Physics and the Person in Philosophy

 

In-arguably, the concept of personhood and the consequences of the existence of personhood on all spheres of reality is one of the most central themes of Pope Saint John Paul II's writings and a central focus of his pontificate.  With this foundation and central focus, it is no surprise that JPII would have found much in phenomenology to assist him in his own development.  And, it is no wonder that it was JPII, the man from the crossroads where the East meets the West, the Pole, who would be instrumental in creating an initial reconciliation in  the rift between Classical philosophy and Modernity and identifying a path forward.

Man has always wondered at reality, and is constantly theorizing to explain the reality which he experiences.  After Descartes such wonder has largely given way to the more ratio-istic (as opposed to Pierer’s  intellectus) driven inquiry.  The nature, quality, and even quantity of knowledge gained by such an inquiry is greatly diminished and limited, leading to a radical nihilism or at best electionism whereby only those who have studied and are deemed “experts” in such a field are able to have knowledge in specific matters.  As we have seen, knowledge of this sort stems from an inward focus and is concentrated more on what knowledge can I specifically hold and know as sure as opposed to a basis of what can be held as true and known.

Phenomenology as an aid to the thought of JPII really finds its stride and strength in the acknowledgement of the human person as a beholder of reality and that the subjective experience must have consequence in how we speak of it, though not necessarily dictating what and how much can be known and still admitting that there is an objective reality which can be known and must be adhered to for ethics and morals.

In one sense, one could use as illustration quantum physics, where particles of matter act differently depending on whether there is an observer in the experiment or not.  If there is an observer, matter behaves exactly as it should and as one would expect: as matter which can be defined according to place and quantified according to mass.  If the observer is absent however, the particles of matter behave as if they were waves of light, and almost inexplicably tend towards a state of non matter.  

Now, an analogy is only as good so far as it goes, and the previous analogy is admittedly not perfectly translatable to the current discussion, seeming to demonstrate in one sense that reality itself is dependent on my observation of it.  Though this may be true about the material world, and the argument that there always is a Person who observes reality (God),  I include this description here as a way of illustrating how the existence and almost passive participation of  a person does have some consequence on reality and, whatever it may be, must be taken into consideration and accounted for in discussion.  In this way phenomenology is a right and good aid to the thought of JPII.

The Eye of the Beholder

 

The Ohio Caverns in the Mid-western part of the state.  My wife and I visited this beautiful place for our first Anniversary some years back.

What is it that makes a young child, upon encountering something completely new and foreign to anything in his previous experience be filled with wonder and invariably ask of someone, anyone: “what is that!”?  The answer of course is readily supplied by Aristotle when he declares that all men desire to know.  Not surprisingly, the child is easily satisfied with a simple noun answer such as “oh, that’s an airplane,”  “that’s a chair.”  It never occurs to the child the great depth and import of the seemingly simple question he just asked; nor does it ever occur to the adult providing this simple answer that a much better answer is required to fully and accurately answer the question asked.  The child is not really looking for anything more, and the adult gives the child exactly what it needs at that moment.  Though this question may satisfy the child, Man in his nature is not satisfied with the simple answer but searches ardently for the essence of things, their quiddity, what makes them what they are.

Pieper in his essay The Philosophical Act makes frequent distinction between the necessary, analytical knowledge of the workaday world and the knowledge inspired by wonder.  The knowledge of the workaday world is similar to the answer we might give the child mentioned earlier when asked “what is that? (a chair)”: categorical, given in the language of the parents to inform the child what the commonly given name is so that communication will be possible.  The knowledge of Philosophy and by extension hope is by contrast similar to the question child who may look upon an airplane as it takes off and asks “how does it fly?”  To go into an in-depth answer of science may be beyond expertise of the parent, and is certainly beyond the comprehension of the child; nevertheless an answer is required.  Though I will not posit a suggestion as to how to answer this, the question asked here literally springs from the eye of the beholder.  The child “beholds” the airplane, marvels at it, holds it first at arms length and then close up in curiosity and wonder.

A picture of a bygone era, when I was allowed to grow a beard as I marvelled while enjoyed God's creation in beautiful NH

The question of hope, the question of “how does it fly?” is one of relation, a quest for the “capacity to relate oneself to the whole of reality, to the whole world… to have a world, to be related to the totality of existing things”.  It is the need to see the whole of reality with the mind’s eye, with the knowledge with which God sees all that we hope for as sons and daughters of Him who loves us, and Who loves to delights His children.

The Masculine and Feminine of the Modern World

 

There are two things in which every person is a self-proclaimed expert: Religion and Politics.  In these two areas it does not seem necessary for a person to learn or accept anything from his predecessor; his expert and infallible opinions of these matters are rather infused within himself.  Though he breaks with every tradition of his forefathers, any one of these pseudo-doctors agrees adamantly upon one thing shared between nearly every other opinion in the world, namely, that there is something wrong with the world.  Staying up all night (or at least very late) and “solving the world’s problems” is a favorite pastime of mine, a pastime which I am not alone in enjoying: it is a very common practice enjoyed by many.  The peculiar thing about these late-night excursions to free the world from the effects of the Fall is that inevitably, no matter how many people are involved in the conversation or how many conclusions are arrived at which definitively affirm “That’s what’s wrong with the world!”, the problems never seem to get fixed; on the contrary, they often seem to take a turn for the worse.  

This outcome of not solving the world’s problems is not peculiar to these conversations.  No one really expects the world to be fixed merely by talking about it, but with all the programs and systems and charities at work in the world, movements from “just talk” to obvious attempts at “fixing” or “alleviating” a problem, one might be justifiably confused as to why the world continues in its worldy ways (no pun intended).  This confusing state is very aptly captured and described by Governor Nix in Tomorrowland, a 2015 movie produced by Disney, when he says that “…[the] earth [is] crumbling all around you.  You have simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation!  Explain that one!”  

Obviously talking about what is wrong with the world late at night will not fix the world; we wake up the next morning to find the world right where we left it the night before.  Apparently the systems and programs set up on industrial levels to fight the problems in the world are not enough to cure the world of hunger, the need for healthcare, injustice, war, death, or really any problem at all.  What is the problem?!  The problem is that there is no problem, at least not in the same way we have been talking about.  There is no ONE problem to which we can point to, the simple removal of which will effectively “fix” the world.  “The poor will always be with you” speaks our Savior, a prophecy which is realized more and more as time goes on.  The true problem is one which the world is incapable of even pointing to (let alone fix), because it exists in a reality which the world has all but forgotten, and speaks a language which is completely, even essentially foreign to the world.  The problem is - bear with me -  the absence of something truly Feminine.

I recognize instantly that this is a loaded statement.  Perhaps it would be more accurately stated as the absence of the truly Masculine because of the eviction of the truly Feminine.  It seems clear, even obvious, to any who care to look that it is not Femininity that is under attack but Masculinity.  Countless examples lend themselves readily to confirm this assertion.  Modern media (including commercials) paint men as bumbling idiots and numbskulls, interested in beer and football, who become dopey and even more useless (if that was possible) as soon as he comes across a pretty face.  Laws, especially governing family matters, are heavily weighted to favor women.  A friend once told me that when she was taking her self-defense course, she was told that all a woman has to do in a courtroom is say that “he made me feel threatened”: give that room a feminist judge and that man, guilty or not, will be serving heavy jail time.  There is clearly an attack and a very big absence of the truly Masculine, to be sure.  How can there possibly be an absence of Femininity?  To answer this, I would like to bring us back to the creation of Man in the Garden of Eden.

In the second story of Creation, after having given all the animals of the earth a name and encountering them all, Adam finds no suitable partner for himself.  This passage is translated countless different ways, all vividly describing that Adam realized a problem with the world (remember, this world was created pronounced “good,” and as yet had not been stained by Sin).  However, though Adam realizes that there is no “suitable” partner for himself, he does not cognate just what the suitable partner would look like, or what that partner would be.  The “suitable partner” for Adam is she who completes him, and who makes Man “in the image of God”: Eve.

 What does it mean to be created in the Image of God?  The Image of God is not a picture, or a replication, but a stark reality of living participation in the Divine Nature “insofar as he or she is a rational and free creature capable of knowing God and loving him, (JPII, on the Dignity and Vocation of Women)" and also by the fact that he is in need of relationship with other physical, living, rational creatures, whom God has created, for “It is not good for Man to be alone”.  God is a rational Person, but He is also in a perpetual communal relationship with Himself in the Trinity.  He is perpetually and intrinsically, as part of His Nature, encountering other Personhood.  Our great opportunity for existing as full participants in the Image of God comes from our encounter with other Human Beings, who share in the Divine Image to the same extent as we ourselves do.  We are called to live in a relationship with persons of our own Nature, just as God is in a relationship with Persons who share His own Nature.

When Adam beheld Eve for the first time, Adam was rendered awestruck, and realized in a moment what had been missing.  He recognized immediately who Eve was, and experienced a sense of catharsis and realization of what he had been missing, as seen in his emphatic words: “This now is bone of bone and flesh of my flesh” (some translations have Adam as saying “aha” or “at last”).  Eve completes Adam and makes the Divine Image possible in Man because she is an essential sharer in Adams nature (Man), while simultaneously existing as completely other from him.  Adam would have remained “alone” in the garden if Benjamin had been created instead of Eve, for Benjamin would not have been truly outside of Adam: intrinsically they would have been the same.  Eve is the only possible new creation who completes man, bringing Adam outside of himself through an encounter with a person who is intrinsically other.

Eve brings Adam outside of himself and completes him, much like the way in which Pieper says Intellectus brings man outside of himself and completes his knowledge, which is primarily Ratio.  According to ancient philosophy, Ratio is “the power of discursive, logical thought, of searching and examination, of abstraction, of definition, and drawing conclusions (Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture).”  This form of reasoning has always been considered, and indeed is self-evidently a form of work.  An example of Ratio would be the logical steps followed in a geometrical proposition, or the deduction of a detective at a crime scene.  This form of understanding is necessary, for knowledge “is certainly quite impossible without work, without the labor improbus of discursive thought”: Ratio is “the properly human element in our knowledge.”  It is active, and is the leader of human reason.

However, Ratio is not its own end and by itself remains incomplete; rather, it leads the reason towards something outside of itself.  Man is not purely physical, nor is he complete in himself but “reaches out beyond the sphere of the ‘human,’ touching on the order of pure spirits.”  The knowledge at which Ratio is aimed and which completes it is Intellectus, which is “understanding in so far as it is the capacity of simplex intuitus, of that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye… [it is] beyond the sphere allotted to man.”  Intellectus is, unlike Ratio, not work, but is instead passive, beholding and understanding truth and beauty in the same way as our eye perceives light, or our ears sound.  Ratio is aimed at attaining this form of knowledge as its true end.

Man’s knowledge is both Ratio and Intellectus simultaneously.  “The discursive element is fused with ‘intellectual contemplation.’”  Ratio is human reason proper and is prior to and necessary for understanding; it is true work.  However, Ratio leads the reason outside of itself and through contemplation encounters its fulfillment through Intellectus, which is beyond the sphere of humans and exists as a true image of Divine knowledge.  As the crown and glory of understanding, Intellectus gives Ratio the means of fulfilling its end through a relationship with itself as intrinsically other but still sharing the same fundamental nature of understanding and knowledge.  Traditionally, wisdom (Sophia) was depicted as female for this very reason.  In the physical world, the male was concerned with the practical completion of tasks while the female traditionally brought the male outside of himself and reminded him of what he had forgotten, that there was more to his life than his tasks.  In a word, then, true “Femininity” might be said to be  a sense of transcendence, of something which brings Man (not just men) outside of himself to a point wherein he can experience the metaphysical.

 The natural world in one sense can be said to tend towards the Masculine inasmuch as it is called to work, to till the earth and subdue it.  However, after the Fall it holds a  tendency to confine itself in its own sphere of work and the daily grind, to reduce itself to logical theories and formulaic solutions.  In the fight to “empower” women, which boils down to nothing more than women trying to be more like what they perceive men to be, the truly Masculine has become isolated.  Too many people are trying to define and rise to be powerful, successful, and monetarily comfortable: all good things in themselves, but they are seen to be specifically Masculine traits.  And it is not good for Man to be alone.  The Masculine only finds its fullness within the context of and in relation to the existence of the Feminine.  So, here at the end, we find it is not merely an absence of the Feminine after all but the besieging and abandonment of the Masculine because of the absence of the Feminine in all of us.  

Tradition: Concept and Claim - an opportunity for discussion and fellowship

We see change everywhere.  In the biological realm, the earth is changing and growing.  In the social realm as in the political, ideas are constantly changing and developing.  Science develops in a linear manner, never seeing the whole picture at any one given time but grows and transforms continually so as to better explain what can be observed.  Technology too advances at breathtaking speed, in some arguments at dangerous speed.  In no other time has there been a more accurate application of the saying “The only thing certain is change”.  

Among all this change there is no small group of people who describe themselves as Traditionalists.  This may be a  strange thing to “identify” as since we readily observe the apparent futility in attempting to remain stationary within time, be it with morals and philosophy or local customs.  Nevertheless, there are a large group who hold on to Traditions in one way or another, in all spheres of life.  It begs the question: Is Tradition actually important? Or are these people holding on to ideals or actions of a bygone age?

Beginning in late Fall of this year, October or November (just in time for the preparation of traditional or non-traditional Christmas celebrations), this question will be answered for those who wish to join me in a roundtable discussion centered around the book by Josef Pieper: Tradition, Concept and Claim.  Through a series of 6 meetings we will discuss the nature of what Tradition is, is it anti-historical, how can one marry the notion of change to tradition, and many more important questions.  These discussions will be held in Northeast Ohio, with the option for distanced participants to listen in on the in-person discussion and add to the conversation in some capacity via Zoom.  

This free opportunity for people of all Religious and Political backgrounds will hopefully provide us all with the tools to understand and better live out our Faiths, our morals and philosophies, and enter into the discussions which are tumultuous in our own days.  If nothing else, it will provide a medium for which we can drink in each other’s companies and have enlightening discussions.  I hope to see you there.

 

 

 

Stay tuned for more details over the next few months!

Pope Saint John Paul II: Slav, and Pole

 Pope Saint John Paul II was not simply Polish.  Polish was the merely the “species” if you will to which he belonged; the “genus” of his heritage was Slavic.  As such, he was not merely well prepared for the implementation of the Second Vatican Council by the cultural diversity found and enjoyed by Poland; he approached the Chair of Peter and the task at hand equipped with the historical and contextual preparation of having been a descendant of those originally hearing the Gospel from Cyril and Methodius.  

Particularly, Poland presented a son who was well prepared for the mission of the New Evangelization.  As we have seen, the Soviet Union was not prepared for a young, passionate Leader of the Church who could unite nations simply because he spoke and understood local language and culture.  Poland has been a nation who truly saw the beauty of a Church breathing with both the lungs of the Eastern and Western Rites; as a result JPII was keenly aware and aided in the deescalation of tensions between the two Churches, both the schismatic and those in communion with Rome.  

His own personal skill was aided and supported by a deeply seated inclination towards Evangelization in the lives of the evangelized through the historical context of Cyril and Methodius.  The brothers truly brought the Gospel to the lives of the Slavs.  Rather that holding the Faith above their heads and requiring the people to learn foreign languages and customs these saints helped the people with their own language, giving them an avenue in which they could rise to meet the coming of the Gospel themselves.  With this background, it is no wonder that JPII was such a humanist in his Christian writing and preaching.

We have said many times that it mattered that JPII was a Pole.  I would add to this that it mattered first that he was a Slav first, no less important than the particular Poland.

William Reynolds: Sheep, Wolf, or Sheepdog?

I love the movie American Sniper.  Apart from being a great story of American patriotism and heroism, it contains one very insightful quote on human nature, using the imagery of shepherding.  Mr. Kyle is eating a meal with his wife and two sons, and makes the claim that there are three types of people in this world: Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs.  Sheep are described as those people who “prefer to believe that evil does not exist in this world.  And if it ever darkened their doorstep they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves.”  He goes on to describe Wolves as those who “use violence to prey on the weak.”  Mr. Kyle finishes his description of humanity by describing “those who have been blessed with the gift of aggression, and the overpowering need to protect the flock.  These men are the rare breed who live to confront the Wolf.  They are the sheepdog.”

An in-depth analysis of this speech (a very inspiring part of the film) is beyond the scope of the following posts.  We do not need to look far to find very pragmatic examples of sheep, wolf, and sheepdog lending themselves to the support of Mr. Kyle’s statement.  For our purposes we assume here the truth of Mr. Kyle’s description of human nature, and turn to the real topic at hand: a look at The Man Behind the Mask.  

Over the next few blog posts (which will be compiled into a paper) I propose to take a look at Mr. William Reynolds, the protagonist in the film The Man Behind the Mask and through observing his actions determine what kind of man he really is: Sheep, Wolf, or Sheepdog.  

Defending alone

Satan has struck again.

Once again, there has come to light some very tragic events and crimes committed by representatives of the Catholic Church. 
And once again, it has come to light that the Catholic Church was not on its game in dealing with, investigating, and prosecuting the molesters in question.  

I am of course referring to and talking about the most recent Sex Scandals of Pennsylvania priests against young men and seminarians.  

I am not going to spend precious time arguing at length to say why and how these acts are wrong.  Nor am I going to spend time laying out and talking about the crimes themselves: this information is readily available to any who wish to know (and I would add, if you have not read about these crimes you should.  Do not turn a blind eye but be aware of how Satan attacks the Church).

What I AM going to do is briefly exhort my fellow Catholics to stay strong.  This is a ploy of Satan himself to spread dissention among the Faithful, a ploy which has historically proven very effective.  There has been Human error and sin in the Church from its very beginning.  However, these sins and the faults of the Humans within the Church do not make her message and the Sacraments any less valid or less relevant in our own lives.  

The Church has gone through many rough times, and many of these struggles has resulted in a Schismatic break by some of the Faithful.  Well-meaning, justly-angered members of the Faithful like you and me see ourselves (rightly) as soldiers on the front lines of the fight, upholding the Tradition of the Church and remaining Orthodox Christians while the Clergy and the Magisterium of the Church appears to be going the way of the world.  We find ourselves alone, and so we bunker down.  We dig in, holding to what we see as traditional and letting the Church go its own sinful way.  This is exactly what happened so many times, be it the break in Eastern and Western Churches in Catherine of Sienna's time or the break of the Pius X society with the coming of the Novus Ordo and the Liturgical Abuses which ensued in the aftermath.  

The problem is that we as Faithful Catholics do not see what is really at stake here.  These attacks of Satan are not attacks upon the Church Herself or Her teachings.  Satan fought that fight already, and he lost.  These attacks are upon US, the faithful.  Satan's precise goal is to have us feel alone, that we need to uphold and defend the Church at all costs, even if that means leaving Her.  One we see the Truth as dependent on OUR intervention and defense to exist, we place ourselves on a level with God.  And then it is that we are truly alone, for no one is like God.

The Truth does not need our help or defense.  It will continue to exist, and will never be defeated.  We are simply called to adhere to it and bear witness to it.  Do not waver in your witness of the Truth, a Truth which also calls us to adhere to the Church and in obedience to the Pope.  

I am saddened by this turn of events within the Church, as all Catholics should be.  However, let us not forget whose souls are the ones at stake here.  We are the soldiers on the front lines precisely because it is our own souls, yours and mine, which are the prime targets in this fight.  WE are the end game.  

Stay strong, my friends, and keep fighting the good fight.