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Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and
Preparing to Die:
Complacentia
Boni as the
Beginning of Acquired and Infused Virtue
William McDonough
NOT ALL READERS APPROACH DUTCH JEWISH DIARIST AND HOLOCAUST
victim Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) appreciatively. Some find her too passive in
the face of the Nazi terror. Literary scholar Rachel Brenner, however, praises
Hillesum as embodying a "stubborn conviction that love is an inclusive force"
for overcoming hatred. In this essay I accept Brenner's reading of Hillesum and
attempt to theologize it. That is, I see in Hillesum's writing a deeply theological
understanding of what love is and how it works in a human life. After defending
Hillesum against her critics, I read her writings through the Thomistic catego-
ries of acquired and infused virtues and claim that Hillesum's writing could
help Christian ethics recover a voice with which to speak helpfully about love in
our day.
Introduction: Why I Am Doing This Study
Dutch Jew Esther (Etty) Hillesum, born in Holland in 1914 and murdered at
Auschwitz in
1943,
has left
a
remarkable collection of diaries and letters that re-
cently received their first unabridged English translation.1 I say more about
Hillesum and her writings in a moment. First, however, I articulate my own in-
terest in her. In the final meeting of an extended joint study of Hillesum's writ-
ings,
a Jewish man asked the Christian participants (of whom I was one), "I still
don't fully understand why this woman appeals to you. Is she an acceptable Jew
to you because she cites some New Testament texts? Can you say again why
you are so interested in her?"
In this essay I seek to answer the man's question. I am seeking a connection
between Hillesum and me (us) that neither "sentimentalizes horror," in the
words of Hannah Arendt,2 nor baptizes Hillesum
post
mortem.
The immediate
draw for me to this woman is that although she is very bright, she begins her
writing as rather a personal mess. She writes at the very beginning of her dia-
ries,
"I am blessed enough intellectually to be able to fathom most subjects I
Journal
of
the Society
of
Christian
Ethics,
25,
2
(2005): 179-202
180 · William McDonough
seem to be a match for most of life's problems, and yet deep down something
like a tightly wound ball of twine binds me relentlessly, and at times I am noth-
ing more or less than a miserable, frightened creature" {Etty [diary, March 9,
1941],
4).
Holocaust scholar David Patterson reads journal entries such as this as evi-
dence that Hillesum was "narcissistic . . . [and] egocentric . . . too focused on
herself to feel much accountability for others. . . . [She] voyeuristically and vi-
cariously experienced each horror as part of a self-centered fascination with the
world around her, and not as something she must attest to as a witness ... [As a
witness to the Holocaust she is] of dubious interest."3 Against Patterson, I read
such entries as evidence that Hillesum might speak to
us.
As she begins writing,
she is bright, self-absorbed, and lost: just like us.
Like her, we also are bright enough; more or less competent; but also con-
fused, frightened, and, to borrow Walker Percy's term, "lost in the cosmos."4
Moreover, at just this time our churches are largely failing in their role as moral
instructors. Catholic theologian (and later cardinal) Walter Kasper put the mat-
ter dramatically: "Today we are unfortunately bound to say that in the souls of
many believers the church
is
dying Twenty years after the council, there are
already renewed signs of certain forms of monopoly on the part of the magis-
terium."5 In our own ways we are lost, and the dominant religious approaches
do not help us find our way back to ourselves.
I argue that Hillesum shows us a way back to ourselves. To borrow words
from Jean Porter, she is a "flawed saint" for our times.6 We can benefit from
letting ourselves "be read by" Hillesum, as Dutch writer Denise De Costa rec-
ommends: "To read Hillesum is to be ... transported out of the familiar into a
world that rewrites you. . . . Her texts push beyond to a Second innocence.'
Letting oneself be read by Etty Hillesum means reestablishing contact with the
other and the alien both inside and outside
oneself."7
To be read by Hillesum means first to read her and to try to name what one
finds in her writing. I attempt to do this naming in three steps. In the first sec-
tion of this essay, I borrow much from Rachel Feldhay Brenner's recent liter-
ary-ethical appreciation of Hillesum and suggest the need for a complementary
theological reading. In the second and third sections, I carry out that theologi-
cal reading by engaging Hillesum with the Christian theological tradition of
virtue ethics. In the second section, I look for a connection between Hillesum
and the foundations of
virtue;
in the third I look for a similar connection be-
tween her and what the Christian tradition calls the virtues infused by God's
grace. In the conclusion of
this
essay I suggest what we Christians might learn
from Hillesum about our own understanding of virtue's foundations; I then re-
turn to the question of whether a Christian may—without sentimentalizing or
appropriating what is not his—engage the writings of Hillesum the way I do.
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 181
Approaching Hillesum: A Literary-Ethical Analysis and the Need for a
Complementary Theological Analysis
The new and first complete English translation of Hillesum's writings has occa-
sioned responses other than David Patterson's. One study flowing from this
new translation is an essay by Rachel Feldhay Brenner, professor of modern
Hebrew literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Brenner's 2004
essay, "Etty Hillesum: A Thinking Artist," begins with a biographical sketch of
Hillesum, a summary of which serves well here:
Hillesum was born in Holland in a middle-class, assimilated, highly educated
Jewish family. Her father was a classicist and a high school headmaster. Her
mother was born in Russia. Hillesum had two younger brothers, both ex-
tremely talented. In 1933 she moved to Amsterdam to study law and Slavic
languages. She also studied and taught Russian language and literature. She
read voraciously, with special emphasis on Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Rilke, Jung,
and the New Testament, especially St. Matthew and St. Paul. In 1941 she met
Julius Spier, a chirologist and
a
Jungian, who became her mentor and lover.
Under his influence, Hillesum started writing her diary Hillesum went to
Westerbork [the transit camp in eastern Holland from which she was eventu-
ally deported to Auschwitz] for the first time on July 30, 1942. Though seri-
ous illness forced her to go home [several times in the next
year]
she was back
at her request in the beginning of June 1943 and remained there until the
end. She continued to write letters to her friends in Amsterdam until the last
moment. Her final letter is from September 7, 1943, which she wrote on the
deportation train [to Auschwitz].8
I add more biographical details throughout this essay. It is worth adding at
the start, however, that Hillesum's family also was psychologically troubled.
Her mother seems to have barely escaped Russia with her life during
a
1907 po-
grom and struggled to maintain her equanimity through the rest of her life.
Each of Hillesum's brothers—Jaap, a physician, and Mischa, a piano prodigy—
was hospitalized for mental illness at least once.9
Brenner's literary-ethical reading of Hillesum's life is the base on which my
reading is built. In particular, I appreciate Brenner's response to the harsh cri-
tique by Patterson and others.10 Rejecting Patterson's reading of Hillesum's dia-
ries
as
narcissistic, Brenner sees in them
a
process of maturation,
"a
lucid, unspar-
ing self-analysis [that was] ... the initial phase in her consciously devised plan
aimed at self-formation."11 Brenner reads Hillesum chronologically, seeing a
two-stage process of growth evident in her writing. The first stage is largely evi-
dent in Hillesum's diaries written before her detention at Westerbork, and the
182 · William McDonough
second stage
is
evident in her letters from that
camp.
According to Brenner, "The
first stage, which I call the stage of preparation, evolved in Amsterdam; at this
stage she prepares to face the reality of the ultimate destruction through self-ex-
ploration
as
thinker and artist. The second
stage,
which I
call
the stage of the test,
began with Hillesum's first departure for Westerbork. At
this
stage,
in the reality
of the deportation
camp,
Hillesum put to test both her ethical perspective and the
art she had been striving to shape in defiance of the increasing Nazi horror."12
Noting what Hillesum calls her desire "to catch and stop [her fellow suffer-
ers] in their flight from themselves and then take them by the hand and lead
them back to their own sources" {Etty [diary, June 8, 1942], 399), Brenner
thinks this desire is "the core of Hillesum's ethical vision, which she taught to
herself and wished to teach to her fellow-Jews; it is a message of redemption in
self-worth and self-dignity. What she wished to defeat is not the physical force
of terror, but rather its insidious psychological objective of dehumanization."13
For Brenner, the dehumanization that Hillesum taught herself and then her
fellow sufferers to avoid is that which results from hating. She claims that
Hillesum held that "it
is
absolutely necessary to get rid of the feelings of self-ha-
tred and degradation as well as of the responses of hate and violence toward
others."14 In support of this claim, Brenner cites Hillesum's invocation of the
apostle Paul in one of her letters from Westerbork. Hillesum wrote: "It has
been brought home forcibly to me here how every atom of hatred added to the
world makes it an even more inhospitable place. I also believe, childishly per-
haps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only
through the love the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thir-
teenth chapter of his first letter" {Etty [letters, December 1942], 590-91).
Brenner sees in this text Hillesum's "faith in the redemptive power of
love
. . .
[her] stubborn conviction that love is an inclusive force that will erase hatred
between religions and races."15 Brenner ends her essay by referring to the post-
card citing Psalm 18—"The Lord is my high tower"—that Hillesum threw
from the transport train after her deportation from Westerbork {Etty [letter,
September 7, 1943], 659). The postcard indicates that Hillesum carried her be-
liefs to the end, leading Brenner to conclude, "Hillesum's clarity of reasoning in
her writing to the very end proved her unrelenting defiance of the terror of
hopelessness and despair. As far as this book allows us to follow... we are privi-
leged to see her living up to the ultimate test of human values that she set up for
herself."1*
For Brenner, Hillesum passed the test she had set for herself and remains a
teacher for us across religious divisions in the redemptive power of
love.
Hil-
lesum
has
left
us
what
she
herself
was
looking
for:
"new thoughts and insights ra-
diating out from the camps, spreading lucidity, crossing the barbed wire."17
I accept Brenner's literary-ethical interpretation completely. What I seek to
do here is complement her analysis with an ethical-theological interpretation of
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 183
Hillesum. Although Brenner's thesis that Hillesum teaches that the redemptive
power of
love
is surely right, we have no further word from Brenner on what,
foundationally, this love is and how it works. In a word, I want to theologize
Brenner's interpretation.18
More particularly, I seek an alternative to two other theological readings of
the love at work in Hillesum's writing, as well as in her life and death. I call
them "naturalist" and "super-naturalist" understandings. Dutch scholar Denise
De Costa's reading of Hillesum can be labeled naturalist. De Costa writes,
"Etty Hillesum's God was born the very moment Etty chose to be
herself.
She
experienced this God not as a father figure but as her own essence, her inner-
most being, her deepest
self.
The moment she canceled a few appointments, af-
ter realizing they
were
not for her, she opened up to the God inside her. She re-
fused any longer to fulfill other people's expectations of her and saw it as her
duty to become
herself;
in other
words:
to fulfill her potential, to grow person-
ally, to use her talents. This is ... becoming divine."19 In the second section of
this essay, I reject De Costa's reading as a partial understanding of the love at
work in Hillesum.
I see a supernaturalist explanation of the workings of love in Hillesum in Ol-
iver Davies' book A
Theology
of
Compassion:
Metaphysics
of
Difference
and
the
Re-
newal
of
Tradition.
Along with texts from Edith Stein and a letter from an un-
named heroic woman caught in the horrors of Bosnia in
1993,
Davies mines the
writings of Etty Hillesum to find what he calls "narratives . . . [for] a transcen-
dental analytic of compassion . . . [for] a kenotic ontology."20 Davies writes,
"The ultimate compassionate love of Etty Hillesum ... for [her] suffering
neighbors is but the most radical example of a self-risking life orientation which
for all this extraordinary character is generally expressed in a multitude of quite
ordinary ways. ... In the act of compassionate love there is mediated to us a
sense of the possibility of an infinite kenosis In other
words,
the act of com-
passion opens to us a horizon of encounter with God in personal form."21
If De Costa understands love in too small a way, Davies makes of it some-
thing all too big and humanly unreachable right from the start. In the two suc-
ceeding sections of this essay, I look to the Christian theological tradition on
virtue for an alternative to De Costa's self-affirming love and Davies' self-effac-
ing love as descriptions of how love works in Etty Hillesum—and in us.
Engaging Hillesum from
the
Tradition
of
Christian
Ethics,
Part
One:
Complacentia Boni—A Resting
in the
Good—as
the
Foundation
of
Virtue
Where De Costa claims that Hillesum's struggle to love gained her God, I want
to develop an idea from Christian theologian Frederick Crowe's 1959 essay on
complacentia boni
to claim that what Hillesum gained
was
not God but love as the
184 · William McDonough
foundation of her
Ufe.
Love,
in its
first
and primary
sense,
is
"passive, complacent,
quiescent... affective consent,... acceptance of what
is
good,... concord with
the universe of being."22 In his essay, Crowe says he is working through to its
completion an idea of Thomas
Aquinas:
"Compiacere is
the first act of
love,
which
is the basic act of will and the principle of all others Thomas' theory of love
was never completed [But] will's first response to the good is not movement
towards it but
a
simple change in the subject, a complacency [T]he will first
rests,
then seeks
as
viator, and finally comes to permanent rest in beatitude."23
In this section, I develop Crowe's idea to suggest the tradition's first answer
to the question of what love is. My desire here is to understand love in
Hillesum—and in us through her—in a less overreaching way than De Costa's.
I go far from Etty Hillesum now in developing this idea of
complacentia
boni,
in
hopes that it will give us words to understand her.
Diana Fritz Cates's book
Choosing to
Feel:
Virtue, Fnendship,
and
Compassion
for Friends introduced me to Crowe. Cates finds in Crowe's idea of complacency
a "depth dimension" to Aquinas's understanding of the affective foundations of
morality that is missing in
Aristotle:
"(Aquinas) points to a needed openness to-
ward the power of being itself that prepares us to be captivated and penetrated
by a particular other's being, allowing careful reason to be momentarily caught
off guard."2«
Cates is doing much to help Christian ethics think about its foundations in
affective love.25 She writes that her own thinking has been influenced by the
work ethicists such as Paul Wadell and Simon Harak have done on passion as
the beginning of virtue.26 This further idea that love is fundamentally a passion
has been critiqued by Jean Porter. Porter claims—with justification—that call-
ing love a passion cuts off love (and therefore ethics) from its foundation in rea-
son.27 One might suggest that De Costa's understanding of love finds a parallel
in the work of contemporary Christian ethicists who regard virtue as already
contained in passion: All short-circuit the move toward virtue in a human life
Porter is right but has not—as far as I know—followed Crowe's and Cates's
further analysis and therefore has not noticed Crowe's insistence that compla-
cency in rational love (rather than in passion) is at the base of the moral life.28 If
Crowe and Cates are right, however, there is already in Aquinas an emphasis—
missing in Aristotle—on morality's foundation in complacent, affective rational
love.29
In his
Commentary on the Nichomachean
Ethics, Aquinas was troubled by Aris-
totle's description of moral truth depending on right appetite—but right appe-
tite in turn depending on truth in the intellect.30 Aquinas proposed a solution to
what he terms Aristotle's "apparent vicious circle"
{quaedam
circulatio):
"There
seems to be some problem [in Aristotle's text.] If the truth of the practical intel-
lect is determined by comparison with
a
right appetitive faculty and the rectitude
of the appetitive faculty is determined by the fact that it agrees with right reason,
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 185
an apparent
vicious
circle results from these statements. Therefore, we must say
that the end and the means pertain to the appetitive faculty, but
the end is
deter-
mined for
man by
nature.
On the contrary, the means are not determined for
us
by
nature but are to be investigated by reason.
So rectitude
of
the
appetitive
faculty
in
regard to the end is the measure
of truth for the
practical reason.,"31
I contend that Crowe's idea oí
complacentia boni
explains how "ends" are "de-
termined by nature" in a person's concrete life. I show Crowe's reasoning in
three steps. First, Crowe accepts the point insisted on by Porter and others that
will is logically dependent on intellect in all human knowing because will is only
able to go out to a known good, but Crowe adds a nuance: "There is no possi-
bility of knowing whether a thing
is,
unless we know in some way or other, per-
fectly, or confusedly, by proper quiddity or genus or accidents or negations,
what it is of which we ask whether or not it exists The basic fact is that will
follows intellect and regards the object as intellect presents it. But a second-de-
gree principle is that intellect is structured in a way will is not. The objective of
intellect is knowledge of what is, but it arrives by stages at this goal, puzzling,
getting an insight, formulating the idea in abstract concepts, testing the con-
cepts,
pronouncing the judgment of
existence.
Will awaits the outcome of this
process and responds to the object presented on its completion."32
Hence, although Crowe accepts will's dependence on intellect, he also notes
that intellect moves slowly, "by stages," toward adequately describing what it
contemplates; it often describes what it sees only partially.33 So how do we
come to the "ends given by nature?" Evidently, our intellect and will work to-
gether to name well the end "given by nature."
Crowe continues (in the second of his
steps):
"[W]hile intellect heads for the
concrete through the mediation of a distinct abstract moment, will has a relative
simplicity in its orientation to the concrete. . . . [T]he creativity of intellect [is
important
here].
It envisages possibility. But, because of the orientation to be-
ing, this possibility must be concrete, emerging from the matrix of the actual
situation and bearing some relation to the operative range of actual resources.
Will responds again to the object presented by the completed judgment, but
now the object
is
concrete only by an extension of the actual to its concrete pos-
sibilities {Summa
Theologiae
I-II. 28. 5c)."34
Thus,
our intellect moves toward true judgment about what
exists.
The will's
spontaneous resting (or failure fully to rest) indicates, however, whether an ab-
stractly true judgment
also is
possible in an individual's life. Will has
a
role in the
selfs searching for what is real; it does not become complacent in a judgment
that, however intellectually coherent, is not possible in the individual's life.35
Crowe adds a third and final step in describing how complacency
is
achieved:
"Once true contemplation of being has been re-established, whether by the in-
tellectual purification described or by other means, I do not think any further
operation is per se required in the human soul to excite the affectivity of will.
186
·
William McDonough
To
know that the world is intelligible is to be automatically complacent and,
unless patterns of
resentment
and hostility have taken shape to block the emer-
gence of peaceful moods, that complacency should be discoverable to reflective
consciousness. . . . What if the
will
is not in the ideal state? What relation has
complacency to the divided heart which Scripture and the spiritual writers de-
scribe? . . . [We] can be concerned about complacency, intent on fostering it,
and
perhaps thereby correcting an imbalance in our psychological life."36
Complacency is gained in a process of
the
"melting"
{liquefactio)
of
a
human
heart:
"Of
(the
proximate effects of love) the
first
is melting, which is opposed
to
freezing. For things that are frozen are closely bound together, so as to be
hard
to pierce. But it belongs to
love
that the appetite is fitted to receive the
good which is loved, inasmuch as the object loved is in the
love
... melting de-
notes
a softening of
the
heart,
whereby the heart shows
itself
to
be ready for the
entrance
of
the
beloved {Summa
Theologiae
III.
28. 5c)."37
Crowe has described the best understanding of
the
tradition on the relation-
ship of intellect and
will,
of knowing and loving at the foundation of
ethics;
yet
the
tradition has all too often lost its foundation in rational, affective
love
and
too
often has settled for an arid and formal intellectualism. Jesuit philosopher
William Lynch, himself influenced by Crowe's
essay,
describes the "Catholic
neurosis" that results when this happens: "Nothing creates as much hopeless-
ness as an ideal
that
is not
human,
an ideal that seems to be commanded and that
is also hopeless It sets up a
self
that
cannot
be reached. The striving
self
can-
not
reach the ideal
self.
The project is hopeless. Thus there can be no taste of
the
self,
and no rest Benedictine Father Sebastian
Moore
writes about the possi-
bility of Ά
Catholic
Neurosis.'... He imagines a Catholic acting
and
feeling
un-
der
the following burden: between him and what he
feels
and, fumblingly,
thinks about
life
there comes what great and noble souls have thought about
it.
. . . So he oscillates between two standards. This oscillation is not the same
thing as the tension between good and
evil,
between the dictates of conscience
and
the importunities of
the
flesh. It is a division of
the
mind rather than of
the
will.
It is better described as a neurosis than as a straight spiritual conflict.'"38
Crowe's development of
the
idea of
the
complacentia
boni
gives
us the begin-
nings of
a
theological language with which to appreciate Hillesum as a teacher
of growth in love. She teaches us that there is no other way to
love
than through
reconnecting
with the good
"given
by nature" in our own
lives.
Far from ac-
cepting the judgment of Hillesum as a narcissist, we should read the diaries as
recounting the process of
the
"melting" of
a
human heart.
Hillesum began therapy with "psychochirologist" Julius Spier on March 7,
1941,39
The next day she began her diary. Her words, cited at this
essay's
begin-
ning, about feeling like a "tightly wound ball of twine" are from the opening
paragraph of that diary's
first
entry. Here are some words from
well
into that
diary: "Life is hard, but that is no bad thing. If one starts by taking one's own
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 187
importance seriously, the rest follows. It is not morbid individualism to work on
oneself.
True peace will come only when every individual finds peace within
himself;
when we have all vanquished and transformed our hatred for our fellow
human beings of whatever race—even into love one day, although perhaps that
is asking too much. It is, however, the only solution" {Etty [diary, June 20,
1942],
434-35).
With Brenner, I read the pages of Hillesum's diaries as intensive self-analy-
sis.
In the context of Brenner's contention that love is at work in Hillesum's dia-
ries, my foray into Crowe's idea of
complacentia
boni provides a more precise
theological description of how this love works. It does two things: First, love af-
firms the self by refusing to start from anywhere else than in the selfs own life.
Second, love engages in deep self-critique, acknowledging the false places the
self has tried (always unsuccessfully) to rest.
I end this part of my essay with a summary collage of texts from Hillesum
describing both of these themes in her struggle to find a foundation for
herself.
(Both sets of texts are arranged chronologically.) First, her affirmation of her
own life as the starting point:
You must continue to take yourself seriously {Etty
[diary,
August 13,1941], 86).
There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God {Etty [diary, Au-
gust 26, 1941], 91).
You cannot heal disturbed people without love {Etty [diary, November 11,
1941],
147).
And I listen in to
myself,
allow myself to be led, not by anything on the out-
side,
but by what wells up from deep within {Etty [diary, December 31,1941],
212).
To take yourself seriously and to be convinced that it makes sense to find your
own shape and form {Etty [diary, June 8, 1942], 398).
When I pray ... I hold a silly, naive, or deadly serious dialogue with what is
deepest inside me, which for the sake of convenience I call God {Etty [diary,
July 16, 1942], 494).
My life is one long hearkening unto my self and unto others, unto God. . . .
The most essential and the deepest in me hearkening unto the most essential
and deepest in the other. God to God {Etty [diary, September 24,1942], 519).
Second, her deep self-critique that goes along with it:
I wanted to own him, and I hated all those women of whom he had spoken to
me;
I was jealous of them Just another way of "owning," of drawing things
in more tighdy {Etty [diary, March 16, 1941], 24-25).
188 · William McDonough
Sometimes I am [in that deep well of
mine],
too. But more often stones and
grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then (God) must be dug out
again
{Etty
[diary, August 24, 1941], 91).
Things ought to be called by their proper name. If they can't stand it, then
they have no right to be. . .
.
Things [must
be]
stripped down to their naked
reality
{Etty
[diary,
June 19, 1942], 426).
I suddenly said to
myself,
if you really believe in God, then you must surren-
der yourself completely and live in faith
{Etty
[diary,
July
21,
1942],
498).
In the past, when I felt like I
was
cracking
up,
I used to do silly
things:
go out
drinking with friends, contemplate suicide, or read right through the night,
dozens of
books
at random. . . . One must have the courage to call a halt, to
feel empty and discouraged. Goodnight! {Etty [diary, October 12, 1942],
549).
What Hillesum gained by taking herself seriously was not God.40 It was not
even goodness. It was the ground on which she could begin to pursue good in
her own life.
Engaging Hillesum from the Tradition of Christian Ethics, Part Two:
Complacentia
Bonias the Beginning of the Virtues Infused in Us by
God's
GraoelCaritas
Oliver Davies cites nearly two full pages of Hillesum's texts in support of his
"kenotic ontology" of love. None are texts in which Hillesum describes her
struggle to find the ground of her life. All of what Davies cites comes from the
end of her diaries—from the brief and beautiful "exercise book eleven" that
comprises the last of her known diaries, written in the fall of
1942
when she was
in Amsterdam between stays in Camp Westerbork.41 All of what he cites be-
longs to Hillesum's description of her first month-long stay in that camp and
her desire to return. Here is a summary sample of the texts from Hillesum that
Davies cites: "How is it that this stretch of heathland surrounded by barbed
wire,
through which so much human misery has flooded, nevertheless remains
inscribed in my memory
as
something almost lovely? ... I was sometimes filled
with an infinite tenderness, and lay awake for hours letting all the many, too
many impressions of far too long a day wash over me, and I prayed, 'Let me be
the thinking heart of these barracks' I have stopped making plans and wor-
rying about risks. Happen what may, it is bound to be for the good."42
In failing to connect these texts to Hillesum's earlier struggles to find her
life's foundation (or even to mention those struggles), Davies' reading misses
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 189
half of her story. These passages provide a partial account of her Ufe, or of any-
one's life.43 Below I show that what Davies cites does not do justice to Hillesum
even at this "late" period of her writing. Before I go further with Davies' partic-
ular interpretation of Hillesum, however, I take another trek into the Christian
theological tradition to ask about love—this time to the tradition's distinction
between acquired and infused virtue. This trek will show that Davies has not
helped us fully understand what love is and how it works in Hillesum's life.
It is not clear whether Davies intends us to understand compassion as a vir-
tue acquired naturally by human beings because he does not use the language of
acquired and infused virtue. If Davies is describing compassion as a virtue natu-
ral to a human life, however, he does not attend to its development over time.
Diana Cates sees the problems in starting from compassion: "The self cannot
love [others] as itself unless it first loves
itself....
[I] t is precisely in loving itself
(in the right way) that the self discovers itself to be a relational self that is bound
to promote the good of included others in the act of promoting its own
good [And] we must remain acutely aware of the ways in which texts [which
emphasize compassion as "self-emptying"] have been and continue to be used
by certain people in power to render the oppressed and marginalized submis-
sive and obedient."44
Davies' idea of compassion as "self-risking" love probably is more in keeping
with what Aquinas calls the virtues infused in us by God's grace, through char-
ity. Hence, I begin by asking: What is charity, and how does it work in a human
life?45
Aquinas writes that charity "is something received in us from God . . .
something created in us The act of charity in human beings works through
an interior habit added to our natural powers.."46 Davies' "kenotic ontology"
may be his description of how love works in us, beyond "our natural powers."
For this reason, I call his approach supernaturalist.
Aquinas says more about how charity works in us through virtues infused in
us by God; he adds that these virtues do three things:
[B]y his natural endowments alone, man can love God more than himself and
above all things [L]oving God above all things is something connatural to
man, and even to any creature ... in accordance with the kind of love which
may befit any creature. . . . Thus in the state of intact nature {statu naturae
integrai) . . . man loved God more than himself and above all things. But in
the state of spoiled nature
{statu
naturae
corruptae)
man falls short of this in the
desire of his rational will, which because of the spoiling of nature pursues a
private good unless it is healed by God's grace. . . . Charity loves God above
all things in a higher way than nature does. For nature loves God above all
things inasmuch as He is the source and end of natural good; but charity loves
Him above all things inasmuch as He is the object of beatitude, and inasmuch
as man has a certain kind of spiritual communion with God. Charity also
190
· William McDonough
gives
the natural love of God a certain quick responsiveness and delight
(promptitudinem
quamdam et
delectationem)
{Summa
Theologiae
Ι-Π.
109.3
c. and
adì).
Aquinas says that charity and the virtues infused with it do three things in
our lives: First, they "heal" our will, so that we can love and pursue the good
that is natural to us as human beings; second, they allow us to do more than
what we might do by our nature alone; and third, they bring "quick responsive-
ness and delight" to our living the moral life.
We can dispense quickly with the second mark of charity—namely, its seek-
ing new ends beyond those of natural love—because here Davies, Hillesum,
and the tradition all come together. Aquinas puts martyrdom (the equivalent of
Davies' "self-risking"?) as something beyond nature, only possible by God's
grace in charity {Summa Theologiae
ΠΙΙ.
124. 3
c).
Consider,
however, the two other characteristics of charity's work—first,
Aquinas's contention that charity repairs our will, "which because of the spoil-
ing of
nature
pursues a private good."
Thomist
JeanPierre
Torrell explains the
distinction
between "intact" and "spoiled" nature: "[For Thomas] the state of
intact nature
refers to the state of Adam before the fall, and in possession of
the
privileges given by God at the moment of creation, but taken in abstraction
from sanctifying grace.
If
one
recalls that these privileges depended precisely on
grace,
then
this distinction could appear Byzantine; in effect, the state of
intact
nature
and the state of
innocence
(or original justice) were one and the same
concrete
reality as lived in the persons of
the
first
parents.
That is incontestable.
But...
the unique reality [indicated by intact
nature]
... serves to identify a be-
ing abstracted from culture, in its integrity as a natural being."47
Thus,
the first effect of grace in a human life is to heal our wounded will. As
a
practical
matter,
the most immediate effect of infused virtue in a human life is
to
help it return to being
human.
The first thing grace does is to heal the
will
to
make
it able to rest—that is, be complacent in true goodness.
Aquinas's third characteristic of grace is the "quick responsiveness and de-
light" it brings to one's whole moral Ufe. The complacent, graced
will
is deep-
ened
in its complacency and quickened in its desire to enact goodness in the
world. In sum, all of what I note above about complacentia boni applies here. The
human
will, changed by grace,
lives
even more complacently in the good.
To
bring this theoretical investigation back to Etty Hillesum,
then,
I should
first say that the Christian tradition would not join Davies in regarding Hil-
lesum's selfemptying as the first sign that she possessed infused virtue. The
first sign we should attend to is not to be found in tremendous acts of "selfrisk-
ing" but in something more ordinary, such as the growth of
a
person from nar-
cissism to otherregard.
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 191
One of my students has pointed out that Hillesum's exercise book eleven
(from which all of the texts Davies cites are taken) was written in the month af-
ter the death from cancer of her mentor and lover Julius Spier.48 As I note
above, in a very early text in her diary Hillesum writes of her desire "to own
him Just another way of drawing things in more tightly"
{Etty
[diary, March
16,
1941], 24-25).
Two weeks after Spier's death, Hillesum writes, "Vanity of vanities—but
what
was
not vain was my discovery that I was able to commit myself unreserv-
edly to another, to bind myself
to
him and to share his sorrow. And did he not
lead me to God, after first paving the way with his imperfect human hand?"
{Etty [diary, October 2, 1942], 540). Hillesum is changed indeed. Early on, this
woman's chaotic sexual life demonstrated the truth of her own confession, "It is
difficult to be on equally good terms with God and your lower parts."49 In exer-
cise book eleven she writes, "love brings so much more happiness than sex"
{Etty [diary, October 9, 1942], 546).™
Infused virtue's third characteristic of delight suggests that we should ad-
mire Hillesum's heroism less than her calm and care. One strong critic of
Hillesum, on the other hand, has critiqued her precisely for her calm. Tzvetan
Todorov writes, "In the end, Hillesum's fatalism and passivity lent themselves
to the murderous project of the Nazis. And this is why, despite her uncon-
testable nobility, I cannot commend her position to the downtrodden of this
earth."5i
French scholar Sylvie Germaine responds that Todorov has mistaken Hil-
lesum's (infused) calm for passive fatalism: "[Todorov's] suggestion of the 'pas-
sive and fatalist' stance of Hillesum from a political point of view is nothing
more than a short-term appearance. It returns at another whole level—a spiri-
tual one—where it presents another real (if mysterious) action, desire and will.
And far from serving the progression of evil, this attitude cuts evil off at its
base.
. . . This is the communion of holiness, of justice, of mercy traveling
through space and time."52
Etty Hillesum's struggle to live well from her own foundation continues to
the end of her writing, although somewhere in the diaries her emphasis shifts
from struggle to calm acceptance of
a
foundation having been given. Her writ-
ing shifts from describing her struggles to describing her recognition of and
participation in a love that is simply given: Her voice grows calmer and more
confident. Although I have worked only a little (and shakily) with the Dutch
text of Hillesum, this assessment seems to be borne out grammatically through
more passive and impersonal verbal constructions, with Hillesum the indirect
object of the action.53
What follows is another sample of Hillesum's writing—this time focusing
on her move from the struggle to find a foundation to the acceptance of the
192 · William McDonough
foundation as given. I find these excerpts the best evidence of Hillesum living a
life of infused virtue. (Again, I arrange these excerpts chronologically.)
Somewhere there is something inside me that will never desert me again {Etty
[diary, July 2, 1942], 461).
There are moments when I... become calmer and calmer and am filled with
a faith in God that has grown so quickly inside me {Etty [diary, July 7, 1942],
481).
How can I thank You, oh God, for all the good You keep showering upon me.
For all the friendship, for the many fruitful thoughts, for that great all-em-
bracing love I feel within me, and that I am able to apply at every step {Etty
[diary, September 20, 1942], 520-21).
I rejoice and exult time and again, oh God: I am grateful to You for having
given me this life {Etty [diary, October 12, 1942], 547).
Time and again, it soars straight from my heart—I can't help it, that's just the
way it is, like some elementary force—the feeling that life is glorious and
magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world {Etty
[letter, July 3, 1943], 616-17).
Love for one's fellow man is like an elemental glow that sustains you. The fel-
low man himself has hardly anything to do with it {Etty [letter, August 7,
1943],
635).
Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the same time... I never
have the feeling that I have to make the best of things; everything is
fine
just
as
it
is.
Every situation, however miserable, is complete in
itself.
... All I really
wanted to say
is
this:
'making the best of things' is
a
nauseating expression. So is
Seeing the good in everything' {Etty [letter, August 11,1943], 637-38).
[S]uddenly I just had to write these few words in my diary, and I now send
them to you: "You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out
Your beauty with open hands...." There are many miracles in a human life.
My own is one long sequence of inner miracles, and it's good to be able to say
so again to somebody {Etty [letter, August 18, 1943), 640).
Opening the Bible at random I find this: "The Lord is my high tower"
(Psalml8.3) In the end, the departure came without warning. On sudden
special orders from The Hague. We left the camp singing {Etty [letter, Sep-
tember 7, 1943), 658-59).
Here Hillesum very much appears to be living what Crowe describes in a
second, shorter essay on "complacency and concern," written for a spirituality
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 193
journal. There Crowe suggests that Christians find a model for our spiritual
lives in "a balance between a complacency which submits to what is and the
wisely moderated concern which is content to play a limited role in bringing to
fruition what is not." Crowe regards Jesus as the "exemplar" of this balance;
even more so the creating God, who "even in that work of creation which will
go on to eternity... proceeds without the slightest shadow of anxiety... seeing
its worth, using the limitations inherent in His scheme, moving all things se-
renely to their rich realization."54
I suggest that Hillesum could reteach Christians—beyond both the "magis-
terial monopoly" lamented by Kasper and Davies' impossible ideal of "self-ne-
gation"—what a life of infused virtue looks like.
Conclusion: What Etty Hillesum Might Teach Christian Ethics
What have we gained by engaging the Christian tradition with Hillesum?
Three things, I suggest. First, whatever the differences between the life of ac-
quired virtue and that of infused virtue, we should note their similarity. The
complacency we struggle for in the life of acquired virtue is the complacency
we
delight in (and deepen) in the life of infused virtue. In seeing that
complacentia
is
the foundation of both acquired and infused virtue, we may have found the
place where Hillesum can help us most. All of
us,
like Hillesum, begin our lives
in the state of "spoiled nature." Whatever their differences, both acquired and
infused virtue work to heal us and lead us toward our "intact nature."
Moreover, from what Crowe says, the immediate tasks of acquired and in-
fused virtue seem to be identical. In both we are to look for a balance between
complacency and concern. In light of this similarity, we can accept with equa-
nimity the observation of Porter and Cates, among others, that Aquinas never
fully explained the relationship between acquired and infused virtue.55
Second, I suggest—without seeking to defend this thesis in any detail—that
Hillesum might be teaching
us
that all actual virtue in the world may be infused
virtue; that the idea of acquired virtue is one to which
we
owe only "notional as-
sent."
John Newman distinguishes "notional" assent from "belief or "real" as-
sent by saying that "acts of notional assent do not affect our conduct, and acts of
belief
do
affect it."56 The idea of acquired virtue is useful (and probably neces-
sary) to protect God's freedom and a human being's moral agency in one's own
Ufe.
We may not (as Davies seems to do) make "self-risking" into virtue's first
task; its task
is
self-finding—seeking
a
complacent place to stand in the world.57
If Aquinas's understanding of acquired virtue is a "notional idea," then no
human being has ever actually lived a life of acquired virtue only. Without go-
ing this far, Torrell does call attention to Aquinas's approval of Augustine's
view that pagans who keep the law do so by the grace of the Holy Spirit: "As
194 · William McDonough
Augustine says, do not be disturbed at [Paul's Letter to the Romans] saying that
they do by nature those things that are of the Law; for the Spirit of grace works
this,
in order to restore in us the image of God, after which we were naturally
made" {Summa
Theologiae
I-II. 109 4 ad l).58 Hillesum, who lived and died as a
Jew, could be teaching Christian ethics in particular to remember humbly and
with contrition that God's grace has always been infusing the lives of people
without respect to religion (or the lack of
it).
Furthermore, if all failure in virtue is failure to cooperate with the healing
work of divinely infused virtue, we are given a further reason complacently to
resist perfectionism. Porter has pointed out that Aquinas holds that the life of
infused virtue, unlike that of acquired virtue, leaves much room for struggle.
She writes, "This reformulation leads (Aquinas) to modify Aristotle's claim that
moral struggle is incompatible with true virtue."59
In a letter five days before her deportation to Auschwitz, Hillesum wrote, "If
we just care enough, God is in safe hands with us despite everything"
{Etty
[let-
ter, September 2, 1943], 657). Hillesum teaches us to be content in living our
own struggle, bringing to it all the integrity we can find from within. We
must—simply though not at all easily—care enough.
The third and final point of this conclusion
is
to wonder aloud if I have senti-
mentalized and/or baptized Hillesum in this study. I hope not, although a
Christian ultimately
is
not in
a
position to give his own answer to the question. I
take some reassurance in Rachel Brenner's belief in Hillesum's "stubborn . . .
conviction that love is an inclusive force that
will
erase hatred between religions
and races."601 hope to have supported Brenner's belief with this essay and per-
haps added some theological specificity on what love is and how it works in a
human life. I hope to have shown not a Christian Etty Hillesum but an Etty
Hillesum who—sixty years after her death—can teach Christians what
we
mean
when we seek to describe and live a life of virtue.
Notes
I am grateful to my students at the College of St. Catherine who have studied Etty Hillesum in
ethics classes over the past five or six years, especially the students in a course in fall 2004 on
"Etty Hillesum and the Nature of the Moral Life." I also am very grateful to the participants in
two interfaith dialogues on Etty Hillesum conducted in several sessions between November
2003 and November 2004 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, with sponsorship from the fol-
lowing groups: Wisdom Ways Resource Center for Spirituality; the Center for Jewish Studies
at the University of Minnesota; Hillel: The Jewish Student Center at the University of Minne-
sota; the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota; Mount
Zion Temple in St. Paul, Minnesota; and the Jay Phillips Center for Jewish-Christian Learn-
ing at the University of
St.
Thomas. I also am grateful to professor Jean Porter, who led me in
my study of Aquinas's virtue ethics (but is not responsible for any of the mistakes I make in this
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 195
essay) and to the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, whose
grant made it possible for me to engage in this study.
1.
Klaas Smelik, ed., Etty:
The Letters and
Dianes of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943, trans. Arnold J.
Pomerans (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002). I cite this text
throughout this essay. References are made parenthetically {Etty), indicating whether the
text cited is from a diary entry or a letter. I also make reference to the Dutch critical edi-
tion: Klaas Smelik, ed., Etty: De
negehten geschnften
van Etty
Hillesum
1941-1943, 4th rev.
and repr. ed. (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 2002). Citations to the Dutch edition are
made in footnotes, with the reference reading Dutch
edition,
plus the page number.
2.
Arendt critiqued "the world-wide success of The Diary of Anne Frank [as a general ten-
dency] to forget the 'negative' aspect of the past and reduce horror to sentimentality."
Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New
York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968 [1955]),
19.1 found the text cited by Rachel Feldhay Brenner, in Writing
as
Resistance:
Four Women
Confronting the
Holocaust
(University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 178.
On sentimentality, see also Alasdair Maclntyre,
Dependent Rational
Animals: Why Human
Beings
Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1999), 124; he says sentimentality—
which is "sentiment, unguided by reason,... and is a sign of moral failure"—is a defect of
misericordia,
a form of the theological virtue of charity. This point is important in the third
part of this essay, when I look at Hillesum and the virtues infused by charity.
3.
David Patterson, "Through the Eyes of Those Who Were There,"
Holocaust
and
Genocide
Studies 18, no. 2 (fall 2004): 285-86.
4.
Percy writes, "How is it possible for the man who designed Voyager 19, which arrived at
Titania, a satellite of Uranus, three seconds off schedule and a hundred yards off course af-
ter a flight of six
years,
to be one of the most screwed-up creatures in California, or the cos-
mos? . . . The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of
wealth, education, and culture is disappointment." Walker Percy, Lost in the
Cosmos:
The
Last Self-Help
Book
(New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1983), 1, 179.
5.
Walter Kasper,
Theology
and
Church,
trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroads, 1989),
141,
142.
6. See Jean Porter, "Virtue and Sin: The Connection of the Virtues and the Case of the
Flawed Saint," Journal of
Religion
75 (1995): 521-39. Porter is referring to Dr. Martin Lu-
ther King Jr. in her essay.
7. Denise De Costa, Anne
Frank
and Etty Hillesum:
Inscribing Spirituality
and
Sexuality,
trans.
Mischa Hoyinck and Robert Chesal (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1998),
206.
8. Rachel Feldhay Brenner, "Etty Hillesum: A Thinking Artist" (unpublished paper), 1-2.
Brenner presented her essay on November 8, 2004, as part of
a
five-part Jewish-Christian
"Etty Hillesum Book Discussion" at the Hillel Jewish Student Center, University of Min-
nesota, Minneapolis. Brenner had included a brief treatment of Hillesum in her book
Writing
as Resistance
but says that the 2002 unabridged English edition of Hillesum's writ-
ing "presented me with a full picture of Hillesum's ethical philosophy, her psychological
insights, her struggle as an artist, and her historical outlook; it reinforced and deepened my
former impressions of her uniqueness." Brenner, "A Thinking Artist," 2.
9. Frits Grimmelikhuizen, "No Human Being Can Flourish Here: A Written Portrait in
Vivid Colours of Etty Hillesum and Her Family" (unpublished), March 26,2004, 7-8,14-
15.
This essay was a presentation by the founder oí Etty Hillesum Zentrum-Deventer,
Hol-
land.
It
was
part of the 2003-2004 series "Etty Hillesum, Companion on Life's Journeys" at
Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality, St. Paul, Minnesota.
196 · William McDonough
10.1 know three highly critical reflections on Hillesum that are available in English: Patterson,
"Through the Eyes of Those Who Were There"; Lawrence Langer, Admitting
the
Holo-
caust:
Collected Essays
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), at 69-7'3; and Tzvetan
Todorov, "Nonviolence and Resignation," in
Facing
the Extreme: Moral Life in the
Concen-
tration
Camps
(New
York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 197-212. Brenner responds to
Langer and Patterson:
"As
I see it, these judgmental appreciations of Holocaust Diaries are
not only highly inappropriate—after all, neither critic was there, in this horrific increas-
ingly hopeless reality—but that, even worse, they are misleading. These critical apprecia-
tions derive from the a priori shaped idea of what the Holocaust diary should be. ... A
'true' Holocaust diarist was an individual deeply steeped in Jewish religion and culture,
whose intention was to leave a factual record of Holocaust atrocities for posterity. Hille-
sum's diary, however, does not fit this prescription; in fact, it remarkably antagonizes these
preconceptions. Her response to the Holocaust does not reflect an affinity with Jewish cul-
ture; nor does she aim at a factual record of the events. Rather, the diary presents us with a
truly extraordinary example of Hillesum's self-education to become a writer of the Holo-
caust." Brenner,
"A
Thinking Artist," 6-7.
11.
Brenner, "A Thinking Artist," 7. De Costa also recognizes Hillesum's early diaries as a
kind of self-analysis and says, "writing and mental well-being went hand in
hand:
as long as
she wrote on a daily basis, she was fairly well in control of
herself.
Every time she stopped
writing for
a
while, her
first
new entry was always about mental
stress."
De Costa,
Inscribing
Spirituality and
Sexuality,
145.
12.
Brenner,
"A
Thinking
Artist,"
2.
13.
Ibid., 12.
14.
Ibid., 13.
15.
Ibid., 14-15.
16.
Ibid., 19.
17.
Ibid., 16. Brenner is citing Hillesum: "New thoughts will have to radiate outward from the
camps themselves, new insights, spreading lucidity, will have to cross the barbed
wire."
Etty
(letter, December, 1942), 587.
18.
It is not a critique of literature scholar Brenner to say that she does not theologize. The
theologizing I have seen done on Hillesum's texts does not seem to press beyond Brenner,
however. For example, Francis Hannafey, "Ethics as Transformative Love: The Moral
World of Etty Hillesum,"
Horizons
28, no. 1 (2001): 68-80, does not tell us exactly what
transformative love is and how it works in a human life. Hannafey does
a
wonderful job of
gathering the available English bibliography on Hillesum.
19.
De Costa,
Inscribing
Spirituality and Sexuality, 226, 228. One particular text is key in
Hillesum's "becoming divine," according to De Costa. This key text is the following diary
entry:
Something has happened to me, and I don't know if it's just a passing mood or
something crucial. It is as if I had been pulled back abruptly to my roots, and had
become a little more self-reliant and independent.
Last night... I babbled out something like
this:
"God, take me by Your hand, I
shall follow you dutifully and not resist too much. I shall evade none of the tempests
life has in store for me. I shall try to face it all as best I can. But now and then grant
me
a
short
respite."
... I think it probably started with what for me was that very in-
dependent gesture of picking up the telephone, and off my own bat, without
consulting him, telephoning that lady and telling her, "I won't do it, it's not for
me."
Whenever something suddenly wells up inside
you,
something that is stronger
than you are and that "makes" you act and take what steps you have to take, to
Etty Hillesum's Learning to Live and Preparing to Die · 197
which you feel impelled, then all at once you feel that much stronger. And also
when you can say with great assurance, "This isn't for me." Etty (diary, November
25,
1941), 154-55.
20.
Oliver Davies, A
Theology
of
Compassion:
Metaphysics
of
Difference and the Renewal
of Tradition
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001), xviii, 26, 29.
21.
Davies, A
Theology
of
Compassion,
11-^15.
22.
Frederick Crowe, "Complacency and Concern in the Thought of
St.
Thomas,"
Theological
Studies
20 (1959): 3-4.
23.
Ibid, 34, 36.
24.
Diana Fritz Cates,
Choosing
to
Feel:
Virtue,
Friendship,
and
Compassion
for
Friends
(Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 100.
25.
See, for example, Diana Fritz Cates, "The Religious Nature of Ordinary Human Emo-
tions,"
Journal
of the
Society
of
Christian Ethics
IS, no. 1 (spring/summer 2005): 35-54.
26.
See Cates,
Choosing to
Feel,
nn. 6 and 11, p. 244; n. 3, p. 246.
27.
See, for example, Porter's critique that "Harak conflates what Aquinas takes pains to distin-
guish, namely, reason, will and passion, and their respective roles in the production of ac-
tion and the formation of virtue." Jean Porter, "Recent Studies in Aquinas's Virtue Ethics:
A Review
Essay,"
Journal
of
Religious Ethics
26, no. 1 (1998): 206.
28.
"If we go directly to the treatise on love as a passion, it is not with the intention of applying
indiscriminately to rational life whatever we find there." Crowe, "Complacency and Con-
cern,"
26.
29.
Joseph Owens suggests the following differences in the ethical approaches of Aquinas and
Aristotle: "Aristotle lived in a civilization that had already experienced the triumph of pa-
gan art in poetry, music, sculpture, painting, and architecture, and in the arts and in athlet-
ics,
as well as in philosophy.... Accordingly he lived in firsthand contact with the best of
Greek culture ... [and] he has an exceptionally broad acquaintance with the civilization of
his day In his ethical works he insists repeatedly on the fundamental importance of this
cultural habituation for shaping one's practical philosophy Aristotle seems to recognize
clearly the need for correct upbringing from one's earliest years. . . . Aristotle shows no
special concern with existence as a philosophical concern But Aquinas's view of reality
was conditioned by reading Sacred Scripture, whose opening words declare that in the be-
ginning God created heaven and earth God makes human beings in God's own image,
and makes them in truth his own children through grace. Aquinas has
a
pessimistic attitude
toward efforts at political change in the world Aquinas's attitude bears witness to rely-
ing on spiritual rather than temporal forces to achieve one's happiness." Joseph Owens,
"Aristotle and Aquinas," in The
Cambridge Companion to
Aquinas,
ed. Norman Kretzmann
and Eleanor Stump (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 40-42, 43^4. Giu-
seppe Abbà says, "Il modo con cui Dio guida nel dettaglio la condotta dell'individuo non
consiste nel fargli conoscere quale sia il
volitum
divinum in ogni circostanza; consiste invece
nel mettere l'individuo in grado di definire attivamente la figura individuale della propria
condotta, e ciò arricchendolo mediante gli
habitus
virtuosi, grazie ai quali le facoltà opera-
tive sono stabilizzate rispetto ai fini delle virtù. La definizione e la costruzione della figura
concreta, che per lui deve assumere il bene umano, è opera dell'individuo che fa uso delle
virtù."
Giuseppe Abbà, Lex et
Virtus:
Studi
sulVevoluzione della
dottrina
morale
di
san
Tom-
maso
d'Aquino
(Rome: LAS, 1983), 271.
30.
In Book VI of the
Nichomachean
Ethics,
Aristotle writes, "Now there are in the soul three
things that control action and (the attainment of truth), viz. sensation, intellect, and
appetition. Of these sensation is not the origin of any action [S]o that, since moral vir-
tue is a state involving choice, and choice is deliberate appetition, it follows that if the
198
·
William
McDonough
choice is to be a good
one,
both the reasoning must be true and the desire right; and the de-
sire
must pursue the same things that the reasoning asserts To arrive at the truth is in-
deed the function of intellect in any aspect, but the function of practical intellect is to arrive
at the truth that corresponds to right appetite." Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics,
trans. J. A.
K. Thomson (New
York:
Penguin Books, 1986), Book VI, ii. (1139al6b2), 205.
Aquinas understood the soul to have four powers: intellect,
will,
sense, and sense appe-
tite.
See Kevin White, "The Passions of
the
Soul
(ΙΠ.
2248)," in The
Ethics
of
Aquinas,
ed.
Stephen Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), at 1045. What is
present in Aquinas and
missing
in Aristode is a notion of the
will.
Alasdair Maclntyre is
helpful here: "The conception of the
will
was Augustine's—invention? Or
discovery?
. . .
[T]he authors of classical antiquity prior to Augustine lacked any vocabulary and for the
most part any conception of
the
will."
Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose
Justice?
Which Rationality?
(Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 156.
31.
The emphasis is mine. Aquinas continues, "According to this, the truth of
the
practical rea-
son is determined by agreement with a right appetitive faculty. But the truth of the practi-
cal reason
itself
is the rule for the rectitude of
the
appetitive faculty in regard to the means.
According to this, then, the appetitive faculty is called right inasmuch as it pursues the
things that reason calls true." Thomas Aquinas,
Commentary
on the Nichomachean
Ethics,
vol. 2, trans. C. I. Litzinger (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964), Book VI (1.2.1131), 546^17.
32. Crowe, "Complacency and Concern," 378, 391.
33.
Another Thomist puts it this way: "What St. T