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The Pope's Grammar School

Claremont Professor Reflects on Global Morality

By James McCoy

Busted flat by autonomy, fearful of himself, man no longer boasts he's come of age; liberty means license now, doing whatever you want, and those who govern, govern by caprice.

Freedom's just another word for living in the truth; nothing that defies that "inner 'logic'" is free, says the pope. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 1995, Pope John Paul II said, "far from being a limitation upon freedom or a threat to it, reference to the truth about the human person -- a truth universally knowable through the moral law written on the hearts of all -- is, in fact, the guarantor of freedom's future." In mankind's age-old "quest for freedom" the pope sees "an extraordinary global acceleration... It is precisely its global character which... confirms that there are indeed universal human rights, rooted in the nature of the person -- rights which reflect the objective and inviolable demands of a universal moral law.

"These are not abstract points; rather these rights tell us something important about the actual life of every individual and of every social group. They also remind us that we do not live in an irrational or meaningless world. On the contrary, there is a moral logic which is built into human life and which makes possible dialogue between individuals and peoples.... If we want a century of violent coercion to be succeeded by a century of persuasion," the Holy Father told the United Nations on its 50th anniversary, the "universal moral law written on the human heart is precisely that kind of 'grammar' which is needed...."

In my quest for a "global moral grammar," I went to Claremont Graduate School. Anselm Kyongsuk Min, Ph.D. teaches theology there. A native of South Korea, Min, 59, came to the States more than 30 years ago. Min, who is married with two children, identifies himself as a practicing Catholic. I interviewed him in his office in the graduate school's religion department on Dartmouth Street. I began by giving him two copies of St. Thomas Aquinas' commentary on Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, his four-orders-of-wisdom introduction, one in English and the other in Latin. Professor Min read the one in Latin.

So what do you think?

There is so much variety and complexity in the order that we find, and so much of the complexity is an expression of human creativity, both individual and collective. Wisdom is the ancient classical virtue that refers to the discovery of order. Prudence is the ability to make the right judgment on the concrete conditions there. It is a judgment regarding means and ends. Prudence is wisdom applied to the practical order of praxis.

It seems as though order is something we create in an arbitrary way. There has been a lessening of the appreciation of the objectivity of order. Of course, when it comes to the human order of mechanical things, how many different kinds of cars are there! Depending on the kinds of use the car would be put to, you can construct different types of cars. The order of a car is not something fixed, inherent in the very nature of a car.

But nature is fixed, in the world not made by man...

The order in the animal world or plant world is not something that we simply read into it. It always takes a great scholar, a great scientist, people with great insight, great inventiveness, to discover what the order might be. And the same is true of the entire cosmos, the stars and the galaxies. In fact, that's one of the dividing points between the pre-modern and modern world: nothing is simply given. Of course, even in the medieval world, like St. Thomas's, they knew the importance of the agent intellect, which is the kind of self-starting, self-moving, always active power of the human mind, with certain habits of intellectual knowledge, that is, first principles.

So St. Thomas doesn't think that the mind is an empty canvas upon which the truth splatters?

Absolutely not, absolutely not. He does not have the critical consciousness of modernity -- and I don't necessarily count it against him -- but at the same time he knew that we have to make the appropriate intellectual effort to know. And he was very modest in the limits of human knowledge: that the human mind is limited to the intelligible structures of the sensible world.

However, even in grammar and logic, logic referring to the rules of human thinking, through the works of many cultural anthropologists, [we now know that there are differences between] the way Hindus think, Chinese think, Western intellectuals think. So there are many different logics. In general, you want to think coherently, so I think, depending on the kind of culture you're talking about, there are different kinds of logic.

But kinds of logic means that there's a basic logic common to all? It's that logic, for example, which makes an American comedy film funny to people all over the world? Too, if logic for thinking is not universal, what hope can there be for a global "logic" for freedom? How can we invent a "grammar" for a universal moral order?

Even I, after over 30 years, find it very difficult to understand some remarks in a film!

The order that we are talking about is the order in the social, historical and cultural world constructed by human actions. And there, so much depends on the complexity and variety of human subjectivity, both individual and collective. Because of the complexity and variety -- both on the side of the human subject and the objective situation -- order becomes almost impossible to universalize. That does not mean that there are no general norms. The individual has to create the ethical deed according to general norms. That's why conscience is the last court of appeal. Even Aquinas recognizes it very well.

He says that any time a man's will doesn't follow his conscience, his will is evil, whether his conscience is correct or erroneous. But in the article immediately after that in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas says that just because a will which fails to follow an erroneous conscience is bad doesn't mean that a will which does follow an erroneous conscience is good. In fact, for a will to be good, it is necessary for it to follow the judgment of conscience -- and for conscience to have judged rightly, according to the good for man and the common good.

That's why politics is part of ethics: what exactly is the nature of the common good in general? What does it take to accomplish the common good? And then it will involve analysis of the economic situation, morality in media, and other things.

That sounds like the beginnings of a "grammar of peace."

Remember that grammar is the rules that govern our writing and speaking, so they are the rules that lead to peace. And I think according to Pope John Paul II -- as according to the prophet Isaiah -- peace is the fruit of justice; no justice, no peace. When you take in the practical situation, the practical situation especially on the global level, [you find] tensions and animosities that go back hundreds of years.... Augustine said that peace is tranquility of order, and order implies justice. Justice implies a certain friendliness, a willingness to be recognized, in general what Pope John Paul II calls the civilization of love, a global civilization of love.... Preferential option for the poor: all these are necessary for the grammar of peace.

You might say because of the complexity of the situation we are kind of desperately seeking for order -- but not always knowing what that order would be -- and certainly not always willing to do what that that order would require.

Do you think the pope's right that there's an accelerating awareness of human rights? In my own lifetime I've seen abortion on demand become an American way of life. And much of the world looks to America as the future....

I think there is a greater and greater awareness. The nineteenth-century thinker Kierkegaard had something very profound to say: contemporary culture, because of capitalism, tends to trivialize morality, both individual and corporate. It weakens our moral will. So even apart from the question of, is abortion right or wrong? there is a weakening of the moral will itself which is a very big problem. So much of human life is being trivialized.... simply living according to the mood of the moment. "It's my personal problem and none of your business" and so forth. I think it's a cultural crisis. And that's why it's even more important for small communities and religions to inculcate moral habits. Simply because there's capitalism doesn't mean that everyone succumbs the same way, even within this capitalist culture which encourages trivializations. You still have people who come from solid families; some people still have religious traditions.

You cannot expect the government to do something about it. Whenever a government does something, there is always a danger of totalitarianism. My fear is that not too many religions are paying attention to that issue. We simply live with it.

What is totalitarianism?

To be precise, totalitarianism means the regulation of all human life -- all my personal, private sphere; all our arts, our culture in general, religion, education....

As I said about ethical action, and how complicated it is, and especially nowadays when you have so many cultures mixing together. There are two things to keep in mind: one is the fact that moral rules and moral laws do not come to us without our attempt to know. We have to try to know. And in trying to know what the moral laws are, you have to consider human nature. But human nature comes in many different ways... nowadays it comes in many different cultures.

Obviously there have been many different moral theories of course. Theory means an extended organized reflection on the foundations of morality, on the contents of morality.... In the natural law tradition coming from Aristotle and Aquinas, they already have a very well defined conception of human nature, and so they have a very well defined theory. But even they say the moral law has to be applied to concrete practical situations. That's where we need conscience.

The problem with the natural law tradition is they had a very frozen, fixed notion of human nature.... In the Confucian culture, for example, they will say it's natural law, it's part of the law of the cosmos -- the same line of thinking as the Western natural law tradition. [For example, Confucian natural law dictates] fidelity between kings and subjects -- that presupposes the existence of kingship. We know that's not part of natural law; we can live in a democracy.... We should be less willing to talk about human nature in general, without denying that human beings are human beings. There are certain common features.

We have to remain faithful to our own tradition. That means understanding our own tradition well and remaining faithful to the best of our tradition. On the other hand, you have to learn to respect other cultures and religions: "I as a Christian believe that Christ has something to say to you; please come and listen." We have to invite them, not threaten them.

The pope spoke that way at the U.N.: "As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ.... We Christians believe that in his death and resurrection were fully revealed God's love and his care for all creation.... The Church asks only to be able to propose respectfully this message of salvation, and to be able to promote, in charity and service, the solidarity of the entire human family."

But that brings us to a paradox, something I've wondered about: why is it almost always a Christian thinker who defends the truth of a universal moral order which is by definition knowable by everybody, Christian and non-Christian alike?

That's a very important insight. Insofar as we are all human beings, there is something common. [But as humanity has gone global], there are all kinds of reasons for pluralism. That is why the natural law tradition has had to fight for its life in the modern world.

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