What Does Philosophy Know About Holiness?

Giovanni SALMERI

University of Rome Tor Vergata , Italy

Patrycja MIKULSKA

John Paul II Institute, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin , Poland

Abstract

The author analyzes the concept of holiness as the perfect conformity of will to the moral law as discussed by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason, as well as his modifications of this idea in The Metaphysics of Morals. Confronting the Kantian philosophical idea of holiness with its Christian concept, the author draws, among others, on the relatively unknown book by Jaroslav Pelikan entitled Fools for Christ, and on the 12th-century treatise The Four Degrees of Violent Charity by Richard of Saint Victor, focusing on both writers’ discussion of madness as resulting from the irreducibility of the holiness of God to any systems of rational human norms, and of God’s goodness to justice. In the conclusion the author claims that ‘holiness’ and ‘goodness’ are names given to God’s infinite, absolutely gratuitous and unjustified relationship to the world expressed in the act of creation, and that holiness and goodness in human experience are finite manifestations of this transcendent relationship.

Summarized by Patrycja Mikulska

Keywords:

holiness, madness, irreducibility of God, goodness, justice, Immanuel Kant, Jaroslav Pelikan, Richard of Saint Victor