The comedian Steve Martin used to say that people who study philosophy in college remember just enough to screw them up for the rest of their lives. It could be added that most people who haven’t studied it, and a good number who have, think it’s too much of a waste of time to even accomplish that much. As one who has a piece of paper hanging from his wall proclaiming him a bachelor of philosophy I can say that my studies didn’t do me any lasting emotional harm (some might disagree on that point). And while I tended to treat these courses as a means to an end without any lasting importance, my view on this has changed over the years. I now wish I had paid better attention and dug a little deeper back in the day. I don’t know that we have to go back to past ages where everyone who went to university left with a philosophy degree (a practice that endured in many Catholic colleges well into the 20th century), but there needs to be some renewal of philosophy in the core curriculum, if such a thing still exists. If we are screwed up today, to use Mr. Martin’s vulgarism, it’s because we don’t really understand why we believe what we believe, and this doesn’t apply to non-religious people only, but for people of faith as well.
Faith is enough to get you into heaven, for sure. There are worse things in life than not understanding St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine. To be versed in theology and philosophy doesn’t make you a saint. There was a professor of Scripture at Xavier when I was there who was very popular, and didn’t believe a word of what he taught. That is he approached the New Testament as an anthropologist might, not as a document of faith. I heard a beautiful and insightful lecture on Isaiah 6 by a professor at SUNY Purchase, but for him it was a poem, nothing more. Knowing something intellectually doesn’t mean that you really believe it, or really understand it in the same way. With faith we have a different way of seeing both the Scriptures and reality around us. We don’t need airtight arguments to convince us that Jesus Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life. But we don’t live in a world guided by the light of faith. We have friends, neighbors, coworkers, even family members who may not share our faith or may be uncertain if they really believe what the Church teaches. We ourselves may have doubts that won’t go way. Appealing to religious authority may not be enough to convince them, or us, of the truth of these teachings. This is where philosophy comes in. If we know enough of the intellectual underpinnings of our belief maybe we can at least convince them, as well as be convinced ourselves, of the reasonableness of our faith.
This is only a first step. What will ultimately convince people is our personal witness lived out in our lives. The writings of St. Thomas Aquinas have certainly helped people to better grasp their faith and even pushed some struggling with the idea of converting “over the edge” to embrace Christ. But it is the example of those like Bl. Theresa of Calcutta that truly move souls to change their lives for the better.
This is a long way around to say that I’m not making philosophy the be all and end all. But it is a tool, and an important one. The Theology of the Body was formulated by John Paul II, who was a philosopher, because the Church had reaffirmed its teaching that the use of artificial contraception is contrary to human dignity and the divine law. Many within the Church found this hard to accept, and to this day most Catholics ignore this teaching. His hope was to show people the religious justifications for this teaching, but also that it is in line with human reason as well.
And so I'm dusting off some old volumes, scouring some web sites and brushing up on my Aristotle, as well as Descartes and Kant. It's actually been enjoyable reacquainting myself with this material and I pray it bears fruit, not just for me but for you.
I had promised a posting on phenomenology, but I found that I need to go beyond TOB’s introduction to really do it justice. So, I’m still reading through some material and hope to have something on that by the end of the week.
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