Perspectivism: Aquinas and Nietzsche on Intellect and Will

Perspectivism: Aquinas and Nietzsche on Intellect and Will

Walter J. Thompson

1.

I propose to examine here the riyal and often radically conflicting views of Aquinas and Nietzsche on the role played by intellect and will in human activity.¹ As the problem occupies so central a position in the thought of each – it is virtually the cornerstone of their respective anthropologies – I will not dwell on justifying my choice of theme. Still, if the topic itself seems unproblematic, perhaps the larger comparative project does not. Some may doubt the very possibility of the sort of encounter of rivals that I propose to facilitate. It might be objected, for example, that the two riyal accounts are so radically conflicting as to be incommensurable, that the antagonists share no common language in which to articulate their problems in a mutually intelligible way, and therefore, that genuine dialogue between them is impossible. If their accounts are indeed incommensurable, then Aquinas and Nietzsche cannot be construed as speaking about, as offering riyal accounts of, the same things. An encounter between such incommensurable views will prove impossible because there will be no commonly acceptable criteria by which to adjudicate their conflict. Indeed, it will be impossible even to identify the problems at stake in a mutually acceptable way, since what counts as a problem and why will itself vary across the riyal viewpoints. If this incommensurability holds, how can the two thinkers be brought into conversation?

To these objections, I offer two responses. First and most obviously, while common explanatory criteria may be unavailable in this case, there remains a deeper commonality to which we may appeal. For it seems an ineliminable mark of all accounts to intend to explain, to give a compelling account of the phenomena they consider. However divergent the riyal ways in which such an intention may be fulfilled, the deep intention to fulfill it remains common. It is this deep intention which justifies our grouping together divergent views as rivals, as contenders in a common enterprise. Despite the radical differences in their accounts of intellect and will, both Aquinas and Nietzsche purport to be offering an explanation of certain fundamental features of human experience. However much their accounts finally diverge, they are united by this deep intention.

Second, as this study will attempt to show, it may be that the apparent incommensurability between the two accounts is surmountable, if we can show that the incommensurability itself is unidirectional. If, that is, one of the two accounts can encompass its riyal, can provide an account that both saves the successes and explains the failures of its rival successes and failures intelligible to the riyal in its own terms then the problem of incommensurability will be overcome from the perspective of the encompassing account.² Such a conclusion, however, requires an argument, which I will now attempt. I will examine the views of both Aquinas and Nietzsche on the relation of intellect and will, expounding each view in itself and then in confrontation with its riyal. Finally, I will attempt to adjudicate the conclusion of that confrontation. Let us begin with the view advanced by Aquinas.

2.

To avoid possible misunderstandings, we would do well to begin by examining Aquinas' order and manner of treatment. Looking to the Summa Theologiae,³ we notice that detailed analyses of intellect and will occur in two contexts: first, in the prima pars, in the discussion of the creation and distinction of things, where Aquinas proceeds along the hierarchy of being that issues from God to arrive at human beings, there to treat intellect and will as powers which belong to the nature of such beings; second, in the prima secundae, in the discussion of those acts by which human beings come to the perfection of their nature, where Aquinas treats the role played by each of these powers in human action. Aquinas sets his treatment of human psychology, then, within a larger account of the nature of human being in particular, and of created being generally. In this treatment, moreover, he employs explanatory principles which he takes to hold for being generally. Those most commonly employed in the account of intellect and will are the Aristotelian concepts of potency and act and of the “four causes.”⁴ We will examine the uses of each principle as the occasion arises.

The type of account Aquinas gives an explanatory account should also be differentiated from an introspective or phenomenological description. For Aquinas, description can provide materials for the construction of an explanatory account, but description is not itself explanation. In his account of intellect and will, Aquinas rarely appeals to introspective evidence largely, it would seem, because it has little to offer in the way of explanation. He does not allow the human soul intuitive or introspective self-knowledge. Instead, he argues that the soul comes to know its own nature in the same way that it comes to know the nature of other beings by constructing an explanation that can account for the phenomena.⁵ In the case of the soul, the phenomena in question are the various actions which it engages. As a potency, the soul must know itself as it knows all potencies, by reflection on the acts proper to it.⁶ Let us turn, then, to Aquinas' two treatments of intellect and will: first, in themselves, as powers of the rational soul within the structure of human being considered statically; and second, in their relation within the dynamic structure of human action.

For Aquinas, intellect and will are powers or potencies proper to the rational soul, the substantial form of the human being. Because the soul is a finite created substance, its essence is not its perfect operation. Rather it is in potentiality to diverse operations, and to each of these in diverse ways. The powers of the soul are the principles of those operations by which the soul is brought to its perfection in act.⁷

The powers, then, are potencies directed to acts. As with all potencies, they are diversified according to the nature of the act toward which they are directed; and acts themselves are diversified according to the nature of their object. Powers, then, are specified by their formal objects or, more precisely, by the formality under which they are related to their objects.⁸ This distinction bears emphasis for, as we shall later see, a thing one in reality may be regarded under various formal aspects, and so be the object of various powers.⁹

Intellect is that power of the soul which is in potency to knowing truth, or that power by which the soul is related to being under the aspect or notion of the true. Thus the proper object of the intellect is being qua intelligible. Will, on the other hand, as a species of appetite, is that power of the soul which is in potency to desiring or inclining to good, or that power by which the soul is related to being under the aspect or notion of the good. Thus the proper object of the will is being qua appetible. The powers of intellect and will, then, are differentiated according to the formal aspect under which they are related to their common object, being.

The powers of the soul are potencies, Aquinas argues, and a potency must be moved to act by something already in act. This cause of motion can be either a principle, which moves as a moving mover, or an object, which moves as a term or end. A power, therefore, can be in potency in two ways: first, with respect to its operation – whether it be exercised or no – and second, with respect to its object whether the end of its exercise be this or that. Both intellect and will are passive with respect to both their operation and object. Each awaits a cause for its exercise and for its determination.

It belongs to the will, Aquinas argues, to move to exercise. Regarding operation will can, as agent or efficient cause, move both itself and intellect to exercise. This is so because under the will's proper object, the common notion of the good, are subsumed all the particular goods which belong to particular exercises of the powers.¹⁰ Will, therefore, insofar as it intends a more universal end the good in general moves the powers directed to more particular ends to their operation.¹¹ It belongs to the intellect, on the other hand, to move by determination. Intellect can, as end or formal cause, move both itself and will to the specification of its act, by presenting a power with its object. In this respect, under the proper object of intellect the common notion of being and truth are subsumed all particular truths regarding the powers and their proper acts and objects.¹² The relation between will and intellect in general, then, is one of reciprocal causality: will as efficient cause moves both itself and intellect to exercise, intellect as formal cause moves both itself and will to determination. ^l3 The causality of the powers is not univocal, but of diverse kinds. Will causes an operation to be, intellect causes it to be such and so. The formal differentiation of the two powers is not a real separation, rather, as Aquinas says, “these powers include one another in their acts. ^l4

Having said this much, certain difficulties with Aquinas' account seem immediately to arise. In the first place, how do we overcome what appears to be a vicious circularity in the causality of intellect and will? How do we avoid an infinite regress of causes if the exercise of a particular act of intellect depends on a prior act of will, which in turn depends for its determination on a prior act of intellect, which itself depends for its exercise on a prior act of will, and so on? How do we overcome the problem that both intellect and will are in potency with respect to both their exercise and their determination? If we suppose that we must begin from an initial inertial state, and if we conceive of causality solely in terms of mechanistic efficient causes, then the circularity cannot be overcome. Aquinas himself, however, makes neither supposition. Instead, he argues for the inherent natural dynamism of the powers, the natural directedness of the powers toward their proper ends.¹⁵ The will, Aquinas argues, is by nature inclined to the universal good, the intellect to the universal true. Pushing the argument further, Aquinas claims that God himself, as first cause of the being and final end of the operation of all natures, is the first cause of such natural movements in things.^l6 God is the ultimate source of the natural inclinations of created beings; and beings are created by God as naturally inclined, as naturally ordered to certain operations and ends. Thus intellect naturally knows first common principles in both speculative and practical matters, while will naturally wills the first principle of voluntary movement, the universal good and last end, under which is

subsumed all that pertains to the wellbeing of the agent as a whole.¹⁷ Such universal motion to the end makes possible every particular act of will, for it is the common notion under which any particular good is willed, the efficient cause which moves every particular act of will. Yet while in the absence of such universal motion, no particular good could be willed, it remains for intellect to determine each particular act of will to this or that particular apprehended good.

The natural teleology of the powers, therefore, overcomes the problem of initial inertia, while the problem of regress is overcome by the recognition that we are dealing not with a temporal series of univocal efficient causes, but with the operation of necessarily concomitant causes which differ in kind. Intellect moves to determination, will to exercise; intellect acts as formal, will as agent cause. The operation of each is necessary to any particular act.

A second potential difficulty arises in attempting to sort out the problems of agency that arise in any so-called “faculty psychology.” Aquinas himself treats this problem in replying to an objection which argues that, since appetite is naturally devoid of understanding, will can in no way receive and heed a command of reason. Aquinas responds that the powers of the soul operate not for themselves alone but for the whole human being. Thus any statement which attributes agency to a power can be translated into one which speaks of the human being who possesses such powers as the real agent.¹⁸ Faculties or powers, though they are to be formally differentiated, cannot be really separated. They are not themselves supposits spiritual organs, as it were but are potentialities which inhere in integral human agents.

Having examined intellect and will in themselves, as powers of the rational soul, let us turn to a brief examination of the role each plays in two sorts of human activity. I have in mind here Aquinas' distinction between speculative and practical activity, a distinction grounded in his differentiation of two corresponding sorts of intellect. Again, however, this analytic differentiation does not amount to a real separation, for while the speculative and practical intellects differ in their material object – the speculative concerned with necessary intelligibles and the practical with contingent operables – still they share a common formal object being under the aspect of the true.¹⁹ They differ again with respect to their end, for the speculative intellect directs apprehension to the consideration of truth alone, and its truth consists in the conformity of the intellect to its object; the practical intellect, on the other hand, directs apprehension to operation, and so its truth consists in the conformity of intellect with right appetite, which in disposing to the right end disposes to right operation.²⁰ This ordering of apprehension to a further end, however, remains an accidental and not an essential distinction, and so Aquinas admits only one power of intellect.²¹

These two sorts of intellect are, however, diversely related to the will. Will does not enter into the constitution of speculative reason's object, the necessary true, while it does enter into the constitution of practical intellect's object, a contingent operable.²² Let us apply our previous conclusions on the relation of will and intellect generally to these two cases. First, will can move both the speculative and the practical intellect to its operation or exercise.²³ While it cannot itself apprehend a thing as such and so, it can move intellect to the act which culminates in such an apprehension, an apprehension which may or may not then specify a further act of will. Thus will can, if indirectly, contribute to its own determination, by causing the exercise of that act of intellect which may subsequently determine it. Second, in speculative matters, will cannot determine intellect's object, for that object is something that cannot be other, something whose intelligibility cannot be altered by willing it so. In practical matters, on the other hand, will enters into the very constitution of intellect's object. The object of practical intellect is a possible thing to be done. Possible things to be done are judged by practical intellect according to their goodness or appropriateness. Goodness, however, is the proper object of the will, and the good is that which is desirable. Fully to know a thing as good, then, is to know it as desirable, and therefore as something toward which the will is inclined. The disposition of the will toward a possible thing to be done serves to mark it as a thing good and to be done or evil and to be avoided.²⁴

To recapitulate, the operation of will is necessary to make use of the power of intellect, both speculative and practical, in allowing or bringing about intellect's relation to its object, while it serves to constitute the object itself only of practical intellect. Such acts of use, as particular acts, must exhibit the reciprocal causality of intellect and will, intellect moving to determination, will to operation. And these acts of the component powers must themselves be particular acts, that is, must themselves exhibit the mutual causality of intellect and will the act of will specified by an act of intellect, and the act of intellect moved by an act of will. Thus will's causing the exercise of any particular act of intellect is not a moving to exercise generally, but a particular choosing in some here and now to move the power to operation. Moreover, choosing to exercise either the speculative or the practical intellect is itself a matter of practice, of something to be done, and therefore depends decisively on will's disposition toward that exercise, as on practical intellect's apprehension and judgment. Both speculative and practical activity, then, fall within the larger unity of voluntary activity in general, of activity that proceeds from a deliberate will. For such activity to be good activity, the proper disposition of both intellect and will is required.

3.

Let us turn next to Nietzsche. I will here construct a Nietzschean response to Aquinas' account, setting forth Nietzsche's own riyal account only to the extent necessary to construct this response. A fuller elaboration of the Nietzschean alternative will follow later in the argument.

To present Nietzsche's interpretation of Aquinas we must first know what it is on Nietzsche's account to interpret, what on Nietzsche's view it means to forward a view. For according to Nietzsche, views do not simply wear their meanings on their sleeves, they are not transparent to their deeper significances. So, confronting Aquinas, Nietzsche will ask: this Latin psychologist, what does he really want, what is it that drives him in such a direction?²⁵ To move toward a response to this Nietzschean question we must first examine Nietzsche's teaching on perspective.

For Nietzsche, all views without exception are perspective views, are interpretations. Interpretations, moreover, are forwarded by determinate character types, who fashion them in light of valuations relative to their type. All interpretations both reflect and at the same time conceal an interest.²⁶ They are fundamentally masks worn by a will to power which engenders them. To understand a view, therefore, we must disclose the interest it conceals, and trace that interest to the character type from which it proceeds. It is the Nietzschean genealogist's task to unearth and evaluate what lies hidden behind and beneath the surface ciphers of a view, to lay bare the character of that constellation of motives which gives rise to it. The truly decisive question regarding any view, therefore, is not “what is it?” but “from whom is it?”that is, what character type does such a view serve and how, or more precisely, what is the character of the will to power manifest in such a view.²⁷ Thus the content of a view becomes a symptom of a state of forces, a cipher of a character.²⁸ The interpretation of a view becomes the evaluation of one type of character (and its masks) by another.

Let us turn then to Aquinas' view, looking to what he does as a clue to what character type he is. What Aquinas does is to forward a certain kind of account, a philosophic account, which offers an explanation of intellect and will in the context of a broader account of nature or being. Such an account treats human nature and human psychology on the basis of principles of explanation taken to hold for being generally, principles at least potentially accessible to those with adequate aptitude in the use of reason. Such a totalizing view, Nietzsche argues, in forwarding the myth of an “order of things” accessible to the rational, denies the creative and perspectival character of interpretation. It denies differences in type, subjecting all alike to the tyranny of the same rational order. On Nietzsche's account, such a view is but a mask that conceals the working of a will to power of a certain type a type that feels the need to deny what differs from itself through totalizing claims; a type that, feeling itself subject, would reduce all to a similar subjection. Such a type is weak and base, and such a view is but an elaborate rationalization and projection on a cosmic scale of that peculiar mode of being. The action of this type is a reaction: too weak to affirm its own difference, it denies the difference of others.

The Thomistic account which vindicates this type, which fashions an order within which it might feel at home, is according to Nietzsche but a scholarly version of the morality of the weak and base all the more contemptible perhaps for its perverse ingenuity.²⁹ In forwarding such a supposedly universal account, Aquinas is in fact playing the duplicitous advocate, taking refuge in the fiction of an “order of things” because he lacks both the strength of character to self-consciously assume the authorship of his own interpretations, and the nobility of spirit to affirm himself in affirming the perspectival character of his views.³⁰

Aquinas' treatment of human psychology and human action views human acts as those which proceed from a deliberate will, and so those over which we are master. On a Nietzschean reading such a separation of doer and deed denies the efficacy of will to power, again for a reason which serves the interest of the weak. It sets over the expression of a type's force, its character, a neutral substratum which it falsely supposes is free and because free responsible to express its inherent character or not, to discharge its force or not. Such a view is the self=deception of impotence which masks the necessity of will to power's causality with the illusion of free conscious agency. “The subject,” says Nietzsche, “(or to use a more popular expression, the soul), makes possible to the majority of mortals, the weak and oppressed of every kind, the sublime self-deception that interprets weakness as freedom, and their being thus and thus as a merit.”³¹ The weak and base, who are constitutionally incapable of true action that is, of self affirmation interpret the necessary expression of their impotence as praiseworthy self-restraint, and likewise condemn the strong for choosing to give vent to the seeming excess which is but the necessary expression of their type.³² In either case, a fictitious agent is held to be responsible for what in truth cannot be other.

Aquinas further treats human powers and operations in terms of a natural teleology in which each power is ordered to some end proper to it, the realization or attainment of which constitutes that power's proper perfection. That perfection, moreover, then provides a measure by which to evaluate the success or failure of any particular operation of that power. On a Nietzschean view, such an elaborate teleological scheme denies the universal efficacy of will to power, substituting instead a multitude of superfluous principles.³³ It denies the multiplicity of evaluative principles which arise from differences in type, differences in the character of will to power manifest in a given type. In short, it denies the interested character of evaluation and substitutes a monolithic measure of adequacy taken to be binding on all perspectives.

4.

In laying out this Nietzschean critique of Aquinas' position, I wonder if I have not said far too much, if I have not quite naively acted the philosopher in attempting to apply Nietzsche's principles to the Thomistic account. For fundamental to Nietzsche's position would seem to be a self-conscious refusal to play the philosopher's game, to suppose that what we are about here is argument, debate, the reasoned consideration of alternatives. Perhaps the most consistently Nietzschean response to the Thomistic account would be no response at all. The self-conscious Nietzschean would not be interested in joining the issue with his riyal, indeed, would not acknowledge any issue between them. The Nietzschean strong and noble type needs no, and so seeks no, justification of his own view. Unlike the weak he does not need to vindicate

himself through comparison. Indeed, the very notion of vindication is radically alien to the character of the one who instinctively affirms his own difference, whose action is a positing of self and not merely a denial of what is other.³⁴ At best such a one would disdain what is other than his type when he happens upon it, but he would certainly feel no need to seek it out in order to prove a superiority he affirms from the start.

The authentic Nietzschean, therefore, would be little interested in engaging in the sort of dialectical exchange into which I have cast him. Indeed, it would be the death of his position to do so. That very few Nietzscheans – Nietzsche himself included – find themselves able consistently to exercise such restraint is a telling fact that we shall examine later at greater length. For now, let us simply note the tension, and move on to an examination of Nietzsche's own positive account of intellect and will.

5.

We notice at the outset a pervasive duality of aspect in Nietzsche's treatment of intellect and will. He examines each by turns from the standpoint of cosmology the view on nature and from the standpoint of psychology the view from the subject. Inquiring into the relation of these two views leads us immediately into irresolvable problems of circularity. On the one hand, Nietzsche will have his cosmological account ground the psychological, will have his teaching on nature ground his teaching on perspective; on the other hand, and simultaneously, his perspectivism requires that his cosmological account be given an explanation in terms of perspective psychology. To sharpen the issue, the necessity for Nietzsche to maintain the perspectival character of his teaching on perspective threatens to impale him on the horns of self-referential absurdity.

Later Nietzsche scholarship has recognized the peril of this duality of aspect and has attempted to avert it by emphasizing one side of the teaching to the neglect of the other.³⁵ Such a neat resolution, however, cannot suffice, for each aspect of Nietzsche's teaching not only accidentally but essentially implies the other. The consistent Nietzschean, moreover, must abjure any such tidy rational resolution.³⁶ We will return to these problems subsequently, when we have a firmer grasp on the particulars of Nietzsche's account.

Let us first consider the cosmological dimension. For Nietzsche all phenomena whatever are expressions of force, or more precisely, of a constellation of interacting forces.³⁷ What a thing is its essence is just this dynamic constellation of force. A thing is its expression; it is its effect. The world is the larger field of force which encompasses these component clusters in their dynamic relations, it is the effect of the summation of effects. On a cosmic scale life is the play of these contending forces and such play has the character of a struggle for mastery. This play of life Nietzsche calls will to power. “A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength,” he says.³⁸ And the world of such things is governed by “the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of claims of power... and every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment.”³⁹

Nietzsche, then, posits will to power as the pervasive cause of all phenomena:

The question is in the end whether we really recognize the will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of the will: if we do and at bottom our faith in this is nothing less than our faith in causality itself then we have to make the experiment of positing the causality of the will hypothetically as the only one... [Should one do so] then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as will to power. The world viewed from inside, the world defined and determined according to its “intelligible character “it would be “will to power” and nothing else.⁴⁰

While thus maintaining the ubiquity of will to power's causality, Nietzsche does not wish to deny, but rather to affirm the radical plurality of appearances, the heterogeneity of phenomenal manifestations. The monism of will to power is compatible with indeed is identical to the pluralism of its expression. It is will to power that manifests itself in any thing's expression, in its force. It is will to power that gives rise to, that differentiates, that relates the order of forces which are the being of any thing.⁴¹ Thus will to power confers on any thing its peculiar character and makes it to be of a certain type.

On the cosmic level Nietzsche envisages two antinomic types of force and will: an active force driven by a will which is affirmative; and a reactive force driven by a will which is negative. In their manifestation in human beings these types appear as the strong and noble as opposed to the weak and base human type. Despite these divergences in types of manifestation, behind all manifestations of force lies will to power. As Gilles Deleuze has written, for Nietzsche, “everywhere and always the will to power is 'the one that.”⁴²

Let us turn next from the cosmological aspect of Nietzsche's teaching to the psychological, from will to power's working in the world to its working in human beings. We have seen above that will to power gives rise to, differentiates, and orders expressions of force into types. In the phenomena we call human beings such determinations specify distinct types of character. What sets one human being apart from another is the character of force and its directive will that that person manifests or more precisely, of which that person's expression is the expression. If a human being, like all beings, is a constellation of will driven force, and if the essence of force is its effect, then a human being is the sum total of his effects, of those manifestations of force we call actions or operations.⁴³ Conversely, what a human being effects in any given situation will be the necessary consequence of the type of his being, of the will driven force manifest in him.⁴⁴

Thus for Nietzsche all the manifold activities in which human beings engage are the many masks assumed by a will to power. Their deep significance is always to be found in the character of will driven force manifest in them. All activities proceed from, or are expressions of, distinct human types, and such types differ radically. Still, all activities proceed toward an end which, while varying materially by type and circumstance remains formally constant across both type and circumstance namely, the advancement of the life of the actor, the increase of his power.⁴⁵

Thus while the particular ways in which individuals further their existence may vary radically across types, it remains the case that all individuals whatever their type seek a formally common end. Similarly, while the particular means through which a type furthers its existence may vary immensely, Nietzsche envisages but two formal possibilities, which correspond to his basic distinction in types of force and will. Strong and noble types further their lives through action through the affirmation of their difference while weak and base types further their lives through reaction through the denial of what differs. Now, as all particular human acts are acts of particular human beings, and all particular human beings are of a type, all human acts must issue from a determinate type. Therefore all human acts will be driven by a will to power which seeks to further a determinate mode of existence. What we say of any particular human act, then, we must say in reference to the needs of a determinate type, the demands of a determinate life.⁴⁶

If it is true that each thing qua living seeks to further its life, and qua type seeks to further its determinate way of life, it is also true that the operations by or in which a thing pursues its goal vary according to the kind of thing it is. Thus all that live share a common end, all of a type share a common character, and all of a kind share common functions or operations. As all particular instances of a kind are of a determinate type, particular exercises of a function must themselves be in the service of determinate types serving their lives through them. Functions, therefore, or their uses, must also be differentiated by type, according to the character of will-driven force they serve and express.

In exploring human beings, then, we must look to them first as a kind sharing common functions, and next as types possessing distinct characters. Among the several functions common to human beings we will concern ourselves here with intellect and will alone, looking to each in itself and to both in relation, first as to their common function and second as to their determinate uses.

For Nietzsche, intellect as a function is not fundamentally a cognitive or contemplative power, but an interpretive or creative one. In an earlier context we adverted to Nietzsche's teaching that all views are perspectival interpretations. Let us here elaborate. Interpretation is for Nietzsche a matter more of eisegesis than of exegesis: it confers, it does not discover meaning. Through intellect a determinate character fashions for itself a meaningful world in which its type can feel at home.⁴⁷ Such creation or conferral of meaning is perspectival, that is, relative to a type, and so is driven by that will to power of which the type is the manifestation.

Intellect, then, is an instrument in the hands of will to power, and its products interpretations are a means through which will to power works its way in human being.⁴⁸ Perhaps, however, the language of instrumentality misleads by reifying and separating the function and its ruling will, whereas for Nietzsche particular exercises of a function are not accidentally or extrinsically but essentially or intrinsically related to will to power. He call that on his view the essence of a thing is its effect, the expression of its inherent force, and will to power both gives rise to and gives order to such an expression. In human beings such force is expressed through the operation of those functions peculiar to their kind. Such operations, then, belong neither to faculties nor agents, but are simply the expression of that will-driven force which is the being of the human being.

Let us now turn from intellect as a function common to the kind of thing we call a human being, to its particular uses in diverse character-types. Nietzsche differentiates particular uses of intellect according to the second order attitude which diverse types assume toward the nature of intellect as a function. Here as always for Nietzsche, as the type is, so is the act; and as the will is, so is the type. To diverse types of will to power, therefore, correspond diverse types of exercise of what on the surface appears to be a common function. Operations diverge in character as radically as the character types from which they proceed, and for the same reason. Let us look to these divergences.

It is the mark of the weak and base, Nietzsche holds, to mask the creative function of intellect, to deny its interpretive and perspectival character, and to substitute a totalizing interpretation of its role which masquerades as the truth of things. Too weak to self-consciously assume the awful necessity of truth-creation, the weak and base deny it, taking refuge in the fiction of a real order of things accessible to and binding on all. Lacking the nobility of spirit necessary to affirm themselves in affirming their own interpretations as interpretive, in donning their masks self-consciously, they end by denying interpretation altogether, and subjecting all to their unacknowledged creations.

The strong and noble, on the other hand, because their action is an affirmation of their own difference, self-consciously affirm the creative function of intellect. Because they glory in themselves, they glory too in their self-expression. They own their interpretations as interpretive, as perspectival. They know their knowing to be a free creation proceeding from a will to power which makes them to be what they are. Such types renounce the petty comfort of subjection to any totalizing view and assume the terrible but liberating responsibility of truth-creation. Unlike the weak, they need not hide the interested origins of their views from themselves at any rate but don their masks self-consciously, in full recognition of their perspectival character. Only in this way is their exercise of intellect an affirmation of difference, only so does their operation conform to their character, to the type of will to power manifest in them.

Turning now from intellect to will, we first note that willing as an operation of the kind of being we call human is not for Nietzsche equivalent to will to power. Rather, as with all functions, acts of will are surface expressions or manifestations of a deeper force-will to power. What we call willing is but a channel through which, or a means by which, this more fundamental drive is vented. As expressions of will to power, therefore, particular will-acts receive their meaning from the character of that which they express, from the type of will to power they display.

As an operation, Nietzsche sees willing as “above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word.⁴⁹ He offers us this phenomenological description:

[T]he will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and specifically the affect of the command.... A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.⁵⁰

Coincident in any instance of willing, then, are a manifold of volitional sensations, a ruling thought, and the simultaneous affects of command and obedience. These exist in an inseparable complex. Their mutual relation and not any one taken in isolation constitutes the phenomenon we call willing. This complex, moreover, is not an act effected by some agent, but a manifold acted within an agent by will to power. It is will to power and not some sovereign subject that wills in our willing.⁵¹ The fiction of the sovereign subject is the interpretation of a certain type, the weak and base, who separate agent and act, force and effect, that they might view as voluntary and so meritorious what is but the necessary expression of their innermost character.⁵² The strong and noble, on the other hand, recognize that behind or beneath their willing is no free and independent subject, but the necessity of will to power. They admit that the very force of their character compels them to discharge their inherent power, to express their strength.⁵³ The weak, while equally bound to this necessity of character, mask it by means of the fiction of moral agency, of freedom of will. And they do so in order that they, who are too weak to enjoy the pleasure of commanding and subduing others through an affirmation of self, might feel the vicarious pleasure of mastery over self through a denial of strength, and so suppose their impotence an achievement.

Regarding the relation of intellect and will as functions, Nietzsche sees the operations of intellect and will as inextricably intertwined. In any human act we will find an inseparable complex of thought directed will and will prompted thought.⁵⁴ The exercise of neither, it would seem, can exist in isolation. There can be no thinking without willing, no willing without thinking.⁵⁵ Their differentiation as functions, moreover, masks a deeper unity, for the operation of both is fundamentally an expression of will to power. A will to power of a certain type always lies behind each instance of thinking willing, giving rise to it, giving meaning to it, giving value to it.⁵⁶

Finally, let us consider the attitude assumed by the divergent types of human being toward the relation of intellect and will to one another and to will to power. It is characteristic of the weak and base, Nietzsche maintains, to mask the causality of will to power through the reification of functions into independent faculties whose operation is subject to the control of a neutral subject. The strong and noble, on the other hand, self-consciously affirm both the inseparability of thinking-willing, and the dependence of this complex on a will to power of a certain type. In short, each type responds to the relation of the functions in a way congruent with its own mode of being, in a way that furthers its own life.

6.

Having set forth the Nietzschean counter-position, I will now attempt to construct a Thomistic response. At the outset we should note that a Thomistic critique will differ from a Nietzschean in this, that while by the internal logic of his own position the Nietzschean cannot engage in dialectic cannot enter into an argument without subjecting himself to the terms of his rival, and therefore without renouncing his position on perspective the Thomistic critique must be dialectical in form, must join the issue on the interlocutor's own ground and attempt to show him on his own terms the impossibility of maintaining his position. Such a dialectical critique must, moreover, provide an account that can explain that impossibility. My own critique will focus on what I take to be the cornerstone of Nietzsche's account, his teaching on perspective. But first, let us address some points of detail.

A Thomist will wonder, first, how Nietzsche can deny the existence of a subject of activity, of an agent independent of its acts, by asserting that a thing is but the sum of its effects. How, the Thomist will ask, can we speak of a sum without presupposing something to which the things summed accrue? Nietzsche may protest that it is only grammatical habit that compels us to speak in this way,⁵⁷ but the Thomist will respond that it is a telling fact that we cannot speak otherwise, that our thought, and so our language, will allow us no alternative. And for one who finds an essential connection between our mode of knowing and speaking and our mode of being, the mute dismissal of grammatical habit seems cavalier.

Second, regarding Nietzsche's understanding of will to power's universal efficacy, the Thomist will ask: if will to power is always “the one that,” and if its expression cannot be other, why are Nietzsche's pages filled with exhortation, with denunciation, with exultation, with lament? Why quarrel with necessity? Why not rather resign oneself to the inevitable?⁵⁸ Nietzsche's own practices threaten to give the lie to his account.

Third, with respect to Nietzsche's account of the best type of human life, the Thomist will wonder just what it is that makes such a life best. The strong and noble type, we recall, is the one who creates meaning, purpose, and direction, who, in Nietzsche's words, “overcomes.” The context within which Nietzsche offers such a teaching on the best sort of human life is a genealogical unmasking of common morality and its claim to be grounded in the “nature of things.” Nietzsche appears to deny the existence of any such natural order and to ground his own rival account in the impossibility of discovering any such norm. Yet here the Thomist will wonder whether, despite his intentions, Nietzsche is not himself forwarding an account of the “nature of things” as norm.

Nietzsche replaces a purposive teleological natural order, conformity to which constitutes human perfection, with an alternative vision of a nature without purpose or direction which, he claims, can function as no norm. If purpose or value is to exist, he argues, it must be created by man or, more precisely, by a certain type of man. Such a type is “the one who overcomes,” the one who freely and self-consciously posits from his own way of being meaning, value, and purpose. It is significant that Nietzsche forwards his account of such a type within the context of a broader account of nature, that he does feel the need to debunk the traditional account and to provide a riyal account in which his ideal type seems more at home. In this sense, Nietzsche does not wish his ideal human type to be a mere rebel against the order of things. What, then, is the true extent of the freedom of “the one who overcomes”?

He is not, it would seem, utterly or indiscriminately free. Indeed, he is in a certain sense bound by at least the formal criterion that, whatever else he may be, he must be one who overcomes, one who creates meaning, purpose, and value. This criterion, then, “the one who overcomes” is not free to create. Though Nietzsche refuses to specify the determinate forms that overcoming may assume, he does bind his ideal type to this formal requirement. The freedom of such a type is not absolute, but conditioned. His is an ordered freedom, a freedom to – in this case, to overcome. In fact, his freedom is a form of enslavement – enslavement to the necessity of life as will to power. ⁵⁹

Given this fact, the question immediately arises: why is freedom understood in such a way normative? What distinguishes this from all other norms which Nietzsche has with such vehemence debunked? In response, Nietzsche seems to argue that he who overcomes is true to life, that life is will to power, and that the character of will to power is overcoming. But again we must ask, why then is life as will to power normative? Isn't Nietzsche here doing precisely that for which he denounces all previous philosophers, namely, forwarding a teaching on the “nature of things,” conformity to which constitutes the best type of human life? Despite his vigorous protests to the contrary, isn't he arguing that nature or the order of things is such and so, therefore human activity should be such and so, that is, in conformity with the “nature of things?”⁶⁰ If Nietzsche is in fact offering such an account, then it remains difficult for a Thomist to see how he can continue to exempt himself from the requirement of justifying his account as an account. If he can no longer claim to be engaged in an enterprise radically different from that of past philosophers, can he maintain the privilege of placing his account above dialectical scrutiny?

For our fourth point, let us examine the relation of Nietzsche as author to the account he authors. Let us compare what Nietzsche is doing in giving an account with the content of the account he gives.

Nietzsche, we will argue, betrays more of the tacit Thomist in himself than he would care to admit. Given his teaching on perspective and the relation of perspectives to determinate types of will to power, why is it that Nietzsche feels the need to communicate his discovery to us, to invite us to consider his view? Why does he forward his account in opposition to riyal accounts? Now, he may respond that his doing so is but a form of self-affirmation, but it remains striking that his affirmations take this form. Given what Nietzsche has said of the strong and noble type, the last thing we would expect from him would be the deliberate and detailed exposition of the opposition of the strong and noble and the weak and base human types. Indeed, the very mark of the strong and noble type as Nietzsche understands him is a terrible yet carefree indifference to all forms of selfjustification.⁶¹ His self is its own justification; he need enter no comparison to be vindicated. The need to vindicate oneself through comparison is precisely the province of the weak and base, whose impotence compels them to give an account.

It remains difficult to see how Nietzsche can escape this difficulty. His own activity as author contradicts the teaching he authors; his deeds give the lie to his words. Nietzsche attempts to vindicate his view in the face of its rivals, while forwarding a view that maintains both the impossibility of meaningful vindication and the superiority of that view which recognizes the impossibility and renounces the quest for vindication. It may be objected that Nietzsche is here offering no vindication but an interpretation, one affected in full knowledge of its perspectival character. Such a retort, however, misses the fundamental point. It is not what is offered, but the fact of the offering that is decisive. Nietzsche can take refuge behind the play of words, but he cannot hide the fact of his speaking. Such speaking betrays a deep need to justify, to give an account of one's views. And this in turn manifests a still more fundamental desire, the desire to be right, to hold not just any view but a true one.⁶² Nietzsche's own deeds in this case bear witness to Aristotle's observation that all human beings by nature desire to know. And is it perhaps a corollary of this desire that all human beings wish the object of their desire to receive its due, that truth be known for what it is and not otherwise? How else can we explain the natural human inclination to argue, to offer accounts which intend to be true and to resist those that appear to be false? Does not this reaction and it appears to be Nietzsche's give the lie to Nietzsche's own account? Does it not imply that we do pursue truth precisely as common, that the notion of the universality of truth is inherent in our desire for it?

Now, to maintain that truth is common is by no means to imply that it is equally apparent to all. From the view that truth is common “in itself' does not follow that it is common “to or for us.” To speak in Thomistic terms, though the order of being the mind's grasp of which constitutes truth itself is common to all, the apprehension of that order need not be. Indeed, given the palpable diversity among potential knowers with respect to intelligence, interest, character, and leisure, we have every reason to believe that it will not be. Here the views of Aquinas and Nietzsche diverge radically, for while Aquinas differentiates speaking of things “in themselves” from things “to or for us,” differentiates the “order of being” from the “order of apprehension,” and relates them as measure to potentially measured, Nietzsche seems to eliminate the distinction altogether. There is no difference, he will argue, between appearance and reality, between things for us and things in themselves. The notion of a “real world” underlying the world of appearance is a fiction and no innocent one at that, for it is fabricated by base, reactive types too weak to assume the responsibility of perspectival truth creation.

To put the issue between them succinctly, I would argue that Aquinas is in fact the perspectivist, while Nietzsche, despite his protests, succumbs precisely to a form of totalism. It is Aquinas who maintains that, while the order of being is given prior to and as the condition of understanding, coming to know it is a process whose success or failure depends decisively on the disposition of the inquirer, on his perspective. Nietzsche, on the other hand, maintains that there is no common reality intended by inquiry, that all knowing, whatever the perspective of the knower, is truth creation.

For Aquinas, one can choose in particular situations whether or not to attempt to come to know. Through a particular act of will one can choose to inquire, to exercise his intellective capacities, whether in things to be done, or in things to be known alone. On a Thomistic account coming to know is a complex process into which figure the dispositions not only of will and intellect our focus here but of the passions, the senses, the body in short, of the whole human being. Knowing is in this sense a process in which a concrete human agent comes into relation to some particular intelligible object. Knowing is perspectival in the sense that all potential knowers are particular agents disposed in particular ways to particular objects, while all occasions for knowing are themselves particular situations with determinate features which may facilitate or hinder the process. Yet while all knowing is from embedded in and conditioned by a determinate perspective, still it is too directed toward a reality whose existence is given prior to its being known. The real “in itself' becomes the real “to or for us” in and through an act of knowing which effects a relation between a concrete human agent and some knowable object. In attempting to give an account of this relation, any but realist presuppositions would seem to lead us into irremediable difficulties, for any denial that it is the real itself that is disclosed to us in this relation must marshal as evidence some contrary insight, which must itself claim to be founded on an adequate grasp of the real.

Nietzsche's counter position takes the form of the quite radical and totalizing claim that all knowing is not merely mediated or conditioned by the perspective of the knower, but that the knower himself constructs an intelligible world out of the resources of, and in harmony with, the needs of his own character. Such an account of knowing holds for all perspectives. Types differ only in the attitude they assume toward it, the strong affirming and the weak denying it. If this is Nietzsche's position, it remains difficult to see how he can forward it and avoid self-refutation. And it remains difficult to see why Nietzsche would be speaking at all if not to forward it. If giving an account is not what Nietzsche wishes to be up to, then maintaining silence would seem to be the most appropriate response. Nietzsche, however, seems emphatically incapable of silence, and given the fact of his speaking, we have every right to assume that he wishes to submit himself to the requirements of conversation, chief among which is the demand that in speaking one actually be saying something, be making a claim, and therefore be excluding from one's claim all that one might have said but did not. Now Nietzsche's claim is a universal one: that all knowing is conscious or unconscious truth creation. As universal, it must apply also perhaps especially to itself. And when applied to itself, it explodes the very claim it purports to make.

At this point, if the Nietzschean takes refuge in the excuse that he is not engaging in argument, that he is not playing the philosopher's game, and so need not subject himself to the conditions of argument, the conversation must end. For time being short, and” the way of inquiry long, the Thomist cannot squander his energies. And arguing with one who rejects the possibility of argument is futile. The Nietzschean may find the Thomist's seriousness in this regard amusing, but the Thomist is enough a Platonist to recognize that the opposite of seriousness is not play but frivolity. And for the Thomist, to press the issue beyond this point would be frivolous.

7.

To conclude, let us return to what is fundamental in the disagreement between Aquinas and Nietzsche. At issue are radically divergent views of the proper way to philosophize, and to approach the history of philosophizing. Nietzsche's genealogical method proceeds not through argument but through interpretation and evaluation. It determines the meaning of a view by revealing its origin in a will to power of a certain type. It then evaluates that view and that will from without, from the perspective of the interpreter. It cannot enter into debate with a rival, cannot criticize an opponent's view from within and show it to be internally incoherent, but must attack from the outside. Genealogy, then, consists in external total critique, in the confrontation of antinomic perspectives. Aquinas' method, on the other hand, is dialectical, it attempts to join an issue from within, on an interlocutor's own ground, and to show in terms intelligible to that interlocutor the impossibility of maintaining his position.

I have attempted to show that Nietzsche's own account cannot explain the fact of his giving it. Paradoxically, it is Aquinas who is able to explain what Nietzsche is doing, and furthermore, to explain why Nietzsche's own account is unable to do so. To the extent that Aquinas provides an explanation for Nietzsche's failures, his account has vindicated itself at the bar of its rival. To say this, however, in no way implies that the argument between them is closed, for at least two reasons. First and most obviously, our analysis here was limited to only one aspect of the thought of each. Many important issues remain to be joined. Second, and more importantly, the encounter of rivals itself has proved to be a fruitful tool of interpretation. The confrontation with an alien view brings to light aspects of a teaching that would otherwise remain hidden in this case, the latent perspectivism in Aquinas' teaching. Dialogic encounter, then, aids us in getting to the bottom of a teaching and, through it, to the real problems that teaching addresses. For these reasons, the analysis offered here can be but a first step in a continuing project.

1.      The author wishes to thank Edward A. Goerner, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Roos, and Michael M. Waldstein for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Research on this paper was supported by the Earhart Foundation and the Department of Government and International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

2.      This framing of the problem owes much to Alasdair MacIntyre, 'The Relationship of Philosophy to Its Past,” in Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 31-48.

3.      I shall confine my analysis to this text, for it provides in compact form the crux of the Thomistic position. A complete account of Aquinas' teaching would need to consider the full range of his writings on the subject, especially De Malo and the Quaestiones Disputate De Anima. My own research into these texts suggests that they serve in diverse ways to extend, but in no way to fundamentally alter, the analysis offered in the Summa Theologiae. For an analysis of these texts which supports this view, see Mark D. Jordan, 'The Transcendentality of Goodness and the Human Will,” in Being and Goodness, Scott MacDonald, ed. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 12950.

4.      See Alan Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 642.

5.      For an elaboration, see George P. Klubertanz, S.J., “The Unity of Human Activity,” The Modern Schoolman 27 (January 1950): 9196; and Jordan, “The Transcendentality of Goodness and the Human Will,” 13435.

6.      Summa Theologiae 1.87.3 (Hereafter, ST part. question. article. (and, if necessary) reply to objection. Citations will be to the Leonine text as found in the B. A. C. edition: (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1961). For further analysis, see Mark D. Jordan, Ordering Wisdom: The Hierarchy of Philosophical Discourses in Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), Sec. 4.2: ''The Soul's Knowledge of Itself.”

7.      ST 1.77.1.

8.      ST 1.77.3.

9.      ST 1.80.1.2.

10.  ST 1.82.4.

11.  ST 12.9.1.

12.  ST 12.9.1.

13.  ST 12.9.1.3.

14.  ST 1.82.4.1.

15.  See Eleonore Stump, “Intellect, Will, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, Michael D. Beaty, ed. (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 266.

16.  Compare ST 12.9.6; 1.105.5; and 1.105.5.3. See Jordan “The Transcendentality of Goodness and the Human Will,” 13840. On the relation of divine and human causality see the seminal work of Bernard Lonergan, “St. Thomas' Theory of Operation.” Theological Studies 3 (1942): 390 et passim.

17.  ST 12.10.1.

18.  ST 12.17.5.2. See Donagan, 'Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 654.

19.  ST 1.79.9.3.

20.  ST 12.57.5.3.

21.  ST 1.79.11.

22.  ST 12.57.5.3.

23.  ST 12.17.6. For an explicit reference to will's moving the speculative intellect to exercise, see ST 12.16.1.3.

24.  This decisive point is not recognized by commentators who excessively dichotomize intellective and volitional functions. See, for example, Stump, “Intellect, Will, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” 267 68; and Scott MacDonald, “Egoistic Rationalism: Aquinas' Basis for Christian Morality,” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, 333.

25.  Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals 1.1. Translations of Nietzsche will be taken from the editions of Walter Kaufmann: (New York: Random House/Vintage Books). I will use the traditional English abbreviations of Nietzsche's works: The Gay Science (GB); Beyond Good and Evil (BGE); On the Genealogy of Morals (GM); Twilight of the Idols (Tl); and The Will to Power (WP). In keeping with Kaufmann's caveats on treating WP as a finished work, I will cite it only to amplify claims extracted from Nietzsche's published works.

26.  BGE 6; 32; 268; WP 481; 493.

27.  BGE 6; GB 335. For an elaboration, see Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, Hugh Tomlinson, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 767.

28.  TI 2.2.

29.  BGE 186.

30.  BGE 5.

31.  BGE 13.

32.  TI 6.7.

33.  BGE 13; 36.

34.  TI 2.5.

35.  Jean Granier recognizes the “antinomy,” but allows it to stand. See “Perspectivism and Interpretation,” in The New Nietzsche, David B. Allison, ed. (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1977), 19799. Harold Alderman elevates the psychological while slighting the cosmological side of Nietzsche's teaching. See Nietzsche's Gift (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977), eh. 4. Traey Strong proceeds similarly, downplaying the cosmological in favor of the psychological. See “Text and Pretexts: Reflections on Perspectivism in Nietzsche,” Political Theory 13 (May 1985): 17576. Gilles Deleuze, on the other hand, explains the psychological in terms of the epistemological. See Nietzsche and Philosophy, eh. 2, especially 5155. Finally, Alexander Nehamas attempts a compromise which in the name of consistency would dilute both sides of the teaching. See Nietzsche: Life As Literature (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1985), eh. 2.

36.  See BGE 22.

37.  WP 567. See Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 3.

38.  BGE 13. See too, GS 5.349.

39.  BGE 22. See too, WP 481.

40.  BGE 36. Nietzsche's use of the language of belief reminds us again of the perspectival character of his account. Yet note the tension involved in the transition from “our faith” to “the world viewed from inside,” from the view from the subject to the view from nature. Can both views be simultaneously maintained, as Nietzsche would have it and at what cost, with what consequences or must we finally choose to reduce one to the terms of the other?

41.  See Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 5051; 8586.

42.  Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 77, citing WP 204.

43.  GM 1.13.

44.  TI 6.2.

45.  GM 3.7. I recognize that I have adopted a terminology foreign to Nietzsche's own exposition, hut I see no other way to make this necessary point about his position. It remains significant that while he cannot seem to eliminate it, Nietzsche himself fails or perhaps refuses to recognize and articulate the distinction to which I advert.

46.  GM Preface.2.

47.  BGE 3; 9; 21; GS Preface.2; 6.301.

48.  BGE 6.

49.  BGE 19. This section is a miniature treatise on will as function.

50.  BGE 19.

51.  TI VI.3; GS V.360.

52.  GM 1.13; TI 6.7.

53.  BGE 21.

54.  It should be emphasized that our examination is concerned with the functions of intellect and will alone, and so abstracts from much that Nietzsche himself includes in his account of human acts the role of the passions for example, or as Nietzsche sometimes puts it, of those other than intellect and will. Any complete treatment of his position would need to integrate what I have consciously excluded.

55.  BGE 19.

56.  BGE 19; 21; 23; see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 53.

57.  BGE 17; GM 1.13; TI 3.5.

58.  Stanley Rosen has provocatively argued that, given Nietzsche's account of the universality of will to power's causality, such exhortations and denunciations form only the exoteric surface of Nietzsche's teaching. They are rhetorical support for the false but salutary belief that human action is free, in the absence ofwhich belief human beings would soon fall into despair. See The Ancients and the Moderns (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 197-200.

59.  Thus the centrality in Nietzsche's thinking of the affirmation of the eternal return of the same as the pinnacle of freedom.

60.  See Rosen, The Ancients and the Moderns, 195,21920.

61.  TI 2.5.

62.  Cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy and Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 4546.