{"id":3474,"date":"2017-11-06T05:48:09","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T02:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=3474"},"modified":"2017-11-06T05:48:09","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T02:48:09","slug":"the-imperial-i-when-the-self-becomes-the-arbiter-of-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/3474\/the-imperial-i-when-the-self-becomes-the-arbiter-of-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"The Imperial I: When The Self Becomes The Arbiter Of Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity<\/a>, at Amazon<\/p>\n

“To thine own self be true.” <\/em>\u2014William Shakespeare, Hamlet<\/em><\/p>\n

W<\/strong>HILE THERE ARE SOME IN OUR CULTURE <\/strong>who will deny the soul, there are others who will at least admit that human beings have a “higher self.” This self, they insist, is not identical with the soul, nor does it follow the dictates of traditional morality or an external moral code. Rather, this is a self that forges a morality all its own. This morality, however, is no less binding for its adherents than traditional morality is for religious believers. What we have here is not a denial of morality, as many religious people suspect. Nor do we have a slide from morality. Rather, we have before us a new morality that may be called liberal morality or secular morality.<\/p>\n

This secular morality has already overtaken much of Europe, Canada, and Australia, and it has made impressive headway in the United States. It is now being exported to other cultures, where it is gaining recruits\u2014especially among young people. While traditional morality held sway in the past, secular morality has staked its claim as the ethic of the future. The “culture wars” in America, involving issues like abortion, divorce, and homosexual marriage, can be largely understood as a clash between traditional morality and secular morality.<\/p>\n

Traditional morality is based on the idea that there is a moral order in the universe that is external to us and makes claims on us. In ancient times this moral order was believed inherent in nature itself. Shakespeare conveys this in Macbeth: <\/em>on the Tuesday beforeDuncan’s murder his horses turn wild in the night, “contending against obedience” and almost seeking to “make war with mankind:’ The night of the murder is disturbed by “lamenting heard in the air, strange screams of death,” and the sky remains dark long after the day should have begun. Similarly in Julius Caesar, <\/em>the night preceding Caesar’s death is convulsed by reports of frightful horrors of nature. In the Shakespearean universe, the physical order itself is disrupted prior to some terrible moral crime.<\/p>\n

Today we no longer make a direct link between the natural world and the moral realm. We don’t see the order in the cosmos as related to the order in the soul. Such a link lives only in fairy tales, where good and evil come embodied in witches, spying ravens, poisoned apples, fairy godmothers, and princes named “Charming.” The great scientific habit of mind has made it impossible for us to take such ideas seriously as descriptions of the real world. But the idea of an eternal moral order has persisted. It remains a powerful idea in Western culture, and it is the predominant code of morality for the rest of the world.
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\nTraditional morality is objective morality. It is based on the idea that certain things are right or wrong no matter who says differently. In various religions, traditional morality is contained in some form of a written code. The best example is the Ten Commandments, the most famous list of dos and don’ts (mostly don’ts) in history. God is usually considered the author of traditional morality. In living up to His edicts, we are presenting ourselves to Him for His favor. This is important because everyone knows that good people sometimes come to grief while bad people flourish. God’s role in traditional morality is to guarantee that, in the next life, these injustices will be corrected and everyone will get his “just deserts.”<\/p>\n

Secular morality emerged in resistance to traditional morality. In the traditional view morality is “out there,” whereas for many people today morality is “in here.” The new source of morality is no longer the external code but the inner heart. When facing a moral dilemma, we resolve it not by consulting a commandment, nor do we follow the instructions of a parent or teacher or preacher. Instead we are guided by the advice Polonius gave to Laertes: “to thine own self be true.” As beings with inner depths, we plumb within ourselves and look to that internal rudder inside us. We grant to this secret inhabitant of our internal selves the authority to guide us infallibly in our actions. Thus we seek to create a harmony between our inner self and our external life. Secular morality is a quest for our best or truest self, which is believed to reside within.<\/p>\n

In some respects the new morality is quite close to Christianity. Traditionally Christians have held that there are two ways of following the will of God: abiding by His commandments and harkening to His voice within us. In Luke 17:21 Jesus recommends the latter: “the kingdom of God is within you.” So did the church father Augustine: “I entered into the depths of my soul, and with the eye of my soul I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays over me.” In Augustine’s view, God is the interior light that powers our souls. The Reformation, too, developed the idea of the priesthood of the individual believer, in which each person looks within himself to discover God’s will. Outward behavior is not enough, because there is an inner self that only God perceives.<\/p>\n

Secular morality breaks with Christianity in its counsel of inwardness as an autonomous moral source. Augustine and Luther presumed that the inward journey is merely the mode of access to the Creator, and through this relationship man finds joy andcompleteness. The secular innovation is to cut off the interior quest from any external source of authority, including God’s. Philosopher Charles Taylor explains this point of view: “I am free when I decide for myself what concerns me, rather than being shaped by external influences. Our moral salvation comes from recovering authentic moral contact with ourselves. Self-determining freedom demands that I break the hold of external impositions, and decide for myself alone.” So the inner light is now the final arbiter of how I should live my life. The self defines what is good and becomes the exclusive source of unity and wholeness.<\/p>\n

Today’s secular morality is rooted in the romantic philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Rousseau’s thought we discover a deeper schism between liberal morality and Christianity. In the Christian view, human nature is corrupted by original sin. Original sin does not refer only to the sin of Adam and Eve; it also refers to the idea that our natures are, from the start, sinful. Augustine asks us to look at the infant, how thoroughly self-absorbed it is, how petulantly it strikes its little arms out at the nurse. If babies do not do harm, Augustine wryly notes, it is not for lack of will but only for lack of strength. In the Christian understanding, the inner self is corrupt, so we need God’s grace to enter from the outside and transform our fallen human nature. Christianity is a religion of self-overcoming.
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\nIn Rousseau’s understanding, by contrast, human beings were originally good but society has corrupted them. We are not to blame for our failings because “society made us do it.” Consequently, in order to discover what is good and true, we must dig deep within ourselves and recover the voice of nature in us. Rousseau never counseled a return to the primitive state. It is not a matter, he wrote in Emile, <\/em>of moving back among the apes and the bears.’ But man’s original state can to some extent be recovered as a state of mind. Within us dwells an original being that is our true self, uncorrupted by the pressures of society. The problem is that the voice of this inner self has been rendered inaudible by the din of convention and artificially generated desires. By connecting with the inner self and giving its voice an authoritative role in our lives, we can avoid “selling out” to a mercenary society and recover our essential goodness. In the secular ethic, James Byrne reminds us, it is not God but we who are “the dispensers of our own saving grace.”<\/p>\n

It should not be thought the secular ethic is a complete repudiation of morality. It preserves the distinction between the “is” and the “ought.” Nature is the way we are, and it also provides the model for the way we ought to be. We should <\/em>follow the call of our inner selves; if we don’t, we are not being true to ourselves and are missing out on the goal of self-fulfillment. This is subjectivism\u2014because each of us has a distinctive way of being ourselves\u2014but it is not relativism, because there is no suggestion here that “anything goes.” In the secular ethic, the inner self speaks definitively and we are obliged to follow it. Secular morality differs from Christianity not in rejecting the notion of the good but in positing a self-sufficient inner source for what is good.<\/p>\n

Perhaps surprisingly, secular morality retains some of the most distinctive features of traditional Christianity. For example, many Christians habitually engage in rituals of self-disclosure and confession. The confessional style is not limited to Catholics, who at least confine the narrative of their sins to a single confessor. Many born-again Christians will at the slightest provocation uncork astonishing details of what drunks, drug addicts, and moral reprobates they used to be until they fell into the arms of Christ. Our secular culture continues this tradition. Turn on Oprah or another talk show, and you will hearpeople discussing without inhibition the intimate details of their sex lives, what Peeping Toms they used to be as teenagers, how they still fantasize about making love to the Peabody twins who live down the street, or how they have come to suspect that their partner’s sex organs are not functioning entirely well. In the Oprah case, the purpose of all this titillating detail is not, however, to surrender these anxieties and turn to Christ. It is to advance the process of self-discovery, aided by audience participation.<\/p>\n

Oprah’s popularity reveals some of the appealing elements of the secular ethic. It promotes individuality, because each of us now has our own moral script and our own way of being human. It eschews hypocrisy. Nothing could be worse under this ethic than to pretend to be the kind of person you are not. Why put on airs and live a lie? It’s better to live naturally, even if this raises a few eyebrows, and to encourage people to accept you as you are. It promotes independence. When you become your own person you are no longer subservient to the will of others, or to the artificial appeal of “society.”
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\nUnder the secular code, art assumes a central role as a means of self-realization and self-expression. The artist is no longer copying nature, in the manner of conforming to an external code, but rather employing sculpture and painting and poetry to reveal his own (sometimes incomprehensible) inner self. No wonder that art has largely replaced religion as the institution to which secular people pay homage: it is much more fashionable to serve on the local museum’s board than on the parish committee’s.<\/p>\n

The deepest appeal of secular morality is its role in the formation and preservation of “love relationships.” How do we know that we love? There is no other way but to reach deep into ourselves and consult the inner voice, which is not the voice of reason but the voice of feeling. We succumb to that inward self so completely that we feel that we have lost control. We don’t love, but are “in love,” and we are now not entirely responsible for what we do.<\/p>\n

Love is the sin for which we find it almost impossible to repent. That is why Paolo and Francesca, the two adulterers who inhabit the outer ring of Dante’s inferno, still cling together like doves, appealing to the law of love, “which absolves no one from loving.” Love has transported them into an almost transcendental state outside the real world, and yet more real than the world. Love of this kind is, quite literally, “beyond good and evil,” and that is why the new morality has become such a powerful justification for adultery. When the inner self commands love, it does so authoritatively, defiantly, and without regard to risk or cost or all other commitments. As C. S. Lewis once observed, erotic love of this kind tends to “claim for itself a divine authority.”<\/p>\n

High rates of divorce in the West can be accounted for by the moral force generated by the secular ethic. Today the woman who leaves her husband says, “I felt called to leave. My life would have been a waste if I stayed. My marriage had become a kind of prison. I just had to follow my heart and go with Ted.” So divorce has become, as it never was before, a form of personal liberation, what Barbara Dafoe Whitehead terms “expressive divorce.”<\/p>\n

Here we have the first hint of a serious problem with secular morality. In its central domain, that of love, it is notoriously fickle. It starts out very sure of itself, promising not just “I love you” but “I will always love you.” This is stated not hypocritically or cunningly but sincerely. Each time actress Elizabeth Taylor got married she could be heard on television saying something like, “This time I’ve got it right. This time it’s the real thing:’ Love’s permanence gives it moral power, the power to lift us above the narrow confines of ourselves and join with another person to become a higher unity. But, as I say, the inner selfhas repeatedly proven itself a liar. Even Rousseau, that great champion of the inner self, admits in Emile <\/em>that in love “everything is only illusion.” Or as Lewis puts it, “Eros is driven to promise what Eros of himself cannot perform.” So the West has paid an enormous social price\u2014evident in the ineffable sadness of the children of divorce\u2014for its adoption of secular morality.
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\nMoreover, there is a deeper and more fundamental problem with secular morality. This morality is based on the assumption that the inner self is good. Is this assumption correct? If we consult the great works of Western literature, the answer would seem to be a resounding no. Read Shakespeare’s plays or take in Wagner’s Ring <\/em>trilogy. As great artists, Shakespeare and Wagner draw us into the inner depths of human nature, and what do we find there? We find gentleness and tenderness and sweetness and pity, to be sure, but we also find cruelty, brutality, lust, hatred, and envy. We find also schadenfreude, <\/em>a word the Germans use to describe the pleasure we take in another person’s misery. Humans are, in their inner depths, cauldrons of good and evil mixed together.<\/p>\n

Quite possibly evil predominates in this mixture, but that may not be apparent to us. A whole body of scientific and psychological scholarship shows that beneath the motives that we admit to ourselves, there are often less admirable motives at work. Even our good motives, such as pity and compassion, may be derived from feelings of superiority and condescension we are reluctant to acknowledge. Evolutionary psychology shows that apparent acts of generosity may in fact be propelled by selfish motives of self- aggrandizement and self-perpetuation. I am not saying that human nature is bereft of virtue. The propensity for good is certainly there, but so is the propensity for vice and evil. The question for secular morality is, in seeking the inner self, which self are you seeking? What principle do you have that distinguishes the good inner self from the bad inner self?<\/p>\n

To these questions secular morality has no answer. It refuses to admit the ancient truth of Christianity: there is corruption at the core of human nature. Human nature is, in Christian terms, “fallen:’ I am not making a religious argument here, nor am I appealing to the Adam and Eve story in Genesis. I am simply making an observation about human motivation, derived both from experience and from art. However morality is defined, there seems to be a universal human tendency to fall short of it. So there is a natural propensity in human beings to evil, and that is the significance of the events that transpired in the Garden of Eden. In this sense “original sin” is not a theological proposition but one to which all rational people can give assent. A realistic assessment of human malevolence should convince even secular people that secular morality is based on an inadequate anthropology.<\/p>\n

I am not advocating the wholesale repudiation of the new morality, which would be an impractical suggestion in any case. The secular ethic is now deeply rooted in Western society, and there is no easy way to root it out. Sociologist Alan Wolfe points out that even some Christians today use the language of authenticity and self-realization to describe what God accomplishes in their lives. Even so, secular morality in most prevalent forms is irresponsible. It offers no check on those who invoke “self-discovery” as an excuse to engage in behavior traditionally considered improper and immoral. “Love made me do it” provides an ideal banner for anyone who seeks to act self-indulgently without regard to the consequences for others. But the problem is not necessarily with self-fulfillment or authenticity. Those are valid moral ideals, but by themselves they are incomplete. I should pursue my self- fulfillment, but only in ways that are good. I will be happier as a genuine, authenticperson, but only if this authenticity and candor is allied with goodness. Hitler, let us remember, did not lack commitment or authenticity.<\/p>\n

The Christian solution to this problem is, oddly enough, not a religious one. It is not to embrace Christ and become a born-again believer. Rather, it is to follow the examined path of the “impartial spectator,” which is to take conscience as your guide. For religious people conscience is the divine taskmaster within us\u2014what John Henry Newman once termed “the connecting principle between the creature and its creator”\u2014but secular people don’t have to believe this in order to recognize that they too have an impartial spectator they can turn to. This impartial spectator frequently directs us to act against our inclination and self-interest. Yes, I know that you feel for this woman, but remember that you have a wife and children. Conscience can be an enemy of love, and a real spoilsport to boot, but conscience is what enables man to rise above being a prisoner of his inclinations. Conscience enables us to go beyond what feels good and to do what is right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, at Amazon “To thine own self be true.” \u2014William Shakespeare, Hamlet WHILE THERE ARE SOME IN OUR CULTURE who will deny the soul, there are others who will at least admit that human beings have a “higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6702,6707],"tags":[7488,7284,7489,7490,7491,7492,7493,7494,7374,7495,7496,7497,2443],"class_list":["post-3474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thechrist","category-studies-thechristcontents","tag-culture-wars","tag-dinesh-d-souza","tag-higher-self","tag-homosexual-marriage","tag-liberal-morality","tag-macbeth","tag-moral-code","tag-new-morality","tag-order-in-the-universe","tag-religious-believers","tag-secular-morality","tag-traditional-morality","tag-william-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}