THE HOLY CHARLATAN; The Dialetheism of Saintliness
Ross Campbell Barham
29.09.2005; 11th APPC @ Uni. of Melb.

0. Introduction

The question is: Why are people so afraid of contradictions? It is easy to understand why they should be afraid of contradictions, etc., outside mathematics. The question is: Why should they be afraid of contradictions inside mathematics?
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics. pp. 512-3

Dialetheism is the rather controversial position that there are such things as ‘true contradictions.’ Not that all contradictions are irresolvable, mind you, but that there at least some contradictions that are truly paradoxical.
I consider myself to be a weak-dialetheist. That is to say that, in a sentiment reminiscent of the Wittgenstein quote abstracted above, I believe that there are indeed true paradoxes to be found within any abstract system of reasoning – be it Logic, Mathematics, or Philosophy.
I am only a weak-dialetheist, however, as I am yet to be convinced that the concrete world can present us with true contradictions. Take, for example, The Liar Paradox:
For logicians (especially of the classical sect), the statement ‘This sentence is false’, does indeed seem self-contradictory in a truly paradoxical way. For your average Joe, however, there’s nothing to it. The corresponding statement ‘This sentence is True’ isn’t paradoxical. It’s just a stupid thing to say, as there’s no way of determining (or verifying) whether or not it is true or false. It’s not something that you’d enter into.
The same holds true for The Liar Statement: if you don’t enter into it in the first place, then you don’t get dragged down into the abyss. This is not to say that the logicians are wasting their time. Rather, it is to suggest that, while it should come as little surprise to discover that, say, an engineer, in drawing-up the plans for a machine, might mistakenly assign the same exact space for two separate parts, it would be an utterly miraculous event if a mechanic could subsequently make the two separate solid parts exist in the same time-space.

Over the past year of researching philosophical conceptions of saintliness, I have encountered a number of seemingly meaningful contradictions. Today, I would like to run through four of the more promising cases with you, to see if we can thereby find justification for strong-dialethesim. My hope is more to evoke discussion than to provide knock-down arguments either for, though mainly against, the dialetheism of saintliness.

1.    Arthur Schopenhauer’s Exchange of Signs

… every nihil negativum or absolute nothingness, if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a mere nihil privativum or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always exchange signs with what it negates, so that the former would then be thought of as negation, and it would itself be thought of as assertion.
Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea.
Book IV, #71. p. 260

The logic of the above argument initially looks as though it has the potential to be paradoxical, for if the exchange of signs can take place in one direction, then what’s to stop them from oscillating back and forth?

In order to get a proper grasp of the matter at hand, one must first realise that this passage was intended to provide the argumentative mechanism that Schopenhauer believed would get him through the following metaphysics:
Most people hold being to be an innately positive aspect of the universe or of life. Nothing or nothingness is the corresponding negative aspect of being. However, both of these dichotomous aspects of the world belong to the Idea or human consciousness that, Schopenhauer explains, is the mirror of the world as pure will. “We ourselves are this will and this world, and to it belongs all ideation, as one aspect of them,” he says. Moreover, following Kant, Schopenhauer holds that Time and Space are inexorable to all ideation. If, then, one becomes an ascetic saint and thereby denies in themselves the will to life, then along with one’s own self-annihilation, one annihilates the mirror of the world, the idea, and therefore, the world itself. As Schopenhauer puts it: “If we no longer glimpse the will in this mirror, we ask in vain where it has gone … because it has no longer a where and when…” Furthermore, it is owing to this peculiar metaphysical vacuum that the ascetic saint is able to invert the valuation of being and nothingness. Nothingness becomes the positive aspect, whereas being is the negative.

This denial of the will to life via saintly asceticism may seem to the rest of us ‘sinners’ to be repugnantly pessimistic. However, according to Schopenhauer ál la Buddha, all life is suffering. We sinners may vainly think that happiness can be found with the gratification of our desires, but the saint knows better.
The saint, on their way to becoming an ascetic, will have travelled the road of heightened compassion. On this path, they will have come to appreciate the futility of charity, owing to the fleeting contentment produced by the temporary alleviation of suffering via the gratification of desires. Such measures, the saint understands, really only feed the flames of desire, and, therefore, of discontent and suffering also. Ultimately the saint truly knows that all life is suffering. From this perspective, then, that the annihilation of the universe can be seen as a positive thing, might not seem all that backward.
Nor, however, does it seem truly paradoxical. Certainly the ascetic saint values being and nothingness in contradiction to our own evaluations of these categories. However, this definitely doesn’t entail a paradoxical situation.
Indeed, even if we were to try to make a paradox (as Nietzsche once did) of Schopenhauer’s claim that the ascetic saint, in themselves, must constantly “strive with all their might to keep to this path [of quieting the will] by self-imposed renunciations of every kind” (W1, 391), Schopenhauer’s theory of the will as acting independently of intellectual agency, manages to ensure consistency, at least within the context of his metaphysical system.

2. William James on Extreme Charity
‘Resist not evil,’ ‘Love your enemies,’ these are saintly maxims of which men of this world find it hard to speak without impatience. Are the men of this world right, or are the saints in possession of the deeper range of truth.
William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience. p. 355

With regard to the above maxim recounted by William James, one perceives what initially seem like a paradox: ‘Love your enemies.’ How can one love what one hates? Surely, the two emotions are diametrically opposed to one another; and thus, through this maxim, suggest a true contradiction.
There are, however, I believe two other possible responses to this:
1) Firstly, an enemy needn’t be someone that you hate. Indeed, according to the Penguin Dictionary, ‘an enemy is merely a person who is opposed to or actively seeking to harm somebody or something.’ To love one’s enemy, by this light, makes no account of any sentiments opposed to love. An enemy may merely be someone who interests coincidentally happen to be at odds with your own. The maxim, then, quite prudently, recommends that one shouldn’t let their feelings of love be effected by such an unfortunate state of affairs.
Indeed, even if your enemy hates you and is actively seeking to harm you and all that you stand for, then there is still nothing self-contradictory about loving them. The hate belongs to the other party; no mention of hate on your part has been made (although one may assume that it is the implied propensity of people to foster hate towards those whom oppose them, that the maxim was designed to warm against).
2) Secondly the maxim ‘love your enemies’ might be thought to be temporally bound.
When one asks oneself: what is the best way to vanquish my enemy? Destruction is what normally springs to mind. But how can one be certain that after you kill your enemy that you’ll be content … that, from the depths of your hatred, you’ll not subsequently feel the need to kill your enemy’s family as well, their friends, their culture, all that that they ever stood for, the very memory of them – in a word – everything that every had anything to do with them … including yourself?
So to ask the question again: What’s the best way to vanquish one’s enemy? The answer surely lies in bringing about a state of affairs where they are no longer your enemy anymore. ‘Love your enemies’ can, therefore, be read as commandment to this end; for, although you may have enemies now, if you were able to love them, then quite simply they would no longer be your enemies. The apparent self-contradiction is seen, so to speak, in the vanishing of an eye.

William James’s own account accords well with either one of these interpretations. He says, that “psychologically and in principle, the precept ‘Love you enemies’ is not self-contradictory” . However, he goes on to argue that in real-world circumstances “the saint may simply give the universe into the hands of the enemy by his trustfulness. He may by his non-resistance cut off his own survival.”  Such thinking leads James to conclude that:

… in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.
William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience. p. 356

According to James, the saint points towards a brighter, more idealistic future and, so, serves to ensure that we not forget the ideals that we are fighting for. However, in accordance with our “empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices,’  we non-saintly types must nevertheless realise the necessity of ‘fighting fire with fire’, or more literally ‘using violence to bring about peace.’
To me, it is these latter maxims that seem more paradoxical, but as they belong to the philosophy of saintliness only in so far as they contrast with it, I must move on to consider the next case.

3. Sartre’s Saintly Sophistry
… the Saint, making use of divine mediation, claims that a Nay carried to the extreme is necessarily transformed into a Yea. Extreme poverty is wealth, refusal is acceptance, the absence of God is the dazzling manifestation of his presence, to live to die, to die is to live, etc.
Jean-Paul Sartre. Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr. p. 202

The abstracted Sartre quote above may initially appear to advocate a dialetheist conception of saintliness, but as he himself explains: “I am not as fond of shit as some people say I am. That is why I reject Saintliness wherever it manifests itself.”  The passage quoted, then, is to be read as a cynical summation of the claims that the saints make themselves (perhaps not explicitly, but at least via their actions).
To get a proper appreciation of what is going on here, we have to go all the way back 100 years to Schopenhauer and trace his influence back through his successor, Friedrich Nietzsche, to his, in Jean-Paul Sartre.

As we saw earlier on, for Schopenhauer, saintly asceticism is able to metaphysically transcend the suffering of all existence once and for all, via self-annihilation. For a time, Nietzsche swallowed this hook-line-and-sinker, and went around, ál la Schopenhauer, claiming that the saint, the artist and the philosopher made up the supreme triad of human-types. Eventually, Nietzsche conceived of what he considered to be a truly universal force: The Will to Power. According to this doctrine, the artist and the philosopher still forms the epitome of the human-type, whereas the saint falls to the bottom of the heap, as they no longer are held to be in anyway able to transcend anything even remotely metaphysical. According to Nietzsche, saintly attempts to embody The Will to Power are made with a bad conscience, in the most literal sense. For, as it features in his Genealogy of Morals, the ‘weak’ – having been actually oppressed by the ‘strong’ – were oppressed even further by the saints who convinced them that it was only owing to their own sinfulness that they suffered at all. In plainer terms: the ‘strong’ are happy with the power that they naturally obtain/attain, and the ‘weak’ are then further oppressed by the saints who convince them that they are unhappy, not because they don’t have the power that the strong have, but because they want for these manifestations of power in the first place. While the ‘strong’ truly achieve greatness despite the weak, the apparent achievements of the saints were brought about only by a perversion of values in spite of the weak.

This conception of saintliness
To this, earlier, quote, I have a quick two-pronged response:
1) Firstly, ‘the need for contrast.’ Imagine, if you will, a person who finds themselves in circumstances of severe and wide-spread famine. For them to attempt to claim that they’ve decided to adopt a life of ascetic poverty and fasting, would be, in this context, quite meaningless. Sartre argues that the phenomenon of saints can only occur in a consumerist society; this, he claims, provides us with some insight into his characterisation of the saint, not as a becoming, but as a final product that is presented to the purchaser or user as polished, varnished, sparkling object that demands to be consumed.
I want to reassert Sartre’s position that the phenomenon of sainthood can only occur in a consumerist society, but for a different reason: the need for contrast.

2) Therefore, let Nietzsche’s strong be happy in their power.
But also let the Saint serve as a role model to reveal true contrast to us all, in the same sense that James suggested they do via their acts of extreme charity.
Certainly Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals, may be right; the message taken historically from the saints has often been that one can’t be happy unless one is absolutely destitute: ‘Extreme poverty is wealth,’ as Sartre puts it. I agree that this message is misguided, but it is as equally misguided as the belief that one can’t be happy without riches.
‘One can be happy without riches’ does not entail ‘one cannot be happy with riches.’ In the same way ‘The strong are powerful and happy’ does not entail ‘The weak are not powerful, and, therefore, unhappy.’
Let the contrast between the strong and the saints reveal to us, then, the true nature of happiness.

4. Simone Weil’s Saintly Mysticism
The first Simone Weil quote included in your handout, suggests that saints are true dialetheists. That may well be the case. However, this quote doesn’t really provide us with anything more than the suggestion that what we’ve been doing here today will pay off in the end. So lets keep at it:

The second Weil quote in the handout offers us a little bit more to chew on in the form of a metaphor of climbing a mountain.
As far as I can gather, Weil here seems to be suggesting that, while the world seems paradoxical to the unenlightened, from the saintly (or perhaps dialetheist) perspective, everything is as it should be.

This sentiment reminds me strongly of a line that Graham Priest was trying to run a here a couple of weeks back.
Borrowed from the Buddhist teachings of Nagarjuna (Nag-a-june-a), the argument goes something like this:

In Conventional Reality there are distinctions (for instance between Conventional Reality and Ultimate Reality, or ‘p and not-p’). In Ultimate Reality, however, there are no distinctions and, therefore, the Conventional is subsumed in Ultimate Reality.

There are, as far as I can see, two equally plausible ways of looking at this.
1) The first is to take the ‘paradox’ literally. Fine, if that’s the case then I have no idea of what is being talked about. I hold no claim to Ultimate Reality, nor could I ever know that another did without also knowing Ultimate Reality; therefore I’ll simply back away and find someone to talk to that I have more in common with.
2) Or, alternatively, I can attempt to make sense of the matter … to bring it into play in the real world. In this way, we might want to re-state the seemingly paradoxical relation of CR and UR in this way (and, yes, I’ve ripped-off the ‘mountains as mountains, not as mountains, and mountains again’ Buddhist saying):
In ignorance I knew only Conventional Reality.
Then, in learning, I was directed towards Ultimate Reality.
Now, in enlightenment, Ultimate Reality is my Conventional Reality.

This is as much to say that:
When I was a student, I sought answers from my teachers.
Now that I am a teacher I have the answers that my students seek,
Though they are not the answers that I once thought they were.
And so I still seek answers from my teachers.

Or

When I was a student, I knew nothing and my teachers knew everything.
Now I am the teacher, I realise that I still know nothing,
Though it is a different nothing than I used to not know.

All this amounts to making sense of what may seem to be self-contradictory statements:

To know that there is no Answer is to know the Answer.
Or
To know that there is no Ultimate Reality is to know Ultimate Reality.

Admittedly, these truths cannot really be taught; but, through experience, they can be learnt. Perhaps, this way of thinking applies to Weil’s metaphor as well. Let us take, for example, the following more concrete example:

We possess nothing in the world – a mere chance can strip us of everything – except the power to say ‘I’. That is what we have to give to God – in other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given to us to accomplish – only the destruction of the ‘I’.
Simone Weil. ‘The Self’ in Gravity and Grace. p. 26

The question then is, how can one consistently sacrifice the ‘I’ without falling foul to the same sort of reasoning that saved us in the case of Jamesean charity? That is to say, how can the sacrifice of one’s individuality be the highest manifestation of one’s individuality? Here, I think a quick passage from Dostoyevsky can help us out:

To sacrifice one’s life willingly for others, to be crucified, burned at the stake for others, can only be done at the highest point of the attainment of individuality. A highly developed individuality, completely convinced of its right to be individual, no longer fearing anything for itself, cannot possibly do anything else with its individuality, that is, can find no greater use for itself that to give itself up entirely for others, so that others too may become equally autonomous and happy individualities.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. pp. 184-5

This is as much to say that, for us non-saintly individuals, we feel the need to fill the emptiness of our unfulfilled individuality with junk that we hope will give us an identity: SUVs, ipods, holidays, specialised interests, honours, etc.
With regards to the saint individuality, however, their cup runneth over, so to speak, and the overflow is freely given to whomsoever is in need.

Thankyou

A Psychological Approach to The Philosophy of Saintliness:
The Work and Lives of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and James
Abstract: Philosophical characterisations of ‘the saint’ have been inexorably affected by the deep-seated psychologies of individual philosophers, to the extent that no subsequent philosophy of saintliness is complete without adequate consideration of these aspects. This thesis shall be demonstrated via a comparative investigation of the lives and philosophies of three of the great Philosophers of Saintliness – Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Preamble
Given both that ethics has always been a matter of philosophical concern, and that saints are commonly supposed to epitomise moral righteousness, it should be of little wonder that a great many philosophers have made use of the notion of saintliness in their work. Of the so-called ‘Great Philosophers,’ the following exemplify this tendency: St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Voltaire, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, William James, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, John Hick, and Aldous Huxley.
Although the above considerations and invocations combined ought to suffice in legitimising ‘the saint’ as a proper philosophical concept (as opposed to, say, a theological one), it is my intention to add a further dimension to our appreciation of The Philosophy of Saintliness.  The contention of this essay is, therefore, that the philosophical characterisations of ‘the saint’ have been inexorably affected by the deep-seated psychologies of the individual philosophers themselves, and that no subsequent philosophy of saintliness is complete without adequate consideration of these aspects. This thesis shall be demonstrated via a comparative investigation of the lives and philosophies of three of the great Philosophers of Saintliness – Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James.

1.2 Structural Outline
In the first instance I shall argue that, given the historical evidence, we can easily (re)establish a portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer as a particularly miserly, misanthropic, and conceited person. In this light it appears inconsistent, as Søren Kierkegaard aptly noted, that while Schopenhauer himself made no (successful) attempts towards personifying or imitating either the charitable saint or the ascetic saint, his philosophy nevertheless extols both as the highest possible attainment for humankind and the universe respectively. I shall consequently argue that a re-evaluation of the supposed authenticity of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is required; one that takes into account the apparently second-hand and/or speculative nature of his masterpiece, The World as Will and Idea. The cultural context in which Schopenhauer was writing and the inspiration he reaped from reading the then recently introduced Eastern philosophies will be evidenced as further supporting this interpretation.

Secondly, the development of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche will be explored, from the triadic conception (qua Schopenhauer) of the saint, the artist, and the philosopher, to his own unique concept of the Übermensch.
Although Nietzsche himself claimed that the nature of the Übermensch was essentially unknowable, he nevertheless implicitly characterised ‘him’ as an artistic philosopher, long devoid of any resemblance to the saint. Subsequently, the thesis of Alexander Nehamas’s Nietzsche; Life as Literature will be employed as a springboard for claiming that Nietzsche’s (perhaps unconscious) motivation for this progression was that he no longer personally aspired towards saintliness – only artistic philosophy – and so his philosophical ideals followed suit.

Finally, in response to Richard M. Gale’s two possible explanations as to how William James could have been so sensitive to and appreciative of religious mystical experiences whilst simultaneously claiming to have not had any himself, I will suggest a third alternative. Taking the lead from the first chapter of John. J. Shea’s work, I shall argue that William James was motivated by the religious conviction and passionate spirituality of his father, the late Henry James Snr., in attempting to philosophically discredit what was increasingly regarded in academic circles as the absurdity of religious belief.
From these psychological insights, I shall subsequently conclude that we are also provided with a more satisfying alternative to Charles Taylor’s recent evaluation of James’s Varieties of Religious Experience.
Charles Taylor’s Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited seeks to locate James’s philosophy of religion within a broader historical context so as to account for the argumentative strategy James adopted. Again, I shall suggest that James’s relationship with his father offers a more directly satisfying explanation of James’s intentions.

With the above arguments having been made, I shall ultimately conclude with a few brief remarks to further explicate and establish the central metaphilosophical thesis of this essay; namely, that any exhaustive Philosophy of Saintliness needs to take into account the personal psychological makeup of its individual philosophical proponents.

2. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The philosopher who advocated denying the ego could hardly have been a greater egotist or more concerned with his personal and material wellbeing.

2.1 The Man
Apart from, most notably, a young Friedrich Nietzsche,  Arthur Schopenhauer has consistently fallen foul of highly critical personal appraisals – far be it for me to deviate from tradition:
Born in Danzig in 1788, Arthur Schopenhauer’s father committed suicide not long after. Although this sad occurrence provided the son with solid economic support,  it seems fair to claim that his father’s passing simultaneously deprived him of much emotional support. His mother, a popular novelist of the time, soon took to polyandry following the ‘loss’ of her conservative husband. Needless to say, young Arthur was appalled. The mother-son relationship ultimately ended when, following an impassioned quarrel, Frau Schopenhauer pushed the young philosopher down a flight of stairs; whereupon he cruelly, though quite accurately, predicted that she would be known to prosperity only through him. Thereafter he moved to Dresden and lived alone. Concerning the alienation that Schopenhauer felt at this time, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote (perhaps with some personal insight):
He was absolutely alone, with not a single friend; and between one and none there lies an infinity.

Always pessimistic, it was in this particular phase of his life that the solitary Schopenhauer most acutely cultivated his cynicism. He became gloomy, paranoid and obsessive – locking his pipes and tobacco away immediately after use, never trusting his neck to a barber’s razor, and sleeping with loaded pistols ready to hand. The result of this period, however, was the masterpiece The World as Will and Idea. With this work, Schopenhauer was so confident that he had overcome Philosophy’s fundamental dilemmas that he toyed with the idea of having a signet ring made, bearing an image of the Sphinx tossing herself down into the abyss as she had promised to do if her riddles were ever answered. Regardless of whether or not he was being unwarrantedly arrogant in this sentiment, his work was poorly received, with the majority of the first edition ending up as waste paper. In response, however, the great philosopher took solace in the elitism of Litchenberger, who wrote:
Works like this are as a mirror: if an ass looks in you cannot expect an angel to look out.

Eventually Schopenhauer was invited to lecture in Berlin, but as he defiantly scheduled his classes at the very same hours that the then immensely popular Georg Hegel was lecturing, the resulting poor levels of attendance left him dejected, and the series was discontinued.
At the age of thirty-three, Schopenhauer fell for a 19-year-old singer. The relationship continued for ten years, though, for reasons essentially unknown, only sporadically. Alain de Botton, in his popular work, The Consolations of Philosophy, suggests, however, that Schopenhauer’s apparent lack of commitment was born of a preference for polygamy.  Yet when we look to Schopenhauer’s own explicit commendation of the practice, I think that, taking into consideration his own troubled family life, we can perceive a philosophy affected by deep psychological anguish:
[A widespread practice of male polygamy would mean] the restoration of women to her rightful and natural position, the subordinate one, and the abolition from the world of the lady, with her ridiculous claims to respect and veneration …

But Schopenhauer’s attitude was more misanthropic than purely misogynistic, as we can glean from the following anecdote related by Will Durant in his work, The Story of Philosophy:
At the beginning of each meal [Schopenhauer] would put a gold coin on the table before him; and at the end of each meal he would put the coin back into his pocket. It was, no doubt, an indignant waiter who at least asked him the meaning of this invariable ceremony. Schopenhauer answered that it was his silent wager that the English officers dining there should talk of anything else than horses, women, or dogs.

As final evidence of the degree of his egotism, let it be noted that all throughout his career, Schopenhauer requested of even his remotest acquaintances that they send him copies of any mention of his name in the media. Again as Nietzsche wrote:
It makes us sad to see [Schopenhauer] hunting for the slightest sign that he was not utterly unknown; and his loud, too loud, triumphing when he did finally acquire readers (‘legor et legar’)  has something painfully moving in it. All the traits he exhibits that are not those of a great philosopher are those of the suffering human being fearful for the safety of his noblest possessions…

2.2 The Philosophy of An Immoral Moralist
As related above, Schopenhauer’s masterpiece, The World as Will and Idea was, in part, the product of the most pessimistic stage of his life. Unsurprisingly, it is also exceedingly pessimistic. Going one step further than Buddhism’s precept that all life is suffering, Schopenhauer concludes that ours is ‘the worst possible world.’ Consequently, the highest possible attainment for not only a human, but indeed for the universe itself, is self-annihilation. The denial of what is otherwise the universal force of The Will to Life via asceticism is, however, the only way to achieve such annihilation, and therefore is the highest of Schopenhauer’s five incremental ethical categories: cruelty (harm to others); egoism (profit to self); righteousness (equilibrium of advantage); charity (profit to others); and asceticism (denial of self).

At first glance, the philosophy outlined above may not seem overly inconsistent. However, a dilemma arises when we relate the more eminent categories of Schopenhauer’s philosophy with the earlier characterisation of him as a gloomy, miserly, and egotistic person. As Søren Kierkegaard wrote:
After reading [Schopenhauer’s] ethics through, one discovers – he is, of course, that honest – that he is not such an ascetic himself. Consequently he does not himself represent the contemplation that is attained through asceticism, but a contemplation which relates contemplatively to that asceticism.
This is extremely suspect; even here the most fearful sort of melancholic voluptuousness, a corrupting kind, can be concealed, likewise a profound misanthropy, etc.
It is also suspect in that it is always dubious to propound an ethics which does not exercise such a power over the teacher that he expresses it in himself.

Of course, the apparent irony was not lost on Schopenhauer either. The World as Will an Idea itself contains the following passage, which might well be regarded as something of a pre-emptive defence on Schopenhauer’s part:
A saint may be full of the absurdest superstition, or, on the contrary, he may be a philosopher, it is all the same. His conduct alone certifies that he is a saint, for, in moral regard, it proceeds from knowledge of the world and its nature, which is not abstractly but intuitively and directly apprehended, and is only expressed by him in any dogma for the satisfaction of his reason. It is therefore just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher as that a philosopher should be a saint; just as it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. In general, it is a strange demand upon a moralist that he should teach no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.

However, as we shall see, the substance of the former portion of the passage, in Schopenhauer’s case at least, precludes our acceptance of its latter claim.

To be a saint, according to Schopenhauer, requires no abstract knowledge of why or what it is that he or she does; it is enough that they act in a saintly fashion. Indeed, the type of knowledge known by the saint is directly experiential and, regardless of whatever fanciful theories one might invoke to try to account for it, it cannot be adequately expressed in abstraction.
Similarly, Schopenhauer reasons, vice versa, that the contrary holds for the philosopher; moralists need not act morally themselves in order to propound true philosophical ethics. Analogically, he stresses that a sculptor who creates a beautiful piece need not be beautiful himself; a point readily validated empirically.
Nevertheless, I think it fair to claim that the sculptor must have, in one sense or another,  some knowledge of what is beautiful in order to create a beautiful piece. Schopenhauer, however, has excluded the immoral moralist from both concrete and abstract knowledge of the saint that his philosophy is seeking to abstractly characterise. As he himself says:
… genuine goodness of disposition, disinterested virtue, and pure nobility do not proceed from abstract knowledge. Yet they do proceed from knowledge; but it is a direct knowledge, which can neither be reasoned away, nor arrived at by reasoning, a knowledge which, just because it is not abstract, cannot be communicated, but must arise in each for himself, which therefore finds its real and adequate expression not in words, but only in deeds, in conduct, in the course of the life of man.

One may feel inclined here to contend this point by noting that this passage was primarily intended to bolster the sentiment of The World as Will and Idea’s reccurring maxim, velle non discitur.  That saintly knowledge is excluded from the realm of the abstract is meant only to add weight to Schopenhauer’s following argument as to why it is beyond the reach of the majority of us:
It would [be] absurd to expect that our moral systems and ethics produce virtuous, noble, and holy men, as that our aesthetics will produce poets, painters, and musicians.

Normally such a claim would not be so detrimental to an ethical philosophy. However, Schopenhauer’s ethics is intimately related to his metaphysical system. This is, in part, the genius of Schopenhauer. But it is also his downfall, because, if saintly knowledge is excluded not only from abstract conceptualisation, but from those who do not themselves live the saintly life, then surely Schopenhauer has cut himself off from personally perceiving the true metaphysical nature of the universe, and thus from authentically communicating to his audience the supposed wisdom/knowledge of The World as Will and Idea.
But does this mean that his philosophy is wrong? Well, to answer this further question, I recommend we take a step back and consider the historical and philosophical background of the thirty-year-old genius who composed this masterpiece.

2.3 Schopenhauer’s Eastern Influence
Even those who warn us from understating the influence of Immanuel Kant on Schopenhauer’s philosophical development must concede, as Bryan Magee did, that “of the major figures in Western philosophy, Schopenhauer is the one who has the most in common with Eastern thought.”  Indeed, Schopenhauer himself referred to Buddhists as his fellow-believers. But, although Schopenhauer emphasises the originality of his own thinking whilst simultaneously marvelling at the ‘coincidences’ it shares with that of the Eastern religions,  his indebtedness to and high regard of Eastern thought cannot be overstated:
The direct exposition of [the living knowledge of eternal justice that] we find in the Vedas, the fruit of the highest human knowledge and wisdom, the kernel of which has at last become accessible to us in the Upanishads is the greatest gift of this century.

It was reputedly the ‘Orientalist’, Frederick Mayer, a friend of Frau Schopenhauer’s, who, prior to Arthur’s solitary retreat to Dresden, first extended the horizons of our young philosopher. It was in Dresden, however, that Schopenhauer’s consumption of “the Oupnek’hat, the Latin translation of the Upanishads, absorbed a great deal of his time.”  In this light, we can, with reasonable confidence, attribute the birth of The World as Will and Idea, not only to pessimism and genius, but to an Eastern influence as well.

2.4 Conclusion: The Life of Religion and The Thoughts of Philosophy
In this, the first of three sections working to establish my central thesis, a characterisation of Arthur Schopenhauer, the man, has been made in order to demonstrate that his personal life did not reflect the ideals of his philosophy. This, it was argued, is significant in so far as it excludes Schopenhauer, the philosopher, from the direct experiential knowledge of what his philosophy sought to abstractly express. In responding to the issue of whether or not this fact undermines the validity of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, if we take into account the profound influence Eastern thought had on Schopenhauer’s thinking, we can partly characterise The World as Will and Idea as an attempt to couch the central doctrines of the Eastern Religions in Kantian terminology. This conclusion, however, is not intended to definitively answer the motivating question of the validity of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Rather, it is to suggest that, whereas the Eastern insights are religiously experiential, Schopenhauer’s insights are philosophically speculative. As Dorothea Dauer wrote in her thesis, Schopenhauer as Transmitter of Buddhist Ideas:
Schopenhauer pushed the Buddhist ideas to extremes in his speculation, while the Buddha as a preacher wisely adhered to his middle-of-the-road policy and never expected what his followers could not possibly do in reality. Schopenhauer never had in mind the possibility of the effect of what he preached, but Buddha had. Buddha was more realistic, Schopenhauer in many cases merely toyed with interesting ideas.

This is as much to say that, while Gautama reputedly experienced enlightenment first-hand, Schopenhauer’s account is, at best, speculative and second-hand. In either case, however, unless we take the testimonies of their adherents, the metaphysical foundations of both requires that any definitive test of validity must make recourse to the direct, first-hand experience they both stress so emphatically.

3. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

3.1 Segue: Schopenhauer’s Influence on Nietzsche.
As Bertrand Russell aptly noted in the opening sentence of his mammoth History of Western Philosophy: “Nietzsche regarded himself, rightly, as the successor of Schopenhauer…”  Indeed, we need look no further than Nietzsche’s own writings to discern the profound influence that Schopenhauer had on his thinking. As Nietzsche recalls in the first of his published works, Untimely Meditations:
…whoever has felt what is means to discover among our tragelaphine men of today a whole, complete, self-moving, unconstrained and unhampered natural being will understand my joy and amazement when I discovered Schopenhauer: I sensed in him that I had discovered that educator and philosopher I had sought for so long.

It should therefore come as no surprise to discover that, in the same way that Schopenhauer conceived of his philosophy as amending the shortcomings of Immanuel Kant’s work, much of Nietzsche’s own, profoundly original philosophy progressed from a continuation, to more of a rectification, if not outright denial, of his predecessor’s work.

3.2 The Triad of Saint, Artist and Philosopher in Nietzsche’s Early Work.
Initially, Nietzsche conceived of a triad of the saint, the philosopher and the artist as forming the highest attainments possible for a human being. In his own words: “They are those true men, those who are no longer animal, the philosophers, artists and saints …”  And again:
This [triad] is the root of all true culture; and if I understand by this longing of man to be reborn as saint and genius, I know that one does not have to be a Buddhist to understand this myth.

This sentiment is entirely reminiscent of Schopenhauer, who held that it is only ‘the genius’ in artistic contemplation,  philosophical acuity  or saintly asceticism,  that can in any way transcend phenomenal suffering. Take, for example, the following passage of Nietzsche:
“… the genius longs more deeply for sainthood because from his watchtower he has seen further and more clearly than other men, down into the reconciliation of knowledge with being, over into the domain of peace and denial of the will, across to the other coast of which the Indians speak.”

And yet, although these passages express what are supposedly Nietzsche’s own (albeit adopted) personal inclinations,  he soon abandoned this supreme triad in favour of a single, unified concept – the Übermensch.

3.3 The Development of The Overman.
As Nietzsche’s philosophical life progressed, he became evermore disenchanted with much of what had inspired him in his youth. Although he had abandoned his once devout religious faith long before, in his early writings we can still glean a degree of reverence for Christianity. For instance:
One has only to recall what Christianity has gradually become through the greed of the state. Christianity is certainly one of the purest revelations of the impulse to culture and especially of the impulse to the ever-renewed production of the saint…

In contrast to this sentiment, by the time Nietzsche came to write the scathing polemic, The Antichrist, in 1888, his philosophy of the Overman and The Will to Power had become firmly enshrined in his thinking, leaving little room for saintliness. As Walter Kaufmann wrote:
In his early philosophy, Nietzsche had envisaged artist, saint, and philosopher as the supreme triad of humanity. [Later] he would still agree that these are the three types that have tried to rise above the mass of men, but he would evaluate them differently. The saint is now pictured as the man who has extirpated his passions and thus destroyed his chances of ever living the Good Life, while artist and philosopher employ their passions in spiritual pursuits and are the most nearly perfect of men; for the powerful life is the creative life.

Although the role that the Overman explicitly played in Nietzsche’s philosophy is too often overstated – the term Übermensch being employed only infrequently by Nietzsche himself – throughout his writings we can perceive an ever-present striving and desire to raise the bar for humanity. The saint, unfortunately, in Nietzsche’s view, is irrevocably a victim of ‘sin’ as it is understood by the psychohistorical theory of his genealogy of morality. As Jörg Salaquarda explains in his essay, ‘Nietzsche and the Judaeo-Christian tradition’:
[After hierarchies of power had been established by physical oppression,] from the “strong” among the slaves …. there arose another, important type of human being. They who had lost influence among their peers discovered the possibility of regaining power as leaders of the slaves. These “ascetic priests” offered to the slaves a new scapegoat on which to blame their sufferings: their own sinfulness. Combined with the promise of redemption for those who believed in God, and in God alone, this interpretation became irresistible. Historically appearing first in Judaism and reformulated in the Christian tradition, it brought about the first “revaluation of values.” The new interpretation of the ascetic priests succeeded by inspiring the slaves with a strong “sense of power” [“Gefühl der Macht”] that finally enabled them to overcome even the “masters.”

Just how these ‘saints’ were able to achieve such a profound feat, Nietzsche himself explains over the following two passages:
…The saint as the most powerful type of man-: it is this idea that has elevated so high the value of moral perfection. One must imagine the whole of knowledge labouring to prove that the moral man is the most powerful, most godlike. – The overcoming of the senses, the desires – everything inspired fear; the antinatural appeared as the supernatural, as something from the beyond –

Why the weak conquer.
… The sick and the weak have had fascination of their side: they are more interesting than the healthy: the fool and the saint – the two most interesting kinds of man – closely related to them, the “genius.”

3.4 Nietzsche’s Denial of Saintliness
Philosophically speaking, why it was that the saint was dropped from Nietzsche’s triad of human potentiality is obvious; if The Will to Power was to be, unlike Schopenhauer’s Will to Life, a truly universal principle, then at least for the sake of philosophical coherency, the ascetic saint’s apparent self denial (i.e. denial of willing) must, nevertheless, manifest The Will to Power via the type of double-think ‘displacement’ expressed in the above quotations. Psychologically speaking, however, we may need to take a further moment to consider the nature of Nietzsche’s characterisation of the human ideal to appreciate why the saint came to fall short by his estimation.

In his work, Nietzsche; Life as Literature, Alexander Nehamas seeks to demonstrate that for all of his posturing about how the Übermensch is as far removed from present-day humanity as we are from the apes,  Nietzsche strives to re-embody and idealise his own self as philosopher and artist throughout his entire body of work:
Nietzsche’s texts therefore do not describe but, in exquisitely elaborate detail, exemplify the perfect instance of his ideal character. And this character is none other than the character the very text constitutes: Nietzsche himself.

Indeed, this sentiment seems not to have been lost even on Nietzsche:

The ‘work,’ whether of the artist or of the philosopher, invents the person who has created it, who is supposed to have created it: ‘the great,’ as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction.

With this insight, we are provided yet another avenue by which to appreciate why the saint came to be abandoned from the Nietzschean canon. Nietzsche, although known as ‘the little saint’ in his devout youth, came to identify himself more as a philosopher and an artist and less and less as a saint as his life progressed. It is little wonder then, that in his philosophy he should have turned his back on his adolescent ideal. As he wrote in his ‘autobiography,’ Ecce Homo: “I do not want to be a saint, rather a buffoon. Perhaps I am a buffoon.”

3.5 Conclusion: Metaphilosophical Limitations of The Will to Power
Again, as in the case of Schopenhauer, these considerations are not aimed at refuting the validity of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Rather, they are intended to add another dimension to our appreciation of Nietzsche’s philosophy of saintliness. Indeed, one only need appreciate the supposedly all-consuming nature of The Will to Power to realise that Nietzsche could never coherently discount the role played by his own subjective psychology in the formulation of his philosophy. This then is to conclude, not that we must discount Nietzsche’s philosophy of saintliness, but rather that we must regard it in the light of his own personal self.

4. WILLIAM JAMES
My personal position is simple. I have no living sense of commerce with God. I envy those who have, for I know the addition of such a sense would help me immensely.

4.1 Non-Mystical Mysticism
In the recently published work, The Philosophy of William James: an Introduction, Richard M. Gale proposes the following two explanations as to how a self-avowed non-mystic, such as James, could be so sensitive to and appreciative of mystical experiences:  1) drawing an analogy between the fact that an inability to compose an Eroica symphony does not necessarily exclude a person from the ability to appreciate one, Gale suggests, in a move reminiscent of Schopenhauer’s sculptor analogy, that the same holds, mutatis mutandis, for James’s appreciation of mysticism; and 2) “… because [James] didn’t want to appear as some kind of a bleeding heart mystic engaged in special pleading,”  he lied about, or at least downplayed, his actual mystical sensibilities; the broad existence of which we can infer from his purposeful experimentation with conscious-altering drugs. Regardless of the validity of Gale’s explanations, I shall now offer a third alternative, which I believe to be far superior.

4.2 In Loving Memory of The Late Henry James Snr.
John J. Shea, in his work, Religious Experiencing: William James & Eugene Gendling, interprets James’s “grappling with religious feeling [as] the grapplings of a man who has both a need to understand and a genius for description.”  And yet, the question of why it was that this psychological yearning beset James has not, to my knowledge, been sufficiently addressed. Shea, it must be admitted, indirectly provides an answer, though it is only found implicitly in the guise of an account of James’s philosophical influences – the main source of which was his father.
Henry James Snr. was an immensely religious man,  and exerted a profound influence over his son, as is plainly evident from the following testimony of William James’s last, sadly unread letter to his dying father:
All my intellectual life I derive from you; and although we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I’m sure there’s a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my powers of estimating, – so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence.

To assuage any question of false sentimentality here, we can further appreciate from the following letter James wrote to his wife, the passion with which he sought to justify, via his philosophy of religion, not only religious faith, but moreover the high esteem in which he held his own father:
You must not leave me till I understand a little more of the value and meaning of religion in Father’s sense, in the mental life and destiny of man. It is not the one thing needful as he said. But it is needful with the rest. My friends leave it altogether out. I as his son (if for no other reason) must help it to its rights in their eyes. And for that reason I must learn to interpret it aright as I have never done …

In this light, I believe we can readily concur with R. B. Perry in his description of The Varieties of Religious Experience as “in the first place, an act of filial piety.”

4.3 Conclusion: A Saintly Father?
The notion that William James’s need to understand and come to terms with the religious life that he did not have, as being motivated by his deep respect and love for his religious father, goes a long way, I believe, to accounting for Gale’s question of how a non-mystical individual such as James, could have such a profound sensitivity to and appreciation of mystical states. As Perry notes:
[James’s father] was to him the most vivid instance of that religious experience which consists in “an acute despair, passing over into an equally acute optimism, through a passion of renunciation of the self and surrender to the higher power.”

Indeed, if one looks to the chapter entitled ‘Saintliness’ in The Varieties of Religious Experience, the similarity of James’s characterisation of the saint is remarkable. James lists the following four characteristics of what he deems to be the ‘universal saint’ (i.e. “the same in all religions” ): 1) a feeling of a “wider life [and] of an Ideal Power” ; 2) a friendly continuity and willing self-surrender to the ideal power; 3) a feeling of “immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining self-hood melt down” ; 4) and “a shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards ‘yes, yes’.”  These comparisons, however, are not intended to suggest that James’ characterisation of the saint was unduly extended to include his own father. Rather, it is my intention to draw a much broader conclusion.

4.4 Addendum: An Alternative to the Philosophy of Charles Taylor
By investigating the psychological life of William James, a promising avenue has been opened for better comprehending various aspects of his philosophy of religion. For instance, in Charles Taylor’s recent work, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited, James’s philosophy of religion is contextualised as belonging to a long historical movement towards an understanding of ‘God’ as sharing a personally intimate relation to the worshipper. As Taylor puts it: “[James] plainly belongs to that strand of [thought] which is ready to challenge the traditionally mediated revelation in the name of one’s inner inspiration.”  The Lateran Council of 1215 C.E., The Brethren of Common Life, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation are all counted as influential predecessors to William James’s work. This tendency is significant, Taylor explains, in so far as its influence had already permeated the beliefs of James and his audience, often to the point of atheism, leaving James little choice but to eschew any recourse to formal theology or organised, collective religion, and instead appeal to ‘the primacy of experience.’
Although Taylor is certainly correct in making such a broad contextualisation, I nevertheless feel that the more immediate psychological context espoused above is of equal, if not greater significance in explaining why it is that “James sees religion primarily as something that individuals experience.”  In writing of his Gifford lectures,  we can, I believe, confidently ascertain that James was indeed aware of the influential nature of those historical tendencies that Taylor invokes in his argument:
The problem I have set myself is a hard one: … to defend (against the prejudices of my “class”) “experience” against “philosophy” as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life.

Certainly, it is tempting to attribute the emphasis that James’s places on ‘the primacy of experience’ in his philosophy of religion as a fully conscious argumentative strategy to turn the atheist’s very own arguments against them. That is to say, that because the atheist contests the claims of religion on the grounds that 1) the philosophy/theology intended to establish such a religion is inadequate, and 2) the atheist has no personal religious experiences, James believes that if he can convince the atheist that the theist does, at the very least,  have actual ‘religious’ experiences – beneficial not only to the individual but to humanity as a whole – then he will have gone a significant way to refuting the atheist’s initial ground for their disbelief.
However, I think it is misguided to presume that James therefore resigned himself to only making the limited claims that his argumentative strategy would allow for; as if he would have liked to have more conclusively demonstrated the existence of God, but instead had to ‘make do’ with what he had. Rather, it is far more satisfying, in thinking back to the filial sentiment expressed by James in the previous sections, to understand the emphasis he placed on ‘the primacy of experience’ not as a direct result of broad historical tendencies, nor as the result of the pragmatic limitations of various argumentative strategies; William James’s philosophy of religion is best understood in terms of a reluctant atheist’s attempt to honour, justify, and respect the religious faith of those he admired most.

5. CONCLUSION
Throughout this essay, I have sought to add a further dimension to our appreciation of The Philosophy of Saintliness. By concomitantly examining the lives and philosophies of three of the ‘Great Philosophers’ of Saintliness, I have argued that we are better equipped to adequately regard and interpret their works. Essentially this is a metaphilosophical claim; i.e. that no philosophy of saintliness is complete without an adequate consideration of the psychological aspects involved. Just how a proponent who is actively engaged in the philosophy of saintliness is to take such seemingly self-reflective/psychoanalytical factors into account is, however, a matter for later consideration.

Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece offers us, what I believe, are three possible characterisations of sainthood: Alyosha Karamazov, The Elder Zosima, and the hermit.
Although Zosima has managed to shape himself into the worthy character of the monastery’s revered Elder, we soon learn that his past was rather sordid. Indeed, it seems that this still incredibly charismatic individual was unable to restrain himself from lewd behaviour in the lay-world that nearly led to the death of, if not another, at least of himself. His self-imposed exile from the outside world, seems not only to be part of the deal he struck with himself/God/the-powers-that-be given that he survived this final ordeal, but, moreover, a recognition of his inability to be self-governing. Admirably, Zosima seems to have paid his debt for his good fortune many times over; Alyosha is not the only one who fervently believes and hopes that his mentor will be officially recognised as a saint. And yet, with his passing, Dostoyevsky strikes the final blow, and the corpse begins to emit a most foul effluence.
I think, at first glance, one may be tempted to regard Dostoyevsky’s motivation this matter merely as a demonstration of the fickle and superstitious nature of all those in the township that smugly smiled at this phenomenon. Certainly, I do not refute this interpretation; Dostoyevsky, the narrator, makes such an insight quite explicit. However, Dostoyevsky, when it comes to the larger picture, I believe, has a far greater capacity for subtlety than most. It was not merely the morally-loaded reactions of the townsfolk that would have served as the impetus for Dostoyevsky’s choice in the posthumous fate of Zosima; it was the fate itself, as it spoke to the life of the man, that is primary in our interpretation of the phenomenon. With his passing, Zosima finally let go of the decay that he so admirably kept at bay since his conversion. The charity and piety that he fostered in himself during in his time in the monastery were the result of a genuine (and successful) attempt to save his soul, but they weren’t natural to his character. Indeed, even more symbolically, we may wish to say that, while his soul was finally able to leave this world untarnished owing to his virtuous endeavours, the body he left behind ultimately revealed its true naturally corrupted self.
Aloysha, on the other hand, is handsomely innocent. A joy to all, he reflexively finds joy in all. Zosima is all to happy to have him around while he is alive, in the belief that his influence has the potential to educate the somewhat naïve Alyosha, not only that life will sometimes demand that you act purposefully and conscientiously (as it did so dramatically in Zosima’s life), but that it can be successfully accomplished, and that, furthermore, it is worthwhile to do so.
Zosima’s final testament that Alyosha should leave the monastery, I believe, faithfully echoes Dostoyevsky’s own point of view: while Alyosha’s brief sojourn was fruitful for the reasons stated above, without the influence of Zosima, the monastic life most certainly had the potential to suffocate the immense potential for doing good in the world at large. Indeed, I think it fair to claim that the crazy old hermit that lived out in the forest behind the monastery was representative of Dostoyevsky’s prediction of what would become of someone as naively conscientious as Alyosha if he was to become a monk. An individual such as Zosima was himself protected by such a fate, by his true nature. But, while Alyosha’s beautiful innocence has the potential to inspire no end of good in the world at large, as a monk he would be stifled and ultimately suffocated.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF SAINTLINESS IN PHILOSOPHY: A Sermon.
Prepared as an exercise in oratorical presentation for ‘Blackwood’ 22-4.07.2005
By Ross Campbell Barham, 57399

1. Introduction
Today, I would like to share with you, a passage that I discovered just last week. It’s by a Fifteenth Century, Christian Philosopher, named Thomas á Kempis.
The chapter it is taken from, is, I believe, well suited to a forum such as this, and (more importantly) to an audience such as yourselves.

As most of you are aware, I’m currently in the process of writing a thesis on ‘Philosophical Conceptions of Saintliness.’ As most of you need to be reminded each time I speak with you regarding-such-matters,, philosophically speaking, a saint need not have any religious beliefs. Indeed, the term needn’t have any religious connotations at all! Obviously, many here might initially find this hard to fathom. ‘The saints’ seem-to-many to be so-inexorably-bound to Catholicism,, that the word’s meaning, would be lost without the institution which has so famously appropriated it. But it, is, a legitimate, philosophical concept also.
Since the genius of Arthur Schopenhauer, the concept of saintliness has also belonged to Philosophy proper..
Unfortunately, given time constraints, I cannot provide you with a complete characterisation of ‘the saint’ here – rather that is the goal of my thesis.
What I can offer you, however,, is a characterisation, adequate enough to suffice for the purposes of my talk with you today…
Saintliness belongs to anyone who heroically heeds the call of their conscience.
To repeat:
Saintliness belongs to anyone who heroically heeds the call of their conscience.

What exactly it means, to ‘heroically heed’ the call of one’s conscience, is, however, a matter of some ambiguity. Again, let it suffice for now, merely to let this phrase signify, that one acts according to their moral beliefs, without any direct, or immediate circumstantial coercion, or compulsion, and,, at a potential risk, or cost, to their own self.

Life presses each, and every one-of-us, everyday, to make decisions of a moral bearing. Most of us, find it either, challenging, or tiring enough, dealing with these direct, and immediate dilemmas.
Saintliness seeks out, and answers, obligations, that, to-the-rest-of-us, are seemingly-remote, to our everyday lives. ‘What responsibility do I have, to the thousands,, dying unnecessarily, throughout the world?’
The saint not only acknowledges the relationship,, but moreover, acts upon it.
It is true, that there exists, in this room,, no-one in dire need, to the point of expiring.
Surely, if there were,, we wouldn’t be merely sitting here,, comfortably indulging in thought experiments such as this one. We have, plenty-of-food, and water, medicine, blankets, shelter, et cetera. – we all…
would make the-care-of-this-unfortunate-individual our highest priority.
But, of course, the person is not in this room.
But it is not exactly correct to say, that they only exist in abstraction either.
Each of us know, that there are people, who are in dire need of assistance.
They’re not in this room, granted. But they are in this world.
They are in our lives.
Saintliness, acknowledges this and acts upon it.

Perhaps those saints do not always succeed … it is arguable that the number and nature of the needy is practically inexhaustible.
But the saint acts nonetheless. And in doing so, they can inspire others to do the same.

Certainly, this elucidation may be thought to raise even more difficulties than the original definition did,, but I think that the essential-meaning, when I say that a saint, ‘heroically heeds the call of their conscience’,, should nevertheless, be clear enough for our present purposes …

But what exactly are, our purposes?
Well,, as I mentioned before this digression, I want to read to you, a passage, by a Christian Philosopher.
Like most early Philosophers of Saintliness,. Thomas á Kempis’s philosophy, is deeply embedded in the context of his religious beliefs.
He makes repeated references, recourses and invocations, to God,, to Jesus, The Saints,, Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

Religion mentioned in a Philosophical context, too often is disregarded outright. The atheist thinks to himself,, ‘I-don’t believe in God,, so what is being said does not apply to me.’

I know this to be the case, because,, before taking on this topic, I myself, thought this way. But I-have-learnt. I have had, to learn,, to read between the lines as it were. To rise above! my prejudices,, and try my utmost, to appreciate-the-sentiment … the sentiment expressed, by those religious writers.
I,, have had to do this,, in order to make useful, the vast majority of the literature, regarding all things Saintly.
I ask of you,, who are antithetical, to religious language,, in listening to the following quote,, that you hold your prejudices in check,,
and take in, as best you-can,, the wisdom proffered by Thomas a Kepis, to people such as ourselves. Translate ‘God’ as referring to the absolute, if-you-must. Take ‘The Day of Judgement’, merely to mean, the day that you die.
Furthermore,, those of you who do believe in a God … don’t let your beliefs lead you astray … just because you acknowledge a divine being, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are God’s favour.

I quote:

2. ‘On the Teaching of Truth’ by Thomas á Kempis
“All perfection, in this life, is accompanied,, by a measure of imperfection,
and all our knowledge,, contains an element of obscurity.

A humble knowledge of oneself, is a surer road to God, than a deep, searching of the sciences.

Yet-learning-itself is not to be blamed,
nor is the simple knowledge, of anything whatsoever to be despised,
for true learning, is good in itself […]; but a good conscience, and a [virtuous] life, are always to be preferred.
[However,] because many are more eager to acquire much learning, than to live well,, they often go astray,, and bear little or no fruit.
If-only such people were as diligent, in the uprooting of vices, and the planting of virtues,, as they are in the debating of problems, there would not be, so-many-evils-and-scandals among the people, nor such laxity in [the] communities.
At the Day of Judgement, we,, shall not be asked what we have read, but-what-we-have-done; not how eloquently we have spoken, but-how-[virtuously]-we-have-lived.
Tell me,, where are now, all-those Masters, and Doctors, whom you knew-so-well in their lifetime,, in the full, flower of their learning?
Other-men, now sit-in-their-seats, and-they are-hardly-ever-called-to-mind.
In their lifetime, they seemed of great account,, but no one speaks of them now.”

3. Motivations

Philosophy is a potentially dangerous occupation. If one thinks deeply, and seriously-enough, on any particular subject, it is impossible to walk away unaltered. This (as you can probably already tell) is particularly true of the concept of saintliness.
The university administration may broadly refer to what it is that we philosophers do, merely-as-research, but when you find yourself, reading book-after-book extolling the saint as the highest ideal of humanity, it is hard, not to feel personally belittled, and personally challenged.
This is, for-the-most-part, an unfamiliar sensation in philosophy. Typically philosophy is self-praising. From The Ancient Greeks onwards, it has been claimed that it is the Philosopher who shall: regain his wings (Socrates), be the most suited to rule (Plato), live the best life (Aristotle); be consoled (Boethius); know god (Spinoza); manifest the will to power (Nietzsche); and so on. Even those, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, who claimed to regard philosophy as a kind of illness, were not content to merely take up gardening (as Nietzsche attempted) or elementary teaching (like Wittgenstein tried to do). Rather, they somewhat inconsistently, sought to fight fire with fire in attempting to find the ‘cure’ with even more philosophising.
If one takes a step back, and regards the matter metaphilosophically, this tendency should come as little surprise. In the History of Philosophy, one of the philosopher’s principal-tasks, has been to make evaluative arguments regarding all that he or she thinks, they know something about; be it Science, Religion, Reason, Ethics, Mathematics, or Human Nature generally. It is no wonder then, that metphilosophical evaluations commonly arise in philosophical thinking; who better to evaluate Philosophy than the philosopher?  And again, that individuals who have devoted their lives to philosophy should not betray the supposed worth of their vocation, ought to be regarded as only natural. Even those, such was the case with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who deride academics and/or the ‘present state of philosophy,’ are, in doing so, implicitly lauding their own philosophy.
But this is no new insight; Friedrich Nietzsche said as much when he explicated his ‘will to power’ while at the same time implicitly characterising the Overman as an artistic philosopher.
What hasn’t,, to my knowledge, been explored,, is the impact, that these tendencies might have, on the philosopher’s evaluation,, of non-philosophical vocations or human types. Nor shall I attempt to do so here; sufficed to say, that the philosopher’s, typical condemnation, of the saint throughout history,, may have more to do, with each, individual philosopher’s, own, personal psychology, than it does, with any objective sense,, of rationality, morality, political beliefs, etc.
What I should rather do, is to very briefly examine my own conscience in response to these thoughts.

4. Personal Consequences
I am no saint. I have committed myself, to far too many particulars,, to be, as universally free, as generous, and as courageous as a true saint need be. Although this, is undoubtedly the case,, and-I-must remain faithful, to those who I have promised myself,, I am not, thereby, morally permitted to further indulge myself,, and wallow in selfhood. The imitation of saintliness, should not be, dependent, on the likelihood of personal success. I,, like all others, am capable of saintliness in my own right; one only need, to honestly heed, to call of one’s conscience in order to attain saintliness.
So, for example, in determining what focus, shall be given to my next thesis,, I shall try to avoid, any consideration, of the likelihood: 1) of a particular topic being more likely to be published; 2) of obtaining a subsequent academic position, 3) of being in vogue; and so on. In keeping, with my conception of saintliness,, I shall have to heed the call of my conscience, and write what I think has the most potential, to be beneficial to the world at large.
For those that may be curious, to date, this has taken form, in the topics:- Philosophical Conceptions of Charity or Philosophical Conceptions of Propaganda.

5. General Metaphilosophical Consequences
I stand here before you today, not to berate you … I know not, of what your conscience speaks to you, in the quiet hours.
Nor, am I so presumptuous, as to assume, that I have any real notion of the desired effects that your philosophical efforts should amount to.
What I do know, however, is that the events of the world, speak directly to me …

It is easy to think that we can turn off our TV’s, stop reading the papers and listening to the news, and carry on our lives as if our responsibilities extend no further than the people we directly interact with.
But this remedy, is a bit too much like an obstinate man,, who, though suffering greatly from his prostate,, refuses, for one reason or another, to go to the doctor; instead hoping that the symptoms will eventually vanish of their own accord … and that cancer will not consume him.
As terrible and frightening as the events of the world can be,, they are of this! world, and are, of this time! And fortunately or not, we all happen to be alive here and now … and for one reason or another, we have the ability to write better than most, to speak better than most, to analyse, interpret and argue better than most …

‘But I’m a logician,’ some will think to themselves.
‘Well, my work is concerned with the Philosophy of Mind,’ thinks another, and so on,, and so on.
Well, what of it?
As Kempis wrote: Learning in itself is not bad.
Davidson, Heidegger, Aristotle, and so on,, Logic, Metaphysics, Aesthetics, and Meta-ethics, are all areas worthy of intellectual pursuit.
But our lives are not purely intellectual … or, again, as Kempis pointed out, it is unfortunate if they are. We all have moral responsibilities and any meaningful sense of ‘The Truth’ will surely elude us if we neglect this fact. To what extent you may choose to heed the call of morality, however, is for you alone to decide.
I raise these points only because I think that they are worthy of our ongoing contemplation, and, while they may very well feature in our own private deliberations, they are not, to my knowledge, openly discussed, or even admitted to amongst our peers … and I think that they should be.

Thank you.

SALVATION FOR SALE: an overly limited account of consumerism in the history of Christianity.

What is this new pity of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul’s need, free it for pure love’s sake?
- Dr. Martin Luther from Project Wittenburg

When Jesus of Nazareth arrived in Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, the synagogue there represented one of the major spiritual centres of the Jewish religion. As it was nearing Passover (or what Christians would come to call Easter), pilgrims from all around had already begun to congregate in unprecedented numbers. The temple priests, seeing that the sacrificial alters would otherwise be over-capacitated, had devised an ingenious strategy for limiting the numbers of devoted: monetary oblations could only be made in temple coinage. Entrepreneurial money-changers immediately set up their stalls outside of the synagogue to make a profit. It was as if the faithful had to buy tickets just to give them away (much in the same way Disney®Money works). The poor, including Jesus, were outraged. So it was that he went into the temple and famously overthrew the moneychangers’ tables, saying: “It is written, [God’s] house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.”

Undoubtedly there would have been numerous other protests at the uncharitable instigation of the temple priests. However, it’s unlikely that any were simultaneously claiming to be the Messiah (not that it was an infrequent ground for crucifixion at the time), and even more unlikely that they would have a backing of twelve others, attesting to a recent resurrection of the dead (i.e. Lazarus). This, the temple priests could not abide. Jesus of Nazareth would be made an example of … though not as they had intended.

Jesus of Nazareth’s death struck a chord with many; here was a champion for the underdog – a situation that the majority of us will find ourselves in sometime during our lives, but, moreover, a situation that often finds one in need of spiritual support. This was certainly the case for the much persecuted early Christians of antiquity, as  a great many were martyred for their beliefs. For those that remained, the all-too-real possibility that they could soon be facing similar circumstances worked to transform natural mourning into ‘super’natural veneration. In the case of martyrs, the longstanding tradition of annually commemorating the deceased now served a twofold purpose of fortifying one’s resolve to meet such an end with equal dignity. It is little wonder then, that Christianity’s first saints took the form of martyrs.
Recent contemporary Psychology and Parapsychology has much to say about the power of belief, the effects of mass hysteria, and the like. But it is not for here to delve into such matters, any further than to say that before long, the newly formed cults of saints had every remarkable occurrence (both good and bad) being attributed to the miraculous intercessory powers of the venerated dead.
Pilgrims, once again, travelled far and wide to visit the shrines of the saints. This ancient form of tourism, which is still much in vogue today, greatly bolstered the reputations and economies of what would have otherwise remained utterly obscure villages. People’s entrepreneurial sense again kicked in and, before you could say ‘boo!’ a thriving relic trade was established. The corpse of a saint represented the spiritual centre of a church or monastery; and if your community didn’t yet have its own patron, at least you could buy a foreign saint’s personal items, such as a bible, an item of clothing, or, if you were really lucky, a finger or another appendage.

Martin Luther grew up in such an atmosphere and, for a time, happily participated in it. Eventually, however, he came to be entirely cynical about the practise. As Richard Kieckhefer explains:

In 1520 [Martin Luther] wrote an anonymous pamphlet parodying a relic collection of archbishop of Mainz; he listed as items in this collection “a fine piece of the left horn of Moses, three flames from the bush of Moses on Mount Sinai, two feathers and an egg from the Holy Ghost, an entire corner of the banner with which Christ rose from Hell,” and so forth. The pamphlet reads like a heavy-handed parody until one turns to the archbishop’s own official catalogue and finds listed there such treasures as a clod of earth from the place where Christ gave the Lord’s Prayer, a small piece of a cloak that Mary made for Jesus (and which had the marvellous power to grow as he did), two vats from Cana, one of Judas’s silver pieces, and remains of manna from the desert.

But relic trading was the least of Luther’s criticisms. Catholic theology postulated that the saints had accumulated a store of divine merit by virtue of their supererogatory (i.e. beyond the call of duty) actions, the benefits of which could be purchased by monetary ‘donations’ made to the church. It was essentially salvation for sale. Nailed to the church door, Luther’s famous 95 Theses condemned this practise, arguing that the saints cannot intercede on behalf of individuals (especially not for cash money); salvation is fundamentally a matter of personal merit. As Luther’s 28th thesis puts it:

It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church [and its saints] is in the power of God alone.

In the sixties, the famous French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, claimed that “the phenomenon of saintliness appears chiefly in societies of consumers.” This is because the future of consumerism rests in the perpetuation of discontent (‘Come on, George. Tatts me outta here!’®), making the following appear possible:-

a Nay carried to the extreme is necessarily transformed into a Yea. Extreme poverty is wealth, refusal is acceptance, the absence of God is the dazzling manifestation of his presence, to live is to die, to die is to live, etc.

Consumers, although unable to break free of their ideological spell, nevertheless sense that lasting contentment is not part of the deal they’ve bought into. The saint, it seems, by renouncing worldly pleasures, is able to attain what we might imagine is absolute spiritual contentment. Yet, saintliness essentially relies on novelty value; if everyone were saintly, surely it would lose all meaning. For instance, the ascetic’s claims of self-denial would be ridiculous if everyone was already starving in poverty.

Yet I believe that people are no longer so easily ‘duped’ by this doublethink sentiment. Today’s consumer believes that the saint struggles to not have, just as much as he or she works to have … and in the end (assuming that we’re not buying in to the whole life-after-death judgement scenario), what’s the real difference: a posthumous shrine or an SUV you can show off to your friends? But as Susan Sontag said of Simone Weil:

Some lives are exemplary, others not; and of exemplary lives, there are those which invite us to imitate them, and those which we regard from a distance with a mixture of revulsion, pity, and reverence. It is roughly the difference between a hero and a saint… No one who loves life would wish to imitate [Weil’s] dedication to martyrdom, or would wish it for his children or for anyone else whom he loves. Yet so far as we love seriousness, as well as life, we are moved by it, nourished by it.

With regard to religion, each individual’s soul is at stake. The faithful, by association, have a vested personal interest in the religion. As a great many works of literature have emphasised, religion allows the small-minded bigot to self-righteously identify themselves with the saints, without necessarily taking stock of their own lives. In this light, the saintly missionary to distant, unknown lands is praised, not so much for the benefits they may bring for the foreigners, but the greater glory of God.

In contrast, Capitalism’s promotion of personal discontent, at least according to the ads, can only be overcome by personal material purchases. We ourselves are not (actively) concerned with charitable action, except in principle, and even then only as a passing fancy. Our primary business is the promotion of the self. The causes or institutions that moral saints have self-sacrificed themselves for, provide us with little personal enjoyment. Instead,  their supererogatory acts – unless they contribute to a particular institution of which we are actively a part of – may actually cause us displeasure and guilt for our neglect of a universal institution which each of us are inexorably a part of: Humanity. In this sense, condemnations of the moral saint might be seen as a psychological defence of a consumerist way of life, a conceptual shutting off from the (potentially) full burden of selfless charity.

As stands presently, the true moral saint has still yet to come into existence. Humankind is yet to reach the stage where empathy with all (human) life is central to our identity. All of the World Religions, in one way or another, have their saints. Humanity as a whole now, more than ever, needs theirs.

Ross Barham, 04.2005

4. A Philosophical Conception of Saintliness

4.1 Introduction
Over the past three parts of this thesis, I have exposited and critically engaged with a number of various philosophical conceptions of saintliness. The crucial lesson to be derived from this endeavour is that, historically speaking, saintliness has been a dynamic, culturally dependent, and often problematic notion. Unfortunately, the way in which many philosophers continue to invoke the concept of saintliness as performing significant work in their philosophies, suggests that they are either unaware or neglectful of this fact. That is to say that their implicit conception of saintliness in general, is suggested to be a fixed, universally understood, and uncontentious matter. This thesis, so far, has indirectly sought to demonstrate that such an assumption is misguided. In this fourth and final part, however, I shall attempt to explicate a philosophically acceptable conception of saintliness: a characterisation that is metaphilosophically rigorous, while, at the same time, remaining true to the intrinsically dynamic and culturally dependent nature of the concept.
With this in mind, the body of Part Four (#4.2-6) of this thesis will concern itself primarily with the explication of such a conception of saintliness. The concluding section (#4.7), then, will bring this investigation to a close by applying each of the metaphilosophical parameters established throughout the thesis, one after the other, in order to test its philosophical adequacy.

4.2 Preliminary Definition
Saintliness seemingly has dual aspects. On the one hand, it functions pragmatically as a term of commendation. On the other, it is suggestive of an essential character, which it is assumed that the praiser must thereby recognise in order to employ the term meaningfully.
Regardless of whether or not the latter sentiment is true in and of itself, in accordance with the metaphilosophical parameters defining this thesis, such a notion can only be approached in light of the former, pragmatic aspect. This is to say, that while saintliness may or may not have an essential nature, the following conception is only able to characterise it according to its pragmatic usage. The full consequences of this, however, will only become apparent towards the close of this investigation. Until then, for coherence sake, I shall have to seemingly tread the line between the two aspects.

With the above in mind, I now offer the following preliminary characterisation of saintliness:
Pragmatically, a saint is an individual to whom an exceptional devotion to The Good has been attributed.
Or, more contentiously, one may be tempted to say:
Essentially, saintliness is an exceptional devotion to The Good.

4.3 Semiotics
The term ‘saint’ is pragmatically one of commendation. In Section #3.2, I argued in opposition to Susan Wolf’s usage, that saintliness, when properly conceived, has intrinsically positive connotations. To label an individual ‘a saint’ is to hold them in the highest esteem morally.
The term, ‘saint’ functions pragmatically in a similar way to the term, ‘fiend’ (though obviously with contrary valuations). Just as one would be philosophically unjustified to hold that (metaphysically) absolute Fiends exist, so too would it be misguided to suppose that absolute Saints exist (See MPs#1&6).
This conception stands in direct contrast to the manner in which the same term is applied by ecclesiastical institutions, such as the Roman Catholic Church (See MP#3). For these institutions, the term carries with it a sense of absoluteness and a plethora of other metaphysical commitments that must be excluded from the following characterisation, in accordance with MPs#1&2.

Just as there are fiendish actions, so too are there saintly ones. Any one essentially saintly act, however, may or may not pragmatically warrant the term being applied to the agent. This is to suggest that there is no distinctive point at which one pragmatically ‘becomes’ a saint. Saintliness is not a phenomenon that can be located by any particular number or degree of saintly deeds (including any supposedly thaumaturgical ones ). This, however, is not to say that either the quality or the quantity of an individual’s supposed devotion to The Good is inconsequential; as was stipulated in the above preliminary characterisation, one’s devotion to The Good must be exceptional for it to be deemed saintly.

4.4 Semantics (‘Exceptional Devotion’ )
With respect to the quality of devotion, while an act may have a vastly and/or profoundly positive effect on or towards The Good, if it does not reveal/suggest a degree of devotion that is relatively pure and unadulterated, then it will not be deemed saintly. That is to say, if it is believed that a person’s actions are motivated by considerations other than The Good (such as self-interest, bigotry, etc.), then they will not be regarded as saintly.
With respect to the quantity (which I use only colloquially), an act that reveals/suggests an exceptional devotion to The Good only in so far as it is of a pure quality, but does not produce a remarkably recognisable effect on or towards The Good, will have a diminished potential for the term to be applied to the agent.
Here we strike upon the significance of the dual aspects of saintliness:
In the case of the quality of devotion to The Good, it is tempting to say that ulterior motives are antithetical to the supposed ‘essence’ of saintliness. In the case of quantity, on the other hand, it is tempting to say that when an act of pure devotion to The Good goes unrecognised, while it will pragmatically diminish its potential to be recognised as saintly, it does not seem to detract from the essential saintliness of the act. Indeed, Iris Murdoch holds a similar view of saintliness, as is apparent from the following passage:
There are innumerable unknown saints and martyrs, such as the dissident who is shot down crying out the truth, or perishes incognito in prison.

In order to see the matter aright, and so decide to what extent an act may be thought of as essentially saintly (without at the same time being pragmatically recognised as such), I must move on to consider what exactly is meant by ‘The Good’ to which the saint is exceptionally devoted.

4.5 Semantics continued (‘The Good’)
In the context of this thesis, ‘The Good’ is intended to function as an umbrella concept, able to encompass any number of diverse instantiations of moral ideals. No attendant Platonistic metaphysics are invoked by this admittedly borrowed usage. Rather, ‘The Good’ is simply intended to indicate any moral ideal, regardless of whether it is thought to be culturally dependent or otherwise.
For example, the following list elucidates many of the various, though by no means mutually exclusive saintly personifications that have emerged throughout the history of Christianity:
The Martyred-Saint. When one recalls that Christianity’s first saints were martyred for their fledgling religion, it can be said that, for both them and their followers, The Good was revealed/suggested to be the spirit of Christianity itself: – Imitatio Christi.
The Desert-Saint. Later, when the Christians came to be less persecuted, their sense of saintly practice changed accordingly, so that asceticism and solitude were thought to be characteristic of saintliness. Here, The Good was revealed/suggested to be the renunciation of worldly goods.
The Priestly-Saint. As the phenomenon of saint veneration grew in popularity, the associated appropriation by local churches of particular saints, the subsequent pilgrimages, and a thriving relic trade saw the keepers of these holy sites become themselves recognised as saints. I shall roughly characterise The Good that these priest-saints reveal/suggest as the service to god/religion.
The Scholarly-Saint. Individuals, such as St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, who devoted themselves so wholeheartedly to theological scholarship and the defence of their beliefs suggest that, similar to the priestly-saint, The Good is revealed/suggested as the service to god/religion, although it was expressed by them in a different way.
The Mystic-Saint. It is true of most religions, including the Christian, that individuals who have appeared to have contact with or knowledge of God/The Divine have always had a heightened potential to be regarded as saints. Here, one might suppose that it is holiness that is revealed/suggested to constitute The Good.
The Charitable-Saint. Again, most conceptions of saintliness hold charitable actions to be core to a proper instantiation of the phenomenon. In this case, one could characterise saintliness as exceptional altruism, where The Good is revealed/suggested to be “an unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others”.

Here, I would like to suggest that, at least in the context of this thesis, ‘the welfare of others’ can be seen as that which underpins our understanding of The Good in the present day. Thinking back to the contemporary philosophers of saintliness, such as Urmson and Wolf, the ethical emphasis of their conceptions of saintliness accords well with such a stance. That is to say, their conception of saintliness as essentially consisting of ‘an unselfish devotion to the welfare of others’ is congruent with my own characterisation when it is coupled with the further argument that it is ‘the welfare of others’ that constitutes our contemporary understanding of The Good.
Why it is that this lattermost, moral form is commonly thought to best characterise saintliness in this, the Contemporary Era, is a matter of some subtlety. However, I suspect that the primary causes can be best explained by the following two factors:
- The view that morality is not dependent upon religious faith or indoctrination is now widely taken for granted, especially in Philosophical circles. This secularisation of morals is certainly related to the increased respectability of religious pluralism. Furthermore, such beliefs seem vitally related to the success of any tolerant, multicultural society. This shift away from the particulars of various religious doctrines, towards the core of morality as being ‘the welfare of (undifferentiated) others’, accords well with The Contemporary Era’s partiality for the charitable-saint.
- That ‘the welfare of others’ has come to constitute The Good, according to this thesis, seems only natural. As essentially social and anthropocentric beings, it is little wonder that our universally shared, highest moral sense should take the form of ‘the welfare of (undifferentiated) others.’

Even so, this is not necessarily to conclude that the evolution of saintliness must cease at this point. Hypothetically, it is at least possible that other forms of The Good will be suggested/revealed. Indeed, there already exist a number of anecdotes revolving around certain individuals that, with only the minimum of imagination, readily accommodate the type of exceptional devotion required of saintliness. Take, for example, the following account of how Quantum Physics’ Chaos Theory came to take a giant leap forward with the discovery of the possibly ‘transcendental’, Feigenbaum Constant (δ = 4.66920160910299067185320382…):
In the spring of 1976 [Mitchell Feigenbaum] entered a mode of existence more intense than any he had lived through. He would concentrate as if in a trance, programming furiously, scribbling with his pencil, programming again. He could not call C Division for help, because that would mean signing off the computer to use the telephone, and reconnection was chancy. He could not stop for more than five minutes thought, because the computer would automatically disconnect his line. Every so often the computer would go down anyway, leaving him shaking with adrenaline. He worked for two months without pause. His functional day was twenty-two hours, He would try to go to sleep in a kind of buzz, and awaken two hours later with his thoughts exactly where he had left them. His diet was strictly coffee. (Even when healthy and at peace, Feigenbaum subsisted exclusively on the reddest possible meat, coffee, and red wine. His friends speculated that he must be getting his vitamins from cigarettes.)
In the end, a doctor called it off. He prescribed a modest regimen of Valium and an enforced vacation. But by then Feigenbaum had created a universal theory.

Although Mitchell Feigenbaum is already considered something of a genius, it doesn’t require too much imagination to realise that if scientific/mathematical knowledge were one-day to be considered The Good (say, in the context of a global environmental crisis), scientists like Mitchell Feigenbaum might well come to be considered saints in their own right. Indeed, when one compares the above description with that the self-mortification of the German mystic, The Blessed Henry Suso, the similarities are striking:
As was quoted by William James in his chapter entitled, ‘Saintliness’, Suso wore a hair shirt, to which he added a vest made of leather straps covered with inward-pointing nails. He tied himself to his bed of hard wood, and wore gloves covered with tacks so that any attempt to tend to his numerous wounds would have the opposite effect, which he willingly did anyway.
He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen years. At the end of this time, when his blood was now chilled, and the fire of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to him in a vision on Whitsunday, a messenger from heaven, who told him that God required this of him no longer. Whereupon he discontinued it, and threw all these things away into a running stream.

The similarities between the two cases are felt to require no further elaboration here. The apparent differences, on the other hand, can, I believe, be readily accounted for simply by a divergence in what each took to be The Good: for Feigenbaum, The Good was found in Science and/or Knowledge; for Suso, it was in the purification of his Soul and the concomitant atonement with God.

Indeed, the idea that instantiations of The Good might again change and so produce new manifestation of saintliness (such as the scientist-saint), seems even more plausible when reading the following story that Raimond Gaita recounts in his biographical work, Romulus, My Father:
Ignac Semmelweis … tried to prove to his arrogantly dismissive peers that they were the cause of rampant childbed fever in maternity wards because they routinely went to their patients after dissecting cadavers without first washing their hands. To prove his theory, Semmelweis deliberately infected himself on a cadaver. He caught the fever, became insane, and jumped to his death from a bridge over the Danube.

While there are numerous hagiographical accounts that bear parallels to the above story, for reasons of brevity, I offer only the following one:
[In 19th Century Korea,] Christianity was forbidden, and for two years [French missionaries] worked in complete secrecy, rising at 2.30 a.m. and ministering at unusual times in conditions of extreme poverty. The growing numbers of Christians (estimated at 9,000) could not for ever remain hidden. Violent persecution followed and the three French priests allowed themselves to be taken, to avert massacre and apostasy. They were beheaded at Seoul on 21 September 1839.

Here, one may want to object that the events leading to the death of Semmelweis are more likely to appear saintly than the extreme devotion exhibited by Feigenbaum, because of the part that a concern for the welfare of others presumably played in Semmelweis’ self-sacrifice. Although I concede this point, I think that the case of Semmelweis can still be seen as suggestive of a hypothetical possibility for an original conception of The Good, such as Medicine. There already exist a number of both canonised and secular doctor-saints (eg. St Cosmas & St Damian, and Sir William Osler ). These saintly physicians, however, used their medical know-how as a means for the charitable care for the welfare of others. In the case of Semmelweis, it is as if the medical know-how itself assumed the form of The Good. As the account says, it was ‘to prove his theory’ that he risked and ultimately sacrificed his life.
Furthermore, one must remember here that the ideals that any one particular saint may be seen to manifest, need not be mutually exclusive. For instance, St Augustine’s primary embodiment of scholarly-saintliness might also be conceived of as compatible with charitable-saintliness. Similarly, in the hypothetical scenario where advances in Medicine are imperative to the ongoing survival or happiness of humankind, medical-research scientists might conceivably be seen to embody saintliness.
Indeed, we can espy a similar scenario in the case of war heroes:
Historically, in times of war, individuals who demonstrate exceptional valour can come to be venerated as heroes in a way not dissimilar to saints. Here, I would like to argue that these hero-saints manifest the severely context-dependent ideal of Victory as The Good. This ideal is not necessarily mutually excluded from other ideals; for instance, the lay-soldier who venerates the ideal of the hero-saint may do so as she believes it to be in the best interest of the welfare of others. However, I believe that it is because of Victory’s heavy context dependence that war-heroes are not considered saints generally. This is to say, The Good that the hero-saint manifests, occurs only in exceptional circumstances that restrict the scope of ‘the welfare of (undifferentiated) others’, in spite of enemy-others.
The same can certainly be said of any number of hypothetical saintly-types, such as the scientist-saint, the doctor-saint, the artist-saint, the philosopher-saint, etc. According to the heavily context dependent circumstances from which they arise, such exemplars are more appropriately termed geniuses, prodigies, visionaries, altruists, and the like. As I have made clear, it would only be if their specific practices were regarded as embodying or essential to The Good, that their proponents might come to be venerated as saints generally.

4.6 Pragmatically Suggestive Saintliness
From the above, while it seems acceptable to roughly characterise saintliness as an exceptional devotion to The Good, further questions concerning ‘The Good’ remain to be addressed.
Taking the issue back to the form that it took at the close of Section #4.4, I can now (re)state more meaningfully that, while saintliness may or may not have an essential nature, within the confines of the metaphilosophical parameters defining this thesis, pragmatically one remains reliant upon a ‘third party’ to recognise a saintly act/individual as such. This is to imply that The Good is pragmatically a normative notion. Such an implication, however, is not to suggest in any way that The Good is essentially normative; in accordance with MP#6, one simply has no way of knowing the metaethical (and perhaps even metaphysical) nature essential to The Good. What is certain, however, is that pragmatically, The Good is revealed/suggested by how and why those who are venerated as saints have devoted themselves exceptionally.

Whether the above presents a Euthyphro-type problem is not a concern for the present undertaking; the present pragmatic constraints exclude the possibility of answering questions such as ‘does The Good define the saint, or does the saint define The Good?’ As the reader may have noticed, throughout this fourth and final part, I have consistently employed the coupled verbs, ‘suggest/reveal’ when speaking of saintliness. As should now be apparent, while I cannot discount the possibility that saintliness is revelatory of The Good, I can only acceptably maintain that it is pragmatically suggestive of it. So, for instance, while the purity of an individual’s devotion may or may not be essentially saintly (that is, absolutely pure and unadulterated), its potential to be deemed saintly is pragmatically dependant upon the suggested degree of devotion alone.
This position has the additional advantage of being able to accommodate Egoists who deny the possibility of altruism. According to this thesis, the question of whether or not truly altruistic acts are essentially possible is an untenable one. What matters here is that the character of the charitable-saint, at least, is suggestive of altruism. If this means that the unconvinced cynic’s world will contain no saints of this sort, then, so be it – it is their loss.

As to the question of whether or not this conception might allow (in the distant future) The Good to be thought of as what may presently seem to us to be moral vice, such as greed, I must concede that this is indeed so. Certainly my intuitions are opposed to such a possibility. However, without the support of an uncontentious metaethical foundation, a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness must be able to accommodate at least the possibility of moral relativism.
Note, however, that an ‘evil-saint’ nonetheless remains impermissible by this account; The Good is defined exclusively in terms of positive moral ideals. All that the above concedes, is that, for the time being, our understanding of what (essentially) constitutes The Good remains pragmatically limited to how those who are venerated as saints are believed to embody it. If in the future, the world came to praise what we now consider vice, then, without the support of an established metaethical foundation, those who are venerated as saints would indeed be the epitome of what we now would consider evil … but they would still be regarded as suggesting an exceptional devotion to The Good for those who believed them to be saints.

4.7 Conclusions (MP Compliance)
The intention of this thesis was to explicate a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness. I have sought to accomplish this by critically engaging with the genealogy of the Philosophy of Saintliness, thereby establishing a number of metaphilosophical parameters. The former task has enabled a heightened appreciation of the various philosophical conceptions of saintliness, from which, I have explicated my own characterisation. The latter task will subsequently enable the following assessment of the degree to which my conception of saintliness is philosophically adequate. Such is the present and final undertaking.

MP#1. The conception of saintliness explicated herein is philosophically adequate in so far as it is not dependent upon any metaphysically contentious commitments. It is not essential to my conception of saintliness that there exist such supernaturalistic metaphysical ‘things’ as are commonly associated with the conception (eg. a god, an afterlife such as Heaven, or the Resurrection, miracles, intercession, etc.).
Furthermore, the question of whether or not a person could be so exceptional as to warrant the term saint being bestowed upon them without belief in God was left undecided. However, although interesting, such a potential dilemma can now be seen to be superfluous to the characterisation given here, for, whether or not a saint has supernaturalist commitments, the conception advanced herein is able to accommodate either possibility.

MP#2. The conception of saintliness explicated herein is philosophically adequate in so far as it is not dependent upon Theological authority. Although the profound influence that religions (especially the Christian) have had on the notion of saintliness generally cannot and was not passed over in silence (See Part #1), the final characterisation was made independently of any such theological sources (eg. Scriptures or Divine Revelation).

MP#3. The conception of saintliness explicated herein is philosophically adequate in so far as it is not dependent upon any philosophically unjustified authority, such as ecclesiastical doctrine. Admittedly, recourse was made to both canonised individuals and the historical development of canonisation in general, and so in accordance with MP #3.1, must be explicitly justified:
In the former case, such recourse was (i) made explicit and distinct from the conception being advanced herein (See, for instance, Footnote #138), or (ii), while being complimentary of the conception being advanced herein, was not, however, fundamental to it (See, for instance, Footnote #192).
In the latter case (See Section #4.5), it was made clear that the variety of saintly-types to emerge throughout the history of Christianity is to be understood as pragmatically normative. That is to say that the saintly-types canonised were seen to be suggestive of cultural notions of The Good throughout the ages (N.B. the existence of a living cult extending over generations is essential to the process of canonisation). In this light, it may be said that canonised saints are saintly in so far as they are venerated as such, and not because of the word of any philosophically unjustified, ecclesiastical authority.

MP#4. The conception of saintliness explicated herein is philosophically adequate in so far as it appears to be pragmatically compatible with the majority of both implicit and explicit pre-existing conceptions of saintliness. Furthermore, while no task-dedicated empirical evidence was given/undertaken, the possibility of mounting such a defence remains open.

MP#5. The conception of saintliness explicated herein is philosophically adequate in so far as it has been especially prudent when making recourse to any form of hagiography. On the one hand, my conception of saintliness is able to accommodate the cynic who may disbelieve, among other things, in the possibility of exceptional devotion. On the other hand, the optimistic essentialist, although not vindicated by my conception, is not excluded either. This means that no ethical or metaphysical absolutes whatsoever are either demanded of or precluded from the conception of saintliness advanced herein.

MP#6. The conception of saintliness explicated herein is philosophically adequate in so far as it assumes no philosophically contentious metaethical foundation. Indeed, while the restricted characterisation of pragmatic saintliness was, as a result, shown to be normative, the question of the very existence of essential saintliness was deemed to be outside of the scope of the present investigation.
Such a position is thought to be able to encompass any one of the many and varied possible metaethical foundations held by philosophers worldwide and throughout history (eg. Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Virtue Ethics, etc.). Of significance to the characterisation of saintliness given here, is only that an individual be venerated in so far as their acts or life suggest an exceptional devotion to The Good. As has already been stated and restated, The Good will be suggested by whatever moral ideal the saint is exceptionally devoted to.
That this definition is somewhat circular is simply the result of the pragmatic constraints placed upon this conception. The circle waits to be broken (‘at one end or the other’) by the work of metaethicists who can provide Ethics with a philosophically justified foundation. Until such time, may we allow the (metaphorical) circularity of this conception to rest patiently above our saints as a halo.

Ross Barham, 2006

3. Contemporary, Ethical Conceptions

As will become evident in this third part, Contemporary philosophical conceptions of saintliness are characterised by their essentially ethical focus. As the first philosopher to be considered in this part of the genealogy put it: “we sometimes call a person a saint, or an action saintly, using the word ‘saintly’ in a purely moral sense with no religious implications.” Indeed, since J. O. Urmson wrote these words, it seems that the once occasional, philosophical usage has now become the norm. Certainly, there are those who do, quite legitimately, employ the terminology of saintliness as having religious connotations. However, such instances shall be overlooked herein for the following reasons:
1) The metaphilosophical reasons established in Part 1 of this thesis limits the utility of religiously based notions in explicating a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness; and
2) Contemporary philosophical works that employ saintly terminology of a religious bearing, I believe, constitute only a minority of the strictly Philosophical literature on saintliness; and
3) Contemporary philosophical works that employ saintly terminology of a religious bearing, I believe, have yet to revolutionise either philosophical conceptions of saintliness or Philosophy at large.

Let it also be noted that, as all the philosophers belonging to this third part of the thesis are, to the best of my knowledge, still living, I have therefore refrained from my earlier convention of providing the dates of each philosopher. Furthermore, I shall henceforth abandon the previous convention of addressing each philosophy according to the chronology of the philosophers’ lives. Instead, the order will be determined by the chronology of the philosophy itself, which will be indicated in each case.

3.1 Urmson and Supererogation

J. O. Urmson’s seminal article, ‘Saints and Heroes’ was published in 1958. Prior to this, the notion of supererogation had long been neglected in mainstream Ethics. Historically, however, it had been pivotal to many Theological debates. For instance (and as one may recall from the earlier section on Martin Luther (#1.4)), while the Roman Catholic Church held that the saints had, in their lifetimes, acquired a surplus of divine merit that the prayers of a (paying) supplicant could secure to intercede on one’s behalf, Reformation thinking maintained a notion of boundless duty that was most aptly expressed, as follows, in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer:
Voluntary works besides, over and above, God’s commandments, which they call works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but they do more for his sake, than bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly, When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants (Article XIV).

Certainly, the concept of supererogation had also been functional in Ethics since at least the advent of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, but Urmson’s article suggested to many that the way in which we characterise the exceptional actions of saints and heroes, as either supererogatory or not, can allow a greater insight into the nature of morality at large.

The central thesis of Urmson’s original paper was that, contrary to the way most ethicists were inclined to evaluate actions – according to only three moral categories – an additional type was required. The three pre-existing ethical categories of action were, according to Urmson: (1) the (duty-bound) moral; (2) the amoral (or nonmoral, as Susan Wolf would have it ); and (3) the immoral.
Urmson, conceiving of morality as a matter of duties and obligations, argued for the additional category of the supererogatory.
Why Urmson’s argument is significant to the genealogical account being advanced herein – although probably already betrayed by the title of his essay – is given by the fact that he argued that it is the actions of both saints and heroes that most clearly demonstrate the need for supererogatory categorisation. Leaving aside heroism for the moment, Urmson allows for a variety of definitions of the saint (and saintly action) as can be seen in the following quotations:
A person may be called a saint (1) if he does his duty in contexts in which inclination, desire, or self-interest would lead most people not to do it, and does so as a result of exercising abnormal self-control.

A person may be called a saint (2) if he does his duty in contexts in which inclination, desire, or self-interest would lead most people not to do it, not, as in the previous paragraph, by abnormal self-control, but without effort.

We may also call a person a saint (3) if he does actions that are far beyond the limits of his duty, whether by control of contrary inclination and interest or without effort.

As I have established the metaphilosophical parameter precluding empirically unjustifiable existential and/or psychological characterisations from my conception of saintliness (MP#4), the apparent distinction between the first two definitions put forward by Urmson is seen to collapse. That one particular saint may be seen to muster great self-control in order to accomplish a particular saintly action, whereas another may seemingly achieve the same result ‘without effort’ is irrelevant to the differentiation of the characterisation of a particular action or person as saintly, as one is morally indistinguishable from the other. For instance, the latter, effortless saint may have been raised in a manner more conducive to the saintly demeanour, or alternatively, while not being seen to exercise great self-control at any one particular time (i.e. in performing a particular saintly action), may, nonetheless, have so completely devoted themselves to practices such as prayer and meditation, that the exercise of self-control took place gradually, consistently and over a long period of time, so that any one particular saintly action might seem ‘effortless’ to the onlooker.
As to why Urmson felt it necessary to make the distinction at all – apart from wanting to provide the most comprehensive characterisation possible – it is fair to assume that Urmson’s conception was reflective of the mainstream tendency to place ethical significance on an agent’s intention. Regardless of this, the suggested differentiation between the two is superfluous to both Urmson’s overall thesis, and to my own explication, and therefore shall not be dwelt upon any longer.

It is the third definition offered by Urmson that is central to the present discussion, as it is held by Urmson both to most adequately characterise saintliness in general, and to warrant the adoption of the category of supererogation into any future ethical theorisation. Indeed, as we can see by the phrasing of this third definition (i.e. “whether by control of contrary inclination and interest or without effort” ), here the question of effort collapses, for, as I mentioned above, it is essentially superfluous to the argument being advanced. What is significant, according to Urmson, is that the saint’s actions go ‘beyond the call of duty’.
What exactly this means for my own explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness is a point of some complexity.
On the face of it, the distinction that Urmson draws between the saintly actions defined by #1&2 and #3 appear coherent enough:
- Each of us is bound by moral duties. While the obligations our morality places on us are comprehensive (#1&2), there nonetheless remains the potential to do more than ordinary morality demands. Such actions are argued to be supererogatory, and are best exemplified by saints (and heroes) (#3).
Difficulty arises, however, when we note that Urmson admits, quite reasonably, “no intelligent person will claim infallibility for his moral views.” The problem then, is that, while Urmson conceives of morality as consisting of ‘duties’ which one can either fulfil, neglect, or (in the case of saints and heroes) exceed, one cannot know for certain what exactly these duties might be, or how one stands with regard to them. Take, for instance, the non-supererogatory saint of Urmson’s first two definitions: if their actions really take place in contexts that “would lead most people not to do it [themselves]”, then how will one be able to distinguish between these non-supererogatory actions and the supererogatory actions of the third type of saint?
As Urmson goes to lengths to establish, saints themselves can provide no solid ground by which to determine whether or not an action is supererogatory. He therefore concludes that “there is no action, however quixotic, heroic, or saintly, which the agent may not regard himself as obliged to perform.”
Therefore, if the saint has no greater insight into how any one of their actions stand with regard to the moral categories of duty, and the rest of us unsaintly-types also have no assured knowledge, then who is to say which actions are duties and which are not? This difficultly is augmented when one considers that, by definition, non-saints are disinclined to perform saintly actions of even a non-supererogatory nature. If the majority of people would fail to perform a particular action, then given that there is no way of ascertaining one’s duties for certain, it seems that the non-saints would surely fail to recognise a non-supererogatory action as such.
Urmson is, for the most part, able to sidestep this difficulty in his discussion of saintliness, as all of the scenarios he examines involve specific, institutional roles such as ‘soldier’, ‘doctor’, ‘monk’, and even ‘granddaughter’ (which is given as having the potential to enable first and second types of non-supererogatory saintly action). In all of these cases, Urmson emphasises the obligations that the role is commonly thought to demand, so that any action that ‘goes beyond’ can be seen as supererogatory. The problem with this approach, however, is that these roles do not characterise human life in general, and so the question is left begging.
If, however, the role of an undifferentiated human being is determined normatively (as would seem to be implied by Urmson’s explication of his Utilitarian morality), then the distinction between the first and second types of saintliness, with that of the third, ultimately seems untenable. If there is no strict sense of the role of a human being and the obligations thereby demanded of them, then all good actions that the non-saintly majority would feel disinclined to do, will surely be deemed exceptional.
All that can be legitimately held of Urmson’s characterisation of the saint, then, could be stated as follows: A person is a saint if they act ‘morally’ in contexts in which inclination, desire, or self-interest would lead most normal people not to do so.
Unfortunately, as Urmson’s conception of saintliness has now been stripped of its core thesis, that which remains seems unconvincing (eg. one who gives their spare change to a beggar is a saint). It does, however, suggest yet another metaphilosophical restriction that must be placed upon this thesis:
[MP6] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness must not be founded upon contentious metaethics.
Let it therefore suffice to have both exposited and criticised Urmson’s seminal thesis as part of the genealogical account of The Philosophy of Saintliness, and, moreover, to note that it seems fair to concede that saintliness must be in some sense exceptional. Exactly what one is to understand of such exceptionality, however, will have to wait until Part Four.

3.2 Wolf and Moral Perfection

Susan Wolf’s now famous essay, ‘Moral Saints’, was published in 1982. Similar to that of J. O. Urmson’s, its central thesis was intended to demonstrate inadequacies in the prevailing Ethical theories of the time. Explicitly, her central premise was that “a person may be perfectly wonderful without being perfectly moral.” This is further to suggest that there are nonmoral goods that are worthy of our respect, admiration and personal aspiration. Wolf sought to demonstrate this position, negatively, by taking the then predominate ethical systems of Utilitarianism and Kantianism to their limits. Her ‘moral saint’ was the undesirable outcome intended to demonstrate the conclusion that “morality itself should not serve as a comprehensive guide to conduct.”

A ‘moral saint’, as Wolf defines it, is (i) “a person whose every action is as good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be.” She offers the further gloss on how we, as contemporary Western citizens, might ‘pre-theoretically’ characterise moral sainthood as (ii) “a life dominated by a commitment to improving the welfare of others or society as a whole.”
While these two definitions may not initially appear dissimilar, I ultimately want to condemn the former and accede to the latter. To appreciate why and how I think that this is necessary, a closer exposition of Wolf’s argument is required.

Wolf’s essay opens: “I don’t know whether there are any moral saints. But if there are, I am glad neither I nor those about whom I care most are among them.” Her motivations for such an aversion to moral sainthood (as was defined above) is that such a life would leave little to no room for indulgences in or the development of nonmoral activities or virtues respectively. That is to say, as Wolf puts it: “…if the moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry or healing the sick or raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand.” This extreme and unwavering moral focus, Wolf argues in a manner reminiscent of Aldous Huxley , would inevitably result in the moral saint being of a particularly bland personality. As she puts it: “A moral saint will have to be very, very nice… The worry is that, as a result, he will have to be dull-witted or humourless or bland.”
Wolf acknowledges that in actual cases of moral saints (according to the second definition), we happily discover “idiosyncrasies or eccentricities not quite in line with the picture of moral perfection” given by her first definition. However, she fails to take this realisation to its proper conclusion and so redefine her characterisation. Admittedly, this shortcoming is merely the result of her overarching argument that if one were to follow most moral theories to the letter, one will inevitably neglect certain nonmorally valuable aspects of life. However, I nevertheless think it fair to claim that, along the way to making this essentially academic point, Wolf wantonly besmirches the reality of the concept of ‘saintliness’.

When Wolf characterised the moral saint as one whose every action is as good as possible, she envisioned not a saint as such, but something like a prudish monster or machine who wouldn’t sleep or eat or sing or cry unless it would have a positive effect on the welfare of others. Whereas the second definition’s phrasing of “a life dominated by [morality]” allows pragmatic room for the moral saint to breathe, as it were, Wolf takes the first definition’s idealism to be quite literal. That is to say that if a moral saint really is to be “a person whose every action is as good as possible”, then not only will the saint’s breathing be a matter of Utilitarian consideration, but their capacity for achieving moral goods must be superhuman (if not absurd). As Wolf herself says, “given the empirical circumstances of our world, it seems to be an ethical fact that we have unlimited potential to be morally good, and endless opportunity to promote moral interests”.
It may be objected that this criticism of Wolf’s argument is too single-minded and sweeping in its exposition; that she does go some way to providing pragmatic considerations to temper her position. Although I acknowledge that she does indeed doubt whether such an (un)ideal type could ever exist in reality, I maintain that her point is essentially academic, and at the cost of good sense.
To make this clear, let me draw attention to a common phenomenon surrounding (religious) saintliness: veneration. Without veneration, admiration, or even inspiration, how could it possibly come about in the real world that a ‘moral saint’ (i.e. someone who we couldn’t stand ) would be regarded as a saint of any type? The answer for Wolf is easy: she has a definition. Whomsoever fits the theoretical mould, is labelled a ‘moral saint.’
Here we can espy the heart of the matter. I am only too happy to concede that the ‘moral saint’ of Wolf’s first definition is disagreeable in so far as their obsession with moral goods would prevent them from recognising other nonmoral goods, such as beauty, or human excellence in fields ranging from the culinary arts to gymnastics. Any person who was so excessively obsessed with moral concerns that they were unable to perceive that, say, one knife might be ‘better’ at cutting than another, would certainly be “suspect[ed] of missing a piece of perceptual machinery.” But to call them a ‘moral saint’ is surely an abuse of the term. Such an undesirable person would be (as Wolf herself maintains) frowned upon as a neurotic prude or an excessive pedant.
In contrast, the moral saint of Wolf’s second definition might well be regarded positively as a saint. A person who led “a life dominated by a commitment to improving the welfare of others or society as a whole,” while perhaps not the only model worthy of our respect and/or aspiration, could indeed have the potential to be regarded positively as a saint, given the all too often dire circumstances of our world. Admittedly, to be the spouse or friend of such an individual would undoubtedly be a demanding position – even if one shared their interests or goals. But the same could be said of any Olympic athlete or dedicated PhD candidate.
The type of exemplary figure (moral or nonmoral) whose obsessive interests utterly prevented them from appreciating excellence in other fields, would indeed be a sorry person to either be or to know. As Wolf puts it: “a life in which none of these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren.”
That such a person, with respect to morality, could be called a ‘saint’ is misguided. The althete who trains every minute of the day and wins every competition they enter might be labelled an ‘athletic saint’, even though they are disliked for their personality and/or humanity. That the same could also be true of a ‘moral saint’ is nonsense. It is intrinsic to the nature of morality (in this case, improving the welfare of others or society as a whole) that it is seen to be ‘good’ in both the moral and the nonmoral senses of the word.

Such criticisms are not thought to be a refutation of Wolf’s overall position. Rather, they are a defence of what I regard to be intrinsically positive connotations for the terminology of saintliness. If we think back to the definitions given in the introductory stages of this thesis, by ‘saintliness’, for the purposes of my genealogical investigation, the required ‘family resemblance’ rests principally on a shared use of terminology. In this light it is clear that such a defence is essential to the current undertaking. This will become especially apparent, for as I mentioned, in Part Four, the notion of veneration and/or admiration will be argued to be essential to my conception of saintliness.

3.3 Gaita and Saintly Love

Earlier, when introducing Augustine (#1.1), I quoted from Albert Camus’ The Plague, where the character of Jean Tarrou asked, “Can one be a saint without God?” There I suggested that this question could be interpreted in a number of ways, one of which was: ‘Without faith in God, is it humanly possible to muster the type of will necessary for performing saintly acts?’ While this particular issue wasn’t a concern at that stage of the investigation, when one looks to the philosophical conception of saintliness advanced by Raimond Gaita in his works, Good and Evil: an absolute conception, and A Common Humanity: thinking about love & truth & justice, this question is seen to be highly pertinent.

In both of Gaita’s major works, he invokes the notion of saintly love as being revelatory of the heights of morality. Gaita claims from his own youthful experience of a nun who tended to severely afflicted patients with no trace of condescension whatsoever, that when one witnesses such acts of saintly love, the wonder it produces in the ‘witness’ provides irrefutable proof of the objective reality of goodness (and thus, morality at large).
Gaita is by no means the first to align saintliness with ‘love of the unlovable’. In his work, The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis argues that Charity is the highest of the four types of love (the others being Eros, Affection, and Friendship). In a manner typical of the Christian writer, Lewis characterises Charity as essentially being a matter of ‘loving the unlovable’ and further suggests that this ‘Gift-love’ is essential to our understanding/knowledge of God himself:
Divine Gift-love in man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, the sulky, the superior and the sneering. Finally, by a high paradox, God enables men to have a Gift-love towards Himself.

In contrast to this, Gaita would be loath to commit his philosophy to a metaphysical foundation such as Lewis’s. Rather, he makes it explicitly clear that his position, although sharing certain commonalities, is not intended to be in anyway religious – Christian or otherwise:
Despite my disavowals, many readers have taken Good and Evil to be (implicitly) a religious work, or to require religious commitment if its arguments are to be pressed home. I persist with my disavowals…

But here we strike upon what might be construed as an inconsistency; for while Gaita is only too happy to characterise the behaviour of figures such as Mother Teresa (and indeed the majority of religious saints) as expressive of saintly love, he claims that his position holds him to no (religiously) metaphysical commitments whatsoever: “My affirmation is as firm and unreserved as it is metaphysically groundless.”
This point has not gone unnoticed. In his essay, ‘Saintliness and The Moral Life; Gaita as a Source for Christian Ethics’, Mark R. Wynn suggests that “Gaita’s scheme at points invites completion in religious terms, above all in so far as the love of the saints depends for its possibility (given the cultural-linguistic traditions that obtain in our world) upon the language of religion.” Indeed, as Gaita himself admits:
I doubt that the love expressed in the nun’s [saintly] demeanour would have been possible were it not for the place which the language of parental love had in her prayers”

But while Wynn wants to take such reliance upon religious language as indicative of the veracity of its concomitant metaphysical commitments – a move which both Gaita and I regard to be unwarranted and unconvincing – I would like now to consider Gaita’s position in and of itself.

When reading of ascetic mystics such as Henry Suso, it is easy to conjecture that non-parapsychological explanations can adequately account for such seemingly paranormal phenomena: i.e. that it is psychologically understandable that those engaged in extreme self-mortification and fasting would eventually come to hallucinate the physical embodiment of whatever abstract metaphysical concept that one was obsessively fixated on, be it God, The Devil, Jesus or a deceased loved one. But in the case of saintly love the matter is certainly more complex and subtle.
As Wynn quite rightly points out: “the language of religion … offers (as a matter of contingent, historical fact) our richest, most sustained exploration of the thought that we are all intelligibly the object of love …” The veracity of his following conclusion is not so obvious: “secular saints … will owe their capacity for such conduct to the availability of concepts that ultimately have a religious origin.”
Here we can espy the unjustified tendency to align what even Wynn himself suggests to be ‘a contingent fact’, with what is subsequently held to be necessary. Certainly, it must be acknowledged that acts of pure charity will be described in terminology that bears a religious etymology. Indeed, such a concession was even made in the introduction to Part One of this thesis (#1.0). However, that its etymology is religious need not entail that its essence must be also. Take, for instance, the now widely secularised character of ‘Santa Claus’: that his title is a phonetic corruption of ‘Saint Nicholas’ surely doesn’t preclude an atheist from (surreptitiously) giving their children presents on Xmas day without any attendant metaphysical commitments.
What is at issue here, is whether or not an individual can muster the type of will necessary for undertaking saintly acts without faith or belief in a religion, and I can think of no compelling argument as to why a secular, atheistic world-view could not likewise provide the psychological support required of saintly love. Indeed, Gaita writes explicitly that “the work of saintly love is not always done by religious people,” and cites Primo Levi’s If This Is Man as providing such an example.
On this point, then, we must tentatively concede Gaita’s claim that his philosophy, although reminiscent and even reliant upon religious language, does not compel him to religiously metaphysical commitments. Such an outcome accords well with the metaphilosophical parameter pertaining to the ability to produce empirical evidence in support of psychological assertions concerning saintliness (MP#4). However, while it seems fair to presume that Primo Levi’s example of a secular saint is believed to be congruent with Gaita’s own notion of saintly love, there remains the alternative possibility that Gaita’s notion saintly love will not be compelling for all. As there is no conclusive argument to decide the question generally, I must leave the matter unresolved.

3.4 Conclusions

In Part Three, the following has been established:

(#3) Contemporary conceptions of saintliness are essentially concerned with ethical implications.
(#3.1) J. O. Urmson’s 1958 essay, ‘Saints and Heroes’ occasioned the advent of the Contemporary Era of the Philosophy of Saintliness. His attempt to delineate three types of saintly acts/attitudes unfortunately collapses, as his metaethical foundations are unable to suggest how one could differentiate one instance from another with any certainty. With respect to my own explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness this conclusion was to recommend a further metaphilosophical parameter (MP#6).
(#3.2) Susan Wolf’s essay, ‘Moral Saints’, in its attempt to indicate a deficiency in the Ethical thinking prevalent at the time, unfortunately besmirched the terminology of all things saintly. It was argued that Wolf’s was an essentially academic point, and neglected the intrinsically positive connotations that the concept of saintliness must bear so as to be pragmatically applicable in reality.
(#3.3) Raimond Gaita’s notion of saintly love, although not utterly original, did suggest that we revisit an issue that was sidestepped at the outset of this thesis (see #1.1). The question of whether an ethical dependence upon religious language commits one to metaphysically religious commitments was answered in the negative, in agreement with Gaita’s own insistence. As to whether an individual could muster the type of will necessary for performing saintly actions, in accordance with MP#4, again I sided with Gaita in the negative with respect to his own conception. However, generally the matter was left unresolved.

2. Modern, Philosophical Conceptions

2.1 Schopenhauer and The Transcendental
The World as Will and Idea occasioned the advent of the Modern Era of the Philosophy of Saintliness. Whereas Pre-Modern philosophical conceptions of saintliness were dependent upon Christian conceptions, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) attempted to construct a complete, self-sustained metaphysical system to support his notion of saintliness. This project therefore is to be regarded as appropriating the concept of saintliness for Philosophy proper.
Moreover, as Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness is indeed philosophically unique and culturally alien, it demands that I offer a more detailed exposition than I have done so far with respect to the preceding, Pre-Modern conceptions.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s masterpiece, The World as Will and Idea culminates with arguments concerning the ethical consequences of the preceding metaphysical system explicated therein.
The ‘good’, we are told, is commonly regarded to be that which furthers the attainment of one’s goals and/or desires. That which is ‘bad’, conversely, is whatever hinders the attainment of one’s goals and/or desires. From this dichotomy, Schopenhauer develops a hierarchy of ‘moral’ categories (i.e. pertaining to more than the individual):
1) Cruelty is the lowest of these, as it actively obstructs the gratification of another’s desires, inevitably to one’s own benefit/pleasure.
2) Egoism, again, is a negative moral category, as one seeks to gratify one’s own goals, even at the cost of another’s.
3) Righteousness finds equilibrium, where, working together, one pursues one’s own interests in mutual cooperation with others.
4) Charity is a positive good, in so far as one actively assists in the attainment of another’s goals whilst disregarding one’s own interests.
5) Asceticism is the highest possible good, according to Schopenhauer’s categories, as the saint actively denies their own self (i.e. the gratification of worldly desires and the attainment of worldly goals. )

It is this final category that principally informs Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness. However, to adequately appreciate its significance we must approach it via further exposition of the preceding categories and their relation to Schopenhauer’s philosophy of human ‘happiness’.

As Arthur Schopenhauer is surely the most renowned pessimist of the Western Philosophical canon, it should come as little surprise that he regarded happiness to be illusory. Conversely, Schopenhauer held (à la Buddha) that suffering is intrinsic to all life, and is the result of our ever-persistent, unfulfilled desires and goals. When any one desire is specifically gratified and thereby ceases to be, it is immediately replaced or usurped by another. True happiness is therefore seen to be essentially illusory, as any sense of contentment is only realisable via the memory of past suffering produced by a particular, now annihilated desire, which, when contrasted to the aggregation of our present desires, can never assuage the suffering that is intrinsic to all life. As Schopenhauer himself puts it: “all satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is always really and essentially only negative and never positive.”
In this light, it can be seen that actions pertaining to at least the first three of Schopenhauer’s moral categories vainly strive to attain personal happiness through the gratification of one’s own personal desires/goals.
The emphasis placed here on ‘personal’ gain is significant: Schopenhauer argues that this sense of individuality (which is given as the more grandly metaphysical, principium individuationis) is intrinsic to the ‘veil of Mâyâ’ (i.e. conventional reality) that obscures enlightenment. The charitable realise this by virtue of their charitable actions. They no longer see themselves as individuated from others. As Schopenhauer says of the cruel: “The inflictor of suffering and the sufferer are one. The former errs in that he believes he is not a partaker in the suffering; the latter, in that he believes he is not a partaker in the guilt.” The charitable do not make this same mistake. As Schopenhauer explains:
The principium individuationis, the form of the phenomenon, no longer holds him so tightly in its grasp, but the suffering which he sees in others touches him almost as closely as his own. He therefore tries to strike a balance between them, denies himself pleasures, practices renunciation, in order to mitigate the sufferings of others.

Unfortunately, they do still attempt to alleviate suffering through the gratification of desires – it is just that their desires now extend beyond their own personal interests. The ascetic saint, however, not only sees through the principium individuationis, but also realises the true, phenomenal nature of suffering. In Schopenhauer’s own words:
…he who sees through the principium individuationis, and recognises the real nature of the thing-in-itself and thus the whole, is no longer susceptible of such consolation [as illusory happiness]; he sees himself in all places at once, and withdraws. His will turns round, no longer asserts its own nature, which is reflected in the phenomenon, but denies it. The phenomenon by which this change is marked, is the transition from virtue to asceticism. That is to say, it no longer suffices for such a man to love others as himself; but there arises within him a horror of the nature of which his own phenomenal existence is an expression, the will to live, the kernel and inner nature of that world which is recognised as full of misery. He therefore disowns this nature which appears in him, and is already expressed through his body, and his action gives the lie to his phenomenal existence, and appears in open contradiction to it. Essentially nothing else but a manifestation of a will, he ceases to will anything, guards against attaching his will to anything, and seeks to confirm in himself the greatest indifference to everything.

Such profound asceticism, Schopenhauer terms the denial of the will to life, in contradistinction to his earlier metaphysical assertion that everything – all existence, being and suffering – is fundamentally the will to life. It is therefore unsurprising that saintly asceticism should result in utter self-annihilation and “the greatest delight in death.” What is more surprising, however, is that Schopenhauer should claim that such an annihilation should extend beyond the illusory-self, to everything, so that “this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways – is nothing.”
To appreciate how this argument is thought to work, we must briefly look to Schopenhauer’s treatment of the relation between Being and Nothingness.

Being, Schopenhauer points out, is typically valued positively. Indeed, this holds even in the case of the suicidal, who, although ‘hating’ their own existence, are only able to do so because of the positive value they attach to idealised being. Nothingness, in contrast, is negatively valued. The ascetic saint, however, is able, via their denial of the will to life, to invert the values commonly given to these two polar concepts according to the following logic:
… every nihil negativum [or absolute nothingness], if subordinated to a higher concept, will appear as a mere nihil privativum or relative nothing, which can, moreover, always exchange signs with what it negates, so that that would then be thought of as negation, and it itself as assertion.

While this may prima facie seem little more than to say that as the saint so truly abhors life, non-existence may actually be a positive, Schopenhauer seems to want to suggest that there is far more at stake. For instance, the ascetic saint is able, via the inversion of metaphysical evaluations, to achieve true happiness and contentment. As was explained before, for the non-saint, happiness is only ever a negative illusion because once any one desire is fulfilled, another immediately replaces and surpasses it. For the ascetic saint, however, at the point of annihilation they completely cease willing and desiring. I say that it is only at the point of annihilation because Schopenhauer maintains that the process of the denial of the will to life “is a hard and painful self-conquest” and “must ever anew be attained by a constant battle.” Or again, more elaborately:
…by constant privation and suffering, [the saint] may more and more break down and destroy the will, which he recognises and abhors as the source of his own suffering existence and that of the world. If at last death comes, which puts an end to this manifestation of that will, whose existence here has long since perished through free-denial of itself … it is most welcome, and is gladly received as a longed-for deliverance. Here it is not, as in the case of others, merely the manifestation which ends with death … For him who thus ends, the world has ended also.

This ‘most welcome, gladly received, and longed-for deliverance’ is further described by Schopenhauer as “that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, the inviolable confidence and serenity.”
Here something seems to have gone awry, however, for Schopenhauer also claims that, because saintly annihilation suspends “the whole manifestation of the will; … the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject and object”, the so-called “ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God, and so forth” is impossible to understand or appreciate from the non-saintly perspective, as it is argued to be “accessible only to one’s own experience and cannot be communicated at second hand.”
While it is tempting to adopt a line of attack similar to the all too common criticism of Kant’s transcendentalism and object that Schopenhauer is guilty of ‘describing the supposedly indescribable’, I will resist this temptation here. Rather, I believe it will prove far more fruitful to instead invoke the following criticism made by Søren Kierkegaard against Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness, as the metaphilosophical parameters suggested by William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (and exposited in the following section (#2.2)) will offer a far more philosophically satisfactory response than any (anti)metaphysical arguments could ever hope to achieve:
On Arthur Schopenhauer
… After reading A.S.’s ethics through, one discovers – he is, of course, that honest – that he is not such an ascetic himself. Consequently he does not himself represent the contemplation that is attained through asceticism, but a contemplation which relates contemplatively to that asceticism. This is extremely suspect…

2.2 James and The Psychological

William James (1842-1910), in The Varieties of Religious Experience, sought to evaluate religious saintliness without recourse to supernaturalistic metaphysical beliefs/commitments, in a manner reminiscent of Erasmus. That is to say that (echoing the sentiment expressed by Camus in Section #1.1) James was concerned with the question of what can be said of saintliness, regardless of whether or not God exists. In order to accomplish this task, James emphasised what he called ‘the primacy of experience’, and, drawing from biographical accounts, attempted to substantiate Existential/Psychological justifications for the character and worth of saintliness.

According to James, the ‘universal’ saint of all religions will have the following four characteristics:
1) a feeling of a “wider life [and] of an Ideal Power” ; and
2) a friendly continuity and willing self-surrender to the Ideal Power; and
3) a feeling of “immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining self-hood melt down” ; and
4) “a shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards ‘yes, yes’.”

The practical consequences of these phenomenological/psychological characteristics are, again, four-fold: (i) Asceticism; (ii) Strength of Soul/Will; (iii) Purity; (iv) Charity.
While James himself goes on to give a typically level-headed, pragmatic evaluation of these phenomenological/psychological and practical characteristics of his ‘universal saint’, I will refrain from following suit for three reasons: 1) There already exist a number of fine expositions of James’s conceptions of saintliness; 2) the broadening of our cultural horizons afterwards has revealed James’s researches to be overly restrictive and narrow ; and 3) his Varieties are significant to the explication of saintliness herein as the methodology used by James will suggest yet another metaphilosophical restriction to be made.

James arrived at the characterisation of saintliness by drawing upon biographical material concerning characters expressive of a heightened religious experience. Indeed, The Varieties of Religious Experience contains numerous substantial slabs of quotations, spanning multiple pages. While his broad and detailed researches were culturally restricted, his methodology nevertheless warrants the following metaphilosophical parameter to be placed upon this thesis:
[MP4] For a conception of saintliness to be philosophically adequate, all psychological and/or phenomenological claims must be empirically defensible.
By this, I mean that characterisations that claim, for instance, that ‘saintliness’ has either beneficial or detrimental phenomenological and/or psychological effects need to be able to provide empirical evidence in support of their position. Similarly, conceptions that claim that saintliness itself involves a particular phenomenological and/or psychological status must be able to be empirically defensible. To fail to do so would be to trespass against Philosophical propriety.
As a case in point, when Robert C. Neville makes the following claim in his work, Soldier, Sage, Saint, we are quite within our rights to demand that his position be supported by empirical evidence pertaining to such ‘saintly’ figures:
The powers of saintliness are greatly to be feared… A small mistake of saintly reasoning can unleash a mighty power for harm. If a misdirected soldier is dangerous, a mistaken saint is close to Satan!

Unfortunately, such a devastating form of misdirected saintliness is not a commonly recognised understanding, and Neville himself makes no attempt to provide any empirical evidence (such as historical examples) in support of his argument. Indeed, it seems unlikely, even if Neville were to produce such a ‘satanic’ figure, that many would be swayed to view them impassively as a saint who made a ‘small mistake’.
This conception of saintliness, as was advanced in Soldier, Sage, Saint, must therefore be regarded as unpersuasive in the context of this thesis.

Similarly, when one encounters a philosophical conception such as is found in Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea (see Section #2.1), not only may one echo the ad hominem criticism put forward by Søren Kierkegaard (i.e. “it is always dubious to propound an ethics which does not exercise such a power over the teacher that he expresses it in himself.” ) but it may be taken one decisive step further:
Schopenhauer proposes a phenomenological characterisation of saintliness that: (1) he provides no empirical support for; (2) he presumably has no personal experience of; and (3) he stipulates cannot be known by any who have not themselves had such an experience (indeed, even of those who have, it cannot properly be called either knowledge or experience!).
In accordance with the metaphilosophical parameters suggested by the methodology of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (i.e. MP#4), Arthur Schopenhauer’s saint is therefore severely discredited.
Certainly, Schopenhauer may not have held himself to such metaphilosophical parameters as I have established here. Admittedly, he does goes some distance to pre-empting objections such as Kierkegaard’s, as can be seen in the following passage:
It is … just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher as that a philosopher should be a saint; just as it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. In general, it is a strange demand upon a moralist that he should teach no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.

Unfortunately, as I consider the metaphilosophical parameter established in response to James’s admirable methodology to be only reasonable, the transcendental edifice upon which Schopenhauer sought to characterise saintliness is rendered inadequate, and so the entire structure collapses.

2.3 Huxley and The Hagiographical
Here, I must momentarily contravene the convention of addressing each topic by the chronology of the philosopher thought to best articulate it, for when Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) writes the following, then, in accordance with the metaphilosophical parameter established in the preceding section (#2.2), one must consider whether he is attempting to offer a proscriptive or a descriptive characterisation of saintliness:
[Like soldiers, saints] tend to forget the inborn and acquired idiosyncrasies with which they normally identify their being and, transcending selflessness, to behave in the same, one-pointed, better-than-personal way…

The following passage, however, suggests that Huxley does indeed believe his conception to be based on empirical fact:
The biographies of the saints testify unequivocally to the fact that spiritual training leads to a transcendence of personality …

Unfortunately, Huxley does not provide any further evidence in support of this assertion. Yet, I think we can safely say that, although the generalising nature of a term such as ‘saint’ necessarily suggests commonalities for its members, the hagiographical literature of the Christian tradition seemingly discredits Huxley’s claim. Take, for instance, two of the better-known religious saints: St Francis of Assisi and St Clare. Both were contemporaries, lived in Assisi, and were extremely pious. However, to claim that either ‘transcended their personalities’ would be to go too far. Distinguished as a great contemplative, St Clare never left the convent at Assisi. St Francis, on the hand, regularly travelled far and wide, and was renowned for his preaching. St Francis is most popularly known for his love of nature, whereas St Clare is better known for her joyful austerity in poverty. So, while it is true that both were undoubtedly religious saints in their own right, it would be overly presumptuous to claim, as Huxley seems to, that they had become the antithesis of ‘Legion’.

Additionally, Huxley goes on to claim that: “It is for this reason [of monotonous uniformity] that, in the whole repertory of epic, drama and the novel, there are hardly any representations of true theocentric saints.” That is to say, reminiscently of Aristotle’s musings on the aesthetic need for akrasia in the protagonists of tragedy : “Legion prefers to read about Legion”
Indeed, a similar notion was expressed by Iris Murdoch in her work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, when she wrote: “The story of Christ is the story that we want to hear: that suffering can be redemptive …” A character who suffers is a character that we can identify with; hence the profundity of Jesus’ supposed final words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

Here we strike upon a further difficulty: to what extent are we to trust hagiographical accounts?
Certainly, there have been a number of representations of saintly-type figures in the canon of Literature. However, both Huxley and Murdoch are right to suggest that these characters are hardly ever purely and unwaveringly saintly. Most examples of saintly characters given in fictional depictions involve a great deal of uncertainty in their steadfastness and faith. The particular instances that I am thinking of here are: the priests in Graham Greene’s The Power and The Glory, Monsignor Quixote and The Potting Shed; Anthony in Gustav Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony; Millie in Henry James’s The Wings of The Dove; and Aloysha and/or Father Zoisma in Fydor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
What is at issue here, I suspect, is the relationship between form and content. While it is appropriate that literary works should explore the psychological difficulties faced by those attempting to live a life of purity, it is just as appropriate that hagiography (which is in essence a form of eulogy) should prudently overlook many of the shortcomings of its subjects. As Iris Murdoch puts it: “a saint described is a saint romanticised.”
The implication that such thinking holds for my own explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness can be stated as yet another metaphilosophical parameter:
[MP5] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness must be especially prudent when making recourse to any form of hagiography.
2.4 Nietzsche and The Anti-Transcendental
Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) conception of saintliness developed directly out of that of Arthur Schopenhauer’s. This should come as little surprise, for as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his History of Western Philosophy: “Nietzsche regarded himself, rightly, as the successor of Schopenhauer…” Indeed, this is nowhere more apparent than in his early essay, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, wherein he wrote the following echo of his predecessor’s conception of saintliness:
… the genius longs more deeply for sainthood because from his watchtower he has seen further and more clearly than other men, down into the reconciliation of knowledge with being, over into the domain of peace and denial of the will, across to the other coast of which the Indians speak.

It wasn’t long, however, before this once avid Schopenhauerian eventually came to be dissatisfied with “that educator and philosopher [he] had sought for so long.” As Alain de Botton explains: in a letter Nietzsche wrote to Cosima Wagner, Nietzsche claimed to have realised that “fulfilment was to be reached not by avoiding pain, but by recognizing its role as a natural, inevitable step on the way to reaching anything good.” Consequently, his philosophy of saintliness was altered too … so much so, that William James characterised Nietzsche as “the most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom I know.” Walter Kaufmann explained the transformation as follows:
In his early philosophy, Nietzsche had envisaged artist, saint, and philosopher as the supreme triad of humanity. [Later] he would still agree that these are the three types that have tried to rise above the mass of men, but he would evaluate them differently. The saint is now pictured as the man who has extirpated his passions and thus destroyed his chances of ever living the Good Life, while artist and philosopher employ their passions in spiritual pursuits and are the most nearly perfect of men; for the powerful life is the creative life.

Indeed, this is all too obvious in the following characteristically Nietzschean aphorism, simply entitled ‘Saints’: “– It is the most sensual men who have to flee from women and torment their body.”
In order to fully appreciate the consequences of this philosophical conception, we first must briefly consider both (1) Nietzsche’s anti-transcendental metaphysical stance, and (2) his genealogical account of morality.

1) As was explained in Section #2.1, Arthur Schopenhauer’s saint was thought to be able to transcend, via the denial of the will to life, what was otherwise the overarching, universal metaphysical force of the will to life. In contrast, Friedrich Nietzsche’s break from his early ‘educator’ resulted in the exposition of his own, original metaphysical principle. Intended to be a truly universal force, the will to power was envisaged by Nietzsche as one that not even the saint could transcend.
That Nietzsche did indeed hold such an anti-transcendental metaphysical stance is evidenced in the following passage, taken from Human, all too Human:
Metaphysical world. – It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed … but one can do absolutely nothing with it, not to speak of happiness, salvation and life depend on the gossamer of such a possibility. – For one could assert nothing at all of the metaphysical world except that it was a being-other, an inaccessible, incomprehensible being-other; it would be a thing with negative qualities. – Even if the existence of such a world were never so well demonstrated, it is certain that knowledge of it would be the most useless of all knowledge…

Prima facie, there may seem to be incongruence between my claim that the will to power was intended as a ‘metaphysical principle’, and the explicitly anti-metaphysical sentiment expressed above. However, let me make it clear that Nietzsche was antithetical to supernaturalistic transcendental metaphysics, but not to metaphysical systems/propositions altogether. For example, one need only think of Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence to realise the veracity of this claim. Indeed, what else could the will to power be, if not a metaphysical principle? What it wasn’t intended to be, however, was a transcendental/supernaturalistic metaphysical principle of the sort Nietzsche attacks in the quotation above. The will to power was conceived of as a truly universal principle that could in no way be transcended by the extreme asceticism practiced by Schopenhauer’s saint. As he puts it in the final sentence of The Genealogy of Morals:
[Asceticism] signifies, let us have the courage to face it, a will to nothingness, a revulsion from life, a rebellion against the principal conditions of living. And yet, despite everything, it is and remains a will.”

What the consequences of this position were for Nietzsche’s own conception of saintliness, is best accounted for by looking to his genealogy of morality.

2) Nietzsche typically divided humanity into two classes: the strong and the weak. The strong are those who exercise the will to power over those who are therefore deemed to be the weak. This oppression, Nietzsche argues, resulted in ‘morality’, which, conceived of genealogically, is seen to be little more than the normative adoption of behaviours and attitudes typically expected of the weak by the strong. From out of this phenomenon of oppressive morality, there arose yet a further ‘type’: the saint. According to Nietzsche, (ascetic) saints pervertedly express the will to power by pathologically embracing the otherwise natural oppression and suffering of morality as a penance for their own heightened sense of ‘guilt.’ As Nietzsche describes it:
… everywhere a misinterpretation of suffering as guilt, terror, and punishment; everywhere the flagellant’s lash, the hair shirt, the sinner stretching himself on the rack of his sadistic conscience …

However, this tendency to punish one’s own self was not thought by Nietzsche to be as simple (or innocent) as it may first appear; for, as he said, “there has never been a saint who reserves sins to himself and virtues to others.” As Nietzsche explains of this new type of the pervertedly strong: “self-inflicted cruelty, [and] ingenious self-castigation, was the principal instrument of these power hungry anchorites and innovators…” It was thus that they oppressed the weak individual even further by the invention of ‘sin’; for at “the very first hint as to the cause of suffering: [the weak man] is told to look at himself, to search his own soul for a guilt, a piece of his personal past; to view his suffering as a penance …” Or again, as Nietzsche explains at some length:
Man, the most courageous animal, and the most inured to trouble, does not deny suffering per se: he wants it, he seeks it out, provided that it can be given a meaning. Finally the ascetic ideal arose to give it meaning – its only meaning, so far … [For] man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose…

The result was that, “people no longer complained of pain but were insatiable for it.” This phenomenon, Nietzsche argued, coincided with the advent of Christianity, as he explains in the following aphorism entitled ‘Christianity and Suicide’:
When Christianity came into being, the craving for suicide was immense – and Christianity turned it into a lever of its power. It allowed only two kinds of suicide, dressed them up with the highest dignity and highest hopes, and forbade all others in a terrifying manner. Only martyrdom and the ascetic’s slow destruction of his body were permitted.”

These ‘highest hopes’ form the primary focus of ‘Ascetic Philosophy’ (presumably a reference to Schopenhauer): namely, to deny what is most real. Indeed, in his posthumously published The Will to Power, we find the following account of saintliness:
…The saint as the most powerful type of man-: it is this idea that has elevated so high the value of moral perfection. One must imagine the whole of knowledge labouring to prove that the moral man is the most powerful, most godlike. -The overcoming of the senses, the desires – everything inspired fear; the antinatural appeared as the supernatural, as something from the beyond-

It is, I believe, this conclusive sentiment that best expresses the core of Nietzsche’s conception of saintliness. However, as it was echoed and refined in the work of Nietzsche’s own successor, Jean-Paul Sartre, I shall hold off from any critical engagement until the ensuing section (#2.5).
Before I move on to do so, however, it must be noted that Nietzsche believed himself to be responding (like Hume before him) directly to Christian conceptions of saintliness. From this, some may want to suggest that his philosophy is more characteristic of The Pre-Modern Era than it is of what I have claimed to be the religiously independent Modern one. Although I cannot discount Nietzsche’s own beliefs, I nevertheless think it fair to say that Nietzsche’s conception of saintliness is so peculiarly at odds with common notions of saintliness (perhaps because of the strong Schopenhauerian influence) that, in a sense, it stands alone, apart from characteristically Pre-Modern conceptions. The same holds true, I believe, also with regard to Sartre.

2.5 Sartre and The Anti-Supernatural

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was no more sympathetic to the phenomenon of saintliness than was his predecessor, Friedrich Nietzsche; as is evidenced in the following, rather crude explanation: “I am not as fond of shit as some people say I am. That is why I reject Saintliness wherever it manifests itself…”
Again, Sartre’s reasons for such an abrasive rejection of saintliness are entirely reminiscent of the anti-supernatural sentiment that was expressed by Nietzsche:
With these [‘saintly’] men appeared the sophistry of the Nay which later achieved such brilliant success; in a destructive society which places the blossoming of being at the moment of its annihilation, the Saint, making use of divine mediation, claims that a Nay carried to the extreme is necessarily transformed into a Yea. Extreme poverty is wealth, refusal is acceptance, the absence of God is the dazzling manifestation of his presence, to live to die, to die is to live, etc.

Such ‘sophistry’ was held by Sartre – again, echoing Nietzsche – to be little more than the result of a passionate desire for power by those who were unable to attain it naturally or honestly:
Unable to be the first among men, [ascetic saints] will want to be above the first; they will turn their eagerness against themselves, and, by a long, conspicuous suicide, they will give the society which is rushing delightfully to its destruction the exemplary image of proud annihilation. These clerks are fakers. By going through the ecclesiastical mill they could have obtained something: some honours, some money, some power. In pursuing Saintliness, it is therefore something which they are refusing. But by means of the transport they display in refusing, by means of self-torture which they practice, they convince themselves and others that they have refused everything.

Here, one is reminded of Nietzsche’s philosophy of the signification of asceticism (i.e. “a will to nothingness … yet … it is and remains a will.” ). Sartre takes this insight one step further, and places it in a social context, so as to thereby claim that “the phenomenon of saintliness appears chiefly in societies of consumers”. The reasons for this are twofold:
(i) [With respect to saintliness,] a simple-minded practicality [in the consumer] stresses the final aspect of the product; the truth of its being appears when it is presented to the purchaser or user as a polished, varnished, sparkling object; it demands, in its being, that it be consumed.

(ii) The Saint makes the world useless, symbolically and in his person, because he refuses to use it. He dies of hunger amidst riches. But it is necessary that these riches exist: divers must seek pearls in the ocean beds; miners must extract gold from the bowels of the earth; hunters must, at the risk of their lives, break down the defences of the elephant; slaves must build palaces, cooks must invent the rarest dishes, so that the Saint, rejecting royal dignity, ivory, precious stones and the beauty of women, may lie at death’s door, barren and disdainful, heaped with everything because he accepts nothing.

In response to Sartre’s conception of saintliness (and, by extension, Nietzsche’s), I have the following to say:
Certainly, both Nietzsche’s and Sartre’s insights into the ‘sophisticated’ appearance of ‘gain’ and supernaturalism via the seemingly exhaustive refusal that is integral to saintly asceticism must be conceded. Extreme asceticism can and has produced in the mind of the ascetic and/or the observer, an appearance (sophisticated or otherwise) of a metaphysical commitment that is antithetical to ordinary, everyday valuations. Although Sartre and Nietzsche both argue that this ‘appearance’ is deceptive because it is wholly dependant on that which it supposedly transcends, I need not refute nor commit to such reasoning at present. It is sufficient that I invoke the first metaphilosophical parameter, in claiming that, as far as the scope of this thesis permits, both Sartre and Nietzsche’s conclusions are, prima facie, valid. This is to say, that while in fact the saint’s actions may well point toward a supernaturalistic metaphysics, all that the present investigation is apt to accede to is that they give the appearance of pointing – whether or not they point towards truth or illusion is, however, a matter beyond the scope of this thesis.

That being said, I nonetheless feel that both of the above philosophers’ attacks against the phenomenon of saintliness are overly brash and require tempering. For instance, while one concedes the (unjustified) supernatural phenomenon of extreme ascetic saintliness, we need not condemn asceticism altogether. Certainly, one would seem to be unjustified in believing that, because the saint denies everything in this world, they must therefore gain everything in/from another. However, this does not entail (as much of Sartre’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy implies) that such a rejection of material goods is bad in and of itself. While many have and do foster philosophically unwarranted metaphysical commitments from such behaviour, there is perhaps, a far more metaphysically innocuous, and philosophically profound relation between consumerism and the asceticism attributed to saintliness.

That the very essence of asceticism is dependant upon its antithesis is not to be doubted. That it is wholly dependant, however, must be … and with interesting results.
Sartre, as was quoted previously, held that “it is necessary that … riches exist” in order for asceticism to be meaningful. This suggests that, in the absence of something to deny, asceticism would be impossible. Initially, this may seem coherent. To our normal way of thinking, it would indeed seem meaningless for an individual to adopt ascetic practices in the context of extreme and persisting poverty and famine. One may ask of such a scenario: what would differentiate the ascetic from the non-ascetic? In answering this question, however, we reveal the true nature of asceticism, and the mischaracterisation of it advanced by Sartre, Nietzsche, and even perhaps by Schopenhauer.
In a context of extreme poverty and famine, an ascetic would be one who seeks contentment with their situation. While in a normal, ‘consumerist’ context, the ascetic strives to minimise their desires, at least in part, by minimising their ‘consumption’ of worldly goods, in the former context the ascetic’s annihilation of desire must be achieved in attitude alone. The ascetic, then, would be differentiated from the non-ascetic by their behaviour and (to tread problematic metaphysical grounds) their feelings/beliefs. The non-ascetic would presumably continue to search in vain for sustenance, and, moreover, express deep and profound despair at both his present situation and the future it portends. In contrast, we can imagine that the ascetic would strive not to scavenge, and to find contentment with whatever the future holds.
In an aphorism entitled ‘To the teachers of selflessness’, Nietzsche wrote: “One’s ‘neighbour’ praises selflessness because he derives advantage from it!” One need only to recall the nature of Schopenhauer’s ethical categories to appreciate the sentiment expressed here. When we take the hypothetical scenario given above, however, it is difficult to perceive what advantage the neighbour of an ascetic might gain in the absence of worldly goods. On the face of it, the non-ascetic may (mistakenly) believe that the ascetic’s disinclination to forage for food and water may be beneficial to him, because, were his own efforts to succeed, he would (against the spirit of charity) feel no inclination to share his spoils with the other. It is, however, just as likely in such a situation, that the addition of another’s aid in the search for sustenance would be beneficial, even if it were to mean that one would have to share.
So, continuing on with Nietzsche’s own program of investigating what is taught or signified by asceticism, in the case given above we can characterise it essentially as an attitude of contentment at odds with desire altogether. That it has the appearance of being a matter of refusal or self-denial in normal circumstances does indeed attest to Sartre’s claim that it occurs primarily in consumerist societies, but not that it is necessary that there be something to refuse or deny.
Indeed, it seems only natural that, as Sartre claimed, extreme asceticism occurs in consumerist societies, as the proliferation of desire or discontent that is broadly fostered by consumerism is not only what makes contentment with nothing appear saintly and/or exceptional, but, additionally, is what makes it necessary at all. Here, it looks as if the adage, ‘extreme circumstances engender extreme measures’ is appropriate. That the phenomenon of venerated asceticism could occur in a society of modest wants seems unlikely. Indeed, hagiographical accounts suggest that the motivation for an individual’s adoption of a life in solitude (or even in a hermitage) was, more often than not, owing to a repulsion felt towards the barbarous and decadent state of the society they abandon. The life of Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) is probably the most well known example of this.
Again, it is difficult to see how an ascetic’s self-indulgent neighbour might ‘derive advantage’ (in a Schopenhauerian sense) from such a scenario. That is, apart from the more traditional (non-metaphysical) interpretation: that the ascetic signals the potentially detrimental effects of unbridled desires.
Here, I need not invoke any notion of ‘eternal punishment’ or ‘sin’ that may infringe the metaphilosophical parameters of this thesis. Instead, it is enough to invoke far more metaphysically innocuous ideas. For instance, it seems obvious that wantonly unbridled desires can be detrimental to one’s consideration of others. Alternatively, history has shown that greed – among other vices – has led to the downfall of a number of societies including Ancient Rome and Nazi Germany. And yet, in either of these cases, the ‘advantage gained’ is not, as Nietzsche claimed, on one’s own terms. Rather it is because one comes to appreciate the worth of the alternative values of the ascetic.

2.6 Conclusions

In this, Part Two, the following was established:
(#2.1) Arthur Schopenhauer’s conception of saintliness was both philosophically unique and culturally alien, and thus occasioned the advent of The Modern Era of The Philosophy of Saintliness, which is distinct from its precursor in so far as the conceptions it advanced were no longer dependent upon Christian conceptions. Schopenhauer conceived of saintliness in terms of extreme asceticism that sought to transcend the otherwise universal will to life.
(#2.2) William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience continued on the spirit of the Modern Era in its attempt to characterise ‘the universal saint.’ Although the broadening of cultural horizons has revealed certain deficiencies in his conception, James’s methodology nonetheless suggested that one must be able to provide or produce empirical evidence in support of any psychological/phenomenological claims pertaining to the nature and/or effects of saintliness. Applying this parameter to both Schopenhauer’s and Neville’s conceptions of saintliness revealed them to be deficient in terms of both execution and conception.
(#2.3) Similarly, Aldous Huxley’s claim, that saintliness universally erases an individual’s personality, was shown to be not only without empirical support, but contrary to it. This, however, raised the issue of the potentially biased nature of hagiographical accounts.
(#2.4) Whereas Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of saintliness was initially essentially Schopenhauerian, he eventually developed his own conception in accordance with his overarching, non-transcendental, metaphysical principle: the will to power. Roughly stated: even the denial of the will to live is a willing (to power). According to this view, the saint ignobly embodies the will to power, thereby oppressing the weaker via a culture of asceticism that gives the illusion that the antinatural is in fact supernatural.
(#2.5) With respect to their conceptions of saintliness, Jean-Paul Sartre was Nietzsche successor. Taking the idea of ‘saintly sophistry’, Sartre placed it in a worldly context and claimed further (i) that saintliness was a consumerist phenomenon, and (ii) that, because the appearance of absolute refusal is dependant upon the something it refuses, it is to be dismissed outright. While I conceded (on my own terms) that the ascetic’s apparent refusal of everything does not entail a subsequent supernatural reward, it was argued that saintly asceticism is nevertheless meaningful in so far as it suggests a tempering (or even polarisation) of ordinary values that, in the face of potentially detrimental extravagances, is to be praised.

By no means am I suggesting that these five philosophers of the Modern Era were the only ones to have employed the concept of saintliness in undertaking significant work in their philosophy. Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil , for example, are two prominent Philosophical figures that spring to mind when discussing saintliness. However, for various reasons – the least of which being that their conceptions were not significantly revolutionary – I have deemed it appropriate that they should be overlooked here. Such an omission, I hope, will be allowed, for while those included in my genealogical account are thought to serve my explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness, those whom I have left out are not thought to contradict it in any meaningful way.

1. Pre-Modern, Christian Conceptions

It must be duly acknowledged that the etymology of the word ‘saint’ is deeply embedded in the history of Christianity. It should seem only natural, then, that the earliest philosophers to concern themselves with the phenomenon of saintliness conceived of it as essentially religious in nature. Taken from the Western canon of Philosophy, these philosophers include, though by no means exhaustively: St Augustine of Hippo, St Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, St Benedict, Meister Eckhart, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, St John of The Cross, Voltaire, and David Hume.
It is the contention of Part One of this thesis that these philosophers and their conceptions of saintliness constitute, what I shall call, The Pre-Modern Era of The Philosophy of Saintliness. This era of The Philosophy of Saintliness is characterised by its utter dependence upon Christian conceptions.

While the eventual philosophical conception of saintliness to be advanced herein (see Part #4) is not intended to be in any way a religious conception (Christian or otherwise), nevertheless, critically surveying the Pre-Modern Era will prove fruitful in so far as it will demarcate the ultimate characterisation of saintliness from other, everyday, implicitly religious conceptions.
That said, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that the Christian-dependant conceptions of saintliness arising from the Pre-Modern Era will be, in each case, exposited only very briefly. Such an approach is thought to be justified as (i) my audience is assumed to have, at the very least, a culturally shared understanding of the Christian conception of saintliness, (ii) there are a number of very good books already available which can easily remedy any deficiencies there may be with my first justification, and (iii) issues of brevity demand that I take such measures where possible, so as to enable a more detailed examination of the more philosophically and culturally curious conceptions encountered in the subsequent parts of this thesis.

1.1 Augustine and The Metaphysical
‘It comes to this,’ Tarrou said almost casually, ‘what interests me is learning how to become a saint.’
‘But you don’t believe in God.’
‘Exactly. Can one be a saint without God? – that’s the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against to-day.’
Albert Camus. The Plague.

The sentiment of this question, as was expressed by Albert Camus’ character, Jean Tarrou, accords well with the overall aim of this section – ‘Can one be a saint without God?’
In a strictly philosophical context, such as we presently find ourselves, this matter is perhaps better phrased: Is one’s conception of saintliness necessarily dependent on a concomitant belief/faith in God?
Allow me to flesh out the differences between the two phrasings:
(1) In its original form, the question might be thought to pertain to whether or not a person could attain saintliness (perhaps with all its attendant religious consequences) without faith in God. That is to say, for instance, if one believes that the saints, by definition, are in union with the divine in an afterlife, the crux of the issue might be whether salvation in the afterlife is possible (i.e. permissible by God) given that one was an atheist in their earthly life.
Alternatively, one might place a more pragmatic emphasis on issues of Psychology, reading the question as follows: Without faith in God, is it humanly possible to muster the type of will necessary for performing saintly acts?
(2) In rephrasing the question, I have hoped to shift the emphasis away from issues of supernaturalistic metaphysics, and towards issues of morality. As will soon be apparent, without an explicit belief in God, the afterlife, etc., saintliness is essentially a moral concept. The problem with which I am presently concerned can now be seen to take the following, more precise form: ‘Without attendant metaphysically-religious presuppositions, what can be said of the concept of saintliness?’

With the above thoughts in mind, one of the first great philosophers to concern themselves with saintliness, St Augustine of Hippo (354-430), conveys a notion of saintliness at odds with the characterisation I am seeking to explicate herein. Indeed, the vast majority of St Augustine’s commentary on ‘the saints’ takes the form of metaphysical speculation/revelation, as can be seen from the following summary of the conception of saintliness advanced in his work, City of God:
Saints lose nothing by being deprived of temporal goods, for they will be infinitely recompensed with heavenly rewards. While it is appropriate to show respect for the corpse of a saint in order to promote faith in the resurrection, a of lack burial does not matter to a Christian because God’s omnipotence will be able to completely restore the body at the time of the resurrection. A saint in captivity is consoled by God’s presence. God can instruct a saint to do what otherwise would be a sin, such as suicide. Christians do not make sacrifices to deceased saints. Demons were allowed power by God only for the greater glorification of the saints through their steadfast endurance of sufferings. God is the source of the power of the saints, and of their purification. Saints existed before Christ, but are nonetheless justified by the mystery of his incarnation and their faith in him. If one is a saint, death is no longer the punishment of sin. Rather, it is a gift by which men pass into eternal life. God’s promise of eternal, resurrected life refutes everyday empirical evidence concerning organic decay. Deceased saints wait happily in the heavenly regions for the resurrection, upon which, they will only have to eat or drink if they want to, as their immortality will be assured. By setting one’s heart with the utmost ardour, hope, and confidence upon the eternally blissful life after death promised to the saints, a person may achieve happiness in this most miserable earthly existence. The saints in heaven will have full knowledge of the eternal punishment that the wicked suffer without having to leave their blessed abodes, so that they recognise the wicked for what they are. In accordance with the prophecies of Daniel, the saints will have to endure three and a half years of the Antichrist’s reign before they receive their everlasting kingdom. At the time of judgement, the boundless compassion of the saints will not induce them to intercede for the souls of sinners, for God has promised eternal punishment and so it will be. No matter how ravaged or deteriorated the saint’s corpse may be, at the time of the resurrection, God will not only resurrect it, but will perfect it.

It is interesting to note here, that when Augustine writes of ‘the saints’, he is referring to a rather specific historical sense of the term. As Richard Kieckhefer explains:
[It wasn’t until The Middle Ages that] the Church developed technical meanings for the word [‘saint’], of which three are still current. First, in the broadest sense, a saint is a person who is leading or has led a life of heroic virtue. Second, a saint is a person who has gone to heaven, whether that fact is recognized or not; the Feast of All Saints is celebrated in honour of all members of this class. Third, in the narrowest sense, a saint is a person who, by virtue of the Church’s judgment that he or she is in heaven (i.e. by reason of canonization), is the legitimate object of public cult.

So, while Saint Augustine himself belongs to the third sense of the term (and presumably, by extension, to the first two as well), Augustine’s own conception of saintliness refers to the second definition only (as being inclusive of the first). This conception is, however, more in keeping with the biblical usage of the term. Indeed, the theological emphasis that Augustine placed on the Scriptures suggests that he acknowledged the ‘saints’ given therein. However, given his historical context, when Augustine wrote of the saints, he was not referring to a specific set of canonised individuals such as the Roman Catholic Church knows today. Nor was he referring exclusively to those individuals that were informally venerated as saints by a cult following. Rather, when Augustine speaks of ‘the saints’ he means, quite simply and quite broadly, those individuals who have led a life of heroic virtue and thus will attain salvation.
Unfortunately, while the former characterisation of one ‘who has led a life of heroic virtue’ will be later shown to accord well with my own conception of saintliness, the latter supernaturalistic notion of ‘salvation’ breaches the conceptual boundaries set for this thesis, and so must be deemed unacceptable.

By no means do I hereby intend to refute or in any way discredit the metaphysical beliefs held by St Augustine. With respect to such matters, I remain philosophically agnostic. I do, however, think it philosophically prudent to exclude such beliefs from our present inquiry. What is at issue here is essentially metaphilosophical in nature; i.e. the establishment of parameters by which one can confidently conduct an explication of a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness. These restrictions are thought to be necessary for the following reasons:
Philosophically speaking, justifications for the majority, if not all, supernaturalistic and religious metaphysical systems are highly contentious and/or inadequate. Therefore, it would be imprudent to invoke any particular such metaphysical commitment to serve as the foundation for a philosophical characterisation of saintliness. Furthermore, it would go far beyond the scope of this limited thesis to attempt to satisfactorily establish any particular such metaphysical commitment (eg. the existence of God), in order to subsequently employ it as a foundation for a philosophical characterisation of saintliness. Certainly, if I believed that another philosopher had elsewhere achieved such a result, I can see no reason why I should not build this thesis upon their established metaphysical foundations. Unfortunately, I do not believe that any philosopher has accomplished such a feat, and so, in good conscience, this path is closed to me. As I mentioned earlier, I remain philosophically agnostic, and so too must my characterisation of saintliness. With this in mind, the first metaphilosophical parameter of this thesis can be stated as follows:
[MP1] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness must not be founded upon metaphysically contentious commitments.

1.2 Aquinas and The Theological
At first glance, the writings of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275) appear to be a more promising philosophical candidate than those of his predecessor. This is principally owing to his explicit conception of ‘human perfection’, as is evidenced in the following quotation :
[Human] perfection is possible in this life, and in two ways. First, so far as everything incompatible with charity, i.e., mortal sin, is excluded from the will of a man. Without this type of perfection, charity cannot exist; and hence it is necessary for salvation. Secondly, so far as the will of man rejects not only what is incompatible with charity, but even that which would prevent the affection of the soul from being directed totally to God. Charity can exist without this perfection, for example, in beginners and the advanced.

Although it is tempting to align with saintliness all that Aquinas has to say concerning human perfection, such a move is problematic, for the following reasons:
(1) The notion of Divine Grace and Cooperation is absolutely essential to Aquinas’s conception of human perfection. For reasons established in the preceding section (#1.1), such metaphysical presuppositions preclude the conception from further consideration within the context of this thesis.
(2) While it seems reasonable to assume that the two concepts (human perfection and saintliness) are in some sense synonymous, my researches of secondary sources have not provided me with confidence to believe that Aquinas himself employs them as such. Nor am I myself qualified to pass such a judgement. Moreover, when Aquinas writes of ‘the saints’, he appears to be primarily referring to the saints of Scripture. This is, however, unsurprising considering the explicit theological enterprise that he is engaged in.

This final point requires elaboration, as it will demand the setting of yet another metaphilosophical parameter:
Theology, as Aquinas understands it, has recourse to the unquestioned authority of the Scriptures. Moreover, the dogmatic authority of the Scriptures is believed to be legitimated by virtue of its unique epistemological status of ‘divine revelation.’ Certainly, Aquinas rejects biblical literalism. However, it cannot be doubted that, although it is necessary to make the correct interpretation, the authority of the Scriptures themselves is nonetheless considered to be final and unwavering.
For the very same reasons given in the determination of MP#1, I can establish the following metaphilosophical parameter:
[MP2] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness must not be founded upon Theological authority.
Indeed, in response to the very first question of the mammoth Summa Theologiæ, St Thomas Aquinas himself writes: Scriptura autem divinitus inspirata non pertinet ad philosophicas disciplinas quœ sunt secundum rationem humanam inventæ.

Why it is that the preclusion of Theological conceptions is thought to warrant mention in addition to metaphysical conceptions in general, perhaps requires brief explanation:
When someone makes justificatory recourse to contentious metaphysical concepts, such as God, the afterlife, etc., then, psychologically speaking, it is apparent that they are appealing to the authority of the concept itself (though presumably within the context of the overall metaphysical system thought to support it). In contrast, when engaged in Theological undertakings, one has recourse to concrete resources (eg. the Scriptures) that, psychologically speaking, suggest a more substantial authority. Compare, for instance, the following two supposed justifications:
a) ‘It is God’s grace that makes the love of saints possible.’
b) ‘Jesus said, “Love thine enemy.”’
In the case of (a), one would immediately demand of the speaker that they provide further supportive evidence for the ‘fact’ of God’s grace (if not existence altogether!). In the case of (b), however, there is the appearance of fact; that is, of a commandment made by a historical figure.
In Philosophical circles, this latter form of recourse to authority is all too common. For instance, one might be heard to say “Well, Aquinas said God does not compel a human being to good action by his aid [of grace]. ” If the underlying metaphysical system thought to support such a statement is acceded to by all parties, then such an invocation of authority might be deemed justified. If, however, no such agreement is in place, then such a strategy is rendered mere argumentum ad verecundiam.
In the context of this thesis, this final evaluation is made of any theological claim concerning saintliness, for, while any particular statement or conception might prima facie seem coherent or justified, given that it is ultimately founded on ‘un(meta)philosophical’ grounds, then, for the reasons given in Section #1.1, it must be precluded from the undertaking at hand.

Some may feel that I am being overly brash in this rather sweeping injunction; that, perhaps, the possible inclusion of the conceptions of saintliness made by our first two great religious philosophers (not to mention the many others) may actually help inform the explication herein. That is to say, that while one cannot, in accordance with the set parameters, condone their conceptions in themselves, one still may be able to draw positively from their insights.
Although, in principle, I readily concur with this commendation, I must nevertheless insist that the reasons offered in Section #1.1 warrant the strategy adopted herein. As should be apparent from the lengths I have already gone to in order to extricate my conception from the religious, the associations that the concept of saintliness carries are thought to run deep. If one were to attempt merely to philosophically engage with the likes of Augustine and Aquinas, let alone attempt to establish the veracity of their position, the number of qualifications needed to disassociate the theological from the philosophical would require a Masters thesis in itself.
Nevertheless, the engagement with both Augustine and Aquinas has not been without benefit, as the following points reveal:
1) With respect to the genealogical account I am developing, both of these Doctors of The Church must be acknowledged as having a profoundly significant influence on the philosophical etymology of the concept of saintliness. Indeed, in response to the earlier hypothetical suggestion that, leaving their metaphysical commitments aside, a characterisation of saintliness may benefit from the insights provided by these great philosophers, I believe that the influence that these religious conceptions have had on the entire history of the Philosophy of Saintliness is so significant that we can pass over their particular instantiations without fear of neglecting such conceptions in general. That is to say that one need only think of the Christian conception of ‘saintliness’ generally to grasp the core of these early philosophers’ own conceptions.
2) Furthermore, the engagement with the work of Augustine and Aquinas, for what it was, has enabled the establishment of metaphilosophical parameters vital to the later explication of a philosophically acceptable conception of saintliness.

1.3 Erasmus and The Superstitious
One of the earliest philosophers to openly criticise the phenomenon of saintliness and its surrounding practices was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). The possible reasons for the previous quiet are numerous, and range from censorship, to the concept’s informal status. However, with the publication of Erasmus’s scathing satire, In Praise of Folly (written for his friend, Sir/St Thomas Moore), philosophical conceptions of saintliness began to break away from their deeply religious origins, and move independently towards Philosophy proper.
In order to emphasise the disparities between the earlier, more orthodox philosophies of saintliness with what became the revolutionary philosophy of Erasmus, I have included below, a rather long, though still heavily abridged passage from this remarkable text:

[Folly says:] Such things [as miracles and fictitious marvels] not only serve remarkably well for whiling away a tedious hour but can also be profitable, especially for preachers and demagogues.
Closely related to them are the people who’ve adopted the foolish but pleasurable belief that if they see some carving or painting of that towering Polyphemus, Christopher, they’re sure not to die that day …
… Then there are people who rely on certain magic signs and prayers thought up by some pious impostor for his own amusement or for gain – they promise themselves everything, wealth, honours, pleasure, plenty, continual good health, long life, a vigorous old age, and finally a seat next to Christ in heaven. However, that’s a blessing they don’t want until the last possible minute …
…It is much the same when separate districts lay claim to their own particular saints. Each one of these is assigned his special powers and has his own special cult, so that one gives relief from toothache, another stands by women in childbirth … and so on – it would take too long to go through the whole list…
But what do men seek from these saints except what belongs to folly? Amongst all the votive offerings you see covering the walls of certain churches right up to the very roof, have you ever seen one put up for an escape from folly or for the slightest gain in wisdom? One man escaped drowning, another was run through by his enemy and survived, another boldly (and equally fortunately) fled from battle and left his fellows to continue to fight. Another fell down from the gallows, thanks to some saint who befriends thieves, and went on to relieve a good many people of their burden of wealth. This one broke out of prison, that one recovered from a fever, to the annoyance of his doctors; yet another swallowed poison, but it acted as a purge and did him good instead of killing him – a waste of effort and money for his wife, who was not at all pleased. Another upset his wagon but drove his horses home unhurt, another escaped with his life when his house collapsed, and another was caught in the act by a husband but got away. Not one of them gives thanks for being rid of folly, and so it’s pleasant not to be wise that mortals would prefer to pray for deliverance from anything rather than from me.

Erasmus’s criticisms are justified, however, only in so far as the ‘foolish but pleasurable’ beliefs are conceded to be superstitious and/or frivolous. Moreover, one would be mistaken to draw from the above that Erasmus was attacking the belief in the intercessory powers of the saints altogether; this is obvious at the close of the quoted paragraph, where the criticism is not levelled against votive offerings being made in themselves, but because they were done so only in the hope of idle self-gain.

The question of whether or not one should concur with Erasmus’s evaluation is a matter for further consideration, and, furthermore, suggests an interesting ‘loophole’ to the metaphilosophical parameters set in the previous two sections (MPs#1&2). For while Erasmus never questioned his faith in the supernaturalistic metaphysical status attributed to (religious) saints, he was nevertheless able to coherently criticise the earthly practices associated with such beliefs. This is to suggest that, in the context of this thesis, while one need not make any commitment to the underlying metaphysics held by the participants of the Christian phenomenon of saintliness, one might, nevertheless, evaluate the psychological impetuses that motivate them.
For instance, it certainly seems superstitious to believe that anyone who observes an image of St Christopher will not die that same day. Yet, that one shouldn’t have the belief that one will not die that day, is a matter of more subtlety.

When one considers the all too common anxieties that people can suffer from, especially when travelling, the appeal of historical or mythical figures such as St Christopher should be unsurprising. If we ignore the more metaphysically contentious belief that saints can miraculously intercede on one’s behalf (which Erasmus himself held), there appear to be obvious and rather innocuous psychological reasons that one might look to the saints for confidence and inspiration.
In much the same way that an atheistic scholar may quite reasonably admire and draw inspiration, motivation and confidence from the examples set by great scholars of the past, so too may the theistic saint venerator look to particular figures who best address their concerns. So it seems only natural that a thought/prayer/observation of St Christopher can allay one’s daily anxieties of travel, and, similarly, that the highly industrious and prodigious St Thomas Aquinas is regarded as the legitimate patron saint of scholars.
That is to say, that if a person is fear-stricken by the unjustified belief that they will die in transit that day, psychologically, it is understandable that they would look to great heroic travellers for confidence in the counter-belief that they will not die that day. That such a resolution is as equally superstitious is obvious, but the above account does not seek to condone such folly – only to understand it.

While these thoughts go some distance to disarming the force of the criticisms made by Erasmus in the second and fourth paragraphs of the passage quoted above, I think that the impact of the criticisms made in final paragraph can be undermined also. Certainly, the insinuation that people are foolish to place a higher value on spiritually trivial gains, than on more substantive gains in wisdom, does seem warranted. However, that people do in fact commonly favour the one over the other isn’t immediately apparent from the nature of the votive offerings that Erasmus produces as evidence. Indeed, I suspect that it is quite understandable why these particular occurrences result in feelings of gratitude to such figures as the saints of religion, whereas matters of wisdom and the like do not.

When one escapes death (as is the case of the majority of the examples given ), it is difficult not to see it as fortuitous in every sense of the word (i.e. as being out of one’s control, auspicious, and fateful ). This is not surprising, for as St. Augustine wrote: “I am certain of this, that no one has died who was not going to die at some time …” Thus, when one narrowly avoids death, even if by means of one’s own ingenuity, it is readily seen to be something of a grandly metaphysical matter, which, as it happens, is the very realm the religious saints are thought by many to occupy. While people may well hold the good riddance of folly as inestimably valuable to their lives (and even their salvation), it seems only natural that the attainment of wisdom should not suggest the same strikingly metaphysical significance to the bearer.
Unfortunately, Erasmus wasn’t attempting to make a point similar to that which the completed quotation of St Augustine makes (i.e. “… and the end of life reduces the longest life to the same condition as the shortest.” ). Erasmus’s suggestion was that “mortals would prefer to pray for deliverance from anything rather than from [Folly].” Although, as we have seen, people do seem quite understandably more inclined to pray (or to give thanks) when faced with immediately obvious matters of mortality, it does not thereby demonstrate that people value these fortuities over and above the attainment of wisdom.

Although the above considerations do indeed seem to undercut the force of Erasmus’s criticisms of the religious superstitions surrounding the phenomenon of saintliness, by no means can such psychological insights be thought to sway the sympathies of a philosophical fanatic. Take, for instance, a different example:
When one considers that the first saints were martyrs for their fledgling religion, it is easy to conjecture that the tendency to venerate such individuals was brought about by an emotional need to bolster the required steadfast religious convictions of those who would quite likely have to stand and face the same fate.

Although curious, the psychological validity of such speculation goes no distance in either confirming or denying the content of the venerators’ beliefs. With this is mind, the argumentative strategy Erasmus employed to satirise the supposedly misdirected veneration of religious saints is unable to overturn the metaphilosophical parameters set in the preceding sections (#1.1&2).
All this, however, has not been without significance, as such conceptual differentiation between saintliness in itself and the practices surrounding it will become crucial to the final conception of saintliness advanced in Part Four (See esp. Section #4.6).

1.4 Luther and The Ecclesiastical
Martin Luther (1483-1546), as is commonly known, was the father of the Reformation. However, most will be unfamiliar with how his philosophy of saintliness worked to serve his cause.
Similar to Erasmus, Luther wrote caustic satires of the phenomenon of the religious veneration of saintly figures. As Richard Kieckhefer recounts:

In 1520 [Martin Luther] wrote an anonymous pamphlet parodying a relic collection of the Archbishop of Mainz; he listed as items in this collection “a fine piece of the left horn of Moses, three flames from the bush of Moses on Mount Sinai, two feathers and an egg from the Holy Ghost, an entire corner of the banner with which Christ rose from Hell”, and so forth. The pamphlet reads like a heavy-handed parody until one turns to the archbishop’s own official catalogue and finds listed there such treasures as a clod of earth from the place where Christ gave the Lord’s Prayer, a small piece of a cloak that Mary made for Jesus (and which had the marvellous power to grow as he did), two vats from Cana, one of Judas’s silver pieces, and remains of manna from the desert.

Indeed, even in his most famous 95 Theses, it is easy to see how Luther’s strictly theological conception of saintliness was able to serve his cause:
The treasures of the church, out of which the pope distributes indulgences, are not sufficiently discussed or known among the people of Christ

Here, Luther is seen to be attacking the Roman Catholic Church’s stance that supplications made in the form of monetary contributions had the power to procure some of the stock of divine merit that the church’s saints had acquired in their lifetime. While it had long been integral to the religious phenomenon of saintliness that “those in heaven would intercede on behalf of supplicants who paid reverence to their earthly remains”, this relatively new development appeared to Luther as blasphemous in the extreme.
As Bernard Lohse explains, “in this period [circa 1517] Luther had not progressed to the point where he totally rejected indulgences.” However, by the time he wrote his 1530 work, On Translating: An Open Letter, it is quite apparent that he did eventually come to totally reject the notion of saintly intercession altogether:
There is not a single word of God commanding us to call on either angels or saints to intercede for us, and we have no example of it in the Scriptures … Thus the worship of saints shows itself to be a mere trumpery of men and an invention of their own, outside the Word of God and the Scriptures.

This is not to suggest that Luther rejected the notion of saintliness altogether. That such a view would be mistaken is evident from his lecture, entitled ‘Who be rightly called saints, and be so indeed.’ Although Luther considered it to be inappropriate that saints should be worshipped or thought to intercede, he nevertheless believed in the phenomenon restrictedly.

Martin Luther is significant to the present undertaking for the following two reasons:
1) His conception of saintliness played a significant role in one of history’s most significant revolutions: the Reformation. Moreover, with respect to the genealogy of saintliness, Luther’s writings altered the more widespread, general conception in such a way as to provide subsequent conceptions with a more receptive audience.
2) Luther’s attack on the authority of the papacy and other ecclesiastical bodies thought to be divinely inspired, suggests yet another metaphilosophical restriction:
[MP3] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness cannot be founded upon philosophically unjustified authority of institutions.

While Luther was able to make recourse to Theological authority in order to establish the character and nature of saintliness (not to mention a list of particular ‘saints’), as I argued in Section #1.2, we have no such refuge here. Certainly, it would remain permissible from this to investigate any one of the particular ‘saints’ canonised by the Roman Catholic Church, or venerated by the Anglican Church. However, they would have to be judged individually on their own merits, and not according to the dogmatic authority of the Church (or the profound influence exerted thereof). Unfortunately, I am again prevented from this course of action generally, for a want of space; to undertake a critical investigation of all the various canonised saints would lead us far beyond the scope of this thesis. This limitation might also be framed as a more specific metaphilosophical parameter, extended from that of MP#3. Accordingly, I will deem it to be only a subclause, stated it as follows:
[MP3.1] A philosophically adequate conception of saintliness may only make recourse to individual ‘saints’ belonging to institutions such as the papacy on the terms of their individual own merits, which must be explicitly justified.

1.5 Voltaire & Hume and The Moral
Has it ever been fully realised that for the longest time all these [ascetic] tendencies ran counter to the requirements of accepted ethics…?
Friedrich Nietzsche. Genealogy of Morals.

The literally revolutionary views of Erasmus and Luther, as exposited above, recast the tone of philosophical conceptions of saintliness forever. In the following two philosophers, Voltaire and Hume, this is especially obvious. Whereas their predecessors merely criticised the morally dubious superstitions that so popularly centred around the phenomenon of saintliness, these following two ‘moral’ philosophers of saintliness indirectly called into question the underpinning supernaturalistic metaphysics, that, for many, were the religious bedrock of saintliness. The extent to which they had consciously intended to achieve this outcome is a matter of some doubt. What is certain, however, is that, whereas their predecessors criticised the beliefs and practices surrounding all things saintly, both Voltaire and Hume directly criticised the practices and beliefs commonly regarded to constitute saintliness in itself.

Born one and a half centuries after the death of Martin Luther, François-Marie Arouet (a.k.a. Voltaire (1694-1778)) would anticipatorily capture the essence of Contemporary, Ethical conceptions of saintliness. Taking his predecessor’s criticisms to the next level, Voltaire called into question not the practical and moral worth of the superstitions surrounding all things saintly, but rather the practical and moral worth of saintliness itself. For example, consider the following passage from his Philosophical Dictionary:
We live in society, so there is no true good for us but what is good for society. A solitary is sober and pious, he wears a hair-shirt: very well, he is a saint. But I shall not call him virtuous until he has performed some virtuous act from which other men have benefited. So long as he is alone he is neither beneficent nor maleficent: he is nothing to us. If saint Bruno brought peace to families, if he helped the indigent, he was virtuous. If he fasted and prayed in solitude, he was a saint. Virtue between men is a commerce of beneficence. No account should be taken of any man who had no part in the commerce. If this saint were in the world he would no doubt do good in it; but so long as he is not, the world will be right not to call him virtuous: he will be beneficial to himself, and not to us.

In what is a remarkably similar passage, David Hume (1739-1790) echoed the sentiments of his French counterpart, in his Enquiries Concerning The Principles of Morals:
Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the enjoyment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupefy the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices; nor has any superstition force sufficient among men of the world, to pervert, entirely these natural sentiments. A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place on the calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself.

What is significant to the genealogy of philosophical conceptions of saintliness is that both philosophers criticised the moral worth of what were then thought to be saintly practices. It would, however, be misguided to believe that Hume and Voltaire had a shared conception of saintliness. While Hume generally thought that the supernaturalistic metaphysical status attributed to saints arose from lay superstition, Voltaire never went so far as to call into question the religious phenomenon of saintliness in general. Certainly, it is tempting to read from the passage quoted above, that Voltaire is, in a similar vein to Hume, delineating ‘the virtuous’ from ‘the saintly.’ And yet, to read the following defence against charges of idolatry in Christian practice, is to see the matter aright:
… we have saints instead of their demi-gods, their secondary gods, but we respect neither rank nor conquests. We have raised temples to men who were simply virtuous, who for the most part would be unknown on earth were they not placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were procured by flattery, ours by respect for virtue.

Here, it is apparent that for Voltaire, virtuousness and saintliness (when rightly conceived) are inexorably bound together. In this light then, we see that the previous quotation wasn’t so much against the notion of saintliness generally (as it was for Hume). Rather, it was that Voltaire believed that social morals should be integral to its conception.

Both Voltaire and Hume’s conceptions of saintliness are seen to be significant in so far as they shifted the focus away from attendant metaphysical beliefs and practices associated with religious saints, towards the morality of saintliness itself. As the genealogical account advances, it will become apparent that it was these two philosophers of saintliness who heralded the essentially ethical emphasis central to present-day philosophical conceptions.
That they nevertheless belong to the Pre-Modern Era is not so much a cause of chronology, as it is a matter of conceptual dependence. As is consistent with the characterisation of the Pre-Modern Era given in Section #1.0, both Voltaire’s and Hume’s notions of saintliness were entirely dependent upon Christian conceptions. That they both railed against such conceptions, to varying degrees, in no way diminishes such a conceptual dependence.

1.6 Conclusions
(#1) The Pre-Modern Era of our genealogy of The Philosophy of Saintliness is characterised by its dependence on Christian conceptions.
(#1.1) As was shown in the case of St Augustine, such dependence on religious metaphysics can run so deep as to warrant the exclusion of any further critical engagement in a philosophical thesis such as this.
(#1.2) While the philosophy of ‘human perfection’ put forward by St Thomas Aquinas initially seemed a more promising candidate than that of his predecessor, as it was given in a strictly theological context, for reasons similar to that of #1.1, it was also excluded from further consideration. This metaphilosophical conclusion was then extended to preclude all Theological authority as providing a foundation for a philosophically adequate conception of saintliness.
(#1.3) While the conclusions of the preceding sections appeared broadly restrictive, the critical philosophy of Erasmus (though not engaging with the religion itself) revealed that it was nevertheless legitimate to speculate about the psychological motivations people might have for such beliefs/commitments. Although it was suggested that such an approach is pertinent to the eventual conception of saintliness explicated herein, it was concluded that these insights could not sway the philosophical fanatic or overturn the conclusions of the preceding two sections.
(#1.4) Martin Luther’s philosophy of saintliness, while itself having recourse to theology, nonetheless revealed that in the context of this thesis, ecclesiastical authority/dogma must also be precluded from any philosophically adequate conception of saintliness. While this was not thought to prevent the philosophical consideration of any particular ‘canonised saint’, issues of brevity were again invoked as inhibiting the adoption of such an approach herein.
(#1.5) The philosophy of saintliness advanced by Voltaire and David Hume, although at odds in some important respects, were significantly alike in so far as they both emphasised the importance of social morality in any legitimate characterisation of saintliness. As our genealogy will reveal, this move accords well with contemporary philosophical conceptions. Their genealogical difference, however, is that as they properly belong to the Pre-Modern era, the philosophies of saintliness put forward by Voltaire and Hume were both dependent upon Christian conceptions.

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.