Scholasticism and Politics

CHAPTER I. INTEGRAL HUMANISM AND THE CRISIS OF MODERN TIMES

CHAPTER I INTEGRAL HUMANISM AND THE CRISIS OF MODERN TIMES I THE CRISIS OF MODERN TIMES To avoid misunderstanding, I should note at once that here my point ofview will not be that ofthe mere logic of ideas and doctrines, but that of the concrete logic of the events ofhistory. From the first point of view, that of the mere logic of ideas and doctrines, it is evident that there are many possible positions other than the 'pure' positions which I shall examine . One might ask theoretically and in the abstract, what value these various positions have. That is not what I am going to do here. In brief, my point ofview will be that of the philosophy ofculture, and not that ofmetaphysics. From this point ofview, that of the concrete logic of the events of human history, I think that we may be satisfied with the following rather general definition of Humanism, which I have already proposed in another book.l Not to prejudice further discussion, let us say that Humanism ,-and such a definition may itself be developed along quite divergent lines,-tends essentially to make man more truly human, and to manifest his original dignity by enabling him to participate in everything which can enrich him in 1 True Humanism, Geoffrey BIes, 1938. [ I J nature and history (by'concentrating the world in man', in Max Scheler's words, and by 'making man as large as the world'). It demands that man develop his powers, his creative energies and the life of reason, and at the same time labour to make the forces of the physical world instruments of his freedom. Certainly the great pagan wisdom, which, according to the author ofthe Eudemian Ethics, aimed to link itselfto 'that which is better than reason, being the source of reason', cannot be cut offfrom the humanistic tradition; and we are thus warned never to define humanism by excluding all reference to the superhuman and by foreswearing all transcendence. What is it that I call the concrete logic of the events of history? It is a concrete development determined, on the one hand, by the internal logic ofideas and doctrines and, on the other hand, by the human milieu within which these ideas operate and by the contingencies ofhistory as well as by the acts ofliberty produced in history. Necessityand contingency are quite remarkably adjusted in this concrete logic, and to designate thislogicwe may use the word'dialectic' in the sense I havejust indicated, a sense neither Hegelian nor Marxist. And because we are here in the practical and existential order of human life, with the exigencies of the universe of desire and of its concrete ends, of passion and action, this dialectic involves a movement much swifter and much more violent than that of abstract logic. Positions theoretically tenable (rightly or not) are swept aside, because practically they appear at once unlivable, I do not say for such and such an individual, but for the common consciousness. Here we see the peculiar vice of classical humanism. This vice, in my judgment, concerns not so much what this humanism affirms, as what it negates, denies and divides. It [ 2 ] is what we may call an anthropocentric conception ofman and ofculture. I am aware that this word is not too felicitous, but I have used it for want of a better. We might say that the error in question is the idea ofhuman nature as self-enclosed or self-sufficient (that is to say self-divinized, for this nature has infinite longings). Instead ofan open human nature and an open reason, which are real nature and real reason, people pretend that there exists a nature and a reason isolated by themselves and shut up in themselves, excluding everything which is not themselves. Instead ofa development ofman and reason in continuity with the Gospel, people demand such a development from pure reason apart from the Gospel. And for human life, for the concrete movement of history, this means real and serious amputations. Prayer, divine love, supra-rationaltruths, theidea ofsin and of grace, the evangelical beatitudes, the necessity of asceticism , ofcontemplation, of the way of the Cross,-all this is either put in parenthesis or is once for all denied. In the concrete government of human life, reason is isolated from the supra-rational. It is isolated also from all that is irrational in man, or it denies this,-always...