Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION The Nature of This Dictionary The present volume offers students and other interested readers a dictionary of philosophical terms.Its distinctiveness lies,in part,in its being shaped by the understanding of rational reflection—and of wisdom—expressed in John Paul II’s Fides et ratio.1 This dictionary focuses on terms central to what the encyclical called the “enduringly valid philosophical tradition” (Fides et ratio, #106). Although he was careful to note that the Catholic Church does not tie itself to any particular “school” of philosophy, it is clear—both from his own philosophical writings and from remarks in the encyclical itself—that John Paul II (as well as his predecessors throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries) accorded a special place to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.2 Aquinas’s thought itself of course stood within a broader tradition— one that John Paul II sometimes called simply the “great tradition” (see, e.g., Fides et ratio, #85). The latter might be characterized more fully, following an expression of Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., as the tradition of “integral Christian wisdom.”This approach to wisdom, wrote Cardinal Dulles, “draws on the full resources of reason and revelation alike.”3 Where John Paul II spoke of a philosophical tradition that is “enduringly valid,” many Thomists (i.e., thinkers who adopt the central concepts and principles of St. Thomas) have spoken of one that is “perennial.” Jacques Maritain, for example, described the latter as a tradition which, although rooted in ancient and medieval sources, nonetheless “is eternally young and always inventive, and involves a fundamental need, inherent in its very being, to grow and renew itself” in every age.4 There are many signs that a renewal of this perennial tradition now in fact is under way.5 If the full fruits of this movement are to be reaped— especially as these fruits were contemplated by John Paul II—two points 1 Carlson-00intro_Layout 1 11/7/11 1:45 PM Page 1 need to be borne in mind. First, throughout most of its history, this tradition has drawn from and contributed to a wider body of Christian reflection .And so it often does today. In discussing what he calls a contemporary “Thomistic renaissance,” Aidan Nichols, O.P., notes that a “distinguishing feature of the new movement” is its “desire to integrate the philosophy more thoroughly within an essentially theological vision.”6 Second, in addition to being true to its sources, a revitalization of this enduringly valid philosophy requires engagement with various elements of contemporary intellectual culture. This includes awareness of movements of thought that are fundamentally incompatible with the perennial tradition; it also includes efforts to incorporate into the tradition recent philosophical themes and approaches of genuine value. (As is well known, John Paul II, under his given name Karol Wojtyla, himself was especially interested in incorporating insights of the 20th-century movements called phenomenology and personalism.) Putting these various lines of reflection together, John Paul II remarked in a key passage in Fides et ratio that “philosophers who wish to respond today to the demands which the word of God [i.e., Christian revelation] makes on human thinking should develop their thought . . . in organic continuity with the great tradition which, beginning with the ancients, passes through the Fathers of the Church and the masters of Scholasticism and includes the fundamental achievements of modern and contemporary thought” (#85). He also noted that, within this “great tradition,” the work of Aquinas occupies a special place (although not a point of final completion ): “In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason”—and to ways in which reason, when properly attuned to reality, can make substantive contributions to this harmony. Thus “the Church has been justified in consistently proposing St. Thomas”as a“master ”of Christian wisdom and a“model”for other thinkers to follow (#43). In accordance with the above,this dictionary seeks—through the exposition , discussion, and noting of relations among terms—to contribute to the ongoing renewal of the perennial philosophy,7 as well as the broader tradition of integral Christian wisdom in which it has flourished; as a structured wordbook, it seeks especially to help make an understanding of the terminology of this tradition available to students. 2 Introduction Carlson-00intro_Layout 1 11/7/11 1...