The Cartesian Cogito and Kant's Copernican Revolution: At the Origins of Modernism - PART ONE

What is Modernism?

The term 'modernism' was first used in the Church's Magisterium by Saint Pius X in the encyclical Pascendi of September 1907. He, by his declaration, adopted it from the usage already made by the modernists themselves and made it his own, so much so that the subtitle of the encyclical is 'On the doctrines of the modernists,' to precisely designate the modernists: 'modernists, they are commonly called by this name and rightly so' (n.4).

A group of the modernists themselves, in November of that year, published a 'program of the modernists,' designating themselves with that name, however, as a matter of pride and not of censure, as the Pope uses it, to defend themselves from the Pope's accusations, to claim that they were not understood, but, as Father Fabro observes [1], they ended up defending their errors and ultimately confirming that they were wrong.

How did the modernists develop the idea of designating themselves with this name? It is not difficult to answer this question. Some theologians of the 19th century, increasing in number, had noticed with ever-increasing clarity that the Church in its doctrinal pronouncements and in the way it promoted theology did not take into consideration the novelties that had arisen or were emerging in the philosophical and theological field for some centuries in Europe.

Missionary journeys and geographical explorations initiated since the 16th century introduced Europe to cultures, customs, and civilizations beyond Europe, rich in ancient traditions, such as India and China.

In non-Catholic countries like England and Germany, biblical studies have developed considerably, especially since the 18th century. New philosophical tendencies had emerged that used Cartesian thought as a possible key to interpreting Christianity.

Advancements in the sciences and historical and archaeological studies since the 17th century offered interesting themes and problems for theologians to work on. Philological and literary research produced better knowledge of ancient pagan wisdom. In the 18th century, the phenomenon of Enlightenment emerged, with its theme of human rights and democracy, which interested moralists and theologians.

The development of social and anthropological sciences in the 19th century opened up new horizons for the development of economics and social justice and called for greater attention to the dignity of women.

The Council of Trent, on its part, had indeed proposed a vigorous authentic reform of the Church, had reinforced the convictions of faith attacked by the heresies of Luther, had given the Church a new missionary momentum, but had led the Church to close in on itself in its self-preservation, breaking off relations with the Protestant world, which in the following centuries would show a philosophical and theological vitality capable of opening new horizons, recording discoveries, and proposing new values, which needed to be discerned, evaluated, purified, assumed, and integrated into the life of the universal Church.

The encyclical Pascendi merely lists the errors of the modernists, without naming any modernist or philosopher of modernity whom they were inspired by. However, it is not difficult to recognize some, such as Hume, Rousseau, Schleiermacher, Darwin, Von Harnack, Dilthey, Comte, Renan, Spencer, James, Sabatier, and Bergson. They are mostly from the Protestant world. The modernists did not then dare to embrace thinkers even further from Christianity like today's modernists, who draw from Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Indian thought.

The main reference, in my opinion, was Kant. The entirety of the great conflict pivoted on Kant as the esteemed master of 'modern philosophy,' the worthy successor and heir of the founder, Descartes. References to Kantism are evident where phenomenism, agnosticism, subjectivism, and immanentism are condemned.

Regarding the modernists, the request that the Church embrace what good had been discovered by modern philosophy and the human sciences, that it recognizes the validity found in Protestant theology, as well as in the cultures, religions, and civilizations discovered through missionary and exploratory activities, the need to soften pastoral and ascetic practices that were too severe—all this was a just request. It must be acknowledged that it existed among the modernists.

However, they lacked judgment and evaluation criteria based on a solid and integral Catholic faith, in adherence to the method of study and theology prescribed by the Church. In contrast, they tended to adopt wholesale and indiscriminately or based on the wrong criteria all of modernity simply because it was modernity, as if it were all pure gold, overlooking the fact that, although it is indeed necessary to modernize and be modern, this modernity must be edifying. If it is not, it is better to return to what is good in the old: in short, a kind of fanaticism and idolatry of modernity, hence the appellation "modernists" that they earned and which they, believing it to be a mark of honor, wanted to attribute to themselves.

Immediately after Pascendi, it became clear that the challenge of discerning what merits adoption and what warrants rejection from modernity, especially from Kant, remained open. While the Dominicans, especially in France, embarked on a serious Thomistic commitment, the Jesuits engaged very seriously in addressing modernity. Here the problem of Descartes was primarily at stake: what to adopt and what to reject.

Catholic Reactions to Pascendi

The encyclical stimulated Thomists to show how true criticism of knowledge must be based on the principles of Saint Thomas and not on those of Kant, demonstrating the groundlessness of Kantian criticism. This was done, for example, by Jesuits - such as Paul Geny and Joseph de Tonquédec-, Gredt, Gilson, Maritain, Roland-Gosselin, Gardeil, Verneaux, and Toccafondi. Sound critiques of idealism were articulated by Cordovani, Zacchi, and Chiocchetti.

At Louvain, Cardinal Mercier addressed Descartes, while the Jesuit Joseph Maréchal tackled Kant with a concerted effort to recover the positive aspects, despite the severe condemnations of Pascendi. Instead, his fellow Jesuit Guido Mattiussi published a too-severe critique of Kant in 1914, with the significant title "Kantian Poison."[2]

However, Mattiussi has the great merit of formulating the famous XXIV Thomistic Theses, which, approved by Pope Pius X, systematically and deductively collect the principles, procedures, and fundamental and principal theses of Saint Thomas's philosophy. These theses, illustrated with unassailable logical rigor and based on the most glaring experimental evidence, show the objective and universal value and the scientific status of philosophy and metaphysics. Thus, philosophy does not appear here as just the personal work of Saint Thomas, like one philosophy among others, as if there were a choice between philosophies as one chooses a vacation spot or a pair of shoes, but as the common and perennial heritage of humanity, as the science of pure reason, which earned Saint Thomas the title given to him by Pius XI of Doctor Communis Ecclesiae, and the doctrine suitable for formulating Catholic dogma.

It must be said, however, that unfortunately while Mattiussi failed to appreciate Kant's effort to build metaphysics as a science, Maréchal shortly after Mattiussi's work deluded himself into thinking he could derive Thomistic realism from Kant's idealism interpreted in a voluntaristic sense as the dynamism of the intellect that, moved by the will, tends a priori - starting from the Cartesian cogito - towards the truth as its aim.

It must be said, therefore, that Maréchal falls victim to the false modernist distinction between the "ancient," "objectivist" method, which would be Thomistic realism, and the "modern" method, which would be idealism, the "transcendental" in the Kantian sense. For Maréchal, both are valid and mutually complementary in conceiving criticism of knowledge. According to him, these conceptions are both true and can be "transposed" into each other to achieve the "same result." He does not realize that the Thomistic perspective is fitting, while the Cartesian-Kantian view, while not devoid of valid aspects, is mistaken.

Maréchal fails to realize that the Cartesian-Kantian critique of knowledge is not at all "modern," but rather a revival of Protagoras' ancient subjectivism, already refuted by Aristotle, the true and immortal justifier of cognitive certainty, and the true founder of metaphysics. On the other hand, the Aristotelian concept of truth, knowledge, and reason does not align with the idea of the 'Ancients,' but rather is the innate and necessary notion of knowledge that human reason elaborates by reflecting on the act of knowing.

It is, therefore, to be noted with regret that Maréchal, just fifteen years after the condemnation of modernism by Saint Pius X, either did not realize or did not want to realize that he remained indebted to the modernist idol, that is, the modernist conception of modernity. And it is somewhat surprising that his vision did not elicit significant interventions from the Church. He writes as follows:

"The ontological critique of the Ancients starts from 'objects' considered in the fullness of their objectivity, that is, posited, as possible Ends (things), and from there proceeds to the theoretical classification of their Forms (essences, defined through sensible phenomena). It establishes an objective absolute and relates the Relative to it." [3]

In reality, in Thomistic realism, things are as follows: Thomas starts from sensible things, of which there is absolute certainty, as possible ends of the will, and from them proceeds to the classification of their forms or principal essences defined through sensible experience. Thomas thus knows that he is dealing with relative entities that refer to an absolute.

Maréchal continues:

"The transcendental critique of the Moderns also starts from objects, but first considers them precisely according to their 'forms' (as phenomena). Suppose this Critique was to justify the objective significance assumed by phenomena in consciousness even more completely than it does. In that case, it should rediscover the affirmation of Ends beneath the Form itself. Through the Relative, present in consciousness, it would discover the ontological Absolute.

The ancient Critique merges with metaphysical systematization and is only completed with it: it is the long way of criticism, but it is also, in our opinion, the natural procedure.

Modern Critique claims to first deduce from the internal conditions of knowledge the essential method and necessary starting points of all metaphysics. It constitutes a preliminary epistemology to metaphysics, a metaphysics in potentiality; it is, one might say, the shortcut of criticism. Moreover, it rests on a methodical artifice: the phenomenological viewpoint—a legitimate artifice, yet one that destroys itself as soon as it leads to the recognition of metaphysical affirmation under the phenomena. However, we believe it can lead up to that point.

These two critical methods, approaching the same total object from complementary angles, must, if pushed to the limit, ultimately yield identical conclusions; for the ancient Critique posits from the outset the ontological Object, which includes the transcendental Subject; and the modern Critique focuses on the transcendental Subject, which postulates the ontological Object.

If it holds that the ontological Critique and the transcendental critique, despite their initial divergence in perspective on the known object, appropriately converge toward the same outcome—a dynamic metaphysics—it appears compelling that intimate connections must exist between the two (Kantian) Critiques. This suggests that one could regard the other as merely a transposition of the first.” [4]

For someone familiar, like myself, with Aristotle and Thomas as realists for decades and Cartesian and Kantian idealism, it's difficult to recognize their position in Maréchal's description. He describes realism and idealism with terms and concepts of his own making, which cannot be traced in the authors he implies. It's unclear how he gained so much success in his arbitrary interpretation, to the extent of founding a so-called "Marechalian school," of which the last and most important follower is Karl Rahner, with his "transcendental athematic pre-conceptual experience of being, of the self, and of God."

The probable reason for such success is found in the fact that a current of philosophers and theologians, calling themselves Catholics, has emerged, who side with Kant and interpret Saint Thomas in a way that aligns him with Kant.

But I wonder: how can we obtain realism starting from the cogito? How can we deduce the real from the idea? How can we move from immanence to transcendence? How can we reach being from thinking? The truth is in the intellect; the good is in reality. But if I do not primarily grasp the sensible external entity or reality, how can it appear true, good, and desirable to me? How can my will tend towards it as an end?

Maréchal believes he can find realism through the intellect moving towards the good. But the fact is that the motion of the will is impossible if the intellect has not first grasped the real. The will cannot give any realistic impetus to an intellect imprisoned by the Cartesian cogito.

Indeed, for Maréchal, in every intellectual act by which we perceive external things, there is always implicit a tendency of the intellect towards the true, which is its good, that is, God:

"Every objective knowledge contains, between a direct representation, always relative to given material objects, an 'absolute position of being' or, if one prefers, an implicit relation of the phenomenal object to the Absolute, supreme unity and ultimate end." [5]

"By discerning... the opposition of the object and the subject, in the opposition of the goal and the tendency itself, reflection reveals the conscious 'form' (the knowable in actu) as doubled between two subjects of inherence, between the in-itself of a subjective activity and the in-itself of an objective end. Then, focusing on the successive acts of intelligence, reflection discovers in them, through true inner experimentation, the correlation of a fundamental dynamism everywhere in action and a subjective ultimate end everywhere hoped for.

Now, unless one denies being and adopts contradiction, the admission of a subjective ultimate end, necessarily volitional, entails the affirmation of an objective ultimate end necessarily existing. At this moment, not only do we implicitly know, but we clearly and explicitly read in the a priori conditions of our primitive perceptions of objects, the revelation, initially latent, of absolute being as the universal end." [6]

Note that God as the ultimate end can be the object and end of our voluntary tendency only after we have come to know that He exists by applying the principle of causality analogically, and not as if the concept and essence of God were known to us, and were affirmed even implicitly, in the judgment we make about things in our daily experience. At most, this experience can suppose that of being or existence, but by no means that of the divine being.

As rightly observed by Gilson, either the intellect is immediately realist from the beginning of knowing, or realism is never achieved. In the cogito, it is possible to enter from the outside, and then one can exit to grasp the real. But if one starts from the cogito doubting the real, the real is no longer grasped. We can build a bridge if we see the other shore. Only then will we be able to traverse from one bank to the other, alternating knowledge (direct) with consciousness (reflected). But if we do not see it, we lack the means to construct any bridge. If, on the other hand, we perceive and acknowledge external phenomena, then we can build a bridge between them and our intellect. Yet, should the intellect be insular from inception, it forfeits the capacity to engage with external reality, lacking a guiding orientation and succumbing to the notion that all existence converges solely upon the ego.

Thus, it must be frankly stated that Thomistic transcendentalism and Kantian transcendentalism are not respectively the ancient and modern transcendentalisms, as Maréchal believes, however, the former holds while the latter proves false. Metaphysics cannot be founded on the will but only on the intellect. The will has its precious place, but it should not pretend to replace the intellect or invade its field, lest it cause the ruin of both and, thereby, of humanity itself.

Kant improperly appropriates the term "transcendental," giving it a sense that does not correspond to what the term originally means. Kant probably found the term in some treatise on scholastic metaphysics. It does not appear in Descartes, Leibniz, or Wolff. And even less in Locke and Hume.

Kant observed that the Scholastics employed the term to denote particular qualities of existence: one, true, and good. But he mentions it disdainfully as medieval childishness and quickly moves on. However, he remains struck by the term and vaguely intuits that it refers to something certain, absolute, foundational, primary, original, universal, all-comprehensive, and super-categorical.

With his critique of reason, he believes he has found the true transcendental, not admitting six, as Saint Thomas had done [7], but only one, which precisely corresponds to the cogito or "I think," or the "transcendental apperception."

However, Kant did not understand that the ego, spirit, thought, or reason cannot claim exclusive transcendental status, as if it alone should cover the entire horizon of being or reality. Certainly, relational transcendentals presuppose the spirit, which, as Saint Thomas says, is "that entity which can enter into a relationship with every entity [8].” Therefore, the true is the entity as it stands before the intellect, and the good is the entity as it stands before the will.

Similarly to what Maréchal did with Kant, at the burgeoning Catholic University of Milan, Monsignor Francesco Olgiati tackled Descartes with just as much risk. Unfortunately, things did not go entirely well here, considering that Bontadini and, worse, Severino emerged from this direction.

Today, however, as we have witnessed for sixty years worse modernism, no one wants to declare themselves a modernist or admits to being one. But the trouble is that the backward-looking individuals falsify the meaning of this name, attributing it to those who favor progress and reform and are lovers of the new, to those who do not deserve it, such as the Pope or the doctrines of the Second Vatican Council.

Today, this term is used almost exclusively by those who look backward and by Philo-Lefebvrians, often inappropriately, because they use it against progressive Catholics when, instead, if love for progress is a virtue, modernism is heresy. The use of this term is advisable to designate those who inappropriately appeal to the doctrines of the Council or the Popes of the post-conciliar period, even if they refuse to recognize themselves in that category.

The modernists call "modern philosophy" the idealism born from Descartes, while the previous philosophy, judged by them as outdated and no longer acceptable, is called with titles or in a derogatory tone, such as "scholastic philosophy," "objectivist," "Greek," "dualist," "medieval," "naive realism," or, like Bontadini, in a tone of tolerant condescension, "classical philosophy," thereby denying the perpetually current value of the philosophy of Saint Thomas, which for them is not at all the Doctor communis Ecclesiae but the exponent of a particular philosophy, as in the Church there is room for many others.

On the contrary, for the modernists, Descartes's philosophy, in its empiricist, Hegelian, Marxist, Husserlian, Freudian, Heideggerian, and Severinian outcomes, is truly universal, perennial, definitive, and obligatory for anyone who today wishes to meet the critical and intellectual maturity of modern times.

If we are to believe the Marian messages of Medjugorje, the Madonna, as Father Livio Fanzaga reports in his book The Deception of Modernism, intervened three times to warn us against the danger of modernism, which she defined as Satan's deception[11].

In this article, I demonstrate where modernism originates. It arises from a false concept of modern philosophy spread by the Cartesians to make their false ideas attractive, passing them off as the invention of the true method for attaining truth in philosophy, beyond what, according to them, humanity has believed to be the criterion of truth, as well as the principle of certainty and knowledge, up to Descartes.

The modern philosophy devised by Descartes is the one that finally and definitively, after millennia during which philosophers have remained victims of error, appearances, uncertainty, and illusion, without managing to break free from this frustration, or without realizing the mistake, well, the philosophy invented by Descartes is the one that guarantees the right starting point, and the right and irrefutable foundations for a safe, fast, easy, and fruitful journey that progressively and infallibly leads man on the path of absolute truth and absolute science.

The modernists have been and still are [12] those Catholics who, believing they interpret the reform and the new doctrines proposed by the Second Vatican Council, continue to base their ideas not on Thomistic realism recommended by the Church but on Cartesian idealism developed, through Kant, into its extreme Hegelian consequences.

They remain deceived by the fact that the Council indeed managed to reclaim the virtuous element in modern philosophy without making it an idol as the modernists did but by maintaining the condemnation of its errors and therefore confirming the value of Pascendi by Saint Pius X.

End of Part One (1/5)

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP

Fontanellato, April 8, 2024

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/il-cogito-di-cartesio-e-la-rivoluzione.html

[1] See the excellent description of modernism provided by Cornelio Fabro in the corresponding entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

[2] Pontifical Typography at the Pius IX Institute, Rome 1914.

[3] The starting point of metaphysics. Thomism facing critical philosophy, Louvain-Paris 1926, p.30.

[4] The starting point, ibid., pp. 30-31.

[5] The starting point, ibid., p.447.

[6] Ibid., p.347.

[7] Quaestio disputata De veritate, q.1, a.1; De potentia, q.9, a. 6, ad 7m and ad 13m.

[8] De Ver., q.1, a,1.

[9] Father Cornelio Fabro, in a highly scholarly and well-documented historical-critical study, has ad abundantiam demonstrated how even Marxist atheistic materialism and atheism, in general, derive from Descartes: Introduction to Modern Atheism, Publisher del Verbo Incarnato, Segni (Rome), 2013.

[10] Sugaraco Editions, Milan 2019.

[11] Messages of May 25, 2010, March 25, 2015, and January 25, 2017.

[12] For example, the followers of Rahner and Bontadini.