Everyday English
transmits a moral discourse which enables individuals to transform the longing
for a more fully human and uniquely personal existence into a realizable
quest. In a supplementary way, this
discourse encodes a critical apparatus capable of exposing the will to power
hidden in rhetorics which pretend to define what it is to be fully human or to
exist as a unique individual.
In this context, a
moral discourse which delineates human existence as a quest is centered in the
narrative structure of the Exodus-theme used by Jewish storytellers to process
Israel’s historical experience. As a
result, it echoes the Yahwist’s vision of unique individuals endowed with
unfathomable depths and a mysterious freedom.
In marked contrast, ethical theories designed to generate definitive
moral judgments assume that a rigorous use of a literary construct, the
conception of reason, will yield deterministic analyses of human motivations
and intentions and of the consequences of human actions. To validate that pretence, they must assume
that this abstract conception provides a detached, disinterested,
dispassionate, god-like perspective which individuals can occupy
interchangeably.
My analysis of moral
discourse is grounded in my conviction that the detachment inherent in literacy
ruptured an illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and totality
fostered by orality. To appreciate the
revolutionary result of this rupture, we do well to begin with the awareness
that words in orally transmitted cultures were transitory events whose meaning
depended on consensual validation and that, since memory was the only repository
of the past, languages lacked the means to distinguish between past and
present. As literacy gradually displaced
orality as the foundation of culture in ancient Greece and ancient Israel, however,
languages consigned to texts took on lives of their own, and dialogue was
increasingly textured by a discourse which encoded increasingly complex moral
issues in words laden with meanings through their use by authors to formulate
distinctive visions or promote distinctive purposes.
As texts displaced
memory as the repository of the past, distinctions between past and present
states of affairs become obvious. And as
the power of language increased, authors enamored with the workings of literary
languages gradually realized that human agency could produce future states of
affairs different from past or present.
Inevitably, the contention among adherents of contending visions fostered
the emergence of tangled moral issues, and languages which had taken on lives
of their own replaced consensual validation with moral discourses which
textured questions raised by the awareness that some actions were conducive to
the quest for a fully human existence, while others were dehumanizing. In effect, these moral discourses encoded
questions concerning the promises and perils inherent in changing conditions of
life.
The Tests Which Transform Metaphors into
Forms of Life
In the western literary
tradition, authors in ancient Greece and ancient Israel wove words laden with
meanings into metaphors with testable implications. Over the course of centuries, metaphors which
generated languages capable of transforming longings and aspirations into realizable
purposes took on lives as distinctive forms of life. Since these forms of life are preserved in
everyday English, they evoke a sense that the use of this language to process
everyday experiences plunges language-users into journeys into the unknown as
naked pronouns in search of metaphors capable of transforming their uniquely
personal longings, desires, dreams, hunches and aspirations into realizable
purposes.
From this perspective,
it is obvious that the reach of metaphors initially exceeds their grasp, that
we need many forms of life designed to realize a distinctive purpose to promote
the quest for a fully human existence, and that there is no reason to suppose
that all possible purposes have been formulated. As a result, the moral discourse encoded in
everyday English transmits textured distinctions among the purposes at the core
of the natural, personal, social, political, economic, aesthetic, historical
and religious dimensions of life.
In sum, honest
searchers do well to embrace a code for re-reading the philosophical and theological strands in the western literary
tradition which recognizes the revolutionary import of Ong’s analysis of the
gradual triumph of literacy over orality as the foundation of western culture
and Wittgenstein’s analysis of the workings of everyday languages.
First and foremost, a
re-reading the interplay between the philosophical and the biblical tradition
governed by this code shows (1) that the misplaced debate between Catholic and
Protestant theologians has more to do with Aquinas’s wedding of philosophy and theology
than with an unbiased return to the biblical tradition, (2) that forms of life
transmitted by everyday English are derived from two over-arching metaphors, a
metaphor of power and judgment (exploited by the philosophical strand in the
western literary tradition) and a metaphor of intimacy (introduced to the
biblical strand in this tradition by Israel’s prophets), and (3) that forms of
life generated by both metaphors over the course of centuries are conducive to
the quest for a fully human and uniquely personal existence. But it also shows that moral discourses in
which the metaphor of power and judgment rules are inherently dehumanizing and
depersonalizing.
This revelation raises
the obvious question: Which of these foundational
metaphors is used to frame the quest?
The Biblical Tradition and the Religious
Right
Tragically, voices
identifiable as the Religious Right use a moral discourse derived from the
metaphor of power and judgment to politicize the issues to be addressed by
voters in the United States. Shaped and
formed by the metaphor of individuality championed by Luther, they ignore moral
issues voiced by the prophetic metaphors of intimacy. The latter imply that a moral discourse designed
to promote the quest for a fully human and uniquely personal existence must be
grounded in the anguished and often inarticulate cries of the oppressed,
dispossessed, abused, marginalized and silenced individuals. As prophetic voices, these cries call for a
willingness to approach moral issues with a sympathetic imagination situated in
the existential experience of a shared vulnerability rather than a moral
discourse derived from a metaphor of power and judgment.
Though these voices of
the Religious Life may pretend to find grounds for the politicizing of moral
issues in a literal reading of the Word of God, they echo the rationalist
assumption that the moral discourse they espouse enables them to impose universally valid judgments on others without
exercising a hidden will to power. As a
result, they perpetuate a bias in favor of dehumanizing and depersonalizing
structures, norms and practices which legitimate the privileged positions of
the powers-that-be. And they do so by using reason to offer rationalizations
for their hidden agendas.
(Historically, the ethical
strand in the western philosophical tradition supposed that, since the use of
reason provided a perspective which individuals could occupy interchangeably,
it possessed the power to compel universal consent to its dictates. In point of fact, the rule of reason over
moral discourse has been used (1) to license rhetorics which dictate submission
to a totalitarian form of government or to an economic system supposedly guided
by an “invisible hand”, (2) to justify the use of the language of rights or a
commitment to law and order to clothe litigious defenses of a form of life
derived from a traditional metaphor of individuality with moral authority, and
(3) to foster the belief that the dimensions of human existence can be
protected and promoted by the vigilant
assertion of a virtually solipsistic existence disguised as personal autonomy.
In each of these
instances, ethical analyses are supposed to ground moral judgments in a way
that frees them from prejudice, arbitrariness or conventionality. In point of fact, the assumption that the
rule of reason provides a detached, dispassionate, disinterested, god-like
perspective on the workings of language and experience is itself quite untenable. Moreover, its use tempts theories to invoke a
single dimension of existence as the god-term which accredits the judgments
they accredit. (The advocates of these
theories agree with Kant’s assertion that morality resides in judgment.)
In this regard, the
political rhetoric of the Religious Right offers a clear example of the
workings of a will to power at the core of any moral discourse designed to
privilege a single dimension of existence.
On the one hand, the rhetoric targets moral issues designed to resonate
deeply in the consciousness of true believers.
For its authority, it privileges the religious dimension of existence
through a pretence that it expresses a literal reading of the Judaic-Christian
Scriptures. For evidence that its
rhetoric calls for a theocracy in which crucial distinctions among the
personal, social, political, moral and religious dimensions of life are
shamelessly erased, see my analysis of the immorality of members of the
Catholic hierarchy and clergy who have politicized the abortion-issue as though it trumped all other moral issues. See also the analysis of the metaphorical reference
to a moral center.
Summary
In western culture,
distinctively personal, social, economic, political, aesthetic and religious
discourses which have taken on lives of their own ensure that a tangle of moral
issues lies, inextricably, at the core of any human action and assertion. On the one hand, inhabitants of these
cultures enter their own journeys into the unknown as naked pronouns in search of fruitful metaphors. On the other, the everyday language they
acquire through a pervasive process of socialization exerts an almost indiscernible
formative power on their longings, passions, desires, perceptions, imagination,
motives, intentions and aspirations. As a
result, individuals can use everyday English to rationalize almost any judgment
or agenda. From this perspective,
analyses which center moral discourse in
a longing for a fully human and uniquely personal existence reveal that the
rationalist tradition is framed by a metaphor of power and judgment encoded in
a fictive voice of reason. As the
product of the western philosophical tradition, this literary construct weds the
interiorization of literacy as an interrogatory stance and the confident belief
that the inner structure of totalizing thrust of languages is governed by a
logical principle of identity. As such, the
interrogatory stance can be celebrated as a means to liberate individuals from
the formative power of the past, while the rule of the One empowers them to
live as unique individuals.
(Regarding tensions between freedom and the
use of power, rhetorics designed to promote the agendas of activists reveal the
way that the interrogatory stance and the totalizing thrust of languages which
have taken on lives of their own evoke instances in which reason recoils upon
itself. E.g., in the midst of chaos, political
conservatives who embrace Locke’s thesis that freedom is an inalienable right
elect politicians who promise a reign of law and order. I suggest, therefore, that reason recoils
upon itself whenever the totalizing thrust of language threatens to silence the
interrogatory stance or a metaphor of individuality licenses the will to power
exposed so penetratingly by Nietzsche.
Moreover, in this context, ideologies which promise that the course of
history will end in an ideal state of existence offer intriguing examples of
the way that ideologues can harness the recoil of reason upon itself to their
own purposes. In this vein, Marx integrated the interrogatory stance and the
totalitarian thrust of language in a dialectically structured materialism. On the one hand, he used the interrogatory
stance to protest against the dehumanizing and depersonalizing violence
inherent in the totalitarian import of a
laissez faire Capitalism. On the other, he used the totalitarianism
inherent in the rule of reason to promise that a cataclysmic expropriation of
the appropriators would create conditions in which the state would wither away
and unique individuals would be able to use all their abilities to the fullest.
In the end, however, Marx’s reductive definition
of human beings as homo economicus offers
a prime example of the way that each of these promises of a fullness of life
grounds the judgments it legitimates in a god-term which privileges a
distinctive dimension of human existence.)
To escape from the
will to power hidden in rationalizations posing as universal, definitive and
authoritative moral judgments, moral discourse must be centered in person-to-person
involvements, not a mythical existence in which detached individuals face one another
as the Other. The point at issue can be
clearly formulated. The use of reason as
a detached, disinterested, dispassionate, god-like perspective on language and
experience grounds moral discourse outside of human reality. Quite explicitly, the pretense that such
discourses offer an objective description of a fully human and uniquely
personal existence devalues passion. And
the pretense becomes pernicious when a metaphor of individuality implies that
one’s uniqueness is already given and must be jealously guarded. In marked contrast, the longing for deepening
person-to-person involvements inevitably reveals that our emotional reactions
to individuals and events offer glimpses of buried depths, crippling
woundedness, distorting fears and self-protective flights from vulnerable self-revelations.
As such, they evoke in those who enter a dialogue informed by a sympathetic
imagination a profound longing for a uniquely personal existence and expose the
many ways that we ourselves violate or silence that longing. By extension, they reveal that, without intensely
personal involvements with other tangled
human beings, we remain blind to what aborts or distorts our quest for a fully human
and uniquely personal existence.
Hosea was the first
prophet to compare God’s covenant with Israel to a marriage-union. In subtle ways, his metaphors of intimacy
countered a judgment licensed by the Deuteronomic tradition which asserted that
the coming exiles were God’s punishment for Israel’s failures to observe the prescriptions and prohibitions of
the Mosaic Law. In the jumbled text that
preserved his utterances, he recorded the process through which his temptation
to punish and even abandon his unfaithful wife, Gomer, revealed to him how
passionately, vulnerably, respectfully and faithfully he loved her. Quite obviously, this intensely personal experience
evoked his awareness that God loves each and every human being in this way.
In my long experience
with married couples, the moral discourse implicit in Hosea’s metaphor will
soon account for the sad fact that spouses who believe that marriage is an
involvement designed to unite two people into one by erasing differences will attempt to realize that unity through the
use of manipulative and capitulative emotional
reactions. But they are in for a rude awakening
if they fail to discover that the judgments which trigger the strategies
encoded in emotional reactions do violence to the commitment to an ever-deepening
person-to-person involvement. They may
not immediately recognize the
consequences of judgments and strategies designed to realize purposes generated
by a metaphor of power and judgment, but, in instances in which they are at
cross-purposes, invocations of a language of rights designed to protect their
unique individuality will force them to admit that such reactions abort or
distort the quest.
On a positive note, a
commitment to a shared journey to deepening intimacy will teach them that
vulnerable and respectful self-revelations set in motion a process of
individuation. E.g., I may try to be
honest when I tell my version of an event in which I find myself at cross-purposes
with a loved one, but I cannot discern the multi-dimensional ways that this story is
shaped by the formative power of everyday English and by events in my personal history. If my loved ones and I have a personal
history, they will be sensitive to the judgments and strategies enshrined in
the long-practiced emotional reactions which hide my deepest feelings from me. Consequently, since their version of the
event will assign me a different role in the event than the role I assign
myself, their stories will tap buried feelings, question well-meaning
intentions and expose acquired prejudices.
And the interaction will, in effect, invite me to try once again to
speak in my own voice and to listen with a sympathetic imagination.
In sum, the process of
individuation sketched in the preceding paragraph is the process encoded in the
moral discourse indebted to Israel’s great prophets. That moral discourse locates the quest for a
fully human and uniquely personal existence in the ability to listen with a
sympathetic imagination to the cries of the poor, the oppressed, the abused,
the marginalized and the silenced and to respond creatively to those
cries. And it calls for this stance in the personal, social,
political, economic and religious dimensions of life.
(Addendum: The hermeneutics of suspicion is designed to target
authority in any shape or form. In their
re-readings of the western literary tradition it generates, postmodernist
critics expose the violence enshrined in the distinctions and boundaries transmitted
by everyday languages and in appeals to authority. And to deprive pronouncements and judgments
of authority, they expose the literary foundations of forms of life generated
by the metaphor of power and judgment, including the form encapsulated in the conception of the
autonomous individual and the many forms legitimated by the purportedly
compelling power of the fictive voice of reason. But its devotees do not pretend to erase the conception
of the self entirely. Instead, to avoid
re-inscribing authority in their texts and utterances, they are content to
speak in a hollow voice of prophetic protest against the violence they expose.
I rejoice in their
relentless critiques of purportedly definitive conceptions of a fully human and
uniquely personal existence invoked by the powers-that-be. As a philosopher
of language indebted to Nietzsche, I must protest against the will to power
hidden in such conceptions. (As one who
had to find my way out of the moral discourse which ruled my formative years in
the Catholic tradition, I can attest to the violence that this moral discourse
did to my longing for intimacy.) But I
must also protest against their exclusive focus on forms of life generated by
the metaphor of power and judgment which blinds them to the ways that the literary
tradition has exploited the literary form of the prose narrative and the
metaphors of intimacy used by the ancient Hebrews to process Israel’s
historical experience.
Tragically, the
postmodernist movement does recover the prophetic insight (1) that moral
discourse must evoke a response to the cries of the oppressed, marginalized and
silenced first voiced by Israel’s prophets and (2) that, as a result, tangled moral
issues lie, inextricably, at the core of every human action and assertion. But Israel’s prophets derived this insight from a metaphor designed
to transform the longing for deepening person-to-person involvements into a
realizable quest. From this perspective,
the hollow voice of prophetic protest legitimated by the hermeneutics of suspicion
inscribes a hollow conception of the unique individual.
In this context,
Gergen’s metaphor, “the saturated self,” functions as both a factual
description of the existence fostered by a life governed by a hermeneutics of
suspicion and an intriguing effort to legitimate this existence as a state of
immediate presence, fullness and totality.
In an age in which the medium of instant communication across boundaries
reigns, individuals can fill their everyday existence with textual or oral-aural
stimuli at will. But the cost of this
version of a participative existence is horrific. This cost is most evident in individuals
whose identity is defined by the last contact they had through their cell-phones. If this is the form of life which they
embrace, they lack a language of interiority capable of evoking a longing for intimacy,
with its call for vulnerable self-revelations of one’s tangled depth. Like the promise encoded in Luther’s doctrine
of justification by faith alone, it promises instant intimacy. But that is a contradiction in terms. And any form of life which lends credence to
such a promise condemns those who embrace it to an existence devoid of a moral
center.
