II. Literary works. III. Objectivist philosophy

II. LITERARY WORKS

1. The Early Ayn Rand (1984)

Rand’s earlier works were published posthumously by her “intellectual heir,” Leonard Peikoff. Her short stories, “The Husband I Bought,” “Good Copy” and “Her Second Career” show her quick mastery of the English language. Some literary themes that foreshadow her later philosophical themes include the intelligent woman worshipping the man who brings out the best in her, the individual who does not look back, the often unrealistic happy endings with the hints of Russian pessimism. Rand’s 

characters would often be described as Rand “in a good mood” or Rand “in a bad mood.” “Red Pawn,” a screenplay, was purchased by Universal Studios. It showed her strong flair for the dramatic and her antisocialist bias which she believed hampered the later success of We the Living.

2. Night of January 16th (originally titled Penthouse Legend) (1936)

In 1935 Rand was offered a contract to produce her play Penthouse Legend on Broadway. The work had been renamed Woman on Trial when it was performed. Night of January 16th is the story of a woman on trial for pushing her wealthy boss-lover from a Manhattan penthouse. The play employed the novel convention of selecting the jury from the audience with two different endings written pending the decision of the jury. This early work pits passionate self-assertiveness, self-confidence, audacity and independence from social norms against conventionality, servility, envy, hatred and lust for power over people.17

III. OBJECTIVIST PHILOSOPHY

Rand is reported as saying that she held the same philosophy for as long as she remembered. It could be summarized, “Man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”18 Once when asked by a group of Random House salesmen to give the essence of her philosophy while standing on one foot, she complied and said, “Metaphysics - objective reality; Epistemology - reason; Ethics - self-interest; Politics - capitalism.”19

Rand would credit Aristotle for his formulation of the laws of logic and his development of a metaphysics of objective reality. She acknowl-edged Thomas Aquinas for a return to Aristotelian ethics during the renaissance and would condemn Immanuel Kant for the return of the Witch Doctor (mysticism) and Attila (physical force). There are strong influences of Nietzsche apparent in her philosophy although she dis-avowed an uncertainty in reason and use of physical force. In a later edition of We The Living, with what Rand described as “merely editorial line-changes”20 she changes the tone of a paragraph to reflect her belief regarding the use of physical force; the original clearly showed the influence of Nietzsche. 

There are many points of Rand’s philosophy which her detractors expound on. Many see contradictions within her system and find her characters unbelievable and hence, her philosophy implausible. It is often charged that her philosophy encourages followers to repress their emotional side. Rand publicly said that she didn’t have an emotion that could not be accounted for rationally. This was to have deleterious effects on many in “The Collective,” Nathaniel Branden the most noteworthy. Her view of women was often questioned. In the world proclaiming rational self-interest as a moral code and denouncing self-sacrifice, Rand claims that the ideal love is that of a woman surrendering to the man whom she worships. Her ideal woman finds pleasure in this surrender.

1. For The New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1961)

After suffering from depression in the years following the publication of Atlas Shrugged and following numerous requests from disciples, Rand proceeded to lay out her philosophy in nonfiction form. In 1961, Random House published For The New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. A sixty-five page original essay introduced the philosophy of Objectivism. Key excerpts from We the Livingf Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged were selected to illustrate the points in the original essay. (See discussion of each of these works below.)

Rand states in the preface that this book is for “those who wish to assume the responsibility of becoming the new intellectuals.”21 She outlines her philosophical system by introducing the archetypal figures of the Witch Doctor and Attila who have reigned throughout history and whose reign led to what she sees as the moral bankruptcy of culture. The Witch Doctor, by relying on faith, and Attila, by relying on force, have oppressed people’s ability to reason. Two events that saved man temporarily from the Witch Doctor and Attila were the reintroduction of Aristotelian ethics and the industrial revolution. Thomas Aquinas was credited with ending the rule of the Witch Doctor by reintroducing Aristotle and freeing man from the bondage of faith. The industrial revolution which was produced by the freeing of man’s mind ended the rule of Attila. This golden age ended too soon, as Rand sees it, due to the decline of the intellectual. She indicts Descartes for reintroducing the Witch Doctor by denying the existence of an objective reality, a mainstay of Rand’s philosophical system. Hume continues this slide from reason by describing human consciousness as that of an animal, denying 

to humans the ability to draw conclusions from the object of causation. However, it is Immanuel Kant for whom Rand saves the bulk of her venom. It is Kant who gave power to both the Witch Doctor and Attila. The “noumenal” world or higher reality is given to the Witch Doctor whereby the rules of morality are made known by a feeling; the “phe-nomenal” world is a distortion perceived by the mind; it is not only a delusion but a collective delusion. Therefore, reason and science are necessarily limited.

Rand claims that the intellectual’s job should have been to provide a rational morality for the Producer, the businessman. At best she sees them as contributing pragmatism - a new form of “Attilaism.” The intellectual became the enemy of the businessman by portraying him as a looter rather than a producer. Had the intellectuals and businessmen joined forces, as she saw the founding fathers of the United States having done, it would have been shown that “a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”22 Rand concludes by calling for the rise of the new intellectual, one who is guided by reason alone, who values “self” above all else, who refuses to give in to faith or to force and who will give capitalism a firm ethical foundation.

2. We the Living (1936)

We the Living is the story of a young woman’s attempts to save her lover in the Soviet State by sleeping with a Communist Party official. Rand felt that it was long rejected because it told the truth of Soviet Russia. Rand says that this story comes closest to her autobiography, more intellectually than historically. This is the first work where we see an embryonic heroic man emerging, although in We The Living the heroine, Kira, is the stronger character. Perhaps the only self-sacrifice that Rand approves of is that of a woman who gives herself up to save her lover. The irony of We The Living and Red Pawn is that the char-acters who are most admirable are the communists.

3. Anthem (1938)

Anthem was unable to find a publisher in America. It was originally published in 1938 in England and printed in the United States in 1948 by Pamphleteer. The narrator, Equality 7-2521, is a man living in a totalitarian state. There is no word, “I,” in their language. Equality 7-2521, taller and smarter than others, is made a streetsweeper because 

he selfishly wanted to become a scholar and dared to question the Council of Vocations. Anthem is the story of Equality’s discovery of the word “I” and the Unspeakable Word, “Ego.” Equality takes the name Prometheus from a book he has found in a house built by people from the Unmentionable Times. Certainly the character of Prometheus pre-figures Howard Roark in The Fountainhead and John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. Here we have a stronger example of Rand’s repudiation of collectivism.

4. The Fountainhead (1943)

The Fountainhead took Rand six years to write. Its central theme is one man against the system. On the surface it is a book concerned with the world of architecture: modernism versus traditionalism. Howard Roark is an architect of innovation subscribing to the ideal that “form follows function.” In an age of neo-classicism his skyscrapers are appreciated by few. Roark is the individualist, Peter Keating is the second-hander. Keating continually comes to Roark for ideas and designs, Roark complies with these requests to see his buildings built, but Keating cannot see that they are built to Roark’s specifications. The story is enriched with a cast of semi-heroes and heroines and villains all exem-plifying the struggle of the individual over the collective, the idea that self-sacrifice breaks a man’s spirit, and a man who works for another is nothing but a slave. At his trial for dynamiting the housing project which he designed but gave to Peter Keating to submit, he says,

No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of man’s moral principles.... The man who attempts to live for others is a depen-dent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality - the man who lives to serve others - is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit?..,23 

5. Atlas Shrugged (1957)

Rand and her followers consider Atlas Shrugged her true masterpiece. It is often referred to as the Objectivist “bible.” Rand herself would refer to John Galt’s speech when asked to summarize her philosophy. This work of fiction has been difficult to categorize: it is both philosophy and fiction, and satire and serious commentary.24 The savage reviews that Atlas Shrugged would receive would sent Rand into a deep depression lasting for years. Granville Hicks, a socialist, would write in The New York Times Book Review that he found both the content and style offensive.25 Whittaker Chambers in the National Review would write, “Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of godless world... a voice can be heard from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber - go!’ ”26 It was not the reviews that would so affect her, but rather that no intellectual peer would speak up to repudiate these attacks.

The cast is comprised of four heroes, the dominant being John Galt, and one heroine, Dominique who is finally Rand in good mood. All of the heroes are men of self-interest who eventually join a grand scheme to bring collectivist society to its knees and make the world safe for capitalism. The cast of villains are enemies of individualism and free enterprise. It is a story of the producers of the world going on strike until the world, ever-emerging as a socialist society, destroys itself. The heroes can then leave their secret Utopia to rebuild the world.

6. The Newsletters (January 1962 - February 1976)

After the publication of For the New Intellectual Rand realized that it was nonfiction that was most natural for her to write27 and soon began The Objectivist Newsletter28 jointly with Nathaniel Branden. In it Rand discoursed on Objectivism and how it applied to contemporary culture, politics or ethics. Often there was a guest editor who amplified the cover page editorial.

The Objectivist19 was an expanded Newsletter with a different format and an ever increasing subscription. It was in the May 1968 issue that she formally broke all ties with and repudiated both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. All subsequent issues were edited by Rand and coedited by Leonard Peikoff. In this journal Rand set forth the policies which any true “student of objectivism” would follow. She made it clear that 

none of her followers should call themselves “Objectivists” lest they twist or modify her philosophy.

After the break with the Brandens and a steep decline in subscriptions, The Objectivist became The Ayn Rand Letter30 (much shorter and narrower in scope) published fortnightly and addressing the national and international events of the day. In 1975, at the age of seventy, Rand was unable to meet the onerous publication schedule and discontinued The Ayn Rand Letter.

7. The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Rand continued to publish collections of her essays from the Newsletter and The Objectivist in book form. The first in this format was The Virtue of Selfishness, a title surely to garner attention from both supporters and detractors. In the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness she states why she uses the term “selfishness” to denote virtuous qualities of character when it antagonizes so many: “For that reason that it makes you afraid of it.”31 She proceeded to outline the rationale of her ethics.

Life is the standard by which good can be judged; here she echoes the Aristotelian principle that the primary goal of any organism is the maintenance of its life, its self-interest. Values must be chosen to achieve that purpose, namely, Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem with the corresponding virtues of Rationality, Productiveness and Pride. As such, the maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are one and the same. In this book and in the space of one paragraph she addresses the age- old relationship between “is” and “ought” and concludes,

In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function neces-sitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus that validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.”32

The essays contained in Virtue of Selfishness respond to many of the altruists’ truisms of the day. Rand and Branden attack these popular platitudes in an attempt to show the detrimental effects these cause, 

8. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

In his book, Ayn Rand, James Baker suggests that had Rand known G.

K. Chesterton’s work she might have paraphrased his comment that Christianity (capitalism) has not failed, it has not been tried.33 Her purpose in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is to instruct Americans on what in her view is the only economic system geared to the life of a rational being. Three articles by Alan Greenspan (then economic advisor to U.S. President Gerald Ford and later the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System) are included in this publication.

Rand claims that capitalism is the only system based on individual rights, especially property rights. A true form of capitalism, as she would describe laissezfaire capitalism, is one without any government controls. Rand sees this capitalist ideal in shambles due to the altruistic socialism that has brought on such policies as anti-trust legislation.

9. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967)

The essays contained in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology were all published in The Objectivist between July 1966 and February 1967 and were intended to give an introduction to what Rand felt was the central issue of philosophy: epistemology and the definition of universal concepts. This book was her first attempt at presenting Objectivism as a systematic philosophy. She instructs readers that the starting point of her epistemology is the validity of man’s senses and the axiom: Existence exists. This axiom implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.34

Rand summarizes four schools of epistemological thought: extreme realism as represented by Plato in which universals are real entities and exist separately from concrete things, moderate realism represented by Aristotle in which universals exist only in concrete things, nominalism in which universals exist in name only, and conceptualism in which universals exist only as images in the mind. Objectivism accepts Aristotle’s moderate realism with the senses as valid transmitters to the brain, the existence of objective reality and that “A is A.” Objectivism differs from Aristotle on the nature of essences with Objectivism claiming that essences are epistemological and not metaphysical. The issue of concepts is differentiated from the four schools of epistemological 

thought in that Objectivism regards concepts as objective, derived from reality by the human mind and not revealed or invented.

10. The Romantic Manifesto (1969)

This book, comprised of articles on aesthetics written between 1962 and 1971, gives a unified vision of the importance of art to human con-sciousness. Because art solidifies abstractions, images can be provided that integrate an infinite number of concepts. Rand sees art as a means for communicating moral ideals. This is what Rand has done with her fictional characters. Rand describes her style as Romantic Realism in an Aristotelian vein portraying a sense of life that describes things as they should be, thus her heroic vision of man. Rand blames naturalism for inspiring literature that is pessimistic, art that is primitive, and music that is irrational.

11. The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)

This is the first published collection of works written after the break with Branden. Rand wrote and published these articles in response to a request from a graduate student for a compilation of her thoughts on the educational system and the challenges the college students posed to the system. Rand at once both praises and condemns the protesting students. She praises them for rebelling against those in the educational system who taught them to think irrationally; a system which stressed conformity and socialization over conceptual skills. However, she rebukes the students for rebelling against modern technology, they should see the smokestack as a symbol of capitalism.

In a strange twist Rand draws an analogy to the women’s movement. She says that there is envy behind protests; and that the women’s movement in particular shows women’s envy of men. She denounces these protests saying that American women don’t appreciate the fact that they are.the most privileged women in the world. She goes as far as to call them men-haters.

12. Philosophy: Who Needs it? (1982)

This collection of essays was published posthumously, introduced and organized by Leonard Peikoff. Philosophy: Who Needs It? contains no new material; most essays were published in The Ayn Rand Letter and 

tend to preserve the dogma of Objectivism rather than forge new ground. The premise of her title essay is that everyone’s actions or inactions derive from a philosophy, either conscious or subconscious. She takes this opportunity to attack the philosophies of Hume, Kant, Plato and Emerson and credits them with influencing modern thought that has come up with such platitudes as, “Don’t be so sure - nothing can be known for certain.”

In “Kant versus Sullivan” Rand rebukes academicians who publish articles devaluing “the work,” propose science without experience and language without words with the example of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, then a topical item in the Broadway play, “The Miracle Worker.” Keller, blind and deaf, is brought into the world of conceptual awareness by Sullivan through the use of language. Rand sees this as exemplifying the significance of “the word,” of language.

13. The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1988)

This is another collection of Rand’s articles and speeches originally published elsewhere. Leonard Peikoff states in the introduction that this is the last collection of Rand’s writings he plans to publish. The areas covered include Philosophy, Culture and Politics. It includes the very thoughtful tribute to Marilyn Monroe that Rand had published in her very short-lived newspaper column for the Los Angeles Times. The timing of this publication of essays is interesting, arriving not long after Barbara Branden’s biography of Rand, and shortly before Nathaniel Branden’s memoir. Peikoff is Barbara Branden’s cousin and broke all ties with her after the Rand/Branden schism in 1968.

IV. CONCLUSION

Ayn Rand was an original thinker whose early philosophical views were heavily influenced both by her responses to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Nietzsche, and by her personal experiences with the moral bankruptcy of communist philosophy as it was applied in the Soviet state. Although her early career was a literary philosophical one, her greatest literary works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were great precisely because they fulfilled what she viewed to be the proper social role of philosophy: the moral mobilization of the public. By contemporary academic standards, Rand was not well read in philosophy. Yet, she fits well in 

the genre of much of twentieth century philosophy. Like twentieth century existentialism and pragmatism, objectivism sought to bring philosophical insight and analysis to bear on the issues that confront real people: the possibility of moral existence in the modem, often amoral world.

A difficult, troubled and creative person, Rand may be the only philosopher whose views have made it to Broadway and the silver screen. Perhaps because she so eschewed academic philosophy, and because her works are widely considered to be works of literature, Objectivist philosophy is regularly omitted from academic philosophy. Yet, throughout literary academia, Ayn Rand is considered a philosopher. Her works merit consideration as works of philosophy in their own right. 10. Cornelia Johanna De Vogel (1905-1986)

TH. G. SINNIGE

I.  BACKGROUND

In 1945, when Europe was awakening from the nightmare of World War II, in every field of activity a movement set in to reestablish traditional values. In philosophy and in institutional religion what was available were the pre-war traditions. There was still no horizon other than that within which pre-war developments had found a place, and even these had been more or less stagnant. What was ahead in the years to come could not be foreseen or conjectured: profound changes in ways of living and in religious standards. Least prepared of all were the Churches, whose leaders were anxious to maintain morality and tradition.

In the Netherlands the whole of intellectual life was split up into three “pillars” (not just pillars of wisdom), as they were then called: Protestant, Roman-catholic and Humanist. The Catholic part of the population (then about 30%) had lived for centuries as a marginal minority and had begun, from the 1850’s onwards, to gain influence in governmental positions and in the universities.

In 1946 the chair of ancient philosophy in the State University of Utrecht became vacant. This university had been founded in 1636 as the second of the new protestant universities (after Leyden) in the free Republic of the Netherlands. It soon became a bulwark of Calvinism. In the faculty of theology large numbers of students from Hungary, Rumania and Czechoslovakia were preparing for their task as ministers of the newly reformed religion. Remnants of the Ualvinistic origins of Dutch universities were still at work even into the nineteen-thirties. In some circles it was thought fashionable to entertain, as a background, a kind of latent antipapism. These and other silent forces broke to the surface when Cornelia De Vogel was unanimously proposed as a

A History of Women Philosophers/Volume 4, ed. by Mary Ellen Waithe, 225-242.

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

candidate for the chair of ancient philosophy. When the proposal was already on its way to the Queen’s cabinet, it became known that a year earlier she had embraced the Catholic faith and had been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. Many years afterwards I asked a leading figure on the faculty if he still agreed with the criticisms levelled at the time, and he answered: “Yes, for sure, - there should not have been appointed a woman to that chair, let alone a Catholic woman.”

II. BIOGRAPHY

Cornelia Johanna De Vogel was born on February 27th, 1905, in the Frisian capital Leeuwarden, where her father was a pharmacist. Having completed the Stedelijk Gymnasium she went to Utrecht University to study Classics (1924-1927), and then to Leyden University (19291930). The years of study were interrupted for two years (1927-1929), when she lived in Harderwijk, teaching Classics in the “Christelijk Lyceum,” and for longer periods in the years between 1930-1940, because of ill health. She passed the doctoral examination in 1932 in Utrecht. According to the order of studies in Dutch universities, this examination conferred the title of doctorandus and the right to present a dissertation for the doctoral degree. (She received her Ph.D. in 1936.)

There is a kind of autobiography up to the year 1974. It takes the form of an interview with a representative of the “Societas Studiosorum Reformatorum.” In the interview De Vogel recalls her early years at home and as a student, and describes the atmosphere in which she grew up. There was no trace whatever of any religious conviction in the family. No reading of the Bible, no prayers, an attitude of tolerance, and at times a violent criticism of the arrogance of preachers. The first notion of religion came to her from children’s books in the library of the elementary school. At the age of about ten the child had her first awareness of God’s presence, and was dominated by the problem that “without God life had no sense.” Having entered middle school she was sent to a series of confirmation classes, where a minister explained religion in a rationalistic and Hegelian vein* The person of Jesus was mythologized and Christ did not come into the picture. In the later years of the Gymnasium she made her first acquaintance with philosophical literature, and from what she read she construed for herself “a kind of philosophical religion” (as she called it). 

There was a passing interest in the theosophical movement, which she later rejected because it relied too heavily on private revelations. Once a flash of intuition came to her, “a kind of enlightenment, a mystical experience,” as she calls it. The words that follow in the autobiography make it clear that the inner experience was rather a moment of great inner light in the intellectual sense, because she adds: “I had felt the reality of the Spirit, a religious experience. It made me understand Parmenides: Being is and not-Being is not. The reality of all this was overwhelming, the world here disappeared from sight. I was flooded by transcendent reality.” The wording suggests that rather than mysticism it was a revelation of the power of conceptual thinking. This is confirmed by the whole of her further development. When, in years to follow, she was groping her way towards Roman Catholicism, the written argument in so many books and articles always bore the stamp of intellectus quaerens fidem, rather than fides quaerens intellectum.

About the year 1926 De Vogel again went through an intense inner experience, this time quite different from the former one because it now was the experience of God’s undeniable presence. She decided to try to find Christ. “I knew that I had to become a member of a Church and be incorporated into what I should find to be the Church of Christ.” In a postscript to her later “manifesto to each and every Catholic in the Dutch countries”1 (1973) she describes these early years as a continued struggle to find a stable and firm footing for her belief in God. She wanted it to be stated clearly that it was Protestant theology, most of all the works of Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, that guided her way to religious belief. In the manifesto she writes:

The Church of the Reformation had guided me to Christ and taught me to live through Him with God. - I made a profound study of the doctrine of justification, from Luther up to Cardinal Newman, which took me three years [1937-39].... Three more years [194042] were spent in studying early Christian thought, especially Athanasius.2

She considered this period of theological study, together with the two years when she lived in Harderwijk (1927-29) as fundamental to her religious convictions. In Ecclesia Catholica De Vogel gave a circumstantial account of her “very personal decision,” she writes: “It was Protestant theology that brought about my decision.”3

Cornelia Johanna De Vogel occupied the Chair of Ancient and 

Medieval Philosophy at the University of Utrecht from 1947 to 1974 when she resigned. She continued to write and publish philosophy for many years. In the last year of her life she had hardly any energy left even for correcting the proofs of her final work, Rethinking Plato and Platonism. The task was completed by her good friend Professor Van Winden of Leyden University. The work was published within a year of her death and was reprinted half a year later.

III. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

On entering upon her professional work of teaching the history of ancient philosophy, the first task De Vogel took in hand was writing a new sourcebook. Eventually it became three volumes. In it the central texts of the great philosophers were printed in the original languages, Greek and Latin, without translations but accompanied by bibliography and notes about modern interpretations. There were earlier books of the kind: Mullach (1860-1867) and the brilliant one-volume work by Ritter and Preller (1838, 10th edition 1934). The new work “should be of a more modern stamp, in touch with the literature on the subject,” as De Vogel states in her Preface. The first volume of Greek Philosophy4 (Thales to Plato) was published in 1950, the second5 (Aristotle, Peripatetics and Academy) followed in 1953, the third volume (Hellenistic-Roman Period) in 1959.6 The books have been in use all over the world as long as there were students who could read Greek. The third volume is still indispensable for anyone working in the field of ancient Stoicism, the Middle Academy and, most of all, Neoplatonism. The texts included are for the greater part taken from sources not easy to find, and the selections betray extraordinarily wide reading. At a number of points traditional interpretations are replaced by new views. These new views include: the treatment of the Stoic theory of oikeiosis, the statements by Cicero, the importance of Antiochus of Ascalon, the notes on Stoic formal logic, the extensive treatment of Philo and Plutarch as forerunners of Neoplatonism, and, the admission of the Hermetica and Valentinus as sources in their own right for tracing gnostic influences in the development of Neoplatonism.

The publication of the three volumes of Greek Philosophy was accompanied and followed by a great number of studies, published in the relevant professional journals.7 As was to be expected, the central area of investigations was Plato and Platonism. In her dissertation8 (1936) she 

had traced the allusions and backgrounds of the mysterious eight para-digms in Plato’s Parmenides. Reconstructing the Academic context of the discussions she found not only that Plato’s Parmenides marked a real crisis in the doctrine of Forms (a “keerpunt,” i.e. a change of direc-tion, a retractatio), but she even could trace the first and still vague development of the metaphysical theory which in later centuries was to be characteristic of Neoplatonism.

The development of metaphysical theory had been for its own sake the primary issue for De Vogel in the years when her world-view took shape. She later came to investigate the growth of Plato’s theory of Forms and the appearance of new theories in the dialogues and in the unwritten doctrines. Her most central studies in this field were pub-lished in Mnemosyne (1954),9 in the Royaumont Colloquium-volume Le Neoplatonism,10 (1969), and (as reprints) in Philosophia I (1970).11 The results may be seen in Greek Philosophy I. From the outset two problems were involved: 1) How far can the neoplatonic interpretation of Plato’s theories be accepted as correct? 2) Should the Demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus be seen as an independent hypostasis in the cosmic scale of being equal to the Plotinian Nous, or simply as a part of or a faculty of the World-Soul, parallel to human intellect in the human soul? The first of the two problems intertwines with the exploration of Plato’s unwritten doctrines, internationally in full course from the 1930s onwards. These investigations were in full swing from the 1930s onwards. The second problem was interwoven with metaphysical considerations which formed the core of De Vogel’s own world-view.

In Plato’s written work the first hint of a super-transcendent One is found in Rep. VI.12 Leading the way by different arguments, Plato makes Socrates explain that a first principle must be recognized which lies “on yonder side” of being and knowledge (and, by implication, “on yonder side” of the Forms, although in the Republic this formula is not found). The argument leading to this conclusion begins with the analogy of sense-perception. The eye can only see the object if both object and eye are illuminated by the sun, and, by analogy, the mind can only see the Forms if there is a superior principle enlightening both. In the realm of pure Forms we must conjecture a first principle over and above the Forms, which makes the Forms visible to the spiritual eye, a principle lying “on yonder side of Being” (509B). In the chronological order of the dialogues this is the first appearance of a super-transcendent prin-ciple, later called the Good or the One. De Vogel saw it as the early foundation for the Plotinian theory of hypostases. 

The next stage in Plato’s development of metaphysical principles is found in the so-called “metaphysical dialogues.” The most outspoken statements are those of the Sophist and the Philebus. The Sophist gives the clear formula of the renewed theory of Forms: The world of Forms does not contain only static and perfect patterns, but has life and movement in it.13 This statement was, in De Vogel’s view, the funda-mental text for interpreting Plato’s philosophy as a religiously inspired system.

The texts of the Sophist and the Philebus imply that there is an uppermost and divine realm of being, standing in a causal relation to our world of changing phenomena. The relation between the two worlds is that of a “scale of being,” or, in other words, it is a system of hypostases. In addition to the arguments already adduced in Keerpunt, both dialogues offer good reasons to consider the Neoplatonic interpretation of Platonism as fundamentally correct. The text of the Sophist remained a central issue to De Vogel throughout her career as a historian of Platonism, just for these two reasons: it represents in the form of metaphysical argument the religious core of Plato’s philosophy, and it demonstrates the well-foundedness of the view that Neoplatonism had its roots in Plato’s philosophy.

As to the second problem, that of the creative Spirit or Nous, De Vogel kept a judicious reserve. In the aforementioned study published in Mnemosyne (1954) she writes:

The Forms are a kosmos, - and as such must be governed by superior ordering principles.... This can hardly have any other meaning than that it is a NOUS.... The Forms are the eternal thoughts of a divine Spirit.14

But in the paper contributed to the abovementioned Royaumont Colloquium of 1969, she stresses that:

... it is true that Plato nowhere talks in so many words about the whole of intelligible Being as a Nous.15

This was meant as a prudent reserve on textual grounds, for in the same paper she had repeated her earlier view of 1954 that “the eternal Archetype [of this our world] must be a Perfect Living Being, that is a Living and Thinking Being,” in other words a Nous. The wording comes from the famous passage in the Sophist quoted above, the argument is not textual but metaphysical. 

The fullest discussion of this problem comes in Philosophia 7.16 This book was projected as a survey of the central themes in her work until then, and contained reprints of earlier papers as well as newly written studies. It should have been followed by Philosophia 7/, but this second volume appeared long afterwards and under a different title: Rethinking Plato and Platonism (1986).17 Like the first volume, it consisted of earlier studies and new work, representing the author’s views and giving a critical assessment of the latest developments in the field. Rethinking was her last great work. It was published posthumously.

In the ninth chapter of Philosophia I the question of the place of the Demiurge in Plato’s system received fuller treatment. The outline of the argument is essentially as follows: In Plato’s world-view there certainly is a Nous, most of all in the metaphorical figure of the Demiurge of the Timaeus. However, this Intelligence cannot be interpreted as a hypostasis by itself. It represents the function of intelligent and creative thinking in the World-soul, just as in the human organism a living soul must possess intellectual faculties. She states:

In Plato the term Nous does not have the character it has in Plotinus: it is not a “hypostasis” nor a kind of substance; it is just a function or activity of the soul.18

Nevertheless, being taken in tow by her metaphysical turn of mind, she adds: “Logically speaking, at the level of Intelligible Being the ‘perfect living Being’ can be nothing but a Divine Mind.” The expres-sion “logically speaking” indicates that the logic of the system requires us to accept this consequence, though in the texts themselves an unam-biguous formula cannot be found.

In the last three or four decades the historiography of Platonism has been revolutionized by the investigation of Plato’s “unwritten doctrines.” A consensus has now been reached as to the existence of an unwritten tradition, but not about its role as a background of the written dialogues. The most important studies are the voluminous works by H. J. Kramer (1959 and 1982) and K. Gaiser (1963) (both of the Tubingen school), J. N. Findlay (1974), and the monumental volume by Giovanni Reale.19 Reale provides a systematic survey of the entire field of histo-riography of Platonism, and comes to a very far-reaching set of conclusions. The early work of De Vogel in Keerpunt initiated this development and in a number of points anticipated it, as may be seen in Greek Philosophy L The analysis of the metaphysical implications of 

the unwritten doctrine had led her to recognize their presence in Plato’s later work, the so-called metaphysical dialogues.

There was, however, one point in which she did not share the inter-pretation according to the new “paradigm,” as it is called in the Italian school. From the Republic onwards the bulk of Plato’s written work offers recognizable traces of and allusions to what must have been an existing background of unwritten doctrines. She had too keen a sense of philological exactness to share the view that even in the very early dialogues we may recognize the presence of the unwritten doctrines. She consistently held that the texts of the early work simply did not allow drawing such artificial conclusions.

De Vogel took a keen interest in the investigations and maintained correspondence whenever one of these voluminous and learned books was published. In Milan a growing interest in her work became manifest from 1989 onward. In that year an exhaustive examination of her views was published by Enrico Peroli,20 and in 1990 Peroli published a com-plete translation into Italian of her last work: Ripensando Platone e il Platonismo.21 This Italian edition has a long introduction by Giovanni Reale, which reads more like a summary of objections. It is, however, interesting because it echoes the discussions which had been carried on by correspondence, including the story of the discussions conducted by De Vogel with Kramer and himself. The original correspondence is now in the Katholiek Documentatie Centrum of Nijmegen University.

In the above-mentioned article by Peroli, there is an interesting summary of De Vogel’s views about the question whether the early origins of Neoplatonic theories can be found in Plato’s unwritten doc-trines. De Vogel published quite a series of studies on this problem: Mind 1953,22 Mnemosyne 1954,23 and the reprints in Philosophia I ch. 8, 9, 10 and 16. As Peroli states correctly, the unwritten doctrines and the later dialogues must be considered as the birthplace of Neoplatonism. He adds that De Vogel’s contributions to solving the riddle are all the more significant

... when we realize that her studies on the continuity of Platonism

and Neoplatonism were published in the early fifties.24

Peroli itemizes three important points in De Vogel’s work. The first is that of the degrees of reality, descending from the One which is “above being.” In this point, when leaving aside the principle of emanation, the Plotinian system clearly corresponds to the Platonic one. 

The second point in Peroli’s summary touches on a central issue in the debate between De Vogel and Reale. In Plato’s unwritten doctrines there are two “first” principles of being: the One and the indefinite principle or apeiron. The same first principles are found in Plotinus’ Enneads and they have a pervasive function in every degree of being. Even in the intelligible realm the presence of the indefinite principle must be recognized. There it is a kind of spiritual matter which is to receive its form from the light of the One. So there is a uniform structure of being in the descending reality from the One downwards. At first sight this may be considered as a quite consistent theory of an all-embracing scale of being. No problems arise as long as no questions are posed about monism or dualism. But if the whole of reality springs from two opposite principles, the way is open to Manichaeism, and there is an independent principle of evil. If that interpretation is to be avoided, the indefinite principle (apeiron) must be subordinated to the first One or even incorporated into it, but this does not eliminate the presence of evil within the Godhead. In the Enneads both views seem to play their part. In modern interpretation this may be considered as simply an open end in the brilliant architecture of the spiritual world as designed by Plotinus. To De Vogel, however, this was an important problem because of its theological implications. She was inclined on metaphysical grounds to decide the question in the sense of ultimate monism. Her studies can be found in Philosophia I and in Rethinking.

The third point Peroli makes is whether the Nous may be seen as a separate hypostasis in Plato’s doctrines. De Vogel has a preference for a metaphysical solution: tht metaphysical system and not the texts taken separately and analyzed philosophically, is decisive. In Plotinus we have the clear outlines of a theory of Nous as a separate hypostasis. In Plato at least the preparatory stage to this doctrine is found.

The discussions between De Vogel and Giovanni Reale were main-tained by correspondence in the last three or four years of her life, and focused on this problem: should the Plotinian system be described as an absolute monism or as a subordination of hypostases, that is as emanationism? De Vogel’s studies also here predated the studies of the Italian school. In her 1957 article “Het monisme van Plotinus” (The Monism of Plotinus)25 she states that:

... multiplicity is already contained in principle in the One. The principle of infinity in Plotinus is thus indeed rooted in the one highest Principle...26 

She adds by way of a cautious reserve that:

... we do not know whether Plato himself already in principle withdrew his twoness into the One.27

The discussions between De Vogel and Reale are related by De Vogel in Rethinking28 and by Reale in his Introduzione to the Italian edition.29 The correspondence dates from 1983-84, which were the years when De Vogel was preparing Rethinking and Reale his Platone, two philosophers astonished to find themselves in (partial) agreement.

IV. CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

Alongside the discussions about the importance of the unwritten doc-trines for the interpretation of Platonism and Neoplatonism, lay another field of problems: the question of the relation between later Platonism and early Christian thought. These problems were discussed in a series of works which were written as early as 1943. And although her inquiries began with the writing of her translation of Athanasius in 1943, that work was not published until 1948, two years following her Ecclesia Catholica.

In Ecclesia Catholica30 De Vogel sums up what had become her convictions after so many years of religious struggle:

1) the arguments about matters of faith can be stated by means of rational concepts. Human language is not senseless when we use it in the world of faith.

2) dogma has a real sense as the expression in human language of a truth about God and about His Salvation. It is the best possible expression in words of any truth about God.31

The conclusions stated may be considered as somewhat more than only conclusions of an argument. They serve as a guarantee that religious convictions may need expression in philosophical formulas, thereby gaining certainty. On the other hand, De Vogel felt certain that the formation of philosophical systems may have obeyed religious impulses. This double-track method remained fundamental in the whole of her philosophical work that was still to be written in years to come. To the reader it is philosophical argument that is presented and explained, but the driving force for the author of the argument always was that of a personal conviction, as a rule with a religious component. In the way 

the arguments are handled the Calvinist heritage comes through. Philosophical argument was valued as a road to certainty. There was often a rather rigid way of arguing when discussing matters of fundamental importance. Among De Vogel’s numerous students, of which five have occupied chairs of philosophy, a kind of proverb was current to the effect that you never should go against her pronounced opinions.

The above cited conclusions of Ecclesia Catholica are closely related to De Vogel’s work in the field of ancient philosophy. The combination of religious convictions and philosophical argument gave her a keen eye and a perfect understanding of what had been the central source of inspiration in the early great philosophical systems. There is no doubt that the religious impulse was foremost, but she kept it hidden behind her professional work as a historian of philosophy in the years when she occupied the chair of ancient and medieval philosophy in Utrecht (1947-1974). In her inaugural address (May 19th, 1947) she states that she had needed long deliberation before accepting the heavy burden which the chair of ancient philosophy was to charge her with. “It seemed to me that problems other than philosophical called for treatment much more urgently, but once I have accepted this responsibility I shall concentrate with all my energy upon this field of scholarship.”

The hidden religious impulse emerged when she resigned her chair in 1974. The address on that occasion was published with the title Aetema Veritas?2 The argument starts with a quotation from the Enneads of Plotinus (V 1,1):

How does it come about that the souls have forgotten God their Father and, having come from yonder and being parts of yonder and belonging completely to Him, have become ignorant as much of themselves as of Him?

For the 20th century Christian, she says, it is hardly possible in these words not to recognize one’s own situation of being divorced from the ultimate source of Wisdom, Sapientia. By introducing Sapientia she alludes to a long series of discussions and publications on the identifi-cation of Plato’s Demiurge with Plotinus’ Nous, the second of the divine hypostases. She argues that it is incorrect to consider the One of Plotinus as equivalent to our concept of God, if this transcendent One is taken without Nous, the creative Spirit. Athanasius and Augustine correctly understood that the two should be taken together, because, she says, God may not be deprived of his Word, that is of the creative Logos, 

incorporated in Christ. In this sense Augustine had a better understanding of Neoplatonic theology, although he needed the Christian faith in order to make the correction. Her conclusion is:

From Augustine onwards the whole of the Christian tradition is in

agreement: the God who inhabits an inaccessible light is the same who

has come to us in Christ.33

De Vogel’s view implies that the Neoplatonic doctrines can only be seen correctly in the perspective of the later Christian tradition inaugu-rated by Augustine. This is certainly what had inspired De Vogel in her work as a historian of ancient philosophy.

As mentioned above, De Vogel’s first discussion of the relationship between later Platonism and early Christian philosophy was in the long Preface to the book on Athanasius dated 1943, but published five years later.34 This was followed not only by the above-mentioned Ecclesia Catholica, but also by Greek Philosophy and The Christian Concept of Creation35 (1953), and Plato's Concept of God36 (1965-66), which were both reprinted in Theoria31 The discussion continued in the short but very dense booklet Wijsgerige aspecten van het vroeg-christelijk denken (1970).38 Her further studies in this field appeared in the form of discussions with Professor Dorrie39 in 1983 and again in 1985 in “Platonism and Christianity: A Mere Antagonism or a Profound Common Ground?”40 The question whether Platonism and a Platonic world-view did form a coherent whole with the theology of early Christianity was for De Vogel a very central issue, and moreover a question in which she felt herself deeply involved in a personal way. In her early work on Athanasius she had enthusiastically described how a number of fundamental Platonic principles had been adapted and integrated into the dense and coherent system of Christian theology. In her view Platonism had been, together with Scripture, at the root of Patristic theology. Dome’s position was quite the opposite of De Vogel’s. He maintained that the early Christian authors had deliberately opposed any adoption of Platonic views or Platonic theological principles. In the wake of Lutheran theology Dorrie stated that Platonism was not only a philosophy, but a doctrine of salvation, opposed to Christianity and therefore never accepted by Christians. He even denied that Plato had posited a transcendent first God as an absolute principle. In Middle-Platonism, contemporary with the earliest Christian theology, God was seen, according to Dorrie, as a creative Logos, immanent in the universe. 

In the discussions with Dorrie the personal involvement of De Vogel recognizably plays a role. The rigid argumentations of Calvinistic theology had left traces in her way of treating philosophical topics and more so when some sort of religious element was mixed up in the problem. In De Vogel’s view any theological argument had to produce certainty in the reader’s mind, - and metaphysical theories, if well con-structed, should procure a reliable foothold for Christian faith. In the discussions on such topics she more often than not is busy redressing all kinds of what to her were errors and misunderstandings. The long drawn-out paper “Platonism and Christianity: A Mere Antagonism or a Profound Common Ground?”41 (1985) was a kind of summary of her views on Platonism and Christianity.

V. ON THEOLOGICAL ORTHODOXY AND WOMEN

The discussions with Dorrie and the publication of the lecture on Aetema Veritas, delivered when resigning her chair, may be seen as a prelude to her last period, that of a polemic author on questions of Church and theology. The first such book to be published was Aan de katholieken van Nederland, aan alien (to the Catholics of the Netherlands, to all of them). She was alarmed at the situation in the Church. In the introduction she states that:

... ministers of the Church have forgotten that we do not go to church to hear about social justice, but to find ourselves in the presence of Christ. Even the hope for a life after death is left aside by the new-wave priests, when they speak about the nullifying function of death. For orthodox believers this is a tragic situation.42

She had tried, without success, to provoke the archbishop, Msgr. Alfrink, into voicing a serious protest “against all those modernistic and modish trends.” But no initiatives were taken, and the archbishop sent her an invitation to give a written and more detailed explanation of her point that “the first duty of bishops is to maintain the Catholic faith, and until now the bishops have failed to do so.” Her answer to Msgr. Alfrink’s invitation occupies sixty two of the one hundred and fourteen pages of Aan alien, and is followed by a critical assessment of the Pastoral Synod held at Noordwijkerhout.43 The arguments leave the reader with the impression that the written text was not aimed at “each 

and every Catholic,” as the title suggests, but at the bishops especially. As an answer to Archbishop Alfrink it missed its point. The papers give vent to a long drawn out series of irritating protests, occasioned by public manifestations were the traditional doctrines were deliberately doubted or denied or given “a new and strange interpretation.”

The broadside provoked a short storm in what was left of a Catholic press in Holland, and after that was forgotten until 1980, when a jour-nalist of the Catholic weekly De Tijd interviewed professor De Vogel.44 The many reactions to this interview were answered by De Vogel in a pocket-size book Tijdproblemen45 (1981). Here again the theological arguments are rather abstract and conventional, but there are two interesting additions on the question of the specific mission of women in this world, and on the question why women should not be ordained priest in the Catholic Church. Another bishop came under fire.

On the occasion of Mother’s Day, May 11, 1980, the Bishop of Rotterdam, Msgr. Simonis, had delivered a radio talk in which he set forth his view as to the “quite special nature which is the privilege of all women.” The predisposition to be a mother, he said, determines for every woman the moral character of her being, as well as her mission in life. This mission can be fulfilled just as well by having children and educating them, as by taking care of the quality of life in the world surrounding her. De Vogel took offense at the bishop’s tendency to reduce women’s capacities to a biological principle and wrote a letter to him pointing out his error. She stressed (more or less describing her own vocation) that teaching and inspiring people in philosophy and religion is a spiritual process, proper to man as well as to woman. This is what is meant by being created in God’s image and likeness. It is quite beside the truth to presume that a woman has her capacity of inspiration just only because of her biological disposition.

Bishop Simonis persisted in his point of view and sent an answer in which he wrote the “horrible words:” “nothing is more fundamental than gender,” whereupon De Vogel retorted: “nothing is more fundamental than being created in God’s image.” She added: “nowhere in the Bible it is said that procreation was the one and only task given by God to humans.”

The second of the added chapters treats the delicate question of the possibility for women being ordained priests. She writes with tact and with due respect for the ecclesiastical tradition. At the end she adduces the example of the by now many women who are working as mis-sionaries in lonely posts. They provide the complete range of pastoral 

services, without being able to administer the sacraments, ordination being requisite. “Should we not ask ourselves whether that is really what our Lord had in view?”

A rather voluminous book was published in 1977. It was projected as an exhaustive refutation of all the new and in her opinion un-catholic developments in the field of theology. Its title, De grondslag van onze zekerheict6 (The Foundation of our Certitude) is the expression of her complete conviction that the authority of the Church is our absolute guarantee for the truth of dogma and tradition. The book is for the greater part a critical assessment of new theological doctrines and new formulas of liturgy. The new trends are treated one by one, and in each case arguments are given to show that the new theories are built upon erroneous premisses or are the result of a misleading use of method.

There is a marked contrast with her early work Ecclesia Catholica, where she had given a very personal account of what had moved her to become a Catholic. The criticism in Grondslag blames all the great personalities of 20th century theological thought: Bultmann, Tillich, Bonhoffer, the Hegelians in general, Kiing, Schillebeeckx, Schoonenberg and others like them, whereas she stresses that the right method for the interpretation of Scripture had been established once and forever by Erasmus. There were plans for an edition in German, and it was small wonder that the German editor felt obliged, in personal deference to leading theologians, to tone down some of the stronger expressions. When De Vogel learned of this she left by train within days, in order to make it clear to the German editor what she wanted to say. Their conversation had no success and the manuscript was withdrawn. Other plans were for a Spanish edition. As an introduction a theologian, Dr. Naaykens, wrote a study to be published in a Spanish theological review, but the text was in French and too long. To help her, I made a translation into Spanish of a shortened version, which was published (1980) with the title El Fundamento de nuestra certeza,47 No Spanish editor took an interest in the book.

De Vogel’s works on the present situation of Catholic theology moved in a world of by that time old-fashioned theology, of interest only to a small circle of conservative Catholics. The situation, compared to 1946, had changed profoundly. The great loser was the Roman Catholic community. Quite a number of its churches in the Netherlands had to be sold and demolished. The Calvinist and the Reformed churches survived somewhat better. 

VI. CONCLUSIONS

Professor De Vogel was known as a prolific author on questions of Ancient Philosophy and Patristic Theology. In a long life (in which she stayed unmarried, having made a vow to that effect) all her efforts were dedicated to her work as a historian of philosophy, and, from time to time, to taking part in contemporary theological discussions. Her inves-tigations in the field of Ancient Philosophy and Patristic Theology were intimately bound up with her religious convictions about the Platonic roots within the Western theological tradition. De Vogel was interna-tionally leading in the historiography of Platonism and Neoplatonism. She taught for 25 years in the State University at Utrecht, and, as an invited professor, for some time at New York University, at Tokyo University, and on Taiwan.

As her former student and as a senior lecturer in the same field of studies of Ancient Philosophy, and now the Executor of her literary estate, I am grateful to the editor and publishers for having invited me to write her philosophical biography.