Christian Philosophy in India

See K. Saccidananda Murty, 170 MUR.S in Divyadaan library

The new relationship between philosophy and theology

As early as 1957, we find Lonergan saying:

“We have the meaning of ‘philosophy’ as concerned with truths that can be known by the natural light of reason, but when the Catholic philosopher moves to the consideration of things existentially, he finds that things as they exist in all their concreteness cannot be completely illuminated without a consideration of the supernatural.” … [Mathematical Logic and Existentialism 1957 CWL 18:297.]

Then again in 1959:

“Again, the natural and the supernatural are really distinct, as distinct as matter and form, soul and body, but in the concrete order of divine providence in this world they are united dynamically….” [Topics in Education 1959 CWL 10:70.]

New relation between philosophy and theology

Quotable Quotes from Lonergan: 

“Indeed, once philosophy becomes existential and historical, once it asks about man, not in the abstract, not as he would be in some state of pure nature, but as in fact he is here and now in all the concreteness of his living and dying, the very possibility of the old distinction between philosophy and theology vanishes.” ["Dimensions of Meaning," Collection, CWL 4:245.] 

Halbfass on philosophy, darsana, dharma, history, etc.

Inspired by Paul Hacker, W. Halbfass (Europa und Indien) has chapters on darśana and anviksiki as distinct from the Western concept of philosophy; on the Indian appropriation of the conception of philosophy in modern Hinduism, on the metamorphosis of the concept of dharma from traditional to modern Hinduism, and on the so-called lack of historical sense of the Hindus, correcting on the way many facile generalizations. [R. De Smet, Review of Halbfass, 1982 188.]

Very useful for the ACPI Encyclopedia, for the entries on PHILOSOPHY, DARSANA, DHARMA, HISTORY. But I am almost sure that neither Hacker nor Halbfass have been used or cited in the bibliographies.

Poetry, history and philosophy

In contrast to Plato, who spoke of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, Aristotle makes poetry closer to philosophy than to history. Where history deals with the particular and contingent, poetry deals with the probable or necessary - and so it approaches philosophy which, according to Aristotle, deals with the necessary.

The essential difference [between history and poetry] is that one tells us what happened and the other the sort of thing that would happen. That is why poetry is at once more like philosophy and more worth while than history. (Poetics ch. 9, 1451a - 1451b)

What is interesting is that Gadamer thought it fit to look to art as a way of conceptualizing the approach to truth in the human sciences - including, I suppose, history.

But keep in mind also Lonergan's distinction between human studies and human sciences. History would be part of the former, while sociology part of the latter.

David Walsh, The Modern Philosophical Revolution

“My encounter with The Modern Philosophical Revolution has been one of the most formative experiences in my life as a philosopher. I have no hesitation in placing it along with Bernard Lonergan’s Insight and Eric Voegelin’s Order and History as one of the greatest works in contemporary English-language philosophy, and I predict its French and German translation will follow even more rapidly than did those of Lonergan’s and Voegelin’s opera magna.”

Brendan Purcell, Review of David Walsh, The Modern Philosophical Revolution: The Luminosity of Existence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), The Review of Metaphysics 62/3, issue no. 247 (March 2009) 700.

Contemplation and gardening

I had hoped to spend a year of contemplation and gardening, or contemplative gardening. It has turned out differently: there is not much contemplation and no gardening. So what have I been busy with? The De Smet book, mainly. Not a very creative enterprise, but certainly an act of pietas, and also – something that vibes with the ‘ordering’ part of my temperament….

So now I have committed to preparing a paper for the June 2009 Lonergan Workshop, but I still find myself drawn to spending time on the next De Smet project: a collection of his Śaṅkara studies. These are many more than the Person studies, but then there is also the experience gathered, and I have the impression that this project will not take me as long as the earlier one. Still, it is taking time, swallowing up time.

For the Workshop I decided to extend my introduction to the Brahman and Person book. I take up De Smet’s ‘retrieval’ or ‘generation’ of the category of person in Indian thought, and see what can be made of it within Lonergan’s method. This would entail, perhaps, studying Lonergan – not so much because I need to study Lonergan, but because I would need to transpose ‘person’ into categories drawn from interiority. The prime candidate for the transposition is ‘subject’, but subject does not quite have the concreteness of person, and that is a problem which I must study. – So I expect De Smet to provide an example of the generation of categories; or else it would be an instance of ‘studies of interiority’ in other traditions (part of the generation of special theological categories). And I would be ‘retrieving’ De Smet’s work from a methodological standpoint.

Something similar might happen w.r.t. his Śaṅkara studies, though perhaps there we would be entering doctrines or perhaps systematics. For where would creation fit? Or better, where would Śaṅkara’s thinking on creation fit? Śaṅkara is a śrutivādin, as De Smet has insisted. He is probably doing systematics, then.

And what about the famous Bibliography of Indian Christian Writings project? Even the promised contributions have not yet materialized. But I would need to spend perhaps a day going through the work of Hambye, and that of Kaj Baajo, and the bibliographies produced by the Heras Institute. That might give me a scheme, at least for the ancient authors, say up to the 19th century. The 20th century would be a very vast enterprise, and that too could be broken up conveniently into pre- and post-conciliar periods.

And then there is the journal, and the nitty-gritty of classes and theses. I have enjoyed doing Aesthetics, and in the bargain have discovered that the reading method – together with a sidelong bow to Montessori’s insistence on the data, the experience – is excellent for arousing, evoking, and holding the attention of the students. What has been amazing also is that they have managed, first years as they are, to follow the philosophers in some way up to Heidegger. Managed is not to say that there has been deep or profound philosophizing – but they have not been turned off, I have not seen anyone drowning, and that itself is very good. Plato coming alive, and also Heidegger…. What more could one want.

But contemplative leisure is important for truly reading, and understanding, and thinking, and creating. Heidegger’s Holzwege arise upon years and years of such contemplative thinking. One has to spiral into the meaning of an author, rise up to his level, so that then one can understood as he has understood and with him. One has to learn to read. And for that one has to slow down. And one begins by walking slower, doing one thing at a time, not cribbing time for prayer, and also playing – which does not mean only football and basketball, but the engaging with the other – the other person, the other kind of book, the newspapers and the magazines and the movies and the novels too.

Phenomenology of money

We have been reading, in the Aesthetics course, Heidegger’s comments on the work of art. Yesterday we read his amazing phenomenology of a pair of peasant shoes, with the help of a painting by Van Gogh. Today we hope to read his phenomenology of the Greek temple. Where shoes relate earth and the world of the peasant, the temple sets up, founds, a world…

In a dream of the morning, a phenomenology of money: money which is almost totally constituted by meaning.

What kind of world does a 50 rupee note set up?

A 50 rupee note does not get used up, the way a pair of shoes gets used up. When a pair of shoes is used up, it becomes useless, and is reduced to stuff. But when a 50 rupee note is torn, I can ‘redeem’ its ‘value’ through a bank. The wear and tear on its material is immaterial to its value. It is only incidentally material.

So money is different from a pair of shoes. It is an element of society and social arrangements. It has little to do directly with earth, sky, water, air. Or it has to do ultimately with these things, with food for my table, with clothing, with shelter, with roti-kapda-makaan, but as a means. It is part of the division of labour set up by all communities except the most primitive. It is what makes Heidegger possible, for it sets Heidegger free for the task of thinking. Heidegger does not have to plough the ground, wait for the harvest, gather the grain, take it to the mill, knead the flour, bake the bread.

And what might we make of Jesus’ reply, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s?”

Does he not imply that, since the Pharisees possess a coin with Caesar’s image, they have accepted to be part of the world which that coin sets up? And is not his reply deliciously ambiguous? For what really is Caesar’s, that has not been given to Caesar by God? “You would not have power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”

Tommaso Demaria, Salesian philosopher

From Mauro Mantovani, I have just heard the name of Tommaso Demaria, a Salesian philosopher-theologian who undertook to integrate history, culture and meaning into metaphysics. Several conferences have been held on Demaria's work in the last 10 years or so, but none of his works have been translated into any other language. The article that Mantovani has contributed to Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and Education might well be the first in the English language - but that has to be checked out.

It would be interesting to compare Demaria's effort with that of Lonergan. Demaria explicitly appeals to the Pauline theology of the Body of Christ, our incorporation as baptized members into the Church; and he notes that this incorporation and our action within the Church is historical. History, in other words, is the theorem relevant to ecclesiology, as Lonergan used to say.

Wittgenstein and Lonergan

The variety and profusion of language games: cf. the varieties and profusion of common sense. there are as many type of common sense as there are places and times; and common sense is the ordinary context within which we live and work. And of course it is not static.

Wittgenstein's 'certainties' which form the 'framework': cf. beliefs. Common sense is largely inherited. We add to it our own personal judgments - but even here there is a complex symbiosis between what we discover for ourselves and what is inherited...

Conflating finitude and falleness

Unlike Heidegger, Caputo speaks well of Aquinas and seems to be far less negative about the history of Western thought. That is why it is suprising that, like Heidegger, he also seems to conflate finitude and fallenness in some way. Thus he can say:

Grace perfects nature. As a Christian with an Aristotelian streak, Aquinas thought that our nature was wounded by sin but not that it was vitiated and corrupted all the way down and that we should fall back on faith in desperation. That particular idea broke out with a fury in the Reformation and it went back to Augustine, not to Aquinas. Aquinas thought that our senses and our rational faculties were made by God and they were capable of working very well, as is anything God has made, but that as natural and human faculties they were limited and imperfect, and this imperfection is made up for by grace, thanks be to God. (Philosophy and Theology 17, emphasis mine)

Caputo does not seem to know about the distinction between gratia sanans and gratia elevans. He does know about grace, but he thinks grace is needed only to make up for the natural imperfect and limitation of human faculties.

Wittgenstein, Newman and Lonergan again

I have just been browsing through the Kienzler article. My impressions: Kienzler's interpretation of Newman might leave much to be desired... He calls Newman an empiricist, a rationalist, and so on. If Lonergan's reading of Newman is right, he is no such thing!

But this is a large question of interpretation - a fine example of one's basic philosophical commitments radically interfering with one's understanding of an author... and a great case for the practice of the Functional Specialty dialectic... put all interpretations in line, find out the radically conflicting points, and reduce them to their roots in basic philosophical positions.

Despite that, Kienzler has done a great job.

Some good work in store for a Lonergan/Wittgenstein enthusiast?

Lonergan on philosophy and theology

Lonergan uses three devices to help him describe the new relationship between philosophy and theology: the moving viewpoint, sublation, and the two vectors of human development.

The first device is predominant in Insight. It is exemplified within elementary arithmetic when new rules have to be found to handle negative numbers, fractions and surds: these rules are able to handle not only the old numbers but also the new. Again, it is exemplified in the shift from elementary arithmetic to algebra, and from Newton to Einstein: Einstein’s theories account for Newton’s laws as well as what those laws could not account for, so that the latter become a subset of the former (see Lonergan, CWL 17:410). The moving viewpoint is therefore not a logical device, for logic can only bring out the virtualities inherent in the initial set of premises, but the moving viewpoint is able to take into account emergent novelty, and it does so only by modifying the initial premises. Thus the shift from philosophy or the ‘purely humanist viewpoint’ to the viewpoint of faith and theology is a movement in the viewpoint: faith and theology go beyond philosophy without disturbing what is proper to philosophy.

The second device emerges in the post-Insight years: theology is an Aufhebung or sublation of philosophy. But Lonergan is quick to specify that Aufhebung here is to be taken in Rahner’s sense rather than Hegel’s. (This would have to be clarified with all the observations Lonergan makes about the difference between his own position and that of Hegel: Lonergan's position is intellectualist rather than conceptualist, non-necessitarian, etc.)

The third device emerges in the post-Method years. The first two devices indicate clearly that theology goes beyond while respecting the competence of philosophy (and here Lonergan is far clearer than Caputo). The third device, however, without denying such sublation, exemplifies the intricate and intimate relationship between philosophy and theology better than the first two – for in the concrete we are often at the vectorial intersection between faith and reason, between what is received and what is personally appropriated.

Lonergan, Caputo, Benedict XVI on faith and reason

Lonergan, Caputo, Benedict XVI: three takes on faith and reason, and there is surprising resonance...

Benedict XVI broadens the picture in several ways. He points out that the Septuagint was a great rapprochement between the best of Greek enlightenment and the faith of the Hebrews. He brings in Liberal Theology and Modernism.

Like Lonergan and Caputo, he mentions Scotus and his voluntarism for the sundering of the Augustinian-Thomist synthesis. He links it to Islam and to the Protestant Reformation. He traces the consequences in contemporary scientism.

Distinction between faith and reason

Caputo's take on the distinction:

The distiction between philosophy and theology is between two kinds of faith, by which I mean two kinds of 'seeing as.' (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 57.)

The distinction is between a common or philosophical faith, which is the complex web of presuppositional structures built into every human enterprise,and another, specifically religious faith. This is a distinction between two kinds of interpretative slants.Faith is an elemental form of human life, a basic ingredient in our existence, as necessary for philosophy as for theology. (Ibid. 57-58.)

Perfectly acceptable. In the 1962 course on Method, Lonergan makes much the same kind of distinction between a common faith, and the light of faith; and he is not saying anything new, but merely recalling (probably) Thomist doctrine. Still, I think he would distinguish the two in a way Caputo has not (yet) done.

Postmodernism and theology

This is interesting, Caputo's own take on postmodernism and theology:

A lot of the postmodern philosophers are thorough-going secularists and their nineteenth-century hero and predecessor is not Kierkegaard but Nietzsche. Their interest in defusing the intimidating prestige of the natural sciences and in gaining a hearing for other forms of discourse is aimed at promoting their interest in art and literature, not religion. But the clear and unmistakable result of what even these very secular thinkers did, the unavoidable implication of what in my view they very successfully accomplished, was to gain a hearing for - God help us - religion and theology, a point that discomforts secularizing postmodernists every bit as much as it discomforts modernist critics of religion. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 52.)

He ends like this:

When philosophers really have an axe to grind about theology, that axe trumps the distinction between modern and postmodern. When it comes to theology, some philosophers take no prisoners. (Ibid.)

Postmodernism, scepticism, relativism

Caputo notes that Lyotard put the word postmodern on the map when in 1977 he defined it in The Postmodern Condition as 'incredulity to meta-narratives.'

The French phrase Lyotard used that got translated as 'meta-narratives' was grands recits, 'big stories,' that is, large overarching accounts, 'totalizing stories' (he was thinking of Hegel) that claimed things like 'history is nothing but the unfolding of the absolute spirit,' or 'nothing but the unfolding of the laws of dialectical materialism,' or nothing but the displaced desire for your mommy, or nothing but the resentment of the weak against the strong, or nothing but this, that, or the other thing. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 49)

So the debunking even of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, the masters of suspicion!
Caputo goes on:

Postmodernism thus is not relativism or scepticism, as its uncomprehending critics almost daily charge, but minutely close attention to detail, a sense for the complexity and multiplicity of things, for close readings, for detailed histories, for sensitivity to differences. The postmodernists think the devil is in the details, but they also have reason to think that none of this will antagonize God. For are not the modernists rather like the Shemites, furiously at work on the tower of Babel, on the 'system,' as Kierkegaard would say with biting irony, and are not the postmodernists following the lead of God, who in deconstructing the tower clearly favors a multiplicity of languages, frameworks, paradigms, perspective, angles? (Ibid. 50.)

Whatever the opinion of other postmoderns, Caputo for one seems to allow place for God and in that sense God's point of view. It would be interesting to compare this with the way Lonergan brings together classical and statistical intelligibility in God in chapter 20 of Insight - his transposition of Aquinas' synthesis of the biblical and the Aristotelian worldview.

The postmodern turn

Caputo explains that the postmodern turn is made up of three turns: the hermeneutical turn, the linguistic turn, and the revolutionary turn taken in a Kuhnian analysis of science. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 49.)

The first two turns here are probably one and the same. As Fred Lawrence notes:

Years ago Don Ihde spoke helpfully of two different orientations within phenomenology. The first type of phenomenology takes its bearings from sense perception, and is oriented towards some 'pure' perception. It is typified by Husserl ... and by the early Merleau-Ponty. The second takes its bearings from language, and is oriented toward language-in-use and dialogue. Heidegger, Gadamer, the later Merleau-Ponty, and Paul Ricoeur are key representatives of this type, which is actually hermeneutic philosophy. ("Martin Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Revolution," Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and Education 19/1-2 [2008] 15.)

Being-in-the-world is being in a linguistic world. One is able to begin appropriating and creating (what Lonergan would call experiencing, understanding, judging, deciding) only within the context of the way down.

Being-in-a-world

When Heidegger insists that we are being-in-the-world, it means that there is no presuppositionless starting point. When Descartes wrote his Meditations, he was already writing.

[O]ne of the presuppositions that escaped Descartes' notice when he set out to put everything in doubt, when he tried to clear the slate of his consciousness and start out from scratch, was that the entire work of doubt relied upon language. By using a word that he had borrowed from his Jesuit teachers, 'meditations,' he was trying to suggest a kind of inner soliloquy of the soul with itself, a solitary, world-less, naked and - here's the punchline - pre-linguistic contact of the soul with itself. But of course, everything he said, and I mean everything he said, every last word of it, was deeply embedded in the words he used that he had inherited from the Jesuits, and from the scholastic philosphers before them, and from his mother and father, and from the books he had read in school, and so on. [...] As Ludwig Wittgenstein [...] said, there is no such thing as a private language. Wherever Descartes starts his Meditations, it will be in the middle of a public language. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 46.)

The postmodern as postsecular

Caputo notes that there are both theological and anti-theological motives behind the emergence of the postmodern, the former having roots in Kierkegaard and the latter in Nietzsche. Whichever way, however, if modernity led to secularization, the postmodern is also the postsecular, and so reopens the space for religion and for theology. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 44.)