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THE LIFE AND WORK OF RICHARD V. DE SMET, S. J.

Bradley J. Malkovsky

Richard De Smet’s name has been known for several decades, espe- cially in , to scholars who have been particularly interested in a systematic and philosophical approach to Hindu-Christian dialogue. Unfortunately, his writings, the great majority of which were pub- lished in India, have never been as accessible to a broad western readership as have the works of other European Christian thinkers of his generation who chose India as their new homeland, such sem- inal figures as Swami (Henri Le Saux, 1910–1973) and Dom Bede Griffiths (1906–1993). Nor is much known in the West about De Smet’s life in general. The purpose of this intro- duction is to present the reader with the basic contours of De Smet’s extraordinarily rich life as well as to briefly summarize some of his scholarly achievements as an indologist, philosopher and theologian.

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Richard De Smet was born April 14, 1916 at Montignies-Sur-Sambre () in ; his father was from the Flemish-speaking north, while his mother was from the francophone south. Richard’s first language was French, but after his mother passed away when Richard was eight, he learned Flemish from his father’s family with whom he spent each school vacation. In view of his future life’s work, it may be said that De Smet’s first significant milestone was his entry in 1934 into the novitiate of the Society of in Arlon. The Jesuit intellectual and spiritual environment during the school years prior to his acceptance into the order had certainly propelled him in this direction. One important incident proved to be especially telling: as a sixteen-year-old De Smet happened upon an article in French dealing with the mysterious words and àtman. He found himself keenly inter- ested in these terms but could not fully grasp their meaning. It was not until many months later that one of his esteemed Jesuit teachers, Fr. René Debauche, unlocked their significance in a class introducing 2  . 

Hinduism and Buddhism. This small beginning would one day lead De Smet to take up seriously the study of Hindu doctrine and spiritu- ality and to enquire as to the possible significance of Vedàntic thought in particular for Christian . But being a product of his time, the young Catholic scholar and future priest would first have to im- merse himself in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose influence on Catholic systematic thought is comparable to that of •aákara on Hindu metaphysics. De Smet’s indebtedness to his Jesuit teacher was enduring; near the end of his life he remarked that the two years he spent as Debauche’s young pupil had given him a vision of a which must be open to all the values of the world.1 During his two-year novitiate De Smet continued to immerse him- self in Indian thought, giving special attention to the writings of the Belgian Jesuit Pierre Johanns, who provided a Catholic assessment of such prominent classical Vedàntin thinkers as •aákara, Ràmànuja and Vallabha. Looking back at this early stage of his intellectual development, De Smet cryptically remarks that it was during this time that he had spiritual experiences that he was only later able to recognize as yogic in nature.2 The earliest years of his membership in the also brought De Smet in contact with Joseph Marèchal, S. J. (1878–1944), one of the leading transcendental Thom- ists of his time. Though Marèchal was not De Smet’s teacher in the classroom their many private conversations led De Smet to a deep appreciation of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and influenced him to adopt Marèchal’s transcendental method of combining the mod- ern philosophical “turn to the subject” with the teachings of Aquinas.3 After a B.A. in classical philology and one year of military serv- ice as a medical orderly De Smet undertook the standard Jesuit philosophical training, reading from Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo- Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas and others. One of the things that struck him in his reading was the affinity between the metaphysical

1 For more on De Smet’s relation with Debauche see “Richard V. De Smet, S. J.—An Appreciation by Julius Lipner,” Hindu-Christian Studies Bulletin 11 (1998):51. 2 De Smet mentions this in an unpublished essay, “The Trajectory of My Dialogical Activity,” (p. 2) which I have used extensively for much of the biographical infor- mation found in the first part of this article. That De Smet refers to such experi- ences at all near the end of his life is surprising; they are not alluded to in any of his publications during his fifty years of writing nor does he expound on the pos- sible lasting significance of his early yogic experience for his theological assessment of . 3 De Smet mentioned this to me in a private conversation in 1988.