Self-consciousness and will had been central to philosophies of the person in classical times; indeed, at one point Augustine claimed that men were nothing else than will. After Descartes’ reformulation of metaphysics in terms of the thinking self, however, the focus upon self-consciousness by John Locke and upon the will by Kant brought the awareness of these distinctive characteristics of the person to a new level of intensity and exclusivity. This constituted a qualitatively new and distinctively modern understanding of the person. It is necessary to see in what these characteristics consist and how they relate to the subsisting individual analyzed above.

This early attempt to delineate the person on the basis of consciousness locates a number of factors essential for personhood such as the importance of self-awareness, the ability to be concerned with, and for, oneself, and the basis this provides for the notions of responsibility and public accountability. These are the foundations of his Letters Concerning Toleration which were to be of such great importance in the development of subsequent social and political structures in many parts of the world.

Another approach was attempted by Kant whose identification of the salient characteristics of the person has become a standard component for modern awareness. Whereas Locke had developed the notion of the person in terms of consciousness predicated upon experience, Kant developed it on the requirements of an ethics based upon will alone. Both the strengths and the weaknesses of this approach to the person lie in his effort to lay for ethics a foundation that is independent of experience. He did so because he considered human knowledge to be essentially limited to the spatial and temporal orders and unable to explain its own presuppositions. Whatever be thought of this, by looking within the self for a new and absolute beginning he led the modern mind to a new awareness of the reality and nature of the person.

This "glorious ideal" has been perhaps the major contribution to the formation of the modern understanding of oneself as a person. At the minimum, it draws a line against what is unacceptable, namely, whatever is contrary to the person as an end-in-oneself, and sets thereby a much needed minimal standard for action. At the maximum, as with most a priori positions, it expresses an ideal for growth by pointing out the direction, and thereby providing orientation for the development of the person. In Kohlberg’s schema of moral development it constitutes the sixth or highest stage, and hence the sense and goal of his whole project – though he notes rightly that this is not an empirically available notion. 

Further, this bespeaks a certain absoluteness of the individual will which is essential if the person is not to be subject to domination by the circumstances one encounters. If one must be more than a mere function of one’s environment–whether this be one’s state, or business, or neighborhood–then Kant has made a truly life-saving observation in noting that the law of the will must extend beyond any one good or particular set of goods. 

Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that still more is needed for an understanding of the person. In Part I of his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant correctly rules out anything other than, or heteronomous to, human freedom and will as an adequate basis for ethics, at least as far as using one’s own ability to think and to decide are concerned. Nor does he omit the fact that these individuals live their lives with others in this world. As the good is mediated by their concrete goods, however, a role for experience must be recognized if right reason is to conform to the real good in things. Further, there is need to know more of the reality of the person in order to understand: (a) not only how will and freedom provide the basis for ethical behavior, but (b) by what standards or values behavior can be judged to be ethical, and (c) how ethical behavior is integral to the project of the person’s self-realization. Something more than a postulation of freedom (along with the immortality of the soul and God) is essential to enable the development of the person to be guided throughout by his "glorious ideal."

In sum, Locke and Kant have contributed essentially to delineating the nature of the person for the modern mind. Both have pointed up that which distinguishes the person from other subjects. Focusing upon knowledge, Locke showed the person to be an identity of continuing consciousness which is self-aware and "concerned for itself." Focusing upon the will and its freedom, Kant showed the person to be an end-in-itself.

By attending directly to consciousness and freedom, however, both left problems which are similar and are of great importance to the present project. The first issue regards the way in which consciousness and freedom are realized in the person as a unique identity with a proper place in society, and indeed in reality as a whole. It is true, as Locke says, that the term person expresses self-awareness and continuing consciousness, as well as its status in the public forum. But, one needs more than an isolated view of that which is most distinctive of man; one needs to know what the person is in his or her entirety, how one is able to stand among other persons as a subject, and how in freedom one is to undertake one’s rightful responsibilities. One is not only consciousness or freedom, but a conscious and free subject or person. Further, it is necessary to understand the basis of the private, as well as the public life of the person, for one is more than a role, a citizen or a function of the state. The second problem regards the way in which the person can attain his or her goal of full self-awareness, freedom, and responsibility, namely, how the person can achieve his or her fulfilment through time and with others.

In sum, what Locke and Kant discovered about the person by considering self-awareness in the abstract and for the political arena needs now to be integrated with what was seen in the preceding chapter regarding the individual in order to constitute the integral person as a rational and free subject.

This progression of steps leading to the one principle, which enables that which is complex nonetheless to constitute a unity, points in the person to the one form which is commonly called the soul. By this single formal principle what Locke articulated only as a disembodied consciousness and Kant as an autonomous will are able to exist as a properly human subject. This is physical truly but not exclusively, for it transcends the physical to include also self-consciousness and freedom. Similarly, it exists in its own right, yet does so in such wise that it exists essentially with others as a person in society.

The implications of such an integration of the physical with the self-conscious dimensions of the person through a single principle are pervasive. One does not become a person when one is accepted by society; on the contrary, by the form through which one is a person one is an autonomous end-in-oneself and has claim to be responded to as such by others. Hence, though for his or her human development the person has a unique need for acceptance, respect and love, the withholding of such acceptance by others–whether individuals, families or states–does not deprive one of personhood. One does not have to be accepted in order to have a claim to acceptance. (Even in circumstances of correction and punishment, when a person’s actions are being explicitly repudiated, persons cannot be treated as mere things.) Thus, the rights to respect, to an education, to possibilities for development and to meaningful engagement in society are based within the person and need to be responded to by family and society.

Finally, attempts to modify the behavior of persons must proceed according to distinctively human norms if they are not to be destructive. Whether in the school, the workplace or society at large, it is crucial to recognize that every human being is a human person, and integrally so in each of their human actions and interactions. Not to attend to this is to fail to recognize those with whom we interact to the detriment and dishonor of ourselves, the person and the social process.

Some developments in recent thought have made important contributions to correcting this individualist–even potentially solipsist–bias. One is the attention paid recently to language and to the linguistic character of the person. Our consciousness is not only evoked, but shaped, by the pattern of the language in which we are nurtured. In our highly literate culture–many would say in all cultures–the work of the imagination which accompanies and facilitates that of the intellect is primarily verbal. Hence, rather than ideas being developed and then merely expressed by language, our thought is born in language. As this language is not one’s private creation, but that of our community and over a long period, conscious acts, even about ourselves, involve participation in that community. To say that our nature is linguistic is to say that it is essentially "with others."

From what was said of being-in-the-world it follows that the person is also being-with-others, for one is not alone in sharing in this world. Just as I enter into and share in the world, so also do other persons. Hence, as essentially sharing-in-the-world, our being is also essentially a sharing-with-others; the world of the person is a world in which we are essentially with-others. In this light a study of the existence of the rational subject with its hopes and its efforts toward self-realization with others must center ultimately upon understanding the development of the person as a moral participant in social life. 

As was seen in some detail in Chapter I the person as consciousness or self-awareness has been the great temptation of the modern mind. To achieve clarity it bargained breadth and subtlety; its ability to control was tried to its reductionist approach tailoring reality to the powers of the human mind. Thus in our day the challenge to humanize social life centers on the ability to open the mind to new dimensions of meaning, particularly to the fourth or metaphysical dimensions (treated in Chapters II and III) can be encountered. Many have taken Descartes’ project of developing a universal mathematics to entail the restriction of his project to Plato’s level III of conceptual clarification and scientific construction in which the divine could not figure.

In the present post modern period such restriction upon the modern mind is recognized as in need of being transcended. In such a liberation of person as consciousness it is important then to see if there is within the thought of Descartes himself the roots of this transcendence. If so the new openings will not constitute a destructive rupture with modernity. Rather its transcendence will have a constructive and enriching character.

In order to grasp something of the nature of the task undertaken with such impressive success by the builders of the modern mind it could be helpful to look back for a moment upon the preceding period, rightly termed the Renaissance or time of rebirth. It was a period of explosive discovery and rediscovery in every field. In space the use of the telescope opened to human reconsideration the nature of the planets; on earth Portuguese ships went to the Indies and circled the globe; suddenly the art and writings of the ancients took on new interest; and in society new forms of civil order were emerging.

Each opening brought major problems as it became necessary to integrate or deal with whole new categories of reality. Where blind forces worked their way, e.g., disease killed off over 90 percent of the population of Central America within one or two generations; greed enslaved entire populations; superstition led Europeans into alchemy and magic. Thus the need for reason to assess and direct life became urgent in order to overcome the threats of confusion and death resulting from the new discoveries and to orient creatively the newly emerging physical and social forces.

Francisco de Vittoria began the elaboration of international law; Copernicus and Galileo began to reorder the understanding of our galaxy; Newton and Harvey laid the groundwork for a new understanding of the physical and anatomical orders. But the most fundamental task and key to all the others was a new level of coordination of the workings of human reason itself. If the new threats were to be avoided and the successes of the Renaissance were to bear fruit then the capacity to observe with precision, and especially for reason to employ the results of these observation, needed to be secured. This was the task which Descartes addressed.

It was a simple plan much needed for its time, and certainly useful for some operations. It is no accident that Descartes became "the Father of the Modern Mind," by the power of the model he provided the late Renaissance mind in its confusion from the welter of new information and high aspirations. The marvellous achievements of the route he opened for the human mind are immediately obvious in their transformation of our physical surroundings, in medicine and in the instrumentation of our lives. But recent environmental concerns begin to suggest that it is too simple for our complex life. There are reasons to suspect that this is true in relation not only to the physical environment, but to our social reality as people are increasingly manipulated by social systems and by their own personal self-understanding as people come to look upon themselves in merely functional and utilitarian terms.

To overcome these undesirable results one could simply add humane understanding alongside what initially was proposed by Descartes, but that does not promises to tame the vision of the man-machine. Instead it would introduce another dichotomy leaving the new humane additions in losing warfare with a tightly organized, well-entrenched adversary. This suggests that a better approach would be to return to Descartes and his original project in order to search there for paths of openness and continuity which it might suggest. When this is done a vast and fascinating panorama opens up – so rich as to suggest that Descartes fatherhood of the modern mind has but begun. The paths are so spectacular that to appreciate these additional dimensions it is more helpful, if not necessary, not to be encased solely in the direct line of the modern Western currents which have applied his method thusfar. If so then India and other non Western peoples could provide a helpful vantage point for unfolding needed further implications of Descartes’ response to modern problems and to the problem of modernity itself.

When we return to Descartes we find something quite marvellous. His project of a unified science may have survived, but by the time he arrived in Holland in 1628, where he was to take up his major work, his effort to work out the general method he articulated in his Rules for the Direction of Our Intelligence had come to an abrupt halt, never to be taken up again.An analysis of this posthumously printed work, however, shows us his dilemma. He had begun the work of laying out in detail his method as described above and was doing this basically in the manner in which it generally has been employed since that time. It was atomic in its assumption, namely, that all consists of a limited number of irreducible simple natures which seemingly quantitative in nature. And it was analytic in procedure, namely, that these were to be distinguished clearly one from another in order to identify the basic components of all things. But it would be synthetic only to the extent that these basic components would be assembled on the basis of equally clear but external linkages; no new reality or truth beyond that of the simple component natures could be derived in, or from, this. It would be a universal mathematics in a reductionist sense.

The result was that he stopped work on this project all-together, and left the manuscript of the Rules in mid-state, replete with repetitions and unresolved alternatives. In no way, however, did this mean abandoning the effort to develop on adequate basis for understanding the sciences; it meant only that a new approach, a new direction, a new foundation was needed.

The moment is indeed decisive in Descartes’ life for he abruptly moved out of Paris and into seclusion in Holland where he spent effectively the remainder of his life, focused around his Meditations on First Philosophy. The circumstances of his move are not well-known: it was sudden and a complete surprise to his associates. The future direction of his work, however, would seem to relate the move not only to his own dismay at the limitations of his project to establish mathematical clarity in all fields of knowledge, but to the major cultural intersection of his time.

From his school days, Descartes had been known for his method. This was remarked by the great mathematician Beeckman’s to whom he promised to write down his method. It appears in Descartes’ Method IV. Shortly before his abrupt departure from Paris Descartes demonstrated the power of his method in the discussion of a paper delivered at a gathering of key intellectuals. Soon after he was summoned by Cardinal de Bérulle, the Augustinian mystic and theologian who founded the French Oratory and was to become Descartes’ spiritual guide. The problem which preoccupied the Cardinal was the great fissure which was opening in the cultural heritage of Europe. On the one hand, there was the tradition of Greek and Christian culture which bore the cumulative humanizing vision of the West. This grounded all in the ultimate Being as one, true and good, echoing the Hindu sense of Brahman, the divine source as existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda). On the other hand, there were the new mathematical methods of quantitative analysis and conceptualization with its great promise for scientific discovery and control. Both were essential for humankind, but the two were turning against each other, each perceiving each other as a basic threat. The challenge of the times was to enable the two to work together.

It was in this context that Cardinal de Bérulle saw the great potential of Descartes’ method and pointed out the Descartes that his development of this method was even an obligation of conscience for the good of humankind. Indeed, Descartes states in the dedicatory letter of his meditations that "some persons . . . demanded in the strongest terms" that he take this step. The foundational issues which this pressed upon his attention, as listed in the title of his Meditations, namely, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, were Augustinian themes. As treated by Descartes they could bridge the growing division between sciences and culture not least because they would help to resolve the precise dilemma which had derailed Descartes’ own initial attempt to work out his Rules.

Hence as soon as he arrived in Holland, he took a chalet, drew up the drawbridge and "for the first nine months I was in this country I worked on nothing other" than a "short paper". This probably is effectively Chapter IV of the Method, which in turn is a sketch of his major work, Meditations on the First Philosophy in which the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul are Demonstrated.

In order to catch the central importance of this for carrying forward the project of Descartes, both as regards founding the modern scientific effort and healing the breach in the culture, we need to turn briefly to Augustine in order to isolate in depth the real issues involved here.

For Augustine the religious dimension of meaning had become centrally important, but for lack of an ability to locate evil in relation to God he seemed forced to the Manichean position of two supreme principles – one good, the other evil. In that case there would be effectively no supreme being, no Goodness Itself, no absolute Bliss (ananda). As he recounted the dramatic story of his conversion in his Confessions, he recounts how he had conceived of God as spatially infinite interpenetrating all: also his soul and body stood as parts in relation to that great Whole. In transcending this purely quantitative approach he was helped by some neo-Platonic books which suggested that he direct his mind inward, into himself. In finding that he judges some of his thoughts to be true and others not, he discovers that his mind has ever been present to some eternal and immutable truth as a standard, which serves as light above his mind (Conf. VII X, 16). As it created him, his relation to it is not that of part to whole, but of measured to measure. In this way, evil can be seen as a deviation which as such does not require a corresponding ultimate principle or cause.

It is most striking that in his Meditations Descartes follows a quite parallel route. In his first Meditation he proceeds by way of doubt to show that of themselves the competencies of the external and the internal senses which constitute the first and second levels of knowledge cannot assure us of true knowledge. Hence, the sciences which depend on them should be bracketed or held in abeyance until a firm foundation can be provided for the truth of their mode of knowledge. This brings us to the third or intellectual level of knowledge where he subjects even mathematical knowledge to hypothetical doubt by hypothesizing a deceiving God or evil genius. The effect is great confusion, indeed vertigo, for lack of ability to find a firm and unchanging basis.

To achieve such a firm basis, in Meditation II he establishes the direction of his search, which like Augustine (and the Gita) is precisely to enter into oneself as thinking. Note that this is no longer in order to reason from thinking to being, as was the case in Descartes’ Discourse on Method, but rather to find, not unlike Parmenides, that thinking is being. Hence one touches directly upon that which cannot be doubted, since to doubt is identically to be thinking, which identically is ‘to be’ or ‘to exist’.

Descartes’ move to Meditation III at this point can be understood in a number of ways, and it is the mark of his genius that probably they are all correct and mutually reinforcing. At the end of Meditation II, he had found his own self, but was in splendid isolation. He needed then to establish a basis for knowledge of realities other than himself. In proceeding to do this he is not simply responding to the hypothetical doubt of his first Meditation, but searching even more for the foundation of the certitude even regarding his self. Thus far he has not been able to doubt this, yet its origin and hence its quality are not yet understood. If this were indeed to have been created by a deceiving God his knowledge would exist in eternal confusion, and, hence, isolation. Thus Meditation III is an effort to assure not only the ability to know others, but to know himself more deeply and to be able to achieve that confidence which, as he had said in the Method, he sought for walking in this world.

His approach to this in Meditation III, in some contrast to Meditation V, could be considered to be a posteriori reasoning from effect to efficient cause. He finds within his mind the idea of an all perfect being: eternal, omnipotent and immutable. Asking how it is possible for his imperfect mind to have the idea of the perfect, on the basis of the principle of causality (and more fundamentally on that of non-contradiction: that being cannot be nonbeing, nor hence can it come from nonbeing) he traces this idea to an existing all perfect being, that is, to God.

A number of pointers lead us still further. First in the Augustinian and NeoPlatonic tradition the mode of thought is different from the Aristotelian pursuit of an unchanging cause of motion, where cause and effect are in clear contrast. Instead it is founded in the Platonic notion of form and of participation, where the participated is identified not by its distinction from, but by its similarity to, the cause. Thus two realizations of the same form, precisely as form, are one; this tends not to oppose, but to assimilate effect to cause.

This is confirmed in the very interesting addenda at the end of Meditation III when he asks how it is that this idea of God is present in his mind. He does not respond in terms of a construction from finite things–quite the contrary. His position is not that this shows the mastery of mind over finite reality or its ability to transcend it, but rather that the mind itself is the very image of its maker who

For Ferdinand Alquié then Descartes’ intuition is three in one: first, it perceives that in doubting he is thinking; second, it perceives that "to think" is identically "to be"; and third it perceives in this thinking-being there is the reality of God by which I think the unique. Thus, the reality of God is the basic reality of/for my mind. It is by His perfection that I can have confidence in my own knowledge and other actions.

In this light Descartes is able to resolve his difficulties in establishing the truth of science. Just as Augustine could not solve his problem of moral evil in terms of the quantitative extension of God throughout the universe of which we are parts, neither could Descartes solve his problem of scientific knowledge in the Rules by looking longitudinally into the set of faculties and their objects in the context of a mechanical hypothesis. Both found their way by turning from extension to intention, by entering into themselves and discovering the divine. For Augustine this was in terms of the reality or norm which founded the truth for his speculative intellect and the right for his practical intellect. For Descartes it was the All Perfect being, of which his intellect, indeed his very self, is the living image. Thus we

In this Descartes echoes Plato’s famous allegory according to which those who gain enlightenment must return to the cave to lead others.

Certainly, there is here a notable difference. Augustine leads the mind up to God where it remains and from which and in terms of which all is illumined and interpreted. His is the vision of the saint. Descartes does not remain there but returns to human reason and its work in the world.

Yet it would be too quick to simply contrast the two. Like Plato’s prisoner’s liberated in the allegory of the cave once they arrive at the light of the fire or sun at the mouth of the cave, they wish to remain there. Descartes too, at the end of his Third Meditation appreciates with prayerful reverence the holiness of the precincts upon which his mind has entered. He is not content only to see that his mind is grounded in truth in order to rush back to the human world. Rather he stops to contemplate, to ponder and indeed to admire and adore, and to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable in this life.

But before I examine this matter with more care, and pass on to the consideration of other truths which may be derived from it, it seems to me right to pause for a while in order to contemplate God Himself, to ponder at leisure His marvelous attributes, to consider, and admire, and adore, the beauty of this light so resplendent, at least as far as the strength of my mind, which is in some measure dazzled by the sight, will allow me to do so. For just as faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we continue to learn by experience that a similar meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable in this life.

Some, being too quick to restrict Descartes to their own reductionist humanism, have not given enough attention to the significance of Descartes’ Third and Fifth Meditations, nor indeed to the dependence of meditations Four and Six thereupon. For Plato those who reached the fourth level of knowledge or the light at the mouth of the cave would see 10,000 times better. For that reason they were urgently needed in the cave in order to unfold the deeper significance of the dimensions of knowledge opened on the lower stages of the line/cave. Descartes’s return to his project of advancing human reason across the board has close analogy and similar impact in the field of reason.

From this one can see the reason for the immense confidence of Rationalists in their work of reason. To know is truly divine; to the degree that one knows clearly and distinctly, one touches that which is really real in things. Thus, humankind has a great mission, namely, to push back the frontiers of ignorance, to shed the light of reason into all that is dark and obscure. Correspondingly, the purpose of human powers for action is to correct all that is deviant from rational order in the physical realm and from justice or the judgement of what is right in social order. His is "a divine rage for order" as has been rightly said. Conversely, what is contrary to reason is deviant, unreal, or at least ought not to exist.

There is danger, as well as hope, in this. For people soon forget that their reason is limited, and that while it is possible to identify what is nonsense it is not possible for anyone to exhaust all the sense there is. In time what does not appear to be significant comes to be looked upon as something to be destroyed or stamped out. In forgetfulness of this lies the dark space in which the passion for reason turns into intolerance and oppression. This has been the bitter experience in our times with the so-called scientific view of history. Further, rationalists, captivated as they are by reason, have often forgot the additional humane dimensions of affectivity, mutual concern and love. Reason is in danger – and itself can be a terrible danger, not only theoretically, but practically – if this be forgotten. However, there is also protection against this in the openness of Descartes, Augustine, Advaita and Saiva Sedanta to the Absolute and to love. We have in these traditions elements that are essential for the road ahead.

There is another side as well to Descartes’ basic project. His sense was not only that an appreciation of the role of God in human knowledge could help to found science, but that scientific reasoning could in turn help theological argumentation. It may not prove helpful to draw loose parallels between science and religion, or to try to find either scientific content in ancient texts written in a quite different mode, or religious content in scientific results concerned with a different order. But increasingly as the physical sciences probe their roots and become more aware of the nature of their theory construction there is a developing appreciation of the role of such themes as identity and unity. It can be hoped that their work if harvested by appropriate technique, as with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Phenomenon of Man and Divine Milieu, might articulate in new and enriching manners what was sung in the Vedic hymns of old concerning the way in which all nature praises the heavens and they in turn praise God. With even greater reason, it can be hoped that the psychological and human sciences, as they point in multiple ways deeply into the dynamics of the self, might help people of our times to achieve greater openness to the Absolute Self within whom is life and love itself.

The above investigation of the thought of Descartes, Father of Western Philosophy, suggests that there is a solution to this dilemma, that modernity is in principle not closed against the religion but on the contrary is built on the reference to God which assures that being is also truth and that this is pervasive in character, including the work of the human mind. In this light, the religious bases of the civilizations is not contrary to modernization but rather its speculative foundation which undergirds also the humanness and spiritual quality of its implementation.

Secularization may have served a tactical purpose in opening new space for the modern rationalization of all aspects of life. However, using it as a strategy in this globalizing encounter of cultures is having the disastrous effect of pitting a seemingly imperial Western civilization against other civilizations which it threatens to undermine. This invites, indeed requires, a clash of civilizations as others seek to save themselves from the collapse of their humanity which would entail the loss of the foundations of their civilization.

It was the genius of Descartes, in contrast to the Cartesians, to see that rationalization was not a reductive humanism, but on the contrary was grounded in the divine. Following his lead promises a way beyond conflict, to cooperation between civilizations.

Unfortunately this rich depth of meaning in Descartes’ turning to the self was covered over by his norm of clarity and distinctness. As a result the subject came to be treated as an epistemological object. As Gabriel Marcel points out, the essential character of the self as source of consciousness and intentionality always escapes whenever treated as an object of knowledge. Hence subjectivity was long ignored or even considered an enemy of knowledge.

During the last century human knowledge of the physical universe was totally transformed by breaking into the atom and discovering its structure. The effect was not only scientific advance, but the ambivalence of the conjoined threat of the atomic bomb and great promise of atomic energy. It is the contention here that similarly philosophical understanding today has shifted from being a work of deduction by specialists working in abstraction from the process of human life, to deep engagement at the center of human concerns under the pressures of life’s challenges. From external objective observation life has now come to be lived in terms also of internal self-awareness where human freedom with its cultural creativity and responsibility becomes central. But as the playing field has shifted, the challenges have risen geometrically and with them the potential not only for death, but for life. To understand this we need to review the steps, negative and positive, by which this breakthrough from mere objectivity to subjectivity has occurred.

The pressures of the last century force us to cross a new divide as we enter into the new millennium. To see this we need to review the history of reason in this epoch. The first millennium is justly seen as one in which human attention was focused upon God. It was the time of Christ and the Prophet; much of humanity was fully absorbed in the assimilation of their messages.

The second millennium is generally seen as shifting to human beings. Its first 500 years focused upon the reintegration of Aristotelian reason by such figures as Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd and Thomas Aquinas.

From its beginning human reason had always attempted to draw upon the fullness of human experience, to reflect the highest human and religious aspirations, and to build upon the accomplishments of the predecessors – philosophers sensed themselves as standing on the shoulders of earlier philosophers. The second half of the millennium, from 1500, was marked by a radicalization of reason and a certain Promethean hope emerged. As with Milton’s Paradise Lost, it was claimed that humankind would save itself, indeed that each person would do so by his or her power of reason.

It was true that Descartes intended later to reintroduce the various levels of human knowledge on a more certain basis. But what he restored was not the rich content of the breadth of human experience, but only what could be had with the requisite clarity and distinctness. Thus, of the content of the senses which had been bracketed by doubt in the first Meditation, in the sixth Meditation only the quantitative or measurable was allowed back into his system. All the rest was considered simply provisory and employed pragmatically to the degree that it proved useful in so navigating as to avoid physical harm in the world.

By the beginning of the 20th century humanity felt itself poised for the final push to create by the power of science a utopia not only by subduing and harnessing the physical powers of nature, but by genetic human engineering and social manipulation. Looking back from the present vantage point we find that history has proven to be quite different from these utopian goals as the power of science was diverted to two destructive World Wars and to the development of nuclear weapons capable of extinguishing the entire human race.

The religiously contextualized philosophical traditions not built in terms of the modern enlightenment reductionism were not understandable within the more restrictive enlightenment. Hence, the great Hindu and Islamic traditions were dismissed as mystifications, and effective access to the classical tradition of Western philosophy was no longer available.

In sum, this century has been marked by poverty that cannot be erased and exploitation ever more widespread, two World Wars, pogroms and holocausts, genocide and "ethnic cleansing," emerging intolerance, family collapse and anomie. The situation recalls the great meteorite which hit the Yucatan Peninsula eons ago sending a cloud of dust around the world which obscured the sun for years, killed off the flora and thus broke the food chain. Life of all sorts was largely extinguished and had to begin slowly to regenerate itself once again.

In this sense the negative dimension of the present period may be misnamed "postmodern," because it is really the final critical period of modernity as it progressively collapses. Having become conscious of its own deadly propensities, modern philosophy begins to attack these evils by the only tools it possesses: power and control. Such attacks are not creative, but destructive. Knowing that it must arrest its inherently destructive urges reason destroys its own speculative foundations. All notions of structures and stages and, of course, all ethical norms, everything must be trashed because the hubris of modern rationalism closes off access to any sense that it itself is the real root of its problem. In a paroxysm of despair, like a scorpion trapped in a circle of fire, modernity commits its own auto de fe.

To read this history negatively, as we have been doing, is, however, only part of the truth. It depicts a simple and total collapse of technical reason if it acts alone and as self sufficient. But there may be more to human consciousness and hence to philosophy.

Above we saw how a close analysis of the thought of Descartes reveals that after all he did not definitively abandon his project of a universal mathematics nor did he allow it to enclose his mind in technical reason. On the contrary that project was the impetus which drove his consciousness in upon itself to discover its roots in divine truth.

In analogy to the replacement of a tooth in childhood, the more important phenomenon is not the weakness of the old tooth that is falling out, but the strength of the new tooth that is replacing it. A few philosophers did point to this new dimension of human awareness. Shortly after Descartes Pascal’s assertion "Que la raison a des raisons, que la raison ne comprend pas" would remain famous if unheeded, as would Vico’s prediction that the new reason would give birth to a generation of brutes – intellectual brutes, but brutes nonetheless. Later Kiekegaard would follow Hegel with a similar warning. None of these voice would have strong impact while the race was on to "conquer" the world by a supposedly omni-sufficient scientific reason. But as human problems mounted the adequacy of reason to handle the deepest problems of human dignity and transcendent purpose came under sustained questioning and new attention was given to search for additional human capabilities.

One might well ask which comes first, the public sense of the human challenge or the corresponding philosophical reflection. My own sense is that they are, in fact, one as philosophical insight provides the reflective dimension of human concern. In any case, one finds a striking parallel between social experience and philosophy in this century. To the extreme totalitarian repression by the ideologies of the 1930s there followed the progressive liberation from fascism in World War II, from colonial exploitation in the 1950s and 60s, of minorities in the 1970s, and from Communism in the 1980s. Throughout, like the new tooth the emergence of a broad sense of the human person across cultures has been consistent and persistent.

There has been a strikingly parallel development in philosophy. At the beginning of this century, it had appeared that the rationalist project of stating all in clear and distinct objective terms was close to completion. This was to be achieved either in the empirical terms of the positivist tradition of sense knowledge or in the formal and essentialist terms of the Kantian intellectual tradition. Whitehead wrote that at the turn of the century, when with Bertrand Russell he went to the First World Congress of Philosophy in Paris, it seemed that, except for some details of application, the work of physics had been essentially completed. To the contrary, however, like the experience of Augustine and Descartes described above, the very attempt to finalize scientific knowledge with its most evolved concepts made manifest the radical insufficiency of the objectivist approach and led to renewed appreciation of the importance of subjectivity.

We have seen how, along with the developments in the objective and empirical sciences, there was need to recognize as well the non-objective realm of human subjectivity. The danger was that, in a time when the sense of science was objectivist, univocous and pervasive, the very attempt to recognize and protect the non-objective would be carried out by objectivist means and thereby itself become a process of reducing subjectivity to objectivity. This marked the efforts from Schleiermacher through Dilthey, and raised the question of whether subjectivity could ever be protected. On the one hand, the attempt of Schleiermacher illustrated that this could not be done if what was sought ultimately was simply objective scientific knowledge. On the other hand, Dilthey’s effort illustrated that subjectivity would be reduced to relativism if left to itself in an exclusively horizontal historical dimension moving simply from past to future.

In retrospect then it would appear that the only way is to take up the vertical dimension which inspired the thought of Schleiermacher, but which had been ignored by those in search of a science of spirit or geisteswissenschaft. In order to access this a new mode of thinking, now called phenomenology, would be needed. This was initiated by Edmund Husserl, not in reaction against, but in the search for, the foundations of scientific knowledge at its most rigorous, namely, in mathematics.

As a student Husserl had been referred by T.G. Masaryk to Franz Brentano in Vienna, who introduced him to the notion of intentionality. From Aristotle this notion had flowed through the channels of Catholic philosophy due to its concern for the work of the Spirit in the human heart. In this light, the sciences and even mathematics needed to be set within the broader horizon of intentionality once they were seen as ways of organizing experience with a view to certain intentions or goals.

Thus, whereas Wilhelm Dilthey had attempted to render all such knowledge ultimately objective for scientific purposes, Husserl situated science within the broader life world. He placed on one side the experience that is objective and hence available for anyone and everyone to see. Under this heading would come the genius of Aristotle in developing a process of abstraction. Here differences would be omitted from attention so that there remained only what was uniform across any field under investigation. Modern empiricism is similarly objectivist in insisting that the object of knowledge be repeatable at any time and by any one, and that the result of any given experiment be exactly the same.

But our experience of life manifests another dimension characterized precisely by its temporal and historical character. What happens is succeeded by other events, in terms of which our prior experience can never again be seen in quite the same light. Hence, experience is not a set of unchanging blocks, but more a process of becoming. It consists less in objects before us than in our total – including our emotional – response to the world. This personal outlook on life is shaped less by the things observed than by living though them. Moreover, these two processes of experience and understanding are not so much separated as interactive in a spiral manner: understanding is shaped by developing experience, which in turn is shaped by progress in understanding. This is the double helix of experience.

In this way Husserl succeeded in directing the mind to human subjectivity, and hence to the unique freedom and creativity of peoples. But he leaves unanswered the question of the unity of this realm of human subjectivity. That there is a unity is seen from the fact of communication, the cooperative projects of science and the yet broader project which is the community. But how can this be grounded? Husserl appealed to a transcendental ego in a somewhat Kantian manner which ideally or formally states the entire realm of self-consciousness and of mutual awareness, but this would appear to lose touch with the life-world he wanted to explore. At a later point he would seem to identify this with the entire historical realm of actual human interchange, but that would not confront the foundational question of the unity of this realm.

In any case, his interest is not in a Kantian form of consciousness superimposed upon the concrete acts of consciousness. Rather he is intent upon a process of phenomenological reduction by which all the particular empirical contents of the various experiences are put to one side or bracketed in order to make manifest what is essential to consciousness. His conclusion is that whereas other things are always what they are, what is proper or essential to consciousness is that it is always of, or about, something else, that is, it is relational, transcending itself and tending toward another; in a word, it is intentional.

Husserl’s process of reductions by which he uncovers this is close to Descartes’ inward process of discovering that doubting is basically thinking and thus the work of the self or spirit as a thinking thing. This leads Husserl to the way the observer is progressively and selectively conscious of the different aspects of objects, and thereby constitutes the world for consciousness.

There is a yet further step to be taken, however, because, in addition to those many relations of the self to its objects in which awareness consists, there is also awareness of this awareness. In this we touch upon the deepest dimension of the self in relation to which everything else including reflection is an object. This he refers to as the transcendental ego, to which corresponds the world as a whole. In a provocative aside Robert Wood notes that

Yet there remains a gulf between the agent-intellects of the medieval philosophers and the atman-Brahman of the Hindu’s, on the one hand, and Husserl’s transcendental ego, on the other. Husserl is looking for the essence or quintessence of consciousness. As this must be a consciousness of consciousness he is in danger of entering as it were into a hall of mirrors and becoming trapped in an idealism.

As we shall see in Chapter VI below, the integral complex of these conscious relations is what constitutes the pattern of a culture, in terms of which life is encountered, interpreted and responded to. In the past culture was not seen as life, but rather as an outer garment by which life was adorned. It was, as it were, an afterthought, a possession of varying degrees of value perhaps, but more an adornment than life itself. Husserl enables us to see that cultures are the forms of the life world of which we are part. Yet they remain for him additions, forming and structuring life, but not being itself.

If this be so then an important step awaits, namely, to review these matters now in terms of being in order to be able to see intentionality as the very quintessence, not merely of consciousness, but of life itself. In those terms cultures and civilizations, and the religions which are their roots, will be revealed as the basic issue of life or death. This would enable us to rediscover in a new way how religion is the heart of life, why it now returns to the center of the conflicts and promises of life in our day, and how addressing its challenges is the key to moving into the future.

The step from consciousness to being was taken up in phenomenological terms by Husserl’s successor, Martin Heidegger. In pursuit of the transcendental ego as the quintessence of conscious life Husserl bracketed the concrete existential reality of engagement in the world, thereby losing actual life in search of the essence of life. To correct this Heidegger advanced the phenomenological project from the order of consciousness to that of being.

He focused concretely on the human being living in the flesh and through time who experiences. But this is twofold. In his earlier work, which culminated in Being and Time, the perspective was not that of single things, or even of these as beings, but of the being of these beings. For this he turned to the being which is conscious of itself, that is, to the dasein, or the human being who is not only given but aware of his givenness. Here the major point of insight which frees the mind and takes it beyond the isolated singularity of things is their temporal character. On the one hand, we are creatures of past decisions which create this world which we did not make but in which we find ourselves thrown. On the other hand, we act in terms of a future toward which we project ourselves.

In this light the character of understanding is not primarily a speculative grasp of a fixed scientific object, but the practical engagement of one’s being in the realization of its capacity for life. This reverses the direction of hermeneutics. It is no longer a search for necessary and objective, repeatable and universal truths; rather it is the conscious emergence of being in time.

Heidegger’s Being and Time was only the first part of a project, whose second part he never formally completed. But in his subsequent writings (the so-called "later Heidegger") his horizon shifts so that the perspective is no longer that of the temporal dasein and what was available or at hand for description and analysis. Rather it becomes Being which the dasein expresses in time, but which transcends this being and is characterized rather by hiddenness and mystery. This deepens his sense of truth as aleitheia, or the unveiling of what is hidden.

The difference is important for the work of hermeneutics. The earlier Heidegger provided rich insight into our temporal conditions and how this could be a mode of awareness of being and of its realization in our lives. Thus, the earlier Heidegger sees the special role of hermeneutics to be that of questioning being – almost calling it to account for itself in history; for the earlier Heidegger this is the essence of the human person. Only in questioning does man become truly himself and correlatively only as answer does being disclose itself. Indeed, by this questioning Being becomes history and in a sense depends upon man as the place of its manifestation.

The later Heidegger looks again at this. Now it is not man which is and brings Being into time, though Being always depends on man as the place of being. Rather man is now seen precisely as the expression of Being itself, which Being becomes the focus of attention. From its perspective all is seen, including human physical and conscious life. In religious terms this has always been referred to as seeing all sub specie aternitatis (in terms of eternity). While not considering Being itself to be the Divine, Heidegger elaborates horizons that can be very helpful for religious thinkers and hence for the dialogue of essentially religious civilizations.

In this later state a whole new terminology appears in Heidegger’s later writings. Man does not summon Being at will by his questioning, but is himself more fundamentally gift. He must wait upon Being to manifest itself, not only in the sense of awaiting the time of kyros or manifestation, but of responding to, waiting upon, and shepherding beings in time. Hence, the properly human attitude is not one of questioning, but of thanksgiving. This most deeply inspires and gives dynamism to human life as it is thanksgiving for the gift of one’s very being. This gift of life can never be repaid in kind; it must be received and treasured, interpreted and shaped; and in turn creatively passed on to others. This itself is a hermeneutic process; indeed it is the essence of all hermeneutics.

Thus we come to what religious people have always known, namely, (a) that only in letting go of the grasping by which we hold to – or more really are held by – our possessions do we allow God to live in us; (b) that we live in Him; and hence (c) that to live is to serve God and neighbor in gratitude and generosity.