Abstract:The Thomistic revival initiated by Leo XIII was late in having an effect on political philosophy. Many have charged Thomism with being inapt to contribute to political philosophy, either because it is at odds with modern political institutions and practices or because it is inflexibly moralistic. I address the former issue by way of an examination of Jacques Maritain's Thomistic personalism, which provides distinctive and valuable resources for understanding modern politics. This requires examining the development of Maritain's political thought in reaction to controversies over integralism in the 1920s and the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and '40s. Throughout this period, Maritain was clear about the theological aspects of his personalism, and so I conclude by discussing contemporary pluralism as a challenge to Maritain's project.
{"title":"Thomism, Personalism, and Politics: The Case of Jacques Maritain","authors":"V. B. Lewis","doi":"10.5840/QD2019929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD2019929","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Thomistic revival initiated by Leo XIII was late in having an effect on political philosophy. Many have charged Thomism with being inapt to contribute to political philosophy, either because it is at odds with modern political institutions and practices or because it is inflexibly moralistic. I address the former issue by way of an examination of Jacques Maritain's Thomistic personalism, which provides distinctive and valuable resources for understanding modern politics. This requires examining the development of Maritain's political thought in reaction to controversies over integralism in the 1920s and the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and '40s. Throughout this period, Maritain was clear about the theological aspects of his personalism, and so I conclude by discussing contemporary pluralism as a challenge to Maritain's project.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84937136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The crisis of democracy unfolding in the United States was identified by John Paul II as due to misunderstanding the relationship of truth and freedom. This crisis has grown worse due to a libertinism that sees objective moral truths as impositions on both free choice and fulfilling relationships, that identifies self-fulfillment with a self-creation in which one creates one's own values, that seeks to build democracies apart from moral objectivity, and that dismisses the relevance of God for living well. I argue that democracy cannot survive these libertine errors and that they cannot be successfully countered by utilitarianism, Rawls's political liberalism, or democratic proceduralism. Survival requires adopting the Thomistic personalism formulated by Aquinas and developed by Karol Wojtyła as indispensable for understanding those lived experiences through which one encounters the ethical moment of self-determination, achieves moral objectivity, avoids loneliness by loving truly, and seeks—via collaboration with women exercising their feminine genius for discerning the welfare of others—the common good, without which democracies collapse into atheistic tyranny.
{"title":"Countering the Crisis of American Democracy with the Thomistic Personalism of Aquinas and John Paul II","authors":"R. M. H. Lemmons","doi":"10.5840/QD20199212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD20199212","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The crisis of democracy unfolding in the United States was identified by John Paul II as due to misunderstanding the relationship of truth and freedom. This crisis has grown worse due to a libertinism that sees objective moral truths as impositions on both free choice and fulfilling relationships, that identifies self-fulfillment with a self-creation in which one creates one's own values, that seeks to build democracies apart from moral objectivity, and that dismisses the relevance of God for living well. I argue that democracy cannot survive these libertine errors and that they cannot be successfully countered by utilitarianism, Rawls's political liberalism, or democratic proceduralism. Survival requires adopting the Thomistic personalism formulated by Aquinas and developed by Karol Wojtyła as indispensable for understanding those lived experiences through which one encounters the ethical moment of self-determination, achieves moral objectivity, avoids loneliness by loving truly, and seeks—via collaboration with women exercising their feminine genius for discerning the welfare of others—the common good, without which democracies collapse into atheistic tyranny.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86370690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay attempts to define Wojtyła's personalism and to present the possibilities for the continuation and development of his work through what the author of the essay calls integral personalism. To do so, we present first of all some of the main keys of the philosophy and anthropology of Karol Wojtyła as they have been developed in his main work, The Acting Person. Later we compare them with the different types of personalism to show that his philosophy does not exactly fit any of them, particularly the Thomistic personalism of Jacques Maritain. Finally, a new stream of personalism is postulated, Integral personalism, which according to the author not only would be able to show with precision the main philosophical theses of Karol Wojtyła but could also develop them.
{"title":"Wojtyła's Personalism as Integral Personalism: The Future of an Intellectual Project","authors":"J. M. Burgos","doi":"10.5840/QD2019926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD2019926","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay attempts to define Wojtyła's personalism and to present the possibilities for the continuation and development of his work through what the author of the essay calls integral personalism. To do so, we present first of all some of the main keys of the philosophy and anthropology of Karol Wojtyła as they have been developed in his main work, The Acting Person. Later we compare them with the different types of personalism to show that his philosophy does not exactly fit any of them, particularly the Thomistic personalism of Jacques Maritain. Finally, a new stream of personalism is postulated, Integral personalism, which according to the author not only would be able to show with precision the main philosophical theses of Karol Wojtyła but could also develop them.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79051526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article interprets Kierkegaard's thesis that "truth is subjectivity," unfolding four possible meanings:
the deepest kinds of knowledge can only come from lived experience;
self-knowledge is essential for metanoia or change;
if the "how" is right, then the "what" or the truth will also be given; and
the deepest importance of truth lies in living it.
These reflections are then related to personalist themes: the incarnate person as responsible, as inviolable, and as averse to coercion; the incarnate person as having a mysterious interiority, an infinite abyss of existence, and as never reducible to a mere part of a whole nor simply determined from within or without; this interiority is not isolating but opens up toward others; and freedom is not arbitrary but implies universal moral and particular religious calls.
Finally, I ask whether Kierkegaard's personalism is too individualistic and does not do full justice to some of the themes here.
{"title":"Interpreting Kierkegaard's Notion That \"Truth Is Subjectivity\"","authors":"Michael Healy, R. Chervin","doi":"10.5840/QD2019923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD2019923","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Abstract:</p><p>The article interprets Kierkegaard's thesis that \"truth is subjectivity,\" unfolding four possible meanings: <list list-type=\"order\"><list-item><label>1</label><p>the deepest kinds of knowledge can only come from lived experience;</p></list-item><list-item><label>2</label><p>self-knowledge is essential for metanoia or change;</p></list-item><list-item><label>3</label><p>if the \"how\" is right, then the \"what\" or the truth will also be given; and</p></list-item><list-item><label>4</label><p>the deepest importance of truth lies in living it.</p></list-item></list></p><p>These reflections are then related to personalist themes: the incarnate person as responsible, as inviolable, and as averse to coercion; the incarnate person as having a mysterious interiority, an infinite abyss of existence, and as never reducible to a mere part of a whole nor simply determined from within or without; this interiority is not isolating but opens up toward others; and freedom is not arbitrary but implies universal moral and particular religious calls.</p><p>Finally, I ask whether Kierkegaard's personalism is too individualistic and does not do full justice to some of the themes here.</p>","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75141933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In this article, I compare Jean-Paul Sartre's and Dietrich von Hildebrand's analyses of the look of the other to argue that personhood is more fundamental than individuality. Sartre restricts subjectivity to individual consciousness, which, qua individual, is defined as not being what others are. As a result, both freedom and selfhood for Sartre are defined as "nihilation." By contrast, for von Hildebrand, the experience of the loving interpenetration of looks reveals both the self and the other as concrete values precisely insofar as they are persons. I conclude with the implications of this primacy of person over individual for understanding freedom. Both Sartre and von Hildebrand recognize our "fundamental" freedom of choosing our ends, which corresponds to our being individuals. However, only von Hildebrand recognizes that the highest freedom is not found in individual choice but, rather, in the "cooperative freedom" of personal love.
{"title":"Toward a Thicker Notion of the Self: Sartre and von Hildebrand on Individuality, Personhood, and Freedom","authors":"Alexander Montes","doi":"10.5840/QD2019925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD2019925","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this article, I compare Jean-Paul Sartre's and Dietrich von Hildebrand's analyses of the look of the other to argue that personhood is more fundamental than individuality. Sartre restricts subjectivity to individual consciousness, which, qua individual, is defined as not being what others are. As a result, both freedom and selfhood for Sartre are defined as \"nihilation.\" By contrast, for von Hildebrand, the experience of the loving interpenetration of looks reveals both the self and the other as concrete values precisely insofar as they are persons. I conclude with the implications of this primacy of person over individual for understanding freedom. Both Sartre and von Hildebrand recognize our \"fundamental\" freedom of choosing our ends, which corresponds to our being individuals. However, only von Hildebrand recognizes that the highest freedom is not found in individual choice but, rather, in the \"cooperative freedom\" of personal love.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78017214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay will examine an illuminating convergence in the thoughts of Pope John Paul II and the cultural anthropologist René Girard. It will be seen that this convergence is a consequence of the shared concern of both to understand the human person in terms of its relation to other persons. So while not a personalist philosopher in the strict sense, René Girard's concern for the interpersonal brings him close to the personalism of John Paul II, who likewise understands human subjectivity in terms of the relations by which it is constituted. Both practice what might be called an "interpersonalist" personalism, which this essay will argue ought to characterize the practice of personalism in a Christian context. The essay will make this observation the basis for further reflections on the nature of personalism and its relation to the Christian intellectual tradition.
{"title":"Personalism as Interpersonalism: John Paul II and René Girard","authors":"M. Darcy","doi":"10.5840/QD2019928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD2019928","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay will examine an illuminating convergence in the thoughts of Pope John Paul II and the cultural anthropologist René Girard. It will be seen that this convergence is a consequence of the shared concern of both to understand the human person in terms of its relation to other persons. So while not a personalist philosopher in the strict sense, René Girard's concern for the interpersonal brings him close to the personalism of John Paul II, who likewise understands human subjectivity in terms of the relations by which it is constituted. Both practice what might be called an \"interpersonalist\" personalism, which this essay will argue ought to characterize the practice of personalism in a Christian context. The essay will make this observation the basis for further reflections on the nature of personalism and its relation to the Christian intellectual tradition.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78562675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores the concept of moral blindness in the light of the self-conscious actions that constitute a person. Personalists argue that as man discovers himself in the acts he posits, the moral character of his actions distinguishes him as a responsible subject of both his being and his actions in the community of persons. Scholars like Dietrich von Hildebrand discussed the various attitudes of this acting person that make him numb to moral considerations under the theme "moral value blindness." This essay there-fore demonstrates how moral blindness poses a challenge to the capacity of man's moral response as a person in action. It examines the danger of being morally blunted by weaving together thoughts of personalists including Karol Wojtyła, von Hildebrand, Hannah Arendt, John Crosby, and others to develop a call to moral consciousness steeped in our awareness of being in communion with other persons possessing absolute dignity and value.
摘要:本文从构成人的自我意识行为出发，探讨道德盲目性的概念。人格主义者认为，当人在他所假定的行为中发现自己时，他的行为的道德特征使他成为他的存在和他在人群中的行为的负责任的主体。Dietrich von Hildebrand等学者在“道德价值盲目性”(moral value blindness)的主题下，探讨了这个行为人对道德考量麻木的各种态度。因此，这篇文章论证了道德盲目性是如何对人在行动中的道德反应能力构成挑战的。它将卡罗尔Wojtyła、冯·希尔德布兰德、汉娜·阿伦特、约翰·克罗斯比等人的思想编织在一起，探讨了道德钝化的危险，并呼吁人们提高道德意识，让我们意识到自己与拥有绝对尊严和价值的人交往。
{"title":"Moral Blindness: A Discovery of Banality in the Actions of Persons","authors":"Anthony Chuwkuebuka Ohaekwusi","doi":"10.5840/QD20199210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD20199210","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores the concept of moral blindness in the light of the self-conscious actions that constitute a person. Personalists argue that as man discovers himself in the acts he posits, the moral character of his actions distinguishes him as a responsible subject of both his being and his actions in the community of persons. Scholars like Dietrich von Hildebrand discussed the various attitudes of this acting person that make him numb to moral considerations under the theme \"moral value blindness.\" This essay there-fore demonstrates how moral blindness poses a challenge to the capacity of man's moral response as a person in action. It examines the danger of being morally blunted by weaving together thoughts of personalists including Karol Wojtyła, von Hildebrand, Hannah Arendt, John Crosby, and others to develop a call to moral consciousness steeped in our awareness of being in communion with other persons possessing absolute dignity and value.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73941752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:One of the worst aspects of racism is the damage inflicted on the human person by evoking feelings of separateness and inferiority. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King meant to capture that impact by referring to a "degenerating sense of nobodiness." This essay invokes King's reference to "nobodiness" and connects it explicitly with the negative effects on three particular elements of the human person. Those are having a unique and expressive voice, living a narrative life, and being a Thou. Each is part of a distinctive, unrepeatable personhood. Racism, however, with its categorizing and generalizing tendencies, denies the recognition of those attributes and thereby accords a status of "nobody" to the victim. His or her point of view, personal story, and capacity to stand with integrity as a Thou are set aside. Rendered a "nobody" by racism, his or her personhood has been denied.
{"title":"Racism and the Denial of Personhood","authors":"B. Buckley","doi":"10.5840/QD20199211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/QD20199211","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:One of the worst aspects of racism is the damage inflicted on the human person by evoking feelings of separateness and inferiority. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King meant to capture that impact by referring to a \"degenerating sense of nobodiness.\" This essay invokes King's reference to \"nobodiness\" and connects it explicitly with the negative effects on three particular elements of the human person. Those are having a unique and expressive voice, living a narrative life, and being a Thou. Each is part of a distinctive, unrepeatable personhood. Racism, however, with its categorizing and generalizing tendencies, denies the recognition of those attributes and thereby accords a status of \"nobody\" to the victim. His or her point of view, personal story, and capacity to stand with integrity as a Thou are set aside. Rendered a \"nobody\" by racism, his or her personhood has been denied.","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89822714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-03-08DOI: 10.5325/jnietstud.44.2.0139
Randall G. Colton
This year marks the twentyfifth and twentieth anniversaries of two of Pope St. John Paul’s most important encyclicals. Promulgated in 1993, Veritatis Splendor sets out the principles of Catholic moral teaching and analyzes the dissent it has sometimes met; Fides et Ratio, written five years later, responds to certain errors with respect to the work of reason and its relation to faith, errors that underwrite a widespread lack of confidence in truth and a corruption of both philosophy itself and the attempts of plain persons to make sense of their own lives. John Paul himself draws the connection between these two encyclicals this way: “In . . . Veritatis Splendor . . . I draw attention to ‘certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine. . . .’ In the present letter, I wish to pursue that reflection by concentrating on the theme of truth itself and its foundation in relation to faith” (n. 6). These encyclicals, then, share a common emphasis on truth and faith. Both encyclicals present careful arguments against various theories that deny the availability or significance of truth as a norm for our reasoning and acting. In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul finds the roots of such phenomena as cultural relativism, distorted views of conscience, and the totalitarian potential of democratic politics in various sorts of failure to acknowledge that the truth about God and the human person is an internal element of freedom and not a threat to it. Likewise, in Fides et Ratio, John Paul focuses on the viability of the human search for truth and its expression in metaphysical inquiry and ecclesiastical proclamation. He criticizes versions of historicism, scientism, pragmatism, and nihilism as the results of a flight from the truth. But John Paul’s aims in these encyclicals go beyond these theoretical interventions. Together, these encyclicals constitute a kind of protreptic invitation to a way of life both philosophical and theological, both naturally human and fully Christian. They both begin, in their first chapters, by proposing the question of the meaning of life.1 This question emerges, in each case, out of a narrative context. In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul begins with the
{"title":"Editor's Introduction","authors":"Randall G. Colton","doi":"10.5325/jnietstud.44.2.0139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jnietstud.44.2.0139","url":null,"abstract":"This year marks the twentyfifth and twentieth anniversaries of two of Pope St. John Paul’s most important encyclicals. Promulgated in 1993, Veritatis Splendor sets out the principles of Catholic moral teaching and analyzes the dissent it has sometimes met; Fides et Ratio, written five years later, responds to certain errors with respect to the work of reason and its relation to faith, errors that underwrite a widespread lack of confidence in truth and a corruption of both philosophy itself and the attempts of plain persons to make sense of their own lives. John Paul himself draws the connection between these two encyclicals this way: “In . . . Veritatis Splendor . . . I draw attention to ‘certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine. . . .’ In the present letter, I wish to pursue that reflection by concentrating on the theme of truth itself and its foundation in relation to faith” (n. 6). These encyclicals, then, share a common emphasis on truth and faith. Both encyclicals present careful arguments against various theories that deny the availability or significance of truth as a norm for our reasoning and acting. In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul finds the roots of such phenomena as cultural relativism, distorted views of conscience, and the totalitarian potential of democratic politics in various sorts of failure to acknowledge that the truth about God and the human person is an internal element of freedom and not a threat to it. Likewise, in Fides et Ratio, John Paul focuses on the viability of the human search for truth and its expression in metaphysical inquiry and ecclesiastical proclamation. He criticizes versions of historicism, scientism, pragmatism, and nihilism as the results of a flight from the truth. But John Paul’s aims in these encyclicals go beyond these theoretical interventions. Together, these encyclicals constitute a kind of protreptic invitation to a way of life both philosophical and theological, both naturally human and fully Christian. They both begin, in their first chapters, by proposing the question of the meaning of life.1 This question emerges, in each case, out of a narrative context. In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul begins with the","PeriodicalId":40384,"journal":{"name":"Quaestiones Disputatae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83214500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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