Pieper: "The wonder of this world"

"In Hans Reichenbach's programmatic book, Aufstieg der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie ["The Rise of Scientific Philosophy"], we read: "The philosopher seems incapable of controlling his craving for knowledge." But is this not, we may say, an entirely appropriate observation? Our longing for knowledge is indeed beyond our control. Is this not what Plato had in mind when he compared the philosopher to the lover? The philosopher, too, is "beside himself" because he is moved to the core by the mirandum, the wonder of this world. We can wholeheartedly agree. What bedevils this insight, however, is the fact that Plato praises what the "scientific philosophy" rejects and disqualifies without feeling the need for further arguments: it shows a lack of discipline even to talk about things beyond our understanding!

Regarding the nature of the so-called "scientific philosophy", Pieper explains that "The most direct formulation is found in the positivist manifesto, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung ["The Scientific World View"], of the early Vienna Circle: "What is, is on the surface; everything is accessible to human perception." Thus it is nonsensical so much as to search for a "root" of all things or for their "ultimate reasons". In short, that mysterious object of philosophy is nonexistent. Only the objects of science are real; they are, in strict sense and without exception, the objects of perception."

~Josef Pieper: In Defense of Philosophy, Ch. 1. (Ignatius Press) 

Pieper: The Purpose of Politics

ALL practical activity, from the practice of the ethical virtues to gaining the means of livelihood, serves something other than itself. And this other thing is not practical activity. It is having what is sought after, while we rest content in the results of our active efforts. Precisely that is the meaning of the old adage that the vita activa is fulfilled in the vita contemplativa. To be sure, the active life contains a felicity of its own; it lies, says Thomas, principally in the practice of prudence, in the perfect art of the conduct of life. But ultimate repose cannot be found in this kind of felicity. Vita activa est dispositio ad contemplativam; the ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.

In the commentary Thomas wrote on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics there is a sentence which expresses this idea in so challenging a fashion that I hesitate to cite it here. Thomas is speaking of politics, which is the summation of all man’s active cares about securing his existence. The sentence sounds almost utopian. But it is based upon a wholly illusion-free estimate of what is commonly called “political life”; it contain the insight that politics must inevitably become empty agitation if it does not aim at something which is not political. “The whole of political life seems to be ordered with a view to attaining the happiness of contemplation. For peace, which is established and preserved by virtue of political activity, places man in a position to devote himself to contemplation of the truth.” Such is the magnificent simplicity and keenness of this dictum that we scarcely dare lean on it. Yet it is nothing but an extension of the idea that contemplation is “the goal of man’s whole life.”

We do not mean by this to scorn or decry practical life. On the contrary, we may well say that here is the clue to salvation and redemption of ordinary life. And here it seems proper to put in a word about the nature of hierarchical thinking. The hierarchical point of view admits no doubt about differences in levels and their location; but it also never despises lower levels in the hierarchy. Thus the inherent dignity of practice (as opposed to theoria) is in no way denied. It is taken for granted that practice is not only meaningful but indispensable; that it rightly fills out man’s weekday life; that without it a truly human existence is inconceivable. Without it, indeed, the vita contemplativa is unthinkable.

But practice does become meaningless the moment it sees itself as an end in itself. For this means converting what is by nature a servant into a master—with the inevitable result that it no longer serves any useful purpose. The absurdity and the profound dangers of this procedure cannot, in the long run, remain hidden. André Gide writes in his Journals: “The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn out living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it.” Here, with his usual acuteness, Gide has described the deadly emptiness and the endless ennui which bounds the realm of the exclusively practical like a belt of lunar landscape. This is the desert which results from destruction of the vita contemplativa. In the light of such a recognition we suddenly see new and forceful validity in the old principle: “It is requisite for the good of the human community that there should be persons who devote themselves to the life of contemplation.” For it is contemplation which preserves in the midst of human society the truth which is at one and the same time useless and the yardstick of every possible use; so it is also contemplation which keeps the true end insight, gives meaning to every practical act of life.

─Selected from Josef Pieper: An Anthology

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“The angel’s girdling”

“THOMAS himself told the story to his friend Reginald during the last period of his life. After he had been imprisoned, at the age of nineteen or twenty, his brothers sent a bejeweled courtesan to visit Thomas in his cell, to lure him from his resolve to become a mendicant friar. After he had rather roughly shown this damsel the door, Thomas fell into a deep, exhausted sleep, from which he awakened with a cry. He had cried out because in his dream an angel had girdled him in an extremely painful manner, in order to make him henceforth invulnerable to all temptations toward impurity. Whatever interpretation we may put upon this story, it is certain that Thomas—like Goethe, incidentally—always maintained that purity was a necessary condition for recognizing truth, for seeing reality. More than that, he fulfilled this condition in his own person. He was, it appears, a person of such unusual “simplicity,” and this “singleness of eye” gives him such “light,” that we are no doubt justified in speaking of charisma.” 

~Josef Pieper: Guide to Thomas Aquinas, Chap. X.

The Temptation of St. Thomas Aquinas, by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez. 

Oil on canvas, 1632; Cathedral Museum of Sacred Art, Orihuela.

Pieper: “the loving pursuit of wisdom”

“ONLY out of the soil of “loving pursuit of wisdom”, indeed of true philo-sophia, could this be said: “The smallest amount of knowledge about the most sublime realities is more desirable than the most perfect knowledge about the lowest things’; “though we may hardly touch the things supreme and divine, their knowledge is nonetheless more important to us than all the things of this our world together; just as it is so much sweeter to catch but a glimpse, however fleeting, of the beloved than to have exact knowledge of many other, even important things.” The first of these quotations is found in the Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas [I, 1, 5, ad 1.]. The author of the second statement is Aristotle…”

~Josef Pieper: In Defense of Philosophy, p. 89.

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Pieper: "The truth of all things"

33) The “Truth of All Things”

IF you study any philosophical treatise of our present era you will with almost absolute certainty not encounter the concept, and much less the expression, “the truth of all things”. This no mere accident. The generally prevailing philosophical thinking of our own time has no room at all for this concept; it is, as it were, “not provided for”. It makes sense to speak of truth with regard to thoughts, ideas, statements, opinions—but not with regard to things. Our judgments regarding reality may be true (or false); but to label as “true” reality itself, the “things”, appears to be rather meaningless, mere nonsense. Things are real, not “true”!

Looking at the historical development of this situation, we find that there is much more to it than the simple fact of a certain concept or expression not being used; we find not merely the “neutral” absence, as it were, of a certain way of thinking. No, the nonuse and absence of the concept, “the truth of all things”, is rather the result of a long process of biased discrimination and suppression or, to use a less aggressive term: of elimination.

34) Things Can Be Known Because They Are Created

The fundamental statement about the “truth of all things” is found in St. Thomas’ Questiones disputatae de veritate; it reads: res naturalis inter intellectus constituta (est); whatever is is real in nature is placed between two knowing agents, namely— so the text continues—between the intellectus divines [God’s mind] and the intellectus humanus [human mind].

These “coordinates” places all reality between the absolutely creative, inventive knowledge of God and the imitating, “informed” knowledge of us humans and thus present the total realm of reality as a structure of interwoven original and reproduced conceptions.

Based on this twofold orientation of all things—so Thomas continues his reasoning—the concept of the “truth of all things” is also twofold: first, it means “thought by God”; second, it means “knowable to the human mind”. The statement, “All things are true”, would therefore mean, on one hand, that all things are known by God in the act of creation and, on the other hand, that all things are by their nature accessible and comprehensible to the human mind.

All things can be known by us because they spring from God’s thought. Because they originated in God’s mind, things have not only their specific essence in themselves and for themselves, but precisely because they originated in God’s mind, things have as well an essence “for us”. All things are intelligible, translucent, clear and open because they are created by God’s thought, and for this reason they are essentially spirit related. The clarity and lucidity that flows from God’s knowledge into things, together with their very being (more correctly: as their very being)—this lucidity alone makes all things knowable for the human mind. St. Thomas, in a commentary on the Liber de causis, we find a profound statement that expresses the same thought in almost mystical terms: ipsa actualitas rei est quoddam lumen ipsius; “the reality of a thing is itself its light”—and “reality” is understood here as “being created”! It is precisely this “light” that makes a thing visible to our eyes. In short: things can be known because they are created.

~from Josef Pieper: An Anthology  

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Description: "Near the end of a long career as one of the most widely read popular Thomistic philosophers of the twentieth century, Josef Pieper has himself compiled an anthology from all his works. He has selected the best and most representative passages and arranged them in an order that gives sense to the whole and aids in the understanding of each excerpt."