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Von Hildebrand on Love, Happiness, and Sex

Von Hildebrand on Love, Happiness, and Sex: The unique profundity of sex in the physical sphere is sufficiently shown by the simple fact that a man's attitude towards it is of incomparably great...

Von Hildebrand on Love, Happiness, and Sex WILLIAM A. MARRA

Von Hildebrand on Love, Happiness, and Sex

  • WILLIAM A. MARRA
The unique profundity of sex in the physical sphere is sufficiently shown by the simple fact that a man's attitude towards it is of incomparably greater moral significance than his attitude towards other bodily Our loving relation to God is by far the most important of all possible loves. But in what follows, I wish to restrict myself to our loves for human persons. I think that we need to develop accurate categories concerning the things of experience before we attempt an analysis of metaphysical realities.
In a typical human life, love comes mixed with many other things: anxiety, concern, sorrow, sacrifice. But every love also affords delight, joy. Even to know that the loved one exists, to be in her presence, to speak tender words together, to do things and enjoy things with a person we love: this is the stuff of a happy life. This brings sunshine and joy into what is usually a gray and prosaic day.
If there is no loved one in my life no dear friend or child or parent or spouse just what can rejoice me? Some superficial sources are no doubt available. There are gourmet meals, for example, and chances for fame (if only as a guest on some big TV show). Possessing money is not painful either, if we prescind from the hard work that often accompanies the acquiring and (perhaps even more) safeguarding it.
And there are other sources of joy which are not superficial. I think here of our commerce with beautiful things in nature and in art. These touch us, warm us, delight us, bring us to our depth. But they leave us essentially lonely in precisely the degree that we have no beloved person with whom we can share the experience.
So, too, professional pursuits may yield their own special kind of satisfaction and happiness. But they, too, are essentially lonely. Certain practitioners of the intellectual life seek to persuade at least themselves that they enjoy a higher happiness for the reason that their minds are fully active. They may hear the joyful laughter or heartfelt song of loving persons and dismiss the scene as one of sense happiness, in contrast to their lofty intellectual happiness. But they deceive themselves. Keeping the mind active, as such, may certainly bring its own kind of delight; but this is not to be compared with the music and sunshine that surround loving hearts.
Von Hildebrand took seriously the crucial distinction made by Edmund Husserl, his teacher at the University of Goettingen, between intentional and non-intentional experiences, including most emphatically those experiences called feelings. If someone strokes my skin, or if some chemical or mechanical agent acts on some part of my body, I shall experience feelings pleasant or not, welcome or not. These are the caused, nonintentional feelings. But if I respond with joy to the presence of a loved one, or with sorrow to news that a beloved person has died, or with gratitude to someones generosity toward me-these feelings are in no way bodily as if they arise from some agents contact with nerve endings of my body.
On the contrary, these belong to the new, spiritual world of intentionality where the person has an enlightened rational contact with being. That I know or understand something is thus an intentional experience; so, too, that I accomplish an inner act of willing. And so, too, are all the feelings that cannot even exist unless I first grasp the object. Von Hildebrand, above all in his book The Heart but also in many other books, at last does justice to the nature of spiritual feelings. The traditional philosophy usually assigned the spiritual part to the will and feeling to the body. Under these categories, it would follow that purely bodiless persons, such as angels, would feel nothing. Their joy or love or grateful praise would somehow amount to an intellectual volition, sharply distinguished from any emotions (which are supposed to be motions of the body).
One of von Hildebrands greatest contributions to the philosophy of the person is his analysis of value response. Love is such a response. For love to exist, I must grasp the beloved person as lovable, as glowing with a preciousness that already belongs to her, independent of any needs or desires of mine. I grasp that the loved one is a value something good in herself. I discover this value, respond to it, am grateful for the encounter.
Never do I glare at the loved one as if to inquire how she can somehow satisfy my needs or urges or desires. This indeed happens in all those encounters precisely the opposite of value responses. Centering on myself, I regard the world as holding beings which can become means to my pleasures and comforts to my happiness in the egotistical sense. Two radically different kinds of good must be distinguished here: the value good and what von Hildebrand terms the subjectively satisfying good. The latter includes all the glittering qualities that shine forth from a being just because it is able to enhance my pleasure or comfort or flatter my pride and concupiscence.
Hence, von Hildebrand is not especially impressed by the principle, enunciated as far back as Aristotle, that man always wills the good and always desires the good. Which good? von Hildebrand would ask. The good of value or the subjectively satisfying good? Nor would he agree that this distinction is equivalent to that between the real good and the apparent good, as if all our choosing of the latter kind results from some sort of intellectual failure some mistake.
The joy that comes from a loving relation to another person arises from our value response to that person. Just the fact of her preciousness and lovability is what stirs within us love and gratitude and delight. Yet not one of these responses can be willed. I do not love the other as a means to a desired end my happiness. Rather, I approach the other for her own sake; I am drawn toward her by her lovability. I forget myself and all my needs and desires. And blessed paradox of life and the Gospel! I am surprised by joy. I had surrendered to the precious one, loved her because she is lovable. I had forgotten my self and my needs. I did not begin to love in order to be happy. Rather, my love is a response to the lovable person who has come into my life. Joy and laughter and sunshine are the fruits of the value response, but never the intended ends.
Dietrich von Hildebrand was thirty-four years old when in 1923 he gave a lecture on marriage in Ulm, Germany, at a congress of the Catholic Academic Association. Two years later, in Innsbruck, Austria, he gave several lectures at a session of the Federation of Catholic Students Unions. These had to do with Purity and Virginity. They were published in German under that title. The Ulm lecture appeared in a little book entitled Marriage. It had the enthusiastic approval of then Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, papal nuncio in Munich, who later became Pope Pius XII. Translated into English during World War II, the book enjoyed great popularity, remaining in print through four editions over fourteen years. Out of print afterward for almost thirty years, it has finally been republished by Sophia Institute Press.
The Innsbruck lectures were published in English in 1930, but under the somewhat apologetic title In Defense of Purity. This has been von Hildebrands most popular book, having been translated into many European languages. Simply stated, the book is a masterpiece, an original and profound study of the mystery of human sexuality and its exact relation to purity, to love, to marriage, and, above all, to consecrated virginity.
For my purposes here, it suffices that I sum up the first part of the book, having to do with sex as distinguished from all other bodily systems.
Von Hildebrand notes that, in contrast with all other bodily experiences, sex alone is essentially deep:
Every manifestation of sex produces an effect which transcends the physical sphere and, in a fashion quite unlike the other bodily desires, involves the soul deeply in its passion .... The positive and negative values attaching to sex belong to a level far deeper than those which attach to the other bodily appetites .
. . . The unique profundity of sex in the physical sphere is sufficiently shown by the simple fact that a mans attitude towards it is of incomparably greater moral significance than his attitude towards other bodily appetites. Surrender to sexual desire for its own sake defiles a man in a way that gluttony, for example, can never do. It wounds him to the core of his being, and he becomes in an absolutely different and novel fashion guilty of sin .... Sex can indeed keep silence, but when it speaks it is no mere obiter dictum, but a voice from the depths, the utterance of something central and of the utmost significance. In and with sex, man, in a special sense, gives himself.1
Scattered throughout von Hildebrands works are many references to the great errors that always abound concerning the human person. One such error has been dealt with briefly above namely, that which sees all human responses, and therefore love, as means to self-gratification. There is then the more modern error, especially egregious since Freud, which interprets all love as being rooted in sex drives, whether explicitly or not. This latter error becomes at least plausible when spousal love is at stake. For such a love occurs between the sexes and certainly is linked to sexual union in a dramatic way. How natural, then, to say that love is but a sexual drive in the first place or at least to say that on the best analysis love is but a spiritual friendship between two persons, with sex merely superadded.
Von Hildebrand rejects such interpretations of spousal love. He stresses that, in its very quality as a spiritual (thus, intentional) experience, the love in question already differs from parental or filial love or the love between friends. This love involves falling in love and then being in love. It includes the enchantment which the beloved person effects on the lover. Far from being a youthful lunacy, genuine spousal love stirs us in our depths. Our heart cries out for requital. The intentions of union and benevolence, to be found in all real loves, find here their most insistent voice.
The great plays of Shakespeare, the music and operas of Mozart (nay, even the songs of Irving Berlin!) speak of this love, sing of it, and celebrate it in a hundred beautiful ways. This love speaks the language of humble gratitude, of yearning, of tender care for the loved one. It pleads for permanence for eternal union even. It would shower all good things on the loved one, and avert the slightest discomfort. It gives birth to music and to joy even to contemplate the beloved, even to pronounce her name.
How are spousal love and human sex related? If atheistic evolution is true (can there be a serious theistic evolution?), there is no link. Everything is the result of chance, of random comings together, after a trillion trillion trials, of atoms and elements of dead matter until at last, by some happy accident, life is made; and then animal life and then human life. Nothing human is especially high or noble, proceeding as it does from the random and irrational combination of material elements. Love is nothing special; nor is beauty or humility. That we humans come in different sexes means nothing: it is but the accidental result of some evolutionary twist as the atoms of matter march blindly into the future. From this point of view, sex is even something grotesque and absurd.
Not so if a personal Creator, God, is at the source of all being and all earthly life and experience. Then nothing is seen as a result of mere chance, least of all the profound complementary character both biological and spiritual of the two human sexes. Von Hildebrand teaches that it is the God-willed meaning the destiny of human sex to be both the bodily expression and the completion of wedded love. Love yearns for union on all levels. Love seeks self-revelation and self-donation to the loved one. Love is of the heart. When now the persons freely will to share a life together, a bond is established: marriage itself. This voluntarily places the future lives of the partners beyond any arbitrariness or caprice.
Only within the garden of wedded love ought the veils that guard our sexual secret be opened: to admit the loved one. Far from being something peripheral or superficial, the sex of each of us belongs to our inner sanctum. Its great personal depth is just the reason for its lofty destiny in marriage.
By the same measure, sex isolated from wedded love constitutes the core of impurity. Von Hildebrand distinguishes three elements of the sin of impurity. He writes:
In the first place, I fling myself away by giving up this personal secret to another with no intention of a real and final surrender to that person or of entering thus into a lasting external union with my partner ....
. . Besides this squandering of self, which may be described as a specific degradation of myself and my partner, this abuse of sex always involves a second factor, a desecration. To perform the act which signifies the hallowed union of two human beings in one flesh, and should be the expression and fulfillment of a lasting and indissoluble bond of love, with a partner to whom we are not united by the sacred tie of matrimony is obviously a desecration of the most awful kind ....
. . . Every abuse of sex further involves a specific defilement.
. . . The aspects which sex displays when it is isolated and no longer formed from within by wedded love and the consciousness of Gods sanction namely, the siren-song of sensual attraction with its poisonous sweetness, and diabolic evil lust display a peculiar power to corrupt and defile the soul. The moment any man in his employment of sex wills one of these two aspects, and gives himself up to it, he incurs a mysterious defilement and separates himself in an altogether unique fashion from God.2
All the above concerns the mystery of human sex in its unitive role. The mystery becomes still deeper and more beautiful when the procreative role is added. This is a topic in itself, which is linked to the great moral issue of the sin of artificial contraception. For the purposes of this paper, however, I should like to end with a final quote from von Hildebrand linking both roles: It is no chance that God has invested the sexual act with creative significance. As Gods love is the creative principle of the universe, so love is everywhere creation, and there is a profound significance in the nexus at once symbol and reality whereby from the creative act in which two become one flesh from love and in love, the new human being proceeds.3

Endnotes
  1. In Defense of Purity (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1935), p. 14. This book has since been reprinted several times in English. A new printing is due in late fall 1989, from Franciscan University of Steubenville.


dividertop



Marra, William A. "Von Hildebrand on Love, Happiness, and Sex." In The Catholic Writer: The Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute 2 (Ignatius Press, 1989): 119-127.

The Author

The late William A. Marra was professor of philosophy at Fordham University.
Copyright © 1989 Ignatius Press

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Monday, May 28, 2018

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The Uses of Philosophy – The Incompleteness of Science
To philosophize is to attempt to see in a coherent and meaningful vision the totality of my whole existence. It is a renewed effort to see the essential value and direction of my life. Ultimately to philosophize one must decide for wisdom of life.
Here we face a number of difficulties.
First a casual look at the history of Philosophy reveals to us many and different beliefs, ideologies, faiths. As already mentioned, it seems that almost everything that has been believed as true by some thinkers was also denied by others. Philosophers do not seem to agree on the most vital issues, which perennially confront every generation of mortals.
Second a casual look at the contemporary scene, at the world today, seems to suggest the same. There are so many divergent views, ideologies and mythologies and all have dedicated defenders and followers sometimes fanatically sold to their visions of what is valuable, true and meaningful.
This realization may lead to despair. Is Truth attainable at all? How can I know whether there is anything worth believing at all? Is not skepticism the most reasonable attitude? Is not everything relative?
Third the observation of the great majority of people is not encouraging either. It does not take much time to see that a great part of mankind lives without paying much attention to the crucial questions of human existence. False notions of security, ignorance deliberately cultivated, thoughtless pleasure-seeking, mad activism are all glorified and widely practiced. Preoccupation with senseless trivialities – this is what we see everywhere, or it seems so.
Not many people like to think deeply. Many deliberately evade confronting their inner emptiness by constantly trying to run away from themselves. The society in which we live provides immeasurable ways for making it easy to plunge into thoughtless spending of time. It is called entertainment:  drugs, alcohol, bought sex, etc. Many people live this way.
It is enough to reflect on this all to be tempted very strongly to give up the serious search for a true meaning of our lives. Is there any?
This “temptation to despair” is nevertheless the result of a superficial and shallow observation. For philosophy is not a futile quest. Many individuals found deep and rewarding meaning to their lives in personal search; in Philosophy. The quest itself is certainly difficult and may last a lifetime. But it is not a futile quest. Gradually light emerges. Many a truth, a belief acquires through centuries of thinking and rethinking more validity and more solid justification. Everyone wants to make his or her life as meaningful as possible. Mankind never gives up this search for meaning. If it had it would stop existing as mankind. There would be no humanity, we would not exist. For this search for meaning, philosophy is the main striving force of one’s existence. There is no life without it.
The perennial questions confront in some way every thinking human being, but the horizon of knowledge, the depth of insight differs from century to century. All humanity evolves dynamically towards clearer understanding, toward fuller awareness, towards simpler vision of meaning of existence.
The differences must be there, because each culture, each civilization, each generation (and each individual) has a perspectival, partial and limited view. Nevertheless the insights, the answers gained gradually accumulate.
We must not let ourselves be deceived by the perspectival and limited nature of human knowledge. Since human beings are limited, so will be their visions, but limited does not mean non-existent. Since philosophical questions face each one of us, we are very privileged. We can examine how the greatest minds of mankind struggle with the same problems. We have a dialogue with the great philosophers of the past and the present. This itself is a great advantage. By examining their views, the way they formulated the enduring all-human questions on the meaning of existence, we may be spared going into blind alleys of improper ways of questioning. By examining carefully their answers we may get tremendous insights and depth of vision, perhaps even true solutions. We are not alone in this human quest which endures over the ages. My and your vision is certainly very limited and meager, to say the least, but in conversing with the great philosophers, the leaders and giants of insight and vision, we can think the thoughts of the best of all humankind. The great advantage of this fact cannot be overestimated ever. This is most certainly the most exhilarating experience. It is growing towards full human stature as a member of the whole family of men. Are we not contradicting ourselves? First we realized that the philosophical search for meaning must be done by each one for himself and thus it is a lonely search, and now we are saying that this search is nevertheless a search together with other thinkers in a kind of enduring search – dialogue over centuries of time! There is no contradiction here. What is important is our aim, our goal:  to shape my meaning of my existence, for myself. The purpose of philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas remarked, is not to know what others thought, but to attain towards the TRUTH of things. In studying Philosophy each one must think for himself. Each one is all the time searching and actively looking for his or her meaning. Philosophizing is a constant determined reaching towards the vision of TRUTH. Otherwise it would be a meaningless gathering of scattered information only. So much is always clear.
However, it would be irrational and unjustifiable to reject a philosophical insight, which after careful rethinking appears as true and valid, within an important area of my search simply because it is not my own, but someone else’s. This point is so obvious that it would be a waste of time to dwell on it further. There lies the value and meaning of studying the greatest and the best in Philosophy.
Some of the modern thinkers are rather skeptical of conclusion, transcending what they define as human experience. This experience is conceived by them in a rather narrow sense, called scientific. To those thinkers – contrary to the Ancient Greek belief and Medieval attitude, philosophy should only be concerned with what is empirically verifiable. By empirical verification again they mean sense-verification. This attitude in its extreme form narrows tremendously the horizon of inquiry to the scientifically demonstrable only. There are some, who believe that Science so understood, is all we have to our disposal.
Scientific truth – truth obtained by special sciences – has the redeeming quality of being exact, but is never complete and never ultimate. It does not suffice unto itself. It needs philosophical, that is more fundamental, grounding. It originates in many assumptions which are without much scrutiny accepted as good. Scientific truth does not stand on its own feet and is not fundamental enough. It must be integrated and rooted in more complete and final kind of truth, which may be considered neither “scientific” (in a sense described above) nor directly demonstrable by senses. No scientific theory is in any way ultimate for each one can be – and historically often had been – replaced by another one. Where science ends the problems do not end, neither does the search for meaning. It must be noted also that special sciences give us only piecemeal insight into very limited a narrowly specified aspects of the world:  by no means exhaustive or complete. The scientist himself within his field of specialization, as a human being needs truth which is whole and complete. Whether he likes it or not, by the very make-up of his human mind, he must form a total concept of the universe and find his place in it. The philosophic truth is more general thus less exact but more basic. It is truth of higher rank not only because its horizon is broader and deeper, but also as a type of knowledge. The inexact philosophic truth is true truth and indispensable. A truth may be very exact and yet very small and almost devoid of deeper meaning altogether. Special sciences alone cannot ever completely satisfy the imperative need for a meaning-vision of the totality of human experience as human. As Sidney Hook remarked, “Philosophy concerns itself with the place of man in the universe from the point of view of certain -large and perennial questions which all reflective men at some time or another ask. These questions are not asked or answered in any of the special sciences, but to answer them intelligently one must be familiar with the best science and theology of the day.” Sidney Hook, The Uses of Philosophy).
This then is Philosophy as the quest for wisdom. Wisdom is concerned with meaning, values and value judgments. It is knowledge of what is good or better, bad or worse, what is meaningful and what is not. It is knowledge which throws in the concreteness of human existence a certain illuminating light at the questions:  Who am I? What is the universe around me? What can I know? What I can hope for? What should I do? Does the universe show a design or not? Is there a God or Friend beyond phenomena or are we alone? Are human beings destined for immortal existence or perchance only complicated sparks of chemical elements?
This of course, is only a random selection of philosophical problems. There is a host of other problems. All are interrelated and mutually trigger one another and thus throw light at one another forming gradually a more meaningful pattern of vision.
We are in the position now to put together the answer to the question:  Why should we study Philosophy? Philosophy provides
(a) purpose in life. It enables a person to attain a coherent system of ideas and beliefs leading towards a more satisfactory mode of living;
(b) tremendous enrichment of human knowledge because it organizes the best of sciences and  draws conclusions relevant for the search for the meaning of life;
(c) contact with the greatest minds in the history of mankind. The problems of Philosophy are by their very nature perennial. Mankind has been wrestling with these problems through the ages and will continue in future. In each generation there are geniuses of insight and depth who have left their answers to be pondered and examined.
(d) a sense of worth and meaning of life. An unexamined life is not worthy of man. An exclusive preoccupation with everyday concerns without a more comprehensive view limits and impoverishes life robbing it almost completely of its value and import;
(e) social evaluation. In our modern rapidly changing world of mass civilizations a mass destruction becomes more and more probable. The study of Philosophy helps towards an intelligent evaluation of the political scene and to constructive use of one’s freedom for the interests of civilization. It augments the sense of meaning of each person’s individual existence.
To quote Jacques Maritain, Philosophy reminds men “of the supreme utility of those things which do not deal with means, but with ends. For men do not live only by bread, vitamins and technological discoveries. They live by values and realities which are above time and are worth knowing for their own sake.” (Jacques Maritain, On the Use of Philosophy).

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Sunday, May 27, 2018

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        The uses of Philosophy – The incompleteness of Science
To philosophize is to attempt to see in a coherent and meaningful vision the totality of my whole existence. It is a renewed effort to see the essential value and direction of my life. Ultimately to philosophize one must decide for wisdom of life. The purpose of the book must be clearly stated in those concluding remarks for the simple reason that a reader may ask why should he or she read such a book.
       Therefore the main reason why the book is written is the desire of the author to bring into clear spotlight the contemporary situation of so called Modern Man and the almost radical confusion in which  people living in the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century find themselves. The so  called modern situation of man is characterized by a tremendous confusion: the crisis in man’s search  for meaning. The technological developments, scientific progress in many areas, and the contribution of very many different cultures, belief, ideologies and the globalization creates probably the first time in human history an extraordinary confusion and bewilderment in many minds. There is a spreading   attitude of resignation and passive, very limited existence, and lack of courage and decision to serious  and determined desire for finding the truth of reality. In a way our time can be described as an escape from reason and fundamental, serious, and deep thinking. What is lacking in our Western culture is a sort of resignation of serious search for the
ultimate meaning of life


.

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The uses of Philosophy – The incompleteness of Science
                               

 To philosophize is to attempt to see in a coherent and meaningful vision the totality of my whole  existence. It is a renewed effort to see the essential value and direction of my life. Ultimately to philosophize onemust decide for wisdom of life. The purpose of the book must be clearly stated in those concluding remarks for the simple reason that a reader may ask why should he or she read such a book.
       Therefore the main reason why the book is written is the desire of the author to bring into clear   spotlight the contemporary situation of so called Modern Man and the almost radical confusion in which  people living in the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century find themselves. The so  called modern situation of man is characterized by a tremendous confusion: the crisis in man’s search  for meaning. The technological developments, scientific progress in many areas, and the contribution of very many different cultures, belief, ideologies and the globalization creates probably the first time in human history an extraordinary confusion and bewilderment in many minds. There is a spreading   attitude of resignation and passive, very limited existence, and lack of courage and decision to serious  and determined desire for finding the truth of reality. In a way our time can be described as an escape from reason and fundamental, serious, and deep thinking. What is lacking in our Western culture is a sort of resignation of serious search for the ultimate meaning of life.
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