SOURCE: Marshall, John S. “Hooker's Philosophy of the Appropriate.” In Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, pp. 77-84. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1963.

[In the following excerpt, Marshall considers Hooker's interpretation of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.]

Hooker accepts the sixteenth century Thomism of Cardinal Cajetan but he also simplifies it. As the Prayer Book simplifies the mediaeval services, so Hooker simplifies the Thomism of the great philosophers of the Roman Church. The dialectic of objections and replies disappears as the form of philosophical exposition. Thomism becomes less prolix and complex; it takes on a classic simplicity and beauty. This is the way in which Hooker reforms and modifies Thomism. This is a typical Anglican procedure, and it is the way in which the past is saved but is also revitalized and strengthened. This simplification takes even more genius than the creation of a new system of thought.

Like Cajetan, Hooker makes Thomism not only more biblical but also more Aristotelian than does Thomas; and Hooker is even more Aristotelian than Cajetan, for he is more Hellenic in the simplicity of his exposition. He is interested, as the other sixteenth century Thomists were not, in the aesthetics of expression. The first book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, the book in which his essential philosophy is expressed, is one of the classics of English prose. Like Burke, Hooker makes his exposition of a technical subject into a classic of literature, but he is even greater than Burke in his mastery of English. Hooker was conscious of style, and was even imitated by Ruskin in the first volume of Modern Painters. Not the least of Hooker's achievements was his aesthetic insight. He had an aesthetic theory which was Hellenic rather than mediaeval,¹ and he created a style of prose which expressed Thomism for the modern mind. In this he was quite as creative as was Cajetan, and much more modern. Cajetan and Hooker are probably the two most creative Aristotelians of the sixteenth century.

In his interpretation of St. Thomas, Hooker stresses and restresses the very features which were so central to Aristotle, but he has modified Aristotle by St. Thomas. The simplicity is that of Aristotle, the notions are those of Thomas. For Hooker, the universe and all its parts are ultimately explained by final cause, or, as we should say today, by purpose. The key to things is their purpose, the end to which they are striving. To learn the purpose of things is to get a clue as to the meaning of life. To try to give a false purpose to things is to miss what we should do with them.² To give a false meaning to our own lives is to miss the meaning of our existence. This is Aristotle and pure Aristotle: this is the clue to Aristotle's conception of nature and of man. Hooker thinks that the energy, the dynamic force of all things both animate and inanimate, is regulated by a law which governs them. As he tells us,

Everything that exists has an operation or particular form of activity that is not constrained or accidental, and nothing begins to function according to this operation without some planned purpose towards which it works.³

This planned purpose is not necessarily conscious on the part of the agent, but it does involve a plan in the mind of God. This plan is the essence of the object, while the energy regulated by the form or purpose is the individual dynamic reality of the thing.

This plan in the mind of God is sometimes called by the scholastic theologians the idea of the thing in the Divine Mind. In the creation of the world God gave each thing a composite character. One part of the composite is the potentiality of the thing, that is, its essence. This essence determines what the thing can become, and corresponds to the Divine idea. Thus the egg of a chicken can become a chicken and not a man, the acorn can become an oak and not an elm.

The other aspect of the composite is the existence of the thing. What can become a dog is a potentiality, but is not existence. Thus essence is realized in existence; but without essence or determined potentiality there can be no existence. Here we have the most significant Aristotelian idea, one which explains how things come into being. This notion was developed by Avicenna, and then was formulated into the most fundamental concept of Thomistic metaphysics. The same notion is also used by Richard Hooker.⁴ By its means he explains the purpose of even inanimate things. When the essences of things are realized in their existence a purpose is realized.

Whereas things natural which are not in the number of voluntary agents … do so necessarily observe their certain laws, that as long as they keep those forms which give them their being, they cannot possibly be apt or inclinable to do otherwise than they do.⁵

The essence of a thing is what Hooker calls the law by which it is regulated. This essence is called form in inanimate creatures and is called soul in living creatures. Here Hooker, following Thomas, distinguishes two kinds of essence; and he affirms that these two kinds are not identical but analogical. “Form in other creatures is a thing proportionable unto the soul of living creatures.”⁶

Here we have another fundamental Thomistic notion of Hooker. The doctrine of proportional analogy affirms that what is indicated of two things analogous to each other is not affirmed in an identical sense but in a remote sense. The two things are alike but not identical in their characteristics. That really lays the grounds for levels of essences. Things are inanimate and animate, and what is said of inanimate things is said of animate things with a somewhat different meaning. Both have essences but the essences are themselves different. Inanimate things have purpose but in a different sense from living things. Again, purpose is different in an animate irrational being such as a dog or a cat and a rational being such as a man.

If we look at human life purpose becomes explicit. It is used of human life in a fuller, more meaningful sense than it is of either inanimate things or irrational, animate beings. The drive of human life is desire, the dynamic of human existence. Desire is incomplete and is a striving to completion; but it cannot find itself apart from a true purpose which realizes it. As the desire takes form it becomes real, and finds its fruition as the law of nature is realized in action. Will directs desire to its proper end.⁷

Every inanimate thing, every plant, every animal, every human being is characterized by unrealized desires. That is called by Hooker, with St. Thomas, potentiality. It is not yet what it can be. All that we can be but are not as yet is potentiality or possibility. Now the very stuff of our life is the realization of the true purpose or law of our being. Law regulates the dynamic into the proper forms of realization. In the case of physical objects and of lower living beings, they unconsciously observe the law of their type. Such natural agents can act in no other way than they do, for they act under necessity according to the law of their being. Inclination leads inevitably to realization according to the laws of nature.⁸ But man is different, since he can act contrary to the law of his type. He can act perversely, and realize something which is a frustration of the law of his nature. He becomes something less than truly human. Groups can do the same thing, and can produce a sick and perverse society.

Human beings desire that which will satisfy: that is the meaning of desire. Only if the law of realization is followed is there satisfaction of our yearnings. In fact, the law of our nature is simply the form which our desire must take to produce satisfaction. It is simply the form or mode of control of our desires to bring them to satisfying fruition. That is what Hooker means by the rational. Reason is not an arbitrary calculus, but is grounded in the very law of the universe, and that law is the law of the realization of desire. This is no Cartesian rationalism; this is not a mere calculus of possibilities. Rather, this is the expression of the meaning of our deepest inclinations and the way they can be realized.⁹

This realization of the fulness of desire is what we call the good. Hooker, like Aristotle, believes that everything, including man, strives for the good; but we are perverse and pursue the evil in the form of the good. Even when the physician tells us that we must do certain things to escape illness, we decide that we can do something else and still be well. We all, including the most perverse, do want the fruition of our deepest desires, but we are often morally sick, and more often perverse, and we pursue what is in fact evil as if it were the good. This perversity of man is the original evil of his nature; but that does not destroy the image of God in us. We all desire the good, we all seek felicity. Hooker is an Aristotelian who makes the end of all human life felicity;¹⁰ he is also a Christian who makes the end of life the blessedness.

All this means that there is an appropriateness in life. Hooker calls it “that which is fitting.” Life is not arbitrary, it is fundamentally a matter of the realization of that which suits the situation, that which befits it. The hard thing to understand is that although we desire the good, we are wayward about it. We do that which will bring ill health when we really want good health; we mistreat our friends when we really want their friendship. Hooker does not debate this matter of human perversity; he simply accepts it, and accepts it as a fact of life called by Christians “the fall of man resulting in original sin.”¹¹

On the other hand, ‘original sin’ of man does not nullify the general appropriateness of the world¹² Every being, even man himself, finds the fruition of his life in the law of his nature. Hooker thinks of the universe as a series of levels with God as the Supreme Being and inanimate nature the lowest being. God contains no potentiality at all; his life is lived in the fruition of his being without striving. He is perfection because his life is the perfection of desire in complete realization. In fact, his desire is not desire, because we think of desire as a striving for what has not yet been realized. But there is something in God which would be desire if it were unrealized. However, God's life is inclination completely realized.¹³ Therefore, he can be defined by St. John in terms of love. That does not mean that he desires and then has fulfillment; it means that he always has been, and is, and ever shall be the fruition of all holy desire. He is love as the fruition of desire without the struggle for fulfillment. Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary in God. Because he is the fruition of love, he is complete goodness. He is completely in conformity to the law of his being. “the being of God is a kind of law to his working: for that perfection which God is, giveth perfection to what he doth.”¹⁴ Hooker makes his position even clearer in a passage in which he asserts what is called by Thomists the doctrine that the will of God follows but does not precede the intellect of God.¹⁵ He says,

They err therefore who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides his will. Many times no reason known to us; but that there is no reason thereof I judge it most unreasonable to imagine, inasmuch as he worketh all things … not only according to his own will, but “the Counsel of his own will.”¹⁶

God for Hooker is one who wills according to his nature; and his nature (essence) or the law of his being is that which is entirely suitable, fitting and appropriate. What we should seek in the universe and in human nature is the appropriate, the suitable, the fitting in life. There is much more of the appropriate in the world than we realize when we follow our unguided inclinations and ask for a universe which conforms to our every mood. The universe is good, and we find meaning in our lives as we discover that goodness. If, on the other hand, we make everything which frustrates our every momentary wish into a sign of the evil of things, we miss the meaning of that law which God has set to govern the universe, a law which is in itself good.

While admitting human waywardness and evil, Hooker asserts the fundamental appropriateness of the world. This gives him his clue to morals and politics. Even man is not totally depraved, and so there are clues to human goodness in the very nature of man and the universe in which he lives. The Puritans' exclusive biblicism blinds them to the very purpose of the Bible. When seen in the context of nature and human life, the Bible is discovered as the means of restoring man to his true nature. The very truth of the Bible is validated by its truth as revealing the image of God in man.

The Bible accents the appropriateness of the things which lead to the life of blessedness. To make it irrational and foreign to human decency is to miss the purpose of the biblical revelation. This is to stress out of their context the Pauline words, “The natural man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him.” The Puritans interpreted these words to mean that all God's commands are simply arbitrary. Hooker makes the very nature of God's acts appropriate.

Are there not cases of salvation wherein a man may have controversie with infidels which believe not the Scriptures? And even with them which believe Scripture the law of nature notwithstanding is not without force, that any man to whom it is alleged can cast it off without force as a thing impertinent.¹⁷

He even uses stronger language than that, and to those who say that there are no moral laws binding on Christians except those explicitly affirmed in Holy Scripture, he declares:

A doctrine which would well have pleased Caligula, Nero and such other monsters to hear. Had the apostles taught this it might have advanced them happily to honour. The contrary doctrine hath cost many saints and martyrs their lives.¹⁸

If every moral wrong must be enunciated in the Bible to be a wrong, if every good deed, to be good, must be specified in the Scriptures, then mighty evil can be done with impunity, and much good left undone. The Bible can only be understood on the basis of both natural law and supernatural law as appropriate. Otherwise, the Bible becomes a source of disaster and even evil in the lives of men.

Notes

1. Hooker, Richard. The Works, ed. John Keble. 7th ed. rev. R. Church and F. Paget. 3 vols. Oxford, 1888. V. vi, xv, xxxviii.

2. Ibid., I. ii. 1.

3. Ibid. This difficult passage has been paraphrased for clarity.

4. “All other things besides [God] are somewhat in possibility, which as yet they are not in act.” I.v.1.

5. Hooker, Ecc. Pol., I. iii. 4.

6. Ibid., I. iii. 4. note 1.

7. Ibid., I. vii. 2.

8. Ibid., I. iii. 4.

9. Ibid., I. vii. 2-6.

10. Ibid., I. viii. 1; x. 2.

11. Ibid., V. App. No. I. 19.

12. Ibid., I. iii. 3; V. App. No. I. 19.

13. Ibid., I. v. 1.

14. Ibid., I. ii. 2.

15. De ver., q. 22. a. 5.

16. Hooker, op. cit., I. ii. 5; he quotes from Eph. 1. 11. At times Hooker makes statements which seem to affirm the primacy of the will of God, e.g., “This law therefore we may name eternal, being ‘that order which God before all ages hath set down with himself, for himself to do all things by’” (I.ii.6). Such assertions do not declare the primacy of the will of God but rather God's free will.

17. Ibid., Church & Paget ed., vol. 1, p. 271, note 2.

18. Ibid., p. 341. note 4.