Robert Miner

The Difficulties of Mercy: Reading Thomas Aquinas on Misericordia

In the Questions on charity in the ST (2a2ae, qq. 23-46), Aquinas considers at length the vices opposed to charity, omitting altogether any Question on a vice opposed to mercy. What does the omission reveal about mercy and its difficulties? First, I reject ready-to-hand explanations of the omission. Second, I consider the relation between mercy and compassion, showing that for Thomas the primary impediments to compassion are less vices than psychological forces irreducible to any single vice. Third, I turn to a different set of obstacles to mercy – acts that can arise from compassion, but do not help (and often harm) the person in need. Given these difficulties, how can Thomas take the practice of virtuous mercy to be generally possible? I conclude with a discussion of suffering and the gift of wisdom.

Thomas Aquinas’s Hopeful Transformation of Peter Lombard’s Four Fears

Where there is hope, there is fear—since the uncertainty of hope’s object implies the fear of not attaining it. This truth, so evident at the level of the natural passions, finds analogical expression on the supernatural plane. Or so Thomas Aquinas suggests by linking the theological virtue of hope to the gift of fear. But just why does the infused virtue of hope operate in tandemwith fear? And what sort of fear? That Thomas comes at these questions by deploying a distinction between four kinds of fear—worldly, servile, initial, filial—is well known. Equally evident is the fact that Thomas derives the fourfold distinction from Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Book 3, Distinction 34. From these two facts, it may seem that Thomas simply takes over Lombard’s scheme, cutting and pasting it into his own framework with minimal alteration. Inwhat follows, I shall argue that the differences between Lombard’s treatment and that of Thomas go much deeper than initial appearances indicate. Far from being derivative, Thomas’s handling of the fourfold distinction innovates on Lombard in ways that have not yet been sufficiently understood. To attain this understanding is a necessary precondition of grasping the 2a2ae’s treatment of hope as a theological virtue. In what follows, my aim is to show how and why Thomas’s consideration of fear diverges from, and improves upon, that of Lombard. I proceed in four steps. First, I begin with the common ground between Thomas and Lombard. Both recognize the problem of reconciling fear’s status as an eternal gift of the Holy Spirit, found even in angels and the blessed, with multiple indications that fear simply does not exist in heaven. What is more, both offer a similar solution to the problem—and exhibit similar hesitations about the solution’s adequacy. Second, I will show that despite the genuine affinities, Thomas’s approach to fear differs significantly from that of Lombard. Unlike Lombard, Thomas does not deploy the fourfold distinction primarily for the sake of solving a technical problem in theology. Rather, he sees each type of fear in relation to the end of “turning to God” (conversio ad Deum), and so places the fourfold distinction within a different framework. This new placement has consequences in particular for servile fear, whose substantial goodness Thomas affirms in away that Lombard does not. Third, I give closer attention to the different ways in which Lombard and Thomas handle the distinction between servile and fil-

Leo Strauss's Adherence to Nietzsche's “Atheism From Intellectual Probity”

Abstract Did Leo Strauss bid a clear “farewell to the atheism from probity, and thus to his own youthful commitment to modern philosophy” in his 1935 Introduction to Philosophy and Law, as David Janssens claims? In this essay I hold that he did not. I argue as follows: (1) Those who appeal to a footnote of the 1935 Introduction to Philosophy and Law to justify the claim that Strauss criticizes probity by contrasting it with the “love of truth” have not read the footnote with sufficient care; (2) Though Strauss criticizes versions of intellectual probity that degenerate into dogmatism, the 1935 Introduction does not contain a critique of atheism from intellectual probity; (3) Strauss does not intend the apparent critique of Nietzsche that appears in the 1962 Preface to the English edition of Spinozas Critique of Religion as a serious refutation of Nietzsches atheism; (4) While Strausss estimation of Socrates is perhaps generally higher than that of Nietzsche, his thinking about Socrates does not genuinely depart from Nietzsche, at least regarding the atheism from intellectual probity.

Nietzsche's Fourfold Conception of the Self

Abstract Struck by essentialist and anti-essentialist elements in his writings, Nietzsches readers have wondered whether his conception of the self is incoherent or paradoxical. This paper demonstrates that his conception of the self, while complex, is not paradoxical or incoherent, but contains four distinct levels. Section I shows Schopenhauer as Educator to contain an early description of the four levels: (1) a persons deepest self, embracing all that cannot be educated or molded; (2) a persons ego; (3) a persons “ideal” or “higher self”; (4) a persons “true self” or “true nature”. In the remaining three sections, I show that Nietzsche develops and enriches this conception, without ever abandoning it. Section II treats the fourfold conception as it appears in Human, All Too Human. Section III interrogates relevant passages in the Gay Science, showing that while Nietzsche speaks of artful self-fashioning (as Alexander Nehamas emphasizes), he also pays due regard to the sense in which we are not our own creations. Section IV turns to the “deepest” level of the self, consisting of motives and drives. Drawing primarily upon Daybreak and Beyond Good and Evil, I show that Nietzsche regards neither the drives nor their hierarchical ordering as things that we construct.

Introduction: Why Montaigne and Nietzsche?

“I know of only one writer whom, in point of honesty, I can rank with Schopenhauer, and even above him, and that is Montaigne. The fact that such a man has written truly adds to the joy of living on this earth,” wrote Nietzsche in 1874. Nietzsche reveres Montaigne as he reveres no other author. To look at Montaigne with Nietzschean eyes reveals dimensions of the Essais frequently overlooked by other readings. This book is to be read not as an exercise in influence-tracing, but as a sustained dialogue between Montaigne and Nietzsche. The next five chapters interrogate the two writers on particular topics—scepticism, perspectivism, the drives, the free spirit, and asceticism. The final two chapters examine an idea with which both Montaigne and Nietzsche were obsessed, the idea of greatness. An Epilogue accepts Nietzsche’s invitation to take Montaigne as one of his judges.

Nietzsche on Greatness

This chapter turns to Nietzsche’s idea of greatness, describing Nietzsche’s appropriation of Montaigne’s distinction between greatness dependent upon exempla and the quite different greatness that belongs to the free spirit. Though Nietzsche praises the latter, he does not hold that the free spirit’s freedom is the highest greatness. On the contrary, he claims that freedom is a means to a higher greatness. Before probing the content of this higher greatness, this chapter elucidates the dependence of Nietzsche’s thinking in Thus Spoke Zarathustra on two notions central to Montaigne. One is physiological (healthy cultivation of the body), the other is psychological (finding the way to oneself). After this intermezzo, this chapter proceeds to consider two logically independent claims that Nietzsche makes about greatness: that greatness lies in the creation of values, and that the “formula” for the highest greatness is “amor fati.”

The Free Spirit

This chapter turns directly to the notion of freedom, attending to the psychological type that Nietzsche takes Montaigne to incarnate—the “free spirit.” For Montaigne, freedom is the avoidance of servitude—whether servitude to other people or to one’s own passions or habits. Freedom also extends to the free use of the understanding, possible only for those able to overcome pernicious habits of thought promoted by fear, superstition, and custom. Montaigne understands freedom to denote both “free living” and “free thinking.” The chapter shows that Nietzsche draws inspiration from both aspects of Montaigne as he displays the free spirit’s development. At each stage of its development, the free spirit takes up a challenge that Montaigne has anticipated and engaged within the Essais. Here the analysis attends to the sustained conversation with Montaigne that Nietzsche conducts in the lesser-known works of his “middle period,” as well as in contemporaneous notebook entries.

Overcoming Asceticism and Cultivating the Body

This chapter continues to probe the ideal of the free spirit. It focuses on one of its particular aspects, the “cultivation of the body” (as Montaigne calls it), so as to avoid excessively “spiritualizing” the free spirit. Perhaps the most visible sign of Montaigne’s free-spiriting is the freedom with which he talks about his body. Food, drink, sex, melons, buttocks, kidney stones, excrement, climate, dietary habits, his penis—these are among the topics of the Essais. Montaigne not only treats ascetic hatred of the body in general, but also singles out for special ridicule the perspectives in which human sexuality appears as something shameful. Here Nietzsche follows Montaigne, extending and deepening Montaigne’s critique in his own genealogical attempts to uncover the origins of guilt about sexuality. Perhaps surprisingly, he is more optimistic than Montaigne about the prospects for uniting healthy sexuality to friendship and even marriage.

Montaigne on Greatness

This chapter and the next interrogate the highest ideal of both authors, denoted by the term “greatness.” Far from simply being an advocate of “easygoing humanism,” Montaigne is fascinated by greatness. Montaigne generally rejects what he calls “eminent greatness” in favor “greatness without a name.” Such greatness turns out to be a democratized ideal of greatness. Even though Montaigne rejects the “great man idea of greatness,” he does not dispense with the need for particular examples of greatness. Accordingly, this chapter reflects on the way in which Montaigne presents his reader with models as diverse as Cato, Socrates, and Epaminondas. Though such exempla are important, Montaigne ultimately holds that the highest greatness cannot consist in the imitation of others. On the contrary, it requires an extraordinary degree of truthfulness about oneself, along with a concerted effort to live in fidelity to what Montaigne calls one’s “master form.”

Gay Science and the Practice of Perspectivism

Against pictures of philosophy as somber or gloomy, Montagine offers a “gay and sociable wisdom” continuous with a tradition of la gaya scienza that goes back to the Provencal troubadours. Nietzsche locates Montaigne in this tradition and takes his own place in it. At the same time, he departs from Montaigne by calling his own project a Wissenschaft, a “science.” After showing how Nietzsche combines science and cheerfulness, this chapter turns to the perspectivism that lies at the core of both Montaigne and Nietzsche. It moves from Montaigne’s perspectivism, showing that it cannot be reduced to scepticism, to that of Nietzsche, whose perspectivism is not to be confused with those whom Bernard Williams calls truth “deniers,” since it proceeds in the service of knowledge. The analysis concludes by interpreting Nietzsche’s perspectivism in a way that does justice to both its playful character and its capacity to serve knowledge.