Guido Mattiussi and Joseph Maréchal - Two Jesuits in Disagreement on Kant at the Origins of Modernism - Part One (1/3)
A Just Cause Pursued in the Wrong Way
Modernism arose from a fundamentally just cause—the desire to modernize Catholic theology in a way that took into account the values of modern thought. However, this cause was pursued in the wrong manner. The mistake stemmed from a misunderstanding of what should be meant by modern philosophy and the consequent adoption of a flawed criterion for evaluation and discernment, the results of which could only be disastrous.
Indeed, the term "modern philosophy" can have two meanings: it can refer simply to the philosophy that exists today, with all its positive and negative aspects, which is the more obvious meaning—a mere historical fact, assuming that the modern is superior to the ancient; or the expression may refer to the philosophy that today stems from Cartesian thought, which its followers understandably consider the best and most advanced.
This semantic identification of Cartesianism and the ensuing German idealism with modern philosophy was the result of a clever propagandistic operation by the Cartesians themselves. It was so successful that, by the time of Pope St. Pius X, it had been adopted even by the Thomists, who consequently spoke of the "moderns" in a derogatory tone while finding the truth in the "ancients," namely, in St. Thomas and Aristotle.
The modernists, for their part, recognized the need for the Church to foster and promote progress both in pastoral care—by adopting a more open and less rigid approach to modernity—and in theology, by encouraging it to embrace the best of what modern thought had produced. All of this was justified. But what was it that led to their famous condemnation by Pope St. Pius X?
It was the fact that they used not St. Thomas, as the Church recommended, but the very errors of modern philosophy as their criterion for evaluation and discernment. While their intent was good, the outcome was disastrous. The central issue at hand was essentially how to approach the philosopher who, at that time, most captivated the attention of Catholic theologians among the heirs of Descartes—Immanuel Kant. The entire debate revolved around Kant. The encyclical Pascendi was a radical rejection of Kantianism, though it also indicated a connection with the subsequent German idealism.
The Intervention of Pope St. Pius X
The fundamental accusation made by Pope St. Pius X against the modernists was that they falsified Catholic philosophy by substituting it with Kantian philosophy. The Holy Pontiff begins Pascendi by sketching in a few powerful strokes a portrait of Kantian thought without naming the author.
However, for anyone familiar with Kant, it becomes immediately evident which philosopher Pius was referring to. Indeed, within the encyclical, we find the three defining characteristics of Kantian philosophy: phenomenism, agnosticism, and immanentism.
Phenomenism is the theory according to which "human reason is entirely confined within the realm of phenomena, that is, of what appears and in the way it appears, without the right or natural faculty to go beyond the phenomena. Therefore, it cannot rise to God, nor know His existence, even through visible things."
From phenomenism follows agnosticism: according to what the phenomena tell us, we know nothing of God because we cannot elevate ourselves to Him from them. But here comes immanentism: this does not mean that Kant does not, in his way, admit the existence of God—God as immanent within reason, the supreme idea of reason, and the development of Cartesian self-consciousness ("I think").
What kind of God, then? Not a God transcendent beyond our reason or consciousness, but a God immanent within it, though not conceptually knowable, but "unknowable," hidden in the "subconscious," the object of the "feeling or internal experience that arises from the need for divinity."
According to Kant, I affirm that God exists not because, starting from the phenomena, the external reality, or the things in themselves, I discover Him as the first and creative cause of the things I experience, but because I need Him to make my reason function. I do not demonstrate but postulate the existence of God. Therefore, this existence is not a reality outside and above my reason, but an idea immanent within my reason, placed by my reason to ground itself or justify itself.
The encyclical then shows how Kant does admit religion; however, he does not understand it as the worship of a personal God, whose existence is demonstrated a posteriori, starting from things and questioning what their first cause is, but rather as an a priori idea within the limits of reason. According to him, the explanation for the existence of religion "is vainly sought outside of man. Therefore, it must be sought within man himself," that is, in human self-consciousness according to the Cartesian principle of the cogito, which Kant expresses in the formula "I think."
The encyclical shows, based on what has been said, how Kant, when speaking of the intellect, judgment, reason, conscience, moral law, and liberty, admits the existence of the spirit.
The encyclical stops at analyzing the various aspects of modernist epistemology in the philosophical and theological fields and does not describe the ethics that follow from it. It tells us how the modernists view the function of the intellect, but it does not explicitly tell us what role the will and action play in their system. However, this can easily be deduced from the damning terms with which the Pope rebukes the modernists, accusing them of pride, rebellion, falsehood, arrogance, cunning, a craving for novelty, and false mysticism.
At the time of Pope St. Pius X, the modernists limited their audacity to adopting Kantianism but did not dare to go further by embracing the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. For this reason, the encyclical does not speak of idealism, which was instead condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani generis, as, by that time, theologians like Rahner began to be influenced by Hegel as well.
The encyclical is limited to discussing immanentism, which is not yet the fully developed idealism of Hegel. Kant still distinguishes human nature from the divine; he knows very well that human thought is transcended by divine thought, although he admits this only on a conceptual level, not on a real one, because he continues to acknowledge the existence of an external reality beyond human thought, but does not draw any consequences from this. By denying the knowability of things as they are in themselves, he cannot ascend from things to God.
Immanentism is the flaw of Kantian theology, in which God is not a person transcendent to human reason but is the supreme idea of reason; therefore, it is a God who is within man and cannot exist without man. For this reason, the profession of idealism is already present in Kant [1]. He rejects Berkeley's idealism, which denies the existence of external material things but inaugurates transcendental idealism, according to which knowing coincides with being. This will be fully brought to light by Schelling, after the elaborations of Fichte.
It will be Schelling, indeed, with his treatise System of Transcendental Idealism [2], who systematically expounds the doctrine of the full coincidence of thought with being, which he expresses in the formula of the "identity of the subject with the object," while Hegel will speak of the "identity of the thing with the concept of the thing." Now, Kant assigns to the subject, that is, to thought, the determination of the form of reality or the thing, but leaves the matter outside of thought, admitting that the thing-in-itself is external to the self.
However, in Kant, the world of the spirit, including God, no longer appears to reason as an external reality, but rather as the world of consciousness, as is already suggested by Descartes and by Luther himself. In this, Kant already anticipates the later idealism.
But the interesting thing about Pascendi is that it already sees in modernism the presence of pantheism (in section 80), a sign that Pius X had noticed that the modernists were already beginning to go beyond Kant and were starting to embrace absolute and transcendental idealism. I would go even further: Pascendi takes on the tone of a true prophecy when it warns of what, only with Husserl and Heidegger, within a few decades, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, would become the influence of the further development of idealism: phenomenology.
The encyclical, with extreme frankness and pastoral clarity—this was indeed the key issue—goes straight to the heart of the matter, presenting the radical question that forms the dividing line between realism and idealism:
"Does divine immanence distinguish God from man? If it does, how does this doctrine differ from the Catholic one?" That is: why deny transcendence? "Or why reject external Revelation?" "If it does not distinguish them, we are back to pantheism. But in fact, the immanence of the modernists desires and admits that every phenomenon of consciousness originates from man as man," and here we arrive at Husserl and Heidegger. "Thus, as a legitimate consequence, we deduce that God and man are the same; and therefore, pantheism."
The encyclical thus emphatically places before us a choice, an either-or: Either one humbly opens to the truth and to realism, following Saint Thomas and the Magisterium of the Church, and then one can come to faith. Or one closes oneself in idealism, in pride and disobedience to the Magisterium of the Church, and then falls into heresy, falsity, disbelief, and impiety.
However, the encyclical did not resolve all the issues. It did condemn the errors, but it failed to recognize the validity of the modernists' concerns. The question of updating theology remained open: agreeing on the existence of errors, but what positive aspects of modernity should be embraced?
This was the pressing issue that some open and prophetic minds began to address urgently after Pascendi—those who sensed the importance and duty of theological progress. Among them were Maréchal, along with others such as Sertillanges, Maritain, Congar, Chenu, de Lubac, and Daniélou.
They anticipated the Second Vatican Council, where the Church itself adopted and responded to this need with its teachings. But especially after the Council, due to a misinterpretation of its directives, a false progress unfortunately began, similar to the modernism of Pius X’s time. Here, a promoter of this neo-modernism was Maréchal, later taken up by Rahner, who further worsened the Maréchalian operation by creating in his theology an evident confusion between the thought of Saint Thomas and that of Hegel and Heidegger [3].
End of Part One (1/3)
P. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, December 26, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/guido-mattiussi-e-joseph-marechal-due.html
Notes:
[1] Critica della ragion pura, Edizioni Laterza, Bari 1965, p. 234.
[2] Edizioni Laterza, Bari 1990.
[3] Rahner asserts that “from Thomas onward, the transcendental method,” which later became that of Kant, “is present and operative in all theology.” From this, the conclusion follows that modern philosophy—and therefore theology—cannot and must not lag behind the anthropological-transcendental revolution initiated by modern philosophy starting with Descartes, Kant, and extending through German idealism, phenomenology, existentialist philosophy, and today’s fundamental ontology. … This philosophy is profoundly Christian. In fact, in a radically Christian conception, man is not a moment within a world made up of things, nor is he subjected to the coordinates of ontic concepts derived from it. Rather, man is the subject upon whose freedom depends on the destiny of the entire cosmos. - Nuovi saggi III, Edizioni Paoline, Rome 1969, pp. 61-62.