thought, but an essentially incarnate spirit destined by nature and grace for the resurrection. Embodiment is such a good thing that God himself became incarnate and prefigured our own resurrection. In this life God’s grace is mediated through the sacraments as material signs, most especially by the transformed bread and wine in the Eucharist. Aquinas’s approach entailed the principle that grace presupposes and perfects a rational nature.
René Descartes’s Discourse on Method is a short work that inaugurated distinctively modern philosophy. Like Plato he attempted to back off from the tradition in order to show the fundamental evidences available to reason. He developed a mode of thinking that involved a notion of body exhaustively treatable by scientific method and culminated in what became the view of the Clockwork Universe in modern physics. It entailed a dualism in human existence between a mechanized body and a separate substance mind/soul. Descartes set the conceptual framework for the way modern science has developed and the way body is considered today in natural science. He inaugurated the modern project by developing science for its practical application in medicine and technology.
G. W. F. Hegel presented a mode of thought that attempted to gather the various philosophic positions into a single System. He taught us to think in philosophy both historically and systematically. His System laid out the conditions—ontological, cosmic, historical, and personal—for the rationally free society. But he also taught us to think with constant attention to revelation. His own thought was rooted in his self-avowed Lutheranism. We have chosen selections from the introductions to his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
Finally, we have selected a small text from Martin Heidegger presented as a “Memorial Address” to peasant villagers of his hometown in Messkirch in Bavaria. Heidegger attempted to get back to what he called “the ground of metaphysics” as first philosophy and to rethink the tradition from there. The ground of metaphysics lies in a sense of the encompassing Mystery that is brought to awareness through the kind of thinking awakened by the arts and that emerges from meditation on ultimate things, such as one’s own mortality. The tradition of philosophy is fueled by that but has not considered it as such. Heidegger saw each great philosophy as a way of revealing fundamental truths about our position in the whole scheme of things, but also simultaneously as a way of concealing what is revealed in other philosophies; and he especially focused upon the rootage of thought in the life-world, in everyday life. As we noted previously, von Balthasar claimed that today theology must make Heidegger’s project its own. In effect, this involves the rootage of theology, not only in philosophy, but also and especially in the life of prayer. The current work provides an introduction to each of the works selected as well as lists of questions for focus and discussion and suggestions for further reading.
4.
There is no such thing as philosophical reading; there is only philosophical rereading and rereading and rereading. The idea is to consider each claim within the context of the philosopher’s view of the Whole, but also to think of that in terms of reflection upon one’s own experience. So when reading one has to anticipate and recall, correcting one’s preliminary understanding in the light of what comes later. By this tacking between part and whole of the text and between text and experience, one gradually builds up a view of the Whole to which each philosopher directs us. It is upon the habits developed in this manner that theology essentially draws in thinking through revelation.
One way to read well is to respond regularly and reflectively to what is read. Students would do well to keep a reflective journal in which they develop reasoned reactions to what might especially strike them, positively or negatively, in the texts. In this way they will learn to think for themselves, following the paths laid out in the readings.
Finally, the texts and the introductory remarks are meant to be supplemented by a seasoned teacher who, through lecture and discussion, can help bring to life what might otherwise remain only the dead letter.
* * * *
Two of the chapters have already appeared in print: “Phenomenology of the Mailbox” in Philosophy Today, “Hegel and Religion” in my Placing Aesthetics: Reflections on the Philosophic Tradition. They are reprinted with permission and with some modification.
FIDES ET RATIO
The human spirit soars on two wings, reason and faith.
—Fides et Ratio, John Paul II
READING
John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship of Faith and Reason (Boston: Pauline, 1998). You are invited to read the entire work, but you are expected to have read the following sections:
Introduction: 1, 3–5
I. Revelation: 12, 15
II. Credo ut Intelligam: 16–19
III. Intelligo ut Credam: 26, 30–33
IV. Faith and Reason: 36, 38–40, 43, 45–46, 48
IV. Magisterium: 49, 51–52, 55–56, 62
V. Philosophy and Theology: 64–68, 71–73, 75–77, 79
VI. Current Requirements and Tasks: 81, 83, 85, 86–90, 97, 106
1.
The epigram to Fides et Ratio presents an image that governs Pope John Paul II’s thought: “Faith and reason are like two wings upon which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” The image is suggestive: with one wing a bird cannot take off but only flutters around in a circle, pivoting around itself. One wing—faith alone or reason alone—gets one nowhere in the greater scheme of things. Fideism or rationalism are the extremes to be avoided. But there is also a third option to be avoided: rejection of both faith and reason.
In this encyclical John Paul II addresses the contemporary intellectual situation. He finds currents of materialism, scientism, positivism, phenomenalism, historicism, subjectivism, relativism, skepticism, agnosticism, atheism, evolutionism, pantheism, nihilism, and fideism, as well as, linked to fideism, biblicism and radical traditionalism.
Materialism is a position that claims to be the upshot of scientific development: everything is reducible to elementary particles that combine and separate according to invariant laws. Human awareness is wholly governed by brain-functioning (Faith and Reason, #80, p. 101; henceforth 80/101). It is also called reductionism. It appears as evolutionism insofar as it sees no link between matter and spirit but reduces the latter to the former. Materialism is linked to positivism. The pope also calls it scientism (88/109), which claims that our only knowledge is sensory (46/62). It is also linked to instrumentalism, which the pope sees as in turn linked to pragmatism (89/110–11), which holds that through science we can know how to develop the means to our ends without any ability to assess ends (47/63). Phenomenalism is broader than positivism because what appears is more than sensory, for example, our own awareness; but phenomenalism denies knowledge of ultimates beyond phenomena (54/71; 83/105).
Relativism is the generic position that denies all absolutes (5/14; 80/101). Its two variants are subjectivism and historicism. Subjectivism claims that all opinions and especially all values are merely relative to individual preference. Certain brands of existentialism make that claim with regard to values. Historicism broadens the claim to cover cultures and epochs: truth and goodness are determined by culture or the historical time frame within a culture and there is no way to judge better or worse with regard to differing cultures or different historical time frames (54/72; 87/109). Skepticism withholds judgment on everything. Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, which means “nothing”) goes further than skepticism to claim that there is nothing at all
