GRATRY, ALPHONSE. - Philosopher, b. at Lille on 30 March 1805, d. at Montreux on 7 Feb. 1872. After completing his secondary studies he entered the "École polytechnique." He was determined to take this step by a firm resolve of scientific preparation that would enable him to confront effectively that program of Christian restoration of thought which his spirit, having overcome a period of intellectual crisis, had set for itself. Ordained a priest on 22 Dec. 1832, after a period spent at Strasbourg together with other young priests under the direction of Bautain, he returned in 1841 to Paris to direct the Collège St-Stanislas.
Later he was appointed aumônier at the "École normale supérieure," a post he held until the polemic with E. Vacherot, director of the school, over the origins of Christianity, arising from the publication of Vacherot's own Histoire critique de l'École d'Alexandrie, induced him to leave the school almost at the same time as his adversary. In 1851 he entered the Oratory, in which he saw his dream of a priestly cenacle of studies become a reality. Here he elaborated his major works, De la connaissance de Dieu (1855), La logique (1855), De la connaissance de l'âme (1857). But the ideal, owing to clashes of mentality between G. and Pététot, a noble but rigid and austere spirit, could not be fully realized. In 1861 G. withdrew from the Oratory, without however neglecting his studies (Les sources [1862]; Les sophistes et la critique [1864]), but giving in them a greater place to more properly religious subjects (La paix [1861]; La philosophie du Crédo [1861]; Commentaire sur l'Évangile selon St Mathieu [1863]; La morale et la loi de l'histoire [1868]). At the same time he devoted himself to practical activities, promoting (1867) the International Peace League, which sought to unite for this purpose men of different religious and political ideas. In this same year he was called to the Academy.
The last battle, which failed shortly after 1870, took place during the Vatican Council. G., with four letters, attacked the dogma of infallibility, provoking, and not without reason, a severe reprimand from the superior of the Oratory. Once the dogma was proclaimed, G. accepted it obediently. He died worn down by bitterness and a very harsh illness. His body was buried in Paris.
G.'s thought is dominated by the motive that truth is approached "with one's whole being"; in the abandonment of this method G. sees the reason for the dispersal of the philosophy of his time. Neo-criticism, positivism, fideism, but above all the neo-Hegelianism of Vacherot and Schérer are the expression of an "isolated" way of thinking, which knows how to "draw nothing but error from the spectacle of visible things, from the interior facts of the soul and from that of human events" (Conn. de Dieu, I, p. 21), and has forgotten that "the solid and healthy development of thought proceeds from the development of the whole soul and of the will" (op. cit., p. 41). To this integral method philosophy must return if it is truly to bring life and not crisis. Philosophical research demands a lofty and intense spirit, sincerely religious, and together with it knowledge of the world of the experimental and mathematical sciences which, even in their peculiarity, call upon one another, indeed unify, insofar as mathematics gives lights and formulas to metaphysics, geometry to psychology. This unitary patrimony of knowledge, which is won only through the cooperation of chosen spirits (it is the ideal and the goal of the Oratory), constitutes that comparative science which is an indispensable condition for philosophizing well. From here, then, thought will set out to confront the most important questions, first of all that of God.
G. in fact begins his elaboration from theodicy, convinced that "philosophy is entirely contained in theodicy" (op. cit., I, p. 71). And it is precisely in the study of the problem of God that G., while affirming that he does not claim to offer new proofs of His existence but only to deepen and render unassailable those already given, presents some of his characteristic theories, such as that of the dialectical procedure and of the divine sense. For G., in fact, the existence of God is reached not only through the classical proofs but also through the dialectical procedure. This is already initially operative in infinitesimal calculus and consists precisely "in passing without any intellectual process, though adhering to a more than legitimate impulse of reason, from the finite to the infinite, from the finite being that one is, that one sees, that one actually touches, to the infinite being really and actually existing, which the existence of the finite implies and supposes" (op. cit., I, p. 59). But this procedure, in which the necessary distinction between the mathematical infinite and the metaphysical infinite is neglected, is nevertheless not sufficient to affirm the existence of God. "Will reason need the external data of the world to know the world, the interior data of the soul to know it, and will it need nothing to recognize God? Will it not rely on God to know Him, and will it need no datum of God to raise itself up to God?" (Logique, I, p. 100). This is offered to us precisely by the "divine sense" which G. defines as "the inevitable attraction of the supreme good in every soul" (Conn. de Dieu, I, p. 69). A living experience of God operating in us, and which depends on us to heed or betray, this divine sense is nevertheless not a mysterious sense that replaces reason but is clarified in the end as an impulse, a stimulus of reason itself.
Whoever gives himself to philosophical research with his whole being, uniting the will and the heart to reason, because "thoughts are great when the heart dilates them" (Sources, p. 8), cannot therefore fail to arrive at God; nor can he fail to crown his research with adherence to the faith which gives us, with the possession of God, a happiness so full and so high as to be identified almost, for G., with the beatific vision. Prepared by natural faith in undemonstrable principles, intrinsic to reason itself, anticipated by it, supernatural faith presents itself as the legitimate crowning of our limited thought, which also sees in faith a necessity as an indispensable condition for not declining spiritually. Union with God pacifies, makes one intensely human, and, through the help of grace, truly free and capable of understanding, despite sorrows, the living beauty of the universe, on a journey not toward death but toward a state of wondrous unity and stability where the present dispersions and changes fall silent, and blessed souls, united to their transformed bodies, have their place. For immortality belongs not only to man but, in a different form, to the whole universe, intimately bound to our life as immortal beings.
G.'s thought unfolds rich in life and motives, at times the victim of an overly vivid sentiment and of excessive symbolism. Thus, for example, when he seeks analogies between the life of the soul and the life of the universe, and in the theory on language in which G. partly follows the traditionalists, maintaining that the word arose through a conspiring of the activity of God, of Adam and of things, and that it expresses the essence of things themselves. Just as the theory on induction and deduction is not exempt from criticism, since it excessively accentuates the distinction between the two procedures; and so too is the reduction of the principle of causality to that of sufficient reason, and of the principle of identity to the identity of substance.
But even these positions help to clarify the true personality of G., who combines with a sometimes overly fervid imagination a soul passionate for God and for man, a yearning for salvation and for self-giving rich in educational power. G. knew how to speak to the men of his time; his teaching, taken up by Ollé-Laprune (v.), was at work in French religious philosophy of the nineteenth century, nor can it be said that it is entirely extinguished.
Bibliography10 works
Romeo Crippa