Personalism in Relation to Aristotle and St. Thomas (Jonathan Sanford)

as I thought about how best to tackle this topic well it seemed to me highly problematic to try to condense into one 30-minute reflection the the whole of the tradition and how it bears upon personalism well so I'm going to focus on on some high points and seek to build upon what I already reflected upon on Monday with regard to to Mystic personalism and to remind you the the thesis there that I was developing in conversation with Jacques mera tan and Norris Clark is that personalism is not foreign to toe mysm but is in fact

an expression of tome ISM and we were reflecting upon that statement that Aquinas makes in question 29 article 3 of the prima pars that the person in all of nature is most supreme writes this that which is most perfect in all of nature but in order to orient my remarks I want to say a few things that are of an attitudinal nature because I think that's significant to how personal lists regard the tradition and oftentimes in my experience at least there is a kind of either or not the Kirk a guardian either or but I

don't want to cheapen about what dr. Healy so eloquently would reflected upon yesterday but a kind of either/or you're either a personal list or you're a tow missed and when I first arrived on this campus it was my my second position although I was just briefly at at Fordham University and my wife and I were very happy to come here and join dr. Crosby and dr. Healy and the rest of the department some 14 years ago 15 years ago and I was put to this question a number of times students said to me are you

a phenomenologist or are you a tow missed and never the two shall meet it seemed and I was flummoxed at the question I hadn't counted it in various forms before because I had read deeply von Hildebrand who sometimes seems to to precipitate this kind of either/or although not always but certainly in in the the hands of some who reflect upon personalism not just christian personalism there seemed to be an opposition well again my my efforts were to make sense of voc ela in my my own way and I saw him as a combination of personalism

and tome ISM one who embraces the tradition as a totality and my own dissertation was on Schuyler and Aristotle reflecting on virtue and value and there was a connect question yesterday on how exactly one connects value and virtue and I'll say a few remarks upon that in in a few minutes because I think there's a very rich connection between von Hildebrand and Aristotle on just this this question but why do we want to avoid as personal lists why do we want to avoid playing upon this this opposition well well one reason is that it burns

bridges unnecessarily and this is the the outcome I think of attempts to really define personalism in its early years is something new and unique it's also results of a distorted kind of tome ISM a distorted view of the tradition but well we don't need to to rest upon that distorted or truncated view of tome ISM we can read Aquinas we've got the whole of Aquinas this works online well at our fingertips we can read Aristotle in translation right there's there's no excuse for us to go to the manual toll ISM for what tome ilysm really

is and nevertheless the environment was such that that perhaps the distinction between personalism and and the tradition and I know the tradition is wider than than tome ISM of course it is well but but quine is certainly plays a pivotal role in that tradition at least if we're going to take hopefully the 13th as as our guide and the second reason we ought not to do this is it marginalizes personalism it makes it seem like a strange sort of philosophical movement that's disconnected from philosophy as a whole and if if it's that then we're going

to define ourselves always on the margins and not at the center there are grand aspirations here to integrate personalism into education into politics into the the culture generally well if we're going to do that we can't be a strange sort of marginal movement Rob the the third problem here is is we can fall into the temptation if we think of personalism as as what's really different and disconnected from the tradition of not really studying the tradition and that can make us look as though were uneducated well the tradition however you wanted to find it more

concretely is the the source of a common philosophical theological literary vocabulary well if we make careless claims about what Aristotle or Agustin or Aquinas or even some more marginal members of the tradition like humor even Nietzsche if we if we recycle our secondary secondarily received opinions about these figures rather than have work through their texts themselves it will be detected when we are engaged in conversation with others and that will bring personalism into disrepute the the most significant reason why we ought to see personalism as an expression of the tradition is because there are profound

resources for personal ISM with the tradition and because in point of fact personalism is an expression of the tradition right so what i thought i would do is just highlight a few features in Aristotle and Aquinas and it's I think fitting to have a both a pagan and Christian representative of the tradition you should not hear my my very brief here because these are major topics remarks as suggesting that the bulk of personalism well as it's articulated in the twenty twentieth and now 21st century is to be found in Aristotle or Aquinas you've got proto

personal istic or personal istic if we're going to adopt marathons approach elements there but one does not have to give up on the claim to originality and creativity in the authors that we've mostly been focusing on the last few days in order to recognize anchors in the tradition you can you can have your originality and your tradition to okay so um let me let me say just a few remarks about virtue and value and yesterday John Henry he knows that I work in and virtue theory well I'm quite a bit said well I was surprised

you didn't you didn't jump in when when professors eyford answered the question of how to understand Aristotle's account of virtue in connection with von Hildebrand and and part of the reason was I thought well I can use the podium today to do that but also it would have it would have maybe got us off track of the the main point of the discussion yesterday but in point of fact I find in Aristotle a heavy value language when he's reflecting on virtue and I'm going to end my remarks with with some comments on Aquinas on charity

and charity is a virtue it's the chief of the virtues Aquinas argues in the secundus of clinda question 23 article six that it is the form of all the virtues because it's their efficient cause so where do we look to in Aristotle for some kind of value rich language well Aristotle says in both his you demian ethics and in his Nick amok in ethics that every virtue is kalan and done for the sake of the Kalam kalan is a truly rich Greek term that means a lot of things well it principally means beautiful it also

means good it also means fine or noble and English translators famously have difficulty translating this term but Aristotle says that every virtue is beautiful and good and done for the sake every virtuous actions done for the sake of that which is beautiful and good Aquinas echoes this in his disputed questions on the cardinal virtues by saying that that virtue makes its possessor good and makes his work done well all right so there's there's one point when Aristotle is reflecting upon whether or not we really need phronesis the intellectual virtue that comes to be translated as

prudencia in the Latin tradition well is this is this really a virtue that we need and he argues that even if prudence furnaces practical wisdom even if it was not necessary for us to act virtuously by means of this intellectual virtue we would still need to acquire it because it perfex us I'd it that is to say irrespective of its results irrespective of the actions that follow from the acquisition of a particular virtue the virtue is valuable and worthy of acquisition and of course we don't just want to acquire virtues like we're going to the

gymnasium so we can we can pump up our character right we're going to work on temperance I'm going to work on on prudence I'm going to work on each of these other virtues and just be virtuous the goal of life is not to be virtuous the goal of life is to act virtuously and in the last analysis for Aristotle acting virtuously entails both the activity of contemplative wisdom but also the exercise of the human virtues in concert with the human community for the sake of Qantas's reflections that the activity which is happiness entails ultimately friendship

with God and that sometimes missed if we're just focusing on the first five questions of the premise of kun day of the sumo theologian where he talks so much of happiness he also talks at the kingdom there but if you read those in concert with his reflections on friendship in the questions in the the secunda secunda on charity you find that that ultimately happiness is is friendship with with God Bob david gallagher who used to teach it catholic university of america has several articles on just this theme that are worth exploring so every every virtue

is is kalan and done for the sake of cologne every virtue is is not the end of the story right it does dispose us towards for action each virtue does but it's valuable in and of itself and although some things might become easier it's not as though the life of virtue is ever easy so Aristotle in Nicomachean ethics 26 defines virtue as a habit of choice a habit that implies choice okay now of course he's rather thin on what choice ultimately means that is because he he lacks a notion of balloon toss the will I

boule which is usually translated as wish is not is not the same thing as the Augustinian notion of the will that comes to be acquired as well by Aquinas when he's reflecting upon a choice but nevertheless there is this this decision point that is part and parcel to the exes of virtue the the the habit of virtue so a a habit in this sense is not like my habit of looking at the mailbox every time I pull up to my house it's not like the habit of well it can entail the habit of being a

pianist game but that's that's a particular type of virtue that is to say an art and art is in a special class as opposed to the other intellectual virtues and the moral virtues it's it's a richly perfecting feature of the human being and it disposes me to act well so how this works for for Aristotle if I've acquired say the virtue of moderation software sue day I am I've got a sort of permanent choice to be temperate or moderate but I don't know how to be temperate at this time in this manner and so on

and so forth right so well how do I exercise temperance in the reception tomorrow night how do I exercise temperance in my conversations with somebody else well that's not yet decided that's where one needs prudence in order to deliberate about the means ok so what one finds then in Aristotle first is this notion that virtue is itself valuable and it enables us to realize objective values to to bring to light to bring to realization those features of reality that ought to be made present to appreciate them to contemplate them depends upon what virtue you're looking

at ok the what what I think you find in the tradition is an anchoring for this account of the virtue and I'll say a few more things about that with regard to the Tacoma of love and the aptitude for the good but you you also find a room for von Hildebrand Ian notion of objective value that is part and parcel to the goods of our experience and beyond so that perhaps is is enough on that let me look at what you actually prepared in your your readings I want to to be attentive to a few

themes and here I had you read from the very beginning of the metaphysics and then it's high point I and the the features that I think are most significant to develop here and that I ask you to draw your attention to are the ways in which Aristotle is anticipating what we identify in the tradition as the imago Dei II I think there are elements of that in Aristotle and that should not surprise us if it's really true that each one of us is an image of God we ought to find these these kinds of recognitions

Rocco was just talking about original sin in a way to approach original sender you find that in in Plato certainly his recognition of original said I've always been struck at the way in which the healthy city is contrasted with the fevered city in the Republic right the fevered city that's our experience we live in a fevered city I concupiscence run amok right that's original Senate or and what saves us is philosophy well well it does in a way this is why speak of Pope Benedict the 16th right when in space solve a he he reflects

in paragraph six on the way in which Christ was regarded as a philosopher on the sarcophagi in the early church that is to say crisis the way the truth and the life philosophy is a way of living in Christ is the the chief way right it's through him that our salvation is found so back to Aristotle whom you should always go back to Bob he he argues that the kind of of wisdom that were seeking in this science that he never calls metaphysics but first philosophy the science of truth he says in the second book

a science of being qua being he says in the fourth book this this science is ultimately a theology we're looking for knowledge of God as the the first cause in principle and we're looking at knowledge of what God knows in book lambda or the twelfth book he reflects upon what God knows in the ninth chapter in the ninth chapter of book 12 for the metaphysics what God knows ultimately is identified as himself all right so he's news knowing noon he's thought thinking thought well I'm caught up in a in a quasi tripartite movement where he's

both subject and object and activity all identified perhaps there's a faint echo of the Trinity there but God also i argue knows knows everything and knowing himself and this of course has developed much more expansively in aquinas but in that tenth chapter of book 12 of the metaphysics aristotle reflects on how God communicates his goodness throughout the whole of the universe alright so not only is God thinking himself God is good and the universe is fundamentally good and this is a theme that that comes out well I'm very richly in book 9 of the metaphysics

when Aquinas or I'm sorry when Aristotle is reflecting upon the absolute priority of being over non-being the world is a world that's that fundamentally is and therefore is good there there's evil in the world but ultimately evil is an absence of the being or goodness that ought to be there so the whole of the universe is good insofar as its participating in God's activity Aristotle says in book 12 that God's activity this activity of thinking is life wherever one finds life one finds participation in God and indeed goodness now there are many arguments when I'm

when I'm talking about a theme like this at a at a conference where there are other Aristotelian scholars there i would spend about 40 minutes defending one sentence that i just said with lots of textual analysis so my interpretation particularly on the way in which the whole of the universe is participating in God is one that that's not universally recognized although there are scholars who recognize it so I want to say that as a matter of academic honesty and fairness so you're getting my my interpretation of Aristotle which just happens to be accurate the so

we we have then the the beginnings not even close to the fullness but the beginnings of a way of thinking about the human being as divine like in its aspirations and as we'll see in just a moment divine like in its nature seeking to be one with a being who is thought thinking thought and the source of the goodness in all of nature though he doesn't create he is the source of its goodness and the aspiration of demonization is made evident and Aristotle as well insofar as as he reflects upon what it is for us

to know anything as an identification between the knower and the thing known and so in his day anema chapter 3 of book 3 in Chapter 7 of book 3 in posterior analytics book 2 chapter 19 and other places he develops this idea that that to know is to be that which we know so if it's our aspiration to know God if that's held out as a as a promise of this science of first philosophy then then that means we become God in some measure let's look at at Nicomachean ethics now this is from book 9

chapter 8 and I want to call your attention to a theme that that's connected to what I was just saying as well as to merit anne's distinction between personality and individuality and this connects as well to something that that Professor seiffert was saying with respect to the self of right and the the notion of of self-love is is discussed here should one love oneself or another most of all while Aristotle says it depends on what you mean by the self if we're talking about the the self that seeks to acquire to get the best if

we're talking about the play on next six self the self that seeks more and more and more like the greedy self then of course when are not one ought not to love oneself Rob but one can be a true lover of self and if you look above 1169 so 1168 be line 33 Aristotle says the site a man is said to have or not to have self control according as his word here is noose translated as reason not logos has or has not the control on the assumption that this is the man himself and the

things men have done on a rational principle I thought most properly their own acts and voluntary acts that this is the man himself then his news is mine that this is the man himself then or is so more than anything else is playing and also that the good man loves most this part of him so Aristotle the champion of Hyla morphism is not abandoning hilum morphism here that is to say that that mind and body are truly one he's playing upon a distinction that comes to be defined more clearly an Aquinas and then meriton as

well as the distinction between personality and individuality like false love of self is love of the individual in the way in which maraton describes true love of the self is loving the person um what remember the human person is both individual and person so the the distortion comes in when one sacrifices the person to the individual so too with respect to to love of one's friend well Aristotle provides a very rich account of the reason one needs friends he gives some more trivial reasons but starting at at 1170 a line 13 he says if we

look deeper into the nature of things a virtuous friend seems to be nationally desirable for a virtuous man deeper into the nature of things well what what's the depth that he deals with it it's as he goes on to describe it it it's the shared life of seeking the truth one sees in his friend another self one needs one's friend in order to live a virtuous life in concert and to engage in reflection because indeed Rob this is what living together would seem to mean in the case of man and not as in the case

of cattle feeding in the same place right we want to share our existence he says with each other that's why we need friends finally won one more indication of this emphasis on the the let the person in the human being can be found at 1177 be this is near the end of chapter 7 of book 10 when he's argued that the contemplative life the activity of contemplating ultimately God he argues in this eighth chapter is the the best life for a human being and he's thinking of those who say well wait a second that's that's

a divine life where human beings were supposed to to live in the the meisel cosmos not rise up to the macro cosmos and contemplate its source he says but such a life would be too high for man for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so but in so far as something divine is present in him and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue if reason is divine then in

comparison with man the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life so he affirms at least an element of the objection you're right well there is something divine about this destiny that we're questing for but we shouldn't follow those who tell us to shirk from that quest indeed we ought with every effort of our nature to strive to contemplate God to rise to the level of the divinity and then he proceeds to contrast again the flourishing of our composite nature with the flourishing of this dimension this divine dimension of our being we

have to live both kinds of lives right the life of the the person the spiritual life that seeks communion with God as well as the life of being in community and so I hope you you see there are some connections to what I was saying about personality and individuality and merit an as well as some elements within this pagan philosopher of what comes to be called the personal istic movement now to to Aquinas I just draw your attention to a few points here that I think are worthy of our attention in part because what what

what Aquinas is looking at here in his reflections on the passions and this is just the beginning of a truly rich account and if you're at all interested in emotion theory and the connection between emotions or passions and virtues well I would encourage you to read questions 22 through 47 of the Primo secunda there's been quite a bit of literature that's come out on this in the last 15 years a very fine study by Robert minor at Baylor University father Lombardo's got a very rich work called the logic of desire and I think there are

many points of intersection with personalism to be found in Aquinas treatment of the passions I'm just looking at a couple of points here to do in a slightly different way what I've been trying to do with all of my remarks which is to show how the tradition can provide some anchors for personal istic insight and one anchor that that I think we need to be attentive to is what motivates us to recognize the personality of another what motivates us to realize objective values right why would we do that why would we want to do that

why aren't we too want to do that and ultimately I think that that Aquinas provides an answer that gets us quite far down that road now it's an answer that's often critiqued by my personal lists because it does draw upon a cosmological view that is to say his his account of love rob is initially cosmic in its reach he looks at at our natural appetites he looks at our sensitive appetites he looks at a rational appetite and he connects love to each of these that doesn't mean that the rational appetite is not qualitatively different than

our sensitive appetite it's also the case that the sensitive appetite is human is spiritual in ways that are often missed indeed our sensitive appetites are elements of our nature that we share with non-human animals but we don't share them in a nonhuman way we they're fundamentally humanized and elevated and that and I'm talking about such such emotions as hope and fear and love and hate on the level of the passions so love love stretches from there the very bottom of the cosmic order into the the very depths of the human spirit Aquinas does use the

same term but he doesn't do so in a way that fails to discriminate between the different types of love and what I think is in need of appreciation here is the idea of fitting pneus or Opta to the name right the the aptitude of the human being for an object of love that's that's where the the motion begins I so there's there are three parts to the the movement of love there's this this beginning aptitude a kind of resting in that which we below we love before it's even a part of us in any way

shape or form or recognize right in the kind of love we have for a great work of art there's a resting in this beautiful work that doesn't in any way deprive others of appreciating it we become one with it we realize its objective value without it becoming a scarce good we don't want to possess it unless work we're wonderfully rich and can acquire our own Museum but anyway this this aptitude of the the person this is the the first moment and then we recognize our lack right so first we see our fitting pneus to this

beloved object we recognize our lack and desire this object this value this good and then when we become one with it we experience joy these are the three moments so to speak of love so love has has both a vertical hierarchy with I would argue a qualitative distinction between the the way in which it expresses itself as a sensitive passion and the way in which it is an expression of the will as the the spiritual power and love also has a horizontal dimension where at each one of these levels there's the the aptitude the fitting

pneus between the the human person and the object then the recognition of the lack and motion towards this object and the the consummation with this object so love then not only begins with this kind of aptitude but love reaches the beloved in ways in which thinking and knowledge cannot Aquinas argues that that when we think something we're thinking about that thing or there are elements of it that we can't capture when we love a thing we love right through that thing right into the very heart of it that being that other person all right so

love penetrates it gives us a intimacy with the beloved object that knowing it lacks right so this is at the heart of of Aquinas 'as treatment ultimately of a friendship friendship with with God well before I turn to charity I'm running a little bit long my watch broke and I have not acquired another one about 40 minutes yeah you sort like okay thanks all right Bob well the thank you I got three different answers so okay the the thing I want to draw your attention to in these another thing I want to draw your attention

to in these reflections on on love and hate Bob if you if you look at page 33 this is question 29 article 4 of the Prima secunda Aquinas is wrestling with the question of whether or not a man can hate himself and in typical Aquinas fashion he says well yes and no but certainly yes there are some ways in which a man can hate himself in first he describes this accidental way which doesn't mean Bob whoops I'm suddenly hating myself how'd that happen well he he that's not his account I don't want to focus on

it right now I want to focus on what he says in the secondly well secondly in regard to himself to whom He wills good for each thing is that which is predominant in it wherefore the state is said to do what the King does as if the King with the whole state now it is clear that man is principally the mind of man and it happens that some men account themselves as being principally that which they are in their material and sensitive nature so your personality individuality wherefore they love themselves according to what they take

themselves to be while they hate that which they really are by desiring what has contrary to reason so we have these idols of the self these false images of the self that are linked to this distorted identification we make with with aspects of our being that are not the totality of who we are and insofar as we think this is who I really am we hate ourselves what self do we hate what we hate our personality is helfen in that sense right and this happens quite often with the way in which we identify ourselves with

with certain sins right there was a time when when I smoked and I remember thinking in fact it was when I started here I decided I wasn't going to to be a smoker anymore I do occasionally enjoy a pipe or cigar but I said I was not gonna was not going to be a smoker you know sort of foreign to my nature as a as a high school in college athlete it was a brief period in my life when I was sleeping very little in head already three children was stressed out well so I'm not

proud of this I hope you appreciate that anyways the point the point I want to make is that I remember thinking can I stop when I stopped smoking I had written most of my dissertation with with this this vice at work and I thought you know what I don't need to I don't want to this is who I am I am a smoker now I'm not saying smoking is always sinful all right I tend to so maybe it's a bad example trying to give up I know there are some smokers in the room so no

no no judgments here but for me clearly it was it was a vice and I was a slave to it and one measure of that slavery was that I thought you know I can't this is who I am I identified who I was with this activity which was you know not not healthy um not good for me it's not something I wanted my students to do it's not something I wanted my children to see me do that you know dad has to have a smoke in order to have a conversation really then I can't just

have a conversation so anyway when I when I realized that I drew upon my personal istic resources and said this is not who I am this is a distortion this is what happens when we attach ourselves to a false image of who we are one born from exclusively our individuality right and I realized I was hating myself in this regard so let me let me turn now very briefly to something that requires a lot of reflection but I will promise to keep it brief here this notion of charity well charity for Aquinas is friendship and

I had to read the the reflection Aquinas gives on the difference between the the love of concupiscence and the love of friendship and he argues that the love of friendship is love simply because you're loving the other for his own good as opposed to loving something else for the sake of another alright so there's there's a an immediacy to friendship to the love of friendship and charity ultimately is friendship charity is a virtue friendship for Aquinas is a kind of virtue he decides what for Aristotle is left a little undecided which is when Arizona begins

his reflections on filia he says that filia either is a virtue or implies a virtue for Aquinas it is a virtue in and it's ultimately the virtue of charity when we're talking about our friendship with God so Aquinas defines charity as man's friendship with God and then as he proceeds to discuss charity he indicates the ways in which this friendship was not initiated by us I God first loved us and calls us into friendship with him and this friendship is as I said at the beginning of my remarks the high point of the human quest

right we can talk about the beatific vision that has a certain a certain abstractness to it though sometimes we don't know what that means but we do know what it means to be a friend and to be a friend with God implies a number of things one thing that it implies is is they the cultivation of our inner life look at the replied objection one of this first article of question 23 of the Supreme Disick Hyundai Aquinas rights man's life is twofold there is his outward life and respect of his sensitive and corporeal nature his

individuality and with regard to this life there is no communication or fellowship between us and God or the angels the other is man's spiritual life in respect of his mind and with regard to this life there is fellowship between us and both God and the angels imperfectly indeed in this present state of life so we finding in this distinction between the individual and the person and the the exhortation to cultivate this inner life the life of the man himself I want to look finally at the second objection the reply to this a second objection because

it it answers in many respects the question of motivation again going back to what I was saying about aptitude inay the motivation for loving our enemies right now why should we love our enemies what you can say that's because you've been commanded by our Lord to love your enemies right and that's a pretty important reason right but what what does this mean to loved ones enemies and why are we being commanded to love one in our enemies right that we want to know the why like we have we have eight children in and I I

want my children to understand the why I'm trying to cultivate my wife and I are trying to cultivate virtue in them I don't just give them commands I want them to recognize the reasons and to grow into the virtues that are perfective of their nature and Aquinas is sensitive to this he wants us to understand the reason why were eggs orted to love our enemies so he tells us in this replied objection to friendship extends to a person in two ways first in respect of himself and in this way friendship never extends but to one's

friends secondly it extends to someone in respect of another as when a man has friendship for a certain person for his sake he loves all belonging to him be they children servants or connected with him in any way indeed so much do we love our friends that for their sake we love all who belong to them even if they hurt or hate us so that in this way the friendship of charity extends even to our enemies whom we love out of charity in relation to God to whom the friendship of charity is chiefly order we

are called to friendship with God friendship with God is charity out of this friendship for God we love all that is God's and all that is God's is everything including those who hurt us and hate us so it's out of our friendship with God that were motivated to love our enemies so again these are elements of what comes to be called personalism and the 20th century I'm not pretending that you find everything and certainly not Aristotle or Aquinas that that one finds in in the very rich literature that's been produced but one certainly finds the

foundation well metaphysical anchoring for ideas that that without that anchoring can have a kind of of what dislocated aspect to them I I think it's important to ground them to find their depths and I think it's important for personalism to see itself for what it is which is an expression of the tradition you