INTRODUCTION

The subject of our study places the future of morality and science on the line, for the challenge of the 21st century threaten to be one of learning how to survive in a world without morality, in the midst of a developing relation of transitivity between the general and the social sciences. It may be convenient to qualify the treatment of this topic by considering the "common ground" on which we can currently agree.¹

It is perfectly possible to ask ourselves if we do not already live in an amoral world. This question would have been strange two hundred years ago. Today it is possible, but not completely true, at least in Venezuela. It is more true to say that we live in an immoral world.

Amorality,² as understood here presupposes a series of conditions which may be summarized as follows: (1) human beings would conduct their lives in such wise as to render intentionality absolutely superfluous and, with it, the concepts of responsibility and guilt; (2) human beings would not be considered substantially different from animals except in their degrees of symbolic abstraction; (3) becoming increasingly irrelevant, the distinctions between the externality and internality of actions, passions, and feelings would disappear; and (4) human beings would understand themselves as causally responsible for themselves such that the question concerning our duties becomes worthless. In reality it is quite inconceivable to take amorality seriously as a human possibility.³

But lest we situate ourselves entirely within the vegetative and animal kingdoms, it is more realistic to speak of immorality, for there is much more immorality in the world than amorality. The problem of immorality is tied to the general problem of the intelligibility and the practicality of morality. In this respect morality is possible and real because it is realizable. However much immorality there may be in our world, its existence, at least intellectually, is a practical consequence tied to the idea that it is possible to act morally; indeed that it is possible to turn from immorality to a state of morality.

The question then is not whether there will be morality in the future, but, more properly, how will the morality of the future develop with respect to the 'immorality' that we have today? The scientific question considered from an interdisciplinary view does not appear any less complex.

If the predicate "scientific" is still associated, especially in the social sciences,⁴ with the extension of causality and explanation so as to include areas once considered the proper domain of morality, one may dream with absolute disenchantment of the exercise of the will in relation to the possibilities of human actions and passions.⁵ A world totally causal and explainable and, par excellence, describable, would be a world without cognitive mysteries. The public domain or the objectivity of the motives for our actions, and the causal structure of our anemic states, would make our behaviors "programmable." Our futures would be neither possible nor individual, but simply necessary.

On the other hand, the transitivity between one and the other kingdom of causality, which is what an interdisciplinary focus proposes, would lead one to recommend as heuristically and methodologically efficient two conceptual possibilities for the future of morality: its suppression or restriction. Thus, one can imagine that the decisions pertinent to what should be done would come gradually to be substituted by answers referring to the change of what should be: one can only do what can be done. The idea of suppressing morality suggests the advent and consequent acceptance of a determinism or conversely the death of liberty.⁶

Perhaps, the acceptance or not of the possibility of continuing with the illusion that one is agent and not process might be the only thing left to call moral. But even such an acceptance -- of doubtful consolation -- would not have serious problems either of predictability and even less of practicality. Again, for now, the construction of a world where there is no history, but only necessity makes heuristically and realistically little sense. For this reason, as in the case of the possibility of amorality, it is more plausible to imagine a future world immorally living today's morality or morally living that same immorality and initiating with it a new system of values.

However, the future of morality and science depends on their past, which focuses on the issue concerning the conceptual and rational significance of both. In effect, what is debated is the process of moral evaluation in contrast with modernity. Today there is a 'traditional' backlash that in the name of history accuses and condemns -- without further consideration -- modernity and, especially, the Enlightenment. This phenomenon is quite extensive in the contemporary process of political philosophy and ethics.

The possibility of a lack of historical significance on this matter, means that we will live as now, deeply immersed in the profundity of our akrasia.⁷ This is to say that we will continue obeying the force of lower passions that lead us to diverse ways of misjudging our relations with morality and consequently with practice and its reason.

Passions are not necessarily predictable. There is no reference to the obvious orientations that we share with all of the West (hedonism, mercantilism, sensualism, etc.). What is at issue here are those passions that, in relation to the emotions, have configured the morality of our immorality and hypocrisy, to the point that passions have without success tried to substitute for the Catholic moral education of our colonial tradition.

What I want to suggest is mediately historical. The future of morality as a problem and its relation with the future of the social sciences depend necessarily on an adequate understanding -- from our present -- of the moral past that we had.

In order to accomplish this aim, we will proceed as follows: (1) we will analyze the conception of morality as understood in terms of an empire of monarchy and fidelity, in other words, the analysis of moral-patriarchalism;⁸ (2) we will examine the advent of civic education and its bankrupt attempt at "secularization"; and (3) we will formulate a number of reflections concerning the philosophical power of the present to face the questions for those futures that for now are only imaginable.

A MORAL CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

Q: What is faith?

A: A light and supernatural knowledge by which without seeing we believe in what God tells us, what the Church proposes.

Q: Do you see that God is Trinity and one, how Christ is God and man?

A: No, but I believe it more than if I could see it.

Q: Why are you so sure?

A: Because God says it and the Church proposes it.

Geronimo Ripolda, S.J., Short Exposition of Christian Doctrine (Antonio Sanz, 1757).

Why return 100 years; why return to 1810? Are we such admirers of that national episode; is this the best way to respond to the challenge of the 21st century? These questions can be answered if we think about the strength of our prejudices over our beliefs. That moment, still alive in our official or public imagination is considered crucial for it is the starting point for the development of our moral imagination.

We have imagined that by blood and fire we become independent, that we first became independent of the superstition of God and of obedience as a proper category of political action; that we stopped being servants. Clearly, this is just an illusion, but still it is a fundamental one. At that time the language of the era or the idiom of serving considered these preoccupations as hallucinations. This is not trivial for hallucinations as critique, which are characteristic of a mentality of revolt (today we would called it "revolutionary"), indicates that the terrain in which a substantial part of the confrontation takes place is the dominion of beliefs rather than of the nature of things (ontology).

One who hallucinates sees what does not exist. That is the product of the imagination and, more specifically, of a type of activity that emanates from it with a creative and destructive power: fantasy. Now, in order for fantasy by means of the imagination to result in an hallucination, some things have to occur: first, the imagination has to be activated; secondly, this activation has to be caused by the "machine" stimulated by powerful passions; thirdly these passions have to be inclined to action rather than, for example, to a melancholic state; fourth, the excitability and elevation that they cause must be so powerful as to confuse, blind or impede the power of reason to control them. Such conditions are enough for fantasy to operate as an hallucination with its concomitant effects, namely, to negate the nature of what is and, hence, of what should be.

If we suppose a difference between belief and knowledge, and accept that the difference consists in the place that we give to the role of proofs and inference, we would be in position to assist the ambience of confrontation as it relates to the concept of trust and faith.

The believer in God of those times accepted as part of that belief loyalty as a condition of his moral existence, and therefore of his political and economic existence. Of course this brings about a series of concentric obligations and corresponding powers: the life of the faithful believer is God's, that of the faithful vassal the King's, that of the faithful son the father's; that of the faithful servant the Lord's, etc.

The scheme of all these obligations is properly termed patriarchalistic by Locke. Whatever that means in Venezuela, the truth is that it conceives and derives its social strength from the general power of faith, an intellectual and affective phenomenon proper to the concept of belief. This means that the administration of "ignorance" was an active part of the process of judging and believing: truth or falsehood may be said, but we believe in a truth that we ignore.

Ignorance and the ignorant should be raised for obedience and within obedience. Seduction for sin by means of the imagination represented the greatest danger against belief as a form of domination and conscious obligation. And since the imagination depends on the passions for the perpetuation of belief as the cohesive framework of the world, it should be guided by reason before the attack of the passions. It was the consciousness of the propriety of such dominion that gave meaning to that mode of belief that governed patriarchalism as a system of the world.

It is well-known that the first lessons of primary schooling were the catechism. It is also well-known that it had to be memorized. It is equally a fact that the age of (Christian) reason started at age seven. In this way memory emerged as crucial. What we need to know now is in which sense and with what objectives.

Memory is important for shaping the future of practical reason since it is attached to the development of the subject and his soul. The aim is to invert, among other things, the fundamental fear with the existence of two ideas of evil: the relative and the absolute. It also illustrates the need to love God within the abyss of puerile ignorance.

It is known that evil exists. One learns to fear evil indeterminately. That indetermination, united to the constitution of obedience as a form of moral conscience, provides the basis on which the practical interpretation of particular evils can be partially constructed. Therefore we feel certain that we know what should be done. And what is most important is a methodology established so that one may not err. What is doubtful is resolved by institutional certainty, i.e., by means of a process of moral acceptance of servitude, meekness and obedience⁹ that the possibility of being a human person incites.

Memory then is very important for its implications for human behavior and the development of knowledge. Memory places practical reason at an early age in possession of the will and through this means possession of virtual and present knowledge. This is significant for many reasons.

First, the will is taught its function to control the passions at the service of truth. Memory requires that the obligation of obedience be observed by the will. The reason is obvious: a youthful spirit burning with passion soon becomes licentious.

Second, if the confrontation is successful and the agent well developed, he learns to guard the truth in the practical security of the future. When this brings new moral challenges, with the efficient help of memory, one can confidently confront the waves of fortune.

Third, reason in its triumphs acquires greater power to deploy itself didactically through human history. Reason will have no problem in making peace and order possible. Peace and tranquility in a world of obedience means the permanent vigilance of reason against the relative dream of the passions.

Fourth, reason becomes lord, dominating the passions and, above all, it conceives and perceives itself as capable of being the principle of our actions. As soon as one is trained to believe, one orders one's actions in terms of reason. One already knows what one has to do, and what one has to do is what should be done. Everything evil that we do is what we did not want to do, what we do not want. Our desiring is the source of goodness that is expressed through the consciousness of our obedience. If we reflect, our deliberation guides our behavior in the direction of right action or moral goodness. If one disobeys the dictates of practical reason, the conscience experiences guilt which, as an expression of a fundamental disobedience, arises as a possibility.

Therefore, it can be concluded that such a morality and its idea of education presupposes a series of propositions: (1) that a "science" of morality is possible;¹⁰ (2) that the relations between economy and politics are not only conceivable, but that there has to be self regulation; (3) that ethics is conceived within a natural order that ontologically orders the possibilities of morality; (4) that ethics is understood as a function of the concept of dominance; (5) that ethics enjoys ontological priority or primacy with respect to economics and politics; (6) that ethics itself supposes as a possibility of morality in general the possibility of its existence as rational education.

THE LEARNING OF LIBERTY: CIVIL EDUCATION

What is the morality of a citizen; in what does this consist? It is not enough to say that we are all citizens. The obvious inadequacy of this way of responding calls for development. An immediate reaction to these questions would consist in saying that there is no such thing as a citizen. Yet, specifically, what does not exist? The citizen, in the first place, does not seem to exist. Indeed, however much the government solicits it, there is a social awareness that is weakened by bureaucratic petition. The citizen is above all a formality. In the future (the challenge of the 21st century), we may see that citizens will exist but not as formalities.

Neither does the morality of the citizen exist. The morality of the citizen is not realized simply by the fact that we call ourselves by that name. As in the case of the existence of the citizen, the existence of the morality of the citizen is offered as possible, but not actual. Neither does there appear to be an existential aspiration to be a citizen.

Now these nonexistents threaten the future moral viability of the citizen. One may ask whether it might not be convenient to reject totally this future moral possibility? To answer this question, one must ask in what does the morality of the citizen consist? Two caveats before beginning: the first is that implicit in the need to consider the interpretative problem of the concept of `citizen' is the controversy between essence and existence. The second refers to the inseparable relation between reason and affectivity that develops the history of the concept of citizen.

Let us start the search of the citizen from the very beginning with the principle that is God. Two objectives are sought: first, what is the relation of the God of traditional Venezuelan colonial Catholicism with the possibility of citizenship and its morality; second, which were the routes of the citizenship in liberation theology?

Concerning the first point there exists a consensus. Religion and the citizen in Venezuela were not conceived as either morally or intellectually compatible: either one was a faithful believer, thereby a subordinate or servant, or one was free, and thereby impious or heretical. The problem -- or for that era the dilemma -- was to aspire to be a believer and a citizen. What started as a dilemma was resolved in practice. This signified two things: in the first place, that it was necessary to fabricate discursively an ad hoc theology for this purpose; and, secondly, actions and passions were set into motion that were not less concrete than the former.

On October 27, 1815, for example, Fr. Pedro José Hernández writes to Narciso Coll y Pray concerning the luck of one of the penitents in his parish:

I hope divine grace will reduce many partisans of Independence for a Free America; and it is a constant that the principal fruits of this diabolical system has been heresy and blasphemy; for which, I ask, if it is possible, that you dispense me of the faculty of absolving the heretics for a year or for the time that you deem appropriate.¹¹

In a similar way, years before and after the earthquake of 1812, Narciso Coll wrote a letter to his priest which clearly defined things said by Bolivar, Ribas, etc.:

Are not these earthquakes natural effects that should not frighten us? You false philosophers! Certified physicians and naturalists shut up at least for this one time! . . . Do you not ignore that your ridiculous propositions are fatalistic and materialistic: Similar errors have been a thousand times refuted and condemned. . . . The evil man hardly dares to defend you: a basic education is enough to be made aware of its infamy, and you will not triumph except among the very immoral and ignorant.¹²

In another passage the God of Narciso is very clear:

It is God who watches continuously and incessantly the same world that he brought forth out of nothing, governing all entities or beings in conformity to his highest and inscrutable dispositions, and punishing, even in this life, vice and rewarding virtue, while making public manifestation of his glory, power, justice and mercy.¹³

Narciso endeavors to change the attitudes of a society in which those with titles and education are considered moral, while faithful believers are looked upon as marginal agents without moral principles. He also intends to change the traditional theology which provides a ground for those seeking a theology of liberty. With this in mind the environment turns confusing. How is the God of the citizen's of Geneva? Where and how can he be found?

For our aims the best place to look is in education; specifically in Rousseau's Emile, Book IV and, especially the profession of faith of the well-known vicar. Emile arrives late to God, way beyond the age of Christian reason. Before his adolescence Emile has not heard any mention of God. Still he is sentimentally ready to find him in the very environment where he was educated; that is in nature, and, above all, in his heart. The encounter is very candid; God speaks to Emile without reservations, absolving him in the integrity of his own conscience:

In me there arises in my heart a feeling of recognition and for the author of my species, and from this sentiment my first tribute to the divine benefactor. I adore the supreme power, and I am moved before his benefactions. I have no need to be taught how to worship, for it is inscribed in my nature. Is it not a natural consequence of love to honor what protects us and to love what wishes us well?¹⁴

This statement brings God down to the level of humanity, he is inside everyone's heart, and he does not make distinctions between small or tall, ugly or beautiful. Every man naturally possesses God within his own depths, inscribed in his sentiment. Still God exists closely attached to the activity and structure of everyone's reason. All becomes just a matter of faith and passion, leaving obedience aside.

One can now descend from that profession of faith to rediscover the "confusion" that this way of establishing God philosophically sows in the process of conceiving an education for citizenship, that is, the education of Emile. Memory appears to be useless since it is not necessary for belief in something that one can not understand; this is catechism. An Emile-type of citizen in the course of time comes to know his own nature, and then he will move in the way of learning and understanding. With the destruction of materialism and fatalism, Emile becomes a God as his own natural measure against religion and in favor of philosophical enlightenment. This didactic change is summarized by Rousseau with a view toward emphasizing the end of faith: love for peace, equality and justice:

In my instruction I would not stick to the spirit of the Church but to the spirit of the Gospel, where dogma becomes simple and morality sublime, where there are more charitable actions than religious practices.¹⁵

Until these maxims are learned by his brothers, it is important to preserve public order:

In the meantime more lights arrive; let us preserve the public order; in all countries let us respect the laws and cults; let us not lead the citizens to disobedience; since we do not know for sure if replacing their opinions with others is good for them, but we do know for certain that to disobey laws is an evil."¹⁶

Here Rousseau makes noticeable the transition between the citizen of the republic, teaching putatively a future model of citizenry:

I come, my young friend, from reciting my profession of faith, and how God reads it in my heart: You are the first one to whom I have made such a recitation and perhaps the last.¹⁷

Since Emile was entering the critical age in which he chooses between good and evil, it is an appropriate time for receiving the "seal of truth."¹⁸ If ethics was at the center of morality, it still continues to be so. It is the concept of character that still retains the attention of Rousseau. Virtue is the condition for the formation of character and what gives meaning to education. Notwithstanding, the sense of that character and those virtues, of practice itself, is dramatically different:

Very frequently reason tricks us; we have all become too adept in rejecting it; but our conscience never lies to us. It is the true guide of man. It is to the soul what instinct is to the body; whoever follows it obeys nature and is not afraid of getting lost.¹⁹

Politics becomes related to ethics as the force that together may rule the earth. It also gives politics religious connotations.²⁰ In Book IV of Emile, Rousseau initiates his consideration of the socia1 contract:

The next step in man refers to that of the moral order. If this was the place for such a consideration, I would attempt to show how from the first moments there arise in the heart the first voices of conscience, and how from the feelings of love and hate there emerge the first notions of good and evil. ²¹

The possibility of morality in general is founded in one's conscience and sentiment. If we remain within ourselves -- whether by way of natural disposition or education -- we will know no other surprises than those born of our own loneliness and limitations. It is when that love-for-oneself comes into contact with other selves that we find ourselves fascinated with the comparison and its effects, such that love-for-oneself becomes self-love. In opting for the value called character, the center of gravity consists now in the existential decision that opposes these two loves:

Here love becomes self-love from which all the passions are derived. To determine whether the passions are good or evil, it is necessary to know in what place man will situate himself with respect to other men, as well as what are the obstacles one has to overcome in order to attain his good.²²

It is then from the experience of encountering others that conscience experiences the challenge to confront the possibilities of morality and politics. Two types of conflicts indicate two types of tensions that forcefully make the possibility of morality depend on politics. First, we have to recognize in the solitude of our affective conscience the natural "inequalities," before confronting the civic "inequalities," i.e., those of the social order.

From prudent conscience, i.e., from the natural and civil comparison of ourselves and others, there arises the tragedy of independence. In order to recover love and overcome the temptations to self-love we should follow the voice of sentimental conscience. In a similar way, it is suggested, that as a state, character is developed by resisting dehumanizing passions. Civil society should then be transformed into the kind of man that Emile wants to be. A methodological charge will civilly condition the possibility that Emile can bring to existence or not. The charge is this:

It is necessary to study society by men and men by society: those who would treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them. By first considering primitive relations, it can be seen how men should be naturally affected and which passions should emerge in them. Such a consideration yields that it is reciprocally by progress of the passions that these passions multiply and expand.²³

What the anthropological datum reveals is equality. An equality that if not total is nonetheless one that implies that the differences that exist in a natural state are not sufficient so as to cause dependence. It is this natural equality that is seen to be destroyed by civil equality. It is presumed that the civil differences are even greater, that they are sufficient to cause dependency. This is for two reasons: one that refers to the very nature of the conception of civil equality and another that refers to the means employed by civil society in order to maintain the first.

In effect, civil equality is chimerical and vain. In such a condition, the second argument indicates, force is employed in order to assure its vanity and its chimerical character. And for this reason the equilibrium of nature and its acceptable equalities are broken. Civil society exercises a corrupting and violent influence and for this reason it absolutely and violently corrupts. Such a civil society is immoral:

The multitude and the public interest will always be sacrificed at the expense of a small number and particular interests; always those specious names of justice and subordination will serve as instruments of violence and iniquity: from which it follows that the public orders that appear useful for the rest are rather useful for the few at the expense of others. It is according to this that one should judge the consideration that is due according to justice and reason.²⁴

The moral challenge of the 19th century and for a good part of the 20th is how to keep civil society under control, how to make the Republic find in its history the general will.

Emile is only possible when civil society adopts politically his image and likeness. It is time to change society so that morality as politics will be absolutely possible. It is impossible to know with certainty if Emile will one day manage to be a citizen. Notwithstanding, whatever were the other sources from which our first liberals found inspiration, there is no doubt that the scandalous confusion of Rousseau provided them with a forceful motive for thinking of God in another way.

I have tried to treat the two types of morality with the hope of elucidating the conflict and crisis of modernity. In order to change society, we must understand our past. Philosophy and, in general, the viewpoints that do all in their power to forget history can serve as a bridge to enthrone -- with even greater force -- intemperate habits. The challenge of the possibility of a morality for the 21st century or simply for tomorrow, with or without foundations, requires paradoxically that we temper our will toward the past that has made possible our national life.

Instituto Internacional de Estudios Avanzados

Caracas, Venezuela

1. This is a classical manner of proceeding; see Nicomachean Ethics VII, I, 1145b.

2. Concerning the difficulties and impracticality of considering as heuristically useful an ethical analysis of amorality, see B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London, 1985), pp. 22ff. In fact I have sought to characterize amorality as bestiality, in line with Williams, rather than from the perspective of knowledge and its possibility in ethics. One may ask oneself then if bestiality does not make the discussion superfluous. Notwithstanding, I defend this description because of the historic value that it possesses for the ends no less historical that I am pursuing.

3. Following Aristotle the human is found between the divine and the beastly; see the Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, 1, 25-30.

4. Here there are two orders of questions. On the one hand, it is necessary to consider the general cognitive process that has made of natural science the model for the conception of the remaining sciences, especially the social sciences, which have been conceived among other things in function of the power and effect of secularization. The state of these questions today is philosophically and visibly in crisis; see R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford, 1980); and J. Dunn, Rethinking Modern Political Theory (C.U.P., 1985), esp. ch. 8. In Latin America recently the social sciences (sociology and politics) attribute the crisis to postmodernity and, curiously, propose a re-encounter with philosophy and the idea of foundations. Notwithstanding, ethics does not appear thematized in this context. Its entry is from the perspective of the fissures of the social integration, narco-traffic, or in politics by intermediary of the effect of a liberal resurrection. For Latin America see E. Faletto, (Caracas: UNESCO, 1988); Lechner, (Caracas: UNESCO, 1988).

5. The contrast evoked here is a classical locus in the methodology of the social sciences. It concerns, at first sight, the confrontation between causality and comprehension. In Venezuela one must add the Creole dialectic. The point is that this touches decisively the conceptual future of the theorization of practical reason. Concerning this specific problem see J. Dunn, "Social Theory, Social Understanding, and Political Action," in Rethinking Modern Political Theory, p. 122.

6. The contrast between one and the other option -- determinism and liberty -- is less significant than the dehumanization that both postures apparently imply in virtue of their modern and Cartesian origin.

7. By akrasia I mean the intellectual intemperance or incontinence that weakens our will so as to excuse ourselves from thinking, that is from analyzing what generally is said and thought concerning these issues. For Aristotle akrasia is appropriately located between vice and bestiality. It refers to dispositions that favor rational and practical access to morality. See Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, 1-10.

8. For heuristic purposes, I understand patriarchalism as developed in the work of one of the most decisive exponents of liberalism, J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise 75.

9. It is not my intention to paint a picture of a social world of servitude and oppression. I only want to illustrate the strength and methodology of certainty.

10. This does not mean necessarily that morality needs to be understood as apodictic; the term may be employed analogically.

11. A.A., Franciscan Fund, File 18, Personal.

12. A.A., Originals, General Captains, Audiences. Last documents 1813-1821, n. 3, Narcisco Coll y Prat, June 1, 1812, faces 7-9. Italics mine.

13. Ibid., face 10.

14. J. J. Rousseau, Emile, Book IV.

15. Ibid., Book IV.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Though economics is ambiguous in Rousseau, he still manages to give economics a religious connotation.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., p. 306.

23. Emile, Book IV, p. 306.

24. Ibid., Book IV, p. 307. Italics mine.