Henri de Lubac and “pure nature”

• Historical background:- 15th century – Denys the Carthusian first advances the thesis of pure nature. Crudely put, this is that man’s desire for God is not a core, intrinsic part of him but almost a special add-on given to him by God. If God had not done so, man would have been quite happy without God. Denys was aware that he was in disagreement with Thomas in this and consciously attempts to refute Thomas.- Cajetan repeats Denys’s view, but instead of claiming to be diverging from Thomas, argues that he is explaining what Thomas himself said.- These conclusions were taken up by Suarez and others and became the accepted scholarly orthodoxy for a time, although not without challenge by several French thinkers in the nineteenth century (e.g. Maurice Blondel, another hero of John Milbank’s).

• Why were Denys and Cajetan attracted by this idea? They were trying to safeguard the gratuity of a human nature which desires God. That is, by saying that God didn’t have to make us for himself, it must be extra-gracious of him to have done so. Furthermore, it safeguards the idea that our nature does not make a claim on God. But this creates a problem: separation of the natural and supernatural. It makes human nature self-sufficient. Far from safeguarding grace, it makes grace unnecessary since human nature is satisfied without grace. It creates the possibility of an eschatology situated this side of death.

• But, de Lubac says, this gives a major hostage to modernity: it is a short step from “could” to “did”. Lacoste illustrates this through his account of three philosophers. Hegel argued for the satisfaction of desire before death. Therefore there is no room for hope in his system – and thus no room for history. This leads inescapably to nihilism, as Nietzsche saw. He connected this death of history with the death of God: only the will-to-life and will-to-power are eternal and therefore the deepest meaning of human existence. Heidegger then defines the only happiness (we might say, the nearest thing to happiness) possible in such a system: “serenity” (Gelassenheit). This is hardly a successful escape from nihilism.

• De Lubac’s project is therefore nothing less than the attempt to recover the concept of beatitude. Based on the preceding analysis, the only or the best way to do this is to recover the idea of a natural desire for the supernatural. Modern man understands nature as a power to obtain an end. Since man has no power to obtain a supernatural end, such an end is ruled out. De Lubac reasserts the reality of a desire which has no power or claim on what it desires. In doing so he also reasserts the reality of grace.

Why might all this particularly be of interest to a group of ethicists??

- The tragic and deadly pretensions of modernity: humanity trying to secure happiness for itself. Ends inescapably in nihilism.

- The separation of natural and supernatural buttresses:• The separation of philosophy and theology. Philosophy becomes intelligible as a purely human enterprise for purely human ends.• The conviction of a naturally autonomous secular society which can subsist without the mediation of the supernatural order. Nature is closed and self-sufficient. Different construals of natural law.