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The Curious Case of Ivan Karamazov: A Thomistic Account of Wisdom and Pride

2017; Wiley; Volume: 59; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/heyj.12713

1468-2265

Alina Beary,

Theology and Philosophy of Evil

Thomas Aquinas famously argues that it is not necessary to be virtuous in order to be wise. To many contemporary moral philosophers, this claim signals Aquinas's failure to address the interrelatedness of our moral and intellectual life. I conduct a case study of Ivan Karamazov to demonstrate that this view is mistaken. After sketching Ivan's character, I present Aquinas's accounts of wisdom and pride and their nuanced relationship. I argue that Ivan illustrates the Thomistic view that pride, though not an insurmountable obstacle to one's acquisition of some intellectual virtues, makes it impossible for anyone to achieve wisdom. The vice of pride therefore proves truly devastating to one's intellectual life, since wisdom, for Aquinas, is the highest and most important of intellectual virtues. In Summa Theologica IaIIae.58.5, Aquinas claims that someone can have the virtues of understanding, science, art, and wisdom, while completely lacking moral virtues.1 On the one hand, this strikes us as intuitively right: we can easily come up with several examples of morally deficient but brilliant people whose work is well respected and received. On the other hand, it seems equally obvious that someone's ability to achieve intellectual excellence is affected by (at least some of) the excellences or deficiencies of her moral character. Does this second intuition signal Aquinas's failure to account for the interrelatedness of our moral and intellectual life? Many contemporary ethicists seem to think so.2 Against this assessment, I argue that Aquinas accommodates both of these seemingly conflicting intuitions. Even though Aquinas holds that moral virtues are not required for the possession of intellectual virtues, I suggest that he could consistently say that perfect and imperfect moral virtues can assist the acquisition of intellectual virtues.3 Likewise, I argue that he could consistently say that specific moral vices can prevent someone from acquiring intellectual virtues. I begin to construct a Thomistic account of the way in which moral vices can affect intellectual virtues by concentrating on pride's effects on the intellectual virtue of wisdom. I use Ivan Karamazov, a character from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, as a case study for my investigation.4 After sketching Ivan's character, I present Aquinas's accounts of wisdom and pride. I then explore some relations between wisdom and pride as these are illustrated in Ivan's intellectual character. I argue that pride, though not an insurmountable obstacle in the acquisition of understanding, science, and art, makes it impossible for someone to achieve wisdom. Thus, pride proves truly devastating to one's intellectual life, since wisdom, for Aquinas, is the highest and most important of intellectual virtues. Our first glimpse of Ivan comes when he and his brother Alyosha enter the house of their benefactor Polenov. Dostoyevsky describes Ivan as a sulky, gloomy child. Early in his life, Ivan realizes that he should be ashamed of his father. Moreover, Ivan quickly apprehends, and is burdened by, his dependent status. Yet, Dostoyevsky also tells us that Ivan is unusually precocious, and that Polenov is so impressed with Ivan's intellectual abilities that he decides to place Ivan under the tutelage of a famous St. Petersburg schoolmaster. Dostoyevsky makes much of Ivan's energy and dedication to his studies, as well as of what looks very much like prudence on Ivan's part. The creative ways by which Ivan supports himself during his first two years of university studies demonstrate 'the young man's practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and unfortunate students of both sexes' (BK, pp. 22–3). When Ivan arrives in his native town, everything seems to indicate that he has become both knowledgeable and wise. He returns as a peace-making moderator in a sordid argument over the inheritance between his father and his half-brother Dmitry. Ivan manages to get along splendidly with his disgraceful father, but the close association with this old buffoon does not detract from Ivan's dignity. Those who are truly intelligent and learned (e.g., the monks at the monastery) treat him with respect, and pseudo-intellectuals (e.g., Pyotr Miusov and Mikhail Rakitin) are jealous of him. Finally, Ivan recognizes the wisdom of Father Zossima and of other monks, and treats them with the appropriate respect and courtesy. So, in the beginning of the novel Ivan appears marked out as a wise person who, in the words of Aquinas, 'order[s] things rightly and govern[s] them well' (SCG I.1.1). Nevertheless, as the novel progresses, we come to see that although Ivan is knowledgeable, earnest, and attentive, he has deep moral flaws. The most serious of these are vainglory and pride.5 Dostoevsky makes it clear that these vices are at least partially responsible for Ivan's lack of prudence in his dealings with his father's unacknowledged bastard son and servant, Smerdyakov. When Smerdyakov confronts him in the last part of the book, Ivan is astonished. He twice exclaims, 'You are not a fool' (BK, pp. 573, 575). Smerdyakov replies, 'It was your pride made you think I was a fool' (p. 575). Due to his failure to see Smerdyakov's intentions clearly, Ivan bears some of the moral blame for the tragedies that occur in the novel – the patricide, Dmitry's unjust conviction of murder, and Smerdyakov's eventual suicide. Moreover, in the chapter 'The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare,' the devil points out that Ivan's grand metaphysical and moral schemes for humanity, reflected in the 'poem' (поэме) 'The Grand Inquisitor,' stem not from wisdom, but from a prideful person's infatuation with his own intellectual brilliance. These clues suggest that Ivan does not have wisdom, and that the readers should be suspicious of his pronouncements about the world in general, and God's relationship with humankind in particular. What might Aquinas make of Ivan's intellectual and moral life? To answer this question, I turn to Aquinas's account of wisdom. Like Aristotle before him, Aquinas recognizes two kinds of wisdom: practical and theoretical. Both are counted among the intellectual virtues, which are stable dispositions (habitus) that perfect the intellect.6 Since the intellect's perfection is found in its reliable apprehension of truth, and truth can be either contingent or necessary, there are two kinds of intellectual virtues: practical and speculative. Practical wisdom, or prudence (prudentia), is the former. As one of the virtues that perfects practical intellect, prudence regards right judgments 'about things to be done' – i.e., about contingent, human actions. Theoretical wisdom (sapientia), in contrast, perfects the speculative intellect, whose good is found in conformity with unchangeable necessary truths. Thus, theoretical wisdom regards certain knowledge of principles of the highest order of reality, namely, reality's highest cause (ST IaIIae.57.2; 5. ad.3). As such, theoretical wisdom constitutes the ultimate end of human knowledge. Since knowledge of the highest principles of reality affects the way someone sees and understands everything else, the wise person thinks and acts in the light of the highest knowledge she possesses. Hence, her theoretical wisdom governs every aspect of her life. It is theoretical, not practical, wisdom that this paper addresses.7 Aquinas distinguishes between acquired wisdom and the gift of wisdom. A person receives the gift of wisdom as a result of having the virtue of charity, or friendship with God. Such wisdom is not achieved through careful study and contemplation, but received directly and gratuitously from the Holy Spirit. Through charity, a person is united to God and grows in conformity to him. Since her mind conforms to God's, she knows him. And by knowing God, she knows the highest cause of all things. Accordingly, she is able to judge all things in accordance with the First Truth (veritas prima) as it is revealed to her through the theological virtue of faith (ST IIaIIae.9.2; 1.1). A person with the gift of wisdom, however, might not be able to explain of why she judges certain things to be right or appropriate. Instead, her wisdom manifests itself as an intuitive-like knowledge of the appropriate way of thinking about God and the world (ST IIaIIae.9.1. ad.1; Ia.12.13. ad.3). And, since the gift of wisdom fully dependents on charity and does not properly belong to its recipient, it is destroyed when charity is lost through an act of mortal sin. Since The Brothers Karamazov stresses that Ivan does not live in a state of grace, the gift of wisdom is not available to him. But could he possess acquired wisdom? There are two possible answers to this question, since there are two possible roads that lead to wisdom. A person may come to know principles of the highest order of reality by studying the natural sciences and philosophy or by relying on the revealed truths of faith. The first approach yields metaphysics, the second theology. Aquinas argues that both sciences qualify as wisdom, since both have the highest cause of reality as their object (ST IaIae.1.6; SCG I.1.2). Metaphysical wisdom is available to a philosopher insofar as she contemplates the first principles of being, even if her contemplation is unaided by revelation. To acquire this wisdom, a person must progress from things seen to their immaterial causes, and so move through the study of natural sciences to the study of metaphysics. In principle, any careful and thoughtful person that applies herself to the study of these sciences, and thus grasps the concept and nature of the First Cause, can acquire this wisdom. Nevertheless, metaphysical wisdom does not look directly at its object, but only as is this object is reflected in creatures. Since all our intellectual operations rely on the use of sensible images, we have no immediate knowledge of what transcends matter and motion.8 Because our knowledge of the First Cause is always going to be indirect, incomplete, and largely negative, metaphysics always lead to aporia – to the wonder which, as Thomas Hibbs suggests, is situated between presumption of full knowledge and despair of ignorance.9 Accordingly, the truly wise metaphysician recognizes the limitations inherent in the human mode of knowledge and displays an appropriate degree of restraint in making claims about the First Cause. Theological wisdom is distinct from metaphysics: its first principles come not from careful study of natural sciences but the intellect's assenting to the divine truths proposed by faith (ST I.1. ad.1; SCG III.40.1). This assent is not automatic. Faith's propositions are neither self-evident nor derived from self-evident principles through series of logical steps. Rather, the intellect assents because it is compelled to do so by the will, 'which chooses to assent to one side definitely and precisely because of something which is enough to move the will, though not enough to move the understanding, namely, since it seems good or fitting to assent to this side.' (De ver. 14.1) A person believes because she is drawn to the object of faith as to her good. 'Behind this radical affectivity of faith,' writes Kieran Conley, 'is the prospect of eternal happiness… Faith attracts the individual by making an appeal to his desire for happiness.'10 Even as faith provides the first principles, a theologian seeks to understand what she believes by using her powers of reason. Yet, a theologian does not view the assertions of faith dispassionately, as if they were speculative propositions. Given that theological wisdom originates in faith and terminates in contemplation of God, it always has affective tones. Furthermore, Conley argues, precisely because theology's primary act is contemplation of God as terminus of our affection, Aquinas sees theological contemplation as meaningless and 'seriously incomplete without charity,' even though charity is not strictly speaking required for theology.11 In practice, this means that certain intellectual positions and arguments are not going to be 'live' to a theologically wise person. A true theologian finds it unacceptable to posit God's indifference to the fate of his creatures in order to solve the problem of evil, or to deny the triunity of God in order to escape the charge of irrationality. Now, let us return to Ivan. Since he does not have faith, he cannot have theological wisdom. It would seem, though, that metaphysical wisdom should be within his reach, especially considering the fact that, according to Aquinas, one does not have to have moral virtues to achieve intellectual virtues.12 A closer look at Aquinas's account of virtues and vices, however, reveals that it would be difficult (though not impossible) for someone without moral virtues to achieve knowledge and wisdom. An agent's pursuit of intellectual virtue can be derailed in different ways, and few of us are so naturally gifted and placed in such a favorable epistemic environment that we may develop intellectual virtues apart from developing some moral character. Therefore, even though we do not necessarily need moral virtues to obtain understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, it is easier to do so when we have moral virtues. Likewise, the presence of certain moral vices can greatly impair our ability to acquire wisdom. Pride, a prominent feature of Ivan's character, is especially detrimental to one's intellectual development. How can pride derail someone's quest for intellectual excellence? To answer this question, we need to understand what pride is and how it affects character. Aquinas identifies pride as a vice opposed to humility, which in turn he classifies as a potential part of the cardinal virtue of temperance. Since temperance perfects a person by regulating her appetite so as to bring it in accord with the rule of reason (ST IIaIIae.141.2), any vice that opposes its potential parts entices the appetite away from that rule. Pride does this by making someone inordinately desire excellence. Although the desire for excellence is natural and directed toward a real good, in prideful person it becomes warped, for the person wants to have excellences in such a way and to such a degree as to be independent from God and her fellow creatures (De malo, 8.2). For Aquinas, pride is both a particular sin and a particular vice.13 Yet, it has a generic aspect as well, in that it makes all other sins and vices possible. This double aspect of pride is manifest in the biblical figure Adam. Adam commits his first sin, the sin of pride, when he desires to attain perfect knowledge and perfect happiness by his own power, apart from grace (ST IIaIIae.163.2). This sin causes his loss of original justice, which in turn results in the disorder of his will and in the darkening of his intellect (ST IIaIIae.163.1–2; De malo, 4.2.i v.). In this state, Adam can act in ways that defy God's rule, and thus form vicious habits. This is how one specific sin of pride engenders all of Adam's other sins. Since Adam's loss of original justice affects the rest of humanity, we too are capable of sinning and of forming vicious habits. Thus, Adam's first sin of pride ultimately is the root of every human sin ever committed. This is one reason why pride is considered the mother of all sin. But pride's role in generation of sin is not relegated to the past; it continues engendering every other sin, and it does so in three different ways. First, pride causes other sins through its formal object (i.e., the good toward which an act or a habit is aimed). Aquinas argues that when people act sinfully for the sake of either mutable (e.g., riches, delicate foods) or immutable goods (e.g., knowledge), they ultimately strive inordinately for personal excellence (De malo, 8.1. ad.1; 8.2). Thus, every sinful act is ultimately done for the sake of pride's formal object.14 Second, pride enables every other sin by turning the will away from God, the actual ultimate end of every rightly ordered will (De malo, 8.1. ad.1; ST IIaIIae.162.2). Finally, because prideful people prefer their own excellence to the good of God, their pride causes them to refuse submission to a superior. This effect occurs in every sinful act, which ultimately are mini-rebellions against God's law (De malo, 8.2). There are four marks by which every kind of pride of the arrogant betrays itself; [1] either when they think that their good is from themselves, or [2] if they believe it to be from above, yet they think that it is due to their own merits; or [3] when they boast of having what they have not, or [4] despise others and wish to appear the exclusive possessors of what they have (ST IIaIIae.162.4, arg.1; cf. De Malo 8, a.4).16 Though each of form may exist independently of the others, a person rarely has only one form of pride. Rather, the species of pride typically build upon one another, leading the prideful person further and further away from God and from reason's rule.17 The first two kinds of pride stem from a person's wrongly desiring excellence (i.e., apart from God's grace or from dependence on fellow creatures). The last two stem from a person's desiring an excellence that is ultimately beyond his reach. Satan gives us the most striking example of first kind of pride. He refuses to acknowledge his dependence on God even though his existence is fully contingent upon God's grace. This species of pride can be described as hyper-autonomy, which Robert Roberts and Jay Wood characterize as 'a disinclination to acknowledge one's dependence on others and to accept help from them.'18 The second kind of pride is at work in a certain type of a self-made person who lives by the dictum 'God helps those who help themselves.' Even though such people believe their success is God-given (or is due to the fact that her ancestors fought for the political/religious/economic freedom her country now enjoys, etc.), they also believe that God's special favor toward them is deserved by their prudence, entrepreneurial spirit, or the like. This kind of pride is manifested in the Pharisee's prayer: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income' (Luke 18:11–12).19 The third species of pride, boasting about having what it does not have, ranges over a broad spectrum of attitudes and dispositions. It can manifest itself in a seemingly morally insignificant insistence that one has things 'under control.' Or it can take the form of a delusion of grandeur where a person believes herself to have a measure of moral, intellectual, or other excellence beyond what she actually possesses. This species of pride can be accompanied by several daughter vices like presumption, which Roberts and Wood identify as a disposition to act in a certain way without permission or right to do so, pretentiousness ('a disposition to claim, in action and demeanor, higher dignity or merit than one possesses'), or conceit ('a set of dispositions of thought, action, and emotion that stem from an unwarrantedly high opinion of oneself').20 Finally, a fourth kind of pride is especially dangerous to people who do have outstanding abilities and achievements and wish to seem to excel all others in their respective spheres of influence (De malo 8, a.4. ad.4). For such people, sin comes from pursuing their outstanding excellence for the sake of being better than anyone else rather than the excellence itself. This desire does not necessarily mean that the prideful person wants the accolades that usually accompany an outstanding performance. In fact, a prideful person might disdain public praise if it comes from those she believes are intellectually or culturally inferior. It is sufficient for her to know that she really is the best in her field.21 This description of pride's species provides a glimpse into ways pride can cause immediate damage to one's intellectual life, as well as influence it through daughter vices and sins.22 A person's intellectual life is directly impaired when, under the influence of the fourth species of pride, he would rather believe that his critics are misguided, uncultured, or stupid than admit he is mistaken about something. Another example is provided by Ivan's dealing with Smerdyakov. Ivan's false belief in his intellectual superiority, the third species of pride, so blinds him to Smyerdyakov's character that he completely misunderstands Smerdyakov's words and actions. This example demonstrates that someone can be so blinded by her prejudice of another race, gender, etc., that she misses or misinterprets valuable data associated with the recipient of her prejudice. Pride's general effects on intellectual life can also vary. Aquinas illustrates this influence when he discusses the vice of curiosity. He shows that when a prideful person perceives knowledge to be an excellence worth acquiring, she works hard to achieve it. She might become exceptional in her chosen field of study, and come to command great respect from her academic peers and superiors. According to Aquinas, however, this person will be guilty of the vice of curiosity (curiositas) if her knowledge-acquisition is motivated not by the love of truth per se, but by the desire to become exceptional (ST IIaIIae.167.1). Paul Griffith explains that a curious person approaches knowledge as a consumer – with a desire to conquer and to own. Thus, she is opposed to a studious person, who treats knowledge as a gift and a window into a greater reality, of which she is a small part.23 A studious person is characterized by intellectual humility.24 She knows her intellectual limitations and does not presume to investigate on her own what is beyond her capacity to understand. A curious person moved by pride, in contrast, plunges right in, thereby creating opportunities for error (ST IIaIIae.167.1). Does the fact that a person has the vice of pride have practical effect on his ability to acquire intellectual virtue? Should the fact that we know someone's character is morally deficient make us expect her research to be less reliable? This seems intuitively wrong when we consider the sciences and fine arts. After all, we would not expect a physicists' research into the nature of subatomic particles to be inferior to that of her peers if we found out that her studies are largely motivated by pride. To be sure, the knower's attitude toward knowledge has practical and moral implications. But there is no necessary connection between our physicist's moral failures and the accuracy of her research. The physicist's pride and intolerance of peer criticism can make her a slave to pet theories and intellectual prejudices, or make her a perfectionist who achieves the height of academic excellence. And even if – due to her lack of concern with the ways she conducts or applies her research – she becomes the proverbial evil scientist, the findings of her objectionable experiments will not be rendered inaccurate by the mere fact that they are morally repulsive. This latter point is brought home by the fact that certain parts of the medical community still use what they perceive to be the empirically accurate medical research conducted by Nazi doctors on the prisoners of concentration camps.25 When it comes to metaphysics and theology, things change. For someone aiming at wisdom, humility is not merely beneficial; it is essential. Why? A metaphysician, investigating the nature of the First Cause without the aid of revelation, arrives at a mostly negative concept of God. She knows that the First Cause is one (i.e., indivisible), uncaused, immaterial, etc., but does not know, for example, that God is Triune, cares for his creation in specific ways, or what this care might entail. Her knowledge, though valuable, makes for a 'thin' concept of God. A wise metaphysician recognizes and respects this natural limitation, and thus exercises humility. A good theologian likewise exercises intellectual restraint, even though, unlike the metaphysician, she has the wealth of positive knowledge about the nature and character of God available through revelation. This restraint shows up not so much in the topics she chooses to contemplate, but in the options she is willing to consider.26 A curious and proud person exercises no restraint in knowledge acquisition, spurns the restrictions placed on her by revelation, or presumes to inquire into areas of knowledge to which her unaided intellect has no access. The motivation for such overreaching inquiry can vary. A person might wish to become the best in her field, and so be willing to push the boundaries of knowledge. Or she might believe in her own intellectual superiority, and think of herself as someone capable of solving mysteries that have successfully stumped others. In any case, the person's pride blinds her to the true nature of her inquiry or achievements so that she comes short of actual wisdom and falls into error.27 But, precisely because of her pride, she does not recognize her shortcomings and continues to presume to dispense judgment on metaphysical and theological topics. Accordingly, even though we might be perfectly willing to rely on the proud and viciously curious physicist's or chemist's research, we should be much more wary when approaching a proud metaphysician or a theologian who investigates the nature of God and his relation to the world. Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of today. "Show a Russian schoolboy" he writes, "a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it." No knowledge and unbounded conceit – that's what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy. (BK, p. 626) Thus, in Ivan, hyper-autonomy is combined with conceit, presumption, and desire to excel all other 'progressive' thinkers.28 Because of his pride, Ivan oversteps the boundaries of his intellectual limitations and forms opinions for which he lacks justification. Furthermore, the novel presents us with ample indications that Ivan's beliefs about the nature of reality are not true. They cannot sustain Ivan in his moment of moral and intellectual crisis. The first of Ivan's two 'disciples,' Smerdyakov, commits suicide when he realizes that Ivan is not willing to live out his professed beliefs about morality. And Ivan's second 'disciple,' Lisé, justifies her meanness toward Alyosha by appealing to Ivan's most sensational statements, yet almost immediately physically punishes herself for being vile and false (BK, 'Little Demon'). Since Ivan's beliefs are neither true nor justified, they amount to folly, not knowledge. In this article I have investigated the effects of pride on the intellectual virtue of wisdom, hoping to construct a Thomistic account of the ways that moral vices affect intellectual virtues. More work is needed in this area. Still, my investigation of one particular vice's effects on our ability to achieve wisdom suggests that Aquinas holds a view both nuanced and complex, and that further inquiry into this topic is worth the effort.