Eastern and Western Philosophy: Personal Identity

With acknowledgement to the CeramiX Art Collection

Posted by John Hansen

Once, when our world was not so small, major philosophies rarely made contact with one another. Further, being embedded in different languages, different concepts, different cultures, and different religions, on the surface of it they seemed to hold little in common.  

Yet as our world has become smaller, and as scholars have devoted more careful attention to distant ideas, so we have discovered, to our surprise, that our philosophies may be much the same.

A case in point is David Hume, the Scottish philosopher of the 18th Century, and Vasubandhu, the Indian philosopher of (about) the 5th – in particular, their views on personal identity.

From one point of view, there were enormous differences between these two men. Hume was an agnostic, and probably an atheist. He was, in the words of Julian Baggini, ‘as godless a man as can be imagined.’ Vasubandhu, on the other hand, was deeply religious. He was a Buddhist monk who spent much of his life writing commentaries on the teachings of the Buddha.

Yet Hume and Vasubandhu came remarkably close, on core philosophical issues. How then did they diverge so completely on matters of religion? What may this tell us about philosophy – above all about metaphysics? But first, let us survey a few examples of the central concepts common to both men, in the area of personal identity.



Vasubandhu believed that the self is a continuum of 'aggregates', which are the physiological elements which constitute the individual person. Similarly, Hume equated the self with a conglomeration of perceptions, which are in a constant state of flux. Both Hume and Vasubandhu therefore believed that, because of the constant transition of our mental states, these are a part of a continuum that moves in temporal sequence from perception to perception.

Vasubandhu believed that one's memory of an object is aroused when a special function of the mind connects to, and identifies objects from, earlier occurrences. Similarly, Hume believed that whatever the changes a person’s mental state may go through, older perceptions influence newer, and the vehicle for continuity is found in our memory, which acquaints us with a succession of perceptions.

For Vasubandhu, the 'self' which possesses a memory is equivalent to that which generatedthe memory. He argues that the only constant is that of perceived causal connection. Hume, similarly, argues that our memory helps us discover our personal identity by showing us associations among our different perceptions – and these produce the impression of identity.

Vasubandhu, however, did not distinguish between material objects and our mental sensation of them. Hume, on the other hand, did separate the two. Therefore Vasubandhu presumed the existence of objects outside of our mental state of being – allowing for religious belief. But Hume focused almost entirely on empirical comparisons and observations, believing it to be an abuse of the notion of personal identity that the idea of an unchanging substance should be added to it.

Hume the skeptic, and Vasubandhu the monk. How did they come so close on core philosophical questions, yet on the basis of such vastly different presuppositions? How could they so completely diverge on matters of religion, while in basic concepts they so largely agreed? What was it that – as it were – switched on religious corollaries in Vasubandhu, and switched them off in Hume?

Was Hume right? Was Vasubandhu wrong? Were there cracks in the coherence of their philosophies? Did their very languages shape their conceptual associations? Do religious belief or godlessness serve as mere garnish to real philosophy? The answers could have crucial consequences for philosophy.

Eastern and Western Philosophy: Personal Identity

With acknowledgement to the CeramiX Art Collection

Posted by John Hansen

Once, when our world was not so small, major philosophies rarely made contact with one another. Further, being embedded in different languages, different concepts, different cultures, and different religions, on the surface of it they seemed to hold little in common.  

Yet as our world has become smaller, and as scholars have devoted more careful attention to distant ideas, so we have discovered, to our surprise, that our philosophies may be much the same.

A case in point is David Hume, the Scottish philosopher of the 18th Century, and Vasubandhu, the Indian philosopher of (about) the 5th – in particular, their views on personal identity.

From one point of view, there were enormous differences between these two men. Hume was an agnostic, and probably an atheist. He was, in the words of Julian Baggini, ‘as godless a man as can be imagined.’ Vasubandhu, on the other hand, was deeply religious. He was a Buddhist monk who spent much of his life writing commentaries on the teachings of the Buddha.

Yet Hume and Vasubandhu came remarkably close, on core philosophical issues. How then did they diverge so completely on matters of religion? What may this tell us about philosophy – above all about metaphysics? But first, let us survey a few examples of the central concepts common to both men, in the area of personal identity.

Vasubandhu believed that the self is a continuum of 'aggregates', which are the physiological elements which constitute the individual person. Similarly, Hume equated the self with a conglomeration of perceptions, which are in a constant state of flux. Both Hume and Vasubandhu therefore believed that, because of the constant transition of our mental states, these are a part of a continuum that moves in temporal sequence from perception to perception.

Vasubandhu believed that one's memory of an object is aroused when a special function of the mind connects to, and identifies objects from, earlier occurrences. Similarly, Hume believed that whatever the changes a person’s mental state may go through, older perceptions influence newer, and the vehicle for continuity is found in our memory, which acquaints us with a succession of perceptions.

For Vasubandhu, the 'self' which possesses a memory is equivalent to that which generatedthe memory. He argues that the only constant is that of perceived causal connection. Hume, similarly, argues that our memory helps us discover our personal identity by showing us associations among our different perceptions – and these produce the impression of identity.

Vasubandhu, however, did not distinguish between material objects and our mental sensation of them. Hume, on the other hand, did separate the two. Therefore Vasubandhu presumed the existence of objects outside of our mental state of being – allowing for religious belief. But Hume focused almost entirely on empirical comparisons and observations, believing it to be an abuse of the notion of personal identity that the idea of an unchanging substance should be added to it.

Hume the skeptic, and Vasubandhu the monk. How did they come so close on core philosophical questions, yet on the basis of such vastly different presuppositions? How could they so completely diverge on matters of religion, while in basic concepts they so largely agreed? What was it that – as it were – switched on religious corollaries in Vasubandhu, and switched them off in Hume?

Was Hume right? Was Vasubandhu wrong? Were there cracks in the coherence of their philosophies? Did their very languages shape their conceptual associations? Do religious belief or godlessness serve as mere garnish to real philosophy? The answers could have crucial consequences for philosophy.

Eastern and Western Philosophy: Personal Identity

With acknowledgement to the CeramiX Art Collection

Posted by John Hansen

Once, when our world was not so small, major philosophies rarely made contact with one another. Further, being embedded in different languages, different concepts, different cultures, and different religions, on the surface of it they seemed to hold little in common.  

Yet as our world has become smaller, and as scholars have devoted more careful attention to distant ideas, so we have discovered, to our surprise, that our philosophies may be much the same.

A case in point is David Hume, the Scottish philosopher of the 18th Century, and Vasubandhu, the Indian philosopher of (about) the 5th – in particular, their views on personal identity.

From one point of view, there were enormous differences between these two men. Hume was an agnostic, and probably an atheist. He was, in the words of Julian Baggini, ‘as godless a man as can be imagined.’ Vasubandhu, on the other hand, was deeply religious. He was a Buddhist monk who spent much of his life writing commentaries on the teachings of the Buddha.

Yet Hume and Vasubandhu came remarkably close, on core philosophical issues. How then did they diverge so completely on matters of religion? What may this tell us about philosophy – above all about metaphysics? But first, let us survey a few examples of the central concepts common to both men, in the area of personal identity.

Vasubandhu believed that the self is a continuum of 'aggregates', which are the physiological elements which constitute the individual person. Similarly, Hume equated the self with a conglomeration of perceptions, which are in a constant state of flux. Both Hume and Vasubandhu therefore believed that, because of the constant transition of our mental states, these are a part of a continuum that moves in temporal sequence from perception to perception.

Vasubandhu believed that one's memory of an object is aroused when a special function of the mind connects to, and identifies objects from, earlier occurrences. Similarly, Hume believed that whatever the changes a person’s mental state may go through, older perceptions influence newer, and the vehicle for continuity is found in our memory, which acquaints us with a succession of perceptions.

For Vasubandhu, the 'self' which possesses a memory is equivalent to that which generatedthe memory. He argues that the only constant is that of perceived causal connection. Hume, similarly, argues that our memory helps us discover our personal identity by showing us associations among our different perceptions – and these produce the impression of identity.

Vasubandhu, however, did not distinguish between material objects and our mental sensation of them. Hume, on the other hand, did separate the two. Therefore Vasubandhu presumed the existence of objects outside of our mental state of being – allowing for religious belief. But Hume focused almost entirely on empirical comparisons and observations, believing it to be an abuse of the notion of personal identity that the idea of an unchanging substance should be added to it.

Hume the skeptic, and Vasubandhu the monk. How did they come so close on core philosophical questions, yet on the basis of such vastly different presuppositions? How could they so completely diverge on matters of religion, while in basic concepts they so largely agreed? What was it that – as it were – switched on religious corollaries in Vasubandhu, and switched them off in Hume?

Was Hume right? Was Vasubandhu wrong? Were there cracks in the coherence of their philosophies? Did their very languages shape their conceptual associations? Do religious belief or godlessness serve as mere garnish to real philosophy? The answers could have crucial consequences for philosophy.

---

By the same author:  The Pleasures of Idle Thought?

The Death of Rationalism

By Thomas Scarborough

We shall inhabit, for a moment, the world of the German philosophers Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen.  In 1973, Kamlah and Lorenzen co-authored the 'Logische Propädeutic' – an obscure title, with a dull brown cover, and ragged text hammered out on an electric typewriter. Yet it soon became a best-seller.

At its heart lies the concept of the predicator, which Kamlah and Lorenzen thought (in their definition of it) to be the key to a disciplined scientific and philosophical language. A predicator, to borrow a term from Gottlob Frege, 'saturates' the object. For example, in the sentence 'This is a Persian cat,' 'Persian cat' is the predicator. The technical definition: 'We assert a predicator of an object when we state something about the object.' A predicator, too, properly belongs only to a very limited range of predicators. For instance, one can point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is an animal,' although one cannot point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is a bicycle.' Predicators which are legitimately available for our use occur in chains, webs, or networks. For example:

    Cheshire cat → cat → animal → living thing
    Mountain bike → bicycle → vehicle → non-living thing

Note that, even at the end of such predicator chains, we may not arrive at anything common. To put this another way, a Cheshire cat and a mountain bike will rarely turn up in the same conversation. Therefore, the words which we speak fit comfortably into certain predicator chains, webs, or networks (we shall simply call them 'networks' here). Whether we speak about chemistry, ecclesiology, or philosophy, or anything else under the sun, our words fit comfortably into the subject under discussion. Yet even at the same time, most predicators will fail to fit into our conversation at any given time. For instance, while we are permitted to say, 'The maid carries the pail,' we cannot say, 'The maid carries the moon,' or anything of that sort.

In fact, our language is tightly constrained – so tightly constrained that when we put pen to paper, in whichever direction we cast our thoughts, we tend to be able only to construct networks of predicators which are agreeble to our starting point. Kamlah and Lorenzen observe, 'Predicators always stand in such a tightly woven nexus that any one tends to appear with others.' And briefly, they suggest a 'thought-provoking example': philosophy from Augustine to Leibniz was 'determined' by philosophers' understanding of predicators.

A philosophy has ambitions to think in every direction. Yet as it does so, it follows predicator rules (which resemble set theory), and is tightly bound by these rules. Thus Kamlah and Lorenzen note that we are 'thoroughly dominated by an unacknowledged metaphysics'. Therefore, as philosophers sat down in the past to write their philosophies, words were attracted to words – much as magnets snap to magnets – and so predicator networks produced philosophies. One merely needs to posit a starting point – the will to power, for instance – and snap-snap-snap, one has a philosophy. In short, philosophies self-assemble.

It happens through the very nature of words and their attractional forces. We all have experience of the same. Drop an origin into the middle of a pool of thought – or a starting point, a kernel, whatever one may call it – and a system grows. We sit down with a group of people in a hotel lobby. Our talk revolves around the tasteful furnishings and elegant décor. Then I drop a comment that I am doing fascinating research into elephants. From this, a string of conversation results which occupies the whole group for some time – until a concierge interrupts us with a message. I wonder then at my powers of influence. Yet it lies in the very nature of language, which click-click-clicks together in keeping with predicator rules.

Therefore, while philosophising may represent a more systematic pursuit than any casual combinations of words, philosophers have represented little more than the inclinations of the philosophers and their culture. All were bound by centuries of 'unacknowledged metaphysics' – namely, predicator rules. In fact, the same must apply to religion, politics, ethics. Predicator networks, even with the passage of time, remain largely intact. Is there an American in the house? The massacres of the Red Indians are in you, and you were in them. Is there a German? Adolf Hitler inhabits your mind, and you inhabited his. Is there a South African? Apartheid is in your heart, and you were in apartheid's heart.

Of course, we need not think so narrowly. There have been many Americans, Germans, and South Africans, as there have been people of many nations and cultures. A changed environment, too, means changed behaviour for the same hapless creatures. Even predicator networks will change. In this, Kamlah and Lorenzen set their hope. If we take a close look at the system and structure of our language over generations, indeed we may discern faint traces of change, if we focus hard enough.

The Death of Rationalism

By Thomas Scarborough

We shall inhabit, for a moment, the world of the German philosophers Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen.  In 1973, Kamlah and Lorenzen co-authored the 'Logische Propädeutic' – an obscure title, with a dull brown cover, and ragged text hammered out on an electric typewriter. Yet it soon became a best-seller.

At its heart lies the concept of the predicator, which Kamlah and Lorenzen thought (in their definition of it) to be the key to a disciplined scientific and philosophical language. A predicator, to borrow a term from Gottlob Frege, 'saturates' the object. For example, in the sentence 'This is a Persian cat,' 'Persian cat' is the predicator. The technical definition: 'We assert a predicator of an object when we state something about the object.' A predicator, too, properly belongs only to a very limited range of predicators. For instance, one can point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is an animal,' although one cannot point to a Cheshire cat and say, 'This is a bicycle.' Predicators which are legitimately available for our use occur in chains, webs, or networks. For example:

    Cheshire cat → cat → animal → living thing
    Mountain bike → bicycle → vehicle → non-living thing

Note that, even at the end of such predicator chains, we may not arrive at anything common. To put this another way, a Cheshire cat and a mountain bike will rarely turn up in the same conversation. Therefore, the words which we speak fit comfortably into certain predicator chains, webs, or networks (we shall simply call them 'networks' here). Whether we speak about chemistry, ecclesiology, or philosophy, or anything else under the sun, our words fit comfortably into the subject under discussion. Yet even at the same time, most predicators will fail to fit into our conversation at any given time. For instance, while we are permitted to say, 'The maid carries the pail,' we cannot say, 'The maid carries the moon,' or anything of that sort.

In fact, our language is tightly constrained – so tightly constrained that when we put pen to paper, in whichever direction we cast our thoughts, we tend to be able only to construct networks of predicators which are agreeble to our starting point. Kamlah and Lorenzen observe, 'Predicators always stand in such a tightly woven nexus that any one tends to appear with others.' And briefly, they suggest a 'thought-provoking example': philosophy from Augustine to Leibniz was 'determined' by philosophers' understanding of predicators.

A philosophy has ambitions to think in every direction. Yet as it does so, it follows predicator rules (which resemble set theory), and is tightly bound by these rules. Thus Kamlah and Lorenzen note that we are 'thoroughly dominated by an unacknowledged metaphysics'. Therefore, as philosophers sat down in the past to write their philosophies, words were attracted to words – much as magnets snap to magnets – and so predicator networks produced philosophies. One merely needs to posit a starting point – the will to power, for instance – and snap-snap-snap, one has a philosophy. In short, philosophies self-assemble.

It happens through the very nature of words and their attractional forces. We all have experience of the same. Drop an origin into the middle of a pool of thought – or a starting point, a kernel, whatever one may call it – and a system grows. We sit down with a group of people in a hotel lobby. Our talk revolves around the tasteful furnishings and elegant décor. Then I drop a comment that I am doing fascinating research into elephants. From this, a string of conversation results which occupies the whole group for some time – until a concierge interrupts us with a message. I wonder then at my powers of influence. Yet it lies in the very nature of language, which click-click-clicks together in keeping with predicator rules.

Therefore, while philosophising may represent a more systematic pursuit than any casual combinations of words, philosophers have represented little more than the inclinations of the philosophers and their culture. All were bound by centuries of 'unacknowledged metaphysics' – namely, predicator rules. In fact, the same must apply to religion, politics, ethics. Predicator networks, even with the passage of time, remain largely intact. Is there an American in the house? The massacres of the Red Indians are in you, and you were in them. Is there a German? Adolf Hitler inhabits your mind, and you inhabited his. Is there a South African? Apartheid is in your heart, and you were in apartheid's heart.

Of course, we need not think so narrowly. There have been many Americans, Germans, and South Africans, as there have been people of many nations and cultures. A changed environment, too, means changed behaviour for the same hapless creatures. Even predicator networks will change. In this, Kamlah and Lorenzen set their hope. If we take a close look at the system and structure of our language over generations, indeed we may discern faint traces of change, if we focus hard enough.

If Aristotle Visited Us Today

Posted by Eugene Alper

The term 'metaphysics' was born with Aristotle. He was the first who aspired to gathering together all previous philosophical knowledge, and integrating it in a single great work.

Perhaps he felt hopeful – as one might feel on a fresh morning in the woods, with the first rays of the sun filtering through the trees. Although he was teased by a few outstanding questions, perhaps Aristotle felt that the end was truly in sight.

Yet if Aristotle visited us today, he might conclude that philosophy is in major crisis. For we have been asking the same fundamental questions – the same perennial questions – for two and a half millennia. And because of that, he might note, we are in a less enviable position than he was. For accumulated knowledge without obvious fruit affects one’s sense of self-confidence. It also undermines hope: the more knowledge, the less hope.

It is natural for the teenager – by way of analogy – to be hopeful about the future, to think that by the age of forty she will certainly know how to live a life, as opposed to her parents who, for some reasons, still do not. But when the age comes, and the former teenager asks the same question and still finds no answer, and suspects something even worse—that at the age of fifty and sixty and seventy she may still have no answer—a sense of unease dawns on her. This is what they call midlife crisis.

One wonders whether Aristotle might see, in the philosophic state of humankind today, the same sort of midlife crisis. He himself had a limited literature or recorded history to look back upon – but we, he might observe, have 2 500 years. This long view of the well-recorded past might give him – as it gives us – a deep sense of unease.

On the one hand, seeing so much treasure accumulated in literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, one can reasonably say, 'Look at the baggage of fine thought we are bringing along. Does this not give hope that its accumulation in the future may be even greater, and that, just as we have seen in technology, there may soon come a qualitative breakthrough? Isn’t this the evidence that we may be onto something? Just one more step, just one more realisation, and we may understand what the good life is?'

On the other hand, this very outlook on the past shows that our thinking, in the most fundamental ways, does not improve with time. Like the bird which greets each morning with the same old song, we fail to recognise that there is nothing new, that our questions are not different from the questions already asked by Aristotle long ago, or better than the answers he already gave.

Our baggage today, Aristotle might observe, is dubious and heavy, for the very ability to know the past and to observe the distance one has travelled without much philosophic growth may make one lose heart. Our human thinking, he might conclude, is somewhat defective, somewhat limited by nature. It could be that, by nature, our mind is incapable of going beyond the Biblical God, Plato’s One, or Aristotle’s Primary Cause. Or it could be that, by nature, our mind does better when dealing with things measurable, yet not so well with things abstract.

Perhaps, then, there is no exiting from the loop, no jumping out of the rut. On the most fundamental issues we will still think in inescapable circles, resembling the fish in the bowl, who thinks it is moving forward while sliding along the concave glass.

The Foundations of Spirituality

The oldest known portrait of St. Francis.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

An Exploration of the Thought of Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen.

“A thought theory that never comes to grips with intuition, hallucination, spirituality or dreaming cannot possibly be a serious account of cognition.” —David Gelernter.

The entire discipline of spirituality – insofar as one may call it a discipline – is unstable. It is pluriform, fragmented, free-floating, subjective, without firm ground and without accepted categories, lacking cohesion. In a word, it is ramshackle.

However, spirituality is where we must begin, if we desire true religion. All religious dogma, without spirituality, is hollow at best. In Fr. Kees' Roman Catholic tradition, a vital spirituality has been neglected in favour of the laborious effort of straining to God through a metaphysics which St. Thomas Aquinas built on a rediscovered Aristotle. It is an impressive yet static edifice, employing (to most) unfathomable language: being, substance, essence, accidence, and so on.

The existing traditional edifice, on its own, is ill equipped to respond to the most pressing challenge of the Roman Catholic Church, which was identified by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as the spiritual reform of faith. Here is the classic predicament which both Catholic and Protestant traditions still properly need to resolve: faith remains weak (fundamentalist) without reason, while rationalism is uninspiring and incomplete (Descartes, for instance, or Kant). There is a pressing need for a vital spirituality.

But then, how should one derive a living spirituality from that which is sterile? How should one ground it? And how should one unite it with a theology of truth? How may one even – to be yet more bold – universalise it? Answering the call of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, these questions became Fr. Kees' journey of fifteen years of doctoral research.




Conservatively, four-fifths of our world believes in God. This includes the Christian tradition, which is formed and sustained by faith in a Triune God. Therefore we may begin with the simple assumption of God's existence, as the foundation of faith and spirituality. Given such belief, there are then three radical, foundational statements which follow. They have foundational worth – in fact general application – because they are indispensable spiritual categories:

• Unless we can experience God, He will be distant and powerless, and may as well not exist.
• Unless we have the spiritual intuition of God, He remains an unsatisfying idea, and inaccessible. And
• Unless we can have a relationship with God, He does not love us, and is irrelevant to us.

These foundational statements, in turn, may be turned into challenging questions about the faith which is the practice of spirituality: in service and in care, in adult formation, seminary training, youth work, catechesis, in worship and in sacraments, and in our personal walk of faith.

• Is there a real experience of God?
• Are we able to receive this through spiritual intuition, so that it is maximally fruitful? And
• Does it bring about a relational change with God, and a form of growth?

With these three foundational categories, we have, further, the example of the saints, which itself is foundational. In Fr. Kees' Roman Catholic tradition (the Order of Capuchin Franciscans), one looks to the example of St. Francis – a man uncontaminated by Medieval theology, yet who uniquely and directly experienced God, mystically intuiting a relational intimacy with Him. Through his spiritual vigour, St. Francis transformed the Roman Catholic Church, and became a significant revolutionary force for change in Medieval times. 

Thus spirituality may be grounded, and foregrounded, on the foundations here described. It may further be rehabilitated, which is the point of it after all. However, the details of its outworking are, needless to say, too expansive a subject for a mere introductory post such as this.

The full 702-page dissertation by Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen on the Foundations of Spirituality has now been published and can be read at:  Thönissen C.J. 2005. Foundations for Spirituality: A 'Hermeneutic of Reform' for a Church Facing Crises Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. Pretoria: UNISA.

The Foundations of Spirituality

The oldest known portrait of St. Francis.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

An Exploration of the Thought of Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen.

“A thought theory that never comes to grips with intuition, hallucination, spirituality or dreaming cannot possibly be a serious account of cognition.” —David Gelernter.

The entire discipline of spirituality – insofar as one may call it a discipline – is unstable. It is pluriform, fragmented, free-floating, subjective, without firm ground and without accepted categories, lacking cohesion. In a word, it is ramshackle.

However, spirituality is where we must begin, if we desire true religion. All religious dogma, without spirituality, is hollow at best. In Fr. Kees' Roman Catholic tradition, a vital spirituality has been neglected in favour of the laborious effort of straining to God through a metaphysics which St. Thomas Aquinas built on a rediscovered Aristotle. It is an impressive yet static edifice, employing (to most) unfathomable language: being, substance, essence, accidence, and so on.

The existing traditional edifice, on its own, is ill equipped to respond to the most pressing challenge of the Roman Catholic Church, which was identified by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as the spiritual reform of faith. Here is the classic predicament which both Catholic and Protestant traditions still properly need to resolve: faith remains weak (fundamentalist) without reason, while rationalism is uninspiring and incomplete (Descartes, for instance, or Kant). There is a pressing need for a vital spirituality.

But then, how should one derive a living spirituality from that which is sterile? How should one ground it? And how should one unite it with a theology of truth? How may one even – to be yet more bold – universalise it? Answering the call of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, these questions became Fr. Kees' journey of fifteen years of doctoral research.

Conservatively, four-fifths of our world believes in God. This includes the Christian tradition, which is formed and sustained by faith in a Triune God. Therefore we may begin with the simple assumption of God's existence, as the foundation of faith and spirituality. Given such belief, there are then three radical, foundational statements which follow. They have foundational worth – in fact general application – because they are indispensable spiritual categories:

• Unless we can experience God, He will be distant and powerless, and may as well not exist.
• Unless we have the spiritual intuition of God, He remains an unsatisfying idea, and inaccessible. And
• Unless we can have a relationship with God, He does not love us, and is irrelevant to us.

These foundational statements, in turn, may be turned into challenging questions about the faith which is the practice of spirituality: in service and in care, in adult formation, seminary training, youth work, catechesis, in worship and in sacraments, and in our personal walk of faith.

• Is there a real experience of God?
• Are we able to receive this through spiritual intuition, so that it is maximally fruitful? And
• Does it bring about a relational change with God, and a form of growth?

With these three foundational categories, we have, further, the example of the saints, which itself is foundational. In Fr. Kees' Roman Catholic tradition (the Order of Capuchin Franciscans), one looks to the example of St. Francis – a man uncontaminated by Medieval theology, yet who uniquely and directly experienced God, mystically intuiting a relational intimacy with Him. Through his spiritual vigour, St. Francis transformed the Roman Catholic Church, and became a significant revolutionary force for change in Medieval times. 

Thus spirituality may be grounded, and foregrounded, on the foundations here described. It may further be rehabilitated, which is the point of it after all. However, the details of its outworking are, needless to say, too expansive a subject for a mere introductory post such as this.

The full 702-page dissertation by Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen on the Foundations of Spirituality has now been published and can be read at:  Thönissen C.J. 2005. Foundations for Spirituality: A 'Hermeneutic of Reform' for a Church Facing Crises Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. Pretoria: UNISA.