Epilogue: Human Autonomy and Finitude

Abstract

Henry Dumery’s philosophy of Christianity is centered around the problem of reconciling human autonomy and creativity with the heteronomy and dependence of religion. This is what is most valuable in Dumery’s philosophy of Christianity. Religion understood as “feeling of absolute dependence” (Schleiermacher) clashes with modern man’s conviction that he is the author of his world. The movement towards the autonomy of man — a movement which began about the thirteenth century — has reached its completion in this our day. Contemporary man thinks that knowledge and life are perfectly possible without God. Man “come of age” according to Bonhoeffer, “has learned to cope with all questions of importance without having recourse to God as a working hypothesis.”1 This view that God is no longer needed as final explanation of things is exemplified by Laplace’s conviction as against Newton’s. While Newton deduced from the order of the planetary system the necessary existence of an intelligent First Cause, Laplace came to the opposite conclusion. Asked by Napoleon when he did not mention the Creator in his Mecanique celeste, Laplace is recorded to have answered: “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.”