Saturday, May 21, 2016
Friday, May 20, 2016
Basia: Basia: Nazi Holocaust Survivor as a Child posted...
Thursday, May 19, 2016
W. Norris Clarke, S.J.Philosophical Journey (in his own words)
http://www.morec.com/nature/clarke.htm
Philosophical Journey (in his own words):
1. I started off as a convinced Thomist from my first philosophical training with the French Jesuits at Jersey, under the guidance of the brilliant young Thomistic metaphysician, Andre Marc, from whom I developed a keen appreciation of the basic metaphysical structure of the real according to the vision of St. Thomas. Also decisive was my private reading of Joseph Marechal’s whole history of Western thought, Point de depart de la metaphysique, culminating in his seminal Vol. V on Aquinas himself, in which he stressed the innate dynamism of the human intellect toward the Infinite Fullness of being as the ultimate foundation of all human inquiry; added to this was my underground reading of the then temporarily banned Blondel’s Action (1st ed. 1893—better than all the later more cautious revisions), which powerfully highlighted the complementary dynamism of the human will toward the same fullness of being as good. I have always held onto these two fundamental insights of St. Thomas as the basic for all human inquiry and search for the good, but I am not a full card-carrying member of the Transcendental Thomism school, for various technical reasons regarding whether and how they reached fully existential being as the basis of metaphysics by their method.
2. The historically important rediscovery of the profoundly existential character of St. Thomas’s metaphysics, centered on the act of existence (esse) as the fountainhead of all perfection, both in creatures and in God, diversified by various modes of limiting essence, was just getting under way when I was at Jersey (1936-39), under the dramatic leadership of Etienne Gilson in the 5th edition of Le Thomisme, but I took full explicit possession of this deeply integrating insight into Aquinas’s thought during my M.A. in philosophy at Fordham, under the direction of Anton Pegis, disciple and colleague of Gilson at Toronto. So I became what soon became known as an “existential Thomist.”
3. The next significant phase of my philosophical development came during my Ph.D. studies at Louvain, under the well-known Thomists Van Steenberghen and De Raeymaeker. Here I shared in the exciting rediscovery of the central role of Neoplatonic participation in the metaphysics of Thomas, especially as the basic structure behind the relation of creatures to God, going far beyond what he could get from Aristotle alone—all this from my reading and discussions with Geiger, Fabro, De Finance, etc. Now I came to understand St. Thomas’s entire metaphysical system as an original synthesis of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. I wrote my thesis precisely on the development of this synthesis in Thomas (summarized in the first, widely circulated article in my list of publications) a theme not yet widely known, it seems, in American Catholic Thomistic circles.
4. The last key element in my philosophical formation I picked up also during my doctorate at Louvain. All around me were blossoming the new movements of phenomenology, both the older more austere school of strict Husserlian phenomenology, which interested me less than the newer more existential interpersonalist phenomenologies of thinkers like Emmanuel Mounier, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Nedoncelle, John Macmurray, etc., and to a lesser extent Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. I plunged deeply into them for months, before returning to St. Thomas for my dissertation. I saw the need now for both these approaches as complementary to give us a more fully rounded understanding of the real. The interpersonal phenomenologies need the ontological grounding of dynamic substance or nature as a unified center for its many relations and its self-identity through time; Thomistic metaphysics needs to enrich the data it is seeking to explain by the more detailed concrete descriptions of the actual life of real persons provided so richly by phenomenology. A creative synthesis was needed. This I have tried to outline in Person and Being (1993), now in its fifth printing, and my widely circulated article, “To Be Is to Be Substance-in-Relation” (1992), which surprised many non-Thomists.
In doing this I identify myself with the growing, late 20th century movement called “Personalist Thomism.” One leading center of this has been the Lublin School of Thomism (Poland), of which the best-known representative is Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), with his seminal book, The Acting Person and other similar writings.
http://www.morec.com/nature/clarke.htm
Philosophical Journey (in his own words):
1. I started off as a convinced Thomist from my first philosophical training with the French Jesuits at Jersey, under the guidance of the brilliant young Thomistic metaphysician, Andre Marc, from whom I developed a keen appreciation of the basic metaphysical structure of the real according to the vision of St. Thomas. Also decisive was my private reading of Joseph Marechal’s whole history of Western thought, Point de depart de la metaphysique, culminating in his seminal Vol. V on Aquinas himself, in which he stressed the innate dynamism of the human intellect toward the Infinite Fullness of being as the ultimate foundation of all human inquiry; added to this was my underground reading of the then temporarily banned Blondel’s Action (1st ed. 1893—better than all the later more cautious revisions), which powerfully highlighted the complementary dynamism of the human will toward the same fullness of being as good. I have always held onto these two fundamental insights of St. Thomas as the basic for all human inquiry and search for the good, but I am not a full card-carrying member of the Transcendental Thomism school, for various technical reasons regarding whether and how they reached fully existential being as the basis of metaphysics by their method.
2. The historically important rediscovery of the profoundly existential character of St. Thomas’s metaphysics, centered on the act of existence (esse) as the fountainhead of all perfection, both in creatures and in God, diversified by various modes of limiting essence, was just getting under way when I was at Jersey (1936-39), under the dramatic leadership of Etienne Gilson in the 5th edition of Le Thomisme, but I took full explicit possession of this deeply integrating insight into Aquinas’s thought during my M.A. in philosophy at Fordham, under the direction of Anton Pegis, disciple and colleague of Gilson at Toronto. So I became what soon became known as an “existential Thomist.”
3. The next significant phase of my philosophical development came during my Ph.D. studies at Louvain, under the well-known Thomists Van Steenberghen and De Raeymaeker. Here I shared in the exciting rediscovery of the central role of Neoplatonic participation in the metaphysics of Thomas, especially as the basic structure behind the relation of creatures to God, going far beyond what he could get from Aristotle alone—all this from my reading and discussions with Geiger, Fabro, De Finance, etc. Now I came to understand St. Thomas’s entire metaphysical system as an original synthesis of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. I wrote my thesis precisely on the development of this synthesis in Thomas (summarized in the first, widely circulated article in my list of publications) a theme not yet widely known, it seems, in American Catholic Thomistic circles.
4. The last key element in my philosophical formation I picked up also during my doctorate at Louvain. All around me were blossoming the new movements of phenomenology, both the older more austere school of strict Husserlian phenomenology, which interested me less than the newer more existential interpersonalist phenomenologies of thinkers like Emmanuel Mounier, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Nedoncelle, John Macmurray, etc., and to a lesser extent Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. I plunged deeply into them for months, before returning to St. Thomas for my dissertation. I saw the need now for both these approaches as complementary to give us a more fully rounded understanding of the real. The interpersonal phenomenologies need the ontological grounding of dynamic substance or nature as a unified center for its many relations and its self-identity through time; Thomistic metaphysics needs to enrich the data it is seeking to explain by the more detailed concrete descriptions of the actual life of real persons provided so richly by phenomenology. A creative synthesis was needed. This I have tried to outline in Person and Being (1993), now in its fifth printing, and my widely circulated article, “To Be Is to Be Substance-in-Relation” (1992), which surprised many non-Thomists.
http://www.morec.com/nature/clarke.htm
The God as Ground of Purposiveness in Plato: Finality and Intelligence
The God as Ground of Purposiveness
in Plato
Why is there a world at all? Why should
there be a plurality of beings? In the Timaeus, the Phaedo, and the Republic,
the only answer that is given is that the Good is the cause of everything. The
Form of the Good is the cause of all being. Everything is arranged the way it
is because it is best that it should be this way. “That this is the supremely
valid principle of becoming and of the order of the world, we shall most surely
be right to accept from men of understanding,”47 and “…the good took
over all that is visible.” 48
In Phaedo49 Socrates, confronted
with the question: “Why is there becoming?” answers that it is, because
sensible things “partake” of forms; the forms “become present” to them. When
the form departs, the thing ceases to be what it was.50 According to
Phaedo the meaning of the Anaxagorian formula “Mind ordered everything” is
this: that the best or good is the cause of the order of things.
In the Republic (Book VI) the Form of Good
is compared by Socrates to the sun, which moves everything. Finality,
therefore, is all-pervasive in all becoming. In the entire universe there is no
action, no movement, no striving, but for the sake of Good. The Form of Good,
therefore, is the cause, the real cause of existence and change in all visible
reality.
Toward the end of the sixth book of the
Republic Socrates says: “In like manner the good may be said not only to be the
author of knowledge of all things known, but of their being and essence, and
yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.”51
It is clear from the above statements that
for Plato the good is the supreme cause of the becoming of each aspect of the
universe. This universe can be understood only by tracing a benevolent design
in it. The category of design belongs to a higher order of reality than the
elements out of which the world is constructed. In the Phaedo we are told that
the real reason why Socrates remains in prison and does not run away to Megara
is not that his body, the bones and
sinews, cannot be moved, but the belief that it is better to obey the laws of the
country. His idea of moral Good makes him stay there.
The idea of Good is therefore the ultimate
real cause of (1) the existence of the world; (2) the essence of the world as a
totality, and also of each element in it; (3) the design of the world; (4) the
design of each being in the world.
That is why we can say that for Plato the
purposeful realization of the Good is the cause of all causes; it not only
makes the cosmos what it is, but is also the cause of its very existence. In
other words it explains why there is a world at all; not only why it is such,
but why it exists at all.
This world is there because it “partakes of”
the Idea of the Good. All elements of the universe are what they are, and are
there because they are all organized, harmonized for the sake of the Good. But,
that for the sake of which something is or acts is precisely the basis of
purposiveness. So, we can say that in Plato the action of the Good is the
causing of order, the ordering of chaotic elements so that they all cooperate towards
Good. This, however, is the very kernel of the idea of purposiveness. In Plato,
therefore, purposiveness is not only something acting externally, on an already
fully constituted system of beings, but it truly causes their existence, their
very being. As such, it is a constitutive principle of being.
Does the Platonic idea of finality imply
the notion of creation? We know that the ancients did not have the concept of
“creation ex nihilo” and Plato, himself, did not develop it either. At least,
there is little in his writings to suggest he did. The idea of the Good is
eternal, separate, above essence and existence. On the other hand, as already
pointed out, Plato was convinced that every movement, every action, must
ultimately come from a “psyche” pursuing some good.
The question occurs: How does the Idea of
the Good, which we now can call the Final Cause of the cosmos, exercise its
causality?
Plato uses phrases like: “is present to”, causes,
or “the world partakes of the Idea.” But the notion is never fully elaborated.
My suggestion is that, in Plato's mind, it can not be explained further. Not by
mortals, anyway. On the other hand, since he was convinced that ultimately only
a psyche can act purposively (and therefore all movement in the world must ultimately
be originated by a psyche), he introduced the Demiurge in the Timaeus. The Idea
of the Good can not be identified with God. That is why the Demiurge is
necessary.
It seems that an analysis of the
relationship between the Demiurge, the Ideas, and the phenomenal world will throw
some light on this problem.
Basia: Basia: Nazi Holocaust Survivor as a Child posted...
Basia: Basia: Nazi Holocaust Survivor as a Child posted...: For those who may not know me, my name is Irene. I am Barbara's younger sister. We used to call Barbara "Basia.&qu...
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Basia: Basia: Nazi Holocaust Survivor as a Child posted...
Basia: Basia: Nazi Holocaust Survivor as a Child posted...: For those who may not know me, my name is Irene. I am Barbara's younger sister. We used to call Barbara "Basia.&qu...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)