1. Introduction
In an extraordinary passage in Fides et Ratio (n. 38), the Pope counters
an argument advanced by Celsus against the Christian faith--that Christians
were “illiterate and uncouth.” Remarkably, a Pope from the
twilight of the Second Millenium engages in debate with a pagan philosopher
from the dawn of the First Millenium. This fact merits attention. By citing
Celsus and Origen’s response to Celsus, John Paul is calling our
attention to that early encounter between Christian theology and pagan
philosophy. One of the issues over which Celsus and Origen argued was
the nature of the philosophical life. Which life really leads to wisdom
and human fulfillment: the way of life pursued by the pagan philosophers
or the way of life pursued by the Christians? By calling this debate to
our attention, the Pope, I would like to suggest, is inviting us to locate
discussions concerning faith and philosophy in the larger context of the
classical search for the way of life that leads to wisdom and fulfillment.
The Pope does so, I believe, for two reasons: First, because it is on
this level that people live their lives; people are seeking fulfillment.
They seek to be happy. Second, the Pope is convinced that when people
bring their search for happiness to reflective consciousness, it is then
that they become open to responding to God’s grace and to receiving
the proclamation of the Gospel. In other words, by promoting the philosophical
life, one is promoting the New Evangelization.
In the Pope’s judgment, however, there is something that threatens
this New Evangelization: despair, despair of reason’s ability to
know the truth about the human person. This despair is essentially the
abandonment of the philosophical life. It marks a collective loss of faith
in the quest for the truth. In the Pope’s view, philosophical despair
is not benign. It does not lead to tranquility or to intellectual humility.
It leads, instead, to blind faith in the will to power; and when blind
faith in the will to power becomes dominant, the roads that lead to life
in Christ become obscured.[1] In the Pope’s judgment, therefore,
one of our tasks is to rekindle in people’s hearts belief in philosophy,
belief that the quest for truth is possible.[2] Interestingly, the Pope
is encouraging non-Christian and secular philosophers not to despair of
their craft. The image that comes to mind is of Celsus and the Pope in
the boxing ring together; and Celsus, instead of sparring with the Pope,
has fallen on the floor in self-inflicted philosophical despair and the
Pope is leaning over him with a towel, trying to revive him. Our task
is to participate in this revival, and to do so in two principal ways:
first, by promoting true philosophy, through conveying its basic truths
and its method of inquiry; second, by living the witness of a Christian
life. To put flesh on this thesis, let us first look more closely at Celsus,
the philosophia that he pursued as his ideal, and Origen’s response
to it.
2. The Early Church and the Philosophical Life
Scholars know little about the identity of Celsus, except that he was
a Middle Platonist philosopher of the second century who, during the reign
of Marcus Aurelius (161-180), wrote a pamphlet attacking Christianity.[3]
Celsus entitled his work, provocatively, alèthès logos,
which is customarily translated as the “True Doctrine,” but
can of course literally be translated as the “True Word,”
the “True Logos.” In Celsus’ view, Christians have severed
themselves from the ancient wisdom of philosophy; they are not living
the “true logos.” For Celsus, the error of the Christians
concerns not only what they think, but how they live. Celsus recognizes
that Christians strive to follow Jesus, but in Celsus’ view, Jesus
was an ignorant charlatan who led those more ignorant than himself into
an immoral way of living.[4]
As one can imagine, Origen was not at all happy with Celsus’ view
of Jesus or with his view of the Christian life. Origen responded to Celsus
vigorously and at great length.[5] What interests us, however, is that
in spite of their vast differences, Origen and Celsus share several assumptions
in common. For both of them, philosophy was not merely a theoretical tool
or a body of doctrine: it was a way of life. It was a style of life and
a way of being whose goal was to direct one toward and place one in harmony
with true wisdom. This was the common view held by most pagan philosophers
during the Hellenistic period.[6] Integral to the view that philosophy
was a way of life, was the conviction that there was such a thing as wisdom.[7]
The goal of the philosophical life was to attain wisdom, to be in harmony
with it. “Philosophy,” Pierre Hadot explains, took on the
form of an exercise of the thought, will, and the totality of one’s
being, the goal of which was to achieve a state practically inaccessible
to mankind: wisdom. Philosophy was a method of spiritual progress which
demanded a radical conversion and transformation of the individual’s
way of being.[8]
Many of the early Christian apologists accepted this ideal of philosophy;
indeed, they embraced it. They argued, however, that only in Christ is
this ideal fulfilled. In other words, these early Christian thinkers respected
philosophia as a life dedicated to searching for wisdom and to striving
to live that wisdom.[9] They argued, however, that the ancient schools
of philosophy had failed in their endeavor. The wisdom they contained
was partial and did not lead to the healing, peace and happiness that
the philosophers sought. For Justin Martyr (d. 162-167), Clement of Alexandria,
as well as for Origen, the Gospel is the “true philosophy,”
because Jesus is the true Wisdom.[10] He is the Logos itself made visible
in human form; as such Jesus is the pattern of the true philosophical
life.[11] Celsus had claimed to know the true logos, but, Origen counters,
in reality Jesus is the “True Logos.”[12] Only in Christ do
we fully discover the way to wisdom and only in Christ do we have the
power to live this wisdom.
3. The Philosophical Life and Despair: the Example of the Weimar
Republic
In the centuries that have passed since the days of the Early Church,
the meaning of the word “philosophy” has clearly changed,
and it would not be helpful, as the Pope notes, to start calling the Christian
faith a philosophy.[13] Yet, when we read what John Paul says about the
human person’s search for wisdom, we discover that the Pope is describing
human culture in classical terms. He affirms that all people search for
wisdom, for the meaning of their lives, and that every human life and
every human culture is essentially a response to the question of meaning.[14]
In other words, John Paul affirms that every life in its own way is a
philosophical life: it is a search for wisdom and a lived response to
the question meaning. “The human being,” John Paul tells us,
“is by nature a philosopher.”[15]
Like the early apologists, however, John Paul proclaims that only in Christ,
the eternal Logos, does the philosophical search finds its fulfillment.[16]
From this perspective, John Paul shares with the apologists the view that
philosophy and the philosophical life are of propaedeutic value.[17] Only
those who seek, find. Only those who believe that a search for truth is
possible, can encounter a Truth that calls them to loving union with itself.
From this perspective the principal threat to the New Evangelization is
not non-Christian or secular philosophy, but the despair of philosophy.
(One could perhaps more accurately say that he regards secular philosophies
as a threat only to the extent that they constitute a form of despair.)
Thus, the Pope states, “now, at the end of this century, one of
our greatest threats is the temptation to despair.”[18]
Here I believe the Pope’s biography becomes important. Karol Wojtyla
lived firsthand the terrors of the Nazis occupation of Poland.[19] The
American Catholic philosopher/novelist Walker Percy observed that “Buchenwald
was only four miles from Weimar.”[20] How those four miles were
traversed is a question that continues to haunt us at the end of the Millenium.
Indeed, I would like to suggest that concern for this question has been
a guiding factor throughout John Paul’s work.
What was there in the fabric of German life during the Weimar Republic
that gave rise to Nazism? The answer to this question is beyond the scope
of this short reflection. But the path from Weimar to Buchenwald can perhaps
be sketched by looking at the experience of someone who lived through
those days. The psychiatrist Karl Stern was raised in a Jewish family
fully assimilated into secular German culture. Looking back at the Weimar
years, Stern describes himself as one who “had known the life of
‘freedom,’ the perfect libertinism of European youth of the
twenties, and the hangover of nothingness and spiritual despair.”[21]
After his conversion to Catholicism, Stern wrote an autobiography in which
he explains that his “spiritual despair” led to a search for
meaning. By the time the twenties had turned into the thirties, Stern
had drifted from Orthodox Judaism, to secular Zionism, and back again
to Orthodoxy. It was a journey that took him through the philosophical
currents of his day and was tinged with a rejection of the beliefs and
mores of the older generation. A parallel restlessness existed among non-Jews.
Stern saw spring up around him a generation of young people who were alienated
from their parents, restless and searching.[22] Children raised in secularized
homes, whether of Jewish or Christian ancestry, were left with an inner
void. The hangover of nothingness, it would seem, was giving way to a
search for a cure-all far stronger than a raw egg: Germany’s youth
were searching for meaning and were going to extreme lengths to find it.
Troubled and angry, they sought a goal to live for and a community with
which to pursue it, and many found this with the Nazis.
4. Weimar Revisited: Despair at the End of the Millenium
The desire to understand the relationship between Weimar and the Nazis
is not merely of historical interest. A number of thinkers hold the view
that certain features of contemporary culture are strikingly similar to
features present in German culture during the Weimar Republic. Nicholas
Boyle, for example, describes Weimar Germany in the following terms:
Germany . . . entered the post-modern and post-bourgeois era a generation
before the other industrialized European states. In the 1920’s,
stripped of empire and bourgeoisie, Germans were dropped into the world
market and left to find an identity for themselves.[23]
After painting this description of pre-war Germany, Boyle turns his attention
to the present.
After the collapse of the Cold War balance of power, the dilemmas of Weimar
Germany have been revealed to be general. The need to compete in a world
market is undermining social and political certainties everywhere. The
most serious threat to world peace seems once again to come from violent
sectarian ideologies. And once again it seems doubtful whether the intellectuals
of Europe and North America can mount any counter-offensive or whether
the Post-Modernists are not unwittingly collaborating with forces that
will destroy them. . . . The decline of the Weimar intelligentsia into
Fascism may be seen as the first case of the failure of a Post-Modernist
movement to meet the political challenge of globalization.[24]
In Evangelium Vitae, Centesimus Annus as well as Fides et Ratio, John
Paul offers descriptions of contemporary culture that are reminiscent
of the cultural and spiritual upheaval of the Weimar years in Germany.[25]
The notion that we are currently sowing the seeds for some future holocaust
is a disturbing prospect. Yet, in John Paul’s view, this need not
be the outcome. There is no historical necessity that we too must walk
those four miles to Buchenwald. The peoples of the world are free to choose
a different course. The challenge for the Christian is to help our contemporaries
choose that other way.
How to help others choose the way that leads to eternal life is a theme
that recurs in John Paul’s work. In Centesimus Annus and Evangelium
Vitae John Paul focuses on the task of promoting true culture. In Fides
et Ratio the focus is upon promoting true philosophy: the vocation of
the philosopher, John Paul explains, is to share philosophy’s basic
truths and method of inquiry so that our contemporaries can undertake
a search for the truth. In each of these encyclicals, however, John Paul
notes that merely thinking-it-right will not be enough. We must live it
right: thought and action together.[26] Philosophy and the Christian life
are what John Paul is calling us to in order to help our contemporaries
walk the way that leads to the tree of wisdom.
In paragraph 74 of Fides et Ratio, the Pope invites us to look at the
spiritual journeys of philosophers who have promoted the philosophical
life. By looking briefly at the life of one of these thinkers, we will
have a better sense of how philosophy and the Christian life work together
to promote confidence in the search for truth. We shall look at the experience
of Edith Stein.
5. True Philosophy and the Christian Life: the Case of Edith Stein
By the time Edith Stein was fifteen years old, she had lost her faith
in God, but her desire to know the truth remained.[27] In college she
undertook the study of philosophy. In God’s providence she became
a student of Husserl. Here is how she describes Husserl’s early
method:
The main reason the Logical Investigations had made such an impact was
that they seemed to mark a radical break with critical idealism, both
of the Kantian and neo-Kantian types. The book had been considered as
representing a ‘new form of scholasticism,’ because it transferred
the attention away from the subject and back onto the object. Once again
perception was treated as something receptive, governed by its objects,
rather than constitutive and regulative of the objects as in critical
philosophy. All the young phenomenologists were committed realists.[28]
This method of receptivity before the real, led Stein to be receptive
to the religious experiences of others. Thus, when she started to attend
Max Scheler’s seminars on “the Nature of the Holy,”
she was profoundly moved.
This was my first encounter with this hitherto totally unknown world.
It did not lead me as yet to the Faith. But it did open for me a region
of ‘phenomena’ which I could then no longer bypass blindly.
With good reason we were repeatedly enjoined to observe all things without
prejudice, to discard all possible ‘blinders.’ The barriers
of rationalistic prejudices with which I had unwittingly grown up fell,
and the world of faith unfolded before me. Persons with whom I associated
daily, whom I esteemed and admired, lived in it. At the least, they deserved
my giving it some serious reflection.[29]
From the realism she had learned from the early Husserl, Stein was able
to see the religious experience of others as phenomena from which she
might be able to learn so new truth. This is precisely the realist philosophy
that the Pope desires to promote. He does so, I would like to suggest,
precisely because of the effect it has had on people such as Edith Stein
and on others like her.
But, we should recognize that more was happening among Husserl’s
students than merely philosophy. There was the presence of God’s
grace and there was the presence of committed Christians who were influencing
these students through the witness of their lives. Stein herself offers
many examples of these Christian witnesses: an important one was the calm
hope and resignation exhibited by a Lutheran friend when her husband was
killed: this hope-filled response was new to Stein and left her deeply
impressed and puzzled.
It was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power that it
bestows on those who carry it. For the first time, I was seeing with my
very eyes the Church, born from its Redeemer’s sufferings, triumphant
over the sting of death. That was the moment my unbelief collapsed and
Christ shone forth--in the mystery of the Cross.[30]
The summit, however, of these witnesses occurred in Stein’s accidental
encounter with Teresa of Avila, when Stein stumbled upon her autobiography
in the home of a friend. She stayed upon all night reading it, and by
dawn when she finished the book, she had the faith of the Church.[31]
Stein became a Catholic because in that encounter with the life of Teresa
she encountered a truth, which, through the gift of grace, she was able
to receive. Thus, in Stein’s own life we see the two elements that
the Pope believes promote the philosophical search for truth and a subsequent
openness to the Gospel: (a) realist philosophy and (b) the witness of
a Christian life.
What Stein did after her conversion is also significant. Her response
to the rise of the Nazis was to enter the Carmelites, the Order that,
perhaps more than any other, recognizes the Christian life to a journey
of discovery: an ascent up the mount of truth, an ascent into the mystery
of Christ’s cross. Although the logic of despair and of the will
to power was to surround her and lead to her death at Auschwitz, Edith
Stein’s fidelity to the truth about human life--the truth about
the cross and resurrection--continues to speak to us. She lived the life
of the Logos, and did so in confidence and peace. By doing so, she says
to Celsus and to all of us, don’t despair: in God’s grace,
the search for truth leads to eternal life.
Published in: Faith and Reason: the Notre Dame Symposium 1999, edited
by Timothy L. Smith (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press,
2001): 245-257.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Cf. Fides et Ratio (henceforth FR) 90: The positions we have examined
lead in turn to a more general conception which appears today as the common
framework of many philosophies which have rejected the meaningfulness
of being. I am referring to the nihilist interpretation, which is at once
the denial of all foundations and the negation of all objective truth.
. . . It should never be forgotten that the neglect of being inevitably
leads to losing touch with objective truth and therefore with the very
ground of human dignity. This in turn makes it possible to erase from
the countenance of man and woman the marks of their likeness to God, and
thus to lead them little by little either to a destructive will to power
or to a solitude without hope. Once the truth is denied to human beings,
it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either
go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.”
[2] FR 56: “in the light of faith which finds in Jesus Christ this
ultimate meaning, I cannot but encourage philosophers--be they Christian
or not--to trust in the power of human reason and not to set themselves
goals that are too modest in their philosophizing. The lesson of history
in this millennium now drawing to a close shows that this is the path
to follow: it is necessary not to abandon the passion for ultimate truth,
the eagerness to search for it or the audacity to forge new paths in the
search.” FR 102: “There is today no more urgent preparation
for the performance of these tasks than this: to lead people to discover
both their capacity to know the truth and their yearning for the ultimate
and definitive meaning of life.”
[3] Henri Crouzel, Origen translated by A. S. Worrall (San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1989), 47-48. Crouzel describes this pamphlet as the “first
attack launched against Christianity on the intellectual plane”
(47).
[4] Marcel Borret, “Introduction Générale, Tables
et Index,” in Contre Celse volume 5 Sources Chrétiennes (Paris:
Editions du Cerf, 1976), 33-121.
[5] The text of the Alèthès Logos has only come down to
us through the extensive quotations of it that Origen makes in the Contra
Celsum. On the character and accuracy of Origen’s method of quoting
Celsus’ text, see Marcel Borret, “Introduction Générale,
Tables et Index,” in Contre Celse volume 5 Sources Chrétiennes
(Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1976), 29-33. For an analysis of Origen’s
Contra Celsum, see, in addition to Borret’s “Introduction
Générale” (199-246), Henry Chadwick, “Introduction”
in Origen, Contra Celsum, translated with an introduction and notes by
Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Eugene V.
Gallagher, Divine Man or Magician? Celsus and Origen on Jesus (Chico,
CA: Scholars Press, 1982); Robert John Hauck, The More Divine Proof :
Prophecy and Inspiration in Celsus and Origen (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press,
1989); Jeffrey A. Oschwald, “The Self-Evident Truth: Scripture and
Apology in the Contra Celsum of Origen” (Ph.D. Diss. University
of Notre Dame, 1993); Louis William Roberts, “Philosophical Method
in Origen's Contra Celsum” (Ph.D. Diss. State University of New
York at Buffalo, 1971).
[6] Pierre Hadot, “Présentation au Collège International
de Philosophie,” (unpublished manuscript), 3, cited by Arnold I.
Davidson in his introduction to Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life
edited with introduction by Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995),
30-31. See also, Hadot’s statement in the same volume: “During
this period, philosophy was a way of life. . . . philosophy was a mode
of existing-in-the-world, which had to be practiced at each instant, and
the goal of which was to transform the whole of the individual’s
life” (265). I wish to thank Brian Daley, S.J. for introducing me
to Hadot’s work.
[7] Cf. Arnold I. Davidson “Introduction” in Pierre Hadot,
Philosophy as a Way of Life 25.
[8] Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life 265.
[9] See, for example, Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho: “Philosophy
is indeed one’s greatest possession, and is most precious in the
sight of God, to whom it alone leads us and to whom it unites us, and
they in truth are holy men who have applied themselves to philosophy”
(2, PG: 6.475); “Man cannot have prudence without philosophy and
straight thinking. Thus, every man should be devoted to philosophy and
should consider it the greatest and most noble pursuit; all other pursuits
are only of second or third-rate value, unless they are connected with
philosophy. . . . Philosophy, . . . is the knowledge of that which exists,
and a clear understanding of the truth; and happiness is the reward of
such knowledge and understanding” (3, PG: 6.479-482). The translation
is from Writings of Saint Justin Martyr, translated by Thomas B. Falls
(New York: Christian Heritage, 1948). For analysis of the meaning of philosophia
for both pagans and early Christians, an analysis that collects most of
the relevant texts, see A. N. Malingrey, “Philosophia,” Étude
d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques
au IVe siècle ap. J.-C. (Paris: , 1961). Cf. Hadot 141, n. 17.
[10] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.18.90.1 (SC 30.115); FR 38.
[11] Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10 and 13 (PG: 6.459-462; 466-467);
Dialogue with Trypho 8 (PG: 6.491-494); Hadot Philosophy as a Way of Life
128; FR 38. Although Origen is highly critical of many of the doctrines
held by the pagan philosophers, he respects their ideal and makes it his
own. As Crouzel notes, “Origen holds in high esteem the moral ideal
of the philosopher characterized by the love of truth and the quest for
it” (Henri Crouzel, Origen translated by A. S. Worrall [San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1989], 157). Elsewhere, Crouzel describes Origen’s
attitude as follows: “Origène est sensible à l’ideal
hellénique du philosophe et en assimile tout ce qu’il peut.
Il emploie fréquemment le mot dans un sens chrétien . .
. Cet idéal moral et religieux, joint au travail et à la
recherche intellectualle, Origène le fait sien” (Henri Crouzel,
Origène et la Philosophie [Paris: Aubier, 1962], 69-70). At the
same time, however, he affirms that Greek philosophy fails to attain its
end. Only the “divine philosophy,” only the “philosophy
of the patriarchs” fully imparts the true wisdom of the Logos (Contra
Celsum 3.4.15-17; SC 136.20).
[12] Contra Celsum 8.1.4-16; SC 150.180.
[13] FR 76: “the Christian faith as such is not a philosophy.”
[14] FR 30: “All men and women, as I have noted, are in some sense
philosophers and have their own philosophical conceptions with which they
direct their lives. In one way or other, they shape a comprehensive vision
and an answer to the question of life’s meaning; and in the light
of this they interpret their own life’s course and regulate their
behavior.” FR 70: “When they are deeply rooted in experience,
cultures show forth the human being’s characteristic openness to
the universal and the transcendent. Therefore they offer different paths
to the truth, which assuredly serve men and women well in revealing values
which can make their life ever more human.” Centesimus Annus (henceforth
CA) 24: “Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated
within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position
he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love,
work and death. At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes
to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically
different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence.”
CA 50: “From this open search for truth, which is renewed in every
generation, the culture of a nation derives its character.”
[15] FR 64. FR 27: “people seek in different ways to shape a ‘philosophy’
of their own--in personal convictions and experiences, in traditions of
family and culture, or in journeys in search of life’s meaning under
the guidance of a master. What inspires all of these is the desire to
reach the certitude of truth and the certitude of its absolute value.”
FR 30: “The truths of philosophy, it should be said, are not restricted
only to the sometimes ephemeral teachings of professional philosophers.
All men and women, as I have noted, are in some sense philosophers and
have their own philosophical conceptions with which they direct their
lives. In one way or other, they shape a comprehensive vision and an answer
to the question of life’s meaning; and in the light of this they
interpret their own life’s course and regulate their behavior.”
FR 33: “From all that I have said to this point it emerges that
men and women are on a journey of discovery.”
[16] FR 34: “[Jesus] is the eternal Word in whom all things were
created, and he is the incarnate Word who in his entire person reveals
the Father (cf. Jn 1:14, 18). What human reason seeks ‘without knowing
it’ (cf. Acts 17: 23) can be found only through Christ: what is
revealed in him is ‘the full truth’ (cf. Jn 1:14-16) of everything
which was created in him and through him and which therefore in him finds
its fulfillment (cf. Col 1: 17).” See also FR 99 and Redemptoris
Hominis 8: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate
Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was
a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord. Christ, the new Adam,
in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully
reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling”
(cited in FR 60).
[17] FR 67: “Recalling the teaching of Saint Paul (cf. Rom 1:19-20),
the First Vatican Council pointed to the existence of truths which are
naturally, and thus philosophically, knowable; and an acceptance of God’s
Revelation necessarily presupposes knowledge of these truths. . . . From
all these truths, the mind is led to acknowledge the existence of a truly
propaedeutic path to faith, one which can lead to the acceptance of Revelation
without in any way compromising the principles and autonomy of the mind
itself.”
[18] FR 91.
[19] See Darcy O’Brien, The Hidden Pope: the Untold Story of a Lifelong
Friendship that is Changing the Relationship between Catholics and Jews.
The Journey of John Paul II and Jerzy Kluger (New York: Daybreak Books,
1998) 164-171; 185-195; 202-218; Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II: the Biography
(New York: Scribner, 1995) 124-132; Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His
Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (New York: Doubleday,
1996) 225-230.
[20] Walker Percy, The Second Coming (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
1980), 132.
[21] Karl Stern, The Pillar of Fire (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1951), 222. Stern says these words in describing himself and his future
bride: “Whatever our views may be, we had come from roots far apart;
she from an over-sophisticated academic tradition, I from the merchant’s
house in the small town; she from a liberal Lutheran, I from an ‘enlightened’
Jewish background. We both had been instilled with Goethean humanism but
our revolts against the bourgeois tradition had taken entirely different
routes. We both had known the life of ‘freedom,’ the perfect
libertinism of European youth of the twenties, and the hangover of nothingness
and spiritual despair.”
[22] Karl Stern, The Pillar of Fire 47-48, 160-161.
[23] Nicholas Boyle, Who Are We Now: Christian Humanism and the Global
Market from Hegel to Heaney (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press,
1998) 125-126.
[24] Nicholas Boyle, Who Are We Now 126. Karl Stern noticed as early as
the late 1940’s that a number of his colleagues in the medical profession
were already expressing views, such as the legitimacy of killing the chronically
mentally ill, that were chillingly close to those expressed in Germany
during the Weimar Republic and subsequently taken up by the Nazis with
great efficiency (Karl Stern, The Pillar of Fire 125-127). Flannery O’Connor
was also sensitive to this growing attitude, describing it as flowing
from a compassion that is cut off from Christian faith. Concern about
the implications of faithless compassion is a theme throughout her fiction.
In 1960 she expressed her views on this subject clearly in an essay introducing
a biography of a young girl who had died of cancer: “Ivan Karamozov
cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus’ hero
cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents.
In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss of
vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with
the blind, prophetically, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to
say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness.
It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ,
is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness,
its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the
fumes of the gas chamber” (Flannery O’Connor, “Introduction
to A Memoir of Mary Ann,” reprinted in Mystery and Manners edited
by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969]
227). This concern was also a theme in the work of Walker Percy. It is
present in the passage from the Second Coming cited above; Percy investigates
it at length in The Thanatos Syndrome and offers a non-fiction account
of his views in “Why Are You A Catholic” in Signposts in a
Strange Land edited by Patrick Samway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1991) 304-315. For an analysis of Percy’s views, see Patricia Lewis
Poteat, “Pilgrim’s Progress; or, A Few Night Thoughts on Tenderness
and the Will to Power” in Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher
edited by Jan Nordby Gretlund and Lark-Heinz Westarp (Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi, 1991) 210-224; Sue Mitchell Crowley, “The
Thanatos Syndrome: Walker Percy’s Tribute to Flannery O’Connor”
in Walker Percy: Novelist and Philosopher 225-237. See also Deal W. Hudson,
Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1996) 42-45.
[25] Evangelium Vitae (henceforth EV) 4; 12-17; CA 24; 41; FR 46-47; 55;
81; 90-91.
[26] FR 32; 105. John Paul develops this theme more explicitly in his
earlier encyclicals: CA 57-58; EV 80-100.
[27] The nature of Stein’s loss of faith during her early years
is not entirely clear. Waltraud Herbstrith asserts in her biography of
Stein that “Edith Stein acknowledged years later that from thirteen
to twenty-one she could not believe in the existence of a personal God”
(Waltraud Herbstrith, Edith Stein, A Biography translated by Bernard Bonowitz
[San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985], 5); but Herbstrith does not offer
a source for this assertion. Stein does state in her autobiography that
at the age of fifteen, when living in the home of non-practicing relatives,
that “deliberately and consciously, I gave up praying” (Edith
Stein, Life in a Jewish Family: 1891-1916: An Autobiography edited by
L. Gelber and Romaeus Leuven and translated by Josephine Koeppel [Washington,
D.C.: I.C.S. Publications, 1986] 148). Stein’s niece, however, wisely
cautions that an adolescent’s decision not to pray does not necessarily
mean that the adolescent is an atheist (Susanne M. Batzdorff, Aunt Edith:
the Jewish Heritage of a Catholic Saint [Springfield, IL: Templegate,
1998] 67). What is clear is that Edith Stein herself affirms that during
her years as a college student she was without faith in God (See, for
example, Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family 195).
[28] Edith Stein, Aus dem Leben einer jüdischen Famile Kindheit und
Jugend, Edith Steins Werke, Bd. VII (Louvain: Nauwelaerts/Freiburg: Herder,
1965), 174, as cited by Waltraud Herbstrith and translated by Bernard
Bonowitz in Waltraud Herbstrith, Edith Stein, A Biography 18. See Edith
Stein, Life in a Jewish Family 250.
[29] Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family 260. Cited in Waltraud Herbstrith,
Edith Stein, A Biography 19.
[30] Edith Stein in a letter to Fr. Hirschmann, S.J. cited by Waltraud
Herbstrith, Edith Stein, A Biography 24-25. The friend was Anna Reinach;
her husband, the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach, was killed in the First
World War. For an account of Stein’s friendship and professional
relationship with the Reinachs, see Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family
247-300, passim; 377- 385, passim.
[31] See Waltraud Herbstrith, Edith Stein, A Biography 30-32.
