Catholic Corner – Maverick Philosopher

Trump versus Prevost: Crudity versus Blather

Donald J. Trump issued a disgusting tweet on Easter Sunday morning. I commented on it in Political Polarization in the Age of Trump. But I fail to see the value of Pope Leo’s pious performative Easter Sunday response.

The pope continued with words directed at the current conflict in the Middle East: “The peace that Jesus gives us is not merely the silence of weapons, but the peace that touches and transforms the heart of each one of us!… Let those who have weapons lay them down!

If you threw down your weapons before Hitler, he would not be moved to do likewise, but kill you on the spot on the ground that you had thereby demonstrated your physiological decadence and unfitness for life in the only world there is. Something very similar holds for the Muslim thugs of Iran. It is utter folly to project into others one’s own values and attitudes, as if we are all the same ‘deep down’ or all ‘really want the same things.’ Bellicosity is hard-wired into some. Thugs, whether born that way or socialized into it, have no regard for your tender-hearted love of humanity.

The Islamo-theocrats have vowed to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization, and have proven their intent through countless horrific acts over many years. They cannot be reached by Prevostian pieties. And there is no small hypocrisy in Leo’s decidedly unleonine mouthings. Would he not call upon the armed might of the Italian state to crush any jihadis who descended on Vatican City to destroy its people and its treasures? Would he allow their slaughter and its destruction?

I discuss the problem in detail in Morality Private and Public. The essay concludes with some penetrating observations of Hannah Arendt from “Truth and Politics” in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245:

The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked “to do as much evil as they please”), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with “what is good for themselves” cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the “common good,” the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension between man qua philosopher or Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher and a Christian, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic “Better to suffer wrong than to do it” and the Christian “Resist not the evildoer.” But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as a citizen. As a citizen, I cannot unrestrictedly “welcome the stranger” as the New Testament enjoins, the stranger who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug smuggler or a human trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I must not aid and abet his law-breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger’s lawbreaking, I would not be “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops and others who seek to inject a particular personal morality into the public sphere.

Intentionality in Thomas and Husserl and the Question of Realism

This entry raises the question whether Husserl’s theory of intentionality supports the sort of realism Thomists embrace. I argue that it doesn’t.

My Serbian correspondent Milosz sent me a reference to an article in Commonweal in which we read:

What attracted these Catholics to Husserl was his theory of intentionality—the notion that human consciousness is always consciousness “of” something. This appealed to Catholics because it appeared to open a way beyond the idealism of modern philosophy since Kant, which had threatened to undermine the possibility that human beings could possess an objective knowledge of realities outside the mind, including God.

Husserl’s phenomenology seemed to offer a solution to this problem. His promise to return “to the things themselves” sounded to many Catholics like a vindication of medieval scholasticism, which stressed that human beings have the capacity to objectively know reality independent of the mind. This led some Catholics to dub phenomenology a “new scholasticism.” By pointing “beyond” modern philosophy, they hoped that phenomenology could also serve as a path “back” to medieval thought, so that one might begin from the perspective of modern philosophy and end up somewhere closer to Thomas Aquinas. Husserl’s phenomenology thus opened up the possibility that modern, secular philosophy could be converted to Catholicism.

The Commonweal article is annoyingly superficial, and the last sentence quoted is just silly. Do I need to explain why? At the very most, Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality prior to the publication in 1913 of Ideas I could be interpreted as supportive of realism, and was so interpreted by many of his early acolytes, among them, the members of the Göttingen and Munich circles. And so in some very vague sense, Husserlian intentionality could be taken as pointing back, via Franz Brentano, to medieval thought and to Thomas Aquinas in particular, assuming one doesn’t know much about Thomas or Husserl. But the claim that “Husserl’s phenomenology thus opened up the possibility that modern, secular philosophy could be converted to Catholicism” is risible.

Undiluted Roman Catholicism consists of extremely specific theological doctrines. No one could reasonably hold that a realistically interpreted Husserl could soften secular philosophers up for Trinity, Incarnation, Virgin Birth, Transubstantiation, Papal Infallibility, etc. (I will note in passing that it was the promulgation of the Infallibility doctrine that triggered Brentano’s leaving of the priesthood.) The most that could be said is that the (merely apparent) realism of the early Husserl was welcomed by Catholic thinkers. In any case, Husserl was not a realist, but a transcendental idealist as I will argue below.

But now let’s get down to brass tacks with a little help from Peter Geach. I will first sketch the intentionality doctrine of Thomas. It will then become apparent, if you know your Husserl, that there is nothing like the Thomistic doctrine in Husserl. In the second main section I will explain how Husserl’s theory differs and how it leads him to transcendental idealism.

A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts and perceptions is possible. How do our thoughts and perceptions reach things in reality ‘outside’ the mind? Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular cat of my acquaintance who I have named ‘Max Black.’ How are we to understand the relation between my mental act of thinking, which is a transient datable event in my mental life, and its object, the cat I am thinking of? What makes my thinking of Max a thinking of Max? Or perhaps Max is in front of me and I am not merely thinking about him but seeing him. What makes my seeing a seeing of him? What makes these mental acts, whether of sense or intellect, take an object, and not just any object, but the very object they do take? Please note that, while I have set up the problem as one concerning the relation of intentionality, it is not obvious that intentionality is a relation sensu stricto as we will see in a moment.

1. Intentionality in Thomas Aquinas

Here is what Peter Geach has to say, glossing Aquinas:

What makes a sensation or thought of an X to be of an X is that it is an individual occurrence of that very form or nature which occurs in X — it is thus that our mind ‘reaches right up to the reality’; what makes it to be a sensation or thought of an X rather than an actual X or an actual X-ness is that X-ness here occurs in the special way called esse intentionale and not in the ‘ordinary’ way called esse naturale. This solution resolves the difficulty. It shows how being of an X is not a relation in which the thought or sensation stands, but is simply what the thought or sensation is . . . .(Three Philosophers, Cornell UP, 1961, p. 95)

But what the devil does that mean? Allow me to explain.

The main point here is that of-ness or aboutness is not a relation between a mental act and its object. Thus intentionality is not a relation that relates my occurrent thinking of Max and Max. My thinking of Max just is the immaterial occurrence in my mind of the very same form or nature — felinity — which occurs physically and thus materially in Max. One and the same form occurs immaterially in my mind and materially in Max. The form itself is as it were ‘amphibious’ as between these two different modes of realization.

Aquinas, following Aristotle, views a concrete spatiotemporal particular such as Max as a hylomorphic compound, a compound of (substantial) form and (signate) matter. Old Max himself, fleas and all, is of course not in my mind, let alone in my head. It is his form alone that is in my mind. ‘In my mind,’ of course, is not to be taken spatially. If felinity informs my mind, however, why isn’t my mind a cat?

Here is where the distinction between esse intentionale and esse naturale comes in. One and the same form — felinity — exists in two different ways or modes. The form’s mode of being in my mind is esse intentionale while its mode of being in Max is esse naturale. You will note that the Thomistic doctrine of intentionality presupposes what I call the MOB-doctrine, namely, the theory that there are modes of being. Said doctrine is hardly obvious and is widely denied by distinguished contemporaries. I myself am open to the MOB-doctrine.

Because my thinking of Max just is the intentional occurrence in my mind of the same form or nature that occurs naturally in Max, there is no problem about how my thought reaches Max. There is no gap between mind and world. One could call the Thomistic theory an identity theory of intentionality, or better, an ‘isomorphic’ theory. One and the same form occurs in the mind and in the thing but in two different ways: with esse intentionale in the mind but with esse reale/naturale in the thing. This isomorphism insures that the knower is not enclosed within the circle of his ideas and cut off from the world. It puts paid to the ‘gap problem’ that bedevils post-Cartesian philosophy. For Thomas, there is a metaphysically antecedent community of nature between mind and world that underwrites the latter’s intelligibility to the former. Extramental beings are knowable by us because of this antecedent community of nature.

This view can be traced back to Aristotle’s De Anima 431b20: “The soul (psyche, anima) is in a certain sense all things . . .” and a little before that, at 431b15 we read, “the mind when actively thinking is identical to its objects.” (emphasis added) No gap, no bridge, identity!

In sum, the sameness of form explains how the mind contacts reality outside the mind; the difference in modes of being or existence explains why the knower is not the known. Knower and known are identical in respect of the common nature or form; knower and known are different in respect of how the common form exists in the knower and in the known. The common nature, as common, is neither immaterial nor immaterial, neither intentionally existent nor really existent.

That in a nutshell is the Thomist theory of intentionality. If you can see your way clear to accepting it as the only adequate account of intentionality, then it provides a bonus by supplying a reason for the celebrated real distinction (distinctio realis) of essence and existence. For the account requires that there be two distinct modes of esse, an immaterial mode, esse intentionale, and a material mode, esse naturale. Now if a form F-ness can exist in two different modes, then it cannot be identical to either and must be really distinct from both. (Cf. Peter Geach, “Form and Existence” in God and the Soul, Thoemmes Press 1994, pp. 62-64, orig. publ. 1969)

I have some questions about the Thomist theory, but I won’t raise them here because my present purpose is not to evaluate the Thomist theory but merely to contrast it with the theory of HusserI.

2. Intentionality in Edmund Husserl

We must now ask how Husserl’s approach to intentionality and thus to the possibility of knowledge differs from the above. I say it does differ and that Husserl’s phenomenology gives no aid or comfort to Thomist realism. This is a large and controversial topic and I cannot say much about it in one weblog entry. But I must say something. I am not concerned at present with the tenability of either position. My sole present concern is to show that (i) Husserl is a transcendental idealist, and that therefore (ii) Husserl’s position is incompatible with Thomist realism.

The Natural Attitude

The realism of Thomas was developed and is maintained within what Husserl calls the natural attitude (die natürliche Einstellung). In the natural attitude the world we experience, live in, and act upon is naively taken as unquestionably given. It is uncritically accepted as the ultimate backdrop of all our concerns, practical and theoretical. Within the world so taken there are knowers and things known. It also includes all intentional (object-directed) mental states, whether sensible or intellectual, of humans and animals. They too are taken to occur in the world of the natural attitude. My seeing the cat or the mat on which he sits is then explained under the presupposition that there really are, extra-mentally, knowing beings and known beings. A knower is a psychophysical complex, a minded organism. Its mental or psychic states are naively taken as states or processes within the same spatiotemporal world in which the knowers’ bodily states occur. This is all uncritically accepted and not put into question from within the natural attitude.

The natural attitude is not a philosophical theory, but is prior to any philosophical theory one might adopt. It is the pre-theoretical basis from which philosophical theories arise. So one must not conflate the natural attitude with the philosophical theory of metaphysical naturalism, according to which reality is exhausted by the spacetime system and its contents.

And while one needn’t philosophize within the natural attitude, and most don’t, one can. One who philosophizes within the natural attitude may ask how objective knowledge is possible and may also ask about the relation in a knower between mental/psychic states and physical states. Let’s briefly consider some natural-attitude solutions to the second problem, the mind-body problem.

If our natural-attitude philosopher is an Aristotelian he will hold that a knower is a hylomorphic compound in which anima forma corporis, the soul or psyche is the (substantial) form of the body. The same goes for the Thomist, mutatis mutandis. If our natural-attitude philosopher is a hard-core materialist/physicalist, however, he will say that mental states are just states of the brain. If our natural-attitude philosopher is a Cartesian substance dualist, he will reject all three of the foregoing positions and tell us that the soul/psyche/mind is an immaterial primary substance (and thus not a form or state) really distinct from bodily primary substances. (There are of course other positions in the philosophy of mind such as epiphenomenalism, emergentism, supervenientism, panpsychism, functionalism, occasionalism, parallelism, and so on, all of them developed within the natural attitude.)

The four positions just sketched are all realist in the sense that the things the mind knows are taken to exist independently of the minds that know them. On realism, the being of the things known is not reducible to their being-known, let alone their being thought-of. But there is nothing to stop a natural-attitude philosopher from being an idealist who holds, like Berkeley, that esse est percipi, that to be = to be perceived. On an idealism like this, which Husserl calls ‘psychological’ to distinguish it from his transcendental idealism, the things known do not exist independently of knowers.

The main point, however, is that all of this theorizing, whether realist or idealist, is being done within the natural attitude. So just as one must not confuse the natural attitude with any version of metaphysical naturalism, one must also not confuse it with any pre-Husserlian version of realism or idealism. Within the natural attitude, mundane idealists oppose mundane realists; Husserl’s idealism, however, is, or is supposed to be, transcendental or pre-mundane. We will have to come back to this later.

Another point that needs to be made before proceeding is that, within the natural attitude, one can perform an epoché or suspension of belief in the manner of such Pyrrhonian skeptics of late antiquity as Sextus Empiricus. There is such a thing as a natural-attitude epoché. Suppose you tell me that Thomas Merton was assassinated by the CIA. There are three main attitudes I can take up with respect to this proposition: Accept, Reject, Suspend. If I suspend judgment, I take no position with respect to the truth-value of the proposition you assert. I merely entertain it without affirming it or denying it. I put it ‘within brackets,’ if you will. It is then, in Husserlian lingo, eingeklammert. But this Pyrrhonian bracketing is piecemeal and partial; it does not put the whole world of the natural attitude within brackets, as does Husserl’s, as we shall see.

The Pyrrhonian skeptic also advocates a sort of ‘reduction,’ a leading back, not from the thing taken naively as existing in itself to its appearing, but from the propositional content affirmed as true or rejected as false, to the propositional content itself under bracketing of its truth-value.

Epoché and reduction in Husserl have a far more radical sense.

To understand Husserl, you must understand that his aim is to thematize what had been, before he came along, tacit and pre-thematic, namely the natural attitude and to show that it presupposes something deeper, transcendental subjectivity, a pre-mundane region of Being. He proposes to uncover this region of Being by way of a radicalization and purification of the Cartesian project of universal doubt. As he puts it in his late Paris Lectures, “The methodology of purified Cartesianism demands . . . the phenomenological epoché. This epoché eliminates as worldly facts from my field of judgment both the reality [Seinsgeltung] of the objective world in general and the sciences of the world.” (The Paris Lectures, Koestenbaum tr., 10) The word Koestenbaum translates ineptly as ‘eliminates’ is ausschalten. Its relevant meanings in this context include switch off, disconnect, set aside, make no use of. The idea is that if one aspires to be truly radical in one’s philosophizing, and go to the root (radix) of the matter, one must set aside the reality or ontic validity [Seinsgeltung] of the world given in the natural attitude and make no use of any of its facts. In addition, radicality demands that we make no use of the positive sciences that investigate these facts.

But why perform the phenomenological epoché?

Before I can answer this question we need a quick Descartes review. Renatus Cartesius (1596-1650), troubled as he was by the cacophony of conflicting beliefs, sought objective certainty. He sought a fundamentum inconcussum, an unshakable foundation for his beliefs. His method of search was by doubting everything that he could possibly doubt to see if there is anything that he could not doubt. He sought the utterly indubitable. What he found was the cogito, the ‘I think,’ where thinking (cogitation, from L. cogitare, to think) ) is understood sensu lato to embrace every type of object-directed consciousness, whether perceptual, imaginative, memorial, judgmental, etc. He found that he could not doubt his thinkings (occurrent episodes or acts of thinking, cogitationes). He could doubt particular objects of thinkings, particular cogitata, whether they exist in reality, and whether in reality they have the properties they appear to have, but he could not doubt the cogitationes directed upon these cogitata. For example, if I see a tree, I can doubt whether there exists in reality, i.e., extra-mentally, a tree that I see, and I can doubt whether it really possesses the attributes (being in bloom, say) that it is seen to have. What I cannot doubt is the existence of an object-directed visual experiencing as of a tree in bloom.

There are, however, not just one but two items I cannot doubt. I cannot doubt the cogitatio, the occurrent episode of object-directed visual awareness, but I also cannot doubt what could be called the CONTENT of this awareness, what Husserl calls the noema of this noesis, namely the cogitatum qua cogitatum. (Side note: Some philosophers in the analytic tradition assimilate Husserl’s noema to Frege’s Sinn (sense) which mediates linguistic reference. If for Frege, linguistic reference is routed through sense (Sinn), for Husserl, thinking reference is routed through the noema. I do not endorse this interpretation, but cannot discuss it further here. It is known in the trade as the West Coast interpretation of the noema.)

The Ambiguity of ‘Object’

There is an ambiguity here that must be carefully noted, and it is relevant to the idealism question. A cogitatum is an object of thought. But ‘object’ is ambiguous. Do we mean the thing in reality that presumably exists and has properties whether or not anyone is aware of it or its properties? Or do we mean the thing precisely as it appears to a conscious being with only the properties it appears to have when it appears? The latter alone is the cogitatum qua cogitatum, the object of thought just insofar as it is the accusative of an act of thinking, that is, just insofar as it is a correlate of a cogitatio, the noema of a noesis. The cogitatum qua cogitatum is what I will call the PURE OBJECT. It is distinct from the ego, from the ego’s cogitationes, and from the thing itself in mind-independent reality, should there be one. We can then call the cogitatum simpliciter the THING.

‘Object,’ then, is ambiguous as between pure object and thing. This parallels the ambiguity of ‘Every consciousness is a consciousness of something’ as between ‘Every consciousness is a consciousness of a pure object‘ and ‘Every consciousness is a consciousness of a thing.’ Suppose I am imagining a winged horse. Am I imagining something or nothing? Something, obviously, but something that does not exist. In this case, the cogitatum, object of thought, is a pure object, not a thing (res). A pure object is a Gegenstand inasmuch as it stands over against consciousness-of. A thing, as I am using the term, is not a Gegenstand, but a thing the being of which is not exhausted by its standing over against consciousness-of. But I don’t call it a Ding-an-sich because, for Kant, the Ding-an-sich is unknowable whereas for Thomist realists the thing is knowable as it is in itself. In passing, I will also note that we should beware of confusing Husserl’s transcendental idealism with Kant’s. The main point of difference is that Husserl’s transcendental idealism requires the epoché whereas there is no epoché in Kant. I cannot pause to explain this now.

We must, therefore, distinguish the pure object from the thing. For example, when I look at Max, I see a cat, which is to say: I live through (er-leben) a conscious state that is object-directed, but is this actual experience (Erlebnis) of seeing directed to, and terminate at, a pure object? Or is directed to, and terminate at, an extra-mental thing? In the first case the directedness terminates at a pure object. In the second case it goes through the pure object and terminates at the thing. In the second case the pure object is an epistemic intermediary, and not the thing known.

In the first case, my living through the experience as of seeing a cat does not guarantee the extra-mental existence of a cat that I see. For it may be — it is epistemically possible — that nothing in reality corresponds to the pure object or even to an ensemble of mutually coherent objects that appear to successive acts. In the second case the experience latches onto the thing itself, grasping it in its mind-independent being.

Two Uses of ‘See’

The difference between the two cases is reflected linguistically in the difference between a phenomenological use of ‘see’ according to which subject S’s seeing of x is consistent with the nonexistence of x, and a ‘verb of success’ use according to which S’s seeing of x entails the existence of x. We find both uses in ordinary English. If I tell you that you are ‘seeing things’ I am telling you that what you are seeing isn’t really there, i.e., doesn’t exist. And in dreams we do see things that aren’t there. This is the phenomenological use of ‘see.’ The verb of success use, however, is at home in the natural attitude.

Now back to our Descartes review. From Husserl’s point of view, Descartes, with his universal doubt is on the right track, but he doesn’t go far enough. He is still partially stuck in the natural attitude, and fails to execute, or fully execute, the ‘transcendental turn.’

Descartes’ underlying schema is this:

D. Ego-cogito-cogitatum qua cogitatum-res.

Husserl’s underlying schema is similar but also importantly different in one respect:

H. Ego-cogito-cogitatum qua cogitatum-[res].

In (H) ‘res’ or ‘thing’ is bracketed, in (D) it is not. Let the thing be the paloverde tree in my backyard presently in glorious yellow bloom in the Sonoran spring. In the natural attitude we take the tree to exist in itself whether or not I or anyone make(s) it the object of an intentional (object-directed) act, whether a perceiving, a remembering, whatever.

But are we justified in taking the tree to exist in itself?

Granted, my seeing is an intrinsically object-directed state that purports to reveal a thing that exists and has the properties it is seen to possess whether or not I or anyone see it. This purport is intrinsic to the conscious directedness. To put it paradoxically, the intentional state intends the object as non-object. (I borrow this formulation from Wolfgang Cramer. It is paradoxical but non-contradictory. The paradox is rooted in the ambiguity of ‘object’ which I have already explained.)

To put it non-paradoxically, the intentional state intends a thing (purports to reveal a thing) the being of which exceeds its being a merely intentional object for a subject. Consciousness-of, by its very nature, purports or ‘wants’ to reach things transcendent of consciousness. This, I claim, is part of the phenomenology of the situation. I am pretty sure that Husserl would agree with this. Whether or not he agrees, the point I am making can be put in Husserlian jargon: what is intended is intended to be more than a mere noematic correlate of a noesis, and indeed more than an entire ensemble of mutually coherent noemata. As it seems to me, what is intended in an intentional state is intended as existing an sich, in itself, and not merely for me or for us. Consciousness-of, by an inner necessity, desires its own transcendence. Every noesis is a nisus, a mental striving or perfective endeavor. These last two formulations are mine, not Husserl’s, but in line with his views. But in the interests of strenge Wissenschaft (rigorous science), this lust for transcendence, which is endemic to the natural attitude, must be chastened and inhibited.

The purport to reveal a thing as it is in itself may also be expressed in terms Descartes borrows from the scholastics. Accordingly, what is intended in an intentional state is the thing in its formal reality (realitas formalis), its formal or trans-objective reality, and not merely in its its objective reality (realitas objectiva) as an object for a subject. ‘Objective reality’ refers to the reality the thing enjoys when its stands in relation to a conscious subject. ‘Formal reality’ refers to the reality that the thing has in itself whether or not it stands in relation to a conscious subject.

Of course, the purported reference of an intentional state beyond itself to a thing in reality may not pan out. Usually it does, but sometimes it doesn’t. It may be that there exists in reality no tree such as the one the directedness purports to reveal. In the natural attitude, we naturally go along with these purports in the vast majority of cases; we do not inhibit them as we do when we are doing phenomenology in the Husserlian style.

From this example we can begin to see what the phenomenological reduction or phenomenological epoché is all about. It is about inhibiting the natural tendency of mind to posit its objects as existing in themselves. The thing is bracketed as in schema (H): it is re-duced to its appearing. Ducere in Latin means to lead; a reduction, then is a leading back, a regression.

Before we get to the question of Husserl’s putative idealism, we need to ask and answer two questions: (Q1) why would he want to put the world of the natural attitude within brackets, and (Q2) why does he think that Descartes did not go far enough?

Q1: Why the Need for the Phenomenological Reduction?

The short answer is to avoid the epistemological circle. Husserl appreciates that one cannot answer the epistemological question of how objective knowledge of real beings is possible if one presupposes what one wants an account of, namely, objective knowledge of real beings. Let me explain.

Consider again my seeing of Max the cat. What makes my seeing a seeing of Max and thus a sensory knowing of Max? How do I know that he exists extra-mentally and has the properties extra-mentally that I see him to have? A natural-attitude answer might be in terms of causal actions of physical things spatially external to my body that act upon my body’s optical transducers (eyes), which in turn convert photons into neural information which is then transmitted by electrochemical means to the visual cortex in my brain, and voila! a cat appears. Such an account is epistemologically worthless because circular: it presupposes that we have knowledge of both (i) the existence of mind-independent things and of (ii) the truth of the sciences of the natural attitude (physics, physiology, electrochemistry, etc.). Husserl’s intention is not to deny or doubt any of this. His point is that no use may be made of it in epistemology. A radical critique of knowledge cannot presuppose knowledge.

W. V. Quine would disagree. See his Epistemology Naturalized.

One objection to Quine from a SEP article has an Husserlian flavor:

(2) A second objection is that Quinean naturalism is viciously circular. Among the central tasks of epistemology, it’s said, is to establish that empirical knowledge is possible—that we may, for example, legitimately rely upon empirical science as a source of knowledge. However, Quine would have epistemologists make “free use” of the results of science from the start.

Q2: Husserl on Descartes’ Lack of Radicality

The reduction in Husserl is a two-step move: from the thing to its appearing to a subject, and then from the subject initially and naively taken to be psychological or psychophysical to the transcendental subject. The reduction is thus a transcendental-phenomenological reduction. Husserl’s beef with Descartes is that he doesn’t execute the second step. In Cartesian Meditations, sec. 10, Husserl alleges that the Frenchman fails to make the transcendental turn (die transzendentale Wendung). He stops short at a little tag-end of the world (ein kleines Endchen der Welt), from which he then argues to get back what he had earlier doubted, including the external world.

Despite his universal doubt, Cartesius remains within the world thinking he has found the sole unquestionable part of it. Although he achieves something very much like a phenomenological reduction, the Frenchman fails to inaugurate a transcendental-phenomenological reduction. He reduces things to their appearances, but fails to properly identify that to which they appear, the transcendental ego. He misidentifies it as something within the world of things, not a material thing, but an immaterial thing. As I would put, Descartes reifies the transcendental ego. A thing is a thing whether material or immaterial.

The reification consists in the misconstrual of the transcendental ego as substantia cogitans, mens sive animus. This gives rise to what Husserl calls the absurdity of transcendental realism. Husserl’s thought seems to be that if one fully executes the transcendental turn one is left with no entity (res) in the world that can serve as the subject for whom there is a world. If everything in the world receives its Seinsgeltung (ontic validity) from the transcendental ego, then this ego cannot be a thinking thing or substance. It cannot be either the empirical ego (the animated body that psychology and physiology studies) nor can it be a soul substance as it is for Thomas and his followers. It has to be the source of the ontic or existential validity (Seinsgeltung) of the objects that appear.

But this is perplexing. Just what is this transcendental ego if it is the purely subjective source of all Seinsgeltung? Is it at all? If it is or exists at all, then it is in the world, even if not in the physical world. It is in the world, the totality of entities. But it can’t be inasmuch as the transcendental ego as the constitutive source of all ontic validity is pre-mundane.

The puzzle could be put like this. Either the constitutive source of all Seinsgeltung is pre-mundane or it is not. If the former, then it would appear to be nothing at all. If the latter, then it is not the constitutive source of all Seinsgeltung.

Conclusion

In a later post I may come back to the problem just posed, which concerns the tenability of Husserl’s final position, but for now, I believe I have said enough to scotch the notion that Husserl’s position supports Thomist realism. Husserl’s phenomenology is committed to transcendental idealism, according to which beings do not exist in themselves but only for transcendental subjectivity. Here is a characteristic passage:

Alles, was ich je als wahrhaft Seiendes einsehen kann, ist gar nichts anderes als ein intentionales Vorkommnis meines eigenen — des Erkennenden — Lebens . . . . (Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Zweiter Teil, Theorie der Phaenomenologischen Reduktion, Husserliana Band VIII, S. 184 f.)

Whatever I can recognize as a genuine being is nothing other than an intentional occurrence of my own — the knower’s — life . . . .

For Husserl, the very Being of beings is their Being for consciousness, their being constituted in and by consciousness. Their Sein reduces to Seinsinn, and that Sinn points back to the transcendental ego from which all sense derives. So the Sinn is not Original Sinn, pun intended, but derivative Sinn. Therefore, on transcendental idealism, contingent beings have no need for a divine ground of their existence, their existence being adequately accounted for by transcendental subjectivity. And since they have no need of a divine ground, one cannot prove that they must have such a ground. Husserl’s phenomenology lends no support to Thomist realism such as we find in Gilson and Maritain. It is indeed incompatible with it.

The Commonweal article under critique is here.

Klima on Intellective Soul and Living Body in Aquinas and the Immortality of the Human Soul

Gyula Klima:

The composition from intellective soul and living body, and the natural immortality of the human soul (a section of a long paper)

. . . given the immateriality of the intellect, which I will not attempt to prove now, but let us just assume for the sake of the argument, the activity of the intellect cannot have as its subject the composite of body and soul, or as Aquinas would put it, this activity does not communicate with matter. What this means is that its acts are not acts of any parts of the body, in the way in which, say, my acts of sight are obviously the acts of my visual apparatus enformed [informed] by my sensitive soul.

BV: The first sentence above strikes me as obviously true. For example, when I contemplate the theorem of Pythagoras, what in me thinks that thought? No part of my living body, not even my brain or any part of my brain. Nor is it the soul-body composite that thinks the thought. In the schema ego-cogito-cogitatum, where the cogitatum is the theorem in question, the ego cannot be any material thing, and thus no proper or improper part of my material body. As for the act of thinking, the cogitatio, it cannot be any state of, or process in, any part of my material body. In particular, it cannot be a brain state or process. So far, I agree with Klima and Thomas. But suppose I am having a coherent, ongoing, visual experience as of a tree. Is it obvious that this act of visual experiencing requires eyes, optic nerves, visual cortex, etc. , which is what I take Klima to be referring to with “visual apparatus”? No, it is not obvious, but to explain why would take us too far afield.

The point of agreement so far is that intellective acts do not “communicate with matter.” But if sensory acts do so communicate, then are there two souls involved in my cognitive life, an intellective soul and a sensitive soul? Or is there only one soul? Only one according to Klima.

But the same sensitive soul also has intellective acts, which Aquinas argues cannot be the acts of any bodily organ, or to put it simply, I am not thinking with my brain (or any other organ for that matter): my brain merely provides, so to speak, “food for my thought”, in the form of phantasms, the singular representations of sensible singulars, which then my intellect further processes in its own acts of abstraction, concept formation, judgment formation and reasoning, all of which are acts of the intellect alone, which therefore cannot have the body and soul composite as their subject, but the soul alone.

BV: Right, we don’t think with our brains. But we live in a world of concrete material particulars or singulars many of which are also sensible, i.e., able to be sensed. My knowledge that the tree is green is sensory not intellective. Phantasms are singular representations of singular sensibles. But it is quite unclear to me how the brain can “provide” or “serve up” these representations for the intellect to “feast on” and intellectively process. Are the phantasms located in the brain where the intellect gets hold of them for “processing”? A representation is a representation of something (genitivus obiectivus) and it is is difficult to understand how any part of a hunk of meat can represent anything. What gives bits of brain matter representational power? But I won’t pursue this question further here. I pursue it elsewhere. We now come to the gravamen of my complaint against the hylomorphic attempt to explain personal survival of bodily death.

We are told that the soul-body composite cannot be the subject of sensory knowledge any more than it can be the subject of intellective knowledge. This, however, has the consequence that the intellective soul is not only a form, enforming [informing] the body, but is also a subject of its own power, the intellect, and its acts. But then, it exists not only as that by which the living body is, but also as that which is the underlying subject of its own acts which it does not communicate with the body. Therefore, upon the death of a human person, when the soul gets separated from the body, the soul ceases to be the form of the body, but that does not mean that it also has to cease to be. Since its own operations are not acts of the body, they can continue without its union with the body. But to operate, it must exist; so, it can naturally go on existing, as the underlying subject of its own intellectual operations. So, when a person dies, the person ceases to exist, but the person’s soul merely ceases to be a form of their body, which can persist in its being, naturally continuing the life that used to be the life of the person, as a separate soul, until the same person will be miraculously restituted in the resurrection, resuming the same life, now as a whole person again.

I agree with the first three sentences up to ‘therefore’ the bolding of which I have added. Klima appreciates that the human soul for Aquinas has a dual function. It not only animates the body of which it is the soul, thereby making it a living body, but it is also that which thinks when a human being engages in intellective acts. The human soul is not only that by which the living body is alive; it is also “the underlying subject of its own [intellective] acts,” acts which do not “communicate with matter” and are therefore not the acts of the soul-body composite, the unitary psychophysical complex. So it is not Socrates qua soul-body composite who ponders whether virtue is teachable or whether there is more to knowledge than true belief; it is the intellect alone in Socrates that is the subject of these acts. That sounds right to me.

But we are then told, in the sentences after therefore, that this individual (not universal) intellective soul will survive the death of its body. But this is very hard to make sense of for several reasons. Indeed, it smacks of a blatant non sequitur. I will present only one reason in this entry. “Brevity is the soul of blog,” as some wit once observed.

It is in virtue of forms that things are intelligible. If what thinks in a human being post-mortem is a form, however, then that form is not only intelligible but also intelligent. It is not only intelligible, but intelligible to itself, which is to say that it is at once both intelligible and intelligent. I find it hard to understand how a pure immaterial form, a form that does not inform anything, a form that is not a form of anything, can be both intelligible and intelligent. I find it hard to understand how the subject and the object of acts of intellection could be one and the same. I don’t intend this as a merely autobiographical comment. I am suggesting that anyone ought to find it hard to understand, indeed impossible to understand, and therefore intrinsically unintelligible. But in philosophy we are not allowed to make bare or gratuitous assertions. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur. So I need to argue this out. I will begin by giving two examples of intrinsically unintelligible notions.

a) The first example of intrinsic unintelligibility is the notion of a thing that causes its own existence. Since nothing can exercise causality unless it exists, nothing can cause its own existence. Not even God in his omnipotence could cause his own existence. For there cannot be an exercise of (efficient) causality unless there exists something or someone that/who exercises it. Necessarily, no action without an agent. But more than that: no action without an agent the being of which is not exhausted in its acting on a given occasion. What that means is that the agent cannot be identical to his action. If Guido makes a meatball, there has to be more to Guido than that particular act of making that particular meatball, which is to say: no agent is identical to any of its actions, or the sum of them. Suppose, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, that agent S performs action A. Even in a case like this the agent is not identical to any of his actions or the sum of them.

b) A second example of intrinsic unintelligibility is the notion of an open sentence that has a truth value. ‘___ is wise’ is an example of an open sentence. It can also be depicted using the free variable ‘x’ thusly: ‘x is wise.’ This open sentence, which picks out what Russell calls a propositional function, is neither true nor false: it lacks a truth value. A (closed) sentence results if we either substitute a name for the variable ‘x’ or bind the variable with a quantifier. Both ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘For all x, x is wise’ are closed sentences which attract a truth value. That is a philosopher’s way of saying that they can be evaluated as either true or false. The first is true, the second false. The claim that ‘x is wise’ has a truth value, however, is intrinsically unintelligible: it makes no sense and cannot be understood, by me or anyone.

A pure immaterial form that is both intelligible and intelligent is like an open sentence that has a truth value. Why? Well, consider the sentences ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is human.’ The first predicates an accidental form of a substance, the second a substantial form of a substance. Those sentences are both meaningful and true. What makes them meaningful is that they express complete thoughts or propositions: each has a subject-term, a copula, and a predicate-term. What makes them true is the inherence of the forms picked out by the predicates in what the subject-terms name, something that is not a form. Socrates is not a form. He is a composite entity, a hylomorphic compound. Just as it is unintelligible to suppose that there could be an action that was not the action of an agent distinct from the action, it is unintelligible to suppose that there could be a form that was not the form of something (genitivus subiectivus) that was not itself a form.

More tomorrow.

The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation

Substack latest.

This entry continues the line of thought in Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?

God freely creates beings that are both (i) wholly dependent on God’s creative activity at every moment for their existence, and yet (ii) beings in their own own right, not merely intentional objects of the divine mind. The extreme case of this is God’s free creation of finite minds, finite subjects, finite unities of consciousness and self-consciousness, finite centers of inviolable inwardness, finite free agents, finite yet autonomous free agents with the power to refuse their own good, their own happiness, and to defy the nature of reality. God creates potential rebels. He creates Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus. He creates Lucifer the light bearer who, blinded by his own light, refuses to acknowledge the source of his light, and would be that source himself even though the project of becoming the source of his own light is doomed to failure, and he knows it, but pursues it anyway. He creates Lucifer who became the father of all perversity. The “Father of lights” (James 1:17) creates the father of lies.

God creates and sustains, moment by moment, other minds, like unto his own, made in his image, who are yet radically other in their inwardness and freedom. He creates subjects who exist in their own right and not merely as objects of divine thought. How is this conceivable?

A Buddhist Scholar Swims the Tiber

Dmitri writes,

Hope all is well. I am reading yet another book of a convert to Catholicism. This one is written by a British professor Paul Williams who is a scholar of Buddhism. Besides the interesting personal story the book contains a few interesting arguments with a few fundamental Buddhist conceptions such as rebirth. Williams states that his return to Christianity and conversion to Catholicism was rational and in part based on the incoherence of the Buddhist concept of rebirth. There is a short chapter dedicated to this topic at the end of the book that can be read standalone. An online religious community shared a copy of Williams’ book if you would want to preview before deciding whether it is worth your time and money.

Great to hear from you, my friend. Conversions (22 entries) and deconversions fascinate me. I ‘ve read a bit of the pdf you’ve kindly sent: the book is engaging from the start. Amazon wants 79 USD which is a bit steep. I’ll read more. These days, the problem’s not lack of loot but of space. Italian frugality has paid off. And while books can burn in a fire, they are less fragile all things considered than online materials.

After what I said yesterday about the left-ward transmogrification unto insipidity of the RCC, a process that began with Vatican II (1962-1965), as Dr. Caiati documents in a comment below, it is somewhat strange that anyone should still want to swim the Tiber. Buddhism has its problems, but Christianity does not? Is Williams serious?

Buddhism, Suffering, and One Reason I am not a Buddhist

People convert and deconvert to and from the strangest things:

Harry Binswanger’s Conversion

Son of Atheist Neo-Positivist David Stove Converts to Catholicism

Sometimes the apple falls very far from the tree.

The Stove ‘Dilemma’ and the Lewis ‘Trilemma’

No Ammo to the Enemy: Defund the Left — and the RCC

Here:

“For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 [the older Latin Mass] should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?”

Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p. 416.

This is precisely right.

However, there are bishops who do despise the Church’s whole past. They want the past erased and buried. They want a new morality, especially. That way they can be popular.

Bowman also quotes Edward Feser:

Preference for the Traditional Latin Mass is massively correlated with orthodoxy. This is precisely why certain people want it suppressed. They call the TLM “divisive” but the reality is, it’s TLM ‘s opponents who want to divide the Church from her liturgical and doctrinal past.

Unlike my friend Feser, I have serious reservations about elements of traditional RCC doctrine. But I have far stronger reservations and outright objections to the destructive Left, in particular, to their trademark erasure of the historical record. Pedant that I am, I will point out once again that the past cannot be erased or buried, for it remains, tenselessly, what it was. But the past can be sent into oblivion which is, practically speaking, the same thing: what has been sent down the memory hole can no longer inform or guide our action in the present.

The RCC should stand as a bulwark against the leftist insanity all around us. So, to the extent that it becomes just another piece of leftist cultural junk, the RCC must be defunded. You are therefore a fool complicit with the forces of the anti-civilizational Left to the extent that you contribute to the RCC monetarily, in the same way that you are complicit fool and a useful idiot if you continue to contribute to those of your alma maters who refuse to renounce publicly the destructive DEI agenda.

But what if the particular church you attend needs repairs, a new roof say, and a collection is taken up within that church for the funds needed. Go ahead, make a contribution despite the theological ignorance of the priests, their homosexual vibe, and the defective Novus Ordo liturgy. If you need services on Sundays, Novus Ordo is better than nothing. If you take a harder line, and shun Novus Ordo, you may convince me.

Whatever Happened to Unconditional “Welcome the Stranger?”

Vatican City has one of the strictest immigration laws in the whole world. I seem to recall the Bergoglio-Prevost tag team — now known as BergoLEO — going on and on about unconditional “Welcome the Stranger.” Suicidal leftist folly on stilts.

I am all for welcoming the stranger, but only under certain conditions. Immigration must be to the benefit of the host country. The depredatory Dems refuse to countenance that simple truth. Interesting to speculate why. Vatican City's immigration law, one of the strictest in Europe - ZENIT - English

Europe in Trouble

Malcolm Pollack, back from Britain, reports:

I have to say, though, that the trip was ultimately rather depressing: it would be hard to overstate how utterly doomed the ancient British nation and people are. Among the staff of the shops, hotels, and restaurants we visited, we hardly ever even heard a British accent. (In particular, I’d been looking forward to hearing Scottish accents in Edinburgh, and hardly heard a one.)

In London, the cab drivers were still mostly English, and to a one they asked me what I thought about Trump; once I said that I was glad he’d won the election, and that he was a necessary correction to the damage that had been done over the past few decades, they felt free to unburden themselves about the moribund state of England. The tone was unvarying: weary, hopeless resignation, and mourning for the homeland they had lost.

The British people have annihilated not only their own future, but also the magnificent, thousand-year legacy that all of their ancestors had bequeathed to them as stewards for generations yet unborn. All of it is just gone, destroyed. In a generation or two, Britain will be an Islamic nation; the only thing that can possibly prevent this is a furious awakening of the virile and indomitable spirit that once ruled the world, and it would have to happen now.

But it won’t. The only ones who seem to care enough, or even to realize what has been lost, are now too old — and as far as I can tell, they’ve already given up.

The West seems bent on destroying itself, with the RCC under the ‘leadership’ of BergoLEO in the lead. (I owe the clever coinage to Vito Caiati.) Rod Dreher:

De Montbrial has a new book coming out in France next week, about what he regards as his country’s “emergency” situation. I suppose the talk he gave yesterday, in English, is part of it. He warned that western Europeans should prepare themselves for mass violence at the level the continent (minus the 1990s Balkans) hasn’t seen since the end of World War II. That is to say (though he didn’t use this term), civil wars. If you see this man’s Wikipedia page, you realize that he is in a position to know what he is talking about. He explained that Islamists have managed to infiltrate both public and private institutions all over Europe, and are using it to their advantage.

How did all this happen? De Montbrial, a practicing Catholic, said that the core of the problem is cultural — namely, that France (and Europe) has lost all sense of who and what it is. It has forgotten its past, and any sense of connection to it, and has lost its identity. (This is what Renaud Camus calls “The Great Deculturation”). How do you expect young people to resist people (Muslims) who are hostile to Western civilization, and who have a strong culture, if you have produced a generation, or generations, of people who have no culture? He said that in France, Muslim activists are even succeeding in winning over the hearts and minds of no small number of native-born French, by telling them, basically: “Look around you at what a nihilistic, pornified disaster modern Europe has become. Is that really what you want? Convert, join the ummah, and gain a story. Become part of the glorious march through history of the sons and daughters of the Prophet.”

Pope Leo XIV, Fetal Rights, and the Death Penalty

I thought Leo might be an improvement over Francis. I’m having serious doubts.

Substack latest.

Who’s Hell Bound?

Just over the transom from Derwood:

Help me understand something. When Jesus died, the vast percentage of humanity had and would never hear of the Jewish messiah/god.

True. And that would seem to include all sorts of righteous Old Testament individuals, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Surely, the latter three are not in hell. As I understand traditional RCC theology, Abraham & Co. upon their deaths were sent to the "limbo of the fathers" (limbus patrum), a 'place' distinct from both hell and purgatory wherein the Old Testament righteous enjoyed a natural happiness, but did not partake of the Beatific Vision (visio beata). This, I take it, is the 'place' Christ visited after his crucifixion when he "descended into hell' (as we read in the NT) before rising on the third day. He went there to release the OT saints from their 'holding pen' and bring them to the Father in heaven. It follows that the hell into which Christ descended is not hell as a 'place' of everlasting/eternal damnation and torment.

Does that mean that the vast majority of humanity, men, women and children, were hell-bound heathens?

The problem of unbaptized children motivated a nuancing of the limbo concept by Albertus Magnus: there is not only the limbus patrum but also the limbus infantium/limbus puerorum, the limbo of children. Surely a just and benevolent deity would not send them to hell, sensu stricto.

How does a just and benevolent deity allow that? That persists today, doesn't it? How much of the world knows about, much less worships, Jesus? All hell-bound?

The topic of limbo is not currently discussed. If I'm not mistaken, the 1992 RCC catechism makes no reference to it. Theology ain't what it used to be What a degeneration from Ratzinger to Bergoglio! The German has a first-rate theological head. I recommend his books. It should noted, however, that Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) considered limbo a doctrine it was not necessary for a Catholic to believe. See our friend Michael Liccione's First Things article on the topic, A Doctrine in Limbo.

I am just scratching the surface, and in any case I am not a theologian. This fact does not dissuade me from 'pontificating' on this and plenty of other theological matters! Here are three good sources for anyone interested in this topic: an article from The Thomist; a Britannica article; and one from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

At some point I want to discuss purgatory. Calvin rejects the notion. Surely that is a theological error of major proportions! (I'm baiting my Calvinist friends.)

Edith Stein: Faith, Reason, and Method

August 9th is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy. She is better known to philosophers as Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher in her own right, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. One best honors a philosopher by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically but critically. Herewith, a bit of critical re-enactment.

In the 1920s Stein composed an imaginary dialogue between her two philosophical masters, Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas. Part of what she has them discussing is the nature of faith.

Read the rest at Substack.

The piece concludes:

So there you have it. There are two opposing conceptions of philosophy, one based on the autonomy of reason, and with it the exclusively internal validation of all knowledge claims, the other willing to sacrifice the autonomy of reason for the sake of truths which cannot be certified by reason or subjectively validated but which are provided by faith in revelation, a revelation that must simply be accepted in humility and obedience. It looks as if one must simply decide which of these two conceptions to adopt, and accept that the decision cannot be justified by (natural) reason.

Addenda (8/9/2025)

I say above that there are two opposing conceptions of philosophy, but is that right? Perhaps not. It might be closer to the truth to say that philosophy by its very nature rests on the autonomy of reason, and that the "other conception" is not philosophy sensu stricto but a worldview. If so, any view according to which "faith is its own guarantee" is not philosophy or a philosophy, but beyond philosophy.
Thomas wears at least four 'hats.' He is a philosopher, a Christian, a Christian theologian, and a mystic. You could be any one of these without being any one of the others. He plays the philosopher in the praeambula fidei of the Summa Theologica wherein he attempts to demonstrate the existence of God in his quinque viae or Five Ways. These proofs make no appeal to divine revelation via Scripture nor do they rest on the personal deliverances of mystical experience. They proceed by discursive reason alone on the basis of sense experience.
So you could say to me that Thomas's theistic worldview is not beyond philosophy inasmuch as the philosophy of the praeambula is an integral part of his defense of the Christian worldview. My response will be that the Five Ways do not conclusively prove the existence of God, let alone provide any support for such specifically Christian doctrines as Trinity and Incarnation (which of course they were not intended to do). So in the end, a will-driven leap of faith is required to arrive at Thomas's theistic worldview. So at best, the Five Ways are arguments (not proofs) that render rationally acceptable Christian belief. Rationally acceptable, but not rationally mandatory. In the end you must decide what to believe and how you will live. My concluding sentence, "the decision cannot be justified by (natural) reason" is not quite right. I should have written: the decision to accept the Christian worldview, while neither it, nor the generic theism at its base, can be proven from natural reason operating upon the deliverances of the sense, can nonetheless be rendered rationally acceptable.
"Go ahead, believe!" Thus spoke Wittgenstein. "What harm can it do?" I add: you won't be flouting any canons of rationality.

Julien Green’s Diary, 1928-1957

It arrived yesterday evening, and I am already 32 pages into it. Why keep a journal? Green gives an answer on page one in the entry from 4 December 1928. He tells of "the incomprehensible desire to bring the past to a standstill that makes one keep a diary." Reading that, I knew I would read the whole 306 page translation of selections from this author's sprawling diary. He nailed it.

In '66 I started my journal scribbling. I didn't want that summer to pass away unrecorded. A life unrecorded, like a life unexamined, is not worth living. So I felt then, so I feel now. Such a life lacks diachronic unity and internal cohesion. I love cats, but a man is not cat, nor should he live like one.

I'll pull some quotations from Green's diary as the spirit moves me.

This First Things article will provide some background on Green and includes translations of some journal entries written around the time of, and about, the 'reforms' of Vatican II.

Are Catholics Christians?

A fellow philosopher writes,

While reading Clarence Thomas’s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: “Americans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.” I’ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren’t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is said about Mormons.) Have you written about this (about whether Catholics are Christians)? What must one think Christianity is in order to believe that Catholics aren’t Christians? Strange.

I haven't written about this topic because it is perfectly obvious that (Roman) Catholics are Christians. Proof: The Catholic Apostle's Creed. Every Catholic is a Christian, but not conversely. Calvinists, for example are Christians but not Catholics. Similarly for all the other Protestant sects. No Protestant is a Catholic. That too is obvious.

Did Justice Thomas, for whom I have great respect by the way, cite anyone who claimed that Catholics are not Christians? Who would say such a thing?

People say the damndest things. There are people who say that math is racist. Now that does not even begin to make sense, involving as it does a Rylean category mistake. Not making sense, it cannot have a truth value, that is, it cannot be either true or false. Mathematics does not belong to the category of items that could sensibly be said to be either racist or non-racist. Compare: 'How prevalent is anorexia nervosa among basketballs? More prevalent than among footballs?' Those questions involve category mistakes. Other examples: What is the volume of the average thought? What is the chemical composition of the number nine? What size shoes does God wear?

People who assertively utter 'Math is racist' are using those words to say something else, although it is not clear what. Perhaps they mean to say that since blacks as a group are not good at mathematics, giving them math tests is a way of demeaning or oppressing them and can have no other purpose. Or something. Speaker's meaning in this case strongly diverges from sentence meaning.

Can this distinction help us explain what people mean when they say that Catholics are not Christians? Going by sentence meaning, the claim is obviously false. But one might use those words to express the proposition that Catholics are not true Christians, where a true Christian is defined in some narrow and tendentious way, as, for example, someone who refuses to accept the Hellenically-tainted doctrines emanating from a magisterium (teaching authority) that interposes itself between the individual soul and God as revealed in Holy Writ.

We are now in the vicinity of No True Scotsman. Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"

Similarly, A says, "No Christian is a Roman Catholic." B replies, "But my Uncle Patrick is a Roman Catholic." A responds, "Your Uncle Patrick is no true Christian!"

Vito Caiati on Pope Leo XIV: An Initial Assessment

The following just over the transom from Dr. Vito Caiati, posted verbatim with a few minor edits and additions of hyperlinks. Asterisks refer to footnotes.

…………………………

Taking a hard look at the composition of the electors, 81 percent of whom were chosen by Bergoglio; the rapid elevation of Prevost by him*; and the gauchiste content of this cardinal’s posts and re-posts on X,** I wrote the following on that site on May 19^th: "Too many people [i.e., the conservative and traditional critics of Bergoglio] are swayed by liturgical gestures and nods in the direction of tradition, rather than objectively judging who elected this man and waiting to see over the coming months if he will acknowledge and undo the evils of the Bergoglian regime. So far little to cheer."

Prevost’s words and actions until the present time confirm this judgment. Thus, on two occasions, he has assured the faithful that the “beloved” Bergoglio, against Church teaching, is CERTAINLY in Heaven (“He accompanies us and prays for the Church from Heaven”). In a meeting with the representatives of other religions, he has also endorsed the Abu Dabhi declaration that Bergoglio signed in 2019, which contains the heretical statement that “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed [thus DESIRED rather than permitted or tolerated] by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings,” as well as the ideologically related encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Furthering Bergoglio’s globalist political vision, Leo has similarly "urged Catholic university leaders to back the United Nations climate agenda, calling participants to ‘build bridges,’ and encouraging them in their ‘synodal work of discernment’ in preparation for COP30.” *** We can add to this troubling list his favorable references to the synodal path, which, of course, is inimical to the unity of the Church and the orthodoxy of its doctrine. Finally, his first appointments, in keeping with the disruptive and heterodox intentions of the late pope, are deeply troubling,; for instance, he appointed a priest who supports women priests and LGBT rights as bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland; an auxiliary bishop tied to the left-wing, scandal laden Cardinal McElroy, as archbishop of San Diego; and another nun [of the pants-suit variety] to a key leadership position in the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, thus following Bergoglio in giving, as never before, un-ordained women authority over religious orders and congregations.

The pattern here is evident, and with the May 22 report of Austen Ivereigh, the late pope’s biographer and confidant, we now know that the election of Prevost, which came so quickly, was essentially orchestrated by Bergoglio, who along with packing the College of Cardinals, was engaged in a constant dialogue with the rapidly advanced Prevost in the final years of his life, meeting with him every week.**** So, I expect that while perhaps certain concessions might be granted to traditional Catholics on liturgy and the brutal rule of Bergoglio will be softened (although as of now the repression of the TLM [traditional Latin mass] continues (Detroit, Charlotte, NC, and France, notably restrictions on the Chartres Pilgrimage), the modernist capture of the RCC remains unchallenged. Unfortunately, so far, too many take the wearing of the mozzetta and a smiling face as substance rather than form. Rather, let’s see what the coming months reveal, allowing history rather than mere hope to be our guide.

_______________________

*September 2015: Appointed Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru by Bergoglio

January 2023: Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops (responsible for naming bishops throughout the world and hence determining the direction of Church policy; Prevost was, for instance, responsible, under orders from Bergoglio in removing the orthodox Bishop Strickland, who rightly criticized Bergoglio for not protecting the Deposit of Faith.

September 2023: Made Cardinal Priest by Bergoglio

February 2025: Made Cardinal Bishop by Bergoglio (one of 12 of 253 cardinals)

**These include (1) re-posts of harsh criticisms of the Trump administration policy on immigration, including support for the gangbanger and wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14693013/pope-robert-prevost-tweets-donald-trump-jd-vance-maga.html); (2) a post harshly objecting to J.D. Vance’s orthodox understanding of ordo amoris as a hierarchy of love and responsibility; and (3) a repost asking for prayer for the criminal George Floyd and his family! (https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-leo-xiv-posted-george-220216069.html).

*** https://www.wmreview.org/p/leo-xiv-cop30

****https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ivereigh-prevost-francis-pope-leo-austen

Rogues in Bergoglio’s Footsteps

The truth is too magnificent a thing to be the the property of any one religious institution. Too magnificent a thing, and too elusive a thing to be owned or housed or patented or reduced to the formulas of a sect or finitized or fought over.

Institutions too often value their own perpetuation over the fulfillment of their legitimate mandates. Examples are legion. This observation occurred to me last year as I watched Representative Chip Roy's grilling of the prevaricating FBI director Christopher Wray. It is especially pertinent to churches of whatever stripe.

Idolatry is ubiquitous. Bibliolatry and ecclesiolatry are species thereof, not that 'Romanists' could be accused of the former.

Things are not looking good for the RCC. Jim Bowman reports.