Human Phenomenon: A New Edition and Translation of Le Phenomene Humain, The

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2002 by Vilas, Franklin E

The Human Phenomenon: A New Edition and Translation of Le Phenomene Humain. By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Translated and edited by Sarah Appleton-Weber with a foreword by Brian Swimme. Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press, 1999. xxxii + 283 pp. $69.95 (cloth).

When I first read The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard's scientific opus, forty years ago, it struck me with the force of a major revelation, and it changed forever my perception of the created order. I was therefore quite eager to read The Human Phenomenon, Sarah Appleton-Weber's recent translation of that groundbreaking volume, which has had such an influence on the popular culture of the past decades, and has opened the way for a sound theology of ecology.

In her explanation of the need for a new translation, Sarah Appleton-- Weber cites the added data from subsequent publications of the works of Teilhard, which had been proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church, as well as errors of translation in the first English edition in 1959. She writes

The most far-reaching error ... is the failure to differentiate between Teilhard's two terms "homme" and "humain." The title itself of the 1959 edition is incorrect. Teilhard's subject is not the "phenomenon of man" as one among other species, but the ever-evolving human phenomenon as it is developing in and around us at this very moment [through which] the imponderable universal current of spirit is manifested (p. xviii).

With this statement, she expresses the double message that is inherent in all of Teilhard's work; first, the organic unity of the human within the evolutionary process and, second, the uniqueness of the human phenomenon as that place in the natural order where spirit, long lying beneath the surface of the material order, erupts into consciousness.

With the corrections and updating of language, this new volume is, if anything, more challenging than the 1959 English translation-especially in light of scientific developments of the decades since the 1940s. Teilhard's insistence on the reality of the "inner side" of the evolutionary process, with spirit as a "radial" energy underlying the cosmic unfolding of matter and life, seems to be born out by recent discoveries of molecular and particle science.

I found this reading of The Human Phenomenon as exciting and challenging as the first. Teilhard, with his scientific training as an eminent paleontologist, takes the reader through the journey of the universe that begins with prelife, and moves through the evolution of matter to the emergence of life. At the same time, he gives his scientific reasoning that leads to the perception of an energy pervading matter which he describes as "the Inside of things." He writes "I am convinced that these two viewpoints need to be united, and that they soon will be, in a kind of phenomenology or generalized physics, where the internal face of things as well as the external face of the world will be taken into account" (p. 22).

Having posited and described the two energies of the unfolding universe as "tangential" and "radial" energy, Teilhard continues to chart the progress of the developing planet Earth, as life emerges and proliferates. In detail that is challenging as well as inspiring to the lay reader of his works, he notes the development of the "tree of life," with its complexity and beauty. Finally identifying the realm of mammals as a tiny lobe on the "tree," Teilhard traces the emergence of the "inner side" as radial energy until it appears in the evolutionary process as consciousness and thought in the human race.

In one of the poetic passages he uses to express radical transitions, Teilhard writes

Everywhere, as we knew before, the summits of the active phyletic lineages grow warm with consciousness. But in a clearly defined region at the center of the mammals, where the most powerful brains ever constructed by nature are being formed, they redden. Let us not lose sight of this line crimsoned by the dawn. After rising for thousands of years below the horizon, in a narrowly localized spot a flame is about to burst forth. Thought is here! (p. 106)

Teilhard's concept of the noosphere as an envelope of thought surrounding the earth with increasing layers as humanity develops prepares the way for his idea of culture as a biological outcome of the process of evolution, which continues through radial energy and psychogenesis towards the Omega Point. In the hyperpersonal dimension of that culmination, he sees the ultimate expression of God, the underlying source of spirit. In an epilogue entitled "The Christian Phenomenon," Teilhard sees Christ as an evolutionary node. He writes, "By a perennial act of communion and sublimation, he is aggregating the entire psyche of the Earth to himself."

For those seeking to relate Christianity to the unfolding story of the universe and the development of life, thought, and human culture on the planet Earth, this retranslation of Pierre Teilhard's classic work is a welcome addition.

FRANKLIN E. VILAS