Posted by johnboy on September 11, 1999 at 19:41:22:
In Reply to: Global Ethic considerations posted by johnboy on September 10, 1999 at 14:27:41:
in the middle of our tradition are people of Therese of Lisieux, on the margins, like Simone Weil, and maybe we could follow their lead and "suspend belief" at least as a heuristic and for the purposes of dialogue with nonbelievers in discovering the global ethic. Therese and Simone are living proof that the invitation to love can be extended, unencumbered by dogma, even if their "atheism" was, in the first instance, not methodological, and in both cases, not life-long.
can a global ethic be affirmed, an authentic deontology be constructed, by non-believers?
as far as the nontheists, atheists, agnostics and secular humanists who might unconditionally affirm a global ethic, the gentle souls i have in mind would little resemble Rousseau, Marx, Sartre or Bertrand Russell but moreso a pre-conversion C. S. Lewis or a dark-night-tripping Carmelite mystic for whom God has gone on vacation
as compelling as the ontological, teleological, cosmological and moral "proofs" of God's existence are, they are not conclusive
in every metaphysics, or theodicy, mystery perdures, for me anyway
we can not rule out another realm, hierarchically *over* our own, which introduces itself in manifold ways, but neither can we prove such
i absolutely agree with Haught and Polyani that it is possible to hold together the fact of physical continuity with the hierarchical conception of ontological discontinuity
certainly, one could construct a matrix consisting of both epistemological monism and dualism and both metaphysical monism and dualism and then decry the inconsistencies of those who want to have their dualistic cake while eating their monistic ice cream, but still we can't demonstrate that there must be an hierarchical universe just by claiming it would not otherwise be meaningful, purposeful or, for that matter, friendly
we are faced with the possibility that everything is meaningless, worthless, null, void and that the universe is, in a word, unfriendly and even if we could metaphysically *prove* a hierarchical reality ( though i can not fathom how we could get our epistemological arms around it), we would still be confronted with the mystery of whether or not its controlling influence was supreme evil or absolute goodness
thankfully, the moral argument does fail as conclusive proof, for if it truly worked, it would work "both ways" and C. S. Lewis might have to ask himself: "But where did I get the idea that things should be other than they are? if not from an outside influence hell-bent on frustrating my aspirations? Why should the wholly other be holy? Why should it, of necesssity, have to introduce our aspirations and not rather our desperations?"
sure, we needn't reject the possibility that nonaesthetic elements of existence can be transformed by a higher realm of existence but neither can we conclude that that higher realm hasn't "broken through" to introduce the chaos and decay we observe
we may have to simply and humbly accept, at least in part, what Freud, Feurbach and Russell had to say about the roles illusions, projections, wishful thinking and fear might play in our ethical machinations, even as we methodologically reject the certitude with which they and others clung to their inconsistent metaphysics
prior to the certitude some are reportedly given through the gift of faith, all of us simply must hope and have got to believe that the "Higher Realm" has broken through and introduced the love we observe, if for no other reason than that the alternative is too unpalatable
i positively have sneaking suspicions that there are those who have been gifted with a confident assurance in things they hope for and a conviction about things unseen and that in their seeking they have searched with all their hearts and have thus found Him for Whom they were searching
i am curious about the claim that there may be a Dark Night wherein God goes on vacation and i view it as either the highest metaphysics describing our transformation into an image of Unconditional Love or the most brilliant rationalization for the loss of faith ever devised
even when suspecting it is a rationalization, there is, to contend with, the testimony of those who have authored this apophatic apologetic wherein they advance the claim that they came through this Night and then, after an indeterminate period of time, perdured in a unitive state, and this arouses my curiosity, even more, as regards both the spiritual and psychological elements that might be involved
no doubt our needs for security and love, rooted in pure animal instinct and sublimated by the powerful devising of the human mind, engender existential orientations which would cry out for transcendent provision of those needs and which are experienced as deeply-felt imperatives
these imperatives are, as far as a Global Ethic is concerned, a given
that they are transcendental as well as existential, to me, is not a given
if this transcendence is known by some, they would seem obliged to share this knowledge (and there are those who claim to know it and those who earnestly share it and i deny no one their experiences or convictions about such matters)
---and thus some, quite simply can not and perhaps should not abandon their proselytizing if it would violate their conscience; still, they should listen, in charity and with openness, to other perspectives and acknowledge the lack of force their arguments may have for those who have not been *graced* with the same experiences of faith
for those who don't know it, no doubt most will persist in their hermeneutic of love, consistent with their existential orientations and they, too, will support the Global Ethic and its imperatives, just because ... or if there need be a reason, perhaps they merely wager with Pascal
history shows that some others don't share that hermeneutic at all and, unfortunately, it seems there will always be some who don't
it seems to me that human dignity and human love, must be radically unconditional if they are to endure at all
to claim external validation or support, such as some perennial philosophers did, does seem to attract more followers because it meets that need for reasonableness that Lonergan well-described, but it doesn't make the support real, neither of Hercules nor of Zeus, and it places the validation always in real jeopardy of being found null and void
we can affirm the reasonableness and the apparent infusion of meaning that the hypothesis of a God-given Ethic offers and it can be a *working* hypothesis in the most superlative sense and there is no method of philosophy that can undercut this meaning even if we must admit that for some it has to remain just an appearance of meaning
the external validation for an ethic needn't derive from a transcendence of discontinuous ontologies and teleological hierarchies but might come from a *mere* transcendence of self not to be depreciated just because the sociobiologists might describe our selflessness in terms of gene pool perpetuation, just because the physiological psychologists might discover the biochemical correlates of our altruism
we might beckon them join us, not because they share our philosophical presuppositions but only because they share the same concern about human ultimacies and therefore experience a solidarity leading them to join us in compassion for one another
our solidarity, to me, is self-evident; that we are all in this together is clear
when we offer others opportunities to experience this solidarity and they awaken to it (for it is a fact and not something we create), generally, compassion ensues
however difficult it may be to articulate this compassion and whatever its genesis, it is global and, it is the ethic
to seek external validation or support is a natural inclination and without them we fear we will be left awash in a sea of nihilism and an ocean of the worst sort of moral relativism but, not to worry, for some reason, most people seem to swim towards the Shore, albeit confusion reigns because the Shore can be found in all directions