Subordinated Ethics. Caitlin Smith Gilson
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only one aeviternity.”
67. Cf. Voegelin, Science, Politics, Gnosticism.
68. Cf. von Speyr, Cross.
69. Levinas, “Beyond Intentionality,” in Levinas Reader, 5. See Walsh on Levinas in Modern Philosophical Revolution, 311: “Love is love only when it loves an other as an other, not just as an other self. The Child is that unmerited event by which an other is ‘more exactly, me, but not myself.’ Transcendence has reached its goal when it has endangered, beyond its own finality, the finality of the transcendence of an other. I can love myself in the child but never as myself; it is always as other that the child is loved.” As such, the lines in Galatians are deeply suggestive of the intentional union we seek to elucidate. See Gal. 3:28 (KJV): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
70. Pegis, Thomistic Notion of Man, 51.
71. Borges, “New Refutation on Time,” in Labyrinths, 234.
72. Bachelard, Intuition of the Instant, 6–8.
73. Timaeus, 37d. Cf. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, §IV 358–59: “‘The moment’ is a figurative expression, and therefore it is not easy to deal with. However, it is a beautiful word to consider. Nothing is as swift as a blink of the eye, and yet it is commensurable with the content of the eternal . . . Whatever its etymological explanation, [‘the sudden’] is related to the category of the invisible, because time and eternity were conceived equally abstractly, because the concept of temporality was lacking, and this again was due to the lack of the concept of spirit. The Latin term is momentum (from movere), which by derivation expresses the merely vanishing. Thus understood, the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping time . . . The moment is that ambiguity in which time and eternity touch each other, and with this the concept of temporality is posited, whereby time constantly intersects eternity and eternity constantly pervades time. As a result, the above-mentioned division acquires its significance: the present time, the past time, the future time.”
74. Possenti, Nihilism and Metaphysics, 349.
75. Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, 453. The operation of the will within ourselves involves also another procession, that of love, whereby the object loved is in the lover, see ST I, 27, 3, resp., and Hegel, Natural Law, 104: “There is nothing else but the performance, on the ethical plane, of the tragedy which the Absolute eternally enacts with itself, by eternally giving birth to itself into objectivity, submitting in this objective form to suffering and death, and rising from its ashes into glory. The Divine in its form and objectivity is immediately double-natured, and its life is the absolute unity of these natures. But the movement of the absolute contradiction between these two natures presents itself in the Divine nature (which in this movement has comprehended itself) as courage, whereby the first nature frees itself from the death inherent in the other conflicting nature. Yet through this liberation it gives its own life, since that life is only in connection with this other life, any yet just as absolutely is resurrected out of it, since in this death (as the sacrifice of the second nature), death is mastered.”
Acknowledgments
I am entirely grateful to Eric Austin Lee for his insightful comments, assiduous review, and patience! Thank you to the community at University of Holy Cross for their support, especially and including the awarding of the Adams Endowed Professorship, which assisted greatly in the completion of this book. In particular, special thanks to Drs. Claudia Champagne, Michael LaBranche, Victoria Dahmes, and David M. “Buck” Landry. I am also most grateful to Mrs. Jane Simoneaux, Mrs. Cindy Self, Ms. Rhonda Aucoin, Ms. Celia Zaeringer, and Ms. Daisi Sue Smith. Thank you to my students at Holy Cross, who make each day an adventure in the classroom!
Abbreviations
Aristotle
De Anima DA
De Caelo DC
Metaphysics Met.
Nichomachean Ethics NE
Physics Phys.
Prior Analytics Pr. An.
Rhetoric Rhet.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Contra Gentiles: SCG
Summa Theologiae: ST
Commentaria in Libros Aristoteles de Caelo et Mundo: Comm. De Caelo
Commentary on the Gospel of St. John: Comm. St. John
In Librum Beati Dionysii de Divinis Nominibus Expositio: DN
Scriptum Super Sententiis: In Sent.
De Ente et Essentia: De Ente
Quaestiones Disputate de Potentia Dei: De Pot.
De Veritate: DV
1
Quiet Homes: The Paradox of Freedom
Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.1
Freedom is as much an accomplishment as a given,2 a non-temporal consequence of the intellectual-spiritual nature of human existence in its journey across time. The will follows upon human intentionality whether or not a choice of consequences is involved. We are in a situation at all because we are by nature free. We are in this situation as a consequence of our own, and others, freedom, though not at all necessarily as a result of choice. Being-in-a-situation is not the negation of freedom but the necessary prerequisite of freedom.3 The essence of freedom is identical to the paradoxical essence of human being,4 located in its natural intentionality: to be-come what I am, I must be-come what I am not: this is a necessity flowing from the radical non-necessity qua contingency of my being and action. My essence is not finished, a “done deal,” a made thing. It must be achieved. This “must” is the sign and guarantee of my freedom. Freedom is a primordial given, but more a lifelong struggle to accomplish. The long historical failure to distinguish these aspects, without absorbing or reducing the one into the other, leads to the muddle of opposing and equally fatuous theories of freedom, choice, and determinism. We may or may not be “responsible” for our situation. That is not the fundamental point. It is because, and only because, we are free that we have—must have—a situation. Cancel the situation and we cancel freedom. Both subjectivism and traditional objectivism fail miserably and utterly in understanding this. Thus, immanence and transcendence are not opposed.5 The transcendent act is not a merely transitive act.6 For the ultimate is attained not by corporeal steps but by the movement of the heart.7 And like a garden, freedom requires nurture, development, pruning, weeding. The given of human nature is a seed, not a fruit. Liberty is a tree: arbitrio/arbor: the free act is the rooted act, not, contra Gide,8 the gratuitous act. Freedom as accomplishment unites body and soul, and ethical, social, political freedom require the careful gardener. In this sense, politics and ethics are “a posteriori” while moral sensibility is “a priori.” Personal-social-political unity requires subordination to an underlying elan, towards a pure and purely Other, reversing in some sense and uniting in another sense, Bergson’s open and closed societies, for Being is the unitary root of the elan vital, of the gardens of society and the mystical soul where theoria reveals itself as praxis. The free ethical act is not “knowledge” in the sense of being in possession of the prescriptive