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The Downside review | 1972
John Coulson
IN his Journals, Kierkegaard speaks of imagination as what providence uses in order to get men into reality, into existence, to get them far enough out, or in, or down into existence. Elsewhere he speaks of imagination as the faculty instaromnium, yet, in so being, it does not take the place of reason and the other faculties, but is the means oftheir beingbrought into equilibrium and simultaneity; and the plane on which they are united is existence? Coleridge, too, writes of imagination as bringing the whole soul of man into activity; and it is therefore very easy to speak of an appeal to imagination as being one to a distinct mental faculty. I think this is, philosophically, a trap to be avoided. It is better to conceivesuch an appeal as to a way of seeing something differently, not only in a new light, but as a whole. You put yourself in someone elses place; you turn the question round. Thus, as Coleridge saw, the appeal is to an activity, to a change of mode to what dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create. 2 When we dismiss a view as unreal, too abstract, speculative or disembodied, we are on the brink of appealing to imagination. When Marx criticizesFeuerbach for reducing conventional religious images and symbols to notions of truth and justice, and then leaving it at that, he is appealing to imagination, or to its grounding in the practical and intentional character of our sense perception. Either the gods exist, or we have been deceived by fictions; to suppose, as Feuerbach does, that belief admits of a middle course is to show a lack of imagination. In his Grammar of Assent, Newman seizes upon this continued association between imagination and belief; and in writing of belief he asks, Can I rise to what I have called an imaginativeapprehension
The Downside review | 1977
John Coulson
THIRTY years ago, in 1947, the editor of THE DOWNSIDE REVIEW, Dom Illtyd Trethowan, suggested that we may be witnessing the inception of a golden age in theology. In order to raise the standards of the Catholic contribution, he looked forward to the opening-up of theology by a pooling of resources which would enable a faculty of Catholic theology to be established in one of the existing universities. Meanwhile, THE DOWNSIDE REVIEW would have as its chief aim the publication of articles and book reviews which aim directly at a quickening of the theological spirit among thinking Catholics. A special emphasis fell upon bridging the gap between philosophy and theology, since when philosophy and theology are thus separated in peoples minds it becomes necessary to insist on truths which ought to be commonplaces. Even then the method envisaged was ecumenical; although we must not discuss with our separated brethren.. . religious experience as they conceive it. We must first restore a sound idea of religious experience which is integral and open. 3 Dom Illtyds prophecies have largely been fulfilled, although it has needed an entire Vatican Council to bring such commonplaces into the main stream of the Churchs life. Downside and its REVIEW have been especially instrumental in helping to establish Catholic teaching and study in the universities. But what exactly has been established? How far into the golden age are we? The freedom now allowed to Catholic scholarship has enabled scholars to bring their imagination to bear upon ancient difficulties and to see them from a variety of new stand-points. This has encouraged Catholics to develop a greater degree of selfunderstanding, at the same time as it has enlarged that sense of reality which they share with brethren no longer quite so separated as formerly. A particularly interesting example may be found in a
The Downside review | 1968
John Coulson
THE conviction is growing that one of the most important and useful areas of theological advance is to be found on the borders not only in the traditional overlap with philosophy, but also with literature. One calls to mind, for example, Professor Tinsleys inauguralleeture at Leeds University, an Oxford University sermon by the Bishop of Durham (I. T. Ramsey) and an article in the Times Literary Supplement by L. C. Knights. Mr Greens book is therefore especially to be welcomed since it deals with that area where judgement and response seem to separate out, even to conflict; and the importance of such a study for the theologian is that it is in the achievements of a literature that our religious and moral judgements are not only realised, but themselves judged. The most dramatic instances occur in works which are acknowledged to be literary masterpieces but are also alleged to deprave and corrupt, of which in our own time Lady Chatterleys Lover has been the classic example, and Last Exit to Brooklyn the most recent. The nature of the conflict is well expressed by Mr Green when he says that few of the sermons he hears compete with the novels he reads for moral insight, and that a page of D. H. Lawrence is infinitelymore alive than a work ofdevotion or pastoral exhortation. Nor ought this point to be complacentlyaccepted as inevitable, as a comparison between Chaucer or Dante and contemporary writers like Grahame Greene or Mauriac will establish. These later Catholic writers have seemed to think it necessary to oppose themselvesto humanist values in order the more dramatically to exalt the power and need of grace, so that, in the words of von Hugel, God thus gets glorified in direct proportion as man gets vilified. Such writing has encouraged official catholicism to set itself against the grain of the contemporary cultural tradition, as if the values of the Christian tradition could only be adequately expressed by a denial of those which are affirmed, for example, by D. H. Lawrence. In a culture which was still rooted1yChristian and more homogeneous, it was possible to describe the effect of a novel like Lady Chatterley or even Lolita as bringing about, by its artistry, no more than a willing suspension of disbelief; but in our own time, as Mr Green shrewdly points out, our response is more hkely to be that of choosing to co-operate, or even involuntarily affirming the values which such books are realizing. And it is finding ourselves committed to what initially we were prepared to condemn that raises the problem of the conflict between judgement and response. One solution is to make of the work of art or literature a cultural monad self-sufficient and self-validating. This is aesthetic autarchy; and it was the position which Yeats himself carne to adopt. Somewhat arbitrarily Yeats takes von Hugel as typifying the opposite approachthat literature should be subservient to, or at least expressive of values
The Downside review | 1965
John Coulson
WE frequently deny that metaphysical assertions are possible because we believe that they necessitate the language of nineteenthcentury Idealism; and the main purpose of this paper is to suggest that such assertions can be made in a language which is compatible with the criteria of logical analysis. We need, however, to begin by seeking to what extent it is a limitation, philosophically, to be exclusively concerned with what is said, and to ignore its development, its form and its relationship to other worlds and disciplines. The English philosophers of the nineteenth century, for example, were often readier than our own to see philosophy in this way as on a par with other disciplines and, like them, subjected to powers and processes (not fashions) over which they had but imperfect control. Mark Pattison noticed that philosophical presuppositions are determined as much by movements in the world at large as by philosophers themselves, as if it were a bad thing for philosophy that philosophers should see themselves as absolute masters in their own house: Ever since 1830, he writes in his Memoirs, there has been among us an ebb and flow; one while of nominalistic, another while of a priori logic. Logic appears to a superficial observer to be merely used in the Oxford schools as material upon which questions may be framed. In spite of this appearance there is always a prevailing or accepted logic asserting itself as true over the opposite system, which it denounces as false. Such certainly was Mills approach when he spoke of Coleridge and Bentham as being types of diametrically opposed philosophical
The Downside review | 1963
John Coulson
response t o which is mediated to u s in terms of metaphors a n d symbols, to which we mus t first respond as a whole a n d with due reverence, before asking them for their credentials. I n his own life, Mill was to acquire a n unders tanding of bo th approaches : his b reakdown before the question, if all your objects in life were realised, would this be a great joy and happiness t o you? and his unders tanding tha t n o man s synthesis can be more complete than his analysis, made it possible for h im to testify to a t radi t ion which, for us , embraces no t merely Wordswor th and Coleridge, bu t Newman , Arnold, Ruskin a n d Eliot — a tradit ion which, safeguarded by ou r English scholars, tends to be ignored by ou r philosophers. I t is no t surprising, therefore, tha t in this otherwise excellent conxad tr ibution to a most welcome series M r s Warnock should emphasise the Benthamite Mill a t the expense of the R o m a n t i c ; and the essay on Coleridge is no t reprinted with its companion . But the essays on Bentham a n d on Liberty a re still the best introduct ion t o tha t real morali ty of public discussion tha t justly sets the tone of our university life a n d teaching: Tru th , in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a quest ion of the reconciling a n d combining of opposites, tha t very few have minds sufficiently capacious a n d impart ial to m a k e the adjustment with a n approach to correctness, a n d it has to be m a d e by the rough process of a struggle between combatan ts fighting under hostile banners . JOHN COULSON
The Downside review | 1963
John Coulson
And Jean Steinmann is adept a t point ing the quality a n d originality of his style. Discussing the rare occasions on which aphorisms have become poetry, he instances La Fonta ine and Pascal and compares the former s U n tiens vaut , ce dit-on, mieux que deux tu l auras with the latter s U n arbre ne se connaî t pas misérable and commente : I n the first you hear the accents of Mart ine , Argan s servant, o r Monsieur Jourda in ; in the second, a Descartes, turned poet . H o w astonishing that the man to develop the first calculating machine should, as the Abbé Steinmann says, be in the front r ank of those seers a n d prophets whose t r iumphant advent was hailed by Rimbaud . T h e last chapters of the original edition treated of the varying approaches of Pascal s edi tors and critics from the eighteenth t o the twentieth centuries. This new, revised, edition has two addit ional chapters . The first is a commentary on those studies of Pascal that have appeared since 1954; the second discusses the Jesuit Père Valensins opinions on the Lettres Provinciales. Both underl ine the remarkable growth of Pascaliana. I t is indeed curious to reflect that Pascal s influence has grown largely because of a development which he never himself foresaw: the abandoning of Christianity by a vast number of intellectuals in the centuries after his death. Pascal himself may never have doubted the t ru th of Christianity, bu t he was brilliantly able to express the unbelievers doubts . A n d it is for him that he presents the two alternatives. His t renchant words oppose t o Christ , as represented by a Church with none of its weaknesses concealed, a man str ipped of every mask, shaking with the cold of an empty universe, a n d whose choice is limited to two extremes: H e who was crucified or nothingness.
The Downside review | 1962
John Coulson
society alert and alive; and it is no coincidence that in our own country the movement towards a more open society — the agitation for a universal franchise, the factory acts, the rehousing of slum dwellers — should have begun in the consciences of Christian men. But the Church has an additional role in the political dialogue: in its public and, therefore, hierarchical aspect, it may set limits to the unfettered popular wil l , when, for example, its bishops pronounce against the moral corruption of pornography or on the morality of A B C warfare; but, as I see it, in the kind of open or plural society described by F r Murray such vetoes are restricted to the individual conscience, and cannot be applied directly to the democratic consensus, since this consensus is, of its nature, politically autonomous and may be opposed only by the individual conscience of its members as citizens, not as Christians or Catholics. But although the Church is thus denied direct political powers, it is also saved from having to protect itself by acquiring such power, so that not only is the Church free to concentrate upon its proper role as a society oriented towards a supernatural end, but some of the strongest objections to the political consequences of Catholic structure are eliminated. What is more, the former enemy of democracy may prove in the end to be its best friend, since, as our metaphysical and moral cleavages grow daily so acute, their resolution by civilized dialogue into the essential political consensus is increasingly frustrated first by Uliberality, then by barbarism and at last by naked totalitarianism. I t may well be, as F r Murray claims in this important book, that if the guardianship of the original American consensus is to survive, then it must pass to the heritage in which it was elaborated long before America was — in the teachings of the Catholic Church, the mother of us all.
The Downside review | 1961
John Coulson
WHEN we believe, do we renounce the right to think for ourselves; can we be free, and faithful? The editor of this anthology, who teaches at the American Catholic University of Notre Dame, believes that the Catholic faith is the source and spring of that freedom to think for ourselves, and he has assembled an impressive array of witnesses to prove it. Under seven headings (God, Man, The Church, The Political Order, History, Religion and Culture, Witness) he has grouped extracts from some of the most recent works of Catholic thinkers. There are de Lubac on the Church, Congar on the Laity, a brilliant paper by Danielou on symbolism, and some lively writing by Guardini. The book abounds in memorable statements: Gilsons plea for a technique of faith comparable to that of science, and his reminder that a visit to the cemetery of scientific doctrines that were irreconcilable with Revelation would take us to a great many graves; de Lubacs reminder that Catholicity is a habit of mind, and has nothing to do with geography or statistics. One can take ones pick of thirty-seven thinkers. So much care has obviously gone into the choice of the extracts that it is a pity that the editor does not give us what he is obviously well qualified to provide: a brief note by way of introduction to each section. It would not only encourage a more systematic use of the book, but would help to show the uninitiated how each contribution fits into the book from which it is taken and into the tradition of which it is a part. This is especially necessary in the first section, on God, where the choice of writers is most enterprising. Instead of the usual battery of pseudoscholastic syllogisers, we have extracts from Lavelle, Le Senne and Sciacca. Sciaccas article is on the conditions which a valid proof for the existence of God must fulfil, and his approach is akin to that of Dom Illtyd Trethowan or Dr Mascall. He points out that merely to speak of the concept, God, in a manner which does not correspond to the way in which such an awareness arises and exists within us is to end up by speaking of something else: a demonstration of Gods existence independent of religious awareness is a demonstration of something quite different. Not that Sciacca accepts the view that we have a simple intuition of Gods existence; he wishes, however, to distinguish between clearly lived experience and rational demonstration. Since God is not known to us directly, demonstration becomes necessary, but such a demonstration can and must draw its power from our clearly lived experience of God. Our primary awareness of God is obscure and confused; we learn that we are not the principle of our own being, in the sense that in our discovery of the necessary and objective nature of truth, and of the character of moral obligation, we discover that we are not the source of that nature but dependent upon it.
The Downside review | 1959
John Coulson
THE discussion of moral problems is never a luxury. It is forced upon us by a host of unpleasant facts teddy boys, the withering away of the family, nuclear anarchy and the even more unpleasant conviction that all these problems seem to be beyond the power of our community to control until we can speak with less divided voices on the nature of moral authority. Those of us who care become angrier as we become uneasier, and we strike out not only at the delinquents but at what appear to be the triflers, particularly at those linguistic philosophers who seem to be concerned only to produce bigger and better cross-word puzzles while Christendom disintegrates. But everything has a beginning even an interest in cross-word puzzles and linguistic analysis often begins when boredom gives way to anger at the bludgeoning we receive from the pious platitudes of pulpit, platform and pressabout we stand before the bar of history, or when we have pulled the ship of state off the rocks, we can go off in quest of the beautiful, We realise, of course, that the trouble arises when we speak as though values existed and could be distinguished and identified as we distinguish and identify tables and chairs; but it is very hard not to talk about history, beauty or conscience as though, in a special sense, of course, they were tables and chairs at a fancy dress ball. We can, however, hardly resent the logical analyst if he decides to put an end to the masquerade. If he succeeds in showing that such terms can be neither satisfactorily defined nor applied without ambiguity and contradiction, we may find ourselves held to be guilty of having falsely hypostatized beauty, of using history
The Downside review | 1956
John Coulson
I N his book Philosophical Style, Professor Blanchard gives an amusing illustration of the licence which we have come to allow philosophers in their treatment of the Kings English. Speaking of a young philosopher, he says : He is writing a book on metaphysics; (and) the clearness with which he thinks he understands and his total inability to express what little he knows will make his fortune as a philosopher. But have we, on the other hand, any right to demand from a philosopher that sensitivity to language which we demand from the educated layman or, more especially, from the poet and the novelist ? It is strange at a time when all British and many continental philosophers are so excessively preoccupied with the analysis of language that philosophy should be so badly written. We are put down by such expressions as ought-statements, topic-neutral, first-order propositions, and we are provoked into assuming that this use or abuse of our language indicates not a special sensitivity to it but the reverse. Are there any truly philosophical grounds for exploring such a prejudice? I believe there are and that Coleridges warning in the Biographia Literaria needs to be heeded by the contemporary philosopher: language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. In fairness to the philosophical party in power, it is important to remember why a philosopher is bound to have difficulties with language of a kind quite peculiar to his occupation, for philosophical thinking is uniquely reversible. This is because the philosopher is in the position of one who goes over the ground twice and his knowledge is not of something we did not know before, but of something we had known all along and now come to see in a new light. We gain this knowledge when we are obliged to examine some well-worn statement such as we are free to act, or
