Recovering Our Humanity Involves a Courageous Moral Stance and Content
New 2018 Book Release on this theme: Craig M. Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: a Christian Appraisal, IVP Academic.
There are many forces in the world today that would seek to steal our humanity, our innocence, our dignity and self-respect, our higher calling in life, our good reason, our good faith, our deeper sense of purpose. There are forces that seek to dismiss our connection with a moral robustness and a transcendent horizon of meaning, seek to dumb us down. We are tempted to sell out to the cheaper definitions of the human experience, to live a trivial existence of narcissism and radical self-interest–the prideful consumer. At the end of the day, these cheap versions are lies and smokescreens, keeping us form deeper insights and wisdom of the ages. They set us up for a spectacular fall, prevent us from reaching our better self. People should not settle for cheap versions of humanity; they should expect and demand a full and whole humanity and pursue a thick self. Don’t miss the profound quotes at the bottom of the article, especially those from Abraham Heschel.
But who would deny that humans have ethical capacity and are skilled at apprehending the good and the true? There is often disagreement about ethical foundations but not this fundamental capacity to make ethical choices and reflect as ethical beings. From a materialist perspective it may seem enigmatic, but nevertheless a real phenomenon as noted by Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. This is quite amazing for any animal. Without this critical ability, one could not expect good science or good relations among scientists, let alone justice and fairness of opportunity within an academic institution, a courtroom or a society. Science would be bankrupt without a tremendous amount of trust, critical thinking and peer review accountability. This is all about ethics and normative expectations; truth and goodness are both operative.
Nor is this moral capacity simply a mere product of evolution, although biologists such as Jeffrey Schloss at Westmont College are working on the evolution of altruism. The moral dimension of our humanity cannot be properly reduced to a survival issue or self-propagation. All humans by choice and desire participate in a quest for truth and struggle with their grasp of the ethical (except for psychopaths or sociopaths), the just, and the fair. Both truth and love are together needed for genuine knowledge according to the late Wittgenstein. [1]
In my PhD work, I was delighted to discover the deep genius of philosopher of the self Charles Taylor at McGill University. According to Taylor’s important tome Sources of the Self, [2] people are deeply embedded as moral creatures and universally have some relationship to the good; they cannot escape their moral capacity, behaviour or moral desires. They cannot escape being moral interpreters and interlocutors. I wrestled much with his position on the moral subject in my critique of Michel Foucault’s concept of moral self-constitution, which was rooted in radical freedom. Taylor, Canada’s premier philosopher, has many important things to offer to this philosophical anthropology conversation. You can read more about the parameters of his position in the GCU blog posts entitled ‘Quality of the Will’. Read More…
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