Only Theology Fulfills Philosophy

Philosophy cannot be philosophy without theology. Philosophy has to exceed itself to be itself. Gratitude is the lever for philosophy’s fulfilling transcendence of itself.

Here’s a sketch of the argument:

Philosophy, let us say, is the analysis of human existence as such.

But we don’t produce our own existence. It’s not my own sperm and egg that made me, and for the first period of life, we receive the necessities of physical life from people who are capable of doing what we cannot do. We don’t invent our own language, or many of our basic cultural and personal habits. To analyze human existence as such, philosophy has to take account of our thrownness.

How do we react to our thrownness? We can react with resentment – hate our parents, disown our native country, cultivate another culture. But we are capable of expressing and pursuing resentment only because of the gifts we received unbidden as children. We cannot cultivate another culture or language without making use of our first culture and language. A thorough-going resentment cannot be anything but nihilistic self-hatred.

Thomas said that gratitude is an act of justice, of giving to each his due. Justice is a virtue, and if we are to respond justly to the thrownness of our existence, we must, at some level, respond gratefully. Even the resentful have received the tools for pursuing resentment, and for that they should, in justice, return gratitude for the gifts.

If gratitude is purely immanent, there is an infinite regression: We are grateful for those who gave us our existence, our language and our culture; they are grateful to those who gave them theirs; and so on. But what about the sheer givenness of the world itself? That is, not the fact that I was given a language, but the global fact that humans have the capacity for language at all. Not the fact that parents gave me my physical existence, but the sheer fact of physical existence. In justice, I owe gratitude for that too? But to what or whom?

Perhaps there is no what or whom to thank for the existence of the universe or humans. But then it is odd that gratitude should be so foundational to human existence.

Thus, by itself, philosophy (at least in its methodologically atheist modern versions) cannot answer these questions without becoming theological.

Philosophy cannot be fully itself without addressing these questions. And, of course, I think philosophy should answer these questions in a particular way – recognizing not only the theological fulfillment of philosophy, but affirming the Eucharistic fulfillment of philosophy.