Abstract

This addition to Herder's "Quaestiones Disputatae" Series is a portion of Rahner's and Overhage's Das Problem der Hominisation; it is very nicely self-contained. After a rapid review of what the ecclesiastical and scriptural sources have to say about the problem of human origins and evolution as a possible explanation of these origins, Rahner launches into a metaphysical analysis of the concepts of "spirit" and "matter," on the one hand, and "causality" and "becoming," on the other. The method is transcendental and the epistemology is that of a critical realism like that of Maréchal and Lonergan. The major innovation comes in Rahner's interpretation of Aristotelian efficient causality. Taking noetic transcendence, i.e., intentional becoming, as the paradigm for all becoming—anything less being a deficient form of the activity of being as spirit—Rahner argues in favor of a cause transcending itself in the production of an effect, whether immanent or transitive. Thus Rahner sees no essential contradiction between the traditional notion of causality, so interpreted, and a theory of biological and human emergence. The going is always rough through Rahner, but the speculative asides he scatters throughout this book on such questions as the unity of the biosphere and sub-organic telism are enough in themselves to justify the trip.—E. A. R.