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The Concept of Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Josef Pieper
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Extract

The question of tradition,* its nature as well as the binding power it might have, was formulated in a most precise and ideal manner at the beginning of the modern age. This occurred in the course of a remarkable and rather dramatic episode in the history of ideas in which several important characters of the time took part, Galileo, Descartes, and Pascal. Pascal did more than take part. At the age of twenty-four he attempted a critical estimate of the sum total of historical knowledge by clearly defining tradition with respect to the range and limits of its validity. This thesis can be found in a short dissertation bearing a title which at first glance looks rather strange: “Fragment of a Preface for a Tract on Empty Space” —the tract itself was never written.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1958 , pp. 465 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1958

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References

* This article was translated by Professor George Wack.

1 Oeuvres de Blaise Pascal, Brunschvicq, Leon & Bontroux, Pierre, editors, Vol. II (Paris, 1908), 129–145.Google Scholar

2 For the details see Ersch-Gruber, , Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, Vol. III (Leipzig, 1839), 486 ff.Google Scholar

3 Letter (Nov. 15, 1647) to his brother-in-law, Perier. Briefe des Blaise Pascal, translated by Rüttentauer (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 33 f.Google Scholar

4 Descartes' principal work Principia Philosophiae had appeared three years before Pascal's “Fragment” (1644). It says, for example: “We quite clearly recognize (perspicue intelligimus), that there is a substance which fills every conceivable part of space; its nature consists ‘solely in being extended substance’; we discover within ourselves no idea whatever of any other substance.” Principia Philosophiae, II, 22Google Scholar; similarly in Meteores, Discourse I.

5 Briefe, p. 35.Google Scholar

6 The question whether there can be “emptiness” was already discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy (Anaxagoras, the Eleatics). In the late Platonic dialogue, the Timaeus (79 b 1, 79 c 1) and in the Physics of Aristotle 213a–217b) the question is answered negatively. The mediaeval commentaries on Aristotle devote considerable space to the question, as for example Thomas Aquinas (in Phys. 4, 13; No. 535 f.), who includes also the arguments of Averroes.

7 De Animalibus, Stadler, H., editor (Münster, 1916–1920), Vol. I, 310, 861.Google Scholar

8 De vegetabilibus, Jessen, C., editor (Berlin, 1867), p. 340.Google Scholar

9 Cf. especially Pascal's letter to P. Noel (October 29, 1647) and to Le Pailleur (February–March, 1648), in Briefe, pp. 18 ff, 43 ff.Google Scholar

10 Oeuvres, II, 129.Google Scholar

11 Ibidem.

12 Pascal also mentions, it is true, in addition to theology, history, geography, jurisprudence, and language. And along with physics he mentions geometry, music, and architecture. The subsequent argumentation, however, confines itself exclusively on the one hand to theology and on the other to physics.

13 Oeuvres, , II, 141.Google Scholar

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16 Cf. Plato, 's Phaedo, 108 a 6.Google Scholar

17 198 b: καλομεν … παραδίδοντα διδάσκειν [kaloumen … paradidonta didaskein.].

18 Cf. Deneffe, A., Der Traditionsbegriff (Minister, 1931), p. 8.Google Scholar

19 I Cor. 11, 23; the inverse in I Cor. 15, 3.

20 Contra Julianum, 2, 10, 34 (Migne PL, 44, 698).Google Scholar

21 “… historic consciousness …, through which the loss of tradition and philosophy without tradition have been sealed as a matter of destiny.” Krüger, G., Bedeutung der Tradition (Frankfurt, 1947), p. 325Google Scholar; cf. p. 322. Ritter, Likewise J., Aristoteles und die Vorsokratiker, Felsefe Arkivi, 1954 (Istanbul).Google Scholar

22 But this does not in the least mean that one accepts a tradition simply because it is a tradition. Cf. Gloege, G., Offenbarung und Uberlieferung (Hamburg, 1954), p. 27 f.Google Scholar

23 614b–621b.

24 Sophistic Refutations, Chap. 2. Thomas Aquinas incorporated this maxim in his tract “De fide” (Summa theologica II, II, 2, 3).Google Scholar

25 Rüstow, A., “Kulturtradition und Kulturkritik,” Studium Generale, IV (1951), 308.Google Scholar

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29 phaedrus, 274 c 1.Google Scholar

30 Laws, 881 a 2.Google Scholar

31 It seems to me in some degree symptomatic that in Apelt, 's Platon-Index(2nd ed., Leipzig, 1923)Google Scholar only a single reference is given (Philebus, 16c), while one can easily count up to forty. In this connection I have found useful the unpublished work of a Berlin student, which lists all the passages in Plato in which παλαις occurs. Rumphort, Heinrich, Überlieferung bet Platon.Google Scholar

32 Cf. Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, 47Google Scholar; Compendium Theologiae, I, 102.Google Scholar

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36 Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, edited by Hoffmeister, J. (Leipzig, 1940)Google Scholar, “Heidelberger Einleitung von 1816,” p. 6.Google Scholar

37 In this connection one should recall the scholastic distinction between traditio constitutiva and traditio continuativa. Cf. Deneffe, , Traditionsbegriff, pp. 132 f.Google Scholar

38 It is true that we can speak of such an equivalence only if the concept “the ancients” is understood in the strict and narrow sense as paraphrased earlier in this article. There is, however, a broader term in linguistic use, in Plato also, which includes all the minds of the past whose thought and teaching have in exceptional measure been nourished by the tradition of truths pointing back to a divine source.

39 N. Monzel speaks of “original recipients of a revelation,” Ü;berlieferung (Bonn, 1950), p. 129.Google Scholar

40 In matter, content, and subject, tradition and revelation—coincide. Everything that is the subject of revelation, and only that, is also the subject of—tradition. Deneffe, , op. cit., p. 114Google Scholar. Cf. also Gloege, , op. cit., pp. 14, 27, 40.Google Scholar

41 Monzel, , op. cit., p. 128.Google Scholar

42 Laws, 715 e.Google Scholar

43 Philebus, 30 d.Google Scholar

44 Phaedo, 63 c.Google Scholar

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46 Metaphysics, 1074 b 1.Google Scholar

47 Rüstcw, , op. cit., p. 309.Google Scholar

48 In the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, in a treatise on the laws, an article which discusses this question (and gives a negative answer), we read as follows: Utrum lex humana semper sit mutanda, quando occurrit aliquid melius? (I, II, 97, 2).

49 Krüger, G., “Die Bedeutung der Tradition für die philosophische Forschung,” Studium Generate, IV (1951), 325–327.Google Scholar

50 Die christliche Glaube und die altheidnische Welt (Leipzig, 1935), I, 47.Google Scholar

51 Gorgias, 523 a 1–3; 527 a 5–8.Google Scholar

52 I, 12.—For the subject of original revelation and original tradition, see Newman, J. H., The Grammar of Assent (London, 1892), p. 431.Google Scholar

53 Politeia, 611 d–612 a.Google Scholar

54 Platon (Berlin-Leipzig, 1928), I, 201.Google Scholar

55 In the second edition (Berlin, 1954) the word is “epochs.”

56 Psychologie und Religion (Zürich, 1940), p. 76.Google Scholar

57 Ibid., p. 93.

58 Ibid.

59 Der heilige Augustin (Hellerau, 1930), pp. 497 f.Google Scholar

60 Ibid.

61 The Confessions, 10, 20.Google Scholar

62 In Plato (Phaedrus, 244 b 6) the following is also said of the ancients: they are οὑ τ ᾽ονόματα τθέμενοί [hoi ta onomata tithemenoi], they give and “set” the names.

63 Letter to Zelter, , 03 18, 1811.Google Scholar

64 Cf. Rahner, Carl, “Wissenschaft als Konfession,” Wort und Wahrheit, 11, 1954.Google Scholar

65 “Tradition is never merely the obstructing adversary, it is always resistance and incentive at the same time.” Litt, T., “Hegels Begriff des ‘Geistes’ und das Problem der Tradition,” Studium Generate, IV (1951), 320.Google Scholar

66 It would perhaps be necessary to show how in the Platonic dialogues, the Gorgias, Phaedo, Politeia, the narrating of the eschatological myths are fitted into the course of the dialectic discussions and to clarify the implications hidden in the Aristotelian proposition according to which the metaphysical inquiry into the nature of being calls for an answer which God alone fully possesses (Metaphysics 983 a 9Google Scholar). The formal structure of a “Christian philosophy” would have to be made clear—an extremely complicated problem as its discussion for the past decades reveals.

67 Jaspers, K., Philosophie (Berlin, 1948), pp. 267–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This formulation indicates, of course, only one aspect of the many-sided concept of philosophy held by Jaspers.

68 Jaspers, K. and Bultmann, R., Die Frage der Entmythologisierung (Munich, 1954).Google Scholar

69 Krüger, G., Geschichte und Tradition, p. 28.Google Scholar