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Tradition, the Magisterium, and the Tasks of Philosophy
For most denizens of the early twenty first century, tradition is obscure and ambiguous; it
begs for persuasive definition. Alasdair MacIntyre has done much to retrieve “tradition” from its
low estate.1 He sees tradition as the natural habitat of much that is distinctively human. Are we
rational animals? Yes, and we reason only in a tradition, it is the context for sustained inquiry.
As an expression of our common life, tradition is a bearer of our defining narratives and
practices. It is the locus of the virtues that sustain these narratives and practices; it is
indispensable for ongoing argument about the common good. Tradition is dynamic, so much so
that we identify and define it in light of its contributors and challenges.2
To be sure, there are a great many traditions. Sometimes, as with Marxism and liberalism,
they sharply conflict; at other times, as with empiricism and pragmatism, they might well
converge. In this paper, I am chiefly interested in the tradition of Roman Catholic philosophy. It
is a tradition with which Alasdair MacIntyre has become deeply engaged; he is, indeed, among
its foremost contributors. How are we to understand this complex and tradition?3 In God,
Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (2009),
MacIntyre begins his story with those who set the stages for it: Augustine, Boethius, PseudoDionysius, and Anselm. To this roster he adds Islamic and Jewish interlocutors, including
Avicenna and Maimonides.
My focus, however, is MacIntyre’s reflections on what recent papal teaching brings to
Catholic philosophy. The richest expression of this teaching is in John Paul II’s encyclicals
Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), given in 1993, and Fides et Ratio (Faith and
Reason), given in 1998. The former is the only encyclical entirely directed to moral theology; it
was prompted by consequentialist distortions of moral judgment.4 The second is the most
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sustained account of the relation between faith and reason; it was occasioned by postmodernist
doubts about reason. Both encyclicals authoritatively express Catholic philosophical thought.
This developing tradition enjoys a collaborative relation with the magisterium or teaching
authority of the Church. Just what is this authority? Vatican Council I (1869–1870) teaches:
“[A]ll those things are to be believed…that are contained in the Word of God, written or handed
down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by her ordinary and universal
teaching [magisterium], proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed.”5 Almost a century
later, Vatican Council II (1962–1965) reaffirmed this statement. “Bishops who teach in
communion with the Roman Pontiff are to be revered by all as witnesses of divine and Catholic
truth; the faithful, for their part, are obliged to submit to their bishops’ decision, made in the
name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals, and to adhere to it with… respectful allegiance of
mind.”6 Thus conciliar teaching presents the magisterium as grounded in Revelation and open to
authoritative development.
MacIntyre engages this teaching authority in his 1994 essay, “How Can We Learn What
Veritatis Splendor Has to Teach?” 7 He keenly appreciates the need to explain the teaching role
of the magisterium in relation to rightly autonomous philosophical debate. With regard to
Veritatis Splendor (or Veritatis), he both asks and begins to answer a critical question:
Insofar as [Veritatis] genuinely contributes to argumentative moral philosophy,
must it not be precluded from presenting itself as authoritative teaching? And
insofar as it is authoritative Christian teaching, how can it possibly be a
contribution to contentious debates of moral philosophy? Part of what is
impressive about Veritatis Splendor is that in the course of answering a
number of other questions, it also answers these questions about itself.8
3
Here MacIntyre confronts Kant’s charge of heteronomy; he does so by directing us to the
distinctive theonomy of which the encyclical speaks. And what is this theonomy? The Gospel’s
measure of life is neither alien nor arbitrary. In the words of Veritatis, “Obedience to God is
not…a heteronomy…a form of alienation [but rather] participated theonomy, since man’s free
obedience to God’s law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in
God’s wisdom and providence.”9 The law of love serves freedom in truth.
We are not limited to the false dichotomy of autonomy, with the voluntarism to which it
leads, or the loss of freedom that heteronomy demands. There is a real alternative. God does not
undermine our freedom. He is, rather, its source. As Augustine puts it, “All the while you were
more inside me than my most inmost part; you were higher than my highest powers.”10 Thus,
MacIntyre contends, Veritatis is an invitation, not an imposition.
It does indeed speak in the name of an authority external to us, God, but that to
which it invites us—that to which He invites us—is in part an act of moral and
rational self-recognition. And Veritatis Splendor as a work of philosophy does
itself exhibit just that moral and rational awareness to which as an encyclical it
invites its readers.11
In answer, then, to the charge of heteronomy, MacIntyre insists that a document can both reflect
revealed authority and exhibit philosophical insight. To fail to see this possibility suggests an
ideological sulk, and such an attitude risks leading those who adopt it to undercut their own
commitments.
But how do such consequences follow? Veritatis, in its case for moral absolutes, concerns
anyone who regards truth as a sine qua non of a sound argument. Philosophy requires a
commitment to logical soundness.12 For this reason, if no other, Veritatis matters to anyone who
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honors dialectic over rhetoric and ranks the integrity of Socrates over the self-defeating folly of
Callicles.13 And why should philosophers insist on logical soundness? It is because without it
philosophy cannot lead us to truth, the quest for which is the vocation of philosophy. On this
goal MacIntyre adds: philosophers “pursue the truth about moral and philosophical matters in a
way…that acknowledges the achievement of that truth as one aspect at least of what seems to be
being treated as a final and unconditional end.”14 Beyond raising high the banner of truth,
Veritatis Splendor also explores the virtues that we need to share in its pursuit and to build
mutual respect in doing so.
Among these virtues MacIntyre includes “prudence,” as well as the “courage of endurance”
and the considerate “generosity” which counters “mean-spiritedness and self-indulgence.”15
Veritatis itself asks that we consider whether the recognition of truth as an absolute might point
to others. Good philosophy demands as much. MacIntyre, in this vein, calls attention to the
moral goods that the philosopher’s practice requires. “Without acknowledgment of them…there
would be lacking the basis for rational conversation about goods and the good and for rational
cooperation in achieving good…either within cultures or between cultures.”16 Philosophy
requires collaboration. But honest collaboration rejects coercion and presupposes the social
peace that enables dialogue. The goods and virtues of dialogue, he notes, find support in what St.
Thomas Aquinas calls “the precepts of natural law.”17 Veritatis reminds us as well that it is not
just philosophers but all of us who must honor life, cultivate the natural world, foster social life,
and be alive to the beautiful.18
Here I would like to pay special attention to the moral force of conscience as a sine qua non
for good philosophy. How we understand conscience depends on what we think about truth.
Suppose, as many do, that truth is subjective conviction or social consensus. If it is, what follows
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about the force of conscience? Regard for sincerity and its sensibilities, together with concern for
social cohesion, can afford conscience prima facie authority. But suppose truth is an absolute
good; suppose, too, that practical reason can arrive at moral truth. Suppose, further, that
conscience is one’s best exercise of practical reason about what to do here and now. What, then,
follows about the force of conscience? So understood, the authority of conscience is absolute.
(This is not to say that one’s conscience is infallible.) We have an obligation, always and
everywhere, to act in accord with moral truth. As MacIntyre writes, the force of conscience
follows from objective “standards of truth” and “rational justification.”19 So understood, respect
for conscience readily translates into respect for the whole range of human rights.
Needless to say, insofar as philosophical debate affects the social order, the stakes are truly
enormous. Veritatis observes that “Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable
by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes.”20 Given this weak
view of conscience, the State’s respect for conscientious objection is undermined; so, too, is the
citizen’s duty in conscience to obey the State. Christian Brugger calls attention to a recent case
that illustrates the contradictions that the subjectivist view of conscience risks. In 2007 the
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) stated that “In an emergency in
which referral [for abortions] is not possible or might negatively affect a patient’s physical or
mental health, providers have an obligation to provide medically indicated and requested care
regardless of the provider’s person moral objections.” But if conscience is simply a matter of
personal moral judgment, the authority of the ACOG, which rests on the judgment of its directors,
scarcely has a greater moral weight in the exercise of practical reason about what to do here and
now than does the physician who, as a matter of conscience, refuses to abort and unborn baby. 21
6
Current disputes about the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that Catholic institutions
facilitate contraception, sterilization, and the use of abortifacients often reflect differing views of
conscience. (In California some Catholic institutions take the view that State law requires that
their insurance policies cover abortion.)22 On the Catholic view that conscience is one’s best
exercise of practical reason and thus authoritative, the State’s bracketing of conscience is
unacceptable. Insofar as the State disregards the authority of conscience, it undercuts the
citizen’s duty to obey the law.
Good philosophy not only requires that we consider the range of moral goods and the force of
conscience. Good philosophy demands that we think carefully about the tasks of philosophy
itself. For the Catholic tradition, these tasks begin with, and never lose sight of, the enduring
questions of the plain person—which are the same questions of the philosopher as a human
being. Fides et Ratio insists on this starting point. Its introduction points out that in every culture
pivotal questions arise: “Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is
there evil? What is there after this life?”23 Their unifying theme is the search for meaning.
Indeed, the encyclical’s conclusion links this theme to human dignity and evangelization. “There
is today no more urgent preparation for [these goals] 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.”24 Noting this emphasis on the plain person, MacIntyre urges philosophers to remember
that, before all else, they are plain persons. “The questions that philosophers ask are…questions
that they first ask, not qua philosopher, but qua human being, qua plain person.”25 Straightway
he adds a corollary: in asking such questions “every plain person is potentially a philosopher.”26
Of course, becoming a philosopher is not easy. Philosophy submits the great questions to
rigorous and systematic inquiry; in doing so, it takes with utmost seriousness the nature of truth,
7
of meaning, and of justification. Justice Anthony Kennedy has famously told us that “At the
heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe,
and of the mystery of human life.”27 But it is license and neither liberty nor philosophy that
would allow for the arbitrary and self-indulgent. Philosophy has a rightful autonomy, as it must
if philosophers are to “practice their trade, their craft, on behalf of all plain persons” and thus
contribute to the “common good.”28 It is incumbent on philosophy to bring into heuristic order
the full range of our enduring questions. A Thomist sees this task as part of a deepening quest for
intellectual wisdom. This quest leads to competing theories, and their evaluation calls for
extended argument. Together with this enterprise, philosophy has the critical task of nurturing its
conversation with plain persons. If it fails to do so, it does not effectively serve the common
good. It can only do so, MacIntyre warns, if it avoids the “analytical vice” of dismembering its
own inquiry and the “idealist vice” of allowing theories to trump truth.29
The Thomist, of course, wants to show how the magisterium, in guiding the Catholic
tradition, rightly engages philosophers and draws on the tradition that it engages. Both MacIntyre
and Veritatis and Fides et Ratio see an organic division of labor. For a start, the magisterium
calls attention to how Revelation provides fresh questions of philosophical significance and the
hope that reason might, in part, answer them. And, again for a start, the tradition of Catholic
philosophy, in giving provisional and partial answers to such questions, helps the magisterium to
speak with perspicuity about the Good News of Revelation.
Let’s further explore this division of labor and do so in stages. Consider, first, the profound
import of the Jewish and Christian teaching of Creation. This doctrine invites the philosopher to
think in news ways about time and history. It fundamentally reframes the core intelligibility of
the natural order. It is one thing to affirm the principle of sufficient reason, roughly, that there is
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a sufficient reason for whatever exists, whatever happens, and whatever is true. And why not,
with Leibniz, make systematic use of it? 30 But it is altogether another thing to identify the source
of such reasonableness. Revelation does so, and it asks that we consider its account of why there
are any explanations at all. Thus, the Gospel of John begins by announcing that “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being
through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (John: 1:1–3). The Word (ὁ λόγος)
is the creative principle of the natural order, and the intelligibility of that order has its source in
God’s own Son. In turning to the New Testament, we might next consider its extraordinary
revelation of God become man, the Trinitarian God who is a communion of persons. It is one
thing to explore “from below,” as it were, what human dignity is and how we might situate
human rights in the political order. It is surely another thing to identify the Source of this dignity
and the rights that honor it. Revelation frees us to address the ontology of the person at the
deepest level and to explore how it gives rise to human dignity.31
It would be a great error, however, to think that Revelation, in the examples cited, forecloses
philosophical inquiry. To do so would foreclose on its freedom. “Each of us,” MacIntyre urges,
“has to arrive at her or his own answers to those practical and theoretical questions that we all
pose and to do so not as reason requires, but as reason is understood to require by us.”32
Revelation does, however, introduce a new horizon of unsuspected realities. For MacIntyre, it
“elicits new questions by making [us] aware of dimensions of [our] existence and relationships
[we] had not hitherto recognized.”33 Philosophy seeks an account of the natural order, and
Revelation expands the horizon for doing so. MacIntyre welcomes the mutuality that emerges:
“Philosophical enquiry begins by considering what it would be to understand the order of things
rightly [and] finds a second beginning in considering how we need to understand the order of
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things in the light of [revelation].”34 Revelation is an impetus; philosophy, in turn, can help give
expression to Revelation and show its internal coherence.
Nonetheless, Veritatis and Fides et Ratio go beyond horizonal and interpretative
complementarity. Both address particular philosophical positions. So we must revisit the
question of how Catholic philosophy can justify, and even welcome, magisterial interventions in
particular and ongoing philosophical debates. The case for such intervention, as already noted,
might well begin by underscoring that philosophical inquiry only too often threatens to become
self-defeating. But here we might elaborate on this threat. Something goes badly wrong when
philosophers so limit reason as to make it difficult, if not impossible, to credit reason with the
capacity to grasp something of the truth about that which is. More pointedly, something has gone
badly wrong when philosophers deny the meaningfulness, much less the possibility, of
answering, the enduring questions of plain people. When philosophers do so, they deny the
tradition of Catholic philosophy its raison d’etre. MacIntyre articulates what is at stake:
The final end of the Catholic philosophical enterprise is…an adequate
understanding of those realities about which the initial questions [of the plain
person] were posed. So to uphold any philosophical thesis or argument that denies
significance to those initial questions, by asserting that they are either
meaningless or unanswerable, would deprive the…enterprise of its point and
purpose.35
And what are such self-defeating theses? They include various forms of positivism and
relativism, as well as any idealism that undercuts objective reality external to the human mind.
But note well: MacIntyre does not say that philosophers outside the Catholic tradition must
accept the arguments of papal encyclicals. Rather, he affirms that one cannot both engage in the
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tradition of Catholic philosophy and accept a thesis that renders it futile. The magisterium has a
duty to call attention to such contradictions, and all philosophers should evaluate these
interventions on their own merit and in light of their own traditions.
In his own analysis of magisterial interventions, MacIntyre highlights the Thomist account of
philosophy which he accepts. It champions the vocation to engage the enduring questions with
which we grapple, and thus it helps the plain person and the philosopher alike to enrich the
common good. As embraced by the Catholic tradition, the Thomistic realist view of truth is
decidedly robust. It differs sharply, for example, from the currently familiar view of truth as
warranted assertibility. On the latter view, truth is a property of a statement within some body of
discourse. It is an internalist view. As Crispin Wright has it, the view of truth as warranted
assertibility “supplies no external norm—in a way that truth is classically supposed to do—
against which the internal standards might sub specie Dei themselves be measured and might rate
as adequate or inadequate.”36 In contrast, the realist view of truth does not hesitate to question
the adequacy of the discourse in which a statement has warranted assertibility. Might not selfinterest or cultural limitations distort the standards of a given discourse? Surely this is an open
question. There is, after all, an order of intelligibility that extends both to us as questioners and to
any object of our questions. Thus MacIntyre observes, “in posing such questions about how
things are and about how we are, prior to our enquiries, we already presuppose an order of things
realistically conceived, or order of things which is itself the ultimate object of enquiry.”37 Such
an order, in the Catholic tradition, points to the mystery of the Word made flesh. He it is who
says “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14: 6). A full account of human truth leads to
the Word made flesh. Propositional truth draws on the truth of the Divine Word. Here we find
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the foundation of both the pursuit of truth and of its final end. Truth is the end (τέλος) of
philosophical inquiry, and truth seeking is central to the common good and the eternal good.
MacIntyre speaks for the Catholic tradition: “Every human being has by nature a desire for
that happiness which is achieved only in union to God, integral to which is a recognition of God
as the truth and of all truth as from God, so that the progress through truth to the truth is itself
one part of the ascent of mind and heart to God.”38 The tradition reflects the new horizon of
Revelation. The Gospel of John, in announcing the Word, tells us that “What has come into
being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:4). Commenting on this
verse, Thomas Aquinas writes that the life of animals shows some understanding; nonetheless,
“They do not have the light of men, who live, and know, not only truths, but also the very nature
of truth itself. Such are the rational creatures, to whom not only this or that are made manifest,
but truth itself.”39 It is a new horizon: this life of ours leads beyond merely warranted
assertibility to a real, if incomplete, knowledge of the nature of truth.
To be sure, the plain person and the philosopher share more than enduring questions. They
share the fears so dominant in advanced capitalism and postmodernity. Yet there is hope as well.
The Nobel Laureate William Faulkner, an eloquent yet tortured man, expressed the abiding hope
that man will “not merely endure: he will prevail.”40 We can expand this hope with a shift from
literature to philosophy; we can say with him: “[Philosophy’s] voice need not be merely the
record of man, it can be one of …the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”41 But we need to be
watchful. For the established disorder discourages plain persons and philosophers alike from
sustained dialectic about the enduring human questions. What, then, is to be done?
In terms of praxis, should we turn to education, especially higher education, to support and
promote our asking the enduring questions? For many this seems an obvious answer, and higher
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education sometimes seeks public support in such terms. But for now, and for the foreseeable
future, higher education has disturbingly little to offer. MacIntyre recognizes that contemporary
university education sees philosophy as a specialized and even idiosyncratic pursuit confined to
the liberal arts. Fides et Ratio recognizes what is at issue:
Other forms of rationality have acquired an ever higher profile, making
philosophical learning appear all the more peripheral. These forms of rationality
are directed not towards the contemplation of truth and the search for the ultimate
goal and meaning of life; but instead, as “instrumental reason,” they are
directed—actually or potentially—towards the promotion of utilitarian ends,
towards enjoyment or power.42
University education, for that matter, sees the liberal arts themselves as of chiefly instrumental
worth. And why not? The regnant cultures see education itself as, above all, in service of social
equilibrium and the pursuit of individual interests. And when these interests conflict? They are
orchestrated by a “thin theory” of the good. Enter the much touted political liberalism of John
Rawls and the liberal State to which it pledges allegiance.43 The Rawlsian State and its imitators
depend on the liberal culture that both reflects and encourages instrumentalized university
education. The State itself positions itself as the first educator of the people. Thus, for Rawls,
“The task of education belongs to…the wide role of political conception.”44 We learn that
[S]uch a conception is part of the public political culture: its first principles are
embodied in the institutions of the basic structure and appealed to in their
interpretation. Acquaintance with and participation in that public culture is one
way citizens learn to conceive of themselves as free and equal, a conception
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which, if left to their own reflections, they would most likely never form, much
less accept and desire to realize.45
But perhaps even so solicitous a State will leave us, if only for the moment, to our own
reflections. In so welcome a recess, we might wonder how we ever managed to think of the
liberal State absent its tutelage. More to the point: We might wonder whether such a State does
not arrogate to itself a despotic intellectual sovereignty.
MacIntyre, to be sure, is no Rawlsian. For Rawls, a duly reasonable and restrictive pluralism
precludes the shared recognition of “a moral order of values or the dictates of what some view as
natural law.”46 (Note: natural law reflects the rational nature of the human being.) On Rawls’s
scheme, as domesticated political animals, we must not consider what it is to be a person in
terms of metaphysics, although the contractarian person ought to be compatible with richer views
of the person.47 But it is hard to see how anyone in the tradition of Catholic philosophy would
leave the human person, created in imago Dei, at the door of Rawls’s famed original position,
even if seen figuratively.
In any case, MacIntyre does not hesitate to predict philosophy’s fate in the established
disorder. Therein, he observes, philosophy is “something that can be safely ignored by the huge
majority of humankind [and] in no way an indispensable part of an adequate education.”48 Yet
Catholic philosophy has a vocation to pursue the enduring questions of meaning, and truth, and
the good; it does so in service to the common good. This requires the tradition to speak to the
plain person, to philosophers, and to philosophers as plain persons. It requires, too, that the
tradition engage its own sharpest critics. But how is it to do so?
Might not the tradition build its own research universities? Are there not already such
universities? Do they not attract significant State support? If we can answer such questions
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affirmatively, then surely the tradition will find a home in these same Catholic universities.
Perhaps someday one might be able to answer “yes” to each of these questions. But for now it is
naïve to answer “yes” to any of them. If the tradition is to have a home in a Catholic university,
that university must encourage philosophy to take a central and integrative role in structuring the
curriculum and in ordering it to the great and enduring questions. But there are no such
universities, apart from a few small and independent institutions. And for the sake of their
integrity, they apply a standard of heightened scrutiny in accepting State support.
Once more, then, what is to be done? The Catholic philosopher, speaking from the tradition,
will draw from Catholic thought with regard to the State. Here Jacques Maritain has much to
contribute. In his classic work, Man and the State, he argues that a good citizen’s allegiance to
the State is always provisional. To be sure, one of the constitutive goods of the common good is
the public order that the State provides. Yet no State has the authority to override the dignity of
the person. No State has the authority to override natural law, that is, right reasoning about the
basic goods of human flourishing. To think otherwise is to make an idol of sovereignty. What
God commands, as Moses taught, “is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away…it is in your
mouth and in your hearts for you to observe.”49 Indeed, Maritain argues that “if we are to think in
a consistent manner in political philosophy, we have to discard the concept of Sovereignty,
which is but one with the concept of Absolutism,” and that, he adds, is because “no earthly
power is the image of God [who] is the very source of the authority with which the people invest
[the State].”50 The State that pretends to sovereignty claims both a pseudo-personhood and a
pseudo-divinity—and often with lethal consequences.
No State, it follows, has the authority supplant parents as the first educators of their
children.51 In light of the family’s right and responsibility to educate its children, Maritain
15
observes that “the function of the educational system and the educational function of the State
are only auxiliary functions of the family”; thus, if the State is to serve rather than dominate, it
must attend to “the philosophical or religious traditions and schools of thought which are
spontaneously at work in the consciousness of the nation and which have contributed historically
to its formation.”52 The current regime, I submit, does little more than to gesture at these
traditions.
The modus operandi of the State, of course, is to assure us that all is well and that, as the
slogan goes, “only public education is education for everyone.” But since it is the watchman who
especially needs to be watched, allow me to introduce here a single and instructive dispute that
suggests that all is far from well. In the case of Romeike v. Holder, now before the United States
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Department of Justice has filed a brief denying
political asylum to a German homeschooling family. While in Germany, Uwe and Hannelore
Romeike faced the removal of their children and threats of jail. On what basis? The Supreme
Court of Germany has declared that the ban on homeschooling was to “counteract the
development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies.”53 But why should
there not be such societies? In important ways, Christianity is committed to building just such
societies. And on what principled basis does the U.S. Department of Justice support the German
restriction of parental rights and religious freedom? One suspects that it is not principle but
expediency that is at work. After all, it behooves one supposedly sovereign State to recognize
another State’s sovereignty; at least, that is, it does so until intelligence needs require electronic
spying abroad.
Catholic political thought sees the State as both necessary and limited. Our allegiance to it is
likewise necessary and limited. We do best to chart with great care a modus vivendi in relation to
16
the State and to the established disorder that both forms and is formed by it.54 This modus vivendi
will be both demanding and precarious. Surely the virtues of prudence and courage are necessary
to endure, much less prevail, in such circumstances. Beyond these natural virtues, there is the
supernatural virtue of hope.55 Alasdair MacIntyre is keenly aware of the perils of the liberal
State. Not surprisingly, he is just as aware of the perils of accepting the dominant secular models
of university education. To the extent that Catholics do so, he writes, “The institutional prospects
for…the Catholic philosophical tradition are not encouraging, quite apart from the daunting
character of its intellectual needs and ambitions.”56 Yet he looks to the Catholic tradition to
deconstruct idols and to search out answers to the great human questions. He is, as we would
expect, forthright: “a moment of reflection on the past history of that tradition is enough to
remind us: it rarely, if ever, was otherwise [and] Augustine is always there to remind us how
finitude and sinfulness issue in the fragility of all our projects, including this one.”57 Does this
verdict seem harsh? It need not be so received, for he straightway urges us to “take courage from
the thought that, in the life of the mind as elsewhere, there is always more to hope for than we
can reasonably expect.”58 Nor does this stringent realism diminish reason. For MacIntyre is
among the first to affirm that “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit
rises,” the initial words of John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio.59
James G. Hanink
Professor of Philosophy
Loyola Marymount University
17
One favorable reference to tradition that comes to mind is Broadway’s Fiddler on the Roof (1964). In
this adaptation of a story by Sholem Aleichem, the village fiddler sings “Tradition” while perched on
roof, following the imagery of Marc Chagall.
1
2
For such an account of tradition, see Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective
History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 165.
3
Some explore this tradition from more specific perspectives. See, for example, James V. Schall, S.J.,
Roman Catholic Political Philosophy (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2004).
4
John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 114; hereafter VS.
5
Vatican Council I, De Fide, chap. 3.
6
Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, no. 25.
Alasdair MacIntyre, “How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has to Teach?” in the Thomist, 58:2
(1994: Apr.), 171-195.
7
8
Macintyre, “What Veritatis Splendor Has to Teach,” 172.
9
Veritatis Splendor, no. 41.
10
Confessions, 3.6.11.
11
Ibid., 175.
12
To be sure, not everyone cares about sound arguments. Harry G. Frankfurt notes this sad fact in his On
Truth (New York: Knopf, 2006), see pp. 7–12, and laments that he ignored it in his On Bullshit
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005).
13
Plato’s Gorgias immortalizes their debate.
14
Macintyre, “What Veritatis Splendor Has to Teach,” 173.
15
Ibid., 184–85.
16
Ibid., 184.
17
MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 90–91.
18
VS, no. 51.
19
Ibid., 187.
20
VS, no. 32.
E. Christian Brugger “Abortion, Conscience, and Health Care Provider Rights,” Public Discourse, July
26, 2012 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5902.
21
18
22
Rebecca Chandler, Vice President for Human Resources at Loyola Marymount University, informed
me of this in correspondence.
23
John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 1; hereafter FR.
24
FR, no. 102.
25
Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 166.
26
Ibid.
27
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992)
28
Ibid., 166–67.
Alasdair MacIntyre, “Philosophy recalled to its tasks: a Thomistic reading of Fides et Ratio,” in The
Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Volume I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 181.
29
30
For a theological deployment of the principle, see G. W. Leibniz, Monadology, §37.
31
For an insightful and historically informed account of the character and the dignity of the person, see
Robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’ (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006).
32
MacIntyre, “Truth as a good: a reflection on Fides et Ratio,” in The Tasks of Philosophy, 214.
33
MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 166.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., 170.
In “Truth as a good,” in The Tasks of Philosophy, 205–207, MacIntyre presents Crispin Wright as a
sophisticated proponent of truth as warranted assertibility.
36
37
Ibid., 209.
38
Ibid., 212.
39
St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, Bk. 1, lect. 3. No. 97.
40
William Faulkner, Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm, December 10, 1950.
41
Ibid.
42
FR, no. 47.
43
See, for example, John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Edited by Erin Kelly. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
19
44
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 56.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid., 15.
47
Ibid., 19.
48
MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 171.
49
Dt 30:10-14.
50
Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1998), 49-50. [First Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1951].
Vatican Council II states: “Since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn
obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost
educators of their children…Hence, the family is the first school of those virtues that every society
needs.” Declaration on Christian Education, no. 3.
51
52
Maritain, Man and the State, 120-121.
See Michael Farris, J.D., LL.M., “German Homeschool Case May Impact U.S. Homeschool Freedom.”
www.hslda.org/docs/news/2013/201302110.asp
53
54
Christopher Wolfe helpfully discusses such a modus vivendi in his Natural Law Liberalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 227–247.
See Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Spe Salvi, given in 2007, for a searching discussion of the theological
virtue of hope.
55
56
MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities, 179.
57
Ibid., 180.
58
Ibid., 179–180.
59
Fides et Ratio, Prologue.