Here we must also recall what we have written in these pages about the immense priority that the purely spiritual sphere in the human person has over the vital-psychical sphere. How much more objective and more “full-bodied” (because more similar to God) is the rational insight into the essence of some object than the obscure notions and impressions which arise in the vital-psychical sphere? How much more objective is the luminous, free, consciously sanctioned response to a clearly grasped and understood value than dark drives and strivings, or mere blind feelings of sympathy and antipathy? To claim that the latter are “more objective” (because devoid of freedom and consciousness) than purely spiritual acts would be as absurd as asserting that the inability to sin, which we find in purely material objects such as stones and mere creatures such as fish, is something higher than what we find in the spiritual person, who alone is capable of the true antithesis to sin—namely, morally valuable attitudes such as fidelity, justice, purity, and kindness.
The spiritual person, however, is not only objective in an even higher sense than all other beings; he is also a much more organic being than all other living things (e.g., plants and animals). How can we discern the hierarchy among organic beings? By grasping the degree of a being’s inherent saturation with meaning, the extent to which the materia is governed by the forma, and the meaningfulness of its structural laws—all this constitutes the criterion of the organic.
Obviously, the spiritual person is, in this regard, enormously superior to plants and animals. In the person, we find a meaningfully conscious, “awakened” being that is aware of itself, but in plants and animals, we find either no consciousness at all, or merely a foggy consciousness bereft of the ability to perform meaningful acts. In the human being, there is a continuity of spiritual consciousness, a clear knowledge of self-identity in the sequence of individual experiences, and a continuous development of experience, but in animals, there is (at best) a discontinuous, momentary consciousness. The person is a rational being who is not only connected with his environment causally, but can touch it “intentionally” [that is, by being mentally present to it] and penetrate it in an act of knowing; he is capable of thinking, drawing inferences, and providing a meaningful motivation for his conduct. In an animal, however, we find, at most, mere sense impressions and instinctive reactions.
The person has freedom, responsibility, and the ability to possess moral values; but in the case of plants and animals, these are nowhere to be found. In the human person, there is a meaningful system of experiences: there is insight, emotional response, free will, and action; but in plants and animals, there is, at best, a merely causally linked sequence of impulses and modes of behavior. Although the word “organic” comes from the vital sphere, the real prototype of the organic among creatures is not any lower life-form, but rather the human being as a spiritual person. He stands much closer than plants and animals to the category of the genitum, non factum (begotten, not made).
The misunderstanding which gets in the way here is analogous to the one we previously encountered in the case of objectivity. Only the person is capable of producing the artificial. In the sphere of matter, the mechanical governs; in the sphere of life, the organic. In contrast to that which has grown, the artificial—or more specifically, that which has been “made” in an external way, such as machines or anything in the sphere of technology—necessarily presupposes a spiritual person. But this does not make the person into something artificial, neither the spiritual person himself, nor the real, essential depth of his inner life, nor even his behavior.
The predominance of the artificial in the epoch which was influenced by the liberalism of the Enlightenment; the triumphal march of technology during much of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth; the overgrowth of action when compared to contemplation; the primacy of a person’s achievements over his being as person; the relegating of all of modern life to the periphery of existence—modern life, with its haste and its hurry, its inner impatience which no longer leaves any time for an event to develop from within; in a word, its so-called “Americanism”—all this has devalued the person, who is viewed as the origin of everything that is non-organic and artificial. But the real path out of the dead-end street of the artificial back to the organic does not pass via the cult of the vital. It passes via the rediscovery of the real essence of the spiritual person and what constitutes his true center of gravity.
It is of the utmost importance to see how much more organic the specifically spiritual sphere in the human person is than the vital-psychical sphere. The lucid, rational penetration into the essence of an object is incomparably more organic than ethnically linked beliefs and convictions which form themselves “anonymously.” The freely sanctioned response to a value that is clearly grasped and understood is much more organic in its structure than the obscure, ethnically linked emotion of antipathy toward something that is perceived to be “foreign to the species.” In the former case, there is an incomparably more meaningful union with the object. In reality, the organic does not constitute an antithesis to that which is luminous, conscious, and free—for otherwise the “Father of lights,” who is the embodiment of all ratio and consciousness, would not be the causa exemplaris of all that is organic.
We must insist today with all possible emphasis that the true positive antithesis to the realm of the artificial and non-organic is not some obscure “stirring” of indefinable feelings and notions, but in fact the spiritual sphere in the human person—the sphere of the conscious “marriage” with being in a clear, lucid insight; in the value-response of a sanctioned love; in the free, meaningfully motivated will supported by the realm of objective values.
Similarly, to believe that the path to true community entails a rejection of the spiritual person, resulting in an affirmation of the cult of the vital and the vital-psychical sphere, is a pernicious mistake. First of all, we must note that community is possible only among persons, never among plants and animals. A community of dogs or cattle cannot exist. The specific structure of “community” as such necessarily presupposes the spiritual person. The notion that the appreciation of community rises in proportion to the debasement of the individual is a grave error which is wholly due to liberalism’s devaluation of the spiritual person.
When the person was mutilated by being detached from God, and the meaningful, free, immortal person destined for eternity was reduced to a meaningless bundle of sensations, it inevitably became impossible to recognize the essential orientation of the human person to community. The same mutilation of the person has also led to further misunderstandings—not only to misconceptions of the essence and value of community, but even a supposed antithesis between person and community. In reality, the failure to understand true community is born of the failure to recognize the true essence and value of the spiritual person. Every form of anti-personalism necessarily ends by replacing genuine community with a mass or a pan-psychic totality.
It is also necessary, however, to see that the communities anchored in the purely spiritual sphere of man are much more authentic, typical, and organic communities than those rooted in his vital-psychical sphere. The “ethnic community” that arises out of mere tribal peculiarities, common living habits, and shared customs or practices is not more “full-bodied,” organic, or profound than the nation which is anchored in the spiritual sphere, or the cultural and linguistic community which results from a consciously lived history. The nation not only stands much higher in value than the “ethnic community” which is anchored in the unconscious; it is also more organic in its structure because it encompasses a much higher realm of meaning.
This is true a fortiori of communities that are even higher than the nation, such as the family, marriage, and mankind. What a gulf separates the family from the clan. The clan is a community anchored in the vital-psychical sphere. It is based upon mere ties of kinship, certain common customs, and shared living habits. It is instinctive, sub-spiritual, obscure, and with
out content.
The family, however, is built upon the community of love in marriage, and the fact that children, as creatures endowed with immortal souls, have been entrusted to their parents by God—a fact which goes far beyond any mere ties of blood. It is built upon the task of educating children for life, and, above all, for God. It is built upon the creation of a spiritual milieu suffused with love and understanding, a milieu in which the human person can organically mature toward his vocation. But without an ultimate understanding of the essence and value of the spiritual person, and without recognizing that such a community must, by its very essence, be anchored in the spiritual sphere of the human being, the high dignity and value of this community simply cannot be grasped.
Only the rehabilitation of the human being as a spiritual person and the specifically spiritual sphere in him (as opposed to the vital-psychical sphere), only a radical overcoming of the anti-personalism we meet in Bolshevism and National Socialism, can fulfil the longing of a humanity disappointed by liberalism—the longing for genuine community, for the organic, and for the objective.
Anti-personalism, when carried through to its ultimate consequences, is always atheism—indeed, is the hatred of God. The assertion that the non-personal is higher, more comprehensive, and greater than the personal constitutes an insurmountable obstacle on the path to God. We encounter it in every form of pantheism, as well as in pure atheism. It is the original source of all substitutes for God. Anti-personalism is incompatible with all Revelation. Even in formal terms, it revolts against the person of the God who speaks to us, and still more against the God who loves us with an infinite love. Thus anti-personalism necessarily bars the way to knowledge of the true God, in whom the yearning for the ultimate foundation of all that is objective and organic is satisfied at last.
That only God can provide such satisfaction becomes most obvious when we consider that all human yearnings to be set free of error and perversion must, in the end, lead to Christ. “Christ is the solution to all difficulties,” says one Church Father. As long as we rely on ourselves rather than the God-man, Jesus Christ, absurdities of every kind—including the perversion and violation of the hierarchy of being—cannot be avoided.
The starting point for supernatural life in the human person—both for an objective, ontic community with Christ as well as a personally lived and experienced community with Him—is the spiritual person, the purely spiritual sphere in us. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” says the Gospel according to St. John (1:12–13).
Thus, anti-personalism signifies a separation from God and the supernatural link to God through Christ. Furthermore, it denies the highest and most authentic community of human beings with each other, the unity of the members of the corpus Christi mysticum (Mystical Body of Christ). For this ultimate objective community, which is possible only through a free gift of God, comes to the human being qua spiritual person; that is to say, it presupposes the specifically spiritual nature of the human person. All sanctification of the vital-psychical and purely corporeal sphere of human beings is secondary, insofar as it presupposes a human nature formed by the Spirit or, to put it another way, insofar as it presupposes that grace attaches first of all to the spiritual person.
The incompatibility of everything connected in even the remotest sense with anti-personalism, everything that is in any way influenced by the present-day revolt against the spirit in National Socialism and Bolshevism, must be relentlessly exposed and unmasked. What, then, is the great imperative of the present hour? We must overcome the devaluation of the spirit. We must put the vital sphere and “blood” in their proper place. And we must rehabilitate the spiritual person in his true essence and value. In the night of contemporary anti-personalism, the words of the Psalm on the human person shine brightly: “Thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor” (Ps 8:5).
THE CHAOS OF OUR TIMES AND THE HIERARCHY OF VALUES
Der christliche Ständestaat
January 7, 1934
Here is a short excerpt from one of the essays that adds something important to the previous essays: von Hildebrand speaks about the need people feel to get beyond a way of living that is overly mechanized and controlled and to recover a more organic and abundant way of living. He argues here that the Nazi ideology is completely incapable of meeting this need, and that its teaching and practice is in fact opposed to the more abundant life that people long for.
The same persons who reduce the spirit to a mere function of one’s racial pedigree, who maintain that personality is a result of membership in an “elevated” race, and for whom physical health constitutes the ultimate standard of judgment, also display a shocking ignorance of the true meaning, value, and mystery of life. It is not just that the individuals who proclaim this cult of the vital sphere exhibit markedly psychopathic traits. They also attempt to mechanize life in accordance with a typically rationalistic attitude—an attitude whose ramifications are on display for all to see in their mad idea that they can “breed” human beings, in their arbitrary interference with human procreative capacity, and in their “rationing” of human reproduction.
Do we not encounter, in such measures of the Third Reich, the spirit of mechanistic rationalization, so antagonistic to life; the spirit of irreverent arrogance, as depicted by Goethe in the character of Faust’s assistant, Wagner; the spirit that reduces the world to an insurance agency; the spirit that strives to remove all risk from the world—despite that fact that life’s deepest gesture, life’s most profound and intimate act, is precisely the taking of a risk in which the person gives himself superabundantly? And does not the idea of a “total” state, one which interferes in every area of life and sets up commissions to “regulate” its mysteries—thereby suffocating all freedom—represent a total failure to recognize the true essence and value of life as something that, by its very nature, flows and pulsates freely? Truly, the present-day trend that pits life against the spirit, fancying itself to be the conqueror of rationalism, is in fact thoroughly permeated by mechanistic materialism and the very irreverence which characterized the Enlightenment.
AUTHORITY AND LEADERSHIP
Der christliche Ständestaat
December 10, 1933
This excerpt continues the thought of the previous excerpt.
Underlying these aberrations is a false belief in the power of the state to transform the world, a belief which is the foundation of socialism, of Bolshevism, and of National Socialism. Once man has become estranged from God he all too easily makes the state into a means of salvation.
It is at this point that we see the fundamental antithesis to the Christian view, which is also the view of Plato in the Republic. According to the view of the Church, the face of the earth cannot be renewed “from without” through laws of the state, but only “from within” through the transformation of each individual in Christ, through full and completely personal membership in the Mystical Body of Christ. Socialism believes, on the basis of its materialistic view of history, that a change of the economic order would transform earth into a paradise. Bolshevism wants to use blood and terror to replace the bourgeois type of human being with a new type. National Socialism thinks that it can create a “Germanic” type of human being with the brutal means of power available to a totalitarian state, through racial breeding, and through propaganda, and that it can call a new culture into life.
It is the old story of the search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Quite apart from the various ideals which these movements hope to attain, and their substantial incompatibility with the ideal of the Christian, they all share, formally speaking, a naïve, mechanical conception of the process through which the world can be inwardly transformed. They want to bring on changes by force “from without,” but these are possible only through the individual’s free will, which is su
pported by the Church’s stream of grace, guided by the Magisterium of the Church, and formed by Christ. They expect of the state things that by their essence are reserved to the Church.
MASS AND COMMUNITY
Der christliche Ständestaat
January 12, 1936
One main focus of von Hildebrand’s philosophical research throughout the late 1920s was political and social philosophy. This research culminated in many publications, most notably his 1930 book, Die Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft (The Metaphysics of Community). This philosophical work was the ideal preparation for the task that he undertook in Vienna by means of his journal. He often draws on this work whenever he analyzes the depersonalizing collectivism of Nazism and Bolshevism. In this essay he explains what it is to be absorbed in a mass, in contrast to living as a person in an authentic community.
It is a fact that people react very differently when they are alone and when they are in a mass gathering. How easy it is for harmless people, who would never be capable of brutality on their own, to get carried away to the point of violence in mass gatherings! Certain slogans that have no effect on single individuals can “trigger” enthusiasm, emotion, or rage in a mass gathering. How much more volatile and unstable is a mass of people than an individual!
It seems that the individual abandons himself to much more irresponsible and uncontrollable passions and instincts when he is part of a mass. This situation robs him of his perspective, suspends the rule of reason, and hands him over to irresponsibility. We need only think of threatening situations that involve some imminent danger. If a mass of people is present, panic breaks out so easily; people who would behave much more reasonably if they faced the same danger alone or only in a small group lose their heads and become irrational. The war psychosis and the mass movements in the political upheavals of recent years offer sufficient examples of such irresponsible mass reactions, and show us clearly how low the individual’s behavior patterns sink when he acts as a mere part of a mass gathering.
My Battle Against Hitler Page 35