By JOHN YOUNG
“The corruption of the best is the worst.” That truth is verified by a look at philosophy at its best compared with philosophy as so often presented today. This is of crucial importance because most of the problems afflicting society have their roots in errors made by philosophers.
Philosophy as historically understood is the study of fundamental truths insofar as human reason can know them. It deals with the nature of the material world, the nature of man, the existence of God. It defends our capacity to know the truth, it explores the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty, it shows the way of life that rational beings should follow. In the study of logic, it prepares and strengthens the mind to analyze arguments and distinguish truth from falsity.
Its starting point is the spontaneous, commonsense knowledge we all have (to the degree that indoctrination has not robbed us of it). Philosophy clarifies, strengthens, and deepens our natural healthy perceptions.
True philosophy throws light on all other forms of knowledge and reveals their relation to each other: the physical sciences, mathematics, politics, and economics are seen as part of a whole, with philosophy underpinning them all.
Especially does it help in the study of sacred theology — which is the supreme science based on God’s special Revelation to the human race. This is the reason the Church requires at least two years of philosophy in seminaries as a preparation for the study of sacred theology.
Take the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. While we can have but a very limited understanding of this sublime mystery, the concepts of person, nature, and relation are essential for gaining some insight into what God has told us about His inner life. But these are philosophical concepts.
Or take the other supreme mystery of the faith: the Incarnation. How can a Being be God and man at the same time, with no diminution of either nature? What modes of knowledge exist in His human mind? How are His divine and human wills united? Did His temptations differ from ours? To get light on these questions without going astray a sound understanding of metaphysics and philosophical psychology is required.
The doctrine of transubstantiation is another example of the need for philosophy. What may otherwise seem at best an enigma and at worst an absurdity will be viewed quite differently if we have a philosophical grasp of substance and accidents and of the fundamental accident which is quantity.
While the truth of these dogmas is known only through Revelation, an understanding of what God is telling us is heavily dependent on the knowledge philosophy affords us. Consequently, the better we understand philosophy the more deeply will we penetrate the Divine Mysteries.
Ethics, or moral philosophy, is an essential underpinning for moral theology. So close is the relationship that the basic content of the Ten Commandments is found in natural ethics. Likewise, such principles as that of the double effect belong to natural ethics.
Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, which he developed through an analysis of texts in Genesis, is also based on St. Thomas Aquinas’ analysis of human nature, and the key Thomistic understanding of man as a composite of matter and a spiritual form (soul).
But there’s a big difficulty — not with true philosophy but with philosophers who have gone astray.
Aristotle points out that a small error in the beginning becomes a big one in the end. This happens when an error is taken to its logical conclusion. And Cicero remarked that there’s no nonsense in the world that hasn’t found some philosopher to support it!
Sound philosophy is currently almost totally absent from academy circles in the secular world. The relativism and subjectivism so often deplored by Benedict XVI are dominant in most universities and in the thinking of most shapers of opinion. The very foundations of thought are attacked by many who call themselves philosophers, resulting in a barren postmodernism.
The results are clear in the bizarre notions circulating now on moral issues. Because all is seen as relative, people are accused of intolerance when they maintain that there are unchanging truths based on a human nature that remains essentially the same through the ages.
In sexual matters the denial of fixed natures results in the claim that we are morally free to do whatever we feel like, provided other people are not hurt. Marriage is seen as an artificial arrangement, not something founded on the very nature of man and woman. So if two men or two women are sexually attracted to each other, their union should be recognized as equal to that of a man and woman in traditional marriage.
So deeply has relativism penetrated the population that tolerance of the intolerable is seen as the norm. That helps to explain why a once-Catholic country, Ireland, has approved legal recognition of one of the most depraved practices.
In the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, n. 29, the Second Vatican Council stated: “In addition to spiritual formation, a solid doctrinal instruction in theology, ethics, and philosophy adjusted to differences of age, status, and natural talents, is required.”
That was published in 1965. Imagine if Catholics had responded by studying the perennial philosophy the Church has constantly endorsed — the philosophy whose greatest master is St. Thomas Aquinas!
In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II made it clear that philosophy is of incalculable importance.
He laments the fact that the Magisterium’s insistence on the study of St. Thomas has not always been followed, and that there has been, since Vatican II, a diminished sense in Catholic institutions of the importance of philosophy.
He continues: I cannot fail to note with surprise and displeasure that this lack of interest in the study of philosophy is shared by not a few theologians (n. 61).
We are assailed daily by superficial thinking, making it very difficult to see deep truths. Thomistic philosophy is a remedy, but needs perseverance. Those who do persevere are able to diagnose to a degree not possible otherwise the sources of the secularism afflicting the Western world.
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(John Young is a graduate of the Aquinas Academy in Sydney, Australia, and has taught philosophy in four seminaries. His book The Scope of Philosophy was published by Gracewing Publishers in England in 2010. He has been a frequent contributor to The Wanderer on theological issues since 1977.)
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