The Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom A Semiotic Reinterpretation of The Great Ideas Movement for the 21st Century (Value Inquiry, 369) 9004468005, 9789004468009

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The Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom

Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Editor-in-Chief J.D. Mininger

volume 369

Philosophy and Religion Editor Rod Nicholls (Cape Breton University) Founding Editor Ken Bryson (Cape Breton University) Editorial Board Deane-​Peter Baker, University of New South Wales (unsw) –​G. Elijah Dann, Simon Fraser University –​Russ Dumke, University of the Incarnate Word –​ Carl Kalwaitis, Marian University –​Ruby Ramji, Cape Breton University –​ Harriet E. Barber, University of San Diego –​Stephen Clark, University of Liverpool/University of Bristol –​Gwen Griffith-​Dickson, Heythrop College, University of London –​Jim Kanaris, McGill University –​William Sweet, Saint Francis Xavier University –​Jim Gerrie, Cape Breton University – Pawel Kawalec, John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin –​Esther McIntosh, St. John’s University –​Peter Redpath, Holy Apostles College and Seminary – Ludwig Nagl, University of Vienna –​Heather Salazar, Western New England University – Alana M. Vincent, University of Chester The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​vibs and brill.com/​par

The Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom A Semiotic Reinterpretation of The Great Ideas Movement for the 21st Century

Edited by

Peter A. Redpath, Imelda Chłodna-​Błach and Artur Mamcarz-​Plisiecki

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Redpath, Peter A., editor. | Chłodna, Imelda, editor. | Mamcarz-Plisiecki, Artur, editor. Title: The great ideas of religion and freedom : a semiotic reinterpretation of the great ideas movement for the 21st century / edited by Peter A. Redpath, Imelda Chłodna-Błach, and Artur Mamcarz-Plisiecki. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Value inquiry book series, 0929-8436 ; volume 369 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Focusing on two universal, culturally influential great ideas of freedom and religion, this volume’s contributors verify a radical thesis that leading ancient and medieval philosophers (scientists) practiced philosophy (science) as a transgenerational habit of wondering about proximate causes of organizational existence, formation, and behavior: scholastic behavioral organizational psychology.”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021025983 (print) | LCCN 2021025984 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004468009 (hardback : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9789004468016 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Liberty–Religious aspects. | Religion. | Liberty. Classification: LCC BL65.L52 G735 2021 (print) | LCC BL65.L52 (ebook) | DDC 201/.723–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025983 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025984

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 0929-​8 436 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 6800-​9 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 6801-​6 (e-​book) Copyright 2021 by Peter A. Redpath, Imelda Chłodna-​Błach and Artur Mamcarz-​Plisiecki. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Dedicated to Benevolent Pagan Mortimer J. Adler and his former Philosopher at Large Colleague John N. Deely Two of the Greatest of Great Ideas

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The enthusiasts of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended. g. k. chesterton

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Contents  Acknowledgments ix  Notes on Editors and Contributors x  Introduction 1 Peter A. Redpath 1  Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings about the Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom 5 Piotr Jaroszyński 2  Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 27 Maria Joanna Gondek 3  How Commonsense Philosophical Realism Influenced Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings 41 Joanna Kiereś-​Łach 4  Becoming a Masterpiece of Unbending Will 59 Artur Mamcarz-​Plisiecki 5  Karol Wojtyła on Semiotically Expressing the Great Ideas of the True and the Good 77 Arkadiusz Gudaniec 6  How the Great Ideas Can Help Resolve the Contemporary Decline of the West 96 Wojciech Daszkiewicz 7  Some Contemporary Problems Obscuring the Greatness of the Great Ideas 112 Katarzyna Stępień 8  Czesław Martyniak: The Great Ideas as Motivational Causes 127 Rafał Charzyński 9  The Great Ideas: Causes of Human Transcendence or Enslavement? 141 Tomasz Duma

viii Contents 10  Christianity: Friend or Foe of the Great Ideas? 163 Robert T. Ptaszek 11  Semiotics of Organizational Leadership and Gateway Leadership Induction Technology (gatelit) 179 Marvin B. Daniel Peláez 12  Greatness of Character in Classical Confucianism 210 Jason Morgan 13  The Great Ideas in the Noble Buddhist Doctrine of Liberation 237 Adam L. Barborich 14  Mortimer J. Adler From Annoying Philosophical Bastard to Great Educational Reformer 257 Imelda Chłodna-​Błach Conclusion. “Leisure Is the Basis of Culture”: Was Josef Pieper Wrong? 286 Peter A. Redpath  Index 299

Acknowledgments Toward the start of 2020, my co-​editors of this collective volume, Imelda Chłodna-​Błach and Artur Mamcarz-​Plisiecki, concurred with me that the dramatic global upheavals happening at this time presented a propitious sign for attempting, as soon as possible, to realize a dream of Mortimer J. Adler, which was one day to globalize his Great Books/​Great Ideas Movement. Our only hesitancy about going forward with this project was whether we could find an internationally recognized publishing house to consider reviewing our proposal (which Brill Publishing’s Philosophy and Religion [par] Series Editor Rod Nicholls had the courage to do) and obtaining help of a copy editor capable of bringing this project across the finish line for a spring 2021 printing. As anyone who has edited a book series knows, excellent editors, and, especially, excellent copy editors are as rare as miracle workers—​and very often resemble them in their abilities. Such being the case, without the help of a first-​rate copy editor, we would not have seriously considered going ahead with this collective volume. Happily, I knew just the person we needed to contact: Elizabeth D. Boepple, a copy editor par excellence with whom, a couple of decades ago, I had previously worked when I was Executive Editor of the Value Inquiry Book Series (vibs) for the Dutch publisher Editions Rodopi, B.V. Despite that Elizabeth had some recent physical problems that would impair her ability to use one arm, she graciously agreed to take on this difficult job. Without her having done so, I doubt this collective would ever have been ready for review in time to be published early in 2021. Likely, it would never have seen the publishing light of day. For this reason, she deserves kudos. It is to her that I devote this Acknowledgements page. Elizabeth and I would, also, like to acknowledge the tremendous debt we owe to our personal friend and mentor Richard T. Hull (R.I.P.) for the great editorial and life-​skill training he unselfishly shared with us over many decades. We also wish to acknowledge with our gratitude that translation assistance for the Polish contributions to this volume was funded by the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln. Peter A. Redpath Founder and ceo Aquinas School of Leadership Cave Creek, Arizona, USA

Notes on Editors and Contributors Editors Imelda Chłodna-​Błach (dr. hab.) is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Culture and Rhetoric within the Faculty of Philosophy at the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin. Her interests include issues related to the philosophy of culture and civilization, philosophy of education, and the art of rhetoric. She is a member of editorial committees of two scientific journals: Man in Culture and Annals of Cultural Studies. She is also a member of the Polish Society of Thomas Aquinas, the Learned Society of the John Paul ii, Catholic University of Lublin, The International Étienne Gilson Society, The Adler-​Aquinas Institute, and The Gabriel Marcel Society. In addition to teaching philosophy and rhetoric at the University of Lublin, she instructs rhetoric and cultural sciences at the Higher School of Social and Media Culture in Toruń, Poland (within the Department of Journalism, Political Science, and Cultural Studies). Artur Mamcarz-​Plisiecki (dr. hab.) is presently Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin, within the Department of Philo­ sophy of Culture and Rhetoric. His research interests include: rhetoric, philosophy of culture (esp. theory of civilization, theory of film, theory of audio-​visual culture), and philosophy of politics. He teaches rhetoric and philosophy of culture (esp. European cultural identity). He is author of many articles on the philosophy of culture, philosophy of civilization, rhetoric, and linguistics. His has authored the monograph Philosophy and Rhetoric of the Film. Perspective of Philosophical Realism (in Polish), and is co-​editor with A. Maryniarczyk, N. Gondek, and A. Mamcarz-​Plisiecki of Dispute about Metaphysics. On the Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Professor Mieczysław Krąpiec: Tasks of Modern Metaphysics, no. 21 (in Polish). Peter A. Redpath retired Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University, New York, is author/​ editor/​co-​editor of seventeen philosophical books and many dozens of articles and book reviews. An internationally recognized scholar, he has given over 200 invited guest lectures nationally and internationally. He is ceo of the Aquinas School of Leadership, llc and co-​founder of the Gilson Society (USA) and

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the International Etienne Gilson Society, the Adler-​Aquinas Institute, and the Angelican Academy and Great Books Academy homeschool programs (both founded with the help of Mortimer J. Adler). Former special series editor for Rodopi and Brill/​Rodopi, he also served as executive editor of the Value Inquiry Book Series/​Rodopi and is currently a member of the editorial board of Brill’s Philosophy and Religion (par) series. Contributors Adam L. Barborich is a Lecturer in the Department of English Language Teaching at South Eastern University of Sri Lanka and in the Department of Pali and Buddhist Studies at the University of Sri Jayawardenepura. He also lectures in the induction program for civil service cadets and trains military officers at the Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration. His specialty is early Buddhist and comparative philosophy, particularly in the areas of aesthetics and metaphysics. Rafał Charzyński holds a Master’s degree in Theology from the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin and a Doctoral degree in Philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. In 2017, he obtained postdoctoral degree in Philosophy. He works in the History of Philosophy in Poland at the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin. His scientific interests focus on the foundations of morality and the history of Neo-​Scholasticism in Poland. Author (all in Polish) of two monographs, The Freedom as the Fundament of Morality in Jacques Maritain and The Problem of Polemic–​ Apologetic Character of Polish Neo-​Scholasticism, he has published many articles, including “A Neo-​Thomistic Formulation of Natural Law as the Basis of Human Rights; “A Christian Philosophy and Christian Worldview According to Piotr Chojnacki”; “Controversies Related to the Autonomy of Thomism”; “Gabryl’s Critique of Catholic Romanticism”; “Idzi Radziszewski as Philosopher”; and “Anthropological and Theistic Foundation of the Ethics of Trentowski.” Wojciech Daszkiewicz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Metaphysics at the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin. Author of publications on the metaphysics and philosophy of culture, his most important monographs include: Intellectual Intuition in Metaphysics (in Polish) and Being–​Human Culture: A Study in the

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Philosophy of Culture (in Polish). He is member of the editorial board of the Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Encyclopedia of Polish Philosophy. He is also Theory of Culture Subject Editor for the Annals of Cultural Studies. Research interests focus on the metaphysical and anthropological foundations of culture and the foundations of Western civilization (especially on the problems of consumerism, globalization, and multiculturalism). In addition, he is a member of the Polish Society of Thomas Aquinas, the Polish Society of Cultural Sciences, and the International Étienne Gilson Society. Tomasz Duma is Assistant Professor in the Department of Metaphysics of the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin. His interests include metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of God, philosophy of religion, and ethics. He has lectured at the University of Natural Sciences in Lublin, Lublin University of Technology, and at the Institute of Religious Sciences, Gródek, Ukraine. He has also delivered lectures at many international conferences, including in Boston, Massachusetts, Bologna, Italy, Athens, Greece, and Barcelona, Spain. He has published two monographs: Act and Potency in Realistic Philosophy: Gallus Manser’s Interpretation of the Theory of Act and Potency and Metaphysics of Relations: At the Basis of Understanding Living Relationships (both in Polish). He is the author of many scientific articles, encyclopedia entries, and he has been editor of collective volumes. Maria Joanna Gondek (dr. hab.) is Associate Professor and member of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. Her academic interests concern the philosophical foundations of rhetoric and the philosophy of culture. In addition to publishing in professional journals, she is author of the monograph, Philosophical Foundations of Deliberative Acts in the Peripatetic Tradition (in Polish). Arkadiusz Gudaniec is Professor in the Department of Philosophical Anthropology and Philosophy of Law at the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin His main areas of research include the problems of personal existence (esse personale), and the unity of human being, realistic metaphysics of the person, and the philosophical concept of love. Author of two monographs (in Polish): The Paradox of Disinterested Love: A Study in Philosophical Anthropology Based on St. Thomas Aquinas’s Writings and At the Basis of the Ontic Unity of a Human Being: A

Notes on Editors and Contributors

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Study in the Metaphysics of the Person, he has also published many articles in Polish, English, and Italian. He is also a translator of Italian philosophical texts into Polish and a proofreader of Greek and Latin terms in philosophical publications. Piotr Jaroszyński (dr. hab.) is currently Professor of Philosophy at John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, is an internationally renowned philosophical scholar with emphasis on metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, art, culture, science, and rhetoric. He has authored approximately 140 include articles published in Polish, English, Lithuanian, and Spanish. He has delivered lectures at over sixty international congresses (Polish) in over ten countries, and has organized annual, international “The Future of Western Civilization” conferences. He also works with the Erasmus program (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students). He is also the Editor-​in-​Chief of the philosophical yearbook, Man in Culture (Polish). Joanna Kiereś-​Łach in addition to her doctorate in philosophy, is a graduate in cultural studies, a certified business trainer, and lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy of the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin, where she teaches rhetoric. She also teaches philosophy and knowledge of culture at the high school level, and is author of the monograph Rhetoric and Philosophy: Intellectual Context of the New Rhetoric of Chaim Perelman, as well as scientific articles in the field of philosophy, rhetoric, and argumentation. Jason Morgan holds his Masters in Asian Studies (China focus) from the University of Hawai’i and doctorate in Japanese legal history from the University of Wisconsin. He is Associate Professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan. He has published articles in many journals and he is the English language translator of Hata Ikuhiko’s scholarly classic on the history of the comfort women. He has co-​translated an introduction to Japanese history. He has authored the monograph, Law and Society in Imperial Japan. Morgan is the editor of Information Regimes and the Cold War in East Asia. He has published six other books in Japanese and contributes regularly to Japanese language journals. He is an op-​ ed columnist with the Sankei Shimbun newspaper and a research fellow at the Institute of Moralogy in Kashiwa and the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo.

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Marvin B. Daniel Peláez is a government economist and researcher in classical philosophy and the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The focus of his research is the application of commonsense philosophical principles in the social sciences with a particular emphasis in economics. He regularly applies commonsense principles when leading and managing the data collection activities of a high performing professional team of economists in his work with a premier US federal statistical agency. He has designed and delivered training programs on both regional and national levels for improving the work efficiency of government economists. He was a co-​editor of “A Return to Pre-​Modern Principles of Economic Science: An Editors’ Introduction,” in the inaugural issue of Studia Gilsoniana (October-​December 2019) and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in economics and public affairs at the City College of New York, USA. Robert T. Ptaszek is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Catholic University of Lublin. He belongs to the Polish Philosophical Society, the Learned Society of the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin, and the Polish Society of Thomas Aquinas (a branch of Societa Internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino). He has authored over 150 publications, including many lexicographical articles pertaining to his fields of expertise, including philosophy of religion, alternative (new) religious movements, philosophical anthropology, interreligious dialogue, and philosophy of culture. His main work is the monograph New Age of Religion? The ‘New Age’ Movement and its Doctrine under Philosophical Scrutiny (in Polish). He has served as the editor-​in-​chief of the magazine: Drohiczyński Przegląd Naukowy. Multicultural Studies of the Drohiczyn Learned Society (2008–​2018) and is currently the thematic editor (theory of religion) of the magazine Annals of Cultural Studies. Katarzyna Stępień is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophical Anthro­ pology and Philosophy of Law at the Faculty of Philosophy at the John Paul ii Catholic University in Lublin. Her areas of interest include philosophy of law and human rights, philosophical anthropology, realist metaphysics. She is the author Philosophical Sources of the Dispute about Understanding the Rights of the Child. A Study in the Philosophy of Law and Human Rights(in Polish) and In Search of the Basics of Rationality of Law(in Polish) as well as nearly eighty scientific and encyclopedic articles, mainly in the first Polish

newgenprepdf

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Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Encyclopedia of Polish Philosophy She has participated in the scientific grant “The Lublin Philosophical School, in: Monuments of Polish Philosophical, Theological, and Social Thought of the 20th and 21st Century”

Introduction Peter A. Redpath Mortimer J. Adler was a friend of mine. He worked with colleagues of mine and me to establish the Angelicum Academy Great Books Program in the US.1 John N. Deely, one of the leading semioticians of the twentieth and twenty-​ first centuies, was also a friend of mine, and of Adler. In 1969, at the young age of twenty-​seven, John had started to work closely with Adler at Mortimer’s Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago. He remained there until he had a heated disupte with Adler about how they would approach the nature of signs and semiotics in an upcoming book they had initially agreed to co-​author (Some Questions about Language). The disagreement between Deely and Adler became so intense that at one point, as Adler attests in the Preface to this work, John told Adler that if he insisted on approaching these topics the way he had told John he would, Adler would have to remove John’s name as a co-​author of the book; “unresolved differences of opinion between us about certain aspects of a theory that we otherwise share prevent him from associating his name with mine in the authorship of this book.”2 Anyone who knew Deely and is familiar with his work in semiotics knows that he: (1) had a masterful understanding of signs as communications relations essentially involving images and ideas as ‘sign-​vehicles,’ and (2) owned the subject of ‘relation,’ and especially about how sign relations function through sign vehicles (ideas and images).3 His magisterial, 677 page work, Tractatus de Signis [Treatise on signs], on the nature of signs in the teachings of John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot), was so unique and masterful that, upon its publication, the The New York Times Book Review section devoted an entire page covering it.4 1 See the The Angelicum Academy Great Books Program at https://​www.angelicum.net/​ associates-​degree-​by-​12th-​grade/​great-​books-​program/​. 2 Mortimer J. Adler, Preface to Some Questions about Language: A Theory of Human Discourse and Its Objects (LaSalle, IL, Open Court, 1976), xii. 3 See e.g., John N. Deely, Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2007). 4 John of St. Thomas, Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot, interpretive arrangement by John N. Deely in consultation with Ralph Austin Powell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); see also Thomas A. Sebeok, “A Signifying Man,” review of Tractatus de Signis, New York Times (March 30, 1986); digitized version at https://​www.nytimes.com/​1986/​ 03/​30/​books/​a-​signifying-​man.html.

© Peter A. Redpath, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_002

2 Redpath While Adler’s work related to great ideas is remarkable, Adler had recognized that, in part, philosophy is essentially a cultural enterprise that, to ensure global peace, through his Great Books of the Western World project, he eventually needed to extend globally. While Adler had thought such an extension of his more generic great ideas movement might take centuries to effect, recent development of the Internet, combined with the increasing, contemporary global leadership deficit and crises besetting cultural institutions on a worldwide scale (such as the crisis surrounding the novel Covid-​19 pandemic) strongly suggest to me that the time is ripe to start globalization of The Great Ideas Movement. The chief means I have chosen to begin this globalization movement involves synthesizing the works of Adler and Deely related to the nature of great ideas with decades long research, which I have done and which has convinced me that, strictly speaking, science and philosophy are identical forms of behavioristic, or, perhaps better, behavioral, organizational psychology; i.e., both are species of habitual wondering about how, under the influence of great (leadership) ideas—​the greatest of these being metaphysical and moral—​we can harmoniously unite previously disparate multitudes to form organizational wholes, capable of cooperatively generating excellent organizational action. Science/​philosophy is chiefly a psychological habit of wondering about causes of organizational unity and behavior. As someone who started his professional career with a PhD from Columbia University in Psychology, Adler implicitly understood this reality. Philosophy/​science is chiefly behavioristic, organizational psychology, the psychological habit of wondering (and resolving wonder) about how organizations become united, built, preserved, and operate, and are even destroyed, through harmonious, great ideas (some of which are leadership generating, some leadership destroying), which can be either internal or external to these organizations. While, from the start of his professional career, Adler firmly believed that great ideas function chiefly as metaphysical and moral tools that generate organizational gravitas or heft—​these can function as leadership tools for forming, operating, and destroying organizations—​to sell his Great Books of The Western World project to financial backers and contemporaries in the West, he was forced first to focus attention on great ideas chiefly as historically-​great principles contained in the writings of great (historically influential) Western authors. Later on in his career, though publication of short articles and books for wide public consumption, Adler switched his attention to precisely what content great books contain that make them philosophically great: metaphysical and moral ideas. In so doing, he became increasingly and publicly critical of philosophy’s modern and contemporary turn, starting with René Descartes

Introduction

3

in the seventeenth century. He also began to promote classical philosophical teaching, especially that of Aristotle, as found in the masterful Nicomachean Ethics and of Aristotle’s chief and most-​famous medieval commentator, Saint Thomas Aquinas. While, like Adler, Deely recognized that what makes ideas great is chiefly connected to their leadership-​ causing nature (moral and metaphysical heft), he was chiefly interested in researching the nature of such ideas as communication-​relation vehicles for uniting, operating, and dividing organizational wholes and their action. By parting company with Adler at an early age, he was able to concentrate the rest of his scholarly life on that issue more than on anything else. This collective volume offers a new thesis, specifically, it asserts that, generically-​considered, philosophy and science are identical in that they are chiefly-​psychological forms of wondering about organizational formation and operation. This is a succinct description of behaviorist organizational and leadership psychology. I will now further elucidate this thesis, which is the main, unifying, ‘great idea’ of this collective volume. 1

Specifying the Main Hypothesis and Great Idea of This Collective Volume

The main hypothesis of this collective volume (to which, in qualitatively different ways, its contributors add specific support) is that philosophy and science are more than identical. They are mainly generically-​identical forms of behavioristic, organizational psychology (a psychological habit of wondering about causes of organizational existence, formation, and behavior). This hypothesis maintains that organizational behavior and organizational psychology were the chief interests of the leading ancient Greek philosophers in their study of the famous ‘problem of the one and the many’; and that Aristotle had chiefly understood a substance (ousia) to be what, today, many of us would call an ‘operational organization’: an organizational whole equipped with all the organizational parts needed harmoniously and proximately to cause organizational operation. To my knowledge, this volume is the first to have a group of international scholars examine these ideas in great depth and explicitly test this thesis about philosophy/​science.5 This volume precisely shows that, regardless whether 5 To my knowledge, this view was initially expressed over two decades ago in my Wisdom’s Odyssey from Philosophy to Transcendental Sophistry: An Introduction to Transcendental

4 Redpath they explicitly realized it, leading ancient and medieval philosophers actually did philosophy specifically in this way. Classically-​trained contemporary philosophers/​scientists like Mortimer Adler and John Deely continued to do it this way, and their doing so is precisely what made these philosophers great thinkers capable of generating great ideas. Such being the case, we are confident that this work offers overwhelming support for the thesis, and we believe that it is historically and philosophically groundbreaking.

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Preface to Some Questions about Language: A Theory of Human Discourse and Its Objects. LaSalle, IL, Open Court, 1976. isbn: 9780875483207. Deely, John N. Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2007. isbn: 9781589661325. John of St. Thomas. Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot. Interpretive arrangement by John N. Deely in consultation with Ralph Austin Powell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. isbn: 9780520042520. Redpath, Peter A. Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. isbn: 9789042004023. Redpath, Peter A. Wisdom’s Odyssey from Philosophy to Transcendental Sophistry: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. isbn: 9789042002050. Sophistry (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), and more fully in my Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998).

­c hapter 1

Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings about the Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom Piotr Jaroszyński Abstract Because Mortimer J. Adler’s teachings about Great Ideas are still little known in Poland, this chapter seeks to make his work better known to Polish readers by addressing different disputes related to religion and freedom that have been of recent interest to many Polish intellectuals (such as mind, materialism, determinism, atheism, communism), which Adler had addressed in some of his work.

Keywords communism –​determinism –​faith –​freedom –​God –​great ideas –​indeterminism –​ materialism –​Poland –​religion

Even today, Mortimer J. Adler (1902–​2001) is not very well known in Poland; he has always been somewhat obscure in this country. Because Adler’s teachings about Great Ideas are still little known in Poland, this chapter seeks to address why, up to this time, his teachings have not been as widely read in Poland as they have been in places like Western Europe and North America, and to make his writings better known to contemporary Polish readers by addressing different disputes related to religion and freedom that have been of recent interest to many Polish intellectuals (such as mind, materialism, determinism, atheism, Communism), which Adler had discussed in some of his works. Since many of the views Adler espoused and his writing style should have found a sympathetic ear among Polish readers, his obscurity among Polish intelligentsia is quite surprising, especially in current times when the Christian context of Polish life has improved the reception of such thinkers as Étienne Henri Gilson or Jacques Maritain, who, for decades, have been, and still are, perfectly recognizable in Poland and familiar to many Polish readers aside from professional scholars.

© Piotr Jaroszyński, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_003

6 Jaroszyński Crucial to note about Polish ignorance of Adler’s work during the start of his creative period during the early twentieth century is that Poland was experiencing a break in continuity of the country’s intellectual development at that time. When he published his first major work, Dialectic,1 Poland was still at the point of reorganization as a sovereign entity, after it had been partitioned by its neighboring states, causing it to disappear from the map in the late eighteenth century, not to reappear for over a century. The same could be said about the country’s academic and scientific life. When Adler published St. Thomas and the Gentiles,2 Poland was on the eve of World War ii, which, within five years, would destroy 90 percent of Poland’s cultural and intellectual life—​the people as well as their works. As the war raged in Poland (1939–​1945), Adler published seven books in the United States, where they found a receptive audience. During the time Communism had hold in Poland (1944, more or less ending in 1989), he had published over ten books on philosophy, broadly understood. In short, while Adler’s early creative output had been quite extensive, well known, and appreciated in North America, conditions for translating and disseminating his works in Poland at the time were highly unfavorable politically (Soviet Bolshevism) and ideologically (Marxism-​Leninism). Nevertheless, during the time before the onset of World War ii, when Adler’s books were largely unknown and unread in Poland, those of Gilson and Maritain had been widely circulated there. Why the disparity? What are the main reasons for this disparity? The answers are complicated. For any author to become successful in penetrating a readership market, some well-​known and respected individuals (preferably, a whole community of such individuals) must first show an interest in this person’s views and promote them. Currently, in Poland, before reaching a wider reading public, original, scholarly texts need to be studied at a university Philosophy department. To disseminate further into the wider culture, the works need to be translated into the local vernacular and then published, so that they can be available at least in public libraries. Before World War ii, Maritain had the longest list of published philosophical works among non-​Polish philosophers in Poland. After the war, Gilson had overtaken Maritain. Stefan Swieżawski, a well-​known Polish medievalist, had met Gilson before the World War ii. This meeting had formed the beginning of an interesting cooperation between Gilson and Polish intellectuals. Gilson

1 Mortimer J. Adler, Dialectic (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927). 2 Mortimer J. Adler, St. Thomas and the Gentiles (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University, 1938).

Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings

7

was interested in the then-​burgeoning Thomistic renaissance in Western Europe and North America, which was gaining a foothold in the Lublin School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin (kul). Simultaneously, a Polish publishing house, pax, had started to bring out Gilson’s major works, such as The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine,3 The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy,4 The Spirit of Thomism,5 and others.6 These books played a crucial academic and religious role in disseminating Gilson’s teaching in Polish academic and public discourse. Ongoing conflict of ideas between traditional Polish culture and Marxism required engagement in many areas of Polish life, including the spheres of media and academia. Under Communism, two Catholic universities had managed to remain open in Poland: the Catholic University of Lublin (the only private Catholic university in the Eastern bloc) and the Warsaw Theological Academy, the second being smaller than the first. Thomism, Gilson, and Maritain played a crucial role in both. Also, Gilson’s work had an especially strong position in academic terms, and his writings formed the foundations of the Christian philosophy and metaphysics that were taught at these universities and theological seminaries. In Poland, the word ‘Christian’ is largely synonymous with ‘Catholic’ in terms of denomination. Among the reasons for this fact, two are of special significance: population-​wise, Poland is predominantly Roman Catholic (86.9 percent). Orthodox Christians (1.31 percent) and Protestants (0.38 percent) form a small minority. Since Adler was not a Catholic at that time, he was not identified in Poland as a Catholic intellectual. He converted to Catholicism only late in life, after the fall of Communism (in December, 1999).7 Before that, he had been an Episcopalian (joining the Episcopal Church in 1984); and before that, he had declared himself to be agnostic.8 The fact that Adler was first an agnostic and later converted to Protestantism meant that he was not well aligned with the Polish religious and moral landscape (he was also a divorcé). While many of his intellectual interests (especially classical philosophy, Thomism) 3 Étienne Henri Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, trans, L.E.M. Lynch (New York: Random House, 1960); this is an English translation of Étienne Henri Gilson, Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin(Paris: J. Vrin, 1949). 4 Étienne Henri Gilson, Gifford Lectures 1931–​32, trans. Alfred Howard Campbell Downes (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1936). 5 Étienne Henri Gilson, The Spirit of Thomism (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1964). 6 By 1989, fourteen books of Gilson’s books had been translated into Polish and published. 7 Tim Lacy, “Intellectum Quaerens Fides: Mortimer J. Adler’s Journey of Mind and Heart,” US Catholic Historian 32, no. 2, Converts and Conversion (Spring 2014): 91–​116. 8 Lacy, “Intellectum Quaerens Fides,” 96.

8 Jaroszyński were undoubtedly quite close to those of leading Polish intellectuals and the general public, as the struggle against Communism raged, Adler’s moral and religious background was relevant to both groups, and they were unacceptable to the Polish Catholic hierarchy. As powerful as his writings were, at that time, his works could never gain sufficient momentum on their intellectual and literary strengths alone. On the ideological plane, Adler was also short on luck in other ways in Poland. In North America and Western Europe, as part of his readership market, he had a large group of adversaries absent from Communist Poland, these having been already eradicated in Poland as the enemies of the people. These were a middle class, whose status had been built on private ownership, which had been the foundation of business and political independence. Precious little space existed for Adler to occupy to gain a readership foothold in Poland, much less to advance beyond that. Moreover, when the conditions started to become ripe for him to gain a Polish readership after the fall of Communism, economic liberalism had started to take care of Poland’s ideological and intellectual opponents (Marxists). Additionally, the role of philosophy in Polish universities and seminaries, and in Polish culture generally, had started to weaken. Within Polish culture, practicing philosophy appeared to be increasingly irrelevant. Thus, by this time, the main antagonist that had generated interested in philosophy and its study had been largely defeated. The year 1995 saw publication of just one of Adler’s books, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (published in Polish under the title Dziesięć błędów filozoficznych).9 This was a time when philosophy was being increasingly marginalized, and Adler had not yet converted to Catholicism. No surprise, then, that this work caused hardly any intellectual stir, or that philosophical books in general were being published in fewer and fewer numbers. Ironically, under Communism, books related to Catholic topics used to be published in greater numbers of copies than after the fall of Communism. Despite having to overcome major difficulties, such as wartime rationing for printing-​paper, Gilson’s History of Christian Philosophy in Middle Ages, published in Polish in 1966 under the title Historia filozofii chrześcijańskiej w wiekach średnich, still sold 3,350 copies.10

9

Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them (New York: Macmillan, 1985). Polish ed. Dziesięć błędów filozoficznych, trans. Józef Marzęcki (Warsaw: medium, 1995). 10 Étienne Henri Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955). Polish ed. Historia filozofii chrześcijańskiej w wiekach średnich (Warsaw: pax, 1966).

Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings

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Now, such books are printed in much lower numbers, often not exceeding a few hundred copies. All books, even those concerned with religion or spirituality, are always addressed to some chief readership market. In the case of Adler’s books, his intended reader was chiefly a member of the American intelligentsia in possession of private capital (a financial foundation), which wanted to navigate the circle of ideas that constituted the legacy of Western culture. At the time, many high schools and colleges in North America had this type of academic profile, which made these people receptive readers: intelligent and well educated. Unfortunately, as Adler later came to realize, this situation has changed in America as well, which, less and less, remains a bastion of Western culture and increasingly undergoes a Left-​leaning cultural revolution. Many authors have tackled this cultural issue. Most notably is Allan Bloom, who is familiar to the Polish reading audience.11 Since Adler was the author who wrote most extensively on the subject of great books, given the current, cultural decline presently occurring in education in Europe and North America (even globally), addressing the issue of the nature of great books and great ideas, is, once again, becoming increasingly worthwhile.12 Adler believed that the only available antidote for the decline of Western culture would be a return to an understanding of the West’s founding principles. The concept of great books, with their ever-​enduring value, became for

11 12

Imelda Chłodna-​Błach, Edukacja amerykańska. Drogi i bezdroża [American education: Roads and wilderness] (Lublin: Wydawn, 2008). Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952–​to present, edited by Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Hutchins, as 54-​volume set. The second edition (1990) has 60 volumes. The original editors had three criteria for including a book in the series: the book must be relevant to contemporary matters, not only important in its historical context; it must be rewarding to re-​read; and it must be a part of “the great conversation about the great ideas,” judged to be relevant to at least twenty-​five of the 102 great ideas originally identified by the editors. For the index to the series, see Mortimer J. Adler and William Gorman, eds., The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1955 ©1952); for the Contents of the 1990 publication (2nd ed.), see http://​ www.bopsecrets.org/​gateway/​book-​lists/​greatbooks.htm; see also Mortimer J. Adler, The Great Books Ideas Program, Family Participation Plan for Reading and Discussing the Great Books of the Western World, with a Set of Reading Guides Prepared under the Supervision of Mortimer J. Adler (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1959); Mortimer J. Adler, How To Think about the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization, ed. Max Weismann (Chicago: Open Court, 2000).

10 Jaroszyński him a pathway to these principles. Since the list of great books is quite extensive, choosing from among them spoils even a literary connoisseur.13 Gilson was awarded with membership the Académie Française for his mastery of the French language. However, in Adler’s case, his popularity was not based as much on the elegance of his language as it was on the commonsense, cultured, and intelligent tone of his works. His writing is sparkling, witty, to the point; and has a natural, even colloquial, flow. Reading Adler is a joy, but this is so when one reads him in English. However, this sort of style places very heavy demands on translators to do it justice. When a translator lacks such an ability, no style would be better than a heavy one. 1

The Great Idea of Freedom

Moving on to a discussion of Adler’s work with great ideas, he frequently discussed the subject of freedom. In his essay, “Free Will and Determinism,”14 E. V. (an anonymous reader) initiates a debate with Adler by asking whether we have free will (the power to choose and decide which action we should take). E. V. maintains that, in the natural sciences, a set of reasons determines the course of events, saying, “I don’t see how I can reject a similar explanation of human affairs by the social sciences, and especially psychology, which disproves the notion of free will. Yet I balk at accepting the idea that we have no control over our own lives.”15 Adler replies: Those who deny free will usually do so because they explain all natural phenomena in terms of a chain of causes. They hold that, since man is a 13

14 15

In the case of Polish education, before World War ii and after, and even in Communist times, the educational curriculum contained ancient works (Greek and Roman); the classics were not unknown to the culture. So, Adler’s idea of the Great Books was by no means anything new in Poland, which would lend even more credence to the idea that his works would be of great interest to the Polish people. However, unlike the United States, which enjoys a degree of flexibility in what curriculum materials are selected at various levels of the educational system, the Polish Ministry of Education dictated not only what topics were covered, but what textbooks were selected to teach the mandatory core curriculum. Thus, even teachers who may have wanted to use Adler’s works would not have been permitted to do so without the permission of the Polish Ministry of Education. Therefore, the problem remaining was not whether Adler’s works were of value in Poland, but how to get his books into the hands of Poland’s students. Mortimer J. Adler, “Free Will and Determinism,” in Great Ideas from the Great Books (New York: Washington Square Press, 1961). Adler, “Free Will and Determinism,” 148–​151.

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part of nature, he cannot be exempt from this universal chain of causes. Those who uphold free will usually distinguish between human actions and all other natural events. They maintain that a man’s actions flow from his own initiative and choice. But some free-​willers believe that the initiative claimed for human action is characteristic of everything else in nature.16 The author of the question concerning freedom gave E. V. three opinions about it: (1) in the natural sciences, everything is in a cause-​effect relationship, which means that no freedom exists; (2) the social sciences must also take into account the causal relationship; and (3) individuals still have control over their lives. In response, Adler replies: (1) some people negate the existence of free will because they accept the cause-​effect link as present in nature and in human beings (and that a human being belongs to nature); (2) some people acknowledge the existence of free will because they claim a human being transcends nature; (3) everything in nature initiates its own activities; thus, freedom exists in nature, and, so, a human being initiating natural action is also free. Adler is pro-​freedom, but he does not specifically adopt any of the above positions. Instead, he opts to take a new standpoint that maintains the difference between freedom of decision and the freedom of action. He claims that these two types of freedom are not identical: the first type is the freedom to choose some direction, objective, or lifestyle. This does not depend upon external circumstances, which may restrict us, or even impair our actions, though it does not deprive us of the freedom to decide. In all circumstances, human beings are free to make decisions, although they might not be free to execute it, which depends on many circumstances to make it really possible. A real decision and real possibilities are not identical. Adler maintains that human freedom is specifically realized first, on the level of some decision to act or not to act. Because it constitutes the true nature of human freedom, Adler’s concept of freedom appears to me to be extremely relevant to the Polish people, Polish culture, and the entire world. It achieves a virtuous mean between contrary opposite extremes of deterministic and omnipotent claims that human beings sometimes attribute to human freedom. One the one hand, it transcends determinism’s reductionistic limitation of human freedom to the level of inanimate

16

Adler, “Free Will and Determinism,” 148.

12 Jaroszyński nature. On the other, it avoids the opposite contrary extreme of attributing to human freedom an infinite freedom properly attributable only to God. Properly conceptualized, human freedom starts with decision making. A free decision unites in one acting nature the generic and specific principles and causes belonging to rational animals: sensory, emotional, intellectual, and volitional. Sensation, passions, intellection, will all harmoniously unite within the free decision-​making process. More. Absent an act of will as the concluding act, human freedom reaches its total nature as a causal agency by traversing and transcending the genus of abstract universal feeling, or thinking, to enter the concrete genus of causing real, individual human action and behavior. This is the Great Idea of Freedom that truly defends human freedom itself against the contemporary contrary extremes imposed on it by: (1) a naturalistic determinism coming from a badly conceived, totally materialistic philosophy of science, and (2) an exaggerated anthropology originating from a badly conceived conflation of contemporary anthropology, psychology, and social science: one that tends to attribute to human beings a freedom proper only to an omnipotent God. Within this context, it is worthwhile for us to consider Adler’s systematic grounds for understanding freedom. While he might not have considered himself to be a practitioner of systematic philosophy, he would frequently draw from the philosophical teachings of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and in both grounds can be found for a systematic philosophy and for calling Adler a ‘systematic philosopher.’ Before so doing, however, we need to ask a fundamental, methodological question. Because they interpret the method of natural sciences as beyond reasonable doubt, proponents of determinism will appeal to the authority of the natural sciences as being essentially deterministic. Nonetheless, some methodological doubt exists regarding using appeal to the method of the contemporary physical sciences as the only, or best, method to use properly to understand human freedom’s complicated psychological nature. Can the natural sciences provide us with a complete, or best, answer to the question of what is a human being so that we may reasonably answer the question about human freedom within this context? A properly formed scientific image, or concept, of a human being essentially depends upon the material object (what we study) and the formal object (the way, point of view we use to study it: the method and chief aim, purpose, a scientist, in this or that field, uses to consider it). Contemporary natural sciences use highly restrictive methods and select aspects that, by default, cannot provide us with an answer to the complicated, qualitatively different and difficult psychological question: “What is a human being as a free decision maker and

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agent?” Consequently, by virtue of the empirical and mechanistic method they are constrained by their research interests to use, physical scientists are incapable of adequately understanding the nature of human freedom, much less answering it. Analogously, the methodology of the contemporary social, psychological, and anthropological sciences, which pride themselves on imitating the empirical and mechanistic method of the contemporary natural sciences, impose reductionistic limits on their methods for cognizing and explaining scientific activities related to the psychological nature of freedom that make the nature of freedom impossible for such investigators to imagine, properly conceive, and intelligibly explain to others. But because contemporary physical scientists and research practitioners who imitate their methods cannot form a proper image of a human being as a person (a self-​determining, decision-​ making agent), does not mean that no such free being exists. It means that the method the investigators have decided to use essentially involves wearing self-​imposed blinders making them incapable of seeing the nature of human freedom. As Adler righty observes, freedom is first and foremost realized inside a human being, as a decision-​making act. Using the empirically and mathematically constrained method of contemporary mathematical physics, can any contemporary social science seriously claim to see such an act and provide it with a scientific image, concept, understanding, or explanation? Because such an act, in the sense proper for these sciences, is, by nature, invisible, intangible, to them, it cannot. This reality is intangible, invisible, to such a science because, once strictly imagined, conceived, and understood, grasping this reality presupposes a set of immaterial acts that, by definition, qualitatively transcend, are of a qualitative intensity of existence in their organizational nature that exceed the nature of the such sciences.17 In sum, a priori, the methodology of such sciences precludes and excludes the possibility of the cognition of free human acts, including the intangibility and invisibility of acts of intellectual cognition and the possibility of intellectual-​volitional choice. 17

As acts of intellect and will, the scope of internally free human action exceeds sensory apprehension. The powers themselves are intangible, invisible, to the senses. However, the human intellect has the ability to recognize material, concrete, beings and, on a qualitatively higher, immaterial level of abstraction, is able transcend from material consideration of the concrete, acting nature to immaterial conception of an abstract essence and genus. It can then even move onto recognizing categories of being (this process of increasing transcendental recognition was solidified in the philosophical tradition as Tree of Porphyry). Because it is limited by the material character of a physical organ in and through which it must exercise its activity (such as eyeball or an ear), no sense is capable of going through such transcendental development.

14 Jaroszyński By nature, all healthy adolescent and adult human beings experience freedom in the form of acts of decision making. This may consist in an experience as simple as that of selecting some commodity in a shopping mall, or as complicated as a choice of studies, profession, marriage, health, or way of life. We especially sense, intensely feel, our own freedom when making moral decisions. However, a great difference exists between concretely experiencing, sensing, feeling internal freedom and abstractly explaining its nature in terms of some knowledge framework, a philosophical system, or contemporary physical, psychological, social, or anthropological sciences. Indeed, can human freedom be explained on a systemic level at all? If so, how, and by which system? How can explanations vary in different systems? What are the intrinsic first principles of human freedom that first cause human freedom actually to exist? To explain this, we need to clarify words and terms we have to use when talking about a power capable of causing an activity like decision making. Abstractly considered, when we talk about human freedom, we are necessarily constrained to use a kind of mental shorthand. The word ‘freedom’ is a noun, but this does not mean we are dealing with a concrete thing, physical substance. Thinking we do so lies at the heart of the mistake Plato made when he tried to explain the nature of real, but intangible, invisible, realities, actions, and relations, such as justice, courage, moderation and other psychological phenomena in terms of tangible and visible realities. Analogously, he transferred to such intangible and invisible beings the tangible and visible reality of a material/​organizational whole: a physical, substance. In a metaphysical (non-​visible, intangible) sense, freedom (free decision making) is no static thing. Like eating, walking, or thinking, it is a whole action caused by harmoniously uniting multiple, different actions into parts (intellect, will, emotions) of numerically one, whole, human action: a free decision. Some numerically one, single individual walks, thinks, wants, and makes decisions. The generic action of walking is conducted by means of harmonizing specific parts (legs. bodily core, arm, head) into numerically one, whole, human action. Analogously, a human being who thinks and makes free decisions does so by first harmonizing multiple acts of immaterial facultative parts of intellect and will into numerically one whole act of a free decision. Precisely how does this happen? When we ask questions about human freedom, we are talking about decisions made by a human being (rational animal) in and through a facultative power (a human soul) capable of synthesizing, harmonizing, personal acts of intellect and will. A question about human freedom is a question about what causes making free decisions, free acts of choice. Technically speaking, we are talking about human beings as decision-​making producers. Because

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we psychologically, internally, experience, realize that we cause acts of free choice, free decisions, all human beings who experience being free evidently, unquestionably, perceive this psychological awareness of producing our own decisions. Indeed, we experience myriads of such acts practically and incessantly psychologically running inside us all the time. While lived experience of personal acts of individual decision making refers to an undeniable reality existing within a healthy human psyche, the question of how precisely and accurately to explain this experience is a different, and difficult, issue. As scientists, how do we reasonably make this experience intelligible to ourselves and to others? By methodological constraints inherent to their chosen methods, contemporary physical, social, psychological, and anthropological sciences cannot make the nature of this experience intelligible to themselves, much less to anyone else. For the same reason, these sciences cannot determine anything about the nature, organizational structure, of human freedom. As Adler correctly realized, to do these things, we must abandon the methods of thinkers like Francis Bacon and David Hume and return to a philosophical anthropology and philosophical psychology akin to that of Aristotle and Aquinas. Only therein will we discover the integral image of a human person that contains the needed scientific concept (scientific object) capable making intelligible, and, thereby, explaining first principles, powers, capable of causing freely chosen acts: acts harmonizing cognition and will. When we adopt this different psychological approach, we immediately recognize a need to consider free human action as a synthesis of the two psychological powers of intellect and will. That this is so becomes easier to intellectually understand if we can answer the following questions: What is a human being really capable of making as an individual object of free decision making in an individual situation? What must be the nature of something for it actually to become something capable for a human being to choose in the here and now? What is the formal, specific, object of human choice? At a minimum, it must be something that, in some way, some human being is capable of identifying. No human being chooses totally blindly. We can only choose what, in some way, we can know and do (a conceivably doable deed). We can only do what, to some extent, we immediately know or can come to know. We can recognize, in turn, sensory and intellectual objects. Our ability to know sensory objects like a color or a sound is more limited in extent than is our ability to apprehend intelligible ones; and this is especially so in cases that involve need to employ an external physical organ like the eye or ear in contrast to a common bodily sense that enables us both to touch and see a quality like shape. As Adler well understood, objects that stimulate intellectual

16 Jaroszyński cognition are not limited by organic restraints. While the sense faculties cannot enable us to perceive personal relationships like love and hatred or the existence of a being simply as a being, the intellect does provide us with the ability to recognize these realities. More. Through the immaterial power of the human intellect, we become capable of understanding even total and partial negations in, and of, being. For example, when we conceive of ‘nothing’ as having no being whatsoever. Or when we conceive of freedom as being totally or partially unlimited or unrestrained. The human will is naturally incapable of choosing blindly. We can only choose what, to some extent, we know. If we know nothing, we can choose nothing. The implications of this psychological reality were clear to Adler: He understood that the concept of human freedom comprises both human intellect and will. We cannot choose, make free decisions about, what we in no way know or want. In addition, while it is possible for human beings to think about wanting any thing conceivable by the human mind, we may only rationally do so at the psychological stage of pre-​decision. The state of rational decision making, choosing, demands being aware of, and intentionally avoiding, conceptually thinking about anything that might involve a behavioral contradiction (choosing to do an impossible action). As Adler also well understood, the psychological constitution of non-​human animals is far less complicated than that of human beings. He recognized that non-​human animals’ senses exist in total service of instinct; in no way are they able to transcend their own animal instinct; their behavior is completely determined by their animal nature. They are limited to instinctive action, not free decision making. By contrast, human beings’ psychological field of action is not wholly constrained by animal instinct; it is not limited to spur-​of-​the moment decisions. It is, however, limited by personal strength and ability, by whether an action is humanly doable considered as such, or doable by this or that person at this or that time or place, this or that set of circumstances. A major problem about the nature of abstractly considered freedom is that we cannot properly recognize individual decision making when we consider freedom in this way. When considered separately from an acting subject (some specific, individual human being), and cognitive powers capable of making decisions (of will and intellect, for instance, in the case of human beings), and the object activating a decision (the action intellectually understood by a human being) as a doable deed, we lack sufficient information to determine whether an action is freely, or instinctively, decided. In such situations, human beings are not determined (limited) by instinct to react to one specific concrete action or kind of good. Abstractly considered, human beings may think

Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings

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about anything and everything (a fact evinced by the science of metaphysics, whose subject is anything and everything that is: being qua being), while non-​ human animals display no ability to know in any non-​instinctive way. In this abstract situation, the human power of choice also appears to be unlimited. It may direct the concept of choice (I want this) to virtually anything, even toward really impossible human deeds for any and every human being, or for this or that person in this or that situation. On the level of the abstract decision making, in a way, the power of human choice is unlimited. Simply because a person intensely desires this or that, especially during times of intense emotional stress or conflict, a behaviorally impossible deed can easily become conflated with the conceptually thinkable one. As Adler sagely observes, persons might want to fly to the Sun, even if they well know that this is impossible to do.18 Thus, while from an intellectual perspective, to some extent, the human will considered simply as a will is unlimited in relation to what it can actually desire, strictly speaking, without intellectual direction, it is not even limited by itself. A person might simultaneously want and not want something. This is a situation in which unlimited choice confronts lack of intellectual restraint. In it, only one limitation of the will appears to exist; but, paradoxically, this apparent limitation confirms personal freedom. I might want and not want, to be, or have, some good. While each choice is ultimately motivated by some natural desire for some kind of goodness, abstractly considered, goodness of choice is unlimited. Hence, apparently it has no limitation. It considers no actually specific good as really, absolutely, totally good in all respects and in every way as real goodness per se, or absolute goodness. Because no specific good as an actually possible object of choice is an absolutely perfect good, no such good has the power to force any human being to desire, much less be coerced, to choose, it. The choice of real, specific, and individual goods we face do not exhaust our natural desire for perfect goodness: to become perfectly good. From the start, limited human cognitive abilities constrain the dynamics of a real human choice. Beyond that, our functioning within a specific ecosystem, global system, universe system, or anthropo-​system to which those cognitive abilities (or instincts) have to adapt further restricts these dynamics. Nonetheless, abstractly considered as human beings, we are cognitively open to the infinite. Therein, we inhabit an onto-​system recognized as one sphere open to an entire hierarchy of goodness and mutual causal relationships of all goods. 18 Adler, Great Ideas from the Great Books, 148.

18 Jaroszyński Within the different finite systems in which we live our everyday lives, we directly experience no absolutely perfect goodness: the one form of unique good human beings could not fail to choose, if they were ever directly to cognize it. Because of the situation of psychological imperfection in which we find ourselves within such systems, as long as human beings do not see an absolutely perfect God, in a way face-​to-​face, as Infinite Goodness, we have the possibility, like biblical Adam and Eve, of choosing or not choosing God.19 While the Christian conception of God is of such a form of perfect goodness, because such a reality exceeds the qualitative powers of human cognition and love, by natural ability, no human being has the psychological power to know God directly (face-​to-​face). Nonetheless, on this level, since the existence of such a perfect goodness is really conceivable, some possibility exists to talk about a special intensification, or strengthening, of natural psychological powers of intellect and will by God. Traditionally, Christians call this type of spiritual strengthening ‘grace.’ Unhappily, the opponents of free will to which, at the start of this chapter, I cited Adler making reference, were incapable of considering this as a real, behavioral possibility. While Adler’s debate opponents knew each other’s viewpoints, unfortunately, none was capable of coming anywhere near to intellectually teaching about spiritual elevation of human freedom similar to that of Aquinas, which, at the time, Adler, at the very least, had considered plausible. That such was the case is easily understandable. Since determinists reduce free will to mechanical-​like, cause/​effect relationships, and, thus, deprive the will of free decision making, speaking about a psychological quality like grace is unimaginable—​conceptually and behaviorally inconceivable to them. Since the followers of absolute freedom attribute absolute power to the human will abstractly considered, they appear to conceive of human beings as God, or as self-​creators, in some sort of way akin to Sartrean existentialism. Neither view stands in need of talk about some otherwise conceivable, supernatural quality like grace. Neither of these approaches was methodologically prepared to operate with a vision of a human being possessed of a subjectivity that includes faculties of intellect and will: a human soul, which is the way Adler had conceived of a human being, and, from what I have discussed thus far in this chapter, appears conceptually and behaviorally to contradict a healthy psychological experience of the reality of the nature of free, human decision making. No soul,

19 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, i, qqs. 1–​5, q. 82.

Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings

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no faculties of intellect and will, no individual human choice is behaviorally possible. In its concluding phase, free choice, free decision making, is a cooperative act of a human faculty, a human will (an appetite of a human intellect) and a human intellect. A will existing unrelated to an intellect is no human will. Because nothing is made really necessary by an abstract openness to goods, being endlessly open to endlessly diverse goods, such an abstractly existing will might imaginably and conceivably choose what it wants. But why would it choose? Because it wants? But why does it want? Because it wants? Such an act of will qualitatively transcends the determination of particular goods. This is the supposed field of real human freedom: self-​determination without any determination? Such a will is no human will. While the followers of unlimited human freedom are wrong when they deify an abstract will as human, the modern and contemporary scientific opponents of human freedom with whom Adler had fictionally debated had reduced such freedom to the level of non-​human animals, or to mechanistic cause and effect relations. None of them was intellectually capable of taking up the debate with Adler’s standpoint, which was not determinism or indeterminism, but real self-​determinism:20 a human being, with the power of personal intellect and will, selecting the motive for choice, and the choice, or rejecting it with a qualitative greatness stronger than the force of impact of any other goodness, except for that of God. Conceived as Absolute, or Absolutely Perfect Goodness, God is the kind of goodness that contains within itself all types of goodnesses. In this case, for us to be perfectly free, we would have to know God face-​to-​face as the absolute fulfillment, perfection, of the human will, intellect, and whole person: an irresistibly beautiful, lovable, object. Nonetheless, as long as we do not cognize some Absolute Goodness in such a way, we have the freedom of choice between particular goods. Understandable, if we see that the unlimited openness of our abstractly conceived will to goodness exists in dynamic, existential, contrast to the limitation of the goods by which our concretely conceived human will exists by its limited, natural powers capable of making imperfect human decisions.

20

Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, I-​Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology, trans. Marie Lescoe (New Britain, CT: Mariel Publications, 1983).

20 Jaroszyński 2

Religion or Modern and Contemporary Science as the Semiotic Measure of Culture?

Moving on to consideration of the possibility of grace influencing human freedom, we must necessarily consider the Great Idea of Freedom in relation to the Great Idea of Religion. But what precisely is religion and what, if any, great idea or ideas does it entail? Because the religious idea of grace qualitatively elevates, intensifies, the internally existing psychological powers of the human intellect and will beyond their natural capabilities, in some way, for them to represent great ideas, the idea of transcendence must necessarily be contained within the nature of religion and freedom. If the idea of religion is to be considered as great, however, this would have to be chiefly because of its causal influence on perfecting human freedom as an internal, transcendentally perfecting quality of the human soul. Also, in a way, both ideas must be considered to be transcendental because of their mutual reference to God as a giver of grace through some religious activity to some internal power, or powers, of freedom existing within some, really existing human soul. At this point, a key question to consider is whether such objects of religious discourse and religion, considered as such, meet the conditions of rationality and, especially, of science. For many centuries, Western culture has treated, and continues to treat, science as the maximum measure or sign that a culture is great. Nevertheless, because freedom and religion are fields of culture, this observation is rationally open to challenge by the natures of the ideas of freedom and religion. This is evinced by the relationship that had existed in ancient Greek, Roman, and medieval Christian religions and science. Therein, no essential conflict ever existed between science and religion. Precisely this essential connection between them was a chief cause and sign of the greatness of science. This essential conflict started in modern times and has continued to this day. Adler takes up the topic of the relationship between the great ideas of science and religion in a lecture he entitled, “The Conflict of Science and Religion,” in which he presents several signs of an apparent conflict between science and religion.21 First, the verbatim biblical text cannot be reconciled with the state of knowledge of contemporary science. Especially when it comes to the creation of the world and humanity, the biblical message appears to be inconsistent with, even conceptually contradictory to, contemporary physics, geology, astronomy, and biology. 21 Adler, Great Ideas from the Great Books, 14–​17.

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In his answer to this issue, Adler indicates that science and religion: (1) have different objectives, (2) seek to find the answer to different questions, and (3) offer humanity different things. What questions does religion chiefly try to answer? According to Adler, these are questions about God’s existence and nature, God’s governance of the universe, and divine providence. Adler, believed that considering the truth of the matter, such questions fall outside the competencies of contemporary empirical sciences. While different religions may offer different answers, empirical science lacks the competence to solve which answers to such questions are true or false. Practically considered, religion’s nature inclines religious human beings to want to have contact with God to give meaning and value to human life. However, to do so, as I have shown, religion must first and foremost provide human beings with the means to seek God’s help (grace) and to be receptive to receiving it. Modern and contemporary science can provide no means for receiving this assistance. Empirical science describes the world in which we live in sensory detail, gives us sensory and mathematical depictions of the structure of physical things and of their behavior; how they physically originate from something preceding them, and what they are; and how we can use them. We can profitably apply modern and contemporary scientific achievements in a wide range of ways, from feeding newborn babies to making a hydrogen bomb. Regardless, this science can neither tell us why or for what chief reason things exist, nor can it protect us against the power it offers to us. Furthermore, Adler points out that scientific knowledge thus conceived allows us to heal or poison, build or destroy. Generally, he stresses that no problem really exists in reconciling science and religion; but another, more specific one crucial for humanity to consider does exist: how to reconcile the biblical version of the world’s creation with the modern teaching about evolutionism. Adler admits that resolving the contemporary dispute between evolution and biblical faith is by no means easy. Following teachings of Augustine, Adler tells his readers that, to effect this reconciliation, we must read Genesis in a more nuanced way. For example, he says that the six days of creation represent an order of events, not a specific temporal sequence. God created all things simultaneously in their causes and established an order that develops in time. Contemporary physics will tell us a lot about this development that is not in general conflict with the Bible. Nonetheless, one conflicting point does exist: Genesis says that human beings were created in God’s image: “and God made man, according to the image of God he made him (kat’eikona theou), male and female he made them.”22 Only human beings possess psychological faculties of reason and free choice of will. This makes us radically different 22

Genesis 1:27.

22 Jaroszyński from other animals. This is what Genesis emphasizes. Science, on the other hand, continues to be able to show how similar human beings are to non-​ human animals; (we even) share some genes with plants).23 Regarding this psychological and anthropological issue, simultaneously, contemporary biology and the Bible cannot both be right. According to Adler, this is where the real conflict between contemporary science and religion chiefly occurs and needs to be resolved. Not too many conflicts like this exist, however; and Adler admits that he does not know when or whether this conflict might be solved. Adler’s reasoning about this conflict contains many insightful topics and arguments that can throw light on this debate even today. For example, while science and religion can talk about the same subject, they chiefly aim to answer different questions about the subject using different methods of research and for different main ends. Contemporary science chiefly looks for answers to technical, physical questions about how to or how many, and it mainly seeks to gain technological mastery over physical nature. In contrast, revealed religions (especially the world’s historically great ones) tend to search for answers to questions about who and why, about a creator and the main aim of creating. The historically great world religions build on some sort of sacred revelation, not on technologically and mathematically dependent, scientific knowledge. Modern and contemporary science are not chiefly interested in understanding who made the physical universe come into existence, who sustains the world in existence, and why this happens. Neither is its chief purpose the practical one of achieving future, personal salvation. It is chiefly interested in studying the world as an organizational, physical whole; and its main purpose in so doing is the practical one of understanding what parts essentially harmonize to comprise this whole, and how they do so, so as to be able technologically to dominate and control their behavior. Its chief aim is not to understand physical nature to gain salvation of an immortal soul in an afterlife. It is technologically to master physical nature so as to improve human life in the present. Chief concerns that, for millennia, have occupied the world’s great religious are not main concerns of modern and contemporary physical science. Nor are the methods or aims of these investigations the same.24 For great world religions, paying attention to the character of a sacral text is most necessary. Even though as far back as the thirteen century, Christian theologians had recognized four levels of scriptural interpretation (verbatim; tropological: to identify a rhetorical figure; allegorical: to find the theological 23 24

For more on this research, see Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, “What Does It Mean To Be Human?” https://​humanorigins.si.edu/​evidence/​genetics. Piotr Jaroszyński, Science in Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 189–​190, 205–​208.

Reflections on Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings

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sense concealed within the rhetorical figure; and anagogic: what a person should do to be saved), some Christians who claim to be experts in Christian scholarship are unaware that this centuries-​old scholarship exists and insist that the whole of biblical interpretation must be reduced to verbatim.25 In his famous encyclical, Fides et ratio (Faith and reason),26 Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul ii) discussed these issues. Therein, like Adler, he showed that faith and reason do not essentially contradict each other. Instead, they complete each other as different ways of considering the same whole. That Adler had paid attention so many years ago to such significant matters in the context of this debate is necessary to realize for everyone interested in such issues, including Poles. No doubt, Wojtyła was aware of Adler’s teachings, as he was of those of Mieczysław Albert. Krąpiec, who had emphasized the transcendent nature of human experience as that of a self possessing a rational nature, plus key aspects of human transcendence related to nature (like cognition, love, freedom) and society (such as subjectivity under law, personal dignity, completeness).27 3

Conclusion

While religion is great chiefly because it is transcendental, and transcendental chiefly because it is directed toward a transcendent God, as Adler perceptively grasped, it draws from the human condition common-​sensical cognition of human contingency and the exceptional nature of human beings within the order of creation. While, in a sense, this is a primeval experience, it is historically repeated and expressed on the level of culture represented by different communities as part of a historical human and philosophical enterprise. To their detriment, this experience is not shared by many modern and contemporary empirical scientists regarding their subject, method, and aim, or with regard to the scientific questions they chiefly seek to answer. Neither is this great conversation and enterprise shared by other creatures on Earth. It largely exists for a few contemporary human beings scattered throughout the world. Sadly, the contemporary concept of science tends to be dominated by an intellectually narrow reductionism that often commits the mistake of 25 Jaroszyński, Science in Culture, 87–​92. 26 Catholic Church, Encyclical Letter, Fides et ratio, of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference 1998). 27 Krąpiec, I–​Man, 325–​326.

24 Jaroszyński extrapolating its technological, scientific cognition from the mathematical and natural sciences onto human cognition considered as a whole, even onto metaphysical and moral aims of human life (which clearly transcend the competence of such methods and aims). While this extrapolation is often not conscious or explicitly intentional, sometimes it is driven by political ideology, not dispassionate, scientific pursuit of truth. When so done, it often appears to be a manifestation of a militant struggle on the part of its practitioners as a fideistic-​atheistic one against religion in general (as displayed by contemporary utopian socialism and Communism), or against some sort of religious fideism, with which it sometimes, and irrationally, tends to identify all religion. Given such types of irrational reductionism, religion often becomes for those attacked a refuge and defense against assigning the human condition to the level of a tecnocratically manipulable object, to that of a non-​human animal or technocratically relational cog in a machine: a being deprived of the status of personhood, rational substance. More. It becomes the sole r­ efuge of a personalistic philosophy. Because the Christian religion has historically been the guardian of human dignity as a form of personal dignity, contemporary, pseudo-​scientific ideologues tend, especially to attack Christians. Ap ­ ersonalized God and a human being as a person are two greatest and most precious religious ideas present and repeatedly defended in Adler’s writings. All seriously religious believers owe him a great debt of gratitude for his lifelong defense of them. Thank you, Mortimer J. Adler!28

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Dialectic. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927. oclc: 1021148. Adler, Mortimer J. “Free Will and Determinism.” In Great Ideas from the Great Books. New York: Washington Square Press, 1961. oclc: 1455928. Adler, Mortimer J. The Great Books Ideas Program, Family Participation Plan for Reading and Discussing the Great Books of the Western World, with a Set of Reading Guides Prepared under the Supervision of Mortimer J. Adler. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1959. oclc: 10294668.

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This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

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Adler, Mortimer J, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1955 ©1952. oclc: 910651 Adler, Mortimer J. How To Think about the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization. Edited by Max Weismann. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. isbn: 9780812694123. Adler, Mortimer J. St. Thomas and the Gentiles. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University,1938. oclc: 905907122. Adler, Mortimer J. Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them. New York: Macmillan, 1985. isbn: 9780025003309. Polish edition Dziesięć błędów filozoficznych. Translated by Józef Marzęcki. Warsaw: Medium, 1995. isbn: 9788385312796. Adorno, Theodor W. “Lecture 18, 24 July 1958.” In An Introduction to Dialectics. Edited by Christoph Ziermann. Translated by Nicholas Walker. Malden, MA: Polity, 1958/​ 2017. isbn: 9780745693118. Catholic Church, Encyclical Letter, Fides et ratio, of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference 1998. isbn: 9781574553024. Chłodna-​Błach, Imelda. Edukacja amerykańska. Drogi i bezdroża [American education: Roads and wilderness]. Lublin: Wydawn, 2008. isbn: 9788373637337. Gilson, Étienne Henri. History of Christian Philosophy in Middle Ages. New York: Random House, 1955. oclc: 231526. Published in Polish as Historia filozofii chrześcijańskiej w wiekach średnich. Warsaw: pax, 1966. oclc: 977758539. Gilson, Étienne Henri. The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine. Translated by L. E. M. Lynch. New York: Random House, 1960. oclc 181032 English translation of Gilson, Étienne Henri. Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin. Paris: J. Vrin, 1949. oclc: 22946802. Gilson, Étienne Henri. The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy. Gifford Lectures 1931–​32. Translated by Alfred Howard Campbell Downes. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1936. oclc 1069264639. Gilson, Étienne Henri. The Spirit of Thomism. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1964. oclc 3006209. Jaroszyński, Piotr. Science in Culture. Translated from the Polish by Hugh McDonald. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. isbn: 9789042021365; e-​book available at ProQuest E-​ book Central, https://​e-​bookcentral-​proquest-​com.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/​lib/​buffalo/​ detail.action?docID=556771. Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert. I-​Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology. Translated by Francis J. Lescoe. New Britain, CT: Mariel Publications, 1983. isbn: 9780910919012.

26 Jaroszyński Lacy, Tim. “Intellectum Quaerens Fides: Mortimer J. Adler’s Journey of Mind and Heart.” US Catholic Historian 32, no. 2, Converts and Conversion (Spring 2014): 91–​116. doi: 10.1353/​cht.2014.0011. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, “What Does It Mean To Be Human?” https://​humanorigins.si.edu/​evidence/​genetics.

­c hapter 2

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas Maria Joanna Gondek Abstract This chapter considers the human ability to exercise acts of faith, especially religious faith. For existential reasons, especially the prospect of death, human beings open up to the absolute being, forming a religious relationship, the development of which depends on individual persons’ free decisions. Such relationship may remain unfulfilled or it may become the reason for striving for fulfillment. This reality involves dramatic choices, which require human actions be transformed in a soteriological perspective. The way to achieve this is through religious actions such as prayer, sacrifice, or asceticism. Such actions have an individual character, yet their effects are manifest in various social dimensions. In this chapter, h these dimensions are considered.

Keywords asceticism –​death –​development –​faith –​freedom –​self-​fulfillment –​human person –​prayer –​quality –​religion –​sacrifice

This chapter focuses attention on a specific human quality: The ability to exercise acts of faith semiotically (that is, through the action of signs and symbols).1 Being able to exercise acts of faith is a specific human quality. More. Acts of religious faith are a dominant area of human life in which acts of faith function, including as signs and symbols. For existential reasons, especially with the prospect of death, we human beings tend existentially to become receptive

1 On the nature of semiotics as related to the action of signs and symbols, see John N. Deely, Basics of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

© Maria Joanna Gondek, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_004

28 Gondek to some awareness of the existence of an absolute being. In this way, we start to form a religious relationship the development of which depends upon a free, human decision expressed in terms of distinctive signs and symbols representing free and religious relationships and actions. It may remain unfulfilled or become the reason for personal fulfillment. Religious development involves dramatic choices, requiring symbolic and semantic influences human actions, gestures, to transform them from signifying a qualitatively natural to a qualitatively more-​than-​natural personal and social dimension—​from being merely human to more-​than-​human in relation to some sense of salvation. Symbolic, free religious actions like prayer, sacrifice, and asceticism attempt to contribute to this transformation. While they have an individual character, they also manifest themselves in social dimensions. In this chapter, I will consider both of these dimensions. For many people, religion is a crucial individual and social sphere related to personal fulfillment. It concerns our relationship to some sort of absolute being and reveals the conditions of this relationship. In so doing, religion provides many solutions for people about existence and human destiny. It demonstrates a teleology related to human existence in the prospect of life after death and introduces contents that semiotically unveil to us otherwise cognitively inaccessible areas of human existence. Since solutions to questions about life after death have some relation to the sphere of religion; religion opens up possibility of fulfillment of human life in a qualitatively higher dimension unavailable to other dimensions of human awareness. While, to some extent, response to deepest spiritual longings manifests the greatness of the idea of religion, accepting religious solutions is connected with some qualitative strength, intensity of religious involvement. Religious content offers solutions that need faith-​based acceptance. More. Religious content: (1) introduces requirements concerning a way of human living, and (2) determines semiotically expressed moral rules of conduct, ways of behaving, that transform human life in a religious perspective. People who act in relation to religious ends constantly undertake to enact symbolic ways of living that behaviorally transform their lives. Such a state of being cannot function without involvement of human freedom, which often also, perhaps always, manifests semiotic expression (for example, by saluting a flag). This involvement reveals the crucial role freedom plays in religion and religious activity. In the face of the complexity of such philosophical considerations about human freedom’s concrete nature, in this chapter, I will concentrate on what Mortimer J. Adler had considered to be a fundamental and natural way that human beings often understand

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 29

freedom as a self-​determined, volitional act: “freedom of the will in its acts of choice.”2 In the chapter, I especially refer to personal and, hence, judicious and free grounds for religious actions: the way free choice necessarily influences religious activity. I focus particularly on symbolic religious acts as crucial for ­personal and social fulfillment within a religious context. I maintain that semiotically expressed free human decision constitutes a necessary condition for performing religious acts. At the same time, I highlight: (1) the crucial role that personal, semiotic enactment plays in freedom and religion, (2) the way this role manifests itself in free human decisions in relation to absolute being, and (3) the wisdom-​oriented philosophical considerations of freedom and religion influenced by the inspiration of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. 1

Acts of Belief as the Basis for Religion

Religion is connected with a person’s acceptance of something by involving a belief factor. To understand this connection between religion and acceptance, we need to recognize that among others, the term ‘belief’ may refer to: (1) an act (believing), (2) an object (what is believed), or (3) an ability to believe.3 In this chapter, my chief concern is with belief as a human act. In different spheres of human activity, people often deal with some transcendent reality not immediately available to us in direct or indirect cognition. At times, the nature of such a reality is not cognitively available to us at all; yet, in some way we accept its existence. By virtue of acts of belief, we first gain access to such realities. These acts are directed toward the contents communicated to us by other people. A child’s development characterizes a way of cognizing reality largely dominated by acts of belief. Children cannot directly and specifically cognize many aspects of reality; but they believe the contents of such realities communicated by their parents. Analogously, the process of school education involves cognition based on many acts of belief. For example, students are often directed to listen to the content of communications from teachers, experts, and textbooks. More specialized scientific development requires many acts of belief. It is impossible for scientists directly and thoroughly to check each premise 2 Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 102. 3 Stanisław Kamiński, “Types of Human Knowledge,” in On the Metaphysical Cognition, trans. Maciej B. Stępień (Lublin-​Roma: Società Internazionale Tommaso D’Aquino, 2020), 131.

30 Gondek they adopt. Human lifespan does not allow us to conduct scientific research from scratch. It is natural for all human beings to believe some results of work passed on by others and to accept some claimed-​to-​be scientific output of previous generations. Since checking all content signified by every premise proposed to us to learn is impossible, the education process essentially demands many acts of belief. Acts of belief, however, concern more than a person’s speculative, or theoretical, educational development. Acts of belief influence our practical decisions, they affect human behavior. They function against the background of social and organizational relationships with other people with whom we socially communicate. Believing contents we receive from others affects the personal life choices we make and our ability socially and organizationally to relate to others. Decisions taken under their influence build individual and social and organizational moral conduct. In this case, the psychological sphere of emotional and conceptual life becomes activated and develops related to sources of information and the informational content we receive from these sources. In human development, acts of belief tend to generate more or less assessment, discernment, skills about the content of information proposed for belief and the reliability the sources of this content’s origin. While not always recognized, acts of belief play a significantly dominant role in human life and relationships. They are not simply bound up with a normal course of development. They are necessary to pursue human life for any extended time. This fact strongly suggests that anyone inquiring about the foundation for an act of belief needs to look for its chief source in human nature, in a specifically personal, psychological, behavioral one: A rational nature, one capable of acts of intellectual cognition and acts of free decision.4 More. Since persons pursue their cognitive and moral life against the background of relationships to other persons, acts of belief encompasses all these human, specific differences. An act of belief is an intellectual act that finds itself in a specific cognitive situation. In an act of belief, the human intellect naturally seeks truth, but, simultaneously, does not find real possibility of attaining this within the cognitive range available to it. Thus, it has no conditions for forming a conviction based upon a non-​dependent search. At this

4 “The person may be only a spiritual being, because only on the canvas of spirituality can one understand consciousness (especially self-​consciousness) and freedom. Both of them, in turn, condition responsibility. All of these features are manifestations of personal life and being.” John Paul ii, Considerations on the Essence of Man, trans. John Grondelski (Lublin-​ Roma: Società Internazionale Tomasso D’Aquino, 2016), 157.

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 31

juncture, a person becomes directed toward cognitive sources which will bring attainment of the sought-​after truth. A crucial moment then occurs, which determines the real nature of an act of belief. Involvement of the intellect itself is insufficient. Beyond the human intellect, persons need to make the decision to recognize at least one other psychological sources from which they may derive the content and recognize the content itself: the human will. In so doing, a person activates the will and, with its activation, engages a behavioral sphere characteristic of practical engagement. Hence, we may properly define an act of belief as a cognitive act of reason occurring under volitional influence.5 So conceived, we may consider an act of belief in at least two different ways: (1) objectively, and (2) subjectively. The objective consideration views an act of belief chiefly in relation to the nature of what activates human interest, what presents itself to human consciousness as a theoretical-​cognitive cause of action, a possibly doable, human act. In terms of its object, an act of belief considers such cognitive content (what is known), not persons in their cognitive processes and individual personal abilities and circumstances. In contrast, the subjective consideration of an act of belief concerns the psychological structure of an act of belief. This structure reveals elements characteristic of practical human action. It is oriented toward action (a doable, or undoable deed for this or that person in an individual situation) and not mainly toward theoretical (simply observational) activity. Herein exists the activity of the will influencing reason to accept or reject a particular judgment as ‘practically true.’ In this situation, since it affects decision of personal acceptance based upon personal ability, the will transcends the judgments of theoretical reason.6 In different ways, intellect and will are faced with judgments that have not been yet been tested, proven or disproven. The truth of neither judgment is obvious.7 However, by virtue of exercise of free choice of the will, they may become recognized as true or false, doable or undoable. The reasons, causes, why the will affects the intellect to accept or reject a judgment of belief, are of great significance. Credibility of the person communicating specific cognitive content constitutes the good that activates and guides the will. At this juncture, I need to emphasize a crucial factor revealed by an act of human belief: Beyond the individual will of a believer, another person is the source of the acquired information, communicated content. Credibility of the person who communicates the content becomes part of 5 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, ii–​i i, q. 2, a. 1. 6 Kamiński, “Types of Human Knowledge,” 132. 7 Kamiński, “Types of Human Knowledge,” 132.

32 Gondek the essential object of an act of belief. Owing to the fact that the content is communicated by another, good or bad, honest or dishonest, trustworthy or untrustworthy person, an act of belief has a social dimension. It involves a factor of trust in another person as good. The social context created by another person is an essential part of objective reason that generates, causes, an act of belief or disbelief. Since acts of belief accompany people in different life circumstances, they perform a crucial role in the sphere of practical action. Because they occur by virtue of the permeation of volitional acts into intellectual ones, they have a personal character. Acts of belief are necessary for a person to function and develop. They happen with the aid of social relationships. However, most commonly, we do not think about such a broad context of functioning of acts of belief. Many of us tend to associate, or reduce, acts of belief to the religious sphere. Because the most important domain in which human acts of belief function tend to be acts of religious faith why we do so is easily comprehensible. Yet, because acts of belief function also outside the sphere of religious acts, we cannot reasonably reduce them to acts of religion. They are conceptually wider in scope. At the same time, personal capacity for acts of belief provides the basis of executing, enacting, all acts of belief, including specifically religious ones. 2

The Perfecting Power of Religious Actions

Persons are naturally inclined to experience with special intensity the conditions of their own existence (especially disease and death) as associated with the transitory nature of human life. No human being can guarantee with absolute certainty another day of survival. Tragic events occurring on a social scale, like wars or pandemics, clearly show the truth of this claim. Transculturally and globally, they concern every person. Regarding existential experiences, especially the prospect of death and experiencing different failings, people are inclined to form specific and individual kinds of responses. At times, we open up to a reality qualitatively exceeding the frailty of our human condition and dimensions of life. We seek help and trust in a reality that transcends us in qualitative strength and is devoid of our frailty. This response highlights the relationship that constitutes a person relating to a variously conceived, absolute being. The relationship engendered by such an attitude constitutes religion’s essence. The etymological meaning of the term ‘religion’ reflects an active character of this relationship. Religion is derived from the Latin term: (1) relegere,

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 33

meaning intellectually considering anything related to cultivating a relationship with absolute being, (2) religere, meaning seeking to be reconnected to absolute being, (3) religare, referring to being tied to absolute being, or (4) some combination of all three preceding words.8 Whatever the case, this activity related to and oriented toward absolute being semiotically reflects a human response to the existential condition that religious enactments reveal to us. Additionally, such a response reveals persons’ inherent capacity for performing acts of faith. Such being the case, two main psychological indicators are identifiable, which determine the specific personal and existential qualities comprising the nature of acts of faith. In faith acts, a personal factor (consisting in an individual’s intellective-​volitional activity) closely binds itself to an existential one (recognized frailty of the human condition). In acts of faith, both qualities intimately relate, they do not function separately. In their functional combination, an intellectual awareness happens to a person of the existential condition of human weakness and a reference to a being devoid of such conditions.9 Persons’ psychological realization of their imperfect, weak, existential condition tends to become qualitatively intensified against the backdrop of the perfection of the absolute being, which brings about a volitional receptivity, instead of resistance, to some sort of transcendental, absolute being. This often manifests itself in different acts of love directed toward the absolute being and other human beings. Thus, at first, persons intellectually discern their own existential conditions (the inevitability of death) intensifying awareness of some personal imperfection. Only against the background of this discernment do persons devotedly seek such a perfect being. Intellectual discernment of the existential condition becomes the chief reason why the volitional desire for the good of the absolute being occurs. In this way, acts of faith arise. As a result, acts of faith consist in trusting a being devoid of the failings that persons have. Persons’ active relationship to an absolute being does not consist in a single comprehension of the conditions of their existence, or a single volitional pursuit. The fundamental function of acts of faith is a person’s development in relation to the absolute being. A religious relationship is formed within the context of a wider and deeper soteriological perspective, involving redemption of the person from human failings. Forming a religious relationship in a soteriological perspective requires many renewed acts of faith, which extend

8 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, ii–​i i, q. 81, a. 1. 9 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, ii–​i i, q. 85, a. 1.

34 Gondek over a whole religious lifespan. A person who does not perform acts of faith leaves the relationship with the absolute being at an unaccomplished level. In contrast, the contrary opposite action (performing acts of faith in the qualitatively highest, most intense, perfect execution of faith) leads to attaining its chief aim: union with the absolute being. Since union with the absolute being constitutes the ultimate purpose of acts of faith, it encompasses fullness of faith’s perfection. Acts of faith qualitatively transform the person into becoming perfectly religious, while, simultaneously, the perfectly acting religious person transforms faith acts into perfect acts of faith. If my analysis is correct, acts of faith have qualities that closely correspond to the personal nature being human. Personal execution of acts of faith reveals the specific character of individual acts of faith. Depending on the individual person, in performing religious actions, intellectual and volitional powers become engaged to differing (more or less intensive and creative) degrees and in many different ways. Thus, it is reasonable to understand why the idea of freedom plays an especially significant role among the Great Ideas that Adler studied. It determines a natural right of free choice, which constitutes one of the first principles of human existence.10 However, in the sphere of human freedom, some factors constrain our free decisions. I will now examine the idea of religion in relation to such constraining elements. Conceived of as a way of acting in accord with a particular code of religious laws with the view to attaining salvation, religion creates a field of rules, including signs and symbols, for moral and social behavior that strongly affect human freedom.11 The actions of a person seeking salvation chiefly aim at attaining a religious end. This is a spiritual end, which may stand in opposition to other human pursuits. Seemingly, many religious activities constrain human freedom. For example, prolonged prayer stifles other spheres of human activity. Fasts and renunciations constrain freedom of physical development. Whether religion leads to a kind of constraining or empowering freedom is no easy question to answer. The true drama of the freedom of human life is not discernible from the outside. It occurs at a more basic, internal, psychological level: the moment of free decision making.12 Therein occurs a functional combination of interrelating acts of intellect and will. In this area, a human being 10 11 12

Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 141, and 11–​12. Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion: A Plurality of Religious and the Unity of Truth (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 46. Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, I-​Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology, trans. Marie Lescoe, Andrew Woźnicki, Theresa Sandok et al. (New Britain, CT: Mariel, 1983), 209.

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 35

as an individual person is the main ruler and sovereign of all freedom. A free decision constitutes a moment of a free choice at which a person determines to execute an action. Considered as such, self-​determination to choose to exercise particular religious action as an internal and sovereign does not appear to involve any constraint of freedom. Indeed, at times, as a result of religious actions, spectacularly positive and perfective transformations of human life occur, each time caused by a free decision. While accomplished in the sphere of such freedom that cannot be endangered by any external, circumstantial conditions, the individual person makes a decision whether to perform a religious action and in what way to do so. The decision takes place even when external conditions do not allow for, or hinder, its performance. Decisions concerning performing religious actions determine the fulfillment of the person’s life in relation to an absolute being. In different religions, analogous religious actions (acts of faith) exist that, in the space of a free decision, attain a relational attitude of some person to some absolute being. Religious actions achieve the end of bringing some person closer to some absolute being. This is accomplished by two types of religious actions: (1) primary, which involve a person directly turning toward an absolute being; or (2) secondary, which play the role of a means directing a person toward this being.13 Primary acts of religious faith chiefly entail acts of religious prayer and religious sacrifice. Secondary acts of religious faith are directed toward other people, other selves or a world of things (such as, first of all, acts of religious asceticism and any moral actions) related to the absolute being that affect relations with other beings. All religious actions are performed individually in the space of sovereign freedom. However, because a person is a potential and social being, religious actions require development and the assistance of other people. Even though the relationship attained is of an individual person to an absolute being, the pursuit of the absolute is accomplished by intellectual and moral virtue, and with the assistance, of other people. Thus, a social dimension exists in performing religious acts, even ascetic acts. Communities develop diverse standard manners, methods, and traditions of performing semiotic religious actions such as prayer, sacrifice, and asceticism. Different organizational forms of prayer (in liturgies, for example) are created, observable, in this respect. Religious communities (like convents and churches) exist whose primary purpose of social functioning is attainment of the relationship to some absolute being.

13 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, ii–​i i, q. 81, a. 1.

36 Gondek Acts of prayer are fundamental religious acts that occur in all religions. Such acts require the existence of free choice. In an act of prayer, a person decides to turn to some absolute being and treat this being as someone who listens. Acts of religious prayer are executed semiotically in thoughts or words directed toward an absolute being. Therefore, prayer develops in a dialogue with an absolute being, whose presence, in different ways, some person experiences.14 Prayer is an act of practical reason, oriented toward action. Attracted by the good of the absolute being, a person voluntarily engages reason in prayerful activity. Thus, the influence of the will transcends, causes, acts of prayer. Worshiping an absolute being, a person simultaneously professes need for this being as originator of some good. Hence, we may express acts of prayer in semiotically different ways (for example, in the form of petition, praise, or thanksgiving, orally, or in silence). The sphere of non-​verbal semiotic behaviors, such as a body posture or a tone of voice, can aid them. Some acts of religious prayer are executed in the form of oral prayer; others by silent reflection (meditation), and contemplation. All kinds of prayer acts are performed by virtue of the involvement of intellectual and volitional factors. Meditative prayer does not consist chiefly in acts of discursive reasoning concerning religious truths. Its nature involves engagement of volitional acts that express love for an absolute being (for example, adoration). Reflecting on the content of the truths of faith becomes an intellectual factor initiating volitional acts of love. Feelings and imagination activated during prayer require a decision to be directed toward some absolute being. In addition, meditative prayer prepares a person for a more advanced, contemplative, kind of prayer. Because the nature of religious contemplation involves the intellect holding on in love to learned truths of faith, contemplation is the highest kind of religious prayer. As a religious act, religious contemplation differs from natural contemplation, which regards the effects of the creative action of an absolute being. While the truths of faith are the object of religious contemplation, the activity of the intellect plays a special role in religious prayer, consisting in a direct apprehension of the content of religious faith. Thus, contemplative prayer does not entail an element of discursive reflection on the content of religious faith. Direct apprehensions of the truths of faith executed by the intellect strongly attract the will to be receptive to listening to the absolute being. Compared to the remaining acts of prayer, acts of contemplative prayer entail a stronger involvement of the volitional factor aided by the activity of the 14 Krąpiec, I-​Man, 288–​289.

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 37

emotive sphere. Contemplative prayer develops in stages, and its chief end is communion with some absolute being. While religious contemplation appears to be connected with a complete cessation of a person’s activity, in actuality it requires intellectual and volitional involvement systematically developed to the utmost degree, highest intensity. Its causative power is the free choice of the will, which, guided by love for an absolute being, seeks communion with this being. Simultaneously, in contemplative prayer, an absolute being is not directly available to the person’s cognitive activity. Persons know their own acts of cognition and love; prayer directs them toward the absolute being; and, in some way, indirectly, are caused to do so by the absolute being. Given its complicated nature, mystics often express this experience of religious contemplation in metaphorical language. Sacrifice is a religious activity that very clearly manifests a person’s freedom. Highly significant for supporting claims I have made in this chapter about the greatness of the ideas of religion and freedom being connected to an essential union between them is the existence of acts of sacrifice in all religions. At the origin of sacrifice exists some discernment of a personal, existential condition as qualitatively inferior in perfection and strength and separated from that of some qualitatively superior, absolute being. A natural consequence of this is the desire caused by love to overcome the separation and inferiority.15 Inspired by a desire to dedicate oneself to an absolute being causes acts of free choice of will to seek communion with the absolute. Transculturally and globally, religion shows two main ways of practicing sacrifice—​external and internal. The external concerns offering goods of a material nature to the absolute being. This sacrifice constitutes an externally discernible sign (semiotic act) preparing a person for a more advanced sacrifice. In so doing, external sacrifice takes on a semiotic dimension, symbolizing the sense of internal sacrifice of a spiritual nature. The internal kind of sacrifice requires a wholly psychological effort, connected with special intensification of volitional acts. Internal sacrifice occurs against the background of a form of love that desires communion with the absolute being. In the most highly developed sense, this is accomplished as a result of a person’s free decision to engage in self-​sacrifice to some absolute being. Persons guided by love in these free decisions offer themselves to the absolute being, perceived and loved as the maker and chief end of personal existence. Free decision making develops more than prayer and sacrifice in religious activities. While these activities require a person’s individual decision to relate 15 Krąpiec, I-​Man, 289.

38 Gondek in a special way to an absolute being, this potentially religious action involves every moral action. Free decision making becomes religious in nature by relating moral decision making to desire for personal communion with an absolute being. Crucial in terms of religion is a person’s free decision to relate some action to the absolute. Doing so connects this action with a radical change of the manner of living. Thereby, each moral action of the person stands a chance of becoming a means of accomplishing religious development, of becoming a religious action accomplished by specific moral action. Asceticism is a special kind of religious activity requiring a decision to become psychologically oriented in a special way toward an absolute being. It is a means of religious development that emphasizes need for cleansing and renewing a person in the context of a relationship to an absolute being. Ascetic actions engage a person’s spiritual and physical sphere. Ascetic actions consist in exercises in which the intellectual-​volitional sphere becomes focused on mastering the sensual emotion alone. Characteristic of such actions is the process of a volitional subjugation of sensual pleasures, drawing on the senses of sight, taste, and touch to aims indicated by reason.16 In this way, asceticism becomes connected with mortifications and renunciations. It becomes a religious action of a prolonged and systematic nature. Connected with some person’s struggle for self-​mastery and, grounded in a decision to undertake and continue a program of exercises in self-​denial, acts of free choice of will intensify the activity of seeking communion with some absolute. Considered as persons’ discernment of a need to cleanse themselves in relation to some absolute being, with the view to attaining communion with the absolute, asceticism becomes specified as a religious action. 3

Conclusion

From the above considerations, several conclusions appear reasonable. Chief among them is that the impact of the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion is primarily accomplished in the individual person. For one reason or another, a psychological conflict or drama occurs in an individual person, which leads to a radical decision regarding developing, or stifling, a religious relationship with some absolute being. Some person makes a free decision to perform, or not perform, some religious actions. The religious person who freely decides

16

Heather M. Erb, “Divine Power and the Spiritual Life in Aquinas,” StudiaGilsoniana 4 (2017): 527–​547, at 539.

Free and Religious Actions as Semiotic Effects of the Great Ideas 39

to habitually perform such actions chooses semiotic manners and forms of accomplishing acts such as prayer, sacrifice, or asceticism, and decides the intensity with which to practice them. Human nature’s personal psychological dimension enables human beings to treat a free decision as the proximate cause for developing habits of religious actions that include semiotic ones. Since each act of faith arises against the background of combining an element of the recognition of the existential human condition and an element of a volitional response to this existential recognition, religious actions have a strongly individual, great, and sovereign character generated by the Great Idea of the union of acts of religion and freedom within an individual person. However, since a society considered as a religious community facilitates and supports development of the free decision concerning whether and how to perform acts of faith, a religious community as a cultural enterprise also participates in the synthesis of religion and freedom as an essential part of the behavioral nature of these personal activities that makes both Great Ideas to the highest degree.

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On. New York: Macmillan, 1981. isbn: 9780025005600. Adler, Mortimer J. Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them. New York: Macmillan, 1985. isbn: 9780025003309. Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: A Plurality of Religious and the Unity of Truth. New York: Macmillan, 1991. isbn: 9780020641407. Erb, Heather M. “Divine Power and the Spiritual Life in Aquinas.” Studia Gilsoniana 6, no. 4 (2017): 527–​547. issn: 2300-​0066. John Paul ii, Pope. Considerations on the Essence of Man = Rozważania o istocie człowieka. Translated by John Grondelski. Lublin-​Roma: Società Internazionale Tomasso D’Aquino, 2016. isbn: 9788360144923. Kamiński, Stanisław. “Types of Human Knowledge.” In On the Metaphysical Cognition—​ O poznaniu metafizycznym. Translated by Maciej B. Stępień. Lublin-​Roma: Società Internazionale Tommaso D’Aquino, 2020. isbn: 9788365792228. Kamiński, Stanisław. “Types of Human Knowledge.” In On the Metaphysical Cognition—​ O poznaniu metafizycznym. Translated by Maciej B. Stępień. Lublin-​Roma: Società Internazionale Tommaso D’Aquino, 2020. isbn: 9788365792228.

40 Gondek Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert. I-​Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology. Translated by Marie Lescoe, Andrew Woźnicki, Theresa Sandok et al. New Britain, CT: Mariel, 1983. isbn: 9780910919012.

­c hapter 3

How Commonsense Philosophical Realism Influenced Mortimer J. Adler’s Teachings Joanna Kiereś-​Łach Abstract In large part, Mortimer J. Adler’s philosophical teaching arises from his conviction that thinkers of Greek antiquity and the Middle Ages, especially Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, had focused their considerations on commonsense cognition of the found world, while thinkers of modern times had detached their philosophical considerations from commonsense and the real world. This chapter considers the issue of commonsense realism within Adler’s philosophy. In addition, because Adler’s concept of commonsense realism shapes his epistemological, anthropological, ethical, social, and religious thought, I will focus on his concept of the Great Idea of Religion against this background, and also because Adler’s philosophical realism led him eventually to embrace religious faith—​to become a Christian.

Keywords determinism –​faith –​freedom –​God –​great ideas –​indeterminism –​materialism –​religion –​ self-​determinism

Mortimer J. Adler’s philosophical thought was, in part, rooted in a conviction that the great thinkers of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, especially Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, had based their deliberations mainly on a commonsense cognition of the physical world as one comprised of composite, organizational wholes, about which philosophers/​scientists were chiefly interested in wondering related to their proximate principles and causes. Contrary to this, Adler maintained that leading modern, Enlightenment, and contemporary thinkers had abandoned this commonsense realism and, as a consequence, had distorted a proper understanding of human rationality. They had torn rational deliberations away from the real world and about organizational

© Joanna Kiereś-​Ł ach, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_005

42 Kiereś-Łach wholes and how they tend to come to be and behave.1 In his short, but intellectually rich, monograph Ten Philosophical Mistakes, Adler: (1) identified and analyzed some major mistakes that modern and contemporary philosophers had committed; (2) diagnosed the main causes of these mistakes; and (3) showed their consequences to human life in intellectual disciplines such as education in general, philosophy, physical science, and social sciences like psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology.2 During the second half of the twentieth century, Adler became famous in North America for his educational program based upon the Great Books of the Western World. He sought to reform Western and world education in relation to their study. Within this context, he was convinced that students should have at least a rudimentary knowledge about the great, universal, ideas contained in these books and a sense of their existence in the world, especially related to human nature and social relations and the moral obligations connected with them. While Adler’s philosophical output and influence (mainly starting with his overnight best-​selling How to Read a Book, which is still in print)3 is still very well known in North America and Europe, where his influence is (at least in some circles) enormous, while little is known about him elsewhere (including Poland). Apart from How to Read a Book and his Ten Philosophical Mistakes,4 none of his other works have been translated into Polish. As the title of this chapter suggests, within it I will discuss the issue of commonsense realism within Adler’s philosophy, especially what he understood by this philosophical realism as an epistemological principle, a principle of social theory and discourse, and historical and heuristic principle. Considered as an epistemological principle, I will examine it as a cause used, among others, to explain the issue of spontaneity of human knowing, especially how cognitive relationships occur between the senses and intellect.

1 “Whereas in antiquity and the Middle Ages, philosophers merely deepened and extended, by their refinements and reflections, the views of reality and of the experienced world held by men of common sense, philosophers in the last two centuries part company with common sense and move away from it in a diametrically opposed direction”; Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990), 86. 2 Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them (New York: Macmillan, 1985). Polish ed. Dziesięć błędów filozoficznych, trans. Józef Marzęcki (Warsaw: Medium, 1995). 3 Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, rev. and updated by Charles van Doren (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940/​1972, 2011). 4 Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes.

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Analyzed as a social theory, I will focus on it especially as it relates to social semiotic communication and discourse (in which, according to Adler, the concept of common sense plays a key role). Examined from the historical and heuristic context angles, I will mainly concentrate on how it served as an intellectual inspiration for him. Commonsense realism, however, is not the chief interest of this chapter. Its chief interest is how this concept relates to the Great Idea of religion. I will start showing how these are related by attempting to answer the following questions: (1) In what context is religion present in Adler’s deliberations? (2) What forms the essence of religion, what is its proper definition? (3) How, and within what context, does religion essentially relate to human beings? (4) What crucial role, if any, does religion play in human life? Against the background of Adler’s thought, I will make passing reference to some relevant views of the representatives of the Lublin Philosophical School (Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, Zofia Józefa Zdybicka, and Piotr Moskal) in connection with the issue of how commonsense realism relates to understanding the nature of religion. In what follows, I will call special attention to Adler’s commonsense realism related to his convictions: (1) to some extent, all psychologically healthy human beings have some degree of it as a universal psychological principle; (2) a sign of such psychological health is the personal ability to: (a) recognize and apply universal principles and laws of real being (the way real natures, organized wholes, are actually composed by their essential parts and inclined to behave), as rational limits of human behavior, especially of free choice, and, at the same time, (b) impose upon a rationally healthy individual moral and social obligations to treat other people in the way they deserve to be treated, irrespective of their individual race, ethnicity, and cultural background, and so on. In short, I will pay some special attention to showing that essentially underlying Adler’s commonsense philosophical realism is a philosophical anthropological and organizational psychological principle that, specifically considered, while all of us have qualitatively greater or lesser talents or skills, all people have the same species-​specific reason and live in the same reality.5

5 “There is only a human mind and it is one and the same in all human beings,” D.W. Hudson, Introduction to Mortimer J. Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1967/​2009), 26.

44 Kiereś-Łach 1

Adler’s Concept of Religion and Its Role in Human Life

In this section, I will consider Adler’s concept of religion mainly on the basis of his Truth in Religion.6 While Adler was born to ethnically Jewish parents in New York City, and had a life-​long adult interest in religion, he was not raised within a practicing-​religious family. His two consecutive marriages were to women who belonged to the Anglican (Episcopal) Church, which brought him slightly closer to Christianity. Although he converted to the Episcopal Church in 1983, he did not feel committed to any specific religious community. He had lived his entire adult life until the age 98 as pretty-​much a pagan. In 1999, shortly before he died on June 28, 2001, he officially joined the Catholic Church.7 Adler’s late-​in-​life conversions to Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism (in which, traditionally, the philosophical teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas have been highly respected) are crucial biographical facts related to the chief interest of this chapter. They suggest as a real possibility that, in some way, the influence of Aquinas’s and Aristotle’s commonsense philosophical realism combined with his not having been raised within a specifically religious family and faith might have played a major role in Adler’s eventual conversion to Christianity and Catholicism. It strongly suggests that, throughout most of his philosophical career, and even after his conversion, Adler had chiefly approached religion like a pagan philosopher/​impartial social scientist. This appears especially to be so because he was long convinced that reasonable philosophical reflection: (1) is a significant element in a democratic culture (a culture in which religion is respected as a sphere which, through its institutionalized forms, regulates human behavior and defines convictions around which human communities are organized);8 and (2) democratic government 6 Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Touchstone, 1990). 7 Mortimer J. Adler, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher at Large (New York: Palgrave, 1992), 263–​264, 270; Tim Lacy, “Intellectum Quaerens Fides: Mortimer J. Adler’s Journey of Mind and Heart,” US Catholic Historian: Converts and Conversion 32, no. 2 (2014): 91–​116. 8 “The organized and institutionalized forms of human conduct and belief that involve communities so constituted that an individual is either a member of it or an outsider, and the membership of the community consists of a fairly large population, with all or most of the following common traits: some form of worship, separating the sacred or holy form the secular and the profane; some form of a separation between a priesthood and the laity (except for the Quakers); some form of codes of religious laws, precepts, or prescriptions that outline, in varying degrees of detail, a way of life or a style of conduct to be followed by those who seek salvation, conceived as the attainment of a spiritual goal, never as one or another form of worldly success; and some form of creed (a set of explicitly stated beliefs that constitute

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is the best kind of government for rational, human beings—​the only form of political government that tends to treat human beings with the proper dignity as rational animals and adults endowed with the faculty of free choice, instead of like brute animals or children. Conceptually considered, Adler generically defines a religion as a community characterized by: (1) a specific form of religious cult, which is the result of a specific understanding of the sacral and secular spheres; (2) a distinction between the congregation and the priests (or spiritual leaders); (3) religious codes containing a number of orders (commandments), prohibitions, and laws regulating day-​to-​day, worldly human life; (4) the concept of life after death. All the preceding translates into behavioral development of a specific, cultural lifestyle, tradition: conduct and personal relationships between the members of the specific community and the people outside it. Religion is, also, a collection of dogmas that comprise the truths of a faith, defined clearly and precisely; and thanks to which the congregation may communicate with one another, and which they are also obliged to proclaim as right and true.9 Paradoxically, for someone raised with no formal religious family background or religious conversion experience, as an impartial philosophical researcher with extensive historical experience, Adler, nonetheless, declares that we cannot treat religion as just another (one of many) aspect or division of culture (that is, an area of human activity qualitatively equivalent in social and cultural impact to science, art, history, or philosophy). Because it relates human beings to God and allows individuals to understand themselves and define their own relations to other people and to the Supreme Being, Adler considers religion to be: (1) culturally and socially superior to all these other cultural and societal disciplines in influence, and (2) the qualitatively highest, most perfect, form of human intellectual activity. Therefore, religion should be the dominating aspect of culture. Otherwise. no place exists for religion in its declared dogmatism) that communicants or members of the community are obliged to affirm as true,” Adler, Truth in Religion, 45. For comparison, see the definition of religion formulated by Zdybicka on the basis of realistic philosophy: “Religion is a real, personal relation (bond) between a human and the Absolute (God), whom the human being regards as the ultimate source of their existence and the Supreme Goodness, which gives meaning to human life. This bond is expressed in the entire human life, to which religion gives direction, especially through religious acts (cult, prayer, sacrifice), which have a personal character. Religion perceives the entire human life through a personal perspective and not an instrumental one. A human being lives and acts within the perspective of a personalized God whom he or she pursues for their entire life,” Zofia J. Zdybicka, Człowiek i religia [Man and religion] (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2006), 299. 9 Adler, Truth in Religion, 45.

46 Kiereś-Łach culture at all. Treating religion as a sphere equivalent to other fields of culture leads, in fact, to the secularization of culture of which many examples historically exist, including militant atheism or Nazi nihilism.10 Granting religion a dominating position within culture, however, does not mean for Adler that a culture should arbitrarily select a set of beliefs from a multitude of available possibilities. He maintains that selecting a religion is essentially a matter of truth, not a matter of taste or individual preferences. He asserts that matters of taste are private issues about which we can engage in no rational dispute, cannot rationally agree or disagree about being essentially true or false. As the sphere of human life meant to supply the answers to fundamental and ultimate, great, questions—​answers that provide people with some understanding of the world and themselves within it—​must concern truth and falsehood. Therefore, religion must contain logically debatable issues that comply with universal standards of scientific inquiry, measurement, rationality: results of observations of a surrounding reality; and must be characterized by conclusive reasoning based upon a plausible rationale. At this point in his deliberations, clearly visible are Adler’s thoughts about the nature of religion and precisely what makes religion a great idea generically considered. He thinks that, in a way, what makes the idea of religion great is not something specific to this or that religion. It is essentially generic to all specific religions that contain the essential properties contained in the idea of religion as found in the behavioral activities of religious communities wherever they might exist. For him, what makes all religions great is chiefly the general semiotically observable behavior of religious communities; precisely what they do to: (1) improve themselves as human communities, and (2) enrich individual and communal human life! Adler appears not to have arrived at his understanding of the greatness of the idea of religion by a desire to engage in an apologetic debate to prove that religion in general, or this or that religion, contains the whole truth about everything. Instead, he consistently maintains the research attitude of an impartial social scientist. Insofar as some human community fulfills in its behavior qualities of communal action that really improve the quality of life of rational animals, free agents, as an impartial social scientist, Adler reasons it is a great human community. Relative to the concept of religion, any religion that fulfills the definition of a great human community is a great religious community. Because it has a great (that is, true) understanding of God (one that improves the quality of life of 10 Adler, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror, 284.

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rational animals as essentially socially peaceful, which Adler thought human beings truly are) a great religion is one that relates a human community in its specifically religious, semiotically observable, behavior to the true idea of religion generically contained in the great idea of religion. Because a great religion manifests within its behavior the great idea of religion, it is truly great. Hence, this idea of being a true (great) religion is visible in the community’s behavior as a sign and symbol of the great idea of religion being present within it. Because religious truth is generically present within all religions that fulfill the specific conceptual conditions of being truly, in the sense of behaviorally, religious, Adler is strongly convinced that inter-​religious dialogue is really (not just hypothetically or speculatively) possible in the pursuit of religious truth. He maintains, further, that because, for the most part, monotheistic religions share belief in the existence of true commandments rooted in revelation and justified in human nature and in moral life that more fully and perfectly cause peaceful behavioral traits to exist within their communities, in their nature (organizational parts and activities [communities] they cause to come to be), they tend to be qualitatively better, less behaviorally contradictory, rationally incoherent, in their religious behavior, than polytheistic religions. In other words, Adler believes that because moral and metaphysical truths (truths about human beings and God) are common properties present in all human communities (organizational wholes) and religions are essentially human communities, in qualitatively more or less perfect, complete, ways, moral and metaphysical truths (peace-​promoting qualities) exist in all true religions; and the more perfectly they do, the greater, better, are those religions.11 Adler’s impartial philosophical/​social science reflections as a commonsense philosophical realist and scientific observer of the concept of religion considered generically as a great idea rooted in behavioristic moral and metaphysical truths at work in truly religious communities convinced him that present within all religion rightly conceived are some such peace-​promoting truths that naturally empower and incline all religions to do great deeds of more or less qualitatively perfect intensity. From realizing this truth, he concluded that, if he could harness the metaphysical and moral strength essentially inherent in all religions to transform human societies for a greater human good, he might be able to use global, inter-​religious dialogue someday to secure global peace. I am convinced that this insight (that the generic concept of religion as a great idea containing moral and metaphysical truths for improving peaceful human relations is precisely what makes religion great) was the proximate first 11 Adler, Truth in Religion, 1–​4.

48 Kiereś-Łach principle for all Adler’s subsequent reflections about religion.12 In addition, contradictory beliefs abstractly proclaimed, and behaviorally displayed, within specific religions (chiefly about God, the world, human nature, and how people should live and behave toward each other) confirmed for Adler as a social scientist the reasonableness of the conclusions he had drawn about the nature of religion being a matter of truth, not a matter of taste.13 Hence, Adler especially noted that, in spite of their differences, all religions share common teachings concerning fundamental, metaphysical issues like the existence of a God, the world, and human nature that influence peaceful human behavior and are semiotically observable within them as religious communities. These universal signs provide sufficient evidence rationally to conclude that these moral standards and metaphysical principles exist as universal behavioral causes within all true religions. He writes that these common teachings are shared on the level of orthopraxis (the sphere connected with rightful conduct) related to all healthy organizational wholes. Consequently, he observes that religions that focus on conversation related to practical cooperation, not on doctrinal orthodoxy, are the religiously most effective socially. However, he also stresses that such religions do not exist chiefly because of their orthopraxy. They do so chiefly because of the metaphysical and moral truths contained within their doctrinal teachings that chiefly cause effective orthopraxy.14 Whether he explicitly realized it or not, the semiotic, ideoscopic function of orthopraxic efficacy inherently present within moral and metaphysical truths that Adler had observed to be essentially and semiotically contained within the idea of religion, played a crucial role in Adler’s ability coenoscopically to induce in it what makes it essentially great when properly conceived.15 12 Adler, Truth in Religion, 20. 13 Adler, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror, 6. 14 Adler, Truth in Religion, 20–​21. Worthwhile here is to reference some findings made in realistic philosophy of religion that indicate religion’s normative character: a personal character of a human approach and orientation toward God pointing to, being a sign of, a human person’s great and inherent dignity. Hence, which religion we practice matters. What matters most is whether the religion contains real and great moral and metaphysics truths about God, human beings, and the world; and, also, whether the religion helps an individual fulfill real, human goodness. For more on this, see Zofia Józefa Zdybicka, Religia w kulturze [Religion in culture] (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasz z Akwinu, 2010); Mieczysław A. Krąpiec, Ludzka wolność i jej granice [Human freedom and its limits] (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasz z Akwinu, 2004), 77–​91. 15 Under the influence of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, Charles Sanders Peirce popularized the terms ‘ideoscopy’ (‘idioscopy’), ‘coenoscopy’ (‘cenoscopy’), and their derivatives into the study of semiotics as different species of scientific observation. The

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Especially worth mentioning here is that Adler differentiates between natural and supernatural knowledge.16 Analogous to first principles of any natural science, the first principles of supernatural knowledge (revelation) can have, and need, no proof. Being what are first, and best, known in any science, they are the best measures of truth within every science. The grace of faith is supernatural revelation’s highest principle of scientific evidence. It is evident to anyone who can induce the existence of religious, supernatural activity from supernatural experience of miraculous activity, like grace. Hence, natural knowledge befits the genus of knowledge based solely upon natural experience and common sense. The genus of supernatural knowledge essentially considers and depends upon natural and supernatural (miraculous) evidence to measure its truth claims. For this reason, Adler analyzes the major world religions using natural and supernatural measures related to their possible religious greatness. In so doing, he observes: (1) only in the three major Western/​Middle-​Eastern religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) do questions, especially great ones, concerning religious truth exist (which helps explain the unique missionary activity of these three religions in contrast to those of other major world religions; why is missionary activity absent from other religions if the claim to possess highest religious truth?); and (2) only these three religions have what they claim to be holy scriptures from which they derive a doctrine that excludes other groups as being supernatural religions. For instance, Orthodox Jews view Jewish Scripture (Torah) to be the Word of God; Christians reserve this status to Christian Scriptures (Christian Old and New Testaments, including the Greek, Septuagint version of the Old Testament); Muslims view the Koran as the source of God’s word; and, in different degrees, each religion rejects as false some teachings that the others accept as true. Adler says this situation causes a dilemma. Given such contradictory opposition in truth claims, we can ask which, if any, of these religions is more authentically religious than the others?17 former refers to special observation, usually aided by technological instruments or special assistance (like exploration) and the latter to general observation based chiefly upon identifying what is common to many. 16 Adler, Truth in Religion, 50–​52. 17 Adler also mentions other (Eastern) religions. He questions, however, that in their case, what teachings are philosophical and which are religious. No clear, semiotic demarcation point appears to exist to make such a judgment clear. While some features of religious cult and of the rite connected with religion, sacrifice, and celebration of particular days within a year exist within them, many such points appear to be simply signs of purely human intellectual activity; Adler, Truth in Religion, 47–​50.

50 Kiereś-Łach To try solve this dilemma, in part, Adler points to qualitatively different methods of perceiving religion that diverse academic disciplines (like apologetics, dogmatic theology, history and sociology of religion, and philosophy of religion) use to attempt to resolve these contradictions.18 Regarding the philosophy of religion, Adler maintains that we should make an attempt to find the answer to at least five important questions: (1) In what generic way must we define religion so that this term can refer clearly to all the main religions of the contemporary world? (2) How do we specify different religions after we generically classify them? What are the major religious species? (3) Where should we place the dividing line be between mythology and religion? (4) Where should we put the dividing line between philosophy and religion? (5) What can we reasonably assume, if anything at all, with respect to the truth in religion in a situation where we confront opposing beliefs in this regard; and also in reference to what we consider to be true in the empirical sciences and philosophy?19 18 Adler, Truth in Religion, 42–​43. 19 Adler, Truth in Religion, 43–​44. For comparison, Zdybicka claims that “in realistic philosophy of religion, the main issue does not concern the interpretation of a specific religion; this philosophy does not explore the doctrines of the great religions—​Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, or Christianity; neither its objective is a detailed description of the religious acts or states or their external manifestations. Philosophy of religion deals with the statement of the fact of a religion, grasping its significant elements and metaphysical findings of the character of religious being which makes up the ontic basis of the entire religious event,” Zdybicka, Religia w kulturze, 145–​146. Piotr Moskal observes, “the world labeled with the term ‘religion’ is not, however, a uniform reality. Religions are very diversified.” Differences occur both in the understanding of God, and of human fate and the redeeming aim of the human life with the saving means which lead to this aim. While some similarities can be observed between religions, it cannot be said that they have an isomorphic structure. Thus religions do not have one common structure, in which some “variables” can be exchanged—​for example. Different names of gods, various religious holiday calendars, styles of art, sacrifice or cult rites. Therefore, Moskal observes that there is a problem with specifying the object of religion. This problem is connected with the problem of a religion definition and the meaning of the term, “religion.” Moskal refers here to Aquinas, who uses the word religio to describe the relations between a human being and God (religio proprie importat ordinem ad Deum), which is at the same time primary cause and the ultimate aim. This relationship consists in worshipping God by means of different external and internal acts. Religion is some kind of devotion and a cult of God (Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–​i i, qqs. 80–​100). The issue of the philosophy of religion, in Moskal’s opinion, is a “philosophical description of religion. It is about the truth of religion, and its aspects which are more significant form philosophical pint of view. It is about the specification of the essence of religion (the thing without which religion is not a religion) and the specification what category of being religion is and also about showing the place of religion in the context of the personal life of an individual and in the context of socio-​cultural life. The other objective is the philosophical explanation of religion understood as attributing some value or justification of religion. It is not about

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Adler points out that, in contrast to the apologist or dogmatic theologian, when acting as a philosopher, the philosopher of religion should not sympathize with any religion at all. As a rational starting point, what is right for the apologist and theologian is not proper for the philosopher of religion, who, just like the historian or sociologist of religion, or physical scientist, should carry out his or her research irrespectively of whether the results of the research are favorable or not for any of the chief subjects of study. The philosopher qua philosopher should only concentrate on the problem of truth or, more generally, on the problem of the unity of truth, in religion.20 2

According to Adler, What Is Philosophy Properly Understood?

I start this section with a conviction crucial to Adler: philosophy is “everybody’s business.”21 He maintained that a human being can be an expert and can be an educational generalist, not be a specialist. He was convinced that nobody can be a truly educated person without some general knowledge of science and philosophy and the history of both.22 Thanks to all human beings having, by natural endowment, a species-​specific human intellect, he was convinced that every relatively healthy, adult human being is capable of philosophizing, and needs to do so to become as happy as possible in this life, and in an afterlife, if it exists.23 Adler observed that each person has some common sense, which the answer to the questions why religion exists (thanks to which factors), but about the answer to the question whether religion is not some kind of an error even if this was supposed to be a useful error. The issue is to answer the question whether religion (and all the time I mean first of all Catholic Christianity) is something genuine. This time, the question is not about the truth of religion, because religion as every being is genuine (the truth as a transcendental property of being) and this truth may be cognitively discovered. … It is about the adequacy of religion in relation to the objective reality” Piotr Moskal, “Koncepcja filozofii religii” [The conception of the philosophy of religion], Roczniki Filozoficzne 16, no 1 (2008): 221–​236. 20 This belief confirms a hypothesis I presented at the start of this chapter, in accordance with which, through his common-​sense realistic philosophy Adler reached Christianity as a specific religious doctrine: “a philosopher of religion, unlike a religious apologist or a dogmatic theologian, should write from the point of view of no particular religious faith. What is proper for a religious apologist and a dogmatic theologian is not proper for a philosopher of religion,” Adler, Truth in Religion, 44. 21 Mortimer J. Adler, “Everybody’s Business,” prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical (New York: Macmillan, 1993). 22 Adler, “Everybody’s Business.” 23 “All begin, as we have said, by wondering that things should be as they are, e.g. with regard to marionettes, or the solstices, or the incommensurability of the diagonal of a square;

52 Kiereś-Łach makes everyone somewhat capable of philosophizing; and, thus, of possessing a spontaneous insight into the natures of the beings, organizational wholes, that exist around us and they way they operate. In a way, everybody who wonders about causes is a philosopher, and philosophizing enriches everyone who does so. The inclination to philosophize is, therefore, a tendency deeply rooted within human nature.24 Clearly, Adler adopted his understanding of philosophy’s nature mainly from Aristotle, who, toward the start of his Metaphysics, makes the often-​ quoted claim that “all human beings by nature desire to know.”25 Adler adds, however, that only the kind of cognition which aims at theoría (contemplation of truth for its own sake) may properly be called ‘philosophical.’ In addition, Adler claimed that philosophy is the best of all sciences, because it is the most basic and concerns the foundations, first principles needed for the understanding of the whole of reality, including the natures of all the arts and other sciences, not just parts of reality. Adler thought that the natural human inclination to wonder about causes was philosophy’s proximate first principle, or cause, because it was the natural accompaniment of every human being’s commonsense contact with sense reality. It inclines all of us to know evident first truths about the natures of things around us and to understand our personal ability to know them, including our facultative powers and abilities, like intellect, will, and sense faculties. Evident conviction about the existence of first and qualitatively highest truths, and most universal principles, measures, of other truths, that are, in some way, the truths we first come to know in and through our initial commonsense contact with physical reality, was an unshakable part of Adler psychological makeup. Just as unshakable was his psychological conviction that the start of, and universal impetus for, all genuine philosophical/​scientific investigation is the intellectual/​sensory habit of wondering about proximate causes of organizational existence, unity, and operation. For him, all philosophy is a species-​ specific habit of wondering about causes of existence of all organizational wholes, and operation, about what chiefly causes all organizations to come into being and generate the kinds of actions they do. Just as for Aristotle, for

24 25

because it seems wonderful to everyone who has not yet perceived the cause that a thing should not be measurable by the smallest unit”; Aristotle Metaphysics 983a13–​14. Adler, “Everybody’s Business.” Πάντες άνθρωποι τοΰ ειδέναι όρέγονται ϕύσει [pantes ánthropoi toú eidénai orégontai phýsei]; Aristotle Metaphysics 980a21.

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Adler, philosophical cognition is wondering about organizations and the way they behave.26 In the Aristotelian spirit, Adler points to the need to philosophize as a guarantee of more than personal human development: educational progress in every form of culture and civilization. He thought that individual human beings spontaneously and incessantly wonder about questions essentially related to life considered as a whole; the world. God, and our place in it; about what role we should play in it; and what the chief aim of someone’s life is and should be. Adler was convinced that refraining from asking, and rationally pursuing answers to such questions (and, in so doing, philosophizing) is naturally impossible for any psychologically normal, healthy, adult human being. More. Adler thought that asking such questions and wondering about such answers is the chief impetus, first principle, for all artistic, social, cultural, and civilizational development for all people. For this reason, philosophy is everybody’s business: Common sense is a common human possession. We all live in the same world, participate in common elements in our experience of it, having human minds that are specifically the same in all members of the species. Hence, when human beings philosophize in moments of reflection about the serious problems that confront everyone, they have the same background for doing so. Only those who make philosophy their lifelong vocation acquire the intellectual skills to go deeper and further than reflective individuals who have common sense.27 The faculty and first principle of commonsense reason (not to be confused with the Thomistic internal sense faculty that Scholastic philosophers call ‘common sense’ to distinguish it from the external, particular sense faculties) to which Adler refers immediately above is of crucial importance for comprehending Adler’s understanding of philosophical realism.28 This differs, among 26 Aristotle Metaphysics 983a27. With regard to the meaning of the term ‘philosophy’ and the origins of philosophy, see also Piotr Jaroszyński, Metafizyka czy ontologia (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu 2011), 17–​44. English: Metaphysics or Ontology, trans. Hugh McDonald (Leiden: Brill-​Rodopi, 2018). 27 Adler, “Everybody’s Business.” 28 Mortimer J. Adler, The Conditions of Philosophy: Its Checkered Past, Its Present Disorder, and Its Future Promise (New York: Atheneum, 1965). Adler writes therein, “if technical or professional philosophy is to play the role is should play in liberal education and is to guide and improve the philosophizing done by the layman, it must avoid being esoteric. … The subject matter of those questions which are purely philosophical … must

54 Kiereś-Łach others, from the commonsense philosophy of the Scottish philosophers, like Thomas Reid, and some later utilitarian philosophers. Adler takes his understanding of common sense from Aristotle’s teachings about human cognition, beginning with Aristotle’s observation that non-​ human animals possess animal instinct, or ‘estimative sense,’ which causes their actions to be in total service of that instinct; in no way are they able to transcend their own animal instinct; their behavior is completely determined by their animal nature. They are limited to instinctive action, not free decision making. For example, sheep are instinctively wary of wolves, which prey on sheep. In the presence of a wolf, a sheep would immediately run and could not freely choose to do anything else. In human beings, Aristotle had maintained that a somewhat analogous faculty exists. Aquinas called this ‘particular’ reason. Within this faculty, Aristotle had located the theoretical and practical principle of prudence as a conflation of theoretical and practical wisdom. Common sense understood as imperfectly possessed human wisdom thus replaces, but functions in a way analogous to, instinct in brute animals. Philosophy as a psychological faculty in human beings analogous to animal instinct naturally inclines all human beings to pursue perfectly developed wisdom as psychological habit and virtue as prudentially evident: or common sense! Hence, according to Adler, philosophy starts in commonsense experience.29

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be primarily questions about that which is and happens in the world or about what men should do and seek, and only secondarily questions about how we know, think, or speak about that which is and happens or about what men do and seek (42–​43). Not only must philosophy be able to answer first-​order questions, but it must also answer them in a way that makes contact with the world of common sense; in a way that is continuous with common sense rather than out of communication with it; in a way that makes sense, not nonsense, of common-​sense” (67–​68). See, also Mortimer J. Adler, The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense (New York: Fordham University Press, 1970); Mortimer J. Adler, The Common Sense of Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971). Kiereś, Henryk. “Teoria poznania” [Theory of cognition], in Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal encyclopedia of philosophy], eds. Stanisław Bafia and Andrzej Maryniarczyk(Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2008), 9: 430–​455; see also Peter A. Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, vol. 2. An Introduction to Ragamuffin Thomism (St. Louis, MO: En Route, 2016), 97–​100, 105–​106, 339–​374; and Peter A. Redpath, “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence,” Studia Gilsoniana 3 supplement (2014): 605–​617. I thank Peter A. Redpath for introducing me to: (1) Aquinas’s teaching about particular reason and its essential connection in Aquinas to sense wonder as a philosophical first principle, and wonder, located within this sense faculty; (2) Adler’s implicit, if not explicit, understanding of the existence of this faculty and the location of personal common sense in the form of prudence located in this faculty; (3) the way Adler’s conception of philosophy is rooted in sense realism and sense wonder as commonsense philosophical first principles; and

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As a classically trained Aristotelian psychologist, Adler understood philosophy to be an intellectual, naturally inherent ability to wonder about behavioral causes existing within all relatively healthy adult human beings. He also thought that through right habituation via sound education, this natural ability could be capable of improving the life of every such human being, and cultures and civilizations. Considered as such, Adler was convinced that the evident first truths from which philosophy starts its activity must involve more than the evident truth of a conceptual non-​contradiction, for example, a square circle cannot exist. Wonder does not start from evident, abstract, conceptual contradictions or non-​contradictions. It starts from apparent contradictions: from observing something behaving in apparently contradictory ways. As a principle that provokes wonder, a philosophical first principle must be a behavioral contradiction caused by something conceived as being conceptually coherent in one way behaving in a conceptually incoherent way as if it were something else. For example, someone a person considers to be a rational animal behaving like a brute. Given Adler’s understanding of himself as chiefly a Aristotelian organizational, behavioristic psychologist and of philosophy’s nature as chiefly a psychological habit mainly interested in wondering about the existence, unity, and operations of organizations and the way their parts harmonizes to cause them to operate in behaviorally coherent ways, Adler became convinced: (1) that philosophers are actually organizational psychologists chiefly interested in studying as their generic subjects really existing organizational wholes operating in the real world, and (2) the crucial importance for all human beings of this conception of philosophy really to enable us to lead culturally enriching and happy lives in this world and the next, if one exists.

(4) that Adler was chiefly an organizational psychologist who had considered philosophy to be mainly a psychological habit of wondering about the proximate causes of organizational existence, unity, and behavior (a behavioristic, organizational psychologist wondering about how organizational wholes come to be and operate) in and of the real world order. Special note should be made that, as a behavioristic, organizational psychologist, Adler’s method of psychology was radically different from B.F. Skinner’s Pavlovian method. Adler was an organizational behaviorist in the commonsense realist tradition of Aristotle: (1) tutor of Alexander the Great and son of Nichomachus, court physician to Alexander’s father, Philip ii, ruler of Macedon; and (2) author of the masterful work in moral and organizational psychology, the Nicomachean Ethics, in which Redpath claims Aristotle analogously applies to the human soul the psychological habits of analysis of a classically trained medical doctor. Adler’s commonsense, behavioristic, organizational psychology is was what Scholastic philosophers often call ‘perennial philosophy.’

56 Kiereś-Łach Consequently, Adler became a leading proponent of universal, public education. For this reason, early on in his academic career, Adler, the benevolent pagan, abandoned writing chiefly for professional academics and started writing for everyone interested in becoming better educated. This was, also, a chief reason he sought to compose a set of Great Books that pretty much every somewhat-​higher-​educated and healthy human being has the native and acquired abilities more or less to read, understand, and personally benefit from. 3

Conclusion

As Adler conceived it, philosophy as a psychological habit (habit of the human soul) arises from commonsense experience of the real world in which we human beings live our everyday lives. It is not chiefly an academic discipline involving considering abstract essences reserved for university professors inhabiting ivory towers. Philosophy considered as a form of wondering about organizations and the way they come to exist and behave is simply an improved, qualitatively better, form and development of commonsense knowledge and understanding of common experience arising from living everyday life in the everyday world. In this world, understanding the nature of organizations, how they come into being, and precisely act the way they do is something that tends to: (1) pique the wonder of all relatively healthy adult human beings, and (2) be everybody’s business. For Adler, philosophy’s true, chief aim is to discover and explain the truth about the whole of reality considered in this commonsense way. As I said toward the start of this chapter, Adler’s teachings about philosophy and great ideas are little known in Poland. In my opinion, this is quite sad, especially because of Adler’s exceptional ability to write clearly, simply, precisely, eloquently, and wisely about pretty-​much ever topic imaginable. He repeatedly explains complex philosophical issues in a simple, comprehensible and intelligent, down-​to earth style. Influence of his wisdom within Polish society, especially within Polish education generally and those interested in multi-​ disciplinary education, could be of exceptional benefit for teachers, students, and the wider reading public in Poland. His ability to translate into simple language apparently inscrutable topics in all fields of education is incomparable. Having had the opportunity to read him in some depth, I am convinced that I do not exaggerate when I say that, apart from the great works of the great thinkers about whom Adler has written, any person who chiefly wants to be a

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truly educated person should also be familiar with Adler’s teachings. They are truly great!30

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. The Common Sense of Politics. New York: Fordham University Press, 1971. isbn: 9780030859663. Adler, Mortimer J. The Conditions of Philosophy: Its Checkered Past, Its Present Disorder, and Its Future Promise. New York: Atheneum, 1965. isbn: 855914862. Adler, Mortimer J. “Everybody’s Business.” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical. New York: Macmillan, 1993. isbn: 9780025005747. Adler, Mortimer J. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Rev. and updated by Charles van Doren. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940/​1972. isbn: 9780671212803. (2011 reprint, isbn 9780671212809.) Adler, Mortimer J. Intellect: Mind over Matter. New York: Macmillan, 1990. isbn: 9780025003507. Adler, Mortimer J. A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher at Large. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992. isbn: 9780025005716. Adler, Mortimer J. Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them. New York: Macmillan, 1985. isbn: 9780025003309. Polish edition Dziesięć błędów filozoficznych. Translated by Józef Marzęcki. Warsaw: Medium, 1995. isbn: 9788385312796. Adler, Mortimer J. The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense. New York: Fordham University Press, 1970. isbn: 9780030818363. Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. New York: Touchstone, 1990. isbn: 9780025005747. Hudson, D. W. Introduction to Mortimer J. Adler. The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1967/​2009. isbn: 9780823215362. Jaroszyński, Piotr. Metafizyka czy ontologia [Metaphysics or ontology]. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2011. isbn: 9788360144527 (English translation: Metaphysics or Ontology. Translated by Hugh McDonald. Leiden: Brill-​Rodopi. isbn: 9789004359871.)

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This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

58 Kiereś-Łach Kiereś, Henryk. “Teoria poznania” [Theory of cognition]. Vol. 9 of Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal encyclopedia of philosophy]. Edited by Stanisław Bafia and Andrzej Maryniarczyk. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2008. isbn: 9788360144176. Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert. Ludzka wolność i jej granice [Human freedom and its limits]. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasz z Akwinu, 2004. isbn: 9788391880043. Lacy, Tim. “Intellectum Quaerens Fides: Mortimer J. Adler’s Journey of Mind and Heart.” US Catholic Historian: Converts and Conversion 32, 2 (2014): 91–​116. Stable url: https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​24584675. Moskal, Piotr. “Koncepcja filozofii religii” [The conception of the philosophy of religion]. Roczniki Filozoficzne 16, no. 1 (2008): 221–​236. Redpath, Peter A. “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence.” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617. issn 2300–​0066. http://​gilsonsociety.com/​files/​605-​617-​Redpath.pdf. Redpath, Peter A. A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics. Vol. 2. An Introduction to Ragamuffin Thomism. St. Louis, MO: En Route, 2016. isbn: 9781633371408. Zdybicka, Zofia Józefa. Człowiek i religia [Man and religion]. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin, 2006. isbn: 9788360144152. Zdybicka, Zofia Józefa. Religia w kulturze [Religion in culture]. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasz z Akwinu, Lublin 2010. isbn: 9788391880043.

­c hapter 4

Becoming a Masterpiece of Unbending Will Artur Mamcarz-​Plisiecki Abstract This chapter chiefly aims to consider the philosophical problem of human will and freedom and their essential connection to religious, human nature as a masterpiece of creation from the perspectives of philosophy as a historical enterprise; i.e., philosophical anthropology; Mortimer J. Adler’s commonsense realist philosophical reflections on the nature of human freedom; and Karol Wojtyła’s analogous considerations of the same topics. Within this context, I will attempt to connect the problem of human freedom (strictly-​speaking: free, perfect, unbending will) as a historical/​philosophical Western enterprise to the concept of the human person as first formulated by Christian thinkers and philosophers of the first centuries and their successors.

Keywords christianity –​freedom –​human person –​Krasiński –​creation –​unbending will –​religion –​Karol Wojtyła

This chapter’s chief aim is to consider some philosophical problems essentially related to the human will and freedom and their essential connection to religious, human nature as a masterpiece (crown) of creation from the perspectives of: (1) philosophy as a historical enterprise and philosophical anthropology, (2) Mortimer J. Adler’s commonsense, realist, philosophical reflections about human freedom’s nature, and (3) Karol Wojtyła’s analogous considerations of the same topic. Within this context, I will attempt to connect the problem of human freedom (a strictly speaking: free, perfect, unbending will) as a historical, philosophical, Western enterprise to the concept of the human person as first formulated by Christian theologians and philosophers starting with the fourth century. Juxtaposing concepts within this chapter’s title contextualizes this chapter’s main aim and enables it to serve as a measure of some potentially quite interesting issues. Discussing a masterpiece in reference to humanity as conceived

© Artur Mamcarz-​P lisiecki, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_006

60 Mamcarz-Plisiecki within the West tends to evoke a transcendental, human, often religious, context, because historically, within this dimension, a human being appears to Westerners (is often depicted within major forms of Western culture and civilization) to be a creator God’ s most magnificent creation: the crown. At the same time, according to this religion’s tradition (often represented within painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, music, and the like), a human being is portrayed as a spiritual and corporeal being suspended like a midpoint between the material world (resting in biology and physical nature) and a spiritual reality (resting in the entire sphere of culture, intellect, and will). Abstractly or concretely defining the term ‘masterpiece’ is difficult. Each time we use this word, we do so in relation to some real or abstract context, genus. To make what me mean by this term as precisely intelligible as possible to ourselves and others, each time we use it we need to start our discussion of it by considering the concrete or abstract, logical, or real, imaginary, historical, spiritual, or material genus in relation to which we are chiefly contextualizing and considering it. In relation to the word ‘masterpiece,’ within such contexts I chiefly mean a perfect (beautiful, trained, fit, and healthy) body or a perfect (wise, noble, mind/​soul). Considered in the second sense, I use the term ‘masterpiece’ as a concept signifying a human person considered as an organized whole who harmoniously combines these qualitatively essential parts so as to act as a whole human being.1 Evident to me is that, at least as a species specific, more or less healthy, psychological faculty, all human beings are born with a somewhat free, even adamant (stubborn) will. Also evident to me is that, at least partly, a stubborn will is at the heart of the problem being free and precisely understanding human freedom as an organized whole nature and crown of creation. For centuries and until present time, a Great Conversation has existed within the West about: (1) whether individual human beings are really free by nature, and (2) what, if anything, in a human being chiefly causes and certifies freedom. The late medieval conflict between voluntarism and intellectualism represents

1 Within this context, worth recalling is the ancient Greek word kalokagathia. This term meant the ideal, or, better, chief purpose, of human self-​education: moral beauty. Kalokagathia is widely interpreted as a harmonious combination of the physical and spiritual spheres of the human being. An outstanding expert on ancient culture, Jacob Burckhardt presented just such an understanding of this concept. The Swiss scholar wrote that this term was the “common ideal of all the Hellenes, kalokagathia, the ideal of physical and intellectual excellence.” Jacob Burckhardt, History of Greek Culture, trans. Palmer Hilty (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002), 27. Not all researchers, however, agree with this translation of the word kalokagathia.

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a historical instance of this conversation. The European renaissance dispute between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther is another. Today, a third has, one more time arisen about precisely what human beings are, what is human nature. Today, this conversation, disagreement, chiefly goes on between supporters of scientific naturalism (positivism/​determinism/​materialism) and classically trained humanists (like Adler), who are proponents of the idea that human beings essentially possess a human soul, in which immaterial human faculties exist, which includes the human intellect and free choice of the will. Clearly, this is chiefly a philosophical and religious disagreement about the proper way to conceive the nature of a human being. Scientific naturalists/​positivists tend to: (1) base their views on the achievements of contemporary, materialistically and mechanistically rooted cognitive science; (2) view human beings to be e instinctively-​and deterministically-​ driven animals; and (3) in so doing, chiefly use a Cartesian, mechanistic, behavioral psychology to analyze human action. In contrast, and on the contrary, using a classical, Aristotelian behavioristic, organizational psychology, classically educated religious and non-​religious humanists tend to understand human beings to be rational animals and study human activity in terms of a holistic, organizational, faculty behavioristic psychology. In short: (1) both groups tend to study human nature and behavior chiefly in terms of behavioristic psychology; but, (2) except for Adler, no contemporary philosopher has actually recognized this reality. As a result, while they share the same chief, generic aim, because they do not precisely define the nature of their subject in the same way, understand the different principles each is using, and how respectively to apply them as chief measures of truth, they can never actually: (1) become members of the same genus, organizational whole, or team; (2) talk ‘on the same page’ with each other; or (3) make any real progress in solving pressing human problems. Instead, they tend to talk past each other and butt heads like stubborn mountain goats. Aside from what I have mentioned thus far about what I understand my chapter title mainly to signify, I want to mention that, it, also, expresses a hope: that, thanks to the improvement and refinement of our understanding of how we actually operate to become, as perfectly as possible a human masterpiece, we might be able to separate ourselves from thinkers who prefer to remain butting heads on a metaphysical mountain top. Such being the case, worth considering, at least, is whether or not, beyond being a conceptual possibility, becoming all we can really be is a really doable, human deed!

62 Mamcarz-Plisiecki 1

Human Being as Masterpiece and Person of Unbending (Stubborn) Will

As I mentioned in the preceding section, a long and rich artistic, literary, philosophical, and theological tradition exists within the West of depicting a human being as a masterpiece of creation. For example, unforgettable to most anyone familiar with the works of William Shakespeare is the famous soliloquy from Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”2 While many readers know well that this apotheosis of humanity is probably the most frequently quoted soliloquy from Shakespeare and world literature, many are not nearly as familiar with the fact that the intellectual roots of this statement date to the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ. Then, reflections in the field of philosophical anthropology first appeared among early Christian theologians and Christian philosophers. Through the influence of these early Church Fathers, the concept emerged of human beings as free agents endowed with a special, metaphysically-​inherent and transcendent, qualitatively greater gravitas—​heft. Human dignity in terms of individual personhood, which had been totally unknown to the ancient, pagan Greek and Roman world, had begun to emerge within the Christian world order. The word “pagan” is derived from the late Latin paganus, which was used at the end of the Roman Empire to name those who practiced a religion other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Early Christians often used the term to refer to non-​Christians who worshiped multiple deities. Throughout most of his life, Adler self-​declared as both pagan and monotheistic. Reflecting on what he meant in making the assertion, he apparently believed in one God, but he adhered to no one formal religion. In a way, he could be seen as a walking paradox. By contrast, Jacques Maritain, for his part, was a Catholic theologian, but both considered saints to be masterpiece of human nature. Regarding this culturally and civilizationally revolutionary idea, quoting and concurring with Maritain, the benevolent pagan, Adler would write, “the Saints are truly and literally [God’s] masterpiece.”3 Maritain and Adler had apparently come to this realization by reflecting on the Great Idea of Creation in more or less the same way. Both had recognized that this idea contains within it the concept 2 2.2.298–​300. 3 Mortimer J. Adler, Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy (New York: Arno Press, 1937/​2008), 592.

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of personal freedom: that only a free, personal, omni-​benevolent God creates in such a way that his works act independently, as secondary and proximate causes, by their own power and on their own initiative—​“works which proceed to action of their own motion.”4 More than simply agreeing with Maritain, at the time, Adler reminded his readers that saints are people who fully possess the virtue of prudence.5 Because virtue consists in moving toward the qualitatively, highest good, and is a kind of spiritual perfection, clearly Maritain and Adler were, at the very least, implying that being a masterpiece means moving toward some highest personal good (God) through our own, personal decisions and actions, our own motion (that, thanks to the virtue of prudence, this is possible). Clearly, while, according to Adler and Maritain, in specifically and individual ways, we can reasonably understand the natural inclination, call, to become a masterpiece: (1) we will always be dealing with an upward movement; and, (2), this upward movement will essentially consist in a rush toward spiritual flowering, toward the qualitative fullness, perfection of life, holiness, and God. Clearly, too, at least by implication in what they say, is that, to some extent, we create, self-​cause, ourselves; and are at least partly responsible for what we become in life. While this implication is controversial and rationally debatable, every day we encounter semiotic experience—​external and internal signs—​of this contrary opposition. For example, internally and externally we experience real weakness, not power, including lack of willpower, in the face of being able to execute everyday deeds, even under normal individual and cultural circumstances. Within the context of the present day Covid-​19 pandemic, we see and hear about such weakness everywhere. Globally, people make, and almost immediately cancel plans and start wanting for something. Even such mundane wanting itself vacillates. It causes no determined, strong movement or action. Perhaps this is why different university courses, textbooks, and motivational speeches are quite popular today. In times of crises, we tend to look for a leader to: (1) help us find or establish order and (2) psychologically reinforce our strength to implement this order. Like a coach who is part of a team, not like a despotic overlord existing outside and beyond it, this leader precisely helps us more precisely understand what to do and, as team members, or parts of a cultural enterprise, do it. Hence, within such a situation, a totally unbendable, 4 Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 12. 5 Adler, Art and Prudence, 592.

64 Mamcarz-Plisiecki stubborn, will appears to be more of an impossible dream than part of real-​life program of doable deeds toward achieving personal self-​perfection. With good reason, one of the most famous Nazi propaganda films of that time, showing the supposed strength and power of Adolf Hitler was entitled Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the will] directed by Berta Helene Amalie ‘Leni’ Riefenstahl, who died in 2003.6 The fact that Riefenstahl never expressed regret or shame for her part in producing this film should cause every human being to look with highest suspicion upon the concept of a totally unbendable will as a sign of truth and real human rationality. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the concept of having a somewhat stubborn will is essentially irrational; that, in some cases, having a somewhat unbendable will cannot be a sign of superior, human rationality, even highest moral courage, prudence, wisdom, and overall human excellence. Polish aristocrat and one of the greatest writers of the Romantic era, Zygmunt Krasiński encouraged Poles of his age to be a masterpiece of unbending will! He belonged to a generation that directly experienced loss of national independence and a national homeland. This generation also saw how essentially brute, animal force can conquer human freedom. In 1795, Prussia, Russia, and Austria carried out the third and final partition of Poland. They deleted Poland from the map of Europe and the world. Apparently, this was Prussia’s and Austria’s way of showing thanks to the former the Republic of Poland for waging victorious wars for two centuries against the Ottoman and Russian Empires and saving Western culture and civilization from destruction. Regarding what had been destroyed by this act of treachery, American historians and experts on the history of Central Europe, Charles Homer Haskins and Robert Howard Lord gave this description years ago: The old Polish state was an experiment of a highly original and interesting character. It was a republic both in name and in fact, although nominally it had a king as its first magistrate. It was the largest and most ambitious experiment with a republican form of government that the world had seen since the days of the Romans. Moreover, it was the first experiment on a large scale with a federal republic down to the appearance of the United States. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this republic was the freest state in Europe, the state in which the greatest degree of constitutional, civic, and intellectual liberty prevailed. … Like the United States today, Poland was at that time the melting pot of Europe, the haven 6 1935, directed by Berta Helene Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl (1902–​2003).

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for the poor and oppressed of all the neighboring countries—​Germans, Jews, Czechs, Magyars, Armenians, Tartars, Russians, and others. … Finally, the old republic represented an effort to organize the vast open plain between the Baltic and the Black Sea.7 Before the United States had come into existence, Poland had been shaped by republican political forms. From 1795 until just recently Poland had to endure absolutist rule of partitioning powers. For this reason, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the idea of freedom was especially and extremely alive as a great idea within the individual and cultural psychology of the Poles. Thinkers who wrote after the loss of independence tried to answer a crucial question that any and every political or business leader should seriously ponder at least once in professional life: How could a nation as efficiently organized as Poland had been, with a truly free political system and a strong army, which had been unbeatable for two centuries, find itself in such a position? During this period of contemporary non-​being, many scholars attempted to answer this question and restore the Republic of Poland. In general, they saw the cause of the Polish defeat as resting in the fall of individual and virtues, in national flaws, and an excess of freedom; i.e., in anarchy. Literature and journalism of that time became saturated with moralism. Literary figures tried to shape the character of their countrymen. Romantic writers also wanted to do this, except they placed the individual and individual freedom in the center. To educate human beings to become doers of great deeds, they tended to shape the hero of the nation as a knight, as a crusader for individual and national human freedom and dignity. They asserted that freedom of all peoples belongs to their own nation with its own cultural principles and traditions. To achieve this goal, Zygmunt Krasiński encouraged spiritually cleansing the Polish soul of anger and hatred. He urged Poles not to be guided by pride and hypocrisy. In his last works, Krasiński focused on individual human issues and problems, not on national ones. He wrote about topics related to human morality and salvation. In a work entitled Psalm dobrej woli [Psalm of good will], Krasiński clearly recognized the chief principles of human freedom that make human freedom a great idea. In his opinion, the will is so important and so strongly inscribed in human nature that even God cannot save his creation without human consent. In this poem, he addresses the Creator thus: “But our

7 Charles Homer Haskins and Robert Howard Lord, Some Problems of the Peace Conference (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 166–​167.

66 Mamcarz-Plisiecki free will Thou hadst to leave to us. Without ourselves Thyself canst not redeem us; for so hast Thou ennobled man and every nation that Thy design, on high suspended, awaits till by their choice men and a nation go upon their destined roads. Forever is Thy Spirit the spouse of freedom only.”8 In one of his last works, “Resurrecturis,” [Resurrection], summarizing creativity, Krasiński wrote: Oh, know thyself for what thou art. Crave not for the mastery which is His Who is in heaven, nor choose to be as the brute beast fattening on the fields of pasture. On this side the grave, before the resurrection dawns, be thou in man the suffering which is of heaven, be thou the masterpiece of unbent will, be patience, mistress of misfortune that slowly buildeth up her edifice from nought. Be thou defeat, of distant aim, but which at last shall conquer for all ages. Be peace amidst the raving of the storm, order in chaos, harmony in discord. Be thou eternal beauty in the eternal war of life.9 According to him, true freedom is always and in every way choice of real good. He also associated freedom as a really doable deed with arduous effort and, especially, using personal creativity to work on transforming for the better one’s own personality. He told Poles that achieving this essentially involves enduring suffering, with patience, gentleness, peace, harmony, and spiritual beauty. In this eternal war of life, while we can agree to lose a battle now and then, we must be convinced about winning the war. True courage consists in defending the good and, with unbending will, staying united to this good despite evil’s strong and determined pressures. Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “Men of fortitude … face the danger on account of the good of virtue, which is the abiding object of their will, however great the danger proves.”10 All true virtue needs and builds perseverance, hope: seeing one’s own life long term, considered as a whole. A really strong human will is not, can never exist or endure as a quality a tyrannical soul, which is psychologically disposed to look at other people as essentially ugly, something to be despised. A psychologically healthy, stubborn, unbending will does not waver because its foundation is real bravery. It is the will of a human being who repeatedly: (1) falls, but

8

Cited in Monica M. Gardner, The Anonymous Poet of Poland: Zygmunt Krasiński (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1919), 282. 9 Cited in Gardner, The Anonymous Poet of Poland, 305; available at https://​pl.wikisource. org/​wiki/​Resurrecturis_​(Krasi%C5%84ski). 10 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, i–​i i, q. 46 a. 1.

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rises, whose house has been demolished, but he or she builds it again; (2) loses, but hopes for victory. This is how, properly, we should understand this gradual process of becoming a human masterpiece: a time of reaching holiness. This is evinced by the title of Krasiński’ s “Resurrecturis,” an old inscription on the graves of the dead. In Latin, it means “to those about to rise again.” Krasiński was returning, and telling Poles to return, to old European intellectually and morally virtuous paths. He became a great thinker, philosopher, and cultural leader. In his reflections, Krasiński identified and personally synthesized three essential qualities and moments in European cultural psychology: (1) the classical concept of virtue, (2) the medieval sense of free will, and (3) the problem of eschatology—​ resurrection after death. 2

Christian Roots of the European Idea of Freedom

In the journey thus far taken in this chapter to understand the nature of a human being as a crown and masterpiece of creation, I have reached the point where need exists for me to examine the great idea of Christianity. In my opinion, the Christian idea of a human being as a person is the greatest contribution ever made by Christianity to the cultural heritage of Europe and the world: the conflated metaphysical and moral concept of a human belong as a person. Christian thinkers developed this idea on the basis of Christological reflections derived from revealed theology. They did not get it from philosophy, or any other form of solely natural knowing. Reflections about the nature of: (1) Jesus Christ, (2) God as a Trinity of persons, and (3) the personal relationships in and through which the Trinity exists led early Christian theologians to discover that a human being is a person: chiefly a some one person (more than an impersonal, organizational being, a some one thing). This discovery caused a real intellectual and cultural revolution within West, the effects of which we are still experiencing today, and have started to extend globally. Already at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ, the texts of Nemesius of Nemesa exist signs of wonder, amazement, about the nature of an individual human person as a created masterpiece: Who, then, could rightly be surprised at the nobility of such an animal that binds together in himself mortal and immortal elements, and joins the rational with the non-​rational; who carries in his own nature the image of the whole creation, for which reason he was also called a

68 Mamcarz-Plisiecki microcosm; who was thought worthy of so great divine providence; for whom is everything that is now and is to be, and for whom indeed God became man; who ends in incorruption and escapes mortality? He is king over the heavens; being born in the image and likeness of God, he communes with Christ, is a child of God, and surpasses all principalities and powers. Who could express the advantages of this living thing? He crosses the seas, in contemplation he enters into the heavens, he recognizes the motions of the stars, their intervals and their dimensions, he crops the earth and the sea, he thinks nothing of wild beasts and sea-​monsters, he controls every science, craft and procedure, he converses by writing with those with whom he wishes to do so beyond the horizon, impeded in no way by the body, he forecasts the future; he rules all things, controls all things and enjoys all things, he converses with angels and with God, he gives orders to the whole creation, instructs spirits, discovers the nature of things, concerns himself with God and becomes the house and temple of God. All this is the fruit of virtue and piety.11 A human being is no longer a passive plaything, cog in the machine, in the hands of gods and fate. Each individual person is a child of God, with God the Father providing each one with wonderful and great opportunities. A child of God is someone who wills and loves other persons as persons, not substances as impersonal, organizational beings. Under the influence of early Christian theologians like Nemesius, later Christian humanist scholars like St. John of Damascus (John Damascene, ca. 675–​749), and later, St. Bernard of Chartres (died 1130) would eventually help generate the great twelfth century French renaissance as part of a cultural, intellectual enterprise led by Saints Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and others. As part of that same cultural enterprise, the French renaissance would help issue in later Italian renaissance, with all its crown jewels of cultural creation. Reflecting on the work of such thinkers, twentieth-​ century scholars like Adler, Étienne Henri Gilson, and Maritain would come to realize that their individual, scholarly work was essentially part of a great cultural, scholastic and scientific enterprise.12 Because a synthesis within Europe of the great ideas of creation, the incarnation, the idea of the personhood, and especially human personhood, served 11 Nemesius, On the Nature of Man, trans. with introduction and notes by R. W. Sharples and P. J. van Der Eijk (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2008), 49–​50. 12 Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, O ludzką politykę [For a human politics] (Warsaw: rw kul, 1998), 18.

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as a chief proximate cause of later European greatness issued in by later cultural renaissances (and eventually to realization of the great idea of personal freedom), wonder about this great idea of human personhood deserves special attention. In the following centuries beyond Nemesius’s consideration of this topic extended and deepened in intensity throughout Europe. Scholarly Christian humanism had developed tremendously. One of the Polish collaborators of Gilson and Maritain, an excellent historian of philosophy, Stefan Swieżawski describes this process: “Quid est homo?” (What is man?) This question was asked by the greatest minds in the history of philosophy—​and in the bosom of Christian thought we can confidently say that next to the question about the existence and nature of God, the question about man occupies the most important place. Great speculative effort of the Middle Ages before St. Tomas was instrumental in deepening and developing the problems of philosophical anthropology. Christian humanism then takes its first steps. Unfortunately, the considerations of the most prominent representatives of the 12th century are little known, although they contain productive and creative thoughts. The deep humanism of such as Abelard, or the theory of man’s indestructible ‘magnitude,’ greatness of his soul preached by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and, above all a short sentence, from Hugh from the Abbey of St. Victor, “positus est in medio homo,” man is placed at the center of the universe—​here are several stages in the development of the Christian concept of man, which in Thomism will find its most mature expression.13 Recognizing in cultural anthropology the radical nature of the human person as a crown of creation and child of God is analogous to realizing the radical nature of the Copernican revolution in astronomy, but with even wider and deeper cultural and civilizational implications. This becomes evident when we consider the way Adler describes two totalitarian—​and, oxymoronic—​ pre-​Christian ideas that applied to all the gods and all human beings, which essentially doomed both to a life of perpetual slavery: fate-​dominated physical nature and destiny-​dominated freedom of the sort that essentially flowed from the ancient Greek conception of nature considered as an everlasting organizational whole:

13

Stefan Swieżawski, “Osoba ludzka—​jej natura i zadania” [The human person—​his nature and tasks], Znak, no. 26 (Autumn 1950): 361–​377, 364 (author’s translation).

70 Mamcarz-Plisiecki In ancient poetry and mythology, both inevitability and chance were personified as deities or supernatural forces. … What happens by fate is fated—​something destined and decreed in the councils of the gods on Olympus; or it may be the decision of Zeus, to whose rule all the other divinities are subject; or, as we shall see presently, it may be a supernatural destiny which even Zeus cannot set aside. In any case, the notion of fate implies a supernatural will, even as destiny implies predestination by an intelligence able not only to plan the future but also to carry out that plan. The inevitability of fate and destiny is thus distinguished form that of merely natural necessity which determines the future only insofar as it may be the inevitable consequence of causes working naturally.14 Within such ideas, both the gods and human beings are essentially slaves, just qualitatively different kinds of slaves, existing within qualitatively different organizational wholes: real genera. While the ancient Greek concepts of the world and divine and human freedom within the ancient Greek universe left some room to maneuver within it, essentially both ideas conceived of the life of rational beings to be one of everlasting enslavement chained to everlasting slavery, lived within perpetually existing, impersonal organizations. Gods and human beings could play a lot with fate, and sometimes stoically accept and endure it in one way or another; but neither could ever fully escape it. In a way, the life of the gods and human beings was essentially a living Hell in which all rational beings (even the gods) are essentially slaves. No wonder, then, should exist about why the ancient Greeks and later the Romans (who essentially inherited from the ancient Greeks their cultural anthropology and metaphysical and moral principles) looked at slavery the way they did. Consider what even Aristotle, often considered by many students of Greek antiquity to have been their greatest philosopher/​scientist of their time once remarked about slavery and slaves: “For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave.”15 According to Aristotle, essentially a slave is a living tool, a living possession of a master.16 Quite revealing about the ancient Greek attitude toward slavery is that, in the first book of his Politics (where he considered the nature of slaves), the greatest philosopher/​scientist, wisest and most enlightened thinker that 14

Adler, Mortimer J., The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1999), 234. 15 Aristotle Politics 1, 1252a24–​1252b9. Jowett trans. 16 Aristotle Politics 1, 1253b24–​1254a17. Jowett trans.

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the greatest of ideas pre-​Christian Europe was ever able to produce locates slaves in the section on economic household. Analogous to where Aristotle placed them, today we might locate a slave in a magazine devoted to home furnishings, perhaps as a lamp standing up next to a chair, or as a universal blender, under a cabinet, next to a microwave oven in a kitchen.17 3

Conclusion: Freedom as Self-​Possession: Can We Become All We Want to Be?

An unbiased account of Western intellectual history clearly shows that Christianity brought with it a genuinely humanizing quality to European civilization. Being endowed by a personal God with an indestructible, personal, qualitative greatness (quantitatis intensiva or virtutis), Christianity forced Western civilization entirely to re-​conceive its nature and enter an entirely new world and human genus: one in which the natural world and human nature became endowed with a new, qualitatively higher, nature crowned with dignity of an indestructible quality and magnitude. How radically different, more intensely liberated, is this picture of the created, Christian universe and human nature existing within it than is the essentially enslaved, ancient Greek and Roman depiction of despotic gods essentially enslaved by fate and human beings essentially used as playthings by totalitarian gods!.

17

Regarding the etymology of the word freedom, Anna Wierzbicka perceptively notes: “The Latin libertas primarily denotes the status of a ‘liber,’ i.e. a person who is not a slave; and it implies the negation of the limitations imposed by slavery. As a first approximation, then, the concept encoded in libertas can be explicated along the lines suggested by Cicero … quid est enim libertas? potestas vivendi ut velis [because what is liberty? It is the ability to live as you want to]. Obviously, nobody can live entirely ‘as they want,’ or do all the things that they want to do, because of the manifold limitations on human life. To be able to live as one wants to means to be in control of one’s own life—​as a liber was, and as a slave was not. But this ‘ability to live as you want’ was not understood as any ‘freedom from restraints’ or ‘the unqualified power to do whatever one likes.’ It was seen as consistent with restraint, and it was often contrasted by Roman authors with licentia, the first being presented as moderate and restrained, the latter as immoderate and unconstrained. … The concept of ‘libertas’ doesn’t imply a total absence of constraints on what a person can do, but only the ability to shape one’s life, as far as possible, according to one’s own wishes (that is, to be ruled by oneself rather than by somebody else)”; see Anna Wierzbicka, Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words. English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 126–​127.

72 Mamcarz-Plisiecki Fittingly, therefore, this chapter should end with probably the most significant definition of a human person ever penned, first formulated by Roman patrician, Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Torquatus Boëthius, 477–​524 ce). In his Liber de persona et naturis duabus, Boethius wrote, “Persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia” (a person is an individual substance of a rational nature).18 What consequences did this understanding of a human bring to the idea of freedom? Thanks to this formulation Western civilization came explicitly to realize: (1) A human person is more than a part of an organizational whole. While a human society is a network of personal relationships among individual persons, each individual within this network, and every human organization considered as a whole, has an individual and organizational relationship with a personal God. (2) A human person is not a cog in a totalitarian machine. We are not things, or playthings of the gods. (3) Humanity is an abstraction. It does not really exist. The individual person (persona qua individua substantia) is what exists. (4) Metaphysically, morally, and properly conceived, persons are not, and can never, with rational coherence, be conceived to be tools.19 Why is defining a human being as a rational subject, person endowed with intellect and free choice of will so crucial? Thanks to this concept, we are at the heart of the Christian idea of freedom as being the true sign-​vehicle of the semiotic relationship that God has implanted within the idea of human nature: the great idea of freedom properly understood as a person. We see here signified as human beings living beings that are essentially: (1) autonomous (self-​determined), causing their own actions (acting in and through motions they freely cause); and (2) self-​aware and conscious of their actions; beings essentially able to distinguish between ‘I am’ and ‘I possess.’ As a human person, we can recognize what constitutes our selves, and our actions and the effects of our actions. Only in this way can a human being own his or her self, or be owner of oneself. From this understanding of the acting human subject, a human being as a free person, Adler presents a crucially enlightening threefold concept of the free human person as a self-​realized, self-​perfected, and self-​determined 18 19

Cited in Adler, The Great Ideas, 251. Piotr Jaroszyński, Osoba: Od maski do jaźni, in U źródeł tożsamości kultury europejskiej [At the sources of identity of European culture], ed. Tomasz Rakowski, 165–​167 (Lublin: Lubelska Szkoła Filozofii Chrześcijańskiej, 1994); (translation by Piotr Jaroszyński).

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human being. In becoming as perfectly human as we can be, Adler understands that, by causing us to become more perfect in our personal human nature in a qualitatively more perfect way, our personal choices and actions contribute really to defining who we personally are. In this respect, each person becomes more perfectly one as an autonomous ‘I.’20 Adler understands human freedom to be an organized whole more intensely uniting, synthesizing within itself, different natural and acquired human abilities within different circumstances. Human freedom enables a human person to choose in this or that situation a specific action to be undertaken in a way in which we can: (1) fulfill our natural needs and acquired wants; perfect our talents and real potential; and assess and choose a specific type of behavior. According to Adler, self-​realization is “an individual’s circumstantial ability to act as he wishes”; “self-​perfection [is] an individual’s acquired ability to live as he ought”; and “self-​determination [is] an individual’ s natural ability to determine for himself what he wishes to do or become.”21 So considered, from the standpoint of classical, Aristotelian behavioristic psychology, as an Aristotelian behavioristic, organizational psychologist, Adler presents a quite clear, holistic analysis of a human person becoming more personally perfect in and through behaving in a qualitatively more deeply perfect, intensely human, yet organizationally inclusive and free, manner. One generically existing animal is becoming more species specifically and individually free by becoming more perfectly oneself precisely as a human person. Striking is how closely, in his doctoral dissertation the profound philosophical/​psychological analysis of freedom that Christian Karol Wojtyła (later to become Pope and Saint John Paul ii) presents matches the behavioristic, psychological teaching of the benevolent pagan, organizational psychologist, and classical social scientist Adler. In analyzing the human will, Wojtyła focuses on three essential properties synthesized within its one nature: (1) self-​possession, (2) self-​determination, and (3) self-​governance: In Self-​Determination the will is seen as an essential of the person … Self-​ determination, which is the proper dynamic basis for the development of the person, presupposes a special complexity in the structure of the 20

21

Adler explained why he used such terms thus, “To complete the identification of freedoms that are distinct subjects of discussion, we have used the words ‘self-​realization,’ ‘self-​perfection,’ and ‘self-​determination’ to signify the mode of self in which a freedom consists,” The Idea of Freedom, vol. 2 of A Dialectical Examination of the Controversies about Freedom (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 4. Mortimer J. Adler, The Idea of Freedom (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), 168.

74 Mamcarz-Plisiecki person. Only the one who has possession of himself and is simultaneously his own sole and exclusive possession can be a person. … Every authentically human ‘I will’ is an act of self-​determination; it is so not in abstraction and isolation from the dynamic personal structure but, on the contrary, as the deep-​rooted content of this structural whole. Because ‘I will’ is an act of self-​determination at a particular moment it presupposes structural self-​possession. For only the things that are man’s actual possessions can be determined by him; they can be determined only by the one who actually possesses them. Being in the possession of himself man can determine himself. At the same time the will, every genuine “I will” reveals, confirms, and realizes the self-​possession that is appropriate solely to the person–​the fact that the person is his own judge.22 Self-​possession is human freedom’s instantiation within the human cognitive field of purpose, awareness of the purposefulness of a self’s actions. Self-​ determination is the quality of unbending will to achieve an intended goal, the ability to choose between different means. Self-​governance is the ability to choose right actions and prudent means in the moment of decision making, and of taking appropriate, proportionate, action.23 To conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, precisely because the semiotic nature of the great idea of freedom reveals as intensely as possible the chief activity in and through which the nature of a fully human person is caused and perfectly realized, the analysis given in this chapter demonstrates that perfect realization of actual human freedom most intensely displays the splendor of beauty of this great idea: A rational subject that is the prefect owner and perpetrator of a perfect human self’s own choices and actions. In closing, the time has come for me answer a question I raised in the title of this chapter. Can we really become what we really want to (can) be? To answer this question, some need exists to call upon the help of Aquinas to define as precisely and specifically as possible virtue’s true nature in all its splendor: St. Thomas understands a virtue to be a good (its species) quality (its genus) of soul (a form [principle of operation, an intensive quantum limit of greatness in existence, unity, health, beauty, and action]) existing 22 23

Pope John Paul ii, The Acting Person, with the collaboration of Anna-​Teresa Tymieniecka, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), 105–​106. For further analysis of freedom and its limitations, see Mieczysław A. Krąpiec, Ludzka wolność i jej granice [Human freedom and its borders] (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2004), 62.

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as part of nature, which exists as part of a whole living being. So considered, the term ‘virtue’ signifies a perfection of a natural or acquired power: an ultimate, maximum, qualitative limit of excellence in possession of good. When used in reference to the intellectual and appetitive faculties of the human soul, ‘virtue’ is properly defined as an operative habit that perfects the activity of the faculty—​makes its possessor good and perfects its possessor’s action.24 As a fixed and stable tendency as perfectly as possible to choose and do good as best we can so as to improve our personal lives as intellectual and volitional selves, virtue requires patience and constant hard work: unbending will. Can a person as a human being, become all that he or she wants to (can) be? Definitely! If, and only if, he or she constantly chooses prudently. And finally, if he or she perfects these virtues within himself or herself.25

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy. New York: Arno Press, 1937/​2008. isbn: 9781443727969. Adler, Mortimer J. The Idea of Freedom. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958. oclc: 606050548. Adler, Mortimer J. The Idea of Freedom. Vol. 2 of A Dialectical Examination of the Controversies about Freedom. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973. isbn: 9780837167381. Adler, Mortimer J. The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought. New York: Macmillan, 1999. isbn: 9780684859217. Burckhardt, Jacob. History of Greek Culture. Translated by Palmer Hilty. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002. isbn: 9780486420967. Gardner, Monica M. The Anonymous Poet of Poland: Zygmunt Krasiński. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1919. oclc: 5714446. Haskins, Charles Homer, and Robert Howard Lord. Some Problems of the Peace Conference. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920. oclc: 1208546.

24 25

Peter A. Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, vol. 2. An Introduction to Ragamuffin Thomism (St. Louis, MO: En Route, 2016), 178. This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

76 Mamcarz-Plisiecki Jaroszyński, Piotr. Osoba: Od maski do jaźni [Person: From mask to self]. In U źródeł tożsamości kultury europejskiej [At the sources of identity of European culture]. Edited by Tomasz Rakowski. Lublin: Lubelska Szkoła Filozofii Chrześcijańskiej, 1994. isbn: 9788390291505. John Paul ii, Pope. The Acting Person. In collaboration with Anna-​Teresa Tymieniecka. Translated by Andrzej Potocki. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. isbn: 9789027709851. Original Polish Osoba i czyn [Person and act]. Kraków: Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczno, 1969. oclc: 255370266. Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert. O ludzką politykę [For human politics]. Lublin: rw kul, 1998. isbn: 9788322802151. Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert. Ludzka wolność i jej granice [Human freedom and its borders]. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2004. isbn: 9788391880043. Maritain, Jacques. Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays. Translated by J. F. Scanlan. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930. isbn: 9780836922417. Nemesius, On the Nature of Man. Translated and with introductions and notes by R. W. Sharples and P. J. van Der Eijk. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2008. isbn: 9781846311321. Redpath, Peter A. A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics. Vol. 2. An Introduction to Ragamuffin Thomism. St. Louis, MO: En Route, 2016. isbn: 9781633371408. Swieżawski, Stefan. “Osoba ludzka—​jej natura i zadania” [The human person—​his nature and tasks], Znak, no. 26 (Autumn 1950): 361–​377. Wierzbicka, Anna. Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words. English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. isbn: 9780195088359.

­c hapter 5

Karol Wojtyła on Semiotically Expressing the Great Ideas of the True and the Good Arkadiusz Gudaniec Abstract A proper understanding of the Great Idea of Good is a necessary condition for a proper understanding of human freedom and religion. In search of such understanding, Karol Wojtyła refers to the achievements of philosophy and the Christian treasury of Revelation. This chapter focuses on how personal, religious truth (directed toward ultimate truth) exceeds ordinary cognitive abilities of human reason. Perfect personal fulfillment comes to us only through synthesis of acts of human freedom and acts of religious faith.

Keywords freedom –​fulfillment –​good –​reason –​abilities –​person –​religion –​faith –​truth –​will

A proper understanding of the Great Idea of the True and the Good is a necessary condition for a proper understanding of human freedom and religion. If we want to understand the nature of the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion, a need exists first to understand intrinsic first principles, proximate causes, contained in these ideas: the true and the good. Following the path of such a search, Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul ii) refers to the achievements of philosophy and the Christian treasury of divine revelation. This chapter focuses on how, in Wojtyła’s thought, reference to personal and religious truth (personal truth directed toward ultimate truth: realizing super-​natural truth about oneself and human freedom and religion) makes individual truth as perfectly intelligible as humanly possible. Therefore, perfect personal fulfillment comes to us only most perfectly through truth that synthesize great acts of freedom and religious faith.

© Arkadiusz Gudaniec, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_007

78 Gudaniec Pontius Pilate’s question, “Truth? What is that?”1 could be the motto of many contemporary discussions on the status of truth. The ironic tone of this question largely characterizes the mentality of our time. Undermining mind-​ independent foundations of truth, which started several centuries ago in the West, has caused many cultural changes in contemporary culture. Nevertheless, the question about truth’s nature remains. Despite shifting the location of truth chiefly from the psychologically independent (public) to the psychologically dependent (private) domains, the enduring nature of this question makes reconsidering the relation of truth to human culture, and especially to two of the most influential of all cultural ideas that shape human culture: freedom and religion. Well known is that, for over a century, leading historians and philosophers of Western culture have maintained that the contemporary West has been culturally declining because: (1) truth’s nature and value have become increasingly minimalized and marginalized; (2) a disordered, reductionistic understanding of truth and its value has become increasingly widespread within the West; and (3) this increasingly narrow understanding of truth is essentially connected to a misconception about truth’s complicated psychologically dependent and independent nature. During in the 1960s and 1970s, from the standpoints of philosophical and theological anthropology and commonsense human experience, Wojtyła participated in a series of great conversations essentially related to truth’s greatness and paradoxical nature. This chapter considers this conversation from both these standpoints, while giving a larger portion to the philosophical one. Many publications have been written about Wojtyła’s different philosophical and theological analyses of truth and its relation to freedom, religion, and culture (especially concerning the importance of religion and inter-​religious dialogue). In this chapter, I will examine these great ideas mainly in connection with what the teachings Mortimer J. Adler has to say about them2 The path Wojtyła chose appears to help shed light on the task Adler had set out to achieve his related to making as precisely manifest as possible the great idea of human nature rooted underlying classical ancient Greek and medieval

1 John 18:8 2 Mortimer J. Adler, “Everybody’s Business,” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical (New York: Macmillan, 1993); Mortimer J. Adler, “About Philosophy in Relation to Common Sense,” in Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Macmillan, 1990). On his concept of freedom, see Mortimer J. Adler, “Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Concept in the English and American Traditions of Philosophy,” inThe Review of Metaphysics 11, no. 3 (1958): 380–​410.

KAROL WOJTYŁA ON SEMIOTICALLY EXPRESSING THE TRUE AND THE GOOD 79

Western culture. In the antiquity (among the pagan Greeks and Romans) the idea of freedom as they chiefly understood it manifested its nature chiefly in the external, psychologically independent form of being an external, social measure for the societal division of qualitatively higher and lower into free and slave. Stoic philosophers were among the first to emphasize within Western pagan antiquity freedom’s nature as an internal human property and measure of qualitative human greatness of human psychology, the human soul. Following the order of reflection that Wojtyła/​John Paul ii followed (in which truth appears first as a challenge to human freedom, and then, as a means to ultimate perfection in a religious relationship), this chapter will first focus on the relationship between truth and freedom; and, then, between the idea of truth and the ideas of freedom and religion. 1

Commonsense Experience as a First Principle of Philosophical Anthropology

In Wojtyła’s philosophy, the starting point is always experience and not some previously constructed concept or system from which subsequent theses are deduced.3 Every issue related to understanding a human being starts with a phenomenological (descriptive psychological) analysis of commonsense, human experience.4 Wojtyła was convinced that all individual persons can access their ‘selves’ through the commonsense experience of insight,

3 Karol Wojtyła (1920–​2005) taught and worked on ethics and philosophical anthropology. He conducted his research at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin. He belonged to the Lublin Philosophical School. His significant achievement in the field of anthropology was a specific combination of the tradition of philosophical realism (Aristotelian-​Thomistic metaphysics) with selected elements of contemporary philosophy, especially phenomenology. The methodological rigors of the Lublin school, plus involvement in many discussions and philosophical disputes that occurred there during the 1960s and 1970s, allowed him to develop a quite original method of philosophical research into the nature of a human being. About the Lublin Philosophical School see the following source in English: Mieczysław A. Krąpiec and Andrzej Maryniarczyk, The Lublin Philosophical School, trans. by Hugh McDonald (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2010). 4 “The characteristic feature of Karol Wojtyła’s anthropological reflection is the fact that initially the author seems not to know what his definite views on the human being will be; he only knows that they must be completely subordinated to human experience, which is the insight into a human being. What matters at the beginning is only experience, only the insight,” in Tadeusz Styczeń, “Być sobą to przekraczać siebie—​o antropologii Karola Wojtyły” [To be oneself is to exceed oneself—​On the anthropology of Karol Wojtyła], in Pope John Paul ii, Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne, 496 (my translation).

80 Gudaniec self-​understanding. Once this is done, he or she should reflect on this insight and make it a criterion for judging every theory about a human being. The aim of Wojtyła’s commonsense, pre-​philosophical anthropology is to enable each man and woman to achieve self-​knowledge, to discover a true understanding about himself or herself: a psychological approach in the philosophical tradition of Socrates.5 In Wojtyła’s case, this Socratic attitude serves to show that we personally experience truth’s nature inside a human being, in and through private self-​reflection on the nature one’s self, not in the agora in and through public disputation. Contrary to an often used bifurcation of human experience into the sensory versus intellectual sphere, Wojtyła understood the starting point of his philosophical anthropology to be a commonsense, self-​reflective, human experience.6 From phenomenology he took the concept of direct viewing as a holistic, psychological attitude that conflates sensory observation and intellectual understanding (understanding experience).7 This means that the experience contains the principles that explain the subject of investigation. Thanks to this, analyzing the experience and gain understanding of its subject (a human being) becomes a really doable deed.8 Wojtyła’s analyses cover the sphere of 5 In this way, anthropology becomes anthropopraxis, which means that it implies: (1) knowing the truth about oneself; (2) choosing this truth; and (3) accepting it; see Styczeń, “Być sobą to przekraczać siebie,” 499–​500. 6 According to Wojtyła, contemporary philosophy has been affected by a serious fracture in the concept of experience. This is because it has been dominated by reductionist tendencies: on the one hand, phenomenalism or sensualism (empiricism), the approaches favoring deterministic tendencies and reducing experience to pure sensory data, which are not sufficient to undertake philosophical reflection. On the other hand, there is apriorism (rationalism), which deduces the concept of the human being from previously accepted general philosophical assumptions, and which breaks down the whole experience and promotes the ideologization of particular issues; see Introduction to Pope John Paul ii, The Acting Person, in collaboration with Anna-​Teresa Tymieniecka, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979); original Polish Osoba i czyn [Person and act] (Kraków: Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne, 1969). 7 Experience is permeated by a specific activity of reason, which brings together its various aspects, so that “every experience is also an understanding.” Intellectual integration of different aspects of experience is carried out by means of induction, in the Aristotelian sense, and its further reduction, discovering the right reasons and foundations of the studied reality. This activity of the human mind gradually turns experience into a theory for which experience remains still the criterion. Introduction to John Paul ii, The Acting Person. 8 See John Paul ii, Pope (as Karol Wojtyła), “Problem doświadczenia w etyce” [The problem of experience in ethics], Roczniki Filozoficzne 17, no. 2 (1969): 12; Karol Wojtyła, “Osobowa struktura samostanowienia” [The personal structure of self-​determination], in Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne, 424. According to W. Chudy, Wojtyła in his concept of internal experience, refers to the scholastic concept of the concomitant reflection (reflexio in actu exercito) in the approach of St. Thomas Aquinas. Self-​experience accompanies, that

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81

human experience: (1) in the commonsense aspect of experiencing one’s own act, and (2) after so doing in the aspect of searching for the proximate causes which emphasize the truly human character of the act. 2

The Relationship of Will to Truth

Wojtyła’s main anthropological work, The Acting Person, demonstrates a methodically conducted, multi-​stage process of revealing a person, irreducible to, but (through a harmonious, self-​determined holistic relationship between and among them) caused by principles, parts, in a human person. He carries out this process through analysis of human deeds as acts in which persons semiotically express themselves. In the section concerning transcendence of the person in the act, Wojtyła intends to reveal qualitatively deeper and deeper layers of the transcendence constituting the spiritual distinctiveness of the human person.9 First he analyzes the act of wanting considered in itself, treating it as a strictly personal experience and linking it to the sphere of will. The act of will is the person’s active response to value: a person engages in a relationship with objects as the values he chooses. The ability of a person’s will to respond to values was presented in Scholastic thought as appetitus rationalis, where the term indicated a close correlation between wanting (will) and cognition (reason). This is where the subject of truth appears in Wojtyła’s analyses. This turns out to be inevitable while trying to penetrate the essence of the activity of will, especially in connection with its ability to decide: The essential condition of choice and of the ability to make a choice as such, seems to lie in the specific reference of will to truth, the reference that permeates the intentionality of willing and constitutes what is somehow the inner principle of volition. To ‘choose’ … does mean to make a

is, it occurs simultaneously (it is ‘half-​given’) with the experience of the act (reflexio in actu signato), which is the perception of objects and persons outside oneself. By making the concomitant reflection the subject of philosophical research, we are able to identify and analyze many significant factors that escape us in the course of the experience of the act; see Wojciech Chudy, Rozwój filozofowania a ‘Pułapka refleksji’: Filozofia refleksji i próby jej przezwyciężenia [The development of philosophizing and ‘the trap of reflection’: The philosophy of reflection and the attempts to overcome it] (Lublin: kul, 1995), 78–​79. 9 John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §3.5. We are not dealing here separately with the question of spirituality.

82 Gudaniec decision, according to the principle of truth, upon selecting between possible objects that have been presented to the will.10 Without reference to truth the choice remains incomprehensible. The choice is possible, a really doable deed, by knowing some truth about the desired action; but the human will itself cannot know truth. By necessity the human will is subordinate to truth and dependent on truth in its action. Hence, a close interdependence and mutual fecundation exists between cognition and willing (choice, decision). The activity of will as a response to value “presupposes a reference to truth.”11 In this way, Wojtyła shows that the relation to truth lies in the inner dynamics of will. This relationship, which Wojtyła defines as ‘surrender to truth,’ determines the personal character of willing, as well as the person’s ability to transcend their dynamisms.12 3

The Truth about Good as a Condition of Freedom

According to Wojtyła, freedom is self-​determination: constituting one’s self in a conscious act of which a person is the cause.13 The basis of self-​determination is some independence (non-​determination) of a person’s will in relation to intentional objects of willing. This independence is possible because dependence on truth resides in the intrinsic nature of the human will: “The person becomes independent of the objects of his own acting through the moment of truth.”14 This moment of truth: (1) does not correspond to the truthfulness of the choices a person makes (because, often these are untrue, oppose true good); and (2) is not a matter of mistake, which takes place in imperfect knowing. It involves the real possibility of guilt or sin: morally doable evil deeds. Wojtyła strongly states that the experience of guilt, sin, and moral evil proves that “the 10 11 12 13

14

John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §3.5–​6. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §3. 7. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §3. 7. Wojtyła uses the Polish term samostanowienie which is typically translated into English as self-​determination. It seems to us that the English equivalent does not fully render the Polish meaning of this word, as Wojtyła points to two important aspects of this issue: firstly, the autonomy in deciding about one’s life, and secondly, the fact that with every act a human being forms and shapes their ‘self’ (which in turn has consequences on the relationship with truth and responsibility). John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §3. 7.

KAROL WOJTYŁA ON SEMIOTICALLY EXPRESSING THE TRUE AND THE GOOD 83

reference to truth and the inner dependence on truth is rooted in the human will.”15 Without this psychological reference the entire personal moral experience, predicament, would become incomprehensible. Personal, human distinction between good and evil is made on the basis of the real, psychological principle of “the truth about good.”16 That is why knowledge (which, by its very nature, is directed toward truth) conditions the human will: puts it in real shape actually to will makes actual willing a doable deed for the human will. As Wojtyła continues, “freedom is expressed by efficacy and efficacy leads to responsibility, which in turn reveals the dependence of freedom on truth; but this relation of freedom to truth constitutes the real significance [displays a semiotic relationship to the will] of the conscience.”17 Persons’ true and complete disclosure consists in the revealing of their necessary relationship to truth. If they do not display a sign of a human person’s transcendence as a reference to the truth and ‘true’ good, analyses of human knowing, will, or human values do not reveal the person.18 Wojtyła’s psychological analysis of the transcendence of the person in action from the point of view of a commonsense experience of the human being as a person reveals the essential meaning of truth for a person as a commonsense ‘truth about good.’19 The concept of freedom to which Wojtyła and Adler refer opposes the absolutization of freedom—​a disordered idea that, since the Enlightenment—​has spread throughout the West and globally. While the idea of absolutization of freedom might recognize freedom as a foundation of personal dignity, it exempts the human person from the obligation to respect the truth, questioning the very possibility of knowing, and having human choices rationally measured by it. One necessary consequence of such thinking is an attraction to a kind of false-​freedom that keeps surfacing individual, social, and cultural psychology and habits of choice. According to its assumptions, the acting subject creates truth, and all values. This illusory image of a man and a woman, freed from any dependence on the being of things, leads to a deepening, psychological dependence on brute instincts, drives, and on the claims of political and ideological powers, which, having lost access to real truth, the subject can no 15 16

17 18 19

John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §3. 7. The real good is the good chosen on the basis of truth. In the philosophical tradition it is known as ‘virtuous good’ (bonum honestum); see Pope John Paul ii, “Osoba: podmiot i wspólnota” [The person: The subject and the community], in Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne [The acting person and other anthropological studies], 371–​414 at 390. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 7. Pope John Paul ii, “Osoba: podmiot i wspólnota,” 390. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 7.

84 Gudaniec longer resist.20 In this way, by detaching them from truth, the apparent liberation and independence of human beings leads to personal enslavement by the brute forces of nature or to their submission to unbridled will to power.21 4

Truth and the Fulfillment of the Person

At the heart of the human pursuit for fulfillment is the contingency and potentiality of real human existence. According to Wojtyła, natural, personal pursuit of human perfection by flawed human beings essentially means that human freedom can be used well or badly—​as a means to human perfection to human misery. The process of distinguishing good from evil takes place in the conscience, whose foundation is known relation to truth: “the person … fulfills himself through reference to … a real good,” because “the human person has the ‘right’ to freedom, not in the sense of unconditioned existential independence, but insofar as freedom is the core of a person’s self-​reliance that essentially relates to surrender to truth.”22 Conscience and responsibility for owning one’s actions, prove that human freedom is essentially subordinate to truth. The above profound, commonsense psychological analysis makes evident the conclusion that, first of all, a person’s true good, and essential means to personal perfection, fulfillment is available. Second, pursuit of personal fulfillment, through pursuit of the real truth about the real nature of personal good implies some commonsense, transcendent reference. In addition, assumes 20

21

22

Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, referring, among others, to Wojtyła’s concept of truth, observed that the recently promoted slogans of post-​humanism lead to the creation of post-​truth, which is no longer based on conformity with the reality. “The post-​truth describes events and cultural realities, but for the post-​truth the facts are less important in the process of shaping public opinion than the appeal to emotions, personal beliefs and social correctness. The post-​truth does not ask whether something is logical, but whether it is psychological—​whether it suits us and satisfies us, both personally and socially.” He concluded with the following statement: “The vision of the truth of Karol Wojtyła-​John Paul II secures the dialogue against contemporary meanders of truth”; “Postprawda i fake newsy uniemożliwiają prawdziwy dialog” [Post-​truth and fake news prevent true dialogue] (2017), https://​ekai.pl/​postprawda-​i-​fake-​newsy-​uniemozliwiaja-​ prawdziwy-​dialog/​. Wojtyła mentions Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud as figures who considered human freedom to be illusory; they subordinated it to three forces: material possession, power, and sex; see Pope John Paul ii (Jan Paweł ii), Mężczyzną i niewiastą stworzył ich: Odkupienie ciała a sakramentalność małżeństwa [Man and woman he created them: Redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage] (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1986), 183. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 2.

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that a person is a real being, not disembodied spirit. In search for real truth and self-​understanding, the human mind does not remain closed within itself. It accepts the truth’s psychological transcendence: necessity to reach out to the truth in action, in really truthful behavior. Through acting, a human being finds fulfillment. Thus, grasping the truth about the good is necessarily related to truth about really being a human being to which that good corresponds. Wojtyła sees the human intellect reaching out to the absolutely perfect human good (the chief goal of the whole man or woman), as reaching out to the whole truth about everything: “reason, so naturally bound to will, must also seek the truth in all that will pursues, in all its actions.”23 “Thus, the whole existence of a man or woman … is being actualized in the presence of truth.”24 Only by respecting truth, especially truth about a true human being (about what the person’s good is and what is not) that an individual human being, as a person and as a rational being, is fulfilled.25 The transcendence of the person in the action does not consist solely either in the ontological autonomy, or self-​centered dependence on the ego. It includes also the indispensable and essential moment of reference to ‘truth,’ and it is this moment that ultimately determines freedom. For human freedom is not accomplished nor exercised in bypassing truth but, on the contrary, by the person’s realization and surrender to truth. The dependence upon truth marks out the borderlines of the autonomy appropriate to the human person.26 The limits of human autonomy do not erase human freedom. They safeguard human freedom against slavery, which seeks to annul the psychologically 23

24 25

26

Pope John Paul ii (as Wojtyła, Karol), “O kierowniczej lub służebnej roli rozumu w etyce na tle poglądów św. Tomasza z Akwinu, Hume’a, i Kanta” [On the managerial or servant role of reason in ethics against the background of the views of Thomas Aquinas, Hume, and Kant], in Zagadnienie podmiotu moralności [The issue of the subject of morality], ed. Tadeusz Styczeń et al., 213–​229 (Lublin: tn kul, 1991), 218. Pope John Paul ii, “O kierowniczej lub służebnej roli rozumu w etyce na tle poglądów św,” 241. See Andrzej Szostek, “Od samostanowienia do daru z siebie i uczestnictwa. O Karola Wojtyły/​Jana Pawła II koncepcji wolności” [From self-​determination to self-​giving and participation. About the Concept of Freedom by Karol Wojtyła/​John Paul II], Nauka 3 (2005): 35–​47, at 41. Referring to the thought of Wojtyła, his pupil and long-​time collaborator, Tadeusz Styczeń, states: “To save one’s freedom, to save one’s loyalty to the known truth and to save one’s self—​this is one and the same thing,” inWprowadzenie do etyki [Introduction to Ethics] (Lublin: tn kul, 1993), 87 (my translation). John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 2.

86 Gudaniec transcendent order of things. Persons truly become themselves only through truth, especially truth about themselves and their freedom. 5

The Human Person’s Dependence on Truth

Evident to the commonsense understanding of human freedom is that human persons can only fulfill, perfect, themselves by virtue of personal freedom in the sense of self-​determination, and truth. “Freedom … carries within itself the surrender to truth,”27 which is only characteristic of the human person. Because it fulfills its nature only through implemented in actions in and through which persons perfect or destroy themselves, this relationship is dynamic. It introduces psychological transcendence of the person, that is our qualitative superiority, qualitative distance in greatness from material being, which reveals the human person’s spiritual nature;28 and it reveals that dependence on truth does not chiefly refer to intentional objects of willing. It mainly refers to a qualitatively higher, intensely greater degree of regard for the subject: his or her ‘I,’ which “in some respects is the ultimate object of the will.”29 Therefore, truth about the human person ultimately becomes truth about the metaphysical gravitas, spiritual weight, heft of ‘value of the person’30; about the person’s fulfillment in truth. In this sense, Wojtyła views self-​determination as equivalent to self-​perfection (self-​fulfillment).31 Without truth a human being would be a brute animal, not a person, would not be free, would not be ‘I.’ The personal center of a human being is qualitatively, metaphysically more than consciousness, or self-​consciousness: personal relation (relation of personal freedom) to the truth about what being a human being really signifies, the semiotic nature of a human being as a divine image. Persons are fulfilled through their acts. And personal acts are fulfilled by the complete truth about the nature of perfect personal good, to which human persons can only be really united through personal, free acts. Therefore, truth is most intensely, perfectly experienced in personal behavior: behaving the way perfectly self-​determined agents as a perfect ‘I.’ In a qualitatively special, more deep and intense way, a perfect person, ‘I,’ experiences dependence upon truth: as a metaphysical and moral responsibility 27 28 29 30 31

John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 2. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 3. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 3. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 3. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 3.

KAROL WOJTYŁA ON SEMIOTICALLY EXPRESSING THE TRUE AND THE GOOD 87

obligation, calling, and imperative to fulfill himself or herself in transcendental truth: be good qua human person.32 Because as human persons we actually establish ourselves as the proximate subject generating, causing, an action in relation to real truth, this obligatory reference, in truth, or truly, to be free is characteristic only of a personal will in perfectly complete act. Experience of a metaphysical and moral duty is a semiotic manifestation of personal freedom’s transcendental need to act: “Far from abolishing freedom, truth liberates it.”33 The human person’s natural and supernatural pursuit for the self-​ fulfillment—​manifested in the experience of a perfectly fulfilling, personal act—​therefore leads to establishing loyalty to the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth as a metaphysically and morally highest, deepest, personal obligation, and faithfulness to one’s own highest fulfillment as a person.34 Therefore, in the totality of human experience it is naturally and super-​ naturally understood to be an essential task fundamental existential vocation of the human person considered as a whole.35 Wojtyła shows yet another dimension of personal life, as he notices a convergence between the axiology of the person and their eudaimonology.36 Happiness, felicity (well-​being), understood as the person’s condition, concerns inner, inbred, and intransitive fulfillment. The conclusion Wojtyła draws from this analysis is that a synthesis of truth and freedom in “fulfillment of the person in the action depends on the active and inwardly creative union of truth with freedom. … To fulfill freedom in truthfulness—​that is to say, according to the relation to truth—​is equivalent to the fulfillment of the person.”37 Wojtyła maintains that each and every human person has a special quality of a someone who essentially experiences personal, human subjectivity: existential identity of human freedom and natural and super-​natural pursuit of fulfillment. This whole psychological realm of self-​experience draws its power from its metaphysical and moral, personal relation to truth considered as 32 33 34

35 36 37

John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 4. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 4. Worth mentioning within this context is Rocco Buttiglione’s comment about the responsibility for the truth and its relationship to the inequality between thinking and knowing. Thinking implies passiveness of the person as a witness of representations, and it is only in the knowing act of judgment that the person experiences personal subjectivity to the act of thinking and, as a subject, assumes responsibility for the truth; see Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 148. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 4. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 6. John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 6.

88 Gudaniec such. The search for the truth inscribed within human nature and the human heart (will as an intellectual appetite) does not correspond to pursuit of theoretical problem solving. On the contrary, it has a crucially important and real existential, personal dimension.38 Men and women naturally and supernaturally search for the truth because they seek qualitatively perfect coincidence between their own personal self, self-​fulfillment, and happiness: perfect self-​ realization. Personal human happiness does not chiefly consist in making free decisions. It mainly consists in human freedom’s qualitatively highest and deepest perfection: totally becoming all a human person can actually be. The personality-​forming dimension of truth Wojtyła discovers along this path makes evident that, in its highest manifestation, truth is no abstraction distilled through intellectual analysis. It is a deeply real-​life, existential first principle of personal living in the world related to the self-​fulfillment of every single person. In this way, truth becomes the highest and deepest dimension of personal human life, a guardian of the ever-​strong commonsense conviction that reality makes sense, that perfect realization of personal good makes perfect because it steps forward toward something qualitatively more, intensely higher and deeper. Hence, lack of sufficient knowledge of truth on the theoretical level does not preclude experiencing truth as an essential element of personal life. This is because simple reference to the truth, as a necessary condition of personal, human fulfillment, has, as Wojtyła observes, something of the absolute existing semiotically within it. Hence, conscience is called God’s voice inasmuch as it serves as a sign-​vehicle of a transcendent level of human existence. Conscience directs all human persons psychologically upward toward surpassing themselves—​thanks to which we achieve full compatibility with our selves.39 Therefore, search for the truth inevitably remains an ever-​present ‘sign’ of our openness to the absolute and transcendent.40

38 39 40

Catholic Church, Encyclical Letter, Fides et ratio, of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1998, 29. See Pope John Paul ii, “Transcendencja osoby w czynie a autoteleologia człowieka” [The Transcendence of the acting person and the autotheology of the human being], in Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne, 485–​488. See John Paul ii, “Transcendencja osoby w czynie a autoteleologia człowieka,” 485–​488; see also Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 25.

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6

Search for the Qualitatively Highest Truth as a First Principle of Religion

This peculiar and crucial relationship between the truth qualitatively present in human experience of freedom, and the absolute truth is one of the greatest existential challenges all human persons face. Wojtyła devoted many of his philosophical analyses to the problem of the reference of the person to truth. The encyclicals and other doctrinal documents of John Paul ii’s papacy were a theological continuation of these philosophical reflections.41 The achievements of Wojtyła’s philosophical and theological anthropological research (especially, the threads concerning human nature as open to the knowing of truth in an infinite dimension) play a crucial role in papal teaching.42 In and through them, Wojtyła tried to show that revelation does not exclude natural reason. It presupposes it and requires its active presence; it requires the response from a man or a woman experiencing personal, existential hunger for truth in its qualitatively highest and deepest form.43 As a result, religious experience becomes a natural dimension of personal life: existentially life in truth: each and every day living face to face in a highest and deepest personal relationship with, and for, the truth. Religion exists in Wojtyła’s thought and teaching as a living, vibrant, dynamic idea that the commonsense experience of personal freedom naturally and supernaturally inclines human persons toward perfect psychological union with the whole truth about everything. In and through this union, human beings will necessarily find fulfillment as a really doable deed, or not at all. The existential path to personal fulfillment leads through personal relationships with other persons based on social and community relationships unique to our social and communal human nature.44 The fulfillment available to men 41

42

43 44

Wojtyła meticulously separates the philosophical and theological orders in accordance with the spirit of the Lublin Philosophical School to which he belonged; Mężczyzną i niewiastą stworzył ich: Odkupienie ciała a sakramentalnoć małżeństwa [Man and woman he created them: Redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage], Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 1986. Herein, application of the results of philosophical anthropology to the interpretation of those statements of revelation pertains to a human being plays a crucial role. Wojtyła observes, among other things, that “A profound understanding of the person is certainly of great significance for the understanding and the interpretation of the revealed Christian doctrine on the eternal beatitude consisting in the union with God”; John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 6. See Karol Wojtyła, Considerations on the Essence of Man –​Rozważania o istocie człowieka (bilingual ed.), trans. John Grondelski (Lublin-​Rzym, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2016), 210. See Pope John Paul ii, “Transcendencja osoby w czynie a autoteleologia człowieka,” 489.

90 Gudaniec and women on this path opens us up to another, deeper social and communal dimension: “It is also on the level of personal participation that—​though only by suitable analogy—​we may interpret felicity in the religious sense, the felicity or beatitude that derives from the intercourse with God and the communion with Him.”45 In a way, mere search for ultimate truth fulfills our human nature, opens it up to the truth. We cannot reach the end of our quest by the human self alone. Perfect human self-​fulfillment essentially depends upon personal human relation with highest knowledge about truth where truth is found as a highest personal self: highest truth revealed by a creator God.46 Perfect personal self-​ fulfillment demands that each human being personally: (1) discover, accept, and actively participate in this message; and (2) proclaim this truth. In this way, Christian revelation fulfills the role of the ultimate truth that completes and makes sense out of the noble and dignified efforts of the historical human search, tirelessly undertaken from the beginning of time by the irresistible natural and super-​natural human desire for happiness.47 7

Religious Faith: Liberation through the Truth

In this way, religious faith evinces its semiotic nature as the chief act that leads to the final fulfillment of a human being as a free human person. Wojtyła undertook an in-​depth reflection on this issue in his encyclical Fides et ratio, in which he clearly emphasizes human “need to reflect upon truth.”48 Throughout all human history and cultures, human beings have searched in different ways for a highest truth existing outside our selves. “Men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them,” because “in the far reaches of the human heart there is a seed of desire and nostalgia for God.”49 We continue to read that “only true values can lead people to realize themselves fully, allowing them to be true to their nature. The truth of these values is to be found not by turning in on oneself but by opening oneself

45 46 47 48

49

John Paul ii, The Acting Person, §4. 6. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 2, 7, 13. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 7–​12. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 6. Despite many setbacks and the lack of a final settlement of this search, Wojtyła expresses his conviction, confirmed by the results of many human efforts, that “in principle the human being can arrive at the truth”; Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 29. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 5, 24.

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to apprehend that truth even at levels which transcend the person. This is an essential condition for us to become ourselves and to grow as mature, adult persons.”50 Regarding this natural desire to seek transcendental truth and the area of its availability that extends over and above truths its natural dimension, Wojtyła states: It is the nature of the human being to seek the truth. This search looks not only to the attainment of truths which are partial, empirical or scientific; nor is it only in individual acts of decision making that people seek the true good. Their search looks towards an ulterior truth which would explain the meaning of life. And it is therefore a search which can reach its end only in reaching the absolute.51 In this way, on the level of religion, understood as the divine revelation, “the relationship between freedom and truth is complete.”52 Christ’s words confirm, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”53 For Christians, the ultimate Truth revealed to every human being, is Jesus Christ. This reflection of Wojtyła recognizes an act of real religious faith as the peak moment in which human persons harmonize human freedom with the truth that all of us naturally and super-​naturally seeks for personal fulfillment. Only a perfect person can perfectly fulfill the human quest for personal fulfillment. Nothing less will do. Realizing this, Wojtyła says, “Men and women can accomplish no more important act in their lives than the act of faith; it is here that freedom reaches the certainty of truth and chooses to live in that truth.”54 In another statement, he makes the same point even more emphatically: In particular, when the why of things is explored in full harmony with the search for the ultimate answer, then human reason reaches its zenith and opens to the religious impulse. The religious impulse is the highest 50 51 52 53 54

Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 25. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 33. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 15. John 8:32. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 13. Furthermore, he notices that “knowledge through belief, grounded as it is on trust between persons, is linked to truth: in the act of believing, men and women entrust themselves to the truth which the other declares to them. … Human perfection, then, consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of the truth, but in a dynamic relationship of faithful self-​giving with others”; Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 32.

92 Gudaniec expression of the human person, because it is the highpoint of his rational nature. It springs from the profound human aspiration for the truth and it is the basis of the human being’s free and personal search for the divine.55 In Wojtyła’s teaching, Christianity is, therefore, the fulfillment of what every human being wants as a person.56 God’s revelation brings human persons face to face with our personal selves: “God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—​in a word, to know himself—​so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”57 For this reason, as a message of the revealed truth, Christianity essentially cannot shut itself from others (non-​Christians), cannot help but display its personally social nature. Instead, its personal openness to others helps makes intelligible its essential nature as a missionary faith, to which the whole of Wojtyła’s pontificate personally paid witness. That religions have existed since the dawn of time is a proof of the presence of religious sense (religiousness) in human nature. Religious beliefs of different peoples, in different times or cultures, and ways semiotically carry within themselves the semina Verbi (seeds of the Word), traces of divine truth—​the touch of mystery.58 The ultimate truth about the nature of human being as a person is thus semiotically revealed, first, in different traces and seeds on the soil of many religions; and, then, in the event of Christ’s presence within human history. The Church as a community of persons who receive with faith the message of the incarnate Word of God makes this awaited-​truth available, and offers it to all people. At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church places a value on the quest of every individual person, because personal salvation of each human being is a real concern of all Christians.59

55 56 57

58 59

John Paul ii, General Audience (19 October 1983), cited in Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 28. “In Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, faith recognizes the ultimate appeal to humanity, an appeal made in order that what we experience as desire and nostalgia may come to its fulfillment”; Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 33. Introduction to Catholic Church, Fides et ratio; see also André Frossard, Nie lękajcie się! Rozmowy z Janem Pawłem II [Be not afraid! Conversations with John Paul II], trans. by A. Turowiczowa, (Kraków: Znak, 1983), 75 (Original French: N’ayez pas peur! Paris: Laffont, 1982; English version: Be Not Afraid! London, Bodley, 1984). See Pope John Paul ii (as Jan Paweł ii), Przekroczyć próg nadziei [Crossing the Threshold of Hope] (Lublin, Redakcja Wydawnictw kul, 1994), 73–​75. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, 12.

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8

Conclusion

The great idea of freedom experienced by a human person is the truth about personal human good. This commonsense, evident first principle of human understanding evinces the personal, human natural and super-​natural need to seek the ultimate and bases for truth and good in a qualitatively highest, perfect person. Personal relation to highest and perfect truth constitutes: (1) highest perfection of human freedom, which perfectly realizes truth about the human self; and (2) highest perfection in human understanding of freedom’s nature and that of religion. This is a human person directed toward the qualitatively ultimate truth, exceeding the cognitive abilities of reason. Therefore, persons fulfill our selves most completely and perfectly through truth in personal acts of freedom and religious faith. In his entire, lifelong work and papal teachings, Karol Wojtyła thoroughly reflected on truth and gave personal witness to how much he valued “[being in] the service of the Supreme Truth and also the truth which is the reflection of the Infinite Truth in the life of the world and people.” A most significant example of this love for truth was the following message he sent to universities and every human being: “Serve the Truth! If you serve the Truth, you serve Freedom. … You serve Life!”60

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. “About Philosophy in Relation to Common Sense.” In Intellect: Mind over Matter. New York: Macmillan, 1990. isbn: 9780025003507. Adler, Mortimer J. “Everybody’s Business.” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical. New York: Macmillan, 1993. isbn: 9780025005747. Adler, Mortimer J. “Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Concept in the English and American Traditions of Philosophy.” The Review of Metaphysics. 11, no. 3 (March 1958): 380–​410. Stable url: https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​20123650.

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John Paul ii, Pope (as Jan Paweł ii). “Przemówienie Ojca Świętego Jana Pawła II do społeczności KUL” [Speech of the Holy Father John Paul II to the Community of the Catholic University of Lublin] (Lublin, Courtyard kul, 9 June 1987) https://​www.kul.pl/​w-​sluzbie -​prawdy,art_​31153.html. * This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

94 Gudaniec Buttiglione, Rocco. Karol Wojtyła: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. isbn: 9780802838483. Catholic Church, Encyclical Letter, Fides et ratio, of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1998. isbn: 9781574553024. Chudy, Wojciech. Rozwój filozofowania a ‘Pułapka refleksji’: Filozofia refleksji i próby jej przezwyciężenia [The development of philosophizing and ‘the trap of reflection’: The philosophy of reflection and the attempts to overcome it]. Lublin: kul, 1995. isbn: 9788322804667. Dziwisz, Stanisław. “Postprawda i fake newsy uniemożliwiają prawdziwy dialog” [Post-​ truth and fake news prevent true dialogue] (2017) https://​ekai.pl/​postprawda-​i-​ fake-​newsy-​uniemozliwiaja-​prawdziwy-​dialog/​. Frossard, André. Nie lękajcie się! Rozmowy z Janem Pawłem II [Be not afraid: Conversations with John Paul II]. Translated by Anna Turowiczowa. Kraków: Znak, 1983. Original French, Frossard, André. N’ayez pas peur! Paris: Laffont, 1982. isbn: 9782253033073. Engish Translation: Be Not Afraid! London, Bodley, 1984. isbn: 9780370305523. John Paul ii, Pope. The Acting Person. In collaboration with Anna-​Teresa Tymieniecka. Translated by Andrzej Potocki. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. isbn: 9789027709851. Original Polish Osoba i czyn [Person and act]. Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne. oclc: 255370266. John Paul ii, Pope (as Wojtyła, Karol). Considerations on the Essence of Man –​ Rozważania o istocie człowieka. Bilingual edition. Translated by John Grondelski. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2016. isbn: 9788360144923. John Paul ii, Pope (as Wojtyła, Karol). “O kierowniczej lub służebnej roli rozumu w etyce na tle poglądów św. Tomasza z Akwinu, Hume’a, i Kanta” [On the managerial or servant role of reason in ethics against the background of the views of Thomas Aquinas, Hume, and Kant]. In Zagadnienie podmiotu moralności [The issue of the subject of morality]. Edited by Tadeusz Styczeń et al., 213–​229. Lublin: tn kul, 1991. isbn: 9788385291114. John Paul ii, Pope (as Jan Paweł ii). Mężczyzną i niewiastą stworzył ich: Odkupienie ciała a sakramentalność małżeństwa [Man and woman he created them: Redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage]. Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 1986. isbn: 9788820915278. John Paul ii, Pope. Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne [Person and act and other anthropological studies]. Edited by Tadeusz Styczeń, et al. Lublin: tn kul, 1994. isbn: 9788385291671. John Paul ii, Pope (as Wojtyła, Karol). “Osoba: podmiot i wspólnota” [The person: The subject and the community]. In Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne.

KAROL WOJTYŁA ON SEMIOTICALLY EXPRESSING THE TRUE AND THE GOOD 95 John Paul ii, Pope. “Osobowa struktura samostanowienia” [The personal structure of self-​determination]. In John Paul ii, Pope. Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne. John Paul ii, Pope. “Podmiotowość i to, co nieredukowalne w człowieku” [Subjectivity and theirreducible in the human being]. In Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne. John Paul ii, Pop (as Wojtyła, Karol). “Problem doświadczenia w etyce” [The problem of experience in ethics], Roczniki Filozoficzne 17, no. 2 (1969). John Paul ii, Pope (as Jan Paweł ii). Przekroczyć próg nadziei [Crossing the threshold of hope]. Lublin, Redakcja Wydawnictw kul, 1994. isbn: 9788322803950. John Paul ii, Pope (as Jan Paweł ii). “Przemówienie Ojca Świętego Jana Pawła II do społeczności KUL” [Speech of the Holy Father John Paul II to the community of the Catholic University of Lublin], Lublin, Courtyard kul, 9 June 1987. https://​www.kul .pl/​w-​sluzbie-​prawdy,art_​31153.html. John Paul ii, Pope. “Transcendencja osoby w czynie a autoteleologia człowieka” [The transcendence of the acting person and the autotheology of the human being]. In Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne. Styczeń, Tadeusz. “Być sobą to przekraczać siebie—​o antropologii Karola Wojtyły” [To be oneself is to exceed oneself—​On the anthropology of Karol Wojtyła]. In John Paul ii, Pope. Osoba i czyn, oraz inne studia antropologiczne. Styczeń, Tadeusz. Wprowadzenie Do Etyki [Introduction to ethics]. Lublin: tn kul, 1993. isbn: 9788385291442. Szostek, Andrzej. “Od samostanowienia do daru z siebie i uczestnictwa. O Karola Wojtyły/​Jana Pawła II koncepcji wolności” [From self-​determination to self-​giving and participation. About the concept of freedom by Karol Wojtyła/​John Paul II]. Nauka 3 (2005): 35–​47.

­c hapter 6

How the Great Ideas Can Help Resolve the Contemporary Decline of the West Wojciech Daszkiewicz Abstract For many decades, the crisis of Western civilization has been a ubiquitous theme in scholarly discussions. In this chapter, some manifestations of that crisis are examined. It is shown that the philosophical basis of this dialogue chiefly consists in an anthropological errors; i.e., a misunderstanding of human nature that results in erroneous conceptualizations of the ideas of religion and freedom. At the root of the crisis lies an erroneous anthropology essentially connected to a rejection of human beings as metaphysical animals. This chapter explains the nature of this mistaken understanding of the human person and attempts to show how ways how to remedy the mistake.

Keywords anthropological error –​culture –​freedom –​human person –​metaphysical animals –​ religion –​civilization

Since at least the start of the twentieth century, the crisis of the West has been much discussed and written about.1 Easy to get from these discussions and writings is the impression that mentioning the crisis causes a specific 1 For example, see Jacques Maritain, The Twilight of Civilization, trans. Lionel Landry (New York: Sheed & Ward), 1943; Edmund Husserl, Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man. In Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man, trans. Quentin Lauer (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 149–​192; Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, authorized translation with notes by Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926); José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, authorized trans. from Spanish (New York: W. W. Norton, 1932); Herbert Marcuse, One-​Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, with an intro. by Douglas Kellner (London: K. Paul, 1964); Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Polity, 1997).

© Wojciech Daszkiewicz, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_008

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discomfort, and spoils the good mood and self-​satisfaction of some representatives of Western culture and civilization. Arnold Toynbee was right to indicate that this “breakdown means loss of control.”2 While we often witness larger and smaller crises, complete destruction of an existing civilization and its culture rarely happens. In this chapter, I consider the issue of the crisis of Western civilization from the perspective of conflicting understandings of the natures of religion and freedom by: (1) explaining my understanding of the word ‘crisis’; (2) connecting these widespread and deep changes in contemporary Western civilization (considered as semiotic relations of the idea of crisis as a sign vehicles that measure the health of the human soul as a proximate cause of actually doable, or realizable, deeds in the real world of everyday commonsense experience);3 (3) analyzing the philosophical basis (considered in terms of an Aristotelian-​Thomistic, behavioristic, organizational psychology) of these civilizational crises chiefly to consist in what I call application to reality of an ‘anthropological error’; and (4), thereby, misunderstanding human nature in a way that results in causing to flow into the everyday world and culture erroneous, impossibly realizable, ideas of religion and freedom and really undoable deeds they cannot generate (which, nonetheless, cultures irrationally attempt to effect). Finally, in an attempt to resolve Western civilization’s crises, I argue that a need exists to return to the commonsense metaphysical and moral realism that Mortimer J. Adler had promoted in his work.

2 Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial: Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 12. 3 I am following here a three-​fold psychological distinction introduced into philosophy and contemporary semiotics by John N. Deely among: (1) a sign vehicle (such as an idea or an image); (2) a sign relation that refers/​connects a sign vehicle to a faculty within a knower and a thing known; and a sign, which is a synthesis of (1) and (2). Strictly speaking, according to Deely, properly understood considered in relation to a human knower, a sign is not a sign vehicle or a sign relation. It is a synthesis of both: a relation that connects a knower and something known to each other through a sign vehicle. For more about Deely’s profound understanding of signs and the way they function, see John N. Deely, Intentionality and Semiotics: A Sttory of Mutual Fecundation as told by John Deely, Scranton, PA (Scranton University Press, 2007). In my discussion, I: (1) follow Peter A. Redpath’s lead of distinguishing the technical way in which, in some of his writings, Adler uses the term ‘common sense’ as shorthand for common, human sense experience as a sign of a generic understanding all human beings have of the existence of evident metaphysical and moral first principles and measures of conceptual and behavioritic coherence and non-​contradiction; (2) distinguish it from the sense faculty called ‘the common sense’ found in Scholastic and Thomistic psychology; and (3) distinguish it from the dictionary definition, which refers to sound practical judgment. I thank Peter Redpath to referring me to Deely’s teaching about the nature of signs and Adler’s technical understanding of common sense and philosophy.

98 Daszkiewicz 1

The Many Faces of the Crisis of Western Civilization

According to the mistaken anthropology I have just mentioned serving as a proximate first principle of the contemporary West’s cultural and civilizational crises, a human being does not need real contact with an Absolute. Each person is considered to be self-​sufficient, autonomous, and, according to one’s own abilities, creates one’s own religion, self-​worship, and self-​liturgy. Detached from the commonsense world in which we live our everyday lives, and reduced to biological forces and impulses, in the name of freedom understood negatively (as liberation from external commands and prohibitions), an abstract, biological humanity becomes creator and first measure of personal destiny. Paradoxically, in the process of downward self-​spiraling from metaphysical to solely biological, animals, human persons also become increasingly market directed and manipulated. The limit and measure of our choices becomes increasingly restricted to what the market, media, and politicians have to offer, and demand. As a remedy for this crisis, I propose a return to a realistic understanding of human beings as essentially rational (free, metaphysical and moral) animals. In this way, the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion (not self-​worship) become intelligible as essential behavioral limits and measures of human activity and destiny requiring an appropriate social, real genus and sign relation, called civilization fully to connect the soul of a human person to the everyday world and fully actualize itself. Some behavioral, semiotic relations the sign-​vehicle (idea) ‘crisis’ psychologically evokes within a healthy soul should include: (1) conflict (in the form of contradictory and/​or contrary opposition); (2) breakthrough; (3) resolution; and (4) turning point. Even though the semiotic relation of emotionally feeling that an existing state of affairs can no longer last, in and of itself this sign relation need not necessarily entail the idea of a real crisis. It might simply entail an imaginary one. Usually synthesis of fewer great ideas are needed to unite to generate the qualitatively greater idea of a crisis. Being qualitatively smaller in intensity and close to being psychologically unnoticeable at the start, students of crises often call these “ideas that lead up to a crisis” or “signs of an impending crisis.” By this they appear to mean that, not having coalesced enough together, these ideas serve as sign vehicles of a qualitatively less powerful relational union between the idea of crisis and reality: the idea being qualitatively less close to being in touch with reality. Nevertheless, we should not assume that signs of an actual crisis only start to appear when actual involvement in a crisis starts to fight (move) against the tendency for inertia, desertion, or escapism;4 and 4 Paul Ricoeur, “Kryzy—​zjawisko swoiście nowoczesne” [Crisis—​A Specifically Modern Phenomenon], trans. Małgorzata Łukasiewicz, in O kryzysie. Rozmowy w Castel Gandolfo

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manifests itself in a semiotic relation of emotionally feeling uncertainty and concern about the present day and future.5 Jean Baudrillard claimed, “the idea of the decadence of the West is part of its cultural language. The West has always delighted in imagining its own death;”6 and, as early as 1919, Paul Valéry spoke his famous and frequently quoted words, “All is not lost, but everything was touched by the wings of death. … Now we know that civilisation is mortal.”7 A common sign relation connecting the above concepts to the idea of a crisis is an identification of the crisis of Western civilization occurring on several generically diverse levels: (1) axiological, in which the crisis psychologically and essentially connects the idea (sign-​vehicle of a crisis) to the real collapse of old systems of values (such as, lack of differentiation of values, the relative character and subjective treatment of them, lack of permanent norms and patters with a simultaneous standardization of norms, the appearance of substitute goals replacing long-​term ones, a lack of faith in the future, hedonism, despair, and a general sense of societal drifting); (2) worldviews, in which the idea of crisis signifies doing away with intellectual diversity, skepticism, disappearance of individualism, utilitarian treatment of knowledge, the cult of scientism, satisfaction with the existing reality, excessive role of mob mentality, and presence of utopian socialist ideologies; (3) political, in which the idea of crisis focuses attention of the human psyche on the dominating role of the masses, liberalism, nationalism, and revolution; (4) social, in which the concept of crisis functions as a sign-​relation connecting the reality of conflict resolution to disappearance of social differentiation and social distancing between people, stripping away conditions for development of individual exceptionalism and healthy organizational cohesion, while promoting unhealthy organizational incoherence; (5) economic, in which the concept of crisis functions as a motivational cause promoting an increase of materialistic attitudes, common [About Crisis: Conversations in Castel Gandolfo], ed. Krzysztof Michalski (Warsaw: Res Publica, 1990), 50. 5 See Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (London: Penguin, 2006). 6 Jean Baudrillard, Paroxysm: Interviews with Philippe Petit, trans. Chris Turner (New York: Verso, 1998), 41. 7 Quoted by Denis de Rougemont, “A Lecture on ‘The History of the Ideal for a United Europe,’ ” in The Meaning of Europe, trans. Alan Braley (New York Stein and Day, 1965), 13. For the original, see Paul Valéry, La Crise de l’esprit (Crisis of the Mind) (Chicoutimi: J. M. Tremblay, 1919/​2005). This laconic sentence appears to be the main sign relation in many other, more-​ developed, critical concepts, including those of: Oswald Spengler, Florian Znaniecki, José Ortega y Gasset, Arnold Toynbee, Albert Schweitzer, György Lukács, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorn, Herbert Marcuse, Karl Jaspers, and Nikolai A. Berdyaev.

100 Daszkiewicz mechanization, an excessive role given to technical progress and money; and (6) cultural, in which crisis is viewed as a generating cause that effects vulgarization of manners, collapse of religion, art, philosophy, qualitative leveling of cultural excellence, excessive spread of technique and technology, and triumph of consumerism.8 Ulrich Beck argued that, in contemporary civilization, all problems intertwine with each other and subsequently occur on the global scale. Thus, we cannot solve these problems individually. And no real possibility exists of social distancing between them.9 In all likelihood, we have to deal with a long-​ term tendency of gradual, pathological degradation in the West’s culturally unhealthy psychological condition. For example, we cannot reduce it to an economic crisis because many causes flowing out of a metaphysical disease conflate in it to form one, complex, semiotic/​metaphysical web that chiefly generates its unhealthy condition and downward spiral. 2

Some Philosophical Aspects of the Crisis of Western Civilization

The proximate causes of the crisis of Western civilization lie chiefly within Western philosophy and in adoption within the West of an incorrect concept of the human person and free (personal) activity: a metaphysical-​anthropological error. Therefore, to solve it, we need to analyze this crisis within the real genus that has suffered from its unhealthy effects: culture. Crucial need exists, therefore, to examine this cultural pathology on the philosophical/​psychological level, where proper study of the world, human nature, and hierarchy of values is indispensable for understanding the culture-​forming activities proper to developing social human beings. While philosophy is generically uniform, it has many species. Above all, contemporary conflict between classical philosophical realism of thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, and modern subjective idealism need to be part of this analysis—​especially its two main, contrary opposite, species: (1) rationalism and (2) subsequent irrationalism. The chief, proximate first principle, cause, of contemporary Western civilization’s crisis and the global one that currently flows from it lies in the West’s loss of 8 Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993); John Naisbit, Nana Naisbitt, and Douglas Philips, High Tech/​High Touch: Technology and Our Accelerated Search for Meaning (London: Brealey, 2001); see alsoArjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 79–​85.

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the metaphysical truth and great idea of a human being as a person. As Adler and John N. Deely had clearly recognized, the consequent damage of so doing is semiotically evinced in repeated, contemporary attempts philosophically/​ scientifically to grasp the whole of human nature and behavior from reductionistic, conceptual understandings fostered by three contrary-​ opposite extremes: (1) biological and contemporary, scientistic reductionism, which deflates human life to the biological dimension (naturalism); (2) angelism, which inflates human nature to the purely spiritual dimension; and (3) the post-​modernistic/​deterministic (modernism on steroids) view that promotes the notion that human behavior is essentially reducible to mechanistic-​like forces, tendencies, and drives .9 3

How the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion Can Help Reverse the Anthropological Error’s Erosion of Western Culture

At this point, crucial for me to note are two cultural pathologies, pandemic viruses, which, through their reductionistic species, modern subjective idealism has unleashed within the West and globally: (1) loss touch with reality and (2) focus on an analysis of the content of human consciousness, where all principles (including behavioral ones) and measures of truth must be sought. This essentially involves replacing the primordial nature of cognition as understood as contact with existing reality with a way of thinking in which humans seek the content and certainty of truth wholly within our inner life (the egocentric predicament).10 Well known is that René Descartes started this psychological pathology and its subsequent global, cultural pandemic by unleashing on the West (and through the West, on the world at large) his metaphysical first principle cogito ergo sum (seventeenth century); that Immanuel Kant and the Enlightenment (eighteenth century) deepened and spread this metaphysical pathology and attempted to cure the subsequent cultural disorders it 9

10

Richard Rorty writes: “It is not that there is anything wrong with reason, truth, and knowledge. All that is wrong is the Platonic attempt to put them [ideas of reason, truth, and knowledge] in the center of culture, in the center of our sense of what it is to be a human being”; Habermas, Jürgen, Richard Rorty, and Leszek Kołakowski. Debating the State of Philosophy: Habermas, Rorty, and Kolakowski, eds. Jozef Niźnik and John T. Sanders. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 27–​28. Reference to post-​modernism as modernism on steroids is a well-​known phrase often used by John N. Deely. See Tomasz Duma, “To Know Or To Think—​The Controversy over the Understanding of Philosophical Knowledge in the Light of the studies of Mieczysław A. Krąpiec,” in Studia Gilsoniana 3 (2014): 277–​299.

102 Daszkiewicz unleashed by looking for and coming up with a cultural vaccine and antidote taken from one or more of its viral strains (like scientific naturalism, angelism, materialism, and so on). Enlightenment absolutization of an abstract, Enlightened Reason conflated with Rousseauean Enlightened Pure Good Will, thereby, became the sole principle and measure of all truth in the world, humankind, and religion.11 No longer would religious faith, any religion, or traditional philosophical ethics have any truth value. All would be reduced to matters of taste, not matters of truth.12 Ensuing separation of religion and morality from the domains of culture caused general cultural fissures, crack-​ups. By further reducing the sole measure of truth to so-​called exact sciences, primarily the natural sciences, Auguste Comte played a crucial role in throwing gasoline on these already existing cultural flames. Comte then narrowed the cognitive properties of reason to the properties of scientific reason oriented at technique (productive, technocratic knowing) as the whole of science. Considered as such, Comte removed from the real genus of scientific investigation the Great Question “Why?” With it, he eliminated causal explanations, including the qualitatively highest and culturally/​civilizationally most crucial (metaphysical, moral, and religious) ones as scientifically meaningless. Additionally, through his historical, first principle of three stages of development of scientific consciousness (religious, metaphysical, and positivistic [technocratic science], Comte historicized scientific consciousness as a sole measure of truth, thereby giving rise of the technocratic, scientific spirit as queen, great idea, and sole measure, of science and scientific progress).13 In Compte’s narrative, humanity has only recently entered the scientific age of human consciousness; the principles of contemporary technocratic science

11 12

13

See Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: What Is enlightenment?” (1784), in Practical Philosophy. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Edited by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge University Press, 1996. See Peter A. Redpath, “The New World Disorder: A Crisis of Philosophical Identity,” in Contemporary Philosophy 23, no. 6 (1994): 19–​24. See also Redpath’s critique of Enlightenment philosophy as a neo-​sophistry, he calls ‘transcendental sophistry’: a conflation of deconstructed, secularized Augustinian theology, neo-​Protagoreanism, neo-​ Heracliteanism, and neo-​ Averroism, in Peter A. Redpath, Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998). Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Compte. 3 vols. Freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau. (Kithener: Batoche Books, 2000), 28–​33.

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are the sole measure in knowledge and truth within the physical the world at large and culture.14 After Comte, different cultural anthropologies developed in the form of ‘isms’ that inclined to apotheosize different concepts of humanity, such as: deism, pantheism, and the popular ‘Promethean Atheism.’ These concepts of humanity generated different concepts of religion or even the rejection of religion. These subsequent concepts of religion include the current deification of humanity. This has chiefly arisen from a pathological inclination to worship scientific and technological progress, with the achievements of technique having aroused in humankind a feeling of the will to power, self-​sufficiency, and the ability for self-​creation. As a consequence, this current led to a reduction of the divine to the human and elevation of the human to the divine. One example is Ludwig Feuerbach’s claims that religion is a false consciousness, humanity is god, and religion is an obstacle on the way to the achievement of humankind’s perfection.15 Hence, God’s ‘death’ is proclaimed so that a ‘superman’ will come to life (à la Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche).16 Thus came Zarathustra and the slogan ‘God is dead’ settling into Western culture, and the currently increasing secularization of the West and Western values. As Adler clearly recognized, by increasingly and more deeply promoting an anti-​metaphysical vision of the human person, modernity on steroids: (1) undermined the cultural foundations of metaphysics and religion within Western culture and Western cultural institutions, and (2), as a result, chiefly caused the subsequent breakdown of contemporary cultural relations within the West between human beings and religion, reducing the latter to a cultural product instead of being a first principle of culture. This contrary-​ opposite inversion of the true order in which ideas influence human experience and behavior (commonsense experience as Adler understood this relationship) disorders: (1) a healthy understanding of religion, human freedom,

14 15 16

For more on this topic, see Piotr Jaroszyński, Science in Culture, trans. from the Polish by Hugh McDonald (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), 200–​203. Ludwig Feuerbach, Wykłady o istocie religii [Lectures on the essence of religion], trans. Eryk Skowron (Warsaw: Tadeusz Witwicki, 1981), 25. English original, Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2001), 118–​120; cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Reginald J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 119–​120.

104 Daszkiewicz and culture; and (2) a proper grasp of the real difference between healthy and unhealthy ways they should behave toward each other. 4

The Trouble with Freedom

As Miguel Cervantes understood when he wrote Don Quixote, “Freedom, … is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men.”17 Contrary to this conception of freedom as being divinely given, chiefly under the influence of the Western Enlightenment, the great idea of freedom became increasingly reduced to an idol for human self-​worship. While the reality of freedom was still widely accepted without discussion within the contemporary West, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, attempts at reflection upon human freedom as having a transcendental source increasingly became treated as an attack against freedom itself. In the History of Europe, Benedetto Croce attempted such a reflection about the ‘religion of liberty,’ which, having been rooted in nineteenth-​century Europe, became a specific common faith.18 Likewise, Fernand Braudel argued that, for Europe, “the word ‘liberty’ is the operative word”;19 and adds, “hence forward liberty … became an explicit factor in world affairs and in history. It was invoked—​legitimately or not—​by almost all the ideologies and claims advanced in the nineteenth century by the very varied movements covered by the artificial term ‘liberalism,’ highly equivocal because it has so many meanings.”20 Nonetheless, during the eighteenth century, Charles-​Louis de Secondat Montesquieu mentioned some abuses of freedom, which he saw as paradoxical results the advantages freedom sometimes carry with it, when he sagely observed, “Liberty produces excessive taxes; the effect of excessive taxes is slavery; and slavery produces a diminution of tribute.”21 And, during the twentieth century, Adler had sage observations to make about freedom, especially in the distinction he made among three species of it: (1) inherent in human nature 17

Miquel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, new trans. Edith Grossman, intro. Harold Bloom (New York: Ecco Press, 2003), 863. 18 Benedetto Croce, History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, trans. from Italian by Henry Furst (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1933), 3–​19. 19 Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, trans. Richard Maine (New York: A. Lane, 1994), 315. 20 Braudel, A History of Civilizations, 329. 21 Charles-​Louis de Secodat Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, trans. by Thomas Nugent (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001), 240.

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(an endowment); (2) facultatively acquired (caused by) prudence and other moral virtues; (3) circumstantial (dependent upon favorable external circumstances to execute an internally free and externally doable human deed).22 Contrary to Adler, during the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries individualistic and collectivistic forms of utopian socialism (such as political liberalism and anarchism) have tended to reduce the whole of freedom to a negatively conceived, unhealthy version of Adler’s third species as a lack of any external, circumstantial determination in which this lack of extermination serves as the as the specific difference constituting us as rational beings and persons. Such a pathological misunderstanding of human nature tends to lead to two extreme behavioral/​psychological and sociopathic, extremes of delusion (often called ‘Sisyphean pessimism’ or ‘Dionysian grandeur’) grandeur, both of which rationally demand as flowing necessarily from their conceptual nature acceptance of the word’s absurdity and human life’s necessary aimlessness. Jean Paul Sartre’s pessimistic existentialism is one example.23 So, too, is Eric Fromm’s psychologically depressing teaching about freedom contributing to a feeling of loneliness.24 Hardly surprising, then, in current times is that many Westerners suffer from psychological depression and incline to become manipulated by media culture.25 Paradoxically, the growing scale of pessimism is interconnected with increasing consumer possibilities;26 and the illusion of unlimited freedom concurs with the feeling of unlimited consumption: with freedom increasingly being identified with the possibility of satisfying all desires and fancies.27 At present, we seem to suffer increasingly more often from the subjective feeling of excessive possibilities accompanied by a specific compulsion to use them than from open borders, bans, or hidden addictions.28 Aided and abetted by contemporary media culture and economic consumerism, contemporary enslavement tends to be more sophisticated, discreet, 22

Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 140–​141. 23 Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (L’Existentialisme est un humanisme), Including, a Commentary on The Stranger (Explication de L’Étranger), trans. Carol Macomber, intro. Annle Cohen-​Solal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 29. 24 Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (London: K. Paul, 1943), 23–​32. 25 See Mario Vargas Llosa, Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays on Spectacle and Society, edited and trans. from Spanish by John King (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015), 23–​56. 26 In this context, Zbigniew Brzeziński uses the well-​chosen expression ‘permissive cornucopia’; see The New Dimensions of Human Rights (New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1995), 15. 27 See Zygmunt Baumann, Consuming Life (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 45. 28 Bauman, Consuming Life, 85–​86.

106 Daszkiewicz and psychological than ancient slavery because it is refined and conducted as if in in agreement with the permission of the slaves. As François-​René Chateaubriand writes about the contemporary form of slavery, “the excesses of freedom lead to tyranny; but the excesses of tyranny lead only to greater tyranny; the latter by degrading us renders us incapable of liberty.”29 The world of contemporary entertainment, fun, and searching for attractions at all costs makes people voluntarily: (1) give into this new slavery, and (2) sell one’s soul to the highest bidder. Nevertheless, by nature, human beings are social animals, not Leibnizian monads cut off from social relations; and human communities are ecological social niches in which we grow biologically, psychologically, and culturally.30 Social responsibility makes us stand face to face with other human persons as species-​specific, social equals. To maximize the psychological benefits of this specific, human experience requires that we first resolve the problem of finding a basis for this responsibility.31 While liberalism and anarchism claim to promote solidarity and tolerance, how can human beings enter into solidarity and be tolerant as human beings if we do not first possess self-​understanding and the ability to comprehend other human beings as free agents, persons? How can such a human being enter into humanly productive conversation with anyone, including oneself? 5

How to Overcome This Crisis?

As I have attempted to show in the preceding sections of this chapter, to overcome the current crisis of Western civilization, first the West has to: return to serious, competent, and actually productive metaphysical and moral reflection and conversation about: (1) human nature, and (2) the actions that the species-​specific faculties of self-​determined, free persons are actually capable of harmonizing together to cause as really doable deeds within qualitatively different cultural organizations/​institutions in the commonsense, measured, real world of everyday life.

29

30 31

François-​René Chateaubriand, “The Future—​The Difficulty of Comprehending It,” in Memoires d’Outre-​Tombe [Memoirs from beyond the tomb], English trans. A. S. Kline (Poetry In Translation, 2005), bk. 42, chap. 14: sec 1. https://​www.poetryintranslation.com/​ klineaschateaubriand.php. Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, Człowiek w kulturze [Man in Culture] (Warsaw: Gutenberg-​ Print, 1996), 72–​86. Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 3.

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To do this, however, since such reflection is chiefly metaphysical, psychologically we have to be able to discover and unpack a concept of philosophy capable of rationally explaining the existence of what Adler refers to as commonsense experience, in which principles of conceptual and behavioral non-​ contradiction: (1) exist, (2) serve as proximate causes of humanly doable deeds, and (3) cause some species of cultural institutions naturally to tend to produce healthy and humanly liberating organizational cooperation, while other forms of so-​called cultural organizations tend to do the contrary opposite: enslave us. Thinking about philosophy’s nature as increasingly more perfect levels of commonsense self-​understanding (habits of wondering about causes of organizational unity, existence, and operation, as Adler appears to have understood the perennial philosophy of Aristotle) might create a great opportunity to solve cultural and other problems, which: (1) transcend specific cultural domains, and (2) provide the means of understanding cultural changes, especially crises, and the criteria to estimate cultural achievements. What, then, is philosophy so conceived? A commonsense philosophy? As Adler conceived it, commonsense, or perennial, philosophy appears to be chiefly a mutually fecundating personal and cultural enterprise (team effort) in personal and organizational self-​ understanding naturally flowing out of commonsense experience and wonder about organizational unity, existence, and causes. More precisely, Adler did not consider philosophy to be an abstract, systematic logic. He considered philosophy chiefly to be a species of organizational psychology (a habit of the human soul). More specifically, he understood philosophy to be an Aristotelian, behavioristic, organizational psychology regulated by conceptual and behavioristic first principles of non-​ contradiction capable of generating really doable, individual deeds of free persons and personal organizations. For Adler, in and of itself, the abstract, intellectual principle of conceptual coherence (conceptual non-​contradiction) can never generate the proximate behavioral principle of sense wonder capable of causing individual human beings and a culture cooperatively to work together as a transgenerational humanistic and educational enterprise, or team, to cause philosophy/​science to come into existence. For that to happen, Adler thought a culture must have developed an understanding of commonsense that recognizes that only a synthesis of conceptual non-​contradiction (conceptual coherence) and behavioral non-​contradiction (behavioristic coherence) can do this. To start on a transgenerational educational project of such a magnitude, the first motivational principle must be more than the abstract concept of doability for some human being at some time and some place. It must be a project in which a team of individuals and team

108 Daszkiewicz members freely choose to engage at some individual moment in human history as really doable within this or that culture. It must be viewed as a really doable deed for me and this culture here and now! Only such a great idea can generate the principle of sense wonder that causes the Great Idea of Philosophy/​Science to enter human history as a concrete behavior-​ altering idea. Even before this understanding enters into cultural institutions of higher education (like higher schools and colleges and universities), in some, way (chiefly through cooperative work, social interaction and conversations, literature, the liberal and fine arts), the generic and specific idea of philosophy/​science must first permeate the day to day cultural psychology of the public at large, in the form of just and prudential productive and practical labor and benevolent social conversations about such forms of human excellence. Such a commonsense realist philosophy starts with: (1) a generically and specifically vague organizational and cultural self-​understanding; (2) some comprehension that human beings are free creators of culture that are, also, formed by culture; and (3) some individual and cultural recognition that personal and cultural development mutually fecundate. If philosophy is to contribute to the personalistic character of culture and civilization, it has to show how culture and civilization mutually perfect each other. As social beings, as Adler understood, human beings are essentially organizational beings and human organizations are essentially instruments that really liberate, do not enslave, people. Precisely how this mutual fecundation can be first conceived and grow in our time so as best to serve individual and cultural development is among the greatest crises of contemporary culture and civilization. Essentially connected with these crises is a lowered, contemporary respect for human dignity, which, in my opinion, can only be resolved by: (1) following Adler’s lead, and (2) reconceiving the whole of philosophy as commonsense, behavioristic, organizational psychology as first formulated by Aristotle and more perfectly refined in relation to the human person by Aquinas.32

32

Stanisław Kamiński, “On the Nature of Philosophy,” in On Metaphysical Cognition–​O poznaniu metafizycznym, trans. Maciej B Stępień (Lublin-​Roma: ptta, 2020), 205. * This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​R ID/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 PLN.

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Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. isbn: 9780679745402. Redpath, Peter A. “The New World Disorder: A Crisis of Philosophical Identity.” Contemporary Philosophy 23, no. 6 (1994): 19–​24. Redpath, Peter A. Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. isbn: 9789042004023. Ricoeur, Paul. “Kryzys—​zjawisko swoiście nowoczesne” [Crisis—​a Specifically Modern Phenomenon]. Translated by Małgorzata Łukasiewicz. In O kryzysie. Rozmowy w Castel Gandolfo [On crisis: Conversations in Castel Gandolfo]. Edited by Krzysztof Michalski. Warszawa: Res Publica, 1990. isbn: 9788370461362. Sartre, Jean-​Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism (L’Existentialisme est un humanisme), Including, a Commentary on The Stranger (Explication de L’Étranger). Translated by Carol Macomber, Introduction by Annle Cohen-​Solal. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. isbn: 9780300115468. Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Form and Actuality. Authorized translation with notes by Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926. oclc: 6183270. Toynbee, Arnold J. Civilization on Trial: Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948. oclc: 344360. Valéry, Paul. La Crise de l’esprit [Crisis of the mind]. Chicoutimi: J. M. Tremblay, 1919/​ 2005. isbn: 9781554425457.

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Some Contemporary Problems Obscuring the Greatness of the Great Ideas Katarzyna Stępień Abstract This chapter focuses attention on a tendency within the history of Western philosophy to absolutize human freedom, often in the forms of atheism, fideism, sentimentalism, or unbridled individualism. It argues that absence of limitations on human freedom tends to result in unhealthy forms of permissiveness—​social, cultural, and political. In some cases, state administrations have enacted laws that dangerously limit or negate human freedoms, especially freedom of religion. This chapter argues that a proper understanding of the nature of human freedom demands a commonsense realist philosophical defense of a synthesis of the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion as rational principles of healthy self-​determined social life that deserves political and educational support and preservation.

Keywords freedom –​commonsense –​culture –​fideism –​religion –​intellect –​person –​transcendence –​semiotics –​will

This chapter focuses attention on a voluntary, theoretical and practical tendency within Western intellectual history (often in the forms of atheism, fideism, sentimentalism, individualism, or some combination of these) to absolutize freedom. In theoretical life, this phenomenon tends semiotically to manifest itself in increasingly: (1) ceasing to define freedom as an internal principle and positive form of human behavior that naturally inclines human beings to pursue truth and goodness within reasonable limits of individually and socially healthy self-​control, and (2) tending to define freedom negatively in terms of: (a) limited space of free choices, (b) lack of self-​determination, (c) coercion (sometimes understood as any external influence [even cultural or educational] on the individual), and (d) having total privacy, (e) ultimately

© Katarzyna Stępień, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_009

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as total independence from having any nature, being unrelated to any real genus or species in terms of an actual nature, world, and essential relationships to other persons. Absence of limitations on human freedom tends to lead to (1) increase in individual and social absolutization, (2) increasing individual and social permissiveness, (3) attempts by societies to use law to limit human freedom, and (4) at times, attempts by societies totally to negate human freedom, often expressed in terms of societal safety and security. Within such a context, apparent conflict(s) between and among freedom and nature, nature and culture, freedom and law become increasingly, illusive, complicated and difficult to understand, explain to anyone, and resolve. This chapter argues that human freedom is precisely and semiotically manifested and defined in its most healthy and unhealthy forms in organizational human behavior: how people treat each other in terms of personal relationships as members of families, local communities, social organizations, cultures, and so on. It maintains that one of the strongest defenses against reduction of freedom and religion to individual and just social life consists in a philosophical synthesis of the Great Ideas of freedom and religion, in the form of the common sense philosophical realism that Mortimer J. Adler proposed and so eloquently defended: one capable of showing the rational and culturally enhancing behavioral character of freedom and religion when properly defined and harmonized. Today, easy to observe within Western nations is increasing individual and societal interest in the Great Ideas of freedom and religion.1 Since the French Enlightenment, freedom has been given an increasingly central and secularized position within Western political liberalism. Along with equality and fraternity, adopted as the slogan of the French Revolution (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ou la mort; liberty, equality, fraternity, or death), the idea of freedom forms a highest, proximate, first conceptual and behavioral philosophical and psychological principle of modern and contemporary culture and civilization. In contrast, the idea of religion has become increasingly: (1) dismissed from its previously primary position as the focal point of the whole of Western culture, cultural psychology, and philosophy, and (2) semiotically (and other ways) moved, by secular principles, from public display (no signs allowed!) to the recesses of individual, social, and cultural life. The chapter points to a voluntary, contemporary tendency within modern and contemporary philosophy, essentially flowing from philosophical 1 Mortimer J. Adler, The Idea of Freedom (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), 127–​149.

114 Stępień principles of the French Enlightenment, to give theoretical justification, absolutization, of freedom considered in and of itself (and essentially divorced from truth) as a means increasingly to secularize the West and social distance it from truth. As a result, the theoretical phenomenon related to the great idea of freedom tends necessarily to overflow and affect every area of theoretical and practical life. As Adler realized, this is always an effect of any great idea; it is precisely one reason an idea tends to be great! As a result, a psychologically unhealthy idea of freedom as essentially divorced from matters of truth tends to seep into a culture and civilization and undermine it from within by destroying its metaphysical and moral foundations. In the current case, when we divorce human freedom’s nature from essential connection to truth, goodness, prudence, and wisdom (matters of truth) and essentially wed it to emotionally held opinions or the blind will to power (matters of taste and forms of fideism), we tend to absolutize, divinize, it and reduce the whole idea of religion to it. No wonder, then, should exist why increasing contemporary absolutization of human freedom considered as an abstraction and as a matter of taste would psychologically lead to increasing, semiotically inspired attacks on: (1) the every sign of the existence of any other religion within a culture, and (2) the idea of religion considered as such—​unless it be one reduced to individual and community secular, self-​worship: individual and community narcissism. Like professional wrestlers facing each other in a cage match, every truly great idea tends to generate great conflicts when it opposes other great ideas. Such great conflicts become even more evident when great ideas become synthesized, such as in the case of the ideas of freedom and religion synthesized into the contemporary great idea of the human right of religious freedom. Hence, as the French sage Jacques Maritain advised, a need exists for human beings to comprehend how properly to distinguish (understand the natures of) ideas, especially great ones, before attempting to unite them.2 In this chapter, I defend the claim that the best contemporary defense religion has against a reduction of the proper understanding of the ideas of freedom and religion to secular forms of fideism and rationally incoherent limitations on real freedom and religious practice is Adler’s commonsense philosophical defense of religion as a great idea.

2 Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, or the Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (New York Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959).

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From Absolutization to Negation of Freedom

Within Enlightenment philosophy, abstractly deified, absolutization of freedom as a behavioral, psychological principle of self-​sovereignty is evident in freedom’s divorce from human nature as a psychological, common-​sense behavioral principle of prudential judgment. Observational evidence of the truth of this claim is easily and semiotically evinced in: (1) freedom’s idealistic detachment from real existence in the phenomenal and empirical world and nature in the work of Immanuel Kant,3 and (2) in its qualitative inflation by: (a) conceiving its nature to be unbounded by any external objective value, and (b) therefore, having the ability to self-​create (in thinkers like Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Georg Hegel, Jean-​Paul Sartre, and Martin Heidegger). So conceived, no real possibility exists for freedom to be behaviorally restricted, other than by freedom itself (present today, for example, in the postmodernist project [modernism on steroids, as John N. Deely was fond of referring to it]). Practically considered, freedom is the key principle in many forms of contemporary, misnamed ‘individualistic’ liberalism (in which it tends to be commonly understood circumstantially as a negative freedom): (1) a space of free choices, as the widest range of liberty in its external, situational dimension; or (2) a lack of any determination, limitations, or coercion whatsoever (sometimes understood as: every external, even didactic, influence on the individual; privacy; and even total independence from the world and other people). Law as law, or as self-​sovereign (The law is the law!) sometimes confronts freedom so perceived as violating some legal code. Under the influence of legal positivism, in present times, the idea of law has gained a kind of quasi-​ independence, status of self-​sovereignty as if it existed in a Platonic heaven metaphysically detached from the nature of real human live and understood only in a formal way as a systemic obligation, prohibition, or imperative.4 If human freedom has no limitation internal to a human being or in external behavior or physical circumstances, then only positive law and State coercion appear able to limit freedom. Psychologically, legal positivism and State coercion tend to absorb and become the entire moral order.

3 Mortimer J.Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985). 4 On absolutization of the contemporary idea of law as: (1) rule of law as law, (2) rule of rule as rule, (3) self-​sovereign, see Francis Slade, “Rule as Sovereignty: The Universal and Homogeneous State,” in The Truthful and the Good: Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski, eds. Robert Sokolowski, John J. Drummond, James G. Hart, 159–​180 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996).

116 Stępień According to Adler, strictly speaking, related to ideas properly considered as such, essential contradictory, contrary, or relational opposition (conflict) between freedom and nature, nature and culture, freedom and law is nonexistent, fictional. Instead, this conflict is chiefly the result of psychological, behavioral disorders that necessarily result from misconceiving the nature of Great Ideas tends to produce within a culture when we: (1) logically or behaviorally misconceive these ideas, (2) fail properly do distinguish between conceptual contradictions (conceptual incoherence: like a square circle) and behavioral incoherence (ideas considered semiotically as representing really undoable deeds for this or that person or organization as circumstantially unrealizable in this or that situation, at this or that time). According to Adler: Modern philosophy has never recovered from its false starts. Like men floundering in quicksand who compound their difficulties by struggling to extricate themselves, Kant and his successors have multiplied the difficulties and perplexities of modern philosophy by the very strenuousness—​and even ingenuity—​of their efforts to extricate themselves from the muddle left in their thought path by Descartes, Locke, and Hume. To make a fresh start, it is only necessary to open the great philosophical books of the past (especially those written by Aristotle and contained in his tradition) and to read them with the effort of understanding that they deserve. The recovery of basic truths, long hidden from view, would eradicate errors that have had such disastrous consequences in modern times.5 Colloquially, insanity is often defined as repeatedly doing the same thing but expecting a different result. So understood, this definition appears perfectly to describe the behavior of the modern and contemporary philosophers Adler describes above. Such being the case, the best hope for the contemporary West to extricate itself from the quicksand of impossible dreams and Cartesian and Enlightenment cultural pathologies in which, for centuries, it has been floundering and increasingly sinking related to the great ideas of freedom and religion appears to be to follow Adler’s advice. To fix the modern and contemporary misconceptions of these great ideas and discover their basic truths long hidden from view, we need to return to the classical, commonsense, realist philosophical tradition best represented by Adler, Aristotle, and Aquinas.

5 Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes, 200.

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Returning the West to Civilizational Sanity with the Help of Commonsense Philosophy

In the classical, commonsense philosophical tradition, of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Adler the way to start philosophically, scientifically, examining the nature of anything is behaviorally and semiotically: by first looking for signs (effects) of an existing nature within the repeated behavior of organizational wholes (actually existing natures, substances), scientific subjects; and, second, once having done this, to start reasoning negatively from effect to cause (in commonsense, scholastic language (reasoning quia, not propter quid: from cause to effect) to form a generic definition of an idea in which is contained an organizational whole—​the parts of which comprise its divisions, one of which is its specific difference from other organizational wholes, substances, and ideas in and through which an organizational whole harmoniously acts. A real organizational whole exists in the harmony of its parts, and causes organizational action in and through their relation to each other and to the chief aim of an organization. For example, observing that human beings within a specific community are repeatedly praised or blamed, rewarded or punished for specific behaviors, a person possessed of commonsense reason might reasonably conclude that such a community recognizes: (1) existence of human freedom within human beings, and (2) that, as part of their organizational composition (nature) as an organizational whole, all healthy adult human beings inherently contain parts essentially able to harmonize with each other (like human faculties of intellect, will, and emotions) capable of proximately generating, causing, free, human acts (personal acts, specifically differentiating human beings from brute animals) for which free human communities freely decide to praise or blame, reward or punish them. Adler calls such ‘natural freedom’: the self-​determined ability of a rational animal to control deeds in view of his or her chief aim as a human being: perfect organizational health; perfect human goodness, as author, proximate cause, of his or her deeds. Classically considered, precisely what does this mean? Classical definition in the West of a human being is rational animal (in ancient Greek: a dzoon logikon, or rational, living being). In this definition, the generic and specific qualities essential for causing free human action are: living, animal, being, and rational. Considered as such, a human being is an organizational whole understood as a composite of two unitable and essential parts. This and only this resulting psycho-​physical unity can make intelligible the nature of a real, behaviorally existing, proximate principle, and behavioral cause, of human freedom really and semiotically observable in external human behavior.

118 Stępień Failure to identify the parts of this union and explain specifically how they can organizationally unite (harmonize) as essential parts of an organizational whole necessarily results in: (1) disregard for the whole’s essential parts, and (2) a resulting misconception of the nature of a free person as either a purely material (for example, a collection of atoms, organs, genes, parts and functions) or purely spiritual (an angel or God)—​that is, falling into a materialistic or spiritualistic fallacy. By employing Adler’s commonsense understanding of philosophy as behavioristic organizational psychology and using this understanding to analyze human freedom as one, whole, organizational operation of one organizationally whole unit, relationally joining within itself immaterial and material facultative powers (parts, or dimensions), we become easily able to analyze the complexity of free, human behavior in terms of readily comprehensible unitary parts, causes, harmonizing together (cooperating) proximately to generate numerically one, organizationally whole, free act. Immaterially considered, a human being is an organizational whole containing one part (a human soul, with faculties of intellect, will, and emotions) and another part (biological body: a living, organic, body). A free human being is an organizational synthesis of both parts harmoniously united in and through the human soul being present as an organizational leader (and, in some way, acting as whole person’s chief agent) relationally existing within and controlling, directing, both parts. As Peter A. Redpath (following Adler, Aristotle, and Aquinas) maintains, through their leading part, causally and relationally: (1) wholes exist in their parts, and (2) their parts exist in and proximately cause their real, circumstantial, situational, actions. In this way, causally and relationally: (1) real genera exist in their species, (2) real species exist in individuals, (3) individuals exist in their individual circumstances and situations, (4) each part exists in another part, (5) the whole organizations exists in all its parts, and (6) vice versa throughout any and every organizational whole! Hence, just as the human soul causally and relationally exists in the human body, the human body causally and relationally exists in the human soul. For example, the human intellect exists in the human will and external sense faculties, and the human sense faculties exist in the human will. Experienced business people know through instinct! The human person exists in every human part and act. Such being the case, in and of its nature, human freedom must exist as an organizationally whole human act, be wholly personal!6

6 Peter A. Redpath “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence,” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617.

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Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion and Free Exercise of Religion as Human Rights

The udhr7 lists as inalienable human rights (‘human endowments’ in Adler’s terminology), along with freedom of thought, freedom of: opinion, word, conscience, and peaceful association, and other rights: dignity of the human person (Articles 1–​2) and religion (Articles 18–​21). These Articles are part of the larger package of articles protecting life, property, minimum standards of health care; and protection against violations of them (like slavery) as constitutional liberties. No wonder should exist that the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights of which Jacques Maritain was a major designer would include the right to religious freedom in this Declaration in the form so stated in Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.” This provision places religious freedom first in the context of freedom of thinking (theoretical cognition), and then freedom of conscience (practical knowledge, morality); and then lists the basic rights with their content specified. The first is the right to change religion or belief, and the second is the right to preach one’s faith or religion: that is, engage in missionary activity. Since this international agreement explicitly includes religion as internationally recognized freedom, pondering the nature of religion as a free human act as defined in this Declaration appears to be a fitting means to use to flush out more precisely the essential connection between freedom and religion. Analyzing Article of the Universal Declaration, Zofia J. Zdybicka points out that this is no accidental relationship, because the idea of freedom of religion is a whole synthesized by uniting freedom of thought and conscience.8 This link of thinking (cognition: the proper object is truth in the intellect, which is conscience [truth considered as a measure, rule, commander, witness, and judge of action or non-​action]): (1) provides assessment of action in the context of good (ethical norm), and (2) determines the moral condition of a person: acts a sign vehicle pointing to religion’s anthropological, or personal dimension, and to freedom and law.9 7 See https://​www.un.org/​en/​universal-​declaration-​human-​rights/​. 8 See Zofia J. Zdybicka, “Wolność religijna fundamentem ludzkiej wolności” [“Religious Freedom as Foundation of Human Freedom”], Człowiek w Kulturze, no. 11 (1998): 129. 9 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–​i i, q. 19 arts. 5, 6.

120 Stępień Among other things, the well-​known claim that the truth sets a human being free signifies the fact that a person has the faculty of intellectual cognition. This translates into personal capability, and real, human need (not an arbitrary want) to seek the whole truth about ourselves and our ultimate cause, model, goal (if one exists). This includes seeking God. Founding personal human life on evidently known and accepted truth allows us to recognize the true good as the goal of any human action, one a person freely decides to pursue in accordance with his or her conscience. Conscience (practical and prudential reason: the moral virtue of prudence sitting as a judge, jury, and ruler: commanding, witnessing, and judging) is expressed through acts of judgment reflecting the truth about the organizational human good that is the motive for undertaking and completing an action.10 Freedom of conscience consists in recognizing the truth about a real, composite-​whole, human as a really doable or undoable deed and distinguishing as a really good or evil some human deed. By using freedom of thought and conscience as synthesizing, proximate, behavioral principles that generate, cause, religion as an essentially free, personal act, to come into existence and be humanly judged by the moral virtue of prudence (conscience) shows semiotic evidence of the anthropological foundations of human freedom and religion; and of human truth in the form of the intellectual and moral virtue of prudence as their measure as conforming to measurement by a healthy reasoning faculty: right reason. This is behavioral rule by human reason properly understood, not behavioristic rule by a narcissistic projection of abstract reason in the form of self-​sovereignty! In giving specific details about the right to religious freedom in Article 27, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights acts as a form of conscience writ large—​a judge and jury witnessing and commanding free, parental human rights to: (1) raise and teach their children, and (2) choose their religious and moral education. “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” In so doing, it expresses freedom of religion as an internal and external behavioral principle, cause, and measure of personal action. Considered as such the idea of religion necessarily manifests itself semiotically in doable deeds of which healthy adult human beings have experiential evidence. Internally we are aware of the reality of our personal freedom as a behavioral cause when we undertake an act of religious choice. Internal freedom and freedom of religion, and the essential connection of both to truth manifest their evident human existence semiotically in and 10

Zdybicka, “Wolność religijna fundamentem ludzkiej wolności,” 132.

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through conscience in which freedom evinces knowledge of truth about real human good and evil. External freedom and freedom of religion semiotically manifest themselves as principles, causes, of individually and communally doable, self-​authored deeds exercised in this or that situation.11 And an essential part of the content of religious freedom is propagation of personal faith by conversation and debate with fellow believers or ad extra persons of different faiths. The right to try rationally to persuade others about the truth of religious teachings and through missionary activities considered as individual and organizational duties (for example, to save souls, or simply to gain new followers communally to survive) are matters of metaphysical and moral truth, not of taste. Acknowledging human rights, a State has a moral obligation to create conditions for shaping (promoting) personal and religious freedom; and to lead a political community toward a common, personal good that respects freedom and religion properly-​so-​called of every citizen. A rational and just legal system should serve this purpose.12 4

Freedom and Religion as a Rational Mean between Contrary-​ Opposite Extremes of Secularism (Public Atheism) and Individual (Private) Atheism

The UN Declaration’s consideration of the human right to religious freedom as a fundamental human right of a person in the universal paradigm of human rights reveals that its signatories had considered human freedom to be universal, natural, inalienable, in some respect equal and resulting from human dignity. Distinctive features of this right so described are consistent with the conclusions of anthropological personalism: a concept that recognizes being religious as an attribute of a human, personal nature. Being religious as an attribute of a person is grounded in the contingent nature of human beings: (1) as essentially social, not as isolated monads, and (2) in universal human aspiration to pursue union with some transcendental, personal Absolute, in and through personal acts of cognition and love. As Zdybicka emphasizes, this fact “transcends all historical forms of religion. The 11 12

See Zofia J. Zdybicka, Człowiek i religia [Man and religion] (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2006), 360. See Zofia J. Zdybicka, “Religia” [Religion], in vol. 8 of Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal encyclopedia of philosophy], ed. Stanisław Bafia and Andrzej Maryniarczyk, 731 (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2007).

122 Stępień relationship between religion and the mode of existence of human being is decisive of making religion imperishable by the fact that it is a personal form of life and a socio-​cultural phenomenon that has diverse forms (forms of religion) but does not perish.”13 Contra modernism and neo-​ modernism posing as post-​ modernism, Zdybicka re-​roots the great ideas of freedom and religion in culture by making them essential defenders of the idea of protection of human dignity and rights. The essential relationship of being religious with the essentially personal nature of being human (a natural fact) together with manifestation of this relationship, in some way, in all human cultures, whether ancient or contemporary (a historical and cultural fact), shows the utopianism of ideologies awaiting the advent of an era without religion. The religiously inspired inclination toward personal transcendence of material existence is the proximate cause of culture. Culture is not the proximate cause of religion. Religion is the proximate cause of all culture, especially of higher culture. Failure of a state to protect religious freedom is more than a failure to protect a God given individual endowment. It is a form of State death wish. As a cultural institution death of religion spells the death of a culture, and with it, if the culture is politically advanced, a State. Ultimately, the natural boundary for freedom and religious freedom is the truth about the personal nature of a human being as manifest in persistent human behavior. The natural, personal, inclination of human beings to be and behave freely and engage in free exercise of religious duties is ineradicable from a healthy human soul and healthy human person. 5

Adler’s Commonsense Defense of the Rational and Real Nature of Freedom and Religion

Paradoxically, in my opinion, among best the defenses of personal human freedom, including religious freedom, every propounded by a philosopher is the commonsense, philosophical realism of Adler. Within it, human freedom is an essential property of every human being, consisting in personal capability of self-​determination for action and free choice of good as a motive. Its internal causes are spiritual powers of a human person: the faculties of intellect and will, while the external causes are real human needs and wants (real and apparent goods). Inherent freedom of self-​determination semiotically 13

Zdybicka, “Religia,” 721.

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manifests itself behaviorally in diverse areas of human life: like physical science; ethics; politics (as political liberty); free-​market economics; artistic and technical creativity, and religious acts of personal transcendence. Adler calls this behaviorally manifested and realized freedom “acquired freedom of self-​perfection”14: (1) as dependent on spiritual struggle and moral effort, and (2) above all, on differences of personal endowment and acquirable talent. Difficulties in its realization are visible in the category of Adler’s circumstantial freedom, which he associated with the context of human action that may or may not be compelling, regardless of the internal interests, or personal and acquired abilities of the acting individual. Adler recognizes that human freedom’s complex nature is not really reducible to abstractly conceivable forms of absoluteness or arbitrariness. As chiefly a behavior-​generating principle hardwired into the constitution of the human soul, awareness of human freedom’s personal nature can only properly be understood by free human beings seeing concepts of it applied in human history. As Adler’s friend Étienne Gilson realized, history is the laboratory in which the measure of real, or only apparent, greatness of Great Ideas can be actually observed, measured, and best tested. If an idea is actually humanly great, historically observing the cultural and civilizational effects of it when self-​ professed philosophers attempt to actualize their concept of it as really doable deeds as part of the enterprise of philosophical experience is the best test of whatever metaphysical or moral truth (the chief principles of human transcendence and the greatness of human ideas) is actually in them. If, when historically attempting to be applied, they tend to wreck human cultures and civilizations, real commonsense, philosophical verification of their being thought provoking, but, strictly speaking, being only apparently, not really, great, is easy to observe. If the culture produced is sick or healthy, those observing it should be able to see this. After all, the observers are parts of the organizations being observed.15 No wonder, then, should exist that we find Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul ii) once remarking about freedom’s nature and our ability to ‘sense it’ as a behavioral cause: Man experiences it endlessly; he feels himself constantly driven internally to make decisions, to choose. He is incapable of avoiding the yoke of that above all internal responsibility that hangs over him. He must 14 15

Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 140–​142. See Étienne Gilson, Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937).

124 Stępień constantly use his freedom, even when these or those external conditions press upon him or when some or another internal habits bind him, even then it is only that they limit the scale of possibilities for employing the freedom of the will, but the very fact of that freedom does not leave him as long as he is aware of himself.16 Semiotically manifest in the Wojtyła’s words is freedom’s personal drama, greatness, which ultimately fulfills itself in the love of real truth as personal in the contingent good of a human person and the absolute good of the Divine Person. By considering the Great Idea of religion in a realistic and personalistic supernatural dimension, in the following way, Wojtyła calls upon transcendent evidence of religious freedom’s personal nature not available to the pre-​Christian, Adler (but evidence that, even then, I suspect, Adler would have admitted to be plausible): The ontic status of a person, the real existence of a personal Absolute (God) and their mutual ontic relations, which lay the grounds for conscious and free personal relations. In human personal structure and personal action, person is open to infinity, they desire infinity. Open to truth, they crave truth, seeking it constantly. Focused on good, they desire good and constantly strives for it, remaining insatiable with goods that do not have the quality of perfection. Person shows unquenchable desire for happiness as an unconscious desire for God. All this makes them capable of knowing and loving the Truth, Good and Beauty—​personal Absolute—​transcendent You.17 The external dimension of religion, therefore, essentially includes the relationship between a human person as a religious being to the Person of an Absolute, capable of fulfilling human insatiable desire for happiness. At the same time, by revealing the qualitatively deepest, most intense, foundations of the rationality of all actuality, religious faith repeals the senselessness and absurdities of voluntarist atheism, scientism, and positivistic naturalism, and enables human discovery of the deepest and mysterious connection of freedom and 16 17

Pope John Paul ii (as Karol Wojtyła), Considerations on the Essence of Man = Rozważania o istocie człowieka, bilingual ed., trans. John Grondelski (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2016), 111. Zofia J. Zdybicka, “Religia” [Religion], in Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal encyclopedia of philosophy], vol. 8 (Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2007): 720–​732, 722.

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being religious. God considered as a personal absolute is the first principle, highest good, and purpose that brings meaning to the life of every person. As Zofia J. Zdybicka emphasizes, in this crucial area of life, “person remains a free [sovereign]: they can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God—​which has consequences for their whole life.”18 Ultimately, as Adler recognized, among the reasons the Great Idea of religion is the greatest of cultural ideas is because it is the first principle and greatest measure and guarantee of true freedom of the human person in relation to all other cultural and civilizational human goods.19

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. The Idea of Freedom. Vol. 2 of A Dialectical Examination of the Controversies about Freedom. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973. isbn: 9780837167381. Adler, Mortimer J. Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On. New York: Macmillan, 1981. isbn: 9780025005600. Adler, Mortimer J. Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them. New York: Macmillan, 1985. isbn: 9780025003309. Polish edition Dziesięć błędów filozoficznych. Translated by Józef Marzęcki. Warsaw: Medium, 1995. isbn: 9788385312796. Gilson, Étienne. Unity of Philosophical Experience. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937. oclc: 368432. John Paul ii, Pope (as Wojtyła, Karol). Considerations on the Essence of Man = Rozważania o istocie człowieka. Bilingual edition. Translated by John Grondelski. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2016. isbn: 9788360144923. Maritain, Jacques. Distinguish to Unite, or the Degrees of Knowledge. Translated by Gerald B. Phelan. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959. isbn: 9780684310718. Redpath, Peter A. “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence.” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617. issn 2300–​0066. http://​gilsonsociety.com/​files/​-​-​Redpath.pdf. Slade, Francis. “Rule as Sovereignty: The Universal and Homogeneous State.” In The Truthful and the Good: Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski. Edited by Robert Sokolowski, John J. Drummond, and James G. Hart, 159–​180. isbn: 9780792341345. Zdybicka, Zofia J. Człowiek i religia [Man and religion]. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu. isbn: 9788360144152. 18 19

Zdybicka, “Religia,” 722. This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

126 Stępień Zdybicka, Zofia J. “Religia” [Religion]. In vol. 8 of Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal encyclopedia of philosophy]. Edited by Stanisław Bafia and Andrzej Maryniarczyk. Lublin: Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, 2007, 720–​732. isbn: 9788360144060. Zdybicka, Zofia J. “Wolność religijna fundamentem ludzkiej wolności” [Religious freedom as foundation of human freedom]. Człowiek w Kulturze, no. 11 (1998): 127–​137.

­c hapter 8

Czesław Martyniak: The Great Ideas as Motivational Causes Rafał Charzyński Abstract Living a purely human life, one not open to a dimension that transcends simply being human, betrays the proper definition of what being human means. This reveals itself in relation to the Great Ideas of freedom and religion. Religion conceived as the relationship between a human being and God requires an openness to a reality qualitatively different than purely human reality. And real freedom of choice is a condition sine qua non inclining human beings to transcend a purely human plane of living. This chapter focuses on the philosophical life and teachings of Czesław Martyniak about the Great Ideas of religion and freedom as motivational causes of personal transcendence and pursuit of perfection.

Keywords Czesław Martyniak –​freedom –​natural law –​reason –​faith –​religion –​sacrifice –​Aquinas

Human history universally reveals a psychological need among healthy, adult human beings to become more than we presently are. A natural inclination exists among all human beings toward personal self-​perfection and complete personal happiness. While this pursuit of self-​perfection takes different forms, it is a common human experience, especially observable in religious activities.1 Understood as the relationship between human beings and God, religious activity requires opening ourselves up to a supernatural reality that 1 “To propose to man only the human is to betray man and to wish his misfortune, because by the principal part of him, which is the spirit, man is called to better than a purely human life. On this principle (if not on the manner of applying it) Ramanuja and Epictetus, Nietzsche and St. John of the Cross are in agreement”; Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 2.

© Rafał Charzyński, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_010

128 Charzyński enables us to become qualitatively more perfect than we recognize ourselves presently to be. The main purpose of this chapter is to use the life and teachings of the Polish scholar Czesław Martyniak to support my assertion that free religious activities of personal transcendence as great motivational principles that may be inexplicable in terms of natural causes are, nonetheless, matters of truth that can be found and made intelligible in recorded human history. I will rely on Mortimer J. Adler’s understanding of the Great Ideas of religion and freedom as the chief point of reference for understanding the nature of these ideas. This chapter elucidates how Martyniak’s semiotic approach to the philosophy of law with respect to freedom and religion reveals how some common transcendental moral and metaphysical concepts have, in some form, dramatically altered human history. Adler’s somewhat clinical, psychological analysis of the concept of religion as behaviorally transformative differs from theological approaches that chiefly consider religion in terms of an interpersonal relationship of individual human beings with God. Adler’s somewhat impersonal emphasis on cognitive formation of a great idea and its semiotic role as a motivational principle in human history reveal some threads of commonality between his teachings and those of Martyniak. These commonalities might escape our attention if we were to analyze them with regard to traditional theological approach to understanding religion. 1

A Short Biography of Martyniak

Czesław Martyniak was born on May 24, 1906 in Lublin, Poland. He studied at the Faculty of Law and Socio-​Economic Sciences of the Catholic University of Lublin (kul), where he obtained a Master’s degree. In 1928, he went to Paris to the Catholic Institute to continue the philosophical studies he had started in Lublin. In 1931, he defended a Doctorate in Philosophy based on his dissertation, “Le fondament objectif du droit d’après Saint Thomas d’Aquin” (The objective foundation of law according to Saint Thomas Aquinas). After returning to Poland in 1931, he obtained a Master’s degree in economics and began working at the Catholic University of Lublin (kul) in the Department of Theory and Philosophy of Law. Two years later, he obtained a Doctoral degree in Law at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. After returning to Nazi occupied Lublin, the Rector at kul asked Martyniak to start teaching in the academic year 1939–​1940. When World War ii started in September 1939, by the order of the Polish authorities, all men capable of military service (which included Martyniak) were obliged to leave kul. Martyniak delivered

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his last lecture there on November 10, 1939, which was coincidentally the day before the anniversary of restoration of Polish national sovereignty.2 Together with other professors present at the University, the next day he was arrested and imprisoned in the Lublin Castle. On December 23, 1939, Martyniak was taken to a nearby Jewish cemetery and executed Evident from this short personal history is that Martyniak was someone who valued freedom. It motivated many of his actions. He belonged to the generation of Poles inspired by a strong desire for Poland to regain national political freedom (sovereignty) after decades of national captivity. This was a chief reason for him to inspire others by his example. He understood freedom as a great motivational idea in the sense Adler meant it. Throughout his life Martyniak’s personal history manifested a consistent commitment to his academic passions, the pursuit of which demanded strict discipline and diligence to achieve maturity of thought at an early age. In his intense commitment to the problems of his community, he also displayed an approach that found behavioral expression in his involvement with social organizations and in his ability to resist opposing pressure from dominating, or fashionable, intellectual tendencies in the philosophy of law in which he specialized. And it was explicitly displayed in his moral courage in making a choice as a commitment to a matter of truth about being possessed of a healthy human nature in his decision to start lectures in the Nazi occupied Lublin in 1939. As Adler would likely have said in reference to Martyniak displaying its nature, moral courage is not reducible to a matter of taste emotionally held. It is a matter of transcendental human truth attended by intellectual joy as a semiotic indicator (sign) pointing to truth’s existence in human behavior. Martyniak’s courageous behavior during World War ii was a historical witness of transcendent behavioral truth. This being so, despite what Adler appears to say to the contrary, taste, too, is not totally unrelated to the existence of truth. It is always sign of the presence of some good or bad in something: like good or bad taste existing in a person’s mouth. As a proponent of Aristotle’s teaching, Adler accepted that the idea good is convertible with the idea true, and evil is an idea convertible with the idea of false. He, also, accepted that, in some way, a cause always exists in its effects. Such being the case, if good and bad considered as true and false exist in their effects, and analogously considered, some truth and falsehood exist in tastes of emotional pleasure and disgust and

2 Poland had lost national sovereignty and was partitioned by the German, Austro-​Hungarian, Russian Empires in the eighteenth century.

130 Charzyński intellectual joy and sorrow, then, analogously speaking, even matters of taste have some truth in them.3 Intellectual pleasure in doing morally great human good tends to be experienced by all healthy, adult human beings to be of a qualitatively higher level of goodness than doing no moral good or some easily doable moral good. Hence, this greater good is used as a sign and measure of the moral and psychological health and disease of emotional human states and choices. The transcendental nature of courage in facing the brutish behavior of Nazi oppression is a sign of supernatural and transcendent quality of moral virtue present in Martyniak’s life. Responsible and truly good use of freedom is freedom well experienced and rightly (or truly) applied. And while it is accompanied by a psychological state analogous to emotional taste, the experience of the intellectual pleasure that accompanies personal witness to truth by a morally good person is of a qualitatively more intense and qualitatively higher nature than is that of purely emotional taste. In the case of Martyniak, freedom is a human good for which he paid the highest price. The concept of freedom that emerges from his life, confirms the truth that Adler well apprehended: to be perfectly understood and exercised, freedom and religion need, cannot live without, each other. Martyniak’s understanding of some transcendental truth contained in human freedom proves his strong conviction that freedom cannot be deprived of a religious (or at least metaphysical) content. Like Adler, Martyniak’s youthful, high assessment of the value of integral philosophical approaches that pay homage to transcendent reality in rational discourse and human behavior appears to have influenced his attraction toward Thomism. Consequently, he devoted one of his first papers to the teachings of Jacques Maritain (someone that Adler, too, held in highest esteem). Martyniak was especially influenced by the evolution of Maritain’s world view, his conversion to Catholicism; and, then, by Maritain advocating the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, especially because of its harmonious approach to the relationship between reason and faith.4 (It is hard to resist the impression that Adler’s decision to follow Aquinas’s thought, which was not very popular in the philosophy of law in the United States at the time, was not dictated

3 I thank Peter A. Redpath for suggesting to me that, analogously, truth may also exist in the human emotions and be referred to as a ‘matter of taste.’ 4 “Reason and Faith reconcile. Thomistic philosophy, by stopping all realities both natural and supernatural, knows how to harmonize them, and give each of them the right place, and satisfy the mind with this harmonious synthesis, the mind which is thirsty to embrace the whole”; Czesław Martyniak, “Jacques Maritain,” Pisma [Letters] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo kul, 2018), 24 (my translation).

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by such a motive.) Martyniak regarded the introduction of the principles of a Christian worldview into the contemporary mindset to be one of his most significant tasks as a Catholic scholar.5 Analogously, even as a non-​religious and humanistic scholar, Adler had the same attitude toward the idea of religion considered as such. Freedom and religion were, therefore, determinants of the life paths of both men, motivating both to go against the cultural currents of their time. And one of their joint objectives was not to betray their true nature as human persons by narrowing perspectives and goals exclusively to the natural human dimension. 2

Adler’s Understanding of Philosophy and What Makes Great Ideas Great

Even as a youth, Adler was convinced that philosophy is everybody’s business; that being human is synonymous with a tendency to philosophize. He also clearly stated that we are all engaged, at least to some extent, in philosophical thinking on a daily basis. However, the statement of this fact is not enough. It is necessary to understand why this is so, and what philosophy itself is. According to Adler, the shortest answer to the latter question is: Behaviorally life-​transforming ideas make ideas Great. These ideas are fundamental and indispensable for understanding ourselves, our society, and the world in which we live. Thanks to them, we are able to wonder about causes. However, unlike specialized scientific concepts, great ideas are derived from common speech and commonsense experience. They are not signs of technical terms; they do not belong to the specialized jargon of any branch of knowledge. Everyone uses them in everyday conversation. However, not everyone fully understands the qualitatively universal breadth and depth of their moral and metaphysical influence on human life. Not everyone is explicitly concerned about the questions implied by each of the Great Ideas. To philosophize is to engage in daily reflection and to elaborate a personal solution that reconciles apparently contradictory answers to great questions. Adler thought that study of Great Ideas found in inexhaustibly rich, Great Books should lead to at least three results: (1) They should give readers a surer grasp of the different meanings of the words used when talking about the Idea. (2) They should make readers more aware of the questions or problems that cannot be avoided if he or she wants to think about Ideas in a more profound 5 Martyniak, “Państwo i Rodzina” [State and family], in Pisma, 29.

132 Charzyński manner. Contained in these Ideas are answers to great metaphysical and moral (philosophical) questions and problems that have been argued over the centuries. (3) Reflecting upon each of the Ideas leads to the reflection of other ideas, which, in some way, are contained in a Greater Idea. For example, our understanding of the Great Idea Truth affects our understanding of the Great Ideas Goodness and Beauty. Understanding the nature of goodness and beauty leads to a better, deeper, understanding of what is right and wrong in general and in science, ethics, and religion in general and specifically (for example, this understanding influences our ability to the ideas of justice and law, and how they impact on our understanding of freedom and equality, and vice versa!). Adler was convinced that reference to the Great Ideas is a prerequisite for effective and meaningful philosophizing and all higher education. Indispensability of the Great Ideas also stems from the fact that, strictly speaking, these ideas are philosophical (metaphysical, moral, and practical ideas by which we know, choose, and manufacture things). Adler did not think that philosophizing is chiefly an occupation reserved for highly specialized professionals. Properly speaking, like Socrates, he thought philosophy to be a way of life, a psychological way of behaving based on commonsense knowledge available to everyone in and through ordinary experience of humanly doable and undoable deeds. He did not think our first awareness of philosophical wonder and philosophy came from academic logicians discovering the conceptual principle of non-​contradiction. He thought it came from the lived experience of not being able to perform humanly undoable deeds. Considered as such, philosophical first principles of wondering (that is, the Great Ideas) must be based on what constitutes the subject of reflection for all people, everywhere, whether they explicitly realize this or not.6 Philosophizing will enable everyone to think about these Ideas in a more profound way, which is probably in line with the expectations of most human beings who have ever contemplated the nature of philosophy. Among other things, asking what philosophy is contains the answer to the question why everyone philosophizes. In addition, considered in this way, Adler thought that the chief job of the philosopher is not that of being a university professor to create jobs for other university professors. It is to teach everyone for the chief aim of making everyone wiser, more prudent, happier; and, thereby, to promote global peace.

6 Mortimer J. Adler, “Everybody’s Business,” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

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Martyniak’s Understanding of Philosophy and What Makes Great Ideas Great

Martyniak’s teachings reflect all the results of study of the Great Ideas mentioned by Adler. However, to show the convergence of the attitudes of both scholars, I will begin by presenting the way they are behaviorally expressed in Martyniak’s scholarly life as signs of the influence these Ideas had on his behavior. In literature, for example, evident to any educated literary observer is Martyniak’s care for precise and clear formulation of thoughts. This is a distinctive feature of all his statements, which is especially visible in his definition of the concept of law, which a key to his philosophical reflection. Following Aquinas’s Summa theologiæ, Martyniak’s search for the meaning of this concept begins with determining the terminology in order to formulate first a nominal definition followed by the real one. This analogously corresponds to the first of the initial results of the study of the Great Ideas formulated by Adler: apprehension of different meanings of the term in use. This does not imply that Martyniak is following Adler. In a way, both are following Aquinas, who is imitating Aristotle. Both scholars follow the Scholastic (humanistic) philosophical tradition that considers philosophers chiefly to be transgenerational team members belonging to a way of philosophizing considered as part of an enduring historical-​cultural enterprise. For this reason, the individual activity of precise definition and distinction considered as such deserves scholarly, philosophical attention. Martyniak’s major research interests focused on the relationship between morality and law. This is observable in his publications, where he justifies the binding force of law by its reliance on healthy moral order. The problem of law’s binding force of law appeared in his first monograph Le fondament objectif du droit d’près Saint Thomas d’Aquin. It is also the main topic of his habilitation, arguing against Hans Kelsen’s logically abstract, pure theory of law, which negates any behavioral relation between law and healthy human life in everyday world of day to day human existence. In his critical reviews of this pure theory of law Martyniak offers a composite outline of his views on the interrelationships between moral and legal orders regulating human activities. Finally, the writing based on his lectures on the theory of law offers his reflections about the relationship between legal and ethical norms. Undoubtedly, since Martyniak’s research was conducted during the 1930s, the totalitarian political situation of the time (which owed its terrifying effectiveness to absolute obedience to authoritarian orders and absence of any references to moral freedom individual, personal, dignity) stimulated him

134 Charzyński to address this issue. He had noticed that aspirations by some at that time to separate law from morality were symptoms of dangerous psychological and behavioral tendencies. This caused him to concentrate on developing a concept of natural law which, unknown to him at the time, would become a universal, international foundation for ethics and law after World War ii and the Nuremberg Trials. Similar to Adler’s Great Books program, Martyniak had planned this to be a prolonged team undertaking. His university studies in law and philosophy had predisposed him to deal with this philosophical and legal issue in both ways. And intense development in the philosophy of law at the time likely increased his desire to do so. Similar to what happened to Adler in the United States, the Thomistic natural law program Martyniak chose to promote put him in direct opposition to the dominant views of legal positivists of that time which rejected the need to confront the existing the positivistic idea of legal self-​justification (A Law is a Law!) with appeal to a law simply as a law naturally measuring healthy and unhealthy human decision making and choices.7 Inspired by Aquinas, in the dictum “do good and avoid evil” Martyniak recognized the Great Idea of a first moral principle of human understanding that measures the health or disease of practical reasoning from which other principles of practical reasoning are derived.8 From this, he formulated an understanding of natural law in normative formulas measuring healthy and unhealthy human behavior.9 Martyniak conceived this normative interpretation of natural law to be more than an abstract, conceptual, scholarly exercise related to the nature of law. He thought of it chiefly in terms of psychophysical analysis of the hardwiring of each and every human person. He did not conceive of natural law as an abstract set of once-​and-​for-​all established rules, but as a chief motivational principle and measure of healthy, free

7 Hanna Waśkiewicz, Czesław Martyniak jako filozof prawa: W nurcie zagadnień posoborowych. [Czesław Martyniak as a philosopher of law: In the Current of Post-​Conciliar Issues] (my translation) (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek–​Benedyktynek, 1970), 309. 8 “The principle of ‘good should be done and evil must be avoided’ is a prototype of other principles that develop it in more explicit formulas, for example ‘you must live by reason,’ boils down to the previous one, once you understand that reason proclaims the judgment of goodness of things. And because reason is a specific feature of man, ‘you must live by reason’ means the same as saying ‘you must live in a manner proper for man.’ In this way we receive three different formulations of the first universal principle of practical reason”; Czesław Martyniak, “Obiektywna podstawa prawa według św. Tomasza z Akwinu” [The objective foundation of law according to Saint Thomas Aquinas], in Dzieła [Works] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo kul, 2017), 108 (my translation). 9 Martyniak, “Obiektywna podstawa prawa według św. Tomasza z Akwinu,” 108.

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human decision making and behavior to defend all human beings against totalitarian despotism.10 As conceived by Martyniak, natural law is chiefly a motivational principle inclining human beings toward healthy decision making and away from unhealthy decision making within the real genus of a rational animal living an everyday life in an individual situation. The order to do good and avoid evil is a command and control principle of the human intellect acting not as an abstract, positivistic logician. It is a motivational principle, advising people to avoid making stupid, unhealthy, choices. Strictly speaking, it is identical with advising someone not to be dumb: to live like a healthy human being, with some human personal dignity; not like a brute animal, or a Nazi ss guard. Martyniak thought that a main difference between rational and non-​rational animals is that, in deciding to act, human beings are not necessitated to do so immediately, instinctively jumping to a conclusion by emotional impulse. Like Adler, he thought that, before making a decision, the psychological constitution of a human being is endowed with the ability to weigh, measure, personal capacities against personal aims and situations to decide whether or not a decision involves a conceptual and/​or non-​conceptual contradiction. For example, given my natural and acquired abilities in this situation, is doing this now really conceivable for any human being to do? If so, is it really conceivable for me to do. No animal in this world, other than the human (rational because intellectually and volitionally free) animal, evinces this complicated way of engaging in decision making before action. Only a human animal evinces this behavioral psychology. Like Adler, Martyniak was convinced that the psychological natural law command to pursue perfection in becoming perfectly human placed upon all healthy, adult human beings generates with it a moral duty to pursue the enabling means to do so: securing perfect human freedom in all its forms, including circumstantial freedoms and human rights secured by a just legal system. Reaching this goal is not determined by instinct; it is based on self-​understanding and reflective choice. Like the logical principle of non-​ contradiction, natural law is not a reasoning principle. It is a practical principle of understanding that precedes attempts to reason, and measures the truth, 10

Martyniak states, “I am not a follower of some abstract ideal order suspended somewhere, ne varietur. I understand too well the variability and fluidity of human relations. … But not everything can be changed freely. There are some permanent things and there are some limits to variation”; “Siła i prawo. Z powodu książek Romana Rybarskiego i Henryka Dębińskiego” [Force and law. Inspired by the books of Roman Rybarski and Henryk Dębiński], in Pisma, 90 (my translation).

136 Charzyński soundness, of reasoning. Freedom first emerges in human understanding, especially in self-​understanding from which emerge the first measures of truth in conceptual and behavioral reasoning. Considered as such, understanding natural law is a common measure of truth in all moral reasoning in the form of prudence (right reason) in moral and positive law. This implies the mutual dependence and mutual fecundation of ethics and jurisprudence in relation to first and highest truths about human psychology and behavior. For this reason the existence of a close connection between them is evinced in human history in repeated semiotic attempts in their respective literatures to normalize each other in relation to perfecting free human activity.11 The validity of positive law in conscience results from its moral value, due to which natural law becomes a negative norm for positive law. Law which contradicts moral order is not law, but something destructive of law. 4

Martyniak’s Understanding of the Great Idea of Freedom

Martyniak’s academic achievements show that, from the start of his scholarly research, he analyzed freedom in connection to natural law and moral issues, which constituted his major research interest. As he understood their relationship, each concept of law implies a specific understanding of freedom. The starting point for this conviction for Martyniak was the Thomistic concept that law is a behavioral, command and control principle of human activity toward the common human good. The effect of obedience to this law, which should support right moral decision making, is really healthy exercise of freedom. The first effect of law is that it makes people good in the sense of physically and psychologically healthy as free persons, not as good Nazis. In light of his understanding of law as chiefly a positive motivator of human action propelling free decision making toward prudent choice, Martyniak questioned the individualistic, positivistic theory of law prevalent in his time according to which law is supposed to fulfill only a negative, circumstantial role, forbidding solely what harms another person. He claimed that this approach narrows down the function of law only to setting the boundaries of competing individual, 11

“There is a relationship between positive law and the natural law, and ethics because of the commonality of the material object. More precisely, the material object of law is part of the material object of ethics. Ethics regulates and values all rational human deeds, while law is only a part of them. Namely, only those deeds that are related to public good”; Martyniak, “Moc obowiązująca prawa a teoria Kelsena” [The binding force of law and the theory of Kelsen], in Dzieła, 382 (my translation).

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external freedom of movement. This is well illustrated by a metaphor of cages in a menagerie, whose bars are to prevent wild animals from devouring each other.12 According to the Thomistic concept, law cannot be limited to a circumstantial prohibitive role. As part of its nature related to it as a means of enhancing human freedom as chiefly a psychological principle, it should be a moving cause aimed at promoting perfect exercise of freedom in all its forms. Understanding the role of law as a positive factor for perfecting human actions assumes understanding freedom as opportunity enhancing. Properly understood, truly human law aims at promoting psychological health in human decision making and effecting further, truly human freedoms in and through that. Hence, civil law’s chief function is as a tool to perfect moral education. In different respects, law is an educational tool functioning under direction of eternal law to help make human beings become perfectly free as good human beings through mutual cooperation of natural and civil law. 5

Martyniak’s Understanding of the Great Idea of Religion

At first sight, just as for Adler, finding the idea of religion in Martyniak’s teachings might appear more difficult than finding the idea of freedom. Like Adler, he inclined to approach his consideration of law, as did Adler, by adopting, as much as possible the method of an impartial social scientist-​psychologist: someone who saw in the idea of religion philosophical truths that, as metaphysical and moral, transcend religion, and are common to all human beings. He recognized that, while everyone who is truly religious is somewhat metaphysical and moral, not everyone who is somewhat metaphysical and moral is truly religious. Hence, he repeatedly expressed the belief that philosophical reflection on law should not resort to arguments coming from sources unavailable to natural reason, and he declared the secularity of the doctrine of the natural law independent from any religion.13 Trying to analyze his position with 12 13

Martyniak, “Obiektywna podstawa prawa według św. Tomasza z Akwinu,” 43. “The Thomistic doctrine of natural law is not associated with necessarily revealed faith, and can be independent of it. We quite consciously take away from the natural law its supposedly religious nature, if this expression is to be understood as absolutely necessary and inseparable dependence on revealed religion, which some attribute to it. To give the natural law its binding force, it is not necessary to attribute it to a religious nature, which it does not possess. About the theory of natural law, we can say the same as about the whole philosophy of St. Thomas, that in itself is independent of the faith, and in its principles and structure is based only on experience and understanding.” Martyniak,

138 Charzyński respect to Adler’s views, one should bear in mind the importance of the metaphysical function that Adler assigned to religion as the source of a worldview. It is supposed to give people a good personal self-​understanding, support us in defining and understanding ourselves in relation to other people, God, and the world. Shared understanding about truths concerning human nature, and moral and metaphysical truths are supposed to constitute the foundation of an interreligious dialogue, which aims at uniting such truths contained in different religions into an ecumenical synthesis giving answers to essential metaphysical and moral questions. In other words, this foundation should be based on an adoption of revealed norms of a universal philosophical nature that can be rationally justified by deriving them from human nature and shared common understanding of the world in which we live. Martyniak devoted all his research to this rational justification. As a follower of Thomistic philosophy, he perceived natural law to be participation of rational human nature in the eternal law of God, which is ultimately identified with God. The chief aim of God the legislator is the legislator himself: God making himself known as legislator. The adopted concept of natural law contained a Christian concept of God is that of the Creator caring for his creation. Martyniak strongly believed that law inspiring action must be essentially connected to preserving and enhancing moral values, an attitude promoted by Christianity. Finally, Martyniak maintained that appealing to God’s goodness and love as the image of God contained in the idea of religion properly understood was the best rational justification for the existence of a world order and the obligation to respect and obey it. Remaining within the limits of the philosopher’s competence, and approaching what was available to purely rational cognition, Martyniak openly admitted that different perspectives of human reflection exist, and that, ultimately, every great question leads us to inexhaustible reflection and the Infinite.14

14

“Obiektywna podstawa prawa według św. Tomasza z Akwinu,” 86 (my translation). Martyniak maintained this position below: “Together with F. Geny and L. Le Fur, we proclaim the secularity of the doctrine of natural law, that is its independence of one religion or another. In other words, we believe that the existence of natural law and the existence of its content, and consequently its scientific evaluation, can be justified by rational, and therefore scientific arguments”; Martyniak, “Moc obowiązująca prawa a teoria Kelsena,” (my translation). “Why should I obey an order whose existence is simultaneously rational? Don’t I have the right to ask what this existence is based on? Is existence itself rational? It is only a fact and a fact is not a law. Wouldn’t it be equally reasonable if this order did not exist? Wasn’t it necessary to appeal to Love to justify creation? God created out of goodness because He is Goodness and this Goodness has all the rights. Shouldn’t we then proclaim the primacy of love or will over intelligence? Here are the perspectives for further reflections showing

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Conclusion

The philosophy practiced by Martyniak was not an activity meant for everyone, in the sense proposed by Adler. It required specialized preparation because it used professional jargon developed by the specialists in the fields of law and a philosophy. Nevertheless, the result of this philosophizing was universally valid and fundamental. It resulted in establishing law (which, if harmonized with moral values) could transform for the better individual human beings and the world community, while any law defying these values could destroy human beings and the world. In Martyniak’s thought, we should think about law as mainly a motivational cause for making human beings more psychologically healthy and peaceful. The concept of law he advocated encompasses specific ideas of freedom and religious perspectives presented in the above analysis. Therefore, the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion should be perceived as implicitly motivating causes, not as abstract essences that are great chiefly because they are abstract and difficult to understand. According to Martyniak, in relation to law and natural and positive law, the Great Ideas serve as mutually fecundating principles. As shown above, my claim that the ideas of Freedom and Religion are Great Ideas understands these notions in a classical philosophical sense. I am convinced that this understanding of these ideas gives them the qualitatively deepest and strongest justification for the existence of a mind-​independent world order, and the obligation to respect it.15

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. “Everybody’s Business.” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical. New York: Macmillan, 1993. isbn: 9780025005747. Maritain, Jacques. Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973. isbn: 9780268005160.

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us that every problem leads us to the Infinite, which undoubtedly surpasses us, but it is also a confirmation of our desire for infinity, which itself is the only source of our satisfaction”; Martyniak, “Obiektywna podstawa prawa według św. Tomasza z Akwinu,” 56 (my translation). The project is funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln

140 Charzyński Martyniak, Czesław. Dzieła [Works]. Edited by Rafał Charzyński and Monika Wójcik. Lublin: Wydawnictwo kul, 2017. isbn: 9788380614451 Martyniak, Czesław. “Moc obowiązująca prawa a teoria Kelsena” [The binding force of law and the theory of Kelsen]. In Dzieła. Martyniak, Czesław. “Obiektywna podstawa prawa według św. Tomasza z Akwinu” [The objective foundation of law according to Saint Thomas Aquinas]. In Dzieła. Martyniak, Czesław. Pisma [Letters]. Lublin: Wydawnictwo kul, 2018. isbn: 9788380615694. Martyniak, Czesław. “Siła i prawo. Z powodu książek Romana Rybarskiego i Henryka Dębińskiego” [Force and law. Inspired by the books of Roman Rybarski and Henryk Dębiński], in Pisma. Waśkiewicz, Hanna. Czesław Martyniak jako filozof prawa: W nurcie zagadnień posoborowych [Czesław Martyniak as a Philosopher of Law: In the Current of Post-​Conciliar Issues]. Vol. 4. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek-​Benedyktynek, 1970.

­c hapter 9

The Great Ideas: Causes of Human Transcendence or Enslavement? Tomasz Duma Abstract Using some intuitions contained in Mortimer J. Adler’s teachings, this chapter presents reasons why the Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom are of crucial importance: for personally grasping human transcendence, and to show the main reasons that underlie some narrow, unrealistic, understandings of the aforementioned ideas—​main effects of which are different forms of human enslavement. Better to elucidate Adler’s thought on these issues, among others, some investigations of Karol Wojtyła will be discussed, which seem to fully correspond with Adler’s, and, in many respects, complement them.

Keywords cultural anthropologists –​determinism –​enlightenment –​enslavement –​freedom –​ Wojtyła –​person –​religion –​transcendence

Among contemporary cultural anthropologists, ethnologists, and ethnographers, common agreement exists that finding within human history a non-​ religious culture is virtually impossible. Many such scholars go so far as to hold that religion is a main factor contributing to cultural and civilizational development. Simultaneously, some modern thinkers claim that religion’s civilizational and cultural influence is essentially destructive. Within the West during the past couple of centuries, the Enlightenment age first shaped this view, which such later trends as positivism and Marxism then popularized. Some representatives of this second group have repeatedly accused religion of all the misfortunes that have befallen human civilization throughout human history. Common to this group is the conviction that, by its essential nature, religion limits human freedom. Put in Auguste Comte’s millennialist opinion,

© Tomasz Duma, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_011

142 Duma freedom’s full realization is only possible after overcoming humanity’s historical, theological stage. Before the idea of freedom appeared within Western civilization, historical records indicate that belief in determinism rooted in religious creeds had dominated within the West (fate; examples of which are the Greek Anánkē, and Roman Fatum). Later, even some Christians became ardent adherents to this belief, which they often expressed in teachings of predestination. Nonetheless, such teachings have never been mainstream Christian positions about freedom. In some respects, following Judaism, Christianity is based upon a free, personal, subject-​to-​subject relationship between God and an individual human person. On the part of a human being, this relationship involves an individual, personal commitment impossible to realize without inner, psychological freedom. Nevertheless, historically considered over the centuries, within individuals and Christian communities, emphasis upon the dynamics of this one-​on-​one, freely chosen, personal relationship between individual human persons and God has witnessed fairly limited discussion within the forefront of Catholic studies and scholarship. Only within the past several decades has this situation started to change dramatically. No wonder should exist, then, that we can find radical criticism of the Christian conception of freedom in someone like Friedrich Nietzsche’s futuristic philosophical gospel, which announced rejection of Christian values as a necessary condition for human liberation; or, later, Jean-​Paul Sartre’s existential philosophical depiction of the human encounter of seeing God face-​to-​face essentially to involve the practical, disjunctive decision to choose human freedom or God, instead of achieving human perfection by personally knowing God in and through direct, intellectual apprehension of God’s essence. Keeping in mind the above-​mentioned difficulties, many recent Christian thinkers have pondered the ideas of religion and freedom. They have tried to purify, draw out of them their necessary implications, and weigh their true value. In the case of religion, for example, Rudolf K. Bultmann started his demythologization program so familiar to many Christian theologians.1 Within it, among other things, he attempted to show that religion cannot be reduced to rational categories, like some rationalistic philosophers had attempted to do. In the case of freedom, during the twentieth century, many

1 David W. Congdon, The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

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scholarly attempts were made to overcome determinism (so deeply rooted in the Western thought) and its opposite: extreme indeterminism. Doubtless to Mortimer J. Adler is the greatness and grandeur, of the ideas of religion and freedom. In his writings about them, he repeatedly emphasized this about them. To do so, among other things, he adopted his own brand of commonsense, philosophical realism from his readings of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, as represented by twentieth century neo-​Thomism. New interpretations of Aquinas by neo-​Thomists (such as Jacques Maritain and Étienne Henri Gilson) were major sources of inspiration for him. Therein, the greatness of the ideas of religion and freedom are essentially connected with the similarly great idea of human transcendence, which gives to human beings an essential, personal dynamism irreducible to merely physiological actions. Using some insights contained within Adler’s teachings, within this chapter, among other things, I will consider the dynamic nature of the ideas of religion and human freedom as motivational causes inclining human beings to do great human deeds that transcend explanation in modern and contemporary scientific terms. In so doing, I will present what I consider to be the crucial importance of the great ideas of religion and freedom: (1) for personally grasping human transcendence, and (2) to show some main reasons that underlie some narrow, unrealistic, understandings of the aforementioned ideas—​a main effect of which are different forms of human enslavement. Generally considered, within this chapter I will start by analyzing the relationship between religion and human transcendence. Second, I will consider the main reasons flawed understandings of the idea of religion tend to exist and how these necessarily tend to lead to diverse forms of human enslavement. Third, I will examine freedom as an essential manifestation of personal transcendence. Fourth, and finally, I will pay special attention to some sources of flawed understandings of human freedom. Especially in practical terms, I will show how such mistaken understandings turn out to be one way in which human beings are enslaved, incapable of realizing autonomy. Herein, I will use considerations about the problems of transcendence and enslavement to help me elicit the true greatness of the Great Ideas of religion and freedom. Better to elicit Adler’s thought on the issues of the greatness of the ideas of freedom and religion, I will use writings of Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul ii), which appear to me to fully correspond to the views of this major American philosopher and, in many respects, complement them, regarding these two notions. I will first analyze their respective teachings regarding the relationship between religion and human transcendence. Then, I will consider what they have to say about some main reasons they think religion considered in its nature should not be blamed for being a cause of human enslavement. After

144 Duma doing that, I will more specifically consider freedom as an essential manifestation of personal transcendence. Finally, I will pay some attention to some main causes that tend to generate a mistaken understanding of individual freedom, one that, in practical terms, inclines to turn human actions into forms of human slavery, not of healthy human autonomy in which we should find true greatness of the ideas of religion and freedom manifested. 1

Religion and Transcendence

Evident from any extensive, in-​depth reading of Adler is that he tended to consider religion, when properly understood in its real nature, to be a proximate cause and manifestation of a human person’s transcendence. For this reason, among others, he thought that attempts to treat religion as a branch of culture analogous to science, art, or philosophy are necessarily doomed to fail. It is more than this. Adler understood religion, when properly conceived, to be essentially founded on a very special relationship of human beings toward God. He understood religion to be a personal human quality that essentially inclines human beings freely to attempt to transcend our natural, bodily dimension, and, through elevated faculties of the human soul (intellect and will) unite with some divine person. For this reason, if religion is truly to be religion, it must have a dominant position in culture. Otherwise, it is doomed merely to be one more contribution to a culture’s secularization.2 To further elucidate the meaning of religion for grasping an inclination toward material transcendence to be an essential part of the human condition, some need exists for me to have a closer look at some necessary conditions for the existence of religion considered as such: religion considered as exceeding in quality the respective powers of physical nature and culture.3 So conceived, religion constitutes a super-​natural relationship between human beings and 2 “Religion cannot be regarded as just another aspect of culture, one among many occupations, of indifferent importance along with science and art, history and philosophy. Religion is either the supreme human discipline, because it is God’s discipline of man, and as such dominates our culture, or it has no place at all. The mere toleration of religion, which implies indifference to or denial of its claims, produces a secularized culture as much as militant as Nazi nihilism” Mortimer J. Adler, “God and the Professors (A Paper given at the First Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, September 1940),” Our Sunday Visitor, A Weekly Catholic National Newspaper (December 1, 1940), 101. 3 Adler notes these conditions in “God and the Professors,” 101. He sticks to them in his later works, in which he deals with the problem of religion more extensively, including Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth (New York: Macmillan, 1990).

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God. The chief reason for this is that the main cause of such a relationship from the side of a human being must involve a free human decision, a choice essentially involving knowledge and will. All relationships between persons essentially involve acts of knowing and willing (freely choosing and loving). Because by nature human beings are essentially incapable of naturally knowing, freely loving, and choosing union with an infinitely perfect being, by nature, human beings are essentially incapable, as simply natural beings, of entering into a personal relationship with God. Since we cannot love and freely choose what we cannot know, only a super-​natural way of existing (super-​natural faith and super-​natural love for what we know by and through super-​natural faith) caused in the intellectual and volitional faculties of the human soul by a super-​natural God, can be the proximate cause of such a personal relationship between a human being and God.4 The supernatural way of knowing acquired through supernatural faith is incomparably higher, qualitatively transcends in intensity, finitely natural human cognition. Among other things, the first exceeds the second in the qualitative strength of its certainty, guaranteed and maintained chiefly by God’s infinite knowledge, perfect goodness, and miraculous activities, not by any human power, which, no matter how strong, is always essentially somewhat feeble. Because theological cognition first exists within the human soul through a supernaturally acquired habitus of understanding (grace), such knowledge is not, cannot, in a simply natural way, be initially present within the human soul as a naturally possessed, or acquired habitus (the intellectual habit of understanding). Consequently, in principle, the two highest forms of human cognition, science (revealed theology and philosophy, especially philosophical metaphysics) cannot be identical, or ever really contradict each other. Divine grace existing within the human will, and coming to the human intellect through the will, serves as the proximate cause, evident, per se notum, first principle of understanding the articles of faith, out of which understanding grows the divine science of revealed theology within a human soul.5 In contrast, sense (or, perhaps better, sensory/​intellectual) wonder is the proximate, evident, per se notum, first principle of understanding through which the evident first principles of reasoning come to be known, out of which philosophical science is first generated.6 4 Adler, Truth in Religion, 51. 5 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, i q. 2 arts. 1, 8; i–​i i, q. 110, a. 1; ii–​i i, q. 2, a. 9. I thank Peter A. Redpath for calling my attention to these texts in Aquinas, and for the reference to Plato immediately below. 6 Plato, Republic, 7, 521a–​534e.

146 Duma Since the sciences of revealed theology and philosophy are different psychological effects (first principles of understanding [grace and sense wonder] essentially existing within the human soul), and since they chiefly love and pursue union with essentially different formal objects, forms of truth, and do so according to essentially different methods, for essentially different chief aims, essentially they possess qualitatively different forms of scientific autonomy, standards of professional excellence and measures of truth that freely arise within them from the free autonomy of the human soul. Nonetheless, since they constitute different intellectual habits existing within the intellectual soul of a human being, like all such habits, they are essentially ordered to cooperate with each other to harmonize to perfect one, composite-​whole, person achieving perfection in knowing the whole truth about everything that is. Considered in this way, as a PhD in Psychology, not in Philosophy, Adler, well understood, these two different psychological ways of seeking after and knowing truth (whether this be about God, the world, or something else) are not, and can never be, really contradictory.7 Evidently true is that contradictory opposites cannot simultaneously be true. Evident to Adler was that, in some way, truth is one. He firmly and repeatedly defended the truth’s unity.8 Adler analyzed the two different ways of knowing—​revealed theology and philosophy—​chiefly from the standpoint of a philosophical and organizational psychologist, not a systematic logician, and a firm believer in truth’s unity. In so doing, he realized that claims within Western religion about the primacy of theological truth are chiefly the result of considering truths of revelation from their being grounded in the truth of God as all knowing and all good. Revealed theology is God’s way of communicating the whole truth about himself and everything else human beings need to know about whatever will enable us to enter into a personal relationship with God, become God’s friend, and achieve human salvation. How do we know this is true? Best possible answer according to Adler following Aquinas appears to be: (1) We know God exists, (2) God says this is true, (3) God confirms what he says by miracles (included among which is the miraculous nature of an animal possessing a soul capable of being causing acts of free decision making, acts that no organic principle can, in and of itself, cause), and (4) thereby being capable of entering into a personal relationship, friendship, with an absolutely perfect person. According to Adler, truth can exist in religion and be known by seriously religious persons. This includes truth about God. For example, if, on the basis

7 See Adler, Truth in Religion, 28, 70, concerning truths of faith developed in Western religions. 8 Adler, Truth in Religion, 113–​128.

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of the evident existence of internal human freedom, we can rationally conclude that an all knowing, all good, personal, God must exist, because only such a being has the power to cause and explain the existence of such a free human being and the transcendent acts it is able to cause, then anyone who contradicts this claim would have to be wrong; and so would any religion. Such being the case, also reasonable would it be for someone then to claim that a rational measure would exist, by which one religion could be compared to another as qualitatively better, greater. Adler maintained that philosophical metaphysics might be able to establish the truth of such claims. For example, he claimed it might be able to prove that God: (1) exists as one supreme being; (2) is transcendent and exists necessarily whether this radically contingent universe exists; i.e., whether, at some time in the future, this radically contingent, presently existing, created order ever ceases to exist; and (3) is the creator and preserver of this universe ex nihilo and the preserver of its existence at every moment of its existence that it does exist. In sum, Adler concluded, “if these conclusions are correctly judged to be factually true, then any religious faith that denies them must be factually false, at least with respect to God.”9 While the limits of human cognitive powers do not reasonably allow us to claim that a form of philosophy or religion exists that possesses the whole truth about everything, this does not mean that no rationally measurable differences exist between particular philosophies or beliefs in differing degrees and quality of perfection of possessing some truth(s). This truth substantiates the claim that some really, specifically better, or best, philosophy or religion can exist, at least with respect to some truths within the real genus of philosophy or religion.10 Given the existence of human freedom’s transcendence of conditions of material existence—​human freedom’s miraculous animal nature, the evident reality of materially transcendent activities existing within the finite universe as a rational sign and measure of the truth that an omnipotent and omni-​ benevolent God exists—​enables us to draw other conclusions as well. From the semiotically known existence of material transcendence as a really knowable miraculous activity that essentially characterizes internal human freedom, we can reasonably maintain openness to faith in revelation to be essentially rational, not irrational.11 9 Adler, Truth in Religion, 77. 10 Adler, Truth in Religion, 79. 11 In this spirit, John Paul ii says in his encyclical, Fides et ratio: “Faith sharpens the inner eye, opening the mind to discover in the flux of events the workings of Providence,” no. 16; “faith liberates reason in so far as it allows reason to attain correctly what it seeks to know

148 Duma For Adler, reason is related to supernatural faith: (1) principally as a tool of such faith that exceeds the natural power of natural reason totally to cause, and (2) is autonomous in relation to it. Natural reason does not possess the power, in and of itself, to enable a human being to get to know, love, and come into a personal relationship with, God. Without God’s initiative in the form of revelation and super-​natural grace, such cognition would be virtually and actually impossible to exist within a human being. While acknowledging the primacy of a supernatural faith and a simultaneous appreciation of philosophical tools in explaining the truth arrived at through such a faith, a first glance, appears to place Adler within the Anselmian tradition summarized as fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding), nevertheless, I maintain that Tim Lacy is right to conclude that Adler’s standpoint is better characterized by the formula: intellectus quaerens fidem (intellect seeking faith). According to this formula, faith is qualitatively superior to natural reason, which, without the light of supernatural faith would not be capable of knowing transcendent truth: truth that qualitatively exceeds in nature any and every truth and existing power within the natural order.12 This classically expressed metaphysical formula manifests the core of the miraculous transcendence revealed in the acts of human freedom and supernatural faith. Thanks to them we are able to enter into a personal relationship with God; and thus qualitatively exceed the realm of nature and all natural relationships! Nonetheless, at most, classical, philosophical metaphysics is capable of establishing the existence of God, and some relationship of human beings to God, by semiotically reasoning through a demonstratio quia (demonstration that) proof for God’s existence from effects to cause, from externally sensual signs and principles of natural reason. Such cognition is very limited and cannot replace the light of faith in its intensive quality of certainty and the ability of us to know God as a perfect person.13 This is one reason why the role of cult, sacraments, and religious life and divine revelation are qualitatively much greater in the development of religious faith than is the role of natural reason left to its own resources.14

12 13 14

and to place it within the ultimate order of things, in which everything acquires true meaning. In brief, human beings attain truth by way of reason because, enlightened by faith, they discover the deeper meaning of all things and most especially of their own existence,” no. 20; Catholic Church, Encyclical Letter, Fides et ratio [Faith and reason], of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul ii: to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference 1998). Tim Lacy, “Intellectum Quaerens Fides: Mortimer J. Adler’s Journey of Mind and Heart,” US Catholic Historian 32, no. 2: Converts and Conversion (Spring 2014): 95. Adler, “God and the Professors,” 101. Lacy, “Intellectum Quaerens Fides,” 110.

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The only way human beings can possibly get to know a transcendent, absolutely perfect being (God) as a perfect person, and with the help of such a being perfectly get to know ourselves and our human nature, and enter into a perfect relationship, friendship, with God is with divine help. To do this, we must first become aware that we are in some way spiritual beings, that we possess a spiritual dimension, which is the second most important manifestation of human transcendence. Adler understood that the human soul is immaterial, and that the immateriality of the human soul is a sign that the ultimate goal of human life (human happiness) must, in some way, transcend material conditions, consist in an immaterial union with some sort of immaterial being.15 Highlighting this kind of transcendence does not mean that Adler was an advocate of a Cartesian-​like dualism within human nature, according to which the human spirit participates in a supernatural realm while the human body belongs to the separate world of nature. Adler supports the conviction that, in essentially one human nature spirituality is essentially united with materiality; so this nature, “which is the highest definable essence in the material order, virtually includes all inferior essences and the individual man actually possesses a hierarchy of powers that represents the order of essential perfections in all material substances.”16 Establishing the existence of a spiritual dimension and supernatural goal to human nature and human life allows us to substantiate a further, crucial aspect of human transcendence: that metaphysical dignity of the human person is the highest of all qualities existing within natural order and animal nature. For this reason, all people—​regardless of age, race, sex, or anything else—​are equal in metaphysical worth of personal dignity. Consequently, considered in this way, all human beings meta-​physically and morally merit to be treated with equal dignity.17 Put in Kantian terms, the crucial point I am attempting to make here is that, first and foremost, human beings possess a metaphysical and moral dignity, which merits that no person be treated like a slave, like a means (tool) that exists only to be used for another person’s pursuit of some utilitarian end. Divine revelation guarantees the metaphysical and moral dignity, worth, of all human beings considered as persons, beings possessed of an intellectual soul: the glaring image of God’s nature with people. 15 16 17

Adler, “God and the Professors,” 103. Mortimer J. Adler, “The Hierarchy of Essences,” The Review of Metaphysics 6, no. 1 (September 1952): 3–​30, at 8. (emphasis added). By ‘virtually,’ Adler means in a qualitatively higher way. Mortimer J. Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 202.

150 Duma Divine revelation confirms to believers that part of the ultimate aim of human life is perfectly to know our own personal dignity and worth in and through seeing God’s essence face to face.18 Acknowledging the exceptional, metaphysical and moral dignity, gravitas, of a human person has a crucial bearing on understanding all human relationships as personal and on creating truly human, personal, communities—​such communities as a rightly conceived democratic state that, according to Adler, “without the truths of philosophy and religion has no rational foundations.”19 For the above-​discussed reasons, rejection of revealed religion’s understanding of the dignity of the human person as Aquinas and Adler conceived it inevitably calls into question the transcendence of a human person, and, with it, respect for individual and communal freedom and dignity. For this reason, we can easily comprehend Adler’s example of the tendency of scientific positivism to treat religion falsely conceived as identical with superstition. An unhappy outcome of this conception of religion tends to be real-​life negation of the human dignity and human rights of religious people by people who incline to “think that all the significant questions men ask are either unanswerable by reason or not at all, . .; who think that science alone is valid knowledge, and that science is enough for the conduct of life.”20 This kind of positivistic and naturalistic thinking appears to serve as a first principle of contemporary, secularized culture and its essential animosity toward all religion. Adler says that neither philosophy nor contemporary science has the inherent ability to answer any of greatest questions human persons ask.21 We can find such questions and answers only in and through revealed religion. This claim implies that, in some respect, revealed religion is the surest source of the greatest of human wisdom.22 As Adler specified them, characteristic features required of truth in religion enabled him, up to a point, to determine criteria that could be used to distinguish between religious and non-​religious faith; and between qualitatively more and less equal, perfect, religions, considered as fulfilling the definition of religion properly understood.23 Such being the case, the question of the nature of personal transcendence and how accurately

18 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, i, q. 12. 19 Adler, “God and the Professors,” 102–​103. 20 Adler, “God and the Professors,” 101. 21 Mortimer J. Adler, “The Questions Science Cannot Answer,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 13 no. 4 (April 1957): 122. 22 Adler, Mortimer J., Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy (New York: Arno Press, 1937/​2008), 54. 23 Adler, Truth in Religion, 45–​47, 69–​92.

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to answer the human (including, social, cultural, and political) implications that necessarily follow from its existence becomes crucial; and especially so regarding being able rightly to defend human freedom and dignity and properly measure religious greatness. How much a religion contributes to discovering such transcendence and human ability to treat human beings with personal dignity appears to be an especially crucial sign and measure of its claim to be religiously great, or, strictly speaking, to be a religion at all. 2

Religion(s) and Enslavement

From the preceding considerations made in this chapter, precisely what question is the best to one to ask so as accurately to determine the greatness of any revealed religion worthy of the name appears to be, “What is God really like?” If religion is a divine-​human, personal relationship and reality, then achieving knowledge of its nature, and differentiating between what is divine and human in it is no easy task. Millennia ago, Plato had posed, and tried to answer, this great question through purely rational cognition alone.24 With the help of divine grace, medieval theologians like Aquinas pondered the same question. In part, returning to Plato’s approach, so did some contemporary philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Bernhard Welte (looking for the divine God [göttlicher Gott]),25 or, following Aquinas’s approach, Wojtyła. He talked about human persons having a need “to purify human notions of God of mythological elements” and “acquire critical awareness of what they believe in”—​remarking that “the concept of divinity is the prime beneficiary of it.”26 Eric Voegelin, in somewhat the same vein, appears to have considered the chief beneficiary of such an inquiry to be true theology.27 Adler’s reflections on religion signify an intellectually deep, intense, awareness of the difficulty involved in answering the crucial questions of such an inquiry. Nevertheless, he was sure they are answerable, apparently because he 24 25

26 27

“The god must surely always be described such as he is”; Plato, Republic 379a. See Stjepan Kušar, Dem göttlichen Gott entgegen denken. Der Weg von der metaphysischen zu einer nachmetaphysischen Sicht Gottes in der Religionsphilosophie Bernhard Weltes [Think against the divine God. The path from the metaphysical to a post-​metaphysical view of God in the philosophy of religion of Bernhard Weltes] (Freiburg Breisgau: Herder, 1986), 2–​5. Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, no. 36. Germino, Dante, ed., Order and History, vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle, vol. 16 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Paul Caringella (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 122.

152 Duma realized that answering them is not an solely natural doable deed. To some extent, it has to depend upon some self-​revelation freely given by God to human beings. While becoming a Christian took Adler close to a century, from the start of his investigations into the nature of divine revelation his writings reflect a profound understanding of Christian theology. His early and extensive reading of Aquinas combined with his native genius helps explain this phenomenon. Wojtyła’s papal encyclical, Fides et ratio (Faith and reason), in turn, helps explain the theological genius of such intellectual greatness in Adler even as a youthful pagan: “Revelation therefore introduces into our history a universal and ultimate truth”28 that in God “lies the origin of all things, in him is found the fullness of the mystery.”29 In a way, in and of itself, desire perfectly to know the whole truth about everything is a sign of the human intellect’s natural openness and receptivity toward divine revelation. Even from its inception in a pagan soul of someone like the young Alder it can be so intense that “it works in such a way that the human heart, despite its experience of insurmountable limitation, yearns for the infinite riches which lie beyond, knowing that there is to be found the satisfying answer to every question as yet unanswered.”30 Wojtyła adds that depth of revealed wisdom can be so great that it “disrupts the cycle of our habitual patterns of thought, which are in no way able to express that wisdom in its fullness.”31 Adler’s intense desire perfectly to know the whole truth about everything apparently drove him to a desire to know the whole truth about what chiefly causes the splendor, greatness, of religion, freedom, and, eventually, culture. Plato once remarked that being wrong about true being is the worst mistake a human being can make;32 It is the worst of all possible mistakes because it masquerades as truth and, in a way becomes the Gorgian paradox, a ‘true falsehood’ or ‘the lie itself’ (alethos pseudos), as Voeglin, following Plato, once called it.33 This applies, especially, to being wrong regarding true lies about the greatest truth: God. Being wrong about how God, in a way, is truth and what is God’s truth is the worst mistake a human being can make about true being! Plato described this type of error as taking possession of the qualitatively highest, greatest, part of the human soul and filling it with stupidity, imprudence, an inability of the highest part of the soul rightly to guide the whole person. 28 Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, no. 14. 29 Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, no. 17. 30 Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, no. 17. 31 Catholic Church, Fides et ratio, no.23. 32 Plato, Republic 382a–​b. 33 Voegelin, Order and History, 122.

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If a soul lacks right relation to the highest measure of being, a totally aimless human being remains the only human measure, guide, leader. What dire consequences such a situation implies for the life of a human community, much less an individual human being! In such a circumstance, no right, healthy, order can exist within the individual soul or civil society (which can never actually be civil). Psychological disorder, eventually total insanity, becomes truth’s highest measure, only really doable deed. This, in turn, encourages development within a person of the deepest human disorders and moral and metaphysical crimes, flowing in and from the worst of human beings, from the lowest recesses of the human soul, in the form of beastly human instincts, normally and, even then, extremely rarely, awakened in a nightmarish dream: an unquenchably strong desire (epithymía) to pursue only bodily pleasure.34 Thus spoke Plato, who was certainly right when he said that being wrong about truth about God leads inevitably to diverse forms of human enslavement, madness. Voegelin’s concept of true falsehoods appears to be quite common among the historical varieties of religious experience and beliefs, even within Christianity. Throughout Christianity’s history related to divine revelation, Christians have often considered faith to be essentially irrational, anti-​intellectual. This has often found expression in different forms of fideism in which religion, more than once, has become a tool of human enslavement. Harnessing religious faith to ideological, utopian, political visions and goals is, and has been a frequently used historical form of human enslavement. The worst manifestation of such misuse and abuse of religion conflates religion with political power so completely that religion loses its supernatural character and becomes merely an instrument of material gain. Another, less pernicious, but still quite damaging way of misconceiving religion’s true nature as a transcendental quality of the human soul that inclines to rightly order and perfect psychological health, is to misconceive religion’s nature to be a purely cultural phenomenon, to use one or another form or cultural relativism to try to articulate its true nature. Doing so appears as much as possible to fulfill Friedrich Nietzsche’s prescription: “remain faithful to the earth and do not trust those who tell you about super-​earthly hopes!”35 Accepting the approach of cultural relativism necessarily entails accepting

34 Plato, Republic, 571a–​572b. 35 “bleibt der Erde treu und glaubt denen nicht, welche euch von überirdischen Hoffnungen reden!,” Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für alle und keinen [Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No one](Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1977), 14 (author’s translation).

154 Duma Nietzsche’s concept of freedom and all the forms of human enslavement that applying this concept as a behavioral first principle essential entails. Because Adler was exceptionally knowledgeable about the history of religion, philosophy, and politics, he was well aware of different ways in which religion can become a tool of human enslavement. This wide and deep knowledge appears, eventually, to have enlarged his research efforts to prevent such misuse of religion, especially for politically dubious aims. In a way, what might have started out on Adler’s part as simply a theoretical interest in understanding the nature of religion in general appears to have later become for him a practical quest to understand truth about revealed religion so that he might be able eventually to articulate, and use, as perfectly as possible the Great Idea of religion to bring to fruition in its most perfect form and full splendor the Great Idea of culture. 3

Freedom and Transcendence

Just as in the cases of the ideas of religion and culture, our ability to see and fully appreciate the greatness of the idea of freedom in its perfect splendor and beauty demands that we first purify the true nature of the diverse kinds of deformations it has suffered throughout its prior existence. Doing so essentially requires understanding the anthropological context in which freedom turns out to be a central historical property of personal human fulfillment. This being so, crucial becomes for us to grasp is that freedom’s essence is necessarily connected with transcendence: the primary semiotic manifestation of the acting person. Freedom and transcendence are so interwoven that one cannot be grasped without the other. To show this interdependence, need exists to look at different species of freedom.36 While the idea of freedom was not systematically examined there, Adler finds the main species of freedom already existing within ancient Greek philosophy. In their analyses of human action, especially related to fixed habits (moral virtues and vices), major Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle

36

Adler presents this problem in “Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Concept in the English and American Traditions of Philosophy,” The Review of Metaphysics 11, no. 3 (March 1958): 380–​410. For Adler’s understanding of freedom, see Michael D. Torre, ed., Freedom in the Modern World: Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Mortimer J. Adler (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); John P. Hittinger, ed., The Vocation of the Catholic Philosopher: From Maritain to John Paul I (Washington, DC: American Maritain Association, 2010).

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considered in some detail the nature of different species of freedom and the question of the difference between being free and being enslaved. In so doing, they came to recognize that, generically considered, freedom consists in being an inner, psychological disposition, habitus. Among essential properties Adler found these ancient Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, discovered self-​ perfection, self-​realization, and self-​determination.37 Adler saw Aquinas somewhat taking over and adding to Aristotle’s conception of freedom and its essential properties, and flushing out in it, in somewhat greater detail, political freedom beyond previously recognized species of freedom like moral, social, economic, and circumstantial.38 He understood Aquinas to be considering freedom chiefly in personal self-​perfection, total goodness of a whole human being considered as having an immortal soul. Adler saw modernity, in turn, dramatically altering the classical understanding of freedom in which, from the ancient Greeks to Aquinas, freedom had tended to be understood as chiefly an internal intellectual, not solely, or mainly, volitional activity. Starting with René Descartes, Adler considered human freedom to become increasingly externalized from the human intellect and an individually existing person and relocated within a will separated from any essential connection with what had traditionally been conceived as a human body. In the teachings of thinkers such as Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he recognized that freedom had increasingly started to become considered in terms of a lack of any limitations rationally and internally placed on the will (which, as a result, marginalized the proper understanding freedom as a species of self-​perfection), or, as chiefly voluntary obedience to law (which separated self-​perfection from the individual free choice will).39 He saw in the tradition of English nominalism a common, sensory approach to freedom, increasingly understanding freedom negatively, in terms of lack of obstacles to doing anything people might want to do.40 In this fashion, he interpreted John Dewey as someone questioning the traditional concept of freedom, pointing out to the key role of non-​rational factors in human self-​realization.41 Realizing serious flaws within modern and neo-​modern conceptions of freedom, Adler increasingly became an advocate of Aquinas’s understanding of it, essentially connected with Thomas’s understanding of a human being as 37 38 39 40 41

Adler, “Freedom,” 386–​88. Adler, “Freedom,” 390. Adler, “Freedom,” 392–​93. Adler, “Freedom,” 396. Adler, “Freedom,” 401.

156 Duma a personal being whose essential nature stands on the shoulders of personal action issuing from the faculty of intellectual choice. In his interpretation of human person’s freedom and transcendence, Wojtyła, too, develops and complements the conception of Aquinas, which Adler increasingly tended to articulate and support. According to Wojtyła, freedom is a decisive factor in the constitution of human action.42 It is the center of personal efficacy that conditions self-​ governance expressing itself as the dependence of someone’s will on someone’s ‘I.’43 Wojtyła sees such dependence to be the key moment in the efficacy of human action, constituting human action as personal. Considered as such, he calls it ‘self-​governance’ (Polish, samostanowienie). Since a personal ‘I’ is subjectified in human nature, self-​governance requires grounding in a more interior, personal ontic structures, connected to the human will, in which the will fulfills other functions. Wojtyła refers to such structures as self-​owning (samo-​posiadanie) and self-​ ruling (samo-​panowanie). Just as a person can govern only what a person really owns, a person can only own what he or she exclusively rules.44 In the case of self-​owning, Wojtyła sees the will to be manifested as an essential personal feature, while, in the case of self-​ruling, the will plays the role of a faculty a person uses. Both aspects are constituents of the ‘I want’ moment of decision making in which a person as an ‘I’ governs personal action. Therefore, free choice is not merely an intentional act, but much more the act of self-​governance in which persons are assumed to possess self-​understanding: truth about themselves. Wojtyła assumes that the personal disposition of the personal will to choose is an intellectual act of self-​understanding (understanding precisely who he or she a person is) followed by a real measure in accordance with personally known truth.45 42

43 44 45

“The discovery of freedom at the root of the efficacy of person allows us to reach an even more fundamental understanding of man as the dynamic subject. Conformably with our basic experience the totality of the dynamism proper to man is divisible into acting and happening (actions and activations). This distinction rests on the difference between the real participation of the will, as in conscious acting or actions, and the absence of the will. What only happens in man lacks the dynamic element of freedom and thus lacks the experience ‘I can but I don’t have to’ ”; Pope John Paul ii and Anna-​Teresa Tymieniecka, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), 100. Wojtyła and Tymieniecka, The Acting Person, 166. Wojtyła and Tymieniecka, The Acting Person, 152. “Efficacy and with it also personhood self-​governance are formed through choice and decision, and these presuppose a dynamic relation to [the] truth in the will itself,” Wojtyła and Tymieniecka, The Acting Person, 249 (trans. corrected by author based on original Polish).

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Analysis of the subjective-​specific, personal, nature the of human ‘I’ permits discovery the transcendence of the self-​owning ‘I’ over all actions caused by the ‘I.’ Wojtyła calls this transcendence ‘vertical,’ and he distinguishes it from the horizontal transcendence that consists in an intentional relation toward an object in knowing and in willing acts.46 Vertical transcendence reveals an irreducibility of ‘I’ to any particular action. This irreducibility represents the fullest manifestation of qualitative power of the self-​owning subjects to govern themselves: an essential property crucial to personhood existence.47 The above, brief, analysis of an intimate connection between freedom and transcendence shows that we should not consider the problem of freedom without considering its broad anthropological context, and especially without taking into account the miraculous, spiritual dynamism characteristic of a human person. Adler appears to have been keenly aware of this truth. I think this was a chief reason tended favored the teaching of Aquinas on his issue. Freedom conceived as self-​perfection is a species of freedom essentially constituting a human being as a uniquely self-​knowing, individual and personal being. No wonder Adler acutely states: “Freedom does not lie in pursuing individual whimsy and immature preference, nor in running away from routine and self-​discipline, but in learning what with fuller experience will be understood as well-​tried and eminently good.”48 4

Freedom and Enslavement

Any conception of human freedom that excludes from its concept it being an immanent cause of personal transcendence and self-​perfection is doomed to fail adequately to explain human behavior or enhance personal human existence (especially if, simultaneously, it attempts to conceive freedom as self-​ realization or self-​determination). Such a conceptually incoherent understanding of freedom boils down to omitting from its concept a necessary condition for avoiding reducing human action to a totally one-​sided way of existing; a 46 47

48

Wojtyła and Tymieniecka, The Acting Person, 109. “Thus conceived transcendence as a property of the dynamism of person can be best explained by comparing it to the dynamism of nature. Self-​governance brings in here, first of all, the superior position of one’s own ‘I’. This superior position springing up from self-​ governance constitutes, as it were, a vertical line. In contrast, there is no such a superior position in an individual who is but the subject of activations coordinated by instinct,” Wojtyła and Tymieniecka, The Acting Person, 119 (trans. corrected by author based on original Polish). Adler, “Freedom,” 382.

158 Duma way of acting totally caused by some principle disjunctively outside or inside a person; but never, properly speaking, by a personal-​relation principle of human behavior capable of straddling both sides (such as between and individual human being and God). Such a conception of freedom, conditioned by many disjointed, possible outer or inner factors, presents, in fact, a dangerous means for unwittingly promoting human enslavement, not a knowledgeable one for fostering real, personal autonomy and self-​sovereignty. For this reason, Adler favored understanding freedom in the sense of personal self-​perfection to be freedom’s highest species within the real genus of human freedom. When we eliminate freedom in the sense of transcendental, personal self-​ perfection from the concept of human freedom generically considered, the borderline between freedom and enslavement becomes accurately unspecifiable, unmeasurable, and impossible precisely to see. On the basis of Adler’s analysis, we can understand more precisely why this happens. When we misunderstand human nature, what all human beings truly are, we cause to come into existence a false measure of healthy and unhealthy human behavior. We introduce into human history and culture more than an erroneous concept. We introduce into culture and politics an essential first principle for replacing cultural, political, and personal freedom with cultural, political, and personal anarchy and slavery. At the same time, we introduce into human consciousness in all these spheres the ‘true falsehood’ mistake regarding being wrong about God that Plato and Voegelin have warned us about avoiding: “True humanity requires true theology; the man with false theology is an untrue man,”49 While misunderstanding the truth about God inclines culturally, politically, and personally to negate the truth about transcendence of the human person, the contrary opposite is, also, true. We cannot be wrong about what human beings are and be right about what God is. As John Paul ii writes, “Here we find ourselves at the very center of what could be called … the ‘anti-​truth:’ For the truth about man becomes falsified: who man is and what are the impassable limits of his being and freedom. This ‘anti-​truth’ is possible because at the same time there is a complete falsification of the truth about who God is.”50 The

49 Voegelin, Order and History, 122. 50 John Paul ii, Dominum et vivificantem [Lord and Giver of Life], On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World (May 18, 1986), no. 37, http://​www.vatican.va/​content/​john -​paul-​ii/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​jp-​ii_​enc_​18051986_​dominum-​et-​vivificantem .html.

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truth about what is a human being necessarily concerns the truth about what is human freedom.51 For this reason, instead of enlarging human freedom, separating transcendence from being a truth about human freedom does not enlarge freedom’s greatness, It kills it.52 For this reason, too, self-​perfection as a manifestation of freedom is crucial to maintain for more than its truth value. As Adler correctly realized, human freedom’s existence and ability essentially to flourish essentially depends upon it.53 No wonder that everything truly human must be subordinated to freedom so conceived. In a way, even truth is its creation;54 so are all measures and values, and, ultimately, the whole of culture and politics. Separated from this grounding freedom tends to become situated in some pre-​moral or extra-​moral, other-​ than-​human realm. It is an absolute unconditioned by anything. According to Wojtyła, such a conception of freedom is characteristic of those tendencies that are deprived of any reference to transcendent reality or straightforwardly negate such a reality.55 Different forms of absolutization, negation of human freedom, or its negation in favor of determinism lead inevitably to human slavery in individual, social, cultural, and political dimensions. This makes impossible personal human ability to realize human perfection in essential aspects of our being, and straightforwardly degrades us in our personal humanity. As Wojtyła notes, we must oppose a twofold temptation: (1) to make the truth about ourselves become totally submitted to our freedom, and (2) to make our selves become totally submitted to the world of things. We must take a stand against the contrary opposite temptations of self-​deification and against self-​reification.56

51 52 53 54 55 56

John Paul ii, Veritatis splendor [Truth Shines] (August 6, 1993), no. 86. http://​www.­vatican .va/​content/​john-​paul-​ii/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​jp-​ii_​enc_​06081993_​veritatis -​splendor.html. John Paul ii, Veritatis splendor, no. 40. Adler, “Freedom,” 409. John Paul ii, Veritatis splendor, no. 35. John Paul ii, Veritatis splendor, no. 32. John Paul ii, Discorso Giovanni Paolo II al mondo della cultura. Aula Magna dell’Università Cattolica di Lublino–​Martedì, 9 giugno 1987 [John Paul II speech to the world of culture. Aula Magna of the Catholic University of Lublin—​Tuesday, 9 June 1987]. Vatican. http://​ www.vatican.va/​content/​john-​paul-​ii/​pl/​speeches/​1987/​june/​documents/​hf_​jp-​ii_​spe _​19870609_​mondo-​cultura.html.

160 Duma 5

Conclusion

According to Adler, millennia ago, Western civilization started a great conversation about historically great ideas that has continued unbroken to the present. Included within these great ideas are two of the greatest and first-​ existing: the great ideas of religion and freedom, which historically served as proximate causes of the West’s eventual realization that, in some way, the West is a culture and civilization., In the light of these ideas, over millennia since the first cultural realization of them within the West, human beings have globally come realize: (1) the personal dignity and worth of all human beings, and (2) the exceptional, qualitative greatness of personhood most eloquently captured centuries ago by Aquinas when he wrote, “ ‘Person’ signifies what is most perfect in all nature—​that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature.”57 Adler was well-​aware of Aquinas’s statement and piercingly investigated implications of it through decades of inimitable, historical, philosophical, theological, anthropological, political, social, economic, educational, and other forms, of research. Under the influence chiefly of Aquinas, he doggedly, masterfully, and, at times, single-​handedly defended the ideas of religion, and revealed religion (even that of the possible existence of angels and of the immateriality of the human intellect) as great and worthy of continued scholarly research and conversation. Within this chapter I have attempted to discuss in some detail Adler’s representation and defense of two of the greatest of great ideas: freedom and religion. In so doing, following Adler’s lead, among other things, I have tried to show in precise detail how, when accurately conceived, religion (especially revealed religion) and freedom (especially freedom open to grace) qualitatively enhance each other, culture, politics, and individual persons in behavioral influence and greatness. In the process of so doing, I hope I have been able to make manifest Adler’s exceptional contribution to showing the greatness of the ideas of religion and freedom, clarifying and purifying them of everything that blurs them for us and for inspiring minds of contemporary researchers to continue to seek the whole and highest knowable truth about everything that is.58

57 Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, i, q. 29, a. 3 respondeo. 58 This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

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Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Art and Prudence: A Study in Practical Philosophy. New York: Arno Press, 1937/​2008. isbn: 9781443727969. Adler, Mortimer J. “Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Concept in the English and American Traditions of Philosophy.” The Review of Metaphysics 11, no. 3 (March 1958): 380–​410. Stable url: https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​20123650. Adler, Mortimer J. “God and the Professors (A Paper given at the First Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, September 1940).” Our Sunday Visitor, A Weekly Catholic National Newspaper (December 1, 1940), 98–​103. Adler, Mortimer J. The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes. New York: Doubleday, 1967. oclc: 727387. Adler, Mortimer J. “The Hierarchy of Essences.” The Review of Metaphysics 6, no. 1 (September 1952): 3–​30. Stable url: https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​20123303. Adler, Mortimer J. “The Questions Science Cannot Answer.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 13 no. 4 (April 1957): 120–​ 125. doi: https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 00963402.1957.11457528. Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Macmillan, 1990. isbn: 9780025002258. Catholic Church, Encyclical Letter, Fides et ratio [Faith and reason], of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II: to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference 1998. isbn: 9781574553024. Congdon, David W. The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. isbn: 978-​1-​4514-​8792-​3. Germino, Dante, ed. Order and History. Vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle. Vol. 16 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Edited by Paul Caringella. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000. isbn: 9780826212504. Hittinger, John P. ed., The Vocation of the Catholic Philosopher: From Maritain to John Paul II. Washington, DC: American Maritain Association, 2010. isbn: 9780982711903. John Paul ii. Discorso Giovanni Paolo II al mondo della cultura. Aula Magna dell’Università Cattolica di Lublino–​Martedì, 9 giugno 1987 [John Paul II speech to the world of culture. Aula Magna of the Catholic University of Lublin—​Tuesday, 9 June 1987], Vatican, http://​www.vatican.va/​content/​john-​paul-​ii/​pl/​speeches/​1987/​ june/​­documents/​hf_​jp-​ii_​spe_​19870609_​mondo-​cultura.html. John Paul ii. Dominum et vivificantem [Lord and giver of life], On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World. (May 18, 1986). http://​www.vatican.va/​­content/​ john-​ p aul-​ i i/​ e n/​ e ncyclicals/​ d ocuments/​ h f_​ j p- ​ i i_ ​ e nc_ ​ 1 8051986_ ​ d ominum-​ e t -​vivificantem.html.

162 Duma John Paul ii. Veritatis splendor [Truth shines]. (August 6, 1993). http://​www.vatican.va/​ content/​john-​paul-​ii/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​jp-​ii_​enc_​06081993_​veritatis -​splendor.html. John Paul ii, Pope, and Anna-​Teresa Tymieniecka. The Acting Person. Translated by Andrzej Potocki. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. isbn: 9789027709851. Kušar, Stjepan. Dem göttlichen Gott entgegen denken. Der Weg von der metaphysischen zu einer nachmetaphysischen Sicht Gottes in der Religionsphilosophie Bernhard Weltes [Thinking against the divine God. The path from the metaphysical to a post-​metaphysical view of God in the philosophy of religion of Bernhard Weltes] (Freiburg Breisgau: Herder, 1986). isbn: 9783451205873. Lacy, Tim. “Intellectum Quaerens Fides [Faith seeking understanding]: Mortimer J. Adler’s Journey of Mind and Heart,” US Catholic Historian 32, no. 2: Converts and Conversion (Spring 2014): 91–​116. doi: 10.1353/​cht.2014.0011. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für alle und keinen [Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for everyone and no one]. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1977. isbn: 9783458018452. Torre, Michael D. ed., Freedom in the Modern World: Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Mortimer J. Adler. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. isbn: 9780268009786.

­c hapter 10

Christianity: Friend or Foe of the Great Ideas? Robert T. Ptaszek Abstract Mortimer J. Adler maintained that religion is mainly an individual and historical, cultural activity, enterprise, through which people learn answers to Great Questions, while philosophy is chiefly an individual and historical, cultural enterprise, through which people enter into a Great Conversation about answers to such Great Questions. While Adler did not think that any one religion exists that provides ready-​made, complete answers to the whole truth about God, human beings, and the world, this chapter defends the claim that, in Western Civilization, Christianity, and most precisely, historically, Catholicism tends to do this better than any other religion precisely because it is, and historically has been, the best friend, defender, of the Great Ideas, including those of Freedom and Religion, as the paradigms, chief measures, of human rationality at its best.

Keywords christianity –​commonsense –​freedom –​great conversation –​historical enterprise –​ religion –​Western civilization

Mortimer J. Adler maintained that religion is mainly an individual and historical, cultural activity, enterprise, through which people learn answers to Great Questions, while philosophy is chiefly an individual and historical, cultural enterprise, through which people enter into a Great Conversation about answers to such Great Questions. Adler did not think that any one religion exists that provides ready-​made, complete answers to the whole truth about God, human beings, and the world. Nonetheless, in this chapter, I defend the claims that, in Western civilization and worldwide, historically, Christianity (and, especially Catholicism): (1) has tended to do this better than any other religion, and (2) has been able to do so precisely because it is, and historically has been, the greatest defender of Great Ideas, including

© Robert T. Ptaszek, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_012

164 Ptaszek those of freedom and religion, as paradigms, chief measures, of rationality at its qualitative best—​as signs of great truths and highly provocative, wondrous, thoughts! To achieve this chief aim that Great Ideas function most effectively in the paradigm of wonder-​provoking great human rationality, I argue for the possibility and necessity of free, human pursuit of the qualitatively great and highest truths. By rigorously defending this paradigm that human beings are created by God to know, love, and pursue the whole truth about everything, I will argue that the Great Idea of religion constitutes the most necessary link between human freedom and truth. Speaking from the perspective of the commonsense, realist philosophy of religion, which Adler represented, and with which I concur, I will define three essential conditions that determine the authenticity of human freedom. In so doing, I will also show how, better than any other religion, the Catholic understanding of freedom appears completely to fulfill these conditions. In this way, from the position of a commonsense, realist philosophy of religion, I enter into this great conversation about the role of the Great Ideas of religion and freedom in the contemporary Western civilization. More specifically, the aim of this chapter is to show how the Christian religion is the greatest friend of the Great Ideas: ideas that Adler considered to be indispensable for human beings essentially to comprehend and wonder about so as best to understand ourselves, society, and the world we live in. To support this thesis, I frame my argument as follows: The Great Ideas operate most effectively within a paradigm of rationality that assumes the real possibility and necessity of human pursuit of the truth and the effective, wondrous desire to follow it. Healthy communal, religious practices give signs that an essential part of human nature is working communally to seek, love, and follow truth. In this way, as an individual and communal activity that supports the cultural existence and thought-​provoking discussion of the Great Ideas, the Christian religion merits the label of their greatest friend. This issue is of special relevance today, when the existence and public discussion of universal truths and moral rules of conduct, norms, are being increasingly questioned and often silenced. I hold this opinion, in part, as a consequence of reading about philosophical errors Adler describes in his book Ten Philosophical Mistakes.1 While, once again, Adler did not think that any one religion provides the whole truth about God, human beings, or the world, just as in the physical

1 Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them (New York: Macmillan, 1985).

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and social sciences, he did think that every religion properly conceived as such expresses matters of truth (including some of highest cultural and civilizational importance) related to which rational standards can be established as rational measures as better and worse, stronger and weaker, more and less complete. According to Adler, rational disagreements essentially relate to matters of truth, not matters of taste; and while no rational debate might exist about better and worse tastes, in matters of truth, rational debate can and does exist. In matters of truth, standards of qualitatively better and worse, stronger and weaker, more and less complete, do exist. To deny this is rationally indefensible. Such being the case, following Adler, in this chapter, I will attempt to argue that, within Western civilization especially, the Catholic religion has been an arch-​defender of highest cultural and civilizational truths—​indeed, appears to be the best of its religious defenders. Such being the case, the Catholic religion reasonably appears to deserve credit for being the best religious defender of Great Ideas and The Great Ideas Movement. 1

Does Western Civilization Have a Religion? If So, Is It Christianity? Catholicism?

For many intellectuals, these questions might appear to have such obvious answers as to merit no attention at all. However, the idea that there might be only one, or a few simple answers is belied by the facts. Doing a simple Google search for ‘Christian Europe’ in English alone, for example, yields 897 million returns, while a search for ‘Catholic Europe’ instantly yields 195 million returns. These staggering numbers evince the ubiquity of the use and interest in the topic. Far from being absurd to pose the questions, asking questions about some essential connection about one religion and Europe is eminently reasonable. More. In works about this topic by authors who are representatives of the Catholic Church, we often find phrases such as Christian Europe, Christian roots of Europe, and Christian heritage of Europe. This also applies to the texts of recent popes John Paul ii and Benedict xvi.2 Pope Francis does the same. And, many historical and philosophical works exist recognizing the religious 2 For example, see Pope John Paul ii, Ecclesia in Europa [Church in Europe], Apostolic Exhortation to the Bishops, Men and Women in the Consecrated Life, and All the Lay Faithful on Jesus Christ Alive in His Church, the Source of Hope for Europe (June 28, 2003); Bendict xvi, Pope (Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal), Introduction to Christianity, trans. J.R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013).

166 Ptaszek foundation of Western civilization in the Catholic Church and its doctrine.3 This is historical truth, not a matter of emotional taste. If the idea of religion generated the idea of Western Europe, if the idea of European civilization grew out of the Great Idea of religion, and precisely out of the Great Idea of the Christian religion, questioning the truth of this claim, not the claim itself, would appear to be where rational absurdity lies. The answer appears to be ‘yes.’ That this is so is a matter of truth, fact, not of taste. A sign of this truth is that the question about the precise name of the religion that underlies Western civilization was so crucial and valid that when Martin Luther gave his historic speech which initiated the religious transformation in Europe from Catholic Europe to Christian Europe (the Protestant Reformation), Hilaire Belloc reminds readers that Protestantism was unique: “It did not consist in the promulgation of a new doctrine or of a new authority, that it made no concerted attempt at creating a counter-​Church, but had for its principle the denial of unity. It was an effort to promote that state of mind in which in the old sense of the word—​that is, an infallible, united, teaching body, a Person speaking with Divine authority should be denied; not the doctrines it might happen to advance, but its very claim to advance them.”4 In 1536, the French religious reformer, John Calvin introduced a major terminological confusion within the intramural debate among Catholic reformers and non-​reformers with the publication of Institutio religionis christianae5 (Institutes of the Christian religion). The title and the content of the book showed that Calvin considered himself to be a true follower of Jesus Christ’s teaching and, therefore, a true Christian. About Calvin, Belloc wrote, “What Calvin managed to do was to produce a church, a creed, a discipline which could be set over what had been for all these centuries (and what still is) the native church, creed, and discipline of Christian civilization. For John Calvin it was who produced, down to its details with the rapidity of genius and the tenacity genius, a new thing.”6 That is, Calvin created a new religious 3 An example of such a publication is Thomas E. Woods Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005). 4 Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1938/​1968), 17. 5 Calvin’s Institutio religionis christianae [Institutes of the Christian religion] was first published in 1536 in Geneva. Subsequently, adjusted and elaborated versions appeared in 1539, 1543, and 1550. The last, much more extensive edition of Institutio religionis christianae was published in Geneva in 1559. In 1560, the work was translated into French, and in 1561, into English; see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, in collaboration with the editor and a committee of advisers (Philadelphia, Westminster Press 1561/​1960). 6 Hilaire Belloc, How the Reformation Happened (Rockford, IL, 2003), 77.

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organization (new religious communities), not a reformed Catholic Church, which had been the chief aim of Luther. For this reason, Belloc thought that Calvin, not Luther, deserves to be called the founder of the new anti-​Catholic doctrine that laid the foundations for Protestant religious communities, which broke with the Church of Rome. Since then-​existing Western European civilization had grown out the Great Idea of the Catholic religion, the implication of what Calvin did was to establish principles out of which, through their habitual psychological application and cultural institutions, they would necessarily generate a new European civilization. In so doing, in a sense, Calvin instituted principles that could essentially destroy Western civilization as previously conceived. The split in Western Christianity brought about by the Reformation led to a serious crisis of the religious identity within Europeans, which still exists today. Attempts were made to overcome that by recognizing Catholicism and Protestantism as different cultural species within a new religious genus generally termed ‘Christianity.’ In so doing, Europeans developed the mistaken impression that, historically, European culture/​civilization had caused, was the proximate first principle of, the Christian religion and its two species. As a matter of historical and cultural/​civilizational fact, however, the contrary opposite (reverse) is the truth of the matter. With good reason, then, this solution faced reasonable criticism from Catholics and Protestants alike. Piotr Moskal expressed a major opposition to this solution from the Catholic perspective when he wrote, “I am against treating the terms ‘religion’ and ‘Christian religion’ as terms determining type and species, and the term ‘Catholicism’ as meaning only a variety of Christianity. Certainly, Christianity is a religion, but Catholicism is a religion as well. What is more, according to the self-​understanding of the Catholic Church, the only true religion exists and subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church.”7 Setting aside as irrelevant to the major concern of this chapter whether the Catholic Church is the only true religion, crucial to the discipline of the philosophy of religion is the psychological misunderstanding that viewing culture/​ civilization as causing religion (instead of religion causing culture/​civilization) inclines to foster a mistake about the essential relationship that exists between the ideas of religion and cultures/​civilizations. For, from the standpoint of historical and metaphysical fact and truth, religious communities in act (religions) are always and everywhere the proximate first principles, causes, of civilizations as forms of higher culture. To reverse the essential relationship between 7 Piotr Moskal, Apology for the Catholic Religion (Lublin: kul, 2013), 7.

168 Ptaszek these two generically different wholes is to reduce metaphysics to culture; and establish cultural relativism as the foundation of highest and first measure of all truth, including philosophical/​scientific truth! A disastrous move for any culture or civilization to make because, as the product of a leisured community’s first metaphysical ideas that cause it to ‘wonder’ about forming an enterprise to transcend rudimentary cooperatives of production and generate liberal arts and fine arts, religious communities and their members (in which religions chiefly exist) are always the first, higher, cultural organizations that come into existence. A religious impulse qualitatively to transcend the mundane workaday world and improve individual and cultural life through qualitatively higher forms of human culture (like liberal and fine arts considered as humanistic organizational enterprises [arts in the sense of humanities, instead of technologies]), always precedes the growth of higher cultures and civilizations. In the light of the above historical and metaphysical facts, one conclusion we may reasonably draw is that the doctrines of the Catholic Church have been the greatest of the great treasury of metaphysically wondrous and provocative ideas that have shaped European civilization as European and Western since the inception of the West with the ancient Greeks. A crucial point to recall today, when the West is under increasing civilizational assault on all sides from without; and Western nations are increasingly dissociating themselves within Europe from their Christian roots. Given its rich treasury of doctrinal metaphysical sources, the Catholic Church is qualitatively much better able organizationally to assist the West defend itself from civilizational attack on its principles than are most Protestant communities. While they have many great spiritual resources, at best these communities form a loose confederation with no centralized command and control authority to operate well as an organizational whole. Such being the case, I will now proceed more specifically to present philosophical arguments justifying the main thesis of this chapter: that the Catholic religion is the chief, proximate first principle of Great Ideas being Great Ideas and Adler’s Great Ideas program arising out of Western civilization. 2

Catholic Religion as the Qualitatively Highest Principle of Great Ideas Being Great Ideas

In his book Six Great Ideas, Adler discusses three metaphysical ones: truth, goodness, and beauty, ideas that serve as chief measuring principles of reality; and three other ideas that form proximate first motivational principles and

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measures of moral action: freedom, equality, and justice.8 While Adler’s analytical method of studying the human condition is philosophical, an analogous way of examining the human condition is visible within the Catholic Church. Its teaching stresses that human beings need clear principles, measures, of reference so as reasonably to be able to understand our lives and effectively pursue practical action toward securing our goal of personal salvation of our souls. Only clear criteria to distinguish good from evil provide a sufficient tool to achieve the goal for which we have been created. For example, in the encyclical Mater et Magistra (Mother and teacher), among other things, Pope John xxiii wrote: Let men make all the technical and economic progress they can, there will be no peace nor justice in the world until they return to a sense of their dignity as creatures and sons of God, who is the first and final cause of all created being. Separated from God a man is but a monster, in himself and toward others; for the right ordering of human society presupposes the right ordering of man’s conscience with God, who is Himself the source of all justice, truth and love.9 Concerning the Catholic religion as the foundation of the Great Ideas from the perspective of commonsense, realist philosophy, the Church clearly continues in the West and globally the same Aristotelian tradition of learning truth about reality as was promoted by Adler and the leading ancient Greek philosopher. Also, Adler was well-​known to hold in highest regard, Saint Thomas Aquinas’s multiple works as best examples of what crucial truths religious reflection on great philosophical ideas can reveal. 3

Some Remarks on Catholic Teaching about Intellectual and Moral Virtues

Like many individual Westerners, as represented by leaders of our major cultural institutions, the contemporary West appears to be suffering from severe and selective memory loss. First, like teenagers, the West is conveniently forgetting who first gave birth to them. The principles that caused the generation 8 Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981/​1997). 9 Pope John xxiii, Christianity and Social Progress: Mater et Magistra [Mother and teacher] (New York: America Press, 1961).

170 Ptaszek and growth of the West came from the teaching of the Catholic Church about human nature and supernatural human destiny. Increasingly, these principles, Catholic virtues (which serve within Western civilization analogously to business values to enable daily instantiation of a mission statement within the habits of a business organization) are increasingly becoming considered as unnecessary and harmful restrictions, hindrances, to healthy growth and development of individual and political freedom. As a result, Western leaders and media increasingly present the Catholic religion as an enemy of scientific rationality, of Europe being Europe, and of globally being able to spread Enlightened European ideals and true science. In relation to the birth and preservation of Western Europe, Catholic virtues are crucially important for the same reason that corporate values are crucial to any business organization: they constitute essential parts of the organizational psychology in, through, and out of, which a business grows, and in which a business actually exists as a business. As Peter A. Redpath maintains, every organization exists in and through the harmonious union of its parts. And the unity of its parts exists chiefly within the psychological habits, constitution, of its members. All human organizations chiefly grow out of a corporate, organizational, behavioral psychology.10 If the Catholic Church has been, since its inception, the chief source of the West’s psychological strength, cultural power, destroying Catholic virtue guarantees psychologically undermining Western leaders and the West’s civilizational destruction! Good reason exists today, therefore, seriously to ponder and heed the following message from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The human virtues are stable dispositions of the intellect and the will that govern our acts, order our passions, and guide our conduct in accordance with reason and faith.”11 The first principles of any organization are psychological principles, chief sources of its organizational harmony, strength, and leadership ability. The crucial importance of virtues in human life as chief principles, sources, of psychological strength, prompts a question: What concept of freedom 10

11

For more about Redpath’s teaching about human organizations growing out of an organizational psychology, see Peter A. Redpath, “The Nature of Common Sense and How We Can Use Common Sense to Renew the West,” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 455–​484; and Peter A. Redpath, “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence,” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), pt. 3, Life in Christ, sec. 1, Man’s Vocation Life in the Spirit, chap.1, The Dignity of the Human Person, art. 7, The Virtues, iii. The Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit, 1834. http://​www.vatican.va/​ archive/​E NG0015/​_​I NDEX.HTM#fonte.

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serves as a necessary condition for human persons to exercise virtues needed for a culture/​civilization to come into being, survive, flourish, and resist being internally destroyed through psychological collapse? In my view, the answer to this question is quite simple: the concept of freedom as found in the teaching of the Catholic Church. 4

Catholic Understanding of Freedom

Contemporary Western civilization is highly preoccupied with the question of freedom. Unfortunately, lots of statements on a matter do not necessarily translate into their being of high quality. In this case, most refer to a very simple, oversimplified, circumstantial concept of freedom, according to which freedom is understood as a form of circumstantial liberty: absence of external restraint by other people or cultural institutions.12 Such a reductionistic misunderstanding of the Great Idea of freedom has led to a situation in which contemporary Westerners very often have a hard time distinguishing between freedom and being totally unrestrained. For example, today in the West, a free person is often thought to be someone with no obligations. But this anarchic concept of freedom does not take into account rather obvious, physical facts. People cannot be absolutely free, if, for no other reason, because of the bodily nature of human existence, which makes us subject to the laws of physics. We must eat, drink, breathe, and perform other physiological activities. In addition, self-​determination is a prerequisite for taking any action. In making decisions, we always have to have some self-​understanding and always be driven by a definite aim (or good) that we want to achieve. Total aimlessness is essentially anarchic, and, as such, completely immobilizes human action. With reference to the nature of freedom, the Catholic religion adopts a different, qualitatively wider and deeper, much richer concept. Catholic philosophers (among whom, later in life, Adler chose to be included) emphasize that freedom does not chiefly consist in the lack of restrictions; but in the power actually to choose a specific and individual good: prudently execute an actually doable human deed in the here and now. A fully free person is a prudent one: someone who can determine and choose the specifically right kind of good, at any time, in any situation.

12 Adler, Six Great Ideas, chaps. 19, 20.

172 Ptaszek Strictly speaking, this idea has considerable advantages over any other. While these are apparent in theoretical considerations, their practical, semiotic manifestations are all the more important. In terms of the way individuals and communities, organizational wholes, actually operate in the day to day world, the Catholic idea of freedom can relate better than any other as a proximate principle capable of causing really doable deeds. From the perspective of an individual, a major benefit of freedom so understood is that it allows someone actually to secure a humanly suitable good befitting a human person. With this, opportunities open for someone properly to achieve physically and psychologically healthy personal goals. More. This concept of freedom clearly demonstrates that achieving such goals actually exists, is not impossible to realize. In the social sphere, the Catholic concept of freedom is unique by the very fact that its essence “is the attitude of personal love that allows people to successfully overcome selfishness.”13 To support this claim with just one from among many examples, the cultural history of later, medieval Europe evinces that, within a few generations after barbarian invasions of continental Europe had subsided, Christian virtues were a main cause of one of the greatest scientific marvels the world has ever witnessed: the thirteenth-​century renaissance in France and Italy, during which, for the first time, international teaching and research universities arose in which international students and teachers mutually involved in the study of Great Ideas related to perfecting human wisdom (including human freedom and religion) arose anywhere in the world! More. No inaccuracy or exaggeration exists in claiming that, to some extent, the chief impetus for Adler developing his Great Books of the Western World program containing 103 Great Ideas was the thirteenth-​century medieval Catholic university. In saying this, I am not claiming that the idea of a formally established academic institution inspired by philosophical wisdom (a university) first arose within the medieval Catholic university. If this is what is meant by a ‘medieval Catholic university,’ the idea of such a university might have first arisen with Plato’s Academy and continued in Aristotle’s Lyceum. It could, also, reasonably be attributed to Indian and Asian schools of wisdom that predated the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, and, perhaps, to some ancient Greek poetic traditions, like those of Homer and Hesiod; and to Islamic ‘Houses of Wisdom.’ Instead, I say this chiefly because, in and through this multi-​cultural, international wonder and Great Idea: (1) the works and teachings of Aristotle

13

Jacek Salij, Eucharystia a wolność [Eucharist and freedom], http://​mateusz.pl/​czytelnia/​ js-​eucharystia.htm (my translation).

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and Aquinas’s masterful commentaries on the teachings were preserved for posterity as treasures containing inexhaustibly rich, wonder-​provoking ideas, which Adler conceived Great Ideas essentially to be, and (2) through his contact with the teachings of Aristotle and Aquinas, Adler came to identify philosophy with scholastic philosophy (perennial commonsense philosophy) as an international cultural enterprise reflecting on the wondrous wisdom contained in commonsense experience the world over. Adler was well aware of the fact that the medieval European university owed its origin to trans-​generational, international, cooperation. A chief proximate cause of the birth of this Great Idea was thanks to the return of the teaching of Aristotle through the two well-​known Western schools of Arabic translation: (1) The First Sicilian School of Translators (La Primera Escuela Siciliana de Traductores) toward the end of the eleventh century in Sicily and (2) the twelfth century in the Toledo School of Translators (Escuela de Traductores de Toledo). Through these two institutions, the works of Aristotle, Plato, and a host of Greek, Jewish, and Islamic commentators on classical philosophical, and other, scholarship (like the Optics of Euclid and Ptolemy and Ptolemy’s Almagest, and the teachings of Moses Maimonides, Averroes [ibn Rushd], and Avicenna [ibn Sina]) for the first time became available in Latin to the medieval West. Through these great international (oikoumenē/​ecumenical: the  inhabited earth) schools of humanistic (scholastic) research cooperation, the great medieval European university as an international research and teaching institution was born.14 The first medieval Catholic universities grew out of schools that were officially transformed into universities (schools that became officially organized into legal corporations with official charters and faculties of masters, students and a rector). These did not arise as such until around the start of the thirteenth century in Europe. Previously, some had been cathedral or monastic schools that later received charters as universities. As Gilson says: The word ‘university’ first meant the whole group of masters and students residing in some town, for instance, Paris, which, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, must have been a city of about 150,000 inhabitants. Once fully constituted, its university consisted of four Faculties: Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts. The Faculty of Arts was, so to speak, the gate to the others. The supremacy of the Faculty of Theology

14

I thank Peter A. Redpath for reminding me that Adler was aware of the influence of these schools of translation influencing the development of the medieval European university.

174 Ptaszek was not contested. The students themselves were divided into four organized bodies called ‘nations’: French, Norman, Picard, and German. The ‘nations’ themselves were divided into ‘provinces.’ Since the university had grown out of the cathedral schools of Paris, the bishops of the city continued to control it in many matters through the Chancellor of the cathedral, himself one of the masters in theology belonging to the chapter of Notre Dame. The university progressively asserted its independence with respect to the Chancellor. Each faculty had its own rector. The rector of the Faculty of Arts, chosen by the four nations, was also the rector of the university. His main functions were to convene meetings of the Faculty of Arts, or the general meetings of the university and to act as their president.15 Also known to Adler, but something that might shock a contemporary reader as ludicrous, is that the idea of ‘Academic Freedom’ was first born within the University of Bologna toward the second half of the twelfth century when it adopted its academic charter (Constitutio Habitus). This became a well-​recognized international fact when, on the 900th anniversary of this University’s founding in 1088, on September 18, 1988, 430 university rectors signed a Magna Charta Universitatum, which, among other things, recognized this to be the case.16 Regarding the influence of the greatest master of the medieval Catholic university, his great teacher Aristotle, and one of his most famous students, Adler said, “I believe I can say, without inaccuracy or exaggeration, that almost all of the philosophical truths that I have come to know and understand I have learned from Aristotle, or from Aquinas as a student Aristotle, or from Jacques Maritain as a student of both Aristotle and Aquinas.” While he admired a few modern philosophers, he could “not attribute to them a single truth [that he] cherished.” Nor had he “learned a single fundamental truth from the writings of modern philosophers.”17 To these immediately preceding assertions, Adler added he was not saying he had learned nothing from modern philosophers. He reported:

15

Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), 246–​247. 16 See, http://​www.magna-​chata.org/​magna-​charta-​universitatum/​history; first accessed on June 20, 2020. 17 Mortimer J. Adler, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 293–​294.

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With the exception of Hegel and other post-​Kantian German philosophers, I have read their works with both pleasure and profit. The pleasure has come from the perception of errors the serious consequences of which tend to reinforce my hold on the truths I have learned from Aristotle and Aquinas. The profit has come from the perception of new but genuine problems, not the pseudo-​problems, perplexities, and puzzlements invented by therapeutic positivism and by linguistic or analytic philosophy in our own century.18 While Adler’s admiration for Aquinas as, perhaps, Aristotle’s best student is well known and so, too, is the influence of the structure of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiæ on Adler’s Great Books program, far less recognized is the impact that the organization of the Medieval Catholic university had on him and the great contribution to university education that the Great Ideas of freedom and religion had on the modern university as an international teaching and research institution. As Gilson has indicated, the faculties of Liberal arts and Theology transformed what had been schools, or incomplete medieval institutions of higher learning, into full-​fledged universities! In fact, anyone familiar with Adler’s educational program can see that he is doing more that modeling it on the teaching of Aristotle and Aquinas’s Summa. As Gilson said, the faculties of Liberal, or free, arts (the trivium and quadrivium) that served as a gateway to medieval university education as a speculative science and Theology (the highest religious/​metaphysical science) that completed it as a university—​an institution of highest human education—​gave the medieval university its perfectly humanizing form. Adler was well aware that the liberal arts introduce students to intellectual habits that liberate the human intellect—​enable human beings to learn the truth about things for the sake simply of perfecting the ability to learn truth about everything. In a sense, this is the Great Idea of freedom perfecting the quality of the human intellect, freeing the human intellect from serf-​like drudgery at the service of only knowing for the sake of production and practical use. Considered as such, the liberal arts (what we tend to call ‘general’ or ‘humanistic’ ‘education’ today) allow human beings to transcend using the intellect only for the drudgery of manual, or other servile, labor. By adding to the liberal (or speculative) arts the human desire to know the truth about everything, theology as the highest form of religious knowing act perfects the quality of 18 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 294. I thank Peter A. Redpath for making me aware of this talk by Adler and for pointing out to me how its content relates to the influence of the Medieval Catholic university on him.

176 Ptaszek the intellect that the liberal arts start to develop. By attaching the faculties of Liberal arts and Theology as the start and completion of university higher education, with medicine and law coming in between, the medieval university did something unique. It attempted more perfectly to humanize lawyers and medical doctors! During the later Italian renaissance, Italian humanists sought to extend this humanizing effect to other disciplines. And so did later intellectual movements, including Adler’s Great Books program. This can easily be seen by reflecting on what Adler said about the nature of philosophy as a commonsense perennial wisdom. Regarding philosophy properly conceived as being identical with the commonsense, perennial habit of psychologically reflecting on perennial human wisdom (the sort that Aristotle and Aquinas possessed and had passed on to posterity as participants in an international wisdom tradition), Adler reports of a talk he had given in 1934 at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, entitled, “The New Scholastic Philosophy and the Secular University,” in which he: (1) “took the opportunity to question the meaning of the word ‘scholastic’ as applied to philosophy,” and (2) observed at the time this simply meant philosophy is wisdom considered as the product of an individual and cultural (trans-​generational team) enterprise pondering commonsense experience of principles of wisdom and their effects. “If philosophy consists of such wisdom as can be distilled by the reflective operation of the intellect upon the materials of common experience, and “if scholastic philosophy is philosophy in this sense,” he adds, “then the word ‘scholastic’ signifies only that philosophy is not the work of a single man, but the work of a school of men preserving and adding to traditional human wisdom.” It is only in modern times that philosophy is not scholastic in this sense, because each thinker insists upon the novelty of his system and hence necessarily discards the tradition.19 This being so, Adler states he questioned whether use of the word ‘new’ to the word ‘scholasticism’ was advisable. Better, he thought, would be for philosophers who considered true, perennial, philosophy to be a cultural enterprise (philosophizing within a wisdom tradition) to refer to it as a revival of philosophy properly understood, and not a new scholasticism. He maintained, further, “This revived philosophy is not more essentially Catholic than it is Greek. It can be called Greek if we wish to refer to the accident of its origin; it can be called Catholic if we wish to refer to the accident of its adoption by the Church. But as perennial wisdom, the only proper qualification of philosophy is as human.”20 19 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 306. 20 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 307.

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177

Conclusion

From the Catholic perspective and that of Mortimer Adler, the direct relationship between freedom and truth as Great Ideas is rather obvious. Because the essence of freedom is to obtain the true good, no human freedom, in the proper understanding of the concept, can exist without truth. Possessing truth makes us free. Classical Western civilization had a deeper understanding of this truth than does the present West. As Adler well understood, contemporary confusion about freedom’s true nature stems, in part, from some attempts made since at least the Enlightenment to undermine rational aspects of religion (excise the idea of truth from the idea of religion and limit religion’s domain exclusively to the sphere of emotions, or matters of taste). As Adler recognized, adopting this concept of religion and its cultural role promoted by the Western Enlightenment is tantamount to civilizational suicide for the West, Western philosophy and the Great Ideas about which, for millennia, this philosophy has provoked human persons to wonder. As Adler understood close to a century ago, not only is such a move anti-​Catholic, it is anti-​human, and just plain civilizationally and philosophically dumb!21

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1977. isbn: 9780025004900. Adler, Mortimer J. Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty: Ideas We Judge By. Liberty Equality Justice: Ideas We Act On. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981/​ 1997). isbn: 9780684826813. Adler, Mortimer J. Ten Philosophical Mistakes: Basic Errors in Modern Thought—​How They Came About, Their Consequences, and How to Avoid Them. New York: Macmillan, 1985. isbn: 9780025003309. Belloc, Hilaire. The Great Heresies. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1938/​1968. oclc: 855914049. Belloc, Hilaire. How the Reformation Happened. Rockford, IL, Tan Books, 1992. isbn: 9780895554659. Bendict xvi, Pope (Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal). Introduction to Christianity. Translated by J.R. Foster. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013. isbn: 9788170866626.

21

This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

178 Ptaszek Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles, in collaboration with the editor and a committee of advisers. Philadelphia, Westminster Press 1561/​1960. isbn: 9780664220204. Catechism of the Catholic Church Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993. http://​ www.vatican.va/​archive/​E NG0015/​_​I NDEX.HTM#fonte. Gilson, Étienne. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages. New York: Random House, 1955. isbn-​1 0: 0813231957; isbn-​1 2: 978-​0813231952. John Paul ii, Pope. Ecclesia in Europa [Church in Europe]. Apostolic Exhortation to the Bishops, Men and Women in the Consecrated Life, and All the Lay Faithful on Jesus Christ Alive in His Church, the Source of Hope for Europe (June 28, 2003). http://​ www.vatican.va/​content/​john-​paul-​ii/​en/​apost_​exhortations/​documents/​hf_​jp-​ii _​exh_​20030628_​ecclesia-​in-​europa.html. John xxiii, Pope. Christianity and Social Progress: Mater et Magistra [Mother and teacher]. New York: America Press, 1961. oclc: 896872438. http://​www.vatican.va/​ content/​john-​xxiii/​en/​encyclicals/​documents/​hf_​j-​xxiii_​enc_​15051961_​mater.html. Moskal, Piotr. Apology for the Catholic Religion. Lublin: kul, 2013. isbn: 9788377025512. Redpath, Peter A. “The Essential Connection between Common-​Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence.” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617. issn 2300–​0066. http://​gilsonsociety.com/​files/​605-​617-​Redpath.pdf. Redpath, Peter A. “The Nature of Common Sense and How We Can Use Common Sense to Renew the West,” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 455–​484. issn: 2300-​ 0066. http://​gilsonsociety.com/​files/​455-​484-​Redpath.pdf. Salij, Jacek. Eucharystia a wolność [Eucharist and freedom]. http://​mateusz.pl/​czytelnia/​ js-​eucharystia.htm. Woods, Thomas E., Jr. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005. isbn: 9780895260383.

­c hapter 11

Semiotics of Organizational Leadership and Gateway Leadership Induction Technology (gatelit) Marvin B. Daniel Peláez Abstract Intellectual deficiencies can negatively impact modern business organizations. Effective leaders supplement specialized education with insights from analogies related to other disciplines. This chapter discusses Mortimer J. Alder’s research that might not appear obvious. More than identifying Great Ideas, Adler was able to show unity among those ideas in his Great Books program by identifying the summative ideas in all spheres of human activity. He believed that leaders in organizations should continuously educate themselves in the general knowledge to achieve a broad perspective when approaching organizational problem-​solving. He considered the Great Books as an organizational whole that should be read in the way he suggested, not in piecemeal fashion. This chapter shows that by implementing a “Gateway Leadership Induction Technology (gatelit),” Adler employed a semiotics of leadership, informed by the Great Ideas of religion and freedom, for leadership education. In short, Adler utilized a synthesis of the ancient Greek metaphysical teaching of the one and the many and a semiotics of leadership to reform the whole of education to produce maximum of excellence in all species of human learning.

Keywords semiotics –​organization –​leadership –​gateway –​Great Books –​ideas –​unity –​metaphysics. religion

By considering organizational leadership in light of trans-​temporal and spatial signs and symbols as a psychological and behavioral habit (a form of Gateway Leadership Induction Technology: gatelit), the chief aim of this chapter is to consider how the Great Ideas of religion and freedom might assist modern business and religious leaders and their organizations operate more efficiently

© Marvin B. Daniel Peláez, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_013

180 Peláez and effectively. To help achieve this goal, arguing that the Great Idea of leadership becomes more accessible to business leaders by viewing it through the philosophical lens of semiotics, I will philosophically (not theologically) consider several examples of leadership from well-​known secular sources before turning to biblical literature, specifically from the Book of Proverbs, to consider its nature. ‘Philosophy is everybody’s business’ is Mortimer J. Adler’s well-​known dictum that encapsulated his lifelong goal of making philosophy accessible to everyone. Adler was convinced that, without being a specialist in any academic, scientific, or professional discipline, all human beings can be generally educated.1 As well, he was convinced that no specialist in any discipline could be considered generally educated without knowing the history and philosophical underpinnings that discipline.2 While, given that society has benefited immensely from the rise of the specialized sciences in modern times, Adler’s convictions might appear to be provocative and even absurd; recent fragmentation of knowledge has increasingly highlighted the importance of general education. A case in point is leadership, a crucial human activity that, to be exercised as perfectly as possible, requires observation and study of current and past leaders and their organizational activity. As Adler recognized, always and everywhere specialists have difficulty seeing the connection between and intelligently conversing across their intellectual domains. A main reason for this is because human understanding and reasoning always first start with what we first know, and what we first know we do so in the form of general, vague, unfamiliar knowledge. We first know something generally and vaguely before we can precisely know what it is and how to react to it in the form of abstract reasoning, or concrete doing, or making. In addition, in first knowing something, Adler was convinced that all healthy human beings (including children) first use philosophical ideas in the form of evidently known metaphysical and moral non-​contradictions/​truths (know something to be evidently true/​non-​contradictory about what they are thinking or planning to do, including about themselves). Only after doing this can any human being become a specialist at knowing or doing. He used the term ‘commonsense’ to refer to both these evidently known truths by which we understand, think, choose, and make things.3 1 Mortimer J. Adler, “Everybody’s Business,” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical (New York: Macmillan, 1993). 2 Adler, Mortimer J. “Everybody’s Business.” 3 I thank Peter A. Redpath for helping me grasp Adler’s understanding of his philosophy of common sense and how this relates to his teachings about The Great Ideas. For more on common sense and how it relates to common experience and philosophy, see Mortimer

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Before reasoning about something, even abstractly and hypothetically (for example, a square), even a psychologically healthy child, much less an adult, must understand that conceptual contradictions make no sense (that is, a square is, and can never be, a circle: that the idea of a square-​circle is a conceptual contradiction [in principle, unthinkable to anyone and everyone]) and to think that, strictly speaking, a square can be a circle contradicts everyone’s understanding of common sense. More concretely and practically, or productively, before attempting to do something, all psychologically healthy children with some lived experience understand that before attempting to reason about how to do or make something, rationally healthy human beings must first think about whether the actions considered are practically doable in this or that situation, time, or place. Because doing otherwise involves rationally inconceivable behavior, psychologically healthy children concluded that to do so would not make common sense. Adler was of the same mind as that of any psychologically healthy child or adult. He was convinced that all healthy human beings know and use conceptual and behavioral non-​contradictions (evidently understood truths) as general educational first principles and measures of healthy understanding and subsequent reasoning in all forms of human knowing: abstract or concrete, observational, practical, or productive. And, he was convinced that the psychological state of affairs I have just described in the preceding paragraph and this one: (1) were the metaphysical foundation for the classical philosophy of the great ancient Greek thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and, especially Aristotle, (2) when wisely or prudently applied as measures of sound reasoning to general, specific, and individual experiences, constituted what Adler referred to as the ‘philosophy of common sense,’ and (3) were ideas present within all of the Great Ideas in his Great Books of the Western World program. For this reason, Adler thought that the philosophical ideas within general education exemplified in The Great Ideas constitute the ‘vocabulary’ of everyone’s thought: ideas by which we think, choose, and make everything we do. Without this vocabulary, grasping nuances of meaning of the words used when discussing an idea or thinking a little further and more deeply about a crucial idea in a unified

J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (New York: Macmillan, 1990), esp. chaps. 8, “About What Exists Independently of the Mind (Including a Note about Reality in Relation to Quantum Mechanics),” and chap. 9, “About What the Mind Draws from Experience”; Mortimer J. Adler, The Common Sense of Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971); and Mortimer J. Adler, The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense (New York: Fordham University Press, 1970).

182 Peláez context that raises questions or issues leading to implications involving other ideas, becomes impossible.4 Evident to any leader is that such intellectual deficiencies can severely and negatively impact a modern business organization as psychological conditions involving insufficient insight. Efficient and effective leaders always supplement their specialized education by gleaning insights from the most remote recesses of knowledge of their own discipline and by drawing analogies from other disciplines. The greatness of Alder’s research, which perhaps might not be obvious, was not just that he identified some Great Ideas but, more importantly, that he showed a unity in them “by the continuity of the discussion of common theories and problems” among all the Great Books in his program.5 Essentially Adler’s life’s work was to reacquaint the world with the unity among specialized academic and professional disciplines by identifying the general, summative ideas in spheres of human activities. He thought it necessary for leaders to make sense of the plurality of human activities in organizations by continuously educating themselves in the general knowledge that ensures maintaining a broad perspective when approaching organizational problem-​ solving. Hence, he did not intend for his Great Books program to be merely a collection of Great Books. He considered it an organizational whole that could and should be read in the way he suggested, not in -​piecemeal fashion.6 Philosophically, Adler’s effort was nothing more than to set out to utilize the ancient Greek metaphysical teaching of the one and the many as a framework in education. An example of this is the relationship between leadership and the great ideas of religion and freedom in biblical literature. How could a leader in a modern, but non-​religious business organization, benefit from what is seemingly remote and incompatible with secular business? What role does semiotics play in leadership and the great ideas of religion and freedom, especially through the work of the late scholar John N. Deely?

4 Mortimer J. Adler and William Gorman, eds., Introduction to vol. 1 of The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of the Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1955 ©1952), 1: xiii–​xvi. 5 Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 1: xiii–​xvi. 6 Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 1: xiii–​xvi.

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The Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom

Semiotics serves as a gateway for leaders to embrace the wisdom of the great ideas of religion and freedom for improving modern business and religious organizations. Although Adler identified ‘Sign and Symbol’7 as one of the Great Ideas from the Great Books, we have seen significant development in the field of semiotics—​the nature of signs and the way they work—​since he first made the connection between signs and symbols and great ideas. This progress is especially evident in the work of John Deely. In my opinion, as conceived by Deely, semiotics serves as a gateway for leaders to embrace the wisdom of the great ideas of religion and freedom for improving modern business and religious organizations. All leaders use signs and symbols as crucial elements of their everyday leadership style. In fact, part of a leader’s essential nature is to be a living-​embodiment, sign and symbol of some organization a leader leads.8 Considered as such, to borrow a term from Deely, leaders and those they lead are ‘mutually fecundating’ examples of organizational excellence or lack of excellence, organizational health and disease.9 Such being the case, a question I wish to consider in this chapter is, in light of the nature of signs and symbols, how would a generally educated, philosophically minded leader learn from, and implement, the great ideas of religion and freedom as part of a day-​to-​day organizational leadership strategy and tactic? Adler claims that anyone can learn about religious ideas without being religious, and it takes a philosophically minded leader like Adler to know the difference, and benefit from leadership stories in biblical literature.10 Pertaining to the topic of this chapter, I will focus on one crucial aspect of religion: the notion of ‘community’ addressed under the Syntopicon topic, “The Religious Life: Religious Offices and the Religious Community,” which elucidates community as an entity with a hierarchical organization.11 The Syntopicon delineates the chapter on religion in “The Nature and Organization of the Religious Community.”12 Addressing activity in religious communities, it draws on a set of biblical verses, some of which come from the Book of Wisdom 7 8 9 10 11 12

Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 1: xiii–​xvi. See Peter A. Redpath, “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence,” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617. John N. Deely, Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story in Mutual Fecundation (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2007). Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 2: 589. Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 2: 598. Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 2: 598.

184 Peláez (Wisdom of Solomon) and Ecclesiasticus: (1) “You have chosen me to be king of your people and to be judge over your sons and daughters”13; (2) “For she knows and understands all things, and she will guide me wisely in my actions and guard me with her glory. Then my works will be acceptable, and I shall judge your people justly, and shall be worthy of the throne of my father”14; (3) “As much as you can, aim to know your neighbors, and consult with the wise. Let your conversation be with intelligent people, and let all your discussion be about the law of the Most High”15; (4) “A wise magistrate educates his people, and the rule of an intelligent person is well ordered. As the people’s judge is, so are his officials; as the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants. An undisciplined king ruins his people, but a city becomes fit to live in through the understanding of its rulers.”16 The second great idea I examine in this chapter is freedom considered as self-​determination, which, according to the Syntopicon, is synonymous with liberty because, “though authors or translators sometimes prefer one, sometimes the other, their preference does not seem to reflect a variation in meaning.”17 The word ‘independence’ has also been used as interchangeable with liberty and freedom, but with a special connotation: to be independent is to be self-​sufficient and implies adequate power.18 Here the Syntopicon suggests that a metaphysical reality is conceived absolutely independent, while no finite thing is absolutely independent.19 The question then becomes, how would a business leader use the idea of freedom in the sense of independence in directing a modern business corporation? If no absolute independence exists in finite things, such as a business corporation or team, then they necessarily depend and interdepend on each other. This suggests that a special relationship exists between a leader and his or her corporation, community, or team considered as an organizational whole unity, just like is the case with a king and his subjects in biblical literature. Related to this topic, the Syntopicon references Aquinas’s Summa theologiae on the metaphysics of freedom;20 but how this will benefit a leader becomes much

13 Wisd. of Sol. 9:7 nrsv; hereinafter, all biblical citations are taken from the nrsv. 14 Wisd. of Sol. 9:11–​12. 15 Ecclus 9:14–​15. 16 Ecclus 10:1–​3. 17 Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 1: 992. 18 Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 1: 991–​993. 19 Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 1: 993. 20 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 22, a. 2, respondeo and ad 4.

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clearer once, with the help of Deely, a leader gains a philosophical understanding of a sign.21 2

Leadership in the Modern Business Corporation

Based on corpus, the Latin term that serves, in English, as the root of corporation, I define a business corporation to include private-​sector, composite-​ whole body that includes companies and governmental agencies. That is, generically, I define business activity (in the sense of corporate activity) as an exchange activity in the broader sense of public goods and services, conducted by either public or private sector organizations, respectively. In this sense, both public and private corporate activities are species of business activity engaged in by a public (governmental) or private (non-​governmental) business organizations. Leadership activity is often identified in terms of the highest-​level executives in a business corporation. Many things are associated with leadership positions—​such as: title, compensation, sphere of influence, strategic thinking, influence, level of response to internal opposition between departments and corporate divisions, and external pressures upon the corporation, whether this be economic, competitive, legal, political, or public health forces. To perform well in an environment susceptible to influence by internal and external forces, since they oversee the whole corporation and, often, one or more divisions, or levels of their corporations, leaders must be able quickly, efficiently, and effectively analyze and solve organizational problems in the most general terms. This requires the ability to think of corporate processes in terms of an organizational whole, composed of unequally qualified, talented, specialized divisions and subdivisions. This is precisely the kind of ability that comes to a leader from a combination of general education involving commonsense

21

Other areas of his works where Aquinas more clearly writes about the nature of the leadership in relation to a contrary organizational opposition between a one and a many. Peter A. Redpath applies these ideas in his book, The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas, to explain that, according to Aquinas, the finite order constitutes a real genus comprised, like a modern business organization, of departments (organizational parts) related to numerically one organizational whole action that the actions of the departmental divisions have to harmonize together to generate. He maintains that an organization exists in and through the harmony of its parts; see Peter A. Redpath. The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas: An Introduction to Ragamuffin Ethics (St. Louis, MO: En Route Books, 2017). 200–​201.

186 Peláez and organizational experience at leading in the individual situation or circumstances.22 3

Defining Leadership

Always and everywhere, leadership as a human activity tends to be more easily seen than defined. People will sometimes say they know leadership when they see it. The question, then, becomes precisely what is the essence of leadership? One definition of leadership widely used in American colleges and universities, which appears to have the broadest extension by encompassing all varieties, is Peter G. Northouse’s: “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal.”23 This definition highlights the dynamic relationship between leaders and their group, or organization. Abstractly, generically, considered, the interactive relationship between the leader and organization is the same in all times, places, and contexts; and whether it be abstractly or concretely considered, in all times, places, and situations, to some extent, the Great Idea of freedom causes leadership to arise, fall, or be maintained. To understand what this process entails, one guideline that business analysts use to identify corporate leaders in general. It applies generic definitions to specific categories of job occupations and is used to determine jobs that range from low-​level production and office jobs to high-​level executive jobs. A more specific guideline addresses the behavioral scope and impact of a job on a business organization. From these guidelines, analysts can measure the extent to which leadership activity plays a role in a particular job within an organization. For example, chief executives are primarily engaged in planning and directing resources. In addition, the impact chief executives have on their organizations is measured by their ability to deal with organizational complexity. At the highest level: [The executive or leader] works with only administrative and policy direction and must make decisions based on broadly stated guidelines that lack specificity or proven validity, e.g., general policy statements, basic laws, or scientific theory. In addition, the job requires many different processes and methods; work also demands great depth of analysis 22 Adler, How to Think about The Great Ideas, xxiv. 23 Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice, 5th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010), 3.

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to identify nature and extent of problems, develop new methods, and deal with many variables including some that are unclear or conflicting. Finally, the work affects the work of other experts, influences important professional and administrative activities of the establishment, or impacts the well-​being of many groups of people.24 From these two guidelines, a person can infer what the leadership process requires to influence an organization to achieve a common goal. A leader must be able to: (1) think critically (thus logic plays an important role here); (2) rely on an intuitive grasp of part-​whole relationships; and (3) interpret signs and their relationships, whether physical or non-​physical. Deely, often recognized to be the leading semiotician of the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries, maintains that, properly understood, a sign provides a communications network (semiotic web) for the whole of human knowledge: the hard sciences and the human and social sciences.25 This foundational network (semiotic web) includes the whole of logic, and the psychological faculties of the leader, such as intuition, or organizational induction.26 4

A Leader’s General Education

Adler maintained that best formal training is a general education based upon the great ideas in the Great Books. Oftentimes, however, young professionals are hired with the specialized skills in a quantitative science. Starting levels of a professional, corporate career are often technical positions where the scope of their duties is narrow. If not self-​driven to continue their general education, they remain with the narrow focus of their own work and specialized level of department of their organization. However, through experience that allows them to engage in analogous understanding and reasoning, generally they start to induce analogous relationships between their work and the work of their work units and levels of their corporations. They begin to acquire a sense of general education related to their organization. Only at this time do they start

24 25 26

National Compensation Survey: Guide to Evaluating Your Firm’s Jobs and Pay. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 2013 (rev), 63. John N. Deely, Basics of Semiotics. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 31. Non-​human animals recognize signs as well, but what differentiates them from human beings is the highest level of estimative sense, called ‘cogitative’ or ‘particular’ reason; cf. Deely, Basics of Semiotics, 28–​29; see also Redpath, The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 105–​106.

188 Peláez to become professionally qualified to compete for leadership positions within their corporations. No longer needing to rely solely on their specialized technical skills, they have developed some general, educational, organizational experience and ability to gather and analyze information at organizational whole levels. The general and specific analysis guidelines to which I have already referred describe the role and scope of budding executives that strives to acquire through experience and continuing general education as follows. Executive leadership training consists in delivering to participants the methods and tools to be able to think in terms of an organizational whole so to make decisions about how to direct, and re-​direct, the different parts that comprise it. Because, according to Adler, they are “basic and indispensable to understanding ourselves, our society, and the world in which we live,” one way to do this is through understanding Great Ideas and what makes them great.27 Inspired by Adler, The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies has provided executive leadership training for decades.28 In the 1980–​1981 program guide, the description of the executive seminar was, “the Executive Seminar’s fundamental concept is that value considerations—​whether explicitly stated or unconsciously assumed—​provide the basis of most significant decision making, and that of understanding of the considerations is essential for effective management.”29 The Executive seminar promotes values, especially democratic values, as being the basis for significant decision making. The program also lists readings that will “provide … a shared focus for discussion. The authors range from Plato, Aristotle and Mencius to Thomas Jefferson, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Machiavelli and Karl Marx; from T.S. Elliot to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Martin Luther King; from Adam Smith to Mohandas K. Ghandi.”30 The selection of readings represents a broad collection of thinkers from different times and places for the purpose of identifying common themes, the hallmark of a general education. Finally, it indicated that the Aspen Institute had “become a catalyst by which people who make or influence decisions can convert ideas and values into action. It encourages individuals and institutions to reach beyond their self-​interest and try to form a more human future.”31 Most notable to 27 Adler, How to Think about The Great Ideas, xxiii. 28 The Aspen Institute, “A Brief History of the Aspen Institute,” https://​www.aspeninstitute .org/​about/​heritage/​. 29 Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, “The Aspen Institute Executive Seminars, 1980–​1981,” https://​www.cia.gov/​library/​readingroom/​docs/​CIA-​RDP05S00620R000100040114-​1.pdf (hereinafter ‘Aspen Institute Seminars’). 30 Aspen Institute Seminars, 3. 31 Aspen Institute Seminars, 16.

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me about the mission statement is the aim of having its participants, most of whom were corporate executives, through free decision making (the Great Idea of freedom), put ideas and values (among which listed are includes ethics, religion, and governance) into action within an organization.32 Clearly, the idea of using a semiotics of leadership, informed by the Great Ideas of religion and freedom, as a gateway technology (gatelit) for leadership education is not without precedent. It did not start with me. The Aspen Institute, successor to the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, continues to try to educate current and future world leaders in this general educational tradition, but without the genius of Adler in the flesh to guide them. In this chapter, I recognize that I am ‘standing on the shoulders of giants.’ In the spirit of Adler’s Great Ideas of the Great Books movement, with the help of my predecessors, I am attempting, through the gateway, great idea of the semiotics of leadership, to add new insight into their already-​rich leadership ­arsenal to improve executive decision making throughout the global leadership community. 5

Semiotics: Signs and Symbols as Gateway to Leadership Thinking

In the Syntopicon Mortimer Adler identified ‘sign and symbol’ as one of Western Civilization’s Great Ideas.33 He indicated that the “great books consider ‘sign and symbols’ as one term in a relation, the relation of being one of meaning.”34 One work listed, but not discussed, was John Poinsot’s (John of St. Thomas) seventeenth century Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus, Ars Logica.35 Adler gives no reason why this work was not discussed in the Syntopicon. Forty years after first publication of the Syntopicon and the Great Books, Poinsot’s work was resurrected by Deely through his monumental translation of Poinsot’s Cursus,36 thereby bridging several hundred years in the history of philosophy concerning semiotics, the theory of signs, and of philosophy in general.37 32 33 34 35 36 37

Aspen Institute Seminars, 16. Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 2: 730–​752. Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 2: 730. Cursus Philosophicus, Ars Logica, 1: 1–​3; 2: qq. 21–​23, cited in Adler, “Signs and Symbols,” in Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas, 2: 752. John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot). Tractatus de signis [Treatise on signs]: The Semiotics of John Poinsot. Corrected 2nd ed., trans. John N. Deely in consultation with Ralph Austin Powell (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013). John N. Deely, Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 51.

190 Peláez According to Deely, John Locke, whom the Syntopicon indicates in “Signs and Symbols,” contributed to semiotics, but his “proposal was not influential.”38 What should have been influential, but was obscured for centuries by historical focus on René Descartes and his progeny, was Poinsot’s masterful and revolutionary Treatise on Signs (Tractatus de signis, 1632). Through understanding the nature of sign and the way it functions from Poinsot’s treatise, the contemporary corporate executive can come to have a clearer picture about the value of signs in leadership activity. While it is a fool’s errand to say that Poinsot’s and Deely’s vast scholarship on sign and its actions can be adequately summarized in this chapter, I hope what I include about it herein will be enough to give corporate leaders an improved picture of basic notions related to semiotics to spur them further and more deeply to investigate the relationship of the action of signs and leadership, something with which they are already somewhat, perhaps, already deeply, familiar. 6

Basics of Semiotics

In leadership, just as in any other practical endeavor, use of signs is no passive, psychological activity. It is active and more than psychological: behavioral and organizational. Deely uses the term ‘semiotics’ to denote the active aspect of what he calls a ‘sign relation,’ which, according to him, is chiefly that to which our often-​used shorthand term ‘sign’ (and the concept it signifies) refers.39 Deely held that semiotics is the study of the action of signs, and that knowledge of this activity that is unique to humans.40 Brute animals also use signs, but not in the same way as human beings. While other animals, and living things (such as plants) communicate via use of sign relations, only human beings know that we use signs, understand that we use signs to communicate and can comprehend their nature. As essentially ‘semiotic animals,’ as Deely re-​ minted the term ‘rational animals,’ human beings are able to see a relationship between the action of signs via ‘sign vehicles’ (a term Deely coined to signify

38

John N. Deely, “The Green Book: The Impact of Semiotics on Philosophy” (Paper presented at the University of Helsinki at the First Annual Hommage à Oscar Parland, December 1, 2000), 25. 39 Brian Kemple. “Sophists and Semioticians” (Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Aquinas Leadership International World Congress, Plenary Session 12: Remembering John N. Deely as Colleague and Philosophical Reformer, Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, Long Island, NY, July 15, 2017). 40 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 33.

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ideas, images, and symbols) and leadership thinking, the rational aspect that involves critical problem-​solving necessary for leading an organization. According to Deely, the action of signs entails a mediating relationship of irreducible triadicity.41 What a sign vehicle (like the physical symbol, stop printed in white against a red hexagon) chiefly points to is a relationship between it and two other beings: like an action (its ‘significant’ in Deely’s terminology: Stop!), and the person who interprets the sign (the ‘interpretant’ in Deely’s technical vocabulary, and the automobile driver in the example I am giving; or an organizational member viewing a ceo, in the case of a business organization).42 A stop sign as a symbol chiefly expresses a mediating relationship existing between the automobile driver and the action, Stop! Thus, Deely maintains that every sign is a composite whole consisting of a threefold relation. The significance of this point for leaders is that sign and its significant can be physical, behavioral, but the interpretant does not necessarily have to be physical.43 The interpretant can be psychological, like in the case of an automobile driver, or to two people looking at the same political symbol: like a flag. For this reason, the same sign can affect different people in different ways in the same place and time, or in different times and places. Semiotics also views nature and culture as compenetrative.44 If leaders are to be informed by signs in religious literature or different expression of freedom in different times and places, crucial is for them to understand this triadic nature of signs. Properly understood, as Deely says, interpretation of signs from the past can never be anachronistic.45 It requires understanding the nature of analogy and the way analogy exists as a qualitatively property that holds organizations together. Semiosis provides the foundation for understanding the action of signs in the present and across times, places, cultures, and civilizations.46 In 41 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 33. 42 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 33–​34. 43 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 33–​34. 44 John Deely, The Four Ages of Understanding: The Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-​First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 684; and “The object of semiotic is neither ens reale [nature] nor ens rationis [culture] preclusively, but both in the ways they get mixed up with and compenetrate one another in experience,” Deely, Introduction to Semiotic, 64. 45 Contemporary social scientists often critique ideas and wisdom from the past as anachronistic to discredit the attempts of broadly educated, philosophically minded learners from applying them to modern-​day problems. This attitude of ‘what is old is not useful’ is a vestige from the Enlightenment and is observable, for example, in the contemporary philosophy of economics. 46 Deely, Introduction to Semiotic, 64–​65.

192 Peláez contradistinction to semiotics, but not in the active way of semiotics, Deely says, “signs make use of another in order to relate or make use of a third.”47 Because it lacks an interpretant semiosis is dyadic in nature (or ‘significante’);48 and it divides nature and culture. As a result, leaders should find semiotics helpful in their problem-​solving. Deely provides examples where the triadic sign relationship could be physical and one example where it is not. In the first example, he uses a thermometer.49 A thermometer (sign vehicle) renders a reading (signficant) relative to the atmospheric temperature of the environment. The environmental temperature is a physical effect. Thus, the triadic sign relationship consists of three physical things. For example, a person wants to know the temperature outside while remaining in his house and sees the temperature reading on the outdoor thermometer. Without needing to venture outside of one’s home, a person, or interpretant, can interpret the outdoor temperature to be a very warm environment.50 Absent the interpretant, the thermometer exists in a condition of dyadic relation that Deely calls ‘semiosis.’ To demonstrate the case when the third thing need not be physical, Deely poses the question, “When a child dies, in what sense is the child’s parent a parent?”51 Here the relationship between father, mother, and child (sign vehicles) changes. In Deely’s language the term ‘family’ chiefly signifies a living relationship between the parents to each other and to the child. Generally, a person interpreting the meaning of the term family would think of it to include signifying a physical relationship existing between physically living parents and a physically alive child. But if the child dies, strictly speaking, considered as a physical relationship, would the parents still be parents? In the physical sense, no, but psychologically and analogously considered, the relation could still exist even after a child’s death.52 And the same is true of the relationship between a husband and wife. If a husband dies, from the standpoint of a physical relationship, is the wife still married?53

47 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 34. 48 Deely, The Four Ages of Understanding, 682. 49 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 23–​25. 50 An example would be taking reading an outside thermometer in the middle of the summer in Arizona. While remaining inside one’s house, one interprets the reading to be hot without actually experiencing it, and yet the environmental temperature physically exists. 51 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 36. 52 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 37–​38 53 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 44.

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According to Deely, whether the relation is physical or non-​physical, parenthood is clearly a relational form of being (even if the child is not physically present and living). In a way, psychologically, a parent does not cease to be a parent when a child dies. In a physical sense, the parent’s psychology and emotional bond still exists, even though the child is physically absent. More importantly, Deely maintains, the parent remains a parent at the level of transcendental relation: an analogous relation is formed in thought and metaphysically with the soul of the child, and, by virtue of the same relation, the parent remains a parent.54 Similarly, in addition to physical relations, transcendental relations exist between signs.55 What sign relations signify, and what a leader as an interpreter/​interpretant can learn from knowledge and wisdom from the triadic relationship, depends upon the capacity of the leader to interpret (read) signs well. Deely provides the example of the gardener discovering what appears to be a rock in her garden when, in fact, the rock is a fossil bone that a paleontologist properly interpreted and identified.56 The fossil bone now becomes part of a new genus and sign-​relation pointing to the existence of a formerly existing animal. Thus, the experience of the leader as an interpreter/​interpretant bears upon his or her ability to understand different situations as parts of different genera (organizational wholes) with different sign relationships and different significance.57 Similarly, understanding the action of signs enhances a leader’s ability as an interpreter/​interpretant to take an existential-​sensory perspective on a situation prior to any need to reason about it: such as having a gut feeling, sensory-​ intellectual understanding, that something is wrong with a business deal or organization.58 This perceptive presides over leadership activity in many 54 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 44. 55 Deely, The Four Ages of Understanding, 229. This technical term, ‘transcendental relation’ exists among the three things related through the sign vehicle, its significant, and interpretant as ‘things that are thought of’ as opposed to things that have relations but exist apart from thought: ontological relation. Because both transcendental and non-​ transcendental relations have an essence, the medieval scholastics coined the expression relatio secundum esse, “relation as such according to the way it has being,” 230. Having suffered death of a son and a disintegrated marriage, Deely was keenly aware of the significance of such events and their impact on reality, consciousness, and relationships. 56 Deely, The Basics of Semiotics, 48. 57 “Essentially, the act of induction involves instantaneously apprehending the chief principle of unity (a one) that exists within a multitude (a many) that harmonizes, orders, that multitude into being parts of this or that kind of whole!”; Redpath. The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 215. 58 Redpath, The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 215.

194 Peláez contexts where leader-​group relationships are, in some way, always reciprocally dependent on each other as parts of part-​whole relationships.59 Because it is a real genus of communications activity and principle encompassing the whole of science, including social sciences and the whole of logic (including conceptual and behavioristic), semiotics is the gateway to leadership properly understood. 7

Semiotics as Gateway: Leadership Induction Technology (gatelit)

As evinced from the Executive Seminars at Aspen, Alder’s Great Ideas provide philosophically minded leaders perspicacious enough to learn a wealth of leadership insights from many different areas of knowledge. This requires a broad reading program to continue maintaining the general education essential for corporate decision making to become increasingly better inducers of first principles that govern organizational behavior. Because, in addition to helping reasoning ability, it: (1) more importantly sharpens a leader’s ability instantaneously analogously to see, understand, and induce principles (that leaders in other times and places were able to use) to solve a contemporary problem; and (2) through repeated practice using its method, through sensitivity to the nature of signs and the way they work in different situations, times, and places, semiotics helps improve a leader’s ability to induce solutions to think outside the box when confronted by radically different contemporary problems. In short, semiotics provides leaders with a revolutionary gateway leadership induction technology to employ instantaneously to size up a situation and understand the precise principle needed at this or that precise moment to solve this or that problem in the here and now.60 Semiotics encompasses observational knowledge (including material and immaterial dimensions) and practical knowledge (including culture, ethics, business, religion, and politics) about nature and culture. The relationship between observational and practical ways of knowing nature and culture is how signs mainly function as a gateway to leadership. From signs known by prior observational and practical living experience and by pondering the ideas 59 Redpath, The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 215. 60 ‘Technology’ or ‘tech’ are terms used to describe computer-​based instruments to assist people in with their productivity in a variety of ways, whether in work or leisure. Brian Kemple makes the point that technology is in essence tools that assist people as efficient or agent causes; see Brian Kemple, Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person. (Amazon Digital Services llc—​k dp Print US, 2019), 49–​50.

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and experiences of previous leaders (even millennia ago), a contemporary leader can learn to hone and sharpen present inductive skills. No anachronism exists in a contemporary leader learning semiotic induction skills from Sunzi (Sun Tzu) or Miamoto Musashi, or even from biblical characters. Contemporary leaders commonly understand that psychology is crucial for influencing people to unite around a common cause. According to Deely, Peter A. Redpath, and Adler, no subject of study surpasses metaphysics in helping a leader to grasp the nature of organizational wholes and the way they operate.61 Redpath goes so far as to say that this is precisely what every science does. Because it studies the principles and causes present in all organizations that cause them to unite and, as a consequence, operate the way they do, science in its highest form is identical with philosophical metaphysics, which is still queen of the human sciences.62 Therefore, in explicitly or implicitly, being aware of realities of commonsense experience (organizational beings) and the way they incline to act, human beings are aware of the reality of mind-​ independent ordered wholes. The reason for this is that ordered wholes (like parts) only exist within organizational wholes.63 In addition, Deely and Redpath agree with Adler that a leader is familiar with the kind of critical thinking for problem-​solving that is mind-​dependent, “the order which the mind through its cognitive workings introduces to things, which has no existence apart from the mind’s cognition.”64 An example of this is a leader analyzing different kinds of data to assess the success or shortcomings on the performance of different departments or corporate divisions. Because the leader must derive solutions to problems through induction and reasoning in both its forms (speculative/​syllogistic logic and behavioral logic), these data are mind-​dependent. Based on job occupational guidelines such as I discussed above, a leader’s ability to use data to solve problems has a significant impact on his or her actions and that of an organization considered as a whole. Data (signs in the form of numbers, charts, or memoranda) present themselves to the minds of leaders so that, establishing and combining semiotic relationships between and among data, they can induce (intellectually see, understand) these relationships and, subsequently, logically deduce solutions to organizational problems from them. 61 Deely, Introduction to Semiotic, 25–​26; see also Peter A. Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, vol. 2, An Introduction to Ragamuffin Thomism (St. Louis, MO: En Route, 2016), 2: 171–​187. 62 Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 2: 188–​201. 63 Adler, How to Think about The Great Ideas, xxiv. 64 Deely, Introduction to Semiotic, 24.

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Examples of Contemporary Signs in Leadership Thinking

By way of illustration of semiotics as a gateway technology to leadership thinking, ‘fog’ is one of the most powerful and well-​known business and military signs and symbols of uncertainty. As a naturally occurring weather phenomenon, fog presents tactical and strategic problems or opportunities in war. In On War (published posthumously), Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “the great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty because all action, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently—​like the effect of fog or moonshine—​gives things exaggerated dimensions and an unnatural appearance.”65 Fog can turn the tide of war on a superior combat force. If a leader is unable to read a tactical situation accurately, it presents uncertainty and chaos. Hence, we have the well-​known expression, ‘the fog of war.’ While not directly coined by Clausewitz, it is associated with him because of his well-​known scholarly research on the topic of war.66 Sun Tzu is another military leader whose teachings from the ancient world are well-​known to modern business executives. A popular quote from him to which they often refer from his classic Art of War is, “the skillful General conducts his army just as though he were leading a single man by the hand.”67 Because a well-​functioning army must perform as a single person, Sun Tzu’s observation offers a powerful insight about the importance of organizational unity. Sunzi asserts, “the sudden rising of birds is a sign of an ambush at the spot. Startled beasts indicate a sudden attack is coming.” In so saying, he interprets the sign of startled birds to signify an ambush.68 Musashi tells us, “it is said the warrior is a twofold way of the pen and sword.”69 By this he means, if you master the principles of the sword fencing, like the effortless brush strokes from a master calligrapher, when you freely beat one person, you beat any person in the world. The spirit of defeating one person exists in the art, and is the same for defeating one person or ten million.70 65

Carl von Clausewitz, On War. J. J. Graham, trans. (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2004), 80. 66 Clausewitz’s On War, is in the canon of Great Books, and “War and Peace”is a chapter in the Syntopicon. 67 Sunzi(Sun Tzu), The Art of War, ed. James Clavell, trans. Lionel Giles (New York: Dell, 1983), 64. 68 Sunzi, The Art of War, 44. 69 Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, trans. Victor Harris (Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1974), 37. 70 Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, 43–​44.

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Use of signs in sports such as baseball, American football, and basketball through calling numbers and behavioral gestures is so commonly known that specific reference to them is not even needed. Such examples are so familiar to business leaders that such leaders often utilize them as metaphors for everyday business operations. 9

Book of Proverbs: Leadership in the Community

Having finished my consideration of non-​religious, or secular, examples of the use of signs and symbols in different professions, I turn my attention to use of them in religious literature, especially to the Book of Proverbs, traditionally known in Western culture as one of its chief books of wisdom and probably written in the late fifth or early sixth century before the start of the Christian era.71 While commonly referred to as ‘a’ book of proverbs, it actually contains two literary genres, not one: instruction (verses 1–​9) and proverbs (verses 10–​31). Because the source of wisdom in Proverbs is God, in which his actions are blessings (divine signs), wisdom in Proverbs is not like the philosophical non-​ theological wisdom of the ancient Greeks;72 and it differs from classical Greek philosophical wisdom inasmuch as a proverb is a short, two-​line, pithy statement expressing some truth in a striking and memorable way.73 Unlike ancient Greek philosophy, it does not chiefly attempt to explain the unity and behavior of some organizational whole by identifying the parts that harmoniously unite to cause the unity and how they do so. Nor does it try to cause some species of organizational unity by harmonizing parts into some cooperative organizational whole. It simply proposes a short, richly provocative thought containing some wise observation or prescription that we can ponder and richly debate. For example, the Book of Proverbs can be interpreted theologically or philosophically, and both from a semiotic point of view. In either case, the Book is replete with meanings and images from which modern-​day leaders can induce great leadership insights. Adler identified texts that exemplify leadership in the community and many of the proverbs between verses 10 and 29, the oldest material in the book. The 71 72 73

Raymond Brown, et al., eds., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 454. Claus Westermann, Roots of Wisdom: The Oldest Proverbs of Israel and Other Peoples, trans. Daryl Charles (Louisville, KY: Westminster/​John Knox Press, 1995), 1. Brown, et al. eds., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 454.

198 Peláez proverbs address the nature and organization of a religious community. And, in studying this work, Claus Westermann focused on a selection of eight proverbs he assigned to four categories: (1) characterization of behavior, (2) personal behavior, (3) wise man promoting the community, and (4) the manner by which the king promotes his rule.74 Even a contemporary leader should be able to derive some benefit from these pithy expressions of wisdom when considered in light of a semiotic philosophical analysis. 10

Great Idea of Religion

10.1 Characterization of Behavior75 Consider Proverbs 24:4: “Like clouds and wind with rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give.” This proverb belongs to the second Solomonic collection and is modeled after the Egyptian instructions for the king and subjects. The wisdom we can infer from this proverb addresses moderation and self-​control:76 From a semiotic perspective, clouds and winds are natural signs, instruments that signify the coming rain. But the proverb strikes the reader with a logical inconsistency. Despite meteorological conditions that surely anticipate it, rain does not appear. The second part of the verse indicates a man who does not deliver on his word despite his boastfulness. A leader would interpret the impact to his organization could be detrimental because he may have persuaded his subordinate executives, stockholders, and employees, of a logical plan of action. The organization then finds to their dismay that, despite the logic of his or her plan, the leader did not follow through on it. Westermann correctly categorized this proverb as a characterization of behavior unworthy of a leader. The leader had signaled one way of behaving and then behaved in a contrary opposite way. “The North wind brings forth rain; and a backbiting tongue, angry looks.”77 North wind is a natural sign vehicle that indicates a coming rain. But this is not just any rain. It is rain coming from a significant direction, indicating, perhaps a heavy rain. A leader could interpret the North wind to signify an authoritative body in the organization, like a corporate headquarters. The rain from

74 Westermann, Roots of Wisdom, 4–​5. 75 Westermann, Roots of Wisdom, 45. 76 Brown, et al. eds., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 460. 77 Prov 25:13.

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corporate headquarters could be an investigation bringing with it a stormy relationship that might involve disciplinary action. Today, a backbiting tongue could easily, and with reasonable justification, be interpreted as a sign vehicle of organizational discontent, semiotically manifested through damaging gossip, or bad media. In business organizations, this is a sign of employee morale. This lesson for the leader is to prevent backbiting by improving his or her communications network among the diverse levels of the organization and to implement plans or programs to improve employee morale and engagement. 10.2 Personal Behavior78 Consider Proverbs 10:19:“When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is prudent.” We can infer from this proverb that words are cultural signs, and if not carefully used, could lead to misunderstandings or miscommunications. The proverb suggests that the sign of restraining for lips signifies prudence, which means a person must measure carefully what he or she says by the amount and types of words used. Plenty of opportunity exists for an organization to misuse language and words, verbal or written with employees, media, shareholders, and executives. Next, consider Proverbs 17:27: “He who restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.” This can be interpreted to mean that the sign relation signifies the act of a person who restrains, or chooses words carefully, is thoughtful and considered knowledgeable. The sign of cool spirit signifies a person of understanding. A cool spirited leader is confident, emotionally calm, and open to handling organizational problems just as he or she would welcome success. Such demeanor conveys a subtle power of steadfastness within the leader that incline people to want to follow. 10.3 A Wise Person Promotes Community In his Roots of Wisdom, Westermann concurs that a wise person promotes community.79 The perspective of the following two proverbs involves keeping a community intact by preventing fools from disrupting harmonious relationships within its social organizations. Consider Proverbs 10:20: “The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of sense.” We can see the wisdom in this as Westermann says, the wise man contributes to the maintenance of peace in an organization and quiets the anger with his words: In

78 Westermann, Roots of Wisdom, 48. 79 Westermann, Roots of Wisdom, 54–​55.

200 Peláez wisdom literature, lips represent speech, and moral speech ‘feeds the many.’ Semiotically, the leader with integrity communicate his or her concern and care for his or her organization; and by prudently changing course should the organization be in peril from unanticipated bad consequences. Organizations will always have critics; but, through commonsense, the leader, like the wise man, assuages their concerns. A wise person in a community can also be the object of ridicule; and the same with leaders who have the best intentions for their organizations. From a semiotic and metaphysical perspective, a leader should expect contrariety within an organization. The nature of organizations as unified wholes must have it. The next proverb illustrates a common theme within the book; consider Proverbs 24:3: “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.” Moreover, the sign of ‘house building’ evokes wisdom’s invitation to seek her (personified wisdom), as illustrated in Proverbs 9:1–​6: Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her servant-​girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, “You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” One way an organization can show its wisdom is through its statement of corporate social responsibility. Wisdom can also be seen in the virtuous manner in which business is conducted. One reason leadership is a moral activity is because proper outcomes depend on moral virtue. Moral virtue, however, must be understood in the context of the proverb and the time it was written. In this small way an organization would reflect a house of wisdom because, in Proverbs, all parts and levels of an organization must be chiefly organizational and conform to the leader’s moral standard, which is centered on community behavior.80 10.4 What a King Promotes in His Rule In the following collection of proverbs, the chief focus is on the quality of the king’s leadership, kind of rule, or governance, over his subjects: “in a multitude of people is the glory of the king, but without a people a prince is ruined”(Prov 14:28). The glory of the king is directly tied to the multitude. As signs of kingly 80 Westermann, Roots of Wisdom, 48.

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rule, multitude and glory signify a harmonious relationship between a king and his subjects. Maximally to benefit from the wisdom contained in this proverb, modern leaders must interpret what glory means to them in a given circumstance. For example, corporate prestige in the high quality of a brand (such as Microsoft or Apple, Inc. might exist when employees find themselves fortunate to work for a prestigious corporation with worldwide name recognition). The antithetical parallelism that follows (expressed by, “but without a people a prince is ruined”) is a sign of the lack of leadership and prestige because without a high-​quality people to rule, no excellent leadership (for example, Northouse’s definition of leadership) can exist. By definition, a leader influences a group to a common cause. The sign of a prince without a people is even more poignant because, like royal monarchs, contemporary captains of industry can fail if they do not seek and cement harmonious relationships within the essential parts of their organizations. Consider next, Proverbs 11:14, which also illustrates antithetical parallelism: “Where there is no guidance, a people fall; but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” A king’s ability to surround himself or herself with capable counselors to help him or her evokes the feeling of safety or stability in a corporation. The sign of ‘abundance of counselors’ signifies guidance and prudence, for if the king, or leader, has no prudent counselors, the people or organization will fail. 11

The Great Idea of Freedom

A leader might be perplexed to find the association of metaphysics, a philosophical term, with a theological article in a medieval theological tome. However, Aquinas was a philosophically minded, Catholic theologian and an organizational genius. His works in general are clear expositions on how, in the hands of a masterful leader, what appear to be contrary opposite extremes can be harmonized to produce a beautiful whole. In terms of leadership, Aquinas’s article, also, provides an example of how a leader can induce incredibly rich semiotic and philosophical insights from even the most unexpected sources, as was the impact that Aquinas had on Adler when he and some colleagues first read Aquinas’s masterful Summa theologiae. Speaking of himself and colleagues Arthur Rubin and Scott Buchanan, Adler says, “We were overwhelmed by the cool, evenhanded, quiet rationality of this procedure. None of us had ever read any philosophical work even remotely like his in structure, method,

202 Peláez and style. Aquinas managed to combine maximum brevity with maximum coverage of points to be handled.”81 In addition, as was the case with Adler as a great leader, it is plausible to think that even the greatest of contemporary Western leaders might never have read anything from Aquinas’s greatest tome, the Summa theologiae, even though it is his “most widely used work and without doubt the best known, even by those who open it occasionally.”82 The Summa is also in the canon of the Great Books and Aquinas is, perhaps, the most read author in that canon. Under the title “Metaphysics of Freedom,” the Syntopicon cites Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, i, q. 22, a. 2, respondeo and ad 4. This question asks, “Whether everything is subject to providence of God.” The context of freedom in article 22 concerns ‘independence,’ one of the meanings given related to this Great Idea. If we substitute ‘dependent on’ for ‘subject to’ in Aquinas’s question, it would read, “Whether everything is dependent on the providence of God.” The Syntopicon directs our attention to Aquinas’s fourth objection to that article: “Further, whatsoever is left to itself cannot be subject to the providence of a governor. But men are left to themselves by God in accordance with the words: ‘God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.’ ”83 And particularly in reference to the wicked, “I let them go according to the desires of their heart.”84 Not everything, therefore, can be subject to divine providence. Human beings are free-​thinking individuals and are, therefore, supposedly independent of providence, which is an organizational rule and measure. In his response to question 22, article 2, Aquinas answers by saying that, because providence is the idea (ratio) God uses to order, or rule, over things in their specific and individual natures and activities, not even individual human freedom escapes from God’s providence. From a semiotic perspective, we have two ‘formal signs,’ God and providence. God, a governor, or a leader, and providence, an organizing cause acting as the widest and deepest principle of all order within the created world considered as an organizational whole. In this way, providence signifies a cause of harmonious unity common to all organizational wholes, including a modern corporation. The principle that Aquinas uses to explain the relationship between God, providence, and human beings 81 See Mortimer J. Adler, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Biography, 1902–​1976 (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 81–​83. 82 John-​Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1. The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 147. 83 Ecclus 15:14. 84 Psalms 80:13.

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(for example: reader, organization, and employees) is a wisdom proverb “She reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly.”85 Wisdom is personified as a woman in Proverbs, but the Latin translation refers to God’s “divine wisdom.” Hence, God orders all things though his divine wisdom ‘sweetly’ or ‘easily’ (suaviter). This semiotic example helps us interpret the value this article has for leaders and their organizations. The best leaders must be wise (know how peacefully, not violently, to establish and maintain order in an organization). Note that, we glean this insight from a semiotic perspective, but we have to resolve human independence with respect to an organization. As Redpath repeatedly says, order: (1) chiefly exists within (is internal to) organizational wholes—​organizations exist in and through, grow out of, their internal order (harmony of parts); and (2) are only intelligible in relation to organizational wholes.86 Aquinas addresses a similar issue in his reply to fourth objection: When it is said that God left man to himself, this does not mean that man is exempt from divine providence; but merely that he has not a prefixed operating force determined to only the one effect; as in the case of natural things, which are only acted upon as though directed by another toward an end; and do not act of themselves, as if they directed themselves toward an end, like rational creatures, through the possession of free will, by which these are able to take counsel and make a choice. Hence it is significantly said: “In the hand of his own counsel.” But since the very act of free will is traced to God as to a cause, it necessarily follows that everything happening from the exercise of free will must be subject to divine providence. For human providence is included under the providence of God, as a particular under a universal cause.87 Aquinas explains that human beings are free decision makers, “in the hand of their own counsel”; but, as created beings, they still belong to the created order (organization of providence), and unlike animals, “which are only acted upon as though directed by another towards an end; and do not act of themselves, as if they directed themselves toward an end, like rational creatures, through the possession of free will, by which these are able to take counsel and make a choice.” Hence it is significantly said “In the hand of his own counsel.”88 Thus, 85 Ws 8:1. 86 Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 2:188–​201. 87 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 22, a. 2, respondeo and ad 4. 88 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 22, a. 2, respondeo and ad 4.

204 Peláez within this organization, human beings act for themselves, but in a way that contributes to establishing and maintaining order within the organization. From the semiotic perspective, the leaders gain insight from this interpretant: they now know that to establish order and promote success in an organization, they have to influence a group of free thinkers and decision makers—​each in the hand of his or her own counsel (prudential decision-​ making ability), to embrace and operate toward a common organizational goal, and not at cross-​purposes. This is consistent with Norton’s semiotic definition of leadership. From a philosophical perspective, communication between a leader and other parts of an organization, and between different levels within the organization with each other and the leader play an essential role in promoting and maintaining harmonious relationships. Redpath clarifies this point saying, “thus conceived by Aquinas, the created order resembles an enormous existence-​communication genus divided up into subgenera, species, and subspecies (individuals). Aquinas does not think that God directly rules over his communications network of organizational existence. Instead, like any good ceo, ruler, or governor, God rules over this organization by, and through, subordinates.”89 Human beings, subordinates to God, exercise independence (or freedom) in providence and their organizations insofar as they contribute to the chief aim that the whole organization mainly exists to realize. If so-​called members of an organization do not, in some way, contribute to fulfilling an organization’s chief aim, then, strictly speaking, they are not really part of the organization. This is where the interpretation meets its limitation. According to Aquinas, because God, and not any human being or combination thereof, is the author of nature and providence, God (providence) rules over them whether they want this to be the case or not.90 Because it is crucial for properly understanding the nature of any and every organizational whole, special note should be made of the nature of opposition in organizations by those human beings who think that are not under God’s providence. Aquinas mentions this opposition to providence in his reply to third objection by “those who withdrew the course of nature from the care of divine providence, attributing it rather to the necessity of matter, as Democritus, and others of the ancients.”91 As a total materialist, like a contemporary scientific naturalist or positivist, Democritus saw no relationship 89 Redpath, The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 59. 90 “Man is not the author of nature … since God is the author of nature”; Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 22, a. 2, ad 3. 91 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 22, a. 2, ad 3.

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whatsoever between providence and human beings because he held that atoms and their local motion totally caused and explained human intelligence and that only atoms and their relationships/​order constituted the parts of organizations and comprised an organizational whole.92 The metaphysics of freedom, or independence, informs the leader of the conduct of human beings within an organization, of those that embrace the organization and those that do not. If we enter the semiotic gate even more deeply into the metaphysics of organizational leadership, leaders can understand at the most general level that opposition, presupposed by the ability to act somewhat independently within an organization, is a necessary condition for a well-​functioning, harmoniously operating business. “This way of imagining a whole,” Redpath says, “is only possible if we can imagine a whole to contain some parts that are contrary opposites.”93 A business corporation, composed of unequally talented people working in qualitatively unequal departmental levels, has the whole level of talent and expertise needed to generate an excellent organizational whole. All strive, and are able, to achieve their respective departmental goals and missions. These differing levels of talent and expertise semiotically represent contrariety within the organization that a good leader is able to harmonize to achieve the organization’s mission. Subordinate leaders assist the highest executive leader in maintaining and monitoring the orderly operation in the respective work of divisions and departmental units. The more contrariety a successful leader and his or her subordinates confront and are able peacefully to harmonize, the more perfect the manner in which the organization reaches its goal. Alluding to Aristotle’s four causes of being—​material, formal, efficient, and final94—​ Redpath provides the following practical example: For example, a leader of a crew team constitutes an efficient cause distributing a harmonization unit (a form), a unity in the form of a principle of harmonizing a relationship to all the members of the crew team (the material parts) by distributing to them the chief aim of winning a crew competition. Without this chief aim (final cause) unequally distributed throughout a qualified multitude (material parts) through a principle of harmonization (formal cause) through a crew leader (efficient cause), imagining and conceiving of an organization called a ‘crew team’ 92

Joseph Owens. A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts, 1959), 146. 93 Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 2: 128. 94 Aristotle Physics 2.3; Metaphysics, 5.2.

206 Peláez is impossible. So, too, is being a crew team or a part, member, of a crew team.95 Redpath describes the ideal functioning crew given each crew member’s capacity to harmonize his or her respective talents. Harmonizing in a business context involves the coordination of the crew team’s strength and weaknesses. This coordination of talents and skills is what project managers do when they select team members for short-​term assignments. The contrariety exists among the crew team because each is a free-​thinking individual, who may not agree with others about how to approach problem solving. As a result, contrariety or opposition are the helpful and necessary conditions of “failure, objections from others, especially from highly intelligent people familiar with subject of study presenting us with difficult arguments to answer, crisis, extreme hardships, and hitting a brick wall in our thinking” that enable great organizations to become great.96 12

Conclusion

To borrow and modify Adler’s dictum, “Philosophy continues to be everybody’s business” especially for leaders, because, other than through immediate, present, contact, the best way to access philosophical ideas from great leaders is through great literature. Adler was a principle contributor in establishing the Great Books of the Western World so to provide the public direct access to its Great Ideas. He and his team of editors created an in-​depth annotated index, the Syntopicon, as a tool that curated selections of Great Books in which themes of Great Ideas are found in different contexts, times, and places. In this chapter, I touched upon several of these Great Ideas, although the focus was on how religion and freedom can inform the leader. One way that Adler went about disseminating his Great Idea of Leadership was through the Aspen Institute, which corporate executives attended to continue their general education by discussing the Great Ideas with their peers from different industries. A sign that this executive leadership training was successful is evinced by the prestigious executive participants who attended the 1980–​1981 program. The Aspen Institute continues to provide some similar leadership training, but not on par with Adler.

95 Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 2: 129. 96 Redpath, A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 2:196.

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Modern leaders know that a general education honed through a good reading program helps them make valuable decisions that impact their organizations. The scope and impact of leaders’ ability to influence their organizations is defined by a leading federal statistical agency in the United States, for which I work, which specializes in job analysis, to include among other important activities (such as publishing key primary economic indicators) developing materials to help corporate leaders make sound decisions. In addition to reading about great ideas and applying insights to leadership, what I have proposed in this chapter is a semiotic, gateway leadership induction technology (gatelit), an induction communications tool to help leaders gain further insight into the Great Ideas that help them grasp the nature of leadership and organizational problem-​solving. The philosophy of signs, or more specifically, the action of signs, semiotics, provides a gateway to a deeper understanding of the common themes that arise in leadership and organizational problems, even if these themes are found in what, at first, might appear to be in the most unlikely places, such as religion, including medieval theology. The great idea of freedom, understood through one of its acceptations, ‘independence,’ teaches significant insights about the dynamic nature of contrariety in organizations and the role of the leadership as a principle in the pursuit of excellence. Effective leaders know that, by helping to determine the correct course of action to achieve a common goal, understanding the nature of signs and the way they operate benefits their work. What leaders also know, often implicitly if not explicitly, is the deeply philosophical metaphysics underlying the nature of signs and the way they work. From the semiotic perspective, the leaders confront metaphysical insights of leadership and organizations on a daily basis. To become the best that one can be, as a leader, at understanding the nature of these signs and the way they operate, as Adler would likely have said, is simply a matter of common sense!

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. “About What Exists Independently of the Mind (Including a Note about Reality in Relation to Quantum Mechanics)”; and “About What the Mind Draws from Experience.” In Intellect: Mind over Matter. New York: Macmillan, 1990. isbn: 9780025003507. Adler, Mortimer J. The Common Sense of Politics. New York: Fordham University Press, 1971. isbn: 9780030859663.

208 Peláez Adler, Mortimer J. “Everybody’s Business.” Prologue to The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​Categorical. New York: Macmillan, 1993. isbn: 9780025005747. Adler, Mortimer J. How to Think about the Great Ideas from the Great Books of Western Civilizations. Edited by Max Weismann. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. isbn: 9780812694123. Adler, Mortimer J. Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1977. isbn: 9780025004900. Adler, Mortimer J. “Signs and Symbols.” In Adler and Gorman, The Great Ideas. Adler, Mortimer J. The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense. New York: Fordham University Press, 1970. isbn: 48665. Adler, Mortimer J and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of the Great Books of the Western World. 2 Vols. Chicago: William Benton, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1955 ©1952.oclc: 910651. The Aspen Institute, “A Brief History of the Aspen Institute.” https://​www .­aspeninstitute.org/​about/​heritage/​. Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, “The Aspen Institute Executive Seminars, 1980–​1981,” https://​www.cia.gov/​library/​readingroom/​docs/​CIA-​RDP05S00620R000100040114-​1.pdf. Brown, Raymond et al., eds. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990. isbn: 9780136149347 Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Translated by J.J. Graham. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2004. isbn: 9780760755976. Deely, John N. Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. isbn: 9780253316769. Deely, John N. The Four Ages of Understanding: The Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-​First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. isbn: 9780802047359. Deely, John N. “The Green Book: The Impact of Semiotics on Philosophy.” Paper presented at the University of Helsinki at the “First Annual Hommage à Oscar Parland,” December 1, 2000. http://​www.commens.org/​sites/​default/​files/​news _​­attachments/​greenbook.pdf. Deely, John N. Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2007. isbn: 9781589661325. Deely, John N. Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. isbn: 9780253330802. John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot). Tractatus de signis [Treatise on signs]: The Semiotics of John Poinsot. Corrected 2nd edition. Translated with interpretive arrangement by John N. Deely in consultation with Ralph Austin Powell. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. isbn: 9781587318771.

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Kemple, Brian. Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person. (Amazon Digital Services llc—​k dp Print US, 2019), isbn: 9781092376549. Kemple, Brian. “Sophists and Semioticians.” Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Aquinas Leadership International World Congress, Plenary Session 12: “Remembering John N. Deely as Colleague and Philosophical Reformer.” Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, Long Island, NY, July 15, 2017. Musashi, Miyamoto. A Book of Five Rings. Translated by Victor Harris. Woodstock, NY: Overlook, 1974. isbn: 9780879510183. National Compensation Survey: Guide to Evaluating Your Firm’s Jobs and Pay. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. May 2013 (Revised). https:www.bls.gov/​ncs/​ocs/​sp/​ ncbr0004.pdf Northouse, Peter G. Leadership: Theory and Practice. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010. isbn: 9781412974882. Owens, Joseph. A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton, Cenury, Crofts, 1959). oclc: 491521371. (1975 3rd reprint, Prentice Hall, isbn: 9780133890983). Redpath, Peter A. “The Essential Connection between Common Sense Philosophy and Leadership Excellence.” Studia Gilsoniana 3: supplement (2014): 605–​617. issn 2300–​0066. http://​gilsonsociety.com/​files/​605-​617-​Redpath.pdf. Redpath, Peter A. The Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas: An Introduction to Ragamuffin Ethics. St. Louis, Mo.: En Route Books and Media, 2017. isbn: 9780998894034. Redpath, Peter A. A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics. Vol. 2. An Introduction to Ragamuffin Thomism. St. Louis, MO: En Route, 2016. isbn: 9781633371408. Sunzi (Sun Tzu). The Art of War. Edited by James Clavell. Translated by Lionel Giles. New York: Dell, 1910/​1983. isbn: 9780385292160. Torrell, John-​Pierre. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol. 1. The Person and His Work. Translated by Robert Royal. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996. isbn: 9780813208534. Westermann. Roots of Wisdom: The Oldest Proverbs of Israel and Other Peoples. Translated by Daryl Charles. Louisville, KY: Westminster/​John Knox Press, 1995. isbn: 9780664255596.

­c hapter 12

Greatness of Character in Classical Confucianism Jason Morgan Abstract Many modern scholars understand Confucianism and the Analects to a philosophy of State and societal order that includes personal attention to rituals of propriety and bearing. The question whether Confucianism is religion or philosophy is a byproduct of the Western Enlightenment, or Cartesian thinking lacking, historical embeddedness. Confucianism, therefore, is thought by many to have been a secular formula for statecraft, grounded in Confucius’s spurning the overtly religious in favor of a this-​worldly policy platform, which gestured respectfully, but perfunctorily, toward Heaven, while focusing efforts on cultivating the ideal citizen on earth. Coupled with the historical, textual, and archaeological record of ancient and classical China, recent scholarship provides evidence that calls this view into question. This chapter follows the lead of new scholarship to view the Confucian junzi (gentleman) as an exemplary synthesis of the great idea of religion and freedom. It defends the claim that Confucius considered freedom to be greatness in concert with Heaven and that the ideal of greatness in concert with Heaven is the great idea of religion and freedom in classical Chinese history and thought and as understood by Mortimer J. Adler.

Keywords Confucius –​Zhou –​Shang –​enlightenment –​heart –​mind –​Xunzi –​King Jie –​junzi (gentleman)

Use of the terms ‘religion’ and ‘freedom’ by historians and philosophers has often been criticized as inherently Eurocentric, implying an array of concepts and attendant ideas, and an entire process of historical development which is unique to Western Europe and, later, North America; and exclusive of non-​ Western cultures and their modalities of experience and thought.1 Recent 1 For works heavily devoted to such criticism, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of

© Jason Morgan, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_014

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scholarship, however, especially in the fields of ancient Chinese history and philosophy, has pointed to a much more robust universality of shared humanity related to these great ideas than previously advanced by proponents of cultural relativism. Although cultural contexts and lived experiences differ, as Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas had argued, essential human appetites and aspirations are joined in the human person to form a generic whole essentially the same across time and space.2 Given the universality of human nature, always and everywhere the ideas religion, freedom, and greatness intersect in the human person as instantiated, fundamental, proximate principles or causes necessary for human flourishing. Religion is the human response to our Creator, the way in which we, as human persons, respond to our capacity for spiritual greatness. Freedom is the necessary condition for this response, and the drama of the human condition: some human beings strive for the intensive quantity (qualitative) greatness of their human nature by growing in whole person—​body, mind, and soul—​and for relation to God, while other human beings do not. These twin ideas of religion and freedom are especially what make us who we are as choosing, thinking, discerning beings capable of responding, or not, to our highest calling: to know and love God and ourselves and to do God’s will. In a sense, it is only because we are free, individual and social animals, morally obligated to achieve perfect self-​realization that we naturally incline to transcend, become more than, ourselves as discrete individuals. Considered as such, this process of individual transcendence is essentially connected to the great ideas of religion and freedom. If the claim is true that, by nature, all human beings desire to know and love God and, as human persons, have an inherent dignity toward which compulsion and bondage are repugnant, then we can reasonably express these truths in an overarching, cross-​cultural, diachronic ideal of religion and freedom. In such an ideal, freedom of individual human beings consists in not being impeded to seek union with God or living lives in accord with what is true and just.3 Chicago Press, 2004); see also Prasenjit Duara, Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (London: Routledge, 2004); Richard Calichman, Overcoming Modernity: Cultural Identity in Wartime Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 2 Cf. Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas: Three Essays, trans. John Murray and Daniel O’Connor (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). 3 Cf. Peter Redpath: “By nature, inasmuch as all men desire to know and excel at knowing the truth, St. Thomas claims all human beings identify the same pleasure as the highest: contemplation of rational truth. The reason for this is that all people have in us a divinely implanted inclination derived from God and/​or our substantial form to know truth.” The

212 Morgan While freedom can be abused or religion always corrupted, generally speaking, the freer human beings are to act religiously (to behave in a manner consistent with human nature as creatures of God with inherent human dignity), the more human beings will be able to realize that dignity and attain to the proper station of human persons vis-​à-​vis the supernatural (metaphysically potent, but sensibly invisible) force that shapes our moral existence and guides our conduct as human beings. In this chapter, I follow the lead of new scholarship in ancient Chinese history and thought to view the Confucian junzi (gentleman) as an exemplary synthesis of the great idea of religion and freedom.4 The junzi (exemplary human beings) were spiritually great, displayed intensive quantitative greatness of character by seeking to do Heaven’s will and trying to revive greatness of soul as lived in the Shang (or Yin, 1600–​1046 bce) and Western Zhou (1046–​ 771 bce) periods. They conceived Chinese antiquity to be an metaphysically ideal, pre-​ historic, Golden Age consisting of intense religious activity and feeling in China when Heaven, along with a host of other spiritual beings, reportedly: (1) suffused the human world with portents and signs, and (2) led human beings to their full potential by exerting a moral force on their whole human persons, forming them in body and mind for exemplification of the humane, Heaven-​ focused, human ideal.5 The junzi found a twofold defining difference between them and qualitatively less perfect human beings in a great idea that synthesizes religion and freedom: (1) with the xiao ren (small man, or ungentlemanly character), who neglects his capacity for refinement (greatness) and, thereby, fails to become a fully free, fully religious, human being; and (2) with the present, fallen age of the Spring and Autumn period during the Eastern Zhou (771–​ 476 bce), when the past religious morality has been scorned, and with the ancient Xia (2070–​1600 bce), and, in particular, with the reign of Huang Chieh (Jie) of Xia (1728–​1675 bce)—​a godless epoch of debauchery and inhumanity occurred, during which human enslavement to the senses and lower instincts

Moral Psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas: An Introduction to Ragamuffin Ethics (St. Louis: En Route, 2017), 413–​414. 4 On Confucianism and religion, see Ming-​Huei Lee, “Modern New Confucians on the Religiousness of Confucianism,” in Confucianism: Its Roots and Global Significance, ed. David Jones (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), 26–​37. 5 Cf. William Theodore de Bary, “Sage-​Kings and Prophets,” and “The Noble Man in the Analects,” in The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 1–​23 and 24–​45. De Bary declares Confucius an “Undeclared Prophet,” 24.

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deprived human beings of freedom and the concomitant capacity spiritually to excel. Confucius (551–​479 bce), the Spring and Autumn period thinker, implies that human beings have free choice and can choose to be great within the context of the spiritual universe.6 As conceived by Confucius, religious freedom is greatness in concert with Heaven; and this Confucian ideal of greatness in concert with Heaven is also the great idea of religion and freedom in classical Chinese history and thought.7 1

Confucianism Considered as a Philosophy or Religion

Modern Western and Asian scholars and intellectuals often understand Confucianism to be a philosophy of State and societal order combined with a personal attention to rituals of propriety and bearing.8 Often, they also say that the question whether Confucianism was a religion or a philosophy is a byproduct of the Western Enlightenment, or, more narrowly, Cartesian thinking, which presupposed religion and freedom as categories without interrogating their historical embeddedness.9 Sometimes they remind readers that, 6 Thomas Fröhlich writes, “In the manifesto from 1958, Tang [Junyi] and his co-​authors suggested that Confucianism is characteristically based on a notion of human nature (xing). In explicit accordance with Confucian and neo-​Confucian predecessors, Tang placed the human being at the center of a cosmic order which he referred to as ‘Heaven’ (tian). Similar to Wang Yangming’s ‘study of the mind,’ Tang singled out … a passage from Mencius VIIA.1: ‘Mencius said, “For a man to give full realization to his heart (jin qi xin) is for him to understand his own nature (zhi qi xing), and a man who knows his own nature will know Heaven (zhi tian).” ’ Tang interpreted this as a proposition about the human being’s potential to fully actualize him-​or herself. This actualization is said to be equivalent to a ‘penetrating awakening’ which allows the human mind to access ‘the ultimate source of the universe and human life’ (yuzhou rensheng zhi benyuan). In this sudden realization, then, the human being will apprehend Heaven and hence the spiritual source of all reality,” Tang Junyi: Confucian Philosophy and the Challenge of Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 108. 7 In general, see Rodney L. Taylor, The Way of Heaven: An Introduction to the Confucian Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 1986). 8 “Confucius is often classed with other great prophets and spiritual leaders who played a crucial role in the transformation of archaic cultures into traditional civilizations. Arthur Waley linked Confucius to a process in China that moved from an ‘auguristic-​sacrificial’ stage to a more humanistic and rational stage of civilization. Karl Jaspers saw Confucius as a key figure in China’s ‘axial age’ transition to a high civilizational level”; cited in William Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism, 26. 9 Cf. Karl Polanyi, Origins of Our Time: The Great Transformation (V. Gollancz, 1944); Simon Kow, “Confucianism, Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu,” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 16, no. 1 (2011): 39–​52.

214 Morgan in the Analects (the work generally ascribed to him), Confucius downplayed overtly religious overtones that his disciples sometimes tried to read into his teachings.10 In the Analects, for example, we read, “Zilu asked how to serve the spirits of the gods. The Master [i.e., Confucius] replied, ‘Not yet being able to serve other people, how would you be able to serve the spirits?’ Zilu said, ‘May I ask about death?’ The Master replied, ‘Not yet understanding life, how could you understand death?’ ”11 Confucianism, therefore, especially as conceived and practiced in the ancient Chinese context (usually periodized as stretching from the pre-​ history Golden Age to the end of the Warring States period [475–​221 bce] of the Eastern Zhou and the rise of the Qin dynasty under Qin Shi Huangdi (221 bce)), is thought by many scholars in both China and the West to have been a secular formula for statecraft, grounded in Confucius’s spurning of the overtly religious in favor of a this-​worldly policy platform, which gestured respectfully, but perfunctorily, toward Heaven, while focusing efforts on cultivating the ideal citizen on earth.12 This formula, the argument often goes, was useful for maintaining privileges for the elite and the dignity of the lowly, all set within a cosmic vision which, while admitting purview of a passive Heaven (the disembodied and marmoreal tian) was not religious but ethical, a philosophy of government and not a teaching about the transcendent, the metaphysical, or the divine.13 Recent scholarship, coupled with the historical, textual, and archaeological record of ancient and classical China, provides much evidence that calls 10

See esp., E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects, cited in Charlotte Allen, “Confucius and the Scholars,” Atlantic 283, no. 4 (April, 1999): 78–​83. 11 Confucius Analects 11:12; see Confucius, The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation: A New Translation Based on the Dingzhou Fragments and Other Recent Archaeological Finds, trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. (New York: Ballantine, 1998), 144. 12 This elides Neo-​Confucianism (Song-​Ming Confucianism), known in Chinese as Zhu Xi Thought, which incorporated a Buddhist metaphysics into a highly selective and esoteric reading of the Confucian classics to create a medieval (ca. 960–​1368) set of beliefs and inward-​looking practices nearly unrecognizable as classical Confucianism. 13 On tian, see e.g., Jingxiong Wu, Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2017); Herrlee G. Creel, The Origins of Statecraft in China, vol. 1, Western Chou Empire (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 23; see also Creel, Confucius and the Chinese Way (New York: Harper, 1960); Walter W. Davis, “China, the Confucian Ideal, and the European Age of Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44, no. 4 (Oct.–​Dec., 1983): 523–​548. On Confucius’ ideal of the junzi (chün tzu), in contrast to Jesus of Nazareth and Socrates, as not transcendent, see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking through Confucius (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 176–​192.

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this view into question. The modernist view of Confucianism was colored by the highly bureaucratic and secularist (neo-​)Confucian example of the Qing dynasty (1644–​1912 ce), and by the thick neo-​Confucian statecraft of the Song (960–​1279 ce) and the Ming (1368–​1644 ce) dynasties.14 But ancient Chinese life was, unlike China in the latter days of the dynastic tradition, lived in the company of a myriad of spirits, presences, prodigies, ghosts, and supernatural forces, even gods or, perhaps, God. Where Matteo Ricci (1552–​1610 ce), Jesuit missionary and pioneer Confucian scholar, had to embark on a Maimonidean, Machiavellian, or Straussian cross-​reading of the Confucian classics to discern the watermarks of the religiosity he needed to preach the Gospel to the Chinese literati, the original texts (considered in light of ancient Chinese culture extending through to the time of Confucius) tended to paint a picture of a world alive with the unseen. If Confucius demurred speaking of these forces, he did so not because he did not believe in them or did not find religious faith important. He did so because his universe was steeped in them and it. 2

Confucianism and the Religiously Oriented, Materially Based Human Person

Confucianism has entered the modern imagination under the cover of different renderings by a variety of latter-​day interpreters. The Jesuits were the first Western intellectuals to attempt a systematic understanding of the Confucian classics. They started entering the Ming dynasty (1368–​1644 ce) territory on long-​term missions of conversion to the Catholic Faith.15 Most famous of these 14

15

Max Weber, for example, emphasized the bureaucratic nature of the Chinese state in his sociological study of Chinese religion; see The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (1915), ed. and trans. Hans H. Gerth (New York: MacMillan, 1964); Max Weber, Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society Max Rheinstein, ed., Edward Shils and Max Rheinstein, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 236; R. Stephen Warner, “The Role of Religious Ideas and the Use of Models in Max Weber’s Comparative Studies of Non-​Capitalist Societies,” The Journal of Economic History 30, no. 1 The Tasks of Economic History (March 1970): 74–​99; Edgar Kiser and Yong Cai, “War and Bureaucratization in Qin China: Exploring an Anomalous Case,” American Sociological Review 68, no. 4 (August 2003): 511–​539; Kiri Paramore, “ ‘Civil Religion’ and Confucianism: Japan’s Past, China’s Present, and the Current Boom in Scholarship on Confucianism,” The Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 2 (May 2015): 269–​282; and Robert M. Marsh, “Weber’s Misunderstanding of Traditional Chinese Law,” American Journal of Sociology 106, no. 2 (September 2000): 281–​302. See Gerhard F. Strasser, “The Impact on the European Humanities of Early Reports from Catholic Missionaries from China, Tibet and Japan between 1600 and 1700,” in The Making of the Humanities, vol. 2, From Early Modern to Modern Disciplines, eds. Rens Bod, Jaap

216 Morgan is Saint Francis Xavier (1506–​1552 ce), who died soon after reaching China in 1552. Matteo Ricci, who spent nearly thirty years in Macau and mainland China studying classical Chinese and learning the intellectual culture of the Confucian scholars, even adopted their dress and bearing in an attempt to work through the Chinese cultural and linguistic idiom in order to lead the Chinese intelligentsia to Christ via Confucius. Other Jesuits followed them; as did other Catholic religious Orders, some of which, especially the Franciscans and Dominicans, questioned the Jesuits’ methods of deep cultural immersion and, critics argued, overly liberal identification of some Confucian teachings and mores with elements of the Christian life. These disagreements over how deeply to pursue affinity between Confucianism and Catholicism culminated in what has come to be called the Chinese Rites controversy within the Church.16 In the end, Pope Clement xi (1649–​1721 ce) came down against the Jesuits, and enjoined the Jesuits against equivocation between Deus (Latin, God) and tian.17 This early failure of cultural and textual engagement in the service of the Gospel notwithstanding, the missionary cast of Confucianism as presented in the West continued, virtually by necessity. Missionaries were almost the only Westerners likely to spend enough time among the Chinese people learning the Chinese language in a scholarly, literary scholarly fashion to act as interpreters of the Confucian tradition for Europeans and Americans. Missionary study of Confucianism became more prominently Protestant than Catholic after the Rites controversy and Clement xi’s ban on the Jesuits’ ecumenical

16 17

Maat, and Thijs Weststeijn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); Yu Liu, “The Religiosity of a Former Confucian-​Buddhist: The Catholic Faith of Yang Tingyun,” Journal of the History of Ideas 73, no. 1 (January 2012): 25–​46; John M. Headley, “The Universalizing Principle and Process: On the West’s Intrinsic Commitment to a Global Context,” Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 291–​321; Willard J. Peterson, Review of Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization by Lionel M. Jensen, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59, no. 1 (June 1999): 276–​283; and Wing-​tsit Chan, “The Study of Chu Hsi in the West,” The Journal of Asian Studies 35, no. 4 (August 1976): 555–​577. Cf., for example, Roman Malek, “Christendom and its Manifestations in China Today,” in Religion in China: Major Concepts and Minority Positions, eds. Max Deeg and Bernhard Scheid (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2015). This was far from being purely a theological controversy; see H. M. Cole, “Origins of the French Protectorate over Catholic Missions in China,” The American Journal of International Law 34, no. 3 (July 1940), 473–​491. On Catholic converts in China, see Jonathan Chaves, Singing of the Source: Nature and God in the Poetry of the Chinese Painter Wu Li (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993). For a parallel dynamic in Japan, see George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University East Asia Center, 1988).

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efforts. Following the achievements of Ricci and his fellow Jesuits, missionary engagement with the Chinese classics reached a second peak with Scottish missionary, James Legge (1815–​1897 ce), who produced an English translation of the Analects that combines deep understanding of the original with a clear, literary English prose style.18 Unlike early Jesuits, Protestant scholars of Confucianism were much less interested in finding a catholicity of Confucianism and Christianity. The religious ideas, which the Jesuits had viewed telescopically as references, ultimately, to God, were tempered to the term ‘Heaven’ in many translations, but Legge defied the trend, by also equating concepts of divinity in the Analects and other Confucian tracts with God. Nevertheless, this trend continued and intensified after the torch of Chinese studies had passed from the hands of missionaries to secular scholars in European and American universities. These post-​missionary scholars often use the term ‘tian’ to refer to a non-​ aligned Heaven. Ricci considered the term tian to be remote and imperfect, albeit providential, reference to the God of Abraham. Many contemporary scholars of the Analects go even further, rendering tian in transliteration as just that, tian, refusing to countenance any English gloss, because this might prejudice readers into seeing affinities between the Confucian worldview and Christian. A similar process took place in Japan. For example, Katō Shūichi writes, “If the evolution of Japanese Buddhism after the Thirteenth Century can be explained as a long process of secularization, the evolution of Confucianism during the first half of the Tokugawa Period may be considered as the process of ‘de-​metaphysization’ of the adopted neo-​Confucian system.”19 A new kind 18

19

James Legge, trans. The Four Books: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, and The Works of Mencius, with orig. Chinese text (New York, Paragon, 1966); see also Edward Caldwell Moore, “The Naturalization of Christianity in the Far East,” in The Harvard Theological Review 1, no. 3 (July 1908): 249–​303; Andrew Ross, Review of Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–​1724, by Liam Matthew Brockey, The Journal of Modern History 80, no. 4, A Special Issue on Metropole and Colony (Dec., 2008), 907–​909; Timothy Brook, Review of Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology, by David E. Mungello, The Journal of Asian Studies 45, no. 5 (Nov., 1986): 1066–​1068; Yuen-​ting Lai, Review of Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese, by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Henry Rosemont Jr., and Daniel J. Cook, and review of Leibniz and Confucianism: The Search for Accord, by David E. Mungello, in The Journal of Asian Studies 40, no. 4 (August 1981): 767–​69; see also Yang Xiao, “How Confucius Does Things with Words: Two Hermeneutic Paradigms in the Analects and Its Exegeses: In Memoriam: Benjamin Schwarz,” The Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 2 (May 2007): 497–​532. A similar process took place in Japan; e.g., Katō Shūichi writes: “If the evolution of Japanese Buddhism after the Thirteenth Century can be explained as a long process of secularization, the evolution of Confucianism during the first half of the Tokugawa Period may be

218 Morgan of missionary reading, this one preaching a cultural relativism and a broad disengagement between the East and the West, took hold, setting the Confucian Heaven, or God, at complete odds with the God of the Bible. In their zeal to render Confucianism in a philosophical context untainted by the Cartesian distortions of the self, scholars such as Roger T. Ames, Henry Rosemont Jr., and Paul J. D’Ambrosio have emphasized the radical otherness of the Confucian person.20 Ames has argued in favor of the intractability of Western cognitive presuppositions in the Confucian tradition, even going so far as to translate xin, the character for ‘heart’ or ‘mind,’ as a field of mind-​body holism completely alien to the Cartesian self—​what Ames translates as the ‘bodyheartminding.’21 François Jullien, French scholar of Confucianism, similarly says that holism dominated Chinese thought prior to contact with the West, while scholars Tang Yijie and Guo Qiyong speak, respectively of ‘the unity of Heaven and man’ and the holistic ‘existential wisdom’ of ancient Chinese philosophy.22 All of this has served to seal the Confucian self off as an alien holism incapable of understanding notions of a transcendent God, and inscrutable to Westerners equipped with an Enlightenment worldview. However, scholars of Confucianism in the United States, Canada, and China have developed a powerful counterargument to these interpretations, and by extension, to the welter of interpolators standing between Confucius and the present. For example, moving again in the direction of the Jesuits’ ecumenical approach, Benjamin Schwarz was an early advocate of the possibility of intellectual commerce across cultural and linguistic divides.23 He resituates—​ even re-​founds—​the study of Confucius in a much richer understanding of the human person. As non-​monadic and fully in concert with the reality of the

20 21 22 23

considered as the process of ‘de-​metaphysization’ of the adopted neo-​Confucian system,” “Tominaga Nakamoto, 1715–​1746: A Tokugawa Iconoclast,” Monumenta Nipponica 22, no. 1/​ 2 (1967): 178; Book publication: Katō Shūichi, Tominaga Nakamoto: A Tokugawa Iconoclast. The Writings of an Old Man. Translated by Katō Shūichi (Vancouver, University of British Columbia, 1967); see also, “Confucian Spirituality” and “Confucius and Confucianism,” in Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, ed. Oliver Leaman (London: Routledge, 2001), 132–​134 and 144–​145, respectively. See Michael J. Sandel et al., Encountering China: Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy, ed. Paul J. D’Ambrosio (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), esp. pt. 4, “Conceptions of the Person: Sandel and the Confucian Tradition.” Roger Ames cited in Edward Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). See Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China, 31. See e.g., Benjamin I. Schwarz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1985).

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human person as found in other times and places, this approach opens the way for an understanding of the Confucian junzi as a human being like those found at any other time or in any place; i.e., spiritual creatures most at home when communicating with the divine Edward Slingerland’s scholarship is crucial in this regard. The following passage from his Mind and Body in Early China is central to the argument I make in this chapter, and also to a more general rethinking of Confucius as a great champion of religious freedom and character cultivation as a religious ideal. He says: One aspect of the holistic myth with regard to early China is the claim that the Chinese universe is somehow distinct in being blessedly free of gods or other supernatural agents. Supposedly, the early Chinese (or the Confucians, who typically stand in for Chinese culture as a whole) navigated their political and moral worlds guided—​like good Enlightenment thinkers—​only by the demands of this-​worldly ecological, familial, and social factors. … As Robert Eno has observed of the early Zhou realm, “There can be no doubt state religion is organized around a clear, central concept: the Mandate of Tian,” or sign of divine approbation for the Zhou rule. This sense of divine purpose is still clearly present in the Analects, where Confucius is portrayed to be on a mission from Heaven and therefore under its physical protection. Mozi similarly grounded his entire ethical system in the discerned will of Heaven. 24 The centrality for the seeker of Heaven, the suffusion of human conduct with heavenly will, and the nature of the divine as the lodestar for politics and personal ethics alike, is the context without which understanding Confucius as a philosopher or religious figure is impossible. He was both, without distinction! In Confucius’s time and cultural setting, to be a human being was to be in the company of supernatural forces. To be a good man was freely to respond to Heaven’s will and amplify personal, pre-​existing humanity in keeping with Heaven’s moral directives and the Lord High God’s predilections. In Ames and Rosemont Jr.’s rendering, this entailed personal transformation from being a ren (human being) to a ‘person of ren’ (person of authoritative conduct). This is also often translated by them as ‘benevolence,’ or ‘humanity’: human beings of earthly and heavenly standing. The character ren, benevolence,

24

Edward Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China, 250–​52.

220 Morgan authoritative conduct/​humanity, is key to this understanding of the human person in Confucius’s time. Ren is written with a radical for ‘man’ next to the character for the number ‘two’ (two parallel horizontal lines). Most interpreters read this as meaning human being considered as social, not as solitary, and someone who acts charitably and humanely toward other human beings. I submit that contextually, this is a more assonant way to read ren: as meaning human beings who have awakened to their true, social nature, elevating their earthly, bodily human nature (the bottom parallel line of the character for the number ‘two’) in concert with the will of Heaven above (the upper parallel line).25 In a similar vein, Gang Xu argues that ren “originally denote[d]‌a practice of sacrifice and martyrdom where a man of respectable social standing sacrificed himself to defend the societal expectations or code of honor, often in a time of social crisis, to honor the Heaven and the Earth.”26 He finds the notion of human sacrifice to Heaven in a way that made a person a greater human being to be central to the understanding of ren, sacrifice.27 On either reading, Xu’s or mine, the person of ren is entirely given over to divine will. The great idea of the junzi was to cultivate personal virtue in the light of God’s (Heaven’s) will; and, thereby, to become a better human being: specifically, a better husband, father, ruler, brother, son. The nature of this cultivation is crucial to understand. Difficulty understanding this is not, as Ames and Rosemont have argued, that the junzi were so fundamentally relational as to possess no self capable of navigating on the dual planes simultaneously of the materially visible and the metaphysically invisible. Instead, the junzi were able to practice self-​cultivation precisely because they sought formation in the sight of Heaven and a welter of other spirits. They desired to become 25

26 27

This centrality of the divine in ancient Chinese life is reinforced by the work of Paul R. Katz. His emphasis on Chinese jurisprudence runs along what Katz calls a ‘Chinese judicial continuum.’ It takes in worldly otherworldly elements of human life. Katz roots his argument in li (‘ritual propriety,’ also glossed by Katz as ‘ritual,’ ‘ceremony,’ and ‘etiquette’) and couples it with law (fa) to form the matrix of the early, and later, Chinese state. “Along with laws (fa),” Katz writes, “li lies at the heart of state and elite efforts to regulate human behavior. Li is understood to be cosmic in origin, with classics like the Book of Rites (Liji) viewing adherence to prescribed forms of behavior as expressions of universal order”; Divine Justice: Religion and the Development of Chinese Legal Culture (London: Routledge, 2009), 7; Paul R. Katz and Stefania Travagnin, eds., Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions III: Key Concepts in Practice (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019) in its entirety. Gang Xu, “On the Origin of ren: A Practice of Human Sacrifice and Martyrdom in Early Chinese History,” Archives of Boston Society of Confucius 1, no. 1 (April 10, 2019): 36. Gang Xu, “On the Origin of ren,” 29–​39.

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perfect in freedom as individual human persons in a multi-​layered relationship with other human beings and other spiritual beings and forces of a different generic order, which I examine in the next section. I now turn to how, precisely, Confucius practiced this cultivation of the junzi as a synthesis of the Great Ideas of Religion and Freedom. 3

The Great Idea of Confucius: Religious Freedom as Cultivation of Personal Virtue (Virtus)

Taken in tandem with the discovery and deciphering of the oracle bones, used for communicating with Heaven, up to the time of Confucius’s death and especially in the early Zhou, which Confucius lionized (and, a fortiori, in the Shang, which was in turn lionized by the luminaries of the early Zhou), clear is that ancient China was a place of intense spiritual awareness.28 As we can understand the situation today via cultural and textual remnants available to us, spirituality and reverence for otherworldly beings informed every aspect of Chinese life. Confucius’s world was through and through religious—​of this no reasonable doubt can exist. As countless tortoise plastrons inscribed with rudimentary characters attest, Chinese writing was first developed, among other reasons, to communicate with gods and spirits. Later, when the Chinese learned how to smelt bronze, they started to produce a wealth of metal objects laced with writing, much of the metal ware and the writing serving a religious, ritual purpose.29 The gods and the spirits of ancestors could eat and drink. They required pious sacrifice (not just the libation, that is, but that he or she who poured it be chéng (upright of heart, sincere); and they exerted a moral force which, properly heeded, helped the self-​cultivator conform to his or her maximum spiritual intensity, greatness of soul, in the plenitude of freedom amplified by religion and ritual.30 28 On the oracle bones, see David Keightley, ed. The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); David Keightley, These Bones Shall Rise Again: Selected Writings on Early China, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014). 29 Excellent drawings and photographs of some of these are available in Noma Shōichi, Chūgoku no rekishi, 10: me de miru Chūgoku no rekishi [History of China, 10: The history of China through pictures] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1975). 30 Cf. “[Confucius] said, ‘Following the proper way, I do not forge new paths; with confidence I cherish the ancients—in these respects I am comparable to our venerable Old Peng,’” Analects, 7.1; see Ames and Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius, 111.

222 Morgan Within this context, Confucius arrayed his teachings about personal cultivation, an inner attunement to the divine will predicated upon the freedom to live a fully human life as a member of a religious community grounded in ritual, liturgy, devotion, prayer, and sacrifice. Properly to understand it as Confucius had intended it to be understood, we should, therefore, re-​read the following quote from the Analects (often used as a way to typify the Confucian sage as merely a patient practitioner of inner calm) as words of a pilgrim seeking Heaven’s will and right relationship with the spirits and the gods: The Master [i.e., Confucius] said, “At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right.”31 This is no call to study for civil service exams, as the later Neo-​Confucians and more worldly-​minded statesmen and emperors insisted. These are Dantean-​ like sentiments, expressing an openness to the spiritual, the particular moral paradigms, proximate first principles, of the spirits and gods, and, ultimately of Heaven, which shape the career of a well-​lived human life. Without these principles the human person wanders aimlessly, unable to fulfill his higher calling to become a junzi, a perfect member of the human genus. For Confucius, the great idea of religious freedom was the dedication of a person’s entire life, diachronically and immanently, to God. This quote from Confucius shows that the man and his teachings are models of the pursuit of greatness of character, an equivocation upon the old concept of the aristocrat (junzi) applied newly to the kind of inner nobility that Confucius held up as the humane ideal. Like Socrates, Confucius taught that his greatness of character was realizable only in a civilized state oriented properly to Heaven and situated within the spiritual world suffusing the 31

Analects, 2.1–​6. As Legge indicates in the notes to his translation of this passage, the line translated as “without transgressing what was right” literally reads “without transgressing the square,” where ‘square’ (ju) means the measure, measuring instrument, used by builders to align various parts at right angles. Heaven so infuses earth with order that the just man follows an almost geometric pattern of righteousness, and yet he must learn how to do this by listening with his whole person, making a habit out of seeking justice until, in a way that would have been familiar to Aristotle and Aquinas, he does what is right out of an abundance of freedom, choosing the good, right measure, as an individual exercising spiritual greatness, maximum virtual quantum, humanity; James Legge, The Four Books, 146–​147.

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visible realm. In a sense, whether Confucianism was a religion is a misleading question. Confucius did not teach religion any more than did Socrates (yet, Socrates, too, repeatedly claimed to be religious). Like Socrates, Confucius taught personal virtue; and, like Socrates, he did so as a member of a society which, he lamented, was losing its respect for a proper understanding of religion. For Confucius, this understanding had existed in an uprightness of the days of old, embodied for Confucius in the paragons of morality the early sage emperors Yao and Shun, and the Duke of Wen. Confucius’s Great Idea was that of Religious Freedom: the twofold freedom of being an individual follower of the gods and an individual seeker of perfection as an individual person. The one task was not considered possible without simultaneously doing the other. From the properly respected gods and spirits, and from the faithfully reverenced ancestors and keepers of the living memory of the golden past, the virtuous gentleman, the junzi, could inherit an ordered society in which to cultivate the virtues worthy of dignity as an embodied spiritual being. The innovation of Confucius was to advocate a return to the religiosity of the early Zhou, although not overtly as an explicit return to the practices and beliefs of a thousand years before, but by means of an internal cultivation of spiritual greatness (intensive quantity).32 One did not need to be the adherent of a particular school or a member of a particular lineage or clan. One could be, as Confucius himself was by turns in his long life, either a lowly factotum or advisor to the head of a given state. What mattered was that one’s inner disposition match the expectations of Heaven, that one be sincere in one’s heart and words, and that one respect the gods by endeavoring to live as those close to them, the sages of early Zhou and the demigods Yao and Shun, as well as the Duke of Wen, had once done. Confucianism is the felt presence of the spirits and the exalted past in action, not in grand gestures, but in the hidden constancy of small interior acts, all bearing on the azimuth of the divine. How, exactly, did Confucius do this? How did he live the ideal of personal cultivation as an expression of religious freedom that many people world over now associate with his name and his way of life? Opening the Analects to 32

Cf. Étienne Gilson, Three Quests in Philosophy, ed. Armand A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008), 33–​74; Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-​Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 167–​171; cf. as whole statements to the entirety of these works: Charles Bonaventure Crowley, Aristotelian-​Thomistic Philosophy of Measure and the International System of Units (SI): Correlation of International System of Units with the Philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas, ed. Peter A. Redpath (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996); D.Q. McInerny, Philosophical Psychology, rev. ed. (Elmhurst Township, PA: The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, 2016).

224 Morgan virtually any page will provide examples. For instance, in Analects, Confucius says, “the progress of the superior man is upwards; the progress of the mean man [xiao ren] is downwards.”33 (The exercise of virtue was key to this progress “upwards”—​a directional marker that, of course, can mean “toward Heaven” just as easily in ancient Chinese as it can in modern English. Confucius held that divination was the key to the exercise of virtue, attunement of the mind to the will of the gods. Thus, we find Confucius repeating a saying of the people of the south: “ ‘A man without constancy cannot be either a wizard or a doctor.’ Good! Inconstant in his virtue, he will be visited with disgrace. … This arises simply from not attending to the prognostication.”34 Legge here translates as ‘prognostication’ the character which means divination or divining the will of spirits or the gods, and translates as ‘wizard’ the character which means the shaman, or the attendee to the gods able to discern their will and even channel their voice. While Legge sees this ability as a healing art, and part of the ranking system of ancient China, much more sense exists for us to take this phrase for what it means elsewhere: a fully religious activity through which, properly done (by divining and understanding the will of the gods), a person may attain to virtue. A human being requires sincerity (cheng) to be good, and rusticity and remoteness in the past were helpful in overcoming duplicity and straightforwardly doing what was upright.35 This free interplay of the human and the divine informs the charity and humility that Confucius also preached: The just man is solicitous of the poor; he privileges virtue itself over any fruit it may bring; is to love the truth more than just know it; and, he is literally born for uprightness. For the just man, to lose uprightness is an even greater disaster than death.36 Confucius’s two key early interpreters, Mencius (372–​289 bce) and Xunzi (aka Xun Kuang, 310–​235 bce), reflect the emerging tension in Confucius’s world between authoritarian substitutes for organic religious belief, and the person-​centered idea of good-​naturedness, which Confucius attempted to implicate within a milieu of religious freedom and the pursuit of the greater good as a spiritual ideal. Broadly oversimplified, Mencius held that human nature was basically good, Xunzi that it was basically evil; but Confucius was neither Mencius nor Xunzi. Confucius was, like Socrates, someone who took the existence of the gods for granted, who sacrificed as required and with 33 34 35 36

Confucius, Analects, 14.24. Confucius, Analects, 13.12. Confucius Analects, 11.1. Confucius Analects, 11.1; 6.3; 6.20; see also 6.28; 6.18; 6.17, respectively.

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sincerity of heart (compare Socrates’s last words of the Phaedo, advising us to remember sacrifice “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. Pay it and do not neglect it.”),37 and whose policy of personal cultivation was not seen by its advocate to be inimical to the religious life of his community. Confucius lived in a religious world, albeit one undergoing enormous cultural and political change. Confucius attempted to repair the breach between the State and the individual, and between the individual and the gods, by calling on each person to become the best he could be (have greatest intensive quantity, highest quality) in free response to his spiritual makeup and to the divine voice of conscience and of the deities themselves. 4

The Personalism of Confucius

The métier of Confucius was to strive for the noumenal freedom of virtuous action within a human life, living as a human being ought, and eventually achieving communion with the ways of old, when men and gods lived in harmony and hearts were tranquil in the cosmos overseen by Heaven and all the spirits subject thereto (tianxia; all under Heaven). It was in striving for interior perfection, intensive quantum, spiritual, greatness; or, as Confucius put it, to become a gentleman, to be a virtuous striver on his way to becoming a junzi (superior man), that Confucius’s Nicomachean approach (making virtue into habit of the soul and slow-​turning of the heart to higher things, and up to God) unfolded. As an example of the personalism of Confucius (calling to mind the personalism of St. Francis of Assisi and of St. John Paul ii, for this is a personalism at once ethical and spiritual, seeking to do the right thing by our fellow human beings by doing the right thing by God), consider this remarkable passage from the Analects:



Book xx. Yâo Yüeh. Chapter 1 (1) Yâo said, “Oh! you, Shun, the Heaven-​determined order of succession now rests in your person. Sincerely hold fast the due Mean. If there shall be distress and want within the four seas, the Heavenly revenue will come to a perpetual end.” (2) Shun also used the same language in giving charge to Yü.

37 Plato, Phaedo, 118a.

226 Morgan





(3) T’ang said, “I, the child Lî, presume to use a dark-​coloured victim, and presume to announce to Thee, O most great and sovereign God, that the sinner I dare not pardon, and thy ministers, O God, I do not keep in obscurity. The examination of them is by thy mind, O God. If, in my person, I commit offences, they are not to be attributed to you, the people of the myriad regions. If you in the myriad regions commit offences, these offences must rest on my person.” (4) Châu [i.e., Zhou] conferred great gifts, and the good were enriched. (5) “Although he has his near relatives, they are not equal to my virtuous men. The people are throwing blame upon me, the One man.” (6) He carefully attended to the weights and measures, examined the body of the laws, restored the discarded officers, and the good government of the kingdom took its course. (7) He revived States that had been extinguished, restored families whose line of succession had been broken, and called to office those who had retired into obscurity, so that throughout the kingdom the hearts of the people turned towards him. (8) What he attached chief importance to, were the food of the people, the duties of mourning, and sacrifices. (9) By his generosity, he won all. By his sincerity (xin), he made the people repose trust in him. By his earnest activity, his achievements were great. By his justice, all were delighted.38

The term Legge translates elsewhere as God is ‘di,’ but in this case, it refers to the highly unusual appellation huang huang hou di (emperor). As Legge explains, the person addressing this augustly named God is T’ang, founder of the Shang dynasty;39 and the prayer is uttered upon T’ang’s having overthrown the Xia dynasty, in particular Huang Chieh (Jie), “the tyrant, and last sovereign of the [Xia].”40 King Jie [Chieh] of Xia was remembered by the subsequent Shang as a man of utter depravity and debauch. Under Jie, the Xia, it is said, had lost their right relation to Heaven, and had defiled themselves in the inhuman indulgence of their base instincts.41 38 39 40 41

James Legge, The Four Books, 350–​351. James Legge, The Four Books, 351. James Legge, The Four Books, 351–​352. On the emergence of states in China, see Sarah Allan, “Erlitou and the Formation of Chinese Civilization: Toward a New Paradigm,” Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 2 (May, 2007), 461–​496; Li Liu, “State Emergence in Early China,” Annual Review of Anthropology 38 (2009): 217–​232; David S. Nivison, The Nivison Annals: Selected Works of David S. Nivison on Early Chinese Chronology, Astronomy, and Historiography (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018);

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Significant for the chief purpose of this chapter is that T’ang speaks to God directly, and that he entrusts the judgment of the sinners of the Xia, namely Chieh (Jie) and his (presumably corrupt) ministers, to God, while conversely taking upon himself the sins of his own people, asking that the masses not be held responsible for T’ang’s sins, but that the sinful offenses of the masses “rest on my person.” This fits perfectly with the rest of the passage, in which Yâo informs Shun, “the Heaven-​determined order of succession now rests in your person,” and that Shun should “sincerely hold fast the due Mean.” The area “within the four seas” could come to “distress,” and, as numbers four through nine make clear, this distress would be the result of the leader not having embodied and manifested justice as was his duty. This is ren: accountability to God even unto death. This is the Confucian ideal, the great idea of religion and freedom for Confucius. When things go badly, the people “[throw] blame upon me, the One man.”42 Shun, by the same token, conferred rule on his successor, Yü the Great, also telling him that kingship was in his person and the peace and prosperity of the realm depended upon his, Yü’s, adherence to the will of God.43 Also highly significant is that number six in the passage quoted above should emphasize that the good sovereign “attend[s]‌to the weights and measures.” Doing this, and examining the laws and restoring discarded officers, leads with logical consistency to “the good government of the kingdom [taking] its course.”44 This is an indication of the interior state of a thing, an implicit argument that interior, qualitative (intensive-​spiritual) greatness accords with the workings of society at large. When the ruler is properly measured against God and Heaven, when the person is within the cosmos in his or her right place and is cooperating with the divine will sincerely, with a pure heart (that is, when body and soul are aligned and the human person is as he or she should be, as he or she was created and endowed), it logically follows that the ruler should want to bring the same good measure to bear on the kingdom, setting the commerce of the people, rooted as it ultimately is in God’s justice, to rights with the right measures and weights. The human person becomes, in this way, a kind

Rowan K. Flad, “Divination and Power: A Multiregional View of the Development of Oracle Bone Divination in Early China,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 3 (June 2008): 403–​ 437; Horst J. Helle, “Oracle-​Bones: The Mandate of Heaven,” in China: Promise or Threat? A Comparison of Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 42 James Legge, The Four Books, 350–​351. 43 This personalism is also why, on the death of Yen Yüan, Confucius cries out, “Alas! Heaven is destroying me! Heaven is destroying me!” Analects, Book xi, 8; cf. Isaiah, 6. 44 Legge, The Four Books, 350–​351.

228 Morgan of measure of all things.45 When the human person is rightly disposed toward creation and the creator, then an orderly society naturally flows from it: “the good government of the kingdom takes its course.”46 In many ways, this emphasis on the individual, acting human person as the one, measure, who takes the initiative, moving toward God by simultaneously traversing the recent centuries, littered with bad governments and unworthy rulers, back to the time, in civilizational memory, when people were in good fellowship with God, helps overcome some of the debates over mind-​ body dualism in the Confucian tradition. For example, David L. Hall and Ames attempt to affect a leveling of the individual within the community and of the human community with the divine thus: In our previous discussion of the person as irreducibly communal we noted that the importance of an individual is a function of his or her extension into and/​or integration with other selves. In this context we wish to indicate how this relationship between importance and personal extension provides grounds for the association in classical literature of ‘sage’ [sheng, which Hall and Ames gloss as a creative listener, an active and open communicator] and ‘spirituality/​divinity’ (shen). Pai hu-​t’ung states, “the reason why the sage alone is able to foresee the future is because he shares in the concentrated essence of the spirits.” The etymology of this term, shen, is suggestive of the extending, integrating, and enriching that the sage brings to his relationships with other aggregate selves. The character is constituted of the radicals, shih, ‘to display,’ and shen, ‘to stretch,’ ‘to extend,’ ‘to guide.’ If we understand the sage’s extension and integration as being the source of meaning in the world, it is not difficult to explain the fact that shen means both human spirituality and divinity, and that it is frequently associated with the rhyming t’ien, commonly rendered ‘Heaven.’ That is, as a person exercises himself as a source of meaning, he moves toward divinity. Further, this extension and integration implicates the whole: as his particular

45

This is also the significance of the “rectification of names” doctrine; see, e.g., Confucius, Rongo to Kōshi no jiten [An encyclopedia of Rongo and Koushi], trans. Ezure Takashi (Tokyo: Taishukan, 1996), 29. Hall and Ames take a completely different view, however; see Hall and Ames, Thinking Through Confucius, 261–​275; see also, Peter Makin, “Ideogram, ‘Right Naming,’ and the Authoritarian Streak,” in Ezra Pound and China, ed. Zhaoming Qian 120–​142 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Crowley, Aristotelian-​ Thomistic Philosophy of Measure. 46 Legge, The Four Books, 350–​351.

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focus (te, given by Legge as Virtue) intensifies, man and heaven become one (t’ien-​jen ho-​yi).47 The key term here is te, and the key phrase is “a person exercises himself as a source of meaning.” Elsewhere, Hall and Ames explain te as a three-​element character comprising: ch’ih ‘to move ahead’; a second element which most etymologists take as a representation of the human eye; and hsin, the ‘heart-​and-​mind.’ The eye and heart-​and-​mind elements would suggest that the unfolding process of te is disposed in a particular direction. It is the transforming content and disposition of an existent: a self-​construed ‘arising.’48 By no means is reading te in this way axiomatic. For example, self-​construed arising is the basis of Ames and Hall’s, and many other scholars’ conception of the ancient Chinese world as being a pre-​Cartesian milieu without distinction between inner and outer, I and not-​I, ātman and brahman. The next, deeper etymology that Ames and Hall offer fits best with the passage from the Analects quoted above. In this etymology the sovereign takes the affairs of the country onto its shoulders. As a priest of the people before an august and omnipotent God, the sovereign offers a prayer of supplication and puts his heart into place (after which the affairs of the kingdom fall likewise into line and the ‘myriad things’ go smoothly in good order). Hall and Ames write: It is general scholarly opinion that the character te . .. . is a later variant of the character te* … (at times found as chih …). This earlier alternative form of te is constituted by chih, commonly used in its derived sense as ‘straight,’ but perhaps better understood in its more fundamental meaning of ‘to grow straight without deviation’ in the context of organic issuance. The organic dimension of chih is underscored by its cognates, chih, ‘to sow,’ and chih, ‘to plant.’ The heart-​and-​mind element in this variant character would again contribute a sense of disposition to the basic meaning of organic germination and growth. The Shuo-​wen has a separate entry for the variant te* …, taking advantage of the homophonous cognate te** …, ‘to get,’ in defining it as ‘to get from oneself within and from others without.’ Finally, of some philological significance is the fact

47 48

Pai-​hu-​t’ung, 6/​23/​7b cited in David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking through Confucius, 260. Hall and Ames, Thinking through Confucius, 218.

230 Morgan that both te and the earlier variant te* belong to the phonetic category deriving from chih, ‘to grow straight without deviation.’49 The divinely striving personalism of Confucius easily bridges the divide between the anti-​Cartesianism of Hall and Ames and the representationalism of the Analects passage quoted above. It is not that virtue is self-​created, virtuous people creating virtue as part of their environmental existence and in response to the community around them, but that they strive toward God via the sages, arriving to the divine will by the very human route of ancestors and predecessors stretching back, and up, to a golden age of lived harmony with Heaven. Confucius lived at a time comparable, in his mind, to the unraveling of the Xia under King Jie. He advocated a morality of the person that could conquer, by example and moral force (spiritual greatness of the virtuous gentleman acting on a world in some way able to receive the rectifying power of personal rectitude, standing on the shoulders of historical giants) the un-​righteousness of the present age, alchemically transforming it into a better image of the gods or of God, through the efforts of the individual seeking the divine. This is the great idea of religious freedom for Confucius that, as part of a great historic enterprise, one great of character can reach up (shen) to God (shen), rightly disposing the community along with him in an expanding symphonics of order. The homophony between shen, meaning extension, and shen, meaning spiritual elevation or divinity, is thus more than coincidental, but rather indicates that the human undertaking of striving for betterment takes part in the divine nature of expanding and rising, being above the mundane world of average men. As Aquinas says, the job of the wise man is to order.50 Confucius argued essentially the same thing, that the weights and measures made honest, the ‘rectified names rectified,’ the world would be in good shape, and the distance between the good past and the untoward present would be lessened, and eventually overcome. When Yâo gives the mantle of rule to Shun, and so on to Yü, and their prayers are models for those of T’ang, who, in his person, overthrew the evil ruler, Chieh (Jie), and reset the balance (the weights and measures of divine justice) with God. It is not that there is no spiritual ‘above’ in ancient China. Far from it. Good people seek God, and, in being transformed by this

49

Bernard Karlgren, “Glosses on the Book of Documents,” 120, cited in Hall and Ames, Thinking through Confucius, 218. 50 Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. i, chap. 1.

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seeking, bring up along with them other people of good will, and so on, until the whole State is transformed. Viewing the junzi as a cultivator of spiritual greatness, intensive quantity, reunites the disparate elements of the Confucian gentleman that have filtered through to modernity. Confucius was religious and concerned with worldly government. He was devoted to an orderly State and to the freedom of the individual. Indeed, as seen in the quote above from Book xx. Yâo Yüeh, order of the State, civic order, depended radically on the individual person—​this aspiring junzi and not that aspiring junzi, or humankind in general—​doing the will of Heaven in a particular way, which could only be done by the free human actor comprising both political acumen and religious piety. Thus, the virtues of Confucius were a kind of Thomistic perfection of Aristotelian explications, the virtuous man perfecting his inner self and the outer person over time, in a Nicomachean way, daily striving to attain to a perfection that was not mere human happiness, but positively doing what God requires. As Mencius said, long after the death of Confucius, “in antiquity, men sought to cultivate the nobility of Heaven, from which the nobility of man duly followed.”51 The cosmos is not readily divisible into Heaven and Earth, with Earth being able to get along without the guidance of Heaven. For the Confucian cultivator of character, becoming a better person meant precisely doing the will of Heaven, and that, in turn, was precisely a matter of religion done freely, sincerely, the great idea of religion and freedom in Confucius’s ancient China. 5

Conclusion

The great idea of religion and freedom in Confucian antiquity was the perfection of the individual human person as a free actor responding to the will of God, Heaven, glossed in ancient Chinese as tian, di, shang di, or other designations clearly denoting a transcendent force, which called out to each human person and required a personal, freely made response that encompassed one’s interior disposition and outward behavior. What holds true for human persons in one place holds true for human persons in another, and across time. Confucius, like Aristotle and Aquinas, was divinely created and called to return to God, a capacity entailing free choice and the possibility of growth in virtue—​becoming a junzi—​by means of sacrifice and devotion—​ren, 51 Mencius, Gaozi 16.

232 Morgan conformity to God’s will, the highest attainment of humanity in ancient China and modernity. Advances in archaeology and historiography support this conclusion, but much more important is that the philosophy and religious outlook of ancient China and the rest of the world are broadly convergent, not contingent upon race, ethnicity, or cultural setting; but fundamentally the same East and West, then and now. The human person is a specific kind of being, and our specific difference from other living beings is that we have the capacity intellectually and volitionally to unite with our Creator. Through religious striving and cultivation of free actions rooted in and caused by free choice of the will, a human person is able to deliberately submit to the Creator’s will. The perfect cultivation of freedom and character and the concomitant refinement of both self and society in God is what constitutes the synthesized great idea of religion and freedom for Confucius, who was simultaneously philosopher and religious exponent par excellence.

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­c hapter 13

The Great Ideas in the Noble Buddhist Doctrine of Liberation Adam L. Barborich Abstract This chapter argues that the Great Ideas are integral to Mortimer J. Adler’s Great Books Movement in much the same way that the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are integral to Buddhism. Both use ‘Great’ and ‘Noble’ to point toward human excellence. For Adler, the Great Ideas are the metaphysical and moral concepts out of which Western civilization developed. They are the main topics in an ongoing great conversation that shapes Western culture. Precisely because these Great Ideas are great, insofar as they point toward human excellence (virtue), they ought not be considered the exclusive property of the West. Instead, as Adler recognized, they should be utilized in the analysis of other cultural traditions. This chapter uses two of Adler’s Great Ideas, freedom and religion, to analyze Buddhism as it is encountered in the early Indian Buddhist texts. It asserts all human philosophy and culture, including that of Buddhism, is ultimately based in religion, thereby making religion the greatest of Adler’s and the Buddha’s Great philosophical and cultural ideas.

Keywords Buddhism –​philosophy –​culture –​freedom –​ideas –​texts –​karma –​religion –​virtue –​wisdom

The Great Ideas are integral to Mortimer J. Adler’s Great Books Movement in much the same way that the Four Noble Truths (cattāri ariyasaccāni) and the Noble Eightfold Path (ariya aṭṭhangika magga) are integral to the doctrine (dhamma)1 of the Buddha. The Great Ideas Movement and Buddhism use the 1 This chapter relies on the early Buddhist texts in the Pāli Canon (Tipiṭaka; traditional term for the Buddhist scriptures). This is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. Unless otherwise noted, italicized words inside parentheses are in the Pāli language. All material

© Adam L. Barborich, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_015

238 Barborich words ‘Great’ and ‘Noble’ as concepts that point toward human excellence in thought, word, and deed. For Mortimer J. Adler, the Great Ideas are the philosophical (metaphysical and moral) concepts out of which Western civilization developed. They are the main topics of discussion in an ongoing great conversation that has shaped the history of Western culture.2 However, it is precisely because these Great Ideas are great, in so far as they point toward human excellence (virtue), that they ought not be thought of as the exclusive property of the Western world. Instead, as Adler recognized, they should be utilized in the analysis of other cultural traditions. In this chapter, I will use two of Adler’s Great Ideas (freedom and religion) to analyze the Buddha’s doctrine as it is encountered in the early Indian Buddhist texts. For Adler and the early Buddhists, the ultimate end of human life was to attain excellence and, thereby, secure human happiness. Adler followed in the venerable tradition of the Greek philosophers who believed that the life of contemplation was the most excellent of lives. For this reason, he focused on identifying the Great Ideas as ideal topics of contemplation and conversation. His chief aim was to be able to apply insights gained from this exercise to the social and political realms of Western and global culture and foster world peace. On the other hand, the Buddha taught a noble doctrine that was primarily geared toward transcendence. The Buddha was a man of his time, firmly embedded in the Indic culture of the age, and given his religious vocation, it is unsurprising is that he had comparatively little interest in the political order. Instead, the contemplative life of the early Buddhist monastics was dedicated to a regimen of ascetic training designed to lead its practitioners toward the highest level of spiritual greatness. The importance of freedom in the attainment of human excellence cannot be overstated. The possibility of attaining excellence presupposes freedom to orient personal acts, intentions, and volitions toward attainment of virtue, especially wisdom. In this sense, freedom is a means to the end of human happiness. For this reason, the main goal of Buddhist doctrine is to attain: (1) bliss,3 from the Pāli Canon and commentaries comes from Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka 4.0 (CST4) (Vipassana Research Institute, Mumbai, 2006); see http://​www.tipitaka.org/​cst4. All references to the Pāli Canon will be footnoted in the standard Pāli Text Society format; abbreviations can be found at https://​dsal.uchicago.edu/​dictionaries/​pali/​frontmatter/​abbreviations .html and http://​www.palitext.com/​subpages/​P TS_​Abbreviations.pdf. Specifically, books cited in this chapter are as follows: A: Aṅgutta; D: Digha 1a; Dhp: Dhammapada; M: Majjhima-​ nikāya; S: Sanyutta1; Th: Theragāthā; and Ud: Udana. 2 Tim Lacy, The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 47. 3 Th 545.

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(2) liberation,4 and (3) release.5 All these are said to be characteristics of ultimate freedom.6 It is said that by following the Buddha’s path, a Buddhist is able to become sovereign over one’s own life and to accept complete personal responsibility for one’s actions in body, mind, and spirit. Adler makes a distinction among three different types of freedom: natural, acquired and circumstantial.7 Natural freedom is simply the species-​specific endowed ability to choose. Acquired freedom, in the sense of moral freedom, is a habitual willingness to will what one ought to will, which is the type of freedom that comes from acquiring prudence and freeing oneself from bondage to the lower appetites and passions.8 Adler’s thinking in regard to these two types of freedom is essentially the same as that of the Buddha. However, Adler differs in making the third aspect of freedom, circumstantial freedom, more of a primary area of focus as a political concern than did the early Buddhists. Adler defined circumstantial freedom is as being able to do as one pleases without undue external restraint. The early Buddhists also addressed this issue of circumstantial freedom, especially in the doctrine of karma; but Adler was primarily interested in circumstantial freedom as political liberty, whereas the Buddha and his order of wandering ascetics had far less interest in mundane political concerns. Nevertheless, freedom is crucial to human excellence in all three of these aspects. Natural freedom is that which makes a human being a person rather than an automaton; acquired freedom reveals new dimensions of existence to the human being (such as the aesthetic and moral dimensions), thereby setting the person apart from the beasts; and circumstantial freedom recognizes the external limitations placed on human freedom in the world and attempts to address the concerns that are raised by this fact. In the socio-​political realm, Adler considers the limits of freedom to depend upon the ability of the principle of justice to measure and regulate liberty. This allows liberty to be harmoniously maximized with other goods, such as 4 D.iii.249; S.iii.189. 5 Dhp 23 & 126; Ud 8. 6 M.i.298 refers to the immeasurable or limitless deliverance of mind, yāvatā kho āvuso appamāṇā ceto vimuttiyo, akuppā tāsaṃ cetovimutti aggamakkhāyati, of which the unshakeable deliverance of the enlightened arahant, one who has attained nirvana (nibbāna), is said to be the best. In this sense, the summum bonum of early Buddhism is a state of ultimate and irreversible freedom from bondage. 7 Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty Liberty Equality Justice. Ideas We Judge By. Ideas We Act On (New York: Collier Books, 1984), 140–​142. 8 Mortimer J. Adler, The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1955 ©1952), 995.

240 Barborich equality. Considered as an immaterial good, Adler maintains that justice is an unlimited good. By this he means that we can never seek nor have too much justice. In contrast, being conceptually wider in nature than justice, freedom and equality are not chiefly moral terms. Considered in their natures, they are morally neutral. In and of themselves, they cannot be taken to be principles for determining healthy and unhealthy moral and political choices. To determine this, we have to modify these abstract nouns according to the moral and political qualifier justice. When we do this, Adler claims we achieve the right measure of human greatness in health attainable in a socio-​political order: everyone has as much liberty as justice allows and as much equality as justice requires, and no more than that.9 This idea of justice as a regulating principle, a measure of psychological health that sets limits upon freedom and serves as a sign (semiotic indicator) toward other, qualitatively higher and unlimited principles, with the Great Idea of religion being the most important of these. Religion’s nature orients human life toward perfection as evinced in the form of a supreme God, or transcendental principle of cosmic order. Adler correctly indicates that this means that we cannot reasonably think of religion as blind or emotional belief or as the acceptance of some metaphysical first principles. Instead, properly conceived, we must think about religion chiefly as a rigorous and complete way of life: Religion to the man of faith usually means much more than the acceptance of a creed. It means acts of piety and worship, recourse to prayer, the partaking of sacraments, the observance of certain rituals, the performance of sacrifices and purifications. It means rendering to God what is His due, obeying His commandments, beseeching and gaining the help of His grace whereby to lead a life which shall seem worthy to him. When religion is conceived as nothing more than a set of beliefs which men have adopted, it is restricted to one part of life. It does not qualify every other part of it. It does not demand that inner devotion and external conduct constitute the practice of a man's belief if he is to avoid hypocrisy.10 As a way of life, religion takes on the nature of a measure of the totality of a person’s experience and becomes the most universal genus for all other species of human inquiry, thought, and behavior. In this sense, the entirety of human culture is rooted in the religious impulse and in semiotic mythico-​religious

9 Adler, Six Great Ideas, 137–​139. 10 Adler, The Great Ideas, 588.

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narratives. All human cultures are first transmitted to children through stories, not by way of abstract philosophical thinking and logic. The first and most enduring of these stories, the “examples of heroism or adventure embodied in narrative tales such as sustain the cultures of humankind and constitute the substance of the enculturation of children in all societies,” are mythico-​ religious narratives.11 Therefore, in a very real sense, all human philosophy and culture is ultimately based in religion, thereby making religion the greatest of Adler’s Great philosophical and cultural ideas. 1

The Noble Doctrine of Early Buddhism

Evidence of a profoundly religious culture existing in the Indian subcontinent stretches into pre-​history, and many of the oldest extant religious texts originate in India. Due to the emergence of the Upaniṣads and new, non-​Brahmanical, ascetic movements known collectively as the śramaṇa schools, by the time of the Buddha the dominant religious tradition of Vedic Brahmanism was being contested. These śramaṇa schools are named for the Sanskrit term meaning one who toils, labors, and exerts oneself, with this definition being applied to the religious mendicants who sought a new type of spiritual greatness. Buddhism was only one of these śramaṇa schools, coexisting with Jainism, Ājīvikism, and other non-​Brahmanical sects that are best described as eternalists, materialists, and nihilists/​skeptics. The śramaṇa schools were a reaction against the ritualism of the Brahmanical tradition, which is thought to date back to the Vedic period. In Brahmanism the ritual activities and sacrifices of Brahmins were seen as contributing to the divine activity of maintaining and ordering the cosmos. The rituals and sacrifices were seen as a link between the human microcosm and the divine macrocosm in a type of analogical reciprocity. Due to the internalization of this type of ritual activity over time, the entirety of human life eventually came to be viewed as a divine enterprise in which humans are engaged with the divine caring for, maintaining, and perpetuating the existence of the cosmos. This attitude toward ritual activities eventually comes to encompass all human activities. When this type of human activity becomes ethicized, we then see the emergence of the Indic doctrine of karma. The Sanskrit word karma (kamma) means action, particularly action of a ritual variety. As the idea of divine ritual activity came to encompass all 11

John N. Deely, Basics of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 2.

242 Barborich significant human action, this activity was ethicized and became soteriologically significant as it was incorporated into rebirth eschatologies as karma. This appears to have been a distinct feature of Indic thought;12 and the ‘ethicization’ of the rebirth cycle seems to have occurred in response to the increasing complexity of Indic societies during the transition from small-​scale villages to urban settlements.13 It is also commonly thought that the swift, and usually merited, punishment in the here and now, which occurs in small-​scale societies, tends to become less certain during periods of urbanization. This means that the interests of justice demand recompense in the cycle of rebirth.14 And this is usually seen to be accompanied by the presence of some sort of a universalizing religion.15 The end result of this process is what is known as a karmic rebirth eschatology. In karmic rebirth eschatology a person’s present existence is deemed to be at least partially determined by the quality of this person’s actions in previous lives. Likewise, a person’s actions in the present are said to influence one’s future lives. This idea of karmic rebirth in an eternal cycle of continuity (saṃsāra) emerges from the aforementioned reciprocal relationship between human and divine activity in perpetuating existence. Since the universe exists and existence cannot come from non-​existence, it logically follows that the universe exists eternally. Likewise, since human beings exist in a reciprocal relationship with the universe, if someone is self-​evidently existing and existence cannot come from non-​existence, it logically follows that he or she must also exist eternally (although not necessarily in human form). And if someone’s activity contributes to the preservation and maintenance of the cosmic order eternally, it follows that all activity is significant, in that it may be beneficial or detrimental to the harmony of the cosmos. Therefore, if all significant human action contributes to cosmic disorder or cosmic order, then human beings have moral responsibility for their own activity and will experience the consequences of their actions as part of their reciprocal relationship with the universe. However, this notion of karmic rebirth becomes a serious problem for śramaṇa schools that accept the possibility of finding an escape from continuous rebirth in saṃsāra. If karmic activity is perpetuating existence on a cosmic

12 Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 14–​18. 13 Gananath Obeyesekere, “The Rebirth Eschatology and Its Transformations: A Contribution to the Sociology of Early Buddhism,” in Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions, ed. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 138. 14 Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma, 75. 15 Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma, 77.

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scale in the macrocosm, then karmic activity must also perpetuate one’s existence in the microcosm. This means that all karmic activity, even activities that are beneficial to cosmic harmony, only serve to keep one immersed in the eternal cycle of birth and death. This idea of being trapped in an eternal cycle of birth, death, rebirth, and re-​death leads to an existential problem of dissatisfaction, because this type of eternally conditioned and mutable existence is ultimately unsatisfactory. This unsatisfactoriness (dukkha)16 arises due to: (1) the presence of ordinary pain and repeated death, and (2) the inherent lack of permanence and stability in existence. This means that if any possibility of escape from this problem of existential dissatisfaction exists in the cycle of continuity, it will involve stepping outside of the cycle. However, if all significant human activity is karmic activity that serves to perpetuate existence, then the only way to escape the cycle of continuity is to stop all activity. In this way, a religious practitioner hopes to expiate past karma (often by way of austerities) by allowing its results to come to fruition, while at the same time avoiding the creation of any new karma through the use of immobility practice. Many ascetic sects, most notably the Jains, sought liberation from saṃsāra through this path of non-​action. However, the Buddhists did not. Instead, the Buddha reframed the idea of karma by equating it with the intention (cetanā) behind action instead of applying it to action itself. In this way, liberation from the cycle of continuity can be attained through the purification of one’s own intentions. This emphasis on the purification of the mind is part of the Buddha’s famed middle path (majjhimāpaṭipadā). Instead of engaging in severe austerities and immobility practice to expiate past karma, the re-​definition of karma as intention turns Buddhist asceticism into an ethical practice; a practice in which a Buddhist endeavors to remove unskillful/​unwholesome intentions (akusala kamma) and replace them with skillful/​wholesome intentions (kusala kamma).17 Thus it becomes possible to purify one’s consciousness while acting in the world.18

16

The Pāli word dukkha has a wide range of meanings and can be translated as angst, anxiety, despair, distress, dread, insufficiency, pain, suffering, unease or unsatisfactoriness. Unsatisfactoriness is often used as the preferred translation because the common translation of dukkha as suffering in English is thought to carry with it a sense of extreme hardship and pain, whereas the word dukkha can refer to anything from excruciating physical pain to a seemingly trivial worry. 17 A.i.58; M.i.415–​16. 18 Dhp 183.

244 Barborich Four types of karma exist in the Buddha’s teaching: (1) dark karma with dark results, (2) bright karma with bright results, (3) dark and bright karma with dark and bright results, and (4) neither dark nor bright karma with neither dark nor bright results leading to the destruction of karma.19 This fourth type of karma is the product of the perfectly purified consciousness. It is essentially an intention directed at abandoning the other three types of karma that produce results in saṃsāra. Karma that is neither dark nor bright does not produce results in saṃsāra because, “unlike that of the first three categories, this karma is selfless.”20 “Only the deed done with complete disinterest or equanimity (uppekkha) bears neither good nor bad consequences. Only in such deeds, moreover, has the tendency to cling to the deed and its consequences been overcome. Nibbāna [the supreme bliss of nirvana] can be attained only when kamma is no longer produced and when past kamma has been consumed.”21 Thus, the Buddhist can free himself or herself from bondage in the cycle of continuity by actively purifying personal consciousness instead of by following a path of non-​action. This is accomplished by following the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path until a person becomes an arahant (fully liberated noble disciple), someone enlightened by direct knowledge of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. The arahant is a noble disciple of the Buddha who has attained this ultimate freedom, the supreme bliss of nirvana (nibbāna). The Pāli word for noble (ariya) is used in many contexts in early Buddhism. It signifies an arahant or other spiritually advanced disciples of the Buddha. The arahant is one who has attained enlightenment,22 (1) the ‘noble happiness’ of the renunciant when compared to the ignoble happiness pursued by worldly men,23 and (2) has come to direct knowledge of the heart of the Buddha’s doctrine—​the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha famously declares that the entirety of his doctrine consists in the Four Noble Truths of suffering (dukkha); origination of suffering (dukkha-​samudaya); cessation of suffering (dukkha-​nirodha); and the Noble Eightfold Path leading to the cessation of suffering.24

19 A.ii.230–​32; M.i.389–​91. 20 James Paul McDermott, Development in the Early Buddhist Concept of Kamma/​Karma (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2003), 24. 21 McDermott, Development in the Early Buddhist Concept of Kamma, 56. 22 Noble liberation (ariyā vimutti) is referred to in S.v.223; and foremost noble liberation (ariyā paramā vimutti) in D.i.174. 23 A.i.81. 24 D.i.83–​4; M.i.140; S.v.421–​22; S.v.437.

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While Buddhist modernists have often portrayed the Buddha as if he were a secular, political liberal who just happened to appear 2500 years prior to the ascendancy of Western Enlightenment liberalism, use of the term ‘noble’ in the early Buddhist texts appears to indicate that the Buddha’s thinking is far more hierarchical and traditional than is commonly portrayed in contemporary Buddhist studies. As John Powers elucidates in A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex and the Body in Indian Buddhism, the Buddha is consistently portrayed in Indian Buddhist literature as the ideal man in his wisdom, conduct, and physical form: The Buddha is described as the paragon of masculinity, the ‘ultimate man’ (purusottama), and is referred to by a range of epithets that extol his manly qualities, his extraordinarily beautiful body, his superhuman virility and physical strength, his skill in martial arts, and the effect he has on women who see him. Many Buddhist monks are depicted as young, handsome, and virile, and the greatest challenge to their religious devotion is lustful women propositioning them for sex.25 This is radically different from the “androgynous figure of modern imagination … the ascetic meditation master and philosopher” who is presented by many contemporary scholars, but it is quite in keeping with the figure of the Buddha as a man who was born a noble prince in the warrior caste (Kṣatriya) and who was destined to become either an all-​conquering universal monarch (cakkavatti) or that most excellent of all beings, a fully enlightened Buddha.26 Of course, given the doctrine of karma, as a Bodhisattva (Bodhisatta) or Buddha-​to-​be, the texts recount that Prince Siddhārtha had already lived as a universal monarch and as a god in numerous past lives.27 The purport of such descriptions is clear: the authors wished to establish that the Buddha experienced every possible exalted situation and spent many lifetimes at the very apogee of power and divine embodiment within cyclic existence. Thus when he decided to renounce the world, he did so with full knowledge of exactly what he was leaving behind. Also related is the notion that birth as a buddha transcends all mortal conditions, even those of the highest gods.28 25

John Powers, A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex and the Body in Indian Buddhism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1. 26 Powers, A Bull of a Man, 2. 27 D.ii.186–​99. 28 Powers, A Bull of a Man, 27.

246 Barborich To become a Bodhisattva, a person must spend countless lifetimes perfecting one’s wisdom and virtue while accumulating karmic merit. Eventually, someone who has accumulated enough merit to be born human during the lifetime of a Buddha, can, in the presence of that living Buddha, make a binding resolution to endeavor become a Buddha in the future. If this resolution is accepted by the living Buddha, the one making the resolution becomes a Bodhisattva. Reportedly Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha of the present age, made his own resolution in front of Dīpaṃkara Buddha four incalculable (estimated at approximately 10140 years) aeons (~1063 years) and one hundred thousand kalpas (each kalpa estimated at about 16 million years) ago. This gives us an example of the way time is considered in early Buddhism, which it must be remembered, unfolds in an eternal universe. It also shows how in the countless births following his resolution, the Bodhisattva devoted himself to meritorious works as he began to acquire the thirty-​two marks of a ‘great man.’29 While other men of great karmic merit may also acquire some of these marks of a great man, it is said that only a Buddha or a universal monarch will have all thirty-​two marks. The Bodhisattva must take his final birth as a man into a worthy family of the caste of warriors (Kṣatriya) or priests (Brāhmaṇa). The final birth of the Bodhisattva also requires a mother of the highest quality. In the case of Siddhārtha, this was Queen Māyā of the Śākya clan. Because nothing greater can be attained in her current life after giving birth to one who will become a fully enlightened Buddha, the mother of the Bodhisattva dies within a week of giving birth. The birth is said to be painless, with the babe emerging undefiled from the womb. Prince Siddhārtha is said to have emerged from his mother’s right side while she reached up to touch a flowering blossom in the garden at Lumbini in present-​day Nepal. Upon exiting the womb Siddhārtha is recorded as being bathed in two streams of water (one hot and one cold) which spontaneously appeared from the sky. The infant then took seven steps in a northerly direction while being supported by the gods and declared loudly, “I am chief in the world, eldest in the world, foremost in the world. This is my last birth. I will never be born again.”30

29 The Lakkhaṇa Sutta, D.iii.142–​79, details all thirty-​two marks and the deeds needed to obtain them. While the combination of characteristics described would seem to make the Bodhisattva a rather odd-​looking being, the list of characteristics is meant to demonstrate that the virtue of the Bodhisattva is not merely an internal psychological state, but is also evidenced ontologically in his physical appearance. 30 D.ii.15.

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Given what we know about the influence of karma in the process of rebirth, that someone who becomes a Buddha is born as the ideal man, the epitome of human excellence, is unsurprising. The final birth of the Bodhisattva is reported to be the final result of having spent countless lives perfecting wisdom and virtue until he finally comes to embody all possible signs of mental, physical and spiritual greatness in a human being. To attain Buddhahood is to attain physical and spiritual perfection, and the early texts are not reticent about this fact: One of the recurring tropes of Buddhist modernism, particularly in Theravada countries, is the notion that in the Pali canon the Buddha is ‘only a man,’ but even a cursory examination of those texts that describe him indicates that this is not the way in which the tradition viewed him. The most modest descriptions of the Buddha credit him with superhuman strength and wisdom; physical skills surpassing those of all other people; a perfect physique; and the ability to perform a range of magical feats, including levitation, walking on water, passing through solid objects, wading through earth as though he were in water, mentally creating bodies that can travel anywhere in the universe, telepathy, clairaudience, and clairvoyance. His wisdom and power transcend those of gods, and the Indian deities … [who] appear at various junctures in his life, proclaim his complete superiority to them, beg him for instructions, and declare themselves his disciples. He is referred to by a range of epithets that highlight his manly qualities, including ‘ultimate man’ ‘great man,’ ‘manly,’ ‘leader of men,’ ‘best of men,’ ‘god among men,’ and ‘possessing manly strength.’ Other epithets emphasize his royal heritage and sovereign power: ‘lord of bipeds,’ ‘king of kings,’ ‘king of the dharma,’ ‘best in the world,’ victor in battle, decisive leader in battle, crusher of enemies, god above all gods, and unsurpassed tamer of men. Another recurring trope links the Buddha with various powerful or ferocious animals: bull of a man, fearless lion, lion-​hearted man, savage elephant, and stallion.31 This should make clear that early Buddhism is no precursor of twenty-​first-​ century egalitarianism, nor is it a passive retreat from life. Instead, it is best conceived as a habitual way of living and a doctrine of heroic struggle to be undertaken by a noble ascetic who aspires to spiritual perfection. Noble 31 Powers, A Bull of a Man, 25–​26.

248 Barborich Buddhist monastics aim at victory over suffering and the conquest of every realm of existence by coming to direct knowledge of reality as it is in its totality (yathābhūtaṃ). This type of supreme struggle has often been downplayed as Buddhism has grown into a universal religion with hundreds of millions of lay adherents; but need exists to remember that early Buddhism was a way of life preached to a small elite of monastics who renounced their homes for lives of homelessness.32 They undertook rigorous ascetic training to perfect themselves for the sake of attaining the supreme spiritual goal. As reported in Buddhist texts, the newly enlightened Buddha hesitated to teach the eternal truth that he uncovered under the Bodhi Tree because he thought that the dhamma was unlikely to be understood by the vast majority of human beings. The great god Brahmā Sahampati is recorded as descending from the heavens to beg the Buddha to teach the dhamma for the sake of the few who were deemed capable of understanding. These happy few are compared to the lotus flower that emerges from the stagnant water of a pond, rising above the water without being soiled by it, rising above the other loti that are content to live immersed in the water.33 Among the elite few who have accumulated the karmic merit necessary to be born human, to live in the time of a living Buddha, and who possess the ability to understand his deep and profound teaching, still more qualifications exist that must be met to be ordained into the Buddhist monastic order: The Buddha indicated on several occasions that he only wished to admit exceptionally gifted men and women to his order. He explicitly forbade ordination of sexual deviants and hermaphrodites, and the Monastic Discipline contains a long list of other prohibited types, including people whose hands or feet had been cut off (a common punishment for theft) or whose ears, nose, fingers, nails, or tendons had been severed (other common legal punishments); dwarves; hunchbacks; people with goiters; people with brands on their skin (indicating that they were slaves); people who had been whipped; those who had crooked limbs; and those who were very ill, deformed, lame, paralyzed on one side, blind, mute, or deaf. These prohibitions are not unique to the Buddhist community but reflect societal norms for world renouncers. The Monastic Discipline provides no reasons for these discriminatory prohibitions, but reading between the lines in the Pali canon these

32 D.i.62–​63. 33 M.i.167–​70; S.i.136–​38.

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exclusions are clearly based on cultural assumptions prevalent at the time. Religious mendicants were highly regarded, and sincere aspirants to liberation were viewed as exceptional individuals whose moral behavior and generation of merit in past births had placed them in a life situation in which they could pursue the religious path. Such people should also be marked with the physical signs of past karma, including a beautiful body and excellent health.34 Although many Buddhist modernists portray the Buddha as a reformer who rejected caste, little evidence exists that the Buddha opposed the caste system in socio-​political affairs.35 It is clear that caste is not considered a barrier in matters of ordination or to the pursuit of spiritual excellence,36 because a disciplined renunciant from the lowest caste will exemplify the spiritual excellence of a Brahmin to a much greater degree than a hereditary Brahmin who does not pursue the holy life.37 This is why all distinctions of caste are lost when someone is accepted into the Buddhist monastic order.38 In their spiritual potential, the Brahmin and the Śūdra are equals; however, this is clearly a matter of spiritual equality, not of any normative declaration of socio-​political equality. The Buddha, as the embodiment of spiritual excellence, also clearly sought noble disciples of the highest quality who were willing to follow his example. This was the example of a royal prince who renounced his throne to attain the highest spiritual reward, a reward that transcends even the heavenly realms populated by the gods. The Buddhist order was not founded for timid people who wished to escape from mundane concerns. It was established for those who sought the highest degree of spiritual perfection: the freedom of an arahant who stands in front of the world unafraid, because he is the sovereign master of himself and of the world. The monk renounces, not out of disgust as such, but out of disdain for an existence that is ultimately unsatisfying. This

34 Powers, A Bull of a Man, 85. 35 David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 94; 101; and Y. Krishan, “Buddhism and Caste System,” East and West 48, no. 1 (1998): 41–​55. 36 M.ii.128–​29. 37 The most famous formulation, na jaccā vasalo hoti na jaccā hoti brāhmaṇo, kammanā vasalo hoti kammanā hoti brāhmaṇo (Not by birth is one an outcaste; not by birth is one a Brahmin. By deed one becomes an outcaste, by deed one becomes a Brahmin), is found in Sn 142. 38 A.iv.202.

250 Barborich nobility of spirit leads these aspirants toward another dimension entirely—​a transcendent dimension of ultimate freedom. 2

Freedom in Early Buddhism

As I have already noted, the Buddhist path is one of action and freedom. The Buddha shunned the doctrine of inactivity when he redefined karma as intention. He also explicitly condemned the doctrines of the annihilationist materialists and the determinism of the Ājīvika fatalists. Indeed, because it was completely deterministic and denied the efficacy of human action and all moral responsibility, the Buddha went so far as to refer to the Ājīvika doctrine as the worst teaching to be found among all ascetics.39 This early Buddhist defense of free will is in line with Adler’s conception of natural freedom as the freedom to choose between alternatives. And, in a manner that resembles Adler’s idea of circumstantial freedom, the Buddha also recognizes that natural freedom is necessarily subject to external limitations. Many of these limitations are produced by one’s actions in past lives, the consequences of which are carried over into one’s present existence through karma. However, the Buddha does not teach karmic determinism. He teaches that karmic influences help to shape personal circumstances and, thereby limit natural freedom. In early Buddhism, past karma primarily determines where and to whom one is born and the length of one’s life. That the circumstances of one’s birth are decisive for the rest of one’s life is self-​evident. And, while some Buddhists would reject the length of one’s lifespan being determined prior to birth, as is the case in many Hindu traditions, most people would still accept that the circumstances of one’s birth may also have a profound effect on one’s life expectancy. In this way, the Buddhist theory of karma acts as an explanation for the diversity found among human beings. It explains why some children are irascible and others are mild-​mannered; why some people are beautiful while others are ugly; why some are born into wealth and others into poverty. The doctrine of karma provides a coherent explanation for any ostensible accident of birth; and it can account for why any particular being is thrown into existence at any particular time, in any particular place, and in any particular set of circumstances. While it is clear is that past karma is powerful, it is also relatively unimportant in early Buddhism, except as an explanatory device. Crucial in early 39 A.i.286–​87.

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Buddhism is the karma that one creates in one’s current life: the karma over which one has control by virtue of each person’s natural and acquired freedom. For the Buddhist, karma is intention; and it is self-​evident that one’s intentions inevitably shape one’s dispositions. These, in turn, inspire mental and physical actions that become habits. In this way, all of a person’s actions, including mental acts of intention (karmic activities) actively create the human personality. Given the Buddhist doctrine of not-​self (anattā), which denies that there is any permanent, immutable and substantial metaphysical self underlying individual experience, this is a crucial concept. In short, in early Buddhism, karma is not something that adheres to a person. Karma is that person. This is evinced by the fact that if a person cultivates vicious intentions, then that person will be inclined toward vicious dispositions. Someone who has vicious dispositions will tend to act viciously. Someone who acts viciously cultivates a vicious character; and, because these karmic dispositions are carried across lives, someone who possesses a vicious character is likely to incur unpleasant consequences in this life and an unpleasant rebirth in the next life. This is why it is often said in regard to karma that one is not punished for one’s deeds, instead, one is punished by one’s deeds. In the same way, a person who constructs a virtuous character will be inclined toward virtuous acts and will likely reap pleasant rewards in this life and a pleasant rebirth in the life to come. This means that early Buddhist karma cannot be considered deterministic. A person is always completely free to start reshaping the overall quality of present and future lives (although this necessarily occurs within the broad limits imposed by one’s karmic inheritance and the external circumstantial forces beyond one’s control in nature). Therefore, if a person uses this freedom to cultivate a habitual willingness to will what one ought to will, that person will attain wisdom and virtue, or what Adler refers to as acquired freedom. This acquired freedom has the most profound impact both on this life and the next life for the Buddhist. However, the nobility of the Buddhist doctrine lies in the fact that the Buddha did not simply stop by teaching a way to avoid unfortunate rebirth and to secure pleasant rebirth, whether as a human being or as a god. Although the Buddha undoubtedly agrees that a pleasant rebirth in a Heavenly realm is preferable to an unpleasant rebirth in a Hell realm, he also insists that neither is comparable to the supreme morality, supreme wisdom, and supreme freedom of nibbāna.40

40 D.i.174.

252 Barborich Note that, while many early Buddhist discourses exist about the proper behavior of kings, just governance, and the conduct of laypersons in society; the reason that, in contrast to Adler, the Buddha is far less interested in these aspects of freedom is that the Buddha’s sights are set on a higher freedom that transcends the world. Adler and the Buddha were both able philosophers, but the Buddha was more than a philosopher. He was the founder of a religion, a noble religion that teaches people to rely on personal power in order to free themselves from every bond. 3

The Noble Eightfold Path and Nibbāna

The summum bonum of the Buddha’s teaching is nirvana (nibbāna), the liberation from suffering and freedom from bondage in the cycle of continuity. In early Buddhism there is no higher goal than attaining nibbāna in one’s present lifetime. This is to be accomplished by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which is made up of the following eight practices: (1) Right view (sammā-​diṭṭhi) (2) Right intention (sammā-​saṅkappa) (3) Right speech (sammā-​vācā) (4) Right action (sammā-​kammanta) (5) Right livelihood (sammā-​ājīva) (6) Right effort (sammā-​vāyāma) (7) Right mindfulness (sammā-​sati) (8) Right concentration (sammā-​samādhi) This path is the Buddha’s fourth Noble Truth: the path to the cessation of suffering. The eight components of the path to freedom are traditionally grouped into three categories: morality (sīla), mental discipline (samādhi), and wisdom (paññā). Right speech, action and livelihood are practices pertaining to moral virtue. These include abstention from lying and abusive, divisive, or idle speech (right speech); abstention from killing, stealing, and illicit sexual relations (right action); and abstention from dishonest employment (right livelihood). Right effort, mindfulness, and concentration are practices pertaining to mental discipline. These include undertaking exertions to avoid evil and to do good while cultivating and maintaining one’s practice on the path (right effort); remaining focused on the body and mind in order to set aside any attachments stemming from greed, hatred, and delusion (right mindfulness); and obtaining advanced meditative states (right concentration). Right intention and right view are the Buddhist practices pertaining to wisdom. A Buddhist must have confidence in the Buddha’s message and an intention to follow the Buddha’s

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teaching and embark upon the path to free oneself from greed, hatred, and delusion (right intention), however, the full actualization of wisdom only occurs when the Buddhist attains direct experiential knowledge of the Four Noble Truths (right view).41 Only at this stage does the Buddhist attain nibbāna and release from suffering. For the Buddhist, craving (taṇhā), whether it be craving for sense pleasures, continued existence, total annihilation, permanence, the unconditioned, and so on, is the proximate cause of all suffering.42 Cravings lead to attachment, or clinging (upādāna), which manifests itself as an attachment to other people, things, wrong views, habits, and so on. Because every object to which a person clings and to which a person becomes attached is impermanent (anicca), the attachments that craving produces are at the root of suffering. Therefore, due to their unsatisfactory nature, to cling to these transient objects is to suffer. Whatever the cause of suffering, all species of suffering are rooted in the fact that the person chiefly aspires to a world in which peace, permanence, and stability exist, while actually existing in an unsatisfactory, conditioned world of impermanence and non-​substantiality. The Buddhist response to this state of affairs is to eradicate craving and any resulting attachments, thereby eradicating suffering through the cessation of the causes of suffering. The problem of how to eliminate craving leads the Buddhist to the idea of purifying one’s consciousness in order to perceive all things as impermanent, non-​substantial, and ultimately unsatisfactory. By understanding the way in which phenomena arise and cease a person comes to see that all craving is ultimately rooted in ignorance of reality. Eradication of this ignorance will result in cessation of craving, clinging, and suffering; in the cessation of the entire cycle of birth, death, rebirth and re-​death in the realm of saṃsāra. Burton sums up the Buddhist solution in this way: “If one’s craving, attachment, and hence suffering are caused by one’s failure to understand the way things really are, then it seems that the solution to this predicament must be to understand things as they actually are. Ignorance must be replaced by knowledge.”43 The way to attaining the liberating knowledge of nibbāna is found by following the Noble Eightfold Path until one comes to know the Four Noble Truths.44 However, this is not a theoretical knowledge. To understand the Four Noble 41 D.ii.91. 42 D.ii.308. 43 David Burton, “Knowledge and Liberation: Philosophical Ruminations on a Buddhist Conundrum,” in Philosophy East and West 52, no. 3 (2002): 328. 44 D.ii.91.

254 Barborich Truths as liberating knowledge, the Buddhist has to have direct, experiential knowledge of the origination and cessation of suffering. Since cessation of suffering is attained by way of the Noble Eightfold Path, the liberating knowledge of the Buddha can never be merely theoretical. The practice of following the path is intertwined with the chief aim of acquiring the liberating knowledge of the Four Noble Truths; and these are obtained by following the path to its completion. In this sense, much like in the well-​known Catholic theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Buddha’s liberating knowledge is a synthesis of practical and theoretical knowledge.45 This liberating knowledge is approached gradually and one’s karmic proclivities and corruptions of character (āsava)—​especially the three unwholesome roots of greed, hatred and delusion (akusala-​mūla)—​are increasingly diminished as someone follows the path. When nibbāna is finally attained, the enlightened disciple is in possession of the totality of the Buddha’s liberating knowledge; and all of that person’s karmic proclivities, taints, and corruptions are eradicated. This is the state in which someone has attained ‘the deathless supreme security from bondage’;46 the ‘peaceful, fumeless, untroubled, wishless’;47 and the ‘supreme bliss.’48 In early Buddhism, the focus is placed on attaining nibbāna in this life. Upon attaining enlightenment, because the noble disciple has destroyed all the defilements that kept him in bondage, the arahant knows with certainty that no further rebirth in the realm of saṃsāra will exist. The enlightened Buddhist experiences the direct knowledge of having obtained the freedom of release.49 Nibbāna is this state of liberation, of absolute freedom: the state of being unbound from this world or any other. Nibbāna is freedom from dissatisfaction and rebirth, it is absolute truth and ultimate reality. 4

Conclusion

Contemporary apologists for Buddhism tend to claim that Buddhism is not a religion, preferring to refer to it in ambiguous terms as a culture, philosophy, or

45 D.ii.122–​23. 46 Nanamoli Bhikkhu and Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, 3rd ed. (Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2005), 259–​260. 47 Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya (Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2012), 229. 48 Dhp 204. 49 Dhp 126.

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way of life. However, Buddhism is really all of these and something else qualitatively beyond them. This is why Buddhism is rightly included in the category of world religions, because it asserts religious truths that can be rationally debated, which inform the explicit orthodoxies and orthopraxies semiotically manifested in the general behavior of a religious community. This is why Adler also views Buddhism as a religion.50 Furthermore, the essential properties of Buddhism are religious in that they are geared toward the rational improvement of human life and the attainment of moral and spiritual excellence. Unfortunately, while Adler correctly recognizes that Buddhism is a religion, his knowledge of Buddhism is minimal. He is apparently unacquainted with Indian logic.51 He also appears to have been largely unaware of the interaction between Hellenistic philosophy and the Buddhist religion in Bactria, an interaction that predates the birth of Christ, let alone the Christian religion. Also, I find a tendency in him to engage in an explicitly orientalist reading of all ‘Far Eastern’ philosophy as idealistic, or as an example of ‘fuzzy mysticism’ (in contrast to the ostensible clear-​headed rationality of the West). This betrays a superficial acquaintance with the philosophies and religions he criticizes. However, these specific, glaring deficiencies in Adler’s knowledge of particular religions do not detract from the value of his generic conception of religion as a complete way of life grounded in universal moral and metaphysical truths, with particular aspects of these truths being unequally reflected in particular religious communities. This is a context within which early Buddhist doctrines can be judged and compared with other religions. And, in this context, that the early Buddhist religion is a manifestation of spiritual greatness should be evident to any unbiased, knowledgeable observer.

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Six Great Ideas. Truth Goodness Beauty Liberty Equality Justice. Ideas We Judge By. Ideas We Act On. New York: Collier Books, 1984. isbn: 9780020720201. Adler, Mortimer J. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1955 ©1952). oclc: 910651 Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Collier Books, 1990. isbn: 9780025002258. 50

Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth: An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Collier, 1990), 48. 51 Adler, Truth in Religion, 70.

256 Barborich Bhikkhu, Ñāṇamoli, and Bhikkhu Bodhi. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya. 3rd ed. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2005. isbn: Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2012. Burton, David. “Knowledge and Liberation: Philosophical Ruminations on a Buddhist Conundrum,” Philosophy East & West 52, no. 3 (2002): 326–​345. stable url: https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​1400322. Deely, John. Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. isbn: 9780253316769. Krishan, Y. “Buddhism and Caste System,” East and West 48, no. 1 (1998): 41–​55. stable url: https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/​29757366. Lacy, Tim. The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. isbn: 9780230337466. McDermott, James Paul. Development in the Early Buddhist Concept of Kamma/​Karma. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2003. isbn: 9788121502085. McMahan, David L. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. isbn: 9780195183276. Obeyesekere, Gananath. Imagining Karma: Ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. isbn: 9780520936300. Obeyesekere, Gananath. “The Rebirth Eschatology and Its Transformations: A Contribution to the Sociology of Early Buddhism.” in Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. Edited by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. isbn: 9780520039230. Powers, John. A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex and the Body in Indian Buddhism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. isbn: 9780674033290.

­c hapter 14

Mortimer J. Adler

From Annoying Philosophical Bastard to Great Educational Reformer Imelda Chłodna-​Błach Abstract This chapter discusses Mortimer J. Adler’s proposal for contemporary educational reform and its relation to the Great Ideas of freedom and religion. It reviews Adler’s education at Columbia University, his relationship with John Dewey, liberal arts education, Great Books, and liberalism in education, politics, and culture.

Keywords Aristotle –​psychology –​commonsense –​philosophy –​education –​humanism –​ truth –​taste –​Adler –​religion

This chapter chiefly considers and aims to show how Mortimer J. Adler’s youthful introduction to the Great Ideas of freedom (a moral concept) and religion (a metaphysical concept) in John Erskine’s famous Honors Program at Columbia University as a cooperative, cultural enterprise dramatically changed his entire life. In so doing, it will place special emphasis on how Adler’s exposure to great Columbia University teachers conversing about great ideas, combined with an unquenchable natural desire on his part to know the highest truth about, and order, everything caused a radical psychological and behavioral transformation in him from being what, in Book 7 of his celebrated Republic, Plato describes as a philosophical bastard into becoming the greatest educational reformer in twentieth-​century America and, perhaps, the world. Mortimer Adler was one of those rare, revolutionary, great thinkers who appears suddenly to pop up out of nowhere within a culture at the precise time a civilization is in dire need of someone to restore to its general population and educator’s cultural health, sanity, especially related to a precise understanding of the nature of education and education’s proper aim. Born on December 28, 1902 in the lower Eastside of New York City into a non-​religious,

© Imelda Chłodna-​B łach, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_016

258 Chłodna-Błach culturally Jewish family, this prolific writer and thinker died on June 28, 2001, in San Mateo, California.1 As a professional philosopher, he was known mainly as a follower and promoter of the teachings of Aristotle whose best interpreter he had considered to be Saint Thomas Aquinas. Adler’s higher educational interests had started at age seventeen when he read Plato’s dialogues. His interest in studying great ideas and reading great books in general as a Western educational canon had started in 1920 when he was accepted as a sophomore with a full-​tuition scholarship into Columbia College’s General Honors program, which, previously, John Erskine had established there. From the time he had first read Plato, more than anything in life, Adler had wanted to become a philosopher in the tradition of Socrates. After working in the General Honors program, more than anything, he desired to become a philosophy professor at Columbia University. However, due largely to his annoying behavior as an undergraduate, he was rejected entry into Columbia’s Graduate Philosophy Department. Still hoping someday to become accepted into the Columbia Philosophy Department, since he had been accepted into the Psychology Department and invited by John Erskine to teach in the General Honors program, in 1923, Adler moved on to study there and, eventually, secure a PhD in Psychology in 1928 from Columbia. Nevertheless, modern psychology was area of study he never much enjoyed, one that, along with modern philosophy and education, he hoped someday globally to transform for the better. During his time as a graduate Psychology Department student, Adler said he spent most of his reading and writing devoted to philosophy and psychology. He reported that his experience studying in both academic worlds had convinced him that most contemporary philosophical problems (including some of his own), especially regarding pursuit of truth, had been caused by modern behavioristic psychologists attempting to understand psychological problems without referring them to the human mind. In relation to this issue, in his philosophical autobiography, he talks about a philosophy paper entitled “A Survey and Discussion of the Philosophical and Psychological Aspects of the Problem of Meaning,” which, during his junior year at Columbia College, had pretty much gotten him exiled from entry into the graduate Philosophy Department. In it Adler remarked that familiarity with John B. Watson’s “simplistic behavioristic psychology prompted” him “to concoct a theory of meaning which 1 William Grimes, “Mortimer Adler, 98, Dies,” The New York Times (29 June 2001); Michael Novak, Review of Haves without Have-​Nots by Mortimer J. Adler, The Christian Century 109 (Apr 1992): 435; Ralph Mc Inerny, “Adler on Freedom,” https://​radicalacademy.org/​adlerarticlemcinerny.html.

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tried to explain it without reference to acts of the human mind, the folly of which I did not discover for many years—​not until I had become a much better student of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Locke than I was on first acquaintance with their works. In fact, it was not until the late thirties, when I read a little essay on signs and symbols by Jacques Maritain, that I was given the ray of light which dispersed my earlier puzzlement about the subject.”2 During this same time period, Adler notes two other events that would have a lifelong impact on him personally and on his professional career as an educator and philosopher: (1) Reading Professor Arthur (Schauffler) Oncken Lovejoy’s 1916 presidential address at the annual American Philosophical Association national conference,3 and (2) some implications related to the nature of truth as a matter of fact that Adler drew from reading this paper.4 Regarding the first event, Adler reports: At the time, I did not appreciate the influence the single paper would exert on the views I was later to form about how philosophical research should be conducted. Nor could I, by the wildest stretch of imagination, have foreseen that when the institute for philosophical research was launched in 1952, I would, in describing the work to be done by the institute harken back to this paper by Lovejoy because of its insistence that philosophy should become a cooperative enterprise instead of continuing to be, as it had been for centuries, a series of solo performances. That idea about cooperative work by philosophers, carried on in the same spirit that leaves scientists to pool their efforts, must have hit me hard at the time, for I find I mentioned it repeatedly and papers that I read before the philosophy club in my junior and senior years.5

2 Mortimer J. Adler, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 40. This essay of Maritain started Adler’s interest in semiotics, a subject in which Maritain is well known, also, to have first interested John N. Deely. I thank Peter A. Redpath for informing me about the strong influence Alder’s time as a graduate student at Columbia had on his whole professional career; and that, later in life, Adler had explicitly recognized this and was quite surprised by it. 3 Arthur O. Lovejoy, “On Some Conditions of Progress in Philosophical Inquiry,” The Philosophical Review 26, no. 2 (March 1917): 123–​163; reprinted in Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1911–​1920, ed. Richard T. Hull, 223–​253 (rth: Tallahassee, FL, 2013). 4 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 39. 5 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 39.

260 Chłodna-Błach Regarding the second event, looking back years later on this paper, and hoping that what he learned from it might help gain him entry into the Columbia University Graduate Philosophy Department, re-​reading four talks he had written as a student, Adler remarked about Lovejoy’s essay, “I am astounded to discover how many of the ideas that I would otherwise have thought took hold of me in much later years had already seized my mind and taken shape in it.”6 About these four talks, Adler says, “When I first turned them up, I was inclined to dismiss these early papers as juvenile efforts (and juvenile they are in their rhetoric excesses), but on a closer examination I have found that they contain, not just the seeds, but some elaborations of ideas that have preoccupied me in recent years—​in fact have been developed in books that I have written since my sixtieth birthday.”7 One such idea relates to the difference between rationally debatable matters of truth and non-​rationally debatable matters of taste. Among other things, Adler, states that implications he had started to see flowing from his reading Lovejoy’s presidential address had prompted him to write for presentation before Columbia’ Philosophy Department a paper entitled “Love and Logic in Philosophy, Being a Defense of the Sentiment of Rationality.” About this talk, Adler says his main concern at the time had been the contrary opposition between: (1) those who understood “philosophical systems as work of the imagination, great intellectual poems each presenting its own weltanschuung,” and (2) those who held the contrary opposite understanding of “philosophy as dealing piecemeal with problems that can be solved in much the same way that scientists of theirs.”8 The first case appeared to Adler to be that “logical criteria for assessing the truth or falsity of particular philosophical propositions were as irrelevant as they would be for the sentences in a poem.” The he second case conceived of the logical criteria for assessing philosophical truth to have an affinity with contemporary physical science, and not with poetry: “that the truth and falsity of a philosopher’s statements, sentence by sentence, would have to be considered. One would not then be satisfied with attributing some kind of ‘poetic truth’ to his world vision as a whole.”9

6 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 39. Adler composed these papers as an undergraduate and graduate student to present before the Columbia Philosophy Department during his junior and senior years at Columbia College and as a first-​year graduate student in the Psychology Department. 7 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 39. 8 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 40–​43. 9 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41.

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Beyond this, in his paper, Adler indicated that, if a philosophical proposition involves no question about truth “no need to worry ourselves about how philosophy can be made cooperative” exists because, “borrowing, the thought, if not the words, from Professor Lovejoy’s presidential address,” Adler added: their conception of philosophy as a cooperative enterprise … implies a conception of philosophy as a system of propositions, the truth of which philosophers are cooperatively attempting to demonstrate. … The composition of a piece of music is usually not a collaborative effort; nor the painting of a picture, nor the writing of a poem. … It would be just as ludicrous to imagine a poem that William Wordsworth, and Algernon Swinburne would attempt to produce together, as to conceive a philosophic system being produced cooperatively by William James and F. H. Bradley.10 Expressing his anguish in what he called “anguished language,” Adler reports that what bothered him most at the time “was the fact that if philosophy were to have no commerce with truth and philosophy in the ordinary sense of those terms”—​that is, as he would later repeatedly argue, as matters of truth rooted in commonsense experience—​“there could be no such thing as philosophical knowledge, for how can there be knowledge divorced from truth?”; and, even worse, “Why bother to become a philosopher or even a student of the subject?”11 He then cited the opening chapter of his 1965 monograph The Conditions of Philosophy,12 in which he listed “the very first condition prerequisite to philosophy’s being a socially respectable enterprise in which one may engage with some measure of intellectual self-​respect is that it achieves knowledge of the same sort that science achieves and that is recognized as knowledge by the general public.”13 Immediately after so doing, he says he repeated this insight in of his magisterial The Idea of Freedom,14 which was “the first published work of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1958.”15 Then he adds that what struck 10 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41. 11 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41. 12 Mortimer J. Adler, The Conditions of Philosophy: Its Checkered Past, Its Present Disorder, and Its Future Promise (New York: Atheneum, 1965). 13 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41, emphasis added. 14 Mortimer J. Adler and Institute for Philosophical Research. The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958). 15 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41.

262 Chłodna-Błach him most strongly about his youthful paper, “Love and Logic in Philosophy” was “the passion expressed in this student essay,” which begins with the words, “I have lived for almost twenty years. For the last three, I have been more and more intensely interested in philosophy”;16 and then, after depicting the position that differing philosophical views are nothing but the manifestation of different temperamental biases, the essay went on to bewail and bemoan the reduction of philosophy to being a matter of taste rather than a matter of truth. Wearing his heart on his sleeve, Adler wrote, “if I really thought that truth and falsehood never occurred among philosophical positions, I would cry bitterly a while for the hours I had wasted and the pains I had suffered come then wipe my eyes, whistle tune and come and dig ditches or study sociology.”17 Having expressed with youthful bravado his (humanistic/​poetic-​like) love for truth as a matter of taste, Adler says, he had immediately set it aside as if it had no relevance to the philosophical truth he was trying to defend: that, as a matter of truth, just like propositions in physical science, philosophical propositions must be disjunctively true or false.18 Instead, while he did not explicitly realize this at the time, he had started to discuss a crucial psychological problem related to a proper understanding of philosophy in the classical philosophical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas as a habit of the soul of a rational animal: a free, personal act involving the person as an integrated, psychological whole (as a species of behavioristic organizational psychology in which emotions, especially love and fear—​such as love of wisdom and awe-​inspiring fear [sense wonder]) play a crucially important philosophical role. On the contrary, he says: I admitted that they (apparent matters of taste) did and that, therefore, it was necessary to dredge them up from their dark recesses and expose them to the light of day by confessing them, as I was here confessing my passion for truth and for logic. This would help to exorcise them; and that done, one could then get on with the serious business of using logic to get out the truth about the matters under consideration, even the truth about where the truth or falsity is attainable and philosophical thought; for, as I argued in the paragraph immediately following my emotional outburst, to deny that truth and falsely are attainable and philosophical

16 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41. 17 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41–​42. 18 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 42, emphasis added.

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thought involves a theory of truth which is itself a philosophical theory that must be either true or false.19 At this precise moment, while he did not explicitly realize it at the time, youthful, Mortimer J. Adler had started to develop self-​understanding as a missionary in the philosophical tradition of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. He was starting to become a man on a mission, someone beginning to form conceptual self-​understand in relation to a philosophical mission statement: to change in America and the world the then-​prevailing understanding of the nature of philosophy from a matter of un-​scientific taste to a matter of scientific truth. That this is so is evinced by Adler in 1965 when he says he was re-​reading his essay, “Love and Logic in Philosophy” and reflecting on a great psychological depression he had experienced as a youth upon leaving a theater after having witnessed George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch.20 Then, as never before, did Adler “clearly and fully appreciate the significance of Plato’s banishment of poets”21 (among whom, beyond lyrical writers, Adler had included composers of all species of imaginative literature, including novels and plays). Being only storytellers (expressing truth in the form of a matter of taste), he said to himself society exempts them from having to have their claims measured by scientific standards of truth and logic. As a result, they can repeatedly and publicly lie and pay and suffer no societal repercussions. In fact, very often, they, and the lies they tell, are celebrated as highest forms of cultural, especially philosophical, political, and civilizational excellence! In 1965, Adler recalled that, in the mid-​1930s, while he was delivering a lecture series at Chicago’s Institute for Psychoanalysis, the Institute’s head, Dr. Franz Alexander, gave him free of charge what Adler called “a portmanteau psychoanalysis of his controlling neurosis.” He told Adler, “Mortimer, the trouble with you is that you are masochistic toward truth and reality.”22 Reflecting on Alexander’s opinion, Adler could see that his passions for truth and order, even when he was young, were strong enough that they could validly be viewed in the way Alexander suggested. Adler agreed with Alexander’s diagnosis that described Adler as neurotic, even anal-​erotically compulsive, 19 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 42. My addition in parenthesis. 20 George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947). 21 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 42. 22 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 42.

264 Chłodna-Błach saying that it sprang from “a compulsion toward orderliness that insists upon classifying things and putting everything into its proper place and keeping it there. It is interesting to note that Adler’s self-​description is almost a verbatim quote of what Aquinas says toward the celebrated beginning of the Summa contra gentiles, where he offers a definition of someone who is wise: “in the naming of things, they are called ‘wise’ who put things in their right order and control them well.”23 Therefore, if it is valid to judge that Adler was compulsively neurotic, he was in good company. At the same time, Adler was unapologetic for his approach. He maintained that, with the possible exception of one psychoanalyst at that 1934 meeting—​who did not react to his presentation “with unconcealed emotional tantrums”—​he thought the psychoanalysts of his time and those at the meeting were sadistic toward truth and reality; and “having lifted these emotional undercurrents out into the open, they should all push them aside and engage in the serious business of conducting their discussion rationally and logically, to discover the truth about points on which they differ.”24 While still an undergraduate student in the Columbia College, during the academic year 1922–​1923, Adler decided to submit another paper to read at a meeting of the Columbia College Philosophy Club. Having the hopes of someday being able to teach philosophy, he decided to title this paper, “The Student: A Dialogical Narrative Considering Aims and Methods in the Teaching of Philosophy.” Re-​reading the beginning pages of this paper in 1965 caused Adler to realize that the chief aim and content of the paper was psychological and self-​reflective. In it, he was chiefly thinking about himself and his future. He says: The paper dealt mainly with conflicts that I now realize had troubled me during most of my career—​the tension between philosophy as every man’s business and philosophy as a technical subject of interest only to professionals, the tension between philosophy as something useful to every student in the class and teaching it as if the only game were to train another generation of professional philosophers, and the tension between devoting one’s time and energies to being a teacher of philosophy and concentrating one’s efforts on becoming a philosopher one’s self. I did not realize how very recent had been the emergence of university philosophy departments, professors of philosophy and professional

23 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, chap. 1. 24 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 42–​43.

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philosophers, though I should’ve known that most of the great English thinkers … were not teachers of philosophy, certainly not professors in departments of philosophy. The glaring exceptions would be found in German universities of the 18th and 19th century. … And unfortunately it was the German model that came to the veil almost everywhere in the 20th century.25 Adler reports that his citation of opposite understandings of philosophy by Lovejoy and a little-​known Charles Edward Garman of Amherst College caused him to be psychologically torn between two, opposite, chief aims for studying philosophy—​specifically to become a university professor who trains future generations of students to: (1) become philosophy professors, members of college or university philosophy departments, as a means of getting a job and continuing the profession of philosophy in college and university philosophy departments, or (2) teach philosophy as a means for improving the life of those being taught.26 As Lovejoy had posed the opposition, should the chief aim of a philosophy professor to be to edify, or verify?27 In reply to this great question, Lovejoy responded: This duality in the prevalent conception of the philosopher affects his work more variously and profoundly then is often realized. … It is well by excellence in the prophetic or poetic character than by excellence in the scientific character that a philosopher has been, and often still is, likely to gain academic reputation and influence. … If philosophy is to be treated as a science still in the making; if it is agreed that it is worthwhile for society to maintain a small body of men for the purpose of ascertaining, with as much care and exactitude a procedure as possible, what can be known about certain of the largest and most difficult questions that present themselves to the human intellect,—​then society must not confuse this purpose with the wholly different one, that a furnishing impressive, imaginative, edifying, emotionally stirring popular discourses about the same problems.28

25 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 44–​45. 26 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 45–​46. 27 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 45–​46. 28 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 45–​46.

266 Chłodna-Błach According to Adler, the extreme differences between these two chief pedagogical aims did not jump off the pages to him in Lovejoy’s paper or Garman’s (someone about whom Adler said, “had no books to his name” or “published a single article in a philosophical journal”).29 Adler says he had come across Garman’s name when he discovered a festschrift volume commemorating his many years as a teacher of philosophy at Amherst College. In that volume Adler discovered a letter written by “Garman to G. Stanley Hall, president of Clark University in which Garmin describe his aims and methods as a teacher of philosophy to undergraduates most of whom were not going to become professional philosophers.”30 According to Adler, while both papers had left a profound impression on him, the glaring difference in opposition between the educational aims and methods for teaching philosophy came out to him most clearly in a statement made by one of Garman’s students related to Garman as a teacher: The determining note in Professor Garman’s teaching of philosophy was his conception of philosophy. It was for him not primarily is subject to be studied for its own sake. I might say it was not studied as a subject at all. He took up the teaching philosophy not primarily because of his interest and philosophical problems, because his belief that it afforded an excellent educational opportunity. The end always in view was equipment for life, by leading men to see the fixed stars in the heavens and by enabling them to realize that they were citizens in the universal kingdom of truth. … This then was the first eminent trait of Professor Garman’s teaching: the attempt to teach the student how to weigh evidence, and to arouse in him the conviction that he could do his own independent weighing, and that truth’s ultimate appeal lay in his own mind. In the second place, the student was quickly led to see that philosophy is a tremendously serious business—​not serious in the sense too often attached to it, or being someone remote and well-​nigh incomprehensible to be pursued only in seclusion, but in the sense of being the essential medium for shaping one’s course if one wished for real efficiency as a man and as a citizen. There was never any splitting of hairs on purely theoretic issues; the issues were living. The student felt that the must be solved if he were to go out into the world of action with any confidence or serenity of mind.31 29 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 45. 30 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 45. 31 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 45–​46.

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Regarding resolving the “conflict between the motives of the edifying teacher concerned to cultivate the minds of students and those of the verifying inquiry concerned to advance knowledge in a highly technical field of scholarship,” Adler remarked that, up to 1965, he had not been able to resolve it.32 Before entering the Columbia Graduate Psychology Department as a graduate student Adler had submitted an undergraduate paper to the Dean Columbia University’s Philosophy Department in support of his petition to teach some courses in the Philosophy Department there while he did graduate studies in psychology. Since reading that undergraduate paper had not changed the Dean’s mind, Adler decided he would read a fourth and final paper at a philosophy conference (this time hosted by the Philosophy Department and organized by John Randall) in May 1924, entitled “God and the Psychologists.”33 Unhappily, Adler reports this paper caused him to become a persona non grata in the eyes of the Philosophy Department faculty and Dean. Adler says that, before the meeting, he had: (1) been reading Cicero and Aristotle, and (2) become “impressed by the profound difference between a philosopher for whom human concerns occupy the center of his thoughts and the philosopher for whom man is only part of nature and must be considered in relation to God or to the cosmos as a whole”34—​the difference between the naturalist and the humanist. In the paper, Adler drew comparisons between the approach to philosophy taken by the: (1) naturalist, metaphysician, God–​centered thinkers (with whom, at the time, he personally identified); and (2) the humanist, person-​ centered, pragmatists (someone whom, at the time he read the paper, I suspect Adler had identified in his mind with a conflation of John Dewey and a poet whom, in Book 10 of Republic, Plato would have banished from his ideal city). What Adler failed to recognize, however, was that, in treating Dewey the way he had, he was pretty much behaving in the way that Plato deplored, like a philosophical bastard short on wisdom.35 32 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 47. 33 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 47. 34 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 47–​48. 35 Regarding Plato’s depiction of a youth short on metaphysical wisdom resembling a philosophical bastard, see Peter A. Redpath, “Plato’s Advice about How to Avoid Becoming a Philosophical Bastard: Moving the Problem of the One and the Many to the Problem of Universals,” in A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics: Written in the Hope of Ending the Centuries-​old Separation between Philosophy and Science and Science and Wisdom, vol. 1, Re-​establishing an Initial Union among Philosophy, Science, and Wisdom by Recovering Our Understanding of Philosophy, Science: How Philosophy, Science, Is, and Always has been Chiefly a Study of the Problem of the One and the Many (St. Louis, MO.: En Route, 2015), 91–​125; see also Plato, Republic, 7.515b–​540c, and Gorgias, 549b–​d and 482c–​527e.

268 Chłodna-Błach Looking back on the paper in 1965, while Adler said he could “still half-​ heartedly subscribe to the opening section, which expressed … adverse judgments about experimental psychology and especially about Watson’s brand of behaviorism, a doctrine which has become a little more sophisticated, but not much sounder, in the hands of B. F. Skinner,”36 he found the paper to contain outrageous errors and caricatures of all the philosophers he had discussed. This realization distressed him. One such outrageous error and caricature to which he refers starts in his paper’s concluding section, in which he had aligned recent pragmatism with: (1) “a psychological approach to the problems of human thought and conduct”; (2) and “the prevalence of the genetic fallacy in this approach,” which, he said, accounted for philosophical speculation’s current, “deplorable state.”37 As evidence of the truth of this claim, among other things, Adler quoted the following passage directly from John Dewey’s 1920, Reconstruction in Philosophy: “Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.”38 In reaction to that statement, Adler declared, “were philosophy to follow that prescription, it would die … at the end of its convalescence; and there were ample signs that the denouement was well on the way.39 Adler then referred to John Dewey, who, at the Departmental conference, was sitting two chairs away from him. He claimed that Dewey’s understanding of philosophy in terms of relating to “the problems of men” was philosophically reductionistic, to a point of almost exclusively limiting philosophy’s nature to a “consideration of sociopolitical problems” (that is, to problems of social and political freedom).40 In short, Adler was critical of Dewey reducing all philosophical statements to humanistic, poetic-​like, matters of taste, not matters of truth. To support his claim, Adler referred to the following passage from Dewey’s, Reconstruction in Philosophy, “The task of future philosophy is to clarify men’s ideas as to the social and moral strife of their own day.” Its aim is to become so far as is humanly possible an organ for dealing with these conflicts.”41

36 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 48. 37 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 48. 38 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 48–​49; see John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1920/​2012). 39 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 48–​49. 40 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 49. 41 Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 16.

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Reflecting like a metaphysical Don Quixote attacking a windmill, or Captain Ahab harpooning the Moby Dick, Adler said regarding this passage, “There is certainly nothing of the love of God in this utterance, no sense of the infinite weavings of the cosmos, wherein the human is but a pattern; no impulse to detached contemplation of the non-​human as well as the human, so that the problems of humanity can be envisioned in proportions in terms befitting man’s position in the total scheme of things.”42 After reporting his reading of this paper at the Departmental conference, Adler described Dewey’s reaction: John Dewey seldom raised his voice or gesticulated for emphasis. I doubt if anyone had ever before seen him explode with rage. But on this occasion, annoyed by my contempt for scientific psychology, angered by the general drift of my remarks, and probably irritated by some infelicitous phrasing of the point I was trying to make, he pounded the arms of his chair, stood up, and walked out of the room muttering that he did not intend to sit around listening to someone tell him how to think about God; he would do that in his own way.43 While Adler says that as a result of his treatment of Dewey, he might have become a persona non grata to other members of the Columbia University Philosophy Department, including, especially, Sidney Hook, even though Adler later thought he would have been justified in so doing, Dewey bore Adler no grudge. In fact, Dewey later displayed such a personal and professional graciousness toward Adler that, when Adler’s first book, Dialectic,44 was published three years later, Hook commented that Dewey “went out of his way to write a highly complementary review of [it].”45 And when Hook showed Dewey a critical review of Adler’s book that he was preparing to publish, Dewey smiled at Hook’s review, with which he agreed; but he suggested that Hook had overlooked some good things in Adler’s monograph, and told him Adler “would learn and grow.”46 While, abstractly considered, I agree that Adler was right about Dewey’s flawed and reductionistic understanding of freedom as having no sound metaphysical foundation in reality, and no sound anthropology to make it 42 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 49. 43 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 49. 44 Mortimer J. Adler, Dialectic (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927). 45 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 49. 46 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 49–​50.

270 Chłodna-Błach intelligible to himself or anyone else, considered as a good human being who respected the dignity of the individual person, at this time, Dewey appears to have been far superior to Adler.47 In fact, Adler appears to have recognized this later in life. Hence, in 1965, he said he had changed his spots to some extent.48 By this he meant he had become able to recognize genuine worth in Dewey’s philosophical thought, and praise his revolutionary educational insights, especially in Dewey’s epic Democracy and Education.49 Furthermore, as Adler appeared explicitly to admit decades later, his understanding of the relationship of metaphysics to philosophy at the time was as reductionistic and logically and behavioristically incoherent as Dewey’s! More. It had been chiefly based on a superficial reading and understanding of Aristotle; and, by his own standards of distinguishing matters of truth from matters of taste, his own metaphysically inspired claims were a matter of emotionally held taste as well. He even went so far as to admit that, at this time, he was better equipped to teach contemporary psychology than metaphysics—​his knowledge of metaphysics being admittedly superficial and largely based on his admiration of the teaching style of Columbia’s masterful student of Aristotle, the legendary Frederick J. E. Woodbridge.50 Nevertheless, at least in principle, even decades later, Adler was unwilling to retract one word of what he had said in his paper “God and the Psychologists” (which he remarked could just as well have been in titled “Mortimer and the Psychologists”) about the then-​contemporary discipline of psychology. Beneath the semiotic exterior of the article’s words, he said, lay “a personal confession of” unhappiness having to teach contemporary behavioristic and experimental psychology. Increasingly, he had found doing so less and less

47

Adler had done more than publicly abuse Dewey on this occasion. As is well known, as a student in Dewey’s classes, he went out of his way to repeatedly irritate him. 48 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 50. 49 John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Free Press, 1944/​1966). 50 Regarding his familiarity with metaphysics at the time and his respect for Woodbridge, in 1965, Adler said: “My references to metaphysics were in the nature of reverential gestures rather than signs of intimate contact with its subject matter or principles. My only contact, in fact, had been in a superficial reading of parts of Aristotle’s treatise and in Woodbridge’s seminar on Spinoza and his lectures on the Eleatic philosopher, Parmenides, and on Aristotle. Those lectures were exciting performances by a man who appeared to be the very embodiment of metaphysics when he told us, slowly and ponderously, in a hushed voice, that the primary object of thought was being itself, being qua being, existence as such, and then—​after a long pause and with a nearly imperceptible smile—​the ‘isness’ of whatever is that is”; Adler, Philosopher at Large, 50–​51.

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intellectually rewarding considered in itself and in contrast to teaching philosophy.51 At the time, Adler remarked, he considered experimental, or scientific, psychology to have “very little to contribute to our understanding of human nature of the human mind”; and, by replacing metaphysics as the highest science, was chiefly responsible in that time for philosophy’s miserable state. In short, Adler had correctly attributed philosophy’s “dearth and rottenness” in the first quarter of the twentieth century to the fact that a conflation of the ideas of psychologism and humanism within the idea of being a social scientist had “turned the problems of metaphysics, logic, and ethics over to the anthropologist, the psychologist, and the sociologist.”52 In so doing, they had reduced philosophy properly understood to a matter of taste, not of truth. Such being the case, Adler exclaimed that “no more appropriate time” existed than then “to raise the cry of ‘Back to Spinoza and to the intellectual love of God! Back to Aristotle into metaphysics!’ ”53 1

Some Observations about the Psychological Impact of Adler’s Columbia Educational Experience on His Future Life as a Philosopher and Educator

Whether, toward the end of his life, Adler would have continued to include Baruch Spinoza along with Aquinas and Aristotle in his ‘back to the future’ exclamation, I do not know. However, I am convinced of several things about the psychological state of Mortimer Adler the Columbia University graduate Psychology student. By this time, he had already started, just as he would do later in life, to conceive philosophy, in some way, to be a historical enterprise; and a chief reason Dewey’s teachings had irritated him was because Dewey appeared to him at the time to have no understanding of philosophy’s nature as a matter of truth always and everywhere to require observing its subject as a species of knowing that has to: (1) borrow some of its principles from the qualitatively higher human and social science, philosophical genus, of metaphysics and (2) do so as an essential part of a historical (humanistic) social science, behavioristic psychological enterprise. In addition, Adler appears to me to have been irritated by Dewey’s lack of appreciation of the nature of metaphysics classically understood (the way Aristotle and Aquinas had conceived of it) as providing a wider, more inclusive, 51 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 50. 52 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 50–​51. 53 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 50.

272 Chłodna-Błach real genus as a universal world view as a public measure of truth claims, and a principle for determining the existence of real, behavioral contradictions and non-​contradictions. He was convinced that the chief measure of all, including philosophical, truth cannot be the abstract, conceptual contradictions and non-​contradictions of logic. It must be concrete, behavioral contradictions and non-​contradictions considered as a part of a philosophical, or scientific, whole social-​scientific/​philosophical enterprise (part of a historical, humanistic, behavioristic, social-​science, enterprise). That this is so is evident from what Adler had said in his student essay, “Love and Logic in Philosophy, Being a Defense of the Sentiment of Rationality.” Recall that, in this paper, his main concern at the time had been the opposition between those who, like metaphysical poets, understood “philosophical systems as work of the imagination, great intellectual poems each presenting its own weltanschuung” and those who held the opposite understanding of “philosophy as dealing piecemeal with problems that can be solved in much the same way that scientists of theirs”54—​that is, as scientifically testing hypothetical statements as part of a historical, social science, logical, team enterprise. The first case appeared to the youthful Adler to be that “logical criteria for assessing the truth or falsity of particular philosophical propositions were as irrelevant as they would be for the sentences in a poem.”55 Logical criteria would simply be one more matter of taste. And, while second case appeared to him to conceive of the logical criteria for assessing philosophical truth as scientific (to have an affinity with contemporary physical, and social, science measures truth, and not with poetry: “that the truth and falsity of a philosopher’s statements, sentence by sentence, would have to be considered”),56 this could only be achieved by concretely testing abstractly conceived logical truth as hypothetical until verified, like a social scientist-​psychologist would do, as being real principles of observable human behavior within the context of observable human historical activities as part of a historical/​metaphysical and social science/​logical enterprise. Some semiotic sign of the existence of philosophical, and especially metaphysical, activities as doable deeds would have to be observable in human history as the ultimate test of philosophical/​ scientific truth. This could not be done, however, unless, in some way, being a historical, humanistic, behavioristic, social science enterprise were part of the essential idea and nature of philosophy considered as a logical whole encompassing both abstract and concrete principles of logical coherence as measures 54 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41. 55 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41. 56 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41.

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of philosophical/​scientific truth.57 When, as a youth, Adler had psychologically analyzed his vague, conflated understanding of his concept of philosophy, its complicated nature tended psychologically to torture him. Untying this Gordian Knot would require a Herculean strength that he did not, and might never, possess! While he might not have explicitly realized it at the time, what most irritated him and had been psychologically gnawing away at him day after day about Dewey and Dewey’s teachings appears to have been something more than the abstract, conceptual incoherence he found in Dewey’s teachings: his own semiotic psychological analysis of John Dewey Columbia University Philosophy Professor as a sign of behavioral contradiction. How could Dewey, as an experienced, highly respected Professor at Columbia University (the only university in the entire world at which, at the time, more than anything else, Adler had wanted to be a graduate Philosophy student and, eventually, a faculty Professor) not be undergoing the same sort of psychological torture as Adler was experiencing? Adler appears to have found psychologically/​philosophically intolerable, torturing, the behavioral contradiction in Dewey’s intellectual blindness not even to have been able to recognize, much less than to have been psychologically tortured by, the need to anchor his abstract, logical premises against the background of some real, qualitatively higher, public, organizational whole (a more universal, public genus, and social science) within which highest first principles of truth could be used as first and highest, public, social science, humanistic, and logical measures of philosophical truth as an essential part of philosophy considered as a historical/​humanistic and social science, behavioral enterprise.58 Even as a youth, Adler was convinced that, to be scientific, an enterprise has to be more than historical (that is, humanistic). It has to be metaphysically social and behavioral. If it were not, he thought of it as nothing more than, poetry, poppycock: a matter of taste. Without metaphysical grounding as the highest science as a public, or social, test of an idea as a behavioral principle capable of proximately causing socially and semiotically observable metaphysical action, being able to manifest its metaphysically humanistic and social, public, truth as a sign of a really doable deed (a behavioral non-​contradiction, and, hence, a real truth), in philosophical history, Adler thought the claim that Dewey’s teachings, or any other for that matter, could be logical (and more than simply a matter 57 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 41. 58 I thank Peter A. Redpath for helping me form this psychological analysis of what had psychologically driven the youthful Adler to have psychologically tortured and disrespectfully treated Dewey the way he had done.

274 Chłodna-Błach of taste) was ridiculous. Worse: strictly speaking, it could not even be a pragmatic or humanistic (historical) truth. Only by subordinating conceptual, logical truth, to real behavioral, publicly measurable, socially observable truth, as a really doable deed witness-​able and actually witnessed in intellectual history could philosophical, or scientific, truth be numerically one whole philosophical, social, scientific, pragmatic, humanistic, behavioral, and enterprisistic truth! That, late in life (1993), with the help of Aristotle, Adler had finally been able to resolve his scientific psychosis by harmonizing in one Great Idea all the above-​listed concepts whose lack of organizational unity had psychologically tortured him while at Columbia is evinced by the calm, brief, matter-​of-​fact way he is able directly to quote the wisdom of Aristotle precisely to identify and explain: (1) the chief causes of philosophy considered as social and humanistic science having the complicated nature it does, and (2) why, because of its complicated social and humanistic, scientific nature, anyone claiming to be a true philosopher must always and everywhere study its subject historically as a “doable human deed.”59



(1) “The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but everyone says something true about the nature of things, and, while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.60 (2) “It is necessary … to call into council the views of those of our predecessors … in order that we may profit by whatever is sound in their suggestions and avoid their errors.61”

At least by implication, Adler understood Aristotle to be saying that, by nature, in its generic definition, philosophy is chiefly a cooperative-​and-​ transgenerational, individual and cultural, behavioral, psychological, social-​ scientific, enterprise (or a transgenerational, organizational, psychological, 59

Mortimer J. Adler, “Philosophy’s Past, Present, and Future,” The Great Ideas Online, 899 (January 2017), p. 6. For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see Adler The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​ Moral–​ Objective–​ Categorical (New York: Macmillan, 1993), from which this article is taken. Notice how, for Adler, any Great Idea resembles a set of larger and smaller wicker baskets all contained within numerically one largest basket; and how the Great Idea of Metaphysics is the largest of such container baskets. 60 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 2.1, 993a30–​993b4. 61 Aristotle, On the Soul, 1.2, 404a20–​23.

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behavioral, social-​science habit: a co-​operative, behavioristic habit of an individual human soul and, analogously considered, a cultural, social-​science one). In understanding philosophy in this complicated way, by this time, Adler would have recognized himself to be agreeing with Bernard of Chartres that philosophy is a trans-​generational enterprise in which, to enter, and progress, “like dwarfs,” we need to “stand on the shoulders of giants” (a statement historically attributed to Bernard by John of Salisbury).62 And he would put to rest the wonder about why truly becoming a philosopher, especially a metaphysician, is a lifelong, Herculean work. 2

The Great Idea of Liberal Education as a Synthesis of the Great Ideas of Freedom and Religion: Mortimer Adler as Philosophical Missionary

While Adler did not explicitly realize it at the time, John Dewey’s humanism and recognition of the crucial importance of the ideas of human freedom and religion to a proper conception of liberal education as rooted in a progressive, historical and humanist tradition that really liberates was a major contribution to helping him cut the Gordian Knot that had been psychologically torturing him while at Columbia University and decades after. As (1) a contemporarily educated and trained behavioristic social scientist/​psychologist, and (2) a classically educated and trained behavioristic social scientist/​psychologist (philosopher and, especially, metaphysician and moral psychologist), Adler knew he needed to come up with a more inclusive idea than he had as a youth that could straddle and unite both intellectual genera (conceptual orders) of contemporary and ancient social science/​psychology under one umbrella, or higher, more inclusive, genus of social science/​psychology. With Dewey’s help, under the generic rubric of liberal education as true social-​science education (true philosophy), Adler eventually came to realize he had come up with a generic idea of science that could be simultaneously: (1) genuinely scientific and genuinely philosophical, and (2) behaviorally psychological, social, humanistic, and historical. In my opinion, from Dewey more than from anyone else, Adler had derived the notion that, in some way, his youthful project was a really doable deed. By combining the ideas of freedom and religion into one Great Idea of Liberal 62

Ralph McInerny and A. Robert Caponigri, A History of Western Philosophy, vol. 2, Philosophy from St. Augustine to Ockham (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), 160.

276 Chłodna-Błach Education and applying this idea to the re-​formation of American education, he could start to revive and re-​conceive that ancient Greek idea of philosophy as identical with science conceived as a species of social science (a new form of behavioral psychology: behavioral organizational psychology) to change the popular and professional understanding of education in North America and globally.63 United together in the Great Idea of Liberal Education, Adler had finally figured out how to synthesize: (1) the ancient world social science idea that had conflated philosophy as a way of life (behavioral activity) and science and the twentieth-​century ideal of social science which had conflated the idea of behavioristic experimental psychology (behavioral activity) and science into the generic idea of liberal education (educating for true human freedom: freedom that liberates the whole human person throughout daily life in real-​life situations) as true social science; and (2) realize his missionary idea of philosophically transforming the world for the better and, perhaps, secure lasting, global peace! Well known is that, in his book entitled Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind, Adler authored one of the most significant works devoted to the issue of liberal education.64 In the chapter, “Liberalism and Liberal Education,” he specifically differentiated the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘liberalism,’ and recognized the generic concept of freedom implicit in each of them. Freedom belongs to Adler’s original list 102 great ideas, to which he later added Equality to make the list number 103.65 Among all these ideas, Freedom the 63 64

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I thank Peter A. Redpath for suggesting to me to consider Adler’s educational reform project in relation to this influence of Dewey on him and Adler’s complicated idea of freedom that I have just summarized. Mortimer J. Adler, Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (New York: Macmillan, 1988). Adler commented also on the views of other authors, who wrote on the topic of liberal education, including Allan Bloom, in Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). Bloom presented this type of education as an antidote to the crisis of higher education in the USA. In his comments about Bloom’s standpoint, Adler stated that Bloom devoted too little attention in his deliberations to the weaknesses connected with the educational foundations in the United States, although these were much more important than the politicization of higher education; see Adler, Reforming Education, xix. Regarding Bloom’s description of the impotence of academic life, and his analysis of the causes of it, Adler claims that they are inadequate and insufficient. In Adler’s opinion, Bloom took too little effort to propose the methods with which the schools could adequately react to the needs of democracy and also enable students’ minds to be ‘open’ to the truth; see Adler, Reforming Education, xix. In his work, Reforming Education, Adler described how he and his team at his Institute for Philosophical Research had worked on the Idea of Freedom for six years, studying different historically major works that contained this topic. As a result, they researched many

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one upon which his Institute worked the longest and hardest. Given the crucial role that this idea plays in Adler’s missionary reform of our understanding of philosophy, no wonder should exist for the Great Idea of Freedom holding this position. When considering freedom’s nature abstractly and conceptually, like Aristotle, Adler claimed that, chiefly, we must essentially add the specific difference ‘rational’ to animal activity. He observed, further, that if we take into consideration human freedom as a natural endowment (the God-​given ability to make a free choice, or free decision making), freedom so-​conceived is morally indifferent: not good or bad. It is a necessary condition, intrinsic, proximate first principle and cause thanks to which an individual human being (considered as an organizational whole person) is organizationally capable of performing and actually doing good or bad human deeds (doable human deeds).66 Freedom is a cause of moral good when it is well used, in the sense of being behaviorally applied in an individual situation under direction of healthy reasoning faculty in touch with reality. This is so because when a good will (a will that really loves truth) is a will actually guided by a reasoning power that knows the truth, a whole person can really choose a truth and become truly and progressively free in his or her actions. As Adler stressed, the righteous mind (right reason: recta ratio) is the main principle and measure of real, human freedom.67 Moral freedom is not anarchy (liberation from following rules). It is chiefly reasonable subordination of human appetites and free choice to right, humanly healthy, behavioral principles of choice.68 Adler thought this understanding of freedom has a practical application as a first principle in education. Only when the mind of a student is: (1) subordinated to healthy discipline through the liberal arts (truly liberating arts), and (2) qualitatively streamlined (qualified) for critical cognition, with a personal character prepared for meeting civic duties under the supervision of moral virtues, may such a student grow to become a free person and a good citizen. Adler even claimed that world peace will not be possible until all young people were prepared for meeting their civic obligations through development of an

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concepts and theories about freedom that eminent thinkers had developed, evaluating the current meaning of this idea by means of summarizing everything that had been written about it, currently and in the past. These studies revealed the fundamental debates that divided and united people, together with the arguments used in these debates; 230. Mortimer J. Adler, “Liberalism and Liberal Education,” in Reforming Education, 50. Adler, “Liberalism and Liberal Education,” 50. Adler extensively describes the issue of freedom in Great Ideas from the Great Books (New York: Washington Square Press, 1961).

278 Chłodna-Błach intellectual and moral life rooted in, and growing out of, an education in the spirit of the seven liberal arts!69 However, to accomplish this goal, educators must understand freedom’s concrete nature as a behavioral cause of healthy human choice. Considered as a truly liberating behavioral principle of human life (and not an abstract essence), human freedom is an effect of choosing under directions of the principles of the four cardinal moral virtues of temperance, courage, justice, and especially prudence (right reason). Life lived according to these proximate causes of moral health is a prerequisite for reaching human happiness in the form of perfection in human freedom. Considered as such, all human beings need to be educated for freedom. For this reason, Adler thought education for freedom to be a universal, natural human right and societal obligation. Moreover, he thought that the individual and societal measure of how much or little freedom should exist is not arithmetical equality. It is ‘proportionate equality.’ No individual human being should have more or less freedom than he or she justly needs in order to live a physically and psychologically healthy personal and societal life. According to Adler, all individual human beings are born endowed by God with a species-​ specific capacity to make free decisions. In the sense, all human beings possess the qualitatively equal psychological ability to be morally educated to become masters in exercising healthy, in the sense of prudent, free choice. In this way, an individual human person becomes educated to fulfill the rights and duties of living a truly human personal life and that of a good citizen. As perfectly as possible to fulfill this life-​long personal duty (to become as happy as humanly possible), children must first be taught what are their real human obligations and personal and societal rights. Only then can they become competent to realize these rights and duties in the proper way. Only then may an individual reach a maximum of perfection in truly liberating human freedom.70 Such being the case, like a physician of the soul, Adler stressed educating children against developing unhealthy habits that cause psychological disorders in the form of moral diseases (like ethnic prejudice, superstitions, injustice) and in favor of developing healthy habits that cause psychological health in fulfilling real human needs (not unhealthy human wants). And he 69

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Mortimer J. Adler, “Freedom through Discipline: Elective System Defeats Purpose of Liberal Education” (Speech given by Mortimer Adler, Professor of the Philosophy of Law at University of Chicago, on February 7, 1944), https://​radicalacademy.org/​adlerfreedomthrudiscipline.html. Adler, “Freedom through Discipline.”

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considered no better means to achieve these behavioral goods than by a truly humanistic (life-​bettering) education of every human being in a lifelong conversation about Great Ideas (ideas that contain great metaphysical and moral truths and errors) observable in human history. He considered such education to be a means of enabling students to: (1) interact with great ideas and healthy and unhealthy effects of their historical application and (2) learn behavioral truths about philosophical truths and errors as being life transforming. Adler saw Great Ideas as truly great because they are chiefly life-​transforming, ideas to live and choose by, the best measures of psychological and physical health. For this reason, the best authority to follow in living a healthy human life is authority of a righteous mind, or better, soul and person. In contrast to this healthy understanding of human education, Adler opposed a different understanding of freedom as anarchic liberty that he had identified as a main cause of the bad condition of American education in his youth.71 Liberty is herein understood as “freedom from” and not “freedom to”: freedom as a condition for the full human self-​realization of a person.72 Thus understood, a flawed liberalism rejects: the existence of a stable human nature and questions natural human freedom (the species-​specific capacity of free decision making as a part of the hard-​wiring of every human being). The only freedom this anarchic form of liberalism recognizes, if any, is circumstantial freedom or behavioral restraint by violence: not being subjected to any will or legislative or non-​legislative authority of anything (including one’s own reason), except unavoidable external restraints. Individual freedom, independence from the changeable, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary will of another person or circumstantial action of any and every thing becomes absolute goodness. In place of this prevailing understanding of human freedom within the West, Adler desired to restore the understanding of freedom as an internal cause, by means of returning to the principles of education in the spirit of the liberal arts historically traceable to the ancient Greek philosophers, and, especially, to Aristotle. In Adler’s opinion, such education contains three essential divisions that he, distinguished chiefly on the basis of their ability to perfecting three essential parts of a human being: (1) intellectual, volitional and emotional (moral), and physical. Adler understood these three educational divisions to be essential parts of a truly liberal, human education (education 71 72

According to Adler: “I do not mean to say that false liberalism, on the part of our educators or the public generally, is the only cause of what is wrong with American education today; but it is certainly among the principal causes”; “Liberalism and Liberal Education,” 48. Mortimer J. Adler, Reforming Education, 50.

280 Chłodna-Błach mainly for liberty), as opposed to vocational education as a chief aim (education for getting a job). While Adler was, in fact, a high school dropout and an advocate of vocational education as an essential part of living a healthy human life, he opposed education for getting a job as the highest aim of education.73 He considered vocational education to be an essential means to, but not, the chief aim of, education—​which was to prepare human beings for perfect freedom: human happiness. For Adler, in fact, education for freedom considered as such (not chiefly for getting a job) is the highest form of vocational education: the qualitatively highest human calling in this life. All divisions of human education I mention above play a crucial role in liberal education as Adler conceived it. Hence, he writes: “The direct product of liberal education is a good mind, well disciplined in its processes of inquiring and judging, knowing and understanding, and well furnished with knowledge, well cultivated by ideas.”74 By enabling it to be a lifelong, well-​lived life, authentically liberal education radically changes for the better the whole of a human life. It affects all our actions, preferences, and choices for the better. First of and foremost, this type of education should help a student answer the most important question a person can ask: “Precisely what and who am I as a human person?” 3

Liberal Education and the Idea of Religion

Given his understanding of human freedom as an evident truth that it is a God-​ given endowment, Adler clearly understood that his educational revolution in liberal education could only be totally and perfectly philosophical in the classical sense by having the behavioral metaphysical principle of human wisdom being its chief educational end. While moral prudence became his highest behavioral measure and sign of behavioral health in human choice, metaphysical wisdom became his highest measure of behavioral truth concretely considered as qualitatively improving perfection of the human mind and a human person considered as a whole. For Adler, liberal education was not an education in Great Ideas considered as abstract essences to be abstractly contemplated as if conversing about them had no influence on human behavior. The chief reason he saw Great Ideas to be great was precisely because, in the 73 Adler, Philosopher at Large, 1–​14. These pages refer to Adler’s first chapter entitled, “Dropout,” in which he reports most positively about his life as a high-​school dropout before attending Columbia. 74 Mortimer J. Adler, Reforming Education, 109–​110.

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tradition of Socrates, he thought that contemplating and conversing about them all the time causes real, qualitative transformations in human behavior. For him, Great Ideas are chiefly great because of their life-​transforming power: chiefly of the truth (but also of the errors they help us avoid) for living the best of all possible human lives as free persons. Far from being a cause of intellectual backwardness and a matter of taste, Adler maintained that historical truth verifies the power of religious truth properly understood to be the first source of metaphysical truth within a culture: to liberate a culture and civilization from the slavery caused by superstition. Considered as containing metaphysical truth and the first beginnings in poetic awareness of philosophical truth, religion is a sign of cultural advancement over irrational superstition and fideism, not of backwardness. In this way, Adler considered religious truth as a form of social-​science behavioral truth analogously conforming to the same sort of rigorous standards of publicly measurable and tested truths applied in contemporary physical science. In his opinion, together with advances in knowledge in contemporary physics, over the centuries, given advance in philosophical analysis, historical verification exists that religion has become gradually purified of previous superstitions. Therefore, today, at least in the West, at least in principle, becoming truly religious has become easier than it was ever before—​and this is thanks to progress in physical science and philosophy, including Adler’s Great Books program. Today, more than ever before in the West, for those who undertake the effort of rational thinking about religion as a Great Idea, becoming truly religious is easier than it has ever previously been in recorded history. Adler’s Institute for Philosophical Research engaged in a rigorous historical analysis of the Great Idea of religion as a behavioral principle observable in history. This research confirmed for Adler his conviction that historical reflection on the idea of religion in the West shows that, prior to the rise of Greek philosophy and Christian theology in the West, in the past only very few people in the West were truly religious in the sense of not being superstitious, and socially and psychologically unhealthy. Today, the reverse was true.75 In Alder’s opinion, a major difficulty in understanding the nature of religion properly conceived (one in which the truth this idea contains and the cultural and civilizational health it promotes become glaringly evident) consists in

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Mortimer J. Adler, “Concerning God, Modern Man, and Religion,” pt. 2 “The State of Contemporary Scientific Knowledge,” https://​selfeducatedamerican.com/​2011/​09/​14/​ concerning-​god-​modern-​man-​and-​religion/​.

282 Chłodna-Błach drawing a dividing line between what is natural and what is supernatural in the sphere of human thought and human activity.76 What is natural in human thought and human activity can be obtained by human beings through our own internal organizational powers without any assistance from causes not contained in our species-​specific strength of ability other than external circumstances conducive for individual and species-​specific action. The supernatural aspect of human thought and human activity, in contrast, concerns everything that can be thought or done with all the preceding factors and with the assistance of some quality that transcends in its strength its species-​ specific organizational parts cooperatively to cause action.77 This distinction constitutes a rational justification to explain why an education based upon the liberal arts needs religion. Adler asks: Suppose, for example, that such disciplines as mathematics, history, the natural, social, and behavioral sciences, and all the branches of philosophy exhaust the departments or branches of natural knowledge. What then? Then either religion is supernatural knowledge—​knowledge that a man possesses through God’s revelation of himself—​or it is nothing but a set of superstitions.78 Religion cannot be merely reduced to a behavioral ethical code, a collection of recipes for how to live, or beliefs concerning the world and the human being. Religion touches upon areas belonging to metaphysical truths, effects of organizational action that are inexplicable in terms of appeal to harmonizing existing organizational parts. Such metaphysical observations are parts of philosophical human experience observable in human history in religious communities. The question is about whether the ultimate explanation truly human existence, is, in some way, evident to human science. The answer is that psychologically evident in the individual behavior of any healthy human adult is personal human experience of metaphysical truth existing in species of organizational human activities like free decision making and the immaterial nature of human intellection. In addition, such behaviors are evident in culturally transforming cultural events in human history. To Adler the existence of such experiences is undeniably true, is a matter of truth, not taste. For

76 77 78

Mortimer J. Adler, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Touchstone, 1990), 50–​52. Adler, “Concerning God, Modern Man, and Religion.” Adler, “Concerning God, Modern Man, and Religion.”

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this reason, Adler maintained that matters of religion are essentially matters of truth of highest cultural concern. Thus, in Adler’s opinion, for their integral development, human cultures and civilizations need social science considered as a complete whole, containing both physical science (rational investigation of natural human experiences) and religious science (rational investigation of super-​natural human experiences). Thanks to physical science we gain a large part of the truth about the physical world in which we live our everyday natural lives (about nature, society, and human beings). And thanks to the science of religion we gain a large part of the truth about the world in which we live our everyday super-​ natural lives. In both areas of research, science is reflection on commonsense lived experience. As Adler emphasizes, truth in physical, philosophical, and religious sciences is analogously one and indivisible: a social-​scientific whole. Fully to develop our humanity as free human beings, to become as perfectly, scientifically, free as we can become as human beings, we need natural and super-​natural cultivation of the mind: pursuit of science in all its social forms into matters of truth. This includes answers to the most important existential questions in philosophy about human life and the universe considered as organizational wholes; and not just this or that part of a human being or the world and how it inclines to operate. The whole of human science is social science and encompasses the whole truth about the existence and behavior of all organizational wholes—​the way they incline to act, and all their causes, not just about some. By gathering together in one genus of social science study of truths about experiential behavior that are, in principle, unobservable and non-​measurable in and by other fields of culture and art, religion opens up to human science the qualitatively rich domain of human truths not discussable in other sciences, but crucial for securing perfection in human freedom and happiness in this life. In so far as it does so, as Adler recognized, religion as a Great Idea brings to completes the idea of science qua science and transforms science into being a truly Great Idea. 4

Conclusion

Taking into consideration the above reflections, education in the spirit of the liberal arts, as Adler worked it out, essentially includes scientific study of all forms of experientially real behavior (physical and meta-​physical), including free, moral and political life. Adler’s role in saving and passing on to future generations some of the greatest of great human truths in the form of Great Books

284 Chłodna-Błach containing Great Ideas is an intellectual treasure that we need to preserve and pass along to future generations as a human right and moral duty.79

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. “Concerning God, Modern Man, and Religion,” pt. 2 “The State of Contemporary Scientific Knowledge.” https://​selfeducatedamerican.com/​2011/​09/​ 14/​concerning-​god-​modern-​man-​and-​religion/​. Adler, Mortimer J. The Conditions of Philosophy: Its Checkered Past, Its Present Disorder, and Its Future Promise. New York: Atheneum, 1965. isbn: 855914862. Adler, Mortimer J. Dialectic. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927. oclc: 1021148. Adler, Mortimer J. The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical–​Moral–​Objective–​ Categorical. New York: Macmillan, 1993. isbn: 9780025005747. Adler, Mortimer J. Freedom through Discipline+Elective System Defeats Purpose of Liberal Education. The Radical Academy, Mortimer J. Adler Archive. https://​radicalacademy.org/​adlerfreedomthrudiscipline.html. Adler, Mortimer J. “Freedom through Discipline: Elective System Defeats Purpose of Liberal Education,” Speech given by Mortimer Adler, Professor of the Philosophy of Law at University of Chicago, on February 7, 1944. https://​radicalacademy.org/​ adlerfreedomthrudiscipline.html. Adler, Mortimer J. Great Ideas from the Great Books. New York: Washington Square Press, 1961. oclc: 1455928. Adler, Mortimer J. “Liberalism and Liberal Education.” In Reforming Education. Adler, Mortimer J. Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind. New York: Macmillan, 1988. isbn: 9780025005518. Adler, Mortimer J. Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1977. isbn: 9780025004900. Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Touchstone, 1990. isbn: 9780025002258. Adler, Mortimer J., and Institute for Philosophical Research. The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958. oclc: 8804883. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. isbn: 9780671479909. 79

This project has been funded by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the program under the name “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019–​2022, project number: 028/​r id/​2018/​19, the amount of funding: 11 742 500 pln.

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Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Free Press, 1944/​1966. isbn: 9780205195275. Dewey, John. “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy.” In Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude. Edited by John Dewey. New York: Holt, 1917. oclc: 919555. Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1920/​ 2012. isbn: 9780486147482. Lovejoy, Arthur O. “On Some Conditions of Progress in Philosophical Inquiry.” In The Philosophical Review 26, no. 2 (March 1917): 123–​163; reprinted in Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1911–​1920. Edited by Richard T. Hull, 223–​253 (rth: Tallahassee, FL, 2013). isbn: 9780985974756. McInerny, Ralph M. and A. Robert Caponigri. A History of Western Philosophy. Vol. 2. Philosophy from St. Augustine to Ockham. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). isbn: 9780268004170. Novak, Michael. Review of Haves without Have-​Nots by Mortimer J. Adler, The Christian Century 109 (Apr 1992): 435. Redpath, Peter A. “Plato’s Advice about How to Avoid Becoming a Philosophical Bastard: Moving the Problem of the One and the Many to the Problem of Universals.” In A Not-​So-​Elementary Christian Metaphysics: Written in the Hope of Ending the Centuries-​old Separation between Philosophy and Science and Science and Wisdom. Vol. 1, Re-​establishing an Initial Union among Philosophy, Science, and Wisdom by Recovering Our Understanding of Philosophy, Science: How Philosophy, Science, Is, and Always has been Chiefly a Study of the Problem of the One and the Many. St. Louis: En Route, 2015. isbn: 9781633370630. Shaw, George Bernard. Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. oclc: 361510. Thomas Aquinas, Saint. Summa contra gentiles. Rome: Apud Sedem Commissionis Leoninae, 1934. oclc: 1065472.

Conclusion

“Leisure Is the Basis of Culture”: Was Josef Pieper Wrong? Peter A. Redpath Abstract In light of Josef Pieper’s celebrated English-​language monograph Leisure: The Basis of Culture, and a few of his other publications, this concluding chapter reflects on preceding chapters in this collective volume to resolve what appears to be contradictory teachings between Pieper and the chapters contained in this volume related to whether religion or leisure is the basis of culture. While Pieper is often thought to have maintained that leisure is the proximate cause out of which cultures grow, all the contributors to this volume maintain a contrary opposite view—​that religion, not leisure, is the proximate cause of all cultures. In contrast to a common way Pieper’s monograph Leisure: The Basis of Culture is mistakenly interpreted, this concluding chapter maintains that Pieper is firmly in the camp of the contributors to this volume in maintaining that religion, not leisure, is the proximate first principle of all human cultures; and it precisely explains why this is the case.

Keywords aim –​basis –​philosophy –​theology –​culture –​Schall –​Plato –​wisdom –​God –​world

As some of us today seek to learn from the works of great teachers from the past so as to preserve and rebuild what remains of Western culture and civilization, a crucial question for us to ask is whether simply having order, discipline, and the liberal arts is enough to have higher culture, to achieve higher education. To achieve such education, especially highest education, as the preceding chapters in this volume appear, at a minimum, to argue and prove beyond reasonable doubt is that we need more than these—​including a transcendent human soul in touch with reality through highest forms of intellectual and moral virtue.

© Peter A. Redpath, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004468016_017

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A common problem I notice existing in current movements to recover classical, especially great books, education within the West is a mindset prevalent in some of these contemporary seekers after higher education, higher truth, that mistakenly inclines them to think that we can somehow rebuild Western culture and civilization by: (1) restoring order and discipline in a land-​based or online classroom setting combined with memorizing principles from the classical trivium (especially those of rhetoric and syllogistic logic), the quadrivium, plus religious apologetics; (2) rotely memorizing principles of natural law from Aquinas’s writings about it; and (3) developing refined tastes in classical music, combined with an eventual appreciation for drinking fine wine and smoking first-​quality cigars. Instead of producing within Western students of all ages, but especially youth, the essential qualities needed to build, preserve, and when needed, restore a higher culture, while all three above-​listed activities might have something good about them, if we divorce them from a proper understanding of the human person—​especially the human soul and the essential connection the intellectual and moral virtues of wisdom, understanding, prudence, justice, temperance and courage (fortitude) have to producing a human soul capable of causing higher culture—​we will not wind up producing students capable of bringing into being such a culture. Instead, we will produce what, in Book 7 of his celebrated Republic, Plato described as—​and Imelda Chłodna Błoch has already cited in this volume in relation to Mortimer J. Adler—​annoying ‘philosophical bastards.’1 Unhappily, while some, perhaps all, of these activities I mention in the preceding paragraph are good for developing a sense of higher culture, they are not chief among the ones that currently need to be executed to preserve and restore the West; and divorced from subordination to those chief activities, such secondary ones can do more harm than good—​can serve as an obstacle, instead of an aid, to cultural and civilization restoration and development. As Adler and Josef Pieper rightly understood, chief among the activities we currently need to restore to the psychology of the West are proper self-​ understanding of what we human beings precisely are and are not—​that we are free, rational animals, and are not pure spirits. Hence, directly quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas answering a question in Disputed Questions on the Power of God about whether, in its final state of happiness, to be more like God, the human soul will be separated from the human body, Pieper reports

1 Plato, Republic 7, 535c–​538a.

288 Redpath Aquinas answering, “The soul united to the body is more like God than the soul separated from the body because it possesses its own nature more perfectly.”2 Immediately, regarding this passage from Aquinas, Pieper comments that Aquinas’s reply is “an answer that is by no means easily digested for it implies not only that man is corporeal, but that, in a certain sense, even the soul is corporeal.”3 Even more difficult to digest are two implications that Pieper ignores: (1) that human rationality is specifically a form of animal rationality, and (2), through divine grace, after death the human body is essentially immortal. Given the peculiarity of human nature, the human genus, or Umwelt as our colleague John N. Deely would likely say,4 is one essentially ordered toward a philosophical/​theological contemplation that essentially begins in being, and always remains, a species of sense wonder naturally and supernaturally ordered toward understanding mystery.5 Considered as such, philosophizing/​theologizing can never be reduced to (as so many contemporary Western colleges and universities [even ones that fraudulently claim to be liberal arts institutions] seek to practice them) handmaidens to technocracy imprisoned within what Pieper calls the workaday world. According to Pieper, philosophy and theology are essentially cultural enterprises, rooted in, and essentially dependent upon, humanistic/​historical tradition, passed on to us from scholars like Boëthius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius) and Bernard of Chartres, essentially calling us to stand on the shoulders of educational giants: great teachers from the past and in the present. Hence, Pieper tells us, “It is very important that it should be seen and understood that the great paradigmatic figures of Western philosophy are ‘believers’ in relation to an existing interpretation of the world, handed down by tradition.”6 While “rebellion against religious tradition is” often “regarded as the core of Western philosophy,” Pieper disagrees. He asserts, “The first spring of 2 Aquinas, Disputed Questions on the Power of God q. 1, a. 10, ad 5, cited in Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture—​The Philosophical Act, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1963/​2009), 104 (hereinafter, Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act); see also what Aquinas says in his famous “Treatise on Man” in the Summa theologiæ, about the specification of human rationality, wherein he locates the specific difference of it in a per se otherness within the sensitive, or animal, part of the intellectual soul, which is sometimes found with and sometimes without reason!; q. 77, a. 3, respondeo. 3 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 104. 4 John N. Deely, “From Sensation to Umwelt as Species Specific Objective World,” in What Distinguishes Human Understanding (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2002), chap. 4. 5 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 93–​125. 6 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 128.

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Western philosophy, never to be recaptured, appears to show, on the contrary, that philosophy has always been preceded by a traditional interpretation of the world—​a tradition which supplied the spark that set philosophy on fire.”7 According to Pieper, Plato was convinced that the wisdom of the ancients was ultimately “of divine origin,” handed down by tradition from a divine source as a gift from the gods to the ancients, who were nearer to the gods and better than those living during Plato’s time.8 Like Plato, based in part on the theological origin of the pre-​philosophical, metaphysical first principles related to ancient philosophy among the pagan Greeks and Christian philosophy among the Medieval Christian theologians, Pieper is convinced of the theological origins of ‘the world as a whole’—​of the universe as real genus in relation to which all human conversation, inquiry, and questioning is made intelligible and well-​framed. He maintains that the wonder, which lies as the first principle of all philosophical investigation, necessarily assumes, presupposes, as evidently known, a natural and supernatural, personal desire to discover the first, ultimate cause of the universe considered as a real genus (whether this genus be everlasting in time) that generates all species and individuals within it as that which constitutes the real world.9 For this reason, Pieper maintains: Theology is always prior to philosophy, and not merely in a temporal sense, but with respect to the inner origin and their relationship in that origin. Philosophical inquiry starts with a given interpretation of reality, and of the world as a whole; and in that sense, philosophy is intimately connected, not to say bound, to theology. There is no such thing as a philosophy which does not receive its impulse and impetus from a prior and uncritically accepted interpretation of the world as a whole. It is in the field of theology, and quite independently of experience and previously to it that the object of man’s desire—​‘wisdom as possessed by God’—​becomes visible, and it is this aim which supplies the impulse and guides the course of philosophical inquiry in its loving search as it moves through the world of experience.10 Put in classical Aristotelian-​Thomistic-​Scholastic terminology, in the above passage, Pieper is saying that all human understanding, reasoning, and speech 7 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 128. 8 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 129. 9 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 130. 10 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 130–​31.

290 Redpath have to take for granted, assume, the evident existence of a real order of genera, species, and individuals in relationship to which human understanding, reasoning, and sounds in the form of language transcend animal-​like sense impulses and squeals and become intelligible as knowledge and speech. Whenever we really identify, know, talk about, any individual being, we do so by locating, placing, it as a real part (species) existing within a real genus (composite, whole, organization). This is the way all human beings really identify and first specify things: by defining them in terms of the place and position they occupy in real genera and species in real organizational wholes.11 More. Since philosophy starts in sense wonder about the first, or ultimate, cause of everything, the world as a whole (all genera, species, and individuals; all organizational wholes), and since philosophical inquiry has to take for granted, assume, the existence of its subject—​of which it chiefly wants know the chief existential cause—​strictly speaking, what philosophy most seeks to know (wisdom as God possesses it) is something philosophically unachievable, an impossible quest for philosophy considered as such. Because only divine wisdom can provide the answer to the chief aim of philosophical pursuit, the philosophical quest must pass through the revelation of theology to achieve what it most desires and make all its activities fruitful and intelligible. Hence, explicitly knowing it or not, by nature, philosophy and philosophers always seek union with theology to satisfy their complete natures. 1

What Pieper Precisely Meant When He Talked about the Relationship between Culture and Leisure

Such being the case, since: (1) Pieper’s monograph, Leisure: The Basis of Culture,12 is one the most-​frequently cited texts on contemporary educators who seek to restore Western culture and civilization refer and (2) the English title of his celebrated monograph appears to contradict the argument Pieper has given, and the main one given by all the contributors to this collective volume—​that religion is the basis of culture, and culture is not the basis of religion—​before concluding this collective volume, a need exists for us to attempt to resolve this apparent contradiction. Is religion the basis of culture, or, is culture the basis of religion? More. Was Pieper wrong when he reportedly said, “Leisure is the basis of culture”?

11 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 132–​43. 12 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act.

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To resolve this apparent contradiction, I start by noting that, to my knowledge, Pieper never explicitly said, “Leisure is the basis of culture”—​at least not in the sense that this is something he ever meant to say. And because he never made, or intended to make, this claim, the apparent contradiction is easy to resolve: The title of the English translation of Pieper’s celebrated German monograph about culture is bad, inaccurate. Pieper’s title as given in the original German is Muße und Kult (Leisure and Cult).13 At least regarding the way he starts his inquiry, the German title indicates that Pieper is doing so simply to indicate that some relationship (not necessarily one of subordination) exists between leisure and culture. In English, however, the title of this work translated by Alexander Dru (and the title given to it universally by English-​ speaking scholars and non-​scholars) is Leisure: The Basis of Culture, which most-​often in English implies a subordination of culture to leisure, that leisure exists first in time and nature and, from its nature, proximately gives birth to culture, including religious culture, in both nature and time. That this is the way an English-​speaking reader, especially a scholar, would understand this title is, also, easy to confirm by simply taking a look at the first sentence of the Foreword to a recent edition of Dru’s English translation of Pieper’s classic by the person many Catholic and non-​Catholic scholars consider to be the greatest Jesuit intellectual of the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries, James V. Schall (1928–​2019). He asserts, “When a culture is in the process of denying its own roots, it becomes most important to know what these roots are.” Given Dru’s English title of this work, Schall finds no need to ponder what the title means regarding the relationship between leisure and culture. Because the English term ‘basis’ immediately suggests to a native speaker ‘foundation’ or ‘root,’ put in Aristotelian-​Thomistic-​Scholastic terms, Schall takes for granted that what Pieper means by his title is that leisure is the proximate and formal cause of culture; that is, in some way, leisure must precede culture, that leisure is prior to culture at least in nature and, without leisure, culture cannot exist. In referring to the way Schall starts his Foreword, I am not suggesting that he misunderstood what Pieper meant by the relationship between leisure and culture; for, as is well known, Aristotle and Aquinas maintained in a way, formal and final causes are identical. The end exists in the beginning. In some way, the oak tree exists in the seed. 13

Josef Pieper, Muße und Kult: Mit einer Einführung von Kardinal Karl Lehmann [Leisure and cult: With an introduction by Cardinal Karl Lehmann] (München: Kösel, 2007). I wish to thank Professor Piotr Jaroszyński locating this German title for me and Rudolf Brun to its proper English translation.

292 Redpath Just as in his classic City of God, Saint Aurelius Augustine is well known to have understood, in one way, peace to generate order and, in another way, order to generate peace, so Pieper had understood, in one way, culture to generate leisure and, in another way, leisure to generate peace.14 Precisely how these two ways of understanding the relationship between leisure and culture are co-​dependent was a chief aim of his writing Muße und Kult. This book is mainly a psychological analysis of the nature of relationships, and especially human relationships related to leisure, work, and culture. Written in Bonn in 1947, “with the background of World War ii and its aftermath” clearly in mind, as Schall rightly observes, “Pieper was already quite aware that the first principle of action” (in a way, its root) “is the end for which we act” (the end is in the beginning). “If we get this source of action wrong, our efforts to achieve this end will go wrong. And if our efforts to achieve this end go wrong, our entire understanding of work, society, culture, and ourselves will run amiss.”15 To understand the roots of an oak tree, for example, we have to know they are roots of an oak tree and not of a blueberry bush. Toward the end of World War ii, when Europe, including Germany, was about the work of rebuilding cities, states, and cultures, like his contemporaries Adler, Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Étienne Henri Gilson, and Romano Guardini, Pieper recognized that, in the task of reconstructing itself, the West had become consumed by focus of attention on work; and had started to misunderstand the natures of work and leisure and their relationship to culture. The popular understanding at the time (which, as Pope Francis appears to recognize, continues to this day) started to develop that ‘a culture is a world,’ largely a place, of ‘total work,’ in which, at best, leisure is a short time off to recharge batteries, a break, intermission, or a ‘time out,’ to regain strength (a time of physical relaxation spent, as it typically was before the winter/​spring/​ summer of 2020 and covid-​19, being idle, perhaps watching a football game and drinking beer). Like his European and American confreres mentioned in the above paragraph, Pieper was alarmed by this situation. He wrote Muße und Kult chiefly to correct the mistaken understanding of the relationship of leisure and culture to work that was developing within his time by showing: (1) the mutual co-​ dependence in relationship between these two principles of human activity

14 Augustine, City of God, bk. 19. chap. 13; available at http://​www.newadvent.org/​fathers/​ 120119.htm. 15 James V. Schall, Foreword to Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 10.

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and (2) their mutual subordination to the natural and supernatural (transcendent) human inclination to become as perfect as we possibly can in human existence, nature, and operation. In so doing, he tried to get his contemporaries to recognize: (1) both true human leisure and culture are human acts only capable of being harmoniously exercised and ordered to each other within what most Westerners still appear to recognize to be a ‘created order’ governed by a wise and just God; and (2) in some way, through such a recognition, out of a natural sense of justice and to become perfectly wise and prudent ourselves, we are inclined to practice as part of the virtue of perfect justice, acts of worship, religious activities (what the ancient Romans called acts of pietas). Rightly ordered human beings naturally incline to seek to repay our Creator for the goodness of our being part of this created order.16 As Pieper says, “Culture depends for its very existence on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and living link with the cultus, with divine worship.”17 From the start of Muße und Kult Pieper clearly and explicitly expresses his direct intention to show that religion is the cultural root out of which all true leisure grows, and that true culture is chiefly the basis, proximate cause, of leisure (and leisure is not the proximate cause, chiefly the basis, of culture). He does this by: (1) his use of the German word Muße (which etymologically, is derived from reference to the Greek muses, goddesses of culture) in the title of his monograph; and (2) the first quote from Plato that he inserts before the start of the first chapter of the monograph: “But the gods, taking pity on mankind, born to work, laid down the succession of recurring Feasts, to restore them from their fatigue, and gave them the Muses, and Apollo their leader, and Dionysus, as companions in their Feasts, so that nourishing themselves in festive companionship with the gods, they should again stand upright and erect.”18 As Pieper explicitly tells us toward the end of his monograph, religion is the foundation, proximate first principle (cause/​basis) of culture; and culture is the foundation, proximate first principle (cause/​basis/​origin) of leisure:

16

In our time, in a much more extended fashion, Piotr Jaroszyński has attempted to do something similar in his masterful monograph, Science in Culture, trans. Hugh McDonald (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). 17 Josef Pieper, Author’s Preface to the English Edition of Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 15. 18 Plato, Laws, 2, 653c–​d.

294 Redpath Culture lives on religion through divine worship. And when culture itself is endangered and leisure is called into question, there is only one thing to be done: to go back to the first and original source. Such is, moreover, the marvelous quotation from Plato placed at the beginning of this essay. The origin of the arts in worship, and of leisure derived from its celebration, is given in the form of a magnificent mythical image: man obtains his true form and his upright attitude ‘in festive companionship with the gods.’19 Cut off from divine worship, Pieper tells us, “leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman,” and “work becomes a cult,” a religion.20 He adds, “Leisure cannot be achieved at all when it is sought as a means to an end, even though that end be ‘the salvation of Western civilization.’ ” In times of pandemic, for instance, people who lack a proper understanding of leisure are forced to self-​quarantine can experience no leisure when cut off from the workaday world!21 Recapitulating the central points of his reflections on leisure and culture, Pieper maintains that we should not expect any genuine religion, act of worship, cult, to arise from human foundations alone. He considers this to be the message Plato gives us in the quote from the Laws with which Pieper started his investigation into the relationship between leisure and culture: “Worship is either something given, divine worship is fore-​ordained—​or it does not exist at all.”22 In saying that divine worship, true religion, is ‘fore-​ordained,’ Pieper is clearly telling us that being religious is a natural inclination providentially given to us as part of what Augustine had recognized to be the order of divine justice imparted by God in creating the finite universe. This providential inclination is an essential part of the whole created order, which, in every part, naturally seeks self-​perfection.23 For example, professional healthcare workers who are now sacrificially seeking to fight covid-​19 as true professionals are not attempting chiefly to slow it down a bit. They are chiefly seeking totally to eradicate it! In human beings this pursuit of individual and organizational self-​perfection can only be achieved through perfect self-​understanding. As all the contributors to this volume have argued, this sort of understanding is not possible 19 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 71. 20 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 68–​69. 21 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 72. 22 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 72–​73. 23 Augustine, City of God, bk. 19, chap. 13.

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without comprehending the first cause of everything that is. The whole of Western civilization from the ancient Greek theological poets until today has grown out of a metaphysical quest, philosophical act of wonder, to answer one question more than any other: What is the first, highest, cause of everything that is, of all the parts that harmonize to constitute this finite order that we call the ‘world’ or ‘universe’?24 To some extent, this act of wonder is the first cause that generates the philosophical/​scientific quest to develop all the arts and sciences (everywhere and always) and to understand ourselves by defining ourselves in relation to our specific and individual place and position in the universe. Also, to some extent, it was, also, the first cause of Western civilization and Western civilization’s ‘Great Conversation,’ as Adler famously called it. As Pieper rightly comprehended, this quest does not start with higher, or contemplative, culture and the higher form of contemplative leisure that it generates any more than athletic prowess starts with being a master competitor and the qualitative pleasure that comes from professional achievement. As Pieper well understood and maintained, the cult, or religion that generates higher culture is essentially dependent upon the organizational development and progressive improvement of human life. The fine arts that the Muses help generate presuppose, essentially depend upon, the existence of a more primitive moral culture in which the cardinal moral virtues of temperance, courage (fortitude), and especially justice and prudence, can develop in human beings a culture of harmonious cooperation in the productive arts of tool making and use: like manufacturing and agriculture.25 For this reason, in his Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics, Aristotle tells us that the first of the virtues that human beings developed in nature and time were not the liberal arts and philosophy, especially, metaphysics. They were the moral and productive virtues that enable human beings to cooperate as part of a cultural team, or enterprise; and the growth of the rudimentary form of a leisure class. For this reason, he tells us that the liberal arts first started with a religious caste class in Egypt, “for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure.”26 Without the moral culture generated by the cardinal moral virtues guiding the 24 Pieper, Leisure/​Philosophical Act, 77–​143. 25 See Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967); note esp., the crucial relationship Pieper emphasizes exists between the virtues of prudence and justice and being able to maintain a reasoning faculty in touch with reality. 26 Arist. Met 1.1.981b14–​26.

296 Redpath productive culture capable of producing the first beginnings of cultural cooperation, peace, and a leisured religious class (and later a class of poets among the ancient Greeks), no higher religious and humanistic, educational institutions could have developed to fulfill the necessary condition, sine qua non, for the generation of the higher contemplative culture and qualitatively higher forms of metaphysical and theological pleasure, joy, that essentially accompanies it (which Pieper understands to be the ultimate end of natural and supernatural human desire). Such being the case, in Muße und Kult, Pieper is not telling us that only one form of culture and leisure exists: that of the higher culture of philosophical and theological contemplation. He is chiefly telling us that human culture and leisure comprise two separate, but essentially co-​dependent real genera, within which exist respective species ranging from qualitatively highest to lowest forms of perfection. Within these genera exist two extremes: (1) the lower, more primitive, one that consists in doing the grunt work involved in acquiring higher and lower forms of moral, productive, and practical virtues, and fine arts (which are the proximate principles of the first beginnings of any higher, contemplative, or liberal-​arts culture and their respective higher and lower forms of pleasure); and (2) the qualitatively higher one that consists in enjoying the contemplative fruits of excelling in, as perfectly possessing as much as possible, perfect human virtue (which is the proximate principle of higher culture and its respective forms of qualitatively higher pleasure, joy, and happiness: metaphysical culture). Such being the case, the concluding message that Josef Pieper is passing on to us in his marvelous monograph, Muße und Kult, and Mortimer Adler and the contributors of this collective volume are passing on to the contemporary world, and especially the West, is that unless and until we in the West recover our understanding of the essential dependency of all forms of culture upon religion and religious tradition, and unless we preserve these, we will do more than misunderstand the natures of true leisure and culture. We will lose Western civilization itself and, with it, all the cultural institutions that, over millennia, its historical traditions have helped to generate, preserve, and perfect.

Bibliography

Augustine of Hippo. Book 19 of City of God; available at http://​www.newadvent.org/​ fathers/​120119.htm. Deely, John N. “From Sensation to Umwelt as Species Specific Objective World.” In What Distinguishes Human Understanding. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2002. isbn: 9781890318970.

“Leisure is the Basis of Culture”: WAS JOSEF PIEPER WRONG?

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Jaroszyński, Piotr. Science in Culture. Translated from the Polish by Hugh McDonald. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. isbn: 9789042021365; e-​book available at ProQuest E-​ book Central, https://​e-​bookcentral-​proquest-​com.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/​lib/​buffalo/​ detail.action?docID=556771. Pieper, Josef. The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967. Pieper, Josef. Muße und Kult: Mit einer Einführung von Kardinal Karl Lehmann [Leisure and cult: With an introduction by Cardinal Karl Lehmann]. München: Kösel, 2007. isbn: 9783466367733. Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The Basis of Culture—​The Philosophical Act. Translated by Alexander Dru. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1963/​2009. isbn: 9781586172565. Schall, James. V. Foreword to Josef Pieper. Leisure.

Index abilities 73, 98 acquired/​natural 56, 123, 135 cognitive/​facultative 18, 52, 77, 93 Absolut(e)(ization)(Being) 98, 115, 121, 124; see also God act(s) 30, 3​ 2, 195 a. of belief/faith 29–​32, 91 decision to act or not 11, 13, 14 free 118, 120, 203 intentional/​volitional/​a. of will 12, 19, 29, 73, 81, 82, 90, 135, 156, 262, 292 personal a. within organization 204, 205 religious vs. a. of reason 36, 120, 167, 212, 294 semiotic a. 37 transcendental need to a. 87 Adler, Mortimer J. passim  A.-​Dewey feud 267–​271, 273 A.’s conversion to Catholicism 7, 130, 163 Dialectic 6 “Free Will and Determinism,” 10 How to Read a Book 42 “Love and Logic in Philosophy, … ,”  260, 272 “The Religious Life …,” 183 “Metaphysics of Freedom” 202 “The New Scholastic Philosophy and the Secular University” 176 Reforming Education 279 “Signs and Symbols” 190 Six Great Ideas 168 Some Questions about Language 1 Syntopicon … (with Gorman) 183, 184, 189, 190, 202, 206 Ten Philosophical Mistakes 8, 42, 164 Truth in Religion 44 Ājīvikism 241 Albert the Great 68 Alexander, Franz 263 Ames, Roger T. 218–​220, 228–​230 anarchism 105, 106 angelism 101, 102 anthropology 12, 70, 269 cultural a. 42, 69 erroneous/​mistaken a. 96, 98

philosophical a. 15, 59, 62, 69, 79, 80 theological a. 78 arahant (fully liberated noble disciple) 244; see also Buddh(a)(ism) Aristotle 12, 15, 29, 41, 54, 55, 71, 100, 107, 108, 116–​118, 133, 143, 155, 172–​176, 181, 211, 231, 258, 259, 262, 263, 267, 270, 271, 274, 277, 279, 291 Metaphysics 52, 295 Nicomachean Ethics 3, 295 Politics 70 art(s) 52, 100, 144, 173 fine/​liberal a. 108, 168, 175, 176, 277–​279, 282, 283, 286, 288, 294–​296 healing a. 224 martial a. 245 asceticism 27, 243 Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies 188, 189 atheism 112, 121 militant 46; see also Nazi nihilism Promethean a. 103 voluntarist a. 124 ātman and brahman 229 attachment 253 Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustine) 21, 25 City of God 292 Back to Methuselah (Shaw) 263 backwardness, intellectual 281 bastard, philosophical 257, 267, 287 Baudrillard, Jean 99 beauty 62, 66, 74, 132, 154, 168 Beck, Ulrich 100 behavior 12, 21, 22, 30, 44, 48, 73, 86, 101, 103, 112, 113, 115, 118, 122, 130, 136, 157, 158, 198, 231, 240, 272, 280–​283 b. unworthy of a leader 198 community b. 200 courageous b. 129 b. determined by animal nature 16, 54 b.-​generating principle 123 healthy/​unhealthy b. 134, 135 inconceivable b. 181 influence of great ideas on b. 133

300 Index behavior (cont.) b. of kings 252 moral b. 249 organizational b. 2, 3, 117, 194, 197, 283 rational limits of human b. 43 religious b. 46, 47, 255 social b. 34 truthful b. 85 behavioral incoherence 116 behaviorism 268 behavioristic psychology 61 beliefs, contradictory 48 Belloc, Hilaire 166, 167 A Bull of a Man (Powers) 245 Benedict xvi, Pope 165 Bernard of Chartres 68, 275, 288 bliss 238, 244, 254 Bloom, Allan 9 Bodhisattva (Bodhisatta, or Buddha-​to-​ be) 245–​247; see also Buddh(a)(ism) Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius) 72, 288 Boshevism, Soviet 6 Book of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon) 184 Bonaventure 68 Bradley, F. H. 261 Brahmā Sahampati 248 Braudel, Fernand 104 Buchanan, Scott 11 Buddh(a)(ism) 237–​239, 241, 243, 252, 253, 255 B. afterlife 251 B. asceticism 243 becoming a B. (attaining Buddhahood) 247 B.’s Four Noble Truths 244 freedom in B. 250 Indian B. 238, 245 Japanese B. 217 B.’s liberating knowledge 254 B. middle path 243 B. modernists 245, 249 B. monastics 238, 248, 249 nirvana (nibbāna) in B. 252 B.’s Noble Eightfold Path 244 B. priests (Brāhmaṇa) 246 Bultmann, Rudolf K. 142 Calvin, John 166, 167 capabilit(ies)(y) 20, 120, 122

castes 249 Egyptian priestly c. 295 priests (Brāhmaṇa) 246 warrior c. (Kṣatriya) 245 Catechism of the Catholic Church 170 Catholic Church, Roman Catholic 44, 92, 165–​170 Catholic University of Lublin 165, 167, 216 cause-​effect relations 11, 117 Cervantes, Miguel 104 chaos 66 Chateaubriand, François-​René 106 chéng (upright of heart sincere) 221, 224 Chinese:  C. culture 216, 219 history and philosophy, ancient 210–​214, 229, 231 holism in C. thought 218 C. jurisprudence 220 C. literati 215 missionary engagement with the C. classics 217 C. spirituality 221 chéng (upright of heart sincere) 221, 224 Christianity 44, 49, 50, 62, 67, 71, 92, 138, 142, 153, 163–​177 Cicero 71, 267 civilization 53, 55, 60, 62, 64, 69, 191, 257, 283 civilizational excellence 263 civilizational memory 228 European/​Western c. 71, 72, 97, 98–​100, 106, 108, 113, 117, 142, 160, 163–​168, 170, 171, 177, 178, 238, 286, 287, 290, 294–​296 great ideas’ influence on c. 123, 125 religion and c. development 141 superstition’s effect on c. 281 Clausewitz, Carl von 196 Clement xi, Pope 216 coercion 112, 115 cognition 13, 15, 16, 18, 23, 30, 37, 52, 54, 82, 101, 120, 121, 138, 145, 148, 151, 195, 277 indirect c. 29 philosophical c. 53 scientific c. vs. c. as a whole 24 theological c. 145 theoretical c. 119 cognitive science 61

301

Index Columbia University honors program 257, 258 common sense 43, 49, 51, 53, 54, 181 communism 5–​8, 24 community 45–​47, 89, 117, 119, 183, 184, 189, 199, 200, 228, 230 leadership in c. 197 leisured c. 168 political c. 121 religious c. 39, 44, 46, 92, 93, 114, 198, 222, 225 world c. 139, 153 Comte, Auguste 102, 103, 141 concentration 252 conduct of laypersons in society 252 Confucius (The Master) 213, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 225, 227, 230–​232 Analects 214, 217, 219, 222–​224, 229 conscience 83, 84, 88, 119–​121, 136, 169, 225 consumerism 100, 105 contradiction (and non-​c.) 16, 50, 55, 107, 116, 132, 135, 180, 181, 272, 273, 290, 291 corporations 173, 185, 187, 188 courage (fortitude) 14, 64, 66, 129, 130, 278, 287, 295 craving (taṇhā) 253 creation 20, 21, 23, 59, 60, 62, 65, 67–​69, 138, 228 human c. 159 self-​c. 103 credibility 31 crises, civilizational/​cultural 2, 63, 97–​100, 106–​108 critical thinking 195 cults 45, 49, 294, 295 cultur(al)(e):   c. activity/​enterprise 163 democratic c. 44 c. pathologies 101, 116 Polish c. 7, 8, 11 Western c. 9, 20, 60, 64, 78, 79, 97, 101, 103, 113, 197, 210, 238, 286, 287, 290 cycle of birth, death, rebirth 243, 253 D’Ambrosio, Paul J. 218 decision making 17, 54, 74, 91, 134, 135, 156, 188 corporate d. m. 197 executive d. m. 189

free d. m. 12, 14–​16, 18, 19, 34, 37, 38, 54, 136, 146, 189, 277, 279, 282 moral d. m. 38, 136 significant d. m. 188 Deely, John N. 1–​4, 101, 115, 182, 183, 185, 187, 189–​193, 195 deism 103 democratic government 44 dependence of freedom on truth 82, 83, 85, 86 Descartes, René 2, 101, 116, 155, 190 desertion 98 Dewey, John 155, 275 Adler-​D. feud 267–​271, 273 Democracy and Education 270 Reconstruction in Philosophy 268 dialogue 84 (inter)religious d. 36, 47, 78, 138 Plato’s d. 258 dignity:  metaphysical/​moral d. 149, 150 personal d. 23, 24, 45, 48, 62, 65, 71, 83, 108, 119, 121, 122, 133, 135, 151, 169, 211, 212, 214, 223, 270 discipline 286, 287 d. of Christian civilization 166 disciplined renunciant from the lowest caste 249 mental d. (samādhi) 252, 282 monastic d. 248 self-d.​ 157 divine:  d. providence 21, 68, 202–​204 d. revelation 77, 91, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153 doable deeds 64, 97, 106, 107, 116, 120, 123, 132, 172, 272 doctrinal orthodoxy 48 dogma(tism) 50, 51 dualism, Cartesian-​like 149, 228 economic liberalism 8 Elliot, T.S. 188 emotional bond 193 Enlightenment (Age) 83, 101, 141, 177, 219 E. cultural pathologies 116 French E. 114 E. philosophy 101, 115 Western E. 104, 213, 245 E. worldview 218

302 Index Enlightenment (attained) 244, 254 Eno, Robert 219 equality 113, 132, 169, 240 arithmetical/​proportionate e. 278 spiritual 249 Erasmus of Rotterdam 61 Erskine, John 257, 258 escapism 98 ethic(al code)(s) 123, 132, 134, 136, 189, 194, 219, 271, 282 philosophical e. 102 everyday life 56, 106, 135 excellence 64, 75, 108, 179, 207, 237–​239, 247, 263, 265 cultural e. 100 organizational e. 183 professional e. 146 spiritual e. 249, 255 exceptionalism 99 executives 185, 186, 188, 189, 196, 198, 199, 206 existence passim  experience passim  faith. See a. of belief/faith under act(s) fate 50, 68–​71, 142 Feuerbach, Ludwig 103 fideism 24, 112, 114, 153, 281 fog 196 Four Noble Truths 237, 244, 253, 254 Francis Xavier, Saint 216 Francis, Pope 165, 292 free choice 15, 19, 21, 29, 31, 34–​38, 43, 45, 61, 72, 112, 115, 122, 155, 156, 213, 231, 232, 277, 278 free will 10, 11, 18, 66, 67, 203, 250 freedom passim  Fromm, Eric 105 fulfillment 19, 27–​29, 35, 77, 84–​92, 154 Gang Xu 220 Garman, Charles Edward 265, 266 Gateway Leadership Induction Technology: gatelit 179–​207 gentleness 66 Ghandi, Mohandas K. 188 Gilson, Étienne Henri 5, 6, 10, 25, 143, 173, 175, 292 The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine 7

History of Christian Philosophy in Middle Ages 8 The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy 7 The Spirit of Thomism 7 God passim  good(ness)(s) passim  grace 18, 20, 21, 49, 145, 146, 148, 160 divine g. 145, 151, 288 Great Books passim  Great Books of the Western World Program 172, 181 Great Ideas passim  G. I. Movement 2, 165, 237 Greek concepts of nature/​world, ancient 69, 70 guilt 3 Guo Qiyong 218 Hall, David L. 228–​230 Hall, G. Stanley 266 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 62 happiness 87, 88, 90, 124, 127, 149, 231, 238, 278, 280, 283, 287, 296 (ig)noble h. 244 unhappiness 270 harmony 117, 185, 203, 225 cosmic h. 242, 243 h. in discord 66 Heaven, live in h. with 230, 242 organizational h. 170 Haskins, Charles Homer 64, 65 heaven 66, 68, 104, 210, 212, 214, 217–​231, 233, 236, 266 Buddhist h. 248 ‘Heaven’ (zhi tian) 213 passive h. 214 Platonic h. 115 rebirth in h. 251 Hegel, G.W.F. 115, 155, 175 Heidegger, Martin 115, 151 History of Europe (Croce) 104 Hook, Sidney 269 Huang Chieh (Jie) of Xia 212, 226 huang huang hou di (emporer) 226 human(ity)(kind) 20, 21, 59, 63, 72, 102, 103, 231, 241, 159, 211, 212, 269, 283 biological h. 98 pre-​existing h. 219

Index humanism 271 Christian h. 69 Dewey’s h. 275 post-​h. 84 human rights 119–​122, 135 Hume, David 15, 116 idealism 100, 101 ignorance of reality 253 impermanence and non-​substantiality 253 individualism 99, 112 inertia 98 injustice 278 inner disposition 223 instinct 16, 17, 54, 118, 153, 157 i. in brute animals 54, 83 lower/​base i. 212, 226 Institute for Philosophical Research 1, 259, 261, 281, 284 intangibles 13, 14 intellect 14–​16, 18, 19, 20, 30, 31, 34, 36, 42, 51, 52, 60, 61, 72, 85, 117–​119, 122, 135, 144, 145, 155, 160, 170, 175, 176 i. seeking faith 148 intellectualism 60 interpreter/​interpretant 191–​193, 204, 215, 216, 220, 224, 258 irrationalism  100 Jain(ism)(s) 241, 243 James, William 261 jargon 131, 139 Jefferson, Thomas 188 Jesuits 216, 218 Jesus Christ 67, 91, 92, 165, 166, 178 John of Damascus, Saint (John Damascene) 68 John of Salisbury 275 John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot) 1, 4, 89, 208 Tractatus de Signis [Treatise on signs] 1, 4, 189 Judaism 49, 50, 62, 142 judging 80, 120, 280 Jullien, François 218 junzi (superior man) 210, 212, 214, 219, 220, 221, 222, 225, 231 just governance 252 justice 14, 169, 239, 240, 242, 278, 287, 293, 295 God’s j. (divine j.) 227, 294 j. and the law 132

303 Kant, Immanuel 101, 116, 155 karma (kamma) 239, 241, 242–​247, 249–​251 king 184, 188, 200, 201, 247 King, Martin Luther 188 knowing 42, 67, 80, 83, 87, 145, 180, 181, 280 k. God 92, 142, 147 imperfect k. 82 religious k. 175 self-​k. 157 technocratic k. 102 k. truth 124, 146, 148, 152, 211 k. and willing acts 157 knowledge:  commonsense k. 56, 132 liberating k. 254 observational k. 194, 253 scientific (valid) k.  21, 22, 51, 150 self-​k. 80 supernatural k. 49, 282 theoretical k. 253 k. of truth 88, 91 Krąpiec, Mieczysław Albert 23, 43 Krasiński, Zygmunt 64, 65 “Resurrecturis” [Resurrection] 66, 67 Lacy, Tim 148 law passim  leadership 180, 187, 189 (also passim) definition of l. 186 executive l. training 188 l. education 179 effects of great ideas on l. 3, 182 organizational l. 179 global l. deficit 2 semiotics of l. 79 l. stories in biblical literature 183 Legge, James 217, 224, 226, 229 Leibnizian monads 106 leisure 286–​296 liberal arts 168, 175, 176, 257, 277–​279, 282, 283, 286, 288, 295, 296 liberal education 53, 275, 276, 280 liberalism 99, 104, 115 economic l. 8 Enlightenment l. 245 flawed l. 279 political l. and anarchism 105, 106, 113

304 Index Liberté Égalité Fraternité ou la mort [liberty, equality, fraternity, or death] 113 Locke, John 116, 190, 259 logic 241, 262, 271, 272 behavioral l. 195 Indian l. 255 syllogistic l. 195, 287 truth and l. 262, 263 Lord, Robert Howard 64, 65 love 16, 18, 23, 68, 121, 172 appeal to l. to justify creation 138 l. directed toward absolute being 33, 36, 37 free choice and l. 145 l. of God 138, 148, 211, 269, 271 truth and l. 93, 124, 146, 164, 169, 224, 262, 277 l. or will over intelligence 138 Lovejoy, Arthur (Schauffler) Oncken  265, 266 “Love and Logic in Philosophy …”  259, 260, 262 The Conditions of Philosophy 262 Lublin Philosophical School 43, 79, 89 Luther, Martin 61, 166, 167 Machiavelli 188, 215 manners 35, 39, 100 Maritain, Jacques 5, 6, 62, 63, 68, 69, 114, 119, 130, 143, 174, 259, 292 Martyniak, Czesław 127–​139 “Le fondament objectif du droit d’après Saint Thomas d’Aquin” [The objective foundation of law according to Saint Thomas Aquinas] 128 Marx, Karl 188 Marxism-​Leninism 6, 7, 141 masterpiece of unbending will 59–​75 Mater et Magistra (John xxiii, Pope) 169, 178 Māyā (Queen of the Śākya clan) 246 Medieval Christian theologians 289 meditative states 252 Mencius 188, 224, 231 middle path (majjhimāpaṭipadā) 243 mind 5, 16, 70, 85, 211, 212, 239, 258, 259, 271 attunement of m. to will of gods 224 m.-​body holism 218, 252

m.-​dependent data 195 heart and m. 229 m.-​independent world order 139 middle path, m. is part of 243 serenity of m. 266 wise/​noble m./​soul 60 mindfulness, right (sammā-​sati) 252 Ming dynasty 215 misery 84 missionaries to China 216, 217 mob mentality 99 moderation 14, 198 Montesquieu, Charles-​Louis-​de-​Secondat 104 moral:  m. action 35, 38, 169 m. courage 64, 129 m. diseases 278 m. duty 87, 135, 284 m. obligation 42, 121 m. speech 200 morality 65, 105, 119 Confucian m. 223, 230 supreme m. 230 m. and law 133, 134 religious m. 212 Moskal, Piotr 43, 50, 167, 178 Musashi, Miamoto 195, 196 mystery 92, 152, 288 narcissism, community 114 nationalism 99 natural law 134, 135, 137 Aquinas’s writing about n. l. 287 Christian God and 138 freedom and 136 independent of religion 5 negative norm for positive law 136 and moral issues 136 rational human being and 138 naturalism 61, 101, 102, 124 Nemesius of Emesa 67–​69 neo-​liberalism. See liberalism Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 84, 115, 153, 162 nihilism, Nazi 46 nirvana (nibbāna) 252; see also Buddh(a) (ism)

305

Index Noble Eightfold Path 244; see also Buddh(a) (ism) non-​contradiction 55, 97 behavioral/​conceptual n. 107, 181, 273 n. of logic 272 moral n. 180 Northouse, Peter G. 186 observance (religious/​rituals) 119, 240 operational organization 3 oracle bones 221 ordered wholes 195 organizations:  organizational experience 186, 188 organizational wholes 2, 3, 41, 47, 48, 52, 55, 61, 69, 70, 72, 117, 118, 168, 172, 179, 182, 184, 185, 188, 193, 195, 197, 202–​205, 273, 277, 283, 290 Pāli Canon 237, 238, 247, 248 pantheism 103 patience 66, 75 Pavlovian method 268 peace 66, 169, 227, 253, 292, 296 global/​world p. 2, 47, 132, 238, 276, 277 p. in organizations 199 perfection 19, 37, 75, 86, 88, 91, 93, 103, 124, 135, 142, 223, 225, 231, 240, 296 faith’s p 34 p. by flawed human beings 84 freedom and p. 84, 278, 283 p. of human mind 280 self-​p. (self-​fulfillment) 64, 73, 123, 127, 155, 157–​159, 294 spiritual p. 63 247, 249 truth and p. 146 ultimate p. in religious relationship 79 permanence 243, 253 person(hood) 13, 15–​17, 24, 62, 68, 69, 156, 157, 160 philosophizing 51–​53, 81, 94, 132, 133, 139, 176, 288 philosoph(izing)(y):  philosopher qua philosopher 51 (pre-​)p. anthropology/​history 15, 59, 62, 69, 79, 80, 89 physical science 12, 22, 42, 123, 260, 281, 283

Pieper, Josef 287–​291 Leisure: The Basis of Culture 286 Muße und Kult [Liesure and culture] 291–​293, 296 Plato 14, 100, 151–​154, 158, 161, 173, 181, 188, 225, 257, 258, 263, 267, 289, 293, 294, 295 Republic 257, 267, 287 pleasures 38, 253 poetry 60, 70, 260, 272, 273 Poinsot, John (John of St. Thomas) 1, 4, 189, 190 On Sacred Science: Cursus 189 Poland:  Adler’s teachings in P. 56 Communist P. 8 Polish academic and scientific life 5, 6, 10 political realm 238, 239 Pontius Pilate 78 positive law 115, 136, 139 positivism, legal 115 post-​modernism 101, 122 priests 45, 246 Protestant Reformation (Protestantism) 7, 166, 167 prudence; see also right reason 54, 199, 201, 239, 278, 280, 287, 295 prudential judgment. See prudence psycholog(ism)(y):  p. analysis of transcendence of person 83 p. anthropology 79 behavioristic p. 73 cultural p. 65, 67 p. disorders 278 freedom, p. analysis of 73 p. independent (public) vs. p. dependent (private) 78, 79 p. approach in Socrates 80 punishment ‘for’ vs ‘by’ one’s deeds 43 Qing dynasty 215 Qin Shi Huangdi 214 Randall, John 267 rationa(lism)(lity) 20, 41, 46, 64, 100, 124, 163, 164, 170, 201, 255, 288

306 Index realism, philosophical 41–​44, 100, 113, 122, 143 realization, self-​ 73, 155, 211, 279, 194 reason(ing) 5, 16, 22, 31, 32, 81, 93, 145, 148, 187, 289, 290 abstract r. 180 commonsense r. 53, 117 discursive r. 14 faith and 130, 148, 170 moral r. 135–​136 particular r. 54 practical r. 134 prudential r. 120 r. and reality 277 revelation and 89 right r. (recta ratio) 120, 136, 277, 278 scientific r. 102 species-​specific r. 46 syllogistic r. 195 will and 85 rebirth eschatologies (karmic r.) 242, 247, 251 Redpath, Peter A. 118, 170, 195, 203–​206 reductionism 23, 24 intellectually narrow r. 23 irrational r. 24 scientistic r. 101 release 239, 253, 254 religio(ns)(us): r. communities/organizations 46–​48, 167, 168, 183, 255 efficacy and r. 83 r. life 34, 148, 183, 225 r. practices 114, 164 ren (human being/​person) 212 Chinese character (benevolent/​practice of sacrifice) 219, 220 xiao ren (mean man) 224 responsibility 122, 239 conscience and r. 84 internal r. 123 moral r. 86, 242, 250 social r. 106, 200 revelation 22, 47, 49, 77, 90–​92, 146, 290 revolution 99 Copernican r. 69 French 113 left-​leaning cultural r. 9

Ricci, Matteo 215–​217 Riefenstahl, Berta Helene Amalie ‘Leni’ 64 right:  r. action (sammā-kamman) 252 r. effort (sammā-vāyāma) 252 livelihood (sammā) 252 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 188 Rosemont, Henry, Jr. 218–​220 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 155, 188 Rubin, Arthur 201 sacraments 148, 240 sacrifice 28, 35, 37, 220–​222 Sartre, Jean Paul 105, 115, 142 scholasticism 176 scientific investigation 52, 102 scientism 99, 124 semina Verbi (seeds of the Word) 92 semiotics passim  sentimentalism 112 Shūichi, Katō 217 Shun, Emporer 223, 225, 230 Siddhārtha 245, 246 sign (s) passim  sin 82 Skinner, B. F. 55 slave(ry)(s) 71, 79, 144, 149 ancient s 106 s. among ancient Greeks 70 s. vs. freedom 85 perpetual s. 69 un protection against s. 119 tribute and s. 149 Slingerland, Edward 218, 235 Mind and Body in Early China 219 Smith, Adam 188 social relations 42, 106 society 23, 131, 164, 180, 188, 223, 227, 263, 265 civil s. 153 conduct of laypersons in s. 252 definition of s., 72 ordered s. 169, 227, 228 s. as religious community 39 sociolog(ist)(y) 42, 50, 271 s. of religion 52 s. science 13, 47, 271–​273, 275, 276 socio-​political realm 239, 240, 249

307

Index Socrates 80, 100, 132, 181, 214, 222–​225, 258, 263, 281 solidarity 106 Shang dynasty 226 soul 14, 18, 20, 22, 55, 56, 69, 74, 75, 79, 97, 98, 106, 107, 118, 122, 123, 144, 211, 225, 275, 279, 286 body-s. aligned 227, 287, 288 capable of causing culture 287 caused by supernatural God 145 s. of child 193 corporeal character of s. 288 free decision making and s. 146 immaterial character of 149 immortal s. 155 mind/​s. 60 pagan s. 152 physician of the s. 278 s. of rational animal 262 salvation of s. 121, 169 tyrannical s. 66 Spring and Autumn period during the Eastern Zhou 212, 213 śramaṇa schools (study of pre-​Buddhist texts) 241, 242 suffering 66, 169, 243, 248, 252, 253, 254; see also Four Noble Truths under Buddh(a) (ism) Sunzi (Sun Tzu) 195, 196 supernatural forces 70, 215, 219 superstition 150 278, 281, 282 Swieżawski, Stefan 6, 69 symbols 27, 28, 179, 183, 190, 191, 196, 197, 259 T’ang (Tang Yijie) 218, 226, 227, 230 218 taste (sense) 38 taste (preference) 46, 48, 114, 129, 177, 272–​ 274; see also fideism emotional t. 129, 130, 166 t. in music 287 t. vs. truth 102, 121, 129, 165, 262, 263, 268, 270, 271, 281, 282 technical progress 100 temperance 278, 287, 295 Thomas Aquinas, Saint 3, 12, 15, 18, 41 44, 50, 54, 66, 68 74, 100, 108, 116–​118, 128, 130, 133, 134, 143, 146, 151, 152, 155–​157, 160, 169, 173–​176, 201–​204, 211, 222, 230

231, 254, 258, 259, 262–​264, 271, 287, 288, 291 Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus [Course in Thomistic philosophy] 189 Summa contra gentiles 264 Summa theologiæ 133, 175 Thomis(m)(tic philosophy) 7, 130, 138, 143 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche) 103 tian (disembodied/​marmoreal Heaven) 214, 216, 217, 231 tolerance 106 Toynbee, Arnold 97 transcendence 23, 81, 83, 88, 95, 112, 122, 123, 127, 128, 156, 238 t. vs enslavement 141, 143, 144, 147–​150 freedom and t. 154, 159 horizontal/​vertical t. 157 psychological t. 85, 86 transgression 199 transitory nature of human life 32; see also human(ity)(kind); mortality treachery 64 Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the will] (Riefenstahl) 64 trustworth(iness)(y) 32 truth passim  t. claims 49, 272 logical criteria for assessing t. 260, 272 uncertainty 99, 196 United Nations Universal Declaration (udhr) 119, 120 utopian socialist ideologies 99 Valéry, Paul 99 values 2, 81, 83, 90, 99, 100, 159, 189 business/​corporate v. 170 Christian v. 142 democratic v. 188 moral v. 138, 139 Western v. 103 virtue 54, 63, 65–​68, 74, 75, 220, 223–​225, 238, 246, 251, 253, 293 Bodhisattva and v. 247 Catholic/​Christian v. 170, 172 Confucian v. 231 v. required for civilization to thrive 171

308 Index virtue (cont.) moral v. 35, 105, 120, 130, 154, 169, 200, 252, 277, 278, 286, 287, 295 practical v. 296 self-​created v. 230 te (virtue) 229, 230 vocational education 280 Voegelin, Eric 151, 153, 158 volition 81 voluntarism vs. intellectualism 60 Warring States period 214 warriors (Kṣatriya), caste of 246 Watson, John B. 258, 268 Welte, Bernhard 151 Wen, Duke 223 Westermann, Claus 198 Roots of Wisdom 199 wisdom 54, 64, 114, 150, 173, 176, 191, 193, 198, 200, 238, 246, 247, 262, 280, 287 w. of ancient Greeks 197, 289 w. of Aristotle 274 Buddhist w. (paññā) 252, 253 divine/​supreme w. 251 existential w. 218 God’s 289, 290 w. of great ideas 183 metaphysical w. 267 philosophical w. 29, 172, 197 w. in Proverbs 197, 201, 203 revealed w. 152

Wojtyła, Karol (Pope John Paul ii) 59, 73, 77–​93, 124, 125, 141, 143, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159 Fides et ratio [Faith and reason] 23 wonder(ing) 2, 3, 41, 56, 67, 69, 108, 164, 168, 173, 177 w. about causes 52, 55, 107, 131 ideas, w.-​provoking 173 philosophical w. 56, 132, 289, 295 rationality and w. 164 sense w. 54, 107, 146, 262, 288, 290 spontaneous w. 53 Woodbridge, Frederick J.E.  270 world order 55, 138, 139 Christian w. o. 62 World War ii 6, 10, 128, 129, 134, 292 worship 119, 240 divine w. 293, 294 w. scientific/​technical progress 103 self-​w. 98, 104, 114 xiao ren (small man or ungentlemanly character) 212, 224 xin (Chinese character for heart/​ mind) 218, 226 Xunzi (Xun Kuang) 224 Yao, Emporer 223 Yü the Great 227, 230 Zdybicka, Zofia Józefa 43