The role of philosophy

From the Acts of the General Chapter of the Dominican Order at Providence (Rhode Island)

(See the Acta Capituli Generalis electivi Ordinis Prædicatorum, Providentiæ in conventu Sancti Thomæ Aquinatis, a die 10 mensis Iulii ad diem 8 mensis Augusti 2001 sub Fr. Carlos Alfonso Azpiroz Costa … celebrati, Romæ: Curia Generalitia ad S. Sabinam, 2001)

Commission to the Philosophical Faculty of PUST

(141) Special care should be given to the study of philosophy and its neighboring disciplines as a key to understanding the world to which we are sent. We commission the philosophical faculty of PUST, together with the assistant for intellectual life, to organize a first symposium before June of 2003 on the role of philosophy in the Order. This symposium should involve Dominican men and women who are expert in the field, and it may be held at the PUST, some other location, or in conjunction with electronic media. The goal of the symposium will be to discuss the questions of what the role, the scope, and the time-line of philosophical education in the educational plan of the Order should be.

The Place of Philosophy in the intellectual life of the Order

(118) Brothers in many parts of the world feel that, even though philosophy seems more important than it has been in the past, there are also growing doubts that we are providing the right kind of philosophical formation for our brothers. We have tended to see it as a rather tiresome passage toward theology, as a place to acquire a vocabulary we will later use in theology. By situating truth in the fact and possibility of human experience, philosophy helps to uncover the root of a truth and to let us know how what has been clamed is true ("rationibus … investigantibus veritatis radicem et facientibus scire quomodo sit verum quod dicitur" Thomas Aquinas, Quæstiones quodlibetales IV, art. 18).

(119) Philosophy must be understood in the context of its neighboring social, natural, and human disciplines that give us insight into the human condition and our place in the cosmos. As Dominicans we have a speical responsibility to the heritage of St Thomas that we have received, but if we take seriously the radicality of the Gospel, our preaching must likewise be attentive to new knowledge and new ways of understanding the world around us. Because God reveals his plan to us in a multitude of ways, we must maintain the delicate unity-in-tension between faith and reason: "Deprived of what revelation offers, reason has taken side-tracks which expose it to the danger of losing sight of its final goal. Deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, and so runs the risk of no longer being a universal proposition. It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the risk of withering into myth or superstition. By the same token, reason which is unrelated to an adult faith is not prompted to turn its gaze to the newness and radicality of being" (Pope John Paul II, Encyclica "Fides et Ratio", 48).

(120) This means that every province, vice-province and vicariate of the Order must evaluate its philosophical curriculum regularly to assure that the philosophical formation which our brothers receive prepares them for the challenges of their day.

submitted 30.4.2003, PUSTphilo.