MacIntyre's analysis of the history of moral enquiry reaches charts the rise of the Augustinian tradition in the middle ages. Augustinianism, as he outlines it, on the one hand, has a strong centre: all knowledge coheres around the divine. Knowledge is only gained from giving oneself over, by an act of faith, to an authority. It is confessional. But (and it is a big but) knowing in human terms is deeply affected by sin's distorting and disrupting effects. Pure knowledge is not possible because of sin.This might seem contradictory: it is certainly a tension in the heart of Augustinianism, and one that Calvinism (and for that matter Lutheranism) has struggled to resolve. Certainly, that is why Calvin and others give accounts of divine illumination being necessary for even basic knowledge of the world.
BUT: a huge challenge comes with the adoption of Aristotelianism into the Augustinian way of thinking, or the attempted adoption at least. Aristotelianism denies that there is a need for this fideistic first step: it has no account of the genesis of knowledge as an externally given thing. Augustinianism, after all, is Platonistic.
Can the two be reconciled? I await MacIntyre's further analysis: but in the meantime, let me just say this -
it is interesting that Aristotelianism was adapted in so wholesale a fashion by the 17th century Protestants when the roots of their movement were so markedly Augustinian. Could they really make this adaptation without betraying the true genius of Protestantism (as a particularly concentrated form of Augustinianism)?
1 comment:
A concerned reader wonders whether I have been hasty in suggesting the 17th century adopted Aristotelianism is such a wholesale fashion... I bet Richard Muller would paint a more complex picture!
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