Introduction

This volume contains the contributions made to a lecture series held at the Munich School of Philosophy in 2014-2015 to commemorate the 200th anni- versary of the 1814 Restoration of the Society of Jesus . In 1773, Pope Benedict XIV suppressed the Jesuit order in response to pressure from the monarchs of France, Spain and Portugal . Until then, Jesuits had achieved great success as teachers and scholars in schools and universities, confessors and advisers at royal courts, and missionaries and pastors . One particular effect of the suppres- sion was the great void it created within the field of Catholic education, so that when ex-Jesuits were called upon once again for academic service, there emerged a growing awareness that a mistake of historic proportions had been made. The universal restoration of the Society of Jesus finally came on August 7, 1814 with a decree of Pope Pius VII . To mark its 200th anniversary, Jesuits worldwide sponsored a variety of commemorative celebrations—among them, academic studies, publications, and conferences . The Munich School of Philosophy decided to make its contribution to the anniversary year by holding a lecture series on several prominent thinkers of the Jesuit order: Francisco Suárez, Baltasar Gracián, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, Oswald von Nell-Breuning, Michel de Certeau, and John Courtney Murray . These nine Jesuits were thinkers who had great influence in their respective eras. Even so, of what interest can these thinkers of the past be for today? What actually makes a thinker stand out? If one were to attempt to identify human nature, one could proceed from the general conviction that humans are thinking beings . Aristotle proposed the well-known thesis at the beginning of his Metaphysics: All human beings strive by nature after knowledge . He also presents the thesis here dialectically: knowing comes about by not knowing . Aristotle’s fundamental approach serves primarily to provide arguments for why it is worthwhile to ask about what lies beneath the surface of the physical world . Aristotle’s philosophical arguments have occupied many interpreters to this very day, which demonstrates that it is precisely knowledge—in the broadest meaning of the word—that constitutes our being human . For human beings, knowledge is not merely an advantage or a practical exercise but rather constitutes an end in itself . The overriding question is therefore not which function knowledge should fulfill, but rather, why knowledge belongs intrinsically to humankind, why humans and knowl- edge cannot be separated from one another . To renounce knowledge means, as Rousseau said, to renounce being human . At the same time, one can see that various forms of knowledge exist and that one must proceed from a classification of the levels of knowing. The foundation of knowledge is empirical, coming from the observations of 2 Janez Perčič, S.J. and Johannes Herzgsell, S.J. experience . With both inductive and deductive methods of thinking we can build theories . The next level leads us to theoretical and practical reason, the distinction between which even Aristotle had made . On the one hand there are unchanging laws, which belong to matter of theoretical reason . On the other hand, we also deal with things that could be otherwise, that is, things that change and that require our rational deliberation . These we must consider with the help of practical reason . Finally, we arrive at the highest form of knowledge, manifested in wisdom, which is more than merely a virtue in the Aristotelian sense . By wisdom we mean a sapiential knowledge, which is defined as the understanding of the whole. This all-encompassing structural principle of knowledge can serve as a fundamental orientation for us . With it we are in a position to obtain an overview of the multiplicity of human mental activities and organize them into a schema that assists us in understanding why it is worthwhile to grapple with a “thinker” and probe his thinking . Now, what is the purpose of such knowledge? To develop human intellec- tual activity . That is, in order to broaden one’s knowledge and to justify the speculations that come about from such knowledge, human beings throughout the course of history have also developed the various sciences based upon these diverse ways of thinking . However, not all forms of knowledge have the same areas of pursuit . Generally speaking, the sciences have been divided into three different areas to produce a triple classification, namely the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. These three reflect the fact that the complexity of human life must be grasped from different perspectives because human life is embedded in differing dimensions . In the realm of the physical world, we are bound to the unchanging laws of nature and thereby more funda- mentally to the laws of causality—that is, we confront the principle of cause and effect—by which human life seems to be determined . In the realm of spirit, however, we encounter the ideas of transcendence, freedom and creativity— those things that humans do which are unique and inimitable . Through our minds, humans are driven towards questions about God, about the reason and purpose of all that exists, about where we come from and where we are going, about the good and about beauty . In the social order, the tensions originating from this complexity leads to the different social systems that demonstrate that human beings are not only by nature social but also conflictual. From there arises the question of how to live together in a community grounded in justice in which individuals can actualize their freedom . The contributions of particular sciences to cultural life cannot really be measured since no consistent and integrative criteria exist across the disci- plines . We can, however, compare those contributions with one another . For example, if we take ethical influence, the humanities have certainly exerted a far greater effect than the natural or social sciences . But if we take the matter of economic progress, then we must conclude that many modern achievements would not have come about without the natural sciences . If we want to explain