What can we till rely on today? What can we hold on to? I am not a pessimist, but we scarcely need reminding that we are now in a "crisis" of values as profound as it is far reaching. Ever since the youth and student revolt of the late 1960s, there are no longer any institution or guardians of values which are not in crisis or have not been radically challenged. Were today i there any undisputed authority? We used to be told: the pope, the bishop, the church says; or the prime minister, the government, the party says; or the teacher, the professor, "your father: says. Where nowadays could we even settle a discussion - let alone pacify a demonstration - with an appeal to such authorities? No, the state, church, courts, army, school family - all seem to be insecure. They are no longer accepted without question - least of all by young people - as guardians of values.
With this crucial questioning of accepted authorities, traditions and ways f life, the values associated with them seem to be called into question as well. Liberalization was necessary, but often went further than had been foreen or planned Elaborate processes designated to get rid of taboos frequently turned ut to be more destructive than creative, with the result that for many young people today, morality as a whole seems to have become relative The effects of all these developments have been anything but liberating The ground has been cut from under the feet of some people - especially the young - who now feel their lives have no meaning and turn to delinquency or extreme religious sects, or to political fanaticism, even terrorism.
This large-scale crisis of values has thrown modern society into conflicts which have not yet by any means been resolved Indeed their full significance has probably not even been grasped. For our grandfathers and grandmothers, religion or Christianity, was still a matter of personal conviction. For our fathers and mothers it was still at least a matter of tradition and "the done thing." For their emancipated sons and daughters, however, it is becoming increasingly a thing of the past which is no longer binding; passed by and obsolete. And there are parents today who observe with perplexity that morality in general has also vanished, along with religion as Nietzsche predicted. For - as is becoming increasingly clear - it is not so easy to justify any moral values purely rationally, by reason alone, as Sigmund Freud would have liked to do; to prove by reason alone why under any circumstances freedom is supposed to be better than oppression, justice better than self-interest, non-violence better than violence, love better than hate, peace better than war Or, to put it more forcefully; why, if it is to our advantage and our personal happiness, should we not just as well lie, steal, commit adultery and murder; indeed, why should we be humane or even fair"?
Perhaps what is good is simply whatever is to my advantage, to the advantage of my group, party, class, race, or even to the advantage of my business or trade union. Is it not a question of individual or collective selfishness? Some biologists and ethologists do in fat try to persuade us that for human beings, as for animals, any sort of altruism or love is merely the supreme form of biologically inherited self-interest. And, after all, philosophers have continually asked where we are able to find the criteria to judge the interests lying behind all knowledge - how we are to distinguish between what is true and what is illusory, what is objective and what is subjective, what is acceptable and what is reprehensible.
Those four paragraphs written c. 1986, at the height of the Thatcher - Reagan years, the Kohl years, the, alas too few, Gorbachev years, the height of the John Paul II papacy . . . etc. are a very good and short summary of the crisis of modernism that has, in thirty-three years, produced Trump and Putin, Boris Johnson and the rise of neo-Nazism and neo-fascism and state sponsored elections rigging and all else. If he had put names to intellectual movements, it's clear he's talking about, among others, the biological determinism of Sociobiology-Evolutionary Psychology and other anti-democratic, anti-religious ideologies as science.
He touches on how the absolute freedom of individuals inevitably negates morality which is all about the boundaries of personal freedom in respect of the rights and, as importantly, the needs of others, especially those with less wealth which translates into less power.
While I don't think Hans Kung necessarily would have stated that as his intention, this introduction, filled out, is a good list of the things I've criticized in both the "right" and also in the would-be "left" and the imaginary middle and, in fact, you have to critisize in yourself to lead a moral life no matter where you would put yourself on a graph of political identity or even more generally as a person.
His line of demarcation of the "youth and student revolts" I'd imagine c. 1968 is understandable in a European context, though those had been going on before. I know he has pointed to 1968 as the year that turned his jr. colleague who he had brought to his university department, from a liberal theologian of Vatican II into an arch reactionary who later became Pope Benedict XVI. It's as good a place to start as any but the intellectual tendencies that produced that had been going on for a lot longer, as his citations of Nietzsche and Freud prove.
As to his description of the dissolution of intellectual and moral authority, no one but an ignorant boob would deny that. Whatever "freedom" that comes from that is more than paid for in the ability of people who merely don't like moral restraints or find them inconvenient of unprofitable to deny they are bound by any moral absolutes. Even the moral absolutes that they should not do to others what they would not want those others to do to them. I have found that it is an exceptional secularist who, when pressed, when subjected to the right set of conditions, will not assert that they are not only independent of things agreed to be immoral, they are also independent of any moral restrictions on themselves, even those they otherwise would or had given mouth to in the past. Though that permission of modernism is hardly unknown to those who profess religion, if not on their own behalf than on behalf of despotic figures they like, such as the JPII supporting some terrible fascists and murderers in concert with the Reagan administration*, as Hans Kung was writing those words, as the "evangelicals" and other supposed religious people who support the flagrant corrupt amorality of Donald Trump.
I have decided to go through the whole book unless ordered to stop. I would guess it will take a number of weeks, if I have to do it in paraphrase, it will go a lot slower. If you would like to read the book, consider this a long unpaid ad for it. The book is very short and succinct and very readable. Why I Am Still A Christian by Hans Kung. I don't know the translator. Even if you found the text for free, I would recommend you buy it for the very useful index. It is an excellent introduction to the huge body of scholarly theology that Hans Kung has written in his long and productive life. I had intended to make this the year I read Rahner, I'm glad I went with Kung, instead. I'll probably make next year a year of Kung, as well.
* I am sometimes quite convinced that John Paul II was, if not an actual CIA-Reagan asset, a virtual one. Perhaps by intention, perhaps by manipulation I'm sure they had a full file on his greatest weaknesses and how to appeal to both his vanity and love of the lime light (he had theatrical experience) and his shortsightedness. I, like Kung, am a deep skeptic of the canonization of Karol Wojtyla who may be the most scandalous of modern "saints". As much if not more so than the Pius popes who have been and are in line for that increasingly empty ceremony. I'll remind you that among those JPII favored canonizing are the center of some of the most serious sexual abuse scandals that started coming to light while he was still alive, Legionnaires of Christ, Opus Dei. He had a serious soft spot for some of the worst, many of whom may well have been deep CIA assets. I wish Francis would have slowed or stopped the canonization assembly line that Wojtyla set in motion. Maybe he should consider that after he canonizes St. Oscar Romero, a victim of the JPII papacy and the fascists who had American support.
No comments:
Post a Comment