[Author’s note: The following post, especially the first half, is more technical and challenging than my previous posts on this site. I do find this material exceptionally important, and I believe that persistence in reading will be rewarded with a deeper understanding of the thought implicitly underlying Pope Francis’s theology and pastoral vision. — VJT]

When compared to historic Vatican documents, even those of the mid-twentieth century, the papal writings of our time exhibit unmistakable differences in mindset, tone, and manner of expression that far exceed the actual development of doctrine. For all this, the unity and coherence of the whole teaching not only remains unshaken, but is in respects even enhanced by this shift.

In a previous article, I noted the hypercautious and even censorious reaction that greeted the proponents of the ressourcement in their bringing what was called in derision the nouvelle théologie to the service of the Church. The example of Humani Generis is instructive; while it marked a significant opening to modern natural science, it roundly condemned what later proved to be the very flower of 20th Century theological thought for its commerce with modern and contemporary philosophy.

While it is true that the Council and all popes since St. John XXIII have contributed to the rehabilitation of these thinkers and the promulgation of aspects of their thought, our current Holy Father has initiated a new and indeed truly epochal turn in theological and pastoral action which has deep and as yet not fully uncovered roots in modern and contemporary philosophy. For the moment, it is worth noting that his current encyclical, Dilexit Nos, contains one short citation each from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato and not a word of (nor even a passing reference to) Aristotle, while devoting two key paragraphs to thoughts drawn from Martin Heidegger,[1] apostate and ex-seminarian, whose sympathy and collaboration with the rise of Nazism repel many (myself included) from engaging with his work. Yet connections to Heidegger’s work have already proven fruitful in many respects, as we shall see over the course of this article.

A great father of the nouvelle théologie, Hans Urs von Balthasar, names as the “most mysterious” distinction to be made by philosophy “the distinction between the unity of all existing beings that share in being and the unity of each individual being in the uniqueness and incommunicability of its particular being.”

To put it a bit more simply: All things hold in common that they exist, even if only potentially; there is nothing we can imagine as per se divorced from existence.[2] The sum total of reality constitutes a cosmos, of which it is impossible to consider an “outside,” or a non-inclusion.

On the other hand, no thing in this cosmos is intrinsically further reducible to something else simultaneous to its own actualization. Likewise, each thing, to the degree that it exists at all, exists as a unity. Unity is integral to being – to being taken corporately or to being taken individually. And the individual existent is not a “piece of being” arbitrarily “sheared off” from a larger block of being, in the manner of subdivisions of an aggregate. Rather, each individual being exists, necessarily, as a unique “organizing” in self-cohesion. (Note that while I could say “organization,” being itself is ever active, more verb than noun.) Thus, these two unities – that of the whole and that of the individual – obtain in a fruitful tension.

Balthasar is fully in line with the tradition, from Aristotle onwards, in acknowledging that there is no convenient hack for collapsing this distinction. Let’s say you do a metaphysical taxonomy of, say, a squirrel: rodents→ mammals→ animals→ living things→ things. At a certain point, “being” simply cannot be made to serve as the most comprehensive genus uniting all other possible genera. Following Thomas, the differentiation falls outside the genus; genus is built on commonality. Now work backward: rodent→ squirrel. What distinguishes squirrels among a vast genus of deer mice, chipmunks, lab rats, capybaras and all the rest, is specific difference.

Now consider “being.” There is simply no way to get “outside.” Should you want it straight, without the chaser, here’s the Aquinas:

Nulla autem differentia participat genus, ita scilicet quod genus sit in ratione differentiae; quia sic genus poneretur bis in diffinitione speciei.

But no difference shares in the genus in such a way that the genus is included in the notion of the difference, for thus the genus would be included twice in the definition of the species.

Individuated being and generic being belong to the same concept. Difference itself belongs to the concept of being, every bit as much as does unity. What unites things and what distinguishes them is therefore one and the same. Each individual is thus truly an instantiation of being, yet falls infinitely short of expressing it. Further, being is not to be taken as a vacuity, as a mere container, like dead space in the solar system. Again, it is, itself, fully dynamic and in act. Such is the aporia at hand.

For St. Thomas, this unfolds as the “real distinction,” namely, the dichotomy between existence and essence. Existence answers to that something is, while essence answers to what it is. Essence, in a nutshell, is the most abstract rendering of particular being. For material being, matter itself is always the principle of individuation… maybe; while classically this is so, there are hints that updating may be in order, especially in the light of modern science. Suffice it to say that for material being, not a few oppositional dichotomies are at play.

For intellectual (i.e. non-corporeal) being, like an angel, individuation can be in no way reliant on matter – that would be a contradiction in terms – and so we need a deeper cut, to which the essence/existence dichotomy speaks. Of this metaphysical yin and yang, essence is the delimiting concept, while existence is enlivening. This angel, this particular existence, is to be exactly as this particular existence; it exists only to the degree that the confines of its particularization dictate, and no more.

For God, the story is different. God is the perfect and complete act of being-undelimited. He has no essence or, much more precisely, his essence is to be.

All of that said (and read), we have earned the right to turn to the payoff. In Fides et Ratio, Pope St. John Paul II puts forth adamantly: “If the intellectus fidei wishes to integrate all the wealth of the theological tradition, it must turn to the philosophy of being [emphasis mine].” My late professor, Roger Duncan, dedicated himself to the “new metaphysics” called for by the pope. He believed that “the issues raised by the idea of a necessarily collective being are at the heart” of such an endeavor.

This insight was prescient – for, as I am edified to see, the notion of “interconnectedness” is taken for granted in all of the theology coming off the Francis papacy – taken for granted as absolutely foundational, but implicitly. Nowhere do we find the “scratch work.”[3] All the same, Francis has only heightened the challenge to the discipline, in giving us new and exciting information to process and to integrate.

And this is where we must note well the meaning of Balthasar’s esteem for Heidegger, on the basis that he considered Heidegger “the only philosopher who has attempted to present a new form of the essence/existence distinction”: namely, Sein und seiendes, Being and the beings. Duncan found this vital inasmuch as being is a more comprehensive concept than existence, as being is inclusive of both sides of the essence/existence dichotomy. The “Being and the beings” distinction, in shifting focus from the more radical individualizing that comes (taken wrongly, to be sure) from monadic essential “parcelings” of being, allows for a finite being which is “inherently plural.”

Always the Ratzingerian to Duncan’s Balthasarian, I introduced my professor to a lesser-known article in which Ratzinger concludes that neither modern nor Christian philosophy go far enough in engaging with the inherent plurality of being. For Ratzinger, this plurality is indeed a mark of divine being – except, precisely on account of its divinity, infinitely so:

In Christianity there is not simply a dialogical principle in the modern sense of a pure “I-Thou” relationship, neither on the part of the human person that has its place in the historical “we” that bears it; nor is there such a mere dialogical principle on God’s part who is, in turn, no simple “I,” but the “we” of Father, Son and Spirit. On both sides there is neither the pure “I,” nor the pure “you,” but on both sides the “I” is integrated into the greater “we.”

Notice that, in this model, the human person is borne aloft necessarily by the historical “we.” Adam himself does not stand as disengaged from this context, as “tradition” for Ratzinger is a matter of trans-temporality.[4]

Ratzinger does not treat the definition of “person” as by any means completely settled, and therefore merely points to its origins and subsequent historical development. (In looking to capture a pat definition of gender, for example, it strikes me that more foundational concepts, which one would consider easier to pin down, remain elusive, and open to expansion. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that there aren’t pre-given structures in reality, but rather that we must proceed humbly and cautiously, as in the realm of suprarational prototypes.) But Ratzinger invokes a concept far exceeding the classical definition coined by Boethius: naturae rationalis individua substantia, an individual substance of a rational nature (De Duab. Nat.), and he does so on the basis of an ever-deepening theological vision: “Precisely this final point, namely that not even God can be seen as the pure and simple ‘I’ toward which the human person tends, is a fundamental aspect of the theological concept of the person.”

Ratzinger is of the mind that to define person more truly, the substantialist mindset of the ancients must be overcome. The metaphysics of substance is too complex to be introduced midstream here, but suffice it to say that substance is that ontic reality by which the individual remains locked into himself as individual. As substance and at the level of substance, an entity exists irreducibly “in itself and by itself.” It is important to note that while we creedally confess the consubstantiality of the Persons, God is not properly a substance. (I will disentangle that at some later point.)  For now, the Persons are not adjacent to one another; they are co-inherent. Ratzinger, at the very end of Eschatology,[5] applies the same idea to the communion of saints. He argues for a theological deepening of the notion of personhood as “pure relativity.” On one level, this does not depart from the traditional Thomistic understanding of Trinitarian relational opposition. What it does do is liberate the notion of finite persons from any undue connotations of isolation from the larger whole.

The pure simplicity of God, the identity of his essence and his existence, means that the “incommunicably proper existence of spirit” (as Richard of St. Victor put it) is unencumbered in its flight to a beloved, and likewise in its receptivity thereto. For creation, there needs to be a correlate, lest we see individuals as exhibiting a “valance” toward mere accidents – which necessarily presupposes change and instability – rather than as impelled toward communion and its spiritualized mode of abiding.

In all this, we have yet another example of Ratzinger’s cutting-edge theology finding its pastoral expression in Francis. “Interconnectedness” is a language more tied in to pastoral concern than is “relativity toward the other.” Ratzinger locates in the definition of Richard of St. Victor cited above a theological meaning of “person” which “does not lie at the level of essence, but of existence” – something of an inversion of the Boethian take. For Ratzinger, a defect in Thomas is the restriction of the system’s existential impetus to God alone. The Heideggerian designation “beings” over “essences” perhaps might prove a privileged view into the “inherent plurality” of each creature, which therefore in turn would seem to speak to an “infinite dignity,” insofar as it is ever a “we,” and far more a “We,” that is at stake. The distinction “Being and the beings” may provide an important structural support for further development pertaining to the analogia entis, the character of analogical relationship which runs through all of being.

Particularly in light of this plurality immanent to all being, the taken-for-granted definition of “person” – and more, the theory of individuation that underlies it – proves insufficient. This finds its validation in these remarkable lines of Ratzinger:

It [that the “I” of which the Godhead is predicated is invested with an eternal, multipersonal richness] explicitly negates the divine monarchy in the sense of antiquity. It expressly refuses to define God as the pure monarchia and numerical unity. The Christian concept of God has as a matter of principle given the same dignity to multiplicity as to unity [emphasis mine]. While antiquity considered multiplicity the corruption of unity, Christian faith, which is a trinitarian faith, considers multiplicity as belonging to unity with the same dignity.

Duncan was, of course, completely wary of Heidegger’s further conclusions, of “the takeover of a univocal mothership darkening the skies,” as he put it. For Heidegger, Being is some kind of third entity that seems to amount to neither creature nor Creator. This is, most emphatically, not tenable. I am no Heideggerian, nor am I overly knowledgeable here… to say the least. I have always kept my distance, for utter aversion to Heidegger’s never-accounted-for entanglement in an ideology too abhorrent to name again. Yet Heidegger, with his pious birth family, Jesuit formation, and long theological study (he was enrolled in the school of theology at Freiburg up to the age of 22 and ultimately wrote his second dissertation on Duns Scotus), is perhaps as much the “posthumous philosopher” as Nietzsche, with the seeds of his early formation ever springing up, awaiting adaptation to totally new contexts. As Balthasar was keen to explore, later Heidegger students such as Clemens Kaliba were looking to construct a Trinitarian ontology. In like manner, Ratzinger – and this may come as a complete surprise to many – concludes his reflections on personhood in citing theological impetus provided by the (likewise atheistic) Feuerbach.

In Eschatology, Ratzinger – while referring to Heidegger as a “post-Christian pagan” (a fair description, which in context carries no note of disparagement) – is quite laudatory of Heidegger’s insight that the possibilities for demise which modern man has placed before himself demand the intervention of a god, and so man must place himself in a state of “prepared readiness.” Vigilance regarding a messianic advent, however generic, is ultimately a matter of the heart, and one demanding a drawing-together in the congregatio of shared need and expectation on a global level. According to Dilexit Nos, “the great philosophical tradition finds [the heart] a foreign notion, preferring other concepts such as reason, will or freedom.”

Now we can look at how Heideggerian thought is brought into the encyclical’s message; the Holy Father cites Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s elaboration of a trope from Heidegger:

The ‘heart’ listens in a non-metaphoric way to ‘the silent voice’ of being, allowing itself to be tempered and determined by it. (DN 16)

…which brings us back to the attentive stance of prepared readiness. It also roots us into the insights garnered from enriching the metaphysical discourse with the “Being and beings” distinction; embedded into being is “voice,” a reality fully dialogical and communicative, a unifying mediation flowing insuppressibly among all that is.

And so we see Francis’s concern:

The heart makes all authentic bonding possible, since a relationship not shaped by the heart is incapable of overcoming the fragmentation caused by individualism. Two monads may approach one another, but they will never truly connect. (DN 17)

And we see its application to our world:

A society dominated by narcissism and self-centeredness will increasingly become “heartless”. This will lead in turn to the “loss of desire”, since as other persons disappear from the horizon we find ourselves trapped within walls of our own making, no longer capable of healthy relationships. (DN 17)

That contemporary humanity learn to dissociate the concepts of the individual and the monadic is especially urgent.

None of this in any way sets aside the great minds of the Church’s tradition. Precisely because of its surpassing merit, the work of great Christian thinkers like Boethius and Aquinas points beyond itself; this pointing-beyond implies no deficiency in the work, but rather an openness toward the future. Whole categories of contemporary thought would not have been remotely possible apart from such groundbreaking contribution as was offered by the Christian theological endeavor. But unless one does philosophy for himself, he is never more than its historian. Modern man needs to find his own apt expression for the tradition, a tradition which he can never plumb unless he does so from his own heart. The contemplative ethos connatural to Aquinas the saint, Aquinas who composed so many of our sublime and poetic eucharistic hymns as well as commentaries and treatises, is scarcely available to moderns. Attempting to engage with bygone works amidst the sterility of the contemporary university risks alienating man from the veritable heart of these systems, and consequently even further from his own and from God’s alike.

In what could be taken as a response to this quandary, the encyclical states:

For Heidegger, as interpreted by one contemporary thinker,[6] philosophy does not begin with a simple concept or certainty, but with a shock: “… Without deep emotion, thought cannot begin. The first mental image would thus be goose bumps. What first stirs one to think and question is deep emotion.” (DN 16)

A theology of the heart would be served well by more radically personalistic ontological categories… and perhaps, with Heidegger, whose sympathies were with a regime that was eventually to be revealed for all its dark and cataclysmic power, we need a language that articulates the state of heart that comes of a collective bottoming-out, closer to redemption for the intuition of its utter need and powerlessness. After all, a broken and contrite heart will not be spurned by God.

This is all very, very preliminary, meant only to pose questions and crack open issues. Yet, as St. John Paul II insisted, metaphysics urgently needs updating – not to mention such a level of renewed engagement as would make updating even possible. A tentative beginning is some cause for hope.

Notes:

[1] This observation on Dilexit Nos, while true, should not be exaggerated; the encyclical extensively cites the Church Fathers and, among Scholastics, St. Bonaventure.

[2]  The metaphysical analysis of evil offers a special case. It is itself not an entity, and while having neither a final nor an efficient cause, it does have an agent cause, if only accidentally; even privative reality is existence-dependent.

[3] Funny story: When I was a kid, Dr. Duncan assigned a logic quiz in which we were to evaluate the truth value of various syllogisms – many of them, predictably, flawed. I submitted the test in minutes, with a high degree of confidence, and it was to my shock that it was returned with a twenty out of a hundred. I did get that grade amended, as absolutely nowhere on the sheet (yes, we used to do exams on paper) did it say to demonstrate the conclusions symbolically. Apparently, I was just anticipating the style of the pope.

[4] All of this carries implications for doctrine which are quite obvious, but cannot be expounded here.

[5] That is to say, at a late placement in the text of his masterwork on the topic, to ward off in advance any possible confusion.

[6] Again, Byung-Chul Han.

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Image: Martin Heidegger