Part Six - The Adventure of Metaphysics
Man-being and being-man
Exploring the Dichotomy of Man-being and Being-man
With this conception of metaphysics, one can imagine what metaphysics becomes and what man becomes: metaphysics impoverishes and restricts itself, it closes within the limits of history, the corruptible, and the contingent, and the gaze becomes incapable of reflecting, penetrating, deepening, distinguishing, uniting, intuiting, abstracting, ranging, synthesizing in the order of being, as well as purifying and elevating itself to the world of pure spirit, and the infinite horizon of intelligence, knowledge, consciousness, logic, soul, angels, truth, freedom, life, sacredness, mystery, divine, transcendence, infinity, and the absolute.
Man [1], according to Rahner, is "the absolute openness to being in general"[2]. This metaphysical way of defining man is certainly suggestive because, in fact, man, as also observed by St. Thomas, possesses a spiritual soul and is an entity "capable of agreeing with every being" (natum convenire cum omni ente)[3].
It is also true that metaphysics serves man in the sense that - as noted by St. Thomas following Aristotle - though it directs man towards a being that transcends him, God, at the same time, it, as also recognized by the Bible, is a regulatory, unifying, and organizing science of the other sciences, thus ensuring the capacity for governing and conducting human affairs. St. Thomas observes:
"All sciences and arts are ordered toward unity, that is, toward the perfection of man, which is his happiness. Therefore, one must govern all the others, and it rightly claims the title of wisdom"[4].
Thus, metaphysics also guides moral sciences, not by entering into the details of the duties to be practiced, and matters within their competence, but by indicating the ultimate goal of human action, the scale of values to be respected, and the conceptual space within which action must move, so that man does not toil in vain and does not seek what he cannot find or for things that are not worthwhile.
Nevertheless, it remains true that metaphysics is ordered to the happiness of man not in the sense that man is the supreme object of metaphysics, but in the sense that he uses it to reach his ultimate end, which is God. This supreme good transcends simple ontology as the science of the entity (what has the being) and concerns itself with ipsum Esse, the object of theology.
Man, therefore, although open through the intellect to universal being, does not belong - insofar as an entity - to the metaphysical order except insofar as he places himself with the spirit about this order; with the spirit, he transcends every limit; he rises to the conquest of the absolute, he perceives the eternal and the infinite, feels their attraction and desire. He makes himself available to the influence of grace that makes him a child of God; he becomes, as Rahner says, "a listener of the Word."
Rahner, however, seems to realize the illusion arising from a purely spiritualistic view of man and tries to remedy it by introducing the material element. Still, he does so inspired by a relativistic conception of human nature, whereby this appears as mere mutable and moldable material at the discretion of the person's freedom.
Rahner does not take into account the fact that man is not simply an openness to being. Inherent within his nature is a subtle inclination towards God, yet it is founded upon each of us to put it into practice or not. Through the power of free will, some affirm their allegiance to God while others reject Him, yet despite this, man does not forfeit his openness to being.
Certainly, openness to being is constitutive of the human mind. Even those who hate metaphysics, if they think, inevitably think about being, since the object of thought is being. Yet should man fail not deliberately choose to open himself to ipsum Esse, to God, what use is openness to being to him? Even the damned in hell retain their openness to being, but what good did it do them if they did not choose to open themselves to God?
This necessitates that we differentiate between the core of humanity (the essence) and its moral excellence, in which he finds his happiness and the ultimate fulfillment of his positive potentialities (distinguishing the metaphysical order from the moral order, Ed). To be merely a man differs from being a contented one. Being a man alone is not enough to be happy. The mere exercise of freedom does not yet bring happiness if it does not occur in observance of the natural and divine law.
This means that openness to being is not enough to define the good of man, that is, the healthy realization of his inclinations and potentialities. To achieve this, it is necessary to refer to true anthropology, which carefully and objectively considers the specific, precise, and exclusive characteristics of human nature and its laws and purposes, a nature that distinguishes man from other beings in reality and from other living beings.
Defining man in terms of being alone is not enough, because, after all, every entity is an openness to the divine being, the ultimate end of all things. But human life norm diverges from that of a plant, horse, or dog, but also from the realm of angels. Therefore, if a man does not simply want to vegetate or live like an animal, or does not claim to act as if he were a pure spirit, and also does not feel equal to God, to regulate his life, he must know, based on a secure and objective knowledge of human nature [5], what his duties are, what the rules of his actions are, and not believe he can do everything that comes to mind simply because he is an openness to being.
The Rahnerian concept of "openness," derived from Heidegger (Offenheit), is beautiful and widely used today. Still, it has a double meaning: one thing is to be open in the sense of being able to open up, and another is to be open. Closure is not inherently evil if what is now closed can be opened. A door that is not locked, even if currently closed, can be opened; therefore, in this sense, it can be said to be open.
Man is essentially open with intelligence to the being as true, but not with the will. It is up to him in this sense and the responsibility lies with the choice of each of us, to open or close oneself to being as good and to God, the supreme being and supreme good.
Mere truth alone is not enough to define the good of man if the will does not intervene and therefore choose what to be. Man must open himself to being with will. One's existence needs to manifest as favorable, desirable, and feasible. The simple intellectual openness to being, proper to man as such, finds knowledge of the truth but is not enough to encounter morality.
When the human mind engages in thought, it inherently opens itself to existence, yet it also opens up to the divine presence of God, the supreme being, only by free choice, as the will can desire a good that is not God. Yet the mind always remains within the horizon of being. Therefore, the fact that it is potentially open to God in everyone simply by existing as men or women does not mean that the choice is currently made by everyone, that is, that everyone necessarily chooses God.
Dealing with the concept of human nature, it is important to bear in mind that, as we also know from Catholic dogma [6], this is not, as Rahner believes, a mere abstract possibility, something indefinite and indefinable, a formless material that can take on infinite forms, as each one wishes to imprint on it. No: human nature is an exceedingly accurate and immutable entity, created by God, common to all individuals, therefore the basis of human equality and brotherhood, a living substantial entity, endowed with its accidents, composed of soul and body, corruptible in the body, immortal in the soul, composed of matter and form, the duality of male and female, delimited and defined therefore by gender and difference so that human action must be regulated, moderated, and measured by extremely particular laws established by God himself in male and female nature, so that man can achieve the end for which he was created.
An exaggerated estimate of human dignity, which relies too much on the power of thought and will, an excessive emphasis on man's relationship with being, with the absolute, with spirit, with eternity, or with infinity, creates in man pride and arrogance that God punishes with the foolishness and slavery of the flesh because man, lacking the humility to submit to moral discipline, no longer controls his passions and believes himself to be free and enlightened, in fact he becomes blind and enslaved by the flesh. Consequently, idealists, who often have brilliant minds, fall into certain thoughts or proposals that are disproportionate, absurd, and impious, whose folly is recognizable even by a child, as happens in The Emperor's New Clothes.
Transcendental Experience: Johannes Lotz
Johannes Lotz proposes a metaphysics not based on the intellect's apprehension of entities abstractly and judgmentally from the sensible experience of external things, but through the experience of self-consciousness, akin to Descartes, as this self-consciousness unfolds in Kant with what he calls "transcendental philosophy," where he no longer calls the entity transcendental, as in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, but rather intellect or reason insofar as they respectively contain a priori concepts and ideas, termed a priori forms, as conditions of the possibility of knowledge of objects of experience.
Lotz, similar to Maréchal, believes that Kantian transcendentalism is compatible with Thomistic transcendentalism, in the sense that while the latter would articulate the notion of entity contained in Kantian transcendentalism, the former would offer the critical and reflective foundation of Thomistic realism and Transcendentalism.[7]
However, things are not so. In reality, from Kantian intellect's a priori forms and reason's ideas, no notion of entity or being can be derived, as Rosmini [8] had also deluded himself, that is, a true realist metaphysics cannot be derived; rather, those who have truly understood and articulated Kantian transcendentalism in its true potential have been Fichte, who understood that Kantian idealism could stand alone without relying on that residue of realism which was the thing-in-itself.
If we want to find the entity's presence in Kantian philosophy, we should not seek it under a priori forms but behind the thing-in-itself. This would be the true transcendental; but it is clear that Kant, by shifting the transcendental from object to subject, and following Cartesian egocentrism, has oriented the intention of knowing from external reality to the ego, attributing to the human subject an ontological self-sufficiency that in Kant's epigones will lead to pantheism and atheism. Kantian transcendentalism is not the "modern" transcendentalism, but the wrong one. And Thomistic transcendentalism is not the "classic" one, but the right one.
As for believing that Kant must provide the critical foundation for realism, this is a mistaken idea, because Thomistic metaphysics knows perfectly well how to construct a well-founded critique of knowledge by its means, as Maritain [9] has abundantly demonstrated without resorting to Kant, who substitutes idealism for realism.
The metaphysics proposed by Lotz simultaneously entails an intellectual and affective experience, which he calls "transcendental experience," [10] where both intellect and will, understanding and volition, come into play. It is a joint experience of one's self, one's feeling, one's understanding, and one's willingness. Hence an experience of transcendent being, truth, and goodness, implicitly including the self, the world, and God. But does such an experience exist? Does it not even call to mind ontological conception, Cartesian innatism, Hegelian idealism, or Husserlian phenomenology?
It is clear how Lotz fits into the voluntaristic tradition of Christian philosophy, which begins with Scotism, the Christian development of Plato's metaphysics of the good as epèkeina tes usias, beyond being, from which arises the essential importance of eros in the perception of truth. Plato's Seventh Letter originates that knowledge "by affinity," to which even St. Thomas [11] was inspired to explain the mystical experience in which truth is known in the light of charity and knowledge is the effect of love.
Lotz, in this metaphysical approach, is preceded by Father Joseph Maréchal [12], who in the 1920s attempted, with a series of careful studies, to show that Thomistic realism could be obtained from Kantian transcendental philosophy by highlighting the dynamism of intellect in the perception of being. In this way, the active starting point of Thomistic metaphysics, namely the intellect acting to apprehend being, is assimilated to Kant's practical reason, which acts by performing good according to the moral law by the ideal of reason. Kant asserts that his critique lays the conditions for constructing metaphysics as science [13].
It is noteworthy, as Maritain shows [14], that Kantian epistemology itself falls victim to the confusion of knowing with doing, a principle that will be adopted by Fichte and which, through Schopenhauer, Schelling, and Hegel, will reach Nietzsche.
Maréchal then believes he can derive metaphysics as science in agreement with St. Thomas's metaphysics by interpreting in a voluntaristic sense the epistemology of Aquinas, as Pierre Rousselot [15] had already done at the beginning of the century.
Maréchal with his theory of the "dynamism" of the intellect seems to confuse the exercise of intellectual activity, which is certainly voluntary, with the specificity or essence of the act of cognition, in the Kantian manner, whereby the intellect does not receive the form of the thing but rather gives a priori form to the object, whose matter is grasped a posteriori from the experience of the external thing.
Similarly, Rosmini will be misled by the previously mentioned Kantian vision, the maker or poietic of knowledge, with the difference that Rosmini posits the idea of being or ideal being as the only a priori form. Now, it must be said clearly that knowing, in reality, is not a composite of matter and form like an artifact, but, to express it in scholastic language, it is a habere in anima formam rei extra animam intentionaliter sive repraesentative vel per verbum interius (having in the soul the form of the thing outside the mind intentionally or representatively or through inner speech), that is, through a mental likeness of the thing which is the concept of the thing itself. Without this realistic epistemology, metaphysics is either an abstract speculation or a surrogate of mysticism born from creative emotion.
The Will in Place of Being
Voluntarism entails a reduction of intellect to will and thus the confusion of being with willing and of being with good. The intellect is humiliated before an overbearing volition striving to replace it and wreak havoc. Truth then no longer depends on the receptivity, potentiality, or passivity of the intellect, but rather on its activity or practical tendency or affectivity of the will. To the humility of the intellect, which seeks to submit to reality to be in truth (adaequatio intellectus et rei), the will demands to command reality to be what it wants. In this way, action is not illuminated by known truth, but truth emerges from the action itself.
It is understood how such a doctrine is harmful both from a speculative point of view, to the extent that it directs the intellect towards nothingness or the chimerical instead of being, and from a moral point of view because it causes the will to act blindly, not enlightened by truth.
Such a doctrine fits well with fanaticism and dictatorial regimes, where obedience is what matters, and it combines with dissolute life, enslaved to passions. Certainly, in softer forms, it is compatible with Christian theology and ethics, as in Duns Scotus or Ockham, where truth continues to guide action, although it depends on will and not on knowledge. Scotus admits the existence of truth, and acknowledges that good is a truth, but asserts that it is the will that determines good.
In voluntarism, the good does not depend on truth but on the will itself; the will appears in Scotus as pure perfection[16] independent of intellect and at the same time identical to intellect. In this case, knowledge is saved although identical to willingness; however, it is enough for Ockham to replace the universality of the intellect with the concreteness of the will, so that good no longer finds its reason in truth, but in mere will.
For Ockham God wants the good not because He is wise, but because He is free and omnipotent. When God acts, He does not put truth into practice, but what He wills is therefore good and true good. He is free to decide what is good and is not bound by truth because He establishes what is true with His will.
For voluntarism, good does not depend on truth but on the will itself, so good is not what is true, but what is willed. In the voluntaristic view, the reason for command is no longer the reason itself, but pure will, so that willing does not appear as the practice of knowledge but as the practice of willing itself. Action is not motivated but is an end in itself. The dangers lurking for moral order under the guise of love or freedom in such a perspective are well understood.
Voluntarism contains a principle of overshadowing the intellect, which, if left free to act, takes over to the extreme consequences and ends up subjecting the intellect to a blind impulse, which is no longer will, no longer enlightened by intellect, but is passion or sensory appetite without moral restraint.
Descartes is a master of voluntarism. His cogito, as Fabro rightly noted, is truly a volo (will). As Fichte will notice, it is not a conforming, a receiving, an accepting of the other, but a positing (setzen), which is an imposing. It is an act of violence. Gentile will say that it is self-creating (autoctisi). Doubt about the truthfulness of the senses is not addressed, so Cartesian certainty is not a humble certainty necessitated by evidence, but forced by my will. The assent of judgment is not the effect of an objective view, but of an arbitrary, gratuitous, and interested decision, typical of voluntarism.
Truth, as Vico will say, is the fact, it is the action performed. Good is good simply because it has been a fact. For Fichte, being coincides with acting; for Schopenhauer, the will to live is an end in itself; for Schelling, truth depends on freedom. For Marx, it depends on praxis. The will wants itself, as Hegel will say, so that being, in Nietzsche, as Heidegger [17] notes, will coincide with the will to power itself. Extreme voluntarism conceives the being as volition, action, and praxis.; being becomes human action. The metaphysics of Heidegger and Rahner, which reduce being to human beings, contain this principle virtually.
Today, metaphysical voluntarism takes on attractive tones presenting itself as a “metaphysics of love” in Giovanni Colzani, "Trinitarian ontology" in Piero Coda, or the "love without being" God of Jean-Luc Marion. The mysticism of Gregory Palamas is in vogue, for whom we will not see in heaven the divine essence, but we will only experience love [18]. But there remains the perplexity about how these visions respect the transcendence and inviolability of truth about our desires, to the desire for affirmation of our will and domination over reality and our neighbor.
The Church Promotes Metaphysics as a Rational Preamble to Faith
As we know, the Second Vatican Council has given a new impetus to the progress of Catholic philosophy and theology, and therefore also of metaphysics, by proposing as a model the thought of St. Thomas in a new form, however, compared to that proposed by the Popes of past centuries, who invested effort in praise the lofty qualities of Thomistic doctrine, emphasizing its usefulness in diagnosing and curing the ills of philosophical and theological intelligence of the time, especially of faith ( intellectus fidei).
However, we must grasp the significance of the Church's endorsement of metaphysics. Metaphysics is concurrently the basic knowledge of every man and the highest of sciences. Pope Francis, referring to it as basic, spontaneous, original, elementary, infallible, universal, intuitive knowledge, has called it "the common knowledge of the people." At this basic level, it is accessible to all and understandable by all.
Important is the distinction between metaphysics as an academic and erudite science or scholarly discipline, and metaphysics as common sense, "the knowledge of the people," as the Pope says, spontaneous and indispensable basic knowledge of the human mind and natural reason.
We add that the notion of being, the basic idea of metaphysics, is clear even to the child when he begins to use the word and the verb "to be." No one teaches the child what being is. He understands it independently by hearing the times and modes of the verb "to be" being pronounced. Independently, he forms the concept of being and knows how to express it with the word "to be."
However, his original notions, grasped intuitively by the mind without being given definitions, such as the use of the verb "to be," or terms like "thing," "I," "mine," "something," "always," "everything," "true," "good," "this," "I want," "I can," "I do," "I think," and so on, are easily learned by everyone from childhood.
This means that intuition or perception or intellection or experience of being is spontaneous and natural to the human mind as such. In this sense, even the child knows what being is, otherwise, he would not use the verb "to be." His mind unconsciously and implicitly performs an abstracting act by which it abstracts from all beings and opens up the possibility of knowing that highest and first most perfect being which is God [19], whose essence coincides with His being.
On the other hand, even the most consummate metaphysician will never be able to exhaustively understand the secrets of being, which, apart from the secrets of nature and the human heart, lead to the infinite mystery of the divine Being itself. Hence the possibility for metaphysics of continuous and indefinite progress and deepening.
However, this metaphysical knowledge can become scientific through reasoning and academic education. This is how scholastic philosophy ( Scholasticism, Ed) promoted by the Church was born. Metaphysics becomes scientific when reason, applying the principle of causality, elevates itself from the sensible knowledge of material things to the science of spiritual things, at the summit of which it finds God. We then have scientific or academic metaphysics, a knowledge reserved for teachers and scholars, appointed by the Church for the education of the clergy and the laity interested in this discipline.
Pope Francis Following in the Footsteps of His Predecessors
It is in line with this centuries-old educational practice of the Church that Pope Francis, following the indications of the Council, proposes again the thought of Aquinas[20] as a stimulus for progress and as a help to the intellectual and spiritual needs of our time and as a critical method for the evaluation of theoretical proposals that come to us from modernity. The Pope says:
"Saint Thomas is the source of a tradition of thought to which 'perennial novelty' has been attributed. Thomism must not be a museum piece, but a continually living source, according to the theme of your Congress: 'Vetera novis augere. The resources of the Thomistic tradition in the current context.' We must advocate for, as articulated by Jacques Maritain, a 'living Thomism,' capable of renewing itself to respond to today's questions. Thus, Thomism moves forward following a double vital movement of 'systole and diastole.' Systole, because we must first focus on studying the work of Saint Thomas in its historical-cultural context, identifying its structuring principles, and grasping its originality. Then comes diastole: turning in dialogue to the modern world, to critically assimilate what is true and just in the culture of the time"[21].
The recommendation in favor of Thomas by the Council and more recently by the current Pope highlights the usefulness of the principles, method, and fundamental axioms (pronuntiata maiora) of Thomism for assessing, discerning, and selecting from the immense production of modern thought or from whatever else interests people today, old or modern, the values that can be assumed into the heritage of Christian wisdom, always maintaining the duty to identify dangers, gaps, risks, pitfalls, errors, and heresies, to warn, refute, recall, correct, purify, liberate, and eliminate error.
Thus, the Council reminds us of the perennial importance of metaphysics as the science of being and existence. It asks metaphysicians to clarify the true meaning of the term "metaphysics," something that is always necessary because the term is often wrongly used, causing misunderstandings and misconceptions that generate antipathies and repugnances towards metaphysics, which would not exist if the word were used in its correct and proper sense, as Thomists do, for example.
The Wisdom of Evangelical Infancy
Metaphysicians must testify, show, and demonstrate the usefulness and indeed the necessity of metaphysics, as primary, intuitive, original, radical, most certain, universal, and foundational knowledge for the foundation and justification of all sciences, arts, and virtues, as well as for the correct interpretation of Christian revelation and therefore for biblical exegesis, for theology, and the articulation of dogmas and articles of faith upheld and taught by the Magisterium of the Church, remains perpetually pertinent.
In this way and for these serious reasons, all the Popes of the post-conciliar period, up to the present Pontiff, have remained on this pastoral line, warning us about misunderstandings, false interpretations of the Council, and condemning opposition to it.
In fact, since the end of the Council, concerning metaphysics - like many other aspects of Christian life renewed by the Council-, two deviant currents have arisen in conflict with each other and in competition to reserve for themselves the title of true Catholicism and belonging to the true Church: one of a conservative type, the so-called "traditional" Church, which suspected the Council's doctrines of modernism and therefore refused to accept them. The other, so-called or so-called "progressive," but in reality modernist, interpreter of the Council in a modernist sense.
The former, believing to safeguard from the false innovations of the Council, Catholic tradition, and orthodoxy, and therefore true metaphysics and true Thomism, seeing in modern thought only the abandonment of metaphysics, did not understand the presence of metaphysical demands in contemporary thinking, remained firm in a Thomism closed to understanding, appreciation, and integration of the values of modern metaphysics, such as those of Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, or Severino.
All this happened against the very spirit of Thomistic metaphysics, which, because of its immense intellectual openness, its honesty in correcting its errors, its insatiable desire to progress in knowledge, and its ability to discern truth from falsehood, is structurally made to achieve continuous progress in absolute fidelity to its unshakable and incontrovertible principles.
This current, therefore, which the Holy Father has characterized as retrograde, seeing in modern thought nothing but the absence of metaphysics or contempt or misunderstanding for metaphysics or the abandonment of metaphysics or the existence of false metaphysics or the misunderstanding of the essence of metaphysics or the presumption of having found a philosophy superior to that of metaphysics, finds nothing better than to return to pre-conciliar Thomism, which had those defects of excessive polemics against modern thought, defects which precisely the Council remedied by proposing a metaphysics faithful to its immortal principles, but precisely because faithful to them, are capable of infinite developments, ordering metaphysicians and Thomists to assume the values of modern metaphysics or at least to be able to discover and enhance metaphysical demands even where they are hidden under worldly appearances or seem denied or not fully understood.
In reality, metaphysics, like any form of human knowledge, has a character of growth and increase, it has a progressive character. Starting with Parmenides in the West and with Vedantic literature in the East, after laying its indestructible and eternal foundations and principles, it has done nothing but progress, grow, and improve over the centuries and millennia, so it is clear that metaphysics today, modern metaphysics is better than ancient metaphysics or origins, just as a grown plant is better than a seedling. Knowledge evolves not in the sense that it changes its object, but in the sense that it, over time, is known better and better.
The notion of being that metaphysicians have today, thanks to the research and achievements of metaphysicians of past centuries, is much deeper than Parmenides' einai or the Indian sat. And even Thomistic esse is now better understood than Thomas himself knew it. This notion also draws on the biblical idea of hawàh, present for example in Ex 3:14.
The second current, due to a misunderstanding of conciliar directives, gave rise to a falsely innovative metaphysics, mostly of Cartesian origin and therefore idealistic, tainted by the errors of modernity, because some metaphysicians, deceived by these errors and misunderstanding the true sense of Thomas Aquinas' metaphysics, instead of assuming the values of modernity in the everlasting heritage of perennial Christian wisdom, have built philosophies and theologies not only contrary to reason but also to faith itself. Mistaking the contemporary for the modernist, modernism has resurfaced for the past 60 years, albeit in a distinct yet exacerbated form, as Maritain highlighted as early as 1966 [22]—a modernism previously condemned by St. Pius X.
The urgent task that imposes itself today for metaphysics, as for many other aspects of Catholic and ecclesial life, is that of seeking reconciliation, mutual integration, and synthesis, excluding opposite heretical extremes, between the outdated approach that I have described, not devoid of values, especially those related to dogmatics, and the modernist tendency, which has its values, which are the need to be open to modernity.
But here's how the two tendencies can integrate and correct each other: the traditionalists, elucidating the immutable truth of dogma, but updating themselves in the light of the Council and subjecting themselves to the guidance of the current Pontiff; the modernists, renouncing their subjectivism, historicism, and dogmatic relativism, to determine the historical form of Christian life and philosophical, metaphysical, theological, and dogmatic knowledge resulting from the critical assumption of the values of modernity, in the light of the immutable truth of dogma and the truth that metaphysics teaches us.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, March 7, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/lavventura-della-metafisica-parte-sesta.html
[1] See my article "Karl Rahner's Anthropology," in Sacra Doctrina, 1, 1991, pp. 28-55; Karl Rahner. The Betrayed Council, Fede&Cultura Editions, Verona 2009, ch. III.
[2] Ibid., p. 66.
[3] Quaestio disputata De Veritate (Disputed Question on Truth), q.1, a.1.
[4] Proemium to the Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Marietti Editrice, Turin-Rome 1964, p. 1.
[5] This neglect or skepticism or convenient relativism, whatever you want to call it, in determining what the essential and specific characteristics of human nature, what are the inclinations, faculties, conditions, possibilities, needs, and purposes of human nature, is already noticeable in Kantian ethics, certainly animated by a strong sense of duty and the perception of the absoluteness and universality of the moral law, but then absent when it comes to establishing what duties are to be practiced to achieve happiness. For Kant, it appears that the crucial aspect is to enforce a duty on oneself and act out of duty. He acknowledges that every man has a sense of duty. But then, it seems that in practice, concretely, everyone is free to decide for himself what is good and what is evil. As Maritain observes, there is a form of morality, but the substance is lacking. See his critique of Kantian ethics in The Moral Philosophy. Historical and Critical Examination of the Great Systems, Morcelliana, Brescia 1971, ch. VI.
[6] Cf Lateran IV of 1215 (Denz.800), the Council of Vienne of 1312 (Denz.902), and Lateran V of 1513 (Denz.1440).
[7] Cf Transcendental Experience, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1993, pp. 9-13. See also Metaphysica operations humanae methodo transcendentali explicata, Gregorian University Press, Rome 1972, pp. 16-18.
[8] Even Heidegger believed he could find in Kantian transcendentalism a "pre-understanding of being" (Vorverständnis des seins) hidden or implicit behind the a priori ideas and forms. See Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Gallimard Editions, Paris 1953.
[9] Jacques Maritain, Distinguere per unire. I gradi del sapere, trad. it. E. Maccagnolo,( Distinguishing to Unite: The Degrees of Knowledge) Morcelliana, Brescia 1981
[10] Transcendental Experience, op. cit.
[11] See Marco D'Avenia, Knowledge by Connaturality in St. Thomas Aquinas, ESD Editions, Bologna 1992.
[12] The Starting Point of Metaphysics, Louvain 1926.
[13] The preamble to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Present Itself as a Science, Carabba Publisher, Lanciano 1924, pp. 94, 137.
[14] Reflections on Intelligence, Massimo Publisher, Milan 1987, ch. II.
[15] The Intellectualism of St. Thomas, Vita e Pensiero Editions, Milan 2000.
[16] Cf Walter Hoeres, Will as Pure Perfection in Duns Scotus, Liviana Editrice in Padua, 1976.
[17] Cf Nietzsche, Adelphi Editions, Milan 2013.
[18] Yannis Spiteris, Palamas: Grace and Experience. Gregory Palamas in Theological Discussion, with an introduction by Massimo Cacciari, LIPA Editions, Rome 1998.
[19] The Catechism of St. Pius X is not wrong in defining God as the "most perfect being." It was drawn up by acute theologians and seasoned pastors who knew well that even a child's mind is open to the idea of being and understands what being is. Today, believing ourselves to be more intelligent, and yet more skillful shepherds, we insinuate into the minds of young people ideas about God for which God is no different from Santa Claus or Gulliver the Giant.
[20] On March 7th, the Holy Father, on the occasion of a conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, gave an important speech that could be considered a true lectio magistralis recommending and praising the thought of Aquinas:
[21] Speech to the participants of the international Thomistic Congress promoted by the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas on September 22, 2022.
[22] The Peasant of the Garonne, Desclée de Brouwer, Bruges 1966, p. 16.