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) 

"An educated man"

“EVERY systematic science, the humblest and the noblest alike, seems to admit of two kinds of proficiency; one of which may be properly called scientific knowledge of the subject, while the other is a kind of educational acquaintance with it. For an educated man should be able to form a fair off-hand judgement as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition. To be educated is in fact to be able to do this; and even the man of universal education we deem to be such in virtue of his having this ability. It will, however, of course, be understood that we only ascribe universal education to one who in his own individual person is thus critical in all or nearly all branches of knowledge, and not to one who has a like ability merely in some special subject. For it is possible for a man to have this competence in some one branch of knowledge without having it in all.”

~Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals, Book I. (639a)

Aristotle, by Enea Vico.
Engraving, 1546; British Museum, London.

The problem of evil

“NO EVIL as such can be desirable, either by natural appetite or by conscious will. It is sought indirectly, namely because it is a consequence of some good. This is the rule for every type of appetite. A natural force works for a form, not the absence of form. Yet one form may extrude another. A lion kills for food, that means the death of the deer; a fornicator wants pleasure, and incurs the deformity of sin.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, I, q. 19, a. 9.

(Thomas Gilby's translation)

Friendship

“NOT every love has the quality of friendship. In the first place it is reserved to that love for another which wills his well-being. When what we will is not the other’s good for his sake, but the desire of it as it affects us, that is not friendship, but self-regarding love and some sort of concupiscence. Neither does benevolence suffice for friendship; in addition a mutual loving is required, for a friend is friend to friend. This interplay of well-wishing is founded on companionship.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 23, a. 4.

(Thomas Gilby's translation)

Maritain: The Rights of the Person

“EVERY human person has the right to make his own decisions with regard to his personal destiny, whether it be a question of choosing one’s work, of marrying the man or woman of one’s choice, or of pursuing a religious vocation. In the case of extreme peril and for the safety of the community, the State can forcibly requisition the services of each of us and demand that each risk his life in a just war; it can also deprive criminals of certain of their rights (or rather sanction the fact that they themselves forfeited them); for example, men judged unworthy of exercising parental authority. But the State becomes iniquitous and tyrannical if it claims to base the functioning of civil life on forced labor, or if it tries to violate the rights of the family in order to become master of men’s souls. For just as man is constituted a person, made for God and for a life superior to time, before being constituted a part of the political community, so too man is constituted a part of family society before being constituted a part of political society. The end for which the family exists is to produce and bring up human persons and prepare them to fulfill their total destiny. And if the State too has an educative function, if education is not outside its sphere, this function is to help the family fulfill its mission and to complement this mission, not to efface in the child his vocation as a human person and replace it by that of a living tool and material for the State. 

To sum up, the fundamental rights, like the right to existence and life; the right to personal freedom or to conduct one’s own life as master of oneself and of one’s acts, responsible for them before God and the law of the community; the right to the pursuit of the perfection of moral and rational life;* the right to keeps one’s body whole; the right to private ownership of material goods, which is the safeguard of the liberties of the individual; the right to marry according to one’s choice and to raise a family which will be assured of the liberties due it; the right of association, the respect for human dignity in each individual, whether or not he represents an economic value for society—all these rights are rooted in the vocation of the person (a spiritual and free agent) to the order of absolute values and a destiny superior to time. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man framed these rights in the altogether rationalist point of view of the Enlightenment and the Encyclopedists and to that extent enveloped them in ambiguity. The American Declaration of Independence, however marked by the influence of Locke and “natural religion”, adhered more closely to the originally Christian character of human rights.

~Jacques Maritain: Christianity and Democracy & The Rights of Man and Natural Law. 


* In this above all consists the pursuit of happiness: the pursuit of happiness here on earth in the pursuit, not of material advantages, but of moral righteousness, of the strength and perfection of the soul, with the material and social conditions thereby implied.

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Structure of the Summa

The structure of the Summa theologiae is beautifully described by the Cambridge theologian Nicholas Lash, who writes:

“We might almost say that, for Aquinas, the ‘soundness’ of his ‘educational method’ depended upon the extent to which the movement of his exposition reflected the rhythm of God’s own act and movement: that self-movement ‘outwards’ from divine simplicity to the utterance of the Word and breathing of the Gift which God is, to the ‘overflowing’ of God’s goodness in the work of his creation (‘Prima pars’); the ‘return’ to God along that one way of the world’s healing which is Christ (‘Tertia pars’); and, because there lies across this movement the shadow of the mystery of sin, we find, between his treatment of the whence and whither, the ‘outgoing’ and ‘return’ of creaturely existence, the drama of conversion, of sin and virtue, of rejection or acceptance of God’s grace (‘Secunda pars’). And this by way of explanation of how in a summary of Christian theology, Christ can make a central appearance only towards the end.”

—The Beginning and End of Religion. (Quoted by Aidan Nichols in Discovering Aquinas)

Faith, Hope & Charity

“ST. PAUL instructs us that our entire perfection is contained at present under three concise headings: and now there remain faith, hope, charity, these three (1 Cor. 13, 13). Such is the apostle’s order, such the order of reason, for we cannot love unless we have good reason to hope, and we cannot hope unless we have knowledge.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Compendium of Theology, 1.