Tradition & Historical Consciousness: A Few Random Observations: Part One

Dear reader: I apologize in advance for the disjointed, rambling nature of my next two posts, but my vanity tells me that they are interesting enough and just barely coherent enough to merit publication here.

 Here at the Guild Review one of our abiding interests is the place of tradition in the modern world and in what way we can shape that tradition. The very idea of shaping tradition, however, may seem problematic to some. Most of us reading this blog, I assume, are Catholics, for whom the most important tradition is the deposit of faith, which was complete upon the death of St. John, from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added; it can only be more perfectly understood and expressed by the Church. One is rightfully hesitant to shape that tradition; much safer simply to assist in handing on that deposit of faith to future generations unchanged. As graduates or friends of the University of Dallas, we went to college to learn from the tradition, not necessarily to “shape” it. It is arrogant in the extreme for a youth to think that he will revolutionize any particular field of learning; much better to listen in respect to our elders before setting on a lifelong journey of learning. Finally, the phrase “shaping tradition” also smacks of poorly-disguised novelty, usually imposed upon an indifferent group of people to encourage more “enthusiasm.” How often have we heard school administrators trying to win support for an unpopular program by proclaiming that “the tradition begins now”?

But, hopefully, all of us here would recognize that there is a legitimate place for all of us to “shape” our tradition, to one degree or another. Unfortunately, however, we tend to think of tradition as a culture’s or religion’s roots in history and not as the flower and fruit of the plant which spread the seed and preserve that plant for the future. To understand tradition and how we should shape we need to understand its relation to historical consciousness.

More precisely, we need to develop a historical consciousness that is in harmony, not in conflict, with tradition. Christianity can supply us with that proper understanding of historical consciousness and tradition. In more primitive cultures, tradition is opposed to historical consciousness in the form of myth. According to Mircea Eliade, in a pre-historical culture everything relates back to illud tempus, “that time” when the gods walked the earth. (Eliade uses the phrase “in illo tempore,” which he takes from the customary beginning of the Gospel in the Latin Mass: “At that time [Jesus]…”) Myths are concerned with origins. Any deviation from the example of the gods set forth in the myth is a sin.

Christianity clearly shares some of these qualities of myth. However, there are two crucial distinctions between Christianity and other ancient myths. The first is the distinction that Tolkien explained to C.S. Lewis in 1931: Christianity is a myth, but it is a true myth. And by “true” we of course mean “historically true.” Our God actually did create the world and then entered into that world and performed the actions that form the basis of our Christian myth. For Christians the origin with which we are concerned is not just the creation of the world, but also the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in history. But, as Catholics, each time we attend Mass, we also enter into what Eliade calls “mythical time”: we are present at the un-bloody renewal of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. What happens at Mass is essentially the same event as happened on the cross nearly 2,000 years ago.

The second crucial distinction is that Jesus preached that he would come again at the end of time. He ends the history of this world by judging the living and the dead. Our actions on earth matter—we are not condemned to endless cycles of reincarnation. The time between our origin, redemption, and eschaton has a direction in which we are free to move closer to or further from God. Through the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Second Coming Christianity gives history a movement from beginning to end; eschatology transformed myth into history. Christianity gives history a shape; it is up to us—with God’s grace—to shape our Christian tradition within history.

But, how should a Christian shape a tradition? One way Christians have always shaped their tradition is by reclaiming their principles—their origins—in the creation, redemption, and continuing sanctification of the world. Every time a Christian meditates on the life of Jesus and ponders how to apply that true myth to his life he is shaping the tradition in his own life and those around him. But, Christianity also allows its followers to subject the principles of other cultures and religions to itself; everything that is good can be referred back to Jesus Christ in some way.

An example should make this second way of shaping tradition a bit clearer. In Scholasticism: Problems and Personalities of Medieval Philosophy, Josef Pieper depicts scholasticism as a twofold endeavor: to recover the learning of the ancient world and to synthesize it with Christianity. The barbarian invasions had devastated scholarship in the late Roman Empire and many authors have been lost in part, if not in whole. All this is well known. But, then, in a somewhat surprising move, Pieper compares the project of medieval theologians with the Great Books programs of mid-20th-century America. In both instances, there was sufficient source material, but this source material needed to be catalogued, understood, and finally synthesized. The cultures undertaking these projects were arguably intellectually underdeveloped and in need of spiritual roots to prepare them for them for the role they were to play on the world stage. Both projects sought to rescue the ancient wisdom from the barbarism of the present age.

However, there is one important difference between the intellectual atmospheres of these two periods that needs to be emphasized: in modern America, historical consciousness is far more developed than it was in medieval Europe. Until relatively recently in history, it was possible to be considered learned while having only a very general idea of the past; that is impossible now.

One key effect of this increased historical consciousness is to turn anachronisms into glaring errors. While increased historical consciousness is generally good, it can also overshadow the main point in a novel, a piece of art, or in philosophy. For instance, when he employs examples from etymology, St. Thomas Aquinas loves to explain the origin of the Latin word lapis (“stone”) as a compound of laedere (“injure”) and pes (“foot”). This etymology is, of course, incorrect. But, how many readers will lose trust in Aquinas once they find out inadequate his knowledge of historical linguistics was, even though it really has no bearing on his philosophy? Likewise, it can be more difficult to appreciate past works of art when we recognize their anachronisms. For instance, any visitor to Charlemagne’s cathedral in Aachen with even a minimal knowledge of the history of architecture will notice the incongruity between the original octagonal Romanesque chapel (and its distinct Byzantine influence), the high Gothic apse, and the Baroque side chapel (the Ungarnkapelle). Finally, certain ideas about art become laughable when viewed in their historical context. Opera, for example, began as a pet project of wealthy and learned Florentine noblemen who thought they were reviving ancient Greek music and drama, especially in the form of a singing chorus. This anachronism does nothing to affect the aesthetic value of any particular opera, but it may color moderns’ views of their forebears.

The Everlasting Yea

Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is like Thus Spake Zarathustra, but with a sense of humor.

Sartor Resartus is the effort of an imaginary English translator/editor to describe the life and opinions of a solitary, mysterious German writer named Diogenes Teufelsdröckh ("God-born Devil-dung"), professor of Things-in-General at the University of Weissnichtwo ("don't know where"), residing in his rooms on the Wahngasse ("Madness Street"), and author of the treatise Clothes: Their Origin and Influence. The book, containing pompous "translations" and summaries of Teufelsdröckh's autobiographical scribblings--literally scraps of paper sorted in bags by symbols of the zodiac--and of his magnum opus, is in part a parody of German philosophy in the first half of the 19th century, but also a vehicle for Carlye to expound some of his own opinions.

Carlyle himself seems to have been a proto-existentialist, a branch of philosophy generally associated not with him but with the later Nietzsche. Both the men and their works share important similarities. Both Carlyle and Nietzsche grew up in sternly religious families and were expected to become ministers, but both rejected the faith of their youth. And yet the writings of both men retain a strongly religious feeling. The most striking evidence is that both men make use of hermits to stand for wisdom-seekers in their philosophy. Teufelsdröckh, after being rejected by his true love Blumine roams the world like the Wandering Jew, pursued by his shadow. Zarathustra, on the other hand, remains in solitude on a mountaintop before deciding to re-enter the world. (Interestingly, Nietzsche also used the figure of the wanderer and his shadow, as witness his dialogue Der Wanderer und sein Schatten.)

The most important similarity between Sartor Resartus and Thus Spake Zarathustra, though, is the message at the heart of their existentialist philosophy: each individual must need for affirm the goodness of the world, say yes to it. This is a message that can and should be taken up by Christians, albeit with some modifications, as it was by Josef Pieper in Zustimmung zur Welt. [1]

In the biographical section of Sartor Resartus, Carlyle sets out three states of soul through which Teufelsdröckh passes: The Everlasting No, the Center of Indifference, and the Everlasting Yea. Only in the Everlasting Yea, when he affirms the goodness of the world, does he attain spiritual perfection. The "everlasting No" is not simply rejection of the world, but is also profound defiance. It can best be given in Teufelsdröckh's own words from his conversation with himself during a quasi-mystical experience on the Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer in Paris, when he was sunk in misery after Blumine forsook him to marry a mutual friend:

Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do again against thee! Hast thou not a heart: canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!"

In the Everlasting No, the individual is totally alienated and is thrown back upon his own freedom. In the midst of his despair, he decides to face death with nothing but his own will power to aid him.

The Center of Indifference marks an intermediate stage through which souls pass from the everlasting Yea to the everlasting No. The soul is still sick, but is also recovering from the defiant despair by which he has been afflicted up until now; the worst symptoms are now in remission. Or, as Teufelsdröckh's English editor describes it, in terms of demonic possession:

We should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out [of Teufelsdröckh], but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state.

Only the everlasting Yea marks the decisive break with despair and defiance. Teufelsdröckh's account of his conversion bears quoting in full in his hyperbolic, exaggeratedly Germanic and professorial style:

Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it...there is in man a Higher than Love of Happiness; he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach-forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, ahve spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, though life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.

What is noteworthy about this passage is that Teufelsdröckh preaches something higher than happiness, for happiness would be too selfish. Instead, he preaches blessedness in the form of annihilation of the self. Love of God, and affirmation of the world, are one and the same thing, but they entail annihilation of the self. The result of this affirmation is to be "borne aloft into the azure of Eternity." The sense of disappearing into God and nature--if there is even a distinction in Carlyle's mind--is palpable here.

However, even though all three writers believe that affirmation of the world is necessary, they all differ from each in exactly how they affirm the goodness of the world. Nietzsche sings the glory of affirmation in poems and rhapsodic prose in Zarathustra, and even states in one of his posthumously published aphorisms: "To have joy in anything, one must approve everything." But in his post-Zarathustra writings it is not quite clear whether he actually can affirm the goodness of the world. He writes his autobiography and calls himself the "Antichrist." Nietzsche may claim that he just wants to affirm the world, but it seems that he is really more of a rebel, defiant in his despair, and angry at the Christian God. As Romano Guardini says of Nietzsche, his portrayal of the perfect man as a "man who can dance" on the surface of nothingness is a Sehnsuchtsbild, a projection of his longing to attain a freedom of spirit and affirmation of the world that he could never actually achieve himself. [2] The man who wanted to overcome himself tragically could not overcome the Everlasting No.

Carlyle reaches a more authentic affirmation than Nietzsche, but he is so full of irony that it can sometimes be hard to tell whether he secretly harbors reservations. On the positive side, his humor can be seen as a sign that he has come to accept the world. He can call the young Teufelsdröckh by the diminutive "Gneschen"! Nietzsche never could have written about a spiritual hero and called him by the nickname "Thustralein." Carlyle's English "editor" can also point out flaws in his author's style and organization, and even criticize some of his opinions. The sometimes flippant humor shows that he is not in continuous agony, like Nietzsche.

Moreover, Carlyle recognizes that our very existence is a miracle. This is one of Carlyle's core beliefs, and one which forms the basis of his affirmation of the world. He repeats this belief in clearer form in his essay on Odin in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History: "This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think it." (Carlyle also holds that wonder at the divinity of nature is the chief characteristic of paganism--strikingly similar to G.K. Chesteron's views.)

On the other hand, Carlyle's irony may signal that he still feels some detachment from the world. One wonders at times whether the irony really indicates that Carlyle cannot but view the wanderings and despair of Teufelsdröckh with quiet ridicule. He may still be stuck in the Center of Indifference.

Furthermore, Carlyle was strongly influenced by German Idealism and its undercurrent of pantheism. While he was not a full-pledged pantheist, there are times when Carlyle blurs the distinction between God and nature. Moreover, in the tradition of earlier mystics, Carlyle also views happiness as an annihilation of self. In a later essay on Mohammad (also in On Heroes), he states: "Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our Earth." This equation of denial of self--what Christ has called all his followers to practice--with annihilation of self--a false form of immanentism rampant in German Idealism--sets up a contradictory relationship to the world. If one hopes for one's self to be annihilated, how can one also affirm the goodness of the world? The two are not compatible--so long as one wishes to remain part of this world. An orthodox Christian, on the other hand, denies himself so that he can follow Christ more obediently and ascend to the source of this beautiful world with Him, not to be annihilated, even in the beatific vision. [3]

Only Pieper, with his characteristic serenity--remarkable for a man who lived through some of the most turbulent times in a country at the center of the last century's upheavals--seems to have actually assented to the world and reached the truly Everlasting Yea. And it is obvious from the types of books he wrote: a Theory of Festivity as well as Happiness and Contemplation; he wrote about affirming the goodness of the world without the rancor of Nietzsche or the irony of Carlyle. In a world turned upside down and full of fashionable sophists like Sartre who called being born absurd, he undertook the difficult task of explaining why the world was good, and why we should say "yes" to it. What made it possible for Pieper to attain the everlasting Yea was his belief in a transcendent God who does not demand self-annihilation as a prerequisite to happiness (or blessedness), as opposed to the quasi-Spinozan God of Teufelsdröckh and Carlyle. For Pieper, who saw himself as developing the key concept of Kreatürlichkeit ("creatureliness") he found in St. Thomas Aquinas, existence was even more of a miracle than for Carlyle--the free act of a Creator who was under no compulsion to make the world. Only with his belief in a transcendent God who created and redeemed the world could Pieper say, "Lord, it is good that I am here!"

The Everlasting Yea, in its sublimest form, is a fundamental affirmation of the goodness of the world and of its Creator. And for each of these authors, the Everlasting Yea is the source of any spiritual serenity they experienced.

[1] Pieper's book is available in English translation as In Tune with the World, but I hesitate to call it by that title because it is a mistranslation of the German: Zustimmung means affirmation, assent, agreement, or approval; it implies an active decision to say "yes" to something, not a passive surrender.

[2] Romano Guardini, Vom Sinn der Schwermut (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 2003), p. 24.

[3] Readers interested on the question of pantheism should consult Thomas Molnar, God and the Knowledge of Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

Josef Pieper: The Other’s Right (V)

And to conclude Josef Pieper Week here on the Guild Review...continued from Part IV:


Our topic, however, as we said, is not man’s relationship to God, but justice in men’s relationships to each other. Here there are also debts which by their very nature cannot be paid. For example, I cannot one moment say to my mother: Now we’re even! A mother, parents, or whoever is in their place—they also cannot be perfectly compensated and paid back. Once again, because justice, strictly speaking, is not achieved in this case, another attitude appears to take its place, if things proceed correctly, as a replacement and makeshift aid, so to speak. The ancients called this attitude pietas—for which the word “piety” is not at all a precise translation. Yet the main concern is that what is meant by pietas is clear; what is meant is the inward acceptance and the outward recognition of the fact that every man owes certain people a debt he is not capable of paying. Now, I think I could dare make the assertion that in the currently prevailing idea of justice among men, the concept of pietas is not to be found, and that the attempt to rehabilitate this virtue would be connected to very far-reaching prerequisites. Pietas, for example, can develop as an element of communal life only when the devastated region of “authority” can regain its proper place. Everyone knows that this is a barely manageable task.

This task could appear nearly hopeless when one takes into consideration a third concept, which according to the ancient doctrine of justice also aims at an attitude that is proper to man and should be demanded of him, and which is another response to an unpayable debt. Even the name used to designate this concept is now lost. The Latin term is observantia; dictionaries translate it as Ehrerbietigkeit [roughly “deference” or “reverence”], a term which nobody uses in real life. But, what is meant by it?

The following is meant: The individual, in his private existence, is always dependent on the meaningful, or just, administration of public offices, such as that of a judge or of a teacher, as well as of any other; it is only then that the individual lives in an ordered community (which by no means happens automatically). But the individual then contracts a debt, which he cannot actually pay to those holders of public office.

So, to repeat, when justice cannot be achieved, another attitude must make take its place: that of observantia, i.e., respect which is consciously accepted and expressed, which says: I owe you something which I can’t properly pay back, and I am letting you know that I know that! But of course, it goes without saying that the findings described here extend well beyond the circle of holders of public office; in almost all human services there is something for which the person who profits from them cannot, strictly speaking, pay. Neither the friendliness of a waiter nor the reliability of a housemaid can be compensated fully, so that as a result what is strictly due has been rendered. And that is where observantia must take the place of justice which cannot be fully achieved, which lets the other person know: I am indebted to you; I know it and I recognize it.

This is the point at which to close our remarks with a question. The question is as follows: Must not life among men necessarily become inhuman when the individual, for whatever reason, does not come to understand himself as someone who is in debt to and has been given gifts by God and man? This might sound a little Romantic and even “bizzare.” But what is meant is something very realistic.

To make my point clear, I would like to remind you of an episode from Helmut Gollwitzer’s account of his imprisonment “...And lead you where you do not want,” a true story. It deals with a work squad made up of German POWs who are supposed to carry out a certain task in the primeval forest of Siberia and may expect bonus rations if they carry out the task on or ahead of schedule. It so happens that they really do receive the extra rations, but that a part of the group (Gollwitzer calls them the “old prisoners,” which means those who were already inwardly acclimatized)—that the “old prisoners” want to deny a share of the bonus to the sick, who could not work at all or only in part. They could no longer, says Gollwitzer, understand our appeal to our common humanity and comradeship; but we, the “new prisoners,” could not yet understand their merciless calculation of what was due to them.

So, to repeat the question: Must not life among men necessarily become inhuman once you try to understand and especially construct and live it based on one point of view: What is my due?

Josef Pieper: The Other’s Right (IV)

...continued from Part III:

Now, in a few closing remarks, we must speak of justice’s limits. Even “restitution” which is always renewed does not suffice in certain significant cases, according to the ancients, to realize a just order even for a moment. Justice simply is not enough to keep man’s world working. Once again it must be said: In this thought there is an entire world view, a belief that penetrates to the roots of man’s communal life, as well as not just between one man and another. One element of this world view could be formulated in the following way: There are debts which by their very nature cannot be paid. There is a creditor, and a debtor, and a debt; but the debtor cannot satisfy it. And precisely when he wants to, when he (in other words) is just; when he, as the classical definition states, has the constant will to give what is due to those with whom he has to deal—precisely then he will realize his impotence especially keenly. And when someone asks further, what kind of relationships in concreto entail such unpayable debts, he receives the answer: those relationships which support our very existence.

It will not much surprise anyone that the ancients speak here in the first place of man’s relationship to God. This naturally lies beyond the topic at hand. However, it is worth it to consider man’s relationship to God for a moment; for in that relationship is realized the paradigm of a debt that in principle cannot be satisfied.

Although the great teachers of Christendom (of course) never said that man is simply nothing before God, it is nevertheless an obvious truth for them that everything which could be due to man from God is preceded by a gift. And this gift can in no way be satisfied and “made good again.” (This is a figure of speech in my hometown of Münster: when someone does another person a favor, he is then asked: “How can I make this up to you, how can I make this good again for you?”)

Now this gift (of mere existence, the donum creationis) we can in principle never make up to God. It is absolutely unthinkable that man could turn to God one moment and rightly say: Now we’re even! To be even means: to have paid off one’s debts. Being even is the state at which justice aims. One can say: Justice, strictly speaking, does not appear in man’s relationship to God. In men’s relationships among each other there is also something just like that (about which we will speak in a second). But we should stay just a little longer with the paradigm of man’s relationship to God. Here it becomes quite clear that and how something else must take the place of justice when it cannot be achieved, an attitude that could be something like a way out, a makeshift aid, a replacement.

The ancients have a name for this attitude which, in man’s relationship to God, makes its appearance when justice cannot be achieved: religio; I am leaving the Latin expression untranslated for a reason (because the world “religion” would immediately provoke or encourage a swarm of inevitable misunderstandings); it is not the phenomenon of worship, dogma, and church that is meant; what is meant, rather, is religio as an attitude of man toward God. The logical connection, the link to the topic of “justice” is this: only when someone on the basis of his relationship to God has recognized and “realized” that there is a discrepancy he simply cannot get rid of, which consists of a debt, a debitum, which by its very nature cannot in principle be settled or paid off—only then and because of this can the inner structure of the religious act (adoration, dedication, sacrifice) become at all understandable, much less able to be carried out. What perhaps also becomes understandable (or more understandable) is the quality of the exuberant and excessive, which according to purely rational observation is the so-called “kookiness,” which as a matter of fact is proper to all religious acts. Why, like the Greeks, should we pour the first sip of wine out of the chalice onto the ground or into the sea—even though maybe only this one glass of wine is still available and even though the gods obviously do not profit from it?! This seemingly “irrational” behavior stems from embarrassment and helplessness: a man knows that it is impossible to do what actually must be done, and for that reason he makes the “impossible” attempt, in some symbolic way, “to do enough,” to do satisfaction, by pouring away, burning, or destroying something valuable, for example, in a sacrifice.

Josef Pieper: The Other’s Right (III)

...continued from Part II:

Before I do that, however, one more rather aphoristic observation on another point of the ancient doctrine of justice which, so it seems, should surely arouse more curiosity than it usually does. I mean the name by which the fundamental act of justice is generally named. Its name is: restitutio, a restoration, then, a giving back, a reparation, a “making-good-again.”

One might ask: What does this “again” actually mean? Yes, when someone gives something back which he unjustly took for his own, or when someone compensates, or tries to compensate, for damage or an injustice he inflicted on someone else—we then speak of restitutio, of making good again; this is a clear case. But according to the ancients the giving of what is due always has, in every case, the character of restitution; surprisingly so, one thinks. But in reality this same surprise is hidden in the common phrase according to which justice consists of giving to each man what is due to him. Schopenhauer posed the question: “When it is his, why must someone first still give it to him?” How (in other words) can something be “his” and at the same time be something that must be given to him, and so obviously something that he has not yet come to possess or no longer has?

The realization of justice really does seem to presuppose that the state which is actually proper to the essence of human community, which for that reason can also be considered the original or “paradisiacal” (so to speak), does not exists (or: no longer exists), that it has been upset and must therefore be restored after the event. That upsetting must not necessarily be understood as the infringement of one’s rights. Every human action “upsets” in a certain sense the condition at a certain time, the static condition of balance. Goethe, to whom is attributed the saying that “[t]o become a man means learning to be unjust”—Goethe says (in Elective Affinities): “A man may withdraw from life into oneself as much as possible, but before he knows it, he has become a debtor or a creditor.” But inasmuch as this happens (that men, simply by being active, continuously contract debts with each other), the challenge comes ever closer to us, to “restore” the condition of balance by rendering and paying what we owe.

Yet it is not to point out these more or less trivial and obvious facts that I lay my finger on the concept of restitution. Rather, I wonder whether this concept, upon which the ancients insist with an odd exclusivity, might not imply a certain, very general idea of the form of all historical action, namely the conviction that in human society the state of everyone being quits with everyone else, of a complete balance of demand and payment, i.e. of justice, can never be definitively “set up” once for all; that rather this state must always be restored “anew,” iterato; that, in other words, the reductio ad aequalitatem, which occurs through restitution, is in principle an unending task. By this we are to understand that what on first appearance is so unimpressive, that the lack of finality, the provisional, the makeshift, constant repairs and patch-up jobs simply belong to the essence of man’s historical activity and to the fundamental condition of the world he has been entrusted with, whereas the militant assertion of exactly defined plans or from final eschatological orders, whereby justice on earth should be established and produced once for all, must of necessity lead to inhumanity (which in fact has been clearly confirmed by mankind’s not inadequate experience).

This is, one will admit, an all-encompassing view of the world and history, a conception of a certain explosive relevance today. But it is precisely this conception, I believe, which lies hidden behind the old, perhaps all too harmless, pedantic-sounding teaching, according to which the fundamental act of justice possesses the inner form of restitution, of making good again.

Josef Pieper: The Other’s Right (II)

...continued from Part I:

Obviously, in such times as these we cannot dispense ourselves from discussing the most profound and ultimate justification for the inviolability of what is due to man; of course, it is not enough that it be discussed; rather, by using every means available for something like this, society must be made aware and kept aware of the insight that something is inviolably due man, because behind man stands a tribunal beyond all human discussion; because, to say it differently and more clearly, man is created by God as a person. This and nothing else is the lone, ultimately valid justification for the inviolability of the obligation to justice. This of course does not mean that an “atheist” cannot be just, just as it does not mean that “theists” must be especially just. We need not waste another word about that.

Yet, if that ultimate reason for the obligation to justice really were to disappear completely from man’s consciousness, something could happen that no longer seems utterly beyond our experience: not only will the executioner not know and not want to know why something is due to his victim, but also the victim will potentially no longer be able to explain why he is suffering injustice.

One may not object that such a grounding of the obligation to justice by falling back upon an absolute authority is something specifically Christian or theological. Indeed, the very same Asian, who was a member of the UNESCO Commission explained that though the phrase “human rights” does not appear in his language and tradition, the matter it concerns does—this Chinaman quoted to his colleagues a sentence, which, as I can well imagine, was received with some puzzlement, and which was taken from the millennia-old “Book of History”: “Heaven loves the people, and the ruler must obey heaven.” That is, as one sees, essentially the same foundation for the obligation to justice known to the Christian-Western tradition, in which it has found a particularly clear and profound formulation, but not at all only in doctrines of justice based on theological arguments. The following sentence, for example, expresses the same thought: “We have a holy ruler, and that which he has given to men as holy is men’s right.” This sentence, however, is not to be found in a theological Summa from the thirteenth century, but rather in Immanuel Kant’s lecture on ethics, who thereby also teaches that man’s right requires, as its final guarantee, a refuge in an absolute, divine ground.

I said, when the old doctrine of justice spoke of right, then it meant “the other’s right,” and nothing besides that. Justitia est ad alterum; this sentence, according to which justice essentially has to do with the other, has more than just one aspect. Surprisingly, for example, this otherness is to be taken much more precisely and literally than one would immediately suspect. It is indeed this, it is said, which distinguishes the structure of justice from the situation of love: the partner formally confronts me “as” other.

Of course, there is another concept of justice which does not exclude love, just as there is a concept of love which includes that of justice. Whoever grasps the distinguishing characteristic, the differentia specifica, must simply see that love has nothing to do with an “other” or with a “stranger,” but with someone who belongs and is bound to him; lovers do not say to each other: “This is due to me, and that to you.” Rather, they say: “All of this is ours.” Lovers give each other gifts; the act of justice, however, is not the giving of a gift, but the paying of a debt. When the ancients insist on this distinction, not only a need for conceptual exactness is in play, but a completely illusion-free idea of reality as well. To be just means: to recognize exactly where one cannot love. This is precisely what the demand contained in this picture of justice signifies: confirm the other in his otherness and help him to obtain what is due to him.

Spelling out what is apparently obvious will not appear superfluous once one remembers that the term “liquidation” has entered into men’s mental vocabulary—and not just the concept, but the reality. “Liquidation” signifies not so much a punishment, or even an execution; “liquidation” means: extermination because of otherness. And it would be, I believe, simply unrealistic, not to acknowledge that this impulse—“whoever is different must be liquidated”—shapes and threatens man’s thought like a poison, or at least as a temptation, perhaps ever since the beginning of the world, perhaps ever since Cain, but especially in our own time. That is the reason why it is still important to name the most elementary components of the ancient concepts of “justice” and to keep them present in our minds. It is the “other,” indeed the “stranger,” who is explicitly meant as the partner of the man who is called to justice—the man who actually “stands off at a distance” or also the man who is mentally perceived as a “stranger,” the man who perhaps unintentionally makes his appearance as our competitor or as a threat to my own interests, to whom it would never occur to me to give a gift, against whom I must hold firm and assert myself: To give even him what is due to him, not more, but not less—that is the achievement of justice.

If one considers the matter from the other shore (so to speak), from the side of the receiver, of the man with a right, then the distinction between the gifted and the debtor proves to be quite acute. Everyone knows the formula: I don’t want any charity, I want my right—whether it deals concretely with the Christmas bonus or foreign aid for development. Even the one who is “gifted” (in quotation marks!) feels that he has been unjustly treated; he wants nothing more than what is due him; but he wants everything that is due. Perhaps he is not wrong.

Yet it is just as evident that we have unintentionally touched upon the most sensitive points of man’s communal life. The inability and the refusal to accept a gift; the unwillingness to show gratitude (why should one express thanks when he is only being paid what is due him?)—all these are after all somewhat problematic things. But in all of them there arises a concern about first principles, namely the question whether perhaps justice, however much it forms the metallic core of all communal life, could nevertheless not be enough for the realization of a truly human existence among men. As a matter of fact, the ancients are of the opinion that justice is not sufficient. (I will have a word to say about this at the end of this reflection.)

Josef Pieper: The Other’s Right (I)

Note: The other day I was going through some old files from my time in Germany and I found this translation of a lecture by Josef Pieper on the nature of justice and human rights. I’m not exactly sure anymore why I went to the trouble of translating it (other than that I really like Pieper), but I think that some of our readers might appreciate it. It’s a bit long, so it will appear in five parts.

The original text is Josef Pieper, “Das Recht des Anderen,” in Über die Schwierigkeit, heute zu glauben. Aufsätze und Reden (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1974), pp. 224-242.

In the years immediately following the Second World War, as is well known, a UNESCO committee was assigned the task of preparing a new formulation of “human rights.” During the committee’s consultations something strange, but noteworthy, happened. The Chinese delegate, a philosophy professor from the not yet Communist China, brought it to the committee’s attention that his country’s language did not even have a word for what they were discussing; the concept of “human rights” was not found in the Chinese tradition. What was meant by the term was, of course, not a completely foreign idea, but was viewed from a different perspective. From which perspective, I will speak about that in just a minute.

I suspect that this information—which was presented with obvious embarrassment—caused not a little wonder; perhaps a few more or less plausible historical-sociological explanations were immediately available. It seems to me, though, that we should not brush this matter aside too quickly. What is actually worth consideration is that the matter does not look all that different in our own great European intellectual tradition. The ancient doctrine of justice (whether we ask Plato—who is not just anyone; the Harvard philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has called all of Western philosophy a collection of footnotes to Plato, which is a little too extreme for me—whether we ask Plato or Aristotle or Cicero or Augustine or the law book of the Roman Empire, the Corpus Juris Civilis, or the great teachers of medieval Christendom)—the ancient doctrine of justice spoke very emphatically of what was inviolably due to each man; but by the same token it also never developed a doctrine of “human rights,” at any rate not formally.

It would be quite meaningful, it seems, to recall a few aspects of this doctrine of justice—forgotten, but especially relevant today—in an essay which will necessarily be more aphoristic than systematic.

The “ancients” (by which of course I mean not the dead, but the “greats,” the great witnesses especially of our own tradition), the ancients, when they speak of justice, never consider the man who has a right, but rather the man who has a duty. The just man’s concern, they say, is to give what is due, not actually to receive it; and to be deceived about what is due to oneself is something completely different from withholding, detracting from, or taking away what is due to another person. “This sentence has already been repeated many times,” says Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, “but it can always be repeated without harm: the man who commits injustice is worse off than the man who suffers injustice.”

The ancient doctrine of justice is, once more, not primarily a statement of rights, to which one is entitled and should lay claim; rather, it is the statement and explanation of obligations, of rights to be respected—whereas the later, more familiar doctrine of human rights, does not appear to focus on the man with obligations, but on the man with rights. Of course, obligations and the man who is obliged are not completely neglected, just as the man with rights is not completely neglected in the old doctrine of justice. However, there is an unmistakable, characteristic shifting of the accent—it may be hard to interpret, but it is still worth taking notice of it.

This shifting of the accent forces itself upon one, with no special attention necessary, if one just leafs through the Declaration of Human Rights passed by the UN: “Every man is entitled to. . ., every man has a right to. . . life, freedom, security, the protection of the law, to freedom of movement, to freedom of assembly, to work, to relaxation,” and so forth. This obvious change in perspective, whatever it might imply and however it should be interpreted, interests us not for the sake of a moralistic and quite problematic praise of “the good old days.” Of course, it begs the question whether the proclamation of rights, which appears so aggressive at first, does not rather come from a basically defensive attitude, or even one of resignation—because, strictly speaking, justice belongs only to those who are capable of granting or denying what is due, through which action each person receives what is his due. Is it not more daring and aggressive, but also more realistic, to make room for this old view of justice by attempting to activate the person who is obliged to fulfill a duty, that is, everyone? Such an attempt will naturally lead to nothing, if one limits oneself to talk. It depends on presenting, in a convincing way, the basis for obligation and the inviolability of what is due.

For according to the ancients justice is essentially something second; it depends on a condition and rests on a foundation: someone else is there, to whom something is inviolably due. One can also formulate it this way: When the ancients speak of a right, then it is always and exclusively the “other’s right” which they mean. The question why, how, and on what grounds something is due to the other, every other person with whom I deal—this question is very decisively answered in their doctrine of justice and with a radicalness which both appears worth thinking about and which it is possibly vital to recover. Finally, in our recurring experience, the appeal to “human rights” does not achieve anything. And insofar as human nature is understood as the ultimate justification of this right, it is no wonder that it is so. Of course, Nikolai Hartmann is right when he says that justice has to do with respecting “the person’s sphere of freedom”; and, of course, something is inviolably due man because he is a “person,” i.e. a being that by nature exists for the sake of its own fulfillment. Nevertheless, these are not ultimate, but penultimate justifications; and falling back on them is simply not enough today—today, that means in an age, in which extreme denials [of the other's right] have emerged and in which, not merely because of a purely empirical barbarization of power but because of programmatic theories, man is treated as if he were not due anything.

Contemptus Mundi

A contempt of the world, which is dominated by fear of weariness and of sorrow, of disease and of old age, is but an asceticism of the blasé, born of disillusion and of satiety. It has nothing in common with religion but its terminology.
--Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages

Josef Pieper, in In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, writes that true festivity is based upon an affirmation of the ultimate goodness of the world. However, just as one might mimic festivity in a perverted way, such as by overindulging in alcohol, so too one might mimic asceticism in a perverted way, such as by overindulging in tears. True asceticism, just like true festivity, is based upon an affirmation of the ultimate goodness of the world.

Josef Pieper, Agnosticism & "The Sense for Mystery"

At the end of his post on the movie Pi, Aaron briefly mentions agnosticism, and suggests that most self-declared agnostics have simply never made any effort to ask the big questions about the meaning of the cosmos. Even if we will not reach conclusive answers, we need to ask the questions, and not take the easy way out by calling ourselves agnostics. This brought to mind a book I read recently, which made precisely this point: Josef Pieper's For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy.

Pieper was a 20th-century German Thomist whose work has been discussed on this site before, and who always deserves more attention. What made Pieper stand out from many of his fellow Thomists was that while he always maintained a realist outlook, he placed great emphasis on the limits of knowledge. For instance, in The Silence of St. Thomas, Pieper demonstrated how Aquinas incorporated the via negativa of Pseudo-Dionysius into the core of his own work. Pieper always placed in the foreground of his writing the paradox that things are intelligible in themselves because they have been created by God, but are not comprehensible by our intellect because God's intellect surpasses ours by so much. Here is a quotation from part VI of "A Plea for Philosophy" that explains this paradox:

The sentence "omne ens est verum" [everything that is is true]. . .has two aspects. The one enables us to recognize an ever deepening access to all existing things; the other, the impossibility of ever reaching rock bottom. Both aspects. . .are empirically verifiable facts. That, however, both may be traced back to the same origin; that they are even in a certain sense identical; that, more specifically, the things are, taken for themselves, knowable in their ultimate constitution because they originate in the infinite brightness of the divine logos and that they are at the same time unfathomable to us precisely because they originate in the infinite brightness of the divine logos--this is not empirically verifiable.

This paradox leads Pieper to the conclusion that, in the face of our inability to comprehend the meaning of the cosmos, agnosticism is not enough. This paradox should instead lead us to wonder, awe, and a "sense for mystery":

Now, what is meant here by mystery is not something exclusively negative and more than simply what is obscure. In fact, when understood more precisely, mystery does not imply obscurity at all. It connotes light, but a light of such plenitude that it remains "unquenchable" for a knowing faculty or a linguistic capacity that is merely human. The notion of mystery should not suggest that the effort involved in thinking runs up against a wall but rather that this effort exhausts itself in the unforeseeable, in the space--the unlimited breadth and depth--of creation.

We never will find all the right answers to the big questions. Nevertheless, that should not prevent us from setting out on the journey.

Work, Prayer and Leisure

The other day I was kneeling in my pew before the start of mass. Having said all I had to say to God, I sat down to await the entrance of the priest. And that is when I realized that I had just spent the last five minutes telling the Lord about the two different approaches to my research status report and why a lot of footnotes would really make sense in this particular case.

Now perhaps this was simply an example of me being too tired and too caught up in my studies to focus on my prayer. In fact, I am rather certain that explains at least part of my strange conversation with the Almighty. But I would like to suggest that there may have been something else at work as well.

Some years ago I was creating a folder on my computer for all of my school papers and things. Following the example of "My Documents" I named this one "My Work." But after a time I came to see my studies as far more than monotonous labor, or even passably interesting labor. I came to see it as a calling, and I renamed the folder "My Prayer." You see, for me, studying is not simply something I do; it is existentially part of who I am. Thus, when, on my good days, I offer my studies to the Lord, I am giving Him myself. Not all of us are called to be academics, but all of us have a calling, a vocation, and not just in the sense of married life or religious life. We all have passions, talents, things we love to do; many of us will find ourselves making a career out of them. Offered to God, this can be more than work; it can be prayer.

Related to, but separate from, this line of thought, I would like to propose another. Studying is, for me, not really work at all, but leisure. Oh, of course, there are those days when I am not keen on reading yet another article on the gendering of intercolonial trade in 18th century Burmudan literature, but on the whole, study is a kind of leisure. It is not just a matter of numbers - that a majority of the time I enjoy rather than loath my studies, and therefore they must be leisure - but something more fundamental.

Josef Pieper defines leisure as "an attitude of mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world." I have neither the time nor the desire to flesh out his whole argument here, so I suggest you pick up a copy of Leisure, the Basis of Culture, one of the great works of the 20th century. In it he contends that religion can only be born of leisure, wherein man finds the time to contemplate Nature and the Divine.

Now, admittedly, the mechanics of footnotes is not quite the same thing as contemplation of the Divine. Still, study is - or at least ought to be - oriented to a right perception of the reality of the world. And who better to tell about my halting attempts to understand the world than its Maker?