Scholasticism and Politics

CHAPTER VII. ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION

CHAPTER VII ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION I GREEK PHILOSOPHY The debate between action and contemplation not only concerns each of us personally, but is also of vital importance to human culture and to the destiny ofcivilization. I hold it to be ofspecial moment to this continent, as I shall try to suggest at the end ofthis chapter. We know well enough how emphatic the East is about its calling to the contemplative life and how proud ofit; while theWest with no less pride,-a pride which is beginning to suffer much,-boasts that it has chosen action. Could this lead us to affirm without more ado that the East is contemplation and theWest action? Such an affirmation would be all too simple. Things do not tell their secrets so easily. Occidental activism might be, in its misery and agony, a degenerated and pathetic form of what was once an incomparable sentiment oflife and human values. TheWest, I believe, had ~mce a habit ofcontemplation in harmony with the deepest postulations ofspiritual reality. In philosophical language the problem of action and contemplation is that of transitive (or productive) and immanent activity (immanent activity in its most typical and purest function). [ I70 ] Transitive activity is that which one being exercises upon another, the so-called patient, in order to act upon it, imparting to it movement or energy. This activity, which is quite visible, is characteristic ofthe world ofbodies; through it all elements of material nature inter-communicate, and through it we act on matter, transforming it. It passes away in Time, and with Time. Not only is it transitory, it is transition . The Greeks were right in saying that in this activity, the action in which the agent and the patient intercommunicate is accomplished in the patient, actio in passo, and being common to both, makes the agent (notwithstanding its being as such the nobler of the two) dependent on the patient, in which alone it obtains perfection. The Agent is itself in actu and attains its perfection only by acting on another than itself , and in the instant of this action. Transitive action is a mendicant action, which achieves itselfin another being, and is essentially in need of another being. On the other hand, while the agent's perfection is also, in fact, that ofthe patient, the agent as such does not seek the patient's good, but its own (this is a typical characteristic of purely transitive action). Hence its 'egotism'. People who exercise philanthropy as a transitive activity need the poor to help if they want to be helpful, sinners to preach to if they want to be preachers, victims whose wrongs they can redress. They need patients. Immanent activity is of quite a different order. It is the characteristic activity oflife and spirit. Here the agent has its own perfection in itself; it elevates itselfin being. Immanent action is a self-perfecting quality. The acts ofknowing and ofloving are not only within the soul, they are for the soul an active superexistence, as it were, superior to the merely physical act ofexistence. Thus the soul, when it knows, becomes thereby something that it is not, and when it loves, [ 171 ] aspires toward what it is not, as to another self This action, as such, is above time. It speaks for Aristotle's greatness to have known and taught that immanent (or vital or interiorizing) action is nobler and more elevated than transitive (or non-vital or exterio:-izing) action. In their doctrine ofimmanent action, the Greeks held that the immanence ofthe intellectual act is, as such, more perfect than that ofthe act ofwill; that is why, according to a thesis which St. Thomas made classical, intelligence is nobler than will, from the sole point of view of the degrees of immanence and immateriality ofthe powers ofthe soul. All this led the Greeks to a two-fold conclusion, which, in its first part, formulated a most valuable truth; and, in its second part, transformed that truth into a great error. The great truth which the Greeks discovered (and which their philosophers conceptualized in very divers spiritual ways) is the superiority ofcontemplation, as such, to action. As Aristotle puts it, life according to the intellect is better than a merely human life. But the error follows. What did that assertion mean to them practically? It meant that mankind lives for the sake of a few intellectuals. There is a...