Wittgenstein once said (to M.O’C Drury): ‘It is impossible for me to say one word in my book about all that music has meant in my life’. I do not think Wittgenstein meant to point to some personal hang up Musical experience is at once very important to those to whom it is important at all and very difficult to talk sense about. It is not quite impossible to do this, but impossible to do it consistently. One thinks of the remarks on music in Cocteau’s Rappel a I’Ordre or Stravinsky’s Conversations where remarks which illuminate sit cheek to jowel with remarks that merely obscure. Or, to take a more academic example, what is one to make of the fact that the same man, Donald Tovey, wrote the brilliant essay on Schubert and Loewes’ setting of Erlkönig that so illuminates the whole world of Lieder, and the utterly wrongheaded paper on Mozart’s fortieth symphony? It is then no disparagement of Hamish Swanston to say that his article, A Redeeming Occasion, in the March number of New Blackfriars, whilst full of interesting ideas, adds up to a general thesis about opera that must be rejected.

Dr Swanston likes opera. His taste is good, or at any rate I like most of the same things he does. He sees, what I am sure is just, that Mozart, Verdi, and Wagner are in quite a different category from other composers of opera. He would add Beethoven, on the strength of Fidelio, to this select company—here I strongly disagree but more of that in a moment. Going to one of this select group of operas is a redeeming occasion in the strict theological sense and Dr Swanston does not hesitate from a final conclusion that opera at this level ‘has itself become a way of theologising’. Here I am sure, he is quite wrong but to say why I find difficult because I do not think going to the opera, even to different performances of the same opera, is one kind of experience about which general conclusions can be made.

My subject is an examination of the alternative economic and social systems which are open to Third World countries. In order to keep this discussion within reasonable bounds I must make certain assumptions. It is important that these should be clear before I begin : for if the assumptions are not shared, then much of what I say will be irrelevant. Fortunately, my assumptions are not very controversial— at least within Africa.

The Assumptions:

My first assumption is that any discussion about the appropriate economic and social organisation must, for the time being at least, be conducted within each nation state, and the decision must be made exclusively by the people of that nation.

Secondly, I take it to be axiomatic that all the peoples of the Third World desire to govern themselves, and want their countries to be completely independent of external control. This does not rule out the possibility of political or economic links between two or more countries; nor does it exclude a possible voluntary merger of sovereignties, provided that these things are agreed upon after discussions based on the equality of all participants.

Thirdly, I shall assume that, to everyone in the Third World, the present degree of poverty, and the general lack of economic development, is completely unacceptable. We have to increase our production of wealth so that we may increase the level of our collective and individual consumption.

My fourth and final assumption is that our struggles for independence were national struggles, involving the rights of all the inhabitants. We were not aiming to replace our alien rulers by local privileged elites, but to create societies which ensure human dignity and selfrespect for all.

I have chosen a strange subject to celebrate the centenary of Thomas Aquinas here, at Oxford. Is it not paradoxical, if not a little provocative, to speak of ‘St Thomas and the Spirit of Ecumenism’? For several reasons great caution is to be recommended.

First of all, there can only be ecumenism if one accepts the other as other, that he also has insights, that he has something to give. Now St Thomas lived in an epoch of a Christianity very sure of itself, and even, one can say, of a latin Catholicism loyal to the Pope as its head, absolutely assured of its legitimacy and its truth. England was certainly no exception. In these circumstances, what could possibly have been an ecumenical dialogue? Heretics were to be ‘exterminated’: that does not mean killed, but driven far away, chased from the land; though the process of ‘exclusion’ could culminate in physical destruction. One thinks of the cathars of Montségur. Listen to this account of an indicative incident. It happened at Cluny, at the beginning of the reign of St Louis, who recounted the episode to Joinville: ‘There was a great conference of clerics and Jews at the monastery of Cluny. There was a knight there . . . , who stood up and leaning on his crutch, asked that the greatest cleric and the greatest master of the Jews he brought to him. And so they were. . . . “Master”, said the knight, “I ask you if you believe that the Virgin Mary, who carried God in her womb and in her arms, gave birth while remaining a virgin and that she is the mother of God”. And the Jew replied that he did not believe a word of it. . . . “Truly”, said the knight, “You will pay for it”. And then he lifted up his crutch and struck the Jew near the ear and knocked him to the ground. And the Jews fled, carrying away their master, badly wounded, and thus ended the conference’.

’ Without this theological provenance I should never have come upon the path of thinking. But provenance decides destination’ (Unterwegs zur Sprache, page 96).

Heidegger’s reputation in English philosophical circles has suffered badly from his association with Nazism. It would be easy to accumulate quotations to show how the connection suffices to discredit him philosophically. Yet we have no reason for expecting philosophers to be politically informed or enlightened or even sensible. They have in fact often proved very authoritarian and elitist in their views. Furthermore, Wittgenstein visited Russia in the 1930s and seriously considered emigrating there as late as 1939, when it was surely plain enough what Stalinism was like (cf. John Moran: “Wittgenstein and Russia’, New Left Review No. 73), but this fact has not affected any one’s estimate of his philosophical work. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s philosophy may not be so independent of his social, political and religious opinions and experience as his most devoted exponents have led us to believe. But in the context of his life Heidegger’s connection with Nazism is not unintelligible.

The title of my paper is intended to represent a glimpse and a project rather than the profession of an achievement. I must, therefore, make explicit at least a certain disclaimer and mark a certain delimitation. I write primarily as a simple pupil of Aquinas, as one, however, who, perhaps precisely as such, has learned a sympathy with certain later and apparently dissimilar thinkers, and in particular with Wittgenstein. Further, the Wittgenstein whom I want to consider here is the later Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations.

My intention, therefore, is to suggest certain analogies between the thought of one whom I consider to be my principal tutor and that of another with whom, I think, Aquinas would have recognised an elective affinity. And since my argument will at least at times be somewhat intricate, I want to begin by providing an Ariadne-thread to facilitate the passage through the possible labyrinth. My contention will be that the conceptions of language held by both Wittgenstein and Aquinas can best be understood as expressions of their conception of what it is to be a man, that their respective conceptions of man turn out to be fascinatingly convergent, but that nevertheless their conceptions of language present a striking, albeit complementary, contrast. Or, put in slightly different form, the idea I want to suggest is that whereas the conceptions of language held by both thinkers should be seen as aspects and consequences of a markedly similar conception of man, these conceptions of language nevertheless present contrasting characteristics.

I shall begin, then, by trying to state my understanding of the main features of Wittgenstein’s conception of language as expressed in the Philosophical Investigations.

Thomas Aquinas is generally regarded as a pillar of orthodoxy, the cornerstone of an intellectual establishment. He achieved a synthesis that almost became something of this sort, although his impact is often exaggerated. In his own time he challenged accepted tradition on a number of points and was condemned by ecclesiastical authorities.

The principal point at issue in this condemnation is a doctrine of Thomas Aquinas that may sound bizarre to many today : the ‘unicity of the substantial form'. It is central to his anthropology and has serious consequences for his ethics. It was regarded by many of his contemporaries as heretical or at least dangerous. And if one were to attempt to place Aquinas in the Marxist-Leninist division of all thinkers into idealists and materialists, this doctrine would earn him a place among the materialists.

I shall not attempt a textual analysis of the problem involved. This would inevitably demand a highly technical discussion in the peculiar language of thirteenth-century scholasticism. Rather, I should like to attempt a description of what I believe to have been Aquinas’s view of man and ethics in terms of our own popular picture. I believe that this view can be substantiated through serious historical research and that it is, within the limits imposed by the language gap, a faithful picture of the position of Thomas Aquinas.

It is often assumed that the ethic of Thomas Aquinas is otherworldly, based on a spiritualist anthropology, and ultimately, rationalist. The first assertion is a half-truth; the second and third are false. Aquinas’s anthropology is materialistic, and he is no rationalist.

Until very recently Christian theology has never been much concerned with social equality. It would be true to say that, on the contrary, a well-developed theology of inequality has been characteristic of Christianity for most of its history. Before I develop this theme it could be well to define what kind of equality I am talking about. I am concerned with social equality of the kind that is demanded by many contemporary civil-rights movements. It may be called ‘equality of consideration’ by which I mean the presumption against treating human beings differently in any respect until grounds for the distinction have been shown which are relevent to the distinction we propose to make. According to such a principle we consider that to judge an individual not on his merits relevant to the case but on the supposed merits of some class to which he belongs is a fundamental injustice. The onus of proof that membership of some class of human beings disqualifies an individual from equality of consideration in some respect always lies with one who wishes to make or to perpetuate the disqualification.

A principle of equality of this kind is not a natural Christian growth. It can be developed without any reference to Christianity but it is likely to be more vigorous if it comes about by the cross-fertilisation of Christian inspiration and humanist ideas. If Christianity has contributed anything to the development of the equality principle in society it is not so much by way of formal Christian ideas as by way of a certain humanitarian impulse at work in a suitable ideological environment.

It is a mark of realism that any inquiry should start from where one is and an inquiry into law should start from our everyday understanding of it. Such an inquiry would most likely register a variety of reactions, each in its own way instructive. Law may suggest ‘law and order’ of the sort that is usually associated with right-wing or repressive sections of the political spectrum. Law may suggest the police carrying out their duties; think of the colloquial expression, ‘I’ll get the law on you’. Law may suggest a judge or magistrate sentencing. Law may suggest Parliament at work. On the whole each of these spontaneous images builds on a central picture of law as a command to be enforced in case of disobedience. On longer reflection law would seem to exist to keep order, public peace and stability so that civic life can flourish and law does in some general way embody the predominant views of the community as a whole most of the time. Moreover our reflections would show that there is virtually nothing which could not be demanded or forbidden by law and in turn that there is no law which could not be changed. We have very little, except perhaps the fact that a Parliamentary majority, if not always right, can at least be changed to shield us from the possible content of law and the severity of its application.