The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017 VoL. XXXIX OCTOBER, 1975 No.4 TRANSCENDENTAL CRITIQUE AND REALIST METAPHYSICS I. DURING THE FIRST decades o£ this century Thomists, anxious lest they be charged as dogmatists before the bar o£ post-Cartesian philosophy, concentrated on the problem o£ philosophical method.1 In the development o£ this school o£ methodologically-oriented Thomists, Pere Joseph Marechal, S. J., 1878-1944, remains a preeminent figure.2 His magnum opus, Le point de depart de la metaphysique, consists o£ five volumes," c.ahiers," which are subtitled" Le~ons 1 See Georges van Riet, Thomistic Epistemology: Studies Concerning the Problem of Cognition in the Contemporary Thomistic School, trans. by Gabriel Franks (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1963) . • Cf. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., " Metaphysics as Horizon," in Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), p. HZ; Otto Muck, The Transcendental Method, trans. by William P. Seidensticker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp. ll-~6. 631 632 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY sur le developpement historique et theorique du probleme de la connaissance." 8 Cahiers I to IV project an historical nexus for what Marechal identified as the modern philosophical problem of knowledge. Cahier V resolves this same problem by a polemical epistemology derived from a confrontation of St. Thomas and Kant.4 Most notably, this fifth volume displays Marechal's effort to refute the Critical Philosophy from its own principles by utilizing the Kantian transcendental method to reestablish a " Thomistic " or, as I shall emphasize, a realist metaphysics. For the specific " problem of knowledge " set forth in Cahier V is the possibility of a method that could guarantee metaphysics to be a universal and apodeictic science of Being.5 Among Thomists, Cakier V provoked a controversy in which it was argued, often sharply, that Marechal had violated not only the letter but also the spirit of orthodox Thomistic philosophical doctrine.6 If this· particular polemic is jejune, as it is sometimes claimed/ the basic controversy, far from being a passing scholastic quibble, has been kept alive in today's 8 Cahier 1: De l'antiquite a la fon du moyen age: la critique ancienne de la ccmnaissance, 1st ed. (Paris: Alcan, Museum Lessianum, section philosophique, 1922); Cakier II: Le conjtit du raticmalisme et de l'empirisme dans la pkilosopkie modeme avant Kant, 1st ed. (Ibid., 1923); Cahier Ill: La Critique de Kant (Ibid., 1923); Cakier IV: Le systeme idealiste chez Kant et les postkantiens (Brussels: L'Edition Universelle, and Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, Museum Lessianum, section philosophique, 1947 [published posthumously]); Cahier V: Le tkomisme devant la pkilosopkie critique (Louvain: Editions du Museum Lessianum, and Paris: Alcan, 1926) . For the complete bibliography, see A. Milet, " Bibliographie du Pere J. Marechal," in Melanges Jos~k Mareckal, I (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1950), pp. 47-71. A partial English translation of the five cahiers can be found in A Mareckal Reader, trans. and ed. by Joseph Donceel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970). All of my citations of Marechal refer to the volume and page number of the French original. • See V, 14; 84. • See V, 15; 34-43. 6 The bibliography for this controversy can be found in Milet, pp. 65-71. Cf. Muck, pp. 205-243. 7 See Bernard A. M. Nachbar, "Is It Thomism?," Continuum, 6 (1968), pp. 282-235. TRANSCENDENTAL CRITIQUE & REALIST METAPHYSICS 633 discussion of the role of hermeneutics and method in determining the rational foundations of metaphysics and theology.8 Under the guise of hermeneutics, there is reincarnated the dominant issue of the earlier exchange: the proper interrelationship of metaphysics and epistemology.9 Yet, the current methodological vogue is unequivocal only in that it endows Le point de depart de la metaphysique with a contemporary significance . How this significance is to be discerned, stated, and evaluated continues to be a major dilemma if the principles of a Thomistic tradition are compared with the diverse, perhaps contrary, presuppositions of prevailing hermeneutical theories.10 In the original debate, one can conveniently isolate two kinds of questions. Roughly speaking, there...