Chapter 4:Organism, Language and Grace (McCabe)

1) Organism: Like animals, we are sensual beings and have a consciousness. We are unlike machines who are manufactured and have no capacity to sense.
2) Language: To be classified as human, we must be a part of a linguistic and cultural system. Unlike Animals who are programmed to recognize symbols, Humans make and institute their own symbols.
3) Grace: Our “divine life” is our participation in God’s Narrative.
4) Aristotle and Descartes have opposing views on Human Freedom/Thinking using the open system/closed system views (respectively)

…what characterizes the human way of living is that it is shared more than the living of other animals(72). Descartes view of being human entailed a completely private way of living and thinking and seems to be in complete contradiction to Aristotle’s view that the only way to know that I am a free thinking being is if I am able to share my thoughts with others. Is it possible for humans to be Thinking/Free in the Cartesian tradition and if not, why?

As McCabe states “Human Freedom, which is an aspect of human thinking, depends on…the world of symbols and linguistic…meanings that are peculiar to the human story.”(72) To be linguistic means that we have inner monologues, which we express and we are capable of “forming aims and intentions for ourselves” (69). We are unlike animals in the way we act because “brute animals can act willingly or unwillingly, there is no possibility that they could have acted differently” (69) Humans are set apart mostly because we are linguistic which means we voice our thoughts, and even though one may argue that a dog is a thinking being, we are set apart from man’s best friend because we can express those thoughts.

As linguistic beings, humans live as characters in both a personal and social narratives. We differ from animals because we can enter into a human story with one another through language. I believe that it is quite impossible for one to do this under the Cartesian idea of consciousness. For Descartes, states McCabe, “consciousness is a way of being private; it belongs essentially to the hidden interior life.” As Descartes says in his Third Meditation, the only way for him to TRULY know that his thoughts were his own, he will “close [his] eyes, [he] will stop his ears, [he] will turn away [his] senses from their objects…” In every way Descartes turns himself away from any human contact. This does not lead to a human person being a thinking being. In fact, this method negates it. Senses are private to the organism experiencing them, and if we say the same for thought, we are no more of free thinkers than animals are.

McCabe agrees with Aristotle’s way of thinking on page 72 and points out that unlike sensations, which I have already established as being private for both animals and humans, “everyone can have my thoughts. If they could not, they would not be my thoughts…they are not unless they can be shared by others. The use of thought, then, is what frees us from the imprisonment in the isolated self.”

That leads directly to a sharing in the Grace Narrative of God. Language is the ability to transcend oneself. McCabe states that “self-transcendence is seen to be complete in grace, in sharing divine life.” So, then realizing that we are more than animals because we speak our thoughts, is it possible for one to enter into grace by being totally and completely alone? (the hermitage scenario) Is it possible for one to be completely alone in the Cartesian sense and enter and participate in the enacted narrative of God?