The Mark of Man: Midgely, MacIntyre, and von Hildebrand on the Distinctively Human (Part 3)

Last updated on: September 28, 2008 at 12:11 pm by Policraticus

The Mark of Man: Midgely, MacIntyre, and von Hildebrand on the Distinctively Human (Part 3) 2008-09-28T12:11:04-05:00 Policraticus

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I now turn briefly to the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand and his analysis of importance and intentionality in an attempt to find a certain mark in man that not only distinguishes him from other animals (both Midgley and MacIntyre have pointed to such marks), but one that is utterly undetectable in any other animal. From the outset it is worth noting that von Hildebrand employs a phenomenological psychology in his philosophical anthropology, a method unused by Midgley and MacIntyre. As will be shown, this places von Hildebrand at a unique vantage for analyzing the interiority of human persons.[1]

As Midgley and MacIntyre have observed, there are particular motives or desires within man for attending to and acquiring goods. In a different, yet similar fashion, von Hildebrand notes that the notions of good (bonum) and of evil (malum) indicate a property of any given thing that enables it to motivate our will or engender an affective response.[2] Insofar as an object is incapable of such motivation or engendering, its character is neutral and indifferent. Those objects of bonum or malum are endowed with importance—either a positive importance (corresponding to bonum) or a negative importance (corresponding to malum). Desire for those objects of positive importance, desiderare, is understood as an affirmative interest in the existence of a good. “It then not only refers to our aiming at the possession of a good, but also extends to our aiming at the very existence of a good.”[3]

There are three categories of importance, the first two consist of that which is subjectively important and that which is important in itself. Let us take two examples. On the one hand is a game of football, on the other is an act of forgiveness. The former is subjectively important insofar as it is a good for me such that it is potentially entertaining. The latter is important in and of itself irrespective of any need, desire, or motive on my part. The subjectively important object is one that is always agreeable to or satisfying for someone. The object that is important in itself is endowed with a value quite distinct from any importance that motivates my will due to its agreeable or satisfactory nature. Note, however, that I may find an act of forgiveness or any good that is important in itself as agreeable and satisfying, yet my attitude toward it does not condition the good as it does those goods that are subjectively important.

An object that is subjectively satisfying provides a self-centering happiness that lacks a sustained longevity. In stark contrast, an object of value “elevates us, liberates us from self-centeredness, reposes us in a transcendent order which is independent of us, of our moods, of our dispositions.”[4] The difference is not one of degree, but of kind—an essential difference. A further difference is in the manner in which each category of importance addresses man. A good which possesses a value imposes an obligation on man to give a proper or due response, whereas a good that is subjectively satisfying does not solicit such a response. Instead, man is free to respond to it according to his own circumstance, mood, or desire. The sphere of the subjectively satisfying has its relative scale; the realm of values has its objective hierarchy.[5]

Von Hildebrand’s third category of importance is the bonum mihi. This entails objects that are objectively good for me. So rather than a simple game of football, which is a good determined by its agreeableness and satisfactory merit, an example of a bonum mihi could be a meal or the attainment of a skill. What stands out immediately is that all three of MacIntyre’s groups of goods are classified according to the subjectively satisfying or the bonum mihi, that is, each group consisted of positively important objects—some subjective goods and some objective goods—that are defined as such in terms of their meaning either for man and his community or for the attainment of a telos. There is no instance of a value–that which embodies the true and objective–on MacIntyre’s list of enumerated goods.

Before looking at von Hildebrand’s concept of response to value, it is helpful to note what it means to take “cognizance of an object.” Von Hildebrand adopts Edmund Husserl’s understanding of “intentionality” as consciousness in directed orientation to an object. The person and the object enact a rational and meaningful relation through intentional experience in contrast to unintentional experiences, which include all pure states, such as fatigue or irritation, and do not have reference to a known or perceived object.[6] Of these two spheres, the intentional is the higher due to its capacity for spiritual response, since this perception of the object is a “transcending experience…whereby my intellect truly possesses the being of an object in a spiritual manner.”[7] There is an intentional partaking and penetration into this object that remains extraneous to me. Correspondingly, as it confronts me, my response to it is directed toward it as I embrace and incorporate it.[8] Von Hildebrand, again following Husserl as well as Max Scheler, divides the realm of intentionality into two types of experience: cognitive acts and responses.[9] While von Hildebrand maintains this distinction in his phenomenological analysis, he nonetheless holds that all responses of intentionality necessarily depend upon the cognitive act, for the mind must grasp either directly or indirectly the nature of the object before a proper response to it may occur.[10] The noetic priority of value response stands in contrast to the instinctive-driven and teleological accounts of human response to goods given by Midgley and MacIntyre.

When man finds himself in an intentional relationship with an object endowed with value, he is able to grasp the importance of an object, and consequently, he is affected by it and motivated by it—an actual transcendence. His attitude becomes self-donation.[11] For example, the dignity of a human person calls forth from me an appropriate affective response, such as admiration, respect, or love. These affective responses are value responses, displaying a spiritual characteristic of affectivity whereby I transcend the immediate relationship between subject and object and respond to the intrinsic value possessed by the other. However, while I do not engender the value responses, I may freely take a position toward what I experience through being affected. Cooperative freedom is my ability to take a position to the spontaneous and unwilled condition of being affected or the arising of affective response. I may abandon myself to these experiences or close myself off from them, essentially modifying their character.

Affective responses always entail an intentional relation between the intellect and the object, which bespeaks of their spiritual and transcendent quality. Logically following this intention is the fourfold moment of affection: 1. the initial capacity to be affected; 2. the actual act of being affected; 3. the affective response; 4. a new state of affectability whereby the capacity to be affected is vivified.[12] For von Hildebrand, these four moments are not ontologically, but logically distinct. For example, when I experience deep contrition over a vicious crime I have committed toward my neighbor, I display these four moments. I initially had the capacity to be affected by the realization of my sin, which led to my being affected. In turn, I respond with profound sorrow from the depth of my soul. There results from this affective response a new fructification of affectivity from which further affective consciousness my stem. The fourth moment becomes the first in cyclical fashion as affective spontaneity is achieved. Contrarily, volitional responses are devoid of the “affective plentitude” that is characteristic of affective responses.[13] Affective responses are the very voice of the heart, and can involve the entire person. The will, while it intentionally commits the person, is exclusively alone in its freedom as an immediate power. “New dimensions of the person are actualized in the affective responses; that is, facets and manifestations of the self more intimate than those to be found in the will.”[14] To imagine that affective responses can be controlled and enacted at will is repugnant to Von Hildebrand:

The idea of being able to command affective responses by our will, to innervate them as we innervate a movement of our limbs, would by implication deprive them of their meaningful relation to the importance of the object. It would deprive them of their essential perfection, which is that of a response motivated by the importance of the object, and in addition place them on the level of certain activities without even giving them the specific (although much lower) perfection which these activities possess. No one who realizes the nature and meaning of joy, love, or veneration could even desire that his affective responses should be accessible to the command of his will. For he can see that this would be incompatible with the dignity of these responses.[15]

Consequently, von Hildebrand identifies the deep problem of the creaturehood of the human person: “The things that can be commanded by our will, which we can bring into existence, are limited in their ontological rank. The higher something is, the more it possesses the character of a gift, which we cannot simply give to ourselves.”[16] In other words, I cannot will to be happy or will to love and it becomes so. Instead, happiness and love come as gift rather than by demand. In short, love and happiness are not decisions, contrary to a widely held view.

Before closing this section on von Hildebrand, it is important to make a brief note of his understanding of virtue. Virtue cannot be confused with dispositions for acting or responding correctly. Instead, a virtue is “a quality of a person’s character, a quality which is fully actualized in his person. . . .”[17] Thus, virtue has as its backbone what von Hildebrand calls superactual value response. The affective plentitude which animates and vivifies the core of the person produces a subsisting virtue, a quality of excellence which is in the background of all man’s activity.

Notes
[1] Von Hildebrand is aptly counted among the Göttingen circle of phenomenologists who embraced Edmund Husserl’s early phenomenology as developed in the first edition of his Logische Untersuchungen. Opposed to Husserl’s later transcendental turn, much of the Göttingen circle developed a stark phenomenological realism and objectivism.
[2] On affectivity, see Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977), especially pages 3-29.
[3] Von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics (New York: David McKay Co., 1953), 30.
[4] Ibid., 36.
[5] A lucid presentation of von Hildebrand’s theory of value can be found in Balduin V. Schwartz, “Dietrich von Hildebrand on Value,” Thought 24 (1949): 655-676.
[6] See von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics, 192: “Mere states exist in us as simple facts; their objective causal determination presupposes no knowledge of it; but even when knowledge is given, these states are not connected with their cause in a conscious meaningful way.”
[7] Ibid.
[8] Idem, What is Philosophy? (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1960), 15.
[9] See Christian Ethics, 195.
[10] See William A. Marra, “Von Hildebrand on Love, Happiness, and Sex,” The Catholic Writer: Papers Presented at a Conference sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute, New York City, September 29-30, 1989, ed. Ralph McInerny (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 121: “That I know or understand something is thus an intentional experience; so, too, that I accomplish an inner act of willing. And so, too, are all the ‘feelings’ that cannot even exist unless I first grasp the object.”
[11] Von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics, 223.
[12] See Andrew Tallon, “Affection, Cognition, Volition: The Triadic Meaning of Heart in Ethics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68 (1994): 214-15.
[13] Von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics, 202.
[14] Von Hildebrand, “The Role of Affectivity in Morality,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 32 (1958): 90.
[15] Christian Ethics, 319. See idem, Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990) 225-228: “There is a class of inward acts that does not fall within our radius of power proper. If, for instance, the news of a person’s conversion leaves us in a mood of blunt indifference, our will is not at liberty to conjure up within us the mood of joy which would be adequate to the event. Similarly, we cannot force our cold and unsympathetic heart to bestow upon a person in need the full response of compassion and merciful love which be congenial to the situation…Our genuine and complete response to value, with the personal uniqueness and weight proper to them, grow organically from seeds implanted in the secret depths of our personality; it is only by indirect ways that we can contribute to their arising in us. This precisely is inherent in their nobility, that they have the character of gifts as opposed to things that can be commanded or made to order.”
[16] Christian Ethics, 319.
[17] Ibid. 357.

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