The True Sense of Man's Moral Being
What I have considered yesterday about the evils of human nature are true principles that are rooted only in human experience, which means that anything which I have raised for discussion is something which we can have true knowledge of by simply observing the motives of man to be violent, or to have any other urge of compulsion within his psyche which would spur him onto violence, or any other evil which is selfish in nature. But the same must also be said concerning the validity of evidence if we were to look at man's noble and gentle attributes which cannot be said to be in doubt at all. With the current affairs of war in the world, however, we should not simply imagine that what is, in actuality, an inconsistency, is little more than a difficult dilemma or dichotomy in our thinking, especially if we are moral realists in contrast to moral emotivists.The difference between realism and emotivism is simple enough, in that those who are moral realists believe that when man commits evil, we have the right to label those actions as such; the emotivist, on the other hand, will claim that whatever action carried out, whether it is good or evil according to preference, is nothing more than an excitation of the moral sentiments of man, without affecting a metaphysical or ontological outcome regarding the state of the good and evil with any given action. But this idea must inevitably be part of a positivism of sorts, because good and evil do not register according to logic which is mathematical, or pure. In pure logic, one has only what available to his senses, and nothing more or less than that. So everything else which is not subject to the laws of empirical and rational observation must have some other source which is non-rational and not truly real as we conceive of something to be real. With these abstract concepts such as good or evil, right or wrong. We see this phenomenon of positivistic thinking in popular culture to such a large extent, that we can see that many people (and no one ought to pretend to know how many) seem to have a mindset in which understanding the truth of man and of the universe is of little importance, as is evidenced by the crass nature of popular culture and what defines "enjoyment" in this age. And so I shall go with the great dictum of Socrates that "the unexamined life is not worth living", while I should manifestly reject the saying of Protagoras that "Man is the measure of all things." This was the unique understanding of the sophists of ancient Athens who needed a Socrates and a Plato to respond to their charges that there are no universal truths. We see this in all of the modern forms of philosophical thought, which include existentialism, logical positivism, and linguistic analysis. The inherent flaws within each of these systems are that they either elevate man to a position of being where he is not supposed to be, or that they deny man's own biases and his flawed nature where they are evident. So thus, I am a moral realist.I find that many moderns of this day and age refuse to discuss the concept of evil because there is nothing to which there can be ascribed any positive definition concerning what the nature of an action is. There is always recourse to criticizing philosophies and institutions because they do not live up to the standards which they believe to be the ideal ones, or they think that a certain way of life is less sophisticated than are others; we see this sort of criticism leveled by secular humanism against the religious right. These two groups never stop waging a war of ideas, and for my part, I could find several serious flaws in both schools of thought. Secular humanism only looks to the positive aspects of human nature for anthropological and ethical guidance, while seeming to downplay the real fact that humanity has a flawed nature. The religious right is probably worse off in the sense that it has no real and substantial intellectual base to validate its philosophy, and thus it wages its war of ideas on a high level of emotionalism and a shrill use of language against its opponents. For this reason, I cannot ascribe my thought to the religious right because it does not set out on a holistic level to validate the truths of human dignity and morality as much as it should, and I vehemently disdain much of the tactics of secular humanism to use itself only as a polemical tool against religion. To say this simply, I am not afraid of what people do in their private abodes, but neither am I afraid that there is a conspiracy to create a theocracy in this society. I will not hold to either extreme, but what I have said earlier concerning my fundamental doubt about the inherent goodness of human nature has come from that fact that man's nature is inclined to do evil as much as it is to do good, and that regardless of which side he is inclined to do so, left to his own devices, man would no doubt think in a way which has more to do with the good of the self than with the good of the community or society at large. If we ever had a universal ethics, it would seem to say that man's responsibility is that moral actions ought to be done with the inclination to duty rather than to happiness. This is taken to its extreme in the sense of having society built on a radical communitarian and communistic ethic, and it is the basis of much of what came to be Marxism in the 20th century, where the individual had little or no rights. This idea clearly will be bound for failure when it is put into practice, but so will radical individualism which stresses the isolation of each person from one another and which places little sense of social responsibility into its ethic. This too must be rejected in favor for the balanced approach of the concept of subsidiarity, which owes much to the doctrines of Christian ethics and social thought which are derived from Roman Catholicism. According to this via media approach, communities are divided into the smallest groups possible in order to ensure that local units of society, along with individuals, are cared for in the obligation to social responsibility, while yet respecting the freedom of small groups and the individual from unnecessary encroachment from a large centralized government. Would this somehow mitigate the problem of how to integrate individual rights with the necessity of social obligation in man? Would it somehow serve as a base for how we treat the human condition and limit the effects of its more troubling aspects? It is certain that when philosophers discuss the prospect of human progress, they are taking a dangerous turn on the wrong path of assessing the problem of human evil by imagining that more action on the part of governments and societies can eradicate human evil, in the sense that individuals will somehow no longer be selfish and evil. St. Augustine saw the inherent problem of human depravity when studying the contrasts between Christianity and the ethic of the Roman Empire, and he said that the differences between a real and ideal world are too irreconcilable for us to assume that each could naturally arise out of its antithesis. This is the central theme of his book The City of God, and thus, instead of trying to find the perfect society, we must anticipate the eschatological reign of the City of God, which is beyond this frail life. Some may see this as a pretext for withdrawal from the world, but it is not to regarded as such, but rather as an understanding of the doctrine of impermanence regarding this present life. Jesus describes this sense of impermanence in His parable of the wealthy landowner. The wealthy landowner had amassed his wealth by honest means as far as the story's account goes, but that he later dies and must give an account to God for how he lived without any real concern about death as the rite of passage where we carry absolutely nothing with us into the grave, and thus we own nothing in this world. But this is not how moderns of this day and age think anymore, in that they have no concept, especially if they are young, of their approaching death. The issue is thus not the fear of death, but the reasons why we fear death, and subsequently try to ignore it. With this in mind, there is no reason to assume that there is nothing beyond this life which we should either cherish or fear, all as the safeguards to man's true moral conscience while living in this world. And so it is rightly said that human depravity and evil can be traced back to the primal urge to put the Self on the throne of this universe, and that whenever we indulge in the passion to spread violence and to kill, we have truly deadened our nerves to the pang of death and suffering. And as I think it good to keep such a fact in mind, I think it is better to ponder on the eternal significance of good and evil insofar as they relate to the immutability of the City of God, and of how subsidiarity best takes into account the need for man to focus on eternal significance.
What I have considered yesterday about the evils of human nature are true principles that are rooted only in human experience, which means that anything which I have raised for discussion is something which we can have true knowledge of by simply observing the motives of man to be violent, or to have any other urge of compulsion within his psyche which would spur him onto violence, or any other evil which is selfish in nature. But the same must also be said concerning the validity of evidence if we were to look at man's noble and gentle attributes which cannot be said to be in doubt at all. With the current affairs of war in the world, however, we should not simply imagine that what is, in actuality, an inconsistency, is little more than a difficult dilemma or dichotomy in our thinking, especially if we are moral realists in contrast to moral emotivists.The difference between realism and emotivism is simple enough, in that those who are moral realists believe that when man commits evil, we have the right to label those actions as such; the emotivist, on the other hand, will claim that whatever action carried out, whether it is good or evil according to preference, is nothing more than an excitation of the moral sentiments of man, without affecting a metaphysical or ontological outcome regarding the state of the good and evil with any given action. But this idea must inevitably be part of a positivism of sorts, because good and evil do not register according to logic which is mathematical, or pure. In pure logic, one has only what available to his senses, and nothing more or less than that. So everything else which is not subject to the laws of empirical and rational observation must have some other source which is non-rational and not truly real as we conceive of something to be real. With these abstract concepts such as good or evil, right or wrong. We see this phenomenon of positivistic thinking in popular culture to such a large extent, that we can see that many people (and no one ought to pretend to know how many) seem to have a mindset in which understanding the truth of man and of the universe is of little importance, as is evidenced by the crass nature of popular culture and what defines "enjoyment" in this age. And so I shall go with the great dictum of Socrates that "the unexamined life is not worth living", while I should manifestly reject the saying of Protagoras that "Man is the measure of all things." This was the unique understanding of the sophists of ancient Athens who needed a Socrates and a Plato to respond to their charges that there are no universal truths. We see this in all of the modern forms of philosophical thought, which include existentialism, logical positivism, and linguistic analysis. The inherent flaws within each of these systems are that they either elevate man to a position of being where he is not supposed to be, or that they deny man's own biases and his flawed nature where they are evident. So thus, I am a moral realist.I find that many moderns of this day and age refuse to discuss the concept of evil because there is nothing to which there can be ascribed any positive definition concerning what the nature of an action is. There is always recourse to criticizing philosophies and institutions because they do not live up to the standards which they believe to be the ideal ones, or they think that a certain way of life is less sophisticated than are others; we see this sort of criticism leveled by secular humanism against the religious right. These two groups never stop waging a war of ideas, and for my part, I could find several serious flaws in both schools of thought. Secular humanism only looks to the positive aspects of human nature for anthropological and ethical guidance, while seeming to downplay the real fact that humanity has a flawed nature. The religious right is probably worse off in the sense that it has no real and substantial intellectual base to validate its philosophy, and thus it wages its war of ideas on a high level of emotionalism and a shrill use of language against its opponents. For this reason, I cannot ascribe my thought to the religious right because it does not set out on a holistic level to validate the truths of human dignity and morality as much as it should, and I vehemently disdain much of the tactics of secular humanism to use itself only as a polemical tool against religion. To say this simply, I am not afraid of what people do in their private abodes, but neither am I afraid that there is a conspiracy to create a theocracy in this society. I will not hold to either extreme, but what I have said earlier concerning my fundamental doubt about the inherent goodness of human nature has come from that fact that man's nature is inclined to do evil as much as it is to do good, and that regardless of which side he is inclined to do so, left to his own devices, man would no doubt think in a way which has more to do with the good of the self than with the good of the community or society at large. If we ever had a universal ethics, it would seem to say that man's responsibility is that moral actions ought to be done with the inclination to duty rather than to happiness. This is taken to its extreme in the sense of having society built on a radical communitarian and communistic ethic, and it is the basis of much of what came to be Marxism in the 20th century, where the individual had little or no rights. This idea clearly will be bound for failure when it is put into practice, but so will radical individualism which stresses the isolation of each person from one another and which places little sense of social responsibility into its ethic. This too must be rejected in favor for the balanced approach of the concept of subsidiarity, which owes much to the doctrines of Christian ethics and social thought which are derived from Roman Catholicism. According to this via media approach, communities are divided into the smallest groups possible in order to ensure that local units of society, along with individuals, are cared for in the obligation to social responsibility, while yet respecting the freedom of small groups and the individual from unnecessary encroachment from a large centralized government. Would this somehow mitigate the problem of how to integrate individual rights with the necessity of social obligation in man? Would it somehow serve as a base for how we treat the human condition and limit the effects of its more troubling aspects? It is certain that when philosophers discuss the prospect of human progress, they are taking a dangerous turn on the wrong path of assessing the problem of human evil by imagining that more action on the part of governments and societies can eradicate human evil, in the sense that individuals will somehow no longer be selfish and evil. St. Augustine saw the inherent problem of human depravity when studying the contrasts between Christianity and the ethic of the Roman Empire, and he said that the differences between a real and ideal world are too irreconcilable for us to assume that each could naturally arise out of its antithesis. This is the central theme of his book The City of God, and thus, instead of trying to find the perfect society, we must anticipate the eschatological reign of the City of God, which is beyond this frail life. Some may see this as a pretext for withdrawal from the world, but it is not to regarded as such, but rather as an understanding of the doctrine of impermanence regarding this present life. Jesus describes this sense of impermanence in His parable of the wealthy landowner. The wealthy landowner had amassed his wealth by honest means as far as the story's account goes, but that he later dies and must give an account to God for how he lived without any real concern about death as the rite of passage where we carry absolutely nothing with us into the grave, and thus we own nothing in this world. But this is not how moderns of this day and age think anymore, in that they have no concept, especially if they are young, of their approaching death. The issue is thus not the fear of death, but the reasons why we fear death, and subsequently try to ignore it. With this in mind, there is no reason to assume that there is nothing beyond this life which we should either cherish or fear, all as the safeguards to man's true moral conscience while living in this world. And so it is rightly said that human depravity and evil can be traced back to the primal urge to put the Self on the throne of this universe, and that whenever we indulge in the passion to spread violence and to kill, we have truly deadened our nerves to the pang of death and suffering. And as I think it good to keep such a fact in mind, I think it is better to ponder on the eternal significance of good and evil insofar as they relate to the immutability of the City of God, and of how subsidiarity best takes into account the need for man to focus on eternal significance.
posted by Bob at 6:19 PM
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