Edith Stein: Faith, Reason, and Method: Theocentric or Egocentric?

August 9th is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy.  She is better known to philosophers as Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. One best honors a philosopher by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically but critically. Herewith, a bit of critical re-enactment.

In the 1920s Stein composed an imaginary dialogue between her two philosophical masters, Husserl and Aquinas. Part of what she has them discussing is the nature of faith.

One issue is whether faith gives us access to truth. Stein has Thomas say:

. . . faith is a way to truth. Indeed, in the first place it is a way to truths — plural — which would otherwise be closed to us, and in the second place it is the surest way to truth. For there is no greater certainty than that of faith . . . . (Edith Stein, Knowledge and Faith, tr. W. Redmond, ICS Publications, Washington, D. C.,  2000, pp. 16-17)

Now comes an important question. What is it that we as philosophers want? We want the ultimate truths about the ultimate matters. If so, it is arguable that we should take these truths from whatever source offers them to us even if the source is not narrowly philosophical. We should not say: I will accept only those truths that can be certified by (natural) reason, but rather all truths whether certified by reason or 'certified' by faith. Thus Stein has Aquinas say:

If faith makes accessible truths unattainable by any other means, philosophy, for one thing, cannot forego them without renouncing its universal claim to truth. [. . .] One consequence, then, is a material dependence of philosophy on faith.

Then too, if faith affords the highest certainty attainable by the human mind, and if philosophy claims to bestow the highest certainty, then philosophy must make the certainty of faith its own. It does so first by absorbing the truths of faith, and further by using them as the final criterion by which to gauge all other truths. Hence, a second consequence is a formal dependence of philosophy on faith. (17-18)

But of course this cannot go unchallenged by Husserl. So Stein has him say:

. . . if faith is the final criterion of all other truth, what is the criterion of faith itself? What guarantees that the certainty of my faith is genuine? (20)

Or in terms of of the distinction between subjective (psychological) and objective (epistemic) certainty: what guarantees that the certainty of faith is objective and not merely subjective? The faiths of Jew, Christian, and Muslim are all different. How can the Christian be sure that the revelation he takes on faith has not been superseded by the revelation the Muslim takes on faith?  And what about contradictory faith-contents? God cannot be both triune (as the normative Christian believes) and not triune (as the normative Muslim believes).  So Christian and Muslim cannot both be objectively certain about their characteristic beliefs; at most they can be subjectively certain. Subjective certainty, however, has no epistemic value.  (This paragraph is my gloss on the preceding quotation.)

Stein's Thomas replies to Husserl as follows:

Probably my best answer is that faith is its own guarantee. I could also say that God, who has given us the revelation, vouches for its truth. But this would only be the other side of the same coin. For if we took the two as separate facts, we would fall into a circulus vitiosus [vicious circle], since God is after all what we become certain about in faith.

[. . .]

All we can do is point out that for the believer such is the certainty of faith that it relativizes all other certainty, and that he can but give up any supposed knowledge which contradicts his faith. The unique certitude of faith is a gift of grace. It is up to the understanding and will to draw the practical consequences therefrom. Constructing a philosophy on faith belongs to the theoretical consequences. (20-22)

For Thomas and Stein, the certainty of faith is a gift of God. As such, it cannot be merely subjective.  It is at once both subjective and objective, subjective as an inner certitude, objective as an effect of divine grace. Husserl, however, will ask how the claim that the certainty of faith is a divine gift can be validated.  It is, after all, a contestable and contested claim.  And not just by sophists and quibblers, but by sincere and brilliant truth seekers such as Husserl. How does one know that it is true? For Husserl, the claims that God exists and that the Christian revelation is divine revelation are but dogmatic presuppositions.  They need validation because of the existence of competing claims such as those made by Jews and Muslims and atheists.

If, as Stein says, "faith is its own guarantee," then, since the faith of the Christian and the faith of the Muslim are contradictory with respect to certain key propositions, it follows that one of these faiths offers a false guarantee.  You can see from this that the Thomas-Stein stance leaves something to be desired.  But Husserl's approach has problems of its own.  Closed up within the sphere of his subjectivity, man cannot reach the truly Transcendent, which must irrupt into this sphere and cannot be constituted (Husserl's term) within it.  The truly Transcendent is not a transcendence-in-immanence.  It cannot be a constituted transcendence.

If man is indeed a creature, there is something absurd about measly man hauling the Creator before the bench of finite reason there to be rudely interrogated about his credentials.  On the other hand, the claim that man is a creature is not objectively self-evident but a claim like any other, and man must satisfy his intellectual conscience with respect to this claim.  It is precisely his freedom, responsibility, and love of truth that drive him to ask: But is it true?  And how do we know?  And isn't it morally shabby to fool oneself and seek consolation in a fairy tale?

Paradoxically, God creates man in his image and likeness, and thus as free, responsible, and truth-loving; it is these characteristics that then motivate man to put God in the dock.

The Incompatibility of Husserl's Egocentrism and Thomas's Theocentrism

Let's give the last word to Stein's Aquinas:

The course that you have followed has led you to posit the subject as the start and center of philosophical inquiry; all else is subject-related. A world constructed by the acts of the subject remains forever a world for the subject. You could not succeed -- and this was the constant objection that your own students raised against you -- in winning back from the realm of immanence that objectivity from which you had after all set out and insuring which was the point. Once existence is redefined as self-identifying for a consciousness -- such was the outcome of the transcendental investigation -- the intellect will never be set at its ease in its search for truth. (31-32)

A brief comment in explanation of the last sentence. For Thomas and other realists, it is built into the very concept of existence that that which exists exists independently of consciousness. Thus if the tree in the garden exists, it exists whether or not it appears to any conscious being. On transcendental-phenomenological idealism, however, the existence of the tree is "redefined as self-identifying for a consciousness," which is to say that its existence is nothing other than the synthetic unity of the noemata in which it appears to the subject, a unity that derives from the unifying activities of transcendental consciousness. This is a thoroughly modern (and idealist) understanding of existence. Compare Butcharov's theory of existence as the indefinite identifiability of what he calls objects and distinguishes from entities, and Hector-Neri Castaneda's theory of existence as "consubstantiation" of "ontological guises."

Now for the crux of the matter as Thomas replies to Husserl

Moreover, this shift in meaning [of existence], especially by relativizing God himself, contradicts faith. (emphasis added) So here we may well have the sharpest contrast between transcendental phenomenology and my philosophy: mine has a theocentric and yours an egocentric orientation. (32)

So there you have it. There are two opposing conceptions of philosophy, one based on the autonomy of reason, the other willing to sacrifice the autonomy of reason for the sake of truths which cannot be certified by reason but which are provided by faith in revelation, a revelation that must simply be accepted in humility and obedience. It looks as if one must simply decide which of these two conceptions to adopt, and that the decision cannot be justified by (natural) reason.

My task, in this and in related posts, is first and foremost to set forth the problems as clearly as I can. Anyone who thinks this problem has an easy solution does not understand it.  It is part of the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. 

Comments

[Dave]

I'm really looking forward to your take on this perennial question.
Particularly, on how Revelation can 'open up' and shed light on questions that autonomous reason cannot. IOW I think the case can be made that revelation gives us a larger and more meaningful world than we can arrive at 'on our own'. $.02.

[Vito B Caiati]

For what it is worth, it seems to me that the “sacrifice [of] the autonomy of reason for the sake of truths which cannot be certified by reason but which are provided by faith in revelation, a revelation that must simply be accepted in humility and obedience” involves the affirmation of an epistemological principle that is, in fact, continually contradicted by its own adherents, or, more precisely, its modern adherents. For, after all, what is this “revelation” of which they speak but the testimonies of those in the past who claimed to have witnessed events that are said to be explainable only in terms of the actions of God within the contours of human history, in such ways that the human mind can identify their source and their purposes. These testimonies were set down in writing, either, as some claim, (1) by the witnesses themselves or by those who had direct access to their testimonies or (2) by later believers in these testimonies as passed down orally or in earlier written forms. So the “revelation” of which we speak, the the truth of which is declared by faith, rests, in the first instance, on our acceptance of the accuracy of these written sources. I have nothing to say on this highly complex question, involving a series of specialized disciplines; instead, I merely wish to point out that what was possible “to be accepted in humility and obedience” in earlier times is much harder to be accepted today. All but the most naïve believers come to such texts with a series of questions and doubts, no matter what their faith claims may be, and in resolving or seeking to resolve these questions and doubts, they inevitably turn to reasoning of one kind or another, whether it involves philosophical inquiries into the nature, source, and proofs of miracles; exegetical and linguistic investigations of sacred texts; or theological and historical studies of one kind or another. In other words, unless one is honestly able to adopt a rigorous fideism, reason is called upon even when dealing with matters the content of which is beyond its reach. The claim that it can be put aside in good faith today may be true of the very few of us who are blessed with the grace that allows the surrender that we find with the saints, but for the rest of us, such a surrender is not possible.

[BV]

Vito writes, >>. . . reason is called upon even when dealing with matters the content of which is beyond its reach.<<

That is certainly true, but I don't see the contradiction that Vito alleges in his opening sentence. Reason is used to assess evidence, formulate the tenets of the faith, show the rational acceptability of religious claims, including claims that cannot be known by reason and empirical evidence alone, and in other ways. But reason only takes us so far, and where it takes us is not far enough, or not far enough for those of us that seek something more than what this miserable life can provide.

Reason can pose this question to itself and do so reasonably: are there suprational realities that are beyond reason's ken? Reason can distinguish the irrational from the suprarational. I don't see a contradiction here.

[BV]

Dave,

Man on his own is without hope. (I am contradicting Ernst Bloch, the Marxist philosopher, but not just him.) We need salvation, but we cannot provide it for ourselves. We need help from a transcendent source. It doesn't follow that there is any such source. But if there isn't, then this life, whatever proximate meanings it may have, is ultimately meaningless. I take it you believe that. So of course you are right that >> revelation gives us a larger and more meaningful world than we can arrive at 'on our own'.<<

Those who don't share our religious sensibility are worldlings or Cave-dwellers. For them the Cave is satisfactory. There is no point in discussing with the Cave-dwellers. But, as Plato points out, the Cave men hate seekers of the light and will kill them. And this is why at the present time we have to engage politically and perhaps extrapolitically with the leftist thugs who seek to stamp out religious liberty.

[BV]

Dave,

Whether or not God exists, whether or not he has revealed himself to man, and what the content of that revelation is remain and will remain disputed questions. There is no way to PROVE anything here. So after all the rational and evidential considerations and counter-considerations, one is simply going to have to decide what one will believe and how one will live. (And these two are connected, since beliefs manifest themselves in actions, and actions give evidence of what one really believes.)

Speaking for myself, my various religious and mystical experiences, the deliverances of conscience, my philosophical reasonings that show the untenability of naturalism incline me to seek for meaning beyond this short life. And that is the way I live, by meditation, prayer, following my well-formed conscience, philsophical study and writing, and discipline of the natural man, the animal side of the self.

And that brings us back to the topic of masturbation that we discussed over at FB. I said that that there are plausible moral argument against it. Here is one that may fly with you since you are a Christian. MT 5:28 "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (KJV) From that we can infer that it is morally wrong to entertain (with hospitality so to speak) the thought of having sex without your neighbor's trophy wife. But you are not about to make a move on her, so you masturbate to orgasm to the fantasy of having sex with her. Would you allow that that is morally wrong? If not, why not? It is not the 'scattering of seed' that is morally wrong, but the violation in thought of the woman you are fantasizing about. You are treating her albeit in thought not in the flesh as a means to your sensuous gratification, and not an an end in herself -- in violation of the well-know Kantian principle (which the Sage of Koenigsberg arguably got from Christianity).

[Vito B Caiati]

Bill, I am probably wrong on this matter on which I cannot claim anything like your knowledge and perhaps “contradiction” is too strong a word, but I used it to call attention to the marked historical shift in the relative weight of reason in the assessment of “truths. . . . which are provided by faith in revelation.” Without the confirmation of the altering and confirming religious and mystical experiences, of which you speak, very few of us today are able honestly to affirm “faith in revelation, a revelation that must simply be accepted in humility and obedience.” Here, I make a distinction between what we assert in word and what we truly believe. In particular, I am constantly aware of the mental and emotional space--the gap--that separates my declaration of the truth of certain religious claims and my deepest confidence in such claims. Something has changed in the mental landscapes of even sincere believers that deprives them of “humility and obedience” that was accessible to Aquinas and others in the past that narrowed or eliminated this space. As a result, many or most of us, are tossed about between reason and faith, with the terrain of the former grown far larger than that of the latter. Perhaps if one is not wedded to traditional dogmatic or doctrinal propositions, instead affirming a more generic form of faith in the Deity, this gap, perhaps the product of misdirected and impudent reason, is narrower or non-existent, but with more luxuriant religious dogmas or doctrines it is certainly present today.

[Dave]

Bill, as for any criticism I may have of 'autonomous reason', it is not the faculty itself that I criticize. What I do find objectionable is illustrated by the difference between 'science' and 'scientism'. I'm sure that your readers grok what I'm saying there.

As for Master Bates - I don't find an 'either-or' dilemma to be necessary, such as: "either don't do it, or you are making your neighbor's wife an object of gratuitous gratification." The dilemma stated that way is obviously false. (I'm Not saying that you put it that way.
So - is MB wrong in itself, or does it depend upon one's motivation - as Jesus put it, "in your heart"? Well, I think it depends. It is not easy for many men I've known, that have been brought up perhaps too strictly or unwisely, to give themselves a break from an over-scrupulous conscience. This is not license, it is pragmatic. A lifestyle built around MB is unwise and harmful; a life going in the right direction that may include some MB is not imo to be sneered at.
There's a good hint here in 1 Cor.10.13 ESV - there are some temptations, common to all of us, that cannot be met with just will power - so God will give us a way to deal with it. Let he who reads understand. :-)

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.