QUOTES FROM FIDES ET RATIO (with a splash of commentary from me):

“Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.” Here the Pope is pointing out that the ordinary experience of life, and especially the experiences of suffering and existential questioning, all but force philosophy on people. This search for answers begins in wonder (which is not always pleasant…) rather than in doubt, unlike, to use the most obvious example, Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. This line strikes me as in line with the Pope’s “theology of the body” in one significant way: He sees men and women as arrows, incomplete until they reach their target. Hence the “nuptial meaning of the body”–the body is directed toward its fulfillment in union with another. And hence the identification of living a “genuinely personal” life with “wonder”: Wonder is what sets us off on our various personal quests, seeking our targets. So there is in some sense a nuptial meaning of the mind as well. More on this below.

“In effect, every philosophical system, while it should always be respected in its wholeness, without any instrumentalization, must still recognize the primacy of philosophical enquiry, from which it stems and which it ought loyally to serve.” Yes!!! More on this when I write about political theory v. political philosophy.

“Modern philosophy clearly has the great merit of focusing attention upon man.” I like this line because it comes in the middle of a strong criticism of modern philosophy, and so it forces us to think about the ways in which “humanism” is similar to and different from “personalism.” Both focus attention upon man; I wonder (ha) if the major difference is that humanism lacks the “nuptial meaning of mind and body” and considers individuals as sufficient unto themselves. Not sure, but it’s an interesting path to start down.

“The need for a foundation for personal and communal life becomes all the more pressing at a time when we are faced with the patent inadequacy of perspectives in which the ephemeral is affirmed as a value and the possibility of discovering the real meaning of life is cast into doubt.”

“It is rightly claimed that persons have reached adulthood when they can distinguish independently between truth and falsehood, making up their own minds about the objective reality of things.” The Pope vs. conformity to culture–more of this comes later: “Human beings are not made to live alone. They are born into a family and in a family they grow, eventually entering society through their activity. From birth, therefore, they are immersed in traditions which give them not only a language and a cultural formation but also a range of truths in which they believe almost instinctively. Yet personal growth and maturity imply that these same truths can be cast into doubt and evaluated through a process of critical enquiry.”

“The truth comes initially to the human being as a question: Does life have a meaning? Where is it going?“ More of philosophy as quest.

Right after the second passage about maturity and enquiry quoted above, we get this: “It may be that, after this time of transition, these truths are ‘recovered’ as a result of the experience of life or by dint of further reasoning. Nonetheless, there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification. Who, for instance, could assess critically the countless scientific findings upon which modern life is based? Who could personally examine the flow of information which comes day after day from all parts of the world and which is generally accepted as true? Who in the end could forge anew the paths of experience and thought which have yielded the treasures of human wisdom and religion? This means that the human being—the one who seeks the truth—is also the one who lives by belief.

“In believing, we entrust ourselves to the knowledge acquired by other people. This suggests an important tension. On the one hand, the knowledge acquired through belief can seem an imperfect form of knowledge, to be perfected gradually through personal accumulation of evidence; on the other hand, belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person’s capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with them which is intimate and enduring.”

I found that really interesting because it connects certain failures of philosophy with failures to trust other people. Philosophy is best performed in a matrix of close friendships, and when there’s no trust in those friendships there is so much less willingness to leave one’s familiar practices and unexamined beliefs. Philosophy’s demands are radical and life-changing, and people who have adopted a “once bitten, twice shy” attitude may find it harder to leave their few comforts. In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom discusses the ways parental divorce made his students more cautious, less willing to give themselves not just to another person but to an idea; that obviously doesn’t always happen (sometimes parental divorce makes people much more determined to give themselves fully, to find a place to set down their anchor) but it makes sense to me that it would happen for a lot of people.

“Human perfection, then, consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of the truth, but in a dynamic relationship of faithful self-giving with others.” More on philosophy as self-giving and as necessarily embedded in a web of relationships.

“From all that I have said to this point it emerges that men and women are on a journey of discovery which is humanly unstoppable—a search for the truth and a search for a person to whom they might entrust themselves.” There it is again.

“The unity of truth is a fundamental premise of human reasoning, as the principle of non-contradiction makes clear. Revelation renders this unity certain, showing that the God of creation is also the God of salvation history. It is the one and the same God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend,(29) and who reveals himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now that is a perspective on the principle of non-contradiction that I had not considered!

“As a result of the exaggerated rationalism of certain thinkers, positions grew more radical and there emerged eventually a philosophy which was separate from and absolutely independent of the contents of faith. Another of the many consequences of this separation was an ever deeper mistrust with regard to reason itself. In a spirit both sceptical and agnostic, some began to voice a general mistrust, which led some to focus more on faith and others to deny its rationality altogether.” Yes, this is your ten-drachma tour of the history of philosophy (as one of my favorite professors would say), but I think it’s an accurate summary from oh, say, the Black Death through Nietzsche.

“As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has appeared finally is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything is fleeting and provisional.” Two points of interest here: 1) Nihilism is attractive–it’s not just a fallback, a sigh of exhaustion, a defeat. It’s also a seduction–even if it’s a Richard III/Lady Anne-style seduction. 2) There’s the philosophical-commitment/personal-commitment parallel again, the divorce mentality in philosophy.

“It should also be borne in mind that the role of philosophy itself has changed in modern culture. From universal wisdom and learning, it has been gradually reduced to one of the many fields of human knowing; indeed in some ways it has been consigned to a wholly marginal role.” Yes. Philosophy is a quest, not a department.

“Deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, and so run the risk of no longer being a universal proposition. It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition.” Yes!!!

“In synthesizing and solemnly reaffirming the teachings constantly proposed to the faithful by the ordinary Papal Magisterium, the First Vatican Council showed how inseparable and at the same time how distinct were faith and reason, Revelation and natural knowledge of God. …Against all forms of rationalism, then, there was a need to affirm the distinction between the mysteries of faith and the findings of philosophy, and the transcendence and precedence of the mysteries of faith over the findings of philosophy. Against the temptations of fideism, however, it was necessary to stress the unity of truth and thus the positive contribution which rational knowledge can and must make to faith’s knowledge: ‘Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth’.(65)”

Am I the only person who hears a marriage metaphor in that? “Inseparable yet distinct”–a one-flesh union of two individuals. Couplehood. And the description of the relationship between faith and reason kind of sounds like standard Christian discussion of the husband/wife relationship, although I admit that’s a stretch. I like the “wife” metaphor better than the “handmaiden” metaphor though (as in “philosophy is the handmaiden of theology”)–might be more accurate.

“Nonetheless, in the light of faith which finds in Jesus Christ this ultimate meaning, I cannot but encourage philosophers—be they Christian or not—to trust in the power of human reason and not to set themselves goals that are too modest in their philosophizing.” Yay, very JPII. Be not afraid!

In general F&R; struck me as more focused than Veritatis Splendor (see below), which was something of a grab-bag, but VS contained more elements that I hadn’t considered before. Nonetheless, the philosophy/trust stuff was cool, and surprising.