KIERKEGAARD & NEWMAN

August 23, 2006

“Such books are like mirrors: if a monkey looks into them, no apostle looks out.”

Lichtenberg

This is a course offered in the Philosophy Department but it deals with two religious thinkers, John Henry Newman and Soren Kierkegaard.

WHAT BUSINESS HAS A PHILOSOPHER DISCUSSING THE WORK OF SUCH MEN?

*one might reply that both men wrote works which are literary or philosophical. But this reply would seem to suggest that the overtly religious or theological works will be avoided.

*one might respond that there are no limits to philosophical interest, that nothing escapes its notice or critique. But this response would be met with disdain by our two authors, each of whom lamented the tendency to reduce the religious to philosophical categories.

*one might respond that such misgivings entail too rigorous a division of intellectual and cultural labor; like universities, the cultivated mind embraces all fields, secular and religious. But this response entails either (a) that there are common criteria for such wide-ranging appraisals, or (b) that one obligingly shifts gears as he moves from field to field. (a) is scarcely a self-evident claim and (b) smacks of dilletantism, a bee buzzing from flower to flower, gathering heterogenous nectar, and to what purpose?

Why do we read at all? We must come back to this.

1. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

a. Any philosopher can be labeled either on the basis of aspiration or fact as a kind of philosopher. In fact, it is probably better to do this, if only to avoid the assumption that “philosophy” over its two and a half millennia career has functioned as a univocal term.

THE “SCANDAL OF PHILOSOPHY.”

Wherever two philosophers are gathered together there are at least three mutually exclusive claims. All these cneturies, and more disagreement than agreement.

*from its beginnings, Plato and Aristotle regarded efforts preceding their own as preambles to it.

*there was a time when the “scandal” was thought to be overcome in the notion of Perennial Philosophy, according to which the most diverse and contradictory efforts are actually contributions to a great cumulative effort of the human spirit.

*in more recent times, noteworthy philosophers begin by repudiating previous efforts as misguided, fanciful, false. The historian might think that the history of philosophy began in the 6 th century BC, but the typical modern philosopher in effect announces, “Now we can begin.” E.g. Descartes, Kant, GEMoore, etc etc

*sometimes too the whole enterprise is dismissed as wrongheaded, e.g. Nietzsche, Wittgenstein. What is needed is a kind of therapy to prevent the thing from going on, a therapy which paradoxically generates responses and commentaries that look pretty much like what one was urged to avoid.

B I AM A THOMIST.

*Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274.

*the Thomistic Revival, 1879

e.g. Maritain, St Edith Stein

*Thomas was a theologian, so how can a philosopher characterize himself as a Thomist?

** philosophy and theology

**without philosophy, no theology...is the reverse true?

***praeambula fidei

C CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

*in Fides et Ratio, Pope JP II speaks of what he calls “separate” philosophy (the phrase is not original with him)...

*the phenomenon of secularization

*the charge of Brehier that generated so much talk of Christian Philosophy

*the secularization of the university

We will be discussing Newman on the Idea of a University

*ex corde ecclesiae

We will see that in the dispute over the 39 Articles and admission to Oxford, a religious test continued to be applied, whether sincerely or not.

Does “Christian philosophy” smudge the difference between philosophy and theology understood Thomistically?

Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritain

D DOES THIS HELP?

It is one thing to say that the believer will be influenced by his faith in all that he does, including his intellectual pursuits, with the result that he way he philosophizes will be markedly different from the way in which the secular philosopher does, and quite another to suggest that this addresses our original question: what is a philosopher qua philosopher doing offering a course on two religious thinkers?

The only solution would seem to be that we will have to adopt from time to time a formally theological outlook. Much in our two authors does not require this, but their most important works do. So I will hold myself to be clear as to when and why I am speaking more theologico .

*****

WHY DO WE READ AT ALL?

A silly question if it implies that all reading is alike.

I ask the question with respect to such authors as Newman and Kierkegaard. Why devote some 15 weeks to reading and discussing what these men wrote, and so long ago?

*it might seem self-validating to read writings of two authors who are by common consent giants of the 19 th century. Isn’t curiosity about the past a condition of realizing that one is in the present?

*perhaps. But I have selected these two authors because they address an absolutely fundamental issue, the relation of Christian faith to everything else in our life, particularly the relation of faith and reason.

*Newman is cited in Fides et Ratio as a model for us. For us. A model.

*This suggests an answer to our question as applied to him, and as we shall see it applies to SK in an analogous manner.

Here is my approach: a believer reflects upon his faith and its relation to reason under the guidance of Newman and Kierkegaard.

*this is not a disinterested objective.

**one can profit from a reading of our authors short of this objective.

***but I will be trying to take them seriously in and on their own terms.