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7/25/2019 Review of Peukert's Science, Action and Fundamental Theology
1/3
574 Dialogue XXVI (1987)
being causal with respect to other things), and there, it has it because it has the
status of essence. "Essence" expresses an ineluctable ontological contribution
which in creatures cannot be that ofesse. Such a contribution is only conceiva-
ble becausebothessence andessein creatures presuppose the divine causality.
(And I claim to be givingno
'existence of its own'', apart from esse, to created
essence, no esse essentiae .)
I would take as expressive of the general vision I am promoting the words of
St. Thomas in theDe ente:"Of substances, some are composite and some are
simple, and in both there
is
essence; but in simple [substances there
is
essence] in
a truer and more noble degree, according as, also, they have more noble being
[esse]:
for they are the cause of those which are composite, at least [this is true
of] the first simple substance, which is God."
4
I.e., the study is of essence.
Essenceisfound most truly of all in God (how far we are from a doctrine in which
"God has no essence" ). We grade essence by the grade of esse the thing
exhibits (since essence is that through which and in which a being[ens]has being
[esse]),and we grade thatesseby the efficient causal hierarchy. The efficient
cause has more noble esse than its effect.
One can see why Owens focusses onesseand uses it as the scientific principle.
It may seem a small difference to insist on, but I would, while keeping essence
and esse in parallel view, as does St. Thomas, take essence as the scientific
principle, while regarding the existence of creatures as the "property", in the
Aristotelian scientific schema. I think this would result in a greater appreciation
of the kinship between essence (or form) and existence, and so in a greater
appreciation of the intelligibility of existence.
I congratulate the Houston Center for its wisdom in making more readily
available these important works of this outstanding Canadian philosopher.
LAWRENCE
DEWAN,o.P. College dominicain de philosophie et de theologie,
Ottawa
Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of
Communicative Action
HELMUT PEUKERT
Translated
by JAMES BOHMAN
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. Pp. xxviii, 330. $37.50
Helmut Peukert is a member of the Department of Catholic Theology, Univer-
sity of Miinster. His book, originally published in German in 1976, stands here as
part of a series entitled, "Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought",
under the general editorship of Thomas McCarthy. Previous works in the series
include books by Theodor Adorno, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jiirgen Haber-
mas.
The central question with which Peukert is concerned in this book is whether
or not theology, given the negative critiques it has received in recent decades,
can any longer be considered an intellectually respectable academic discipline.
At root this is a question about the intellectual respectability of theology's
4 St. Thomas,De
ente
et
essentia
(Leonine ed., chap. 1, lines 58-63).
7/25/2019 Review of Peukert's Science, Action and Fundamental Theology
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7/25/2019 Review of Peukert's Science, Action and Fundamental Theology
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576 Dialogue XXVI
1987)
comm itment so as to prescind from the victims of history; but this undercuts the
possibility of communicative action by eliminating its necessary precondition.
Or one may choose to remain comm itted to universal solidarity, notwithstanding
the apparent futility of such a commitment; and exactly in and through one's
experience of taking the latter course, Peukert argues, there is disclosed an
unlimited, mysterious, and liberating reality by virtue of which the death of
every innocent victim ultimately is definitively overcome, such that in conse-
quence the futility of on e's commitment is manifested as merely apparen t. The
latter course alone preserves the presupposition that is essential to concrete
communicative action. Peukert illustrates this second step of his argument
through reference to developm ents in a second line of theology that culminate in
the work of Bultmann, Rahner, and Metz.
Precisely as an inquiry into the foundations of theology, Peukert's book
illustrates an increasingly widespread phenomenon, namely, the emergence of
issues that historically have been called ph ilosophical in academic disciplines
other than explicit philosophy. Whether recognized and labelled as such or not,
basic epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological issues are surfacing at
every turn in the attempts of physics, psychology, sociology, historiography,
literary criticism, etc., to make explicit their primary grounds of meaning and
elemental criteria of justification. One ofthegreatest merits of Peukert's book is
the clarity with which it manifests that an encounter with the full range of these
basic philosophical issues through inquiry into the foundations of academic
disciplines will be complete only insofar as the foundational study of any given
discipline eventually becomes at least virtually a foundational study of all the
disciplines, including theology. My principal criticism of the book is that the
level on which itfinally roots the philosophical issues is not, in my judgment, the
truly fundamental one. Peukert correctly points out that basic philosophical
questions ultimately are matters not of theory but of practice. The practice to
which he refers, however, is already intersubjective, linguistically constituted,
essentially public: he gives no standing to mental practice that is individually
subjective, often pre-linguistic, radically personal. I would argue that this Witt-
gensteinian stance reflects an insufficient knowledge of one's own subjectivity.
Except a t the price of operational self-contradiction, one cannot deny a certain
methodological priority of individual cognitional and moral practice over that of
the community; and the level of such individual practice is the fundamental level
on which philosophical issues emerge.
MICHAEL VERTIN
St. M ichael s College, University ofToronto
Order and Organism Steps to a Whiteheadean Philosophy of
Mathematics and the Natural Sciences
MAURICE CODE
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985. Pp. x, 265. $39.50,
$14.95 paper
Aproblem facing the philosopher of mathematics is to explainhowmathematics
can play such an important part in our knowledge of the world. How, for
instance, can one make a connection between the increasingly abstract notions