Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [30]
So far as this kind of consciousness is concerned, Christians should be unconscious. In holy self-forgetfulness we should surrender ourselves to the values and the command that issues from them, according to the words of Christ: “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”
Excessive rational analysis
The second form of false consciousness arises from a hypertrophy, an excessive predominance, of the cognitive attitude. It is found in persons who, in a situation which requires them to take sides emotionally or to intervene actively, remain confined within the bounds of rational analysis. A man, for instance, is listening to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. Instead of allowing his soul to absorb the beauty of the music and to give free rein to its delight, instead of allowing himself to be seized and elevated by that beauty, he dissects the object present to his senses and examines the reasons why it is beautiful.
Now, whenever we are concerned with the elucidation of aesthetic problems the rational analysis of the object is fully justified; but if the experience of the beauty of that music is at stake, this attitude is entirely inadequate. Or again, take someone who, in a developing love-relationship, at a moment when he and his beloved should naturally be dominated by the experience of their mutual awareness, turns instead the beloved person into an object of psychological research, observing his behavior and with great interest registering the results of his observation. Such an attitude, again, is fitting for an experimental psychologist confronted with his subject but is entirely out of place in a lover. Another example—suppose a man sees someone in immediate danger of life, and, instead of rushing to his rescue, studies his facial expressions.
In all these cases the cognitive attitude predominates in a person so exclusively as to prevent him from giving his attention to the objective theme of a situation and the demand which that situation sends forth. This means a destruction of the true contact with the object, and means, in spite of a seemingly prevalent objectivity, an attitude which is actually nonobjective, since it is based on a refusal to realize and to conform to the inherent meaning and appeal—the objective logos.
As in the first-described form of false consciousness, here, too, we remain outside the intrinsic context of a situation, and restrict ourselves to the status of a mere spectator incapable of being moved by the inner sublimity of values.
The proper function of rational knowledge
Rational knowledge has a twofold function in human life. On the one hand, it is a purpose by itself, a theme in its own right; on the other, it provides a foundation for all our emotions and volitions. It is one of the basic qualities of man as a spiritual person that, alone among terrestrial beings, he is able to participate in the existence of the surrounding world, not merely in the sense of exerting causality on that world but in the sense of an intentional relationship, of intellectual apprehension. Whereas the material things and the merely vital beings are interconnected only through the links of causation, man is equipped to penetrate the essence and qualities of things by the light of knowledge-. By virtue of acquiring a knowledge of things, he possesses them, as it were, from above.
In this unique, ordered, resplendent consciousness of all the rest of creation, the sovereign status of man as an image of God and a lord of created things is specifically manifested. Whoever denies that knowledge by itself is part of man’s destiny, that he is invited to penetrate the cosmos intellectually and to propose to himself as a self-subsistent theme the nature and qualities of existing things, cannot but fail to understand the nature of man.
To our intellect is entrusted the further function, however, of supplying a base