Abstract
This book presents a selection of hitherto unpublished manuscripts of Dietrich von Hildebrand compiled by Martin Cajthaml from Hildebrand's Nachlass (literary remains) preserved at the Bavarian State Library in Munich. The compilation provides explications and further developments of themes mentioned or implied in von Hildebrand's seminal work Ethics (von Hildebrand 2020), along with an opening commentary by Cajthaml.
Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977) was a leading philosopher in the realist phenomenological and personalist movements, originally mentored (along with Edith Stein and others) by Edmund Husserl, Adolph Reinach, and Max Scheler in Göttingen. Hildebrand published his first book Die Idee der Sittlichen Handlung (The Nature of Moral Action) in 1916, followed in 1921 by Sittlichkeit und Ethische Werterkenntnis (Morality and the Knowledge of Moral Values). Subsequently he produced works in every major field of philosophy: ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and aesthetics, as well as multiple spiritual works, most notably Transformation in Christ. Hildebrand was called “the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church” by Pope Pius XII (Pius XII 1967, 269) and one of the “great ethical thinkers of the twentieth century” (von Hildebrand 2005). Pope Benedict XVI, who knew him as a young priest in Munich, later remarked: “When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time” (Ratzinger 2000, 12).
Hildebrand began his work on Ethics while teaching at the University of Vienna, but due to his vital anti-Nazi resistance activities, he did not complete the work until he arrived in New York as a refugee in 1940, where he joined the faculty of Fordham University. In Ethics he developed key concepts of “importance” (Bedeutsamkeit) and “value” (Wert), which were central to his entire philosophy. Importance refers to that property of a being that is able to move a person's heart affectively or elicit an act of the will; its opposite is “neutrality” or indifference. Positive importance is that characteristic in virtue of which an object could motivate attraction, whereas negative importance would awaken some aversion. Hildebrand distinguishes three categories of importance: (1) value (the importance that a being has in itself because of its intrinsic excellence or splendor), (2) the importance something has only in virtue of its being “subjectively satisfying” for someone, and (3) the “objective good for the person.” In order to perceive values and realize their call for a fitting/proportional response, one must have certain fundamental moral attitudes, e.g., “reverence,” which enables one to transcend one's own subjective needs. Beyond that, moral consciousness allows one to recognize a special class of values, namely those that are “morally relevant.” Our responses to objects that possess values of this sort are not only appropriate or not, but also morally good or morally evil. A morally bad action or response is one that “ignores in one way or another a good possessing a morally relevant value; it consents to destroy or to injure this good” (von Hildebrand 2024, 3). This leads to the question of the roots of such immoral behavior, i.e., the reason or motive for such.
Hildebrand initially explores this question in Ethics Chapters 30–35 and recapitulates it in Chapter I of the current work. He begins by showing why a number of classical explanations for the roots of moral evil do not work. Firstly, he discusses Socrates's thesis that ignorance is the reason for morally bad behavior—that our intellect mistakes an apparent good for a real good. Hildebrand shows that the basic error here is the “silent presupposition that there exists only one possible motivation of our will, namely, the bonum in a univocal sense” (von Hildebrand 2024, 4). Socrates fails to distinguish between motivation based on the subjectively satisfying and that based on (morally relevant) value. Where there really is ignorance of morally relevant values, “blindness to the values is not just a mere intellectual failure, like, for example, ignorance concerning physical or chemical facts” (von Hildebrand 2024, 4). As Plato pointed out, one's knowledge of good and evil can be darkened by our passions, and as Aristotle recognized, it depends on right disposition of the will. Secondly, Hildebrand shows that the immorality of actions is not due to preferring a lower value to a higher one, since all actions do not involve such a preference. Even when they do, this thesis “reduces the essential difference between the subjectively satisfying and the value to a mere difference of degree in the realm of values” (von Hildebrand 2024, 6). Thirdly, Hildebrand argues that immorality of actions is not due to interference of passions with practical reasoning. Not all actions are perpetrated under the influence of such passions, but even when they are, it is “not primarily the formal character of the passion as such” that explains the immorality of an action, but the “fact that the passion involves an interest in something that is merely subjectively satisfying” (von Hildebrand 2024, 11).
After refuting these different theories, Hildebrand argues that one's position toward morally relevant values, and ultimately to God himself, “decides whether a human attitude is morally good or bad” (von Hildebrand 2024, 4). Following St. Augustine's distinction in the City of God between a life lived according to God or to the “flesh” (which embraces pride and concupiscence), Hildebrand argues that disrespect for goods possessing a morally relevant value is rooted in one (or both) of two “centers” (“superactual” tendencies/attitudes or frames of reference manifest in individual concrete actions/responses) that are incompatible with a value-response, namely pride and concupiscence. Both involve subordination of the reverent, humble, loving center that is superactually directed to the reign of values to a selfish center predominated by the subjectively satisfying.
Chapter II begins with a recapitulation of Ethics Chapter 34, which distinguishes three main types of concupiscence: the passionate, the vegetative-phlegmatic, and the hypersensitive. The current work then adds new material concerning the different ways the subjectively satisfying can appeal to concupiscence, namely the bodily agreeable, sexual pleasure, and bodily pain. Hildebrand elaborates on the unique nature of sexual pleasure, which is not just something agreeable to the body but involves significant psychic and spiritual dimensions revolving around spousal love. Concerning bodily pain, he shows there is in general no moral obligation to accept intense bodily pain, but there are exceptional circumstances where one may be obligated to undergo bodily pain in order not to disrespect a morally relevant value. He distinguishes the response of the saint to pain compared with that of the less heroic but value-conscious person, the soft concupiscent type, the person driven by fear, and those who react with cursing. He shows how concupiscence can arise from bodily displeasures caused by urges, unpalatable food, or unpleasant smells, as well as from a spectrum of activities in the psychic sphere such as games, superficial socializing, light entertainment, release of psychic urges, and mental energies. He then discusses the sphere of pure concupiscence, including sadism and curiosity. He describes concupiscence in the realm of objective goods for the person and that of property, and he concludes with an interesting discussion of different forms of laziness.
Chapter III begins with a recapitulation of Chapter 35 of Ethics, which delineates five different types of pride: satanic pride, pride of self-glorification, vanity, pride of exterior leadership, and haughtiness. Following this is a new discussion of the role of pride in different spheres of life. Section VII elaborates on six reasons for the surprising paradox that the kind of pride which relishes higher values (such as moral or religious values) is much worse than pride that refers to a talent or exterior beauty, i.e., something one receives as a pure gift without the collaboration of our will. After distinguishing dynamic from static pride, Hildebrand discusses various objects of pride: disvalues, absence of personal values, exterior goods, wealth and money, and being loved.
Chapter IV addresses an entirely new subject, hatred, which Hildebrand indicates is the antithesis of love/charity and not its mere absence. The worst sort is hatred of God found in satanic pride; however, it is found to varying degrees in other types of pride. He then discusses types of hatred that are not based on pride, such as revenge, enmity, irascibility, fanaticism, and hatred directed to the morally depraved enemy of God.
The final chapter expands on the subject of “immanent logic,” i.e., the notion that “every action or situation requires that one proceeds in certain ways to be effective” (von Hildebrand 2024, xlii; von Hildebrand 2020, 192). Though it is necessary and legitimate to conform to the immanent logic of many activities, if a person wants to act reasonably and accomplish the telos/end of that activity, he is in danger of moral evil if he detaches the means from the end, becomes a slave to the immanent logic, and subordinates the end to the means. Falling prey to the immanent logic is rooted in lack of firmness of one's basic value-response, false security, “unawakenedness,” fascination, and drive to be successful–all of which are rooted in pride and/or concupiscence.
Overall, this work provides a valuable augmentation of Hildebrand's groundbreaking writings on ethics. Though the seeds of the issues addressed here are contained in Ethics and earlier works, the current material adds further explication and clarification of these ideas. As in other works, Hildebrand continues to display his unique talent for illustrating a wide spectrum of types of moral behavior with characters from literature, history, and his own personal experience. This brings abstract, theoretical ideas to life and down to earth, and thus also makes them applicable to medical professionals, who have to deal with these issues both in their patients and in themselves; though for some this philosophical discussion may nonetheless be somewhat challenging.
