Per Caritatem

French sociologist Loïc Wacquant, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, traces four causes of present-day American anti-intellectualism.  Not surprisingly, topping the list is America’s worship of the dollar.  Elaborating on this point, Wacquant explains,

[t]he first is the unquestioned supremacy of economic over cultural capital in the American field of power, a supremacy that is arguably more pronounced today than at any time in the past half-century. Few modern societies abide by rules of social competition and access to positions of authority that so strongly favor money over knowledge, the wallet (porte-monnaie) over the pen (porte-plume), and give such abrupt precedence to big business over big ideas. The hegemony of the haves is virtually complete when the paradigm of the market imposes itself upon the totality of human activities and needs, from the arts to the media, publishing, health, and education (the fact that these are referred to as “industries” testifies to this), and is elevated to the dignity of a collective ideal at the highest reaches of a state exhorted by its head to transform itself into a mere service provider for taxpayers.[1]

(Forgive my jumping-to-related-current-readings tendencies, but that’s how things go in blog posts). Although I have not finished it yet, Philip Goodchild’s conclusions in his excellent book, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety, likewise attest to the all-pervasiveness of the market paradigm on our human being-in-the (post)modern world. As he engages Nietzsche’s critique of reason and his discussion of the “murder of God,” Goodchild unearths the new horizon, the new sun to which we have chained ourselves, namely, money.

The meaning of the murder of God, that is, the emergence of a secular worldview with a corresponding affirmation of atheism, is that God is no longer required to play a foundational role in organizing humanity’s activity in relation to reality. The murder of God therefore reflects a shift in pieties. God has stopped paying us our ordered existence; or rather, there is another god who pays us, who responds more immediately, directly and tangibly to our prayers: Mammon.[2]

One could make several comments on this fruitful passage (and I recommend highly Goodchild’s book); however, let’s return to Wacquant’s four causes. In addition to our new god, Mammon, what else has brought us to disparage the life of the mind and contemplative pursuits? The second cause for enthusiastic American misologism is that progressive intellectuals are, on the one hand, “severely handicapped by the debilitation of the organizational vehicles liable to enable them” to effect social change and to engage in (reasoned, if such is possible these days) public debate, and on the other hand, the lack of unity and bickering among various activist groups themselves. In other words, in addition to the absence of a strong left-wing party, those advocating for equal rights etc. for their group or cause end up following “their particular(istic) strategy, and [aim] at distinct goals without sufficient concern for the synergy of agendas and the overall coherence of their lines of action.”[3]

Third, there is the reality of large numbers of intellectual puppets, that is, so-called intellectuals—members of various think tanks on the “Hill”—who produce so-called scientific, scholarly, “reports” for the purpose of reinforcing “the accepted wisdom of the moment” and presenting “a veneer of rationality” to their own public policies.

The new advisers to the Prince salaried by the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation possess all the trappings—the hexis, the language, and the credentials—of the academic, but they lack the one attribute that makes (or made) the latter troublesome: the capacity to formulate his or her own questions and to seek answers with total freedom, no matter where this leads her. Henceforth, the think tanks and the schools of public policy that serve as their transmission belt within the academic institution are there to stand guard and protect the American dominant class from the impertinent questioning of critical reason.[4]

The fourth cause of America’s anti-intellectual atmosphere is found in the self-absorbed, inwardly turned university community itself, occupied with its own inconsequential “intestinal controversies” and filled with university “professionals,” that is, “expert[s] possessed of a neutral body of knowledge reduced to its technical dimension.”[5] Given this splintered, fragmented milieu, where cross-disciplinary pollination is anathema, serious collegial dialogue within disciplines is rare, and narrow “professionals” abound, it is no wonder that

the mass of academics feel justified to cast aside any and all civic or moral engagement beyond their narrow domain of expertise by invoking the professional imperative of neutrality, for which the precepts of positivist epistemology serve as a convenient philosophical G-string.[6]

Wacquant does have a way with words, doesn’t he? And I thought my dissertation was provocative!

In chapter 2, “Human Development in Our Time,” of his recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI calls for a commitment to interdisciplinary exchange among the various fields of knowledge in order to encourage genuine development of human beings.  This is a call to something beyond mere “joint action.”  The action must be directed to the proper end and must be animated by charity, as charity and knowledge belong together.  As Benedict explains,

In view of the complexity of the issues, it is obvious that the various disciplines have to work together through an orderly interdisciplinary exchange. Charity does not exclude knowledge, but rather requires, promotes, and animates it from within. Knowledge is never purely the work of the intellect. It can certainly be reduced to calculation and experiment, but if it aspires to be wisdom capable of directing man in the light of his first beginnings and his final ends, it must be “seasoned” with the “salt” of charity. Deeds without knowledge are blind, and knowledge without love is sterile (CV, 2.30).

Here the Pope calls for a “thicker” notion of knowledge and speaks against a reductionistic view of knowledge as mere calculation.  Knowledge as mere calculation-at least one dominate Enlightenment version-promotes both a diminished understanding of reason, reality and human beings because it immanentizes each and rejects any genuine transcendence that might complete, transform or direct it.

Charity, rather than an “appendix to a work already concluded in each of the various disciplines,” must serve as a dialogue partner from the very beginning.  Charity and reason are harmonious and when in proper relation to each other, they neither contradict nor devalue the other.  Yet, reason formed by charity acknowledges its own lack and remains open to possibilities beyond its grasp and control; that is, it remains open to an Other who has made known what true humanity is by becoming one of us and embodying love in the fullest sense because He is love.  This openness to something more than, something beyond human reason does not mean that we abandon the genuine insights of reason.  “Going beyond … never means prescinding from the conclusions of reason, nor contradicting its results. Intelligence and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in intelligence and intelligence is full of love” (CV, 2.30).

Wisdom then calls for an interdisciplinary dialogue animated by love in the service of humanity.  In this picture, science, theology, and metaphysics actually listen to one another, appreciating the insights each has to contribute and striving to integrate holistically the truths  discovered and made clear in each respective field.  Perhaps such a vision simply isn’t possible in our age; however, something along these lines is needed as a target for which to aim given the fragmented condition of the various fields of knowledge and the refusal to engage in healthy dialogue between differing groups (with guilty parties found on all sides of the debate, including those representing the Church).   Noting the difficulties in our current situation, Benedict writes:

The excessive segmentation of knowledge[1] the rejection of metaphysics by the human sciences,[2] the difficulties encountered by dialogue between science and theology are damaging not only to the development of knowledge, but also to the development of peoples, because these things make it harder to see the integral good of man in its various dimensions. The “broadening [of] our concept of reason and its application”[3] is indispensable if we are to succeed in adequately weighing all the elements involved in the question of development and in the solution of socio-economic problems (CV, 2.31).

Notes

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[1] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998), 85: AAS 91 (1999), 72-73.

[2] Cf. ibid., 83: loc. cit., 70-71.

[3] Benedict XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006.

In chapter 3, “Certainty as the Way to Nihilism,” of his book Proper Confidence, Newbigin discusses a number of dualisms that come to the fore in Modernity, and which can (at least on a traditional read) be trace to Descartes.  The first is the dualism between the res cogitans and the res extensa. The second and third dualisms consist of a sharp division between objective and subjective, and a dichotomizing view of theoria and praxis. With regard to the second dualism, Newbigin brings Polanyi’s insights of “personal knowledge” into the conversation.   Polanyi, a Hungarian scientist turned philosopher, argued that “the objective-subjective dualism is false and that all knowing of reality involves the personal commitment of the knower as a whole person” (p. 39).  One might perhaps see Polanyi’s ability to break through the rather ossified enlightenment-inspired tradition that had come to reign among scientists in terms of approaching the issues of knowledge from a new set of questions.  Rather than ask, “how are truth claims to be justified,” Polanyi asks, “how do we come to know, and how are discoveries made?” (p. 40).  Discoveries are not typically made as a result of following a set of rigidly defined rules, as discoveries are hitherto unknown and often involve bending the rules.  As he explored these epistemological issues, Polanyi came up with the following as possible answers to the question of how discoveries in science occur.

First, one must be apprenticed to a tradition of knowledge.  Second, one must “indwell” this tradition.  As Newbigin explains,

The assumptions, the assured findings of the past, and the methods of science become part of their own equipment on which they [scientists] rely.  All this functions like the lenses of our spectacles.  While we are wearing our usual spectacles and exploring the world around us, we do not attend to the lenses; we attend through them to the things we are examining.  They function as an extension of the lenses in our own eyes, and we indwell them just as we indwell our own eyes.  Likewise when we have come to use a language freely, we indwell the language.  We don not look at the language as an object over against us; we think through the language.  By indwelling it we are able to make contact with the world around us. We are subsidiarily aware of the words we use, but we focus on the things to which they refer.  In the same way, scientists are subsidiarily aware of the tradition to which they are apprenticed, while, at the same time, they are focally attending to the object of their research.  If their work is to make progress, they have to trust this tradition, just as we have to trust the lenses in our eyes or in our spectacles.  This trust is a precondition for our exploration of the world (pp. 40-41). 

Hence, according to Polanyi, the scientific tradition itself serves a kind of “fiduciary framework” in which the scientist must trust so as to make progress in knowledge (p. 41). 

Third, in order to further scientific knowledge, one must recognize a problem and attempt to find a solution.  Here Polanyi introduces his idea of recognition as a kind of intuition that there is some kind of “pattern or harmony waiting to be found” amongst what hitherto seems to be merely chaotic empirical reality.  Such intuitions of course can turn out to be illusory, and in those cases, they would simply be abandoned or redirected.  Not only does scientific discovery involve intuition, but it also requires imagination and a kind of prudence that co-exists with risk taking.  To this, Newbigin adds,

[a]t every point along this course, there is need of personal judgment in deciding whether a pattern is significant or merely random.  None of these things can be covered by formal rules.  They all involve the personal commitment of the scientist, and it is absurd to pretend that the findings of science can be understood without taking into account all these subjective factors (p. 41). 

Fourth, the scientist’s work involves what Polanyi calls “tacit knowledge.”  In other words, much of what we know, which influences our thinking, we are not able to explicitly express (p. 42).  Fifth, contrary to the idea promulgated in the 19^th century, science will not one day be able to predict and control all events.  Such a notion fails to take into consideration the hierarchical structure of the physical world.  Here the idea is that one cannot limit the laws governing one field to that of another (e.g., the laws of chemistry cannot be limited to the laws of physics, nor can those of biology be reduced to physics).  “The exhaustive examination of the physical, chemical, and mechanical structure of the machine will not enable us to discover the purpose for which the machine was constructed.  We have to be informed either by the designer of the machine or by someone who is accustomed to using it for its proper purpose” (p. 42).

Lastly, though it is the case that all knowledge claims involve personal commitment, the scientist makes these “with universal intent” (p. 43).  In addition, “a valid truth claim will lead to new discovery” (p. 43).  Newbigin adds, for Polanyi, truth claims made by scientists are not “irreformable and indubitable claims to possess the truth; rather, they are claims to be on the way to the fullness of truth.  There is thus no absolute dichotomy, such as Descartes has bequeathed to us, between knowing and believing” (p. 43).  Newbigin ends the chapter by citing one of Polanyi’s most concise statements of his position.  After affirming, “the personal participation of the knower in all acts of understanding,” Polanyi says

[b]ut this does not make our understanding subjective.  Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity.  Such knowledge is indeed objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidden reality, contact that is defined as the condition for anticipating an indeterminate range of as yet unknown (and perhaps yet inconceivable) true implications.  It seems reasonable to describe this fusion of the personal and the objective as personal knowledge. (Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pp. vii-viii).[1]

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[1] As cited in Proper Confidence, p. 44. 

The fourth Balthasarian thesis is one of my favorites, viz., that “[m]ystery is convertible with truth.” Though the Gestalt includes the appearance or surface of being (that which is immediately accessible to us), it is more than this surface: “it is the coincidence of appearance and being, taken both in their unity and in their difference” (p. 595). In other words, since the Gestalt has an immanent-transcendent character with respect to being, mystery and manifestation go hand in hand and “are in reality interdependent aspects of a single thing.” Furthermore, this allows for a positive rather than negative view of mystery: “it is not the withdrawal of being from the illumination of reason, or simply that which, as exceeding the intellect, is not given to it. Rather, it is for Balthasar precisely the givenness of being, that is mysterious, insofar as the generosity at the heart of the act of manifestation is the reason for the mystery” (p. 595). Here we see that it is just in the grasping of the Gestalt that its transcendence manifests. In other words, this account of the Gestalt presents us with an object that is both intelligible and mysterious and allows for a kind of open aspect to truth. Moreover, Balthasar’s view of truth as mystery does not equate to irrationality. “[T]he ever-more character of a thing is a positive presentation of its intelligibility, and the more directly the mind has access to this presentation, the more wonder-fully clear will its mystery be. From this understanding of being’s self-revelation, mystery is due not to the finite mind’s deficiency, as Aquinas implies, but to its power and perfection” (p. 596). Schindler concludes by noting an integral connection between the third and fourth theses. “If truth did not occur most properly in something distinct from the soul, there would be no way to avoid making truth and mystery opposites in principle,” for if grasping truth is understood as intentional identity, then there is no room for excess or distance. Given the allowance or embrace of excess on Balthasar’s view, we are able to understand the intellect itself as “a kind of desire, and at the same time a kind of self-gift, insofar as its act comes to a close beyond itself, and this generous desire cannot simply take the form of a will to closure precisely because it is set on what is essentially open in in its intelligibility” (p. 596).

Lastly, we arrive at the fifth thesis, viz., that “[k]nowledge is essentially non-possessive.” In affirming that the locus of truth is in the Gestalt, we are also acknowledging that the various aspects that make up and come together in the “event” of truth, form their unity primarily beyond the intellect (though the mind does in some immanent sense “take in” the truth). The point being that the immanent unity of intellect and thing known is a “participated unity” shared with the Gestalt. “[I]t takes this unity into itself precisely by transcending beyond itself into the Gestalt. But if this is the case, then the very act of appropriation is an act of expropriation: the mind, one might say, leaves its own home, its mother and father, in order to cleave to its object and become one with it. The identity that the mind thus achieves with the thing that it knows is therefore not an elimination of its difference from it, but instead an appropriation of that difference as difference. It is just this that allows us to say that a knowledge of truth is the real-ization of mystery. In a word, it is not only the will that represents the soul’s movement beyond itself, but reason, too, is essentially ecstatic (p. 596). Schindler then discusses three implications of this notion of ecstatic reason. First, it involves affirming a “moment of ‘discontinuity’ in the operation of the intellect.” Here we might highlight the Balthasarian insight that surprise and wonder are “intrinsic elements of genuine thought […] And once we see that a moment of discontinuity is intrinsic to the completion of understanding, we can say that discontinuity, as such, is not in principle a threat to rationality” (p. 597). Second, if reason is by nature ecstatic, then the ecstatic movement of the will is in no way opposed to the “natural movement of the intellect. Third, “knowledge thus acquires an essentially non-possessive form.” Since, for Balthasar, truth resides primarily in the objective Gestalt (not in the soul), we have a more paradoxical (but not irrational) account of knowledge. Given that the adequatio constituting truth is located in the “freer space of the Gestalt,” one need not be anxious about “holding all things together in one’s own mind in order to safeguard rationality; instead, truth is held together for the individual soul, and so it can entrust itself much more openly and confidently to the more encompassing reality of truth and truth of reality. One enters into knowledge and so one need not keep it nervously for oneself. It is thus that the act of knowledge is itself, in its very structure, a generous act. To know is a very precise, indeed perhaps the most profound, way to love” (pp. 597-598).

In conclusion, we have seen that in Balthasar’s view, truth is not understood as intentional identity in the soul. Instead, his non-possessive concept of knowledge locates truth in the Gestalt and allows for a construal of will and reason as ecstatic by nature. Moreover, Balthasar is able to overcome the problems that arise from a traditional reading of Aquinas, viz., a conception of the will that when logically carried out moves us toward irrationality or a possessive view of knowledge which would collapse the analogy of being into simple identity [1]. Balthasar avoids these pitfalls “by making intelligence an act that preserves the difference of analogy and thus leaves room for an eternity of wonder and surprise as a restful end rather than a ceaseless chase” (p. 598). For Balthasar, inherent to reason itself is a “moment of discontinuity” which allows for a positive view of mystery and makes every truth (not just the truth of God) mysterious in some sense. Both the glory of beauty and the drama of truth are, as Schindler emphasizes, “intrinsically necessary to the rationality of truth.” So does love in the end “trump reason?” Perhaps the best answer is sic et non. That is, “if truth is a transcendental, and love is the meaning of being, to say that love trumps reason is to say that truth trumps truth.” […] In the end, the absolute supremacy of love is precisely what makes reason ultimate because it is what allows reason to embrace the very totality that remains, even in the embrace, ever-greater than reason” (p. 599).

Notes
[1] See Part III for a detailed explanation of these claims.

[In order to avoid an excessively long post, I have decided to make theses four and five a separate post (part VI), which will conclude the series].

Here we begin with the third Balthasarian thesis, viz., that “the ‘locus’ of truth is the concrete Gestalt. As Schindler is aware, it at first seems odd to speak of a transcendental relation with two termini. However, we must keep in mind that according to Balthasar, the act of the understanding is not simply that of the soul acting on a passive object. Rather, it is a “co-act, a single act that is shared between the asymmetrical and irreducibly different activities of the soul and object operating in conjunction with one another. Being—as love—is not a static fact but gives itself, makes itself known, in its manifestation to the soul, a manifestation that is in fact possible only through the appropriately attentive, and reciprocally generous, engagement on the part of the soul that knows. The intelligible manifestation, then, is not due to the object or the subject alone, nor is it the mere addition of their respective activities, but is rather the single fruit of their encounter or reciprocal interaction. Balthasar calls this fruit the Gestalt (p. 593).

A Gestalt is not reducible to the sum of its parts but is rather a whole that exceeds its parts. This is the case because it manifests as a “distinct ‘third’ in relation to the knowing soul and the thing known.” Yet, a Gestalt is also simultaneously “itself a part that makes concretely manifest a greater whole” (p. 593). Given that this “third” has its own reality and resists reduction, it is a fitting object for the intellect. For Balthasar, in contrast with the conventional reading of Aquinas where the locus of truth is in the soul, the Gestalt is in part the fruit of the “soul’s perceptive and cognitive activity, and thus has an intelligibility that is ‘more’ than the material being by itself, but this Gestalt nevertheless—because truth terminates in some respect beyond the knower—has a concrete existence ‘independent’ of the knowing soul. To say that the Gestalt is thus irreducibly distinct from the soul means that the soul can ‘appropriate’ it only by going beyond itself ‘into’ the meaning” (p. 593). Here we see that in the very act of understanding (not just in the act of the will), the soul must move beyond itself to the extramental object. Balthasar adds that the Gestalt designates both the reality of the being as it is in itself and the appearance of this being; yet, he is adamant (which distinguished him from Kant) that the “appearance is always only of being. Here Balthasar seeks to safeguard the excess quality of the Gestalt. That is, “[t]he reality that comes to manifestation in the Gestalt is a reality ‘beyond’ the manifestation. The non-appearing depth of being cannot be juxtaposed to the appearance as one thing next to another, because the appearance is of nothing other than those very depths; but neither can they be simply identified with one another. No matter how immediate our relation to being may be, this relation is nevertheless always mediated by some ‘appearance’. It is in this sense that we speak of a Gestalt as being an expression of the whole in the part: the Gestalt is the particular, and thus finite, manifestation of a depth that transcends it, and every Gestalt therefore possesses an intelligibility that is inexhaustible to the extent that the difference between being and appearance cannot be eliminated. [Might we think, analogously of course, of Jesus as the Gestalt par excellence? If so, are there similarities here with Marion’s claim of Jesus as the preeminent saturated phenomenon?]. In sum, the Gestalt, as the locus of truth, as a ‘third’ distinct from the knower and the known, is at once more than and less than each of them taken in isolation” (p. 594).

In affirming the Gestalt as the locus of truth, Balthasar is able to maintain a connection between truth, goodness, and beauty due to his more unified view of the aspects of volition and perception. As Schindler explains, by making the Gestalt the place of truth, Balthasar’s view safeguards the ontological dimension of truth because it does not allow truth to be reduced to either subject or object. Instead, Balthasar’s account highlights the “transcendental character of truth, as a property of being, which includes both subject and object in their relation. Moreover, locating truth in the Gestalt holds together its relation to the other transcendentals. If truth had a merely intentional existence, and the transcendentals were distinct not in re but in ratione, truth would be identified specifically in terms of its separateness within its circumincessive relation to goodness and thus to being. […] This real identity is found in the Gestalt” (pp. 594-595).

As noted at the end of the previous post, Schindler wants to explore a more paradoxical reading of Aquinas on the will-intellect relation in order to avoid seemingly irresolvable tensions that arise from a conventional interpretation [see Part II for a detailed explanation of the problems highlighted by Schindler]. At this point, Schindler brings Balthasar into the conversation and suggests that Balthasar’s vision of the transcendentals, being, and love would harmonize well with a re-reading of Aquinas’ texts in which the appropriative aspect of knowing is relativized. Moreover, Schindler rejects the claim of certain scholars that Aquinas and Balthasar are fundamentally opposed and believes that his project as outlined above shows that at the deepest level the two thinkers are in unity (p. 586). In other words, the assumed dissonance between Aquinas and Balthasar has more to do with trying to bring the two together on the basis of a conventional interpretation of Aquinas.

So that we might see more clearly the significance of Balthasar’s contribution, Schindler sets forth a number of logical implications (not claims from Aquinas himself) that ensue from a traditional reading of Aquinas where we have what Schindler calls a possessive view of knowledge. First, according to Aquinas, in the beatific vision, the soul does not “take God into itself intellectually,” but is instead raised up to God by means of grace. Though this account solves one problem, it creates another, viz., it leaves us with an irrational account of the soul’s vision of God because the intellectual vision of God is presented as “a movement exactly the contrary of the soul’s natural exercise of intelligence” (p. 586). Here we have knowledge and supernatural vision seemingly “collapsing into contradiction.” Yet, from another perspective, we have the possibility of “the analogy of being collapsing into identity.” That is, as Thomas explains, it is by God’s grace that the human intellect is elevated so that it can experience the beatific vision. Aquinas also holds that the knower becomes one with the known in act. So if we follow this out consistently, in the beatific vision, the Christian becomes one form (deiformes) with God. In light of what Thomas has affirmed in regard to the imperfect unity of the will, it appears that Aquinas would have to claim that this deiformity eliminates all difference. “It would seem necessary for it do so if Aquinas had rejected love as the essence of beatitude precisely on account of the abiding difference, and thus the incompleteness of the unity it entails. Moreover, if it were true that, in spite of the assimilation to God that this created grace enables, God still remained in some sense ‘more’ than the soul, then the logic of Aquinas’s position would require him to affirm love as the ultimate act, because the act of will is nobler than the act of intellect whenever that to which the soul relates is higher than the soul. But to affirm this would, in turn, require a radical reconsideration of his philosophical anthropology […]. If we were to deny that God remained forever greater than the soul, on the other hand, then the analogia entis would founder into a substantial identity between the soul and God, which, as Aquinas would say, is ‘repugnant to the faith’” (p. 587).

Schindler then proceeds to spell out more specifically the problem in Aquinas’ philosophical anthropology mentioned above. In part, Aquinas had affirmed the superiority of the intellect over the will in the absolute sense in order to avoid voluntarism. We have also seen that for Aquinas, following Aristotle, knowledge is understood as an act in which the soul and the intelligible form of an object become one. Knowledge in this context means to comprehend or fully possess, as that which is known is appropriated into the knower with no remainder. “[T]his implies that the use of the will in relation to anything not possessed by the soul, anything that ‘exceeds’ the soul, is irrational.” Accordingly, anything affirmed on the basis of authority cannot be considered an “intrinsically rational act, even if one has good reasons for giving one’s assent. In this case, because the revelation which is the object of faith cannot be possessed in its truth in the manner generally accorded to reason, there will always remain something fundamentally irrational, or at least ‘a-rational’, about faith” (pp. 587-588). In other words, a possessive view of knowledge as outlined in a conventional reading of Thomas lands one in a fideistic concept of faith. “By the same token, the love for God that transcends the possession of God in knowledge, whether we consider it in via or in fine, will itself, from this perspective, be non-rational per definitionem precisely because it is ordered to an object that exceeds reason’s grasp. Unless we modify what we mean by reason, we can avoid an ultimate irrationality only by collapsing into the comprehensive possession that the analogy of being does not permit” (p. 588).

Lastly, Schindler highlights the ways in which knowledge as immanent possession threatens the positive value of mystery. First, on the conventional reading of Thomas on the acts of the powers of the soul, with the exception of angels, the created order must be evacuated of all mystery. If I am intentionally identical with something, then it cannot be mysterious to me—after all, I fully possess it. One might counter that matter remains a mystery since only the intelligible species is one with the intellect. However, as Schindler explains, matter would at best be a “negative mystery, an unintelligible darkness.” That is, if one grants that the human being because of his/her immaterial soul reigns supreme in the (material) created realm, then there is no “worldly truth” that exceeds the human being. “I cannot participate in a truth that exceeds me, because truth after all has its ‘locus’ in the soul: it cannot exceed me because […] I contain it. That which is contained cannot be mysterious” (p. 588).

So what about the divine essence? Thomas of course strongly affirms that the divine essence exceeds the human intellect in intelligibility and can neither be contained nor comprehended by the human intellect. Does this not suggest that the divine essence is essentially mysterious to the human intellect? Indeed it does; however, thus conceived, we have yet to move beyond a negative sense of mystery. That is, “[t]hough this mystery arises from an excess of intelligibility rather than an absence ( as in the case of matter), it nevertheless remains in a significant respect a negative mystery with respect to the human soul, insofar as the mystery is due precisely to the soul’s deficiency. If knowledge is the possession of truth, mystery can only be what is not (yet) possessed. But this entails a dialectical relationship between knowledge and mystery: what is known is not mysterious, and what is mysterious is not (yet) known. To make progress in knowledge, then, is just so far to conquer mystery, except insofar as one uncovers more to be taken into intellectual possession. What we lose, in this case, is a depth dimension in both knowledge and mystery. Truth, evacuated of any essential mystery, becomes flat” (p. 589).

Schindler believes that there are resources in St. Thomas’s works that are able to address these problems. However, to accomplish this task necessitates abandoning what Schindler has called the conventional interpretation of Thomas and opening up a space for a non-possessive concept of knowledge. Such a concept is provided in Balthasar’s understanding of reason and love and their relation to truth. The following post will begin to trace out the basic features of Balthasar’s philosophy in relation to the subject at hand.