Considerations for Philosophers of Action

CONSIDERATIONS FOR PHILOSOPHERS OF ACTION T HROUGHOUT the history of philosophy we have experienced radical opposition between some of the major systems of thought. Whether between materialists and idealists, mechanists and formalists or any of the dichotomicously ranged philosophies the result has genera1ly been the severing of the naturally united co-principles of corporeal substances. }'rom the ancient Greek atomist, Democritus, up to Descartes and the legion of Cartesians the intrinsic union of matter and form in physical substances has very often been denied. Now while it may not be precisely the same problem which is causing the major rift between contemporary schools of philosophy, it is another serious dichotomic struggle which is as dangerous and as unwarrantable as the age-old one between materialists and idealists. We have in the twentieth century, among many others, the opposing schools and their various derivatives of ultra-dynamic existentialists and radical theoretical essentialists. The latter insist too strongly on the importance of the formal element-the intentionally grasped or intelligible part of existing and possible beings, while the former seem so preoccupied with the concrete action of singulars that they have lost sight of both the principle, or source, and the very end of these actions. The essentialists are so buried in speculative considerations of the formal cause that they fail to appreciate the fact that only through continuous becoming do physical substantial beings ever exist. And the dynamists are so fascinated with actions as to abstract them and actually separate them from their efficient causes. The same old errors occuring in successive centuries should make us at least somewhat suspicious of our method of pro311 312 SISTER M. ANNICE cedure and some of the traditional textbook descriptions. For it is surely not the world of substantial beings, nor the mentality of man, nor yet the constantly moving and accomplishing powers and forces at work in nature which are at fault. The clue seems to lie in the unrealistic separation of truth, which is so characteristic of modem philosophy and science. If we go back several centuries we will find much more unified studies of the universe of lower creatures, man, and even spiritual substances. Aristotle's vast works are an example of wonderfully unified and systematized knowledge. And among the scholarly medievalists we find again that same wholistic view of things. St. Albert the Great united knowledge of the lowest natural sciences with all other sciences in a hierarchical order. St. Thomas Aquinas integrated the whole gamut of knowledge of philosophy of nature, man and God and completed and crowned it with a complete system of theology. Among philosophers from the fifteenth century forward we find the tendency to assign to philosophy chiefly the speculative work of defining natures. To the physical scientists waa gradually allotted the task of " experimenting with," measuring, and writing up the quantitative equations for the moving phenomena. The effects or products of movement were generally given over to some special science or art. Gradually the devotion to quantitative measuring and comparison became so popular that by the t~entieth century we have almost lost sight of essentially qualitative distinctions and comparisons, which should be used to clarify our knowledge of the qualitative aspects of motion. Finally knowledge has become so scattered that in disgust some thinkers have begun with movement at the outer fringes of things in an attempt, as it were, to " work their way back " to truth. It is much like working a problem in mathematics backward to arrive at the given answer. This is an age in which it is necessary that well trained philosophers be ready in the spirit of Christian charity to explain both the truth of principles and their application in available terms. It is not expected of them, and indeed it would be an understandable castastrophe, to surrender sound estab- CONSIDERATIONS FOR PHILOSOPHERS OF ACTION 313 lished systems to the false zeal of some of the modem "dynamists." ORDER Is ALso PHILosoPHY's "FmsT LAw" There is today grave danger of a confusion of orders in the science of philosophy. People seem to want metaphysics to speak in the language of empirical psychology. Philosophy of man is confused with...