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574 Dialogue XXVI (1987)

being causal with respect to other things), and there, it has it because it has the

status of essence. "Essence" expresses an ineluctable ontological contribution

which in creatures cannot be that ofesse. Such a contribution is only conceiva-

ble becausebothessence andessein creatures presuppose the divine causality.

(And I claim to be givingno

'existence of its own'', apart from esse, to created

essence, no esse essentiae .)

I would take as expressive of the general vision I am promoting the words of

St. Thomas in theDe ente:"Of substances, some are composite and some are

simple, and in both there

is

essence; but in simple [substances there

is

essence] in

a truer and more noble degree, according as, also, they have more noble being

[esse]:

for they are the cause of those which are composite, at least [this is true

of] the first simple substance, which is God."

4

I.e., the study is of essence.

Essenceisfound most truly of all in God (how far we are from a doctrine in which

"God has no essence" ). We grade essence by the grade of esse the thing

exhibits (since essence is that through which and in which a being[ens]has being

[esse]),and we grade thatesseby the efficient causal hierarchy. The efficient

cause has more noble esse than its effect.

One can see why Owens focusses onesseand uses it as the scientific principle.

It may seem a small difference to insist on, but I would, while keeping essence

and esse in parallel view, as does St. Thomas, take essence as the scientific

principle, while regarding the existence of creatures as the "property", in the

Aristotelian scientific schema. I think this would result in a greater appreciation

of the kinship between essence (or form) and existence, and so in a greater

appreciation of the intelligibility of existence.

I congratulate the Houston Center for its wisdom in making more readily

available these important works of this outstanding Canadian philosopher.

LAWRENCE

DEWAN,o.P. College dominicain de philosophie et de theologie,

Ottawa

Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of

Communicative Action

HELMUT PEUKERT

Translated

by JAMES BOHMAN

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. Pp. xxviii, 330. $37.50

Helmut Peukert is a member of the Department of Catholic Theology, Univer-

sity of Miinster. His book, originally published in German in 1976, stands here as

part of a series entitled, "Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought",

under the general editorship of Thomas McCarthy. Previous works in the series

include books by Theodor Adorno, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jiirgen Haber-

mas.

The central question with which Peukert is concerned in this book is whether

or not theology, given the negative critiques it has received in recent decades,

can any longer be considered an intellectually respectable academic discipline.

At root this is a question about the intellectual respectability of theology's

4 St. Thomas,De

ente

et

essentia

(Leonine ed., chap. 1, lines 58-63).

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1987)

comm itment so as to prescind from the victims of history; but this undercuts the

possibility of communicative action by eliminating its necessary precondition.

Or one may choose to remain comm itted to universal solidarity, notwithstanding

the apparent futility of such a commitment; and exactly in and through one's

experience of taking the latter course, Peukert argues, there is disclosed an

unlimited, mysterious, and liberating reality by virtue of which the death of

every innocent victim ultimately is definitively overcome, such that in conse-

quence the futility of on e's commitment is manifested as merely apparen t. The

latter course alone preserves the presupposition that is essential to concrete

communicative action. Peukert illustrates this second step of his argument

through reference to developm ents in a second line of theology that culminate in

the work of Bultmann, Rahner, and Metz.

Precisely as an inquiry into the foundations of theology, Peukert's book

illustrates an increasingly widespread phenomenon, namely, the emergence of

issues that historically have been called ph ilosophical in academic disciplines

other than explicit philosophy. Whether recognized and labelled as such or not,

basic epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological issues are surfacing at

every turn in the attempts of physics, psychology, sociology, historiography,

literary criticism, etc., to make explicit their primary grounds of meaning and

elemental criteria of justification. One ofthegreatest merits of Peukert's book is

the clarity with which it manifests that an encounter with the full range of these

basic philosophical issues through inquiry into the foundations of academic

disciplines will be complete only insofar as the foundational study of any given

discipline eventually becomes at least virtually a foundational study of all the

disciplines, including theology. My principal criticism of the book is that the

level on which itfinally roots the philosophical issues is not, in my judgment, the

truly fundamental one. Peukert correctly points out that basic philosophical

questions ultimately are matters not of theory but of practice. The practice to

which he refers, however, is already intersubjective, linguistically constituted,

essentially public: he gives no standing to mental practice that is individually

subjective, often pre-linguistic, radically personal. I would argue that this Witt-

gensteinian stance reflects an insufficient knowledge of one's own subjectivity.

Except a t the price of operational self-contradiction, one cannot deny a certain

methodological priority of individual cognitional and moral practice over that of

the community; and the level of such individual practice is the fundamental level

on which philosophical issues emerge.

MICHAEL VERTIN

St. M ichael s College, University ofToronto

Order and Organism Steps to a Whiteheadean Philosophy of

Mathematics and the Natural Sciences

MAURICE CODE

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985. Pp. x, 265. $39.50,

$14.95 paper

Aproblem facing the philosopher of mathematics is to explainhowmathematics

can play such an important part in our knowledge of the world. How, for

instance, can one make a connection between the increasingly abstract notions