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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Urs von Balthasar’s theology is attuned to a realism which becomes more attractive as Rahner’s engagement with Kantianism seems less pertinent. This realism ‘turns the rudder hard over’, as von Balthasar said of Barth; but how did he acquire it? Rowan Williams has suggested that von Balthasar’s seamanship originates partly with Heidegger. This article will place him within the German Catholic revival of the 1920s and 1930s. At this time, German Catholics delved into phenomenology, and into Newman’s theology. They appraised Aquinas’s thought differently than did English or French neo-Thomists.
The Memoirs of the Hungarian philosopher Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973) supply some sidelights on von Balthasar’s writings. Both men attended the University of Vienna between 1922 and 1926. There von Balthasar is said to have “. . . heard the Plotinus lectures of Hans Eibl: there being was . . . interpreted as . . . the self-communicating good.” He will later say that the affinity between Thomas and Heidegger derives not from Aristotle, but from “. . . that Plotinus for whom being remains a supraconceptual mystery.. ,” Kolnai places Eibl in his time and place:
“. .. Hans Eibl, [was] a Sudeten German and violent nationalist, yet a Catholic with ... a prodigious erudition concerning St. Augustine and Patristic thought . . . During the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg regime, Eibl was editor of a crypto-Nazi rag ... Yet this man, essentially a ... rightminded Catholic Conservative, had little resemblance to the Nazi and none to the current... ‘Reich German’ ... type.”
1 Williams, Rowan, “Balthasar and Rahner”, in Riches, John, ed., The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 11–34Google Scholar.
2 “Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Portrait”, by Medard Kehl, in The Hans Urs von Balthasar Reader, edited by Kehl, Medard and Daly, Robert J., translated Daly, Robert J. and Lawrence, Fred (Crossroads, New York, 1982), p. 15Google Scholar.
3 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, edited by McNeil, Brian and Riches, John, translated by Davies, O., Louth, A., McNeil, B., Saward, J., and Williams, R. R. (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1991), p. 435Google Scholar.
4 Kolnai, Aurel, Memoirs, (Claridge Press, London, forthcoming 1993), p. 265Google Scholar. All paqe numbers refer to the manuscript.
5 Barth, Karl, The Epistle to the Romans, translated from the sixth edition by Edwyn C. Hoskins (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, preface to the Fourth Edition, p. 21.
6 Ibid, p. 60.
7 Von Balthasar, Glory: V, p. 15.
8 Dunlop, Francis, Scheler (Claridge Press, London, 1991), p. 61Google Scholar.
9 Von Balthasar, Glory: V, p. 445.
10 Ibid, p. 625.
11 Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, translated by George G. Leckie as Concerninq Being and Essence (Meredith, New York, 1967)Google Scholar, Chapter 1, p. 5.
12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. II, Chapter 53, point 4; Aertsen, Jan, Nature and Creature: Thomas Aquinas's Way of Thought (E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 83–8 and 127.
13 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics. I: Seeing the Form, edited by Fessio, Joseph and Riches, John, translated by Erasmo Leiva‐Merikakis (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1982), p. 448Google Scholar.
14 Kolnai, Memoirs, pp. 262–253.
15 Boring, Edwin G., A History of Experimental Psychology (Century, New York and London, 1929), pp. 351–59Google Scholar.
16 Christian von Ehrenfels, “On Gestalt Qualities” (1922), in Foundations of Gestalt Theory, edited by Smith, Barry (Philosophia Verlag, Munich, 1988), pp. 82–117Google Scholar (pp. 90‐3). All three essays are collected in this volume.
17 Ibid, pp. 92–3.
18 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, “Die Entfaltung der Musikalischen Idee: Versuch Einer Synthese der Musik”, Sammlung Bartels 2 (1925)Google Scholar, [‘On the Unfolding of the Musical Idea’] 1–39, (16).
19 Cited in Barry Smith, “Gestalt Theory: An Essay in Philosophy”, in Foundations of Gestalt Theory, pp. 11‐80, (p. 67). See also Smith, Barry, “Christian von Ehrenfels and the Theory of Gestalt Qualities” in Smith, Barry, ed., Structure and Gestall: Philosophy and Literature in Austria‐Hungary and her Successor States (John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1981), pp. 145–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Stein, Edith, Life in a Jewish Family 1891–1916: An Autobiography, translated by Koeppel, Josephine O.C.D. (I.C.S. Publications, Washington, 1986), p. 217Google Scholar.
21 Ibid, p. 250.
22 Kolnai, Memoirs, p. 215.
23 Spiegelberg, Herbert, The Phenomenological Movement, Volume I (Martinus Nijhoff, the Hague, 2nd edition 1969), p. 236Google Scholar; Francis Dunlop, Scheler, p. 11. Husserl says “we are concerned with a phenomenological origin or—… we are concerned with the insight into the essence of the concept involved. We can achieve such an end only by intuitive representation of the essence in adequate Ideation …”: Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations [1st edition 1900; 2nd edition 1913], translated by J.N. Findlay from the 2nd German edition (Roulledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1970), Volume I, p. 238.
24 . Dr. Dunlop explains the disparity in dates: The book was first published in 1913; Kolnai refers to Scheler's re‐edition of The Nature of Sympathy, in the early twenties. Sheler now added the speculations about ‘cosmic Einsfühlung’ which are discussed below. Scheler's allegiance to Christianity was not deepened.
25 Scheler, Max, The Nature of Sympathy, translated by Heath, Peter (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1954), pp. 10, 41, 122.Google Scholar
26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, First Part of the First Part, Question 34, Articles 1 and 2.
27 Francis Dunlop, Scheler, pp. 47–8.
28 Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, p. 250.
29 Kolnai, Memoirs, pp. 256–60.
30 Ibid, pp. 182–4.
31 Ibid, pp. 183–4.
32 Ibid, pp. 184–5.
33 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol, I, pp. 60, 70–71, and on Bolzano, pp. 222–4. Setting the empirical singular against the universal: Ibid, pp. 101–110, 185 and 227–8.
34 Max Scheler “Problems of Religion”, in On the Eternal in Man, [1921], translated by Bernard Noble (S.C.M. Press, London, 1960), pp. 105–356 (pp. 170–1; 247–51; 254 and 282–83).
35 Ibid, pp. 149–50.
36 Ibid, p. 163 and 283.
37 Ibid, p. 284.
38 Aertsen, Nature and Creature, pp. 222–4.
39 Przywara, Erich, Analogia Entis, translated by Secretan, Philibert (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1990), pp. 65Google Scholar (philosophy and theology); on analogy as measure, pp. 125–27.
40 Ibid, p. 27–30.
41 Schrijver, Georges de, Le Merveilleux Accord de L'Homme et De Dieu: Etude de l'Analogie de l'Etre Chez Hans Urs von Ballhasar (Leuven University Press, 1983), pp. 267–8Google Scholar, citing Przywara's student, J. Teran‐Dutari.
42 Przywara, Analogia, p. 10.
43 Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. I, e.g. pp. 111–13; Przywara, Analogia, 91–3.
44 Thomas Aquinas, Concerning Being and Essence, Ch. 2, pp. 7–8 and Ch. 5, pp. 28–9; Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk II, Chapter 54, points 6, 8 and 10. The structure is, more precisely, threefold, including individual, essence and being: Ibid, Ch. 3, pp. 15–18 and Aertsen, Nature and Creature, p. 138.
45 Przywara, Analogia, p. 94.
46 Ibid, pp. 75 and 156–8.
47 Ibid, p. 32.
48 Ibid, pp. 31 and 163.
49 Ibid, pp. 87 and 114–15; Schrijver, Merveilleux Accord, p. 284; von Balthasar, , La Dramatique Divine: II. Les Personnes du. drama: 2. les Personnes dans le Christ, translated by Givord, Robert (Lethielleux, Paris, 1988), p. 176Google Scholar.
50 Schrijver, Merveilleux Accord, p. 284.
51 Przywara, Analogia, pp. 116.
52 Ibid, p. 106.
53 Ibid, pp. 144 and 163.
