Moral Development - Term Paper Example

Human history is the product of the individual actions of individual persons within the wide context of a society. These actions remain themselves guided by ideas, and, insofar as a human being is an end-driven organism (that is, he or she acts for the sake of an end), by self-derived purposes or goals. In his lecture on ethics and culture, “Healing and Creating in History”, Bernard Lonergan addresses the sorts of methods that ought to be taken by society in order to avert social decline, which includes a synthesis of moral theory and economics, the synthesis of creation with healing, and the abandonment of secular materialism which only sweeps the problem under the rug. History, to Lonergan, is simply “human affairs”, and within the scope of human affairs, we can identify definite periods of breakdown as well as creativity and growth. Because human action is goal-driven, so too must be human affairs—the continuous cycle of birth, decay, and rebirth. Lonergan’s mission it seems should not be to keep this sequence from decline. This would be akin to extinguishing the natural fires that forests must periodically endure for deadwood to be cleared away and new life to arise, only for this forest to become a massive conflagration. Instead, we should ensure that the forest heals properly from these natural fires. Lonergan’s thesis is not that decay is unnecessary, but that healing the damage from this decay is necessary, and creation is the means by which human beings respond to the malady of breakdown and collapse. Ultimately, Lonergan’s cure for the problem he diagnoses is correct. However, one should not be so certain that the disorder Lonergan diagnosis is itself real enough to warrant his cure. As Lonergan’s introduction goes, we find it eventually predicated of the distinction between a diagnosis and a cure. When a doctor tells a patient that he or she has a curable illness, such is not itself a cure. When that doctor prescribes a medicine to combat the illness and/or its effects, such is a cure. “Healing” and “creating”, the topics of Lonergan’s lecture, both deal with cures, after he says: “Let me illustrate this need for human creating from the contemporary economic situation”, which, from his statement of a cure, presupposes the diagnosis. Their continued operations, he believes, pose a threat to mankind’s “collective survival” (a term used by Barnet and Müller, quoted from Lonergan). However, Lonergan neglects a crucial element of his lecture unargued and omits any shred of evidence for his claims, largely leaving them assumed for his listener (or reader) to grant him. However, on the basis that his diagnosis is wrong, so too must be his cure. A doctor cannot cure an illness that does not exist or does not need a cure without being disingenuous or deceitful. Lonergan’s premise, a diagnosis which holds corporations as leaders of a social decline, to begin his discussion of a cure, is categorically mistaken. The subsequent discussion of a cure for this problem must be instead directed at some other cause for the decline that we are supposed to be seeing. I turn now to the cure itself (and away from the diagnosis), which remains applicable to a number of different ills, a miracle drug of sorts. This characterization of creation (at least as Lonergan conceives it) as a “miracle drug” is one he might be in favor of. Indeed, it accounts for the rebirth from the social decline that he erroneously placed on the shoulders of corporations. The process of creation involves the collection of insights: where “insights” are nontrivial, non-arbitrary thoughts on life. Insights, in contrast to abstractions and concepts, are not merely heuristic and are necessarily concrete and specifically applicable. Insights are important insofar as they develop in a person the right way of looking at the world, which is ultimately important for one’s moral development. Simply using concepts, one cannot apply one’s knowledge, such as when we say a person is “book-smart” when that person retains much information, but fails to use it in practice. If the creative process and insights are instrumental for a person’s moral development, they must be essential to the creation of a well-structured society. On this topic, Lonergan characterizes human development in two ways: (a) development from below upwards, and (b) development from above downwards. The formulation of (a) is what he calls “creating” and the formulation of (b) is what he calls “healing”. “Healing” may be part of, to use Lonergan’s example, “the human love of one’s tribe, one’s city, one’s country, and mankind” (Lonergan 573). With regard to healing, we might say that insights, which come along with creation, create healthy societies as well as healthy people. Resembling in many respects the teachings of Confucius, who too had much to say on moral development, we might say that the relationships between citizens of a state and members of a family are essentially the same, and that the same principles of unity connect constituents of both relationships. This hierarchical structure should reveal to us not only how to make our societies or families more morally responsible, but ourselves as well: moral development begins with the most basic levels in human cognition, or, as Lonergan states it, “from experience to growing understanding, from growing understanding to balanced judgment, from balanced judgment to fruitful courses of action, and from fruitful courses of action to the new situations that call forth further understanding, profounder judgment, richer courses of action” (Lonergan 573). This process of moving from the most fundamental layer to the most complex is (a) the creative process. Indeed, creation is a process which goes precisely in this direction, as formulated by (a). Thus, not only is “healing” (the move from complex to fundamental) instrumental for moral development, so too is creation. Nevertheless, the creative process comes with a crucial caveat: insights—the building blocks of creation—necessitate of the creator an open mind. Without this characteristic, one cannot create, remembering that implementation and application are what differentiate insights from concepts and abstractions, and one cannot implement the insight if he or she has a biased mind. For instance, an author may potentially be a wonderfully creative and gifted writer; however, because of a bias, that person may be unable to craft the best piece of literature that he or she could do. In that sense, the bias would limit the individual’s potential and stunt his or her moral growth. Not having an open mind (that is, being biased in some way) is not the only “exclusion”, as Lonergan describes them, of fresh insights and therefore the creative process. He also excludes the insights of the neurotic, group egoism or bias, and the fallibility of common sense. The danger of these obstacles to the creative process is the complete reversal of creation to destruction and decline. Instead of fresh and useful insights being crafted and employed to satisfy some end, the biases of individuals (and groups) generate nothing but a heap of useless and contradictory suggestions and thoughts. Lonergan describes the situation with an analogy: “As a diagnosis of terminal cancer denies any prospect of health resorted, so a social dump is the end of fruitful insight and of the cumulative development it can generate” (Lonergan 573). Thus, the conclusion is this: if the process of creation is instrumental for one’s moral development, and insights are crucial for the creative process, then insights must be crucial for one’s moral development. To achieve insights, and accumulate them correctly, the mind needs to be open and unbiased. Thus, a virtue of liberality might be introduced, such that only by being open to new ideas and insights, and by being open to applying these thoughts, can we achieve our potentials as moral agents. While creation is necessarily essential to one’s own development, equally important is the process which runs parallel and opposite to it: “healing”, as formulated by (b). Like creation, healing is hierarchical in structure. Particular structures, such as the family, can upon their own repair help repair the larger structure, such as the state, to which they serve as a part. Love, something which Lonergan indicates is crucially important for the healing process, can overcome some of the obstacles to creation. “Love” as such can reveal values, dissolve bias, and break the bonds of psychological and social determinisms. In contrast, hatred clouds values, reinforces bias, sees only evil, and loosens the bonds between individuals and groups. While hatred can loosen the bond between members of a family and thus destabilize entire societies, love will strengthen the bonds between individuals in that family, making the family tighter and more concerned for the welfare of its members, and thus draw entire societies together under a common goal. Love too, in this respect, might be spoken of as a virtue insofar as it makes an individual’s moral development possible: without love, or agapē, the individual remains unable to form any lasting, permanent connections with other human beings, with whom we often share common goals and aims. On these principles, Lonergan subsequently moves to strike out of considerations that either secularism or materialism can provide the appropriate philosophical framework for cultivating this (and other) virtues. He dismisses secularism not for its marginalization of religion in human affairs, but for its deception with regard to its relation to religion. Contrary to its claims, secularism has not produced an “antidote for hatred” (Lonergan 574). So instead of it getting rid of hatred altogether, it merely reformulates that hatred into some other form. Thus, in the place of conflict between religious groups, we see instead conflict between classes, as in Marxism. Secularism, as a result, cannot provide the proper basis for exercising the virtue of agapē. Lonergan also dismisses materialism on the basis that it, by its own principles, cannot “heal” as such but only “manipulate”. This is because materialism treats all things, including behavior and cognition, as products of material processes, and thus alterable by an outside force, such as state authorities. People need, Lonergan maintains, a religious force—God’s grace—to enlighten us and guide us in our paths to becoming excellent human beings that exercise and practice as habits the virtues of love, liberality, prudence, and so on. As a side note, healing requires the creative process, for without it, one might be “a soul without a body” (Lonergan 575). Lonergan furthers this thought by analogizing creation and healing with Christianity in the ancient world: while the religion healed what was absent or wrong with Roman imperialism, it failed to create, and thus inherited a world of barbarism and savagery. Likewise, within each individual, the process of healing, in the absence of creation, will lead to imprudence and an inability to understand. In contrast, the process of creation, in the absence of healing, will lead to blind egotism, an inability to love, or appreciate the importance or value of particular objects and people. Both, along with their caveats and qualifications, are objectively necessary if one is going to strive to fulfill his or her own potential as a human being and become a virtuous agent. There is no “choice” between the two: to neglect healing, one becomes an evil genius, a maniac unconcerned for others or himself; to neglect creating, one becomes a sloth, a creature that has the best intentions, but is unable to act or think. Lonergan concludes his essay by appealing for the synthesis of economics and ethics. The incorporation of normativity into the science of human relationships represents, for Lonergan, a necessary step in achieving what has been previously described as an “objectively necessary” synthesis for the individual. I agree insofar as mankind is an end-directed organism, acting for the sake of something. Moral action, like all action, is directed at an end: in particular, doing what is right. The assimilation of moral percepts into economics would represent the unity of creation and healing, which is necessary not only in each and every individual human being for his or her moral development, but in human relationships as well: whether they are between family members or citizens of the state. However, while Lonergan makes this prescription for what he sees as a necessity for our “collective survival”, I see it as a prescription for moral incompleteness and as indispensable for one’s moral development. We need not appeal to corporations in order to speak of the possibility of living a moral life. We need only appeal to the fact that someone is a human being to realize those things that define us, and how we need to act because of that fact. Works Cited Barnet, Richard J. and Ronald E. Müller. Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975. Lonergan, Bernard. The Lonergan Reader. Ed. Mark D. Morelli and Elizabeth A. Morelli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Read More