Problem vs. Mystery - Jacques Maritain
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Here Jacques Maritain explains the difference between reason and
intellect in that reason is moving from one "problem" to another.
Intellect is the penetration into being, which he calls "mystery."
Problem and mystery are the two dimensions of cognition. Problem
knowledge is moving from thing to thing, as in science. Mystery
knowledge is staying in the same place with an ever deepening
understanding of the same thing, as in contemplation - Jim J. McCrea
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Maritain says:
The proper object of understanding is being. And being is a mystery,
either because it is too pregnant with intelligibility, too pure for our
intellect which is the case with spiritual things, or because its
nature presents a more or less impenetrable barrier to understanding, a
barrier due to the element of non-being in it. which is the case with
becoming, potency and above all matter.
The mystery we conclude is a fullness of being with which the intellect
enters into a vital union and into which it plunges without exhausting
it ... The Supreme "mystery" is the supernatural mystery which is the
object of faith and theology. It is concerned with the Godhead Itself,
the interior life of God, to which our intellect cannot rise by its
unaided natural powers. But philosophy and science also are concerned
with mystery, another mystery, the mystery of nature and the mystery of
being. A philosophy unaware of mystery would not be a philosophy.
Where then shall we discover the pure type of what I call the "problem"?
In a crossword puzzle, or an anagram. At this extreme there is no
ontological content [no being content]. There is an intellectual
difficulty with no being behind it. There is a logical difficulty, a
tangle of concepts, twisted by a mind which another mind seeks to
unravel. When the tangle has been unraveled, the difficulty solved,
there is nothing further, nothing more to be known. For the only thing
to be discovered was how to disentangle the threads.
... In fact every cognitive act, every form of knowledge presents these
two aspects. The mystery and the problem are combined. The mystery is
present because there is always some degree of being, and its depth and
thickness must be penetrated. The problem also because our nature is
such that we can penetrate being only by our conceptual formulae, and
the latter by their nature compose a problem to be solve.
The problem aspect naturally predominates where knowledge is least
ontological, for example, when it is primarily concerned with mental
constructions built up around a sensible datum - as in empirical
knowledge, and in the sciences of phenomena ... purely ideal as in
mathematics; or yet again when its object is mental constructions of the
practical intellect as in craftsmanship and applied science.
... The mystery aspect, as we should expect, predominates where
knowledge is most ontological, where it seeks to discover, either
intuitively or by analogy, being in itself and the secrets of being; the
secrets of being, of knowledge and of love, of purely spiritual
realities, of the First Cause. The mystery aspect is predominate in the
philosophy of nature and still more in metaphysics. And most of all in
theology.
Where the problem aspect prevails one solution follows another: where
one ends, the other begins. There is a rectilinear progress of
successive mental views or ideal perspectives, of different ways of
conceptualizing the object. And if one solution is incomplete, as is
always the case, it is replaced by its successor. It is as when the
landscape changes and scene succeeds to scene as the traveler proceeds
on his way. Similarly the mind is on the move. Progress of this kind is
progress by substitution.
On the other hand where the mystery aspect prevails the intellect has to
penetrate more and more deeply into the *same* object. The mind is
stationary turning around a fixed point. Or rather it pierces further
and further into the same depth. This is progress in the same place,
progress by deepening... Thus we can read and reread the same book, the
Bible for example, and every time discover something new and more
profound.
Here knowledge is not exactly constituted by the addition of parts,
still less by the substitution of one part for another. It is the whole
itself that grows or rather is more deeply penetrated... as the
indivisible whole and in all its parts at once.
At this point we must distinguish three kinds of intellectual thirst and three corresponding means of quenching them.
In the first case, where the problem aspect predominates I thirst to
know the answer to my problem. And when I have obtained the answer I am
satisfied: that particular thirst is quenched. But I thirst for
something else. And so interminably.
This is the water of science, useful and bitter.
In the second case where the mystery aspect predominates I thirst to
know reality, being under one or other of its modes, the ontological
mystery. When I know it I drink my fill. But I thirst and continue to
thirst for the same thing, the same reality which at once satisfies and
increases my desire. Thus I never cease quenching my thirst from the
same spring of water which is ever fresh and yet I always thirst for it.
This is the water of created wisdom.
In the third case - the vision of God's Word face to face - my thirst is
once again different. I thirst to see God and when I see Him my thirst
will be completely quenched. I shall thirst no longer.
This is the water of uncreated wisdom of which it is
written " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall
give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall
give him shall become in him a fountain of water
springing up unto everlasting life." (John iv. 13-14)
The climax of spiritual disorder is to confuse the
third of these thirsts with the first, by treating the
things of eternal life, the vision of God, as an object of
the first thirst that namely which belongs to the first
case of which I was just speaking, the category of
knowledge in which the problem predominates. For
.this is to treat beatitude, not as a mystery, our
mystery par excellence, but as a problem or series
of problems, like the solution of a puzzle. As a
result of this confusion Leibnitz can declare that
beatitude is a moving from one pleasure to another,
and Lessing that he prefers endless research to the
possession of truth which would be monotonous, and
Kant considers the boredom which it would seem
God must experience in the everlasting contemplation
of Himself.
But it is also a radical disorder to confuse the second
thirst with the first by treating philosophy, metaphysics,
wisdom a category of knowledge in which reverence
for the mystery of being is the highest factor as an
object of the first thirst, pre-eminently a problem to
answer, a puzzle to solve. Those who make this
mistake attempt to make progress in wisdom by
proceeding from puzzle to puzzle, replacing one
problem by another, one Weltanschauung by its
successor, as though in virtue of an irrefragable law.
Progress by substitution is required by the sciences of
phenomena, is their law, and the more perfectly they
realise their type the more progress they make. But
progress of this kind is not the law of wisdom. Its
progress is progress by an adhesion of the mind to
its object and a union with it increasingly profound,
progress as it were by a growing intimacy. And it
therefore requires as its indispensable prerequisite a
stable body of doctrine and a continuous intellectual
tradition.
From
A Preface to Metaphysics by Jacques Maritain
Maritain was one of the premier Catholic philosophers of the Twentieth century.
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