refers is the ground of objective reality itself.1 Tradition is a reality that reflects a trans-human source whose meaning is to be handed down from one generation to another. Pieper claims this insight, not only for religion and theology, but also for philosophy; and insofar as he claims to be a philosopher in expressing this insight, his analysis calls for closer inspection.2 For Pieper, tradition is not an isolated or even a special topic; it has general import. He insists that how we evaluate tradition tells us something important about ourselves, others, and the whole field of reality. For “tradition” is not a partial or particular concept, but one that leads us into the recesses of the whole of existence (das Ganze) and of our own situation as persons and in community. The impor1. See, for example, Martin Heidegger in What Is a Thing? and in a very different approach, the interesting discussion of the “paradox of the Meno” in Michael Polanyi’s The Tacit Dimension (22–24). Without suggesting an identity of position between Polanyi and Pieper, we read: “It appears, then, that to know that a statement is true is to know more than we can tell and that hence, when a discovery solves a problem, it is itself fraught with further intimations of an indeterminate range, and that furthermore, when we accept the discovery as true, we commit ourselves to a belief in all these as yet undisclosed, perhaps as yet unthinkable, consequences” (23). Even Pieper himself occasionally uses the term “presupposition” (Voraussetzung). Pieper’s usage might be understood as the reverse of the proposal (Zumutung) in the sense of Hegel’s project at the beginning of the Wissenschaft der Logik, in that Hegel looks toward the completion in the realized Absolute System, whereas Pieper looks back to the beginning as transcendent Source. What lies “before” experience, however, is the question (as formulated by Plato) that lies beyond a merely empirical answer and is to be directed to “those who are wise in divine matters,” i.e., to the Ancients. Josef Pieper, “Über das Zuhören und die philosophierende Interpretation,” 148. 2. He tells us that his frequent references to theology “do not of themselves mean that I am ‘speaking as a theologian’. Theology is not something primary but something secondary. The primary thing, which is presupposed by theology, is a body of traditional pronouncements which are believed to have been revealed, not to have come into being through human interpretation of reality, but as Plato puts it [Philebus, 16], to ‘have come down from a divine source’.” Josef Pieper, The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, 29 [298].

The Concept of Tradition  173 tance of the concept for his own thought is indicated by no less than three works dedicated to the topic; and even more, by the frequent reference to the concept in many of his other writings.3

1. The Elements of Tradition In Über den Begriff der Tradition4 Pieper sets out the elements of the concept. Eight elements or features stand out. First, there are minimally two persons or subjects involved: one who transmits and another who receives something that is handed over (traditum).5 Second, the broad sense of the term can refer to a variety of “things” handed down (tradita, tradenda). Pieper, however, selects for analysis: truth, in the form of a teaching, a message, a wisdom, a custom, a legal maxim (Rechtssatz), a rite; but in each of these, whether expressed or implied, is a statement about reality.6 Third, tradition is no ordinary exchange among equal partners, a mere reciprocity or commercium; it is hierarchical, formed by two levels. One party speaks, another listens and hears. In this respect the exchange differs from the ordinary discourse that passes between teacher and student, and 3. The monographs are: “The Concept of Tradition” and Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration. I have had access to these in the original German, along with numerous shorter works. I must thank the editor of this volume, Bernard N. Schumacher, for his assistance in providing me with a number of works otherwise difficult of access for me. Where I have not had access to some works in the original, I have used English translations (noted in each instance), as long as the ideas are consonant with those expressed in the German. 4. Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 470ff. [13ff.] In addition, see “Tradition in der sich wandelnden Welt,” 189ff. Also “Gefährdung und Bewahrung der Tradition,” 191. 5. “[T]he concept of ‘tradition’ . . . necessarily includes two subjects, two personal beings, two somebodies: one who transmits and another to whom something is transmitted. This ‘something’, the matter transmitted, or to be transmitted, may belong to any sphere of human existence.” Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 470 [13]. 6. “In the following discussion the main emphasis will be on the transmission from one generation to another of a truth. Hence the traditum or tradendum will be a statement of what the facts are in a particular case, of a doctrine, of a wisdom— though we must hasten to add that a custom, a legal maxim, a ritual may also imply a statement about reality, a doctrine.” Ibidem, 470 [13].

174  Kenneth Schmitz for that matter from much of the dialogue between Socrates and his interlocutors. And so, in the conversation that takes place in the Symposium between Diotima and Socrates, something quite extraordinary occurs. In that exchange, Diotima speaks and Socrates listens and receives what she says. This is not a dialogue, but rather a transmission, the handing on of meaning (tradere, Überlieferung).7 The distinction between traditional transmission and ordinary teaching manifests a fourth feature. The transmission of tradition embodies a difference in the quality of time. I might put the matter thus: In chronology, all temporal differences between early and late are levelled in accordance with the native uniformity of number. In tradition, however, the difference between before and after is not merely an accidental variant of a common mathematical measure; it is an essential differentiation that is existential and constitutive of the relation itself. Indeed, it is not even a simple qualitative difference, but an ontological one, a difference in the mode of being. Regardless of chronological age, the “handing on and down” intends the recipient as a disciple or follower, as an heir who participates in the reception from an earlier time directed toward coming generations.8 This is to say that, in ordinary teaching, time is somehow incidental and even irrelevant, a contact of minds in the present; whereas in tradition the temporal (but not merely chronological) differential is part of the very structure of the exchange. But there is more. Fifth,—and here Pieper resorts to the language of place—the “handing down” is from a radically other “place” (Ort), a different kind of source. The transmission differs from the exchange whereby a teacher imparts his own knowledge to his students, knowledge which he has acquired through his own efforts. Such communication is a reciprocal sharing of knowledge, whereas 7. Ibidem, 470–71 [14]. 8. “In the case of tradition, however, the transmitter regards the receiver as the successor, the son, the ‘disciple’, the inheritor who accepts what is imparted to him as intended for the future, for the coming generation.” Ibidem, 471 [14].

The Concept of Tradition  175 in tradition something is handed down and handed on that itself has been previously received and handed on.9 And so, as well as a difference of times, we may speak of a difference of places, “whence” (von wo) the knowledge comes, “whither” (wohin) it is directed, and “where” it is “at” (auf). It is not acquired knowledge but rather knowledge that is received from elsewhere (vonanderswoher).10 It follows, sixth, that what is transmitted is “owned” neither by teacher nor by student. This latter feature is, to be sure, not without controversy, since it acknowledges a transhuman factor in the concept, at least if it is taken in what Pieper refers to as “Tradition in the strict sense.”11 It is this transcendence that is the source of the celebratory power of sacred festivals which are worldly, but never profane.12 Of course, Pieper concedes a less strict, more everyday use of the term, for there is a “gray” world that shades off into customs that are not obligatory in the strictest sense. Regarding “worldly” traditions of a social character, it is clear that their “obligatory” character is of a different kind and source from that of sacred tradition. He gives examples, such as the current custom of the German farewell, Aufwiedersehen, adopted with nationalist fervor during the first World War in place of the up-to-then customary Adieu.13 Many such, more or less transitory, accretions attach themselves to familiar behavior, but what interests Pieper about tradition understood “in the strict sense” is the stable core that discloses the essential truth about our humanity and about the reality within which we live. Since the traditum comes from a transhuman source, it follows, 9. “On the contrary, something previously handed in is handed out, something is passed on that was previously received.” Ibidem, 472 [15]. 10. Ibidem, 472 [15]. 11. Tradition is realized most purely in sacred tradition (heilige Überlieferung). Ibidem, 480 [25]. See Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 270 [274]. 12. Regarding the source and character of the celebratory power of sacred tradition, see Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, 34ff. (242ff.): “A festival without gods is a non-concept.” 13. See Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 267 [271ff.]

176  Kenneth Schmitz as the seventh feature, that such a core is to be handed down without alteration, just as it has been received. Regarding the obligation to preserve the content of what is handed on without alteration, Pieper distinguishes between the ordinary preservation of social continuity and the preservation of the core content of Tradition (the traditum). The former is a properly human and cultural requirement, whereas the latter stems from an absolutely binding divine source, touching the very fundamentals of human well-being.14 We will shortly come to see, however, that the stable core is not static, and that it permits growth, though not in the transitory sense of “progress.”15 Distinguishing what he calls “worldly” traditions or customs from basic Tradition, taken “in the strict sense,” Pieper lays down two characteristics of such Tradition: that the earliest form of reception not be altered, and that the binding power of the traditum have no other source than divine revelation.16 As such, then, Tradition must be accepted as a gift on loan (Leihgabe).17 An eighth feature might be called “participation” from the side of the recipient and “authority” from the side of the source. For one can, as an historian, acquire knowledge about tradition with14. Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 482–83 [26–27]. 15. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 275 [279]. To treat the core of tradition as static rather than permanent is the mistake made by traditionalism or conservatism, in that it attaches undue importance to the details of secondary “traditions” (Ibidem, 273–74 [277–78]. “Tradition in der sich wandelnden Welt,” 193–194). At the same time, one ought not to treat the disappearance of at least some secondary traditions as though their disappearance might not eventually erode the core itself. 16. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 270 [274]. On the other hand, some customs are no more binding than simple courtesy; as times change, so do they. Such alteration is ambiguous only if it touches upon the essential core of genuine tradition (Ibidem, 268–70 [272–74]). The loss of some customs may signify only adaptation to changing times, but—for example—failure to celebrate Easter would, at least in European culture, be quite another matter (271–72 [275–76]). 17. In contrasting what teacher and student possess from having learned it through their own efforts, Pieper remarks: “What a person learns becomes his property; what he receives from tradition remains something like a loan.” He also elaborates the contrast between learning and remembering, commenting on the fact that Überlieferung rests on the need to [actively] remember rather than to discover. See Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 476 [20]. This simply reinforces the affinity of Pieper’s thought for Plato’s notion of reminiscence (anamnesis).

The Concept of Tradition  177 out conceding to it the authority that is intrinsic to its full meaning.18 Participation in the reception of Tradition may well be called faith (Glaube), though the faith of the Christian is not the only faith that is here meant. There is the faith of pre-Christian and extraChristian tradition as well, the first among the Greeks, and especially with Plato and even with Aristotle, and the latter with other cultures, most notably those of the Far East.19 Reflecting upon Pieper’s contrast between tradition and history, one might say that what distinguishes the authority of the historian who studies tradition from the “believer” who accepts it on its own authority, may be formulated thus: The authority of history pertains to the historian’s methodical reconstruction and interpretation of the past as it comes to him in the present; but this is a limited authority, governing his historiographical reconstruction; it is epistemic authority. The “believer” who accepts Tradition on its authority, on the other hand, receives it as bearing upon the fundamental aspects of his whole life and existence; such authority is ontological, touching every aspect of his being.20 To recapitulate: Tradition in the strict sense is a non-reciprocal 18. In contrasting learning with the reception of tradition, Pieper observes: “The thing I know I do not at the same time believe. It is not received by me but appropriated, and I possess it on my own” (Ibidem, 473 [17]). “I accept what is handed down as true and valid without being able critically to test its validity” (473 [16]). 19. “There is still another stock of tradition which has become accessible to us [. . . .] I am speaking of the non-European, above all the Far Eastern cultures.” Josef Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy, 154 [429]. Referring to Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 7, ad 2, and Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad 5), he says that “any non-Christian who is filled with conviction that God—in some way deemed suitable by him—will set men free, therefore also believes, fide implicita, in Christ.” This, it seems to me, does not merely rest “saving” truth in reason and appropriate action, but extends such truth claim to appropriately “purified” non-Christian myths as well, even though (in Pieper’s view) they fall short of the fullness of Christian revelation. 20. See my essay “What Happens to Tradition When History Overtakes It?” It may well be that, in our present historically sensitive and non-traditional society, tradition must be blended into a mosaic in which wisdom consists, not only in the proper balance of first principles, but also in the proper weight to be given to the past, present, and future, so that wisdom takes on a temporal mode, a balancing of the demands of history and tradition.

178  Kenneth Schmitz handing-down-and-on of a dynamic guidance from a transcendent Source, Place, and Duration, that is obligatory for human beings toward the realization of their well-being.

2. The Loci of Tradition Pieper acknowledges that these features only outline the formal structure of the concept of Tradition, so that the question remains whether there actually is to be found—anywhere—such a claim as Tradition in the strict sense. He treats this as an empirical question and locates Tradition in several “places” (Ortsangaben): in biblical religion, especially Christianity; in pre-Christian and extra-Christian myths; and in depth-psychology, to which he adds a fourth locus, though only lightly touched upon: language.21 For Pieper, what first comes to mind—at least for Western European civilization upon which his attention is concentrated, despite occasional references to personal experiences in Japan and India— is the traditional teaching (Lehrüberlieferung) of biblical religion, specifically of Christianity, which for him is all but paradigmatic. It is the task of theology to interpret this revelation, which he distinguishes from the project of philosophical enquiry. The second source of Tradition is to be found in the myths, the stories of the relation between gods and men, found in the pre-Christian Mediterranean culture as well as in the Far Eastern and other cultures. Pieper asks rhetorically, whether this manifold and diverse source is not “something like a ‘primordial revelation’  ” (so etwas wie eine ‘Ur-Offenbarung’).22 These myths are not to be understood indiscriminately, however.23 And here Pieper relies in a special way upon 21. See Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 485 [29]. Pieper addresses the theme of language in the service of revelation in “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’? Preliminary Reflections to a Theological Debate.” 22. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 278 [282]. An interesting, if incidental and inconclusive, correspondence with the ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt is mentioned in No One Could Have Known, 124f. [137]. 23. Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 486 [30].

The Concept of Tradition  179 the Platonic Socrates to disengage the core meaning of the original revelation. I will, therefore, shortly return to this “locus” for a more intensive consideration. The third “locus” of Tradition—an important one, he tells us, for his theme, though here Pieper speaks with some caution (am fragwürdigsten)—may be found in the work of Carl Jung, who uses the word “tradition” (Überlieferung) in this context.24 Pieper finds it more difficult to articulate this “locus” with sufficient rigor. What is meant are “definite certainties associated with the medium of human existence.” These are not obvious on the surface but make themselves compellingly clear under certain conditions. The findings of depth-psychology seem to Pieper to provide evidence and to justify the following claims: There are “unconscious certainties” whose object is the fundamental existential “facts” (Existenz-Sachverhalte): salvation, damnation, guilt, punishment, happiness, and concord. These basic convictions (Grundannahmen), though not simply verifiable by rational means, are held with such certainty that we in fact live our lives in accord with them and are at odds with ourselves if we try to live otherwise.25 But more needs to be said. This source must not be understood simply in a psychological sense. It is more than individual, and it is a power that maintains itself throughout generations and harkens back to the early origins of human history. As memory, it leads us back beyond our individual selves.26 The fourth “locus” of Tradition is found in language. For we enter language, not as its inventors but as the recipients of a manifold of already constituted meanings, including those touching upon the 24. Ibidem, 487 [32]. Also Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 283 [288]. These passages are all but identical in the two texts. 25. “First, there is subconscious certainty—C. G. Jung speaks of ‘insights’ and of ‘archetype ideas’—which has as its object the basic factors of human existence: wellbeing, misfortune, guilt, punishment, happiness, harmony. Secondly, in spite of the fact that these basic assumptions defy rational proof we are so certain of their truth that as a matter of fact we do adjust our lives in accordance with them and that we are at odds with ourselves when we try to live otherwise.” Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 487 [32]. 26. Ibidem, 488 [32]. See Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 283–84 [288].

180  Kenneth Schmitz most important issues for human existence and destiny. Within the manifold of a particular language—and one may say, in every language, however different the emphasis or formulation—there are the words of everyday life, of memory and of hope. Following Plato in the Phaedrus,27 Pieper understands language, not simply in a functional manner, as a mere instrumental means of communication, but as a repository of human experience and values that constitute a traditum, guiding the speaker toward a substantive interpretation of the world that the individual finds already embracing him. Positivism and secularism in modern Western society attempt to drive such understandings and expectations to the edges of lived consciousness, denuding them of their value.28 In sum, then, Pieper locates Tradition in four “loci”: the Christian revelation (which he takes to be the most complete and authoritative);29 the myths of peoples, with especial attention to Plato’s articulation of the Great Myth; the fundamental existential directives for human understanding and conduct (as articulated in a psychological manner by Jung); and finally, the basic meanings that every speaker becomes heir to as he or she enters upon language.

3. The Great Myth After having canvassed the four sources of Tradition in his works, it is evident that, for Pieper, the study of Plato is of the first importance, not only regarding his concept of Tradition, but for his philosophy as a whole.30 Pieper reads the Platonic texts as a philosopher and not simply as an historian of ideas, and he brings his own phil27. See Plato, Phaedrus, 244b. 28. See Pieper’s critique of scientism and positivism in A Plea for Philosophy, 129–30 [128–31]. His principal objection to the Wiener Kreis (Vienna Circle) is the arbitrary exclusion of evidence in the interest of unexamined presuppositions. 29. But see note 19. 30. In Josef Pieper’s Death and Immortality, 101 [380], he remarks: “Plato, after all, is not just anybody, but one of the founders of all European thinking about man, and still capable of setting the tone of philosophical discussion.”

The Concept of Tradition  181 osophical insights into play. For that reason, it is indispensable that we look at Pieper’s understanding of Plato, and especially of what he terms the three great eschatological dialogues: Gorgias, Republic, and Phaedo.31 His is a study that presents an interpretation of the great philosopher that is in many respects at odds with a widely accepted understanding of the ancient Greek. His understanding may be summarized with his own words: “Plato himself is no Platonist.”32 The first phase of Pieper’s “rescue” of the true myth for our present time closely follows Plato’s earlier rescue.33 And so, the first move is both negative and external. It consists in taking seriously Plato’s own dissection of the myths by which the Greek excluded the misleading stories told by the poets, concerning the dalliances of the gods, their quarrels and seductions; for he excluded these from the substantial truth contained at the core of the myths.34 Nor was this criticism easily or eagerly embraced by the young Plato, for 31. In his most extensive study of Plato (Über die platonischen Mythen), Pieper lists the authentic myths which are deserving of belief, as: Timaeus (for the creation of the cosmos by a benign creator), Symposium (for the original fall of man in Aristophanes’ account), and the Gorgias, Republic, and Phaedo (for the eschatological myth of the other-world: Jenseits, the beyond refers to the afterworld, and the judgment and fate of the dead: Totengericht). See Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 344. Additional references to the great cosmic and eschatological myth are strewn throughout Pieper’s works, with particular attention to the Phaedrus (see Enthusiasm and Divine Madness), but also to the Meno (on memoria and anamnesis), the Statesman (269b), Crito (54b), Euthyphro, Lysis (217b), Philebus (16c), and the Seventh Letter (335a): see Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 345–46. 32. Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality, 104 [383]. The target is principally the spiritualist or mentalist interpretation common in the Enlightenment, such as that of Mendelssohn; but in another direction, he also criticizes the excessive rationalism of nineteenth- and twentieth-century exegetes who are embarrassed by Plato’s treatment of myth. 33. Pieper builds upon Plato’s own project of purification: “Plato uses in this context the word ‘save’: the mythical message concerning the last judgment and otherworldly punishment was ‘saved’ in a wondrous manner, and he adds the astonishing hope that ‘it will save us if we believe it’ Republic [621c] and for further details see Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 340f.).” Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 276 [280]. 34. For example, in Euthyphro (6b–c), Socrates condemns the poets’ depiction of battles and the like among the gods for their lack of seriousness: “gegen den Unernst spielerischer Phantastik,” Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 367.

182  Kenneth Schmitz he greatly loved Homer and his stories.35 What Plato took with utter seriousness was the truth contained in the Great Myth,36 at whose core (as already mentioned) are three beliefs: belief in the birth of the cosmos from a benign creator; belief in an original fault whereby man fell from perfection to the present state; and belief in a last judgment (Totengericht) which renders reward and penalty, whereby those who have lived rightly will find blessedness in companionship with the gods.37 In sum: creation, sin, and redemption! This brings the Great Myth very close in its content to the Christian mysteries.38 Pieper sees the Christian revelation as the fulfillment of an illumination already begun, not only in biblical prophecy, but also in the myths. The Great Myth speaks of a transcendent realm (drüben not hier), and of a guide to action and conduct (tun). Moreover, we are told that the language is not to be taken literally, but rather symbolically,39 since it expresses truth about the whole of human existence, with open reference to the transcendent world of cosmic origin and human destiny. In other words, it enters into a strange and all but alien realm.40 Finally, as we have seen in the sixth element already mentioned, the one who recounts the myth is not its author, but rather the transmit35. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 368; see 337. Pieper quotes from the Republic a statement that prefigures a similar remark of Aristotle (595c2): “One must revere the truth more than a man, and so I must speak.” Über die platonischen Mythen, 368. Plato accuses Hesiod of outright lies (lügnerischen Mythen), Über die platonischen Mythen, 367; citing Socrates in Republic (377b–e). Pieper reminds us, however, that Xenophanes and Heraclitus had already raised objections against the libidinous tales of the poets. 36. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 345–46. 37. Ibidem, 338; see note 31. 38. In his “Gefährdung und Bewahrung der Tradition” (199) Pieper remarks that, in its basics, the message (Botschaft) of the Great Myth harmonizes closely with Christian revelation: “all dies haargenau zur christlichen Antwort in dieser gleichen Sache passt, wenn es nicht überhaupt mit ihr im Grunde identisch ist.” 39. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 364. 40. See his remarks on ecstasy and “being-beside-oneself,” in Enthusiasm and Divine Madness and the shorter version, Divine Madness: Plato’s Case against Secular Humanism.

The Concept of Tradition  183 ter of what has been received; he is not an eyewitness who possesses experience of that of which he speaks, but a listener who has “heard it said” (durch Hören; ex akoeˉs).41 For that reason, the acceptance is not one of knowledge in the usual sense, but of “faith.” In the Phaedo42 Plato uses the very word: peíthesthai, which (not without controversy) Pieper takes to mean: to trust, to believe:43 “ich habe es geglaubt.” And he concludes that the only possible meaning is that the word (péithesthai) expresses “the certitude of faith.”44 Pieper is conscious of an unease among his philosophical hearers. At this point I am prepared for a critical interjection. Well then, will we from now on be engaged in theology? This question has often been flung at me and I am deeply concerned to make it plain that the answer is, “No.” 41. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 339–42, 344–45. The term (ex akoeˉs) is the medium of reception from die Alten, the palaioi, pampalaioi, archaioi, antiqui, maiores, introduced often in the Platonic dialogues with the incipit: palai legetai. Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 477–79 [21–23]; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 256, 257–58 [259, 261]; “Gefährdung und Bewahrung der Tradition,” 197: die Alten who are “better than we.” Plato also uses the term theios logos (“Tradition in der sich wandelnden Welt,” 197). And in Über die platonischen Mythen (361), Pieper cites the Seventh Letter (335a: toîs palaioîs te kaì ‘ieroîs): den alten und heiligen Reden zu glauben. (See Gorgias, Republic, and Lysis, 217b.) Furthermore, Pieper insists that it is Hören! and not, as some German translations render the term: Hörensagen, i.e., “hearsay” (Über die platonischen Mythen, 345). It is significant, he tells us, that Plato uses the same wording as that of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (10, 17). See a similar comment, Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 154 [152]. 42. See Plato, Phaedo, 108e, 109a. 43. He is aware of a certain ambiguity in the term, since he criticizes those who render it as “I am won over” (playing on “obedience” associated with pépeismai), or “I am convinced” (überzeugt), or even “opined.” Even more mistaken are the attempts of some distinguished exegetes to take the Platonic discussions of myth as “senseless,” “fantastic,” “absurd,” “a fable,” “playful,” or in some way ironic. Of course, the single term (péithesthai) alone cannot settle the issue, but only a consideration of context, and here the frequent association of the word with the truth in the Dialogues seems to corroborate Pieper’s claim that Plato took the core myth with great seriousness. Cf. (among many passages) Pieper’s citation of Socrates in the Gorgias (523a, 524a, 527a): “Dies, Kallikles, ist es, was ich gehört habe und wovon ich glaube, es sei die Wahrheit.” Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 348. 44. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 371.

184  Kenneth Schmitz No, we are not engaging in theology; or at any rate not when, in attacking the problem of death in a philosophical way, which is to say under every conceivable aspect, we consider what we believe about the theme of death and include the theological interpretation of that belief in our considerations—doing so, moreover, frankly and expressly, with our cards on the table. No one who engages in philosophy with existential seriousness can omit this branch of thought, no matter whether in concreto he is considering the creeds of atheism (as with Jean-Paul Sartre) or of Hinduism (as with Radhakrishnan) or Christianity. Of course it matters very much what the creed and the religion offer in their defense. But still this play of what a man knows against what he believes must be performed with critical keenness; otherwise we would no longer be considering the subject at hand under every conceivable aspect, which is the same as saying we would no longer be philosophizing.45

But, if the “certitude of faith” associated with the Great Myth is founded upon the unalterability of the content of the myth insofar as Plato has “rescued” it, we meet a difficulty in Pieper’s own interpretation of Plato. For Pieper, in at least one important instance, does not take Plato literally, that is, insofar as the Greek endorses the pre-existence of the soul. Now Pieper’s “correction” of Plato here is not the same as the exclusion of the poets’ scandals, for it “corrects” Plato himself, and in regard to something that the Greek considered part of the Great Myth. In Tradition als Herausforderung Pieper counsels us: “I have in mind to suggest that we ‘give up’ the expression ‘pre-existence of the soul’, although it is undoubtedly literally in the Platonic work, and to ignore it in order to save the truth of what is properly meant.”46 45. Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality, 55 [335]. I have added the emphasis, to underscore the open non-selectivity that is central to Pieper’s conception of philosophy. 46. “Ich habe im Sinn, den Vorschlag zu machen, die Aussage ‘Präexistenz der Seele’, wiewohl sie zweifellos wortwörtlich im platonischen Werk zu lesen ist, ‘preiszugeben’, sie zu ignorieren, um die Wahrheit des eigentlich Gemeinten für uns zu retten.” Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” 244. For a fuller treatment of the soul, see “Unsterblichkeit—eine nicht-christliche Vorstellung? Philosophische Bemerkungen zu einem kontroverstheologischen Thema” and Death and Immortality.

The Concept of Tradition  185 Pieper seems to treat this “rescue”47 more lightly than some readers might appreciate. It seems, at first glance, to be rather more serious surgery than a responsible exegete might tolerate, especially given that Pieper has insisted upon the obligation to accept traditional teaching without altering it. And indeed, Pieper himself is sensitive to the problematic character of such a “correction,” since it does not concern only the scandalous poets. He tells us, “it is my conviction that Plato is not equal to doing this [i. e., to completely purging the false and misleading elements in the stories as they have come down to him] [. . .] and that here we find drawn an insuperable limit for pre-Christian thought.”48 Nonetheless, Pieper will shortly introduce a nuance to his “correction” that purports to restore Plato to good standing, even as it justifies Pieper’s emendation, which has to do with Plato’s expression rather than his intended meaning. Nevertheless, a reader less ready to dismiss what appears to be a contradiction on Pieper’s part—i.e., to preserve yet alter the teaching—might rightly ask for legitimation of the alteration to the obvious sense of the text. Since Pieper is operating as a philosopher, it would not be fair to plead that the Christian rejection of the pre-existence of the soul could be advanced as the philosophical grounds for abandoning the literal meaning of Plato’s text. Some other grounds must be sought, and indeed, for a more patient reader, there is somewhat to be said for Pieper’s interpretation, which is one of “convenience”—not in our contemporary self-serving sense, but in the mediaeval sense of an argumentum ex convenientia, i.e., one that “fits” and “meets with” the situation. It is a subtle point that needs careful attention, for more is at 47. See note 33. 48. “[. . .] es ist meine Überzeugung, dass Platon ebendies zu tun gerade nicht imstande gewesen ist. Im Gesamtbestand der faktisch ihm vorliegenden mythischen Überlieferung das Wahre und das Falsche, den Kern und die Schale, das Wesentliche und das Beiwerk zu underscheiden und zu scheiden—gerade dies war ihm nicht möglich. Hier ist dem vor-christlichen Denken eine unübersteigbare Grenze gezogen.” Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 346.

186  Kenneth Schmitz stake than a particular construal of a text. The “unalterability” of genuine Tradition rests upon a certain trans-temporal value in regard to its content, which is “always valid and vital at all times,” even though “continually threatened by the danger of forgetfulness and corruption.”49 And so, although there can be no “progress” in the sense of an accumulation or an addition to the content of something radically new that was not there before, there can be a growth (Weitersein) in the maintenance of the content through a clearer and deeper grasp of its significance.50 And this is what Pieper sets out to realize in his interpretation of Plato’s literal position regarding the “pre-existence of the soul.” In Enthusiasm and Divine Madness51 Pieper argues at greater length for a non-temporal or trans-temporal meaning of pre-existence: agénetos as the denial of coming-to-be-in-time. But does not the Christian doctrine at bottom agree with this Platonic idea? We too think of the spiritual soul as something that is not really “born.” When we say that the soul is immediately “created,” like all spiritual beings that enter into existence, are we not saying that the soul does not come to be in the same way that all other [bodily] things grow and develop? There is no such thing as a genetics of the spiritual soul. This thesis— which, by the way, is of highly contemporary importance—is not merely similar to Plato’s; it is exactly the same.52

Such an answer translates a temporal priority into an ontological one. And it rests upon the issue of the existence of a spiritual dimen49. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 275 [279]. “. . . das immer Gültige und zu jeder Zeit Aktuelle, das freilich auch unausgesetzt vom Vergessenwerden wie vom Verdorbenwerden bedroht ist.” 50. Ibidem, 274–75 [279–80]. 51. Josef Pieper, Enthusiasm and Divine Madness, 74ff. [308ff.] 52. As to the contemporary pertinence of the insight, while Pieper distances himself from the “questionable” language (ibidem, 75 [309]) in which Plato couches the doctrine, it may be worth remarking that the contemporary dilemma regarding the soul is characterized by a materialist analysis that reduces it to material forces, or by a positivist claim that dismisses the very conception, or by a critical idealist or postidealist conception of consciousness as subjectivity that in practice takes it as a first principle and as, in that sense, “unbegotten.”

The Concept of Tradition  187 sion, an issue that lies well within the provenance of a philosophy that attends to the evidence presented by the whole of reality.53 But even before he is likely to gain a hearing for this interpretation of Plato’s text, Pieper has to face a more general objection to his claim that Plato has taken seriously the truth of the Great Myth, and equally that Pieper himself has endorsed the truth of this claim. The two—Plato and Pieper—are closely entwined: the particular question of how one reads Plato and the philosophical truth of the matter are all but inextricable, for it is in that “locus” that Pieper finds the integral account of the traditum made explicit. In answering the general objection, Pieper carries out a vigorous refutation of those interpreters who dismiss Plato’s serious conviction regarding the truth of the Great Myth. Thus, he insists that for Plato the basic features of the myth, as set out in the Timaeus and elsewhere, are unshakeable in their truth.54 In the strategies of avoidance adopted, on the other hand, by many modern scholars—he names the great Wilamowitz and Couturat, who defuse the plain meaning of the various references to myth in Plato’s text, along with more recent scholars—he finds an unstated supposition that philosophy, supposedly having “extricated” itself from the stories of the poets, cannot possibly take any mythical account seriously. And so what is at issue in this general objection is not the earlier textual issue—whether Plato took the myths seriously—but the very possibility that the myth itself might be taken seriously.55 53. Such issues are addressed directly in their philosophical terms in Reality and the Good and The Truth of all Things. An Inquiry into the Anthropology of the High Middle Ages.—Ancillary to these but central to Pieper’s own philosophy are: Guide to Thomas Aquinas; Scholasticism; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas” and “The Timeliness of Thomism.” 54. “Das ist für ihn eine schlechthin unumstössliche Wahrheit.” Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 357. “Meine These also besagt, Platon habe das in den Mythen Gemeinte für unantastbare Wahrheit gehalten.” (359). 55. Of course, the two issues—how to read Plato and whether the myth is true— are allied, since the dismissal of the truth of all myth lays upon the Platonic exegete the prior tendency to “free” Plato himself from such belief.

188  Kenneth Schmitz And so Pieper realizes that he must deal with a built-in suspicion and rejection of the truth-value of any and all myth; after all, did not philosophy emerge out of myth and against it? And so, just as Plato had “rescued” the core of the Great Myth from the scandalmongering of the poets, Pieper now carries through a sustained and parallel refutation of the many interpreters who disclaim Plato’s serious acceptance of the truth of the Great Myth and interpret the text in a figurative or less than serious way. He charges that, in their strategies of avoidance, what is at work in the rejection of the claim to veracity is a certain pre-understanding of philosophy and of reason that arbitrarily excludes from serious consideration the factual presence of such myths among all peoples. Now, it is Pieper’s view that it is not the business of the philosopher to ignore such a massive phenomenon. It is a defect and distortion for a philosopher to direct his thought toward anything less than the whole of reality and to all of the evidence it presents to us. To be sure, this is not theology, which rests its interpretation upon the revelation accepted as a sacred word, but rather philosophy, which takes account of the presence of religious revelation in the experience of mankind and relates that presence to the whole of reality and man’s situation in it. What is at issue here, then, is the very concept of philosophy and of reason itself: whether a philosopher is permitted to adopt an a priori principle of exclusion that dismisses what lies beyond the capacity of human reason, simply on the grounds that human reason is unable to produce it out of itself—as Lessing, for example, thought it could do, given sufficient time. Pieper acknowledges that religion and philosophy have the same intelligible field: the non-selective totality of what is real and true. Their difference lies in the way they enter upon that field; but neither can engage in selective withdrawal from the field of cosmic and human existence in its entirety. From the side of objective content (tradita), then, there can be no exclusion from whatever offers itself to the philosopher for his consider-

The Concept of Tradition  189 ation. And from the side of the subjective search, the philosopher should not refuse to accept what may be the truth, simply on the grounds that it has come from an other-than-human source.56 Pieper insists that philosophical enquiry seeks and receives an answer, but that it is not one that eliminates the question; nor does the answer preclude a further questioning that opens out onto the massive presence of religion in the history of mankind.57 In contrast to the special sciences, this “openness to the whole” is the differentia specifica of philosophy. Whereas science listens to reality, but does so only under the prior limitation of its questions, which are directed to an already exclusive aspect, philosophy demands, in Goethe’s words to Herder, “the total shedding of all pretensions,” a direct and unqualified simplicitas.58 Since what philosophy can achieve in and through its enquiry can never exhaust the totality of its object, it must remain open toward a continuing search and a readiness to accept what presents itself and recommends itself to the enquiring mind from whatever source. This, after all, is the attitude of theoria, which Pieper attributes to philosophy.59 Countering the arbitrarily closed vantage point of the 56. Regarding Karl Jaspers’s renunciation of revelation, “we propose to examine Jasper’s own particular conception of philosophy. Its specific character derives, it seems to me, from the special weight it places on the philosophizing person. While he is certainly desirous of an answer, his desire is, on the other hand, not so unconditional that he would allow it to be communicated to him by another.” This position exhibits “an almost envying vigilance in ensuring that the formal character of the philosophical act is not violated or comprmised. Here the methodological ‘purity’ of the philosophizing act appears to be considered almost more important than any possible answer to the philosophical question.” Now this differs from Plato and Aristotle, who “were not interested in philosophy at all (at least not in this sense), that is, as a formal, carefully delineated academic discipline, and certainly not for the sake of the delineation itself.” Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 153–54 [151–52]. 57. Ibidem, 85 [80]. 58. Ibidem, 108–9 [104–5]. 59. Regarding the religious origins of the term, the theoros was obliged to report back to his city verbatim the words of the oracle. Pieper cautions us, however: “Still, there is no need for concern: it would never have occurred to me to equate philosophical theoria with the visio beatifica. The contemplation of reality as a whole with respect to its ultimate meaning, that is, philosophizing as such, takes the form of a

190  Kenneth Schmitz Vienna positivists, Pieper “takes a stand.”60 Nevertheless, it would be quite mistaken to reduce that “stand” to an arbitrary act of the will. It is rather that, since it concerns “first things,” the enquiry cannot expect an ordinary demonstration, and certainly not one in accord with the exact sciences. Instead, the enquiry must be addressed to the realm of the wondrous, which unexpectedly opens itself up beyond the putatively matter-of-course and in the midst of it. Not to cover up the world’s unfathomable ground (unergründlichen Grund) with language, but to bring it before one’s view through language—this is the task that confronts both the philosopher and the poet. With this, however, the distinction between the two has not in the least been blurred; the method of philosophy, unlike that of poetry, is not one of representation through sensuous forms (sound, rhythm, repetition, figure) but rather one of capturing reality in nonintuitive concepts.61

Can the philosopher refer to revelation and tradition? The question runs as follows: Does it belong to the genuine philosophical task of the philosophizing person to consider evidence on the world and human existence that derives not from experience and rational argumentation, but rather from a realm that can be denoted with the terms “revelation”, “holy tradition”, “belief”, and “theology”? Is it possible legitimately to include such statements that are neither empirically nor rationally demonstrable in one’s philosophizing? To which I would answer: It is not only possible and legitimate; it is necessary.62

questioning rather than a beholding” (Ibidem, 118 [114]). It is well to remember that, for Pieper, religion and philosophy seek the same end, viz. the perfection of man, differing, however in modality, philosophy carrying out its search primarily in relation to experience and reflection and on that basis taking into account the revelation present in the religions and myths of mankind. 60. See ibidem, 124 [121]. See his discussion of positivism in ibidem, 131ff. [128ff.]. In that discussion, he concedes that the call for a knowledge beyond the “fake” exactness of positivism (Whitehead; see ibidem, 132–33 [129–30]) is “only an assertion, indeed, a very bold and very ‘vulnerable’ one, which urgently requires justification.” This unsettling remark is uttered in the context of a discussion of scientism and positivism. In view of remarks in other contexts, I take it to mean that a call for knowledge beyond the criteria of the positivists will seem “very bold.” 61. Ibidem, 142 [139]. 62. Ibidem, 148 [146] emphasis added. See note 60.

The Concept of Tradition  191 Whenever one philosophizes in a fundamental way, he falls back upon notions that are “praeter-natural.” And this holds, not only for the Christian who philosophizes, but for everyone: “I am convinced that every philosophical interpretation of the world and human existence is based, at least unconsciously, on assumptions that aim at the whole and that one does not so much ‘know’ as ‘believe’.”63 The content of such “belief” is, in Pieper’s view, highly intelligible, giving meaning to the deepest of human memories, concerns, and aspirations. It should be borne in mind, also, that Pieper is not here considering philosophy in its merely formal (and abstract) sense, but concretely as it is exercised by and in the philosopher.64 And so, we arrive at the positive defense of the great Tradition as its unfolds in Pieper’s understanding of Plato and in his own thought. For the tradition of the Great Myth recounts events and actions that spring from the free interplay of God and man. On this point, Pieper insists, there is no difference between the instruction (Auskünften) which the Christian believes and that of the myth recovered and recounted by Plato. Contrary to Lessing’s “truths of reason” and abstract principles, both the revelation in which the Christian believes and the myths which Plato recounts have in common that their object is not a mere content (Sachverhalt), but a history (Geschichte) of events occurring between the divine and human realms.65 63. Ibidem, 151 [149]. 64. “First, we are speaking, not of ‘philosophy’ as such, but—just as in the previously cited passage from Plato’s Republic (474b, 475c, 486a, 485b)—of existential philosophizing and the philosophizing person.” Ibidem, 148 [146]. 65. “In diesem Punkt gibt es keinen Unterschied zwischen den Auskünften, an welche die Christen glauben, und den von Platon erzählten Mythen. Beide haben das gemeinsam, dass ihr Gegenstand nicht ein Sachverhalt ist, sondern eine Geschichte, sich zutragend zwischen göttlichen und menschlichem Bereich” (Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 374). That is why he does not consider the allegory of the Cave in the Republic to be a myth in the core sense, since it has to do with purely human affairs rather than with communication between the divine and human, and moreover, affairs that presumably can be settled by men without recourse to the gods (ibidem, 337–38). In Enthusiasm and Divine Madness, 77 [311], he observes: “I should like to raise an objection here, chiefly to the loose usage of the term myth. In the strict sense, myth is a story dealing with the interplay between the divine and human

192  Kenneth Schmitz St. Augustine’s understanding of memoria is not far from Pieper’s mind,66 in which memory plays a decisive role.67 The German intensive Erinnerung is a “going within” to a deeper meaning that is meant to accord, not only with the past, but with the reality of the way things are. And indeed, this conception of memory is attested by the philosophers Plato, Augustine, Hegel, and Marcel, among others. With a passing reference to the Meno, Pieper enlarges on the pregiven structure of reality that is accessible to us in our very being and its relation to truth.68 And in support of this understanding, he (perhaps surprisingly) cites Thomas Aquinas to the effect that there is a knowing that is “not from without, not from the outside objective world nor from our experience of it.”69 This raises an issue, both with a certain interpretation of St. Thomas and with the truth of the matter. Yet the issue is not so easily settled as one might first think. Pieper dismisses an intermediate position: that there is somehow a “between,” neither “out” nor “in.” He insists that either we learn it “from outside or not,” and the clear position of Pieper is that we do not learn this fundamental knowledge in the ordinary way of empirical discovery but are concomitspheres; it is not the invention of the narrator who happens to be telling it, but is rather something he is handing down from tradition.” 66. Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” 243–44. 67. See his remarks on Jerome, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Goethe in Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 275, 283 [280, 288]. We do not “advance” beyond these authors in the sense of a mere temporal passage (blossen Dahingangs der Zeit) that introduces something radically new. 68. He tells us that in the Phaedo we read that “we must already have received from somewhere the knowledge of the concept ‘same’.” Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” 244. And Pieper says further: “Es gibt offenbar, erfahrungsunabhängig, ein Wissen um die Grundsachverhalte, die Grundstruktur der Wirklichkeit, die letztgründige Bedeutung der Welt, den Sinn des Daseins” [It obviously gives, independently of experience, a knowing of a foundational sort, the basic structure of actuality, the ultimate and fundamental significance of the world, the sense of existence (Daseins)] (244). In “Those ‘Guests at the Festival’,” 70 [515–16], Pieper remarks that “all that exists carries somehow the imprint of ‘paradise’, and all authentic fine arts, offspring of the Muses, know how to make this truth transparent.” 69. “Nicht ‘von aussen her’, nicht von der gegenständlichen Welt her und nicht von der Erfahrung dieser gegenständlichen Welt.” Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” 245.

The Concept of Tradition  193 tant with it in and through our metaphysical constitution: We come to know it, not through our own efforts of discovery and acquisition, but through what we have received from an other, and ultimately from an Other. In some sense we “already” and “always” know it as part of our ontological inheritance. What Pieper here dismisses is that empiricism which endorses a total emptiness on the part of the knower; this alleged emptiness is meant to be the safeguard of objectivity, but it is an artificial exclusion of the subject from its most intimate presence to itself and the world. What Pieper defends is an original harmony, a concordance, a non-chronological priority that constitutes the existential structure of the human person: das Voraus-Dasein und das VorausGewusstsein.70 And even if one were to appeal to the relational character of knowledge (which he would not deny)—so that knowledge arises out of the “between” of the knower and the world—still one would have to account for the grounds on the part of the knower for his ability to recognize what the world is telling him, and that lies in a peculiar “pre-existence” that is not a temporal “before” but the very ontological structure of the human being—the structure that has already begun to form in the womb (Voraus-Dasein). Pieper asks: “How does this fundamental knowledge [VorausGewusstsein] come about, this beginning, this principium, to which (woran: whereby) all learning is linked?”71 It seems to me that Pieper’s position comes to this: The tabula rasa, associated with Aristotle,72 and in a deviant way with John Locke and modern Em70. Ibidem, 246. See his defense of the Platonic elements in St. Thomas’s “Aristotelianism” in Guide to Thomas Aquinas, esp. 43ff. [191ff.]. The significance of Aristotle is his “decisive turn to concreteness, to the empirical reality of the world.” But Pieper adds: “which means that the material world of reality, within man himself also, the sense, and what the senses grasp—is all to be taken seriously” (44–45; the stressed word is so in the original [193]). The “within” is what is accessible to anamnesis and to memoria. This bears affinity with Gabriel Marcel’s notion of reconnaissance and reconnaître. The “pre-” is structural not chronological. 71. Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” 244. 72. Pieper’s understanding of Aristotle recognizes both his empirical researches in the world and his deeper reflections on the nature of reality as such. He insists,

194  Kenneth Schmitz piricism, accounts for the empirical acquisition of categorial knowledge, for the moment of discovery; but there is a prior and deeper human endowment. That endowment is, from the beginning, involved in the world of reality. From that world it receives its very structure, its ontological constitution, its faculties, its fundamemtal orientation to the world, its primordial inclination, anticipation and expectation, by way of that same reality. This same reality, being intelligible, includes relation to a Mind and thus includes the spiritual principles of knowing and loving. This is the basis for the concept of “human nature,” which Pieper fully accepts, though he speaks more frequently and existentially of creatura than of natura.73 It might be objected at this point that our ontological constitution has come about by an evolutionary series of acquisitions on the part of our human and pre-human ancestors, but—if I have understood Pieper’s argument—that will not nullify the need for tradition. If we accept the notion of “existential act” as a “doing” that is absolutely decisive—beyond our power, beyond our control—yet present, not only at the initiation of the cosmos and humankind as a great starting “shove,” but as a continuing and ultimately-and-originally “vital” presence that determines everything—what and that all will be and are—then we are carried beyond ourselves to a Source that (including everything in its power) includes Mind. In this all-too-brief encapsulation of a long reflective argument, we both locate the pivotal anchor of Pieper’s thought and exceed the limits of an essay on tradition. Whereas the “five ways” of St. Thomas elaborate a proof for the existence of God in the discursive language of causality, these “Thomistic” reflections of Pieper, which are motivated and integrathowever, on the continuing Platonic elements in Aristotle’s mature works. He quotes from Aristotle (De partibus animalium I, 5:644bff.) to the effect that the knowledge of divine things, though sparse and difficult, however fleeting, is “a greater pleasure” than “seeing accurately many other and greater things.” To which Pieper remarks that from Aristotle’s “sober mind one had not perhaps expected such courtesy of formulation.” Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 134 [131–32]. 73. See the extended reflection on creation in Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.”

The Concept of Tradition  195 ed with his own thought, explicate an intuition into the primary “giftedness” of the whole of reality and human existence.74

4. Coda It remains, then, to add a coda. The protoplasmic and archetypical matrix of ideas that give rise to Pieper’s understanding of tradition and its role in human life are rooted in his philosophy.75 And there he tells us that we ought not to take ideas as abstract, but rather as concrete directives for the pursuit of the true and the good. That is why philosophy is, first and foremost, not an academic discipline, but something “strange” and essentially unfinished. It is, if I may use my own expression, not simply the pursuit of true knowledge, but the pursuit of the “truth” of truth. That is why, as was said at the beginning, there can be no demonstration in the ordinary sense, any more than a rationalist can demonstrate his own presuppositions regarding the alleged “purity” of reason. Yet the intelligibility of things can convince one, providing he does not put up obstacles to the open search for meaning. The path that Pieper invites us to take requires several decisive steps; and so it is a sort of proposal, a Zumutung, not in the sense of an unreasonable demand but of an expectation that goes beyond ordinary categorial understanding. One is tempted to speak of an appeal to Vernunft rather than Verstand, but in a quite different sense from that of Hegel, that is, not in the vacuous sense with which Hegel begins his Science of Logic, but to the contrary, with the mirandum at the fullness that escapes us on all sides and that awakens the 74. In the end, all acquisition comes to rest in an original acceptance and reception from that which is Actual by essence and not by acquisition. The other alternative is ungrounded and meaningless facticity. This reasoning bears closely upon the “third way” (from possibility and necessity) and the early De Ente et Essentia. See the long reflection on “existence” in Guide to Thomas Aquinas, xi, 134ff. [155–56, 273ff.]; also “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.” 75. See note 41.

196  Kenneth Schmitz wonder with which philosophy takes its first steps and sustains itself on its journey. First, we are invited to experience that loving surprise from which philosophy itself arises.76 Second, the philosopher must approach the whole (das Ganze) with “no holds barred”; that is, unlike the special sciences whose partiality and selectivity is the very fortress that ensures their integrity and success, the philosopher must address reality with an open stance. Of course, this will not result in a specially guarded and defensive academic form of philosophy which, after all, differs little from the special and partial sciences. Third, we must acknowledge an initially given character or nature, the humanum, however we seek to alter it or develop it or enculturate it. And here we might pause to consider the grounds of this stable nature which, after all, is not our invention but rather what we have been given. It cannot be gainsaid that—both in our individual and communal existence and in the very existence of mankind as a whole—we were not there at the beginning, either existentially at the beginning of the earth or the cosmos, nor are we yet existentially and knowingly at the end.77 Our humanum is not of our making, but rather is the result of the movement of being itself, its tensions and harmonies, its intelligiblity and its goodness through its spiritual as well as its physical media. And so, fourth, we must ask about the very nature and source of the order within the movement of being from which and within which we have emerged as human beings and persons. In all simplicitas, we must ask such a simple question as why success suc76. This surprise is, among other writings, a principal theme of his short monograph Only the Lover Sings. 77. In this regard, see Hope and History, as well as The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History. Our ignorance with regard to the end time is starkly insisted upon in Josef Pieper, “Wo stehen wir heute?” 464. For a full analysis of Pieper’s understanding of hope, see Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope and the contribution of Joseph J. Godfrey in this volume.

The Concept of Tradition  197 ceeds, even when the ordination goes against our own specific desires and more or less immediate aims—in earthquakes, floods, and microrganisms. Fifth, there is above all the inexhaustible intelligiblity of all things—for every serious searcher always finds an unknown land stretching out before him, so that he never absolutely quenches his thirst for knowledge; or if he does tire, he knows that it is he who has tired; he is not facing a wall of which no further questions remain to be asked. Now, intelligibility—the truth which we seek and which is normative for the searcher and perfective of him as a person—this truth is a transcendental “quality” that belongs essentially to a mind, so that the inexhaustible intelligiblity of things points to a more than human mind, and it is of this mind that tradition speaks, in the form of revelation and myth. But if the very intelligiblity of things originates out of a mind that is not ours, then truth itself—the meaning which the scientist, the philosopher, and the ordinary enquirer seek—this truth is to be received as a gift. The greatest obstacle to such receptive openness is an inappropriate ambition for unqualified control, not in the restricted sense of everyday limited activities, with which we manage and seek to improve our daily lives, but with regard to the fundamental structures of reality. This ambition narrows the search down to partial results and extinguishes the sense of wonder that arises from consideration of the whole; and that wonder is part of a perennial experience, celebrated by the saint, the poet, the artist, and the philosopher. Since we do not have so much power and control as to create all things in the world through our own power, we are called to recognize the claim to absolute control as both irrational and detrimental to an authentic freedom. Now, if we accept the stance of openness and incorporate within our thought the acknowledgment of our status as creatures existing with others within a world not made by us, then it is rational to address the myths and revelation in a serious way, as potential guides to the basic goods of human life that lie at the base of our deepest

198  Kenneth Schmitz expectations and aspirations.78 And, in the age old wisdom of die Alten, Pieper finds just such indications offered. This does not erase the integrity of philosophical enquiry, but rather places it in a harmonious relation with the myths, in the way in which two melodies in contrapuntal association with each other retain their own quality even as they contribute to a richer, more concrete composition. 78. Milosc Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, is enlightening in this regard. The “lightness of being” is the drift from one meaningless affair to another. What is telling is why this should be “unbearable” if there were not a deeply felt expectation of something meaningful, something better, something true and good.

8



o

The Twofold Discipleship of the Philosopher Faith and Reason in the Thought of Josef Pieper Bernard N. Schumacher Translated by Michele M. Schumacher

At the time of his first doctor honoris causa, conferred by the theology faculty of the University of Munich in 1964, Josef Pieper strongly objected to the “error invicibilis” of those who recognized him as a theologian under the pretext that he considered pre-philosophical data in his philosophical act. Declaring his intention to “attack a notion of philosophy which rejects the grandeur of its own origin,”1 he proposed a rediscovery of the concept of philosophy as presented by the Western tradition. His reflection in the aftermath of the Second World War is radically opposed to Barthian thought, for which the attempt to determine a connection or even a systematic distinction between philosophy and theology is extremely grievous: “It is 1. See Josef Pieper, “Theologie—philosophisch betrachtet,” (1964) with the opening words of his conference, 181.

199

200  Bernard N. Schumacher evident that theology can be interesting for philosophy,” he insists, “only when philosophy no longer interests theology.”2 The relation between these two sciences has, throughout the history of thought, been constantly at the heart of intellectual discourse and controversy. Either they have been set in a juxtaposition that excludes every intrinsic or accidental connection between them, or one has been reduced to the other. Some hold that philosophy should be liberated from the enslaving tutelage of theology to become a fully autonomous and free science, founded uniquely upon reason. Others maintain that the Christian believer should not aspire to philosophical knowledge, which is perceived as the expression of human pride, a vain trap, or even a prostitute. Noteworthy are the remarks of Tertullian: “What is there, then, about them that is alike, the philosopher and the Christian—the disciple of Hellas and the disciple of Heaven?”3 “What then has Athens in common with Jerusalem? What has the Academy in common with the Church? What have heretics in common with Christians?”4 Still others seek to distinguish these two disciplines—whether in scientific or existential terms—so as to unite them within the larger whole of a “contrapuntal symphony.”5

1. Philosophy as Openness to the Totality of Being Pieper describes the philosophical act—in a general but not vague manner—as a reflection upon the whole of that which the subject perceives or experiences, sensibly and intuitively. This totality of things, which the Greeks call to pan, is considered in its ultimate signification, in its most profound roots and in every possible respect.6 The philosopher always asks, in the last analysis, what in2. Karl Barth, “Offenbarung, Kirche, Theologie,” 35. 3. Tertullian, Apology, 46:18, 114. 4. Tertullian, The Prescription of Heretics, section 7, 45. 5. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 155 [154]. Philosophy does not stop at a particular moment to be replaced by theology. 6. See Josef Pieper, “The Condition of Philosophy Today,” 24 [203]; Guide to

Faith and Reason  201 trinsically is being: “What is it all about?”7 as Whitehead, cofounder of modern mathematical logic, sums up. By contrast with the specialized or scientific technician, whose methodology requires a precise delimitation of the object of research—an exclusion of all that is exterior to his field of investigation in view of attaining concrete results—the philosopher is above all and essentially orientated toward the whole of reality. His object is not uniquely the whole seized by experience, as in the so-called positive sciences, but simply the whole, the whole of being. Philosophy, whose intentionality is constituted by the emerging of the why, is a rational and systematic reflection upon the ultimate foundation of reality and of human existence, upon their global meaning. The philosophical project tends toward an authentic knowledge that seeks the principles, the ultimate reasons, and breaks away from that knowledge which is of the order of opinion. This conception of philosophy—which rejoins that of the occidental tradition—is opposed, on the one hand, to scientific philosophy, for which there is knowledge, properly speaking, only on the scientific level: that which is observable and measurable and which is delimited by a precise object. In order to obtain valuable results, the philosopher must, according to this perspective, have recourse to the methods of so-called “exact” sciences which determine the parameters of rational human knowledge and to renounce a reflection upon the whole. On the other hand, this conception of philosophy is opposed to certain forms of logical reductionism, to historicism, to all forms of reductionist specialization, and to a philosophy of system, all of which deny the philosophical act its proper and fundamental character—that of questioning—and enclose the totality of the real in very limited propositions. The philosophical act is, as we have seen, the search for the ultimate and intrinsic meaning of the world and of existence, of Thomas Aquinas, 144f. [283f.]; A Plea for Philosophy, 84, 87–88 [79, 83]; The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, 14 [289]; What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 68 [57]; “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery,” 304ff. [309ff.]. 7. Alfred North, Whitehead, “Remarks,” 178.

202  Bernard N. Schumacher wisdom. Is this meaning, however, possible to know? While some maintain that the reason for the world is unknowable, others dismiss the question altogether: there is no reason for the world. Only those objects perceptible by science, and thus by experience, exist. Certainly science can, in principle, obtain definitive responses to the questions that it raises. At the moment in which a response emerges, the hope which sparked the research disappears only to reappear as the principle of a new question. This is not however the case in philosophy, which is set upon an unending path. By nature, philosophy can never claim to have responded definitively to its own questions. The authentic philosopher cannot, according to Pieper, avoid the state of astonishment, which is natural to him as the principle of his vocation, for he never entirely understands the real before him. “The philosophical act begins at the boundary where intelligibility and unfathomability intersect,” Pieper explains; “it is initiated by a recognition of the incomprehensibility of the world and human existence.”8 The Platonic dialogues express this reality well. They do not furnish a well-rounded truth which can be formulated as acquired, but rather the certitude of the human being’s powerlessness to seize the mystery of the world. To found this unknowable character of the world, Pieper refers to the distinction between two sorts of res: naturalis and artificialis. Before working a piece of wood, the carpenter forms an idea of the form, of the essence of the concrete object—a chair, for example— which he intends to create. Pieper calls this idea a “pre-form.”9 The idea of a chair is, for the moment, materially in potentiality, its form being yet invisible to the eyes. Only the creating intellect knows it, and this remains the case until he has exteriorized the form in matter or communicated it to another intellect. The projection of 8. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 128 [125]; see 84–85, 122ff., 128 [80–81, 119ff., 128]; “Theologie—philosophisch betrachtet,” 129–30; What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 29, 62ff. [17, 51ff.]. 9. Josef Pieper, Reality and the Good, 122 [55]. See The Truth of All Things, 46 [132]. “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 385f.

Faith and Reason  203 the idea of a chair into material existence is realized by means of a voluntary actualization and coordinated by instrumental causes such as the hands of the carpenter or his tools. The same thought is found in Jean-Paul Sartre, who, when describing a bench, a book, a paper knife,10 concludes that, in that which concerns res artificiales, essence precedes existence. For him, as for Pieper, the human intellect is the origin of the nature of the res artificialis. It is its measure. Referring to the intrinsic relation between the nature of a res and an intellect—between the existence of the former and a will—and discussing Sartre’s position according to which “there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it,”11 Pieper affirms that the intellect and the will at the origin of res naturales are those of God, and that, by this fact, they are independent of the human intellect. In this he is in agreement with the Thomistic analogy according to which “all created things stand in relation to God as products of art to the artist.”12 Here reference is made to Aristotle, for whom there exists a profound similarity between the production of art and that of nature, which is to say that art imitates nature in its operation.13 Pieper distinguishes between the knowledge of a thing, which signifies taking within oneself the form of the known, and the understanding of a thing, that is, a knowledge that includes all that is knowable in the thing known. Certainly it is given to the human being to know all things to a certain ex10. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, 13–14 [17–18]; Situations, vol. 3, 289– 305. 11. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, 15 [22]. On this subject, see Josef Pieper, “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs”; “Creatureliness and Human Nature: Reflections on the Philosophical Method of Jean-Paul Sartre”; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 50f., 61 [116f., 123]. 12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles II, q. 24. See III, q. 40, 100. Summa theologiae I, q. 117, a. 1. On the notion of measure, see Horst Seidl, “Bemerkungen zur Erkenntnis als Massverhältnis bei Aristoteles und Thomas von Aquin.” 13. See Aristotle, Physics, 194ff. On the axiom “art imitates nature” see the studies of Kurt Flasch, “Ars imitatur naturam: Platonischer Naturbegriff und mittelalterliche Philosophie der Kunst” and Hans Meyer, Natur und Kunst bei Aristoteles.

204  Bernard N. Schumacher tent, for his intellect is capax universi. He knows the essence of beings whose “post-forms”—the realization of the form—he is able to seize. It is nevertheless impossible for him to seize the analogy between the post-form and the pre-form residing in the creating intellect in order to understand that which is: “rerum essentiae sunt nobis ignotae,”14 as Thomas proclaims. He even states that the philosophers, despite all their effort, have not yet succeeded in seizing the essence of a fly.15 The intellect cannot even understand things in all their aspects by which the intellect itself is measured; it is not their creator. “The span of being,” Pieper notes, “can never be fully exhausted by the finite spirit; the intelligibility of things always surpasses that which is known of them.”16 The impossibility of completely understanding any particular object, this philosophia negativa, is ultimately grounded in a metaphysic of creation, which is the object of a rational knowledge of the intellectus and which is inserted into a knowledge of the ratio.

14. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 10, a. 1 and q. 4, a. 1, ad 8. Quaestiones disputatae De spiritualibus creaturis, q. 11, ad 3. See Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 126–27 [124–25]; “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 445f.; “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery,” 304ff. [310ff]; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 65 [125]; “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 89, 91f., 97f. [138, 140f., 144f.]. “We can never properly grasp this correspondence between the original pattern in God and the created copy, in which formally and primarily the truth of things consists. It is quite impossible for us, as spectators, so to speak, to contemplate the emergence of things from ‘the eye of God’. Since this is so, our quest for knowledge, when it is directed toward the essences of things, even of the lowest and ‘simplest’ order, must move along a pathway to which there is, in principle, no end. The reason for this is that things are creaturae, that the inner lucidity of Being has its ultimate and exemplary source in the boundless radiance of Divine Knowledge.” “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 63 [124]. 15. See Thomas Aquinas, Collationes in Symbolum Apostolorum, prologue (nr. 864). 16. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 58 [141]: “But a finite mind is never capable of grasping all the potential knowledge offered by any existing reality. Rather, whatever is knowable in and of an object itself, always and necessarily exceeds what can actually be known.”

Faith and Reason  205 As soon as I ask in the true philosophical sense, I immediately and formally deal with the unfathomatable and inscrutable; and this because it is in the nature of my question to approach to the roots of things, that is, to advance to the source of Being, the dimension of invention and formgiving design, in other words: the dimension of createdness.17

One might ask if it is of the nature of the human intellect to be incapable of understanding things—the analogy between the postform and the pre-form being in se understandable, although the intellect is too weak to understand it—or if this analogy is by essence unknowable, which is to say, there is absolutely nothing to know. Excluding the second possibility, Pieper maintains that it is by their luminosity and brightness that things blind the human intellect, which acts in their presence like the eye of a bat before the sun: “Though the eye of the night owl may not see the sun, the eye of the eagle still gazes on it.”18 The philosopher is constantly “on the way” to a full comprehension of the ultimate foundation of the world and of existence, a comprehension he is, however, never able to attain. “To do philosophy,” Karl Jaspers notes, “means to be on the way”19 which is to say that the philosopher is not oriented toward a complete conceptualization of the world and of being, but is rather moved by the desire to go to the foundation of things. His starting point is to ask about the ultimate reason for the world and for the human being, not the clear and distinct or methodical delimitation of the object of research. Philosophical thought is not pure knowledge; it is a path 17. Josef Pieper, “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 97 [143–44]. See 96, 109f. [143, 152]; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 60, 66f. [122, 126f.]; “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery,” 307–8 [313]; Faith, Hope, Love. On Love, 176f., 233f. [325f., 374f.]; Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 46f. [223f.]. 18. “Solem etsi non videat oculus nycticoracis, videt tamen eum oculus aquilae.” Thomas Aquinas, Sententia super Metaphysicam, vol. 1, nr. 286. See Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 59 [122]; Was heißt Akademisch? 81f, 102–3; What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 59f. [48]; The Truth of All Things, 59 [142]; “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery,” 307ff. [313ff.]. 19. Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy, 12 [13].

206  Bernard N. Schumacher directed toward a grasp of being and the world, an attentive listening to the silent voice of the world, in which the truth of being is manifest. Philosophy does not offer the answer. It eternally poses the unending question that is beyond all answers, namely, in the words of Aristotle, “What is being?” or, to borrow from Leibniz and Heidegger, “Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?”20 This situation does not, however, lead to an agnostic resignation or to despair, which leaves all philosophical problems in suspense; for the loving search of wisdom is stimulated by the principle of hope, as is also the human being. “The essence of things and the totality of things are given to him [the human being],” Pieper clarifies, “not with the finality of perfect comprehension, but ‘in hope’.”21 The impossibility, inherent in both reason and philosophy, of fully understanding any given object expresses the ontological and anthropological structure of the status viatoris. This, in turn, is characterized by the not-yet-being which is the ontological foundation of Pieper’s philosophy of hope, which temporally precedes The Principle of Hope of Ernst Bloch. Pieper refers to the analysis of the temporality and historicity of Heideggarian Dasein, which he inserts in a movement of transcendence with transcendence.22 In contrast to the Blochian usage of the term, Pieper understands transcendence as breaking out of temporal and immanent finitude which, he in20. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1 [3]; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade / Principes de la nature et de la grâce, fondés en raison, 426–27. 21. Josef Pieper, What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 50 [38–39]. See 63ff. [51ff.]; A Plea for Philosophy, 131ff., 137f., 153 [128ff., 134f., 151]; “The Condition of Philosophy Today,” 31 [239]; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 68ff. [129f.]. See also Paul Ricoeur, “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems”; Jean Ladrière, “Raison et eschatologie.” 22. The notion of transcendence with transcendence expresses a surpassing of the real, which transcends the dimension of temporality and historicity (in contrast to the transcendence without transcendence of Bloch, which remains enclosed in an ontology of historical temporality). On the subject of hope, see Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope, and Joseph J. Godfrey’s contribution to this volume.

Faith and Reason  207 sists, does not constitute the whole of reality. Whereas science, as well as the so-called scientific philosophy or philosophy of system, makes exactitude an absolute,23 philosophy is situated upon a path of non-achievement: it is principally an act of not-yet-being, of hope. Here we might refer to the Pythagorean definition of philosophy constantly cited within the occidental tradition: the human being cannot become a wise man, but only a loving searcher of wisdom. He is not a sophos, but a philosophos. Plato takes up this distinction in attributing to Solon and Homer not merely the title of sage, but that of “friend of wisdom, ‘philosopher’.”24 The philosopher walks in hope toward the loving possession of wisdom, which Plato and Pythagoras define as the knowledge that possesses God. This knowledge cannot be enclosed within a logical system of thought; it is of the order of gift, of gratuitous receptivity according to the mode of possession characteristic of lovers. Philosophy is differentiated from science, which furnishes a certain number of concrete and very interesting results that render the human being knowledgeable and erudite, but not “wise.” Rejecting the Hegelian proposition that philosophy should “lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ so as to become ‘actual knowing,’  ”25 Pieper defends the image of philosophy as the loving contemplation of the wisdom that possesses the wholly Other, who always escapes the searching viator without leading him to despair of attaining Him. Philosophy’s search for “what it is all about” is impregnated by the principle of hope: “Between hope and absolute knowledge,” Paul Ricoeur insists, “we have to choose.”26 Refusing an attitude of resignation, philosophy always hopes to find not only a response to a particular question, but also the answer to all questions. It is contin23. Alfred North Whitehead emphasized at the end of his life that “the final outlook of Philosophic thought cannot be based upon the exact statements which form the basis of special sciences. The exactness is a fake.” “Immortality,” 700. 24. Plato, Phaedrus, 278d. See Symposium, 204a. 25. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 [12]. 26. Paul Ricoeur, “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems,” 64.

208  Bernard N. Schumacher ually accompanied by uncertainty, as Peter Wust has well noted,27 even by a profound vulnerability, a persistent astonishment, and a silent contemplation of the real. Even when reason seems satisfied by a response, it is open to question. Philosophy, one of the artes liberales, is, among other qualities, fundamentally free, bearing meaning in itself. In a society such as ours, where the imperatives of utility, efficiency, and production progressively penetrate the totality of human existence, philosophy’s place is, Pieper maintains, compromised. Hannah Arendt notes that the entire society is transformed into “a laboring society”28 having as its slogan, expressed by Zinzendorf: “one does not work to live; one lives to work.”29 All disinterested activity risks being excluded when questions predominate such as: “How can one procure the elements necessary for daily existence or any given object for that matter?” In these conditions, the fundamental metaphysical question—“Why is there being rather than nothing?”—assumes the character of an intellectual extravagance, a useless activity, insane, dangerous, and even harmful, for it hinders or prevents the actualization of concrete and practical objectives of daily existence. This world of work tending toward totalitarianism affirms, Pieper maintains, that “the human being is a functional being,” that “every free activity without social utility is condemnable and should be suppressed.”30 The human being of praxis rejects the artes liberales in favor of the artes serviles, reducing the first category to the second. Philosophy serves nothing, as Heidegger 31 remarks; it is a fossil without practical value, it does not lead to the realization of goals. According to Kant, the human being of praxis contests the intuitive knowledge of the intellectus which 27. See Peter Wust, Ungewissheit und Wagnis. 28. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 4. 29. Zinzendorf cited by Josef Pieper in Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 4 [3]. 30. Josef Pieper, “Vie humaine et loisirs,” 92. See A Plea for Philosophy, 90f., 95ff. [85f., 90ff.]; Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 27ff. [20ff.]; “Arbeit, Freizeit, Musse,” 533. 31. See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, 12 [14].

Faith and Reason  209 is permeated with the spirit of gift, of gratuitous receptivity, of nonwork, and refuses to recognize it as an act of intelligence. Instead, he opts for the unique ratio which arrives at results after numerous operations such as abstraction, comparison, precision, demonstration; that is to say, after having worked. Some thinkers hold that these operations alone constitute thought; according to this standard, every other form of knowledge would be categorized as non-rational and would thus be disqualified as knowledge. In his 1796 article, “Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie” in the Berlin Monatszeitschrift, Kant discusses the question of intellectual activity in the philosophy of Plato, whom he calls the “father of all philosophical enthusiasm,” as well as in the German romantic philosophy of Jacobi, Schlosser, and Stolberg. Kant dismisses the so-called contemplative philosophy, this pseudo-philosophy, “in which one does not work, but may only listen to and enjoy the oracle in oneself in order to bring the entire wisdom, which is the goal of philosophy from its very foundation, into one’s possession.”32 For Kant, philosophical knowledge is subject to the law of reason, thanks to which one realizes knowledge only through work, “through a ‘Herculean’ work.”33 A knowledge that one achieves without work is properly called false or invalid. The law of reason is “to achieve for oneself a possession through work,”34 that is to say, Kant presents intellectual knowledge as nothing but a work of the mind. He rejects contemplation—that knowledge which is constituted by the dimension of gift—as a means of acquiring knowledge. Without work, there is no knowledge. Work becomes a criterion for the veracity of knowledge, that is to say, if one achieves knowledge without effort, this knowledge cannot be true. Is that really the case? Is Kant right? 32. Immanuel Kant, “Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie,” 390. 33. Ibidem. 34. Ibidem, 393.

210  Bernard N. Schumacher Pieper opposes Kant’s narrow position with another dimension of knowledge and relies on the distinction between two forms of mental knowledge: on one hand discursive knowledge, the ratio of the ancients; on the other hand a contemplative knowledge that avails itself unintentionally to the object, which Pieper conceives as a simplex intuitus, as an intellectus capable of a receptive, but not a discursive, gaze on reality. Human knowledge results from a combination of intellectus and ratio, of a symbiosis of passivity and activity, of release and tension. Both of these actions have their location in the act of philosophical thought. This thought is not only critical discursive knowledge but also, most interiorly, an orientation of silence and contemplative attention to the “real.” Consequently it is by no means sufficient that one is content with this waiting for an oracle, with this intuition that enlightens actual being; rather, one must integrate the intuition and the ratio.35 The disdain we mentioned earlier of theoria by praxis, which tends toward the destruction of the former—the “victory of the hand over the eye”36—is not a child of the modern world. Ancient philosophy already provides us with two powerful examples. Thales, who lovingly contemplates the heavens—being absorbed in his thoughts of admiration, even astonishment, for the real—falls into a well. A 35. See Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 74 [195]; “Muße und menschliche Existenz;” The Four Cardinal Virtues. Prudence, 9 [7ff.]; A Plea for Philosophy, 109f. [105f.]. Pieper repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the intuitive knowledge of reality (a knowledge in agreement with a metaphysics of gift) as a constitutive, even as the most constitutive, element of thinking for philosophical action. Intuition and irrationality are not co-terminus for him; the combination of the gazing and thinking knowledge makes possible a sweeping knowledge of reality. With such an understanding, Pieper distances himself from “intuitionalism,” from an Idealism that tends toward subjectivism, but also from a philosophical intellectualism that reduces the philosophical action to ratio and dismisses any other mode of knowing as irrational. The essence of the philosophical act of thinking consists not merely in the intellectual effort, in discursive elucidation of a certain problem, but is present also where reality manifests itself, where it unintentionally enlightens the silent, receptive mind like a gift. Newman, who differentiates between a useful knowledge and a liberal knowledge, remarks that in the latter case it is an “acquired illumination” (The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated, 6, 113). 36. Bernard Ronze, L’homme de quantité, 34.

Faith and Reason  211 servant who witnesses the spectacle mocks the poor philosopher and suggests that he ought to spend his time engaged in productive activities rather than regarding the heavens without any practical goal. This contemplation of reality which we call philosophy is, from her point of view, nothing but a pure loss of time, the product of a childish imagination. By her mocking laugh, she expresses judgment upon the uselessness which, in her opinion, characterizes every true philosophy. If it must however exist, it should remain in the service of the praxis.37 In the dialogue Gorgias, Callicles maintains that philosophy, as well as every other theoretical activity, is formative if practiced in one’s youth, under the condition that it is exercised with moderation. If, however, one continues to do philosophy at an advanced age, it is “the ruin of men,” who thereby flee from work and the life of the city. “I’m struck by the philosophers most nearly the way I’m struck by those who mumble and act childishly.” He suggests that they are “deserving (of) a beating” and exhorts them to “stop these examinations” so as to “practice the culture of the world’s affairs.”38 Pieper calls “proletariat” this subjection of the person to a collective profit whereby only that activity which is in service of work has a right to exist. This term designates the servitude of the human being to servile and utile activities, his imprisonment in the process of work. Pieper seeks to ‘de-proletarize’ the human person by defending activities which have their meaning and goal in themselves. He refuses to consider him as a civil servant that must produce a certain return and is thrown away after use. This being, Pieper insists, is a person having his end in himself, a person who should be respected for his own sake. Leisure is not justified in making the functionary as “trouble-free” in operation as possible, with minimum “downtime,” but rather in keeping the functionary human (or as Newman said it, so that he can stay a gentle37. See Plato, Theaetetus, 174a–b; Josef Pieper, Was heißt Akademisch?, 95ff. 38. Plato, Gorgias, 485b–486c.

212  Bernard N. Schumacher man); and this means that the human being does not disappear into the parceled-out world of his limited work-a-day function, but instead remains capable of taking in the world as a whole, and thereby to realize himself as a being who is oriented toward the whole of existence.39

Confronted with the super-promotion of work, Pieper wishes to preserve, within the world of work itself, a metaphysical dimension of being and of gift as is expressed in celebration, poetry, art, leisure, and contemplation—a dimension that constitutes an impenetrable bastion where the human being encounters himself in all of his dignity as person.40 Authentic leisure transcends doing and having; it allows the human person to fully rest in being, where he contemplates the real, permitting himself to be passively penetrated by it. Leisure is characterized by an attitude, intrinsic to the human soul, of inactivity, rest, well-being, absence of effort, gift, confident abandonment of self, contemplative immersion within being and the real. It is, by essence, an attitude of silent, loving, and festive contemplation of reality, belonging to that category of activities—vital for a harmonious human existence—which possess their meaning and their goal in themselves. Once they cease having their end in themselves, they cease ipso facto to exist. The problem of the relation between work and leisure is rooted in a metaphysical conception of both reality and the human being: the primacy of contemplatio over praxis. On the one end of the spectrum is the person who, in the course of his busy everyday life, is untheoretical only in a strictly factual sense; at the 39. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 35 [26]. “It is an insidiously dangerous and consequential undertaking to deny that work is characterized by its ‘usefulness-for-something-else’, even—yes!—by its ‘servile’ dimension. It is a fiction to declare work, the production of useful things, to be meaningful in itself. Such fiction leads to the exact opposite of what it seems to accomplish. It brings about the exact opposite of ‘liberation’, ‘elevation’, or ‘rehabilitation’ for the worker. It brings about precisely that inhuman dimension so typical of the world of absolute work: it accomplishes the final bondage of man within the process of work, it explicitly makes everybody a proletarian.” In “Work, Spare Time, and Leisure,” 21 [14]. 40. See François-Xavier Putallaz and Bernard N. Schumacher (eds.), Der Mensch und die Person and L’humain et la personne.

Faith and Reason  213 other end of the spectrum is the practitioner of power politics who aggressively closes his mind to “useless” knowledge—for whom a philosophy, for example, that cannot be ‘put to use’ as a guide to political action deserves no more than liquidation.41

The philosophical act is, according to the tradition of the great philosophers, essentially impregnated by theoria, by gift and astonishment, being open to the totality of the real and free of every praxis that attempts to put it in service of a utilitarian end. It blossoms in a framework in which collective, political, ideological, or economic interests are suspended. Philosophy is not the knowledge of the working man but, as John Henry Newman42 has demonstrated, of the gentleman. Existential astonishment, which, Pieper maintains, can be expressed by questioning of our comprehension of the world, of our place in the world and of the significance of our lives, shatters the “embourgeoisement” of thought that is satisfied to stop at the immediate reality—taking it as ultimate—without perceiving the world of essences and meaning behind the things that are encountered. This reversal of bourgeois thinking can be effected in many ways, but most especially by death and eros, whose “banalization” leads to a further enclosure of the person in the world of utility and of work, of the Umwelt.43 Astonishment implies a certain loss of certitude, an uprooting—which, however, enables a more profound rooting. It expresses a new consciousness of the world, which suddenly appears larger and more profound than it had previously within the familiar framework of daily life. At the same time, astonishment leads to the realization that being is in se incomprehensible. Philosophy is thus characterized by its openness to the totality of being, by its freedom with regard to practical reason understood 41. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 90–91 [86]. See also 95–97 [90–93]; also “Kallikles: Der Mensch ohne Wahrheitsverhältnis,” 198. 42. See John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, V, 5, 109ff. See also his definition of a gentleman: V, 8 and 10, 117ff. 43. See Bernard N. Schumacher, The Morality of Life and Death in the Contemporary World (forthcoming).

214  Bernard N. Schumacher in the sense of utility and output, by its silence before the real to which it attentively listens and from which it is willingly impregnated, by its continual (and never satiated) hope; this expresses the status of the itinerant human being.

2. Theology as Theios Logos Theology as an act of thought presupposes, from Pieper’s perspective, a God who speaks to the human being, a theios logos,44 bearing a message whose content might not be known from an analysis of the world. One can conceive theology only in the measure that there is revelation, a message of an author to a hearer. (Here is encountered the ex akoeˉs of Plato,45 as well as the analysis that Pieper makes of the notions of tradition and transmission.) The hearer is called not only to listen to the message in question, which should be transmitted to him in a comprehensible manner, but also to accept it, to believe it. Theology is, Pieper notes, “the effort by the believer and for the believer to reach an interpretation of revelation; it is the attempt to understand as fully as possible the audible speech of God contained in the documents of revelation.”46 Theology seeks to order the data which the tradition bears within itself in order (1) to interpret them in a critical manner according to precise and intrinsic norms which are proper to it, (2) to compare them, and (3) to bring out their true signification. A human enterprise, theology bears the possibility of degeneration and the continuous necessity of correction. It can nonetheless be accompanied by tradition understood as doc44. See Josef Pieper, “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’? Preliminary Reflections to a Theological Debate,” 146 [166]. 45. See Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen; “The Concept of Tradition”; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration and Enthusiasm and Divine Madness. On the Platonic Dialogue ‘Phaedrus’. 46. Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 145 [283]. “Theologie—philosophisch betrachtet,” 134ff. “The Condition of Philosophy Today,” 34–35 [216–17]. A Plea for Philosophy, 149 [147].

Faith and Reason  215 trina sacra, according to which the author of Revelation has himself inspired the theologian’s interpretation.47 Pieper does not however reduce the notion of Revelation, and thus of theology, to the unique dimension of Christianity (although he does add the precision that Christianity constitutes the “only genuine theology”48 that may be encountered in Western thought whose conception of reality is naturally marked by an intrinsic reference, positive or negative, to Christian theology). He extends the notion rather to every acceptance of reality by an act of faith in a revealed deposit which might occur outside of Christianity, as Thomas Aquinas has emphasized: “multis gentilium facta fuit revelatio.”49 In opposition to a certain school of interpretation, according to which Greeks are without faith, Pieper points out, for example, that Plato recognizes in myth a holy revelation transmitted by elders and issuing from a divine source which he believes without being any less a philosopher. He seeks to decipher the message hidden in the myth, and this enterprise is of the order of theology. Within this context, Pieper recognizes the possibility of a primary revelation,50 a notion accepted by certain Fathers and some modern thinkers such as Newman, Möller, and Scheeben. Anterior to the philosophical act, it would include an interpretation of the world in its totality which would be transmitted by tradition in the form of history and teaching. Theology thus strives, according to Pieper, to interpret the content of a message that the subject holds as true and thus believes and that is transmitted by a tradition issuing—for Jews and Christians—from God and for Pla47. See Josef Pieper, “Theologie und Pseudo-Theologie,” 210ff.; Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 155f. [293f.]. 48. Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 29 [298]. See A Plea for Philosophy, 151 [149]; What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 72ff. [61ff.]; “Was heißt ‘christliches Abendland’?” 446f. 49. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3. See Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad 5. 50. See Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 373ff., 359ff.; What Does It Mean to Philosophize?, 68f. [57f.].

216  Bernard N. Schumacher to, from the elders; in both cases, it is believed that the hearers are addressed by a divine word.51

3. Philosophy Implies an Openness to Revealed Data After having discussed the notion of philosophy and theology, it is now possible to address the nature of their relation, which constitutes, for Pieper, “the most ‘problematic’ problem.”52 One might ask, first of all, if it is legitimate to integrate, within the context of philosophical reflection, information about the world and existence in general which can be proven neither empirically nor by reason alone, but which originates in a tradition, in a belief, in a theology. If the philosopher reflects, for example, upon death and suffering, he should take into consideration, Pieper specifies, all the possible data that the human being possesses in this domain, data originating, for example, in psychology and history, in psychiatry and medicine, in ethnology and cultural anthropology, in sociology and in biology, as well as in theology. If he must disregard the information furnished by the latter or other known data, whether experimentally demonstrated or believed, he can no longer (according to the definition that we have given which is that of the occidental tradition) claim to be engaged in philosophical activity. In fact, he would no longer philosophically consider the object of his investigation under its diverse possible aspects so as to seize them in depth. It is not a question of knowing if, in a systematic philosophical exposition, there might also be found theological phrases, but rather if its subject considers, in his reflection, data stemming from belief 51. See Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 479–80 [23–24]; “The Condition of Philosophy Today,” 34–35 [216–17]. See also Pieper’s response to Jürgen Moltmann’s objections (Theology of Hope, 296ff. [277ff.]) “Herkunftlose Zukunft und Hoffnung ohne Grund?” 349ff. See Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 259ff. [263ff]; What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 68f. [57f.]. See Kenneth Schmitz’s contribution to this volume. 52. Josef Pieper, “The Condition of Philosophy Today,” 34 [216]. See “Theologie—philosophisch betrachtet,” 184.

Faith and Reason  217 that he bears in himself. Pieper does not speak here of philosophy, but—and this is an important distinction—of the person who is philosophizing, implicitly adopting Maritain’s distinction between the nature and the state of philosophy, between its order of specificity and its exercise.53 In fact, if the philosopher who believes in one manner or another (although obviously not in a superficial manner and not without critical sense, without a rational foundation) in the truth of the data concerning the world (data which are the object of a knowledge which is not purely rational but super-rational or a priori) must exclude these from his reflection, he ceases ipso facto to philosophize. In disregarding knowledge held as true, the philosopher would no longer consider his object (which is the world and existence in its totality, from the point of view of the whole) in every possible regard. This openness of the philosopher to theology, this recourse to pre-philosophical data, does not however signify, Pieper maintains, that he ceases to be a philosopher and is transformed into a theologian.54 In his recourse to such data, Pieper does not engage in theology anymore than does Plato, in his reference to the myths whose content he esteems as revealed and true. Similarly, one might ask if the philosopher who seriously considers, in his study of evil and suffering for example, the data of medicine or of psychology is actually engaged in these disciplines. This requirement, according to which the philosopher ought not to formally exclude from his reflection any accessible knowledge concerning a subject treated, is, according to Pieper, intrinsic to the structure of the philosophical act. In this regard, there is however a problem which Pieper does not directly treat. Which theology is our concern? What is its validity and its legitimacy? The philos53. See Jacques Maritain, An Essay on Christian Philosophy, 11ff. [240ff.]. 54. See Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 29ff. [298ff.]; A Plea for Philosophy, 149ff. [146ff.]; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 289 [294]; “Theologie—philosophisch betrachtet,” 129; “On the Dilemma Posed by a Non-Christian Philosophy,” 297f. [302f.]; “Gibt es eine nicht-christlichen Philosophie?” 111f.; Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 150f. [288f.].

218  Bernard N. Schumacher opher of Münster opts for Christian theology, which, he maintains, is the “only genuine theology” to be encountered in contemporary European society.55 He does not however specify whether this theology is Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, nor whether one might legitimately consider theological interpretations of Revelation which have, according to Catholic doctrine, a lesser weight than the teaching of the Church and the magisterium. What criteria are used to judge one theology as superior to another? In judging theologies, is one not himself engaged in the work of a theologian? Pieper avoids questions such as these that underlie his position and is satisfied to describe the intrinsic structure of the philosophical act which is, by nature, open to pre-philosophical data. Philosophical reflection presupposes, at least unconsciously, Pieper insists, a priori knowledge that touches the totality of being and is not only of the order of knowledge, but also of the order of belief (even when it has for its principle the negation of a holy Revelation). Relying upon a meticulous and critical analysis of the original texts and commentaries on the Platonic dialogues, Pieper concludes that the Greek philosopher maintains and lives—qua philosopher—an organic and contrapuntal synthesis of philosophy and theology, an essential complementarity between logos et mythos.56 Far from a clear separation between these two manners of conceiving the totality of the real, he integrates mythical tradition within the philosophical process itself. When rational debate reaches the limit of its possibilities, Plato has recourse (for example in Gorgias and the Politics)—as an ultimate and decisive argument—to an eschatological myth which he holds as true. Frutiger specifies in Les mythes de Platon that at the instant in which the dialectic bumps up against some unfathomable mystery, Plato “pre55. Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 29 [298]. 56. See Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen; “Über die Wahrheit der platonischen Mythen”; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration; What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 69ff. [57ff.]; “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy,” 160ff. [159ff.].

Faith and Reason  219 fers to negation or skepticism the daring option of a belief: indemonstrable, of course, but nonetheless justified by its moral efficacy and its pragmatic fecundity.”57 Droz in Les mythes platoniciens insists that Plato did not choose between logos and mythos, for “he knows or feels their necessary complementarity.”58 The philosophical act takes its impulse from an interpretation of the world that is initially accepted without critique, as, for example, in the thought of Plato, but also in the philosophy of one of the thinkers who has most strongly marked the intellectual debate of the twentieth century: John-Paul Sartre. His philosophy, which is an ontology of liberty, has no other goal than that of clearly “draw all the consequences of a coherent atheistic position.”59 His starting point is the a priori acceptance of God’s nonexistence,60 which is to say that his philosophy is also based upon an a priori which Pieper calls a pseudo-theology. Sartrian philosophy is inscribed within an attitude of “academic sophistry” 61 which refuses, a priori, to acknowledge any affirmation resting upon an act of faith. Everything is at stake for Sartre: his person and his knowledge, whether of reason or belief. Thanks to an acknowledgment of pre-philosophical data, to a vision of the world that is initially accepted without criticism, phi57. Perceval Frutiger, Les mythes de Platon, 224. See Walter F. Otto, Mythos und Welt, 268f. 58. Geneviève Droz, Les mythes platoniciens, 19. 59. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, 51 [94]. See Bernard N. Schumacher (ed.), Jean-Paul Sartre. 60. Commenting on the atheism of Naville, Sartre recognizes that this position is not the result “of a progressive discovery. It is a simple a priori affirmation concerning a problem that infinitely surpasses our experience. This position is also mine” (Situations, vol. 3, 139). Sartre nonetheless tries to demonstrate the non-existence of God, founding his argument upon the ontological notions of being-in-itself and being-for-itself, as well as upon a false comprehension of God as Ens causa sui. God should, if he exists, be both being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Because such an identity between the two ontological notions is impossible however, the existence of God is also impossible. 61. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 151 [149]. See What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 74f. [63f.]; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 292f. [297f.].

220  Bernard N. Schumacher losophy grows in vivacity and receives its impetus from the existential order. The philosophical act arises and develops within a concrete individual existence characterized by a certain conception of the world which implies affirmations of faith, whether positive or negative.62 Indeed, experimental knowledge always refers to prestructured theoretical observations, which are situated in a larger context. The philosopher cannot live a dualism that separates his “work” from his life. His manner of thinking and his manner of being are united within his existence. Philosophy arises from within concrete personal existence, including the philosopher’s own vision of the world—which, being posed a priori, is non-demonstrated, incarnated in his language and in his unconscious. In fact, the particular question that is posed to our intellect is inserted within a given totality proper to our cultural heritage, to our tradition, a totality that underlies and is anterior to our acts and reflections. We can philosophize—pose questions and attempt to respond to them—only within a particular tradition, a certain cultural context, a belief, a horizon. Alasdair MacIntyre rightly emphasizes that there does not exist a “theoretically neutral, pre-theoretical ground from which the adjudication of competing claims can proceed.”63 Every philos62. See Josef Pieper, What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 68ff. [57ff.]. 63. See Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopeadia, Genealogy, and Tradition, 172ff. In an attempt to escape the dilemna caused by the confrontation of two rival intellectual traditions in the absence of any neutral criterium for evaluating their assertions, MacIntyre notes [in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 166–67] that a genuine controversy proceeds in two stages. “The first is that in which each characterizes the contentions of its rival in its own terms, making explicit the grounds for rejecting what is incompatible with its own central theses, although sometimes allowing that from its own point of view and in the light of its own standards of judgment its rival has something to teach it on marginal and subordinate questions. A second stage is reached if and when the protagonists of each tradition, having considered in what ways their own tradition has by its own standards of achievement in enquiry found it difficult to develop its enquiries beyond a certain point, or has produced in some area insoluble antinomies, ask whether the alternative and rival tradition may not be able to provide resources to characterize and to explain the failings and defects of their own tradition more adequately than they, using the resources of that tradition, have been able to do.”

Faith and Reason  221 ophy is—contrary to what Heidegger maintains, at least theoretically—penetrated by a Weltanschauung. Certain philosophers, in the name of method and the purity of knowledge, simply exclude from their reflections any pre-philosophical knowledge, that is to say, data contained within a tradition and accepted by faith. The philosopher, if he wishes to preserve the radical questioning which defines him, must “think outside all revealed religion.”64 For Heidegger—once he introduced the époché into his analysis—the true philosopher is an atheist65 who has a neutral regard toward previously given conceptions of the world, Christian or other. Such conceptions, which are situated on the ontic level, are, he insists, incongruous to philosophy. If it is ‘contaminated’ by faith, which already knows the response to its questioning, philosophy is instantaneously sacrificed. On the one hand, the philosopher is unable to act as if he wished to believe or know the data of theology, which are of the order of faith alone. On the other hand, the believer cannot philosophize—question the real in a complete and radical manner—given that he judges himself as already possessing the response. Heidegger explains: Anyone for whom the Bible is divine revelation and truth has the answer to the question “Why are there essents rather than nothing?” even before it is asked: everything that is, except God himself, has been created by Him. God himself, the increate creator, “is.” One who holds to such faith can in a way participate in the asking of our question, but he cannot really question without ceasing to be a believer and taking all the consequences of such a step. He will only be able to act “as if” . . . .66

64. See Etienne Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 91 [125]. 65. See Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die Phänomenologische Forschung, 197. 66. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, 6–7 [8–9]. Heidegger continues: “From the standpoint of faith our question is ‘foolishness’. Philosophy is this very foolishness. A ‘Christian philosophy’ is a round square and a misunderstanding. There is, to be sure, a thinking and questioning elaboration of the world of Christian experience, i.e. of faith. That is theology. Only epochs which no longer fully believe in the true greatness of the task of theology arrive at the disastrous

222  Bernard N. Schumacher For Heidegger, the passage from philosophy to theology is marked by an existential jump that implies abandoning one existential state for another. There is no place in thought for belief, and whenever the subject enters into relation with revelation, thought is sacrificed. “The unconditional character of faith, and the problematic character of thinking, are two spheres separated by an abyss.”67 The philosopher of Freiburg thus excludes both the possibility of a theology which considers philosophical data within its own discourse and reflection and the possibility of a Christian philosophy, which he describes as a “square circle and a misunderstanding,”68 a conception that “is even more contradictory than a square circle.”69 Heidegger distinguishes two truths that he, in my opinion, too radically opposes: that which is conformed to revelation and is the object of faith (the truth of the believer or the truth for the believer) and that which is atheistic, free of any and all revelation (the truth of the philosopher or of the non-believer). The Western philosophical and theological tradition, by contrast, postulates the existence of one and the same wisdom-truth, which is sought with the help of instruments characteristic of each of these disciplines. The role of reason, moreover, cannot be reduced to that of correcting the data of faith; it actually constitutes an essential element of theology, and element that has recourse to revelation, of course, as known by faith and faith alone (one might still speak here of an existential jump), but also to reason, which serves to clarify, deepen, and even correct theology’s concepts. Theological reflection is not a notion that philosophy can help to provide a refurbished theology if not a substitute for theology, which will satisfy the needs and tastes of the time. For the original Christian faith philosophy is foolishness. To philosophize is to ask ‘Why are these essents rather than nothing?’ Really to ask the question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end. Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy” (7–8 [9]). 67. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? 177 [181]. 68. See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, 7–8 [9]. “Phänomenologie und Theologie / Phénoménologie et Théologie,” 393. 69. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 88 [116].

Faith and Reason  223 restitution or a repetition of nice words or phrases stemming from an ecclesial faith. If it were, it would be nothing more than a historical science or a propaganda of faith which would tend toward a dangerously rigorous, even demagogic, authoritarianism. On the contrary, theology seeks, by means of a rational reflection, to know God. Along this path of discovery, reason assumes an irreplaceable position without, however, infringing upon the fundamental role of revelation, which is, by essence, beyond reason’s means: revelation can never be reduced to pure reason. This indispensable aid that philosophy supplies to theology in no way implies, however, that the first depends upon the second. On the contrary, philosophy remains, in essence, fully autonomous and free, even while it exists in a partnership with theology. This partnership is possible to the extent that both sciences seek to seize, in every possible aspect, the ultimate foundation of the world and of the human being. Heidegger does not quite grasp the heart of the act of faith; it is certainly characterized by knowledge, but knowledge which remains uncertain and in some sense unobtainable. The philosophical act, which refers to pre-philosophical data and which proceeds from facts that are certain, does not possess definitive answers. Continually penetrated by astonishment, it does not cease to raise questions. It is always accompanied by a certain non-knowledge; it is constantly confronted with mystery. The philosophical question of being is, in fact, sparked when it considers the data of Revelation and faith. Pieper judges the methodological refusal of pre-philosophical data—of belief-knowledge (whether positive or negative)—within philosophical reflection, as well as the systematic Heideggerian rejection of every possibility of an answer for the sake of preserving the questioning character of philosophy,70 to be a rejection of the very essence of the philosophical act it was understood and experienced by the great philosophers of Western tradition. These think70. Heidegger thus seems to maintain the primacy of the methodological purity of the philosophical act over the response called for by the philosophical question.

224  Bernard N. Schumacher ers were, Pieper notes, less attached to a well-defined academic discipline than to the search for even a fragmentary answer, even if it comes from outside the philosophical domain. Whenever reference back to theology is rejected, the philosophical character of the questions asked is detroyed realiter; the enquiry simply ceases to be directed upon the roots of things, and hence ceases to be of human importance outside the merely specialist field.71

Certainly one can distinguish the two acts—the philosophical and the theological—in an abstract manner, but the concrete person who philosophizes remains a unity. This “contrapuntal symphony,”72 as Pieper calls it, enriches the two sciences, permitting a better grasp of reality in its totality and in its ultimate foundation. It necessarily highlights the unavoidable conflicts accompanying intellectual progress without which the two sciences would become sterile. A philosophical education should take into account these discords so as to refuse both simple resignation as well as a too rapid harmonization. What is important is not so much the formulation of a theoretical structure in which faith, knowledge, and philosophy would receive their proper and definitive roles, but the realization of a fundamental and total openness which excludes nothing that exists and which constitutes the very nature of the spirit. 71. Josef Pieper, The End of Time, 24 [295]. He had earlier specified that “it happens in all vital philosophizing that the sphere of the ‘purely philosophical’ has perforce to be overstepped into the sphere of pronouncements whose nature it is to be, not the result of human cognitive endeavour, but brought to view prior to all intellectual activity and as something received or to be received. And it is the most authentically philosophical impulse of enquiry, directed upon the first principles and roots of things, in virtue of which the boundary between philosophy and ‘theology’, ‘faith’ or ‘revelation’ is overstepped—so that, accordingly, a philosophizing which insisted on remaining ‘purely philosophical’ would be false to itself and actually cease to be philosophical. It is a peculiarity of philosophic enquiry, inherent in the matter itself, that it stands from the outset in a fully-fledged ‘contrapuntal’ relationship to theology; there is no philosophical question which, if it really wants to strike the ground intended by itself and in itself, does not come upon the primeval rock of theological pronouncements” (16) [290]. 72. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 155 [154].

Faith and Reason  225 The act of philosophizing requires that one’s gaze be completely uninvolved, a state of complete unaffectedness that is inconsistent with any form of conditionality. Philosophy betrays itself at the very moment it begins to construe itself as an academic subject. The philosophizing person is not characterized by the fact that he is interested in philosoph as a “subject”; he is interested in the world as a totality and in wisdom in its entirety.73

Despite this vital relation between philosophy and theology, necessary to their full blossoming, it is fitting to emphasize the clear distinction that always exists between natural knowledge and faith. It is not as if these two sciences form a diffuse amalgam. Both sciences remain independent and free, each having recourse to its own method. The object of each is, in a certain regard, identical: the totality of reality, which is sought in its ultimate foundation and from every possible point of view. Theology is distinguished from philosophy, which is primarily concerned with being that is known through daily experience, by its focus upon the content of a revelation that is believed and transmitted by a tradition. Although the intrinsic relationship between philosophy and theology is evident in Pieper’s philosophical discourse, he never really fully entered into the sometimes stormy debate incited by the question of a Christian philosophy. He rarely addresses the question head-on, focussing rather upon the question of whether a nonChristian philosophy is possible. Referring to an analysis of Plato’s texts as well as to the Western philosophical tradition, which maintains that the philosophical act is by its nature oriented to theology (theology being understood in the large sense as including pre-philosophical data), Pieper asks, toward which myths, or theologies, does philosophy turn post Christum natum. His answer is direct and clear: uniquely toward Christian theology! Since the birth of Christ there has existed no non-Christian philosophy within Western culture; the diverse mythical revelations (Ur-Offenbarung 73. Josef Pieper, “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy,” 161 [160].

226  Bernard N. Schumacher of the Greeks) have been replaced by Christian revelation. There no longer exists authentic revelations if not for Christian revelation. “A philosophy that is at once true and living will either not be achieved at all (and it is certainly possible that we will be left waiting) or, if it is realized, then only as a Christian philosophy (in the aforementioned sense!).”74 Christian philosophy does not claim to hold already-given and absolutely certain solutions—quite the contrary. Characterized by mystery and accompanied by astonishment, it incarnates the very essence of the philosophical act as it has been defined and experienced throughout the Western philosophical tradition. By its orientation to pre-philosophical data, it breaks out of the so-called “pure philosophies” to rediscover the original philosophical impulsion, this loving search for wisdom that is essentially open to mystery and thus infinite. Such a philosophy is not a facile solution. It is not—just because it refers to pre-philosophical data 74. Josef Pieper, What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 74 [63]. “If the original conception of philosophy by definition includes a methodological openness to theology; if philosophizing necessarily implies viewing a thing within the horizon of reality as a whole and thus relating it to God and the world; if philo-sophia is the loving search after wisdom such as God alone perfectly possesses—if the original conception of philosophy contains all these elements—the, as far as our Western world is concerned, ‘Christian philosophy’ is simply the one and only genuine, necessary, and natural form of philosophy. [. . .] From the standpoint of the Platonic/Aristotelian conception of philosophy, it is not the notion of a ‘Christian philosophy’ that requires defense and justification. Conversely, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to answer the question of how something like a non-christian philosophy is supposed to be possible—unless, again, one understands by philosophy something other than what has been understood by it since the name was first coined. It is an empirical finding, easily verifiable by all, that in our Western world there is simply no counterpart—apart from Christian theology—to what the myths, the ‘wisdom in the divine things’, the Mysteries, the interpretation of the world received from the ‘ancients’ meant for Plato. If, however, it is true that everything the mythological tradition contained by way of truth and wisdom for Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle has neither been forgotten and lost nor been absorbed in the Christian dogmatic tradition and so neutralized, then does it not follow either that philosophy, in interpreting the world, must wholly abandon that contrapuntal polyphony which classical philosophy had possessed through its proximity to myth or that it can preserve it only through recourse to Christian theology?” Josef Pieper, “The Dilemma Posed by a Non-Christian Philosophy,” 299–300 [304–5]. See “Gibt es eine nicht-christliche Philosophie?” 112f.

Faith and Reason  227 that supposedly already possesses the solution, or answers, to the questions it addresses—any simpler than other philosophies. On the contrary, it opens toward a new, unknown and mysterious dimension, which escapes a superficial and rational harmonization of the world and the human being; it is inscribed within uncertainty. The authentic philosopher is profoundly permeated with the fundamental characteristics (ontological and anthropological) of uncertainty and risk, and with the principle of hope.

9

o

Josef Pieper on the Truth of All Things and the World’s True Face Matthew Cuddeback

The Truth of All Things is one of the defining works of Josef Pieper’s corpus.1 In his autobiography Pieper describes the origins of this work: The subject of the “truth of things” had continued to ferment within me all this time [during World War II]. Above all, it gradually became clear to me that the old saying omne ens est verum is by no means a merely abstract doctrine of scholastic metaphysics but an utterly real and relevant statement about the nature of man.2

So relevant for his age did Pieper deem omne ens est verum that there is hardly a major work of his in which he does not mention 1. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things: An Inquiry into the Anthropology of the High Middle Ages. Guido Rodheudt (Die Anwesenheit des Verborgenen: Zugänge zur Philosophie Josef Piepers) says that this work and its subject are a key to Pieper’s work. See also Pieper’s more compact treatment of truth in “Wahrheit der Dinge— ein verschollener Begriff.” 2. Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 163 [171].

228

The Truth of All Things  229 the subject. The passage from his autobiography indicates two leading features of his teaching. First, omne ens est verum, “every thing that is, is true,” is an “old saying” that has been handed down within the Western wisdom-tradition and is weighted with that tradition’s authority. Second, omne ens est verum has unmatched power to “reveal and illumine” the nature of man and of reality.3 It means: God sees, and God creates by seeing things into being. Hence all things are knowable by the human mind. This teaching, says Pieper, makes a “decisive difference” for our view of the world. It gives the world “another face,”4 its true face. In this article I shall present Pieper’s teaching on “the truth of things,” and on a central point develop and support it. In section I, I shall examine omne ens est verum as an utterance handed-down within what Pieper calls “holy tradition.” In the remaining three sections I shall examine the way that omne ens est verum illumines reality. In section II, I shall describe three basic elements of Pieper’s teaching on truth in order of priority: God sees and makes all things by His ideas; the creature is shaped by God and so is knowable; the creature is shaped by God and so unfathomable. In section III, I shall develop and support Pieper’s assertion of the primacy of God’s seeing of creatures in His ideas, by examining Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae I, qq. 14–15, on the primacy of God’s speculative knowledge. Pieper uses these texts, but not to the full advantage of his own position. In section IV, I shall show that Pieper’s assertion of the “word-character” of created things is the full flower of his 3. He speaks of its “wirklichkeitsaufschließende Strahlungskraft” in The Truth of All Things, 11 [101]. I have modified the translation and I shall modify translations throughout. See ibidem, 20 [108]; “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 383. 4. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 43 [130]. The phrases I am translating appear in their original context as follows: “Macht es nicht für das Weltbild eines Menschen einen entscheidenden Unterschied, ob einer den folgenden Satz des Thomas von Aquin mitvollzieht oder nicht: ‘Die Dinge sind mehr in Gott, als Gott in den Dingen ist’?” and, “Sondern die Welt der Dinge selbst hat für den Menschen ein ein anderes Gesicht, je nachdem, ob er diese Lehre [i.e. the truth of all things] bejaht oder nicht.”

230  Matthew Cuddeback teaching on truth, and something he intended as a word of hope for his troubled age.5

I As Kenneth Schmitz observes in this volume, tradition is the starting point, goal, and medium of Pieper’s thought. The opening pages of The Truth of All Things bear this out. Pieper presents omne ens est verum as a traditional Weltaussage, an utterance about the whole of things, that runs roots to Plato (truth “is the most noble of things”),6 Parmenides, Pythagoras, and deeper. The great teachers of the high Middle Ages, “in whom the whole Western tradition from the earliest Greek thinkers on is set forth and lives as something instinctive and so unbroken,”7 inherit and hand on the saying and its meaning. But in the Renaissance and in the Modern period this long-held saying is beset, gutted, and at last tossed aside by Immanuel Kant, who calls it empty. That Kant found it empty should not surprise, says Pieper, since for Kant’s teachers Alexander Baumgarten and Christian Wolff “the truth of all things” had come to mean merely that all things are real and, unlike dreams, obey rules of logic. As compared to the “powerful, original stream of the ancient metaphysics,” the teachings of Baumgarten and Wolff are but a “shrunken streamlet, whose undenied clarity lies in naught but its lack of depth.”8 From the start of The Truth of All Things Pieper makes his reader feel the heft of the traditional teaching on truth and the hardship of its loss. He gauges major philosophers from Bacon to Kant with 5. Josef Pieper, Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit. Interpretationen zu Thomas von Aquin: Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, Pieper conducts a close textual study of Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on truth in Quaestiones disputatae De veritate. This study will not figure in my presentation of Pieper’s teaching on truth, since my focus is not Pieper’s interpretation of Aquinas’s texts on truth, but Pieper’s re-presentation of Aquinas’s teaching as a message for his age. 6. Plato, Republic, 532c. 7. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 11 [100]. The English version leaves some of the German untranslated here. 8. Ibidem, 25 [113].

The Truth of All Things  231 regard to this teaching, and deems each more or less unknowing or heedless of it. He comes then to his main task: to raise “the truth of all things” from forgetfulness by drawing on medieval thinkers, headmost Aquinas.9 Aquinas is a mouthpiece of the ancient teaching on being and truth: This philosopher-theologian of the thirteenth century, known as the “universal teacher,” belongs to a unique circle of witnesses, not so much because of his personal genius, but because of the truly creative selflessness with which he sets forth in his works the polyphonic variety of the most meaningful utterances about the whole of things [Weltaussagen], bidding us overleap historical limits. In the Summa theologiae it is not so much the individual author Thomas Aquinas that speaks [. . .] (though his very selflessness gives surpassing illuminative power to his thought). Rather what speaks is the mouth of the great wisdom-tradition itself.10

The first chapter of The Truth of All Things is an effort to spark the desire, indeed the sense of obligation, to heed Thomas Aquinas’s authority as a mouthpiece of tradition, and to listen to his teaching on truth.11 The appeal to Aquinas’s authority flows from Pieper’s philosophical notion of tradition,12 which he defines as “the transmission from one generation to another of a truth.” The transmission involves at 9. See Josef Pieper, “Warheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 381; A Plea for Philosophy, 124–25 [121]; “Kreatürlichkeit: Bermerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 447–48. 10. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 26 [114]. Nearly identical words are found in “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 383–84, and in the Preface to The Four Cardinal Virtues, XII–XIII [Das Viergespann, Vorbemerkung, 11]. See Pieper’s description of Aristotle in Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 45 [194]. 11. For Pieper, listening implies a ready receptivity (Aufnahmebereitschaft) before a wisdom-teacher, Plato for instance. One who reads Plato out of mere historical interest, to find merely “what Plato thought about something,” does not listen to Plato. Only one who aims both to know what Plato says and to weigh its truth listens to Plato. See Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” esp. 238–42. See the remarks of Marion Montgomery, a reader of Pieper, on truth and listening in his The Truth of Things: Liberal Arts and the Recovery of Reality, 152–53. Pieper long battled what Steven Long (“Nicholas Lobkowicz and the Historicist Inversion of Thomistic Philosophy”) has called “the historicist inversion” of Thomism. 12. He specifies that it is a philosophical notion rather than a theological one. See Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition”; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration;

232  Matthew Cuddeback least two persons: one who speaks, and another who listens.13 It is not a dialogue. The speaker hands on something received,14 and the listener accepts what is handed down on the grounds of some authority.15 Traditions commonly grant authority to “the ancients,” or “our fathers,” but their authority derives ultimately from a divine authority to which they are deemed near. “Tradition cannot be conceived as something in itself irreducible unless we also admit that the origin of its content is a divine utterance, a revelation in the strict sense.”16 Tradition is most fully embodied in “holy tradition,” which has three defining marks. First, the truths of holy tradition have a divine origin and divine authority.17 Second, the truths of holy tradition bear on “the whole of the world and the center of existence,” and convey the “divine guarantee of the world and of human salvation.”18 Third, because of these first two marks, holy tradition is absolutely binding.19 Its hearers must receive it and hand it along unchanged. Pieper holds that both the Greek myth-tradition from which Plato draws and the Christian revelation are holy tradition.20 Plato

“Tradition in der sich wandelnden Welt.” See also chapter 4 of What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 68–80 [57–70]. 13. Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 470 [13–14]. 14. Ibidem, 472 [15]. 15. Ibidem, 473 [16]. 16. Ibidem, 480 [24]. See 477–78 [21–22]. 17. Ibidem, 481, 483 [25, 27]; “Tradition in der sich wandelnden Welt,” 198; “On the Dilemma Posed by a Non-Christian Philosophy,” 298–300 [303–5]. See Pieper’s discussion of “holy tradition” in Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 254–66 [257–70]. 18. “die göttliche Verbürgung der Welt und des menschlichen Heiles.” Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 149 [287]. See also Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 481 [25]; Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 264 [268]; The Philosophical Act, 148 [57–58]. 19. “It is an obligation that can only be found in the holy tradition”: Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 271 [275]. 20. Pieper says it is empirically verifiable that in the West, Christian Revelation serves the role that myth and mystery teachings once served for Plato. See “On the Dilemma Posed by a Non-Christian Philosophy,” 300 [305]. On the Christian tradition’s distinctive standing in the West, cf. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, chap. 3, “Tradition as History: An Apologia,” 43–61, esp. 52.

The Truth of All Things  233 draws from the myth-tradition truths such as: the world and man are creatures;21 God holds in His hands the beginning, middle, and end of all things; the soul is immortal.22 The following also belongs to holy tradition: “everything that is, is true.”23 The Truth of All Things, and all of Pieper’s discussions of truth, are efforts to meditate upon and hand on holy tradition.24 Aware that by the twentieth century the tradition of which he writes is fogged or forgotten, he works to stir wonder at the tradition’s wealth,25 to restore sap to the saying omne ens est verum. One reason for Pieper’s lasting appeal is his ability to lead his reader to the beginnings of holy tradition, near to the gods, where one listens in on divine utterance.

21. Pieper speaks of “die überlieferte Schöpfungskonzeption” in his “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen u¯ber die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 442. See Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 273 [277–78]. 22. Josef Pieper, “The Concept of Tradition,” 481 [25]. Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 264 [268]. See Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 148–49 [286–87]. What Does It Mean to Philosophize?, 68–69 [57–58]. 23. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 11 [100]; A Plea for Philosophy, 125 [122]. 24. Pieper’s writing style is meditative and charged with his sense of responsibility to hand on holy tradition faithfully. His reviewers often remark on his style. André Hayen, in a review of Pieper’s Über die Gerechtigkeit, calls the work an “analyse technique et profondément humaine, écrite dans une très belle langue, inspirée par une connaissance profonde et très sûre d’Aristote et surtout de saint Thomas, en même temps que par une méditation prolongée de l’expérience humaine et des perspectives du monde d’aujourd’hui. Elle présente d’une manière saisissante, étonnamment actuelle, ‘la conception vitale que l’Occident se fait de la justice’,” 451. See T. S. Eliot’s remarks in the Foreword to The Philosophical Act (Leisure—The Basis of Culture) 17 [75]. See also David M. Gallagher’s review of Pieper’s Werke, and Ralph McInerny’s review of Pieper’s Guide to Thomas Aquinas. 25. In the Introduction to The Everlasting Man (11–21), Gilbert Keith Chesterton argues that when “the traditional grasp of truth” is overtaken by “fatigue and forgetfulness of tradition,” the way back starts with the recovery of “the candour and wonder of a child,” and a rekindled power to imagine. See Pieper’s remark about Chesterton in Happiness and Contemplation, 88 [204]. Pieper raises a call to wonder in “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery.”

234  Matthew Cuddeback

II According to Pieper the handed-down meaning of omne ens est verum is: God sees; God creates by seeing things into being; because all things are seen and created by God, all things are knowable. I shall examine Pieper’s teaching under three headings: God sees and makes all things by the divine ideas; the creature is shaped by God and so knowable; the creature is shaped by God and so unfathomable. God sees and makes all things according to His ideas. Both the Christian teaching on the divine Logos and the Western tradition on divine ideas as first principles (Plato, Augustine) are tributaries of the traditional teaching on the truth of all things.26 Omne ens est verum means that every creature can be referred back to a divine idea according to which it is made and measured, and it is called “true” insofar as it imitates that divine idea. Each thing is called “true” unqualifiedly in accordance with the order toward the intellect on which it depends. And so it is that a thing made is called “true” by [its] order to our intellect: for a house is called “true” which attains to a likeness of the form in the artificer’s mind; and speech is called “true” in as much as it signifies true knowledge. And likewise natural things are called “true” according as they attain to a likeness of the ideas which are in the divine mind.27

For Pieper, as for Aquinas, to understand the relation between divine idea and creature we should grasp the relation between a human artisan’s practical or “making” knowledge, and the thing the artisan makes. An artisan’s practical knowledge measures the thing made, and, through his hands, stamps it with its form. The thing made is called “true” so far as it imitates the knowledge—the plan 26. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 46 [132]; “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff.” 27. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 1, which Pieper quotes in the text at The Truth of All Things, 42 [129].

The Truth of All Things  235 or idea—according to which it was stamped. This knowledge is penetrating: “We know nothing so ‘through and through’ as the work of our mind and our hand.” This knowledge, Pieper stresses, is “the fullest and most authentic” relation between knower and known.28 In an artisan’s mind the “inner form” of an artifact is “wholly translucid and shadowlessly alive.”29 “The creatively knowing mind of the artisan [. . .] is as fully inside the objectively real work as the work is [inside] the mind of the one who thinks it.”30 Because the artisan conceives and fashions the artifact, his speculative knowledge of it—knowledge that beholds, apart from an order toward making—is also penetrating, more so than his speculative knowledge of something he did not make.31 Pieper does not develop this point, but I shall return to it. As Aquinas does, Pieper applies the account of the human artisan to the divine artisan. By His knowledge, God makes all things and stamps them with their forms: “the forms of things are ‘nothing other than the imprint [sigillatio] in things of God’s knowledge.’  ”32 God’s creative knowledge penetrates the creature: “God is in all things, and intimately.”33 And so every creature is called “true” by reference to the divine artisan’s knowledge of it. In a key move, Pieper explains the creature’s dependence on God’s knowledge by quoting from texts where Aquinas says crea28. Pieper overstates the point, I think. Examples from Aquinas’s texts of intimate speculative knowledge include God’s self-knowledge (Summa theologiae I, q. 14, aa. 2–4), and angelic self-knowledge (ibidem, I, q. 56, a. 1). There is a lover’s knowledge, “which is not satisfied with a superficial apprehension of the beloved, but strives to gain an intimate knowledge of everything about the beloved, so as to penetrate into his very soul” (ibidem, I-II, q. 28, a. 2). All translations of Aquinas are my own. 29. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 41 [127]. 30. Ibidem. 31. Ibidem, 41 [128]; “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 387. 32. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 44 [130]. He is citing Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate q. 2, a. 1, ad 6: “formae non sunt nisi quaedam sigillatio divinae scientiae in rebus.” Pieper uses this text often. See Josef Pieper, “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 445. 33. Pieper cites Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 8, a. 3 ad 3 at The Truth of All Things, 48 [134].

236  Matthew Cuddeback tures are “life” in the divine mind. “Since all things made by God are in Him as understood, it follows that all things in Him are the divine life itself.”34 The ideas (rationes) of both living and nonliving creatures are life in the mind of God,35 for these ideas are the divine Word itself.36 So it is more fitting to say that the creature is in God, than that God is in the creature.37 Hence the truth of all things—this is the critical point—derives from their being stamped and measured by the divine artisan, who first beholds them in His inner life, in His ideas, where the creature is “wholly translucid and shadowlessly alive.”38 If we grasp this, says Pieper, it makes “a decisive difference” for our view of the world, and the world comes to have “another face,”39 its true face. Why a decisive difference? Why another face? The next two points explain. The creature is shaped by God and so knowable. Pieper says that if the creature is created from a divine idea, design, Entwurf in God, the effect in the creature is its being-patterned or being-designed (Entworfenheit, Entworfensein) by God, its being-determined by God’s thought: das Erdachtsein der Dinge durch den Creator.40 It is essential to [the] nature [of creatures] [. . .] that they are thought [gedacht]. They are because they are thought [gedacht]. To put it more precisely, they are real because they are creatively thought [schöpferisch gedacht], that is, they have been fashioned by thought [erdacht]. Things have an essence because they are creatively thought [erdacht]. This is to be taken literally and not in any figurative sense.41 34. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 18, a. 4. 35. Ibidem, I, q. 18, a. 4, ad 2. 36. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, 1.2. 37. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 8, a. 3 ad 3. 38. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 41 [127]. 39. Ibidem, 43 [130]. 40. Josef Pieper, “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs.” 444, 446; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 53, 61 [118, 123]. 41. Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 51 [116] (translation modified).

The Truth of All Things  237 This passage leads us from seeing the creature as thought by God (gedacht) to seeing it as fashioned by God’s thought (erdacht). Its being fashioned, determined, designed by God’s thought is something within the creature. It is one and the same, asserts Pieper, to say that “the thing’s essence is the effect of [God’s] predesigning creative knowledge” (entwerfendes schöpferisches Erkennen), and to say that the creature has “an innerly determined essence.”42 The creature’s inner form is a Nach-Form of its divine Ur-Form,43 an Abbild of its divine Urbild.44 The creature’s essence is an inner stamp, “structure” (Struktur, Bauform), and measure received from God.45 The creature’s being determined, stamped, structured, measured by God is the reason for its knowableness, and so is the creature’s truth. Hence omne ens est verum is indeed “an utterly real and relevant statement about the nature of man”:46 because God creatively thinks the creature, shaping it within, every creature is open and knowable to us.47 “Because things come forth from the eye of God, they are wholly logos-like [logos-artig], that is, they are light42. Ibidem, 63 [124]; “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 94 [142]. 43. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 42, 51 [128, 135]. 44. Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 63 [124]. 45. Ibidem, 61, 69 [123, 128]; “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 391. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 44, a. 3. 46. See Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known, 163 [171]. 47. In The Truth of All Things Pieper often asserts that truth inheres in creatures. It is common for interpreters of Aquinas to speak of truth, or “ontological truth,” as something in the creature. But Lawrence Dewan (“St. Thomas’s Successive Discussions of the Nature of Truth” and “A Note on Metaphysics and Truth”) argues convincingly that in his mature teaching Aquinas becomes emphatic—he had taught it in some form all along—that truth is not in things but in the mind. In Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 1, ad 3 we read: “the being (esse) of a thing, not its truth, causes the truth of the intellect” (“esse rei non veritas eius causat veritatem intellectus”). In The Truth of All Things Pieper treats Sentences I, d. 19, q. 5, De veritate, q. 1, and Summa theologiae I, q. 16 without attention to their historical sequence. His Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit deals mainly with De veritate, q. 1. But this point of interpretation need not distract from Pieper’s project to find the root of the knowableness of things.

238  Matthew Cuddeback some and lucid to their depths. It is their origin in the Logos which makes them knowable to men.”48 The creature is shaped by God and so unfathomable. At the same time that the creature’s being-determined or being-designed by God makes it knowable, this being-determined also makes it fathomless (Unergründlich), inexhaustible (Unaustrinkbar, Unausschöpfbar, Unauslotbar), unable to be grasped by us fully (Unbegreiflich).49 Because of their very origin [in the Logos], [all] things reflect an absolutely infinite light and so are unfathomable [to us] [unbegreiflich]. It is not chaos or darkness which makes them unfathomable. Inasmuch as one who inquires philosophically into the essence of things reaches his object, he finds himself in an inexhaustible [unauslotbar] abyss, but it is an abyss of light. He strikes out on a road that is endless in principle, since in inquiring into the essence of things he is also inquiring after their design and archetype.50

The crucial claim is the last: that philosophic inquiry into the essence requires inquiry after the divine idea of that essence. Fully to grasp the creature would be to grasp the divine idea itself and the creature as a likeness of the divine idea.51 It would be fully to compare divine idea and creature, Form and Nach-Form. Since we cannot do that, we cannot fathom any creature.52 48. Josef Pieper, “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 96 [143]. 49. These terms are found, among other places, in Josef Pieper, “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 393; “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery,” 308–9 [314]; “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 450–51; A Plea for Philosophy, 128 [124–25]. 50. Ibidem. 51. See Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 53 [118] and “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 94 [142]; “Creatureliness and Human Nature: Reflections on the Philosophical Method of Jean-Paul Sartre.” In his 1970–1971 Gifford Lectures, E. L. Mascall takes issue with Pieper’s position: The Openness of Being: Natural Theology Today, 245–46. 52. Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 67 [127]. For a similar argument see Mark Jordan, “The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in Aquinas.” Jordan argues that Aquinas’s teaching on the divine ideas as causes implies that we are denied “final understanding” of

The Truth of All Things  239 Pieper regularly uses a language of light inspired by Aquinas to explain both the knowableness, and the inexhaustibleness, 53

of creatures. He often cites the text “Ipsa actualitas rei est quoddam lumen ipsius,” “the very actuality of a thing is in a way its own light.”54 Every creature has an inner light (Licht, Helligkeit) that is a participation from the Ur-Licht, the divine Logos.55 This participation makes the creature “light, lucid, open, accessible, [. . .] penetrable” by the human mind,56 so that no creature is in itself murksome or “irrational.”57 But the creature’s light is also “inexhaustible” (unaustrinkbares Licht), since “the inner lucidity of being has its ultimate and exemplary source in the boundless radiance [Lichtfülle] of divine knowledge.”58 creatures. Aquinas, for his part, sometimes suggests that our intellect can comprehend (comprehendit) the substance of a certain thing, “such as a rock or a triangle,” where “none of the thing’s intelligible notes exceeds the faculty of human reason” (Summa contra Gentiles, book 1, chap. 3). But in the prologue of Summa contra Gentiles, book 4, he says that, though creatures are the way by which our intellect can rise to God, even they are not fully known by us, due to the weakness of our sensedependent intellect. He adds: “But even if the very natures of things were known to us, the ordering by which divine providence disposes them toward each other and directs them to an end can be known to us but thinly, since we cannot attain knowledge of the ratio of divine providence” (Summa contra Gentiles, book 4, chap. 1). This argument is akin to the one Pieper and Jordan make: if we cannot know the divine idea of a thing, we cannot have exhaustive knowledge of it. 53. In the Summa theologiae Thomas Aquinas establishes that light-words (lux, lumen, illuminare) may properly signify acts of knowledge and other immaterial things. See Summa theologiae I, q. 67, a. 1; and also I, q. 12, a. 2; I, q. 106, a. 1; I-II, q. 109, a. 1. 54. Thomas Aquinas, Super librum De causis, lect.. 6. Pieper cites it, for example, in The Truth of All Things, 53 [136]; “Language and the Philosophizing Person: Aperçus of an Aquinas Reader,” 207 [209]; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 56 [120]. 55. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 53 [137]; A Plea for Philosophy, 128 [125]. 56. Josef Pieper, “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 391; “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 55–56 [119]; The Truth of All Things, 53 [137]; “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 447. 57. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 43 [130]. 58. Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,” 63 [124]; “The Timeliness of Thomism,” 96 [143]; A Plea for Philosophy, 128 [125].

240  Matthew Cuddeback

III Above I said that for Pieper the truth of all things derives from their being stamped by a divine artisan who first beholds them in His inner life, wherein the creature is “wholly translucid and shadowlessly alive.” Drawn from Summa theologiae I, q. 18, this teaching is the headspring of all Pieper wishes to convey about omne ens est verum and the “decisive difference” it makes for our view of the world. I shall now elaborate Aquinas’s texts with the aim of supporting Pieper’s appeal to q. 18. Question 18 is the beneficiary of the discussion of God’s knowledge in Summa theologiae I, qq. 14–17.59 When Aquinas argues in question 18 that “since all things made by God are in Him as understood, it follows that all things in Him are the divine life itself,”60 the antecedent—that all things made by God are in Him as understood—comes from question 14, on God’s knowledge (scientia), and question 15, on God’s ideas. These two questions show that God’s making flows from His speculative knowledge. In the first four articles of question 14 Aquinas establishes that God perfectly knows and comprehends Himself, since God’s act of knowledge (intelligere) is His act of being (esse). In article 5 he argues that God knows creatures in virtue of His self-knowledge: because God knows perfectly His own creative power, in which creatures are contained by likeness,61 He knows creatures perfectly, exhaustively, and individually.62 The conclusion that God knows creatures in knowing Himself grounds the primacy of God’s spec59. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 14, prologue; I, q. 18, prologue. 60. Ibidem, I, q. 18, a. 4. 61. The verb continere is a leading verb in Summa theologiae I, q. 14, aa. 5–6. 62. “God would not know Himself perfectly unless he knew whatever ways other things can participate His perfection. Neither would he know the very nature of being [ipsam naturam essendi] perfectly unless He knew all modes of being. Hence it is manifest that God knows all things with proper knowledge, in their distinction from each other.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 6. In the same article see also ad 1.

The Truth of All Things  241 ulative knowledge over His practical knowledge. This primacy is examined in the last article of question 14 (a. 16). In short, if God’s knowledge of Himself is speculative, and if God knows creatures by knowing them in Himself, then God’s knowledge of creatures is primarily speculative. In article 16 Aquinas says that knowledge may be called speculative in three ways: according to the object known, according to the mode of knowledge, or according to the end of the knowledge (quantum ad finem). In the first way, knowledge is speculative if it bears on an object that is not doable or makable. An example would be our knowledge of human nature, whose intelligible notes we can know but cannot change or make. The second and third ways in which knowledge may be speculative show how even makable things may be known speculatively. In the second way in which knowledge may be called speculative, a housebuilder may consider (considerare) the “universal attributes” of a house with no intention to build it. This knowledge is speculative in its mode. In the third way in which knowledge may be called speculative, a housebuilder may consider (considerare) the ways he might make a house. This knowledge is speculative in its end (quantum ad finem)—even though the thing the artisan considers is something makable, his end is not, or not yet, to make, but merely to consider. If the builder were to apply this knowledge by building, the knowledge would become practical in its end. Aquinas uses the words consideratio and considerare to describe the second and third kinds of speculative knowledge. He is spotlighting knowledge that is prior to and independent of making, and that remains a consideratio veritatis. Though this speculative knowledge may in time reach toward making, it remains a beholding.63 63. See Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 2, a. 8: “Sed sciendum, quod artifex de operabili habet duplicem cognitionem: scilicet speculativam et practicam. Speculativam quidem, sive theoricam cognitionem habet, cum

242  Matthew Cuddeback Aquinas applies this threefold division of speculative knowledge to God’s knowledge. Corresponding to our knowledge that is speculative because its object is not something to be done or made, God has purely speculative knowledge of Himself, since His essence is not something to be done or made. Corresponding to our speculative knowledge of definitions and universal formal principles, God knows such things, though excellently so. Corresponding to our speculative knowledge of ways we might make something, God has speculative knowledge of all things He could create but does not, and He has both speculative and practical knowledge of things He does create. The assertion that God has speculative knowledge even of the creatures He does make is a principal conclusion of the article, and Aquinas insists on it in the final reply: Since God’s knowledge is in every way perfect, it is fitting that he should know makable things insofar as they are makable and not only insofar as they are [objects of] speculative [knowledge]. But [His knowledge] does not fall [thereby] from the nobility of speculative knowledge, since He sees all other things in Himself, and knows Himself speculatively. And so in [His] speculative knowledge of Himself, He has both speculative and practical knowledge of all other things.64

God’s practical knowledge—the creative knowledge by which He makes any creature—flows from and is informed by His speculative knowledge of Himself, that is, from his speculative consideration of the creature within His own essence.65 rationes operis cognoscit sine hoc quod ad operandum per intentionem applicet; sed tunc proprie habet practicam cognitionem quando extendit per intentionem rationes operis ad operationis finem; et secundum hoc medicina dividitur in theoricam et practicam, ut Avicenna dicit. Ex quo patet quod cognitio artificis practica sequitur cognitionem eius speculativam, cum practica efficiatur per extensionem speculativae ad opus. Remoto autem posteriori remanet prius.” 64. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 16, ad id vero quod in contrarium obiicitur. 65. The accent here is on the higher nobility of speculative knowledge as compared to practical knowledge, a nobility that comes of the fixity and actuality of the

The Truth of All Things  243 In question 15, on the divine ideas, Aquinas continues his insistence on the primacy of God’s speculative knowledge of creatures. An idea is the form in an artisan’s mind according to which he makes something. Take a housebuilder: “the likeness of a house preexists in the mind of the builder, and this may be called the ‘idea’ of the house, since the builder intends to build his house like to the form conceived in his mind.”66 Notice the priority: the builder first knows the idea in his mind, then intends to make something to be like that idea. Knowledge of an idea is reflexive, the knowledge of knowledge: “When a housebuilder knows the form of a house in matter, he is said to know the house. When he knows the form of a house as known by him [ut a se speculatam], he knows the idea or ratio of a house, since he knows that he knows [the house].” This reflexive knowledge allows the artisan the freedom to stand back and consider, within himself, whether to make, what to make, how to make. This analysis of an artisan’s idea extends the discussion in q. 14, a. 16 of the ways that knowledge of something makable can be speculative, in particular the third way, in which an artisan considers the ways he might make something. The reason that such knowledge can remain a speculative consideration of ways to make, without being applied to making, is that the artisan is knowing his ideas. Aquinas applies this analysis to God: “God not only knows many things through His essence, but also knows Himself knowing many things through His essence. But this is to know many rationes of things, or to know many ideas in His intellect as understood.”67 A divine idea is the divine essence, known reflexively and “considobject of knowledge. God’s knowledge is most noble because He—unchanging, pure act—is its object. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 15. 66. Ibidem, q. 15, a. 1 67. “Sicut artifex, dum intelligit formam domus in materia, dicitur intelligere domum, dum autem intelligit formam domus ut a se speculatam, ex eo quod intelligit se intelligere eam, intelligit ideam vel rationem domus. Deus autem non solum intelligit multas res per essentiam suam, sed etiam intelligit se intelligere multa per essentiam suam. Sed hoc est intelligere plures rationes rerum, vel plures ideas

244  Matthew Cuddeback ered” as imitable in some way. We may take the divine ideas in two ways: as “cognitive principles” or “principles of the making of things.” As the latter, they are called the “exemplars” of things God makes “in time”—things He actually creates—and they pertain to God’s practical knowledge. As cognitive principles, they are principles of God’s knowledge of all things, both those made in time and those never to be made. In this second way ideas pertain to God’s speculative knowledge. This account of divine ideas sheds light on the assertion in q. 14, a. 16, that God’s knowledge “does not fall from the nobility of speculative knowledge.” If ideas are the cognitive principles of all that God knows—those He creates and the infinity of things He does not—then His knowledge of all things is knowledge of Himself, or better, knowledge of Himself knowing all things. God is an eternal, speculative considerer of all He knows in His essence. And God’s reflexive, speculative consideration of all things in his ideas is prior to the practical knowledge in which He creates in time. It is not an illicit anthropomorphism—and it is one Aquinas employs—to say that God “stands back,” beholds, considers, the ways that creatures may imitate Him “prior to” the choice to create.68 There is something crucial at stake in this last point, in itself and for our understanding of Pieper. At the start of question 15, Aquinas says that if the order of the universe is not the result of chance but is intended by God, God must have an idea of that order.69 We appreciate this argument from effect (an order intended by God) to cause (God’s idea of that order) only if we grasp that to make from an idea is to make from a reflexive consideration that esse in intellectu eius ut intellectas.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 15, a. 2 ad 2. 68. I am using language from Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, James Ross, and Exemplarism: A Reply,” 231–32 and “St. Thomas, Ideas, and Immediate Knowledge.” 69. “Sed si ipse ordo universi est per se creatus ab eo et intentus ab ipso necesse est quod habeat ideam ordinis universi.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 15, a. 2.

The Truth of All Things  245 charges the thing made with the artisan’s intent. “The form of a house in the mind of the housebuilder is something understood by him, according to whose likeness he makes the house from material [elements].”70 Hence “the housebuilder intends to make the house to be like the form in his mind.”71 In other words, a house is charged with the housebuilder’s intent because it is speculatively considered and fashioned from that consideration. Analogously, creatures are charged with intent because God speculatively considers them in His essence.72

IV Thomas Aquinas’s teaching in questions 14 and 15 supports and enriches Pieper’s principal insight that God’s seeing of creatures in His inner life is the ground of the truth of all things. The proposition asserting the “truth” of all things (“omne ens est verum”) must also be rescued from its obscurity, for it asserts nothing other than that everything that possesses being is by nature, that is, by virtue of its being real, at the same time intelligible. It is, however, not completely accurate to describe the proposition as asserting nothing “other” than this. In reality, that “other” which it asserts in addition to this is even more important than the aforementioned. That “other” is the reason why the things are intelligible and have names: the reason is that everything that is emerges from the creatively designing knowledge of God and consequently possesses “in itself,” as something thought and, in fact, uttered, a “word-character” that is the characteristic of being in principle comprehensible and intelligible. “We see the things you have made because they are. But they are because you see them.”73

70. Ibidem. 71. “Et haec potest dici idea domus: quia artifex intendit domum assimilare formae quam mente concepit.” Ibidem, I, q. 15, a. 1 (my emphasis). 72. Ibidem, I, q. 47, a. 1, where Aquinas argues that the order of things arises “ex intentione primi agentis.” 73. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 125–26 [121–22]. Pieper cites Augustine, Confessions 13.38; 7.4.

246  Matthew Cuddeback Omne ens est verum means: “because things come forth from a divine idea (Entwurf), and are themselves logos-like (word-like) [. . .] they bring us to knowledge of themselves.”74 When Pieper speaks of the “word-character” of things75 he is re-presenting Aquinas’s teaching in questions 14 and 15, that the creature is laden with God’s speculative consideration and artistic intent. Creatures are God’s forethought, predesigned “words.”76 Through every creature, God intends to say something. Just as human speech actually begins in the moment when the [mind’s] representation of reality takes the form of an inner word, so the generation of the “Eternal Logos in God can truly be called the speaking of God ([. . .] producere Verbum, quod est dicere vel loqui)” [Summa theologiae III, q. 39, a. 8 ad 2]. But the eternal Word of God is not only the image [Abbild] of the Father, but also the pattern [Urbild] of creation, Who comprehends in Himself the essential designs [Wesensentwürfe] of all things. And so creation may be described—if not literally then at least metaphorically—as something God has “said.”77

Indeed, if the creature is something God says having considered his ideas, then the creature is something God intends to say about Himself. Lawrence Dewan captures in a sentence both Pieper’s insight and the teaching of Summa theologiae I, qq. 14, 15, and 18: “We find things ‘interesting,’ not merely because they reveal a mind at work originating them, but because that mind at their origin produced them while contemplating himself, i.e., the fullness of being.”78 This does give the world “another face,” its true face: if eve74. Josef Pieper, “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’? Preliminary Reflections to a Theological Debate,” 145 [164]. 75. Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 125 [121]; “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’?” 144 [164]; “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 448. Pieper credits his friend Romano Guardini with the phrase. 76. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 37, a. 2: “As we say that a tree flowers by its flowers, so we say that the Father speaks Himself and creatures by the Word or the Son.” “Sicut ergo dicitur arbor florens floribus ita dicitur Pater dicens Verbo vel Filio se et creaturam.” 77. Josef Pieper, “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’?” 143–44 [164]. 78. Lawrence Dewan, “Truth and Happiness,” 14; see also 7.

The Truth of All Things  247 ry creature is first held in God’s beholding of Himself and made therefrom, then the divine source reached in contemplation is not a “what” but a “who.”79 “Behind the things we encounter immediately, and within them, the face of the divine incarnate Logos is visible.”80 In such a world, says Pieper, “mind can actually be defined as ‘receptivity to Being’,” and intellectual knowing “can be considered a form of hearing divine speech.”81 The nearly mystical quality of these utterances does not overstep the sober limitations Aquinas and Pieper place on our knowledge of God. What Pieper calls “earthly contemplation” always begins with and respects what is visible, material, and concrete. It first and always “directs its gaze straight at the heart of things,”82 and avoids the temptation to leap over the creature to get to God. But if the visible, material creature is God’s word, then it is so “woven through” with His artistry (gottdurchwirkt)83 that from within it one may catch, “more or less clearly, a foreglimpse of [its] divine source.”84 That is earthly contemplation. Pieper cites with admiration G. K. Chesterton’s “almost mystical conviction of the miracle in all that exists, and of the rapture dwelling essentially within all experience.”85 In a short and pithy essay, “Heiligung der Welt,” Pieper muses that the creature is so thoroughly worked through with God’s artistic purpose that it is, in some sense, “holy.”86 79. Josef Pieper, “The Problem of Faith Today,” 7 [184]. 80. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 80 [199]. Contemplation takes place when “in the midst of our workaday cares we raise our heads and unexpectedly gaze into a face turned toward us.” Josef Pieper, “Down to Earth Contemplation,” 151–52 [571]. With respect to Pieper’s appeal to the Logos, see Mark D. Jordan, “The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in Aquinas,” 31–32: “The Ideas are fully understood only when they are placed in the Trinitarian person of the Son and His activity in creation.” 81. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith, 61–62 [235]; “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 448. 82. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 86 [203]. 83. Josef Pieper, “Heiligung der Welt,” 381. 84. Josef Pieper, “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’?” 146 [165]. 85. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 88 [204]. Pieper cites Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton. 86. Josef Pieper, “Heiligung der Welt,” 381.

248  Matthew Cuddeback An exhortation to contemplation and a defense of its possibility are at the heart of Pieper’s writings on culture, and are central to his message about what constitutes “a truly human life.”87 In Leisure— The Basis of Culture, The Philosophical Act,88 In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, and Only the Lover Sings, Pieper holds that true leisure, festivity, and art (making it or beholding it) are nourished by contemplation.89 But contemplative knowledge is made possible on the side of the subject, man, by his immaterial soul, and on the side of the object, creatures, by their word-character. Because of their word-character creatures are “soaked with the eternal,”90 freighted with an “uneveryday dimension,” 91 bearers of “supramundane calls.”92 In contemplation, leisure, festivity, and art, we step beyond the workaday world and tap “the superhuman, life-giving powers of being [Seinsmächten], which renew and quicken us in our everyday tasks.”93 Creatures have this power to quicken us because they are shaped by a divine idea and so are logos-like: “God is present in the world; He can appear ‘before the eyes’ of the gaze directed toward the depths of things.”94 “In the end, everything confronts us in the most immediate way with the primal reality of God.”95 Because creatures are God’s words, Pieper bids us cultivate certain fundamental dispositions (Grundhaltungen) toward reality: a listening silence, the ability to stare, and hope. A “listening silence,” 87. Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 266 [270]. 88. In the Preface to the English edition of Leisure—The Basis of Culture, Pieper says that his books Leisure and The Philosophical Act “are intimately connected and properly belong together”; Leisure—The Basis of Culture, XIV. 89. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 85 [202]; In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity; “Three Talks in a Sculptor’s Studio. Vita contemplativa—The Contemplative Life.” 90. Josef Pieper, “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs,” 462. 91. Josef Pieper, “Language and the Philosophizing Person: Aperçus of an Aquinas Reader,” 207 [210] (translation modified). 92. Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 133 [272]. 93. Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 57 [26]. 94. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 79 [199]. 95. Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, 142 [280–81]; Happiness and Contemplation, 78 [198].

The Truth of All Things  249 more than a retreat from noise, is a “listening to the essence of things.”96 Things are not mute—for Pieper a baleful thought97—but speak of themselves and of their Maker.98 If the creature is God’s artwork, we should stare it down.99Pieper worried that “man’s ability to see is in decline.”100 In earthly contemplation we stare at the creature with an “intense gaze,”101 with “passionate attention,” to get to the creature’s “inscape.”102 “The contemplative impulse, which seeks the divine meaning underlying all beings, fires reverence for concrete reality.”103 Even the lowliest particular rewards our staring. Pieper envisions omne ens est verum as a message of hope. Hope and the loss of it in the century his life spanned were always close to Pieper’s mind, and encouragement to hope is an undertow in all his works. In 1969 he closes “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff” (The truth of things—a forgotten concept) this way: Might not all these well-known hopeless and despairing theories about man and his world which gainsay and negate the principle of the “truth of all things” offer an unlooked-for insight—namely, the idea that man and things have a meaning, an importance, a significance, indeed a “what96. Josef Pieper, “Music and Silence,” 55 [508]; Leisure—The Basis of Culture, 33 [8]. See Gerald Vann, The Water and the Fire, chap. 2, “Sound and Fury: The Stillness of Vision,” 24–43. Vann cites Pieper’s Leisure—The Basis of Culture several times. 97. Pieper attributes this position to Spinoza. See Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things, 17 [105]; “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 383. 98. See Thomas Aquinas, Lectura super Ioannem 1ect. 5: “Just as light is visible not only in and through itself, but also makes all other things visible, so the Word of God is light not only in itself but also as manifesting all that is manifested. For as each thing is manifested and is known by its form, all forms exist through the Word, which is the [divine] art full of living exemplars. Hence [the Word] is light, not only in itself, but as manifesting all things.” 99. I borrow the phrase “stare it down” from Brian Barbour, “  ‘The Mule’s Hind Quarters’: Flannery O’Connor as Hillbilly Thomist,” 28, 31. 100. Josef Pieper, “Learning How to See Again,” 31, 32 [367, 368]. See Pieper’s warnings against modern man’s inattentiveness in “The Problem of Faith Today,” 5–6 [182–83]. 101. Josef Pieper, “Learning How to See Again,” 35 [369]. 102. Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 85 [202]. Pieper takes the term “inscape” from Gerard Manley Hopkins. 103. Ibidem, 87–88 [204] (translation modified).

250  Matthew Cuddeback ness” and a “nature,” only insofar as they are patterned after a divine design [Entwurf], that is, only insofar as they are “true”?104

And in “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’?” he says: It has always seemed to me worth pondering that someone who expressly and consistently denies that things originated from the Logos—who denies their word-character—finds the substance of the real world itself slipping through his fingers. Sartre is the prime example: “there is no human nature because there is no God to conceive it.”105

A role of holy tradition is to convey the “divine guarantee of the world and of human salvation.”106 In handing down omne ens est verum Pieper strives to assure the men and women of his unsettled time of that guarantee. Omne ens est verum says that creatures are always held in God’s speculative and happy beholding of Himself.107 From that gaze God speaks forth creation to us. “Might it not be,” Pieper asks, that the man who despairs, precisely he, has ‘not yet received’ certain ‘tidings’?”108 Pieper shapes the old, handeddown saying, omne ens est verum, into tidings of hope for his age: God holds all things in His shadowless gaze; God sees things into being; creatures are God’s words.109 104. Josef Pieper, “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff,” 395. 105. Josef Pieper, “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’?” 144 [164]. 106. See note 18 above. 107. In chapter 3 of Happiness and Contemplation Pieper argues that a consistent thinker whom the world’s incoherencies brings to despair will inevitably be brought to think, “God is not one with Himself, God is not happy.” Only in the absolute and indestructible happiness of God will such a one find the “ultimate surety” (Bürgschaft) that being is sound, that happiness can be man’s goal; Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 30–31 [165–66]. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 26, a. 1–4, which Pieper cites, for instance, a. 4: “As for the happiness of contemplation, [God] has continuous and most certain contemplation of himself and of all other things.” Compare chapter 3 of Happiness and Contemplation to Romano Guardini, The Living God, chapter 2, “God gazes on us lovingly,” 33–44 [23ff.]. Paul Murray says, “This is contemplation—this is contemplative love—not so much that we contemplate God, but that God has first contemplated us” (“Recovering the Contemplative Dimension”). 108. Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World, 62 [281]. 109. I wish to thank Peter Fegan, O.P., and Brian Barbour for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

10 The Platonic Inspiration of Pieper’s Philosophy

o

Juan F. Franck

Together with Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas, Plato is for Josef Pieper one of the four greatest Western thinkers. Reference to the Athenian philosopher becomes more frequent in his mature works. Whereas in his first four volumes on the virtues—which date from 1934 through 1939 and are mainly conceived as a philosophical actualization of Aquinas’s thought—Plato is not quoted,1 the other three—dating from the fifties, sixties, and seventies—show an increasing assimilation of basic Platonic theses.2 This constitutes an important enrichment in Pieper’s philosophical itinerary. Without abandoning Thomas, Pieper sees in Plato a source of insights for illuminating many of the problems that concern the situation of 1. See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Fortitude (1934), Prudence (1937), Temperance (1939). Faith, Hope, Love. On Hope (1935). 2. See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues. Justice (1953). Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith (1962), and On Love (1972).

251

252  Juan F. Franck our society and culture. He speaks of both philosophers as his “two teachers [Lehrmeister].”3 The first lectures that Pieper gave on Plato date from the years after his Habilitation. Between 1948 and 1964 he lectured on several Platonic dialogues at Münster and Essen. Two of these lectures have recently been published for the first time in Felix Meiner’s German edition of Pieper’s Werke. Between 1962 and 1970 he broadcast his own versions of three dialogues (Gorgias, Symposium and a representation of Socrates’ death) on German, Austrian, and Swiss radio and television channels;4 he had already, in the fifties, given radio lectures on some characters of the Platonic dialogues. Specifically dedicated to the Athenian philosopher are the commentary on the Phaedrus,5 the book on the Platonic myths,6 the essays on Plato’s concept of philosophy7 and on the different Sophistic figures (lectures from 1954–1956, but edited later in different publications) and the three theatrical representations mentioned earlier.8 As a rule, all these writings result from the re-working of his lecture courses, most of which had been taught more than once. But beyond these writings Plato’s presence can be found in all of Pieper’s writings after the Second World War. It is particularly noticeable in the analysis of the act of philosophizing (1948), of the concept of University and of the academic (1952), leisure (1947), immortality (1967), tradition (1970), love (1972), language and revelation (1965), but it extends to almost all other topics as well. In this essay I will try to show how Platonic inspiration is conspicuous in Pieper’s works. It is unnecessary to cite all the places that mention the Greek philosopher or to discuss all the topics on 3. Josef Pieper, “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen,” 16. 4. See Berthold Wald, “Editorische Hinweise,” 387. 5. Josef Pieper, Enthusiasm and Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue Phaedrus. 6. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen. 7. Josef Pieper, “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy.” 8. Josef Pieper, Kümmert euch nicht um Sokrates. Drei Fernsehspiele.

Platonic Inspiration  253 which his thought influenced Pieper’s. An overview of some fundamental insights gained through the reading of Plato’s dialogues will suffice to confirm this presence. My exposition will follow the interconnections among these insights, so that one analysis will lead to the next in a logical sequence. For practical reasons I did not consider Pieper’s commentary on the Phaedrus in particular, because it would deserve a separate study, within the context of contemporary literature on Plato. Besides, many of the insights expressed in that text are also present elsewhere. Although Pieper is usually considered to be basically a Thomistic philosopher, I hope that these pages will help demonstrate the Platonic inspiration of much of his thought. In this sense it is not without significance that Pieper dedicated his lecture at the symposium commemorating his ninetieth birthday to the explanation of a Platonic concept: theia mania, divine madness.9 In the first section I will deal with the concept of the academic, which is closely tied to Plato’s conception of his Athenian Academia. Secondly, in order to appreciate both the seriousness and the appropriateness of the fight against the Sophists revealed in Plato’s dialogues, which at the same time reflect the imperishable value of the institution that he founded, I will consider the hermeneutical criteria Pieper applies to the Sophists and only then move on to the discussion of their harmful influence in society, which should certainly not be restricted to a limited period of history. The theoretical attitude at the root of the Academy, discussed in the third section, also explains the exact position of the latter in the fight against Sophism. In the fourth section, I show how deeply Plato’s understanding of philosophy is present in Pieper’s own. This will become even clearer in the following section, where I will argue that the reasons Plato had to regard some myths as bearers of truth correspond to Pieper’s style of philosophizing. The sixth and last section 9. Josef Pieper, “Gottgeschickte Entrückung. Eine Platon-Interpretation.”

254  Juan F. Franck provides an example of how fruitful Pieper’s authentically philosophical hermeneutics proves to be in the consideration of the nature of the spirit and the present human condition.

1. The Concept of the Academic Aside from all merely historical or simply accidental connections, Pieper sees the essence of the academic as being very closely related to Plato’s concept of philosophy and to his fight against the Sophists, so much so that he explicitly declares: “academic means philosophical [ . . .] philosophical means theoretical” and “academic means anti-sophistic.”10 A distinctive feature of theoria, the theoretical attitude, is the exclusion of all aims other than the contemplation of truth. Its opposite is the practical attitude, which aims at obtaining something concrete, at having power over nature, at transforming or modifying it. All disciplines can be cultivated in a theoretical way, i.e. academically, as long as they are studied independently of the practical applications that they may have. In this sense, even though education for a practical profession is not excluded, what is authentically academic differs from an exclusively practical study in the way knowledge is sought, not in the further consideration of additional features of the thing in question. Together with Pieper, one could also pose the question, whether “it might be the case that the practical effect depends precisely upon the previous and completely pure realization of theoria?”11 In fact, the surrendering to the truth of something, which is proper to theoria, is a precondition for any possible and legitimate practical application of that same thing that we may seek. By contrast, an ex10. Josef Pieper, Was heißt Akademisch? 76–79 and 91. See also Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power, 38 [151]. The last essay summarizes the reasons for Plato’s fight against the Sophists, as the original lecture upon which it is based was called, and points at possible sophistical attitudes and positions in the academic world. 11. Josef Pieper, Was heißt Akademisch? 81.

Platonic Inspiration  255 clusively practical focus allows the mind to see only what serves a preconceived purpose, and makes it blind to the true nature of its object. Therefore, something like theoria is not possible where reality is seen as a mere material for one’s own ends. Contemplation presupposes that things have a meaning of their own, before we put them at our service. Accordingly, we cannot obtain anything useful from them unless their nature is respected. The critical examination of the specialist must also have its place, but first of all things deserve reverence, a deep respect for what they are in themselves.12 Now, in Pieper’s view, this attitude of reverence is not sufficiently grounded until the divine origin of reality is accepted; the fact that Plato had placed his Academy under the protection of the gods indicates for the German philosopher the authentic basis for his contemplative attitude.13 When Pieper claims a “free space” for the University, in order that it can become a “zone of truth,”14 where scholars can dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, he is in fact asking to protect it from all possible assaults, to respect the sacred character of truth, no differently from Plato in Athens. To honor their name, contemporary universities should actively foster the same spirit that animated the ancient Academy, i.e. the philosophical, theoretical attitude. In this sense, the use of the term “academic” does not guarantee the subsistence of that bond. However shocking, and therefore also revealing, the following question might serve as a touchstone for discerning whether the original academic spirit still lives and blows in our universities. If somebody approached the ancient masters with the intention of learning to study something “in a philosophical way,” “from a philosophical point of view” we might say, Pieper suggests that the ancients would ask in turn:

12. See ibidem, 94. 13. See ibidem, 84–88 and Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power, 36–37 [150]. 14. Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power, 37 [150].

256  Juan F. Franck Has it been given to you [to understand] and are you completely familiar with the idea of seeing reality as something in a certain sense divine and thus worthy of reverence, as something that is in any case more than and different from mere material for human activity? Is this thoroughly evident to you?15

The academic is also negatively defined as anti-sophistic. Pieper seems to have been strongly influenced by this essential aspect of Plato’s philosophy. In many of his works he refers to the danger that the Sophists pose, not only to philosophy or in the domain of knowledge in general, but also to the good of society. In multifarious ways, the Sophist denies that the person participates in his true spiritual richness only through a silent theoria, concerned about truth and nothing else, like a listener who receives the measure from the reality of the world that lies before him.16

He can appear as the relativist who conceives man as the measure of all things (Protagoras), as the erudite who boasts about his wide knowledge (Hippias), as the one who, by making the basest things look sublime and vice versa, makes any respectful attitude toward reality impossible (Prodicus), and as the nihilist writer who dazzles with the brilliance of his style (Gorgias).17 The danger of the Sophistic approach is that it resembles the academic very closely; there is apparently the search for truth, for knowledge, together with a kind of seriousness and competence that make the Sophist look more like a philosopher than the philosopher himself.18 I will come back to Sophism in relation to praxis in the third section. 15. Josef Pieper, Was heißt Akademisch? 85 16. Ibidem, 92. 17. The salient trait of Gorgias’s speech is “the striking lack of substance, however wide his formal expertise might be.” Josef Pieper, Kümmert euch nicht um Sokrates. Drei Fernsehspiele, 22. 18. Pieper likes to quote John Wild’s Plato’s Theory of Man: An Introduction to the Realistic Philosophy of Culture, 283: “He seems just like a philosopher. He talks just like a philosopher. In fact we may say that he appears even more like a philosopher than the philosopher himself.” See Josef Pieper, “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen,” 146. Enthusiasm and Divine Madness, 10 [260]. Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power, 29 [145]. A Plea for Philosophy, 101 [96].

Platonic Inspiration  257 Among Pieper’s recently edited commentaries on Plato is a series of six lectures held in 1956 at the University of Münster under the title “The Character of the Sophist in the Platonic Dialogues.” Although many of the ideas developed there are to be found in other books also, the plan of the lectures offers a clear and comprehensive overview of Pieper’s understanding of Plato’s fight against sophistry. The lectures make evident how much Pieper owes to his encounter with Plato and how significant this encounter became in his discussions with contemporary philosophy. But before offering a summary of these lectures, I will consider the nature of Pieper’s hermeneutics, which apply to his reading of Thomas as well.

2. The Hermeneutics of the Dialogues Although it is true that hermeneutical seriousness requires placing a thought in its historical context, it is not legitimate to conclude that its importance is therefore limited to that particular context. Quite the opposite: only the actual context of a philosophical statement discloses all its applicability and thus opens up the possibility of significance in a different context. This is the case not only with the interpretation of a philosophical text, but with any kind of interpretation. To interpret is, in a way, to translate, and a good translation presupposes: (1) expertise in both languages, together with the knowledge of all the cultural circumstances that determine in one way or another their use, and (2) consideration by the interpreter of the truth (or falsity) of the text that he reads, i.e., his interest in what is meant, not just in how something is expressed. The second element is in fact the essential one, since it is possible to interpret or translate correctly without a thorough philological knowledge of the text. Pieper gives Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle as an example.19 By contrast, meaning is lost when the interpretation is done without reference to reality, and then interpreta19. See Josef Pieper, What Is Interpretation?, 222, 224 [225, 228].

258  Juan F. Franck tion, as well as translation and even tradition (in the proper sense of the terms) become in fact impossible. Pieper theorized the hermeneutical problem as such, and he certainly supports the possibility of a hermeneutics that attains a perennial truth. More significantly, his interpretations themselves are proof that a philosophical reading of past thinkers—i.e., a reading that aims at understanding “how the truth of things stands is attained” (qualiter se habeat veritas rerum)20—is achievable and that the opposition between hermeneutics and truth in the classical sense—the manifestation of reality and the correspondence of the mind to it—depends on a preconceived idealistic position. Pieper’s interpretations convey the freshness of thought resulting from the encounter with reality in the first place, and not with a book; this is so even when the thought is the result of a particular reading. On the other hand, the fact that our sights are limited does not mean that all our statements are historically determined.21 When explaining Aquinas or Plato, Pieper interprets, i.e., translates their message so that the reader does not merely receive information about how Thomas or Plato saw things, but he learns something about reality as such. He encourages the reader to agree or disagree with the thought expressed, not to evaluate whether a given thought has been more or less exactly reproduced. This manner of interpreting, so strikingly characteristic of his writings, is a vigorous counter-argument against the appropriateness of a herme-

20. Thomas Aquinas, Sententia super librum De caelo et mundo, 1, 22, 8. 21. Independently of his merits in the historiography of philosophy, Gadamer understands interpretation differently. He frequently dismisses a philosophical statement with such reasons like: “it can no longer be thought,” “after” this or that philosopher, etc. See, for example, his essay, dating from 1960, on the nature of things and language: “Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge,” 69, 71. See also Berthold Wald, “Josef Pieper als Interpret des Thomas von Aquin. Anmerkungen zur philosophischen Hermeneutik und zur Wahrheit der Interpretation,” 475f. Wald discusses there the reason for the intelligibility of things, handled also by Pieper in an essay published in the same volume: “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs.”

Platonic Inspiration  259 neutics that is disengaged from the question of truth; Pieper himself puts it best: Philosophical interpretation of the Ancients means: on the basis of a previous philosophical, inquisitive relationship with the world, and with our sights directed toward our real world, the one we encounter, we turn to a great text, in order to understand not the text, but rather this world of ours, which we assume is more clearly reflected in that great [thinker] than in ourselves.22

I think it worthwhile to consider the following example of philosophical interpretation, which regards Plato. In a short contribution to a Festschrift published in 1955, called “Equitableness in Interpretation,”23 he puts forward an original way of reading some of Plato’s central thoughts. Billigkeit is the word Pieper chose to translate the Greek epikeia, which in juridical language means a decision taken against the letter of the law in order to follow the mind of the legislator, and it takes place when a situation occurs that the legislator could not possibly have predicted. A higher form of justice is obtained by an apparent opposition to the law. Similarly, in the case that, in a way the author could not have foreseen, a statement that he holds to be valid proves to be wrong [. . .], it should be possible, even meaningful, and maybe also necessary, to save what is actually meant in the text, so long as its literal meaning is at the same time discarded.24

Historical and even some kind of philosophical criticism may easily reject some Platonic affirmations as outdated, misinformed, definitely wrong, etc., but a deeper regard may discover important claims about “how the truth of things stands.” This capacity to withstand 22. Josef Pieper, Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit. Interpretationen zu Thomas von Aquin: Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, 60. The title of the Münster Symposium (Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Aufklärung durch Tradition [Enlightenment through tradition]) indicates a general character of Pieper’s philosophy, which draws light from the past to understand our own problems, thus reversing the opposition between modernity and classical thought. 23. Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation.” 24. Ibidem, 243.

260  Juan F. Franck criticism is very rare, and Pieper finds it in Plato precisely where it is least expected, namely, in the Platonic teaching on reminiscence as a proof of the immortality of the soul. The literal element in the text that Pieper proposes to put aside is the pre-existence of the soul; he does this in order to see more clearly “what is actually meant in the text.” Only if the reader is intently interested in the problem discussed can he approach Plato in this way. But if his interest is mainly philological, he will not see beyond an argument, which in its literal shape is certainly no longer defensible. The first Platonic thesis we would be ready to give up, once we can no longer accept the pre-existence of the soul, is that knowledge takes place as a kind of remembering. We would no longer see the actual experience as an occasion for bringing back to the mind what we already knew, but rather would regard it as the only source of information the soul possesses. Now, Plato’s teaching is not to be understood in the sense that all our knowledge results from a recollection; that may be called an “over-interpretation.” Only some particular notions are referred to: some from the field of mathematics (think of the Meno), others such as the good and the beautiful, etc. Pieper quotes Wittgenstein’s example about the past and the very notion of remembering. In fact, how do we know that something is “beautiful” or “good,” that two equal things are “equal,” that the past is “past,” and that when we remember we are “remembering”? Without hesitation Pieper concludes that “there is evidently, independently of experience, some knowledge about fundamental states of affairs, about the fundamental structure of reality, about the ultimate meaning of the world.”25 Furthermore, and this I find a particularly noteworthy remark, he does not mask the fact that even Thomas Aquinas admits a kind of knowledge that “obviously is not communicated to us ‘from outside’, by the objects in the world or through our experience of them.”26 However long 25. Ibidem, 244. 26. Ibidem, 245. Most interpreters would accept only a metaphorical use of the term innatum, innata by Aquinas, neglecting the evidence that Thomas clearly

Platonic Inspiration  261 and tough the process of remembering may be, and even if it may sometimes require the assistance of a teacher, it consists in somehow “mak[ing] explicit to the mind what is actually known but is nonetheless not present [to it].”27 I wonder whether in ordinary language there exist more precise terms for this phenomenon than remembering or reminiscence. A second Platonic thesis we would readily abandon is the argument for the immortality of the soul based on its pre-existence. But, Pieper notes, precisely when we refuse to take pre-existence literally, and we keep in mind what we have seen about reminiscence and the possession of some basic notions about reality, just then the full and genuine power of Plato’s proof becomes clear. The soul contemplates the ideas, which constitute the previously known and what has to be remembered. Now, ideas are “something that belong to the divine [. . .] a power well beyond the limits of the finite” and through them the soul “takes part in a very special manner in the realm of truth.” Therefore, if [. . .] the human soul is of such a kind that its knowledge begins through the contact with an indestructible, superhuman light (with which beginning we can communicate through the power of remembering) [. . .] then the soul is also indestructible.28 distinguishes two sources of knowledge and that he did not subscribe unreservedly to Aristotle’s principle nihil est in intellectu quin prius fuerit in sensu, nor did he find the nature of the intellect fully described as a tabula rasa, but only with respect to the species intelligibiles of sensible things, never of the principles of the understanding, be they speculative or practical. Without explicitly employing the words innate or innatism, Pieper recognizes both that there is another source of knowledge and that since Plato’s time we have not found an explanation of how this occurs. See Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus in communi, q. 1, 8c. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, Bk. 3, d. 25, a. 2, 1B ad 2. Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 10, a. 6, ad 6. Summa theologiae I-II, q. 109, 1c and II-II, q. 8, a., 1 ad 1. Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. 3, ch. 46, n. 4. A very erudite, well-argued, and comprehensive analysis of this problem, from Plato through German Idealism, is Antonio Rosmini’s A New Essay Concerning the Origin of Ideas: see particularly vols. 1 (An Historical Critique) and 2 (The Innate Light), where Rosmini proposes an original and carefully grounded theory of innatism. 27. Josef Pieper, “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation,” 245. 28. Ibidem, 246.

262  Juan F. Franck This Platonic-Augustinian conclusion, which also dominates Aquinas’s works,29 is obviously independent of the thesis that the soul had an existence before it came to inform its actual body.

3. The Deleterious Influence of the Sophists in Society After reviewing a dozen studies on Plato and the Sophists and corroborating that the majority of the studies highlight the Sophists’ innovative elements and their “contributions” to the history of ideas and the development of the human spirit, Pieper, who insists on taking seriously the fact that Plato fought his entire life against this imposing cultural and philosophical movement, asks himself whether Plato “had not absolutely ignored the essential element of Sophism?”30 No doubt the figure of the Sophist is elusive, but is it not possible that Plato simply misunderstood their true significance? The question also applies to Socrates and to Aristotle, who were determined opponents of the Sophistic movement. In his attempt to reach a sort of definition of the Sophist, Pieper starts with a description of his salient traits. The Sophist “returns in all times” and each time presents himself as “what is updated”; he always looks modern and is therefore to be found in different forms. The Sophist is difficult to identify, since it looks as if he incarnates what is required in each period of history, what society actually needs. Accordingly, the first step toward overcoming their influence is calling the Sophists by their name. Here, Pieper observes, the Ancients cannot solve our own problem in identifying them: We “can cope with our problems only at our own cost and with our own means, on no account with a mere citation, repetition, and interpretation of the ‘wisdom of the Ancients’!”31 This is to be understood 29. See for example: “anima intellectiva est immortalis ex eo quod apprehendit veritatem” (Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, Bk. 1, d. 19, q. 5, a. 3 ad 3), where Augustine is explicitly mentioned. See also Summa contra Gentiles, 2, 84, 2. 30. Josef Pieper, “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen,” 134. 31. See ibidem, 144–47.

Platonic Inspiration  263 as meaning that the philosopher should pay attention not exclusively to what the Sophists say or write, as if they were easily to be caught in their words, but also, and in a considerable way, to their reactions, gestures, attitudes, to the promptness or slowness to give an answer, in a word, to what Pieper calls the “music” and the “instrumentation” of their discourse.32 From this perspective, the dialogue as a form of writing philosophy takes on an additional meaning, since it makes it possible to represent a situation, to see and hear the characters in conversation, and thus to unveil the manner in which the Sophists appear in society. Nobody can deny Plato’s genius in this point, and we also have to recognize Pieper’s merit in revitalizing not just some of his insights, but especially this realistic approach to the problem of Sophistry and of philosophy as a whole. Two closely connected traits of the Sophists are their search for success and their blindness to the intrinsic value of truth. Behind the well-known difficulty posed by the Greek professors of rhetoric—whether those who teach deserve to be paid or not—lies a more far-reaching problem, namely the value assigned to truth. Socrates’ ironic remark at the beginning of the Cratylus33 is aimed at showing how absurd it is to measure truth with money, which also stands for success and power. The right to receive a payment for teaching is not in question, but rather how the payment is understood, if as a salary (Lohn) or as a fee (Honorar). In German Honorar conserves the Latin root honor, meaning what deserves respect and has intrinsic worth. An honorable action is one performed according to what is right and virtuous. Similarly, teaching the truth can never 32. “[. . .] if one does not see the characters, then some essential aspect of Plato’s statement absolutely escapes his regard.” Josef Pieper, “Kallikles: Der Mensch ohne Wahrheitsverhältnis,” 201. 33. Speaking to Cratylus, Socrates says: “If I had not been poor, I might have heard the fifty-drachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar and language—these are his own words—and then I should have been at once able to answer your question about the correctness of names. But, indeed, I have only heard the single-drachma course, and therefore I do not know the truth about such matters.” Plato, Cratylus 384b, in The Collected Dialogues, 422.

264  Juan F. Franck be adequately compensated with any material good; it is more than and something different from a service performed in exchange for money. It is an alarming sign when this idea begins to sound strange in a society, as though it needed justification. It means that society is no longer able to see the difference between what is to be sought for its own sake and what by its very nature is ordered to something else. Power and money belong to the latter category; on the contrary, truth, as well as life, health, beauty, and friendship, for example, are intrinsically valuable goods, which cannot be adequately compensated with anything material. When such a situation takes roots—and this is a permanent danger in all times—it means that a momentous step has been taken toward the instrumentalization of what is most sacred, toward the “totalitarian working world,”34 that is, toward a world where everything is seen as a means to something else, which unavoidably transforms persons into one more means in an anonymous mechanism. In this context, since the Sophists teach how to be successful in society and their knowledge is completely oriented toward a practical purpose, it is natural that they require more money for a class that will instruct its participants how to be more successful and, therefore, richer. In that way, the Sophist becomes simultaneously one more element of the same “totalitarian [i.e., all-encompassing] working world” that he, based on his culture and education, to a certain extent despises.35 Let us ask the question once again: What did Plato find in the Sophists that he considered so dangerous? Why did he fight the Sophists throughout all his life? The answer has to do with rhetoric: not that the art of talking convincingly is something to reject on cultural, educative, or moral grounds, but rather that the Sophis34. For Pieper’s development of this extremely relevant topic see Frank Töpfer’s contribution in this volume. 35. Drawing also from Ernst Jünger, Aquinas, and Goethe, Pieper expanded on this point in Was heißt Akademisch? under the subtitle “The ‘worker’ and the Sophist” (88–94).

Platonic Inspiration  265 tic movement effects a transformation of the word into a means to power, which finally corrupts the nature of language and puts human intellectual life in danger. Pieper condenses Plato’s concern about the Sophists into the thesis that “in the specific treatment of words, precisely what constitutes the meaning and dignity of the word is corrupted and destroyed.”36 The word binds together two essential features: it shows a particular reality and it is addressed to somebody. The Sophists distort both of them, since they are indifferent to the essence of things and therefore cannot really engage in a conversation; they can only talk, but they cannot have a real partner. As soon as the word is not seen as what reveals reality to the mind, the communicative character of language also becomes senseless: basically there is nothing to communicate. Gorgias’s nihilism—which maintains that nothing exists; and, if there were something, it could not be known; and, even if it could eventually be known, it could not be expressed—does not deny “the world of a thousand facts,” but rather denies that “behind these facts there is some authentic, definitive, absolute, or even divine being.” Without the rapport between the word and reality, human language becomes a means to power, a means to obtain something from the others, but not to engage in a dialogue, the main character of which should be to make something real present to the other person’s faculty of understanding. And, conversely, “in so far as the Sophist refuses to recognize his partner as another subject, he refuses eo ipso ‘to account for’—precisely for the agreement or not of what he says with the state of affairs.”37 In this context, Pieper sees the famous Protagorian sentence—“man is the measure of all things”—as a logical consequence of ignoring others as persons and treating them merely as objects. 36. Josef Pieper, “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen,” 156. 37. See ibidem, 169. Plato’s quotation is from Protagoras 336e. The last two quotations are on pages 158 and 169, respectively. Pieper’s philosophy of language can also be found in the essay “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’? Preliminary Reflections to a Theological Debate.” See also Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power.

266  Juan F. Franck True reality no longer concerns the Sophist, and a pseudoreality is established in turn, which we may very well understand as today’s so-called virtual reality. In fact, behind this universe of fictitious characters, feelings, emotions, stimuli, etc., behind the toofrequent flattery we are subjected to by the media, there lies a more or less concealed intention of inducing a particular behavior.38 In the realm of the entertainment industry, of commercial advertising, and of political propaganda, very often language is used in order to obtain something from the listener, and not because “things are so and so.”39 The other person is considered void, an empty receptacle of a message. Socrates, instead, says to Theaetetus: “Your mind is not empty or barren. You are suffering the pains of travail.”40 By that he means that reality has also made itself present to him, that his word also discloses some aspect of the real. “Reality has so many sides because its archetype resides in God’s mind,” says Pieper, and “it can only be seized by an infinite number of finite spirits.”41 There is no trace of this thought in the Sophistic attitude, in which both dimensions of language (disclosing and communicative) have been destroyed. No Sophistic figure better represents this absolute absence of interest in the truth of things than Callicles, “the man with no connection to truth.”42 He is solely concerned with achieving his goals, with being successful and with asserting himself. Any question 38. See Josef Pieper, “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen,” 189f. Scheinwirklichkeit is the word Pieper uses for this pseudo-reality. See ibidem, 173ff. 39. Ibidem, 187. 40. Plato, Theaetetus 148e. Quoted by Josef Pieper in “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen,” 181. 41. Josef Pieper, “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen,” 180. Obviously, Pieper is not suggesting that an infinite number of finite spirits would exhaust the knowledge of reality and thus equal divine knowledge, but that the richness of reality allows for an ever-increasing number of finite minds. 42. Such is the title of a radio program, later published as an essay, that Pieper dedicated to the analysis of Callicles’ personality. See Josef Pieper, “Kallikles: Der Mensch ohne Wahrheitsverhältnis.”

Platonic Inspiration  267 about truth just does not exist for him; only the “intellectuals” care about it, people who do not take life seriously, as he does. It is absolutely inconceivable to him that somebody might have all the power in the city and still not be able to do what he truly wants, what his nature strives for. In the Platonic dialogue Gorgias, Callicles incarnates the attitude which Gorgias does not dare to carry to this ultimate consequence, since he remains somehow still attached to the traditional order. However, between Gorgias and Callicles there is Polus, who goes further than his master, but still at the level of thought. Callicles in turn represents the third generation, which has transformed a way of thinking into a way of living. Displaying a complete ignorance of his actual situation, though, he would find the idea that knowledge has to do, not primarily with power, and not only with the intellect, but also with a person’s will, with his entire life, with his good and his happiness—he would find all these claims utterly fantastic, incapable of withstanding the slightest confrontation with the “real” world. In his adaptation of the Gorgias, Pieper introduces a young woman who is asked by the professor leading the discussion of the dialogue to pay attention so that “the male intellect does not lose sight of reality.” She should ask for clarification “as soon as she finds that the discussion has become too abstract.” This woman remarks that the dialogue began with a discussion on rhetoric but has drifted into issues such as “power, right, happiness: those are thoroughly new topics!” The professor takes up the comment and, acknowledging the difficulty one might have in perceiving at first glance the connection between the new problems and rhetoric—understood here as the “irresponsible use of language”—uses the opportunity to put forward a “wholly plausible” interpretation of the dialogue. He says: the relationship of the new topics to the previous one, “rhetoric,” is very close. On the one side we have happiness, justice, truth, three things that belong together. But the other side, the reverse of the coin, also shows

268  Juan F. Franck three things that belong together: one is rhetoric, i.e. the use of language separated from the truth of things; the second one is the unrestricted exercise of power and the third one: despair [. . .]. This is Plato’s opinion: when such things determine the foreground and the external appearance of everyday life, then the organs of the body politic are sick, and the raw struggle for power prevails behind the scenes.43

Everybody can appreciate the contemporary relevance of this thought.

4. The Character of Plato’s Philosophizing When Pieper distances himself from the “male intellect,” he is not only warning against the general inclination of the human mind to look abstractly at just one side of reality, but, in my opinion, he implicitly puts forward his understanding of philosophy, which avoids the dominating tendency toward an ever-greater specialization and therefore toward an increasingly fragmented view of reality and a consequent loss of wisdom, the real aim of philosophy. In fact, Pieper has so often had recourse to Plato when explaining what philosophy is that we can doubtless say that he has made Plato’s concept of philosophy his own. He dedicated a short essay to the topic, entitled “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy” in which we find the basic insights he has always defended.44 First of all, the philosopher is somebody who lovingly seeks wisdom, even the wisdom that God himself possesses. His sights there43. Josef Pieper, Kümmert euch nicht um Sokrates. Drei Fernsehspiele, 34f. 44. See Josef Pieper, “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy.” See also What Does It Mean to Philosophize? and A Plea for Philosophy, where he frequently has recourse to Plato. In the second edition of Was heißt akademisch? (103–8) Pieper answers his critics, grouping their objections and remarks in three parts: the notion of theoria, the relationship between philosophy and the “ancients,” and the link between philosophy and the religious vision of the world. Especially in the second part, where essential aspects of his thought had been called into question, Pieper has recourse mainly to Plato’s dialogues. Plato’s philosophizing embodies in a particularly clear way the two characterizations of philosophy that are recurrent in Pieper’s writings.

Platonic Inspiration  269 fore are set on reality as a whole and his greatest desire is to understand it from all possible points of view. He does not select one or another aspect of reality or any clearly demarcated parcel of the universe; rather, his mind stretches out toward the whole, the totality (tou olou kai pantos).45 It would be the negation of philosophy to reject deliberately any legitimate source of information about the world and to transform it into a specific academic discipline. As we will see later, the acceptance of a divine revelation that truly illuminates the real world stands at the center of the Platonic way of philosophizing, and this in virtue of the nature of philosophy itself. A second characteristic of a philosophical question, closely related to the previous one, is that it differs from other kinds of questions in that only the knowledge of the archetypes of things can satisfy it. The philosopher wants to know what things essentially are, what is fundamentally meant by them.46 This Platonic thought depends on his thesis that there is an exemplar for each thing—also for the human being—to which the entity must conform in order to be fully itself. This exemplar is something divine, and when the philosopher asks for the fundamental meaning of reality, he is in fact asking for the knowledge of it that God himself possesses. Now, since an authentic philosophical questioning seeks the meaning of the universe as a whole, philosophy is given to us negatively, never as a “well-rounded” truth. A definite answer will never be achieved, and Plato, together with Pieper, warns philosophers against a premature systematization. Pieper quotes here Nicholas of Cusa’s docta ignorantia, and elsewhere he speaks about Thomas Aquinas’s philosophia negativa, an idea that gave rise to strong op45. See Plato, Republic, 475b5 and 486a5. In Pieper’s words the Greek tou olou kai pantos would be equivalent to: “under every conceivable aspect.” See Josef Pieper, Was heißt akademisch? 124–28. 46. Although the thought cannot be developed here, whenever Pieper speaks of “being meant” he refers to a divine creating intellect, whose existence is frequently presupposed. The opposite thesis, namely that nothing “is meant” by things, is notably that of Jean-Paul Sartre. See Josef Pieper, “Creatureliness and Human Nature: Reflections on the Philosophical Method of Jean-Paul Sartre.”

270  Juan F. Franck position in some twentieth-century Thomist circles.47 To see philosophy this way results in an attitude of contemplative silence, in which the mind is open to reality and gives up the pretension of having found a definite “scientific” answer. Similarly, Plato compares philosophy to love, insofar as it awakens a desire that cannot be fulfilled once and for all. Philosophy is not less valuable for that reason; on the contrary, it thereby reflects the structure of human existence, in constant straining toward a plenitude that actually exceeds all human possibilities.48 A salient point in Pieper’s concept of philosophy, for which he relies on Plato as well, is the refusal to understand philosophy as a system. On the contrary, Plato’s dialogues reflect the openness of philosophy, its constitutive incompleteness. This also explains the priority Pieper gives to ordinary language rather than to terminologies. Systematic thought needs to delimit the meaning of words in order to gain precision. A terminology is made of precise words (from the Latin prae-cisum: cut out), whose meaning is clearly defined with respect to other words similar or connected to it. By contrast with this procedure, ordinary spoken language, as it has developed historically, refers to reality in a different way. It evokes the complete thing, not only one single perspective, since its main interest is to view the whole thing, as it is found in reality. Certainly, precision is welcome for the advancement of sciences—Pieper explicitly accepts that—but the price one has to pay for it is a certain restriction and impoverishment of the reality under consideration. In contrast, the philosophical task consists in taking care that no aspect of reality is put aside, in not allowing a partial 47. For the reactions that this idea of philosophia negativa encountered in different places, see Josef Pieper, Noch nicht aller Tage Abend, 304f, 410, 485. See the development of this idea in “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas” and “The Timeliness of Thomism.” 48. “[. . .] whether man must perhaps by virtue of his very nature ask questions that transcend his ability to comprehend, whether man, perhaps, as Pascal put it, transcends himself to an infinite degree.” Josef Pieper, “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy,” 170 [169–70].

Platonic Inspiration  271 interpretation of reality to claim to be the definite theory of the real and to announce the formula of the world. Philosophy vigilantly keeps alive the sense of the mystery and the inexhaustibility of reality. Pieper insists that this inexhaustibility is relative to the finite intellect and proves the limited character of the latter. Reality is partly obscure to us, not due to a lack of meaning, but rather because of an excess of light, which blinds our capacity for seeing. Pieper frequently gives the example of death. The complete reality of somebody’s death is far from being thoroughly expressed as a biological process, and an honest look at the real event “death” is enough to raise the question: “Is that everything that happens when a person dies?” The biological process is an aspect of death, but it is just one aspect; the psychological, ethical, and religious aspects also constitute real features of a person’s death. There is no event that would be just “the cessation of certain biological functions”; something that would be this and only this never actually takes place.49 The fact that the Athenian philosopher has chosen the dialogue as the means of transmitting his thought is seen by Pieper as a concrete manifestation of the thesis that truth is given to the human being piecemeal, one aspect after another, not in the solitary contemplation of the mind but in the “contrapuntal polyphony” of a conversation, in which as many voices as possible are to be heard, even mistaken and erratic ones, since they thus contribute to hearing the others more clearly. In a word, Pieper finds in the structure of dialogues a thesis about human knowledge, about the way truth is given to us.

5. Plato and the Myths One of Pieper’s merits is to have shown with extreme clarity the unique role played by certain myths in Plato’s philosophizing. This 49. See Josef Pieper, A Plea for Philosophy, 143f. [140f.]. “Language and the Philosophizing Person: Aperçus of an Aquinas Reader.”

272  Juan F. Franck role is quite distinct from the role played by the many stories and tales Plato elsewhere introduces about the Greek gods and men.50 There are a few which he explicitly regards as true: “You may consider it a story, I take it to be the truth,”51 says the Platonic Socrates to Callicles before citing the myth about the judgment of the soul after death. The same attitude, which is notoriously that of the believer, is displayed by Plato with regard to other two myths, namely, the one about the creation of the world by a good God and the fall of the first men from a state of happiness to a state of sin and fault, which is now our present condition.52 These myths have been accepted ex akoeˉs, by hearing, since they refer to the beginning of the world and to the beginning of history. Socrates has not created them but has heard them, and he asks his listener to hear as well. He sees himself as a transmitter, as a link in the chain whose commencement nobody can date. Plato frequently speaks of “the ancients,” who were closer to the gods than we are; they received this divine revelation and transmitted it to posterity.53 At their origin there was “the event of a divine discourse explicitly addressed to men.”54 In Plato’s understanding of the myths, the oral tradition of mankind, however corrupted, obscured, and deformed, conserves the vestige of an original divine revelation, and the philosopher—i.e., the person who seeks truth—cannot simply ignore that tradition without betraying the very meaning of his efforts. It is remarkable, too, that Plato 50. See, in this same volume, Kenneth Schmitz’s contribution, section 3, “The Great Myth.” 51. Plato, Gorgias 523a1. I prefer to translate the sentence so and not as William Dudley Woodhead does in The Collected Dialogues, 303: “Give ear then, as they say, to a very fine story, which you, I suppose, will consider fiction, but I consider fact.” 52. See Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 338 and 344. These three myths “deal with the deeds of the gods, in so far as these deeds affect man, and with the deeds of men, in so far as these refer to the gods” (ibidem, 339). They are characterized by their symbolic form and by the fact that their author is unknown. 53. See e.g. Plato, Philebus 16c. Socrates’ intervention begins with the words: “There is a gift of the gods . . . .” 54. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 373.

Platonic Inspiration  273 not only acknowledges the existence of this tradition but also undertakes a critical interpretation of it.55 He remains a philosopher when he makes room for myths in his philosophy, since for him these are certainly “a form of truth,”56 even “the ultimate form of truth we can attain.”57 With his analyses Pieper corrects a common view of Greek philosophy as a rational effort that begins with leaving behind the interpretation of the world transmitted in the myths and in religious tradition, thus replacing mythos with logos. He convincingly shows that Plato does not reject this pre-philosophical information, but rather honors it and philosophizes in constant reference to it. If we understand theology as the interpretation of divine revelation, then “it is impossible . . . to want to pursue philosophy in conscious and radical abstraction from theology and to appeal to Plato at the same time.”58 Still, far from uncritically accepting all religious traditions—he even reproaches Homer, the founder of the Greek state, for having attributed shameful deeds to the gods—Plato struggles to separate the legitimate elements from what has been added by the poets’ imaginations and from various interpretative efforts. In other words, 55. He is certainly not alone in this task: Xenophanes and Heraclitus at least had made important steps in the same direction. And first of all Socrates is to be mentioned, since to a great extent it was his effort to distinguish the perennial message contained in Greek traditional religion from the outdated form that encrusted it that occasioned the mistrust of the aristocracy and eventually brought him to trial. See Romano Guardini, Der Tod des Sokrates, 55–60. From his Christian standpoint, Pieper acknowledges that Plato’s insurmountable limitations rendered him incapable of carrying out this interpretation in order to attain the original divine message in its purity. This was made possible only when the same Logos who spoke at the beginning of history became incarnate and entered human history. See Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 373. The primitive revelation (Ur-Offenbarung) is referred to by Pieper in several places, and its acceptance is ascribed to many important thinkers, among them Augustine, Newman, and Thomas Aquinas. See, e.g., Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 278ff. [282ff.] and What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 68f. [57f.]. 56. Josef Pieper, Über die platonischen Mythen, 361. 57. Ibidem, 365. 58. Josef Pieper, What Does It Mean to Philosophize? 72 [61].

274  Juan F. Franck the symbolic form in which they are contained does not completely correspond to human fantasy, but conceals at its core a truth which must be disclosed. And when it comes to bringing that core to light, Plato is surprisingly transparent and “un-obscure,” as in this paragraph from the Timaeus: Let me tell you why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men. God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable [. . .] out of disorder he brought order.59

In my opinion, Pieper is able to give this aspect of Platonic philosophy, as well as many others, their due significance because of his insistence on philosophizing, on the philosophical act, instead of on “philosophy” as a discipline. This allowed him to discover all the existential seriousness that is to be found in Plato—the “essentialist”—and at the same time to restore to philosophy this fundamental dimension. In fact, after Socrates’ death—one might say, after Plato’s reflections on his master’s death—philosophy acquired a new tone, since the whole earnestness of the question of truth and justice, of life and death, became unavoidable. Socrates’ attitude has become paradigmatic and highly revealing of man’s intimate convictions. After narrating the myth about the judgment of the soul, Socrates, even though the whole story is not thoroughly evident to him (his knowledge is based on belief, not on evidence and rational argument), believes that it is “both a reasonable contention and a belief worth risking, for the risk is a noble one.”60 And there is no reason to think that this would be only his thought and disposition, and not Plato’s also. For them, as well as for Pieper, something 59. Plato, Timaeus 29d5–30a5, quoted by Pieper in Über die platonischen Mythen, 358. 60. Plato, Phaedo 114d4f.

Platonic Inspiration  275 like a “pure philosophy,” an aseptic, well-delimited academic discipline, would be the negation of the philosophical act, which by its very nature is directed to the totality and aimed at unveiling the ultimate meaning of the world and of human existence.61 This “nonpure” character of philosophy applies not only to Plato, but also to Thomas Aquinas and to all great thinkers of the past, from the West and also from the East.62

6. Death, the Spirit, and Immortality Plato’s conception of what happens when a person dies does not allow for hasty over-simplifications. However, he certainly has a positive notion of death, since he sees it as the necessary passage or step toward the liberation of the soul from the obstacle represented by the body. According to Socrates, therefore, the philosopher is the one who wishes to die. Still, even though death is something good, nobody is allowed to kill himself, since as long as we live in the body we are at the gods’ service. It is not up to us to decide the moment of our departure. In Plato’s understanding of death, the separation of soul and body63 does not imply the requirement of a reunification, but signals a definitive exit, which is longed for by those who know the real nature of the soul. Man suffers death, but only as a step toward a greater freedom, as the dissolution of a temporary union. Even though this anthropological conception severely contradicts the Christian understanding of the nature of man and the belief in resurrection, and even though it also fails to explain the care 61. On Pieper’s understanding of the philosophical act see Vincent Wargo, “Pieper and the Philosophical Act” and Bernard N. Schumacher’s contribution in this volume. 62. See Josef Pieper, Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration, 290f. [295f.]. Pieper reports there the lively discussion that took place during a conference in Tokyo about whether or not there is a Japanese mythical tradition. The discussion on Western thinkers, however precise, had been merely scholarly. 63. See Plato, Phaedo 64c.

276  Juan F. Franck with which many cultures treat corpses, thus expressing the conviction that a person has inexplicably lost something which intimately belongs to him, the immortality of the soul is a requisite for the resurrection of the body. Otherwise, not only a new body would have to be given to man, but also a new soul (!), with the necessary consequence that there is no real resurrection, since it is not the same human being any more who would “arise.”64 At this point I suggest applying Pieper’s interpretative principle. When we put aside the thesis about the pre-existence of the soul, we found an argument for the immortality, or rather, for the indestructibility of the soul.65 Now, if we consider the present condition of man, his body is a source of enjoyment but also a source of suffering. The multiple cares it requires, even if they are the occasion for the development of many virtues, which have their seat in the soul, are in contrast with the immense and unlimited happiness that the possession of truth conveys to the spirit. That does not mean that we have to view the body as a pure and simple obstacle for the spirit; yet the truth behind the Socratic-Platonic understanding of death is that the actual human condition somehow contradicts man’s nature and man’s superior principle—not necessarily in the sense that having a body is not essential to the human being, but rather in the sense that our present human condition is not completely in order and is in need of a deep purification. The lack of harmony in our nature does not have to be constitutive, but could very well be the consequence of a sin, a fault that mysteriously weighs on every human being that comes into existence. No one should be surprised to note that Socrates again has recourse to the myths at this point.66 64. See Josef Pieper, “Unsterblichkeit—eine nicht-christliche Vorstellung?” 313: “But he [Aquinas] is of the opinion that, if man’s soul were not immortal from creation, there would be nothing, and nobody, to receive God’s gift of resurrection and of eternal life.” 65. See Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality, 109ff. [388ff.]. 66. See Plato, Symposium 189–93. See Rosmini’s commentary on this aspect of Plato’s thought: “It was, therefore, an error on the part of Plato to look upon the

Platonic Inspiration  277 All this being said, it would be unjust to call Plato’s position a kind of “spiritualism,” if by that is meant the contempt or neglect of the body. Instead, I would suggest seeing his position as underscoring the nature and supremacy of the spirit; in that way it will become evident why Pieper explicitly finds support for his philosophy of the spirit in Plato’s anthropology. In Pieper’s opinion the spirit is best understood as that being which is open to the totality, and which is therefore never satisfied with any limited finite good. This thesis, which complements the classical ontological theory of truth with its fundamental anthropological correlative, as is clearly proved in Pieper’s Habilitationschrift,67 constitutes at the same time a basic Platonic insight. Aquinas’s description of the soul as that being which is born to agree with the whole of being (quod natum sit convenire cum omni ente), explicitly finds support in Aristotle’s well-known saying that the soul is somehow all things (anima est quodammodo omnia), but it could very well be based on Plato’s reflections on what happens when a person experiences love, truth, or goodness. This is not a “  ‘typically Platonic’ idealization . . . it is nothing other than a fully realistic description of what spirit actually is.”68

7. Conclusion However many imitators he may have had, the dialogue as a form of doing philosophy has probably been mastered only by Plato, and it is to Pieper’s great credit that he restored its original combody as a hindrance to the flight of the soul. The truth is that, considered in itself, it is the instrument whereby the soul develops and perfects itself. But Plato’s view has its justification, if, instead of applying it to the nature of body, we apply it to the corruption entailed upon the animal nature by the first sin” (Philosophical System, nr. 126). 67. Josef Pieper, The Truth of All Things. See also Matthew Cuddeback’s contribution in this volume. 68. See Josef Pieper, Enthusiasm and Divine Madness, 76 [310]. See Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, q. 1, 1c.

278  Juan F. Franck plexity, richness and persuasiveness. Plato’s genius certainly goes beyond anthropology and ethics, Pieper’s main fields of interest. He also covers logics and dialectics; his philosophy of knowledge does not allow for some of the simplifications to which even Aristotle reduced it, and his cosmology and ontology still deserve serious attention. But the clarity with which Pieper brings to light the wisdom contained in Plato’s teachings about human existence, ethical behavior, culture, society, and religion, is doubtless a rare thing. Like Thomas Aquinas, Plato is in the noblest sense of the word interpreted: his true voice is made audible again. Pieper’s translations of both philosophers are indisputable proof of this. And if Plato almost seemed to defy his own doubts whether the written, “dead” word is an adequate means for transmitting the truth, Pieper is all the more a true Platonist, inasmuch as he succeeds in making the text—Plato’s, Thomas’s, and also his own—truly speak.69 69. I want to thank John Romanowsky and Michael J. Miller for the stylistic revision.

Bibliography

Josef Pieper Werke in acht Bänden, edited by Berthold Wald, 11 volumes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1995–2008). For a complete bibliography of Pieper, see “Gesamtbibliographie” in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 749–815.

Books Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992) [Mißbrauch der Sprache—Mißbrauch der Macht (1970) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 132–51]. Alles Glück ist Liebesglück. Selbstlosigkeit und/oder Glücksverlangen in der Liebe (1992) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 339–56. An Anthology, translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989) [Josef Pieper Lesebuch, with a preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar (München: Kösel, 1981, 1990)]. Arbeit, Freizeit, Muße—Was ist eine Universität? (1989) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 532–48. Das Arbeitsrecht des Neuen Reiches und die Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno (1934, withdrawn from bookshops by the author a few months after its publication) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 336–62. A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, translated by Paul C. Duggan (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) [Kleines Lesebuch von den Tugenden des menschlichen Herzens (1941; revised edition München: Kösel, 1947; with a preface by T. S. Eliot, 1957)]. Buchstabierübungen. Aufsätze—Reden—Notizen (1980) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), vol. 3 (1995), vol. 7 (2000), vol. 8.1 (2005), vol. 8.2 (2008). The Concept of Sin, translated by Edward T. Oakes (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2001) [Über den Begriff der Sünde (1977) in Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 207–79].

279

280  Bibliography Death and Immortality, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2000) [Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1968, revised edition 1979) in Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 280–397]. Deutsches Sonntags-Meßbuch, with Heinz Raskop, introduction by Josef Pieper (Paderborn: Jungfermann, 1938; Köln: Peter Bachem; Münster: Aschendorff). Divine Madness. See Enthusiasm and Divine Madness below. The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History, translated by Michael Bollock (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999) [Über das Ende der Zeit. Eine geschichtsphilosophische Meditation (1950, revised edition 1980) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 286–374]. Enthusiasm and Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue ‘Phaedrus’, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2000) [Begeisterung und Göttlicher Wahnsinn. Über den platonischen Dialog ‘Phaidros’ (1962) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 248–331]. Abbreviated version: Divine Madness: Plato’s Case against Secular Humanism, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995) [Göttlicher Wahnsinn. Eine Platon-Interpretation (Ostfildern bei Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1989)]. Entsakralisierung? (1970). The contributions are reprinted in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 394–419, 448–53, 491–94. Das Experiment mit der Blindheit (1979) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 554–61. Faith, Hope, Love. On Faith (13–85) translated by Richard and Clara Winston; On Hope (87–138) translated by Mary Frances McCarthy; On Love (139–281) translated by Richard and Clara Winston (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997) [Über den Glauben. Ein philosophischer Traktat (1962) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 198– 255. Über die Hoffnung (1935) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 256–95. Über die Liebe (1972) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 296–414]. For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006) [Schriften zum Philosophiebegriff in Werke, vol. 3 (1995)]. The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (Prudence [1–40] translated by Richard and Clara Winston; Justice [41–113] translated by Lawrence E. Lynch; Fortitude [115–41] and Temperance [143–206] translated by Daniel F. Coogan) (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966, 2006) [Traktat über die Klugheit (1937) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 1–42. Über die Gerechtigkeit (1953) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 43–112. Vom Sinn der Tapferkeit (1934) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 113–36. Zucht und Maß (1939) in Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 137–97]. Gerechtigkeit—heute (1973) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 256–65. Eine Geschichte wie ein Strahl. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen seit 1964 (1988) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 2 (2003), 497–672. Glauben—Hoffen—Lieben (1981) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 307–38. Gottgeschenkte Atempause. Arbeit—Muße—Sonntag—Fest (1980) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 613–26. Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln. Eine soziologisch-ethische Grundlegung der Sozialpädagogik (1933) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 196–309. Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln, seventh complete revised edition (1987) in Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 1–47. Guide to Thomas Aquinas, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) [Hinführung zu Thomas von Aquin. Zwölf Vorlesungen

Bibliography  281 (1958); third revised edition under the title Thomas von Aquin. Leben und Werk (1986) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 153–298]. Happiness and Contemplation, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1998) [Glück und Kontemplation (1957) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 152–216]. Hinführung zum Glauben (1978) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 227–49. Hope and History, translated by David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994) [Hoffnung und Geschichte. Fünf Salzburger Vorlesungen (1967) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 375–440]. Also translated, under the title Hope and History: Five Salzburg Lectures, by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969). The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary of Philosophy from the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, translated by Drostan MacLaren (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002) [Thomas von Aquin. Sentenzen über Gott und die Welt (published in 1940 under the title Über Thomas von Aquin) 1956; Trier: Johannes-Verlag Einsiedeln, 1987)]. In Search of the Sacred: Contributions to an Answer, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) [Was heißt ‘sakral’? Klärungsversuche (Ostfildern bei Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1988). The contributions are reprinted in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 394–419, 420–27 and 537–58. In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1999) [Zustimmung zur Welt. Eine Theorie des Festes (1963) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 217–85]. Kümmert euch nicht um Sokrates. Drei Fernsehspiele (1966) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 1–131. Leisure—The Basis of Culture, translated by Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1998), 1–60 [Muße und Kult (1948) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 1–44]. Also translated by Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon, 1952). Lieben, hoffen, glauben, (Munich: Kösel, 1986). Also in Werke, vol. 4 (1996). Living the Truth, translated by Lothar Krauth and Stella Langa (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). Menschliches Richtigsein. Die Kardinaltugenden—neu bedacht (Freiburg in Breisgau: Informationszentrum Berufe der Kirche, 1980). Die Neuordnung der menschlichen Gesellschaft. Befreiung des Proletariats. Berufsständische Gliederung. Systematische Einführung in die Enzyklika ‘Quadragesimo anno’ (1932, third revised edition 1933) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 61–141. Nicht Worte, sondern Realität. Das Sakrament des Brotes (1980) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 420–27. No One Could Have Known. An Autobiography: The Early Years, translated by Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987) [Noch wußte es niemand. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen 1904–1945 (1976) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 2 (2003), 26–231]. Noch nicht aller Tage Abend. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen 1945–1964 (1979) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 2 (2003), 232–496. Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990) [Nur der Liebende singt. Musische Kunst—heute (Ostfildern bei Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1988). The contributions are re-

282  Bibliography printed in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 367–70 and 8.2 (2008), 429–35, 509–20]. A Plea for Philosophy in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 81–156 [Verteidigungsrede für die Philosophie (1966) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 76–155]. Also translated by Lothar Krauth under the title In Defense of Philosophy: Classical Wisdom Stands up to Modern Challenges (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992). Problems of Modern Faith: Essays and Addresses, translated by Jan van Heurck (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1985) [Über die Schwierigkeit, heute zu glauben. Reden und Aufsätze (1974). The contributions are reprinted in vol. 3 (1995), vol. 6 (1999), vol. 7 (2000), vol. 8.1 (2005), vol. 8.2 (2008)]. Psychotherapie und Absolution (1980) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 283–89. Reality and the Good, translated by Stella Langa, in Living the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 107–77 [Die Wirklichkeit und das Gute (1935) in Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 48–98]. Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2001) [Scholastik. Gestalten und Probleme der mittelalterlichen Philosophie (1960, revised edition 1986) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 299–440]. Schweigen. Leben aus dem Schweigen (1974) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 578–80. Sehen und Schauen. Das Experiment mit der Blindheit. Irdische Kontemplation (1983) in Werke, 8.2 (2008), 554–61 and 569–73. The Silence of St. Thomas, translated by John Murray and Daniel O’Connor (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1999). Sprache, Terminologie, Jargon (1989) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 199–211, vol. 7 (2000), 142–66, vol. 8.1 (2005), 224–27. Sünde—eine Fehlleistung? (1985) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 269–82. Thesen zur Gesellschaftspolitik. Grundgedanken der Enzyklika Quadragesimo anno (1933, forbidden and confiscated in 1934). New edition since 1946 under the title Thesen zur sozialen Politik. Die Grundgedanken des Rundschreibens Quadragesimo anno in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 157–95. Thomas-Brevier (1956): this anthology contains Über Thomas von Aquin; Ordnung und Geheimnis; Das Auge des Adlers. New edition: Thomas von Aquin. Sentenzen über Gott und die Welt (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln, 1987). Thomas-Fibel. Erläuterungen zum Apostolischen Glaubensbekenntnis, zum Vaterunser und zu den Zehn Geboten, edited with Heinz Raskop (1936) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 10–93. Totale Bildung. Die Grundformen ihrer Verwirklichung: Führerbildung und Volksbildung (1935, with Heinz Raskop; the first chapter was written by Pieper; the work was forbidden in the same year) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 310–27. Tradition: Its Sense and Aspiration in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 233–94 [Überlieferung. Begiff und Anspruch (1970) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 236–99]. Tradition als Herausforderung. Aufsätze und Reden (München: Kösel, 1963) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), vol. 3 (1995), vol. 7 (2000), vol. 8.1 (2005), vol. 8.2 (2008). The Truth of All Things: An Inquiry into the Anthropology of the High Middle Ages, translated by Lothar Krauth in Living the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

Bibliography  283 1989), 8–105 [Wahrheit der Dinge. Eine Untersuchung zur Anthropologie des Hochmittelalters (1944) in Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 99–179]. Über das christliche Menschenbild (1936) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 94–114. Über das Gute und das Böse. Vier Vorlesungen (Thomas-Interpretationen) (unpublished lecture, 1949) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 1–57. Über das Schweigen Goethes (1951) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 45–71. Über die platonischen Mythen (1965) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 332–74. Über Platon und einige Figuren der platonischen Dialoge (Münster: private publication, 1966) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), vol. 3 (1995) and vol. 6 (1999). Verstehen. Liebendes Erkennen (1977) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 581–83. Was heißt Akademisch? Zwei Versuche über die Chance der Universität heute (1964) in Werke, vol. 6 (1999), 72–131 (contains: Was heißt Akademisch? Oder der Funktionär und der Sophist [1952] and Offenheit für das Ganze—die Chance der Universität heute [1963]). Was ist ein Priester? Ein notgedrungener Klärungsversuch (1987) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 454–74. Was ist eine Kirche? Vor-Überlegungen zum Thema ‘Sakralbau’ (1972) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 537–58. Weistum, Dichtung, Sakrament. Aufsätze und Notizen (München: Kösel, 1954) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), vol. 7 (2000), vol. 8.1 (2005), vol. 8.2 (2008). Welt und Umwelt (unpublished lectures, 1950) in Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 180–206. What Catholics Believe, translated by Christophe Huntington (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2006) [Christenfibel (1936), reworked version by Josef Pieper in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 10–93]. Also translated by Jan van Heurck (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982). What Does It Mean to Philosophize? in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 27–80 [Was heißt philosophieren? Vier Vorlesungen (1948) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 15–75]. Also translated, under the title The Philosophical Act, by Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon, 1952) 23–86 and, under that same title, by Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1998), 61–134. What Is Interpretation? in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 209–32 [Was heißt Interpretation? (1979) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 212–35]. Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit. Interpretationen zu Thomas von Aquin: Quaestiones disputate De veritate (unpublished lecture, 1950/51) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 58– 111.

Articles “Die Aktualität der Kardinaltugenden: Klugheit, Gerechtigkeit, Tapferkeit, Mass” (1974) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 287–306. “Arbeit, Freizeit, Muße” (1989) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 532–48. “  ‘Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges Wort’: Romano Guardini zum 70. Geburtstag” (1955) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 658–60. “  ‘Billigkeit’ in der Interpretation” (1963) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 238–47. “Christian Values and Freedom” in Konstanty A. Jelenski (ed.), History and Hope: Progress in Freedom (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 145–48 [“Religion und Freiheit” (1960) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 466–69].

284  Bibliography “The Concept of Tradition” in The Review of Politics, vol. 20 (1958), 465–91 [Über den Begriff der Tradition (Köln und Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1958)]. “The Condition of Philosophy Today” in Deal W. Hudson and Dennis W. Moran (eds.), The Future of Thomism (Mishawaka, IN: American Maritain Association, distributed by University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 23–37 [“Philosophieren heute. Die Situation des Philosophierenden heute” (1975) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 202–21]. “Creation and Sacrament” in Orate Fratres (Collegeville MN) 1951, 433–37 [“Schöpfung und Sakrament” (1951) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 375–79]. “Creatureliness and Human Nature: Reflections on the Philosophical Method of Jean-Paul Sartre” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 173–84 [“Kreatürlichkeit und menschliche Natur: Anmerkungen zum philosophischen Ansatz von Jean-Paul Sartre” (1974) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 173–85]. “Death and Immortality” in Philosophy Today, 1962 (6), 1–4 and 34–44 [“Tod und Unsterblichkeit” (1959) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 314–29]. “Down to Earth Contemplation” in Problems of Modern Faith, translated by Jan van Heurck (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1985), 149–55 [“Irdische Kontemplation” (1965) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 569–73]. “Dreimal ‘Grundformen sozialer Spielregeln’. Eine autobiographische Reminiszenz” (1997) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 699–700. “Echte Bildung und deutsche Gegenwart” in Münsterischer Anzeiger, 10 January 1934 in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 331–35. “Die Figur des Sophisten in den platonischen Dialogen” (1956) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 132–94. “The Foundations of Freedom: A Broadcast Discussion between Josef Pieper and Walter Weymann-Weyhe” in A Bulletin of the Committee on Science and Freedom. Science and Freedom (Manchester), no. 4 (December 1955), 23–28. “Gefährdung und Bewahrung der Tradition” (1974) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 188–209. “Die geistige Situation der Gegenwart und die Verwirklichung echter Bildung” (1934) in Magazin für Pädagogik, vol. 97, no. 3 (1934), 118–20. “Das Gesellungsideal der industriellen Arbeitswelt: Aufriss einer sozialpädagogischen Grundfrage” (1934) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 367–81. “Gibt es eine nicht-christliche Philosophie?” (1952) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 109–14. “Gottgeschickte Entrückung. Eine Platon-Interpretation” (1994) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 14–28. With Pieper’s added introduction, in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Aufklärung durch Tradition (Münster: Litt, 1995), 147–63. “Die Grundbegriffe L.v. Wieses” (1930) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 10–29. “Heidegger’s Conception of Truth” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 185–96 [“Heideggers Wahrheitsbegriff” (1946) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 186–98]. “Heiligung der Welt” (1958) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 380–83. “Herkunftslose Zukunft und Hoffnung ohne Grund” (1967) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 343–56. “Heroism and Fortitude: The Hero and the Heroic Ideal” in The Great Ideas Today (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1973), 50–56 [“Ist ‘Heldentum’ noch aktuell?” (1973) in Werke, vol. 8.1, 279–86].

Bibliography  285 “The ‘Hiddenness’ of Hope and Despair” in Cross and Crown (USA), vol. 8 (1956), 44–53 [“Die Verborgenheit von Hoffnung und Verzweiflung. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag” (1955) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 330–40]. “Kallikles: Der Mensch ohne Wahrheitsverhältnis” (1963) in Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 195–202. “Knowledge and Freedom: Opening Address” in Science and Freedom: The Proceedings of the Hamburg Congress (20.–26. Juli 1953) (London: Martin Secker and Warburg, 1955), 24–29 and in The Review of Politics, vol. 19 (1957), 147–54 [“Erkenntnis und Freiheit” (1953) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 436–43]. “Kreatürlichkeit: Bemerkungen über die Elemente eines Grundbegriffs” (1974) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 440–64. A short version was translated: “The Concept of Createdness and Its Implications” in Tommaso d’Aquino nella storia del pensiero. Atti del congresso internazionale (Roma—Napoli 17–27.4.1974) Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, vol. 1 (Naples, 1975), 20–27. “Language and the Philosophizing Person: Aperçus of an Aquinas Reader” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 197–208 [“Der Philosophierende und die Sprache. Bemerkungen eines Thomas-Lesers” (1986) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 199–211]. “Learning How to See Again” in Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 29–36 [“Wie lernt der Mensch wieder sehen?” (1952) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 367–70]. “Music and Silence” in Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 55–56 [“Musik und Stille” (1975) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 508]. “Muße und menschliche Existenz” (1959) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 453–58. “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas” in The Silence of St. Thomas, translated by John Murray and Daniel O’Connor (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1999), 43–71 [“Über das negative Element in der Philosophie des heiligen Thomas von Aquin” in Philosophia negativa. Zwei Versuche über Thomas von Aquin (1953); second edition under the title Unaustrinkbares Licht. Über das negative Element in der Weltansicht des Thomas von Aquin (1963) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 112–29]. “Notizen über das Schweigen” in Die Neue Rundschau, vol. 54 (1943), 124–26. Published by Peter Suhrkamp, Taschenbuch für junge Menschen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1946), 277–85. “Notizen über Muße und Mußelosigkeit” in Die Neue Rundschau, vol. 53 (1942), 431–33. Published by Peter Suhrkamp, Taschenbuch für junge Menschen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1946), 308–16. “On Clarity” in Chronicles, vol. 12 (1988), 12–13. Also “On the Language of the Mirandum” in Temenos (London), no. 10 (1989) [“Sprechen über das Mirandum” (1987) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 224–27]. “On the Christian Idea of Man” in The Review of Politics, vol. 11 (1949), 3–16 [“Über das christliche Menschenbild” (1936) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 94–114]. “On the Dilemma Posed by a Non-Christian Philosophy” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 295–301 [“Das Dilemma einer nicht-christlichen Philosophie” (1950) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 300–307].

286  Bibliography “On the Idea of ‘The Academic’  ” in Thought. Fordham University Quarterly, vol. 30 (1955/56), 577–94. “On the Platonic Idea of Philosophy” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 157–72 [“Über den Philosophie-Begriff Platons” (1966) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 156–72]. “Philosophic Thinking in the Modern World” in Man and Philosophy (German Opinion on Problems of Today) no. 4 (München, 1964), 66–83. “Philosophical Education and Intellectual Labor” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 13–26 [“Philosophische Bildung und geistige Arbeit” (1946) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 1–14]. “Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen” (1975) in Werke, Ergängzungsband 2 (2003), 1–25. “Philosophy and the Common Weal” in Confluence. An International Forum (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA), vol. 1 (1952), 61–67 [“Philosophie und Gemeinwohl” (1952) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 420–28]. “Philosophy and the Sense for Mystery” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 303–9 [“Das Geheimnis und die Philosophie” (1954) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 308–14]. “A Possible Future for Philosophy” in For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy, translated by Roger Wasserman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 311–18 [“Die mögliche Zukunft der Philosophie” (1991) in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 315–23]. “The Problem of Faith Today” in Problems of Modern Faith, translated by Jan van Heurck (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1985), 1–11 [“Über die Schwierigkeit, heute zu glauben” (1974) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 177–87]. “Real Cognition as True Cognition” in Joseph Armenti (ed.), Transcendence and Immanence: Reconstruction in the Light of Process Thinking. Festschrift in Honour of Joseph Papin, vol. II, Wisdom and Knowledge (Villanova: Villanova University Press, 1975), 245–52. “Ritterlichkeit als soldatische Haltung” (1942) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 235–41. “The Social Meaning of Leisure in the Modern World” in The Review of Politics, vol. 12 (1950), 411–21. “Some Reflections on the Notion of Tradition” in Philosophy Today, vol. 49 (1957), 152–59 [“Bemerkungen über den Begriff der Tradition” in Hochland, vol. 49 (1957), 403–13]. “The Spirit of Controversy” in Philosophy Today, vol. 50 (1958), 166–71. “The Theological and Philosophical Legacy of St. Thomas Aquinas” in Universitas (English), vol. 3 (1959/60), 279–85 [“Das Zeugnis des Thomas von Aquin” (1959) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 66–72]. “Theologie—philosophisch betrachtet” (1964) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 129–41. With the opening words of his conference before the theology faculty of Munich, this article may also be found in Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 15, no. 3 (1964), 181–89. “Theologie und Pseudo-Theologie” (1974) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 210–13. “Three Talks in a Sculptor’s Studio. Those ‘Guests at the Festival’  ” in Only the Lover

Bibliography  287 Sings. Art and Contemplation, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 64–71 [“Drei Ansprachen in einem Bildhauer-Atelier. Die ‘Festgenossen’” (1980) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 513–16]. “Three Talks in a Sculptor’s Studio. Vita contemplativa—The Contemplative Life” in Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 71–76 [“Drei Ansprachen in einem BildhauerAtelier. Vita contemplativa” (1985) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 517–20]. “The Timelessness and Timeliness of the Cardinal Virtues” in Netherhall House (London 1974), 3–24. “The Timeliness of Thomism” in The Silence of St. Thomas, translated by John Murray and Daniel O’Connor (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1999), 73–110. [“Über die Aktualität des Thomismus” in Philosophia negativa. Zwei Versuche über Thomas von Aquin (1953); second edition under the title Unaustrinkbares Licht. Über das negative Element in der Weltansicht des Thomas von Aquin (1963) in Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 130–52]. “Tradition in der sich wandelnden Welt” (1960) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 184–99. “Tradition: The Concept and Its Claim upon Us” in Modern Age, vol. 36, no. 3 (1994), 217–28. “Über die Spannung zwischen Organisation und Gemeinschaft in der kirchlichen Arbeit” (1934) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 382–87. “Über die Wahrheit der platonischen Mythen” (1962) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 6–13. “Über das in Wahrheit Bewahrenswerte” (1959) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 165–76. “Über das Zuhören und die philosophierende Interpretation” (1954) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 144–52. “Unsterblichkeit—eine nicht-christliche Vorstellung? Philosophische Bemerkungen zu einem kontroverstheologischen Thema” (1959) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 291–313. “Verteidigung der Muße” in Hochland, vol. 39/40 (1947), 289–302. “Vie humaine et loisirs” (1957) in Kephas, vol. 1, no. 1 (2002), 89–95 [“Leisure and Human Life” WAY forum, vol. 12 (1957)]. “Wahrheit der Dinge—ein verschollener Begriff” (1969) in Werke, vol. 8.1 (2005), 381–95. “Was heißt ‘christliches Abendland’?” (1957) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 444–51. “Was ist eine Kirche?” (1971) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 537–58. “What Does It Mean to Say ‘God Speaks’? Preliminary Reflections to a Theological Debate” in Problems of Modern Faith, translated by Jan van Heurck (Chicago: Franciscan Herald, 1985), 117–48 [“Was heisst ‘Gott spricht’? Vorüberlegungen zu einer kontroverstheologischen Diskussion” (1965) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 142–66]. “What Makes Priests Different? (I)” in Triumph (Warrenton, USA), vol. 7 (1972), 24–27 and (II) in Persona Christi, no. 3 (1972), 28–31 [“Was unterscheidet den Priester? Ein notgedrungener Klärungsversuch” (1971) in Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 454–74]. “  ‘Wirklichkeitswissenschaftliche’ Soziologie. Kritische Randbemerkungen zu Hans Freyer, ‘Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft’  ” (1931) in Werke, Ergänzungsband 1 (2004), 30–47. “Wo stehen wir heute?” (1960) in Werke, vol. 8.2 (2008), 459–65.

288  Bibliography “Work, Spare Time, and Leisure” in Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, translated by Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 15–27 [“Arbeit, Freizeit, Musse” (1953) in Nur der Liebende singt. Musische Kunst—heute (Ostfildern bei Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 1988), 9–19].

Other Authors Abel, Theodore, Systematic Sociology in Germany: A Critical Analysis of Some Attempts to Establish Sociology as an Independent Science (New York: Columbia University Press; London: P. S. King and Son, 1929; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1965). Adorno, Theodor W., Jargon der Eigentlichkeit in Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 413–526. ———, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, translated by Edmund F. N. Jephcott (London: New Left Books, 1974) [Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben in Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 1–302]. ———, Negative Dialectics, translated by E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1973). [Negative Dialektik in Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 1–412]. ———, “Resignation” in Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10.2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 794–99. ———, “Über Tradition” in Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 310–20. Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming ([orig. 1972] New York: Continuum, 2000) [Dialektik der Aufklärung (first edition in 1947) (zur Neuausgabe von 1969) in Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 1–335]. Aertsen, Jan A., “Gibt es eine mittelalterliche Philosophie?” in Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, vol. 102 (1995), 161–76. Akwali Okafor, Simon, “Pieper’s Theory of Festivity: Towards a Philosophy of Nigerian Education” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1982). Anscombe, Elizabeth, “Modern Moral Philosophy” in Philosophy, vol. 33 (1958), 1–19. Reprinted in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. 3 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 25–42. Aquinas, Thomas, Collationes in Symbolum Apostolorum in Opuscula theologica (Turin/Rome: Marietti, vol. 2) [The Aquinas Catechism, foreword by Ralph McInerny (Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 2000)]. ———, Lectura super Ioannem, Raffaele Cai (ed.) (Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1952) [Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Parts I and II, translated by James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher (Petersham, MA: Albany, 1980)]. ———, Quaestiones disputatae De potentia in Quaestiones disputatae, Pio Bazzi (ed.) (Turin/Rome: Marietti, vol. 2, 1965) [On the Power of God, translated by the English Dominican Fathers, Laurence Shapcote (ed.) (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1932–1943)]. ———, Quaestiones disputatae De spiritualibus creaturis, Leonine edition, vol. 24/2,

Bibliography  289 Joseph Cos (ed.) (Rome: Commisio leonina, 2000) [On Spiritual Creatures, translated by Mary C. Fitzpatrick and John J. Wellmuth (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1949)]. ———, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, Leonine edition, vol. 22 (3 volumes) (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1975–1976) [On Truth, translated by James V. McGlynn and Robert W. Schmidt, Robert W. Mulligan (ed.) (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1952–1954; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994)]. ———, Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus in communi in Quaestiones disputatae, Pio Bazzi (ed.) (Turin/Rome: Marietti, vol. 2, 1965) [Disputed Questions on Virtue, translated by Ralph McInerny (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1999)]. ———, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, vols. 1–2, Pierre Mandonnet (ed.) (Paris: Lethiellieux, 1929) and vols. 3–4, Maria F. Moos (ed.) (Paris: Lethiellieux, 1933 and 1947). ———, Sententia super librum De caelo et mundo, Leonine edition, vol. 3 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1886), 1–257. ———, Sententia super Metaphysicam, Raymundi M. Spiazzi (ed.) (Turin/Rom: Marietti, 1950) [Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, translated by John P. Rowan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995)]. ———, Summa contra Gentiles, Leonine edition, vol. 13–15 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1918, 1926, 1930) [Summa contra Gentiles, translated by Anton C. Pegis, James F. Anderson, Vernon J. Bourke, and Charles J. O’Neil (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997)]. ———, Summa theologiae (Cinisello Balsamo—Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1988) [Summa theologiae, Thomas Gilby and Thomas C. O’Brien (eds.) (New York: Garden City, 1964–1973)]. ———, Super librum De causis, Ceslai Pera (ed.) (Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1955) [Commentary on the Book of Causes, translated by Vincent A. Guagliardo, Charles R. Hess, Richard C. Taylor (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996)]. Arendt, Hannah, Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1955). ———, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958). ———, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951) ———, “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture” in Social Research, vol. 38, no. 1 (1971), 416–46. ———, Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960). Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, the revised Oxford translation, Jonathan Barnes (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, Z. Zycha (ed.), Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 28 (Prague, 1894). Baier, Annette, “What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?” in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds.), in Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 263–77. Barbour, Brian, “  ‘The Mule’s Hind Quarters’: Flannery O’Connor as Hillbilly Thomist” in Providence: Studies in Western Civilization, vol. 7, no. 1 (2002), 26–39. Barth, Karl, “Offenbarung, Kirche, Theologie” in Karl Barth (ed.), Theologische Existenz heute (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1934).

290  Bibliography Baumgartner, Hans Michael, and Hans-Martin Sass, Philosophie in Deutschland 1945–1975, (Meisenheim, Königstein/Ts.: A. Hain, 1980). Berro, Alberto, “Pieper und Guardini auf Burg Rothenfels. Eine fruchtbare Begegnung” in Theologie und Glaube, vol. 95 (2005), 332–46. Also “Pieper y Guardini en Rothenfels: un encuentro fecundo” in Sapientia, vol. 59, no. 216 (Homenaje a Josef Pieper) (2004), 339–58. Bloch, Ernst, The Principle of Hope, 3 volumes, translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight (Cambridge: MIT, 1986) [Das Prinzip Hoffnung in Ernst Bloch Werkausgabe, 16 volumes (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969ff.), vol. 5, 1985]. Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, “Der deutsche Katholizismus im Jahre 1933. Eine kritische Betrachtung” in Hochland, vol. 53 (1961), 215–39. Reprinted, with a historiographical essay by Karl-Egon Lönne, in Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde, Der deutsche Katholizismus im Jahre 1933. Kirche und demokratisches Ethos (Freiburg: Herder, 1988), 39–69. Born, Monika, “Vom Lehren und Lernen. Josef Pieper zum 100. Geburtstag” in Katholische Bildung, vol. 105 (2004), 289–307. Braun, Hermann, “Die Anfälligkeit des Prinzipiellen. Existenzphilosophie und philosophische Anthropologie vor und nach 1933” in Perspektiven der Philosophie. Neues Jahrbuch, vol. 17 (1991), 345–83. Bretzke, Gabriele, Josef Pieper: “O elemento negativa na filosofia de Santo Tomas de Aquin.—O conceito de criacaoo e suas implicacaos para a filosofia da educacao” (Ph.D. dissertation, Sao Paulo, 1999). Bubner, Rüdiger, “Wittgenstein als meditativer Denker” in Rüdiger Bubner, Antike Themen und ihre moderne Verwandlung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 203–15. ———, “Wohin tendiert die analytische Philosophie?” in Philosophische Rundschau, vol. 34 (1987), 257–81. Buckley, Frank. M., “The Everyday Struggle for the Leisurely Attitude” in Humanitas, vol. 8 (1972), 307–21. Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997). Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, The Everlasting Man (New York: Image, 1955). Comte-Sponville, André, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life, translated by Catherine Temerson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001) [Petit traité des grandes vertus (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995)]. Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974, 1976) [De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967)]. Descartes, René, Discourse on Method, translated by Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1998) [Discours de la méthode, Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (eds.) (Paris: Vrin, 1902ff.), vol. VI]. Dewan, Lawrence, “A Note on Metaphysics and Truth” in Doctor Communis, N.S., no. 2 (2002), 143–53. ———, “St. Thomas, Ideas, and Immediate Knowledge” in Dialogue, vol. 18 (1979), 392–404. ———, “St. Thomas, James Ross, and Exemplarism: A Reply” in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 65 (1991), 221–34. ———, “St. Thomas’s Successive Discussions of the Nature of Truth” in Studi tho-

Bibliography  291 mistici 58: Sanctus Thomas De Aquino: doctor hodiernae humanitatis, Daniel Ols (ed.) (Vatican City: Libreria editrice vaticana, 1995), 153–68. ———, “Truth and Happiness,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 67 (1993), 1–20. Dominaci, Caterina, “La filosofia di Josef Pieper in relazione alle correnti filosofiche e culturali contemporanea” (University of Bologna, Ph.D. dissertation, 1980). Droz, Geneviève, Les mythes platoniciens (Paris, Seuil, 1992). Dülmen, Richard van, “Katholischer Konservativismus oder die ‘Soziologische Neuorientierung’  ” in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, vol. 36 (1973), 254–303. Eliot, Thomas Stearns, “Introduction” to Josef Pieper, Leisure—The Basis of Culture, translated by Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon, 1952), 11–17. [“Nachwort. Einsicht und Weisheit in der Philosophie” in Was heißt Philosophieren? in Werke, vol. 3 (1995), 70–75]. Fechner, Eberhard, Die Comedian Harmonists. Sechs Lebensläufe (Weinheim und Berlin: Quadriga, 1988). Fechtrup, Hermann, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Aufklärung durch Tradition. Symposium aus Anlaß des 90. Geburtstags von Josef Pieper, Mai 1994 in Münster (Münster: Litt, 1995). ———, Nachdenken über Tugenden (Münster: Litt, 1996). ———, Sprache und Philosophie (Münster: Litt, 1996). ———, Die Wahrheit und das Gute (Münster: Litt, 1999). ———, Wissen und Weisheit. Zwei Symposien zu Ehren von Josef Pieper (1904–1997) (Münster: Litt, 2005). ———, Zwischen Anfang und Ende. Nachdenken über Zeit, Hoffnung und Geschichte. Ein Symposium, Münster 1999 (Münster: Litt, 2000). Fellmann, Ferdinand, Phänomenologie und Expressionismus (Freiburg/München, Alber, 1982). Fischges, Willi, “Richtigsein der Person. Eine Untersuchung zur Tugendlehre Josef Piepers” (Rome: Pontificia Studiorum Universitas a Saint Tomas Aquinas in Urbe, Ph.D. dissertation, 1997). Flachmann, Holger (ed.), Europäische Werte denken. Josef Pieper—Philosoph, Lehrer, Autor (Beiheft zur Ausstellung der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Münster, 11.11.–13.11.2004) (Münster: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Münster, 2005). Flasch, Kurt, “Ars imitatur naturam: Platonischer Naturbegriff und mittelalterliche Philosophie der Kunst” in Kurt Flasch (ed.), Parusia (Festgabe für Johannes Hirschberger) (Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1965), 265–306. Fraenkel Ernst, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, translated by Edward A. Shils in collabation with Edith Lowenstein and Klaus Knorr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1969) [Der Doppelstaat: Recht und Justiz im Dritten Reich (1941) (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984)]. Franck, Juan F., “  ‘El hombre‚ bajo todo aspecto pensable.’ La antropología de Josef Pieper” in Anuario Filosófico, vol. 39, no. 1 (2006), 133–62. Freyer, Hans, Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft. Logische Grundlegung des Systems der Soziologie, reprint from the first edition of 1930 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964). Frisch, Max, “Wir hoffen” in Max Frisch, Forderungen des Tages 1943–1982 (Frank-

292  Bibliography furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 332–42. First printed in Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel (Frankfurt edition), vol. 32, no. 76 (21 September 1976), 1412–18. Frutiger, Perceval, Les mythes de Platon (Paris: Alcan, 1930). Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon, 1993). ———, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1999). Gadamer, Hans Georg, “Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2 (Tübingen: C. B. Mohr, 1990), 66–76. Gallagher, David M., “Review of Pieper, Werke in acht Bänden, vols. 3 and 5” in Review of Metaphysics, vol. 51 (1998), 710–13. Geach, Peter, The Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, translated by Alfred Howard Campbell Downes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949; South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991) [L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale (Paris: Vrin, 1989)]. ———, Christianity and Philosophy, translated by Ralph MacDonald (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939) [Christianisme et philosophie (Paris: Vrin, 1986)]. Godfrey, Joseph J., A Philosophy of Human Hope (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987). Guardini, Romano, The Living God, translated by John Chapin (Manchester: Sophia Institute, 1997) [Vom Lebendigen Gott (Mainz: Matthias Grünwald, 1981)]. ———, Der Tod des Sokrates (Mainz: Matthias Grünwald, 1987). Gurian, Waldemar, Der Bolschewismus. Einführung in Geschichte und Lehre (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1931). Haas, John M., “Come Pieper ripensa Tommaso d’Aquino” in Bernard N. Schumacher (ed.), La filosofia cristiana del novecento (I). Josef Pieper (Roma: Edizioni Romane di Cultura, 1997), 51–66. ———, “The Holy and the Good: The Relationship between Religion and Morality in the Thought of Rudolf Otto and Josef Pieper” (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington, D.C., 1988). Habermas, Jürgen, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, translated by William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996) [Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992)]. ———, “Die Moderne—ein unvollendetes Projekt” (Rede aus Anlaß der Verleihung des Adorno-Preises der Stadt Frankfurt 1980) in Wolfgang Welsch, Wege aus der Moderne (Weinheim: Akademie, 1994), 177–92. ———, “Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften” in Philosophische Rundschau, Beiheft 5 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1967). Habermas, Jürgen, Dieter Henrich, and Jakob Taubes (eds.), Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971). Hank, Rainer, Arbeit—die Religion des 20. Jahrhunderts. Auf dem Weg in die Gesellschaft der Selbständigen (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1995). Hare, Richard, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981). Hawking, Stephen, The Universe in a Nutshell (New York: Bantam, 2001). Hayen, André, “Review of Josef Pieper, Über die Gerechtigkeit” in Revue philosophique de Louvain, 1955 (53), 451–52. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Arthur V.

Bibliography  293 Miller with analysis of the text and foreword by John Niemeyer Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) [Phänomenologie des Geistes, Johannes Hoffmeister (ed.) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952)]. Heidegger, Martin, Essence of Truth, translated by John Sallis in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.) (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1993 [orig. 1977]) 112–42 [Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1933)]. ———, An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1959) [Einführung in die Metaphysik in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 40 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983)]. ———, Nietzsche, translated by Frank A. Capuzzi, vol. 4 (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982) [Nietzsche in Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997)]. ———, “Phänomenologie und Theologie / Phénoménologie et Théologie” in Archives de Philosophie, 32, no. 3 (1969), 7–9, 356–95. ———, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die Phänomenologische Forschung in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 61 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1985). ———, Poetry, Language, and Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) [Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959]. ———, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000). ———, What Is a Thing? translated by William B. Barton Jr., and Vera Deutsch (Chicago: H. Regnery 1968) [Die Frage nach dem Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsätzen [Freiburger Vorlesung Wintersemester 1935/36] (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann 1984, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 41)]. ———, What Is Called Thinking? translated by J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968) [Was heißt Denken? in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002]. ———, What Is Metaphysics? translated by David Farrell Krell, Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.) (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1993 [orig. 1977]) 103–22) [Was ist Metaphysik? (Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1943)]. Heuss, Theodor, “Quadragesimo anno . . . . Zur Entwicklung der katholischen Soziallehre” in Der deutsche Volkswirt, 1930/31, Heft 47, 1588–92. Hickson, Robert, “Josef Pieper’s Festive Wisdom on the Virtues of the Human Heart and His World-View Rooted in Gratitude: A Lucid Defense of the Bonum Commune, Temporal and Supernatural” in Verein zur Förderung der Psychologischen Menschenkenntnis (ed.), Mut zur Ethik. Bonum commune—Ethik in Gesellschaft und Politik (Zürich: Verlag Menschenkenntnis, 1999), 518–44. Hinman, Lawrence M., “On Work and Play. Overcoming a Dichtonomy” in Man and World, vol. 8 (1975), 327–46. Hitler Adolf, “Arbeitsfront,” May 30, 1933 in Die Reden Hitlers als Kanzler (München: Franz Eher, 1934), 15. Homenaje a Josef Pieper en el Centenario de su Nacimiento, special number of the review Sapientia (Buenos Aires), vol. 59 (2004). Horkheimer, Max, “Diskussion zum Thema Wertfreiheit und Objektivität. Einleitung zur Diskussion” in Otto Stammer (ed.), Max Weber und die Soziologie heute. Verhandlungen des 15. Deutschen Soziologentages (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1965), 65–70.

294  Bibliography ———, “  ‘Die Funktion der Theologie in der Gesellschaft’ (1969): Gespräch mit Paul Neuenzeit” in Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 308–16. ———, “  ‘Das Schlimme erwarten und doch das Gute versuchen’ (1972/1976): Gespräch mit Gerhard Rein” in Marx Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), vol. 7, 442–79. ———, “  ‘Zur Zukunft der kritischen Theorie’ (1971): Gespräch mit Claus Grossner” in Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 419–34. Hoye, William J., “Die Grundstrukturen des guten Menschen nach Josef Pieper. Die vier Kardinaltugenden” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Wissen und Weisheit (Münster: Litt 2005), 173–97. Husserl, Edmund, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, translated by Frederick Kersten (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982) [Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana vol. III, 1, Karl Schumann (ed.) (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976)]. Inciarte, Fernando, “Wahrheit oder Sinn? Ein Konvergenzpunkt zwischen analytischer Philosophie und hermeneutischer Theologie” in Dietrich Papenfuß and Jürgen Söring (eds.), Transzendenz und Immanenz. Philosophie und Theologie in der veränderten Welt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977) 67–71. Jankélévitch, Vladimir, Traité des vertus (Paris: Bordas, 1947) and the completely revised second edition (Paris: Flammarion, 1983–1986). Jaspers, Karl, Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen—Politisches Bewusstsein in unserer Zeit (Munich: Piper, 1958). ———, Die geistige Situation der Zeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1931). ———, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Munich/Zurich: Piper, 1988). ———, Die Wandlung, Monika Waldmüller (ed.), Deutsches Literaturarchiv. Verzeichnisse, Berichte, Informationen 13 (Marbach am Neckar, 1988). ———, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy, translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967) [Einführung in die Philosophie (München/Zürich: Piper, 1971)]. John Paul II, As the Third Millennium Draws Near (Tertio Millennio Adveniente) (Boston: Saint Paul Books and Media, 1994). ———, Encyclical letter Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship between Faith and Reason (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1998). ———, On the Holy Spirit (Dominum et Vivificantem) (Boston: Saint Paul Books and Media, 1986). Jordan, Mark, “The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in Aquinas” in Review of Metaphysics, vol. 38 (1984), 17–32. Jünger, Ernst, Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1932). Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason, translated and edited by Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) [Kritik der praktischen Vernunft in Werke, Wilhelm Weischedel (ed.) (Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1956), vol. IV]. ———, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin and Leipzig: Akademie-Ausgabe, 1923). ———, Metaphysics of Morals, translated and edited by Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) [Metaphysik der Sitten in Werke, Wilhelm Weischedel (ed.) (Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1956), vol. IV].

Bibliography  295 ———, “Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie” in Kant’s Werke (Berlin: G. Reimer (A.B.), 1919ff.), vol. VIII, 389–406. Kaufmann, Franz-Xaver, “Das Soziale und das Gute” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Die Wahrheit und das Gute (Münster: Lit, 1999), 11–35. Kemper, Max Eugen, “Die Christenfibel von 1936. Ein Vorläufer des Erwachsenenkatechismus” in 60 Jahre Katholische Erwachsenenbildung in Dortmund (Dortmund, 1988), 65–76. Kierkegaard, Søren, Das Buch über Adler in Gesammelte Werke, edited by Emmanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1986). ———, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980). Kimball, Roger, “Josef Pieper: Leisure and Its Discontents” in Roger Kimball, Experiments against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2000), 335–50. Kock, Erich, “Angekommen, wo wir aufgebrochen: Josef Pieper” in Communio. Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift, vol. 27 (1998), 76–82. Kracauer, Siegfried, Die Angestellten (Frankfurt am Main: Societäts-Verlag, 1930). Kranz, Gisbert, “Der Philosoph und der Dichter. Zum Werk von Josef Pieper” in Salzburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie, vol. 20 (1975), 137–51. Kuhn, Helmut, “Die Weisheit der Alten in unserer Zeit” in Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 81 (1974), 350–61. Kundera, Milosc, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper Collins, 2004). Kunisch, Hermann, “Sapientis est ordinare. Josef Pieper zum 85. Geburtstag” in Communio. Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift, vol. 18 (1989), 267–75. Kupperman, Joel, Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Lammers, Elisabeth, Als die Zukunft noch offen war. Edith Stein—das entscheidende Jahr (Münster: Dialogverlag Münster, 2003). Ladrière, Jean, “Raison et eschatologie” in Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa, vol. 45, no. 4 (1985), 173–92. Lauand, Luiz Jean, “Método y Lenguaje en el Pensamiento de Josef Pieper” in Sapientia, vol. 59, no. 216 (Homenaje a Josef Pieper) (2004), 433–54. ———, “Introdução à filosofia da Educação de Josef Pieper” (São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva & Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, Ph.D. dissertation, 1986). Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade / Principes de la nature et de la grâce, fondés en raison in Philosophische Schriften, vol. 1, Hans Heinz Holz (ed.) (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985). Lewis, Clive Staples, The Screwtape Letters, revised edition (New York: Macmillan, 1982). Lewis, John Underwood, “Leisure, Wonder and Awe: An Introduction to Joseph Pieper” in Philosophy Today, vol. 17 (1973), 197–204. Lochbrunner, Manfred, “Josef Pieper und Hans Urs von Balthasar” in Manfred Lochbrunner, Hans Urs von Balthasar und seine Philosophenfreunde. Fünf Doppelportraits (Würzburg: Echter, 2005), 9–53. Long, Steven A., “Nicholas Lobkowicz and the Historicist Inversion of Thomistic Philosophy” in The Thomist, vol. 62 (1998), 41–74. Louden, Robert, “On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics” in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote

296  Bibliography (eds.), Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 201–16. Lübbe, Hermann, Politische Philosophie in Deutschland. Studien zu ihrer Geschichte (Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1963; München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974). ——— (ed.), Wozu Philosophie? Stellungnahmen eines Arbeitskreises (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1978). ———, “Wozu Philosophie? Über einen Grund des Interesses der Wissenschaften an ihr” in Willi Oelmüller (ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1988) 248–94. McInerny, Ralph, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997). ———, “Review of Pieper’s Guide to Thomas Aquin” in Thought, vol. 38 (1963), 471–72. MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). ———, Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago: Open Court, 1999). ———, “Sophrosune: How a Virtue Can Become Socially Disruptive” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 1–11. ———, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopeadia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). ———, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1988). Maier, Hans, “Das Heilige Denken. Zum Werk Josef Pieper” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Aufklärung durch Tradition (Münster: Litt 1995), 27–40. Manent, Pierre, The City of Man, translated by Marc A. LePain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) [La cité de l’homme (Paris: Flammarion, 1998]. Marcel, Gabriel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, translated by Emma Crawford (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962) [Homo viator. Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de l’espérance (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1944)]. ———, The Mystery of Being, vol. 2, Faith and Reality, translated by René Hague (London: Harvill Press, 1951) [Le mystère de l’être, vol. 2 (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1951)]. Maritain, Jacques, An Essay on Christian Philosophy, translated by Edward Flannery (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955) [De la philosophie chrétienne in Oeuvres complètes, 15 volumes (Fribourg/Paris: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse/Éditions Saint-Paul, 1982ff.), vol. 5 (1982), 225–316]. ———, On the Philosophy of History, translated by Joseph W. Evans (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957) [Pour une philosophie de l’histoire in Oeuvres complètes, 15 volumes (Fribourg/Paris: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse/Editions Saint-Paul, 1982ff.), vol. 10 (1985), 603–761]. Marquard, Odo, “Der Philosoph als Schriftsteller” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Sprache und Philosophie (Münster, Litt, 1996), 9–22. Marz, Bernd, “Leben aus der Kraft des Sakralen. Josef Pieper” in Bernd Marz, Grenzgänger des Glaubens. Gespräche und Porträts (Würzburg: Echter 1995), 63–73. Mascall, Eric Lionel, The Openness of Being: Natural Theology Today (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971).

Bibliography  297 Meilaender, Gilbert, “Josef Pieper: Explorations in the Thought of a Philosopher of Virtue” in Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 11, no. 1 (1983), 114–34. Also in Meilaender, Gilbert, The Theory and Practice of Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 18–44. ———, “Learning from Pieper. On Being Lutheran in This Time and Place” in Concordia Theological Seminary, vol. 63 (1999), 37–49. Metz, Johann Baptist, “Theology versus Polymythicism: A Short Apology for Biblical Monotheism” in Johann Baptist Metz, A Passion for God: The MysticalPolitical Dimension of Christianity, translated, edited, and introduced by J. Matthew Ashley (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 72–91 [“Theologie versus Polymythie oder Kleine Apologie des biblischen Monotheismus” in Odo Marquard (ed.), Einheit und Vielheit: XIV. Deutscher Kongreß für Philosophie (1987) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990), 170–86]. Meyer, Hans, Natur und Kunst bei Aristoteles, published in the collection Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, vol. 5.2 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1919). Moltmann, Jürgen, “Progress or Abyss: Remembering the Future of the Modern World” in Paul Gifford (ed.), Two Thousand Years and Beyond (London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 16–34. ———, Theology of Hope, translated by James W. Leitch (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1967) [Theologie der Hoffnung (München: C. Kaiser, 1965)]. Montgomery, Marion, The Truth of Things: Liberal Arts and the Recovery of Reality (Dallas: Spence, 1999). Morkel, Arnd, “Josef Pieper und die Idee der Universität” in Theologie und Glaube, vol. 94 (2004), 332–50. Mounier, Emmanuel, A Personalist Manifesto, translated by Monks of St. John’s Abbey (London, New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1938) [Manifeste du personnalisme (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1936)]. Mrso, Ivica, “Culture and Religion in the Writings of Josef Pieper” (Ph.D. dissertation, 2001). Murray, Paul, “Recovering the Contemplative Dimension,” a talk to the General Chapter of the Dominican Order, Providence, RI, July 12, 2001. Available from http://www.dominicains.ca/providence/english/documents/murray-eng.htm. Musil, Robert, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Adolf Frisé (ed.) (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1992). Müller, Klaus, “Über das rechte Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie. Josef Pieper im Kontext einer neu entfachten Debatte” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Die Wahrheit und das Gute (Münster: Litt, 1999), 75–93. Nagel, Thomas, Other Minds: Critical Essays 1969–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Narváez, Mauricio, “Comment Dieu entre-t-il dans la philosophie? Une lecture de la question du point de vue de Josef Pieper” in Laval théologique et philosophique, vol. 59 (2003), 97–113. Newman, John Henry, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1973). Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Irony of American History (New York: Scribner’s, 1984). Nietzsche, Friedrich, Wille zur Macht in Sämtliche Werke, Peter Gast (ed.) (Stuttgart: Kröner Verlag, 1964).

298  Bibliography Nürnberger, Christian, Kirche, wo bist du? (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000). ———, Die Machtwirtschaft. Ist die Demokratie noch zu retten? (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999). O’Callaghan, John P., “Creation, Human Dignity, and the Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence” in Nova et Vetera (English edition of the International Theological Journal), vol. 1, no. 1 (2003), 109–40. O’Connor, Terrence J., “A Study of the Concept of Wisdom in the East and West in the Philosophies of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Josef Pieper” (Ph.D. dissertation, 1972). Otto, Walter F., Mythos und Welt (Stuttgart: Klett, 1962). Padrón, Héctor Jorge, “Josef Pieper y la reflexión sobre el mito y la cultura” in Sapientia, vol. 59, no. 216 (Homenaje a Josef Pieper) (2004), 469–89. Paz, Octavio, Essays, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980). Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale University, 1984). Pellegrino, Ubaldo, “Crisi dell’uomo e metafisica in Josef Pieper” in Bernard N. Schumacher (ed.), La filosofia cristiana del novecento (I). Josef Pieper (Rome: Edizioni Romane di Cultura, 1997), 31–40. ———, “Verità e antropologia in Josef Pieper” in Josef Pieper, Verità delle cose. Un’indagine sull’antropologia del Medio Evo (Milan: Massimo, 1981), 5–28. Pieper, Annemarie, Pragmatische und ethische Normenbegründung. Zum Defizit an ethischer Letztbegründung in zeitgenössischen Beiträgen zur Moralphilosophie (Freiburg-München: Alber, 1979). Plato, The Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.) (Princeton University Press, 1963; 17th edition, 1999). Plenge, Johann, Marx und Hegel (Tübingen 1911), reprint (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1974). Plessner, Helmuth, The Limits of Community. A Critique of Social Radicalism, translated by Andrew Wallace (New York: Humanity Books, 1999) [Grenzen der Gemeinschaft. Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus (Bonn: Cohen, 1924); reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981)]. ———, Die verspätete Nation. Über die Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982). Polanyi, Michael, The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983). Przywara, Erich, Ringen der Gegenwart in Gesammelte Aufsätze II (Augsburg: Filser, 1929). Putallaz, François-Xavier, “Josef Pieper y el tomismo medieval. La controversia sobre la creación” in Sapientia, vol. 59, no. 216 (Homenaje a Josef Pieper) (2004), 491–506. Raddatz, Fritz J., Zeit-Bibliothek der 100 Sachbücher (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984). Rahner, Karl, and Bernhard Welte (eds.), Mut zur Tugend. Über die Fähigkeit, menschlicher zu leben (Freiburg: Herder, 1979). Rawls, John, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good” in Collected Papers, Samuel Freeman (ed.) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 449–72. Ricoeur, Paul, “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 44 (1970), 55–69. Rodheudt, Guido, Die Anwesenheit des Verborgenen: Zugänge zur Philosophie Josef Piepers (Münster: Litt 1997).

Bibliography  299 Roldán, Juan Pablo, “Algunas consideraciones sobre J. Pieper y el tema del mal en la problemática filosófica contemporánea” in Sapientia, vol. 59, no. 216 (Homenaje a Josef Pieper) (2004), 507–14. Also in Studium Filosofía y Teología, vol. 8, no. 15 (2005), 169–78. Ronze, Bernard, L’homme de quantité (Paris: Gallimard, 1977). Rorty, Richard, Philosophical Papers, vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Rosmini, Antonio, A New Essay Concerning the Origin of Ideas, translated by Denis Cleary and Terence Watson, 3 vols. (Durham: Rosmini House, 2001) [Nuovo Saggio sull’origine delle idée, Gaetano Messina (ed.) (Rome: Città Nuova, 2003– 2005)]. ———, Philosophical System, translated by Donald Davidson (London: Kegan Paul, 1882). Rudolph, Günther, “Friedrich Nietzsche und Ferdinand Tönnies: Der ‘Wille zur Macht’ widerlegt von den Positionen eines ‘Willens zur Gemeinschaft’  ” in Ferdinand Tönnies, Der Nietzsche-Kultus. Eine Kritik, Günther Rudolph (ed.) (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1990), 107–39. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Existentialism in Existentialism and Human Emotions, translated by Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957) [L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Nagel, 1946]. ———, Situations, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1947). Schmitz, Kenneth, “What Happens to Tradition When History Overtakes It?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 68 (1994), 59–72. Schnädelbach, Herbert, and Keil, Geert (eds.), Philosophie der Gegenwart—Gegenwart der Philosophie (Hamburg: Junius, 1993). Schneewind, Jerome, “The Misfortunes of Virtue” in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 178–200. Schumacher, Bernard N., “Deux philosophes contemporains allemands de l’espérance. Ernst Bloch et Josef Pieper” in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol. 104 (1999), 105–32. ———, “Espérance” in Monique Canto-Sperber (ed.), Dictionnaire d’éthique et de philosophie morale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 524–28. ———, “Esperanza e historia” in Communio (Argentina), vol. 6, no. 4 (1999), 51–64. ———, “L’homme du loisir. Parasite ou facteur de transformation du monde?” in Aquinas, vol. 49, no. 1 (2006), 191–213. ———, “Hope’s Confrontation with a Possible Self-Destruction of Humanity” in International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 41 (2001), 333–46. ———, “Josef Pieper, Werke in acht Bänden, vol. III and vol. IV” in The Thomist, vol. 63 (1999), 167–71. ———, “Le loisir comme fondement de la culture” in Josef Pieper, Loisir, fondement de la culture, translated by Pierre Blanc (Geneva: Ad Solem, 2006), 5–12. ———, The Morality of Life and Death in the Contemporary World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). ———, “Philosophie de la culture. L’influence de Josef Pieper dans la pensée de Joseph Ratzinger” in Kephas, vol. 5, no. 1 (2006), 127–33. ———, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope, translated by David C. Schindler, Jr. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003). ———, “Tradición al encuentro de la modernidad. Josef Pieper (4.V.1904–6.

300  Bibliography XI.1997)” in Themata. Revista de Filosofía (Sevilla), vol. 19 (1998), 309–12. Schumacher, Bernard N. (ed.), La filosofia cristiana del novecento (I). Josef Pieper (Roma: Edizioni Romane di Cultura 1997). ———, Jean-Paul Sartre. Das Sein und das Nichts, Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2003. Schumacher, Bernard N. and Putallaz, François-Xavier (eds.), Der Mensch und die Person (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2008); French edition: L’humain et la personne (Paris: Cerf 2008) with a preface by Pascal Couchepin, President of Switzerland. Schumacher, Ferdinand, “Predigt zum Requiem von Josef Pieper (14.11.1997)” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Die Wahrheit und das Gute (Münster: Litt, 1999), 109–12. Sedlmeier, Kaplan, “Erziehung zur Vaterlandsliebe im katholischen Religionsunterricht,” Magazin für Pädagogik, vol. 97, no. 1 (1934), 16–19. Seidl, Horst, “Bemerkungen zur Erkenntnis als Massverhältnis bei Aristoteles und Thomas von Aquin” in Albert Zimmerman (ed.), Mensura, Mass, Zahl, Zahlensymbolik im Mittelalter, vol. 1 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), 23–42. Sieber, E., “Die katholische Volksbildungsarbeit in Deutschland und in der Diözese Rottenburg” in Magazin für Pädagogik, vol. 97, no. 1 (1934), 19–26. Slote, Michael, From Morality to Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 126–44. Spaemann Robert, “Einleitung” in Thomas von Aquin, Über die Sittlichkeit der Handlung, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 18–21 (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora, 1990). Splett, Jörg, “  ‘Gentleman und Christ’. Ein Bild geglückten Menschseins bei Josef Pieper” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Die Wahrheit und das Gute (Münster: Litt, 1999), 51–74. Stauber, Georg, “Zum 97. Jahrgang” in Magazin für Pädagogik, vol. 97, no. 1 (1934), 1–3. Stein, Edith, Untersuchungen über den Staat in Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, second edition (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1970), 285–407. Stein, Lorenz von, The History of the Social Movement in France, 1789–1850, translated and edited by Kaethe Mengelberg (Totawa, NJ: Bedminster Press, 1964) [Der Begriff der Gesellschaft und die soziale Geschichte der französischen Revolution bis 1830 (Leipzig: Wigand, 1850)]. Steiner, George, Martin Heidegger. Eine Einführung (München/Wien: Hanser, 1989). ———, “Real Presences” in George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1996 (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996) 20–39. ———, Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1989). Stoecklin, Alfred, Schweizer Katholizismus. Eine Geschichte der Jahre 1925–1975 zwischen Ghetto und konziliarer Öffnung (Zürich: Benzinger, 1978). Stolleis, Michael, Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994). Stonner, Anton, “Heroismus und Christentum” in Magazin für Pädagogik, vol. 97, no. 1 (1934), 7–16. Sturm, Vilma, “Das Menschenbild im Werk Josef Piepers” in Pädagogische Rundschau, vol. 3 (1949), 11–17.

Bibliography  301 Taylor, Charles, “Geschlossene Weltstrukturen in der Moderne” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Wissen und Weisheit (Münster: Litt, 2005), 137–69. Tertullian, Apology, trans Sr. Joseph Daly, in Tertullian, Apologetical Works, Fathers of the Church, vol. 10 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1950). ———, The Prescription of Heretics in Tertullian, On the Testimony of the Soul and On the Prescription of Heretics (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1914). Thieme, Karl, “Ein Anwalt der Wirklichkeit” in Hochland, vol. 42 (1949/50), 284–95. Thomas, Anita J., “Sin and Self-Deception: A Constructive Statement Using Elements from the Thought of Josef Pieper and from the Philosophical and Psychological Discussion of Self-Deception” (Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Methodist University, 1992). Tönnies, Ferdinand, Community and Association, translated by Charles P. Loomis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955) [Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Fues, 1887); the quotations come from the 8th edition, from 1935 (Wiesbaden: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963)]. ———, Soziologische Studien und Kritiken in Ferdinand Tönnies, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 15, Dieter Haselbach (ed.) (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2000). Vann, Gerald, The Water and the Fire (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954). Vernekohl, Wilhelm, “Deuter des christlichen Menschenbildes” in Begegnungen (Münster, 1959), 217–30. Vickery, Jon, “Searching for Josef Pieper” in Theological Studies, vol. 66 (2005), 622–37. Wald, Berthold, “Abendländische Tugendlehre und moderne Moralphilosophie” in Josef Pieper, Werke, vol. 4 (1996), 415–35. Also in Prima Philosophia, vol. 9 (1996), 435–45. ———, “  ‘Aktualisierung durch Enthistorisierung’. Zu einem Brief von Josef Pieper an Gustav Gundlach aus der Zeit der NS-Diktatur” in Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 104 (1997), 175–81. ———, “Editorische Hinweise” in Josef Pieper, Werke, vol. 1 (2002), 385–88. ———, “Gegenwart der Philosophie” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Sprache und Philosophie (Münster: Litt, 1996), 23–46. ———, “Josef Pieper. Un dottore della Chiesa del mondo moderno ovvero verità e realtà e l’attualità di san Tommaso d’Aquino” in Rivista teologica di Lugano, vol. 11 (2006), 21–35. ———, “Josef Pieper als Interpret des Thomas von Aquin. Anmerkungen zur philosophischen Hermeneutik und zur Wahrheit der Interpretation” in Doctor communis, vol. 4 (2003), 168–79. Also in Josef Pieper, Werke, vol. 2 (2001), 465–77. ———, “Der ‘linke Pieper’ und das Dritte Reich” in Die Neue Ordnung, vol. 59 (2005), 278–93. Also in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, and Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Wissen und Wahrheit (Münster: Litt 2005), 199–218. ———, “Moralische Verbindlichkeit und menschliches Richtigsein. Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend” in Hermann Fechtrup, Friedbert Schulze, Thomas Sternberg (eds.), Nachdenken über die Tugenden (Münster: Litt, 1996), 29–55. New version in Theologie und Philosophie, vol. 72 (1997), 553–64. ———, “The Notion of Truth in Josef Pieper’s Works” in Sensus communis, vol. 4 (2003), 113–22.

302  Bibliography ———, “Philosophie in der modernen Welt. Zum 100. Geburtstag von Josef Pieper” in Holger Flachmann (ed.), Europäische Werte denken. Josef Pieper—Philosoph, Lehrer, Autor (Münster: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, 2005), 28–48. ———, “Philosophierende Interpretation. Josef Pieper über die Aktualität von Platon und Thomas von Aquin” in Theologie und Glaube, vol. 94 (2004), 314–31. ———, “Positive Philosophie. Der Ausgangspunkt des Philosophierens bei Josef Pieper im Blick auf Schelling” in Theologie und Glaube, vol. 98 (2008), 1–10. ———, “Theologie des ‘als ob’. Das Dilemma nichtrealistischer Selbstdeutungen des christlichen Glaubens” in Josef Pieper, Werke, vol. 7 (2000), 627–35. ———, “Valor para la realidad—Valor para la persona. Reafirmación cristiana como crítica de la cultura en la obra temprana de Josef Pieper” in Sapientia, vol. 59, no. 216 (Homenaje a Josef Pieper) (2004), 559–81. ———, “Vollendete Negativität oder theologisch gegründete Weltlichkeit? Die Kulturphilosophie Josef Piepers als eine Antwort auf das Nein zur Welt” in Theologie und Glaube, vol. 89 (1999), 219–35. ———, “Wahrheit und Sinn. Über die Konvergenz von analytischer und hermeneutischer Perspektive im Philosophiebegriff Josef Piepers” in Salzburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie, vol. 40 (1995), 131–39. ———, “Wahrheitsanspruch des Glaubens und Weltverhältnis der Moderne. Zur Aktualität der Religionsphilosophie Josef Piepers” in Josef Ernst (ed.), Theologie aktuell (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2001), 215–32. ———, “  ‘Was ich für meine Sache halte’. Zum 90. Geburtstag von Josef Pieper” in Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 102 (1995), 113–18. ———, “Wende zum Menschen” in Josef Pieper, Werke, vol. 5 (1997), 399–410. Ward, Maisie, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1958). Wargo, Vincent, “Pieper and the Philosophical Act” in The Modern Schoolman, vol. 80, no. 2 (2003), 114–43. Whitehead, Alfred North, “Immortality” in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1951), 682–700. ———, “Remarks” in Philosophical Review, vol. 46 (1937). Wiese, Leopold von, Der Liberalismus in Vergangenheit und Zukunft (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1917). Wild, John, Plato’s Theory of Man: An Introduction to the Realistic Philosophy of Culture (New York: Octagon Books, 1981). Wisser, Richard, “Philosophieren und Philosophie. Das Denken Josef Piepers und Helmut Kuhns” in Hochland, vol. 59 (1966), 153–60. Wright, Robert, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Random House, 2000). Wust, Peter, Ungewissheit und Wagnis in Peter Wust Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, Wilhelm Vernekohl (ed.) (Münster: Verlag Regensberg Münster, 1964), 25–293.

Contributors

Hermann Braun is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal / Bethel. He studied philosophy, history, English and German philology at the universities of Tübingen, Reading (Great Britain), and Heidelberg. Wissenschaftliche Staatsprüfung für das Lehramt an Gymnasien (1958) at the University of Heidelberg. Ph.D. in philosophy (1960) at the University of Heidelberg. Selected bibliography: Realität und Reflexion. Studien zu Hegels Philosophie der Natur (Rotaprint 1960). Editor, with Manfred Riedel, of Natur und Geschichte, Festschrift Karl Löwith (W. Kohlhammer-Verlag, 1967). He is the author of numerous articles in the history of basic philosophical ideas and in philosophical questions concerning Christian theology. He analyzed the attitudes of philosophers before and after 1933, especially emphasizing Josef Pieper (“Die Anfälligkeit des Prinzipiellen. Existenzphilosophie und philosophische Anthropologie vor und nach 1933” in Perspektiven der Philosophie. Neues Jahrbuch, 17 [1991], 345–83).

Matthew Cuddeback is assistant professor of philosophy at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. He studied philosophy at the Catholic University of America (M.A. 1993; Ph.D. 1998). He

303

304  Contributors has been visiting scholar at Thomas Institut in Cologne and at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He was a participant in the Anthropology Project of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, a project to provide grounding for the psychological sciences. Selected bibliography: Light and Form in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of the Knower (UMI, 1998) and articles on metaphysics and philosophical anthropology.

Juan F. Franck teaches at the Catholic University of Argentina and at the University of Montevideo (Uruguay). He studied philosophy at UCA (Buenos Aires) and obtained his Ph.D. (2001) in philosophy at the Internationale Akademie für Philosophie (Liechtenstein). He did postdoctoral research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and was a Visiting Scholar at the Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi Rosminiani, at Stresa (Italy). Selected bibliography: From the Nature of the Mind to Personal Dignity: The Significance of Rosmini’s Philosophy (The Catholic University of America Press, 2006). Editor, with Oscar H. Beltrán, Héctor J. Delbosco, and Juan Pablo Roldán, of Contemplata aliis tradere (Dunken, 2007). Translation of Antonio Rosmini, Diálogos sobre la naturaleza del conocimiento (Encuentro, 2004) and of Josef Pieper, Tratados sobre las virtudes. I: Las virtudes cardinales and Tratados sobre las virtudes. II: Las virtudes teologales (Librería Córdoba, 2008).

Joseph J. Godfrey, S.J., is an associate professor of philosophy, and former chair of the Philosophy Department at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he has also served as rector of the Jesuit community. He has a Ph.D. (1977) in philosophy from the University of Toronto, and degrees in Catholic theology (Woodstock College, Maryland, 1969) and in Protestant theology (Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1970). He has been Bannan professor

Contributors  305 at Santa Clara University and Wade professor at Marquette University. Selected bibliography: A Philosophy of Human Hope (Nijhoff, 1987), and articles on hope and more recently on trust. He is completing a book on trust in philosophy of religion.

Thomas S. Hibbs is distinguished professor of ethics and culture and dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy (1987) at the University of Notre Dame. He was previously professor at Thomas Aquinas College (1987–1990) and professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Boston College (1990–2003). Selected bibliography: Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Shows about Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld (Spence Publishing, 2000); Virtue’s Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good (Fordham University Press, 2001); Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion: Metaphysics and Practice (Indiana University Press, 2007); Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption (Spence Publishing, 2008).

Kenneth Schmitz is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto. He has taught at Loyola University of Los Angeles, Marquette University, Indiana University, and the Catholic University of America. Past President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1977–1978), the Metaphysical Society of America (1979– 1980), and the Hegel Society of America (1974–1976), he was elected (1991) a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was awarded (1992) the Aquinas Medal from the ACPA. Selected bibliography: The Gift-Creation (Marquette University Press, 1982). At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophi-

306  Contributors cal Anthropology of Karol Wojtyła/Pope (The Catholic University of America Press, 1993). The Recovery of Wonder: The New Freedom and the Asceticism of Power (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). The Texture of Being: Essays in First Philosophy (The Catholic University of America Press, 2007). Editor, with Warren E. Steinkraus, of Art and Logic in Hegel’s Philosophy (Humanities Press/Harvester Press, 1980).

Bernard N. Schumacher teaches at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He received his Ph.D. (1994) and his Habilitation (2000) in philosophy from the University of Fribourg. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, at Providence College (Rhode Island), at the University of Lugano and in Toulouse; he has been a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, the Catholic University of America, Tübingen, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. He is director of the collection “Josef Pieper” (Geneva: Ad Solem), which publishes the French translation of Josef Pieper. Selected bibliography: A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope (Fordham University Press, 2003; French: Cerf, 2000; German: Matthias-Grünewald, 2000; Spanish: Eunsa Press, 2005). The Morality of Life and Death in the Contemporary World (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), French: (Cerf, 2005); Confronting Death: The Question of Death in Contemporary Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, [forthcoming]; French: Cerf, 2005; German: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004). Editor, with Edgardo Castro, Penser l’homme et la science. Betrachtungen zum Thema Mensch und Wissenschaft (Presses Universitaires de Fribourg Suisse, 1996). Editor of La Filosofia cristiana del novecento (I). Josef Pieper (Edizioni Romane di Cultura, 1997). Editor, with Jorge Gracia and Gregory Reichberg, of Classics of Western Philosophy (Blackwell, 2002). Editor of Jean-Paul Sartre. Das Sein und das Nichts (Akademie Verlag, 2003). Editor, with Jean-Christophe Merle, of Philosophie de l’amitié (Presses Universitaires de France, 2005).

Contributors  307 Editor, with Jean-Christophe Merle and Jérome Niquille, of Figures du communautarisme (Aachen, 2006). Editor, with François-Xavier Putallaz, of L’humain et la personne (Cerf, 2008) and Der Mensch und die Person, with a preface by Pascal Couchepin, president of Switzerland (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008).

Frank Töpfer is working at the Chair of Ethics in Medicine at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He studied philosophy, sociology, and German philology in Münster, Freiburg in Breisgau, and Tübingen. He received his Ph.D. (2005) in philosophy from the University of Freiburg in Breisgau. Selected bibliography: Heideggers früher Philosophiebegriff (forthcoming). Editor of Richard Koch und Franz Rosenzweig, Schriften und Briefe zu Krankheit, Sterben und Tod (Agenda, 2000). Editor of Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die Phänomenologie (Königshausen and Neumann, 2006).

Berthold Wald is professor of philosophy at the Theological Faculty of Paderborn. He studied philosophy, linguistics and German literature, and Catholic theology in Freiburg in Breisgau and in Münster in Westfalen. Ph.D. (1986) and Habilitation (2002) in philosophy at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Selected bibliography: Genitrix Virtutum. Zum Wandel des aristotelischen Begriffs praktischer Vernunft (Münster, 1986). Person und Handlung bei Martin Luther (Weilheim, 1993). Philosophie im Studium der Theologie (Bonifatius, 2001). Substantialität und Personalität. Philosophie der Person in Antike und Mittelalter (Mentis, 2005). Editor of Josef Pieper, Werke in acht Bänden (Felix Meiner, 1995–2008).

Index of Names

Abel, Theodore, 98, 99 Abraham, 128 Adorno, Theodor W., 33, 34, 35, 42, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50, 64, 65, 81, 82 Aersten, Jan A., 33 Ambrose, 125 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 9, 54, 55, 56, 116, 117, 140 Apel, Karl-Otto, 35 Aquinas, Thomas, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 16, 32, 33, 46, 47, 58, 60, 61, 65, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 95, 110, 112, 114, 119, 120, 123–39, 143, 177, 192–94, 203, 203, 205, 215, 229, 230, 231, 234– 37, 239–47, 249–50, 251, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262, 264, 269, 271, 273, 275–78 Arendt, Hannah, 20, 63, 64, 65, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 208 Aristotle, 3, 22, 28, 29, 32, 33, 37, 46, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 83, 84, 112, 116, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 136, 139, 177, 182, 189, 193, 194, 203, 206, 226, 233, 251, 261, 262, 277 Augustine, 42, 46, 58, 84, 128, 129, 135, 192, 234, 245, 251, 262, 273 Bacon, Francis, 85, 230 Baier, Annette, 125 Balthasar, Hans Urs, 6, 155 Barbour, Brian, 249, 250

Barth, Karl, 40, 41, 42, 200 Batzdor, Suzanne, 115 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 230 Baumgartner, Hans Michael, 31 Bernard of Chartres, 2 Beltrán, Oscar H., 304 Bloch, Ernst, 8, 9, 11, 43, 141, 143–46, 148, 149, 153, 154, 155, 160, 162, 163, 206 Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang, 104 Boehm, Ulrich, 111 Böll, Heinrich, 89 Braun, Hermann, 7, 66, 67, 70, 88, 110, 303 Buber, Martin, 151 Bubner, Rüdiger, 26, 28 Burke, Kevin, 159 Callicles, 211, 266, 267, 272 Carnap, Rudolf, 7 Cassirer, Ernst, 7 Castro, Edgardo, 306 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 233, 247 Claudel, Paul, 48 Comte-Sponville, André, 10 Couchepin, Pascal, 307 Couturat, Louis, 187 Cuddeback, Matthew, 12, 88, 228, 277, 303 Cusa, Nicholas of, 269

309

310  Index of Names Delbosco, Héctor J., 304 Derrida, Jacques, 27, 50, 51 Descartes, René, 85 Dewan, Lawrence, 237, 244, 246 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 31 Diotima, 174 Domin, Hilde, 111 Dostoevski, Fyodor M., 4, 147 Droz, Geneviève, 219 Dülmen, Richard van, 107 Dunin-Borkowski, Stanislaus von, 6 Einstein, Albert, 7, 93 Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 3, 89, 90, 233 Ettlinger, Max, 6, 12 Fechner, Eberhard, 106 Fechtrup, Hermann, 259 Fegan, Peter, 250 Fellmann, Ferdinand, 39 Flasch, Kurt, 203 Fraenkel, Ernst, 103 Franck, Juan, 18, 251, 304 Frederick the Great, 105 Freud, Sigmund, 55, 137 Freyer, Hans, 45, 94–98 Frisch, Max, 66, 67 Frutiger, Perceval, 218, 219 Fukuyama, Francis, 142, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 35, 111, 112, 258 Gallagher, David, 233 Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald, 117 Geach, Peter, 9, 10, 58 Gilson, Etienne, 2, 33, 221 Godfrey, Joseph, 9, 139, 140, 149, 151, 164, 196, 206, 304 Goebbel, Joseph, 106 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 5, 89, 93, 189, 192, 264 Gorgias, 256, 265, 267 Gracia, Jorge, 306 Gregory the Great, 119 Guardini, Romano, 5, 16, 88, 89, 246, 250, 273 Gundlach, Gustav, 101, 104 Gurian, Waldemar, 113

Habermas, Jürgen, 35, 47, 54, 57, 58, 97 Haecker, Theodor, 4, 16 Hank, Rainer, 38, 79, 80, 83 Hare, Richard Mervyn, 54, 57, 58, 60 Hawking, Stephen, 166 Hayen, André, 233 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 9, 31, 44, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 172, 192, 195, 207 Hegner, Jakob, 8, 65, 89 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 28, 29, 34, 35, 41, 42, 50, 51, 62, 83, 111, 114, 172, 206, 208, 221, 222, 223 Henrich, Dieter, 35 Heraclitus, 29, 182, 273 Hesiod, 182 Heuss, Theodor, 100 Hibbs, Thomas, 8, 10, 116, 305 Hippias, 256 Hitler, Adolf, 10, 90, 101, 104, 105, 106 Hobbes, Thomas, 131 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 41 Homer, 182, 207, 273 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 249 Horkheimer, Max, 33, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 64, 65, 81, 82, 97 Hume, David, 57 Husserl, Edmund, 40, 114 Inciarte, Fernando, 2, 25 Inerny, Ralph, 121, 233 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 209 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 9 Jaspers, Karl, 9, 28, 31, 110, 189, 205 Jerome, 192 John Paul II, 3, 114, 167 John of the Cross, 127 Jordan, Mark, 238, 239, 247 Jünger, Ernst, 80, 81, 109, 264 Jung, Carl Gustav, 179, 180 Kant, Immanuel, 9, 13, 39, 41, 44, 50, 54, 55, 59, 124, 138, 139, 144, 146, 148, 149, 153, 154, 160, 208, 209, 210, 230 Kaplan, Grant, 63 Kaufmann, Franz-Xaver, 91 Keil, Geert, 30

Index of Names  311 Kierkegaard, Søren, 4, 24, 37, 38, 88, 136 Kipp, David, 141 Koch, Richard, 307 Koeppel, Josephine, 115 Kracauer, Siegfried, 81 Krüger, Gerhard, 12, 15 Kuhn, Helmut, 90, 91 Kundera, Milosc, 198 Kupperman, Joel, 118 Ladrière, Jean, 206 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 206 Lenin, Vladimir, 146 Leo XIII, 100 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 188, 191 Lewis, Clive Staples, 1, 3 Lobkowicz, Nicholas, 231 Locke, John, 131, 193 Lönne, Karl-Egon, 104 Löwith, Karl, 303 Long, Steve, 231 Loomis, Charles P., 67 Louden, Robert, 121, 122 Lübbe, Hermann, 25, 31, 94 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 9, 53, 54, 59, 117, 121, 130, 131, 220 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 50 Malsbary, Gerald, 24 Manent, Pierre, 131 Marcel, Gabriel, 11, 15, 143, 144, 151, 192 Maritain, Jacques, 9, 217 Marquard, Odo, 24 Marx, Karl, 93, 94, 105 Mascall, Eric Lionel, 238 Meilaender, Gilbert, 8, 117 Merle, Jean-Christophe, 306 Metz, Johann Baptist, 142, 155, 159, 160, 165, 166, 168 Meyer, Hans, 203 Meyer, Maria Amata, 114 Miller, Michael J., 1, 63, 88, 278 Möller, Johannes, 215 Moltmann, Jürgen, 154 Montgomery, Marion, 231 Mounier, Emmanuel, 20 Müller, Klaus, 110

Murray, Paul, 250 Musil, Robert, 40 Mussolini, Benito, 100, 101 Nagel, Thomas, 2 Naville, Pierre, 219 Newman, John Henry, 17, 42, 133, 210, 213, 215, 273 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 164 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 49, 55, 130, 147 Niquille, Jérome, 307 Noldenberger, Waltraud, 92 Nürnberger, Christian, 80 Parmenides, 29, 230 Pascal, Blaise, 133, 270 Paz, Octavio, 47 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 232 Pius XI, 99, 100, 114 Plato, 4, 18, 27, 28, 29, 58, 60, 84, 172, 176, 177, 180, 181, 183–89, 191–94, 202, 207, 209, 211, 214–19, 226, 230– 34, 251–55, 257–68, 270–78 Plenge, Johann, 7, 92–95, 99 Plessner, Helmuth, 33, 38, 39, 41, 82 Plügge, Herbert, 144 Pieper, Annemarie, 53, 59 Polanyi, Michael, 172 Polus, 267 Prodicus, 256 Protagoras, 256, 265 Przywara, Erich, 6, 11, 12, 40, 42 Putallaz, François-Xavier, 212, 307 Pythagoras, 207, 230 Raddatz, Fritz J., 89 Rahner, Karl, 58 Rawls, John, 11, 53 Reichberg, Gregory, 306 Renan, Ernest, 48 Riedel, Manfred, 303 Ricoeur, Paul, 164, 206, 207 Rimbaud, Arthur, 50 Rudolph, Günther, 70 Rodheudt, Guido, 228 Roldán, Juan Pablo, 304 Romanowsky, John, 278 Ronze, Bernard, 210 Rorty, Richard, 27

312  Index of Names Rosenzweig, Franz, 307 Rosmini, Antonio, 261, 276, 304 Safranski, Rüdiger, 111 Sass, Hans-Martin, 31 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 11, 15, 51, 56, 184, 203, 219, 269 Scheeben, Mathias Joseph, 215 Scheler, Max, 10, 70 Schmidt, Wilhelm, 178 Schmitz, Kenneth, 4, 171, 216, 230, 272, 305 Schnädelbach, Herbert, 30 Schneewind, Jerome, 123 Schlosser, Johann Georg, 209 Schulze, Friedbert, 259 Schumacher, Bernard N., 1, 8, 16, 62, 117, 132, 139, 142, 173, 196, 199, 206, 212, 213, 219, 306, 307 Schumacher, Michele, 199 Sedlmeier, Kaplan, 108 Sieber, E., 109 Simoneit, Max, 12 Simmel, Georg, 99 Sisyphus, 152 Slote, Michael, 136 Socrates, 20, 29, 55, 174, 179, 181, 182, 183, 252, 262, 266, 272–76 Solon, 207 Spaemann, Robert, 88 Spinoza, Baruch, 249 St. John, 5, 88 Stauber, Georg, 107, 108 Stein, Edith, 70, 114, 115 Stein, Lorenz von, 67 Steiner, George, 41, 49, 50, 51, 52 Steinkraus, Warren E., 306 Sternberg, Thomas, 259 Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, 209 Stonner, Anton, 108 Stolleis, Michael, 103 Suhrkamp, Peter, 33

Taubes, Jakob, 25 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 141, 143– 46, 149, 153, 154, 155, 157, 160, 162, 163 Tertullian, 200 Thales, 210 Theaetetus, 266 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 7, 67, 68, 69, 70–73, 75, 76, 96 Töpfer, Frank, 16, 63, 307 Thurnwald, Richard, 7 Vann, Gerald, 249 Vierkandt, Alfred, 99 Wald, Berthold, 2, 12, 24, 66, 101, 102, 104, 117, 252, 258, 307 Ward, Maisie, 49, 247 Wargo, Vincent, 275 Weber, Max, 97 Welte, Bernhard, 58 Welty, Eberhard, 38 Whitehead, Alfred North, 201, 207 Wiehl, Reiner, 111, 112 Wiese, Leopold von, 7, 94, 98, 99, 113 Wilamowitz, Ulrich von, 187 Wild, Heinrich, 65 Wild, John, 256 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 28, 260 Wolff, Christian, 230 Woodhead, William Dudley, 272 Wright, Robert, 142, 155, 157–60, 162, 163, 165 Wust, Peter, 12, 208 Xenophanes, 182, 273 Zander, Jürgen, 114 Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig von, 208

A Cosmopolitan Hermit: Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper was designed and typeset in Walbaum and Hypatia Sans by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, North Carolina. It was printed on 60-pound House Natural Smooth and bound by Sheridan Books of Ann Arbor, Michigan.