INTRODUCTION

This chapter will try to show how process thinking may provide a basis for ethical insight. Most, if not all, ethical theories are dependent on the philosophical pattern of thought employed. Thus, metaphysical thinking which employs the categories of substance and accident, act and potency, matter and form, etc., as in Aristotle and Aquinas, leads to an objectivist and absolutistic theory of ethics. An empirical mode of thinking as in the utilitarian theory of Bentham and Mills leads to relativism and subjectivism and so does the existentialist pattern of Sartre. Each of these patterns of thinking gives ethical insight by emphasizing some aspect of moral experience which other conceptual models may fail to do. The justification for the processive pattern of thinking is its conformity with our modern view of reality as evolving.

Process thought is not a homogeneous system of thought, any more than is scholasticism or empiricism. But one may safely characterize process thought in contrast to other philosophical modes of thought as based on the assumption or insight, if you will, that reality is dynamic and open-ended and, further, that there is more at the end of a process than at the beginning. In other words, growth or evolution is an essential characteristic of process thinking. Since there is no one process philosophy, my approach to process thought is largely influenced by Teilhard de Chardin.

In this study we will apply the process mode of thinking to the question of the nature and function of moral action and to the problem of relativity of morals and change in values.

THE NATURAL LAW ETHICS OF AQUINAS

As the Metaphysics so the Ethics

We will begin our study by a consideration of the metaphysical approach as exemplified in the natural law ethics of Aquinas.¹

Western thought in its rationalistic, as opposed to its mystical tradition followed the static world-view of Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. This is not to imply that the static world-view denied the fact of change but that change and becoming were relativized and absorbed within the principal and all-embracing category of being. For Aristotle, science was a study and classification of "natures" or essences, hence of the immutable and the universal (Scientia est de universalibus) with the result that concern for phenomena was merely peripheral to the principal pursuit of arriving at immutable and universal truth. Paralleling the Aristotelian conception of species as eternal in contrast to which individuals or "particulars" of a species were mutable, was the classic conception of metaphysics in which the category of substance was central while the nine accidental categories of being were considered peripheral. This static view of biology and philosophy could best be represented by the cosmological view of Ptolemy in which the earth was the stationary center around which revolved the planets.

In the Middle Ages, the medieval theologians appropriated Aristotelian metaphysics, which had already integrated the sciences and added theology in order to obtain a harmonious and coherent view of the universe. This view may properly be described as Ptolemaic, for in it the truths of the Faith were labelled the "substance of the Faith" (substantia Fidei) and consequently occupied a central location in the map of knowledge, while at the outer edges were the contingent and particular truths of the empirical sciences.

In accord with this static metaphysics of being, a static character also pervaded ethics. The dictum, "as the metaphysics, so the ethics," may be seen to be the case by looking at the ethics of Thomas Aquinas in the Summa. To quote the pertinent passage from Aquinas:

That which first falls under apprehension is being, the understanding of which is included in all things whatsoever a man apprehends. Therefore the first indemonstrable principle is that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time, which is based on the notion of being and not-being: and on this principle all others are based, as is stated in Metaphysics iv. Now as being is the first thing that falls under the apprehension absolutely, so good is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action (since every agent acts for an end, which has the nature of good). Consequently, the first principle in the practical reason is one founded on the nature of the good, namely, that good is that which all things seek after. Hence this is the first precept of law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this; so that all things which the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good belongs to the precepts of the natural law under the form of things to be done or avoided.²

Being which serves as the foundation for the good is human nature. The metaphysical approach to human nature is by theoretical reason seeing that at the center of human nature is the immutable and fixed essence (matter and form) and at the periphery are the nine accidents. Similarly, in ethics, practical reason sees at the center corresponding to the essence, the absolute and fixed first moral principle of the natural law: good is to be done and evil avoided. Next come the common general principle or moral axioms, then reasoned conclusions and, lastly, at the outermost periphery are the particular applications of the first moral principle. We can verify this Ptolemaic character of medieval ethics from the following passage of the Summa:

There belongs to the natural law, first, certain most common precepts that are known to all; and secondly, certain secondary and more particular precepts, which are, as it were, conclusions following closely from first principles. As to the common principles, the natural law, in its universal meaning, cannot in any way be blotted out from men's hearts. But it is blotted out in the case of a particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from applying the common principles to the particular action because of concupiscence or some other passion.³

The ethician's task corresponded with the classical scientist's task. Thus, just as the latter tried to discover the physical laws of nature imprinted in things, so the ethician tried to discover the natural moral law imprinted in the nature of man by the Creator. Just as the essences were fixed, so the natural law was fixed and absolute. As a result, ethics assumed a static and authoritarian character and became legalistic.

Explaining Change and Relativity Within Natural Law

The explanation of change of values within metaphysical ethics follows the explanation of change in metaphysics. In metaphysics, there are two types of change, namely, substantial and accidental. Substantial change is a change in substantial form as would happen when wood is burned and turns to ashes. Here, prime matter receives a new substantial form, `ashness.' Accidental change is a change in the accidental properties of a given thing, while its substance (matter and form) remains intact. Now, how does this metaphysical theory of change apply to natural law?

Natural law is founded on human nature, therefore, natural law is "as absolute and as relative as human nature".⁴ Human nature, according to scholastic philosophy, is composed of matter and form, that is, animality and rationality, respectively. Barring substantial change as in death, variability in human nature can only be accidental. As one Thomist ethician puts it, "man's essence is unchangeable, but some properties flowing from his essence are adjustable to circumstances and capable of growth in the course of history."⁵ In line with this view of change in human nature is a corresponding change in natural law: "While the core of the natural law has absolute moral necessity, there are peripheral areas that have a conditional moral necessity."⁶ As Thomas Aquinas notes, while there is necessity with common principles, "the more we descend toward the particular, the more frequently we encounter defects" and these defects are explained as a matter of deficient knowledge, not a change in the law itself, where the reasoned conclusions and particular applications of the natural law are "not equally known to all".⁷ Fagothey elucidates this passage of Aquinas by observing that "since society itself, though natural, develops its institutions gradually, some conclusions of the natural law will not have application until a certain degree of cultural sophistication has been reached."⁸ Thus, in a primitive society the natural law may permit to savages some forms of seizure and violence that could be only brutality or revenge in a civilized man.⁹

It would seem then that relativity in morals is explained by metaphysical ethicians as due to deficient knowledge of the natural law. Yet, is it not patronizing to consider some societies primitive by using one's own society's value as standard for interpreting the contents of natural law? And are there not intelligent ethicians not only today but in the past who doubt not only the contents of the natural law but even its existence?

It was not only the difficulty of explaining relativity in morals that served to eclipse the natural law tradition but other reasons noted by Bernice Hamilton:

The change of emphasis to individual conscience after the Reformation (prepared by the fourteenth and fifteenth century nominalists' stress on the uniqueness of every person), and the verbal confusion between natural law and natural rights--now becoming the more important of the two--all served to weaken the natural law tradition. In the seventeenth century, Locke's attack on innate ideas, and in the eighteenth century, Hume's criticism of the confusion between is and ought, served to undermine the age-old notion of law `written in men's hearts' or minds, and confirm doubts about the natural law's validity as a law in any modern sense of the word. In the twentieth century we have had the further flight from metaphysics which has proved a second Occam's razor.¹⁰

We believe that the concept of natural law can be revived as a better alternative to the shallow and parochial modern ethical theories. But we need to give up tired arguments that have been used to support it such as the accusation of bad faith on those who are not convinced by it. The root of the problem, in my view, is the metaphysical underpinning that is no longer adequate and effective. One need not be metaphysical to accept the natural law concept.

We will now look at human nature and natural law in the light of process thought.

RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURAL LAW

Teilhard de Chardin's Evolutionary World-View

Let us briefly sketch Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary world-view, for it is within this ontological frame of reference that our reconstruction of the natural law concept is to be done.

In contrast to the Platonic and medieval view of a static cosmos, Teilhard's view is of a universe that is born and continues to grow to its fullness. Instead of fixed and finished species so that the ones that exist today are the same ones that existed since the beginning, we have the evolutionary view of species that at one time did not exist but have emerged from lower forms.

The processive view sees reality as an unfolding rather than as one fully given at the beginning. Scientifically, we can see three major stages of this unfolding: the evolution of matter (cosmogenesis), the evolution of life (biogenesis). and the evolution of culture or mind (noogenesis). This third stage is not seen by some biologists as a new and separate stage. Culture is seen merely as an epi phenomenon of biological evolution. Accordingly, moral values that appear within culture are understood by sociobiologists, like E.O. Wilson, in terms of biological categories. But as T. Dobzhansky has observed: "Culture is not inherited through genes, it is acquired by learning from other human beings . . . In a sense, human genes have surrendered their primacy in human evolution to an entirely new, nonbiological or superorganic agent, culture."¹¹

Teilhard sees the evolution of culture or of mind as a new stage of transformation. Instead of biological transformation: the development of the nervous system and of bigger and bigger brains, we now have primarily psychical transformation.¹² Let us consider this transition from biogenesis to noogenesis in greater detail.

The Evolution of Human Nature

The emergence of homo sapiens is a process of transformation of purely animal life which is instinctual into a reflective and self-conscious one. The animal in biogenesis has become an ex-animal which now inhabits the noosphere. The new human zoological type has attained a degree of stability such that we can speak of it as having a "fixed" nature so that we can define it as an animal that is rational. But this fixity is to be understood only in relation to the biosphere. While evolution of the human brain is more or less finished, the evolution of human consciousness is not. Just as biogenesis resulted in a transformation of animal life into human life, so noogenesis will result in a transformation into a superior state of humanity, the ultrahuman.¹³ Thus, Teilhard distinguishes two levels of hominization. As he says: "Above the elementary hominization that culminates in each individual, there is really developing above us another hominization, a collective one of the whole species."¹⁴ At present, the present human "nature of Man is in the full flood of entitative change".¹⁵ We can properly speak of this final form of humanity as the real and definitive human nature.

Traditional philosophers and theologians of the metaphysical dualist mold deny that the whole man, body and soul, is a product of biogenesis. This is because they see reality dualistically as consisting of two distinct realities, matter and spirit. For them evolution is nothing but the evolution of matter. Spirit comes from without the evolutionary process. But for Teilhard, matter and spirit are two aspects of one and the same evolving reality. Matter in the beginning was already pre-conscious, that is, it already contained in inchoate form a psychic element or energy. Accordingly, "man was born entirely from the world; not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought."¹⁶

For metaphysical thinkers who employ the categories of matter and form, a human being already has a substantial form. Any form that he may acquire in the future can only be an accidental one. Consequently, the second form that man acquires as a result of noogenesis can only be considered accidental. lt is impossible in a metaphysical frame of reference for a thing to have two substantial forms. But in process thought it is possible to have two natures for the first one is unfinished and evolving, hence, it is not definitive; nor do they exist contemporaneously, for one is intermediate and the other ultimate. In other words, humanity is seen as a process, hence is in the category of becoming, while the definitive human nature which is the culmination of the process is in the category of being.

Having made the distinction between the two processes of hominization and the two forms of human nature resulting therefrom, we can now try to rethink the concept of natural law by relating it, not to the first form but to the second. Our first step is to locate "oughtness" within reality as process.

The Ontological Foundation of the Moral Ought

Morality as ethicians tell us has to do with oughtness. Morality makes prescriptive statements as opposed to the descriptive statements of science. The fundamental problem for ethicists is the determination of the foundation of oughtness. Deontological ethicists believe that there is an objective foundation. The tradition of natural law assumes that there is a fixed common human nature which serves as the objective foundation for moral oughtness. From this, human nature is derived the natural law and natural rights.

The modern objection to this deontological and naturalist theory, even if we grant that there is a fixed human nature, is the possibility of drawing moral conclusions which are value statements from a human nature whose properties are factual and therefore describable. In other words, can one draw an "ought" from an "is"? To claim that one can is considered by Hume and G.E. Moore invalid and this invalid process is called by the latter the naturalistic fallacy. The response of naturalistic theories is to meet the objection head-on and state flatly that it is "possible to derive an `ought' or value statement from an `is', or factual statement, for `ought' can be defined in terms of `is'.¹⁷ Whatever be the merit of this counter-argument, we believe it more fruitful to follow a different procedure by founding moral oughtness not on "is" but on "will be," in other words, not on "being" but "becoming."

We find the possibility for the above procedure in the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Thus, we can base moral oughtness on the notion of potentiality (not-yet-being) rather than on actuality (being). One is therefore not deriving the "ought" from the "is" but from the "will be" or "not-yet-being". There are observable natural potentialities in human nature which need to be actualized. This need is an ontological ought and on it is founded moral oughtness. This teleological aspect of Aristotelian and Thomistic ethics in which moral action is related to the actualization of potentialities (formation of character and the virtues) is their greatest strength. In my view, no modern theory, whether that of Kant or Utilitarianism or even the theory of justice of John Rawls in which basic rights are founded on a mutual agreement of absolute fairness, has provided a better alternative or answer.

Having accorded this praise to Aristotelian and Thomistic ethics, we hasten to add a reservation, namely, that while moral oughtness is rightly founded on potentiality, this potentiality is merely accidental and hence does not give sufficient force to the moral ought. In order for us to be convinced to pursue good and avoid evil, the good must be sufficiently important for us to expend moral energy. But if it is merely an accidental good, even if we call it an "essential" accidental good, still it is accidental and its loss does not lessen the substantial perfection of my human nature (matter and form). Thus there is no sufficient internal basis for being moral. To give sufficient force to the imperative of natural law, Thomists invoke an external source of authority, namely, God's will expressed in the Eternal Law in whose participation the natural law receives its compelling power.¹⁸

In an age in which theological assumptions have lost their power to persuade, the notion of an eternal Law does not carry much influence on secular reason. Grotius' attempt to found moral obligation or oughtness independent of theological presuppositions (etiamsi daremus non esse Deum) while remaining within the scholastic philosophical framework, is bound to fail.

Let us turn instead to a process view of human nature to show the ontological foundation for moral oughtness. We can state at the outset that for Teilhard, the potentiality in man is much more than accidental, for as he notes, "the nature of man is in the full flood of entitative change."¹⁹ The entitative change Teilhard is talking about here is the very constitution or creation of a new nature which is the culmination of the second level of hominization we discussed earlier. Thus, the ontological need or ought comes from a void in the very depths of one's existence. The existentialist, Sartre, has perceptively noted the Nothingness at the heart of human existence. There is no form there. And rightly did he say that essence or form follows on existence. Man is in search of selfhood and identity.

Let us further analyze the various dimensions of the ontological ought which is man's need to become, to evolve. First, there is the individual level, in which the failure to evolve is to be aborted. Without the achievement of the new man, the individual is nothing and this nothingness is the nothingness of despair, not the nothingness that has a future hope. But there is a deeper level to the ontological obligation and responsibility to become, to evolve. It is not just an obligation to myself, it is an obligation to the whole of humanity, for my individual destiny is tied up with the destiny of humanity. But this already awesome ontological obligation that I evolve for the sake of all humanity does not go far enough. I must also evolve for the sake of the cosmos. Here is where Sartre fell short for he divorced human historical existence from its roots in the infrahistorical--the level of matter and the level of biological life. For process thought, man is revealed as having been born from the womb of the infrahuman levels of reality. Man is now evolution conscious of itself. In man lies the hopes of all reality-in-process. Man's action is thus fraught with cosmic significance for he can either lead the cosmos to its maturation point in a new earth or abort it. From the ontological depths of reality-as-process comes a cry for completion. In the poetic words of St. Paul, "all creation is groaning until now to be delivered."

Let us digress at this point to consider an objection that we are guilty of the naturalistic fallacy in imputing value on the world. The assumption of the naturalistic fallacy is that the world is factual and objective while values are subjective. But this assumption is a fallacy--and if so the naturalistic fallacy is founded on a fallacy. Process thought shows that man is evolution conscious of itself. In other words, what we call the world is for process thought the material and biological worlds. But matter and life are the early stages of man's evolution. Therefore if value appears at the level of man, it must have been present in undeveloped and inchoate form at the lower stages. It follows that there is an ontological basis for seeing value at these lower stages and we cannot be accused of anthropomorphism or emotivism. From an evolutionary perspective, the world is not just factual nor neutral; it is value-filled. It is not just objective; it is also subjective, for if subjectivity arises in man, then it must have been present in germinal form at the lower levels.

To summarize this discussion on the processive view of the foundation of moral obligation, perhaps we can do no better than quote Teilhard at length on the matter:

Act we must--but why and how?²⁰

So long as our conception of the Universe remained static, the basis of duty remained extremely obscure. To account for this mysterious law which weighs fundamentally on our liberty, men had recourse to all sorts of explanation, from that of an explicit command issued from outside to that of an irrational but categorical instinct. In a spiritually evolutionary scheme of the Universe, such as we have here accepted, the answer is quite simple. For the human unity, the initial basis of obligation is the fact of being born and developing as a function of a cosmic stream. We must act, and in a certain way, because our individual destinies are dependent on a universal destiny. Duty, in its origin, is nothing but the reflection of the universe in the atom.²¹

Thus, for Teilhard the ontological foundation for moral obligation is the radical incompleteness of finite man and the tendency found in one's being toward a dissolution or entropy.²²

The ontological obligation for man to complete himself is noted by Teilhard as having cosmic significance:

Man would see in the first place the greatness of his responsibilities increasing almost to infinity before him. Hitherto he could think of himself in nature as a bird of passage, local, accidental, free to waste the spark of life that is given him, with no loss to anyone but himself. Suddenly he finds in his heart the fearful task of conserving, increasing and transmitting the fortunes of a whole world. His life, in a true sense, has ceased to be private to him. Body and soul, he is the product of a huge creative work with which the totality of things has collaborated from the beginning; if he refuses the task assigned to him, some part of that effort will be lost forever and lacking throughout the whole future. . . .

When each man, . . . will admit that his true being is not limited to the narrow boundaries of his limbs and his historical existence but that he forms part, body and soul, of the process that drives the universe, then he will understand that, in order to remain faithful to himself he must devote himself to the task demanded of him by life as to a personal and sacred duty.²³

The Moral Ought as Love

If man is conscious that he is the highest product so far of a gigantic creative work in which the whole universe collaborated since the beginning and conscious that the success of this unfinished evolution of cosmic energy concentrated in him depends on the proper use of his knowledge and freedom: there arises in his consciousness a `should' or moral ought. This moral ought is not just a command for his own personal fulfillment, hence, not just a personal ought, but a cosmic ought and duty to fulfill himself for the sake of the universe.

The problem for process ethics is how to direct cosmic energy for the transformation of humanity and in the process the transformation of the earth. Before ethics can prescribe particular rules and precepts, it must discover an over-all principle or spirit that must animate these precepts. What is the universal form of the `good'? The answer is that human actions are good insofar as they are directed towards the transformation of the human person. The function of morality is to guide the cosmic stream of energy forward and upward towards its maturation. Therefore, `good' means right direction and bad means wrong direction.²⁴

It might be interesting to point out here the similarity between process ethics and the Biblical view on the function of morality as rules and precepts. The Biblical view sees all creation with man at its head on a journey whose termination is variously called the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem (Jn 21:1-3), the new creation (2 Cor 5:17) or the new creature (Gal 6:15), the new Man (Eph 2:15), the second-Adam (Rom 5), etc. Commandments are meant to lead the people of God to the end of their journey. To disobey the commandments, that is, to sin, is to go off the road, to stray, to take the wrong direction.

If the function of morality is towards point to man the right direction, then it is man's task to direct the cosmic energy of the universe towards the future where transformation into the new man and the new earth is achieved. In man cosmic energy appears as both physical and psychical. Physical energy presents itself as tangential energy. Tangential energy tends towards multiplicity, inertia, dissociation and entropy.²⁵ Tangential energy in its highest form is animality and of course man is rooted in it. In Freudian terms, tangential energy is instinctual energy, the libido. The mistake of Freud is to see libido as the essence of the psyche. He fails to see a deeper dimension which is spiritual or as Teilhard calls it, radial energy. This energy is unitive, creative and convergent. Another name for this energy is love. This love is unselfish, benevolent as opposed to love of desire or concupiscence. In Christian terms, this unselfish love is agape.

The direction of evolution is towards personalization.²⁶ The fulfillment of personality is in a gift of itself to the other, hence, through unselfish love. In giving itself to the other, personality is not lost in the sense of being dissolved like a drop of water merging into the ocean. Rather, loving union differentiates.²⁷ This is the paradox of love. Love not only heightens personality, it heightens conscious awareness. As Teilhard notes, "love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in them."²⁸

It is the task of process ethics to see to it that love is the ruling principle of human action instead of hate which derives from the death instinct and surfaces from the depths of the unconscious as suicidal or murderous. All moral rules and precepts must be informed by the supreme principle of love. For process ethics, the reconstructed natural law is simply love as an imperative. To give it more specification, it is love of neighbor and one's fellowman. For a process moral theology which is based on Faith, besides love of neighbor, love also means love of God, on the supposition that the Omega point is a Divine Center of convergence of all personal centers of consciousness.

We noted earlier that in man there are two energies, one tangential and egocentric, the other radial or altruistic. It is this task of both psychology and ethics to control these energies. Psychology uses the method of psychoanalysis, analytic psychology, etc. to attain the roots of these energies in the unconscious. Ethics uses moral rules and precepts to prohibit selfish and hateful acts and prescribe loving, compassionate and generous acts. Process ethics justifies the Aristotelian ethics of virtue whose goal is the formation of character, for a man of character is one who is self-controlled. Virtues are habitual dispositions that facilitate human acts that are informed by love. But process ethics deepens the importance of virtues. In Aristotelian ethics, virtues are accidental perfections of an already substantially perfect nature. In process ethics, virtues are for the constitution and creation of a new man, new nature. Love energy is the energy that causes transformation by creative union. The virtues predispose human acts to proceed from the principle of love.

Process ethics considers faith, hope and love as the most important of the virtues. Traditionally, these are called theological virtues, but in a process universe, these are natural virtues, for they are natural features that are found in those who are advancing towards future transformation. In order to have the drive and enthusiasm to work for the completion of the cosmic process, I must believe that there is a future to it, have hope that it is attainable, and be united with it by love. The opposite of these virtues are skepticism, despair and hate.

Not only is there room for Aristotelian virtue ethics within process ethics, but modern rights-and-duties ethics can be accommodated, except that the foundation for rights and duties are different. In modern ethics, the foundation is having; in process ethics, it is being. In the former, the individual fulfills himself by possessing, acquiring, preserving life, liberty, property and or happiness. Because of a conflict in acquisition and possession motivated by self-interest, rules (legal and moral) must be provided that will limit these acquisitive forces in order to maintain balance and harmony in society. The model used here is contractual, adversarial and conflictual. Such a relationship is really alienating as Marx has noted.

In process ethics, we use the cooperative model or interpersonal one. Being is being-with. To be is to love and in the gift of self, one attains a higher level of existence and awareness in the union. If to love is the cosmic duty for man, then he has the right to love. But to love one must be free. There cannot be a loving relation where there is a Master-Slave relationship. Love demands equality, hence from love is derived the right to equality and justice. Love also demands giving and material gifts are a symbol of love. Therefore man must have the wherewithal to express his love, hence, the right to property. But property we must hasten to add is ultimately not for having but for being which is achieved in giving. The right to life is quite evident. One cannot love unless one exists. To love I must have worth, dignity, and liberty.

Teilhard de Chardin contrasts the ethics of individualism with the ethics of love thus:

Morality has till now been principally understood as a fixed system of rights and duties intended to establish a static equilibrium between individuals, and at pains to maintain it by a limitation of energies, that is to say, force. This conception rested in the last resort on the idea that every human being represented a sort of absolute term in the world, whose existence had to be protected from all encroachment from without.²⁹

This ethics can be transformed, says Teilhard, only if we recognized that:

Man on earth is no more than an element destined to complete himself cosmically in a higher consciousness in process of formation. Now the problem confronting morality is no longer how to preserve and protect the individual but how to guide him so effectively in the direction of his anticipated fulfillment.³⁰

Just as the task of ethics is transformed, so the job of ethicians:

The moralist was up to now a jurist, or a tight-rope walker. He becomes the technician and engineer of the spiritual energies of the world. The highest morality is. henceforth that which will best develop the phenomenon of nature to its upper limits. No longer to protect but to develop, by awakening and convergence, the individual riches of the earth.³¹

To the morality of balance (`closed morality') the moral world might seem a definitely bounded realm. To the morality of movement (`open morality') the same world appears as a higher sphere of the universe, much richer than the lower spheres of matter in unknown powers and unsuspected combinations. The boldest mariners of tomorrow will sail out to explore and humanize the mysterious ocean of moral energies.³²

Changing Values

It remains now to describe the mechanics, so to speak, of change in values and morals. That values have changed historically is an undisputed fact. It is the nature and depth of these changes that is the point at issue here. All theories of ethics attempt to show some type of change. The degree of change ranges from the minimal as in metaphysical ethics to the maximum as in situation ethics. Metaphysical ethicians believe that there is an objective natural moral law that is absolute and unchanging based on a fixed and timeless human nature. Changes in morals are therefore accidental merely, affecting the application of the natural moral law rather than the law itself. At the other extreme, the existentialist ethicians deny the a priori existence of a human nature, and consider ethical values to be determined purely by the unique situation of each individual at each given time. Ethics thus becomes very relativistic and subjective. Our processive ethics takes the middle ground in opting for an evolving human nature.

The individual in process thought cannot be humanized in isolation from the rest of humanity. Humanization is in personalization and personalization implies community. The constitution of community is synonymous in practice to the ongoing constitution of human nature. We postulate therefore a human nature, not as given antecedently, but as a goal to be achieved. Consequently, we differ from traditional metaphysical ethicians who postulate an antecedent human nature and also from situation ethicians who do not accept a common human nature to be cooperatively and freely achieved and constituted. Human reality for us as an evolving reality is not like a fireworks display that shoots off in all directions, but like a cone that reaches a summit as the point of convergence.

Morality for process thought is a function of this common and objective human nature to be constituted. Morality is a creative force for union in the building of a higher unity than the purely biological. The basis then for the evolution of values and morals is the need for the evolution of authentic human nature. Since authentic human nature is a community achieved through union, morality prescribes values that are needed to achieve this community. That is moral which unifies and consolidates the members; immoral which alienates them. But what actions precisely unify and alienate can only be determined in the context of a given historical community. Just as the notion of community evolves by the interaction of the members of the group, so also does the notion of morality. Consequently, no community in the past, present or future can lay claim to knowing what the essence of community is from which it can derive absolute norms of moral behavior. No "instant" community can claim to lay down moral rules binding for all times on succeeding generations. This does not imply complete relativism or the absence of objective morality, for in our view there is a convergent point for the noosphere. Does this mean that before that maturation point there is no objective morality? No, first, because morality is not based on individuality but on community and second, because communities are not isolated units but form an evolutionary continuity. The present notion of community is a product of the past. For example, the formation of groups has evolved from the purely biological--the family, the clan, the tribe, etc., based on blood, race, color--to town, city and nation, groups based on economic and political bonds. At present, the notion of community is evolving from national groupings to that of a world community as the result of an evolution that embraces all historical communities. The morality emerging from the concurrence of these communities can be considered an objective and universal moral norm insofar as it applies to all people of a given age and not to all people of all times. If, as we noted above, the objective foundation of morality is an evolving human nature, then as human nature evolves toward the fullness of form and objectivity, so do morals evolve toward greater objectivity.

CONCLUSION

If we may be permitted to assess the possible contribution of process ethics to contemporary moral philosophy, perhaps we can measure it by considering how it has met the deficiencies of contemporary ethics as noted by Iris Murdoch:

It seems that there is a void in present-day moral philosophy. Areas peripheral to philosophy expand (psychology, political and social theory) or collapse (religion) without philosophy being able in the one case to encounter, and in the other case to rescue, the values involved. A working philosophical psychology is needed with a terminology concerned with virtue. We need a moral philosophy which can speak significantly of Freud and Marx, and out of which aesthetic and political views can be generated. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

After this paper was written, I came across a passage which aptly summarizes what process ethics as presented here has tried to accomplish:

Ontology as the ground of ethics was the original tenet of philosophy. Their divorce, which is the divorce of the `objective' and `subjective' realms, is the modern destiny. Their reunion can be effected, if at all, only from the `objective' end, that is to say, through a revision of the idea of nature. And it is becoming rather than abiding nature which would hold out any such promise. From the immanent direction of its total evolution there may be elicited a destination of man by whose terms the person, in the act of fulfilling himself, would at the same time realize a concern of universal substance. Hence would result a principle of ethics which is ultimately grounded neither in the autonomy of the self nor in the needs of the community, but in an objective assignment by the nature of things.³⁴

The University of the District of Columbia

Washington, D.C.

1. Modern writers of ethics because of their anti-metaphysical stance have largely abandoned natural law ethics. Yet, as we hope to show, one does not have to be metaphysical in order to support the natural law theory.

2. Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 94, a. 2 (emphasis added).

3. Ibid., I-II, q. 94, a. 6. It is highly unlikely that Thomas was Ptolemaic in his personal life. While his theoretical formulation of ethics is, in my view, Ptolemaic, his mystical life was dynamic and processive in orientation.

4. Austin Fagothey, S.J., Right and Reason (Saint Louis: Mosby, 1963), p. 136.

5. Ibid., p. 137.

6. Loc. cit.

7. Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 94, a. 4.

8. Fagothey, op. cit. p. 137.

9. Loc. cit.

10. Bernice Hamilton, "Some Arguments Against Natural Law Theories", Light on the Natural Law, ed. Illtyd Evans, O.P. (Baltimore: Challenge, 1965), pp. 40-41.

11. See his article, "Anthropology and the Natural Sciences--The Problem of Human Evolution", Current Anthropology 4 (1963), 146-48.

12. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), p. 167.

13. Ibid., p. 284.

14. Ibid., p. 305.

15. Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: Harper, 1964), p. 15.

16. Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy (London: Collins, 1969), p. 20.

17. Tom L. Beauchamp, Philosophical Ethics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), p. 340.

18. Summa Theologica, 1ae 2ae, q.91, a. 1 and 2.

19. The Future of Man, p. 15.

20. Cf. The cosmic problem of action. Cited from Jean-Pierre Demoulin, Let Me Explain Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 111.

21. Human Energy, p. 57. Cited from Demoulin, op. cit., pp. 111-12.

22. Emile Rideau, The Thought of Teilhard de Chardin, trans. René Hague (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 135.

23. Teilhard de Chardin, The Vision of the Past, trans. J. Cohen (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 137, 140-41.

24. Rideau, op. cit., p. 138.

25. The Phenomenon of Man, p. 256.

26. Ibid., p. 260.

27. Ibid., p. 262.

28. Ibid., p. 265.

29. Human Energy, p. 106.

30. Loc. cit.

31. Loc. cit.

32. Ibid., p. 108.

33. Iris Murdoch, "On `God' and `Good'", in Revisions, ed. Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), p. 68.

34. Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 283. Emphasis added.