I Tradition : The Concept and Its Claim Upon Us Josef Pieper

ONE WONDERS WHETHER tradition is not actually anti-historical. It stands in stark contrast to the most impressive and most visible strand of the historical process, namely, the ever-advancing scientific investigation of the world and mankind, the ever more deeply technical harnessing of the energy of the cosmos, the revolutionary achievements that each generation must make its own if it wishes to remain at the cutting edge of its time. Societyitself is inconstant flux, though the direction of change is not easy to determine. Hegel speaks qui te unperturbedly of progress in the consciousness of freedom; however, there are other formulations, such as the one that anticipates the gradual transformation of mankind into an army of workers. Sometimes this societal change accelerates as in an explosion; the revolutionary coup is an ever-recurring historical phenomenon. Although these strands and forms of historical occurrences differ from one another, they have one thing in common: they are all ordered toward change, transformation, upheaval, revolution; they all, as it were, go with the times. Things ought not to remain as they have been until now. But tradition is quite specifically not concerned with what is new; it is not concerned with development, or with change or revolution. It is concerned with what went before, with the already given, with that which can be preserved in its identity throughout all changes, throughout all time-indeed, despite time. Suddenlywefind quite different words to express this. There is talk neither of new advances nor of progress. Instead we hear: “Let the Word stand as it is!” Men fiercely resist, as we read in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, “another Gospel.” Even the Marxists speak of their “doctrines of classical authors.” Although these doctrines were formulated more than a century ago, they should, according to the Marxists, still be inviolable today. Even in Marxist circles we hear of “deviation,” “orthodoxy,” “accommodation,” “aggiornamento,” “revisionism,” “reformation,” and “demythologization.” All of this makes sense only in the context of tradition, where the preservation of something originally given is seen as an elemental task, indeed, as a matter of life or death. The question arises whether tradition, the concept and the reality, has a legitimate place only in the realms of religious faith, of theology, or of some “Weltanschauung.” Actually a surprise awaits anyone who is interested simply in “tradition”and, with that interest, turns