Thomas Merton's Hostility to Scholastic Manualism and the Forgotten Fr. Hickey

As much of a flaky liberal as Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968) is, both politically and theologically, I love the guy I meet in the pages of the seven volumes of The Journals of Thomas Merton.  I am presently savoring Volume Six, 1966-1967.  This morning I came upon the entry of May 21, 1967, Trinity Sunday, in which he reports being "dazzled and baffled" by a new book on quantum physics by George Gamow.

The 52-year-old gushes excitedly  over the accomplishments of "Niels Bohr and Co." and "this magnificent instrument of thought they developed to understand what is happening in matter, what energy really is about  -- with their confirmation of the kind of thing Herakleitos was reaching for by intuition." (237) Now comes the passage the vitriol of which caught my attention:

What a crime it was -- that utterly stupid course on "cosmology" that I had to take here [at the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani in the 1940s] (along with the other so-called philosophy in Hickey's texts!). Really criminal absurdity! And at the time when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima! Surely there were people in the order who knew better than [to] allow such a thing! Dom Frederic, no. He couldn't help it. The whole Church still demanded this, and God knows, maybe some congregation still does. (237-238)

Now I have read my fair share of scholastic manuals, including Klubertanz, Vaske, van Steenberghen, Garrigou-Lagrange, Smith & Kendzierski, and a some others, but I was unfamiliar with this Hickey. Curious to see how bad his manuals could have been, I did some poking around but came up with very little. But I did glean some information from Benjamin Clark, O.C.S.O., Thomas Merton's Gethsemani:

We used as text the three-volume series by J.S. Hickey, abbot of Mount Melleray in Ireland 1932-1934, a text quite widely used in seminaries in the United States at the time. The text was in Latin, but English was spoken in class, unlike some seminaries in the United States at the time where the philosophy lectures were still given in Latin. Most of our students did not have enough Latin background for that, and some found even reading the text rough going at times.

Does anybody have volumes from the Hickey series? Is he willing to part with them?  What about scholastic cosmology as presented by Hickey got Merton so worked up?

My desultory research also led me to a quotation from a guy I know quite well:

At any rate, a recent blog post by Bill Vallicella got me thinking about it again. The post is ostensibly about the origins of political correctness. In reflecting on that, Vallicella also had this to say:

By the time I began as a freshman at Loyola University of Los Angeles in 1968, the old Thomism that had been taught out of scholastic manuals was long gone to be replaced by a hodge-podge of existentialism, phenomenology, and critical theory.  The only analytic fellow in the department at the time was an adjunct with an M. A. from Glasgow. I pay tribute to him in In Praise of a Lowly Adjunct. The scholasticism taught by sleepy Jesuits before the ferment of the ‘60s was in many ways moribund, but at least it was systematic and presented a coherent worldview. The manuals, besides being systematic, also introduced the greats: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, et al. By contrast, we were assigned stuff like Marcuse's Eros and Civilization. The abdication of authority on the part of Catholic universities has been going on for a long time.

So, how bad was scholastic manualism?

Edward Feser counts as a latter day manualist.  See his Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Editiones Scholasticae, 2014). Here is an article by Ed in which he lays into David Bentley Hart to repel the latter's charge of scholastic manualism. Excerpt:

Menacing references to the threat of “manualism” and “baroque neoscholasticism” have long been a favored tactic in theologically liberal Catholic circles. Given Aquinas’s enormous prestige and influence within the Catholic Church, attacking some position he took has always been a tricky business. The solution was to invent a bogeyman variously called “manualism,” “sawdust Thomism,” etc. This allows the critic to identify the hated position with that and proceed as if it has nothing to do with Thomas himself. Such epithets generate something like a Pavlovian response in many readers, subverting rational thought and poisoning the reader’s mind against anything a Thomist opponent might have to say. Though neither a theological liberal nor a Catholic, Hart knows what buttons to push in order to win over the less-discriminating members of his audience. 

Comments

[Pablo B]

I found that the Hickey manuals are available on archive.org. Here are the links if you or anyone is interested. The 2nd volume appears to deal with Cosmology along with Psychology, while Vol 1 and 3 deal with Logic and Natural theology respectively
https://archive.org/details/summulaphilosoph01hick
https://archive.org/details/summulaphilosoph02hick
https://archive.org/details/summulaphilosoph03hick

[BV]

Pablo,

Thank you!

[The London Ostrich]

Good post.

There is a nice piece by Feser (link) on Analytical Thomism. I would count myself in that tradition, having been educated at the court of C.J.F. Williams. Williams followed Frege, Geach and Prior, and claimed never to have read any Heidegger. I now reject some of what Williams taught, as you know. (The Fregean Platonistic elements, that is).

I present Boehner’s classification of logic at my website here. ‘As types, we mention the textbooks of Hickey, Esser, Maritain and Gredt’, i.e. manualism. Boehner is fairly contemptuous of the genre.

Here also is my short summary of Joyce’s Principles of Logic, a manualist classic.

PS Thank you to Pablo too.

[The London Ostrich]

N.B. A quick glance at the footnotes of the Hickey suggests he owed a lot to his contemporary Joyce.

Both seem to have been converts to Catholicism.

[BV]

>> It would seem preferable, however;' to avoid the term "symbolic logic", since the use of symbols is not confined to modern logic. It has been in vogue since ancient times. Similarly, it would seem advisable to avoid the name "mathematical logic", at least if we understand by logic precisely that more basic science which underlies mathematics, and for that very reason stops short of mathematics.<<

Boehner is certainly right about 'symbolic logic.' And he makes a reasonable point about 'mathematical logic.' But there is a reason to refer to modern logic as mathematical: One of Frege's great innovations was to employ the function-argument schema of mathematics in the analysis of propositions.

Thus 'Socrates is wise' is understood to involve a propositional function represented by '___ wise' which has the value True for the argument Socrates. Or is the argument 'Socrates'?

Terminology is a bitch!

Have you read Hickey, Ed?

[BV]

I enjoyed the entry on Joyce. But I think you need 'Schroeder' for 'Schroder.'

[The London Ostrich]

>>But I think you need 'Schroeder' for 'Schroder.'

That was early days for the Logic Museum and I never worked out how to do an umlaut. And yes I am aware that 'oe' is a suitable equivalent. I shall fix it sometime.

Just back home and looking at Boehner again.

I haven't read Hickey until now.

>>One of Frege's great innovations was to employ the function-argument schema of mathematics in the analysis of propositions.

A great evil in my view. 'Propositional function' indeed. That is something we could discuss.

Just off to a swanky restaurant for wedding anniversary, so I may not be back for some time.

[BV]

Order a Boulevardier. A most excellent synaptic lubricant!

A clear proof of the infirmity of reason is that philosophers still cannot agree on the correct logical analysis of 'Socrates is wise.'

Suppose the object Socrates saturates the Fregean concept *man.* Does it follow that S. himself is a constituent of the proposition expressed by 'Socrates is a man'? Can't be. Is it then the sense of 'Socrates' that saturates the concept? But no sense is a man.

Your scholastic theory of predication, though, is just as hopeless.

Our minds are very weak and synaptic lubricants won't help much.

[The London Ostrich]

>>Order a Boulevardier. A most excellent synaptic lubricant!

We had a nice Pouilly Fumé, though not cheap. I have been researching the variants of Negroni, however, and may buy the ingredients for Christmas. A barman in Ely showed us a version with vodka instead of gin, and elderflower liqueur instead of vermouth.

On the Frege and the proposition, more later I think.

[BV]

The classic Negroni: one part gin, one part Campari, one part sweet vermouth.

The trouble with it is the racist name. It means 'I own Negroes.' Order it at your risk.

[The London Ostrich]

I think you are pulling my leg. Named after its originator, Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni, who developed it from the Americano (Campari, vermouth, soda).

[BV]

Of course I am joking!