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MicheleQ
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Personally I am not concerned about going "off-topic" I mean, sure, if we get WAY off track we should steer ourselves back but by all means let's talk about the things that come to mind as we are reading.
Also, I will post the text as I can (and I don't know when I will get to it today because I am very busy and just now taking a break to check in.) but don't feel like you need to stick to discussing the part that has been posted --discuss whatever strikes you at the time --if you are like me you will have forgotten the point if you don't make it soon. 
I suppose this sounds like a rather haphazard way to do a study but think of it more as a rousing discussion over a pint (now where IS MacBeth?). I love those kinds of discussions ...even though I don't drink beer. 
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LeeAnn
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So long as I can make mine a pint of hard cider, that all sounds fine to me!  Off to look up "appanage."
---
ETA:ap·pa·nage also ap·a·nage (p-nj) n.
1. A source of revenue, such as land, given by a sovereign for the maintenance of a member of the ruling family.
2. Something extra offered to or claimed by a party as due; a perquisite.
3. A rightful or customary accompaniment or adjunct.
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Willa
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About complaisance, I'll give a stab at it -- I went and looked it up too.
It seemed to me he was talking about how some "unsimple" people, myself being my primary example, will get unsettled by a compliment or an offer of help or an award or something that would simply please a simpler person, or that they would probably just appreciate without a second thought.
I remember once getting absolutely in a twist once when someone I had only recently met had to help me unload my car. She was very happy to be of help and not at all pushy or show-off about it, quite the reverse, but I felt so wretched, almost angry, as if she had shamed me. It took me completely by surprise but I realized it was a pattern of mine only I usually wasn't so tired and needy as to feel it so very strongly.
I feel the same when I get praise -- a very complex set of emotions. I usually feel primarily ashamed, which isn't appropriate.
So I thought maybe that was what he meant about "complaisance" but I could be wrong. This is my best take. I can't be the only one -- I hope. I think it's a kind of pride. It makes it worse when I try to argue myself out of it (adding yet another layer of complexity) so I usually just say something simple to myself "Just breathe -- be grateful and peaceful -- let it go" and it passes over.
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Eleanor
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Willa, that's how I read it, too.
"Appanage," I did look up! I agree that the attitude that DVH describes in that passage (i.e., seeking out things that are "interesting" for their own sake) tends to be characteristic of those who are pursuing the intellectual life in the absence of truth. This was me in college... no sense of an underlying order or meaning, just looking for bright shiny objects to bring back to my nest. 
It's still me at times, when I jump into a new field of study too quickly, and don't ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance to help me see which approaches are dead ends and which ones are worth pursuing. Fortunately, that's happening less and less often these days. I'm not sure if this is a sign of maturity, or if it's just that my household responsibilities take so much attention -- causing me to take frequent breaks and turn my thoughts back to the most important things, when my personal inclination would just be to keep going down all those intriguing rabbit trails.
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CrunchyMom
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Thank you, Willa, for that example! I thought I understood him, but its so much clearer now!
It makes me think that as educators have some power over helping our students grow in this kind of simplicity. I performed music a lot growing up, and my mother impressed on my the importance of graciously accepting a compliment. She was actually rather simple herself, and I'm sure it was not wound up in any grand thoughts about true humility or anything, but she was right, and it IS related to true humility!
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Lindsay, that reminds me of something Father George Rutler wrote about Father Stanley Jaki, the late Benedictine priest and philosopher.
"Father Jaki was a genius and, as true humility dispenses with modesty, he would not have denied it if someone were rude enough to ask, though he would have thought the question more silly than impolite."
Now that's simplicity for you!
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CrunchyMom
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That is a great quote! I know so many who were so sad when Fr. Jaki died!
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JennGM
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Bumping this conversation back into action. Here's the next two sections:
Dietrich Von Hildebrand wrote:
Simplicity does not mistake complexity for profundity
Or again, a man may develop a predilection for complicating as many things as possible because he mistakes complexity for profundity. This species of complexity, unlike the aforementioned one, is more or less an appanage of the intellectual. Its lover prefers obscurity to clarity; he is liable to credit oracular stammerings with profundity and to dismiss whatever is unequivocally and tersely enounced as trivial. He thus tends to make everything appear more complicated than it really is and consequently falls short of an adequate knowledge of reality.
For such people are blind to the trait of simplicity associated with the metaphysical wealth and height of being; they overlook the metaphysical law that the higher a thing is the simpler it is, in a sense – in the sense of inner unity, as expressed by the dictim, “simplicity is the seal of verity.” They are insensitive to the value of true simplicity.
Simplicity avoids the cult of the abstruse
This kind of complexity, too, is connected with the false type of consciousness, particularly its second form: what we have called the overdevelopment of the cognitive attitude, and the cult of cognition as a self-contained process. The category of the intellectually interesting takes precedence over the category of truth. The protean vastness of untruth, the maze of arbitrary and extravagant but witty errors and sophistries are considered with great interest – if only because they divert the intellect from platitude and simplicity. The mere fact of their complexity (and often enough, of their abstruseness) confers on these errors – in the eyes of such people – a claim to be taken seriously, indeed, even a glamor outshining the simple dignity of plain truth.
Obviously the realm of concepts in which these minds roam about is a highly complicated and disharmonious world, for the possibilities of error are innumerable, whereas truth is one.
Those infatuated with complexity also enjoy the involved aspects of their own psychic life; more, they purposely complicate it by the reflective attention they pay to their feeling or impulse, no matter whether in the given case there is any legitimate need for self-observation. A person of this type takes pleasure in his emotional detours and blind-alleys which provide him with a sense of being deep and interesting. Jacobsen, the Danish novelist, has succeeded in presenting such states of mind (from which he was not free himself) in a remarkable plastic way; Dostoyevsky has depicted them with superior mastery.
This perverted spirituality hides an inherent impotence to penetrate the world of being, directly and essentially. The mind that wallows in complexity is unable to grasp the logos of what is in a straightforward way, to establish a vital contact therewith. It rambles around objects, without ever communicating with them intimately; its ideas are not inspired by the logos of the reality in question and are therefore devoid of intrinsic necessity. A sterile missing of the mark is the invariable fate of such minds: they are forever a prey to the infinitude of possibilities instead of coming close to the one reality. All intoxication with complexity betrays the hunger of those who feed on stones in place of bread. |
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LeeAnn
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Jenn, thanks for posting the next section. I really am enjoying what DVH has to say, but oddly (or maybe not) I find it hard to offer any good comments or ideas about the text when it is a critique of overly-complex thinking! I do love that phrase, "simplicity is the seal of verity" and the idea of a "false type of consciousness" that pursues the "intellectually interesting" rather than the "plain truth." I could apply these ideas to so many aspects of life but I'm afraid I am in a very ascetical mode and not much of what I have to say would make for good and pleasant reading. I am becoming more Tolkien and less Lewis, more a man of Gondor and less of a hobbit. At least that is how I picture it...trying not to pay too much attention to the "involved aspects of [my] own psychic life" of course.
I think it would be great if we just posted the next chunk of text every day (or every other day) or so and let those who want to comment on it do so. Some is better for meditation and some is better for discussion. What do you think?
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I was thinking of the second section quoted and how it relates to the culture of death. Whether it is to argue for euthanasia, eugenics, abortion, or anything else, it seems that those behind it try to make complicated very simple concepts.
If I may be a bit crass, it reminds me of the famous Clinton statement, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is." We are a people who can imagine ourselves to be so profound when we are really being ridiculous!
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LeeAnn wrote:
| I think it would be great if we just posted the next chunk of text every day (or every other day) or so and let those who want to comment on it do so. Some is better for meditation and some is better for discussion. What do you think? |
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By all means please post it! I simply do not have time to do it right now and my scanner isn't cooperating anyway.
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LeeAnn
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I only have access to the Google Reader copy of this chapter, so I can't copy/paste or scan the book, but I typed up the next section. All errors of spelling and punctuation are my own! I also didn't take the time to italicize certain words that DVH did. Please forgive the omission. :)
Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote:
Simplicity of primitivity vs. simplicity of inner unity
Before, however, we turn to the subject of true Christian simplicity, the antithesis to all forms of disunity and complexity, we must first treat of a certain type of simplicity which is scarcely less remote from true simplicity than are the attitudes we have just been discussing.
The cosmos of beings reveals a vast hierarchy of degrees in regard to their contents of meaning. In the sphere of lifeless matter, a comparative poverty of meaning seems to predominate. Lifeless matter presents a certain simplicity in the sense of a low measure of metaphysical perfection and depth of meaning—shown by the supremacy, in this province, of mechanical patterns of happening. Everywhere in matter we find a mere contiguity and combination of things rather than creative interpenetration. This sphere, too is destined to represent symbolically the metaphysical abundance of God; but to fulfill that function it needs the category of quantity, both in the sense of multiplicity of single units and in the sense of extensive manifoldness. A single material thing taken as such represents the wealth of being, proper to the material sphere as a whole, in a fragmentary and indirect manner only.
It is different with the sphere of organic life. In any single organism much more is “said,” as it were, than in a piece of lifeless matter; at the same time, it manifests a far greater simplicity in that it is all subordinated to one principle. The various component functions in an organism are not merely contiguous to, and combined with, one another, they are coupled together in a kind of mutual interpenetration. All single aspects are united and ruled by a basic principle, as is never the case with any unit or accumulation of lifeless matter. Over and above mere contiguity and multiplicity, there appears a structural trait of mutual penetration and communion. We shall find that quality vastly increased, however and charged with and entirely new meaning in the superior realm of spiritual personality.
How immensely much is said in a single human being! How much is contained in a being that possesses consciousness and is pervaded by the light of reason, that is endowed with a capacity for love and for knowledge, that is free, and a bearer of moral values; a being which, in contradistinction to all others, is not merely a vestige but an image of God. All multiplicity and grandeur of the material realm, the quantitative vastness of the material cosmos, the immense variety of objects composing it, the solar systems, even the ineffable manifoldness of living things, fail to represent God in so high a sense as does a single spiritual person.
In the degree in which a thing represents God, by so much does it participate in the divine abundance of being, and so much greater is also the significance of a single unit thereof. In the spiritual person, the principle of mutual interpenetration is far more predominant even than in the living organism as such. And, while the spiritual person has far more substantiality and depth than has the living organism, let alone lifeless matter, by the same token it also possesses much more simplicity. Here, the category of quantity decreases in meaning and is no longer applicable in exactly the same sense. For personal essence is not resolvable into isolated, extensive, measurable and mechanical components or aspects. Metaphysically speaking, the higher an entity is, the greater its simplicity. The soul is so simple as no longer to admit of a disjunction of form and matter.
Simplicity, thus interpreted, is not akin but antithetical to primitivity and poverty of meaning. The simplicity of an entity increases with its height; it implies, as it were, the expression of a great meaning in one word, the condensation of a great wealth of being in one individual, in one quality, in one act or manifestation.
This character of simplicity (in the sense of a condensation of being) grows along the ascending hierarchy of the cosmos until it culminates in the one eternal Word of God, in quo est omnis plenitude divinitatis (“in whom is all plenitude of divinity”) that illumines the face of Christ. The absolute simplicity of God precludes the distinction, not only between form and matter but between existence and essence, between actus and potential. Yet, God is the infinite plenitude of being.
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For those of you getting tired of this long, rambly talk, please be aware that this is the wind-up to the pitch...the next few sections (after one more like this) are much more direct and discuss the character of Christian simplicity head-on. Thus far, DVH has only been making the case for the theological-metaphysical underpinnings of his arguments. :)
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LeeAnn wrote:
I only have access to the Google Reader copy of this chapter, so I can't copy/paste or scan the book, but I typed up the next section. All errors of spelling and punctuation are my own! I also didn't take the time to italicize certain words that DVH did. Please forgive the omission. :)
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Thanks LeeAnn! I have to do it this way too as my scanner is not working and I have nothing to cut and paste from, so it's all been by hand. I think that's the same for Jenn.
I hope to be able to jump back into the conversation soon!
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JennGM
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Thanks for typing, LeeAnn! I had to type my sections, too, as my scanner isn't compatible with my new computer.
He's long-winded here, but the points really hit home. I hadn't thought much about it, but the contrast of living things that the simplest form of one-celled organism to most complicated is exactly opposite of the spiritual world -- God is the most simple, he is Absolute Simplicity.
So the closer man gets to God, following the call "Be perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect" would mean imitating God in His simplicity.
So beautiful to think about!
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Eleanor
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I think this passage is beautiful, too. Even the complexity of the language serves as a reminder that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made." As creatures made in God's image and likeness, but with our mental faculties weakened somewhat by the effects of original sin, any intellectual framework that we come up with to describe ourselves is going to have its limitations. That doesn't stop us from trying to understand (just as theologians don't stop trying to understand God Himself), but we're only ever going to get part of the way there.
The simplest and deepest way of knowing someone isn't to read, write, or think about them; it's to pay attention to them, listen to them, and spend time with them. With people, the most basic way of getting to know each other is through our family life; with God, it's through personal prayer and the liturgy, especially the Blessed Sacrament. In both cases, what we need above all is to be faithful, and open to hearing what the other person is saying, rather than complicating it by trying to alter it to fit with our own preconceptions and desires.
For some reason, I'm reminded of Brother Andre. Maybe because of his devotion to St. Joseph. Who could be simpler than St. Joseph? And yet, he knew Our Lord so intimately, as His protector and father in His earthly life.
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It's been a while, but I really wanted to bring this discussion back in the forefront. Two sections below:
Quote:
Simplicity of cognition: science compared to philosophy as a form of knowledge
In regard to the modes of cognition, too, we may visualize the increase of simplicity in proportion to the degree of height. Thus, philosophical cognition, intent on grasping the essence of things (intima rei intus legere), is in a fundamental sense simpler than scientific cognition, whose methods of observation and deduction are linked to an outward approach to the object.
The natural sciences depend on quantity, on an extensive accumulation of data by means of repeated experiments; the knowledge they procure covers its field in breadth. Philosophy, on the contrary, is not essentially dependent on the multitude of single observations, as it may in principle seize the essence of the object by means of one relevant example; nor is it intent on elaborating a knowledge in breadth.
The dimension in which it seeks to unfold is that of depth; moreover, it aims to comprehend the unity of the entire cosmos, and its crowning act is an advance to the ultimate principle of being: being infinite and absolutely simple, in which all abundance of being is contained per eminentiam.
Inner spiritual poverty is not true spiritual simplicity
Analogously to this cosmic hierarchy in reference to the inner plenitude of being, and according to the two opposite kinds of simplicity in general -– the simplicity of primitivity and crudity on the one hand, the metaphysical simplicity of inward unity on the other -– we also must distinguish between two extremely different types of human simplicity.
In describing people of primitive minds as simple, we refer to their inner poverty and their incapacity to respond to the depth and the qualitative manifoldness of the cosmos.
The attention of such people may be monopolized by elementary concerns, poor in meaning: for instance, the external necessities of life. Thus, a peasant's thoughts and worries will sometimes be strictly confined to his chattel and his parcel of land. His life is deployed within the boundaries of a low sphere, impoverished in meaning and devoid of spirituality; in fact, a small section of that sphere, his household economy, may swallow up his life.
Moreover, that tiny microcosm itself may bear no interest for him except from certain pragmatically restricted points of view. He is hardly interested in a domestic animal as a living being, in the deep mystery embodied in a living organism as such. With all that he has no concern: he is absorbed by concerns of economic usefulness. The same applies to the objects of his agricultural activities.
Thus, his world is a shrunken one, both in depth and width, and his conception of the world is simple in the sense of lacking content and differentiation. It is uncomplicated; but that freedom from complication is obtained at the cost of a renunciation of metaphysical depth and abundance. Frequently, again, his inner life will reflect that conception of the world. In such a case, he will be simple in the sense of being coarse. A few primitive motifs, always the same, occupy his mental scene in a monotonous rhythm. This type of simplicity, no less than the aberration we have labeled complexity, forms an antithesis to the true Christian simplicity which is always joined to spirituality and depth of meaning. |
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Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote:
Stupidity is not spiritual simplicity
Or again, we may call a person simple because he is so poorly equipped intellectually as to be incapable of understanding things of any notable degree of spiritual depth or structural differentiation. As soon as he turns his mind to any higher sphere or even to the manifoldness of contents proper to a more trivial sphere, he seems to lose all faculty of comprehension: everything perplexes him. His mind is only able to grasp quite simple situations or relations, that is to say, such as enclose a very modest content of meaning. His mind is marred by a similar incapacity with regard to values. The motivation of his behavior is equally primitive and undifferentiated. Every task requiring a somewhat deeper insight or more careful discrimination will baffle him. His intellectual deficiency renders him awkward; his clumsy hands are unable, so to speak, to touch anything complicated, differentiated, or refined, without crushing it. His life will rarely be tainted with morbid complexity but that danger is prevented at the expense of depth and wealth of meaning. This organic primitivity again has nothing to do with true simplicity.
There are, furthermore, people whom we call simple owing to their habit of an illegitimate simplification of all things. Here again we must distinguish two varieties.
Reductionist simplicity of platitude is not spiritual simplicity
First, there are those who interpret the entire cosmos after the pattern of its lowest sphere. Without considering the specific logos of the object they are faced with, they apply the categories of mechanism to the province of organic life and even to the realm of spiritual personality and culture. Far from attuning themselves to the element of reality that confronts them or attempting to plumb its depth, they drag down everything into the sphere in which they feel themselves at home. Facility is their watchword; and their complacent pride impels them to treat all things in a cavalier fashion. This type of person is not awkward or clumsy but completely uninitiated. A great many popular philosophies are marked with this shallow simplicity.
But the latter is by no means confined to the theoretical domain of popular philosophizing. There are people thus addicted to illegitimate simplification concerning their private lives, too. In their candid complacency, they will (for instance) lavishly offer advice that is no wise appropriate to the depth or the intricacy of a given situation; they imagine themselves to be able to solve every problem and to arrange everything according to some simple prescription. Their own lives run smoothly without friction, conflicts or complications because they contrive to master all its aspects by dint of a few schematic notions.
In contradistinction to the forms of false simplicity cited above, these simplifiers really occupy themselves with the higher spheres of being; but in their imaginary superiority, they denature the object of their attention and with a kind of glib dexterity doctor it, as it were, until the problem appears to be solved or, rather, enchanted away. They do not treat things adequately but merely tamper with them, though often with a show of success. They walk through life with a boastful smile, proud of being past all obscure problems and grave difficulties. They believe they see through all things and know everything; nor is there anything for which they would not promptly supply an obvious explanation.
This simplicity of platitude, which would strip the cosmos of all depth and all metaphysical stratification, is perhaps even more radically opposed to true Christian simplicity than is the disease of complexity. For he who denies the dimensions of being, its depth and width, and pretends to flatten out the entire universe, is even farther remote from truth than he who ignores the supreme value of inward unity. |
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Added the next sections. The last part seems to be so applicable to today's pop pyschology, all the advice columns, books, talk shows, the motivational speakers...all these people have the answer. Even some Catholic approaches could be called into question.
The firs thing that comes to mind when I read this is those "Chicken soup for the soul" kind of approaches -- everything can be solved and parcels in small little bits of advice.
And the message so often gives an answer from without, not from within.
When he talks about "inward unity", having the simplicity principle of everything being ordered to seeking first the kingdom of God, while "simple" doesn't mean easy to grasp and do. I was reading today from Jacques Philippe In the School of the Holy Spirit and this passage just really hit home, reminding me of this simplicity discussion:
Quote:
| Basically, it's very simple; but like all simple things it takes years for us to understand and, above all, to practice. |
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4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: True Simplicity: Part 1
