Philosophy; Oxford, Blackwells, 1998; $49.95
 

Reviewed by Julian O'Dea

THE READER'S heart sinks when he opens a book and finds this kind of thing:

"In this way, we can see how the redefined, apostrophized 'object' renders possible a non-ironic, non-indeterminate subjectivity." The Cambridge philosopher, Catherine Pickstock, does not have a light touch. But her After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy helps to explain what is really going on in the traditional liturgy, and what may be missing in the New Mass.

Pickstock claims to write from a position of "radical orthodoxy", in itself an interesting phrase. We are so used to seeing these words in opposition that it is surprising to see new ideas being associated with orthodoxy.

One of the great popular myths of our time is that there is nothing new to be said about orthodoxy; and that all radical thought inevitably undermines tradition; and that the only way ahead is 'reform', and more 'reform'. A work like Pickstock's is the ideal counter to this suggestion.

Fergus Kerr, OP, is quoted on the back to the effect that "... this book suggests why the reform of the liturgy instigated by Vatican II was always likely to fail ..." This is a conclusion which could certainly be derived from Pickstock's thinking, although the book is in no way a polemic. It does, however, show clearly how the traditional Roman Rite grew organically over the ages: and how its supposed illogicality of exposition, accretions and excesses in fact reflect stylistic and philosophical subtleties founded in the historical reality that the liturgy was conceived as the most appropriate way for a creature to speak to God.

An important outcome of Pickstock's approach is a concept of transubstantiation which goes beyond the usual arguments about form and substance; and, indeed, what makes her study particularly fascinating is that it is a genuine meeting of the most contemporary philosophy with Catholic theology. This is not to say that the work lacks historical depth. The author outflanks postmodernism and modernism in the best philosophical style, with a return to Plato; stressing that his philosophy gave pride of place to liturgical speech and action as the best route beyond the uncertainties of the world to underlying realities which cannot be approached through written langauge alone.

Pickstock opens her book with an attack on Derrida's interpretation of Plato. Derrida is a hugely influential modern thinker and one of the prophets of the Strange New Faith discussed by Christopher Kaczor in the Spring 1998 issue of Oriens. Perhaps Derrida is ripe for re-evaluation, having just been named as the most overrated philosopher by the British Philosophers' Magazine.

Like the thought of Alvin Plantinga, a major Christian philosopher at Notre Dame University, Pickstock's ideas seem to show a way out of the maze into which modern thinkers have led us. Both thinkers point out the bankruptcy of contemporary claims to have had the final thought and said the last word on what can constitute knowledge. The fertility and optimism of these thinkers seems to reflect the attitude of Cardinal Newman in the nineteenth century who, faced with great intellectual challenges, was confident that good Christian answers would eventually be forthcoming.

Pickstock discusses the recent reforms in the liturgy, and argues that the drive to return to a notional primitive simplicity, and to divest the Mass of supposed accretions from court ceremony and the age of autocrats, is ahistorical and misguided. In particular, she claims that the eucharistic celebration was never a simple meal, but always would have had a ritual significance, by virtue of its being a feast celebrated by a community with a liturgical life.

She is fascinating on the nature of the language of the Mass. The circuitous and complex liturgical approaches to God are analysed in terms of philosophy and rhetoric: the despondent 'dorveille' of the Quare tristis es anima mea et quare conturbas me?; the reason why incense is offered up at 'evening' in Dirigatur, Domine, oratio mea, sicut incensum, in conspectu tuo: elevatio manuum mearum sacrificium vespertinum; the use of repetitive language as a kind of verbal offering or 'sacrifice'; and the way in which the liturgy reflects the oral, bardic, quality of the New Testament itself.

Importantly, Pickstock sees the words of consecration as stylistically unique, an example of asyndeton: blunt, unadorned; breaking through the tentative language of the rest of the Canon as a stark and central assertion and consummation.

The philosophical approach taken gives great weight and centrality to the Mass, almost to the extent of founding an entire solution to the ills of modernism and postmodernism on a theology of the Eucharist. The author writes, "The Eucharistic sign, by contrast, as I shall show, is able to outwit the distinction between both absence and presence, and death and life." Pickstock, in a sense, sees the Eucharist as pointing beyond these distinctions in a way which both addresses the question of the nature of the Real Presence, and gets Modern Man out of his philosophical impasse.

This impasse is not new, but is traced back historically to such notables as Peter Ramus in the 16th century, who tried to reduce all knowledge to diagrams and systems, and demanded that language be plain and simple; and Robert Boyle in the 17th century who believed he could experimentally demonstrate God's place in the Universe by creating a vacuum with an air-pump.

But, of course, God is not to be sought in such an instrumental fashion, as if He were Lewis Carroll's Snark, to be hunted with the right equipment:

"They sought it with thimbles,
they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks
and hope."

No. For Pickstock, it is liturgy and the Eucharist which bring the eternal realities beyond the Universe down to earth: from a space that Plato would have called the Realm of the Ideal Forms; and we call God's Kingdom.
 

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