Hedwig Conrad-Martius

Placed an order for Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, shipped by Abe Books all the way from Japan… should be here in 30-60 days. The book is one of  Ratzinger’s sources for his reflections on person and relation. The author is a woman, a phenomenologist and Christian mystic. Though Protestant, she received a dispensation to become the godmother of Edith Stein. Stein’s interest in Catholicism came from a visit to the home of Conrad-Martius.

C-M was one of the first women in German to pursue a university education. She came under the influence of Husserl, but later felt that Husserl's transcendental idealist tendency was not adequate. She herself worked out what is called an "ontological phenomenology."

Interesting that her Das Sein is one of the three sources quoted by Ratzinger when he indicates directions for the further development of his insights about the basically relational nature of all personal being. The other two sources are B. Welte, “Homoousios hemin,” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon III, ed. A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht (Würzburg, 1954), 51-80 and H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor, tr. Brian E. Daley (San Francisco: Ignatius and Communio Books, 2003), 235-55. See http://books.google.co.il/books?id=Y1l5R-eROwYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Perhaps I should work towards a second article on Person and Relation, concentrating this time on Ratzinger's sources. A sort of retrieval of Ratzinger along the lines of what I tried to do for De Smet: what is his understanding of knowing? being? objectivity / truth? Should be extremely interesting. Ratzinger has, of course, a Bonaventure-Franciscan background, fundamentally, in contrast to several of the other leading theologians of the Council who had a Thomist background. 

Person and relation

Jose Kuttianimattathil has asked me to contribute to a Festschrift for Dominic Veliath. The topic suggested is Person and Relation - perhaps because of the Brahman and Person book. I have been collecting matter, mostly from the encyclopedias, on Person, before tacking De Smet and Lonergan.

Something very surprising and unexpected has turned up: Ratzinger criticizing both Augustine and Aquinas for sort of excluding the idea of relation from the definition of the human person - or not allowing the idea of relation, which pervades the concept of divine persons in God, its full and proper generality. Person as intrinsically relational, or, as Zizoulas, an Orthodox theologian, says: Being as Communion.

This makes things interesting and even exciting. What might Lonergan and De Smet, both of whom are soundly Thomist and, as far as I know, do not depart from Thomas, what might they have to say to the provocations of Ratzinger?

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find anything more substantial in Ratzinger than his “Zum Personverständnis in der Dogmatik” (1966), published as  “Zum Personbegriff in der Theologie" in  Dogma und Verkündigung (1973, 4th ed. 2005) and in English translation as "On the Understanding of ‘Person’ in Theology" in Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life (2011). 

Person and relation

Here is something I have been searching for and found this morning. It is from De Smet, saying why 'relation' is not to be included in the definition of person in general:

Krempel’s masterly study of the concept of relation, especially in St Thomas, seems not to have been sufficiently assimilated by the author. This weakens his understanding of ‘person’ and its possible application in Vedānta. Like many contemporary Christian writers, he includes ‘relation’ within the very definition of ‘person’ without wondering why St Thomas did not do that. Specific definitions of the term, when applied to specified persons, such as those of the Trinity, have to include it for special reasons. But ‘relation’ is not a definiens of ‘person in general’ which only connotes ‘capacity for inter¬personal relationships.’ (De Smet, Review of Doctrine de la Non-Dualite (advaita-vada) et Christianisme, in Indian Theological Studies 23/1 (1986) 65-68.

Samavaya or relation in Indian thought

The Vaisesikas hold that there is a special padartha called samavaya, which is a necessary relation of inherence in opposition to the contingent relation of conjuction (samyoga), which is a mere guna.

Even though the connected members be transient, samavaya is eternal.

Bhatta and Sankara reject samavaya, since it seems to beg the question: it is an entity between entities, and it would have to be linked to them by other linking entities, which leads to infinite regress. "But the tadatmya or bhedabheda by which they have replaced it lead to other insurmountable difficulties or at least cannot be a final answer. All this demonstrates how unfortunate it is that Indians did not discover the full authentic theory of relation, especially that it can be either logical or real (ontological) and that it must not therefore necessarily be ontological in order to give rise to a true judgment." (Guidelines 231)

Does De Smet modify this judgment upon Sankara later on? I think he does, or at least, he is not so categorical. He is able to find, in Sankara's tadatmya, something that at least implies a non-symmetrical relation between Brahman and world, logical from Brahman to world, and real from world to Brahman.