By the Same Author Translated into English In Defense of Purity Marriage Liturgy and Personality Transformation in Christ Fundamental Moral Attitudes In German Die Idee der sittlichen Handlung (The Idea of Moral Action) Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntniss (Morality and Knowledge of Moral Values) Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft (The Metaphysics of the Community) Zeitliches im Lichte des Ewigen (Timely Questions in the Light of Eternity) Katholisches Berufsethos (Catholic Professional Ethics) Vom Wesen der echten Autorität (On the Nature of True Authority) Vom Wesen des philosophischen Fragens und Erkennens (On the Nature of Philosophical Inquiry and Knowledge) CHRISTIAN ETHICS By DIETRICH VON HILDEBRAND Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein DAVID McKAY COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK Copyright, 1953, by Dietrich von Hildebrand AU rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. PREFACE nihil obstat: john m. a. fearns, s.t.d. censor librorum imprimatur: ►j" francis cardinal spellman archbishop of new york October 57, 1952 The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed. manufactured in the united states of america In an allocution to the Federation Mondiale des Jeunesses Feminities Catholiques, His Holiness Pope Pius XII condemns a new concept of the moral life which he characterizes as follows: The distinctive mark of this morality is that it is in fact not based on universal moral laws, as, for instance, on the Ten Commandments, but on the real and concrete conditions or circumstances in which one must act, and according to which one must act, and according to which the individual conscience has to judge and choose. This state of things is unique and is valid but once for each human action. This is why the champions of this ethics affirm that the decision of one's conscience cannot be commanded by ideas, principles, and universal laws.1 This new form of ethical relativism and subjectivism is specifically vicious. It is a wolf in sheep's clothing because it claims to be typically Christian and to stem as a consequence of man's filial relation to God: Here there is only the "I" of man and the "I" of the personal God; not of God the lawgiver, but of God, our Father, with whom man must unite himself in filial love.2 1 "Le signe distinctif de cette morale est qu'elle ne se base point en effet sur les lots morales universelles, comme par exempts les Dix Commandements, mais sur les conditions ou circonstances reetles et concretes dans lesquelles on doit agir, et selon lesquelles on doit agir, et selon lesquelles la conscience individuelle a a juger et d choisir. Get etat de chases est unique et vaut une seule fois pour toute action humaine. C'est pourquoi la decision de la conscience, affirment les tenants de cette ethique, ne pent etre commands par les idies, les principes et les lots universelles." {Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1952, p. 413.) 2"Ici il y a seulement le je de I'hamme et le Je du Dieu personnel; non du Dieu de la loi, mais du Dieu Pere, avec qui I'homme doit s'unir dans I'amour filial," (Ibid.) v VI PREFACE The concept of Christian ethics offered in the present work is radically opposed to this "new morality." One of its main objects is precisely to show the inalterable character of the moral law, the absolute nature of moral values, to oppose to the abuse of the term "hierarchy of values" the true hierarchy of values which is at the basis of St. Augustine's ordo amoris and of the whole Christian philosophy, and to elaborate the precedence of moral values over all other personal or impersonal values. We hope that our philosophical analysis of morality may serve to unmask the dangerous fallacies contained in an ethics which declares that acts undoubtedly sinful are permissible under certain circumstances; we hope that this book will also prove that obedience to the inalterable moral law, far from narrowing, thwarting, or stifling our spontaneous life, is the only way conducive to true freedom, and that the moral law and the true hierarchy of values can never be at variance. I have believed it suitable to place at the beginning of this work a brief epistemological introduction entitled "Prolegomena"—in order to explain at the start the purpose and methods of this ethical analysis. It must be emphasized, however, that the reading of this prolegomena is not indispensable for an understanding of the contents of this book. The reader who is not a professional philosopher may pass it by and still succeed in understanding our treatise on morality. I wish to express my great indebtedness to the Rockefeller Foundation for the generous help they have granted me toward the completion of this work. I also wish to thank wholeheartedly Mr. Donald A. Drennen, M.A., Dr. William A. Marra, and Miss Madeleine Froelicher, M.A., who, with great devotion and understanding, have cooperated with me in making stylistic corrections and on other technical details. I wish to thank Mr. Bernard B. Gilligan, M.A., of Fordham University for his intelligent and devoted collaboration and for having drawn my attention to several facets of important ethical problems. My gratitude is also due Mr. Robert Sweeney for his preparation of the index to this volume. Two other persons have aided me in such a way that it is impossible to express my indebtedness in words. The first is Dr. PREFACE Vli Alice M. Jourdain of Hunter College, whose collaboration has extended from the discussion of philosophical problems to research in a wide historical field. For a period of over two years she has dedicated every free moment to the completion of this manuscript. Her thorough understanding of my philosophy has enabled her to help me more than I can tell. Last but not least, I must mention the immense debt I owe my dear friend and colleague Dr. Robert C. Pollock, the great historian of philosophy at Fordham University, Graduate School. No words can adequately express my heartfelt gratitude for his generous help. His deep scholarship, his keen insight, his profound philosophical understanding, his witty criticism, have been invaluable both as a testimony of his friendship and as an inspiration to me. May this work, by means of a philosophical analysis appealing to reason, clear the path and be helpful for finding "the True Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world." Dietrich von Hildebrand New York In Festo Sanctissimi Corporis Christi, 1952 CONTENTS Prolegomena 1 Part One I. VALUE AND MOTIVATION Chapter 1, The Notion of Importance in General 23 Chapter 2. Importance and Motivation a 8 Chapter 3. The Categories of Importance 34 Chapter 4. The Useful 64 Chapter 5. The Primacy of Value 72 Chapter 6. The Role of Value in Man's Life 75 II. THE REALITY OF VALUE AGAINST ITS DETRACTORS Chapter 7. The Categories of Importance as Properties of Beings 79 Chapter 8. The Irreducible Character of Value 95 Chapter 9. Relativism 106 III. FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF THE SPHERE OF VALUES Chapter 10. Ontological and Qualitative Values 129 Chapter 11. Unity of Values 140 Chapter 12. Value and Being 145 Chapter 13. The Good Tidings of Values 156 Chapter 14. God and Values 161 Part Two I. VALUE AND MORALITY Chapter 15. The Nature of Moral Values * 169 Chapter 16. Morality and Reasonability 180 Chapter 17. Value Response 191 is X CONTENTS Chapter 18. Due Relation 244 Chapter *9- Moral Consciousness 257 II. FREEDOM Chapter 20. Introductory Remarks 282 Chapter 21. The Two Perfections of the Will 284 Chapter 22. Freedom and Animal Voluntariness 295 Chapter 23. The Range of the First Dimension of Free- dom 302 Chapter 24. Direct and Indirect Freedom 312 Chapter 25. Cooperative Freedom 316 The Spheres of Affective Responses 318 Chapter 26. Indirect Influence of Man's Freedom 338 III. THE SOURCES OF MORAL GOODNESS Chapter 27. The Three Spheres of Morality 342 The Sphere of Actions 346 The Sphere of Responses 349 The Sphere of Virtues 357 Chapter 28. Moral "Rigorism" 379 Chapter 39- The Role of the Objective Good for the Person 393 IV. ROOTS OF MORAL EVIL Chapter 30. The Problem of Moral Evil 405 Chapter Centers of Morality and Immorality 408 Chapter 32. Forms of Coexistence of Good and Evil in Man 414 Chapter 33- Legitimate Interest in the Subjectively Satis- fying 427 Chapter 34- Concupiscence 43i Chapter 35- Pride 441 V. CONCLUSION Chapter 36. Christian Ethics 453 Index 464 PROLEGOMENA When we read in the Acts of the Apostles of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, we are confronted with a "datum" of striking grandeur. The saint's meekness and strength, his prayer for his murderers, and his forgiveness of them, reveal themselves to us as things which are specifically noble and sublime. They obviously differ from the examples of brilliant gifts and talents which fascinate us in reading about men like Alexander the Great or Napoleon. In the instance of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, we are transported to the specifically moral sphere, the sphere of moral goodness. This sphere holds a unique position in the life of man, since it touches the deepest and most central point of the drama of human life and implies the great realities of conscience and of guilt and merit. In our daily lives we are continually aware of the fundamental difference between the moral sphere and all other spheres of human existence. As soon as a moral problem arises, we are transported into a "world" of its own. We take cognizance of its incomparable gravity, implying, as it does, a unique kind of obligation. In order to understand this moral sphere, we must immerse ourselves, as it were, in the rich qualitative plenitude of a moral datum and bring ourselves to a full state of "wondering" about it. We must seek to analyze the datum, delve into its nature, explore its relations with other fundamental data of experience, and, finally, inquire into the presuppositions which have to be fulfilled in order that a man may be endowed with moral goodness. In pursuit of our inquiry, however, let us be on our guard against all constructions and explanations which are incompatible with the nature of moral data as presented in experience or f a CHRISTIAN ETHICS which in any way fail to do full justice to them. Thus we must, time and again, come back to the most explicit and unrestricted experience of moral data, and confront every result of our exploration with the full flavor of the experienced data themselves. The task of ethics is to attain to a full philosophical prise de conscience of moral data (i.e., a philosophical awareness implying an explicit and fully conscious grasping of these data) and to arrive thereby at a precise notion of their specific nature, of their full significance, and of the presuppositions of man's conduct required for the possession of moral goodness. Ethics is further bound to inquire into the difference between the moral sphere and all other spheres and to discover especially the relations existing between the moral sphere and God, and between moral goodness and man's destiny. The indispensable prerequisite for this, however, is faithfulness to moral experience, to the moral data which are given to us in our daily life, through great literature, in the lives of the saints, in the liturgy of Holy Church, and, above all, in the Gospel. Before we begin the analysis of our topic, some fundamental remarks of an epistemological nature are in order. These will serve to clarify further the few introductory remarks we have made thus far. This work starts from "the immediately given," that is, from the data of experience. The reader will be able to estimate properly our results only if he is willing to hold in abeyance for a while all theories which are familiar to him, and which provide him with a set of terms which he is accustomed to use in sizing up that which is immediately given. I want to begin from the beginning, suspending all theories concerning the moral sphere. I want to start with the moral experience itself. In the same way Aristotle, speaking about the soul, says at the beginning of the second book of his De Anima: Let the foregoing suffice as our account of the views concerning the soul which have been handed on by our predecessors; let us now dismiss them and make as it were a completely fresh start, endeavoring to give a precise answer to the question, What is soul? The reader is asked to look without any philosophical prejudice at the moral data themselves, to "listen to the voice of being" PROLEGOMENA 3 itself, and to ignore everything which does not bear the credentials of that which is immediately given. We ask the reader to be willing to follow our analysis of the data step by step and to suspend all explanations which have been offered in former theories, reductions, or interpretations, many of which, unfortunately, often leave no room at all for the data in question. When a full understanding of our analysis has been achieved, then it will be time to confront our results with those of other ethical theories. If we ask the reader to set aside for a while all theories in order thus to be unhampered both in his approach to the object of inquiry and in his grasping of that which is given concerning it, we must here extend á similar plea with respect to the philosophical theses which will be forthcoming in our work. The attitude toward a philosopher and his theses is often prejudiced by the tendency to classify prematurely. Sometimes such classification has a historical character, as when one automatically approaches every philosophical work with the disposition of characterizing the author as a Thomist, an Augus-tinian, a Kantian, a Spinozist, a Hegelian and so forth. Instead of giving the author credit for some originality, one assumes quite arbitrarily that, after all, he must be a commentator or at least a formal disciple of some other well-known philosopher. From the start one looks at his ideas and theses from this point of view, under this uncalled-for expectation, and consequently bars oneself from a real understanding of his ideas. This tendency becomes especially grotesque when the main reason for such a classification is a merely terminological similarity. For example, there are some who appear to believe they have sufficient evidence for calling an author a strict Kantian, simply because they have found in his work the terms "categorical" obligation or a priori. But we are asking much more than the avoidance of these rather careless habits of prejudging a philosopher. We ask the reader to try to free himself, in reading the terms used in this work, from any special connotations which the former use of the same terms may carry. It is but too natural that in finding the term "intuition," one person may understand it in the light of Bergson, another in the light of Fichte, and so on, according to 1*;. 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS the philosophical literature the person in question has mainly studied. But this tendency cannot fail to lead in most instances to a misunderstanding of the meaning of these terms in our context. Hence we ask the reader to take the terms used here in that sense alone which they bear when introduced in our context. This is not to say that every term will be introduced by a definition; instead the main stress is laid on the meaning which a term receives in the context by our reference to a definite datum. The terms should be understood by following my expositions and analyses, by looking with me at the object, and by restricting the meaning of the terms to that which the object and our analysis of it dictate. To introduce every term by a definition would even be absolutely contrary to our aim. The full meaning of a term can be grasped only in the course of our analysis and to the extent that we have gained a more adequate knowledge of the datum which the term covers. To expect us to give in few words a complete definition of the term implies the supposition that the reader can understand what is meant without having explored the object with us. The explanation offered in introducing an important term must thus be accepted with the understanding that it will be completed in the measure that we proceed with our analysis. A stubborn refusal to accept anything which is not completely explained at once by a formal definition would frustrate any full contact with reality and any real philosophical exploration. It would be based on a radical misunderstanding of reality and of philosophy, for it would place a philosophical exploration on the same level as consulting a dictionary. It will be one of our chief aims to avoid any thesis which is not imposed on us by the data and, above all, to abstain from tacit presuppositions which are neither evident nor proved. We take reality seriously in the way in which it discloses itself; we greatly respect everything which is immediately given, everything which possesses a real, intrinsic meaning and true intelligibility. There are philosophers who take it for granted that everything which is accessible to our immediate experience is doubtful, subjective, or at best only a secondary aspect of reality which cannot demand or win our full attention and interest. Some of these philosophers will announce as their proud discovery that there PROLEGOMENA 5 is a total discrepancy between reality and the data given in our . pre-philosophical experience. They will tell us that in reality a color is nothing but a vibration, beauty nothing but a contraction of the viscera, love nothing but a mere sexual instinct, and so forth. These men will identify the object either with something reflated to it by causality, or with something which is in some other way connected with it. Such identification simply confuses the philosophical approach with the approach proper to natural science. Physics, chemistry, or biology not only may discover beings of which we had not the slightest idea in our prescientific knowledge, for instance, certain glands or microbes or cosmic rays, but : 'may also show us that certain things which seem to be quite distinct in our naive experience are in reality the same. Legitimate as this method of reduction is for the natural sciences with their own special objects and their own purposes of knowledge, it is impossible concerning the objects of philosophy and of no avail toward the end of philosophical knowledge. Philosophy will never discover anything which is absolutely alien to mxr pre-philosophical knowledge. It cannot possibly discover that tisfo different things, such as knowledge and will, are in reality one and the same thing, or that justice in reality is nothing but a fruit of a bitter grievance of the weak and mediocre (i.e., what, 10 be more accurate, we call fessentiment). It is quite reasonable 10 state that a man who pretends to be just is in reality only moved by ressentiment, but it is absurd to say that justice is in reality a nssentiment of the weak. Granted that it could be maintained ibat real justice cannot be found anywhere in this world, it is still absurd to say that justice as such is only an invention of the .. weak in order to overcome the strong. The first thesis can be true ■or false," the second is simply nonsensical. We repeat what we said above. We take the immediately given data seriously. It is a fundamental error to believe that we have zo approach every datum which is given in experience with the presumption that it is a merely subjective impression or at best ■3 mere appearance which obviously differs from the real objective nature of the being. The mere fact that-something is accessible to our immediate experience, that it is given to us, in no way : /establishes the fact that the datum has but a subjective validity. 6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS It is time for us to realize the true character of a merely subjective impression, that is to say, an entity which has no other status in reality than to be an object of my consciousness, a mere percept to which the formula esse est percipi truly applies. A mere semblance, for instance, is any object the "being" of which really is nothing but its "being perceived." This applies first to contents of our consciousness of corporeal things which prove afterward to be mere semblances and not to exist in the real world surrounding us; for instance, a mirage is a mere semblance. The mountain we dreamed of and the bent appearance of the stick in the water are mere semblances. It applies secondly to every fiction: a centaur, a dragon, a golden mountain; everything which either is believed to exist though it does not exist, or is known to be a mere fiction and is entertained by the mind only as a fiction. It is obviously impossible that an entity should be a mere appearance if it possesses the character of intrinsic necessity and full intelligibility. Justice, love, time, space, and other entities having the same intrinsic necessity and intelligibility are not and never can be mere appearances. Apart from the question of their concrete existence here and,now, they are something completely objective and autonomous, independent of their being objects of our consciousness. If somebody said of time, of space, or of justice that each is a mere illusion, a fiction like the golden mountain, we should immediately grasp the nonsensical character of such an assertion. An entity of ultimate, objective meaning-fulness and ontological truth, such as justice, never could be invented. The necessarily contingent character of every "invention" and every product of human imagination is essentially incompatible with the intrinsic consistency and ontological truth of justice. These intrinsically necessary and highly intelligible data exclude not only every interpretation of them as inventions, illusions, fictions, dreams, etc., but even any distinction within them of an appearance on the one hand, and an ontologically serious essence on the other. As far as the objects of natural science are concerned, we distinguish between the aspect which our naive experience offers to us and the nature of the objects which the scientific investigation discovers. This appearance is certainly PROLEGOMENA 7 snore than the poor existence of a mere object of our conscious-Bess; it is the valid "face" of these real beings, their aesthetical essence, so to speak, which is quite real although not necessarily in conformity with their constitutive nature. For our naive experience the whale looks like a fish; science tells us that it is a mammal. Chemistry reveals to us an essential affinity between things which have no similarity whatsoever for our naive experience. This naive aspect, which is the starting point of our concepts of beings, is not simply a subjective illusion, but an objective appearance. It does not lose its significance and its deep contents because it belongs to another stratum of being than the constitutive essence. But this distinction of appearance and real nature applies only to corporeal substances in their unintelligible and contingent character.1 It makes no sense whatsoever to say that what we call justice is perhaps only an appearance and that the underlying reality is an invention of the weak in order to protect themselves. Justice, love, truth, space, time, numbers cannot be mere semblances, nor can they be the objective appearances of something else. Each oi these entities is too intelligible, too necessary, too much some-thing definite in itself, to permit any sane man to interpret it as a mere aspect of something which in reality is different from the supposed appearance. If we stress time and again the necessity of remaining above all with the data, and especially with the immediately given, the question may arise: What precisely is the "given"; what is meant hy opposing the given in experience to theories, explanations, asjd hypotheses? It would certainly be a complete misunderstanding of our exhortation to adhere to the given in philosophy if this were interpreted to mean that philosophy should consist in a mere description of our naive experience. The data from which we have to start and which we have to tx-tsetrate and analyze in philosophy are not at all identical with Jjie image of the universe which our naive experience offers to nor does philosophy consist in a mere description of every-thmg which we experience. In order to explain the nature of data t!Ms epistemological problem has been elaborated in detail in our work Der « philosophischen Fragens und Erkennens (Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 8. CHRISTIAN ETHICS in our sense we must first grasp a decisive distinction in the realm of naive pre-philosophical knowledge. There exist many different types of pre-philosophical knowledge. They have been analyzed in the work of mine mentioned above. I quote only some decisive points. First, there is the knowledge which man has in his lived contact with being: seeing a landscape or enjoying music, stating that the train in which he wants to travel is coming, or that his room is overheated. In it I include every awareness of an object in unreflecting lived contact with being. Secondly, there are the unphilosophical and unscientific theories, i.e., opinions which are held by a man as soon as he begins to reason and reflect on his naive experience. This pre-philosophical and unscientific reasoning and theorizing is very often without any real contact with the first naive experience. In most people there is a definite gap between their immediate impressions and experiences, and their theoretical opinions about the content of their experience. They are indignant at a crime, but soon afterward they will pretend that there exists no objective good and evil. There may well be an unbridgeable gap between what they grasp in hearing a symphony of Beethoven which impresses them deeply, and the explanations they give of why the symphony is beautiful. These pre-philosophical theoretical views are conceived and nourished mostly by books which have been read without being digested, by popular philosophies in newspapers, by illegitimate generalizations and wrong conclusions, by all sorts of unfortunate influences, by everything except the real content of their naive experience. In these pre-philosophical theoretical views we find the homeland of dilettantism and of intellectual prejudice. Here blossoms the doxa} the random and confused opinions which Socrates tried to overcome with the so-called Socratic irony. Unfortunately these conceptions and convictions, although they are constructed without genuine reference to naive experience, are not completely without influence on naive experience; for they darken and confuse the naive unreflecting knowledge which results from any lived contact with being. To reach the given in our sense of the term is to purify the content of naive experience and to purge from it all the unconscious PROLEGOMENA 9 SaHuences of the doxa. And this task only philosophy can accom-j Ha&u To become aware of all deformations, additions, and inter-jwtaaons which function as a curtain or fog between our mind ass$ die voice of being in our lived contact is a great and difficult %mki the man who believes that he does not need to purify con-h ifesaly and cautiously his naive image of the universe and up- sc< from it all unconscious illegitimate influences proves by 1*3*1 very illusion how much he is a prey of doxa. The second step leading to the datum, as we understand the t*irmT is a further purification of the knowledge resulting from ii$ lived contact with being. It consists in eliminating those nsrtwing and accidental reductions which the pragmatic out-imposes upon our approach to being. Certainly the pragmatic approach has a positive function as a '♦^wsful motor for our knowledge. Nevertheless, from the point l view of the adequacy and completeness of knowledge, the „ r*g«aatic approach inevitably has the effect that we grasp, in our ismact with being, only a segment, viz., that segment which it is ^dispensable to know for a practical use of the being in question. Tiie overcoming of this one-sidedness in our experience of be- ■jg is one of the great prerequisites for reaching the objective well as for truly philosophical exploration. As a matter of v i«x the very direction of philosophical questioning as such is *.«ady an antithesis to the pragmatic approach. If is obvious that philosophy has to avoid the error of the un- bJfssophical opinion, of that which ignores the content of our r*sl experience. In freeing the authentic voice of being from all pjagaaatic one-sidedness, philosophy reaches the datum from »hkJi it has to start. What we have so far said, however, is not zrmt^h to indicate what is meant by datum or the immediately Char claim to focus on the "given" would be completely misun-srscood if it were confused with the claim of all those who, in the t rae of empiricism, oppose all mejaphysical and a priori knowl-eiiSr. We do not take the given to mean the observation of many ddental, contingent facts; our given is neither the experience an explorer, nor that of scientists making experiments as a » irttag:point for inductions. It is not the experience championed * y iRidi a man as Francis Bacon. 9 m io CHRISTIAN ETHICS The "given" at which we are aiming, and which we oppose to theories, interpretations, and hypotheses, is always a necessary, intelligible entity, the only true object of philosophy, such as being, truth, knowledge, space, time, man, justice, injustice, numbers, love, will, and many others. It is the object possessing a necessary and highly intelligible essence; it is the object which imposes itself on our intellect, which reveals and validates itself fully when we focus on it in an intellectual intuition. The "given" in our sense is in no way characterized by the fact that it is easy to apprehend, that we are able to grasp it with a minimum of intellectual effort. This would be the "given" of the positivists or of David Hume. The prejudice involved here arises from the idea that sensations have, in their being given, a superiority over other data, a superiority which precisely is not given, but which is rather the postulate of an arbitrary theory. Nor can the given be identified with that which is seen and admitted by everyone. For in saying that something is seen and admitted by everyone, we still can refer to very different things. In our naive experience there are many different types of awareness of a being. For example, there is one type of awareness exhibited in the fully conscious acquaintance with the color red; and there is another type exhibited in the situation before the Organon of Aristotle was written, when men were familiar with the laws of syllogism in using them, though they would never have been able to formulate them. Every child is in some way aw,are that a being cannot simultaneously exist and not exist, though he does not have the same insight into this most fundamental fact which Aristotle had in formulating the principle. A child constantly asks "why" and wants to learn the cause of many things which confront it, and often even their final cause. The self-evidence of the principles of efficient and final causality is presupposed and implicitly declared in the very question, but the child does not "know" these principles as he knows the house in which he lives, or his toys, or a cat, or the color red, or his mother. To confuse the given with the objects which are known and admitted by everybody, in the sense of a knowledge which enables everyone to form a concept of them, would mean to exclude PROLEGOMENA 11 Ik&m the rank of the given all those principles which are con-*£zntly presupposed and which are among the foremost typical examples of the given. Thus the given cannot be identified with those things which .ire inevitably known to all, if the term "known" is understood js the sense of an awareness which enables us to build up con-«3cs and terms referring to them. The given also embraces that which is apprehended in an implicit awareness; that is to say, the given embraces everything thick is included in the message of being conveyed to everyone, X it only in an implicit manner. The full prise de conscience of "iiese data is one of the fundamental tasks of philosophy. Vet, the realm of the given extends still further. Even things "hlch are not included in this message of being conveyed to ■vsry man can belong to the realm of the given. The given also sKludes things which presuppose special talents in order to be j^msped, such as beauty in nature and art. We now clearly see that the "given" in our sense is synonymous wislier with experience as such, nor still less with the average, Mure*? conception of the world. Furthermore, philosophy is far '« being a mere description of any experience. It is in the first tsar the full prise de conscience of all the "given" in our sense, the dating of which already implies a difficult task which is to be 3«tuously accomplished. Hand in hand with this prise de conscience goes the distinction between that which is evident and which indisputably validates Itself in its being, and that which is not evident and which must Therefore be critically discussed and analyzed. The philosophical exploration of these highly intelligible, - saoessary data, far from consisting in a mere description of them, ««B$ at the insight into necessary facts rooted essentially in the s&tmt of the given being. It aims at an absolutely certain in-into these necessary facts, an insight which implies a deeper pmetration step by step into the nature of this entity. Needless to say, our claim to adhere to the "given" in no way fcstfans that we could and should forget those data which the *i$e de conscience of great philosophers irr the past have made Accessible to us. If this were our conviction, it would mean to s*% sentence on philosophy and this book would be condemned 12 CHRISTIAN ETHICS in advance. It would be completely nonsensical to begin a philosophical book with the plea that everyone should ignore all the contributions which philosophy is able to make. All true discoveries o£ great philosophers of the past, precisely in their character of a full prise de conscience of a datum, have opened our eyes to this datum. Prior to the discovery the datum was given only in our naive experience; we were not fully aware of it, and a fortiori still less did we have a philosophical understanding of it. It would be difficult to state to what extent we are indebted to Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others for enlarging our knowledge of the given. It goes without saying that what should be held in abeyance is not the enrichment of the given by great thinkers, but merely all theories, explanations, and hypotheses which are also to be found in their philosophical thought. We should, above all, refrain from believing that we are unable to enlarge the prise de conscience of the "given." A consequence of such belief would be to suppose that we are equipped only to become commentators on the thoughts of great philosophers instead of philosophers ourselves. Another observation has to be made. Certain authors consider a work as philosophical only when the topic is brought into a system. We grant that it surely belongs to philosophy to treat its topics in a systematic way. We grant, moreover, that it is not enough to discover several important facts without discussing the relation existing between them, without connecting them with other more general facts. In the systematic analysis of a thing it is indispensable that we proceed step by step. But between systematic analysis and the building up of a system there is a great difference. Certainly an ideal fulfillment of an adequate knowledge of the universe would require a system which completely corresponded to the architecture of the universe. But this could obviously be attained only at the end of all philosophical investigation. Granted that certain fundamental general features of being are the first to disclose themselves to us, and that every further step of investigation of a special topic goes hand in hand with some new general differentiations, we must yet be aware of the great danger of a premature systematization. In the first place, as soon as we believe that from certain general Slip PROLEGOMENA lg isdmciples we can deduce the rest of the universe, we are bound to build up a system which is not in conformity with reality. This trains true even if the first principles from which we start are m conformity with reality. Ail such mathematical procedures (more geometrico in the Spi-Wran sense) cannot but blind us to the plenitude of being, can aw but force us to overlook data which are completely new, even tficsse of a fundamental character. A famous example is Descartes' m deduce the essence of color from the notion of a corporeal $W9»§ and thereby transmit to the blind person the notion of i^»n. But this is not the only case where the deduction of an es-ssaaee is impossible, where appeal must be made to an original SKtaition of the essence. •Of the same observation applies to many ultimate data of a K .rfma& order, though the original intuition is here not a sense ^#gpiion, a seeing with our eyes, but an intellectual intuition fc&adfe is no less immediate than a perception.-11 is impossible to ✓-■:«ee from the notion of being, and from what have been called <&£ fat principles, the nature of life, of time or space, of the 14 christian ethics prolegomena person, of moral virtue, or the notion of consciousness. All those ultimate data must be grasped at least once in an original intuition, and the philosophical prise de conscience has to be based on this primary experience. Thus the first danger of premature systematization lies in the temptation to deduce as much as possible from certain general principles. This leads to overlooking all those realities which necessarily require an original intuition in order to be grasped. And this means a crippling of reality in its most general and basic features from the very start. To many people philosophical knowledge is equivalent to a reduction of all the different essences to certain general fundamental notions. The necessity of an original intuition seems to them incompatible with a systematic philosophical knowledge. To them the definition seems to be the climax of intellectual conquest. Taking "qualitative" in the largest sense—the sense in which essence is more qualitative than existence—we may say of these people that they consider a definition to be the more intelligible in the degree that it is the less qualitative. This ideal of philosophical knowledge deems it an advantage and a triumph to deduce more and more so that we are less and less confronted with "arche-data" requiring an original intuition. What we possess in a definition seems to such thinkers superior from the point of view of intelligibility to what we possess in an original intuition. We want to stress from the very beginning that we do not share this ideal of philosophical knowledge. For us definition is not the climax of knowledge. A definition can never exhaust the plenitude of a necessary, intelligible essence; it can only circumscribe it by mentioning some essential features which suffice to distinguish this essence from another. The definition helps also to give to a concept a univocal precision. Only artificial beings which are deprived of an ontological plenitude, only technical objects and mere instruments, can be exhausted by a definition. But as soon as we are no longer confronted with artificial beings, we are faced more and more with the mysteries of being; and then our definition should not pretend to exhaust the nature of this being, but only the modest aspiration to fix it uni-vocally by a concept. As soon as we believe we have definitely 15 conquered a being intellectually because we have a correct definition of it, we deceive ourselves. Certainly the highest form of philosophical penetration implies the insight into all those necessary facts rooted in the essence, and all the essential marks of this being. However, these insights precisely presuppose an intellectual intuition of the object, a full grasping of its nature; they cannot possibly be discovered by approaching the object as if it were readily accessible to our minds by a deduction from other more general notions of being. The anxiety to attain a definition as quickly as possible may well exclude us forever from any genuine insight into the object. Further, when we have discovered all the necessary facts and marks rooted in this essence and have elaborated all its essential features, we must nonetheless understand that the composition of all these features does not necessarily exhaust the nature o£ tiiis being. Another danger lurks in a premature systematization; the tendency we have to be caught by the immanent logic of a sys-and to become more anxious to preserve the consistency of sills system than to do justice to the nature of a being. The inter-S^ttation of a new datura is then determined more by the frames hmlt up in the system than by the nature of the object. Even if a philosopher avoids the error of attempting to deduce this datum fiom general principles, he will nevertheless be blinded to the WKierstanding of the nature of this new datum if he is more preoccupied by fitting it into a system than by the adequate wu&y of the datum itself. I am not thinking of evident alternatives and general principles which are constantly at the basis of all knowledge, for in-«tssce, the alternative of existence or non-existence: the principle ^contradiction. Such general principles must be continuously |«*saapposed in approaching any being; without them every-fMasj would become nonsensical. I am thinking of a system which s««rally is not composed exclusively of self-evident principles, &ns of the immediately given by means of theories which, ^wStather plausible or not, in any case have only the character of fi^epc&fjeses, and not the character of absolutely certain insights |»» an intrinsically necessary fact. i6 christian ethics But obviously the ideal way of proceeding would be the constant readiness to revise, modify, or give up any hypothesis which a new datum renders impossible. Instead of adapting, like Procrustes, the people to the bed, we should always be ready to adapt the bed to the people. Summarizing, we can say: First, the evident, as well as everything which is really given, must have undisputed precedence over any hypothesis, explanation, or interpretation. Second, we have to approach being with a readiness to grasp the specific nature of every new datum, especially if this datum has the character of a fundamentally new ratio, such as personal being, time, space, moral virtue, knowledge, will, and so on. Third, we must turn our efforts in the direction which will allow us to do full justice to a datum; we must ever be aware of the danger of violating it by reducing it to something already familiar to us, aware of the temptation of a certain intellectual laziness disguised as an epistemological "economy" which deafens us to the voice of being and prevents us from wondering enough about its nature. Finally, the task of estimating properly the nature of a datum which is given to us must take precedence over the effort to bring the nature of this being into harmony with formerly discovered, undubi table data. Our primary concern, therefore, is the knowledge of the immediately given datum; the second is to harmonize this with other formerly conquered data. In saying "secondary" concern, we do not intend to minimize its importance, for obviously this part of knowledge belongs essentially and in a specific way to the nature of philosophy. But the term "secondary" indicates that in the process of philosophical exploration, the question of co-ordination must be posed only after justice is done to the new datum. For example, the problem of the relation between freedom of will and the principle of causality presupposes, in order to be fruitfully analyzed, that we have already grasped in an adequate way the nature of freedom. If we begin the analysis of freedom in being primarily concerned with its relation to causality, if we begin by asking how freedom can coexist with the principle of causality, we frustrate the full understanding of freedom. We are in danger either of seeing freedom in the light of causality prolegomena i7 or of mistrusting the datum because we believe it to be incompatible with causality. Many materialists are unable to grasp the absolutely different and new character of psychical and spiritual reality because they are too much concerned with the relation between soul and body, and with the consistent unity of the corporeal world. The precedence of the exploration of the nature of a datum over the exploration of its relation to other beings is necessary, first of all, because the real problem of its relation to other beings cannot even impose itself so long as we have not done full justice to the nature of the being which is under consideration. Moreover, the exploration of the nature of a datum has definite precedence over the question of its relation to other beings because we do not have the right to make the knowledge of its nature depend upon whether or not we are able to give an answer m the host of problems which spring from the original datum. Otar admission that there exist spiritual entities, acts of knowledge or will, for example, cannot depend upon our capacity to »lve the problem of body and soul, to answer why the accomplishment of an act of thinking presupposes the integrity of cer-mm parts of the brain. It is a fatal "logicizing" of reality to re-«|eire a smooth intelligibility, an easy transparence concerning possible problems which a fundamentally new type of being imposes, and to adapt and mangle the nature of this being until ail these problems disappear. Every fundamentally new datum wfekfi is immediately given and which discloses univocally its OTStire must be affirmed, even if this admission opens up innumerable difficulties. fmtead of escaping from these problems by violating or denying: the true nature of a being, the problems which arise should tm^ite a new effort to dig deeper, a readiness to accept the diffi-«!| and tiresome task of grappling further with them. We should -afiderstand and wholeheartedly acknowledge this invitation to mx% the solution of the problem in a deeper stratum. This brings us to a third, the most important, principle: We tsnt íKít allowed to give up something which has disclosed itself vas^iiivocally to us simply because we are-unable to answer tsnm problems which arise with the admission of this fact. Cardites Xewman stressed this fundamental truth with respect to the l8 christian ethics content of our faith, in his famous words: "Ten thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt." Sometimes the reconciliation of fundamental facts is impossible to attain on the level of our natural knowledge. We cannot understand for example how freedom and predestination can coexist nor even how human freedom can be reconciled with efficacious grace. But this should not shake our absolute certitude that both exist. Again, the existence of evil in a world created and ruled by an absolutely wise, absolutely powerful and infinitely good God will always remain an inscrutable mystery. Should we therefore deny the existence of evil in order to escape from this dilemma? Or should we deny the existence of God, because of the indubitable existence of evil? No, we must have the courage to say: I see something with absolute certitude, and I also see something else with absolute certitude. I shall adhere to both even if I know not how they can be reconciled. Another characteristic feature of the right approach to the problem of morality must be adverted to. In the spirit of complete openness to all that which is given, we want to exclude no moral value which is accessible to us in our analysis of morality. The saint is the most perfect embodiment of morality. The fact that this morality is a new and incomparably higher one is for us no reason to exclude it from a philosophical analysis. On the contrary, it will form the pattern for our analysis since, obviously, we shall choose the highest manifestations of morality in order to understand the essence of morality as such.2 The Christian morality resplendent in the saints is a fact which only prejudice can deny. This fact is accessible in its completely different and new quality to any unprejudiced and healthy mind, even before it possesses faith. How many people have been converted by this irresistible and victorious charity, by this touching humility, by this ultimate inner freedom which 2 Even the non-Catholic philosopher Henri Bergson realized the impossibility of ignoring the data of the morality of the mystics. In his work Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Paris: F. Alcan, 1932), he clearly shows that this morality differs from any morality without Christ, and that it is the highest and most authentic one. Without sharing his views on the source of the morality which he opposes to that of the mystics, we find in his awareness of the unique character of the morality of the mystics and of the Christian saints, and of its being the highest and most authentic manifestation of morality, a testimony of his unprejudiced openness to reality and of his capacity to grasp moral data. prolegomena 19 are to be found in the saints I Though we know by faith that this morality depends upon grace, our mind can grasp the fact of this morality with the light of reason, and our reason can understand the relation existing between this morality and its object,* M can trace the motives of this charity, this humility, this'generosity, this patience, and it can prove that this morality is the fulfillment of all moral goodness while simultaneously surpassing u as something completely new. By including in a philosophical work on morality the morality ©f the saints, the outstanding embodiment of a true Christian morality, we do not at all mean to confuse ethics with moral theology. The way in which ethics proceeds is based on our natural capacities of knowledge and does not refer to supernatural lacis as arguments for our knowledge. In taking into account all ssoral data which we can know by experience, embracing also site morality which manifests itself in the Christian saints, we _».not leave the field of things which are "given" to us. Our aim v m grasp the nature of this morality and of all the factors de-TWsImng its presence insofar as they are accessible to us by K natural light of our mind. We have thus to inquire into the iXmc of the goods motivating this morality; we have to analyze & pole of knowledge implied in this morality as well as the *.seclfic character of the responses given to these goods, and the ' auction of will underlying this morality. Certainly a great part of the virtues, and even the most sub-a*e and important one, charity, presuppose among other con-kmns. that the person possessing them has knowledge of the C&iisdan Revelation; they presuppose a conception of the world ushhh a person can reach only through the Christian Revelation. Boat «thics does not discuss here the truth of this revelation and not appeal to revealed truths as arguments. Ethics only ''Mnn to the necessary link between those virtues and the Chris-m Revelation as their intentional object. ■ll I. Value and Motivation Chapter i THE NOTION OF IMPORTANCE IN GENERAL Experience reveals, that a being which can become an object of our knowledge will not necessarily motivate our will or our affective responses such as joy, sorrow, enthusiasm, indignation, and so forth. Were we to ask a despairing man the reason for his sorrow, and *ACre he to answer, "Because two and two are four," or, "Because c sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to two right angles," '.if would obviously reject these facts as explanations of his sorrow. We would suppose either that he is putting us off for some n^son, in refusing to tell us the true object of his sorrow, or else that he superstitiously connects these facts with some evil. We sn;ght perhaps suspect that he is demented or at least the prey of <& neurosis in which the true object of his despair has been repressed into the unconscious. In any case we should refuse to . ncede that mathematical statements as such could possibly »«ivate his sorrow or despair. For such statements seem to have m character of neutrality, stripped of anything which would enable* them to motivate either negatively or positively any affec-' w%« response. Now die notions of good (bonum) and of evil (malum) indite precisely this property of a being which enables it to motivate our will or to engender an affective response in us. For the jssosemt, we will not raise the question of whether every being as L