Reason, Relativism and Wisdom

How do we engage with the wider world?

A popular Catholic myth

The evil secular world rejects Catholic teaching.

This is because the people of that evil secular world are anti-religious, atheistic, materialistic, individualistic, relativists, who reject morality.

How evil is this?

I had forgotten all the deeper issues and had been content with flippant cleverness. Suddenly the ground seemed to give way beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. Within five minutes I went through some such reflections as the following: the loneliness of the human soul is unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that religious teachers have preached. Whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful or at best useless. It follows that war is wrong, that a public school education is abominable, that the use of force is to be deprecated, and that in human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.

Relativism

• I decide what is right and wrong for me

• The language of right and wrong is meaningless

• Right is whatever my culture says is right

Not Relativism

• Secular tolerance: all cultures are respected and protected insofar as they do not harm individuals and the wider society.

• Contextual/situation ethics: good ethical decision-making needs to consider the whole context in order to make the right judgment

1. Right and wrong are whatever I think are right and wrong

• Soft version = I do whatever I happen to want and no one can tell me not to.

• Corollary: I cannot tell anyone else what they ought to do either.

• Existentialist version: I make fundamental choices through which I ‘choose’ my ethical character. (We have a complete responsibility for our actions).

2. ‘Right and Wrong’ are meaningless

• When we say things that are true or false

• Either we are describing things about the world, based ultimately on the evidence of our senses. [The earth goes round the sun]

• Or we are making claims based on the meanings of words. [The Pope does not have to remember his wedding anniversary]

Unfortunately…

‘Hitting the dean over the head in a library with a baseball bat is wrong’

Which bit of the evidence tells us ‘is wrong’?

What analysis of the words tells us ‘is wrong?

Problem with 1 + 2

1 Reality check – We cannot live like that.

2 Language: whether we are soft-relativists or existentialists or meaning-deniers, the moment we start using ethical language we want to claim that what we choose to do is ‘right’ and that when others challenge us, they are ‘wrong’ to do so.

Human language and culture

• This suggests that however we try to explain it, the language of right and wrong and the whole range of ethical language are a part of being human.

• By being able to speak human language as a part of a human community we learn to talk about the world ethically and to see the world with ethical eyes .

3. Cultural Relativism

• Right is whatever my culture says is right

• This seems to ‘explain’ how ethics and ethical language, one way or another, is so much part of life: this way of living works for this society.

• But how, then, can we begin to criticise cultures? How can we say, for instance, that a society that segregates its citizens is ‘wrong’?

Plato

• Fifth Century BC Athens• Democratic • New affluence, new freedoms.

• Challenge to ‘traditional’ beliefs and values

• Plato’s response: when we engage in conversation about right and wrong we discover that we are led in particular directions that we can choose to ignore but cannot escape.

A Horizon of Value• We are led to affirm the importance of Justice, Wisdom,

Courage, Self Control.

• We are led to recognise illuminating the whole of reality, the idea of goodness, the sovereignty of the good, like the sun from a higher world.

• When we approach goodness and the virtues this illuminates and completes our human self.

• Human love is something that can lead us and inspire us towards the truth.

Aristotle

• A scientific approach that describes how ethics works in society.

• Virtues• Justice: giving each their due; an obedience to law

that has insight into the ‘mind of the lawgiver’.• Practical reasoning – reasoning that ends in action.• ‘Friendship’ – how to live well as fellow-citizens• Happiness – the goal of human life.

Echoes and influences

We find echoes of Plato in John’s Gospel

We find echoes of Aristotle and Stoic ethical philosophy in Paul’s letters.

Augustine and Aquinas identify God as Plato’s ‘goodness itself’

Aquinas’ ethics take as their starting point Aristotle’s discussions

Christian decision making according to Ignatius of Loyola

• Sometimes we will ‘see’ in a grace-filled moment what we are to do (like Paul on the road to Damascus).

• Sometimes we will have a sense of being led by God’s spirit in our deliberations.

• There is a third pattern of discernment. Sometimes our soul should simply be able to use ‘its natural faculties in freedom and peace’

The grounding of law and decisions in modern thought

• Acting out of fellow-feeling for other human beings. (David Hume)

• Respecting the dignity of the human person as a free, rational agent. (Immanuel Kant)

• Bringing about the greatest happiness of the greatest number. (Jeremy Bentham)

• Protecting the rights of all human beings. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

• Working to understand and subvert unjust economic and social structures. (Karl Marx)

Convergence in Practical Reasoning

We find slow but accelerating progress towards the beliefs that everyone’s well-being matters equally, and that everyone has equal rights. Most of us have come to believe that slavery is wrong and to reject racist and sexist beliefs. And more of us are coming to believe that we should not inflict pain on animals.

Reasons are Out There

The facts of the matter give us reasons for acting one way or another and some of those reasons are ethical:

‘We respond to reasons when we are aware of facts that give us these reasons, and this awareness leads us to believe, or want, or do what those facts give us reason to believe, or want, or do.’

Reason-responsive animals in a Reason-giving Universe

• Echoes of philosophical thought from before Christianity. ‘The logos that runs through all things’

• The universe has a ‘logos’ • and we are creatures • that can respond to the ‘logos’

• Here there is a new bridge between our world and our ethics and the world of non-theistic, modern ethics.

Does not believing in God mean that nothing has meaning?

‘It has also been widely believed that nothing matters, since reasons are given by our desires and we have no reasons to have these desires. As I have argued and shall argue further…, we ought to reject this bleak view’

Is this a vision that we can share in?

• What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, ceasing to overheat the Earth’s atmosphere, and taking care of this planet in other ways, so that it continues to support intelligent life.

• If we are the only rational animals in the Universe, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants during the billion years in which that would be possible. Some of our descendants might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including those who suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.

New Atheists Agnostics Christian theists

Democritus

EpicurusLucretius

Plato, AristotleStoic, sceptic Philosophers

EgyptiansBabyloniansSumeriansPersiansJewsIndiansArabs…

Christianity

Connections

What we can learn (and re-learn) from our non-theistic younger brother

• The centrality of compassion and a concern for human well-being in ethical reasoning.

• To take human freedom seriously.

• The value of tolerance as a condition for complex societies.

• The importance of human rights as the closest to a code that we can all agree on.

• The importance of intelligent, wide-ranging, honest thought for healthy ethics.

What we might have to offer• The testimony (by our existence) that value is real in the

world and that life has meaning• The need of every human being for a personal

transformation of ethical vision and of the heart.• A three thousand year history of intelligent and profound

reflection on the human condition.• Pastoral compassion – the importance of love• An honest humility about the limits of humanity• The assurance of grace and new-beginnings.• The possibility of forgiveness.

Models of our relationship to the world

Imperial Christianity:

Constantine and Charlemagne

Negotiating with Barbarians:Leo the Great

meets Attila the Hun

The wise friend, sharing the journey

The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.