https://brill.com/display/book/9789004548596/BP000018.xml?srsltid=AfmBOopZlw9otlekXfDjqw7S0QfcICwGc2ctJvYpFejmVXlxgvDRPZU4 MacIntyre writes, “Yet of course there have been notable Thomists in the last hundred years who would have disagreed with this account of first principles as strenuously as any Humean or Kantian, ascribing both to Aristotle and to Aquinas a belief in a set of necessarily true first principles which any truly rational person is able to evaluate as true.” 12 He continues to say these errant Thomists found Aquinas’s account rationally superior because they thought it could assume nearly any first principles and so argue modern philosophical opponents on their own ground. Of course, they convinced no one. MacIntyre’s unnamed Thomist is named in subsequent works as Josef Kleutgen. By failing, then, to understand Thomism as a tradition-based rationale, Kleutgen presented it as a closed system, not one that continues through history. What lies at the heart of Kleutgen’s mistake, for MacIntyre, is failing

Philosophical Inquiry according to the Roman School: Perrone, Kleutgen & Contemporary Thomism on the Role of Prima Principia https://brill.com/display/book/9789004548596/BP000018.xml?srsltid=AfmBOopZlw9otlekXfDjqw7S0QfcICwGc2ctJvYpFejmVXlxgvDRPZU4Justin M. Anderson “Lì si vedrà ciò che tenem per fede, non dimostrato, ma fia per sé noto a guisa del ver primo che l’uom crede.” 1 – Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, II 43-45 Between 1988 and 1990, Alasdair MacIntyre raised a complaint against Josef Kleutgen on three separate occasions. 2 Given his specific influence over Aeterni Patris, but especially his general authority within Leo XIII’s budding neo-Thomistic renewal, MacIntyre presents Kleutgen as the leading neo-Thomist of the 19 th century. MacIntyre’s fundamental accusation is Josef Kleutgen, by misunderstanding and misrepresenting Aquinas’s understanding of rational inquiry, laid the foundation for the indefinite fragmentation of Thomism that would take place in the 20 th century. While MacIntyre’s accusation is more complex than it may seem, its focus rests on Kleutgen’s understanding of how rational inquiry proceeds from first principles. In this essay, I first examine MacIntyre’s complaint, before turning to an examination of Giovanni Perrone and Josef Kleutgen’s distinct presentations of the first principles. I close by drawing out a few points that are still an open question for Thomists today and indicating ways that the Roman School may return to once again dialogue with its first cousin. MacIntyre’s Complaint against Kleutgen In Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, MacIntyre commends Kleutgen as rightly perceiving in the history of philosophy a fundamental rupture, which must result in the ultimate rejection of the modern epistemological project of Descartes and his subsequent empiricist and idealist successors. This means that in a positive way, Kleutgen does not wish to share in the enlightenment project, a form of rational inquiry one marked by its “unitary conception of reason as affording a single view of a developing world within which each part of the enquiry contributes to an overall progress and whose supreme achievement is an account of the progress of mankind.” 3 In this manner, Kleutgen represents something uncommon in the history of Christian thought. He does not attempt to take up the philosophy of the age and “baptize” it, but instead indicates its inoperable condition. MacIntyre agrees. However, a moment later, MacIntyre complains that while Kleutgen was correct regarding the existence of a fundamental rupture, he mislocated the locus of the rupture. 1 Dante Alighieri, La commedia: secondo l'antica vulgata: Paradiso, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan: Mondadori, 1967), II, 43-45. “There will be seen, what here we hold by faith, not demonstrated, but known per se, as is the primal truth which men believe.” I have altered slightly the English translation by Robert and Jean Hollander as presented at “The Princeton Dante Project.” 2 Alasdair MacIntyre raises his complaint first in his 1988 Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and twice in 1990, first in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition Gifford lectures (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) and then again, in a different manner in his Aquinas Lecture entitled First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues. 3 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, p. 32.

Symbolized in embracing Suarez as continuance of the scholastic school, Kleutgen failed to recognize the rupture happened between Aquinas and Ockham, not Suarez and Descartes. This constitutes, for MacIntyre, not only a misreading of philosophical history, but signals a fundamental misunderstanding by Kleutgen when reading the texts of Aquinas, whom he championed. Instead of understanding Aquinas’s tradition-constituted form of rational inquiry being utterly opposed to that of modern philosophy’s encyclopedic rationale, Kleutgen falls back into that modern project. Instead of presenting Aquinas’s rational inquiry as part of a tradition that begins at definitive points and remains open to further specification, Kleutgen presents his rationale as a closed school of thought. MacIntyre’s complaint, then, rests on two theses. The first is that there exists in Aquinas a form of rational inquiry he dubs “traditional-constituted.” The second is that Kleutgen failed to notice this, and thereby unwittingly subscribes to the “encyclopedist” from of rational inquiry. Let us look briefly at the first – i.e., the form of rational inquiry MacIntyre finds in Aquinas’s work – before turning to greater detail to both Perrone and Kleutgen’s understanding. In lieu of encyclopedic rational inquiry MacIntyre argues that Aquinas’s was “tradition- constituted,” refering to rational inquiry as necessarily part of a tradition of rational inquiry whose proponents share fundamental sources and final ends. Such a traditionalist rationale must necessarily be a communal endeavor, an enterprise perduring possibly throughout multiple centuries. Why? Because every science begins from first principles, those beginning points which provide both “function as a premise in arguments” as well as “that to which such principles refer […] in a single act of comprehension.” 4 Progress in this tradition consists in one’s journey from an initial incomplete grasp of the principles toward a fuller, perfect comprehension of them. Thus, for MacIntyre, the principles are both starting points and final ends of a science. 5 This is the idea behind calling them “first.” Rejection of the primacy of these principles entails a rejection of a fixed finality as well, both symptoms of modernity. This nexus is such because rational inquiry is a human activity, and “in practical life it is the telos which provides the archê, the first principles of practical reasoning.” 6 Such an understanding of first principles leads MacIntyre to the conclusion that “the conclusion which is to be the end of our deductively or inductively […] reasoned enquiry is somehow already assumed in our starting-points.” 7 Because the principles are first and rational inquiry terminates with a complete comprehension of those same principles, the question arises, how is it possible for one to begin? How is it possible for one to learn? 8 For MacIntyre, the student necessarily needs a teacher, a teacher whom the student trusts to introduce the first principles and guide him or her into not only those cognitive habits, but also those human habits 4 MacIntyre, First Principles, p. 3-4. MacIntyre cites here Post. Anal. I, 2, 2-3; I, 5. 9; I. 18, 7; II. 2, 9. Cf. Scott MacDonald, “Theory of Knowledge” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stumpf (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 194, n. 70. 5 MacIntyre, First Principles, p. 6-7. 6 Ibid., p. 7. Though MacIntyre is careful to note Aquinas’s own comments on similarities here between practical and speculative inquiry. In another place he states, “achieved understanding is the theoretical goal of the practical activity of enquiry.” (p. 27) There his reference is to Expositio super Boethii de Trinitate VI, 1. 7 MacIntyre, First Principles, p. 14. MacIntyre cites Aquinas’s commentary on Post. Anal. I, lect. 3 and De ver. q. 11, a. 1. 8 MacIntyre, First Principles, p. 34-51; MacIntyre, Whose Justice?, p. 174-178.

necessary to be a participant in the craft of rational inquiry. All of this presents a picture of difficulty in comprehending completely the first principles. MacIntyre indicates that Aristotle and Aquinas came to the same conclusion. 9 He writes, “The contrast with Cartesianism could not be sharper. […] Hence, we can know without as of yet knowing that we know, while for the Cartesians, as I remarked earlier, if we know we must know that we know.” 10 The craft the student is introduced to is, naturally, a tradition; it is a tradition-constituted process of rational inquiry. The process of development from this entry point, which necessarily presupposes an authority and often an authoritative interpretation, is one of dialectical reasoning to greater insight. However, this insight must be elicited from the learner until that student becomes able to move towards, when necessary, a new revision of the first principles. Thus, we move from authority to a process of dialectical reasoning, dialectical conclusions born of insight, then provisional formulations of theses, then further specification, revision, and enrichment. 11 Rational inquiry and scientific progress moves therefore, for MacIntyre, as a tradition moves forward in a messy road, not at all together in a straight line. MacIntyre thinks that another popular model of rational inquiry is fundamentally Cartesian. His comments in 1988 summarize his indictment of Kleutgen. MacIntyre writes, “Yet of course there have been notable Thomists in the last hundred years who would have disagreed with this account of first principles as strenuously as any Humean or Kantian, ascribing both to Aristotle and to Aquinas a belief in a set of necessarily true first principles which any truly rational person is able to evaluate as true.” 12 He continues to say these errant Thomists found Aquinas’s account rationally superior because they thought it could assume nearly any first principles and so argue modern philosophical opponents on their own ground. Of course, they convinced no one. MacIntyre’s unnamed Thomist is named in subsequent works as Josef Kleutgen. By failing, then, to understand Thomism as a tradition-based rationale, Kleutgen presented it as a closed system, not one that continues through history. What lies at the heart of Kleutgen’s mistake, for MacIntyre, is failing to appreciate how first principles operate in rational inquiry