THE SEARCH FOR WISDOM

The transcendental term "Goodness" is often attributed to things that are only apparently good, for example an alcoholic drink seems very good to an alcoholic, but is in fact destructive, bad for this person. This understanding of the term, of course, makes the goodness of things merely relative to human needs. But from this narrow conception of the good, we also come to see more broadly that the "goodness" of anything is the full realization of its potentialities and whatever preserves it in existence and contributes to its wholeness and perfection, its unity and ontological truth.

Thus we can recognize that the preservation of living species and their health and survival is good not bad since it contributes to the order of the universe. This can also be said of inanimate substances as they exhibit various forms of organization needed by the system of the universe in its development and marvelous order. To the contrary we recognize as bad or evil the destructive events in the universe that seem to return it to chaos. The main argument of the atheist and the cynic is the evident evil in the world. Thus the notions of "good" and "bad" or "evil" can be meaningfully, though in analogous ways, applied to everything that exists in the contingent universe that is the subject of study by First Philosophy.

That "good" and "bad" have many senses that are only analogous is evident if we consider how different it is to say that a child is "bad" is from the sense that food can be said to be "bad" or that the destruction of biodiversity is "bad" even when pursued for human benefit. Thus the notion of goodness or value is connected in Aristotle's thought with that of final causality or teleology (from Greek telos goal). Aquinas quotes Aristotle's definition of the Good "as that which everybody desires." This definition is not contradicted by the fact that some people desire what is bad because they desire the bad only because it appears to them to be good or because even if they know it is bad they find something good in it to justify their evil desire. [1]

One of the major features of the development of modern natural science was the rejection of such teleology or explanation through final causality. As early as Francis Bacon teleological explanations in science were said to be anthropomorphic projections of human purposiveness on to inanimate things and hence scientifically useless, "The research into final causes, like a virgin dedicated to God, is barren and produces nothing." [2] Causal explanations were reduced to those from efficient and material causality. Formal causality was not recognized, yet actually entered into natural science through its use of mathematical models, because mathematical explanations are made through formal causality. Kant seemed to settle the question by arguing that all causal explanations and especially those through final causality are due to the imposition of the categorial structures of the human mind on the data of experience. [3] This rejection of teleology by natural scientists seems to have been principally the result of a persistent misunderstanding of the Aristotelian concept of finality. [4] Aristotle's natural science has changeable being (ens mobile) as its subject and this subject is analyzed into its intrinsic material and formal causes. Since, however, as shown in Chapter III, "Nothing can change itself," change will not take place without the action of another substance, the efficient cause. If then we are to formulate universal natural laws about efficient causality we must determine that a given kind of efficient cause has a determined and specific effect---unless by chance another natural or free agent interferes with the production of this effect. This implies that the agent is pre-determined by is nature to produce this specific kind of effect and not another. For example, the law of gravity states that massive bodies are predetermined by their mass to attract other massive bodies with a precise force. On the other hand, while bodies with opposite electromagnetic charges always attract each other, those with similar charges repel.

This final causality or teleology, as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas, is not some kind of conscious purpose in a body, nor is it some occult kind of efficient cause, but it is nothing more than precisely this pre-determination of a natural efficient cause to produce a specifically determined effect provided that this effect is considered in its productive rather than its destructive character. This qualification is added because in natural changes the production of one entity is the destruction of another. Thus the growth of a plant to maturity from its seed is a good example of final causality (teleology), since in proper conditions this happens naturally (regularly) and results in a relatively stable entity that functions for its regular life span.

Thus the growth of a plant to maturity from its seed is a good example of final causality (teleology), since in proper conditions this happens naturally (regularly) and results in a relatively stable entity that can function for its natural lifetime. It would be wrong, however, to consider the death of a plant, although all plants die, as final causality, but the fact that in dying plants make the soil fertile for a new crop or are eaten to sustain an animal can be considered ecological teleology, although less evidently so than the plant's growth. We might, therefore, call processes considered as they destroy order and stability in nature "anti-teleology." Hence anti-teleological processes are correlative to teleological processes and enter into scientific explanation only in so far as the material world continues to survive. Thus material and formal causes are intrinsic to a substance and keep it stable, while efficient and final causality pertain to extrinsic agents that cause it to change.

Aristotle never claimed that all observed processes are teleological. Some observed events are best explained by reference to their material or efficient causes without reference to any final cause. Thus in his treatise On Dreams, unlike Freud and other moderns who seek a function for dreaming, Aristotle concluded that dreams are merely the residual activity of waking sensations that have not yet quieted down. [5] In any case, since we have already established that chance is an objectively real type of efficient causality, not all events are teleological, but only those that occur regularly and result in the existence of relatively stable entities.

Thus, just as matter and form are correlative so that they complement each other, so efficient causality is correlative to final causality, if it has regular, productive effects that maintain the natural order and all natural science explanations through law-like efficient causality must also be through final causality, i.e., they must be teleological. Therefore in current natural science explanation through final causality is not only actually used covertly under other terminology such as "teleonomy," "directedness," "function," "adaptation," but is always the ultimate mode of explanation. As Aristotle said, "Final causality is the cause of causes," since nothing occurs in natural processes expect through efficient causes that are pre-determined to produce effects that have the regularity of a predictable probability. [6] Thus in biology the physiology, anatomy, and psychology and life functions (respectively the material, formal, and efficient causality) of an animal are ultimately explained in terms of its survival in its actual environment and thus by the pre-determination or teleology of the efficient forces that keep it alive and functioning.

Since mathematical objects do not change, final causality is not a general mode of explanation in mathematics. [7] It is absurd to ask whether 3 is better than 2 or a circle better than a square. As shown in Chapter VIII mathematics, because of its abstract character that omits questions of change, generally defines and demonstrates only through material and formal causality. This does not mean, however, that mathematical objects, as imagined and understood in their orderliness, are not, at leas tin certain ways, "good." They can have a unity, clarity, and wholeness in contrast to lack of order or incompleteness. I will speak of this later in this chapter as well as of the central place of teleology in the practical sciences where it is obvious that the purpose or goals of action are fundamental principles.

In Chapters III and VI it has already been shown that the universe is a unified system of substances that have a relatively independent existence and that each of these substances is a more or less complex and unified system of material parts or in the case of spiritual beings a system of spiritual powers. We must, therefore, distinguish between an internal teleology of a substance by which these differentiated material and spiritual parts are hierarchically ordered so as to serve the good of the substance and the external teleology of systems of substances that have relatively independent existences. Yet even the prime matter of the universe has teleology since as pure potency it is ordered to all the actual things that can be produced from it. Thus far from being a principle of evil as some Platonists and Neo-Platonists thought, matter, though it is not actually good, is potentially good. [8]

Natural science studies each kind of substance to explain how its parts function for the preservation and perfection of the whole. Such practical disciplines as medicine are especially concerned to remedy any dysfunction of parts that may cause disease of the whole body. It also considers how systems of substances lead to the preservation and dynamic evolution of the substances that in these systems are connected causally by extrinsic relations. Thus we can speak of ecology (from Greek oikos, household) as concerned with the preservation of biodiversity and the balance of life forms as something good and of the destruction of ecological systems as bad. Such teleology is extrinsic to the individual substances, but of course intrinsic to the system as a whole.

One of the causes for the bad reputation of teleological explanations has been the failure to recognize that while it is rather obvious that there is an internal teleology or functional unity in living things and even in atoms and molecules, external teleology is more problematic. Thus in the nineteenth century there were naīve attempts to show that various features of animals, plants, and minerals were designed by God to make them suitable for human use. [9] Such theories are now replaced by evolutionary and ecological accounts of how the human species has survived by being adapted to its varying environment. Yet this leaves unsolved the question why in fact the human species has been the extremely improbable outcome of this evolution.

Errors in explanation by external teleology are rooted in the deeper error of supposing that the service of non-human substances to human life and to the good of the universe is merely utilitarian. In fact while this service is necessary for human survival, the higher teleology of the system of substances, material and immaterial, in the universe is the manifestation of God to spiritual beings. Biodiversity, for example, is not just good because it has practical uses for human beings, but also and in a superior way, because the human study of the diversity of living things gives us a contemplative joy that exceeds utility. An entomologist delights in the vast variety of insects not for any practical purpose but because of their wonder and beauty. Aristotle answered those who laughed at his interest in "the entrails of worms" by saying that "The work of the Divine Artist is evident even in these lowly things." [10] Hence if, as I have argued in Chapter IV, pure spirits exist, they surely must praise God for the variety and order of the universe and know him naturally through their contemplation of its order, as they must also take pleasure in serving God in the governance of his creation.

In Chapter VI only three transcendental properties of Being, unity, truth, and goodness were listed. Many have argued that "beauty" should be added to this list. Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out that while theologians have paid much attention to God as Unity, Truth, and Goodness, they have said little of him as Beauty. Is this not odd, he asks, considering that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures constantly speak of the divine "Glory" or Beauty? He believes that, [11]

Others for purely philosophical reasons have asked if beauty ought to be ranked among the transcendentals as a property of all Being and this topic is often considered to be a special branch of metaphysics called aesthetics. [12]

Aquinas in speaking of beauty as the splendor veritatis or splendor formae and describing it by terms claritas, proportio, and integritas provided us with a profound metaphysical analysis of this question. [13] Ontological truth of itself has integrity or the wholeness of transcendental unity and this requires the proportion of its parts. In itself it also has clarity since it is intrinsically intelligible and self-consistent. It is in this clarity, or splendor of the ontological truth of being, its relation of conformity to the conditions of the knower (logical truth), that beauty principally consists, while the integrity (wholeness) and proportion (of its parts) are the necessary conditions of this ontological truth.

Hence it is only a half-truth to say, as many do, that beauty is purely subjective ("Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," There is no disputing about tastes") or that it is purely objective, since it consists in a relation between known and knower. Thus what appears beautiful to one may not appear so to another because of some condition of the knower, faulty perception, lack of trained sensitivity, etc., or because of disappointed expectations, as when a work of popular art pleases an average audience, but a trained sophisticated connoisseur finds it crude or trite. Moreover, some things that really have little beauty are thought to be so by greedy shoppers because they are rare or expensive, or by lustful voyeurs because they promise sensual pleasure, or by vain spectators because they are "in style."

Thus to speak or show the truth so that it is beautiful is to express it in a way that it can be easily and deeply grasped by the one to whom it is spoken or shown. To God's perfect intelligence his own being and that of the creatures he creates is perfectly known without any shadow of obscurity and hence are seen (except insofar as they are injured by accident or sin) as wholly beautiful Even then God sees them in contrast with their pristine beauty that he as Creator intended for them to have. To created intelligences, however, God's Truth is mysterious and imperfectly understood and so is the ontological truth of his creation to a greater or lesser degree as it depends on the power of a particular created knower to understand what God has made. That is why all creatures have to search for truth and come to know it gradually as its obscurity is clarified and its splendor unveiled.

When we see some truth clearly, when it becomes perfectly related and fitted to our minds then it appears to us as beautiful. This is why good mathematicians find much of mathematical truth very beautiful, because of its clarity, though to the non-mathematician it is most obscure. That beauty is, therefore, a kind of truth is because the good of the knower is to seek what he or she seeks to know and this is attained perfectly when at last the truth shines out in his fullness. When the poet John Keats said in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, "Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty," he was profoundly right, but when we added " That is all you know on earth/ And all you need to know," he was sadly mistaken since there are in fact many and sometimes very important truths we know or need to know that "on earth" remain very obscure to us and hence whose intrinsic beauty is for us veiled. Thus we can define beauty as it is a property of Being as "the goodness of truth," truth as we desire to enjoy its contemplation.

Since human cognition begins with the senses and essential intellectual knowledge depends on what the senses show us, objects, if they are to seem beautiful, must first of all fit our senses and thus make a vivid impression. The senses of touch, smell, and taste present their objects to us too vaguely to reveal their beauty. It would be odd to speak of an appetizing steak as "beautiful" rather than "tasty," yet its visual "presentation" on the plate surrounded by colorful vegetables might be called beautiful. Sight and hearing, however, provide specific information that is more easily used by the intelligence. Hence visual and audible objects can be beautiful. [14] A color that is vivid to the eye is beautiful. A sound that is uniform (musical) and easily audible is beautiful.

Yet beauty is found not only in particular sensible qualities but in complex patterns of shapes and colors and sounds of varied pitches and timbres that provide objects with a proportion, symmetry, and wholeness of their parts and a clarity of relationships and contrasts. Thus a flower is beautiful not only because of its pleasing color but because of the symmetry of its petals that form a pattern of balanced relations and also because of the contrast in shape and color between its flowers and its leaves. The objection could be raised that in landscapes sometimes mist or fog seem to enhance the beauty of the scene, or that soft sounds of waves and wind can have a special beauty, since such vagueness seem to obscure rather than enhance clarity. The reason for this fact, however, seems to be that human observers often prefer external sensations that, rather than show an object clearly, simply suggest beautiful images to the internal senses. In this way observers by filling in the details of the suggested object by the activity of their own imaginations enter more intimately into the experience of the beautiful. Thus beauty that is too obvious can in fact conform less well to the knower (that is, have less clarity) than something subtler. A clear, sunny day is generally perceived as more beautiful than a gloomy one. Yet some observers in a mood that resonates with a misty scene in which the outlines of trees and mountains are mere suggestions of form may find its mystery more beautiful than it would be on a clear day.

The archetype of the beautiful for us humans is the human body in its integrity, proportion, and clarity (color and "clean-cut-ness") because our human powers of cognition are especially constructed to help us know other human beings, particularly those of the opposite sex, or our small children. Generally beauty is attributed to women's bodies and strength to men's but this is a matter of emphasis only, since both female and male bodies have their appropriate kind of both beauty and power. While physical beauty obviously contributes to sexual attraction, the two kinds of goodness should not be confused. The attitude of the observer looking at the nudity of the opposite sex in search of a sexual mate is by no means the same as that of an artist observing his model in order to make a beautiful painting or of an esthetically sensitive person enjoying a representation of that nude in an art gallery. [15]

The latter kind of observer is said "to maintain an aesthetic distance" from the object so that it does not suggest sexual fantasies. [16] If this distance is disrupted and the observer becomes sexually aroused, the experience of beauty is likely to be overwhelmed by sexual appetite, just as an observer at an athletic game would be if his enjoyment of the contest turned into thoughts of shooting the opposing team. In such cases the contemplative attitude is disrupted by a controlling attitude that wants to act on the object rather than simply to enjoy it as it is. Hence, as already mentioned, pornography and scenes that arouse violent impulses are not seen as beautiful, but as satisfying other kinds of desires (goods) that are in fact ethically disordered and evil.

The saying that "great beauty must have a touch of strangeness" indicates that although the beautiful is essentially the clarity of truth, nevertheless for us humans too much clarity quickly palls. This is because we know instinctively that the greatest truths and their beauty transcend the human level. They remain mysterious to us, and this suggestion of mystery in a beautiful object leads us beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary. Therefore, the element of ugliness and tragedy found in many great works of art and literature does not contradict the definition of beauty as clarity or splendor. These negative features both make the positive features stand out more clearly by way of contrast and they also suggest a mystery by summoning us to envision a higher beauty beyond our immediate grasp. Eighteenth century critics made this point by emphasizing what they called the distinction between "the beautiful and the sublime." [17] The ugly elements in some great and beautiful works of art, however, do not justify the tendency of some modern artists to shock their audience with mindless ugliness.

Plato in his dialogues the Symposium and the Phaedrus (themselves marvels of literary beauty) shows how through the visible physical beauty of the human body one can come to appreciate the beauty of the invisible virtuous human soul. Thus from erotic (sexual beauty) one can ascend in contemplation to spiritual beauty, of which, for Plato, bodily beauty is a mere imitation. Physical beauty fads, spiritual beauty is ever new and fresh. In human beings this spiritual beauty is that of character formed in the virtues and will be discussed later under the heading of ethical beauty, but the human soul itself and certainly the realm of pure created spirits has an ontological beauty analogous to that of the structure of the body. Spiritual entities, although not material and hence not sensible, have active qualities of intelligence, will, and the power to act on material bodies, as well as to communicate with other spirits (see Chapter VI).

According to Aquinas, the human soul separated from the body at death will, like the angels, become directly self-conscious as a pure form that is self-transparent. [18] It will then see that to be a spiritual creature is to be far more beautiful than any physical thing. This will be true even for those who have died in mortal sin, as it for the fallen angels, though in these spirits this original beauty is tragically distorted by sin so that they are like ravished masterpieces of art. Thus the medieval artists who pictured the devils as hideous or even comic monsters missed the point of this tragic ruin of what was once so glorious and Milton was closer to the truth in making his Lucifer magnificently evil.

While we can only know spiritual beauty through its analogy to the physical beauty that we can sense, in First Philosophy "beauty" as a transcendental signifies this whole range of degrees of beauty up to the ultimate and infinite beauty of God the Creator. The Creator has produced many things to form an ordered universe because such an Unum in Pluribus can better reflect the divine plenitude of Being than could any single creature no matter how perfect. This holds also for creation as it reflects God's beauty like a mirror. [19] The order of a universe of creatures each one having a unique beauty but hierarchically ordered in a harmonious whole is like that of orchestral music made up of the coordinated harmony of instruments making different sounds yet all united by the conductor.

Only in the later eighteenth century with the adoption of motives from Chinese art did European culture begin to appreciate the art and literature of the East so different in its style and esthetic emphases than "classical" Greco-Roman art and literature. Indeed it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the art of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and other pre-literate cultures were appreciated as more than "savage" or "barbaric." It is not possible here to say much on this vast topic but only to indicate the kind of issues that arise when the fine arts and literature of cultures having different worldviews are compared.

In the art of pre-literate cultures architecture is not highly developed, although around the world there remain ancient monoliths used as tombs or as markings of sacred places related to astrology that are forerunners of the monuments and temples of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the pre-Columbian Americas. Even cultures having only the simplest of technologiies create dance, music and oral literature that is often quite refined and expressive of their mythological worldviews. Such art is often unappreciated by Western viewers because it is much less concerned to represent natural forms than it is to manifest the hidden power of natural forces. For example, in the wonderful art of tribal Africa and of the Mayas and Aztecs in Mexico what eighteenth century Europeans saw as primitive barbarity, is in fact, as Picasso and other twentieth century artists were to discover, a very sophisticated distortion of literal representation in order to display the hidden power of spiritual presences. Yet these twentieth century artists for the most part have replaced the expression of these natural powers with the expression of their own personal powers as artists.

In early Europe mythological cultures, Minoan, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, and Roman, along with the Judaic Bible provided the Western Ecumene with a symbolic heritage that underlies all its art. Central to the development of that heritage, however, has been the Greek art from the time of Homer in the seventh century BCE to the rise of the Roman Empire in the first century BCE that created the "classicism" that still remains central to Western culture. This classicism is characterized by two elements that reflect the cultural tendency that became manifest in Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy. On the one hand classical art is attentive to the exact representation of nature and hence its dynamic, changing aspects; on the other it tends to idealize or intellectualize such representation by seeking the essential rather than the accidental details of changeable realities and hence their timeless spirituality.

Yet these two tendencies are also found, but with different emphases, in the art and literature of other cultures. Thus India, like Greece and its Homeric poems, has the great epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Mahabharata, however, differs from the Greek epics in that it includes much explicit philosophical and religious reflection, notably in the Bhagavad Gita. Yet, as in Homer, the many eloquent speeches in these epics provided Indian culture with models of rhetorical discourse. Many manuals of rhetorical figures were also produced. Eventually the whole range of lyric poetry, drama and fiction and the plastic arts of sculpture, painting and architecture, as well as music and dance, developed in extremely rich and varied styles unique to India. The Gandhara style of sculpture that especially influenced Buddhistic iconography, however, manifests strong Greco-Roman influences. Musical theory was extensively studied with an emphasis on the raga or traditional modes each of which was thought to have special expressive qualities. As early as the first century BCE Bharata in his Natya-sastra discussed all the fine arts, especially sacred drama with its dance and music.

Art historians have noted three especially remarkable features of Indian esthetics. First, the common conviction of the religions of India that the phenomenal world is no more than a veil for the eternal Absolute, have led Indian artists to portray this world as a kind of fantastic dream of shifting images, human and animal, in contrast to gods and heroes often posed in silent Yoga meditation. The result is an art that is very sensuous and dynamic yet always centered in some silent, motionless symbol of ineffable mystery. Yet mystical devotion (bahkti) to some god that symbolizes the Absolute also is often expressed with an amazingly frank eroticism.

A second notable element of Indian esthetic, evident especially in its highly developed theater, as in Kalidasha's (fl. c. 375 CE) famous play, Shakuntala and the Love Token, is that it largely ignores the theme of tragedy so prominent in Western literature. Its heroes and heroines virtuously rise above the conflicts and perils that beset them much as do the sages who achieve moksha by indifference to the passing things of this world. A third element is the notion of the gift of aesthetic sensitivity (rasa) not possessed by all. Abinavagupta (c. 1000 CE) taught that such sensitivity is a reward of the merit gained by the possessor in a previous existence.

In China and Japan also literature and the arts, including poetry, fiction, music, dance, theater, architecture, painting and sculpture have richly flourished and have received critical analysis in such works as Luc chi's The Art of Letters (c 302 CE) and Liu Hsieh The Literary Mind and the Carving of the Dragon (c. 550 CE). In contrast to India, literature also extended to important works of history such as Ssu-ma Ch'ien's, Shih-chi or Historical Records (c. 85 BCE) covering some 2,000 years.

The influence of Confucianism was felt in the arts in a conservative traditionalism in style and subject matter; that of Taoism at first frowned on artificiality. Later, however, under Buddhist influence Taoism favored a remarkable mystical emphasis in the arts. [20] Landscape painting, which as a principal subject was a relatively late development in the West, became in China a chief way to express a meditative transcendence of the phenomenal world. Thus in Chinese and Japanese art a characteristic subject is a scene of mountains looming above mist, with a small figure of a monk in meditation under a lone tree, leaving much of the space blank. Similarly in sculpture, the human figure is largely depicted only as a decorative architectural feature, except for the icons of Buddha or other figures in silent meditation. This emphasis, however, does not exclude many works depicting lively scenes of the daily life of the court or even of common people.

Yet this tendency to transcend the personal and individual is also reflected in the remarkable attention given to the crafts of exquisite design and workmanship in bronze, ceramics, and lacquer. In such objects there is often an expression of abstract feeling that approaches that of music. Also, because of the peculiarities of Chinese script in which the letters stand for concepts but not always for the same sounds, calligraphy (beautiful writing) was remarkably developed by the Chinese, as well as by the Koreans and Japanese who used the same Chinese script for their own different languages. In Japan the "tea ceremony" is a ritual that in its setting, gestures, and implements is directed to creating an indescribable atmosphere of serenity and sensitive sociability while the operatic No Drama developed by Zeami Motakiyo (1363-1443) often expresses a Buddhist spirituality.

While the Indian and Chinese cultures, due to their monistic worldviews, favored a kind of abstraction in art, the monotheism of the Jews led them to iconoclasm (rejection of visual images as tending to idolatry), although they produced a rich literature and music. [21] After the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, however, Jews were so dispersed that as a minority in many different countries of varied cultures they tended to take on the styles of their particular locations. When Arabic Islam arose and conquered wide territories it developed, with some borrowings from Byzantine Christianity, especially in architecture, strictly aniconic styles in which the visual arts emphasized patterns not representation, although in Persian Islam some representation in exquisite miniatures was permitted. [22]

Christianity accepted monotheism from the Jews but as it spread assimilated a variety of cultures, but since it first came to dominance in the Greco-Roman world its art adapted the "classical" style of that culture while at the same time retaining the Judaic fear of idolatry. This suspicion of figurative art lead to the iconoclastic crisis that was overcome only when the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II) in 787 condemned iconoclasm as heretical because it was inconsistent with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. Yet the Eastern Church continued to venerate only painted icons, while the Western Church, although it permitted sculpture, did not fully adopt the realistic imitation of nature until the Renaissance. [23] It was sill influenced by the Platonic philosophy that regarded the visible world primarily as a symbol of invisible, spiritual reality. Prepared by the increased interest in natural science that the Aristotelianism of the High middle Ages had fostered, the Renaissance became much more interested in representation in art. It quickly developed the theory of perspective in painting and of accurate anatomy both in painting and sculpture. [24]

Thus European art became skillfully representational and a parallel realism entered literature both in drama and the novel. This scientific attitude also lead to innovations in musical techniques that became ever more elaborate. Naturalistic tendencies were further advanced by the Enlightenment that on the one hand emphasized natural science and on the other began to treat art as the expression of personal creativity and systems of value, that is, "life styles." In the Romantic Movement that was at once part of and counter to the Enlightenment the aesthetic contemplation in nature and fine art are sometimes see as the summum bonum of human existence replacing the traditional religions.[25]

Ultimately these tendencies led, at the beginning of the twentieth century, by way of extreme realism and impressionism to abstract expressionism in which naturalistic representation in painting and sculpture was minimized in painting and sculpture, and remanded to photography, the cinema, and the TV. [26] At the end of the twentieth century post-modern "critical theory" has led to the view that art is a political statement against domination and in favor of individual freedom. It must, therefore, be "disturbing" and is often marked by violence, dismember, repulsive body floods, and blasphemy against all claims of the sacred. There is widespread sense that "modern" art is coming to an end and is not clear what are the future possibilities.[27] In brief, the comparison of artistic traditions is not only a matter of art history, but of the underlying ontologies or worldviews that these manifest. Precisely because different styles in art and literature are so visible and tangible they provide points of entry for contextual dialogue.

It would seem that what is needed is the recovery, already to be noted in the ecological movement, of a sense of nature as the origin of human art, as Aristotle maintained. This not to be understood as mere photographic representationalism as in the Realism of the nineteenth century. Mimesis as Aristotle used the term meant an attempt through art to manifest the essential natures of things that make them intelligible to us but not simply in the abstract manner of science but as these natures are phenomenologically revealed through their sensible appearances and actions. Thus certain of Picasso's drawings of animals in a most delightful manner and with all the freedom from mere representation characteristic of modern art shows us the wonder and humor of these creatures in such a way as also to help us understand our own animality. Unfortunately Picasso did not use his genius to open that way to a future art, but preferred to occupy himself mainly with the kind of modernism that has now led to a dead end. [28]

As we every day experience goodness, we also experience bad things, frustration, and pain and, not infrequently, the destruction or death of things or persons we love. Much of the greatest literature is tragic or seeks to transcend tragedy by laughter. The Book of Job poses the problem of evil in the starkest of terms without attempting any final answer. While in the end things turn out well for Job, yet it is never clear why God permitted him to be tested by Satan, as if God needs to prove anything to Satan! Thus the existence of evil is properly classed as a profound mystery, that is, a puzzle that reason needs to explore yet knows it cannot expect to solve to its complete satisfaction. Yet it is possible at least to clarify this problem so as not to draw false conclusions from its existence as a mysterious fact.

One such false conclusion has been stated very plainly in recent time by Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) when he reasoned, "Either God exists or the world is absurd. But the world is absurd. Therefore, God does not exist." [29] In Part I of this book I argued for the existence of God from natural science, leaving questions of the divine nature to Meta-Science, as we will see in Chapters XII-XIII. There are really only two serious arguments against God's existence.[30] The first is that the universe is self-explanatory. This argument was refuted in Chapter IV by showing that changeable material beings cannot change and exist without a First Cause that its not material and whose essence is to exist, a necessarily existing non-material being.

The second argument is that if God existed he would be perfectly good, but a good God could never cause or even permit evil. Yet the First Cause could not be totally evil but would have to be totally good, since it is Pure Act, in no way deficient. In fact, the notion of an existent being that would be totally evil is simply self-contradictory, since existence as such is something positive. [31] In fact by "bad" or "evil" we mean not merely a lack of some goodness (otherwise only God would be good) but a lack of some perfection in a thing whose nature requires such perfection; for example, a crippled animal that needs healthy limbs to survive. Some, like the Zoroastrians held for a dualism in which a Good God and a Bad God struggled together, although they believed the Good One would eventually conqueror. [32] Others, like the Gnostics and Manicheans, believed the Good God had hidden himself, and that the world in which we now live is the work of an Evil or Foolish God. [33] Spiritual monists claim that the evil in the world is really error and illusion. [34]Many moderns believe our world is the work of evolutionary chance indifferent to what humans consider good or evil. Others even think that the distinction of good and evil is arbitrary. [35]

To expose the fallacy of all such views we must first distinguish between two very different senses of the term "evil" often confused, namely, the distinction between physical and moral evil. [36] The argument against God's existence from evil assumes that God is morally good, since it seems contradictory for a morally good person to cause what its morally evil. It is not contradictory, however, to suppose that a morally good person can sometimes cause physical evil, provided that by doing so a greater good is accomplished. Who would consider it morally evil to eat good food for the sake of health? Yet when I eat an orange I cause a physical evil because I destroys the orange which will never achieve its own natural (teleological) physical good by producing an orange tree.

Thus, as we have already seen, it is of the very nature of finite, changeable, material things that the production and welfare of one physical thing necessarily entails some physical evil, namely, the destruction of some other physically good thing. Hence for God to cause some things in the universe to destroy other things physically is necessary, if he is to create a material universe at all. Moreover, it is morally good for me to eat an orange in order to maintain my life or even for some moderate recreative pleasure, because human life is a greater good in the hierarchy of being than is the good of an orange tree and its fruit.

It follows that it is entirely compatible with and indeed an exemplification of the moral goodness of God that he has created a hierarchy of beings and brings about more perfect beings by the destruction of less perfect ones. Thus a theory of the evolution of the cosmos and of life is wholly consistent with it being the work of a good God even though it means that the species of things that pertain to one stage of evolution are destroyed by the next higher stage. [37] We may regret that a asteroid collided with the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, but they had to go to make room for us. Thus Dostoevky's famous cry, "How could a good God permit the suffering of a single innocent child?" was a sentimental refusal to face the reality of physical life. Physical life involves some pain, and it is better to suffer some pain than never to have the possibilities of life.

Moral evil, on the other hand, is a lack of perfection in the free act of intelligent persons, embodied and purely spiritual, who choose to do what they recognize will result in making the world less good morally (and usually also physically) in situations where it is their responsibility at least not to make things worse. [38] If, as the argument supposes, God is totally good such acts are impossible for him. They are possible, however, to the finite, intelligent and free persons whom he has created. What is not possible is for a good God to be the First Cause of the free acts of created persons insofar as they are lacking moral goodness. Thus when a human being chooses to murder another, though God is the First Cause of the person's physical act of murder, the moral evil of that act, namely, the killing of an innocent human being, makes the world less perfect but is due only to the free will of the murderer, not to God.

Yet God, because he is totally good, will certainly find a way to bring about a greater good to compensate for this lessening of the cosmic good. But when or how God will do that need not be apparent to us now, since we do not know the final outcome of the cosmos. That it is possible for an all-powerful God to bring a greater good out of any evil, no matter how great, is certain from the analogy of our own experiences. [39] For example, we have all experienced cases when, because of one especially heinous murder, the public is aroused to protect other likely victims whose safety would otherwise have been neglected. Indeed, in human history, we see that a greater part of all human progress has been occasioned by lessons learned from tragic events, and each one of us can testify that some bad events in our lifetime have led to greater goods.

Yet, of course, many bad things have also happened to us that seem not to have led to a greater good, and in such cases it is necessary with Job to await God's answer, saying "God gave; God takes away," perhaps waiting even to the end of time. As God says to Job, the goodness and wonder of creation ought to be enough to make us trust God's wisdom and in humility admit the limitations of our own understanding. Job shows his own wisdom by admitting, in spite of his puzzlement, that what God says is undeniably true.

Since God never causes moral evil, but only permits his creatures to evilly abuse the freedom he gave them, it does not follow from the fact that he permits this only for the sake of bringing out of the evil a greater good that we can "do evil so that good will come from it," as some moralists have claimed. "A good end does not justify the use of a morally evil means" because by definition a "morally evil means" is one that cannot achieve but rather contradicts the attainment of the true goal of human life. When this ploy is used as an excuse, what is really being said is that to achieve some good that seems more apparent one has chosen to imperil a greater but less evident good. For example, when President Harry Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to terrify the Japanese into surrender, he no doubt did so to save American lives, just as the Taliban "martyrs" thought themselves justified in attacking the Twin Towers to terrorize us into getting out of Islamic territory, but in both cases the means used, the indiscriminate killing of innocent people had no real ethical justification. The use of intrinsically immoral means for a good end is immoral for two reasons: (1) it tends to habituate the evil-doer to do evil again; (2) it is an injustice to those who suffer from the evil-doer's action. On the other hand, to use only just means, even if they fail to achieve the end desired, (1) develops the virtue of justice in the person who makes this effort; and (2) at least makes some headway in achieving the good purpose.

Thus the argument that the evil in the world shows a good God does not exist is logically false and cannot disprove the arguments for that God's existence. On the other hand it leaves us with a great mystery, namely, given the immense amount of moral evil in the world and also the great physical evils, such as the destruction of the environment and unjust war, that have resulted from these moral evils, how can God possibly bring a greater good out of it all? We can very well agree with Sartre, "The world is absurd." Yet its greatest absurdities are quite evidently the result of the abuse of free will by human (and maybe demonic) creatures.

Moreover, the beauty and order of the cosmos and the existence of such marvelous beings as intelligent and free persons and the many great and good things they do can only be caused by a wise and generous God, it its Sartre's fallacious argument, not the cosmos, that is absurd. In fact there could be neither physical nor moral evil if the world were not as a whole good, since as was already said, evil is a lack of some good proper to an essentially good being. Thus no matter how great the evil or absurdity of the world the very fact of evil shows that the First Cause of the being of the world must be perfectly good. The real problem, therefore, is not to explain evil, but to explain the good in the world, no matter how terribly ruined that good has been. Yet when a physician looks at a horribly diseased and dying patient, the ruin of this living organism is not nearly so strange as that fact that it is able to live at all.

The last lines of Dante's The Divine Comedy refers to the power of God that moves the poet's free will to circle around the Divine Center. That power is "The love that moves the sun and stars," that is, the whole universe. Since "The Good is what things desire," the ultimate goal and reason of all being, the term "love" must be applied to every efficient cause to indicate its predetermination or teleology. Of course it can only be used analogously, since the teleology of beings without cognition, those with only sense cognition, and those with intelligence and free will is of extremely different types/ Yet all have a single goal, just as they have a single First Efficient Cause, since, as has been shown, any final cause must have a correlative efficient cause and vice versa. This supports Dante's view that God is the Primal Love that moves all things, just as he is the goal to which all move. Moreover, they are able to move toward this Divine Goal only by sharing in his love. A wise God who is Love must love the creatures he has freely chosen to create. [40] His absolute love for himself includes his free love for his creatures. Many commentators on Aristotle have denied that he ever came to this conclusion so forcefully developed by Aquinas, but, as we will see in later chapters, Aquinas thought otherwise. Before this problem is taken up, however, something must be said about how this analogical term "love" applies to created beings.

For modern science, it is the four fundamental forces, all of which, except gravity that is only attractive, have both attractive and repulsive actions, that produce all processes of change in the visible cosmos. The fact that, according to modern quantum theory, these processes have only probable not certain outcomes, would not surprise Aristotle, since he thought that in a material world subject to changes that were more than local motion, natural physical laws are true only in pluribus, for the most part. [41] As I argued in Chapter IV, it seems at least highly improbable that such forces could produce complex inanimate chemical compounds, let alone life. It would seem that just as the synthesis of complex chemical compounds in a laboratory has to be guided by a knowledgeable chemist, so the interaction of these fundamental forces has to be guided by cosmic spiritual intelligences. Darwinism inadequately explains these processes as change events guided only by other chance events in the environment. Recent evolutionary theorists such as Stuart Kauffman think that a deeper understanding than Darwin's can be gained from the concept of "self-organization." [42] It is certainly true that natural substances tend to preserve and complete themselves (for example, an atom deprived of some of its orbital electrons, will tend to recapture them and crystallizing substances will to form more perfect crystals). It has not been proved, however (nor are Kauffman's arguments without serious flaws) that simpler chemical species have the inherent capacity to organize substances of more complex chemical species, let alone, living organisms. Thus natural substances, inanimate or animate, do not appear capable of self-organization beyond the level of their own unified complexity. Aquinas admitted that "spontaneous generation" of very simple organisms might be possible, but only by the action of the sun, itself moved by a separated spiritual intelligence.

Thus the cosmic and biological evolution that we know to have taken place in the history of the universe is teleological yet exceeds the inherent teleology of matter endowed with the four or more fundamental forces. There is no Cosmic Egg self-organizing itself like an embryo into a mature complex substance as a result of inherent rationes seminales, "seed principles," as St. Augustine speculated. Rather, science has so far science only revealed a universe made up of very simple chemical substances spreading out or collecting in very chaotic patterns, except for our little earth on which material substance has risen to the level of organic life and, in us, of embodied intelligence. The vast information required to guide this result can only be found in the First Cause acing in creative love. Yet he has probably shared this information with created spiritual causes whom he has directly created and who in turn act out of love for their Creator. Thus the manifest goodness and beauty of the order that science more and more uncovers in this material universe so subject to chance must be understood, as Dante did, as a manifestation God's love just as the work of any human artist manifests his love for the work he freely produces and for those he hopes will enjoy the produc of his work.

From this it follows that the human persons in the community they naturally form and then intelligently and freely shape are inclined by nature and thus moved by love to explore the universe. They study it in order to enjoy its beauty and to learn from it something of the hidden wonder of its Creator and the spiritual community that serves him. The endeavors of scientists and their formulation of theories of evolution manifest the power of this love for truth and understanding. Scientists' concerns for ecological balance and biodiversity is plain evidence of how natural it is for humans to love the truth about their world and themselves as part of their world

This love of true understanding also issues in the human cultural urge to build an ordered society and to form virtuous members of the community. The virtues are intelligent skills that make it possible for persons as members of the human community to organize their human powers to preserve and develop the culture of this community in accordance with the love they need and to which they should mutually respond. These virtues, however, incline us not simply to seek the good of others, but as Aquinas insists, to be united to other persons by sharing our lives with them. Nothing can so satisfy our natural desire to know as to know other persons since a person by reason of its spirituality is the most perfect and beautiful thing God has created. It is not merely an effect of God's creative act, but it is his "image." Thus love between persons is God's greatest gift. It is friendship (Greek philia) that Aristotle calls "the crown of the virtues." [43]

The Lutheran theologian Andres Nygren in an impressive book Agape: An Ethical Analysis, [44] started an important discussion by noting that the New Testament term for "love" is usually agape rather than philia or eros, the latter often having a sexual emphasis. Nygren argued that while since love is a desire to obtain something that another has that one desires, the love of God for us cannot be erotic since he lacks nothing that he could gain from us. Our love for him, however, is a general sense, wider than sexual desire, is erotic. Josef Pieper and others, however, have criticized this distinction, since our love of God and neighbor is a participation in God's love of us. Therefore in human love their can be both agapetic and erotic aspects. Certainly perfect friendship as Aristotle and Aquinas understand it is not simply desire for something we need but a love for the beloved's good. [45]

Denis de Rougement in his well-known Love in the Western World [46] also raised the question of the seeming opposition between "romantic" love and marital love. He claimed that the notion of romantic love originated in the chivalric love celebrated in troubadour poetry with its exaltation of the women, defense of adultery, and the culmination of passion in death. This he attributed to Manichean and Platonic dualism transmitted to the West through the Crusades. Irving Singer, however, in his three-volume study The Nature of Love [47] shows that De Rougemont's theory has little historical support and that this conception of romantic love is largely a product of the Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century.

Another theme that has been given much modern attention is the question of how though love the human being as individual transcends its limits by mutual sharing with the other. This emphasis is called "Personalism" because it understands the term "person" as contrasted to "individual" to imply this inherent transcendence that characterizes human beings because of their intelligence and freedom. [48] It would be a serious mistake, however, as has been pointed out already in Chapter VII, to go to the opposite extreme of treating inter-personal relationships as superior to the social common good. The intelligence and freedom that enables us to enter into friendships and marriage is subordinate to the common good which includes and fosters them. The famous statement of one of the members of the English intellectual Bloomsbury clique who said he would "rather betray his country than his friends" is indefensible. It is true, as Aquinas emphasizes, that there is an ordo amoris that gives us responsibility to those close to us in preference to those more distant, but this does not negate the fact that the common good, since it includes the personal good of all its members, cannot be sacrificed to more partial loves. This why, for instance, military service can take precedence over family concerns.

Yet the marital love between man and woman effects the fullest possible realization of the natural qualities proper to human nature. Thus human nature is not completely manifest in either male or female persons but only in their permanent, covenanted union. This union, however, is not fully a friendship until they learn to really communicate and share with each in unselfish love. Moreover, since naturally we are mortal and our bodies will die, the continuation and extension of the species through procreation perfects this marital friendship. The family is the school of love in which children through the experience of their parents' and their sibling's love learn to love and form a new family. Yet no family is adequate to meet all human needs and human community in various degrees of love must extend outward to the nation and the whole human race. Thus love in this full sense of love between persons constitutes human society.

Therefore the ultimate goal of our universe must somehow be the formation of a community of intelligence persons, humanity and pure spirits, who freely give themselves to one another. This is the highest realization of the Good. Whether some still higher friendship is possible between created persons and God remains mysterious for mere reason. That we can love each other is proof that God loves us, but whether we can be so elevated beyond our finitude as to enter into a communion of friendship in the strict sense with God remains unknown to our limited intelligence. Since we cannot effectively will what we do not know to be possible, the "natural desire" to see God face to face of which Aquinas speaks must be said to be only conditional. We must remain open to the possibility, but it is not due to our nature or its necessary for its natural fulfillment. [49]

It is true, therefore, as Dante said, that the love of the Creator calls forth in the universe a movement toward order and beauty that is manifest wonderfully first at the inanimate level of material things; then at the level of animate love; finally at the spiritual level. The fact that this high order emerges out of what is at first a chaotic world of matter supplied with only a few simple forces for change and transformation reveals the Love that moves all things.

Since the splendor of truth is beauty and for us as human persons beauty is the "fit" of reality to our specific mode of knowing that is at once sensible and intellectual, it becomes clear that naturals science, ethics, and the sapiential understanding of the spiritual through its material effects should be in harmony. Dante as a great poet and artist expresses this idea profoundly as the theology or love of creation for its creator. Aquinas, inspired by Neo-Platonism, expressed it philosophically as well as in the light of faith as the circle of exitus et reditus, the creative love of God and the return of the universe to its Creator through human science and wisdom. That other great medieval doctor, the Franciscan, St. Bonaventure, proposes a similar vision. [50] The fragmentation of present knowledge, wonderfully advanced as it is by modern science, reflects a universe whose celestial music has been jangled out of tune by human and angelic deconstruction in the service of a "freedom" that is in fact an enslavement to death. Thus the search for wisdom, if it is in any measure to succeed, must be motivated by the love of the beautiful Good. On this point Aristotle was a faithful disciple to Plato and the Christian Aquinas in humility learned from both.

[4] See my articles, "Research into the Intrinsic Final Causes of Physical Things," published under the heading: "Problem: The Relation of Physical Activity to Essence and End", with a comment by Robert J, McCall, S.S.J., American Catholic Philosophical Association Proceedings, April 16, 1952, 185-197 and "Final Causality" (5:162-166) "Liberal Arts," (8:646-99); "Teleology (13:979-981), New Catholic Encyclopedia.

[9] Michael J. Buckley, S. J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism argues that the naīve, extrinsicist teleologism in apologetics of theologians like William Paley (1743-1805 paved the way for modern atheism when it was undermined by Darwinian evolution. In my opinion it was the philosophical naiveté of these authors who confused extrinsic and intrinsic finality rather than what is now called "the argument from design" that seemed to be overturned by Darwin.

[12] Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley, The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern and Arguments About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates provide an introduction; reference material for the field can be found in David Cooper, ed. A Companion to Aesthetics and Michael Kelly, ed. Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 4 vols.

[13] The best textual study is Jordan Aumann, O.P., De Pulchritudine: Inquisitio Philisophico-Theologica; see also Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. For the three marks of beauty see S. Th., I, q. 39, a. 8 c and II-II, q. 180, a. 2 ad 3.

[16] The theory of "aesthetic distance" probably originated with Immanuel Kant but became prominent through E. Bullough, "Psychical Distance" (1912) reprinted in A. Neill and A. Ridley, eds. The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern. It has been criticized as incompatible with the intensity and concentration involved in the aesthetic experience, since "distance" lessens rather than enhances this. Yet what Bullough meant was an attitude that concentrates on the beauty of the object rather than on practical involvement with the object. We do not appreciate the beautiful presentation of a dish if we are so hungry that we do not have time to really look at it.

[17] This distinction was made current by Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful) and taken up in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.

[23] On the history of iconoclasm see Mahmoud Zibawi, The Icon : Its Meaning and History, pp. 19-32); also Jaroslav Pelikan, Imago Dei and Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Losky, The Meaning of the Icon, 2^nd ed.

[25] For Plato's criticism of the fine arts as misleading see the Republic Bk III. For Aristotle see the Poetics and Politics VIII (on education, probably incomplete). On the exaltation of the arts to a religious status see Chris Baldick in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, who, in defining the Romanticism that swept Europe in the first half of the 19^th century, writes, "Rejecting the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment as mechanical, impersonal, and artificial, the Romantics turned to the emotional directness of personal experience and to the boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration. Increasingly independent of the declining system of aristocratic patronage, they saw themselves as free spirits expressing their own imaginative truths; several found admirers ready to hero-worship the artist as a genius or prophet. The restrained balance valued in 18th-century culture was abandoned in favour of emotional intensity, often taken to extremes of raptures, nostalgia (for childhood or the past), horror, melancholy, or sentimentality. ...[A]lmost all showed a new interest in the irrational realms of dream and delirium or of folk superstition and legend. The creative imagination occupied the center of Romantic views of art, which replaced the `mechanical' rules of conventional form with an `organic' principle of natural growth and free development."

[26] See the relevant sections of H. W. W. Janson and Anthony F. Janson, The History of for the period up to 1850 and after 1850 to present see H. Horvard Arnason, and Maria Prather, History of Modern Art:

Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography.

[27] See David Hopkins, After Modern Art, 1945-2000; Edward Lucie-Smith, Artoday; and Uta Grosenick ed., et al. Art at the Turn of the Millennium). The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in his The Dehumanization of Art), pp. 3-56 raised important questions about modernism in art.

[28] For example the delightful 31 aquatint prints Picasso made in 1942 for an edition of Buffon's Historire Naturelle; see the catalogue of an exhibit by Gerhard Wurzer Gallery, Houston, Texas.

[29] Sartre's arguments for atheism were based on the notion that the contingency of our world implies that it is absurd, humanly meaningless. This is what he meant by saying that "existence [that is, the contingency of existence] precedes essence." Hence it is up to humans to give the existent meaning by responsible free decisions. It is, however, precisely the contingency of creation in which essences do not necessarily exist that is the basis of Aquinas' demonstration of God's existence.

[39] S. Th., I. q. 20, a. 23; q. 49, aa. 2 and 3; q. 103, a. 8; III Suppl. q. 99 on why God's permission of evil and his punishment of sin are not contrary to his mercy and will that all that evil must end in a greater good.

[41] In Physics II, c. 9, 2000a 30-11 Aristotle shows that the determinism of natural processes is hypothetical since it results in regular results only when it is not frustrated by chance or freedom.

[42] Stuart A. Kauffman, At Home in the Universe : The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. A current definition of the concept is provoveded by Scott Camazine et al., Self-organization in Biological Systems (Princeton: Princeton University, 2001), Chapter 1, p.8: "Self-organization is a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges from numerous interactions among lower-level components of the system. Moreover, the rules specifying intractions among the system's components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern." For a critique of this notion see Dean L. Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization. This definition seems question-begging since it seems to claim that something causes itself.

[45] Josef Pieper, About Love, Alan Soble in his The Structure of Love pp. 4-12 discusses this problem and insists that agapetic love does not merely recognize value in the other but creates it. Yet it can also be said that God in giving us the power to love gives us the power to share his gifts with others creatively. Maurice Nédoncelle, Love and the Person, especially pp. 209-239 also criticizes Nygren p. 13-19; as does John Cowburn, S.J., The Person and Love . This view was criticized as inaccurate from a Thomistic point of view by Charles De Koninck, "In Defense of St. Thomas, " Laval Theologique et Philosophique 1 (2, 1945) pp. 1-103.

[47] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), ses vol. 2 pp. x-xiv and p. 29. Singer, pp. 293-4, also shows that Luther made an important contribution to a more positive view of married love.

[50] For an introduction to St. Bonaventure's thought see Paula Jean Miller, Marriage : The Sacrament of Divine-Human Communion : A Commentary on St. Bonaventure's "Breviloquium." The symbol of marriage between God and the Church and each of its members expresses a mutuality that is not found in Neo-Platonic linear hierarchy.

THE WAY TOWARD WISDOM
An Interdisciplinary, Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

Chapter X: Goodness and Final Causality

THE WAY TOWARD WISDOMAn Interdisciplinary, Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

Chapter X: Goodness and Final Causality

THE WAY TOWARD WISDOM
An Interdisciplinary, Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics