In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

240 20. Revelation and Political Philosophy On Locating the Best City For it would be absurd for someone to think that political science or intelligence is the most excellent science, when the best thing in the universe is not a human being. Aristotle The word “revealed” refers not only to the future—as though the Word began to reveal the Father only when he was born of Mary—it refers equally to all time. From the beginning the Son is present to creatures, reveals the Father to all, to those the Father chooses when the Father chooses, and as the Father chooses. So, there is in all and through all one God the Father, one Word and Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation for all who believe in him.  St. Irenaeus After they have been carried along to the Acherusian lake, they cry out and shout, some for those they have killed, others for those they have maltreated, and calling them they then say to them and beg them to allow them to step out into the lake and to receive them. If they persuade them, they do step out and their punishment comes to an end; if they do not, they are taken back into Tartarus and from there into the rivers, and this does not stop until they have persuaded those they have wronged, for this is the punishment which the judges imposed on them. Plato I • Philosophy is the quest for knowledge of the whole by a being that is himself a whole but not the whole. The quest is given with our being. It makes us be what we are, both acting and thinking beings. It explains An earlier version of this chapter was prepared for a lecture at Loyola University, Baltimore , and published in Telos 148 (Fall 2009): 16–27. Epigraphs are from Aristotle, Ethics, 1141a20–22; St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 4; Plato, Phaedo, 114a–b. Revelation 241 the constant dynamism that charges through our lives whether we like it or not. Further, it incites us to know what we are in order that we might choose to be what we ought to be. We are the only beings in the universe that cannot be what we are without our own decision actually to be what we are intended to be. Not even the gods can change this status, nor do they wish to. The gods want us to be what we are. The question is whether we want this “whatness” also, or do we wish to be ourselves gods? The gods are not philosophers, as they already know the whole. We love wisdom; they are wisdom. Philosophy begins with not knowing, the tabula rasa. Philosophy is a human enterprise, the activity of leisure , the contemplative life. Philosophy is the articulation in conversation of what we know about what is. The truth of what we know is measured by the intelligibility within what is. The truth is, as Plato observes , to say of what is that it is, and of what is not, that it is not. Veritas est adaequatio mentis et rei. Truth only “exists” when something is actively being affirmed as true by a being with the power of intellect. Philosophy wants to know how and why things are, rather than are not; why they are this, not that. Our mind is defined by Aristotle as the faculty that is capax omnium, the power by which we are all things not ourselves while still being ourselves. We are not deprived of all that is by being, within the whole, a particular that which is. We can imagine, barely, what it is not to be. We do this by negating existence in something that is. We do not encounter “nothing,” then ask what it is. We encounter something; then we deny existence to it. Our meditations on nothing themselves presuppose something that is, something we know. “Know thyself,” the great Delphic admonition that sent Socrates forth on his lifetime mission, his quest, includes first knowing what is not “thyself.” This self-knowing results when Socrates ventures forth into the streets of Athens to find out who is wise since he knows he is not. Thus, I am not the first object of my intellect. I know myself indirectly through first knowing what is not myself. The world, what is not myself, gives me myself, both in being and in knowledge. Ultimately we are “gifts” even to ourselves. In following Socrates, the philosopher...

Share