Philosophical Traditionalism

The word and the thing

The word "traditionalism" here denotes a philosophy of knowledge, not an attachment to liturgical traditions or old customs. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it as "a philosophical system which makes tradition the supreme criterion and the rule of certitude"^[5]. The whole system rests on three linked affirmations, which Abbé Sauvage sums up thus: human reason, left to itself, is radically incapable of knowing with certainty any truth, or at least any of the fundamental truths of the metaphysical, moral and religious order; our first act of knowledge must therefore be an act of faith grounded in the authority of Revelation; and this Revelation reaches us through society, its truth being guaranteed by tradition, that is, the general consent of mankind^[6].

"A philosophical system which makes tradition the supreme criterion and rule of certitude." — Abbé George Sauvage, article "Traditionalism", Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 15, New York, Robert Appleton, 1912^[7]

Concretely, the traditionalist says to the Catholic: you know that God exists, that your soul is immortal, that good and evil exist, not because your reason discovered it, but because mankind as a whole has always believed it, and because this universal belief goes back to a primitive Revelation made by God to the first men^[8]. Philosophy demonstrates nothing; it gathers up the common deposit.

The error in one sentence

To grasp what is at stake, the image of the two wings, familiar to readers of John Paul II, sheds full light: faith and reason are the two wings of a single bird^[9]. Enlightenment rationalism wanted to fly on the wing of reason alone; traditionalism, by reaction, wants to fly on the wing of received faith alone. In both cases the bird crashes: a faith which no reason precedes or sustains can be neither justified before the unbeliever, nor even recognized as credible before embracing it^[10]. That is why the Church classes traditionalism, in its fundamental principles, under the same condemnation as fideism: "Traditionalism, in its fundamental principles, is a kind of Fideism"^[11].

What traditionalism is not

Three confusions must be cleared away from the outset, for the word is a trap today^[12] :

• Philosophical traditionalism is not liturgical traditionalism. Defending the traditional Mass or criticizing the post-conciliar reforms, the positions of the Society of Saint Pius X and of so-called "trad" circles, has nothing to do with the 19th-century thesis on the powerlessness of reason. A Catholic may love the ancient liturgy while holding, with Vatican I, that reason proves the existence of God; and a liturgical modernist could well be a traditionalist in philosophy without knowing it^[13].
• Traditionalism is not the Catholic reverence for Tradition. The Church holds Tradition, together with Scripture, to be a source of Revelation, and she venerates the consent of the Fathers as a precious witness^[14]. But she never made it the supreme criterion of all certitude, and least of all at the price of natural reason: Vatican I defines the two orders of knowledge, distinct and harmonious, without sacrificing either to the other^[15].
• Traditionalism is not ultramontanism. Bonald, Maistre and the early Lamennais were ardent defenders of the pope against the Gallicans, and that is even why Rome first read them with sympathy^[16]. But defending the authority of the pope does not imply declaring reason powerless: one can be ultramontane in ecclesiology and Thomist in philosophy, as most of the great popes of the century were^[17]. See the articles Doctrinal Gallicanism and Gallicanism (15th-19th century).

The trauma of the Enlightenment

To understand traditionalism, it must be set, as Abbé Sauvage invites us to do, "in its historical surroundings": it "clearly appears as a reaction and a protest against the rationalism of the philosophers of the eighteenth century and the anarchic individualism of the French Revolution"^[18]. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists had made individual reason the supreme tribunal before which Church, monarchy and tradition itself had to appear; the Revolution had carried out the programme: Civil Constitution of the Clergy, de-Christianization, the Terror^[19]. In the eyes of Restoration Catholics, the record looked damning: half a century of emancipated reason had produced the scaffold and the cult of the Supreme Being^[20]. The temptation was then immense: if reason left to itself breeds such monsters, it must be radically tainted, and certitude must be sought elsewhere, in authority, society, tradition^[21]. Traditionalism is that temptation turned into a system.

Joseph de Maistre: the Counter-Revolution in philosophy

Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), a Savoyard who became a Sardinian subject and ambassador in Saint Petersburg from 1803 to 1817, is the spiritual father of the entire Catholic Counter-Revolution^[22]. His Considérations sur la France (1797) sees in the Revolution an event at once "satanic" and providential: through it, God chastises an unfaithful Christendom^[23]. His essay Du pape (Lyons, 1819) makes the sovereign pontiff the keystone of every European order, an ultramontane thesis which delighted Rome and prepared minds for Vatican I^[24]. His Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg (posthumous, 1821) blends philosophical dialogues with meditations on sacrifice, language and war^[25].

Maistre is not himself a traditionalist in the technical sense: he does not deny that reason demonstrates the existence of God^[26]. But he supplies the school with three decisive weapons: hatred of individualist rationalism, the theology of authority ("all authority comes from God"), and a taste for the crushing paradox, which teaches a whole generation to despise the "petty reasonings" of the philosophers^[27]. Bonald and Lamennais would read Maistre as one reads a prophet.

Louis de Bonald: society before the individual

Viscount Louis de Bonald (1754-1840), an émigré during the Revolution and peer of France under the Restoration, gives traditionalism its absolute philosophical form^[28]. Three works mark out his system: the Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux (1796, published at Constance during the emigration), the Législation primitive (1802) and the Recherches philosophiques (1818)^[29]. His master thesis reverses the order of the Enlightenment: man is not first an individual who thinks and then associates; he is essentially a social being, and it is through society that he becomes intelligent^[30].

The decisive argument concerns language. Man, says Bonald, needs signs and words in order to think as well as in order to speak: "man thinks his verbal expression before he verbally expresses his thought"; yet man could not have invented language himself, since he would already have needed thought in order to invent it. Therefore language, together with the fundamental thoughts it expresses, was given to man by God his Creator, and with it every truth necessary to intellectual, moral and religious life^[31]. These truths must first be accepted by faith; they are communicated through society and education, and guaranteed by tradition, the "universal reason of mankind"^[32]. Apart from it, Bonald concludes, there remains "nothing but human opinions, contradiction, and uncertainty"^[33].

"Man thinks his verbal expression before he verbally expresses his thought." — Louis de Bonald, quoted by Abbé Sauvage from the Législation primitive (I, ii)^[34]

The reasoning charms by its apparent force, and the Church would never reproach it for what it holds that is true: the immense role of society, education and language in the formation of the mind^[35]. But the logical leap is huge: even granting that God gave the first men the primitive elements of language, it in no way follows that our first act of knowledge must be an act of faith; it should on the contrary be an act of reason recognizing, by natural reflection, the credibility of revealed truths^[36]. Bonald confuses the order in which the child receives truths (through teaching, which is undeniable) with the order in which the mind grounds them^[37].

The Essai sur l'indifférence: universal consent erected into a criterion

Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854) is the genius of traditionalism and its most illustrious victim^[38]. A Breton priest ordained in 1816 almost in spite of himself and a redoubtable pamphleteer, he publishes from 1817 to 1823 the four volumes of the Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, the book which makes him, at forty, the most widely read man in Catholic France^[39]. Rome herself at first salutes the work: Leo XII is said to have thought of making Lamennais a cardinal^[40].

The system of the Essai is, by Abbé Sauvage's admission, "almost identical" with Bonald's^[41]. Lamennais starts from an inventory of the instruments of knowledge, the senses, feeling, reason, and declares them fallible^[42]. The rule of certitude can therefore only be exterior to man: it consists in checking the senses, feelings and reasonings of the individual against the testimony of the senses, feelings and reason of all other men, whose universal agreement is the rule of certitude^[43]. To escape scepticism, one must therefore begin with an act of faith prior to all reflection, since all reflection already presupposes the knowledge of some truth; and this act of faith finds its criterion in common consent, "general reason"^[44]. Lamennais's conclusion, quoted by the Catholic Encyclopedia from the Défense de l'Essai (chapter XI), is: such is "the law of human nature", outside of which "there is neither certitude, nor language, nor society, nor life"^[45].

"Such is the law of human nature, outside of which there is neither certitude, nor language, nor society, nor life." — Félicité de Lamennais, Défense de l'Essai sur l'indifférence, ch. XI, quoted by Abbé Sauvage^[46]

The logical objection, which Sauvage states bluntly, fits in two questions: how could universal consent, which is nothing but the collection of individual judgments, give certitude, if each individual judgment is only opinion and each individual reason is declared fallible? And how could such agreement be ascertained in practice across the whole human race, even requiring only a moral universality?^[47]. Above all: to give firm assent to the teaching of universal consent, one must first have recognized the legitimacy of its claims upon our assent, which means that reason must after all precede faith, failing which our assent would not be reasonable^[48].

L'Avenir and the journey to Rome: 1830-1832

After the July Revolution of 1830, Lamennais changes his battle: with Lacordaire and Montalembert he founds the newspaper L'Avenir (October 1830) and the General Agency for the defence of religious liberty, demanding liberty of conscience, liberty of the press, separation of Church and State and the absolute independence of the Church from thrones^[49]. The French bishops take alarm; the paper is suspended in November 1831, and the three pilgrims leave for Rome to seek the pope's approval^[50]. Gregory XVI receives them kindly but decides nothing; on 15 August 1832 the encyclical Mirari Vos condemns, without naming anyone, the theses of the paper: liberty of conscience erected into a right, unbridled liberty of the press, separation of Church and State^[51]. Lamennais suspends L'Avenir and first makes an act of submission^[52].

Philosophical traditionalism is not the direct object of Mirari Vos: it is nascent Catholic liberalism that is targeted, and its history belongs to the article Condemned Catholic Liberalism^[53]. But the wound is dealt: Lamennais, who expected Rome to crown his thought, finds there only a refusal; the philosopher of universal consent will not forgive the pope for not consenting^[54].

Paroles d'un croyant and the break: 1834

In spring 1834 appears, with no author's name, the little book that would travel all over Europe: the Paroles d'un croyant (April 1834), biblical centos in which, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "resounds a violent cry of rage against the established social order", denouncing "the conspiracy of kings and priests against the people"^[55]. Into it Lamennais poured all his bitterness: the priest of universal consent turns prophet of democracy in it, and the apologist of authority turns accuser of the pope^[56].

Rome's answer is crushing. On 25 June 1834 the encyclical Singulari Nos condemns the book, "small in size, but immense in perversity", a phrase that has remained famous and comes from Gregory XVI himself^[57]. In it the pope sees a work undermining the entire civil order by rousing peoples against princes in the name of the Gospel^[58]. Lamennais refuses to submit: he had already resigned his ecclesiastical functions in 1833 and now consummates the break publicly^[59]. His friends try to hold him back: Lacordaire begs him in vain not to publish the Paroles, Montalembert conjures him in vain to submit to Singulari Nos^[60]. In vain.

"Small in size, but immense in perversity." — Gregory XVI, encyclical Singulari Nos, 25 June 1834, on the Paroles d'un croyant^[61]

The years of inward exile: 1834-1854

What follows is the slow drift of a genius without moorings. In the Affaires de Rome (1836-1837), Lamennais tries to justify himself; the work is put on the Index on 14 February 1837^[62]. His Esquisse d'une philosophie (1840-1846) systematizes his late thought, increasingly pantheist and humanitarian^[63]. He dies in Paris on 27 February 1854 and, by his wish, is buried in a common grave at Père-Lachaise, without funeral rites, mourned only by his political and literary admirers^[64]. The philosopher who had wanted to ground all certitude on the consent of all ends up alone against all, even against the Church he had wanted to defend.

The disciples who submit

Not all of Lamennais is lost. Several of his disciples, formed in his school, choose Rome over the master, and it is through them that the best of the movement survives^[65] :

The case of Montalembert is the most poignant: it was in vain that he had begged Lamennais not to publish the Paroles; after his submission to Singulari Nos, his correspondence with the master "ceased definitely in 1836"^[66]. The lesson holds for the whole dossier: the Church never condemns persons without leaving the door open to them, and those who walk through that door, like Gerbet, Lacordaire or Montalembert, become her finest servants^[67].

The order of acquisition and the order of demonstration

After the fall of Lamennais, traditionalism does not die: it grows modest. The mitigated traditionalists propose a distinction that sounds like common sense: the order of acquisition (ordo acquisitionis) must be separated from the order of demonstration (ordo demonstrationis)^[68]. Knowledge of metaphysical truths, they say, is absolutely necessary to man if he is to act reasonably; the child must therefore acquire them through teaching, through tradition, whose source can only be a primitive Revelation, before he can use his reason. In this order of acquisition, faith thus precedes science^[69]. But once these truths have been received by faith, reason can, by reflection, demonstrate the reasonableness of this act of faith: in the order of demonstration, science therefore precedes faith^[70].

The distinction seems to save the essentials: the child receives everything from his parents and from the Church, who would deny it? And reason would keep a role^[71]. But Abbé Sauvage is categorical: mitigated traditionalism "is substantially identical" with the pure form, and falls under the same criticism, "since religious and moral truths are declared to be given to man directly by Revelation and accepted by him prior to any act of his reason"^[72]. The distinction of the two orders, moreover, has "no real foundation": to demonstrate a truth already known is simply to reproduce, under the guidance of that knowledge, the operation performed at its first discovery: "the faculties and the process employed in the two operations are essentially the same"^[73]. Both systems therefore rest on the same fundamental error: in the last analysis, faith there precedes reason^[74].

"Mitigated or Semi-Traditionalism, in spite of its apparent differences, is substantially identical with pure Traditionalism." — Abbé George Sauvage, article "Traditionalism", Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912^[75]

Bautain and Bonnetty: the dossier summarized, the detail elsewhere

Louis Bautain (1796-1867), professor of philosophy at Strasbourg who became a priest in 1828, and Augustin Bonnetty (1798-1879), founder of the Annales de philosophie chrétienne (1830), are the two French names of mitigated traditionalism, and the two condemned men of the next generation^[76]. Their system starts from a sound observation, that wounded reason often goes astray, and draws a false conclusion from it: the fundamental truths (God, the soul, morality) would be inaccessible to reason left to itself^[77]. Rome proceeds step by step: six propositions imposed on Bautain on 18 November 1835, six more on 8 September 1840 (DS 2751-2756), the pledge of 26 April 1844 (DS 2765-2769); four propositions imposed on Bonnetty on 11 June 1855 (DS 2811-2814)^[78]. Both men sign, and die reconciled^[79].

This dossier is not developed here: it is treated in detail, with quotations and tables, in the article Fideism, of which the present article serves as the historical matrix^[80]. Keep only the Roman formula that closes both cases: the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul and the freedom of man can be proved with certainty by reason. That is the substance of the propositions of 1840 as of those of 1855^[81].

Ventura and the Louvain school: the Europe of traditionalism

Traditionalism is not a purely French affair. In Italy, the Theatine Gioacchino Ventura di Raulica (1792-1861), a famous preacher, philosopher and sometime unofficial nuncio, defends in his works, notably his Philosophie chrétienne, a softened form of the system: while exalting tradition, he wants to keep for reason a place which the pure traditionalists denied it^[82]. In Belgium, Casimir Ubaghs (1800-1875), professor at the university of Louvain, teaches a mitigated traditionalism which lastingly marks the school: his works, examined at Rome, prove to contain opinions "which could not be taught without danger", and the affair ends with the correction of Louvain teaching^[83]. The Catholic Encyclopedia expressly classes Ventura, Ubaghs and "the school of Louvain" among the holders of the mitigated system^[84].

Two encyclicals for a single man

The Roman dossier on traditionalism paradoxically begins with a political dossier. Mirari Vos (15 August 1832) condemns no thesis on reason and faith: it condemns indifferentism, liberty of conscience erected into an absolute right, and conspiracy against legitimate thrones^[85]. Singulari Nos (25 June 1834) condemns one precise book, the Paroles d'un croyant, for its revolt against the civil and ecclesiastical order^[86]. Neither defines the doctrine of faith and reason, which is why traditionalism as a philosophy would wait another thirty-six years for its dogmatic refutation^[87]. But the two encyclicals already sort the persons: they separate the obedient flock, Gerbet, Lacordaire, Montalembert, from the straying shepherd who refuses to enter^[88].

Vatican I: God knowable by reason

On 24 April 1870, the First Vatican Council promulgates the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius on the Catholic faith, the first text of an ecumenical council devoted organically to the relations of faith and reason^[89]. Its chapter II defines that God, the principle and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason through the things that are made (DS 3004)^[90]. Its chapter IV (DS 3015) establishes the twofold order of knowledge, distinct in principle, reason and faith, but bearing on the same truth, which cannot contradict itself since God is the author of both^[91]. And canon 2 on Revelation (DS 3026) anathematizes whoever denies that God can be known by natural reason^[92].

"Not only can faith and reason never disagree, but they also bring mutual help to each other: right reason demonstrates the foundations of faith and, enlightened by its light, cultivates the science of divine things." — First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, ch. IV^[93]

This is the dogmatic and definitive condemnation of the traditionalist principle: if God can be known with certainty by reason left to its own powers, then it is false that our first act of knowledge must be an act of faith, and false that tradition is the supreme criterion of all certitude^[94]. The detail of the edifice, chapters, canons, full table, confirmation by Vatican II and Fides et Ratio, is set out in the article Fideism; only the sentence closing the historical dossier is kept here^[95].

The table of Roman acts

Authority cannot do without reason

The first argument, which Abbé Sauvage borrows from Saint Thomas (I-II, q. 2, a. 1), is pure logic: authority, in whatever way it presents itself to us, cannot by itself be the supreme criterion or rule of certitude, for to be a rule of certitude it must first be known as valid, competent and legitimate, and reason must have established this before authority is entitled to our assent^[96]. In other words: believing tradition on its word already presupposes an act of reason which judged tradition believable. The traditionalist who refuses reason this first act saws off the branch on which his own faith sits^[97].

Universal consent grounds nothing by itself

The second argument targets the Lamennaisian criterion: universal consent is nothing but the collection of individual judgments. How could it give certitude, if each judgment is only opinion?^[98]. To this are added two practical difficulties which Sauvage does not spare: how could agreement across the whole human race be ascertained in practice, even requiring only a moral universality? And what would be, in this system, the criterion of truth for matters in which the human mind is not generally interested, or for scientific problems of which it is generally incompetent?^[99]. The criterion collapses as soon as one leaves the great truths that interest everyone, precisely where a rule of certitude would be most needed^[100].

What traditionalism had seen rightly

The condemnation is not a blanket rejection, and that is what makes the Catholic judgment great: it distinguishes the error from the grain of truth it wrapped up^[101]. Abbé Sauvage notes three gains which the Church keeps from traditionalism: against individualism and rationalism, it rightly insisted upon the social character of man; it recalled that authority and education play a large part in intellectual, moral and religious development; and it restored to the human mind respect for tradition, for the experience and teaching it contains, as the condition of true and solid progress^[102]. Universal consent may even be, "in certain conditions, a criterion of truth": it suggests the discovery of the true or confirms truth already discovered, but it can never be its supreme criterion^[103].

"Unless we admit that our reason is of itself capable of knowing with certainty some fundamental truths, we logically end in scepticism, the ruin of both human knowledge and faith." — Abbé George Sauvage, article "Traditionalism", Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912^[104]

The true doctrine, the same page teaches, is that of the Church, confirmed by psychology and history: man is physically and practically able to know with certainty some fundamental truths of the natural, moral and religious order, but, in the conditions of the present life, he remains morally and practically incapable of knowing sufficiently all the truths of the moral and religious order without the help of Divine Revelation (cf. Council of the Vatican, sess. III, ch. II)^[105]. Everything is said: reason can, but it does not suffice, which is why both reason and Revelation are needed^[106].

A dead system, a living temptation

As a professed system, philosophical traditionalism died with the 19th century: after Dei Filius, no Catholic school any longer holds that reason proves nothing^[107]. But the temptation remains, under two faces which John Paul II would denounce in 1998 in Fides et Ratio: the fideism which despises reason in the name of faith, and the rationalism which despises faith in the name of reason^[108]. Every generation of Catholics wounded by the errors of its time is tempted to throw away one of the two wings to save the other^[109]. The history of traditionalism is then a vaccine: it shows where extreme reaction leads. "The reaction was extreme, and landed in the opposite error", notes Abbé Sauvage soberly^[110].

Not to be confused with later crises

Two false sequels must be flagged to avoid anachronisms^[111]. On the one hand, the modernism condemned by Pascendi (1907) is the inverse error: no longer faith without reason, but religious feeling without dogmatic reason. Its history belongs to the article Modernism^[112]. On the other hand, the contemporary so-called "traditionalist" crisis concerns liturgy and disciplinary obedience, not the theory of knowledge: confusing the two senses of the word would commit exactly the equivocation which the first section of this article dispelled^[113]. Philosophical traditionalism belongs to the history of modern heresies on faith and reason, alongside the fideism of which it was the matrix^[114].

Readers who wish to go deeper will start with the clearest source: Abbé Sauvage's article "Traditionalism" in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), brief, structured and of implacable logic^[115]. They will then read the texts themselves: Gregory XVI's encyclicals Mirari Vos (1832) and Singulari Nos (1834), then the constitution Dei Filius of Vatican I (1870), all available on vatican.va^[116]. For the detailed doctrine of the heirs, Bautain, Bonnetty, the chapters of Dei Filius, see the article Fideism; for the later Lamennais and liberal Catholicism, see Condemned Catholic Liberalism; for the inverse error of the following century, see Modernism; for the Gallican context against which the first traditionalists fought, see Doctrinal Gallicanism and Gallicanism (15th-19th century); for the Jansenist ally of certain theses on the powerlessness of nature, see Jansenism^[117].