All Show and No Substance
It is interesting how the historians of German idealism, which has its founders in Luther and Descartes and includes Berkeley, Böhme, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, up to Husserl, Gentile, Heidegger, Rahner, Severino, and Bontadini, present their heroes as geniuses of spirit, consciousness, freedom, the transcendental self, thought, heralds of truth, masters of rigorous science, dialectics, and critical acumen, philosophers of identity, certainty, the universal, the absolute, and the infinite, revelations and apparitions of God, of being, and of the eternal. They systematically overlook the issues of their moral conduct, particularly regarding their consideration of chastity and the practical consequences of their principles concerning the practice of chastity.
German idealism is distinct from Platonic idealism, which was embraced by the Church Fathers and Saint Augustine and appreciated with reservations by Saint Thomas. In Platonic idealism, the idea is an inner vision and a blessed revelation of divine truth, beyond vain, fleeting, and deceptive appearances and opinions. It is a model, paradigm, divine exemplar, transcendent absolute, spiritual, and immutable, the rule and end of our being, thinking, and acting. Embracing and accepting the ideal in our life is a sign of humility, sincerity, and wisdom, a source of salvation, perfection, freedom, and happiness.
The problem with Platonic idealism is that it remains stuck in a dualism of matter-spirit and thus spirit-sex, from which it cannot escape. Therefore, to save and liberate the spirit, it considers itself compelled to reject the body and sex. But this is contrary to the destiny of man as willed by God, the creator of both spirit and sex, of both man and woman, whose ultimate happiness lies in their currently mysterious union of soul and body in the future glorious resurrection.
Thomas is far from ignoring that, due to original sin, man must occasionally renounce the flesh to save the spirit. However, Thomas rejects the Platonic dualistic opposition of soul and body, which demands the abandonment of the body to save the soul. Instead, he embraces the Aristotelian conception, consistent with biblical anthropology, of the soul as the substantial form of the body—a doctrine that the Church would later dogmatize at the Council of Vienne in 1312. (The Council took place from 1311 to 1312 and was convened by Pope Clement V. It is notable for addressing the dissolution of the Knights Templar, reforming clerical and monastic life, and discussing issues related to heresies and Church organization, as summarized from ChatGPT.) He well understands that God's will for rational animal man is the conjunction of spiritual happiness with sexual happiness.
The German idealist, for his part, with his concern for the "concrete," "feeling," "historicity," and "becoming," might initially seem to reconcile spirit and sex. But in reality, since he also opposes them in a Platonic manner, he falls into the false solution of conflating them, rather than distinguishing them first and then uniting them.
Thus, the sublime idealist genius who begins with the Absolute and spans the infinite horizons of Being, when descending from the a priori to the a posteriori, from the transcendental to the categorical empirical, reveals and exposes, in his miserable pettiness, the utter illusory emptiness of his lofty speculations on being, the absolute, the eternal, the pure self, self-consciousness, the infinite, thought, and so on.
But all this depends on the fact that despite his grandiose claims, the German idealist does not have the idea of pure spirit. For him, spirit is ultimately, by his admission, nothing but the "spirit of the world." Using Saint Paul's language, it is nothing but the "god of this world," a "god" who, without the world, as Hegel puts it, "is not God."
For the German idealist, the subjective idea, as in Luther (who calls it the "word of God") and in Descartes (the so-called "innate idea"), is not based on an objective vision of the transcendent spiritual. Instead, it is the effect of a doubtful, narcissistic, and self-satisfied inward turn of the self.
The idea is not, as in Plato, proposed by God to man as the absolute rule of truth and conduct, as understood by the Church Fathers and Saint Augustine. Instead, it is "a priori," placed by the self that thinks itself and thus makes itself the source of truth. The self no longer aims at the object but at itself. This is what Rahner calls the "turn to the subject," considered the hallmark of "modern philosophy," and Kant calls the "Copernican revolution."
Now I would like to note that, aside from the open disdain for chastity in Luther, the less than edifying lives in this regard of Descartes, Schelling, or Rahner, I do not mean to say that many of them did not lead decent and dignified lives, mastering their passions, perhaps even to the point of rigorism or sexophobia, as in the cases of Kant or Husserl.
But if this happened, it was not due to the application of their moral principles but because they were restrained by reasons of convenience or a residue of moral conscience.
If, instead, they had fully applied their ideas in practice—ideas that confuse thought with being, being with action, spirit with matter, sense with intellect, will with passion, and God with man—they would have opened the door to overreach, transgression, and dissipation. This confusion between being and appearance, the idea of God’s becoming and the infinity of man, their moral relativism and evolutionism, the identity of human and divine knowledge, human and divine freedom, human and divine nature, and the transcendental self or athematic experience, would have led them astray
True Spirituality Is the Reconciliation of Spirit with Sex
True spirituality and our true greatness, and consequently the true affirmation of human dignity, moral values, and holiness, are achieved through the conscientious and faithful observance of divine commandments. This is supported by the gift of grace, acknowledging ourselves as created by God in His image and likeness.
It is found in the practice of asceticism and penance, being docile to the inspirations of the Spirit, and in communion with the Catholic Church. There must be a humble awareness of the limits of human nature, particularly our animality, and the necessary realization that we must draw our ideas— even the loftiest ones—from a careful and intelligent elaboration of what the senses provide us.
We must govern our passions with goodwill, recognizing the dignity of the distinction and conjunction between man and woman, as willed by God, realized in Eden, lost through sin, and regained with the grace of Christ through sacrifice and abstinence. This dignity is anticipated as a first fruit of the Spirit in the present life, destined for fulfillment in the future life of the glorious resurrection
The proud person or one who considers himself super-intelligent, toying with his self-adulation, is punished by God with foolishness and mental blindness, infatuated with his excessive claims and considering himself infinitely above the common mass of mortals.
The German idealist, as shown by the historical and individual applications of his ethics, ends up immersing the human spirit in the whirlpool of the lowest passions. Saint Paul would say: "he begins with the spirit and ends in the flesh," instead of overcoming the rebellion of the flesh by subjecting the flesh to the spirit.
P. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, July 29, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/idealismo-e-castita-la-superbia-conduce.html