Traditionalism, in the context of 19th-century Catholicism, refers to a theory which held that all metaphysical, moral, and religious knowledge derives from God's revelation to man and is handed down in an unbroken chain of tradition. [1] It denied that human reason by itself has the power to attain to any truths in these domains of knowledge. [2] It arose, mainly in Belgium and France, as a reaction to 18th-century rationalism and can be considered an extreme form of anti-rationalism. [1]
Its chief proponents were Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais. [1] Their doctrines were advocated in a modified form by Louis Eugène Marie Bautain, Augustin Bonnetty, Casimir Ubaghs, and the philosophers of the Louvain school. [3] The fundamental distrust of human reason underlying traditionalism was eventually condemned in a number of papal decrees and finally ruled out by the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius during the First Vatican Council in 1870. [2]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Cross & Livingstone 2005; Homan 1998, p. 737.
- ^ a b Cross & Livingstone 2005.
- ^ Cross & Livingstone 2005; McCool 1989, p. 126.
Bibliography
- Cross, F. L.; Livingstone, E. A., eds. (2005). "Traditionalism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press (published 2009). doi: 10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-956671-6.
- Homan, Roger (1998). "Traditionalism". In Wuthnow, Robert (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion. Vol. 2. Abingdon, England: Routledge. pp. 737–741. ISBN 978-0-415-19081-7.
- McCool, Gerald A. (1989) [1977]. Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method. New York: Fordham University Press (published 1999). ISBN 978-0-8232-1257-6.