Fr. Rutler on eating meat

source

Someone asked that I reply to a recent comment on your blog that questioned the logic of my letter on vegetarianism. Let me say that I am not a meat fanatic, and in fact I often have meatless dinners. One should never cite Genesis to promote strict vegetarianism, as it was written by meat-eaters inspired by God who created all the animals as a menu for Adam and Eve. Their “dominion” over every beast gave them authority to choose how they wanted to serve them up, it seems to me.

I had a great aunt who was a vegetarian and her body started to make funny sounds and then she died. We hardly mention her, although we pray that our merciful Lord has welcomed her to the eternal Supper of the Lamb where there is no alternative menu.

It is silly to suppose that the creation of seed-bearing plants and fruit trees means that we should not eat meat. It only means that we should eat vegetables and fruits just as the provision of animals means we should eat them, as we are biologically designed to do. To think that incisor teeth for biting meat evolved only as an indulgence to beefeaters later on, would be like saying that legs evolved as a consequence of wanderlust.

Vegetarianism is not like celibacy. Vegetarians disdain meat; celibates do not disdain marriage. I am a celibate, but would not exist if Adam and Eve had not married, albeit without the benefit of a clergyman. Their only dietary restriction was against a certain fruit; experts think it was a pomegranate. I suspect they did not eat the first animals because there would not have been second animals, but once animals got going, there you had dinner.

We need not wait for Exodus to find carnivorous action permitted. Abel ate meat and Cain seems to have been a vegan. The Lord had respect unto Abel’s roasted lamb and rejected Cain’s vegetables and so Cain waxed exceeding wroth and slew Abel. The first murderer was a vegetarian. Vegetarians tend to be more violent toward meat eaters than the other way around, probably because of a lack of protein. Also in Genesis, Jacob made his father a lamb stew from what was evidently an old family recipe. It probably went back to Eden.

The citation of Deuteronomy only supports meat eating. The prohibition of blood and strangled animals renders licit bloodless meat slaughtered some other way. Rare is the man who can strangle a cow to death anyway. It is also unwise to cite the saga of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar became a vegetarian only when he went mad. He was driven from men and ate grass like an ox (Daniel 4:33).

As for health, meat is now being promoted for its vitamins and other sorts of stuff our bodies need, although preferred meats include hard to get elk and impalas. I had a great aunt who was a vegetarian and her body started to make funny sounds and then she died. We hardly mention her, although we pray that our merciful Lord has welcomed her to the eternal Supper of the Lamb where there is no alternative menu.

Meat eating is better for the economy, too. It gave us Chicago for starters. It also gives us waterproof rainwear and sensible shoes. In a vegetarian society we’d be clad in watermelon rinds and shod with potato skins.

Vegetarians do not address my point about vegetable abuse. The vegan sentimentalist has no tears to shed for the mashed potato. Ask the olive: How cold is it at the bottom of a martini?

The New Adam is certainly an improvement on the Old Adam. But even in resurrected glory, He had a barbecue on the shore of Galilee. One more evidence of the Divine Mercy is that Jesus never hectored the early Christians about the health benefits of spinach.

CIEL proceedings

Sixth Proceedings: Presence of Christ in
the Eucharist
• The Degrees in Holy Orders and their Liturgical
Functions
Fr. Martin Reinecke
• The Offering of Christ in the Roman Liturgy
Mgr. Arthur Burton Calkins
• Memory, Presence and Contemplation -- The Feasts of
our Lord in the Traditional Roman Missal
Professor Pawel Milcarek
• The Celebrant and the Notion of President
Dr. Andrew Beards
• 'Altar Girls': Feminist Ideology and the Roman Liturgy
Fr. Brian Harrison OS
• Quid Hoc Sacramento Mirabilius? The Presence of
Christ in the Sacrament according to St. Thomas
Aquinas
David Berger
• Holy Scripture, Liturgy and the Presence of Christ
Fr. Andrew Wadsworth
• The Rites of the Consecration
Fr. Raoul Olazabal
• A Pastoral View of the Ecclesia Dei Communities
Mgr. Camilo Gregorio
• Christ, the Principal Priest of the Eucharistic Sacrifice
and Ministerial Priests Acting in Persona Christi
Dom Basile Valuet OSB
• The Cross, the Mass... and the Key to Eucharistic
Doctrine
Dom Jaques de Lillers OSB
2000, 266 pages, paperback, $20.00


Seventh Proceedings: Faith and Liturgy
• The Nature and Content of Preaching
Mgr. Martin Viviès
• Defence and Propagation of the Faith in the Prayers of
the Tridentine Missal
Abbé Dariusz Olewinski
• The Liturgy as Locus Theologicus
Mgr. Joseph Schumacher
• Unity of Faith and Liturgical Diversity
Fr. Gabriel Díaz Patri
• Doctrine, Liturgy and Ecumenism
Brother Ansgar Santogrossi OSB
• Revelation, Tradition and the Liturgy
Fr. Aidan Nichols OP
• The Development of Doctrine and the Evolution of
Liturgy
Dom Basile Valuet OSB
• Liturgy and Catechesis
Professor Robert Kramer
• The Holy Spirit, the History of the Church and of the
Liturgy
Mgr. Rudolf Michael Schmitz
• The Centrality of Christ in the Ordo Missae of the
Classic Roman Rite
Professor John Saward
• Authentic Liturgy versus the Tower of Babel: the Dawn
of a 'New Era'
Mrs. Helen Hitchcock
2001, 280 pages, paperback, $20.00


Eighth Proceedings: Liturgy and the Sacred
• Modern Man in Search of the Sacred
Fr. Maurice Gruau
• Sacred Signs
Fr. Samuel F. Weber OSB
• Architecture and Sacred Space
Professor Thomas Gordon Smith
• Liturgical Music - Sacred or Profane?
Dr. Mary Berry CBE
• The Effects of the Sacred: Is the Sacred Missionary
Fr. James Jackson
• The Roman Missal - Bearer of the Sacred
Fr. Tancrede Guillard
• Revelation Through Concealment in the Old Roman
Catholic Liturgy
Martin Mosebach
• Time and the Sacred
Fr. Andre Forrest
• The Sacred and the West - Preliminary Reflections on a
Forgotten Concept
Benoit Neiss
• Tradition, Liturgy, and Catholic Culture
Rudolf Michael Schmitz
• The Liturgy and Man's Spiritual Life
Dr. Alice von Hildebrand
• The Classical Rite and Holy Scripture
Dr. Sheridan Gilley
2002, 208 pages, paperback, $20.00


Ninth Proceedings: Liturgy, Participation, and
Sacred Music
• Mystery, Comprehension, and Participation
Fr. Pietro Cantoni
• Elements of a Theory of Participatio Actuosa in the Writings
of St. Thomas Aquinas
David Berger
• Active Participation and Pastoral Adaptation
Dom Alcuin Reid OSB
• St. Pius X and the Liturgical Question
Fr, Christian-Philippe Chanut
• Active Participation in the Liturgy in Accordance with the
Prescriptions of Mediator Dei
Fr. Bernard-Marie Laisney
• Participation in the Current Magisterium
Fr. Peter M J Stravinskas PhD STD
• Quis Non Amantem Redamet?
Fr. Charbel Pazat de Lys OSB
• Josef Pieper and Participatio Actuosa
Dr. Guido Rodheudt
• Participation and Singing
Benoit Neiss
• Position and Attitude of the Faithful during Mass: The Body in
the Liturgy
Fr. John Perricone
• Active Participation in the Parish
Fr. Jerry J Pokorsky
• The Principle of Participation in the Roman Rite
Fr. Tancrede Guillard
• Participation in the Holy Liturgy
Jorge A Cardinal Medina Estevez
• Sermon Given at the Closing Mass
Jorge A Cardinal Medina Estevez
• Ens, Verum, Bonum et Pulchrum Liturgicum Conventuntur:
Reflections to Serve as a Conclusion to the Colloquium
Mgr Rudolf-Michael Schmitz
• Liturgy, the Sacred, and Inculturation: the Testimony of a
Missionary
(From the 2002 Colloquium)
Fr. Jean-Marie Moreau
2003, 270 pages, paperback, $20.00


CIEL USA

I think I have 2-5, but I'm going to have to double-check once I get the library organized.

New titles from St. Augustine's Press

that are of interest to me...

A reprint of the Tractatus de Signis, by John Poinsot -- Latin text plus English translation by John Deely. This is the corrected second edition; the first edition, published by UC Press, has been out of print for a while.

624 pages, jacketed clothbound, $85
publication date: November 2007
ISBN: 978-1-58731-877-1

And two titles published in association with Thomas International:

Virtue's End: God in the Moral Philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas
ed. Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, Jeffrey Langan; preface by Ralph McInerny
208 pages, paperbound, $19.00
ISBN: 978-1-58731-901-3
publication date: October 2007

Ethics Without God?
ed. Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, Jeffrey Langan; preface by Ralph McInerny
196 pages, paperbound, $19.00
ISBN: 978-1-58731-225-0
publication date: October 2007

From the Fall 2007 catalog:

Virtue's End collects nine substantial essays on the nature and relationship of theological commitment to moral theory, practical reason, and the metaphysical framework of Aristotelian ethics. Among the questions explored: What does it mean to know the good? What is the source of moral law? What role does God, or the notion of God, play in practical reasoning and human action? What is the relationship between Aquinas's ethics and Aristotle's? How is friendship with God possible? The contributors include: Kevin Flannery, Christopher Kaczor, Antonio Donato, Anthony J. Lisska, Fulvio di Blasi, Giacomo Samek Lodovici, Robert A. Gahl, Marie I. George, Daniel McInerny.

Ethics Without God? brings the theological perspective of the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions to bear on a variety of current political and theoretical questions. The main essays explore a place for the role of God in recent academic philosophy and political theory. The volume also explores a place for the role of God in recent academic philosophy and political theory. The volume also explores the implications of two recent books, each a major scholarly venture in theologically realist ethical reflection: a defense of Platonism in John Rist's Real Ethics and a natural law jurisprudence in Russell Hittinger's The First Grace. With lengthy essays prompted by these books--four essays each, by prominent theologians, moral philosophers, and political scientists--and with extended responses from Rist and Hittinger, the result is a volume that engages ultimate questions across academic disciplines and intellectual traditions.

None of these titles are listed yet at the website. St. Augustihe's Press has been trying to catch up with its publishing schedule for a while, so we'll see if these books are published not too long after the tentative publication date.

I think I'll hold off ordering them until I see Mr. Fingerhut at the next Center for Ethics and Culture conference, if I am able to attend.

National Times series on climate change

here

Things to check out

From the ISN conference:
Prof S Conway Morris, Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
Simon Conway Morris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Life's Solution - Cambridge University Press
Amazon.com: Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely ...
PCID - A Review of Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris
Book Review by Anthony Campbell: Life's Solution (Simon Conway Morris)
Pharyngula::Curse you, Simon Conway Morris!
Simon Conway-Morris, "The Crucible of Creation," 1997
Gifford Lecture Series - Biography - Simon Morris
ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE SACRED PRESENTS: UA's Templeton Research ...

Someone collaborating with him recently moved from Cambridge to Oxford?
Templeton Foundation: Biology

Dr. Ard A. Louis, Royal Society Research FellowCambridge University (Cambridge UK)
Adriaan (Ard) A. Louis: homepage
Ard Louis Research Group Home Page
Dr Ard Louis
Redeeming Reason

Dr. Jonathan Doye Department of ChemistryUniversity of Cambridge (Cambridge UK)
Jonathan Doye's Research Group
Dr Jonathan Doye
Dr Jonathan Doye

Emergent Properties; Neil Campbell?

A Proposed Link Between Emergent Biological Principles and Cosmology

Albert Goodelbert
Allphonso Aguilar

Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy

Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe
MIT Department of Physics - Alan H. Guth
Edge: THEINFLATIONARY UNIVERSE

William Carroll, "At the Mercy of Chance: Evolution and the Catholic Tradition"

Professor Nancy Cartwright
London School of Economics and Political Science
No God, No Laws

Chris Olsen (PhD, CUA) -- also teaches at the Center for Higher Studies

What Genes Can't Do
Michael Bradie reviews What Genes Can’t Do by Lenny Moss

Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Mercurius in Sole Visus - Pierre Gassendi

Baylor University Department of Sociology Rodney Stark
Rodney Stark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Faith and reason - The Boston Globe
A Double Take on Early Christianity, An Interview with Rodney Stark
The Testimony of Rodney Stark, Ph.D.
The American Enterprise: Fact, Fable, and Darwin

Behe's latest book

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
By Michael J. Behe
(Free Press, 320 pp., $28)

More by James Larson

his series on the New Theology

Broken Cisterns (on Hans Urs von Balthasar)

By Arts Entirely New (on Henri de Lubac)

The Suffering Continues

Christian Order: Eastern Orthodoxy Unveiled

Eastern Orthodoxy Unveiled

JAMES LARSON

We tend to think of Eastern Orthodoxy as a branch of Christianity whose form of worship and religious symbolism may seem rather strange to us, and we are also ready to admit that the one really important Catholic doctrine which they have rejected is the Primacy of the Pope (we tend to mistakenly think of their rejection of the Filioque - the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son - as being a rather marginal issue), but most of us are not prepared to consider that Orthodoxy is something radically different, and even opposed, to Catholicism.

However, such is the case. The extraordinary fact is that virtually any serious Orthodox writer will be the first to make precisely this claim: namely, that Orthodoxy and Eastern Spirituality represent a faith and spirituality which in many ways are in profound opposition to the Latin Tradition. And this, despite the fact that his counterpart in the West is usually expending a good deal of effort in attempting to prove that the differences are minimal and inconsequential.

Dionysisus and the "Palamite" tradition

I want to begin our analysis of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality with a series of quotes which I hope will shock the reader into a state of acute watchfulness. It is, of course, always possible to distort a writer’s thought by taking quotations out of context. We will therefore be discussing their full meaning in relationship to Eastern theology and spirituality as we proceed in our discussion. For the present, however, I would like the reader to try to conceive of any context in which the following statements might be acceptable. They are all taken from authors writing in what certainly must be considered the dominant Orthodox tradition.
Two of the writers are of ancient tradition. Dionysisus the Areopagite was considered until relatively recent times to be of apostolic origins. In his writings he disingenuously portrays himself as a contemporary of the apostles, and to have witnessed the solar eclipse at the Crucifixion. It is now known for certain that he lived somewhere around the year 500 A.D. We should also note that the writings of Dionysisus are of immense importance to Orthodox tradition, and have also probably been the primary source of Neoplatonic contamination of Western theology.

Gregory of Palamas (1296-1359) is considered by the Eastern Church to be a Saint (proclaimed to be so by a Synod in Constantinople in 1368), and the greatest theologian in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. A series of Eastern Councils in the 14th century endorsed his theology as being the doctrinal basis for Orthodox Christianity.

The two other writers, Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff, are probably considered the most respected explicators and apologists for this tradition (the "Palamite" tradition) in the twentieth century. I would therefore ask the reader to carefully consider all the following quotes:

1. "The cult of the humanity of Christ, is foreign to Eastern tradition….The way of the imitation of Christ is never practiced in the spiritual life of the Eastern Church." (Vladimir Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 243

2. "The Eastern tradition knows nothing of ‘pure nature’ to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For it, there is no natural or ‘normal’ state, since grace is implied in the act of creation itself." (Lossky, 101)

3. "The notion of a state of grace of which the members of the Church can be deprived, as well as the distinction between venial and mortal sins, are foreign to Eastern tradition." (Lossky, 180)

4."The notion of merit is foreign to Eastern tradition." (Losski, 197)

5."The essence of God is everywhere, for, as it is said, ‘the Spirit fills all things’, according to essence. Deification is likewise everywhere, ineffably present in the essence and inseparable from it, as its natural power. But just as one cannot see fire, if there is no matter to receive it, nor any sense organ capable of perceiving its luminous energy, in the same way one cannot contemplate deification if there is no matter to receive the divine manifestation. But if with every veil removed it lays hold of appropriate matter, that is of any purified rational nature, freed from the veil of manifold evil, then it becomes itself visible as a spiritual light, or rather it transforms these creatures into spiritual light." (Gregory Palamas, The Triads, p. 89)

6. "This latter division [of mankind into two sexes] was made by God in prevision of sin, according to St. Maximus, who is here reproducing the thought of St. Gregory of Nyassa. ‘Being, which has had its origin in change – says the latter – retains an affinity with change. This is why He who, as Scripture says, sees all things before their coming to be, having regarded or rather having forseen in advance by the power of His anticipatory knowledge in which direction the movement of man’s free and independent choice would incline, having thus seen how it would come to pass, added to the image the division into male and female: a division which has no relation to the divine Archetype, but which, as we have said, is in agreement with irrational nature’." (Lossky, 108-109)

7. "It was the divinely appointed function of the first man, according to St. Maximus, to unite in himself the whole of created being; and at the same time to reach his perfect union with God and thus grant the state of deification to the whole creation. It was first necessary that he should suppress in his own nature the division into two sexes, in his following of the impassible life according to the divine archetype. He would then be in a position to reunite paradise with the rest of the earth, for, constantly bearing paradise within himself, being in ceaseless communion with God, he would be able to transform the whole earth into paradise. After this, he must overcome spatial conditions not only in his spirit but also in the body, by reuniting the heavens and the earth, the totality of the sensible universe. Having surpassed the limits of the sensible, it would then be for him to penetrate into the intelligible universe by knowledge equal to that of the angelic spirits, in order to unite in himself the intelligible and the sensible worlds. Finally, there remaining nothing outside himself but God alone, man had only to give himself to Him in a complete abandonment of love, and thus return to Him the whole created universe gathered together in his own being. God Himself would then in His turn have given Himself to man, who would then, in virtue of this gift, that is to say by grace, possess all that God possesses by nature. The deification of man and of the whole created universe would thus be accomplished. Since this task which was given to man was not fulfilled by Adam, it is in the work of Christ, the second Adam, that we can see what it was meant to be." (Lossky, 109-110)

8. "The true purpose of creation is, therefore, not contemplation of divine essence (which is inaccessible), but communion in divine energy, transfiguration, and transparency to divine action in the world." (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p.133)

9. "But He Who is beyond every name is not identical with what He is named; for the essence and energy of God are not identical." (Gregory Palamas, TheTriads, p. 97)

10. "In God the order of nature precedes the order of volitive action, and is both superior to and independent of it [this means that God and His Will are not One]. Because God is what He is, He is not determined or in any way limited in what He does, not even by His own essence and being." (Meyendorff, pl 130)

11. "Now this union with the illuminations [which is the divinizing experience of the "saints"] – what is it, if not a vision? The rays are consequently visible to those worthy, although the divine essence is absolutely invisible, and these unoriginate and endless rays are a light without beginning or end. There exists, then an eternal light, other than the divine essence; it is not itself an essence – far from it! – but an energy of the Superessential." (Gregory Palamas p. 100)

12. "This is the perfecting of prayer, and is called spiritual prayer or contemplation….It is the ‘spiritual silence’ which is above prayer. It is that state which belongs to the kingdom of Heaven. ‘As the saints in the world to come no longer pray, their minds having been engulfed in the Divine Spirit, but dwell in ecstasy in that excellent glory; so the mind, when it has been made worthy of perceiving the blessedness of the age to come, will forget itself and all that is here, and will no longer be moved by the thought of anything.’" (Lossky, 208)

13. "This tradition remains common to the East and to the West as far as the Church witnesses with power to those truths which are connected with the Incarnation. But those dogmas which are, so to speak, more inward, more mysterious, those which relate to Pentecost, the doctrines about the Holy Spirit, about grace, about the Church, are no longer common to the Church of Rome and to the Eastern Churches. Two separate traditions are opposed one to another." (Lossky, 237)

14. "But these things are not to be disclosed to the uninitiated, by whom I mean those attached to the objects of human thought, and who believe there is no superessential [in Orthodox theology this term is used to convey the belief that God is "above" essence] Reality beyond, and who imagine that by their own understanding they know Him who has made Darkness His secret place. And if the principles of the divine Mysteries are beyond the understanding of these, what is to be said of others still more incapable thereof, who describe the transcendental First Cause of all by characteristics drawn from the lowest order of beings, while they deny that He is any way above the images which they fashion after various designs; whereas they should affirm that, while He possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the Universal Cause) yet, in a more strict sense, he does not possess them, since He transcends them all; wherefore there is no contradiction between the affirmations and the negations, inasmuch as He infinitely precedes all conceptions of deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative distinctions….He is super-essentially exalted above created things, and reveals Himself in His naked Truth to those alone who pass beyond all that is pure or impure, and ascend above the topmost altitudes of holy things, and who, leaving behind them all divine light and sound and heavenly utterances, plunge into the Darkness where truly dwells, as the Oracles declare, that ONE who is beyond all." (Dionysisus the Areopagite, Mystical Theology)

In the ensuing analysis of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality, the numbers in parenthesis will refer to the quotations given above.

"Apophatism"

The name given by Eastern Orthodoxy to their theological approach to God, and also to the process by which man is "deified" is "apophatism."
The "apophatic way," as taught by Eastern Orthodoxy, is rooted in a conception of God which makes of Him an Absolute Who is beyond everything the human mind can attribute to His nature. He is, in fact, beyond essence, nature, and being (9,10,11,14).

Anyone who is familiar with the monism of the Absolute in philosophical Hinduism will be familiar with such a concept. It is rooted in the belief that the human mind can predicate nothing of God. If we wish to call God such things as Good, Truth, Love, Being, Essence, Existence, One, Eternal, Immutable, Just, Merciful, we may do so only with the proviso that these "names apply only to the "energies" of God, and not to His "Superessential" Godhead, which always must be seen as "beyond" any naming, essence, or even being.

The human mind can never, even with the assistance of God’s grace, know anything positive about God’s ultimate being and essence. (Interestingly enough, the Eastern theologian, while denying being and essence to the ultimate nature of God, are still forced into using these terms).

"Deification"

Our ultimate union with God is therefore not a matter of "seeing Him as He is", but rather the fruit of a negative process of growth and evolution by which we are liberated from all limitations (both of passions and mind) and become united in contemplative union with God’s "energies" or "rays" which are already present in creation (we will be exploring Eastern Orthodoxy’s distinction between God and His "energies" in a moment).
This union can take place in this life and is called, among other things, "contemplation" (5,7,8,11,12,14). It is also called "deification", and this deification culminates in that state of union whereby God gives himself to man "who would then, in virtue of this gift, that is to say by grace, possess all that God possesses by nature (7)." (This would indeed seem to be self-contradictory since, as we have seen, Eastern Theology believes God is beyond nature, essences, and even being).

However, in considering the real content of what Eastern theology considers "deification", we must take into account two things.

Eastern understanding of nature and grace

First, in the words of Vladimir Lossky, "The Eastern tradition knows nothing of ‘pure nature’ to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For this tradition, there is no natural or ‘normal’ state, since grace is implied in the act of creation itself (2)."
Deification in this tradition must then consist of a union with the "energies" of God which are in man and in all creation from the beginning. This is simply a variant of Pantheism, and involves a profound violation of the Catholic ontological distinction between God and His creation. John Meyendorf writes:

This concept of salvation is itself based upon an understanding of the human being which views the natural [this is Meyendorf’s own emphasis] state of man as composed of three elements: body, soul, and Holy Spirit….The Spirit is not seen here as a ‘supernatural’ grace – added to an otherwise ‘natural,’ created humanity – but as a function of humanity itself in its dynamic relationship to God, to itself, and to the world. (Meyendorf, Catholicity and the Church, p.21)

In other words, according to the Eastern tradition, the Divine is ontologically part of creation from the beginning. This involves a profound violation of creation ex nihilio ( creation from nothing). If the Spirit (the Holy Spirit) is "a function of humanity itself" from the beginning, and if, as Gregory Palamas say, "the Spirit fills all things according to essence", then creation is not "out of nothing" because it contains God in its original essence.

Further, in viewing the human being in his "natural" state as a "dynamic," evolutionary process in which the Holy Spirit seeks to rend the veil of all human limitation (5), Eastern theology also denies the substantial "nature" of the human person. There is no "grace added to nature" – both because grace and the Holy spirit are present as the Spirit of man from the beginning (2,5), and also because there is no such thing as human substantial nature to begin with. The whole concept of "nature" is to be seen as abstract, limiting, and stultifying to the process of man’s "deification."

Eastern understanding of God

Secondly, the "nature" of God which man is alleged to possess in this supposed state of deification cannot be what Eastern Orthodoxy considers the absolutely transcendent and ineffable God Himself, who is beyond all nature, essence, and being. This "nature" can only be the "energies" of God which are in no way identifiable with the "God Who is."
We may see, therefore, that in kindred cause with reductive analytical science, that Eastern theology is at war with the whole concept of substantial being itself, whether it be Supreme Being or created being.

To realize how profoundly contrary all this is to Catholic theology and spirituality, it is very beneficial to consult St. Thomas. St. Thomas is explicit in his affirmation concerning the "knowability" of God:

It is written: We shall see Him as He is (1 John, ii. 2)

I answer that, Since everything is knowable according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without any admixture of potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable….Hence, it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God (I, Q.12, A.1).

Profound difference

There is, of course, a certain way in which negative assertions are also integral to Catholic theology. St. Thomas goes on to say that because the Saints see the essence of God is not at all the same as meaning that they totally comprehend Him. God is infinite, man finite. We may very well see God face to face, be able to see His Divine Essence, receive the Gift of knowing Him as He is, and yet be infinitely far away from comprehending the fullness of God.
Yet this does not in any way justify the notion that God is unknowable in His essence. Rather than being infinitely unknowable, God is in fact infinitely knowable. And herein lies the profound difference between Catholic and Eastern theology and spirituality.

Catholic understanding of God

This profound difference is reflected in the way in which we understand the Names that are attributed to God.
When Catholic theology understands the concept of man being created in the image of God it also understands that this concept means that man’s nature is created in the image of God’s Nature. As such, the supreme values of our life are directly reflective of Who God is. When, therefore, we say that God is supreme Being, or that He is infinite Intelligence and Love, that He is Good, Eternal, Immutable, etc. we give names to God that are His Essence, Substance, or Nature. These Names while being severely affected by our finite limitations, are nevertheless positive affirmations of Who God is. In speaking of these names, St. Thomas writes:

Therefore the aforesaid names signify the divine substance, but in an imperfect manner, even as creatures represent it imperfectly. So when we say, God is good, the meaning is not, God is the cause of goodness, or, God is not evil; but the meaning is, Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God, and in a more excellent and higher way (I, Q.13, A.2)."

Nor does the fact that we attribute all these various names or attributes to God violate His Divine Simplicity or the Absolute Unity of His Being. St. Thomas further writes:

The perfect unity [and Simplicity] of God requires that what are manifold and divided in others should exist in Him simply and unitively. Thus it comes about that He is one in reality, and yet multiple in idea, because our intellect apprehends Him in a manifold manner, as things represent Him (I, Q.13, A. 4)."

While there is, therefore, a total discontinuity between man and God according to being (according to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo), there is at the same time a profound continuity in the fact that man is truly created in the image of God, and that man’s perfections, and the perfections of all created things, are created "likenesses" to the very Essence of Who God is.

Catholic understanding of nature and grace

The process of "deification" in the Catholic tradition does not therefore require a negation of all that is human nature. Rather it requires the perfecting of human nature through a gratuitous Gift of God superadded to human nature.
It necessitates, in the first place, the free cooperation of man with God’s grace. Secondly, however, it requires the Gift of a special grace of God, the "Light of Glory", which lifts man’s intellect and will above its created nature in order for him to be able to see the very Essence of God. St Thomas again writes:

"It is written: In thy light we shall see light (Ps. 35:10).

I answer that, Everything which is raised up to what exceeds its nature, must be prepared by some disposition above its nature; as for example, if air is to receive the form of fire, it must be prepared by some disposition for such a form. But when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height. Now since the natural power of the created intellect does not avail to enable it to see the essence of God, as was shown in the preceding article, it is necessary that the power of understanding should be added by divine grace. Now this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect, as we also call the intelligible object itself by the name of light of illumination. And this is the light spoken of in the Apocalypse (21:23). The Glory of the Lord hath enlightened it – viz., the society of the blessed who see God. By this light, the blessed are made deiform – that is, like to God, according to the saying: When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is (1 John 2:2)

"Energies" of God are not His "essence"

Eastern spirituality and theology reverses all this. On the one hand, in accord with its apophatic theology, it denies that the Names of God are applicable to His essence. In fact, it denies essence to God.

On the other hand, it destroys the absolute distinction between the Being of God and the being of created things by placing the eternal energies of God within creation itself (5). This amounts to a denial of creation ex nihilo through a not-so-subtle affirmation of Pantheism. In order to now be able to fully see the truth of this statement, we shall quote again a portion of quote # 5:

"The essence of God is everywhere, for, as it is said, ‘the Spirit fills all things’, according to essence. Deification is likewise everywhere, ineffably present in the essence and inseparable from it, as its natural power."

The reader will notice that Eastern theologians are very willing to use a term such as "essence" when speaking of the "energies" of God. Usually, they are only willing to apply such concepts as "essence", "nature", and "being" to created things or to the "energies" of God, simply because they believe in the apophatic conception that God is beyond all such concepts or assertions, including any assertions concerning God’s own "energies." There is, however, one instance in which they are willing to violate this rule – this occurs when they wish to distinguish between the "energies" of God and His "essence." Thus, Gregory Palamas writes:

But He Who is beyond every name is not identical with what He is named; for the essence and energy of God are not identical. (Gregory Palamas, TheTriads, p. 97

Simply because God is viewed as being completely transcendent in the sense that no Name or operation can be predicated of Who He is, then Eastern Orthodoxy found it necessary to make an ontological distinction in God between Who He is and What He does.

"Who God is" is therefore viewed as totally distinct from "What God does." The first is God Himself. The second are the "energies" of God, which are not to be identified with His essence (again we must emphasize that the Eastern Orthodox use of the word "essence" here contradicts its own assertion that God is not an essence).

Radical divide

These energies are, as I have said, not identical with God, and yet are to be seen as eternal, and inhering in God. Thus, in order to deify creation, Eastern Orthodoxy is forced to violate not only the Catholic doctrine creation ex nihilio, but also the truth concerning the unity and simplicity of God.
It is also important to understand that these energies are not just limited to the actual work of God (such as creation), but also to all the Names of God. In other words, God’s Will is not identical with His essence. Nor are His supreme Intelligence, Goodness, Immutability, Eternity, Beauty, or Unity identical with God.

There is no question but that the "apophatic way" of Eastern Orthodoxy destroys the simplicity of God. In order to preserve and protect their sterile conception of an absolutely transcendent and unknowable God, the Eastern theologians have been forced to posit a radical divide between God’s essence and His operations.

Variant of Pantheism

For St. Thomas, this is, of course, completely unnecessary. God is defined as pure Act. All the Names and Acts we rightly posit of God may be multiple in our conception of them, but are in reality One in His Substance. It is this fundamental fact of the Nature of God which Orthodoxy has entirely missed.
But there is more. Having denied a knowable Nature in God, and the real possibility of man achieving union with God through the Beatific Vision of God’s Essence, Eastern Orthodoxy is left, in a sense, with God’s crumbs under the table.

It is left, in other words, with the possibility of union with God’s "energies" or "rays." And since these rays or energies are defined by Eastern theology to be in the world, then the process of deification becomes identified with a "communion in divine energy, transfiguration, and transparency to divine action in the world (Meyendorff, p.133)." This "divine action in the world" is seen to be the action of the Holy Spirit. Some Orthodox writers, including Soloviev, have in fact called the Holy Spirit the "Soul of the World." This is simply a variant of Pantheism.

Aversion to the Incarnation

In our analysis of Eastern Orthodoxy we have now come full circle. We should now be able to understand why Vladimir Lossky could say that "The cult of the humanity of Christ is foreign to Eastern tradition", and that "The way of the imitation of Christ is never practiced in the spiritual life of the Eastern Church."
We should also be able to understand why both Lossky and Meyendorff can conclude that the question concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit is the absolutely central point of contention between Roman and Eastern Christianity. If, as believed by Eastern Orthodoxy, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and not also from Christ, then our Faith is not truly Incarnational because the road back to God does not lie through the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ:

Having therefore, brethren a confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ; A new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh. (Heb 10:19-20)
I believe that there is a causal relationship between the division established in Orthodox theology between God’s essence and His "energies" and, on the other hand, the denial of the "Filioque."

In Catholic mystical theology, the way to the "Heart" of God, and the Vision of His Essence, lies through Christ. Since Eastern theology denies that man can ever see or know the Essence of God, then his aspirations must stop at union with the divine "energies." These "energies" would then most appropriately be the operations of a Spirit Who is the Soul of the World, but not sent by Christ. Any incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ would then never be accompanied by a true union with, and vision of, the Divine Person of Christ, anymore than it would ever be fulfilled in the direct vision of the Blessed Trinity.

Aversion to Transubstantiation and Original Sin

The reader should not be surprised that since it views God as being beyond any category of substance, essence, being or nature, Eastern theology also has no time for the doctrine of Transubstantiation. John Meyendorff writes:
"The Byzantines did not see the substance of the bread somehow changed in the Eucharistic mystery into another substance – the Body of Christ – but viewed this bread as the ‘type’ of humanity: our humanity changed into the transfigured humanity of Christ (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, P. 205)."

This aversion to the idea of substance or nature as applied to either God or man also affects Eastern Orthodoxy’s view of Original Sin. The Catholic view is aptly expressed in the New Catechism of the Catholic Church (the italics in the following passage are part of the actual text):

By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice (#404)."

The Eastern position, on the other hand, is succinctly stated by Meyendorff:

"But sin is always a personal act, never an act of nature. Patriarch Photius [author of the Photian schism in the latter part of the ninth century] even goes so far as to say, referring to Western doctrines, that the belief in a ‘sin of nature’ is a heresy (p. 103)."

"There is indeed a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions in identifying the inheritance of the Fall as an inheritance essentially of mortality rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of mortality (Meyendorff, p. 145)." [In a subsequent passage the author specifies that "mortality" is the "means through which the fundamentally unjust ‘tyranny’ of the devil is exercised over mankind after Adam’s sin" – p. 146].

It is not at all surprising, therefore, that the Orthodox view of baptism does not accord with the Catholic:

"Thus, the Church baptizes children, not to ‘remit’ their yet non-existent sins, but in order to give them a new and immortal life, which their mortal parents are unable to communicate to them. The opposition between the two Adams [the First Adam and Christ] is seen in terms not of guilt and forgiveness but of death and life (Meyendorff, p. 146).

Aversion to St. Thomas

All of the errors which I have discussed concerning Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality (and there is much more that could be said) are the fruit of violating those truths which are contained in the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

There is no true understanding of this doctrine without at the same time understanding the real existence of Being, Essence, and Nature in both God and man.

Creation ex nihilo is necessarily founded upon an absolutely real ontological distinction between the being of God and the being of His creation The metaphysics of St. Thomas, which has been embraced by the Catholic Church as "her own" (Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem) is absolutely necessary to this distinction and this doctrine. In placing itself in direct opposition to this metaphysics, Eastern theology not only compromises the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, but also all other doctrines of the Church which are either directly or indirectly dependent on such ontological concepts of being and substance, including as we have seen: Original Sin, Baptism, and the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Union by conversion alone

It would, of course, be very easy to also expand this list to include the necessity of the Papacy as the foundation of a hierarchical Church. As the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev said: "For the East the infallibility of the pope and the outward unity of the ecclesiastical organization were superfluous…."
After all, if God does not have an identifiable Nature, why should His Church? We should be able to see from this how pathetic are any attempts to achieve unity with the Eastern Orthodox in any way that falls short of their full conversion to the Catholic Church.

Fellow-travellers against Catholic truth

Finally, we should also realize that whenever Thomistic philosophy is undermined in our own tradition, inevitably some form of Neoplatonism or Eastern theology and spirituality is there to take its place.
Therefore, since the primary intellectual force involved in the war against Thomistic metaphysics has been reductive analytical science, it should come as no surprise that over the centuries reductive atomic science and Eastern theology (including both Neoplatonic and Orthodox) have been fellow-travellers in their war against Catholic truth.

Eastern Orthodoxy and the New Theology

I would hope that all through the preceding analysis of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality, the reader would have experienced a great deal of resonance with my previous articles on the "New Theology." [CO, March, April, May 2006]
When Lossky, for instance, denies the Catholic notion of grace added to nature, our minds should go back to de Lubac.

When Gregory Palamas tells us that God’s essence and energy are not identical, this heresy should resonate with the heretical propositions of Rosmini. [CO, Feb. 2004]

The totally foreign attempts by Eastern authors to explain Original Sin and the Real Presence by eliminating all Thomistic concepts of cosmology and ontology should bring us face to face with the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger. [CO, Oct., Nov. 2003]

And the vehemence with which Eastern Theology combats and persecutes any form of Thomistic Metaphysics should bring before our minds the image of a whole host of 20th century philosophers and theologians, at the centre of which stands the whole Communio movement.

High doctrinal stakes

The reader is probably aware of the great emphasis which John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have placed upon establishing unity with the Orthodox Church. We tend to equate such ecumenism with what has been traditionally considered to be the sin of indifferentism. But I believe that we are here dealing with something much more than indifferentism. Rather, we are faced with a passion for unity founded upon a hunger for a certain kind of theology and spirituality (Palamite spirituality) which both the New Theology and Eastern theology make possible and acceptable.
Meanwhile, what is at stake in this contest is virtually every doctrine of the Catholic Faith: of Who God is, and also who man is; of what constitutes nature and grace, sin and redemption; and, most fundamentally, of the distinction between God and man that is enshrined in the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

Theology of Antichrist

In conclusion, I would like to quote a passage from George Williams’ book entitled The Mind of John Paul II, in which he gives his synopsis of the theological approach promoted by the proponents of a "New Theology" (often called "Neo-Thomism") in their promotion of the ecumenical agenda. I will leave the reader to make his own comparisons between what is quoted below, and the subject which we have discussed above:
Always carefully enunciated, a fundamental concern of the New Theology was to accommodate a general Catholic acceptance of human evolution to received theology at the crucial point of Adam created in the image of God and of Christ as the Second Adam and Redeemer of men. By speaking of "the unity of mankind" alongside the received oneness of the race in the First Adam, and in beholding the eternal son of God incarnate as the second Adam and as having from eternity with God the Father sought the redemption of all humanity and indeed of all creation with "the new man" even before the incarnation and the rise of the Church as his salvific prolongation in time through the Holy Spirit, they had come to understand Christ as continuously active in the minds and hearts of all peoples and persons under Providence. Going back behind the sharp distinction drawn by Thomas between nature and grace and between reason and faith, the proponents of the New Theology in different ways found sanction in St. Augustine and the Greek Fathers and in Scripture itself for their disposition to see the whole of life sacramentally (hence their interest in lay participation in the Liturgical Movement) and to see nature suffused with sustaining grace and the Church itself as the Sacrament and Sign of the fundamental unity of every man in body, mind, and soul, of all mankind in a common global history. They were opposed to secularism but they were also opposed to a displacement of the supernatural spatially above and beyond the natural ( p. 99).

It is out of such a Pantheistic theology that the Antichrist will surely rise.

David Gordon's lectures on the history of political philosophy

The History of Political Philosophy: From Plato to Rothbard (A Steve Berger-Kenneth Garschina Seminar)

No idea about the quality of the lectures.

The Smithy

a blog devoted to Duns Scotus

(via Scott Carson)

The principle of subsidiarity

How is the principle of subsidiarity formulated in the CCC and the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine?

From the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching:

185. Subsidiarity is among the most constant and characteristic directives of the Church's social doctrine and has been present since the first great social encyclical. It is impossible to promote the dignity of the person without showing concern for the family, groups, associations, local territorial realities; in short, for that aggregate of economic, social, cultural, sports-oriented, recreational, professional and political expressions to which people spontaneously give life and which make it possible for them to achieve effective social growth. This is the realm of civil society, understood as the sum of the relationships between individuals and intermediate social groupings, which are the first relationships to arise and which come about thanks to "the creative subjectivity of the citizen." This network of relationships strengthens the social fabric and constitutes the basis of a true community of persons, making possible the recognition of higher forms of social activity.

186. The necessity of defending and promoting the original expressions of social life is emphasized by the Church in the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, in which the principle of subsidiarity is indicated as a most important principle of "social philosophy." "Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them."

On the basis of this principle, all societies of a superior order must adopt attitudes of help ("subsidium") -- therefore, of support, promotion, development -- with respect to lower-order societies. In this way, intermediate social entities can properly perform the functions that fall to them without being required to hand them over unjustly to other social entities of a higher level, by which they would end up being absorbed and other social entities of a higher level, by which they would end up being absorbed and substituted, in the end seeing themselves denied their dignity and essential place.

Subsidiarity, understood in the positive sense as economic, institutional or juridical assistance offered to lesser social entities, entails a corresponding series of negative implications that require the State to refrain from anything that would de facto restrict the existential space of the smaller essential cells of society. Their initiative, freedom, and responsibility must not be supplanted.

I believe that it would be a mistake to read this as a libertarian manifesto. The good of a nation state is not different in kind from that of a polis. It is however, more difficult to obtain, because of the size involved. One needs to remember the distinction between incomplete/imperfect communities and complete/perfect communities. The political community is a perfect community, while the family and other intermediate societies or associations are not.

A polis is complete because it can provide all that is needed for the good life. The principle of subsidiarity protects the lesser societies and even the individual from micromanagement by the government.

Still, I do not think the principle of subsidiarity as it is presented within recent Church teaching should be understood as a positive endorsement or promotion of the modern nation-state. It may be an acceptance and affirmation that such political organizations exist, without an endorsement of their existence as being an ideal. Aristotle's criticism of communities that are too big are still valid today, especially for those nation-states that claim to be democracies. The principle of subsidiarity rather is a prudential response to them and their overreaching. The Church's teaching on subsidiarity can be seen as an attempt to limit the problems associated with nation-states that are too big for their own good and centralization, and is another example of the Church's realism.

Even in a properly sized polis the principle of subsidiarity would apply--there is a place for individuals to exercise some prudence in determining what to do for themselves, their families, and for the polis. In fact, the principle of subsidiarity is more a normative feature of the polis than of large nation-states. Why?

Because even in such a community there are multiple levels of organization; while the lower are wholly subordinate to the higher as to the end, nonetheless the lower have ends/goods proper to them.

The case can be made that for some smaller political "sub-units" (the province, state, etc.), that they are actually perfect communities. I would argue that it is not intrinsically unjust for such subunits to secede; only considerations of prudence, such as interdependency for essentials (food, etc.) should prevent such a unit from seceding. (Such communities which are contemplating secession should do what they can to mitigate such interdependency and to build up self-sufficiency before declaring political independence.)

(What work is proper to a certain level of organization?
An extreme interpretation--affirm that there is autonomy? Potential basis for independence?)


Note: the compendium makes a distinction between the political community and civil society:

417 The political community is established to be of service to civil society, from which it originates. The Church has contributed to the distinction between the political community and civil society above all by her vision of man, understood as an autonomous, relational being who is open to the Transcendent. This vision is challenged by political ideologies of an individualistic nature and those of a totalitarian character, which tend to absorb civil society into the sphere of the State. The Church's commitment on behalf of social pluralism aims at bringing about a more fitting attainment of the common good and democracy itself, according to the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity and justice.

Civil society is the sum of relationships and resources, cultural and associative, that are relatively independent from the political sphere and the economic sector. "The purpose of civil society is universal, since it concerns the common good, to which each and eveyr citizen has a right in due proportion." This is marked by a planning capacity that aims at fostering a freer and more just social life, in which the various groups of citizens can form associations, working to develop and express their preferences, in order to meet their fundamental needs and defend their legitimate interests.

418. The political community and civil society, although mutually connected and interdependent, are not equal in the hierarchy of ends...

What is the distinction being made here? I do not think "political community" is referring here to the state (or to the government). Rather, it is between men understood as being gathered together for the sake of a political end, and men understood as being gathered together for an end that is even higher than that. If I am correct here, then perhaps the language is a bit sloppy and needs to be clarified. (It may be similar to the distinction that is attributed to Augustine, between temporal society and a supernatural society, the City of Man and the City of God--this distinction is not the distinction that Augustine himself makes, though.)

The political community is not reducible to the government and institutions associated with governing, even if the government has the role of guiding the whole community to its proper end. (see Maritain and Simon on what they have to say about the "state").

Economic interdependence is not a sufficient reason to create an even bigger political community with a centralized government, destroying sovereignty -- rather it should give impetus for relocalization and a move towards self-sufficiency. If we know that we are dependent upon other communities for the necessities of bodily life, we should take that as a warning sign, rather than an indication that we have attained some sort of lofty humane ideal.

Defensive alliances too can take care of the need for a common defense. There is no reason that a single government is necessary for a collection of states, even though by themselves, they are lacking in the means to defend themselves from a larger state.

(Is the Federal Government a necessary instrument for determining interstate commerce, movement of peoples between states? That is, the authority it has to make decisions on such matters is originally derived from the states themselves? Or does it actually have a higher authority by its very nature than that of the states?)

Historically, the trend towards consolidation is a result of sin more than "reason." (Thanks to Dr. Clyde Wilson for describing this trend as "consolidationist.") Those who attempt to justify an international community, with "one world government" point to the ills that such a government can solve, but at what price? (Advocates include certain prominent Catholic intellectuals, unfortunately.)

The size of the modern nation-states thus presents an obstacle to the good life in at least two ways (and is therefore fundamentally disordered).

1. When it has been coupled to an almost unlimited right to acquire and dispose of property, the self-sufficiency of smaller political units becomes threatened and eventually destroyed as corporations are able to expand their reach and even most food is produced by corporations. With their long chains of supply, the production of food is eliminated, for the most part, from most political units and the burden for feeding their citizens is transferred onto other political units (to the detriment of local ecologies).

2. Even in a properly ordered nation-state which is able to maintain some sort of check on the corporations and the rich, one must ask the question of how much power the new central government can have, without destroying the political life of the smaller units, or violating their authority?

Wwhat sort of justice is involved here, in these considerations about size and sovereignty and subsidiarity?

Are powers delegated to the government by the people by agreement or consent? Is transference of authority possible, and to what extent?

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church on
The Organization of the International Community

441. Concern for an ordered and peaceful coexistence within the human family prompts the Magisterium to insist on the need to establish 'some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all and endowed with effective power to safeguard, on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights.' In the course of history, despite the changing viewpoints of the different eras, there has been a constant awareness of the need for a similar authority to respond to worldwide problems arising from the quest for the common good: it is essential that such an authority arise from mutual agreement and that it not be imposed, nor must it be understood as a kind of 'global super-State'.

Political authority exercised at the level of the international community must be regulated by law, ordered to the common good and respectful of the principle of subsidiarity. 'The public authority of the world community is not intended to limit the sphere of action of the public authority of the individual political community, much less to take its place. On the contrary, its purpose is to create, on a world basis, an environment in which the public authorities of each political community, their citizens and intermediate associations can carry out their tasks, fulfil their duties and exercise their rights with greater security'.

442. Because of the globalization of problems, it has become more urgent than ever to stimulate international political action that pursues the goals of peace and development through the adoption of coordinated measures. The Magisterium recognizes that the interdependence among men and nations takes on a moral dimension and is the determining factor for relations in the modern world in the economic, cultural, political and religious sense. In this context it is hoped that there will be a revision of international organizations, a process that 'presupposes the overcoming of political rivalries and the renouncing of all desire to manipulate these organizations, which exist solely for the common good', for the purpose of achieving 'a greater degree of international ordering'.

In particular, intergovernmental structures must effectively perform their functions of control and guidance in the economic field because the attainment of the common good has become a goal that is beyond the reach of individual States, even if they are dominant in terms of power, wealth, and political strength. International agencies must moreover guarantee the attainment of that equality which is the basis of the right of all to participate in the process of full development, duly respecting legitimate differences.

Is the solution worse than the problem? How can the public authority of the world community be effective if it does not in some way override the authority of sovereign nation-states? The Compendium and the Magisterium do not appear to be talking about the continued use of diplomacy and binding treaties, but of something else entirely. Catholic liberals also endorse the nation of a supranational authority as being necessary for the common good of all mankind. I find it rather dubious--how can be subsidiarity be preserved, when the size and organization of current nation-states themselves are already opposed to reason?

Review:
Mirror of Justice: Mirror of Justice: Subsidiarity Within the Church, The Ambiguities of Subsidiarity
What is the link between practical reason and a theory of authority; what is reasonable versus what is legally binding?

Clyde Wilson on Ft. Sumter

Dan Toma

faculty page

Mentioned at the conference as being someone who would be interested in its mission.

Impetus and inertia

Dr. McLaughlin gave a paper for the ISN conference on inertia, and argued for the reality of inertia by appealing to gravity fields. It wasn't clear how much I would have disagreed, except for the proposition that something in motion tends to stay in motion, and would continue to do so, unless acted upon by something else. He did say that the modern conception of the universe was more of an open-system, and that local motion involved a relationship between the object moving and the other object to which it was moving (or to which it was "attracted", my words, not his). I brought up the pure Aristotelian solution of a relation between a thing and its proper "place"--hence, in the Aristotelian conception, according to Dr. McLaughlin, where a thing was going was more bound up with what it was, or formally.

I still think that aspect of inertia (a tendency to stay at rest seems to be separate, since I think it is linked to natural motion and place) contradicts the conception of change as an imperfection, and the terminus of that change is the perfection, or the actualization to which it is ordered.

locomotion = change of place

Unless one wants to see locomotion as a separate category of being unto itself, which Dr. McLaughlin suggested though I wasn't sure how fully he endorsed this position.

The line of thought I would like to work out, instead of relying on inertia or impetus:
locomotion involves displacement; and an object moved must move other objects in order to take their place; some things are more susceptible to being displaced while others are not

immobility = resistance to being moved; and different things may have different tendencies to their proper places?

The question is whether this can explain "loss of energy" or continued motion...

We also talked about whether the universe is expanding or not, and if it is expanding, whether it would be for a purpose. He did think that an endless expansion would seem to be meaningless, pointless. He also recalled that many of the difficulties that Halton Arp had brought up regarding redshift had beeen resolved. It is not clear to me still that redshift is adequate evidence for the expansion of the universe.

And of course, there is the question of void/space and whether it is real or merely a mental construct. (Or more precisely, a mathematical abstraction.)

Interview with John Crosby

Von Hildebrand's Voice of Reason
Interview With Founder of Legacy Project



ALEXANDRIA, Virginia, JUNE 13, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI sees in Dietrich von Hildebrand a voice of reason in an age that has largely despaired of reason, says the founder of a project to disseminate the philosopher-theologian's writings.

John Henry Crosby recently spoke with ZENIT about the mission of the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project and the influence the German thinker had on the Catholic Church throughout the 20th century.

Crosby works closely with Alice von Hildebrand, the widow of the philosopher. Dietrich von Hildebrand lived from 1889 to 1977.

The Legacy Project recently released a new edition of "The Heart," which can be purchased at the project's Web site.

The project has pledged to donate 10% of all purchases through this link to ZENIT, and orders destined for the continental United States are eligible for free shipping.

Q: You and Alice Von Hildebrand recently met with Benedict XVI. What is the Holy Father's interest in this project?

Crosby: This is a challenging question because the Holy Father is interested in the Legacy Project or, more precisely, in Dietrich von Hildebrand, at many levels.

Many people will not know that the Holy Father knew von Hildebrand already as a young priest, when as young Father Ratzinger, he was the assistant pastor at von Hildebrand's parish church in Munich.

From the very start, Father Ratzinger had a deep esteem for Dietrich von Hildebrand, both as a personality and as thinker.

Beyond his personal admiration, however, the Holy Father also sees von Hildebrand as a Catholic figure who left a tremendous mark on the Church -- a mark about which many Catholics are regrettably unaware.

One could hardly attribute a greater historical importance to von Hildebrand than Cardinal Ratzinger did when he wrote about von Hildebrand in the year 2000: "I am firmly convinced that, when at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the 20th century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time."

These are not idle words, and the Holy Father has gone to great lengths to demonstrate how seriously he meant them.

Soon after the Legacy Project was founded in 2004, he took the rare step of joining as an honorary member, and even after his elevation to the papacy his support has been faithful and concrete.

The Legacy Project just released our first publication in collaboration with St. Augustine's Press, namely a new edition of von Hildebrand's book "The Heart."

The book appeared around the time of our audience with the Holy Father. Alice von Hildebrand and I were able to present the very first copy to him, to which he responded, expressing his gratitude, "Ah, the young people will like this."

Naturally, all of this collaboration only heightens the question of the Holy Father's interest in Dietrich von Hildebrand. Among the many different reasons that come to mind, two in particular, or, perhaps, two ways of explaining his support, stand out.

To begin with, one might say that the Holy Father sees Dietrich von Hildebrand as a voice of reason in an age that has largely despaired of reason.

How often have we not heard it said that there is no objective moral law but only what is right for me; that there is no reality except what I choose to make my reality?

This was hardly the way of von Hildebrand, who was always concerned with conforming himself to reality or, as he often expressed himself, to "listening to the voice of being."

Von Hildebrand has been described as a "knight for truth," and this marvelously expresses the way he not only sought and understood the faith but the manner in which he defended it and gave witness to it through his life.

Too few people know of the great Christian witness of von Hildebrand which, during the 1920s and 1930s, reached a heroic highpoint in his intellectual anti-Nazi resistance.

I am reminded here of some words which Cardinal Christoph Schönborn recently wrote to me in a letter about von Hildebrand, for they drive home the importance of von Hildebrand for today: "I continue to think, as I have in the past, that the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand stands among the very great Catholic contributions to the thought of the 20th century."

"Precisely in our time," Cardinal Schönborn continued, "it is becoming increasingly clear to me how precious it is to have great thinkers formed in the faith through whom we can find orientation and support in the midst of the confusion of the present time."

A second reason for the Holy Father's interest in Dietrich von Hildebrand lies in the fact that he sees the "personalism" of von Hildebrand as a kind of instrument for making the Gospel fully intelligible to the contemporary world.

How ironic it is that one of the bloodiest centuries in history, namely the 20th, went hand in hand with a deepening understanding for the dignity of the human person.

We see this in the whole language of "human rights," which is an expression of precisely this deepening sense for the dignity and inviolability of the person.

The philosophy that has arisen around this deepening sense for the dignity of persons, both as its cause and consequence, often goes by the name of personalism.

One of the greatest practitioners of personalism was the late great Pope John Paul II, who was capable of transforming so many thousands of lives in no small measure because of the personalist approach he always took.

Like John Paul, the thought and witness of von Hildebrand are rooted in his personalism, for von Hildebrand too was deeply interested in the nature and dignity of human persons -- indeed, one can say that the personal forms a kind of axis of his thought.

In his personal style as well, von Hildebrand acted out of a deep sense for the mystery of personal existence -- always with warmth, with love, with respect, and with a passionate desire to "win over" his interlocutor -- and this, I believe, was a crucial reason for his capacity to reach people so profoundly.

If there could ever be any "test" of successful Christian living, it would have to be that of conversions -- genuine conversions motivated by Christian witness. Von Hildebrand had over 100 godchildren -- a remarkable reflection of the personalism he both taught and lived.

Q: What inspired you to found the von Hildebrand Legacy Project?

Crosby: I am often asked why I founded the Legacy Project. How is it that a young man of 26 -- my age at establishing the project in 2004 -- should devote himself to the work of appropriating, preserving and disseminating the legacy of von Hildebrand?

The answer begins in the close bond of friendship that connected my family to von Hildebrand many years before I was born. I t is hard to imagine my maternal grandfather and my parents without the profound and formative relation they had to von Hildebrand.

And while I never knew von Hildebrand personally -- he died in 1977, the year before I was born -- throughout my teenage years I had the privilege of coming to know his widow, Alice von Hildebrand.

My appreciation for von Hildebrand grew especially during my university years. I felt increasingly that his rich and abundant vision of the world was becoming my own, and I began to understand why generations had been nourished by his prolific writings.

Dietrich von Hildebrand was a philosopher I could follow. His heroic struggle against Nazism fired my imagination; his single-minded love and pursuit of truth presented me with a vivid embodiment of the true philosopher; and his passion for music, literature and art taught me that life without beauty is impoverished and inhuman.

The Legacy Project is my response to the gift that von Hildebrand has been in my own life. I do not doubt that I am acting on behalf of the thousands who received this same gift in their own lives.

Q: Von Hildebrand was himself a convert to Catholicism. What led to his conversion?

Crosby: Von Hildebrand's friend and teacher, Max Scheler, drew his attention early on to the saints. Von Hildebrand discerned in them a supernatural beauty that spoke of God and bore witness to the truth of the Christian faith.

He was struck by the way in which their being was transformed by their love for Christ. The new moral ethos of the Christian saints won his heart and deeply affected him.

But it was in particular the radiant beauty that he experienced in the saints, and most of all in the God-man -- it was this beauty that drew him to Christ and led to his conversion.

We can say that his book "Transformation in Christ" is in a way the story of his conversion; for the beauty of "new creature in Christ" that he unfolds so masterfully in that book is the very thing that fired his imagination and made him a Christian.

Q: Why is von Hildebrand considered one of the most influential Catholics of the 20th century?

Crosby: Historians will have to discuss this question in the years to come, for von Hildebrand's legacy looms large in many different areas. Still, a consideration of this question could hardly ignore his prolific writings on marriage, man and woman, purity and virginity.

Given the influence of these writings on the Church's teaching on marriage at the Second Vatican Council and in the encyclical "Humanae Vitae," it is perhaps not an overstatement to say that von Hildebrand's thought on marriage has affected thousands upon thousands of Catholic marriages.

For centuries Catholic writers had stressed almost exclusively the procreative meaning of the marital act. Von Hildebrand was one of the first to see that over and above the procreative meaning there is also the unitive meaning of the marital act -- the enactment of the love of the spouses for each other.

With his writings on man and woman in the 1920s he prepared the ground in the Church for the teaching of Vatican II on the dual meaning of the marital act.

There is another teaching of Vatican II that he also helped to prepare, namely the new emphasis found in "Gaudium et Spes" on the dignity of natural and human values.

He did not think that only a soul in the state of grace really counted and that other values, such as values of culture and human thought, were of no real significance.

He instead contributed to a new Christian humanism in which all human goods and values are redeemed. This humanism can be seen in his rich philosophy of love; for he does not think that only Christian love of neighbor counts as love, but he takes seriously all the kinds of human love, giving particular attention to the love between man and woman.

These human loves are meant to be transformed and redeemed and not to be replaced with Christian love of neighbor.

Q: What do modern Catholics have to learn from the writings of von Hildebrand?

Crosby: Yet again, this is a challenging question, given the wide range of possible answers. I would like to draw attention to one aspect of the writings of von Hildebrand, not only because it is particularly important but also because it is not always properly appreciated.

Von Hildebrand was deeply formed by the tradition of Christian thought, above all by his great love of St. Augustine. On the other hand, he was a student of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), who was also the teacher of Edith Stein -- St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Like Edith Stein, von Hildebrand drew freely on both the tradition of Christian thought and on the many contributions of contemporary thought -- including those of his famous teacher, Husserl.

In this respect, von Hildebrand and Edith Stein went against a certain Christian tendency that views contemporary thought with a degree of skepticism and even an unwillingness to acknowledge its insights.

Von Hildebrand, as well as Edith Stein, overcame, or better, superseded this tendency in the best and most effective manner, namely, by making contemporary contributions fruitful in his own work.

Not only does this mean that Christian thinkers may benefit from the rich insights of von Hildebrand; it will also help them to approach contemporary thought with a view to harvesting its true and therefore timeless aspects.

This bodes well for the tradition of Christian thought -- which will only become richer and deeper.

Natural Law and Human Rights: A conversation with Robert P. George

NATURAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS: A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT P. GEORGE (pdf)

Webcast of a lecture by Robert George

"The Embryo Question: Biotechnology and the Status of Nascent Human Life"

Back to the science of life

Back to the science of life
Anton Markoš, Fatima Cvrčková

Sign Systems Stud. 30, 129-147, 2002

Back to the science of life
Anton Markoš, Fatima Cvrčková



Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences, Charles University,
Viničná 7, Prague 2, 128 00 Czechia

e-mail: markos@cts.cuni.cz

Abstract:We give a survey of epistemological and ontological approaches that have left traces in the 20th-century biology. A common motive of most of them is the effort to incorporate biology into the realm of physical sciences. However, such attempts failed, and must fail in the future, unless the criterion for what science is becomes biologically oriented. This means broadening the realm of classical natural sciences, incorporating at least part of the thesaurus of the "humanities". We suggest three mutually complementary candidates for further development in this direction: modular biology, the hermeneutics of the living, and the semiotic disciplines.

In the bitterness of their victory over their clerical opponents, [the biolo_gists] have made the meaninglessness of the universe into a new dogma.
Dyson (1979: 249-250)
Recently, we have witnessed a number of strange terminological shifts, where the subject of particular science becomes confounded with the science itself. Thus psychology means both mental pheno_mena and the science studying them, a piece of fine organic chemistry was needed when life originated on the planet, and the same holds for, say, physiology, ecology, botany, or even biology as such. But observing that a plant is growing is not biology yet, nor speaking about one's feelings and thoughts is psychology. The scope of a special science is always more limited than its subject. Life is not only biology, mind is not the same as psychology.

This does not mean that special sciences deal simply with a mere subset of traits characteristic for their subject. An established science, if creative, will also create new phenomena appropriate for the current set of paradigms held at the time. Monoclonal antibodies, inbred clones of mice, or a single species of protein in a test tube are constructs of a special science _ biology. Such constructs, and models based thereon, may provide extremely efficient tools, models and maps, enabling description and understanding of certain aspects of reality. However, any model _ scientific or otherwise _ is no more and no less than a caricature of the real world, and we should remain aware of the limits of its validity. Paradoxes and inconsistencies between a model and observation may indicate either a principal fault, or a mere transgression of the limits of model applicability. As Sidney Brenner (1997: 36) noted, Occam's razor should always be accompanied by Occam's broom _ to sweep the cut bits under the carpet. A substantial part of model formulation concerns defining the borders of the carpet _ i.e. the part of world where our models make sense.

Within the realm of natural sciences, biology has always held a strange position. Not all features of the living could be forced to meet the stringent measures of "hard" science, as exemplified by classicalphysics. It is not because spontaneity, evolution of complex systems, historicity, or even meaning were absent from the non-living realm. It is because during the last three centuries, modern science had chosen to ignore such appearances as mere epiphenomena of "real", objective, fully knowable causal laws acting in the background. For biology, however, the task to meet such criteria was even harder than for other experimental sciences: evolution and ontogeny always tended to escape any general rules. Here we shall try to show how various schools of biological thought try to negotiate the paradox.

Besides such "physicalist" attempts, there always existed a respectable tradition of philosophical thinking that pinned down those properties of the lived world (Lebenswelt) which resist "collapsing" into the schemes of physical sciences and "biology" derived thereof.

In this article we shall treat briefly some of the numerous 20th-century attempts to found biology in a way which would respect specificity of the living realm, yet take advantage of the methodological armoury of "hard" sciences. All such attempts represent different ways of projecting the teeming realm of the living onto a kind of map, or better grid or matrix, containing limited number of dimensions and therefore methodically manageable. The examples chosen are mostly balancing on the edge between turning life into physics, or jumping out of the physical world altogether. This "living on the edge" is, of course, inherent to the very realm of life (Kauffman 1993). However, depending on the factors taken into account, it can project into substantially different conceptions of the "science of life". All of them necessarily carry a burden of some sort of bias. Depending on what axes were selected for the projection, we obtain different models of life, often incompatible, at least to some respects, with other models.

As an alternative, we give in the second part a short survey of biosemiotics, as we understand it. In the third part we attempt to formulate outlines of another two "grids" which we consider to be best fitted, at present, for understanding the realm of the living, namely modular biology and hermeneutics of the living (undoubtedly charged with their own biases).

1. Physicalism

We use this somewhat ugly term to encompass all the worldviews based on the conviction that all natural phenomena are subject to eternal, immutable laws. In biology, there have existed several great schools of physicalism, differing in how they were able to treat the historical dimension of life. We will proceed from mechanicism and its branch through biological structuralism, vitalism and organicism, to biology as understood by two contemporary authors: Mae-Wan Ho and Stuart A. Kauffman. We will discuss the extent to which the explanatory scheme of these branches relies to objective existence of immutable, once-for-all given laws (objective in the sense "existing out there", not merely "agreed by peers"), compared to free exploration and invention within the space of meanings.

Mechanicism

A mechanism is a projection of the world into the geometrical space. Making use of a device _ mechanical or not _ means understanding causal interdependencies of its parts, i.e. being in principle able to characterize them by a set of (simple) mathematical equations. It should be stressed that mechanical functioning could never be reconciled with historicity, introduced by evolution. The clockwork functioning of the world was the leading idea in natural sciences up to the end of the 19th century. This ethos began to crumble with the onset of modern physics and mathematics. Moreover, hand by hand with mechanism always goes the question after its creator.

Owing to trifles of history, the mainstream biology has remained the stronghold of mechanicism long into the 20th century. This, surprisingly, persists despite the fact that biologists fully acknowledge evolution as the principal formative force shaping the realm of the living. The uneasy compromise was helped by extreme reductionism ending in atomism, both chemical (molecular behaviour) and con_ceptual (contemporary evolutionary genetics). It is true, the argument goes, that at the macroscopic level we observe intentionality, free will, historicity and the like, but all these are nothing but epiphenomena safely grounded in the mechanical behaviour of molecules _ i.e. something fully predictable from the initial and boundary conditions. Yet chance may enter at this level, be it genuine chance, measure of our ignorance, or some tricks implemented from the quantum world. If we, however, succeed to set such appearances, which are felt as disturbances, aside, or if we succeed to suppress them experimentally, we should end up essentially with predictable, truly objectively accessible world. All phenomena at the macroscopic scale of both space and time can be explained as causal consequences of either elementary mechanical movements, or genetic instructions read and executed blindly by mechanical protein contraptions.

Contemporary mechanistic thought in biology is characterised by two pillars: (1) molecular biology as taught by Jacques Monod (1979), and (2) sociobiology epitomized by the name of Edward O. Wilson (1998). Yet even in such strongholds of mechanicist thinking we can follow a strange _ albeit rarely reflected _ shift away from hard science and towards semiotics. Monod introduced the concept of gratuity, which, by all measures, cannot be acknowledged as belonging to chemistry. It is rather a description how molecules become symbols. The nature of molecules as chemical entities sud_denly plays only a marginal role: they serve as a mere medium to store or deliver meaning. Sociobiology, in turn, gave birth to memetics, which parts even with the last bonds of the causal molecular world and becomes a free game of symbols (Dawkins 1989; Black_moore 2000). By these and similar moves even the mainstream of biology may have transgressed its own horizon long ago.

Biological structuralism

Structures, the central concept of (biological) structuralism, can again be viewed as a kind of reduction _ projection _ collapse of the multi-dimensional space onto a construct. This time it is not the 3D Cartesian space of the mechanicists. Instead of invariant molecules and kinetic laws, invariance is supplied by implementations of structures into the lived world (see, e.g., Webster, Goodwin 1996). Evolution and morphogenesis is viewed as a result of lawful (i.e. in principle, as in the previous case, fully knowable) transformations of ever-existing and unchangeable structure. The structure is a system of relationships that always has existed, and its transformation proceeds according to fixed rules (although this does not mean that transfor_mations themselves are given in advance _ only the rules are conser_vative, not the outcomes). Knowledge of rules of (trans)formation allows one to analyse the order of formations of things, and the principal task is to find these rules.

Structuralism also stresses the relationship between the whole and its parts: a thing is to be understood not as a single fact or term, but as a totality, and only as such it has any meaning. Its parts gain their meaning only from their position in the whole structure. If we succeed in deciphering the nature of the relationships between the parts and the whole, we get a model of a given structure. Such a model will become a formal analogue of all models organized by that structure; thus it makes it possible to unify even domains which, at first sight, have nothing in common (for example various mathematical theories). In science, the structuralist approach is an attempt to overcome _ or better, complement or correct _ explanations based on the reduction to the molecular level. Each level of description becomes the basic level with its own structural laws.

It is important to realize that the system of transformations _ in the structuralists' interpretation, is closed; it develops and becomes enriched because of inherent rules that are independent of outside influences. At the same time it does not allow the structure to transgress the limits pre-set by rules. Novelties may appear only if they have always been virtually present as potentials of the structure. Historical events, i.e. trajectories of the system in time, cannot change the rules _ otherwise no structured space would exist, but only a kind of eternal flow akin to the Heracleitan River. From a postulate of the self-sufficiency of a structure it follows that a structure can be totally known in itself, without any need to refer to elements outside the structure.

In a closer view, the very notion of virtual presence brings about problems. "Virtual presence" is not objective: the structure is a mere point in the space of possibilities. This space is teeming with possibilities, also mutually exclusive ones, in a kind of superposition. Structuralists tend to stress that any decision, selection or interpre_tation results in a collapse from this space into a single solution, thus revealing a preexisting attractor. But we might ask whether the system of transformations could not be open, endlessly creating new possibilities _ and new structures.

Structuralism, as physics and as molecular biology, is seeking what is timeless, fixed, and constant: the grammar and the vocabulary of a given language or of a given phenotype. Evolution and morpho_genesis become a system of fixed and lawful (i.e. objectively decipherable) transformations where no contingency is allowed. We end with a kind of rational morphology supported by mathematics.

The aim is thus similar to that of physicalism. However, in contrast to mechanicism, structuralism has no ambition to reduce biology to physics. Biological phenomena stay in their own "causal domain" (Havel 1996), without reference to other domains of description. Physics is attractive because it supplies examples (analogies) how to build a rational taxonomy without any need for history. To disclose such an order for the realm of living beings should be _ according to structuralism _ the principal goal of all biologists. Hence, biology should break away from the flaws of historicity and finally transform itself into a true science worth of physicalists' criteria.

Vitalism and organicism

The vitalists' endeavour (here we present mainly views held by one of its main protagonists among the biologists, Hans Driesch (1905, 1914, 1929)) was also to encompass the phenomenon of life into the body of physical science. Vitalism is a conviction that life processes are autonomous, i.e. understandable only in the context of the living, not from some "simpler" levels, such as that of chemistry. But these autonomous processes, themselves, are also governed by a fully describable principle(s). Life, as a property of a living body, is in no way the result of physico-chemical events, but rather a ruler of those. This, however, does not mean that spontaneity or even free will should be allowed for.

The vitalists therefore felt a need to find and define principles controlling vital processes; they always stressed that such principles should be expressed as measurable variables, being in simple mathematical relations to magnitudes already known. Thus, the priority was, again, to discover simple laws that govern life, i.e. to broaden the realm of physics to be able to embed life more completely into it. This quest can best be demonstrated by their rejection of Darwinian theory: they held that introducing historical contingencies into pure science was unacceptable!

Driesch, as one of the pioneers of experimental embryology and discoverer of regulatory processes in early embryos, centres his efforts on the explanation of regeneration. To understand such phenomena, one has to presume the existence of harmony (causal, structural or functional) and purposiveness in organisms. His aim was to prove this assumption.

When in the 1920s it became obvious that vitalism had become depleted of explanatory potential and dogmatic, i.e. of no practical use in experimental science, the term organicism was coined instead in the 1930s (Bertalanffy 1960). Its aim, again, was to explain the obvious fact of emergent properties of complex systems, encountered on the way from a "lower" level of description to a "higher" one. This tamed form of vitalism survived in developmental biology for the rest of the century and, according to Gilbert and Sarkar (2000) will also have much to say in the century coming.

Perhaps it will, but we do not see much difference between the organicist statement "Different laws are appropriate for each level of description", and the vitalist "There are life-specific laws". In our opinion, the controversy _ often very heated _ between mecha_nicism, vitalism and organicism could perhaps have been resolved on a purely terminological ground. Not much will change if we, instead of proposing "autonomous laws of the living realm", speak of expanding physics and chemistry in order to accommodate life, pointing to generally accepted instances of such previous expansions, such as the whole area of organic chemistry. Moreover organicist statements can also easily be applied to any complex dissipative system, which means that they do not provide the answer to the basic question: "What is the difference between the living and the non-living?" Is our understanding sharper if we speak of information, complexity, or structure without having clear idea of the meaning of such words?

The anxiety not to leave the Cartesian world "where the laws of chemistry and (Newtonian) physics rule" is, in our opinion, con_demned to failure. If biology, psychology and similar areas of human knowledge are to become sciences with a status similar to physics, they ought to abandon their vain attempt to confine biology into the Cartesian space and do what physics did several decades ago: transcend it.

"Enlightened physicalism" of M.-W. Ho:
Introducing the concepts of quantum physics

One possibility how to do this may be encompassing, at last, the 20th century developments in physics. Quantum physics has turned the traditional question after material structures upside down and started to ask after the structure of matter, opening thereby perspectives unavailable to classical physics. Surprisingly, few biologists took this challenge seriously. Mae-Wan Ho in her earlier works (see, for example 1993, 1994) makes a serious attempt to describe living beings in terms of self-structuring fields. Inspired by the Fröhlich theory of resonance (see, for example, Pokorny 1995), she sees living beings as coherent systems synchronized through many levels of organization.

According to Ho, organisms can be characterised by high-effi_ciency energy transfers with minimum losses. She interprets this fact as evidence that energy transformations in living beings are of a different order from those described by standard chemical kinetics. The latter are defined for reactions in homogenous space involving very high numbers of molecules, and characterized by quantities based on the averaging of states of large numbers of particles (temperature, concentration, free energy, entropy, etc.). Such quantities, however, cannot be defined for the interior of living cells _ they have no meaning there, because the space within the cell is highly structured. Evidence for the presence of elaborate _ almost crystal-like _ order within living things is seen in the observation that live cells, unlike dead ones, exhibit optical polarization. This means that cells do not contain anything like homogeneous solutions (see also Hess, Mik_hailov 1995, 1996, or any current textbook, for support of this notion; compare also the concept of evolution based on non-ergodicity in Kauffman 2000).

In such a highly ordered space, huge numbers of molecules (of the order of 1020) interact in a coherent (i.e. coordinated, nonlocal) manner, ensuring extreme efficiency of energy transfers. Ho assumes that the coherence present in organisms is quantum in nature, and interprets living beings as highly coherent systems, interconnected through many spatial (10-10-101 m) and temporal (10-14-107 s) orders. Although she is far from providing conclusive evidence for the involvement of quantum phenomena, we believe that her introduction of quantum physics concepts into biology represents a hopeful way of transcending the mechanistic worldview.

"Enlightened physicalism" of S. Kauffman:
Introducing history

Stuart A. Kauffman (1993, 2000), in contrast to concepts discussed above, fully recognizes the creativity and historicity of the physical realm. He started with modelling the dynamics of very complex systems, and showed that such systems have an inherent property of becoming self-organized and evolving. He therefore maintains that, in evolution, order (structure) will establish itself "for free", in spite of natural selection. From the mathematical world of models Kauffman made a decisive step to the physical world and attempted to find laws that would govern the evolution of a non-ergodic world. Kauffman's key concept is the autonomous agent, defined as an entity able of self-reproduction and of performing work cycles _ i.e. canalising the flow of energy. An autonomous agent, in addition, can act on its own behalf in the sense that it evolves towards maximizing the efficiency of both these essential functions. Obviously, any living being belongs to the category of autonomous agents. What, however, should the properties of a physical system be for it to be able to act on its own behalf, i.e. to become an autonomous agent? Such a system must be able to increase its own organization.

But this is not the end of the story: autonomous agents are busy manipulating the surrounding world in order to maximize its diversity, co-constructing thereby a biosphere: "Biospheres persistently increase the diversity of what can happen next" (Kauffman 2000: 4). The configuration space of a biosphere cannot be defined in advance.

It does not, however, mean that biospheres are heading towards chaotic and unlimited diversity. Reaching out and making a living means making sensible choices from the space of possibilities created. We stress the word choices as an opposite to necessity imposed by natural selection: informed choice is unthinkable without the historical, experiential, hermeneutical dimension.

Kauffman tried to decipher lawful properties behind co-constructing biospheres, and he suggests the tentative 4th law" of thermodynamics. "As an average trend, biospheres and the universe create novelty and diversity as fast as they can manage to do so without destroying the accumulated propagating organization which is the basis and nexus from which further novelty is discovered and incorporated into propagating organization" (Kauffman 2000: 85).

Is this vitalism? If we take Driesch as a reference, the answer is no. There is, in Kauffman, no sign of the stiff physicalism so typical of Driesch. Quite the opposite is true: Kauffman focuses on creativity, spontaneity of the living. But how to name this quality "scienti_fically", formulate a concise theory, develop testable hypotheses and appropriate methods for their testing? In other words, how to define laws for non-ergodic evolving physical systems? In this sense Kauffman's views may be very close to those of the American semiotician C. S. Peirce, who hundred years before Kauffman stated that "natural laws are acquired habits".

2. Biosemiotics

Biosemioticians maintain that, in contrast to inanimate matter which can be characterized by causal processes (action and reaction), the essence of the living is in semiosis, manipulation with symbols. Whereas "natural laws" represent generalizations about natural processes, helping to arrange the original heterogeneity under a small number of simple and homogeneous rules, the process of semiosis leads towards greater heterogeneity, elaboration, i.e. evolution (compare with the evolution of Kauffmanian biospheres above). Biosemiotics is an abstraction from the (causal) physical world, and focuses itself to a universe perfused with signs, where organic wholes participate in a never-ending interpretative process. The principal terms of biosemiotics are meaning and understanding, and the processes that create them. We consider crucial the following thesis, with all its reminiscences of vitalism or organicism:

The world is material, but all matter is organized into forms and these again can be further organized. There are qualitative differences between these organized forms. What exists are not just fundamental particles, energetic fields, and their organization: Reality has during its evolution become organized into characteristic primary levels (the physical, biological, psychical and social). Entities at higher levels possess emergent properties, some of which are ontologically irreducible to lower level properties. (Also called material pluralism or irreductive physicalism). Semiotic phenomena may be characteristic of some, but not necessarily all levels. (Emmeche 1997: 96)

We come to the view of an unfolding semiosphere (Hoffmeyer 1998) not incompatible with the visions of Kauffman or even those of Teilhard de Chardin (1956). All living beings participate, as experienced entities, in this process:

[...] we can say that when life, and thus natural selection, emerged inside the Earth system we had already passed beyond the secure sphere of physics into the sphere of communication and interpretation. In this sphere the dynamics of history (evolution) changed and began to become individualised, so that each little section of history became unique and henceforward no big formulas could be erected covering the whole process. Organic evolution is narrative rather than lawlike [...], and if quantification is wanted, it should be searched not at the level of genetics, but at the level of the constrained thermodynamic system framing organic evolution. (Hoffmeyer 1997: 365; our emphasis, A. M. and F. C.)

Semetic, instead of genetic, processes and interactions are considered the driving force of evolution. Emmeche (1997) even hopes that the biosemiotic effort will lead towards the integration of semiotics, biology and physics, and thus to the comprehension of emergence of new orders of complexity.

3. Perspectives

Examples above illustrated what were the problems biology has been struggling with for the past century. Biological field theory, structuralism, epigenetics, general systems theory, organicism and many other theories attempting the holistic or top-down approach in science, all remain somehow suspicious from the point of view of "true", prosperous, reductionist science. Biosemiotics, on the other hand, has completely left the realm of natural sciences.

The objective for the 21st century is clear: either to conclude that some aspects of life's appearance simply cannot be subdued to the scrutiny of objectivist biology as we know it today, or to create a concise holistic theory of life, broadening thus the realm of biological science.

In the following part of our essay we shall attempt to outline two methodological (or epistemological) approaches that, to our opinion, may show some promise in relation to the second option mentioned: modular biology and hermeneutics.

Modular biology:
resurrecting classical genetics

The term module can refer to a very heterogeneous set of entities. It can be applied to functional units in genomes _ e.g. exons that can shuffle between the genes, thus increasing functional variability of encoded proteins (Patthy 1995). It can also represent autonomously developing units in ontogeny (Gilbert et al. 1996). However, here we shall focus mostly on the concept of modules as structural, regulatory, or functional units within cells (Hartwell et al. 1999), although some of the conclusions may apply also to the developmental, and even genomic, understanding of modules. What is common to all three conceptions mentioned is that modules serve as a kind of archetypal "scaffolding" for explication, i.e. forming some phenotypical trait. The scaffolding is relatively stable as to its internal relations. Its existence is a necessary condition for building the trait in question, but the trait itself cannot be derived from the existence of the scaffolding.

What, then, comprises a module? Some of the Hartwellian modules are identical to previously recognized multiprotein complexes, such as the ribosome. Such entities could be, at least in principle, isolated in vitro and subjected to detailed chemical and physical analysis that would optimally lead to a 3-dimensional model of the corresponding molecular machinery. Others correspond to known regulatory or signal transduction pathways, such as protein kinase cascades and transcription regulation circuits involved in cell cycle regulation, hormone response and other cellular processes. In a general case, it is not spatial localization but functional relations what decides whether a particular molecule belongs to a particular module. In extreme cases, molecules belonging to the same module might never co-exist in the same cell! As a rule, modules are more likely to be discovered by the "old-fashioned" methodical apparatus of classical genetics than by high-tech 21st century biochemistry alone, although they can, of course, be studied also by biochemical and molecular methods.

However, results of such studies, interesting as they undoubtedly are, do not contribute much to the understanding of relations between modules themselves. When studying these relations, we treat modules as black boxes, characterized only by their inputs and outputs. (For an alternative approach to the analysis of intracellular processes in terms of a network of relations _ not between modules, but between molecules, see also Kanehisa 2000).

Indeed, if we aim towards understanding the basis of the extraordinary diversity and plasticity of life, we may that find the structure of the network of inter-modular relations matters more than the intra-modular processes. Modules themselves appear to be surprisingly conserved, comprising a kind of "basic toolbox" or a set of standardized blocks from which diverse bodies are built. What we observe as differences between modules in different lineages are more like dialects than different languages. Modules can become interconnected with other modules in a variety of ways, thus enabling new combinations of intracellular regulations or ontogenetic path_ways.

The conservative character of modules could be due to the necessity for horizontal communication between distant genealogical lines. This supposition is fully relevant at the level of the genetic code (note that the whole transcriptional and translational mechanism is a module par excellence) _ especially in bacteria and archaea. Frequent and extensive genetic exchange across the bacterial world calls for a universal and conservative genetic language. To explain the conservation of modules by the necessity of horizontal transfer would, however, be quite challenging. The lineages represented by recent eukaryotic species tend to be well, if not hermetically, isolated. Horizontal exchange might have some importance immediately after speciation in so-called hybridization chains where great chunks of genetic material can move from species to species by interspecific hybridisation.

Another possible justification for a language of modules may be symbiosis: its existence will allow the partners to "understand" (or manipulate?) each other to differing extents. It is not that important whether the partners exchange their genetic material (mitochondria, chloroplasts) or not (lichens, ciliates, parasites). Such higher-order phenotypes require intimate interconnections between the regulatory systems of the constituting species. The establishment of multifarious symbiotic associations is typical in the biosphere, and the existence of a universal modular language undoubtedly makes it easier. It may even appear that symbioses (even in spite of the risk of parasitism) are advantageous in evolutionary terms, to the extent that there is a pressure to maintain the universal language in spite of genetic isolation.

Perhaps the most popular (and best known) example of a module, both in the Hartwellian and in the developmental sense, is the system of Hox genes. Chromosomal location of these genes is collinear with the body axis and their function corresponds to morphological modules which can be recognized on the body, such as segments (for a review see e.g. Davidson 2001). The products of homeotic genes, conserved throughout the metazoan kingdom, thus assign an "address" to the body structures. Incorrect addressing caused by incorrect functioning of the homeotic coding leads to so-called homeotic mutations, when structures appropriate to one type of segment appear at incorrect, ectopic sites. Many other regulatory modules are of such archetypal nature, for example systems specifying the dorsoventral axis in animals, the proximal-distal axis of appendages, the establish_ment of boundaries between body compartments, neuro_cranium, or left-right asymmetry. Similar archetypal regulations can be found also in plants.

Also another aspect of the project of modular biology, formulated by Hartwell et al. (1999), deserves attention in our context. The authors explicitly point to an obvious analogy between the processing and integration of multiple environmental and external signals by a (modular) cell on one hand _ and analogous tasks performed by the metazoan nervous system on the other. As a result, they arrive to a rather shocking question: are there any modules that would correspond to a cellular equivalent of our nervous system?

If we accept this analogy and all conclusions it could lead to, we cannot but accept that, one day, cell biology may have to embrace the whole arsenal of methods, approaches and theories worked out in the long centuries of the study of diverse aspects of human nervous system. And there is no reason to stop at methods developed in the realm of neurobiology and related "nearly exact" sciences: biology has to be open to input from the humanities as well.

On the first glance, such an idea may appear preposterous, unacceptable and absurd. However, from a closer perspective the same objections could be raised against the previously sketched mechanistic models underlying most of traditional biology, as they are based on the rather immodest assumption that man-made devices are adequate models for understanding the world around and within ourselves.

Hermeneutics of the living (or better by the living):
Interpretation everywhere

Taking the data of "standard" biology and re-interpreting them in the light of hermeneutics may be a good example of such an approach (Markoš 2002). In other words, we can view a living body as if it were a reader of texts, endowed with internal history (that of an individual and/or of a lineage). It masters a natural language, with understanding the meaning through word-by-word instructions as well as through cues, contexts, game of words, memory, communication with others, etc. In short, the hermeneutic approach considers any living being as if endowed with abilities analogous to human consciousness.

As an example, take the gene _ protein level of description. Here, genes play the role of dictionary entries, whereas proteins represent words that could appear in various grammatical forms, and, together with other proteins, constitute a plethora of predicates. The cell uses all this to weave a texture of temporal and spatial expressions, which reflect its context in the world.

A multicellular body can also be taken as an expression, where differentiated cells (including the extracellular matrix) are elements of syntactic and semantic relations. The dictionary would not be genes but whole modules (for example signalling cascades). In this metaphor, ontogeny is a species- (or genus-, phylum-, etc.) specific explication of a very old and conservative text shared by the greater part of, or even all, living beings. Like any explication, this too is subject to "cultural", historical shifts in course of evolution. A species-specific understanding of the genetic script is then an analogy to culture _ specific understanding of, say, holy writ or the law codex. In this species-as-culture analogy, all the appearances of members of a species (morphology, behaviour, etc.) are results of habits acquired in course of historical contingencies. It follows that the causal bond "genetic inscription ? body appearance" is far from being strict.

The deciphering of a code in DNA is often taken as a historical milestone: the existence of a digital code was, and is, felt as a warranty that all what is really important can, and indeed is, unequivocally written down in a string of symbols _ bases. But there are two facets of the problem. First, it is true that digital information can be unequivocally copied within the realm of the digital. But it is often forgotten that it cannot be simply copied when transferred into a realm of the analogue, i.e. into the realm of bodily structures. This transition always requires interpretation (Gadamer 1989). The inter_pretation act is never a simple decoding as in case of transcription, translation, or transforming digital magnetic track into a text page on the screen (or a printer). Interpretation is always based in previous experience of the individual, species, lineage, an experience that goes back to the very beginning of life. Any interpretation is a historical singularity that will change the run of the world. To adapt the terminology of S. Kauffman, autonomous agents, by performing interpretation acts, bring the world into the adjacent possible.

In this respect, we are already entering the realm of ontology, the ontology of hermeneutic circle as laid out by M. Heidegger _ or as outlined by modern physics in a somewhat different flavour (although non-physicists rarely appreciate this). However, even the physicists' world does not encompass the semiotic dimension yet. Adoption of the hermeneutic and semiotic methods by natural science would, hence, mean a decisive step towards biologisation of physics, centring sciences in biology _ a bold parallel to the already accomplished biologisation of chemistry by development of organic chemistry and biochemistry.

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hrm.. a response later when I have an opportunity...