(2) Ordo, qui est partium universi ad invicem...(INPROGRESS)
(2) Ordo, qui est partium universi ad invicem...(INPROGRESS)
Commentary on Josef Pieper´s Thomas-Brievier
Ordo, qui est partium universi ad invicem, est per ordinem qui est totius universi ad Deum. (Questiones disputate de potentia Dei 7.9)
“The order which is of the parts of the universe to each other is through the order which is of the whole universe to God.”
“And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house” (Lk 10:5). It´s a beautiful thought that our movement towards God will involve a restoration of our relation to all created things, it will involve finding our proper place amongst the parts and within the whole of these orders of creation moving toward God. Equally thrilling is the consideration that the movement to find ones proper place within these orders of creation will, even if unwittingly, be a movement towards God. One way of simplifying this thought is to think about the role of the Apostles as Heralds of Peace. Peace is, according to St Augustine, the tranquility of order. With the Advent of the Incarnation, with the coming of the Eternal Word, the parts were coming together to find their proper ordering amongst themselves and in Him, and coming to find their order as a whole ordered to Him. He comes with a blessings of peace, His Signification quickens unto right order.
Since the breaking down of, what Ferdinand Braudel called, the Biological Regime in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, human existence has been increasingly plagued by its alienation from the created order. Braudel depicts the evolution of man as he slowly began to win a hithertofore inconcievable independence from the strict discipline and punishing rule of nature. Yet along with this freedom came a newfound disorder within man himself, amongst his bretheren, and in relation to creation. And its safe to say the dynamics outlined by Braudel have not yet reached their apotheosis: the rapid development in and alteration of man and culture adapting to the products of his own creation continues unabated. And thus if we can try to grasp the meaning of said quote from St Thomas at a speculative level, even this faint grasp should awaken a level of fear at the level of practice. Fear because of how distant the practical reality is from our everyday experience.
Alasdair MacIntyre seems to be one of the only ones making the right sort of philosophical observations and arguments on this front to help people comprehend where they are. Even if the picture he paints is quite sobering. It's no surprise that he, like Braudel, was a Marxist. So a certain level of interdependence between forms of thinking and forms of monetary abstraction and labor are a given. In his first chapter of After Virtue, MacIntyre raises “A Disquieting Suggestion:” what if our moral language is no longer tethered to the form of life in which these terms were found to be meaningful? Should we still use this vocabulary? Even if only as instruments we have grown accustomed to abusing? To him the way forward is not clear, it's Trotsky and St Benedict for MacIntyre.
There has yet to be a After Virtue sort of equivalent in the realm of Metaphysics. Robert Pasnau´s Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 is excellent, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg. The history of metaphysics gives clues to our current malaise just as the history of moral philosophy. Equally clear is that the philosophical jargon rarely makes reference to the original terrain it was developed to make sense of. Much less do lives of theologians and philosophers appear to be animated and ordered by their task and teleos as in Plato´s academy or the University of Paris in the 13th century. Thus, one can raise other disquieting suggestions about the unintelligibility of the ordering of the universe to us late-capitalist dullards by glancing at the contemporary use and abuse of the metaphysical language.
In this post, I will take one such short glance in this direction and take a look at the use of words absolute and relative. These words also still very much carry weight in modern parlance, yet both in the philosophical use and everyday language use, one notices sundry problems and changes. If we comprehend the original meaning of the words absolute and relative in western philosophy, it becomes clear why instantiating a dictatorship of relativism in principle, could only result in syndicates of absolutism in practice.
The Scholastic and Modern Use of Absolute and Relative
The scholastic use of the word absolute connotes something that exists independently, something that exists in and of itself, whereas the word relative connotes something that exists with respect to something else. In medieval philosophy, the distinction absolute and relative is intimately tied with the distinction simpliciter and secundum quid respectively. What is absolute exists simply, that is of itself, and what is relative exists with respect to something.
The same thing can exist absolutely and relatively as regards different orders of the universe. There is a moral order, a physical order, a metaphysical order, etc. The health of a human is absolutely good according to the physical order of the universe. Yet, considering the moral order, health is a relative good: it is considered good with respect to its support of virtue. It's harder to be courageous as a malnourished weakling. Furthermore, virtue could require the sacrifice of biological health. In the moral order, virtues are absolutes, they exist of themselves, without reference to anything greater. Yet, considering the divine order, virtues only have a relative good, they exist with respect to the absolute good of beatitude or supernatural life with God. But you get the point, this distinction helps make sense of the various heirarchical orders of creation and their relation toward one another and containing all of the other orders within itself is the order of being.
Let us not forget, there is also metaphysical order, where substance is something absolute, and accidents are relative to the substance. In ancient and medieval philosophy, the key to comprehending the universe is to identify the orders and to determine what sorts of things exist simply of themselves in these orders, without respect to anything else. This ultimately gives a hierarchical picture of the universe, that God created the various orders with a certain level of independence internal to themselves, as substances, rocks, animals, and virtues both exist of themselves, they exist simpliciter in the metaphysical, physical, biological, and moral order respectively. There is also a relative interdependence between the various orders. Moral excellence is also a biological good for the human organism for example.
The scholastic saying goes absolutum est prius quam relativum, i.e. what is absolute is prior to what is relative. This can be explained three ways, by nature, by dignity, and by knowledge. Thus in the study of nature, what is relative is dependent upon what is absolute, in the study of the moral life, what exists of itself is more excellent than what exists with respect to something else, and in the study of knowledge, the the priority is to make sense of the self-subsistent, absolute features of reality and causes within reality, which exist prior to those which are dependent upon them. One notices straight away that this distinction has a wide and varying application according to the expansiveness of scholastic philosophy.
It's thus surprising to find the term absolute finds an entirely different and severely constricted role in modern philosophy, where absolute and relative are now interpreted on the ontological and epistemological level. The Absolute is basically given the status of the divine being and relative the status as created being in modern philosophy. And from the consideration of the supernatural order, this is true for the medievals as well, all things rest upon God for their existence. But there is a great flattening of the heirarchical medieval universe with modern philosophy. Here there is only the absolute, so divine being, and all created things which exist with respect to God, whose existence is relative to God. The idea of the created independence of the orders vanishes, the idea of self-subsisting metaphysical or moral things like substances or virtues as well.
For the medievals it was meaningful to speak of the divine simplicity. That was that God is the most simple being, the being who exists entirely through and of himself. Due to the shift in meaning the divine simplicity has hardly any meaning at all for modern theologians, this is because the distinction no longer makes reference to the corresponding distinction of simpliciter and secundum quid, if only one being exists simpliciter, then the term is really no longer meaningful as it was before.
The reason for this flattening is clear: there is a sort of two-tier rational absolutism in modern philosophy, collapsing the manifold orders of the medieval universe. God is what after some anguish and doubt secures for the doubting cartesian-ego the reliability of his impressions of the world. For Descartes only God is Absolute, but really the second order which supplants all others is human cognition. Lip service is given that this order is relative with respect to God, but the starting point is universal methodological doubt. The cogito is, de facto, the new absolute starting point, the cogito is what cannot be doubted. Descartes, true to form, retains the scholastic meaning as best he can, for him, absolute signifies self-subsistence, independence. This is reserved only for God as a perfect, infinite being.
“I understand by the word ‘God’ a substance that is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, and supremely powerful, and that created me along with everything else that exists… I could not exist with the nature I have, that is, having in myself the idea of God, if God did not truly exist.” (Meditations on First Philosophy, Med. III, AT 7:45)
Because Descartes could doubt the reality of the external world, because Kant could doubt how we could have certain knowledge at all, modern philosophy is transformed by a, sometimes vieled, absolutism of the “I,” the thinking subject, and all creation is equally relative to the forms of cognition. Here the scholastic maxim is helpful, there is no relativism without an absolute, even if the absolute is a skepticism, as it is in the cartesian and kantian forms of skepticism, i.e. doubting appearance\real and how we can know at all, respectively. This is why, if absolute and relative are a foundational division of being in the scholastics and explained by reference to the distiction between simpliciter and secundum quid, in modern philosophy absolute and relative are restricted in practice to the thinking cogito and made sense of in terms of a priori and a posteriori knowledge respectively. This is the crux of the new solipsistic worldview, this is the consequence of the epistemological turn in modern philosophy. For the philosophizing ego, the absolute points of the universe are those which are known a priori, they tend to be structures of reason itself and structures of consciousness, just like for the medieval schoolman, the absolute points are the self-subsistent substances of a given order. Kant takes the new basis to its logical conclusion, he seeks out absolute forms of cognition on the basis of which on can have certain knowledge. His project is to map the absolute form of human understanding in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Yet, like Descartes the old meaning in terms of self-subsistent entity to which all things are relative in terms of their existence is retained. For Kant this form of the Absolute is in itself unknowable, it is the untimate unconditioned reality that underlies all things. In his Kritik der reinen Vernuft , the absolute is restricted to the noumenal realm beyond the absolute form human cognition. He writes
“Now, if we take away all thought (of objects), all relation between the faculties of our cognition ceases, and thus no concept of an absolute whole of cognition, which is possible only in an empirical progression, remains. Hence, the idea of an absolute cannot have any objective reality at all.” (Critique of Pure Reason, A326/B383)
For Kant, the absolute remains a regulatory idea of reason, one which serves to guide reason and inquiry. Thus the absolute is in the bizarre situation of being a necessary idea for human inquiry but one without an objective knowable status. The reason for Kant´s predicament here is similar to Descartes: he wants a firm epistemological basis for knowledge, an absolute basis, that is an a priori basis for knowledge. Regarding the structure of reality, it is this new epistemological focus on an absolute form of knowledge, a priori, that replaces the medieval focus on absolute defined as self-subsisting substances in various orders of creation. Kant´s absolutism is a cult of a priori knowledge, to which all things are relative, all except that which he must assume is there underlying all things ontologially, but cannot know, that is The Absolute (here in the ontological sense)
Friedrich Schleiermacher reacts to the spiritual austerity of Kant's epistemological focus by bringing the ontological absolute back from the fore of the noumenal to the heart of human life. Schleiermacher makes a feeling of absolute dependence itself as the lynchpin of his entire philosophy, it is what unifies scientific and ethical knowledge. Scheiermacher writes,
“The pious self-consciousness is one in which everything finite and relative is raised to the Absolute, by way of a feeling of absolute dependence.” (On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, First Speech, p. 39)
In his Glaubenslehre, He identifies the absolute not with a particular being but with the infinite ground that underlies all finite experiences. For Kant the Absolute is an idea that regulates the process of inquiry, for Schleiermacher its what conditions the quasi-religious experience that unifies human knowing, desiring, and acting. In both cases, we see the sort of flattening impulse, the ontological absolute is that to which all things are relative, but even this is determined, like with Descartes, and Kant, as relative to some absolute subjective experience or conscious thought. There is no consideration of an absolute in the sense of self-subsisting justice or prudence in the moral order, all things are relative to the cogito, either the forms of understanding with Kant, or a fetishized feeling of absolute dependence for Schleiermacher.
Hegel, like Schleiermacher keeps the same subjective focus (though his philosophy is inextricably social) and the Kantian framing (i.e. looking for absolute, certain forms of knowedge, with something called Absolute knowing as a ultimate ideal). Hegel too responds to Kant´s skepticism by enthroning absolute knowledge itself. For Hegel, the culmination of the dialectic of Spirit is the Absolute Idea in Absolute Spirit imparting Absolute Knowledge and Absolute Freedom. In Phenomenology of Spirit, the absolute is the end point of this dialectical process, where all contradictions are reconciled in a unified whole.
“The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it truly is.” (Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, §20)
The point of this crude tour is to show how the medieval philosophy and use of the terminology was more or less vindicated by the modern abuse of the terms. The rather mundane scholastic division of being into absolute and relative, where absolute could apply to Almighty God as well as an apple, is vindicated in the sense that absolue is prior to relative. As moderns turn away from the order of the universe and turn towards a more absolute order of thinking/reason/consciousness in search of an absolute, self-subsistent basis for knowledge, the universe or reality still retains a shell of its former self as an object of human knowledge. In this knowledge centric universe, a deification of the Absolute occurs, as the Absolute becomes the principle of the fullfillment of the new epistemological and subjective focal point of reality, the cogito (Descartes), or forms of understanding (Kant), or feeling of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher), or dialectical development of consciousness (Hegel). The problem with this new philosophical universe is that what it struggles to make sense of: (1) the relation of God to the world and (2) the moral life.
1st Consequence of Error: Pantheism
Thus with Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel a certain trade appears: the absolute becomes a singular divine thing in relation to which all things are relative, for Kant its unknownable, a regulatory idea to guide reason, for Schleiermacher a feeling, for Hegel the result of a process. Yet, this harkens back to the dispute between Parmenides and Aristotle regarding the unity of all things in Being and that if Being is One, and nothing exists outside of Being, then all existing things must be united in Being. Aristotle exposes this teaching by showing the various senses of the use of the word being, also by demonstrating that accidents exist, but exist secundum quid. Aristotle opposes against Plato´s theory of the forms again with his notion of substance and accidents, of absolute and relative being. He argues substances exist simpliciter, or absolutely, not in respect to an immaterial world of forms. This argument preserves the transcendence of God from his creation. If the terms absolute and relative lose simpliciter and secundum quid as their point of reference, then there is little defense against pantheism.
Of course this is exactly what we have witnessed by the nouvelle theologie, both in its liberal and conservative iterations, that the distinction between the supernatural and natural can no longer be sustained—e.g. that all men possess by nature a supernatural desire for the beatific vision and so forth. What is lost thereby is both the self-subsistent character of the natural order as well as the transcendent and sublime character of the supernatural order. A weighty consequence of which is that the natural order ceases to be ordered to the supernatural end, and instead becomes an immanent principle of the divinity itself. Worst of all the dignity and glory of the supernatural end is lost sight of, as it is interpreted according to what is observable in nature. Imitation of Christ Book III, Ch 54 explains the problem all too well:
Pay careful attention to the movements of nature and of grace, for they move in very contrary and subtle ways, and can scarcely be distinguished by anyone except a man who is spiritual and inwardly enlightened. All men, indeed, desire what is good, and strive for what is good in their words and deeds. For this reason the appearance of good deceives many.
Nature is not willing to die, or to be kept down, or to be overcome. Nor will it subdue itself or be made subject.
Grace, on the contrary, strives for mortification of self. She resists sensuality, seeks to be in subjection, longs to be conquered, has no wish to use her own liberty, loves to be held under discipline, and does not desire to rule over anyone, but wishes rather to live, to stand, and to be always under God for Whose sake she is willing to bow humbly to every human creature….
Nature is covetous, and receives more willingly than it gives. It loves to have its own private possessions.
Grace, however, is kind and openhearted. Grace shuns private interest, is contented with little, and judges it more blessed to give than to receive.
Nature is inclined toward creatures, toward its own flesh, toward vanities, and toward running about. But grace draws near to God and to virtue, renounces creatures, hates the desires of the flesh, restrains her wanderings and blushes at being seen in public….
This grace is a supernatural light, a certain special gift of God, the proper mark of the elect and the pledge of everlasting salvation. It raises man up from earthly things to love the things of heaven. It makes a spiritual man of a carnal one.
The more, then, nature is held in check and conquered, the more grace is given. Every day the interior man is reformed by new visitations according to the image of God.
2nd Consequence of Error: Absence of Moral Fortitude
Rather than depict the hierarchical order of universe and its ordering to God, of which the moral order towered over the physical order, the focus of modern philosophy becomes attaining the certainty of scientific knowledge, not the possession of wisdom. Thus absolute comes to refer to absolute a priori knowledge or proof, rather than a self subsistent entity. The obvious consequence of this shift of focus toward epistemology and knowing with absolute certainty was that the moral order was cast aside, was held in suspension or doubt. The medieval schoolmen depicted absolute self subsistent beings and orders in creation, enlightenment philosophy sought to discover a world of absolute a priori structures of thought. In this attempt, the world of the Bible, the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the Medieval Schoolmen is no longer present. Theirs was a world where justice was a self-subsistent feature of the moral order of the universe. Ok all barring Thrasymachus.
If we lived in this world, where the moral order was exhalted as a self subsistent order unto itself, would we live differently? if we were convinced of this? would we desire justice in a different way if we thought it existed unto itself in the moral order? I´d say so. Would we even interpret our own lives and experience as being ordered by justice, a feature of the moral order of the universe, an order more sublime than its physical order? I think so. Would we expect justice to be meted out, in our lives, and especially at the end of our lives in a different way? Again, I would say yes.
You might say I am being dramatic. And perhaps I am, I did not live in the past, but I do think one sign of the difference between our culture and cultures I have read about is the desire of justice. When Mahatma Gandhi as a schoolboy stole a pencil from a classmate he begged to be punished for his crime. My contemporaries, even the best of them, don´t seem to feel this in their chest like the men of ages past. In St Catherine of Sienna´s Dialogue really her first prayer, her very first spiritual movement towards the Eternal Father is to ask that she be punished for her sins in this life. This is her hunger, that justice be done, because she knows it to be an absolute feature of the moral order, and that the moral order is itself ordered to God. The near total absence of like desires in our current culture, and of course it would be silly to look for bad examples from which one can learn nothing, but I have our most learned Bishops in mind! Our supposed Spiritual Leaders! who seem, in unanimous opinion, to treat the notion of justice of the past as if it were something cruel or out of date. The easiest test to ascertain that it was much nearer to mercy than what the mongol church today peddles is to answer the question: would you change your life if you thought you would be punished for every false word you utter? You will be punished! “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matt 12’:36). It´s just no one today believes it, and they don´t believe it because they cannot see it, and they don´t see it because no one has told them nor have they searched thoroughly for the truth.
On Skepticism and Wonder
To close, even when you start to press on one point of the philosophical apparatus and vocabulary, like absolute and relative, a picture emerges: the vocabulary of ancient and medieval philosophy was geared towards grasping the ordering of the various created orders in creation, and that the modern philosophy was geared towards erecting an edifice of a priori truths upon which the world could be known. The difference can be best accounted for by the impulse to philosophize itself and the concieved end of philosophy. The ancient and medieval impulse to philosophize was born out of wonder and the desire to know and possess what is aboslutely good. Modern philosophy is born out of skepticism and the desire to attain absolutely certain knowledge. At this point too, we see the origins of privationism. At the heart of ancient philosophy is the revelation of the good, and and at the heart of modern philosophy is a worry about being deceived. But is the absence of deceit the Truth? No. Unfortunately the absence of falsity can also be non-sense. And contemporary philosophers and theologians produce a great deal of the latter. Chesterton´s shrewd quip applies here as well: “the middle ages were the ages of common sense. And the Enlightenment, the age of uncommon sense. And our age is the age of uncommon non-sense.“ And how. The only sure footing of philosophy is to hold fast to its truly radical inspiration, that all men desire to know, and that this desire kindled and enflamed in wonder. Out of wonder it will desire to know and make sense of the orders of the universe, the parts in relation to themselves and their constituion as a whole ordered to God. And out of wonder one desires to find his proper place within this creation first and foremost. So let the wisdom sown in wonder, not science born in skepticism, flourish amongst us. Let the tranquility of order reign again! And peace by the consideration of the Truth that divides! “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself” (John 12:32).