A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian sates, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.
Aldous Huxley. Foreward to Brave New World. Harper Perennial 1998. p. xiv.
What has been called St. Thomas’s “system” took shape in this work of assembling, sifting, ordering. The body of knowledge of his time became ordered in his mind. He wrote no “philosophical system,” nor has the system behind his works been written so far.
Yet anyone who studies his works will find clear, definite answers, perhaps to more questions than he himself could ask. And what is more, the organon that the Master bore within himself and that enabled him to settle a host of issues with a firm, serene respondeo dicendum, leaves its mark on his “disciple” and gives him the ability to answer questions in Thomas’s spirit that Thomas never asked and possibly at that time could not have been asked at all.
This may well also be the reason why folks today are going back to his writings. Ours is a time that is no longer content with methodical deliberations. People have nothing to hold on to and are looking for purchase. They want a truth to cling to, a meaning for their lives; they want a “philosophy for life.” And this they find in Thomas.
Of course there is a difference between Thomas’s philosophy and what passes for “philosophy for life” today. In his philosophy we will look in vain for flights of emotion; all we will find is truth, soberly grasped in abstract concepts. On the surface much of it looks like theoretical “hairsplitting” that we cannot “do” anything with. And even after serious study it is not easy to put our finger on practical returns.
But a person who has lived for some time with the mind of St. Thomas – lucid, keen, calm, cautious – and dwelt in his world, will come to feel more and more that he is making right choices with ease and confidence on difficult theoretical issues or in practical situations where before he would have been helpless. And if later he thinks back – even surprising himself – on how he managed it, he will realize that a bit of Thomas’s “hairsplitting” laid the groundwork. At the time that Thomas was working on this or that problem, he naturally had no idea what it could someday be “good for,” nor was he concerned about it. He was but following otu the law of truth; truth bears fruit of itself.
St. Edith Stein. Knowledge and Faith. tr. Walter Redmond. ICS Publications. 2000. pp.26-28
The least understanding of highest things is more desirable than most certain knowledge of lowest things.
Et tamen minimum quod potest haberi de cognitione rerum altissimarum, desiderabilius est quam certissima cognitio quae habetur de minimis rebus…
St. Thomas, Summa (I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 1)
In every age of Christianity, since it was first preached, there has been what may be called a religion of the world, which so far imitates the one true religion, as to deceive the unstable and unwary. The world does not oppose religion as such. I may say, it never has opposed it. In particular, it has, in all ages, acknowledged in one sense or other the Gospel of Christ, fastened on one or other of its characteristics, and professed to embody this in its practice; while by neglecting the other parts of the holy doctrine, it has, in fact, distorted and corrupted even that portion of it which it has exclusively put forward, and so has contrived to explain away the whole; — for he who cultivates only one precept of the Gospel to the exclusion of the rest, in reality attends to no part at all.
John Henry Newman, “Religion of the Day,” Plain & Parochial Sermons. Vol. 1, #24
But the fundamental, intrinsic reason for culture’s ongoing decline, its petering out, is its secularization. For several centuries now, the minds of enlightened humanity have been increasingly captivated by anthropocentrism—more politely called humanism—which in the twentieth century risked morphing almost into totalitarianism. But a hubristic anthropocentrism can provide no answers to many of life’s vital questions, and the deeper these questions, the more helpless it appears. The spiritual component is being expunged ever more perniciously from the system of human conceptions and motivations. As a result, our entire structure of values, our understanding of man’s very nature and mission in life, has become distorted. Little by little, we’ve fallen out of sync with the rhythm and breath of Nature, of the Universe.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The depletion of culture” §
The unknown, the inaudible forces that make for good in every state and community - the gentle word, the kind act, the forgiving look, the quiet de-meanor, the silent thinkers and workers, the cheerful and unwearied toilers, the scholar in his study, the scientist in his laboratory — how much more we owe to these things than to the clamorous and discordant voices of the world of politics and the newspaper! Art, literature, philosophy, all speak with the still small voice. How much more potent the voice that speaks out of a great solitude and reverence than the noisy, acrimonious, and disputatious voice! Strong conviction and firm resolution are usually chary of words. Depth of feeling and parsimony of expression go well together.
John Burroughs. Under the Apple Trees. “The Still Small Voice.” Houghton Mifflin. 1916. p. 110
Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable, an economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature or the eternal world of the prophets and poets.
Wendell Berry. Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006. p. 93
- • The opinions of the predecessors must be known.
- • No prejudices.
- • Fix clearly in your eye what you are after.
- • Don’t be satisfied with half notions, squinting thoughts.
- • Penetrate into the heart of the matter with your interpretation.
- • Don’t glide over what you don’t understand.
- • Don’t admit to yourself that there is more than one right.
- • Distinguish sharply between the possible and the impossible.
- • Cultivate the feeling of truth.
- • Never grow weary in trying to find ways.
- • Don’t try to explain everything.
- • Don’t go into criticism until you exhaust hermeneutics.
- • Hold the mean between audacity and timidity.
- • Enthusiasm dwells only in specialization.
- • (Enthusiasmus liegt nur in der Einseitigkeit.)
- • Read, read much, read very much, read as much as possible.
- • (Lesen, viel lesen, sehr viel lesen, möglichst viel lesen.)
- • A problem must leave you no rest or peace, by day or by night, until it is solved.
- • (Nicht Ruhe noch Rast muss ein Problem lassen bei Tag und bei Nacht.)
Friedrich Ritschl (1806-1876), quoted by Basil L. Gildersleeve, “Friedrich Ritschl,” American Journal of Philology 5 (1884) 339-355 (at 349-351, arranged as a list by Laudator Temporis Acti)
For a man’s words are the mirror of his mind. Indeed, the very word of God establishes that from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and the treasure of the heart is revealed by speech.
Paulinus of Nola. Epistle 13.2
Marx saw that history is subjected to determinism, that it is of the realm of matter. It is extraordinary therefore that in looking for justice, he ascribed to matter a capacity for producing justice. After all, why does history subjected to necessity automatically produce a happy Communist society? What god watches over it? We can understand that matter through evolution produced man. Why should it care that he be happy and live in a happy society? No one yet can understand why matter should have been “a machine for the manufacture of Good,” as Simone Weil says. This is the main contradiction at the base of today’s major philosophical controversy, and it cannot be bypassed.
Miłosz, Czesław. To Begin Where I Am. 2001. p. 215