When I see one of those sweet and silly Saviours or St Francises and see how other people find them beautiful and edifying, I feel it is an insult to the real Saviours and it makes me think: Why did he live and suffer so terribly if people find a picture as silly as that satisfactory to them! But in spite of this I know that my own picture of the Saviour or St Francis is only a human picture and falls short of the original, and that the Saviour himself would find the picture I have of him within me just as stupid as I find those sickly reproductions.
Herman Hesse. Steppenwolf. p. 119
0. Introduction
0.1 Contention
It is the intention of this thesis to explicate a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness.
When one takes into account both that Ethics constitutes one of the principal schools of Philosophy, and that saints are commonly regarded as embodying the epitome of moral righteousness, it should come as little surprise that, throughout the history of Western Philosophy, a great many philosophers have made significant use of the concept of saintliness in their work. As the discipline of Philosophy has evolved, so too has the concept of saintliness and what can be legitimately said of it, philosophically speaking.
The task of this thesis, then, is to advance the philosophical notion of saintliness one step further. This undertaking will be accomplished via a critical survey of the chronological history of the Philosophy of Saintliness. Section by section, I will critically engage with the pertinent issues raised by some of the more philosophically significant conceptions of saintliness.
The order in which each issue is addressed will be determined by the chronology of the philosophies thought to best articulate the question at hand. This approach has the additional advantage of suggesting a genealogical account of the philosophical development of the concept – an accomplishment that, to the best of my knowledge, has never before been made. The purposes served by such a genealogical account are (i) to provide an enhanced appreciation of the rather dynamic history of philosophical conceptions of saintliness, and (ii) to thereby create a conceptual stepping stone from which I will be able to explicate an adequate philosophical characterisation of saintliness with ample confidence in both my own understanding and that of my audience.
As to the ever-persistent question of the general purpose and/or relevance of any Philosophical thesis, I offer the following responses:
1) With respect to the genealogical nature of this thesis, although it must be acknowledged that there already exist countless works concerning the history of saints in general, the emphasis of these accounts are primarily of a historical, sociological, or religious nature. To the best of my knowledge, an extensive, genealogical account of the Philosophy of Saintliness has never before been made comprehensively. Considering the multitude of ‘great’ philosophers who have made much use of this concept, I hold that this deficiency in the literature is enough to deem the focus of this thesis meritorious.
2) The persistent philosophical usage of saintly terminology demands attention as a matter of course. That so many philosophers have and presumably will continue to employ the concept of saintliness as performing significant work in their philosophies, calls for the explication of a philosophically adequate conception. When involved in, say, ethical deliberation, it is all too easy for a philosopher to invoke the everyday concept of saintliness as supporting their claims without giving it any further thought. For this reason alone, it is advantageous that a separate, specifically focused investigation, such as this, be made, independent of any potentially obscuring or distorting (meta)ethical agenda.
3) The notion of saintliness has profoundly rich cultural, historical, and above all philosophical aspects that are not, I believe, sufficiently acknowledged in Philosophical circles. It is of the very essence of this thesis that this should be remedied.
0.2 Definitions
Before I begin in earnest, it would be prudent to qualify a number of essential concepts thought to legitimately constitute the present genealogical undertaking:
By genealogy, I mean only a loose sense of the term. It is my intention merely to ‘tell a story’ of how philosophical conceptions of saintliness have differed over the history of Western Philosophy. While certain philosophers have directly influenced others (eg. Erasmus in Luther; or Schopenhauer in Nietzsche in Sartre), such a sense of ancestry is by no means necessary to the genealogy. Indeed, it is not even the norm. Furthermore, while certain philosophers and philosophies may well have a specific philosophical ancestry in the more formal sense of genealogy (eg. Judaism in Christianity; or Kant in Schopenhauer), such ancestry is not essential to the project, and indeed need not even be mentioned except where it is thought to either augment or contradict the genealogy in particular.
By philosophical, I refer exclusively to the Western canon of Philosophy. This is not to suggest in any way that other schools of thought (eg. Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, etc.) are not just as worthy of our philosophical attention. Indeed, research into many of these traditions did much to inform the characterisation of saintliness given in Part Four of this thesis. However, given the limitations of a thesis such as this (especially the audience’s presumed expertise), the genealogical account will limit itself exclusively to the Western canon, except where it is thought to augment or contradict the genealogy in particular.
As should be evident from the above definition, no metaphilosophical account is thought to be necessary at this stage. Admittedly, as the investigation progresses, a number of metaphilosophical arguments will be advanced. Ultimately, it will be that I explicitly establish a number of strict parameters, so as to allow for the eventual explication of a philosophically satisfactory characterisation of saintliness. However, for the genealogy in general, all that is required for a conception of saintliness to be considered ‘philosophical’ is that a member of the canon of Western Philosophy advanced it.
By saintliness, I allow for any usage of terminology pertaining to all things ‘saintly.’ Such usage may be:
(i) direct (eg. “The saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive…” – William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience); or
(ii) indirect (eg. “Charity can exist … in beginners and the advanced” – St Aquinas in Summa Theologiæ ); or
(iii) translated from another language (eg. “I reject saintliness wherever it manifests itself” – Jean-Paul Sartre in Saint Genet).
By saintliness, the required ‘family resemblance’ rests principally on a shared use of terminology. Certainly, it is the contention of the genealogical account that this ‘family resemblance’ runs much deeper than this. However, from the outset, there are no grounds for the objection that, prima facie, one philosophical conception of saintliness, either:
(a) is not commensurable with any other philosophical conception of saintliness; or
(b) is not commensurable with any other conception of saintliness (belonging to a particular tradition or otherwise).
With respect to (a), this is intended to defend the genealogy from objections such that, while the account traces the chronology of philosophical conceptions of saintliness from one philosopher and/or era to the next, the philosophical conceptions of saintliness of ‘philosopher A’ and ‘philosopher Z’ are so disparate as to call into question the validity of the claim that there is any family resemblance whatsoever. For any further justification thought necessary to defend this qualification, the reader is encouraged to refer again to the definition of ‘genealogy’ given above.
With respect to (b), this is intended to defend the genealogy from objections such that, while it is acknowledged that any one individual philosopher’s conception of saintliness is restricted to philosophical consideration, it fails to accord with the reader’s or anyone else’s pre-established conceptions or convictions of saintliness or saints. For example, that St Augustine would not be considered a saint according to Schopenhauer’s conception, whereas he is commonly regarded to be a saint by society at large, is prima facie no objection against Schopenhauer or the account provided herein. Such objections philosophically amount merely to argumentum ad populum, and no recourse to the supposed ‘unquestionable authority’ of institutions, such as the Roman Catholic papacy, will, in this particular philosophical context, deem them to be otherwise.
