Abstract
Tracey Rowland’s Beyond Kant and Nietzsche is a contribution to a series ‘dedicated to the renewal of faith in a world that is both Godless and idolatrous’. The six figures she has selected certainly lived through a time that many might regard as exceptionally godless and idolatrous – a time of world wars, revolutions, totalitarianism and the holocaust. Yet, seen from our own time, it was also an age in which the churches still had a significant role in virtually every aspect of society, although, in the case of German Catholicism, this had been weakened (but not eliminated) by Bismarck’s Kulturkampf.
All of Rowland’s six case studies are, in fact, Catholic, an identity that is crucial to her argument that Catholicism provided a distinctive resource for the defence and promotion of humanist values in the modern world. They are Carl Muth, Theodor Haecker, Theodor Steinbüchel, Gottlieb Söhngen, Romano Guardini, and Erich Przywara, of whom, probably, only Haecker, Guardini and Przywara have had a significant reception in the anglophone world.
All had strong connections to Munich, although ‘Munich’ does not provide as strong a unifying factor as, say, ‘Frankfurt’ in the Frankfurt School. Not quite a group or school, they had overlapping interests in Kierkegaard and Newman, and the role of art and literature in articulating Christian faith, and several published in the journal Hochland. They regarded social fragmentation and the emergence of ‘mass man’ with alarm, preferring hierarchy to democracy. Several had links to the White Rose protesters, perhaps the most daring opponents of the Hitler regime during the war. Their heritage includes a notable influence on more recent figures such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II). Their Christian humanism was focused on the recognition that it was human identity itself that needed to become a primary focus of Christian apologetic and teaching. In many ways their efforts paralleled those of Jacques Maritain in France (briefly mentioned on p. 82), which are perhaps better known to British and American readers.
There is no doubt that Rowland has brought together an exceptionally interesting gathering of thinkers. If one had believed that Catholic theology went into a state of suspended animation after the trauma of the Modernist crisis, this study shows that there was, nevertheless, still scope for intelligent and imaginative engagement with the modern situation. At the same time, it is not clear to this reviewer how distinctively Catholic their analysis of this situation really was, since in many ways it reflected views found across the political and philosophical spectrum. Unfortunately, it was also shared by many, such as Heidegger, who threw in their lot with Nazism, although Rowland’s thinkers each made better choices than he did. Furthermore, the lofty ideal of rebuilding Europe on Catholic foundations was probably unrealistic then and is virtually inconceivable today. Nevertheless, the case is well made that these are figures who merit further attention and who are a reminder of the rich variety of theology in the interwar period.