5C. MISPLACED DEBATES IN MORAL DISCOURSE

Uses of reference to "right" provide clear-cut illustrations of Wittgenstein’s discovery that the meaning of a word laden with meaning depends on its use in a form of life. 

    

Background

Everyday English transmits a moral discourse derived from two metaphors, a metaphor of power and judgment (forged by the western philosophical tradition) and a metaphor of intimacy (projected by Israel’s prophets to assure Israel of the intensely personal involvement of her God despite threats to her continued existence).

As the product of an on-going dialogue among three strands in the western literary tradition, literature, philosophy and theology, this everyday language centers moral discourse in the quest for a fully human and uniquely personal existence for all human beings. However, since both metaphors have contributed forms of life conducive to that quest, either can be used as the foundation for a discourse in which a quest for such an existence replaces orality’s illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and totality.

To frame the point at issue:

a.  The rule of the metaphor of power and judgment is evident in Hobbes’ version of the social contract.  In short, Hobbes grants priority to the political over the personal and social dimensions of human existence.  To justify the rule of the One, he insisted that reasonable human beings must confer absolute power on a dictator irrevocably if they hope to escape from a perpetual war of all against all.  And since there can be no moral issues, politics also trumps morality in the resulting form of governance.

b.  On the opposite pole, Israel’s prophets projected metaphors of intimacy which implied (1) that God’s moral voice could be heard in the cries of the vulnerable and (2) that moral issues lie, inextricably, at the core of human actions and assertions.

c.  In a position lying between these polar oppositions, authors in ancient Athens framed the quest for a fully human and uniquely personal existence with a metaphor depicting the city as the cradle and crucible of culture and civilization.  As the product of a traditional fascination with forms of governance, this metaphor addressed the fact that communities consisting of individuals with different cultural backgrounds faced tangled moral issues.  Extended to questions raised by discernibly different forms of government, it accommodated the vision of a city whose citizens had equal voice in the formulation of laws and were equal under the law.  And on a more abstract level, it evoked metaphors of individuality designed to protect individuals from the potentially totalitarian forms of governance licensed by the dictum, "Might makes right".

d.  Over the course of centuries, apologists for wildly divergent forms of government supplemented traditional metaphors of individuality with a language of rights, but the rights conferred were obvious responses to issues in the prevailing culture.  For example, the doctrine which proclaimed the divine right of kings invoked the vision of a hierarchically structured natural order to justify a rhetoric that was inherently exclusive.  In Hobbes’ secularization of this governance structure, individuals existing in a primordial state of existence were presumably endowed with the right of all to all.  But Hobbes’ contract theory of society negated the right to own property by demanding that reasonable beings surrender all power to a dictator who could dispose of everyone and everything.  Still later, Locke replaced Hobbes’ myth of origins with a myth which defined freedom as an inalienable right possessed by all human beings, always and everywhere.

e.  In each of these instances, the rights conferred depended the form of life which the rhetoric was designed to legitimate.

Freedom of Speech as a Right

In Wittgensteinean terms, the political rhetorics that frame appeals to rights in the United States privilege incompatible forms of life.  On a broad canvas, many invoke Locke’s declaration that freedom is an inalienable right to justify their resistance to programs and policies designed to promote equality by aiding the disadvantaged.  In a polarized reaction, liberals pretend to echo Lincoln’s insistence that we are a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, but ground their efforts to promote equality in metaphors of individuality designed to benefit special interests.  In the meantime, a few prophetic voices speak as voices crying in the wilderness who can seldom find an audience for such dictates of the Catholic social justice tradition as the right to a living wage.

In this context, a shared acceptance of freedom of speech as a right offers a clear example of the thesis that the meaning of a word is determined by its use in a form of life.

a.  A rhetoric which grounds this right in a metaphor of power and judgment defines rights as personal possessions to be jealously guarded and fiercely defended.  On a foundational level, it fosters a detachment which, in turn, fosters a stance which regards others as the Other.  If those who embrace this stance suppose that their right is being violated, they go to court.  The result:  A litigious society in which the affluent have the advantage since they can afford litigation

In the United States today, there is ample evidence that many who view rights as personal possessions to be jealously guarded have no respect for the right of others to the same freedom of speech.  (A clear example:  On the issue of teachers expressing their personal religious beliefs in a classroom, I invoke a moral discourse which insists that a tangle of moral issues lies, inextricably, at the core of human actions and assertions to justify my opposition to such expressions.  There clearly is no unbounded right to freedom of speech.)

b.  A rhetoric framed by a metaphor of intimacy situates this right in a form of life which calls for the passionate, vulnerable, respectful and faithful involvement which characterizes person-to-person interactions.  Speaking honestly involves vulnerable self-revelations.  As prophets discover, it can be extremely hazardous when what one says challenges social structures or public policies that favor the powers-that-be.  Since I will need your support when and if I am vulnerable, participating in a form of life centered in a shared vulnerability calls me to respect your right to speak freely and to defend you even when you say something I find offensive.  In short, in this form of life, invoking this right reminds us of our shared vulnerability in the face of judgments imposed by the powers-that-be.

Misplaced Debates in Moral Discourse

The different meanings assigned to the right to freedom of speech suggest that the priority accorded the rule of the metaphor of power and judgment over ethical inquiries has burdened moral discourse with misplaced debates.  Among the most prominent:

a.  In the Hellenic tradition, the assumption that reason must rule unruly passions and desires played a central role in the emergence of the metaphor of power and judgment.  (Plato’s famous metaphor of the charioteer driving two blind horses.)  But this assumption has an unacceptable implication:  It enshrines a dualism which devalues passion and desire.  (Kant’s analysis of morality takes this devaluation to its logical extreme in its insistence that compassion is a purely natural force which urges moral agents to perform actions which violate the impartiality demanded by a detached, disinterested, dispassionate voice of reason.)

I.e., because the moral discourse in question regards naked power as the central moral issue, it implicitly denies passion and desire a role in the quest for a fully human and uniquely personal existence.  (As the extreme example of this denial, Hobbes began with a theory which reduced human motivation to the quest for pleasure and to the avoidance of pain, and used this theory as the basic for his conviction that an irrevocable social contract which endowed a dictator with absolute authority was the only way to escape from a perpetual war of all against all.  Structurally, his contract-theory and Locke’s counter stand as opposites revolving around the power-pole at the center of the metaphor of power and judgment.)

b.  Today, Pope Benedict XVI is determined to endow an objective moral order with authority.  To disguise his reliance on Aquinas’ baptism of Aristotle’s metaphysical framework, he centers his argument in a polar opposition between an objective morality, on the one pole, and a sheer subjectivism or the cultural relativity of values on the other.  The argument is both explicit and questionable:  Only an objective morality can prevent the lapse into a moral anarchy devoid of grounding moral protests against enshrined or eruptive violence.  But its grounding in a polar opposition raises a valid and unanswerable question, "Why be moral?".  On the one hand, conformity to an objective moral order is inherently depersonalizing, and a moral discourse grounded outside of human reality can hardly delineate a journey into the unknown which promises a more fully human existence.  On the other, subjectivism condemns individuals to a solipsistic existence in a small world, while cultural relativity lacks the resources to dictate moral imperatives or voice moral protests.  In sum, neither alternative can speak with moral authority.

c.  In ancient Athens, the metaphor depicting the city as the cradle and crucible of culture and civilization encoded an implicit rejection of cultural relativity and subjectivism without inscribing an objective moral order or privileging the political over the social dimensions of human existence.  Today, it surfaces in the arguments of Catholic moral theologians who view moral discourse as an arena in which polar opposites—an espousal of a rank individualism or an embrace of the Aristotelian insistence that humans are social beings—vie for the mantle of prophecy.  For the most part, these theologians use the priority granted to the assumption that humans are social beings to justify their efforts to delineate the structures of an ideal society and to propose a list of the virtuous practices needed to maintain such a social existence.  Here, two examples stand out.  Feminist theologians, in particular, rally around mutuality as an ideal structure, while advocates of a virtue-ethics hasten to set forth a list of virtues designed to counter the greed that has wreaked havoc in an economic system that rewarded greed handsomely in the past.

The Point at Issue

A Two-Fold Thesis:

1.  My passionate responses to people and events reveal my unique identity to others and to me.  Or, from another perspective, without a commitment to deepening person-to-person involvements, we cannot experience the personal dimensions of human existence fully.  At the same time, the passionate, vulnerable, respectful and faithful interactions which foster such involvements are inherently transforming.  (We are not the sole creators of our unique existence or the sole authors of our journey through life.)

2.  If moral discourse is grounded in the metaphor of power and judgment (rather than the metaphor of intimacy), it fosters a false promise of immediate presence, fullness and totality.  (NB:  The reflection on the transition from orality to literacy as the foundation of western culture shows (1) that orality fosters an illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and totality, (2)that the detachment inherent in literacy ruptured that illusory sense, and (3) that the rationalist strand in western philosophy promised the knowledge and power needed to transform that illusory sense into a reality.  (Prime examples:  The promises of totalitarian ideologies such as Communism;  the solipsistic individual revealed by the Cartesian methodical doubt;  the autonomous individual as the centerpiece of the myth of Modernity.)

In this context, the metaphors of individuality which frame a language of rights were designed to protect and enhance the personal dimensions of existence.  But the language which transforms the longing for intimacy into a realizable quest reveals that they cannot produce what they promise.  Thus, everyday experiences of those seeking deepening person-to-person involvements reveal (1) that passionate interactions tap otherwise hidden depths in those who share the quest, (2) that we acquire a vast repertoire of socially validated emotional reactions which enable us to hide our deepest feelings from ourselves and from others, (3) that events which occur on a shared journey into the unknown will tap feelings entangled in emotional reactions in ways that reveal us as strangers to ourselves and to each other, (4) that identifying, embracing and expressing these feelings in and through vulnerable self-revelations is the only way to enhance the

intensely personal dimensions of one’s life, (5) that anyone who invokes their "rights" in such involvements reveals a profound misunderstanding of a process which calls for vulnerable self-revelations, and (6) that a moral discourse which evokes a sympathetic imagination is far more fruitful than a discourse which promises that the use of reason yields definitive moral judgments.

In sum, everyday English transmits linguistic formulations capable of exposing the many ways that judgments and strategies derived from the metaphor of power enshrine definitions of personal and social existence which promise immediate presence, fullness and totality.  (Example:  Skilled seducers use the language which can express vulnerable self-revelations for an end validated by a metaphor of power and judgment.  They use this language to avoid being vulnerable themselves.)

    

The Background Revisited

The god-term in the constrictive belief-systems forged by medieval theologians inscribed the rule of the One in an abstract conception which depicted God as a rational and purposive Creator who inscribed his moral will in an autonomous Book of Nature.  Extended to moral discourse, the conception demanded conformity to a hierarchically and teleologically structured natural order.  Consequently, when advances in the physical sciences indebted to Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes suggested that human agents could harness the impersonally operating forces of nature to their purposes, metaphors of individuality indebted to the recovery of the heritage of ancient Greece during the so-called Renaissance were greeted with enthusiasm.  In significant ways, these metaphors prepared the way for the role played by Kant’s conception of the autonomous individual in the myth of Modernity.

(1)  In the rationalist strand of the western philosophical tradition, Descartes’ methodical doubt replaced what he referred to as the hold of the dead hand of the past with a liberating myth of pure beginnings.  In an admittedly polemical context, he sought to replace Aristotle’s hierarchically and teleologically structured universe with the geometrization of the universe exploited so effectively by Newton.  Through its inward turn, the method also generated a metaphor of individuality which depicted individuals as solipsistic thinking beings.  To re-insert the solipsistic thinking being in the romantic celebration of revolutionary changes in culture due to human agency, Kant filled the hollow center of the Cartesian metaphor of individuality metaphor with his own conception of the autonomous individual.  In so doing, however, he remained captive to the traditional supposition that reason must rule unruly passions and desires.  

(2)  In the theological arena, Luther encoded his protest against the hold of Tradition on theological discourse in a rhetoric which presented him as a champion of individuality.  Concretely, his doctrine of justification by faith alone was designed to strip away interpretations of the Scriptures used to justify the belief that God came to individuals through a hierarchically structured institution.  This doctrine promised that individuals who stood naked before God, confessing their inescapable sinfulness and believing that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross had made reparation for human sinfulness, would be restored to the natural relationship with the Creator which the sin of Adam severed.

 (Hear the echoes of orality’s illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and totality in the starting points for Descartes’ philosophical system and Luther’s theological system.  Descartes was convinced that the new, pure and certain starting point yielded by the rigorous application of his methodical doubt would lead to the totality of knowledge.  On the foundational level, it supposedly yielded an ontological argument which depicted God as an infinite Being.  And in and through the purely formal framework implicit in the geometrization of the universe, it promised a language capable of presenting the whole of creation transparently.

In the same vein, Luther assumed that the Scriptures were an immediate word of God which revealed his doctrine of justification by faith alone.  To accept the justification of the natural relationship between Creator and creature severed by the sin of Adam, one had first to confess their utter and inescapable sinfulness.  In effect, this confession was supposed to provide a new beginning by placing the individual naked before God.  

Presumably, this experience enabled true believers to see that the Scriptures assure them that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the Cross made reparation for the sinfulness of all human beings and to accept justification by faith alone as an unmerited gift.  And at this point, the echoes of orality’s illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and totality can be heard in Luther’s use of the formula, "Totus simul justus et peccator," [trans: “simultaneously both completely justified and completely sinful”] to describe the outcome of the event in question.

To an incarnational theologian, Luther’s formula  is a paradigm example of Augustinian dualism run amok.  And that dualism is also enshrined in Descartes’s depiction of human beings as ghosts in a machine.  Here, however, I am more concerned to point out the analogies between a belief that a confession of utter and inescapable sinfulness would enable an individual to stand naked before God and the Cartesian depiction of a solipsistic individual capable of making a pure beginning.

(3)  Rousseau entered the literary dialogue given form and direction by Augustine’s inward turn and metaphors of individuality generated by the metaphor of power and judgment with a romantic conception of the self.  Structurally, Rousseau’s Confessions offer ample evidence of his determination to assert his authority over Augustine by replacing Augustine’s harsh doctrine of original sin with a conception which implied that individuals are made unique, free and good by nature, not God, and supplementing that assertion with passages which imply that socialization was exclusively responsible for any action of his that others might view as morally deficient.  In and through this distinction between nature and nurture, he wove the biblical vision which depicted human existence as a perpetual journey into the unknown into a metaphor of individuality designed to distinguish between a purportedly objective morality grounded in a teleologically structured human nature and his desire to show that individuals made unique, free and good by nature must create their own original identities on their journey into the unknown.

To expose the conceptual quagmire on which Rousseau’s celebration of human creativity rests, one need only set forth his depiction of romantic love.  On the one hand, as the champion of creativity over conformity, Rousseau privileged passion over reason.  When he turned to person-to-person involvements, however, he presented romantic love as a meeting of soul-mates untroubled by passion.  (I hear echoes of Rousseau’s conception of romantic love in Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical on Love.  At the very least, this text implies that God designed erotic love to engage couples in a process which would ultimately spiritualize their involvement.)

The Implications of the Metaphor of Intimacy

Everyday English transmits a form of life capable of transforming the elusive longing for a fully human and uniquely personal existence into a realizable quest.  This form of life is framed by a metaphor which weaves words laden with many meanings into a language capable of processing everyday interactions in a way that evokes, respects and promotes the longing for deepening person-to-person involvements with other unique individuals who dare to share such a journey into the unknown.  To embrace this longing, however, individuals formed by a pervasive process of socialization and marked by events in their personal journeys must understand that the longing for deepening involvements calls them to integrate an often painful inner journey into their own tangled depths with the sympathetic imagination which alone provides them with glimpses of another’s murky depths.

Those who commit themselves to this journey soon discover that, to realize the purpose encoded in this distinctive form of life, they must learn how to interact passionately, vulnerably, respectfully and faithfully in events which trigger the emotional reactions validated by the process of socialization.  In effect, they discover that, before they can voice vulnerable self-revelations, they must learn to identify the judgments and strategies encoded in emotional reactions which have too long done violence to their own deepest feelings and blinded them to the deeply buried feelings of loved ones.

During my mid-life crisis, these discoveries were forced on me by experiences which plunged me (a committed celibate) into the perpetual journey into the unknown.  In the following 35 years, longing to live with personal integrity and fidelity to loved ones has convinced me that a moral discourse designed to enhance my quest for a more fully human and more uniquely personal existence must be accorded priority over a moral discourse derived from a foundational metaphor of power and judgment.  To frame the point at issue, I invoke a polar opposition that stands in stark contrast to the distinction invoked by Pope Benedict XVI.  On a pole which marks a significant distinction between the personal and the social dimensions of human existence, a willingness to identify the judgments and strategies at the core of emotional reactions legitimated by the prevailing culture reveals that we are not socialized to intimacy.  The consequence:  Social norms and practices are designed to govern interactions between and among detached individuals, not to enhance the personal dimensions of experience.  And on the opposite pole, those who argue that a respect for life must invoke a moral discourse derived from a metaphor of power and judgment implicitly privilege the political over both the social and the personal dimensions of human existence.

            (In encounters between and among individuals seeking love, passion may run amok, but the individuals I fear most are true believers who center their passionate existence in the defense of deeply entrenched (if honestly acquired) prejudices or religious beliefs.  I grieve constantly over the violence they inflict on wounded individuals.)

Summary

If I ruled the world, I would be tempted to force every theologian in the Christian tradition to address the exposure of the literary foundations of doctrinal commitments to re-readings of the western literary tradition governed by the code generated by a hermeneutics of suspicion.  But the temptation would soon yield to my conviction that any use of force would condemn the project to failure.

Note well:  The hermeneutics of suspicion is designed to expose the will to power hidden in claims to speak with a god-like authority.  To that end, it generates re-readings of the interpretations of Scripture which perpetuate the misplaced debate between Catholic and Protestant traditions.  In each of these traditions, human beings claim to occupy a god-like perspective that clothes their reading of the Scriptures with authority.  From a postmodernist perspective, however, they simply echo the promise of a god-like perspective inscribed in the fictive voice of reason to support the supposition that all people of good will can occupy this perspective interchangeably.  Presumably, this interchangeability justifies the insistence that their reading can compel assent to the descriptions and consent to the moral judgments voiced by their readings.

As history shows, however, the totalitarian import of judgments which pretend to speak with a god-like authority is both dehumanizing and depersonalizing.  Sooner or later, the violence it does to unique individuals must evoke genuinely moral protests.  As a late convert to Heidegger’s insistence on the historicity of experience, I embrace the revelatory power of the postmodernist hermeneutics of suspicion.  Consequently, to the extent that I have acquired wisdom through making every mistake in the book and learning from them, I insist that moral discourse must be framed by the metaphor of intimacy, not grounded in the assertion that human beings are naturally social beings or in ideologies which promise that the historical process they promote will ultimately transform nature into the state of affairs lost by the rupture inherent in a concern with the personal dimensions of existence.