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Yves R. Simon: A Philosopher's Quest for Science and Prudence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2009
Abstract
This essay treats the inspiration and nature of Yves Simon's philosophical life. His embrace of that life was importantly shaped by his engagement with the republican tradition in France, his passionate opposition to the fascist threat to France, and his later attachment to the aspirations of American democracy. However, his early philosophical interests took direction and inspiration from his encounter with Jacques Maritain who drew him to Thomism. His devotion to the truth was fierce, and he confronted honestly the threats to this defining quality of philosophical life from the pressures of social conformity and from the discouragement of seeing the inadequacies and disagreements in the history of philosophy. He came, as especially evident in his most influential book, Philosophy of Democratic Government, to esteem highly the virtue of prudence, seeking to protect it from both philosophy and social science.
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References
1 Simon, Yves R., “Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words,” in Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictures, ed. Griffin, John Howard and Simon, Yves R. (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1974), 9Google Scholar. Simon's text, revised shortly before his death, was the basis for his last public lecture.
2 Philosophy of Democratic Government, initially published in 1951 by The University of Chicago Press, is available since 1993 at the University of Notre Dame Press. The Notre Dame edition incorporates a detailed index and certain editorial corrections of earlier editions.
3 Simon, Anthony O., “Editor's Note” in Acquaintance with the Absolute: The Philosophy of Yves R. Simon (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), xiiiGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Anthony Simon, a son of Yves Simon and director of the Yves R. Simon Institute, not only for suggestions relevant to this essay but also for his fruitful efforts over the years at seeing to publication and/or into translation much significant work of his father that had not appeared in his lifetime and at maintaining regularly the kind of complete bibliography that is available in the volume cited here.
4 Notable is his rich treatment of the common good including the “vivid examples” of the frustration in attaining the common good when a family's best planning of a holiday nonetheless results in disaster, and of the success of reaching the common good with the aid of an indefatigably uncompromising, single-minded but conscientious Latin teacher nearly fanatic in his attachment to the advancement of Latin. Simon, Philosophy, 21–22, 45–46. The example of the family is richly elaborated for another purpose at 31–35. The singularly apt phrase, “vivid examples,” is that of James V. Schall, S.J., “Introduction: Immanent in the Souls of Men” in Acquaintance, 4.
5 Robert J. Mulvaney, “Practical Wisdom in the Thought of Yves R. Simon,” in Acquaintance, 148, 153.
6 This book, his second in the year 1934, was Critique de la connaissance morale. The quotation here from the last chapter is taken from the English translation by McInerny, Ralph, A Critique of Moral Knowledge (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 75Google Scholar.
7 Simon initially came to the United States for a year as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame, but he welcomed the opportunity to stay when free France fell.
8 See Strauss's review of Philosophy of Democratic Government, which appeared in The New Scholasticism (July, 1952) and is reprinted in Strauss, Leo, What Is Political Philosophy? (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1959), 306–11Google Scholar. Strauss strongly praised Simon's analysis of modern democracy, specifically Philosophy of Democratic Government, in the presence of this author. Simon's concerns with the adequacy of Thomism and, to a degree, Catholicism in resisting fascist authoritarianism come to the fore in correspondence between Simon and Maritain especially during 1941, and this is reviewed in Hellman's, John “The Anti-Democratic Impulse in Catholicism: Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, and Charles de Gaulle during World War II,” Journal of Church and State 33, no. 3 (Summer, 1991): 458CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff. It appears that the period between the intense days of early World War II and his writing Philosophy of Democratic Government as well as an essay that appeared in 1954 saw Simon giving more and apparently more thorough attention to the alleged and sometimes felt tensions between Thomism and Catholicism on the one hand and modern democracy on the other. The essay of 1954 is “The Doctrinal Issue between the Church and Democracy,” in The Catholic Church in World Affairs, ed. Waldemar Gurian and M.A. Fitzsimons (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1954), 87–114. A recent and fine interpretation of “the Thomist case for democracy” that Simon came to make in his work of the 1950s is found in Schindler, Jeanne Heffernan, “Democracy and Tradition: A Catholic Alternative to American Pragmatism,” Logos 11, no. 2 (Spring, 2008): 35ffGoogle Scholar.
9 Kuic, Vukan, Yves R. Simon, Real Democracy (Lanham, MD., Rowman and Littlefield: 1999), 1Google Scholar. As Anthony Simon observes in Acquaintance, ix, his father regarded himself as a “non-specialized philosopher by principle.” Yves Simon's range of philosophical interests is represented in the courses he offered as a member of the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought (1948–1961). They are found on page xii of Kuic's, Vukan “Editor's Preface” to Yves Simon's Work, Society and Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.
10 “Yves R. Simon,” in The Book of Catholic Authors, ed. Walter Romig (Detroit:Walter Romig and Co., 1945), 266.
11 A detailed examination of these studies and their impact on Simon's later thinking is found in Nelson, Ralph, “Freedom and Economic Organization in a Democracy,” in Freedom in the Modern World: Jacques Maritain, Yves R. Simon, Mortimer J. Adler, ed. Torre, Michael D. (Mishawaka, IN: American Maritain Association, 1980), 141–52Google Scholar.
12 This essay made very little use of Simon's correspondence; a more extensive study of that will likely shed further light on his self-understanding and development as a philosopher. The following has just appeared as this article goes to press: Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, Correspondance, vol. 1, 1927–1940, ed. Florian Michel et al. (Chambray-les Tours, France: Éditions CLD Cahiers du Livre et Disque, 2008).
13 Simon in Romig, Book of Catholic Authors, 264–66.
14 Simon in Romig, Book of Catholic Authors, 267.
15 Simon, “Homage,” 8–9, 14 (see also 11 for emphasis on how Maritain remains clear about and loyal to the philosophical calling).
16 Simon, Yves R., foreword to The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas, trans. Simon, Yves R., Glanville, John J., and Hollenhorst, G. Donald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), xxii–xxiiiGoogle Scholar.
17 Simon, Yves R., Foresight and Knowledge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), 4Google Scholar.
18 Simon, Foresight, 4, 91.
19 In A Critique Organized (80). Simon wrote: “A metaphysics of man's ultimate end is implied by every political concept. No doubt, the same idea of the ultimate end is compatible with different opinions on how the city should be organized.” See also earlier in the book (40) where the connection between moral science and metaphysics is made explicit.
20 Simon, Yves, The Great Dialogue of Nature and Space, Revised Edition (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2001), 21Google Scholar; Practical Knowledge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1991), 98–99; “The Philosopher's Calling” in Philosopher at Work, ed. Anthony O. Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 4–5.
21 Simon, Foresight, 76.
22 Simon, Great Dialogue, 178. See, in addition, Chapters 7 and 9 of this book.
23 Simon, Yves R., “Philosophy, the Humanities and Education,” The New Scholasticism 62, no. 4 (Autumn, 1988): 471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Simon in Romig, Book of Catholic Authors, 270.
25 Simon, “Homage,” 13.
26 Yves R. Simon, “The Concept of Work,” in Philosopher at Work, 18.
27 Simon, Yves R., The Community of the Free, Revised Edition (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 5Google Scholar.
28 Simon, Community, 5–6. In the pages that follow, Simon showed the sensitivity and deftness in the service of the truth that allowed him to envision withholding truth and even using silence as a means of serving truth in certain circumstances.
29 Simon in Romig, Book of Catholic Authors, 270.
30 Simon, “The Philosopher's Calling,” 1–2; “Philosophy, the Humanities,” 469.
31 Simon, “The Philosopher's Calling,” 3.
32 Simon, “Philosophy, the Humanities,” 469.
33 Simon, “To Be and to Know,” in Philosopher at Work, 193.
34 In “Homage” (14), he presents Maritain as responding to his call rather than his choice in the sense of preference.
35 Simon, “The Philosopher's Calling,” 5.
36 Simon, Work, Society and Culture, 107–9.
37 Simon in Romig, Book of Catholic Authors, 267, also 264.
38 Simon, “The Philosopher's Calling,” 5–6.
39 Simon in Romig, Book of Catholic Authors, 269, 265, 267.
40 Simon, “Homage,” 11.
41 Robert J. Mulvaney, “Editor's Note,” in Simon, Practical Knowledge, xii, adds, “[Simon's] message is a simple one: the traditional concept of practical wisdom has been lost in the past four centuries of Western experience. Its recovery is an urgent need in our individual and social lives.”
42 Simon, “Homage,” 12. The emphasis is mine.
43 Simon, Philosophy, 279.
44 Simon, Philosophy, 282–83.
45 See Kuic, Real Democracy, 34–37, for an overall treatment of Simon's rejection of substitutes for the virtues as critical ingredients in practical wisdom.
46 Simon, Practical Knowledge, 96.
47 Simon, Philosophy, 190–91. Emphasis is mine.
48 Simon, “Homage,” 12–13. The reference to Simon's writing on the invasion of Ethiopia is to a book that initially appeared in French in 1936 and is soon to be published in English translation at the University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
49 Simon, Practical Knowledge, 96–97.
50 Simon, Philosophy, 235 and throughout.
51 Simon, Practical Knowledge, 24.
52 Simon, Practical Knowledge, note 17, 40.
53 For some further elaboration of this and what follows in this essay, see especially Simon's exchange with Maritain, Practical Knowledge, 106–08, and Mulvaney's interpretive commentary on some aspects of the exchange. Mulvaney in Acquaintance, 175.
54 Simon, “Philosophy, the Humanities,” 471.
55 Simon, Philosophy, 80.
56 Simon, Philosophy, 139–39.
57 Simon, “Homage,” 4. It is reasonable to assume that in the different contingencies of today when philosophy is minimized or entirely marginalized in liberal education, Simon would argue differently. Furthermore, it is clear that he expected and likely thought justified that technical education and scientific instruction would take more curricular space than in the past (Philosophy, 279), yet he was concerned that the more holistic perspective that human inquiry needs could be neglected in these developments. See Practical Knowledge, 141, and Raymond L. Dennehy, “Yves R. Simon's Metaphysics of Action,” in Acquaintance, 38.