The Degrees of Knowledge

Curiously, as I read Jacques Maritain's The Degrees of Knowledge, I kept finding my mind wandering to poetry that corresponded to the Thomistic philosophy that Maritain deliberately, methodically, and systematically unfolds. George Herbert's metaphysical list poetry, for example, articulates Maritain's emphasis on Quiddity (the what-ness) and Divine Essence.

The Quiddity

My God, a verse is not a crown, 
No point of honour, or gay suit, 
No hawk, or banquet, or renown, 
Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute: 

It cannot vault, or dance, or play; 
It never was in France or Spain ; 
Nor can it entertain the day 
With a great stable or demesne: 

It is no office, art, or news, 
Nor the Exchange, or busy Hall; 
But it is that which while I use 
I am with thee, and Most take all.

Prayer (I)

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, 
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almight, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind tune, which all things hear and fear; 

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best, 

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

(George Herbert 1593-1633)

What an unexpected surprise when, by the book's conclusion, the genre shifted from systematic philosophy---a philosophy, as the title portends, that addresses the different degrees of knowing, of knowledge, of noetic activity---to mystical poetry! 

In this detachment the spiritual soul

finds its quiet and repose; for since

it covets nothing, nothing wearies it

when it is lifted up, and nothing

oppresses it when it is cast down, for

it is in the center of its humility;

since, when it covets anything, at that very moment

it becomes wearied.

(St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, 1542-1591)

Maritain writes, "Having reached the highest degree of divine union, the soul can do nothing which in itself is better and (apart from positive obligation) nothing more useful and fruitful than to contemplate and love God in solitude" (406). Nearly every page of this beautiful book has a hint of poetry; indeed the whole book exudes a poetic sensibility which many scholars have traced to Maritain's wife, Raissa Maritain, who herself was a poet and philosopher. My favorite chapter, not incidentally, is the one Jacques dedicates to his wife, "Metaphysical Knowledge, To Raissa Maritain" (as though the full title of the chapter is both title and dedication). Here, the book experiences a shift, a pivot, from a deconstructionist impetus in correcting a false idealism or errant materialism in post-Enlightenment philosophy, to a metaphysical philosophy that speaks of eternal souls, the Divine Essence, and God unashamedly and lovingly and poetically. Maritain argues that where idealism ends, metaphysical philosophy begins---for it is in metaphysics where we begin to know, to encounter, to commune, to merge with that which is transintelligible, that is, that which is disproportionate to our human intellect, that is, the divine.

"Our bat's eyes can discern nothing in this too pure light except by the interposition of obscure things from here below. To penetrate into this transintelligible is the deepest desire of our intellect. From the outset it knows instinctively that only there will it find its repose. And according to the saying of Aristotle, it is a more precious joy for it to glimpse anything of that world obscurely and in the poorest fashion than to possess clearly and in the most perfect fashion that which is proportionate to us. It aspires to things divine. Descartes can never be forgiven for having preferred to this effort and to this stripping a comfortable and rich establishment in a world of clear ideas. He preferred thereby the comforts of the understanding to the dignity of the object (and to the spiritual perfection of the same understanding" (233).

Because God is "simple, one, good, omniscient, all-powerful, free," Maritain writes, "we are more certain of the Divine Perfections than of our own heart," capricious as it is in its creaturely captivity to the flesh and to its propensity toward sin and rebellion (244). Although we can be certain of the Divine Perfections, the Divine Nature "remains veiled, not revealed, to our metaphysical gaze" however much it is an "absolutely stable knowledge", an "absolute Simplicity", "one perfection after another, science of simple intelligence and science of vision..." (245).

In his defense of St. Thomas Aquinas' Christian philosophy, Maritain asserts, "The marvel of Thomistic wisdom, the metaphysics of being and of causes, theology as a science, is that, being set at the peak of human reason, recognizing itself inferior to the knowledge of infused wisdom but superior to every other knowledge, and distinguishing only to unite, such a wisdom establishes within the human soul an enduring coherence and living solidarity between those spiritual activities that reach up to heaven and those that reach down to touch the earth. And it does so without in the least lessening or changing them, and always with objective exactness" (321).

Above metaphysical wisdom, comes theological wisdom, then infused wisdom also known as mystical theology. This infused wisdom has as its object Deity: "it is no longer a question of merely learning, but rather of suffering divine things. It is a matter of knowing God by experience in the silence of every creature and of any representation, in accordance with a manner of knowing, itself proportioned to the object known, insofar as that is possible here below" (270).

Where Descartes ends with knowledge that is proportionate to human understanding in his idealistic philosophy, it is sanctifying grace that makes us sharers in the Divine Nature, consorts divinae naturae, connatural with God. Maritain asks, "How can we thus be made gods by participation, receive a communication of what belongs properly to God alone? How can a finite subject formally participate in the nature of the Infinite?" (271). It is GRACE that bestows on us a "radical power of grasping pure Act as our object, a new root of spiritual operation whose proper and specifying object is the Divine Essence itself" (ibid.).

Sanctifying grace gives us a seed of the Beatific Vision, a seed of God, semen Dei: "A primary gift of love, a perfectly gratuitous gift, it is new spiritual nature grafted on to the very essence of our soul, and demands as its due to see God as He sees Himself" (ibid.; 272).

The human heart and intellect, chambers of unfathomable depths and detours, contains hidden degrees of faith, and, as St. John of the Cross poeticizes, the latency of faith remains hidden just as God remains a truly hidden God: "He is hidden within you, and you do not hide yourselves as He does in order to find Him and experience Him. If anyone would find a hidden thing, he must hide himself so as to enter into that place wherein it is hidden, and when he has found it, he is just as hidden as it is...You ought always to hold Him as hidden, and serve Him as One hidden by hiding yourself..." (Canticles). 

In St. John of the Cross's mystical theology, knowledge gives way to pure love, which is God, Deus caritas est: "The proper light of infused contemplation only comes from the ardor of a love which burns in the night. That is why this supreme wisdom, this supernatural loving knowledge which (St John of the Cross test us) we can compare to a warm light, is described as a renunciation of knowledge and an ignorance--a ray of darkness for the intellect, in the words of Dionysius" (281).

Further, Maritain writes, "In beatitude we shall be deified by intellection. But this very vision will be the crowning effect of love, the hand by which it will grasp its good, and in the delights of exultant love this vision will blossom. Furthermore, here below, where we do not know God by His essence but by His effects, no pure knowledge is able to unite us to God immediately and without an intervening distance. But love, on the contrary, can" (343).

"The end of the journey is transformation into God, which is begun here below by grace, faith, and love, and will be consummated in vision. It is a matter of going to that place where the Son is. (He is in the bosom of the Father and He is on the Cross.) It is a matter of becoming one single spirit with God" (379).