Scholasticism and Politics. Jacques Maritain

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СКАЧАТЬ by science to man’s domination: now, metaphysics and religion (for the Marxists do not distinguish the one from the other) are but a way of anticipating, in terms of imagination, a supremacy not yet acquired in practice. Metaphysical reason refers to the non-dominated province, which it pretends to construct theoretically, in such a way that it dominates it in the imagination. God and being qua being have been created for the sake of dominating this province which yet remains inaccessible. When a real and practical domination replaces this imaginary domination, the illusory constructions of metaphysics and religion will vanish of themselves. And when will this occur? No doubt when the ‘practical domination of the external world will be assured by such a high degree of material, productive forces, that the advent of a society without classes and without individual increase in value will enter the domain of the possible’.¹

      Thus are disposed of the problems and objects which, at all times, the most universal and skilled thinkers,—from Lao-Tse, Çankara and Ramanoudja, to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz and Hegel,—have considered to be the domain of wisdom. Would it be indiscreet to ask whether this historical evacuation of the universe of wisdom does not itself presuppose a metaphysical intrepidity unconscious of itself? For after all, what is it that assures the theoreticians of dialectic materialism, that the entire material world will some day be submitted to the domination of man? Unless, perhaps this assurance is given to them by the words of Genesis: ‘Replenish the earth and subdue it.’ What is it that assures them that not only the external world, but also the internal world, the one that is inside man himself, will thus be susceptible to complete domination? In short, are they quite sure that there does not exist somewhere some province not subject to domination? It is commercial dishonesty to open a store of machine-guns and to say: ‘I sell umbrellas.’ It is intellectual dishonesty to dispense metaphysics and to say: ‘Metaphysics exist no more; I open a factory of social facts.’ We know, and we profess that our reasons are metaphysical ones. And because of metaphysical reasons which we believe to be good, we are convinced that there exists a province of reality which cannot be dominated. We believe it to be impossible that by the mere effort of man and of empirical knowledge, death can some day be defeated, and the eternal longings be satisfied which man bears in his intelligence and in the physical fibres of his being. We assert that the liberation demanded by man is such that the possession of the world would still leave him unsatisfied; we consider man to be an unusual animal, who will be content with nothing less than absolute joy.

      The Marxist dialecticians cannot even try to establish that we are mistaken in all these assertions, for in order to proceed to this demonstration they would have to indulge in an explicitly metaphysical discussion. And so long as they have not proved that in these matters their presuppositions are exact, their dialectical explanations and evacuations must be considered as a simple imposture. It is a certain satisfaction for the mind to attain to positions and oppositions so absolutely primordial, that whatever respect and amenity is felt for the person of their contradictors by the philosophers, the latter will have to renounce all possibility of courtesy, and to exchange offensive words. As long as one is not reduced to denying one’s opponent the right to exist intellectually, there is no really radical philosophic conflict. It is perhaps by virtue of the degradation of the sense of this truth, that the use of injurious terms is so wide now in certain circles of dialectical-materialist thinkers, as it once was in certain circles of theologians. And so, let us be indulgent in regard to them. Mr. Max Raphael is a particularly distinguished Marxist philosopher. I have recently received the French translation of one of his books: The Marxist Theory of Knowledge (Zur Erkenntnistheorie der Konkreten Dialektik), accompanied by the most refined and friendly dedication. After perusing, most profitably, this interesting work, I realized that Mr. Max Raphael cannot do otherwise than classify Thomist metaphysics as a bigoted imposture. I highly esteem the works of Mr. Max Raphael; but I cannot help placing Marxist metaphysics in the category of dialectical trickery.

      I should add that I am so deeply convinced of the infinite suppleness of the dialectical procedure, and of the possibility of obtaining from it, at the appropriate moment, anything one chooses, that I do not lack the hope that some day dialectical materialism will find means for explaining that it fully agrees with, and even calls for metaphysics, theodicy and even revelation.

      VII

      PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

      I still have to indicate, before concluding this chapter, that in the Thomist perspectives, metaphysics does not constitute the whole of speculative philosophy, but only its highest category.

      Below metaphysics and above the sciences of the empiriological type, there exists another degree of knowledge, that of the philosophy of nature. The philosophy of nature knows the same world as the empiriological sciences, the world of change and movement, of sensible and material nature; but the resolution of concepts is made here in intelligible being, not in the observable and the measurable as such. Here, again, the intellect perceives being abstractively, but not, this time, being according to its proper mystery; it perceives being in so far as the latter is invested with material motion and according to the proper mystery of the world of becoming; and it is clear that, if human intelligence is capable of abstractive intuition, it must exercise this power first in that order which is most connatural to human intelligence, namely, the order of sensible nature. A philosophical knowledge of movement, of transitive action, of corporeal substance, of living organism, of sensitive life, helps thus to complete, by proceeding according to an entirely different noetic type and conceptual lexicon, the empiriological notions obtained about nature by the sciences of phenomena and of experimental detail,—that is, by science in the modern sense of the word.

      I will not dwell here further on the problems relative to the philosophy of nature. I shall end this discussion by repeating that, notwithstanding their opposition, neo-positivism and dialectical materialism lead, by different ways, to certain common negations. If either of them is right, there is only one science, the science of phenomena, pure and even purist in one case and, in the other case, carried away by the great dialectical fantasy. And there is no wisdom. Blinded by logical empiricism or hallucinated by historical explanation, the intellect is a slave in the service of sensitive apprehension.

      If Thomism is right, all the truth that neo-positivism has discerned concerning the sciences of phenomena is maintained and saved, just as is all the truth discerned by dialectical materialism concerning the movement of history and the evolution of the social concrete. But above the sciences of phenomena, there are other categories of science which are categories of wisdom, because they reach, in its very mystery, and yet in quite different ways, being itself, that being after which the intellect thirsts and hungers. And above the work of man in time, accomplished in order to subjugate material nature and eliminate from society the forms of servitude—above this work, there is the activity of man in the eternal, an activity of wisdom and of love, by which the intellect and the heart of man interiorize to themselves an infinite good, not dominated, not capable of domination, but which finally gives its self as the object of fruition.

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