Benedict Takes on Descartes

Competing philosophies from the Middle Ages have woven their way down through the centuries and have presented us with two divergent visions of the human person:

The Thomistic understanding sees man as person, that is, a composition of body and soul, united by a shared human nature to those around him and to those who preceeded him. Belief in this common human nature has profound implications for each individual. This venerable tradition teaches that man cannot fully realize himself as person in isolation from the "other." It is through interaction with others that one grows in his own awareness of self. In other words, we come to know things through our senses. We assimilate the outside world via physical encounters with persons and things. This philosophy leads, ultimately, to the heavily relied-on adage that "It is only through the giving of self that one fully discovers his self." The negative read on this philosophy of person logically concludes with the discussion of alienation. Speaking in philosophical terms, a self-imposed isolation is unnatural for man and theologically speaking and as a corollary, sin constitutes a painful alienation from others and finally from self and God.

Another vision of person emerged from the mind of William of Okham. Okham rejected outright any existence of universals. Accordingly, there is no such thing as a human nature, shared by all. Such concepts are nothing but fabricated constructs which help us group things for the utilitarian purpose of taxonomy. Reality is composed of individual things, like atoms darting to and fro in complete isolation from the other. There is no essential relation between persons. Over time, Okham's theory was added on to and tweaked here and there; less emphasis was given to the senses, which were presented as unreliable, even deceptive tools for coming to know. The awareness of self-reflection and knowing became the primary proofs for man's existence. Enter Descartes' Cogito. "I think therefore I am."

The other day I was reading a section from the pope's An Introduction to Christianity and I came across some thought-provoking insights. I thought I'd share them.

Under the section entitled, The Individual and the Whole:

"Christian faith is not based on the atomized individual but comes from the knowledge that there is no such thing as the mere individual, that, on the contrary, man is himself only when he is fitted into the whole: into mankind, into history, into the cosmos, as is right and proper for a being who is 'body in spirit.'"

Citing the German theologian Mohler: "Man, as a being set entirely in context of relationship, cannot come to himself through himself, although he cannot do it without himself either."

And von Baader: "That it was just as absurd 'to deduce the knowledge of God and the knowledge of all other intelligences and non-intelligences from self-knowledge as to deduce all love from self-love."

"Human reality is only reality when it is being known...from another."

Rather, the pope says we should postulate, "Cogitor, ergo sum." "I am thought, therefore I am," for, "only from man's being known can his knowledge and he himself be understood."