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DIFFICULTIES WITH THOMISM1
Contents:
Introduction; General Difficulties; Difficulties with the language of body and soul; Infinity and Continuum; Demythologizing Thomism.
Introduction
Until I gave you that "Quaestio" I had made no effort to communicate to you my feelings towards Thomism. I have been more concerned about understanding it than making a coherent assessment of it. I have no objections to you hoping that I become a fully fledged Thomist, or even to you trying to persuade me to become one. But I do object if you insist that withholding commitment to Thomism requires immediate justification. Nevertheless, I now offer to tell you that I have serious misgivings about Thomism and to express what my objections are. My objections may not be philosophical, or consistent with each other, and may even be totally irrational. But if you want me to be a Thomist, then you must show how the truth seeking expression in my objections will be able to find full expression in Thomism.
Thomism is not simply a set of propositions which are true or false, since it is concerned to elucidate that very notion itself. It is difficult to attack Thomism from a position outside it in such a way as to disturb those inside it because the attack has to be translated into Thomistic terms before registering anything. The main reason why I wrote "Quaestio" in Latin was in order to by-pass that kind of filter. You may criticize the Latin, and I am prepared to correct the text, but do not expect a direct translation to be given. Writing in English forces me to take a less direct approach.
When you set me the task of writing this essay you made two demands, the exact wording of which I cannot remember now, but the gist was: (i) express in English my difficulties with Thomism; (ii) avoid introducing any autobiographical note into it. But so far I have not explained the specific difficulties I have with Thomism, other than those which any complete philosophy must unavoidably present. Moreover, I have not avoided bringing in personal references. Yet, like Aristotle, I have begun by outlining what has led up to the writing of the essay and reflecting on what I am doing. Surely reflection is the starting point of all philosophizing? It is only the goal which must be without an autobiographical note.
General Difficulties
The first difficulties I wish to present are concerned with the idea of philosophy itself. I present them, not because I reject the Thomist view of philosophy in general, but because I cannot fully assent to a theory like Thomism unless it can be shown to get round these difficulties effectively. In the trial of philosophy itself, each theory must put its own case for the defence. To be effective, the defence does not have to be complete, i.e., it does not have to remove the necessity of bearing the objections in mind even after the theory itself is fully grasped. I only ask that they be shown to be ultimately removable, perhaps by using language analogically.
It is right that one should strive to have a theory which offers to provide, as Thomism tries to, a complete framework for integrating all possible human knowledge and understanding. But just when a theory seems reliable and complete, it seems that it must reveal itself to be otherwise. For what was the creative play of ideas becomes the mechanical manipulation of words. The filter already referred to in my introduction, the screen through which the theory interprets reality, becomes an impenetrable wall, so that, what was thought, possibly, to contain the key to life, becomes cut off from life, and dies. Thus I believe myself justified in insisting on a theory taking seriously the dynamics of the very words it needs to use to express itself.
A theory is philosophical only in so far as it does not rely on anything outside itself, trying to argue for itself in such a way as to make as few assumptions as possible. Ideally, it should make no assumptions, so that its arguments make it self-evidently true. But such an ideal is a Platonic kind of ideal and cannot be incarnated2 in any finite chain of reasoning. Indeed, this ideal is something for which to bear it in mind is to know that it is true, and is therefore the Holy Spirit. A philosophical theory must settle for giving an outline of an ideal proof having an infinite number of steps. But a theory can compensate for this by showing how every gap in the outline can be filled in as much as we please.
Difficulties with the language of body and soul
It is not sufficient to attack some particular explicitly dualist position in order to avoid making the same kind of error. So you must also show that Thomism successfully solves the problems that drive people towards dualism. It is helpful to know about the danger at the bottom of a slope in order to avoid that danger, but one can only move safely on the slope where it is not slippery or steep.
It is all very well saying that the distinction between body and soul is a distinction "in ratione" and not "in re", but that is not sufficient to keep dualism at bay. For, surely, in Thomism it follows from the essence of a thing whether or not the distinction can or should be made in the understanding of it? If therefore one can fix the distinction "in ratione", then one must be able to fix it "in re". So any pinning down is liable to be incipient dualism.
This problem seems to be acknowledged by Thomism in the vagueness of descriptions of the soul, such as that the soul is the life of the animal. But it cannot be simply a question of a necessary vagueness, because one must rule out even the possibility of conceiving the distinction as fixed. In fact one cannot talk directly about the relationship between body and soul because, if one of them is thought of as some thing, then the other cannot be thought of as anything in particular.3
The way that the body and soul may be related indirectly by means of language is suggested to me by Plotinus’s system, where, for instance, the One is related to the Psyche by the Nous. It is rather like drawing diagrams of a geometrical cube in two dimensions on paper. Not only can the diagrams seem to differ about the relations between the vertices, but distinct vertices can appear to coincide, indeed any pair can be represented as coinciding for a cube. And we should not be surprised to find that all language is necessarily of "fewer dimensions" than the full reality which encompasses it.
Infinity and Continuum
Although these are strictly mathematical, and Aristotle and Aquinas could hardly be expected to anticipate the modern understanding of them, nevertheless it has serious consequences for their philosophy generally, which should not be ignored. I have not yet acquainted myself with much of what either of them have actually said on this, so that most of what I have to say about their views on it has been gleaned indirectly from considering Thomism generally.
Aristotle never seems to have accepted the idea of infinity properly, and what he calls "infinite" according to the translators he is really describing as "indefinite." For instance, he would hold that objects can be indefinitely large, but there are no infinitely large objects. He may have had some notion of infinite time, but I suspect that it would be what we would call now unbounded but finite – as in the circumference of a circle or some modern theories about the Universe spatially.
Aquinas seems to have made important advances upon Aristotle in this matter. His notion of a cause of causality throughout an infinite chain of causes and their effects not only acknowledges that infinity could have a physical reality, but it also provides a way of understanding what sort of reality it must then be. For, almost by definition, infinity is not some number reached by counting, but by standing back from the process of counting. By this "standing back" our attention is no longer focussed on any particular step. It is like walking down a long straight tunnel and slowly turning one’s torch from pointing at the ground immediately in front to pointing ahead almost horizontally. What is happening can only be expressed indirectly, by the mediation of a variable, just as the Nous mediated between the One and the Psyche, but now the parallel is closer with the relationship between body and soul. At one end of the bridge the variable is seen as replaceable by a finite number, a particular value, and at the other end it symbolizes the counting process in its entirety, being the entity which follows the rule.
It is perhaps easier to accept infinity as a possible attribute of something "in re" in the guise of other infinite processes, such as division of a geometer’s line. Perhaps Aristotle was closer to accepting it in that form, but even infinite divisibility is a long way from a modern notion of continuum.
The implications for Thomism are serious. Multiplying distinctions may be useless if the situation demands an infinite sequence of them, let alone a continuum of them.
Demythologizing Thomism
The difficulties with Thomism, which I have outlined, were outlined so briefly that it is unlikely to be your fault if you fail to understand, or fail to appreciate the significance of, some remarks. I had hoped to expand on it and add to it before giving it to you, but now it seems that such an undertaking must be postponed indefinitely. It is more urgent that I make clear my own attitude to the philosophy of St. Thomas.
I have never studied philosophy formally until this last academic year,4 and although I have had occasional philosophical discussions even before I knew the word ‘philosophy’, I have read very little philosophy at first hand. I do not say this as a boast because I value what philosophers down the centuries have said. Even while I attack Thomism I want to understand it, not in order to demolish it more completely, but rather to rescue those insights to which it bears witness. It is true that any tinkering with the basic framework of the Thomist system has repercussions throughout it, producing a radically different theory, but this does not mean that the baby will necessarily be thrown out with its bathwater.
I have written the above because I feel I have certain insights to bring to philosophy from other fields, and yet the thought is often presented to me that, if one has something important to contribute, then one must be in a position of not having anything important to learn. Over the past year I have tried to assimilate what I have been studying, but I am slow,5 and there must be much that has gone into me in the past year that I am not properly aware of myself, let alone able to demonstrate to others. But for fear that my own contribution may never be made by anyone, I think that I might try to express the present state of play, although much of what I try to express may have been expressed already and much better by others, and much may need drastic rethinking in the light of what others have said.
This proposed project may well take a month, even working solidly, but I can give it6 to you in instalments and much of it will simply be from shorthand notes I have made already, so that if I stop myself from being self-conscious about my wording and presentation then I may get through it much quicker.
The benefit of looking directly at works of philosophers (e.g. reading Aquinas in the Latin) is to help to get behind the myths and legends conjured up by philosophically well-worn words to find their mundane historical roots. Not that I despise myths, nor that I can really escape from them, but that I can understand them better, so as to master them.
1 This text was the follow-up to "Quaestio de Unitate Ullius Entis" also on this web site, and written in the Spring of 1982. As with "Quaestio", the original was given to Herbert McCabe O.P. and the version here is based on a previous rough draft so it may differ from the original. (Two whole paragraphs have been kept in here, although they are crossed out in the surviving rough draft.)
2 It is curious that I used the word ‘incarnated’ here. I coined the word ‘inverbate’ about three years later. The word ‘materialized’ would have been more apt at the time.
3 In the original I added the comment, in brackets, "except, perhaps, as the same thing." I now think that that comment is not only unnecessary and confusing to the reader, but also in error.
4 An unintentional error here which I spotted five years later (1987) when seeing the rough draft again: I did some Philosophy as part of a teacher training course in 1977-78, but the content was rubbish.
5 Pencilled in the margin of the draft is, ‘I cannot hurry myself in Philosophy.’
6 The "it" is the first version of what came to be called ‘Regenerating Philosophy’.
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