Operatio sequitur esse? vel esse sequitur operationem?

For those of you ladies and gentlemen who might for some reason read my blog but who have not devoted several years of your life to the study of a language on life support, the title of this post translates to "operation follows being? or being follows operation?"  I apologize for any pedantic impressions.  :-)

Today, in philosophical anthropology, we are studying a work by Julian Marias about personhood, a much-contested topic since the time of Descartes and especially Jean-Paul Sartre.  Traditionally in Scholastic thought, the definition of "person", according to Sts. Boethius and Thomas Aquinas, has been an "individual substance of a rational nature."  This held as the academic standard up until the time of Descartes, whose cogito, ergo sum changed the manner in which people tended to look at this reality; his principle of skepticism came to introduce what is now known as the mind-body problem, which has only recently been attacked by modern neuroscience in the work of men like Searle and Ramachandran (but mostly Searle.)  This mind-body problem introduced the perpetual albatross of dualism into attempts to study the human person, which roughly (at the time) divided philosophy into rationalists and empiricists, then led to the essentialistic views of Kant and Hegel, and eventually led to the Continental existentialism and the movements which arose from it, such as structuralism and post-structuralism.

In Continental thought, Jean-Paul Sartre proposed that man's existence, his being here-and-now, is prior to his essence, his "what he is to become", such that man defines himself in the absence of a God Who defines him in his creation.  This self-definition occurs throughout history by man's choices and the acts which arise from those choices, such that man's "being" (in the sense of what he will be) is defined by his "doing" (in the sense of his doing something in his now-existence.)  This led visibly to the thought of the modern feminist movement, both first- and second-wave, in which gender, that much-controverted term, became a matter of what woman chooses to make herself.  This was, historically, held forth in the longtime relationship between Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the pioneer of the Continental feminist movement.

Marias proposes that when we ask "what it is" about something, we are not inquiring into its "personhood", but its "facticity", to use Sartre's term: that state of being-now which is the result of the becoming men and women choose.  When we ask "who it is", we are in some sense asking about its futurity, the character of its self-determination.  Sartre speaks of existence, the facticity, as a solid thing, which is in some sense no longer the person, but merely circumstance; the essence, on the other hand, is a fluidity, something that changes depending upon the way men or women choose.  Thus, to Sartre, de Beauvoir and Marias, the person is not something one may speak of here-and-now in time, but something which, really, can only be spoken of as a "project": something which by being "flung forward" in time, "projected", is condemned to freedom of self-determination.  This accords, in some sense, with our perceptions; I am not, having chosen to sin or to resist sin, according to the same personal circumstance as I was before I did so.  This allows for a massive amount of, so to speak, wiggle room in the understanding of the person, in that the person is in no way definite as person.  Personhood can be everything or nothing; its definition lies in the choosing, which is able to be many different things until it is determined.

While this option is attractive to many, it needs to address whether there is actually a meta-reason to posit this idea that "being follows operation."  And in fact, we already have a definition provided that states precisely the opposite from medieval philosophy.  It is important, before we side unilaterally with one side or the other (and they are, in principle, mutually exclusive, although whether there can be some accounting for the other side on either end will become clearer later) that we understand both.  Whereas Sartre, Beauvoir and Marias start with the action as determining the facticity, which is not the personhood in their view, Boethius starts with what they would consider the facticity and moves to the action.  It is a first principle, not just of philosophy but of any science whatsoever as such, that something cannot come from nothing.  Some think that quantum mechanics escapes this principle, but this is either a misunderstanding of "something", "nothing", or "quantum mechanics."  This is no less true in the case of personhood.  If I am able to act, "I" must be; if I am able to act in a certain way, I must be a certain way.  A hammer made of chalk cannot hammer a steel nail.  A plant cannot compose music.  An animal, even a gorilla or a dolphin, cannot "discuss" rational topics, but can merely convey emotional responses, and that through a certain complex memorization of sensations and a power of instinctual discernment.

Boethius, moving from this principle, examines the understanding we have of people.  People are always individual subsistences; they are never species.  This is perhaps the first thing we realize about them; a person is an "I", and with respect to that I, other things are other than them.  "I" am, in some respect, here and now, my blood, my bones, my eyes, my brown skin, my outfittings, my rational apprehension of things, and other such properties and accoutrements.  Other things are not "I".  People are always "substances", composed of form and matter, a soul and a body, which is as much as Marias is willing to admit; a body, because we require a body for sensation of particulars, for the acts which constitute our life, and a soul, because we require a form according to which we are materially determined to those powers (in our organs, DNA, etc, but not as those things), as well as an immaterial principle by which one is able to have unchanging, immaterial knowledge of universals such as the figures of mathematics.

Lastly, people are always "of a rational nature"; animals and plants are not people, and even when we jokingly or semi-seriously attribute a personal character to them, we call it "anthropomorphism", "human-likeness."  Animals cannot determine themselves the way man can; they do not become domesticated in nature, but feral, and it is characteristic of the relation of man to creation as a steward that they become "pets", having a certain affectionate relation to us.  This is not heartless reasoning, though it may seem so to those unfamiliar with the way we speak about things in philosophy, or the addle-pated few who want to propose a rationality we simply do not see in creatures we see every day of our life on the way to class.  Only human beings have this sort of rationality.  Some might propose that angels are "rational", but this, aside from complicating the argument needlessly, means something more nuanced in angels and God, and is immaterial to this argument.  Human beings discuss philosophy, create art, determine means to their ends, choose some proximate ends as means to ultimate ends; animals do only what their sensitive life requires, and that by instinct and discernment, which are already determined in many respects.  This is particularly important in the discussion of people, because it is a most manifest thing that the way the reason of human beings influences their sensation, their artistic sensibilities, and the degree to which a human being is inclined to contemplation of the causes of things determines the way they are in those ways which for us define their personhood, although it may be that some aspects of personality, which is probably an accident of personhood to my knowledge, are themselves formed in some other way.

With this consideration, one can begin to compare the examples.  A person, for Boethius, is body and soul, possessing certain powers of self-determination, the sensitive principle, the intellectual principle and the will which follows from that intellectual principle.  These powers determine the person in those ways in which we realize that people become, for example, more mature, more learned, more experienced.  The operation of the person is the potential of the person, but in this conception, the potential is founded upon the actuality already present; my ability to study personhood is founded upon my ability to discuss philosophy, which is founded upon my sensation of things, and my ability to express that study is founded upon my being organized, having fingers, the ability to use tools, to type and to act according to the common language between my audience and myself.  Thus the potentiality of the person, the becoming, the operatio, is founded upon the actuality of the person, the being, the esse.  This makes the most manifest sense, because this is the way we think.  When we construct a tool, we have the understanding of what it will be in our mind; first, I need to hammer a nail, so I need to make a hammer; and since the "doing-well" of hammering a nail requires a head and a handle, the hammer ought to have this form; and of course, the hammer must be made of a sufficiently hard material, or I can't hammer the nail; and I will need these mediate tools to make the hammer to be so.  These are Aristotle's four causes, final, formal, material and efficient.  These are taken directly from our experience conditioned by our rationality.  It is part and parcel with the manner in which we, analogously, "create" that we should think thus.

For Sartre, on the other hand, this is precisely the problem.  Sartre was no mere conventional atheist; Sartre was a hard-bitten philosophical atheist, whose entire philosophy of existentialism, he says at one point, is determined by the principle that it is an attempt to explain how man is if not created by God, the immutable.  Accordingly, his conception of "person" is totally reversed; man is not a being for which "operatio sequitur esse" holds, but precisely the opposite.  The first thing in the creation of a thing is meaning, as in the case of the hammer's final cause, the hammering of a nail; God does not give us meaning; therefore man must create his own, so that man is, so to speak, creating himself in his own, not-yet-existent image.  Thus something is, according to Sartre, coming from nothing; man "becomes what he is"; he is not yet, and will be, but must always be becoming.  His or her very existence, his or her "humanity" is a project, a "going-forward."  His or her esse follows his or her operatio.  Accordingly, his or her formal, material, and efficient causes will be, even in their finitude, a temporary state; I may be such-and-such a thing now, but I will not be thus after I choose; my persona, coming from the term "mask", is fundamentally mutable.  My identity, my gender, my "what-I-am" is continually changed by my "who-I-am", and my every state of being determined by choice.

Now it seems that it is not enough today to say that something makes sense; in order to make one's case, one must always "prove it."  But it is the hazard of these discussions, and the hazard of the whole philosophical undertaking since Descartes, that all would-be Johnny-come-latelies to the game need simply deny the principles (sensation can be trusted, something can't come from nothing, something cannot be and not be in the same respect at the same time) in order to invalidate (to their mind) anything one says; thus Descartes, unwittingly, drove a wedge into the ability of man to truly be man.  So it might be good, before I begin my critiques proper to say that I'm trusting people reading this to use their common sense, except that after Descartes, Locke proceeded to try and redefine even that from its classical usage, such that it ceased to mean anything in short order.  It used to mean that faculty of sensation by which a human being unites the various external sensibles (color, sound, etc) into one object (Socrates, my dog Wally, a plant of a certain sort), such that asking someone to use their common sense here would mean bringing all the different things I've said together and comparing them as a whole, but Locke changed it to mean "knowledge that everyone has in some measure", a phenomenon that, for Cartesian reasons given above, has since become a sort of begging after the non-existent.

Nevertheless, I present my case.  I disagree with Sartre precisely because I am such a thing that is able to disagree with him, which requires that I understand his terms, such that I need to be able to read his terms, such that here-and-now I need to be a certain way, and I must remain this way however much I may do what he considers a redefining.  I take it that however it may be that my actions may change me, however it is that my personhood is dynamic, nevertheless, like all potencies to change, that dynamism is founded in and implicit in my static being.  That static implicitude is in my being rational.  It is by my rationality that I apprehend time, the number of motion according to before and after.  It is by my rationality that my sensations are changed to being the sensations of a beast to those of a man, such that my knowledge can condition my sensation.  It is by my being composed of this soul and this body, a body of such-and-such a sort, such that I can sense at all; it is by my being constituted as capable of coming to these sensations, this knowledge, that I am able to become so.  And just as a hammer of chalk cannot hammer a nail, and a Venus fly-trap cannot develop into a reasoning being, and a monkey cannot produce Hamlet except by sheer accident, an accident which by nature is able to be and not to be, such that it may never be so, so I could not be me now if I was not such-and-such a thing at my adolescence, my birth, and my conception, etc.  I did not make me me, except by being somehow capable of being me prior to becoming so.  That capability is in my being, at some time, a static not-me which nevertheless was.  That static not-me was not my own production, but that of my parents and God.  And this is the key: that for me to be me, at some time (said loosely), I must, like the hammer, have been a final cause in the mind of God, some purpose which entered into His creation, known before I was formed in the womb.  This is part of what the Church means, mechanically speaking in respect of the creation of the form of a body, when she, in her wisdom, says that life begins at conception.

I am not simply by having chosen thus prior to being simply, without qualification; even Sartre says that we are condemned to freedom.  In order to be condemned to freedom, one must first be directed towards it; in order to be thus directed, one must be.  In order to be, one must become by some other's agency.  A thing cannot cause itself this way.  And in order to be free, or condemned thus, one must become in such a way that one becomes free or condemned thus.  This indicates an Intelligence behind creation, which made creatures thus.  And indeed, to accept this reversal of essence, what Sartre rightly sees as pertaining to becoming, and existence, which he rightly sees as pertaining to being-here, is against the faith.  Thus, I cannot without extreme reserve say that I agree with Sartre, although none can deny that he was insightful.  I would say that this invalidates a large portion of modern feminism.  However, Sartre, de Beauvoir and Marias were not blind; I have admitted as much in the last few sentences.  One must try to reconcile what is true in what they say with what the Church herself and reason itself necessitates, since even amidst the rough one may sometimes find diamonds.

As I've said above, being precedes operation in principle.  Yet in the procedure from that principle, as I have also said implicitly, there are ways in which being follows operation.  If the definition given by Boethius is both true and comprehensive (as I do, indeed, believe it is) it must be reconcilable with the true phenomena.  It is true that man determines himself.  Sin is an evident example of this; the one who looks at pornography degrades their capacity to enter into relationships, for example.  Virtue is also a good example; the ones who act in a courageous manner, seeking to obtain courage itself, sometimes do so, such that the courageous thing becomes pleasant, and they seek it in every circumstance as part of their happiness.  We do, indeed, determine ourselves, according to our free will.  And this will is, indeed, influenced principally by our knowledge; one cannot love what one does not know.  Yet this itself is in the context of our nature.  Sin  and vice detract from our rationality and turn us into beasts.  Lewis saw this, and made it explicit in the case of the Talking Beasts; a Beast treated badly eventually gives into such a treatment, changes themself, and loses the ability to talk.  Virtue, on the contrary, makes us more in accord with our rationality, the highest activity and perfection of our nature as nature; Edmund, after betraying his family, fought the White Witch alongside them on the battlefield.  Supernatural virtue adds a whole new dimension to this; our very nature, created good, is raised to a supernatural perfection in grace, such that we may enter into contemplation of God in love.  This, indeed, is a further determination in the accidental cooperation of the will, such that in a real way, despite our nature as accidental movers (for in Him we live and move and have our being) we really do participate in the decision to be changed "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."  And leading the discussion back to de Beauvoir, our model for this is not some upstart philosophers setting themselves against themselves, but Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin, who when asked if she would bear our salvation Himself in her womb responded "Let it be done to me according to your Word."

Our personhood is not acquired in mere liberty, which is really libertinism, but freedom, which is liberty in submission to just rule.  When we act against this freedom, this justice, we do not determine ourselves as people, but against our personhood.  We lose our personhood and become beasts, scratching in our dirt patches, encasing ourselves in the ice of our self.  We degrade our nature, losing our very humanity, becoming, as Nietzsche proposed, nothing more than beasts, learning "to dwell in deepest polar Hell, forgetting God and man."  As with most discussions of contemporary philosophy, one is led back into Nietzsche and the question of whether man can get "beyond good and evil."  But that is, perhaps, a question for another time.

There is a postscript of modern relevance.  Much has been made of modern feminism, both in its successes and its failures.  Within the Catholic tradition, there is a vast movement in attempting to move back to a true anthropological account of what femininity really is, a movement resisted almost unanimously (and with much animosity) by the feminist legacy of de Beauvoir.  I will not profess to go into specifics about what constitutes femininity; it would be folly to do so, as I am not a woman, cannot live that reality, do not wish to do so, and quite frankly cannot conceive of its special sufferings and blessings on a primordial, experiential level.  I can only profess to respect such femininity as having the greatest dignity, for it is as having that dignity with which we are called to revere Our Lady, the perfection of femininity in being sinless, immaculate.  Yet there is something which immediately follows from this conception of personhood.  Part of personhood is our facticity, our static being, and that static being includes our bodily character.  It is most evident to anyone who is not willfully blind or stupid that there are generally differences (barring the peculiarities of certain individuals who accordingly deal with those peculiarities as a different facticity, a special suffering, and accordingly deserve our respect) between men and women.  These differences in their generality constitute a unique facticity.  If there is such a unique facticity, and if as said above these facticities, like the facticity of a hammer, indicate a different final cause, why should we not soberly consider the claim that men and women are called to different identities as men and women?  This is not to say that these vocations do not overlap, often, or even that some particular women are not better than particular men at performing some particular act usually (in our feeble sight of vocation) attributed to men.  Rather, it is to say that there is a much richer ground to explore, one which includes anything true or good de Beauvoir or any of her followers had to say about femininity, in this more comprehensive and clear understanding of humanity and personhood.