The Analogy of Individuality and “Togetherness”

THE ANALOGY OF INDIVIDUALITY AND "TOGETHERNESS" IN EVERY person's life and in every philosophy of man there is the constant tension between honorable individuality and community. Excessive individuality can destroy one's necessary membership in community. Over preoccupation with community can check one's growth in individuality. Occasionally some persons choose exclusively either individuality or community. It seems that, although the tension will never be fully resolved, one must be both an individual and a member of community. In the paragraphs which follow we wish to bring out this point, namely, that one must be, necessarily, both an individual and a member of community, but particularly we wish to expand the thought. that neither individuality nor community is a univocal concept or reality. Rather, in man there are various levels of individuality . Likewise there are various levels of community. We have used the word" togetherness" as a generic term because , as will appear later, community, at least in our future use of the word, will be limited to a particular level of togetherness . We wish, immediately, to acknowledge our indebtedness to Karl Rahner and to Gabriel Marcel for many of the ideas which appear below and, in some instances, for their terminology. NouMENAL EGo-PHENOMENAL EGo By these terms " noumenal " and " phenomenal ego " we wish to give a name to two aspects of man which, although they cannot be separated, yet must be distinguished. Man is spirit in matter, or, if you will, spirit in the world. By the " noumenal ego " we mean man as spirit. It is common doctrine with the Scholastics that the human soul is a self-subsistent form. By this they mean, at least the Thomists, that certainly 497 498 DANIEL J. SHINE after death the human soul is capable of existing on its own apart from the body. But also it must be emphasized that the human spirit, even in its conjunction with the body, is selfsubsistent . If it is self-subsistent after death, it must be self-subsistent before death. By the term "phenomenal ego" we mean the same human soul which informs matter. Donceel l has brought out this distinction rather felicitously. He points out that the human soul must be considered both as a formal principle and as a substance, as a spirit. The soul is said to be a spirit which acts like a substantial form. The soul as spirit is rightly said, as self-subsistent, to be a complete substance but not a complete nature. This understanding of the soul as a spirit which informs matter is a synthesis of a thesis which derives from Plato and an antithesis which comes from Aristotle . Plato insisted that the human soul was a spiritual being -and this we grant. Aristotle insisted that the human soul was the form of matter-and this, too, we must grant. The synthesis is found in the fact that the human soul is a spirit which informs matter. It would take us too far afield to give a deeper explanation here of how the unity of man is thus preserved and how, simultaneously, the soul can be spirit which is materialized by its intrinsic dependence upon matter. It is our opinion that a solution of this antimony can be suggested by a recourse to Karl Rahner's theory of quasi-formal causality 2 and likewise to De la Taille's theory of Act and Actuation.3 INTELLECT-UNDERSTANDING If man is a spirit (noumenal ego) and spirit in matter (phenomenal ego) on the substantial level, it will be necessary that these two aspects of man appear in his levels of activity. 1 J. F. Donceel, S. J., Philosophical Anthropology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), pp. 435-436. 2 Karl Rahner, S. J. "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace," Theological Investigations, trans. Cornelius Ernst, 0. P. (Baltimore: Helicon Press), I, pp. 319-346; cf. footnote ~, p. 340. 3 Maurice de la Taille, S. J., The Hypostatic Union and Created Actuation by Uncreated Act (West Baden Springs, Ind.: West Baden College, 195~). THE ANALOGY OF INDIVIDUALITY AND " TOGETHERNESS " 499 We wish here to point out how this will become manifest in the operations of...