Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective

3. The Affections and the Life of the Mind

47 The Affections and the life of the Mind Contemporary Culture and the Quest for Autonomy at the Expense of Truth In the opening page of the Metaphysics Aristotle tells us that all men by nature desire to know. This desire has been described as the eros toward the first principle or the first cause, an eros which like all natural appetites will require regulation and purification. Without such correction the quest for the truth on the part of reason can be seriously hindered by unruly passion or evil habit, that is, by disordered loves, and also by the influence of the dominant culture in which we live. Our natural desire for truth can therefore be frustrated, along with our flourishing as human beings. The purpose of this essay will be to consider some of the challenges posed by contemporary culture to an understanding of the life of the mind in terms of a pursuit and love of truth, both in the speculative and practical uses of reason. John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio provides help in delineating what the difficulties may be, by drawing our attention to the materialism, relativism, and nihilism prevalent in our culture today, by contrasting the wisdom of the world to the wisdom of the wise, chapter 3 48  Beauty, Order, and Teleology 48  Truth, Measure, and Virtue which is able to distinguish higher goods from lower goods, and by ultimately focusing on the wisdom of the cross, that radical newness which reason of itself could never fathom. Among the most serious problems of our Western culture are the many forms of atheism and of secular and antihumanisms. Division within the self, for want of a unitary end such as the quest for truth, is common, as is the conflict within human life, either individually or collectively; common also is the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness. A brief analysis of modern and contemporary thought made within the framework of Catholic wisdom, which complements and perfects the truth arrived at through natural reason, readily brings to light man’s search for autonomy at the expense of truth, the anxious pursuit of material and external goods, and the absence of what may be called an “ethics of knowing.” Such an analysis can also draw our attention to certain fundamental virtues that ought to be fostered in order to counteract the dominant vices in our culture. In contrast to what is problematic and unsound in contemporary culture, we will try to see with the help of that master of thought, Thomas Aquinas, what truths and goods need to be cultivated, and how we might be able to order our loves so as not to impede the life of the mind in its directedness to truth. At the very root of what hinders knowledge of the truth, Fides et Ratio reminds us of the blindness that pride produces: man’s inordinate desire for excellence makes him unwilling to submit his mind to God.1 Man’s intellect, created as a potency unto the infinite, is meant to reach beyond the data of the senses to the cause and origin of all perceptible things, and also to appeal to this higher source for the knowledge of good and evil. However, once the mind seeks to declare its independence from God, from the origin of all being, truth, and goodness, the hu1 . John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference , 1998), sec. 22, par. 3. Affections and the Life of the Mind  49 man capacity to know the truth is impaired. Referring to the sin of our first parents which so wounded reason, Fides et Ratio presents the closing in of the mind and heart onto themselves and thus onto an emptiness or nothingness due to the original aversio Dei and the conversio ad creaturam. The eyes of the mind were no longer able to see with clarity; reason became more and more imprisoned within itself.2 It is no wonder, then, that when limited and fragile reason does catch a glimmer of the greatness to which it is called, there is resistance. Overly concerned about material things and the creation of an earthly paradise, we can drive out the truth amidst these concerns, or we can run from the truth once glimpsed at because we are afraid of its demands. Disproportionate absorption in earthly affairs, so characteristic of modern...