The Dynamism of the Spirit and the Infinite Within

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The essence of the Transcendental Thomist approach to God seems to me to be this: it has brought out of obscurity into full development St. Thomas's own profound doctrine of the dynamism of the human spirit, both as intellect and will, toward the Infinite--a dynamism inscribed in the very nature of man as a priori condition of possibility of both his knowing and his willing activities--and then applied this doctrine to ground epistemology, philosophical anthropology, metaphysics, and the flowering of the latter into natural theology. Using this radical dynamism of the human spirit to illuminate the foundations of the whole of Thomistic philosophy--in particular the rational ascent to God--was entirely in harmony with St. Thomas's own deepest thought. Let me now present briefly the essential core of this analysis, insofar as I myself can take philosophical responsibility for it and make it my own. THE ASCENT THROUGH THE DYNAMISM OF THE INTELLECT As we reflect on the activities of our knowing power, we come to recognize it as an-inexhaustible dynamism of inquiry, ever searching to lay hold more deeply and widely on the universe of reality. It is impossible to restrict its horizon of inquiry to any limited area of reality, to any goal short of all that there is to-know-about all there is. For our experience of knowing reveals to us that each time we come to know some new object or aspect of reality we rest in it at first, savoring and exploring its intelligibility as far as we can. But as soon as we run up against its limits and discover that it is finite, the mind at once rebounds farther, reaching beyond it to wherever else it leads, to whatever else there is-to-be-known beyond it. This process continues indefinitely in ever-expanding and ever-deepening circles. As we reflect on the significance of this inexhaustible and unquenchable drive toward the fullness of

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