INTRODUCTION
The Death of Morality?
Let us begin with a commonplace: moral education is in crisis; indeed, society itself is in crisis due to a lack of moral values in its citizens.
The sense of moral development is sustained by two complementary elements. An external element which comes to the individual from society and is conveyed in terms of an ought-to-be: `Do the good imposed upon you and avoid evil.' The other element is internal and has its roots in the structure of the person: the search for the good perceived as a way of achieving one's own identity and happiness. The moral ought or norm shows itself as something desirable and the good appears as that which orders the totality of human life. So important is the highest good, and so strong is our adherence to it, that it is able to direct all other factors and subordinate the other partial goods, instincts and personal inclinations. This is not because of its being imposed upon me, but as a result of the very meaning of that superior good for me. Indeed, I may give up my own life in order to attain it. This is what happens, for example, when someone is executed or is tortured for refusing falsely to accuse an innocent person: love is stronger than death.
We do not like to say that the moral norm or ought, which comes to us from the outside, coincides with internal moral sensibility. Certainly, it does not simply strive to submit externally to the current norms of a given society, but seeks internal adherence to its own conscience. However, we are cognizant that the possibility and the historical fact of a profound contradiction exists between these two areas. Frequently, the discovery of this contradiction emerges only many years after one had been convinced of their compatibility. For example, when a lady -- who for most of her life had internalized and faithfully lived the role that society traditionally expects of women in the home and in society -- discovers the possible immorality which may affect such a role and the obstacle that it may present to her own realization as a human person, she not only enters into conflict with, but may develop a profound hostility and lack of confidence toward all guardians and conveyors of that moral ought.
The fact is that in Western society -- and via its influence throughout the world -- the traditional formulators and guardians of that ought have lost significantly their prestige and capacity to inspire a moral sense of life -- their moral authority. Also they have lost their effective power for social control and coercion. Traditions, churches, parents, teachers, civil authority, the Bible, God, nature and metaphysics seem impotent.
There are two possible "readings" of this situation. One says that today people are so immoral that they neither respect, nor feel any esteem for, moral authority and its representatives. The other "reading" is that today in order to be moral we must liberate ourselves from those which have dominated and denied men and women personal realization by imposing and inculcating a moral ought now seen as immoral.
We are in a pragmatic, hedonistic, changing, pluralistic, permissive and secularized society. This society nourishes personal attitudes which question what constituted the traditional moral ought. The result of this indictment is the lack of authority and stability of social norms and institutions. In consequence, as long as one is not dealing with clearly criminal behaviors, morality is left to the subjective determination of each individual. But there is something more. The long struggle toward modernity has been lived in the Western world by its protagonists as a struggle of liberation from the slavery of the pharaoh: in general, the guardians of morality were seen as the warriors trying to impede liberation.
The modern world has brought about a completely different human reality
regarding the conditions and ways of tackling the questions concerning what ought
to be, good and evil, and the sense of human realization. In sum, it has brought
about four decisive situations:
1. It has discredited the traditional underpinnings of heteronomous morality.
2. It has relegated to the realm of individual subjectivity the search for an internal and autonomous meaning.
3. It has brought about the development of an amoral scientific-technical rationality prodigiously capable of providing goods and services viewed as highly desirable. With its actions -- not with its theory -- it proves or pretends to prove that scientific-technical amorality -- and the humanity modeled by it -- is infinitely more moral than the conditions under which moral societies maintained the human being.
4. Modernity has shown the global unity of the person and society in
different areas such as science, technology and human behavior. Each area has its
own logic with the object of realizing the means that lead to the achievement of its
proposed ends: to produce wealth, to cure cancer, to reach the moon, to extract a
confession from one under arrest, etc. In each area what is considered good is that
which achieves its proposed ends. The ability to furnish the means is the necessary
condition. Each one is at liberty to accept those ends and to determine whether one
is willing to furnish the means that lead to their realization.
Today, modernity is coveted and highly esteemed by those who have reaped
its fruit and by those who visualize it as the promised land toward which they are
directed. Modernity seems to demand as payment the acceptance of an utilitarian
rationality. In each area, what is good is that which efficiently leads to the
achievement of specific ends.
What Task Lies before Us?
There may be several.
1. In the name of traditional moral guardians, to lament the moral disasters that modern society has brought about, and those that postmodern society will produce if we do not undertake a great crusade to avoid them.
2. To undertake a dialogue, as if nothing had happened, trying to see how we can strengthen the personal sense of morality in more or less conventional terms. This is to say a morality of individual rectitude and interior honesty, without considering objective conditions in society which encourage or discourage it.
3. The third alternative is to take seriously modernity -- and all its marvelous
productions in benefit of humanity -- in order:
- To appreciate the formidable authority of its amoral logic.
- To appreciate the great objective possibilities which it offers for human development and for the consideration of new alternatives not available in traditional society, which limited itself to commending or rejecting whatever it already had defined as good and evil. The liberation of human behavior--for good or evil--from external coercion and a forcefully imposed heteronomous morality opens up new moral possibilities which thusfar have not been developed.
- To examine carefully the theoretical criticism and, above all, the factual disavowal of traditional morality from the viewpoint of modernity.
- To understand, at the same time, the new human misery that this society
brings about: the incapacity of this culture to nourish a transcendent moral sense;
the profound inhuman condition of this second nature produced by
scientific-technical rationality; the need for establishing a public space and the
possible conditions for development in the person of a rationality of interpersonal
relations and of the gratuitous gift that persons may represent for each other. In
other words, we need to appreciate everything that the untying of Logos and Eros
have accomplished on behalf of man, and at the same time to acknowledge the
contradictions between them and how they lead civilization to Thanatos (death).
This requires a discovery beyond a Logos reduced to one of its aspects -- instrumental rationality. Rather, it requires Logos-Agape, i.e., the love that transcends
objective knowledge. This is derived from interpersonal relations; it arises in the
affirmation of the other as gratuitous gift. It is an Agape capable of assuming and
respecting instrumental Logos and Eros in order genuinely to make us creators of a
life qualified as human.
This third alternative represents our preference. We do not believe that the solution to the problems of profound dehumanization derived from a scientific-technological culture lies in a return to traditional society, with its connection to nature and God and its interpersonal relations. The question lies in how to humanize the formidable marvel of scientific-technology, rather than in its rejection.
We do not accept -- in contradistinction to many authors -- that inhumanity is
inherent to this form of technological rationality; that this rationality necessarily
destroys, dominates, and turns the human being into an instrument for the accu
mulation of wealth, power and pleasures. But we consider that it is possible to change the perverse character, with which it is imputed nowadays, only to the extent that a different rationality be developed. This is a rationality of interpersonal human relationships understood not in separation from society's objective logic nor solely in terms of a person's inferiority, nor as confined within churches, but as a loving rationality capable of assuming and reordering the whole of society and human life.
We believe that this is impossible so long as Christianity does not recover its
identity with the God of the Gospel, not with just any God. This cannot come about
as long as the God which is Love as gift and life remains undifferentiated from the
heteronomous God, i.e., the God of fear. The latter is a legitimizing guardian of
dubious social and personal moralities, unable to transform modernity in service of
a really human quality of life. Accordingly, philosophers, educators, psychologists,
sociologists, theologians and social communicators face a difficult challenge, albeit
one that has the most transcendent importance.
THE MORAL IMPACT OF MODERNITY
The response to the moral impact of modernity is not a matter of showing concern for norms that have shifted in different areas of human behavior. Modernity has produced a type of society in which the sense of the ought-to-be itself has been challenged. Beyond scientific laws developed within each field of knowledge, and instrumental rationality with its legitimizing criterion, i.e., its capacity for securing the specific ends of each field, does it make any sense to raise the moral question? If morality can still be defended, what is its proper scope in satisfying a particular exigency of the human being or in ordering those fields that modernity has, with much effort, endeavored to isolate?
Modernity has proceeded with an implicit or explicit assumption which affirms the rationality and goodness of the universe and of the human being. Rationality and goodness are expressed by laws. To the extent that the human being discovers and applies those laws in every field, the moral ought and being become identified. Reason is understood as the source of knowledge and the good, that is to say, of happiness and human fulfillment.
On the one hand, there is an implicit logic which rejects moral statements as counterproductive. But today the bitter results of inhumanity which have been the by-product of scientific-technological rationality are also evident. Here, there is always the possibility of making a moralistic and catastrophic "reading" of the contemporary world, e.g.: threats of total destruction, the misery of the poor majority, corruption, drugs, the meaningless of life in opulent society, sexual licentiousness, etc. In fact, young people often develop a profound resentment against this type of society, which is perceived as capable of producing everything, but unable to offer an appropriate cultural habitat for the flourishing of human love, tenderness, understanding, and unselfish concern for every human being. In contrast to this unbearable daily life of the technological worldview devoid of human warmth and fraternity, stands the search for religion, metaphysics, interiority, the sacred and the esoteric returns.
But these limitations and even disasters resulting from modernity do not of themselves provide a legitimate moral alternative with a real possibility of acceptance: the indubitable human disrepute of the liberation produced by technocratic abundance and utilitarian society is counteracted by its immense capacity for seduction.
The articulation of a viable moral vision, that is, one capable of producing a civilization with a genuine quality of human life for all peoples, requires grasping the irrationality of a humanity that destroys itself, as well as the powerful human contribution made by scientific-technological instrumental rationality with its capacity to achieve its proposed ends.
Today, many young people develop a clear sense of the immorality of modern society, in addition to the absurdity of traditional heteronomous morality. Clairvoyance, together with the incapacity to build up a different world where it would be possible to develop and dwell upon a transcendent moral sense, may lead in the direction of an unbeguiled cynical evasion.
Without surrendering to modernity, its reorientation or substitution does not
seem possible. Let us see some of its elements and effects on morality.
The Long Struggle of the Enlightenment
As is the case with every profound change in society, the triumph of mo
dernity has involved a long struggle (in this case, several centuries in duration) with great conflicts and resistance. The ability to know and dominate nature seems to have been fundamental for the success of modernity. By means of modernity, humanity went from a state of adaptation to nature, with a relatively reduced transformation, to a state characterized by its ability to provide an abundance of goods and services previously unsuspected. This means that modernity -- beyond its European development -- has a universal character. Without engaging in value judgments -- Is it better or worst than other civilizations? -- it seems that all peoples in a few decades will follow the modernist path, either spontaneously or by external influence.
The transformation of the Western world derives from Greek rationality and Judeo-Christian inspiration, which desacralizes nature and promotes man's transforming action in history. Accordingly, Western man "dominates the earth," discovering the laws of God operative in nature. However, the relationship between enlightened modernity and the traditional Christian matrix undergoes a confrontation which supposes the rejection of authority, ecclesiastic wisdom, and morality, as historically defined by the churches.
The modern Enlightenment struggle against traditional society appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries as a liberation of humankind. When Adam Smith, professor of morality, proposed an economy which may follow scientific laws without interference of any moral ought (civil or ecclesiastic), he was proposing an amoral mean for achieving the moral end of better production and distribution of wealth.
For that generation of learned men and scientists, the human spirit, particularly reason, was the brilliant, almost lightning expression of a creative Divinity through a positive, ordered and rational world. However, they found that in the traditional world in which they lived evil and ignorance imposed limitations and poverty, social discrimination within a stratified society, and the subjection of persons to heteronomous impositions which reduced the human individual to merely carrying out directives. In defense, an indisputable religious-civil authority allegedly consecrated by God was proffered as supreme guardian in this irrational order.
Certainly, this inherited society was moralistic, which does not mean that it was moral. Sometimes, this moralism maintained and protected deeply immoral realities. But, even in cases in which the prevailing morality postulated the good for everyone, it did not have the means for its production. For example, when health was desired, one prayed for it, without possessing the scientific-technological knowledge to fight against plagues or to produce penicillin. Hence, they lived in a moral society which in many aspects was deeply immoral. Facing this, the Enlightenment tried to create a space for science and technology governed by its own laws -- without the interference of any external moral oughts.
For them, this was another way of obeying God, supreme Lord of the Universe, who ordained all according to rational laws and endowed the human beings with the capacity to discover and adjust themselves accordingly. Whenever subjective and objective reason met, the Kingdom of Reason would be established, i.e., the True and the Good, as well as the ability for producing the desired abundance of goods and services through the domination of nature. Domination here is achieved by obeying nature, that is to say, by adjusting oneself to its laws. The mystery of evil for the human being -- who does what he does not want to do and does not do what he thinks to be good -- will be solved (so they thought) to the extent to which we liberate reason from obscurantist guardianships which kept it under subjection.
There are two aspirations in this long movement of Enlightened modernity: the liberation of scientific-technological reason and the liberation of individual conduct. Both were tied up through extrinsic constraints; both needed to be guided by intrinsic laws inscribed in the very nature of things. The confrontation with those extrinsic powers, which bound humans and hindered the free development of reason and science, was brought about in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this respect, the church, metaphysics, theology, absolute monarchy, male or patriarchal authority, or the intervention of economic rules are understood as extrinsic to the laws and the nature of each sector of created reality. Irrational adherence or subjection to those external impositions was considered as the source of evil.1
The economy was freed from regulatory norms and left to function in accord with intrinsic laws whose free action, according to the theoreticians, would generate a maximum production and distribution of goods, which, in turn, would reward the better servants, that is to say, the better producers.
Kings were desacralized and politics was understood in terms of a more scientific and participatory conception of power. Advances were made in the natural and human sciences; psychology, sociology and anthropology came into being. This liberating process towards an adult humanity promised freedom, equality, brotherhood and material affluence for everyone.
This long struggle -- hard and sanguine at the beginning, quiet and tranquil
during the second half of our century -- has brought about a prodigious world. Its
unquestionable and unbelievable achievements are its justification. At the same
time, these achievements are the disavowal of the old order guardians, who, in spite
of at least some good moral principles, were not able to produce anything comparable to the miracle of modern society and the liberation of human conduct. What,
it is asked, have metaphysics, religious authority, tradition, paternal authority,
inherited taboos, etc. produced which is comparable to the products of scientific-technology free from any moralist interference? In a nature well-ordered by
Supreme Reason, everything is guided toward the good. The categorical imperatives
must be desacralized and subjected to reason; it is the Truth of Reason that begets
the Good.
Morality Loses Moral Authority
With the subjection of all to reason, the logic which governs modernity uncovers the inconsistency and irrationality of much which was defended as "untouchable." This debate emerged initially as confined to the theoretical order and properly concerning intellectual trends. In the last decades, this is not so: secular human society was inexorably established. Moralist positions were discredited for not only theoreticians but praxis itself had proven their falsehood. Individual rationalization mechanisms and societal legitimization processes were appraised as false, as concealing reality. The liberation of egalitarian social aspirations, of individual trends against imposed social patterns, of sexuality, of women -- against any heteronomous imposition of a subordinate role -- have greatly diminished, if not altogether demolished, the foundations of traditional morality.
There is a deconstruction of the super-ego, and a generation lives with a lack of security because, with a single stroke, all the learned moral norms have been discredited. Additionally, part of this generation harbors hostility and resentment toward a past to which it had paid the tribute of morality. At the same time, another generation is born and grows, one which no one dares to guide explicitly toward a way of life considered as good in opposition to another considered as bad, or to influence by means of explicit moral preaching. Guidance is through the communications media, by the existing systems of rewards and punishments, and by celebrities who serve as role models. Their behavior is presented as reflecting alternative lifestyles, even in cases which are clearly immoral.
If anthropology has suggested a cultural relativism of moral norms; if
psychology has disclosed the different subconscious mechanisms which challenge
freedom, responsibility, motivation and morality itself; if the critique of religion
from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis and Marxism argues that the object of
religion is not a supreme reality but a reflection of inhuman alienation; and if rapid
mobility and cultural changes indicate that whatever at one time was considered
transcendent and everlasting is no longer so considered -- then in view of all this
every heteronomous morality seems to crumble. It is not concrete moral categories
that change; rather it is the possibility of morality itself. Is there any adequately
certain and stable reality, of sufficient value, capable of sustaining a moral imperative, a moral ought, and of demanding sacrifices to which we may adhere absolutely? Is there any non-negotiable good? If nothing has an unconditional value,
good and evil become, at best, that which in each moment one's subjectivity
considers to be such. Good and evil will be a feeling, an intuition, a need in a given
moment for a given person. As in the case of religious feeling and its accompanying
meaning, morality is understood as properly stemming from an ascientific
subjectivity.
Amoral Autonomous Knowledge Claims
When the religious and metaphysical views of human wholeness and a unitary civil and religious authority gave way to a multiplicity of sciences each with its own internal logic, this removed the foundations of a unique view of humankind as endowed with a transcendent orientation with respect to the areas of knowing and action. The effects of scientific advances and the new ways of knowing reach the moral field many decades later. Normally, persons, including scientists, ground their personal morality on surviving elements taken from another type of society. Today, the effective (non-theoretical) logic of amorality and secularity is more strongly perceived. Yesterday was the time of theoreticians who frequently were without any suitable practice; today is the time of practitioners who, without a need for theory, render suspect heteronomous morality.
Each area of human knowledge has its own rationality and instrumental valuation which judges the capacity of a technique or of human behavior in terms of its ability to achieve its proposed ends. The deistic faith (as well as the atheistic one) made us think of a harmony in the universe such that if each part follows its own intrinsic rationality, it can be integrated within a rationality underlying the whole totality. Therefore, there is no need to consider the totality or the ultimate foundations of things and the meaning of human life. Neither is it possible to make objective valuations on the appropriate ends of each field of knowledge and action (e.g., of nuclear physics or organizational efficiency). All this pertains to subjective knowledge.
The intrinsic rationality of each field ought to be questioned only if we want to advance in that field and achieve its proper ends. Thus, the end to be pursued begets an instrumental ought. If you wish to win the elections, you must offer such and such to the electorate; if you want the arrested person to talk, you must torture him. . . . This rationality sets aside a transcendent moral sense and, on the other hand, gives a certain moral character to instrumental effectiveness.
The revolution brought about by instrumental rationality has in its favor the production of astonishing achievements in its mission of offering effective means for achieving coveted human ends in medicine, food, communications, etc. At the same time, it has developed an immense capacity for manipulation, control, and transformation of nature, including human nature. Consider biogenetics, psychology and information theory. In former cultures there was a different world consisting of a subject acting who accepted a transcendent sense of life and a way of acting recommended as moral so as to dissuade him from pursuing a contrary conduct. A particular combination of coercion, dread, punishment, love, and persuasion made possible the assimilation and respected for the moral ought. Metaphysical and religious conceptions, traditions, educational practices, the system of authority, its means of coercion, and rewards were oriented toward the maintenance of behaviors which were conveyed as desirable. The conception of good and evil, and their system of rewards and punishments respectively, did not end with death, because it was assumed that there was a unity of this life with that of the "next." In some cultures, this life was a trial while the "other" was viewed as the definitive life, which rewarded faithfulness in this life to the moral ought. Accordingly, heteronomous morality depended not only on external social coercion, but also on the fear of eternal punishment and the promise of eternal reward.
In Western culture, with its influential and dominant pragmatic rationality, some of these dimensions and views have lost their viability. Reward and punishment for actions are empirically verified in terms of whatever is possible to achieve; there is no need for metaphysical or religious justification. This society has created other ways of guiding and persuading, a functional mode of persuasion which points to effective means for achieving definite ends. This is not a moral mode of reasoning, but a utilitarian one.2
Instrumental Enlightenment rationality is common to both capitalist and Marxist perspectives, despite their historical confrontation. In both systems, it is a matter of discovering and supporting objective rational laws, so that automatically they will produce happiness and the good.
The Marxist enlightenment offered to end evil on earth thanks to the discovery of certain scientific laws. There are laws inherent to societies which account for alienation, human exploitation, misery, and evil. These laws disclose a connection between the economic fact and all such other dimensions of human life as politics, religion -- in a word -- the whole culture. According to these laws, the overthrow of the private appropriation of the means of production necessarily brings about the disappearance of social classes and overcomes alienation and misery. A new socialized economy signifies the emergence of a new society and a new humanity. Labor loses its present character and becomes a catalyst for the realization of the human being and brotherhood. Humanity is liberated from the alienating relationship between capitalists and proletariat and is transformed into a classless mode of life. Once the cause of evil (the private appropriation of the means of production) is eliminated, the moral ought and being become identified.
Both capitalism and Marxism are products of the Enlightenment, and uphold
that respect for laws which governs economics and history. Without interference of
the moral ought, this begets the good and happy society. In essence, it is a matter of
finding any mechanical failure which may hinder the good functioning of society.
The problem of evil is too serious to be left in the hands of human subjectivity,
whose freedom -- for good or bad -- does not have any more certainty than its own
preference and absolute valuation of the good.
The Part for the Whole
The problem here is not in the development of instrumental rationality, but in the lack of an equally strong development of the rationality of ends, within the context of a non-utilitarian and non-instrumental rationality of human relationships. The radical affirmation of the human person who cannot be reduced to an instrument, the full "quality of life" and living together as the soul of culture, and the real power to shape and guide instrumental rationalities -- all have been relegated to the sphere of marginal and marginalized groups of human rights.
The sense of human life is endured so long as it does not attempt to guide the totality of the human reality of our culture. But to the extent that an attempt is made to affect the direction of social life, politics and the economy, its supporters are treated as delinquents and subversives. Instrumental rationality -- which is only one aspect of the whole of human rationality -- is imposed as a totality which relegates transcendent morality to private life, religious communities and minority ethical groups.
A duality or sort of "schizophrenia" is formed in those engaged in moral
education for the young. Such an education is not expected to judge or transform the
logic of the ruling power in today's society. Hence, as those who receive a moral
education in accord with a transcendent orientation enter adult life and act in
society, they discover that in practice its morality has very different utilitarian logic
and rules to which they are expected to adjust.
From Homo Faber to Homo Fabricatus
Homo faber -- the scientist, the technician, the "organizational man," and the productive man -- has deeply shaped nature, society, the worldview and its relationship (if any) to God. But, one also shapes oneself as well, to the extent of becoming homo fabricatus. The ruling instrumental rationality is such that it transforms the human being into a product, in its own image and likeness. Society has a tendency to produce in humans a sort of second nature in which the utilitarian aspect is the determining factor.
Of all the utilitarian rationalities, economic rationality dominates this era of humanity, characterized by a move from an economy of subsistence (with relatively little transformation) to an economy of accumulation in a state of permanent productive revolution and transformation. Not only will the habitat of a XXI century urbane man be artificial or built by humans, but in a certain sense the human being itself will be artificially produced and shaped by an instrumental combination of economics and hedonism. The strong convictions of a deep moral sense in favor of living together and of non-instrumental human relationships wane. Anyone who wants to survive and to be successful in this society must be subordinated to the dominant rules of the game. In spite of the inner resistances, the productive achievements of this society are their own justification, and persuade us regarding the convenience of paying a price for them. The economic design not only pertains to economic life, but shapes family relationships. Perhaps the most radical move from homo faber to homo fabricatus will be brought about by recent developments in the field of biogenetics.
Today's society, greatly determined by economic factors, on the one hand, tries to liberate itself from primary economic deprivation (with fundamentally serious scarcities which threaten existence), and, on the other hand, develops a secondary economic dependence which shapes humans and their behavior with needs induced and guided by an instrumental logic.
Given that in their fundamental structure humans are indigent beings, subjects of needs and aspirations, one's search for realization can be manipulated and tied to the dynamics of supply and demand with profit as the main motivation. Given the openness and indeterminacy of human "spiritual" aspirations, there exists the possibility of artificially relating them to the consumption of goods and services which are for sale. In terms of primary material needs, however, one is less changeable; there is a more direct relationship between needs and the objects that satisfy them. In practice, the need determines the object: one who is thirsty needs water, one who is cold needs clothing, which objects do not admit of facile substitution. In contrast, the means that satisfy a person's aspiration to love, happiness and self-esteem may be diverse, contradictory and have almost no objective relationship with one's aspiration.
In this sense, the demand is not that which governs the supply, but the supply induces the demand. On this basis is built the huge industry of behavior motivation and the production of object-means. This industry gives the illusion that it can realize human aspirations; money is presented as the universal mediator between humans and their needs and aspirations, be they material or spiritual.
Even one's religious aspirations may be manipulated and satisfied via
"electronic religion." There an actor -- who need not be religious -- and limited
television scenery provide the whole of religious depth. The same can be said about
drugs and commercial sex; they are capable of producing sensations which
momentarily fill the affective emptiness of human life.
The Influence of Mass Media on Human Behavior
Scientific and technological advances so revolutionize the mass media and entertainment that they emerge as the producers of the image or mirror in which human persons look at themselves and endeavor to shape their behavior. The power of the communications media to influence human behavior seems unlimited. Although not necessarily used in an anti-human way, at present it functions as a huge industry in the hands of powerful consortia whose principle aim is profit. The dialogue of supply and demand with regard to programming tends to turn into an encounter between economics and individual hedonism.
In this way it fosters the direction of definite behaviors, an efficient social
direction without norms or any explicit moral ought. Likewise, its amoral language
blurs the differences between what is moral and immoral, human and inhuman.
The Praise of Amorality
Certainly, we are not referring to all the diverse trends in society today. Many social trends are deeply moral. Rather, we are attempting to develop certain consequences from the dominant logic and the conditions which it imposes for the task of moral education.
We are in an economic society in which selfishness is not an evil, but the motor of progress, the fundamental law of the productive revolution. Accordingly, it is said that the free play and interchange of selfish economics has internal laws which, carefully respected, can lead the world to the greatest productivity and distribution of goods and services. Hence, the radical human economic tendency to have more succeeds, for the economy produces what never was achieved by the moral ought.
This fundamental trend of human selfishness, presented as the cause of every evil by a non-enlightened heteronomous authoritarian and interventionist morality, may turn into the fundamental principle of economic morality, the motor of the optimum production and distribution of profits and services. Accordingly, backward countries living in subhuman conditions that want to better their situation must revise their laws in order to be guided by laws leading towards economic and social liberation.
Some suggest that there is something similar in the world of subjective happiness, namely, that we must search for rational laws or natural tendencies and liberate them from any ought-to-be, and that this will lead to happiness and the good for everyone? This mode of reasoning is more implicit than explicit.
Within an Enlightenment logic this would appear evident. If nature is rational, a product of an ordering rationality, man will not be less than this. Hence, let us remove every restraint, taboo and imposed authoritarianism and heteronomous morality so as to achieve the desired good and happiness. It is not a matter of looking for a philosophical theory to support this position, but of making explicit the implicit logic of the daily life of our society which shapes thousands, indeed millions, of human beings. The theory of such a daily praxis, imposed by the culture, is that it is necessary to discover the fundamental laws of human happiness so as to liberate human beings from the prohibitions and taboos which hinder their accomplishment.
Accordingly, selfishness must be redeemed from the impact of moralist disqualifications and liberated from the prohibitions that repress it. Selfishness is the fundamental law of nature, and for this reason it leads to the good; only evil is produced by the repression of natural tendencies. For the happiness of humanity, selfishness -- long repressed by religion, ignorance and static traditions -- should be freed. It is necessary to recover the instincts as fundamental laws and guides of the theistic project: if Creation is a marvelous work of creative transcendent Reason, so are humans as its crowning achievement. Therefore, the instincts which determine the tendency toward desired objects ought to be not only liberated, but also taken as natural guides. For that purpose, laws referring to the human being within each field of knowledge need to be examined in order to liberate human behavior from any hinderance that may prevent its realization. Following this logic, instincts as laws of nature do not require a moral ought which always is understood as an internal, absolute, irrational imperative which subdues humans as objects of the norm.
At the same time, in what may be called the objective logic of society, the enterprising sense of profit which controls the availability of goods and services, and the hedonism of individuals which demands the satisfaction of their needs and aspirations, shake hands. Given the malleability and the indeterminacy of individuals regarding the satisfaction of their aspirations, the fabulous technological capacity for programming, and the association of aspirations and consumer objects, hedonism and economics socially determine tastes, aspirations, ideals, desires and the images of men or women.
Thus, ever since the ruling criterion came to consist in the combination of economics and hedonism, and electronics became capable of shaping desires, projecting images, and domesticating sublime aspirations with almost unlimited efficacy, the subject has been left to some degree at the mercy of external stimuli with limited capacity for processing and evaluating one's inwardness.
To this we must add the logic of power domination -- that other formidable
instinct -- by which superpowers and states develop a mighty capacity for manipulating and controlling humans. Economic resources, technology and the power to
dominate, unite with a strength never before encountered. In not a few people, this
promotes the logic of the impious in the second chapter of the book of Wisdom:
We came into being by chance and afterwards shall be as though we
had never been. For our days are the passing of a shadow, our end is
without return, the seal is affixed and nobody comes back (Wisdom
2:2 and 5).
From which consideration of death is drawn the immediate hedonist conclusion:
Come, then, let us enjoy the good things of today, let us use created
things with the zest of youth: take our fill of the dearest wines and
perfumes, on no account forgo the flowers of spring but crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither, no meadow excluded from
our orgy; let us leave the signs of our revelry everywhere, since this is
our portion, this is our lot! (Wisdom 2:6-9)
For those who do not enter upon this way, there is offered the possibility of looking for other alternatives, but only provided that this logic of power and wealth, congruent with individual hedonism, is not altered.
It is not necessary to consider the destiny of the weak and retarded of the
world, that is to say, of the three-fourths of humanity which do not possess power,
wealth and technology:
As for the upright man who is poor, let us oppress him; let us not
spare the widow, nor respect old age, white-haired with many years.
Let our might be the yardstick of right, since weakness argues its own
(Wisdom 2:10-11).
The objective dynamics of our society cultivates, nourishes and exacerbates hedonism. While our society does not prohibit morality, it has downtrodden its basic supports without offering any other foundation. From here, amorality establishes itself as a criterion and immorality as a practice, so as to reach the conclusion: "Eat and drink that we shall die."3
The amoral contemporary world sees in its favor achievements in the production of goods and services, but by not considering the counterweight of morality it becomes immorality. Paradoxically, human liberation ends in the actual dehumanization of life. Such rationality ends in destruction and death.
In sum, the formidable adventure of Logos and Eros disconnected from the
old guardians ends in Thanatos because the Logos developed by the Enlightenment
and modernity is not Agape. It is not the biblical Logos, which gives absolute value
to the person, but only the objectivizing part of knowledge. It is not intersubjective
knowledge, which does not instrumentalize the other; such knowledge of the other
and self-knowledge are given only as a gratuitous interpersonal gift.
MORALITY AS AFFIRMATION OF LIFE
We are convinced that today the conditions for moral education are deeply altered in relation to what they were forty or fifty years ago. A traditional moral education has few possibilities of inspiring anything new, nor has it the moral strength needed to humanize effectively the most diverse dimensions of life.
On the other hand, there is a growing conviction (contrary to initial expectations) that the culture of scientific technological rationalist modernity and omnipotent economicism does not bring about a development that may be viewed as leading to a humanizing progress. Many thinkers, from different ideological and philosophical perspectives, agree with Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis: "The panorama of the actual world, including the economic, instead of causing concern for a development which is genuinely human -- as the encyclical Populorum Progressio hoped -- is leading us more rapidly toward death".4
There are conditions under which the rebirth of a renewed morality may and
must contribute to reorienting humanity's movement as a whole. It must offer new
generations a life with meaning and with challenges for human growth which are
worth living for. The following are some recommendations in this direction.
The Challenge of Amoral Knowledge
In the first place, it is necessary to take seriously all the possibilities for man produced by modern society and the different fields of scientific knowledge, technology and rational organization.
The pretension that these fields of knowledge by themselves tell us all there is to know about human behavior and about how man should use such knowledge appears unacceptable. All technological know-how, all forms of efficacious organization oriented to the production of proposed ends, should be reduced to their appropriate instrumental role, not converted into supreme laws of life.
One trend holds that instrumental rationality is in itself dominating and alienating. Certainly, human work, science, and social organization and interaction have maintained their role in overcoming natural resistances. This said, humanity's desirable ends are not achieved by the free and spontaneous development of the pleasure principle, for from that perspective we cannot deduce that oppression, alienation, and death are the fundamental signs of instrumental Logos. Habermas notes that scientific-technological reason has a great liberating potential provided that it be ordered by a superior Logos, which turns it into an instrument for the production of suitable living conditions for all persons.5 For that reason it is necessary to develop a rationality which searches for the good, namely, the rationality of human communication, which affirms the other not as an instrument, but as a person: an affective loving communication based upon the sense of the person as gratuitous gift. These would seem to be two opposed rationalities, but they are not, although they are different and irreducible one to the other. We must set up the proper relationship between them within a new equilibrium. Young people need to imagine and visualize this utopia, and to find themselves in realizing it, although the surrounding environment does not encourage this.
Christians believe that the Logos, which understands the whole divine reality, is Agape or love. The center of the mystery of life is that Logos-Agape made itself flesh and set up its tent amongst us.6 This is God's tenderness which is conveyed to us as a great joy and "good news" to all people. This is more valuable than all else for human beings. Here we are not talking about a God viewed reductively as ruler of the Universe, or as a guardian of heteronomous laws imposed on man from the outside -- one who is ready to punish severely anyone who disobeys his laws.
In God there is no contradiction between the rational Logos and the
Agape-Logos, but this contradiction is found in human history. Humanity today
enjoys a privileged moment for searching for a new morality with a new relationship between these components of the human condition. Christ is the "first-born of
the whole creation."7 The key to human liberation is the lordship of love, Agape,
which does not annul Logos and Eros, but guides, orders and brings them to their
plenitude. Amoral scientific knowledge offers the enhanced possibility of being
good or bad. Agape saves this from its ambiguity and turns it into abundant life for
everyone.
The Irreducible Moral Structure
Even in a society such as ours where at times the term `moral' may seem like a dirty word there is an unquestionable fact. In the person's identity, in the depth of one's being, there is a moral structure which calls one from the inside toward the good, the Supreme Good, as the horizon of one's identity and complete realization. Even in the most arid desert of an inhuman society or an immoral personal life, this inner source of morality never dries up. This is in accord with the utopian conviction that love is stronger than death, that to give one's life for the other, including for a foreigner, is to find it. Indeed, the establishment of a just and fraternal humanity is the last transcendental word about man; it is a fire that never goes out. Within our being, at its constitutive depths, is Love. By the initiative of this original love, the creature comes forth and is called to humanize oneself, to become a person through love. "It is not that we have loved God, but that he first loved us and sent us his Son."8
It is this positive moral sense that must be nourished so as to unravel all its
transforming possibilities in today's world. Before any other moral norm or instrumental handling of Christianity for the support of repressive realities -- whether
social or personal -- or the legitimization of doubtful social, political and economic
orders, the living of this reality must constitute the aim of all moral education.
From a Heteronomous to a Theonomous Morality
via an Autonomous Morality
In a permissive, relativist, pluralist and changing society, there are not many supports for an heteronomous moral sensibility, for an external norm which is imposed unquestionably as an absolute value. Neither is this the morality of a humanity which aspires to adulthood. In St. Thomas's words: "The one who avoids evil, not because it is evil, but because he is commanded, is not free; but he who avoids it because it is evil, he is free."9
Autonomous morality, in which the individual looks to himself as the center of his decisions, appears as one of the supreme achievements of the modern world. But in the long run, such a morality has the tendency to make one's own subjectivity the law and supreme arbiter with catastrophic effects for human living and for the fullest sense of human life.
In morality there is always a transcendent and absolute value as affirmation of the person in relation to other persons. It is not subjection to the norm as norm, but rather the attraction of constituting oneself as a person in relation to other persons.10 In theonomous morality, by going outside of ourselves, we affirm ourselves; affirming the other as another self, we discover ourselves. But this affirmation of the other is not obedience to an external norm, but love, interior tenderness, a gift which is realized in and with the other.
The absolute character of the ethical commandment consists in self-love and in love for the other. It is not a selfish act, but one in which we answer a call to affirm ourselves as a gift, as gratuitous relationship with the other. Theonomous morality is based upon transcendent love and the inner calling towards full realization in the personal encounter, in which the "I" finds himself with Love. Not every theistic morality is theonomous. A God perceived as a superior or external being that commands us, maintains controls over us, and punishes us whenever we do not obey him, is a God of heteronomous morality.
Theonomous morality conveys its meaning in the ecstasy in which God is perceived as highest being, plenitude and gift who in his tenderness accepts us as we are and, for that reason, makes us capable of transforming ourselves into a gift for others. The encounter with God is perceived as the encounter with our own identity. Every image is limited (God-father, God-mother, God-friend) but points to one reality: God as the supreme Good that concerns us absolutely because in that plenitude of love one affirms the plenitude and meaning of life. This, in turn, leads to the humanization, i.e., "domination," of the earth and affirming others -- every human being -- as we affirm ourselves.11
Hence in a theonomous morality, God is not perceived, primarily, as a being foreign to us, who has the power to command and impose his rules on us. In this context, God is not law, but Spirit which gives us the inspiration and strength to pursue the good. It is a gift conveyed to us which makes us free to accept ourselves and to turn ourselves into a gift of tenderness and creativity for others. Theonomous morality is supported by the dynamics of Agape.
Before consideration of ourselves as atheists or not, as members of a church or not, there is the transcendent structure of the identity that constitutes us as persons, in which the Spirit makes present our vocation and moral life. "God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear for fear looks at punishment; he who fears has not reached the plenitude of love."12
St. Paul tells us that in heteronomous morality we are still slaves, or under age. Moral adulthood is received not from a law which orders what has to be done without providing the strength with which to do it. Rather, the Spirit communicates love. More than an extrinsic commandment, morality is an inner force which leads us to plenitude. This morality is neither heteronomous nor autonomous, but theonomous. A morality of God as Love conveyed to every person in the Spirit as a gift oriented to achieving its plenitude. Thus we understand morality "as dynamism which launches man toward his personal self-realization."13
The particular contents may vary according to the circumstances of space
and time, but not the transcendent source of morality which never is sufficiently
domesticated by any social determinant nor by immoral nor amoral life itself. This
source of morality transcends all human reality. Its objectification requires reason,
analysis, technique and organization in order to achieve a theonomous morality
which is objectifiable and socially effective, not merely an arbitrary and inoperant
sentiment.
From Logos-Eros-Thanatos to Agape-Logos-Eros
Modernity has separated Logos and rationality, but only in one of their senses: knowledge and instrumental reason. However, in theory and even in practice modernity has emphasized the part for the whole as if this were the whole of rationality, and as if the product of its historical praxis were capable of attaining human fulfillment. For example, in the universities all other forms of knowledge are excluded. But the Logos is person; it is knowledge-love-creation; logos is love. It is imperative to recover this integrity of the Logos. Scientific and technological reason is only one dimension of reason and attains its full and constructive sense to the degree that it is ordered by love. It is true that the human being in history needs to unfold the Logos in its different aspects and needs to distinguish different areas of knowledge. But this differentiation of our culture without a corresponding growth in the integration and humanization of the whole, threatens the whole with death. Law and science are not bad, but they must be assumed and ordered by love; they must be guided by free and responsible subjects. In this global sense, rationality is a synonym for humanity, and humanity means love rooted in God's love which is communicated to us.
Love-Agape has the peculiarity of affirming itself by affirming the other, by
affirming what is different, not by denying or supplanting the other. For that reason,
this transcendent love does not deny the other forms of knowledge or the other
forms of love and of tendencies of the human being. It assumes, transforms and
brings them to fulfillment. Agape, as the "movement which affirms the other
without condition" assumes and affirms: Libido understood as the "movement of the
needy toward that which meets its needs," Philia as the "movement of a fellow
human to unite oneself with one's neighbor, and Eros as the "movement of what is
minor in being toward what is higher."14 Agape is realized among persons, joining
the lover and the beloved by their wish for plenitude in communion. Agape among
human beings includes Libido, Philia and Eros, and God's love as present. But, also,
in a sense there is a loving, contemplative relationship of communion with nature as
well, a non-instrumental, non-dominating relationship that is in some way
dialogical. Instrumental Western culture has suffocated this to the extent that
ecocide is not a remote menace, but present in the lack of a loving relationship with
nature that threatens humanity with total destruction.
The Personal and the Subjective:
Molders of the Social and the Objective
The radical foundations of morality need to be nourished. For that purpose the family and society in general need to be strengthened. However, if contrary values prevail within a system which fosters only hedonist tendencies, they do not find this nourishment.
Within the present compartmentalization of life, it is not enough to have a special sector of society where those feelings might be developed. To permit and even prize a sort of inner haven so long as it does not transcend its limits so as to guide the economy, politics and human relations is not acceptable. Although those realities need their own autonomy, this is not true with human behavior. Transcendent morality is one and total; it is for all dimensions of human life, for all persons, and for all kinds of behavior -- it is indivisible. Morality does not refer to a desire for peace, justice and a certain abundance of necessary goods and services for one's own well-being as well as that of one's family. Whoever does not feel pain for the misery and scorn of half of humanity has never known morality.
The person's subjectivity -- the responsible and conscious subject -- must
shape all the dimensions of life. It must transcend its inner world and private life so
as to assume and shape the whole society without denying its own specificity. John
Paul II says that the huge accumulation of goods and services produced by science
and technology have not produced liberation:
On the contrary, the experience of the last years demonstrates that if
all this considerable amount of resources and potentialities offered to
man is not directed by a moral objective and by a course oriented
toward the true good of the human person, it may turn against humanity to oppress it.15
In this sense, it is necessary to break the barriers of different areas of human acting which acknowledge no orientations except those they themselves advocate in agreement with intrinsic laws useful to the achievement of their own ends.
If we are overwhelmed by the resistance of society's own dominant logic and take refuge in a moral shelter or small ghettos, we shall compromise the totalizing dynamism of the moral sense and deny the conditions for its existence. In the majority of cases, moral sensibility will die by social suffocation, and society will die for lack of this morality which comes from this inner sense of the person.
How does one achieve a morality that will not hinder the specifications of
knowledge and social dynamics and develop them in such a way that the moral
sense is not down, but instead is placed at the center of life and society?
Conditions of Possibility for a Postmodern Morality
The possibility of a postmodern morality is a complex topic. Starting from the notion that today the moral sense is a foreign land, there is, nonetheless, an increasing awareness of its urgent necessity. Therefore, I would like to end with a few notes concerning some conditions for its revitalization.
A positive moral sense needs community to nourish it with life; this will
transform society, in turn, into a pleasant and meaningful reality. Perhaps it would
be better to say that it needs communities which expand in concentric circles,
starting from the family nucleus, until it transcends the wide world of the polis. This
moral growth requires a public space for its realization without partisan segregation
-- the good is not limited to only a few and should not be reduced to one or another
area of reality, as would happen if one were to fight against drugs but not against
political and economic corruption. The partial goods are not solidly sustained if
they are accepted as a result of a mandate or because their contraries are ill-viewed
by society. They are based upon vivid communication with the Supreme Good,
apprehended in religio-ethical awareness which perceives Him as supreme gift, as
Spirit that endows us with capabilities for the good. Such a God does not force us
into submission by coercion and condemnation, but offers himself to us kindly in a
spirit of service, as a gratuitous gift. In this way we must recover and make
effective the moral dimension of life.
Universidad Católica Andrés Bello
1. On the topic of rationality, see Max Weber, Economy and Society, I and II.
2. Cf. Luis Ugalde, "La racionalidad irracional de la sociedad post-industrial segun Jürgen Habermas," in O.E.S.E., Valores, estructuras y sociedad (Caracas: Fondo Editorial Común, 1974).
3. Isaiah 22:13; 1 Corinthians 15:32; Wisdom 2:7-9.
4. Cf. Mijail Gorbachov, Perestroika, no. 24 (Edit. Oveja Negra), pp. 9-10 and 22.
5. It might be of interest to see J. Habermas's books on this topic: Theorie und Praxis, Techik und Wissenshaft als Ideologie, Erkenntnis und Interesse.
6. John 11:14.
7. Colossians 1:15-20.
8. 1 John 4:18.
9. Aquinas, In Epistolam II ad Corinthos, III, Lect. III.
10. Cf., Paul Tillich, Systematische Theologie II, p. 186.
11. Genesis, 2:18, and 2:24.
12. 1 John 4:18.
13. E. López Azpitarte, Praxis Cristiana, I (Madrid: Ed. Paulinas, 1980), p. 274.
14. Since these terms are used with different meanings by authors, we have specified the sense we use here.
15. Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 28.