OXFORD THEOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS Editorial Committee M.McC.ADAMS M.J.EDWARDS P.M.JOYCE D.N.J.MacCULLOCH O. M. T. O’DONOVAN C. C. ROWLAND OXFORD THEOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS HIPPOLYTUS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus J. A. Cerrato (2002) FAITH, REASON, AND REVELATION IN THE THOUGHT OF THEODORE BEZA JeVrey Mallinson (2003) RICHARD HOOKER AND REFORMED THEOLOGY A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace Nigel Voak (2003) THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON’S CONNEXION Alan Harding (2003) THE APPROPRIATION OF DIVINE LIFE IN CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA Daniel A. Keating (2004) THE MACARIAN LEGACY The Place of Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradition Marcus Plested (2004) PSALMODY AND PRAYER IN THE WRITINGS OF EVAGRIUS PONTICUS Luke Dysinger, OSB (2004) ORIGEN ON THE SONG OF SONGS AS THE SPIRIT OF SCRIPTURE The Bridegroom’s Perfect Marriage-Song J. Christopher King (2004) AN INTERPRETATION OF HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Eschatology as Communion Nicholas J. Healy (2005) DURANDUS OF ST POURC¸ AIN A Dominican Theologian in the Shadow of Aquinas Isabel Iribarren (2005) THE TROUBLES OF TEMPLELESS JUDAH Jill Middlemas (2005) TIME AND ETERNITY IN MID-THIRTEENTH-CENTURY THOUGHT Rory Fox (2006) THE SPECIFICATION OF HUMAN ACTIONS IN ST THOMAS AQUINAS Joseph Pilsner (2006) The Worldview of Personalism Origins and Early Development JAN OLOF BENGTSSON 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Jan Olof Bengtsson 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquires concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0-19-929719-3 978-0-19-929719-1 13579108642 Preface This book is a revised and expanded version of my Oxford D.Phil. thesis from 2003. I am indebted to my supervisors, the Revd Prof. em. Keith Ward and Dr William J. Mander, for their commitment and complementarity; to the Revd Prof. em. Alan P. F. Sell and the Revd. Dr Philip Kennedy for their valuable criticism and suggestions; to the Revd Prof. George Pattison for his careful reading of and comments upon the thesis as well as the manuscript of this revised text; to Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch for his kind interest in my work; to the staV of the Bodleian Library, the Taylorian Institute Library, the Theology Faculty Library, and the Philosophy Faculty Library, and of the British Library, the Royal Library in Stockholm, Lund University Library, Uppsala University Library, and Stockholm University Library for their professionalism and friendliness; to the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities for a grant; to Prof. Svante Nordin of Lund University for encouraging me to do doctoral work on Swedish personalism, for supervising the Wrst stage of that work, and for com- menting upon my revision of the thesis; to Prof. em. Stig Stro¨mholm, the former Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University, for his support and for reading and commenting upon early drafts of parts of the thesis and parts of the manuscript of this revised text; to the Fellows and students of St Cross College and Dr John Walsh of Jesus College for conviviality; to Prof. Claes G. Ryn of the Catholic University of America for a unique philosophical conversation over many years; to Prof. Randall E. Auxier of Southern Illinois University, the editor of the Library of Living Philosophers, and Prof. Thomas O. Buford of Furman University for discussions of American personalism; to my colleagues in the Department of the History of Ideas at Lund University, and in particular Dr Jonas Hansson, for relevant discussions; to Dr Carl Johan Ljungberg for his congenial ideas; to Pusey House and the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society for inspiration; to Prof. Francis X. Clooney of Harvard University, the former academic director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, for discussions of comparative perspectives on personalism; and to Prof. em. Thure Stenstro¨m, Uppsala, Prof. Bo Lindberg of Gothenburg University, Prof. Alf W. Johansson and Prof. Hans Ruin, both of So¨derto¨rn University College, Dr Mats Persson of Uppsala University, Dr Go¨sta Wrede, Stockholm, Prof. em. Anders JeVner, Prof. David Boucher and others at the Collingwood and British Idealism Centre at CardiV University, Prof. em. Timothy Sprigge, Dr Peter P. Nicholson of the University of York, Prof. John Haldane of the University of St Andrews, Prof. Roger Scruton, Lord Plant of HighWeld, Dr R. T. Allen, Prof. em. J. W. Burrow, and the Revd Prof. em. Sir Henry Chadwick for important conversations and encouragement. As always, I am grateful to my parents, Birgitta and Bengt Olof Bengtsson, for their interest in my work and their unfailing support and love. This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction 1 1. The current view of personalism and its origins 31 The view of the historians 31 The view of the personalists 49 2. Personal ‘reason’ and impersonal ‘understanding’ 67 Jacobi 68 Schelling 83 Speculative theism 93 British personal idealism 116 3. The personal absolute 129 Jacobi 134 Schelling 142 Speculative theism 151 British personal idealism 177 4. Personal unity-in-diversity 203 Jacobi 205 Schelling 212 Speculative theism 217 British personal idealism 240 5. Early personalism and its meaning 271 Bibliography 284 Index 297 This page intentionally left blank Introduction Personalism exists in many diVerent forms, and an exhaustive classiWcation will not be attempted in this book. The two best-known forms are the American personalism initiated by Borden Parker Bowne, and the French school of Emmanuel Mounier. But there are also strong currents of phenomenological personalism, existentialist personalism, and Catholic personalism. Although there are many signiWcant diVerences between these various forms, as personal- isms they also have much in common, their positions often overlap, and histor- ically they can be seen to have stood in more or less close contact and to have inXuenced each other. The journal The Personalist, edited by the leader of the Californian branch of the American school, Ralph Tyler Flewelling, regularly and frequently published articles on and by all kinds of personalists, and Mounier was one of its advisory editors. Less representative versions of personalism were developed by Charles Bernard Renouvier and William Stern. Before becoming bishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyła developed a personalism inspired not only by Thomistic thinkers like Jacques Maritain, but also by Max Scheler’s personalistic phenomenology. The French school of Mounier has been a strong presence in Polish personalism, but the latter also draws inspiration from the American school. Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy can be considered a distinct form of personalism. A British version of personalism was developed by John Macmurray. National variations have developed in many countries. The argument in this book concerns the historical origins of modern perso- nalistic philosophy. Against the current view of these origins, I will show how personalistic philosophy emerged throughout the late eighteenth, the nineteenth, and the early twentieth centuries. This philosophy was richly embedded in other, more familiar philosophical, theological, and other currents, which together constitute a complex intellectual landscape, determined by broad cultural and historical forces and not reducible to philosophy in any narrow technical sense. One of my purposes is to disentangle the central themes of what can be discerned as a distinctly personalistic worldview in this context. One reason why the origins and early development of personalism have been hidden from view is that many thinkers in whom personalistic themes appear have, rightly or wrongly, been seen rather as belonging, with regard to their main contributions, to some other current or to a current better described in other terms. As we will see, the American school remains the paradigm of personalism. It is on personalism in the somewhat more precise sense, as deWned by this school, that I will focus in my argument about its historical origins.