There is a rather threadbare trope, Full-Circle Revolution, which describes the rebel's paradox. A rebel burns down the old system, is cheered by the crowd, and then, before the smoke has even cleared, is busy drawing up the blueprints for a brand-new system. This new system is usually more complicated, more smug, and more demanding than the one it just toppled.

In philosophy as in the history of ideas can be found similar patterns. The philosopher Patrick Robert, in his excellent article St Bonaventure, Defender of Christian Wisdom, formulates this result of philosophical rebellion as a paradox. Describing the ultimate failure of the Averroists in medieval thought, he observes:

Like the modern rationalists, the Averroists knew but one worship, that of the goddess of Reason. But the hard paradox that shows the futility of men’s endeavors at self-sufficiency, again came into play, and this rationalism brought upon itself its own condemnation. Human minds, fearful of all their shortcomings, instinctively seek a guide to hold them in their march toward truth. The Averroists found theirs in Aristotle. <…> Having rejected the authority of God, human reason submitted itself to that of a man.

Patrick Robert, St Bonaventure, Defender of Christian Wisdom, 1943, pp. 167-168 [Link]

The underlying structure of this paradox is both elegant and sobering. It suggests that the very attempt to dismantle one set of intellectual idols inevitably leads to the creation of new ones. This cyclical failure is born not of a lack of rigour, but of the inherent shortcomings of the human mind. In its quest for pure, unadulterated reason, the intellect instinctively seeks a new foundation to rebuild upon, often crafting a system more intricate and absolute than the dogma it sought to replace. The result is a form of philosophical hubris, where the critique of doctrine itself becomes doctrinaire. Even a cursory glance at intellectual history reveals numerous examples of this paradox.

Take, for instance, the German theologian Martin Luther. A man of formidable severity, he launched a reformation that shattered the Catholic Church and repudiated its core doctrines. And who did he train his fiercest fire upon? The usual suspects: Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. His contempt is best captured in a glorious, and typically uncompromising, jab:

Whoever wishes to philosophize safely in Aristotle must first become thoroughly foolish in Christ.1

Luther’s condemnations of their work were, to put it mildly, exhaustive. In response, he initiated the Protestant Reformation, which, as ill luck would have it, generated its own set of doctrinal and social complexities. The ultimate result of this rebellion is perhaps best summarised by the subsequent German theologian Adolf von Harnack, who assessed Luther's legacy thus:

The same man, who otherwise the scholastics mocked, declared now: "The sophists speak about-this rightly", gifted his church with a Christology, which in scholastic absurdity the Thomistic by far left behind (ubiquity of the body of Christ), eliminated the faith so greatly from the sacrament, that he the doctrine of the manducatio infidelium to the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae raised ("the body of Christ is with the teeth bitten-to-pieces"), and trumped with the unreason of the doctrine as the seal of its divine truth.2

And thus, we encounter a quintessential example of our central paradox: a vehement denial of an established orthodoxy, undertaken in the pursuit of simplicity and intellectual independence, yet destined to culminate in a system of even greater sophistication.

Let us now turn to other cases in the history of philosophy. A particularly striking exemplar is the French philosopher René Descartes. Indeed, the radical nature of his project led the German philosopher F. W. J. von Schelling to remark that Descartes had proceeded “as if no one had ever philosophized before him.”3 This wholesale dismissal of prior thought created a historical aberration that demanded correction.

Consequently, the restoration of intellectual justice fell to later scholars. First, the eminent medievalist Étienne Gilson meticulously demonstrated the secondary nature of the Cartesian cogito, tracing its true origins to the neglected frameworks of medieval Scholasticism. Later, the analytical rigour of philosophers such as Jaakko Hintikka4 further weakened the logical foundations of Descartes’ seemingly indubitable first principle through work on self-referent argumentation.5 Ultimately, it has required nothing less than a full-scale renaissance of metaphysics within the analytic tradition to begin developing coherent non-Cartesian forms of dualism,6 thereby slowly overcoming the very problem Descartes himself bequeathed to modern philosophy.

Another exemplar and another French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He anathematised modern culture and called for a return to a pristine state of nature, conceptualising a natural man or homo duplex who was torn between his innate goodness and the corrupting influence of society. Rousseau had championed this savage. However, since the creature existed more on paper than in reality, Rousseau was left with the problem of what to do with him. He never found a practical solution, and ultimately contributed further to the very cultural complexity he denounced. His influence spilled over into real-world politics, and its disruptive power was still being felt well into the twentieth century. This lingering disturbance is why a figure like the great French novelist Maurice Barrès felt compelled to confront Rousseau's legacy as late as 1912, when he wrote:

Rousseau is par excellence the genius who tries to launch us into this nefarious, and moreover impotent, revolt, and who advises us to act as if we had everything to redo anew, as if we had never been civilized. We refuse to follow him.7

The real problem with Rousseau lies not in his so-called ethics or political philosophy, but elsewhere. Perhaps only Jacques Derrida could deconstruct Rousseau's cult of nature so thoroughly.8 Moreover, he, with a hint of irony, point out that the technique of deconstruction was itself pioneered by Rousseau par lui-même.

The German philosophical spirit, however, proved decidedly more resourceful than its French counterpart. Consider Edmund Husserl: he did not mince words in determining what required denial, systematically stripping away the world of experience until only the 'things themselves' remained. One might note that Descartes, at the very least, retained the Latinate res. Husserl, by contrast, dismissed even this, pressing further towards the stark German Sache. From this sprang his famous imperative: Zu den Sachen selbst! (To the things themselves!).

Husserl's methodological stricture, operationalized through the three phenomenological reductions, resulted in the confinement of the human subject within the immanent domain of its consciousness: a world constituted purely by phenomena and delimited by its intrinsic horizons. It was this very horizon that Martin Heidegger subsequently struggled, some might say in vain, to break out of by recasting it within a primordial historical and temporal perspective. Heidegger’s work thereby paved the way for new forms of metaphysics.9

The final example concerns Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's aggressive refusal of the psychoanalytic tradition. Primarily, was criticized Jacques Lacan, who was most responsible for restoring and bringing to elegance Sigmund Freud’s legacy. They rejected the core Lacanian ethic, which insisted on the insistency, that mean accurate concerning to signifier. The philosophical avant-garde cheered blindly: fascism had been defeated once more. But the 20th century (a deleuzian century) has ended. Deleuze, who fantasised about made to some philosopher a monstrous children, was himself got knocked up.10 The father isn’t known. Paternity suspects are Nick Land, Ray Brassier, and Graham Harman, to name but a few. Nomen illis legio. Now it's our generation's turn to fill in the gaps Deleuze left behind.

Thus, we can express the generalised form of this paradox as follows:

1. A philosopher sets out to achieve intellectual self-sufficiency, aiming to break free from a prevailing orthodoxy.

2. They proceed to dismantle established doctrines, criticising them as overly complex, dogmatic, or unsound.

3. Yet, when confronted by the inherent limits of human reason, they feel compelled to seek a new guiding authority or first principle to anchor their thought.

4. Yet, in their pursuit of a new foundation, they inevitably erect another system. Ironically, in its drive to be comprehensive and to dismantle all prior doctrine, this new edifice often surpasses the old one in both complexity and absurdity.

In this light, the solution for preventing the paradox would seem to lie in understanding the psychological drivers behind its first and third points. This is, in effect, an attempt to solve the core metaphilosophical problem: the persistent inability of philosophers to reach consensus.

Two disciplines have attempted to provide an answer. The first is metaphilosophy in its various guises.11 The inherent irony, however, is that as a branch of philosophy, it risks becoming another example of the paradox it seeks to explain. The second is the psychology of philosophy,12 which has the more ambitious goal of examining the problem from the outside, using the empirical tools of cognitive science. The frustrating conclusion is that neither approach on its own, nor any combination of the two, has yet yielded a definitive solution.

The main hitch is that the upon closer inspection, such and such attempts have a high risk of falling into our central paradox. So for didactic purposes to avoid slips in philosophy, we can only turn to G. K. Chesterton’s principle, which looks like our paradox.

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘Tf you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judgo whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease.

Chesterton, G. K. The Thing: Why I am a Catholic (London: Sheed & Ward, 1946). [Link]

This principle rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there... There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease.

At the very least, Chesterton’s principle can help us overcome the first point of our general paradox. The core problem, however, is that philosophy is not a common road in constant need of cleaning. Indeed, the very myth that our intellectual space requires decluttering is a primary motive for falling victim to this paradox oneself.

A case in point is Jacques Maritain, who almost fell into this trap in his work Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau. While he accurately highlighted the necessity of considering problems historically, his critique ultimately proves either too late (in the case of Luther) or too weak (with Descartes and Rousseau). We might agree with Lacan, who identified the weakness of Maritain’s approach in its very rigour, a precision so severe it led him into a “caricatural impasse”.13 Yet, to his credit, Maritain succeeded in not ejecting these thinkers from the actual space of philosophical thought; he engaged with them on their own terms, even if his final judgment was flawed.

Thus, it hardly seems to seek a good solution of this problem. The only clear conclusion is this: we must abandon the image of philosophy as a road requiring clearance. We cannot justify razing its existing edifices for the sake of a mythical or promised Cockaigne.

Philosophy is better understood as a cemetery of hypotheses, where critic and criticised ultimately occupy the same ground. Its true attraction, after all, lies in the perpetual opportunity to think otherwise.

Bibliography

• Barrès, Maurice, Le Bi-centenaire de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: Éditions de “l’Indépendance”, 1912). [Link]

• Bartlett, Steven James. Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning (Piscataway, NJ: Studies in Theory and Behavior, 2021). [Link]

• Chesterton, G. K. The Thing: Why I am a Catholic (London: Sheed & Ward, 1946). [Link]

• Deleuze, Gilles. ‘Lettre à un critique sévère’, in Pourparlers 1972–1990 (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1990), pp. 11–23. [Link]

• Derrida, J. Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). [Link]

• Harnack, Adolf von. Dogmengeschichte, [link (in German)]

• Hintikka, Jaakko. ‘Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?’, The Philosophical Review, 71.1 (1962), 3–32.

• Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XIV: The Logic of Phantasy, 1966–1967, trans. by Cormac Gallagher (1966–67). [Link]

• Lowe, E. J. ‘Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and the Problem of Mental Causation’, Erkenntnis, 65.1 (2006), 5–23. [Link]

• Maritain, Jacques. Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (London: Sheed & Ward, 1929). [Link]

• Palmer, Humphrey. Presupposition and Transcendental Inference (London: Routledge, 1985).

• Phillips, Eric G. ‘Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation Revisited in Light of the Philosophical Proofs’, Concordia Theological Quarterly, 82.3–4 (2018), 235–45. [link]

• Robert, Patrick. ‘St. Bonaventure, Defender of Christian Wisdom’, Franciscan Studies, New Series, 3.2 (1943), 159–79. [Link]

• Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von. Schellings Münchener Vorlesungen: Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie und Darstellung des philosophischen Empirismus, in Sämmtliche Werke, div. 1, vol. 10 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1861). [Link]

In philosophy, some concepts neither act as clear signposts for a particular school of thought, nor are they commonplace terms. Instead, their histories are so complicated that, with few exceptions, any attempt to use them proves utterly unsatisfactory. And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a major philosophical work that didn't use one. Such a concept is ‘contemplation’, which comes from the Latin contemplātĭo.1

In the fate of European thought, this Latin term was destined to play the doppelgänger of Greek θεωρία (theoria), the latter (what an ironic twist) came to mean something abstract in modern usage.2 Today, we can find the usage of contemplation in almost every area of philosophical thought. Moreover, it’s used in completely different meanings, from blessed activity3 through something mystical4 to philosophical cuckoldism.5 The only thing that doesn’t change is its frequency of usage.

The aim of this work isn’t to uncover its true meaning (God forbid!) but to warn against its use in philosophy by highlighting the conceptual chaos it has caused. To explore this, we must turn to the ideal couple: St Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, in exactly that order. Of course, it would seem more logical to consider them chronologically, but there’s a snag for us, and that is that Aristotelian thought per se isn’t something directly accessible to our understanding. We can get this "direct access" only by battling through abundant commentary. Nevertheless, we can't simply ignore him, and for good reason. This is why we must consider how this Aristotelian idea was reintroduced by the very man who helped distance us from ancient thought. In the context of the analysis of the term ‘contemplation’, this choice can be justified in the following ways. Firstly, as a pragmatic step, St Thomas, at least, can be understood. He, among others, shaped the Christian and European consciousness that we have inherited. Nothing can be done about it. We know who writes the history. That is why the choice of possible alternatives such as Plato-Augustine or Avicenna-Siger of Brabant for our aims is less desirable. Thomism leads the Barque of St Peter; let us therefore consider its helmsman.

Secondly, Aquinas has already done this analysis himself. His consideration seems thorough not only because of a good commentary on Aristotle but also because of a sensitive understanding of the contemporary discourse, in which Aristotelian thought found its different interpretations. The High Middle Ages were not merely the time of revealing Aristotle’s works. It was the time of various interpretations, cruel debates in which the final say did not always remain with a good argument. The famous fates of Peter Abelard and Sigerus demonstrate this. The biblical phrase the Lord knows them that are his (2 Timothy 2:19) sometimes turned blood red. St Thomas was the one who constructed contemplation from piecemeal notions and formed it as a theological term.

In other terms, we don’t want to make a clear mistake and divide Aquinas into a philosopher and a theologian. He isn’t a philosophical interpreter of Aristotle’s thought. As the French theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange noted, Aquinas is ‘a great theologian who from a supernatural point of view used Aristotle for the defence and explanation of the divine truths of faith.’ As we hope to demonstrate, contemplation has theological value, but it has no philosophical usage.

The High Middle Ages can serve as a litmus test to see who has a keen philosophical mind. On the one hand, an inability to perceive the glimmering truths of this period looks deeply suspicious. Alas, even the amiable Franz Brentano failed to perceive these glimmers.6 On the other hand, the case of Neo-Thomism shows the opposite extreme, one that entirely forgets the golden mean. For our purposes, we need only approach this era without bias to discover what Gottfried Leibniz called the ‘gold hidden under the rubbish of the monks' Barbarous Latin’.7 By itself, this quote proves nothing: “as Heraclitus says, ‘an ass would prefer chaff to gold, since to asses food gives more pleasure than gold.”8 Still, lest we miss our chance to understand how Aquinas injected contemplation into Christianity, we must be willing to examine this very rubbish for ourselves.

Contemplated ‘Rubbish’

When St Thomas stated that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (philosophia ancilla theologiae), he clearly echoed the radical defender of pure faith, Peter Damian, who rejected the impurity of Greek wisdom (sophia). The problem is that when Aquinas said it, attempting to save theology (and God himself) from a freedom-loving reason, theology had already become the handmaiden of Aristotle (ancilla Aristotelis). The latter was delivered into the hearts (though not yet in the minds) of European monks as a Judeo-Arabic contraband. Formed as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance, the fruitful soil of medieval thinkers was ready for redux and laurelled Aristotle. With deep pleasure they immediately dubbed him simply the Philosopher.9 As a result, philosophy effectively became the handmaiden of the Philosopher (philosophia ancilla Philosophi). The great but useless battle began between the remaining supporters of Augustinian Neo-Platonism and radical Aristotelians.10

As for St Thomas, he quite successfully found the middle way, but his genius clearly presented itself in another way. The hitch is that the Doctor Communis, like almost any other medieval figure, studied from a non-original, non-Greek version of Aristotle's work. Meanwhile, Latin Aristotle planted by infidels was presented as the original. Philosopher Patrick Robert11 describes the situation this way:

On account of historical factors which had nothing to do with philosophical speculation, Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics came to the western world through Arabian translations and commentaries which made the dangers and errors of the original much worse. The unity of the world and the denial of Providence were not enough for Averroes; he added the more pernicious thesis of the unity of the intellect which destroys all Christian morality.

Patrick Robert, St Bonaventure, Defender of Christian Wisdom, 1943, p. 166 [Link]

Or, if you are interested in a more detailed study of the winding path of Latin Aristotle, see the great work Averroës et l'averroïsme by Ernest Renan (in French).

Latinization of the Philosopher cost Europe the accuracy of Aristotle's ideas. As the French historian Amable Jourdain precisely noted about the weakness of the Latin translations of Aristotle: Ce sont de pures versions littérales où le mot latin couvre le mot grec, de même que les pièces de l'échiquier s'appliquent sur les cases.12 (These are purely literal versions where the Latin word covers the Greek word, just as chess pieces fit onto the squares).

Thus, medieval readers saw Aristotle not as children can see directly but through a glass, darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). What an awkward chain of interpretations: God and World explained by Aristotle, Aristotle explained by Averroes, and finally Averroes explained by Aquinas.13 In other words, with pedantic rigour bos mutus14 worked with an interminable string of lapses, yet he could finally carry some insights that escaped scholarly books.

Indeed, it took time (from Isaac Casaubon15 to Martin Heidegger) to free the Stagyrite from the dry husk of Latinate wisdom. However, this doesn't mean we have truly learned to understand Aristotle, merely because we know him better than our medieval progenitors did. Most likely, we stay in the shadow of those who shielded themselves from what was revealed in Aristotelian thought. Even so, certain implicit ideas, persisting through these translations of Aristotle, were enough to arouse the suspicion of the Church adherents, who dreamed of a philosophy that would act as a silent handmaiden to the Church (ancilla ecclesiae).

The suspicion took the following form: it started from the Condemnation of David of Dinant’s16 dangerous interpretations17 (1209), and the Condemnation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy (1210). Then, Gregory's bull Parens scientiarum of 1231 mandated the correction of the mistakes in any natural philosophy Aristotle’s Physics:

Those books on natural philosophy which for a certain reason were prohibited in a provincial council, are not be used at Paris until they have been examined and purged of all suspicion of error. [link]

And finally, the Condemnations (1270, 1277) banned Peripatetic and Averroistic doctrines again and again. The dangerous seed of the Corpus Aristotelicum, as something unwordable, disturbed the Christian doctrines, triggering such reactions. Nonetheless, in spite of a long sequence of condemnations, murders, executions and emasculations, philosophers, having once gained it, didn't want to lose λόγος, even if it in fact was only ratio. In reality, neither the idea of eternity of matter (hyle/ὕλη) nor the idea of a-personal God as the prime mover (primum movens) was particularly dangerous for Christianity. For St Thomas they certainly weren’t, even though various interpretations had existed. It is striking to see how he rectified Aristotelian thought, defending the Christian faith in opposition to Arabic philosophy, which was also based on Aristotle.

We’ve briefly examined Aristotle’s comeback not only to demonstrate historical context, but also to point out the challenges posed by the translational context. This, in turn, produced difficulties in seeking a proper interpretation that led to severe consequences. Europe faced a dramatic period trying to find its Greek origin using Latin form. In other words, the chess pieces were redrawing the squares of the chessboard.

Contemplation between contemplātĭo and θεωρία

As we mentioned above, Aquinas transferred contemplation into theology, after which this term is divided into two: the proper theological sense and philosophical usage.18 This compels us to use definitions of contemplation from the post-Aquinas period with excessive caution. Let us, for example, take its definition from A lexicon of St Thomas Aquinas… which states that contemplation is the simple gazing at manifest truth.19 You can compare it with another definition from Catechism of the Catholic Church: ‘contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus.’ Such and such definitions are strictly theological; we need faith to understand them. Hence, for consideration its duality, we must bring in the work of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange:

Contemplation in general, such as may exist in a non-Christian philosopher, for example, in Plato or Aristotle, is a simple, intellectual view of the truth, superior to reasoning and accompanied by admiration, simplex intuitus veritatis, as St Thomas says. An example of this contemplation is the admiring knowledge of that supreme truth of philosophy, namely, that at the summit of all composite and changeable beings there exists absolutely simple and immutable being itself, the principle and end of all things. It has not received existence; it is of itself existence, truth, wisdom, goodness, love, just as, in the physical order, light of itself is light and has no need to be illumined; just as heat of itself is heat. Reason by its own strength, with the natural help of God, may rise to this contemplation. The contemplation of the faithful is, on the contrary, founded on divine revelation received through faith.

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange Christian perfection and contemplation : according to St Thomas Aquinas and St John of the Cross pp.221-222 [Link]

The final sentence is crucial. We should notice that the author marks this distinction from the theological position. Now, we need to recheck this point to ascertain its truth. Indeed, if we read only Summa Theologica, it would be difficult to find this distinction. And maybe that is why some secondary sources, which often trifle with the truth, state that according to Aquinas, God can be known only with natural reason without any leap of faith. We can only repeat the key point for the proper reading of Aquinas: it’s a theological text.

The clear division is in his Expositio in Canticum Canticorum (Commentary on the Song of Songs). Explaining the sense of spiritual goods in Song of Songs 1:2, Aquinas notes:

For the understanding of the aforesaid it is to be noted, that the sweetness which the Church, the bride of Christ, desires to obtain, is drawn according to the contemplative life. Moreover the contemplative life, just as the philosophers and the saints have spoken about it, is not taken uniformly: for the philosophers place the end of contemplation in knowing (sapere). Therefore in the 10th of the Ethics where it is determined concerning contemplation and happiness, it is shown that the perfect operation according to spiritual contemplation is happiness: for to speculate according to wisdom, that is according to metaphysics, is the highest happiness which the philosophers posited. Therefore the Philosopher in the 4th of the Ethics, wishing to extol such happiness supremely, shows it to be most delightful, saying that philosophy seems to have marvelous pleasures in purity and firmness. But contemplation, as the theologians speak about it, consists more in savor (sapore) than in knowing (sapere); and consists more in love and sweetness than in contemplation. And if the study of letters is found sometimes to pertain to the contemplative life according to theologians, this is insofar as through study of this kind we are led by the hand into the love of God. If anyone therefore studies for this that he may know, not that he may be edified, and may profit in the love of God, let him know that he lives the contemplative life according to the philosophers, not according to the theologians.20

This raises the question of how to understand this philosophical contemplation, which is based only on sapere? Aquinas’ theological interpretation isn’t suitable for it because without faith it’s just a blind spot. The only way to analyze it successfully is to consider what Aquinas changes in Aristotle’s contemplation. To do this, we can use his commentaries on Aristotle, allowing us to compare the contrast between them to see how the chess piece is placed on the square the difference. For this purpose, we raise four questions: ‘What is the motive cause for contemplation?‘, ‘What is its final aim?‘, ‘What do we contemplate?‘, ‘What do we use for contemplation?‘

For those who think that these questions are banal, here is a little puzzle to solve. You may ask these questions to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where he writes: 6.45 ‘The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.’ You can be sure, the beautiful cold construction of Tractatus contains the answers to these questions, but to find them is quite a challenge.

Intellect vs. νοῦς

Let’s start with the last question: what do we use for contemplation? According to St Thomas, the answer is evident: it’s the intellect.21 But what is this thing called intellect? It’s a perfect act gifted by God, an ability to understand God.22 Aquinas proposed a partial explanation of contemplation (for theologians) in Summa Theologica (II-II q.179-182). As a working definition, contemplation can be taken as an act of the intellect toward its proper objects.

At first glance, this meaning of intellect corresponds23 to the given meaning in Nicomachean Ethics. In Book X, contemplation is defined as ‘the activity of the intellect that constitutes complete human happiness.’24 Translators obligingly convert (nous/νοῦς) to intellect, but that’s not important. Aristotle himself explains this with obvious difficulty:

But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the intellect, or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, cither as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively templation: the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already that this activity is the activity of contemplation.

Aristotle ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ X. vii. 1 [Link] (Eng., Orig.)

The core of the problem in this quotation is the intellect (νοῦς),25 or whatever else. Aquinas doesn't dwell on this passage. He comments on the Ethics using the terms intellect (intellectus)26 and mind (mēns) for νοῦς27. Nonetheless, he differentiates between types of intellectual activity. Thus, he distinguishes between contemplation, meditation, and cogitation, agreeing with Richard of St Victor. He therefore distinguishes between them as follows:

contemplation is the soul’s clear and free dwelling upon the object of its gaze; meditation is the survey of the mind while occupied in searching for the truth: and cogitation is the mind’s glance which is prone to wander (ST.II-II.Q180.A3.Rep1).

In turn, for our purposes, it’s important to highlight the problem of distinction between intellect (intellectus) and reason (ratio). Let’s examine the six steps of contemplation:

These six denote the steps whereby we ascend by means of creatures to the contemplation of God. For the first step consists in the mere consideration of sensible objects; the second step consists in going forward from sensible to intelligible objects; the third step is to judge of sensible objects according to intelligible things; the fourth is the absolute consideration of the intelligible objects to which one has attained by means of sensibles; the fifth is the contemplation of those intelligible objects that are unattainable by means of sensibles, but which the reason is able to grasp; the sixth step is the consideration of such intelligible (intelligibilium) things as the reason (ratio) can neither discover nor grasp, which pertain to the sublime contemplation of divine truth, wherein contemplation is ultimately perfected. [ST.II-II.Q180.A4.Rep3]

We can explain the last step using the following example: Resurrection of Jesus isn’t rational; it cannot be understood with reason (ratio). Yet, as a believer you can see it even if you cannot explain why you understand it. For you, resurrection isn’t something absurd; credo quia absurdum is not a description for it. For God’s intellect the Resurrection is clearly intelligible, but for the human mind it can be seen as intelligible only by faith. Or as Aquinas says: ‘Reason cannot reach up to simple form, so as to know what it is; but it can know whether it is.’28 And again, this subject is placed in the field of theology.

We have pointed out this distinction to engender doubt about the philosophical usage of the term intellect in relation to contemplation. In fact, Benedictus de Spinoza’s concept of the intellectual love of God (amor Dei intellectualis), as a type of contemplation, doesn’t imply such a complex structure of knowledge as in Thomism. As we shall show subsequently, Spinoza’s contemplation therefore has significant weaknesses.

Reason. In or out

For our goals it’s sufficient to show that for both Aristotle and Aquinas the motive cause of contemplation is not a rational decision made by the contemplator. St Thomas finds the motive cause of contemplation in the will:

intention is an act of the will because intention is of the end which is the object of the will. Consequently the contemplative life, as regards the essence of the action, pertains to the intellect, but as regards the motive cause of the exercise of that action it belongs to the will, which moves all the other powers, even the intellect, to their actions. ST.II-II.Q180.A1.SC

Even though contemplation is an intellectual activity, it’s caused by the appetitive/affective power of the soul. For Aristotle, contemplation is a natural endowment bestowed by some divine dispensation. It is an inborn character to choose virtues. The motive cause of it is obviously not under our control because ‘the Good is That at which all things aim.‘ But the highest form of good is pleasure, which is a natural culmination of proper activity, occurring when the best-conditioned organ acts in relation to the finest of its objects. Contemplation, as the perfect form of activity, leads to the highest degree of happiness. Aristotle clarifies this point in VII.xiii.2.

On the contrary since every faculty has its unimpeded activity, the activity of all the faculties, or of one of them (whichever constitutes Happiness), when unimpeded, must probably be the most desirable thing there is; but an unimpeded activity is a pleasure ; so that on this showing the Supreme Good will be a particular kind of pleasure, even though most pleasures are bad, and, it may be, bad absolutely.

We can choose contemplative life not because we are reasonable, but because, unlike animals, we have the intellect which achieves its highest potential in contemplation. Aristotle points out clearly that ‘passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.‘ The actualisation of our own nature is a virtuous action. For this reason, only a virtuous person can choose contemplation, as virtue entails always obeying one’s reason.

The consideration of the motive cause is complicated by the relation between free will (liberum arbitrium) and God’s providence. A motive cause to contemplate is God’s gift, but a person chooses for themselves whether or not to live a contemplative life. Hence, for clarification, let us turn to Dominican theologian Ambroise Gardeil, who concludes that St Thomas fundamentally consecrated the ancient doctrine, which distinguished God’s gifts from the virtues. Aquinas considered gifts to be the first movements in the heart (primi motus in corde) but instead of identifying the gifts and actual graces, Aquinas saw in the gifts

subjective dispositions to receive the most sublime actual graces. With an incomparable and magnificent synthesis, St Thomas attached this point of doctrine to what, both in the philosophy of Aristotle and in his own theology, is most elevated and most profoundly true on the pre-eminence of the divine action. He thus brought this point of doctrine back to absolutely first principles, which, in philosophy as well as theology, govern questions about the divine action as such; that is, developing it in conformity with the inner law of the divine being. By this systematization, he assured it the indestructible solidity of every doctrine which is attached to first principles, evident in themselves or primarily revealed. [Link]

However, despite its beauty, this conclusion is only right for a believer. It seems such a conclusion satisfies St Thomas. Nevertheless, we should see that any speculation in philosophy about the motivation to contemplate is manipulative. If the reason to contemplate isn't defined by its nature (de re), then this reason can be interpreted as anything. Any contextual definition (de dicto) is as good as another one. Let’s paraphrase Hegel’s famous quote to conclude this idea: those who insist on the substantive distinction between one's own will, a Divine gift (love), or a product of desire (in Freud's term, Wunsch), let them just try to state in what that distinction consists.

Being delighted and εὐδαιμονία

Regarding our goals, identifying the final aim of contemplation serves a specific function. We just need to make certain that these goals for Aristotle and Aquinas are something divine. Aquinas clearly defines it:

The end of contemplation as contemplation is only the truth, but insofar as contemplation receives the notion of a life, in this way it is imbued with the notion of being desired, and of the good. [Sent.III.D35.Q1.A2.qa1.Rep1]

In other words, its final goal is ‘contemplation of the supreme intelligible good’ (God as Truth). Contemplation guarantees a delight which isn’t a human, but a spiritual one, and which is greater than carnal pleasure.

Aristotle states that contemplation, as a self-sufficient and continuous activity, alone constitutes perfect happiness (eudaimonia/εὐδαιμονία). As Aristotle says, ‘perfect happiness is some form of contemplative activity‘ As an intellectual activity, it is a God-like activity (humans can only be blessed in contemplation, as God is).29 Here is how Aquinas summarises Aristotelian view of contemplation:

Second, an activity can be called human from its matter or object, as those human activities that have the emotions for their matter, for in this way the moral virtues are properly called the “human virtues.” This is why the Philosopher says in the Ethics 10 that an act of contemplative virtue is more divine than human, because it has necessary and eternal things as its matter, not human things. Third, an activity is called “human” from its mode, namely, because in human activities, whether in the first or second way, a human mode is also preserved. However, if things that belong to man someone performs in a superhuman mode, it will not simply speaking be a human action, but in a way a divine action. Whence the Philosopher, in the Ethics 7, divides heroic virtue—which he calls “divine” insofar as a man becomes like God through the virtue’s excellence—against virtue simply speaking. Sent.III.D34.Q1.A1.C.11

Here, we should be on guard and don’t let ourselves think about Aristotle’s God in terms of Blaise Pascal, who was perhaps the first to mark explicitly the distinction between God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.30 The senseless and absurdity of such a division in post-medieval philosophy will be demonstrated in the next part. For now, in the perspective of the next question, it’s enough for us that the goal of contemplation is located in the divine for both Aquinas and Aristotle.

Actus purus or οὐσία

After all, we are ready to consider the last question, what do we contemplate? As we have seen above, the six steps of contemplation themselves contain the answer for Aquinas. We go through these steps to contemplate God. For Aristotle, the answer is objects with which the intellect deals are the highest things that can be known; truth in other words. But we don’t want to philosophize slyly on the topic of the transformation of notions of truth and good from Aristotle to Aquinas. Instead, we need to go for it and ask directly, with which ontological categories Aristotle and Aquinas deal with in the process of contemplation?

It seems, there are absolutely different categories to them. The crux of the problem, in which St Thomas was involved, is the problem of being which cannot be ignored after Aristotle. This is the relation between esse, ens and essentia.31 For the medieval perspective and for Christian thought particularly it was important to define these terms in such a way, that God’s position was the only source of every being. Here we must note that Aquinas adeptly refined and fitted the concept of contemplation in a form suitable for Christian doctrine, by solving the problem of being. So to understand his solution first we turn to Aristotle, for whom this question, strictly speaking, didn’t exist.

Aristotle’s study of being (ousia/οὐσία) as philosophia prima, in this context, is quite elegant. We can find the core sense of being in his Metaphysics, Book V (Chapter 7) and Book VI (Chapter 2). It was formulated partially as a rejection of the Platonic division between this world of illusions (the concrete world of change and of becoming) and the true kingdom of Ideas.32 The notion οὐσία, depending on the context, can mean essence, substance, nature, form or quiddity (whatness). Nonetheless, it can relate to accidental or absolute being, and being qua truth. Using today’s language of philosophy, we can say that Aristotle solves the question ‘What is the nature of reality?’ but he leaves aside the question ‘What is existence?’ As French philosopher Étienne Gilson summarized Aristotle’s notion of being:

What is true is that essences are and that individuals exist, so that each essence exists in and through some individual, just as in and through its essence every individual truly is. But, to be in a position to say so, one must first have distinguished between individuation and individuality, that is, one must have realized that, no less necessarily and perhaps more deeply than essence, existence enters the structure of actual being. Thus, the world of Aristotle is made up of existents without existence.

Being and some philosophers, p. 50

But Gilson blames Aristotle in vain for ignorance of modern philosophical concepts.33 It took centuries of drill and discipline to force far-fetched ontological distinctions into human minds. In order to ruin the taste of intellection, first being was sold for a hundred thalers, then was given to a crowd of currently reigning bald kings of France, and finally was exiled to Meinong's jungle where what's left of being was confined to the realm of variables.

Aquinas faces an acute problem of defining being. It’s obvious knowing that God exists (any believer knows it) is not the same as knowing God. St Thomas ingeniously solves this difficulty. God’s essence is his existence. Let’s turn to the important passage of Aquinas’ thought on God’s being:

God is not only His own essence, as shown in the preceding article, but also His own existence. This may be shown in several ways. First, whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence (like a property that necessarily accompanies the species—as the faculty of laughing is proper to a man—and is caused by the constituent principles of the species), or by some exterior agent—as heat is caused in water by fire. Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now it is impossible for a thing’s existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.
Second, existence is that which makes every form or nature actual; for goodness and humanity are spoken of as actual, only because they are spoken of as existing. Therefore existence must be compared to essence, if the latter is a distinct reality, as actuality to potentiality. Therefore, since in God there is no potentiality, as shown above, it follows that in Him essence does not differ from existence. Therefore His essence is His existence.
Third, because, just as that which has fire, but is not itself fire, is on fire by participation; so that which has existence but is not existence, is a being by participation. But God is His own essence, as shown above; if, therefore, He is not His own existence He will be not essential, but participated being. He will not therefore be the first being—which is absurd. Therefore God is His own existence, and not merely His own essence.
ST.I.Q3.A4.C

God as pure act (actus purus) is considered as a source of Being, who shines the light of Being upon us permanently, thanks to which our world exists. And the only way we can know God (albeit analogically analogia entis) is through contemplation, since the divine presence can be discerned as the cause for this world’s existence. So, through this and thanks to the very existence of the world, we can contemplate God.

And here we can draw the demarcation line between Aquinas and Aristotle. The matter isn’t that St Thomas uses new ontological categories which Aristotle didn’t know. In this case we would have to say that according to Aristotle, we can contemplate only the whatness (or essence) of objects ignoring their existence. Instead, for Aristotle objects of contemplation are intelligible by their nature. For this reason, intellect is an active part in the process of contemplation acting continuously. For Aquinas, intellect is not an active factor, it's a bridge between reason and faith, sapere and sapore. Finally, we can compare St Thomas’ understanding of reason to Wittgenstein’s ladder34. We don’t need the ladder of reason after we’ve climbed to the top of faith. In other words, according to Aristotle we contemplate the divine as the unity of truth and the absolute. But according to Aquinas, we contemplate God as the true sameness of existence and essence.

This is the end of the first part of our brief consideration of contemplation in Aquinas and Aristotle. You can notice that this analysis was conducted from the theological position of St Thomas projected onto the void left by Aristotle. As a result, the first is seemingly understood but we don’t need him because he is the theologian. The second one is invisible, therefore his transparent form created by philosophers for wisdom’s sake is disgusting. It’s worth noting that we aren’t trying to dismiss the last 500 years of the exegesis of Corpus Aristotelicum. Referring again to the metaphor of chess, we aim to show that rules of chess have changed much. There is little if any hope for a good game on the Isles of Greece.

And this is all we can say about contemplation without any distortion. Indeed, this observed “rubbish” without a hint of philosophical applicability is the base for numerous speculations in the history of ideas. We will glance at these in the next parts, but henceforth we should remain vigilant.

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Due to the lack of fresh air, we do not see our regrettable situation. This blindness is no accident. The frameworks of our thought and the horizon of our world were thrown together by Bildung, as if out of spite, and in the worst way possible. Therefore, our goal is to demonstrate other ways of thinking through the reopening of the great philosophical works and the analysis of their poor interpretations.

Thus, Ecclesia Apostatica is not a project within philosophy. If the signifier of philosophy is abandoned to the ravages of time, we can call it falsafa, which referred to ‘a sect of philosophy learners’ in the medieval Arab world. But the way of post-, non-, and anti-philosophers is not our way. Our modest aim is not to fight against what people believe, but against their stubborn habits of thought.

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